Wikipedia talk:Requests for arbitration/Date delinking/Proposed decision

Arbitrators active on this case

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Protected

I note that Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers) has been protected since November 20, 2008. I would hope any remedies would include some sort of path to unprotection. MBisanz ^talk 05:34, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

I suppose it is rather meanginless to note that WP:MOSNUM does not sit on its own, as since its protection the edit warring has continued by the involved parties at Wikipedia:Manual of Style (links) as of Feb 2nd: [1], [2]. So my above comment should probably be phrased as "I would hope any remedies would include some sort of path to long term unprotection of all date-related MoS pages. MBisanz ^talk 03:16, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

"Temporary" injunction

The injunction in this case has been in place for nearly three months. This might be acceptable if it was limited in application and affected only the parties to the case. However, it is incredibly broad, applying to "all editors" and affecting edits that are extremely common. Despite that, I doubt it's well known to everyone it might affect, or that it's been adequately publicized. Although the stated dispute is about the use of bots and scripts, the injunction has now been enforced against someone who is not using any such tools, is not a party to the case, but is simply going about normal systematic editing that isn't particularly about date links, even though they happen to come up (kind of hard to avoid, actually). So I'd like to ask, why is this injunction staying in place so long with no apparent progress on the case? --Michael Snow (talk) 16:27, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

I'd make it clearer what is meant by "mass" to avoid hitting people acting in good faith, for example: "Until the case is closed, any editor adding or removing links to year articles and/or day-of-the-year articles from more than n distinct articles within an x-hour period may be blocked." I'd go with n = 24 and x = 168, but any reasonable values would do. --A. di M. (formerly Army1987) — Deeds, not words. 18:52, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

I agree that this type of clarification is necessary for editors not using bots, especially considering the way that Wikipedia:Date_formatting_and_linking_poll/Month-day_responses is going. Karanacs (talk) 20:15, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

• As Michael eloquently points out, the block in the case he noted above is entirely unfair – this is clearly collateral damage which should not occur. The injunction should only have been applied to automated linking and delinking by the parties only, plus User:Tennis expert in view of the evidence here. Its application/enforcement (or not, as the case may be) has resulted in more drama and harm than it was ever meant to prevent, and should be lifted. Ohconfucius (talk) 01:57, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

While I can understand your frustration, I just don't see what is so urgent about delinking dates. I absolutely cannot understand why, when someone has been informed that a temporary injunction exists, why it is so absolutely necessary to continue to delink all dates in the articles which he visits. It beggars belief that he feels that it is so crucial for the survival of wikipedia as a whole, that it is worth violating an arbcom injunction. Additionally, if the outcome of this arbcom is as you hope, then his edits will be performed in about ten seconds by lightbot. So the edits have saved about ten seconds of server time and wasted the time of everyone involved, including the person who delinked the dates. This is why my sympathy is extremely limited. AKAF (talk) 07:10, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

There is nothing particularly "urgent" about cleaning up the date autoformatting mess or inconsistencies and illogical choices of format in any particular article. But it is urgent that our transition from amateur to professional standards continue apace, and the broader programs of such cleaning up are significant to the transition. This is why the wikignoming efforts of editors such as Colonies Chris and the skilled and sensitive development of bots and scripts by editors such as Lightmouse are so important to WP. The temporary injunction needs to be lifted for a host of reasons, among them that we can get on with the job. The community has discarded the creaking old date autoformatting system that was hastily introduced without consensus in 2003, and there is something of a landslide at the RFC for the relevance-related linking of date-fragments.

I believe we should take notice of this Wikimania address by researcher Dr Bill Wedemeyer, Faculty of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Michigan State University, who conducted an extensive study of the quality of (mainly) scientific articles on WP. One of his conclusions is the significance of bots etc. to improving our article quality and MoS compliance (I think it's around 30 minutes in). Tony (talk) 07:48, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Apparently Colonies Chris does not really need the injunction to be lifted or modified as he never quit delinking dates anyway. See, e.g., (1), (2), (3), (4), (5), all of which were after March 28, 2009. Tennis expert (talk) 09:44, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

It's a volunteer project and thus there is no deadline. The only two places that we need to act fast are with respect to copyvios and with respect to BLP. The entire reason this case exists is that people felt MOS compliance was a high urgency task - it is not. --MASEM (t) 12:36, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

(od) This injunction has served its stated purpose, but in light of the recent WP:DATEPOLL, is now simply an impediment to what should be normal editing. I understand that there is no deadline, but have to ask what the conditions for lifting this injunction are? The arguments above simply seem to suggest that the passage of time is required. If so, then how much time? Does it improve the encyclopedia to stop the wishes of the community being carried out? If removing deprecated date links improves the encyclopedia, then WP:IAR would surely trump this injunction right now. Any contributor can point to the poll results as consensus for their removal of an irrelevant date link. I understand that ArbCom may take an arbitrarily long period of time to consider other issues in this case, but the injunction does not depend, per se, on the outcome of those other issues. Can anyone explain how to propose a motion that the injunction be lifted? --RexxS (talk) 13:49, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

While I would agree that the consensus is clear on how we should link dates, we certainly have not resolved how this should be carried out. After all, one of the issues here is specifically about how the consensus position on linked dates should be carried out. Many people were (and are likely still) opposed to using a bot to delink all dates indiscriminately, as Lightbot does, when the consensus specifically allows for certain relevant dates to remain linked. -Chunky Rice (talk) 14:24, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

Consensus has shown that few date links need to remain, and can be easily relinked. See Wikipedia talk:Date formatting and linking poll for more discussion on the matter. Dabomb87 (talk) 14:32, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

Consensus actually appears to have shown that relevant date links need to remain — how few or many that is remains to be seen. Regardless, if bots and scripts are ultimately going to be let loose on the article base to remove the dates that were purely for autoformatting and are not relevant — which would seem to be the most efficient solution — dates that should not be removed need to be protected in some manner before that happens. That same mechanism for protection would also keep them from getting removed in subsequent sweeps of the bot. In my mind, this is the most important item to be addressed through this arbitration. Mlaffs (talk) 15:06, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

I already "protected" the relevant link from the dab page MM to the article 2000 (however clumsily). Assuming that bots won't touch chronological articles, I think that job's finished, unless you can give any other instances of a link to a year or day-month article that's actually relevant? --RexxS (talk) 15:21, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

All that has to be done is to create a template what should be used to wrap and protect dates that should be linked, giving editors say 2 weeks to apply it (those that are concerned about date linking will be well aware of it), and then let Lightbot loose on any unprotected date in other articles. This may require that the date be a bit more formalized in the template arguments to make it look like anything but a date so that Lightbot can run without modification (and probably the easiest solution). Yes, there may be some dates that should be kept in articles that are not watched or maintained by those with date linking interests, but it can also be corrected in the same manner with the template. --MASEM (t) 17:26, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

• There's a basic misunderstanding here: the proposal is that Lightbot should unlink only tripartite dates (that is, date autoformatting alone), not date fragments for which the consensus did indeed settle on a relevance test, albeit a strict one. The Lightbot task is framed as narrow in scope, to keep it technically simple and uncontroversial, to be applied broadly. This is a much stricter application of Lightbot than previously performed. Tony (talk) 17:02, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

• Moreover, the screening criteria his bot uses seems rather sophisticated. In a test of 40, randomly selected articles, his bot had 0% error in leaving alone articles like 1985, which are allowed to have linked dates, and it had 100% success in catching dates like the date in the second paragraph here in Parkfield-San Bernardino earthquake. We have also proposed that Lightmouse can have his bot go through—say—a hundred articles and wait for feedback. If an editor responds with “why is my precious link now black instead of link-blue”, we can direct them to MOSNUM. But we might also find that Lightbot fouls up with captions or some unforeseen issue (this is just an example). Lightmouse can tweak and then process, say, a thousand articles. This ramped approach is quite conservative and should be uncontroversial. It’s easy enough to hit [undo] and write to Lightmouse. Lightmouse can provide a “contact me” link in the edit summaries. Greg L (talk) 17:17, 19 April 2009 (UTC)
• Thank you for clarifying, Tony. I agree that removing the linking for such dates is uncontroversial. I'm only concerned that a lifting of the injunction prior to the resolution of this case also opens the door to delinking of all kinds which is just a recipe for more drama. -Chunky Rice (talk) 17:54, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

I agree that the injunction should be lifted. I've been afraid to touch any dates because of the way I was informed and warned about the injunction. (In short, I knew nothing about it and was immediately warned with the threat of blocking. I hear that someone else who had no idea about the injunction was already blocked as well.) I also don't know what the big deal is about using Lightmouse's script. The script shows you the proposed changes before it saves the page. I have a brain and I can simply correct any edits to dates that should not be delinked myself, before saving. Anyone using the script could do the same. I also wholeheartedly agree with Greg L's above proposal of how to test Lightbot. RainbowOfLight ^Talk 18:35, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

• Agreed, the fat lady has sung. Ohconfucius (talk) 04:20, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

No misunderstanding on my part, Tony — just an absence of relevant information. I hadn't seen any discussion about a narrower scope for Lightbot, and so my comments were strictly a response to RexxS' suggestion that the injunction should be lifted. Assuming that the new scope would be removing linking in situations like [[2008-05-04]] or [[May 4]], [[2008]] — where the purpose of the links is clearly for autoformatting — I'd be supportive of a limited suspension of the injunction for Lightbot only, in order to begin some live test runs as described by Greg L. I'm assuming, however, that in this stricter application, if it were to encounter a pair such as [[May 4]], [[1972 in music|1972]], it would remove only the first link and not the second. If that assumption is incorrect, then my original concerns still remain. While the piped link clearly looks like broken autoformatting, determining intent is a lot trickier. As it links to what may be relevant information (depending on the context), I still don't believe it should be removed by automated process. Mlaffs (talk) 05:13, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

• There has been discussion about the action plan at WT:DATEPOLL. There seems now to be a general agreement for bot action to remove the square brackets around full dates only (any date that contains the three elements, day, month, year, in whatever sequence or format) in instances of misformatted dates. At the same time, the bot would insert a space where it is missing from the raw text, and insert a comma where it is missing from the raw text in mdy format. Date fragments (linked years and linked day-months) would be left untouched. In this connection, work is being done to prepare a list of such instances where there are misformatted dates. Ohconfucius (talk) 05:51, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

• Oh sure; of all the pages not to have watch-listed, I pick that one. Thanks for the link, Ohconfucius. I've paged through the discussion, and it looks good to me. I think I saw a suggestion about halfway through the page that piped date links be left alone — I can't tell for sure from your comments directly above whether that's been included in the planning or not. If not, I still have concerns. However, if piped links will be unmolested in this phase, then count me as a voice from the "other" side of this issue in support of the proposed go-forward plan. Mlaffs (talk) 15:14, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

• The list of instances is a new page, so you can go easy on yourself. We have been discussing a more general approach on WT:DATEPOLL, but the specific recommendation came from our resident date-script expert. He will be joining the DATEPOLL discussion. Ohconfucius (talk) 15:27, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

OhConfucius's link seems to lead to a version of the discussion from a few days ago - here's the current version. Sssoul (talk) 17:42, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

• Mlaffs: "limited suspension" of the injunction? Why? It was a temporary injunction and is no longer appropriate given the results of the RFC. Wikignoming to clean up dates and many other aspects of articles needs to resume as before the injunction, nearly four months ago. I can't imagine why you think the injunction should be merely "suspended". Lighbot will not touch piped links.
• Chunky Rice: Have you read the results of the RFC? Tony (talk)

• I just skimmed it. Why? Did I miss something about how the community wishes to proceed with delinking? -Chunky Rice (talk) 16:52, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

• (outdent) With regard to “limited suspension”, I think Mlaffs is using phraseology that actually refers to going forward precisely as we are proposing. He wrote …I'd be supportive of a limited suspension of the injunction for Lightbot only, in order to begin some live test runs as described by Greg L [in his 17:17, 19 April 2009 post, above]. Then he wrote …then count me as a voice from the "other" side of this issue in support of the proposed go-forward plan. In this case, “limited” merely means that he supports the idea of lifting the injunction so Lightmouse can commence his conservative, stepped approach to getting Lightbot up and going as he tweaks his bot between successively larger runs.

  Lightmouse wants controversy about as much as hole in his head. He can deal with technical issues pertaining to his bot all by himself. But the poor bastard will need help if an editor like you‑know‑who pops up who vehemently disagrees with the MOSNUM guidelines being implemented by Lightbot. Accordingly, the need for intervention by anyone from ArbCom might only be necessary if another editor were to set himself ablaze over how “delinking dates is evil and the last RfC was invalid” and files WQAs and ANIs against Lightmouse. If it comes to that, I’m sure someone on the ArbCom can figure out an expedient and efficient procedure to deal with that sort of thing—perhaps refer them to WP:Sucks to be you. Deal with it.

  Besides, Tony, Mlaffs uses an iMac, just like you and I, so we know we think alike in many ways.;-) Greg L (talk) 18:02, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

• Nicely put, Greg. Tony, I just figure that if there's a plan being developed for Lightbot to do the work in an orderly manner, with pre-defined logic, then we should let Lightbot do it. If the edits all come from one source, with a consistent edit summary and a pointer to where to deliver reasonable, policy-based expressions of concern, then I'd hope to see a material decrease in the associated drah-ma. There will be hundreds of eyes — well, dozens at the very least — on these edits, and it'll be a lot easier if they all need to focus in only one direction.

  On the other hand, if we lift the injunction completely right now, then the chance for consistency goes way down with everybody running every which way to link and delink based on their own interpretations, and the gnashing of teeth and wailing will almost assuredly begin anew. In the meantime, hopefully Arbcom will finish up with the case and deliver whatever statements about policy, the application thereof, and user conduct that it feels are appropriate, and then the injunction can be lifted completely.

  Besides, the injunction was only with regard to date linking/de-linking. I'd be distressed if wikignoming to clean up "other aspects of articles" had been slowed down in any way. Heck, my iMac and I have been wikignoming our posteriors off. Mlaffs (talk) 18:39, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

• I know of one such case where gnoming has come to a halt: Colonies Chris has been knobbled several times in his cleanup efforts because of the interpretation of the injunction. As an occasional gnome, I know it is extremely inefficient to run an AWB pass only knowing you need to do it again [tomorrow] after the injunction; it's difficult to reformat 256 unlinked dates in an article and have to leave a small handful of dates linked. Ohconfucius (talk) 01:52, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

The injunction and auto formatting

As regards the latest RFC results, while it's true that the community seems interested in reducing the number of date links, they have not reached consensus on the issue of auto formatting. As auto formatting relies upon linking, I think it would be premature to remove the injunction and engage in mass removal of date links (and hence date auto formatting). —Locke Cole • t • c 21:01, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

It's pretty apparent that the community doesn't want most dates to be linked. A majority of RfC responses also said no to any form of autoformatting; there was not consensus from the minority on what technical way autoformatting should be implemented. See Wikipedia_talk:DATEPOLL#Autoformatting and Wikipedia_talk:DATEPOLL#Autoformatting_-_take_II. Karanacs (talk) 21:20, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

I already said the community doesn't want most dates to be linked, but that's irrelevant if the community isn't prepared to abandon date auto formatting. I also disagree with Ryan's interpretation of the way forward: I don't think it's appropriate to begin mass delinking (which would also effectively remove all the markup for auto formatting) when auto formatting hasn't been rejected. —Locke Cole • t • c 21:45, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

However, any autoformatting using links has been rejected. You asked the question; this was the answer: WP:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)/Date Linking RFC#Deprecating the current date autoformatting : 247 Support [81.8%] / 48 Oppose [15.9%] / 7 Neutral [2.3%] --RexxS (talk) 00:47, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

I think we should leave Locke alone with his rather "unique" interpretation of the consensus. He didn't get it on 25 December 2008, it doesn't look like he's getting it any better on 13 April 2009. Ohconfucius (talk) 01:56, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Wow, where have I seen this comment before.. oh right, it's the way you discourage people from working with me to try and win support for your "one true way". Go away. —Locke Cole • t • c 11:38, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

I didn't ask that question, but thanks for continuing to attribute multiple editors work to me. It's flattering. No, those results are, according to Tony1 (talk · contribs), invalid because of the way they were phrased, remember? Besides, if we can fix the current system (which UC Bill showed we can in large part), I don't see the point in killing it. Further, if we remove date links of the coming year, and then a future auto formatting system is implemented that goes back to using the linking syntax, do we really want to have more bots going around relinking (and re-autoformatting) dates? The community supported "some form", which I take to mean a "working form". So let's fix this system and avoid all the unnecessary bot/script edits. —Locke Cole • t • c 11:38, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

• Exactly, where have I seen this comment before...? Finally, I've found the right term this time – 'infinite loop'. I think it's you who needs to "Go away". Ohconfucius (talk) 12:53, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

40% of the community supported "some form" of autoformatting. That is a minority view by any stretch of the imagination. Karanacs (talk) 13:51, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

My apologies, Locke, I thought you were part of the team that devised the second RfC in November last. Anyway, you and Tony are entitled to your opinions about the validity or otherwise of the RfCs, but I'm more interested in looking for things we can all agree on. Looking at the comments from those RfCs and from the recent poll, I am convinced that using links to format dates was the one autoformatting markup that was near-universally rejected. I really hoped you would be able to agree (once more) with that conclusion. The point in killing the current system is that folks don't want it. I understand that you feel if we delink dates now, it will make it harder to re-introduce some other form of date autoformatting in the future, but that probably is not so. Well-formatted, plain text dates (which is what we will have) are not at all difficult for a bot to recognise. Believe it or not, if the community at some point wants a new system of DA that doesn't use link markup, I'm sure Lightbot would set about that task, if required. Heck, I'd write one for you myself if you wanted. More importantly, I'd urge you to consider this: at some point, the community will be asking "After we made our views clear on linked dates, why are they still there in huge numbers?" It is commendable to argue your case; but at some point, the lack of support for that argument will put you in the position of a "blocking minority". My advice, for what it's worth: Accept that some battles will not be won and look for ways where you can move forward on common ground with all the other editors. Building this encyclopedia needs that approach. Sincerely --RexxS (talk) 00:01, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Please read WP:CON, consensus is not a majority, nor is it determined through polling. We've concluded that the community rejects date links but is indecisive about date auto formatting, the path forward is to disable the links but keep the auto formatting, not throw away both. —Locke Cole • t • c 02:07, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

• The “there is no consensus” argument. (*sigh*) You seem to be deluding yourself here (and everywhere else), Locke, that you can influence the ArbCom decision. What’s going to happen is going to happen. What are you going to do when the rulings come down(?), appeal to Jimbo? Everyone else but you understands that the community has spoken and this last RfC is just that: the last one on this issue. Please. Give it up; it’s over. Greg L (talk) 03:15, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

draft status

The draft that has been posted is not ready for voting. There are a number of aspects that need to be discussed. Specifically comments on the "Manual of Style" options will likely help arbitrators gain an appreciation of which option is more appropriate. Also, I will be notifying wikitech-l of the principles "MediaWiki developers", "System administrators", "Open source" and "Deprecation of MediaWiki functionality" - if they see issues with those principles, we can take them over to the Workshop and collaborate on them. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 04:32, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Two concerns

Of concern is that the arbitrators cannot vote that the December RFC reaffirmed that DA is undesirable AND that there is consensus that dates should be delinked (contrary to the overwhelming vote in the RFC on bot usage and MOSNUM in December). This problem arises from the conflation of the two points in 3.2.

3.2) Two RFCs held in December 2008 reaffirmed that date autoformatting is undesirable, and that WP:OVERLINKing of dates is not desirable, however consensus has not been found on when dates should be delinked.

It is noted that the continual incivility of Locke Cole, instances of which were reported on the Evidence page, has been passed over. Perhaps this was inadvertent. Tony (talk) 07:24, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Tony, you appear to have not seen the word "when" in proposal 3.2. There are a few sets of working notes that I am pulling together, so there are a number of omissions. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 07:38, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

John, thanks for your response, and for drawing my attention to the word "when". May I politely request that "when" be more specific, since I took it to mean "in what circumstances"; now I see it could mean "the time onwards from which" or "what type of date or context in which a date occurs". May I also ask that there be no confusion among readers concerning whether (tripartite) "full dates" are the referent, or "date fragments" (such as month-day and solitary year items). Tony (talk) 07:50, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

I will not attempt to clarify it, because the ambiguity in that proposed finding underscores the point being made. I wont mind if another arb rewrites 3.2 or adds an option, but the problem is that if the proposed finding does not appear to be an accurate description of the events, not all arbtritrators will be able to support it.

I do not believe we are able to find very much conclusive about any of the RFC, especially given the behaviour of the key players. You believe the RFCs laid clear the path for delinking. I do not believe that is true. Your belief that these polls gave you license to behave as you have is what got you into this mess. For starters, I do not hold your poll in high regard from a user conduct point of view, but there is limited value in detailing every user conduct issue in the proposed decision. Despite the underlying problems in the hows and whys of your poll, it only tried to demonstrate disapproval for "Years, months, days/months, and full dates should normally be linked" and the poll results dont even clearly demonstrate that!, much less demonstrate actual approval for any concrete scenarios where a link should exist, and where it should be removed. Unless you can show me something vaguely like an actual requirements specification being put to the community as an RFC, there is no clear definition of the desired changes or intended outcome. You continue to believe that there is. The more recent poll does a far better job of describing where the MOS would say MUST rather than SHOULD or MAY, but that poll wasnt conducted in December. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 08:37, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Jayvdb, do you have an undisclosed interest in the outcome of this arbitration? Should you have recused yourself from any involvement? Before you answer, take a good look at the recusal statements from Carcharoth and Casliber and then tell me whether you have applied the same scrupulous standard to yourself.--Goodmorningworld (talk) 10:15, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Goodness no, not that I am aware of. Thanks for asking now that the draft proposed decision is published. You cant read my scrupulous recusal statement at User:Jayvdb/recusal. :-)

I've never met Tony before in my life, nor have I met Casliber for that matter. I dont think Tony is an Azeri or Armenian or even Dutch (I didnt check this), and Tony is not a member of Wikimedia Australia as far as I know (yes, I did check).

I couldnt give two hoots about date delinking - if it happens, I expect that it is done orderly; if it doesnt, I expect the bugs are fixed as developers find time to do so.

I dont think I have ever participated in any of the discussions about date delinking, and I doubt I have participated in many MOS discussions either. I've got my own fun and games with the Wikisource MOS - that keeps me more than entertain.

I did raise a related bug that seemed obviously useful: JavaScript control over the dates means that a lot of table sorting issues can be fixed. I raised it simply because it was an obvious bug lost in the big MOSDATE bug, and I thought it would be easily fixed it separated. I was also thinking about the terrible syntax under s:NYT, which we can discard due to the changes by Werdna, once I add a bit of JavaScript voodoo, when I get around to it.

In my own editing, I havent been consciously linking dates for a long time, because it is deprecated and I agree with many of the reasons for that deprecation.

I do like the idea of retaining the metadata in these date links, because I have occasionally used Whatlinkshere on year pages, seeking every mention of that year, and filtering the huge results via software based on my needs; it is annoying that I myself am participating in this metadata extraction method becoming increasingly useless for my non-editing needs; but there are always other ways of achieving the same result (like a SQL query on the database).

From a schema design viewpoint, my view is that this metadata does not belong in the links table among the other links that are important. I'd love to see some or all of semantic mediawiki added to Wikipedia, but not before it is easy to use.

In short, I can see all sides, and have no interest in this battle. But I can see no reason for the gross incivility and battlefield mentality being displayed in this situation.

The only possible reason I could recuse is due to being a professional software engineer, since this case does relate to one of my professions. I'm also heavily involved in library science and the research industry, which would mean I could recuse from almost all cases if tried hard enough to think of a reason - I would be happy to recuse from all cases and laze on a beach instead ;-) More seriously, if anyone does have serious concerns, please do raise them.

John Vandenberg ^(chat) 11:44, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I'm also troubled by the omission of anything covering the canvassing by Tony1 and Lightmouse in the most recent date linking RFC (also on the evidence page). There's also nothing about the off-wiki coordination that's obviously been going on amongst Tony1/HWV258/Dabomb87/Lightmouse/Ohconfucius/Greg L (and perhaps others) to effectively steamroll discussions with their point of view as soon as they're started (I'm not certain, but as I recall a recent ArbCom decision frowned on this kind of behavior) or coordinate edit warring to try and induce editors not on their "side" to violate 3RR. I believe the canvassing shows a complete lack of good faith in the process, and taken in the context of the ongoing behavior shows an unwillingness to abide by community norms. —Locke Cole • t • c 07:57, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

• We were just the change agents. The real steamrollers already did their work here: 1, 2. Ohconfucius (talk) 16:31, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Not only Locke Cole is being let off easy. The three ultra-hardcore warriors fighting against community consensus over dates, besides LC, are Tennis expert and Septentrionalis PMAnderson; the latter is continuing to attack editors opposed to him using the most vicious and hate-filled language but no mention of him in the Proposed Decision. It is just as I said on the Workshop page: the refusal by Tony1 and others to stoop to their accusers' level and go dumpster diving for examples with which to hang their opponents is being used against them. I lost my faith in Arbcom a long time, this just confirms me. I did not vote in WP:DATEPOLL because I knew what was going to happen.--Goodmorningworld (talk) 10:32, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

• I endorse GMW's comment; I also lost respect for the process a while ago, but hoped that the Arbcom reform drive was a recognition of this failure. However, it's all becoming clear (from VDB's comments) that those of us who favour delinking did not have adequate consensus (sic) and were making waves, and the Arbs are fed up with 'our antics' -seemingly agreeing with Locke Cole in the most arse about face logic I have ever heard in my entire existence. I don't care so much about myself having my wings slightly clipped because I've been occasionally stupid in this affair, but it seems like Lightmouse will not only be tarred and feathered, but also hanged, drawn and quartered. Lightmouse is scripts and bots - take that away from him, and you've effectively banned him. On the obverse, unless someone can prove me wrong, Tennis expert looks like getting the long leash for embarking on the largest program of edit-warring in WP history, throwing the whole of WP:TENNIS into turmoil with his warring overall (not just on dates), dragging down a group of respectable editors who were caught out by the sheer weight of numbers and who, with the exception of seicer, will be probably admonished by Arbcom's acceptance of his allegations of tag-team warring. I have greater faith in God than justice from Arbcom. (BTW, I'm an athiest!). Ohconfucius (talk) 15:56, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Jayvdb, you stated: "Thanks for asking now that the decision is published." I see no arbitrator votes. Is it just your judgement? Tony (talk) 16:41, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Sorry Tony, I forgot to prefix it with "proposed" and "draft". I did mention it was only a draft in a section above. I have added that in now. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 17:02, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

I have added incivility FoF for Locke Cole and Pmanderson, however I will not support either proposed finding unless some better evidence is provided. The evidence provided so far is extremely mild in comparison to the utterings of the other editors in this case for whom there are incivility findings proposed. See my reasoning here for background. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 16:52, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

John, I think you used an incorrect diff. This surely not incivility from Pmanderson? I believe you are referring to this. Dabomb87 (talk) 21:29, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

I included your edit also so that the reader can see what Pmanderson was reacting to. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 22:56, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

• Quoting John: The evidence provided so far is extremely mild in comparison to the utterings of the other editors in this case for whom there are incivility findings proposed. Yes, John… “utterings.” You go do your part to help make Wikipedia more of a nunnery as far as “utterings” go. Personally, I’d much prefer someone reverting something I incorrectly wrote with an edit summary like “Perhaps you shouldn’t edit on subjects on which you don’t know your ass from a hole in the ground.” That would be much, much more preferable to editors who have a chronic propensity for behavior such as starting a Miscellany for Deletion on another editor’s own userpage or deleting an RfC (using the nice wiki-term “archiving”).

  Why don’t you focus on the more important issue of who is causing endless and chronic disruption to Wikipedia? Way back in second grade for me (1962), it was de rigueur to call each other “shit ass.” (*shrug it off*)  What is truly annoying as hell is having to spend hours on ANIs whenever someone like Locke or Tennis_expert pulls another one of their ‘metric ton of weapons-grade disruption’ stunts and gets away with it over and over and over again because they do so while using polite words lifted right off the bulletin board in the nunnery entryway. Greg L (talk) 23:13, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Response to the draft template

Jayvdb: I responded to you very politely above, and was unprepared for such trenchant and unexplained criticism in your rejoinder.

Ambiguity? You responded that I "appear to have not seen the word "when" in proposal 3.2"; when I asked for clarification, you said "I will not attempt to clarify it, because the ambiguity in that proposed finding underscores the point being made." Is ambiguity the purpose of the statement on which the arbitrators will vote? Does this give someone wriggle room to "interpret" this part of the judgement at the bottom? "if the proposed finding does not appear to be an accurate description of the events, not all arbtritrators will be able to support it"—That's not much good if there are few or no alternatives, Editing Wikipedia talk:Requests for arbitration/Date delinking/Proposed decision (section) - Preview - Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaand arbs just want an end to this. Why are knowingly inaccurate proposals being inserted in the expectation of their rejection?

Style and editing topics of RFCs mixed with "conduct"?

1. Jayvdb stated, "For starters, I do not hold your poll in high regard from a user conduct point of view". If I had known my motives in holding an RFC were going to be attacked on this count, I'd have defended myself on the Evidence page. But no scope was established. The choices offered to arbs appear to reinforce the partisan line of the date-link crowd at the time, which was hysterical that I dared to launch an RFC before theirs, and that I had expressed the proposals in the negative).
2. Are there rules against the timing and polarity of RFCs? If so, why are they not stated? Why I should be impugned for creating an RFC that produced clear results on the questions posed appears to be in service to the small band of users who vehemently objected to the results of the community survey.
3. Please assure me that "conduct" is not being wound in merely to drag the (style-based) RFC into the ambit of ArbCom, which deals only with conduct, and not with style. "I do not believe we are able to find very much conclusive about any of the RFC, especially given the behaviour of the key players." Is this again a mixing of RFCs on editor guidance with personal "conduct"?

Funnelling arb voting by "packaging" statements together

1. The accusation Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Date_delinking/Evidence#Tony1 disruptively creates his own RFC appears for the arbs to endorse under the proposal "The parties listed below have battled in the dispute over date delinking without forming consensus". Thus, if arbs vote to declare that no consensus was formed over date linking, they are forced to label my launching of those three RFC questions as "disruptive" as well. Has this "package" been slipped in because of strongly held personal views? I believe GoodMorningWorld was right to call into question whether you should not recuse yourself from the case. Due process says I should be informed publicly of the reasons you think for your accusation. It is not proper for one user's conduct to have any bearing on the interpretation of community consensus as it appears in RFCs; I'm unsure ArbCom should be making pronouncements on community consensus for particular matters: that falls outside its "conduct" scope.

One-sided choices.

1. Notably absent from the draft are any solutions that take note of the clear majority that is against date autoformatting and date-fragment linking, expressed again and again. Jayvdb appears to have skewed the choices for his fellow arbs all one way. For example, why is there no choice to simply lift the injunction and get on with moving on from DA, as was the clear feeling at the recent RFC and its talk page after close of the poll? Jayvdb's own prejudgements are more than a little obvious; ArbCom is being funnelled down a predesigned pathway.

ArbCom as language and style authority.

"11.2) The Manual of Style [provides] a set of standards for editing on Wikipedia. It consists of standards to be followed and guidance where no firm requirements have been developed. It should use terminology throughout that differentiates the two, such as using MUST and SHOULD respectively. Editors are expected to follow the Manual of Style."

1. Here, arbitrators are asked to vote on an area that is not behavioural, but is at the core of editing and style. The ArbCom policy, reinforced by the provisional draft of the new policy, says in very concrete terms, that ArbCom does not make judgements on content and style. Why does this proposal appear?
2. This is retrospective legislation that would force the wholesale rewriting of all of the style guides in terms of these two new imposed meanings. Third, "editors are expected to follow the Manual of Style", and "should" means that "no firm requirements have been developed". There will be chaos, since "should", by most people's definition, means should; that is, it is prescriptive. This foray into the uncharted waters of being a style and language authority starts with the disorganised; it will end in chaos.
3. What is the relationship between this proposal and Proposed remedies on "Mass delinking" (2.1/2.2)? Does ArbCom's new "MUST" and "SHOULD" have a bearing?

Bloat

1. Why are arbs asked to vote "yes" to such platitudes as "Edit warring is harmful", "WP works by consensus", and the "Optional styles" statement at the opening of the styleguides? ... Again. And again. And again. We know this; they're key policies and pillars. Please don't say "that's how judgements are made around here"; it's doing no good for ArbCom's reputation as a serious body. And what has "The desire to apply rules for the sake of rules must be suppressed" got to do with this case? It needs to be cut back to the core, which is all that matters. I'd be annoyed if I were an arbitrator.

Lightmouse.

1. Why are arbiters voting for or against harsh sanctions against Lightmouse concerning bot use and accusations hurled around of wrong-doing WRT his previous accounts?
2. The specific supporting evidence (among the voluminous mass of it on Evidence and Workshop pages) is not cited in the judgement draft.
3. Bot- and account-use was established by neither filer nor ArbCom as part of the scope; if it had been, Lightmouse might have known he needed to specifically defend himself against what he may say are distortions and misinformed or malicious hearsay concerning on these matters.
4. He has had no opportunity to set the record straight, and without any statement of scope has been caught unaware.
5. There is no assertion in the judgement that the project has been damaged by Lightmouse.

This draft does not yet reflect due process. Tony (talk) 14:17, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia's most august court: ArbCom.

“ Alice had never been in a court of justice before, but she had read about them in books, and she was quite pleased to find that she knew the name of nearly everything there. “That’s the judge,” she said to herself, “because of his great wig.”

The judge, by the way, was the King; and as he wore his crown over the wig, (look at the frontispiece if you want to see how he did it), he did not look at all comfortable, and it was certainly not becoming.

“And that’s the jury-box,” thought Alice; “and those twelve creatures,” (she was obliged to say “creatures,” you see, because some of them were animals, and some were birds,) “I suppose they are the jurors.” She said this last word two or three times over to herself, being rather proud of it: for she thought, and rightly too, that very few little girls of her age knew the meaning of it at all. However, “jurymen” would have done just as well.

The twelve jurors were all writing very busily on slates. “What are they doing?” Alice whispered to the Gryphon. “They ca’n’t have anything to put down yet, before the trial’s begun.”

“They’re putting down their names,” the Gryphon whispered in reply, “for fear they should forget them before the end of the trial.”

“Stupid things!” Alice began in a loud, indignant voice; but she stopped hastily, for the White Rabbit cried out, “Silence in the court!”, and the King put on his spectacles and looked anxiously round, to make out who was talking.

Alice could see, as well as if she were looking over their shoulders, that all the jurors were writing down “Stupid things!” on their slates, and she could even make out that one of them didn’t know how to spell “stupid,” and that he had to ask his neighbour to tell him. “A nice muddle their slates’ll be in before the trial’s over!” thought Alice.

”

“Who cares for you?” said Alice (she had grown to her full size by this time). “You’re nothing but a pack of cards!”

Tony, I might comment that this is Kafkaesque, except that one of WP's many idiot admins would then step in and notify me that if I were user:Kafkaesque I needed to log in under that name. (No, I am not making this up.)
You never had a chance. The outcome was a foregone conclusion from day one. All that is left for you now is to take a leaf out of Josef K.'s book and "die like a dog".--Goodmorningworld (talk) 14:41, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

• Woof! "Ja jsem mrtvy pes", as he would probably have said... Ohconfucius (talk) 16:12, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Major omission

As far as I can see, there is nothing in the proposed judgment so far to deal with the matter which is at the very heart of the dispute and will repeatedly cause other disputes in the future if something is not done to deal with it - how do we know (in a situation without unanimity) when we have consensus or not? Who decides, and on what basis, and by what process? And what is the point of saying that we must abide by consensus if edits made to enforce (and explicitly justified by) consensus decisions are treated as edit warring just the same as those which knowingly go against consensus? That is surely an untenable position. If you can't address these fundamental issues, then we won't have learnt anything from all this.--Kotniski (talk) 09:36, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

If a user ever finds that they are reverting or being incivil, and thinking to themselves "this is like the date delinking case; I wish the arbs had given us better guidance", that person has already gone to far, and should step away from the keyboard, go for a long walk (or otherwise occupy themselves), and either decide to a) walk away from the silly mess and do something better with their time, or b) stop reverting and/or being incivil and find a better approach to resolve the dispute, or go to dispute resolution.

The revert button is not a form of dispute resolution. The revert button is not an means of keeping consensus in the face of opposition by good faith contributors; the WP:BRD sequence only includes one revert.

The vagueness of "consensus" didnt cause this mess. One side became fed up of waiting for the developers to do something about this extremely important issue, and they took out all stops to force consensus, by any means possible. Sadly, the escalation has meant that a few people who were trying to simply keep order ended up engaged in this battle (if only briefly), and have been included in the FoFs and the remedies. I appreciate that this "All editors involved" approach is hard on them, and that is why there is a template for individual user remedies: if the arbitrators decide that the "All editors involved" approach is too hard on those who were not major players, we will replace the "All editors involved" remedy with per-user remedies, which will allow the remedy for each person to be fine tuned based on the level of their involvement.

My preference is to go with the "All editors involved" remedy and hand out a lighter option to them all (to clear the air), and have stronger user-user remedies for the people who engaged in the incivil behaviour that made this such a minefield. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 10:37, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

What does this have to do with the developers? I'm sorry, but the facts here are just wrong. One side wanted to change something to make Wikipedia better, in a way which didn't require any developer assistance. They launched discussion, argued their points, got consensus (or thought they did), and went about implementing it. Others objected that there wasn't consensus, so: more discussion, consensus was again confirmed, implementation of the improvements continued. Other side still disputes the consensus, so they come complaining to ArbCom. How is this whole problem not caused by the vagueness of consensus? If the Arbs seriously think that this needed to have anything to do with the developers, then this is simply incorrect - it is the other opposing side who were urging the developers to do something new, in the (now confirmed) absence of consensus to do it.--Kotniski (talk) 11:28, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

More. The above shows just how disastrously out of control this case has got. It was impossible for any sane person (a category in which I deign to include myself) to follow everything that was going on here, because of the vast amount of unfocused verbal outpouring that was going on in all directions. Now I see that things are being accepted as facts that are simply not the case. If the discussion had been focused, we could have corrected them. But as in the whole date linking saga, the ordinary Wikipedian's voice has been drowned out by the well-orchestrated shouting, and we find ourselves disenfranchised and being accused of things that we have had no opportunity to defend ourselves against. --Kotniski (talk) 11:35, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Breadth of restrictions

Whilst I think the proposed remedy placing a revert limitation on some editors of Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers) is certainly needed, I think it ought to be broadened to include other MOS pages that have been the subject of edit-warring on this issue. For example, Wikipedia:Linking (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) and Wikipedia:Build the web (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) (there are others too, including in the template namespace). The protection of WP:MOSNUM did not halt the edit-warring, it just moved it to other locations and thus I would suggest that the proposed restriction should be topical rather than applying to one specific page. CIreland (talk) 12:40, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

After reading the recent changes by User: Jayvdb, the gist of it seems to be, the Arbcom shouldn't try to decide the linking dispute, so instead, those who have been arguing about it the most should be muzzled. After those editors have been muzzled, if the dispute still isn't solved, action to resolve it one way or another should be suppressed, allowing the mess to continue forever.

That approach is nonsense. Arbitrators should arbitrate. Decide the issue. --Jc3s5h (talk) 14:24, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

CIreland, you are correct; those additional pages do need to be included as it has spread since I wrote the remedy back on Feb. 15. A topical ban may introduce ambiguity, but we should be able to find a wording that covers most pages that this could spread onto. Feel free to make suggestions. I need to work on other things. Another approach would be to topic ban these edits on all MOS, guideline and policy pages, but such a draconian remedy couldnt be applied to the "All involved editors.." because some are involved much less than others. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 16:37, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

"When the page is not in a disputed state"

I'm a little concerned that the mass date delinking remedy mentions " may only occur at times when the page is not in a disputed state" without any finer detail. I note that one of the proposed findings of fact indicates that date autoformatting is undesirable (per the community); the most recent RfC (March) appears to underscore that consensus in a big way. However, Locke Cole is still arguing that there is absolutely no consensus to remove autoformatting and no actions should be taken to remove autoformatting syntax. We've also had an RfC already on which particular text should go into the MOS page, so that should not be disputed at this time (although I'm pretty sure it will be once the page protection is lifted). I worry that no actions will ever be able to take place becase, regardless of the results of any future community survey on whether or not to delink which date fragments, a few of the harder-line individuals will continue to dispute that there is consensus. Even if this is not something that the Arbitration Committee wants to rule on specifically, further guidance on this talk page would be very useful in determing how to handle such situations. Karanacs (talk) 14:47, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I quite agree, this is another very serious omission. I assume the arbs will correct this. Policy/guidelines don't stop being policy/guidelines just because certain people are prepared to loudly disagree with them, to the extent of putting disputed tags on them. --Kotniski (talk) 15:25, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Kotniski's position is curiously malleable; he does appear to believe that WP:BTW became no guideline when he revert-warred on it. But if there is a consensus to unleash Lightbot, where is it? Here, where the discussion consists of that neutral and uninvolved trio of Lightmouse, Ohconfucius, and GregL? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:12, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

There was indeed consensus: WP:BTW got merged to WP:Linking through efforts by a neutral third party, in case he hadn't noticed. Ohconfucius (talk) 01:32, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

What MOSNUM says

Dates should not be linked unless they contain information that is germane and topical to the subject matter.

This cannot be decided or enforced by any existing bot, can the bot understand what is "germane and topical"? Therefore, even if this is undisputed (and GregL's revertwarring with the poll leaves that in doubt), the decision should read Mass date delinking is forbidden for six months; this would be much simpler.

If, after six months a real consensus (one not consisting of the usual half-dozen participants in this arbitration) for mass delinking exists, fine; if one develops sooner, ArbCom can be asked to revise this decision. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:29, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

The bot does not need to understand what is "germane and topical". It is a simple task for editors to produce a list of pages that contain such "germane and topical" date links. Once agreed, that list can be an exclusion list for the bot (just as inherently chronological articles will be). We don't put off bots bringing articles into conformance with other elements of MOS - why should date links need a six month break when consensus has been clear for some time? --RexxS (talk) 19:22, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

If such a list is compiled, we can come back to this.

• "Consensus has been clear" only to Rexxs and his six disruptive friends. (Please note placement of adjective; I do appreciate that one editor is capable of arguing for an invalid position without revert warring for it.) Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:41, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

But I don't have any friends, disruptive or otherwise. Maybe you were thinking of those who could see the consensus in the results of the RfC's and Poll? Would that be Locke Cole[3] and Ryan Postlethwaite[4]? Perhaps you could be my friend? --RexxS (talk) 00:12, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Comments on April 30 Draft by RexxS

Proposed Principles

Optional styles

8) "When either of two styles are acceptable it is inappropriate for a Wikipedia editor to change from one style to another unless there is some substantial reason for the change." - "substantial reason" is undefined and a recipe for WP:Battle. Is "consistency within an article" a substantial reason? Yes, of course. Is "local consensus"? I say no; others will say yes. The problems inherent in this dispute remain and this PP does nothing to address them.

Manual of Style

11.1) There is an implication that because "it is not policy, editors may deviate from it with good reason", whereas editors may also deviate from policy with good reason WP:IAR. What is the point of the last clause?

11.2, 11.3) Calling MOS a style guide misses the point that it is a WP:Guideline - defined thus: "Policies and guidelines describe standards that have community consensus" - failing to recognise the consensus inherent in any guideline allows editors to treat them as optional. Therein lies the route for further dispute, rather than a resolution.

This is wrong. Guidelines indicate general directions; they have exceptions. Policies are statements of principle and should not. (In the case of MOS, there is usually no genuine consensus even on the general direction; but that's another problem entirely. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:44, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

No, it's right. It's a direct quote from the policy page WP:Policies and guidelines (para 2, line 1). Feel free to establish a consensus to change that policy if you don't like it, but for now, it's policy. As for exceptions: "Policies have wide acceptance among editors and are considered a standard that, with rare exceptions, all users should follow. ... Guidelines are considered more advisory than policies, with exceptions more likely to occur." (quoted from WP:Policies and guidelines#Policy and guideline pages, line 1). I hope that accepting this wikipedia policy will help us all debate within an agreeable framework. Sincerely --RexxS (talk) 20:27, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

As usual, Rexxs quotes incompletely and misleadingly; but I suppose this is the only way to defend his position. Policies have wide acceptance. True. Guidelines are not policies, and MOS (all of it) is a guideline. It would be nice if it did indeed represent general consensus, but it usually doesn't. What his position is on exceptions, I cannot tell; I do not hold that WP:OR has exceptions. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:37, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Ah, Ad hominem again. I'm sure you don't want me to quote all of WP:Policies and guidelines, and of course when you simply call it misleading, it doesn't make it so. Argue your case if you're so sure of it.

I'm glad we agree that policies have wide acceptance. I'll ask you to explore with me what that means: since a very large number of editors are comfortable with the consensus that a policy documents, there will be few occasions when an exception improves the encyclopedia; guidelines (as stated above) also document consensus, but exceptions are more likely. I don't think we are going to differ by much on that.

As for exceptions, I'm happy to be guided by the relevant policy pages. For example, WP:OR admits to Citing oneself, Original images, Translations, and Routine calculations - as I'm sure you're aware, being an expert on Greek and Maths. However, I take your point that MOSNUM is problematical and invite you to join me on the MOSNUM talk page to discuss improvements. After this case is closed, it looks like we'll be the only ones there. --RexxS (talk) 23:06, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Don't worry, there are a couple of new voices who would like to simplify MOSNUM, and make clear the rare occasions when MOS in general needs to be prescriptive. Needless to say, Tony is attacking them as my co-conspirators; after all, they threaten "the authority of the Manual of Style", which is (according to Tony) indispensable. But if they stick around, we should have plenty of company. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:33, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Changing a guideline such as Manual of Style

13.1) "see how policies are decided." links to an irrelevant section. It should link to WP:Policies and guidelines#Changes to guideline and policy pages.

13.2) MOS should contain nothing that does not have broad consensus (by definition of a WP:guideline). The difference between prescriptive and descriptive elements is not that the former has consensus and the latter hasn't. Where options are described, the fact that options are acceptable must have consensus.

All guidelines omit some qualifications which would be necessary for literal truth.

Perhaps MOS should "contain nothing that does not have broad consensus", but the implication that it does contain no such thing is fantasy. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:48, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Role of bots and scripts

14) "Approval from the Bot Approvals Group is generally required before an editor may use a bot for automatic or high-speed edits." There's no "generaly" about it; approval from BAG is a pre-requisite for bot operation (see WP:Bot policy#Approval: "All bots that make any logged actions (such as editing a page, uploading files or creating accounts) must be approved before they may operate." - and that's policy.

BAG

17) I have seen no suggestion anywhere on the pages of this RfArb that any "consistently or egregiously poor judgment" has been exercised by any member of BAG, much less any opportunity for members to respond to such an accusation. This PP is irrelevant to the case as presented and needs to be struck.

--RexxS (talk) 19:27, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Didn't we? Then I'll suggest it here: approving the blank check Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Lightbot 3 was "egregiously poor judgment". If it is overridden, nothing more than a reminder is necessary. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:54, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Well, if you are about to accuse User:ST47 of "egregiously poor judgment" on an ArbCom case page, don't you think it would be courteous to inform him at least, in case he wishes to dispute the charge? --RexxS (talk) 21:00, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

I didn't write the proposal; and if he has remained oblivious to the discussion of that unfortunate approval, a reminder (and this is no more) will be just as well. If you (or a clerk) feel like stepping in, go ahead. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:40, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

I see no FoF deriving from this principle, so it seems superfluous. Moreover, I see no direct indictment of ST47. It's a copy from a somewhat different case. My reading of it is more towards a general comment on the occasional failings of the BAG process, where a single member can "approve" a bot and on (rare) occasions, approvals slip through without sufficient specification and assurance of community consensus for the task. Franamax (talk) 21:43, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Proposed findings of fact

Engagement of technical staff

4) "the decision to decommission this functionality, and the mass delinking of dates from all articles in mainspace should have involved the technical staff" - absolutely not. The decision on delinking of dates must be in the hands of the community. Style may not be a pillar, but consensus certainly is. It is untenable to suggest that developers should have any greater voice in a community decision than anyone else. John has seemingly confused the desirability of consulting with developers on how best to implement a decision, with the decision itself. If not, then this PFoF is unhelpfully ambiguous. Either way, it needs to be redrafted before it causes further confusion. --RexxS (talk) 01:04, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

The entire class can't go out for recess at noon

With regard to Editors restricted: I don’t know how serious of a suggestion this is, but if it is serious, it is pure garbage. It is tantamount to when a 5th-grade class clown or two throw spit wads at a teacher when his or her back is turned and the entire class is punished by not being able to go outside for recess. That is pure crap. Take a look at my edit history. How often do you see me linking or de-linking a date. Once in a week or two. How often do you see me messing around editing date-related stuff on MOSNUM? It’s been a long time. But although I have no interest now in those areas at the moment, I might in the future and don’t like the notion of having special restrictions hanging over my head for six to twelve months. So I don’t like being swept up in a blanket “class punishment” one damn iota. If the arbitrators are going to meet out restrictions on editors, go look at individual behavior and restrict on an individual basis.

The arbitrators know full well who has been edit warring and who has consistently pulled B.S. malicious stunts just to be a dick. You can’t circumvent your responsibility for looking into and determining individual fault simply by painting everyone involved with the same brush. If I am to be restricted, tailor the restriction based on what *I* did. I have a pretty hard time believing Wikipedia needs to be protected from me in any shape, form, or fashion. Greg L (talk) 20:31, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Heh. Greg, just read your post immediately above, count the swear words and deprecatory statements aimed at anyone other than yourself. Ask yourself again whether Wikipedia needs to be protected from you. You're not exactly covering yourself in glory... Franamax (talk) 21:26, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

• I didn’t write the above to impress you. I wrote what I think and what I believe to be true. As to your allegation of “swear words”, such an absurdity doesn’t exactly cover you in glory. Greg L (talk) 21:53, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
  • GregL may not have invoked a deity; but coprolalia does count as swearing. I welcome the prospect of peace and quiet. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:01, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

If you want to get technical, "one damn iota" contains a word invoking the deity. My point was more towards Greg's acerbic attitude toward anyone who doesn't precisely agree with his views, as well indicated by his response to my post, including the wonderful tactic of parroting back the original speaker's words. Franamax (talk) 22:15, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

• Heh. Franamax, with regard to your allegation of “invoking the deity”, I don’t agree. What I’m seeing above is pretty tepid. Wikipedia isn’t a nunry and you don’t win any arguments by avoiding the *substance* of arguments by instead trying to *show off* (if that’s what you could call it) how you can be even more politically correct than Mother Teresa’s grandmother; that’s a petty and old Wikipedia tactic that doesn’t impress anyone.

  Now, if you want to continue with tit-for-tat about how I used the two-letter abbreviation “B.S.” or the word “damn”, which appears on prime-time TV where children can hear it, take it up on my talk page. But if you want to persist here, I think it would be just splendid if you could stick to something relevant about the proposed decisions. Greg L (talk) 22:19, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Sure Greg. I wish to refute your argument that blanket restrictions should not apply. The DA/DL dispute is complex and has featured determined actions on all sides. One "side" has been tenacious in defending principles they hold dear. The other "side" has used group tactics and borderline-incivil commentary to consistently denigrate all parties who fail to hew to their viewpoint. Kind of like what you're trying to do to me right now. (No problem there, I'm a big boy, others can make their own judgements) I personally think you should be happy to enter into a blanket restriction, since a personally-tailored one might be much less to your liking. And with that, you know what, I can't be bothered with your endless aggression. Have fun! Franamax (talk) 22:36, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

• Ah. I see! One size fits all. What logic! Which is to say, faulty logic. But thank you for at least speaking to the issue; much better (although I find your logic to have severe shortcomings). Greg L (talk) 22:49, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Please stop this ridiculous, obnoxious, disgraceful bickering. It is unwelcome anywhere on Wikipedia and especially on the arbitration pages. In anticipation of voting on the proposed decision and offering some alternatives, I am rereading and catching up on the evidence and the other casepages. I am not impressed by a great deal of what I am seeing. Newyorkbrad (talk) 01:41, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

"Must be respected"

In Mediawiki developers and System administrators, there is curious phrasing:

"The Wikimedia projects may, of course, question their decisions but must at all times respect those decisions", and

"The local community may, of course, challenge these decisions, but must at all times respect them."

The coupling of "must" with "respect" raises my Orwellian hackles since "respect" has denotations regarding how someone feels about a topic. Obviously, developers should be treated respectfully (i.e. overt behavior and communication), but it would be silly to suggest that everyone must literally feel respect for the developers and their decisions (i.e. stating what personal opinions one must hold). The turn of phrase used here tends to invoke the latter sense, at least for me. In addition, it also suggests an alternative meaning where "respect" is essentially intend as "accept", i.e. the community must accept developer changes. Of course, this double meaning is rather self-evident since developer decisions must be accepted as non-developers have no control in the matter. I'm not entirely sure what the author intended, however, I would suggest rephrasing to something like:

"Developer decisions regarding software functionality are binding on the projects. The projects may, of course, question their decisions but should at all times treat developers respectfully."

I think this sort of phrasing is clearer and avoids messy connotations regarding how one should feel. Dragons flight (talk) 22:55, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

• I agree 110 percent Dragons flight. That issue too was on my mind. The proposed wording confuses having proper appreciation for the volunteer services of the developer community, with some sort of mandate / dictate / requirement that everyone must always respect their infinitely wise decisions, whatever that might be. Let’s get real here. Just because some developer knows a programming language isn’t an entitlement to be treated as if everything they think of is infinitely cool beans. Certainly, everyone (developers too) deserves to be treated like their efforts are appreciated—particularly if they are a volunteer. That goes for regular editorial-content editors too.

  I might add that if the entire developer community really thinks their decision making is completely insular from the wishes of the rest of the wikipedian community, then we should consider a community-wide RfC to better establish an understanding and set of procedures so we don’t find ourselves with another DynamicDates. Some simple tweaks to that system at the outset based on some community feedback could have saved a lot of man-hours. Greg L (talk) 00:04, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

When I read that piece, I was under the impression that it meant the community cannot act in opposition to the decision. Respect as in "to refrain from intruding upon or interfering with the decision" rather than "treat devs with regard or consideration" as Dragonsflight suggests. Perhaps we can get clarification here.--BirgitteSB 16:34, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

• BirgitteSB, even if it meant “the community cannot act in opposition to the decision [of the developer community]”, I would submit that such a notion is bankrupt. Clearly, there are paid developers. They have extra influence. There is a Board and they control money and make policy decisions. The Golden Rule: those with the gold make the rules. This is how the world works.

  But we should be clear that the “developer community” includes paid developers on staff plus a much larger number of volunteer developers. Brion Vibber, Wikipedia’s paid Chief Technology Officer is on record that he didn’t support autoformatting. Yet, even he subordinated himself to the “community consensus” of the Wikipedian community. He was watching how the outcome regarding Dynamic Dates would shake out of all these RfCs. Now, I don’t want to put words in the man’s mouth, but it seems clear that he was listening to not only what the volunteer developers wanted, but he apparently thought the community consensus of the regular Wikipedian editorial community was quite relevant. That is how the system really works here on Wikipedia: the whole Wikipedian community is what counts when determining what is the right thing to do. And this is one of the five pillars laid down in the Five Commandments by Jimbo; he holds dear to his heart that “community consensus” is always right. Any policy that puts some small group of developers above this principle undermines this inviolate principle.

  Clearly, the regular Wikipedian editorial-content community is large—no-doubt much larger than the developer community. At times, given that we had UC Bill running a sockpuppet account, Sapphic, the developer community actively advocating a particular technology can be exceedingly small. I frankly don’t buy into the notion that any “decision” or technology advanced by the developers must be presumed to have been washed by unicorn tears and must be “respectfully” accepted by the community. I frankly have no idea how such a notion got all the way into this proposed decision; I can assume that this attitude is how some developers see their suitable role in the universe (on a marble pedestal).

  I’m sure there are many behind-the-scenes code technologies that are obviously good and/or benign, and clearly uncontroversial. Such technologies need not be discussed outside of the developer IRC and their other regular channels. But I would posit that the developer community must listen—closely listen—to the editorial-content Wikipedian community on anything that has an impact on how editorial content appears and actually reads on Wikipedia. The decision to dump DynamicDates onto the community was galactically unwise. It was intended to stop edit warring by allowing intransigent editors able to see whatever they pleased. But at the same time, we were creating a hodge-podge of truly unprofessional, lousy-looking results for 99.97% of our readership. Moreover, the technology was linking to articles that were virtually never germane and topical to the article in which they appeared. While I have yet to have anyone from the developer community ‘fess up to how many of them had a hand in the DynamicDates decision, I would guess it was the product of less than a handful of developers. The result of that fiasco was what must be thousands of man-hours of bickering and battles here..

  So, NO, I utterly reject that the regular Wikipedian community “must respect” all decisions of the developer community as if they are insular gods who bless our wheat fields with life-giving rain and keep them free of pestilence. Community consensus rules on matters such as this. Greg L (talk) 17:35, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

I think you are reading far too much into the statement. This a general principle and not necessarily applies to the situations you bring up about individuals. I am not familiar with the case, and was merely interested in reading the proposed decision as a sometimes do. I thought it was pretty safe to comment on principle, without detailed knowledge of the events going on here, as they should applicable in general terms. I don't think this necessarily means what you seem to fear it does, but I could be wrong. However, you seem far too worked up for me trust your concerns are reasonable at face value.--BirgitteSB 17:52, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

• Your last sentence, clearly intended to paint yourself as a calm, big-picture, high-road person, does not magically establish you as the only voice of reason here. I am not “worked up”, as you put it. If you want to argue the evidence, do so. But please cut out the cheap stunts. Greg L (talk) 18:09, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

My last sentence merely means that I am not giving your concerns the weight I would if they were explained in a more calm and coherent manner, as opposed to not giving them weight because I disagree with the merits of your concerns. I don't really understand your problem and I don't intend to take the time to decipher what it is because your tone makes me suspect you are over-reacting. But as I said above, I am aware that could be wrong to discredit your concerns. If you hadn't directly addressed me, I would simply not have responded at all. As it was I thought you deserved some reply, I am sorry you saw it is a cheap stunt. I am really unfamiliar with this case and no one should think of me as a voice reasonable or otherwise on the specifics of what went down over this whole issue. I am only commenting on general principles.--BirgitteSB 18:36, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

(unindent) I do not respect some development decisions made by, among others, Unix, IBM, Microsoft, and Intuit, and myself. That means I consider some of the decisions short-sighted, flawed, and/or downright stupid. Why should I have a different attitude about the decisions made by Wikipedia developers? The farthest I'm willing to go is to agree to not deliberately subvert such decisions in a way that will affect any computer that I do not own. --Jc3s5h (talk) 18:07, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

• As a side note: I think the people en.WP are far too accustomed to devs acting nearly instantaneously every time the community finds consensus on something. Whether it is a new vandal fighting tool or rearranging the order of the sidebar links. I don't think many people realize how highly unusual this situation is elsewhere in WMF. There a numerous issues that have garnered large consensus, even across languages, where devs simply did not have any interest in enacting the will of the community. I stopped advocating for this to change years ago, although there was a time when I thought making the complaint widely known might leads to changes. But my point is that the principle here is really seems to me to be an accurate description of how things work. If a dev thinks a bug is a bad idea, or to be frank is simply not interested in a bug, it never gets acted on no matter what a community wants. On the other hand when a community does something that hurts the performance of the hardware, they are told to stop and do. Am I the only one that remember the old problems with templates? This seems to me to simply be how things have always worked, not anything new. Although I understand en.WP has seldom had bugs languish the way other wikis have, and that information might be a new idea to some here. Still the devs telling people not to delete large pages or other things that may be technically possible but a bad idea and people obeying them is not a new concept to en.WP. I am not sure what this principle might mean for date delinking, but it does not strike me as anything unusual.--BirgitteSB 18:20, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

• Much better, BirgitteSB. Well put. I agree with everything you say about what the developer community typically does and how things generally work. This was an extreme circumstance. But, out of extreme circumstances often come extreme laws. In this case, no decision of an ArbCom can become “law”; nothing can undermine the principle on Wikipedia that everything flows from community consensus. It is simply unwise for the proposed ArbCom proposed decision to contain wording that suggests that the community “must respect” decisions of the developers; it smacks of having the relationship of who subordinates to whom all reversed. As we’ve seen with Brion Vibber, Wikipedia’s CTO, the developer community look towards community and its consensus views whenever some rare developer issues become a front-and-center issue. Greg L (talk) 18:35, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

• Thank you for replying on things I am more familiar with. I think that hard cases make poor law. And even if this principle would be problematic in some extreme situations, I believe it is a good principle overall. The worst case is devs makes a decision the community believe is bad. The community follows this decision even thouh they disagree with it, while they seek remedy on wikitech-l or through the wider dev community. If it is truly a bad decision it will be overturned and the community will have their way after a small delay. If is actually a good decision, the community will come to understand that as the issue is debated within the dev forums.--BirgitteSB 18:56, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

• I have been a professional software developer for over 25 years and the customer/user determines if your software meets their needs. I have helped create products that have been in use for 20 years and products that were rejected by the market place. The developers should be treated with the same respect as any other editor. The editors of en.wikipedia do not have to use every function in the MediaWiki software. The paid and volunteer software developers should be respected but they should respond to their customer's needs. (The customers are the editors/readers and the needs are determined by consensus.)

  What does open source have to do with date delinking? Customers accept or reject software based on functionally, not its copyright method. The "code" dispute in this case was initiated by UC Bill and his sock, Sapphic. It is strange that this disruptive editor and his actions get to total vanish from this inquisition but those who responded in any way are to be sanctioned. -- SWTPC6800 (talk) 05:44, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

I would prefer to use "respect", as we expect that everyone in the community helps maintain a "mutual respect" atmosphere, and our developers and sys-admins are a vital part of our community. However I have reworded the principles earlier this evening to use the phrasing suggested by Dragons flight; that the software is a "binding decision" is a big part of what I was driving at. These principles don't suggest that the developers are perfect, or that they always make the right decisions and need to be treated like gods. However we are eating each others dog food, and if it taste like shit, we need to go over to the team responsible and work with them to fix it. In the case of developers and sys-admins, that typically means seeking them out on their preferred channels (mailing lists/IRC/etc), getting in their face about it, but remaining respectful. We need to be asking "what else do you need from us in the way of requirements?". In this particular case, a great question would have been "Will you disable date autoformatting?". It looks like date autoformatting could have been easily disabled with a poll (which we have since done) and raising a "bug" (read: request) for the sysadmin to turn it off. The devs might have said that we need a data migration strategy, such as fixing all of the instances of YYYY-MM-DD. The devs might have pointed out that problems like bugzilla:8226 are most easily resolved by date autoformatting, and no other solution is available (I dont know that my solution is the best; I do know it will work). They may have written a conversion script, like User:conversion script, or given bot operators a set of pages to fix before the feaure could be disabled. We do know they were not consulted sufficiently. There is no evidence of a technical discussion. Besides the /Evidence, I have looked through the archives of WP:VPT - there is none that I have seen. If there is a discussion I have missed, please point it out. We have technical staff - they haunt different forum, but unless they are engaged on issues like this, it is not surprising that the community finds sub-optimal solutions. On the other hand, those wanting to retain date linking asked the devs and found that it would be simple to do so without affecting those who didnt want the "sea of blue". (e.g. User_talk:Werdna/Archive_1#Date_autoformatting) Instead we have witnessed people trying to indiscriminately eradicate all instances of date autoformatting before consensus had formed, and before agreement with the developers that it was the right course of action.

On the surface, it is pretty simple: we can't change the code; we also can't change the config. However it is important to recognise (and "respect") that these people actually have a responsibility over the code and config (they are not twits - they have those roles for good reasons), as it is their job to be making decisions for the good of the projects, of which English Wikipedia is only the biggest.

Finally, I dont see any objection to "respect" in the final sentence about the processes and customs of other forums because it is accompanied with "should" rather than "must", and in my experience people who dont respect these processes and customs usually end up being forcibly removed from them. I'll consider removing the word respect there as well if someone would like it rephrased. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 13:39, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Closing speech from Kotniski

I have no intention of giving myself any more sleepless nights by participating in this weirdness any longer - I came to Wikipedia to help build a good encyclopedia, not for the Kafka Experience - so here are my parting thoughts.

1. Think about it - is it really reasonable to conclude that out of a group of Wikipedians trying actively to get the right solution to this dates issue, almost all of them are bad people deserving of punishment? Has no-one looked at the good things many of us have done? The clear setting out of arguments to the community, the initiating of discussions to achieve consensus, the proposing of solutions, the willingness to spend many hours working to make Wikipedia that little bit better, the frequent maintenance of cool in the face of appalling insults and invective from people who have somehow escaped being on the list of "guilty" editors altogether? Are we (and I include people from both sides in this) to be criminalized for those occasions when our tempers were pushed past breaking point?
2. Again, think about it - can anyone really claim that a system that allows this situation to continue unresolved for months is a perfectly good system? Is it really beyond the arbitrators' mental powers to see what major defects in the system have led to all this? I believe it is not beyond mine; I will set out my analysis below (#Systemic defects). In any case, arbitrators should not bury their heads in the sand by making editors the scapegoats for what are clearly faults of the system we are made to work within.
3. The stuff in the proposed decision about developers and MW functionality misses the point entirely - I don't know who wrote it, but I sincerely hope no arbitrators will vote for it in its present form. Again, my analysis is below (#Why autoformatting is not a developer problem).
4. "When the page is not in a disputed state" must obviously be removed, as pointed out above, otherwise there will simply be more edit wars to put it into/out of such a state; the presence of a disputed tag at any given time means nothing.

Systemic defects

These are things I keep saying; since no-one ever contradicts me, I've come to assume they must be basically accurate.

1. The consensus-forming process can fail to converge. The difference must be recognized between a disagreement over what is the right decision, and a disagreement over what decision has been made. The latter type of disagreement may need to be resolved by a respected outside party, and standards need to be set for how that is done (hint: not by counting votes, and not without dialogue between decider and decidees).
2. Consensus, once reached, is not enforceable. No point in having productive discussion in the community if the decisions reached can be prevented from being put into practice by a few disruptive people. Like reversion of vandalism, reverting to ensure respect for consensus should not be treated as edit-warring. (But this goes hand in hand with the previous point; it must be known objectively what consensus currently is.)
3. Edit-warring is actively rewarded. Admins are encouraged to have as little interest as possible in who is right or wrong. If pages get protected in whatever form the admin finds them, then obviously it's the most aggressive edit warriors who get what they want. Or equally obviously, if reasonable people don't edit war, then WP ends up being written by unreasonable people. Admins ought to use their people skills to focus discussion between the parties on the issue at hand; and their skills of judgement (based on the arguments) to decide what is the right solution, even if only temporary.
4. Guidelines and policy are made through a random process. A consequence of the above three points is that no-one knows (except by examining past discussions) to what extent anything written on guideline or policy pages represents an accurate description of currently accepted good practice.

--Kotniski (talk) 10:50, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

The consensus forming process fails to converge when people refuse to accept the other editors points of view. The key word here is compromise. Unfortunately much of these discussions degraded down to "we want it our way, exactly, with no changes whatsoever", which lead to Tony1 hijacking the first RFC on this (despite knowing another was developed and waiting for the Thanksgiving weekend to pass), and also lead to Greg L starting another RFC after the first two attempting to re-assert his point of view as being the one representing consensus. All of these were missed opportunities to be civil and discuss this rationally, like adults. When it became clear there was no consensus on some of the important points we should have worked towards compromise on the issues, and instead the "our way is the only way" attitude continued to persevere. I won't claim to be perfect, and I know I've made innumerable mistakes during this, but all of us really could have done so much better. And we still can. —Locke Cole • t • c 14:14, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

I was about to remark on your good writing, but arrived at the inevitable attack on me ("hijacking"). I had no intention of hijacking anything (although someone has managed to convince John Vandenburg that this was the case, since he has packaged it so that any arb who wants to acknowledge a battle went on at MOSNUM has to declare my RFC "disruptive". We had waited and waited for weeks for the loudly trumpeted RFC your people were developing, and it had looked messy and undeveloped the week before, when I'd last looked. I think I remember commenting there even earlier that there were major structural and wording problems, but no one had taken any notice. I'd heard nothing more, and knocked up three simple propositions (obvious ones). Whoever's came first is a non-issue, because they were soon twinned and mutually linked together. Both seemed to receive plenty of response. Accusations of "hijacking" are irrelevant and seem to be in bad faith, as is your assumption that I know what on earth "Thanksgiving" is. A festival? Perhaps we could attempt to be nice to each other. Tony (talk) 16:56, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Tony, you participated in the drafting of that other RFC, hence why I choose to term what you've done as "hijacking". And saying something repeatedly ("your people", in this case) does not make it so. Your people (yourself, Greg, and others as I recall) also worked on this RFC, with a neutral party (Masem (talk · contribs)) hashing out the details. Weeks of work were thrown out the window, unilaterally by you, when you launched that other RFC. Then confusion once the other RFC launched, and you insisted your RFC and the MOSNUM developed RFC must have equal promotion in the watchlist notice (despite your RFC really being just your RFC). It was unnecessary. As for Thanksgiving, there you go. But if you'd known we were waiting for it to pass, and didn't know what it was, surely you should have asked rather than striking off on your own as you did. As for "bad faith", please, look at what you've done and contrast it with what we were trying to do: we were working in good faith towards agreed upon questions, you chose to not ask, and disengage from the group discussions and instead to strike off on your own. That is, IMHO, the definition of bad faith. —Locke Cole • t • c 10:46, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

• I don't believe this line of accusation has been resurrected again. I too, did participate. As I recall, it had stalled when Tony launched a simple 3-question RfC with simple yes/no response. The stalled RfC was then launched it is state without further modification within the next 24 hours as a panic response. Ohconfucius (talk) 14:54, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

• For the record, Tony started the other RFC 10 days after my RFC was created. "Stalled" is not a word I'd used here. --MASEM (t) 15:03, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

(outdent)

• (*sigh*) I don’t know why people respond to your arguments, Locke Kotniski; it just seems to encourage you. In this case, your since no-one ever contradicts me, I've come to assume they must be basically accurate-statement seemed to have been the bait that produced a bite. The truth is that your arguments are tedious, ignore reality, and are therefore nonsense; that’s why people don’t “respond to your arguments.”

  You claim that the universe is all out of kilter because Tony and I participated in crafting an RfC. Well, you and Locke participated in this RfC. So why is it that you think the RfC you helped draft (with other help from like-minded compatriots) is the only RfC that has been washed in unicorn tears? And why is it that the RfC that Ryan oversaw—with the backing of the ArbCom—and which you helped craft, is so fatally flawed? Note that the only flipping reason we wrote the wording to address the “generalities” of autoformatting is because Locke insisted that we do it that way.

  This latest RfC was as fair as any collective of human neuron buckets can make it. The only reason you people object to its *fairness* or disagree with the outcome is it didn’t go your way. You reject the conclusions of the ArbCom committee members because their interpretation that a clear majority is a rejection of autoformatting isn’t to your liking. You persist at badgering us all here on this talk page because you somehow think that you can reverse what you must know is an inevitability. Happy editing – have a good life – whatever. I can’t wait for this to be over; it was so unnecessary. Greg L (talk) 15:18, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

• You're not even reading this right. I did not say that, Kotniski did. I responded to it. —Locke Cole • t • c 15:38, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

• Indeed. Fixed. Greg L (talk) 16:03, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

• Oh, BTW, Locke… when you wrote …and also lead to Greg L starting another RFC after the first two attempting to re-assert his point of view as being the one representing consensus. All of these were missed opportunities to be civil and discuss this rationally, like adults. When it became clear there was no consensus on some of the important points we should have worked towards compromise on the issues, and instead the "our way is the only way" attitude continued to persevere.…

  Do you realize how similar that complaint is to what Thunderbird2 wrote here on his talk page to an administrator? He wrote I am realistic enough to see there is probably no consensus for [Wikipedia going back to the IEC prefixes]. The reason I say "probably" is because it has never been discussed in a civil manner, so it is impossible to tell what consensus might be if it were to be discussed. … That is not consensus and it never will be.

  Change happens on Wikipedia, Locke. And with such a diversity of Wikipedians, there will always be holdouts, such as yourself. Just like the IEC prefix fiasco, where Wikipedia was the only general-interest publication on earth to use “256 mebibytes (MiB)” rather than “256 megabytes (MB)”, we corrected ourself and got ourselves into alignment with common-sense technical writing principles to improve Wikipedia.

  And now we’ve done another change to improve Wikipedia. The majority view is that all links should be germane and topical to the subject matter. The majority view is also that it is unwise to have ever started down a path of providing a few registered editors such as yourself see a special view of editorial content that our I.P. users don’t see. Like Wikipedia’s unilateral adoption of the IEC prefixes, our resorting to DynamicDates to mollify users like Locke Cole is now recognized as unwise.

  Notwithstanding the shortcomings of the regular binary prefixes like megabyte (it can mean one million bytes—like in hard drives—or mean 1024² bytes) we now use the terminology the rest of the world uses. I can handle ambiguity; you can too. And notwithstanding that I am accustomed to seeing “May 2, 2009” as an American, I can handle seeing “2 May 2009”; you can too.

  None of the rest of us seem to have the lust for cutting out the still-beating hearts of our Wikipedian enemies until the heat death of the universe. It’s coming to an end. Deal with it.

  P.S. I know: the only reason the two outcomes (IEC prefixes and autoformating) are so similar (manifestly unjust and a total misread of what the community really wants) is because I am such a bad bad person and you are so so right. Save your keyboard the wear. Greg L (talk) 15:55, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

• As I noted in my response to Kotniski, consensus fails when editors try go ignore the other sides arguments entirely. Compromise is key to resolving any dispute, not repetition and edit warring to force your way. Derailing discussions is also unhelpful, and was done repeatedly during this whole affair (and is in fact, still occurring even today, see WT:MOSNUM where Tony1 tries to derail a discussion on Dynamic Dates complexity). As soon as you stop insisting on your way as the only way and start coming at this with an open mind and a willingness to see the other side of the argument, you'll get a lot farther. As an aside, further comparisons to your involvement with the IEC debate will be ignored. Just because your tactics worked with that doesn't mean they will work here (or are acceptable to the community; hopefully ArbCom deals with your rampant and unending incivility). Maybe you should take my advice and consider discussing the remaining issue of Dynamic Dates in a reasonable fashion? —Locke Cole • t • c 16:27, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

• There is actually no need for you and I to further discuss anything. The community has spoken in an ArbCom-sponsored RfC. The ArbCom committee decides on the outcome. You and I accept that. We do however, have the ability to comment on points of their proposed decision. What I am commenting on here is what seems like your continual ranting objecting to the very fundamentals of their decision: that the majority of Wikipedians have rejected the key points of what you want. To that extent, your persistence in claiming that everyone else has it all wrong and you have it all right bears an uncanny resemblance to Thunderbird2. Or am I missing something here? It seems about that simple. I am quite done here for the day. I have a sprinkler system to work on. If you want to persist on how I am a poopy-head, please advise me so on my talk page. See you there. Greg L (talk) 16:44, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

• • And what do you claim the community has said? Some of us see consensus against both extremes, linking all dates whatsoever and delinking all dates whatsoever. I see no other consensus.
  • If GregL had not revert-warred his way into removing all broader questions, we might see more. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:04, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Why autoformatting is not a developer problem

The developers certainly bequeathed us this problem by "giving" us the linked-date-autoformatting functionality. But the problem was actually caused by the community's unthinking acceptance of this functionality as a good thing. Only recently have we realized, thanks to the efforts and clear arguments of Tony, Greg etc., that it was something we should never have used in the way that we did. However the main problem is not the fact of the autoformatting itself (that is a problem, but only a secondary one, in that it causes some editors not to notice certain style defects in articles), but the fact of all the unwanted links that exist only because of the ill-advised former use of the functionality. These links should certainly be removed, and this means changing article text - it is obviously a problem for bots and scripts, not for devs. At the same time as doing this, the secondary problem mentioned above can be addressed, principally in terms of the correction of inconsistent date formats. People were doing this undisputedly good work; you (ArbCom) stopped them; you must make up for it now by explicitly giving them the right to continue doing it unhindered. Failure to do so would show contempt for the efforts of people who have the intelligence, skills and commitment to make WP better, and for the views which the community has expressed through proper decision-making processes.

But if that's too much rhetoric for you, then understand this one simple thing: "deprecating autoformatting" didn't mean switching off the autoformatting function (though that might have happened in time), it meant stop using the links that serve no purpose except to make autoformatting work. It's a question of how we edit articles, not of how the software is configured. Therefore it was a question for the WP editing community to make, and it made it; it didn't require the permission of, or even consultaiton with, the developers. (If you still don't get it, compare flagged revisions - the developers have put the functionality in the software, now we as a community decide if and how we want to use it.)

Thank you for listening, and goodbye for now. I assume if some sanction is applied against me personally, I will be notified (it will be a tragicomic absurdity, but I will comply). But please think carefully about what could be achieved through this judgement if made with brains fully engaged. Happy Mayday,--Kotniski (talk) 10:50, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Look, the community has already said they support "some form" of auto formatting. I don't know where some people got this funny idea that meant "kill it with fire, as quick and as fast as possible", but somehow they did. That's what got us here, not the repeated (and often ignored, and usually attacked) attempts to fix the problems in the software. That's a key thing the arbitrators must understand– it is entirely possible to address the various concerns expressed by Tony/Greg/etc. so long as we aren't put in a situation where they can randomly move the goalposts (and hopefully as a developer, John is letting his fellow arbs know just how simple this kind of thing can be). I'll note again: UC Bill and myself offered our assistance in discussing technical solutions with these editors and were consistently and repeatedly turned away. I was willing to consider compromises (such as keeping the syntax, but losing the automatically generated links, while keeping the auto formatting), but was again and again met with bad faith accusations of "holding things up". Heaven forbid the delinkers stop, come to the table and hash out a compromise rather than pursue their "our way or the highway" mentality. This attitude, and the behavior surrounding it (incivility, personal attacks, canvassing of community discussions to turn the !vote their way, and so forth), are why we're here. It's not too late to consider compromises that might better address concerns on both sides, but it will require putting down the torches and pitchforks, curbing the attitude, and engaging in civil discussion. —Locke Cole • t • c 14:09, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

A minority of the community supports some form of autoformatting; the majority do not. Your position that the community decided we can't get rid of autoformatting does not appear to have consensus, and this is why I am worried about defining when the guidelines are actually "disputed". Karanacs (talk) 14:24, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

(ec) I don't think that the last poll, with over half of the respondents opposing any form of autoformatting, shows support for your first claim, Locke. The community is rather split on the issue. But your point about rushing is well made. Nevertheless, the community has shown that not only should the links go, but also that the current syntax is not wanted. Is that the sticking point? The opportunity is there for developing solutions like formatdate, but it is clear from the comments in responses to the RfCs and poll that the community does not want any autoformatting solution to be confused with linking, ever again. Why not give way on having square brackets around dates and concentrate on getting formatdate fully documented for a start? This isn't bad faith. Reasonable people could take the view that since the links and the present syntax are not wanted, there remains little point in opposing their removal. The removal of metadata is really not a problem, since a sql search can easily recognise the well-formed dates which should be a consequence of any delinking (as John has already hinted). We both know that a compromise will have to be found, but that compromise must reflect what the community wants or it will never stick. Let's go to the table and see how to address both sides' concerns; I promise I won't whip up the villagers to attack the castle when we do. --RexxS (talk) 14:48, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

No, the second poll shows support for my first claim. Where did the community reject the syntax for Dynamic Dates, BTW? I've never seen that asked in a poll directly. And if the argument is that square brackets are too complicated, then by definition any markup is too complicated (certainly typing {{#formatdate: DATE}} is more complicated than simply wrapping dates in brackets, yes?). I'll ask this question at MOSNUM, but unless I've been confused these past many months, I don't understand how square brackets are more complicated. —Locke Cole • t • c 11:02, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for the clarification of your position. The second RfC (not poll) showed a minority (about 35% if I remember correctly) commenting that they would support "some form of autoformatting" - we debated that at the time. Both you and I looked through those comments and drew conclusions; I also examined the comments in the first RfC. Between the two RfCs there is a clear dislike of using the linking syntax. Here's one of the most clearly stated: "Not all users are aware that linking a date will format it, and using square brackets to do so is not intuitive."[5] The argument is of course not that that is "too complicated", but that it confuses the issue of linking. We both agree that a question does not need to be asked directly in a RfC (that's the purpose of the "Comments" part) to draw conclusions, since that is how you arrived at the result that some support exists for DA.[6] In summary, you can't have it both ways: if you can reach a conclusion about support for DA by parsing the RfCs, you can't object to others who see the opposition to square brackets by the same process; and you should know better than to create a straw man, by creating the "too complex" argument, when the issue was clearly "confusion with links". --RexxS (talk) 12:59, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

The RFC I was referring to was here. A majority of those participating showed support, not 35%, but more like 54% IIRC. As for the rest... thanks for the good faith. I'm not "trying to have it both ways", I'm trying to reach something resembling consensus (not this silliness from the most recent RFC, which really only shows consensus on a few of the issues, but leaves Dynamic Dates up in the air). As for the alleged straw man, I did nothing of the sort: the most recent RFC was the one to claim that the Dynamic Dates syntax was a "con" of the system, I'm merely trying to address these concerns people seem to have. Thank you, again, for the good faith in assuming I'm trying to manipulate this discussion through logical fallacies though. —Locke Cole • t • c 13:17, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for the further clarification. The RfCs I was referring to are here[7] and here[8] where of the 309 total responses, only 107 (35%) supported some form of autoformatting or that dates should normally be autoformatted. I'm sorry I didn't make that clearer. If you completely ignore RfC1 then you do indeed get 53% supporting some form of autoformatting. That's ok, I know you reject RfC1, so I can see where you claim comes from now. I hope you'll allow that others may hold a different opinion. I assume the thanks for AGF was sarcastic, so I should perhaps make it clear I actually do assume good faith where you're concerned, Locke. I've said before, I respect your position, and I respect your opinion, even if I disagree with both. Please afford me the same courtesy. As for the complexity argument, thank you for the pointer, I can now see that the latest poll (not RfC) used that phrase. Nevertheless I fail to see what bearing it had on the points I raise. I've never had that concern. For me, the problem is trying to re-use pre-existing markup and the confusion it causes, particularly with new editors. That's why I pointed out it's "straw man" if you you were addressing the concerns I raised. I hope you will agree that assuming good faith does not prohibit me from questioning your statements when I can see an inconsistency. In good faith --RexxS (talk) 00:41, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

I'm not actually surprised that there is one verdict which keeps coming back loud and clear; I'm surprised by the strength of it: Date linking for the purposes of 'date-autoformatting' was overwhelmingly unpopular. 'Dynamic Dates' will serve as a reminder to the community for some time to come as an unpleasant experience. The general principal of autoformatting is another matter, and the community has in no way been won over by the idea. I think 'son of Dynamic Dates' will have to be damn near perfect to overcome the community's apprehension. Ohconfucius (talk) 15:29, 1 May 2009 (UTC)PS I still cannot think in what way the goalposts have been moved.

Quoting Locke: Look, the community has already said they support "some form" of auto formatting. Look, the evidence says otherwise. Greg L (talk) 17:50, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

{{fact}}. —Locke Cole • t • c 11:02, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

In what way have the goalposts been moved? First you (and by "you" in the following statements, I mean your group, possibly but not always including yourself) wanted Dynamic Dates to provide a consistent date view for unregistered/IP readers (this was the big deal breaker when I joined the discussion, and the only major issue I was aware of). We overcame that. Then you insisted unregistered readers must be able to choose their date format. (First goalpost move). Then you claimed it needed to support date ranges. We overcame that. (Second goalpost move). Then you made the bizarre demand that it support slashed dates (which is impossible except for obvious instances like YYYY/MM/DD; for MM/DD/YYYY and DD/MM/YYYY it's impossible for software to tell which date is first, the month or the day). The issue is, you listed one or two problems initially that were dealbreakers for auto formatting, and when we addressed those, you started adding more and more. Feature creep (in this case, seemingly used to keep proponents of the system from gaining support for it, even though the proponents were acting in good faith by trying to address/fix their concerns). Truthfully, every single problem you have with Dynamic Dates is a separate bug unto itself, but you seem to be trying to use each issue you come across as some new problem, some new hurdle to be jumped or hoop to go through before you'll support it (and, inevitably, that support never comes because you seem to have an endless list of complaints that changes from day to day). And don't get me started on the "the syntax is too complex" arguments, where the same people seem to think {{#formatdate:December 3, 2005}} is less complex than just putting square brackets around dates ([[December 3]], [[2005]])... —Locke Cole • t • c 11:02, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Locke, you're the only person who has suggested that "the syntax is too complex", so it's hardly an argument. The problem is that [[December 3]], [[2005]] uses markup that is already in use for something completely unrelated. It's like someone suggesting using '''December 3''', '''2005''' to autoformat. In some ways, I wish they had. Then we would only be having a debate about whether dates should be bolded in articles. --RexxS (talk) 13:14, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Uhhhh, no.... not even close. The latest RFC (with Ryan, clerk of this case) was where it was suggested the syntax was "complex" or "too complicated" (the exact wording eludes me, and I'm too lazy to go chasing it right now, I trust you have the skills necessary to find this on your own now that I've set you on the path). The linking syntax would still be useful if we had a Preference that allowed editors to optionally link date articles (as UC Bill had done in his patch for MediaWiki), and would be sensible then IMHO. Again, there's a chance for compromise here, please people, stop passing it up for the "my way is the only way!" rhetoric. It's unhelpful. —Locke Cole • t • c 13:20, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

It's not unusual that features wish-list evolves - We had hardly got past defining the specifications when the UC Bill/Sapphic fix came along. Ohconfucius (talk) 14:02, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

You've got that backwards. UC Bill did a good chunk of his work and then you all clamored for a specification (I'll admit to being totally puzzled at the demands for a specification after the work had already began and was well underway but tried to work with you all anyways). The point is, what had gone from simply being "unregistered users see the underlying mish mash of date formats" to "this, this, and this, and that, and we'll throw the impossible (slashed date handling) in there too, just to stymie the whole thing". The way to handle this is to identify the top three major issues with the system, agree to stop trying to dismantle the system and let the dev(s) try to fix those problems. If there are more problems, great, but identifying the biggest showstoppers gives us something to start with and a goal that's not constantly moving and changing. After the goal is reached, assuming all agree with the fixes, the system goes live and the process repeats. But using features/bugs as a filibuster to stymie progress on the discussion is unhelpful, and that seems to have been what happened here. It was never good enough, the work UC Bill did, despite meeting the demands as they changed from day to day (and sometimes hour to hour). —Locke Cole • t • c 14:17, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

• Yes, who ever heard of a complex piece of software without specifications? As I said, we had hardly got past defining the specifications when the UC Bill/Sapphic fix came along. Then Bill had a big civility blow-out and removed all his work. That's when Sapphic stepped in in earnest, remember? Ohconfucius (talk) 15:05, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

• I've never seen a specification for ANY software I've been in developing beyond basic guides for what the expected result was. And I've certainly never seen a specification for a patch (which is what UC Bill was working on). And again, you have it backwards IIRC, UC Bill posted about his patch and then came the demands for a specification... very confusing, that. —Locke Cole • t • c 16:30, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

• Take two pills of “figure out how to make it so regular I.P. editors benefit exactly the same way as registered editors” and call me in the morning. Wikipedia is about our *I.P. users* Locke, not us. Greg L (talk) 14:49, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

• Yes Greg, that's what you want now. Originally the complaint was that Dynamic Dates didn't even work for IP readers; the implication was that if it formatted dates consistently, that was good enough. I even asked if a magic word approach, so articles could display in a consistent date based on this magic word, was okay, and as I recall, there wasn't any great objection to this. Now this seems to not be the case. As I mentioned above, the constant moving of the goalposts is one factor that landed us here. IP readers being able to choose a date format is possible, but it will take more time because there isn't currently a way to store IP preferences in a uniform manner (my thinking is that it will likely involve cookies stored in the readers web browser). This is a logical goal IMHO, but it shouldn't hold up progress on the other issues (act as a filibuster, effectively). Especially not when the critical problem (that it doesn't work at all for IP readers) is resolved. —Locke Cole • t • c 15:14, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

• When does the main feature start? Ohconfucius (talk) 17:12, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

(outdent)

• (Well, I can’t let a colossal deception go into “the record” uncontested.)  Locke, so I write “Take two pills of “figure out how to make it so regular I.P. editors benefit exactly the same way as registered editors” and call me in the morning.” Your response? Quoting you: Yes Greg, that's what you want now. And As I mentioned above, the constant moving of the goalposts is one factor that landed us here. Hogwash. Pretty much nothing you wrote above is founded in reality one iota. There has been no “goal-post moving.” I’ve been taking the position that “all editors should see the same article content as regular I.P. users” all along. Want proof? Check out “My” RfC. What’s it say there? I’ll tell you: “We adhere to the fundamental principle that all editors should see the same article content as regular I.P. users” (in bold, no less). And what date is that? 27 January 2009, that’s when. The community overwhelming supported that proposal. Do you see the support votes? Notice some of the same ol’ names? Do they look familiar? I’ve been consistently adhering to this message point all along without failure. There was no “implication” otherwise (except perhaps in your imagination).

  The only “problem” here is you have been so blinded by your desire to have it your way—notwithstanding what the majority of the community wants—you haven’t even been able to even comprehend what our position has been all along. The rest of the community *gets it.* I can’t help it if you never will. I’ve seen your style of argument before. It is tedious, accomplishes absolutely nothing, and is a colossal waste of time.

  It is an utter travesty that Wikipedia processes allows an editor to wikilawyer so disruptively that it results in thousands of wasted man-hours to deal with your intransigence in the face of overwhelming evidence that the community had previously arrived at a consensus that it didn’t want date linking and didn’t want autoformatting. Wikipedia has got to find a way to muzzle such disruption with much less fuss. This isn’t a “personal attack,” this is TRUTH.©™® Greg L (talk) 05:34, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

• Maybe if you're so certain that's true you could explain how this happened. Your statement in that RFC you conducted was made after you'd moved the goal posts, BTW. IIRC they were moved sometime in December (you originally insisted that IP editors should have consistent dates, once it was clear that wasn't impossible to accomplish, you tweaked your demand to include the ability to choose their own format; I've tried to AGF throughout this, but it seems like this was done to filibuster because you knew it would take more time to accomplish). That's truth too, but I don't expect you'll accept it. —Locke Cole • t • c 05:43, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

• Puhleeze. Look at the date of that thing: November. Is that the date you put blinders on and plugged your ears? Your point is silly. I’m done here tonight. Until tomorrow… Greg L (talk) 06:09, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Apparent conflicts of interest and the question of recusal

Please see my post here. Tony (talk) 14:28, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Closing statement by Colonies Chris

It's a measure of the madness that has descended upon Wikipedia as a result of this dispute that I have twice found myself blocked for making edits (date delinking), as an adjunct to my normal gnoming activities, which were in line with the MoS, in line with the community preference expressed in multiple RFCs, to which no-one had objected, and which I'd been making for six months previously to almost total indifference from other editors. At that point I decided to step away from editing Wikipedia until some sort of sanity had returned. I naively imagined that this would occur when the long-awaited ArbCom judgment was delivered. However, looking at the proposed decision, that's clearly not going to be the case.

What’s in this proposal? First of all, a string of platitudes, motherhood-and-apple-pie statements that no-one could possibly disagree with (are arbs, who presumably have real lives to attend to, really expected to expend time to vote on "The purpose of Wikipedia is to create a high-quality, free-content encyclopedia in an atmosphere of camaraderie and mutual respect among contributors"?), and restatements of policy (BTW, what would happen if Arbs were to vote against the "Optional Styles" statement for example - would that invalidate existing policy?)

Statement 15 "Fait accompli" at first sight appears relevant, but is actually valueless in this dispute "Editors who are collectively or individually making large numbers of similar edits, and are apprised that those edits are controversial or disputed, are expected to attempt to resolve the dispute through discussion." This does not mean that anyone who doesn't like certain edits can stop them by making a fuss. It means that consensus must be obtained. And there's the rub - after months of discussion and several RFCs, those of us who favour delinking feel that consensus has been made very clear. The opposing camp disagrees. How then are we to decide where consensus lies?

Statement 17, on the BAG, comes completely out of left field. There seems to be an implicit criticism of the BAG, or certain members of it, but they have taken no part in this case and have had no opportunity to defend themselves. This statement does not belong in this case at all.

In statements 18 and 19, on Mediawiki, what on earth is the value of "The local community may, of course, challenge these decisions, but must at all times respect them"? If it means we should treat developers with respect, then it's unarguable. If it means we should abide by their decisions, it's empty: we can try to influence their decisions but we have to live with whatever they decide.

In statement 21 "decisions to deprecate or disable software features are best left in the hands of the technical staff" is also irrelevant. That's simply how it is. We're entirely within our rights to request that a feature should be deprecated or disabled, but they make the decisions.

Open source At last a statement I can agree with "Developers are volunteers, and at no time is it acceptable to expect them to fix non-critical problems." That's exactly why they shouldn't be asked to come up with a new improved autoformatting method; a feature which is at best a nice-to-have, and that the community has made clear it doesn't want. They've got many more important things to spend their time on.

"Two RFCs held in December 2008 reaffirmed that date autoformatting is undesirable, and that WP:OVERLINKing of dates is not desirable, however consensus has not been found on when dates should be delinked."
Why is there no mention of the RFC that has recently concluded? We now have multiple RFCs where the community has repeatedly made its will very clear, but a few vocal editors continue to dispute that. Consensus does not mean unanimity - there will always be objectors, but a small group of noisy objectors should not be allowed to obstruct what the community has repeatedly said it wants.

“the decision to decommission this functionality, and the mass delinking of dates from all articles in mainspace should have involved the technical staff, due to the size and resources used to perform such a large change”.
This conflates two different things. Decommissioning the autoformatting functionality is a technically trivial change - a modification to a single parameter. Mass delinking would affect a lot of articles but requires no involvement by developers at all. Up to this point there has been no suggestion that the size of the delinking task would present a technical problem. Where is the evidence for this implication? And if a bot were to perform the task, it would first require approval from the BAG. Surely it's their job to consider technical factors such as this, not ArbCom's?

This statement "Deprecation of autoformatting and date-delinking have been problematically conflated in this dispute. While both sides of the date debate have conflated the issues, consensus for the deprecation of autoformatting has been abused as consensus for mass date delinking." appears to be condemning the participants in the dispute for doing something that was absolutely unavoidable. Nobody needed to conflate the issues; they are unavoidably conflated - the linking syntax provides the autoformatting facility. That's why the debate is so complicated and intractable – there are different issues unavoidably conflated, and what might be an acceptable solution to those who like/dislike autoformatting is not acceptable to others who like/dislike date linking.

[No. In principle, one could have deprecated autoformatting without recurring to mass date delinking by simply adding a colon at the beginning of any link to a date, e.g. May 2, 2009 (autoformatted) into May 2, 2009 (not autoformatted). --A. di M. (formerly Army1987) — Deeds, not words. 10:02, 2 May 2009 (UTC)]

Bug 4582: This text entirely fails to note that the new versions of autoformatting did not address the question of date ranges or slashed dates at all. Articles currently have to be written in an unnatural way in order to get the dates properly autoformatted, and the proposed new version would not address this problem at all.

Battle on articles:
Shamefully, this section lifts wholesale texts from the many many allegations made by Tennis expert, the ultimate edit warrior. And then Arbs will be asked to vote on whether the entire list of editors has edit warred, without any distinction between, at the one extreme, Tennis expert, with his 751 reverts, all contravening the MoS and supported by no-one else, to at the other extreme, HJensen with 9 edits, all in conformity with the MoS.

Mass delinking:
"Despite the ongoing dispute, mass date delinking has been conducted by many users via scripts, AWB, and bots, hindering dispute resolution and encouraging fait accompli. In conjunction with blind reverts, bot and script bugs, and articles being delinked multiple times, the mass delinking contributed to the tension of the dispute and was self-defeating."
We have said all along that the community did not want date links, and multiple RFCs have vindicated that view. It's the opposition's refusal to accept that that has prevented dispute resolution. Allegations have been made of blind reverts, but where is the evidence? I can certainly provide evidence of blind reverts of my unlinking. What were these alleged script bugs? Where are the diffs? And how many articles were delinked multiple times? A few, probably in single figures, out of thousands delinked without problems. This is a gross misrepresentation of the facts.

FoF 17: "In an attempt to speed up the process of date delinking, Ohconfucius has informed users that he has operated multiple instances of AutoWikiBrowser" As the community has made clear that it does not want date links, OhConfucius should be commended for this, not condemned.

FoF 19: "Ohconfucius has battled while evading blocks" The 'reverts' diff shows that OhConfucius was reverting edits made by Kendrick7 whose sole purpose was to relink dates.

FoF 21: "Bureaucrat The Rambling Man has made comments intended to encourage a contributor to quit" A vital diff is missing - here on 19 November, Tennis expert melodramatically announced his retirement, then failed to follow through.

Proposed remedies
User x is prohibited from MOS enforcement
So if I were subject to this restriction, would this mean I would be banned from making any MoS-related changes unless they're indicated as compulsory? Or does it mean that if anyone objects to my MoS-related changes, I have to back off? And what if the objector is one of the complainants in this case, following me around and objecting to any such changes I may make?

"Mass date delinking is restricted for six months to changes prescribed in Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers), and may only occur at times when the page is not in a disputed state." What does 'in a disputed state' mean? And does 'the page' refer to the MoS page or an article that's being delinked? If one editor (not even necessarily a previous editor of that article) complains, does that make it 'disputed'?

Stability Proposals to ban users from MoS. There are genuine and difficult underlying issues here – they won’t go away just because you prevent people from discussing it. The battle will just move elsewhere and resurface when the ban is up. The underlying issues need to be resolved.

“If the Manual of style has not stabilised within three months after the close of the case, the committee will open a review of the conduct of the parties engaged in this battle and hand out permanent MOS bans to any parties who have actively prevented the manual of style stabilising on a version that has broad community consensus.” And who's going to decide what constitutes “broad community consensus”? We’ve just had a series of RFCs that were supposed to settle that, but the objectors won't accept it. That won't have changed in three months' time. Why not deal with that now and put an end to the dispute?

In summary, I'm deeply disappointed at the confused, unbalanced and tendentious nature of some of the questions that Arbs are being asked to vote on, and at the almost total failure of this proposed decision to grasp or address the real issues here. It seems to me that sanity is not about to return; I don't expect to return to editing any time soon. Colonies Chris (talk) 21:43, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

• C.C.: I think you have done a remarkably thorough job of parsing the implications of the draft proposed decision and have raised some very good points. Greg L (talk) 00:10, 2 May 2009 (UTC)
  • It's a very insightful statement. Chris is too polite to say the obvious. Here, we have an egregious example of scope manipulation. Together with the personalised scope, manipulative selection of "evidence", and the refusal to accept the notion that there might be a teensy-weensy conflict of interest in the drafter's professional background and collaborative relationships, the conclusion by a reasonable outsider would surely be that it is corrupt. Tony (talk) 03:14, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

• "It's a measure of the madness that has descended upon Wikipedia as a result of this dispute that I have twice found myself blocked for making edits (date delinking)..." I think this is also relevant: The poll is closed. It shows consensus that Wikipedians do not want dates linked. All this fighting over "we can't delink dates because it will break autoformatting" is nonsense. The fact that the injunction is still in place - the same injunction that almost got me banned even though I didn't know it existed - even though we have a majority agreeing that dates should not be linked, is nonsense. All this nonsense is making me very strongly consider permanently retiring as a Wikipedia editor. I've been here for over 4 years. Imagine what this nonsense is doing to people who haven't been here as long, or who aren't as persistent as I am. I am still appalled that an injunction such as this that has the potential to get legitimate, good-faith editors banned, was not widely publicized (perhaps in the header that appears when there is voting to be done) and made known to regular (as in those who are here regularly) Wikipedians. The injunction was so little-known that I was using Lightmouse's delinking script for 2 months into the injunction before someone informed me it existed. (Whereupon I was not simply notified that it existed, but immediately threatened with banning by an administrator who implied that he was being generous by having not banned me already but taken the "courtesy" to inform me of the injunction.) RainbowOfLight ^Talk 02:37, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

I regret not being able to join this Mutual Admiration Society, but It shows consensus that Wikipedians do not want dates linked. is false. Indeed, a proposal to offer the choice to delink all dates was suggested during the poll, and shot down (by GregL, who is no friend of links) as having no chance of being most popular. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:37, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Excuse me for not being clearer - when I said "do not want dates linked," I meant "only want relevant and germane dates linked." Here I thought that 256 support votes under linking only relevant dates (as opposed to 18 link only commemorative dates, 8 link all on first occurrence, and 42 remove all guidance) was a majority. And under years, 208 votes for option 1, as opposed to 41, 6, and 37, respectively. Yes autoformatting is more evenly split with 287 opposed to 209 support, but still there has been a proposal for some coding to autoformat dates without linking them. So do we define consensus as every user agreeing, rather than majority rule? RainbowOfLight ^Talk 23:12, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

I agree (and have proposed as a FoF in this arbitration) that there is consensus against linking all (or almost all) dates. I do not consider this proven beyond reasonable doubt, in part because of the restricted nature of this latest RfC; but the evidence for it is quite strong.

This is, however, a much weaker claim than the Rainbow's first claim; please be more careful.

WP:Consensus has never meant majority rule; it means a statement which (almost) everyone can tolerate. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:18, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

If we were looking for consensus, and not majority rule, then what was the point of the poll, when polls generally show majorities? I would think that in the absence of consensus that the majority view would be upheld. RainbowOfLight ^Talk 05:46, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

See voting is evil. See also WP:NOTDEMOCRACY. The results of polls where only a majority is defined (and not a consensus) should be the start of more discussion, not the end of it. —Locke Cole • t • c 05:58, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

• There was very little point to the poll. Ryan was attempting to see if there was anything generally agreed on; this might have been done, if GregL had not reverted continually to get a poll which did not address any of the issues on which we might agree. See its talk page for much more. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:33, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

• Well I think it's pretty obvious we'll never get consensus on this matter, so I don't know what else the arbs can base their decision on other than what the majority wants. I think this is broken. RainbowOfLight ^Talk 06:23, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
  • I have suggested that ArbCom base their decision on WP:ENGVAR and the principle of the Jguk case: when there are two ways of doing something, and editors disagree on which to do in general, permit both and don't edit solely to switch (unless there is consensus that there is good reason at some individual article) . That's the beginning of WP:MOS, for those who reverence it. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:08, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

• Colonies Chris has done a fine job of summarising my initial reactions to the draft, so I will just piggyback onto his excellent work, as I have neither the time nor inclination to do a deconstruction of the draft decision.

  I feel that with this impending ruling, Arbcom will have done everything to encourage the proliferation of drama and nail houses and relatively little to restore normalcy and respect for consensus. There is precious little within these pages which indicates why the RfCs shouldn't be put into action. Any strings attached will guarantee further opportunity for drama.

  I would add that I share the concern that the technology angle is wholly irrelevant at best; at worst, it would set a new agenda to elevate Wikimedia developers to the status of Archangels next to Jimbo, because they are supposedly the only ones capable of an overall view.

  There have been casualties - Kendrick7 is gone, and UC Bill has imposed permanent exile upon himself (sic); There have been innocent ordinary editor victims among which I count Chris (although he has been forced into our camp by the opponents of delinking); members of BAG are being hung out to dry for their apparent approval of Lightbot. I have not been entirely blameless. Slap a few 'hail Marys' on Locke, PMAnderson, me, Greg and Tony for our incivility by all means if you really must, but I have already said here that the said Lightmouse motions certainly fail to pass the 'preventative, not punitive' objective declared by Arbcom. Ohconfucius (talk) 02:30, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

• Nice statement CC. Maybe this was after all a matter of being the one presenting the most "evidence" and wasting the most time? --HJensen, talk 07:59, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

• Rainbow and Anderson: please let's clarify in all comments whether we're referring to (full-date) autoformatting or to the linking of date-fragments, such as years and month-day units. Otherwise, it's confusing. Tony (talk) 09:40, 4 May 2009 (UTC)
  • There is no real reason to distinguish along that line. It may well be that both halves of a linked date [[5 November]] [[1605]] are germane. The question of whether we are to have autoformatting should be independent of linking. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:18, 4 May 2009 (UTC)
  • Dates such as November 3 without a year are autoformatted, too (except with the default and the YYYY-MM-DD setting). --A. di M. (formerly Army1987) — Deeds, not words. 19:38, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Septentrionalis. RainbowOfLight ^Talk 05:46, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:08, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

why the new text on BTW/MOSLINK dispute? It's been resolved

I don't understand why jaydb has added a substantial new text on this, when only a few days ago, after fruitful discussion, BTW has been re-merged into MOSLINK. It doesn't appear to be an issue now. Tony (talk) 14:43, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

I see also that "Style locked in dispute" is old news too, and fails to mention that only the DA section is locked, not the whole page. Should it be "Style guide"?

These two sections appear to depict situations that are unstable and disrupted, where they are not. Can the facts be corrected please? Tony (talk) 14:48, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

• It may have been the case back in January, but what, pray, could the instability, warring and protection Jayvdb be talking about? WP:Build the web was successfully and undramatically merged with not much intervention from any party in this dispute three(?) days ago. The proposer may even have referred to it as a 'no brainer' Ohconfucius (talk) 14:53, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

The initial posting of the "Proposed decision" looked stale, as if it were created in February. The RFC conducted by the Arbcom clerk, Ryan Postlethwaite, was not mentioned. The UC Bill / Sapphic disruptive sock episode is totally absent. This "Proposed decision" needs more work to make it an up-to-date and balanced case. -- SWTPC6800 (talk) 15:15, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

John has already mentioned he wrote the decision in February. Nevertheless, since ArbCom reserves the right to examine all aspects of user conduct related to the case, I suspect John wishes to highlight the out-of-process MfD, particularly as WP:Miscellany_for_deletion#Prerequisites states "Nominating a Wikipedia policy or guideline page, or one of the deletion discussion areas (or their sub-pages), for deletion will probably be considered disruptive, and the ensuing discussions closed early. This is not a forum for modifying or revoking policy", and the Arbs may wish to consider whether that behaviour was disruptive. --RexxS (talk) 15:25, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Compound statements: arbs still being funnelled on critical issues

I'm sorry to harp on about this, but the serious matters raised on this page and jayvdb's talk page have not been addressed, while time is being expended adding what appear to be misleading "findings of fact" (see previous section above).

Pity help arbs who believe the RFCs in December and under the aegis of ArbCom do indeed represent consensus and have in effect resolved the dispute, whatever one might make of the protestations of one editor on this page. Why does the draft pass ignore the RFC that showed overwhelming opposition (nearly 80%) to the notion that "Automated/semi-automated compliance with any particular guideline require separate consensus"?

For that matter, why is ArbCom asked to go far beyond its brief of investigating and judging behavioural matters, now to interpret RFCs on content (the RFC all concerned how one aspect of the content of articles will be treated).

These two proposals for the vote are particularly problematic:

• 3.1) The RFCs to date have not resolved the date delinking dispute.

• 3.2) Two RFCs held in December 2008 reaffirmed that date autoformatting is undesirable, and that WP:OVERLINKing of dates is not desirable, however consensus has not been found on when dates should be delinked.

Compound packaging: There seem to be key instances of the packaging of findings that do not necessarily go together, in which arbitrators are forced to say one thing in order to say another.

• WRT 3.2, why are arbs not able to vote that the RFCs in December reaffirmed that DA and the overlinking of date-fragments are undesirable, and that consensus has been established on when dates should be delinked ("when" is deliberately ambiguous, jayvdb has stated). The recent, ArbCom-related RFC clearly established when years and month-days should and should not be linked. What does "dates" refer to at the end of 3.2?
• An arb might agree that "the parties have battled in the dispute over date delinking without forming consensus", but to do so must affirm in the same package that one of the two December sets of RFCs (including the one linked to above) was "disruptive", for some undisclosed reason, an opinion mouthed on the Evidence page by MBisanz. Why are these separate issues (unsupported by real evidence or argument) thus packaged, like the extra laws that are routinely popped into major Congressional acts to get from the lawmakers what is desired by a particular lobby-group?

Ambiguity and complexity: Will it be clear to arbitrators that "the parties" here is distinct from their findings elsewhere on the consensus formed by "the community"? A very close, careful analysis is required to realise this. The ambiguity of "when" remains on purpose, as Jayvdb states above: "I will not attempt to clarify it, because the ambiguity in that proposed finding underscores the point being made. I wont mind if another arb rewrites 3.2 or adds an option,..."

It seems that the proposals set out here, inter alia, reflect Jayvdb's stated opinions above: "I do not believe we are able to find very much conclusive about any of the RFC." These are some of the reasons that people are upset about what they regard as manipulation of the judgement in this draft, even if Jayvdb did not intend such. At the very least, some of these issues need to be broken into separate votes if they are retained. It would be rational to bin the first nine or so embarrassing mom-and-apple-pie votes to save arbs' time, so that they can focus on voting in a way that would be a cleaner and more accurate representation of the their opinions, uncontaminated by funnelling via compound statements. Tony (talk) 15:45, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

• Shorter Tony: I'm sorry to do this but I'm going to do it anyway.
• There is no consensus on when to delink dates; there is consensus not to delink all of them, and (probably) consensus [not] to link all of them; there is also a vague and undiscussed formula, composed by GregL, but which does not apply clearly to any actual case, and approved by a large number of editors whose comments show they didn't read it.
• The "parties to this case" are a well-defined set: Locke Cole, Tony1, Greg L, Lightmouse, Dabomb87, Ohconfucius, Guy Peters, Earle Martin, Colonies Chris, and Kotniski. All an arb would have to do is consult the main file on the case and the motions on the workshop.
• I am glad to see that Tony is no longer alleging that Jaydb conspired with Werdna; what's the next conspiracy theory going to be? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:47, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Has this got to the point of tendentious editing? An editor who wilfully disregards RfCs and the attempts to produce consensus must surely be liable to sanctions at some point? To be blunt, there is consensus on when to delink dates ("[dates] should not be linked unless their content is germane and topical to the subject"). If an editor can refuse to accept a position gaining over 70% support, then there is no hope of that editor ever abandoning a "my way is the only way" mentality. To compound that by positing an imaginary consensus to link all dates, against all that the community has said, is a failure to accept reality. To state that a large number of the editors, who took the time to contribute (most with well-reasoned comments), didn't read the proposal is disrespectful of fellow editors and amazingly arrogant. It's time PMAnderson gave up on the project, since this poisonous denial of consensus when it does not match their own views, can never result in anyone finding a consensus while they are involved. --RexxS (talk) 21:08, 5 May 2009 (UTC) struck discourteous commentary - it is better to focus on the issues, rather than get annoyed over a typo. --RexxS (talk) 00:42, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

No, this has gotten to a most unfortunate typo, now fixed. I meant to say: consensus not to delink all of them and probable consensus not to link all of them, exactly the same as I said on this FoF, where Rexxs and I agreed. He might have had the courtesy to remember this; but I thank him for observing the error. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 00:24, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

• Well done, RexxS. Indeed, "[dates] should not be linked unless their content is germane and topical to the subject". Very similar wording was in here in the second-to-last RfC, which received a landslide reception. And I trust editors knew how to actually read back then too. About the only date in regular article-space across all of Wikipedia that is actually germane and topical to the subject matter is September 13, 1965, which can be found here in our Trivia article. All others—unless they are in intrinsically chronological articles like 1996—need to be delinked as rapidly as possible by bots. Greg L (talk) 22:53, 5 May 2009 (UTC)
  • Since a bot cannot tell the difference between the two classes, GregL is proposing the impossible. But this discussion should make clear the extent to which Greg L knows what he is talking about. A ban on bottery for 12 months is necessary because of such good souls. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 00:24, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

• Oh darn. *Inconvenient truth* coming up: In a test of 40 articles, about half of which were chronological in nature and were supposed to keep their dates, Lightbot had zero errors. Zero false positives in the chronological articles (like 1985 and April 2), and zero false negatives in regular editorial content. It nuked every single linked date that should be nuked, and left every single one alone that should have been left alone. Except for the possibility of some restrictions on a one or two editors who run bots, I think it very likely that the ArbCom committee plans to let community that make bots, run bots, and oversee bots worry, about bots. Or, perhaps the ArbCom committee should instruct the bot people to come see PMAnderson for permission… Greg L (talk) 05:00, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
  • This would appear to be: Lightbot removed all the date-linking from non-chronological articles and none of it from chronological articles. This is not what any RfC supported; some links in chronological articles are not germane, some links in other articles are.
  • Of course, if Greg L had supplied a link, instead of his bald assertions, we could see for ourselves. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 05:18, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

"…that everyone can edit", not "…everyone has to…"

For months now, the parties to this case, other involved parties (amongst which I count myself), and anyone else interested have had the opportunity to engage in this case. Whether evidence, workshop, or talk pages, we all have engaged in spades — screen after screen after screen filling up with everything from relevant facts and insightful analysis to petty bickering and useless bloviating. For anyone who truly cares about the outcome, it been an absolute labour to keep following along.

More recently, there have been cries from all corners for ArbCom to 'get off the pot' and do something — issue a decision, interpret RFCs, lift the injunction — do anything, but just get this over with.

And here we are. The proposed decision page is getting fleshed out and, in time, it'll be time for the Arbs to consider the proposals, perhaps suggest some of their own to complement what's been proposed or, in some cases, to replace it. Then, and only then, they'll start to vote. But drafting is happening; whether anyone agrees with the words thus far or not, there's progress.

And yet… we still can't shut up!

Why are Arbs being asked to choose between this or that? They're not being asked to choose anything yet — it's a draft.

Why does the proposed decision fail to take into account this discussion or that person's actions? It can't fail to take into account something until it's final — it's a draft.

I realize that we're waving goodbye to our loved ones while the Pacific Princess steams away from the harbour here, but wouldn't it have been amazing if everyone could have just let Jayvdb draft away peacefully, shut the h-e-double hockey sticks up about everything that this draft is or isn't, and waited until we saw what it actually is once he was finished with it before adding to the 160KB that's already on this page alone? He'd almost have been better to do all the drafting offline and then put it up as a finished product, except that there'd still be bleating that nothing was happening.

So please, consider this a plea from one user whose damn (sic) has finally broken; just for a few days, suppress your urge to click the edit link, at least on this page. Go review a featured article, or fill in a red link, or clean up a link to a dab page — build an encyclopedia, which so many of you have been begging to be allowed to do. Let Jayvdb finish the drafting and then, once he's done, I'm sure you'll have plenty of time to resume the streams of invective or approbation as applicable to your hearts' content while the other Arbs are tweaking it. Or not — maybe consider the possiblity that we've all said enough, and let the Arbs get on with bringing this incredibly depressing chapter in our history to a close. Mlaffs (talk) 20:58, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

FoF #10

I should just say that I suspected as much well before this bit of innuendo. At the time, I thought for sure it was an open secret but then I quickly thought well, what if it isn't and re-considered. Further I noticed that some of the disputed edits (particularly un-piping the [[1492 in the Bahamas|1492]]-style year links) were actually a positive endeavor, and that I was caring less and less about the rest of them (so little that I had been paying no attention to this case and didn't realize until now that the cat… err… mouse was officially out of the bag. Lightmouse, I know we've had our share of disagreements at "MOSNUM" but I apologize if I played any part in blowing your cover or hastening the onset of this train-wreck of an arbcom case. — CharlotteWebb 14:45, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Thx for your comment, Charlotte. Except I don't think there was any great "cover" to blow. Lightmouse/Bobblewik, whatever you want to call him, has nothing to hide in his contributions to WP, which have been sincere and well-meaning, and of enormous value, despite the odd detractor and a few teething problems. Ryan Postlethwaite, the Clerk of this case who also ran the related RFC, was busy arranging with Lightmouse only a few weeks ago to set up his bot to clean up the square-brackets around DA in the whole project (see LM's talk page). Something happened behind the scenes to halt what was largely regarded as the obvious move after the RFC; we have not been apprised of the machinations, which is most unsatisfactory. I can even point to the precise time they occurred, if anyone wants, probably on some IRC. Lighmouse's niche expertise and the trust many people in the community have put in him are in stark contrast with the bizarre allegations against him in this draft judgement. Tony (talk) 15:26, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Ugh, I disagree strongly with everything Tony has said. Both you and Lightmouse have engaged in off-wiki canvassing to try and win your "battle" here on the English Wikipedia. Now new evidence has come to light (see the /Evidence page, the additions by Phe (talk · contribs)) showing that you, likely Lightmouse, and Ohconfucius have moved your battle to the French Wikipedia. Further, Bobblewik has much to hide from, particularly his lengthy block log. I'm actually dismayed that stronger remedies aren't being proposed given the long pattern of misbehavior displayed here. Would a topic ban from MOS help? Sure, but the attitudes and actions displayed aren't limited to just MOS (or MOSNUM), you engage in similar behavior at FA (as shown to some limited degree in my evidence). This needs to stop. —Locke Cole • t • c 15:44, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

One of your more savage and unpleasant attacks, again based on rumour and supposition. Ryan Postlethwaite investigated one issue you raised, and concluded that it was relatively trivial. I won't stoop to making counter-accusations of you and your associates, although I could; I'm just sick of the unpleasantness, and I'm sure everyone else is. The only reason you have not been proposed for censure on the basis of your incivility is that you appear to be being protected. I suggest you consider my suggestion the other day that you be nice to others, even those you disagree with. Tony (talk) 15:55, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Tony, I've been nice (I've also made mistakes, but given the environment, I hope some leeway is given). I've asked, very rationally, for discussion at MOSNUM on finding a way towards compromise, repeatedly, only to have you and your group insist the matter is resolved (it clearly isn't) and turn the discussion into yet another battleground. We'll never, I repeat, never find compromise on these issues if you insist on everything being your way. The only way I can describe your behavior is obstructionist in nature. Unfortunately we don't have a behavioral guideline on Wikipedia to deal with this kind of long-term behavior (it's not outright incivil, and unless tempers flare, it's not a personal attack, but at it's core it's disruptive). When you make comments like the above, insisting Lightmouse has done no wrong, and insisting the RFC endorses your specific point of view and the course of action you think appropriate (it doesn't), it gets old. Compromise Tony, that's the only way you'll ever see progress on this. —Locke Cole • t • c 16:11, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

More attacks. I've given a lot of leeway, and so has the project. I see that it's all my fault, is it? OK. I'm going to bed. Tony (talk) 16:14, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Not entirely your fault, or else you'd have been the only named party to this arbitration. But collectively as a group? Yes, I place the blame for this largely at the groups feet. From the first time I became involved in this I tried to discuss this with an aim towards compromise, and at almost every step those gestures have been ignored, turned back on me, or attacked for other reasons (mostly of the "we have consensus for this, we don't need to compromise"-variety). Again, I've made my share of mistakes and I'm not perfect, but the attitudes which still pervade "your side" of this dispute are not conducive to finding consensus. —Locke Cole • t • c 17:09, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Does Tony really believe that if Bobblewik had made those bot requests, under his original username, with his block record, they would have been granted? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:27, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Well it wouldn't surprise me considering the degree to which his third bot request resembles a blank check. Didn't mean to start a flame-war here, honestly. — CharlotteWebb 16:51, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

You didn't. You didn't write of sinister machinations behind the scenes. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:07, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

As for the "immense utility" of Bobblewik's contributions, I stand by my proposed principle: this is inherently a tempest in a teapot, over a triviality; it has now been exported to other Wikipedias by three editors who can't find anything better to do than irritate other editors by Date Warring. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:27, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Anderson, have the honesty to provide diffs to support your allegations of warring, please, rather than hoping that the some of the mud you throw will stick. The user Phe, who is engaging in threatening behaviour towards me elsewhere, has already made allegations at the Evidence page that, as far as I can see, comprise straight-out lies and innuendo. Where are the diffs to support the allegations? And although Cole, who appears to be behind all of this, would dearly love to impugne and personalise in any way possible to achieve his ends, no one has done anything wrong at fr.wp, and what happens on fr.wp has no bearing here. The issue needs to be raised at fr.wp, and it is an open project. Fr.wp has a far worse linking problem than eng.wp ever did, and there is nothing to stop people starting the debate there. It's a wiki, remember, and anyone can edit. Don't engage in political much-raking. Tony (talk) 16:33, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

The diffs are all in evidence. Date Warring need not involve reversion or repeated edit; it is changing from one guideline-defined style to another without a substantial reason unrelated to mere choice of style. Whether or not the French Wikipedia chooses to sanction this behavior, it (like the block log for this arbitration - which does not include Tony, although it does include his friends) evidences a habit unacceptable here. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:45, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

You can't have read Phe's statement very carefully, then. The rub is that there is no guideline-defined style. But there's still no evidence. Ohconfucius (talk) 16:51, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

What part of Whether or not the French Wikipedia chooses to sanction this behavior, it evidences a habit unacceptable here did Ohconfucius fail to understand? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:00, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Tony, out of curiosity, why do you say Phe's statement comprises "straight-out lies and innuendo"? Following up on Phe's post, it does appear that you have moved your efforts to delink dates and so-called "common terms" on the French Wikipedia as well, and that there is objection to your doing so over there. (With regards to links, this complaint on your French talk page is a good start.) Moving the campaign to a new front does seem an odd thing to do, given the controversy here (and now apparently there as well). --Ckatz^chat_spy 17:03, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

No, every WP needs to question its overlinking, especially the french WP, which is in many places mostly blue, without rationale, and has no guidelines for internal linking at all (let us hope that they develop some; I will contribute to that discussion). No one has done anything wrong; the delinking was not seriously questioned, apart from a few technical issues, until today. Those who have debated it today are from a cabal that does not, in my opinion, represent community views. I have not "warred". I have visited few fr. articles indeed, and none after the extended discussion on my talk page. What more do you want?

I am glad to raise the issue there, and will continue to. I shall do so soon at the German WP, although it is not in such a bad state (and my German probably not up to it). All WPs have their own rules, their own ArbCom, and their own system, and it is natural that advances in one should be raised in others. Your allegations, you know very well, are dishonest and comprise pure muck-raking in an attempt to discredit reformists here. You should be ashamed of yourself. Tony (talk) 17:14, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Oh, and pointing to User:Phe's (DarkoNeko's) threatening accusation on fr.wp is rather like linking to Locke Cole's accusations here. They need to be seen as representing a narrow and extremist viewpoint, without any particular authority. Tony (talk) 17:17, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Umm, "dishonest"? How, exactly, is asking a question "dishonest"? You've said the claims were false, so I checked it out. You, Ohconfucius, and another editor who appears to be Lightmouse are making the edits as described. There are at least five editors there who have objected, including three admins (one of whom also holds bureaucrat and checkuser status on the site). How does that represent a "narrow and extremist viewpoint, without any particular authority"? --Ckatz^chat_spy 17:27, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Phe's statement is a nasty, exaggerated, unfounded allegation that twists the truth to attempt a smear. In doing so, it appears he is acting for your group. Yes, today there has been objection, and I stopped my delinking of a rather small number of articles. It is unacceptable to brand this as "warring": where are the diffs of reversions? Where is the failure to engage in debate? Where is BRD? And I note that there's no consensus to link in the first place, just a minor point. Tony (talk) 18:12, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

You did not stop your delinking after the problem was pointed out to you three. Seawind asked you to stop at 18:15 on 5 May 2009, Lightmouse was asked to stop at 23:52 by Totodu74, and Herr Satz pointed out to Lightmouse that delinking had already been discussed and did not have community approval at 00:03 on May 6. And yet you made two further delinking edits[9][10], and Ohconfucius and Lightmouse also continued delinking after this point[11][12]

The obvious response would have been to stop when asked to do so, and ask for links to the previous "delinking" discussions. I am not surprised that stewards stepped in when these edits continued, and the comments by Tony here only justify their concerns that this was an attempt to "reform" fr.WP using the same approach as done here on en.WP.

It is true that there was no edit warring on fr.WP, so while it is helpful that this was brought to the attention of the committee, I don't think it is helpful to include this incident as a FoF in this case, especially not at this late stage. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 01:29, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

• "The obvious response would have been to stop when asked to do so, and ask for links to the previous "delinking" discussions." You know full well that it's not practice to necessarily stop when asked, but more precisely find out what the objections are to work out an acceptable course of action. Here, it's called WP:BRD. The comments I received on my talk page mentioned some technical matters without challenging the underlying acceptability of date delinking. It was late here when I got the rather overblown official warning, and also found out that there had been many discussions on the subject, and it would have been my next port of call to request where these discussions lay. Had the exact same sequence of events happened on en.wp, no-one would have bat an eyelid. Instead, I find this has been blown out of all proportion while I slept, with Manderson and Cole pouring petrol on the flames. I've been working on fr.wp for yonks. If Mandy, Katz and Cole have complaints against what we're doing at fr.wp, I feel they should be dealt with there - incidentally serious discussions had been initiated, and they are welcome to join in. I can see there's political advantage to them in this date-linking case in dragging us through the mud, but really they should brush up on their French and deal with us over there. Ohconfucius (talk) 01:57, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Ignoring my own advice above, I wade in. Tony, let's presume for the sake of discussion that your view on the excess/date links issue is right, and that this current predicament in which we find ourselves is a mere blip. Regardless, that view is currently surrounded by controvery, and whether or not you agree that this case should ever have been accepted, I think you'll agree that you can't peak much higher for controversy than ArbCom. The case will eventually be resolved and closed and let's again presume for the sake of discussion that you end up vindicated. You believe that the French and German WPs have similar problems that need to be raised, and in particular that the French WP doesn't have any guidelines at all. So, here's my question. Strategically, if nothing else, wouldn't it make more sense to wait until the situation here is settled in your favour? You could then raise the discussion at the French and/or German project, point to how everything got hashed out here and all the pain that we went through, suggest that the new English standards might make sense on their project as well, and, assuming that you developed a consensus, offer your services in putting those new guidelines into effect. I realize you feel like you're under attack by a cabal at the French WP — although I'm not seeing what you are — but they're users nonetheless and they're raising concerns that aren't dissimilar from ones raised on this project. However secure in your position you may be, surely you could have anticipated that if it kicked up this much dust here, it might kick up even a little elsewhere, and that it might have been wiser to lead with the 'D' portion of 'BRD' rather than the 'B'? Mlaffs (talk) 17:51, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Quick answer is that WRT other projects, it matters nought what the eng.ArbCom decides (and above all, it's supposed to decide on behavioural issues alone, here, isn't it?). Other WP projects need to address the same issues as we have, irrespective of what happens here. I'm sure they'd be offended to think that Eng.WP should somehow have a definitive bearing on what happens in their own projects. And going to the french and saying "eng.WP has evolved a much better linking practice that you have: so change yours" .... would be rather rude, culturally, don't you think? Each project must be treated on its own, and discuss linking in relation to its special requirements. That is why the three of us have been discussing the matter there, and observing the peculiarities of linking, the attitudes of the regulars to a small amount of delinking, and the absence of guidelines where they are sorely needed. You cannot stop users from doing that in order to further your own political ends here. Nor should users from fr.WP come here and splatter their bad-faith, false accusations here where there is limited right of reply. It is disgusting, and I see Cole is over there mixed up in it. Tony (talk) 18:06, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Tony, I actually don't have any political ends here, nor was I suggesting that the right approach was to be as condescending and prescriptive as you've described. All I was wondering about was the strategy — the approach you've taken to achieve your reforms, in a honey versus vinegar way. I would have hoped by now that you'd have realized that we don't disagree all that much about the ends, but rather about the means to achieve them. That said, despite the misunderstanding, I appreciate your honest response. No further reply necessary, and I'll return to taking my own best advice. Mlaffs (talk) 18:27, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

"going to the french and saying "eng.WP has evolved a much better linking practice that you have: so change yours" .... would be rather rude, culturally" Dead right, it's been unacceptable to say things like that since Hundred Years' War, if not earlier. Ohconfucius (talk) 02:04, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

So instead you and Tony are changing their linking practice without talking to them - or listening to their objections. That is one manner of civility; a step back to the wooing of Henry V of England. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:29, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

• Kindly check your facts, engage brain befor opening trap. Ohconfucius (talk) 02:49, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
  • I have. I see that Tony at least refrained from breaking French grammar at the beginning of his crusade, and that he has now been explicitly been invited to discuss at the end. We'll see what he does. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 03:05, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
    • WP:AGF. Ahh, Silly me! I think you may have already said Tony's AGF quota has been exceeded. Could this explain it? Ohconfucius (talk) 04:40, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

• "Cole" made one comment, thanking the wrong editor for providing evidence, to the French Wikipedia. I'd hardly call that "mixed up in it". —Locke Cole • t • c 18:31, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Darkoneko (talk · contribs) is also a Steward on Meta, one of the most trusted positions one can achieve on any of these projects. —Locke Cole • t • c 17:50, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

I frankly don't care who he is. He has used a threatening tone and assumed bad faith. It is unacceptable. He could be the Queen of England for all I care. And, by the way, earning trust is a quite different thing from being promoted. I'll reserve trust, as I do with others here who have been given higher responsibilities, when I see evidence that suggests good-doing. Tony (talk) 18:06, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

This is a troubling response. Stewards must earn the trust of not just a particular projects Wiki, but really the meta trust because of their position. To say you don't trust someone trusted across all the projects is not good. —Locke Cole • t • c 18:14, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Tony, Phe (talk · contribs) is not Darkoneko (talk · contribs). —Locke Cole • t • c 17:50, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Since this is also discussed here, I 've to inform you that the french board has decided to block those users (user:Tony1, user:Ohconfucius, user:Sourisnaine == Lightmouse) indefinetely for various reasons including trolling, absence of cooperation, and forcing a solution after beeing warned (message of the block : "Keep your crusade on your own wiki"). Loreleil (talk) 12:12, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Zut! How quintessentially French! "We don't want your <insert your product, religion, philosophy here>." Ohconfucius (talk) 15:47, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

• Pfffff. None of these trumped-up reasons stacks up to scrutiny, and is symptomatic of a self-serving project that is inward and xenophobic. Too bad for their readers. Tony (talk) 12:24, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
  • Heh… just for the record I'm curious which wiki you are describing. — CharlotteWebb 16:38, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Charlotte, we knew before that the French WP was egregiously wanting, but our experiences over the past few days has shown how its governance is crude and arbitrary—what we saw would not even have occurred here, even though the eng.WP leaves a lot to be desired. It's a pity for that project (its readers, not the editors): the prose is definitely not good (in different ways from here), and many articles are slender (like French itself). There's less sense of collaboration and free input. In brief, the eng.WP has it all over the fr, and I'm excluding from that judgement the disparity in article numbers. What you immediately notice is that the "sea of blue" is far, far worse than we had here a few years ago. It really makes you appreciate the progress we've made in encouraging editors to link selectively in the eng.WP. But the French are notoriously insular culturally and linguistically, of which the source is a keenly felt insecurity at the gradually receding place of France and its language in the modern world, especially in relation to English. The eng.WP, may squabble and brawl, but it admits a systemic flexibility that allows it to evolve more quickly: this is a decided advantage in a changing world and Internet. It is why the English.WP will continue to be pre-eminent for a long long time. One whining statement from a french users says it all: "You come in here and piss on our backs, and then say the heating system can be improved." Cultural insecurity at its most colourful and entertaining. Tony (talk) 17:12, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Wow, stereotype much? Should we tell you go back to cracking open beers and sticking prawns on the barbie, then? No, I don't think so. -- Earle Martin [^t/_c] 17:51, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

(ec)The actual quote is: "Don't piss on our back and then try to convince us it is a new heating system we should appreciate". Regardless, I'd strongly suggest against trying to force this on any other Wikimedia projects. —Locke Cole • t • c 17:53, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

This must be a corruption of "don't piss down my back and tell me it's raining" adage from Josey Wales. That seems silly when one can blame it all on full moon fever and this great big "sea of blue" everybody keeps talking about. — CharlotteWebb 19:47, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Stereotype? Sadly, fr.WP does live up to that stereotype, but some of my description above is widely accepted as a feature of French politics and diplomacy, including its insistence on developing nuclear bombs (all about threatened national pride)—in fact, it has been shown to be a hyper-exaggerated form of French insularity and pride. This is very sad for its readers. Go have a look at the Einstein article I cleaned up a while ago (no one, I repeat, no one, blinked, despite many subsequent small edits). Now, the link-fanatic cabal has dragged it back to its ugly state. While it might suit your political drumming, Cole, to issue accusations of force (100% predictable), I suggest you look at the way the link-fanatics acted. Fr.WP is in a sorry state, and I can see why they'd turn off a lot of potentially good editors. Tony (talk) 02:32, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

What I said. Ohconfucius (talk) 04:17, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

I just discovered that my colourfull intervention in the debate on WP:fr was quoted here. Thanks to CharlotteWebb for pointing the fact that it was probably coming from Josey Wales. It is one of my favourite films, and I had no idea I had taken that strong image from there :-)

I do not know if I ought to be surprised by the xenophobic tone of the comments of certain persons here. I will let the usual users of WP:en take care of that. Personnaly, I do not feel offended at all, as I am not French. Neither is WP:fr, by the way: it is the wikipedia in french :-) I hope you liked this sea of blue ^_^

I think what I will retain from Tony's express carreer of WP:fr is this sentence he wrote on his talk page: "I am a reformist who proposes change, which is always a battle, of course": he seems indeed to be more interested by the battle than by anything else. Asavaa (talk) 09:10, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

The cabal

Ckatz doesn't see: it's all a cabal:

• Bokken, Seawind, Clem, and Darkoneko are conspiring against "the reformists" on the French Wikipedia, a link-fanatic cabal which seeks uglification;
• I'm conspiring with Shakescene on MOSNUM;
• Jayvdb is conspiring with Werdna.

All these are conspiring against the vast consensus of reform which everywhere is silently supported by multitudes</irony> - but always actively consists of Tony, Ohconfucius, and two or three others.

Can the Arbitrators please do something about these self-pitying "persecuted" innocents - unless they will consent to do what Clem asks, and listen to others? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:34, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Every time the word "cabal" is used with a straight face it makes whoever uses it look progressively more ridiculous. Just saying. -- Earle Martin [^t/_c] 15:30, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Now all that needs to happen is for Tony, Greg L or one of the others to invoke Hitler, then the Arbitration Committee can cite Godwin's law and close this case immediately. —Locke Cole • t • c 16:33, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

• Shrugging off the personal attack… I do note, Locke, that Godwin's law states As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1. So, your making your self-referential, semi-circular “comparison involving Hitler” just proved Mike Godwin to be quite prescient. I’m sure he would be most pleased to read your post. I’ll thank you to not gratuitously demonize editors with whom you have disagreements and stick to the facts from hereon. Greg L (talk) 17:10, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

• Actually I'd have to compare something to the Nazi's or Hitler, merely mentioning them doesn't suffice. So, as an example, I'd have to say something ridiculously stupid like "delinking dates is something Hitler would have approved of". :P —Locke Cole • t • c 02:25, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Comments on the Rambling Man vs retirement

I'm not so sure what is being considered worthy of admonishment here.

Tennis Expert edit-warred, harassed and took (and takes) WP:OWN to levels of extremity I've never seen on Wikipedia before. He then announced his retirement. TRM's expressions that that retirement had not stuck are mild, humourous and civil.

It strikes me as plainly bizarre that this ArbCom case should pick out this banal point for consideration, to the "no smoke, no fire" detriment of TRM. The surreality of this is even more pronounced, when one considers that Tennis Expert's name is not even mentioned on the entire page of proposed decisions.

Something is decidedly wrong here. And it grieves me to say I told you so. --Dweller (talk) 12:36, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Tennis expert was mentioned on this page until last night, when it was pointed out to me privately that this tennis battle needed to be rewritten in order to frame it more appropriately. I removed mention of Tennis expert in the course of the rewrite.[13][14] The evidence sections provided by each side of this battle leave the reader without a clear picture, and I'll have another up very shortly.

TRM's comments dont rise to what I would view as our definition of "incivil", but I do consider them inappropriate and I think it is appropriate for the arbitrators to assess it to determine if it is relevant, and/or if any remedies are required. Only by looking at it and supporting or opposing it can the allegations be considered settled. If it is not looked at, it would be seen as sweeping it under the rug. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 15:51, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

I have added a new evidence section and initiated a discussion on the evidence talk page. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 18:40, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

I do hope that you take into consideration that some editors (I for one) have not wanted to spend much time on Tennis expert's wild shots at everybody who is against his opinions (opinions he believes to be the truth). So, my guess is that the amounts of actual evidence against him is biased strongly downwards. I has never imagined that his bizarre and unnerving accusations about "pattern of mutual interaction and support by these editors to impose their date delinking agenda pattern of mutual interaction and support by these editors to impose their date delinking agenda" and his adaptation of "scare" labels like "members of the 8" would be given much weight. He appears like a retired lawyer with a little too much time on his hands. I simply can't compete with that. Respectfully, from an editor that naïvly thought that it was natural to follow the MOS. --HJensen, talk 13:00, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

(At the "workshop" I did at one point show that of a window of 500 of Tennis expert's edits in five days, more than half of them were date linking—in that respect I can't compete either. I never thought I would be so pretentious as to "file" it as "evidence".) --HJensen, talk 22:51, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

• IMO, Wikipedia has too strong of a tendency to punish childish, playground-level name calling while permitting those who are truly and chronically exasperating to their fellow Wikipedians to persistently engage in disruptive and spiteful behavior without a block just because they know how to employ polite wiki‑talk while doing so.

  I’m talking about behavior such as starting a Miscellany for Deletion on another editor’s own userpage or deleting an RfC (using the nice wiki-term “archiving”). It seems the tactic they use is to write a summary like “Oh dear. Archiving this as it isn’t helpful” really works. Some other editor has to take an hour to file an ANI over it, administrators have to tell the offender to ‘knock it off’, and the offender doesn’t receive even a 12-hour block. The rest of the community suffers in the long run.

  It amounts to letting a pickpocket off the hook because he politely lifts your wallet out of your pocket while saying “Excuse me, but your capitalist ideals don’t mean you deserve to earn what you have here.” The cops say “Hey, your nice polite argument is nonsense; put the wallet back and don’t do it again.” But they never arrest the guy. Why? Because the next time the pickpocket offends, it’s often a different cop. So the guy continues to mill around in the train terminal doing the same thing over and over and over again.

  Wikipedia really needs to figure out a way to deal with chronic pests. They don’t need to be permanently banned. Why? Because they’ve learned the rules of Wikipedia well enough; it’s just that they elect to use that knowledge to exploit the game to their advantage. They full well know what isn’t permitted and know how to persistently do it and not get blocked. So some nice “you’ve been a chronic dick the last two days so here’s a 12-hour block” would cure these people right quick.

  The trouble is, the only blocks that are quickly and decisively meted out are for lipping off to admins; those blocks are handed out on the spot and the admins don’t even look in their rearview mirror to see how many times the body roles in the highway after being run over. But chronically pissing off a dozen regular ol’ editors requires RfCs and ANIs, and tons of hogwash. This isn’t fair. I expect admins to be as sensitive to the frustrations of other editors as they are to their frustrations and that of their fellow admins. Greg L (talk) 16:46, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

• I agree the community has suffered, unfortunately I think we disagree over the cause of the suffering. The RFC's I attempted to archive were both ridiculous: the first one timed to disrupt the RFC that had been developed openly and with input from all involved in the dispute; the second one seemingly done as an attempt to invalidate the results of the openly developed RFC that had only just concluded (and you can tell the community was tired of this garbage, hence the lack of any significant comment outside the usual group of MOSNUM people in that RFC). I also think the behavior has been childish, but again, I expect we diverge over which behavior is childish (preemptive note: my own behavior isn't some model of perfection, but I've also not resorted to linking to off-wiki pictures of babies crying to try and get a rise out of my fellow colleagues). I think somewhere along the way mutual respect was lost, and that's one of the root causes of our dispute. —Locke Cole • t • c 02:42, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

• WRT the "ridiculous RFCs", I believe that nearly 200 people !voted on the three-proposal RFC, so I don't think we suffered from a biased or restricted (i.e., to MOSNUM) sample of people. Dabomb87 (talk) 03:11, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

• Ah, but the community did suffer: they had to participate in two similarly themed RFCs because one editor decided he knew best how to phrase the questions. Worse, his phrasings may have directly impacted the more balanced questions from the openly developed RFC. And that's ignoring the purely disruptive effect his RFC had; it was openly known that we were waiting for the holidays to pass before beginning the RFC. It was only opened early when it became clear Tony was not going to back down from his disruption (and that editors from his camp were willing to revert war (against an administrator and arbitration clerk even) to keep their disruption in place). The latter RFC, the one Greg started (and continues to make reference to as if it proves something), had something like 20 participants? Mostly the same MOSNUM group or their supporters. That one was definitely biased/restricted (and invalid, IMO). —Locke Cole • t • c 04:01, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

• How many people have suffered because of this RFAR that has lasted four months? -- SWTPC6800 (talk) 04:33, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

• The dozen or so participants of this case; as opposed to the hundreds who participated in the disruptive RFC. Or the thousands who were asked to opine in both RFCs running at the time because Tony refused to back down and insisted his RFC be included in the watchlist notice. —Locke Cole • t • c 04:47, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

• It's all about backing down, winning or losing, is it? Neither RFC appeared to be disruptive, and both appeared to be bona fide attempts to find consensus. Please try not to express the matter in personal, adversarial terms. However, while on this matter, I see that John Vandenberg has not:
  1. included any link-side party in the incivility judgements (gobsmacking when you look at the evidence provided);
  2. clarified that the two occurrences of "dates" refers to "date-fragments" (i.e., years and month-day items) and not DA in this sentence: "3.2) Two RFCs held in December 2008 reaffirmed that date autoformatting is undesirable, and that WP:OVERLINKing of dates is not desirable, however consensus has not been found on when dates should be delinked." The two issues could easily be confused. Is this the first time that ArbCom will have made declarations on consensus arising from content-related RFCs? It seems to be a breach of ArbCom's policy to try to do so.
  3. acknowledged that the RFC in November clearly showed that the community does not expect explicit extra consensus to be gained to use automated means to put into effect a recommendation in MOSNUM (nearly 80%), in this proposed judgement: "5) Deprecation of autoformatting and date-delinking have been problematically conflated in this dispute. While both sides of the date debate have conflated the issues, consensus for the deprecation of autoformatting has been abused as consensus for mass date delinking." Again, this is a triple statement, and arbitrators will be forced to vote for or against all three at once. Why are they not separated? Tony (talk) 08:55, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

• The only RFC which was disruptive was yours Tony. Of course the openly developed RFC couldn't be disruptive, it was the one being disrupted. We're here because of behavioral issues surrounding this dispute, so personalizing this is, unfortunately, unavoidable. As for your numbered questions:
  1. this is just a draft, I'm sure they'll add more if they believe it is warranted; to be fair, I'll admit I've lost my cool on occasion, but I'd like to think the environment I was in (generally hostile to my opinion and suggestions) would be considered,
  2. ArbCom has previously made decisions on content, see here, where the issue of meta templates was deferred to the MediaWiki developers when the committee decided there was no consensus for abolishing them,
  3. it would be a mistake to make such a statement, since a poll or consensus on MOSNUM cannot override our BOT policy, if you wish to change the requirements you need to go conduct a discussion at WP:BOTPOL.
• I do wish you'd accept my invitation to discuss this calmly and consider compromise solutions, but your contributions to the discussion at WT:MOSNUM does not give me hope for that... —Locke Cole • t • c 09:17, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Be nice. Tony (talk) 14:31, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Niceness

Two diffs are in evidence for my incivility; while I doubtless have been, one of them is not mine.

For what it is worth, I really think the other diff with the edit summary go somewhere else means that the text should go elsewhere, not the editors. I regret the ambiguity; I suspect I was editing in haste. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 04:34, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

See [15]

Feel free to demonstrate that you were of the opinion that the text should go elsewhere. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 05:52, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

I remember where this came from: I was attempting to walk away from exact reverts by "going somewhere else"; my previous edit had been one. "To oppose something is to maintain it. They say here "all roads lead to Mishnory." To be sure, if you turn your back on Mishnory and walk away from it, you are still on the Mishnory road.... You must go somewhere else; you must have another goal; then you walk another road." Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:10, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

if "while I doubtless have been" means Pamanderson is seeking more illustrative diffs, here are a few: [16] (the "bog of unsourced, semi-literate tendentiousness" and "consumer fraud" comments), [17] (the "disputed" tag and comment added to Ryan Postlethwaite's RfC) and [18] (the edit summary). Sssoul (talk) 06:39, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

[19], and [20] are the correct diffs for the first 2 links by Sssoul. AKAF (talk) 08:31, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

In all fairness, the first diff ("waste of electrons") does not show incivility, although the comment was not constructive. If you have any diffs, please add them to the evidence page. Dabomb87 (talk) 12:37, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

I was making no comment about the diffs, and I have already added all the evidence to that page which I think is necessary. One has only to read this page to have a good idea about which editors are generally rude and unpleasant. I do not think that very occasional rudeness is a problem which warrants investigation by Arbcom, and will therefore not add those diffs, but feel free to add them yourself. AKAF (talk) 12:58, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

PMAnderson does not need "to demonstrate that [he was] of the opinion that the text should go elsewhere". He stated that was the case and apologised for the ambiguity. That's precisely what AGF is about. As for incivility, I'm sure that some of his exchanges with me on these very pages could be viewed as stretching the bounds of civility. But that doesn't matter. I don't take offence and believe it's all part of the "rough-and-tumble" of robust debate. Anybody who believes this RfArb is about civility can't see the wood for the trees. It's come about because of a dispute between two groups of editors who sincerely hold very different views. If the outcomes of this case fail to find a way of bridging that gap and moving the dispute towards a compromise resolution, then it's been a colossal waste of everyone's time. --RexxS (talk) 15:18, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

It's also about the methods used to promote those views. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:20, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

Sssoul's three diffs are, if AKAF interprets correctly,

• an assertion that MOSNUM is a waste of electrons, (and that Wikipedia as a whole is a bog with much more serious problems than those MoSNUM pretends to deal with)
• An assertion that the format of DATEPOLL was achieved by revertwarring, and was therefore disputed.
• a claim that an uninvolved editor is an intermittent bully

The last is unparliamentary, and I do regret responding to The complainants have forumshopped their butts off. This is a farce with this response in kind, although I believe it accurate; since he is not a party here, I am not called upon to demonstrate it. The other two are claims of fact. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:11, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

I regret seeing that Jayvdb regards me as only a hair better than the parties to this case, although I am pleased by the hair. I will consider this seriously, whatever the response to the present plea.

I was going, in any case, to resume article-writing when this is over, and go away from MOS - I am perfectly capable of ignoring that page when it is not being used to change all Wikipedia to somebody's pet idea. I would appreciate it if ArbCom would consider a sanction which would leave me able to comment on MOS: to answer questions as here; to ask whether there has been an oversight as here: those have really been the bulk of my contributions. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:49, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

"I am perfectly capable of ignoring that page when it is not being used to...". I was going to let things go, but that comment has tipped me over the edge and forced a response. Sorry Pmanderson (talk · contribs), but you watch the MOS pages like they are train wrecks which they, thanks to your assumption of bad faith in others (coupled with things like your allegations that others are lying when they simply edit in good faith) often become.

In addition, "...when it is not being used to..." indicates that you are inserting a loop-hole in your offer that suggests you have no intention of staying away from MOS pages. I'm quite convinced that despite your protestations, it will all be business as usual within a short space of time. We all remember your attempt to diminish the MOS (soundly defeated), as was your attempt to declare the MOS historic (also soundly defeated). The latter attempt of yours came complete with a comment "...it is of doubtful service to the encyclopedia. Let's get rid of it" (in relation to MOSNUM). So I'll choose to treat with suspicion any claims you make in trying to be of service to improve the MOS pages.

Lastly, please stop trying to pre-empt what is coming in this arbitration. It smacks of a naughty schoolchild who has done the wrong thing, knows he's done the wrong thing, but is too scared to accept the punishment that is coming his way. I have confidence that your attempt to wriggle will be treated with the contempt it deserves.

(The above comment is from someone who is not directly involved in the arbitration.)

 HWV258  04:35, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Mass delinking

One of the few conclusions for which there is support from both sides is that there is consensus against delinking all dates (and against linking all dates, but there doesn't seem to be any wish to do that by bot.)

Furthermore, there is no consensus about how the present wording of MOSNUM applies; some editors view all date articles as automatically non-germane.

Therefore

Mass date delinking is restricted for six or 12 months to changes prescribed in Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers), and may only occur at times when the page is not in a disputed state.

is too weak; whether MOSNUM prescribes the sort of delinking bots can do is in dispute. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:58, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

Opposition to delinking all dates is not the same as opposition to delinking most dates. In the comments of the RfCs, I see consensus for delinking in all but rare cases.

The delinking by bot issue has made no progress: The Pro-Linkers believe that many date-links are germane according to the MOSNUM prescription; The Anti-Linkers believe that hardly any date-links (outside of chronological articles) are germane. If the second position is correct, then it is trivial to identify such pages for the bot to avoid. I submit that the onus is on the Pro-Linkers to disprove this, by showing evidence that many germane date-links exist. Otherwise the Anti-Linkers are being asked to prove a negative. I know that the Pro-Linkers will not voluntarily submit evidence as it will demonstrate the weakness of their position. Nevertheless, if you really want to resolve the dispute, the challenge is before you: show the evidence that more date-links meeting MOSNUM exist than can be easily identified. If not, it will be clear that you wish to maintain the appearance of dispute solely to delay the implementation of MOSNUM that the community has endorsed. --RexxS (talk) 22:52, 13 May 2009 (UTC)\

I know that the Pro-Linkers will not voluntarily submit evidence as it will demonstrate the weakness of their position. Bad faith; hanging around with the Anti-linkers is affecting your sense of decency.

No, it is not trivial to find the instances the bot should avoid, even if there are few of them. Suppose there are; then finding them is finding needles in a haystack. The bot can't find them; it is not capable of seeing what is germane, even if humans agreed perfectly. We may hear about them when people who value them show up to complain (will they be ignored again?), but most people inconvenienced by bots don't complain; they mutter, or revert, or leave. And a large proportion of the valuable links won't be by anyone save Recent Changes, which will ignore bots.

The present wording of MOSNUM was achieved by -shall we say "persistent"?- editing of the form of the poll by GregL, and yet some editors have always cited examples of date links which seem to them germane. Even the examples he wrote in explicitly will appeal to some: It is germane to Philip Johnson that he was born in a different world, among the first airplane flights; it is germane to his art that he was born in the year of the San Francisco Earthquake, and therefore he was studying it as it adapted to earthquake (he was at Harvard, I presume - and we should be clearer - during the Tokyo quake, which was one influence on the International School).

Of course, certain parties to this case will disagree, but tastes differ; we are the encyclopedia that anyone can edit, even those who like [date added 18:28, 14 May 2009 (UTC)] links more than Tony does (which would be most people). Septentrionalis PMAnderson 04:49, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

RexxS has said it all: again and again, we ask for evidence of the relevance and usefulness of 2006 and February 3 in a specific article, whether together in piggybacked DA form or as fragments: we are met with silence. That is proof enough. Now, Anderson says here that "most people" like links more than I do. This is spin: I am one of those who value wikilinking highly, and want to optimise it, not denigrate it. Overlinking is a great way of ruining it. No, let's straighten the record—a key reason for my promotion of "smart linking" is the optimisation of the facility. Tony (talk) 05:50, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

And you've just gotten an answer; indeed, the only occasions you have not are when the rest of us are tired of repeating ourselves. "None is so deaf as he who will not hear", just like on the French Wikipedia. Thank you for demonstrating why the faction which Tony represents should not be trusted with tools of mass editing. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:41, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

(outdent) Pamanderson's response doesn't clarify why a link to a list of 1906 events would be useful if San Francisco earthquake is the relevant event. Sssoul (talk) 16:57, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

I described three events which are germane to Johnson, all accessible through the single link - there are probably more (and would certainly be more if 1906 were our best work, which nobody contends - it would, for example, link to Architecture in 1906). Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:22, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

FWIW, it does link to 1906 in architecture in the box at the right of the TOC. --A. di M. (formerly Army1987) — Deeds, not words. 18:50, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

To PMA: It's funny, really, that you still can't resist having a dig at those who hold different views. My decency remains untainted, thank you, but please let me remind you that smearing opponents in debate doesn't actually reinforce your argument. I explained before that your use of ad hominem is transparent. Let me be clear: the weakness of the Pro-Linkers position is obvious; it's not a matter of bad faith on my part. Simply look at the three examples you provide:

1. Johnson was born three years after the first flight in 1903
2. He was born in the same year as the S.F. Earthquake in 1906
3. He was at Harvard when the Great Kantō earthquake occurred in 1923

All of those events may be germane (although his predilection for using massive amount of glass in his designs would seem to indicate he didn't put much thought into the effects of earthquakes), but I notice you don't explicitly contend that the articles 1903, 1906 and 1923 are. So what are you suggesting? That the Philip Johnson article should have links to 1903, 1906 and 1923? Seriously? Those three articles are lists of 50-100 unrelated factoids and 100+ births and deaths. How is the reader meant to assemble any understanding of his influences by scanning those articles? Not to mention that Johnson was studying History and Philosophy in 1923 and his interest in Architecture only really flowered several years later. The valuable links are already in Johnson's article: Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, International style (architecture), and so on. Do you really want to see them diluted by worthless links to lists of trivia? If that's what you really want, state that clearly; we'll at least have a clear view of the size of the gap between us, and ArbCom can see the size of the problem they've taken on. Because they'll have to bridge that gap or admit that they cannot deal with the real issues in this dispute --RexxS (talk) 21:44, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

No, what I am suggesting is simple: the editors and readers of the article decide what they want to link to, and where the balance lies between too many links made and too many omitted. Tastes differ; the advantage of being a collaborative work is that we need not decide on this obscure page a law for all of them; one law for the lion and the ox is oppression.

Many readers value links for context; consider this comment from a year ago:

What is the harm being prevented here? How does linking of dates that are significant to the article make Wikipedia worse? Some people like to know what else happened on a date, and especially so when the date is not within their personal memory. If reading about the First Anglo-Dutch War, it might provide a particular reader with useful perspective to see what else was going on in that year. For example, tea, coffee and cocoa all first arrived in London during the year 1652. While there is no immediate relevance to the war, that fact gives some perspective on the growth of world trade in the period. Even if the year article mentions nothing of interest or value now, that should change over time as Wikipedia improves. Obviously, you don't read that way, but Wikipedia is written for the readers, not for us editors. Personally, I think that linking years and dates is a service to readers and should be, if anything, encouraged.

That is somewhat more sweeping that my personal taste; but my personal taste is not at issue, any more than yours or Tony's. Our polls (even Tony's strawmen polls) have consistently shown that a significant number of Wikipedians feel this way. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:13, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

You make a persuasive argument here, akin to Locke's view that enabling even slightly relevant links allows a kind of "chain-of-consciousness-browsing" that some readers enjoy. I can also see some of Kendrick's belief that the year articles (in particular) will one day improve to the point of being a useful resources. But the other side of the coin is this: as I am a relatively novice editor - although a long-time reader - I greatly appreciate guidance; not an inflexible law, but something that helps me and many other editors decide what is best for the reader when I edit; something to refer to when there is a difference of opinion, so I can avoid the same conflict time and again (because I am then able to look up what wiser folks have come to consensus on). It may be we all read into the RfCs & Poll the conclusions we want, but I still believe those samples of community consensus actually show, in general, far more support for the Anti-Linking position than the Pro-Linking, and believe that should inform the guidance we give. Nevertheless, I respect your right to read them differently. --RexxS (talk) 00:15, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

I have no objection to guidance; indeed, saying "germane" and "relevant" is sound guidance. This is, and should be, closer to Delink All Dates than Link All Dates; but it is neither of them, which are all bots can achieve - I'm not arguing for Link All Dates, just some of them. My objection is to pretending that mass delinking of dates would be following that guidance.

And following the "wiser folks" and their consensus has two problems:

• the wiser folks are the same intensely -er- Private Persons you've been watching through the arbitration, Tony and Ohconfucius and me.
• The results we come up with aren't consensus, and never have been; they're the editwarring of the more determined party. With the result that they rarely represent English as a whole; rather the native dialect, or crank theories, of the last three editors who happened to agree with each other when nobody else watching.

Come to the MOS talk pages and see the sausage factory in action, complete with the incivilities entered into Evidence here. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 04:33, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

I really do want to avoid having editors' activities on one of their hobbies—Wikipedia—defined by the whims of others. Discuss? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:03, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

Tennis wars (FoF 9)

The statement "A battle to delinking dates on tennis articles commenced in September 2008, with Tennis expert (talk · contribs) almost exclusively pushing back repeatedly with 751 reverts. As a result, the battle become excessively personal." is factually incorrect, as it implies there was no 'personal' conflict within the Tennishere before delinking. It should be re-written to read:

"the battle on tennis articles, already personal (see ongoing RfC on Tennis expert‎), became even more so when delinking dates commenced in September 2008, with Tennis expert (talk · contribs) almost exclusively pushing back repeatedly with 751 reverts."

Ohconfucius (talk) 02:51, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

I see no mention on that page of any date before September 2008. Please be specific. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 04:53, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Better yet, submit Evidence! John Vandenberg ^(chat) 05:17, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

• Or, maybe we can forget about trivial crap like which editor has been naughty or nice and deserves to get an extra-juicy plumb in his stocking the next morning. Doesn’t it seem like a phenomenal waste of effort looking back at crap a year ago and 751 edits-worth? Jeez.

  What we need is for admins to dish out nice 12-hour blocks for editors who have been chronic dick-heads over a day or two rather than turn a blind eye and make mere-mortal editors jump through high-hurdles at ANIs. I guarantee that would get rid of 80% of the frustration with certain problem editors who know how to wikilawyer their way out of most everything short of high-treason.

  What we really need here out of this ArbCom is date-related decisions, such as “Locke Cole is prohibited from promoting date linking for one year.” Same for PMA and Tennis Expert. But especially Locke. The latest ArbCom-sponsored RfC proved that we weren’t misreading the results of the first three RfCs (like three wasn’t enough) and didn’t need to be dragged here for a fourth. So a nice “shut the hell up and don’t edit against consensus on dates” that’s good for one year is all we need. Let’s be done with this. Greg L (talk) 06:01, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

I think the key concept here is Poisonous Atmosphere. We all know that a few hyper-aggressive editors, especially editors who add a large amount of material to a talk page can quickly produce an atmosphere where other editors feel unwelcome. This is counter-productive, since Wikipedia requires editors coming and going from each area to survive. These editors may be new to Wikipedia or new to the area. When an editing area develops a poisonous atmosphere, editors are lost from that area, and maybe even from the project as a whole. If you would like a good example of a poisonous atmosphere, then look no further than the workshop of this RFArb, and I'm sure you remember Tony1 expressing his frustration and refusing to work any further on it. It is only in part the measure of a Wikipedian how much work you yourself produce, but much more, how much is produced by the groups in which you work. Thus someone who is abrasive, foul-mouthed and "doesn't suffer fools" is far less valuable (or even of negative value), when compared to other editors. It isn't even about being "right", when the content of an article is correct. Huge edit wars about formatting benefit no one, although formatting may be of benefit. I hope you can see the difference. AKAF (talk) 13:13, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

• Sure he’s hyperaggressive. But why is that what Tennis_expert (TE) did or did not do over on some tennis-related subject last year become relevant to this ArbCom? I’m not defending Tennis_expert; he’s pulled a colossally mean-spirited, purely disruptive stunt on me by making me jump through ANI hoops. He made a series of unwelcome edits on my own userpage, was reverted by some of my pals, he kept putting the material back, and I told him to knock it off. His reaction? He nominated one my my own userpages for deletion. Half a wasted morning just because he was mean. And all he got was a damn warning because needlessly wasting three hours of a regular editor’s time isn’t as actionable as calling an admin a “poopie head.”

  All I’m advocating is that we stop pretending any justice could possibly be done by going back and looking into “751 reverts” over the last year. I have zero doubt that TE hasn’t been playing well with others. That he has gotten away with it for so long points to the shortcomings of Wikipedia and the double-standard administrators have, where editors who lip off just a little get a 24-hour block in a nanosecond. Trying to retroactively redress these grievances here is the wrong thing to do because it’s simply the wrong forum; Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Tennis expert is the proper place to deal with that.

  What I want to see out of the ArbCom Date delinking decision are decisions related to date-related behavior. If TE has been linking a bunch of dates in the past, then I would simply propose that the decision be to warn him to narrowly follow the wording on MOSNUM with regard to dates. I want to get out of here. Greg L (talk) 15:28, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

I wasn't only talking about tennis expert. Just counting on my fingers, I think that there are at least 10 editors in this dispute to whom that comment could apply. AKAF (talk) 15:45, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

• Yes, I realized that after I made that post. So let me give that another try:

• So an ArbCom on date linking and delinking ought to be expanded to redress grievances editors have with editors who create a Poisonous atmosphere? Why is that what Tennis_expert (TE) did or did not do over on some tennis-related subject—last year—somehow become relevant to this ArbCom? I’m not defending Tennis_expert; he’s pulled a colossally mean-spirited, purely disruptive stunt on me by making me jump through ANI hoops. He made a series of unwelcome edits on my own userpage, was reverted by some of my pals, he kept putting the material back, and I told him to knock it off. His reaction? He nominated one my my own userpages for deletion. (*sigh*) Half a wasted morning just because he was mean. And all he got was a damn warning because needlessly wasting three hours of a regular editor’s time isn’t as actionable as calling an admin a “poopie head.”

  All I’m advocating is that we stop pretending any justice could possibly be done by going back and looking into “751 reverts” over the last year. I have zero doubt that TE hasn’t been playing well with others. That he has gotten away with it for so long points to the shortcomings of Wikipedia and the double-standard administrators have, where editors who lip off just a little to an Admin©™® get a 24-hour block in a nanosecond. Trying to retroactively redress these grievances here is the wrong thing to do because it’s simply the wrong forum; Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Tennis expert is the proper place to deal with that.

  What I want to see out of the ArbCom Date delinking decision are those related to date-related behavior that could reasonably be expected to continue to affect other editors in the future. That’s one of the things we’re working on now in the formal rules for ArbComs: properly defining the scope of what is to be accomplished up front so they don’t expand to start encompassing issues such as whether or not Tennis_expert editwarred eight months ago over text regarding a mole on Serena Williams’ rear end. If TE has been linking a bunch of dates in the past, then I would simply propose that the decision be to warn him to narrowly follow the wording on MOSNUM with regard to dates. I want to get out of here.

  As for your Huge edit wars about formatting benefit no one, although formatting may be of benefit-comment: splendid effort there to write prose to make you look like you walk on water, but it doesn’t impress. We all got dragged kicking and screaming to this ArbCom by one editor: Locke Cole. And it was an utterly needless waste of everyone’s time because the community’s mood was shown to be no different from what the first three RfCs showed. I hope you can see this fact. Greg L (talk) 15:56, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

If you think that this RFArb started because of Locke Cole, then you're sadly mistaken. Just reread your comment above, and you'll see it doesn't meet even the most basic standards of civility on Wikipedia. If this is how you behave when under the watchful eye of the Arbcom, how should anyone believe that you won't bring your steamroller to the next "collaboration". This arbitration is not happening because someone said some bad words once. It is happening because a large number of people behaved badly over a long period of time. As Tony1 comments, I think very fairly, below; many of the parties to this collaboration are excellent article writers who could be working together. More particularly, many of the parties to this RFArb are editors who are escalate in incivility when they perceive an incivility or an injustice directed at them. Everybody would have benefited enormously by de-escalating, as far as the incivility was concerned, to concentrate on the content disputes.

As far as the formatting dispute: It's just not very important. At least, not enough to accept a constant edit war across tens of thousands of articles and tens of guideline and talk pages. To be honest, I find the discussion as to whether dates in an article should be blue or black trivial at best. More worrying is the deflection and steamrolling of criticism, and the generally caustic and antagonistic approach taken by all parties, and a good number of non-parties. Why on earth should so many people have found it so important to continue linking or delinking dates while this RFArb is going on? Why cover all of these talk pages with snarky, attacking and just plain rude comments? If I have one wish from the depths of my heart, I would hope that all parties would start to preview their comments to remove incivility before submitting. AKAF (talk) 19:29, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

• I disagree with everything you wrote, above. I note your doesn't meet even the most basic standards of civility on Wikipedia. Perhaps you are referring to where I wrote that Tennis_expert did a mean-spirited, purely disruptive stunt against me? Oh dear! Then you might also take issue with what the admin wrote on his talk page when he was advised to knock it off: It was spiteful and disruptive. Sorry, but your above post looks like just a bunch of grand-standing and posturing for effect. I don’t find what you wrote to be at all well-grounded in reality so I will no longer respond to you. Happy editing and have a nice life. Goodbye. Greg L (talk) 20:52, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

Since you were unable to find it, I'll quote: "Or, maybe we can forget about trivial crap like which editor has been naughty or nice and deserves to get an extra-juicy plumb in his stocking the next morning. Doesn’t it seem like a phenomenal waste of effort looking back at crap a year ago and 751 edits-worth? Jeez." Three four letter words and a rhetorical question doesn't meet the best standards of civility. AKAF (talk) 07:10, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

• What vexes me is that we have failed to find a way to bring Tennis expert on board as a collaborator (WP systemically, as much as those directly involved). I got a glimmer of the kind of cooperation of which he is capable when he and I talked two weeks ago about the Serena style section; it was a great relief, even though he was guarded in his interactions with me. There is so much grief among experienced users concerning this one user. The ArbCom case seems to have been associated with a worsening of the problem, and has certainly not been a pathway towards its resolution. I think the hundreds of angry edits TE has made on the evidence and workshop pages have fuelled his feelings of betrayal and conspiracy against him; on the other side, his actions have been regarded by some other editors as over the top, and along with irritation and—on occasions—disbelief by the editors around him, there has been an element of sniggering that TE clearly finds offensive and undermining. What he craves, above all, is to be respected for his knowledge about tennis, and we've moved to a situation where all he receives is negative feedback. He is egregiously upset, and this is driving an emotional cycle that is bad for tennis articles. How has the project dealt with such situations in the past? Probably not well. I'd like ArbCom or the Mediation people to come up with constructive ways of putting the past behind us and try to forge a new relationship with this user. It would be a great contribution if ArbCom were able to engineer a circuit-breaker, such as some new branch of the tennis-related project that we could all be assigned to work together on under supervision. We don't seem to be able to find an answer ourselves. Tony (talk) 16:20, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

So true, and a vision of how thing might have been. What a pity. AKAF (talk) 19:29, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

Tony1 just said: "I think the hundreds of angry edits TE has made on the evidence and workshop pages have fuelled his feelings of betrayal and conspiracy against him; on the other side, ... there has been an element of sniggering that TE clearly finds offensive and undermining. What he craves, above all, is to be respected for his knowledge about tennis, and we've moved to a situation where all he receives is negative feedback. He is egregiously upset, and this is driving an emotional cycle that is bad for tennis articles." How patronizing and, for what it's worth, incorrect. This is merely the latest example of Tony1's harrassment of me. For similar tactics he's used in the past along the lines of "I think Tennis expert is crazy and we need to help", see this. Tennis expert (talk) 10:36, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

That is "harrassment"? It was well-meant, and an attempt at NPOV. I'm close to giving up on trying to foster understanding and collaboration between TE and the tennis-editing community. It will take skilled mediation, and I hope ArbCom feels fit to arrange it ... I have no objection to being required to participate in mediation, even though I have only a passing role in tennis-related articles. TE, please try to assist rather than rejecting every suggestion. Something positive from you? Tony (talk) 10:46, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

• No Greg, "Locke Cole" was not the only one who "dragged" you here. You may or may not recall, but two other editors signed on as co-filers for this arbitration. Yet another editor was the one who alerted me to the fait accompli ruling from Episodes and Characters 2. I know you like twisting this, repeatedly, to be just a "Locke Cole vs. The WHOLE ENTIRE INTERNETS", but it's pathetic. Hundreds of editors agree with my point of view on auto formatting. A smaller (but still recognizable) portion supports linking dates "sometimes". I've managed to avoid your baiting so far today, but it gets tiring seeing you continue to twist and flat out LIE on here. I've issued invitations to discuss this issue rationally and with an eye towards reasonable compromise, but again and again you turn me down, issuing your usual "my way or the highway" remarks. —Locke Cole • t • c 19:06, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

Good luck, Tony. Several of the Arbitrators accepted this case to look at behavioral issues (and I do see some of them on both sides). Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:30, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

• This Arbcom? Or a different one, Tony? Greg L (talk) 16:32, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

• Tony seems to have found a plausible explanation why almost everyone has had bad experiences 'cooperating' with Tennis, whose pride in his encyclopaedic knowledge of the sport is not acknowledged as he thinks is merited. However, that only explains part of his behaviour. Arbcom may require thinking a bit 'outside the box' to stop the kamikaze mode. Ohconfucius (talk) 17:34, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

Glad to finally realize that mind reading is one of your skills. What am I thinking now? Tennis expert (talk) 10:36, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

I'll take a wild guess guess: "I am right, the others are wrong. I may be alone, but I am still right and that is all that matters." (PS. Feel free to add this as evidence of what you now label as Psychological warfare (great term by the way).--HJensen, talk 11:33, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

"Glad to finally realize that mind reading is one of your skills. What am I thinking now?" My guess: "STFU, dickhead"? Ohconfucius (talk) 14:57, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

• No Locke; you’ve once again misinterpreted the truth. Let’s examine what you wrote above: No Greg, "Locke Cole" was not the only one who "dragged" you here. You may or may not recall, but two other editors signed on as co-filers for this arbitration. Let’s see… here is your RfA. This is your request. What does Tony’s statement say? On this basis, I submit that the application be dismissed. What does my statement begin with: I really do want to avoid having my activities on one of my hobbies—Wikipedia—defined by the whims of others. I’ve repeatedly said that you dragged us all here kicking and screaming into an unnecessary ArbCom. If you think Tony and I wanted yet another RfC, (we thought the first three more than settled it), then there is a serious “theory of mind” issue going on here. In the end, the ArbCom-sponsored RfC didn’t shed any more light on what the mood of the community is than we already knew from the first three RfCs. These are the facts and they are indisputable. Greg L (talk) 20:53, 15 May 2009 (UTC)
  • Well phrased; thank you for mentioning it. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:01, 15 May 2009 (UTC)
  • How does one misinterpret the truth? Bizarre. Again, Earle Martin and Guy Peters signed on as co-filers for this arbitration, and their statements can be seen here and Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Date_delinking#Statement_from_Earle_Martin. Pretending they don't exist doesn't magically make some new truth. I'm sorry you and Tony believed the RFCs settled the issue. Further, I'm sorry you and Tony (and your other compatriots) believe you're above the need to compromise. However, while I'm sorry for these things, there's no way I can accommodate you on your desire to delink all dates and turn off auto formatting. The will of the community simply does not support your view, and the sooner you step away from the edge of this cliff you're on and start discussing reasonable solutions (solutions which don't involve bots making mass edits to articles) the better off we'll all be. —Locke Cole • t • c 05:22, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

• P.S. Oh… Locke, with regard to your I've issued invitations to discuss this issue rationally and with an eye towards reasonable compromise, but again and again you turn me down, issuing your usual "my way or the highway" remarks. Uhm… ‘no’ again to you. Neither Tony nor I can negotiate away the will of the community on anything. Last time I looked in the mirror, no one had handed me a “You are *really really* special” license where I had been anointed with the powers to decide what the community’s views are on date linking and can decide on everyone else’s behalf what is best for them. It’s simply about honoring the will of the community. My role was to help Tony in leading the charge to implement the will of the community—to do otherwise would be a sure-fire prescription to failure. Tony’s first RfC should have settled the issue. But it didn’t and you and I both know why it didn’t. So here we are.

  I simply took a look at the issues, made some arguments, read the community reaction and comments, carefully read the position statements of the first two RfCs (1 & 2), and wrote my own RfC (3) to address issues the first two didn’t resolve. Note the enthusiastic and overwhelming response by the community when offered a black & white proposition in that third RfC. Those first three RfCs didn’t settle the issue. But they didn’t and you and I both know why they didn’t. So—again—here we are.

  You’ve declared that the first, third, and fourth RfCs—all of which you didn’t help to author in a meaningful way (or at all)—were biased and that editors didn’t even understand what they were voting on. I reject that supposition. Most reasonable people feel that way. In fact, it’s your “my way or the highway” attitude that seems to underlied your efforts for petitioning an ArbCom. You simply would not or could not accept all the previous RfC results and their implications and you hoped the ArbCom committee would simply rule in your favor. I don’t believe you bargained that yet another RfC would come out of the ArbCom, did you?

  What about that fourth RfC? It was open for you to help draft and comment on. And Ryan did his level best to ensure it was free of bias. Once it was clear that Ryan was going to conduct a fourth RfC it was like pulling teeth to get you to contribute wording at all; Ryan had to go look for volunteers to contribute to the “Statement for”. Your major contribution to the RfC seemed to have been limited to its discussion page, where you said that the RfC shouldn’t be about any “specific” autoformatting technology because you conceded the community would reject it if it was based on Son of Autoformatting. Suddenly, when it served your interests, you seemed to be awfully prescient about how the community really felt on an issue. In the end—after it was all over—you resorted to your standard tactic of trying to declare its results null and void because it too was confusing and editors didn’t understand what they were really voting on. Greg L (talk) 22:21, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

The "will of the community" is (if it exists) that date links be relevant, germane, and rare; they should exist in those cases, but not in every date or most dates. What you are being asked to negotiate is (as far as I can tell) your personal behavior, ranging from mass reversion to bold-face screams. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:40, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

• Awe, come-on PMA. Please, at least get your facts straight. I’ve never participated in mass delinking or linking of any sort. Not my style. What Tony and I were really being asked to do is cave and give Locke and you everything you wanted. Wasn’t gonna happen because it’s not the will of the community, which does exist (notwithstanding your wishes that it not). Greg L (talk)
  • Implausible; Locke and I want quite different things. We agree only in what we do not want.
  • The will of the community is that this lame dispute stop without either extreme position being imposed.
  • If mass delinking is not Greg's style he should support the request, one section up, to deprecate it. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:00, 15 May 2009 (UTC)
    • I'm beginning to think this may be the only solution, which is why I proposed it so long ago: extend the temporary injunction to an indefinite period so people can either a) move on or b) settle down and (hopefully) find some compromise solution which has consensus. —Locke Cole • t • c 05:22, 16 May 2009 (UTC)
      • To the two of you who are in agreement of what you don't want: one of the things the community has said it does not want is a sea of linked dates. Making the temporary injunction permanent would only appear to grant the wishes of those two, at the expense of the community's wishes. Ohconfucius (talk) 09:52, 16 May 2009 (UTC)
        • Please stop misstating things; the community supports links "sometimes". They do not, in fact, support delinking all dates. I seriously wish the committee would make a finding of fact on this critical point, because one gets the impression that the delinkers think if they state this enough times, people will (erroneously) believe it to be true. And as a preventative, the community also does not support disabling auto formatting. —Locke Cole • t • c 12:55, 16 May 2009 (UTC)
          • This has been going on long enough, and it is high time it came to and end. Anybody reading my comment above and then yours immediately below would be surprised to find considerably less than 100% correlation. Ohconfucius (talk) 13:28, 16 May 2009 (UTC)
• Ohconfucius is correct, as far as it goes, that the community opposes "a sea of linked dates". I will go further: nobody at all (including the participants in this conversation) has proposed a sea of linked dates, and very few articles, if any, have enough dates to permit one.
• I'm not sure what this claim is; it may be a simple straw man, but if not, it shows no connection with the Wikipedia existing in this universe.
• It is indeed time for an end. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:51, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

While roughly the same ten of you go on and on filling these pages with the same arguments over and over, I was in a bad car accident Friday before last and I realize that this just doesn't matter anymore. There isn't consensus, there will never be consensus, and since Wikipedia isn't a democracy and majority can't rule, this isn't going to go anywhere and in another 6 months you'll all still be having this argument. Wake me if there's ever a decision. In the meantime, I retire. RainbowOfLight ^Talk 03:12, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

No consensus

Rainbow of Light is quite right, in the section above; there is no consensus on a final solution. I hope he reconsiders; we have much else to do, more important than this lame dispute.

The question, however, how we are best to get on in the meantime, until the spirit of Consensus descends from heaven. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:01, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

Prevention of falsehoods

So long as date autoformat continues to function, and so long as the MOS and/or MOSNUM and/or numerous template documentation pages describe the format YYYY-MM-DD as being the ISO 8601 format, linking a non-Gregorian calendar date in a way that allows it to be displayed in the YYYY-MM-DD format is a falsehood. The correction of such falsehoods should be allowed even during periods when MOS or MOSNUM are disputed. --Jc3s5h (talk) 21:29, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

I don't believe that; [name deleted] is overreading the ISO protocols. In any case, the proper solution, which I would support, is to disallow autoformatting into YYYY-MM-DD. (Possibly limit this to dates before 1752.)

Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:43, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

The MOS says "A decimal point is used between the integral and the fractional parts of a decimal; a comma is never used in this role". Therefore, if an article contains the number 16,952 and the value is actually 16 and 952/1000, the article contains a falsehood. The MOS also says "ISO 8601 dates (like 1976-05-13)..." so an article that contains the date 1572-05-13 means that date in the proleptic Gregorian calendar. If the article were actually describing the date Gregory XIII became pope, it would be false, because he became pope on May 13, 1572 of the Julian calendar.

The only real question is whether a logged-in reader who specifically chooses the ISO-8601 format as his/her date preference is making an informed assumption of the risk that some of the dates displayed will be false because the input to the autoformatting function was a non-Gregorian date. My position is that those who choose this option have not been adequately warned; Pmanderson seems to think these people will have no expectation of correct handling of non-Gregorian dates.

No, my position is that readers have no solid ground to expect 1001-10-01 to represent a Gregorian date; the ISO protocol advises that the situation will be troublesome, and should be avoided. 1001-10-01 O. S. should be perfectly clear in intent as the first of October, 1001 Julian style; it is probably undesirable for a reader to be able to force that reading on to the screen, but that's a developer problem. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:05, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

This is why I was leaving anyways...

...clearly the committee is happy to accept the behavior of the delinkers, handing out limit topic bans, but nothing that truly reflects the disruption they caused with their fait accompli. Meanwhile, it appears trying to shine a light on this behavior (while at first trying to actually work with these editors) warrants a year long block.

I'm glad the constant preening about my block log (the vast majority of which is from over two years ago, going on three years) also gained traction with the committee. Meanwhile the delinkers and their supporters seem to be taking a "you're getting what's coming to you" (quoting HWV258, further above) stance to this. Is this really the behavior and the attitude you want to reward on here? Is this really the kind of environment you want to foster? I hope the committee thinks long and hard on whom is causing more problems here for the project.

PS: As regards my block log, most of it was inappropriate anyways... any arbitrator wanting insight in to this is welcome to contact me via e-mail, but there's at least three blocks which I think any objective person would view as inappropriate or incorrect. —Locke Cole • t • c 04:45, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Hi Locke_cole (talk · contribs). Please note that "you're getting what's coming to you"-type comments were said in the realised context that "it" is coming to everyone involved (however Pmanderson (talk · contribs) seemed keen to try a little transparent wriggling trick at this late stage). It was worthy of comment. Bye bye.  HWV258  05:02, 18 May 2009 (UTC)