Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case

Requests for arbitration

Arbitration Committee proceedings

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Case requests

Request name	Motions	Initiated	Votes
Nightscream		9 December 2013	{{{votes}}}
Serbo-Croatian infobox dispute		7 December 2013	{{{votes}}}
Discretionary sanctions		6 December 2013	{{{votes}}}

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Open cases

Case name	Links	Evidence due	Prop. Dec. due
Historical elections	(t) (ev / t) (ws / t) (pd / t)	20 Aug 2024	03 Sep 2024

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Recently closed cases (Past cases)

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

Clarification and Amendment requests

Request name	Motions	Case	Posted
Amendment request: Definition of the "area of conflict" Clause 4 (b)	none	none	26 July 2024
Clarification request: Appeal methods for Lima Bean Farmer topic ban	none	none	12 August 2024
Amendment request: German war effort	none	(orig. case)	13 August 2024

Arbitrator motions

No arbitrator motions are currently open.

Nightscream

Initiated by Beeblebrox (talk) at 23:00, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

Involved parties

• Beeblebrox (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA), filing party
• Nightscream (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)
• Salvidrim! (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)

Confirmation that all parties are aware of the request

• Nightscream notified

Confirmation that other steps in dispute resolution have been tried

• ANI April 2008

Note this comment from Nightscream which precipitated the closure of the thread: " I'll make it a point from now on not to mix conflict participation with administrative actions. I apologize for failing to do so up until now. Nightscream (talk) 03:04, 23 April 2008 (UTC)"

• AN February 2009

A very long discussion of a block issued by Nightscream in a situation where they were involved. Partial quote (the discussion is very much in TLDR territory):"I not only do not find the opinion that involved admins are preferred not to be the blocking admins in such disputes, but I explicitly stated that I agree with it...Nightscream (talk) 17:49, 13 February 2009 (UTC)"

• ANI September 2009

Note this closing comment from Nightscream regarding the involved admin policy: "I will make sure to read over that policy more carefully. Thanks to everyone here, and you especially, xeno. Nightscream (talk) 01:56, 3 September 2009 (UTC)"

• ANI April 2012

Thread regarding Nightscream's understanding of the edit warring policy, among other things.

• Current discussion on their talk page

Regarding the recent edit warring and block for same.

Statement by Beeblebrox

While reviewing unblock requests a few days ago I came across a block placed by Nightscream on User:Rtkat3. The block was for their edits to the article Gotham City. They edited the page on 7 November. Nightscream edited the page themselves, and then issued a two week block on 6 December. I should think it would be obvious what is wrong about that as there is little preventative purpose to issuing a block a month after an action, and Nightscream was involved in editing the same article so blocking at all for anything but obvious vandalism is completely inappropriate. When I went to speak to Nightscream about this I found that they were also blocked at that time for edit warring at the article Jessica Nigri. A close look at the page history reveals that the final edit before the block was made after the page had already been protected by another admin and Nightscream edited through protection in order to restore their preferred version. It is true that the protecting admin another admin also reverted, to a pre-edit war version, after the page was protected corrected per Salvidrim but that does not seem particularly relevant. Any responsible admin will never make substantive edits to a fully-protected article, and especially not to one they were already involved with in an editorial capacity.

If these were isolated, one-off incidents that would be one thing, but a search of AN and ANI archives quickly reveals a long-term pattern of ignoring WP:INVOLVED going back at least five years. Additionally, they seem to believe that if they perceive a violation of any Wikipedia policy that their subsequent actions related to that content are not subject to the edit warring policy. This would be bad enough in a "regular" user, it is a dangerous and destructive attitude when coming from an administrator. Above are just a few examples demonstrating this pattern, but this is by no means an exhaustive list.

In short, I do not believe Nightscream should continue to be permitted to serve as an administrator as they do not respect important policies regarding both editorial and administrative actions, they have repeatedly abused thir position of trust in the community, and in recent times have been utterly unrepentant and refused to even acknowledge their errors in judgement. Beeblebrox (talk) 23:13, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

Statement by Salvidrim

I was involved in the latest issue, as mentioned above by Beeblebrox, but had had no previous interaction with Nightscream and as such have little insight to bring forward as to the pattern of editing other than what I can see from the history presented above. See this section on my talk page for more details about my view of what happened in the past few days. I'd also like Beeblebrox to clarify in his above statement that the protecting admin at Jessica Nigri was not the one that reverted to the last pre-war version; if I hadn't stepped in to revert to the last pre-war version in an administrative decision, Nightscream would not have had the opportunity to revert to his preferred version in an editorial decision, and would have stopped just short of violating WP:3RR. That does not excuse edit warring, nor the attitude surrounding the heated denials that edit warring took place, and obviously does nothing to alleviate concerns brought on by the history of such warring and denial cases, but it's important context for the latest issue in my eyes. Since I know my own block of Nightscream will, clearly, be the subject of scrutiny, I thought it better to come out right away and offer some explanation. Make of that what you will. ☺ · Salvidrim! · ✉ 23:22, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

Comments by BOZ

I have to agree that an admin needs to come to WP:AN or WP:AN/I for help from other admins rather than using admin tools in WP:INVOLVED situations. I don't know if that is what has happened here, but I notice that this latest tussle has been with User:Niemti, whom as I have observed is an experienced edit-warrior himself. He has been blocked three times, once for abusing multiple accounts and unblocked three days later, once (by Beeblebrox) for edit warring, and once for personal attacks or harassment. I recall that there was a fair amount of edit warring on his part at Psylocke for example, and note quite a bit of undos there earlier this year, including edit-warring over an image while a discussion was taking place [1][2][3], and edit-warring over categories [4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11], and another edit war with User:Lucia Black and TriiipleThreat over images several weeks ago [12][13][14][15][16]. I'm not excusing anything on Nightscream's part, but if he had to deal with anything like this again from Niemti anywhere else, I can fully understand his frustration. BOZ (talk) 23:53, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

Clerk notes

This area is used for notes by the clerks (including clerk recusals).

Nightscream: Arbitrators' opinion on hearing this matter <0/0/0/2>

Vote key: (Accept/decline/recuse/other)

• Awaiting statement from User:Nightscream, who has edited at least since the notification was placed so is presumably aware of the arbitration request. Carcharoth (talk) 23:37, 9 December 2013 (UTC)
• Also awaiting a statement from Nightscream. By way of disclosure, I have met him at New York area meet-ups three or four times. We haven't collaborated on anything either on or off wiki, and I don't believe mere acquaintanceship warrants recusal, but I thought I'd mention the fact. Newyorkbrad (talk) 23:45, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

Serbo-Croatian infobox dispute

Initiated by Kiril Simeonovski (talk) at 00:18, 7 December 2013 (UTC)

Involved parties

• Kiril Simeonovski (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log), filing party
• Taivo (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Kwamikagami (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• JorisvS (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Confirmation that all parties are aware of the request

• Diff User talk:Taivo
• Diff User talk:Kwamikagami
• Diff User talk:JorisvS

Confirmation that other steps in dispute resolution have been tried

• A request for mediation was rejected after the other parties did not agree to use mediation to solve the dispute.
• The case was reported on the administrators' noticeboard but there was no response from any of the admins and mostly comments by one of the other involved parties who requested to start a new section for discussion. I accepted his/her request and that was the beginning to reach this case.

Statement by Kiril Simeonovski

After accepting the request from user Taivo on the administrators' noticeboard to start a new section for discussion in order to present my points, I started a new thread and described there all the things relating the infobox with my opinion on why these changes are really necessary (diff 1). The first response by Taivo was an overall comment on my most recent proposal and a new section in which he rephrased my proposal in a different (diff 2). I wasn't content with the response, especially not with the overall comment, but decided not to war about it and thereby left a thankful comment and subsequently one with a mild criticism on the tone (diff 3). A discussion commenced over the change in the infobox and user Kwamikagami proposed a modified solution which appeared to be a good compromise in my opinion (diff 4). Another user edited the article and then joined the discussion with mild support for that change (diff 5 and diff 6). I was carefully following the discussion all the time and left a comment discussing some possible scenarios (diff 7), which was briefly asnwered by Kwamikagami as a cogent argument (diff 8). Since there was agreement on that comment and given the direction of the previous discussion, I decided to be bold and make the change on my own (diff 9). In the meantime, user JorisvS joined the discussion to question the change and we started our brief conversation over the change (diff 10, diff 11, diff 12, diff 13, diff 14, diff 15, diff 16), while he/she also made some reverts on my changes in the main article as well (diff 17, diff 18, diff 19, diff 20). But his/her comments were not supported by any sources and my next comment requested to see some and was followed with a list of sources supporting my point (diff 21, diff 22). JorisvS did not revert my edit again after this comment, but Taivo was the one who did it by waving a non-existing consensus apparently reached before (diff 23, please pay attention on these comments from the previous discussion: diff 24, diff 25, diff 26). His/Her comment on the discussion page did not list any reliable sources to counterbalance the views and contained a disregard on my list, although it included works by prominent linguists and experts on the topic such like Friedman, Brozović and Kordić (diff 27). My next two comments replied to his/her disregard, asked for link to the "non-existing" consensus once again and invited the user to check the latest discussion and the compromise over the change (diff 28, diff 29). Kwamikagami joined the discussion to support disregarding my sources attributing them as "travel guides" and "other idiocies" (diff 30, diff 31). Taivo reported me for violating the 3RR after which I was blocked for two days; he/she also posted a comment detailing his/her views with no explanation why it is better than my points that he/she ignored at the very beginning of the discussion (diff 32). Finally, JorisvS agreed with this comment, albeit not paying attention on my points (diff 33). I have nothing else to conclude than just saying that they will always find a way to turn me down, even if they already lack of sources and arguments, use words of mouth about non-existing consensus, have very low regard to reliable sources by prominent authors and use insinuations to get rid of me at any price.--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 01:48, 7 December 2013 (UTC)

Clerk notes

This area is used for notes by the clerks (including clerk recusals).

Serbo-Croatian infobox dispute: Arbitrators' opinion on hearing this matter <0/2/0/2>

Vote key: (Accept/decline/recuse/other)

• I'm wondering if we need to look further into Kiril Simeonovski's overall conduct. I followed the links provided by User:No such user during this discussion, and I'm concerned that Kiril brings up trivial issues, and then refuses to let the matter drop in a WP:Tendentious editing manner. In the Serbo-Croatian incident mentioned above, I'm not impressed by Taivo's incivility - though I wonder how much of that has been caused by exasperation at Kiril Simeonovski's behaviour. Waiting further comments. SilkTork ^{✔Tea time} 18:00, 7 December 2013 (UTC)
• We often remind editors that the Arbitration Committee primarily resolves issues of user conduct, as opposed to making decisions in content disputes. In one way, the filing party here has been unusually circumspect about that rule, in that I read through the request for arbitration several times and it gave me no insight at all into what the underlying content dispute is actually about. On checking the diffs, of course, the issue becomes clearer. As I read it (and I am sure I am eliding the details), the original dispute concerns whether the Torlakian dialect is properly considered a dialect of the Serbo-Croatian language. It appears from the extensive talkpage discussions, among editors who enjoy significant subject-matter knowledge (that most if not all of the arbitrators will lack), that linguists disagree on this issue. It also appears to me that editors have been able to fairly reflect the differences of scholarly opinion in the article itself, and that the locus of dispute centers on the infobox. As was noted by several editors in our recent Infoboxes case, infoboxes (like categories) can require summarizing information in a word or a phrase, even where disputes over that information could fill the entirety of an article. It is necessary for knowledgeable editors to work these things out; it is also important that editors not focus on the exact phrasing of an infobox entry at the expense of developing the substantive knowledge base of the encyclopedia. Beyond these observations, awaiting further statements to see how, if at all, arbitration might help here. Newyorkbrad (talk) 18:15, 7 December 2013 (UTC)
• Decline. This is primarily a content dispute, perhaps some evidence of tendentious editing. As a suggestion: just because there is the opportunity to include a parameter in the infobox doesn't mean that parameter has to be included. If the parameter relates to something in the article where there are notable divergent opinions, it's probably just best to not include it in the infobox. Risker (talk) 17:47, 8 December 2013 (UTC)
• Decline per the responses given by Newyorkbrad and Risker. Carcharoth (talk) 15:07, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

Discretionary sanctions

Initiated by Neotarf (talk) at 06:25, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

Involved parties

• Neotarf (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log), filing party

Confirmation that all parties are aware of the request

• Neotarf [17]

Confirmation that other steps in dispute resolution have been tried

Arbitration enforcement action

• February 2013. Talk page discussions with sanctioning administrator [18]

• March 2013. A/R/CA. Sanctioning administrator's clarification request to the Committee [19]

• March 2013. A/R/CA. Notification from ArbCom clerk: “The request is archived; however, an arbitrator is planning on offering an arbitrator motion ‘very shortly’.” [20]

• May 2013. A/R/CA Arbitrator: “By a happy coincidence, the follow-up to that clarification request was scheduled some time ago to take place this week.” [21]

Article probation action

An email request made to the sanctioning administrator was declined.

Statement by Neotarf

Note: Please correct any procedural errors, or let me know what to do. I would appreciate patience for any delay in responses, due to ongoing internet connectivity issues.

I wish to appeal two discretionary sanctions, one from AE, and one under article probation. As a remedy, I request that the sanctions be vacated/ rescinded and stricken from the notification logs: [22] and [23], similar to this example.

AE action

This involves an Arbitration Enforcement request opened by a user while another request involving a pending sanction against them was still under discussion. After the second AE request, 4 of the 14 editors who participated in the discussion were sanctioned: Neotarf (myself), Noetica, SMcCandlish, and Ohconfucius.

Warning template on talk page: [24]

The warning accused me of “casting aspersions”, was made without evidence, and without any concerns having previously been brought up on my talk page or in an appropriate forum. No appeal process was specified.

Article probation action

A sanction was logged against me after I reverted apparent vandalism in a good-faith edit. [25] No action was taken with the other editor. I was subsequently templated [26] and my name added to this “log of notifications” page of indeffed and red-linked usernames, which was decidedly unsettling. [27]

I have not edited this page in the last year; per WP:POLEMIC I wish my name removed from public view.

Comments by Neotarf

@AGK 1) "material about the ongoing DS review"??? Where? 2) This has already been taken to A/R/CA and was completely ignored. We were promised a decision in March and promised again in May. Nothing. Check the diffs. We have been waiting for 9 months. If you think someone will actually pay attention to it somewhere else, please do move it. But it has already been there and done that. Which is why I put it here, to have more eyes on it, at least initially. This has been festering for a long time. I think it could be quite quickly and easily resolved--for everyone, arbs and editors alike--in a motion. —Neotarf (talk) 13:29, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

@arbs, would you please slow down.

• Would you mind slowing down the voting until I can catch up to the current round of comments? Some meaningful points are being raised and I would like to respond to them.
• Judging by the statements that have been made so far, there are huge misunderstandings here about what I have requested. The answers to some of the concerns raised here were in the draft of my original request, but were lost due to the word limit. The alternative seems to be to use the comments for explanations, as needed.
• My original RFAR draft ran to 866 words, according to the word counter I was using, but has now been pared to 495 words. I'm not sure how diffs are counted, but the current draft should now be well within the 500-word limit.
• I have noted other recent ArbCom requests approaching a thousand words. I don't know how it would be handled if there was a problem with those RFARs, but I hope that they would be informed and someone would assist them. Please note that I am at a disadvantage here compared to these other users, since due to the above template placed on my talk page some 9 months ago, I am now under the provisions of the discretionary sanctions, and if I exceed a word count, may be summarily blocked and banned with no warning. —Neotarf (talk) 10:17, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

Statement by Sandstein

Thanks for the notification, Newyorkbrad. I was the administrator who issued the warning of February 2013 that is, if I understand this correctly, one of the two actions Neotarf wishes to appeal.

I recommend that the appeal is declined because warnings or notifications are, in my view, not in any meaningful sense subject to appeal or revocation. Their purpose is not to restrict their recipient in any way, but to inform them about future possible sanctions, as required per WP:AC/DS#Warnings. It is not possible to undo that. It appears that the Arbitration Committee intends to codify this, as per the draft rules at Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Discretionary sanctions/2013 review#Issuing alerts.

Should the Committee wish to discuss the warning on its merits, I refer to my statements in the original AE thread and in the extensive discussion with the warned users (and with one user in particular) after the warning. On that basis of these considerations, I am of the view that the warning was appropriate, or at any rate within the discretion granted by the Committee to administrators as described at WP:AC/DS. The exceptional aggressiveness with which the discussions about this mere warning were conducted indicates why the Arbitration Committee was probably right to make this topic area subject to discretionary sanctions. I'm glad to see now, however, that the warning did not in fact result in the then-announced retirement of some of the warned editors.

I agree with Neotarf, however, that the Arbitration Committee has been very tardy in resolving the procedural question about the possibility of appealing warnings, as already raised by several previous cases. I recommend that in order to do so the Committee should conclude the process at Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Discretionary sanctions/2013 review as quickly as possible.  Sandstein  18:23, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

Statement by KillerChihuahua

As requested, here is my comment. There have been no sanctions at all to Neotarf under Article Probation. Neotarf was merely notified the article was under probation.

From the Talk:Men's rights movement/Article probation page, section Notifications:

Note: Listing here indicates only that an editor has been notified. Listing here should not be taken to mean that the user's edits were in violation of the article probation.

From the notification itself, which is a substituted template, {{uw-probation}}:

Thank you for your contributions to the encyclopedia! In case you are not already aware, an article to which you have recently contributed, Men's rights movement, is on article probation. A detailed description of the terms of article probation may be found at Talk:Men's rights movement/Article probation. Also note that the terms of some article probations extend to related articles and their associated talk pages.

The above is a templated message. Please accept it as a routine friendly notice, not as a claim that there is any problem with your edits. Thank you.

As you can see, it is a notification. Not a sanction or even a warning. How can you un-tell someone something? You cannot. As I emailed Neotarf when Neotarf asked me about this via email back in August:

"That's just a notification, they never get undone. Doesn't mean you've done anything wrong at all; just a friendly notice to ensure you are aware the article is under sanctions."

and:

"I've never, ever seen a notification removed, for good reason - it's a notification. If you've been notified, you cannot be un-notified. The list exists so admins can check to make sure people knew about the article probation before they sanction them, and to prevent multiple notifications of individuals, which is annoying for those not doing anything wrong, and can allow those breaching probation to evade sanctions (briefly). Frankly, I wouldn't remove anyone from one of those lists; it indicates no wrongdoing, and does not indicate anything other than that you've been informed."

There is nothing here to appeal, as there were never any sanctions at all.

I personally think that the current ArbCom sanctions method of never notifying, skipping straight to a warning, is inferior to this method, which is used on most (if not all) community sanctioned pages. KillerChihuahua 16:55, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

Clerk notes

This area is used for notes by the clerks (including clerk recusals).

I have notified KillerChihuahua about this request [28]. --Rschen7754 10:23, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

Discretionary sanctions: Arbitrators' opinion on hearing this matter <0/5/0/1>

Vote key: (Accept/decline/recuse/other)

• Decline and move to WP:A/R/CA because discretionary sanctions appeals are heard as amendment requests, not case requests. The material about the ongoing DS review does not seem relevant. AGK [•] 12:49, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
• Comments:
  • I would not vote to decline this request simply because it is filed as a request for a new case rather than a clarification or amendment. At most, if the request is in the wrong section, I would simply ask a Clerk to move the case to the correct section. Frankly, the correct categorization of some requests is not always clear even to us, and we cannot expect ordinary editors to master every nuance of our increasingly (overly) complicated procedures.
  • A fundamental issue raised by this request is whether a "warning" or "notification" given under either ArbCom discretionary sanctions or a community-imposed article probation is (1) simply an formal advisory that there are special rules for the article of which the editor should be aware, or (2) a signal that the editor's participation on that page has actually been problematic. The answer to that question, in turn, may dictate whether the warning is treated as simply a historical fact (which cannot be "undone" or changed on appeal because a person can't be "un-notified" of something), or whether it is an adverse action subject to appeal on AE or to the Committee.
  • In recent months the Committee has been badly divided on these issues, both in the context of concrete requests and in discussion of the discretionary sanctions policy update. While several arbitrators have taken the former position, and it is understandable why they do, several editors who have received such warnings find it difficult to accept that they are "on warning" about the possibility of sanctions for their editing a given article, when in their view they have done nothing wrong in connection with that article, and expect that they would have a venue to challenge such a warning. The counterargument to that position is that we have enough bureaucracy around here already, without also having to process appeals addressing simply whether an editor was properly reminded to behave well on an article and of the possible consequences if he or she doesn't, with no other adverse consequences. This request may provide a further opportunity to flesh out some of these issues.
  • Before proceeding further, the administrators who took the disputed actions should be notified. I believe that would be Sandstein in the case of the DS, and KillerChihuahua in the case of the AP. Newyorkbrad (talk) 17:39, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
• Decline. I am in general sympathetic to the situation of users being inappropriately templated, warned and/or listed in a manner which indicates incorrectly they behaved poorly. However, if I recall correctly, it was established in a previous case request that warnings (or alerts as they are proposed to be called) cannot be appealed, which is what prompted the current DS review. If someone wishes to bring a case against an admin for giving inappropriate warnings, then the Committee would generally like to see more than one instance. SilkTork ^{✔Tea time} 17:27, 7 December 2013 (UTC)
• Decline. Risker (talk) 17:43, 8 December 2013 (UTC)
  • Just to point out to my colleagues, this is an article under community article probation, not Arbcom discretionary sanctions. I'm fairly certain we don't have jurisdiction here. Risker (talk) 19:54, 9 December 2013 (UTC)
    • I believe the request concerns two separate notifications, one of which (Sandstein's) was based on ArbCom DS, the other of which (KillerChihuahua's) was based on a community probation. In any event, I think we would have "jurisdiction" to vacate a clearly inappropriate administrator decision rendered on the basis of a community sanction, just as we have asserted the authority to vacate (for example) a community-imposed topic ban. The circumstances under which we would exercise that authority are narrow, and I am not saying they are present here, but that is different from saying we don't have the authority at all. Newyorkbrad (talk) 23:39, 9 December 2013 (UTC)
• Decline. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 15:06, 9 December 2013 (UTC)
• Decline with no prejudice to re-filing at a later date if a better case can be made (this is not the place for a lengthy back-and-forth). In passing, I don't think the committee is as badly divided on these issues as Newyorkbrad states above (though the views of some non-arbs commenting may give rise to that impression). I do think the discretionary sanctions review is making good progress with this, so I don't think anything further is needed here other than to wait for that review process to conclude. Carcharoth (talk) 15:16, 9 December 2013 (UTC)