Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Kafziel/Evidence

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Evidence presented by Hasteur

Concern regarding Kafziel's previous history

1. Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Kafziel 3 In which in Question 4 raises concern regarding Kafziel's combativeness and civility prior to the 3nd Request for Adminship. Note how Kafziel does not directly address steps that they will take to reduce conflict. (Incorporated from comment by SilkTork)
2. July 2012 thread regarding block In which a block of a significant editor with additional removal of talk page privileges was called as being excessive, out of line with expectations for administrators, and not authorized by the community endorsed blocking policy.

Concerns raised on Kafziel's talk page.

1. User talk:Kafziel#Skimlinks: Kafziel deletes directly from AfC, refuses to restore it back to the AfC space at the request of the editor who was working on it. Expresses a explicitly hostile to AfC viewpoint while missing out on key principles;
2. User talk:Kafziel#Please use the proper procedure for aproving drafts at AfC: When approached collegially by a member of the Wikiproject Articles for Creation who is familiar with policy and procedures. Admin flatly says "No thanks" without explaining why they won't try to follow the community endorsed procedures.
3. User talk:Kafziel#Munjed Al Muderis article nominated for deletion: When approached by a editor at large who is affected by the cowboy admin actions, Kafziel elects to substitue their own opinion (and incorrect assumptions) for the request of an editor and the community consensus.
4. User talk:Kafziel#Submission: IgnitionDeck and User talk:Kafziel#Submission: OrderUp: Again, the admin elects to substitute a very wide interpertation of the CSD rationalle with respect to the Advertising/Copyright/Spam. This is against the stated purpose of the Articles for Creation process.
5. User talk:Kafziel#AfC reviews: User is asked to explain themselves by members of the Wikiproject Articles for Creation to try and come to a compromise. Kafziel declines to explain themselves (which is a violation of ADMINACT) and further asserts that they will continue to make more actions when the current ones have been challenged.
6. User talk:Kafziel#Working on backlogs: User is cautioned by a member of the Arbitration committee to not work on the AfC space. Kafziel declines and is Interested in helping users avoid abuse at the hands of AfC, and making sure that Wikipedia remains free and open.
7. User talk:Kafziel#Arbitration: User provoctatively suggests that one of the arbitrators should recuse due to a generally neutral suggestion over 7 months ago that was in the same "Conduct unbecomming an administrator" cause of concern (User_talk:Kafziel/archive8#ColonelHenry)

Escalated concerns to AN/I

1. Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive821#User:Kafziel_abusing_admin_tools_and_overriding_long_established_consensus: Thread opened on AN/I per the procedures established procedure at ADMINABUSE. Several editors and Administrators in good standing express concern with the actions and the reactions to being questioned about the acts. Thread was closed down (and edit warred over) with respect to the issue being over. Several assertions were made about the thread being a witch hunt by supporters and opposes of the discussion.

Misconceptions regarding Articles for Creation

1. Articles for Creation is a process by which new or unregistered editors can submit draft articles for review by experienced editors. The process was created as a response to the Wikipedia biography controversy. Editors that are confirmed or autoconfirmed can bypass this process, but that is their choice.
   1. Some editors have explicitly created their draft in AfC space so that they get a second opinion on the article and they do not feel comfortable with the creation.
2. The number 40,000 and tens of thousands of drafts have been thrown around multiple times in the statements and various locations. This is a ill informed statement.
   1. There are approximately 2000 pending AfC submissions (Category:AfC pending submissions by age). While we would like to have a backlog of zero, there are only so many reviewers that can help out and pages that they can give time for.
   2. There are approximately 24,000 stale AfC submissions where the draft has not been edited in more than 6 months (Category:Candidates for speedy deletion as abandoned AfC submissions). Approximately 3 months ago there were 80,000 stale AfC submissions. The submissions were stale because the community had endorsed the CSD:G13 rationale as a way to clean out the old drafts that are not having progress being made.
   3. There is a procedural cleaning of the stale drafts by a bot (User:HasteurBot) that goes through all the old AfC drafts to look for drafts that have just become eligible for G13. Once the page is eligible for G13, the bot gives the page creator a notice that the submission is in danger of being deleted by G13 rule. 30 days after the notice, the page becomes eligible for the bot to nominate the page for deletion via G13. There is a great deal more of rules and side processes that are tied up with the bot, but for the most part, we will eventually stabilize at a reasonable amount of stale drafts.

Evidence presented by Ritchie333

Speedy deletion of Damaris Richardson

• 01:19 22 October 2013 - Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Damaris Richardson is created ([1])
• 17:10 22 November 2013 - Kafziel accepts the submission ([2])
• 17:12 22 November 2013 - Kafziel speedy deletes the draft (now in mainspace) per WP:CSD#A7 ([3])
• 17:26 22 November 2013 - Kafziel leaves a reasonable and civil note on the creator's talk page that he has deleted the submission ([4])
• 18:05 22 November 2013 - Article's creator leaves a blunt and impolite note in response ([5]) and has not edited Wikipedia since

I feel that while Kafziel's actions are somewhat unorthodox, his attempt to engage with the article's creator was reasonable and that the submission (which has since been restored) has been declined as non-notable by another editor since then.

Edit warring on WP:ANI

• 17:05 10 December 2013 - Rationale for closing an ANI thread changed by Floquenbeam with an edit summary of "more neutral close" ([6])
• 17:06 10 December 2013 - Revert by Kafziel ([7])
• 17:10 10 December 2013 - Revert by Floquenbeam ([8])
• 17:12 10 December 2013 - Revert by Kafziel ([9])
• 17:14 10 December 2013 - Kafziel opens a discussion on Floquenbeam's talk page ([10]) ([11])

Articles for Creation process

• The instructions for reviewing AfC submissions are at Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles for creation/Reviewing instructions
• An automatic script is available to make the process of reviewing articles easier. The use of the script is described as highly recommended but it is not mandatory. The principal advantage of the script is described as "editors are notified and templates are removed from articles once they have been created"
• The bulk of the reviewing instructions are concerned with notability, verifiability and suitability. There are also a set of quick-fail criteria, including cases where speedy deletion of drafts / submissions is appropriate. For example :
  • "If a submission is clearly an attack page ... you should immediately tag the page for speedy deletion with {{db-g10}}"
  • "If the entire page is an unambiguous copyright violation, you should also tag the page for speedy deletion with {{db-g12}}"
  • "where a submission is a blatant advertisement and the subject is clearly non-notable or otherwise unsuitable for Wikipedia, it may be appropriate to tag the submission for speedy deletion using {{db-g11}}"

Opinions of quality criteria

• Kafziel believes that submissions sit in AfC space for too long and should be accepted provided they pass the CSD (but not necessarily PROD or AfD) criteria ([12]).
• Kafziel has created a flowchart at File:Kafziel flowchart AfC.jpg, described as a "Flowchart for Cutting Through the AfC Bullshit", as an expression of this view.
• Hasteur has taken exception to this view ([13])
• I cannot find a reference to policy that states which view is correct.

Evidence presented by Kafziel

No thanks

By this point, after all this discussion, if nobody has been able to point to a specific policy that says I'm wrong (while I've pointed to several which say I'm right) then there isn't one. So this is just going to end up a more formal version of the AN/I discussion, with Hasteur foaming at the mouth and getting nowhere, and me responding to his threats and demands with much the same results. But there's nothing anyone here can say or do to make me apologize for anything I did, or agree to do anything differently, and there's nothing short of that that will please people like him. So I don't guess there's any point in my sticking around to listen to any more of it.

AGK is right, in a way. At some point over the last several years, it was decided that Wikipedia administrators should act like a bunch of navel-gazing, mewling little bitches. I don't know if it was a gradual thing, or a sudden change and I just missed the memo. So he may be wrong about the reason—I've never deleted anything simply for being "not encyclopedic"—but he's right about my failure to adapt to this new Wikipedia culture. I never agreed to help spammers game the system, that's for damn sure.

I truly appreciate the widespread support I've received over this, both on and off site, but I'm the first to tell people that no individual editor is actually important to the project, so it would be hypocritical of me not to take my own advice and show myself out. I don't make any claim that Wikipedia will be worse off without me, and I'm still very proud of what we built here over the last decade. Despite its many flaws, Wikipedia is still the best damn thing on the Internet. But I don't need it, and it doesn't need me.

I'm not saying this to try to end this ArbCom discussion. By all means, please see it through, because these issues—in particular, whether the demands of a Wikiproject can trump the core policy of IAR—is in dire need of attention from the wider community. I just won't be watching or participating. The question is not whether I'm an asshole. The question is whether a badly mismanaged project has the right to force its guidelines on other users who are following policy (even if making occasional mistakes) and trying to improve the encyclopedia. I'm glad I stood my ground at AN/I, even though it means I'm now leaving Wikipedia, because if AfC is allowed to tell editors who can edit what, and when, and how, and which articles are "ready" for the main namespace, and which are immune from deletion, all according to their own private set of rules, then this has become The Encyclopedia Some People Can Edit. And I hate to think we've worked all these years just to end up with that. Kafziel ^{Complaint Department: Please take a number} 15:13, 16 December 2013 (UTC)