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the action was inconsistent with the contentious topics procedure or applicable policy (i.e. the action was out of process),
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^ The administrator may indicate consent at any time before, during, or after imposition of the restriction.
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Important notes:

For a request to succeed, either

(i) the clear and substantial consensus of (a) uninvolved administrators at AE or (b) uninvolved editors at AN or

(ii) a passing motion of arbitrators at ARCA

is required. If consensus at AE or AN is unclear, the status quo prevails.

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All actions designated as arbitration enforcement actions, including those alleged to be out of process or against existing policy, must first be appealed following arbitration enforcement procedures to establish if such enforcement is inappropriate before the action may be reversed or formally discussed at another venue.

Information for administrators processing requests

Thank you for participating in this area. AE works best if there are a variety of admins bringing their expertise to each case. There is no expectation to comment on every case, and the Arbitration Committee (ArbCom) thanks all admins for whatever time they can give.

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Rusf10

Rusf10 is warned against using purely personal opinion in place of policy-based argument when assessing the quality of sources. They are also warned against engaging in WP:BATTLEGROUND behavior and assuming bad faith in other editors. ~Awilley (talk) 03:41, 4 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

This request may be declined without further action if insufficient or unclear information is provided in the "Request" section below.
Requests may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs (not counting required information), except by permission of a reviewing administrator.

Request concerning Rusf10

User who is submitting this request for enforcement: Volunteer Marek (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) 07:40, 26 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

User against whom enforcement is requested: Rusf10 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
Search CT alerts: in user talk history • in system log

Sanction or remedy to be enforced: Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/American politics 2#Discretionary sanctions (1932 cutoff): Also BLP

Diffs of edits that violate this sanction or remedy, and an explanation how these edits violate it

1.June 26 Asserts, without evidence, that a living person (David Cutler) " hates Donald Trump". Also asserts that the subject (Cutler) is "fringe theorist" because "he's a professor, he's liberal, he's worked in Democratic administration". Apparently being a liberal academic automatically makes you "fringe".

The same comment (as well as some others, see below), also makes some concerning assertions concerning reliable sources:

"That's another fallacy, because something is published in a medical journal, it must be creditable."
"But because this guy is an academic (over 90% of which happen to be liberal), we're supposed to believe that is of high integrity and wouldn't just write a political piece"
" I wouldn't trust anything this guy says." - apparently because SOME OTHER academic did something at sometime (it's not exactly clear)

Generally Wikipedia considers academic, scholarly sources to be top-quality sources, better than newspaper articles, magazines, etc. Taken together with other comments, it's pretty clear that Rusf10 has the polar opposite view - according to him academic sources are the least ones we should trust. This is an explicit admission that the user is not willing to follow our policy on reliable sources when it comes to articles concerning American politics.

2.June 25 "Drmies, is under the false impression that everything published in an academic journal must be true which is really no more intelligent than saying "I read it on the internet, it must be true"" - appears to say that stuff published in academic journal is no better than "stuff found on the internet". Again, a pretty fundamental opposition to our policy on reliable sources.

3.June 26 " You don't have any intent to follow WP:NPOV, since its clear that you here to push a certain viewpoint, so don't lecture me on policies." - Attacks other editors and ascribes motivations to them rather than discussing content.

4.June 26 Doubles down on the "hates Trump" BLP violating claim because... he looked at the guys twitter which apparently has some criticism of Trump's policies. It should be obvious that being critical of some Trump policy is not the same thing as "hating" Trump.

More minor (at least IMO) but still problematic

June 25 "Daivd (sic) Cutler worked in both the Clinton and Obama administrations, so don't try to act like be is some highly-respected non-partisan scholar" - this is also border line BLP vio (Cutler is actually very very highly respected)
June 24 "You clearly don't like Trump and that's fine, but it doesn't mean you get to trash his article" - Unnecessarily ascribes motivations and beliefs to other editors
June 24 WP:NOTAFORUM violation

Diffs of previous relevant sanctions, if any

N/A

Note: @Fish and karate: despite what User:Lionelt insinuates, I don't have a topic ban on Donald Trump. User:JFG is also incorrect that I am "restricted" from that article. The only thing here is that I told NeilN, after he asked, that I'd leave the article alone for a few days. Also I have not cast WP:ASPERSIONS against anyone. I presented diffs in an appropriate forum. If you don't find these convincing, that's fine. But it's not aspersions, it's dispute resolution. You should also look at the diffs provided by User:MrX below.

Note: In this diff I am pointing out that just because there is the "standard disclaimer" on the piece ("does not represent the views of blah blah blah"), that does not make it an opinion piece. Lots of peer reviewed publications have these, it's just legal ass covering. And while Newsweek may call it "an opinion piece" I was objecting and still object to the proposition that this academic source is in any way comparable to "opinion pieces" published as editorials in newspapers and magazines.Volunteer Marek (talk) 18:09, 29 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

If discretionary sanctions are requested, supply evidence that the user is aware of them (see WP:AC/DS#Awareness and alerts)

For BLP

For post 1932 American politics

Additional comments by editor filing complaint

Here is the broader discussion. Rusf10 appears to have a... strange, idea of how academia and academic publishing works. He also appears to be reflexively distrustful of academic and scholarly sources. Several users, including User:Drmies and User:Neutrality have tried reasoning with him and explaining to him how it works, but it fells on a bit of deaf ears.

Notification of the user against whom enforcement is requested

[1]

Discussion concerning Rusf10

Statements must be made in separate sections. They may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs, except by permission of a reviewing administrator.
Administrators may remove or shorten noncompliant statements. Disruptive contributions may result in blocks.

Statement by Rusf10

This is a waste of everyone's time and should boomerang on Volunteer Marek just for bringing this here. Is he really trying to take me to AE because I said a professor "hates Trump"? Regardless of whether or not he truly hates him, its 100% he doesn't like him, so this request is really petty. What Volunteer Marek doesn't want you know is that I'm criticizing an opinion piece being used as a reliable source. I never said everything published in an academic journal is not reliable, but an opinion piece that has not been peer-reviewed with a disclaimer is probably not reliable. Any claim that 80,000 people are going to die should obviously be viewed with skepticism. And this edit came right after VM said "And again, your comment basically indicates that you have no intent of following Wikipedia's policy on reliable sources (you dismiss academic and scholarly sources out of hand)." [2], so how is what I said any worse? The reset of the diffs VM provided are even more petty, so I'm not even going to respond to them. One thing is clear, VM doesn't like his views challenged.--Rusf10 (talk) 08:46, 26 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Volunteer Marek: I presented diffs in an appropriate forum. If you don't find these convincing, that's fine. But it's not aspersions, it's dispute resolution. That's a dishonest statement. This forum is not for dispute resolution, its for bringing sanctions. And you know that too because you been here many times before. If there wasn't a reason for a WP:BOOMERANG before, now there is. You should also look at the diffs provided by User:MrX below. Those are even worse than the one's you provided and several are taken out of context.--Rusf10 (talk) 17:42, 26 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Drmies:I thought you'd sit this one out, but since you're here, let me point out that your behavior here is troubling as well, especially for an admin. to start you just accused me of having a " complete lack of knowledge of how science, publishing, and peer review works" and being a "nihilist."

Threatening me "OK, so here we have another editor referring to an article in JAMA as "piece of garbage". You have disqualified yourself for this discussion, and from any future RS discussion you partake in." [3]
Personal attack on another editor (not me) "First stop gaslighting with your "don't like someone's expressed opinion". "It seems that you are expressing an opinion"--yes, I am, but it has nothing to do with politics. My opinion is that you are not capable of judging what is and what isn't a reliable source, given your comments here. "[4]
" I know Trumpers don't like science" [5]
"That the right would go post-truth, who could have thunk that two decades ago. " [6]

@NeilN: In that diff, I was trying to make the point that an opinion piece published anywhere (including a medical journal) is still an opinion piece. Perhaps I could have said it differently, but this came after Drmies attacked me. Here is his comment which I was referring to [7]. Being that he is an admin, I took that to be a threat. And now he has come here and piled on even more personal attacks. Look at the diffs I posted, Drmies behavior is clearly unacceptable for an admin.--Rusf10 (talk) 02:22, 29 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Fish and karate, NeilN, Masem, Vanamonde93, MastCell, and GoldenRing: :I appreciate that at least a few of you can see that the other side has behaved in a manner that is at least as bad. However, some of you seem to be giving the other side a pass (maybe because you agree with their viewpoint?). No one has commented yet on the diffs I provided of user:Drmies. Is there some unwritten code that admins can't criticized other admins? Again, I hate to keep repeating myself, but the "source" is an opinion piece that appears with a disclaimer and has not been peer-reviewed, something Drmies refuses to accept. Let me just say that getting something published as an opinion piece in JAMA means it's solid, it's peer-reviewed, it's been vetted more than most other pieces of writing, and that because it is an opinion piece a whole bunch of other editors besides the usual reviewers have looked it over. [8] and then again he insists that its peer-reviewed here And user:Volunteer Marek refused to accept that it was an opinion piece. That actually DOES NOT make this "an opinion piece". [9] Not an "opinion piece" [10] And I provided two sources that back up that this is an opinion piece and not peer-reviewed. [11] [12]. Of course user:MrX then tried to have Newsweek thrown out as not reliable. [13]. You cannot admonish me or topic ban me (since a couple of people have called for that) without doing the same to others. I'm glad that at least Fish and karate & Masem see both sides of this, but am troubled that some of you cannot.--Rusf10 (talk) 17:55, 29 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Drmies: Consider striking your response. First as reported by Bloomberg (last I checked, that's still a reliable source) "The essay, which was not a formal peer-reviewed study" [14]. Now either you're wrong or Bloomberg is wrong, which is it? It seems to me that you are the one who chooses to ignore reliable sources if they don't fit your POV.--Rusf10 (talk) 01:44, 30 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@NeilN:I also haven't seen any links in this request leading to sources that dispute the facts of the piece.With all due respect, there are no facts in the piece to begin with, that's why its an opinion piece. There is no detailed explanation of how they came up with the numbers, so that makes it very difficult to analyze. Part of the numbers came from a paper that the Obama administration released about how many lives were projected to be saved by new regulations on fuel economy standards [15]. For example, the number they pulled from that paper (5,500) is not a conservative estimate or even an average, it is the largest number found in the report based on a one particular "expert opinion".--Rusf10 (talk) 23:36, 30 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@SPECIFICO: I admit I could have toned down my language a bit, but I had a point. And to call for an indefinite tban over one incident is absurd, especially coming from you. You recently got off with a warning for you behavior [16] and you've been to AE far more times than me. Also, what really irritates me here is that most of the admins are giving Drmies a pass and whatever warning (or ban) I get, he clearly deserves the same.--Rusf10 (talk) 19:34, 2 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@SPECIFICO: It is not WP:ASPERSIONS when it is backuped up by evidence, the evidence being past AE requests against you for which you have received warnings. It is very hypocritical for you to call for extreme sanctions against me, when your questionable behavior has been treated very leniently.--Rusf10 (talk) 20:22, 2 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Fish and karate, NeilN, Masem, Vanamonde93, MastCell, GoldenRing, Awilley, TonyBallioni, Bishonen, and Black Kite: I'm sorry to ping everyone again, but I really want to know how any of you in good consensus are about to let USER:Drmies off scot-free when he continues to personally attack me. I don't suffer fools (well, foolishness) gladly [17] If that's not WP:BATTLEGROUND, I don't know what is.--Rusf10 (talk) 18:17, 3 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Lionelt

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Volunteer Marek banned from the Trump article? – Lionel^(talk) 08:49, 26 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by JFG

Content dispute, RfC in progress, nothing to see here. — JFG ^talk 09:55, 26 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Lionelt: VM is only restricted from editing the Donald Trump article. This thread is about Presidency of Donald Trump. — JFG ^talk 09:55, 26 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

To admins reviewing the case: it seemed to me that AE's goal is to discuss editor conduct, not litigate content disputes. But since the discussion has evolved into an analysis of the disputed source's validity, let's take a look. Most of the comments supporting the use of this source as a credible study lean on appeal to authority: "the authors are recognized experts", "Harvard is a serious university", "JAMA is a reputable journal". Yes, yes, and yes, that is not the issue. The fundamental problem that is still being debated at the ongoing RfC and at RS/N, is that some editors are conflating JAMA as a peer-reviewed journal and the JAMA Forum, which by their own disclaimer, is only a repository for opinion pieces.[18] Special congrats to the reporting editor here, Volunteer Marek, who first seemed blind to what JAMA stated,[19] then waved it away saying "it's just standard legal-ass-covering and nothing more",[20] and finally came here while the content dispute is still in full swing to get a dissenting editor sanctioned. OK, that's an opinion piece which should have some more weight than a random blog because of the reputation of the writers, however that is still not more than an opinion piece, a fact that should be taken into account according to our sourcing policies. Usage of this particular report is problematic due to the dire consequences predicted, pinned on speculation about long-term effects of the recent relaxing of various EPA regulations. On its face, the source sounds like political scaremongering, and this is probably why it has been so much disputed, both at Wikipedia and in secondary sources. In light of this controversy, I would find it particularly wrong-headed to heap sanctions on an editor who forcefully defends one view of this study, while excusing other editors who forcefully defend the other side. Civility is not great on either side of the debate, so that AE sanctions for this reason would also be unfair. Again, that is a content dispute, let it be resolved at the appropriate forums. — JFG ^talk 10:52, 30 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by SPECIFICO

As documented in the diffs VM provided, Rusf10 has openly explicitly and repeatedly denied core WP sourcing policies and gratuitously defamed living persons whose professional work was under discussion on the article talk page. This user has failed to respond to the pleadings of numerous editors who have explained this problem and why such behavior is unacceptable. This editor has already drained way too much time and attention, and despite all these good faith attempts to redirect Rusf10's behavior, he has chosen to continue and to escalate his rhetoric. This user has rejected core WP policies and Guidelines and should be TBANed from BLP and American Politics articles. SPECIFICO talk 12:32, 26 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Rusf10's insipid rebuke of Drmies is all the confirmation we need to know that he is unwilling to abide by WP norms in these articles. SPECIFICO talk 18:51, 26 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@GoldenRing: The proposed article content stated the authors' finding as such and with attribution, not in WP's voice. These are notable scholars writing in the field of their expertise. Several times on the talk page it was pointed out, this would be valid article content even if it appeared in their self-published blog. Attempts to disparage the authors as "fringe" and WP editors as dishonest POV-pushers have nothing to do with any "content dispute". BTW, I also see similar over the top interpersonal interactions in this user's history in entirely different contexts. But at any rate, with the explicit Civility Sanction on the current article, there's not much question about his violations. SPECIFICO talk 11:56, 30 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I'm puzzled as to why the only discussion among Admins now has narrowed to the detailed wording of a prospective warning when there were many Admins considering an indefinite TBAN. Even if the latter does not happen, there's a lot of daylight between that and a -- let's face it -- meaningless "warning". There's lots of disruptive behavior that might arguably be prevented by a warning. An explicit rejection of WP sourcing and content policy cannot be changed by a warning. (cannot be changed, that is, if we assume it was a good faith statement of Rusf10's understanding and belief and not a (blockable) bad faith gaming of the discussion thread. For the avoidance of doubt, I read it as the former. SPECIFICO talk 18:08, 2 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Rusf10: wrote, especially coming from you -- considering that the proposed wording of your lenient warning is already on the table, WP:ASPERSIONS in plain sight of the volunteer Admins here more or less proves the warning is a waste of their time. Bans of some duration are clearly required. Moreover I just commented above that Rusf10's incivility is the least of the issues here. Incivility might have been cured (notwithstanding the above), but denial of the 5 Pillars can't be cured when there's no indication that Rusf10 understands what a Reliable Source is, what an attributed opinion is, and our standards and practices for each. SPECIFICO talk 19:59, 2 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by MrX

As evidenced by Volunteer Marek, Rusf10 is exhibiting consensus-inhibiting behaviors described in WP:GAMING, WP:NPA, and WP:BLP. Specifically, personal attacks, filibustering, ad hominems about academic sources and similar disparagement of living people, assumptions of bad faith.

Examples

Falsely claims that Al Gore predicted that the world would end in 2016 - False claim about a living person
"... its clear that you here to push a certain viewpoint, so don't lecture me on policies." - Assumption of bad faith
"This is being pushed into the article because it fits into the narrative that Donald Trump is evil." - Assumption of bad faith and politicizing disputes
"Sorry, I have to correct you, but one of the authors of this piece of garbage was a woman" - Incendiary rhetoric
"(any more stupid questions?)" - Assumption of bad faith
"And I now know that David Cutler worked in the Clinton and Obama administrations, so he clearly has a bias." - Ad hominem

A few of such comments could be dismissed as roughhousing, but the intensity and frequency have become disruptive. In fairness, I will say that Rusf10 has made a number of constructive comments at other article talk pages.

Also, there is no basis whatsoever for sanctioning Volunteer Marek.- Mr X 🖋 15:17, 26 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Pardon me Fish and karate, but did you really just call my above examples "misrepresenting others contributions out of context" and "shockingly poor form", and suggest that I be warned for it? I'm not even sure how to react to that, but "shocking" is an adjective I might use. Please explain how any the above six diffs misrepresent what Rusf10 wrote.(Note: This is not a rhetorical request; I would like for you actually do it, as required by policy). Please also clarify, for future reference, what the expectations are for quoting a user's comments as evidence at AE. The widespread practice that I've observed is to quote the offending sentence or phrase, and link with a diff to the full comments (which, by the way, also shows the full context). In fact, there is a 500 word limit at AE, so how exactly would that work? Should entire conversations be copy pasted here? I can do that now if that would help you to gain clarity about where sanctions should be applied. Please advise. - Mr X 🖋 11:54, 29 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

No Rusf10, I did not try to "have Newsweek thrown out as not reliable." I said "I wouldn't put too much stock in what Newsweek writes. It used to be a somewhat reputable publication, but not so much now", and I provided some evidence. I never dismissed it entirely. It's generally fine to use Newsweek (in fact I did yesterday), but if they are the only source reporting something, I would proceed cautiously. - Mr X 🖋 18:30, 29 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Yes Fish and karate, referring to a scholar's published work as garbage, when multiple editors are explaining why the work is valued, most definitely qualifies as incendiary rhetoric. If you plan to shoot the messenger by giving me a logged warning (which is an admin action), I would fully expect for you to explain your reasoning and you should expect a full appeal. - Mr X 🖋 21:07, 29 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Drmies

I'm just baffled by some editors' opinions which betray a complete lack of knowledge of how science, publishing, and peer review works. That someone could think that an opinion piece in JAMA wouldn't be vetted is amazing to me, and that this would be equivalent to "something on the internet" is ... well. So in that sense, given that kind of lack of understanding, it may well be a good idea to ban them from sensitive areas. I just looked at all the opposes in the discussion, and one or two make the argument that it's UNDUE right now (User:Markbassett argued along those lines)--that's valid. What is different for this editor is not just the empty argument (they're not the only one) but also sort of nihilism which in the end undercuts RS, for starters. Drmies (talk) 16:35, 26 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I see that Rusf still maintains that something marked "opinion" in a peer-reviewed journal is not peer reviewed. As in the famous presidential "both sides" remark, there is no "both sides" here: false equivalency. Reasonable people can disagree on how to weight the particular article (written by two scientists and published in a scientific journal), of course, but it is not reasonable to disregard basic facts. Perhaps the editor could stop pinging me until they learned to sing a different song. Drmies (talk) 01:12, 30 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Rusf10, that the article didn't present the results of a peer-reviewed study does not mean the article itself was not a peer-reviewed article. Seriously, seriously, you are still proposing that JAMA publishes something without peer-reviewing it. Das crazy. The journals I work for don't even fart without an editorial meeting, and none of those rise to the stature of JAMA. For the audience who may not be familiar with academic peer-review--nothing gets published in one of those journals without being peer-reviewed. That includes everything: articles, studies, opinions, bibliographies, reports on academic activity, book reviews--nothing. I'm sure the president's address is peer-reviewed. Drmies (talk) 01:49, 30 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
GoldenRing, yes. First of all this "within a few hours of the journal receiving it"--your link points at coverage of the 2012 Presidential Campaign. If you're suggesting that that editorial commentary on how JAMA was covering the 2012 campaign means that "all pieces in the JAMA forum are run within hours of reception" then I think you're seriously wrong. Second, you seem to reinforce what some parties here say too: if it's not a formal peer-reviewed study, if it's opinion, if it's on a forum (and I think you throw in "blog" as a loaded term), then it's a peer-reviewed article and there's no editorial oversight. Again--as if there is nothing in between some blog and "a gold-standard reliable secondary source" (I have never argued that this one meets a gold standard.) So, if you are giving me the option of being either incompetent or "glaringly deceptive", I'll choose to just ignore that, and I'll rather listen to and learn from editors with tons of article space edits, content editors who have written articles, who have experience with using and judging sources. Drmies (talk) 17:50, 30 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I'm cheered by the fact that any warning for me will come from one individual administrator, as matters currently stand. I hope that editors who know me a bit know that I value only the BLP more than I value RS (and that I edit and administer in that way regardless of the article subject), that I don't make a habit of camping out on political articles, and that I certainly don't try to turn things into a battleground; it is true, of course, that I don't suffer fools (well, foolishness) gladly. If that one admin wants to admonish me for that, so be it. Drmies (talk) 16:28, 3 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by SMcCandlish

Volunteer Marek says, 'I ... object to the proposition that this academic source is in any way comparable to "opinion pieces" published as editorials in newspapers and magazines.' I looked and it is not an academic work. It's an opinion piece by academics published in the section for those in a journal. Just go read it. It is absolutely, positively an op-ed, not a science paper. The fallacy "It's in JAMA ergo it's a high-quality piece of academic research" is the same fallacy as "It's in The New York Times so it must be high-quality, secondary journalism." Publications have more than one kind of material, and an op-ed is an op-ed, an ad is an ad, a book review is a book review, and an advice column is an advice column (hint: all primary, not secondary). That an opinion piece in JAMA was vetted is immaterial; it's still opinion. NYT op-eds are subject to editorial review, too. The problem is the nature and purpose of the work. It's the kind of thing we'd use as "According to an op-ed by [Whoever], ...", iff the quotee was eminent and quoting their view was relevant and WP:DUE. Unlike some well-researched NYT op-eds I've seen, this one does not provide citations for the potentially secondary factual claims it makes, so we can't really evaluate them. It may be high-quality, but it's still primary.

Both editors at the center of this are generally constructive. I'm inclined to stay out of the inter-editorial personality clash (the more recent-ish range of the WP:ARBAP2 topic area is a cesspool). I noticed at ARCA today that ArbCom is saying "Either have AE deal with this case-by-case, or open ARBAP3", and some parties lean toward the latter. I'm not sure there's much point in AE hearing mini-cases like this in the interim, but that's up to you all. This ultimately boiling down to treating an op-ed as if it were secondary science sourcing can be addressed head-on, however. It's a fundamental misunderstanding of our sourcing policies and guidelines. It's not constructive to try to bend our policies to say what they don't and fire up a huge pissing contest in the process. Just follow the damned policies.

I think this may relate to a blind spot among the WP:MEDRS crowd more than to ARPAP2. It's a guideline subject to near-total control by a handful of editors and never subjected to thorough examination by the community. There's a serious conflict with policy in it which I've tried to address several times, and it directly relates to this matter: a belief that primary sources (even press releases and position statements) by respected medical publishers transmogrify somehow into "ideal" secondary sourcing. In a post today [21] at WP:VPPOL in a thread largely about ARBAP2, I explicated this in some detail – starting at "Even MEDRS has an error in it in this regard ..."). Update: Moved to essay page: WP:FMSP#MEDRS. I think this is worth RfCing, because the problems it's causing are clearly spreading from medical articles to other topics like politics.
— SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 19:39, 29 June 2018 (UTC); updated: 06:31, 30 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Re Geogene's statement below: "Gun nut" operates exactly like the N-word and dyke: it's only non-pejorative when used between those to whom it pertains, a re-claimed epithet turned into an insider slang subcultural endonym. In short: if you're not a gun nut talking with other gun nuts, using "gun not" is always a pejorative. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 06:22, 4 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Kingsindian

This is mostly a content dispute. I fail to see how this behaviour rises to the level of sanctions.

Rusf10 responded to an RfC and argued about the inclusion (or not) of an analysis by David Cutler. I mostly see good-faith arguments on the talk page by Rusf10. There is little or no disruption. The purpose of an RfC is to invite comments by a broad cross-section of people. This will necessarily include badly argued or incorrect comments.

Claiming that a person X "hates Trump" is not ideal and Rusf10 should refrain from saying that. However, it's rather a stretch to claim that this claim is a BLP violation. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 13:03, 30 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

NeilN's comments are extremely strange and very bad. There is nothing wrong with a Wikipedia editor describing a piece of analysis as "garbage". That is clearly a personal opinion, and people are allowed to have opinions. Denigrating some source is not a BLP violation; I have denigrated plenty of sources in my own editing on Wikipedia. One has to allow a certain bit of leeway to discuss the reliability and due weight of a source during discussions.

Here's the basic point. The piece is an informal analysis by an expert in the field, who also happened to serve in the administrations of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. Both things are true: he's an expert, and he is associated with past Democratic administrations. Thus, this should be seen as an intervention by a "public intellectual" on an important matter. That does not mean that the estimate is automatically wrong (indeed, I support inclusion of the material). But it is not illegitimate to discuss the provenance of the source during an RfC discussions, nor is it illegitimate to say that estimates of this kind are often rather dubious. Prediction is hard, see Expert Political Judgement for instance.

Personal opinions about all sorts of things are flying on the talk page. For instance, to take a very simple example: Drmies writes I know Trumpers don't like science, just below an "Oppose" vote. This is, to put it mildly, rather inflammatory, not to mention a snide personal attack. I know American politics is rather ugly nowadays, but come on.

Here's the main point: discussing the provenance and reliability of a source is fair game, and some leeway should be allowed on the talk page. The focus should be on disruption; is Rufus10 edit-warring or otherwise disrupting the process? I don't see any evidence of the latter. Rather, I see good-faith (though mistaken, in my view) arguments on the talk page. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 23:50, 30 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by MjolnirPants

@GoldenRing:"Peer review", like almost every other jargon term, has two distinct meanings. The first is a formal system of review by properly credentialed experts prior to publication as an article in a scientific or scholarly journal, which usually occurs in a well-defined system, with rules and procedures. The second is that someone who knows what they're talking about read it and was okay with publishing it. This piece certainly meets the second definition, and I'll eat my shoe if anyone can prove otherwise. JAMA forums and the associated blog is not a Forbes site, where any popular enough writer can write about whatever they want. Hell, their about us page explicitly states that "we have assembled a team of leading scholars" to write the articles that appear therein, and I've yet to see an article on that site that isn't on a subject the author has immaculate credentials in. While these articles are subject to the usual disclaimers ("the opinions herein are those of the authors...," the same disclaimers that cover a huge swathe of our sources), JAMA clearly directed an effort to produce these articles. They were subject to editorial oversight. Let me reiterate that last, with some relevant details pointed out: They were subject to the editorial oversight of one of the most well-respected publishers of scientific literature in the world. To refer to that as "peer-reviewed" in an offhand way is unusual, but hardly without precedent, and not even close to unjustifiable. Hell, with the phrase "Let me just say that..." Drmies was explicitly laying that out as a heuristic; he wasn't saying "this article was peer reviewed" (which is defensibly true, as I just pointed out) but "you can think of this article as peer-reviewed, for all intents and purposes."

In light of that, your comments about Drmies look like a failure to AGF at best, and a blatant personal attack at worst. I'm going to give you the same advice I frequently give to brand new editors, because it seems you need it: don't be afraid to ask for clarification if someone says something confusing or inexplicable. A strawman is a strawman, whether you built it on purpose or not. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 04:45, 1 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Dlthewave

We can certainly discuss the provenance of the source, and Rusf10 makes a reasonable point regarding peer review, but this is not how we discuss sources. The author of this opinion piece fits all the requirements: he's a professor, he's liberal, he's worked in Democratic administration, he hates Donald Trump. And its was published in an academic journal. This argument is not policy-based, yet Rusf10 continues to bring up these points even after they are rejected by other editors. This type of activity obstructs the consensus-building process and is a tremendous time sink. Worse yet, it creates a toxic environment that drives good-faith editors away from the areas where they are most needed. I would also remind admins that when an editor disrupts a discussion by filibustering or framing it as a content dispute, they will often continue this behavior at AE. The success rate of this tactic is embarrassingly high. Rusf10's statement exceeds 1000 words, so it may be time to enforce the word count limit. Editors should be able to present their side of the argument but this does not necessarily mean that they may respond to others' comments. –dlthewave ☎ 05:01, 1 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Seraphim System

I don't think the JAMA article is the greatest source for the statement Based on the regulatory impact analysis done by the EPA when the rule was implemented (as well as otheranalyses), repealing the rule would lead to an estimated 36 000 deaths each decade and nearly 630 000 cases of respiratory infection in children alone. or cost the lives of over 80 000 US residents per decade and lead to respiratory problems for many more than 1 million people." - I think the two authors are qualified based on their backgrounds and field of expertise, but the statement itself is based on 3 sources and it lacks context—it doesn't help that the EDF study is even more problematic. On its face, this does not seem like it would be due for inclusion, but whether it is secondary or primary for the 80,000 figure could be argued either way. I wouldn't even say this is an "opinion" piece in the usual sense. We have particular standards for "isolated studies", even for peer-reviewed studies that explain their methodology and analysis in depth - which I think is non-optional for this type of content, and I can understand why someone would object as most of these underlying sources would benefit from a more detailed secondary analysis then just accepting at face value "based on the regulatory impact statement" ... there must be hundreds of studies out there. But is a sanction necessary here? It just seems like this whole thing has gotten blown out of proportion. Seraphim System ^(talk) 06:47, 1 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Beyond My Ken

This concerns me:

The author of this opinion piece fits all the requirements: he's a professor, he's liberal, he's worked in Democratic administration, he hates Donald Trump

I'm old enough to have lived through several periods of strong partisan divisions in this country, and I recognize that we're living through one of them now, perhaps the deepest one in many decades, but is concerns me that a Wikipedia editor would believe that simply because someone worked in some capacity in a Presidential administration, that automatically makes that person a die-hard Democrat, or Republican, or a liberal, or a conservative, to the extent that it totally overwhelms the credentials that got them the position in the first place.

Yes, there are political hacks in all administrations, and some have more than others, but exceedingly few people in this country ever get called upon to work for the White House, and it's disheartening to think that any Wikipedia editor would believe that simply because someone answered that call to duty, they automatically chucked their learning, knowledge, good sense or morality out the window and became a blind automaton enslaved by Party dicta. Possibly that does happen to some who didn;t start out that way, but it can't (and shouldn't) be assumed that it happens to everyone, or even most of them. Just as we evaluate every source for reliability, each instance should be taken on an individual basis, determined by what is known about the person and their qualifications.

To reject the views of apparently well-qualified people simply because of the assumption of bad faith based on their service in a Presidential administration or the like is simply wrong and should have no part in any discussion here on Wikipedia, where we should be (but aren't, unfortunately) above that sort of thing.

So, in my opinion, if anything needs to come from this, a warning to Rusf10 that that kind of behavior is not acceptable here is that thing. Whether their other behavior is worthy of sanctioning, I have no opinion on, not having parsed the evidence sufficiently. Beyond My Ken (talk) 07:54, 1 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Sir Joseph

I echo everything Kingsindian said. I was hesitant to post anything, but I do feel that what KI said is what I wanted to say, among other stuff. I especially echo his part about Drmies' comment regarding Trumpers and about the "garbage" opinion, Sir Joseph ^(talk) 20:13, 2 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Pudeo

Since the conduct of Drmies is being discussed as well, I was put off by his response to another editor with "I hear this all the time from gun nuts" at AR-15 style rifle (June 3 2018) Gun control is another topic covered by sanctions. GoldenRing is right here. --Pudeo (talk) 23:49, 3 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Geogene

"Gun nut" is a frequently used colloquialism, not a pejorative. I also think that digging an entire month into Drmies' edit history, and then complaining about something they said in a completely separate DS area, is unseemly. Geogene (talk) 00:27, 4 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by (username)

Result concerning Rusf10

This section is to be edited only by uninvolved administrators. Comments by others will be moved to the sections above.

Definitely no action to take here, this is a nonsense. I'm inclined to wonder whether VM's Donald Trump topic ban needs to be broadened a little bit to cover closely-related articles. I would note he has an arbitration sanction which states he is "strongly warned against casting general aspersions against editors who [he sees] as "pro-Trump"." Fish+Karate 11:18, 26 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I would note that MrX's suggesting this (read it in context with the post to which it's replying) is "incendiary rhetoric" is very, very unfair. @Vanamonde93: My thoughts are that this is a quibble over whether or not a source is reliable or not between two very stubborn people who have opposing views on the matter. What it is not is something that should result in a sanction. I can see Rusf10's point, in that the source in question, although it has been published in a journal, is an opinion piece on an environmental issue written by two social scientists which was not peer-reviewed (as per this) so what it contains ought not to be taken as a 100% stone cold fact and ought not to be granted the same level of credibility as a proper, peer-reviewed, scientific study. So I do think in this instance Rusf10 was not acting from an incorrect starting point. I can see Volunteer Marek's point, in that the approach Rusf10 is taking is rather bulldozery and argumentative. I would love for them both to be able to work out the issue and then leave each other alone. Wikipedia has tens of thousands of editors and you don't need to fight every battle. And more to the point, you don't need to see them as battles in the first place. Fish+Karate 08:38, 29 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@MrX: While I am not obliged to justify my statement as per the link you provided, as they are not an administrative action, I will do so anyway, but I’m on my phone so that’ll have to wait til Monday now as it’ll take forever this way. In short though if you honestly, truly think “incendiary rhetoric” is a reasonable summary of a mild and polite correction then I don’t think you’ll accept anything I say. Fish+Karate 19:56, 29 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Fish and karate: I'm actually not so bothered by the "not everything in journals is reliable" diff. Questioning a source based on the quality of the publication is necessary. Questioning a source based on partisanship isn't, because WP:NPOV and WP:RS make no allowance for supposed partisanship. I am more bothered by stuff like this, together with persistent assumptions of bad faith. That said, I'm not in favor of sanctions either. I would suggest a warning, which I'll try to put together below. Vanamonde (talk) 09:08, 29 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Vanamonde93: I think a warning (possibly to both parties) around combative attitudes is reasonable. Fish+Karate 09:15, 29 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@NeilN: I would agree with most of what Rusf10 said in that diff. It's not right to assume everything published in every journal is the gospel truth, particularly if the work in question is explicitly described as an opinion piece. I wouldn't agree with his first sentence, but I can see what he's trying to say overall, albeit not particularly collegiately. Fish+Karate 08:42, 29 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I would caution Rusf10 against expressing his personal views about the work of living people so forcefully (diff 1) and to take care when summarizing other editors' views (diff 2). Diff 2 is particularly concerning because if Rusf10 feels that's an accurate view of Drmies' position then I have to question if they are able to participate productively in this area which often requires the careful reading and summarizing of source material. No action against VM. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 14:43, 26 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Rusf10, do you have any comment on this diff? --NeilN ^{talk to me} 01:26, 29 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Too many cases have passed by AE /ArbCom where editors have expressed negative opinions of BLPs but these simply go as non-actions within these , as 1) its a problem through WP, there's no reason to single out any one person unless we're going to go full bore across all editors, which would hit a lot of established editors, and 2) most of the time, it's clear these are opinions and not factual claims, to any casual reader. I agree that all editors should be asked to tone down any personal feelings they have towards BLPs as per NeilN above, and to try to argue for inclusion or omission of BLP material without getting into their personal opinions of said BLP. It helps to avoid the BLP line and can reduce the battleground mentality editors seem to have in these areas. --Masem (t) 15:42, 26 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
While Rusf10's commentary on talk pages is far from ideal (stuff like this being a case in point), I don't see a need to sanction them from a BLP perspective, though I would agree with NeilN that a caution is in order. I am far more concerned at their misunderstanding of NPOV. They seem to be under the impression that neutrality has something to do with finding an arbitrary midpoint between two arbitrarily divided political positions in one country; which has nothing to do with how Wikipedia defines neutrality. We define NPOV in terms of significant viewpoints in reliable secondary sources. Now Rusf10 is welcome to disagree with that definition, but they are still required to edit within it, and their commentary about academic publishing suggests that they may not be able to do so. This problem goes deep, and is not something that can be sorted out by a block or a restricted topic-ban; and I'm not keen on imposing a sweeping t-ban right off the bat. So, I would support a strongly worded warning, with the expectation that further evidence of misunderstanding NPOV and our concept of reliable sources may result in a wide topic-ban. There's also the issue of their continued assumptions of bad faith. Since this request has been open for a while: @Fish and karate, NeilN, and Masem: what are your thoughts? Vanamonde (talk) 05:10, 29 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Without opening up that discussion here, that stance on NPOV is very much debatable and has been at the center of many many disputes for at least 4+ years, and remains an issue (see , for example, this recent VPP discussion. So no, we cannot fault them on how they view NPOV; where we can find fault if there is any here is in aspects of related to WP:TE or WP:IDHT behavior if the talk page consensus has come down one way or another that we can talk some type of action against. --Masem (t) 05:26, 29 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Masem: Feel free to ignore my definition of what NPOV is not; but my statement of what it is is from the policy, nearly word for word, and if we're unwilling to enforce that we have a problem. Vanamonde (talk) 05:41, 29 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Let me restart: while that is what NPOV says, that wording is a point of contention for 4+ years, moreso in the last two (that link one example of considering what's wrong with NPOV that could be addressed) Rusf10's free to question the particular application of NPOV in a contentious area (keeping in mind that even policies are not absolute), but has to avoid the TE/IDHT in the same discussions if a consensus had previously been reached about how NPOV applies. --Masem (t) 05:58, 29 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, Masem, while I might agree with you that the wording of NPOV has been contentious and that Rusf10 is free to question it, they should not be free to question it in particular applications of the policy. Just for our own sanity, we can't have editors relitigating the meaning of the policy every time there is an RfC on the use of a particular source and to do so is nakedly disruptive. If Rusf10 wants to change the policy, then there are venues available to try to do so and they should use them. So, to the degree that this is a dispute about the meaning of NPOV, Rusf10 should have the policy explained to them and be warned that fighting over the text of policy on article talk pages is disruptive and could lead to sanctions.
For the rest of it, I read through the discussion a few days ago (a little after this complaint was filed) and haven't looked at it since; it struck me then as a simple dispute over whether a source should be regarded as a reliable. If that is still in dispute, it is a straightforward matter for RSN to decide. I don't see the BLP portion of this complaint as actionable; that same statement has me far more worried that Rusf10 is treating the dispute as a battleground - David Cutler "fits all the requirements," by which I think he means all the requirements for certain editors to want the material included. I'm not in favour of sanctions yet, but if Rusf10 continues down this path they will come. GoldenRing (talk) 07:21, 29 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Precisely. You don't have to agree with the policy (I dislike parts of it myself), but if you want to change it, VPP is thataway. In all specific cases, you've to follow it as written. Vanamonde (talk) 07:56, 29 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Fish and karate, Masem, GoldenRing, and NeilN: Apologies for the many pings What do you think of the following: "Rusf10 is warned not to assume bad faith in other editors and not to treat Wikipedia as a battleground, and is reminded that disagreements with policy should be brought to the community rather than litigated on article talk pages." Vanamonde (talk) 09:47, 29 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I'm ok with that in and of itself but would change "warned" to "reminded" (let's not assume bad faith ourselves). It is missing any reference to the other party, though, who should be trouted for bringing this bunkum to ARE in the first place, and I'd be inclined to warn MrX about misrepresenting others contributions out of context, which is shockingly poor form. Fish+Karate 10:02, 29 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Fish and karate: I'm unimpressed with Marek's language (as I've frequently told him) but I was involved in a content dispute with him over the 1973 Chilean coup some three years ago, and though it makes not the slightest difference to my judgement here I will stick to the letter of the law and not comment on sanctions with respect to him. I haven't reviewed Mr. X's conduct in detail yet, but I will do so, and if you wish to propose something in the meantime please go ahead. Vanamonde (talk) 10:07, 29 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Fine with the strongly worded warning to Rusf10, but I do think a caution to all editors involved to turn down the battleground mentality is needed. As I mentioned above, this seems to single out one bad actor among several simply because they have a certain ideological stance compared to the others. --Masem (t) 13:31, 29 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I am almost prepared to give Rusf10 a topic ban here over their JAMA comments. If you are calling something published in a very solid source (as determined by other Wikipedia editors - not me) "garbage" you'd better have other solid sources that detail why that piece is garbage, and not just your own personal opinion. That is blatant POV editing. I agree with Vanamonde93 and GoldenRing in saying that admins uphold written policy as it stands. I disagree with Fish and karate that VM deserves any warning. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 13:36, 29 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I'm with NeilN; the JAMA comments by Rusf are substandard enough that I'd consider sanctions on those grounds. This diff alone encapsulates an impressive volume of fallacies and misunderstandings of policy, aggravated by the aggressive ignorance he's displayed in the thread in question. Just in that one diff:

"Drmies, is under the false impression that everything published in an academic journal must be true..."... Drmies neither said nor implied any such thing; this is a bad-faith misrepresentation of an opponent's position.
"... which is really no more intelligent than saying "I read it on the internet, it must be true". Advocating for JAMA as a reliable source (which it is) is quite different from claiming anything on the Internet must be true. This is, again, a bad-faith misrepresentation. It also indicates a deep misunderstanding of policy; one fundamental determinant of reliability is the venue in which a claim is published. Rusf chooses to ignore this, and to pretend that it makes no difference with regard to reliability whether a source is published in JAMA or on a random website.
"BTW, I forgot to mention that I believe the guy who wrote this is an economist, not a environmental scientist, which gives him even less creditably" [sic]. The piece in question was written by two people, not one "guy". One of the two authors is a statistician who specializes in climate change and health policy. It's somewhat ignorant to suggest that an economist is unsuited to comment on the impact of policy changes on measurable outcomes (that is, after all, one key aspect of economics), but it's worse to misrepresent the article's authorship in an attempt to undermine it.

More generally, Rusf's tone in this entire thread is aggressively partisan and displays either ignorance of, or contempt for, basic site policy on sourcing. I don't doubt that there are other offenders in the topic area, and identifying and handling Rusf's editing doesn't give them a pass. But this is obviously someone whose input in the topic area is a massive net-negative in terms of both tone and content, and this is exactly the sort of behavior that we need less of. Discretionary sanctions exist to deal with this kind of thing. Like NeilN, I would favor a topic ban, although I recognize that I'm in the minority. At a minimum, it should be made clear to Rusf that his behavior isn't appropriate and that, if it continues, a topic ban will result. MastCell ^Talk 15:11, 29 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
The latest response by Rusf10 is not encouraging. Paraphrasing what I said on my talk page, Rusf10 is free to argue about the appropriateness of a source without stating a piece he personally disagrees with is garbage and a fringe theory and providing no evidence. That is POV editing (similar to when an Indian editor dismisses out of hand all works by Pakistani scholars) and that kind of editing will get you topic banned. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 19:11, 29 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I read the "Survey" section at this revision. It's really not good. Basically, Rusf10 decides that a source which backs a position he doesn't like isn't reliable, despite a large number of people pointing out its provenance; then decides that one of the scientists involved is biased because of a poisition they previously held, calls the source (in the JAMA, no less) "a piece of garbage" - and then baldly states "I just proved the source is not creditable", despite having done absolutely nothing of the sort. I'm with MastCell and NeilN here. Topic ban. Black Kite (talk) 20:01, 29 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I'm for a topic ban also. A contentious ARCA was just closed,[22] where several people asked for a more forceful use of discretionary sanctions at AE for the "shit-show" that is the American Politics area — or, failing that, for a whole new arbitration case, American Polics 3, to clean it up. I quote Tryptofish, with italics seeming to express some despair: "I cannot emphasize strongly enough how the present situation has arisen through a failure of AE. ... DS do not mean take a minimalist approach. The entire point of ArbCom issuing DS in a topic area is to empower admins to act quickly and decisively in a topic area where all other forms of dispute resolution have failed. Admins: when DS exist, your hands are not tied...The one way we can avoid an AP3 case is for AE admins to continue to hand out topic bans in AP2." I agree, and the case of Rufs10 is a case in point, per the examples given by MastCell, Neil, and Black Kite. Warnings for editors who behave like this are pretty useless in my experience. Bishonen | talk 07:44, 30 June 2018 (UTC).[reply]
@Bishonen: I find myself in the odd position of disagreeing with you, but hear me out, if you will. I agree completely that we need more forceful application of DS. That said, I don't think we should jump to levying sanctions without previous warning. I think it's fairly reasonable to say that a user should receive a warning about sanctionable behavior from neutral admins, and a sanction only if they fail to heed the warning. Particularly in situations like this, where we don't have bright-line policy violations, only indications that they may not take a policy seriously enough. Vanamonde (talk) 12:28, 30 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
My difficulty with all this is that I do think Rusf10 has at least a bit of a point about that source. Combatively stated and over-the-top, yes, but fundamentally he has a point, and I'm disappointed that respected names who really should know better are here arguing that JAMA forum should be treated as a gold-standard reliable secondary source, as though it was part of JAMA's print output, and to my mind this is equally a failure to understand our sourcing policies. The piece is published by a recognised expert and shouldn't be treated te same as anything you read on the internet. But according to JAMA, their forum is a blog that presents opinion articles, only published online separately to the journal content, that was founded to give opinions on political events in the run-up to the 2012 US presidential election. The articles are "lightly edited" and are expected to be published "within hours of receiving them." In that light, I take a particularly dim view of Drmies, who has said, it is now blatantly obvious you don't understand how this works ... it's hard for me to gauge the depths of your ignorance of the academic publication process ... Let me just say that getting something published as an opinion piece in JAMA means it's solid, it's peer-reviewed, it's been vetted more than most other pieces of writing, and that because it is an opinion piece a whole bunch of other editors besides the usual reviewers have looked it over. He has rather hammered this point home, too, describing other editors as being like watching a bunch of school kids discuss quantum mechanics. I just can't see how his claims about the nature of the article can possibly be true, given what JAMA themselves say about it. Are we to believe that "it's peer-reviewed, it's been vetted more than most other pieces of writing, and that because it is an opinion piece a whole bunch of other editors besides the usual reviewers have looked it over" ... within a few hours of the journal receiving it? Either Drmies is flat-out wrong and has put their foot in their mouth in no uncertain terms or, if we are to believe what they say about their own expertise in the field of academic publishing, they are being deliberately deceptive. User:Drmies, have I misunderstood something here? Can you explain the glaring discrepancy between what you say about this publication and what the publication itself says about it? GoldenRing (talk) 10:16, 30 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@GoldenRing: Rusf10's implicit assertion is that JAMA would publish garbage and fringe theories in this venue. Do you think Bob from Baltimore's treatise on how putting fluoride in the water is a government conspiracy to control our brains would be published here? Or would JAMA's editorial board exercise discretion? I also haven't seen any links in this request leading to sources that dispute the facts of the piece. Looking at the RFC, I see the proposed wording did not present the numbers in Wikipedia's voice and explicitly attributed them to an analysis by two authors. The editors who supported inclusion of the text may have overstated their case, conflating editorial review and discretion with peer review, but that is not remotely equivalent to writing off the analysis as garbage and fringe theory based on no evidence. A logged warning to Rusf10 is the least we can do here. I know I will be topic banning Rusf10, logged warning or no, if similar behavior occurs in the future. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 18:07, 30 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

It's an entirely mainstream view. Every other Western government accepts and uses exactly this kind of estimate, but in the GOP these days it's "scientific heresy".Which is of course an oxymoron. Guy (Help!) 22:18, 30 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@NeilN: No, I don't think that Rusf10 has behaved well here and I'm still in two minds about the appropriate response; I've argued above that a strong warning is in order and realistically that is probably the minimum that should be levied. My problem is that Rusf10 (and others, notably PackMecEng) originally pointed out that the piece is an opinion piece and not subject to a peer review process; they were rather viciously belittled for being so "ignorant" about how the academic publishing process works when in fact they were exactly right. That doesn't excuse Rusf10 escalating the rhetoric further; but honestly I think telling an editor "it's hard for me to gauge the depths of your ignorance" and comparing them to an old lady who glues pictures to the wall thinking it's facebook is a pretty incendiary thing to say and I'm not surprised that Rusf10 responded in the way they did. If Drmies was right about the nature of the source, then he might have had a sliver of a point; when he was largely wrong about the nature of the source, from such an established editor such uncollegial snark is absolutely inexcusable. Or so I think, at any rate. GoldenRing (talk) 11:57, 1 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Drmies: What??? The piece I linked was the article, published in JAMA by JAMA's editors, where they launched JAMA Forum and describe its purpose and how it works. Yes, it was launched in the context of the 2012 election; I'm not sure how you go from there to "it's irrelevant." What you said about the source in question was, "it's solid, it's peer-reviewed, it's been vetted more than most other pieces of writing, and that because it is an opinion piece a whole bunch of other editors besides the usual reviewers have looked it over" and made repeated personal attacks on other editors who disagreed with you (diffed above). I'll ask you again: how do you reconcile what you said about the source with how the editors of JAMA describe JAMA Forum as working? Could you, just possibly, be wrong, and owe a few editors an apology? GoldenRing (talk) 08:15, 1 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I have spent some time today reviewing the RfC thread where all this happened. I have a few thoughts on this. The proposed wording, in my opinion, did slightly overstate the case in that it was written as if there had been a peer-reviewed study. I didn't notice anybody overtly claiming the study was formally peer-reviewed, but I can see how Rusf would have thought that people were thinking that. So it was fair game for them to point out that it was was an opinion piece, not a peer-reviewed study. Had they stopped at that we wouldn't be here. Unfortunately the rest of their contributions to the thread put them decidedly in "net-negative" territory and make me question whether someone who so casually equates scientists with cable news "pundits" or who suggests that academic journals are about as true as anything you happen to read on the internet, can be trusted to follow our sourcing policies. On top of that there was the bludgeoning and strawman arguments and the attacks on other editors. I think a logged warning is an absolute minimum, but I don't know what it should say, and I don't know that it will do any good anyway, because I don't think Rusf understands what the problem is. ~Awilley (talk) 04:13, 1 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Proposed wording of warning: "Rusf10 is warned against using purely personal opinion when assessing the quality of sources used in the area under discretionary sanctions. Specifically, when calling a source fringe theory or similar, and that source appears in a publication generally held reliable by Wikipedia editors, Rusf10 must provide links to other reliable sources that explicitly share the same assessment about the source. Rusf10 is also warned to make sure their summaries of other editors' views about sources are accurate." --NeilN ^{talk to me} 12:04, 1 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@NeilN: Two points; I'm not too happy about the statement about fringe sources, because such sources are very rarely dealt with by mainstream sources (because they are fringe) and therefore trying to prove a source to be a fringe source is often an attempt to prove a negative. Second, I do think the warning should include assumptions of bad faith on Rusf10's part. Vanamonde (talk) 12:12, 1 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Vanamonde93: What wording would you suggest to warn Rusf10 against dismissing sources appearing in reliable publications as garbage with no evidence to back up their assessment? --NeilN ^{talk to me} 12:44, 1 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@NeilN: I think the first part of what you proposed is just fine: I'd suggest phrasing it as "Rusf10 is warned against using purely personal opinion in place of policy-based argument when assessing the quality of sources." Vanamonde (talk) 12:54, 1 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Vanamonde93: That sounds all right to me. The only little quibble I have is that not all valid reasons for objecting to a source are listed in policy but admins can use their judgment if the behavior occurs again. Any suggestions for the assuming bad faith warning? --NeilN ^{talk to me} 15:01, 2 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I'd also like to see something about not escalating disputes; is there anything wrong with "warned to assume good faith, work collegially and not to escalate disputes?" It's generic, but covers the bases. GoldenRing (talk) 15:33, 2 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

That sounds like it would be covered by a warning to not engage in WP:BATTLEGROUND behavior. ~Awilley (talk) 15:36, 2 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

"Rusf10 is warned against using purely personal opinion in place of policy-based argument when assessing the quality of sources. They are also warned against engaging against engaging in WP:BATTLEGROUND behavior." GoldenRing, any warning for Drmies? --NeilN ^{talk to me} 20:18, 2 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@NeilN: That sounds good to me, though I would add "...and assuming bad faith in other editors." Vanamonde (talk) 03:49, 3 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding Rusf10, that works at a pinch. I think what's wrong with their editing has been hashed out pretty thoroughly here and if they don't change it's going to escalate pretty quickly. And yes, I think Drmies should likewise be warned against battleground editing - in particular belittling other editors. GoldenRing (talk) 09:06, 3 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I will do the logged warning for Rusf10. GoldenRing, whether or not to log a warning for Drmies is up to you. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 12:43, 3 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Works for me. I would object to the warning for Drmies. Their tone near the end wasn't ideal but doesn't rise to needing a logged warning in my opinion. Also I don't see anything approaching a consensus for warning Drmies in this section. In fact I can only find one admin (GoldenRing) who who specifically took issue with Drmies. ~Awilley (talk) 15:50, 3 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I saw this on Drmies’ talk, so I came to see what the fuss was about. He’s not misrepresenting anything: he’s saying that peer-reviewed journals have a reputation to protect and that while an opinion piece may not rise to the level of an academic article, they aren’t going to simply allow some crazy person to publish absolute nonsense. There is a gradient between blogs from Randy in Boise and the opinions of academics who have published in peer-reviewed journals that are hosted by a very prestigious journal, even if not subject to formal peer-review (see WP:SPS, which this isn’t, but it makes the central point pretty clear.) Yes, these are opinions and they should be reported as such and not in Wikipedia’s voice, but a warning to Drmies here would be highly inappropriate. TonyBallioni (talk) 16:14, 3 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Rusf10, the admins here don't see Drmies' posts as problematic as yours. Simple as that. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 20:34, 3 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Rusf10, I've never issued a sanction or formal warning to anyone for saying that they don't suffer foolishness gladly, and I'm not planning to start now. More generally, I agree with Tony's and Neil's comments directly above mine. The problem here is that you took a source that obviously met reliability criteria and tried, aggressively and at length, to disqualify it as unreliable, using arguments grounded in partisanship and your personal distrust of scholarly work in general. If you don't understand why this sort of behavior is destructive, then a warning is pointless and a topic ban is the more appropriate sanction. MastCell ^Talk 00:38, 4 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Icewhiz

This request may be declined without further action if insufficient or unclear information is provided in the "Request" section below.
Requests may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs (not counting required information), except by permission of a reviewing administrator.

Request concerning Icewhiz

User who is submitting this request for enforcement: MyMoloboaccount (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) 22:49, 3 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

User against whom enforcement is requested: Icewhiz (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
Search CT alerts: in user talk history • in system log

Sanction or remedy to be enforced: Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Eastern Europe#Standard discretionary sanctions.Not complying with Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines in regards to Wikipedia:Do not create hoaxes, Wikipedia:Verifiability, Wikipedia:Neutral point of view, and Wikipedia:Civility - entering information citing a source, which does not appear in the source, falsely claiming about a source.Icewhiz has engaged in falsification of sources, constant edit warring, ethnic based insults and remarks, and presenting the most tendentious and inflammatory remarks aiming at provoking other editors, as well as edits that can't be seen as anything other but attempts to stir up conflict and fights with other editors.

Diffs of edits that violate this sanction or remedy, and an explanation how these edits violate it

08:35, 10 June 2018Icewhiz falsified a source stating that villagers massacred by Soviet/Jewish unit were supposedly hunting down Jews.I checked the source and there is nothing about Naliboki village on page 280.There is mention about Jewish partisans raids in Naliboki Forest on page 283 and their attacks against local population and subsequent fights which authors show as example of change from victim to perpetrator role. Naliboki village and Naliboki forest are two different locations. To make it easier, I even uploaded a screenshot from the source in question showing that there is nothing about Naliboki villagers attacking Jews on page 280[23]. After pointing this out to him, Icewhiz claimed the statement about Naliboki village inhabitants hunting down Jews is on page 283. Here is the screen of page 283-nothing about inhabitants of Naliboki village doing such a thing[24].This is a gross falsfication of a source and serious accussation.
22:09, 28 June 2018 Here user Icewhiz removed information that Poles were target of genocide by Nazi Germany under the claim "unsupported by source"I have uploaded the screenshot of the source in question and underlined that indeed does state that there was genocide[25].
22:52, 28 June 2018 , Icewhiz claimed there is no mention of genocide in the source, and that Nazis didn't genocide Polish people, just "mass extermination of leadership" and "reprisal killings" which according to Icewhiz "wasn't genocide". Again this is falsification of the source, and inflamming of the discussion.
"He's advancing polocaust, which is quite fringey" 20:02, 9 June 2018 Ethnic based deregatory term and statement that information about Nazi Germany engaging in genocide against Polish people is "advocating fringe polocaust". This is a gross violation of civility and a very disturbing ethnic based remark.
Obviously, it is possible to find polophilic writers in English 18:04, 9 June 2018 (UTC) Ethnic based attack to discredit sources as non-reliable.
I have seen him described as a "polophile" 9 June 2018 Ethnic based accussation to discredit a scholar as non-reliable source.
Our article at present is a one-sided modern Polish narrative 14 March 2018.About about massacre of Polish villagers including women and children, where Icewhiz engages in ethnic based accussation and attributing a single view of the world to a nationality.
10 June 2018Stating that largest Polish anti-Nazi resistance group Home Army is responsible for deaths of 100,000-200,000 Jews, using a quote by controversial author that doesn't even have anything about Home Army in it.False sourcing, and falsification.
04:18, 22 June 2018 Stating that Polish civilians attacked in massacres and raids by Soviet and Jewish partisans were engaging in theft of Jewish property. Icewhiz's comment seems to be nothing more than attempt to provoke other editors here.
we wouldn't add such a section to the Nazi Party 19 June 2018,Certainly - we describe crimes by the Schutzstaffel and Wehrmacht 12 June 2018.This has been repeated several times, and seems to have been aimed at provoking other editors.

If discretionary sanctions are requested, supply evidence that the user is aware of them (see WP:AC/DS#Awareness and alerts)

Participated in an arbitration request or enforcement procedure about the area of conflict in the last twelve months, on 24 June 2018
Quick response to Eadlgyth:

You completely misunderstood my point, I completely agree with the viewpoint that Poles in general weren’t victims of Holocaust.My point was thaf Icewhiz claimed that Nazis weren’t engaing in genocide against Polish people.While Poles weren’t part of Holocaust, they certainly were victims of genocide, this is accepted by mainstream historians and in line with verdicts made in Nuremberg Trials.We have to remember that while Holocaust was the most ruthless and total genocide carried out by Nazi Germany, it wasn’t the only one.Again, this is nothing radical,just normal mainstream theory.Historians who would claim only Jewish people were victims of genocide would be very fringe, if they exist.--MyMoloboaccount (talk) 17:14, 5 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Notification of the user against whom enforcement is requested

[26]

Discussion concerning Icewhiz

Statements must be made in separate sections. They may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs, except by permission of a reviewing administrator.
Administrators may remove or shorten noncompliant statements. Disruptive contributions may result in blocks.

Statement by Icewhiz

In regards to the diffs above:

I mis-cited the page number (280 instead of 283 - 280 being the start of the chapter and I was using the Google auto-citation). Naliboki village is in Naliboki forest. The source is clearly referring to the well known massacre in Naliboki village, as is clear from the citations (which refer to the village). After this was challenged on this basis (forest vs. village) - I dropped this edit/source.
This - is the source. It discusses two viewpoints - the top of the page (and bottom of previous page) - presents the widely held view that Poles&SU-citizens were not victims of the Holocaust&genocide. The bottom of the page (which is in the screenshot) discusses the view that Poles were victims of the Holocaust&genocide. The highlighted portion in the screen shot is not in N&N's voice, but rather attributed to "those who would include Polish and Soviet...".
The same source (The Columbia Guide to the Holocaust) - in presenting the majority view does not use genocide - it does however state "mass extermination" of natural leaders and reprisal killings. The minority viewpoint, presented below, does use genocide. The authors of the Columbia guide do not include Poles in the Holocaust(conclusion - here - [27]).
Polocaust/Polokaust (a contraction of "Polish Holocaust") is advanced by the Polish state, see Gebert, Konstanty. "Projecting Poland and its past: Poland wants you to talk about the “Polocaust”." Index on Censorship 47.1 (2018): 35-37.Reuters: Polish minister says backs idea to create 'Polocaust' museum - it is not derogatory - it refers to treating Poles as victims of the Holocaust.
This term has been used by RSes (see 6), and is not based on ethnicity but on a viewpoint favorable to a particular side.
I said I saw this individual described as such in several source, and provided a single source to back this up - [28]. There are additional sources - Atlantic, Macleans. Discussing the POV of a source, particularly one described as biased in other sources, is essential for achieving NPOV - by balancing use of sources (as opposed to using sources from only one POV).
I provided sources. Here's another- per Foreign Policy "Facts about the raid are heavily disputed, including whether the villagers were acting in concert with the Nazis".[29]. I will note that academic RSes that have covered this have treated this incident as "word-code" in right wing media - "Nevertheless, after the intense campaign to publicise these crimes during the Jedwabne controversy, Koniuchy and Naliboki started functioning as word-codes, symbols of Jewish savagery and refusal to repent for `their' atrocities."[30]. Per one academic RS the investigation into this was seen a "contemptible farce" in most of the world.[31] To adhere to NPOV, our article should reflect coverage of this incident in top-notch sources - and not as it is portrayed in a particular type of media.
I provided a direct quotation of Gross (who in most of the world is considered one of the leading scholars (and certainly one of the most cited) in the topic area in the past 20-30 years) - that refers to Poles as a whole (of which the AK was the largest armed group) - I should have chosen a better source referring specifically to the AK - which I indeed did - in the next post and added an example.
Again - this is "word code" incident (see 7), which is much disputed (A Soviet unit (per witness accounts possibly with some Jews in it - some former residents of the town) attacked the village (which housed a self-defense unit (which was also cover for AK) sanctioned by the Nazi authorities - a unit which resisted partisan requisition attempts), was fired upon (around 6 Soviets were killed), and after the firefight - executed mainly men and teenagers who were mainly members of the unit in the village (in all ~127-130 villagers died - mainly male teenagers and men, but also 3 women and a 10 year old child). I did not say "theft" - I said took over. As might be seen in USHMM Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933-1945, vol II pages 1185,1203-4,1229,1248 - there were Jewish residents in Naliboki prior to 1943 - if we are tying these former Jewish residents (based on some of the witness testimony), this is possibly relevant background.
I provided a patently absurd example - which I explained (sourced) in here and here - in regards to a section with OR (the source was a list of names) that misrepresented Yad Vashem's award. I will quote Joshua D. Zimmerman - "Understanding of the Polish Underground’s wartime record was overwhelmingly negative. Holocaust survivor testimony and scholarly studies argued that partisans of the Home Army — those clandestine forces in Nazi-occupied Poland loyal to the Polish government-in-exile — were just as dangerous to Jews as were the Nazis. And the specific cases on which these claims were made were no doubt accurate"[32] (and will note that Zimmerman has a more nuanced view - he differentiates between the most positive pre-June 1943 command of Rowecki, and the subsequent negative Bór-Komorowski as well as differentiating by area/individuals). This is a widely used comparison (in regards danger to Jews) made by several scholars of Holocaust studies - and should not be seen as offensive (and in fact - if an editor rejects Holocaust studies scholarship based on "offensiveness" - that is a serious issue).

Icewhiz (talk) 07:05, 4 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I would like to point out the following misrepresentations, in article main-space, by MyMoloboaccount:

Revision as of 22:41, 19 June 2018 - highly questionable source ("the most vocal attack ... by the conservative newspaper Rzecpospolita, which has, in turn, been accused of anti-Semitism"[33]) - edit misrepresents the source as "Other witness statements by Jewish members" while the source describes a single statement by a daughter (not a witness) describing what her mother told her.
Revision as of 22:28, 19 June 2018- not in the source (which itself - is a magazine intended for youth).
Revision as of 22:12, 19 June 2018 - source does not use "war crimes".
Revision as of 22:04, 19 June 2018 - source described meeting between AK district command and Lenin (Komsomol) brigade from the Lipiczany forest (a different location, which incidentally also housed other Jewish units). According to the source the discussion was about Jewish partisans and partisan groups - not about the Bielski group - in the edit this statement about Jewish partisans in general was modified to Beiski - "Polish resistance officially complained to Soviets about alleged rapes and murders,including murder of young children, committed by Bielski's partisants and asked Soviet command to stop sending them for food requisitions".
Revision as of 21:46, 19 June 2018 - source describes the poor combat value of the Zorin and Bielski family groups - in the edit this becomes "Jewish partisans" at large - everywhere in the Soviet sphere of influence.

Icewhiz (talk) 07:44, 4 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

In regards to VM's comments below - some were already previous raised by him at AE (here). I will address any diff there in depth if required:

In regards to Krajewski - I said nothing of the sort (and the omissions (...) are quite relevant) - I specifically excluded him, and provided a sourced stmt on other coverage, including an outlet present in the article (Rzecpospolita).
In regards to Norman Davies - this is a matter of public record (six Jewish professors . . . stood up and castigated a single chapter .... The historians' religion is relevant, Davies says, because they claimed he distorted the history of Poland, was insensitive to the Jews .... Davies's suit will charge that the defendants "met secretly and conspired among themselves' and covered in a secondary manner- see archive(book form),NYT, I removed WP:BLPPRIMARY/WP:OR from his page (sourced to a 'court transcript, that didn't support the text either) and replaced it with secondary coverage.
Ewa Kurek's coverage in English is mainly of the this sort and this.
Marek Jan Chodakiewicz/Bogdan Musiał/Tomasz Strzembosz(deceased 2004) - all represent the same school of ethno-nationalist writing,[34] and argue that Judeo-communism is not an anti-semitic cliche but historical reality.[35] Musiał has been recently covered in English here, and his dewiki entry is quite telling. Chodakiewicz has been covered by - Newsweek, SPLC2009, SPLC2017, HopeNotHate.

That being said - some of them (particularly Davies) are usable as sources - but for discussion of WP:BIASED such information is relevant. I will note that what is truly troubling is the mass promotion of some of these figures (particularly Kurek, Musiał, and Chodakiewicz) into Wikipedia articles, while more mainstream views are less present. If any particular point below needs addressing, please point out and I will defend my self. I will note that, barring mistakes, any assertions I've made on a BLP are backed up with strong sources (either in the same diff, or in other diffs in the same discussion).Icewhiz (talk) 05:18, 5 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

In regard to point #10 - I could have quoted a source directly making this comparison - there are several such sources in Holocaust studies. I chose to quote Zimmerman (whose views are different, and more miďdle of the road) as he provides context for prior research (which is recent - this is from 2015) - which is more informative than a single view (and he discusses histiography at greater length in his intro chapter). I clearly stated after the quote that Zimmerman has more nuanced views on the matter, and described those views, however the purpose was to show this is a widespread view in the field of study, and not to represent Zimmerman (whose work is outstanding, regardless).Icewhiz (talk) 17:33, 6 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Beyond My Ken

It's getting monotonous, I know, but I'm commenting to point out yet again the number of AE complaints that have been filed in the last few months over the Poland in WWII issue, indicating, yet again, that admins really need to step up their game and more aggressively police this subject area, which falls squarely under ARBEE. And, once again, I renew my suggestion that topic bans for the regular combatants on both sides of the dispute would be a good start. Beyond My Ken (talk) 04:36, 4 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Sandsten: I believe you are correct that there's nothing specifically to be done about the general problem here at AE, however, the admins who read AE and participate in its discussions can do something about it, as discretionary sanctions were created specifically to allow uninvolved individual admins greater discretion in levying sanctions such as topic bans to disruptive, tendentious or non-neutral editors in a disputatious subject area, which Poland in WWII has undoubtedly become. I urge the admins who read this, and the comments from other editors agreeing with my thoughts, to actively patrol those articles and start to hand out tickets to those causing the problems. Beyond My Ken (talk) 22:38, 4 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by SMcCandlish

Concur with BMK, and think some other editors' activities in the area need some examination. Virtually every time I run across a talk-page mention of Poland, it's about continued disputation over events leading up to, during, and shortly after WWII. It's as if the place did not exist outside this time frame. I get a lot of WP:FRS invites to RfCs, and Poland shows up strangely (too) frequently, always about the same stuff, and featuring too many of the same squabblers. I'm not an editor at these articles other than gnome stuff, and don't have an opinion on the pro/con this and that stuff (it really does look hard to research with certainty, and I don't have a background in it). So, I tried to moderate, for example, at Talk:Blue Army (Poland) from 2015–2017 (archives 4–6), and eventually just gave up. I've mostly stayed away for a year-ish, so any diffs I have are too old to be actionable. Just want to chime in that the perception of a .pl-related WP:ARBEE issue is not illusory. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 06:47, 4 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Kingsindian

Most of the diffs above look like good-faith content disputes to me. I haven't edited in Poland-related matters, but I have some experience with Ukraine-related matters, where the same issue of "whether the Ukrainian famine was genocide" is debated (both by scholars and by Wikipedia). Calling something "genocide" is obviously a value judgement, and scholars often disagree. The case about Naliboki should be treated as a good-faith argument, imo. Thus, I feel that no sanctions are warranted here.

I would like to, however, like to say to Icewhiz that comparing the Home Army to the Nazi party is a needlessly provocative statement, and is not anywhere near the scholarly consensus. There were segments of the Home Army which killed Jews, and some which collaborated with the Nazis, but the overall stance was neither of collaboration nor exterminationist anti-Semitism. For instance, Joseph Rothschild notes: The Polish Home Army was by and large untainted with collaboration. (Return to Diversity p. 55). One can argue about exclusion of some text, or the overall tone and emphasis in the article, without this sort of gratuitous and unfair comparison.

I do not have any opinion about the broader matter. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 07:53, 4 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Malik Shabazz

I, too, support what Beyond My Ken has written. I used to edit articles related to Polish-Jewish history, but the recent invasion and disruption of those articles by ideological editors -- led by Icewhiz -- has driven me away from the subject area (except for undoing what I consider the most egregious excesses in POV-pushing}. It's time to start thinking about topic banning the whole lot of them. — MShabazz ^Talk/_Stalk 08:12, 4 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Piotrus

I had no time to review the diffs here. My usual attitude is that bans or TBans are not a good solution, but it's not like anyone would listen to me. Recently two editors got TBanned from this, but this clearly had not helped. Perhaps unsurprisingly, as while one of those tbans seems reasonably sound (affecting an editor who has not to my knowledge contributed much content), the other targeted one of the more prolific content creators in this topic arena, author of numerous GAs and dozens of DYKs (see User_talk:Poeticbent#Unfair_topic_ban). So it's not only that (since last year or so) we have more disruptive and battleground minded editors running loose (people who were not active in this topic arena before, and it was much more stable and less prone to appearing at AE), since the last few weeks due to one of the worst AE calls in recent memory, one of the most constructive content creators is gone - so the ratio of flame/noise to good edits has IMHO significantly decreased. None of this, unfortunately, makes me think that an ArbCom will be any less random in their judgement as AE, I am just concurring that this topic arena is overdue for its 'what a random mole' game by AE's big brother. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 08:56, 4 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Clearly, this report needs a review by an admin who has time to examine more than '3 diffs'. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 08:20, 5 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by François Robere

Ah, the gang's all here... The analogy of AK to Nazi Germany was tasteless, but it's pretty clear Icewhiz didn't fabricate, falsify or misrepresent any of the sources; neither was he unduly inflammatory in stating there's a nationalist component to this debate, which is both common sense and something numerous authors wrote about. It's unfortunate that Molobo would choose to file an AE where there's no policy violation, and do so without challenge or warning.

Regarding BMK's suggestion: As before, I support more active involvement by admins, and oppose mass bans. Mass bans are just indiscriminate punishment, and if that's what the "community" strives for, then it has lost its right to exist. A better course of action would be if some of the +500 or so active admins we have would just grow some balls (or ova, or whatever it is that gets Wiki admins going faster than a dead yeti). Want some good places to start? I opened this DRN following community guidelines, but some users refuse to participate. If any of them reverts an edit on the relevant page, smack them with a ban. Another? Two admins refused to enact sourcing restrictions on the entire topic area; why? Honest representation of sources is such a fundamental thing in academia, I can hardly think of a scholar who wouldn't get sanctioned if they didn't do so. Why not here? You'd rather dwell on these obtuse soaps-like ANI and AE sagas against individual editors, instead of enacting major (and needed) changes to how the community behaves.

If all admins are willing to discuss are editor vs. editor conflicts, then editors will naturally focus on other editors rather than on content. If admins were willing to mediate content disputes, then editors would've naturally focused on content and argumentation rather than on other editors. Piotr laments PoeticBent's ban; PoeticBent was corrupted by the system, and by refusing to engage on a deeper level than "he stole my pencil, he took my icecream" you're encouraging the rest of the community to follow in his path. François Robere (talk) 11:43, 4 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Ealdgyth: Your involvement is appreciated, not least because we need more unbiased editors on these articles. Your source review was useful, and will be followed up. François Robere (talk) 09:52, 5 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Ealdgyth

I'm entirely too involved in the subject area to act as an admin, but it's getting beyond ridiculous in the topic area. After the last round at AE, I tried to bring the discussion around to the actual article content with Talk:Koniuchy massacre#Sourcing..., where I specifically stated I didn't want to discuss who added the problem bits - that we should just concentrate on the content. Others can judge how well that went by the replies. The article was full-protected right as I was spending a couple of hours going through all the sources, so in theory, everyone should have been forced to discuss on that article's talk page - instead it appears to have just moved to other pages with the same "discuss the other editors" behavior. This attempt at discussing sources was after a long discussion on my talk page at User talk:Ealdgyth#WP:AE which rapidly degenerated. I even tried to explain how the problems were being seen by outsiders here, but it doesn't seem to have registered or been heeded. There is entirely too much discussion of other editors going on, which fuels the acrimony and thus it becomes a never-ending cycle that just changes articles but never behavior. Ealdgyth - Talk 13:06, 4 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Vanamonde93: - I have no ideas on how to fix the problems. Much of the problem seems to be a mindset behind much of the editing - rather than approaching the sources, reading lots of them and those thoroughly, and then trying to reflect the varying views of those sources in our articles, it appears that much of the editing is approached from a "I know this information is true so I'll add it and then I'll use google books and google scholar and plain google to find sources that back up the statement I want to add" angle. An example - MyMoloboaccount's point #2 above. It concerns this diff. IT's sourced to The Columbia Guide to the Holocaust p. 73. MM then points to a screen shot of the page from Polish Google Books, I assume (but it's in English). Well, I actually own The Columbia Guide to the Holocaust - my page 73 has nothing like what MM is showing in his screen shot. That screenshot is actually from page 49-50 in my edition and is part of a long chapter discussing various possible definitions of the Holocaust. By using just the google books link without actually reading the whole chapter and digesting it - it's easy to think that Niewyk and Nicosia support including Polish and Soviet civilian losses in the definition of the Holocaust - which is actually not the case. N&N in this chapter discuss four different possible definitions of the Holocaust - ranging from a definition of it only including Jewish victims, to a second possible definition that defines several parallel Holocausts, each with different victim groups, to a third defniition that includes Gypsies and the handicapped along with Jews in the Holocaust, to a final definition that would include all of the victims of the German racial policies. N&N give examples of scholars who use each definition and then go on to declare that they are using the third definition, but that many scholars and works use the first or the last definiton. We cannot use N&N to support the fact that Poles should be included as victims of the Holocaust because they themselves do not use that definition. Now, I have no idea who first put that citation in to the wrong page with the wrong defintion ... but I note that no one on either side who is arguing over it actually went to the source and noticed the page number problem much less appears to have actually read the entire chapter. I could probably go on at great length, but there is likely more than enough blame for bad citations to go around to all sides. My preferred solution would be for all sides to drop the battleground attitudes and quit talking about other editors and focus on fixing the many many problems in the articles. The first step is to have the citations actually reflect what they are sourcing - rather than have lots and lots of source errors. The hard part is actually doing the work - just digging into THIS one citation took me almost 20 minutes of digging and that's when I have the book actually right on the shelf next to me. Ealdgyth - Talk 15:28, 5 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Seraphim System

Regarding this [36] - no, it's not "Fringey", quite the opposite. The whole thing is Lebensraum. There are multiple sources that discuss Lebensraum as a genocide, including Bloxham's Oxford Handbook [37] so calling it the "polocaust" or otherwise refusing to get the point and work with editors is part of the problem. The debate is over the term "Holocaust", presumably, but conduct on both sides is far from stellar and as long as it continues it will drown out any hope of reaching a consensus through reasonable discussion about how to best accommodate this - a solution that would probably include clearly linking to and improving other articles instead of burying and minimizing. This is where the underlying problems become more apparent. Seraphim System ^(talk) 13:25, 4 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

There is a conflict here - persons who help in situations like these are usually a minority, but that minority receives a lot of attention. This may start with reading something like Number the Stars (which I'm sure a lot of us have read, I read it when I was about 7) and goes on through our entire lives. It is actively supported by Yad Vashem's international educational outreach programs and classroom materials. This includes lessons on "good Nazis" (some of us may remember a man named Oskar Schindler, who Yad Vashem discusses in some detail) - most of these lesson plans taught in primary and secondary schools around the world are geared at prevention, and understanding how something like this can happen when people are indifferent. Or it has been, until recently - now they are putting out some new stuff that is pulling back from universal applicability.

I think this conflict reflects the deep tension between these views and there are sources on both sides - sources that have been created by scholars who believe the moral lessons of the Holocaust are universally applicable, sources that have expanded from that foundation to produce comparative studies that seek to understand the causes of racial violence and genocide in the area of comparative genocide studies, contrasted with those who think antisemitism is a special case (which segues into the debate about new antisemitism). My concern is that there is a difference between understanding what happened in Poland, and seeking to place blame or to vindicate, and editors may be approaching this with the assumption that neutrality is not possible - which I think it is, as there are many excellent sources available.

As for solutions, I strongly believe this can only be resolved through source-based discussion - I think some behavioral guidelines may help at this point, but I don't think any views should be silenced, but some type of intervention like moderated discussion may be needed to make the talk page discussions more productive.

Seraphim System ^(talk) 09:42, 6 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Nishidani

There are irrational components on both sides of this, of course. My impression is that Icewhiz is seen as spending a huge amount of time and effort (some of the materials he brings up are nonetheless cogent on specific points) singularly on Jews versus (other) Poles, and seems wholly insensitive to a general overview, i.e. that the Poles experienced a level of Nazi destruction unheralded in any other area occupied by Germany; that 6,000,000 died, of which, yes, 3,2 million were Jews; that Poland, compared to many other 'Slavic' countries, both resisted German claims, was invaded, fought back, was denied an administration, and Poles were subject to the death penalty if caught sleeping with Germans, that the Generalplan Ost for postwar implementation, foresaw the deportation, extermination or ethnic cleansing (Völkische Flurbereinigung) of Polish lands of 80-85% of Poles; that no SS Polish division was ever raised, unlike what happened in many other 'Slavic' countries. Polocaust/Polokaust like Pallywood is offensive contextually (one thinks of old German stereotypes of Poles as 'pissed as a fart' (polenvoll); or polnische Wirtschaft which has the same connotation as Avoda aravit(Arab labour) in modern Hebrew, etc.etc.etc. (See, to cite just one small study - the field is far more complex than what Icewhiz makes out - John Connelly, 'Nazis and Slavs: From Racial Theory to Racist Practice,' Central European History, Vol. 32, No. 1 (1999), pp. 1-33. Poles are justifiably extremely sensitive about these, as are Jews. It is understandable that in ethnic conflict articles, partisans of either ethnos see only their national perspective, but WP:NPOV apart, solid history is not written by conducting endless negotiations between maximalist positions. It's written with a cold eye to the overall picture, and a sympathetic eye for all victims of a tragedy. Nishidani (talk) 17:28, 4 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

This sudden interest in the area reflects a recent clash between Israel and Poland over the representation of the Holocaust.( Moran Azulay, 'Yad Vashem slams joint Polish-Israeli statement on Polish role in Holocaust,' Ynet 5 July 2018.) Icewhiz seems to mirror the Yad Vashem position that there was no significant effort by the Polish Government in Exile or the Delegatura in Poland to save Jews. Yet the document Poland and Israel underwrote, which acknowledges Polish efforts to save Jews, was apparently approved by Yad Vashem's own chief historian, Dina Porat. So admins are not going to sort this out, since the Israeli authorities themselves apparently can't agree, and the political interests at stake seem to trounce clear neutral editing. Nishidani (talk) 14:27, 5 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I've only examined one diff (because Yaniv cited it today below, I think, and got it wrong). It's diff 10 by the plaintiff.

Icewhiz removes from Home Army the following:

Recognition:Members of the Home Army that were named Righteous Among the Nations include Jan Karski, Aleksander Kamiński, Stefan Korboński, Henryk Woliński, Jan Żabiński, Władysław Bartoszewski, Mieczysław Fogg, Henryk Iwański, Witold Bieńkowski and Jan Dobraczyński.

The source contains these names. The material is wholly uncontroversial and innocuous.

Icewhiz’s edit summary is that the Home Army isn’t named, hence WP:OR (looks pretextual); the Righteous aren’t recognized for their belonging to a group (irrelevant); that listing Polish Righteous in an article on the organization they belonged to is tantamount to mentioning Nazis who saved Jews.

Ergo, Icewhiz essentially removed those names because he thinks the Home Army acted no better than the German Nazis. That is his POV.

In his response to 10, Icewhiz cites the authority of Joshua D. Zimmerman, The (sometimes) righteous underground Politico 16 October 2015 bolding the following:

"Understanding of the Polish Underground’s wartime record was overwhelmingly negative. Holocaust survivor testimony and scholarly studies argued that partisans of the Home Army — those clandestine forces in Nazi-occupied Poland loyal to the Polish government-in-exile — were just as dangerous to Jews as were the Nazis. And the specific cases on which these claims were made were no doubt accurate"

No. That is sheer deception. That is Zimmerman's summary of old research before his own research altered the received wisdom (which Icewhiz is defending). I.e. he is misquoting Zimmerman to support a view Zimmerman has deconstructed. Zimmerman's article continues:

New research, however, demonstrates there was another side to the story. In my book, “The Polish Underground and the Jews, 1939-1945,” I show that — alongside documented cases of crimes against the Jews — individuals and groups within the Polish Underground played more of a role in aiding Jews than was previously known. . . The Home Army was an umbrella organization numbering over 300,000 by 1944, with members drawn from all regions of pre-war Poland and from all social and political backgrounds, ranging from socialists and peasants to nationalists. Its attitude and behavior toward the Jews during World War II thus varied widely from extraordinary acts of aid to acts of murder. Yet in focusing, as we must, on the latter, we are in danger of forgetting the former: those righteous acts performed by the Polish Underground that saved numerous Jews from a hideous death.

He didn't even trouble himself to check Zimmerman’s book (Joshua D. Zimmerman, The Polish Underground and the Jews, 1939–1945, Cambridge University Press 2015) either. It documents many actions which underline the Home Army’s role in saving Jews. I.e.

chapter conclusion here on p.237

chapter conclusion here p.348

while duly covering Crimes against the Jews by Home Army regional units mainly in Eastern Poland p.297

The plaintiff is correct. That removal seems motivated by pure prevarication and dislike, based on nothing more than a superannuated view Icewhiz's own authority has dismissed as simplistic, and which he pushed out because in his view the Home Army behaved like Nazis, and people belonging to it recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous should not be named. Anyone who comes to Polish articles WW2 with the conviction that its resistance movement was, regarding Jews, no different from the Nazi military machine, shouldn't be editing anywhere near there. Nishidani (talk) 19:49, 5 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Vanamonde93

Posting here because since the last AE I've discovered some content interactions I had with IceWhiz, that were minor enough that I didn't remember them earlier. I flagged the first diff presented by MLoboaccount in the previous AE discussion. However, Icewhiz acknowledged the error in page numbering soon enough, and I see no reason to believe it was more than an honest mistake. The rest of this is mostly hot air: unless there's specific history I'm unaware of, I don't see that calling someone a "polophile" is a dreadful insult, though it's not ideal behavior. Similarly, I'm not seeing clear-cut evidence of source misrepresentation (and yes, I did read the screenshots that have been presented). Unless we're t-banning a bunch of editors (and that's a solution I've supported before, and may be okay with here), I don't see a need for sanctions in this case. Vanamonde (talk) 18:02, 4 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Volunteer Marek, if you want your report to be taken seriously, it needs to be concise enough to read. Moreover, while a couple of your diffs are concerning (ie this statement based on this source isn't entirely appropriate) editors are nonetheless required to thoroughly assess source quality on talk pages, and some of your diffs actually don't support what you say they do. I honestly don't see how this is portraying the subject as anti-semitic (maybe I just don't know enough) and while Icewhiz acknowledged error with respect to the "American Jews" statement in this diff, it is actually supported by the text in this source, which reads "may be used for another anti-Polish campaign organized by American Jewish communities" when put through google translate. So again, I don't see how there's enough evidence here for a sanction against just Icewhiz. I would be interested to hear Ealdgyth's views on how to go about fashioning a collective restriction. Vanamonde (talk) 04:59, 5 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Volunteer Marek

I was planning on filing the following evidence in my own WP:AE report, particularly because it focuses on BLP violations. But since this is already open I'll post it here.

Sanction or remedy to be enforced: Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Editing_of_Biographies_of_Living_Persons

Notice of DS awareness: [38]

Since he got involved in editing the topic area Icewhiz has made numerous BLP violations, in particular against living historians that disagree with his POV. The sequence of events in this regard always unfolds in the same way:

Icewhiz gets into a dispute on some article abut Polish-Jewish relations. He is presented with a reliable source, by a historian, that does not fit his POV
He proceeds to try to marginalize, attack and misrepresent the historian in talk page discussions. In several cases he insinuates or ascribes negatives views to these BLP subjects, which is not supported by sources. This is part of Icewhiz's tactic of trying to winning content disputes
Icewhiz proceeds to begin editing the article on the historian he finds objectionable and tries to turn it into an WP:ATTACKPAGE.
With one exception, in none of these circumstances does Icewhiz actually inquire about reliability or suitability of the sources at WP:RSN (one exception was Ewa Kurek, which may be the one BLP where Icewhiz’s edits were somewhat justified)

Here is the list of BLP violations and historians Icewhiz has attacked:

Kazimierz Krajewski, historian

Icewhiz writes "One should also note that in 2008-9 there was a wave of (…) publications in Poland (…) and that at least some of these reactionary pieces (…) were accused of anti-Semitism." [39]

Icewhiz falsely insinuate that a living subject, historian Dr. Krajewski has been “accused of anti-Semitism”. He provides a source [40] which is about ANOTHER publication being accused of it, not Krajewski. In the relevant section, the entire discussion is about Krajewski [41], no other author or source is mentioned, so to a regular outside reader it will most certainly appear from Icewhiz’s statement as if it’s Krajewski who’s been “accused of anti-Semitism”.

When confronted about this BLP vio [42] Icewhiz neither explained nor struck his comments. Needless to say, Krajewski has NOT been accused of anti-semitism (afaik). Indeed, he’s cited approvingly and extensively by Holocaust scholars such as Joshua D. Zimmerman [43] Leonid Rein [44] Timothy Snyder and Elezan Barkan (et. al) among others

Note Icewhiz claims that "I specifically excluded him" - this is completely false.

Marek Jan Chodakiewicz, historian

Icewhiz falsely misrepresents a source by changing "post-Stalinists" (source) to "American Jews" (Icewhiz’s words) [45] in order to make the BLP subject appear anti-semitic. Neither the word “American” nor “Jews” appear in the source [46]

When asked about this edit, Icewhiz excused himself calling this smear of a living person a “mild form of OR” [47] (!!!!!!)

Icewhiz falsely misrepresents a source by claiming that MJ Chodakiewicz "wrote a column in which he described an on-going genocide against whites by blacks in South Africa”. [48]"This is false. In the very first paragraph Chodakiewicz writes “There is no genocide, but it is true that they have been subject to violence”. To be fair to Icewhiz, the headline attached to the article misrepresents the text as well, but then why is Icewhiz using WP:PRIMARY sources to attack BLPs in the first place? Another case of "mild form of OR" I guess.

Generally, in a series of edits, Icewhiz has tried to make sure that Chodakiewicz’s article portrays him in the worst possible light [49] [50] [51] [52] [53] While some of these criticisms have a basis in sources (and this is just a sample of Icewhiz’s edits to the article), taken overall, it’s clear that Icewhiz engages in BLP violating WP:CHERRY PICKING where he goes out there and tries to find any critical mention of the subject in order to include it in the article.

Norman Davies, historian

Icewhiz falsely alleges that this British historian “has alleged Jewish historians have conspired against him personally” [54]. This is false. While Davies has alleged that Standford denied him tenure for political reasons he has not said anything about any “Jewish conspiracy”. This is again Icewhiz misrepresenting sources to insinuate a historian, a very prominent and famous one in this case, is anti-semitic.

In a series of edits to Davies’ BLP article, Icewhiz also has tried to make sure that the historian is presented in most negative light possible [55] [56] [57]

Bogdan Musial, historian

Here Icewhiz rewords the views of the historian to, again, make them appear anti-semitic. Note the original text is sourced, Icewhiz’s changes are not.

And of course, in a series of edits to Musial's BLP, Icewhiz also tries to make sure that the historian is presented in most negative light possible

[58] [59] [60] [61] [62] [63] (OR) [64] [65] [66] [67] (adds criticism but omits important context from source) (and quite a number of others)

Note that in Icewhiz’s preferred version [68] at least half the article consists of “Criticism”! Again, while some of these controversies may be notable enough for inclusion, overall this is the result of WP:CHERRY PICKING of sources to attack a BLP subject – he goes out into the internet, then tries to cram every single criticism he finds into the article.

Bogdan Musial's scholarly work has been corraborated by the widely respected Jewish (Litvak) historian Dov Levin, as well as [69] and Israeli historian Yitzhak Arad.

Other historians attacked by Icewhiz

Tomasz Strzembosz, historian: [70] Again, using the article to attack a subject via a cherry picked and unbalanced criticism section.

A similar situation has also occurred on articles for historian Piotr Gontarczyk and historian Ewa Kurek, although for the last one, some of the allegations and criticisms are probably satisfied, although (imo) the subject is not notable enough for an article.

The evidence above presents a pretty clear picture of WP:TEND editing and BLP violations. And the pattern is the same everytime - when presented with a reliable source which doesn't support the Icewhiz's POV, Icewhiz proceeds to try and turn the author's biography into an WP:ATTACKPAGE.

@Nishidani: - "This sudden interest in the area reflects a recent clash between Israel and Poland over the representation of the Holocaust." yes, exactly, this whole flare up seems to be the result of the passage of Act_on_the_Institute_of_National_Remembrance which criminalized "blaming the Polish nation for the Holocaust" (or something like that). For the record I think it's an idiotic, stupid, law which goes against fundamental principles of free speech and a whole other set of liberal values (the law was watered down [71] later on). The arrival in the topic area of Icewhiz and Francois Robere, as well as the explosion in WP:BATTLEGROUND and the filing of WP:AE reports definitely coincides with the controversy around this law. I actually *agree* with Icewhiz in regards to the stupidity of this law, which is why initially, back in January or so, I was fine with his edits (my initial interaction with Icewhiz was actually me helping him get an article through DYK, although not in this topic area (Wrangell Bombardment)- this must be payback for the help I offered). But then it seems at some point Icewhiz decided that "Poland needs to be punished" and what better way to do that, then go through all the WW2 Poland related articles and stuff them full of POV. Go through Icewhiz's last 500 edits in this topic area. Find me one which isn't inserting something negative into some article or talk page about Poland (obviously I can't present 500 diffs). It's unrelenting. As a result, even people who are sympathetic to the view that this Polish law was bad, bad, bad, get into conflicts with Icewhiz simply because his edits are so one-sided and over the top (the comparison between Polish anti-Nazi resistance and the Nazi party itself is a perfect example).Volunteer Marek (talk) 14:52, 5 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

One final point

I wanted to emphasize one aspect - there's a reason why I made this comment about BLP issues (I could have made it about the general dispute). And that's because this is one part of Icewhiz's general WP:BATTLEGROUND approach which I see as most problematic. Arguing about sources, even misrepresenting sources, blind-reverting, acting in bad faith, filing spurious reports and such, when it doesn't concern living people is one thing. But the fact that Icewhiz in his pursuit of battleground victory resorts to attacking scholars and historians, and turns tries to turn their articles into attack pages is a much more serious matter. And the situation is very bad. Recently in a discussion I brought up some findings from a particular source but then became cautious about actually saying who it was by. This is because I genuinely became very concerned that if I named the relevant historian I wanted to cite, then Icewhiz would run off and write an attack page on that person.

When it gets to the point where editors are afraid to actually name potential sources because they think that the other party will go and immediately smear the authors with BLP vios, then we have a very serious problem.

There needs to be a sanction on Icewhiz which specifically addresses the BLP issue.Volunteer Marek (talk) 07:38, 6 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by My very best wishes

I think the last comment by Nishidani was insightful, but... The problem here is the collision of different POVs. Which POV, exactly? Icewhiz tells about it in his statement (#10, green, "partisans of the Home Army — those clandestine forces in Nazi-occupied Poland loyal to the Polish government-in-exile — were just as dangerous to Jews as were the Nazis."). Just as Nazi. Yes, I understand, this is a quotation from here, but one should read the entire source, and it was written to say something different ("New research, however, demonstrates..." etc.). Can such "Polish anti-Nazi=Nazi" POV be justified as a "majority view" of scholarly sources? No, it definitely can not, even considering the description of the controversy by Nishidani (diff above). The actual question under discussion is different: was the effort by the Polish Government in exile to save Jews significant enough? Yes, there are different opinions about it. Overall, the behavior by Icewhiz looks rather problematic to me. I said this before [72]. My very best wishes (talk) 15:19, 5 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by (username)

Result concerning Icewhiz

This section is to be edited only by uninvolved administrators. Comments by others will be moved to the sections above.

As regards MyMoloboaccount's complaint, for lack of time, I examined only the first three diffs and did not see any actionable misrepresentation of sources, if one accepts in good faith that the page number 280 was a mistake in the first diff. How to interpret and use these sources is a content dispute outside the scope of AE. As to Icewhiz's countercomplaint, again looking only at the first three diffs, I can't read Polish and therefore can't examine the sources. Accordingly, I'd take no action here, but warn both parties that AE is not a forum for settling content disputes, and that the fora provided for in WP:DR must be used for this purpose. With respect to the broader problem of disputes in this topic area, I don't see much that AE can do about it except examining individual complaints. Sandstein 10:59, 4 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I have commented on the case below and won't comment here other than to say that they need to be considered together. GoldenRing (talk) 19:28, 5 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Volunteer Marek

This request may be declined without further action if insufficient or unclear information is provided in the "Request" section below.
Requests may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs (not counting required information), except by permission of a reviewing administrator.

Request concerning Volunteer Marek

User who is submitting this request for enforcement: Icewhiz (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) 06:33, 5 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

User against whom enforcement is requested: Volunteer Marek (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
Search CT alerts: in user talk history • in system log

Sanction or remedy to be enforced: Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Eastern Europe#Standard discretionary sanctions, WP:BLPDS. NPA, ASPERSIONS, not adhering to BLP policy, NPOV and V.

Diffs of edits that violate this sanction or remedy, and an explanation how these edits violate it

23:09, 1 July 2018 - WP:ASPERSIONS emphasize the "if", Icewhiz contacted you off-wiki and asked you to comment here on his behalf and/or throw in some reverts on the article (your blind reverts, coming out of nowhere and always restoring Icewhiz's version make this a possibility).
17:40, 2 July 2018 - ...and are here just to revert on someone else's behalf - WP:ASPERSIONS, no "if".
EW report filed 18:50, 3 July 2018‎ - Edit warring report filed against user that was reverting apparent vandalism. VM also reverted in this dubious info and did not participate in talk.
00:50, 18 June 2018 obscurantist WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT on the part of Thucidydes - WP:NPA.
00:40, 1 July 2018: incivility: your comments are sort of unclear and incoherent.
04:23, 20 June 2018 - personal attack - "your extremist views", per VM - 14:12, 20 June 2018 this is not a PA, and furthermore please cease making personnel attacks is a false accusation and a PA.
15:01, 12 June 2018 - PA: your extremist bias ... your extremist POV.
22:58, 9 June 2018 PA your own extreme bias.
07:22, 23 June 2018 - calling academic source "garbage" or "sarcastic" + personal attack.
23:29, 13 June 2018 - I have no idea what your source is or who the author is, but there's some grade-A stupidity and nonsense in it. ... Where the hell did you dig this piece of junk up? - acdemic source.
15:17, 11 June 2018 - (and any source which describes AK as "conservative nationalist" is garbage. Yes, that applies to Christopher Browning. - attack on BLP Christopher Browning, clear NPOV problem given that the AK is often described in that manner.
04:03, 10 June 2018,23:04, 9 June 2018 - attack on Mordecai Paldiel and KTAV Publishing House.
15:02, 22 June 2018, 08:12, 25 June 2018(more on TP), - repeatedly denying the professional credentials of an individual (who is a historian of literature, cultural anthropologist, photographer...[73]
06:17, 4 July 2018 - misrepresentation/BLP issue - removed HUGE HOWEVER regarding "anti-Polish bias" of a BLP present in source.
18:08, 13 June 2018 - PA/ASPERSIONS 3rd, because it's paywalled it's hard to verify this stuff, and given the editor's track record with sources, that is a matter of concern
04:05, 25 June 2018 - calling a grossly defamatory WP:HOAX, discussed in this AE report as It wasn't a HOAX. It, like a lot of articles about small towns that really nobody gives a flip about, had sloppy sourcing.
(following cleanup of a similar denialist HOAX on another article) 15:59, 3 July 2018 + re-revert - 16:26, 3 July 2018 - VM entered a defamatory misrepresentation (the source isn't about Radziłów, doesn't speak of families, and covers why this false labeling occured). After a too-long discussion he did self-revert.

Diffs of previous relevant sanctions, if any

If discretionary sanctions are requested, supply evidence that the user is aware of them (see WP:AC/DS#Awareness and alerts): Alerted BLP, EE.

Additional comments by editor filing complaint

VM has also been showing up quite frequently at articles I've edited, including articles he's never edited, and his main contribution has been reverting - see editor interaction tool with 1 March 2018 start date.

There are also issues with misrepresenting Polish language sources (general stmts on Jews in an area => specific Jews, specific Jews => general stmts on Jews), which I did not present, but diffs are available (requires reading the Polish).Icewhiz (talk) 06:40, 5 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

How about assessing who is right and who is wrong here? I have not engaged in personal attacks, I have been removing outright WP:HOAX material - e.g. at Stawiski and Radziłów (in both of which Polish pogroms against Jews morphed into Jews persecuting Poles and Germans massacring Jews with no Polish involvement). And I have been adding well sourced content to several articles.Icewhiz (talk) 17:55, 5 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I strongly support better sourcing standards. I have taken several sources to RSN in this topic area in the past few months, however RSN is somewhat "dead" in terms if uninvolved editors of late - there is little outside input. In regards to Polish language sources, while there are some top notch sources there are political influence problems pre 1989 and post 2006 (and legal issues post 2018) - as a search for "memory politics"+IPN in relevant journals readily shows. The more notable authors tend to publish English language journal articles in leading journals. There have also been several instances in which non-English sources have been misrepresented - including cases in which the source said the opposite of what it was sourcing - this was at RSN ([74]). Few editors will fully verify + vet credentials of non-English sources (when the credentials are not in English).Icewhiz (talk) 07:52, 6 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Finally I apologize for any offense I may have cause, and for some TP threads devolving into TLDR walls of text.Icewhiz (talk) 07:52, 6 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@GoldenRing: - the sourcing restriction would do the topic good. There are however very limited situations (e.g. investigations from the past 5 years, other recent material) where news orgs are relevant sources. Also 1RR (see Koniuchy massacre and the mess there) would lead to more discussion and less edit warring.Icewhiz (talk) 12:51, 6 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Notification of the user against whom enforcement is requested: notified

Discussion concerning Volunteer Marek

Statements must be made in separate sections. They may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs, except by permission of a reviewing administrator.
Administrators may remove or shorten noncompliant statements. Disruptive contributions may result in blocks.

Statement by Volunteer Marek

Lol. Obvious "revenge report". Did I mention Icewhiz has a WP:BATTLEGROUND problem?

Since April of this year - in the last three months, there has been a total of ELEVEN WP:AE reports in this topic area. For comparison, between April 2015 and April 2018 there have been FIVE total reports in this topic area. This means that regarding Eastern Europe, there have been twice as many reports in last 3 months as there have been in the preceding 3 years! Something's obviously not working. Guess what the common factor is? That's right, all eleven of those reports had involvement from Icewhiz (6 as filer, 5 as subject, 1 as commentator casting WP:ASPERSIONS). Why is April 2018 the month in which the number of WP:AE reports in EE just exploded? Well, March 2018 is when Icewhiz began editing this topic area aggressively, quickly coming into conflict with every established editor in the topic area, from User:Malik Shabazz, to User:Piotrus, to User:E-960, to myself, to users which avoid WP:AE (such as Chumchum7 and Nihil novi). Why has he pursued this strategy? Because his behavior has been tolerated and rewarded.

And this is of course ignoring all the WP:AE reports that Icewhiz has been involved in other topic areas, such as Palestinian-Israeli topics. He uses WP:AE as a weapon. And admins here tolerate it.

Anyway. #1 not a PA. I sincerely couldn't understand what the user was saying. #2, #3 not an aspersion but explanation of policy to a user who showed up to support Icewhiz in an edit war and make WP:IJUSTLIKEIT votes in support of Icewhiz, without prior engagement on talk. #3 uhh, what?

Wait, wait, wait... #4 isn't even from this topic area. Icewhiz is just diff-stuffing.

6,7,8 - yes, comparing the main Polish anti-Nazi organization to the Nazi party is extremely biased not to mention offensive. Only reason I can think of why Icewhiz would make such a claim is that he was attempting to provoke other editors ... so that he could use the diffs at WP:AE. Hey! That's exactly what he's trying to do! Whoa! This is covered in MyMoloboaccount's report above.

9 Actually Icewhiz has already brought this one up at User:NeilN's talk page [75]. NeilN already explained to him [76] why this wasn't a problematic statement. So this is Icewhiz WP:FORUMSHOPPING for a sanction.

10 Same as #9, already discussed at NeilN's page. And yes, the source did have serious nonsense in it (it claimed that a local partisan commander and a major in Abwehr had the authority to negotiate over Poland's post war borders!)

11 Same as #9, already discussed at NeilN's page.

12 ... just ridiculous. Criticism and evaluation of a source is not an "attack".

13 Same as #12. The individual in question is actually a photographer.

14 Content dispute, discussed extensively on talk. After failing to obtain consensus for this material in early June, Icewhiz snuck back to the article about a month later and tried to reinsert his WP:OWN version again, without discussing on talk. I have no idea how there is suppose to be a BLP issue here. Icewhiz regularly makes false allegations along these lines. See for example this discussion where Icewhiz made particularly fantastical false claims of BLP vios. I didn't include that in my report above so as to keep it concise. But if you want to see WP:GAMEing in action, there you go.

15 This was shortly after Icewhiz was caught falsifying sources and using far-right anti-semitic sources on the Chodakiewicz BLP as described in my report above (though that happened earlier, it wasn't discovered till then).

16 Argument on User:Ealdgyth's talk page. What exactly is suppose to be actionable? There was no "HOAX". Icewhiz was just using hyperbolic language to attack and misrepresent other editors.

17 Again, not everything that Icewhiz disagrees with is a "HOAX". The fact that he chooses such language is a problem itself. This one actually demonstrates just how WP:BATTLEGROUND Icewhiz's approach is. See discussion on talk [77]. Initially Icewhiz argued that Dov Levin was being misrepresented. I disagreed, because, well, he wasn't (certainly not a "HOAX"). Then Icewhiz said that Levin's statement does not specifically mention this locality. I say "hmm, that's a good point" and remove it myself. So, I agree with Icewhiz and do what he wants, yet... he still comes running here with that diff!!! That's some low shit. You can see him actually getting frustrated with me agreeing with him (because that makes it harder for him to try and use this diff to get me sanctioned! How dare I?!?) in this comment where he tries to keep arguing or pretends that I haven't just agreed with him, even after I have.

This report just shows how dysfunctional WP:AE has become in the past few months. You incentivize bad behavior, you get bad behavior.

(note: Icewhiz went back and changed his ordering and numbering of his diffs, so I don't know if my responses match up properly. I'm not going to waste my time chasing his numbering around)

Other WP:TENDENTIOUS and WP:BATTLEGROUND behavior by Icewhiz

User:Vanamonde93 mentioned lack of conciseness above, but honestly, if I were to bring every instance of Icewhiz's disruptive behavior to AE it would go on for pages. So, the following episode would be sufficient basis for a separate report on Icewhiz, but since here we are... It illustrates perfectly why it's impossible to have a normal content discussion with Icewhiz, how combative he is, how petty and antagonistic, and how he engages in WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT behavior which drives everyone who is forced to deal with him nuts.

So after some back and forth the article on the Koniuchy massacre was fully protected by User:TonyBallioni [78] after Icewhiz filed a bogus 3RR report [79] which Tony closed. Notice how Icewhiz continues commenting AFTER his report was closed, how he wants to keep on arguing and fighting: [80] [81] [82] [83]. This is part of the WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT pattern that I'm referring to.
After the full protection, User:Ealdgyth, who's been doing some clean up work at the article, lists some formatting and sourcing issues which need to be fixed that should be worked on [84]. She specifically says: " let's work together to FIX the issues rather than playing blame-games. "
I tell Ealdgyth that I'm fine with her editing through full-protection (she an admin) and try to help resolve the issues [85] [86] [87] [88]
But then ooop! Here comes Icewhiz [89] who rather than helping, immediately starts an argument and does EXACTLY what Ealdgyth asked editors not to do.
Ealdgyth responds to Icewhiz and repeats that she's not interest in having the argument. I don't want to mis represent her (she can correct me if I'm wrong) so here a quote: "Let's NOT rehash who did what or why or when ... I don't care who did it. The thing is... it needs fixing and recriminations do not help with the collaborative nature of the project."
Icewhiz responds by... starting ANOTHER argument, this time about whether or not he started an argument. Seriously. First start an argument and when someone objects, start a second argument about whether he started an argument! It's like a bad sitcom. [90]
This one's a mistake on my part - I let myself get drawn in [91] for one comment (Icewhiz has a very annoying practice of calling his WP:OWN version "the stable version", even if there is absolutely no basis for that)
Icewhiz keeps going [92]
I give up.

This is WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT to a tee. It creates an impossible situation. It's badgering. It's antagonistic. It's WP:BATTLEGROUND.Volunteer Marek (talk) 07:56, 5 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Text (far) in excess of 500 words removed as an admin action. Sandstein 09:05, 6 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@GoldenRing: - while the suggestion that only "peer-reviewed scholarly journals and academically focused books by reputable publishers can be used" is ok, I don't think it will serve to solve the underlying problem. Bad sources are not really the issue here. The problem is mostly misrepresentation and cherry picking of sources or false allegations of misrepresentations of sources. Back in February or March I pointed out that Icewhiz was misrepresenting a source. He got yelled at and warned that if he did it again he'd be sanctioned. He learned from that - he learned to always accuse others of misrepresenting sources even if such an allegation is completely false. The recent RSN discussion he linked to is a prime example of that. So while by itself this proposal is fine, it will most likely just lead to a lot of WP:GAMEing, arguments over what constitutes appropriate sources and false allegations that the other side is breaking it. I doubt it will stem the tide of WP:AE requests coming out of this topic area, he'll just be file them under different pretexts.Volunteer Marek (talk) 17:09, 6 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Piotrus

I am curious if this time Sandstein will find time to review more then 3 diffs. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 08:21, 5 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion here is actually serious and relatively topic (a bunch of topic bans for people - and I stress, plural - who mostly talk/revert rather then create new content is not a bad idea, unlike the same approach when applied to prolific content creators). That said, I'd personally suggest starting with 1RR rather then a topic ban, and escalate to topic ban if disruptive behavior continues. One final point, however, re: User:Paul Siebert, User:K.e.coffman - I'd be vary of restricting local (i.e. non-English) sources. There's a lot of research in this area that is done only by local (Polish, for example) historians. It is also against WP:NOENG. I'd strongly oppose any restriction on sources; current rules are good enough. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 10:27, 6 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Paul Siebert: In theory, this sounds nice, but in practice, I am still skeptical. For example, vast majority of Polish historians publish in Polish, not English. This is because a) they often don't know English and b) there are relatively few English academic outlet interesting in Polish history. Google Scholar is pretty bad at indexing non-English citations, not to mention that a requirement to be cited means that you are discarding all new works (sometimes it takes years for a work to get cited after publication). Allowing a single user to veto is an invitation to censor perfectly reliable sources, for example pl:Biuletyn Instytutu Pamięci Narodowej is a popular science magazine that publishes a lot of quality historical research by reliable historians, but I know that there is a user active in this discussion who consider anything IPN-related to be biased due to his view that IPN is a political tool, and he will be happy to veto it. I refuse to allow a user with fringe views to effectively censor work of dozens of professional historians on their whim.--_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 18:40, 6 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by François Robere

Please. Stop. Lying. [93]
Please stop making shit up. [94]
Please, come up with better excuses for reverts. [95]
Yes, yes, we all know you're very good at cherry picking the most negative aspects of this article's topic. [96]
How about you "focus" your RfC... so that it doesn't propose one thing, and then tries to sneak in another? [97]
[98]
And once again you're borderline violating BLP by trying to smear a prominent historian... At least this time you're not misrepresenting sources and trying to use anti-semitic far right publications to make your attacks [99]
As for your clumsy attempt at an explanation ... bunkum!... YOU. DIDN'T. READ. WHAT. YOU. WERE. REVERTING. And your attempts to blatantly, um, present a false picture of your actions, right here and now, just makes your behavior worse! [100]
[101]

Earlier examples:

You've invented that part yourself and you're pretending not to understand the objection (WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT)... And that's on top of blatantly misrepresenting some sources (not to mention the fact that... you were just making shit up). [102]
There are also quotes and sources... which you appear to be purposefully ignoring [103]
Stop. Making. Stuff. Up. [104]

Admin notifications:

[105]
[106]

This attitude isn't helpful or fun. François Robere (talk) 11:27, 5 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Beyond My Ken: This isn't only a matter of group membership, it's also a matter of group dynamics. Some of the other editors are perfectly amiable to discussion and compromise, but when you have people like Bella [107] or Marek around they tend to either disrupt the discussion or affect the rest of the group in ways that are counter-productive. We've already seen some progress since Bella was removed; I believe that if this AE request is accepted things will shift. François Robere (talk) 18:34, 5 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@GoldenRing: neither editor's conduct is egregiously awful unless you can tell which is right about the argument: With all due respect, this attitude is one of the reasons we keep finding ourselves in these discussions. When you allow an editor to act like Marek does because it's not "egregiously awful", you're guaranteeing a sour experience for the rest of us. I'm not here to spar with a guy who always assumes I'm lying, or to swallow insults from some virtual personality I never met and don't care to. I could just say "fuck it" and go about my merry business, but how would Wikipedia look then? How would it look if others quit? (Oh, wait - they do) This is a ridiculous standard for "civility" for a place that depends on people participating. If someone told your mother "Betty, I think you're making shit up, I don't like your excuses and you should really keep your grade-A junk to yourself" it would (I hope) upset you just a bit, but here? Here it's fine! François Robere (talk) 14:11, 6 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Beyond My Ken

This entire situation has moved past ridiculousness into farce. This is very close to a zero-sum situation: either Volunteer Marek and MyMolobyAccount and friends are right, or Icewhiz and Francis Robere and friends are right. These can't both be the case at the same time. One of these two parties is distorting historical fact and using unreliable sources to do so, or misusing reliable sources, and somebody with authority needs to sort through all these claims and diffs and find out who is telling the truth and who is dissembling. It is no longer enough to punt, these need to be settled, or it's going to go on ad infinitum. It is not a matter of a mere content dispute, the very legitimacy of Wikipedia is at stake. We cannot allow our articles to be based on the misrepresentation of reliable sources or the use of unreliable sources, so which ever group is doing so needs to be stopped and shut down. Beyond My Ken (talk) 13:32, 5 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I endorse the direction pointed to by K. e. coffman and Paul Siebert, that adopting s strict sourcing rule for ARBEE would help tremendously. I still believe that topic bans for the more disruptive editors have a role to play right now, but their comments are useful for a long-term strategy. Beyond My Ken (talk) 04:24, 6 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Ealdgyth

BMK - feel free to take my source check here and figure out who added what to that article. It took me quite a while to do that and I was trying to model good editing behavior by not digging further to find blame. Ealdgyth - Talk 14:22, 5 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by WBG

Echo BMK word by word.∯WBG^converse 14:24, 5 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by SN54129

Those diffs of Icewhizz' require rather an elastic interpretation of the policy ("personal attacks"—upon sources?). If this filing is deemed retaliatory, then, of course, there is only one immediate course of action to be taken here. —SerialNumber54129^{paranoia /cheap sh*t room} 15:39, 5 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by יניב הורון

User:My very best wishes: Regarding your comment, I think you made a mistake. Refering to a "green" statement Icewhiz made - which he did not actually make - he was quoting a Holocaust historian's assessment of the former literature. Icewhiz actually did not offer his own opinion (which is probably inline with Zimmerman's opinion - and differs from the quote of prior research) - he quoted a fairly respected scholar.... That's not POV pushing!--יניב הורון (Yaniv) (talk) 17:23, 5 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Rusf10

I really don't have enough knowledge of the topic to know who's right or wrong in the content dispute. Yes, it should be a long-term goal to figure that out, but its not going to be decided here. What is clear is Volunteer Marek's behavior is extremely disruptive. His constant personal attacks should result in sanctions. He also made unsupported claims of collusion among other editors.

His claims that another editor is making too many AE reports is laughable. Overall, Volunteer Marek makes more AE requests that any other single editor. When doing research on AE requests related to Donald Trump, we found that he was involved with 15 cases over the past two years and of those he filed 8, more than any other editor. [108] Over the same two-year period Volunteer Marek filed 18 AE requests overall. In contrast Icewhiz filed only 11. Many of volunteer marek's requests are frivolous, with at least ~~two~~ one resulting in boomerangs, so there is actually a good case to be made to ban him from filing future AE requests.--Rusf10 (talk) 18:48, 5 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Tryptofish: To be clear, I am not saying that filing 11 cases is okay or that the cases were justified. I was just pointing out the hypocrisy of Volunteer Marek.
@Volunteer Marek:How many sanctions have you ducked? You are not going to drag me into re-litigating the last request. And I don't believe there is any requirement for me to be involved to comment here. There were certainly a large number of people who were not involved who commented in the request you made against me, yet I didn't see you complaining then. Here is your boomerang warning. I was going off of analysis by another editor, maybe I missed something,@Lionelt: please correct me if I'm wrong. Volunteer Marek, you can't just cherry-pick data and focus on a brief three month period and predict the future based on that. Maybe Icewhiz has filed requests that are bad, but it does not excuse your behavior. Even if they haven't boomeranged a good number of the requests you filed resulted in no action meaning that they probably should not have been filed to begin with. The way you operate here is to throw out whatever allegations you can come up with and see what sticks, that to me is an abuse of the system and a waste of time. The reason you brought the request against me was primarily for a BLP violation which no one seemed to agree with.--Rusf10 (talk) 20:50, 5 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Tryptofish

I had not planned to comment here, but the assertion that filing 18 AE requests is a problem, whereas filing "only 11" is not, seems to me to be rather creative quantitative reasoning. The link to the sandbox study is a link to something that reflects the problems with the AP2 topic area, and the data there should not be taken at face value. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:16, 5 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by My very best wishes

First of all, I agree with GoldenRing and NeilN suggestions, i.e. to request that in the subject area "Only high quality sources may be used... Anyone found to be misrepresenting a source...". This is main issue here, not the alleged incivility or whatever. But I do not think that only English-language sources can be requested. Doing so would be against the policy and beyond the mandate of this noticeboard. Yes, WP:MEDRS might be a good approximation, but it needs to be modified for the area of history.

Now, speaking about misrepresenting a source, there is an example of this by Icewhiz: (diff #10 in the previous request). Using this source to justify and promote the idea that the partisans of Home Army were just as dangerous to Jews as were the Nazis is an obvious misrepresentation of this source. In this example, Icewhiz selectively quotes whatever he likes, instead of reading and objectively summarizing the entire publication, just as he fights with historians and sources he does not like. Please see the comment by Nishidani in the previous request for more detail [109]. Was VM engaged in such misrepresentations? No, I do not see it at all.My very best wishes (talk) 16:13, 6 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

However, if admins do not want to look at the sources and their potential misrepresentations, I think they should simply close these two cases as "no action". Then it should be up to the sides of this case if they want to follow mediation or other peaceful WP:DR, or they want to submit a case to Arbcom. But I think that must be their choice. My very best wishes (talk) 14:27, 7 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Statement K.e.coffman

The recent AE filings have brought to the surface problematic sourcing and material in articles touching on Polish-Jewish relations during WW2. Some examples:

A fringe author Mark Paul was widely used in these articles — and defended by some editors. Paul puts forth a theory that Jews in the Soviet zone of occupation "collaborated" with Nazi Germany in 1939-41, that is before these areas were occupied by Germany; please see: Paul's thesis. There's on-going support for this position here on Wikipedia; see bottom of diff: [110] (courtesy ping Tatzref).
Undertones of "Judeo-Bolshevism" canard were / are present. For example, in the context of the murderous policies that Nazi Germany was about to unleash on the Polish and Soviet Jews, "in the personnel of the Soviet security police at the time, the high percentage of Jews was striking" reads uncomfortably close to Nazi propaganda. See also: "Juxtaposition" (TP discussion).
Here's an example of where the content was deemed to be "anti-semitic propaganda" by Sandstein: AE. Etc.

If I were to pinpoint where the issues exists in Wikipedia articles, it would be the use of shoddy sources and inappropriate synthesis, resulting in distorted content such as the above. I agree that some articles (i.e. Home Army) are a can of worms due to evolving historiography and conflicting academic positions, as GoldenRing points out. However, the murder of Jews during the early months of Barbarossa is not such an area. The scholarship is clear and unambiguous.

My suggestion would be to adopt the sourcing restriction across the ARBEE area: [111]. That would reduce the amount of conflict and improve the quality of articles.
An alternative is, perhaps, to have a new ArbCom case to examine the use of sources and editor behaviour. A more in-depth exploration of the topic area may be beneficial.

K.e.coffman (talk) 00:14, 6 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Statement Irondome

We are in a very difficult position due to current profound disagreements between governments and academic schools of thought on this topic. [[112]]. This, for instance is the latest Yad Vashem statement. The project can only record what is stable and consensual in the academic real world. I would support K.e.coffmans assertion that "Shoddy sources and inappropriate synthesis" being a major factor in our present trouble. I would support K.e's second proposal in the longer term, and in the meantime adopt his first proposal. Irondome (talk) 00:56, 6 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Malik Shabazz

I support what Volunteer Marek wrote. It's time for admins, Sandstein in particular, to stop sheltering Icewhiz and encouraging his behavior. On 30 May, I warned Icewhiz about his disruptive behavior. He e-mailed Sandstein, complaining that I had violated a topic ban two weeks before the topic ban had been imposed. Even more outrageously, Sandstein accepted his accusations at face value. Either Sandstein is a moron or an idiot, but he has no business being an administrator, certainly not passing judgment on those with whom Icewhiz battles. — Malik Shabazz ^Talk/_Stalk 01:25, 6 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Paul Siebert

These two AE requests actually reflect a broader collision, and this collision is a clash between local nationalistic narratives in the areas that are not in the scope of a broader scientific community. In a situation when high quality sources describing these events are scarce, local writers, journalists or fringe theorists privatised this area and advocate a very specific point of view that support one or another nationalistic myth. Accordingly, some users non-critically choose the sources advocating one or another myth, and in that situation "a plague on both your houses" seems a very reasonable approach.

In this battle of nationalistic narratives, poor, questionable and obscure sources become an essential tool. Accordingly, instead of banning certain users, which inevitably is a temporary solution, it would be more productive to apply more strict rule for source selection. That would resolve not only this particular problem, but many problems in this area. I think, Wikipedia in general will benefit if we decide that the articles describing historical events that are covered with ARBEE should be written primarily based on peer-reviewed sources written in English, because western authors are more neutral when they write about EE, and majority of good EE historians either publish their works in the West, or their books or articles are being cited by western peers. In contrast, questionable and poor quality local sources are being essentially ignored in the West. By applying more strict rules in the EE area, we can eliminate the ground for many conflicts.

Possible rules may be as follows:

English peer-reviewed sources published by reputable western publishers are accepted as the sources. The sources that have been cited at least 5-10 times, according to Google scholar are accepted without reservations.
Monographs and books written in English are acceptable without reservations if they have been cited or if positive reviews on these books are found in Jstor or similar databases.
The sources written by local authors are acceptable if they have been cited according to google scholar (1-2 citations by foreign authors, excluding self-citations, should be enough)
If other works authored by some local author have been cited more than 10 times, the writing of this authors in local peer-reviewed journals or books published by local publishers are also acceptable. The below example demonstrates that many EE authors can be easily screened out by applying this filter.
Other local sources are acceptable only if a consensus is achieved between users about that. In that case, any user has a right of veto.
Finally, more strict sanctions should be applied for misinterpretation of sources. The user who has committed more than 2 serious misinterpretations may be topic banned.

I realise that these rules may lead to deletion of some articles. However, I don't think it is a big problem, because if no good quality sources exists about some topic, Wikipedia as whole will benefit from deletion of such an article: it is better not to have an article at all than to have an article written based on some obscure writings.

I think we can easily clean Wikipedia from a significant amount of questionable content if we take these measures in the ARBEE area. For example, such a "renown" author as Volodymyr Viatrovych (one of major nationalistic historians in Ukraine) was cited in the West just 3-4 times, some of citations contain a serious criticism. That means, this "scholar" essentially is not existing for international community, however, his writings fit Wikipeda's sources policy. By applying the procedure proposed above, we can easily get rid of most of highly questionable claims that can be found in Viatrovich's books and decrease tensions around many EE related articles. I am pretty sure the same will work for the articles about Polish, Lithuanian, Russian etc history. --Paul Siebert (talk) 03:18, 6 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Seraphim System. I was probably not clear enough, but my I did not propose to delete any article. My proposal just sets more strict standards for sources, and that looks pretty reasonable in the areas where passions are high. If you read carefully what I wrote, you probably noticed that foreign sources are allowed if they appear in google scholar source and have been cited by good quality sources. As a rule, good foreign authors meet these criteria quite well. With regard to your "there is no source that is so reliable that it can't be misused by an editor who wants to misuse it", I respectfully disagree. If these two users were acting in bad faith, they must be banned. However, since that haven't been done yet (and I hope that will never happen), we should assume their good faith, which means there was some objective reason behind this conflict. In my opinion, if some sources are excluded, the ground for a conflict will be eliminated, at least partially. Good quality sources are less provocative, they leave less freedom of manouevre for misinterpetations, and are less likely to cause hot debates.--Paul Siebert (talk) 14:10, 6 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus, please, do not misinterpret my words. I did not propose a global ban of non-English sources, I just propose more strict procedure for its selection. An additional argument in support of that is as follows: a major part of the dispute is about misinterpretation of sources, and such a dispute is much easier to resolve when all parties have an access to the source in question and they have common tools for their evaluation. If the source is published in peer-reviewed journals, or the English review on that book exists, that provides us with an additional information to make a judgement. However, if one party can read Polish (Russian, Ukrainian, no matter), but another party can not, and it cannot independently evaluate a quality of this source (sometimes, it is not possible to tell if some EE publisher or journal is trustworthy), a situation is somewhat unbalanced: one party has to trust to another party about reliability the information taken from this source and accuracy of its interpretation. If more strict procedure is applied (see above), this problem will be essentially eliminated. By the way, good EE writers are now a part of an international community: they publish their works in international journals, they are being cited by their peers, and all of that is easy to see. However, if some EE author has no articles published in the West, that might be an indication of some problem with their reliability. Sometimes, it would be better to avoid writing something in Wikipedia than to write questionable things.--Paul Siebert (talk) 15:14, 6 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Nug. I am very disappointed with this your post. You perfectly know who I am, and how I am selecting the sources, which means you should be aware that the procedure for source selection I propose here is exactly the same procedure as I myself am following. I never (with, probably very rare exceptions) use Russian sources (I have no idea why do you focus on Russian sources: do you mean I am Russian?), and I am always trying to avoid the sources that do not meet the criteria I outlined here. Which means not only I have really thought this proposal through, I demonstrated that it works perfectly, at least, for me.

Secondly, you are right, I returned after a 5 year break, and that gives me an ADVANTAGE: I perfectly remember the old WP:EEML story, and this your post reminds me old days when some members of that notorious email list demonstrated the same battleground behaviour that I am currently seeing in your post. I even found something new: nobody was accusing me in xenophobia 5 years ago, so my conclusion is that the situation is getting even worse. In connection to that, I recommend Sandstein , GoldenRing, Awilley, Drmies and other admins who are analysing this case to re-read that old EEML story and check the history of some users who are commenting here under new names, because some of them have more dense personal connections to this story than it seems, which means their opinia may be more partisan than neutral, and should be treated accordingly.--Paul Siebert (talk) 02:20, 7 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@power~enwiki, it was not my intention to remind people the names of ex-EEML members. I personally see absolutely no problem in VM, Piotrus or Molobo's behaviour, and I didn't plan to resurrect the EEML story. However, the recent Nug's post, which was factually incorrect and redundantly aggressive, demonstrated that not all ex-EEML members abandoned their old style behaviour. The original Nug's name was Martintg (talk · contribs), and, as far as I know, five ex-EEML members voiced their opinion here.--Paul Siebert (talk) 06:04, 7 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by SMcCandlish

@Paul Siebert:'s proposal is interesting, though a bit detailed. It's probably how WP should be handling all topics that require primarily scholarly research. In spirit, it's essentially the same approach as WP:MEDRS, just different as to exact details. I've long thought that MEDRS's model should be generalized at least to all of the sciences. It might be interesting to see if a limited-time (1 year? 3?) ArbCom editing restriction in this particular topic proved that a stricter sourcing approach was tolerable to the community and beneficial (both in output quality and in a lower conflict level) at a socio-historical academic topic, too. I guess this would require a motion at WP:ARCA. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 05:24, 6 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by MyMoloboaccount

As to Paul Sieberts statement, I have to strongly disagree. We can't change overnight rules on reliable sources that were made in different process and required extensive discussion. Some of the topics of Wikipedia aren't researched in the West at all, others have little coverage.As such information about these will be only found in local reliable sources, however still fulfilling WP:RS criteria. For example information about Wehrmacht war crimes in 1939 Poland is mostly covered by scholarly publications in Poland and there is little information about them in Western sources when it comes to details.Likewise a lot of information about atrocities and resistance in communist occupied Europe will be only found in local sources that of course need to fulfill WP:RS criteria.Again, research or coverage is often scarce in Western literature. We have WP:RS as guidance and for example to ban reputable, scholarly sources if they weren't discussed by Western publications seems too much to me like suble historic colonialist attitude.Also such decision would effect such wide range of articles that much wider discussion than here would be needed to enact such policy.As Wikipedia is a global project, we can't restrict our sourcing to just sources in Anglosphere world. However I think one of the problems is using authors that have been widely criticized as having bias or have been controversial. If a view has been widely seen as controversial and is subject to debate, it should be restricted to the author and not be a basis for writing the whole article from such point of view.I would also be fine with restrictions demanding only high quality sources may be used, specifically peer-reviewed scholarly journals and academically focused books by reputable publishers or that anyone found to be misrepresenting a source, either in the article or on the talk page, will be subject to escalating topic bans.--MyMoloboaccount (talk) 06:39, 6 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Seraphim System

Regarding the above proposal, I think the deletion of articles where foreign language sources are needed to establish notability would be a problem. Instituting this kind of restriction of sources is not going to be a substitute for addressing behavioral problems. There is no source that is so reliable that it can't be misused by an editor who wants to misuse it. Consulting multiple sources, and varying the sources used, so the article doesn't become too locked into a single narrative is crucial, as is recognizing where the author is developing original ideas the acceptance of which needs to be checked in other secondary sources (easy to spot as it usually follows the format of "The past scholars were wrong. What they didn't understand was x. I propose ....") The main problem presented by foreign language sources is that they can't be verified by other editors. Seraphim System ^(talk) 12:49, 6 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Paul Siebert: Bad faith is a bit stronger than what I intended - editors don't need to be acting in bad faith for the types of sourcing issues raised in this discussion to persist. We've seen discussion here of cherry-picking facts which can often misrepresent or subtlely distort the source - this is probably one of the most common sources of sourcing disagreements, and I don't think bad faith needs to be assumed. It is more often non-neutral editing, which doesn't have to be bad faith to create the types of issues we are seeing here. But, I also absolutely agree that using stronger sources will improve the discussion and be more persuasive and that editors should be willing to do this voluntarily to at least try to achieve a consensus. Its fairly disheartening that may need to be formalized at ARCA, when reasonable editors could mutually agree to implement without being forced to.Seraphim System ^(talk) 15:42, 6 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Nug

To be honest, the idea of excluding foreign language sources seems somewhat xenophobic. Surely we don't want to go down that path. Given that many WW2 articles use Russian language sources, I don't think Paul Siebert has really thought this proposal through. Paul has just recently returned to Wikipedia after a five year break in April 2018, I'm not sure how much weight should be given to his statement, as it seems more about perpetuating his past battleground grievances rather than any real new insight on the present situation.

@Paul Seibert, EEML was nearly ten years ago and that caravan has long moved on, it had nothing what so ever to do with misrepresenting sources and their reliability. After an absence of five years, what is one to think of an editor who immediately wades into conflict[113],[114],[115],[116] against their old opponents within the last two months of their return? Not my idea of a clean start. --Nug (talk) 04:22, 7 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

One could accuse Volunteer Marek of many things, but misconstruing sources or use of unreliable sources definitely is not one of them. Note that IceWhiz has filed this case against VM two days after a similar case was filed against himself. That smacks of a classic battleground tactic on the part of IceWhiz. I think WP:BOOMERANG applies here. --Nug (talk) 01:24, 7 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by power~enwiki

I agree with various editors (including GoldenRing) that this dispute is not suited to WP:AE. I recommend referring this to WP:MEDCOM to attempt to determine which references are reliable on the various disputed articles, with an explicit note that discretionary TBANs of either Volunteer Marek or Icewhiz from ARBEE (excluding MEDCOM proceedings) are permitted to any admin that feels it necessary; I don't believe they are necessary now but feel there is consensus to allow any admin to apply such a TBAN without appeals/drama if these editors continue to be disruptive (though both editors should be allowed to participate in any MEDCOM proceedings). power~enwiki (π, ν) 04:05, 7 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Separately: Volunteer Marek is the subject of the largest volume of spurious complaints at administrative noticeboards of any editor, and he should not be punished for that. power~enwiki (π, ν) 04:07, 7 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

As EEML has come up: I believe MyMoloboaccount, Piotrus, and Volunteer Marek were parties to that case, and no other editors who have commented here. I don't believe anything beyond that statement is relevant here; while comments here may be biased, the concerns about article content are largely matters of fact. Those facts can be determined by neutral parties without concern as-to any bias of the participating editors. power~enwiki (π, ν) 04:42, 7 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Vanamonde93

After making yet another effort to understand this mess, I have to agree with GoldenRing that understanding who is being disruptive requires understanding who is wrong or right with respect to the source material. I do not believe AE is equipped to handle that, and I do not think we would be serving the encyclopedia if we t-ban both parties simply because we do not have the time and knowledge to discover who is in the right. Aside from being unfair and potentially counter-productive in this case, such a sanction would have the effect of provoking disruption in a number of other areas, because there is no shortage of editors (well, accounts, anyway) who would be willing to face a t-ban if their "opponents" also received one. I acknowledge that I recently recommended a "plague on both your houses approach", but that was in a case where the disagreements did not involve subtle points in non-English sources, and the attitude problems were much worse. My advice at this point would be to kick this to ARBCOM, much as I hate to say so. Vanamonde (talk) 09:59, 7 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by (username)

Result concerning Volunteer Marek

This section is to be edited only by uninvolved administrators. Comments by others will be moved to the sections above.

As has been pointed out by various editors, and as is apparent from the many recent AE requests about it, the history of Poland in World War II has become a WP:BATTLEGROUND, and the diffs provided by both parties as well as by François Robere indicate that both Volunteer Marek and Icewhiz have been engaging in battleground-like conduct. Unsubtle instruments seem to be needed. I'd start off with a topic ban of Volunteer Marek and Icewhiz. Sandstein 16:24, 5 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Because it will take a great deal of time and effort to figure out who's right or wrong or neither here, I'd support a short-ish (3 month?) topic ban from the area for both VM and Icewhiz (per Sandstein), and strongly encourage both to agree to a voluntary interaction ban between themselves (in the sense they should be aware to avoid interacting like this with each other but shouldn't have to worry about tripping up over each other as strong ibans usually require), and only if this ends up here again, we're not going to take that constant amount of discourse between the two lightly. --Masem (t) 16:38, 5 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I've spent somewhere between four and five hours so far reading through talk page discussions and I'm no closer to having a handle on this. My problem in approaching this is that neither editor's conduct is egregiously awful unless you can tell which is right about the argument. They argue back and forwards a lot over which sources are reliable, and which sources are primary, and which are secondary, and which should be preferred, and which translation of foreign sources should be preferred. If one is clearly right about the sources and one is clearly wrong, then the one who is wrong is being tendentious. I doubt that any uninvolved admin is going to have a sufficient view of this subject to be able to judge which is right, and I also think it entirely possible that the historiography is disputed in the RS and so each is coming from a particular perspective that is supported by a "camp" of academics. This is also quite possibly related to the current arbitration case (German War Effort) which likewise is an area where changing historiography causes sharp divisions over which sources should be considered reliable. I'll keep digging around this, and it's possible that another admin will come to firmer conclusions than anyone who's commented so far, but if not then we have two possibilities: We could declare "a plague on both your houses" and ban them both; this is giving up but might be the only way we can prevent disruption in this forum. Or we ask the committee to open a full case to investigate something which is too complex for this forum to handle adequately. GoldenRing (talk) 19:26, 5 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with this assessment. Option two would be a good approach as well, but I suspect that option one, which I proposed above, leads to roughly the same outcome for a fraction of volunteer time absorbed. Sandstein 20:12, 5 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I'm still plowing through this, but have some initial thoughts. If uninvolved editors want a clearish introduction to what it's all about, the history of "Polish death camp" controversy starting on January 29 and extending a week or two into February gives you something of a flavour of it. My initial inclination is to impose across the whole subject of the holocaust in Poland broadly construed similar restrictions to those User:NeilN has applied to Collaboration in German-occupied Poland, namely: Only high quality sources may be used, specifically peer-reviewed scholarly journals and academically focused books by reputable publishers. Anyone found to be misrepresenting a source, either in the article or on the talk page, will be subject to escalating topic bans, and are subject to discretionary sanctions while editing this page. There is far too much use of news sources for a subject which (as far as I can tell, anyway) has a reasonably developed academic literature. I'm a bit ambivalent about including NeilN's preference for English-language sources, recognizing that there is a sharp difference of perspective between Polish sources and Western ones. @Icewhiz and Volunteer Marek: and any uninvolved admins who happen by, I'd value your thoughts on this. GoldenRing (talk) 12:31, 6 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@GoldenRing: That clause was a watered down version of Sandstein's suggestion to limit source-evaluation to English-language academic sources only. He correctly noted that most admins here can't read Polish when the issue of source misrepresentation comes up. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 13:17, 6 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Just now starting to dig into this. NeilN, do you have any feedback on how this worked? (saying English sources are preferred when available and equal quality and relevance?) ~Awilley (talk) 18:56, 6 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@NeilN: I'm aware of the difficulties non-English-language sources create for enforcement, but in this case it does seem that Polish historians take a significantly different view of history to others. I'm worried that by encouraging the deprecation of Polish sources, we are excluding a significant POV from the articles. Your thoughts?
@Paul Siebert: I think most of us here are pretty well aware of EEML, thanks. As for your proposed restrictions, I think the concept has merit but experience has shown that such restrictions need to be as straightforward as possible to make enforcement feasible, and to discourage lawyering. GoldenRing (talk) 08:13, 7 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I kinda want to stay out of this, for a couple of reasons. First of all, VM is a prolific editor and there's too much to dig through for this admin. Second, I've blocked Marek before, for personal attacks--but I will note that I have not seen reason since then to even consider blocking. Yes, he has feisty rhetoric (and I can't stand the Whole. Thing. Where. You. Do. This, though I'm sure he's not the only one), but again, I have not seen personal attacks. The whole area is already a battleground, so that some editors (on both sides! haha) have some measure of battleground isn't unexpected. But I have not yet seen that VM ever misconstrues evidence or uses unreliable sources, and that is hugely important here. I cannot say the same for Icewhiz because I just don't know them well enough, though I have some doubts. Drmies (talk) 20:41, 5 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Note that I have blocked Malik Shabbaz for 31 hours for personal attacks made on this noticeboard, after giving them a chance to strike it themselves. GoldenRing (talk) 11:52, 6 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Adamgerber80

This request may be declined without further action if insufficient or unclear information is provided in the "Request" section below.
Requests may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs (not counting required information), except by permission of a reviewing administrator.

Request for Adamgerber80

User who is submitting this request for enforcement: Nauriya (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) 22:35, 5 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

User against whom enforcement is requested: Adamgerber80 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
Search CT alerts: in user talk history • in system log

Sanction or remedy to be enforced: Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/India-Pakistan#Standard_discretionary_sanctions :

Diffs of edits that violate this sanction or remedy, and an explanation how these edits violate it

03/07/2018 Reverted a vandal-undoing IP with a misleading edit summary.

Diffs of previous relevant sanctions, if any

[117] A stray IP vandalized Regional power by erasing a longstanding sourced content.
[118] Another IP then came along and undid that vandalism.
[119] But then Adamgerber80 steps in to revert the vandalism-undoing IP with the misleading edit summary of "Back to sourced version.
This is shocking. Everyone can see that this was a misleading edit summary because in the edit Adamgerber80 actually removed longstanding sourced content. Since this edit involved erasing Pakistan's name from the list of regional powers in South Asia, this comes under the purview of [WP:ARBIPA]]. Adamgerber80 made no sign of accepting this as a "mistake", no self-revert was made and the edit war was continued by others soon after. Thus, I believe this is a case of WP:TE One diff may not be deserve a sanction but again this user is not a newbie making first timer mistakes that we just pass over it.
[120] Not sure how its relevant, but displaying the block log just in case its needed.

Notification of the user against whom enforcement is requested

Notified

Discussion concerning Adamgerber80

Statements must be made in separate sections. They may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs, except by permission of a reviewing administrator.
Administrators may remove or shorten noncompliant statements. Disruptive contributions may result in blocks.

Statement by Adamgerber80

This seems to be a misrepresentation of the series events of not an assumption of WP:AGF. First, I have numerous (greater than 10 edits) on Regional power going all the way back to 10 September 2017. Also, I have been extremely active on the article talk page regarding discussions of multiple countries (nothing to do with Pakistan's inclusion or exclusion). Yes, that edit was a mistake on my part but not out of malice. If you look carefully, there is another editor [121] who edits (June 28) between the vandal IP edit (June 28) and the restoration of the content by the other IP (July 3). On a page, which sees a high degree of vandalism, I reverted back to an edit by a registered editor. This is what I tend to do and add a summary like back to good version or sourced version. Yes, I should have paid more attention to the content but the gap of days between those edits might have caused me to make a mistake. In my defense, when you have more than 2000 pages on your watchlist with a limited time, one can make a human mistake. Now, I have not edited since then to be able to rectify my mistake which I would not have, given no one notified me including the person who filed this WP:ARE. I do see now that another editor did revert me and there is some discussion regarding that on the article talk page which I will join in. If some admins do feel that I have a partisan view of this (give my nationality), like this editor here, then please feel free to go through my edits([122],[123], [124], [125]). I have watched over numerous South-Asian military related pages (which is my interest) and have not shown any bias against anyone. On the contrary, I overlook many pages of Pakistani Armed Forces and have reverted vandalism on them multiple times. If it matters, please free to have a look at my block-log which was sometime ago (year 2016) because of a WP:COPYVIO and little understanding of policies. The blocking admin can testify to the fact that I have been very careful since then and even helped her with other WP:COPYVIO issues. Just as a final note, here I am not accusing anyone, but merely making an observation. The filing editor and I have no previous interaction whatsoever. Our intersect of pages is extremely limited and moreover the editor has no contributions on Regional power even now. In a different world, an editor would revert your edit and ask you to explain your edit if they are unfamiliar with you. Here the editor is not even involved on that page and yet files a complaint here based on another editors edit comment. This leads me to believe that there is something more to this complaint then meets the eye. Also, I am happy to have the CU check if the original vandal IP was me in disguise. Happy to answer any more questions or concerns anybody might have. Adamgerber80 (talk) 20:40, 5 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

To illustrate my point further, I present exhibit A. An unrelated incident which happened with me soon after this WP:ARE was filed. @KNHaw: reverted my vandalism reversal on Dawood Ibrahim and left me a note at User_talk:Adamgerber80#July_2018. When I engaged him, he realized his mistake and self reverted. His first instinct was to leave me a warning on my page and my first instinct was to engage them which seemed like an honest mistake, not to report each other to WP:AE. KNHaw is in a very similar position with experience and having no interaction or intersection with me whatsoever. @KNHaw: Sorry for using that incident as an exhibit, this was not to report you or accuse you but simply show that we are all indeed human and make genuine mistakes. In addition, having some time looking around, I have a strong suspicion that this editor filed this WP:ARE at behest of other editor(s) who are unable to do so because of policy reasons. In saying so, I do "not" wish to cause a WP:BOOMERANG but illustrate a concern I had raised sometime earlier at an admin's page User_talk:Vanamonde93#Proxy_war_brewing. I do "not" wish to point fingers or file a formal complaint because I am honestly tired of following the numerous forum discussions that have occurred in the last few months. Even currently if you have look at Regional power has turned into a WP:BATTLEGROUND with many editors (including the complaint filer who has not edited the page but somehow discovered this edit[126]) having suddenly turned up there with no prior history of editing the page. Adamgerber80 (talk) 01:06, 6 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Replying to the question raised (based on looking at the history), there is a registered editor whose edit 4 mins later and inadvertently masks the first vandal IPs edit ([127]). This is probably what did me in because when the vandal undoing IP came in 5 days later, I went back to the most stable version which I wrongfully assumed was this one. I am a little disconcerted with the continued assumption of bad faith in both filing this ARE and the current comments ([128],[129]) partly because of my nationality. I have watched the page for some time (8-9 months), reverted vandalism on it multiple times, and even discussed inclusion and exclusion of countries (Nigeria, Egypt, Kazakhstan, others). None of these edits on that page even once had anything to with India or Pakistan. If I had an "agenda" to fulfill then I would have showed up there pushing for my supposed POV (Talk:Regional power is a great testament of it). I still fail to understand what was the motive to file this ARE from a then uninvolved experienced editor, having never interacted with me even before they requested a clarification from me. Nor did any of the other editors who watched over the page, notified me of my error (I assume they were done in by the reason as me). If they had found my clarification unsatisfactory then the filing of this ARE would have seemed justified (in my mind). Another note, my edit was "not" a content dispute and there was "no" content dispute nor has this point been up for debate when I edited the page. Lastly, I will be offline and might not be able to reply for the next 48-72 hours.

Statement by Kleuske

From an uninvolved standpoint, i'd say Hanlon's Razor applies. Why suspect malice when a mistake suffices to explain the facts presented? Intervening good faith anons have confused me more than once. Errare humanum est. A (lifted) block in 2016 has no bearing on this case. Kleuske (talk) 20:16, 5 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by NadirAli

I do have some difficulty understanding why Adamgerber80, who says they have been active on Regional power since 2017, did not revert the first IP which did the vandalism instead of the second IP which reverted the vandalism. The vandalism in which Pakistan's name was removed from the list by the IP took place on 28 June.[130] Another IP corrected it on 3 July.[131] Where was Adamgerber80 during those 5 days? His edit history shows he was active in those five days.[132] So why did he not revert the vandal IP? Why did he only step in to revert the vandalism-undoing IP?[133]

Of course, Adamgerber80 can be given the benefit of the doubt. So I think this incident can be passed over Nauriya, especially in light of Adamgerber80's retrospective talkpage comment here.[134] But what can't be passed over is the behavior of User:Orientls on that same article.

The real problem on Regional power is this edit[135] by Orientls. In it, Orientls basically blanked references added by Mar4d, as well as any old content about Pakistan's status as a regional power, without even providing an edit summary for explanation. This is a vandal as well as tendentious edit.

Nor has Orientls been active on the article's talkpage nor had any activity on that article before that. What is interesting is that Orientls is an account which has only made 182 edits in the past 4 years [136] which raises socking and sleeper account questions.

His edit history also looks aggressive. See for example his aggressive/incivil comment to Joshua Jonathan here[137] and his condescending demands (to which he has no right anyway) on TurboCop's talkpage here.[138]

I would recommend no action, besides perhaps a mild warning, for Adamgerber80. The real problem is Orientls. He is the one admins will need to deal with.--NadirAli نادر علی (talk) 03:08, 6 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Sdmarathe, I looked at the thread you linked and wasn't aware of it until you pointed it out. Not being prior aware of it means I did not participate in it. You shouldn't accuse me like that unless you can point out which one of those people is me.--NadirAli نادر علی (talk) 20:51, 6 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Thryduulf

@NadirAli: I haven't got time to look into this in any sort of detail, but if you believe that action against Orientls is needed it will likely be much better to file a separate enforcement action request regarding them as they are neither the filer nor the subject of this request. Thryduulf (talk) 10:58, 6 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Sdmarathe

Filer never edited this board before or participated in the discussion or the article and has botched a number of edits while he was filing this report.[139][140]

This is a simple content dispute that has been inflamed by a number of editors preparing for tag team edit warring on an online forum, dedicated towards propaganda and bias.

Mar4d used the term "vandalism" for describing a good faith edit.[141]

NadirAli is distracting from one-side and blaming other side for their completely constructive edits and calling them a "vandal", "socking", "sleeper" and misrepresenting a valid concern[142] as "condescending demands". @GoldenRing: have a look at the conduct of NadirAli here, he is again trying to deceive others for clearing editors of one side by engaging in gross misrepresentation, personal attacks and battleground mentality. Also have a look at his recent topic ban violation while he was engaging in same battleground mentality as evidenced by the edit summary he used.[143]

I am surprised by the actions of Nauriya,[144] Mar4d[145] and NadirAli[146] that they are deliberately referring a good faith and potentially constructive edit[147] as "vandalism" which strikes me as battleground mentality.

NadirAli's misrepresentations are large in quantity. He mentions that Adamgerber80 restored to a "vandalized" version of the page that removed Pakistan. If the NadirAli bothered to look into the diffs, he would realize that the "longstanding" version in fact DOES NOT LIST PAKISTAN as a regional power. Please avoid spreading falsehood NadirAli. The diffs are there for everyone to see :) Sdmarathe (talk) 16:22, 6 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by 2Joules

Confirmed sockpuppet's comments removed, please see Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/FreeatlastChitchat Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 12:34, 7 July 2018 (UTC) 2Joules (talk) 08:12, 7 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Vanamonde93

I cannot recall previous interactions with the filer, but I've been on the periphery of this conflict for a while, and am acquainted with the other protagonists. Adamgerber generally keeps their head down and edits with due regard for source material and consensus, rather than blindly warring over content they dislike. In this particular instance, they have stated that the first revert was a mistake (an easy one to make) and I'm inclined to take that at face value. I would not recommend action here. All the rest of you, meanwhile, please go and read WP:NOTVAND. Calling people vandals when they aren't can get you blocked. Vanamonde (talk) 11:15, 7 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Mar4d

I will just make an exception to Sdmarathe's claim regarding the longstanding version. As was noted in the section below regarding WP:TAGTEAM, the content which got removed has been present in the article along with sources for several years [148]. Please don't attempt to mislead fellow editors on something as obvious and easy to verify. Mar4d (talk) 11:18, 7 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by مھتاب احمد

The more I am reading the article histories the more I believe the former AE case did not successfully deal with all the problem editors. Thats why the nationalistic war has, instead of becoming history, has carried on to the remaining editors who escaped the mass topic ban. I think we can add RaviC and Razer2115 to the list of problem editors. RaviC's editing is hostile[149] and he has a habit of reverting others, who are adding non-contentious citations, with vague edit summaries claiming "POV"[150], just like My Lord.[151] Rzvas does the same.[152] The modus operandi of stonewalling is alike. Similar story with Razer2115 who ironically supported the same users at ARCA[153] who he opposed at ARE with aspersions.[154]

Adamgerber80 also seems to do edit wars, for example broke 3RR with 4 reverts here[155][156][157][158]. In some of his edit summaries he claimed the IP was a block evading sock. No evidence was provided for this claim. He also edit warred quite a bit on Sindhudesh. [159][160][161] — Preceding unsigned comment added by مھتاب احمد (talk • contribs)

Masem Have you checked Adamgerber80's history of edit warring, he broke 3RR with 4 reverts here[162][163][164][165]. He also edit warred on Sindhudesh. [166][167][168] In some of his edit summaries he claimed the IP was a block evading sock. No evidence was provided at the time for this claim. No definite finding existed at the time to justify those reverts and edit summaries either. مھتاب احمد (talk) 14:18, 7 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Result concerning Adamgerber80

This section is to be edited only by uninvolved administrators. Comments by others will be moved to the sections above.

I cannot see how Adamgerber's actions given their history on the page in question and in relationship to actions on other pages could be seen as anything other than an AGF mistake - I know I've done similar when I see IP edits on my watchlist on articles that draw vandals, myself restoring the wrong version. If someone pointed out that they restored the wrong version, Adamgerber would have been able to rectify it under WP:3RRNO. Based on history of these other pages, I agree that the situation is similar to what Sdmarathe above describes: an off-site forum upset with how WP's handles Pakistan's status and fighting it with propaganda. I don't believe Nauriya here is coupled with that, nothing in their immediate history shows such problems, and in fact they seem well aware of the socking issue in the I/P topic area; this again to me seems like Nauriya may have been jumping the gun in making sure this off-site forum wasn't using a sock. In other words, this is a case where two accidental wrongs do make a right - I don't see any need for any action here, just a reminder to Nauriya to AGF, and first try to alert the user to make sure it was a mistake (see the next immediate section on Adamgerber's talk page that shows them quickly helping to clarify a situation; I'm pretty confident that they would have done the same if they were alerted to the mistaken wrong version.) --Masem (t) 13:06, 7 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Dan the Plumber

WP:ANEW is the right venue but I will handle this. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 23:47, 6 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

This request may be declined without further action if insufficient or unclear information is provided in the "Request" section below.
Requests may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs (not counting required information), except by permission of a reviewing administrator.

Request concerning Dan the Plumber

User who is submitting this request for enforcement: Huldra (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) 22:20, 6 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

User against whom enforcement is requested: Dan the Plumber (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
Search CT alerts: in user talk history • in system log

Sanction or remedy to be enforced: WP:GS/SCW&ISIL:

Diffs of edits that violate this sanction or remedy, and an explanation how these edits violate it

20:52, 6 July 2018 removes RT source
21:01, 6 July 2018 removes RT source again, in article under 1RR

If discretionary sanctions are requested, supply evidence that the user is aware of them (see WP:AC/DS#Awareness and alerts)

Alerted about discretionary sanctions in the area of conflict in the last twelve months, see the system log linked to above.
Gave an alert about discretionary sanctions in the area of conflict in the last twelve months, on 15:00, 3 July 2018

Additional comments by editor filing complaint

I asked him to revert, User_talk:Dan_the_Plumber#1RR, but he replied that "RT is not a RS". (What I can see from Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard it has been discussed many times, it looks as if it can be used with attribution.) Huldra (talk) 22:20, 6 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I thought this was the place to report him, but is WP:AN/3 the correct place? Huldra (talk) 23:18, 6 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Notification of the user against whom enforcement is requested
notified

Discussion concerning Dan the Plumber

Statements must be made in separate sections. They may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs, except by permission of a reviewing administrator.
Administrators may remove or shorten noncompliant statements. Disruptive contributions may result in blocks.

Statement by Dan the Plumber

If I reverted some RT report it was because it was superfluous, and not necessary. Using RT on Syria related articles is a provocation really anyhow, and hardly innocently used. On Terrorist showing up , I want to state the Wikipedia Username policy that usernames that are provocative are meant to be prohibited. The following is s serious report. Terrorist, Huldra, and your ilk, look at this report, serious report, but you couldn't give a stuff could you. Yu'r more exrcised by this here 1RR report aren't you. Scary.

Statement by Shrike

This is not correct forum for this complain.Its not arbcom decision so there nothing to enforce.Shrike (talk) 22:41, 6 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Beyond My Ken

I agree with Shrike, but also wish to comment that RT is not a reliable source for much of anything, considering that it's a Russian propaganda outlet. Its use should be highly circumscribed - probably only to represent the official Russian government opinion on something, as it is not an independent source. Beyond My Ken (talk) 23:08, 6 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by terrorist96

He was warned 3 days ago here [169] Terrorist96 (talk) 23:11, 6 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Result concerning Dan the Plumber

This section is to be edited only by uninvolved administrators. Comments by others will be moved to the sections above.

Orientls

This request may be declined without further action if insufficient or unclear information is provided in the "Request" section below.
Requests may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs (not counting required information), except by permission of a reviewing administrator.

Request concerning Orientls

User who is submitting this request for enforcement: NadirAli (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) 00:10, 7 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

User against whom enforcement is requested: Orientls (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
Search CT alerts: in user talk history • in system log

Sanction or remedy to be enforced: Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/India-Pakistan#Standard_discretionary_sanctions :

Diffs of edits that violate this sanction or remedy, and an explanation how these edits violate it

5 July 2018 Vandalism, removed old content sourced content and he also blanked additional scholarly refs added by Mar4d. Provided no explanation in edit summary. He also had no edit on that page or its associated talk page before that vandal edit.

Additional comments: What is interesting is that Orientls is an account which has only made less than 190 edits in the past 4 years[170] which raises socking and sleeper account questions. This diff also seems to indicate a botched attempt of meatpuppetry [171] where he inadvertently seems to have copy pasted something else, probably from a chat browser, which indicates that he is doing edits under instructions for somebody else. This diff [172] confirms my suspicions further.

His edit history also looks aggressive. See for example his aggressive/incivil comment to Joshua Jonathan here[173] and his condescending demands (to which he has no right anyway) on TurboCop's talkpage here.[174]--NadirAli نادر علی (talk) 00:10, 7 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

To editor Winged Blades of Godric: it doesn't have to be a chat browser. It could be something else. This diff[175] shows a botched attempt at copy paste of the entire talkpage, with the result that the talk page became duplicated. My feeling is that this sleeper account (indicated by their low levels of activity since it registered in 2014) was given a whole talk page to replace the existing talk page but messed up. I am also quite surprised that you aren't taking this diff seriously because I recall in another case you took similar activity seriously.--NadirAli نادر علی (talk) 03:33, 7 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

To editor Sdmarathe: This unexplained blanking[176] of old content and sources was vandalism. There is no definition by which it can be called a "constructive edit". This blanking edit was even before Orientls came to the talkpage.

This diff[177] is incivility. Read these parts "Do you understand what is an WP:OR or WP:SYNTH? You clearly don't. " and "since it doesn't you can't make connection only because you feels to".

The message[178] to TurboCop is inappropriate because that disclousre is TurboCop's business and not Orientls'. We can't say its a case of impersonation with certainty when admins have not even decided on that yet.

I also find your AE statement inappropriate.--NadirAli نادر علی (talk) 03:56, 7 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Notification of the user against whom enforcement is requested

Notified on talk page--NadirAli نادر علی (talk) 00:13, 7 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion concerning Orientls

Statements must be made in separate sections. They may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs, except by permission of a reviewing administrator.
Administrators may remove or shorten noncompliant statements. Disruptive contributions may result in blocks.

Statement by Orientls

Statement by WBG

I didn't have time to look through the diffs. in their entirety (me thinks that it is a content-dispute and out of scope for AE but I might be wrong) but if we were conferring awards for lack of assumption of good faith, the diff. provided in support of the aspersion that some chat forum is being used will make it.

NadirAli, can you please leave your creative thinking skills, (which borders on nonsense), for some time?∯WBG^converse 03:21, 7 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Sdmarathe

Regardless of my above message, NadirAli is still WP:NOTGETTINGIT that there was no vandalism.[179]

There is nothing wrong with that message, and this other message was absolutely correct given that impersonation is not allowed and the suspicious account never addressed the impersonation obviously because the account's purpose was to engage in disruption while using identity of a long dormant account. I wonder why NadirAli feels this offended. We cant allow impersonation only because you feel otherwise and you are testing edges of your topic ban by talking about an account who's edits are not supposed to be discussed by you since you are topic banned from the entire subject.[180]

NadirAli lacks the understanding of what is a vandalism and wants to treat everyone to be as deceptive as him or even a little bit, given his own history of siteban and topic ban evasion that was never brought into attention until very recently.[181][182] NadirAli has been making these allegations against other editors [183] by falsely claiming that others are making edits for someone else and he never interacted the editor contrary to great deal of with NadirAli.[184]

NadirAli is bordering on objectionable behavior - noting his gross WP:CIR issues and battleground mentality here alone, including the recent topic ban(link) violation where he was engaging in same disruptive battleground mentality per his edit summary.[185] Ping GoldenRing. I think we might need to consider some reprimand about this behavior . Sdmarathe (talk) 03:30, 7 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Mar4d's misconduct and assumption of bad faith is concerning. Here's an example of Mar4d's continued misconduct on Talk:Regional power, where he says other user is "hiding behind one non-Western source".[186] And on this board, he dismisses his opposition as "WP:TAGTEAM", and seeks sanctions against them when they are not in violation. If I recall correctly, it was this same misconduct that led topic ban on him. But now I see it is becoming worse that he evaluates sources by their ethnicity and terms good faith constructive edit as "vandalism". Sdmarathe (talk) 12:20, 7 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Mar4d

I'll try to keep this short.

The content concerned (which was blanked unilaterally) has been present on the article for several years [187]. Until it was removed in drive-by IP vandalism. I won't comment on Adamgerber80's restoration of the IP, given he has claimed it was in error. But right after a user restored the article to its longstanding version, Sdmarathe's first ever edit on that page is to restore the IP's vandalism. Then Lorstaking makes his first ever edit, restoring the IP's edit with the misleading summary "your SCO/G20 references don't make point", even though it included old references.

When the longstanding version was reinstated along with references, Orientls' first ever edit is blanking the section back to Lorstaking's version [188] [189] with no edit summary, which itself should be sanctionable. He did not explain his revert, and commented on the talk 13 hours later. All three of course have no history on the article, but edit the same topics, and added similar original research and personal opinions on the talk.

Regarding NadirAli's concerns on WP:MEAT, at the very least there is substantive indication of WP:TAGTEAM which ought not to be ignored. I would like to see scrutiny of the named accounts in addition to monitoring of the article for WP:NPOV issues, and at the very least actionable measures with regard to Orientls to prevent conduct-related damage. Best regards, Mar4d (talk) 10:58, 7 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Sdmarathe: Source details are certainly an issue, as you are emphasising one source in opposition to ten strong references. You have been long enough on Wikipedia supposedly to know by now what WP:WEIGHT stipulates. Please don't diverge this discussion off-rail. I'm not the one who's mysteriously turning up on articles, or edit warring and reverting WP:NOCON edits. Mar4d (talk) 12:30, 7 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by (username)

Result concerning Orientls

This section is to be edited only by uninvolved administrators. Comments by others will be moved to the sections above.

[1] The administrator may indicate consent at any time before, during, or after imposition of the restriction.

[2] This criterion does not apply if the original action was imposed as a result of rough consensus at the arbitration enforcement noticeboard, as there would be no single enforcing administrator.

[a]

[b]

@@ Line 643: / Line 643: @@
 Now, speaking about misrepresenting a source, there is an example of this by Icewhiz: (diff #10 in the previous request). Using [https://www.politico.eu/article/the-sometimes-righteous-underground-poland-homearmy-nazis-jews/ this source] to justify and promote the idea that the partisans of Home Army ''were just as dangerous to Jews as were the Nazis'' is an obvious misrepresentation of this source. In this example, Icewhiz selectively quotes whatever he likes, instead of reading and objectively summarizing the entire publication, just as he fights with historians and sources he does not like. Please see the comment by Nishidani in the previous request for more detail [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3AArbitration%2FRequests%2FEnforcement&type=revision&diff=848998335&oldid=848996743]. Was VM engaged in such misrepresentations? No, I do not see it at all.[[User:My very best wishes|My very best wishes]] ([[User talk:My very best wishes|talk]]) 16:13, 6 July 2018 (UTC)
+:However, if admins do not want to look at the sources and their potential misrepresentations, I think they should simply close these two cases as "no action". Then it should be up to the sides of this case if they want to follow mediation or other peaceful [[WP:DR]], or they want to submit a case to Arbcom. But I think that must be ''their'' choice. [[User:My very best wishes|My very best wishes]] ([[User talk:My very best wishes|talk]]) 14:27, 7 July 2018 (UTC)
 ====Statement K.e.coffman====

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