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Edit this section for new requests

Martinphi at WP:NPOV

Relevant arbcom case: Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Martinphi-ScienceApologist
Relevant remedy: Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Martinphi-ScienceApologist#Martinphi restricted (among others)
Disputed edit by Martinphi: removing someone else's comment from WT:NPOV
Further context WT:NPOV#Removal of comments by Martinphi
Martinphi warned: [1]

--Francis Schonken (talk) 05:02, 7 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Removal of personal attacks is common practice, and allows the attacker to leave it be and no harm done. Since the editor insisted, I reported him to AN/I, so it is also being discussed there. ——Martin^phi ☎ Ψ Φ—— 05:12, 7 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

That would be WP:ANI#User:Shoemaker's Holiday --Francis Schonken (talk) 05:22, 7 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Suggested action: Martinphi banned from WP:NPOV, maybe also from WT:NPOV (see Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Martinphi-ScienceApologist#Martinphi restricted for how to apply such sanction). --Francis Schonken (talk) 05:19, 7 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm missing how Shoemaker's post was a personal attack. Unnecessary, sure, but it's not a personal attack to note the fact that a user is under arbcom sanction.

In any case, the more important issue is Martinphi's recent edits to WP:NPOV, which changed the meaning of the policy, and the failure to seek a broad consensus before putting those changes into effect. --Akhilleus (talk) 05:30, 7 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

WP:NPA Is not just about personal insult, its about any attack against the editor, over the edit. A brief survey of Shoemaker Holiday's comments suggests some untoward hostility. This looks like its more proper to send them to dispute resolution.--Tznkai (talk) 05:38, 7 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

DR? All I want is that he stop attacking me in the future. I gave him plenty of opportunity tonight. See the AN/I thread. ——Martin^phi ☎ Ψ Φ—— 05:40, 7 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Quoting from WP:NPA: There is no official policy regarding when or whether most personal attacks should be removed, although it has been a topic of substantial debate. Removing unquestionable personal attacks from your own user talk page is rarely a matter of concern. On other talk pages, especially where such text is directed against you, removal should typically be limited. (emphasis mine)

I am aware of the AN/I topic, and I am unimpressed with you both.--Tznkai (talk) 05:43, 7 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Certainly. I didn't read policy, I followed common practice. I guess common practice is in accord with policy, though, because I did a limited (one time) removal. At any rate, I can see people would have a problem if I'd taken it out more than once. I didn't, but followed the usual rout in reporting. ——Martin^phi ☎ Ψ Φ—— 05:57, 7 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It is not common practice to remove another's comments, unless something egregious occurs, such as threats of personal harm, revealing of personal real world information, and so forth. Furthermore, WP:NPA is an important piece of policy. Familiarize yourself with it.--Tznkai (talk) 06:00, 7 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The underlying problem is indeed Martinphi's messing with WP:NPOV as mentioned by Akhilleus, notably Martinphi's efforts towards expanding possibilities for the weight minority POVs may assume accross Wikipedia, thus shifting the balance of the NPOV policy. Martinphi uses disruption as a means to acquire that, which calls for a straight application of the remedies of the ArbCom case Martinphi was involved in. --Francis Schonken (talk) 05:47, 7 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Under absolutely and no circumstances are we having this conversation. 1. This is a wiki, and changes to policy are under the eyes of I dunno, a billion editors or so, so no big deal. 2. Martinphi is on a short leash for disruptive behavior, not content editing, to wikipolicy or anything else. The straight application of remedies is under the judgment of an administrator. At this exact junction of time, that's me.--Tznkai (talk) 05:50, 7 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This edit by Martinphi was disruptive: removing someone else's comment from WT:NPOV --Francis Schonken (talk) 05:52, 7 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It was improper, and I am reviewing it, and the ArbCom case now.--Tznkai (talk) 05:54, 7 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I won't go further than this here, but edits undertaken very slowly in conjunction with several other editors over a matter of days with lots of discussion on the talk page cannot be called pushing or non-consensus of any kind. More abuse of AE for trying to get Martinphi. ——Martin^phi ☎ Ψ Φ—— 05:50, 7 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

There's currently multilateral edit-warring at WP:NPOV, which indicates a lack of consensus. This is a core policy, and it needs to be relatively stable, or at least not the subject of active edit-warring. I sentence you all to one week's hard labor cleaning up Sarah Palin-related articles. MastCell ^Talk 05:55, 7 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Funny, but ambiguous: are all admins currently so taken in by the wheelwarring on a vice-presidential candidate's page, that giving some attention to one of Wikipedia's core content policy pages is asked too much of them? --Francis Schonken (talk) 06:45, 7 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Good thing we don't have a WP:No Cruel and Unusual Punishment--Tznkai (talk) 06:04, 7 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Heh. Like which ones? I read a bit of the main one, and it didn't look like some POV piece. How about helping make NPOV better? Gradually of course. You're a cool hand. I think you'd be of enormous help over there. ——Martin^phi ☎ Ψ Φ—— 06:01, 7 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I apologise if my comment chiding Martinphi was slightly rude. The backhhground is that a while ago Martinphi was editing WP:CIVIL in ways that let him better attack Scienceapologist. He was cited for it here: [[2]] Here's the diff where he specifically stated that was his purpose in editing that policy. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 06:17, 7 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Apology accepted. I recommend you take a break from interacting with Martinphi for a day, and he with you. In addition Martin, I'd suggest using the talk page and extra civil language when editing policy pages. I'd really like it if this is resolved this without having to resort to any actual sanctions.--Tznkai (talk) 06:31, 7 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Frankly, if I hadn't been pulled in by the comment deletion and Martin's ANI thread, I'd have probably moved on already. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 06:40, 7 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

(ec, @Shoemaker:) Well, if you want ArbCom remedies applied WP:AE (this page) is probably the more suited page. I don't want to re-emulate the prior incident (which was extensively discussed in other places at the time), but I do think that the current actions of Martinphi at WP/WT:NPOV warrant a straight application of the cited ArbCom case's remedies, especially as from the above discussion it is more than apparent that Martinphi has no intention to feel sorry about his disruption, nor to improve his behaviour at WP/WT:NPOV. --Francis Schonken (talk) 06:45, 7 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I was hoping it wouldn't be necessary to have any sanctions applied, that I could post that and it'd be the end of it. As it is, I probably think he should be banned from all policy and guideline pages, if he's going to create this much drama every time. Anyway, I have other things to do today than have an internet argument. See you all later! Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 06:53, 7 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Asking an admin to ban Martinphi from WP/WT:NPOV for the time being (according to the spirit & letter of Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Martinphi-ScienceApologist#Martinphi restricted), and to take it from there as far as other guidance pages are concerned. Note that Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Martinphi-ScienceApologist#Log of blocks and bans already has some entries regarding Martinphi, so I see no reason to be too lenient for the current incident (nor for any possible future ones but I go from the assumption it would stop here and now after the proposed WP/WT:NPOV ban is instated). --Francis Schonken (talk) 07:03, 7 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Declined: Martinphi hasn't edited anything for a while, so the issue is moot. If he starts making disruptive edits starting now, note it here and on my talk page please, with diffs. Or you could always try another administrator I suppose.--Tznkai (talk) 07:06, 7 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

07:30, 7 September 2008, an edit by Martinphi containing "...I do not know of any [recent change] which actually changed the policy...", which is a clear case of WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT (a specific form of disruption), especially in view of the detailed explanations and comparisons provided by Shoemaker at WP:ANI#User:Shoemaker's Holiday. --Francis Schonken (talk) 07:43, 7 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

That diff says "I'm happy to go with the general consensus on the examples, whatever that consensus eventually turns out to be. Premature bold edits should be avoided. If I remember, the examples were in for quite a while (consensus), then one or two eidtors started to try and edit war them out."

Golly gee, awful. ——Martin^phi ☎ Ψ Φ—— 06:30, 7 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I endorse a topic ban of Martinphi from this and other related policy pages. Since these are the principal policies which Martinphi violates in promoting his pro-fringe agenda, to have him editing the policies in order to weaken their effect in preventing that problem, identified by ArbCom and numerous others, represents a serious problem. It is Martinphi who is wrong here, not the long-standing policy. Guy (Help!) 10:38, 7 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I endorse that topic ban as well; when one feels a policy is wrong, raising discussion on the policy page about reexamining it is the correct thing to do; simply going ahead and changing the policy to a favored bent without consensus is emphatically not and MartinPhi was well aware of that. — Coren ^(talk) 14:49, 7 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
(I do not, however, endorse a band on WT:NPOV— Martin should be free to attempt to change consensus by discussion — just not impose his view against consensus). — Coren ^(talk) 14:51, 7 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Right now Martinphi is under strict scrutiny and has not done anything egregiously damaging, or irreversible we do nothing for the time being. Blocks are not meant to be punitive. Should something occur again within the next 72 hours and change, 4 month topic block.--Tznkai (talk) 15:35, 7 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Within limits. If he presses the point beyond what is reasonable, then he should be banned fomr there as well. In my experience Martinphi never gives up and I am strongly opposed to giving him a license to carry on asking until everybody else has got bored and walked off, giving him the day be default. It should not be necessary to devote massive amounts of time to resisting changes of policy designed primarily to allow violation of the policy as it has existed for a long time. Guy (Help!) 15:37, 7 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

A message on his talk page has suggested to me he is not getting it, and I have left [3] message on his talk page.--Tznkai (talk) 16:03, 7 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Let me make clear that there was no POV pushing on NPOV, as the edits, done gradually over days, make clear. Accusations to the contrary not only have no basis in the actual edits, they do not take account of the process of the edits, which as suggested by an admin were very slow: when people started editing faster and on other than the main WEIGHT section we were working on, by consensus we stopped that editing (except a few copy edits by another editor), for the reason that we did not want anyone to be confused- we wanted to maintain consensus.

As for the accusations of POV pushing here, no one has stated what POV was pushed, nor how the edits promoted any POV. Nor do I believe they promoted any POV. Thus, the accusations are merely that. Any ban or sanction ought to be based on what we actually did (and I was not the only one editing the WEIGHT section, I did it along with other editors), not on mere numbers of accusers. So, they accuse me of POV pushing. They accuse me of editing against consensus, or without it. Is that so? No, it is not. Anyone who, like Tznakai, looks at my actual edits, will see this.

I will do as Tznkai says, and not directly make changes to policy for the next week. I will not refer to or communicate with Shoemaker for 24 hrs, unless he continues to refer to or attack me, in which case I will bring it to the attention of the Arbitrators, or whatever administrators I am advised are appropriate- but I will not confront him directly.

I would like to register my dismay that no one had more to say to Shoemaker for his poisoning of the well, and his incorrect accusation of sanction for POV pushing- a sanction which is most conspicuous by its absence, as that was the main charge brought in two ArbComs.

I recognize that Tznkai has had to walk a very fine line here, to be as fair as he felt possible in the face of so many attacks. I have seen quite a few admins react this way: confusion concerning the disconnect between the actual edits of mine and the vehemence of the attacks, resulting in an attempt to find a ground which is viable yet not unfair. Indeed, the ArbCom itself reacted this way. Tznakai obviously looked at my actual edits, which is all I ask of any neutral admin. So I thank Tznkai for doing the best he could under very difficult circumstances, when he found himself in the middle of a game of "get Martinphi" which has been going on for years now, and which only the steadfastness of the ArbCom has prevented from prevailing.

Thank you, Tznakai, I recognize how difficult this kind of thing is. ——Martin^phi ☎ Ψ Φ—— 19:27, 7 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I consider this matter resolved. thoughts?--Tznkai (talk) 20:06, 7 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Fine, wait a couple of weeks and revisit. If martin continues to press for NPOV to be rewritten in a way that supports his serial violations of that policy, then a long-term topic ban should be enacted speedily. Guy (Help!) 23:10, 7 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Sarah Palin

MBisanz has full protected this article for two weeks citing the "Footnooted Quotes" arbcom ruling. According to that ruling, the protection can only be overturned per consensus developed through discussion here on the Arbitration enforcement board. Thus I am creating this section for the discussion that is sure to come. Mike R (talk) 15:11, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It's very important that we get BLP articles right. History shows that when a major news story breaks, there is typically a frenzy of editing on the related article (e.g. the Virginia Tech shootings). This period is typically marked by short periods of full protection, longer periods of semi-protection, and lots of reverts. It's painful, but in the end it generates the right article. The problems with POV pushing can and should be resolved by strict use of the blocking policy. But extended full protection goes against our basic principle that content is created through public editing. In previous cases, articles generated by a writing frenzy have turned out well, and I am sure that Palin's article will as well. — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:15, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Support Full protection - This is going to be a VERY contervisal article about a living person, and the controversy will not stop within the next few days (especially with all of the media coverage of her). It has generated a MASSIVE influx of POV pushers, and other editors trying to get there agenda point across. These are particulary difficult to defend against as it often takes time to research toe sources cited to determine if they are reliable sources or not and if they are in violation of policies. By the time this is done, several intermediate revisions can have occured by either neutral or biased editors making it even more difficult to determine what is the right content to have in there. In this case I bnelieve full protection is necessary for the protection of the living person to prevent false/negative information from finding its way in there and/or accidently being kept. Chrislk02 ^{Chris Kreider} 15:20, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

We have new editors inserting BLP violations, we have established editors edit warring. Protection is right at this point. I don't think 2 weeks should be set in stone, we can play it by ear. Lets give these people time to thrash it out on the talk page instead of the article. Once some clear consensuses have formed we will be better suited to deal with new users. Chillum 15:18, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Chillum is correct. We may be able to remove the full protection in less than two weeks, but we need a little time for the media feeding frenzy to die down, and for the new editors this article has attracted to learn how to discuss on the talk page. To Carl's comment above - it was completely impossible to utilize the warning or blocking policies. The editing volume was so impossibly high that you simply could not figure out who was doing what in hundreds of edits per hour. Please let things settle down, for the most controversial issues to be hashed out on the talk page and dealt with through edit requests, then we can look at early unprotection. I have been involved with this article since the Palinsanity started, and I know of what I speak. Kelly ^hi! 15:23, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I acted after reviewing the situation, the edits made during the period of semi-protection, as well as the several days of discussion over the BLP violations in various forums. Regardless of her public stature, we cannot violate a subject's rights just because we are an open encyclopedia. Given that in the 45 minutes it was semi-protected this morning, numerous edit warring over unsourced or poorly sourced statements occurred, I am of the opinion that the full protection of the article was the only responsible choice. Remember that in a given day 119,000,000 people view Wikipedia. So even 5 minutes of an article having a poorly sourced statement, may mean 1000s of people view that statement and that immense harm is done to the subject of the article. If the debate here results in some time less than two weeks for full protection, I will agree, but for the time being, I remain of the feeling that the only responsible option is full protection. MBisanz ^talk 15:25, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Full protection is too much -- semi-protection should do the trick. My opinion. --nemonoman (talk) 15:26, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

What about the established users edit warring? If we don't full protect the page, should we block them or let them edit war? Chillum 15:31, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Honestly? Block away. We haven't been doing enough of that, and the sanction under discussion here clearly and specifically requires admins to "counsel editors that fail to comply with BLP policy on specific steps that they can take to improve their editing in the area, and should ensure that such editors are warned of the consequences of failing to comply with this policy. Where editors fail to comply with BLP policy after being counseled and warned, administrators may impose sanctions on them, including restrictions on reverts or other specified behaviors, bans from editing any BLP or BLP-related page or set of pages, blocks of up to one year in length, or any other measures which may be considered necessary." Protection should be an emergency measure; two weeks is excessive for such an emergency measure. We as administrators need to take a harder line with persistent BLP violators, and we haven't in this case; that needs to come first, and if those efforts are insufficient, then full protection should be used. We have to balance the high traffic this article is getting with the need to protect the subject of the article, and I think means exist to do so that do not involve Full protection. UltraExactZZ ^Claims~ Evidence 15:42, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If the limited number of involved admins were to take the time to counsel all of the potential BLP violators, the article would quickly become overrun while the administrators were off elsewhere handling 1 of the many editors who have influxed to this article. Counseling takes time, and by the time the admin goes to the editors talk page, and engages in discourse over their actions, 10 more editors have popped up at the article. Chrislk02 ^{Chris Kreider} 15:46, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

In re: Edit volumes; Could the article be placed on BLP Probation of some sort, where any BLP violation incurs a level 4 Stop-it-or-its-your-ass warning? UltraExactZZ ^Claims~ Evidence 15:45, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If edits are needed, they can be requested via the talk page, and then implemented by an administrator if there is a consensus. Jehochman ^Talk 15:35, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Absolutely protect We don't need to cowtow to wikilawyers when it comes to BLPs. rootology (C)(T) 15:35, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I oppose this protection. A highly trafficked article whose subject is in the front pages of all newspapers world-wide, and about which new information is emerging cannot and should not be protected from editing. Vandals and BLP violations can be dealt with blocks. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 15:36, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Jossi, please see my comment above. The editing volume made that impossible. Kelly ^hi! 15:41, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I hear you, Kelly. But 20 admins and countless good editors can indeed take care of business. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 15:46, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If 20 admins were taking care of the situation, then we would not have needed to protect it. That however was not what was happening. We need to work with what we have, not what we ideally would have. Chillum 15:51, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Precisely. The admin activity on this article has been absent and even requests on their noticeboard have returned nothing but mocking replies suggesting that they didn't bother to even peruse the article, but rather decided to comment on a spelling error. Kyaa the Catlord (talk) 15:52, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Support full protection. Admin intervention has been sadly lacking and this is necessary to end the BLP violations. Kyaa the Catlord (talk) 15:50, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I think protection is reasonable in the short term, but it needs to be re-evaluated on a daily basis. I'd favor trial unprotection every 1-2 days with observation. If every unprotection leads to massive edit-warring and WP:BLP issues, then the article can be re-protected. My concern with a 2-week protection is that it's going to run the full 2 weeks by default and inertia. We don't protect the featured-article-of-the-day despite the fact that it attracts massive vandalism, because it also attracts good new editors. This is a bit different - BLP is involved, obviously - but we can still find a balance between protection and maintaining the idea that this is a dynamic, community-driven encyclopedia. If I thought there were enough admins committed to overseeing this article 24/7, then protection would indeed be unecessary, but I don't think that's the case. I'm certainly not willing to spend my time on it after my experience with the John Edwards article. MastCell ^Talk 15:52, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Right now, the page in question is getting millions of hits a day. So, how many is that in a second? How many seconds have BLP violations been there? This is like protecting the main page, it just needs to be done because we don't have the resources to deal with the volume. Chillum 15:53, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Protect IMHO, BLP violators are particularly vehement on this article. For whatever reason, this page seems to have become the locus of the modern culture war. Let's let it go for a few days with admins carrying the bucket of change requests back and forth from the talk page. Ronnotel (talk) 15:53, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Just an added note that in the month of August, the Sarah Palin article was viewed 4,220,407, considering she was only "famous" the last week or so of the month (9 days), that works out to about 325 page views per minute. MBisanz ^talk 15:59, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- For the record, she recieved 2.5M hits on the 29th, the day she was nominated. 1.1M on the 30th, and 550k on the 31st. Records for this month aren't immediately available, but if it keeps falling rapidly, we might expect to be back down to levels that are typical for high-profile biographies within a few days. Dragons flight (talk) 16:17, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Support (full protection) There isn't enough time, not enough competent editors and admins, etc. The Wikipedia is not broken, but this one article is too attractive to anti-Palin partisans to pass up. You have to weigh the damage to the Wikipedia's reputation in spreading falsehoods and unverified rumors, versus a reasonable cooling off period to let more of her biography appear in secondary sources with verification or denials of disputed items. patsw (talk) 16:05, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. Let's be real. The lack of easily accessible biographical information on Palin and the popularity of the Wikipedia make it an especially vital target for those who seek to disparage and insult Palin, spread unverified rumors, and influence voters not to vote for her. This role in electoral politics is a first for the Wikipedia. Let it cool-off for two weeks and let secondary sources get broader and deeper information on Palin so in two week we can summarize it down to Wikipedia size. Let secondary sources do their job and shape the public perception of her, and let the Wikipedia hold back a bit. It's an encyclopedia. patsw (talk) 13:40, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Support protection. Though it is possible to try semi-protection in a few days, and see what happens. Cenarium ^Talk 16:16, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I support full protection, based on [[Chillum's rationale. There are just too many pageviews, too many edits, and to many BLP violations for the time being. Everytime a reader sees a blog-rumor in this article, Wikipedia's reputation suffers. Let's give everyone a chance to cool down, then unprotect. Coemgenus 16:17, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with full protection for now. Looking at the timeframe Kelly describes above, it seemed to be coming so fast and so furious that even keeping track and warning people just once seemed unmanageable. The problems with the featured article are usually vandalism, as the article is by definition mature. Sarah Palin was getting a lot more traffic than that, and it was complicated, time-consuming POV-pushing stuff, not vandalism reverts. Talk page discussion and editprotected requests are the way to deal with it for a while. There may be better ways to handle it between now and the election (Tim Vickers' experiment with the Evolution article springs to mind, I seem to recall that worked in that case, not sure if it would work here), but it seems to me the admins who were working that page desperately needed help. I'll add it to my watchlist, FWIW. --barneca (talk) 16:19, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I support full protection for at least five days. In the 48 hours before the article was protected last night there were more than 1,200 edits. And I guarantee that most of those were edit wars and insertion and deletion of WP:BLP material. It just isn't possible to keep the article free of rumors and even slander at the level of activity it is currently seeing. --Paul (talk) 16:21, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Interesting statistics... According to this tool, the article has been edited 4,383 times in a week. So on average there is an edit every 138 s on 24/7. Of course like many statistics this is missleading, as the editors in European or Asian timezones are not present in large numbers. – Sadalmelik ☎ 16:33, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose full protection. Many of the commenters here seem to believe that "BLP violation" is roughly comparable to "misspelling" in that you can determine it pretty much by looking at it. On several of the specific topics at issue, discussions on the talk page have revealed good-faith disagreements as to whether a particular passage violates BLP (as well as NPOV, etc.). JamesMLane t c 16:35, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: Wouldn't full protection lend itself well to having the requested edits overseen by seasoned wikipedians and BLP, NPOV and weight arguments being hashed out prior to having the possibility of unsubstantiated rumors being presented as fact by our encyclopedia? Discussion should be promoted instead of having the sort of edit wars which have been prevalent on the article this past "week". Kyaa the Catlord (talk) 16:41, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

On the fence as to which level of protection is best, but as the article now isn't too bad, I will weakly concur with full. The one drawback I see is the duration; a lot can happen in a few days, and reincorprating agreed-upon content upon expiration might be tricky as it may involve wholesale structure revisions of the article, etc., while drive-by BLP issues return at the same time.
That said, I may be able to watch intermittently if necessary; I have a somewhat conservative (sorry!) interpretation of BLP, so if I excise something too much, consider re-adding a trimeed and polished version rather than a full revert. Baccyak4H (Yak!) 16:37, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Overturn to semi, there are enough people to watch the development of this article. Ian¹³ /t 17:23, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Semi-protection with immediate blocks for editors continually adding info that has no consensus or is controversial without any discussion. Joshdboz (talk) 17:24, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I oppose and would rather see it downgraded to indefinite semi-protection (as we usually do with high profile BLPs). The real point of strict BLP enforcement is to protect less public persons whose livelihoods could be seriously damaged by libel and rumors on Wikipedia, and whose articles aren't always under constant watch. Sarah Palin is a highly public figure, and hundreds of editors are watching this article like hawks to revert vandalism. Even if vandalism manages to stick for thirty seconds, she's such a public figure now that it would have no impact whatsoever on her livelihood. krimpet✽ 17:26, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I completely support the protection and think that MZMcBride unprotecting it again constitutes wheel-warring and is deplorable, particularly given the volume of discussion dedicated to this. This discussion alone should have prevented immediate action on their part. There is simply no way this article can be policed given the sheer volume of people trying to edit it. In response to Krimpet, I think your rationale is flawed; you think it is acceptable to have slander about someone visible to half a million people, just because it won't affect their livelihood? That is wrong, it will impact on their livelihood, and it is completely unacceptable to have in the first place. Woody (talk) 17:34, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I am mostly against protection in general, and specifically against this one. Much like every other tool which allows us to make editing less transparent or more restricted, this one is getting used more and more often. Full protection now, when there's so much interest in the article, will only serve to turn away all these potential new editors coming to Wikipedia for the first time with Sarah Palin. Let those potential editors see how a wiki works. If need be, place a tag at the top explaining that some of the content may be controversial or just plain wrong. But don't try to make this into a backdoor stable version article. If we're going to implement stable versions, we can do that the right way. Unprotect this article, and leave it unprotected. kmccoy (talk) 17:33, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose full protection - This subject is very much in current events and information can change rapidly. That and this is one of the most highly viewed articles on the site right now. This sends a very bad message to readers. High profile people like Palin have teams of PR people, a BLP violation in her article is not going to be nearly as harmful as one to a lesser-profile person and any violation in the article for a few seconds is going to be far overshadowed by ultra left-wing "media" and blogs. A 2 week protection is basically pointless, people are going to try to insert crap all the way through the election in November, and if McCain wins, there's going to be at least 4 years of it. We haven't kept George W. Bush full protected his whole time in office, there's no reason we need to do it for Palin. Mr.Z-man 17:50, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, but Bush has not seen the sheer volume of edits that the Palin article has over the last 5 days. Bush's article itself has not been the subject of numerous news articles in such a short space of time. Woody (talk) 17:54, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- He's the president, he's been in the news almost every day for the past 8 years. I fail to see how number of edits has anything to do with whether protection is warranted, if anything its a reason to unprotect. Unless you are arguing that almost every edit by a non-admin was vandalism. Look at the history of the Heath Ledger article shortly after his death, while there was vandalism, the overall result was a vast improvement in a very short time. Mr.Z-man 18:32, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm talking about the article itself, not the President. The Palin article has been the subject of news reports due to the edits before the announcement. It is not the number of edits, but the type of this huge volume; the sheer number of POV pushing / personal attacks / egrerious violations of BLP and common decency and the sheer number of editors pushing these, have meant that full protection is neccessary. Woody (talk) 19:14, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Support full protection - I have to support full protection based on the article's history, as much as I dislike this outcome I don't see any way around it. The page had become a magnet for libel and edit warring. --ThaddeusB (talk) 18:00, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Concede full protection. I grant that full protection is warranted in the short term, as an emergency measure. However, two weeks is not appropriate for an emergency. I would recommend reviewing the protection in 48 hours, and determining if semi-protection would be worthwhile at that point. While wheel-warring is horribly inappropriate, I have to agree with MZMcbride that this is a wiki, and we can't have one of our highest traffic pages protected forever. As I note above, Admins need to be ready to warn and then block BLP violators on sight; perhaps we can tool up a template such as {{uw-palinblp}} to offer a specific warning with advice and counsel (as is required by the special enforcement ruling under discussion), as well as specifically noting the possiblity of a block for further such violations. Such a template, I think, would streamline the efforts of admins to stop BLP violations, while avoiding WP:BITEing new editors. UltraExactZZ ^Claims~ Evidence 18:03, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Just wanted to say that I think two weeks is a ridiculously long length of time for full protection in this instance, it would mean that for about a quarter of time until the election we are giving up on normal wiki editing. When there are edit wars and BLP violations, temporary short periods of full protection while the disputes (and the editors who cause them if necessary) are dealt with seems valid but this length just seems silly. I also think Doc Glasgow's comments on the WP:RFAR make a lot of sense but don't have much confidence that it will be successful as the normal protection policy that protection should end when "there is no consensus that continued protection is necessary" regretably will not apply here because of that arbcom ruling. (None of this should imply I back any admins actions in any wheel warring that took place.) Davewild (talk) 19:24, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It has been generally agreed below that we will revisit this on Saturday, not in two weeks. That is just the expiry time, it is not set in stone. Chillum 20:44, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, following the protection war, I think it is set to indef full, so Saturday will be a good time to revisit it, since it can't stay full forever. MBisanz ^talk 20:47, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Support Full Protection For Two Weeks. The article spun out of control. Even while the article has been in fully implemented protection, there has been a very active process to edit the article based on reaching talk-page consensus, so the status quo (full protection for two weeks) will not be a hardship. For many hours before full protection was first implemented, the page was inundated with edit-warring, vandalism, and so much happening that no one could keep track of it. Giving things two weeks to settle down seems VERY highly appropriate. Until then, this will be the article "that anyone can edit" by reaching talk page consensus and persuading an admin that there is urgency.Ferrylodge (talk) 21:48, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Reduce to semi-protection. I also suggest, based on what I am seeing in the page logs and many of the edits that have taken place in this article, that for the duration of the time that the article remains full-protected, any {{editprotected}} requests would best be handled by administrators from outside of the United States. Risker (talk) 01:21, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support full protection for the time being. At least a week seems appropriate. This won't mean that the article can't be updated at all. The request and consensus based editing at the talk page brought quite a few edits to the article already in the short time protection was in place. Hobartimus (talk) 05:43, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Reduce to semi protection to bring balance back to the article. Right now the page is protected and all the changes are being made by majority rule rather than consensus which has lead to a massive and unfortunate shift in the tone of the article and a clear POV has emerged.zredsox (talk) 13:56, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support full for now. Yes, this is a wiki, and yes, this wiki should be able to fix problems like this as they occur without resorting to protection. Absolutely correct. But the fact of the matter this wiki was not fixing the problems as they occurred. With the sheer amount of people reading the BLP violations that went unchecked and the wheelwarring that happened, we look like a bunch of fools. If people want to compound the problem by opening the floodgates when there aren't enough volunteers to fix things, then those people are part of the problem, and should step aside until the problem is resolved. Nobody protected the talk page; anyone could still get consensus for changes there. This is still a wiki. --Kbdank71 17:51, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Reduction to Semi (Non administrator) - Not having any user at all able to edit this article is resulting in a POV imbalance which is screwing it up. Registered Users only would at least mean that a balance can be restored to this work. Thor Malmjursson (talk) 23:08, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure I understand how having the article protected is "resulting in a POV imbalance"? If the article isn't changing except for consensus edits made by Admins from Talk page requests, how is this POV imbalance getting into the article? If you really think there are serious POV violations in the article visit the talk page and make your case.--Paul (talk) 00:09, 6 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose full protection Immediate reduction to semi. Should never have been fully protected in the first place. What could have been a shining moment has been lost. A novice editor to wikipedia should have realized that the sheer number of people editing this page meant that it would be protected from vandals or one political side's POV. By fully protecting it you've made it look like wikipedia doesn't believe in its own values. Freezing the page could also create the appearance of some impropriety, that a few biased administrators liked the page the way it was for a political reason and decided to keep it that way. The whole protection wheel war makes everyone think that wikipedia's administrators are incompetent, don't actually have faith that wikipedia will result in a high quality article the more people who edit it, or worse, are biased. Heads deserve to roll for this fiasco, but there obviously has been a major breakdown in policy.--Cdogsimmons (talk) 04:29, 6 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Political positions of Sarah Palin should not get full protection. Also, just to be a bit of a gadfly, I wonder how the percentages of admins vs. nonadmins breaks down. I'll get to work.--Cdogsimmons (talk) 05:35, 6 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

My count was that as of Masem's "vote", 7 admins were for semi-protection and 11 were for full. 7 non-admins were for semi-protection and 9 were for full.--Cdogsimmons (talk) 05:59, 6 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Support full protection - Those that are worried that the article may not be up-to-date with breaking news need to remember that besides BLP issues, WP is not the same as Wikinews. Give new information a few days to filter through and be verified by multiple sources in the media and then is can be added through a editprotected request. --MASEM 05:07, 6 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

How about this

Support update and suggestion Looking at the history of what happened even with admins now that we're RFAR bound when it was changed against consensus, which defines policy, I'd say lets just go with the original and simple plan of leaving it protected till Saturday. How about someone just reduce it to semi at 11am EST Saturday, and we see what happens. If all hell breaks loose, a BLP vio a minute, and so one, we can decide together, admins and non-admins, since non-admins have as much authority on the subject for consensus, if it should be re-protected. I'm betting it won't be, but thats a decision that gets made together. Anyone disagree with this really simple plan? rootology (C)(T) 12:40, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Support this test unprotect on Saturday. Kyaa the Catlord (talk) 12:54, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Go for it. Things should start to settle down now, and a new news cycle will push attention elsewhere. We can always protect again if SPAs and trolls return. Coemgenus 14:02, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

support Homunq (talk) 22:30, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Fully protecting an article like this reflects badly on Wikipedia. There will be many bad edits, but we will have to deal with it. --Apoc2400 (talk) 17:40, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

No consensus to keep the article protected

From the discussion above I see no emerging consensus to keep the article fully-protected. Return to semi-protection seems to have support and it is consistent with other BLPs of nominees. The ArbCom proceedings are a separate process and has no bearing on the status of the protection of this article, which again, has no consensus to be kept protected. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 20:03, 6 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Editors and admins willing to watchlist the article and remove BLP violations on sight

≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 15:47, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Unless you can get over 100 people in different times zones on this, there will still be many minutes of the day when BLP violations are in the article and 1000s of pageviews to readers seeing violations. MBisanz ^talk 15:51, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The problem here is that there is often a lack of agreement on what constitutes a BLP violation. I tried this approach for the John Edwards article, in a similar (though probably lower-profile) situation, and it didn't work. There was disagreement even among established editors as to where to draw the line. For instance, if the National Enquirer makes a claim which is then noted by mainstream outlets (who specifically describe it as an unverified rumor), is that suitable material for a BLP? I say no. Some established editors say yes. Some base their policy interpretation on who the target of the rumor is. Any way you look at it, it's not as simple as "watchlist and remove BLP violations on sight". MastCell ^Talk 15:59, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Nothing is "simple", Mastcell. My take is that protection, in this case, is simply not appropriate. Let's not allow politics to dictate what articles are open to edit or not. The article will eventually be excellent, if we let it, that is. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 17:06, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The John Edwards extramarital affair case was unique in that mainstream media outlets either refused to follow-up on the leads given by the National Enquirer, or having information verifying the rumor to be fact held it back. patsw (talk) 16:36, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I really doubt the latter, and regarding the former, while the case is almost certainly true, at least to a degree, I hardly find it unique. If MSM spent time hunting down every lead of that ilk, they'd end up with very few stories to report, and nearly all of the real stories would go unreported. Baccyak4H (Yak!) 16:41, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think that sending people to the talk page will help them establish what BLP means to that article. This ambiguity is part of the problem and that is one of the causes of the edit warring. After a week or so of discussion I think we will see a more clear picture of what is expected for the article because people will have been discussing it. Chillum 16:09, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I recently edited WP:RS to caution editors that while there may be a news value is passing along unverified rumors, the Wikipedia is not a newspaper and the articles are biographical. patsw (talk) 16:28, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I will, but as people above have said it's tough because checking sources and reviewing edits takes time. Oren0 (talk) 17:19, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Support. Whatever the status of the protection, having a list of admins willing to assist is of great benefit, I think. Count me in. UltraExactZZ ^Claims~ Evidence 17:53, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

People who put comments about protection in the list of now watching admins

reduce to semi-protection This is getting ridiculous. While I understand that admins are a little worn out on this article, the idea that admins are the only protectors of Wikipedia and the only ones capable of reasonably editing this article is offensive. There are a lot of rank-and-file editors putting time in on this article, locking down this article to admins only belittles the efforts of non-admins. While a cooling off period is perfectly reasonable, 5 days was too much and 2 weeks is essentially censorship. Wikipedia is described as an "open content encyclopedia". Does that need to be updated to "open content encyclopedia, except in the case of controversial articles where edits are limited to privileged admins".--Rtphokie (talk) 11:42, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Agree with the above. Homunq (talk) 19:25, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Maintain current full protection for two weeks, or until such consensus forms to remove protection. Which I don't see happening. seicer | talk | contribs 11:52, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Agree with Rtphonkie, absolutely.--Cdogsimmons (talk) 17:16, 6 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Another proposal: transcluded subpages

My perception is that at least some of the difficulty in this case comes from the sheer volume of edits on a substantial article such as this one. Imagine if each subsection were a separate page: there would still be the same editing disputes, but each subpage would have a much smaller number of disputes. This would make the talk pages and the edit histories much more manageable, and reduce edit conflicts, with the indirect effect that it would be far easier to police any given page for policy violations, and somewhat easier to attain consensus. The downside would be that people would need to add a number of pages to their watchlists in order to see all of them; however, in such a high-traffic situation, a watchlist is a weak tool anyway.

This is doable. All we need to do is create subpages (such as Sarah Palin/Early life and education) and transclude them in the main page. The main page could include the section headings, to avoid the mediawiki bug when editing transcluded sections. The main page could be fully protected, and the subpages semiprotected. To avoid non-geek editor confusion, html/xml in the main page could be used to manually create working "view/edit source" and "talk" links to each section, and the same links could be included on the main talk page. When the main page is unprotected, the sections can be put back together on one page (by simply adding subst: to all the includes in one edit.).Homunq. (talk) 14:48, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

(Same suggestion posted at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#modest_proposal_for_Sarah_Palin)

(Note: it may happen that this proposal gets support, but is still too radical to adopt in the context of an article which has been wheel-warred. If so, I would propose it for consideration by ArbCom as a possible mechanism when a similar situation arises in the future.)

While I do not directly oppose this, I have a major concern with the subst/remerge idea at the end of this. To me, this becomes effectively a cut&paste copy operation from the subs to the main. And as such, would it not violate/break GFDL to do such? The history, and thus the attribution for the various edits would remain with the subs, but the content would suddenly appear back on the main, without any history trace. And then, what *does* happen to the subs? They, and the history they contain, could not easily be deleted, but neither could they be easily history merged back into the main without making a total mess of the history. This just does not seem to work to me. - TexasAndroid (talk) 18:20, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. I like it but I could only support this if the GFDL concern can be solved somehow. Merging the histories won't work. Oren0 (talk) 19:08, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

What about just turning them into redirects? Then the edit history is preserved. You could add comments in each section with the URL for its out-of-band edit history. A hack, but not really terribly awkward. Homunq (talk) 19:23, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It's nice that we normally have every single edit recoverable, but I don't think the GFDL requires that. It simply requires that the primary contributors to the page be identified. If Homunq's solution is technically unfeasible, then here's an alternative: As a one-time kludge, once the content were merged back in and the subpages were no longer being edited, someone could go through the subpages' edit history, manually compile a list of everyone who edited, and post that list to the main article's talk page. I think that would satisfy the GFDL. JamesMLane t c 04:09, 6 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Supporters of transcluded subpages:

Homunq (talk) 14:48, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

zredsox (talk) 15:42, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Rtphokie (talk) 20:59, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

JamesMLane t c 04:13, 6 September 2008 (UTC). I don't know whether this would work but the experiment is worth trying. If it collapses into chaos we shrug, re-merge the subpages, and at least we've learned something.[reply]

Coemgenus 22:28, 6 September 2008 (UTC). Sounds like an interesting plan.[reply]

A genuinely good idea that is very much worth trying. user:j (aka justen) 23:57, 6 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Opposition to transcluded subpages:

I would have to oppose splitting this up into even more pages that have to be watchlisted. The edit-protected system seems to be working well now. Kelly ^hi! 19:17, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The current edit-protected system is an unmitigated disaster. zredsox (talk) 23:33, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I like the word "fiasco". ~~But I Oppose transclusion, too messy. Just make people click to subarticles if need be.~~ Phlegm Rooster (talk) 23:36, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

"The edit-protected system" is antithetical to the aims of this project. No other current event article has that discretion, and by all means a biography of a person that is on the front pages of all newspapers around the world and about which very little was known as of a few days ago, does not need that type of limitation, on the contrary. Let the edit continue, on the encyclopedia that anybody can edit. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 02:03, 7 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Duration

Her traffic peaked at 2.5M hits per day on the 29th when she was nominated. It fell to 1.1M on the 30th and 550k on the 31st. "Normal" high-profile biographies, like Barack Obama, get ~25k hits per day in the absense of major breaking news. I realize some editors are burnt out already, but assuming her traffic will continue it's rapid decline, the attention paid to her article might be more normal by not long after the convention has ended. Since long-term protection is undesirable, I'd like to suggest that we stage it a few days at a time rather than weeks. The convention ends tonight, so how about an initial target of mid-day Saturday? We can of course extend it as necessary, but I don't like the idea that the default position should be two weeks (which is the current duration). Dragons flight (talk) 16:33, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I suggest we take another look at the talk page on Saturday and consider reducing it to semi-protection. I don't want to see editors being blocked for edit warring because discussions were caught short so if there seems to be a developing consensus I say we let it develop. Chillum 16:42, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Saturday sounds like an agreeable day to revisit full protection. I wonder if Henrik could gets more current stats for us to use? MBisanz ^talk 16:44, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. I think that in a few days we should review this situation and check the waters again. Kyaa the Catlord (talk) 16:49, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Ya, I would say that the determining factor would be the resolution of the major outstanding issues on the talk page. Kelly ^hi! 16:46, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

We really could benefit from near realtime stats in this matter. I know the technology exists but it does use a lot more resources than if you aggregated them in a less realtime manner. Perhaps a system could be set up where only specific articles would be monitored so closely. Chillum 16:46, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I am still contending the need for protection. Rather to assume that there is consensus one way or another, lets wait to see what consensus emerges. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 17:07, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think saturday is a great idea to revisit full protection. Chrislk02 ^{Chris Kreider} 17:42, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Not until at least monday, I'd say.. let's let "the surge" die down a bit more before we unprotect the article. From the notes below, we're at 750K page views per day right now on the article. Let's give it a few days for the initial fevor to fade. SirFozzie (talk) 03:41, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I submit that caution should go on the side of less protection. If half of the admins here say Saturday and half say Monday, I think that it should be considered for Saturday. The protection is not healthy for the article; despite the edit warring, the article had made a lot of progress, and now it is languishing with {{editprotect}} tags on its talk page trailing off into inconclusive semi-debate. Homunq (talk) 16:45, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Saturday is too soon. There has been an eruption of angry and disruptive talk page entries today Talk:Sarah Palin History, including a charge she is a racist, a bunch of rabidly political stuff on pastors of her church, accusations of people at her church speaking in tongues, a hit job YouTube video & etc. At the current level of rage, ten editors will have to spend their weekends glued to the keyboard to keep things civil. The lock should stay in place at least until Monday.--Paul (talk) 23:09, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed, the status has actually gotten worse since the last time I edited yesterday. People are tossing around personal attacks, conspiracy theories and continue to just not get WP:NPOV. Once again, I request that administrators take all steps in their power to police this issue. Kyaa the Catlord (talk) 14:33, 6 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

One question: We've gone through some pretty extensive (and contentious) discussions during the last week to reach where we are. Fortunately, most of the garbage can quickly be recognized at face value if it makes its way back on. Some of the more insidious stuff for which it took hours or days to reach consensus might come back, and we probably don't want to go through all those same debates (at least unless new material has emerged). In some cases, it wasn't the inclusion of a citation but the exclusion of relevant one that made the case for exclusion. Anyway, how do you track such things to preclude that eventuality? Fcreid (talk) 23:46, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

somewhat unrelated side-comment

ps. I personally feel conflicted about three of the biggest editors on the page: Kelly, Ferrylodge, and Kyaa the Catlord. There is no denying that many of their edits were necessary: without them, the article would be a tabloid swamp of BLP violations. Yet all three have admitted a pro-Palin personal POV, and I think this snuck into the article in their choice of which version to revert violations to. This is not an accusation against them - they certainly have some right to choose revert versions, especially given the chaos. But for the article's sake, I perceive that, in a tug-of-war between BLP-violating anti-Palin POV and non-BLP-violating pro-Palin POV, the lockdown does not help, as in "resolving" the situation it discourages more-neutral contributors from taking enough interest to achieve a balanced consensus.Homunq (talk) 16:56, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I would have to respectfully disagree. Could you show an example of a pro-Palin POV edit that I made? If I do have any feelings about the article subject, it's sympathy based on the horrible crap people have been placing in that article, because of all the time I spent fighting it. I don't particularly care about her politics one way or the other. Kelly ^hi! 19:20, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You did great work. Without digging through thousands of edits of history, I will freely state that it is not my impression that you made any edit which violates NPOV. But NPOV is not some magic exact happy medium, it is a small range (or rather, the intersection of a lot of ranges). All I said was, when you reverted violations, you tended to choose things on the conservative (politically) side of my NPOV range. And the debate about protection is not, itself, without its POV implications. I think that moves to loosen the lockdown (whether it be unprotection, subpages, or a lower consensus threshold for editprotect requests, or some combination) will help this article heal itself faster. While I think your contributions on both the article and the talk page are absolutely, unquestionably productive, I think that the present situation gives undue weight to conservative (content-wise, not politically) and/or highly-engaged editors, such as you and the two others I mentioned. Homunq (talk) 19:43, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Another point is that whether you like it or not, your choice of reversions lends a POV. It's just natural that when only a few editors are actually changing the article, it's more likely to be tilted one way or another. It's by no means a condemnation of your work- I have always stayed away from the swamplands of highly contested pages for the distate of such odious but necessary action. But the more editors (within reason; I mean the more constructive ones) the better for any contentious article. It's the wiki way, after all. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 20:31, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Your comment on your talk page about figuring out how to fight the DKos meme-of-the-hour is somewhat indicative. Some of the memes you mention are just trashy libel, but some constitute valid content disputes, and some of them, while invalid, are notable enough to merit direct denials on her page. Again, I can't go through thousands of edits to prove it, but I suspect that maybe if you'd been a little more forgiving on the borderline, the "ZOMG! It's being whitewashed!" counterimpulse would have been moderated too. Of course, you would never have known - 30 an hour or 15 an hour is still swamped. Homunq (talk) 21:23, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

<- Points taken by all above. I only hope the attention teh drahmaz has called to the article means that a larger number of responsible people will be watching it. I have a feeling this article is going to compete with Barack Obama and George W. Bush as a long-term target for miscreants. Kelly ^hi! 22:09, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Long Duration Edit Protect

I say "Let it Languish." There simply are too many people with zero editing experience or are POV warriors on this article. Every so often nonsense arguments are being raised for inclusion "it appeared in USA Today" or "here's the cite from the AP" -- in the false belief that there's an automatic inclusion rule for any fact that passes WP:V and to hell with WP:BLP and WP:UNDUE. Let the secondary sources do their job and broaden and deepen the biography of Sarah Palin and after a cooling off period let editors here prepare a summary biography, and let a consensus emerge among serious editors what merely has news value and what has encyclopedic value. patsw (talk) 23:09, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Current view stats

My server is busy crunching old data, but per request above, here are the page view stats for Sarah Palin for the last 4 days. henrik•talk 20:31, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Date	Views
September 1	571,157
September 2	733,338
September 3	554,531
September 4	752,864
September 5	453,353
September 6	207,665

Holy S&*t. Kelly ^hi! 21:40, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

So it hasn't decayed in quite the way one might have expected. Still after the convention it may finally get better. Dragons flight (talk) 21:52, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Obviously, Palin's nom has touched a few nerves. Jim62sch^dissera! 23:17, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

There's a difference between "touching a few nerves" and driving people batshit insane. Unfortunately, the second seems to be the case here. Kyaa the Catlord (talk) 14:35, 6 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I've updated the above figures through September 6th. Palin's traffic has fallen significantly in the last 24 hours, but remains substantial. Her page is still the most viewed article during 13 of the last 24 hours, including all of the last 6 hours. Dragons flight (talk) 03:25, 7 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Wheel warring

It seems an admin has decided to ignore the arbcom ruling, and this discussion and just undo the protection of this page: [4]. Chillum 17:31, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Please refer to Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration#MZMcBride. MBisanz ^talk 17:36, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Also note that he's been blocked. PhilKnight (talk) 17:37, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

...And unblocked to participate at the Arbitration request. UltraExactZZ ^Claims~ Evidence 18:10, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Consensus on BLP violations not being edited

I dunno if this is the right place to address this but now that the Sarah Palin page is on lockdown and admins have been caught edit warring, nothing is being edited, not even BLP violations that have reached a consensus. Any admin that wishes to help please see the talk page there. Thanks. --98.243.129.181 (talk) 21:10, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Anytime there's a consensus for an edit you can place the {{editprotected}} template on the thread and that will flag it for admin attention. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 21:28, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Just make you include an explicit copy of you what you want edited in the request. That is the current problem. Regards Woody (talk) 21:33, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

And please explain why you think it's a BLP vio. Jim62sch^dissera! 23:18, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Massive change to Sarah Palin made without consensus

This massive change completely rewrote the Political positions section. Attempts that were already underway to achieve consensus on the talk page were utterly ignored and overriden by this edit. To me this is an act of rogue administration. T0mpr1c3 (talk) 21:33, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Sure, sure. I've already addressed this here: I don't intend to have to repeat it all again. You're surely not going to tell me that isn't an improvement on the previous in-article laundry list BLP-dubious nonsense...Moreschi (talk) 21:39, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You completely undercut the attempts of other users to achieve consensus on the talk page by imposing your version on this locked page. You are putting me off Wikipedia in a big way. T0mpr1c3 (talk) 21:47, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Consensus supports this change. Move on. Cenarium ^Talk 21:45, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Aye, I'm moving on, see you in RL fellas. T0mpr1c3 (talk) 21:58, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know whether you meant it that way but that sounds a bit threatening. — CharlotteWebb 23:07, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

T0mpr1c3 has retired to spend more time with his baby daughter and her large collection of fluffy animals. T0mpr1c3 (talk) 08:16, 6 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Agree with Cenarium. Previous version was a train wreck. New version, if not perfect, is better. Cool Hand Luke 21:54, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It has conveniently left out any and all of her positions that are less popular. I am all for re-writing it, but was under the naive impression that we needed to come to a consensus on copy. Instead, it seems that the admins have taken over this article and are just writing it as they choose. A very clear POV is emerging. zredsox (talk) 22:07, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

There is consensus for Moreschi's action on the article talk page. The people complaining seem to be outraged that there is not a laundry list of controversies in the main article. We have a spinout article for this stuff - Political positions of Sarah Palin. Kelly ^hi! 21:45, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

How was this consensus achieved? By Moreschi making the edit and you patting him on the back after the event. T0mpr1c3 (talk) 21:49, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Majority and consensus are not the same. WP:Consensus zredsox (talk) 22:15, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This is getting bloody ridiculous... An edit to a protected page? Consensus? This Palin thing is going balistic. Have people lost their marbles? I am taking a break, and hope that reason prevails. This POV pushing is hurting my eyes.≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 21:46, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Consensus? Is this it? Talk:Sarah_Palin#Political_positions_section_.282.29, I am really tired of people citing policy such as WP:CONSENSUS and WP:BLP with ZERO basis. What is going on here? ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 21:53, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Isn't this article locked? Shouldn't we discuss the nature of changes and reach a consensus before making a part of a highly trafficked article take on an entirely new life with new emphasis and new POV? Yes Moreshchi, it is an improvement if you are the McCain campaign, but not if you are looking for a balanced article with a neutral narrative. zredsox (talk) 21:52, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

What clear new POV? I have no particular view on Palin myself either way (other than that she's sexy), but you've yet to explain how putting Palin's views in their context (social conservative, economic libertarian) is POV, nor how refusal to duplicate at length Political positions of Sarah Palin is POV either. Come on, guys: how long did you want that miserable list to be viewed by millions for? And there's an open ArbCom case on this stuff already: I suggest you take my nefarious evils there. Moreschi (talk) 22:08, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I am not saying you personally have a POV. What I am saying is that by not discussing this and coming to a decision amongst the group we have ended up with Palin positions which do not represent a balanced sample of the positions that she holds. zredsox (talk) 22:15, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Right...and in your mind, the list was a balanced sample. Ok, I think we have a problem here, and it's not me. Have you read Wikipedia:Summary style? A child article does exist, you know. In the main article, half on her social conservatism and half on her economic libertarianism is perfectly reasonable. Moreschi (talk) 22:17, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I strongly support the changes made by Moreschi. His version might not be perfect, but at least it is a summary unlike the crap that existed before. The laundry list that existed before was absolutely horrid in style and because it was basically an exact copy of the sub-article using less words. Further there WAS strong consensus for a summary and one existed before the wheel war which allowed one user to thrust his own point of view of what the section should be without seeking consensus of any kind. Restoring this summary section to a summary is a fine & noble thing and I commend Moreschi for his boldness. Meanwhile, other admins sit idly and are afraid even to fix grammar problems without broad consensus. --ThaddeusB (talk) 22:24, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

P.S. No one has raised specific objections to the summary written by Moreschi, so I see no reason to call it POV. Unless you think making people click a highly visible link to see specifics is POV. --ThaddeusB (talk) 22:24, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think Moreschi's edits are fine. The only thing 'wrong' with them is that some folks think that a listing of her political positions should contain a list of specifics that will set off alarm bells in people with certain politics. One "change" was going from "she supports mandatory parental consent for abortions" to "she opposes abortion except when the life of the mother would otherwise be imperiled, and is a member of Feminists for Life" The second version has the same content (actually more) but is missing the POV-pushing. Sadly, what is still going on today on the Talk page shows a lot of anger and argues strongly against unprotecting this article prematurely. Tomorrow is much too soon.--Paul (talk) 22:32, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

People are making a plea for balance in the article and getting somewhat ignored by administrators who are implementing edits at will and without fair reflection. If there is a discussion, we are not seeing any sort of consensus on the major issues with seemingly everything coming to a vote which is relying on majority rule and not taking into account valid minority opinions. In essence the Palin page has become a microcosm for the larger issues that effect Wikipedia as a whole. As much as some people would like the page to be as glowing as possible and reflect the very best of Mrs Palin, there has to be counterpoints within the positions that she holds in order for it to retain any sort of neutrality. Rather than balance, it seems the Pro-Palin majority are getting 100% of their edits implemented (such as the summary in question) instead of putting forth copy that includes passages from both sides of the aisle. We are not seeing compromise. We are seeing complete disregard for the opposition and as I have mentioned before, a very clear POV in the article has emerged. Not so much for what has been said, but more so for what has not. zredsox (talk) 23:09, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The changes might be written by Shakespeare himself, but doing it without participating in the consensus process is off-putting to non-admins (added)and thus deserves a reprimand(/added). I suggested a compromise: everyone, including admins, has to put up their non-minor changes for comment on the talk page. If they get generally positive comments, they can implement them *even if a consensus is not yet reached*. Same goes for user-proposed changes. Rinse, repeat: only you have to work towards compromise in some manner, you can't just propose reverting. In other words, All changes must go through the talk page, but lower the standard of consensus so the page is not totally frozen. Admins, implement proposed edits provisionally, EVEN IF YOU DO NOT FULLY AGREE, as long as they are good faith, not uncompromising reverts, and have ANY SIGNIFICANT reasoned support. Moreschi did not have consensus, but under this scheme would have quickly gotten enough support to go ahead. Zredsox, I really sympathize, why don't you propose edits (while keeping prose style)? And then, admins, you would have to actually implement those suggestions, and then make a counterproposal... good for the goose is good for the gander. Homunq (talk) 22:40, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. The changes where made without consensus. I find the actions of Moreschi to be a disgrace, and ask that he be sanctioned for this violation of the fully protected article. Just because onr is an admin doesn't mean you get to edit the article when others don't. I also think that calling known political positions of Palin, ones that are in the other article, a "BLP concern" is a lie. Do you really think that these positions managed to survive in the article for days after McCain picked her, and survive on the Postions article, and still be a BLP concern? The pro-Palin editors are terrified that people might read her positions and decide not to vote for her, that's all. Million of people read that Palin article, and only a few thousands click though to the positions article, and they know it. Phlegm Rooster (talk) 22:54, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, WP:DUCK ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 23:07, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

- "A disgrace"? Please. That awful list was not a consensus version, it ended up back in there during the protection wheel war. Kelly ^hi! 22:57, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  - Yes, Kelly the page was protected on the m:The Wrong Version. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 23:06, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    - It was consensus, because many editors had worked on it until a few hours before the first full protection, then consensus was developing on the talk page to ask for it to be changed back to the pre-ThaddeusB whitewash, then it was "snuck" back in the article (by me) while unprotected, and no consensus to get rid of it can be found on the talk page when Moreschi somehow managed to get find ThaddeusB's version to be "better."
    - Conservapedia's version of the article now has more of the material that Kelly is worried about than Wikipedia does. Phlegm Rooster (talk) 23:18, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The way this article was edited in the last days is indeed a disgrace for Wikipedia. It was simply mob rule. The POV-pushers have won. Most people who edit the talk page are too pro-Palin to think logically and the neutral people have left after they have faced the outrageous trolls on the talk page.

In my admin career, I've been editing lots of 'hot' stuff from the Balkans, full of trolling and arguments, but this is the first time when I think that something terribly wrong is going on with Wikipedia. Wikipedia scaled well with traffic, it seems it doesn't scale well when the power of influencing the masses is involved. Peace, bogdan (talk) 23:12, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The masses? The hoi polloi are known for their lack of rational thought. Jim62sch^dissera! 23:20, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

That, sir, is an affront to the very spirit of Wikipedia. The article was written by the masses. Now it is being rewritten by one admin, without consensus. Phlegm Rooster (talk) 23:32, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Horse-hockey. Facts do not equal affronts. The vulgus, as would be expected, have an average IQ of 100. We ain't talking Socrates here. Jim62sch^dissera! 23:49, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

But I thought Wikipedia is not a democracy. Why is there a poll on the talk page for everything? bogdan (talk) 23:30, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The article "owners" know that they have a majority, so they bring everything to a vote. The funny part is, of course there will be more conservative interest in an article about a Republican Vice Presidential candidate, and thus we will see that demographic much better represented. In essence the current polling trend is somewhat like being at the Republican National Convention and asking attendees how they feel about different issues (and then confusing that with a consensus or neutral point of view.)zredsox (talk) 23:43, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, I noticed this, it's mob-rule. BTW, there are some new accounts which only edited during the campaign on articles related to Palin: Fcreid and Pianomikey0. bogdan (talk) 23:58, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You are correct. As I already made clear last week on talk, this was my first visit to WP where I created an account. I came here from a Google hit, apparently with a couple million other people judging by the stats below, to find out factual information about a politician of whom I'd never heard. As I also stated in full disclosure, I have nothing (nada) to do with any political campaign. I design communications systems for a living. You won't find a red or blue bumper sticker on my car. Frankly, I could care less about politics. It's all the same shit sandwich in the end. However, what I did find was the callous, crude and disgraceful treatment of a public individual worse than any paparazzi hack-job could ever do. Go back through the history and tell me that doesn't make your skin crawl like it did mine. Anyone who would reduce themselves to that shameful level on behalf of a political party has sorely misplaced their priorities. So I stayed to right that wrong. I confined myself entirely to talk, and my cursor never touched the article. I worked hard to build consensus for changes to the article that treated this women fairly and neutrally, as we should do with any other human. I objected to the jigsaw stringing of disparate facts to paint an incorrect truth. Not doing so would have been an embarrassment for me as an American. Anyone who would deface this page with that kind of smear and innuendo should be ashamed of themselves, and they should have been chased back to the damn blog pits where they can feed off each other's hatred. Being top on Google's rank is an important responsibility. WP needs to reflect that if it intends to retain its relevance. People should fight your political battles elsewhere. You want me to leave? I will. I expect it's only a matter of a very short time before the partisans show you they can't be trusted anyway, and the value of this article loses all relevance. Fcreid (talk) 01:23, 6 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Given that my name was raised as suspect and with an obvious implication I am persona non grata, I have some final comments before fading into the firmament of the World Wide Woodwork. I didn't come here for a fight or a debate. The record will show that every edit I’ve made spoke only to the accuracy of characterizing this woman and her family, and only because she was defenseless to do so herself. I contributed nothing to claims of hand-delivering checks to every Alaskan or passing laws to promote seal clubbing as a competitive sport. I objected only to the scandalous, scurrilous and just plain silly attacks against her as a person, and only through consensus that it be made right. What I did for her is the same I would do for myself, my family or any one of you. Whether that undermined Team Blue or bolstered Team Red was neither my concern nor my goal. So, when you lower the child’s gate again to let the children play, please think how you would feel if the article were about you, and that it was your own child reading it. It may help you decide whether you would want that characterization at the top of their Internet search results. Fcreid (talk) 12:18, 6 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This isn't remarkable in the least. Do you suppose that the Obama or Biden articles are any different? The Obama article is a good piece of work, and it is that way because the "article owners" don't allow any crap about Obama being a closet Muslim or having Chicago mob connections.--Paul (talk) 00:29, 6 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It's not going to be effective to try to write an article via talk page discussion and editprotected requests. Consensus is forged from edits that converge on a final version. The talk page process discourages people from reading a change and saying "that's good enough, I'll leave it" - which is crucial for building a stable article. — Carl (CBM · talk) 23:45, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Let's not forget that WP:V and WP:RS trump consensus. Jim62sch^dissera! 23:51, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Nor that WP:UNDUE, WP:SYNTH and WP:BLP are there for very good reasons.--Paul (talk) 00:01, 6 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Why is the handling of this page so chaotic? Unless there is defamatory material in the article entered without due WP:RS, then the page protect should be sacrosanct except for clearly uncontroversial edits such as repairing references, templates for errs that render the page unreadable, or insanely embarrassing spelling errors. The priority isn't how to squeeze in the most up-to-the-minute development under the page protect. This is an encyclopedia, not Headline News. The priority is developing a workable solution to removing the page protect, which in my mind at minimum involves assessing the level of commitment that can be counted on from editors to help keep things from getting out of hand again. Consensus has never been easy to judge, and virtually impossible in an article like this where nobody will wait hours, let alone days, for editors views to be heard. So this attempt to gain consensus for edits while the page is protected can only lead to more disastrous conflict. Yes, this page is getting a lot of views. That's why it's important to get a plan in place so the article can continue to be improved. But these seemingly "on the fly" attempts to allow admins to make supposedly "consensus" edits even while the page is protected have got to stop. Professor marginalia (talk) 00:21, 6 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Why should the protected version be sacrosanct? Can you point to any essay (other than m:The Wrong Version, which is pure sarcasm and so a little short on logic) which makes this argument? I honestly don't understand why that should be. This is not your typical little edit war, where bad faith has been demonstrated by most of the parties. This is a real content dispute, the kind that is best resolved by active editing by the numerous good-faith people interested in the article. zredsox and crunch are crying bloody murder because *they and their point of view have been frozen out of the discussion*. Kelly et al are not because *theirs has not*. Kelly deserves much thanks for protecting this article from an onslaught, but that thanks does not extend to getting their way all the time. I have proposed a mechanism for solving this: *apply all editprotects* which have no well-founded major objections (and "that violates NPOV or SYNTH or BLP" should only count as an objection if it is clear-cut, ideally with someone from the other side of personal POV land agreeing) and are not just (effective) reverts. Yes, this means "editprotect wars". So be it, because these wars will ONLY be allowed to continue as long as they are converging on a compromise. So they will be productive. Homunq (talk) 01:11, 6 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Why? Common sense, that's why. You do not wage "editprotect wars" to prevail in content disputes, one. And two, as of yet, disputed claims of consensus or lack thereof are front and center in the wheel warring over the page. There is no reasonable rationale I can see for pronouncing within a matter or minutes or hours of polling that consensus has been reached in these particular content disputes; continuous 24/7 vigilance couldn't be sustained for vandalism or pov edits, so we resort to a plan that requires 24/7 vigilance for polling content issues during prolonged admins-only editing? How is this is not making a difficult situation worse? Professor marginalia (talk) 17:33, 6 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

What zredsox said at 22:15, 5 September 2008 sums up the situation perfectly. The so-called consensus is a sham set up by over-zealous admins who have become defacto owners of this article in violation of everything Wikipedia stands for. Making piece-meal changes to a locked article is no way to create a reliable piece of factual content. --Crunch (talk) 00:39, 6 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Oh right. Yes, Moreshi should not have made this edit without having consensus first on the talk page, I thought I had made this clear enough here:

Administrators Attention!

Do not edit this page without consensus on the talk page or be prepared to be blocked.

. Now that it is done, and that consensus supports the change, we should move on and continue our talk page discussions to achieve consensus. And if Moreshi makes this kind of edit again, he'll be blocked. Cenarium ^Talk 00:46, 6 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Just to make things more fun, Bogdangiusca (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA) is now making multiple undiscussed edits through protection as well. :) Kelly ^hi! 00:48, 6 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Glanced over it, and if [5]is what we're talking about, avoiding plagiarism overrides most other policies.--Tznkai (talk) 07:16, 6 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

What about this one? rootology (C)(T) 07:25, 6 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know. Adding a summary from a branching article is usually uncontroversial, but this time, maybe not so much. This conflict is waaaay to big for me though. I'd be willing to block everyone involved and start from scratch with Botswani monkeys or something.--Tznkai (talk) 07:33, 6 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Cenarium, I see several editors here and on Talk:Sarah Palin who don't support the change. Indeed, some have heatedly denounced it. Would you be so kind as to explain to me by what process of reasoning you arrive at the conclusion that "consensus supports the change"? JamesMLane t c 05:00, 6 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I have reverted the second change, as there should have been consensus first. I don't see any reason why discussion should not have preceded the edit. Kevin (talk) 11:12, 6 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The change you made actually goes against consensus. zredsox (talk) 14:31, 6 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

On further review, while I still support the statement made yesterday by user zredsox, it is clear from his subsequent actions (documented at Sarah Palin and on his user page), that he is an instigator of much of the violations he pretends to oppose. At this point, it appears it may be necessary to lock the page from everyone including admins. This is a position I never thought I would take. --Crunch (talk) 14:17, 6 September 2008 (UTC).[reply]

Not an instigator, just being gang tackled. zredsox (talk) 14:28, 6 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Your actions, including deleting posts on Talk:Sarah Palin, show that not to be the case. You can cry self-defense all you want. Your actions are not defendable. --Crunch (talk) 16:30, 6 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

See Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#Inappropriate conduct of administrators on Sarah Palin. Cenarium ^Talk 16:22, 6 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

May I please chime in to make a humble observation and request.. I almost exclusively post anon and realise this gives me little wieght in providing a valid opinion but hear me out. In the past few days I've seen really good things and really bad things happen on the Palin page. Folks have been able to come to a consensus on several issues and admin have made changes accordingly, and folks have abused the talk page making edit reverts in the talk page. As it is, I'm shafted on several fronts, I cannot edit the article as anon and my word has little effect in talk as anon. That being said I like the rticle protected as it is and hope it stays this way. Good consensus (consensi?) are in develpoment, folks are talking and admin who abuse are being investigated. There will be quirks with all the activity when a few people stir up crap with thier vinditive POV or when admin abuse powers but those problems seem to be getting dealt with and in the meantime the article is actually looking quite nice. I praise the consistancy and tenacity of all the admin and editors who are now fully engaged in reaching agreements and emplore you all to consider that if this current state is working, let us keep it in the current state until months from now when 100's of people aren't trying to edit it everyday. Right now, it seems to be working and the article is growing ever closer to a "good artile" Thanks for reading. :) --98.243.129.181 (talk) 02:12, 7 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

We're super-full-protecting an article on a politician just named the vice-presidential candidate during the period just after her nomination to that role? Oh, yeah, that'll surely work, I mena, it's not like anything newsworthy will happen regarding her in those two weeks. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 04:54, 7 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Article development continues with {{editprotect}} requests. Kelly ^hi! 04:55, 7 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Try out FlaggedRevs?

Maybe this would be a good time to expose stable revisions? ffm 02:29, 7 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

User:Xasha

This is copied from my talk page: User_talk:Rlevse#Could_you_help.3F: Hello. Could you rap Xasha a little? He seems to ignore the ban he received last month ([6], [7]). For your info, I've also just reminded him of the ban. Thank you. Ovidiu2all (talk) 15:30, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It's messages like these that expose you as a sock.Xasha (talk) 15:55, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This set of users has made a habit of coming to my talk page, but I now feel it is time for more uninvolved admins to look at this situation and handle as appropriate. Thank you. — Rlevse • Talk • 18:14, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Resolved

DreamGuy

The following discussion is an archived report. Please do not modify it. Subsequent reports should be made in a new section.

No action taken. PhilKnight (talk) 21:33, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Case and section: DreamGuy 2: DreamGuy is subject to a behavioral editing restriction. If he makes any edits which are judged by an administrator to be uncivil, personal attacks, or assumptions of bad faith, he may be blocked for the duration specified in the enforcement ruling below.

DreamGuy has been editing the article Yanartaş, introducing some minor changes which seem very important to him, and which have produced ungrammatical and unintelligible English. He also moved it, apparently without discussion.
This move was brought to WP:RM, and I !voted. In the course of the discussion, the question arose whether the article is about an ancient site, as it was originally written, or the modern location with which it has been identified.
Since the changes had preserved 90% of the text, leaving 5% novel and 5% gibberish, I reverted to explain what the article had originally been about, merging in the new text.
In the course of this DreamGuy appeared out of nowhere, making exact reversions; his edit summaries include again, can't just revert the article to how it existed more than a year ago like you WP:OWN the article. Some very bizarre actions going on in this article. For those who care, this is the second of two exact reverts; there is more charming language on the talk page.

This last seems like an uncivil assumption of bad faith. Has he broken his edit restriction? (And if not, please somebody watch the page...) Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:40, 28 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, come on. There's charming language on the talkpage from most everybody, and I really can't see DreamGuy assuming any more bad faith than the people analysing his character there. You call him "notoriously intemperate", but are you perhaps rather angry yourself? I ask because you sound it. What's wrong with "turning up out of nowhere", for instance? I often do. And turning up to reply to people when they're comfortably telling each other what a horrible person he is seems positively to be expected; you don't need to be "notoriously intemperate" to do it. Where is the "ungrammatical and :unintelligible English"? The only example of such that you cite in the Requested Moves discussion is his "Some sources state that this geothermically active region was the inspiration for the myth Ctesias." What's wrong with that? As for the edit summary you offer as "an uncivil assumption of bad faith"—it's not especially sweet-tempered, but how is it uncivil or assuming bad faith? I can't believe the ArbCom had this kind of thing in mind when they issued the editing restriction. Bishonen | talk 00:01, 29 August 2008 (UTC).[reply]

- Am I annoyed? Yes; anyone would be at being reverted within minutes of beginning to edit an article and abused in the edit summaries.
- Is DreamGuy's intemperance notorious? Well, I saw it mentioned on ANI months before and after the arbitration, and ArbCom found "DreamGuy has frequently engaged in incivility, assumptions of bad faith, and personal attacks directed at other editors."
- What's wrong with Ctesias? Ctesias isn't a myth; he's an author. DreamGuy has mangled the two sentences Chimaera, in antiquity, in addition to being the name of a monster, was the name of a volcanic site which was held , by euhemerizing geographers, to have inspired the myth. and Ctesias (as cited by Pliny the Elder and quoted by Photius) identified the Chimaera with an area of permanent gas vents which can still be found today by hikers on the Lycian Way in southwest Turkey. into one.

At least keep watch over this reverter. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:22, 29 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know whether ArbCom had this kind of thing in mind or not. But this edit summary, and the accusation that Pmanderson is violating WP:OWN contained therein, strikes me as a personal attack. Rather than recognize that he and Pmanderson have a substantive disagreement over the content of the article, and attempt to discuss the problem on the talk page, DreamGuy accuses Pmanderson of a policy violation (implicitly dismissing his position as invalid). Now, it's true that editors do this kind of thing all the time, but it still doesn't seem like the way to foster a collaborative editing environment.

DreamGuy has done this kind of thing elsewhere. Here's a recent revert on Jesus myth hypothesis, with an edit summary that reads "more to the point, your refusing to accept what a reliable source says just because you disagree does not make it not a reliable source. Your edits are plainly POV-pushing and against WP:NPOV". This is after a fairly extensive post on the talk page explaining my edit, to which DreamGuy responded "So, basically, you don't want to use it because it disagrees with the POV you've been clearly pushing in this article for ages now. You don't get to remove cites to reliable sources just because you disagree with them." That strikes me as an assumption of bad faith, at least.

Again, I have no idea if ArbCom intended this kind of behavior to fall under the sanction. But I do know that when DreamGuy calls those with whom he disagrees POV-pushers or accuses them of policy violations instead of seeing that they merely have a garden-variety content dispute, it makes editing less enjoyable, and sometimes (as WP:CIVIL puts it) "results in an atmosphere of conflict and stress." --Akhilleus (talk) 01:50, 29 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Oh my. I have just been trying to discuss a separate matter with DreamGuy, and as the user has failed to substantiate his edit summaries which I deem bad faith accusations, I came here to report it. I have looked at the above, and it is some bad faith edit summaries, but they are borderline. Take a look at this one: "comment... known meat puppet of Elonka's is major editor if the Essay created by Elonka and now voting here also in true tag teaming style - ironic, eh?" At User_talk:DreamGuy#meat_puppetry_accusation I asked the user to provide evidence of this meat puppetry accusation, but none has been forthcoming despite having quite clearly requested then, days to respond with diffs, and having been told on my user talk that "a community of editors (including a number of admins) have agreed that Fat Cigar is a meat puppet". If this is an open and shut case of meat puppetry, diffs should be easy to provide. Instead I am being given thinly veiled accusations of being a hot head, blind, irresponsible, etc. Without diffs that predate the accusation, there was no reason to attack Elonka and FatCigar in this way, and the arbcom remedies were intended to stop this rot. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 04:08, 29 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Boy, the accusations sure do fly all the time. Once again the people making them seem to be trying to use the ArbCom decision against me as some sort of excuse for assuming bad faith and so forth. These latest complaints are just more of the same over the top claims.

As far as Pmanderson's complaint above, I can't for the life of me figure out what he means by "DreamGuy appeared out of nowhere, making exact reversions" -- the fact of the matter is that I have been on the article all along, watchlisting it, and looking at the edits over the past year by other editors and approving them. It was some new editor who came out of nowhere (new user account with limited history) and tried to move the whole article by copying and pasting the text to another article, and then Pmanderson came back after a more than year gap to revert back to *his* exact old version of the article, adding back the claims about the origin of the Chimera myth that are simply not the accepted beliefs of modern mythologists and authors. Pmanderson and this new editor, joined some other editor who is posting comments there as if he has been editing the article all along and that they had a consensus I was ignoring but has never edited it all at as far as I can see, seem to have immediately jumped to making personal attacks on myself, setting up a supposed consensus before discussing it. He also claims "He also moved it, apparently without discussion.", which is silly, as the article has been at that name for more than a year... it was someone else who came out of nowhere to move it with a copy and paste. Certainly that kind of odd behavior (false claims about consensus, who moved what, etc.) constitutes as bizarre actions, but it looks like he wants to try to exaggerate that statement into an attack of some sort. The bottom line is that Pmanderson is actually guilty of the reverting, making sweeping changes without attempts at establishing consensus, etc., and apparently decided to jump here to make a report hoping that people won't take any time to look into it and just assume that he's right.

John Vandenberg above is all upset that I pointed out that a brand new editor with no edit history showed up to strongly and aggressively support another editor in an RFC, and then continued on to support that same editor in edits to an essay and on her talk page during a recall attempt. A number of other editors have noticed this, including admins User:Jehochman in this edit (and others) and User:Bishonen in this edit directly supporting me against John's complaint). Those are just two I turned up rather quickly -- those are certainly not either of those two editors' first comments on the puppet account, nor are they the only editors who noticed it. They labeled Fat Cigar a sockpuppet, but I took the added extra step of assuming good faith and referred that user as a meatpuppet instead, as a sockpuppet would be deliberate attempts to deceive and a meatpuppet could be more innocent (a friend hopping in starting a new account thinking he is helping, or whatever), albeit still a major problem. John Vandenberg for some unknown reason decided to treat this as some huge offense and to go after me personally... his communication always focused on the ArbCom decision on me instead of the normal process of identifying and dealing with puppets.

The fact of the matter here is that ever since the ArbCom decision was made I have been hounded by people who constantly assume bad faith about my actions and, whenever any sort of disagreement comes up, use it as a club against me to attempt to get me to do what they want me to do instead of following what the decision was supposed to uphold: that everyone here should be civil and follow policies. This ArbCom decision was intended to promote better good faith dealings between editors, but instead all it did was put a target on my head with people who prefer to use it as a shortcut to prevailing in whatever conflict they have instead of trying to resolve that conflict by normal methods of communication and fair dealings. Nobody who disagrees with any edits I make even has to try to resolve anything anymore, they just treat me as a second class citizen they can either ignore or antagonize and then go run off to report me.

Frankly, the best thing ArbCom can do to improve editor cooperation is to unambiguously tell editors that just because I have an ArbCom sanction against me doesn't mean they get to ignore policies themselves whenever they are in any conflict that involves me. Pmanderson's complaint here is a transparent attempt to prevail in an edit conflict that he started up again a year later after failing to get consensus the first time around, and John Vandenberg seems to want to dispute what the other editors said about Fat Cigar's puppeting but for some reason chose me to go after. DreamGuy (talk) 20:38, 29 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Er, Fat Cigar (talk · contribs) is obviously not a new editor. On the other hand, I doubt they're a "sockpuppet" or "meatpuppet" of Elonka - I don't think she'd be involved in that sort of thing. Fat Cigar's topics of interest and likes/enmities immediately bring to mind Jagz (talk · contribs), and I'm half-minded to file a checkuser request along those lines. But I guess we're getting off track. MastCell ^Talk 21:05, 29 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

As everyone here prolly knows, I am not a fan of DG, and personally think he's about as cuddly as a hand grenade. That said, I think that what we are actually seeing here is as follows:

DG is not perceived as a polite person, and instead of working amicably with people to arrive at a compromise/consensus, he tends to trout-slap folk, and I am increasingly of the opinion that he cannot (instead of will not) control this behavior. Unfortunately, it tends to happen a lot. If it can drive seasoned editors up a wall (across the ceiling and down the opposite wall), imagine how much less fun it must be for the relatively new users who could benefit from the use of honey to vinegar? I submit that DG might see such behavior as a waste of time (not just his detractors, but with everyone; one tends to develop a fairly quick bite reflex when used to working on fringe theories and the like), and his reaction to such is largely counter-productive, turing potential allies into bitter enemies.
I cannot be sure, but TexasAndroid and myself are suspecting that that someone is trying to set up DG, albeit clumsily.
That DG seems to see anyone opposing his edits as part of a vast conspiracy of blind-editing POV-pushers hardly helps matters.

It seems that DG is walking towards a hole that an unknown party seems all too willing to dig for him.

I think DG needs to walk away from his comfort zone of articles for a bit, and try out working with articles where his personal knowledge aren't going to lead him into incivility or a trap of some sort. Of course, he might very well see that as a punishment for having done little wrong (at least, 'little' to his reckoning), but if he cannot improve his behavior, he is going to eventually be indef blocked and/or banned. I would rather not see that happen. - Arcayne (^{cast a spell}) 00:32, 30 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Arcayne, this isn't Editor Review or a Request for Comment. PhilKnight (talk) 03:18, 30 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

DreamGuy, you didnt just call it a sock puppet as Jehochman did. You turned it into a personal attack on Elonka as part of your ongoing dispute with her. You have yet to substantiate your claim. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 03:09, 30 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Jayvdb, the account is blatantly a pro-Elonka sock puppet, which is essentially what DG said. I don't consider his comments to be an infringement of the ArbCom restrictions. Also, I don't believe he needs to make a further clarification. PhilKnight (talk) 03:21, 30 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I will request checkuser on the account, since accusations are flying. If it is User:Jagz, indef blocked, then the account obviously needs to be blocked. Should DreamGuy make any uncivil comments, I recommend redacting them first. If DG restores an uncivil remark, then blocking could be used. Additionally, Arcayne has a log history with DG. I would advise both of those parties not to make reports on each other. If somebody is acting up, others will notice and file any necessary reports. (For transparency: I have blocked DG in the past.) Jehochman ^Talk 10:49, 30 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

One cannot redact an edit summary, and that's where Pmanderson, I, and John Vandenberg said that incivility/assumptions of bad faith were happening. --Akhilleus (talk) 11:06, 30 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe we should take that up with the developers. It does not sound like a difficult technical problem to let administrators erase uncivil edit summaries. That would be a very useful capability. At the moment, if an edit summary is uncivil (or contains other inapproprate info) we can administrator delete or oversight the edit. When people are acting trollish, we want to deny recognition of their remarks and minimize drama. The current scheme (uncivil remark -> WP:AE -> block -> unblock request -> debate) is exactly what should be avoided. Jehochman ^Talk 11:12, 30 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I don't care whether the edit summaries remain or not. I don't care whether DreamGuy is blocked or not. I simply want someone uninvolved to look at these incidents and let DreamGuy know that certain aspects of his edit behavior do not encourage cooperation. Once you call someone a POV-pusher, it pretty much stops collaboration dead. --Akhilleus (talk) 11:28, 30 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I concur. I don't care if they are removed, I want him not to make more of them. It would be nice to not be reverted; I would even be happy at not being reverted in thirty seconds and without discussion; but I will settle for being reverted without abuse. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:56, 30 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Agree. While I don't believe DG's actions violate the letter of his ArbCom restriction, they do violate the spirit. I suggest he refrains from bad-faith assumptions in his edit summaries and takes the discourse to the talk page instead- editors dueling with edit summaries has, in my experience, always led to an increase in tensions. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 15:15, 30 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

To Akhilleus: you're in the wrong place, Akhilleus. See the top of the page: "This is a message board for requesting and discussing enforcement of Arbitration Committee (ArbCom) decisions." (Enforcement = blocks.) That's the exclusive purpose of the Arbitration enforcement noticeboard. It doesn't make any sense to post a variety of complaints against DreamGuy here while insisting that you're not interested in actual enforcement against DreamGuy. ("I don't know whether ArbCom had this kind of thing in mind or not."..."Again, I have no idea if ArbCom intended this kind of behavior to fall under the sanction.".. "I don't care whether DreamGuy is blocked or not. I simply want someone uninvolved to look at these incidents.") I have a lot of respect for you, Akhilleus, but I'm afraid the impression you leave in this case is a paradoxical one: your posts can only have the effect of supporting the likelihood for enforcement blocks, assuming that a sufficiently trigger-happy admin strolls by. If that isn't what you're interested in, then please don't post complaints here. Take 'em to ANI or something
To Arcayne: you're in the wrong place too, and saying the wrong things. As Phil Knight points out above, this isn't Editor Review or Requests for Comment. I've told you before that conduct advice from you to DreamGuy is only going to have the effect of aggravating him. I thought you agreed. [8][9] Yet here you are again, talking to him "like a father" (after first being this snarky on his page). If you want to report him here, fine, great, report him. But please don't take your itch to "advise" DreamGuy here, too. If you're irresistibly impelled to analyse his character flaws, can't you just type it into a text editor and ceremonially burn the document, or something?
To most everybody: no, DreamGuy isn't cuddly, but could you please take account of, and mention, context when you report people, any people, for incivility here? There's a limit to how far the argument "but he's under a civility restriction and those other people aren't" will take you. (Because baiting an editor that you know is under civility parole is actually especially bad.) As I said at the beginning of this thread, if people are having a cosy conversation on an article talkpage about what a terrible person you are, it's pretty human to be terse in response to them.[10] Can I ask you to make a habit of looking at the preceding edit summaries in the history of an article or talkpage, lest your WP:AE report be biased? More: the whole bad faith thing in this thread strikes me as overdone and a bit absurd. Click on the links, please. Is DreamGuy really assuming bad faith? (PManderson had no reply when I asked him above, and I still don't get what he meant by bad faith.) And: is DreamGuy replying to people who're clearly assuming bad faith from him? I'm not asking you to ignore sanction violations if he is; but please describe that situation in your report. I want to note that Akhilleus, giving these links, does describe the situation, allowing the reader to evaluate it, and in fact showing rather rude editing by DreamGuy. Thank you, Akhilleus. (Even though I have a low opinion of some of your examples of "personal attacks" and "bad faith". Referring to WP:OWN isn't assuming bad faith, and isn't a personal attack. It's just a silly way of shooting oneself in the foot by showing one doesn't have any real arguments. But then so is referring to WP:AGF and WP:NPA, you know. Apply within for a short list of policies that have their virtues, but are just no good to hurl as brickbats.) Bishonen | talk 18:02, 30 August 2008 (UTC).[reply]

- If Bishonen can read Some very bizarre actions going on here, especially combined with the accusations about advancing a fringe POV and a group of editors ganging up on him, as not being a suggestion of conspiracy, how else can they be read? (I'm not entirely clear what POV DreamGuy has in mind, which is the problem with this sort of quarrel by edit-summary; but it sounds like he is objecting to a view I do not hold.)
- The purpose of the last ArbCom case was to stop DreamGuy from using abusive language. Do we have to start DreamGuy 3 to accomplish that result? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:21, 30 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  - At this point, any block is going to be punitive, rather than preventative, so there is no point in discussing further. Please go to WP:RFAR, Requests for Clarification, if you think better remedies are needed. It is my experience that people with civility issues are not deterred by sequential blocks. Quite the opposite, blocking tends to cause agitation and often leads to worse disruption. Jehochman ^Talk 07:19, 31 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  - There is a checkuser result: Wikipedia:Requests for checkuser/Case/Jagz Inconclusive. Jehochman ^Talk 07:38, 31 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    - Fat Cigar is so obviously Jagz...we can't be taken for a ride on this one. Blocked indef. Moreschi (talk) 18:25, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

For the record, I do not know who Fat Cigar is, and it is categorically false for DreamGuy to imply that Fat Cigar is acting at my request, such as to say that Fat Cigar is a "known meatpuppet of Elonka's".[11][12] This is yet another violation of DreamGuy's ArbCom sanctions, as he has recently been making many other false statements about me and others.[13][14][15][16] I have cautioned him at his talkpage,[17][18] but the cautions do not seem to be working, as he is continuing to make bizarre attacks. I therefore recommend a block in order to enforce the ArbCom sanctions. His block log is already quite long,[19] so at this point I would recommend a block of at least one week. --El on ka 07:52, 31 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I don't disagree, though I think a one week block will only provide a temporary respite, and then he will return, angrier. It would be more useful to arrange a long term solution to the problem. Perhaps an acceptable mentor can be found. There is a big difference between saying an account is a sock, and saying an account is a sock of somebody (when there is absolutely zero evidence of the second person's involvement). Jehochman ^Talk 13:47, 31 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Jehochman, you have been told repeatedly, by multiple admins, to disengage from situations involving me.[20][21][22] I strongly recommend that you follow that advice. --El on ka 17:51, 31 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

My name was mentioned on this thread, and I commented here first. This page is on my watchlist and I post here regularly. Jehochman ^Talk 18:54, 31 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I believe Jehoch is correct in that a block will only enflame the situation further, and currently would only serve as a punitive action. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 18:04, 31 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

(Regarding Bishonen's earlier comments which addressed me by name) Actually, you missed the mark at least twice there, Bish. Firstly, I wasn't trying to talk to DG "like a father"; my observations were for the group, not that individual. It was provided to present some perspective as to why the behavior occurs/continues. I wouldn't presume to advise him; he doesn't think there is anything wrong with his behavior, and I am but a part of the vast conspiracy to 'get' him. The advice he needs surpasses the ability and legal liability of the wiki to offer. Secondly, my apology on DG's page for hastily filing a checkuser on him and an anon was met with somewhat less than cordiality (nothing new, tho'), My response was somewhat incredibly restrained. It wasn't snarky at all; tongue-in-cheek would be a better description. Wit is not snark.

Lastly, I would point out that DG built the restriction box he is in, and no one is pointing and laughing at him, nor are they arguing about the construction of it. They just want DG to respect the restrictions he is under. Are folk going to be a bit more judgemental and quick to report him when he steps out of that box? Absolutely - and they should. The restrictions are primarily there to protect the community from the incivility and system-gaming. The secondary purpose is to guide DG towards the realization that so long as his behavior remains unadaptive, he is going to re-encounter these issues over and over again. If he feels goaded by the restrictions, or even being reminded of them, he should focus less on the Grand Unfairness of It All, and more on the reasons as to why someone might be pointing them out.

While there might in fact be one or two unknown users diligently trying to have DG removed from our community permanently, the greater majority of the folk taking issue with his behavior are an ever-widening circle of editors who never dealt with him before. Where there is smoke, there is often fire. - Arcayne (^{cast a spell}) 18:08, 31 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, DavidFuchs and Jehochman, if blocking DreamGuy isn't the way to go here, what other methods of persuasion are left available to us? For practically everyone else, just having been the sole subject of an ArbCom complaint would be enough to modify one's behavior. Certainly not one but two modifications to the restrictions should serve to reinforce that modification. And yet, for DreamGuy, it hasn't been anything approaching effective.

Let me put it another way. You have an employee at your business who is rude to customers and smarts off to you. You give him a warning and the bahvior stops for a bit before returning. You issue a second warning, and the pattern repeats a few times. You then give him fewer hours to work (to ensure your business isn't disrupted by the rudeness), but that doesn't abate the behavior. How many times do you dock the pay and remove them from the schedule before enough is enough? - Arcayne (^{cast a spell}) 18:15, 31 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

<- Arcayne, I agree with you that repeated bad behavior needs to be addressed. If DreamGuy is causing problems, and if past blocks have not been effective deterrent, perhaps a mentor would help. If that fails, stronger measures may be needed. Is there anybody who would be willing to mentor DreamGuy? DreamGuy, would you be willing to accept a mentor? Jehochman ^Talk 18:51, 31 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

(Outdenting.) I'm looking—a little incredulously—at Elonka's remark to Jehochman above—"you have been told repeatedly, by multiple admins, to disengage from situations involving me, I strongly recommend that you follow that advice". Since the conversation (or, largely, monologue) has moved so far since then, I don't think anybody would notice a response from me to Elonka up there. I'm putting it here, I hope that's not confusing. Here goes:
Oh, that's appropriate, Elonka, to tell Jehochman to disengage from situations involving you. This is primarily a situation involving DreamGuy. You're on the extreme outer edge of it. For you to come here to deny knowledge of Fat Cigar is fine, naturally—I for one believe you—but issuing advice about what punishment you would "recommend" for your ancient adversary DreamGuy is not fine, and if you had better judgment, you wouldn't be doing it. You have a COI about DreamGuy. That's putting it mildly. Please disengage. Bishonen | talk 18:56, 31 August 2008 (UTC).[reply]

Agree with Bishonen - in addition, Elonka has been previously advised to leave situations involving PHG to other admins, and the same principle applies here. PhilKnight (talk) 19:09, 31 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

These matters seem quite tangential to the issue at hand. I would block based on the editing restrictions for this comment referred to above, but for it being stale now. It first came to my attention as the closing admin of the MfD and I found it exceptionally uncivil and ABF.--Doug.^{(talk • contribs)} 19:37, 31 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, let's avoid the side issues and focus on the problem at hand. DG is supposed to endeavor to be civil with the rest of Wikipedia. The link given by Doug clearly shows he was not civil. As his las block was 4 days long, what would be the next plateau?

On a side note, I think that DG's long-running problem has rendered a great many editors and admins unable to look at just the current event, but all the others that have led to it. However, that's just my opinion. - Arcayne (^{cast a spell}) 22:00, 31 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

And my opinion is that we should attempt to resolve the issue before blocking further. At some point, indef blocks may be necessary-but I'd rather attempt to get DG to accept a mentor or the like and save us the time of slowly implementing incremental blocks before someone says "what the hell" and doesn't put in an end date. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 22:21, 31 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Okay. Will he accept mentoring? What do we do if he chooses not to accept such? - Arcayne (^{cast a spell}) 00:43, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I dunno, I would defer that task to an admin who DG prolly knows, or at least someone he's more likely to respond to. If he doesn't, and continues in disruptive action, then we can contemplate longer blocks. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 15:01, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I can pretty much guarantee that DG will not accept any mentor, any time. He has previously quite unequivocally condemned the whole mentoring program. - TexasAndroid (talk) 15:46, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Okay then. If he is interested, he can say so at any point. Otherwise, we are left with the choice of carrying out a sanction that has proven ineffective time and again, ignoring the problem, or asking the Committee for help to craft a better sanction (which they probably won't or can't do). Jehochman ^Talk 16:16, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

(ec) Well, lt's not make absolutist statements for the guy. I am sure that if he recognizes that he may recognize the choice between the devil and the deep blue sea and act wisely. I am not going to post the idea on his usertalk, as Bish seems to think I am the vinegar in the kool-aid when posting to DG, so someone else who hasn't been marked as part of the Cabal would be best. - Arcayne (^{cast a spell}) 16:25, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Previous attempts to deal with him have failed because they have been of the type of "let's block him and hope he behaves better when he comes back".[23] But then he never acknowledges any remorse, he refuses to acknowledge the validity of the ArbCom sanctions ("yet another block for no sensible reason whatesoever"), then he waits out the block, comes back, and goes back to the same disruptive behavior, which just leads to another block, and round the cycle goes again. So what I recommend this time, is to block him, and then do not unblock unless DreamGuy acknowledges his ArbCom sanctions and promises that he will abide by them. That would be more effective, since we'd actually get his word on things, rather than us just vainly hoping for change. It would also be a good sign if DreamGuy would change the uncivil message at the top of his talkpage. If he could do those things, then I would support an unblock. But if he cannot even, at a minimum, promise to change his behavior, then just leave the block in place. --El on ka 16:58, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

<- I agree that a block is the appropriate response, that's what ArbCom gave us for a solution and I don't think we should be requiring admins to water that all down with offers for mentorship etc. Anyone wants to offer that on their own and then present the success of the offer here as mitigation, go for it. On the other hand, Elonka, an indef block is not supported by the ArbCom decision and would have to be independently warranted, which it certainly is not. I count two logged blocks. The max block continues to be one week, unless I'm reading things wrong.--Doug.^{(talk • contribs)} 17:29, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think a block is the right response - I have noticed from my limited interactions with DG that people do tend to pile into him a little heavily. I think the most important thing for him to try and adhere to is to comment on the content, not the contributor, as the latter seems to be what gets him into trouble the most. Brilliantine (talk) 19:36, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, but at some point if he continues to refuse to do so, and accept measures such as mentoring to do so, he effectively puts us in the positive of just grinning and bearing the harassment, or blocking him for an extended (possibly indefinite) period until he learns not to disrupt. Based on previous blocks, none of these are going to help unless he has a change of heart. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 19:41, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think the best thing would be for the editors he has history with to keep off of his talk page and try to avoid commenting on him where possible, and to see if he can be gently persuaded to focus his arguments around content - I have left a note on his talk page encouraging him to read WP:NOSPADE, and to be honest, I feel it's an essay that everyone should read in situations like this. I don't think it can be denied that some of the comments made towards him have the effect of provoking him, even if this may often be inadvertent. Blocking is very much a last resort, and I do believe that DG genuinely wants to improve the encyclopedia and is capable of doing so provided everybody disengages a bit. Brilliantine (talk) 00:46, 2 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Agree that those around DG are hardly blameless... Dream, Giano, and Sceptre have all violated policy and guidelines before (to various degrees), but I don't think anyone can question they are/have been committed to the project. Giving everyone some room to breath might be the best way to deal with these kinds of editors. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 01:59, 2 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

(reply to Doug) I agree (and have said above) that I think a one-week block is the way to go right now. Then if DreamGuy would clean up his talkpage, acknowledge the ArbCom restrictions and promise to do better in the future, the block could be lifted early. If not, it would be left in place. Either way, it would be block #3 of 5, towards the one-year block (if he continues to disrupt), per Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/DreamGuy 2#Enforcement. --El on ka 17:56, 2 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Elonka, your conduct is unbecoming. You need to stop dispensing "advice" about DreamGuy in this inappropriate venue. If you won't, then minimal civility demands that you at least reply to my protest above,[24] and give some reason for thinking you're entitled to go on like this. Bishonen | talk 18:08, 3 September 2008 (UTC).[reply]

Perhaps the both of you - who seem unable to tolerate the contributions of the other - could withdraw from here, as your personal difficulties with each other are tangential to the discussion here. The subject of this complaint might well be laughing his ass off whilst you two argue this section into distraction. I myself have said what I think, and am withdrawing, unless addressed personally. - Arcayne (^{cast a spell}) 16:31, September 3, 2008 (UTC)

What's missing from this discussion as always is context. Dreamguy's WP:OWN comment came after PmAnderson baited DM on the talkpage about his "notorious intemperan[ce]", while the "POV-pushing" comment which Akhileus later reported came after this patronizing comment from him.

What concerns me most about this report is that it appears there are still some folks who are prepared to use the most minor incidents to try and get rid of someone with whom they disagree. That is not what AE exists for, that is called gaming the system and it is surely behaviour that should not be encouraged. Instead of sanctioning Dreamguy, perhaps it's time we started considering sanctions against people who make frivolous reports like this as in my opinion they are far more disruptive—in terms of the time and energy wasted by the community—than anything the defendant has been accused of here. Gatoclass (talk) 02:10, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

As a sitting arbitrator I prefer not to comment on threads on this board, because disputes here sometimes return to the Arbitration Committee and I then want to look at them with an open mind. However, I note that the challenged edits here are 6 days old, and DreamGuy has done little editing since then. Given that there is not a clear consensus for enforcement, it strikes me that this thread could best be closed as stale, with a general request for civility and decorum from all editors on the article in question. Newyorkbrad (talk) 02:30, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

What erks me is that DreamGuy has not apologised for overstepping the mark, despite plenty of opportunity to. This discussion is older than it could have been, because I took the time to try to discuss it on the users talk page rather than bringing it here. I wouldnt have brought the matter here if the responses I had received indicated that there was a willingness to accept that the accusations made were not appropriate. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 10:03, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Either way it seems obvious that this thread is not helping with DG. I suggest we close and pursue discussion at other channels, if needed. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 12:17, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Violation of TTN's restriction?

I'm relatively inexperienced in matters of Arbcom, but this [25] appears that it might be in violation of TTN's restrictions. I originally posted this at the incident board and was told that it belonged here instead. One of the members there suggested it might be frivilous, however the situation seems very similar to these [26] [27] which resulted in a one week ban. I realize his restriction expires soon, but if its a violation its a violation, so I thought I should still bring it up. 75.93.9.235 (talk) 23:46, 7 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

[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]