Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Eastern European disputes/Evidence

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Hodja Nasreddin (talk | contribs) at 18:07, 20 September 2008 (→‎Evidence presented by User:Biophys). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Anyone, whether directly involved or not, may add evidence to this page. Create your own section and do not edit in anybody else's section. Please limit your main evidence to a maximum 1000 words and 100 diffs and keep responses to other evidence as short as possible. A short, concise presentation will be more effective; posting evidence longer than 1000 words will not help you make your point. Over-long evidence that is not exceptionally easy to understand (like tables) will be trimmed to size or, in extreme cases, simply removed by the Clerks without warning - this could result in your important points being lost, so don't let it happen. Stay focused on the issues raised in the initial statements and on diffs which illustrate relevant behavior.

It is extremely important that you use the prescribed format. Submitted evidence should include a link to the actual page diff in question, or to a short page section; links to the page itself are insufficient. Never link to a page history, an editor's contributions, or a log for all actions of an editor (as those will have changed by the time people click on your links), although a link to a log for a specific article or a specific block log can be useful. Please make sure any page section links are permanent. See simple diff and link guide.

This page is not for general discussion - for that, see the talk page. If you think another editor's evidence is a misrepresentation of the facts, cite the evidence and explain how it is incorrect within your own section. Please do not try to re-factor the page or remove evidence presented by others. If something is put in the wrong place, leave it for the Arbitrators or Clerks to move.

Arbitrators may analyze evidence and other assertions at /Workshop. /Workshop provides for comment by parties and others as well as Arbitrators. After arriving at proposed principles, findings of fact or remedies, Arbitrators vote at /Proposed decision. Only Arbitrators (and clerks, when clarification on votes is needed) may edit the proposed decision page.

Evidence presented by Deacon of Pndapetzim

Piotrus abused his admin-status battling over Republic of Central Lithuania

On March 12/3 (depending on time-zone), Piotrus was blocked for a violation of the 3 revert rule [1]. Piotrus had been edit-warring on Republic of Central Lithuania, along with User:Halibutt, "against" two or three Lithuanian users. Piotrus added edit-summaries such as "this was all discussed before and this is the preferred version", despite the fact 3 editors were reverting it. He was the only one to breach the technicality of the rule, and was blocked for doing so.

On the #admins irc channel Piotrus used his admin status to misrepresent his "opponents" and by doing so got his block lifted. User:FT2 summarized what took place in the public channel:

Roughly speaking, Piotrus states he has been blocked and that the block was placed by someone criticized for blocks at arbcom [presumably User:TigerShark.] and suspected on an RFCU of IP puppetry on the article in question. He states that being blocked for reverting vandals is not good and claims that as an "experienced admin" he should be warned and does not deserve blocking. He describes the incident as possible sock IP(s) making disruptive edits and states the two users [i.e. User:M.K and User:Lokyz.] are "pov trolls" who have been parties at Arbcom, and that he knows they are sockpuppets and he is mostly sure he knows who of.

FT2 wrote a long summary of the case, from which this is drawn, and saves me regurgitating it:

Visiting IRC to ask for an unblock is fine, as would emailing unblock-l be. But his descriptions of why are grossly inaccurate, his statement that he should have different treatment from the norm when in fact he has breached a more demanding standard as an admin is slightly shocking, and his description of his opponents is questionable, and in fact has now been looked at by two checkusers who feel it is not by any means evident. (It should be noted that I am AGFing a bit here by assuming Piotrus genuinely did have this belief.) He also described a new version as "the preferred version" when in fact it was only his preferred version. In fact a more factual analysis of his claims are that these were not "vandalism" by any definition in WP:VANDAL

This is available at Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Archive134#Analysis. Piotrus, incidentally, also misused rollback during this edit-war,[2] claiming later that this anonymous editor's preferred version was "vandalism", a claim also made by Piotrus' revert-ally User:Halibutt [3], a charge both part of and separate from the other charges mentioned here.

Piotrus' Holocaust in Lithuania caused bad faith

I may not have the endless supply of good-faith that is so frequently the appearance of admins new to situations, but this article was created by Piotrus almost immediately after returning from his block. Although a valid article topic, Piotrus knows that Holocaust-perpetration is one of the most sensitive historical topics in Lithuanian society. That it contained much selective material irritating to Lithuanian users and inspiring of bad-faith was as predictable as a Zimbabwean election, the results being evidenced by "tweaks" such as this (for the scores of others, just navigate the adjacent diffs). And not surprisingly, many tweaks contained hot-headed edit-summaries, and so Piotrus got seemingly what he wanted. User:Lokyz lost restraint often enough to give Piotrus enough diffs, which he was gathering in his secret page,[4] to launch what appears in hindsight to be his clearly planned revenge arb-enforcement thread, the one that resulted in Lokyz' block. Three users, User:Irpen, (and two admins) User:Elonka and User:Angusmclellan expressed the view that Piotrus' diff-list was misleading (effectively dishonest, assuming Piotrus read as he was gathering) and that Piotrus was more interested in obtaining sanction against Lokyz than anything more constructive.(see comments at Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Arbitration_enforcement/Archive19#Lokyz).

In addition to slandering the admin (see above) User:TigerShark (and compare his attempts to exploit, assuming he didn't instigate, the slander-only account User:Koretek for his statement), he also apparently sent TigerShark a nasty email lecturing and threatening him, all because he enforced WP:3RR.[5]

Piotrus uses meatpuppetry for edit-wars

Whenever I've had a disagreement with Piotrus (not as often as perhaps would be convenient in these circumstances), I have noticed that his typical editing behaviour is to revert, scurry to leave messages on the talk pages of users he hopes will be friendly, await a sympathetic comment or two, and use that as an excuse to ignore all the significant issues raised while disingenously invoking policies he must know to be irrelevant and generally being confrontational and disingenuous.(e.g. this and the recent dispute in full (and his contribs in and around his posts there). He appears, in essence, to be a tendentious user with lots of experience as well as the sysop powers he acquired back in the day when standards were ... erm ... different.

Back in the day, Piotrus (primarily, but hardly solely) used - and oversaw - the Polish wikipedian's noticeboard as a recruiting ground for edit-warring tag-teams. This can be verified merely by checking the first half-dozen or so archives of Portal_talk:Poland/Poland-related_Wikipedia_notice_board. See for instance [[6]] where presiding above the board is a template called "Articles needing attention", in fact a list of on-going edit-wars involving Polish and non-Polish users (mostly German and Russian). In fairness, this was mostly updated by User:Molobo, but Piotrus nevertheless frequently used the board to direct hoped-for meatpuppets to assist in his disputes, mainly those with the prolific Russian editor Ghirlandajo. This in its most extreme and blatant forms ended a little more than gradually when User:Elonka turned her attention to it and gradually shamed Piotrus out of it doing it so blatantly (see, for instance, here).

One would naturally expect that, unless Piotrus somehow developed some moral objection to this kind of thing, it would have continued offline. Email is always there, and Piotrus regularly chats to fellow Polish-speaking editors on IM (see the following requests [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12][13], and recently during the Boleslaw I dispute, [14] [15] [16]. From what I can gather, usually when Piotrus has run out of reverts in an edit war, the fourth reverters are most often Tymek, Molobo and Darwinek. However, just the other day it was User:Alden Jones, who magically appeared after a 3 week + absense just after Piotrus' third successive revert was reversed.[17] Piotrus subsequently came up with a story that Alden was a loving fan who reverts on his own accord through devotion to him, despite Piotrus' alleged protests. However, against this inventive story are the following:

  • It is more likely, esp given the timing, that Alden was on IM than that he was following Piotrus' contributions at that so convenient point in time
  • Alden confessed on his talk page that he went there on the request of another user,[18][19] the only candidates being Piotrus or his guardian angel (of the five editors, he and Alden were the only one reverting to his version) [Alden later posted,[20] presumably at Piotrus' instigation,[21] that someone else asked him ... obviously, ehm, Piotrus' guardian angel]
  • Piotrus' condemnation of Alden's revert, despite a long history of reverting for Piotrus and a claim made to Renata that they were good friends,[22] was made in public only after, and on the same day as, Alden had made that confession.[23]


Besides, this is only the most recent instance of his use, Piotrus revert-warring over Trakai Voivodeship in early June:

and ...

Same thing, this time late July, on Holocaust in Nazi-occupied Poland:

then, the hero worshipper comes to the rescue

For another instance, in July, see Revision history of Truce of Vilna. You can check Alden Jones' contribs for more; it will also be seen that he does nothing more than help Piotrus, usually at convenient points most easily explained by being requested on IM. Anyways ... I got a word-count limit here, and so I'll end it and leave (for now) other stuff for others. I'd welcome arb requests to supply more evidence or to elaborate on specific points. But to conclude, Piotrus, while his abuse of his \admin powers is limited these days, abuses his [power from] admin status, chronically violates the spirit of WP:BATTLE, and has demonstrated such a lack of good-conduct and personal integrity that his fitness to retain such status must be questioned by all reasonable wikipedians.

Addenda

Comments on the issue-deflection tactics used in this evidence page

It is obviously no surprise to me that the editor whom this arbcom concerns would try to deflect the issues away from himself. I don't presume the arbs to be stupid or lazy, but nevertheless I will make a few comments:

Tag team 1: Russian: Deacon/Calgacus
ArbCom to look at whether Deacon is fit to be an administrator, particularly to consider whether his judgment is good enough to allow him to contribute to AE (in his capacity as an admin, which he employs there with blocks and unblocks
  • Inconvenient to him as it may be, I have no pattern of editing-allegiance on eastern European articles. I have no national ideology in this region, being from a small western European country (i.e. Scotland; one can sail to Russia from Scotland directly, but other than that, there's not much Russian about me). I'll be honest, I dislike nationalism and have real problems with the fact that so many ideologues edit an encyclopedia. I don't however see Piotrus' nationalism as the big problem in the context. Rather his dishonesty, tendentiousness and general lack of editorial integrity. If nationalism was the issue I wanted to address, I would have presented my evidence for that purpose.
  • I have no pattern of administrative intervention in eastern European articles as I haven't even done so on a handful of occassions (my small admin log will make this negative easy to verify). Despite, Piotrus' wish to lie to the contrary, and though there's no reason why I shouldn't have, I have never actually blocked on an ArbEnforcement thread and the only Poland-related user I've ever blocked was User:Jacurek.

I'm quite surprised that the cheap-shot accussations of Polonophobia weren't nipped in the bud and have continued while I've been away. Obviously, these users believe it will help distract attention from Piotrus' problems or (perhaps more instinctively) that I should be "punished" for bringing this arbcom case, but suffice it to say, I'm sure all arbs will agree they reflect more on the credibility of those espousing them or posting innuendo to that effect, than on any real matters. Even though I said a few impolitic things when I was a relatively new user back in 2006, none of those given "in evidence" even approach "Polonophobia".

It will be noted that Piotrus' evidence section, and some of the evidence used by his friends. fails to deal with the main concerns about his behaviour through:

  • 1) ignoring them or at best responding to straw man versions of the arguments rather than the real ones
  • 2) lying attacks on the filer of the case, or on other users incidental to the case
  • 3) misrepresentation of those are supposed to be supporting him, as well as those who are bringing evidence.

In addition, I would urge all arbs to put in the effort to check all his claims against his diffs and reconstruct all the narratives he has attempted to forward from the bottom up.

Evidence presented by Piotrus

Replies to allegations

Meatpuppetry

In addition to my reply in opening statement addressing Alden, who is somewhat of a basketspecial case (see here), I would also like to add that I am not stupid :) Long after the argument "Piotrus uses GG for evil purposes" was first raised I've continued to ask new Polish editors, on en Wikipedia, if they use Gadu-Gadu. I've done so publicly instead of emailing them because I've nothing to hide. I will not be cowed into hiding my good faithed actions (if I truly meant to run a cabal, I'd do it much more discreetly). As I wrote, I talk about Wikipedia and other issues with various editors (not only Poles), some of whom I now count among friends. Sometimes we talk about recent articles and events on Wikipedia just as most active editors do. Never, however, we do so with the intent of "let's start an edit war on some article, bait editor X into 3RR and make the life of a particular group of miserable", as was suggested.

Sometimes I look at edits by my friends, edit or comment on their new articles (for recent examples, see my edits at Polish Radio Lwów, an article I found after looking at Tymek recent contribs, or see this DYK notification, a result of a DYK nomination I made after I saw a promising new article created by Halibutt, which I found by looking at his recent contribs). I've also created and monitor the Portal:Poland/New article announcements and presumably I am not alone. I am sure some of them do the same thing: look at what their friends edit and help out (and vast majority of such edits are not reverts, Alden being the unfortunate exception). That Alden found something to revert (on three occasions - consider that all that fuss is really about three reverts...) is not surprising, since (being in the Top 50 most active Wikipedians), simple numbers explain that I am relatively often involved in some controversial disputes. So three times he looked at my contribs and he found instances where I was recently reverted and joined in... you hardly need a conspiracy to explain that (and how often did he log in and not seen something to revert?). In any case, he is not a very efficient meatpuppet (A, he "helped" me only three times, and B, a good meatpuppet would not be so evident - again, if I wanted to have a meatpuppet, I'd have enlisted somebody, ekhm, less naive :). I doubt there is any cabal: as I've explained here, the kid probably misunderstood some good faith explanation why he should not "help" me that way... There is no bad intent anywhere, rather - there's a normal activity and cooperation, found between any members of a reasonably active WikiProject (and Polish noticeboards doubles as WikiProjectPoland). That WikiProject is no cabal, we were not shamed into changing our name, we did it because it was a logical move and we wanted more editors to join us, not only Polish nationals. Once most noticeboards had a name suggesting they are only for a given nationalities, this has changed and I was one of the people who suggested this early on. Not all noticeboards have done so, but I've no intent to believe that (for example) Wikipedia:Australian Wikipedians' notice board is an Australian cabal :) This was also discussed long time ago at in this mediation.

Finally: since IMs logs are private and often don't exist, the accusation that one uses IMs "for evil purposes" can never be proven (as Biophys pointed out below); on the other hand, I believe we have ample evidence here of "bad faith" and "slander" accusing Polish editors of "evil cabalism" (and me of being the arch puppeteer). This continuing slander can be easily proven and should be penalized (it is damaging to our community, as, surprisingly enough, some people don't like to be accused of being part of a cabal; I know at least one Polish editor who told me "in future I want to be an admin, and if I hang around Polish noticeboard, the usual crowd will veto my RfA because of that". A smiliar attitude can be seen in this statement by Poeticbent. To put an end to this, I would like ArbCom to consider stating whether there is a Polish cabal, whether accusations of such constitute personal attacks, and whether such accusations going on for years and several ArbCom merit some form of civility parole.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 21:09, 2 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Reply to Boody's "case study"

First, Boody conveniently omits to note that all admins agreed he has violated 3RR, and some (like Black Kite's, who posted at the bottom of the 3RR report in question) supported a block of him. Such highly biased (bad faith) framing of evidence is common throughout certain "evidence" sections here. Further, at ANI, in order to lessen the edit warring, I explicitly supported (and designed most of the wording) of the agreed 1RR restriction. Lastly, this entire incident shows a failure of 3RR system (when a persistent edit warrior - just see Boody's block log - gets no penalty, his content version remains and he even has the gal to use this an an example to criticize those who tried to stop his edit warring). Similar failure occurred a week before. I've described this procedural failing here.

Reply to Irpen

I agree with Irpen that BATTLE-related proceedings turn into a mud-throwing arena, and have unclear and expanding scope, as more and more editors pile their grievances. I also agree that we should not loose focus regarding "the main issues at hand, which is the charge that most of Piotrus' Wikipedia editing is a violation of WP:BATTLE and disruption disguised as "content" and an apple-polishing veneration of "civility""; I'd just like to add that if this charge is shown to be baseless (as was implied by the last two arbcoms in which it was presented - Piotrus 1 and Digwuren), than the arbcom should finally investigate why and by whom has it been repeated for years and years. This may shine some light; along the answers to the following questions: who and why flings such accusations all over wiki and who repeatedly starts and fails to drive those charges through arbcoms, only to repeat this again and again? And what can be done to stop this cycle?

Regarding one's right to collect evidence, see short but "to the point" PS statement by Tymek or my comment to Irpen's earlier criticism here, which can be followed up to his claims and my counter arguments in Piotrus 1 ArbCom a year ago (his claims are nothing new, and I will not repost my old arguments, this arbcom is already too long and complex). The fact that he claimed the very things (that my evidence collection is wrong), and that his claims were ignored by ArbCom then, was and is to me a clear indicator one has the right to collect evidence. I just wish that (as I've requested) this was stated clearly by the ArbCom way back. Isn't it interesting, anyway, that Irpen uses the evidence I have never presented publicly as evidence of my bad faith? There's a different between analyzing user's editing pattern, and publicly criticizing him: despite Irpen's attempts to create an illusion to the contrary, I have not been going around Wikipedia and accusing him of wrongdoing. His case is significantly based on bad faithed assumption I was planning to do what he has been doing to me and others for years. In fact the evidence (not all of which I was ever planning on using - it is, after all, just a draft) was to be used only in another arbcom that I expected to be launched against me (and was I wrong?). Also note that this arbcom was not launched because of my evidence gathering - i.e. it's not mentioned by Deacon as the reason for this ArbCom. It's something only Irpen has a problem with (and had for over a year). Alternatively, we can follow Irpen's desires and state that "Piotrus' ability to lodge further complaints should be restricted" or maybe, to be on the safe side, follow the line of thought advised by him in "this activity will continue unless Piotrus is banned from editing"... Because seriously, to have user(s) complaining about Irpen's harassment is unthinkable, is it?

I will leave (old...) content disputes aside, as irrelevant to this arbcom (I could restate old grieviances, like Irpen's past usage of biased Russian historiography like Mikhail Meltyukhov (which is one of the "referenced sources" I removed - read his bio for rationale), but I see no reason for it, and I expect arbcom will not pay much attention to the 2007 and older content diffs presented by Irpen); I'll just single out allegation that I somehow improperly move the articles (apparently by daring to use redirect templates) with a question: how many of those moves/uses of redirect were judged disruptive somewhere, until now? 0. But of course if Piotrus does it, there has to be some evil ulterior motive in anything. QED.

Evidence against other editors

Special case: Boodlesthecat

As much as I dislike mud slinging, Boody's disruptive behavior has only increased since the start of this proceedings. I find his most recent comment way over the top fin confrontational battleground creation, and thus - since he already voluntarily involved himself here - I am forced to lay out a case against him. He is not a part of any tag team, he is a singular editor who had some brushes with me recently, and who apparently found out about this ArbCom and decided to air his grievances. Alas, if he wants to bring ArbCom's attention to himself... I guess we should oblidge him.

I find Prom3th3an's (mediator's between Boody and several other editors) statement telling. Boody commonly assumes bad faith and posts variou accusations, for example: "Piotrus came into the article and bombed it with 16 fact tags, effectively defacing it. Piotrus has a habit of following me around and challeging my edits, based not on the quality of the edits but apparently on some form of animosity." (anybody can judge for themselves whether this series of edits, in an article I created some time ago, is following Boody and bombing his articles out of animosity...). His attitude culminated as noted here, when he send me several offensive emails ("Your editing tactics are abhorrent and disgraceful for a so-called teacher", "you are such a dick"). He is not shy of edit warring (see his blocklog). He has harassed greg (I have seen few so venomous posts on wiki in my 4+ year career) with accusations of antisemitism (more on that below), and recently started harassing Tymek (see here and scroll down for more "warnings", most blatant one calling a 3RR report a violation of good faith...). He made little attempt to compromise so far in the month-long mediation (linked above), showed no remorse or apology for his personal attacks or revert warring, and criticized all of the blocks he got as a work of a Polish cabal (just read here). This indicates to me that his confrontational attitude will only get worse before it gets better. Update (Sept 11): Boody just accused me of antisemitism: "stop trying to fill an encyclopedia without outdates, discredited and outright anti-semitic nonsense".

Boody had a history of harassment and edit warring before he arrived in the articles on Polish-Jewish history. Since then, in what was a rather peaceful arena, several edit wars occurred and previously stable articles were protected. While I've tried to reach out to him, he posts personal attacks on my talk and elsewhere. If Boody could be given a topic ban from the area of Polish-Jewish history, much peace would be restored to this fragment of EE issue, although some form of civility parole should be also adopted, as his attitude is very confrontational and responsible for battleground creation (before Boody, for example, we were somehow able to raise History of the Jews in Poland to a FA status, without any major incivil disputes; after his arrival it became one of the protected articles, with edit warring and bad faith accusations of antisemitism on talk).

Finally, regarding greg and boody disputes: I disapprove of greg's rather occasional but strong worded criticisms, and support a request to him to refactor his posts for more civility and for him to monitor his performance. On the other hand, I see his attitude much less problematic from the bad faithed attitude Boody displays. There is an important issue of whether greg was baited (as I believe he was) into his more emotional statements by Boody's confrontational attitude over the past few months of their interaction (analysis of Talk:Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland after Auschwitz, where I believe those editors first met, should provide relevant evidence to address that). In fact, I find Boody's repeated slandering accusations of antisemitism, directed at greg (and recognized as such by others), to be very serious: calling somebody an antisemite should not be done lightly (it's probably one of the worst mud balls out there), and in this case it seems to me to be building a straw man (since I don't believe greg is an antisemite) and a guilt by association (since Boody has implied that anybody who defends greg is an antisemite). In any case, both greg and Boody should be cautioned to be more civil, and Boody in particular should be cautioned to avoid labeling others as anti-semites. Please see also related comments on Boody's accusations by Prom3th3an (linked above) and Vecrumba here.

I would like to however disagree with Greg regarding user Malik Shabazz: other than the strange incidient in which Malik gave Boody a barnstar "For going to the mat against a cabal of POV-pushing Polish chauvinists" in the direct aftermath of Boody getting a block for 3RR and sending me the "dick" emails, I found Malik to be a very reasonable editor, and his input in Polish-Jewish history, including his constructive moderating of Polish POV, without offending the Polish editors or assuming bad faith on their part, is an example of what Boody should do. I therefore strongly defend Malik's good name as a constructive editor.

Tag teams

Content disputes are problem only when they lead to revert warring and 3RR blocks. Civility is always a problem. When uncivil editors cannot win a content dispute with their arguments, and turn to harassment and flaming, creating a battleground, this becomes a serious problems. When not stopped, they gain experience and organize themselves into tag teams, becoming the most serious problem and one that ArbCom needs to address.

I'd like apologize to Russian, German and Lithuanian editors, vast majority of whom are not part of the "Russian, German and Lithuanian" tag teams I will present the evidence against below. After careful consideration, I've decided to use those national names for ease of discussion. This is not meant as a slight against those nationalities, and all three nationalities have greatly constructive communities on Wikipedia (which, notably, are NOT a part of this ArbCom). Every community has its black sheep, Polish included. The evidence below should not be seen as fingering particularly disruptive communities, or as a proof of a conflict between ethnic based communities, but as fingering not so uncommon extremists hailing from certain communities whose long pattern of behavior (described at WP:TAGTEAM) is to harass opponents until they leave this project. Please note that the users criticizing me, so far, are all the ones I've predicted in my @ to Andy regarding EE tag teams. Please also note that neutral mediators and commentators quite clearly support only one side of this dispute.

Tag team 1: Russian
Deacon/Calgacus

As I wrote in my opening statement, I am rather disappointed by his confrontational attitude. He did not try to discuss anything with me on my talkpage or via mediaton before launching this ArbCom (the entire "previous attempts of dispute resolution" section listed ancient (year+) issues not relevant to his opening statement). I've addressed his controversial behavior in the content dispute that sparked this ArbCom in the second para of my statement and I'd like to add it to evidence (instead of copying it here). While accusing me of WP:OWN - when in fact I've attempted to merge our versions and kept almost all of his changes (see the second para of my statement linked above for diffs) - it was Deacon who simply reverted ([24], [25], [26], [27], [28], [29], [30]) to his version (aided by a mysterious sock), erasing even my cosmetic copyediting (see my complain here, point 9 at the very bottom). For few weeks it looked to me like his goal was not to allow me to edit the article (one I brought up to a MILHIST A-class) at all. I believe that the entire recent talk there (from here down) is a good example of how "battlegrounds" develop: I assume good faith, maintain civility and try to reach a consensus, asking for outside opinions, making progress in merging our versions due to input of other civil and good faithed editor (ex. Angus), but personal attacks, refusal to compromise and constant reverts by Deacon make progress much more difficult and much more stressful than it has to be. It was only recently (Sept 7) that Deacon seems to have accepted the merger of our versions (thank you, Angus, for the unofficial mediation).

I am seriously disappointed with Deacon's conduct as an admin: several times he has joined Irpen's "criticize Piotrus and Polish editors" bandwagon (not surprising, considering his attitude as Calgacus). His defense of user Lokyz on AE, going as far as (in his opening statement to this ArbCom) to suggest that my complains against a user who accuses me of being on somebody's payroll are harassment of the Lithuanian editors, show a serious lapse of judgment in terms of who is the victim here (see also the first para of my statement to ArbCom for more evidence and arguments). I would like ArbCom to look at whether Deacon is fit to be an administrator, particularly to consider whether his judgment is good enough to allow him to contribute to AE (in his capacity as an admin, which he employs there with blocks and unblocks).

I also believe that statements by Lysy (here), Marting (here), Vecrumba (here) and Temer (here), shine more light on the Deacon-Piotrus issue and thus I am mentioning them and linking as evidence in this section.

Irpen

Irpen has been found uncivil and biased against me in the past arbcom. We very, very rarely edit similar content anymore (due to his inactivity; for the pattern of past interactions, see evidence below by Biophys, and in a wider picture, past statement by Vrecumba), although Irpen still occasionally targets my content contributions with incivil comments (ex. here in April he popped out to accuse me of "hate for Soviet Union"). The main problem (albeit also lessened due to his recent inactivity) is that Irpen still habitually stalks me, questions my edits and slanders my name with various accusations (ex. in addition to his statement in this ArbCom, punctuating his recent inactivity, here (AE, March) "Piotrus maintains a black book on multiple contibutors off-line" ... "Piotrus, unhappy with the lack of quick action he was seeking shopped for a friendly closure at #admins today"). After last ArbCom, I politely asked him to stop it: He did not reply. Please note that I don't go around Wikipedia, creating bad faith battlegrounds in articles he edits, I don't forum shop to get him blocked or slander his good name, claiming he has violated x policies, is unfit to be here, or such. He, however, still does it; he has been doing it for years. I would this sniping to finally stop. His bad-faith actions are an unpleasant reward for my contributions to this project, and I am not the only victim: his attitude and actions have already chased valuable editors from this project: see my analysis of Balcer leaving, for example, and see an even larger scope analysis noted by Vecrumba here.

I would like the ArbCom to ask Irpen not to participate in discussing of my person - in other words, to issue a wiki restraining order. Further, given his history - like chasing Balcer off wiki after similar harassment - I believe there may be a need to formulate some ruling preventing Irpen from personally attacking, harassing and slandering other editors, since his confrontational attitude does not seem limited to my person. Discuss content, not editors... he needs to be made to finally "get it". PS. Analysis of Irpen's contribs presents an interesting picture: over the years, he has created less and less new articles and other encyclopedic content; his main activities are increasingly (and for over a year, almost exhaustively) discussing (editors...) and wikipoliticing. Perhaps a reminder of why we are here would be useful, too.

Statements by Moreschi (here), Tymek (here), Marting (here), Durova (here), Vecrumba (here), Biophys (here), Hillock65 (here) in this arbcom, plus Biophys evidence below, shed more light on Piotrus-Irpen relations.

PS. As puzzling as it is, it appears Irpen in his evidence is actually bringing and analyzing evidence against himself I was not planning on using (since I tend not to use too old diffs, or since it doesn't concern me - remember, he is using my draft). Still, if he wants to bring it to light and proverbially shoot himself in the foot with it...*shrug*

Ghirla

While I am disappointed with Ghirla's sudden delurking and posting a criticism of me, mimicking the slandering spirit of Irpen's behavior above, I have had almost no problems with Ghirla since our last ArbCom. I hope it stays that way. That said, it should be noted that Ghirla still ocassionally delurks with battleground comments like this one. This should be discouraged in the manner similar to the one I've described above, less he is made to believe such behavior is acceptable.

Tag team 2: Lithuanian
Lokyz, M.K. and Novickas

I believe that those three users form an experienced Lithuanian tag team.

Lokyz is the most uncivil and likely to create the battleground with his comments - hence my requests (ex. here and here) on AE to make him more civil and less confrontational (please look at those requests for evidence of his long pattern of incivility, bad faith and battleground creation). As the second AE request was derailed by Deacon, Lokyz confrontational attitude continues: [31], [32] While I dislike bringing old diffs, as I stated in derailed AE, this diff may be of interest to oversight (slander of a respected historian).

M.K. is a more difficult case, he creates quality content related to Lithuania but will often join Lokyz in the tag team actions, particularly by launching bad faithed dispute resolutions against his opponents, or simply by stalking them and popping out in random discussions with the tag team tactic of joining the band-wagon of criticism. Here are a few diffs :

He has first honed this tactic on Halibutt, whom he succeeded in chasing off this project (see Halibutt's statement in last ArbCom). The continuing bad faith tone of M.K.'s statements in such content disputes in the past, always painting his opponents as evil incarnate, are a good proof of this attitude becoming a long term strategy.

Please also see last arbcom evidence against MK proposed by Lysy, and consider that MK himself became the focus of two proposals by last ArbCom: here and here). If they were passed, much wikidramu would not have occured.

Novickas seems to me the least disruptive of the three. He is civil, but his edits display some problems, such as very selective use of sourcing to push a certain POV sympathetic to that of the Lithuanian tag team. Here's an example: [33] - and here's another one: [34] - the desire to include the controversial word "terror" in the article... Of course, he is entitled to his content POV, but unfortunately, he does join the tag teams in their harassment: his statement to the ArbCom is very telling (in addition of being a repeat of past grievances): he points out some errors I made in content creation, but does not mention I was always willing to discuss the issue, and when proven wrong I withdrew my objections or corrected the errors myself. It's amusing he criticizes my unreferenced stubs, yet does not mention anything about the referenced DYK content I create at the same time. He assumes bad faith: "probably each delisting will be a battle", despite the fact that I believe my conduct in FARCS was always respectful: proof1, proof2, proof3, proof4. Note also that despite accusations of OWN or similar, I even supported delisting of some of my former FAs... in any case, he misrepresented and twisted evidence against me in a similar fashion in last ArbCom (see my reply there and considered why his evidence section then was ignored). Bottom line: bad, bad faith.

This tag team has succeeded in chasing User:Halibutt of Wikipedia (proof, proof 2). I remember peaceful days before they arrived, when Polish-Lithuanian topics were not a battleground (this is when I featured Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and Halibutt featured Jogaila). Since they became active, Polish-Lithuanian relations have been a constant battleground. I would strongly suggest a topic ban for those three editors, and putting Lokyz and M.K. on a civility parole.

Please note the way they portrays claims of common detractors of my person - Irpen, Novickas - as "community proof" and "consensus" of my wrongdoing. This is again a tag team tactic: Members A and B state X, member C will later claim their agreement as "proof of consensus"... see one of many example: his statement here "Already such Piotrus "cases" were identified as unclean attempts" and the old discussion. Note how the tag team members defend each other, creating - particularly for newcomers to this issue - the illusion that many members share similar views (this is why before this Arbcom started I have identified all the tag team members - and there are not that many, about 5-6 active). They use this illusion - as I've shown above - to create an illusion of community consensus, whether to condemn another editor ("look how many people disagree with him and criticizse him") and to defend each other ("look at this poor editor, unfairly accused by the editor we all disagree with"). Again, all of this is discussed at WP:TAGTEAM.

Tag team 3: German
Matthead, Stor stark7, Sciurinæ

Respected editors such as Moreschi (here), AGK (here) and Tymek (here) have pointed out the disruptive role User:Matthead plays as one of the most active German "tag teamers". His silence here is interesting, particularly as two other active members of this tag team have risen up in his defense: Stor stark7 (here) and Sciurinæ (here). Note that both of them try to divert the case from Matthead and their own actions, by focusing the attention on their long time sparring partner, Polish editor User:Molobo, and are following enshrined tag team tradition of dragging out year+ old diffs to support their cases (Molobo has a problematic history and was once blocked for a year, hence making a good guilt by association beating men).

I would like to note that the issue at hand is not content, but (again) harassment. I disagree with the POV represented by this tag team (which could be variously described as ranging from "Greater Germany" to "neo-Nazi", see statistical breakdown of articles most often edited by Stor stark7, for example). However, with the exception of Matthead, the other users (including some who are no longer active, ex. User:Jadger) have rarely engaged in strict civility violations or more importantly, 3rr violations and extensive edit warring. They, like everyone, have right to their POV and to its due representation in this project. Undue, of course, is kept out (by me and many other editors). If the ArbCom wants, I can address stor stark7's content claims in more details, for now I will note they are bad faithed and have never been endorsed by neutral editors (for example, I removed early refs to Blanke per WP:V because they were misattributed and couldn't be verified, I removed dubious German sources with non-neutral claims like "The dead in Bydgoszcz included priests, pregnant women, children and the elderly" and so on). The entire lenghty section about a single diff presented by stor stark7 here not only omits the confusing actions of an IP editor who was reverting both of us ([35]), but also completely ignores my main argument there - that this entire para was mostly irrelevant to the article (as I explained in this edit summary, which stor stark7 misrepresents in his section as refusal to discuss...), adding a trivia/undue weight fact promoting the idea that in 1939, Germans had a moral right to invade Poland because Poland might have contemplated invading Germany in 1933... and so on, we can discuss 100 similar content issues. The only problem that ArbCom should address is the the increasing pattern of harassment of my person and other editors, as Matthead - but also Stor stark7 and Scrucinae - have increasingly voiced their criticism of my person (and other editors) across Wikipedia (presumably, as was pointed out by several other editors in their statements, cited above, because if they cannot ensure their POV is unduly represented due to my enforcement of NPOV, smearing my name and chasing me away from this project may be the way to achieve it). In essence, behavior of Matthead, Stor stark7 and Scrucinae towards editors they disagree with is very similar to that displayed by Irpen or M.K. (going around various project spaces, chipping in with criticism and complains wherever unrelated issues related to the editors they dislike are being discussed). Few examples: Matthead defens Lokyz and attacks me, Stor stark7 placed on Digwuren's list, Matthead blocked while on Digwuren's list, Sciurinæ pops out in a medcab case not involving him or articles he edits and criticized Polish editor's side, Sciurinæ slips that his previous post was an "attack"... and of course their joining of this arbcom, cherrypicking a few out of my ~80k edits (Sciurinæ's "evidence" is the "best": his only diff of me in 2008 is my... evidence post here) to build a case against me.

I do find the POV "Germans were victims and Allies were the victimizers" highly offensive, but in retrospect, however, I can see how label "neo Nazi" (which, according to Stor stark7, I used three times over my four years here (or in 80k edits) - what a great amount of evidence to build an arbcom case, isn't it? has anybody build a case on less diffs? :)) could be seen as offensive, I do apologize for having used it before and I promise I will not use it in the future (it would be helpful if a complain about me using it was made to me before ArbCom).

Bottom line: disruption and battlefield creation by Matthead may merit special attention to that editor. Stor stark7 and Sciurinæ should be asked not to harass other editors.

Final comments

Editors differ. Some are clearly disruptive, some are only occasionally so. Combined, I believe that there is enough evidence above to finger several most disruptive ones, tag team leaders or activists, who create uncivil battlegrounds, hoping to wear down their opponents, and whose ban or parole would both give others something to think about and vastly stop battlegrounds from occurring in EE topics.

In my ending comments, I would like to point out to two circumstances:

  • all editors critical of my person are the same ones (Boody being the SINGLE newcomer) who have been critical of my person for the past two years. One would expect that if I am the problem, I would attract more criticism. As noted, before this ArbCom, I have (incidentally, but in retrospect, luckily) noted "who is who" in tag teams in an email to a respected admin and ArbCom clerk. All editors critical of me were who posted in this ArbCom were listed there, and very few of those listed have not posted here yet. This should prove it's not a "war between communities", but a "war between extremists and a community". I authorize Andy (AGR) to fwd my letter to interested ArbCom members, or quote it (or paraphrase it) on Wikipedia
  • on the other hand, dozens of neutral (and many non-Polish) editors have posted in this (and past ArbComs) with their support of my person/side and criticism of the same small group of tag teamers: from Wikipedia talk:Requests for arbitration/Piotrus: Durova, Darwinek, Appleseed, Poeticbent, Evrik, Beaumont, Fabartus, Balcer, David Gerard, Pmanderson, Zscout370, LUCPOL, William M. Connolley, Hillock65, Tulkolahten, DGG, Biophys (17 total) and from Wikipedia talk:Requests for arbitration/Piotrus 2: Lysy, Moreschi, AGK, Tymek, Martintg, Durova, Prom3th3an, Poeticbent, Biophys, Vecrumba, DGG, Temer and Hillock65 (12). I believe that many different voices are enough to warrant a comment that "community sees a problem, and I am not IT".

Last comment: please, no more general restrictions or rulings. We all should know we are here to build an encyclopedia in good faith and so on. Most of us is doing just that. We need to deal with the few people who are not. For that, we need rulings about specific editors: whether they are the root of the problem (if so, ban or parole them, so they stop) or victims (the latter is important to state clerly so targeted editors will not be subject to eternal rehashing of old accusations). In past two ArbComs (Digwuren, Piotrus) I noted that this entire mess will return unless specific editors (the same few...) are finally fingered and stopped. I hope "thrice the charm". Otherwise, see you all at ArbCom Piotrus 3 in 2009, and for no.4 in 2010 a few of us may get commemorative badges or such :) Signing off, Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 17:08, 11 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Evidence presented by Moreschi

{Write your assertion here}

Place argument and diffs which support your assertion; for example, your first assertion might be "So-and-so engages in edit warring", which should be the title of this section. Here you would show specific edits to specific articles which show So-and-so engaging in edit warring.

{Write your assertion here}

Place argument and diffs which support the second assertion; for example, your second assertion might be "So-and-so makes personal attacks", which should be the title of this section. Here you would show specific edits where So-and-so made personal attacks.

Evidence presented by Sciurinæ

Molobo and Koretek

Only a day after Deacon of Pndapetzim initiated the request for arbitration, a brand-new account by the name of Koretek (talk+ · tag · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log · CA · CheckUser(log) · investigate · cuwiki) was created, which claimed to be a "not established user" and only tried to dismiss Deacon's request for arbitration on spurious evidence as an "attack by polonophobic". One of the shallow points was the emphasis on the fact that Deacon had himself renamed and was formerly known as Calgacus. I had seen something like that before - Molobo (talk+ · tag · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log · CA · CheckUser(log) · investigate · cuwiki) asked Deacon in March this year whether that was him and Deacon responded unambiguously affirmatively. After that, however, Molobo still wanted to point out to Piotrus and others that Deacon was no other than Calgacus: in a content dispute with Deacon as part of his comment against Deacon's point of view.

Molobo has reason to defend Piotrus, who in turns takes pains to defend Molobo against indef-blocks ([36] [37]). In addition, Molobo didn't appear to like Deacon particularly ([38] [39] [40]). And moreover, Molobo had a history of attacking people as just being against Poles ([41] [42] [43]). All of Koretek's supposed evidence consists of shameful (mis)interpretations that go along the lines of assuming that if you argue against one or a few Polish users or one historian, you must be doing this only because you hate Poles in general. You'll also find the same fallacy in this comment. Molobo and Koretek also have the same opinions - about a Polish name for the monarch: [44], about the correctness of criticism against the historian: [45], about the "polonophobic" element in Wikipedia ([46]) and the "antipolish" sentiment in general ([47] [48] [49]), about a "Polish cabal": ("a very negative prejudice",[50] "contrary to AGF",[51] "attacking Polish editors as whole" [52]).

Molobo was also involved on all the relevant talk pages where the links point to and/or in the relevant disputes. In fact, he already immediately reported Deacon for the vulgar slip. The last accusation is no less ridiculous, the accusation of renaming himself in a cloak-and-dagger style to survive an Rfa. In reality, Deacon had himself renamed (linking his old talk page to the new user) many months after the unpleasant events at Talk:Jogaila. Again many more months later, two users nominated him at Rfa. He immediately mentioned that his former username was Calgacus and even that he had had unpleasant experiences at Talk:Jogaila (he mentioned the Jogaila affair even twice, like it was important) - and became an admin. The way Koretek portrayed it was a complete reversal of the truth, and Piotrus was only all too happy to buy into this, incorporating this shameless diff as the first in his essay.

I once noticed Molobo had been using a mass of sockpuppets in the last few months of his one-year block. The problem was that, then, he hadn't been editing with the main account since November 2006 ([53]) and as the IP was new and from the neighbouring city, old IP evidence was no use, going without IP evidence would possibly just be attacked by blank denial (eg), but I was probably foolish to simply leave the matter at that because by the time he had finally betrayed that his new IP was in line with the sock chain, a few months had already passed and therefore nothing could be done about that.[54] A few days later Molobo brushed it under the carpet ([55] [56]) - and gone it was. Please consider using CU on Koretek in connection with Molobo. Sciurinæ (talk) 23:29, 31 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Reply to Piotrus' N-word smear attack above

There is no imaginable justification for the poisonous offence that you've just committed above by dumping other people, including myself, into a "German tag team" and giving it the tag "neo-Nazi". There is not even a personal attack imaginable that is worse than implying another person is a neo-Nazi. And no people are more vulnerable to the smear effect as those from Germany. That is the nastiest attack imaginable. The Nazis were a horrendous bunch of thugs, deceivers, psychopaths, racists who committed genocide and caused the deaths of millions. The hypocritical apology in the same comment only demonstrates that you're well-aware of the unforgettable transgression, which you made regardless. You are aware of both WP:PA and the offence, so retract your horrific statement immediately and unambiguously. Sciurinæ (talk) 19:37, 12 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

{Write your assertion here}

Place argument and diffs which support the second assertion; for example, your second assertion might be "So-and-so makes personal attacks", which should be the title of this section. Here you would show specific edits where So-and-so made personal attacks.

Evidence presented by User:greg park avenue

Support User:Piotrus against the above mentioned adversary(ies). The evidence lies clear on the hand if I may use a German idiom, right here. I don't bother with our Lithuanian friends - they were pals or allies of us polacks since centuries - we always get along and will find common ground, mind just Boody and his obvious supporters/sockpuppets who seem to try to impersonate negative stereotype of some particular minorities - a role they don't fit in. That must end once and for all, at least here on Wikipedia. I am for one state Israel/Palestine, see my user page, not very popular idea yet - there is no common ground there - both sides try to undermine each other using all possible ways available including inciting hate against each other. The ones most active in English Wikipedia edit warriors use this tool to antagonize Polish, Ukrainians, Lithuanians, Germans, Jews etc against each other. They the provocateurs in my experience descend from the former priviledged special forces class known in Poland as SB (2 million), in USSR as KGB (??? zillion), stripped from the prominence after the fall of the Soviet Union and holding the grudge for that, still they have access to significant funds in form of fat social security checks and unlimited time to spend behind their own PC bitching about almost anything and anybody while their younger fellow citizens must struggle to survive, forget about owning a PC. Polish fora say Onet.pl are full of them. Hundreds of bullshit comments delivered every minute even in the middle of the night. Didn't look at that chickenshit lately, don't have to, next time I access English Wikipedia, I'm afraid it'll be the same or very close to that until someone does something about it. My best advice is to follow Piotrus comment - strictly enforce WP:CIVIL or give up this project. greg park avenue (talk) 03:42, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

More evidence regarding User Boodlesthecat disruptive and uncivil activity - this section was added after the user in question sent hate mail to Piotrus which included words you are such a dick see User_talk:Ryan_Postlethwaite/archive18#How_WP:CIV_works. These diffs are just samples of his comments posted on Talk of Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland after Auschwitz following his obsessive reverts: [57], [58], [59]. Most of my posts were called anti-semitic rants and ALL MY EDITS of this article which were many see [60] were reverted by this user or his mirror accounts User:Malik Shabazz or User:Malcolm Schosha etc. see [61]. Not even one of my edits survived. For Malik's disruptive activity see [62] - this barnstar was granted after the hate mail mentioned above was sent to Piotrus while Boody was temporarily banned (48 hrs only). greg park avenue (talk) 22:25, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]


Proof of sockpuppetry User:Boodlesthecat = User:Malik Shabazz

When someone maintains more than one account, it happens all the time he or she forgets to log out from one account and log in to another account when switching the identity, and then he sends a post written by one person but signed by another. The classical example you can find here:

I have no problem adding additional reliable sources that put forth other estimates, I was clearly objecting to outright removal of the figures given by Friedrich. I doubt if we will find a "most popular 'average' estimate", and probably will have to cite a few reliable sources and their estimates. User:Boodlesthecat 18:05, 12 August 2008 [63]

That's fine. Are we ready to unprotect the article? User:Piotrus 18:57, 12 August 2008 [64]

It's okay with me. My objection was the replacement of the range with the single estimate. Malik Shabazz 02:51, 13 August 2008 [65]

It's not a decent sockpuppet. Both accounts are disruptive, rude and abusive. Boodles accuses of antisemitism almost all editors who are against him: And threatening to block me for complaining about vicious, anti-semitic attacks against me? [66]. How attacks against him might be anti-semitic, if there is no shred of evidence he is of Jewish descent, neither on his user page, nor in his attitude. Jewish editors react usually like that: [67], not like Boodles who obviously is an impostor. Most his edits in mainspace are reverts - removing decent material, restoring junk. It's a major disruption to Wikipedia in selective areas, and it should end, earlier the better. I hope the other honest editors would revise their opinion about Piotrus until they don't want to be put into the same bag together with the Boodles/M Shabazz team (though I think is only a tip of iceberg), and ask themselves what side they want to be - Wikipedia (Piotrus) side or the troll side? greg park avenue (talk) 16:54, 10 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The search of of about 20 talk pages [68] shows the tag team Shabazz/Boodles plays the good/bad cop routine. Usually it looks like that: Shabazz makes series of reverts, then Boodles makes series of reverts and enters the discussion with his usual claims concerning civility of other users. After the discussion becomes heated, Shabazz enters the picture and makes some concessions, which are only temporary and for show. Their insistence prevails and the article in the end takes the designated by the team form, simply because the other users are too tired of this feud and give up. All these articles including Fear ended just like that. However, the claims concerning antisemitism or uncivility of other authors are almost never confirmed, see for example comment by User:John513 here. The author of such claims is mostly Boodles, but Shabazz also shows his "bad cop" face now and then, see User Talk:Jacurek. They both are simply inseparable and identical in sharing interest and opinion. If you switched the signature under any edit, no one would see the difference.

User:Malcolm Schosha

No traces of sockpuppetry found. The similarity of opinion is simply coincidental. He even uses American "toward"unlike Boodles/Shabazz who use British "towards". It seems like he really is a native of Brooklyn as stated on his user page. I apologize for suspecting him. greg park avenue (talk) 23:42, 13 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]


{Write your assertion here}

Place argument and diffs which support your assertion; for example, your first assertion might be "So-and-so engages in edit warring", which should be the title of this section. Here you would show specific edits to specific articles which show So-and-so engaging in edit warring.

{Write your assertion here}

Place argument and diffs which support the second assertion; for example, your second assertion might be "So-and-so makes personal attacks", which should be the title of this section. Here you would show specific edits where So-and-so made personal attacks.

Evidence presented by User:Biophys

The existence of tag-teams is difficult to prove

A lot was said about the alleged tag-teams. But this term is poorly defined. Yes, there are numerous teams in WP. Teams can be good if they improve WP content, or teams can be bad if they disrupt productive editing or conduct harassment. Do users "A" and "B" collaborate with each other? This is as simple as WP:DUCK. Do these users form a team? This is somehow subjective. Good team or bad team? That can only be decided by ArbCom. This complexity is fully reflected in this Piotrus-2 case. Let's consider a few examples.

  1. Piotrus-Alden Jones "team". It may be possible that Alden Jones was responsible for following Piotrus edits to support him everywhere (WP:STALK upside down). But he did this individually, and I do not see wrongdoing by Piotrus. Definitely, they are not even a "team", good or bad. One can not apply the idea of collective responsibility to Piotrus.
  2. Irpen-Deacon connection. Of course the evidence presented by Piotrus above and by Marting below show such possible connection. I also noticed the following:
    • (1) Deacon and Irpen did similar reverts in the same article Holodomor denial: [69] [70]. Deacon of Pndapetzim never edited this article before and he did not justify his edit at the article talk page.
    • (2)Deacon recently blocked a well known "anti-Russian" user Captain Obvious, in the midst of Ossetian war 2008, which was one of only 22 blocks ever made by Deacon. This is not to dispute his block.
    • (3)Deacon often ovserved the Irpen-Piotrus discussions only to make very strange and perhaps offensive comments like that. I have no idea what “porno” he is talking about.

However, can all this evidence by Irpen, Martingt and me to prove the alleged "tag-teaming"? I think this only proves that Deacon wanted to help Irpen, just as Alden Jones wanted to help Piotrus.

  1. If I was looking for "team mates" of Irpen, I would rather note his collaboration with User:Relata_refero or User:Jo0doe. Please note, this is only an example. If I wanted to comment specifically on Irpen or someone else, that would be a much bigger pile of evidence. They conducted a synchronized edit war in the same article (e.g. Holodomor denial) - after a brief exchange of opinions:
  • Round 1, insertion of "multiple issues/OR" template - 15 identical reverts by Irpen

[71] [72] [73] [74] [75] [76] [77] [78] [79] [80] [81] [82] [83] [84] [85]

  • Relata does exactly the same, 15 identical reverts:

[86] [87] [88] [89] [90] [91] [92] [93] [94] [95] [96] [97] [98] [99] [100], and more.

  • Round 2, deletion of "Holodomor" template - 7 identical reverts by Irpen

[101] [102] [103] [104] [105] [106] [107]

  • Relata does the same, 5 identical reverts:

[108] [109] [110] [111] [112]

What we have here are ~20 identical reverts by two users over tags, which all were made after (one can check the timing) this preliminary conversation. Also note that Relats refero made this ultimatum to prevent presenting this evidence to ArbCom. Is that a tag-teaming? I am not here to judge. But compare this with only three reverts in the case of alleged Alden Jones-Piotrus collaboration.

Irpen versus Piotrus: harassment rather than collaboration

Piotrus and Irpen were often painted as two equally “nationalistic” users. But I do not think so. All cases I know about followed the following scenario: (1) Piotrus makes a significant contribution or creates a new article; (2) Irpen comes to re-edit the article and to challenge Piotrus with various issues that are partly legitimate, but in fact lead to a huge disruption of productive work by Piotrus and others. Some of Irpen's comments and minor corrections are usually good, but the disruption cased by a prolonged discussion and edit warring outweight the benefits if any. I can provide only a few examples, since my interaction with the both users was very limited.

Example 1. Defense of Brest Fortress. This defense was an icon of the Soviet war history, something everyone in the Soviet Union was proud of. But it was “Polish nationalist” Piotrus who created and greatly expanded this article about Russian heroes starting from the old version of Brest fortress. Now, it is the turn of Irpen. After making several minor changes in the article, he began an exhausting discussion with Piotrus. One of main contention points is the fate of main celebrity, Russian hero Piotr Gavrilov who was later imprisoned to Gulag.

In the beginning of this discussion Irpen admits that Gavrilov was sent to Gulag[113]. However later Irpen changes his position in favor of an old Soviet propaganda version (that Gavriolov was never imprisoned) [114]. Unfortunately, Piotrus does not know Russian and can only use Western sources. He asks me for translation. After being confronted with Russian sources about the imprisonment of Gavrilov [115], Irpen still disputed the sources and achieved the elimination of Gavrilov’s imprisonment from the “Fortress” article.

Finally, it was “Polish nationalist” Piotrus who created another article about Russian hero Piotr Gavrilov.

Example 2. Przyszowice massacre. This article is about an important but a local event. Therefore, it was described mostly in the Polish press. The sources obviously satisfy WP:Verifiability. An extremely long, exhaustive, and completely unfounded discussion has been initiated by a banned user Vlad fedorov [116] and by Irpen [117]. Even asking for 3rd opinions [118] did not help much. An extensive edit warring between Vlad fedorov and several other users followed. Such a waste of time!

Intimidation of witnesses?

I do not assert anything here, but present a few suspicious facts, only to ensure fair consideration of this case:

  1. So far, only two users supported Piotrus with evidence: Greg and me. Greg was immediately and unfair accused of antisemitism, which resulted in frustrating discussions at several talk pages.
  2. An attempted outing of me took place by User:Miyokan, almost simultaneously with opening this case [119], and it was predictable that I am going to be active here.
  3. When I provided some evidence here, this campaign accelerated, with already two Russian users involved. Of course Miyokan was talking previously with Irpen in WP, but so did many other Russian users. There is nothing suspicious here.
  4. After coming back, Irpen argued at ANI in favor of Myokan [120] who was later banned.
  5. Irpen came to my talk page and suggested to use my right to disappear - please see a conversation here. "Abandon this account and start editing from a different one ... you don't even need to notify any admins of your actions.", said an experienced administrator Irpen - is that a good advice or a mouse trap? If I followed Irpen's advice, I would not be able to present anything here.
  6. He later also issued this warning. ("outlandish remarks like this in public fora are completely outrageous."). But my words were precisely on the subject of the article, and I argued only to NPOV an article, as another user suggested.
  7. Relata Refero issued me this ultimatum. Relata Refero collaborate with Irpen, as I presented in my evidence above.
  8. I expanded a number of articles on Russian state security services here, including Alexander Litvinenko, Russian apartment bombings, SVR, FSB, GRU and many others. Not surprisingly, I sometimes use quotations about the Soviet KGB, simply as a figure of speech. However, when I used such quotation recently [121]. Irpen took this citation very personally [122], although I did not mean it at all [123]. Please note that my first statement was not directly addressed to Irpen, but I simply expressed my frustration about this ArbCom case. But he decided to answer in this manner. The quote of the journalist tells: "we", it does not tell "you"; it is not addressed to anyone personally.

Note I do not have any content disputes with Irpen. I believe we had only one content dispute in the past [124] [125] [126] [127] (please see this for details).

Questionable accusations

I can not discuss all evidence here, but a typical "evidence" against Piotrus looks like that: "He called me Nazi", tells Stor stark7 below and provides this diff. Yes, perhaps the statement by Piotrus was questionable. But there is huge difference between criticizing a person ("Stor stark7 is Nazi") and criticizing article content: "let's remove whitewashing of Nazi crimes from this article". The latter is allowed, because there are publications and historians who indeed whitewash Nazi crimes. That is precisely why this case reminds me the Big lie technique: through as much dirt as possible, and something will stick.

Stork stark7 replied below. Great! But he did not provide a single diff where Piotrus tells: "Stor stark7 is Nazi". There is no proof. Thus, he had to present a very complicated story to blame Piotrus of a variety of other misdeeds. That only enforces my point.

Evidence presented by Stor stark7

this has been made into policy by being linked to from here. Piotrus actions should be viewed in light of that.

Serious POV pushing

My friction with Piotrus originates with his oft-time support for Molobo. Molobo follows me even into the Pacific. [128] and Alliance shopping there [129] there. (My reply by the way)

It started with this little Piotrus & Molobo real-time charade on the talk page.[130]. What it in reality revolved around was the review by Professor Richard Blanke of two Polish books (JSTOR link) that Piotrus seemingly wanted to get rid of, for example by claiming it did not exist. The problem seems to be that the book reviewer identifies that the the 5th column theory was a Polish Communist regime official thesis, and that the reviewer dismisses it as Polish communist and nationalist propaganda. (He is very critical of the reviewed Polish book)

After Piotrus many edits to the Bloody Sunday article the review remains there as source for a number of sentences, some erroneously as far as I can tell, but strangely no mention is made of the reviewers critique as propaganda of the quasi official Polish position promoted by the communist dictatorship and still followed by many Polish historians. Only close to the very end of the article, and using another source, is a very timid mention of "bias of communist era Polish historiography".

To quote from the source, on the works of the Western Institute, a prolific Polish issuer on Germany related works:

"anti-German slant of most of its projects have reflected an unpopular, Soviet-imposed regime's belief that to perpetuate the idea of eternal German-Polish enmity was key to its own efforts to justify that regime's existence in Polish eyes." "According to this quasi-official thesis, Nazi Germany instructed the German population of Bydgoszcz and surrounding areas to congregate in the city and mount a "diversionary" attack on Polish forces. The problem with this work is that other historians, "third-party" as well as German, present a pretty good case for seeing this event quite differently."

A causal glance at the article might give the impression that it now is neutral, unless one realizes that what the article presents as an equal weight argument between German scholars and Polish scholars is in fact an argument between Democratic German and Democratic 3rd party scholars, against Polish scholars who for 50 years followed the Party line, and as the reviewer pointed out some Poles such as Jastrzebski still regurgitate the party line even after the advent of freedom of expression.

  • Recruiting help to Bromberg

[131], [132]

Piotrus used the book review as a source in another article too. [133], where he restated the communist thesis [134] (see whats hidden at the end of the very long edit). Note that no mention whatsoever is made of the used sources critique of this quasi-official Polish Communist regimes thesis nor that German and other neutral historians dispute it, and in fact the way he wrote it makes it look like the review instead confirms the whole sentence when in fact it only support the "inflated to 58,000" part.

That's abuse of sources, and very heavy POV pushing.

Accusations of Nazism and of blackening Polands reputation

  • Nazi accusations No.1 "neutral version restored, Nazi whitewashing reverted..."

Considering this rule I'm curious to why Piotrus has received no warning since he directly accused me of being a Nazi[135]. All I had done was after an anons blanking restore to the version that Piotrus had previously agreed upon[136] in March after I had been forced to ask for 3rd opinion due to his behavior.

  • Use of - or approval of - sock puppets.

This edit was left unchallenged, and this is reminiscent of the 2 actions of this sock puppet account, first here and also here. In the second case at Bloody Sunday accusing my edits of "propaganda". Rather than reverting this obvious vandalism edit this "user" was welcomed by Piotrus and the revert used as basis for further edits by Piotrus.

  • Nazi accusations No.2

After my encounter with Piotrus at Bloody Sunday, and his help to Molobo at other articles I tried to get some help at the Admins forum. This only resulted in Piotrus launching a Nazi accusation against me as defense: "in my experience 99% of edits from this periodically editing account involve whitewashing (or plainly removing) references to Nazi crimes during WWII"[137]. My response. [138].

  • Indirect Neo Nazi accusation

Accusing an IP of being "likely a sock of some neo-Nazi"[139] and then requesting check user for that IP against me and Scurinae.[140] --Stor stark7 Speak 18:18, 6 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

  • Forum shopping and Accusation of black washing Poles...

This accusation[141], apparently directed at me. And some associated forum shopping. [142]. Odd in light of this notice[143] to Molobo at the end of his 1 year block, a notice never enforced by the way.

To sum up, Piotrus crosses the line, he often hides it well under a blanket of other edits, but at least he should not be allowed to do it while wearing the Armour of respectability that adminship for better or worse provides, especially not when accusing people of being Nazis when they reinstate previously agreed-upon text....--Stor stark7 Speak 17:10, 6 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Response to Piotrus evidence against Stor stark7

I'm Swedish, but since postwar Germany is one of my specialties I'll let Piotrus labeling me as German slide.

German Tag team Allegation

Piotrus makes the claim of an association between me and Matthead two other active members of this tag team have risen up in his defense How exactly is voicing my concerns about Piotrus behavior "defending Matthead"? It's news to me to hear that I'm an active member in an alleged tag team and I note that Piotrus was unable or unwilling to provide diffs actually showing me to be part of such a team, despite his repeated accusations. Where is the proof? Why does Matthead need defending from Piotrus by the way? Is he part of this arbitration? In fact as far as I know it is exceedingly rare that I even cross paths with Matthead or Sciurinæ. And I do not need to "try to divert the case from Matthead and their own actions", I'm here to draw attention to Piotrus actions nothing else and I presume this is in fact simply an attempt by Piotrus to try to divert attention using words since diffs are non-existent.

Accusation of using old diffs

year+ old diffs: The bulk of the diffs I provided as a sample of Piotrus activities come from the period March - April 2008. No diffs are any older than that.

Accusation of me having POV "ranging from 'Greater Germany' to 'neo-Nazi'"

Since the only example given relates to me - a statistical list of editing topics - and Piotrus previously repeatedly has called me a Nazi I presume the 'Neo-Nazi' bit of the alleged range is meant for labeling me and not Matthead or Sciurinae, except by alleged association to me. This is precisely the type of Piotrus behavior I'm involved in this arbitration because of. Where is the evidence? E.g. editing the article Nazi Germany does not by default make anyone a Neo-Nazi. Piotrus makes complaints about Guilt_by_association, and then uses precisely that tactic. Perhaps Piotrus finds it distasteful that I in my most recent edit of Nazi Germany added the Saar flag, or that I that same day had added a crematorium image? Maybe it was "Nazi" or "Greater Germany" of me to expand the article Disarmed Enemy Forces from a stub last week? I write about notable but relatively unknown topics that few others want to deal with, such as this, which is a thankless job, especially when it leads to this type of vicious personal attacks. I would have though that my response in the the Administrators noticeboard should have been enough indication for Piotrus that I find it highly offensive to be attacked as a Nazi, as any normal wikipedian would. Further I don't not see why Piotrus seems unable to understand this still, since he simultaneously both seemingly apologies and continues with "Neo-Nazi" accusations. In fact I do not see how Piotrus can possibly avoid a block for this latest Nazism accusation.

"My content claims"

If the arbitration committee so wishes I too can address the content claims in more detail, and will provide the book review to any arbitrators unable to access it themselves.

Claim I go looking for places to criticize in

Piotrus claims that (paraphrased) "I chip in with criticism and complaints wherever unrelated issues related to editors I dislike are being discussed". And the evidence provided for this allegation by Piotrus is this?? A completely unrelated restriction notice, based in part on me blowing my lid here? As far as I can tell this completely unrelated issue was brought up just to make me look bad (so he did that wrong, then maybe he did what Piotrus claims too...), either that or when Piotrus realized there was nothing with which to substantiate his allegation with he decided to provide a diff anyway, and that was the worst he could find.

My alleged POV:

According to Piotrus I promote the POV "Germans were victims and Allies were the victimizers" Apparently this is Piotrus "explanation" for his repeated personal attacks on me using the Nazi label. Actually I'm afraid the whole sentence might be a very cleverly disguised attack. A combination between Ad hominem and Straw man 1. Twist things by attributing a certain unsavory POV to me which might make the Nazi attacks seem justified. 2. Vaguely admit the Nazi accusation and admit that it could be seen as offensive.... Mud sticks, as they say, how exactly do you defend yourself against an accusation like that, an accusation without any attempt at evidence presented, without risking the "the lady doth protest too much" syndrome? My editing is straightforward and not hidden under random stuff; anyone can easily check my content edits. My real POV is that there are gaps in Wikipedia on notable topics. One of those topics is crimes against the Japanese for example. I think I can take much credit for this section even coming into existence, but it sure was difficult. One of the supposedly undue topics I've looked at are the German victims. Apparently some would like to claim monopoly on victims, but surprise, there were some German too, e.g.[144]. Another topic I look at is the occupation of Germany, where Piotrus has for example collaborated with Molobo as I pointed out at the Administrators noticeboard. I have nothing to hide nor any offensive POV that in any way could possibly justify Piotrus Nazi accusations. When I'm stuck or don't understand something I ask for reputable help, such as here[145],[146]. I have to give Piotrus a reluctant artistic credit for the very cleverly phrased sentence though. I've added notable content to loads of articles, including the Holocaust article too[147], I wonder if that's also part of the edits that Piotrus claims he finds "highly offensive" POV? Please review my Nazi accusations No.1 point, and check if it in any way could be compatible with Piotrus "explanation" for his Nazi attack against me.

Accusations of Harassment

Piotrus repeatedly claims that he is being harassed by alleged anti Piotrus tag-teams, of which I'm supposed to be part. Piotrus even request that I should be asked by the arbitration committee not to harass other editors. It's impossible to prove non-harassment, how do you produce the diffs? But it is painfully obvious that Piotrus has produced no diffs of any alleged harassment against him, all that's been produced by Piotrus are the endlessly repeated tag and harassment accusations against me i.e. Proof by verbosity.--Stor stark7 Speak 01:18, 12 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Undue Weight, misrepresentation allegation etc

Reply to this:

  • The Pittsburgh range IP's that reverted me, and indeed also Piotrus, at westerplatte were irrelevant to this arbitration, although it can for forms sake be noted that Piotrus never bothered to undo the IP's repeated blankings.
  • Piotrus writes that I misrepresent this as a refusal to discuss.[148]. See also the subsequent discussion.[149] Please judge who misrepresents.
  • Piotrus on the other hand misrepresents. It is Piotrus continuing POV that the paragraph at westerplatte is "trivia/undue". The 3rd opinion disagreed with Piotrus, as he well knows. And the following is very indicative of Piotrus lack of self awareness of his POV: "fact promoting the idea that in 1939, Germans had a moral right to invade Poland because Poland might have contemplated invading Germany in 1933". I do not care if this is the way Piotrus actually views the paragraph, or if it is simply defense rhetoric. Either case vividly shows that he should not be allowed to remain as sysop.
  • Number of Nazi attacks. Piotrus states - with a smiley - that his 3 uses of Nazi (actually it is 4, against me at least) is a irrelevantly low amount of evidence to present here, especially considering his large body of edits. For me, and others, being accused of being a Nazi is a big deal. I don't follow Piotrus around to see what he calls others, I've presented the cases where I've been personally sorely offended. I'm sorry to see that for Piotrus using the Nazi allegation is not that serious. Do we need admins, people who are supposed to be role-models for the rest of us, with this attitude? --Stor stark7 Speak 11:17, 19 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Response to Biophys

In his attempts to defend Piotrus user Biophys has singled out my evidence for a personal attack by Piotrus as "typical 'evidence'", which he then proceeds to attempt to defuse by providing just the primary diff and his own interpretation of that diff. Somehow he manages to ignore that Piotrus already in essence has admitted guilt, see "German tag team" and Biophys also omits all the context diffs for that incident, (as well as the other prior and later events where Piotrus has used "Nazi", including - incredibly enough - in this very Arbitration.) According to Biophys what Piotrus did was simply criticize article content: "let's remove whitewashing of Nazi crimes from this article".

Lets see how Piotrus "removed whitewashing". He added 2 sentences.

I had dropped those those sentences while harassed by IP's intent on removing the paragraph. The first sentence adds nothing of value, we already linked to the reason for the proposal: Preventive war, i.e. war now to avoid a seemingly inevitable worse war later. And, more to the point, the "context" provided by Piotrus is misleading since the treaty violations did not really start until 2 years later, i.e. Hitlers future intentions were clear enough visa vi the Free City of Danzig etc, but visible German treaty violations started only in 1935.

The second Piotrus sentence (or rather what he choose to omit from it) on the other hand is actually very interesting: "French continued their policy of appeasement". While technically true, the way the source phrases it is that after French rejection of the proposal the Poles flung themselves into the race for appeasement and just barely won the race ahead of France. To make that Piotrus addition accurate and neutral you would have 2 choices, either mention Polish appeasement together with French - and face hell from IP's (and possibly others) - or simply drop the appeasement topic.

Now what Piotrus actually said about his changes to the paragraph I had restored - Biophys very charitable interpretation aside - was: "neutral version restored, Nazi whitewashing reverted..."[150] See the resemblance to this March 4 statent?"in my experience 99% of edits from this periodically editing account involve whitewashing (or plainly removing) references to Nazi crimes during WWII and unduly highlighting suffering of the German people."[151]

And again, let me point out that the paragraph I wrote that he had very reluctantly agreed upon in March did not contain those two sentences.[152]

Lets look at the March 2008 background to this incident, which happened while I was having continued friction with Piotrus at the Bloody Sunday article:

  1. I insert the topic to the article Westerplatte.[153]
  2. The sockpuppet Antyfaszysta (talk · contribs) is created, and proceeds to blank my entry[154], although first he blanks my long and well sourced entry at the Bloody_Sunday article using the edit summary "propaganda"[155]
  3. A few minutes minutes later Piotrus welcomes this 2-edits "user"[156]
  4. 11 minutes after welcoming "him" Piotrus uses the Antyfaszysta version of Bloody Sunday (the "propaganda" summary blanking version) to begin making the article as he prefers[157]
  5. Some time later I try to undo the sock puppet damage at Bloody sunday, but get reverted by Piotrus[158]
  6. I told Piotrus that he should not have based his edits on the "propaganda" revert of this new account Antyfaszysta (talk · contribs). The response was: "Perhaps."[159]
  7. Meanwhile, back at the Westerplate article I had restored the content, only to be reverted by Piotrus with the summary "completely irrelevant"[160]
  8. I request that Piotrus take up his issues at talk. This only resulted in a new revert[161]
  9. I asked for outside comment (it was moved to 3rd opinion, which I did not know existed)[162]
  10. Piotrus finally accepts the inclusion of the text[163]
  11. The 3rd opinion agrees, and has some advice for Piotrus.[164]

So, to sum up the response to Biophys, the "nazi whitewashing" was indeed a personal attack, in essence identical to the earlier "whitewashing (or plainly removing) references to Nazi crimes"[165] and the one used in this arbitration "this tag team (which could be variously described as ranging from "Greater Germany" to "neo-Nazi" and it is merely a highlight of a very antagonistic pattern on the part of Piotrus. It is notable that Biophys failed to note this, as well as Piotrus "apology". --Stor stark7 Speak 00:27, 19 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Evidence presented by Boodlesthecat

"Special case" Boodlesthecat's response to Piotrus

First, let me thank the Academy for this "special case" award. Now, let's explore point by point.

  • Piotrus finds mediator Prom3th3an's statement "telling," although he's not telling what he found telling. Others also found Prom3th3an's statement of interest, enough to issue Prom3th3an this unambiguous warning
  • My complaint about Piotrus' article defacement by fact tag bombing (sixteen tages!) speaks for itself. This is not the first time Piotrus has defaced an article like this. It wasn't acceptable in the past, and its not acceptable now
  • Although this sort of editing tactic might be an improvement from the edit-war-file-a-3RR tactic that Piotrus and his allies used to prefer, which seems to have ceased now that this arb is scrutinizing some of these tactics. Although Tymek seems to have not gotten the email about not using that tactic any more.
  • My WP:CIVIL warnings to Tymek are self explanatory. I will take further action if Tymek continues to make false accusations like those I have deatiled on his talk page in the warnings.
  • Piotrus claims I have "harassed greg with accusations of antisemitism." Actually, concern about Greg's Jew baiting is becoming a wider community concern. Framing this as me against Greg is transparently false. Note also, for those unaware, Greg's apparent threat of violence against an admin here.
  • Piotrus claims "Boody has implied that anybody who defends greg is an antisemite." A) Please show a diff where I made that "implication," or kindly remove that defamatory claim, and B) what I actually have, and continue to imply is that Piotrus explicitly defends Greg--to the point of abusing his admin power and threatening to block me for removing a serious BLP violation by Greg (upheld HERE).
  • Piotrus amazingly claims "before Boody, for example, we were somehow able to raise History of the Jews in Poland to a FA status, without any major incivil disputes." I will, as the Bible instructs us, assume good faith and assume Piotrus simply made a big boo boo here with that accusation, rather than proffering a bald faced lie. Check the record, Piotrus. The article failed feature article review on April 25, 2008 (mainly because it had been wrecked by edit warring). Note also that I did not make a single edit to the article until June 18, 2008, (yes, that would be 2 months later) where I made a minor edit that was reverted 3 minutes later (giving me a forewarning of what was to come, although my edit is now upheld, as are about 99.9% of the edits I've made to that article). Piotrus also rather immodestly [took sole credit for the FA] even though it was clearly a collaborative effort by a number of editors at the time).
  • Piotrus claims that he tried to "reach out" to me. Actually, his main "reaching out" is illustrative of another tactic of his--trying to play his perceived enemies against each other. Piotrus has tried to solicit my help in his border war with the Lithuanians, although I had to beg off.
  • A splendid example of playing perceived enemies off against each other is his contrasting of editor Malik Shabazz' "constructive" style (and I agree with him there) with my supposed disruptions. Let me remind Piotrus of some of Malik's own comments on the modus operandi of Piotrus and his team that Malik posted not long ago here:

    "It takes two to tango, Piotrus. You are just as rigid in your position as Boodlesthecat is, so please don't act as though he's the problem. You and several other editors seem determined to white-wash Polish antisemitism, or to blame it on the Jews, and Boodlesthecat brings quality sources that refute your assertions. You're not an innocent victim here."

I have always respected Malik's judgement, and I am glad that Piotrus does too! Hopefully he will take Malik's words to heart.

  • Oh, and yes, I sent an unkind an inexcusable email to Piotrus for which I've apologized on a few occasions rudely accusing him of dikdom (and despite Piortus' comical mention of the "dick" emails, there was only one email anointing thusly and rudely). Others have been kind enough to note, without excusing it, some of my possible reasons for such rudeness.
  • Open challenge to Piotrus or anyone else. Show me any improper edits I have made to any of the disputed articles. In attempting to address the "white-wash" that Malik notes above, it has been the case that the vast majority (quite near 100%) of my edits have withstood the attacks of Piotrus and his teammates because they are valid, and have made a modest contribution to improving this project. The challenge is open. Boodlesthecat Meow? 19:07, 8 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • Update 9/11: Piotrus humorously declares in anguish "Boody just accused me of antisemitism." Anyone who could care is welcome to read my comment here where for the umpteenth time I do indeed implore Piotrus to stop filling this encyclopedia with "outdated, discredited and outright anti-semitic nonsense". Peruse if you care, the last week of of Piotrus' feverish edit warring on Lwów pogrom (1918), as he aggressively attempts to fill that article with examples of the abovementioned "outdated, discredited and outright anti-semitic nonsense", or as Malik accurately describes it above, examples of Pitorus in action once again as he continues to be "determined to white-wash Polish antisemitism, or to blame it on the Jews." I make no apologies for my repeated attempts to educate Piotrus on basic encyclopedic historiography. Boodlesthecat Meow? 21:15, 11 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Case study of Piotrus' abuse of admin authority to engage in POV edit warring

Piotrus continues abusing the 3RR report process as a tool for his edit warring, as can seen here. The result; yet another admonishment to Piotrus for his abuse of the 3RR process to carry out edit warring. This particular interaction is emblematic of the sort of POV edit warring Piotrus (and his fellow tag team members) engages in on articles concerning Polish Jewry (the topic in which I have come up against his abuses); namely, attempts to minimize instances of Polish anti-semitism, and to inject a decidedly fringe, and indeed anti-Jewish POV into articles that seek to find ways to blame Jews for pogroms and other abuse committed against them. In this particular instance, I had removed a long-standing anti-semitic canard] from this article, which attempted to justify pogroms with claims (falsely attributed to the Morgenthau commission) by noting (completely without context) that "that Poles also died at the hand of Jews," and falsely claimed that "a significant portion of which (as also supported by Richard C. Lukas) supported the Soviets and formed militias to fight their Polish equivalents and regular army." this is simply an old, anti-semitic canard with no support outside of the fringe (and misquoted) sources used to back it up. Piotrus responded with a revert, claiming "proper corr" (not sure what that means; I again removed the false material, editing it to correspond to the fringe source. Piotrus again reinserted the multiply probelematic wording, with an odd "In detail" edit summary. I removed it again, indicating it did not correspond to the sources, and requested in the summary that Piotrus "take it to TALK and provide quotes supporting and discuss before reverting." Piotrus ignored my request to discuss on talk, and reverted again, this time with an edit summary of "+ref" and adding a ref and quote which (oops) unfortunately referred to the wrong war (Piotrus had dug up a quote referring to the Polish-Ukrainian War rather than the Polish-Soviet War—the subject of the article in question). I reverted yet again, pointing out both the fact that the material still was not in the sources cited, as well as this blooper of an error bringing in a quote from the wrong war, and again requesting that Piotrus discuss his edits on talk and provide documentation there. Piotrus finally began discussion on talk, (although only to disingenuously demand a reason for "removal of refs" rather than to provide the twice requested explanation and quotes supporting his edits) and only after he filed a 3RR report (Piotrus was apparently too busy provoking a revert war and compiling diffs to enage in a discussion of his erronesous and offensive anti-Jewish edits on talk).

As noted in the evidence presented below, not only was Piotrus engaging in an edit war on this article in order compile diffs to file a 3RR while ignoring repeated requests to discuss his extremely problematic edits on talk (this despite clear earlier warnings to Piotrus not to use reverting as an editing technique, he was simultaneously shopping for admins to look at the edits he refused to discuss himself, in the hopes that one such admin might find something amiss and block me (apparently unsuccessfully). This is only the latest of his attempts to forum shop to have me blocked (always without notifying me of the discussions), eg here. It would be worthwhile for this arb to look into just how much on and off Wiki shopping Piotrus has been engaged in in his rather obsessive effort to have me blocked. Boodlesthecat Meow? 17:20, 15 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

  • I now expect Piotrus will, in retaliation for my posting of this case study, attempt to beef up his portrayal of me as a villain in an attempt to try and do some damage control. this is to be expected, and I have confidence that reviewers here will weigh the evidence objectively. Boodlesthecat Meow? 17:56, 15 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • And a reality check-- Do I anywhere above claim that Malik agrees with me? No, yet thats the falsehood Piotrus tells Malik while Piotrus pleads with Malik for the second time! to dissociate himself from my comments. Seems like the spin control is spinning out of control. Boodlesthecat Meow? 23:10, 11 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Evidence presented by Tiptoety

Piotrus placed on 1RR resrtictions along with Boodlesthecat

While responding to reports at WP:AN3, Piotrus took notice and sent me an email requesting that I review a report that he had filed against Boodlesthecat (talk · contribs). Upon investigation, I found that both users where involved in a content dispute over the removal of material that Boodlesthecat found to be false, and if the report was not stale, I would have blocked both parties for edit warring. Here are a few examples of the reverts: [166], [167], [168]. While investigating the edit warring further (seeing as there was an active Arb case and a rather large history between the two users), Piotrus, in another forum I participate in that is unrelated to Wikipedia, requested/asked/shopped for uninvolved admins to look into the reverts that Boodlesthecat were making, and for them to see if the they were against policy, and if so, would someone block him/her (please note that no one group of admins where approached specifically, just anyone who was willing to listen) . After a discussion, myself and another admin decided it was best to continue our conversation on-wiki in hopes of getting some form of resolution. A thread was started on ANI, where it would later be decided (both parties agreed) that it be best that neither Piotrus or Boodlesthecat are to revert one another more than one time (generally speaking), and that any violation of said restriction would result in a block. Both Piotrus and Boodlesthecat were notified of the restrictions. Tiptoety talk 21:03, 12 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Evidence presented by User:Novickas

Incivility, tendentious editing, edit warring, battling, low-level incivility (conduct unbecoming an administrator, aka what Irpen calls ungentlemanly behavior)

I haven't been very active this summer, and still don't have the time or inclination to spend hours digging through diffs. But here are a few examples.

  • "Ethnography in ethnographic Lithuania is as much non-political as socialism in national socialism :> The concept was quite clearly political - although of course it was dressed as a scientific concept to make it look more acceptable; another comparison would be of intelligent design to a scientific theory."[169] Two odious comparisons.
  • Other examples of P's objectionable statements and actions: "I suggest you concentrate on writing content instead of trying to discuss things with editors like M.K." [170]. " Don't discuss? "Yes, as the history has shown, Germany and Russia proven to be true great friends of the Lithuanian nation, indeed." [171] "As I said, one could also criticize this article for recreating one of the legends of the Patriotic War. I do however note that you have no objections along that line?" [172] Unnecessary battle: he filed this AFD [173], stating that the entity of Suvalkija was no more than an instance of Lithuanian POV. Skim the article and decide for yourselves if the AFD was warranted, and whether he should have quickly admitted error and backed off.
  • Battlegrounds - the number of Arbcoms, admin interventions, page protections, mediations, RFC, the recall request, etc. that he has been involved in speak for themselves.

Re my lack of good faith - this is a conduct investigation. Yes, I do lack faith in Piotrus. Long history, and I don't quite get the WP philosophy of "staleness" - how old is too old when it comes to discussing unacceptable behavior? Constant forgiveness isn't practiced in stable workplaces, that could be why I'm having trouble adjusting to it here. And foreseeing future battles is one reason why contributors leave WP. But here's a reasonably recent incident that contributed to bad faith. According to P., "...Alfred E. Senn explicitly noted that Lithuania has violated its neutrality towards Poland so far that Poland would have been quite justified in declaring war against Lithuania at that time".[174] Well, historians don't generally make statements to the effect that war would have been justifiable; and in this case Senn did not. (What he did say) When you lose faith in an editor's interpretations of a book that's not online...well, interlibrary loan was free, but I leave it to you-all to consider the consequences.

Evidence presented by Irpen

Please see this section at the Wikipedia talk:Requests for arbitration/Piotrus 2/Evidence for some responses.

I am severely restricted in my wikitime these days. Please allow another couple of days for me to post here before the case is moved to the "Proposed decision" stage. Thanks, --Irpen 16:09, 15 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Past experience, and the developments in this case so far, suggest that a case where the ArbCom is requested to make a ruling on a WP:BATTLE issue, which is very narrow in scope and limited in extent, is going to become (or may already be) a free-for-all mudbath. This narrow finding, that persons who use articles to engage in political battling, now stands as a truncheon with which warriors beat one another. It has become, instead of the resolution of a case, the instrument of wiki-war.

Experienced combatants know that the surest way to derail any arbcom case (or even an ANI discussion) is to be on a permanent rampage of changing and expand the scope. Many cases have already been derailed this way, sometimes by Piotrus himself [175] , by bringing unrelated grievances against his perceived enemies to any case where their names are mentioned. On the one hand, this is a form of stalking (following a person around, from conflict to conflict, to try to hammer at old (resolved) grievances), and, on the other, it is tendentious editing (using edits for the primary purpose of creating conflict). He already started posting evidence on everyone except his "comrades in arms" in this very case, and others have joined in waving dirty laundry. I may also address this later but, at least for now, I will try to stick with the main issues at hand, which is the charge that most of Piotrus' Wikipedia editing is a violation of WP:BATTLE and disruption disguised as "content" and an apple-polishing veneration of "civility."

  • The easiest way to see Piotrus's motives and means is to check his own black book. Examine these diffs and who they target. Try to understand why he is collecting them?
  • Ask, also, why he was collecting since March 2007?
  • Piotrus has been asked about these collections and, I feel, dissembled. I say this because the purpose can be inferred from:
    • the timing of his black book edits (how it was started in March, 2007, [176] while no arbcom was under way, purportedly shut down [177] (when it came to light in the previous arbcom [178] ), while in fact surreptitiously restarted [179] and maintained throughout these months [180])
    • the spin he gives to each diff [181] compared to what actually happened. Each summary is jaundiced, at the least, and looks to be prosecution, judgment, and execution of enemies.

Black Book

Piotrus black book is clearly malicious

Piotrus claims he was "collecting evidence". The logical questions are, "Evidence of what? For what venue? For what time?" He claimed earlier that he started it for his defense. Were he to have been "prosecuted" at the time, we could have talked about some sort of "defense", but, first, he started logging in March 2007 [182] while no ArbCom case was being heard or even in sight. More importantly, it is difficult to see what defense of his own violations, real of alleged, can be derived from his logging of alleged violations of others. This can be a "defense" only if two wrongs make a right, if impugning those he has harmed and warred with can excuse his actions.

As a defense, the log is useless. As subterfuge or confusion, it's possibly useful, but where it is absolutely best used is as a form of attack. It is my belief that the sole purpose of his log was to oust or sanction his content opponents as, no less importantly, every single subject of Piotrus's black book, Dr Dan, M.K., Lokyz, Matthead, Ghirla, myself, M0RD00R, are or were his content opponents at some point of time (although a single poit of diversity coming from his adding Giano to hit-list [183] is a curiosity). If the list were designed to help prevent abuse, then one wonders why none of Piotrus's colleagues in content POV, many of whom are editors with a rather poor record (Molobo and a multisock master who we now know as Alden Jones), made it to his list of violators whose actions needed recording.

Sin diary vs list of failed attempts of conflict resolution

Even if we accept Piotrus's explanations and read them as charitably as possible, this sin diary is a very bad sign. Policy violations, real or alleged, and conflicts should be dealt with as they happen and through the accepted channels of Wikipedia's dispute resolution system. One way to deal with a problematic incident is to let it go. Another option is making an attempt to address the problem once there is one. It would be ideal to record the problem along with the attempts at resolution and the outcome, for this can help create peace. However, if no attempt to resolve the problematic incident was tried, recording the alleged misbehavior for the future use is simply vindictive. Even worse is stalking opponents all over Wikipedia and recording their alleged violations in disputes completely unrelated to you (as Piotrus has done for example here or here). Such activity is nothing but the viciousness of a grand scale. A list of the "greatest hits" of opponents over years is not only meaningless, but it is useful mainly to mislead, misdirect, and continue "war by other means": it can make anyone look either saint or Satan. Such an involuntary sin diary can have no other purpose than ejection of opponents.

Piotrus black book is an irrefutable proof that he sees editing wikipedia as WP:BATTLE, and this attitude, combined with several incidents of his uploading of his log to Wikipedia at opportune times (example 1 [184] [185]; example 2 [186] [187], example 3 [188] [189], and so on) is sanctionable as a form of longstanding, slow-motion, edit warring and disruption. The very moment he claimed to have stopped [190], he restarted this repugnant activity [191] and continued it on a different pl-wiki page [192], but to the detriment of en.Wikipedia's editing climate.

My pleadings to Piotrus to stop

I made it clear to Piotrus many times that I see his maintaining such a log on myself as others a major detriment to our being able to edit harmoniously [193] [194] [195]. I asked [196], begged [197] him to stop to no avail (actually, my pleading was also added to the black book [198]). Piotrus saw my attempt at dispute resolution as a crime against him worthy of recording in his testament of slights.

Now, it is absolutely clear from his persistence, that this activity will continue unless Piotrus is banned from editing (and this is not a solution anyone requests), because the ban on logging would be impossible to enforce. But the outcome of this case must produce a clear verdict on this activity, whether it is considered to be commendable and ethical or vicious and vindictive. In the latter case, Piotrus' ability to lodge further complaints should be restricted.

Diffs themselves

Now, let's look at his diffs by comparing what actually happened with the spin he gives to the event. I take no pleasure in parsing Piotrus' line of thought, so to save myself and the readers' time I will analyze the stack he had on myself (simply because I can easily remember what actually happened around each of these diffs) as well as those selected entries on others that I can easily recall without much digging:

My dispute with Balcer

The first set of diffs Piotrus managed to compile on myself was unloaded by him into a different Arbcom to which Piotrus had no relation [199] (a sign of times, as I said earlier.) Piotrus attempted to prove my misbehavior towards Balcer. I reviewed those diffs in every minute detail here and many uninvolved editors of the highest standing commented on the merits of these accusations [200] [201] [202] [203] [204].

I had a huge respect and even admiration of Balcer before that sad incident. In fact, I once told Piotrus that my regard towards Balcer was so high that I considered Balcer "the best Wikipedian who edits Polish topics". All the more I was taken aback by how Balcer acted towards me at that particular discussion. We had a disagreement about a particular source, an 86-volume encyclopedia (see from here to the bottom of this page) and Balcer made a veiled accusation that my usage of this source may be suggesting no less than a sympathetic attitude toward the antisemitic views that prevailed in the Imperial Russia. His direct quote was: "Is there something about the POV prevalent in 19th century Russia that is particularly to your taste?" If there is a way to offend me, THIS works and I stated plainly that is too low of him, way lower than I expected, especially, since it was not the first incident of him pulling such stuff on me. While I would react the same way to anyone accusing me of xenophobic views, I said multiple times that I miss editing with Balcer (one example).

Piotrus was clearly stalking in search of material

Piotrus' running around with accusation of myself in connection with the Balcer issue has been tried and commented upon (see above) but other diffs he accumulated are noteworthy as they demonstrate what his goals were, especially if his diffs are analyzed as a combination of what actually happened, the context of what happened, the spin Piotrus gives and (sometimes) the obvious way how he finds them.

Perhaps these are especially revealing:

Both diffs have no relation to Piotrus or any pages of his concern whatsoever and their presence in his log proves beyond reasonable doubt that Piotrus was following me all around Wikipedia in search of material.

In the first diff Piotrus tries to spin an incident when I reprimanded Betacommand [205] for trolling at my talk page. Betacommand first posted a vandalism warning template at my talk [206], then repeated his vandalism accusation [207] and, after I removed that nonsense [208], revert warred with me on my own talk page [209]. So, in this Piotrus finds proof that "conflicts are not limited to Polish editors only". How did he find my entry at Betacommand's talk? The answer is obvious.

The second time Piotrus logs that my "incivility comes up at ANI in an event unrelated to Polish editors" does not really require any explanation beyond reading the ANI thread noting the names of Irpen-bashers (Dorftrottel and Sceptre) and wondering why it is relevant for Piotrus to log.

This note in the black book is curious too for it records the time I was not editing at all!:

  • Irpen: "December 28-Feb 8: inactive"

And inactive I was indeed [210] as I seriously pondered leaving the Wikipedia until some unexpected events made me change my mind [211]. Now, please, anyone, add all the good faith in the world you are willing to assume! And after you have done that, explain this "diff" being logged by Piotrus in a good way!

The other three diffs Piotrus added to his log in the same edit are these: [212], [213] and [214]. The context was Piotrus' taking turns with Molobo (to stay under 3RR) repeatedly removing well-sourced material from History of Poland (1939-1945). I invite anyone to check these diffs Piotrus considered logworthy for whatever reason and decide for themselves.

Dishonest editing

Piotrus invokes his content creation as his main defense. It seems so convincing that even I was charmed for a while. You need to edit with Piotrus for years (like myself) or be a specialist in the field of one of his articles (like Deacon wrt to the history of Medieval Rus) to realize the true picture.

By its very design the Wikipedia is written largely by amateurs. We should strive to make at least our FA assessment process scholarly but the rare serious scholars who try to take part in our project are often driven off in the climate conducive of ignorant editing, POV pushing by users for who advancement of their political views is the main motivation of editing and with the resolution process being skewed by career mandarinship and wikilawyering.

So, the assessment, both of content and of editors, remains poor and random. Article's "appearance" and compliance with MoS play an undue role while the quaility of references, the propriety of their use, and whether the article actually reflects its supposed references plays little role. Who has time to verify these references anyway?

Many of Piotrus' references are googled or google-booked quotes from sources that he obviously have not read in full but rather found searching for a particular string . Guess what content can you write if your main source of references comes from running strings like "Jewish Soviet collaboration" or "Lithuanian Nazi collaboration" in Google Books or Google Scholar? At the same time the classical and most cited in the scholarly field works are often pushed aside in favor of much lesser quality sources and web-sites. As a result Piotrus' articles reflect the fundamental difference between the writings based on the fully read books and tendentious writing based on the cherry-picked googled quotes stacked together to promote one POV. In this quest, the sources are often misrepresented and even outright falsified. Often, when the quality sources contradict the tendentious POV, they are attacked with the persistent vigor.

Falsification, misrepresentation and skewing of sources, copyvios, etc.

The first time my alarm rang when I noticed that Piotrus lifted the horrible content (terribly POVed) from a low quality web-site and inserted it without attribution directly into a Wikipedia article [215]. See this discussion and note a terrible amount of good faith I was willing to assume back then.

At about the same time Piotrus added a fictituous book that was never published to the list of references of an article [216]. Piotrus could not have ever seen that book because is timply never existed. See this discussion for details.

Here, Piotrus adds a claim that is contrary to what the reference says. Piotrus addition says: "the excesses were of political rather than anti-Semitic nature and that the term "pogrom" was inapplicable to the conditions existing within a war zone, particulary as Poles also died at the hand of Jews, significant portion of which supported the Soviets and formed militias to fight their Polish equivalents and regular army". What the reference in fact says is exactly the opposite: "These excesses were, therefore, political as well as anti-Semitic in character"[217] See this discussion at talk.

Here, Piotrus adds to an article of the Polish philosopher, author of Judaized Hitlerism, a claim that he was a "fighter against racist myths". The source of Piotrus' edit is a talk page entry from an anonymous IP. See the talk page discussion for more on that.

Here Piotrus inserts a statement into History of Jews in Poland claiming that "Significant percentage of Jews [in 1930s Poland] were sympathetic to the communist cause; that led to growing tensions betweem Polish and Jewish communities in those regions." He references this famous antisemitic claim to a work [218] that in fact states to the contrary: "Most of the Polish Jews, except for a small group of Communist sympathizers, were afraid of the Soviet Union and Communism. Before their eyes were still the fresh memories of the Polish-soviet Russian War of 1920. In addition, most Polish Jews were occupied in trade. Jewish workers, in general, were very few."

more coming

Page moves

Many editors had some heated discussions with Piotrus regarding the articles' names. There is nothing wrong in that per se. But Piotrus, when he is uncertain that his preferred name for the article can meet a consensus, frequently uses the, so called, AndriyK's move trick that consists in the page move being followed by the immediate salting of the redirect through making an edit to the redirect page. This creates a history for the page that prevents the article from being moved back over a redirect.

I noticed him implementing this trick during the rather hot debate about the name of the Partitions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth article. But it is easy to see that during the last 12 months alone he employed the AndriyK trick at least 15 times. The footprints can be seen in the histories of the following redirects:

  1. Christopher Radvila
  2. Christopher Radvila "the Lightning"
  3. Louise Caroline Radvila
  4. Janus Radvila
  5. Janus Radvila of Dubingiai and Slutsk
  6. Mestwin I of Pomerania
  7. Teutonic Takeover of Danzig
  8. List of burgomasters of Danzig
  9. Partitions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
  10. Allenstein and Marienwerder plebiscite
  11. Duchy of Auschwitz
  12. History of Gdańsk (Danzig)
  13. History of Gdańsk-Danzig
  14. Battle of Annaberg, also see [219]
  15. Solidarity

Note that when Piotrus does not expect any objections to his redirect, he does not bother to edit it. See eg. history of the "Battle of Cudnów" redirect.

Improper use of off-wiki channels

Abuse of #admins access to advance his POV agenda

Piotrus did not feel a need for #admins until the previous arbcom case was filed against him. The case was filed on April 20th, 2007 [220]. On April 21st I posted a statement where I actually expressed my doubts about this being an ArbCom matter [221] since Piotrus' Black Book, which was a breaking point for me, was only discovered two months later [222]. However, on April 26, 2007 Piotrus joined #admins to "get help" [223] and help sure came in the form of David Gerard arriving from the channel completely out of the blue with an uninformed comment based on a diff that Piotrus fed to him. This caused much bemusement from many editors [224].

Another known example of the channel misuse by Piotrus in his WP:BATTLE against his content opponents is well documented here when our famous civillity vigilant convinced another admin to give him a hand by madmouthing his opponents, M.K. and Lokyz, behind their backs in the forum to which he knew they have no access.

The newest incident is fairly recent. Just last week Piotrus went to #admins to shop for a friendly closure of a 3RR report he filed against Boodlesthecat against who Piotrus was revert warring rabidly on a number of pages. Details that became fully public can be found here and above but I am sure anyone interested, including arbcom, can see a log of #admins during the late hours (GMT) of September 11, 2008. It was a very quiet night at the channel, so it won't be difficult to find relevant exchanges.

Evidence presented by Martintg

Irpen's chronic assumption of bad faith detrimental to collaboration

I've not had that much interaction with Irpen, but what I have observed is that he suffers from a chronic tendency to assume the worst in people, particularly with those people he identifies as belonging to groups that have had historical conflict with Russia. His chronic lack of good faith, which he demands other people maintain, is justified by his view that "Wikipedia:Assume good faith does not say "be a fool" anywhere inside it." [225]. Yet on the other hand he displays seemingly unlimited good faith in regard to his fellow compatriots, where he has a tendency to doggedly defend disruptive editors such as User:RJ CG (who btw is currently serving a 2 month ban)[226] [227] and Ilya1166(User:Miyokan) [228] against admin intervention. This chronic assumption of bad faith against people of different backgrounds gets in the way of effective collaboration.

Irpen's long term obsession against Piotrus and tendency to harrass rather than collaborate

Irpen has been obsessed with Piotrus long before I joined the project. He continues to make the same unfounded accusations of bad faith of Piotrus on all the possible forums, over and over again. The depth of his obsession with Piotrus was breathtakenly demonstrated when he jumped straight into this ArbCom case within one day of returning from a month long wikibreak to battle with his old foe. I have to agree that there appears to be a pattern of harassment rather than collaboration as described in Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Piotrus_2/Evidence#Irpen_versus_Piotrus:_harassment_rather_than_collaboration. Another example is when Irpen made a bad faith nomination for deletion of the article Soviet_repressions_of_Polish_citizens_(1939-1946) within 24 hours of its creation by Piotrus [229], despite Piotrus explaining in the article talk page his intentions with the work in progress. The result was an over whelming snowball keep. The only person to support Irpen for deletion was User:Deacon of Pndapetzim, who added a polonophobic comment to his delete vote [230]. During the deletion debate, other editors noted that rapidity of the nomination after article creation could only be possible if Irpen was monitoring Piotrus' activities.

Meat puppet teams and disregard of Wikipedia policy to promote Russian nationalist POV

The article Occupation of the Baltic republics by Nazi Germany was moved to Occupation of the Baltic states by Nazi Germany in January 2008 to align with the the parent article Occupation of the Baltic States by User:Renata3, which also brought it into compliance with the naming convention policy [231]. However this was opposed by Russian nationalist editor User:Dojarca and was reverted a couple of times in April [232] on the basis that he believed that the title should reflect Russian political POV that the Nazis occupied Soviet republics. Irpen then intervened out of the blue in support of Dojarca (Irpen claimed he had the article on his watchlist, except that he never edited the topic previously and did not detect Renata3's move in January). A discussion was started on the talk page, along with subsequent searches revealing a trend that "Baltic states" was more common than "Baltic republics" by a factor of 10 to 1 in English usage, both during the time of the occupation and in current usage. At that point Irpen began a vote prematurely before the discussion was fully developed, contrary to guidelines that state that early votes can be divisive. The appearance of User:Deacon of Pndapetzim magically followed (I don't recall him ever editing any article about the Baltic states before) to stack the voting. The move request was subsequently closed with no concensus.

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Evidence presented by User:X

{Write your assertion here}

Place argument and diffs which support your assertion; for example, your first assertion might be "So-and-so engages in edit warring", which should be the title of this section. Here you would show specific edits to specific articles which show So-and-so engaging in edit warring.

{Write your assertion here}

Place argument and diffs which support the second assertion; for example, your second assertion might be "So-and-so makes personal attacks", which should be the title of this section. Here you would show specific edits where So-and-so made personal attacks.

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