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Clarification request: Fæ/R2.1 Bot Edits

Initiated by — xaosflux Talk at 14:36, 8 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Case or decision affected
Fæ arbitration case (t) (ev / t) (w / t) (pd / t)
Link to relevant decision: Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Fæ#January_2015:_Remedy_2.1

List of any users involved or directly affected, and confirmation that all are aware of the request:

Statement by Xaosflux

Greetings, I am a WP:BAG member and we are currently reviewing a BRFA (Wikipedia:Bots/Requests_for_approval/Commons_fair_use_upload_bot_3) operated by User:Fæ. Seeking clarification on Remedy 2.1, to determine if BAG may authorize Fæ's bot (assuming it meet's all other qualifications) to perform tasks that may run afoul of his topic ban regarding "images relating to sexuality, broadly construed" - as the bot may potentially edit interact with "images relating to sexuality". — xaosflux Talk 14:41, 8 January 2015 (UTC); (removals and additions — xaosflux Talk 15:16, 8 January 2015 (UTC))[reply]

  • @Courcelles: No intrusion on BAG domain, we are primarily concerned with: the technical aspects of a bot, that it operates within policy, and that there is a community consensus for the activity to take place. With all bot edits being the responsibility of the operator and this restriction in place we are attempting to determine if this is permissible under the restriction or not, if ARBCOM wants to add logging requirements as a condition of the restriction on the operator that is fine as far as the bot approval would go. — xaosflux Talk 23:42, 8 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Fæ

Firstly, I suggest everyone keep in mind that User:Commons fair use upload bot is a good thing, intended to help sustain Wikipedia content and avoid the deletion of images on Commons with demonstrable educational value from being lost to Wikipedia. Any decision or outcome here should be positive for the encyclopedia.

I summarized the technical situation in the BAG request linked above. The request here is slightly misleadingly worded. The Commons fair use upload bot does not "edit" images, nor does it insert them into Wikipedia or Wikipedia articles, it can only ensure images continue to be on Wikipedia unchanged in a way that the reader would never notice.

Though I do not believe a further motion is needed, this does raise a more general issue that Arbcom may wish to clarify, in that this topic ban or future modified versions on my single editing account cannot be relevant to authorized bots, given that BAG decisions over the last few years show that no bot would be acting as an article editor. I would be highly concerned if the "broadly construed" subject of sexuality were to apply to automated bots targeted at general maintenance, as this effectively reverses the Arbcom decision to allow me to be a bot operator by making automated action almost impossible without an advance human review on each action. One might imagine that if the operators of fully automatic archiving bots were to receive a topic or interaction ban on their main account that they would have to abandon such bots for the duration of a the ban, which would be an unintended damaging consequence if bans are intended to be precautionary rather than punitive.

I read the Arbcom placed topic ban placed after I was unbanned as already requiring me to avoid deliberately by-passing the topic ban using other accounts, just as it would require me to avoid 'directing' other editors in a manner that would be interpreted as meat puppetry. Were the operation of a bot be potentially interpreted as being able to by-pass the ban, say because myself as the operator were able to direct its actions making it an oddly Heath Robinson editing tool, then I am sure this would come up at the BAG discussion and a flag would be refused until this were made impossible. --Fæ (talk) 15:07, 8 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Added a strike above to reflect diff. --Fæ (talk) 15:48, 8 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
@Courcelles: Yes. I can confirm that the bot picks up images before they are deleted from Commons and localizes them (the bot does not need admin rights on Commons to work). This is why the reader would not know that anything had happened. --Fæ (talk) 20:37, 8 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
With regard to your follow-on question, I can add a log. Keep in mind that the same data sits in our public wiki logs for images and the edit log for the bot, so this data was fairly easy to track using current systems. Rather than making surplus edits on en.wp, I would rather that a text audit log is kept on WMFlabs (a facility for easy linking to files was only announced this week, see wikitech). Audit logs on labs are normal for helping track or debug other tools and fits rather better with the fact that we would really want a simple cross-project log and track the same data for projects like Wikisource as well as Wikipedia and other projects that opt in at future dates without having to rewrite much in the core code or have to set up odd log pages on each project. When the tool is running, we can add a prominent link to the audit log(s) on the bot user page for anyone interested to browse.
By the way, as mentioned above on the BAG request discussion, only Commons administrators can request that images up for deletion use this bot for local copies to be made. As I am not a Commons administrator at this time, it is already impossible for me to make this request. --Fæ (talk) 22:44, 8 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
@GorillaWarfare: @Seraphimblade: I hear what you say. I do not believe it is appropriate for any bot operator to run bots that enforce their personal editorial values, neither do I imagine that the Bot Approval Group would let such bots run on this project. If I have to have my ban lifted before it is realistic for me to operate bots on this project, then I will prepare a request, however due to real life stuff I was not planning to have to think about that for a while. --Fæ (talk) 20:37, 8 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
@NE Ent: I agree that reading the source code addresses the points made about whether the operator has some sort of editorial control. Arbcom need not make another resolution or motion on this for it to be effected. Firstly, before this request was raised, I had already chosen and declared that I will publish the active code on Github, secondly the Wikitech:Labs terms of use require the code to be freely licensed and open source, in fact anyone with an account on labs can browse everyone else's projects, and thirdly the BAG process, which is required by the recent Arbcom motion (even though this was the only way to get a bot flag on the English Wikipedia), ensures that the source code is published in order for it to be reviewed. --Fæ (talk) 08:22, 9 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Gaijin42

I think the arbs who have already commented should reconsider. Actions taken by the bot where Fae has no editorial input or decision making should not be subject to the ban. The analogy to the archiving bots is quite apt. However, if the bot were discovered to have special logic in it to apply in the banned area differently or preferentially, that would be a very severe issue as it would indicate deliberate circumvention of the ban. Gaijin42 (talk) 19:57, 8 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by NE Ent

Pass this with the stipulation that the code remain open source (https://github.com/wikigit/Commons-fair-use-upload-bot); simpler than trying to infer the logic from a log. NE Ent 01:00, 9 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by {other user}

Clerk notes

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

Fæ/R2.1 Bot Edits: Arbitrator views and discussion

  • recuse (as I was recused on the motion that enacted this remedy). Thryduulf (talk) 16:47, 8 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • We did authorize you to operate bot accounts, but we did not relax your restriction for this purpose. Although I recognize that applying this restriction to fully-automated accounts will be challenging, I feel you are still expected to keep the bot from editing these areas. If you feel this is impossible, then you will either need to appeal that restriction, or have someone else operate the bot. GorillaWarfare (talk) 18:58, 8 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Actually, after more thought, I've changed my stance here. It would be inappropriate for Fae to create and operate a bot that was intentionally editing in the areas from which he was restricted, but bots such as this (that have been identified at necessary, and are reviewed by the BAG as being appropriate) should not be needlessly restricted because of restrictions on the operator. GorillaWarfare (talk) 22:00, 8 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Agreed with GorillaWarfare. It would be necessary either to find a way to keep the bot from making edits in the restricted areas, appeal to have the restrictions lifted, or have someone else operate the bot. Having someone else operate it is an option, provided they understand they will be fully responsible for all edits the bot makes, as is true of any bot operator. Seraphimblade Talk to me 19:53, 8 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Fæ: Is my understanding correct: The bot does not edit articles, it only uploads images here that are about to be, or have been, deleted Commonsside? And it uploads them under the same name, such that no edits to articles are required? Or does the bot run after the (renamed, but y'all know what I mean) CommonsDelinker ran, such that a revert on the actual article would be required? Courcelles 20:16, 8 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Given that the underlying task is pretty much uncontroversial (the former owner ran it with no problems I'm aware of) and that the control of which images to upload here is not being made by Fae, but rather editors on Commons who add Commons:Template:Fair use delete to image pages, I'm rather mindful to craft something to just allow the task to go forwards with a minimum of problems. Courcelles 21:52, 8 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Fæ: Hate to do this again, and I also hate to stray too close to acting like BAG, but would it be possible to modify the bot to make a log page here on enwp of which files were transferred, what article they were used on at the time of transfer, and which editor Commonside asked for the transfer? Because what I'm currently thinking is somehow to allow the BOT to be fine moving such images, but for you, yourself, to not be allowed to request such transfer. If we had a log, I think that could walk a fine line between letting the bot be fully functional, yet staying inside your personal restrictions. Courcelles 22:08, 8 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think (tentatively) that I agree with Courcelles (as I understand him to be saying). As long as it does only the technical function narrowly defined, it would not be a violation if by accident some sexual images got caught up in it. DGG ( talk ) 00:35, 9 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Amendment request: Richard Arthur Norton (1958- )

Initiated by Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) at 21:22, 26 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Case or decision affected
Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Richard_Arthur_Norton_(1958-_)#Richard_Arthur_Norton_.281958-_.29.27s_topic_ban_on_article_creation

List of any users involved or directly affected, and confirmation that all are aware of the request:

Statement by Richard Arthur Norton

I am currently following Wikipedia rules on attributing source material and have been creating articles in my user space at User:Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) as examples. I would like my restrictions on 1) creating new content in Wikipedia space lifted and 2) on adding images to dead people's profiles under fair use lifted.

I have gone over my earliest edits to attribute the source material used and rewrite blocks of text where the writing was insufficiently altered. I have not found any additional ones and no one has brought to me any further examples that need work. Any additional ones found in the future will be fixed right away. I would like to continue adding images to dead people's biographies under fair use. I will use the most current template and make sure it is filled-in as completely as possible.

@Wizardman: Your last edit at the CCI was removing the quote parameter from the reference saying "such a long quote is a fair use violation. especially for a one-sentence article." yet the source material was published in 1911 and is in the public domain. If you want to lobby for the removal of the quote parameter from references it is better to do it at the talk page of the template, than to remove them ad hoc under the guise of a fair use violation or a copyright violation. This is an issue that needs to be resolved globally. If you think snippets used as quotes should be one word, or one sentence, this should be argued at the talk page of the template. That is why the count is so high. That needs to be resolved at the Wikipedia level. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 19:28, 29 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
@All: It would take an additional 10 years to go over 10 years worth of edits. Why don't we run one of the bots designed to look for strings of text matching outside sources. I think Coren bot was one of them ... and run it against every article in Wikipedia. And rank them based on how much text appears in the article. It can ignore text in parenthesis and in the quote= function and ignore works published before 1923. A bot would be objective instead of the subjective way it is done now. One person decides that the quote= function from public domain sources is a copyright violation. One person was saying that the title of articles in Wikipedia represents a copyright violation and was truncating all the New York Times headlines down to the first sentence, and counting that as a violation. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 20:33, 30 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Carrite

Richard Norton is celebrating 10 years as a Wikipedian tomorrow. He stands as #124 on the Most Edits list with over 153,000 edits (he is a plain editor, not someone with a bot-inflated count). He is #96 on the new starts list, with more than 3,000 articles started. Of these, a very small fraction, mostly c. 2005-2007 were problematic — granted that a very small fraction of a huge number is significant. Regardless, he now understands copyright rules with respect to WP content. No one has complained of copyvio in his work of the past year or two... Richard has a huge backlog of new material to be moved to mainspace, the current system of proxy-editing his starts is not working. He will be under very close scrutiny for any future copyright violation, rest assured. The current restriction upon him (which was ill-advised in the first place) does nothing but fetter his work and should be ended. Carrite (talk) 02:56, 27 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Psychonaut. The CCI case will never be completed. Their methodology does not scale and, as you mention, their backlog is massive and growing. In short summary: it only takes three demonstrated instances of copyvio to open a case. Once opened, a case can never be closed without each and every edit in the history of the subject of the inquiry being hand-checked. For a new contributor or a small-scale contributor, this is possible; for one of the most prolific contributors in the history of Wikipedia — as RAN is — it is not possible. CCI had fewer than a dozen really active volunteers at the time of the Norton case, these to handle every single case. It's an absolute waste of RAN's time as a content-writer to be hunting copy vio needles in haystacks (not to mention it's probably not going to happen, not to mention it would be a subject of a copyvio investigation policing the ancient edits made by himself...) Carrite (talk) 10:42, 28 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
There are 46 unresolved cases older than the Norton case, which was launched in November 2011 — more than 3 years ago! There are 106 additional unresolved cases that have been launched since the Norton case was launched. Not only does CCI's investigative model not scale as it needs to for the Norton case, CCI is an absolutely inadequate, completely bogged down, massively and irretrievably understaffed institution. Mr. Norton's early editing will never, ever, ever be investigated and corrected by CCI. We can point at glossy pictures of "pillars" for newcomers to Wikipedia all we want, but the fact is: done is done, it's not gonna be undone, and the question is whether there is a problem going forward and are we willing to cut off our noses to spite our faces? RAN is not a threat to produce additional copyright violations and he has not been for a long time. He's not going to redo a decade's worth of editing because a minor fraction of his early editing was problematic. He's a content writer and he's writing content. The simple question is this: are we gonna improve the encyclopedia by using it or not? Carrite (talk) 22:11, 28 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Fram

As the one that brought the case against Richard Arthur Norton here in the first place, I have no objection against lifting the restriction on creation of new content (i.e. articles) in the mainspace. His user space articles seem to be copyright-violation free. I believe he still has a tendency to use quotes excessively (in footnotes), but that is less of a problem and doesn't need a restriction if it doesn't get a lot worse. As for the image restriction, I'm less convinced that there won't be problems with this, but have no recent evidence for this. Fram (talk) 16:48, 27 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Psychonaut

Richard Arthur Norton is asking for his restriction to be lifted on the basis that he has fixed all his past copyright violations, and that no one has brought any further ones to his attention. However, at his CCI (Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/20111108) there remain literally tens of thousands of edits to thousands of articles yet to be checked. It's true that no further copyvios have been found there since 2013, but consider that no one has even been processing the CCI since that year. (Sadly, CCI has such a backlog that cases there often languish for months or years between edits.) We simply cannot take the lack of any recent discoveries in the CCI as evidence that they don't exist. In fact, I would wager that if processing were resumed, many further copyvios would be uncovered.

In light of this, I wonder if, rather than allowing him to start creating new pages again, it might not be a better use of Richard Arthur Norton's time to assist in the massive cleanup of the old ones. Keeping the restriction in place until such time as the CCI is completed might give him a greater impetus to clear the backlog.

I haven't been involved in this particular CCI but am pinging those who were most active in it (User:Sphilbrick, User:Hut 8.5, User:Moonriddengirl, User:Wizardman, User:MER-C, User:Amalthea, and User:Bilby) in case they want to weigh in. —Psychonaut (talk) 17:57, 27 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Carrite: Except for the very smallest edits, this is not a "finding needles in a haystack" problem; it is a "shooting fish in a barrel" problem. On the first page of the CCI alone, 36% of the articles checked so far were found to contain copyvios. Richard Arthur Norton is uniquely qualified to identify his sources, since he's the one who found and copied from them in the first place. He could save us all a lot of time by actively marking and fixing the positive cases. No matter how understaffed CCI is, we can't simply throw up our hands and ignore the copyvios; ensuring that our articles are free content is one of our core principles. —Psychonaut (talk) 11:34, 28 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Wizardman

I'd be okay with lifting the restrictions had he been active in helping remove any copyright issues and helping out on his investigation. Instead, There have been next to no edits in 2014 on his CCI, sans a slew I just did. The fact that we have found more than a few just on the first page shows that this is something he has to work on. Yes, CCI is forever backlogged, but if he's not helping then I can't sympathize. Wizardman 22:45, 28 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Rich Farmbrough

As I have stated before, the original case against Richard Arthur Norton 1958- was soggy to say the least.

Richard quite correctly says, and others reflect, that the amount of work required to manually check every contribution he has ever made is enormous, and indeed there are more pressing cases such as Jagged, which introduced falsehoods as well as huge obvious copyvios, into Wikipedia and more widely, and have largely been abandoned (some of my more recent work on this can be seen on meta) - given the lack of decent tools, and those permitted to run them.

I can see no reason that we should perpetuate the sanctions against Richard Arthur Norton 1958- which were always punitive rather than preventive.

I wholeheartedly commend this amendment to the Committee.

A Happy New-Year! Rich Farmbrough, 23:59, 31 December 2014 (UTC).

Statement by Hut 8.5

We do have some bots which scan new pages for potential copyright violations of things found elsewhere on the web. However my understanding is that it isn't possible to use these on existing pages because many sites copy or mirror Wikipedia content and the bot would pick these up as potential infringements. Even with new pages these bots make plenty of mistakes and their output needs extensive review by humans. I would be very surprised if anyone manages to write a bot that can figure out when a piece of text was first published.

The only edits RAN has ever made to the CCI are [1] [2]. While it isn't reasonable to insist that RAN clear the CCI before the restrictions are lifted, it is reasonable to expect him to do something. Hut 8.5 20:55, 2 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by { other user }

Clerk notes

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

Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ): Arbitrator views and discussion

  • Awaiting any further statements. Statements should focus on whether the concerns about Mr. Norton's editing that prompted us to impose the restriction have been addressed in his more recent editing. Newyorkbrad (talk) 04:44, 27 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'd like to hear some more statements before making any decision (which may not happen before disappear off the committee), but in principle, I'd certainly have no issue with easing these restrictions to allow Richard to show he's able to work without causing issues especially if he has put right what's been pointed out. WormTT(talk) 11:25, 27 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm amenable to applying the standard "parole" (i.e. we lift the sanction, but for the first year it may be reimposed by any uninvolved admin, in the event of further problems). Salvio Let's talk about it! 12:01, 27 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'd also like to hear from those originally involved, but absent any serious and recent concerns, I'd be amenable to Salvio's suggestion. Seraphimblade Talk to me 20:28, 27 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    • Based upon Wizardman's statement, it looks like it's not yet time to look at removing these as the conditions for doing so haven't been fulfilled. For reference, though, once that is done, I would certainly be happy to support relaxing these restrictions, and don't in any way hope for them to be permanent. Seraphimblade Talk to me 21:10, 30 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • It is a little soon, in my book, to be loosening restrictions applied in 2013. I am likely to oppose the motion suggested above, at least for the time being: the issues identified in the original case, although diminishing, are not clearly gone. Decline. AGK [•] 23:17, 27 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • The restriction states, in part; "in order for appeals of this remedy to be considered, he shall be required to submit evidence of substantial work on his part towards resolving the Contributor Copyright Investigations filed against him". Is any evidence available? Wizardman only speaks to 2014, but the restriction wa spassed in the first half of 2013. Courcelles 23:55, 29 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • The remedy provides that "in order for appeals of this remedy to be considered, he shall be required to submit evidence of substantial work on his part towards resolving the Contributor Copyright Investigations filed against him, most particularly the one focused on his text contributions." I see no such evidence submitted in this request. Decline. T. Canens (talk) 02:44, 30 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Decline per the evidence given by Wizardman --Guerillero | My Talk 17:49, 30 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • At the moment I'm leaning towards decline given Wizardman's statement, but will wait a few days to see if any of the other CCI regulars involved who were pinged by Psychonaut have anything else to add. Dougweller (talk) 17:50, 1 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Courcelles' and Timotheus Canens' points are valid, and I don't see Richard Arthur Norton (1958- )'s comment above about using a bot to scan all of Wikipedia for copyvios to be terribly relevant. Is there evidence that you could provide of work on your part to the CCI? GorillaWarfare (talk) 03:50, 2 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Decline as the condition cited above is not met - no particular evidence of "substantial work on RAN's part towards resolving the Contributor Copyright Investigations filed against him, most particularly the one focused on his text contributions." I sympathise with the amount of time it would take to review every single past edit for copyright violations, but a) that is not the condition in the remedy, which only requires "substantial work," and b) presumably RAN knows where the likely copyvios are and can address them quicker than others might. The fact that there are other even older lists of copvios to be checked, or that the CCI backlog is very long, are not relevant to this specific remedy. Re bots - sounds great but it doesn't exist as far as I know, so it's not an immediately practical solution. Lastly I note Courcelles' question above - would happily reconsider if evidence was now provided of RAN's "substantial work" towards the CCI investigation from 2013 (or any other time). -- Euryalus (talk) 07:32, 2 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Decline per Eurylaus. Absent evidence that RAN has done "substantial work" on reducing the backlog of his own CCI there is no benefit to Wikipedia in altering this restriction. The aim of the restriction was not punitive but rather to improve the project by removing doubt about the copyright status of articles he potentially added copyright infringing material to by either removing any copyvios or showing they are clean. By doing this it would also assist his demonstrating an understanding of copyright issues and how they affect the project, without which it would be be very difficult to be comfortable the problems would not reoccur. That is not the only way that understanding could be demonstrated, nor does that understanding alone guarantee the restrictions will be lifted, but it would be a Good Thing all round. Thryduulf (talk) 10:06, 2 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Decline per Thryduulf. That we will never completely clear up CCI is not an argument against trying to at least partially improve the situation there. DGG ( talk ) 00:45, 3 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • My colleagues have already exhausted the reasons for my opinion. I'm obviously willing to consider a change when there is significant effort put in to clearing the CCI, without that, Decline. I do thank RAN for making the attempts in his userspace to show his attempt to resolve the issue. -- DQ (ʞlɐʇ) 05:26, 3 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Amendment request: Infoboxes

Initiated by Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) at 01:11, 20 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Case affected
Infoboxes arbitration case (t) (ev / t) (w / t) (pd / t)
Clauses to which an amendment is requested
  1. Remedy 1.1 - Pigsonthewing and infoboxes
List of users affected by or involved in this amendment
Confirmation that the above users are aware of this request
Information about amendment request

Statement by Callanecc

I know it's another Infoboxes request, but bear with me, this one will (hopefully) be easy and uncontroversial.

There was an AE request filed which requested enforcement against Pigsonthewing requesting and discussing deletion of infoboxes at WP:TfD. The consensus among admins was there was an implication that the restriction applies to articles only however as this is not clear in the provision there would continue to be misunderstanding and possibly further AE requests closed without action being possible. So this request (as an uninvolved admin carrying out the close of the request) is for a motion with the following wording:

Remedy 1.1 of the Infoboxes arbitration case is amended to read:

Pigsonthewing is indefinitely banned from adding, or discussing the addition or removal of, infoboxes from articles.

@AGK: The original remedy has been interpreted as discussing the removal of an infobox template, as they are used in articles the interpretation as far as enforcement goes was the remedy applied to articles. If that is incorrect then enforcing admins have interpreted it outside it's intention so it needs to be clarified. Something like adding "in all namespaces, including {all discussions/requests for deletion} at WP:Templates for discussion and similar discussions at other venues" to the end of the remedy.
@Courcelles: I'd suggest dropping "to improve their functionality" as leaving it would require admins to decide whether an edit improved it or not (unless that was the attention). Other than that it sounds good to me. Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 12:22, 30 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Francis Schonken

Disagree with Callanecc's proposal. Here we see Pigsonthewing going in denial about an unresolved issue regarding infoboxes, removing the link to where the discussion of that issue was taking place: unnecessary & unhelpful – if it is qualified as "unhelpful" to try resolve an actual infoboxes issue the resulting impression remains that many months after the conclusion of the Infoboxes case at least some infoboxes proponents prefer to go largely in denial about the issues at hand.

If anything, an amendment to the Infoboxes case should imho further restrict PotW's actions regarding infoboxes. --Francis Schonken (talk) 11:39, 20 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

"...I'd be in favour of a gordian solution: let's simply ban Andy from anything infobox-related across all namespaces" [3] is the one I like best. Failing a compromise on that, I suppose "...discard the invented interpretation that this restriction applies only to the mainspace..." [4] would do best. Courcelles' rewrite attempts appear to be going nowhere: they add complexity, and thus confusion, so, no more than fertilizer to future distraction. --Francis Schonken (talk) 11:50, 1 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
On a related note, this edit by PotW seems to attract controversy – indeed it would have been better to talk to involved parties first, before cluttering many main namespace pages with a rather technical in-crowd notice. --Francis Schonken (talk) 10:55, 7 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Gerda Arendt

@Francis: "Comments here should be directed only at the above proposed amendment." - We are not discussing here your bold change to a project page of a project of which you are not even a member, claiming that it is a "disadvantage" of infoboxes that a certain program extracting a PDF fails to render the image. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 12:14, 20 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@AussieLegend, who said that "Andy does nominate a lot of infoboxes for deletion or merging". This is true, and this is good for the project. Look for example at {{infobox hymn}} (specialised, old-fashioned, with camel-case parameter names and no room for an image), nominated to be merged to the more general flexible {{infobox musical composition}}. It seems desirable to have only few, well maintained infobox templates, - I use {{infobox person}} for all people. Thank you, Andy, for the unrewarded cleanup work in the field. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 14:18, 29 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@CT Cooper: You say: "What is in dispute is the way in which Andy goes about doing these things." I say: It is not, the dispute is if the restriction is worded precisely enough and nothing else. (Not if it's a good restriction, and not in which way Andy goes about things). In the example above, he didn't talk first to users - and how would you find out which editors use infobox hymn? Seems kind of not practical, on top of being unrelated to the question here. I was pleased about his initiative to merge, - I would have been to lazy to try it myself.

See also "honourable mention", and enjoy a happy and peaceful 2015! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 10:01, 31 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@AussieLegend: the phrase "testing his boundaries" was used related to an edit which was brought to arbitration enforcement: formatting a malformed infobox. Instead of a simple "thank you" for helping a new user who wanted an infobox but didn't know how to code it, the edit received attention on three noticeboards. I asked the candidates for arbitration about it, they said "no foul, play on". I add "playful" to my wishes for 2015 ;) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 12:26, 31 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Ched's question: no, thank you --Gerda Arendt (talk) 14:39, 31 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@DGG: You made the effort of adding a statement, generally addressing experts "who are not willing to follow community norms". Please name one specific incidence as an example of what you mean. I rather see certain projects not willing to follow community norms, at least back then in 2013. However, the ice seems to be breaking. Compare the discussions in the archive of Rigoletto talk and what you see today. I joined project opera again. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 09:05, 4 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Rich Farmbrough

If that was, or reasonably seems to be, the intention of the original wording, then the amendment should be made without cavil. And I would say that it clearly is the substantive intention. Any desire to extend the sanction should be the subject of a different process.

All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 15:27, 20 December 2014 (UTC).

Statement by Thryduulf

Note I'm commenting here as an involved editor, not as an incoming arbitrator

I fully support this, as this matches how the restriction has been interpreted on multiple occasions at AE. Indeed, I would go further and explicitly add a second sentence "Pigsonthewing may nominate and discuss infobox templates at Wikipedia:Templates for discussion." to fully avoid any ambiguity. Thryduulf (talk) 19:31, 20 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Salvio giuliano: Please can you give some evidence of Andy testing the boundaries? There have been several cases where people have tried to get Andy in trouble, but on every occasion the community as agreed that Andy has done nothing wrong and has not breached the restriction, which does not prohibit him discussing the changing of infoboxes that are on articles by consensus of other people. Gordian knot solutions are only suitable as a last resort when nothing else can work, but in this case there is a very simple amendment that can be made to achieve the same ends with no disruption going forward. It is completely inappropriate to penalise an editor when they are following the restrictions because other people are confused by it. Thryduulf (talk) 13:31, 28 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@AGK: The interpreation that this applies only to article space has been the one made by the community every time it has been asked, and has been upheld every time its been before the committee. Doing nothing now only guarantees more disruption. Thryduulf (talk) 13:31, 28 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Courcelles: I think your proposal is a good start, but I'd word it as:

"Pigsonthewing is prohibited from adding an infobox to any article, or participating in discussions related to whether an article or group of articles should include an infobox. He is explicitly allowed to:
  • Edit infobox templates
  • Change the type of infobox used on an article
  • Add, remove or change the information displayed in an infobox
  • Nominate and discuss specific infobox templates at templates for discussion or other appropriate venue (including template talk and wikiproject talk pages)."

This incorporates your response to Rich Farmbrough and Callanecc's proposed change. It also explicitly permits nominating infobox templates at TfD for any reason (to avoid any wikilawyering about whether nominating something for e.g. deletion is nominating it for "discussion"), participating in discussions other than at TfD (e.g. he can discus a template on it's talk page and partipate in a WikiProject's discussion of an infobox relevant to their project. I've included the word "specific" to make it clear this isn't permission to discuss the merits or otherwise of infoboxes as a concept) changing the type of infobox (per previous clarification requests, and which not all participants in this discussion are apparently aware of) and changing the information in an infobox that already exists (I'm not aware this has been controversial yet, but given the nature of this topic it's better to be explicit and prevent that). The bullets are just my preference for long lists of simple items over short lists of more complex ones. Thryduulf (talk) 10:36, 2 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I feel I should make it explicit that the topic ban remains unchanged in this proposal, the bullets are simply clarifications to the scope (which have been proven required) not exceptions to it. Thryduulf (talk) 12:36, 2 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@DGG: Please can you provide some evidence of disruption at TfD actually caused by Andy rather than other people disrupting TfD's Andy has opened? If a discussion is closed as "no, because X needs to be done first" it is not disruptive to nominate the same template again when X has been done. Thryduulf (talk) 10:40, 3 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Courcelles: That motion is very good, although it leaves things ambiguous about whether he may participate in other discussions about infoboxes at TfD, and whether he may discuss templates at venues other than TfD (e.g. template talk pages). Sadly the history this dispute has shown that people will use these ambiguities to wikilawyer and harass Andy. Thryduulf (talk) 00:29, 9 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by NE Ent

AGK although personally I agree with you -- as discussed on the linked AE thread -- this is clarification and amendment. Given the requesters have a good faith question about the scope of the sanction, a comment indicating your interpretation would be helpful. NE Ent 23:40, 27 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Harry Mitchell

(Note: Andy is a personal friend of mine IRL so, although I have no strong feelings about infoboxes, I don't claim to be 'uninvolved'.)

This is silly. The locus of the dispute was around the addition of infoboxes to articles. The dispute was between Andy et al and members of the classical music project over whether or not articles in that project's scope should have infoboxes, and all other infobox-related disruption that led to the original arbitration case was spillover from the resulting interpersonal disputes. Essentially the project members adamantly refused to entertain the idea of infoboxes on their articles, Andy attempted to force the issue (resulting in edit wars and other disruption), the project members were very rude to Andy, Andy was equally charming in return and the whole thing deteriorated to a point where nothing could be achieved. The ban on adding/discussing infoboxes on articles was a proportionate (if grossly one-sided) remedy. Andy's participation at TfD was never part of the original dispute and his contributions regarding the technical implementation of infoboxes was never problematic. Indeed, the only disruption related to his participation at TfD has been the repeated misinterpretation (or indeed malinterpretation) of the remedy and its use as a stick to beat Andy for otherwise unproblematic edits.

The consensus at AE has at least twice been that Andy's participation at TfD is not within the scope of the remedy, so making this amendment would merely codify what is already practice and prevent further misguided enforcement requests—given the precedent, it is vanishingly unlikely that another AE thread would conclude that Andy's participation at TfD was a violation of the remedy, especially as that participation is not disruptive in and of itself. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 14:12, 28 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Courcelles: With Callan's caveat (removing "to improve their functionality", because it's better for all concerned not to leave things open to interpretation), I wholeheartedly endorse your proposed wording. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 12:40, 30 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by CT Cooper

I have been a part-observer/part-participant in the recent infobox controversies involving Eurovision related articles, an area in which I am active.

I presently accept, as does Wesley Mouse (talk · contribs) who raised the issue with him, that the remedy concerned does not cover his participation in TfDs. However, it is my view that editors should respond to restrictions by finding an entirely new area to edit, and not edit around them, regardless of whether it's permissible or not, as doing so often only causes further trouble. Recent events have only re-enforced this viewpoint in my eyes, as the behaviour of Andy at the TfDs and in related discussions was problematic and managed to cause a lot of completely avoidable infobox drama – one thing the remedy was supposed to put a stop to. I criticised him as an involved editor for some of his remarks (1, 2, 3), and he was admonished by an uninvolved administrator for a separate remark (4); an admonishment that Andy appears to have rejected (5). I'm not saying that all other editors in these discussions behaved perfectly, but this discussion is not about them.

As it stands, I will not support any amendment that endorses or otherwise encourages Andy to continue to edit in this area, but I will accept the proposed amendment as a simple clarification of the existing restrictions as they are currently interpreted. However, if the proposed amendment goes through and this behaviour from Andy continues, I believe it is only a matter of time before the Arbitration Committee will be asked to review this remedy again. CT Cooper · talk 18:37, 28 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@AGK: I disagree, the remedy is not clear at all. A person could reasonably interpret "adding, or discussing the addition or removal of, infoboxes" as covering TfDs as such discussion do often result in the addition or removal of infoboxes. Arbitrators seem to be giving us a variety of different answers here on what the restriction is intended to cover, which in my view is evidence in itself that the remedy doesn't work as currently worded. CT Cooper · talk 18:46, 28 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Gerda Arendt: Many of the TfD nominations were justified; that is not in dispute as far as I'm concerned. What is in dispute is the way in which Andy goes about doing these things.

@RexxS: In the case of Eurovision template there were already plans in motion to merge some redundant templates, but they weren't gong anywhere fast, so the effect of Andy's actions was a lot of unnecessary drama and the templates being panic merged in a poor fashion, which later had to be fixed by outside parties. I cannot speak about the details of other cases, but it is not true that Andy is the only person on the project which merges templates. As for this remedy being unrelated, well it clearly isn't that unrelated – the remedy was about infoboxes; this discussion is about infoboxes. Claims that they are unrelated hinge entirely on the current interpretation of the remedy, which given arbitrators' comments so far, may still be up for debate after all. CT Cooper · talk 17:49, 29 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Montanabw: No, the remedy is not clear that relates only to articles which is why this amendment has been proposed, and the merging/deletion of infoboxes inherently involves articles anyway. Actually, he has been admonished by an uninvolved admin at least once for incivility, which was name-calling, as was clearly indicated in my original statement. I took the courtesy of reading all prior statements before making my own, and I would appreciate it if other editors did the same. CT Cooper · talk 20:09, 29 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Fæ: Thank you for your input. If I had my way, this particular case would have never ended-up in front of ArbCom. On the Eurovision templates, I did attempt to informally mediate the situation by pointing out errors in the actions of both sides and noting that there was actually agreement that some templates needed to be merged; it was tragically only drama over how it was done that was getting in the way. Unfortunately however, the issue spiralled out of control very quickly, and so here we are. If the proposed amendment goes through or no further action is taken by ArbCom, I would welcome an uninvolved administrator to come in and mediate should Andy choose to continue to be involved in Eurovision templates. CT Cooper · talk 21:55, 29 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@RexxS: In my statement I have clearly stated that I accept the motion as proposed; said motion is not "trying to remove just Andy from template discussions". Yes other editors have not behaved well at times, that is undeniable, but Andy is the one that got himself subject to ArbCom sanctions and so this discussion is about him and him alone – I know some people are unhappy about that, but that is the reality of the situation. Actions against other editors are for another venue such as WP:ANI.

I have already presented clear evidence (I am the only person here to have actually presented diffs), which clearly shows problematic behaviour from Andy. My area of contact with Andy is limited to Eurovision templates, and there maybe kernels of truth that Andy has been unjustly criticised elsewhere, which is why I have no quarrel with some statements supportive of Andy, even if they present things from a different perspective from my own. What I take exception to it people appearing to turn-up to engage in cheer-leading and to simplistically declare that anyone who dares have a grievance against Andy is somehow on an template ownership driven witch-hunt, without taking the time to review what the grievances against Andy actually are, let alone reviewing the full facts of the matter before commenting.

I could present more evidence or elaborate in much more detail on why Andy's behaviour was at times unacceptable, but my main motive here is not to get Andy "punished" or further restricted. What I'm interested in ensuring that the sanctions are properly defined and that Andy refrains from further problematic behaviour so this doesn't need to come in front of ArbCom again. On the latter, I view coming to ArbCom as an absolute last resort and I've stated clearly that I'm open to options which are far more favourable to Andy. TfD discussions inherently involve adding and removing infoboxes from articles, and the remedy covered discussions on such matters, so yes they are related, though whether they are covered by the sanction or not is a matter for ArbCom to decide. I hope they do so soon. In the meantime, I will present more evidence if and when ArbCom requests it; I don't answer to anyone else on that subject. CT Cooper · talk 14:51, 30 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Courcelles: A think a complete re-wording is a good idea, and something along those lines is acceptable to me. However, as I alluded to in my opening statement, there needs to be a change of behaviour from Andy for this to be a workable resolution. CT Cooper · talk 15:18, 30 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@RexxS: I think I was clear that I'm happy to accept the current interpretation (in fact, I said so in the second sentence of my statement), with my support for the motion being motivated by a desire to help set the current interpretation in stone. Any comments from me which stated the interpretation was up for debate again were in a response to some arbitrators appearing to want to review this, though I will let them speak for themselves on that. It remains my view that people should respond to restrictions by finding completely new areas to edit, rather than editing around them, though I accept that nobody is obliged to follow this advice and I have not at any point actively pushed for the current interpretation of the remedy to be altered. If in the future I reach the conclusion that stronger sanctions are needed, I will ask for new sanctions at an appropriate venue, not for re-interpretations of existing ones.

The merging of templates sometimes does involve removing existing templates from articles – such as when merging multiple templates together into a new one, as was carried out with Eurovision templates recently, but I won't quibble over such technicalities and a completely revised wording should resolve this. I agree that merging little used templates is generally a good thing, and I don't think anyone is suggesting that such activities are in themselves a problem. What is the problem is the way Andy sometimes goes about doing this, as highlighted in my evidence. Does that justify new sanctions at this point? Probably not, but if the problematic behaviour continues, that situation might change. Certainly I think lifting all the sanctions is out of the question at this point, at least until Andy proves he is ready for it. CT Cooper · talk 19:42, 30 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Gerda Arendt: I disagree, as rightly or wrongly, it was ultimately Andy's behaviour that led to this coming back to ArbCom, starting with an enforcement request, which has now been followed by this request for clarification and amendment. Myself and other editors at WikiProject Eurovision didn't even know Andy was under an ArbCom restriction to start with, and it could have easily stayed that way. I'm afraid I'm not following the rest of your points, though I've been familiar with Andy's highly positive contributions in various areas for a good while, which if I'm honest, is one reason I was as actually quite shocked to find out that he did have such a long history with ArbCom. A happy New Year to you too! CT Cooper · talk 14:56, 31 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Littleolive oil: When quoting my comments, please give proper attribution and proper context. That is my view based on experience with similar situations to this one, but I have also made clear that I have given my support to clarifying the current sanctions, rather than to expanding them. CT Cooper · talk 11:51, 3 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by AussieLegend

There really does need to be greater clarification regarding this, since much of the problem involves Andy's participation at TfDs, especially when he nominates and then sometimes re-nominates the same templates without attempting to involve himself in discussion with end users or maintainers of the template. Quite often we see "Redundant to....." as the rationale, when in fact this is not the case. An example is {{Infobox Ireland station}} which, along with {{Infobox NI station}}, Andy nominated last year. The result of the discussion was that Infobox Ireland station was kept and Infobox NI station was merged into it. Not satisfied with the result, as has happened before, Andy has now re-nominated Infobox Ireland station today. Forcing the community to go through the same process over and over until he achieves the desired result can be seen to be disruptive, and this is what forces people to file AE Requests, especially since deletion of an infobox can be interpreted as removing it from an article, even if it is replaced by another. If the restriction placed on Andy is only applicable to articles, then this needs to be set in stone. If this isn't done, then more AE Requests are likely to be filed as Andy does nominate a lot of infoboxes for deletion or merging. --AussieLegend (✉) 13:32, 29 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Gerda Arendt: - Yes, reducing the number of templates can be beneficial but that's not always the case. For example, Andy has now nominated {{Infobox Rome episode}} for deletion (again). In the process, and regardless of the outcome of the TfD, he has removed code from the template that now opens the way for somebody to justifiably create two additional templates regardless of the TfD outcome. Andy has a narrow focus when it comes to templates and doesn't always look at the big picture. --AussieLegend (✉) 15:24, 29 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Courcelles: - The wording is an improvement, but I don't think it is enough. One of the things that I've been complaining about for some time is that Andy almost never (99.9% of the time) seems to engage in discussion with template maintainers or end users before nominating infoboxes for deletion or merging. The restriction would seem to encourage him not to engage in discussion which, to me at least, seems counterproductive. An example is the nomination for {{Infobox Australian road}}, which was specifically kept after extended discussion, including an RfC attended by members of the Highways and Australian Roads projects. If Andy had discussed this first, the TfD might not have happened. I feel Andy's restriction should require that he engage in discussion before nominating infoboxes. At the very least it should encourage such discussion but, as it stands, it encourages him to nominate and sort it out at TfD, which can be a combative venue, and Andy seems to be taking advantage of this based on his recent nominations. --AussieLegend (✉) 09:35, 31 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Thryduulf: Does replacing one infobox with another in an article qualify as "Andy testing the boundaries". There has been no consensus for this change. --AussieLegend (✉) 11:28, 31 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Or this. --AussieLegend (✉) 11:35, 31 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@RexxS: I really don't appreciate your accusations of mud-slinging. It's been said here that Andy's restriction extends only to article space and here we have two edits in article space where he has effectively added an infobox. The restriction does not make it clear that changing is not part of the restriction. The change he made doesn't make sense when all of the related articles use a different infobox and his change removed content from display. He made that change specifically as a test. He could have easily created the example in his user space or at Template:Infobox Rome episode/testcases where there is a side by side comparison.

You want Andy to search around for all the people who edit your templates or use them before being allowed to start a discussion at Templates for Discussion? No, it's simply common courtesy to discuss use of a template with the end users first. Andy avoids that at all costs. He doesn't have to "search around for all the people", it's usually just a matter of going to the template's talk page to identify the end user project and opening a discussion on the project's talk page. Andy is so inconsiderate that he won't even leave a simple note, leaving others to do it for him.[5] He refuses to even add |type=infobox to TfD notices because the option is not available in Twinkle,[6] which regularly upsets other users.[7] Andy selectively forgets that Wikipedia is supposed to be a collaborative effort and it's that attitude that has resulted in an extremely long block log and sanctions. His negative interactions with so many editors necessitates making the wording of those sanctions very clear because not everyone can find the long discussions that lead to those sanctions. --AussieLegend (✉) 23:22, 31 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by RexxS

Andy is well-known for his technical abilities, especially related to templates such as infoboxes. It is therefore not unexpected that he should be regularly involved with clean-up of the vast proliferation of templates that perform near-identical functions. This request was sparked off by Andy asking that {{Infobox Ireland disused station}} (used 314 times) and {{Infobox Ireland station}} (used 187 times) be merged into {{Infobox station}} (used 16,002 times) as it is easier to maintain and use one template than three. In this case the generic template can specify the country and could have the date when the station stopped being used. It is perfectly reasonable to have these sort of debates and that is the purpose of TfD. Look at Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2014 December 29 #Template:Infobox Ireland station and see if you think asking for a debate is unreasonable.

What is unacceptable here is some editors' attempts to stifle debate by using an unrelated ArbCom decision to remove an "opponent" from nominating templates that they OWN. Andy does nominate a lot of templates for merge and deletion, but that's is not disruptive, per se - for heaven's sake there are thousands of templates that are only used in a handful of articles where a more generic and widely-used template is already available. Andy is one of the few people who is willing to spend time rationalising this sort of proliferation and - inconvenient as it may be to the OWNers - he performs a valuable job in this field. --RexxS (talk) 14:48, 29 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@CT Cooper: You accept that other editors have caused problems yet you are trying to remove just Andy from template discussions. So what if "there were already plans in motion to merge some redundant templates"? you can't be the sole arbiter of who participates in those discussions and Andy is not only entitled to do so, but is a useful catalyst in moving forward such discussions. If templates were merged in a poor fashion, the answer is to FIXIT, not blame the person who pointed out the problem. As Humphrey Appleby would say 'to be bold' is one of those irregular verbs: "I edit boldly; you edit problematically; he/she edits disruptively". As for unrelated - yes TfD is utterly unrelated to adding or removing infoxes from articles. If you want to make a case for sanctions concerning TfD, then file a case; you'll need diffs, of course, not this sort of "guilt by mud-slinging" that some have been engaged in here.

@ArbCom: Here's yet another confirming instance that your faulty decision last year has done nothing but paint a target on some of the participants: you sanction someone for one thing and it's open season on them every time they get into a disagreement with other editors. Isn't it time you realised you screwed up by taking sides in a content dispute? or do you intend to repeat the same mistakes again and again? --RexxS (talk) 02:17, 30 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@CT Cooper: Andy's track record at TfD shows that he is concerned with merging little-used templates into more generic ones. In most cases this is a good thing. The effect of a successful merge is normally that one template becomes a redirect to the other. This clearly does not result in the removal or addition of a template to any article. It was never an issue at the Infobox RfArb case that there was a problem with Andy replacing one infobox with another - and we've even had this argument at Clarification and it was clearly agreed that this was not part of his restriction. So no, asking for a template to be merged into another really, really doesn't have any relationship to the sanctions imposed on Andy and I worry that you're asking for an already answered question to be re-litigated.

@Courcelles: Yes, it would require a lot more wordsmithing because "prohibited from ... discussions concerning whether an infobox should be added [to] or removed from ... [a] group of articles" would include project pages (is that your intention?) as well as directly contradicting "allowed ... to nominate infobox templates for discussion at templates for discussion. since the former is one of the things that people discuss at TfD. Even though Andy has never, to my knowledge, suggested at TfD that a template should be removed (he is always looking to merge them into more common ones), your wording would prevent him from taking part in debating one of his nominations as soon as someone suggested deleting the template. I seriously hope that wasn't your intention, either. --RexxS (talk) 19:13, 30 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@AussieLegend: No. Replacing one infobox with another is definitely not part of Andy's restrictions and that question has already been asked and answered in the negative as part of a previous Clarification Request. We already know it's not testing any boundaries and your suggestion amounts to mud-slinging at Andy in the hope that some of it sticks. Do your homework before trying to extend sanctions by the back-door. Replacing {{Infobox Rome episode}} by {{Infobox television episode}} is an utterly sensible improvement to an article - do you advocate a template for each and every television series in existence? He doesn't need your permission before editing; and suggesting that editors have to seek consensus before making an uncontroversial edit is just the usual trick of OWNers who don't want outsiders messing with their precious articles. "Engage in discussion with template maintainers or end users before nominating infoboxes for deletion or merging" over my dead body: you just want to put obstacles in the way of any editor who dares to edit your articles. You want Andy to search around for all the people who edit your templates or use them before being allowed to start a discussion at Templates for Discussion? ridiculous. You also need to understand what is meant by "Templates for Discussion": it's the place where templates are discussed. You want to have that discussion on the pages of a WikiProject, rather than on the pages where we are meant to discuss templates. TfD is the correct venue because it brings together members of Wikiprojects and other editors who may have a different view to have the discussion. That's healthy, and requiring a pre-discussion on the pages of what may be a moribund Wikiproject is not a sensible option. --RexxS (talk) 15:36, 31 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Montanabw

The arbcom decision was clear that it related to articles. Andy is doing helpful wikignoming with his TfDs and this is simply a witchhunt. His efforts are beneficial to the project as he largely is finding long-abandoned templates or those with few transclusions. He defends his actions and is remaining remarkably civil in his responses (which are at times a bit pointed, but he's yet to resort to name-calling; something that cannot be said about other editors who oppose him). There is an OWNership problem here and a serious lack of goodwill. This needs to be closed with a clarification that only articles are subject to this sanction, and frankly, given Andy's use to the project (I asked him to repair infobox horseracing personality not long ago), I think it is time his restrictions are lifted altogether. If the project wants to avoid drama, then avoid setting people up as scapegoats. Montanabw(talk) 18:31, 29 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I find the people crying "off with his head" to be quite troubling. Per WP:BAIT, I think Andy has been remarkably civil. And per WP:BOOMERANG, I strongly suggest that people in glass houses of ownership and rude, incivil behavior (Francis and DePiep, for example) should not be throwing stones! Montanabw(talk) 00:45, 2 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@DGG: and others: I am very troubled that a legitimate content contributor with actual expertise in the area is being considered for a ban in that very area of expertise. This is a misguided attempt to boomerang on what the original filing party @Callanecc: wanted to accomplish, which was to clarify the parameters of the restriction. I have found Andy very helpful and quite willing to be collaborative and cooperative in genuine attempts to improve content. Andy is an individual who has been given awards for his work by WMF by none other than Jimbo, Andy is an individual who is a wikipedian in residence in his home country, with a wealth of knowledge to contribute to the project. It just seems beyond the pale that a small herd of disgruntled individuals who want to preserve their WP:OWN little Balkanized domain are trying to run him off for things like suggesting at TfD that we don't really need separate infoboxes for each of the hundreds of mass transit systems throughout the world where one will do. In the face of people calling him incompetent, trolling his every TfD to !vote oppose with the same ill-will-biased personal attacks every time, I am really quite impressed that he has consistently replied with fair arguments, a modicum of basic civility, and just the slightest touch of snark. He hasn't even called anyone a "c--t". (Which recently has - appropriately - been deemed a forgivable misstep once the totality of the circumstances were considered) These bullies can dish it out, but they sure can't take it. Montanabw(talk) 02:20, 3 January 2015 (UTC) ::perhaps it is precisely those experts in a field who are not willing to follow community norms in that field who can sometimes be most effctively disruptive, more so than people working in a field they know little about. DGG ( talk ) 06:02, 3 January 2015 (UTC) As I've recused from the issue, I'm moving my comment. DGG ( talk ) 05:59, 4 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Fæ

I have known Andy for a few years, and neatly cooperated on a couple of projects without making a big hooha; however I only know of this request due to preparing my own amendment for a different matter. CT Cooper above raises a reasonable point of distance, however if there is a problem with working collegiately then this does not need Arbcom's authority to resolve, the conventional civility and dispute resolution procedures are sufficient.

Speaking as an editor "haunted" and occasionally gibed by a past Arbcom case, I can well believe the views expressed here that the prior case involving Andy may be used inappropriately. This does not benefit the encyclopedia in the long run, and as Arbcom has often stated, normal collegiate resolution processes with any action within the capability of administrators should be preferred and exhausted before resorting to the supreme device of the Arbcom stick. --Fæ (talk) 21:34, 29 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Ched

IMO the editors who were restricted well over a year ago here have more than followed their sanctions. Andy has avoided the article end of adding and removing infoboxes, and has still remained dedicated to improving the project through his technical skills. It appears to me that even though Arbcom (of that day) did not place the all so common "broadly construed" to its remedy, the bulk of disruption comes from those looking for a thread with which to create a noose. While the continual drag ya back to AE/ARCA is entertaining from a soap opera point of view, it seems to me that the elephant in the room is: Remove the restrictions, and you remove the drama mongers out looking for a lynching party. — Ched :  ?  17:01, 30 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

  • Question. Many if not most arb cases contain a clause stating that after a certain amount of time (often 12 months/1 year) editors are able to appeal their restrictions. I wasn't able to find that provision in the infobox case, can someone tell me why that is? The facts are plain that it was those who favored the inclusion of an infobox who were sanctioned, those who opposed them were "reminded and/or admonished" - and that's fine, evidence/findings etc. I get that. I know that as a 3rd party that I can't request the lifting of restrictions - but I am wondering ... just how long does the committee intend to impose restrictions on those who favor having infoboxes in articles? Just wondering. — Ched :  ?  12:47, 31 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • @DGG. With respect sir, I am somewhat confused. Per your comment "What I personally would do is simple: I have definite opinions on the subject of infoboxes, that they are useless if not uniform, and I would have recused from the entire case." which you made here, I must ask if you are now un-recusing with regard to this topic? — Ched :  ?  14:22, 3 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Olive

The arbitration refers to articles. If wording needs to be explicit for those confused by the arbitration wording that seems fine. However, this should not be an opportunity nor is this the appropriate place to rewrite the arbitration and expand restrictions, and is it not a place to implement further restrictions based on opinion as for example, here, "However, it is my view that editors should respond to restrictions by finding an entirely new area to edit, and not edit around them, regardless of whether it's permissible or not." This was a simple request; perhaps it is best on multiple levels to keep it that way.(Littleolive oil (talk) 11:30, 3 January 2015 (UTC))[reply]

Statement by DGG

I'm commenting as an editor, not an arb. I consider myself recused on this issue

As a general statement, perhaps it is precisely those experts in a field who are not willing to follow community norms in that field who can sometimes be most effctively disruptive, more so than people working in a field they know little about. I'm therefore not sure that expertise with infoboxes is relevant to this request.
As a specific comment, I agree the wording could ideally be more precise, but I don't see how to do this without causing other ambiguities, so perhaps the existing general statement is best. DGG ( talk ) 06:02, 3 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Clerk notes

This section is for administrative notes by the clerks (including clerk recusals).

Infoboxes: Arbitrator views and discussion

  • The purpose of restrictions is to reduce disruption. It doesn't much matter whether the disruption is on articles or talk pages, or wherever. If his contributions in non-article space have not been disruptive, there may be benefit in formalising a narrower scope of the restriction.  Roger Davies talk 20:33, 20 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • My recollection was that we crafted the remedy to stop the infobox wars. Those were mainly around adding and removing infoboxes from articles, and that's where Andy needed to be taken away from. I personally supported allowing him to stay in policy debates on the topic, though that didn't pass. I'd certanly support such a change. WormTT(talk) 11:34, 27 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • As Roger says, arbcom restrictions are meant to stop drama, not breathe new life into it. Considering Andy's recent attempts at testing the boundaries of his restriction and the community's uncertainty as to where exactly these boundaries lie, I'd be in favour of a gordian solution: let's simply ban Andy from anything infobox-related across all namespaces. Salvio Let's talk about it! 12:08, 27 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • The restriction is fine as written. Decline. AGK [•] 23:18, 27 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    • The restriction is not fine as written, as evidenced by the fact that it's the second time in less than two months that we have been requested to clarify its scope. Salvio Let's talk about it! 11:02, 28 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
      • This is evidence that people are struggling to grasp the restriction, not that it warrants amendment. It is unreasonable to agree that a sentence as simple as the one in question is ambiguous.

        @NE Ent: My advice is to discard the invented interpretation that this restriction applies only to the mainspace; I don't see where this has come from or why it was arrived at. As I said, the restriction is fine as written. Any confusion about it is difficult to sympathise with in this case, given the remedy's clarity. AGK [•] 13:15, 28 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

  • In case this is still active on 1 January, I'll note here for the record that I am recused as an arbitrator for this case. Thryduulf (talk) 16:20, 28 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • What about something like "Pigsonthewing is prohibited from adding an infobox to any article, or participating in discussions concerning whether an infobox should be added or removed from either a specific article or group of articles. He is explicitly allowed to edit infobox templates to improve their functionality, and to nominate infobox templates for discussion at templates for discussion." Needs some wordsmithing, but I've never liked the wording of the initial restriction, and while I don't think Andy has gamed it, the wording has still led to drama. Some more explicit language would be good, even though it leaves the line of what Andy may and may not do the same. (I think enough time has passed to allow an exception for putting infoboxes in articles he has recently created himself, but that might be beyond the scope of this request.) Courcelles 23:49, 29 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • @RexxS: Perhaps "participating in discussions related to whether an article or group of articles should include an infobox". The locus of dispute here was binary, whether an article should or should not have an infobox; not whether it should use "template:infobox foo" or "template:infobox bar". Courcelles 19:56, 30 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Sounds good to me --Guerillero | My Talk 17:48, 30 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • I like Courcelles' suggestion, though I think Callanecc has a good point that "to improve their functionality" should be dropped. GorillaWarfare (talk) 03:41, 2 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • I am also recused from this request. Dougweller (talk) 19:08, 2 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Essentially I agree with Salvio. I consider some of the renominations at TfD disruptive, and think that both nominating and discussing template related infoboxes there should be included in the ban. I'd like to find some language permitting technical changes, but I can't see how to make it unambiguous. DGG ( talk ) 00:37, 3 January 2015 (UTC) I had earlier stated I would recuse from this case. DGG ( talk ) 20:02, 3 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • I tend more toward agreeing with Courcelles and WTT. I don't see how any of these nominations were deliberately disruptive (the fact that a discussion turned contentious does not necessarily mean it should never have been started), and the original restrictions clearly indicate a restriction on whether or not an article should have an infobox, not maintenance tasks on infoboxes. I would have to see more evidence of disruption on Andy's part in the areas of maintaining infoboxes before I would be willing to consider expanding the restriction, and I don't see justification for that here. Seraphimblade Talk to me 13:45, 3 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Motion

Remedy 1.1 of the Infoboxes case is replaced by the following: "Pigsonthewing is indefinitely prohibited from adding an infobox to any article, or participating in discussions concerning whether an infobox should be added or removed from either a specific article or group of articles. He is explicitly allowed to: edit infobox templates; to nominate and discuss specific infobox templates at templates for discussion; and to discuss specific infobox templates on their own template talk namespace pages."

Support
  1. This seems to have totally stalled out, so proposed as a motion to stimulate new discussion. The goal here is to neither widen or narrow the restrictions, but to reduce drama by clearing out some grey area, along lines of how the AE admins have been enforcing the existing remedy. Copyedit as necessary. Courcelles 00:20, 9 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    @Thryduulf: Good point, I've made some changes based on your feedback. (WHich I think I can do, seeing as how I'm the only vote at the moment.) If any arbs prefer the older version, feel free to revert. Courcelles 01:13, 9 January 2015 (UTC) Courcelles 01:13, 9 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  2. it works --Guerillero | My Talk 01:18, 9 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  3. GorillaWarfare (talk) 06:48, 9 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose
  1. No, Andy needs to be topic banned from everything related to infoboxes, not granted exceptions which make it easier for him to act disruptively all over again. Salvio Let's talk about it! 10:22, 9 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Abstain

Clarification request: Climate change (WP:ARBCC)

Initiated by NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) at 13:37, 24 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Case or decision affected
Climate change arbitration case (t) (ev / t) (w / t) (pd / t)

List of any users involved or directly affected

Statement by NewsAndEventsGuy

The question
As you know, WP:ARBCC (and the new DS system that enforces it) applies to the broadly construed topic of climate change. Does that encompass the article Scientific consensus?

My request/opinion
I would like to see you answer "YES", and an admin or clerk paste the notification template on the article talk page.

Supporting article history

  • Dec 4 2004 (William M. Connolley 11:30, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)) I don't know if it helps, but if you look at the very early history of this page you'll see it was essentially created by Ed Poor to hold a quote from Michael Crichton that attacked global warming.
  • July 18, 2005 OK, now that the Climate wars have quieted down a bit following the Arbcom decision, I've taken a look at the rewrites. -Vsmith 15:03, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

What prompts the motion
Originally I wrote something about the users and editing that has been happening recently, but after completing it I decided to redact it. After all, I'm not seeking AE against anyone at this time. If anyone asks, I can just add it back. It should also be obvious that well-funded PR firms are paid to undercut belief in the notion of "scientific consensus" as part of various industries' fight against regulations, fees, and taxes. The fossil fuel industry is joined in that regard by tobacco, big pharma, and many others. There are plenty of RSs for that too, if needed.

Conclusion
If you agree, then please have a clerk post the DS notice on the article talk page.
Thanks for your attention, Happy Holidays
NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 13:37, 24 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Re Serten's odd Jan 5 comment, the article in question has had a static title ("scientific consensus") since it was first created by someone else in 2004, and Serten was a prolific participant at the article talk page where I posted the notice. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 00:19, 6 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Callanecc

@NewsAndEventsGuy: The discretionary sanctions would apply to any edit was what broadly construed to be related to climate change, so not every edit on the page would be covered, though the two edits you linked (2004 & 2005) would be covered. Edits regarding tobacco and big pharma very likely wouldn't be covered, but edits regarding fossil fuel probably would. So the short answer is yes and no, and it depends on the edit. For example, an edit to Al Gore regarding his military service wouldn't be covered by the ARBCC discretionary sanctions but an edit to the Environmentalism section very likely would be. Whether it's worth adding the DS template to Talk:Scientific consensus, I don't think it matters two much, the template doesn't need to be there for someone to be sanctioned, nor for them to be alerted about the discretionary sanctions. Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 13:50, 24 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by J. Johnson

I would point out that Scientific consensus and the editing and issues there are directly connected with Draft:IPCC consensus, which has parallel issues and authorship. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:10, 24 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

As noted above, NAEG provided notice at Talk:Scientific consensus#FYI ARB clarification request filed. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 00:05, 6 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Serten II

I am the author of the Draft and I was as well involved on the page here. Nobody informed me so far. Nice approach. Point is, the Article Scientific consensus has been dragged into the WP climate wars, via copy and pasting from Politicization of science, which is parroting the US specific controversies, merchants of doubt, Climate change, evolution and so on. Yawn. I have been told today that a scientist daring to write a critical review about Oreske in a scientific journal is no scientist at all and major contributions (from a Holberg Prize laureate) from science studies about science are "cargo cult science". Thats the sort of debating culture at the moment.

In the meanwhile, I have rewritten the entry Science studies and received some friendly support from an actual scholar in the field. @DASonnenfeld:. The stage here is not my game. However I am sort of annoyed about the way scientific consensus is being hold hostage for a low quality side show of the US climate wars. It could be improved in an valuable entry about the development, use, limitations and strenghts of science consensus approaches in addressing wicked problems, using a more abstract level than Ozone depletion and climate change. Serten II (talk) 22:39, 5 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]


Clerk notes

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

Climate change (WP:ARBCC): Arbitrator views and discussion

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