Talk:List of Wikipedia controversies

Issues

So many issues with this article, where do I even begin. Let's see, I guess i'll start from the simplest and go toward the more complicated.

1. There are several statements in the article that are not properly referenced and, since they are statements making an opinion about something on behalf of an outside group, they especially need to be referenced. I have tagged those with citation needed tags.

2. The references. Referencing another Wikipedia article, even if it is the About page, isn't really useful for anything. Nor is saying "See also" to another Wikipedia page in the references. Just include the relevant references that are used on those other pages. There are also several uses of primary sources, which in an article like this that is giving opinions, should really be avoided as much as possible. There are also sources of questionable reliability for this subject (Daily Mail) or of known non-neutrality for the subject (Violet Blue) that's being presented as a neutral source. Then there are the unreliable sources (Wikipedia Review).

3. In turn, these references of questionable reliability are being used to prop up non-neutral language. In fact, quite obviously POV language. The most explicitly obvious POV being in the line "Wikipedia administrator and community liaison Oliver Keyes wrote a blog post ridiculing Roth for his approach, but supplied no viable alternative", where the reference for this is the blog post itself, clearly showing that the writing is meant to be POV without any attached reference. There are a number of other such examples throughout the article.

4. In total, it adds up to an article that can be easily viewed as having been constructed to be POV from the get-go, using shoddy references and POV language to push the reader toward a certain viewpoint.

Though I do note that a lot of this language can be attributed to IP 174.141.213's edits. Silverseren^C 07:11, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

I can only speak to your point number 2, since it complains about my use of a wikilinked article after the phrase "see also" in the references. This footnote falls under WP:EXPLNOTE. It's not supporting anything, it's merely explanatory. I would have used the {{further}} template, which I assume you would have had no problem with, but it seemed to overwhelm the single bullet point. Also, it seemed like overkill to list the referenced article in the see-alsos for the whole article, since it really only applies to that section. Do you have a better solution than this? It's certainly not an instance of a WP article cited to assert a fact. You only say it's "not useful." How so? It seems obviously useful to me.— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 14:38, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

I went ahead and took it out of the footnotes since it was bothering you.— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 15:20, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

Your edits were perfectly fine, I just question the editing neutrality of others that have edited the article. As for the See also thing, I feel that we should try and keep inter-Wikipedia articles out of reference lists. It causes a self-referential issue. Even for information that is just explanatory, I feel it would just be best to include an actual reference and have the Wikipedia article link be included in the article text itself. Silverseren^C 15:53, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

See section below for another response. I definitely agree with you about that line about "definitive proof."— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 15:13, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

Seren, can you be a bit more specific about which parts of this article are POV? Your complaints are a bit too vague (except for some of number 2).Volunteer Marek 23:16, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

The article has been significantly expanded from what it was before. Giving it a cursory read, it looks like most of my concerns have already been fixed. I'll have to check through the references still, but it's looking good right now. Silverseren^C 22:24, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

WR found definitive proof...

I removed this:

Wikipedia Review found definitive proof that Jordan made false claims about his academic qualifications and professional experiences on his Wikipedia user page.

since it doesn't seem to be sourceable and does seem to need a source. Thoughts?— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 15:12, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

Pretty much all Wikipedia Review info and references in the article should be removed, since the information doesn't appear to be corroborated by independent news sources. Silverseren^C 15:53, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

You might source something along those lines to the following passage from an independent news source: "Wikipedia's success has led to many sites focused on its foibles. One such site, the "Wikipedia Review", was the locus of much investigation into the "EssJay" scandal in which a highly ranked administrator falsified academic degrees and lied to the New Yorker", which appears in a column in The Guardian, "Inside, Wikipedia is more like a sweatshop than Santa's workshop". At this point I would normally engage in a little self-deprecating humor regarding the author of that column. But I've learned from past experience that such jokes are very dangerous to make on Wikipedia due to the peril of being taken out of context. -- Seth Finkelstein (talk) 12:37, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

POV

And with this edit, the IP has clearly revealed their non-neutral intent in wording. Please keep an eye out for any of their future edits to this article and revert them if they are of the same kind of non-neutral wording. Silverseren^C 15:59, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

Do note that the IP's ISP (or they themselves) seems to be continually switching the last two digits of their number. So leaving talk page warnings is pretty much useless, as you'd be leaving them on a different one every time. I do note that they have been blocked before, fairly recently too. No idea how many other times they might have been because of the switching address. Silverseren^C 16:02, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

it is metropcs, which has dynamic (as fuck) IP's. there is no way of knowing which previous user of that IP made the edits that got that IP blocked. 174.141.213.27 (talk) 17:19, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

• what was not neutral about those two edits? the word "copious"? please identify what was not neutral about the edits so that in the future i can avoid using whatever has upset you. 174.141.213.24 (talk) 17:18, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

Notability template

I removed it in line with the template documentation, since I am "certain that enough in-depth, independent sources have been published about the subject to overcome any notability issues." Matters were not helped by the fact that the editor who added the template did not start a discussion about the issue here on the talk page. I hope that, in the future, editors templating this article will start sections here clarifying exactly what problems they think need to be addressed.— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 19:30, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

I think you'll be on safe ground if you deal only with issues that were dealt with by more than one RS. That's the definition of a controversy, imho. I think that this article is a good resource, but it bothers me that you have "controversies" consisting of one negative press clip. Coretheapple (talk) 04:48, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

• The definition of a controversy given by the OED is "Disputation on a matter of opinion; the contending of opponents one with another on a subject of dispute; discussion in which opposite views are advanced and maintained by opponents." In other words, there have to be at least two contending schools of thought. Many of the entries are not controversies. For example, the Seigenthaler incident was a hoax. Everyone seems to agree that it was a deliberate deception which should have been caught and corrected. So, where's the controversy? Genuine controversies tend not to be isolated incidents as, by their nature, they take some time to debate and resolve. For example, some educators support the use of Wikipedia and some oppose it. This is a complex matter which is taking time to work out. Incidents of scholarly use and abuse are material in that debate; they are not the actual controversy. Warden (talk) 07:22, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

It seems that the use of Controversy in this instance has precedence across 100s of other wikipedia articles. John lilburne (talk) 09:38, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

• Our article controversy starts by defining the concept: "Controversy is a state of prolonged public dispute or debate, usually concerning a matter of conflicting opinion or point of view.". This seems to confirm my point. The examples which follow in your link likewise confirm the point. Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy is about free-speech vs Moslem taboo. Creation–evolution controversy is about the religious vs scientific views of the origin of species. The incidents presented here do not have this character; they just seem to be one-sided mud-slinging, contrary to WP:NPOV. Warden (talk) 11:15, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

And this is about what? And this is about what? All of it is about someone taking exception to some isolated thing that someone has said or done. Which is exactly what the list is doing, it is pointing to things that wikipedia has said or done. It is the instances where wikipedia is used by people either inside wikipedia or external to wikipedia have used wikipedia to advance a POV/COI, or where internal wikipedia policies have resulted in unforeseen consequences in the outside world. When fly-by vandalism can result in some national football team gets called Sand Monkeys in otherwise respected news sources, when someone gets labelled as an assassin, when people are credited with having done something they didn't do, and when false factoids get published externally as truths then that those are not isolated instances. That my friend is your prolonged dispute, that it is affects isolated individuals and isolated external articles does not mitigated the fact that the vandalism, POV/COI and the rest is a continuous pollution of the external world. John lilburne (talk) 13:38, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

Your first example, Rape and pregnancy controversies in United States elections, 2012, is detritus from last year's electioneering, contrary to WP:SOAP. One can find plenty of junk like that in Wikipedia, hence WP:OSE, but when you start ranting about "continuous pollution" then you well demonstrate what's going on here. Warden (talk) 14:29, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

IOW it is wikipedia controversy. Is it not educational to provide authors and journalists a list of times when their fellow scribblers had been caught out by vandalism in WP articles? John lilburne (talk) 15:20, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

It's not a controversy just because you want to make it one. Other organs such as The Guardian are notorious for their errors. Do we have a list of the errors made by that or other news media? As everyone makes errors, wouldn't compilations of them tend to be indiscriminate? And don't we all agree that errors are bad and best avoided? Still not seeing the controversy. Warden (talk) 16:15, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

The Gruniad doesn't fills its pages with statements, presented as facts, that X is an assassin whilst simultaneously denying any responsibility for such statements. Comparing the unwittingly publishing of errors by those and having legal responsibility for such errors, with the deliberate insertions of falsehoods by those hiding behind immunity, is a rather controversial position to take, and one that most people would feel to be quite bizarre. John lilburne (talk) 18:12, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

The Grauniad publishes plenty of misinformation such as the Maurice Jarre obituary. They corrected that, just as Wikipedia did, but not so quickly. But other newspapers routinely publish incorrect information and don't make or publish corrections. Please see Reign of error which indicates that the media makes thousands of errors but only correct them in a tiny proportion of cases. By singling out Wikipedia and making a meal of its errors, their significance is distorted, contrary to WP:UNDUE, and without a proper context such as the Nature survey, which found its accuracy to be comparable with Britannica's. This violates WP:SYN, WP:SOAP and WP:NPOV to make a blatant attack page. Warden (talk) 12:06, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

Actual the Nature Survey showed no such thing. On a rough count they found that B was more accurate than WP: 123 errors versus 162. Then again in 2005 Jagged85 hadn't got into his stride. The real problem is that when one looks at a Britannica article one can be pretty sure that 5 seconds previously it wasn't screwed with. John lilburne (talk) 20:57, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

There does seem some definitional confusion, and a lot of lumping different kinds of things together. It would be more useful if it was split into related lists. One would be List of hoaxes on Wikipedia (which, oddly, is currently a cross-namespace redirect to Wikipedia:List of hoaxes on Wikipedia) - that's quite a few items here. Another would be something like "List of people who were reported in national media as editing Wikipedia for their own benefit" (or something in that direction) - that's quite a few items here. Clear those out, and the remaining items would be easier to evaluate, to maybe split the list further, or else provide a workable definition of "controversy" for the purposes of the list. Rd232 ^talk 11:48, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

I think that what perhaps may be happening is that some of us are conflating a controversy within Wikipedia that gets outside coverage to genuine controversies that people outside Wikipedia would care about. BP is a good example of the latter. Most of this article is a list of the former, and really doesn't belong as an article anywhere in Wikipedia. Trust me, people outside Wikipedia don't give a damn about internal intrigue. You can distinguish easily the latter from the former by the number of media outlets that talk about it. Coretheapple (talk) 15:43, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

You also have things that aren't really Wiki controversies. For instance, the French intelligence pressuring an editor to remove an article. Was that even on the English Wikipedia? And if it was, how is that a controversy? There is a grab-bag of stuff like this, while genuine controversies get either short shrift or too much detail. Coretheapple (talk) 19:49, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

The French Intelligence one should definitely be in the COI editing article, not here, since it's far more related to that. Silverseren^C 22:29, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

Not sure it even belongs there, unless some French spy became an editor. Coretheapple (talk) 02:11, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

I agree with Rd232. I would also note that the "List of people who were reported in national media as editing Wikipedia for their own benefit" is pretty much the COI editing on Wikipedia article, which covers much of the information that is in this article already. I do agree that this article should be split up, because many of these are not controversies. Silverseren^C 22:29, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

Copying within Wikipedia

Please be mindful of the WP:Copying within Wikipedia guideline while building this article. If you copy and paste content, please include a link to the source article in your edit summary. If you have rewritten the text sufficiently, attribution is not required, but a link back may be useful to future editors.

• User:Jayen466's edit summary of New article, with contents attributed to Wikipedia, Wikipedia biography controversy, Essjay controversy, and Scott Kildall. identifies the source articles of the initial creation.
• User:AnomieBOT's fix of an orphaned ref led to me finding this insertion.
• Many of the cite templates contain old accessdates, indicating that they were originally looked up and inserted before this article's creation. "Bare references" is the first item in WP:Copying within Wikipedia#Where attribution is not needed, so attribution is not required if the text around the refs was rewritten from scratch.

I placed a {{Copied multi}} to start. Flatscan (talk) 04:24, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

Conflict of Interest

There are obvious conflicts of interest from everyone in writing this article. For example, why is there not entry for this Foreign Policy article which is a more recent report and more scholarly than the Gibraltar coverage in the lead? Alanscottwalker (talk) 11:35, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

SOFIXIT John lilburne (talk) 11:49, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

When it's obvious that everyone writing this article has a conflict of interest? Alanscottwalker (talk) 12:00, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

Are you admitting to a COI then? :) -edit- To be slightly less flippant, if being a Wikipedia editor makes one have a COI in writing an article on wikipedia controversies, then being British would make any British editor have a COI in writing articles on Britain. We dont extend COI to that level of paranoid. Only in death does duty end (talk) 13:46, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

Yup. Having an interest in a subject doesn't necessarily imply any particular conflict. For example, if members of the Antarctic vegetable grower's society edit articles about vegetables, there wouldn't necessarily be any conflict of interest. --SB_Johnny | ^talk✌ 14:20, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

No. When the Antartic Growers write about the Antartic Growers, there is a conflict. (And Britain is not a reference work). Alanscottwalker (talk) 17:46, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

So Gardeners who live in England can't write about English gardens? --SB_Johnny | ^talk✌ 18:47, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

No. But gardeners who produce a reference work, have a conflict when they write about that reference work. Alanscottwalker (talk) 21:33, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

What's my conflict of interest? Take some action on your accusation against me or STFU about it.— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 14:19, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

Some action? What are you talking about? The conflict of interest is patent -- whenever a written work or news organization writes about itself it has a conflict. Alanscottwalker (talk) 17:00, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

I absolutely agree, though I think you're making a category mistake or two: I'm not sure I'd want to describe WP as a written "work", much less describe Wikipedians as an "organization". Think about it... --SB_Johnny | ^talk✌ 18:47, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

It's a reference work in writing. It is produced and presented by editors (also called wikipedians) in an organized manner that is called Wikipedia. Alanscottwalker (talk) 21:33, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

• Per WP:BOLD I've removed all items that are sourced to only one news article, or none in one case. I don't see how you can have a "controversy" when something is mentioned by only one reliable source. I think this may help rectify some of this article's issues. I may have missed a few. Coretheapple (talk) 17:36, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

Wales and his lady friend

I am not a fan of Jimbo Wales, but I don't understand how a gossipy item on his breakup with his girlfriend deserves a mention in this article. What has this got to do with Wikipedia? It's a "Wales controversy." It belongs in the "List of Wales controversies" article. Coretheapple (talk) 03:43, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

Completely agreed. Just a case of people trying to shame him wherever possible. But we already know that they're actually the sad and shameful ones with no lives. Silverseren^C 20:41, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps, but there's also a plagiarism case involving the editor of Wired, with only a tangential connection to Wikipedia. This article is such a grab-bag that I am wondering if perhaps deletion is not a bad idea after all, since it is a magnet for unrelated incidents that are not really Wiki controversies. I'm seeing very few here. Coretheapple (talk) 20:48, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

Doran

I've removed the Caroline Doran incident, twice, because it had nothing to do with Wikipedia content, Wikipedia editing, or Wikipedia editors. It was a behind-the-scenes brouhaha that had 0 impact on any articles or other content, and did not affect anyone's editing. Another editor appears to strongly disagree.

It was in, I removed it, it was restored, I removed it again, it was restored again, so rather than breach 3RR, I'm raising the topic here on the talkpage. Given that the WMF is not Wikipedia (despite their inherent link), how does the Doran incident count as a "Wikipedia controversy" ? Please explain. DS (talk) 04:10, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

The sources cited link it with Wikipedia. E.g. the first one says:

The revelation comes as the Wikimedia Foundation, which runs the volunteer-written Wikipedia and its sister Web encyclopedias in other languages, is staging a fundraising drive and trying to expand beyond a ragtag startup.

"This is indicative of poor management of the Wikimedia Foundation," said Charles Ainsworth, a frequent Wikipedia contributor.

Ainsworth said he had been considering donating to support the encyclopedia, but won't "unless they clearly get things fixed."

Since the sources link it with Wikipedia I think we're safe in describing it as a Wikipedia controversy.— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 04:30, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

These are the cited sources:

^ "Convicted Felon Ran Wikipedia Parent Company". Fox News/Associated Press. 21 December 2007. Retrieved 2013-04-19.

^ "Felon given senior Wikipedia role". The Sydney Morning Herald. 24 December 2007. Retrieved 2013-04-19.

^ Wikipedia COO was convicted felon Cade Metz, The Register, 13th December 2007

The lady was in charge of the financial management of the donations received by the Wikimedia Foundation, donations which come mainly through Wikipedia fundraisers. Andreas JN466 04:33, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

But there was nothing pertaining to Wikipedia, just to the framework in which it exists. DS (talk) 04:57, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

In this case, the word "Wikipedia" is functioning as an attributive noun, which can be seen from the fact that a "Wikipedia controversy" is a controversy but it is not a Wikipedia. As the article linked to states:

In many languages, including English, it is possible for nouns to modify other nouns. Unlike adjectives, nouns acting as modifiers (called attributive nouns or noun adjuncts) are not predicative; a beautiful park is beautiful, but a car park is not "car". In plain English, the modifier often indicates origin ("Virginia reel"), purpose ("work clothes"), or semantic patient ("man eater"), however, it may generally indicate almost any semantic relationship.

In this case, the semantic relationship is that of being the framework in which it exists. This is a perfectly normal use of the word "Wikipedia" in English.— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 05:18, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

This isn't about semantics, it's about what's helpful. I don't think it's helpful to mix up Wikimedia issues with Wikipedia ones, especially since this list is such a definitional mess anyway (see my remarks above about separating out hoaxes and COI issues). The Wikimedia issues can be handled elsewhere, with a See Also link. At the end of the day, this is quite a strange concept of an article (it's almost an alternative History of Wikipedia...), and for it to be any use beyond a dumping ground for Anything Bad To Do With Wikipedia, it needs to be shaped and pruned as much as possible, with things that can go elsewhere moved elsewhere. Rd232 ^talk 09:44, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean when you say that this isn't about semantics. What else would it be about? Here's the issue. We have an article called "List of Wikipedia controversies." There is a question about whether a given controversy X belongs on the list. This is fundamentally a question about whether the statement "X is a Wikipedia controversy" is true or not. Statements are generally either true for syntactic reasons or for semantic reasons. This one, not being a tautology, is not susceptible of being true for syntactic reasons. Thus it must stand or fall on semantics. So we want to know whether X is a Wikipedia controversy. Since no one seems to deny that it's a controversy, and we have three sources linking it with Wikipedia (there are more) and we have the phenomenon of the English attributive noun, in which a noun used as a modifier of another noun expresses a semantic relationship between the nouns, one can't even make the argument that the sources are applying the modifier "Wikipedia" incorrectly. As the one source says, she had a "Wikipedia role." That makes it a "Wikipedia controversy."— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 11:15, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

It's almost like you didn't read one single word of what I wrote. You're also engaging in a quite admirable level of sophistry to claim that sources' laziness about use of Wikimedia's major project to help get readers' attention justifies us conflating Wikimedia and Wikipedia. Honestly, if nowhere else can be found or built to put Wikimedia issues, then whatever, dump them here. But I don't see why nowhere else can be found or built, or why it wouldn't be better to do. Rd232 ^talk 20:36, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the vote of confidence in the level of my sophistry. I have ever believed, with Protagoras, that "Man is the measure of all things: of things which are, that they are, and of things which are not, that they are not." I suppose that this leaves us, as encyclopedists, to decide for ourselves how to write this article rather than arguing about whether distinguishing between WP and the WMF constitutes a carving of nature at its joints. Thus I've taken the initiative to make the scope of the list more clear in the lead paragraph. As the sources will, no doubt, continue to conflate WP and WMF, along with our readers, editors, and mostly everyone else in the world, I think that this is an easier solution than trying to enforce an artificial distinction which no one will ever be able to keep straight anyway, even if it happens to, although I doubt that it does, possess a difference.— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 21:23, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

Perennial controversies

Or maybe "structural controversies"? I'm collecting sources in the further reading section for a new section describing controversial uses of wikipedia which are themselves notable but which don't occur as discrete notable events. Some of these are:

• Judicial citations to Wikipedia
• Law review and scholarly citations to Wikipedia
• Juror misconduct involving Wikipedia
• Use of Wikipedia writing assignments in post-secondary education

If anyone has any ideas on how to structure a part of the article on these kinds of things chime in. Meanwhile I'm going to collect sources until I'm forced to make a decision.— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 23:55, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

Isn't that covered by Criticism of Wikipedia? Rd232 ^talk 20:09, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

I don't think so, no. Can you be more specific?— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 21:11, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

More specific? Well, specifically, the whole idea of "structural controversies" is the same as "criticism". Rd232 ^talk 21:18, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

That makes sense. Perhaps it's best to stick with "perennial controversies." I don't think that the issues I've listed are "criticisms" of Wikipedia, though. They're controversies about how Wikipedia's existence intersects with the real world in various ways. For instance, the debates in law reviews over whether it's reasonable for judges to cite Wikipedia in their decisions don't typically include criticisms of Wikipedia per se. They take Wikipedia as a given and either praise or criticise judges for their use of it. No single instance of a judicial citation seems to garner enough discussion to be described as a controversy, though. But taken together there is a great deal of controversy over the issue. Same with the other two I listed. That's my thinking on this.— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 21:25, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

Tags

I've added a number of tags concerning issues with this article. It's strikingly non-neutral, consisting of a cherry-picked list of news articles with a common theme of "anything that makes Wikipedia look bad", it seems to have a particularly non-neutral focus on Jimbo Wales personally, many of the supposed "controversies" have only a single source to back them up (not much of a controversy then!), there is a problem with undue weight throughout the article - major issues like the Siegenthaler controversy are mixed in with small beer like Gregory Kohs' ban over his paid editing scheme and Daniel Brandt's anti-Wikipedia website, which I presume are included because they're pet issues for the Wikipediocracy crowd - and it lumps together Wikimedia Foundation issues with Wikipedia. It's a patently indiscriminate collection of information. These problems are pretty fundamental and require significant changes to the article. In addition, there is also a COI issue in that contributors are being paid to edit it by Wikipediocracy - see the discussion here. Prioryman (talk) 07:58, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Arbitration sanctions

Please also note that this article comes under the scope of Wikipedia:WikiProject Scientology and as such is subject to a specific set of arbitration sanctions. They're listed in the collapsed box at the top of this article, but for information, they are that editors of this article are required:

• To edit on this article from only a single user account, which shall be the user's sole or main account, unless the user has previously sought and obtained permission from the Arbitration Committee to operate a legitimate second account;
• To edit only through a conventional internet service provider and not through any form of proxy configuration;
• To edit in accordance with all Wikipedia policies and to refrain from any form of advocacy concerning any external controversy, dispute, allegation, or proceeding; and
• To disclose on the relevant talk pages any circumstances (but not including personal identifying information) that constitute or may reasonably be perceived as constituting a conflict of interest with respect to that page.

Any uninvolved administrator may of their own volition impose Discretionary sanctions on any editor who, after warning, fails to comply with the letter or spirit of these instructions. This was (authorized by the Arbitration Committee by motion on 1 June 2012. Prioryman (talk) 07:58, 24 April 2013 (UTC)