User talk:Philip Cross

Blocked indefinitely (1st year AE)

I have blocked you for one year as an arbitration action for breaching both your topic ban from British politics, imposed by ArbCom in Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/BLP issues on British politics articles, and your topic ban from "living people who are significantly involved in politics, broadly construed (including, but not limited to, candidates, activists, and political journalists or commentators)", imposed by me under the auspices of WP:NEWBLPBAN. After that year, the block continues indefinitely as a regular admin block for disruptive editing.

The violation that caused this block is this. I will take a moment to explain why I am electing to impose the maximum DS block length for an edit that, on its surface, may appear fairly minor:

• Your three previous TBAN violation blocks were all for cases in which you appeared to deliberately test the limits of your TBAN.
• You are coming immediately off of a three-month block and the imposition of the new additional TBAN.
• You spent much of those three months editing our sister wiki Wikiquote. We often encourage editors to edit sister wikis while blocked, but I note that much of your editing there was in the topic areas you are banned from here, including edits like this regarding Ghislaine Maxwell and Prince Andrew and this regarding George Galloway, subject of the community ABAN that was expanded into the BritPol TBAN. I am not sanctioning you for this sister-wiki conduct, as it is beyond my jurisdiction, but it does speak to your state of mind regarding the intersection of enwiki, enwikiquote, and biographies of living persons, and in that way it influences my assessment of your intent here.
• Hadley Freeman is, by any reasonable definition, a living person significantly involved in politics, and specifically British politics at that. Her article has a 262-word section on her political views, and she has written professionally about politics. You know this because you quoted her political commentary when you wrote q:Hadley Freeman.
• And that is the crux of it. You wrote her Wikiquote page, including content about politics, and then you came to enwiki and added a link to it to her article.

If this had been a case of adding some other template to her article, it would be a minimal violation of the TBANs, and I would have probably responded with an only warning. But this specific template linked to content you had written that would have much more squarely violated your TBANs if written on this wiki, and which show you knew she was engaged in political journalism.

I can view this as nothing other than trying to game the system yet again. There is no reason to expect a warning will suffice where three blocks haven't. There is no reason to expect broadening your BLP TBAN will suffice when you've flouted the current one at the first opportunity. And so I conclude there is no adequate preventative remedy other than an indefinite block, the first year as an AE action. The paperwork for that is included below.

AE block template (this links to the British Politics case but the block will be logged under BLP as well)

To enforce an arbitration decision, you have been blocked from editing for a period of 1 year. You are welcome to edit once the block expires; however, please note that the repetition of similar behavior may result in a longer block or other sanctions. If you believe this block is unjustified, please read the guide to appealing blocks (specifically this section) before appealing. Place the following on your talk page: {{unblock|reason=Please copy my appeal to the [[WP:AE|arbitration enforcement noticeboard]] or [[WP:AN|administrators' noticeboard]]. Your reason here OR place the reason below this template. ~~~~}}. If you intend to appeal on the arbitration enforcement noticeboard, I suggest you use the arbitration enforcement appeals template on your talk page so it can be copied over easily. Reminder to administrators: In May 2014, ArbCom adopted the following procedure instructing administrators regarding Arbitration Enforcement blocks: "No administrator may modify a sanction placed by another administrator without: (1) the explicit prior affirmative consent of the enforcing administrator; or (2) prior affirmative agreement for the modification at (a) AE or (b) AN or (c) ARCA (see "Important notes" [in the procedure]). Administrators modifying sanctions out of process may at the discretion of the committee be desysopped."

-- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she|they|xe) 14:03, 30 October 2022 (UTC)

I apologize for my edits to the Hadley Freeman article. Obviously, I did not consider the trans issue come under the "broadly construed" politics provision; the mention of a parliamentary act is only in passing. Freeman's Wikiquote article naturally mainly contains Freeman's own writing, the only portion directly contributed by me says she "is an American British journalist based in London. She wrote for The Guardian from 2000 to 2022." The only direct reference to a living (Polish) politician in the quotes I selected for Wikiquote is in passing. None of the Wikipedia categories describe her as being a "political journalist". Adding the wikiquote template to Ms Freeman's Wikipedia article is not original content with a BLP issue with faulty sourcing, although I did not dare add the template to other articles which are about explicitly political writers I added to the other Wikimedia site. I would have removed it if asked, which is normally a requirement.

I recall when someone objected to my edits in January 2021 to the article on the suppressed television film Royal Family (1969), which had illicitly appeared on YouTube, it was considered the British royal family was excluded from the British politics post-1978 topic ban, so my addition to the Ghislaine Maxwell WQ article mentioning the Duke of York and his mother, the late Queen, should not be considered any kind of breach. The quote you mention in the Wikiquote article about a Scottish politician relates to an incident much cited in the UK media over the years and should have been added long ago. It isn't even directly about politics.

If mentioning my edits to Wikiquote on my user page is so objectionable, please remove it. Philip Cross (talk) 15:25, 30 October 2022 (UTC)

Again, this sanction is not a comment on any edits you made on Wikiquote, where your TBANs do not apply. It's up to Wikiquote's admins to determine whether any violation of their own policies occurred. Rather, I took the Wikiquote edits into account inasmuch as they showed your continued interest in editing about living people involved in British politics, which is relevant to assessing your intent in adding a link from such a person's enwiki BLP to a page you wrote on another wiki. Your own comment here seems to show you were aware you were editing within a political topic area. If you were someone who'd just been topic-banned for the first time, now would be the time to discuss what "broadly construed" means and explain that yes, someone who has extensively commented publicly about a divisive political issue in the UK and who you have quoted as writing about Polish politics is both a) someone involved in British politics and b) a political commentator and/or journalist, but this has been going on for years, and you've had three previous tempblocks during which you could have asked questions. So I'm afraid I don't buy this, at this late juncture, and even if I did, I fear it would be too little, too late. If you'd like to appeal the block, there are instructions in the template above. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she|they|xe) 16:02, 30 October 2022 (UTC)

@Tamzin:, if I've understood Philip's block correctly, he cannot make edits to his user page such as this one. At the risk of making myself look uncharitable, it might be worth making that clear.     ←   ZScarpia   09:45, 31 October 2022 (UTC)

If Philip Cross successfully appeals this block, any necessary TBAN issue clarifications can be made at that time. That said, I do not see that edit as having been a violation, myself. The issue with the edit I blocked over was linking to content on Wikiquote that would have been a TBAN violation if added here (on top of the underlying violation of editing that article to begin with); linking to Wikiquote is not in itself a violation. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she|they|xe) 09:57, 31 October 2022 (UTC)

Comment: I'm not an administrator, but personally I hope that one day Philip Cross is given another chance to edit on Wikipedia. He has made over 200,000 helpful edits on a wide variety of different topics. It's unfortunate that issues have arisen about a British politics ban. He has apologised for edits to the biography of the journalist Hadley Freeman and I think it would be a shame if Philip's overall contribution to Wikipedia was permanently lost. Kind Tennis Fan (talk) 12:21, 18 December 2022 (UTC)

There's always the standard offer. Also, contributions are for an entire good. Their contributions are still logged but if they continue to not follow policies, this is why blocks are done. – The Grid (talk) 20:34, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

Books & Bytes – Issue 53

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Issue 53, September – October 2022

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Books & Bytes – Issue 54

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Books & Bytes – Issue 55

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --12:45, 16 March 2023 (UTC)