Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Kurds and Kurdistan/Evidence

Main case page (Talk) — Evidence (Talk) — Workshop (Talk) — Proposed decision (Talk)

Case clerk: TBD Drafting arbitrator: TBD

Arbitration case pages exist to assist the Arbitration Committee in arriving at fair, well-informed decisions. This page is not designed for the submission of general reflections on the arbitration process, Wikipedia in general, or other irrelevant and broad issues; and if you submit such content to this page, please expect it to be ignored or removed. General discussion of the case may be opened on the talk page. You must focus on the issues that are important to the dispute and submit diffs which illustrate the nature of the dispute or will be useful to the committee in its deliberations.

Submitting evidence

• Any editor may add evidence to this page, irrespective of whether they are involved in the dispute.
• You must submit evidence in your own section, using the prescribed format.
• Editors who change other users' evidence may be sanctioned by arbitrators or clerks without warning; if you have a concern with or objection to another user's evidence, contact the arbitration clerks by e-mail or on the talk page.

Word and diff limits

• The standard limits for all evidence submissions are: 1000 words and 100 diffs for users who are parties to this case; or about 500 words and 50 diffs for other users. Detailed but succinct submissions are more useful to the committee.
• If you wish to exceed the prescribed limits on evidence length, you must obtain the written consent of an arbitrator before doing so; you may ask for this on the Evidence talk page. For this case, clerks at their discretion may give non-parties an extension to 1000 words and 100 diffs.
• Evidence that exceeds the prescribed limits without permission, or that contains inappropriate material or diffs, may be refactored, redacted or removed by a clerk or arbitrator without warning.

Supporting assertions with evidence

• Evidence must include links to the actual page diff in question, or to a short page section; links to the page itself are inadequate. Never link to a page history, an editor's contributions, or a log for all actions of an editor (as those change over time), although a link to a log for a specific article or a specific block log is acceptable.
• Please make sure any page section links are permanent, and read the simple diff and link guide if you are not sure how to create a page diff.

Rebuttals

• The Arbitration Committee expects you to make rebuttals of other evidence submissions in your own section, and for such rebuttals to explain how or why the evidence in question is incorrect; do not engage in tit-for-tat on this page.
• Analysis of evidence should occur on the /Workshop page, which is open for comment by parties, arbitrators, and others.

Expected standards of behavior

• You are required to act with appropriate decorum during this case. While grievances must often be aired during a case, you are expected to air them without being incivil or engaging in personal attacks, and to respond calmly to allegations against you.
• Accusations of misbehaviour posted in this case must be proven with clear evidence (and otherwise not made at all).

Consequences of inappropriate behavior

• Editors who conduct themselves inappropriately during a case may be sanctioned by an arbitrator or clerk, without warning.
• Sanctions issued by arbitrators or clerks may include being banned from particular case pages or from further participation in the case.
• Editors who ignore sanctions issued by arbitrators or clerks may be blocked from editing.
• Behavior during a case may also be considered by the committee in arriving at a final decision.

Evidence presented by Supreme Deliciousness

Paradise Chronicle repeatedly claims me and others of showing tolerance to ISIS

User:Paradise Chronicle has repeatedly made the baseless claim that me and other users of showing: "tolerance towards ISIS" [1][2]"ISIS-Erdogan or Assad POV pushing" [3].

At the first diff Paradise Chronicle was defending the sockpuppet User:Konli17 who was the one that started the entire disruption at the Syrian Kurdistan article. Without that sockpuppet there wouldn't be any arbitration case right now. "That they now want to oust Konli17, who really improved many articles"[4] the sockpuppet Konli17 adding fake maps into Wikipedia:[5][6][7][8][9][10][11](This is the fake map: [12]) removes well sourced historical info that Kurds migrated from Turkey into Syria: [13][14]. There are many more diffs just like these by the sockpuppet Konli17 that Paradise Chronicle felt the need to defend while claiming the disruptive sock had "really improved many articles".

I will ad more evidence about others later.--Supreme Deliciousness (talk) 07:20, 23 January 2021 (UTC)

User:Levivich removes reliably sourced information that shows "Western Kurdistan" as not being in Syria

Today's Kurdish nationalist claim is that part of Syria is "Kurdistan". They call this "Syrian Kurdistan" or "Western Kurdistan". There are historical sources that show that "Western Kurdistan" is not in Syria. These historical sources therefore exposes today's Kurdish nationalist claims as having no historical basis. Levich decides to remove the well source historical information from the article: [15][16]

Admin User:Valereee introduces source restriction that gives editors veto power to remove undisputed historical info

Valereee introduces source restriction [17] Valereee later clarified that it is "disputed" not because the content was disputed by another source, but because another editor disputed it: [18] Basically giving unprecedented veto power to Levivich and other users to remove sourced and undisputed content out of the article. This has now led to large amounts of undisputed and well sourced historical information and historical maps being removed from the article [19][20] and no one dares to say anything against this in fear of getting blocked. I ask the arbitrators to please lift this newly implanted source restriction.

I would also like to bring attention to a comment made my an uninvolved Administrator at the AN where he perfectly described the situation: "You can easily see how this could be gamed, though: somebody finds a historical detail they don't like, appropriately cited to a pre-2000 source, edits it out and boom, now it's "disputed" and the bar for re-adding it is much stricter than projectwide policy supports."[21]

Unfair behavior of admin Valereee

On 28 November Valereee blocked me because I said "cherry picked sources" [22] and said at my talkpage: "Talk about the edits, not the editor.". On 7 January Levivich accused me of "cherry picking" [23] Valereee did not give him a block, not even a warning at his talkpage. Even when i pointed this out to her: [24] So there is one type of rules that only I have to follow and I get blocked for but "the other side" does not have to follow those rules and they will not receive any block for saying the exact same thing.

Rebuttal to Valereees comment:[25]. Anyone can clearly see the exchange between me and her at my talkpage and see that she blocked me mainly for "cherry picking", that was the main issue: [26][27]. Even when she added the block notice to my talkpage she only mentioned "cherry picking", nothing else: [28], this further proves my point. --Supreme Deliciousness (talk) 08:44, 29 January 2021 (UTC)

I will ad more evidence later. --Supreme Deliciousness (talk) 22:46, 23 January 2021 (UTC)

Evidence presented by Semsûrî

Background

I was asked by El_C[29] to summarize the general disruption I've seen in Kurdish-related articles, so here we go. I've seen an immense amount of POV-poshing, disruptive editing that almost always resulted in the editors getting blocked after not being able to argue for their edits and/or personally attacking me. I started cleaning Kurdish-related articles back in March 2019 and experienced daily sockpuppetry, meatpuppetry, hounding, povforks, ANI-abuse and one editor impersonating me to get me banned. Ultimately many, many and many editors were banned indefinitely. Most of this took place from March to June 2019 and slowly ebbed out by the end of the year but the problem does flare up sometimes.

This entry is therefore about the general disruption seen in Kurdish-related topics since 2019. If I had to describe the disruption, it was definitely attempts to question the Kurdishness of the respective articles, but easy to counter since they were blatant POV-pushes.

Summary

Kurmanji and Yazidis (March-June 2019)

• Kurmanji

This page was one of the articles experiencing a lot of disruption. Prior to my involvement, the article saw an attempt to disassociate this Kurdish dialect/language from Kurds. You can see how the word 'Kurdish' is being removed by this editor[30]. I then removed the blatant POV-push[31] (and general clean up) but was reverted and accused of conducting ethno-pov[32] by the same editor. This user would ultimately get blocked but the article continued to experience disruption and POV-pushing immediately after[33] which continued till June when it got indefinitely protected[34]. On October 25th, protection was lowered[35] but reinstated the next day[36].

• Kurmanjis

Annoyed by my actions at the 'Kurmanji'-page, the same editor(s) chose to focus on the already-existing Povfork Kurmanjis which without any reference claimed that Kurmanji-speaking Kurds were in fact an ethnic group.[37] This was just another attempt to disassociate the Kurmanji vernacular from Kurds. They failed linguistically and now attempted ethnically. Nonetheless, they failed and the page was redirected to Kurds.[38]

• Template:lang-kmr

Perhaps the best example of how ridiculous this vandalism is. This template is only used on one page [39] but has experienced a long-standing ping-pong between removing and adding the word 'Kurdish' after 'Kurmanji'[40].

• Ezidkhan/List of Yazidi settlements

The state of the article before I got involved[41]. The main issues were pushing for the notion that Ezidkhan was a geographically defined territory but also the attempt to portray the flag of the HPÊ as the flag of Yazidis. I removed the flag[42] and general clean up like removing blogs used as reference. I got called a Kurdish nationalist[43] and the editor was ultimately banned. I subsequently moved the article to List of Yazidi settlements[44] and made it into a page containing villages populated by Yazidis. I moreover cleaned up articles where Ezidkhan was portrayed as an autonomous entity in this fashion[45] and in total these articles included most of the articles included in this category.

• Persecution of Yazidis by Kurds

Ultimately redirected to Persecution of Yazidis by Muslims, this page was just a 'let's find anything we can on Muslims of Kurdish origin oppressing Yazidis and add it here', despite the fact that scholars clearly stated that the oppression took place due to the religion and not the ethnicity of the perpetrators.

Tribes and dialect of Laki (May-August 2019)

Editor Shadegan had for years and almost succeeded in their pov-push on various articles until I confronted them with references. Never have I experienced an editor so determined to their cause and any interaction was completely futile due to lack of a direct answer. Instead they would turn to personal attacks and start disrupting unrelated Kurdish articles just to annoy me. For example, they would request a name move for Flag of Kurdistan and Iranian Kurdistan which also attracted some of the disruptive editors and IPs from the Kurmanji/Yazidi group[46][47].

The main pov-push from Shadegan was the attempt to question the Kurdishness of Kurdish tribes and dialects. Most of these pages had to be almost fully rewritten, so before and current urls of these articles is probably the best way to showcase the pov-push:

• Before|Now
• Before|Now
• Before|Now
• pov-fork now redirected

Disruptive editors from the Kurmanji/Yazidi group joined in in another dispute as well[48].

Hounding (October 2020)

Back in October last year, I expanded these articles Kifri, Jalawla, Khanaqin and other similar articles. As I expanded these articles, one editor with various accounts kept rewording my edits (and thereby add OR) to suit their POV. Examples: [49][50][51] --Semsûrî (talk) 16:06, 23 January 2021 (UTC)

Evidence presented by Brunswicknic

There is heat around Kurds and their issues, even in small things

I have watching Gaziantep, in it there has been small edits to raise Kurdish points, sometimes clumsy, but in good faith. But they seem to be met with short, unhelpful responses. There is frustration, there is strong indication of "deeper issues" at play. The editors concerned though have not overstepped any lines of wiki-behaviour here, just an example of the problems around Kurds and things related to them. Brunswicknic (talk) 03:28, 24 January 2021 (UTC)

Evidence presented by Valereee

Just for the record, Special:Diff/991171223 is not me objecting to "cherry picking", although cherry picking is always objectionable. But my objection was to SD saying 'cherry picked sources that further pushes the debunked "Syrian kurdistan" fraud'. The cherry picking is bad, but it's the assertion of 'further pushes the debunked SK fraud' that was the problem. ETA: and SD is right, I should have been clearer that there were two specific problems in their statement I was objecting to. —valereee (talk) 22:00, 28 January 2021 (UTC)

Evidence presented by {your user name}

before using the last evidence template, please make a copy for the next person

{Write your assertion here}

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

{Write your assertion here}

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