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Case requests

Request name	Motions	Initiated	Votes
Future Perfect at Sunrise - Involved and AdminAcct		13 February 2014	{{{votes}}}

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Open cases

Case name	Links	Evidence due	Prop. Dec. due
Venezuelan politics	(t) (ev / t) (ws / t) (pd / t)	20 Apr 2024	04 May 2024

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Conflict of interest management	13 Apr 2024
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Request name	Motions	Case	Posted
Amendment request: Conduct in deletion-related editing	none	(orig. case)	30 April 2024
Clarification request: Palestine-Israel articles 4	none	(orig. case)	8 May 2024

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Future Perfect at Sunrise - Involved and AdminAcct

Initiated by Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) at 11:22, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

Involved parties

• Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log), filing party
• Future Perfect at Sunrise (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Confirmation that all parties are aware of the request

• [1]

Confirmation that other steps in dispute resolution have been tried

• WP:ANI
• User talk:Furure Perfect at Sunrise

Statement by Anthonyhcole

An IP editor added a comment, supported by diffs, critical of the candidate to Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship/Piotrus 3. The comment was not off-topic, vandalism or a personal attack - discussion of a user's conduct or history, with diffs, is not a personal attack when done in the appropriate forum - so I can see no justification per WP:TPG or WP:NPA for the comment's removal. The IP may have a valid reason for not identifying their account, if they have one. But reasonable people may and do disagree on the comment's appropriateness.

A succession of editors removed and restored the comment over the next two days (four different editors removing and seven restoring). A request for intervention was lodged at ANI. User:Future Perfect at Sunrise removed the comment and fully protected the talk page.

I have asked FPaS in the ANI thread and on his talk page to explain how reverting the page to his preferred version and then protecting it is not a breach of WP:INVOLVED and he has declined to discuss it and banned me from his talk page.

I have no prior history with FPAS or the RfA candidate that I am aware of. I'm just concerned that an admin used his tool while involved and will do so again if he's not given appropriate guidance. Perhaps I'm wrong; if so, I'd appreciate guidance. And I'm concerned that FPAS hasn't answered my repeated requests for an explanation, per WP:ADMINACCT. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 17:36, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

Floquenbeam's and Tarc's comments have persuaded me. The IP is highly probably a ban-evading sock and in that charged setting, and given the irrelevance of its contribution to the final outcome of the RfA, there was no point in extending the benefit of any slim doubt to the IP. I'm sorry it took so long for me to see that and for wasting everybody's time and adding to the candidate's and FPaS's stress. I shall now slink away and self-flagellate for a while. Do with this RFAR what you will. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 19:39, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

Just to be clear: there is no doubt FPaS acted while involved. None. But in this case the removal of that comment from that talk page was so obviously the right thing to do that WP:IAR was appropriate. That "obvious rightness" is clear to me now - but a few hours ago, until Floq's vandalism analogy and Tarc's "bring order to a tension-filled RfA", it was not. And it is still not clear to other reasonable, good-faith, unbiased editors here and at ANI.

Unlike Vercrumba, who has a picture of Stalin on his user page, I and many others opposing FPaS's action were not motivated by partisan sentiment, but by concern for the very poor behaviour and low competence of too many of our admins, and by FPaS's apparent disregard for consensus and contemptuous treatment of his fellow editors who disagreed with him.

When an admin acts while involved, against the express view of a majority of involved editors in good standing, in a highly charged situation, they need to be polite. If those he is overruling do not immediately get why IAR is appropriate, the admin should be patient. During this affair, FPaS has been appalling in his dealings with others. If this behaviour is part of a general pattern in his treatment of others with whom he disagrees, we still have a problem admin. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 01:42, 14 February 2014 (UTC)

NE Ent, before Mike Godwin, Louis Brandeis said, "If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence." There was no time to expose through discussion any falsehood or fallacies in the IP's case. Removal was the right thing to do, under the circumstances. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 02:16, 14 February 2014 (UTC)

Statement by Future Perfect at Sunrise

This is getting stupid. I came to that page as an entirely uninvolved administrator, having seen a request at ANI to stop an edit war. Unlike virtually everybody else in the edit-war I had no dog in the fight over that RfA (if anything, I am well known to have been historically critical of the RfA candidate in question, and would personally have agreed with much of what the sock IP was saying). I saw the edit-war and resolved to protect the page, regularly, on the version I found it in at that moment – which was the one with the sock posting removed. While I was preparing to press the protect button, I noticed that somebody had put in yet another revert, beating me to it by seconds. I therefore resolved to use my admin discretion and do what I had originally – and without any doubt legitimately – meant to do, i.e. protect the version I had been meaning to protect. To do that, I made another revert before protecting. Per the protection policy, since "protecting the most current version sometimes rewards edit warring by establishing a contentious revision, administrators may also revert to an old version of the page predating the edit war if such a clear point exists". This is exactly what I did – the version before the edit-war being the version from before the sock IP posted its rant.

This version also happened to be the version I was convinced was the one that is in line with policy. There cannot be any reasonable doubt that the IP's posting was made in breach of either WP:BAN or WP:SCRUTINY, and in that preceding edit-war I had seen no rational, policy-based argumentation being brought forward against this obvious point. In that sense there was no "disagreement between users in good standing" to be taken seriously – those who kept reinstating the post did so not out of any policy-based consideration, but either because they simply liked the message or out of some vague impulse of "not censored". Anthonyhcole and some others have been repeating ad nauseam that the IP "may have a valid reason for not identifying their account". This is in direct, obvious contradiction to WP:SOCK, but these editors have doggedly refused to listen whenever this has been explained to them, to an extent that crosses the line into disruptive WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT behaviour.

Obviously, I did explain my actions immediately upon them becoming the object of discussion [2]. Anthonyhcole's complaints over WP:ADMINACCT are thus bogus. "Accountability" doesn't mean I'm obliged to respond to perpetual badgering and to requests for repeats of explanations ad infinitum simply because somebody doesn't like the explanations I gave. Fut.Perf. ☼ 17:50, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

Statement by Leaky Caldron

In addition to WP:INVOLVED I request that Arbcom. consider the Admin's interpretation of policy WP:SOCK / WP:ILLEGIT and their general interactions WP:ADMINACCT / WP:CIVILITY.

I was involved in the RfA and subsequent ANI discussion concerning the submission of a lengthy argument by an IP against the candidate. I had already !voted when the material was added, I was not aware of the EEML saga and took the contribution at face value. It was well written, formatted and fully supported by diffs. It is policy that IPs can edit except for documented exceptions such as RfA voting. RfA Talk IS NOT an exception. I reinstated it with the edit summary "(....you do not have permission, the editor has identified and per WP:TPO I object to it being removed without discussion)". Although I was later proved incorrect about the contributor having identified, I would make the same reversion again in the same circumstances given the lack of discussion with the poster and the obvious objections to it being removed. WP:TPO seems clear on this point. The Admin. has claimed policy support for his decision to delete the material in WP:SOCK, specifically WP:ILLEGIT "Editing project space": "Undisclosed alternative accounts should not edit policies, guidelines, or their talk pages; comment in Arbitration proceedings; or vote in requests for adminship, deletion debates, or elections". The Admin claims that "Obviuosly [sic] that also goes for editors choosing to edit logged-out without disclosing their link to their prior edit history (whether that prior edit history be itself through IPs or an account)." This exchange can be seen in the diffs towards the bottom of this link [3].

I cannot find any basis in policy for the interpretation and justification given by the Admin. Unless clear and incontrovertible evidence shows a posting to be from a banned or blocked user we cannot just delete stuff we disagree with. Unsubstantiated edit summaries such as "(rv, obviously a statement by some banned troll sock)", while comically blunt, are guaranteed to provoke an adverse reaction from editor's who prefer evidence rather than rhetoric. Accuracy, effective communication and evidence is a minimum requirement for Admins. making controversial edits.

WP:ILLEGIT does not preclude IPs editing the Talk Page at RfA in the list of prohibited areas. It expressly lists voting at RfA, but not adding to the RfA Talk Page and I believe that there is good reason for that. The Admin. with the following edit dismissed that argument thus: "Sigh. I didn't expect anybody would sink so low into wikilawyering. With this, you have finally lost any claim to being taken seriously here. Learn this: on Wikipedia, we read policy texts for their intent, not for their letter. Now go away, I'm no longer interested in having any discussion with you." Edit summary: "end of discussion". This brings me immediately to another issue that the Admin. should be held accountable for, namely the blatant lack of civility in their dismissive, derogatory response. Civility is an absolute stated requirement of WP:ADMINACCT. In this and other examples throughout this discussion the Admin. has demonstrated a single minded and off-hand style of dealing with any challenges made to their decision. In my opinion it has gone beyond acceptable levels of cut and thrust argument and he has descended into aggressive and hostile defence of his position including undisguised personal attacks on an editor simply pointing out documented policy and requesting clarification.

Statement from MONGO

Concur that reasonable people might disagree as to the merits of the IP posting at the Rfa in question. My impression is that since making what could easily be construed as a wise admin decision, Future Perfect at Sunrise has been subjected to harassment, inquisition style questioning and badgering which indicates that those engaged in such behavior must either have other deeper reasons for this behavior or they are simply bored and this is how they get their kicks. The amusing part about it to me is that not only did they see no problem with aiding and abetting a throw away IP account that could easily be argued was simply trying to misuse the Rfa process to settle a score, but that when an administrator tried to make that Rfa less acrimonious, these same enablers proceed to hound and harass the admin. That is as clear a definition of cyberbullying as can be found.--MONGO 18:53, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

Statement by Tarc

It is rather obvious that the IP user we're talking about is not a legitimately "new" user, that they are clearly falling under the "avoid scrutiny" part of WP:ILLEGIT, so the removal was perfectly valid. I read not a lick of what was actually posted, and have never had a thing to do with the EEML situation, the problem here is simply that we shouldn't be allowing scrutiny-avoiding criticism to be entered into an RfA. As a person stands for adminship, they should have the right to rebut criticism and to know exactly who it is coming from. FPaS acted to bring order to a tension-filled RfA, nothing more.

Statement by NE Ent

I'll note I don't share other's divination powers to know whether the disputed content was from a banned editor, a so called anonymous coward, or long term ip editor. Regardless, it was a well crafted political statement -- rather than a rant it appeared to be a well-sourced manifesto intended to scuttle the Rfa, which did in fact not succeed. Since correlation is not causation, assigning causality would be going too far, but its at least plausible FPaS's heavy handed intervention Streisanded the statement into greater prominence; as Mike Godwin said, "The best answer for bad speech is more speech." Had the statement been allowed to remain the candidate could have attempted to address the concerns listed, rather than appearing to be metaphorically hiding between the skirts of the editors repeatedly removing the content and eventually the admin who removed it and temporarily protected the page.

Nonetheless, although the admin action was counterproductive, it in itself is not sufficient grounds for ArbCom scrutiny -- but what came after is.

I don't see FPaS's statements as adequate because they're not coherently cogent. In paragraph one they claim no editorial involvement -- they say they were simply going to protect the wrong version but add some convoluted I didn't inhale defense saying they "had no dog in the fight" but their revert to a preferred version doesn't really count because that's the first version they saw; describing the statement as "rant" indicates a strong editorial position. Then in paragraph two they say removing the content was in line with policy, which contradicts the whole convoluted paragraph one.

Personally, I would expect a tool using administrator not merely to "do what is right," but to have a logically coherent reason in line with policy for the doing, and to be able to succinctly and civilly explain those reasons.

Uncle Ben famously said With great power comes great responsibility, and the current written WP:Administrators policy claims "Administrators should strive to model appropriate standards of courtesy and civility to other editors." This is backed by prior ArbCom statements:

• Wikipedia editors are expected to behave reasonably, calmly, and courteously in their interactions with other users; to approach even difficult situations in a dignified fashion and with a constructive and collaborative outlook (AC 2008)
• In general, Wikipedia's administrators are held to a higher standard of behavior than other users, particularly with regard to principles such as assume good faith and no personal attacks. Administrators are expected to keep their cool and should not use administrator-specific capabilities casually or without thought. They should lead by example and serve as a model of the proper editing behavior to which other users should aspire. (AC 2007)
• Administrators are expected to lead by example and set a standard of engagement for others to follow. (AC 2007)
• All editors deserve to be treated with the utmost of respect by administrators.(AC 2007)

So this case provides AC 2014 with an opportunity to let the community know whether those seven year old statements indicate current policy, or whether Tim Simonite was correct when he wrote in Technology Review "The loose collective running the site today, estimated to be 90 percent male, operates a crushing bureaucracy with an often abrasive atmosphere that deters newcomers who might increase participation in Wikipedia and broaden its coverage." NE Ent 20:20, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

Vecrumba When you say "this is a waste of time and energy and is symptomatic of the kind of sniping that has caused us to lose more than 30% of active editors ..." what is the antecedent of (what do you mean by) "this"? Who should have acted differently? NE Ent 22:27, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

Statement by Vecrumba

It's fair to say that FPaS and I don't always see eye to eye. That said, this is a waste of time and energy and is symptomatic of the kind of sniping that has caused us to lose more than 30% of active editors since our peak in 2007. An ounce of restraint is worth an infinite quantity of mea culpa post-self-flagellation. VєсrumЬа ►TALK 21:42, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

@NE Ent, Anthonyhcole should have inquired rather than accused and then escalated. It's symptomatic of:

• accuse—not inquire,
• presume guilt—not innocence,
• escalate (i.e, "this") on the accused's failure to admit said guilt—not desist when their folly is pointed out.

Anthonyhcole can self-flagellate until the cows come home, the incremental damage is done. WP is an encyclopedia, not a self-deputizing police state. Really, accusations of "censorship" for deleting anonymous IP diatribe? VєсrumЬа ►TALK 23:19, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

Statement by Lukeno94

I'm rather disappointed to see that ArbCom are also immediately jumping to the "banned sock" viewpoint, when there is categorically no evidence this is a banned user. None whatsoever. Now, whether this user is violating WP:ILLEGIT is another argument, and one that can be made without jumping to unfounded conclusions; but Floquenbeam, you have unfortunately jumped to said conclusion. It's pretty clear to me that FPaS did violate WP:INVOLVED, but it's better to leave this sorry case in the past, rather than trying to drag it up again - it's clear no one is going to get sanctioned from this. Lukeno94 (tell Luke off here) 23:18, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

General observation by Resolute

I don't know if FPaS specifically cited a belief that the IP was a banned editor, but if he was operating under that premise, then removing the content before protecting would effectively be one administrative action and not a violation of involved. One might instead question, as Likeno94 does, whether that would have been a good assumption in this case, but it would still moot the original question of INVOLVED. Also, given I am not lashing out at FPaS, and since I am also an admin, I am obviously just part of the cabal as certain agitators involved in this dispute intent on poisoning the well will no doubt argue. Resolute 03:15, 14 February 2014 (UTC)

Statement by Andy Dingley

I've taken no part in the RfA and make no comment on that. However in just the immediate section beneath that ANI, we have this: WP:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive828#Betacommand-related_drama.3F, an issue that I didn't raise here, but I've been involved in for some time. Future Perfect is behaving in just the same way, stonewalling a discussion amongst a number of GF editors by the instant blanket deletion and blocking of another editor who is posting material relevant to an SPI, but doing so by socking (Given the harassment and attacks that follow any involvement in that SPI, I can understand why an editor might choose to do so).

The issue here is Betacommand's return by socking. Future Perfect, long a supporter of Betacommand, is acting in a way to prevent discussion of this. He is acting against the direct wishes of multiple editors (two of us make it very clear in that ANI post). Future Perfect is using admin tools, including threats of immediate blocks against long-established GF editors, to strong-arm a discussion against other editors. This is precisely the sort of behaviour admins should not follow.

As noted by Luke above, this editor is almost certainly a sock but there is zero evidence presented to indicate that they're a banned editor, despite being regularly described as such. The circular logic is also applied that they must be a sock because they're blocked, and that they're now blocked because they're a sock.

I see these two issues, and why these two issues matter at ANI, why they matter here, and why they're still not made moot by a closed RfA, as being about Future Perfect and their use of admin powers, not about the RfA or the SPI specifically. Andy Dingley (talk) 03:21, 14 February 2014 (UTC)

Clerk notes

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

Future Perfect at Sunrise - Involved and AdminAcct: Arbitrators' opinion on hearing this matter <0/2/0/0>

Vote key: (Accept/decline/recuse/other)

• Decline. I don't need to wait for further statements, this is clear cut. The ridiculous edit warring on that page is depressing, though not surprising, and "trouts all around" wouldn't be taken onboard by anyone, and "blocks all around" would perhaps be overkill, so I'll not suggest either one. Re: INVOLVED: This isn't what INVOLVED refers to, any more than an admin reverting vandalism and then protecting the page would. This is an obvious banned sock, stirring up trouble. Re: ADMINACCT: FP@S explained his actions pretty clearly, I believe meeting the requirements of ADMINACCT. Perhaps more patience with people questioning him is in order, but I know that's easier said than done. Look, if we're going to let obvious banned editors avoid scrutiny and post 58k of accusations against an old enemy on the talk page of an already contentious RFA, then we might as well throw WP:SOCK out the window. --Floquenbeam (talk) 18:44, 13 February 2014 (UTC)
• Decline Per Floq and the fact that it is basically moot at this point. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:07, 13 February 2014 (UTC)