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Nagorno-Karabakh article

Request concerning the Nagorno-Karabakh article

Relevant article

Nagorno-Karabakh (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

Sanction or remedy to be enforced

Wikipedia:ARBAA2#Standard discretionary sanctions

Notes

Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Xebulon/Archive#08 February 2012 has a fuller description of the issue, courtesy of Golbez (talk · contribs). See also #Nagorno-Karabakh, above. Opening a formal report to allow for fuller discussion as to potential sanctions to address this situation. T. Canens (talk) 10:48, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Notification

[1]

Discussion concerning the Nagorno-Karabakh article

I have two objections against this idea, and one proposal.

1. The text of standard discretionary sanctions says
   (i) that the subjects of discretionary sanctions are some particular users, not articles;
   (ii) that the sanctions are applied after the user has been properly warned.
   In connection to that, the very idea to impose editing restrictions on some article as whole is not in accordance with the discretionary sanctions concept, because
   (i) that means that all users (not only those who edit war in this area) appear to be sanctioned, and
   (ii) the Sandstein's sanctions had been applied without proper warning. For example, if we look at the Mass killings under Communist regimes and at the WP:DIGWUREN, we see that I had never been formally warned (I have never been mentioned on the WP:DIGWUREN page). Nevertheless, my editorial privileges (as well as the privileges of overwhelming majority of the Wikipedians) appear to be restricted. That restriction of my editing privileges is almost tantamount to topic ban and I do not understand why have I been placed under such topic ban. Similarly, although I have no interest in the Karabakh area, however, I cannot rule out a possibility that I may decide to edit some Karabakh related area in future. In connection to that, I do not understand why should my editing privileges to be restricted in advance, despite the fact that I committed no violations of WP policy.
2. Whereas the Sandstein's sanctions made the admin's life dramatically easier, the result is by no means satisfactory. The article appeared to be frozen in quite biased state, and tremendous work is needed to fix a situation. If we look even at the very first opening sentence, we will see that it starts with the data taken from The Black Book of Communism, arguably the most influential, and the most controversial book about the subject. Do we add credibility to Wikipedia by using such sources without reservations? My attempts to move this statement to the article's body and to supplement it with necessary commentaries had been successfully blocked by the users who, by contrast to myself had been already sanctioned per WP:DIGWUREN, and the only reasons they appeared to be able to do that was masterful usage of formal nuances of the Sandstein's sanctions. As a result, I (as well as other reasonable editors) decided to postpone our work on this article, because the efforts needed to implement even small improvements are not commensurate with the results obtained. As a result, we have the article, which appeared to be frozen in totally unsatisfactory states. This fact does not bother the admins, because there is no edit wars any more, but the fact that some article gives a totally biased picture (and that this situation cannot be fixed) is extremely dangerous for Wikipedia. Yes, there is no visible conflict, however, the most harmonious place in the world is a graveyard.

By writing that, I do not imply that no sanctions are needed. However, these sanctions should be in accordance with the discretionary sanctions' spirit, i.e. they should be directed against the users who had already committed some violations in this area, and who had alrfeady been properly warned. In the case of WP:DIGWUREN, we already have a list of such users, so it would be quite natural to restrict only those users (more precisely, those who had been warned during last 2-3 years). For other users no restrictions should exist (although, probably, article's semi-protection to exclude IP vandalism would be useful). For Karabakh articles, I suggest to create a similar page (if no such page exists yet): starting from some date, every user committing 3RR or similar violation is added to this list, so s/he cannot make any edit to this article until the change s/he propose is supported by consensus as described by Sandstein. I fully realise that that may initially create some problem for the admins, however, that will allow us to develop Karabakh related articles, which is much more important.--Paul Siebert (talk) 16:56, 26 February 2012 (UTC)
PS. In addition to the MKuCR, we have other articles that were placed under restrictions (such as Communist terrorism, which is under 1RR). This is also not in accordance with the discretionary sanctions spirit: nowhere on that page can you find a statement that the admins are authorised to place unspecified number of users under edit restrictions without proper warning. I think by applying these sanctions the admins exceeded their authority. In my opinion, such a restriction may exist only for some concrete users, and should be implemented in a form of the list which is being permanently modofied by adding those who abuse their editing privileges, and by excluding those who committed no violations during, e.g. last 2-3 years.--Paul Siebert (talk) 17:09, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

I see you point, and understand your concerns. But the problem in this article is caused not by the established editors. Those are known very well, and more or less behave. The problem here are new and recently created accounts with very limited history of contributions, which pop up one after another just to rv or vote. Some are quacking very loudly, but nothing is done. For instance, I mentioned in the CU request the account of Spankarts (talk · contribs), which was created only to vote for deletion of an article. Do we need a CU for such accounts? As for sanctions, those affecting only the established users are not effective, because such measures benefit only those who use socks to evade restrictions. For instance, the sanctions imposed on Caucasian Albania clearly did not work. The edit warring there was waged by User:Vandorenfm and User:Gorzaim, both of whom eventually turned out to be socks of the banned User:Xebulon (btw, the edit warring on Nagorno-Karabakh was started by the same 2 accounts). At that time Sandstein imposed a sanction that read: All editors with Armenia/Azerbaijan-related sanctions are banned from editing this article and its talk page. For the purposes of this ban, these editors are all who have at any time been the subject of remedies, blocks or other sanctions logged on the case pages WP:ARBAA or WP:ARBAA2, irrespective of whether or not these sanctions are still in force or whether they were imposed by the Arbitration Committee or by administrators. But since all long time editors in AA area were at some point under some sort of sanctions, this pretty much opened the doors for sock and meatpuppetry, since new accounts were not under any prior sanctions. The result is that the article reflects the views of the sockmaster, who was free to make any edits he wished, and established editors could not remove even unreferenced OR claims. This is why the article about Caucasian Albania is in such a poor condition now. The sock account even managed to place an established user on a 1 year topic ban: [2] Note the complaint of the sock: The immediate concern is his editing of the article on Caucasian Albania, where User:Twilight Chill continues waging an edit war against 5 (five) other unrelated editors (Aram-van, Gorzaim, Vandorenfm, MarshallBagramyan, Xebulon). 4 of 5 accounts that he mentioned turned out later to be socks (User:Aram-van, User:Gorzaim, User:Vandorenfm, and User:Xebulon). Nice, isn't it? I have a reason to believe that the sockmaster is happily editing under a new account now, and having a good laugh at arbitration enforcement. Something similar is now going on in Nagorno-Karabakh. I don't know whether they use socks or not, but clearly a lot of SPAs are being engaged. Therefore I think the solution implemented by Sandstein on Mass killings under communist regimes is much better. At least something should be done to prevent mass edit warring with the use of new accounts. Otherwise this is not going to work. Grandmaster 18:42, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

No. You simply don't understand what those sanctions mean. Such sanctions may work well only if they are directed against a limited set of users who, despite being warned, continue their disruptive activity. It is ridiculous to effectively block WP community from editing of some particular articles simply because a limited amount of users appear to be unable to collaborate.--Paul Siebert (talk) 19:52, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

But I'm not proposing to block the whole wikicommunity. I believe well established users should be allowed to edit freely any article. However the activity of new and recently created users should be limited on contentious articles. I agree with the proposal that the user should have at least 500 edits, preferably outside of AA area, to be allowed to edit an article like Nagorno-Karabakh. Otherwise you will get a bunch of SPAs which turn up only to rv or vote. Grandmaster 21:36, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

@ T. Canens. Thank you for providing a link to the Armenia-Azerbaijan 2 discussion. Unfortunately, I overlooked this discussion and was not able to present my arguments timely. Let me point out, however, that Kirill's idea that "(a) that the editnotice on the article constitutes a sufficient warning as required by ¶2" is not fully correct: ¶2 implies that a warning is issued to the editor, who "repeatedly or seriously fails to adhere to the purpose of Wikipedia". In other words, the full sequence of the events that lead to discretionary sanctions is:

1. Some editor working in the area of conflict "repeatedly or seriously fails to adhere to the purpose of Wikipedia";
2. A warning has been issued for him (obviously, this warning is supposed to contain a reference to some wrongdoing)
3. If violation continues, sanctions are imposed.

However, in a case of article wide sanctions the edit notice is being issued to everyone and in advance, so the user appears to be sanctioned simply by virtue of his interest to this topic. That is a blatant violation of our WP:AGF principle. Moreover, whereas one can speculate if 1RR itself or block for its violation is the actual sanctions, the article's full protection is already a sanction, which has been applied to whole WP community. I have a feeling that the idea of a possibility of article wide sanction should be re-considered as intrinsically flawed.--Paul Siebert (talk) 19:47, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

@ T. Canens. Re you "we have never required evidence of "repeated or serious" misconduct before a warning may be issued." Well, my # 1 was probably too strict. However, you have to agree that some misconduct is supposed to take place before the warning is issued. The discretionary sanction text says

"Prior to any sanctions being imposed, the editor in question shall be given a warning..."

In other words, according to this text a warning is issued to the editor, whose behaviour seems problematic. A typical example of such warning contains a reference to some concrete example of misconduct by the user in question. Alternativelly, the warning may be issued as a result of the AE request [ http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3AVolunteer_Marek&action=historysubmit&diff=428783293&oldid=428236720 ], however, I am not familiar with the case when some good faith user appears to be arbitrarily warned for no reasons. Nowhere in the sanction's text can you find allowance of a blanket warning to everyone who just happened to express interest to Eastern Europe, Karabakh or Palestina-Israel. Therefore, the edit notice is just information, not a formal warning.

Moreover, you forgot one more important fact. Per WP:DIGWUREN, the Mass killings under Communist regimes article is fully protected, so the editorial privileges of all users appeared to be revoked before they got a chance to commit any violation. That means that sanctions have been applied even before the user got a change to read the "warning" (which, as I have demonstrated, is not a warning at all). Do you see any logic here? --Paul Siebert (talk) 17:58, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

PS Re you "in fact, the provision does not require any misconduct before a warning". If that is the case, then that such warning simply becomes a new rule that all Wikipedians are supposed to observe, i.e. a new policy. Does that mean that we have different policies for different fields within the same Wikiproject? And if this is a local policy, then why only admins/arbitrators are allowed to participate in its creation? As far as I know, admins and ordinary users have equal rights to write and modify policy...--Paul Siebert (talk) 18:20, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

I would like to ask admins to have a look at the most recent SPI request by an uninvolved user on one of the accounts engaged in Nagorno-Karabakh article: [3] While there's no technical evidence to prove sockpuppetry, behavioral evidence provided by The Devil's Advocate is pretty alarming. There are user accounts that only act as revert machines. What are we supposed to do with those? The fact that 3 unrelated editors, including an admin, filed SPI requests mentioning the same accounts I believe demonstrates that there are reasons for concern. Grandmaster 16:57, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

There is a reason for concern and that is Grandmaster/Tuscumbia/TheDevil'sAvocate own disruptive sock-machine that continues churning foul-faith SPI reports which are now disregarded and closed without much ado [4]. See my full comments. Dehr (talk) 20:56, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

That's quite an interesting accusation. If you check, The Devil's Advocate is registered in 2007 and has about 4000 edits, and almost none of them in AA area. I never knew this user before I encountered his name on Xebulon's SPI request. If you still believe that we are each other's socks, you are more than welcome to file an SPI request.Grandmaster 21:46, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

That is a clear problem with User:Grandmaster. He invents policies but does not want such policies be applied to him. One can argue that The Devils Adv is part of your sock-farm but you conspired to hide him so well that SPIs would not help. So, let's then disregard SPIs and ban you both on charges, as Dehr suggested, for WP:TROLL, WP:AGF and WP:BATTLEGROUND. Winterbliss (talk) 05:09, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Nice. So I've been hiding him for 5 years, but we've never edited the same article, and our paths only crossed now? Compare that to all those accounts that popped up since September 2011, after the previous bunch of Xebulon socks were banned, and who all edit the same articles, and some appear only to rv or vote. I would like to ask admins here a question. Are there any reasons to consider the accounts of Oliveriki (talk · contribs) or Spankarts (talk · contribs) to be good faith accounts? I think the latter account is the most blatant one, other than deredlinking his user page, it only made 3 edits, all of which are votes for deletion of contentious articles at AFDs. If it is not an SPA, then what is it? Grandmaster 10:22, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Both of them seem rather blatant to me. Oliveriki's only significant contributions have just been to get involved in edit wars to support Xebulon or his socks. The January 24th revert restoring a 28k Xebulon sock edit that had been reverted months before was pretty damn disruptive.--The Devil's Advocate (talk) 17:25, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

I appreciate the comment by WGFinley, but I want to ask a question. Is it Ok to create SPAs just to rv or vote? Should the votes by such accounts count, and the rvs in highly contentious articles amidst heated disputes not considered disruptive? Everyone can ask his friends, relatives, acquaintances, etc create accounts to promote a certain position. How can disruption by SPAs be stopped? Shouldn't the activity of new accounts be restricted on contentious articles? As for SPIs, admins are involved in filing them as much as everyone else is, see for instance this: [5], the very first SPI was filed by the advice of the admins. And later SPIs were filed by unrelated users, some of whom do not even edit AA articles, and a wikipedia admin. That shows that there are serious reasons for concern that make all these people file the SPI requests. When one sees new accounts that pop up one after another to rv contentious articles or take part in AFDs, it makes him think that it is not just a mere coincidence. And also, filing SPIs is pretty useless nowadays. There are so many mass puppeteers (Paligun, Xebulon, Hetoum I, Ararat arev to name just a few), that figuring out who's who is almost impossible. But something needs to be done to stop disruption. Grandmaster 17:13, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

I find certain statements by Winterbliss to be a rude violation of WP:AGF. For instance, a generalizing statement like "Azerbaijanis are not interested to develop the article Nagorno-Karabakh because academic sources are not on their side" are unacceptable. He implies that a user cannot be a good contributor to an article because of his ethnicity. And secondly, there's no consensus at talk for the edits of the banned user, who was using a number of socks to have the article his way. Please note that the edits by Bars77, Vandorenfm, and Gorzaim were made after their master (Xebulon) was banned, so the sock accounts were editing in defiance of the ban, which justifies the revert. Not a single established editor supported the edits of the banned user. Those supporting are all recently created accounts. Vandorenfm and Gorzaim were banned as socks on 15 and 18 September 2011, and here are user creation logs of all accounts currently supporting the edits of the banned user at talk of NK article:

October 1, 2011 Dehr (talk | contribs) created a user account
November 11, 2011 Sprutt (talk | contribs) created a user account
November 16, 2011 Zimmarod (talk | contribs) created a user account
November 19, 2011 Winterbliss (talk | contribs) created a user account
January 9, 2012 Nocturnal781 (talk | contribs) created a user account

I find it highly unusual (to say the least) that all those editors created accounts and flocked to a certain page to support edits of a certain editor, who happened to evade his ban using multiple sock accounts. Grandmaster 22:46, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

First, it is clear from the context that I never meant to generalize about ethnic Azerbaijanis but meant instead users who declared themselves to be from Azerbaijan on their talk pages and who participate(d) in tendentious editing in the AA2 area. I should have been more clear on that though. Secondly, Grandmaster's position that above mentioned accounts are socks has been argued out WP:Ad nauseam by repeating the same points over and over again, a method of filibustering a consensus on talk pages and applying psychological pressure on administrators in this talk. That is a rude violation of WP:AGF. You have been warned and are way over your head on that already. You created this discussion in bad faith and it should be closed immediately. Furthermore, I believe that some previous accounts were blocked as sockpuppets under similar pressure/brainwashing as per WP:SOAP. This tactic might have numbed the judgement of admins so that they developed prejudicial position visavis the victims of bad-faith SPIs filed by you, User:Tuscumbia and other users banned in RusWiki as meat-machine. User:Gorzaim and Vandorenfm might have been targets of such pressure tactics and could have been blocked unfairly. You placed a sock tag on User:Gorzaim in violation of the fact that User:Gorzaim was NOT a confirmed sock of User:Xebulon. Please be aware of WP:TROLL, WP:AGF, WP:BATTLEGROUND, WP:SOAP and WP:NPA as per [6] where it is said: a personal attack are accusations about personal behavior that lack evidence. Grandmaster should also understand that he is engaged in a campaign to drive away productive contributors as per [7], a disruptive tactic described in Wikipedia:Disruptive editing. Winterbliss (talk) 04:50, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

First off, I did not accuse the above accounts of sockery, I just drew attention to their user creation logs, which strangely coincide with the period following the ban of 2 sock accounts, Gorzaim and Vandorenfm. And I find your arguments in defense of the socks of the banned user to be unconvincing. You repeatedly said that Gorzaim and Vandorenfm became innocent victims of misjudgment and prejudice by the admins. But if one looks at the SPI requests that resulted in their ban, the CU showed that Vandorenfm was the same as Bars77: [8], and Bars77 was a CU confirmed sock of Xebulon: [9] Can you see any prejudice here? As for Gorzaim, the result of CU on him was " Likely. He edits from different ISPs, but they geolocate to the same general area. There are many overlaps with user agents as well. J.delanoy." [10] Please note that sockpuppetry is established not just on the basis of a perfect IP match. Eventually, it is up to the admins to decide on the basis of technical and behavioral evidence if an account is a sock. In this case we had 2 users with the same geolocation making identical edits to the same pages. Their IPs might have not been absolutely identical, but the behavioral evidence showed that this could have been home/work situation, so the evidence available to the admins allowed them to rule that Gorzaim was also a sock. And wikilawyering is pointless, you said that I "created this discussion in bad faith and it should be closed immediately", but I started this AE request because I was advised to do so by the admin who handled the SPI requests. This is yet another violation of WP:AGF on your part. Grandmaster 09:24, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Grandmaster, given that you have filled your above posts with "tuscumbiaobsession"-style allegations about sockpuppets, and that you have cited my name, I now consider myself free to be involved in this RfA. Meowy 14:12, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

I don't make any rules here, so you are free to do what you want. But I don't think that I ever brought up your name. The only time that I mentioned you was when I responded to Winterbliss reposting your post from another board. I thought that it was resolved at that thread. But I don't see that this particular discussion has any direct relation to you. Grandmaster 15:40, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

I would like to propose a solution that could possibly reduce the disruption on the article in question. As one could see from the evidence posted here, this article attracts a lot of sock and meat puppetry, and it is not a recent problem. This happened in the past as well: [11] I think we need a solution that would bring to minimum the disruption that could be caused. There was a proposal here that I think made a lot of sense. To decrease sock/meatpupetry, the accounts that have less than 500 edits, including substantial number of edits outside of AA area, should not be allowed to revert the article. This would prevent accounts like Oliveriki from coming out of nowhere and reverting the article back to the 5 months old version created by the socks of banned user. If new users have any ideas, they are free to propose them at talk. Also, no large rewrites should be allowed without the general consensus on the talk of the article. And by consensus I mean not the agreement reached by 5 recent accounts among themselves, but the consensus reached by both sides of the dispute, or when that is not possible, consensus reached with involvement of a larger Wikipedia community in accordance with WP:DR. At present what we see is that the article is still being reverted to non-consensus version, sometimes with misleading edit summaries: [12] Grandmaster 17:26, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

Statement by Winterbliss

This report filed by User:Grandmaster represents yet another spasm of endless bad-faith, baseless complaints pushed over, over, and over again by a tightly-knit team of Azerbaijani users who target unrelated accounts in a coordinated fashion with the purpose of limiting editing activity on specific pages. They falsely accuse unwanted editors in sockpuppetry and try to discredit their productive work by making false statements about their editing practices. Now these efforts are getting really desperate and disruptive because Grandmaster’s earlier pranks to discredit his opponents and filibuster consensus-building on talk Nagorno-Karabakh pages are failing. But regardless of Grandmaster's filibustering and manipulating (e.g. WP:WL) discussion and consensus building on Nagorno-Karabakh talk pages proceeds as planned and according to Golbez's earlier recommendations (despite his declared exit from the scene). Various issues and parts of the texts are discussed one by one, and neutral, third-party and high-quality sources are used to support write-ups. This may not be am super-ideal process but most people involved seem to try hard to comply with the earlier guidelines set by Golbez. All participants were CU-checked and are unrelated. Golbez asked to "re-own" earlier texts and one of the participants (Zimmarod I beleive) did that promptly, explaining rationale of every good-faith addition that was deleted → [13].

Grandmaster’s report is based on lies, and he came to AE forum with unclean hands. One is that User:Xebulon “has been disrupting Wikepedia for years.” Xebulon’s account was created 10.24.10 and closed on 7.7.11, and no connections between him and earlier accounts were established.

Grandmaster filed and SPI request [14] accusing as many as 9 (!) editors of being sockpupptes but not only his effort went bust but his SPI was categorized as disruptive when CU showed lack of any relation among the editors by User:Tnxman307. Furthermore, per User:Tnxman307’s comment [15] “As far as I can tell, the same group of users accuse the same opposing group of being sockpuppets. Nothing has ever come of this. Frankly, I think it's disruptive and pointless and am inclined to decline these on sight.”

It has been known that Grandmaster was coordinating editing of a large group of Azerbaijani user in Russian wiki from here information on meta-wiki and here [16] by being the head of 26 Baku Commissars. There is also evidence that Grandmaster uses off-wiki coordination on the pages of English wiki as well: take a look at this curious exchange - [17], [18], which are requests of off-wiki communication between Grandmaster and User:Mursel.

In the recent past such reports, mainly AE and SPI requests, were routinely filed by Grandmaster’s friend User:Tuscumbia, who got recently topic banned for one year on the charge of WP:BATTLEGROUND and racist comments about ethnic origin of academic references [19]. Just a few examples of Tuscumbia's fishing trips: [20], [21], [22], [23], [24]. That is how Tuscumbia’s practice of harassing SPIs was described by an independent Lothar von Richthofen:

• "Checkuser is not for fishing. If you can present actual evidence other then "they make edits that I don't like and it makes me mad so I want to harass them with SPIs on the offhand chance that they will turn up to be the same people, then maybe a new Checkuser might be in order. Otherwise, your invocation of phantom sockpuppeteers is borderline disruptive.→ [25]

User:Grandmaster who was so far editing on an on-and-off basis with rather long periods of absence from WP suddenly hit the Nagorno Karabakh talk pages one day after Tuscumbia’s removal from AA area, picking up right where Tuscumbia left off [26]. Grandmaster’s and Tuscumbia’s behavior is identical: conspiratorial accusations in sockpuppetry, repeating the same points over and over again, a method of filibustering a consensus used most recently by User:Tuscumbia in talks on Murovdag. User:Grandmaster acts as User:Tuscumbia’s placeholder, if not as his loudly quacking meatpuppet who came to man the post of his banned comrade as soon as Tuscumbia got into trouble.

It is high time to restrict Grandmaster’s disruptive conduct by limiting his access to editing AA-related topics.

"(despite his declared exit from the scene)." I just want to point out that my recovering sanity allows me to take a disconnected view at the topic, rather than avoiding it altogether. So my declared exit was from caring and being involved; I can still observe and perhaps even discuss. --Golbez (talk) 01:14, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Zimmarod's point of view

User:Paul Siebert said it well above [27]. Sanctioning simply by virtue of someone's interest in a topic, or because of loose suspicions that there are some users who are proven not to be sockpuppets in multiple SPIs but can theoretically be found socks or meats in an unspecified time in the future is a blatant violation of the WP:AGF principle. This is in fact total absurdity. Imagine a court issuing a verdict clearing the accused of charges; but then the complainant pops up and suggests to incarcerate or execute the formerly accused right away simply because of his lingering suspicions or because in the future the accused can be found guilty of something else. It is like I may suggest to run a CU on Golbez or T. Canens accusing them in being Grandmaster's socks, and when it turns out that they are not socks, I will propose to get rid of their administrative powers on WP:DUCK charges simply because I am not happy with the results of SPIs and want to get rid of Golbez or T. Canens anyway. We on the Nagorno-Karabakh article try to be as constructive as possible and work toward a consensual input of edits after discussion. I now own the old edits, not some Xebulon. Many are tempted to restore the old edits at once but we decided not to do that and be selective and work incrementally, discarding non-consensual parts as we go. What is the problem? Ah, I know. All this runs counter to the strategy of User:Grandmaster who is unhappy. Instead of him writing long passages on this topic he could be more succinct, and say honestly: "I want to own the article Nagorno-Karabakh by excluding everyone from editing. I tried to play the old game of accusing a bunch of users in being socks, and that did not work out. Now I want them all excluded on absurd excuses simply because I exhausted my arsenal of disruptive tricks, and my meat-pals like User:Tuscumbia cannot help me since they are (again) banned for racism and wp:battleground." Zimmarod (talk) 20:40, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Comment by George Spurlin

Reading the above comments I see intense wiki lawyering and users attacking each other. Let me take a different approach and talk about myself. I have been a wikipedian for about 9 months, and this subject area happens to be one of my interests, and if I was limited to participate, most likely I would've found a better place to spend my time. Lets not forget that this is the Free encyclopedia that anyone can edit! --George Spurlin (talk) 20:07, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Comment by The Devil's Advocate

My assessment of this situation is that SPI has proven inadequate at dealing with some of the obvious sockpuppetry going on. Vandorenfm and Gorzaim were two accounts that got subjected to three separate checks before it finally came to light that they were socks of Xebulon once new accounts popped up to compare them with. This suggests these sockmasters have proven very capable at evading detection from checkusers. I am not sure how many of these editors are socks, but there is definitely something shady going on with some of them. Not sure if doing anything about this one page will address that issue.--The Devil's Advocate (talk) 18:28, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

It seems that User:Gorzaim's account was NOT found to be a sock of Vandorenfm or Xebulon based on SPIs. It was closed simply because of an arbitrary decision of the administrator HelloAnnyong [28]. I am inclined to believe that since those 3 accounts which were showing as unrelated in so many previous SPIs are truly unrelated and were closed as a result of a mistake or a technical glitch. Dehr (talk) 21:41, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

This is alarming but also reveling: same tactics, same phrases. User:Grandmaster and The Devil's Advocate QUACK painfully similar. Both were defending the banned User:Tuscumbia who was editwarring in Nagorno's article [[29] and [30]. Both filed similar SPI useless and disruptive reports on the oft-cited user Xebulon. They are coordinating their SPI operations [31]. Dehr (talk) 21:12, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Nothing revealing about that. I saw the case and was planning to comment even before Grandmaster commented at my talk page. The first SPI was filed because an AE case was closed on the basis that accusations of sockpuppetry be taken there and several of the admins commenting at the AE case felt strongly that there was something to the accusations of sockpuppetry against users such as Winterbliss and George Spurlin.--The Devil's Advocate (talk) 21:57, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Yes indeed The Devil's Advocate, please be aware of WP:TROLL, WP:AGF (as per Dehr) and also WP:BATTLEGROUND.

On the Sandstein restriction, one thing I think makes sense is having a 1RR per week limit on the article.--The Devil's Advocate (talk) 15:27, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

Comment by Dehr

This issue has now clearly transformed into a WP:TROLL and WP:AGF concern, when a coordinating cluster of editors attack and harass the other group on highly suspicious pretenses (e.g. the conspiratorial but baseless "SPIs do not show anything but SOMETHING is going on"). The loudly QUACKING User:Grandmaster and The Devil's Advocate shoot one foul-faith SPI after next attempting to disrupt the development of the Nagorno and related articles. One of these SPIs was filed today by The Devil's Advocate. I am calling on the administrative operatives to stop these attacks and deal with the disrupting account User:Grandmaster. Dehr (talk) 21:28, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Comment about User:Golbez and WP:CIVILITY

User Golbez has acted as a self-appointed watchman of the article for some time and there are people who believe that his participation had been generally helpful. But as of late he has been outright disregarding WP:CIVILITY which casts serious doubt on merits of his endorsement of this AE request. Some examples of incivil conduct by Golbez:

• See edit summary: “you know what, fuck it, i yield. i don't have time for this petty bullshit, not until arbcom can give us the power to summarily ban every last nationalist on wikipedia.” [32]
• “Sir or madam, you have made my fucking night.” [33]
• “This idiotic revanchism, this useless irredentism, means nothing to me” [34]
• “A pox upon both your houses.” [35] - written in a pamphlet by Golbez which is not too bad in fact, but it shows that he was determined not to develop any subject-matter expertise and wrongfully praised that attitude as impartiality.

It would be helpful if Golbez could act as an arbiter distinguishing filibustering from honest disagreements on talk pages but he failed to be such an arbiter. Instead he chose profanities and sided with disruptive users. So far he supported felonious User:Tuscumbia and User:Brandmeister (each are/were recently topic banned of one year for disruptive conduct), and was freezing the Nagorno-Karabakh article on the versions supported by these two users. He praised User:Tuscumbia as someone who “follows the rules” on the very day (!) when Tuscumbia got banned after exhausting himself in multiple WP:BATTLEGROUNDs [36]. Here Golbez teams up with Grandmaster, supporting his disruptive idea [37]. Just too many inconvenient facts. I would also like to bring you comment by User:Meowy who well characterized Golbez as a careless and failing administrator [38]:

• Regarding the comments by Golbez (who, if my memory is right, I consider to be one of the better-informed administrators and generally OK in his aims and actions): "Shall I start issuing blocks based solely on the duck test?" Is this a warning or is it meant to be ironic? "Since they were found to be unrelated, I am left with few civil options." ....erm .... since they were found to be unrelated you really have no business making further discussion about them in relation to sockpuppetry, and to continue otherwise is an example of bad faith.

Winterbliss (talk) 04:54, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Hold on - since you are pushing my name into this - I did not characterise Golbez as "a careless and failing administrator", I was saying that I was disappointed that he was failing in this instance by refusing to just accept the finding that proved the accounts he thought were related were not related. Meowy 21:34, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

• It is probably worth mentioning that the above mentioned Meowy (talk · contribs) is just back from a 1 year block for sockpuppetry. [39] So his comment at SPI request page is not surprising. Meowy is also indefinitely banned from commenting at WP:AE on AA related matters, [40] so I don't know whether it is Ok to repost his comments here. Grandmaster 10:35, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

  My above comment, made to clarify a misrepresentation of my views, will be the only post I intend make here. If Winterbliss's misinterpretation of what I had written elsewhere were to be removed along with the quote, then my comment about it can also be removed. However, it is just you who say this is an AA2-related thread. The comments from all the unconnected editors indicate that it is NOT that because the powers you wish to see simply do not exist under AA2, and that to make them exist would mean making a fundamental change to the way Wikipedia editing works. So it is actually a policy change that would affect all of Wikipedia. Meowy 22:06, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

I am amused that my attack on irredentism and revanchism is somehow incivil. Or that thanking you for giving me a good larf is somehow bad.

So, I'm not sure what the point of this subsection is, seeing how I'm pretty much out of the Caucasian clusterfuck at the moment - are you suggesting there be sanctions placed upon me, or are you just filling space? If the former, there's an actual place to go to do that; if the latter, you've at least made me grin. I seriously thought this was going to be about all the time I've characterized the editors of those articles as children, so this really could have been done better. I give it a C-. Also, I've been here a skosh longer than you, so I actually know what I'm talking about. Anyway, I think the fundamental problem here is, for some reason I thought the provisions of AA2 had expired or at least had been tempered; if I knew I could throw any of you kids on a 1 revert restriction, my sanity might still be with us. Is this still the case, anyone who is familiar with the situation? Then again, looking at the list of bans and blocks placed because of AA2, and still no long-term change... clearly it would seem that AA2 has failed.

Meowy, I accepted the finding that the accounts weren't related... that doesn't change the fact that at the very least, Oliveriki should be blocked for disruption - reverting back to a four-month-old version with a blatant lie for an edit summary on an AA-related article should be an instablock. My failure was not in executing it, but actually trying to get people to discuss before going all revert happy.

I guess I've burnt bridges on my way out, so I probably won't be able to go back in with the same cachet I had before (You know, the cachet that got me accused of being both Armenian and Azeri? Those were the days. You don't know how hilarious it is that you accuse me of being pro-Azeri. Oh, newbies, what would life be like without their naivete?), but ... eh. It's Wikipedia's loss, not mine. If I really was THE only person holding those articles together, then that appears to be a structural problem that the whole project needs to figure out how to fix. Someone else can pick up the pieces; I have maps to make and governors to list. --Golbez (talk) 22:41, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Reply to Gatoclass

Hello Gatoclass. Thank you for taking the time to take another look at the issue again. However, I regret to notice that you at times misreport on the facts and have taken an approach that is not well balanced.

• First, User:Tuscumbia was recently blocked from AA2 for one full year and not for six months (as Gatoclass misreports). Take a look one more time: [41]. This misreport shows that Gatoclass failed to invest enough time and effort to inspect the entire situation honestly. I do not want to assume at this moment that he intentionally tries to protect users banned for WP:BATTLEGROUND.

• Second, in the bigger order of things, it does not really matter if texts in WP articles are developed by socks, fox, schmocks or frogs. The only thing that matters is the quality of the text itself i.e. if it complies with the WP standards for neutrality and accuracy. I don’t and no one really should care if there were xebulons, babelons or schmebulons writing the text. If it is good, it should be in the article. You are right, however, that since someone was banned (in good or bad faith), it makes re-inputting good quality texts a bit tricky, procedurally speaking, and certain rules should be observed. And some (big or small) parts of the previous writeup can be thrown away. The users were warned about this by Golbez, and they are complying by discussing these issues before they change the article. Please familiarize yourself with the part “Proposed Rewrite” [42]. Per Golbez’s recommendation, User:Zimmarod took a look at the parts of the article deleted last year, looked at sources and assessed the quality of the deleted paragraphs in the section “Restored part of the text discussion by Zimmarod” [43]. Ideas how to develop the article should be discussed on talk pages but there should be a policy punishing repeating the same points over and over again per WP:IDHT and filibustering honest discussions per WP:FILIBUSTER.

• One favorite method of users like User:Grandmaster to disrupt editorial process is to repeating the same points over and over again alleging that consensus is not reached (although it is reached). Please understand that it is WP:TE, specifically subsection “Disputing the reliability of apparently good sources” [44], “Repeating the same argument without convincing people” [45] and above everything “deleting the cited additions of others” [46].

• I talked about this before but let me repeat this again: Azerbaijanis Many Azerbaijani WP users are not interested to develop the article Nagorno-Karabakh because academic sources are not on their side. To familiarize yourself with this argument please take a look how User:Tuscumbia was trying to filibuster and stonewall against academic references on talk pages in Murovdag [47]. They try to ban their Armenian opponents as socks so that edits they made would forever be silenced or suppressed. In other words, they try to ban people in order to suppress ideas that these people express. Imagine a situation that there is a WP dispute in the article about the Moon. One group of editors believes the Moon is a pancake hanging in the air, the other thinks it is a natural satellite of the Earth. The group saying it is a celestial object was found to be a sock who gets banned. Does this mean his the notion that the Moon is a natural satellite of the Earth shall be forever removed from and suppressed in the article? Nonsense, right? That is exactly what the Azerbaijani editors want to happen and that is why they harass their opponents with SPIs – they believe this creates pressure on administrators who would eventually get tired and would concede in arbitrarily declaring the opposite group as socks, regardless of actual evidence. This is not an excuse to be biased against them all but is something to keep in mind.

• Your allegations about accusing Zimmarod in WP:SOAP and WP:NPA are unconvincing. There were no personal attacks and no propaganda or advertisements. And what about bad-faith SPIs that were criticized by several administrators??? Gatoclass ignores this entirely. Comparing users from Azerbaijan, which is a nationalist dictatorship indeed, with China or the USSR makes sense. In all three cases, we deal with people who are likely to be brainwashed by state propaganda, and have a lack of understanding of how open-source collaborative projects like Wikipedia should work in terms of WP:NPOV.

• One last point about User:Vandorenfm and User:Gorzaim who were accused and banned for supposedly being socks of User:Xebulon. I really did not want to go into that but the more I hear about them the more I am convinced that they these two were banned under pressure and with no or little evidence of sockpuppetry, especially User:Gorzaim, who as someone (Dehr?) mentioned previously, was banned by User:HelloAnnyong without any technical evidence of sockpuppetry. And banning User:Vandorenfm could be a mistake made under the psychological pressure of relentless bad-faith SPIs, which blurred the vision and numbed the senses of the administrators. Winterbliss (talk) 22:07, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

Result concerning the Nagorno-Karabakh article

This section is to be edited only by uninvolved administrators. Comments by others will be moved to the section above.

• The Sandstein sanction (the one used on Mass killings under Communist regimes) is a rather drastic remedy, so I'd like to hear from other uninvolved admins before taking any action on that front.

  Also, the status quo is rather...unsatisfactory, and I have a feeling that this thread will take a while to conclude. I'll be interested in hearing suggestions as to any temporary sanctions on the article while this thread is pending. T. Canens (talk) 11:10, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

I don't see what a sanction like that will achieve, because if an article is already in poor shape (and it usually is when it is a BATTLEGROUND topic), then all it's going to do is empower POV pushers to prevent improvement to the page. That certainly seems to be the case with the Mass killings article mentioned - after more than a year under this sanction, I don't think that article could be described as either neutral or well written. In fact, I'd say there's probably a good case for vacating that sanction at this point.

As regulars at this page will probably be aware, I did start work on an alternative "lightweight" AE-type process about a year ago, although other commitments have prevented me moving forward with it. I still think it would be worth a tryout, but it needs a rewrite and I haven't been able to find the time yet.

I'm not sure what else might be done in the meantime to improve articles in contentious topic areas, but one possible option would be to require anyone who wants to edit such pages to have, say, 500 mainspace edits outside the topic area before editing within it, as well as at least half their ongoing contribution outside it. A restriction like that might at least put a break on sockpuppetry, and hopefully encourage erstwhile POV pushers to make positive contributions elsewhere on the project. That is one option.

Another might be to give one or more respected admins draconian powers over particularly troublesome articles, allowing them to make decisions about what content is or is not permissible. An option like that would of course run the risk of the article coming to reflect the particular bias of the admins in question, but an article controlled by a couple of responsible administrators should still end up better than one in the control of POV pushers and their socks. There would still be some problems to resolve however, such as how to choose the admins in the first place, and what method of appealing their decisions might be put in place. Regardless, whatever method might be chosen, I think there must surely be a widespread recognition by now that current methods of dispute resolution are not doing the job and that new approaches must be tried. Gatoclass (talk) 14:26, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Having now read through the Xebulon sockpuppetry thread linked above, I think Grandmaster's suggestion of permitting admins to simply block any account per the duck test, as Moreschi did on previous occasions, might be the simplest solution for the current problems with this article. Gatoclass (talk) 14:59, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

I'm inclined to agree with you on that last suggestion; that's de facto what happens in some places already (Chinese-Taiwan issues, for instance), so formalizing it might not be a bad idea. I have enough faith in our admin corps to know it when they see it. The other ideas are certainly worth discussing, but I think that would require broader community input. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 18:23, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

That's true. Sandstein's sanction pretty much froze that article because nobody can get consensus on anything, and that is pretty unsatisfactory. DUCK blocks don't need AE authority though; they have always been allowed. We could hand out a bunch of sock/meatpuppetry blocks (which is which doesn't matter since we treat them identically). However, SPI didn't see enough evidence for a block and that does concern me. Another possibility is to put this group of editors under a collective revert restriction. T. Canens (talk) 19:03, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

I must say I have some misgivings about the notion of DUCK blocks, as a possible side effect is the alienation of new, good faith users. A revert restriction that favoured established users would be another alternative. I would like to take a closer look at the article before commenting further however. Gatoclass (talk) 07:36, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

• On the technicality issue, article-level discretionary sanctions are permitted under Wikipedia talk:Requests for arbitration/Armenia-Azerbaijan 2#Request for clarification: Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Armenia-Azerbaijan 2. The edit notice serves as the requisite warning; the block for failure to obey the article-level sanction is the actual discretionary sanction. T. Canens (talk) 18:50, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

• @Paul Siebert: we have never required evidence of "repeated or serious" misconduct before a warning may be issued; in fact, the provision does not require any misconduct before a warning. DSN allows for sanctions on an editor who "despite being warned...repeatedly or seriously fails to adhere to the purpose of Wikipedia, any expected standards of behavior, or any normal editorial process". Repeated or serious misconduct is required for sanctions, not for a warning. T. Canens (talk) 17:36, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

• I too have concerns about the "Sandstein Option" having the desired effect for the article. The way these folks scrap regarding Nagorno-Karabakh is remarkable though, I've had to admin disputes over an abandoned mosque and the name of a mountain range of all things. The national tensions in this area of the world are profound and, like other areas, those folks want to bring their battles here. I have great concerns about the misuse of SPI as well. Yes, a lot of people sock in this area and there's probably off-wiki canvassing in this area but we can't use that as justification for immediately assuming an editor is from that without proof. I am also having growing concerns about the "SPI Patrol" that is, those who regularly submit largely unfounded SPI requests. Therefore, what I would suggest, is a more stringent approach to single purpose accounts. Simply put, they are politely warned they are editing in a conflict area as an SPA and as such they can find themselves subject to sanction quite readily if they're engaging in TE or causing disruption. This eliminates a lot of the guesswork in socking and just brings them to account for their behavior. There's nothing wrong with being an SPA, it just opens you up to scrutiny in conflict areas. --WGFinley (talk) 15:09, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Having found the time to do a little more research on the history of the article and the users concerned, it seems the following has occurred:

Between about June and August 2011, the article was gradually taken from about 60k to 95k bytes by several users since banned for sockpuppetry, including Bars77, Vandorenfm, and Gorzaim. After these accounts were banned, Ehud Lesar reverted the article back to the 60k version in September, per WP:BAN.[48] Lesar then found himself in an edit war with several other users, most of whom also turned out to be socks. The article then remained relatively stable on the 60k version for about five months, until January 24, when Oliveriki, a user with only a handful of edits, reverted back to the 95k version with the misleading edit summary "rest references".[49] This triggered a renewed edit war over the two versions, with the participants this time including Tuscumbia (currently serving a six-month one year ban for another issue) Zimmerod, Brandmeister and Winterbliss.

My initial conclusions are, firstly, that Oliveriki renewed an old edit war and did so with a highly misleading edit summary,[50]] also failing to explain his reasons for restoring about 30k of content on the talk page. The fact that this user has only a handful of edits is also a concern. Secondly, Zimmarod restored the contested 95k version three times,[51][52][53] the last time justifying his restoration per WP:BAN due to Tuscumbia's ban,[54] ignoring the fact that the content he was restoring was itself originally added by sitebanned users. Zimmarod has also made disparaging remarks on the article talk page about his opponents, in breach of WP:SOAPBOX AND WP:NPA: "Azerbaijani editors always discard anything that runs against the spirit and letter of official state propaganda of their bizarre oil dictatorship headed by the uncrowned KGB monarch Aliyev. Azerbaijani futile fight against Western academia is like the objections of of the state-brainwashed Chinese or Soviets against Western accusations of human rights abuse"[55] and "I think five editors spend a month in empty talk with a stubborn POV-pusher."[56] As a consequence, I think both editors should as a minimum be formally warned of AE sanctions.

With regard to the edit warring, most of the reverts on both sides have been made on the grounds of WP:BAN, presumably from the clause which states that Anyone is free to revert any edits made in defiance of a ban. I do not see however, where the policy states that edits made by a user before his ban can be reverted on sight. Regardless, the policy also states that Wikipedians in turn are not permitted to post or edit material at the direction of a banned editor (sometimes called proxy editing or proxying) unless they are able to confirm that the changes are verifiable and they have independent reasons for making them. From this, I conclude that if an edit originally made by a since banned user is restored by another user in good standing, then that edit should be discussed as a legitimate edit and not simply re-reverted per the first WP:BAN clause.

Finally, with regard to the contested content itself, I agree with Golbez,[57] who suggested that it is not appropriate in such a contested article to add so much content in a single edit without discussion, and that the additions need to be discussed section by section by the parties concerned so that outstanding issues can be properly addressed. Gatoclass (talk) 08:39, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

I'm concerned that Winterbliss has seized upon a minor error in my conclusions above to cast aspersions on my honesty and integrity.[58] Since his comments were directed at me personally, I think it best to leave it to other admins to decide whether or not such comments are acceptable in the light of the evidence presented in their support. Gatoclass (talk) 08:06, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

Zenanarh

Zenanarh (talk · contribs) topic-banned from articles relating to the former Yugoslavia for six months. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 04:09, 4 March 2012 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Attention: This request may be declined without further action if insufficient or unclear information is provided in the "Request" section below. Request concerning Zenanarh User who is submitting this request for enforcement Whenaxis talk · contribs | DR goes to Wikimania! 23:40, 29 February 2012 (UTC) User against whom enforcement is requested Zenanarh (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) Applicable discretionary sanctions Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Macedonia#Standard_discretionary_sanctions Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Digwuren#Standard_discretionary_sanctions Violation Dispute resolution in depth Notifications of his actions Warned on 31 December 2011 by Whenaxis (talk · contribs) Warned on 19 January 2012 by DarkFalls (talk · contribs) Statement by Whenaxis This has been brought here from request for arbitration (RFAR) by the request of the arbitrators. Click the link in the header "Violation" for more information on the violations. Zenanarh has been sockpuppeting through anonymous IP addresses as confirmed by Elen of the Roads in the aforesaid link, so it is currently difficult to notify and/or track Zenanarh's actions. A suitable solution would be either a) blocking Zenanarh, b) topic banning Zenanarh, or c) emplacing an interaction ban between Zenanarh (and all sockpuppets) and Silvio1973 (because these two are the ones who usually have conflict with each other. I think this would be the most effective). Notification Notification Discussion concerning Zenanarh Yes. I agree with EdJohnston as well. Can we also have this template: {{Article discretionary sanctions}} be put on the three articles as a reminder to the editors? Whenaxis talk · contribs | DR goes to Wikimania! 19:23, 1 March 2012 (UTC)  Done Whenaxis talk · contribs | DR goes to Wikimania! 02:20, 2 March 2012 (UTC) Statement by Zenanarh Comments by others about the request concerning Zenanarh Result concerning Zenanarh This section is to be edited only by uninvolved administrators. Comments by others will be moved to the section above. I recommend that Zenanarh be banned under the ARBMAC discretionary sanctions for six months from the topic of the former Yugoslavia. This will include biographical articles on people born in what is now Croatia such as Luciano Laurana. In a comment in the RFAR, Elen of the Roads stated: "Regarding the IP editors at Zadar, two are Italian. I believe the others are Zenanarh." Due to the strong possibility that Zenanarh has edited the disputed articles using IPs, the three articles mentioned in the RFAR should be semi protected for six months. These are Zadar, Luciano Laurana and Schiavone. If this protection turns out to be an inconvenience for any good-faith contributors working as IPs, they should be encouraged to register an account. EdJohnston (talk) 02:49, 1 March 2012 (UTC) I'm inclined to agree with EdJohnston here; Zenanarb has clearly been causing a lot of problems in this area, and a six month break would do everyone some good. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 15:22, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Rejedef

Attention: This request may be declined without further action if insufficient or unclear information is provided in the "Request" section below.

Request concerning Rejedef

User who is submitting this request for enforcement

Mathsci (talk) 06:28, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

User against whom enforcement is requested

Rejedef (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Sanction or remedy to be enforced

WP:Eastern Europe, indefinite topic ban from all articles and their talk pages related to Eastern Europe, broadly construed

Problems with editing

These have been discussed recently at WP:ANI in this thread. Recent edits:[59][60] Talk page contributions from November 2011: [61][62][63], etc.

Diffs of notifications or of prior warnings against the conduct objected to (if required)

Warning of a report being made here has already been discussed at WP:ANI in the thread mentioned above, where Rejedef has participated.[64] He had also been warned in the threads on Talk:Europe (linked above) that editing of this kind could result in a report here

Additional comments by editor filing complaint

Rejedef has for some time now been editing uncontentious articles on wikipedia, like Europe, trying to remove references to Eastern Europe. He has stated that his belief is that "Eastern European" is used as an ethnic slur. That apparently has been the basis for his disruptive edits. Further examples are given in the WP:ANI thread listed above. In the diff above from that thread, Rejedef writes: "My nickname will be illegally (in EU's law) processed by Wikipedia, apparently." He also suggests that "Western European" is a racial slur. (Very little of this seems to make any sense at all.)

Rejedef gives further evidence below of his disruptive stance. He shows no understanding of the problems this is causing on multiple articles. Administrators should read the ANI thread for the comments of Jayjg, Jayron32 and Qwyrxian. Mathsci (talk) 02:21, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Notification of the user against whom enforcement is requested

[65]

Discussion concerning Rejedef

I find all of it incomprehensible and very biased. I am severely disadvantaged because I have no contacts on Wikipedia, and only this form of support (other user's support) is apparently accepted. Why don't you delete my account, as I wanted? --Rejedef (talk) 03:37, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Statement by Rejedef

I have nothing to say but direct to resources that will speak for me best, although there is a number of them. A travel over Europe is also compulsory to be able to write about it anything.

Number 1. Milan Kundera's essay: 'The tragedy of Central Europe': is.cuni.cz/studium/predmety/index.php?do=down&did=18219

Number 2. Christopher Lord, Central Europe: Core or Periphery? http://www.ce-review.org/00/36/books36_nilsson.html

Number 3. Larry Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment, book

Number 4. Michal Buchowski, The Specter of Orientalism in Europe: From Exotic Brother to Stigmatized Brother: http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/anthropological_quarterly/v079/79.3buchowski.html

Number 5. Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8507.html

Number 6. Scholarship http://amu.edu.pl/en/year-at-amu/a-year-at-amu/amu-pie/offer/amu-pie-offer-20102011-winter-semester/european-orientalism

Does any of you have any paper to say that we should still use the term 'Eastern' and 'Western Europe' and if you have one, did the same author changed his opinion over time, like Timothy Garton Ash, or admitted actually no expertise on 'orientalism' (or European semi-orientalism), being under fire from the critics like Edward Said? --Rejedef (talk) 02:10, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Problems with editing All changes were justified.

National geographic is popularising (lat.populus-mass, people) science. It is meant to be simplistic and negligent. There is a lot of problem with it, not only including Reading National Geographic, Catherine Lutz and Jane Collins but also@ http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/138051#.T1Qrl_GDj8c http://www.countercurrents.org/lieberman120507.htm http://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?collection=journals&handle=hein.journals/taxlr41&div=22&id=&page= It admits it has a viewpoint: http://www.nationalgeographic.com/xpeditions/lessons/18/g912/readingnews.html shall I find more resources? Also, the atlas was published in 1999 when the geopolitics of Europe was just 10 years after the start of communism fall? If the book was published in 1999, then the date would have been at least 1 year old. We must always look at the newest resources. Imagine that few countries emerged in Europe since 1999, namely Montenegro and Kosovo, which is quite controversial to date. In addition Yugoslavia ceased to exist. Why don't you look at Collins Atlas of the World published in 2011? --Rejedef (talk) 03:20, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Additional comments by editor filing complaint 'Eastern European' is a subtle racial slur, this is why it should be removed, unless it is accurate. The more acceptable is geographical 'eastern European'; still, it relates to predominantly European Russia (as the centre of Europe is located in Lithuania or Estonia). 'Eastern Europe' is a synonym for nasty adjectives. Similarily, yet less commonly, Western European is also relegating but it is not perceived as a slur that often, as a synonym of 'shallow', 'stupid' or 'immoral'. It is illegal in EU law to not to have the opportunity to be forgotten, including just deleting your account. My edits have been NOT disruptive at all. I find the critics totally incomprehensible. --Rejedef (talk) 03:20, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Result concerning Rejedef

This section is to be edited only by uninvolved administrators. Comments by others will be moved to the section above.

• @Rejedef, AE can't judge matters of content—that's for the relevant talk pages. We can only look at matters of editor conduct, so your best bet would be to defend yourself against the claims Mathsci makes and/or showing us how your presence in the topic area (from which he is requesting you be banned) is beneficial. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 02:36, 5 March 2012 (UTC)
• This seems to be a user with a fixed idea that he is going to continue to promote by edit warring, even if he never persuades a single person to support him. The discretionary sanctions under WP:DIGWUREN were explained to Rejedef in this post to Talk:Europe in November, 2011, which he must have read since he responded just below that comment. Rejedef's response above (in the Statement by Rejedef) gives us no reason for optimism about his future contributions, and gives no hint he is open to discussion. I would suggest an indefinite ban of Rejedef from the topic of Eastern Europe. Of necessity, such a ban would include reference to the topic of Eastern Europe or the countries that make it up in more general articles such as Europe or Central Europe. EdJohnston (talk) 03:19, 5 March 2012 (UTC)
  • I agree. T. Canens (talk) 09:27, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

Arbitration enforcement action appeal by FkpCascais

Procedural notes: The rules governing arbitration enforcement appeals are found here. According to the procedures, a "clear, substantial, and active consensus of uninvolved editors" is required to overturn an arbitration enforcement action.

To help determine any such consensus, involved editors may make brief statements in separate sections but should not edit the section for discussion among uninvolved editors. Editors are normally considered involved if they are in a current dispute with the sanctioning or sanctioned editor, or have taken part in disputes (if any) related to the contested enforcement action. Administrators having taken administrative actions are not normally considered involved for this reason alone (see WP:UNINVOLVED).

Appealing user

FkpCascais (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) – FkpCascais (talk) 08:34, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

Sanction being appealed

Topic ban from the subject of Yugoslav Partisans, imposed at

[[66]], logged at Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Macedonia#Log of blocks and bans

Administrator imposing the sanction

Wgfinley (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)

Notification of that administrator

The appealing editor is asked to notify the administrator who made the enforcement action of this appeal, and then to replace this text with a diff of that notification. The appeal may not be processed otherwise. If a block is appealed, the editor moving the appeal to this board should make the notification.

Statement by FkpCascais

I come here gentleman in order to appeal to the sanction I was imposed to. I beleave the decition was precipitated and the involved administrators have been mislead and may also have confused me with the actions of another user. I decided now to follow the recomendation of the sanction imposing admin and appeal here at AE, along with the recomendation of another admin who was uninvolved in this episode who advised me to acknolledge and apologise for my mistakes. I wouldn´t have had any problems to follow the advice, and I am willing to do it as I am a person who acknolledges his mistakes, however, after numerous examinations by my side of all the events, I really don´t see one single fault on my behalve, and I see acusations wrongly attributed to me, not to say that my actions were actually positive and recomended by the policies. The problem is that the accusations are vague, none concrete diffs of evidence were presented to me despite numerous requests on my behalve, and I see no policy having been broken in any action of mine. All the time I asked for evidence for the charges against me, I was not provided any specific diffs, and allways when I presented diffs showing the charges were not appropriate I was allways provided with other unfounded charges.

I will explain the events:

• An article found on my watchlist, Yugoslav Partisans, has been experiencing an edit-war between several editors, divided in two sides (3 vs 1) with both sides actually inserting and removing eachothers disputed texts.
• I promote discussion and consensus building at the talk page, as seen at Talk:Yugoslav_Partisans#mediation. Here we can already see two wrongly attributed charges to me, the first one being tendentious editing (WGFinley at his sanction notification - User_talk:FkpCascais#Arbitration_Enforcement), when in fact I didn´t edited the article, and another, which is that I "pushed pretty heavily for mediation" (EdJohnston at his "Review findings" at the AE report), which is absolutelly contrary to my actions, as it was another user LAz17 who pushed for mediation, while I did exactly the opposite, as clear in my first comment at the artcle talk page discussion. Another users action seem to have been atributed to me by mistake.
• At the discussion at article´s talk page, the unwilingness of some editors to discuss is clear from the begining, and my attempts to discuss are sabotaged by derailing comments with personal remarcs directed from Direktor to me. As LAz17 was blocked in the meantime, and the article was protected for 3 days by Causa sui because of the previous edit-warring, the editors left were all part of the same side of the dispute, so they clearly showed the intention of avoiding discussion and waiting for the protection to expire so they could insert again the same disputed text. Just as note, for an outsider this can easily seem as if I was along LAz17 in that dispute, however I shall inform that I only limited myself on looking objectively at the dispute and acknolledging some reasons he had, however LAz17 is ideed a young inexperianced editor who´s disruption I even reported in the past. Direktor had a much closer relation with LAz17 than myself, so the entire gesture of putting myself and LAz17 as friendly editors is phalse, however the other side used this on their favour as on this ocasion both of us were not agreing with their edit.
• The view on the dispute was affected due to the bad reputation of LAz17, as clearly indicated by Causa sui who without getting into the dispute details assumed that by having him removed the dispute would be solved, and declined my extension of protection request, Talk:Yugoslav_Partisans#Protection. Hoping to archive at least some progress in the discussion, I aksed the intervenients to focus strictly on content, I opened a new subsection Talk:Yugoslav_Partisans#Content_dispute, I analised the existing sources and mentioned the applicable policies. As my concerns were ignored and other sources were only announced as to be brought but actually never brought to talk page, I saw myself in a situation where I was actually sabotaged. The issue is as controversial as it can get, they insist to add ethnic cleansing accusation flashing for attention directly to the lede, knowing that they don´t have a scholar consensus on the issue, and just as I feared, they didn´t had any new sources but were rather gaining time for the protection to expire so they could bring the same old ones which were already debated at another discussion (Talk:Chetniks/Archive_5#Discussion_of_content) where another senior editor, Nuujinn, has expressed many concerns for them, as most weve local and non-scholar. The best sources on the matter actually fail to describe the events as such, and it is important to notece that troughout the dispute my attitude was absolutelly correct, as I never opposed that they add the text into the article body, correctly transponded of course, but not at the lede, as the subject lacked scholar consensus and as per the policies I cited in the discussion. I was the one being flexible and trying to arhive consensus, while they wanted nothing more than lede. To be honest, what they actually did was that Nuujinn announced his departure for hollydays, and they took the advantage of his absence to insert the edit he was opposed to, knowing that without him, they would more easily eliminate and ignore me over that issue.
• Seing that situation, and with Direktor escalating the trolling by posting in middle of the discussion an offensive image where he indicates that opposing him is as stupid as saying world is flat, see diff, along with a threat of reporting me, I decided to ask for help at ANI report. Anyone can see that I don´t ask for no one to be blocked (seing things back, I should have done it) but rather that some admin assist us at the discussion. After an initial positive response, admin AniMate commented at the report by saying that Direktor has brought sources, something he didn´t, and defending him. As that has not been the first time that admin has intervened in a report against direktor allways excusing him, I may have overeacted a bit, but I had to expose that he was providing phalse statement because no sources were brought to the discussion, however after that, AniMate insisted on it, providing again a phalse statement about the sources and clearly trying to turn it now into a boomerang to me.
• Finding this attitude of AniMate wrong, and because this has not been the first time he did that at ANI (he once even intervened in a report of mine against Direktor where he ignored all the disruption I presented and "advised" me to edit somewhere else because I had no English language skills) I opened a thread on Jimbo´s talk page asking for advice on how to deal with this kind of behavior: diff.
• Afterwords, the article protection expites, and despite admin Causa sui clear recomendation of discussion, or even DR, over edit-warring (as seen in Talk:Yugoslav_Partisans#Protection), it lasted only 5 hours for Direktor to edit-war his same disputed version (which was even admitedly badly sourced even by one of the editors from his side of the dispute).
• I don´t edit-war, I continue discussing for some days, and by seing that no admin wants to help, I end up leaving the discussion despite having the same concerns and the edit was not in the agreement with the policies I cited.
• During the following weeks I fully remove myself from the discussion, including all related ones, and I edit other areas of WP. Not sure why, PRODUCER, one of the ediors from the dispute, feels that is not enough, and starts a campaign to get me blocked, first at ANI and when that report fails, by recomendation of AniMate, he bring it to the AE report that got me sanctioned. Ironically I was accused of forumshopping, while he, by doing two very similar reports isn´t. Even EdJohnston at the AE itself in the "Result concerning FkpCascais" section mentions: "The warring parties are not giving us much usable information to work with" words that explain well the weight of PRODUCER´s accusations at his report.
• I discuss with Producer at the AE report, and when it looked finished, already more than 2 weaks of any of my involvement in any of those disputes, I sudenly get sanctioned with a 6 months topic ban.

Now, as far as I see, I was sanctioned for Wikipedia:TE and Wikipedia:FORUMSHOP. I didn´t edited the article, neither I beleave I had recently, including years time, any edits which would be considered tendentious. My attitude at the discussion is not tendentious either, but I rather back my position with policies. It is actually the other side, which has a completelly tendentious approach to the entire subject and which actually edits by searching the most extreme wording and gives it maximal importance. The tendentious nature of editing can clearly bee seen in this exemple:

• Template:Yugoslav_Axis_collaborationism where they fully insist in adding the Chetniks and their leaders in equal manner as the other collaborators, while in the
• Template:Resistance_in_Yugoslavia_during_Second_World_War they completelly deny them any resistance status, as seen by Direktor who promtly after my sanction went there and removed them using an outragious phalse excuse to remove sources as well: diff. He knows very well that both, Roberts and Pavlowich deal with resistance activities of them, not to mention David Martin who´s entire book is about their is about it, to a point of Direktor allways protesting to eliminate him as source as he consideres him unrealiable because, Direktor´s words, he glorifies them.

The Chetniks were a monarchic resistance movement in Yugoslavia during WWII, opposed to the communist Partisans, and what happends is that during the war they engaged in both, resiatnce and collaboration acts, as that was basically a war of all vs all. Now, as the royal family was Serbian, and most members of them were Serbs, Croatians, like Direktor and Producer and probably others, tend to exagerate for most their collaboration activities, while deniying them their resistance ones. Also, whoever opposes the Croatian POV on this is immediatelly declared as "Serbian nationalist" by him, as he often did and as many users can confirm. The extremism of Direktor went as far as trying to remove the Yugoslav flag from the royal period from the Flag of Yugoslavia article, and when one user opposed him, he inmediatelly accused him as seen in his first comment here: Talk:Flag_of_Yugoslavia#The_flags_of_the_Kingdom_of_Yugoslavia_should_be_restored_to_the_article. Now, for some time the only way to get the article to work fine was to separate the articles, by recomendation of admin Zscout370, and you can see that shortly after you imposed me a ban, Direktor went to the article and changed it despite opposition of other users. This is how it looked before, we had two articles, just as many other countries in this situation have:

• K. of Yugoslavia: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Flag_of_the_Kingdom_of_Yugoslavia&diff=471385175&oldid=471041708
• SFR Yugoslavia: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Flag_of_the_Socialist_Federal_Republic_of_Yugoslavia&diff=471502034&oldid=471403929

Now, after Direktors edits and Producer participated as well, we have one article: Flag of Yugoslavia. (Link in case someone changes it: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Flag_of_Yugoslavia&diff=472069226&oldid=472013447) See the royal flag at bottom and the communist ones well displayed? How can one be more tendetious than that?

Should I explain that as much as Direktor may want to convince you that I am "tendentious", I dare to say that I am all but nationalist. I live for more than 25 years out of the region, and in a place where I don´t have many Yugoslavs at all. Also, in this particular dispute Chetniks/Partisans ; Royalists/Communists I am completelly free, as my father side of the family were moderate monarchists, while my mother side were Tito fans (my grandfather even worked and travelled with the guy). However the problem here has to do with the fact that a number of users disguised as anti-nationalists are promoting their own extreme views, and I am being punished for opposing them. I am defending the NPOV in the interest of WP, and I challenge anyone to present one edit of mine where the contrary can be seen. The major problem is that because you gentleman have lack of time and patience to get involved and check facts, the side using agressivity and manipulation gets their way. So by removing me you think you are providing peace, but you are actually leaving room for all those extreme views and biases to get unchallenged. I could provide you plenty of exemples of these. For instance, they massivelly edited the Chetniks article unopposed, and you can just make a test, see our article here on WP and see the Britannica one...

Now, I apologise to this lenghty post, but this is not easy to explain. I usually work alone, so I don´t have "friendly" admins supporting me, but I supposed I would never need them, because I agree and follow all WP principles and policies. I only had 2 blocks and they were years back, both related to Direktor, while I got 1 ARBMAC warning, which was attributed to all participants of one discussion, and the 1RR/48 hours sanction which was also in a dispute with Direktor, which was given to me at a report Direktor made without notifiying me, and with the decition being made without me even knowing what was happening. What happend was that I made one edit and 2 reverts in a article, and Direktor reported me for edit-warring. Assuming he was right, I got that sanction, but when I analised the events, I even noteced Direktor had made 4 reverts in the same period, and even the admin, FPS I think, acknolledge it when I explained it, but nothing was corrected. That sanction passed to me unnoteced, as I am not an edit-warrior, and that fact should even work in my favour, as I honestly doubt who would pass that sanction without breaking it of any of the other usual intervenients. And those sanctions are used against me, so I find it unfair, unfair to have now another one, without knowing exactly why.

Now, I may have not proceded the best way regarding AniMate, but I honestly didn´t knew what to do, and the episode was definitelly worth reporting as it was not cool at all to try to turn things againts me in the report by using phalse statements. I will be more carefull in the future, and I will try my best not to react while heated from another dispute in such situations. But regarding my reports, I am sorry, but I do feel they were the best response. In all of them, I am actually asking for help, for someone to assist us at the discussion as way to avoid further personal remarcs and trolling images being displayed to me. I actually fought hard not to respond in that hard environment, and I didn´t, but instead I reported disruption and asked for help.

I tryined to explain this to WGFinley and EdJohnston, but it is very much possible that my disapointed-mad-a-like approach didn´t help me at all. But I do feel that the situation is extremely unfair, because not only I don´t quite understand why exactly was I punished (and it was punishement, because I had been out of all discussions for weeks when the sanction was imposed, so it was not preventive in any way as advised by policies), but rather the other side had all their attitutes rewarded, and you can all see they didn´t lost time to undo many consensuses when found themselfs alone. So his action directly influenced a thin balance that was somehow found in a dispute, awarding one of the sides. The report itself was basically the collection of all of mine most polemical comments for the last year or so, and they are the worste one can digg about me, and even so I dare to say that I don´t see anything out of policy at any of the diffs. Much less to deserve an extremely harsh 6 months ban. I beleave all the trust was provided to them, and actually none of my actions were seen in detail and in context. I really hope you provide me at least some credit.

I apoligise for the enormous comment, but this is really painfull for me. FkpCascais (talk) 08:34, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

Result of the appeal by FkpCascais

This section is to be edited only by uninvolved administrators. Comments by others will be moved to the sections above.

Tiamut

Attention: This request may be declined without further action if insufficient or unclear information is provided in the "Request" section below.

Request concerning Tiamut

User who is submitting this request for enforcement

Jaakobou^{Chalk Talk} 12:22, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

User against whom enforcement is requested

Tiamut (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Sanction or remedy to be enforced

WP:ARBPIA#Purpose of Wikipedia under Wikipedia:ARBPIA#Enforcement

Diffs of edits that violate this sanction or remedy, and an explanation how these edits violate it

1. 11:46, 6 March 2012 Reinsertion of text in violation of WP:UP#POLEMIC following a unanimous, 5 to 0, support by uninvolved admins to have it removed.

Diffs of notifications or of prior warnings against the conduct objected to (if required)

Tiamut was among the involved parties in the original WP:ARBPIA and has been blocked for a week in 2010 following a WP:AE report (The block is missing from the Wikipedia:ARBPIA#Log_of_blocks_and_bans).

Additional comments by editor filing complaint

In the WP:ANI thread summarized here[67] all of the 5 uninvolved admins were unanimous in their view on this text. Reinsertion of the text by Tiamut after such a clear consensus is disruptive conduct. The talk page summary for this edit is, in my honest opinion, inappropriate as well.
Correction: I've missed one uninvolved admin who was in the opposing view.

Extra Note 1: I'm hoping this thread will not devolve into a chain of like-minded editors (i.e. on the same side of the political fence), chanting "bogus!" in unison. In that regard, Gatoclass presenting a link to a spat I may have had with Tiamut in 2008 is a complete red herring. Would be nice if it were possible to have uninvolved admins dominate the discussion.

@ErrantX: Here's the consensus view from uninvolved admins regarding the content:

• [68] - Hello Tiamut. As an uninvolved administrator, I would politely request you remove the quotes section from the top of this page. It serves no purpose but to stir up emotions from the other side of the Judaism debate. Thank you. — foxj 18:00, 5 March 2012 (UTC)
• [69] - rm polemic material. This is politically-motivated and intended to divide. Revision as of 22:21, 5 March 2012 (edit) (undo) Crazycomputers (talk | contribs)
• [70] - Frankly, I would say that both of those talk pages need to be blanked. There's no need for such incendiary talkpages. Black Kite (talk) 22:57, 5 March 2012 (UTC)
• [71] - Wikipedia is not for advocating our political opinions. If Tiamut wishes to do that, then I suggest they start a blog and keep it there, but any remotely objectionable content in userspace that is not directly related to improving the encyclopaedia should be removed in my opinion (regardless of whose userspace it is in and what it is advocating). HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 04:45, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

It is quite shameful where some editors insist anti-Jewish propaganda is somehow conductive to the purpose of the project. This has very little to do with whether or not I interact with Tiamut (I don't).

@ErrantX 2:

• The methodology of uninvolved admins is applied on many instances relating Arab-Israeli issues. The majority of non-admins who commented, e.g. RolandR and Zcarpia, are wiki-advocates for the same content Tiamut is promoting. In that respect, almost any discussion which is based on involved parties will gain no consensus. Wikipedia is full of examples where only the final conclusions of of uninvolved admins were used for deciding if there was a consensus.
• Tiamut's talkpage makes a mockery of the immense suffering of the Jewish people and his quotes end with 'sharpen the weapons' type battle cries. Imagine what one could do with WP:POINT edits that insult Palestinians on a similar level.

@Timotheus Canens,

• I am simply interested that extremely offensive content will be removed after a consensus was reached (see above).

Notification of the user against whom enforcement is requested

I'm thinking someone else should do this considering Tiamut's demand was "don't touch my user page again"[72]

@univolved admins,

• I've left notes for the admins who supported the removal of the content and request their input would be considered.
• I can see where my removal of the content was not the best approach and can see where a mutual IBAN would be beneficial. I am actually voluntarily complying with such an arrangement for quite some time. Clearly, I only acted out of real distress and requested the input of uninvolved administrators -- why otherwise would I go through so much bureaucracy? Regardless, I am not against making it official for the both of us.
• A topic ban, however, has no valid article or talk page basis and is a strictly punitive suggestion. I've collaborated quite well with all of my recent edits (disregarding an issue with Gatoclass), which were beneficial to the project (Samples: [73], [74]).
• Regardless of my own errors in handling of this issue, I am simply interested that extremely offensive content will be removed after uninvolved administrators expressed a consensus (see above).

Discussion concerning Tiamut

Statement by Tiamut

I'm going to try to keep this short, but may fail. My history of interaction with Jaakobou spans many years now, and has been singularly unpleasant, rather tiring, and all together unproductive. There was a time long ago when he could really get under my skin. I even kept a page titled User:Tiamut/Jaakobou in my user space at the ready to file at AE in the hopes putting an end to an editing pattern characterized by tendentiousness, mischaracterization, and unnecessary melodrama and hyperbole (the latter of which I can also be prone to from time to time, though less so I hope these days).

In the last couple of years, despite attempts by Jaakobou to provoke me into engaging him (like the bogus AE report he filed last year), I have managed to avoid spending too much time dealing with him. I was surprised when he first deleted the quotes on my talk page, as he had raised the issue nowhere previously and they have been there for years. When Fox7 came to my talk page to ask me to remove the quotes, citing one part as particularly offensive, I removed the quote he had highlighted. I did this because I can see how it might be offensive to Jews who survived the Nazi holocaust. I did this despite knowing that Fox7's intvention was due to Jaakobou's chat canvassing, which he resorts to everytime he wants to get something done while bypassing the scrutiny of the community at large. Its something he has been doing for years, ever since the Arbcomm that led to the Israel/Palestine article being adjudicated here. An arbcomm that was in large part prompted by Jaakobou and my interactions at Palestinian fedayeen (see archive 1 of talk there) among other articles. His off wiki canvassing probably has a lot to do with how he has managed to stick around here so long without any serious sanctions.

On the current issue, I do not feel that the quotes on my user talk page are so grossly offensive that they inhibit a collaborative editing environment here. I have productively edited Wikipedia with them on my page for years and have seldom heard a complaint about them. I can see how they might be offensive to someone who does not view Palestinians as equal (the first quote) or someone who thinks all Palestinians are terrorists (who can only read the first quote as a real threat) or someone who does not view Israel's actions in occuiped territory as colonial in nature (the second quote) or someone who sees political discourse as periphal to day to day life and the inclusion of political opinions as needlessly provocative or aggressive (all 3 quotes together). I'm willing to risk offending individuals from among these groups, not out of antipathy (though those who have problems recognizing Palestinian humanity aren't great loves of mine) but out a belief that being direct about one's sympathies is beneficial to the project. It cuts through the bullshit and it keeps my editing honest as it is subject to greater scrutiny. I try my best to keep my personal feelings in check when developing an article. I do try to express even those viewpoints I don't agree with, though I'm sure my own additions don't give them as full as an exposition as those viewpoints to which I am sympathetic. I think that's the case with everyone though, bar the most personally uninvested of individuals.

Finally, I'd like to point out that Jaakobou is now claiming that the quotes on my user page are anti-semitic. In my opinion, this constitutes a personal attack. Even if one's world view (see above) could permit them to interpret the first and second quotes as having anti-semitic overtones, such an interpretaton fails completely on the third quote, which makes it crystal clear the issue is ideological. There is no doubt that Jaakobou is offended because his preferred ideology is being depicted in terms that are alien to soul. Too bad ... Zionism is alien to my soul, but I deal with it all the time in life and at Wikipedia. If he cannot countenance seeing the view expressed on my user talk page, he certainly cannot countenance it in article main space and very often doesn't, even when its expressed by reliable sources, which has been the root problem underlying most of our interaction over the years.

I think I've said enough. and probably too much. I'd ask that after this AE is over, my user page on Jaakobou be deleted. I should not have kept it this long anyway. Tiamut^talk 18:45, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

Comments by others about the request concerning Tiamut

Comment by Gatoclass

Tiamut's (very longstanding) text box may or may not be considered too polemical, depending on one's POV, but given Jaakobou's history of harassment of Tiamut, he is absolutely the last person to be taking it upon himself to be making deletions of personalized content from her user page. How much longer is this user's WP:BATTLEGROUND conduct to be tolerated? Gatoclass (talk) 14:50, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

Further inspection reveals a considerably more disturbing pattern than at first evident:

At 11:25, Jaakobou misrepresented the AN/I discussion by cherry picking the nics from a number of comments that happened to favour his POV and listing them under the misleading header "Uninvolved admins (summary of this discussion)".[75] Four minutes later, at 11:29, without waiting for further discussion or for the AN/I thread to be closed, Jaakobou raced to Tiamut's talk page to delete the text box himself, using the cherry picked list he himself had created a few minutes earlier to justify the deletion.[76] At 11:46, Tiamut reverted him, warning him "not to touch my talk page again".[77] 26 minutes later, at 12:22, Jaakobou filed this case.

The unseemly haste with which this case was concocted is underlined by the fact that the AN/I thread itself was closed as "no consensus" only a couple of hours after the case was filed.[78] Gatoclass (talk) 16:12, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

It seems a non admin decided to abruptly close the thread as "no consensus" after 5 uninvolved admins supported the content removal. Jaakobou^{Chalk Talk} 16:16, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

There was no support for content removal, only statements saying it was somewhat controversial. FunkMonk (talk) 17:00, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

Comment by Maunus

User:Jaakobou is misrepresenting consensus by cherrypicking among the editors who commented Wikipedia:ANI#Polemic_material_at_User_talk:Tiamut and ingnoring that it was closed as "no consensus for removal". It seems clear that Jaakobou has a personal stake in this issue and cannot be trusted to act in good faith in this regard. I think this falls under WP:BOOMERANG and WP:BATTLEGROUND. And by the way I have no previous involvement with either Jaakobou, Tiamut or ARBPIA related articles.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 14:55, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

It seems a non admin decided to abruptly close the thread as "no consensus" after 5 uninvolved admins supported the content removal.[79] Is this intentional disruption or just a bad joke? Jaakobou^{Chalk Talk} 15:53, 6 March 2012 (UTC) +fix link 16:04, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

Comment by asad

This request should be speedily closed as it has nothing to do with a user requesting Arbitration Enforcement. -asad (talk) 15:45, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

Comment by ZScarpia

When I struck out a personal attack against another editor on an IP article talkpage, I was advised here that doing so was likely to be disruptive and therefore not a good idea. Jaakobou has now twice deleted text from another user's own talkpage which was not a personal attack, but which he/she merely found offensive personally. Could somebody, if they feel it is appropriate, please advise Jaakobou on the desirability or otherwise of his act. I think that it is reasonable that grossly offensive material is deleted, but I don't think that description fits the quotes that Jaakobou has been deleting. I should think that allowing the deletion of text which isn't grossly offensive isn't a precedent which it would be desirable to set in the IP area. Looking at Jaakobou's user talkpage, it looks to me as though insisting on editing other editor's talkpages over their objections has become a bit of a bad habit.     ←   ZScarpia   16:53, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

Comment by Nil Einne

Errant has already said nearly everything I wanted to say except to note that it's not clear foxj supported removal. foxj appears to believe it would be best if Tiamut voluntarily removes the content (or never posted it in the first place), as did some people in the ANI discussion and for that matter so do I. But from what I've seen, foxj has never opioned on whether the content should be removed if Tiamut doesn't do it voluntarily. I'm guessing they were hoping it wouldn't be an issue. It seems this probably isn't going to be the case which is unfortunate although similar to what Errant said on Jaakobou's actions preventing any chance of consensus, I'm guessing they also potentially turned Tiamut away from voluntarily cooperating. It seems likely HJ Mitchell and Black Kite (and probably all of those cited) don't consider Jaakobou's actions a good way to address the problem. Nil Einne (talk) 17:35, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

Comment by Boing! said Zebedee

As an uninvolved admin, I have just had a read over the ANI report, and there was clearly no 5/0 support for the removal of that content from Tiamut's Talk page. Yes, there were some people opining that it would be better if Tiamut removed it, but there was clearly no consensus in favour of any action such as forced removal. I really don't see how it could be read any other way - Jaakobou's "5/0" claims are at best a misunderstanding, and at worst tendentious. (I offer no opinion on Tiamut's quotes themselves.) -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 17:47, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

At the time when the summary was made, it was 5 editors either saying it should be removed (see 4 diffs above) and/or that it is a soapbox that is unhelpful to the project. One uninvolved admin I managed to miss and have made note of that on this post as soon as I realized it (see "correction"). Regardless if you count 4 or 5, it is still a clear 5:1 or 4:1 majority. Currently, the list includes 6 uninvolved admins who mentioned that the text is not entirely proper with two admins maintaining that the thread should be about whether or not to implement WP:UP#POLEMIC and not just about the nature of the text. Jaakobou^{Chalk Talk} 18:33, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

Comment by Fluffernutter

At least one, and likely more than that, of the users involved in removing the content from Tiamut's talk page were acting on a specific request from Jaakobou, via IRC, that such action be taken. I saw him request removal twice - the first time, it seemed to be a standard case of someone looking for an admin to help them out via IRC, and it is indeed within the realm of reasonable actions to have disputed and removed the content, but after I saw him ask for someone to remove the content a second time, I spoke privately to Jaakobou and recommended that he use on-wiki processes instead of IRC to pursue this issue, as using IRC to handle it could appear to be forum-shopping or coordinating other editors into revert-warring on his behalf. For that reason, I was pleased to see the issue brought to ANI (and now AE) instead of back to IRC, but I share the concerns noted above that Jaakobou seems to be applying a healthy dose of POV to his analysis of the ANI thread, especially in regard to citing editors who acted at his request as supporting him. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 18:05, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

Whom do you feel should be excluded from my list of people considering the text problematic? Jaakobou^{Chalk Talk} 18:11, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

The issue is that you presented it as a list of people who agreed that the text should be removed, not as a list of people who find the text problematic. I think you are being deliberately obtuse now though.--Atlan (talk) 18:29, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

There were at least two more uninvolved admins who expressed it was problematic on top of the ones mentioned above who explicitly said it should be removed. If there were any places where I've misstated this, it was an oversight that does not really change the general uninvolved administrator's majority perspective. Anyway you count it, there is a majority who expressed the text was problematic and a smaller majority who expressed it should be removed. Jaakobou^{Chalk Talk} 18:40, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

Result concerning Tiamut

This section is to be edited only by uninvolved administrators. Comments by others will be moved to the section above.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the wording at Wikipedia:ARBPIA#Standard_discretionary_sanctions is such that standard discretionary sanctions only apply to "All Arab-Israeli conflict-related articles, broadly interpreted." While this does extend to article talk pages, I do not believe it covers pages in userspace. --Elen of the Roads (talk) 15:18, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

Per an email discussion on clerks-l (and I think arbcom-l too) sometime last month, WP:AC/DS was updated to reflect longstanding practice: that discretionary sanctions apply to all pages in the topic area, not just articles (or even articles + talk pages). NW (Talk) 15:48, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. Must have missed that. --Elen of the Roads (talk) 18:12, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

The AN/I doesn't really give any strong support for removing the text. In any case, Jaakobou seems to have pretty much shot himself in the foot with his sequence of actions (putting together a somewhat dubious summary and trying to make the removal - rather than waiting for someone uninvolved to decide a consensus was reached). That's not done much except inflame the situation - and this AE has had much the same effect. Switching forums so quickly gives the perception of baiting Tiamut into action that AE could sanction. I am sure Jaakobou means well; but he's not acted well here. I suggest an interaction ban between the two editors. --Errant ^(chat!) 16:21, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

• This is pretty blatant forum shopping, and considering the contents of that ANI thread, also pretty obviously meritless. At a minimum an interaction ban is in order, and I'm thinking that a topic ban is probably more appropriate since Jaakobou has been warned previously for making a plainly meritless AE request against the very same editor. T. Canens (talk) 16:43, 6 March 2012 (UTC)
  • I agree with Timotheus Canens. This needs to stop now – and, besides, the consensus emerging from the ANI thread was not that the material was inappropriate and should be removed. I'd support, as a minimum, an interaction ban, but also a topic ban. Salvio ^{Let's talk about it!} 17:22, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

@Jaakobou; hmm, the discussion included multiple editors - some of whom didn't think (despite being AN/I anyone uninvolved is invited to comment, so don't worry too much about "admin") a mandated removal was warranted. Elen's advice on that thread is excellent; what counts as offensive is incredibly subjective. For example; quite a lot of our editors carry user pages with certain strong quotes/comments about God, or religion, which I personally find problematic - and even offensive. Rather than pursue such material it is better to let is slide; Wikipedia has always allowed a certain amount of expression of ones own opinion in user space. This comment by Tiamut is worth reading and taking on board, I think. Particularly I have no problem considering the feelings of others. I expect that they will consider my own as well. . Realistically you undermined any chance of AN/I reaching a decision to remove that text by pre-empting the community. What *is* concerning though is that despite consistent comments that you have no interaction with Tiamut it is emerging that you do have a history of interaction; much of which seems focused on getting him sanctioned. --Errant ^(chat!) 17:15, 6 March 2012 (UTC)