Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement: Difference between revisions

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For appeals: create a new section and use the template {{Arbitration enforcement appeal}}
See also: Logged AE sanctions

Important information

Shortcuts

Please use this page only to:

request administrative action against editors violating a remedy (not merely a principle) or an injunction in an Arbitration Committee decision, or a contentious topic restriction imposed by an administrator,
request contentious topic restrictions against previously alerted editors who engage in misconduct in a topic area designated as a contentious topic,
request page restrictions (e.g. revert restrictions) on pages that are being disrupted in topic areas designated as contentious topics, or
appeal arbitration enforcement actions (including contentious topic restrictions) to uninvolved administrators.

For all other problems, including content disagreements or the enforcement of community-imposed sanctions, please use the other fora described in the dispute resolution process. To appeal Arbitration Committee decisions, please use the clarification and amendment noticeboard.

Only autoconfirmed users may file enforcement requests here; requests filed by IPs or accounts less than four days old or with less than 10 edits will be removed. All users are welcome to comment on requests except where doing so would violate an active restriction (such as an extended-confirmed restriction). If you make an enforcement request or comment on a request, your own conduct may be examined as well, and you may be sanctioned for it. Enforcement requests and statements in response to them may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs, except by permission of a reviewing administrator. (Word Count Tool) Statements must be made in separate sections. Non-compliant contributions may be removed or shortened by administrators. Disruptive contributions such as personal attacks, or groundless or vexatious complaints, may result in blocks or other sanctions.

To make an enforcement request, click on the link above this box and supply all required information. Incomplete requests may be ignored. Requests reporting diffs older than one week may be declined as stale. To appeal a contentious topic restriction or other enforcement decision, please create a new section and use the template {{Arbitration enforcement appeal}}.

Appeals and administrator modifications of contentious topics restrictions

The Arbitration Committee procedures relating to modifications of contentious topic restrictions state the following:

All contentious topic restrictions (and logged warnings) may be appealed. Only the restricted editor may appeal an editor restriction. Any editor may appeal a page restriction.

The appeal process has three possible stages. An editor appealing a restriction may:

ask the administrator who first made the contentious topic restrictions (the "enforcing administrator") to reconsider their original decision;
request review at the arbitration enforcement noticeboard ("AE") or at the administrators' noticeboard ("AN"); and
submit a request for amendment ("ARCA"). If the editor is blocked, the appeal may be made by email.

Appeals submitted at AE or AN must be submitted using the applicable template.

A rough consensus of administrators at AE or editors at AN may specify a period of up to one year during which no appeals (other than an appeal to ARCA) may be submitted.

Changing or revoking a contentious topic restriction

An administrator may only modify or revoke a contentious topic restriction if a formal appeal is successful or if one of the following exceptions applies:

The administrator who originally imposed the contentious topic restriction (the "enforcing administrator") affirmatively consents to the change,^[a] or is no longer an administrator;^[b] or
The contentious topic restriction was imposed (or last renewed) more than a year ago and:
- the restriction was imposed by a single administrator, or
- the restriction was an indefinite block.

A formal appeal is successful only if one of the following agrees with revoking or changing the contentious topic restriction:

a clear consensus of uninvolved administrators at AE,
a clear consensus of uninvolved editors at AN,
a majority of the Arbitration Committee, acting through a motion at ARCA.

Any administrator who revokes or changes a contentious topic restriction out of process (i.e. without the above conditions being met) may, at the discretion of the Arbitration Committee, be desysopped.

Standard of review
On community review

Uninvolved administrators at the arbitration enforcement noticeboard ("AE") and uninvolved editors at the administrators' noticeboard ("AN") should revoke or modify a contentious topic restriction on appeal if:

the action was inconsistent with the contentious topics procedure or applicable policy (i.e. the action was out of process),
the action was not reasonably necessary to prevent damage or disruption when first imposed, or
the action is no longer reasonably necessary to prevent damage or disruption.

On Arbitration Committee review

Arbitrators hearing an appeal at a request for amendment ("ARCA") will generally overturn a contentious topic restriction only if:

the action was inconsistent with the contentious topics procedure or applicable policy (i.e. the action was out of process),
the action represents an unreasonable exercise of administrative enforcement discretion, or
compelling circumstances warrant the full Committee's action.

^ The administrator may indicate consent at any time before, during, or after imposition of the restriction.
^ This criterion does not apply if the original action was imposed as a result of rough consensus at the arbitration enforcement noticeboard, as there would be no single enforcing administrator.

Appeals and administrator modifications of non-contentious topics sanctions

The Arbitration Committee procedures relating to modifications and appeals state:

Appeals by sanctioned editors

Appeals may be made only by the editor under sanction and only for a currently active sanction. Requests for modification of page restrictions may be made by any editor. The process has three possible stages (see "Important notes" below). The editor may:

ask the enforcing administrator to reconsider their original decision;
request review at the arbitration enforcement noticeboard ("AE") or at the administrators’ noticeboard ("AN"); and
submit a request for amendment at the amendment requests page ("ARCA"). If the editor is blocked, the appeal may be made by email through Special:EmailUser/Arbitration Committee (or, if email access is revoked, to arbcom-enwikimedia.org).

Modifications by administrators

No administrator may modify or remove a sanction placed by another administrator without:

the explicit prior affirmative consent of the enforcing administrator; or
prior affirmative agreement for the modification at (a) AE or (b) AN or (c) ARCA (see "Important notes" below).

Administrators modifying sanctions out of process may at the discretion of the committee be desysopped.

Nothing in this section prevents an administrator from replacing an existing sanction issued by another administrator with a new sanction if fresh misconduct has taken place after the existing sanction was applied.

Administrators are free to modify sanctions placed by former administrators – that is, editors who do not have the administrator permission enabled (due to a temporary or permanent relinquishment or desysop) – without regard to the requirements of this section. If an administrator modifies a sanction placed by a former administrator, the administrator who made the modification becomes the "enforcing administrator". If a former administrator regains the tools, the provisions of this section again apply to their unmodified enforcement actions.

Important notes:

For a request to succeed, either

(i) the clear and substantial consensus of (a) uninvolved administrators at AE or (b) uninvolved editors at AN or

(ii) a passing motion of arbitrators at ARCA

is required. If consensus at AE or AN is unclear, the status quo prevails.

While asking the enforcing administrator and seeking reviews at AN or AE are not mandatory prior to seeking a decision from the committee, once the committee has reviewed a request, further substantive review at any forum is barred. The sole exception is editors under an active sanction who may still request an easing or removal of the sanction on the grounds that said sanction is no longer needed, but such requests may only be made once every six months, or whatever longer period the committee may specify.
These provisions apply only to contentious topic restrictions placed by administrators and to blocks placed by administrators to enforce arbitration case decisions. They do not apply to sanctions directly authorized by the committee, and enacted either by arbitrators or by arbitration clerks, or to special functionary blocks of whatever nature.
All actions designated as arbitration enforcement actions, including those alleged to be out of process or against existing policy, must first be appealed following arbitration enforcement procedures to establish if such enforcement is inappropriate before the action may be reversed or formally discussed at another venue.

Information for administrators processing requests

Thank you for participating in this area. AE works best if there are a variety of admins bringing their expertise to each case. There is no expectation to comment on every case, and the Arbitration Committee (ArbCom) thanks all admins for whatever time they can give.

A couple of reminders:

Before commenting, please familiarise yourself with the referenced ArbCom case. Please also read all the evidence (including diffs) presented in the AE request.
When a request widens to include editors beyond the initial request, these editors must be notified and the notifications recorded in the same way as for the initial editor against whom sanctions were requested. Where some part of the outcome is clear, a partial close may be implemented and noted as "Result concerning X".
Enforcement measures in arbitration cases should be construed liberally to protect Wikipedia and keep it running efficiently. Some of the behaviour described in an enforcement request might not be restricted by ArbCom. However, it may violate other Wikipedia policies and guidelines; you may use administrative discretion to resolve it.
More than one side in a dispute may have ArbCom conduct rulings applicable to them. Please ensure these are investigated.

Closing a thread:

Once an issue is resolved, enclose it between {{hat}} and {{hab}} tags. A bot should archive it in 7 days.
Please consider referring the case to ARCA if the outcome is a recommendation to do so or the issue regards administrator conduct.
You can use the templates {{uw-aeblock}} (for blocks) or {{AE sanction}} (for other contentious topic restrictions) to give notice of sanctions on user talk pages.
Please log sanctions in the Arbitration enforcement log.

Thanks again for helping. If you have any questions, please post on the talk page.

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Samofi

User spoken to. NW (Talk) 21:11, 24 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

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 Samofi

User who is submitting this request for enforcement: Nmate (talk) 11:45, 24 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

User against whom enforcement is requested: Samofi (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Sanction or remedy to be enforced: [1] [2]

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

On 07:48, 20 October 2011 Samofi got banned from the topic of Hungarian-Slovak ethnic and national disputes, indefinitely:

"Having reviewed your continued conflicts with other editors over Slovak-Hungarian topics, I have become convinced that your role among all the editors that have been contributing to the overall disastrous editing atmosphere in this topic domain has been among the most unconstructive. Under the discretionary sanctions rule of the WP:DIGWUREN Arbcom decision, I am therefore banning you, indefinitely, from all edits relating to Hungarian and/or Slovakian ethnic and national disputes (including but not limited to: naming issues, issues of ethnic/national characterization of historical personalities, and historic conflicts involving these nations"

Some days ago, Samofi inquired about how his topic-ban can be lifted [3] [4] and then began editing within the domain he is topic-banned from, even before it is successfully appealed:

07:45, 22 February 2012 Explanation: Hungarian and/or Slovakian ethnic and national dispute
08:24, 22 February 2012 Explanation: Hungarian and/or Slovakian ethnic and national dispute
08:19, 24 February 2012 Explanation: Hungarian and/or Slovakian ethnic and national dispute

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

Warned on 15:16, 28 September 2011 by EdJohnston (talk · contribs)

Additional comments by editor filing complaint

To avoid further wiki-drama, I do not want to comment on whether Samofi should be blocked ,or should not.

Notification of the user against whom enforcement is requested

[5]

Discussion concerning Samofi

Statement by Samofi

Comments by others about the request concerning Samofi

Result concerning Samofi

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

I left him a warning, because I didn't see a need to block just yet. If he continues to violate his topic ban, he should be blocked. NW (Talk) 14:28, 24 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
- I spoke further with the user and don't think any more action is necessarily warranted. Let's leave it as is for now; a report may be opened again if Samofi violates his or her topic ban in the future. NW (Talk) 21:11, 24 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Anonimu

Don't do that. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 22:52, 24 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

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 Anonimu

User who is submitting this request for enforcement: Codrin.B (talk) 22:02, 24 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

User against whom enforcement is requested: Anonimu (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Sanction or remedy to be enforced: Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Anonimu, Conditions to provisionally suspend Anonimu's ban, Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement/Archive86#Anonimu

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

05:24, 11 February 2012, 20:45, 11 February 2012 - 1RR, incivility violations at Moldova
12:44, 20 January 2012, 16:38, 20 January 2012, 16:54, 20 January 2012, 14:04, 25 January 2012 - 1RR, incivility violations at {{History of Romania}}
16:14, 17 January 2012, 11:04, 19 January 2012, 12:32, 30 January 2012 , 07:07, 1 February 2012 - edit warning, article locked for edit warring, 1RR violation at Communist Romania
10:33, 21 January 2012, 10:43, 21 January 2012, 10:45, 21 January 2012 - multiple 1RR Violation at Victor Ponta
17:00, 4 January 2012, 15:26, 5 January 2012 - Edit warring,1RR violation at Soviet occupation of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina
02:10, 9 September 2011, 18:11, 12 September 2011, 11:41, 12 June 2011 - Edit warring, removal of relevant content, near 1RR violation at Comparison of Nazism and Stalinism
13:46, 14 February 2012 15:28, 15 February 2012 - Edit warring, cleverly dodged 1RR violation (timed it to be 24h + 1h42min later) at Moldovans
07:04, 4 February 2012, 15:04, 9 February 2012, 15:23, 15 February 2012 - attack on WP:ROMANIA main project page, edit war, cleverly dodged 1RR violation, vandalism, WP:STALK

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

Warned on 3 October 2011‎ by The Last Angry Man (talk · contribs) (his response was to remove and ignore the warning)
Warned on 14 January 2012 by Darkness Shines (talk · contribs) (his response was to remove and ignore the warning)
Warned on 20 January 2012 by Codrinb (talk · contribs) (his response was to remove and ignore the warning)

Additional comments by editor filing complaint

This is a briefer repost of the February 17, 2012 request for enforcement, per the closing admin suggestion.

Below is a list illustrating some of the most aggravating edit wars, extreme attitudes and conflicts entertained by Anonimu which violate the civility parole/impeccable behaviour conditions from the previous ban. It is a significantly smaller subset of what was previously reported on February 17, 2012:

[6], [7], [8], [9] - Edit warring, WP:OWN, WP:POV pushing at Fântâna Albă massacre, removal of valid templates like Template:Anti-communism in Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina, shocking "dialogs" on the Talk:Fântâna Albă massacre, considering this is an article about a massacre
[10], [11], [12], [13] - Attack on, later removal/redirect of article, on Valeriu Boboc, a recent victim killed by the Pro-Russian Communist regime in Moldova during 2009 riots; also trying to downplay the involvement of the government in the victims death
[14], [15], [16], [17], [18] - Removal of sourced content, edit warring against multiple users, WP:OWN, blatant Soviet WP:POV pushing/WP:PUSH at Soviet occupation of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina
[19], [20], [21], [22] - Conflict with User:Darkness Shines (insults, incivility)
[23], [24], [25], [26] - Conflict with User:The Last Angry Man (reverts, insults, incivility)
[27], [28] - Conflict with User:Man with one red shoe
[29], [30] - Conflict with User:Constantzeanu
[31], [32], [33], [34], [35], [36] - Conflict with User:Vecrumba (insults, incivility)
[37], [38], [39] - Conflict with User:Octavian8, reverts, insults, no communication
[40], [41], [42] - Conflict with User:Estlandia, reverts, insults, no communication
[43], [44], [45], [46] - Very negative attitude towards newcomers/inexperienced editors/IPs in stark contrast with WP:BITE; mostly reverts, insulting comments; no welcoming, no coaching; no dialog

Please also note that a significant number of users already made statements in the February 17 report.

User has violated each provision of his reinstatement with impunity and repeatedly: 1RR, no edit warring, civility parole. He creates constant conflict and strives in it.

Notification of the user against whom enforcement is requested

Original notification diff, Repost notification diff

Discussion concerning Anonimu

Statement by Anonimu

Comments by others about the request concerning Anonimu

I would have thought that Codrinb would have gotten the last closure, instead they have chosen to come back to AE, yet again, and have filed very much the same grievances from the last report. The diffs as displayed do not stack up to scrutiny, and in most cases are stale. I will again state, that this is obviously a case of editors attempting to throw enough shit in the hope that some of it sticks -- as noted to Anonimu on his talk page, this is an old tactic with new participants, and it should not and must not be allowed to continue to occur on this project. As Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement/Archive86#Anonimu, FPaS noted, in relation to Codrinb, I must be missing something. What has an edit war back in August 2010 to do with a need for a block now? – On the other hand, what we indeed should consider is to hit the reporting party with a silver carp, for falsely accusing his opponent of "vandalism" in his complaint above, and of the bad-faith move of citing Anonimu's actions in the "Dacian script" case as an instance of disruption, when he knows full well that consensus was on Anonimu's side, not his. Codrinb has clearly accused Anonimu of incivility, creating disputes and the like, not once, but twice, and they just do not stack up to scrutiny. As this obviously seems to be a problem on the part of Codrinb, I suggest closing this off with no action against Anonimu, but with that "silver carp" coming back at Codrinb; as Codrinb is clearly using AE as a battleground tool against a supposed opponent, and because of problems raised at the last request (for example, wilfully falsely accusing Anonimu of sockpuppetry, and canvassing and the like), a ban on Codrinb (and perhaps canvassed editors) from filing AE requests on Anonimu should be implemented. Russavia ^{ლ(ಠ益ಠლ)} 22:50, 24 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Result concerning Anonimu

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

Nagorno-Karabakh

See below.

The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

I'm not going to file a request against one particular person, because we have a situation where disruption is caused by more than one user. I would like to draw the attention of the community to what is going on in the article Nagorno-Karabakh. This is a very troubled article that was a subject to a number of arbitration cases. For quite a while now it is an arena of endless edit wars, which are waged by a number of recently created or brand new user accounts, which try to push a version, originally created by the banned user Xebulon, who has been disrupting Wikepedia for years. What is going on there was described in much detail by the admin Golbez, who has been watching this article for many years: [47] I will not repeat here what Golbez has already said, please check his account of the events. The CU showed no connection between the accounts engaged there, yet it is quite obvious that something is going there, and that actions of all those accounts are coordinated. The most recent example, the account of User:23x2, who never edited Nagorno-Karabakh, pops up out of nowhere to rv: [48] And it is nothing unusual, this happens in this article all the time. The edits of the banned user are restored by users who have been inactive for a long time, or who have never edited this article before. I listed a number of edit warring accounts at my own SPI request that I by coincidence filed at the same time as Golbez did: [49] All those accounts look pretty much the same, act the same, and edit the same. I have a strong impression that they are all operated by the same person, who somehow manages to evade the CU. But even if we assume that it is not one person, but different ones, it is still quite obvious that their actions are well coordinated, and they keep on bringing in new accounts to edit war. I think this article should be placed under some sort of community control, and no edits that have no consensus should be allowed. Also, the activity of accounts that previously never edited this article should be restricted. I would even recommend that only well established accounts with at least 1 year of active contributions to Wikipedia, including outside of AA conflict, should be allowed to edit such contentious articles as Nagorno-Karabakh. I was advised to raise this issue here, which is what I do now. Grandmaster 23:17, 25 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I endorse this because these articles need help and I'm tired of trying to hold them together alone. I would love for some form of enforced edit restriction on these articles. --Golbez (talk) 01:10, 26 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

One possibility is some form of sanctions similar to that employed by Sandstein on Mass killings under communist regimes, but I'm not sure how practical it is. T. Canens (talk) 08:59, 26 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

That is actually quite a good solution for the problem. I would support something similar to what was done at Mass killings under communist regimes. Grandmaster 10:05, 26 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Opening a structured thread below, with the standard AE format adapted to this situation. Further discussions should be had there. T. Canens (talk) 10:52, 26 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

76.102.173.102

Blocked.

The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

Request concerning 76.102.173.102

User who is submitting this request for enforcement: Kiefer.Wolfowitz 23:56, 25 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

User against whom enforcement is requested: 76.102.173.102 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Sanction or remedy to be enforced: Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Eastern European articles (TBA)#TBA

Kiefer.Wolfowitz has trouble finding the Eastern European discussion in Signpost, and needs to sleep. Below, another editor suggested that this editor may be a banned editor, who has had his own ArbCom case, DigWuren (sic.). 00:11, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

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

25 February 2012 Editing warring, re-inserting nationalistic claims without references
25 February 2012 First personal attack from this account, alleging that User:David Eppstein is a pro-Russian, pro-Putin, anti-Ukrainian, and anti-Western, etc.
25 February 2012 Edit warring in Stefan Banach article: Changing name of then Polish University to the name of a present Ukrainian University, without reference, again.
25 February 2012 Edit warring at Lviv University (also a conflict in the Banach article), reinserting anti-Polish, anti-semitic, and ultra-nationalistic bullshit.

All of this IP's edits seem to be disruptive editing with the same agenda.

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

Warned on 25 February 2012 by Tgeairn (talk · contribs)
Warned on 25 February 2012 by Tgeairn (talk · contribs)
Warned on 25 February 2012 by Sodin (talk · contribs) (Sasha)
Warned on 25 February 2012 by Kiefer.Wolfowitz (talk · contribs)
There are other warnings on the related talk pages of articles and David Eppstein, of course.

Additional comments by editor filing complaint

I suspect that this is just a bored teenager-troll posing as an ultra-nationalist.
This sounds like the fellow who called David a "commisar-stein" last year.
I read about the EE case in the SignPost. Another precise reference for enforcement is suggested below (DigWuren). Thanks, Kiefer.Wolfowitz 23:56, 25 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Notification of the user against whom enforcement is requested

The user has been notified.

Discussion concerning 76.102.173.102

Statement by 76.102.173.102

Comments by others about the request concerning 76.102.173.102

Just use WP:DIGWUREN -- this would clearly fit this area. Also this edit is enough to show that this is nothing more than a wannabe-troll. Oleh Antoniv -- really? Block IP, and be done with it. Russavia ^{ლ(ಠ益ಠლ)} 00:03, 26 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

FYI, I wasn't suggesting that this is User:Digwuren, but rather that it could be handled under the Digwuren case, as is the standard for EE topics...in particular Wikipedia:DIGWUREN#Standard_discretionary_sanctions. Russavia ^{ლ(ಠ益ಠლ)} 00:29, 26 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Result concerning 76.102.173.102

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

Obvious troll is obvious. I'm blocking the IP for 5 days for the obvious NPA violations and will issue a WP:DIGWUREN notification. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 00:35, 26 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

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)[reply]

Notification: [50]

Discussion concerning the Nagorno-Karabakh article

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

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.
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)[reply]
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)[reply]

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: [51] 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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

@ 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:

Some editor working in the area of conflict "repeatedly or seriously fails to adhere to the purpose of Wikipedia";
A warning has been issued for him (obviously, this warning is supposed to contain a reference to some wrongdoing)
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)[reply]

@ 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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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: [52] 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)[reply]

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 [53]. See my full comments. Dehr (talk) 20:56, 29 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

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.Grand master 21:46, 29 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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: [54], 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)[reply]

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 were made after the user (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, 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)[reply]

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 → [55].

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 [56] 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 [57] “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 [58] 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 - [59], [60], 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 [61]. Just a few examples of Tuscumbia's fishing trips: [62], [63], [64], [65], [66]. 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.→ [67]

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 [68]. 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)[reply]

Zimmarod's point of view

User:Paul Siebert said it well above [69]. 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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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 [70]. 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)[reply]

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 [[71] and [72]. Both filed similar SPI useless and disruptive reports on the oft-cited user Xebulon. They are coordinating their SPI operations [73]. Dehr (talk) 21:12, 29 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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.” [74]
“Sir or madam, you have made my fucking night.” [75]
“This idiotic revanchism, this useless irredentism, means nothing to me” [76]
“A pox upon both your houses.” [77] - 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 [78]. Here Golbez teams up with Grandmaster, supporting his disruptive idea [79]. 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 [80]:

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

It is probably worth mentioning that the above mentioned Meowy (talk · contribs) is just back from a 1 year block for sockpuppetry. [81] So his comment at SPI request page is not surprising. Meowy is also indefinitely banned from commenting at WP:AE on AA related matters, [82] so I don't know whether it is Ok to repost his comments here. Grandmaster 10:35, 1 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
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)[reply]

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]

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: [83]. 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” [84]. 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” [85]. 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” [86], “Repeating the same argument without convincing people” [87] and above everything “deleting the cited additions of others” [88].

I talked about this before but let me repeat this again: Azerbaijanis 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 [89]. 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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

@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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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.[90] 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".[91] 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,[92]] 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,[93][94][95] the last time justifying his restoration per WP:BAN due to Tuscumbia's ban,[96] 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"[97] and "I think five editors spend a month in empty talk with a stubborn POV-pusher."[98] 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,[99] 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)[reply]

I'm concerned that Winterbliss has seized upon a minor error in my conclusions above to cast aspersions on my honesty and integrity.[100] 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)[reply]

Dalai lama ding dong

Dalai lama ding dong blocked 24 hours, and AndresHerutJaim blocked 2 weeks; both also banned from Palestine-Israeli conflict topic area for 90 days

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 Dalai lama ding dong

User who is submitting this request for enforcement: Shrike (talk) 14:02, 27 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

User against whom enforcement is requested: Dalai lama ding dong (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Sanction or remedy to be enforced: Wikipedia:ARBPIA

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

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

Warned on 16 September 2011 by EdJohnston (talk · contribs)
Warned on 18 February 2012‎ by HJ Mitchell (talk · contribs)

Additional comments by editor filing complaint

Clear 1RR violation and edit warring the same goes with user:AndresHerutJaim.Both users probably should be blocked and article protected.I am not sure about topic bans.--Shrike (talk) 14:02, 27 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Notification of the user against whom enforcement is requested

[104] [105]

Discussion concerning Dalai lama ding dong

Statement by Dalai lama ding dong

Comments by others about the request concerning Dalai lama ding dong

Result concerning Dalai lama ding dong

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

Seems to me like a pretty clear 1RR violation on both Dalai lama ding dong and AndresHerutJaim, as you say. Dalai lama ding dong has been warned about this already, so a 90-day topic ban on either the article or the general subject would be fine. AndresHerutJaim has been blocked more than once for ARBPIA issues, so something stiffer would probably be in order; I'm open to suggestions, as I'm not sure what I think is right just yet. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 17:10, 27 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
- I've blocked both for the 1RR violation (Dalai lama ding dong for 24 hours, since it's his first block; AndresHerutJaim for two weeks because he has several previous blocks for the same). I think a 90-day topic ban each is reasonable—AndresHerutJaim has a longer block log but doesn't appear to have been sanctioned recently, whereas Dalai lama ding dong was very recently the subject of an AE thread. I'll leave this open for long enough for others to comment, though. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 20:31, 27 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

User against whom enforcement is requested: Zenanarh (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Applicable 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)[reply]

Done Whenaxis talk · contribs | DR goes to Wikimania! 02:20, 2 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

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)[reply]
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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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:[106][107] Talk page contributions from November 2011: [108][109][110], 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.[111] 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.)

Notification of the user against whom enforcement is requested: [112]

Discussion concerning Rejedef

Statement by Rejedef

Comments by others about the request concerning Rejedef

Result concerning Rejedef

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

[1] The administrator may indicate consent at any time before, during, or after imposition of the restriction.

[2] This criterion does not apply if the original action was imposed as a result of rough consensus at the arbitration enforcement noticeboard, as there would be no single enforcing administrator.

[a]

[b]

@@ Line 235: / Line 235: @@
 ::::::::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.--[[User:The Devil&#39;s Advocate|The Devil&#39;s Advocate]] ([[User talk:The Devil&#39;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: [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement&oldid=469260120#Result_concerning_Tuscumbia], 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 ([[User:Paligun|Paligun]], [[User:Xebulon|Xebulon]], [[User:Hetoum I|Hetoum I]], [[User:Ararat arev|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. [[User:Grandmaster|<span style="font-family:Arial;color:#464646">'''''Grand'''''</span>]][[User talk:Grandmaster|<span style="font-family:Arial;color:#808080">'''''master'''''</span>]] 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 were made after the user (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, 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<br/>
+November 11, 2011 Sprutt (talk | contribs) created a user account<br/>
+November 16, 2011 Zimmarod (talk | contribs) created a user account<br/>
+November 19, 2011 Winterbliss (talk | contribs) created a user account<br/>
+January 9, 2012 Nocturnal781 (talk | contribs) created a user account<br/>
+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. [[User:Grandmaster|<span style="font-family:Arial;color:#464646">'''''Grand'''''</span>]][[User talk:Grandmaster|<span style="font-family:Arial;color:#808080">'''''master'''''</span>]] 22:46, 4 March 2012 (UTC)
 === Statement by Winterbliss ===

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