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See also: Logged AE sanctions

Important information

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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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Adrummond67

This request may be declined without further action if insufficient or unclear information is provided in the "Request" section below.
Requests may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs (not counting required information), except by permission of a reviewing administrator.

Request concerning Adrummond67

User who is submitting this request for enforcement: FDW777 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) 19:50, 29 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

User against whom enforcement is requested: Adrummond67 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
Search CT alerts: in user talk history • in system log

Sanction or remedy to be enforced: Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/The Troubles#Standard discretionary sanctions :

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

18:39, 29 January 2020 Adds monarch field to someone who held one of the positions of First Minister and deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland. Editor was specifically pointed here to Talk:Martin McGuinness/Archive 2#Monarch/ appointed by, regarding the consensus regarding FM and dFMs not being appointed by the monarch.
18:39, 29 January 2020 As above, to a different person who also held one of the offices
18:41, 29 January 2020 As above, to a different person who also held one of the offices
18:43, 29 January 2020 As above, to a different person who also held one of the offices
18:43, 29 January 2020 As above, to a different person who also held one of the offices
18:44, 29 January 2020 As above, to a different person who also held one of the offices
18:45, 29 January 2020 As above, to a different person who also held one of the offices

Diffs of previous relevant sanctions, if any

If discretionary sanctions are requested, supply evidence that the user is aware of them (see WP:AC/DS#Awareness and alerts)

Notified here

Additional comments by editor filing complaint

Based on articles edited and the edits made, they also edited as Special:Contributions/2A00:23C4:AB9C:F100:C592:536:29F4:4D2F prior to creating an account. They are a single-purpose account dedicated to adding "monarch" fields to infoboxes. They were requested here to stop edit-warring and discuss their proposed changes on the relevant talk page of the articles concerned. They ignored this and made the edits noted above.

@Ymblanter: That edit could be excused as simply being new, and I did notifty them of MOS:TERRORIST here on 20:30, 2 February 2020. However they have chosen to ignore my message and repeat the edit today. FDW777 (talk) 18:46, 8 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Seraphimblade: I do think this is someone's first account, due to the clumsy nature of their editing. For example this edit caused their addition to be invisible due to using "Monarch" rather than "monarch" for the infobox field name. There are also three failed attempts to add a monarch field to the infobox at President of the Executive Council of the Irish Free State, none of which was successful as it's not a valid field for the article's infobox. I would have expected any reasonably experienced editor to have seen their changes weren't actually visible and to have attempted to work out the problem. FDW777 (talk) 19:11, 8 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Notification of the user against whom enforcement is requested

Notified

Discussion concerning Adrummond67

Statements must be made in separate sections. They may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs, except by permission of a reviewing administrator.
Administrators may remove or shorten noncompliant statements. Disruptive contributions may result in blocks.

Statement by Adrummond67

Statement by (username)

Result concerning Adrummond67

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

As Adrummond67 has continued editing after being notified of this request but has said nothing here, I believe we should proceed on evaluating this request without their input (though they are, of course, still welcome to provide it now if they wish to do so). Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 19:51, 7 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I tend to agree with Ymblanter, and also find myself rather skeptical that this is someone's first account. Jumping directly into a contentious topic like this is relatively common for sockpuppets of those previously excluded from those topics, or from the project entirely. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 20:33, 7 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
The user only made 33 edits, and one of the last edits, already after the request was filed, is [1]. I conclude that they are not net positive to the English Wikipedia. My first choice would be an indefinite block; the second choice would be a topic ban on everything related to Ireland (note that they have zero edits in topics not related to Ireland).--Ymblanter (talk) 20:24, 7 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Looks like indefblock remains the only option.--Ymblanter (talk) 18:55, 8 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

QuackGuru

This request may be declined without further action if insufficient or unclear information is provided in the "Request" section below.
Requests may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs (not counting required information), except by permission of a reviewing administrator.

Request concerning QuackGuru

User who is submitting this request for enforcement: Beland (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) 20:59, 6 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

User against whom enforcement is requested: QuackGuru (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
Search CT alerts: in user talk history • in system log

Sanction or remedy to be enforced: Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Editor conduct in e-cigs articles :

I started a section on Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#QuackGuru and was informed about the arbitration case and advised that was the wrong forum and this was the correct one. The discussion there is still ongoing, so apologies if this is inappropriate duplication.

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

Talk:2019–20_vaping_lung_illness_outbreak#Removal_of_update_section_tag - removing problem tags on excessively narrow grounds
2020-02-03 Removal of problem tags without consensus even though discussions are underway on talk page
Talk:Nicotine_pouch#Alarming_amount_of_Ownership_and_unreliable_source_about_Kenya - editors are complaining about ownership; appears to be wikilawyering by applying the requirement for citations in a way that ignores the common-sense meanings of words and collections of words
Talk:2019–20_vaping_lung_illness_outbreak#Predicting_the_future_in_a_scary_way - wikilawyering to argue WP:CRYSTAL allows any speculative claim because it only prohibits "unverifiable speculation", and willfully obtuse semantic arguments ignoring common-sense meanings of words, grammatical tense, and neighboring sentences
Talk:Hospitalized_cases_in_the_vaping_lung_illness_outbreak#NPOV_issues - Started out constructive, but devolved into arguments that are overly narrowly focused on particular sentences and ignore the meaning of the word "some".
Talk:Hospitalized_cases_in_the_vaping_lung_illness_outbreak#Vaping_among_teenagers - exhibits strong anti-vaping POV, which is a theme - having a personal POV is welcome, and I happen to agree with this one, but combining that with obstructionism seems to have resulted in this article being far from neutral (rather than balancing out pro-vaping commercial interests, as some QuackGuru supporters are hoping); also exhibits the "try every conceivable argument even if obviously wrong to wear down the opponent" strategy, which in this case defending a claim as neutral on the grounds that it is factual (which is true but it should be glaringly obvious that a fact that people were advocating for one point of view could be considered non-neutral; a constructive discussion would focus on whether this anti-vaping fact is or should be balanced by pro-vaping advocacy facts, or how context affects neutrality).
Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Proposed_boomerang_topic_ban_for_Beland which responding admins have complained is disruptive and illustrative of the "try every argument even if obviously wrong" strategy

If discretionary sanctions are requested, supply evidence that the user is aware of them (see WP:AC/DS#Awareness and alerts)

Mentioned by name in the Arbitration Committee's Final Decision linked to above.

Additional comments by editor filing complaint

Interactions with QuackGuru appear to have contributed to the departure of User:Mfernflower from this topic. While looking into the reasons for their dissatisfaction with the resolution of previous disputes, I found a long discussion in case starting in September 2019 at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive1021#QuackGuru and disruption over e-cigs and pod mods which I'll let speak for itself. The closure on that also suggests taking up the issue here.

QuackGuru is clearly smart and some interactions have been constructive—it often takes experienced editors from different perspectives to polish a text to be well-referenced and neutral. But sometimes they will veer from constructive to what appears to be deliberately obstructive. I would hate to lose the useful contributions of this editor, but I also hate to lose the contributions of other editors who don't have the patience to argue past the obstructionism or rope in third editors or start dispute resolution proceedings.

Notification of the user against whom enforcement is requested

Done, 2020-02-06

Discussion concerning QuackGuru

Statements must be made in separate sections. They may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs, except by permission of a reviewing administrator.
Administrators may remove or shorten noncompliant statements. Disruptive contributions may result in blocks.

Statement by QuackGuru

Talk:2019–20 vaping lung illness outbreak#Removal of update section tag - I removed the tag because no new source was presented. The content Beland added "though individual cases do not provide strong evidence of causal relationships"[2] was unsupported by the source. I tagged the content and replaced it with verifiable content.

Belend merged the article on 21 December 2019.[3] After the merge was undone it was merged again after the AFD close.[4] The merge was overturned.[5] Beland merged the article again on 13 January 2020[6] and deleted the entire Patients section.[7] The talk page consensus limited it to three cases.[8]

I removed the tags from the Hospitalized cases in the vaping lung illness outbreak because I did not believe there was a serious enough issue to justify the multiple tags. FULBERT removed two of the tags.[9]

Talk:Nicotine pouch#Alarming amount of Ownership and unreliable source about Kenya - The word "lobbies" is a general term and it does not specify who made the claim. Beland wrote in part: "It would be unwise to attribute claims made by "lobbies" to KTCA..."[10]

The discussion at Talk:2019–20 vaping lung illness outbreak#Predicting the future in a scary way involved content cited to a 2019 review. The content is stating that the lung injuries could be more widespread and the lung injuries in various countries is not clear. It is not stating anything in a scary way. All the content from the review was deleted and the unverifiable content not vitamin E acetate was added by Beland.

I started a RfC to help resolve the matter for Talk:Hospitalized cases in the vaping lung illness outbreak#NPOV issues and Talk:Hospitalized cases in the vaping lung illness outbreak#Vaping among teenagers by proposing verifiable content for the lede.

The matter involving MelanieN for the e-cig lede was about updating the text. I objected to including a US-centric warning in the lede since the outbreak is not worldwide.

The matter involving KristofferR at the e-cig article was mainly about misleading content. The misleading content was fixed and I added a note to clarify the outbreak content.

The matter involving Sunline09 at the e-cig article was more about WP:SYNC. All previous versions were a SYNC violation. I copied content from the lede of the subarticle for the Frequency section.

The matter involving Seraphimblade was resolved here. On 29 December 2019 Seraphimblade reverted to an older version. It was undone by Doc James.[11]

Andy Dingley says "I've certainly avoided pod mod, QuackGuru, and their personal space of vaping articles ever since...".[12] According to talk page consensus a sentence fails verification. Andy Dingley made a comment about the pod mod article on 14:38, 6 December 2019. Soon after, Andy Dingley removed the FV tag on 14:54, 6 December 2019. The source mentions nicotine salts on pages 95-96 but it does not verify the claim.

The content and the quality of sources is under dispute at the nicotine pouch article. KristofferR added commercial websites and added nettotobak.com that sells LYFT products. I tagged the unreliable source and other unreliable sources. Beland removed the unreliable tag added to the nettotobak.com commercial website and other tags were removed. Beland also added commercial websites. I requested verification for "Unlike vaping products".[13] Beland asked me "Why would that require verification?"[14] The PDF file does not verify the claim "Unlike vaping products" added by Beland.

On controversial topics there are usually content disputes. Editors have different interpretations of policy. I am concerned that there may be no opportunity to examine in detail whether the content I tagged as failed verification did indeed fail verification. However, I accept that people disagree. I understand other editors' frustration and I am looking for a way to resolve the issue. Would it help if I don't add or remove tags for a year? QuackGuru (talk) 01:11, 11 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Levivich

I clicked, at random, on the third link, to Talk:Nicotine_pouch#Alarming_amount_of_Ownership_and_unreliable_source_about_Kenya

Article text at issue: "The Kenya Tobacco Control Alliance objected to the entrance of nicotine pouches in Kenya.[citation needed] They are concerned that the nicotine pouches may raise the risk of cancer, heart disease, and reproductive or developmental harms.[failed verification] They also[failed verification] stated that there is no reliable research that demonstrates nicotine pouches are safer than regular cigarettes.[1]"
What the cited source says: "Lobbies have raised an alarm, saying the pouches could result in increased risk for cancer, heart disease and reproductive or developmental effects. Kenya Tobacco Control Alliance (Ketca) protested the introduction of nicotine pouches, saying there is no adequate data to show the smokeless pouches were a less risky alternative to cigarettes. Ketca Chairman Joel Gitali said tobacco pouches, illegal in parts of Europe, could have lower levels of some potentially harmful chemicals compared to cigarettes. He said the pouches contained higher amounts of arsenic, cadmium and nicotine. 'The US Food and Drug Administration said there is not enough data to prove they are safer than cigarettes and, therefore, we call upon the government not to license these products that are a threat to public health,' he said."
In the talk page discussion, QG argues that the text fails verification because It is "Organizations in Kenya" not "They" and The word "Lobbies" does not mean "Kenya Tobacco Control Alliance". Maybe it's a language issue or just not reading carefully enough, but I can see how this sort of argumentatoin would prompt editors to raise WP:TE or WP:CIR concerns. – Levivich 00:12, 7 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- @Johnuniq: I ec'd with your comment rewriting my statement; it now includes the relevant text from the source. The source says that Ketca is one of 'the lobbies" that has concerns about pouches raising the risk of cancer, etc. Levivich 06:38, 7 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- @Johnuniq: The Kenyan Tobacco Control Alliance is, as the name suggests, an alliance of tobacco control groups. They are the "lobbies" that are being referred to in this passage: "Lobbies have raised an alarm, saying the pouches could result in increased risk for cancer, heart disease and reproductive or developmental effects. Kenya Tobacco Control Alliance (Ketca) protested the introduction of nicotine pouches, saying there is no adequate data to show the smokeless pouches were a less risky alternative to cigarettes." Also, Ketca is the only group that is mentioned in the entire article. The entire article only puts forward two points of view: that of the tobacco companies, given by the managing director of a tobacco company, and that of the anti-tobacco lobby, given by the chairman of Ketco. The article does not mean lobbies other than Ketco are concerned about the pouches. Ketca is speaking on behalf of "the lobbies" – they are "the lobbies". Maybe this is an engvar thing? Levivich 07:20, 7 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Doc James

And than we have the tagging issue on the other side. User:Beland requests that an "update" tag not be removed as the that section ONLY has sources from September 2019.[15] Was tagged in this edit.[16] Seriously if you have newer sources than add them. September is only a couple of months ago. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:20, 7 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

It seems like this one issue is resolved.[17] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:50, 8 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by MelanieN

I’ll chime in here to share my own experience with QuackGuru. I was also driven away from an article by his relentless ownership. Last September I went to the Electronic cigarette article, intending to see that the coverage of the vaping-related lung illness was being reported accurately. I made six edits over a three-day period, most of which were immediately reverted by QuackGuru. His resistance to anything not contributed by him was total. One battle that I lost was his insistence on retaining a lot of outmoded information in the lede; see the second paragraph in the lede, which to this to this day consists mostly of outmoded studies from years ago indicating that vaping is pretty harmless, with a single sentence at the end of the paragraph mentioning the vaping-related illness outbreak in the U.S. last summer. Another example: he totally rejected my attempts to insert the warnings issued by the CDC and AMA, insisting that warnings couldn’t be in the lede, or had to go in a different article entirely, or were non-neutral, or were silly, or were WP:NEWS, or whatever other argument he could think of. In this talk page exchange you can see my fruitless attempts to bring the article up to date and put the relevant information in the lead. I summoned Doc James to the article’s talk page, but his recommendations were also rejected. I don’t really know what can be done about this situation, because the entire article, and its multiple spinoffs, are totally QC's creation, and the articles are written in his almost unreadable style, which consists of dozens or hundreds of single sentences, each summarizing a report and sourced to that report, with no context or summarizing allowed. Trying to rewrite the article to make it more readable would be an enormous job even if it wasn’t fought by him at every turn. Trying to do any editing at all is pretty much impossible. -- MelanieN (talk) 06:45, 7 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

In reply to El C's question about whether QG has continued to behave as I describe here: The issues I described were in early September. The ANI thread was closed October 24. So I checked to see if he is still doing what I described - “owning” the article and refusing to accept any editing or input from anyone else. Answer: yes, he is. Most recent activity:

Jan 30: User:KristofferR pointed out on the talk page a new report from the CDDC, saying it should be added to the article. QG disagreed. [18]
Over the next few days: KristofferR repeatedly added information to the article from the new CDC report and QG repeatedly removed it (in fairness, two other editors including Doc James also removed it).[19]
Feb 2: KristofferR posted at the talk page with additional references, and he and QG argued.[20]
Feb. 5: Another user, User:Sunline09, added sourced content to the article page.[21] QG immediately tagged all three additions “failed verification” and asked Sunline to “post all the new sources here on the talk page.”[22]

My conclusion: yes, he is still behaving as I described. He is still “owning” the articles and challenging everything anyone else tries to do. I should also note that electronic cigarettes and spinoff articles (Category:Electronic cigarettes lists 56 articles on the subject, virtually all created by QG) are pretty much the only things he is editing about. In his past 500 edits I found only three or four on any other subject. This is not just ownership; this borders on obsession. -- MelanieN (talk) 20:14, 7 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Seraphimblade

I had considered the course of action of an AE filing myself, based upon what I've seen of QuackGuru at Hospitalized cases in the vaping lung illness outbreak. I will first say that I believe QG has the best of intentions in keeping the encyclopedia free of pseudoscience and woo, and I have often myself seen QG do good work in those areas. However, in this area, QG has been a problem there as well. QuackGuru has the habit of, rather than participating in discussion, continuing to repeat himself with claims like "failed verification", even after being shown the specific portion of the reference which confirms the article text, as here. QuackGuru's conduct can have the effect of driving other good-faith contributors away entirely as well [23]. While I see that Thryduulf has proposed sanctions related to tags and reverts, those are not in my view the primary issues. Rather, the core issue is ownership of articles and I didn't hear that during discussions, as well as reverts with a simple statement of "failed verification" without any explanation of what QG believes failed verification and why, which make interaction with QuackGuru, especially in this area, a phenomenally frustrating experience. 1RR and a prohibition on tag removal will not solve those problems. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 19:23, 7 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Andy Dingley

My experiences echo those of MelanieN. I've had little to do with QuackGuru, and that was too much.

Late last year there was a backlog drive at AfC, which I took part in. QuackGuru objected strongly to the pod mod article, blanked it as a "hoax" (a farcical claim) and then was persistently disruptive afterwards, with clear behaviours beyond OWN and IDHT. Several times they deleted a claim or section made by others, only to add it back again themselves later on. Their attitude to sourcing is peculiar, seemingly regarding anything that isn't a literal text copy as then not supporting the claimed content. Yet nowhere else on WP do we seem to have a problem in avoiding close paraphrasing like that. They also relied on that old favourite MEDRS for issues, such as the aesthetic design of commercial products which are outside the MEDRS scope.

A long ANI thread was the result: Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive1021#QuackGuru and disruption over e-cigs and pod mods

I've certainly avoided pod mod, QuackGuru, and their personal space of vaping articles ever since, even to the point of avoiding AfC (which still has a backlog) altogether. Andy Dingley (talk) 16:26, 8 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by KristofferR

I deliberately took a break from Wikipedia for a few days because I found dealing with QuackGuru so exhausting. I was relieved to go back and find this discussion, and the issues I consider QuackGuru to have introduced to the articles I participated in, to be fixed.

I won't beat around the bush too much, as my experiences completely echo those of others here. Suffice to say to say I found him to inherit an alarming amount of ownership to the articles in question, and fight participation by abusing sourcing requirements by adding "failed verification", "unreliable source", or similar tags, to every sentence added, despite the sources being undeniably reliable (government sources for example) or not needed at all due to WP:BLUE, and subsequently add complaints about overcitation when too many sources are added as a last ditch resort to satisfy him.

The nicotine pouch article was especially egregious, he threatened a revert of all my edits to the article, to an objectively inferior version (where health statements from an anti-tobacco lobby was listed under "Research" for example), due to his abuse of sourcing tags. Thankfully this discussion happened, Beland stepped in, and fixed the real issues with the article while also leaving in the relevant content I contributed. Thanks again Beland! KristofferR (talk) 05:19, 9 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Answer to question from Johnuniq by Beland

@Johnuniq: It's a bit unfair to judge remarks taken out of context, but if it helps here are some examples.

Based on two news articles that each relate stories from several patients hospitalized with vaping injuries, in this edit I combined "Teenagers who were admitted to the hospital due to vaping-induced lung illnesses are sharing their stories and telling others to quit vaping." and "People who came close to death from a vaping-induced illness are also telling their stories." into "Some patients are sharing stories of hospitalizations and life-threatening symptoms." dropping "and telling others to quit vaping" because the source didn't explicitly say they were doing so, just that they had inspired people to do so (and this did not sound neutral). Quoting from Talk:Hospitalized_cases_in_the_vaping_lung_illness_outbreak#NPOV_issues:

Combining different claims to come to a conclusion that it was "some" is a SYN violation. Both sources don't support the same claim. QuackGuru (talk) 23:42, 3 February 2020 (UTC)
BuzzFeed News verifies teenagers and telling others to quit vaping. The other does not verify that claim. No source verifies "some" patients. QuackGuru (talk) 00:00, 4 February 2020 (UTC)
None of the sources presented verifies the word "some". It is about verifiability not truth. I am arguing we don't conduct our own review of the presented sources and come to a conclusion not found in any source. BuzzFeed News also verifies that they are telling others to quit vaping. QuackGuru (talk) 00:47, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

Refusing to apply the meanings of words and pretending that proposed changes resultingly cause a sourcing violation is probably the most vexing pattern of obstruction; slavish copying can also (as in this case) act as a backdoor to import the POV of a source. Slavish sourcing also results in very choppy articles with no summarizing allowed. Though strong sourcing is awesome, QuackGuru seems to have an interpretation of sourcing requirements that does not align with the consensus policy:

...why not just have an unreferenced summary of the contents of the article here (in particular the list of cases), as is usually done on Wikipedia articles? It's allowed by MOS:LEADCITE for uncontroversial content, which a summary of well-referenced details presented later in the article usually is. -- Beland (talk) 01:42, 4 February 2020 (UTC)
I moved it to the body. Unsourced content in the lede not supported by any source is strictly forbidden. QuackGuru (talk) 01:47, 4 February 2020 (UTC)
I would not characterize unsourced content as "strictly forbidden", though for many claims it is indeed needed. MOS:CITELEDE says in part: "information in the lead section of non-controversial subjects is less likely to be challenged and less likely to require a source; there is not, however, an exception to citation requirements specific to leads. The necessity for citations in a lead should be determined on a case-by-case basis by editorial consensus.". -- Beland (talk) 02:10, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

Result concerning QuackGuru

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

@Beland: Sorry to overwhelm with you with bureaucracy (similar to my response at ANI) but those links show a lot of comments which are difficult to disentangle. Please pick one point which best illustrates the issue and outline what edits or comments are a problem and why. Personally, I can't get excited about a battle over tags—are there edits or comments that show QG to be repeatedly incorrect about an article assertion or that show QG pushing a "strong anti-vaping POV"? Johnuniq (talk) 23:25, 6 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- @Levivich: I know that QG's style and rigidity frustrates other editors but QG is often right about sources. Please correct me if I'm missing something but the key point in your example concerns QG's failed verification on "They are concerned that the nicotine pouches may raise the risk of cancer...". In context, "They" refers to a specific organization and the article does not say that organization is concerned about an increased risk of cancer etc. The article reports that the organization said "there is no adequate data to show the smokeless pouches were a less risky alternative". That is a long way from the assertion and unless there is other text that I can't see, the source fails verification. The article says that (unspecified) Lobbies are concerned that pouches may raise the risk of cancer etc. Johnuniq (talk) 06:32, 7 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- @Levivich: I'm afraid the changed comments confuse me. Please spell out what text in the source verifies that a specific organization (Ketca) is concerned that nicotine pouches may raise the risk of cancer. The source has two mentions of Ketca and two of cancer. The subheading (probably not written by the author of the article) is "Lobby has raised an alarm, saying the introduction of pouches could result in increased risk for cancer" but the article does not assert that Ketca is the lobby in question. One might infer that but it's a stretch and "failed verification" is correct. Johnuniq (talk) 07:11, 7 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- @Levivich: That's a big stretch. It might be right but that conclusion is not in the source, aka failed verification. Johnuniq (talk) 08:29, 7 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
If what MelanieN says is representative of overall interactions, then it's probably time other editors got a chance to also edit the article without effectively being restricted by QG. A topic ban for a few months, or more leniently, a 1RR restriction, could prove worthwhile. At any rate, this request is actionable. El_C 07:36, 7 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I could see how Awilley's suggestion of a personal "consensus required" sanction could serve as an effective middle way between a full topic ban and 1RR/0RR. El_C 19:27, 7 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@MelanieN: noted. Note that if QuackGuru fails to submit a (any) statement in response to this request, that would sway me more toward the topic ban end of the sanction spectrum. I would like to get a sense that they understand and are willing to work toward resolving the critical input here. As for their "borderline obsession," I'm fine with them having a narrow focus for significant duration — but, if they get so attached to their own works to the point that it hinders editorial collaboration, then indeed that is a problem this request ought to address. El_C 21:30, 7 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Back in October there was a lengthy AN/I thread about QG engaging in exactly the same behaviour as lead to this request, and his conduct was significantly criticised by the Arbitration Committee who warned him "that continuing to engage in a pattern of disruption to Wikipedia will result in further sanctions." It is evident from the above that he is continuing to disrupt the topic area so further sanctions are necessary. I would suggest a standard 1RR and a prohibition on adding or removing any tag disputed by any other editor (excluding editors blocked as a sock or meat puppet), unless there is a clear consensus to do so on the talk page of the article concerned. "Disputed" defined as (a) added or removed by another editor acting in good faith, and/or (b) subject to discussion on the article talk page. "Tag" applying to both inline tags (e.g. failed verification) and banner tags (e.g. needs additional citations) that apply to articles and/or sections. Both restrictions applying to the e-cigs topic area broadly interpreted and subject to appeal (together or individually) after 6 months. There would be no restriction on him starting or contributing to discussions about tags he or another user disputes, as long as he does so in good faith. I would also issue a warning that if these restrictions are not abided by or there is further disruption that a topic ban will very likely be the result.
Indeed having said all that, while I don't think a topic ban is required now, I will support one as a second choice if that is the consensus of other admins. Thryduulf (talk) 11:59, 7 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- Based on others comments, I'm tending now to agree that the tagging restriction I suggested should be expanded to Awilley's suggested personal consensus required suggestion, but I'm also less against a straight topic ban than I was. Thryduulf (talk) 13:28, 8 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I haven't engaged with QuackGuru for a couple of years now at least, but it looks to me like things haven't changed much since then. I think at the root of the problem is extreme OWNership of a topic area. Every battle, no matter how small, is fought to the bitter end. Every talk page comment is responded to. Every edit is reverted. Every nit is picked. In trying to mitigate behavior like this in the past I tried a 0RR rule, but quickly found that was being cleverly gamed. (This was back in 2015.) I think the previous topic ban from E-cigarettes and the ArbCom warning is probably enough that the next sanction should be a topic ban. But I would prefer to start with an attempt to throttle the most disruptive tendencies in a way that still allows constructive editing. My first thought would be something like a personal "consensus required" sanction (if an edit you make is reverted you may not reinstate that edit without consensus on the talk page). In my mind that would force a person to either become successful in building consensus or to drop disputes and move on. (And yes, I realize there are people in the topic area who will never agree with QG no matter how much they discuss, but I don't think those types of editors are in the majority.) ~Awilley (talk) 19:08, 7 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
How practical is a "personal consensus required" sanction if Every battle, no matter how small, is fought to the bitter end. Every talk page comment is responded to.? We have evidence here of editors giving up on the topic because of this mentality and so they should not be able to claim consensus because those who disagree with them simply stop fighting. I am, however, in favor of trying to find some way to let QG still participate in the topic because in looking at the diffs presented here some real % of the time QG is right to challenge the text as compared to the source. For my out of the box thinking, I wonder if an ERRORS2 sort of situtation could be viable here. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 05:42, 9 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

SashiRolls

Per the consensus here, SashiRolls is indefinitely banned from the topic of post-1932 American politics. The ban will be appealable in the standard six months. Best regards, ~Swarm~ ^{sting} 06:07, 10 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

This request may be declined without further action if insufficient or unclear information is provided in the "Request" section below.
Requests may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs (not counting required information), except by permission of a reviewing administrator.

Request concerning SashiRolls

User who is submitting this request for enforcement: MrX (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) 14:26, 7 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

User against whom enforcement is requested: SashiRolls (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
Search CT alerts: in user talk history • in system log

Sanction or remedy to be enforced: WP:ARBAPDS#Behavioral standards:

5) Wikipedia editors are expected to behave reasonably, calmly, and courteously in their interactions with other editors; to approach even difficult situations in a dignified fashion and with a constructive and collaborative outlook; and to avoid acting in a manner that brings the project into disrepute. Unseemly conduct, such as personal attacks, incivility, assumptions of bad faith, harassment, disruptive point-making, and gaming the system, is prohibited.

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

Assumption of bad faiths, WP:ASPERSIONS

February 7, 2020 - "It is obviously impossible to contribute to this entry as it has been taken over by Snoogans, MrX, WSMR, O3000 & Slywriter. Cf. WP:OWN"
February 1, 2020 - "The way to show intractable problems is to document them. That is what I have done. MrX is watching, if they feel like reverting I'm sure they will. WMSR is watching too. I'm sure they'll be quick to respond."
January 30, 2020 - "A quick fact-check shows that WMSR has added zero reliable sources to the article, has been criticized for edit warring on 13-14 January at AN/I (1RR page) and has removed about a dozen sources." (link omitted)
January 29, 2020 - "[Tell us about your involvement] with MrX's causes, WMSR.
January 22, 2020 - "Speaking of your behavioural problems WMSR, why do you revert edits (images) and then refuse to discuss when sections are opened about your revert on the talk page, preferring to rant about others rather than to explain your slashing? Smells like typical tag-team WP:GAMING to me..."
January 22, 2020 - "Team "Notherethere" has deleted multiple RS in their crusade against having too much front-facing information about Brock in this entry."
January 15, 2020 (logged out - see [24]) - " Usually it is not unemployed or underemployed Wikipedia contributors like yourself who are the best judges of the quality of content, so to show you are not just some random Snoog you need to actually argue, not just yell out your opinion louder than everyone else using words like "brazen", "absurd", "tedious", "indiscriminate", etc. Do you have any real world qualifications to compare with these authors, journalists, editors, and publishers whose work you are calling "absurd CTR content"? You're not fooling anyone..."
January 15, 2020 - "I see that Objective3000 has now made their third edit to the article: the first was to remove the inaccurate word "slightly" a couple minutes after MrX filed an ANEW report about the word, following WMSR's similar reversion without having studied the source."
January 7, 2020 - "Regardless, the claims made by Snoog above are not policy compliant: feel free to reread WP:ASPERSIONS concerning evidence-less claims. And saying an editor is "obsessed" is just a little poisonous, too. But I'm used to MrX and Snoog's methods."
January 5, 2020 - "Perhaps Team X could instead add the relevant reports on Russki Meddling in Homespun spinner-space, so we can see the bigger picture, rather than deleting reliably sourced information. "
December 31, 2020 - "Things always have a tendency to heat up when you talk about Brock for some reason. :)"
January 5, 2020 - "Also, why do I get the feeling you two are following me around? Granted I pinged you at RSN MrX after you followed my recent contribs to Talk:Tulsi Gabbard. And I don't know why Snoog is getting involved over there. ^^"

Diffs of previous relevant sanctions, if any

November 10, 2019 - Topic ban; interaction ban; cautioned.
May 27, 2019 - No personal comments restriction
May 19, 2019 - Interaction ban
June 23, 2017 - Indefinite block
September 3, 2016 - Topic ban

If discretionary sanctions are requested, supply evidence that the user is aware of them (see WP:AC/DS#Awareness and alerts)

Previously blocked as a discretionary sanction for conduct in the area of conflict, see the block log linked to above.
Previously given a discretionary sanction for conduct in the area of conflict on May 28, 2019 by Awilley (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA).

Additional comments by editor filing complaint

The behavior documented here is unabated. At least four users: (MrX, Snooganssnoogans, Objective3000, and WMSR) are now the target of baseless accusations of being members of a cabal. This bellicose behavior damages reputations, disrupts discussions, and erodes trust and collaboration. - Mr X 🖋 14:26, 7 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Pudeo (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) has made a specious accusation of tag teaming, which according to the essay is "a controversial form of meatpuppetry in which editors coordinate their actions to circumvent the normal process of consensus." I am asking Pudeo to substantiate that accusation with ANY evidence of "coordinate their actions to circumvent the normal process of consensus". and if they are unable or unwilling to, I request that the accusation be stricken. - Mr X 🖋 20:35, 7 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think I need to respond to most of SashiRolls' post hoc ergo propter hoc claims about me, but I do want to rebut the ridiculous claim that I reported his behavior here because he tried to get me blocked for supposedly edit warring. Here's is the sequence of what actually happened:

00:50 - Aspersions cast by SashiRolls at me, but more so at WMSR.
02:57 - Having witnessed these slurs for months and seen several editors push back, I gave SashiRolls a final warning.
12:50 - SashiRolls deleted my warning with the edit summary "removeha"
14:01 - Realizing that SashiRolls probably would probably continue making aspersions, I started a sandbox to organize diffs.
Six days later, after seeing SashiRolls' cabal accusation, I reported his conduct here. - Mr X 🖋 14:38, 8 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Notification of the user against whom enforcement is requested

[25]

Discussion concerning SashiRolls

Statements must be made in separate sections. They may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs, except by permission of a reviewing administrator.
Administrators may remove or shorten noncompliant statements. Disruptive contributions may result in blocks.

Statement by SashiRolls

Immediate history

On 31 January 2020 MrX was warned for edit warring on Media coverage of Bernie Sanders. He was at 3RR at 14:30 and had not reverted his (mistake) by 23:30 (and still has not). I filed at ANEW, and after he was warned, MrX began compiling diffs for this revenge filing on the same day.
On 4 February 2020, Snooganssnoogans made a series of 6 reversions (one continuous revert) with insulting edit summaries:

fix poor, incomprehensible writeup
nonsensical descriptions
awful writeup
this has nothing to do with media bias against Sanders. one editor has repeatedly edit-warred this into the article over the objections of other editors ( diff ).

The cumulative effect was clear "baiting" to take advantage of the "no personal comments" sanction Awilley had imposed in a previous case MrX had brought against me, and which Snoog was also involved in.
I presented the facts on the talk page, showing beyond any doubt that nobody had ever deleted the content I had supposedly repeatedly edit-warred into the article.

WMSR, who has been trying to get me sanctioned for some time, denied the evidence on the talk page.
Objective3000 made a number of personal attacks against me which I tried to remove (one of which WMSR acknowledged O3000 shouldn't have said in yet another denial of the clear evidence that Snoogans had made up the edit-war he was complaining of.
WMSR, Objective3000, Slywriter and another contributor directed a number of personal comments towards me on the talk page (zero discussion of content) while I rewrote a paragraph about the section scrubbed from the article by Snoogans & MrX. I explicitly and politely responded to their concerns with previous content and continued a content discussion on the TP amidst the poisonous atmosphere being established by the five editors in the original thread. In mainspace, WMSR just wholesale reverted when a better compromise could have been found giving the reader context. No comment from WMSR on the TP about his revert quite a few hours (36?) later. O3000 did, so I suppose that's ok, then.

qabbalah: People have objected to my saying the entry & topic area is being controlled by a "house" cabal with a division of roles according to talents, tools, and experience points. Wait, no, I didn't say all that, did I? :) People have also previously objected to me drawing attention to the fact that Snoogans & MrX work together. As the record shows, these two have interacted on 41 pages within 10 minutes of one another, and 167 pages within 10 days of one another. Their #1 and #3 interactions are on Media coverage of Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard, two pages where I have had to deal with them extensively.

19:29 12 Jan MrX - O3000 19:38 12 Jan (first edit to the page)

18:03 29 Jan MrX - O3000 18:05 29 Jan

00:18 12 Jan Snoo - MrX 20:28 12 Jan

00:23 12 Jan Snoo - MrX 20:18 12 Jan

Repetition is the mother of learning (context matters): Since I've been asked about the "underemployed" comment, note that it was plucked from a discussion conducted 3 days after I'd been taken to a noticeboard for removing my own (inaccurate) word "slightly" from the entry. Poke, poke, poke and you'll eventually get a reaction, maybe in the middle of the workweek... The following is what led to that comment, as can be verified at this diff:

The absurd CTR content that has been challenged by multiple has again been edit-warred into the article by SashiRolls. How many times is this editor going to be allowed to edit-war newly added content into the article despite the objections of multiple editors? It's a brazen violation of BRD and the consensus-required requirements that all the other editors are abiding by. The editor was just days ago warned on the edit-warring noticeboard for edit-warring on this page, but immediately comes back to edit-war this nonsensical content into the article? Snooganssnoogans (talk) 03:31, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

Chill. The content I restored was deleted on the grounds that the chapter title of one of the two sources was "fishy", seemingly suggesting that it did not exist. I restored the edit after proving that the source said exactly what I wrote that it said and providing a link to the page where it did. Please stop misrepresenting matters. I notice you did not provide a link to that discussion at ANEW which was closed within 27 minutes of being opened. In the interest of transparency concerning what really happened, I'll add a link since it was just archived. 🌿 SashiRolls t · c 08:46, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

Please explain why you are repeatedly restoring content that has been challenged by multiple editors, and which has not been supported by any editor except yourself. It's a direct violation of BRD and the consensus-required requirements, and it makes it impossible to edit this article. You were literally "warned" on the edit-warring noticeboard, so your link just shows what I said. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 14:46, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

In fact, it shows slightly more than that.

WMSR's copyvio & harassment accusations

On 28 January 2018, WSMR started an AfD on the "media coverage of BS" page and an ANI report against me which was closed the same day (though he reopened it a few hours after Bbb23 closed it as being most likely a disruptive timesink). Five days later, I challenged him to demonstrate the copyvio (the least subjective of the accusations). Caught in the fib, he shifted the goalposts: "Regardless of whether the use of that image was a violation of copyright law, it was a clear violation of WP's fair use policy" in this diff.

WMSR removed the image from the article on 21 January 2020, I never restored it. Why was this worth discussion 7 days later?

WMSR also accused me of harassment on 28 January 2020, though I hadn't even commented on his talk page (though he'd been asked to stay off mine).

Working the refs

Obj3000, MrX, and Snoog have all commented on 7 admin talk pages. The closest association (by far) is with Awilley, who imposed the "no personal comments" sanction (20, 19, and 22 comments, respectively) (Snoog and MrX have 5 and 6 contributions respectively to Awilley/Special Sanctions). I have made a spreadsheet of their interactions separated into subject areas for ArbCom. The two that concern me at the moment are among their closest collaborations. (rough text version)

Further evidence available

I can respond to each of the diffs presented above providing the context. (evidence phase)

Snoog has misrepresented the off-wiki information from 2017 he sent to ArbCom. Like the false claim of edit warring above, this is a tactical misrepresentation.
Given the clear evidence of coordinated harassment, the gaming of the "no personal comments" sanction Awilley unilaterally imposed, and the very clear misrepresentations of content (which is a behavioral issue about which I have solid evidence to share, especially concerning Snoogans), this case belongs at ArbCom, with the filer and first three commenters on this case as parties to the dispute.

-- SashiRolls ^{🌿 · 🍥} 14:34, 8 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Looking back on the article I noticed that nobody had given anyone a heads up there that anything was happening. I wonder how anyone knowing anything about the dispute could have found out about it?
I also noted two discussions which have been opened but had not been substantively discussed (1, 2), drowned out by the wailing and gnashing of teeth about tone. -- SashiRolls ^{🌿 · 🍥} 00:34, 10 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Thought-crime (addendum)

I notice that MrX has added one of my edit summaries on my talk page in boldface, suggesting that it is particularly important. For information, I had misspelled "harassment" with two Rs and while backspacing hit <return> instead of <backspace>. (I can't really claim "fat" fingers, but...)
A lot of people have found it inappropriate that I asked Snoogans about their qualifications to judge the "absurdity" of professional mainstream journalists' articles. I think it is interesting that on en.wp it is considered a major-major foul to ask what someone does for a living, whereas in life, this is usually one of the first things you know about someone. I'm not trying to excuse my irritation with their pestering by pointing out how weird it is to hide your professional qualifications, I just think people should be aware how weird it is. (For complete transparency, I have taught foreign languages and computer skills at all levels (from middle school through graduate school and grandes écoles to continuing education) for 20+ years and have also worked in radio, retail, translation, academic research, photography, manual labor, and quite a few kitchens. In other words, I have legitimate working class bonafides.)
Levivich mentioned Cirt/Sagecandor. I'm not sure I ever said Sagecandor was a sockpuppet as such. I was blocked in Dec 2016 for questioning whether there was "some today politics" in their desire to have their rewrite of "And are you lynching Negroes" promoted to GA status (which it was not), and later in June 2017, for documenting their production at Talk:Bibliography of Donald Trump. I say this because opining you think someone might be a sock-puppet is a thought-crime in the 1st degree (as I understand it) unless you provide evidence (as I did twice for Bulldog Antz & User:The Bone Dorchester).-- SashiRolls ^{🌿 · 🍥} 11:59, 9 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Snooganssnoogans

I will try to be brief:

(1) The editor has repeatedly insinuated that I'm hired by David Brock (a largely disreputable figure in US politics) to edit Wikipedia: (a)[26] the "for some reason" line is the insinuation I'm working for him. (b)[27] SR asks me if I know of headshots of David Brock that he can use, which is a clear insinuation that I'm working for him. (c) I've sent an email to the Arb Committee where SR explicitly names two other editors: Calton and Neutrality as working for David Brock.
(2) SR brazenly edit-wars on the page in question (I listed some of the many many clear-cut BRD violations here: [28]). The editor bullies changes into the article and attacks every other editor who challenges his edits, and has over time largely driven other editors from the page. The edit-warring, coupled with the personal attacks and the conspiracy theories about other editors, suggests at the very least that this editor is incapable of editing American Politics. He sees himself as the only pure editor whereas all who disagrees with any of his edits are editing for hire and coordinating against him.
(3) SR will inevitably respond with a Gish Gallop. If you don't understand what he's talking about and if you don't have time to chase down all the vague spurious accusations and irrelevant links he throws up, don't assume that there is something to it. Ask him to be clear and concise, and to actually provide evidence.
(4) When SR's ban was rescinded in Nov 2018, it was on the condition that he be kept on a tight leash. Additionally, when he was unblocked, many editors and admins voiced strong opposition to unblocking him, knowing from their past interactions with him that he would inevitably cause problems again. Since the unblocking, he has on three separate occasions by two administrators (El C and Awilley) been blocked for harassment, personal attacks and battleground behavior, and been warned countless times by both administrators and editors. This editor will be indefinitely banned at some point or another: it's just a question of how much time that Wikipedia editors and admins are going to have to spend dealing with him before that. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 15:16, 7 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Pudeo argues that SR's civility violations and non-stop conspiracy theorizing about other editors is excusable because the conspiracy theories are true (!). The only evidence in support of the claim that I am tag-teaming with two other editors is that we happen to have edited many of the same articles. However, if you were to put in the names of all other active editors in American Politics who have been as active as MrX, Objective and I in the last few years, the editor interaction analyzer would show the exact same thing. If we happened to have edited the same very obscure American Politics pages or completely unrelated Wikipedia pages, then yes, that would indicate tag-teaming. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 20:27, 7 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by WMSR

To be frank, the diffs cited by MrX and Snooganssnoogans don't even begin to scratch the surface of SashiRolls's constant incivility on talk pages and with regard to edit warring. Looking purely at Talk:Media coverage of Bernie Sanders and Talk:Tulsi Gabbard 2020 presidential campaign Sashi demonstrates pretty clearly their belief that WP:FOC to everyone except them. I recently raised issues about personal attacks at WP:ANI, but they were not addressed. That complaint contains several more diffs. --WMSR (talk) 17:00, 7 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I'm disappointed but not surprised to see Sashi respond with a Gish gallop that is well over the 500-word limit and continues attacking other editors, myself included. Since his reply to this complaint, rather than focus on content at the page in question, he is accusing editors of pouring fog into the page by bringing a case here. The claims made by Xenagoras on this page are equally outrageous and frankly offensive. If you want to drag me to a noticeboard, feel free to do so, but please stop casting aspersions. --WMSR (talk) 23:52, 9 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Objective3000

6 February 2020 [29] – “One does wonder why this entry is so important to the 'no there there' folks.”
5 February 2020 [30] – "Here the 'digging' I'm referring to is reading the article and seeing what it says (and proving with wikiblame that Snoog was not telling the truth). Feel free to try it, rather than making comments vacated of any substance..”
1 February 2020 [31] – “Thank you for teaching me that your point of view is that the Media coverage of Bernie Sanders page should not contain any actual media coverage of Bernie Sanders' campaign. I feel so much wiser now!”

Sashi’s last comment this morning: It is obviously impossible to contribute to this entry as it has been taken over by Snoogans, MrX, WSMR, O3000 & Slywriter. Cf. WP:OWN is breathtaking. Sashi made 256 of the last 500 edits to the article with a great deal of resistance from at least five other editors. Sashi’s conclusion: those five editors are exhibiting ownership behavior, not Sashi.

If you attempt to engage Sashi in discussion, you can be certain of two things. Sashi will demand that you focus on content. Sashi will focus on you. Often both in the same edit.

Sashi has racked up an array of blocks from an impressive number of admins and arbcom for personal attacks, harassment, uncollaborative editing, aspersions, battelground, intimidation, nothere, disruptive editing and Wikihounding; has lost talk page access three times, and lost email access. Clearly there is a problem with behavior towards other editors. Blocks haven’t worked. Perhaps an indef TBan from AP2 and BLP to see if this is a problem dealing with controversial arenas. Or will that just shove the problem elsewhere? O3000 (talk) 17:48, 7 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Pudeo: You stated: After Snooganssnoogans recently brought up SashiRolls on Awilley's talkpage, MrX and Objective3000 commented there within an hour. You neglected to mention that SashiRolls called both MrX and me multipliers of negative energy just before we responded. How on Earth is it tag-teaming for each of us to respond to accusations against oneself? I would suggest that this is not a good venue for casting aspersions. O3000 (talk) 20:33, 7 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I would like to respond in more detail to Pudeo’s accusation/rationale for Sashi's behavior. They did not click “Pages edited by all users” when using the interaction tool. When you use the tool for three people without this option, it does not mean all three are in each interaction. It sums three interaction pairs and the triple interaction. Clicking the option drops results from 93 to 39. Secondly, the results aren’t surprising as we all have been editing the AP2 articles for years, and talk page discussions can be very long and intense with constant minute to minute interaction. As an example, if I replace Snoog with MelanieN and run the same tool, there are 87 interactions.[32] Does this mean that admin MelanieN is a meatpuppet of MrX and me? O3000 (talk) 23:03, 7 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I’ve read SashiRolls statement and don’t really see anything to respond to. I live two blocks from a Kabbalah center, which has not helped me divine any meaning from the qabbalah section. Yes, I comment on admin TPs on occasion. I have 15-20 admin TPs on my watchlist as I have found these pages highly informative. Hope I haven’t been a pest. If someone thinks there is something I should respond to; I’ll be happy to do so. O3000 (talk) 15:42, 8 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Pudeo

It seems that all the editors who SashiRolls says are tag-teaming have already submitted statements. SashiRolls' general position in the contentious topic (Media coverage of Bernie Sanders) has decent acceptance, as the article survived two well-participated AfDs as "no consensus".

It is evident without a doubt that there is tag-teaming at play here. After Snooganssnoogans recently brought up SashiRolls on Awilley's talkpage, MrX and Objective3000 commented there within an hour[33]. I noticed this as well in an AN/I thread last month. In two comments I posted there, both were replied to by MrX and Objective3000. Based on the editor interaction tool with Objective3000 and MrX, it's fairly obvious they are following each other's edits to give back-up. They sometimes even reply for users on behalf of the other person:[34]. O3000 further states: I nearly always agree with MrX.

The editor interaction tool can yield results for three different users ~~combined~~: Snooganssnoogans, MrX & Objective3000. Can you believe that! SashiRolls has every right to complain about tag-teaming. Whether those complaints need to be tone-policed, is up the administators. But please do not reward tag-teaming in a POV fight. It is understandble that being tag-teamed against is strenous, and can't really be acted against, so I'm afraid SR has been put in a difficult position. --Pudeo (talk) 20:11, 7 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@El C: Acknowledged. A link with "pages edited by all users" ticked: [35] It does halve the results, and a deeper dig is required, but I hope that SashiRolls will give a response here which might touch this given that this is the root of many of his comments. I must say that I don't consider "tag-team" an egregious personal attack, anyhow. --Pudeo (talk) 23:39, 7 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by GoodDay

I don't wish to elaborate, as it's difficult to pin down. But, it's frustrating to edit or discuss topics concerning the corporate-centrist -vs- progressive divide in the US Democratic Party. My experiences have left me feeling it's difficult to point out the DNC's & MSM's bias against progressives. Thus why I don't hang around these disputes, very often. GoodDay (talk) 20:17, 7 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by GMG

If I'm being honest, we have a user twice indeffed, and now subject to a one way IBAN, a two way IBAN, a TBAN, and a conduct restriction. Where exactly is the area where this user has contributed productively and collaboratively? Who is it this user has interacted with that hasn't been part of the cabal (myself included, four some odd years ago, which is exactly why I continue to generally avoid them, and most any article they're active on)? GMG ^talk 22:37, 7 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I would suggest that those opining would review the previous requests linked to the prior restrictions, specifically regarding elaborate mechanisms to enable this editor to continue to take up community time[36]. I neither supported nor opposed the original unblock request, but correctly predicted that they would again be blocked within a year, which they were three times.

I await an answer to my original question. If we are to consider yet another topic ban, then where is it that we can expect this user to contribute in a way that is productive and collaborative? Do we have any evidence that this will somehow not result in either 1) cessation of editing having been eventually walled off from anything of any interest to them, or 2) an indefinite block regardless of the wall and what it cordons off? GMG ^talk 16:22, 8 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Jusdafax

Sashi Rolls may or may not deserve sanctions here. However, a look at the link to the editor interaction tool provided by Puedo does in fact show remarkable unanimity in timing between 3 editors on a wide range of articles. I'd say that this deserves further scrutiny as well. Jusdafax (talk) 23:07, 7 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I join others in pointing to the statement just below mine by Levivich. This A/E request is the tip of a complex, long-standing issue, and a deep, comprehensive analysis before judgement is called for, in my view. Jusdafax (talk) 04:43, 9 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Levivich

Recently I lamented at AN about how procedural fairness is not valued at AE. "Procedural fairness" includes not voicing an opinion on a sanction before the reported editor has even responded to the complaint. "Procedural fairness" means at least pretending that you're keeping an open mind until after you've heard from all parties and reviewed the evidence. Even if you don't think one of the parties deserves fairness, everyone else is watching, and they see that the decision makers do not have an open mind, and that has a predictable chilling effect, preventing editors from seeking help, and leaving problems to fester unaddressed.

I'm not seeing personal attacks in the 12 diffs listed in this report, except for the "unemployed" bit. But that diff (along with others in this report) was already brought to a noticeboard, here: Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive1029#User:SashiRolls's behavior at Media coverage of Bernie Sanders, and closed by an admin with the comment, "I see nothing sanctionable in SashiRolls's conduct." So is bringing the same diff here WP:FORUMSHOPPING? I've recently heard the opinion expressed that if you take something to ANI and it's closed as not actionable, bringing the same thing to AE is forum shopping. In fact, I think an editor was recently sanctioned for that. Do these forum shopping rules get applied equally to all editors? Or is it because WSMR filed the ANI (and pinged Snoog), but MrX filed this AE, that it's not forum shopping?

Of course no one is surprised that the noticeboard reports against Sashi are made by the same group of editors (who insist there is no cabal), each of whom has conveniently been available to comment quickly on the others' noticeboard reports, and who have the helpful habit of restoring each others' reverted edits, so none of them are pestered by WP:1RR, WP:3RR, or WP:BRD. I agree with Sashi that this is one for Arbcom (who won't voice an opinion on a final decision until after the evidence phase), as there seems to be no chance that the tag-teaming issue will even be looked at, never-mind addressed, here. Levivich 16:41, 8 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@El C: When Sashi filed an ANEW against X, you didn't see me or anyone else, jumping in to call for sanctions against X. But when X reported Sashi, Snoog and O3000 are both there in the hour, calling for sanctions, and Snoog saying "This editor is a nuisance and clear net negative on this page." Three years ago, when the socking admin Cirt/Sagecandor took Sashi to AE because Sashi repeatedly accused them of socking, Snoog and O3000 were there calling for sanctions on Sashi. This has been going on for years and I raised the tag teaming three weeks ago at X's ANEW against Sashi; we have new examples since then (as can be seen in this AE report). Everyone is a volunteer here, so no admin is obligated to do anything about anything, but it is disheartening to see an editor be sanctioned for saying the emperor has no clothes when the emperor is, in fact, naked. It's even more disheartening when it's the second time around.

By the way, about the editor interaction analyzer: Pudeo's 90something number is the correct measure. It's true that when you turn on the "all editors" switch, that number gets cut in half, but the "all editors" is when all three editors edited the page, and you don't need all three editors to edit a page in order for there to be tag-team editing: it only takes two out of the three. The "proof" isn't in the number of interactions anyway–it's in the details of those interactions themselves: who is making what edits exactly, and when. There are some concrete examples in the #qabbalah section of Sashi's statement, and Pudeo's link to the editor interaction analyzer leads the way to more edits like those. I'll take the other side of that bet on the Arbcom case, though; after reviewing diffs in the evidence phase, I don't think Arbcom will siteban Sashi, I think they'll find that the emperor has no clothes. Levivich 01:50, 9 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Jorm

SashiRolls and they way they operate actively prevents me from engaging in discussions or articles that they are involved in because I just don't want to deal with the headache.

The editor is an absolute net negative to the project and a simple topic ban is only going to kick the can further down the road and we will be back here within a handful of months, wasting time yet again. Hopefully people will not be swayed by pages of text attempting to rationalize their conspiracy theories.--Jorm (talk) 16:47, 8 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Rusf10

I am not going to review all the diffs because it would likely be a waste of time. The verdict was already delivered by biased admins before all the evidence was in anyway. How can anyone in good faith suggest a topic ban before the accused (SashiRolls) even had the chance to respond here? Levivich is right, if the admins cared about even having the appearance of objectivity, they would have given SashiRolls a reasonable amount of time to defend himself before calling for topic bans. I would tend to believe that there probably is some type of tag-teaming between MrX and Snoogans (and possibly others). Even this filing here has the appearance of a coordinated effort since SnoogansSnoogans posted a lengthy statement within one hour of the original filing. This probably needs to go to ArbCom.--Rusf10 (talk) 22:02, 8 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Sir Joseph

I want to echo Levivich. Some admins commented before Sashi replied which does not seem fair. How can you rule on an AE action without hearing from both sides? Further, as he pointed out, some of the diffs were already adjudicated. You can ban Sashi, but the net result will end up just making the articles in the area even more biased. There is a reason why people don't edit in certain topic areas. I for one, don't want to be faced with it, so I try not to edit in political areas anymore. And people know that political topics on Wikipedia are very skewed to the left. Perhaps take a look at who is filing the complaint and others providing diffs and see how often they are involved in disputes as well. See how often the same names show up in political disputes. Sir Joseph ^(talk) 23:38, 8 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Jdcomix

I've honestly tried to be uninvolved, but after they alleged me of harassment on their talk page even though I've only made 1 addition to it (look at the history), and skimming through the talk page at Media coverage of Bernie Sanders, I am strongly in support of sanctions. The editor being discussed is clearly not assuming good faith of the other editors on that article's talk page, and often makes baseless personal attacks against anyone who opposes them (see https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=939518348&oldid=939513414&title=Talk:Media_coverage_of_Bernie_Sanders). I'd probably be supporting an AP2 topic ban if it came to that. 01:47, 9 February 2020 (UTC)

Statement by Xenagoras

My opinion about SashiRolls: Disclaimer: I have never read the Media coverage of Bernie Sanders article or its talk page and am therefore unfamiliar with SashiRolls' conduct there. But I have witnessed SashiRoll's conduct towards myself on pages where I edit and found him to be friendly, productive and helpful. From my brief gazing at AfD discussions with SashiRolls' involvement, he seems to be an emotional individual which might cause him to have a low tolerance for getting annoyed. The Media coverage of Bernie Sanders article getting nominated for deletion three times caused SashiRolls distress. I would recommend SashiRolls to spend more time relaxing, not taking Wikipedia too serious, and in calm hours, read all the policies and guidelines about behavior and editing. And perhaps he can find a mentor who can help him handle difficult situations on Wikipedia more calmly and guide him on how to be and respond more disenganged.

My opinion about content and/or conduct disputes with Snooganssnoogans, WMSR, MrX: I found it extremely time consuming, tedious and nearly impossible to insert pertinent reliably sourced content into articles when WMSR and/or MrX are opposed to it.

Snooganssnoogans attempted to damage my reputation and discredit my future edits by making a false statement of fact about me [37]. He ignored my request to withdraw his damaging remark [38] and doubled down on it [39]. He also raised a false suspicion about me having a conflict of interest [40], for which he had zero evidence and no reason to believe I had a COI. For all of this I complained towards him [41], which he also ignored.

MrX has caused severe content disputes for misrepresenting sources one month ago and his refusal to respond to me addressing his edits, and the disputes got more severe recently for his political censorship, tendentious editing and stonewalling. The most recent part of this long lasting dispute can be read here and I complained to him there [42] (many links to MrX' problematic edits and which policy they violate are included in my complaint).

WMSR raised a false and baseless suspicion about me being sock puppet and requested a sock puppet investigation against me and 8 other editors. [43] As we all know, the penalty for sock puppets is an indefinite ban. He had zero evidence for his suspicion, for which his investigation request was thrown out of window by the admins/clerk.[44]. WMSR recently made several severe false accusations against me, including but not limited to his failure to assume the assumption of good faith and accusing me of casting aspersions and [45] and personal attacks [46], for which I complained to him [47], to which he reacted with denial and hostility.[48] WMSR participates in the same severe content dispute as described above for MrX. WMSR's edits include political censorship and stonewalling and other problems, which can be read here and for which I complained to him [49], to which he reacted with denial. [50]

In this current content dispute, MrX, WMSR and Calton have been mirroring each other's arguments via edit summaries and talk page comments and repeated each other's reverts (which enhances the stonewalling referenced above by enabling them to prevent content from other editors getting into an article without violating WP:3RR themselves):

MrX makes an unwarranted large 3-part revert poorly sourced and blatantly false claim. ... This is WP:UNDUE This material is excessive an unencyclopedic. Who cares who commented in her defense? "This is unencylopedic" alias "This doesn't belong" is not a valid argument. This gets reverted by two other editors [51] [52] a couple hours later. WMSR repeats the revert of MrX a couple hours later [53] with edit summary The content MrX deleted did not belong in the article per WP:DUE. ... Discuss on the talk page. Oh, the "doesn't belong" argument again. I explained to WMSR why his revert was based on invalid arguments [54]. WMSR did not explain or even propose his revert on talk page before making it, but he requested others to discuss. 5 days later, after I discussed MrX' and WMSR's objections to the disputed content in great detail [55] and made a much improved edit to adapt to their objections [56], Calton fully reverted [57] me 33 minutes later with edit summary No, make your argument for each piece. The "media bias" and "campaign sign defacement" stuff, for two, really don't belong here. Oh, the "doesn't belong" argument again. Calton's edit summary was an invalid argument as I explained him on talk page, and he - like WMSR - did not explain or even propose his revert on talk page before making it, but he requested others to discuss so far. Later, MrX implictly referred to WMSR and Calton [58] when he erroneously implied consensus were a counting of heads of same opinion Three editors have now opposed this content, thereby ignoring that consensus is determined by ascertaining the quality of the arguments given on the various sides of an issue, as viewed through the lens of Wikipedia policy, and that consensus cannot be created against policies and guidelines. MrX also termed me discussing content on the talk page you still continue to push it, thereby discouraging me from any further discussion or attempting to insert content into the article that he doesn't like. Xenagoras (talk) 07:19, 9 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Additional interaction details on false "sock puppet" suspicions by WMSR and MrX: WMSR raised false sock puppet suspicion against Rotaryenginepete and StanTheMan0131 at ANI at 06:46, 26 December. MrX agreed with WMSR on every point 7 hours later at 13:52, 26 December. MrX raised this false suspicion again 16 minutes later at WP:SPI at 14:08, 26 December. WMSR added to MrX' report at WP:SPI and 4 hours later raised false and evidence free sock puppet suspicion against me and 8 other users at 18:10, 26 December 2019. The sock puppet suspicions against me, Rotaryenginepete, StanTheMan0131 and all other editors got dismissed (for zero evidence) at WP:SPI on 26 December.

Rotaryenginepete was blocked at ANI for WP:NOTHERE on 31 December.

Later, in February, after I told WMSR [59] that I know he had raised a false, evidence free sock puppet suspicion against me, WMSR claimed [60], ...suggesting that editors listed by a banned editor as being on their side should perhaps be looked into, which is a false representation of history of events because Rotaryenginepete was not banned at the time when WMSR suspected him and me and many others of being sock puppets, and Rotaryenginepete got acquitted at WP:SPI on 26 December, 5 days before he got blocked for something else at ANI. Xenagoras (talk) 13:37, 9 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Atsme

I agree for the most part with Levivich, Jusdafax, and Sir Joseph. The reason we have AE is to stop/reduce disruption in highly controversial topic areas that are subject to DS, and such actions should be executed without causing potential harm to NPOV. To single out one editor when all have been disruptive participants does not bring resolution to the heart of the problem, especially if our admins will/have reviewed the number of times each of the following named editors have been bringing opposing editors to AE, ARCA, ANI, AN, etc.; therefore, a plausible solution in this case (one that would send a loud message if our admins are treating all editors equally) would be a 6-month AP2 t-ban for the 3 key players here; i.e., MrX, Snoogans and Sashi. Each have a POV to contribute, and the only true way to reach NPOV is to engage in a civil level of debate/discussion on the TP, (and not t-ban an editor for participating in lengthy discussions that are required where DS/consensus required are imposed). Tag-team editing is a major annoyance and causes the editor being tag-teamed (perceived or otherwise) to become defensive - better yet, instead of referring to it as tag-teaming, let's call it collaborative editing among those with a similar POV who reject an opposing POV which carries with it the potential to be noncompliant with NPOV, so there is certainly justification for all 3 to experience a 6 mos t-ban. ^Atsme _Talk 📧 20:36, 9 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Result concerning SashiRolls

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

I'd suggest a topic ban from American politics and some sort of block to go with it. These edits blatantly breach the "no personal comments" restriction imposed here, which is still in effect. They're also way below what we expect from editor conduct and it looks like they're making the article a miserable place for everyone else to work. Hut 8.5 19:28, 7 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Bishonen: the main reason I'm suggesting a block is that these edits violate a previously imposed sanction. Given the history I imagine it would have to be quite a long one. I think Snooganssnoogans does have a point that this behaviour is likely to result in an indef block sooner or later. Hut 8.5 19:42, 8 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I would support a topic ban. Something needs to change and it's clear my "no personal comments" sanction didn't work here. ~Awilley (talk) 23:02, 7 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Pudeo, Jusdafax, please be aware of Objective3000's clarification regarding the interaction tool: here. El_C 23:13, 7 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Levivich: both SashiRolls and Mr.X had attempted to 1RR-penalize one another (SashiRolls was reported on first by Mr.X, then a few weeks later, Mr.X was reported on second by ShasiRolls) — I had closed both reports with a warning, incidentally. As for AN/I and forumshopping (latest here), as I kept trying to tell participants in that article, for example most recently when I placed it again under enforced BRD, AE is more suited for this complaint than AN/I. That, because a quorum of admins deciding the result in a structured discussion just makes more sense for this case and its history than the alternative. I suppose SashiRolls is right that an Arbitration request would also be a viable option (indeed, one in which they would have an evidence phase available to them). But a final appeal to the Committee also remains an option in regards to the result of this AE request and a related possible subsequent appeal, anyway. Anyway, my intuition tells me that the Committee is likely to be more harsh in an Arbitration request (siteban) than is possible here with a quorum of admins in this AE request (topic ban rather than an indefinite block). But that's just a hunch. El_C 17:23, 8 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Levivich: SashiRolls' supporters (for lack of a better word) are, unlike his opponents, not involved this current content dispute (that I noticed, at least), which that asymmetry at AN3 may be a product of. Some of his supporters are also not actual supporters but constitute more opponents of his opponents. Word salad! Anyway, I think you are mistaken about what the Committee will conclude (or, another likely outcome could be that they will simply decline the appeal on various grounds), but I guess we'll find out. I say that, because if consensus among admins here would be to go with a topic ban. That can be appealed to the Committee directly, can it not? Or would the respondent need to undergo an AE appeal first? I'm not really sure. I always got the sense that appeal to the Committee has become kind of what an appeal to Jimbo used to be — that is to say, any administrative decision on Wikipedia (singular or quorum) can be appealed to the Arbitration Committee. Please feel free to correct me, anyone, if that is not accurate in any way. As for the interaction tool, I don't understand it well enough to trust (any) interpretations of it, sorry. El_C 03:11, 9 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Thryduulf: thanks for the explanation. Regarding an appeal, that more or less corresponds to my thinking, also. Regarding this appeal, I'm not sure. Sounds plausible. Again, intuitively, I get the sense that a full Arbitration request would result in sanctions which are more severe than those which this AE is now leaning toward. But, of course, that is counter-factual, so perhaps it represents a line of thought which is redundant to pursue. El_C 04:26, 9 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

SashiRolls has requested 48 hours to respond, which is a relatively reasonable time frame given the volume of material here. But I honestly cannot imagine any way in which a statement like "...unemployed or underemployed Wikipedia contributors like yourself..." could be considered anything other than a clear violation of the "no personal comments" restriction, not to mention of the no personal attacks policy even absent such a restriction. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 12:04, 8 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

SashiRolls is a negative in the American politics area, with his persistent lowering of the tone and playing the man rather than the ball; as Hut 8.5 says, "making the article[s] a miserable place for everyone else to work". I certainly wouldn't go on working in an area where I had to put up with being spoken to the way Snoogans is here, by an originally logged-out Sashi. See altogether MrX's diffs and eye-popping list of previous sanctions (which clearly have not helped). It would just be too dreary. I support an indefinite topic ban from post-1932 American politics, to be appealed no sooner than after six months. If something further is proposed (what "some sort of block" do you envisage, Hut?), I might support that too, after consideration. Bishonen | talk 12:15, 8 February 2020 (UTC).[reply]
Absent something truly extraordinary from SashiRolls, I too think an indefinite topic ban from post-1932 American politics is the minimum necessary here, although I'm wondering just how much more rope we should be giving them given that nothing we've tried so far has resulted in them returning as a productive editor. Thryduulf (talk) 13:23, 8 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- @El C: regarding appeals. The sanctioned editor can choose to appeal an AE sanction to AE, to ArbCom or to Jimbo. AE is somewhat bound to hear an appeal, arbcom is not bound but will usually give anything that's not frivolous or obviously doomed to failure at least some consideration. If you haven't tried an AE appeal arbcom will want to know why. Jimbo is not bound in any way and last I paid attention (which was quite some time ago to be fair) very rarely heard appeals (when asked publicly at least), especially if neither AE nor Arbcom had been tried first. You can't go back down the chain - you can appeal AE to ArbCom but you can't appeal ArbCom to AE. The actions of individual administrators can be appealed here only if the action was, or could have been, an AE action, other admin actions can be appealed at ANI and all can be appealed to ArbCom and Jimbo, but you would need to give a convincing reason why you didn't try earlier steps first before they'll hear it. Personally, I don't think an appeal of a topic ban or limited time block now would be likely to succeed. An appeal of an indef block would be a toss-up I think. Thryduulf (talk) 04:10, 9 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I support what I consider to be the absolute minimum that is required here, namely a topic ban from post-1932 American politics. If similar behavior takes place in other topic areas, an indefinite block would then be called for. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 22:40, 8 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Per above, an indefinite topic ban seems to be warranted. --Guerillero | Parlez Moi 23:23, 8 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Arbitration enforcement action appeal by Cleisthenes2

Procedural notes: The rules governing arbitration enforcement appeals are found here. According to the procedures, a "clear, substantial, and active consensus of uninvolved administrators" 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: Cleisthenes2 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Sanction being appealed: Topic Ban from Toby Young

Administrator imposing the sanction: Galobtter (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 Cleisthenes2

I was topic banned from Toby Young after trying to work towards a satisfying compromise on the language of the lede. As I think the record shows, I repeatedly suggested alternative wordings that would restore NPOV (all were almost immediately rejected), was always calm and polite in my comments, and was consistently open to compromise wordings. I did try to counter repeated reverts and attacks from one user called Fae, and this got me banned (together with a good number of attacks from Fae herself and a couple of close allies). Though I'd rather not talk about other users, I think it's worth pointing out a) that Fae has a long record of disruption on articles of this sort, and was eventually banned from all articles to do with sex and gender and b) that she seems particularly incapable of neutrality or compromise when it comes to Young (see e.g. her comment on Young's talk page that "Young is absolutely desperate to appear controversial, when any real analysis shows he's just a sad troll that confuses right wing politics with hating all minorities"). Obviously, she has a right to her opinions, but I'm not sure that it's good for Wikipedia if someone with that kind of burning antipathy can get someone banned from editing a topic, especially someone who was working very civilly to move towards a change that it looked like most of the other users were sympathetic to. Thanks for considering this. If the ban is removed I intend to continue to work towards consensus in a reasonable way, but I also don't see why I shouldn't act to counter the kind of bullying that I was exposed to by Fae (and that many others on here have also apparently experienced). Cleisthenes2 (talk) 19:07, 9 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Galobtter

Statement by Black Kite

I'm posting in the involved section because it was myself who raised the original WP:ANI report that led to the sanction (which can be seen here). My observations;

Until a week or so again, Cleisthenes2 had made no edits to Wikipedia after being topic-banned from Toby Young some ten months ago, bar one edit which was an appeal to the admin concerned. This may be seen as unsurprising as for the year prior to the sanction, 90% of their edits had been to Young's article, effectively acting as a SPA.
They still don't understand why they were sanctioned, which was for persistent edit-warring against multiple other editors (I count at least five established editors involved over the nine months or so that this was happening).
They violated their topic ban by editing Talk:Toby Young (diff) 15 minutes before posting this appeal.
Irrelevant to this appeal, but despite two previous requests (one at each ANI) not to do so, they have misgendered User:Fæ yet again in this appeal.

Black Kite (talk) 20:47, 9 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by (involved editor 2)

Discussion among uninvolved editors about the appeal by Cleisthenes2

Result of the appeal by Cleisthenes2

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

Note I've blocked this editor 72 hours for violation of the topic ban, so any questions here will have to be answered at the talk page during that time frame. For me, the editor has both violated the topic ban and once again misgendered Fae after being repeatedly told Fae was male, during the process of this appeal. That gives me no confidence allowing the editor back into the area would be wise, and I would decline the appeal. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 19:50, 10 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, I've just noticed that the sanctioning admin was never notified as required, and Cleisthenes2 had plenty of time to do that between filing this request and being blocked. Since they're now blocked I'll take care of that, but inability to follow simple instructions sure doesn't give me much confidence either. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 19:53, 10 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
The idea of topic banning a user from one particular article is that they'll be able to edit the rest of Wikipedia to show that they can edit constructively altogether, and then appeal the article ban. Clearly Cleisthenes2 has not done this; they were an WP:SPA before the ban, and remained an SPA after it. (Note that User:Galobtter explicitly advised Cleisthenes2, as early as August, to edit elsewhere in order to bolster any coming appeal: "A record of productive editing on other articles would help any appeal".) I'd really like to see some actual, and good, editing before I'd consider an appeal. Also, I wonder what the exclusive, tunnel-vision interest of this article, alone, could be for Cleisthenes2, as they deny having a COI and claim to have only the loftiest of goals with editing it. In 2018, Fæ inquired here if Cleisthenes2 had any personal or professional connection with Toby Young, and was told no, "I'm only interested in the language in this piece because I'm keen to keep Wikipedia a politically neutral and respected source". I'm sorry, but it's extraordinary to me that an editor tries to achieve such a generalized, and virtuous, goal by focusing so exclusively on one article — to the point, even, of editing virtually nothing for a year when one has been banned from that one article. It just doesn't compute for me. Would you like to have a shot at explaining how it computes for you, Cleisthenes2? Do you not feel that any of our other 6 million articles make a difference as regards keeping Wikipedia a politically neutral and respected source? Bishonen | talk 20:40, 10 February 2020 (UTC).[reply]

[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 107: / Line 107: @@
 <small>''Statements must be made in separate sections. They may not exceed 500 [[Word count#Software|words]] and 20 diffs, except by permission of a reviewing administrator. <br />Administrators may remove or shorten noncompliant statements. Disruptive contributions may result in blocks.''</small>
 ====Statement by QuackGuru====
+[[Talk:2019–20 vaping lung illness outbreak#Removal of update section tag]] - I removed the tag because no new source was presented. The content Beland added "though individual cases do not provide strong evidence of causal relationships"[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=2019%E2%80%9320_vaping_lung_illness_outbreak&diff=next&oldid=939242041] was [[Wikipedia:Verifiability#Responsibility for providing citations|unsupported by the source]]. I tagged the [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=2019%E2%80%9320_vaping_lung_illness_outbreak&type=revision&diff=939298372&oldid=939296778 content] and [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=2019%E2%80%9320_vaping_lung_illness_outbreak&type=revision&diff=939549902&oldid=939542981 replaced it with verifiable content].
+Belend merged the article on 21 December 2019.[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hospitalized_cases_in_the_vaping_lung_illness_outbreak&type=revision&diff=931857000&oldid=929969635] After the merge was undone it was merged again after the AFD close.[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Media_reports_of_persons_hospitalized_involving_the_2019_vaping_lung_illness_outbreak] The merge was overturned.[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deletion_review/Log/2019_December_30] Beland merged the article again on 13 January 2020[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hospitalized_cases_in_the_vaping_lung_illness_outbreak&type=revision&diff=935663723&oldid=934716147] and deleted the entire Patients section.[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=2019%E2%80%9320_vaping_lung_illness_outbreak&type=revision&diff=935656966&oldid=935235572] The talk page consensus limited it to three cases.[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:2019–20_vaping_lung_illness_outbreak#Patients_section_is_getting_too_long]
+I removed the tags from the Hospitalized cases in the vaping lung illness outbreak because I did not believe there was a serious enough issue to justify the multiple tags. FULBERT removed two of the tags.[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Hospitalized_cases_in_the_vaping_lung_illness_outbreak&diff=next&oldid=939520540]
+[[Talk:Nicotine pouch#Alarming amount of Ownership and unreliable source about Kenya]] - The word "lobbies" is a general term and it does not specify who made the claim. Beland wrote in part: "It would be unwise to attribute claims made by "lobbies" to KTCA..."[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk%3ANicotine_pouch&type=revision&diff=939689218&oldid=939688775]
+The discussion at [[Talk:2019–20 vaping lung illness outbreak#Predicting the future in a scary way]] involved content cited to a [https://www.bmj.com/content/366/bmj.l5275 2019 review]. The content is stating that the [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=2019%E2%80%9320_vaping_lung_illness_outbreak&oldid=940097521#cite_ref-GottsJordt2019_8-4 lung injuries could be more widespread and the lung injuries in various countries is not clear]. It is not stating anything in a scary way. All the content from the review was [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=2019%E2%80%9320_vaping_lung_illness_outbreak&diff=next&oldid=940124837 deleted and the unverifiable content not vitamin E acetate] was added by Beland.
+I [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk%3AHospitalized_cases_in_the_vaping_lung_illness_outbreak&type=revision&diff=939958904&oldid=939535866 started a RfC] to help resolve the matter for [[Talk:Hospitalized cases in the vaping lung illness outbreak#NPOV issues]] and [[Talk:Hospitalized cases in the vaping lung illness outbreak#Vaping among teenagers]] by proposing verifiable content for the lede.
+The matter involving MelanieN for the e-cig lede was about updating the text. I objected to including a US-centric warning in the lede since the outbreak is not worldwide.
+The matter involving KristofferR at the e-cig article was mainly about misleading content. The misleading content was fixed and I added a [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Electronic_cigarette&type=revision&diff=939611052&oldid=939609929 note] to clarify the outbreak content.
+The matter involving Sunline09 at the e-cig article was more about [[WP:SYNC]]. All previous versions were a SYNC violation. I [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Electronic_cigarette&type=revision&diff=939607999&oldid=939605422 copied content from the lede of the subarticle] for the Frequency section.
+The matter involving Seraphimblade was resolved [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk%3A2019%E2%80%9320_vaping_lung_illness_outbreak&type=revision&diff=933284917&oldid=933284867 here]. On 29 December 2019 Seraphimblade reverted to an [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=2019%E2%80%9320_vaping_lung_illness_outbreak&type=revision&diff=933058613&oldid=933008976 older version]. It was undone by Doc James.[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=2019%E2%80%9320_vaping_lung_illness_outbreak&diff=next&oldid=933058613]
+Andy Dingley says "I've certainly avoided [[pod mod]], QuackGuru, and their personal space of vaping articles ever since...".[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement&diff=prev&oldid=939768375] According to talk page consensus a sentence [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk%3APod_mod&type=revision&diff=918109236&oldid=918101544 fails verification]. Andy Dingley made a comment about the pod mod article on [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk%3AWikiProject_Medicine&type=revision&diff=929545046&oldid=929542418 14:38, 6 December 2019]. Soon after, Andy Dingley removed the [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pod_mod&curid=60359397&diff=929546836&oldid=929546708 FV tag] on 14:54, 6 December 2019. The source mentions nicotine salts on pages [https://www.nap.edu/catalog/24952/public-health-consequences-of-e-cigarettes 95-96] but it [[Wikipedia:Verifiability#Responsibility for providing citations|does not verify the claim]].
+The content and the [[Wikipedia:Verifiability#Reliable sources|quality of sources]] is under dispute at the nicotine pouch article. KristofferR added [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Nicotine_pouch&diff=next&oldid=938914703 commercial websites] and added [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Nicotine_pouch&diff=next&oldid=938915561 nettotobak.com] that sells [https://www.nettotobak.com/varumarken/lyft LYFT products]. I tagged the [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Nicotine_pouch&diff=next&oldid=938962303 unreliable source] and other unreliable sources. Beland removed the [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Nicotine_pouch&diff=next&oldid=939689626 unreliable tag] added to the nettotobak.com commercial website and other tags were removed. Beland also added [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Nicotine_pouch&type=revision&diff=939816799&oldid=939815405 commercial websites]. I requested verification for "Unlike vaping products".[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk%3ANicotine_pouch&type=revision&diff=939699516&oldid=939691833] Beland asked me "Why would that require verification?"[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk%3ANicotine_pouch&type=revision&diff=939811497&oldid=939699516] The [https://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/early/2019/11/21/tobaccocontrol-2019-055321 PDF file] does [[Wikipedia:Verifiability#Responsibility for providing citations|not verify]] the claim "[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Nicotine_pouch&diff=next&oldid=939689965 Unlike vaping products]" added by Beland.
+On controversial topics there are usually content disputes. Editors have different interpretations of policy. I am concerned that there may be no opportunity to examine in detail whether the content I tagged as failed verification did indeed fail verification. However, I accept that people disagree. I understand other editors' frustration and I am looking for a way to resolve the issue. Would it help if I don't add or remove tags for a year? [[User:QuackGuru|<b style="color: #e34234;">QuackGuru</b>]] ([[User talk:QuackGuru|<span style="color: #B02200;">talk</span>]]) 01:11, 11 February 2020 (UTC)
 ====Statement by Levivich====

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