Wikipedia talk:Arbitration/Requests

When did contributions in good standing to another Wiki become "admissible" in ArbCom cases?

At the Wikipedia_talk:Arbitration/Requests/Clarification_and_Amendment, I see that editor Cirt was told that his contributions to q:Scientology were a reason for him never to be allowed to have restrictions here loosened. Now I know that in some cases off-wiki harassment is admissible, and administrative action on other wikis might be admissible, but does this process really need to allow one moment of criticism in a quickly resolved dispute on another wiki to be taken into evidence and re-litigated here? (or more to the point, litigated here for the first time since it never came to that on Wikiquote) It is inevitable that when editors on a Wiki contribute a huge amount of very useful content, as Cirt did about the Erhard Seminars Training, that there will be a few quotes that someone else thinks are a bit irrelevant or need to be trimmed down. If your standard is simply whether anyone has ever complained, there is no way Cirt could meet it without following a topic ban on Wikiquote that you did not take the opportunity to order.

It seems to me this is an executive level organization, making executive level decisions, and it has the duty either to systematically review the contributions of every editor coming before it on every Wiki (which it doesn't have the time to do), or to admit it can't do so and refer (at most) to the executive decisions of those other Wikis (such as the willingness of Wikiquote and several other projects to retain Cirt as an administrator in good standing, without sanction). Wnt (talk) 12:38, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

We do not ever review every contribution ever made by editors who come before the committee. This doesn't change between editors who only edit Enwiki and editors who edit more than one WMF project. If you think the actual edits to Wikiquote/Wikisource do not demonstrate what the committee holds they do, please rebut the specific edits at the relevant proceedings. AGK [•] 14:36, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

Edits to other projects have long been considered admissible. Please refer to Wikipedia:Arbpol#Admissibility of evidence, which reads:

In all proceedings, admissible evidence includes:

1. [...]
2. Edits [...] from [other] Wikimedia projects [...], where appropriate; and
3. [...]

So, there was nothing strange in our taking into account Cirt's edits elsewhere. Salvio ^{Let's talk about it!} 17:32, 30 March 2014 (UTC)

Gun control article, ongoing Arbitration an embarrassment to WP

I have no strong views regarding gun control, because I don't think the evidence is clear one way or another as to whether it reduces crime. But this stuff about Nazis continues to embarrass the community. VirtuallyNo reliable academic sources believe the Holocaust was in any way about gun control. Virtually no academic articles on the Holocaust describe it as entailing gun control, and no academic articles/encyclopedia entries on gun control describe the Holocaust as an example of it. Yet this rubbish has been given a prominent place in the gun control article for months with no admin intervention.

In a tortured literal sense of the term, one can say the Nazis practiced "gun control". Similarly, one can say that laws disarming toddlers, violent criminals, and prisoners violate "gun rights." (And that white immigrants from Africa are African Americans.) This sort of use of language, while technically correct in some literal sense, is completely out of accord with the academic and colloquial meaning of words. It should be excluded from Wikipedia because context matters.

How has it taken the Committee so long to put a stop to this? Any educated person can see that the 'Holocaust=gun control' stuff is POV-pushing rubbish and a smear campaign. It utterly fails WP:RS, WP:V, and other basic community principles. Steeletrap (talk) 16:44, 30 March 2014 (UTC)

Uhm, no. Content disputes are not the remit of ArbComm. Behavior disputes are the issues addressed there. That you assert that "any educated person" agrees with your preferred policy position is both absurd and untrue. Trying to say that the project is now and will be further "embarrassed" if you don't get immediate action from ArbCom (and the article) supporting your position is just odd. Let them do their work, it's a hard enough job without people jogging their elbows. Capitalismojo (talk) 17:02, 30 March 2014 (UTC)

The entire premise of ArbCom is a fallacy. "Behavior disputes" and "content disputes" are inextricably intertwined and cannot be evaluated independently. If the 'the Holocaust=gun control' users got together and decided to put speculations about Obama's birth certificate into his BLP, this would create a behavior dispute. But the behavior dispute (centered around allegations of tendentious editing) could not be resolved without rendering judgment on the content they added. Steeletrap (talk) 17:10, 30 March 2014 (UTC)

In general, it's true that solving good-faith content disputes is outside ArbCom's remit; however, it is occasionally possible for a content dispute to become a conduct dispute. It's rare but it's possible; the current standard has been formalised during WP:ARBARG (cf. Neutral point of view and role of the Arbitration Committee and Tendentious editing), where it was held that [...] editors may not assign to a viewpoint a weight that is either so high or so low as to be outside the bounds of reasonableness; such actions violate the neutral point of view policy and that [u]sers who disrupt the editing of articles by engaging in sustained point-of-view editing may be banned from the affected articles, or in extreme cases from the site. Salvio ^{Let's talk about it!} 17:41, 30 March 2014 (UTC)

It's ridiculous that it is "rare" for content disputes to factor into the ArbCom's decisions. Most forms of behavioral misconduct are related to edits to articles. Even when it comes to personal attacks, content is contextually relevant. For example, in the ArbCom dispute, one user has repeatedly accused other users of "libelous" edits. If the edits aren't libelous, she's clearly guilty of misconduct for saying they are; if they are, she's not. One cannot answer this question without rendering judgment on content. (Nor can one address the allegations of tendentious and disruptive editing on the Austrian Economics and Gun Control arbitrations without rendering judgment on content.)

On another note, I appreciate the fact that you (Salvio) are actually engaging user concerns with the Arbitration process. Many members of the Committee act like 19th century British schoolmarms, shouting down and threatening to 'punish' anyone who dissents. I think you should be promoted to the Committee from your clerk position. Steeletrap (talk) 18:16, 30 March 2014 (UTC)

Well, now that you frame the question like this I tend to agree with you and, from my experience, edits are taken into consideration; to refer to the case you mention (I have skimmed over the evidence as it was presented during the case, but I'm not really familiar with it; I'm waiting for the proposed decision to be posted to review the evidence in depth, so I'll take your word for it), if the edits are actually libellous, then an editor defining them as such is not guilty of misconduct, just as a user describing another as a "pov-pusher" or "vandal" is not guilty of a personal attack if the person is actually a pov-pusher or a vandal (with exceptions, however, see WP:ASPERSIONS). What ArbCom will not (and cannot) do is get involved in a content dispute to say who is correct and who is wrong.

And, speaking strictly for myself, I am willing to cut some slack to an editor who's trying to insure that content on Wikipedia complies with our policies and occasionally loses his cool, especially when faced with civil pov-pushers or with wikilawyers.

Don't get me wrong, I believe Wikipedia ought to have a body of experts elected by the community and tasked with making binding content decisions when the community is for any reasons incapable of making them. Unfortunately, we currently don't have such a body and ArbCom is prevented from fulfilling that role because we don't have either the legitimation nor (and, again, I'm speaking only for myself) the competence.

Also, erm, I am already an arbitrator, although my term is due to expire in nine months... But thanks. ;-). Salvio ^{Let's talk about it!} 18:41, 30 March 2014 (UTC)

Well, right or wrong, the whole clear reason for requesting the Arbcom case was for the content and/or policy-on-content question, and they took the case. Although there were (are?) also some significant behavioral (abuse of editors) problems making the article unnecessarily nasty and painful (and which could use some action) and others in the case itself, those were not even in the reasons for the request for an Arbcom case. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 11:36, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

Course, it probably doesn't help that we're almost two months past the deadline to even see a proposed decision. Yeah, yeah, technical reasons. Of course, the one legit tech issue was fixed some time ago, and a committee interested in resolving problems with the project could have had someone else post proposals by now if the Chosen Poster's wheels fell off or whatever. Instead, the committee struggles under the surely unbearable burden of TWO active cases. Both of which are overdue. And both of which remain active debacles while Nero fiddles. 153.2.247.31 (talk) 17:00, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

It's not ideal, at all. Hopefully moving forward these issues will be ironed out. In regards to the acceptance of the case: despite the emphasis of evidence being on content there were mentions of conduct that were investigated were adequately egregious. As another note, there is always going to be some intersection between content and conduct. Any decision will leave some sort of implication one way or the other regardless of intent. I'm definitely not a fan of self-expanding remit as was suggested in Workshop. NativeForeigner ^Talk 19:37, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

Mistakes were made, eh? The problem here is really that there's nothing like accountability. Not to the community nor any other body. The committee gives us the names of drafting arbitrators and sets public deadlines to give the illusion that there is respect for due process. But it's security theater in a Potemkin village. Barring agreed-on extensions, the committee is happy to close the doors on the Evidence and Workshop phases -- the ones where the rest of us get to say anything -- right on schedule. And if a party to a case just simply doesn't respond for six weeks, they'd almost certainly be censured for it. People have lost the admin bit for far less, even in a world where desysops usually require the unanimous vote of three live unicorns. When the committee does the same though, it's "not ideal", because the committee obviously reserves the right to ignore its deadlines and dicta to itself alone. If the committee is serious about learning from this teachable moment, how about a cogent explanation to the community for how four designated drafting arbitrators over two cases have failed to produce any voting-ready content for weeks (going on months in Gun Control) past their self-defined deadlines? Or why none of the other august members saw fit to step in to shoulder the burden? Not that I expect anything at all. Vaunted claims of committee transparency and efficiency aren't much more real than those deadline dates. 153.2.247.31 (talk) 20:49, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

Is there such a thing...

As "talk page probation"? I know there is probation for articles, but many time the real problem is the talk page and the way discussions quickly become heated and also the way many editors will add walls of text or discuss the general subject as a tactic to fill up the talk page and move discussion away from proposed changes and suggestions. If there is such a "probation" I was wondering if I could be directed to one as an example and if there is not...how do we begin such a proposal?--Mark Miller (talk) 22:38, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

It's called a topic ban. It wouldn't really be feasible to allow an editor to edit an article and not the corresponding talk page -- would lead to edit warring and really long pointy edit summaries. NE Ent 22:53, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

Sure...but that isn't what I am talking about. Article probation doesn't mean all editors cannot edit an article. It just means there are restrictions on the article and it is being monitored by admin and over site by the AC and others. I'm only asking is there is such a probation that has been suggested or implemented on talk pages.--Mark Miller (talk) 22:57, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

Not sure if this exactly what you mean, but John has taken a very active role in sorting out a contentious discussion at Talk:Soccer in Australia by creating and monitoring discussion at Wikipedia_talk:Naming_conventions_(Football_in_Australia), guiding the discussion through his own statements, removal of off topic comments by others and blocks where he felt they were necessary. His actions have been generally endorsed by the community. NE Ent 23:22, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

I can't think of a time when article probation has been applied just to a talk page, but ArbCom imposes sanctions (both discretionary sanctions and probation, when they used that) to the article and talk page especially more recently. Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 23:44, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

Yes, there we go. That was what I was wondering about, Thanks Callanecc!

Slander, AN/I, and ArbComm

For the past several months, I have faced a continuous slander campaign by a group of users in Wikipedia. These users do not respect interaction bans placed by the committee, resorting to WP:IDHT and WP:MEAT in order to continue what is an apparent tag-team attempt at wearing me down (if not to bully me away from the project altogether).
I have asked the arbitrators and community for help, and have received some assistance from administrators, but up to now nothing concrete has been done to prevent these individuals from continuing their battleground behavior towards me. These users have been warned to cease their uncivil behavior, but the matter continues from one point or the other (this is where the tag-team becomes important).
It seems to me that these editors consider themselves superior to the arbitration committee's ruling (and the opinion of administrators), because of their featured contributions on specialized content. While their contributions may be noteworthy, their arrogant demeanor has caused constant problems (including this imagined sense of superiority over other editors such as myself).
This situation is absolutely absurd. We're all for the most part volunteers in this project, and I myself have also contributed a handful of valuable featured and good article content to the encyclopedia.
All I expect in return is to be treated with the same amount of respect as any other individual deserves in the encyclopedia. I request that the Arbitration Committee please do something about this problem.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
Best regards.--MarshalN20 ^Talk 05:22, 3 April 2014 (UTC)