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Climate change discretionary sanctions proposal

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The climate change dispute is currently at arbitration, but I figured that as a community we could solve this dispute ourselves by imposing the discretionary sanctions to the topic area. I've taken the usual wording from the Arbitration Committee here and I suspect that this would give administrators more leeway when dealing with disputes arising from this area. The community sanction would be as follows;

Wording

The Climate change article, and parts of any other articles that are substantially about climate change, are subject to discretionary sanctions.

Discretionary sanctions

Any uninvolved administrator may, on his or her own discretion, impose sanctions on any editor working on an affected article if, despite being warned, that editor repeatedly or seriously fails to adhere to the purpose of Wikipedia, any expected standards of behavior, or any normal editorial process. The sanctions imposed may include blocks of up to one year in length; bans from editing any page or set of pages within the area of conflict; bans on any editing related to the topic or its closely related topics; restrictions on reverts or other specified behaviors; or any other measures which the imposing administrator believes are reasonably necessary to ensure the smooth functioning of the project.

Prior to any sanctions being imposed, the editor in question shall be given a warning with a link to this discussion; and, where appropriate, should be counseled on specific steps that he or she can take to improve his or her editing in accordance with relevant policies and guidelines.

In determining whether to impose sanctions on a given user and which sanctions to impose, administrators should use their judgment and balance the need to assume good faith and avoid biting genuinely inexperienced editors, and the desire to allow responsible contributors maximum freedom to edit, with the need to reduce edit-warring and misuse of Wikipedia as a battleground, so as to create an acceptable collaborative editing environment even on our most contentious articles. Editors wishing to edit in these areas are advised to edit carefully, to adopt Wikipedia’s communal approaches (including appropriate conduct, dispute resolution, neutral point of view, no original research and verifiability) in their editing, and to amend behaviors that are deemed to be of concern by administrators. An editor unable or unwilling to do so may wish to restrict their editing to other topics, in order to avoid sanctions.

Appeal of discretionary sanctions

Discretionary sanctions imposed under the provisions of this community decision may be appealed to the imposing administrator, or the appropriate noticeboard, or the Arbitration Committee. Administrators are cautioned not to reverse such sanctions without familiarizing themselves with the full facts of the matter and engaging in extensive discussion and consensus-building at the administrators’ noticeboard or another suitable on-wiki venue.

Logging

All sanctions imposed under the provisions of this decision are to be logged at Talk:Climate change/sanctions.


Hopefully this would really help in the area without the need for a long, drawn out case. Ryan PostlethwaiteSee the mess I've created or let's have banter 01:21, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Wording 2

Pages related to Climate change (broadly construed) are subject to the following terms of article probation:

  • Any editor may be sanctioned by an uninvolved administrator for disruptive edits, including, but not limited to, edit warring, personal attacks, incivility and assumptions of bad faith.
    • Sanctions imposed may include restrictions on reverts or other specified behaviors, bans from editing the climate change pages and/or closely related topics, blocks of up to 1 year in length, or any other measures the imposing administrator believes are reasonably necessary to ensure the smooth functioning of the project.
    • For the purpose of imposing sanctions under this provision, an administrator will be considered "uninvolved" if he or she is not engaged in a current, direct, personal conflict on the topic with the user receiving sanctions (note: enforcing this provision will not be considered to be participation in a dispute).
  • Prior to any sanctions being imposed, the editor in question shall be given a warning with a link to these provisions; and, where appropriate, should be counseled on specific steps that he or she can take to improve his or her editing in accordance with relevant policies and guidelines.
  • Sanctions imposed under this provision may be appealed to the imposing administrator, the appropriate administrators' noticeboard, or the Arbitration Committee.
  • Administrators are not to reverse such sanctions without either (1) approval by the imposing administrator, or without (2) community consensus or Committee approval to do so.
  • All sanctions imposed are to be logged at Wikipedia:General sanctions/Climate change probation/Log#Log of sanctions.

Discussion

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  • I think this is a great chance to encourage more administrators to act in this area of editing which can be quite contentious, and on which there are frequent brawls, edit wars, sock puppeting, and use of talk pages and articles for advocacy. I encourage all uninvolved administrators to support this proposal. --TS 01:30, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Blocks of up to one year? Should it not be topic bans of up to one year? Or at least a choice between the two?--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 01:31, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • I see a serious problem here. A large part of the disruption comes from a neverending series of socks, many by one, but several by other sockmasters. Some are easier to recognize, some harder. All are discarded when identified. Such socks don't care about warnings or blocks, naturally. The proposed simple model would hence put serious editors under an additional disadvantage compared to the sock flood. If a suitable solution to this problem can be found, this might be a step in the right direction. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 01:33, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I do think the sanctions ought to recognise the specific problems of sockery. Editors should be expected to file a proper sock report, and once somebody has done that administrators should take account of this. The question of whether good faith newbies are being inappropriately bitten by a particular editor (who for that reason should not be left to make reverts on his own sole judgement) can be made by an admin and appealed in the usual way. The point is that much of the mess is due to parties failing to extend good faith and engage in reasonable discussion, and that can be handled well by discretionary sanctions. --TS 01:47, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  • For the love of all things holy, yes. These pages have been in desperate need of administrative oversight for ages. I do share Stephan's concerns though. Semiprotection doesn't help because Scibaby (and some of the others) age their socks to get around semi. Tony's suggestion for formal sock reports becomes impractical when dealing with someone who has created over 500 socks. We need a streamlined process for that. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 01:51, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Heaven's no, these articles are already a bastion of wikilawyering, WP:OWN, and meatpuppetry and this will simply make the problem much worse. I've noticed a couple admins will edit some global warming articles, staying away from others, while another admin will edit a different set of global warming articles, but then ban/use admin power in the articles the other admin is edit warring in - these regulations will increase this type of behavior and keep already badly balanced articles in the horrible shape they are in. If this "must" pass, then it should be made clear that an admin involved in one global warming article is involved in them all - skeptics are far more frequently banned/sanctioned over non-skeptics - the use of admin power in these articles is neither balanaced or fair. TheGoodLocust (talk) 02:10, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • Ryan's proposal is effectively a carbon copy of the regime already in place to manage Barack Obama-related articles. I'd suggest you have a read through Wikipedia:General sanctions/Obama article probation and the sub-pages to see how that has worked in practice. I might add that if sceptics are being sanctioned more frequently that is probably a reflection of more frequent disruptive behaviour on that side of the dispute. I've certainly not seen any non-sceptic counterpart to the rampant sockpuppetry being pursued by the likes of Scibaby, though admittedly the breadth of my experience in this topic area is very limited. -- ChrisO (talk) 02:17, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
      "I might add that if sceptics are being sanctioned more frequently that is probably a reflection of more frequent disruptive behaviour on that side of the dispute." - Did you have a straight face when you typed that? Just curious. The skeptics are fighting to bring balance to the currently POV status quo. Changing the status quo is by definition disruptive and vehemently resisted by the WP:OWNers of that status quo. Team AGW has no need to do anything other than stonewall any suggestion of change. Stonewalling has never been viewed as disruptive as far as I have seen. --GoRight (talk) 06:02, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
People like "SciBaby" come into existence when people (William Connolley specifically) ban them as sockpuppets, or tag team new editors until they get 3rred or worse. Besides, if AGW-advocates had socks there would be no way to find out - editors who are AGW skeptics seem to always be accused of sockpuppetry and get checkusered. How many AGW advocates have been checkusered? Anyway, skeptics are not more "disruptive" - they just tend to be newer and less experienced at gaming the system and provoking people into getting banned. TheGoodLocust (talk) 02:39, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
If as you suggest there are people who are gaming the system, then this proposal to encourage more administrator involvement will help to address that problem. --TS 03:02, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
More admins simply mean more marks for the gamers - these people have been doing this for many years now and do it well. The solution is less admin involvement, not more - I'm a free market kind of guy. TheGoodLocust (talk) 03:08, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
So you propose a free-for-all? Or do you just propose that the current situation (in which you claim longstanding abuse of Wikipedia by regular editors continues) should continue? --TS 03:11, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
A free for all is more preferable than having one side with their hands handcuffed behind their back. If past observations are any indicator the rules will be strictly enforced for one side while the other side will be able to do whatever they want. The only way this could possibly change is with at least 1-3 very good admins with the sense and the balls to apply the rules equally or through less admin interference. I'm quite skeptical of the former happening since any admin volunteers for this will either be masochistic or biased. TheGoodLocust (talk) 03:41, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
TGL: I'm pretty sure less admin involvement is not the answer here. ++Lar: t/c 03:25, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
And I would suggest that characterising admins as "marks" is not exactly doing justice to the admin community. -- ChrisO (talk) 03:43, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Well, calling them "marks" seems a dang sight better than calling them "meatpuppets" which is what Team AGW did to Tedder. --GoRight (talk) 06:08, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I think perhaps this side discussion is in danger of becoming a recapitulation of the Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee discussions on various talk pages, so I suggest we leave it there. We've all had our say and Thegoodlocust has clarified his point as I requested. --TS 03:48, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • I support either the first or the second wording. Neither is perfect but both are better than what we have now, which is too chaotic. As for combatting socks, if SPI used the normal way is too cumbersome maybe we need to keep an SPI page open for Scibaby (and similarly for other repeated sockers) and not close it but just let reports pile up and CUs deal with it on an ongoing basis. ++Lar: t/c 03:25, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • A question: many of the issues I've seen personally have been a combination of behavioural and content issues - for instance, editors repeatedly adding unsourced personal commentary to articles. Are these proposed sanctions meant to deal with content issues or just behavioural ones? So for instance, if someone repeatedly violated BLP or NPOV on an article, would that be actionable? -- ChrisO (talk) 04:19, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
That is actually one of my bigger concerns. NPOV claims are subjective, which makes enforcement more open to interpretation and therefore bias/manipulation. :*[User:Thegoodlocust|TheGoodLocust]] (talk) 04:24, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • This is a case in point: an editor is repeatedly deleting a cited summary and replacing it with uncited personal commentary on completely bogus grounds (apparently the police and a major university aren't reliable sources, who knew?). This is the kind of behaviour - completely ignoring prohibitions on original research and lack of verifiability - that needs to be penalised. -- ChrisO (talk) 11:35, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I looked at the diff and apparently he was removing content from the Real Climate blog, which only seems to be a "reliable source" in these articles because William Connolley used to blog there. If he added unsourced commentary (I didn't look) then that should be removed, but removing a source like "Real Climate" is a good thing. TheGoodLocust (talk) 00:51, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Wording changes
  1. The first wording allows sanctions after a warning. I'd like clarification that the reference to warnings means warning posted on an editors talk page after the implementation of this proposal. Many of the involved editors have received some warning and without change, this proposals would allow a one year ban immediately. (Yes, I know it can be appealed, but it basically would reverse the "innocent until proven guilty" presumption into "guilty until proven innocent".) I don't think reasonable people would oppose this clarification, and perhaps Ryan can simply clarify that it is implicit.
  2. The second wording has no warning requirement. While I can endorse the reduction of the usual warning escalation from four to one, dropping it to zero is not appropriate.
  3. I concur with LiteratureGeek's observation that a block of one year is unreasonably onerous. I'd prefer "block up to one week, topic ban up to one year".
Assurances
  1. I can imagine someone arguing that Climatic Research Unit e-mail hacking incident is not an article about climate change. This isn't an abstruse argument, it's a simple fact that the article isn't about climate change. For the purpose of this agreement, I'd like assurance that this article will be deemed one of the climate change articles (I think "broadly construed" covers it, but if someone would simply say, "of course", it will help.}
  2. I take it as obvious that is an admin is involved in one climate change article, but not another one, they are considered involved. Seems obvious, but I've seen statement implying otherwise, so just want to hear "of course".
  3. Assuming the final agreement contains language requiring a warning, I'd like to hear that if a warning is issued, and an uninvolved admin posts that the warning was not warranted, it will not count as a warning. I note that there is no requirement that the warnings be issued by an uninvolved admin, or even by an admin. It would subvert the process if any editor could simply post a warning for edit warring, thereby making it possible to invoke strong sanctions without further discussion.--SPhilbrickT 16:04, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It looks to me as if this second proposed wording has pretty broad support and has already been tested in the field. I suggest we discuss the minutiae once it is put into action. Let's do it and see how it works in practice, as was done in the Obama case. --TS 18:31, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I object to the characterization of the reaction as "pretty broad support". Unfortunately, this is a perfect example of the whole problem, writ small. I see support from TS and ChrisO. I see support from Ryan, but as proposer, that goes without saying. Prodego and Lar are the only uninvolved supporters I see. I, personally, like the general concept, but asked specific questions which have not been answered. Without answers, I am strongly opposed. GoRight expressed reservations, as did Stephan Schultz, LiteratureGeek, A Quest For Knowledge and TheGoodLocust. I'd say a fair reading of the discussion identifies almost as many editors with concerns as editors with unreserved support. Barber supports, with some reservations, and Boris supports. (Sorry Dimawik, not sure how to characterize your position). --SPhilbrickT 16:20, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • I like the general idea, and I think it will be helpful in many ways, particularly in removing simple incivilities and cutting back further on the edit warring, and with abuse from SPAs and IPs. I especially like this language, which gets at the problems we have with many veteran editors: the need to reduce edit-warring and misuse of Wikipedia as a battleground, so as to create an acceptable collaborative editing environment even on our most contentious articles. Editors wishing to edit in these areas are advised to edit carefully, to adopt Wikipedia’s communal approaches (including appropriate conduct, dispute resolution, neutral point of view, no original research and verifiability) in their editing, and to amend behaviors that are deemed to be of concern by administrators. And yet I don't think admins will really hold veteran editors to high standards, even when they can be seen to be POV pushing, using battleground behavior and below-3RR edit warring. When a group of highly political editors takes over an article to POV-push it, they need to be held to the strictest standards on behavioral violations, because no one's going to topic ban or block them for violating NPOV itself. Admins, fearing controversy and reversal (and ultimately fearing a waste of their time), won't be strict enough, even on behavioral violations, even with editors who repeatedly violate them. That's just the way it is. So I support this fully but have no hope it will do much good. It would be better to pass this over to ArbCom and have them set up something like this, preferrably with ArbCom-selected admins. An ArbCom-endorsed regime on these articles would give admins the backbone they need for this kind of task. -- JohnWBarber (talk) 19:24, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, let's do it. --TS 00:24, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Absolutely. Implement Ryan's proposal as written. No embellishments such as restrictions against anyone editing (other than standard Wikipedia policy). Any further restrictions such as 1RR, etc can be implemented on an as-needed basis by admins. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 00:32, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
This is just a restatement of standard policy: "Any uninvolved administrator may, on his or her own discretion, impose sanctions on any editor working on an affected article if, despite being warned, that editor repeatedly or seriously fails to adhere to the purpose of Wikipedia, " -- such is already the case for all editors on all articles on all subjects, as are the mechanisms for reviewing it. Frankly, though, I don;t really expect arbcom to do anything better. DGG ( talk ) 00:52, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Even today, the WP:3RR and WP:CIVIL rules are not enforced against the pro-AGW side, and the same side of the dispute seems to be able to call for air support (edit protection) whenever the going gets tough - and gets this support immediately. I thus expect that giving more ammo to the admins will hurt, as the very same decisions will be made by the same semi-involved admins, yet will be easier to make and harder to revert.
A single admin who took sides is all it will take under the proposed rules to make life for people who do not edit Wikipedia for living really miserable. Notice that unlike 3RR, the other rules, say, WP:CIVIL, are 100% fuzzy, and the changes make them a subject to the interpretation of a single person. The proposed changes will therefore simply make the most problematic group of the editors even more disruptive. Dimawik (talk) 04:37, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Interesting. I'm slightly worried with the qualifications regarding who's an uninvolved administrator though. It only takes two working together to completely enforce their POV and all the editors will be able to do is to go to ArbCom. As outlined in the current ArbCom-case, one affected talk page has problems with administrators seemingly acting as gatekeepers and disrupting attempts to reach consensus. So far I haven't seen any admin abuse (and I hope there won't be any), but it's a possibility that cannot be ruled out. It's actually somwhat visible in this very discussion as of this moment, although I do not think this is the place to start a discussion about it. Troed (talk) 16:28, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • I would like to support this as it stands but SPhilbrick's six points give me sufficient pause that I would like to see them clarified. I don't think details like proper issuing of warnings and maximum block length are "minutiae", I think they're central. A quick resolution here would be desirable though, since it would likely head of a nascent Arbitration case that will take 500 times as much text and time to arrive at probably exactly the same conclusion (along with primciples like "Wikipedia is an on-line encyclopedia") Even if it's just going to be the current wording #2, it can always be reviewed after two months and taken to ArbCom then, by which time the new Arbs will have figured out how their pencil-sharpeners and email work. This is worth a try. Franamax (talk) 17:29, 1 January 2010 (UTC) Support wording 2 with the addition of warning text. Franamax (talk) 20:52, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Alternative proposals arising from discussion

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Proposal by Thegoodlocust

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Okay, if admin interference must be implemented then here is my proposed solution and it is far easier to implement and will be far more effective. Topic ban anyone who makes more than 100 (200-500, or whatever we decide on) article edits to global warming related articles. The articles will be just fine, it'll calm things down, and make the articles more welcoming for new input and eyes. Nothing could be more fair than that. TheGoodLocust (talk) 03:48, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

That would have the effect of getting rid of all of the experienced editors and turning the field over completely to newbies and socks. I can't see that working. -- ChrisO (talk) 03:53, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The experienced editors are a problem and have been for years. They may have gotten better at hiding it, those who've studied criminology know older criminals are less likely to be caught, but the problems they cause continue and will continue until they either quit obsessing over the subject or are made to quit obsessing over it - in fact, it'd probably be doing them an enormous personal service. TheGoodLocust (talk) 03:59, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
If, as Thegoodlocust has suggested at 02:39, banning only encourages socking, this proposal if implemented would pose a further temptation to socking. --TS 03:56, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I agree, that's why I said "if admin interference must be implemented." The only difference is that this would be applied equally, people would know about it, and it would be intrinsically fair and less likely to inflame passions on the subject. TheGoodLocust (talk) 03:59, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I'd add, from a technical point of view we could do 'enhanced' semi-protection like this, obviously these criteria wouldn't be a great idea. But if you wanted to say, protect a page from editing by anyone with less than 500 edits, or who registered less than 3 months ago, you could do that with the AbuseFilter. You could also do editing rate limits on a group of articles, as well as some other things. I'm not sure that would be the best way to fix this situation though, unless semiprotection combined with strict edit warring rules were to fail. However, best to keep all options on the table. Prodego talk 04:00, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Would it be possible to restrict to experienced admins (old accounts), but only those with less than a certain # of edits to such articles? That sort of compromise might be ideal. TheGoodLocust (talk) 04:03, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
No, and as outlined above, that is a bad idea anyway. Prodego talk 04:06, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
This is a really bad idea. Since this is a technical subject (or the science is, at any rate), we'd be banning everyone who actually knows what they're talking about. This is doubly bad here because once implemented, the scokpuppets (who necessarily have few edits) would rule. So then once the admins interfered, they'd be letting loose a storm of sockpuppetry. Yowzers. Awickert (talk) 04:07, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, which is why we aren't going to do any of the things TheGoodLocust suggests. Lets get back to the restrictions proposed above please. Prodego talk 04:12, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Are you concerned that you'd be banned from the articles? I might, I'm not as proflic, but I wouldn't really care since I think such a policy would be for the greater good. Besides, if only experienced editors could edit the articles then that'd cut down on sockpuppet use. This reminds me of the whole Social Security situation, it is going bankrupt, but nobody wants to do what is necessary to stop the system from collapsing because a vocal minority would get upset at the only solutions. TheGoodLocust (talk) 04:12, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Not so concerned for myself, and due to the ECx4, I was still actually replying about the <X edits - sorry for the confusion. I wouldn't mind only allowing selected editors to edit post-admin-intervention. That would allow the real editors to deal with the dispute without sockpuppets and SPA-vandals sabotaging everything. Prodego's "accounts <X days old" suggestion might do a good part of the trick. Awickert (talk) 04:22, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The idea of a "accounts <X days old" restriction has its attractions - it would raise the bar for the sockpuppets and would reduce the number of disruptive new users - but it wouldn't do anything to tackle the disruptive established users. They are probably the bigger part of the problem. Absent an Arbcom ruling cutting a swathe through the SPAs, we're probably stuck with them for the time being (or at least until they cross the line). -- ChrisO (talk) 04:40, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

<outdent> How would the "real editors" be selected? How would "single purpose" be defined? I have no problem with the proposals if they are implemented fairly and evenly. TheGoodLocust (talk) 04:41, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The "real editors" would be difficult to define. SPA-vandals could be prevented from editing via a ">X day old account" rule. Not perfect, certainly, and I actually am unconvinced of what I am saying, so perhaps this is not the route to take... Awickert (talk) 04:49, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I'd think a more accurate way of identifying SPAs would be by the proportion of global warming articles edited compared to non-global warming articles. The only question would be what % defines a SPA? Over 50%? 75%? The attractive part of this, assuming fair application, is that it'd dampen extremism a bit. TheGoodLocust (talk) 05:43, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Thegoodlocust, This is the best (only?) good idea I've seen to reduce the tag-teaming and socks. tedder (talk) 06:34, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks fellow Oregonian (Vote no on 66/67! :)). TheGoodLocust (talk) 06:37, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit. I'm all for reducing vandalism where possible, the proposals of only admins, people with 500 edits, >3 months, etc are all unreasonable to apply to dozens of articles. It's contrary to the purpose of the encyclopedia. Oren0 (talk) 06:46, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
That's a good point, but I'd say right now that SPAs are making it, in a de facto manner, impossible for anyone else to really edit those articles. I think it comes down to either letting the SPAs continue their reign or making the articles more welcoming to other people. TheGoodLocust (talk) 06:59, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Easy to game. You just do a few minor typo corrections. If it is over 50% for example, you search for an obvious typo, fix it, then do your edit on the main page. Or you start chipping in on AFDs/Talk page RFCs etc etc etc. --Narson ~ Talk • 13:01, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

<outdent>I meant a % of "article" edits - not talk page edits. Also, if someone's edits on other articles are just typos then they should be topic banned from GW too - they are obviously trying to game the system. Most people do minor edits for such things so it should be easy to tell - and if they aren't marking them as minor then that is simply more evidence they are attempting to game the system. TheGoodLocust (talk) 20:34, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Banning people who know the subject and restricting it to people who aren't interested is a Really Bad Idea William M. Connolley (talk) 18:17, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Let's test that out Connolley, we can topic ban SPAs for a few months and then see if that calms things down a bit. Besides, I think you'd welcome the break. TheGoodLocust (talk) 18:39, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not a SPA, so it wouldn't affect me. GR is though William M. Connolley (talk) 22:27, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Wow touchy - assume good faith please. Obviously I meant you wouldn't have to deal with SPA vandalism and would get a much needed break. Although, now that you mention it, it would only be fair to make sure that SPA criteria applies equally to veteran editors like yourself and GoRight. TheGoodLocust (talk) 23:10, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal by GoRight

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Well if we're thinking out of the box on things that aren't going to see the light of day, how about 1 edit per person per article per calendar day (as opposed to per 24 hours like 3RR)? That would cut down the edit warring and article churn AND it's trivial to enforce. --GoRight (talk) 06:23, 31 December 2009 (UTC) P.S. Plus 1 on each of the talk pages as well. --GoRight (talk) 06:31, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

That's fine with me. I think a lot of things could help if implemented correctly. TheGoodLocust (talk) 06:25, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I disagree with your PS though - I don't think conversation should be stifled - esp. not to that degree. TheGoodLocust (talk) 06:35, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Which time-zone, though? UTC? Sceptre (talk) 06:33, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I vote for Martian (UTC+4387.62) Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 06:38, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
More to the point, how about automatic checkuser for every new editor that shows up to edit climate change articles out of the blue with full knowledge of Wikipedia guidelines, policies, and dispute resolution procedures, and no known learning curve? I estimate that at the current rate, this would require at least 30 checkuser requests per month. Want an example? Adam.T.Historian (talk · contribs). This guy shows up on December 30, makes 62 edits to date, 39 of which are made to Talk:Climatic Research Unit e-mail hacking incident. What about Gunnanmon (talk · contribs). User shows up on December 30, and makes 12 edits on the same talk page. Guess which two editors suddenly became friends?[1] Even more interesting is how the Adam.T.Historian account is being used as an expert vote wrangler, straight outta the box.[2] All starting with this. The likelihood that this is a new user is close to nill. Viriditas (talk) 08:57, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Sure, as long as I get to have mine picks checkusered to. I'd like to see one on this account User:Oski Jr. But I won't be able to get one I am quite certain, unlike the rubberstamp Scibaby checkusers you guys get. --GoRight (talk) 19:25, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Sure, checkuser would be better than banning users based on as little as a single edit per "WP:DUCK." In my opinion scibaby is a scapegoat that was created just so people can ban certain users on site, which has resulted in massive IP range blocks, many people being falsely accused and/or blocked. I'm not even sure if it's possible to calculate how many legitimate users and donors that have been aborted by the entire "scibaby" affair. TheGoodLocust (talk) 09:36, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Do you have any example of a user being banned based on a single edit per WP:DUCK? If yes, please tell us. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 10:06, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

No. GR is a SPA; if you want to see whether he is serious about improving wiki or just causing disruption, then his attempt to enable wiki-lawyering by User:Abd is instructive William M. Connolley (talk) 13:29, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your insightful bias - is there anything you would like to comment upon the proposal itself, rather than the proposer? LessHeard vanU (talk) 13:59, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
On edit per day per article would seem to be a gift to the edit warriors. They just have to show up for their daily alloted revert and carry on. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 15:08, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
@LHVU: oh, I thought it was obvious. But if you're not prepared to think it through yourself: the proposal itself is silly. Calendar day rather than 24h is obviously bad. One edit appears like a pointless restriction - why would you want to prevent people adding non-controversial text? 1RR is the more obvious restriction, it is well understood and easy to implement William M. Connolley (talk) 17:58, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I want to point out that the main problem at the Climatic Research Unit e-mail controversy article is NOT the typical case of AGW skeptics attempting to push their POV. Sure, that's a problem, but there's another problem at this particular article. There are editors there who are refusing to admit that there's a controversy in an article about the controversy. Those of you who are familiar with my work on the 9/11 conspiracy theories and Lunar landing hoax articles know that I am no fringe theorist and have absolutely no desire in promoting minority or fringe viewpoints against scientific consensus. But in an article about a controversy, you have to at least explain what the controversy is about. We have editors who are so overzealous that they are refusing to even mention what the controversy is about. So we have POV-pushing coming from two different directions. What's more, some of the criticism is coming not from AGW skeptics, but from AGW proponents such as George Monbiot[3] and colleague Michael Mann[4]. I strongly urge the admins on this board to take into consideration that there's more going on at Climatic Research Unit e-mail controversy article than the typical AGW skeptic nonsense when implementing this proposal. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 18:00, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I am afraid that you are mistaken. The behavior and tactics that you observe from the "mainstreamers" on Climatic Research Unit e-mail controversy are exactly the same on every GW page. You are drawing a distinction without a difference. The only difference is that on the GW articles the "controversy" is over whether there is a consensus or not, and in that respect there are legitimate scientific voices, for example Richard Lindzen, on the skeptics side that receive the same character assassination treatment you have observed at Climatic Research Unit e-mail controversy. Just read his article and the discussions on the talk page to see what I mean. --GoRight (talk) 19:38, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Jolly good. But why did you say it here? William M. Connolley (talk) 18:06, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Read the last sentence. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 18:35, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
In my view this proposal would do nothing to improve matters and would only encourage socking. Banned editors who think nothing of creating a battery of 10 new socks would rejoice to see the regular editors ability to deal with their insertion of misinformation thwarted. --TS 18:11, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I support this one edit per day suggestion, with editors falling foul of it moving to one edit per week. If as Tony says this would only encourage socking then we have plenty of editors here already to edit these bunch of articles, have them all semi protected to stop this problem. Off2riorob (talk) 18:15, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
1RR or one edit/day is unlikely to help. In fact, I can give you about 500 reasons why it won't work. There are a finite number of good-faith editors and a relatively infinite supply of new sockpuppets on these topics at present. These proposals empower the sockpuppeteer - by giving them the "right" to dozens of edits per day - and penalizes people who use one account. That's not the right set of incentives. MastCell Talk 21:05, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Actually that is not the situation and it does work well and has worked at the Irish troubles articles, I have seen it work, hordes of sockpuppets do not turn up and when they do with the extra administrator eyes they are easily dealt with. Off2riorob (talk) 23:05, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Ah. Were the Irish articles beset with individuals known to have used over 500 sockpuppets individually? We're not talking about encouraging de novo sockpuppetry; we're talking about an existing, prolific sockpuppeteer (and a few lower-level ones) who would benefit substantially from such an approach on these particular topics. MastCell Talk 23:12, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
It would also be open to exploitation by meatpuppets. In the Irish case, I don't think we had numerous blogs on one side of the dispute campaigning against Wikipedia's supposed "bias" and directing their readers to specific articles. -- ChrisO (talk) 01:59, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Unfortunately there are a number of editors who use Wikipedia for purposes of advocacy on this subject; this is complicated by the fact that those editors see William as doing the same, which is tricky as he is advocating the dominant scientific view (as an expert in the field). Unfortunately this is not going to go away until either the scientific consensus changes (unlikely in the near term) or the deniers acceppt the consensus (unlikely before the heat death of the universe). I don't see any way around it other than restrictions monitored and imposed by a group of long-time users / admins selected for previous non-involvement on climate change - a community appointed editorial board for climate articles. Guy (Help!) 10:53, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal by Arzel

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Restrict editing to climate change articles such that no admin may actively edit these pages or any related pages. This would ensure that uninvolved admin's are responsible for sanctions, bans, blocks, etc. Any current admin that are currently editing a climate change article will either have to stop editing these pages or give up their administrator role. Part of the problem with banned editors and socks is systemic because of the actions of admin's closely involved with these articles. Removal of involved admins from these articles should reduce future bans and blocks and ultimately reduce the need for editors to create socks. It is apparent that many of these issues are from editors that feel they have been unfairly targeted because they feel these articles are being controlled to present one point of view. Until that appearance of control is removed there will be no appreciable improvement in these articles. Address the root of the problem, don't try to fix a symptom of the problem. Arzel (talk) 20:23, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal by WMC

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Restrict editing of GW-related *science* articles to editors who have a demonstrable record of improving the *science* of GW in related non-controversial articles William M. Connolley (talk) 22:31, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

That's a non-starter in my opinion. Requiring editors to acquire a good record on science prior to editing would exclude people who make useful changes unrelated to the science content, and all that is required to edit science content, in truth, is some knowledge of basic scholarship. --TS 22:38, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I can't believe I'm agreeing with Tony, but I thought it was well established that scientists are (for the most part) crap writers. How are we going to have any readable articles??? Brilliantine (talk) 01:43, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Wasn't this the problem of nupedia, 7-10 years ago, and why it didn't catch on? Trying to figure out who had a record of improving science within GW articles would also be subjective. Such is life, I suppose. On a earlier brought up comment, some of us, even after four years, are finally grasping where wikipedia stands on certain issues. For some of us, it takes quite a while to mine the WP help pages, since there are so many. Thegreatdr (talk) 22:54, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Conditional support. The science of global warming is an extremely complex topic, and although I am a scientist in a related field, I don't always trust myself to get things right. This should allow people who understand the field to write articles and increase signal-to-noise. "Conditional" for 2 reasons: (1) I remain categorically skeptical of these restriction proposals, but this is the only so far that seems plausible. (2) What about small edits (per TS) and new users who are knowledgeable? Awickert (talk) 22:46, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - The assessment required to identify applicable editors is subjective. --GoRight (talk) 22:53, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
No, it would be easy enough. It would count you out, obviously, for example. In fact it is hard to think of a single skeptic who would be included. Can you think of one? William M. Connolley (talk) 17:45, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I have to say this seems totally impractical. How would you manage this, for a start? Would we have some sort of review panel assessing editor's contributions and giving them "permits" to edit GW-related articles? Who would select those reviewers? How would the unqualified be kept out? And so on. While I agree that a large part of the problem with these articles is an influx of scientifically illiterate and just plain ignorant people, this is a problem which every topic area faces. It just happens to be on a larger scale in this topic area because the American right has embraced anti-intellectualism and is hostile to any branch of science that undermines its ideological assumptions, and because Americans are over-represented on the English Wikipedia. Those are structural problems which we can't fix. All we can hope to do is reduce their impact. -- ChrisO (talk)
How strange that you, of all people, would accuse anyone of being anti-intellectual given your attempts to shut down entry of the report of the Institute of Physics comprised of 36,000 physicists who were officially sanctioned by the British Parliament to investigate the Climategate scandal.[5]--David Crabtree (talk) 02:01, 28 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]


If I'd said something that bigoted towards a group of people then someone would've erased it within minutes - the fact that your statement still stands after so long is evidence of the left-leaning bias of wikipedia. TheGoodLocust (talk) 03:07, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think what ChrisO said has anything to do with the alleged "left-leaning bias of Wikipedia", which appears to be a Conservapedia talking point, nothing more. When ChrisO says that the "American right has embraced anti-intellectualism and is hostile to any branch of science that undermines its ideological assumptions" he may be exaggerating. While it is true that you can find many examples supporting what ChrisO is saying (start at Politicization_of_science#Recent_examples), in my own experience, liberals and conservatives both have a tendency to embrace anti-intellectual and anti-science positions. This is because, liberalism and conservatism are concepts based on ideology, and ideology is incompatible with freethought. The goal is not to remain entrenched in ideology, but rather to transcend it. These old beliefs have outlived their usefulness. Viriditas (talk) 06:08, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - I'd probably be very capable of improving the science of these articles. I don't do that because of the unwelcoming nature of the talk pages including, for instance, the removal of my request for a listing of the special editing arrangements that have supposedly been made to apply to this subject only.
I've also requested specific assistance on specific points (eg what is Dr Will Happer talking about, shouldn't he be mentioned?) and discovered there are no answers to my questions. Even when my concerns have been properly met (a new section on soot promptly inserted by another, thankyou very much person who shall remain nameless) it seems to be a huge problem. So much for an encyclopedia that helps people. The last thing we need is more self-appointed experts keeping everyone else out - in fact, that's the cause of this problem. 22:12, 2 January 2010 (UTC)MalcolmMcDonald (talk)

Proposal by Rd232

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We have WP:ARBCOM, and they take weeks to deliberate and come up with remedies in cases like this. Why should we think that we can achieve something similar in an WP:AN thread? These inevitably fruitless attempts should be dropped in favour of pursuing existing dispute resolution of various stripes more vigorously. What might be usefully discussed here is how and on what issues to do that. Rd232 talk 06:37, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal by BozMo

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I advocate either nothing or a Mini Arbcom approach. Seen what 2/0 has managed to achieve by being there and being respected and am deeply impressed, although even he has just become entangled with accusations, draw your own conclusion from User_talk:2over0#Biased_Admin_action_disguised_as_.22fixing.22. So suggest get or appoint a small balanced standing committee of Admins to do this (2/0 as chair I suggest), with a couple of Arbcom members. They need to become a bit specialised in the issues around GW (specific socking issues, specific disruption issues etc). At present part of the problem is that there are loads of competent involved admins but they all get dragged into being involved by reverting socks, or reverting well meaning people who meat puppet for socks, or reverting such obvious POV pushing that it becomes vandalism or otherwise following instinct to do no-brainers which improve the project. Then there are odd drive-by admins who don't look deep enough, muddy the waters and get all uppity, exaggerating the problem when they are told "do you mind engaging your brain before you do that" by the regulars. The serious long standing admins all get shy of using tools because of ambiguity over "involved". I suggest this committee never edit any of the articles concerned from here on, but just handle warnings and sanctions. People like Connolley can edit the articles and the committee can trout him at 1800 every Friday (on traditional grounds that if they don't know what he has done wrong he will). Use select committee rules to agree on a list of names. Or do nothing. Sure it isn't great but there are worse places to try to venture an opinion... try putting Germaine Greer's views into Breast Implant, or "balancing" Antisemitism... I think you will find much worse conduct without even trying hard and neither have the sock or public outcry issues which plague GW. --BozMo talk 14:02, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal by ZuluPapa5*

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I appreciate the Probation in effect now, and apologize for being late to the discussion here. The measures in effect appear to be primarily focused on civility, as such, it is civil to request editors to work towards a NPOV following this advice:

The fact of the matter is that editors are saying "no", "not", "isn't", "don't", "can't", "shouldn't" and nearly every other form of meaningless negative statement -- (e.g. nihilism, which would be disruptive to WP:FIVE for absence of objectivity) -- in their effort for an exclusionary POV. This is largely evident in edit summaries and the actual talk. Admin 2over0 proposed in Talk:Scientific Opinion on Climate Change, that negating editors have a civil responsibility to advance an objectively meaningful discussion. The continued pointless negativity may be disruptively provoking disputes and causing redundant talk.

Please consider expanding the warnings for sanctions to editors who show bad faith in negation without getting to the point with an objective meaningful reference to wiki guidance or a proposed compromise. At some reasonable point, the burden of proof must shift from the inclusionist to the exclusionist. Excessive negativity makes wiki meaningless. Sincerely, Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 06:13, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

General discussion

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Looking at GoRight's idea of a 1RR single edit per calendar day (yikes!), the encouragement this would give to sock puppets seems insuperable to me. Thegoodlocust's suggestion has all the disadvantages of GoRight's, and would pose the added problem of excluding our most highly qualified editors in the field. William M. Connolley's suggestion, placing a very high entry bar on editing global warming articles, would be a sledgehammer to crack a nut. Arzel's proposal seems to assume that the problem is biased admins, and ignores or downplays the role of problematic non-admin interactions and constant sock puppetry. Rd232 proposes vigorous prosecution of dispute resolution; encouraging editors who have a grievance to follow this path is something I find myself doing a lot, but with limited success.

So far these added proposals are attracting, some of them, quite a lot of discussion, but have little support.

This leaves the original proposal of Ryan Postlethwaite, in a variety of two different but similar wordings. Unlike the other proposals it has wide support and the second wording has the benefit of having been tested on the Obama articles. It presupposes that the problem can be resolved if administrators are encouraged to enforce policy more rigorously, and that's a reasonable assumption and one that the arbitration committee has increasingly endorsed in recent sessions. Accordingly, we should probably abandon the side proposals and concentrate on the main one. --TS 11:13, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  • Agree. The choice is essentially between Ryan's proposal to adopt a well-understood, previously tested regime that has been a success in quelling problems in another topic area, four proposals that would introduce novel regimes with which many unresolved problems have been identified, and a further proposal that - while it has its merits - would not address the conduct issues (though dispute resolution certainly should be pursued in parallel with greater admin involvement). The regime proposed by Ryan's second choice of wording (copy/pasted from the Obama articles regime) seems to me to be the obvious choice. I suggest that we should nominate a date by which the regime should be implemented - say next Friday, 7th January, if there is a consensus for it? -- ChrisO (talk) 12:05, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    One or two weeks should be enough. --TS 12:26, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Yes, what Tony said. Let's try this for a defined period (one month?) and then take to arbitration if it doesn't work. Guy (Help!) 14:36, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    How about a three-month trial? If it completely flops we'll be back at arbitration sooner than that in any case. --TS 15:21, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    I'd like to see a review over time and see the direction of the curve. If the curve of disputatious nonsense is flat after a month then we're going nowhere, if it's downwards then that's good. The problem for me is the amount of everybody's time that this is sucking up. As with all issues where there are strong financial interests holding out against a strong scientific consensus (homeopathy, creationism, pseudoscience in general) there is a long-term external problem that will always manifest itself in agenda accounts turning up to "fix" the problem of Wikipedia reflecting a consensus they don't like. Guy (Help!) 16:05, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    Well put, Guy. That is one of the best concise summaries of the actual problem I've seen expressed. --Nigelj (talk) 16:25, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    Try to avoid debating the controversy out there, and let's stick to the subject here, because I could bring up equally valid matters equally outside this discussion (there's an economic interest in pushing this issue from the climate-change side as well: government grant money is available for those pushing climate change to the extent climate change is seen as a problem; the pecuniary interests of third-world government officials in getting climate-change foreign aid is another issue, and we could go on and on, further and further from the topic ...) I'm fine with any of the Postlethwaite versions, opposed to the more innovative versions, fine with any of the trial periods of the lengths TS and Guy have brought up. -- JohnWBarber (talk) 16:46, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    I agree with John. The discussion on the global warming articles can get heated and, above all, lengthy. We ought to try to stay focused here. --TS 17:22, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    Sure. My point was, the problem is fundamentally unfixable because it's of external origin, the issue here is whether it's manageable or containable. I think we will find that out fairly quickly, and I think if we make a point of reviewing progress and increasing or decreasing the intrusiveness of control measures as necessary then we will get to a resolution (positive or negative) more quickly. Guy (Help!) 23:30, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • As a rather curious observer to this, I would urge the use of Ryan's proposed system. Not only is its effectiveness proven, but it avoids some of the gamesmanship the other ones would promote. Obviously, this is tinged by the fact I trust Ryan to ensure its enforcement, as without effective enforcement it is all meaningless. I'd urge that it is implimented at the earliest possible moment, so everyone can get back to the trifling matter of content. --Narson ~ Talk • 14:43, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • I agree all the side proposals are doomed and we should concentrate on Ryan's. I only put mine up for the fun of seeing people recoil in fear at the idea of knowing anything about the subject before editing William M. Connolley (talk) 17:52, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • I was completely fooled by your suggestion that self-appointed experts should be allowed to dominate these subjects at the expense of usefullness - this being the problem as I thought had been identified in the past. I'd be happy to take down my comment if it was indeed in response to a complete red herring. MalcolmMcDonald (talk) 22:36, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Ryan's proposal. My only concern is that "climate change" be limited to what relates to present-day climate change, so discretionary sanctions aren't placed on tons of geology articles that don't mention modern climate. But I'm convinced that I'm in the minority that thinks about climate change over the course of geologic history as opposed to the course of decades and centuries. Awickert (talk) 02:58, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    Are any of those articles controversial in the context of the modern climate issue? -- ChrisO (talk) 03:08, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    Note that we didn't explicitly discuss this, but a lot of the recent fuss over global warming articles on Wikipedia has focussed on paleoclimatology, particularly dendroclimatology, the hockey stick graph, the convergence problem and the Medieval Warm Period. Almost any article remotely related to global warming may need sanctions of this kind. We have pet sock puppet factories that will undoubtedly enjoy creating inflammatory situations on any number of related articles. This mandate to administrators should help us to handle the problems. --TS 03:12, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    Dendroclimatology is recent compared to what I am talking about, though I agree that we should cast the net prudently to keep sockpuppetry and related nastiness out. I'm thinking more the stuff about several-millions-of-years-ago to billions-of-years-ago climate, which is uncontroversial except w.r.t. young-Earth creationists and some others. Of course, Tony's point should be taken with these articles as well: for example, Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum could become a battleground because it is used as a case study for present day warming. But those climate articles in the geologic past that do not relate in any way to modern climate change should IMO be excluded from sanctions. Awickert (talk) 04:40, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Moving forward

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It's clear the 2nd wording (based on the Obama article probation) has consensus here. I agree with Guy that we should see how things run for a month, then we can review things on the admin noticeboard to review things to see if we need tweaks, or if we indeed need to go to arbitration. A number of minor tweaks have been proposed, but I personally think the wording is fine as is. If we still need tweaks after a month, we can make them then. Unless there's any major objections, I'm going to implement the second wording in a few hours. Ryan PostlethwaiteSee the mess I've created or let's have banter 19:46, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

There are some issues that could use clarification. I'll explain how I would clarify some of the open issues, and assume that if I'm wrong, you'll respond.
  1. The Climatic Research Unit e-mail hacking incident is not about Climate Change, but I'll assume that the modifier "broadly construed" will include that article.
  2. The process requires a warning before sanctions can be issued. Implicit is that an admin cannot simply give the warning, and then apply sanctions. There must be additional violations after the written warning.
  3. I have seen warnings issued that were not appropriate. I take it as obvious that if someone receives a warning, and an uninvolved administrator posts that the warning wasn't valid, it doesn't count as a warning for the purposes of subsequent sanctions.--SPhilbrickT 20:41, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Point 1 and 2 you're correct on. With regards to point three, the warning is merely there to let users know about discretionary sanctions and the fact that they're there on the articles that they've been editing. It should be used fairly loosely - if someone is active on the pages under the sanctions and there appears to be some misconduct, however minor then they should be notified of the sanctions in place - if they do something again then they can be sanctioned. Ryan PostlethwaiteSee the mess I've created or let's have banter 20:47, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
As I said before: making this about climate change is wrong. It should be about global warming William M. Connolley (talk) 21:00, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Does anyone else have any thoughts about this? I'm fine with it being climate change personally. Ryan PostlethwaiteSee the mess I've created or let's have banter 21:35, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Focussing it broadly (i.e. CC) does no harm. The danger with a narrow focus (just GW) could be that individuals move their nonsense over to other CC articles to try to escape these controls. --Nigelj (talk) 21:38, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
William, so that uninvolved administrators not familiar with the field would know what you mean here, could you explain what difference your proposal would make? Are there some articles that fall under one definition and not another? --TS 21:40, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
It is mostly just a general indication of not knowing what is going on. Climate change isn't a controversial article - it is about general stuff, like ice ages. GW, and all its relatives MWP, the CRU hacking stuff, etc, are the controversial bits William M. Connolley (talk) 22:13, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
In that case, for ease of understanding, I suggest defining the scope as "articles relating to climate change and global warming, broadly defined". -- ChrisO (talk) 22:46, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

These are two good points:

  • SPhilbrick (16:04, 31 Dec: take it as obvious that is an admin is involved in one climate change article, but not another one, they are considered involved. [6] -- never answered. I don't think it's obvious at all)
  • Dimawik (04:37, 1 Jan: the very same decisions will be made by the same semi-involved admins, yet will be easier to make and harder to revert. A single admin who took sides is all it will take under the proposed rules to make life for people who do not edit Wikipedia for living really miserable [7])

Both make a good point about the possible next level of POV pushing, which will be more sophisticated: admins taking sides. This is pretty much inevitable given that any "uninvolved" admin can start throwing his or her weight around and pretty much any admin can walk in. Nevertheless, I support the proposal because the potential abuses are preferable to the current situation. Admins who aren't prudent about not taking sides should be brought before AN/I -- if necessary, again and again. Wikipedians who actually want NPOV treatment of subjects should be vigilant about watching for admin misconduct here (while being respectful of people trying to handle a difficult task), because what we're doing essentially channels the temptations toward admins. I do wish admins who involve themselves with policing here were not associated with any side or with regardingother global warming articles. If they are, they should realize that they too are under scrutiny. Having ArbCom appoint admins to police would have avoided much of this, but let's see how it shakes out, and be ready to complain when we see evidence of abuses. -- JohnWBarber (talk) 21:50, 1 January 2010 (UTC) --wording change in reaction to Franamax's comment just below -- JohnWBarber (talk) 22:31, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I wonder if I would be classed as involved. I've made a handful of edits at Antarctica clarifying the science on ice mass balance and part was in response to an IP saying AGW wasn't real. Also, I worked with -gasp- Polargeo doing it. Does that make me "pro-global warming" now? Franamax (talk) 21:57, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I changed my comment in response to what you've just said. My concern is with admins involved controversially on the general topic who then police controversially. If your edits were opposed on grounds of not being NPOV there, I'd avoid getting involved with sanctioning the other side here. If not, I wouldn't be scrupulous. If you get hot under the collar about people on the other side of whatever opinions you have about this, it's probably a bad idea. -- JohnWBarber (talk) 22:31, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I'd agree with your method of definition here and it's what I would endorse too. Except if my edits "were opposed on grounds of not being NPOV", that leads to a tasty pot of beans. I'd prefer "were credibly opposed..." but the whole thing falls apart right there. The opposer always thinks they're credible, whichever side they're on. :( Franamax (talk) 22:48, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I can anticipate one difficulty that this regime will encounter. In science articles, Wikipedia follows the scientific consensus and does not offset mainstream viewpoints with fringe POVs. The contrarian/sceptical/denialist (delete as applicable) viewpoint is clearly a fringe view within the scientific community, comparable to the pro-intelligent design or creationism POV, which is likewise a fringe view among scientists. As with creationism, the contrarians are more widely represented outside the scientific community than within it. In some countries it may even represent a majority viewpoint among the public (though not among scientists). Any admin action that has the effect of maintaining or upholding the scientific viewpoint at the expense of the "populist" viewpoint is going to be attacked as "biased". We have already seen some warm-up accusations to this effect on this page. How do we respond to such accusations? -- ChrisO (talk) 23:19, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
By looking at the facts of each accusation? -- JohnWBarber (talk) 00:58, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Make it so. There is some cavilling but the proposal is sound and any minor clarifications don't really need to be agreed before we can make the first moves. To Chris' point above, we go back to what reliable independent sources say. Good quality secondary and review sources, of which Nature would be my favoured example, can describe popular dissent and set it in the context of the scientific consensus. Guy (Help!) 23:23, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure this addresses my concerns (see here). How will this proposal will address the issue of POV-pushing from AGW proponents? (Again, see here for an explanation of my concerns). A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 23:45, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

By having admins give them editing restrictions? Obviously they can push whatever POV they like - on the talk page. If they edit the article to do so, they will no doubt end up being reverted, and from there an admin would act. Prodego talk 23:52, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I think AQFK may be missing the point that the article he mentions is very heavily influenced by BLP issues, which is why information that might otherwise have been included has not been. Editors need to be aware of the "high degree of sensitivity" required for editing on BLP issues. Particularly where uncorroborated accusations have been made against private individuals, we're required to be conservative about our coverage and sourcing. This principle has routinely been flouted in practice, as others have noted above. I expect there will probably be a number of topic bans over BLP issues now that the sanctions are in force. -- ChrisO (talk) 00:41, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Chris, I am very well aware of WP:BLP issues. As you are no doubt aware, WP:BLP says that "if an allegation or incident is notable, relevant, and well-documented by reliable published sources, it belongs in the article-even if it's negative and the subject dislikes all mention of it." Well, the allegations concerning Climategate are notable, relevant and well-documented by dozens of reliable published sources. In an article about a controversy, you have to explain what the controversy is about. I simply advocate following WP:V, WP:OR and WP:NPOV. The few extra requirements mentioned in WP:BLP such as outing someone's sexual preference do not apply to this topic, don't you agree? A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 01:45, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Enacted

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I've gone ahead and enacted the article probation. We have the following new pages;

I think I've covered everything there, but please feel free to make some tweaks. What we could do with is a fancy template for the major article talk pages pointing new users to the probation. Could someone handle that for me? Cheers, Ryan PostlethwaiteSee the mess I've created or let's have banter 23:58, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, and I should have said - to notify users, you can use the following template;

{{subst:uw-probation|PAGE NAME|Wikipedia:General sanctions/Climate change probation}} -- ~~~~

Ryan PostlethwaiteSee the mess I've created or let's have banter 00:02, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Ryan, could I draw your attention to the comments above about limiting the scope to "climate change" possibly leaving wriggle room? Or do you intend to treat global warming as a subset of climate change? It would be helpful to clarify this at the outset to avoid disputes later. -- ChrisO (talk) 00:22, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you, Ryan. Well done. -- JohnWBarber (talk) 00:23, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Technical issue, would requests for enforcement not be better handled at WP:ANI instead of on a separate page? This would attract a greater variety of admins (but also a larger peanut gallery), and would need no extra archiving mechanism etc.  Sandstein  00:29, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
AN/I is a bit of a circus, to be honest. These sanctions are based on the existing Barack Obama community sanctions, enforcement requests for which are dealt with at Wikipedia:General sanctions/Obama article probation/Requests for enforcement. I think there are advantages to having a separate page where distractions from the peanut gallery, as you put it, are less likely to occur. It seems to work well enough that way with the Obama articles. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it"? -- ChrisO (talk) 00:45, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, Ryan. I think we can all feel very proud of this very swift process from proposal to resolution, and if the implementation runs as smoothly then on this first day of 2010 we will have quietly achieved a great improvement in the working environment of those editing global warming articles. The fact that we were all able to come together and make this decision fills me with hope. --TS 00:53, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Hi, Tony. Unfortunately, I don't believe we have all come together to make this decision. In addition to the objections introduced by AQFK and others above--and nowhere addressed, from what I've seen--I suspect many of the active editors on the global warming pages would object to the proposal if they had known about it. I myself learned of its existence only by chance. I believe it's a step in the wrong direction. --DGaw (talk) 01:12, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Ryan. Might I inquire on what authority you are "enacted the article probation"? --DGaw (talk) 01:06, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Mission from Jimbo, I suspect. I had no idea this discussion was taking place but it seems like a reasonable regime for restoring order. If it stands it stands, that is the nature of consensus. - Wikidemon (talk) 01:34, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I placed a note about this discussion at talk:global warming and at the talk pages of every WikiProject of which global warming is a member. I have to say, however, that I had regarded this as a matter for administrators to decide, subject to the authority ceded to them by the arbitration committee. The committee really like to see this kind of thing worked out within the community. --TS 01:43, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Agree with Tony, this is for admins to decide and will stand if admins get behind it. So let us do so, then. Well done Ryan, and everyone else who had input or predecessor proposals. ++Lar: t/c 02:01, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
this is for admins to decide No. That's not what "the community" means. This essay, linked from Wikipedia:Administrators, states (here), Adminship is not meant to be anything special beyond access to extra editing tools which, pragmatically, cannot be given to every user. It does not give any extra status, weight in discussions, or special privileges beyond what is necessary to technically use those extra tools. (emphasis added) WP:NOBIGDEAL implies the same.
Wikipedia isn't supposed to be a class system. -- JohnWBarber (talk) 05:30, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]


Scope

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I have severe and serious issue with the scope of entries being tagged for probation under this entry. Christopher Monckton, 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley has been tagged for probation even though it is a bio of a living person that only incidentally deals with climate change. The person in question is notable for reasons other than climate change. This is not at all in the spirit of this resolution to tag any entry in which the words "climate change" may incidentally appear and has clearly been done to stifle discussion on an issue related to the living person's views on AIDS. Nothughthomas (talk) 03:22, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Please note that the scope of this article probation is "Pages related to climate change (broadly construed)". As Monckton is a prominent climate change sceptic, his biographical article is covered by the probation scope, just as (for example) the biog of Al Gore is covered. Gore is likewise notable for a few reasons other than climate change. -- ChrisO (talk) 03:25, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I suggest we tag the entry BBC as it is a prominent source of reportage on climate change. Nothughthomas (talk) 03:28, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Too broad. Any news organisation worth its salt will report on climate change issues. Would you suggest tagging them all? -- ChrisO (talk) 03:29, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Any prominent public figure worth his or her salt will comment on climate change issues. Would you suggest tagging them all? (e.g. Keanu Reeves, Kathy Griffin, etc., etc. etc.) Nothughthomas (talk) 03:33, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I take it from your evident use of sarcasm here that you agree with the thrust of Chris's reply. --TS 03:37, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Are Keanu Reeves and Kathy Griffin particularly well known in relation to climate change issues? If not, then no. High-profile public campaigners, on the other hand - like Gore and Monckton - are most definitely covered. -- ChrisO (talk) 03:38, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Yes; particularly Reeves. His film the Day the Earth Stood Still was seen by more people than Monckton has ever been heard by and it dealt primarily with climate change; a point he made repeatedly during the promotional tour. So, please enact the censorship protocols for that entry. Also, we should tag dog in view of the recent study that the domestic dog is a contributor to climate change as well. IMO. (Perhaps we can just auto-tag the whole of wikipedia?) Nothughthomas (talk) 03:46, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
And not Eric S. Raymond, unless a certain editor persists in trying to make something of some blog postings by esr. The key, I suspect, is the presence of global warming-related controversy in the editing process. --TS 03:41, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I did look at ESR but passed over him, based on the contents of the article; there's no mention of climate change issues, let alone any indication that he has any kind of profile as a commentator or researcher on the issue. -- ChrisO (talk) 03:45, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Heehee, but on the bright side, us last three have now become involved on the topic of Dogs! In my case, as a result of two years of watchlisting. :) (late sig: Franamax (talk) 04:31, 2 January 2010 (UTC))[reply]
Nothught, I'll be clear that my understanding here is that probationary sanctions apply to a wide variety of articles, but only to the extent that the edits involve climate change / GW / AGW. So if you want to edit-war about whether the person was born on a Monday or a Tuesday, there is no applicable sanction here. Of course, that's broadly construed, so if you edit so as to character-assisinate or hagiopraphise a person involved in CC/GW/AGW, you're liable for the same sanctions. It's the various approaches to making edits that are being targeted here. Franamax (talk) 04:30, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. I have objected at Christopher Monckton, 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley that there should be a consensus declared there that the page is considered to fall under that probation. --GoRight (talk) 04:38, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Since Monckton is a very prominent climate change sceptic, just as his nemesis Al Gore is a very prominent climate change campaigner, both articles are covered by the probation. Obviously. What part of "Pages related to climate change (broadly construed)" is unclear? -- ChrisO (talk) 04:42, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
As pointed out above there are many notable aspects to Monckton, his views on climate change are but one. Are you suggesting that any article which has any conceivable connection to climate change is automatically covered if you decide it is? I dispute your authority to make such decisions unilaterally. There should be a consensus established for each article that is placed under this action. --GoRight (talk) 04:46, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
So we're constrained to the aspects of Monckton that relate to climate change for these purposes, right? If you think they lived in a blue house, it's not "climate change" - unless blue paint has something to do with climate change and you're systematically changing articles to note which people paint their house blue. The pattern of edits will make things clear I think. Franamax (talk) 05:12, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, as I understand it that's pretty much correct. -- ChrisO (talk) 11:39, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see any problems with the "scope" issues. It would be hard to tell just from the name whether "BBC" deserved to be tagged, but if it had a section called "BBC reporting of climate change" and the obvious fights were occurring, it would be tagged. Lord M obviously satisfies the requirement for tagging. Furthermore, the article probation restrictions are just a rather more rigorous enforcement of good behaviour. Adding them does not damage an article, or the ability of good faith editors to improve an article. Too many tagged articles might be a problem for the over worked enforcing admins, but that is a problem best left to them William M. Connolley (talk) 11:54, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Objection

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I object to this purported enactment of probation by User:Ryan Postlethwaite. Postlethwaite is the proposer of the entire thing and therefore is clearly an VERY involved party. Unless I am mistaken closure of such discussions by involved parties is generally considered an abuse, or at the very least inappropriate. I also consider the closure to be premature. The entire discussion has only been open for less than two days and those were over a world wide holiday. In addition, there are a number of alternate proposals on the table which have not even had that much time to receive community input.

I would also ask for a explicit !vote to clearly establish that this is supported by a wide community consensus BEFORE it is implemented. We are not talking about a small set of articles here. Significant controls require significant support, IMHO. --GoRight (talk) 04:07, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I strenuously object to any vote being taken on this question. Consensus was clearly achieved in a transparent and equitable manner. Nothughthomas (talk) 04:15, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I retract my objection. I just saw the photo of User:Ryan Postlethwaite on this user page and don't believe he's motivated by serious desire to better wikipedia based on his flippant appearance. Nothughthomas (talk) 04:23, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
You know, Ryan doesn't always edit Wikipedia while drunk. </sarcasm> And please lighten up! A bit of levity is a good thing, especially at this time of year. -- ChrisO (talk) 04:47, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
No. Nothughthomas (talk) 04:49, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
So before this is enacted, you want the community explicitly to not vote on it? Goodness! --TS 04:10, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I merely want a clear and unambigous reflection that (a) there actually IS a consensus, and (b) that such a consensus is based on a wide reaching community discussion. I believe that this action fails on both counts. This is s significant action and it should not be enacted without clear and proper discourse. This matter should have been advertised at the Villiage Pump and other such venues for a suitable amount of time to allow interested parties proper time to respond. --GoRight (talk) 04:43, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Objection seconded. This proposal was forwarded and declared enacted in a period of less than 48 hours, more than half of which was a global holiday in which much of the community was undoubtedly away from the computer.
The community of editors in the global warming article is large (more than 90 editors made more than 10+ contributions to the Talk:Climatic Research Unit e-mail hacking incident page in December) yet only a handful were involved in this discussion, which I, for example, found out about only by chance, just as the proposal was being declared a fait accompli.
Furthermore, the proposal is being put forth in an effort to head off a request for arbitration made by an individual not party to this discussion, and several of the people participating are named individuals in that request. For their votes (for or against) to have a significant effect on this proposal, and therefore the action requested of the committee, seems highly improper.
Finally, "uninvolved" has been defined to exclude administrators who have interacted with specific users, but it has not been defined, as it reasonably should, given the meaning of the term overall on Wikipedia, to exclude editors who have made content changes (or recent changes) to the articles in question.
I know Ryan made his proposal with only the best of intentions, but I believe its implementation is fatally flawed, and as it does not reflect a true consensus of the community, contrary to both policy and best practices. I have said as much on Ryan's talk page, and am awaiting his reply.
I second GoRight's request that this proposal be properly advertised for a reasonable period, and that in the meanwhile, as it has only the force of consensus, and no consensus exists, suggest it be recognized by uninvolved administrators as void until either approved by real consensus or rendered moot by Arbitration Committee action.
--DGaw (talk) 05:31, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Third Objection - I didn't have adequate time to participate due to the holiday weekend. Propose the sanctions should be reformed to advance NPOV. Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 06:17, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
4th Objection - For what it is worth I think this is ridiculous. This is only going to make the WP:OWNers even worse - there have already been several admins who've lost their various privileges involved in these articles (and more that should) - this is certainly not the area to give them more power to abuse. TheGoodLocust (talk) 07:16, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
5th Objection - as I mused over under the Discussion heading above, how to define uninvolved? I don't think it's by accident that one of the editors/administrators named as showing a degree of ownership by tedder in the Arbitration Request was the first one to use the new probation regime. I do not believe this is what we wanted to accomplish (but I might of course be wrong). Troed (talk) 12:57, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
6th Objection - I am effectively offline at the moment but I would certainly have something to say here if I wasn't. So count me amongst editors who resent the New Year timing of the proposal. It seems to me that there are at least three groups of climate change editors in the community: advocates, skeptics, and those unaligned or centrist; and this proposal has an appearance, after my brief scanning of it, of being partisan. Alex Harvey (talk) 13:12, 3 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
7th Objection - the swift railroading of the proposal was wrong. The way to calm the situation is to reduce the collective power of any editor group (say, by strictly enforcing 1RR - or at least 3RR) and thus force the negotiations. Both the measure itself and the way it was proposed favor organized groups of editors who can man the battle stations for 24 hours over New Year weekend. The GW advocate group is already by far the most organized. Handing them additional weapons will have one of the two consequences: either non-AGW editors will organize their own team and thus escalate the conflict, or will quit and let AGW POV rule. Either way, Wikipedia loses. Dimawik (talk) 21:03, 3 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
8th objection This is an ivote meant to further a single PoV and is unsupported by consensus policy. Gwen Gale (talk) 21:47, 23 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think we're voting, but I put on record my support for this process, which seems to have got off to a good start. My thanks to the admins involved. I wish it well and will endeavour to help it William M. Connolley (talk) 22:40, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

How do you figure? So far, there's been improvement on the article's neutrality. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 21:16, 3 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Notification template for article talk pages

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Ryan asked above about notification templates. To notify article talk pages of the sanctions, we can use the existing Template:Community article probation with the appropriate fields, as follows: 

{{Community article probation|main page=Climate change|[[Wikipedia:General sanctions/Climate change probation]] for full information and to review the decision}}

This template will automatically categorise articles into Category:Articles on probation. Note that the "Main page" field should be left as shown above, since the main page for this set of articles under probation is Climate change.

To notify a user on their talk page that an article is under probation, Template:uw-probation can be used. This can be referenced with: 

{{subst:uw-probation|PAGE NAME|Wikipedia:General sanctions/Climate change probation}}

-- ChrisO (talk) 01:19, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I have added this information to Wikipedia:General sanctions/Climate change probation#Notification of probation for easy reference. -- ChrisO (talk) 02:06, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

First enforcement request - admin review needed

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I certainly hadn't anticipated that this would be necessary so early, but here it is: Wikipedia:General sanctions/Climate change probation/Requests for enforcement#Request concerning User:GoRight. -- ChrisO (talk) 04:30, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I have filed a similar complaint against User:ChrisO and would like it, also, to be reviewed. I also need someone to kind of clean it up and smooth out the rough edges a bit. Thank you. Nothughthomas (talk) 04:35, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I cleaned it up for you. Hope that helps. -- ChrisO (talk) 04:37, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Actually there's three now I think. ++Lar: t/c 06:21, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Still only one if you exclude the frivolous ones. :-) -- ChrisO (talk) 06:22, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Actually there are none if you exclude the frivolous ones. --GoRight (talk) 07:20, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Seems to me the path to avoid frivolity would to be allow greater time between warning and sanction. In addition, it may be necessary to have the warning and sanction performed by separate admins to ensure objective review. I suggest lessons be learned in this early example. Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 07:26, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I suggest instead that warnings be heeded. ++Lar: t/c 07:35, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • I've looked at the discussions in question. FWIW I agree with Lar that Nothughthomas' advocacy is disruptive in this case and his retaliatory motion is likely to inflame rather than resolve any dispute. It's also pretty clear that GoRight has become (if he was not always) an agenda account and needs to modify his behaviour. That's one of the elephants in the room in the discussions above so it's no surprise that an early request for action has been logged. I'd say that GoRight needs to start to take on board some of the criticisms of him, otherwise he will find himself unable to press for the content changes he wants. Guy (Help!) 09:44, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]


I am one of those "genuinely inexperienced editors" who is part of the "swarms of ranting newbies." but I am not really an "editor" in that I have only made comments on talk pages. Maybe explaining what this whole thing feels like to me would be helpful.

When I read Wikipedia, I expect (and usually get) a fair treatment of the subject. In areas like abortion law, where both sides have some good points, I see a balanced treatment. In areas like creationism where one side has all the evidence and all the scientists and the other has zero evidence, , I see about the right amount of onesidedness. When I read about AGW, on the other hand, where the minority view has some real evidence and is suported by some real scientists, I see them being treated like creationists. This is especially so in that articles about the leaked/hacked emails and the list of AGW skeptics; really obvious bias in favor of the AGW side. I just feel like Wikipedia can be better than that.

BTW, I am not a "sock puppet." Should I get a username instead of' going by IP address so as not to be confused with one? 67.150.175.77 (talk) 18:13, 7 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Since many of those who hold the "minority view" behave exactly like the creationists (and in quite a few cases are creationists - cf. the Discovery Institute) the comparison isn't inapt. If there is "really obvious bias in favor of the AGW side", that is simply because that is the mainstream scientific position, just as evolution is the mainstream position in biology or the earth going round the sun is the mainstream position in astronomy. And yes, I would suggest you get a username, as that has many advantages over editing without being logged in. -- ChrisO (talk) 18:19, 7 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
With all due respect, the above is simply not true. There are no scientists with qualifications like those of Richard Lindzen or Fred Singer who doubt heliocentric theory or evolution. Those really are mainstream views and the skeptics really are fringe. AGW skepticism isn't at all like creationism of geocentrism. Wikipedia does not have a list of scientists opposing the mainstream scientific assessment of the earth going around the sun, and it never will because there aren't any. AGW skepticism is a minority (not fringe) view and you know it. Nobody has to threaten to get scientific journal editors fired to keep creationist articles out of peer-reviewed journals. Nobody has to stonewall freedom of information requests for the raw data supporting the sun being the center of the solar system. You are part of the problem -- one of the Pro-AGW editors dominating these pages. I am hoping that someone unbiased will step in and do something about it rather than let all the global warming pages be filled with obvious bias.
Re
"And yes, I would suggest you get a username, as that has many advantages over editing without being logged in", are these alleged advantages listed anywhere? 75.84.238.18 (talk) 00:36, 9 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Arbitration request filed to overturn article probation

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I suppose I had better note that GoRight has filed an arbitration request asking the Arbitration Committee to step in and halt this article probation. Please see Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case#Climate Change Probation. -- ChrisO (talk) 12:02, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

A biased account of my action, actually. I asked Arbcom the halt the implementation of the probation until a proper community consensus, or lack thereof, could be demonstrated. That's not really the same thing as what C said above. --GoRight (talk) 01:34, 4 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
This all does seem to have happened with indecent haste. As far as I can see this page was started on 1 Jan. Martin Hogbin (talk) 18:49, 4 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
That was when it was forked from the noticeboards, but you can hardly say it's indecent haste, the dispute has been going on for years. Guy (Help!) 19:46, 4 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

User:AbbaIkea2010 and User:DuKu

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These two editors are having an exciting edit war on global warming. Could one of the watching admins go over and give them a heavy hint that this is a bad idea, please. DuKu has already broken 3RR on ExxonMobil (and it is clear, from the edits, that this is a probation-related matter). Both editors are new and are not going to listen otherwise William M. Connolley (talk) 11:50, 4 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Connoley, if you check i stopped reverting his "diffrent" edits. Also i warned the user and later reported him for vandalism. Cheers. --DuKu (talk) 11:52, 4 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
See WP:ANI#Simple 3RR case offered for possible action by Some Other Admin. EdJohnston (talk) 18:08, 4 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Why this endless buck passing? Since when has a simple 3RR violation required ANI? And where are all the admins who are watching this page? William M. Connolley (talk) 18:29, 4 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
DuKu has been blocked 48 hours by another admin. I deferred to ANI because I had issued his previous block, and since he complains of admin misconduct at every turn. EdJohnston (talk) 20:04, 4 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
[8] indeed. As to the deferring, I'll spare you my opinions on that :-) William M. Connolley (talk) 20:07, 4 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

WMC has resumed his edit war at the Climatic Research Unit hacking incident

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WMC has resumed his edit-war by deleting yet again the 'Code and documentation' section of Climatic Research Unit hacking incident without consensus. While WMC is allowed one revert per 24 hours, I do not think this revert allows him to resume his edit-warring. Here are diffs of at least 3 times WMC has deleted this section without consensus: [9] [10] [11] I'm about to head out for the night. Can someone please look into whether WMC is allowed to use his one revert to continue an edit-war? Thanks! A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 23:21, 4 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I think this edit [12] is rather interesting. Notice the edit comment: re-add code and documentation section with fixed links for OrenO - that looks like a rather clear case of meat puppetry to me: we're all on 1RR there, OrenO has "used" his 1R for the day, so HiP is editing for him. That isn't acceptable (none of which has anything to do with my edit, which is my first there this month, so I thik the charges of wild edit warring area touch... wild) William M. Connolley (talk) 23:37, 4 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Just a point of order. I notified WMC here[13]. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 23:38, 4 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

While we're on this subject, could an admin clarify if calling another editors contributions "complete bullshit" [14] is acceptable? William M. Connolley (talk) 23:54, 4 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

That is not what that editor said. He said that your assertation that the RS associated with this (BBC) was not an RS was BS. And he didn't spell out the word for dramatic effect either. Such hyperbole doesn't improve the situation. Arzel (talk) 00:08, 5 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Technically, as noted elsewhere, there is no violation of 1RR restrictions in place in the reverting, with commentary at the article talkpage, of content noted above. However, following my comments at the enforcement page and A Quest for Knowledges question on my talkpage I do think it useful to determine if there is indeed a "slow edit war" in regard to this section. If there is, then it needs to be brought to a conclusion. The best way would be to determine where consensus lays, within policy. Then the article may be edited to that agreed consensus. I am not minded to try and determine who is to blame for any edit war, and to sanction those found "naughty", but to end the matter. It would be useful if both parties, those for and those against inclusion of the material, would lay out their understanding of the dispute, and how they feel consensus supports their viewpoint. References to applicable policy would be appreciated. LessHeard vanU (talk) 20:02, 5 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • I would find the comment mildly incivil, abbreviated or not, as I would using the adjective "laughably" when commenting on someones supposed nonexpertise in an area. If I am going to warn or sanction on one then I would need to do so on the other - I prefer not to.
    Now, as noted, the reason I have come here is to determine whether there was a slow edit war regarding this section, and where people believe the consensus regarding the content is? Are you able to provide your rationale? LessHeard vanU (talk) 20:54, 5 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Here, or just below, please (copy pasting of the content would be fine). I would request that each interested party place their understanding separately and not comment on the others until the "deliberation stage" (that I have just introduced), so that each argument can be reviewed clearly. I want to make sure it is possible for a third party to look at the strengths of each case, present their conclusions and take responses. LessHeard vanU (talk) 22:28, 5 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • OK: I took out the code section again. As I said before: it is broken. It has no RS's, and is laughably wrong to anyone with any familiarity with the area ... @MN: no, there was no consensus for it to stay. Nor was there consensus to remove it. Please don't pretend. There was disagreement both ways. @SA: agree. @AQFK: not exactly civil of you, old fruit. But no: Newsnight is good enough within its own field, but quite out of its depth here, as was its "expert". For the latter, Cumming's blog is interesting [15]: note the number of times he has to go back and say "oops I was wrong" William M. Connolley (talk) 22:40, 5 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • WMC: When you say things like "Would you be able to read it there" I think most (many?) of us sense sarcasm or snarkiness in your word choice. I think you really really need to work on your phrasing. Especially when you are at noticeboards pleading your case. Because that sort of thing just doesn't help. A start would be to banish the word "laughably" from your vocabulary here. Forever. ++Lar: t/c 01:20, 6 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • I do indeed resent having to cut-n-paste stuff here. Unlike the other editors on that talk page, I haven't been unbearably prolix. The reason that page is an unreadable mess, so that LHVU can make no sense of it an needs us all to repeat, is not me. You need to concentrate more on the actual substance of a problem and try to see below the surface. But I have an offer for you: drop your use of "sharp elbows" and I'll drop "laughably" William M. Connolley (talk) 08:27, 6 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Well Lar, since you're soooo fascinated by exact civility, how about "bollocks" [16]. Is that OK by you? LHVU is OK with bullshit, it seems, but bollocks? Seems to me that the principle here is the the skeptics can be as rude as they like and you don't care one whit William M. Connolley (talk) 13:31, 6 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

As has been found in the British Courts (per Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols#Overview) that word is slang for "rubbish" or "nonsense", and it was used in that context in disagreeing with the content of your comments. I would note your enthusiasm for bringing up each example of alleged incivility or coarseness of expression is in contrast to your reluctance to copy over your rationale for deleting content (which, incidentally, should be the focus of this section). LessHeard vanU (talk) 15:51, 6 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I do think it's a bit odd that Lar has a tight threshold for "sarcasm" or "snarkiness" but doesn't hesitate to deride a group of editors as a "cabal" and "socially inept."[17] All while he is directly involved in an enforcement capacity with those same editors. But maybe that's just me. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 15:53, 6 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Lar, and LHVU's, biases for civility towards the skeptics are all too obvious; the principle here is the the skeptics can be as rude as they like and you don't care one whit is clearly correct. You will jump through hoops to excuse anything by them. As for reluctance: no, I was happy to coppy stuff over. I did so. What I'm unhappy with is the *need* to do so, which brings up two obvious points you seem reluctant to acknowledge: one, that you should be prepared to bother read that page yourself; two, that it should not be difficult for you to do so, because the talk page should be in good order. Neither of these is true, of course, but you might want to ponder why William M. Connolley (talk) 16:14, 6 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
If you believe Lar and LHvU are biased, and some of us feel the same about 2/0 and BozMo, then having those 4 participate here might create some balance... ATren (talk) 16:59, 6 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Are they in the habit of attacking one "side" of the issue false claims of "cabalism", like Lar is? Lar shows a long history of animus towards pro-science editors, and has made false accusations against what he calls the "AGW cabal". All I see from 2/0 and BozMo is an understanding that, as a mainstream encyclopaedia, we can't give equal credit to fringe ideas. You know, one of the basic foundations of NPOV. Guettarda (talk) 17:27, 6 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Well, you're kind of agreeing with me here: I've disagreed strongly with BozMo's and 2/0's handling of the probation, you disagree strongly with Lar and LHvU. My point is, if they all work together and come to joint decisions, I think it will be better than having just one side (2/0 and BozMo) making all the decisions. And yes, 2/0 and BozMo have demonstrated an affinity to one side, more so than Lar/LHvU at this point, so IMO there can be no complaint whatsoever at the involvement of Lar/LHvU. And perhaps watching Lar/2/0/LHvU/BozMo making joint decisions after civilized discussion will inspire us lowly editors to do the same on the articles. :-) ATren (talk) 17:46, 6 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
That you disagree with them doesn't make them biased; that 2/0 or Bozmo have demonstrated an affinity for one side is bollocks William M. Connolley (talk) 20:30, 6 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
(ec)No, that's not the point. BozMo and 2/0 have not displayed the kind of obvious bias that Lar, for example, has. Applying policy fairly does favour one side - when we're talking about the science, we can't give the same weight to Jim Inhofe or Anthony Watts as we do to peer-reviewed science. So yes, policy favours one side, and applying policy fairly does appear to favour one side. For argument's sake, lets say LHvU is operating under the principle that each side's ideas deserve equal weight. If that's the case, that makes him clearly acting in a partisan fashion, since the so-called "skeptic" side does not deserve equal weight. Blogs don't deserve the same weight as peer-reviewed science. That's policy. (Now I think that LHvU is acting to balance the influence of the "pro-science" side, and has gone well beyond giving both sides equal weight. He's putting his hand on the scale, and then calling for equal weighing.) Lar, of course, is another case all together - he has a long history of partisan support for anti-science activism. Guettarda (talk) 20:43, 6 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
This "for the science!" argument is frankly bollocks. I've improved many actual science articles, but most of the disputes in the global warming articles are political in nature, not scientific. TheGoodLocust (talk) 21:15, 6 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Sounds like bollocks to me. I haven't seen you improve the science on a singel GW article William M. Connolley (talk) 21:41, 6 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I was actually refering to my edits regarding astronomy, plant biology and entheogens - I'm well aware of the difficulties in improving the global warming articles and so I try to stick to the more political ones so I don't have to hear about the "for the science!" argument. But, since you insist, here is an edit that improved the carbon sink article - I picked one that you were familiar with. TheGoodLocust (talk) 21:50, 6 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Guettarda, are you proposing extending the undue weight argument to admins involved in conflicts? That's what it sounds like. The content conflict is only part of the problem here, and even within the content conflict, many of the questions don't have anything to do with the science. So even if you could make the argument that so-called "anti-science" admins have no place here (dubious, especially since many of us don't consider him anti-science), the "science" is only a small portion of this probation. I'll return to what I said before: you view Lar/LHvU as biased on this page, I view 2/0/BozMo as biased, it's as simple as that, and if the conflict is to be resolved, having both involved is better than having only admins that one side considers biased. ATren (talk) 17:51, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]


The "animus towards pro-science editors?" The "false claims of cabalism?" Perhaps if WMC's facebook friends didn't constantly show up out of the blue to defend him then people wouldn't make such claims. Isn't that right Guettarda? TheGoodLocust (talk) 19:04, 6 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
That is bollocks William M. Connolley (talk) 20:30, 6 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I apologize, I must've misinterpretted Guettarda's comment as a "defense" when in reality it was actually more of an attack. Although, they say the best defense...TheGoodLocust (talk) 20:37, 6 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps. But his history suggests otherwise. Rather, he has carried over his pre-existing disputes into this arena. But then, you have to wonder about people who only inhabit the Wikipedia: namespace. Guettarda (talk) 20:43, 6 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
(in response to an earlier comment by you)Um, no, I don't think that fringe theory has equal standing within an article - I think the WP:Due weight clearly defines how different pov's should both be incorporated or disregarded. However, I do take the argument that the disproportionate interest or commentary generated by fringe advocates and reported by reliable sources might be argued as providing a rationale for including some of their claims, and the counter claims, in appropriate articles. Per WP:Due weight, of course. That is, I feel, a different creature from giving credence to finge theory and thus "equal" standing with well established (and sourced) science. LessHeard vanU (talk) 00:50, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Argument for 'code section' inclusion

[edit]

Above LessHeard vanU asked for a synopsis of the arguments pro and con. Here's the section that was removed.

Since there is a dispute I am collapsing the content so it isn't mirrored - no opinion regarding the ultimiate (non) inclusion. LessHeard vanU (talk) 23:36, 5 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The CRU files also included temperature data processing software written in Fortran and IDL as well as programmer comments and a readme file.[1][2] On BBC Newsnight, software engineer John Graham-Cumming said that the code lacked clear documentation and audit history, and included a bug in its error handling code.[3] Myles Allen, head of the Climate Dynamics group at the University of Oxford, said that the code investigated by Newsnight had nothing at all to do with the HadCRUT temperature record used for climate reconstructions, which is maintained at the Met Office and not at CRU.[4]

References

  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference SMH-12-04 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference freesoftware was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ Cite error: The named reference newsnight-code was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  4. ^ Cite error: The named reference Myles Allen, guardian was invoked but never defined (see the help page).

Here's why it deserves inclusion:

  • The article is about a controversy. The code is a WP:notable part of that controversy. It comprises the bulk of the released material and is included in many RS descriptions of the incident.
  • The section in question deals with a the opinion of a notable expert in computer science Dr. John Graham-Cumming as expressed on the BBC's Newsnight program. Certainly the BBC is a reliable source. His comments were about the quality of the code, its documentation and audit controls. He made no assertions about the significance to CRU's work product.
  • Arguments that Dr. Cumming's opinion is wrong are irrelevant. Verifiability and not Truth is the standard for inclusion and it is verifiable he said what he said.
  • Arguments that he's not a RS fail. The Times has named his blog one of its Top 30 Science Blogs. He is published in multiple respected CS venues including O'Reily and was featured on the BBC as an expert. He thus easily meets the web notability threshold and it would be permissible IMHO to use his blog analyses directly.
  • The section rewrite was the result of collaborative editing over many days. The section itself has been in place for a long period of time.
  • WMC's removal of this section without discussion IMHO violates the spirit if not the letter of the article's terms of probation. Allowing the exclusion to stand rewards bad behavior.

JPatterson (talk) 22:15, 5 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Initial conclusions

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The section under discussion was initiated here by Oren0 "per Talk..." (it seems that the content was already discussed, doubtless with the usual advocacy and resistance - please be kind and not provide links...) and was promptly reverted by Tony Sidaway, possibly in mistake when also reverting a "SPA", and then restored by Oren0. The content remained, with some minor wikification type edits, until WMC removed it. WMC gave notice of his action on the article talkpage, giving his rationale. The action was reverted, and WMC again reverted under his 1RR restriction. Much discussion ensued, with some vocal support of WMC's actions and equally vocal criticism. Much has been made of the reliability of Newsnight as a reliable source, and the specific expertise of the featured commentator, and the validity of the code he commented upon. In an effort to resolve the issues then brought forward several variants of the content were proposed, of which some attracted more support than others. One of those "shorter" proposals, which had garnered some support from most participants was re-introduced by Heyitspeter and then promptly reverted by WMC.
Wikipedia:CONSENSUS#Consensus as a result of the editing process notes that an edit may be challenged, but if it is not then a consensus is assumed. However, consensus can change and subsequent challenges are entirely legitimate. When an action against the apparent existing consensus takes place, a discussion then ensues to see if the change has consensus. If not, the status quo is retained (this is the fundamental basis of both WP:BRD and WP:WHEEL).
My initial conclusions is that the content quickly formed consensus in that it was not materially altered for a calender month - all involved editors appear to have made minor, wikignoming, edits to it. The content was ultimately removed as part of a challenge to its status as reliably sourced content, which is permissible. There was no obvious or indicated consensus for its removal, and the rationale for the removal was itself challenged, and per WP:BRD the content was returned. Again, this conforms to WP policy and practice. After self reverting an intervening removal - under his 1RR restriction - WMC again removed the content under the basis that it was unreliably sourced. I see no claim to consensus, only to a discussion, as a rationale for the removal. This I think is unsupported by WP policy, guidelines, etc. I am also unable to find that any of the proposed alternatives presented had firm consensus, although the one re-instated by Heyitspeter was the one with most support. However, I do not think that no consensus for a proposed version negates the fact that there was an existing consensus for inclusion of the content generally. The final removal again did not refer to consensus, but stated WMC's opinion on the reliability of the source, which has not itself found consensus as a legitimate reason for removal of the content. This again I feel is contrary to accepted WP practice.
Unless I can be shown a consensus that the material should be excluded, my understanding is that there is a consensus for the content to be included in some form. I also believe that WMC has edit warred against consensus by reverting reinstatement of the content after failing to gain consensus for his initial removal. It would be beneficial if any comment about my findings would refer to policy. LessHeard vanU (talk) 00:11, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Just so you know, I consciously removed the discussion of the code, which I regarded as very poorly sourced and uninformed. I withdrew from editing the article shortly afterwards. If the content was ever restored and not continually challenged, as you suggest, I would find that most extraordinary because it was so obviously poorly sourced. There may be editors who regard everything coming from the BBC, Reuters, the New York Times or whatever to be reliable. Those people are wrong in fact and wrong as to Wikipedia policy. It is for Wikipedians to decide whether a factual statement is verifiable. The only factual statement in the NewsNight report appears to be that a self-appointed software expert, who happened to have a blog, had expressed an opinion (which, predictably, he has now largely disowned). That almost certainly failed due weight in December and quite obviously fails it now.
If the section has been improved since then with other sources that's a different matter, but it would seem extraordinary to me that William M. Connolley was the only person in over a month to express any reservations with that poorly sourced item. I certainly had no time for such rubbish, as you will see from my comments on the talk page during the time of my editing. I was certainly not alone in vociferously attacking the inclusion of an item on the code, at a time when the purpose for which the code was to be used by CRU, the means of selection by a malicious hacker, and other questions of its provenance, had still to be answered. To my knowledge those questions are yet to be answered. No sensible software expert would touch this with a barge pole.
I think you may well have completely misread the status of that extremely contentious code section. --TS 01:08, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I have struck my comment regarding your removal of the section. I would note that I spent many hours clicking through the edit history of the article to determine whether the content was removed between your and WMC doing so. I didn't see any. Anyone wishing to prove otherwise has my sympathy (and a wish for fast connections) in repeating the task.
I have no comment as regards the validity of the commentary regarding the code, nor as regards to Newsnight as a reliable source. I looked at this simply from the basis of WP policy regarding consensus and its application. Thanks anyhoo for your input - although given your comments I hope you understand that you no longer qualify as an uninvolved admin. Cheers, LessHeard vanU (talk) 01:19, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The fact that he's not an admin at all might also disqualify him from being an uninvolved admin. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 01:24, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not an admin, obviously. LessHeard vanU, I suggest that if you look at the archives of the talk page you will find ongoing criticism of the code section running throughout January. That is what I found. At least one other editor said that it was "pants", another said he'd prefer to delete it entirely. For an informed editor to suggest that there was any kind of consensus for that section at any time in January would require some considerable effort. I suggest that you may have arrived at a premature conclusion because there had been no actual edit warring. --TS 01:29, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, I forget (and apologise for any inadvertent sand in claw). I am going to formulate an addendum, which I think you should also review - you know your edit history better than I. LessHeard vanU (talk) 01:38, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Minor point: WMC's revert restriction to the whole topic area was not enacted until the fourth, but that article has been under a specific 1RR restriction for a month now so the analysis holds. I think that the key point here is that most of the material is still covered at Climatic Research Unit hacking incident#Content of the documents. I see a broad consensus at /Archive 24 and the current talkpage indicating that the article as a whole and that section in particular spend too much time focusing on the minutia of the coverage of the topic at the expense of a broader, more encyclopedic treatment. My reading of the relevant timeline goes:
Had he also removed the summary, this would have been editing disruptively without consensus. As most of the material remained, however, I read this as a minor issue of presentation, not a fundamental one of edit warring. The form of the discussion could have been better, clearly, but raising discussion instead of blithely edit warring over every minor point is one of the behaviours that this probation is supposed to encourage. I do not think that anyone has crossed the line here. - 2/0 (cont.) 01:54, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Whuff.... I shall read through the above, likely tomorrow. LessHeard vanU (talk) 02:01, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Following Tony Sidaways comments I am not so certain as to the consensus regarding Oren0's inclusion of the section. Per WP:BRD Oren0 should not have reverted the removal, but it is clear to me (per AGF) that Oren0 considered that TS's actions were probably related solely to the ip's edits regarding "whistleblowing" around their edit (theirs having the time stamp as the ip's subsequent one). I don't know if this was discussed, but think it unlikely given TS's comments above. The fact that the material was subsequently edited by numerous contributors and not removed/challenged until 31 days later I feel still indicates that, although incorrectly returned, there was consensus for it. That is, that is my provisional feelings. I will see if 2/0's links provide any different angles... But not tonight! LessHeard vanU (talk) 02:10, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I do not agree with either reconstructions of the time line. As TS said, the section had engendered mush bickering over most of the month. WMC and others had removed the entire section multiple times only to have someone from the other side revive it. It was this removal at 09:14, Jan 28 by WMC that was the impetus for the Archive 24 discussion 2/0 refers to above. The result of this discussion was implemented some twelve hours later here by NigelJ, an editor who most often agrees with the AWG proponents. This version with only minor variations stood until here, which is the top of 2/0's timeline above. The HC/NM version was even shorter than the previous compromise version and was moved out of a separate section and into the body of the article. We were discussing this development constructively I think. OrenO's revert was not back to the "full version" as 2/0 seems to0 think, but rather to the much shorter compromise version. The refs got broken in the process and were being were being worked on when WMC again removed the entire section and here we are. The point of all this is to show that the "compromise" version was a collaborative effort and stood for a week before it was undone. TS's comments while true are not really germane to this incident because he had left the article before the work on the compromise version began. JPatterson (talk) 02:53, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Per TS and DS, and as I've said elsewhere: there has never been consensus to either include or exclude that section: opinions are polarised. In particular, silence does not denote consent William M. Connolley (talk) 09:48, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This is why I carefully noted both Wikipedia:CONSENSUS#Consensus as a result of the editing process and Wikipedia:CONSENSUS#Consensus can change. The opportunity to challenge the consensus for inclusion was missed when Oren0 reverted, in good faith I believe, TS's removal of the content on or around 27th December 2009. Notwithstanding that there may have been reservations on the validity of the material, and that "consent" for its conclusion should not be construed by the lack of noted opposition, the fact that the section remained in place for 31 days does indicate that it then required consensus for its removal, per policy. However, because there were good faith efforts to then find a form of words that would be agreeable it might be argued (I would, certainly) that there was no longer a consensus for it in its original form. Per 2/0's clarification above, a form of words that had most support was re-introduced, was removed with valid concerns, it was resubmitted with those concerns addressed. You then removed it under the rationale by which you removed the original (but subsequently edited) content. While I AGF that your removal of the content was because you believed that consensus for such material was not in place, my review was that there was consensus for it to be addressed. Regardless of your opinion in relation to the reliability of both the source and the expertise of the commentator quoted, are you able to agree that both the existence of the original content for 4+ weeks and its refining as a result of discussion and agreement provides for an argument of consensus per "Consensus as a result of the editing process", and thus the permanent removal of the material requires its own consensus? LessHeard vanU (talk) 12:37, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Not at all. Various editors have made clear their opposition to that section, and the quality of its sourcing, and the inappropriateness of the sources used. If you want to know if there is consensus for insertion or removal (as I say, I don't think there is either, if you define consensus as > 75% support; of course, you may have a different defn) then the obvious thing to do is to ask people William M. Connolley (talk) 14:08, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Lets count, as expressed in Talk:Climatic_Research_Unit_hacking_incident#Rv:_why. For inclusion: Marknutley, Jpat34721, A Quest for Knowledge, Thepm (weakly), Heyitspeter. Against: William M. Connolley, ScienceApologist, Dave souza, Scjessey, NigelJ. I count that as 4.5 (in) vs 5 (out), which supports my contention of no consensus either way. It destroys Marknutley (etc etc's) contention that there is clear consensus for inclusion. From the above, I think we could reasonably add Tony Sidaway to the "out" side William M. Connolley (talk) 14:21, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Your count is confused because the talk page is not in chronological order. As we worked through the language the compromise gathered support. For instance, it was Nigelj who implemented the compromise edit, you can't put him on your side. Dave souza and Hipocrite also went along albeit reluctantly. I think it is important when judging consensus (whatever that has come to mean) one gives particular weight to the number willing to cross the line in the interest of comity. It is hard work, which is why those who engaged in it find your unilateral action so hard to swallow. JPatterson (talk) 16:08, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
As someone with a degree in Computer Science and a published author in this field, I find Tony's assessment of this source to be without foundation. You'll note that Tony's assessment rejects the reliability of the source without going into any details as to why the source is unreliable. I'll go into details shortly.
First, here's some background on the source. The BBC News report quotes an established expert commenting on his field of expertise. According to our article, John Graham-Cumming studied at Oxford University and has a BA/MA in Mathematics and Computation and a Ph.D. in computer security. Assuming our article is correct (I did not check it), I see no warning signs about this expert's opinion. If there are any specific concerns about this expert, please raise them here. Otherwise, rejecting Graham-Cumming without justification is completely unwarranted.
Second, in my expert opinion, I find nothing unusual in Graham-Cumming's assessment of the code quality to reject its reliability. I've been performing code reviews for years and the problems that Graham-Cumming reports are exactly the types of problems code reviews are intended to uncover.
Graham-Cumming' says that lack of documentation is an indication of unprofessional code quality. This is correct. Without proper documentation, it is difficult for maintenance developers to understand and maintain the code they write and increases the likelihood of introducing bugs into their programs. Even if the original developer and the maintenance developer are the same person, code I write today might - 6 month later - be as foreign to me as if someone else had wrote it.
In fact, I would not allow a developer on my team to write code without proper documentation. I'd one-up Graham-Cumming's assessment and say that any developer who doesn't know how to write code really needs to get out of our industry and find another career. The report shows a section of code where the error message is "Oooooooopps". No, that code does not go into production, not if I have anything to say about it.
With regards to the issue that Graham-Cumming uncovers, the code does seem to be problematic. If an error occurs, I didn't see anything to resolve the error or even log it. This code smacks of VB's dreaded On Error Resume Next.
Further, the code shown doesn't contain any documentation to explain why this is OK. To go on a bit of a sidebar, normally when you write code, if you do anything unusual (such as ignore errors, throw out data or fail to log errors - all three of which the code appears to do), you should at least explain why you are doing what you're doing. Without knowing exactly what the code is supposed to be doing (and again because it's not documented), I can't say how significant of an issue it is. It could be completely meaningless or could introduce significant errors in the output it produces.
Granted, I've not used Fortran, but I have programmed in (in alphabetic order) assembler (IBM 370), C, C#, COBOL, RPG, (classic) VB and VB.NET and probably a couple languages that I've forgotten about. The problems uncovered by Graham-Cumming such as lack of documentation and poor error handling are common across programming languages. I should also note that everything I've said is based solely on what's show in the BBC News report. I did not examine the source code myself as that would be original research.
I see no reason why this source's reliability should be rejected. No reason at all. Indeed, the fact that no one's even provided a reason smacks of WP:IDONTLIKEIT. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 16:44, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
As someone with a degree in Computer Science and a published author in this field. No. You're anonymous. You may or may not have either of these properties - we have no means of telling. This is a pretend argument by authority, and so is even less valid than an argument by authority. NJ who implemented the compromise edit, you can't put him on your side. DS and HC also went along albeit reluctantly. - no. All three of these are clearly in favour of removing the section in the discussion I've pointed to, which immediately follows my edit William M. Connolley (talk) 17:10, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I note that WMC did not address any of the substance of my comment. Can we please stay focused here? A Quest For Knowledge 17:20, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The entirety of your comment is predicated on something invalid; therefore the entire thing is invalid. If you care to strike the invalid portions and leave some substance, if there is any, that would be great. But it all looks rather irrelevant to me: the issue is who supported removal, not whether the sources are RS or not. We all know that I think they aren't and you think they are: your comment above adds nothing. So yes: do try to stay focussed: deleting the entirety of your comment and our followups would be the best way of achieving this William M. Connolley (talk) 17:25, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The problem here, A Quest for Knowledge, is that you've posed as an expert in the field and made some ex cathedra pronouncements, which will be ignored. I won't bother to relate my own qualifications with respect to Fortran code, because they are completely irrelevant. I have pointed to the "expert" sources quoted in early versions of the code section, that have now retracted much of their opinion, and I have also pointed out that because of questions as to provenance little that is sensible can be said about the code. In any organization specimens of shockingly poor code may be procured by a diligent and malicious snooper. Whether they are representative of the organization's software quality standards is moot. Obviously the hackers had no intention of making the Climatic Research Unit look good. It follows that it is still far too early to say anything about the implications of the hacked code source, and every software expert with any sense knows this. --TS 17:29, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
WMC, please stop assuming bad faith.
Tony, you did not provide any cites to say that Graham-Cumming has "retracted much of their opinion" in your original comment or in your second comment. Can you please do so in order for other editors to examine it for themselves? A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 17:37, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Graham-Cumming appear to be an expert in professional coding, his blog shows that he acknowledges he is not an expert in the way code is used by practitioners of science. It's my view that even the better greatly shortened version gives undue weight to a professional coder's view of something that is commonplace in science, giving the false impression that it is unique to CRU. However, the issue may be moot as in splitting the article in summary style as previously agreed on the talk page, I cautiously put the earlier version in, then changed it to the most recent version before deletion. It clearly needs more work, and on that article there's room to resolve the issues. The main article summary now doesn't get into this unresolved detail. . . dave souza, talk 17:39, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
<edit conflict, sort of> While I was writing this, CoM restored the battleground.[18] .
Dave, like Tony, you failed to provide any cites to back up your assertions. Without cites, I cannot validate your claims one way or another. Please provide them so other editors can evaluate them. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 19:10, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Thought you had a link to G-C's blog, here's an example (read to the bottom) and a useful perspective. His expertise obviously can lead to small improvements in the real code (not the archived stuff from CRU of unknown purpose), the point that academic code isn't always of commercial quality is addressed here though not from a climate expert viewpoint, but fortunately things are improving. We're still rather short of good analysis on the actual stolen code. . . dave souza, talk 19:49, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
As I said repeatedly during the discussions, the section is based on two ideas, that really do annihilate each other: The BBC and others say it's crap code and Myles Allen says, but the BBC (and these others) forgot to ask what it's for, it's certainly not "to do with the HadCRUT temperature record at all". The pieces of code analysed might be doodles, experiments, teaching aids, students' homeworks. The BBC et al forgot to ask. This is an incontrovertible fact: at this stage, no one knows the purpose of this code. (If anyone has a reliable reference that says what analysis, model or publication any of the code was written for, let's see it.) The short summary at the end of 'Content of the documents' is more than sufficient in the light of this. --Nigelj (talk) 20:09, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Dave, I didn't see anything in those cites where Graham-Cumming retracts anything in regard to the BBC News report, but perhaps I missed it?
Nigel: I'm not aware of any policy or guideline that states that when reliable sources conflict, they 'cancel' each other out. As far as I know, when reliable sources disagree, you document the dispute. Consider, for example, the debate among historians regarding the functionalism/intentionalism of the Holocaust. Or the debate among scientists whether the ALH84001 meteorite contains evidence of ancient life on Mars. We don't delete the article on whether there was/is life on Mar on the basis that we don't know. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 20:28, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The problem here isn't about reliable sources at all, but about a very unreliable source being given undue prominence. This happens. Quite how some Wikipedians have gotten the concept of the intrinsically reliable source into their heads I do not know. Something is verifiable or it is not. What is verifiable here is that a programmer looked at some code of unknown provenance and identified some bugs. All the rest was interpretation, speculation and whatnot, most of which has been taken back by the programmer himself. We are not obliged to cite singleton reports of clearly poor quality. --TS 00:26, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Tony, this story is absolutely a reliable source. You keep saying that this expert has retracted most of what he said but have not provided any proof of this. This is the third time I'm asking you to provide your sources for this. Either you have them or you don't. A Quest For Knowledge 02:19, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
It's one of those I didn't hear that arguments. I don't do those. Please check the links you've already been given. Obviously it's ridiculous to argue whether a story is a "reliable source" without examining the facts. The policy isn't called Verifiability by accident, you know. It isn't called "I read it in the Times so it must be true." --TS 02:24, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Tony, but you haven't provided any links. This is the fourth time I've asked that you do so. Please don't accuse me of engaging in I didn't hear that arguments when you're the one who refuses to provide any cites. Also, it doesn't help when you confuse The Times with the BBC or claim that I've examined the facts when I've already done so. I note again that you've failed to provide any cites and failed to address any of the substance of my post despite asking you repeatedly to respond. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 13:39, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Conclusions

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Although of a contentious content and gestation, it appears that the section Code and documentation existed for a sufficient period unchallenged to indicate consensus per policy; it was edited several times to amend/improve its presentation, but the meaning of the content was not altered. WMC then removed the content, citing concerns with the content but was reverted. At this point of the WP:BRD cycle (WMC being Bold, and being Reverted) the next step was for discussion regarding whether the content should be removed; that is, consensus to keep should be changed. Instead, a revert war - kept to a slow pace in part owing to technical 1RR per day limits being imposed - ensured. WMC was responsible for removing of the material, against consensus and in disregard to the notices provided he was doing so. The material removed was the focus of some discussion on how a compromised form of words might be included, and this was attempted and again removed by WMC. My view is that material that already had a consensus and was being worked into a consensually refined form was removed by WMC solely on the basis that they disagreed with the validity of the sources - which is not a basis for which consensus may be over-ridden.
In trying to find opinion on my initial conclusions, all of the respondees took issue with the validity of the content. While I understand their concerns stated, I did not get a view on whether my understanding of concensus was in error or not. In the absence of an opposing opinion on the substance of my conclusion regarding the establishment of a consensus, I now assume I was correct.
Regardless of subsequent, or in this case possible prior, concern regarding the validity of a good faith edit, once consensus has been established for the inclusion of content - by dint of it remaining unaltered in intent for a period - consensus for its removal must be found. This can be done by simply removing the content, as if it is uncontested then the new consensus is assumed. If removal is contested (by revert) then a consensus for removal should be found at the appropriate venue. Unless the content is vandalism, or a BLP matter, or is otherwise against policy, then it cannot be removed without evidence of consensus to do so.
Therefore, WMC did edit war against consensus and disregard notices to that effect. He further edit warred to remove similar content that had been amended per a discussion that sought to resolve the issues regarding the material, which might rightly be considered consensus. WMC failed to engage in any meaningful discussion regarding the existing consensus, although in good faith this may be because he failed to see it. Regardless, WMC did not show either good faith or due diligence in this matter.
William M. Connolley is admonished and warned against further disregard to application of policy, guideline, and accepted good practice. At the time of writing WMC has been sanctioned for other unrelated - but same general topic - matters and I therefore will not be piling on to add any further sanction. I would strongly remind all editors, though, that compliance with WP policies, etc, is paramount if they are to expect to remain to be able to edit these articles. If the "other side" has established content within article space according WP practice, in good faith, then only use of WP practice can remove it regardless of the concerns regarding the material. The standard for removing content should be no lower than its inclusion. In future, anyone found disregarding or acting in defiance of WP practice, once notified, may be sanctioned by any uninvolved administrator. LessHeard vanU (talk) 00:52, 13 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

So WMC is found to have violated WP:EW, WP:AGF and WP:CONSENSUS, but is not sanctioned because he has previously been sanctioned for unrelated reasons in the same topic area? To me this is very obviously problematic, but for some people it may not be so I may as well try an analogy: Person x is convicted of assault and battery, serves time and subsequently commits murder. Should we commute the latter sentence due to x's previous history of violence? The rational reaction would be, "To the contrary!"
I've not seen the kind of response given by you in this section elsewhere in Wikipedia. When someone doggedly violates policy the general response is to move from blocks to bans, and not to scale back blocks due to the existence of previous blocks. I understand it's not always easy to step back and get perspective when one is engaged in a specific instance of dispute resolution, so I figured I'd point this out. It'd be nice for you to reconsider, especially given WMC's consistent violations of WP:AGF and WP:CIVIL on climate change talkpages, and minimal (recent) contribution to actual content. Whether you amend this "ruling" isn't that important to me, though. It's the general pattern that bothers me. Thank you.--Heyitspeter (talk) 23:33, 13 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
No, the problem is that LHVU's stuff above is so tortured and illogical that no-one supports it. The obvious fact that I was right, and the material is gone from the article, is relevant William M. Connolley (talk) 00:09, 14 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
(to H) The legal remedy is usually to allow sentences to run concurrently - it gets noted in the judgement but it is not tacked onto the end of the sentence to extend it. British legal system, anyhoo. However, this is not any legal system - just a volunteer edited encyclopedia. WMC is aware of my findings, and disagrees. If he thinks policy sustains him, or just doesn't care about policy, he will make the same actions - if he gets sanctioned, because he chose to disregard the warnings, then he has no grounds for complaint. If he doesn't make the same actions, I don't care what his reasons are - the encyclopedia continues to be edited.
(to WMC) Someone agreed with me on my talkpage, but then it never was a vote. LessHeard vanU (talk) 00:21, 14 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
WMC: The content is still there although it's been shortened, proving once again, that you were wrong to edit-war. A less combative style would do you well. Wikipedia should not be a battleground for ideological disputes. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 00:24, 14 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
It actually hasn't even been shortened, it's been moved here--Heyitspeter (talk) 01:40, 14 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Does "disregarding or acting in defiance of WP practice" here refer solely to WP:CONSENSUS or does it also extend to such policies as WP:WEIGHT, WP:RS, etc? Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 00:25, 14 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Here, specifically, WP:CONSENSUS. Everywhere, including here, all policies. LessHeard vanU (talk) 00:48, 14 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Soapboxing on Talk:Global warming

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[19]. Any chance of admin intervention? William M. Connolley (talk) 17:31, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

And he was responding to Dave Souza (who is constantly going off about "tories" and the "torygraph") who was talking about linking how "denier" science is funded by the fossil fuel industry. In that context, the response to him was quite predictable. TheGoodLocust (talk) 20:06, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Predictable maybe; but not helping to improve collegiality, or the article. --Nigelj (talk) 20:15, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Nor was the comment he responded to - why not go directly after the source rather than the predicted reaction to it? Otherwise baiting is simply being rewarded. TheGoodLocust (talk) 20:22, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
So chop the lot, stop excusing it William M. Connolley (talk) 20:25, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Go for it, I was simply providing the context of the situation. TheGoodLocust (talk) 20:33, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Your context seems a little odd, there was no mention of the Torygraph or Daily Telegraph in my preceding comment, and I'm absolutely serious that the "controversy" issue should note Oil and Motor industry funding of some (but by no means all) opposition to action on AGW. The Indy (oops, Independent) is a reasonable source that the accusations of this are being made. Note that I was giving a properly sourced suggestion for improvement. You may find it uncomfortable that many people seem to be misled by pov-pushing Daily Telegraph reporting but it's a serious issue. As for context, unsourced claims that "FAQ spouts a lot of nonsensical gobbledygook before stating '10 years isn't enough time to show that!' The fact of the matter is that the PDO has gone into its cool phase and the AMO isn't that far down the line. We're in for cooling"[20] are unhelpful and fail talk page guidelines. . . dave souza, talk 22:23, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It is interesting, I did a search of "torygraph" and "souza" and found that Connolley uses that term too. You've also used the term "tory" frequently (search results = 47), and since your use of it usually seems hostile, I looked up the wikipedia article on the subject and it said, "In the United Kingdom, after 1832 and supersession of the Tory Party by the Conservative Party "Tory" has become shorthand for a member of the Conservative Party or for the party in general, sometimes but by no means always as a term of abuse." Of course, context is everything, but I must wonder why you and Connolley must refer to the "Torygraph," tory-this and tory-that? However, the point of the tory-nonsense, and your charge about skeptics being funded by the oil industry, is the overall over-politicized (and therefore polarized) climate that such constant attacks will inevitably lead to responses like the one Connolley posted.
As for my quote that you popped in there, that was in response to a deflection to the FAQ, and what I did was summarize the "answer" in the FAQ, which was simply another deflection, and explained why it was wrong. :) TheGoodLocust (talk) 23:36, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oh and I should point out that the "FAQ" question that I debunked was essentially unsourced as well :). TheGoodLocust (talk) 23:43, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Long digression on Tories
It would be fair to say that British journalism is far more openly partisan than in some other countries. To describe the Telegraph as "basically like the Church of England, the Tory party at prayer", is a common trope that was repeated most recently by Kelvin McKenzie. The Telegraph has always voiced the conservative position just as The Guardian has always voiced the liberal position. --TS 23:49, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps it is, but that doesn't mean wikipedia editors should be throwing around insults (like those I showed) so freely. I don't think I've ever commented on the Guardian or BBC's journalistic integrity, I have my opinions of them, but I'm not calling them "Big Brother Cares" or the Guardian(of socialism) (just examples, I have no idea what denigrating names are used for them). TheGoodLocust (talk) 23:53, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
It's not a matter of integrity, but of political bias. The Telegraph is quite openly biased towards the conservative position and this fact is universally acknowledged throughout British society, not least by the Telegraph itself. "Torygraph" is a common demotic name for the Telegraph. --TS 23:57, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I did a google search of "torygraph" and didn't find a single "nice" use of the term. Also, one of the first few results was from Connolley's blog and shows exactly why "torygraph" and "tory" are being used as epithets and shouldn't be (in fact, probably breaking Connolley's civility parole now that I think about it). The fact of the matter is that "tory" is often used as a form of abuse and adding "graph" on the end doesn't change that fact. It is rude, it is unneccessary and it is disruptive. TheGoodLocust (talk) 00:03, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
It's possible that there are some cultural problems here. The Tory Party is commonly known by that name, Tories call themselves Tories and commonly use the word at the hustings. There's no shame in being a Tory. It's a fact of British politics that goes back many centuries. There may be parts of the world, and locales, where the word "Tory" is an insult. This isn't the case in England, by and large. --TS 00:11, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps, but the use of it is quite obvious, and if I am in error then so is the wikipedia article on the subject. Although, I suppose I can ask my Dad his opinion on the subject (being British) when I next speak with him. TheGoodLocust (talk) 00:21, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
TheGoodLocust, would you explain how you believe yourself to have "debunked" a FAQ question, and identify which FAQ question it was you think you debunked? --TS 23:50, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Most FAQ questions in the global warming articles are poorly sourced or if sourced the question isn't actually based on the source. In this case I believe it was question 3 or 5, and the source appeared to substantiate only the last sentence (which was rather unimportant). TheGoodLocust (talk) 23:53, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Then as a priority, identify whichever FAQ question it is, and discuss the problem on the relevant talk page. Boasting on this page about having "debunked" a FAQ doesn't help to improve Wikipedia if the problematics FAQ has not been fixed. --TS 00:02, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
As you are (or should be) well aware I spent some time pointing out the various inaccurate, inaccessible and "blog" sources used in the FAQs and met with much resistance. There is so much resistance to change in these articles that meaningful improvement is nearly impossible in the articles and completely impossible in the FAQs where the only people who edit them (and reference them) care enough to control the content - only when the cultural tides turn against this apocolyptic AGW nonsense will wikipedia be able to improve itself (if it has a reputation left by then). TheGoodLocust (talk) 00:19, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The title of this section includes the word "soapboxing". You've just referred to "this apocolyptic AGW nonsense". Would you like to reconsider the way you express yourself? --TS 00:28, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
As long as the likes of Scjessey are saying "billions" of people will die from global warming then I'm perfectly accurate in that statement. TheGoodLocust (talk) 00:34, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Well, at least we know where he stands - alongside those who would speak of "this evolution nonsense" or "this round earth nonsense"... -- ChrisO (talk) 00:30, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I'm a firm believer in evolution ChrisO. It has been observed and makes perfect sense - AGW does not make logical nor scientific sense to me. I may be wrong about it, but if I ever see convincing evidence then I'll change my mind. TheGoodLocust (talk) 00:34, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I don't doubt that you believe in evolution. However, you are making exactly the same argument that creationists do - "evolution does not make logical nor scientific sense to me" - or in other words the argument from personal incredulity, a classic logical fallacy. I rather think that you will not change your mind, because your objection to AGW clearly has little to do with the science, which is every bit as strong as that for evolution, and therefore no evidence will serve to convince you. -- ChrisO (talk) 00:41, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
And the arguments pro-AGW people use are usually based on the logical fallacies of arguments from authority and popularity. Everyone has to make up their own mind on everything in the universe and I decided a long time ago to trust my own judgements due to my record of intellectual courage, genius and overall accuracy. :) I have perfectly valid scientific reasons for my anti-AGW beliefs and find the pro-AGW arguments to be immensely flawed almost 100% of the time. TheGoodLocust (talk) 01:00, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
This discussion is now officially weird. And off topic. Thegoodlocust, you know that the neutral point of view applies on Wikipedia and ScJessey's "apocalyptic nonsense" or whatever does not influence the content. If it did I'd be the first to complain. We don't do the kind or original research you appear to be proposing on Wikipedia. The scientists have made their arguments public and submitted them to peer review, and the overwhelming verdict is that there is a warming trend and that it's most likely to be strongly influenced by human activities.
My opinion on global warming (which you don't know, incidentally) is immaterial. Yours should be too. That I edit articles according to the reliable sources on the topic is all that matters. Now please stop defending your own flagrant soapboxing by reference to the same behavior by other editors. You know better than that. --TS 01:29, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
If someone asks me a question then I will answer. If someone implies something that is patently false about me (like that I'm a creationist) then I will respond to the charges. Additionally, I don't appreciate being accused of soapboxing when my only off-topic posts in this thread are the direct result of your and ChrisO's posts that were directed at me. In short, if you are so worried about soapboxing then don't put out so much bait. TheGoodLocust (talk) 01:48, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Re Spoonkymonkey (talk · contribs); don't know him/her, but their contrib history shows a lot of activity in December/Jan in these topics - with some major breaks. Is there history of warnings - the talkpage shows only a general topic probation notice - or requests to cease soapboxing? Requests for admin action would be more effective if there was some history for said sysops to work on. LessHeard vanU (talk) 00:33, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I gave them a warning here. I do not know about general issues, but I saw nothing relevant at their talkpage since being informed of the probation. - 2/0 (cont.) 02:07, 9 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
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