Revision as of 01:53, 26 May 2009

Requests for amendment

Use this section: To request changes to remedies or enforcement provisions, for example to make them stronger or deal with unforeseen problems. To request lifting of an existing Arbitration sanction that is no longer needed (banned users may email the Ban Appeals Subcommittee directly) How to file a request (please use this format!): Go to this request template, and copy the text in the box at the bottom of the page. Click here to edit the amendment subpage, and paste the template immediately below this box and above any other outstanding requests. Using the format provided by the template, try to show exactly what you want amended and state your reasoning for the change in 1000 words or fewer, citing supporting diffs where necessary. Although it should be kept short, you may add to your statement in future if needed as the word limit is not rigidly enforced. List any other users affected or involved. Sign your statement with ~~~~. If your request will affect or involve other users, you must notify each involved person on their user talk page. Return to your request and provide diffs showing that other involved users have been notified in the section provided for notification. This is not a page for discussion. It may be to your advantage to paste the template into your user space or use an off-line text editor to compose your request before posting it here. The main Requests for arbitration page is not the place to work on rough drafts. Arbitrators or Clerks may summarily remove or refactor discussion without comment. Requests that do not clearly state the following will be removed by Arbitrators or Clerks without comment: The name of the case to be amended (which should be linked in the request header), The clause(s) to be modified, referenced by number or section title as presented in the Final Decision, The desired modifications to the aforementioned clause(s), and A rationale for the change(s) of no more than 1000 words. Requests from banned users should be made by e-mail directly to the Committee. Only Arbitrators and Clerks may remove requests from this page. Do not remove a request unless you are one of those individuals.

Motion to amend prior case: Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/West Bank - Judea and Samaria

Statement by other user

Clerk notes

Arbitrator views and discussion

• See this discussion for background. There's an ambiguity in the decision resulting from the wrong term accidentally being used. The definition of the scope was intented to extend to all articles related to the conflict, or edits related to the conflict made to any other article (cf. the definition of what the biographies of living persons policy applies to). --bainer (talk) 23:49, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Motions

There are currently fifteen active arbitrators, so eight votes are a majority.

1) In remedy 1.1 ("Area of conflict") of the West Bank - Judea and Samaria case, "... the Palestine/Israel dispute ..." is replaced with "... the Arab-Israeli conflict ...".

Support:

1. bainer (talk) 01:53, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Oppose:

Abstain:

1. Recused. Newyorkbrad (talk) 00:41, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Request to amend prior case: WP:RANDARB

List of any users involved or directly affected, and confirmation that all are aware of the request:

• User:TallNapoleon

• User:ChildofMidnight ()

• User:J Readings
• User:Karbinski

• User:KD Tries Again (already posted here)

• User:Skomorokh

• User:Snowded

Statement by TallNapoleon

I would like to request that my topic ban on editing Ayn Rand related articles be lifted. There is a great deal of work that needs to be done on Rand related articles, including major ongoing consolidation and cleanup being led by Skomorokh and J Readings (please see Template:Objectivism and Ayn Rand Cross Talk, which has become a central hub for these efforts). Currently, my limit to talk pages is severely limiting my ability to improve the project, as even in the most uncontroversial of cases I have to ask for other users to make the change, which is frustrating to me and, I am sure, them. Were the committee to lift this restriction, I would voluntarily place myself on 0RR (excepting, of course, vandalism removal), would avoid making any controversial edits without first gaining clear consensus via the Talk page, and would make sure to avoid involving myself in any edit wars. Thank you for your consideration. TallNapoleon (talk) 03:40, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

As a side note, I only listed myself because I don't believe this directly affects other users. I did post a link to this on Template:Objectivism and Ayn Rand Cross Talk, and if the Committee likes I would be glad to notify all other members of the original ArbComm proceeding. TallNapoleon (talk) 04:11, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

I originally posted this request at the suggestion of Skomorokh, who is I'm sure tired of having to make noncontroversial edits for me that I could largely make myself (I was originally planning to just ask for permission to tag articles).

The best place to see my involvement would be at the cross talk page, where I've started actively hunting through the "darker corners" of the Objectivism-related articles. There are a number of these articles, and they tend to be are extremely poorly written, of dubious notability, and POV. Many are in need of being merged or prodded.

In terms of the kinds of edits I would like to be able to do:

First, I would like to be able to add tags to articles. This would help tremendously with sorting.

Second, I would like to be able to PROD and AFD articles. As this has the potential to be controversial, I would discuss any such move on the cross-talk page before doing so.

Third, culling inappropriate material. There's lots of this stuff in the Objectivism section. We just recently finished a cull of a couple of different sources that turned out to be nonnotable and/or self-published (books by Ronald Merrill and James S. Valliant). There is also, for example, the quotes section on Romantic Realism, which despite being an article about a topic that extends far beyond Rand consists only of Rand's quotes (also IIRC quotes sections are discouraged).

Fourth, fixing blatantly obvious POV, for instance, as shown here. I had to ask other users to make that fix despite the fact that it was totally non-controversial--it's never Wiki's place to say that someone's arguments are "oversimplified". I also repeatedly notified the talk page about edits from our problem IP (see EdJohnston's update to WP:RANDARB), e.g. , which frankly I would have fixed on my own.

Fifth, I intend to make grammatical and format fixes, and be the grammar Nazi I was raised to be.

Sixth, in those cases where I do decide to be bold (which will likely be rare) it will be done on a section or subsection level, one piece at a time, without trying to rewrite whole gigantic articles, making it easier for other users to comment and edit changes and for consensus to develop.

Seventh, I intend to implement changes where consensus has been reached.

In terms of if other editors believe I overstep myself, I do not presume to tell ArbComm what decision they should make, or what sanctions they should place on me. I would suggest that the thing to do would be to either bring it back here or to go to an admin. Admins and ArbComm are really better suited to answer that kind of question than I am. If lots of my edits are being reverted, I think the thing to do would be to look at context. Are my edits based on consensus and it's just one person reverting, are my edits a case of being WP:BOLD in the face of no consensus (which to be honest is not the best idea on many of these articles) or are they directly against consensus? One is not my fault, one is potentially problematic, and one is definitely problematic. But I'm not planning on breaking my word on this. I intend to work for consensus, to make universally acceptable changes, and above all not to edit war, which is what my original sanction was for. TallNapoleon (talk) 00:21, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

Carcharoth, I think Karbinski was pointing out the kind of edits I might make (or oppose) if I were not banned. Please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, Karbinski. TallNapoleon (talk) 08:00, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

Quick question to Vassyana--could the motion make clear whether or not I would be permitted to revert vandalism? TallNapoleon (talk) 06:47, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Statement by KD Tries Again

I have been spending some time trying to help with the Rand-related articles recently, and I can confirm TallNapoleon's statement that there is an immense amount of editorial work to do. It would be very helpful to have him back on board.KD Tries Again (talk) 16:33, 12 May 2009 (UTC)KD Tries Again

Statement by Snowded

Edit warring has continued on the article, but with new editors. Articles of this nature have significant issues on questions of weight and verifiability and attempting to deal with them simply as behavioural issues of the editors involved is at best a short term solution. Current editors have carried out far more RRs that KD ever did. I have no objection to his request, he has always been careful to attempt a NPOV and to properly source material in a field where he is knowledgeable. --Snowded (talk) 05:38, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

Sorry only just spotted this. RR as in 3RR etc. Since the Arbcom ruling edit warring has continued. My point was that there has been a lot worse behaviour than exhibited by TN since the ruling which has gone unpunished. I was not referring to KD. I am supporting TN being reinstated, although I think he should not be under any special restrictions. --Snowded (talk) 09:40, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Statement by Karbinski

A couple examples of edits he may have made to Objectivism (Ayn Rand) here and here. --Karbinski (talk) 10:43, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

As well an example of an edit to Objectivism (Ayn Rand) - here - that he objected to being reverted. --Karbinski (talk) 15:52, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

Statement by other user

Clerk notes

• I will be implementing the below motion and closing this thread shortly. AGK 13:40, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Arbitrator views and discussion

• There is a question of what effect this will have on the editing environment. If you could please inform the current active contributors of your request, it would be appreciated. Opinions of current participants would be helpful. (That said, I would give fair warning to any who might comment that while reasonable objections and opinions are welcome that this is not an open forum to slag on other editors or complain about the "evils" of one side or another.) If you could, please better illustrate the kind of contributions you intend to enact. Could you link to a couple of examples of changes you would have made? Can you provide a few links to show your participation in recent discussions and additionally highlight a few broadly accepted changes that were implemented where you took part in the preceding discussion? It will also help our determination if you better clarify what sort of restriction you are looking to volunteer. Can the restriction be enforced, as per normal, by any uninvolved administrator? If a lot of your edits are being reverted, should this be considered against your limited mainspace participation? If a portion of your edits are seen as controversial or pushing the line, should that be considered against your participation? How would you expect violations of the restriction to be treated? Should your restriction revert to the mainspace prohibition? Should you be blocked? Should you be placed under another restriction? Any information and context that you can provide will help us make a determination. --Vassyana (talk) 15:21, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
  • TallNapoleon seems to be have a good awareness of what boundaries he should respect. His request provides a suggestion for very strict editing conditions. No objections have been lodged, but some editors believe this would be of benefit and all indications appear to support that position. As such, I have proposed a motion below. --Vassyana (talk) 06:23, 20 May 2009 (UTC)
• Question for Snowed: what do you mean by "RR" and why are you referring to KD? This amendment request is about TallNapoleon. And a question for Karbinski - I'm not sure what you are saying here. What are your diffs showing? Are you objecting to TallNapoleon's restrictions being lifted or are you saying he has been editing the articles instead of the talk pages? The explanation by TallNapoleon makes sense - the question to Snowded still stands. 19:08, 16 May 2009 (UTC) Carcharoth (talk) 07:45, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the answer, Snowded. I think some restrictions are still needed, and have voted to support the motion below. Carcharoth (talk) 01:24, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Motions

1) The topic ban imposed on TallNapoleon (talk · contribs) (see WP:RANDARB#TallNapoleon topic-banned and warned) is removed. In place of a mainspace topic ban, TallNapoleon is subject to a zero-revert restriction (0RR) on Ayn Rand and related articles for the remainder of the six-month duration. He is instructed to seek talk page consensus before undertaking any potentially controversial edits. TallNapoleon is encouraged to continue his efforts to develop a functional consensus and improve articles related to the subject.

Support

1. As proposer, per my comments above. --Vassyana (talk) 06:23, 20 May 2009 (UTC)
2. Support; TallNapoleon seems to have improved and is working well with editors on talk pages. Sam Blacketer (talk) 09:35, 20 May 2009 (UTC)
3. Carcharoth (talk) 01:21, 21 May 2009 (UTC)
4. Newyorkbrad (talk) 02:56, 21 May 2009 (UTC)
5. Casliber (talk · contribs) 23:35, 21 May 2009 (UTC)
6. Kirill  16:13, 23 May 2009 (UTC)
7. — Rlevse • Talk • 16:23, 23 May 2009 (UTC)
8. Wizardman 21:14, 23 May 2009 (UTC)
9. bainer (talk) 23:37, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Oppose

Abstain