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Misplaced Pages Arbitration
About arbitrationTalk Arbitration policy (CU/OS) Guide to arbitration Noticeboard + Talk Search archived proceedings Ban appealsReport
Open proceedings All open requests Case requests Clarification and Amendment requests Arbitrator motion requests Enforcement requests
Active sanctions Contentious topics (Log) General sanctions Editor sanctions
Arbitration Committee Discuss+ Contact Members Procedures ElectionsTalk History Clerks+ Talk Clerk procedures Conflict of interest reports
Audit Talk StatisticsTalk Reports (pre-2016)
Track related changes
v t e

Important — please note The Committee, in passing the motion to open this case, provided explicit direction to all editors participating in this case: "Editors are expected to observe appropriate decorum on the case pages and in any other discussion of this incident." "Editors are instructed to refrain from disclosing on-wiki the name or other identifying information concerning any editor who does not edit under or disclose on-wiki his or her real-world identity. Any evidence that would have the potential effect of making such a disclosure shall not be posted on-wiki, but shall be e-mailed to the Arbitration Committee. The committee will take appropriate steps to ensure that no editor is sanctioned based on private evidence without an appropriate opportunity to respond to such evidence, while also seeking to ensure that editors' identifying information is not unnecessarily disclosed." "All editors, whether or not they are potential parties to the case, are strongly urged to exercise consideration and discretion in dealing both on- and off-wiki with all aspects of this highly sensitive situation. Any behavior that would unnecessarily inflame or widen the dispute should be avoided." The Clerk for this case is KnightLago (talk · contribs) who will be assisted by non-recused members of the Clerk team in enforcing the above rules. The Clerks will, wherever it deems necessary, refactor and remove statements where they violate the above directions, or where they violate the general standards of decorum and Misplaced Pages policies. The Clerks will, where required for particular egregious or repetitive violations, ban participants from the case pages for an appropriate period of time. Both the refactoring of statements, and case page bans, that are implemented by the Clerks, can be appealed to the Committee. If any user requires assistance in submitting private evidence to the Arbitrators in the method requested by Committee (see the second bullet point, above), please contact a member of the Clerks or, alternatively, an Arbitrator directly. —User:KnightLago (talk) 02:17, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Anyone, whether directly involved or not, may add evidence to this page. Create your own section and do not edit in anybody else's section. Please limit your main evidence to a maximum 1000 words and 100 diffs and keep responses to other evidence as short as possible. A short, concise presentation will be more effective; posting evidence longer than 1000 words will not help you make your point. Over-long evidence that is not exceptionally easy to understand (like tables) will be trimmed to size or, in extreme cases, simply removed by the Clerks without warning - this could result in your important points being lost, so don't let it happen. Stay focused on the issues raised in the initial statements and on diffs which illustrate relevant behavior.

It is extremely important that you use the prescribed format. Submitted evidence should include a link to the actual page diff in question, or to a short page section; links to the page itself are insufficient. Never link to a page history, an editor's contributions, or a log for all actions of an editor (as those will have changed by the time people click on your links), although a link to a log for a specific article or a specific block log can be useful. Please make sure any page section links are permanent. See simple diff and link guide.

This page is not for general discussion - for that, see the talk page. If you think another editor's evidence is a misrepresentation of the facts, cite the evidence and explain how it is incorrect within your own section. Please do not try to re-factor the page or remove evidence presented by others. If something is put in the wrong place, leave it for the Arbitrators or Clerks to move.

Arbitrators may analyze evidence and other assertions at /Workshop. /Workshop provides for comment by parties and others as well as Arbitrators. After arriving at proposed principles, findings of fact or remedies, Arbitrators vote at /Proposed decision. Only Arbitrators (and clerks, when clarification on votes is needed) may edit the proposed decision page.

Special notice regarding evidence

Attention: Due to the private nature of the contents of the alleged mailing list, the following rules are in order: No quoting of any email is to be done by persons other than the author or intended recipient(s) No reference to real life identities of editors is to be made No posting of the email archive, or of links to purported copies of the email archive, is permitted Clerks are instructed to enforce those measures with blocks as necessary. Submission of evidence that contains or may contain private information is to be done by email only to the Committee mailing list.

Evidence presented by Sandstein

Reposted here from the case talk page as suggested by Daniel.

I was first made aware of the (alleged) existence of this mailing list in the WP:ANI thread of 17 September 2009, and have not seen the supposedly leaked archives.

I have not participated in any off- or onwiki coordination related to Eastern Europe in general or administrative actions in this area in particular. I am not aware of any attempts, as has allegedly been the purpose of this mailing list, to exert any sort of influence upon me (except of course that I have received several onwiki and some e-mail reactions to administrative actions I took with respect to the topic area).

My administrator and arbitration enforcement actions in this area are all based solely on the requests made and evidence presented on the administrators' and arbitration enforcement noticeboards, and this will continue to be the case.  Sandstein  12:44, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

Evidence presented by Ellol

User Russavia was unfairly topic-banned

First of all, what are the facts. Russavia was topic-banned for 6 months by Sandstein for addressing a member of the Eastern European Mailing List (Marting) in a not generally appropriate manner.

Later, the topic ban was extended by Sandstein for infinity after this Russavia's comment at Russavia's talk page: .

Given the new evidence about the Mailing List, the situation looks so.

Russavia told to a member of the Mailing List a single sentence that was treated by the admin as WP:BATTLE (though it was marked with a smile, and could be normally treated a joke). As far as I know, it's a rather harsh decision even without the current evidence.

But given the evidence we have now, I assert that Russavia was not in the situation of the ordinary Misplaced Pages user-to-user discussion. Instead, he addressed the people acting as a single united team with certain ideological settings. Generally, we see the Wiki relationships as person-to-person ones and insist that people need to stay civil. But in this case, Russavia was confronted by a team.

I had to stand in some situations against edits by users from the Mailing List, and I can say it's a highly unpleasant feeling, when it looked that I don't talk to real alive people, but the wall that behaved regardless of what I do. It looked like the world around was against me. And it looked that I am wrong merely for having a different opinion than the other people -- who as I see now actually teamed against me. So I understand perfectly well what Russavia could feel.

What happened later is what I can't understand at all. Russavia's ban was extended merely because he posted a comment on his own talk page! What does it mean -- he could not even express his opinion about what's going on, at his own talk? How can this be possible?

I strongly propose the Arbitration Committee to review the situation with Russavia's ban, that looks for me very much unfair, especially given the new evidence.

Admin Sandstein shouldn't be let to keep sanctions on Russavia

I see that he made an unjustified decision to ban Russavia even without the evidence we have now. But what strikes me is that Sandstain continues to insist now that his decision was correct: .

I am afraid, that now he might be merely proving that he was right that time, as it may matter for his future and current Misplaced Pages career.

I believe that he is not an uninvolved person to this case. I strongly propose not to leave Russavia's case on behalf of admin Sandstain, who must be suffering from the conflict of interests.

Evidence presented by Durova

After taking a couple of days off it isn't very much of a surprise to see this dispute at arbitration, but it is startling to discover the way it arrived and shocking to see myself compared to a cockroach. If any good can arise from this unfortunate situation let's hope it will be to see WP:CIVIL resume its former significance at this website. For those who prefer name-calling, Usenet is thataway.

These unexpected developments make a statement necessary. As everyone knows, I have a history with regard to offsite correspondence which I am very sorry for. If there had been any reason to guess that this situation could take a similar direction then I would have avoided it completely. I was not aware that the mailing list existed. The ANI thread about Russavia's topic ban appeared to be at the wrong venue and it seemed like a reasonable thing to agree with the people who had already referred it elsewhere.

Shortly afterward, when a community sanction got proposed, I objected procedurally in order to prevent the kind of difficulties that arose after the Bluemarine case: for a quick refresher browse two noticeboard threads that bookend the problem. The main lesson to be learned from the Bluemarine example is that it's best to establish clear lines regarding arbitration sanctions and community sanctions. Months of trouble arose from the lack of clarity in that instance. The Eastern European disputes are bitter and longstanding; a similar problem there would likely be worse.

Both at ANI and here I have no opinion whether the sanctions on Russavia were appropriate or inappropriate; I simply hope to see ArbCom settle the matter and put it to rest.

Until today when this case opened my only offsite correspondence regarding this dispute was a brief gchat with John Vandenberg on 11 September, which I initiated. I mentioned the ANI thread and suggested the Committee might want to look into the problem before it worsened. My final words to him were "It's the type of situation where the cross-accusations tend to accumulate, and ArbCom eventually finds itself mopping a big spill instead of a small one."

Today I received two brief emails from Piotrus and a gchat from Giano, which brought me up to date in a basic way. As the nature of this matter becomes clear please conduct further communications onsite.

Regarding the list emails themselves (which I have not seen nor do I want to), it is currently my understanding that they were obtained via hacking. During the Bluemarine arbitration a computer hacking occurred and the Committee disregarded the information that emerged from it. There are two very good reasons for ignoring hacked information: (1) we don't wish to encourage hacking, and (2) anyone who sinks to hacking is probably not above altering material.

In the Bluemarine case the hacking victim's bank account was also emptied. Durova 19:40, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

Striking previous evidence, and substituting an update. During the early days of this case I offered to attempt a comparison of list emails from the list members against the version that reached ArbCom. Possibly I was not the best person to extend such an offer, but no one else had attempted it (including the arbitrators, it appears). It was unknown to me until ArbCom declined the request that anyone other than the list members themselves had privacy issues at stake. Simple workarounds could have resolved those issues but they were not pursued. As a fallback I planned to compare the list members' versions against publicly available versions. All members of the list gave consent for me to review their correspondence; I would have deleted and purged any material that compromised anyone else's privacy. Unfortunately, no member of the list actually provided me with any material. Repeated requests since 23 September have gone unheeded; I have not received any emails from any list member, nor has a time frame been established for providing them. Details are available at User:Piotrus/ArbCom. Consequently, I have not read any of the publicly available emails. Other than for purposes of vetting it's none of my business.

I no longer have time to attempt the review and have withdrawn the offer.

A handful of people from both sides of the case have contacted me offsite, offering various rationales for the delay. These range from guilt-induced sloth to well-meaning dispondency and disorganization. I offer no opinion regarding those speculations. What I do wish to refer people to is the underdeveloped article Steve Jackson Games, Inc. v. United States Secret Service, which Mike Godwin won during his time with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Although the relevant Misplaced Pages articles don't cover the matter sufficiently, Bruce Sterling's book The Hacker Crackdown happens to be available online. The groundbreaking finding of the case concluded that email has the same legal expectation of privacy as postal mail.

It is both ironic and disappointing to watch the most experienced volunteers of Godwin's current employer abandon the privacy concept upon which he built his reputation and career. The current arbitration case was hastily conceived; without vindicating or damning the parties who are currently under scrutiny it remains possible to shiver at the example being set here. Durova 18:30, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Evidence presented by Skäpperöd

Off-wiki coordination of the group was/is not limited to the mailing list

In addition to evidence already forwarded to the Arbcom, I formally include here the evidence concerning off-wiki coordination presented in Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/Eastern European disputes. With the mailing list archive, Arbcom has strong evidence and should focus on the analysis of that archive in the workshop, yet as shown in the respective evidence sections of the prior EE case the timeframe of the group's operation and the group's means of off-wiki coordination are not limited to what the archive reveals.

Evidence for off-wiki coordination presented in Piotrus2 arbcom:

• Piotrus, Tymek, Molobo, SPA
• Piotrus, Tymek, Molobo, Poeticbent, SPA
• Piotrus at IRC
• Piotrus, Tymek, Molobo, SPAs

Rumours tell and Arbcom/clerks may be able to verify that

• : Piotrus, Tymek and Jacurek coordinated their edits before the latter joined the list.
• and : IM, compare to former Piotrus2 Arbcom.

During the Piotrus2 arbcom, Piotrus had a telling conversation with Irpen, which should be re-read in face of the new evidence . Quote Piotrus:

"I can promise you I will not "call in reverts" to create battlegrounds, I will not stack votes with otherwise uninterested meatpuppets, I will not seek to block content opponents I cannot deal with via normal dispute resolutions." (Piotrus, September 2008, )

Pending verification by Arbcom/clerk

May Arbcom or a clerk please verify if the following rumours are correct:

Piotrus proxied for blocked Molobo

• -->
• and -->

Jacurek proxied for blocked Molobo

• -->

Radeksz proxied for blocked Molobo

• -->

Tymek proxied for blocked Molobo

• -->

Sock of Radeksz proxied for blocked Molobo at Wikimedia Commons

• --> (proxying sock) and (sock was Radeksz. Radeksz had and has an account at Commons .)

Jacurek did tasked reverts following selective tendering by Radeksz

• and --> , and

Piotrus, Digwuren and Tymek coordinated their actions at WP:AE

• ff. -->

Radeksz, Digwuren and Tymek coordinated editing

• (Radeksz) --> (Digwuren) and ff. (Tymek)

Molobo (blocked, via proxy), Radeksz, Piotrus, Jacurek, Tymek: Canvassing, coordinated editing, reverting and baiting into 3RR, coordinated report

ff. (whole thread) --> resulting 3RR. Note also Poeticbent's involvement.

Questionable behaviour during this case

Piotrus going after his opponents here on admin boards

• Piotrus opened an AN thread on Vlad fedorov
• Piotrus going after Giano in a dead AN/I thread

On this evidence page, Molobo presents a faked RfC against me that was circulated, tweaked and composed on the EEML

Molobo drafted an RfC against me during the SPI case I filed against him. The purpose was to discredit me by associating me with the Nazis. I hope that nothing of the defamation campaign is taken seriously. Clerks and Arbs may be able to access the original draft of the RfC and distribution to EEML members here

• ff, attached file with the first draft: Skap.txt
• , attached file with draft: Skap.txt

In the Piotrus2 Arbcom case, Molobo had badmouthed me and another user in a similar way with out-of-context "Nazi" quotes. The faked nature was revealed in the course of the case eg here and here. Molobo (political views) has disrupted this project multiple times (block log, conditional lift of his last permaban, 1st parole evasion, 2nd parole evasion).

Now Molobo is presenting his RfC here as his evidence . One diff (the "...Reich Ministry...1934..." of July 2008) he brought up against me in the Piotrus2-Arbcom already, my response was and is in that arbcom's pages.

The other diffs:

• Re "Incivility": Molobo dug out a diff from 2008 where I said "Das spricht schon Bände". To interpret that as an "anti-Polish slur" speaks volumes (ext link to dictionary) - that's what it means (Bände=volumes, spricht Bände=speaks volumes, see also Future Perferct's comment; besides that, "Bandit" (the word I did not use) would not even be an "anti-Polish slur": it has the same meaning in German as in English.
• Re "Campaign of intimidation...": Well, I guess people with access to the archive will wonder if it was not the other way around? As to the diffs: Yes, I do file reports when I am being insulted and harassed. More interesting for Arbcom may be to compare the Xx236 diff with and
• Re "Persistent edit warring": The diff shows me enforcing the Gdanzig rule in early 2008.
• Re "Disregard regarding community consensus": Look at the diffs, compare the names of Molobo's supporters with the names on the mailing list, and look for the plenty of other voices amidst the noise.
• Re "Showing Nazi...": The diff is actually evidence to the contrary: Molobo was the one who claimed the whole data of the source to be a Nazi census, the source did not say so, and it later turned out that it wasn't. But with the same change he falsely attributed the RS as Nazi census, he actually introduced a table really based on Nazi sources ...
• Re "Trying to ban...": I still think that it is problematic to base half a contentious article on these Communist-era sources and not even have an in-text attribution, the on-wiki discussion is here, for the off-wiki discussion compare ff - Communist sources are bad except when used by mailing list members.
• Re "Removing information...": This SPA was responsible for the insertion and the mailing list then appeared out of the blue reverting to the SPA's version, maybe user:Thatcher recalls the drama, that made it to AE . The resulting RfC discarded the SPA's/mailing list's version, and who knows if the SPA wasn't someone's sock. Also compare the threads starting with and .
• Re "Concealing identity...": calling a living lawyer a Nazi in mainspace w/o RS backing that up is a no-go, and I was not the only one who thought so
• Re "...respectable historians": This diff is not only misrepresented, but also the result of a mailing list "trap" for me extra designed for the RfC, compare ff

More reductio ad Hitlerum

Molobo abuses his conditional unblock to turn his evidence page into an attack page, the sole purpose of which is to abundantly use the term Nazi next to my username. Eg, he uses this comment of mine to accuse me of "pushing forward Nazi imagery". And so on. Instead of playing "I don't beat my wife", I refer to my real contributions about Nazis, eg the Nisko plan article which was primarily written by me, or this one etc pp. Molobo's evidence is no more than evidence for his intention to continue to bash users he does not like.

On this evidence page, Radeksz is misrepresenting facts to discredit me

In his evidence, Radeksz has created a section calling a "living a lawyer" a Nazi (never happened) accusation - but Skap did try to hide that this living lawyer was a non RS Holocaust denier, in line with the Concealing identity... allegations in Molobo's evidence. What really happened was:

• 31 July: Radeksz introduced the following sentence to the article: "The president of the Federation of Expellees, Erika Steinbach, relying on a work by the extreme far-right nationalistic author Heinz Nawratil " . This is Nawratil's first appearance in the article, he has not been used as a source for anything up to this day. From the diff it is also obvious that the sole purpose of introducing him at all was to make Steinbach look bad.
• 5 August: I removed the "extreme far-right nationalistic" attribution as a possible BLP , and start a discussion on the talk page explaining what I did and why . Contrary to Radeksz' claim, I did look for sources with a book search, which did not turn out any results, this is also in the discussion diff of 5 August. Also on 5 August, I take the concerns to the BLP board for a wider audience to comment , and link that BLP thread in the article talk.
• 15 August: After repeated re-insertion, I request admin intervention at ANI , the article gets protected because of BLP and the possible BLP is removed by uninvolved admin Toddst1 ]. It was only thereafter that another BLP board thread was opened by Radeksz , where he enters the off-wiki requested "dirt" ( and follow-ups) and asks the mailing list for help .

These diffs show beyond any doubt that the concealing (Molobo) and hiding (Radeksz) etc allegations are constructed and false. In fact, I went lengths to get outside input on this issue, and it were in fact the accusing parties who chose to construct "dirt" out of the off.

I also stand by my assertion that calling someone part of the German extreme far-right nationalistic faction is calling him a Nazi, and since most of the sources the mailing list collected are not good, I still regard the (meanwhile re-inserted though toned down) phrase as well as Radeksz' additions to the Nawratil article to be a borderline BLP. And yes, Nawratil is a lawyer, and all the Nawratil drama is only about having him named and discredited in the article to discredit Steinbach by association.

More BLP on the evidence page?

Furthermore, I regard Radeksz' attribution of Nawratil (in his evidence) being a "non RS Holocaust denier" as a BLP itself. This assertion is based solely on one obituary published in the Journal of Historical Review ext link!, and on the assertion that everyone publishing in this journal is a Holocaust denier. Might be true, but imho much to weak an argument to make such a strong claim.

Statement by Deacon of Pndapetzim

Email archive

Let's get one thing clear: this list is real, and the amount of incriminating material is breathtakingly overwhelming and thickly spread, so much so that despite the huge size of the archive evidence of gross misconduct is obscenely easy to spot. For instance, in the threads entitled " Molobo ban" (early days of June), it is revealed that Piotrus, Radek, Biophys and others knew and encouraged Molobo's recent socking (for which he was banned for a year by User:Avraham), conspired more puppetry, pondered how to avoid detection in future, and advocated use of proxies. Other such activities are easy to spot. Conspiring to harass and edit-war is so rampant throughout the archive that ironing out the details is almost pointless, and using this User:Deacon of Pndapetzim/North-East Europe AE threads along with the archive saves very little time. I will not post many more comments on the archive until it is clear what ArbCom have and have not spotted, what they intend to do, and so on.

Some of these emails should be required reading for future AE admins. Particularly Biruitorul's post on " More cabal theory" June 6 2009 and Radek's long post at "Re: It isn't over" on June 21 2009, the former concerning the "political" set-up among nationalist users in eastern Europe and the latter on cabaling strategy in general. Read only though if you can take the smack on your faith in human nature, and can protect yourself from future over-reactive cynicism.

My "involvement" and how this was allowed to happen

Two of the users on this list I've been familiar with for years, namely Piotrus and Molobo. I only encountered them because I inadvertently stepped into a nationalist war on a medieval history article (Jogaila), and, after that dispute was settled everything was amicable, until the Lokyz unblock that is. The others I had never heard of until the period leading up to the Piotrus 2 ArbCom hearing, but know now from AE threads. What an experience it has been to have users like Martintg, Biophys, Vecrumba, Digwuren, and others, who I'd barely heard of and never had a dispute with, attacking me on wiki. Back when I encountered them in 2006 (Piotrus and Molobo are the only survivors from that period on this list), they were doing much of this on wiki, at

• Portal talk:Poland/Poland-related Misplaced Pages notice board (note the top, there is a list of nationalist POV disputes advertised to all members to edit war in "articles needing attention")

(and there after visibly went offline e.g.)

I sought intervention against that board and its activities then, (or see Talk:List_of_Polish_monarchs/Archive_01#Aftermath) and nothing would have happened (as I was an inexperienced newbie) were it not for the fact that my concerns were picked up, independently I think, by User:Elonka.

E.g. Portal_talk:Poland/Poland-related_Wikipedia_notice_board/Archive_6#Proposal_to_rename_this_notice_board

Elonka's good-faithed activity led to her recusing from involvement in the area once she became an admim, yet she was not "involved" beyond trying to ensure good behaviour, while her Polish ancestry made her no more involved than Kirill Lokshin, the Russian architect of most previous ArbCom decisions. Yet the users in question managed to hound her from the area, just as they later hounded me. And as a result, two admins with insight into this matter were made useless to the community, and instead it was left to more naive admins whom this cabal could and have eaten for breakfast. I've had to watch while good-faithed admins like AGK, Ryan Postelwaite, Sandstein, and others were played like pawns in a game they neither understood nor knew they were playing (Thatcher is an exception, and this should be stated). If these admins think I am being unfair, then they should check the emails and note how the cabalists glory and gloat at their expense.

Why have I been unable to do anything? When I brought Piotrus 2 forward, they depicted me as an involved eastern european editor:

Misplaced Pages:Requests_for_arbitration/Eastern_European_disputes/Evidence#Tag_team_1:_Russian], where Piotrus listed me as part of a Russian tag team.

• The account User:Koretek was set-up by User:Molobo (as User:Sciurinae has shown since) purely to leave messages on talk pages accusing me of being anti-Polish

I think some of the arbs bought this, sadly enough; certainly that's what the email cabal seem to think (e.g. "Friday, February 06, 2009 5:15 PM"). A frivolous admonition was passed against me as punishment for bringing the case, and since then this "remedy" has been used to undermine everything I've said about this case, whether this was on AE threads (e.g.) or elsewhere. I have also been accused of nursing a grudge against Piotrus (by Piotrus' list pals of course, but sadly also by User:Coren,here soon after a minor dispute I had with him as a clerk, comments which even these mail-listers thought were funny ). I was really frustrated at this, but being a little non-networking user/admin I had to accept that this is sometimes the result of trying to protect good wikipedians against abuse. As I said at the time to one of the arbs, ArbCom and the clique around them often inadvertently do more damage to good users than these bad users do.

But if I and Elonka, two admins with AE experience, had freedom in this area, this cabaling would not have had the same effect. I can't speak for Elonka, but I already knew this was happening and stated frequently. As a result I was frequently accused of bad faith and grudge-holding, but my integrity has never been seriously challenged and the plain fact is that I just had more experience and insight. Having no reason to doubt my integrity, there was no reason to ignore me and my experience, as ArbCom did. But if this weren't bad enough, ArbCom had the ability to know itself just by reading the evidence, but did nothing.

You can bring a horse to water, but can't make it drink

ArbCom already had the information to know this was happening, and to know about the character of these users. The Alden Jones incident in question was commented upon in the evidence section of Piotrus 2. Since mine is mostly deleted now, I'll repost the section:

Shortly afterwards a user came out of nowhere and reverted , User:Alden Jones, for which effort he was almost blocked for it. The user has only poor English, no interest in the topic and was only reverting to "support" Piotrus, and most of his edits in the past have consisted of little more than reverting to whatever version of an article Piotrus happens to prefer. Funnily enough, Alden had been inactive for more than three weeks prior to that revert, since his 2 day block for revert-warring (along with Piotrus) on Truce of Vilna. Alden Jones has since effectively revealed that he was sent there by another user; the only other reverter was, of course, Piotrus . Piotrus later left this message Long time after the single revert, but 2 hours after Lokyz' comment there. Use your own judgment here. He has since claimed this is a loving follower, and now I'm just waiting for him to claim that Alden's gaff was the result of his poor English.

The diff, presented above, is here.

Evidence showing beyond doubt that off-wiki collaboration was widespread was presented, here, here, and, among other places, here and here. But, despite this, we got:

25.3) There is no definitive evidence that Piotrus (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · edit filter log · block user · block log) is responsible for any off-wiki editing coordination that may have occurred in this case.

Passed by 6 arbs to 0.

You can only bring a horse to water, you can't make it drink. Not only was this FoF a bad summary of the evidence, it was also a misleading message (presumably prompted by Piotrus' disingenuous complaints that he was being misunderstood) that told the admin community that the accusations against him were a natural result of the inevitable enmity he encounters by writing lots of articles, and nothing more. I know some of the arbs actually believed this, from a second hand account of private arbitrator comments. That said, this finding was just one of many absurdities showing the arbs hadn't read the evidence and had little but haughty contempt for those who provided it, a haughty contempt that turned misguided opinion of the matter into damaging action.

It was continually shown that Piotrus and his followers were using offline techniques to co-ordinate edit-warring and harass other users; it was continually shown that Piotrus had a disreputable character unbecoming of an editor let alone an admin (evidence the TigerShark-Lokyz IRC incident, or the whose post_Piotrus 2 history can be seen in the emails), yet those punished were the victims, a list including but not confined to User:Irpen, User:Lokyz, and, in a previous case, User:Ghirlandajo. The last, before he left, was statistically Misplaced Pages's top content contributor! Irpen joined Ghirlandajo after the case in the long list of productive wikipedians who have been driven off the project. They are volunteers and don't need to put up with this kind of abuse if ArbCom, the only body who could have protected them, refused to and instead victimised them. Having a sense of injustice transforms a person remarkably.

Evidence presented by Offliner

Evidence relocated to subpage (Offliner)

Extensive evidence section relocated to Misplaced Pages:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Eastern European mailing list/Evidence/Offliner.

Summary

• There is considerable evidence of tag teaming and coordinated reverting by the list members, with the aim of circumventing 3RR and provoking opponents into going over the 3R limit.

• Team members swamped community discussions in an attempt to create a fake consensus which can then be exploited.

• In what is a remarkable example, team members through vote stacking, canvassing and abuse of admin tools by Piotrus attempted to force Misplaced Pages into keeping a clear copyvio image.

• Piotrus has abused his admin tools, and has abused his admin status.

• Various attempts to bait editors into making incivil remarks were coordinated on the secret list.

• Coordinated lobbying of admins took place, in order to convince them to unblock team members.

• There is considerable evidence of various kinds of disruption, baiting, harassment and gaming of the system by list member Radeksz, who appears to be one of the chief disruptors in the group.

• One of the groups chief aims appears to have been censorship of Estonian articles in line with the Estonian government's official position.

Evidence presented by Atama

I just wanted to post a response to Ellol above. Per Russavia's block log, Sandstein had blocked Russavia for only 2 days. Russavia had violated a topic ban but later agreed to abide by the topic ban, which led to Sandstein removing the block. It was Good Ol'factory who later blocked Russavia for making legal threats, and that block has only been lifted procedurally to allow for comments regarding this mailing list incident. I don't see why Sandstein's block is being objected to, when the current indefinite block was Good Ol'factory's decision. Good Ol'factory made the declaration of the indefinite block on AN/I and approved the temporary unblock. I just wanted to clarify this as an outside observer.

Evidence presented by Biophys

Evidence relocated to subpage (Biophys)

Extensive evidence section relocated to Misplaced Pages:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Eastern European mailing list/Evidence/Biophys.

Two main points of my evidence

1. Massive outing of EEML members was most probably accomplished by a paid editor who penetrated this group as an informant of the Russian government, although one can not exclude hacking or interception of emails.
2. There was a clearly identifiable group of pro-Russian government editors who extensively communicated with each other on-wiki, by email and over the phone, although there is nothing wrong with people privately talking.

To tell the truth, I have little trouble because of the outing at the moment, beyond my Russian colleague telling: "I never thought you could be so incredibly stupid to struggle against a group of paid (as everyone knows) people who will censor everything they want any way", but that's enough for me to stop editing here, at least for the time being. Biophys (talk) 14:38, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

Suggestion by Óðinn

I urge the ArbCom to check if the User:Petri Krohn has also been the victim of this alleged campaign of harassment, discrediting and provocation. He is currently blocked for a year over a conflict with one of the parties of this case. Óðinn (talk) 20:54, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

Evidence presented by Russavia

Evidence relocated to subpage (Russavia)

Extensive evidence section relocated to Misplaced Pages:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Eastern European mailing list/Evidence/Russavia.

Further evidence posted

I have posted further evidence of harrassment/stalking to Misplaced Pages:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Eastern_European_mailing_list/Evidence/Russavia#Further_evidence_of_stalking_and_harrassment. --Russavia 10:23, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Evidence presented by YMB29

Biophys' stubborn edit warring

From editing the Human rights in the Soviet Union article, I could tell that there was some kind of team work involved. User:Biophys would have some users show up to support him in edit warring and "creating a consensus". User:Bobanni especially would come and help Biophys avoid 3RR, keep his edits to 3 or 2 reverts.

Recent example:

10:36, 10 September 2009 Biophys (Unexplained revert)

10:12, 10 September 2009 YMB29 (Undid revision 312888591 by Biophys (talk) See edit on 15 June 2009 23:46)

20:49, 9 September 2009 Biophys (rv. Sorry, but that was you who started reverts here)

13:13, 9 September 2009 YMB29 (Undid revision 312804016 by Bobanni (talk) See talk. Don't start a revert war again.)

12:22, 9 September 2009 Bobanni (reverting to an old copy is not the Misplaced Pages way - see talk)

10:53, 9 September 2009 YMB29 (Reverted sneaky reverts by Biophys, made some statements more clear and neutral.)

And then an admin blocked me because I had 3 reverts, but Biophys only 2...

I can understand how the group could have gotten users blocked after purposely making them lose their cool. It was often very frustrating with Biophys. He would act like he was following the rules and knew what he was editing. However, discussing with him felt like talking to someone who pretends to be silly to make you lose your patience. Often he would ask me to list my problems with the article to discuss, but he was unable to follow on with the discussion, continue to revert, and then again ask to discuss the issues...

Some of his comments from discussion:

You act against consensus here.

I will need a couple of days to look into all the issues and find all additional sources.

I have no time right now.

We had a stable version. You came and started making large changes without discussion.

You are welcome to include citation tags if they were accidently deleted.

Please tell what specific problems do you have with this last specific version.

Please do not fight against consensus using blind reverts.

OK, let's start it all over again, one point at a time.

Comments like that were very annoying in the context of him refusing to fully discuss issues and him reverting everything, including tags and sourced info.

Based on Biophys' editing, it is no surprise that he was involved in planned actions that are against Misplaced Pages's rules. He has shown that he only cares about keeping the article how he wants it with his stubborn reverts, which were often sneaky. He would say one thing in the edit summary but would really just revert the article to his version. This was obviously done to mask his reverts. For example, after settling down for seven months, on 15 June 2009 he reverted to his version from 3 Nov. 2008.

19:46, 15 June 2009 Biophys (actually, this is referenced to book by Albats that someone deleted) diff

You can see here that the versions are exactly the same, while his edit summary is nothing about that.

Piotrus defending Biophys

On Sept. 10th, not wanting to get into another long edit war with Biophys and Bobanni, I reported Biophys, specifically his edit on June 15th. The first comment I see to the report was one by Piotrus defending Biophys. Before I could write a response that Piotrus is not impartial when it comes to Biophys (I knew it from here), I am blocked. Another admin blocked me without really looking into what I reported. I have a strong suspicion that Piotrus' comment may have influenced this hasty block. It was also funny to see User:Radeksz come in and protest the block, but then he realized that it was not Biophys who got blocked and apologized.

Furthermore, when Biophys was last blocked Piotrus again defended him and said he would have unblocked him if he would have seen his unblock request (before it was withdrawn) . Also User:Martintg hounded the admin for blocking Biophys.

-YMB29 (talk) 20:49, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

Response to evidence by Biophys

I don't know what difference it makes how much edits I have. Maybe I would have more edits if Biophys was more cooperative in that article, since he wasted my time and discouraged me from getting into editing other articles. From the misleading edit summaries Biophys claims I made, only in one I did not mention or imply that I was going to revert (I reverted and added links as part of a compromise). I did reply and explain on the talk page , so I was not misleading anyone.

I was not uncivil to him; that was regarding a user citing hate websites in another article over three years ago.

As far as User:M.V.E.i., Biophys already accused me of being his sock and was proven wrong (even though there was not any real evidence to start a checkuser request).

-YMB29 (talk) 02:42, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Evidence presented by MBisanz

Authenticity of archives

In June/July I was contacted by two people now alleged to be on this mailing list, the discussions I have since forwarded to arbcom. I have now seen a copy of the mailing list archive on a public website and compared the emails around the dates of these two earlier conversations and do see references that lead me to believe that the archive in general is authentic, since it would require non-public knowledge known only to me and the two other parties to re-create these properly timed references in the archive.

Evidence presented by Good Olfactory

Responsibility for block currently in force against Russavia

I want to confirm what Atama has stated in evidence above. The editing restriction imposed by Sandstein is related to, but obviously not the same as, the block I imposed. I imposed the block for Russavia's extensive wikilawyering and for making an ambiguous legal threat while Russavia was challenging the restrictions imposed by Sandstein in a WP:ANI thread. The block currently imposed on Russavia is the block I imposed. This block has been temporarily lifted with my knowledge and acquiescence so that Russavia can participate in this case. Unless the decision in this case decides otherwise, I expect the block against Russavia to remain in force after the case is concluded.

Was not contacted by any of the parties in this case prior to imposing the block

I was not contacted by any of the parties in this case regarding Russavia's behaviour prior to my decision to impose an indefinite block on Russavia. I have had typical Misplaced Pages "passing interactions" with some of the parties in the case, but I have never experienced any contact with any of them in which a user has lobbied or otherwise requested that sanctions be imposed on other editors.

Evidence presented by HistoricWarrior007

On the Russavia Ban

I believe that the reason Russavia made the comments that enabled Ol'Factory to ban him, was because Russavia was constantly provoked by the e-mail team, and even banned by their resident administrator. Thus the issue here is not Russavia's final action, but the reason that Russavia committed his final action. We are all human. We all err. A single error should not be the reason that a person gets banned. Russavia made a bad post, after being provoked by the e-mail group, that Sandstein used to get him banned for 6 months. Here is the comment: "In his edit notice at , Russavia (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · edit filter log · block user · block log) wrote that the content at issue was "hardly undue and i willl fight you to the death on this :D." When a Russian user posts a smiley on the end, ahh heck, when any user posts a smiley on the end - that means they are kidding! A six month ban for such a comment, considering the previous provocations against Russavia, and considering that the article in question, is trying to promote a film that shows "how similar Soviet States was to Nazi State" (because we all know it was the USSR and SS going around and committing the Holocaust, or so the film's hypothesis alleges). Russavia wanted to include a Dyukhov, someone who wrote a critique of the film, while the e-mail group wanted to marginalize Duykhov, and anyone critiquing the film, because "if you cannot attack the argument, attack the person making the argument" is apparently a valid tactic to use on Misplaced Pages. For this, Russavia received a six month ban from Sandstein, which led Russavia to make the comment that was used by Ol'Factory to impose an infinite ban on Russavia. I don't see this as neither fair, nor just.

We Vote Together

Just so you can get an idea of how badly the voting was rigged, I'll sum up the arguments of both sides:

Side #1: Initially, we followed http://en.wikipedia.org/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Military_history/Style_guide, and since the war had no common name, (it still doesn't) we named it after the location where most of the fighting took place. Additionally, an extreme majority of wars are named after, either the location, or in the attacker-defender format. The title should stay because it's the only descriptive and NPOV name suggested. Because the war was reasonably named, following Misplaced Pages Conventions the title should not be changed. Additionally, there is no consensus for changing it, and a multitude of valid arguments backing up the status quo.

Side #2: Our argument is based solely on Google Hits. Whichever title gets the most Google Hits, even if the other title is also extremely popular, (Ossetia War has over a million Google Hits,) the one with the most Google Hits wins, even though we cannot think of any wars named after Google Hits, and even though this title portrays Russia, as the attacker, whereas in reality Russia was attacked. (Peacekeeping Base + Russian Citizens.)

And so we have the first vote: 2008 South Ossetia War has 24 votes in favor, and 16 opposed. By contrast, 2008 Russia-Georgia War has 23 votes in favor, and 18 opposed. The 16 (and 23) included: Biophys, Martintg, Ostap, Digwuren, Biruitoirul, Vercrumba. Vercrumba included his vote in the 23, but not the 16.

But the voters didn't get their way, so a sequel vote was introduced, with Biophys, Ostap, Vercrumba and Digwuren voting again. And again they failed.

We Keep Articles, that have no arguments to be kept, via votes too!

Of course not all of their efforts were successfully parried. Take the case of a deletion vote for the "Ethnic Cleansing of Georgians in South Ossetia article, http://en.wikipedia.org/Talk:Ethnic_cleansing_of_Georgians_in_South_Ossetia. There was no ethnic cleansed committed during, or after, the 2008 South Ossetia War by either side. Georgians attempted ethnic cleansing, but attempted murder isn't the same as murder, just ask the victim if you don't believe me. The article has no valid sources backing up its point; Here are the sources: The Government of Georgia, a "Human Rights Commission" allied to the Gov't of Georgia, a New York Times Blog stating "Ethnic Cleansing, a form of Genocide", a second-string correspondent misquoting a Russian General, (nobody else had that quote), scratch paper citations, and the HRW quotes that actually disprove the entire article. Oh yeah, also a man who sees genocide in People's eyes, adds to the "credibility" of the sources. The article was headed for speedy deletion. Enter Biophys and Co.

The vote result, and the administrator keeping it could not give me a single argument in favor of the article, so the article's deletion is based purely on votes: 11 to delete/merge, 12 to keep, and 1 to keep/merge. They included: Biophys, MartinTG, Ostap with Ostap's reason being "per Biophys", some characters looked like potential puppets, editors who appease without fact-checking, and generally the anti-Russian clique, almost the same voters as those who wanted to rename the 2008 South Ossetia War Article, as is discussed in the previous section. In the case of 11 to 12, 3 votes would have made a difference, and the article would have been deleted, had it not been due to canvassing of Biophys, MartinTG and Ostap R.

Summary

1. Russavia's ban should be lifted, because he was provoked into acting the way he acted, that led to Good Ol'Factory's ban. Since Good Ol'Factory had no knowledge of Russavia being provoked, he wrongly thought the ban was just. Had Russavia not been provoked, the ban would have been just.

2. User:Biophys, User:Ostap, User:Digwuren, User:Vercrumba, User:MartinTG and User:Biruitoirul most likely engaged in canvassing for votes via the mailing list.

3. Of these, Biophys, MartinTG and Ostap managed to have an anti-Russian article, that has no valid proof for existing, kept via their canvassing efforts.

Response to Staberinde

Firstly I would note that user:Historicwarrior007 has been caught canvassing for his preferred title: Talk:2008_South_Ossetia_war/Archive_23#Misplaced Pages:Canvassing.

I was falsely accused of canvassing. I placed an NPOV disclaimer about the title vote, on Wiki:Russia, instead of WikiProject:Russia. It was a newbie mistake which I instantly admitted, and apologized for. The other part of the canvassing accusations included contacting five users who have previously, some edited the talkpage, as recently as two weeks ago. This has all been stated, numerous times on the talkpage of the article, and I'm very surprised that Staberinde missed this.

Secondly HistoricWarrior007's description of both sides arguments is not even remotely accurate. It has been repeatedly demonstrated that in searches from Google Books and Google Scholar current title horribly fails against far more popular titles "August War" and "Russo-Georgian War". On other hand current title has been backed only with original research claims by wikipedians, like HistoricWarrior007's consistent claim that "attacker goes first in Wiki Articles", for what he has failed to provide a single reliable source, while suggesting most ridiculous methods like this proposal for a competition between me and him to list wars for deciding war naming standards.

It does appear that Staberinde is just flat out refusing to read my arguments, and is preferring to ignore them. His statement of me not providing a single reliable source is discredited, twice, in the very same section that he cites: http://en.wikipedia.org/Talk:2008_South_Ossetia_war#2008_South_Ossetia_war.3F.3F.3F Above Staberinde's post there is a big bolded part block of text with tons of citations, I don't know how in the World Staberinde managed to miss it. That block of text cites links to several wars named in Attacker-Defender Format. We've had hundreds of pages on this debate, so I thought repeating arguments would be silly; instead I linked to them.

Even if Staberinde managed to miss the bolded part, in my response to his comment, I linked the list of wars, where a single example, such as the Anglo-Aro War, was a mere three clicks away, and extremely easy to find, even for a teenager:

Click one: (my link): http://en.wikipedia.org/Lists_of_wars Click two: (based on my WWII Argument, go to the pre-1945 link): http://en.wikipedia.org/List_of_wars_1900%E2%80%931944 Click three: http://en.wikipedia.org/Anglo-Aro_War

TA-DA! If Staberinde is too lazy to click on the links provided, I am not going to spoonfeed him the information that was already spoonfed on that talkpage, numerous, numerous, numerous times. I expect editors to at least click competently. But with Staberinde there is a pattern of deliberately missing my arguments, and then claiming that I didn't make them.

There's no competition. All post-Soviet Conflicts relating to post-USSR states were named after the location. If one side has 100% of the argument, there's no competition. Duh! I do love how Staberinde critiques my argument, but fails to make his own.

Finally as far as I can see nobody has posted evidence about any "off-wiki" canvassing for 2008 South Ossetia War, and various mailing list members participating in it is completely normal, because it is one of the most notable and well known recent events in Eastern-Europe/Caucasus area.

Of course not! That's because the canvassing was done via the e-mail list. And an anonymous user forwarded me the relevant e-mail that shows clear canvassing, without any names attached, but the evidence of canvassing is there.

"...some characters looked like potential puppets, editors who appease without fact-checking, and generally the anti-Russian clique..." is just a hilarious characterization for someone like User:Alex Bakharev . Also I would note that as far as I can see, neither HistoricWarrior007 nor anyone else seems to have posted any diffs or referred to any e-mails, that would prove any canvassing on that deletion discussion.

Once again, Staberinde fails to read the argument that he quotes. Please pay attention to the part that says "editors who appease without fact-checking" - that group would include Alex Bakharev. He didn't check his facts, which was made obvious in the deletion discussion. genocide in the title is POV but there is no doubt that there were ethnic cleansings stated Alex Bakharev. And yet no valid proof of ethnic cleansing was found. Source of discussion: http://en.wikipedia.org/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/2008_genocide_of_Georgians_in_South_Ossetia. According to the EU Report, no ethnic cleansing or genocide was committed by either side. However this was Alex Bakharev's only mistake, so it most likely was an honest mistake, where he mistook the 1992-1993 Abkhazia War for this one. In the case of Staberinde, in his presentation of three points, he managed to ignore my text four times, claiming that it never happened. Misplaced Pages has logs :D HistoricWarrior007 (talk) 01:01, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

As per the canvassing e-mail, once again, would you like me to post the plain text of the e-mail? No names, no private information, just the plain text, that lists me as #1 under the enemy subheading relating to the vote. HistoricWarrior007 (talk) 01:01, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

Evidence presented by Fut.Perf.

Tymek voluntarily disclosed his password

User:Tymek has publicly admitted he voluntarily disclosed his wikipedia password to his fellow list members . (Arbitrators can check this against the e-mail archive from July, thread titled "vacation".) This means we no longer need to assume any illegal act of "hacking", "security breaches", "information theft" etc either from inside or outside the group at all. It makes it quite likely that the whistleblower e-mails were exactly what they said they were: written by somebody from within the group who felt he could "no longer support this". The whistleblower used his own, legally acquired copy of the e-mails and was merely forwarding them non-publicly to selected individuals, which is entirely legal; by using Tymek's account he was probably just trying to create a false track to avoid detection by his fellow conspirators, but he wasn't even acting illegally in doing this because Tymek had explicitly invited list members to use his account for "whatever they felt necessary".

This also throws some doubt on the sincerity of the loudly professed security fears and concerns over illegal hacking attacks offered by the list members – after all, they all knew Tymek's account was open to this kind of exploitation by one of their own. Fut.Perf. ☼ 08:15, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

CAMERA precedent

Given the above evidence, it seems safe to assume at this point that the legal status of the EEML e-mails is exactly the same as that of the CAMERA e-mails in 2008: leaked to Misplaced Pages administrators by somebody who, being a legitimate recipient of the original list, had every right to do so. In the CAMERA case, the following practice was found acceptable by both the community and Arbcom: a small group of administrators who had been given access to the material were free to study them, publicly summarise their contents, publish selected quotations from them, and disclose links between wikipedia accounts and list members, while making certain that personally identifying information in the e-mails was filtered out (see Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents/Statement re Wikilobby campaign). Sanctions imposed by us administrators on the basis of this report were explicitly validated by Arbcom (here, see also here). Fut.Perf. ☼ 08:50, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Edit-warring and on-wiki hounding of opponents continues

On 27 September, Jacurek (talk · contribs) followed one of his old opponents, Matthead (talk · contribs) into an article he had never edited before, West Germany, with the sole purpose of joining a revert war. Jacurek reverted 3 times in 12 hours , , , while Matthead reverted twice , .

Jacurek's behaviour on talk was distinctively less constructive than his opponents (aggressive, restricted to asserting the same point over and over again, and failed to address the points made by the other side , , , ). He then made accusations against Matthead on several user talk pages, falsely telling two admins Matthead was under a relevant revert limitation , (in reality, Matthead's restriction was topic-limited and didn't affect this article.) As a direct result of this false information, Matthead was in fact blocked . Fut.Perf. ☼ 06:46, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Molobo knowingly submitted false evidence to these proceedings

section removed; this has now been rectified. Fut.Perf. ☼ 21:16, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Radeksz engaged in coordinated baiting of opponents instigated by Piotrus

Not sure if this has already been brought up somewhere, but I find it so striking it shouldn't go unnoticed.

In , Piotrus suggests a systematic plan of "taking on" the group's perceived opponent Deacon of Pndapetzim. He suggests that members should "try baiting Deacon" into making anti-Polish statement that could then be used as evidence against him. In parallel, he suggests specifically that Radeksz, under the guise of acting as an independent editor in good standing, should increase pressure on Deacon by warning him about alleged incivilites. In , Radeksz reveals that he made this edit in direct response to Piotrus' suggestion, that he deliberately worded it in a "sufficiently patronizing" way to make Deacon "at least irritated", and that he tried to goad him into saying particular things that would come across as uncivil, by "feeding" him lines in the hope that he would echo them in some way. Fut.Perf. ☼ 09:29, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

Evidence presented by PasswordUsername

Evidence relocated to subpage (PasswordUsername)

Extensive evidence section relocated to Misplaced Pages:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Eastern European mailing list/Evidence/PasswordUsername

Evidence presented by Piotrus

Very short summary

Very short summary: errors of judgment were made; multiple participants of this case, myself included, should (which I thus do) recognize that, apologize to the community for not mending their ways sooner, and adopt a series of voluntary (hopefully...) restrictions on themselves to demonstrate they recognize that they have erred and that they endeavor to avoid repeating such errors in the future. See my proposals to remedy the situation: large scale mediation/mentorships are needed, public EE noticeboard (created), an offer to build content, voluntary restrictions and pledges and my analysis of why the EE battleground existed for years and what must be done to end it once and forever. My replies to evidence presented by others has been archived and is accessible via the link below. PS. That said, I want to note that I am significantly disappointed in how parts of this case were handled; in particular with the dubious and possibly illegal way the evidence was obtained, disseminated, read and used (and is still used by some) for online and real life harassment and outing and how those aspects of the case (gross violations of privacy and harassment) are still being ignored. Please note I am not saying that two wrongs make one right, but that there are two wrongs and one is being ignored. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 18:18, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Evidence relocated to subpage (Piotrus)

Extensive evidence section relocated to Misplaced Pages:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Eastern European mailing list/Evidence/Piotrus

Evidence presented by Shell Kinney

I was made aware of this mailing list via private email several days ago mainly because someone reviewing the "leak" noticed several of my emails had been forwarded to the mailing list. I can confirm that the emails forwarded to the list by Piotr were not forged or tampered with and I can provide the original mail to ArbCom if needed. This was done without my permission or knowledge and I am frankly outraged that Piotr not only broke trust in this manner, but has yet to offer any reason or apology for such behavior. This is not the sort of conduct I would expect from an administrator. Shell 17:30, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

• Possibly relevant/helpful report in my userspace User:Shell_Kinney/EEreportsreview. Started in response to a number of simultaneous AE reports to examine behavior of many of the parties named here. Covers January through June of this year and outlines actions across a number of articles; may help in comparing against email archives. Shell 22:57, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

• Another bit to consider: during my review of the AE reports I was contacted multiple times via email by those listed as begin part of the mailing list; some were being reviewed, some were not. At the time I didn't think much of it, but I think it would be appropriate for ArbCom to review whether or not this was coordinated and intended to influence the outcome of any sanctions. Shell 04:19, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Evidence presented by DonaldDuck

Edit war, wikistalking and block-shopping by the members of secret mailing list team

On 31 December 2008 User:Piotrus writes to the mailing list asking for help dealing with me in Tsarist autocracy article. Piotrus explicitly writes that this help is needed to circumvent Arbcom warning to him to stop edit warring. On 2 January 2009, when I make edits in this article, coordinated action from the team follows.

1. 03:54 IP user reverts my edits Contributions from this IP from Estonia. This IP was active only from 31 December 2008 to 15 January 2009.
2. 12:18 Second revert from different IP . This is the only edit from this IP from Estonia. No other edits.
3. 13:22 Mailing list member User:Digwuren joins the edit war.
4. 14:21 Mailing list member User:Hillock65, who never edited this article before, joins the edit war, makes 2 reverts 1 2 and places warning at my talk page
5. User:Piotrus reports me to the administrators noticeboard. I am blocked by User:Spartaz. Efforts to block me are discussed in the several emails in the mailing list. Spartaz fails to notice teamwork, although it is quite easy (appearance of 4 new editors in one day, 2 anonymous IP edits, editor who never edited this article suddenly coming to make reverts), blocks me for a week and warns me of further indefinite block.

On 6-12 May 2009.

1. Piotrus starts new edit war against me, making 2 reverts 02:20 06:00. He writes to the mailing list, asking for help in edit war. He writes that he would like to avoid more then 2 reverts a day.
2. Mailing list member User:Radeksz, who never edited this article before, joins the edit war
3. User:Digwuren joins the edit war
4. On 9 may 2009 Piotrus writes another letter to the list, reminding that I am still a problem.
5. I am avoiding 3RR violations, but at last after repeated provocations by members of the team I make 4 reverts in a 24 hours on 9-10 of May. User:Radeksz places a warning at my talk page . After this warning I self-revert my last edit. Technically, I did not even break a 3RR rule in this case
6. Piotrus reports me to the administrators noticeboard. Two members of the secret team: User:Biophys and User:Digwuren support this report by Piotrus. User:William M. Connolley ( recently desysopped for abuse of admin tools by ArbCom decision) blocks me for 2 weeks, but noticing previous warning of indefinite block by Spartaz, in 5 minutes changes his decision and indefinitely blocks me for edit war that did not even amount to 3RR. He fails to notice offwiki communication between the members of the team.

June 2009.

1. After some negotiation, William M. Connolley unblocks me. Mailing list member User:Biophys tries to intervene to keep me blocked. My unblock is discussed in the mailing list, there are calls to "look out" for me.
2. On 9 June I am included to the "fresh enemies list" by members of the mailing list.
3. User:Biophys runs a campaign to block me again. On June 23, Biophys wrote offwiki email to User:Thatcher. On this secret offwiki request I was again blocked indefinitely by User:Thatcher. Such offwiki block-shopping is strongly discouraged by Blocking policy

In this way, organized edit wars, stalking and block-shopping against me, started by Piotrus despite previous warning by ArbCom to him to stop edit wars, and carried out by Piotrus, Digwuren, Hillock65, Radeksz and Biophys, coordinated through this secret mailing list, resulted in my indefinite block.

Edit war in this aricle quite clearly illustrates methods, employed by this secret group. It was not group vs group, cabal vs cabal. Several commited and experienced edit-warriors attacked single editor, primarily because he did not fit their political agenda.DonaldDuck (talk) 02:22, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Block-shopping by members of mailing list team (Petri Krohn case)

In May 2009 User:Petri Krohn was blocked for a year after WP:ANI diccussion. Out of 7 editors supporting block of Petri Krohn 4 (Martintg, Miacek, Biruitorul and Biophys) were members of the secret mailing list team, while 4 users opposing the block were mostly uninvolved editors.

1. 20090523-1324- Digwuren informs mailing list of this discussion.
2. 20090529-1210- Miacek writes another email canvassing the votes to ban Petri Krohn and recommending not to vote in block to avoid suspicions. Very important revelation is that he writes that Petri Krohn did not made much trouble lately. This proves that goal of this group was not even protection of preferred articles versions by the coordinated edit wars, but primarily stalking other editors and driving them out of wikipedia.

Mailing list is serious evidence that this WP:ANI discussion was affected by stealth canvassing of votes by this team.

Re:Piotrus

Hillock65 and Radeksz did not make a single edit in Tsarist autocracy before you called them to join your edit war in your letter to the mailing list on 31 December 2008 (by the way this was already your third letter to the mailing list asking to deal with me). And after I was blocked on 12 May, Digwuren, Hillock65 and Radeksz also did not make a single edit in this article. This proves that they came to this article not to improve it, but with single purpose of taking part in edit war.

I can not believe your expectations of good faith from members of your team or your own good faith after my inclusion into the "enemies list" by member of this team. You did not report creation of this list to administrators. DonaldDuck (talk) 03:52, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Re:Biophys

I have no connection to User:Russavia beyond his 5 public messages at my talk page, and 2 my responses to this messages. And I have absolutely no connection to User:Miyokan, I have first known about this editor from Biophys posts.

This is something new, It looks like it is veiled legal threat by Biophys right at the arbitration page.

Re:Radek

Radeksz statement includes direct legal threat to Arbitration Committee and all involved parties.

Re:Vecrumba, Radeksz and Biophys

Vecrumba, Radeksz and Biophys constantly accuse their opponents of being pro-Putin/extremist/chauvinist/Stalinist/neo-Nazist. They do not only show lack of good faith, but also show little understanding that their political motivations are only of secondary importance in this case, whatever this motivations may be. Every editor has his own views and has some bias. The problem is major disruption of collaborative editing process and consensus building done by members of mailing list group.

IP editors

Can someone check IP editors 62.65.238.142 and 90.190.58.112 ? Was it Digwuren or some other member of the mailing list or not?

Evidence presented by Radek

Evidence relocated to subpage (Radek)

Extensive evidence section relocated to Misplaced Pages:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Eastern European mailing list/Evidence/Radek

• Preliminaries and clarifications
• Russavia
• DonaldDuck
• PasswordUsername/Anti-Nationalist (sic)
• Offliner
• Skapperod
• MK (quick)
• MK (full)

Evidence presented by Vecrumba

Evidence relocated to subpage (Vecrumba)

Extensive evidence section relocated to Misplaced Pages:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Eastern European mailing list/Evidence/Vecrumba
Table of contents follows. 25 October 2009 (UTC)
 

• Statement/Evidence by Vecrumba
  • These proceedings and Russavia
    • Giano returns from the wilderness
    • Threats and intimidation
    • Reverence for Irpen
  • Proposed principles as evidence
    • Consensus
    • Participation
    • Consensus in internal processes
    • Canvassing
    • Not a battleground
    • Gaming the system
    • Meatpupettry
    • Presumption of coordination
    • Off-wiki communication
    • Exclusion of evidence
    • CLOSING regarding Principles
  • Asssumptions and questions not asked
  • Regarding evidence editors have filed against me
    • Sandstein
    • Ellol
    • Durova
    • Skäpperöd
    • Deacon of Pndapetzim
    • Offliner
      • re: Discrimination against ethnic minorities in Estonia
      • re: Files for deletion, File:German Soviet.jpg
      • re: Coordinated provocations against PasswordUsername, June 10
      • re: Members of the secret email list protect each other at admin noticeboards
      • As these proceedings have unfolded
      • Typical pro-Russia warring
      • re: Censorship of Estonian articles
    • Russavia
      • re: Tag-teaming with Digwuren at RIA Novosti scope of reliability
      • re: Offliner as Russavia's proxy
      • re: Web brigades
      • re: Alexander Litvinenko
      • re: Soviet War Memorial (Treptower Park)
      • re: Communist Romania et al. regarding timing
      • re: Several list members actively broke general sanctions
      • re: My personal details were discussed
    • YMB29
    • MBisanz
    • Good Olfactory
    • HistoricWarrior007
      • "Cabalites"
    • Fut.Perf.
    • PasswordUsername
      • re: Swamping of AFD and CFD discussions
      • re: Anti-Russian sentiment: 8-16 May 2009
      • re: Neo-Stalinism: May 10-18 2009, August-September 2009
      • re: Collaboration with the Axis Powers during World War II: 15-17 August 2009
      • re: Evidence from the e-mail archive
      • Jaak Aaviksoo
      • re: Baiting Paul Siebert
      • Smearing dead Estonians
    • Shell Kinney
    • DonaldDuck
    • Crotalus horridus
    • Hiberniantears
    • Commodore Sloat
      • re: Canvassing on Communist Genocide and Communist terrorism AfDs
      • re: Canvassing and other illegitimate actions by Biophys
    • Viriditas
    • Vlad fedorov
    • Thatcher
      • The poisoning of Misplaced Pages
    • Dojarca
      • re: Activity of the group in the article Occupation of Baltic states and avoiding dispute resolution procedures
      • re: spoilers and "hiding"
      • re: Template:Soviet occupation
      • re: Ousting and removing any Russian and pro-Russian authors and sources
      • re: On the previous arbitration case
    • Paul Pieniezny
    • M.K.
    • Alex Bakharev
  • Summary regarding evidence
    • Post scriptum
  • On moving forward

Evidence/statement presented by Miacek

Statement

There was a mailing list and I participated in it from March to July, 2009, there's no denying of such facts. I left the list when I was running short of wikitime in June-July. I am sure the mails were not obtained via whistleblower, so hacking remains the only plausible way e-mails got leaked and are now circulating on the net, so to say. I became familiar with a number of users in that list, Biruitorul and Dc being especially impressive due to their intellectual level, some of the participants have remained relatively unknown for me, too, since many edit only Poland-related articles that I am not interested in.

What we had in common was the threat of neo-Stalinist/Russian chauvinist POV pushing by accounts like Irpen, Petri Krohn or Roobit (all now justly banned or forced to leave by real consensus). Please don't even try to argue that e.g. departure of the prolific yet extremely biased user Ghirlandajo had something to do with our list. (The editing trio Irpen-Ghirlandajo-Grafikm_fr had their own misdeeds, as already pointed out by others).

On the other hand, issues with users like Russavia or, say, Alex Bakharev, who are constructive yet posed problems for some of the participants of the list - they were discussed, too (as were many different facets of world politics, too, btw), but there were dissenting opinions on which position one should take wrt to them. I personally did not take part in en bloc voting, as far as I remember. Despite having left the list in August, I do not regret my participation. I left for a number of reasons (1) I have very little time for Misplaced Pages (2) my editing pattern was rather different from that of the other participants (3) while editing Misplaced Pages I tended to disagree with the participants, e.g. more nationalistic Poles and also Biophys, and wished to be completely independent and to avoid useless arguments within the list. Regardless, I never gave out anything about the list to third parties, neither IRL nor on-line and am perfectly sure no-one else did.

Also, please note I am not going to take part in this arbitration process in any depth. Regards, User:Miacek 17:09, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Evidence presented by Crotalus horridus

AFD canvassing on the mailing list

Someone else posted above that they suspected canvassing on Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Soviet-run peace movements in Western Europe and the United States. I looked at the underlying article and determined it to be a mess of original research by synthesis and POV-pushing. The allegations of canvassing looked plausible, since many/most of the Keep !voters were list participants. I obtained a copy of the list and quickly found a thread discussing this article. In a message posted on "Fri, 17 Jul 2009 13:32:23 -0400," User:Piotrus engaged in explicit canvassing, with the following words: "Much weaseling in the article, and the AfD is still ongoing and can use some votes" (followed by a link to the AFD). Note that this had been discussed on the list for several days prior, so even before the explicit canvassing, votes may have been tainted by this participation.

Evidence submitted by Hiberniantears

This is mostly a placeholder for the moment, as I'm late to this (thanks to Viriditas for the heads up). For the moment, I will direct you to the extended threads (many of which placed under a hat by me) on this archive of my talk page. I got into it with many of the editors on this mailing list back and May and June, and have encountered the feeling of a well coordinated group of editors behaving in a tendentious manner. I will readily admit that this entire experience burned me out, as evidenced by my increasing grumpiness around here since then. It was not one of my finer moments, but it does represent the impact that the mailing list editors are having on the project.

I'm not taking sides on content, or behavior, as I believe there is a great deal of antagonism between two groups of editors who are simply talking past each other. I can only speak to the experience of trying to tamp down this bad behavior, and feeling utterly overwhelmed, and lacking any meaningful remedy as an admin. I've directed some generalised vitriol at ArbCom recently, and this stems largely from what I perceive as our inability as a community to contain the types of things that this mailing list was coordinating. I would be most interested to know if there are any emails relevant to my dispute with this group back in May and June.

Again, this is post is rushed, and I will try to expand later this evening if there is still time. If any members of the committee require further background from me, please reach out to me on my talk page, or let me know if I should check my email.

Thanks. Hiberniantears (talk) 18:26, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Difs

It may be worthwhile for those doing the leg work to cross reference the email archive for activity relating to some of the following diffs:

• Anything relating to my first post at Talk:Occupation of the Baltic states
• My split/move/protections of Occupation of the Baltic states
• Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Baltic states and the Soviet Union
• Marting talk page

In each case, there was something of a swarm by the editors who appear to be members of the mailing list. Out of fairness, this is not entirely a surprise since the same editors would have probably had this set of related articles on their watch list, and a swarming reaction would have been somewhat expected with or without a mailing list. Hiberniantears (talk) 21:41, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Looking at my talk page, it appears that my interaction with this group of editors really kicked off on, or shortly after April 26, 2009 following this post from User:Dojarca. My talk page was then a battleground through most of May and June. Hiberniantears (talk) 22:58, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Email concerning me

So I went ahead and downloaded the emails. I will not disclose specifics, since ArbCom can simply verify my assertions by searching "Hiberniantears" in the zip file's "String to find" search function. That said, the 50,000 ft view of things as they concern me in the emails are as such:

• 38 emails are in regards to me, discussing ways to get me or desysopped or disciplined.
• Comments range from cuationary to incendiary.
• There appears to be one current admin present in the discussion concerning me. I found a number of instances where this admin was asked to use his admin rights, and he either agreed, or declined depending on whether said action would expose him as part of the group.
• The date range of the emails corresponds to the difs I included above (4/29/09 - 6/28/09).

On one hand, this is somewhat bothersome. On the other hand, it was pretty obvious to me at the time that something like this was going on given the fact that an entire group of editors were able to act in unison without any apparent on-Wiki coordination. As someone who has long tried to neutralize nationalistic editing, I have always encountered combative groups of like minded editors. However, that there is an administrator present in the emails is something of an outrage. As an administrator, you are supposed to prevent things like this, not be a part of them.

Admins should never be a cabal themselves, but when an admin is part of a cabal that actively seeks to undermine objective neutrality, you do considerable harm to the project. Hiberniantears (talk) 18:50, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Evidence presented by Commodore Sloat

Canvassing on Communist Genocide and Communist terrorism AfDs

I have not had a lot of interaction with the people on this alleged cabal list but I wonder if their actions during the AfD of Communist genocide and Communist terrorism were coordinated. The latter may be too old to be covered with the evidence here but the former is more recent, and both display the same symptoms - a sudden burst of activity from a significant number of members of this list (apparently 9 of the 11 available members voted on the Communist genocide AfD, all at roughly the same time). Both votes were close and contentious, with several of the people named in this arbitration jumping on board at roughly the same time and making arguments almost as a chorus. Arbcom should look into whether this vote was canvassed and coordinated, and whether the discussions of this vote included any suggestions to go after certain users or anything like that.

Canvassing and other illegitimate actions by Biophys

I have had interactions with one of the listmembers in the past, User:Biophys, and was amazed how several times when he was losing an argument someone who had never edited the article before dropped in to "help out" in an edit war -- I'm particularly thinking of interactions over this article in the past, but I also wonder about this article as well as the Suitcase nuke article. There were several times I wondered at the coincidences. I now wonder how much of this activity was orchestrated, and whether Biophys in particular or some of his compatriots on this list singled my account out for any particular harassment or other games. I have always felt Biophys was playing games, and have even called him out on his annoying habit of denying that he made edits that he has just made. I don't know whether this super secret email list coordinated such attacks as the burst of activity on the Communist terrorism AfD or the Communist genocide AfD or the sudden appearance of Piotrus on this discussion or Vecrumba's similar appearance on this discussion but I do think that anyone familiar with the evidence and the list archives should take a close look at these things.

Frankly, if even a portion of what is alleged to be in these archives is actually there, it is a substantial problem at least as worrisome as the CAMERA scandal, if not more so.

Evidence presented by Viriditas

I have expanded upon the event briefly described by PasswordUsername concerning the incident at Human rights in the United States. Particularly noteworthy is the presence of the Eastern European mailing list group from May 24-26 involving their support of User:Mosedschurte during an article RfC and an ANI report, and their participation in an RfC/U from June to July. To the best of my knowledge, these editors had not edited the Human rights in the United States article before this incident.

As the allegations show below, User:Biophys helped defend Mosedschurte's position by announcing the Misplaced Pages discussion on the closed Eastern European mailing list and inviting its members to join the discussion during an ongoing RfC. User:Piotrus used the same thread to announce the existence of the ANI report against Mosedschurte. In all cases, user talk pages, an article RfC, multiple ANI reports, and an RfC/U were soon flooded with responses from list members, skewing the discussion. While this kind of e-mail announcement is generally classified as stealth canvassing, it at first appears harmless. However, the tactics and strategies described on the mailing list go against the fundamental, core policies of Misplaced Pages, and the results of the RfC and ANI reports were neither a fair representation of a broad spectrum of editorial opinion nor actions indicative of good faith discussion.

Human rights in the United States

The following information concerns an incident that occurred in late May, early June on Human rights in the United States and played out on its talk page in the form of extended discussions and an article RfC.

Timeline

• 2009-05-21 - 05:56 - User:Mosedschurte arrives on Talk:Human rights in the United States.
• 2009-05-23 - 11:45 - User:Viriditas (myself) submits an ANI report on Mosedschurte
• 2009-05-23 - 13:25 - Mosedschurte blocked for 3rr on Human rights in the United States.
• 2009-05-23 – 18:30 - User:Biophys arrives.
• 2009-05-24 - 14:59 - Biophys reverts and removes disputed material supporting Mosedschurte
• 2009-05-25 - 15:22 - Biophys reverts and removes disputed material supporting Mosedschurte
• 2009-05-25 - 19:54 - Mosedschurte votes on the RfC
• 2009-05-25 - 23:06 - Biophys votes on the RfC
• 2009-05-25 - 23.15 - On the EE mailing list, Biophys invites the list to comment on Talk:Human rights in the United States, noting that he finds favor with comments made by Mosedschurte, but wonders if commenting on the talk page will be worth it
• 2009-05-25 - 23:28 - On the EE mailing list, User:Radeksz responds to Biophys' message, and says he will attempt to participate at Talk:Human rights in the United States, adding that he is interested in deleting content due to what he perceives is fringe material
• 2009-05-25 - 23:32 - Radeksz arrives.
• 2009-05-25 - 23:41 - User:Martintg arrives and votes on the RfC.
• 2009-05-26 - 01:42 - Radeksz votes on the RfC
• 2009-05-26 - 06:41 - User:Digwuren arrives.
• 2009-05-26 - 07:46 - On the EE mailing list, User:Piotrus responds to the Human rights in the US thread, and notifies the list about the ANI report (see above at May 23 - 11:45) filed previously against Mosedschurte
• 2009-05-26 – 16:21 - User:Vecrumba arrives.
• 2009-06-05 - 14:33 - Vecrumba votes on the RfC.
• 2009-06-12 - 22:13 - Radeksz reverts to Mosedchurte version of POV tag
• 2009-06-14 - 03:17 - Radeksz reverts to Mosedchurte version of POV tag

RFC/U

Timeline

• 2009-06-29 - 11:30 - RfC/U created by User:Mosedschurte on User:Viriditas (myself).
• 2009-06-29 - 12:29 - On the EE mailing list, User:Biophys invites list members to comment on the RfC/U one hour after it is created by Mosedschurte.
• 2009-07-03 - 20:00 - User:Vecrumba comments at the RfC/U.
• 2009-07-11 - 23:02 - On the EE mailing list, User:Dc76 asks the list about Mosedschurte.
• 2009-07-11 - 23:20 - On the EE mailing list, Biophys responds to Dc76, describing Mosedschurte in favorable terms and points Dc76 to the RfC/U. This was the second time Biophys referred list members to the RfC/U. (see above at 12:29, June 29)
• 2009-07-12 - 01:46 - Dc76 comments at the RfC/U several hours after being pointed to it by Biophys.
• 2009-07-12 - 13:01 - User:Radeksz comments at the RfC/U.
• 2009-07-14 - 14:44 - Biophys informs the mailing list that he had sent e-mail back and forth with Mosedschurte, because, according to Biophys, Mosedschurte needed help dealing with Viriditas (myself).

Evidence provided by Poeticbent

My evidence is short and to the point for two reasons. Firstly, I joined the list at the very end, and have no knowledge of any earlier contributions. Whatever exchange of email took place before late June remains unknown to me. Secondly, my name is being mentioned here only on a few occasions. – The examples are laughable nevertheless, shedding the light on the quality of the so called evidence dumped on this page by some of the most aggressive POV pushers I’ve ever met.

Response to evidence by Offliner

I’m being accused of voting at AfD to keep the article which I expanded with several book references, how amusing. Meanwhile, Offliner was badgering every single person who voted the same way, with his numbingly repetitious comments (nine, in all) including the totally uninvolved admins; canvassing to have it deleted, and so on. Please, look at the article history for more revelations. Book references are being deleted from the article and the level of manipulation is staggering to this day. Consequently, nothing of my research remained.

The same user Offliner accused me of trying to defend an image I myself uploaded with a rock-solid license (soon confirmed by the admin). It doesn’t get any worse than that in misrepresentation of fact. – What coordinated action did I take, I ask?

Response to evidence by PasswordUsername née Anti-Nationalist

My interaction with user Molobo dates back to the early days of Misplaced Pages. Molobo lost it somewhere along the way, and is temporarily banned from editing due to his unwillingness to close the eyes to POV attacks on Poland–related articles which he was unable to defend by the rule. The clerk in his investigation duly noted that his German opponent’s evidence was in some cases only masquerading as evidence. There’s no connection to the above mailing list whatsoever. I would like to advise those who provide misleading and dishonest evidence to please quit playing with smoke and mirrors, because you’re making yourself look foolish.

Response to evidence by Skäpperöd

Users, such as Skäpperöd, are the reason why, some sort of off-wiki discussion between Polish editors has become unavoidable after a while. That's because Skäpperöd is concerned solely with articles related to German presence on traditionally Polish lands coupled with attacks on Polish editors. Skäpperöd's top edited articles include "Expulsion of Germans after World War II" (422 edits), "History of Pomerania" (303 edits), "Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany" (205 edits), "Pomerania" (195 edits), "Flight and expulsion of Germans from Poland during and after World War II" (152 edits), "Szczecin" (140 edits) and similar others. Compare that with my own average of 5 edits per each top DYK article of equal size. No Polish Wikipedian has ever been able to match his uniquely German viewpoint, since 2007. Meanwhile, Skäpperöd's clashes with Polish editors are record-bearing. See Eastern European disputes, and Administrators' noticeboards: archive 194, 503, 559, 535, AfD 1, 538 among others, not to mention: the Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement, Requests for mediation, and most importantly, attacks on my real life identity as a notable Wikipedian. Please take this into consideration when sifting through his own dubious grievances.

On good will and personal pride

There’s no question that the leaked archive was prepared and disseminated by an individual well versed in all aspects of programming. The archive starts at exactly the same time as the initial EE mailing list set up, thus drawing my suspicion that perhaps the outing was pre-planned and that the later participants (like myself) were lured to join in by the prospect of advantage. – Please try to see it from my own perspective. Would you refuse an invitation to a discussion group devoted to Misplaced Pages? Of course, not. Perhaps you would even feel honored, like some others did. Unsubscribing from the list at any point in time though, would draw unnecessary fears, that’s why it was better to just let it go.

At least one list participant, Ostap R, once blindly attacked me on-wiki demanding, at AN/E, that I’ll be banned. This caused quite a stir among the group members. Piotrus threatened to withdraw from the list with all his Polish friends (July 31, 2009 12:11:52 AM). Ostap responded like a gentleman. He asked to be taken out instead, and that everybody else stays put. Ostap soon retracted his comment at AN/E and the matter was satisfactorily resolved by EdJohnston. This is how a lot of honorable people would interact in the real world as well, I believe. --Poeticbent talk 20:35, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Evidence presented by Martintg

Evidence relocated to subpage (Martintg)

Extensive evidence section relocated to Misplaced Pages:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Eastern European mailing list/Evidence/Martintg

Further evidence in reply to Russavia posted to Misplaced Pages:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Eastern_European_mailing_list/Evidence/Martintg#Russavia

Further evidence of egregious harassing behaviour Misplaced Pages:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Eastern_European_mailing_list/Evidence/Martintg#Vexatious_claims_of_.22WP:OUTING.22

Evidence presented by Vlad_fedorov

Evidence relocated to subpage (Vlad_fedorov)

Extensive evidence section relocated to Misplaced Pages:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Eastern European mailing list/Evidence/Vlad_fedorov

Evidence presented by Sander Säde

As a first thing I would like to say that I felt honored when I was invited to the list in June (not re-joined like Offliner claims). I still feel the same, the list accomplished a lot, including unofficial (and much more effective) mediations between various groups/editors - which on-wiki would undoubtedly caused a lot of drama and possible blocks of hard-working editors. The second purpose of the mailing list was to create a high-quality NPOV content in which I think the list was extremely successful.

None of my decisions or actions on Misplaced Pages have never been something I would have not done without the mailing list. If an AfD or content dispute was mentioned on the list, I was only involved if I had an opinion about the article/issue. I do believe all others did the same. In many cases of AfD's mentioned in the list, I would have noticed them or changes in articles - as I monitor edits by Vecrumba, Martintg and some others (none of whom is a member of the pro-Soviet cabal) - and I have scripts that allow me to monitor all changes in WikiProject Estonia articles.

Unlike what Russavia claims, no one list never sought to eradicate pro-Soviet/anti-Baltics propaganda from Misplaced Pages. We wanted to balance it by introducing alternate viewpoints (and remove obvious lies, see below), always using valid sources - something that was always a very sore point for the pro-Soviet cabal, as their sources often were... shall we say, lacking.

In this stage, I am not going to address every single claim made by said cabal - quite frankly, I have a life outside Misplaced Pages and simply have no time to edit three days in a row like some of the pro-Soviet cabal members apparently can. I am just going to point out the most glaring errors and issues - either intentional or logical.

However, I feel... shocked is the best expression - that Arbitration Committee allows private e-mails containing highly personal information to be openly discussed and shared. Let us not forget that no matter what our imagined or real wrongdoings, nothing of this is even closely comparable to the hacker releasing the archive, committing a mass outing - especially as some of our list members have already received death threats. I propose that owning and use of the archive is allowed only by ArbCom, mailing list members and persons whom the mailing list members allow to analyze the archive. All references by others to the e-mails must be removed and any attempt to use the archive should be followed by an indefinite block. No matter what rules apply to the members of ArbCom, there must be an extremely strong message that hacking or using hacked material to "get" your opponent is not allowed.

AfD's

I would like to remind everybody that AfD's are not voting. Closing administrator will read the opinions and arguments - and decide then. So all claims about canvassing on list are moot - not to mention, I don't have the said archive, but I don't remember ever seeing an e-mail saying "Nnn is in AfD! Vote keep!!!". Considering the high personal integrity of list members, I find claims of such conduct a nasty attempts to discredit us.

Amusingly, in his list of AfD's, Russavia brings an example of canvassing where I had given my opinion already before the e-mail in the list. Russavia also misspells my name there. In the same AfD Russavia calls Kaitsepolitsei "Estonian KGB", a highly insulting comparison - and refuses to remove it after it has been pointed out.

There are many examples by Russavia and Offliner where they accuse us of cabalism and canvassing in relation to AfD's. Let us see those AfD's they mention from the other side:

• Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Russian influence operations in Estonia: delete by Offliner, Russavia, DonaldDuck
• Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Russian influence operations in Estonia (2nd nomination): delete by Offliner, Russavia, PasswordUsername
• Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Putinjugend: delete by DonalDuck, Russavia
• Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Evidence of FSB involvement in the Russian apartment bombings: delete by Russavia, DonaldDuck, Offliner
• Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Evidence of FSB involvement in the Russian apartment bombings (2nd nomination): delete by Offliner, Russavia, PasswordUsername
• Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Russian influence operations in Estonia: delete by Offliner, Russavia, DonaldDuck
• Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Discrimination of ethnic minorities in Estonia: keep by PasswordUsername, Russavia, Offliner,
• Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Communist genocide: delete by Offliner, Russavia, PasswordUsername

I think comments are unnecessary.

Edit warring

Again, arbitrators must not be deceived by simply presented diffs, but must actually look at the content being removed/added. Otherwise you might see reverts of such material as "Children are often molested" inserted by PasswordUsername to Crime in Estonia (, one of the most shameful edits I have seen all of the time I've been in Misplaced Pages. Do look at his edit spree on that article and draw conclusions yourself) as simply edit warring.

Let's have some other examples.

• Mark Sirõk

BLP article includes personal health information sourced to a web forum (something that is very much against BLP rules - and also illegal). Shotlandiya, Offliner and PasswordUsername edit war to include blatant BLP violation.

In his "evidence" PasswordUsername claims he had only one edit in the article. Strangely I count 18 of them, including at least four attempts to reinstate BLP-violating health information: , , , .

PasswordUsername accuses me on this very page of joining "Digwuren in their attempts to discredit Mark Sirok" - which was inserting well-sourced material about Sirõk. In effect, he accuses me of an attempt to improve the article.

And I invite everybody to read two comments by Shotlandiya on the talk page, . This is what we are dealing with almost daily.

• Jaak Aaviksoo (Estonian Minister of Defense, high-profile BLP)

Shotlandiya and PasswordUsername attempt to portray Jaak Aaviksoo as neo-Nazi, by misrepresenting an extremely poor source: , , , , , , , , , , . The quality of the source can be deduced from the fact that as it came out, Jaak Aaviksoo did not even participate in the event at which PasswordUsername and Shotlandiya attempted to have him wearing Nazi symbols (see Talk:Jaak_Aaviksoo#Controversy_section) - but even that source did not have him wearing Nazi symbols. That was a misrepresentation of the source.

• Kaitsepolitsei

, - PasswordUsername attempts to insert material equating Estonian Security Police with Nazi Political Police, based on the similarities of a translated name. That despite the fact that all Kaitsepolitsei members were murdered by Soviet forces during their occupation before the Nazi occupation - and that Republic of Estonia did not de facto exist.

Russavia and Offliner edit war to include critizism based on a blog post and a self-published book by Johan Bäckman: , , , , , (I probably missed quite a few, as the mess is hard to untangle).

I do hope that this shows clearly with what Eastern/Northern European editors have to put up with. I have brought examples only from three articles - but there are dozens that have suffered a similar fate. I hope other editors and arbitrators will look at the articles and edits very closely before making any decisions.

On Dojarca's evidence

Dojarca claims that Occupation of Baltic states "currently present one point of view as the truth", which is not true. Article has several sections representing alternate viewpoints - Occupation of Baltic states#Soviet sources prior to Perestroika, Occupation of Baltic states#Russian historiography in the post-Soviet era, Occupation of Baltic states#Position of the Russian Federation. If there is any sourced viewpoints missing, then I do not understand why Dojarca doesn't simply add them. Quite frankly, I do not understand why he brings it up, as even a glance on the mediation (more then 1.5 years before the creation of the mailing list) and article talk page shows that there is a wide support for the current version, which has been more or less stable for years. This seems to be just an attempt to remove alternate viewpoint from Misplaced Pages - an extremely well sourced viewpoint supported by majority of historians/sources.

Evidence presented by William M. Connolley

Emails from me on the list

It has been said to me that at least one email sent by me to a list member has appeared in the archive. Since I haven't seen the archive I cannot verify this, but I'm including below a copy from my gmail archives of the message said to be present (I was not asked, and I did not give, permission for this mail to be forwarded).

 
From: William Connolley <wmconnolley@gmail.com>
Date: 2009/2/2
Subject: Re: Regarding  3RR report
To: 
This is all very well, but if you care to fix up the report to show
why the reverts really are, please do. If not, its not really a 3RR
problem and needs to go to DR
-William

This is of vague relevance as it may demonstrate that (a) at least portions of the archive are genuine and (b) that some member of the list has been rather less scrupulous about respecting the privacy of other peoples mail than they appear to be about their own. Note that part of my sig contained my phone number, which was therefore posted to the list. This contradicts the assertion that No any private information was disclosed in emails, except information about the participants themselves and information that was openly posted by others in wikimedia space.

•  Confirmed that the above email was posted, with WMC's phone number intact, to the list on 2 Feb 2009 as message 20090202-2236- Fwd_Regarding Russavia's 3RR report. Thatcher 01:58, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

As has now become clear, this email was forwarded by Marting; see Misplaced Pages:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Eastern_European_mailing_list/Evidence#Accidental_forwarding_of_one_of_William_Connelly.27s_emails (sic) for his explanation. I am disinclined to believe him, on the evidence provided. If he does want to believed, then he needs to permit access to his gmail account to a trusted third party who can verify his assertion of habitual forwarding-with-comments William M. Connolley (talk) 20:39, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Evidence presented by Thatcher

My "controversial" imposition of 1RR

Following a request for Arbitration Enforcement, I imposed a 1RR restriction on a broad range of editors whom I felt were "involved" in the Eastern European disputes. This action was vigorously protested, then appealed. Following another lengthy discussion, a request for clarification was filed. Two arbitrators and several admins, in the various discussions, commented on the need for "doing the paperwork" of posting a formal notice and warning before imposing the 1RR limit. Therefore I rescinded the 1RR limits.

Please note

• The parties had been coordinating their reverts for months
• The parties had discussed using 1RR limits against other editors
• The parties coordinated their response to Shell Kinney's offer to "analyze" the EE situation and find out what the problem with EE articles was
• The parties coordinated their responses to my imposition of 1RR
• The parties complained on-list because I vacated all the 1RR sanctions I had imposed instead of just the ones they wanted removed
• Radek thinks I'm a crybaby and writes a long draft complaint about how I undermined the process, and wants to get the sanction against Russavia, Offliner and PasswordUsername reinstated.
• Piotrus suggests sending the complaint to Kirill (I wonder why)

The entire episode is breathtaking in its duplicity. I think a few people ought to have egg on their faces, and I think anyone who answers any complaint at WP:AE involving any of these people is an idiot. Arbcom can clean this mess up.

Digwuren

Digwuren has "retired" in order to reincarnate with a clean record. (20090707-0759)

The attention of the Arbitrators is specifically drawn to these messages

Proof of intent to coordinate reverts

• 20090402-2239 reference
• 20090621-1920
• 20090603-1647
• 20060605-2009

Edit warring at Tsarist autocracy

• 20090506-1615
• 20090507-0101 (never edited prior) (correction: Radek was not subscribed to the list at this time)
• 20090509-0513 (full history with that article)

Nope, no improper cooperation here, nothing to see, move along

• 20090619-1800

File under "wishful magical thinking"

• 20090619-2134

Pest control

• 2009621-2047 et seq.
  • Note especially the construction of a "cover story" about the above diff could have innocently come to certain users' attention
  • And the double standard (20090610-0947)
  • kind of funny, in retrospect
  • Good recap here

We can haz ur mail but U kant haz ours

• 20090622-0539
• 20090202-2236

1RR is favorable to us because we have the numbers

• 20090622-1805

Piotrus proposes to create socks for reverting

• 20090701-0204

Misc evidence of bad faith

• Compare 20090616-1120 and
• 20090615-0607 ORLY?
• Compare 20090618-1441 and 20090618-1933, ROFL
• 20090619-0038 and 20090619-1112 Soup?

Evidence presented by Dojarca

Activity of the group in the article Occupation of Baltic states and avoiding dispute resolution procedures

Article Occupation of Baltic states currently present one point of view as the truth. Any attempts to make it more neutral meet with fierce resistance of the members of the Baltic POV-pushing group, who are engaged in this case. User Hiberniantears, an administrator (see his statement above in this page), tried to neutralize the article by moving it to a more neutral title Baltic states and the Soviet Union, an attempt that failed and led to creation of a new article on the same topic, with the article under the old title also remaining. Hiberniantears has been personally attacked for "moving against consensus" with threats of desysoping. A meditation case opened by Hiberniantears and supported by another administrator John Carter and me, has been unanymously rejected by the members of the group (Misplaced Pages:Requests for mediation/Occupation of the Baltic states):

Agree on meditation:

• Hiberniantears
• John Carter
• Dojarca

Decline meditation:

• Martintg
• PetersV
• Termer
• Jaan Pärn

This clearly indicates their bad faith and "we have numbers so we do not need talking" approach.

The mailing list revealed that the group deliberately agreed not to accept the mediation in hope that the opposing party would have no options to proceed with. It should be also noted that the results of the previous meditation case (before the group adopted the tactic to reject any meditation), which concerned the POV tag in the article, were rejected and the mediator personally attacked .

• In 20090430-0433 it is suggested by Digwuren to stonewall the mediation process, and do not reply. He also advises to completely ignore me, and in the case I opened an ArbCom case on the issue, to ignore that case as well.

• In 20090429-2353 the same user argue on how to direct my attention to another topic. Considered South Ossetia, but rejected based on that I have no interest in that topic. Finally proposed to add something provocative in the article on Chernobyl accident which I recently edited.

• Some comments by John Carter on the unpleasant behavior of PetersV       TALK (Vecrumba) you can find here: . The whole dicussion is put under spoiler by Vecrumba himself (possibly to hide it):

User Loosemark and Radeksz

User:Loosmark is involved in edit-warring in Soviet invasion of Poland including attempts to change a link to an article into a link to a redirect to the same article: which is a clear case of disruption. He also violated a topic-ban, imposed on him by editing articles on Polish-Ukrainian relations . Administrator Sandstein admitted the topic ban violation, but refused to take any action , so I urge the ArbCom to issue a reprisal.

Now Radeksz, a participant in the cabal continues with Loosmark a campaign of coordinated reverts in German–Soviet military parade in Brest-Litovsk trying to represent point of view that the parade was a joint victory parade as a historical fact (actually according the primary sources the parade was a part of German withdrowal ceremony).

Suva: IRC coordination and seeking support of government bodies in disruption of Wikiperdia

• 20090325-2118 Biophys: Suva prefers IRC to e-mail coordination
• 20090428-0510 Suva proposed somebody to look through articles on nuclear warfare and "correct" them
• 20090523-0823 Suva has relevant contacts to interest Estonian embassy in the English Misplaced Pages because it is more useful
• 20090531-2329 Suva again "defend each other"

Template:Soviet occupation

This template was created by Digwuren to attack the Soviet Union and integrates information about completely irrelated events, such as Soviet poarticipation in allied occupation of Europe during and after WWII with such things as Soviet war in Afghanistan. The template also presents point of view that the Baltic states were occupied by the USSR as a historical fact (dispite this being disputed by Russia). The initial version of the template included the ongoing Russian-Japanese territorial dispute over Kuril islands as an instance of "Soviet occupation" (altough even Japan does not consider the territories currently occupied, only pointing out that Khrushchev promised to return them to Japan)

A deletion case was heavily mobbed by the mailing list members (Digwuren, Martintg, Piotrus, Vecrumba and others). It was closed as "no consensus" although most uninvolved users voted for deletion.

Ousting and removing any Russian and pro-Russian authors and sources

There are numerous instances when the mailing list members removed from articles references to Russian historians Dyukov, Isaev, Meltyukhov, Vishlyov and others accusing them of holding "fringe" views. It should be noted that these historians are professionals specialized in Russian history and all have academic degrees. For example:

• Radeksz you can add any reliable source, but not Dyukov
• Termer: advocating expulsion any modern Russian and former Soviet points of view from Misplaced Pages (especially relatad to Baltic politics) on the basis they were produced by "totalitarian or semi-totalitarian societies"
• Termer: advocating Soviet sources should be separated from all other sources on the basis the USSR did not belong to "Western civilization"
• Attempt by Vecrumba to change Misplaced Pages's rules to prohibit use of Soviet sources, including declassified archives "because they may be forged" . He is supported by Piotrus and Sander Säde (Russian sources are fringe because they go against Western(=international) sources).
• Radeksz, Biophys: Great Soviet Encyclopedia is not a reliable source , edit-warring with an uninvolved editor, removing the references.
• The disappointed editor asked for a comment at WP:RS , but who answers him? Only Piotrus, Martintg, Digwuren, all are participants of this mailing list, thus creating impression that there is consensus to exclude Soviet sources (note that this event happened before the starting date of the mailing list, which clearly indicates that the off-wiki coordination existed much earlier).

So I request the ArbCom to clarify whether these sources are acceptable in Misplaced Pages and if yes, issue remedies againt removal of such sources.

On the previous arbitration case

The previous arbitration case concerning Digwuren and other members of the cabal turned to be a complete fail. The decision, proposed by a former ArbCom member Kirill Loshkin shocked many. Dispite the concrete evidence of IRC conspiracy in which Digwuren asked another user to trade GA promotions of their articles and promote his Soviet occupation denialism into GA just a few hours after creation and numerous other disruptive behavior, he was banned only for a year. Another user User:Petri Krohn who by the time did not edit any EE-related topic for several months was also banned for a year for something looking like political statements on the talk pages. Dispite massive evidence against EE-POV-pushing group, the arbitrators applied the same sanctions against many good faith users. As I know some good contributors, notably, Irpen, left Misplaced Pages after first time seeing the decision.

The decision also included the right for any administrator to block any user in EE topic on sight, which scared the remaining good faith users from the topic. For example, I abandoned EE-related topics for a long time not to risk to be blocked by a random admin. This allowed the Cabal to further their agenda in any article without any opposition.

I hope the ArbCom will be able to learn from previous mistakes.

Victims

It is now evident that a number of Misplaced Pages's users became victims of the attack by this group. I urge the ArbCom to perform extensive investigation on who of the Misplaced Pages's users became victim of the baiting campaigns directed by the participants of the mailing list group.

I ask the ArbCom to provide clarification if this edit by Petri Krohn which led to his year-long ban really contains any break with the policy as it is evident now that he was mobbed by "false consensus" to ban him from the community.

I know no Misplaced Pages's rules which he broke and I strongly disagree with the previous ArbCom decision to block him for a year which in my view was motivated by false sence of neutrality (i.e. to apply equal sanctions to both sides of the dispute regardless of their actual behavior) after Martintg's appeal that the proposed remedies are "assymetric" apparently because Kirill Loshkin's Russian background. It is pity that an ArbCom mamber became vulnerable for such kind of allegations and quickly retreated.

Radeksz, Biophys, Piotrus: Evidence of coordinated activity during the arbitration

Radeksz and Biophys during this ArbCom investigation conduct coordinated reverts in Communist terrorism . After RFC was opened Piotrus arrived to support their cause as an "uninvolved commenter"

Evidence presented by Grey Fox-9589

On the history of these disputes

I was only a minor editor in the past, but I edited a lot for Russian related articles. The reason why I eventually became inactive was due to a very large amount of Russian users who would defend dozens of articles about Russian-history, primarily focusing on defending the policies of the present-day Russian government. This defending happened on an enormous scale, everywhere ultra-nationalist users would edit-war, continue disputes without ever searching for compromises (some of the disputes are going on for years still!), pretty much glorifying Russia in every field, using peculiar Russian sources and in effect using Misplaced Pages as a tool of propaganda rather than to build a well-balanced encyclopedia. The topics were mostly the defending of Russian politicians, political groups, Soviet History, Russia’s military conflicts such as the war with Georgia and the wars in Chechnya, human rights articles concerning Russia, and articles about journalists / human rights defenders critical of the post-soviet government in Russia, including many who have over the past years been assassinated. Nowadays few of these articles are reliable and it doesn’t look like they’re going to become reliable anytime soon.

During the outbreak of the war with Georgia a large amount of new nationalist users have popped up, most of who people are still dealing with today. Characteristically they will always defend each other during disputes, always support each other during block/article votes and make it impossible for new editors to make any changes to the articles. This is about when I left and deemed wiki too unrealizable for controversial subjects. Other editors who did not want to give up created the mail-list we are discussing today. Only with co-operating their activities, as they believed, could they offer any resistance. Though the mail-list was a wrong move of them and should indeed be judged as a violation of wiki policies, the context in which it happened should most certainly be taken into account.

Alex Bakharev / Piotrus

I noticed a lot of complaints about user:Piotrus from Russian users. His presence on the mailing list was obviously wrong, but that he was a single administrator conspiring with several users and therefore disrupted wiki seems like an unfair judgment to me. I’m pretty sure a small number of administrators, usually with a Russian background, have in the past defended the nationalist users no matter how disruptive they were. One of them was User:Alex Bakharev. Though it wasn’t a systematic campaign by him, he would often offer his support for nationalist users no matter how disruptive they were. I don’t have the time to go through all the past archives and find out all the actions I think were biased, but a few stuck with me, which were about preventing several nationalist users from getting banned:

(June 2007) Here ultra-nationalist user User:M.V.E.i. was indefinitely blocked for some hideous violations. Alex Bakharev defends M.V.E.i and attempts (and eventually succeeds) to unblock him. See the history of M.V.E.i’s talk page for more information (He would get indef’d again).

(September 2008) Here another nationalist user is about to get banned for outing User:Biophys. Alex Bakharev opposes the banning and defends the user but when this doesn’t seem to help and the user is about to get indef’d, alex blocks him for 13 days in a sneaky attempt to prevent the indef ban from taking place. The user got indef’d anyway by another admin.

(December 2008) Here an ultra-nationalist ‘cossack from the Russian army’ (just check userpage history) gets banned by arbcom with a 7 to 0 vote for several unbelievable violations. Not however without the defense from Alex on the talk page who opposed the banning and dubbed himself an 'uninvolved' admin.

After User:Ellol made an alleged-coded death threat to User:Biophys (as explained above by biophys himself) it was User:Alex Bakharev who concluded that nothing like that had happened. I’ve always wondered what a different admin with an understanding of Russian would have concluded, one who isn’t known for being biased that is.

User:Alex Bakharev also defended User:Russavia when he got banned recently for several violations, both before and after he received the archives of this mailing list. Knowing how disruptive Russavia has been I too believed this was extremely biased.

User:Russavia received more support from Russian admin User:Ezhiki who also protested Russavia’s ban (before the archives were leaked). I had no knowledge of this admin before, except for that he had been working on several articles together with Russavia, and Russavia’s talk page suggests the two certainly helped each other out a lot with some articles. This means another involved Russian admin tried to prevent a nationalist user from getting banned.

So why do I believe this is relevant? Due to User:Piotrus now being labeled an unreliable admin, who supposedly disrupted wiki, without proper context, which is that ‘the other side’ had their own support from an admin as well. I don’t believe any of these administrators are necessarily bad administrators and I don’t hold a personal grudge to any of them.

(remainder of contribution removed to /Talk as was non-evidentiary - Manning (talk) 05:03, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Evidence presented by Molobo

Updated on 28th of October.

Evidence relocated to subpage (Molobo)

Extensive evidence section relocated to Misplaced Pages:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Eastern European mailing list/Evidence/Molobo.

• Reasons why the list was attractive as base for discussion

• Positive aspects of the list

• Responce to others

• Responce to Skapperod's second statement

• Responce to Skapperod's second statement

Evidence presented by LokiiT

Even though I'm an uninvolved party and haven't much to contribute regarding the cabal itself, I've been directly attacked and feel the need to defend myself.

Response to evidence by Biophys

Biophys accused me of being a "sockupuppet account created for edit warring". First of all, I should note the odd nature of this accusation, being that I am, as I mentioned, an uninvolved party, therefore none of that is relevant, and secondly, the fact that everything he mentioned occurred well over a year ago before this cabal existed (as far as I know). I'm not sure what motivated him to launch this attack on me.

Regarding the accusation itself, it's entirely false and baseless. LokiiT was an alternate account that I created with the intent to edit specific articles that my main account, Krawndawg, was not involved in (Yes, I realize this is still against policy, details below). Now if you look at this account's earliest contributions, you can see that I was simply making legit edits to an article, and my first edit was even an explanation of the problems I felt the article had. Then Biophys came along and started to revert war with me, and was generally being very disruptive with accusations of "copyright infringement". You can be the judge on whether or not he was really worried about copyright infringement given the nature of my edits, and the biases that Biophys clearly has regarding the subject matter. That revert was his first edit in the article in months.

Anyways, you can look at all my earliest contributions and see that aside from edit warring with Biophys, which he initiated, I was making regular contributions and not using this as an edit-war account. You can also compare my edit history to Krawndawg's and see that they did not edit in the same articles, much less to edit war. Therefore I feel that his accusation against me is an unprovoked attack, entirely baseless, and very perplexing at that.

Biophys' dishonest and disruptive editing

Note in the above diff, regarding supposed copyright infringement, he rolled back all my edits; grammar, references, format, unrelated additions, tags etc.. just to revert one of the edits that he found a supposedly legit problem with. Here are my individual edits, all of which he rolled back on his claims of copyright infringement: - The last one was the "copyright infringement", and here one of his old tagteam friends aka User:Grey Fox-9589 (who, I think it's worth pointing out, constantly accuses everyone he disagrees with of being "nationalists" in extremely bad faith) removed the paragraph without stating why, so I naively assumed it was an accident and re-added it. That's when Biophys came in with his copyright infringement claim, removing the paragraph again and undoing all of those unrelated edits in one swift click.

This is a revert war tactic that Biophys used constantly, and not just against me. He would point out some technical problem and use that as an excuse to do an entire rollback. I'm pretty sure others have mentioned that here too, and I was once blocked for commenting on that fact, an example of how this sort of subtle disruptive editing, that goes unnoticed by anyone who isn't directly involved in the content dispute, is able to push people over the edge (not to excuse my own lack of self control of course).

Some more examples of this subtle way of revert warring and overall dishonesty in editing:

• Notice a huge rollback of edits similar to the above example, and with the comment merely stating: "restoring an important section per talk and removing some duplicate materials". Getting very frustrated at that point I reverted him saying "stop undoing my changes", and he reverts again with the edit summary: "More changes. No, I am cooperating. In reply to your criticism at talk page, I insert more referenced materials on the subject of suspected Putin's invlvement." - Clearly trying to antagonize me.

• In order to fix grammar as his edit summary says, he rolls back and and removes sourced content that I added.

• Removes a paragraph I added, commenting "(rm irrelevant - this has nothing to do with subject, especially in introduction)" - But this is the 2008 South Ossetia war article, and the article is titled "The war of miscalculations", while the first words of the article read: "It took well over a week after the Tbilisi offensive against South Ossetia..." No explanation needed I think.

• Removes a sentence I added, commenting "(rm misrepresentation of source. it only tells that US military had no any information whatsoever)" - But if you simply compare what I added to the article I cited, this is a blatant lie. I added: "However these speculations contradict an unnamed US Defense official who said that there was no obvious buildup of Russian forces along the border that signaled an intention to invade.", and the article says: "But the official said there was no obvious buildup of Russian forces along the border that signaled an intention to invade." - What did I misinterpret exactly?

Biophys' disruption and harassment drove me to create sockpuppets

I wrote about this on the workshop page, but I feel it belongs in the evidence bin.

I have to first say that I realize what I did was against wiki policy, and I am not trying to excuse myself. I am 100% responsible for my own actions, and my actions lead to my being blocked, and I deserved it. I knew better.

However, in every "crime", there's a motive. The whole reason I created a second account was that I was getting extremely fed up with Biophys following me around to every article and reverting me, unprovoked. He was simply looking at my edit history and following me everywhere, making sure that his utmost anti-Russian interpretation of whatever the issue was would stick. I could go through history and find dozens of examples, but I'll just mention one that really got on my nerves to make my point: In the Aging of Europe article (not even a political article, and many of my changes had to do with Italy), I was having trouble with a user who was exerting ownership over the article by reverting a large edit I made, yet refusing to discuss why, and simply ignoring discussion aside from saying something akin to "I don't like your edits". So where does Biophys come in? Well, he simply showed up and decided to assist this other editor in reverting me, even though he had never before edited in the article (and hasn't since). If you check that article's edit history, you can see the only reason he ever went there was to engage in edit warring with myself.

Like I said, this was just one example that really sticks out in my mind, it's certainly not the only time he's done this to me. It basically got to a point where I felt that it was impossible for me to edit anywhere in Russia related articles without Biophys following me and reverting me. Therefore I created LokiiT, and amazingly, after a few edits, it's like someone alerted him someone was writing "pro Russian propaganda" in wikipedia or something, because he was right back at it, harassing my new account about "copyright infringement", not even realizing I was Krawndawg (note: I had never edited that article with Krawndawg - my intention was to abandon the articles that account was associated with). I still tried my best to avoid him in other articles, but there's no avoiding Biophys. He followed me to the Nazi crimes against Soviet POWs article and started edit warring with me there, despite the fact that I explained my edit in talk and he did not respond before reverting, and again he hadn't edited in that article in months until he came to revert war me. He also revert warred with me in the 2008 South Ossetia War article on numerous occasions.

Biophys sockpuppet fishing

Anyone who knows Biophys knows that he has made many accusations about people's alleged socking, and often with very little evidence. And for me this was no exception. He had flat out accused me of socking on a number of occasions (never correctly, and to prove my point he even accused Offliner of being my sock when he started editing), and then he finally went and reported me one day. What he was doing was explicit fishing. If you look at that page, you can see that he made a number of accusations against me, and not one was correct. Why? Because I didn't use them in disruptive ways that sockpuppets normally do, I used them as separate accounts. And I pretty much abandoned Krawndawg a few months earlier anyways. I also had a few throw-away accounts for talk pages/other stuff (two of the accounts I acknowledged were temporary alts, one of them I even wrote on the user page that I was Krawndawg, but I don't think the admin noticed/cared, and it probably didn't matter). But in the end, his unfounded accusations and fishing were enough to get me userchecked and all was revealed.

If you look at that investigation page, you can even see me saying he accuses everyone who he disagrees with of socking, a statement which I won't retract. The entire "investigation" was just a giant fishing fest with randomly selected accounts, userchecks all over the place for no good reason..not a single one of his accusations about me was correct, and I still to this day find it mindboggling that an admin actually went along with his game and violated the privacy of all those innocent people who were supposedly me, but for which there was no sufficient evidence to warrant such accusations.

After that, I pretty much gave up, and made it clear that Biophys' and his tag-teamers' harassment was the reason. I decided to stay away from politics articles, and my edit count fell to almost nothing up until just recently. (You may find that message of mine ironic or somewhat prophetic, but it's neither. Anyone who was involved in Russian/Eastern-Europe related articles even back then knew damn well what was going on. It was clear as day, and evidently only got worse after I left.)

Vecrumba purposely misinterpreting my comment

In Vecrumba's response to Offliner's evidence in which Vecrumba is being alleged, rightly so in my opinion, of being uncivil and making personal attacks against myself, he makes what I consider to be purposeful misinterpretations of my comment, which would show deceitful intent.

Compare:

• My original comment "Do you know what a Proxy is? Moreover, are you aware that people sometimes go on business trips/vacations to other countries? The location of an IP proves nothing. The activity is highly suspicious."

• Vecrumba's (mis)interpretation "All LokiiT had to do was check my user page for where I'm located. It's not worth my time to get on a plane and go somewhere else to revert an edit. His insistence at the possibility was a bit over the top."

The meaning of my comment is as clear as can be: Editing with an IP from a different country is not hard and can be achieved by various means. However, according to Vecrumba's (mis)interpretation, I was absurdly suggesting that he took a flight to Britain so he could edit war on wikipedia. Just a little ridiculous. In my opinion this clearly shows deceitful intent, unless one is to judge a misinterpretation of that caliber as honest...

This may seem like a rather minor issue, but it's the principle of it. It begs the question of just how many of his arguments are constructed on this sort of conduct?

Evidence presented by Colchicum

Timeline of the on-wiki events I am aware of

Before August 2008 Russavia was an editor who I (and probably others) rarely came across. Mostly he edited articles on Russian airlines and diplomatic relations and other dreary topics. However, he met the 2008 South Ossetia war surprisingly enthusiastically. This is where the battleground started.

This (August 13, 2008) was probably the first encounter of Russavia and future list members (namely Molobo, Ostap R, Biophys). Nothing criminal so far, but a rather heated conversation.

However, Russavia soon adopted confrontational attitude towards Biophys, with gross assumptions of bad faith on the South Ossetia war-related articles: , , , ,

The latter suggestion was followed on September 11 by a series of Russavia's rather provocative edits in articles previously edited by Biophys and never touched by Russavia before; Russavia subsequently edit-warred over them:

Igor Sutyagin , , ,

Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev

Valentin Danilov ,

Boris Stomakhin ,

Mikhail Trepashkin ,

CfD

The second big encounter of Russavia with future participants of the list (Biophys, Ostap R, Hillock65): During that event on September 11, 2008, DonaldDuck attempted to out Biophys. Russavia supported the line and Miyokan (talk · contribs) threatened to out him completely .

Assumption of bad faith again: ,

Continuation of the outing story, e-mail conversation with Miyokan: , , ,

Russavia welcoming Vlad fedorov, an old nemesis and stalker of Biophys due to return from his 1-year ArbCom ban, inviting him to e-mail communication:

Russavia following Biophys' edits again, incivility , Russavia's highly inflammatory userbox referring to this. Funny, isn't it? , , Assumptions of bad faith again:

Inflammatory signature (Tovarishch Komissar = Comrade Commissar) from September 14 to September 15

Inflammatory soapboxing, highly inaccurate as of then:

A headsup to comrades Igny and LokiiT ( ) directing them here

Then on September 15 Moreschi (talk · contribs) blocked Russavia for outing Biophys, which he had done by slapping a COI tag on a certain biology article (I don't remember which) referenced, among other things, with a peer-reviewed article written by Biophys and co-authors. Russavia had not been interested in biology before and there was no obvious connection between the author in question and Biophys. The relevant edits are deleted now, so I can't locate them. Shortly thereafter he was mistaken for a sock of Miyokan by FayssalF and blocked by Tiptoety. Then on his talkpage, outraged, Russavia outed himself in order to prove he is not the same person as Miyokan 2000 km away (edits later suppressed by either Future Perfect at Sunrise or Alex Bakharev), was unblocked by FayssalF and reblocked by Future Perfect at Sunrise to serve the original term. Ever since he has been reluctant to admit that he attempted outing of Biophys. The diffs on User talk:Russavia and ANI are messed up because of massive deletion of personal information. This is what we have now: , . During his block I asked him what had gone wrong with him since August 2008, and he answered something, it was on his talkpage from September 2008, apparently in a deleted section, if Arbs are interested they probably may check, I don't remember the detail. Not something incriminating, but still interesting for the background.

Immediately upon his return from the block he resumed attacks on Biophys (edit summary, ). The list didn't even exist back then.

Canvassing:

LokiiT's abusive sockpuppetry (Krawndawg (talk · contribs) was the best known of his socks, or rather the original master account with a history of disputes with Biophys), which didn't result in an indefinite block by sheer luck

Vlad fedorov's block-evading sockpuppetry which didn't result in an indefinite block by sheer luck

Russavia's incivility, assumptions of bad faith ,

Opinion of uninvolved admin Georgewilliamherbert (talk · contribs) on Russavia's conduct, February 4, 2009:

On April 2, 2009, Offliner, who hadn't shown any interest in Estonia-related articles before, suddenly added to Kaitsepolitsei provocative information sourced to a blog of a noted Finnish neo-Nazi, disguising him as "lawyer and philologist" (although this is not what he is known for, he was referred to as neo-Nazi in virtually every independent source and nobody has ever disputed this). . He got reverted, probably thanks to the Estonian public watchlist, but subsequently edit-warred over his edit: . Within an hour Russavia, who had also never been interested in that article, came to his help: . The edit-war continued until June (PasswordUsername joined the party later): , , , and so on.

On that article, Russavia committed a 3RR violation, including move-warring, but the report was declared stale only five hours later because the closing admin had been fed up with that drama .

Russavia, Offliner, Password Username, Ellol, Beatle Fab Four (talk · contribs) and Kupredu (talk · contribs) (a sock of Jacob Peters (talk · contribs)) are engaged in edit-warring, BLP violations, and lying about the sources on Valeriya Novodvorskaya, see edits between May 12 and May 27, 2009, as well as the talk page.

DonaldDuck was not lucky and was permablocked for block-evading sockpuppetry (as D.Albionov (talk · contribs)). No cabal had anything to do with that. . Donald Duck repeatedly attempted to out Biophys despite the earlier warning (the log on Commons revealing Biophys' personal information is now oversighted).

Shell Kinney's report on edit-warring in EE-related articles: .

August 14, 2009, Russavia spamming 35 Kosovo-related articles with POV-tags in retaliation to Termer (talk · contribs)'s edits to South Ossetia- and Abkhazia-related articles within an hour (starting from Estonia–Kosovo relations): , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . He subsequently edit-warred over the edits with Kedadi (talk · contribs).

Evidence presented by Paul Pieniezny

I am one of those who feels he was driven off Misplaced Pages by this cabal (Biophys, Digwuren and Martintg being most instrumental in achieving this). One of the reasons I would like to know whether I am mentioned in these e-mails, is the fact that I am certain that this cabal has now been in existence for more than two years: and predates my loss of interest. If you go back further in that discussion, you will see that the discussion about creating a Neo-Stalinist watchdog was actually started by  Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk  though under a different chapter title. And yet, one year later he promised Irpen that he would never be doing that. Piotrus has proven himself to be unreliable.

Personally, I am very sorry I simply had to contribute to this nationalist pile of humbug (euphemism) again.

Addition: I have since been told that I was not discussed.

User:Vecrumba has alluded a few times on the Proposed decision talk page that Russia is planning a law against historical revisionism. This Guardian article gives you a good idea what the Russian parliament particularly objects to. Funnily, the author writes "But across eastern Europe, the Baltic republics and the Ukraine, the drive to rewrite history is being used to relativise Nazi crimes and rehabilitate collaborators.", exactly what got User:Petri Krohn banned the first time.

--Paul Pieniezny (talk) 10:54, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Some of the mailing list members want to limit the discussion to the specific time and place frame from their enrolling at the mailing list until the end of the leaked archive, not including any evidence of off wiki actions outside of that frame. However, that will lead to a misinterpretation and gross underestimate of the disruption these editors have caused.

a) This is how the mailing list was conceived in July 2007: (Piotrus starting discussion), (Digwuren arrives on the scene) (Piotrus offers help to Digwuren without wanting anything in return for now: “I will check the articles you mentioned; there is nothing currently I am working on that needs significant input from your area, but I hope we will stay in touch.”) (Digwuren: “Building on this shared knowledge, we could pool our resources.” And later “It might be worthwhile to set up a Neo-Stalinist Activity Watch messageboard, or a mailing list. For now, user talk pages will do nicely, though.” Followed by discussion of Kuban kazak and Anonimu) (Dc76:“Digwuren’s idea is interesting”) (User:Turgidson - normally wrote articles with Romanian interest but in 2008, became one of the “uninvolved” edit warriors over Denial of the Holodomor, has since retired: “Interesting proposal, Digwuren.”) (User:Suva - another Estonian editor - argues that Stalinism should not be confused with communism) (Ursul pacalit de vulpe, lurking in without participating) ((Ursul pacalit de vulpe, shows up again, asking for help on Transnistria) (After Dc76 told various editors he does not have the time to devote on Transnistria, Digwuren offers help)

The continuation element (with Turgidson and Digwuren) is clear. Particularly annoying was the deception that happened in the meantime: (Dc76 defending Biruitorul who was trying to get adminship at the time with the ominous words: “Please, do watch Biruitorul's edits in the next months: convince yourself who he is.”) (the now famous intervention by Piotrus on Irpen’s page: ”I can promise you I will not call in reverts to create battlegrounds” – simultaneously asking Irpen to apologize to 3 Polish editors)

b) it did not take me too much googling to find this: (see the last comment on that page) So, the mailing list still exists and accepts new members, even one who is banned at Misplaced Pages( ) Now what would be the benefit to the other members of the membership of a banned Misplaced Pages user? And why is it so easy to get subscribed for people like User:Abd, increasing the possibility that a next instalment of the discussions may one day be outed? I cannot answer these questions without an infringement of WP:AGF, and that is a major problem now, because all the off-wiki activity which the leading mailing list members denied for such a long time, has now been proven. --Paul Pieniezny (talk) 11:21, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Evidence presented by Nikitn about some of the editings of Biophys and his group

I have been following many discussions concerning Russia and Soviet Union, and I ALWAYS see Biophys in there, spewing the same stuff, avoiding sourcing and discussions. It is really annoying, and it just makes me loose faith in wikipedia. Anyway, here is a classic example of Biophys's disruptive edits: http://en.wikipedia.org/Talk:Human_rights_in_the_Soviet_Union Just read this.

So basically, these are some of the main points of Biophys's disruption in that article alone (I read the talk page for around 40 minutes): 1. Biophys was arguing with several other editors, but he often simply stopped arguing and engaged into edit wars. 2. Biophys rarely presented sources, and if he did, they were directly against wikiepdia's N:POV policy or just very unreliable. Example: "In Guinness book of world record, it is said that 66,7 million people died due to political oppression in the Soviet Union from Lenin to Khrushchev." Of course this was seriously criticized and said to be complete rubbish (like, page numbers were demanded for such a claim, and sources, - but Biophys did not give anything). 3. Biophys edited the article without using sources, or using sources that never mentioned any of the claims. Example: "During time of Stalinism, 22,000,000 Orthodox Christians died . 4. Biophys frequently tried to dodge arguments of the other editors. Example: When a editor systematically answered every one of Biophys's claims, he demanded to only discuss "one issue" - while continuing with random edits here and there. 5. Interestingly, he also referred to his edits as "ours" and apparently hinted that it was not he alone who engaged in such edits.

Sorry if this is short and not very useful, but I don't want to spend too much time on this. But I couldn't help not to contribute something..

PS. To point it out again, this is only some of his edits. I have seen this stuff before in talk pages about Russian politics, Soviet politics, and other historical topics involving eastern European countries. The thing is, I don't want to engage into a tug-of-war with him, it would take too much of my energy.

Cheers (Is that what English persons say?)! --Nikitn (talk) 23:36, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Evidence presented by M.K.

Evidence relocated to subpage (MK)

Extensive evidence section relocated to Misplaced Pages:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Eastern European mailing list/Evidence/MK.

Polish cabal existed in 2007 already

see general evidences that Polish cabal existed in 2007 already

2007 evidences

see evidences from the 2007 showing existence of Polish cabal

Cabal mailing list confessions

see cabal mailing list confessions there cabals acknowledge existence of cabal prior EE mailing list scandal

Summary

see summary of 2007 evidences combine with new cabal mailing list confessions

CAMERA vs EE mailing list

see comparison of CAMERA and EE mailing list

User:Radeksz

see general evidences of Radeksz disruption

Editorial profile

see editorial profile of Radeksz

Radek engaging into stealth canvasing, false consensus formulation, coordinated reverting

see evidences of Radeksz's stealth canvasing, false consensus formulation, coordinated reverting

Radeksz harassing editors

see general evidences of Radeksz harassment of editors

Radeksz harassing user:Deacon of Pndapetzim

see evidences of Radeksz harassment of Deacon of Pndapetzim

Radeksz harassing user:Sciurinæ

see evidences of Radeksz harassment of Sciurinæ

Radeksz harassing user:Skäpperöd

see evidences of Radeksz harassment of Skäpperöd

Radeksz harassing User:Smith2006 and User:Matthead

see evidences of Radeksz harassment of Smith2006 and Matthead

Radeksz harassing user:Russavia

see evidences of Radeksz harassment of Russavia

Statement by Staberinde

This statement is direct reply to several claims presented by HistoricWarrior007 (talk · contribs) , in relation to 2008 South Ossetia War.

• "We Vote Together" (link just for easier navigation)

Firstly I would note that user:Historicwarrior007 has been caught canvassing for his preferred title: Talk:2008_South_Ossetia_war/Archive_23#Misplaced Pages:Canvassing.
Secondly HistoricWarrior007's description of both sides arguments is not even remotely accurate. It has been repeatedly demonstrated that in searches from Google Books and Google Scholar current title horribly fails against far more popular titles "August War" and "Russo-Georgian War". On other hand current title has been backed only with original research claims by wikipedians, like HistoricWarrior007's consistent claim that "attacker goes first in Wiki Articles", for what he has failed to provide a single reliable source, while suggesting most ridiculous methods like this proposal for a competition between me and him to list wars for deciding war naming standards.
Finally as far as I can see nobody has posted evidence about any "off-wiki" canvassing for 2008 South Ossetia War, and various mailing list members participating in it is completely normal, because it is one of the most notable and well known recent events in Eastern-Europe/Caucasus area.

• "We Keep Articles, that have no arguments to be kept, via votes too!"

"...some characters looked like potential puppets, editors who appease without fact-checking, and generally the anti-Russian clique..." is just a hilarious characterization for someone like User:Alex Bakharev . Also I would note that as far as I can see, neither HistoricWarrior007 nor anyone else seems to have posted any diffs or referred to any e-mails, that would prove any canvassing on that deletion discussion.--Staberinde (talk) 15:48, 6 November 2009 (UTC)