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The behavior of the six users in question (], ], ], ], ], ]) are difficult in many respects. The specific complaints of ], ], ] &mdash; all experienced Wikipedians &mdash; are well taken, and I endorse them in every particular. And a review of the documentation in those complaints, and edit histories of the articles effected, also disclose a number of tactics by the six users in question which are not mentioned by Shotwell, Fainites, or StokerAce &mdash; tactics which particularly frustrate the objective of trying to produce accurate and reliable articles dealing with the emotional attachment of children. To wit: The behavior of the six users in question (], ], ], ], ], ]) are difficult in many respects. The specific complaints of ], ], ] &mdash; all experienced Wikipedians &mdash; are well taken, and I endorse them in every particular. And a review of the documentation in those complaints, and edit histories of the articles effected, also disclose a number of tactics by the six users in question which are not mentioned by Shotwell, Fainites, or StokerAce &mdash; tactics which particularly frustrate the objective of trying to produce accurate and reliable articles dealing with the emotional attachment of children. To wit:


#''Bullying''. They enforce their singular point of view by edit-warring over the slightest change in article texts. They automatically revert changes by certain other editors, even those legitimately marked as "minor" or which make an indisputable correction. They've even done it on the project page of a Request for Mediation, ultimately asking for page protection (which was rejected as "lame"). #''Bullying''. They enforce their singular point of view by edit-warring over the slightest change in article texts. They automatically revert changes by certain other editors, even those legitimately marked as "minor" or which make an indisputable correction.<small>(Partial statement redacted-- see clerk notes)</small>
#''Graffiti''. They tag opposing users for "vandalism" for making changes they disagree with. My own ], for example, has been "tagged" many times by ]. The talk pages for the articles are littered with tags of all sorts. #''Graffiti''. They tag opposing users for "vandalism" for making changes they disagree with. My own ], for example, has been "tagged" many times by ]. The talk pages for the articles are littered with tags of all sorts.
#''False Claims''. They persistently mischaracterize actions by or about opponents. ] has listed here one significant example. Another is the oft-repeated claim &mdash; again seen here by ] &mdash; suggesting that I have been "sanctioned" for my editing activity on the pages in question, when in fact that has never happened. Still another is the mischaracterization of good-faith comments on talk-pages as "provocative" and "inflamatory" . #''False Claims''. They persistently mischaracterize actions by or about opponents. ] has listed here one significant example. Another is the oft-repeated claim &mdash; again seen here by ] &mdash; suggesting that I have been "sanctioned" for my editing activity on the pages in question, when in fact that has never happened. Still another is the mischaracterization of good-faith comments on talk-pages as "provocative" and "inflamatory" .
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==== Clerk notes ==== ==== Clerk notes ====
*Per ], statement during mediation attempts may not be used for arbitration process. I've redacted statements based off RfM due to a mediator request. - ] &#124; <sup>] / ]</sup> 09:46, 3 July 2007 (UTC) *Per ], statement during mediation attempts may not be used for arbitration process. I've redacted statements based off RfM due to a mediator request. - ] &#124; <sup>] / ]</sup> 09:46, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
**I've redacted further statement from a party. Statements/actions during mediation attempts (with the obvious exception of refusing to mediate) cannot be used as evidence for arbitration. - ] &#124; <sup>] / ]</sup> 10:38, 6 July 2007 (UTC)


*Four votes to accept, noted. To open Friday absent any further developments. ] 19:57, 5 July 2007 (UTC) *Four votes to accept, noted. To open Friday absent any further developments. ] 19:57, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Revision as of 10:38, 6 July 2007

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A request for arbitration is the last step of dispute resolution for conduct disputes on Misplaced Pages. The Arbitration Committee considers requests to open new cases and review previous decisions. The entire process is governed by the arbitration policy. For information about requesting arbitration, and how cases are accepted and dealt with, please see guide to arbitration.

To request enforcement of previous Arbitration decisions or discretionary sanctions, please do not open a new Arbitration case. Instead, please submit your request to /Requests/Enforcement.

This page transcludes from /Case, /Clarification and Amendment, /Motions, and /Enforcement.

Please make your request in the appropriate section:

Arbitration Committee proceedings Case requests

Currently, there are no requests for arbitration.

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Misplaced Pages:Arbitration/Requests/How-to

Current requests

Great Irish Famine

Initiated by SirFozzie at 13:07, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Involved parties

Confirmation that all parties are aware of the request

Sarah777: sony-youth: MarkThomas: Domer48:

Confirmation that other steps in dispute resolution have been tried

Misplaced Pages:Requests_for_comment/Sarah777, discussion on ANI currently

Statement by SirFozzie

This is a subset of the ongoing issues with Northern Ireland/Ireland related articles, that has recently turned nasty. During the RfC, which pretty much degenerated into the two sides (including the wider Ireland/Northern Ireland conflict) sniping at each other, User:MarkThomas was blocked for 24 hours for violations of WP:NPA and WP:Civil. Shortly after the RfC pretty much ground to a halt, Domer48 listed this edit detailing why he could not work with User:sony-youth on the issues at hand. User:MarkThomas then brought the case to ANI here, and continued sniping at User:Domer48 on his talk page, stating that he wanted Domer48 blocked.

Several Administrators have tried to cool the ill will between the two groups (amongst them User:SWATJester and User:Alison, however, it has become obvious that the issues behind this case will not be settled unless ArbCom looks at it. SirFozzie 13:07, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Statement by Swatjester

I don't consider myself an involved party, since all I did was warn a few people to stop using the RfC incorrectly, and then blocked MarkThomas in particular for it. However, I feel 100% that this belongs in arbitration. A) Mediation would never work on this. B) It's not over the article content, it's over the editing practices involved. C) This is a subject that for some people is as touchy as the israeli-palestinian conflict and needs ArbCom's guidance. ⇒ SWATJester 13:30, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Statement by sony-youth

My issue rests with the use of the following citation from Donnelly, JS, 2005, The Great Irish Potato Famine, Sutton Publishing Limited: England:

Since those chapters were written, the amount of scholarly attention devoted to the Great Famine has expanded enormously, mostly as a result of the impetus given by the official sesquicentennial commemoration of the famine in the years 1995—7. Along with numerous other scholars, I made contributions to the extraordinary surge of publication associated with the commemoration. As I argue in the introduction to this book, the flowering of famine scholarship during the 1990s has given academic respectability to certain key nationalist perspectives on the famine, and on the issue of British government responsibility, that were previously out of fashion among professional historians, especially those working in Ireland itself.

This citation was used by Domer48 to support the following text in the Great Irish Famine article (diff):

This view though its self has changed since 1996. Professor James Donnelly states that the amount of scholarly attention dedicated to the Great Famine has “expanded enormously,” since the official sesquicentennial commemoration of the famine in the years 1995—7. As a result of this impetus with numerous other scholars, he made contributions to the “extraordinary surge” of publications. The “flowering of famine scholarship” he says, has given “academic respectability” to certain “key nationalist perspectives on the famine.”

I commented out use of the citation (diff) on the basis that it does not refer to the claim of genocide and posted a message to the talk page explaining why I had done so (diff).

Several reverts ensued, including one by myself. In one of these Sarah777 changed the text of the relevent part to read (diff):

Professor James Donnelly states that the amount of scholarly attention dedicated to the Great Famine has expanded enormously, since the official sesquicentennial commemoration of the famine in the years 1995—7. As a result of this impetus with numerous other scholars, he made contributions to the “extraordinary surge” of publications. The “flowering of famine scholarship” he maintains has given academic respectability to the view that the famine was genocide.

Shortly after this edit, the article was locked. During the reverts, I missed Sarah's edit and mistakenly thought that Domer48 had made the above change. Having already posted my concerns about this interpretation being implied, I said that changing the text to explicitly make the claim after I had raised concerns about it "makes it very hard to assume good faith." Upon recieveing an angry response, asking if I was assuming bad faith in (mistakenly) Domer, I posted "Damn right, I'm assuming bad faith." It was after this, with some effort (which included Domer48 first saying that I hadn't "a wit of cop on" and then calling me a "slow learner"), that Domer48 explained that it was Sarah777 that had changed the section after my concerns had been raised. I appologised for my accusation of bad faith ("It was Sarah who changed it, not you, and so I retract all that I said about bad faith.") and continued to try to resolve my concerns about the use of the citation.

That was five days ago. A fairly reasonsed, abeit sometimes heated and quite wandering, discussion followed with Domer48's argument being that by "key nationalist perspectives" Donnell means the genocide claim. Domer says that this is further supported by Donnell's reference to these perspectives being ones that were "previously out of fashion". Mine is that it could mean any number of perspectives that are key to nationalist interpretations of the famine, none of which include the genocie claim, and that many nationalist perspectives were previously "out of fashion". The discussion presently stands at deadlock.

Statement by Domer48

I consider myself harassed, and my edits frustrated by User:MarkThomas who wish to push a POV. I consider the conditions placed on me by some editors, are in excess of what they would expect for themselves. The frustration and exasperation this has caused has resulted in my being here. I consider some of the actions to be manipulative and disruptive and designed to stifle my efforts. Regards --Domer48 17:51, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Statement by Goldheart

Although I don't see myself directly involved, I did have an interest in having a balanced inclusive objectivity woven into the article. I don't believe that there is any POV being pushed here, I believe it is more of a clash of EGOS, than an actual content dispute, and whose style is going to dominate in the editing. I believe Domer48 and Sony-youth are two worthy editors, but this ani and rfa etc is very wearying, and will deter future editors and input. User:MarkThomas has been particularly disruptive in the talk page, and has even attacked me for no reason whatsoever, on another related issue, on my talk page, Archive2/Reply.Gold♥ 18:55, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Statement by Sarah777

Not entirely sure why I'm in this one. I agree with Domer's perception that he is being unfairly treated by editors who fail to recognise their own POV. I openly admit to mine, and seek to keep it out of articles. But countering "opposing" pov is taken by certain editors as pushing my own. (Also, I don't think this is serious enough or anywhere near enough to a "last resort" to be here in Arbcom. Sorry Sir Fozzie). (Sarah777 20:41, 3 July 2007 (UTC))

Clerk notes

Four votes to accept, noted. To open Friday absent further developments. Newyorkbrad 19:56, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Arbitrators' opinion on hearing this matter (4/0/0/0)

JAF1970

Initiated by — KieferSkunk (talk) — at 20:35, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Involved parties

Confirmation that all parties are aware of the request
Confirmation that other steps in dispute resolution have been tried
  • Attempted to resolve the issue one-on-one in JAF1970's User Talk page - even after apologies had been exchanged, behavior continued.
  • Filed a request in Wikiquette Alerts - no response from any third party.
  • Filed a request for informal mediation - case opened, but arguments continued and escalated both in the mediation page and in other articles. I came to the conclusion that JAF is not willing to let mediation take place.

Statement by KieferSkunk

A large-scale personal dispute has arisen between myself and JAF1970 over some edits I made in Pac-Man Championship Edition (PMCE). This dispute now spans multiple pages (Talk:Pac-Man, Misplaced Pages talk:WikiProject Video games/Article guidelines, User talk:KieferSkunk), and contains large amounts of personal, inflammatory arguments from both sides. This request for arbitration is not about JAF's stance on article content, but rather about the way he has treated people (me specifically) during the dispute - I feel that his behavior toward me has been rude, belittling, uncivil and openly hostile, and my attempts to resolve the dispute both one-on-one and through informal mediation have failed.

I wish to see an apology and a change in behavior from JAF for:

  • Accusing me of vandalizing the PMCE article;
  • Maintaining an uncivil tone during discussions; , , , ,
  • "Rubbing my face" in my initial mistakes, even after I had taken steps to correct them; , , ,
  • Blocking my attempts to call for open discussion on article-specific issues; , , , ,
  • Placing himself in the position of sole judge as to what content is acceptable, and using that to tell me that I'm wrong and my ideas and concerns don't deserve consideration (JAF also repeatedly used a single paragraph of supporting text from another user to argue against me); , , , , ,
  • Threatening to undo any future edits I make to the PMCE article without review (he later clarified that he was talking about "drastic changes", but his tone was very confrontational);
  • Using my initial mistakes as a basis to discredit me as a whole; , ,
  • Accusing me of breaking mediation (by making large-scale edits to PMCE), when I had clearly done no such thing; , ,
  • Refusing to acknowledge that he accused me wrongly, and presenting my initial edits (made before mediation was requested) as evidence that I was breaking mediation; , ,
  • Refusing to take personal arguments to my or his User Talk page when I requested that he do so (he only opened up discussion in my User Talk page long after I had made that request);
  • Giving me a blanket apology in the form of "I'm sorry you feel bad" and taking no responsibility for his actions - JAF believes very firmly that he has done nothing wrong, other than to be "a little gruff". , , , ,

I wish to clarify that I do not have a problem with JAF's opinions about article matters. It's the way he presents and argues them that offends me. He seems very willing to reject consensus and to overrun consensus discussions when the views being expressed are contrary to his own, and he frequently accuses me of doing the exact same thing. I don't claim to know fully what's going on in his head, but it is very difficult to remain civil with this editor. This dispute has gotten me riled up several times, to the point where I have myself violated WP policy in retaliation. In the instances that I am aware of, I have acknowledged and owned up to my mistakes and apologized for my behavior. (Example: ) However, this has not resulted in any change in JAF's behavior toward me - there are only a few isolated instances where he has addressed me in a way that indicated true willingness to debate and discuss, and in each of those instances, I have responded in kind.

One more quick note: JAF has sent me several emails asking for live chat to discuss this matter. I am not currently able to engage in live chat with him due to my work schedule and limitations, and I do not feel that taking this offline is appropriate at this time.

Response by KieferSkunk to kaypoh

I haven't. However, two people from the Mediation Cabal have commented on the situation and had expressed concerns about JAF's behavior, similar concerns to mine. He argued with them as well, though not as fervently. (The mediators did also address me, and I acknowledged my side of the situation.)

It is worth noting that JAF seems to have calmed down a bit since I filed this request, though I'm not convinced that things will remain calm if I attempt to restart consensus discussions and/or make further edits to the affected articles. I believe there is enough circumstancial evidence from previous disputes between JAF and other users to warrant seeing this through - otherwise, this may very well just happen all over again the next time I make an edit he disagrees with. — KieferSkunk (talk) — 16:06, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Statement by JAF1970

Question by uninvolved kaypoh

Did you file an RFC yet? --Kaypoh 09:55, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Clerk notes

Parties are reminded to only comment in their respective own sections. - Penwhale | 00:03, 4 July 2007 (UTC) Refactored KieferSkunk's response to proper section.

Arbitrators' opinion on hearing this matter (0/3/0/0)

Attachment Therapy

Initiated by shotwell at 11:33, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Involved parties

Confirmation that all parties are aware of the request
Confirmation that other steps in dispute resolution have been tried

Statement by Shotwell

This arbitration requests is the result of nearly one year of content disputes over Attachment Therapy and related articles. This content dispute has been unnecessarily prolonged due to serious user-conduct issues. Resolution is extremely unlikely without intervention to address these issues.

DPeterson, RalphLender, JonesRD, SamDavidson, MarkWood, and JohnsonRon edit the attachment therapy related pages with the clear agenda of advertising Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy (DDP). They have inserted and defended extraordinary and unverified claims concerning DDP into a wide variety of articles. Reactive attachment disorder contains a good example of DDP advertising.

There have been many accusations of sock-puppetry against Dpeterson et al, but at least one checkuser showed that three of the accounts were unrelated. Nonetheless, this group of editors acts in unison to promote DDP. They goes so far as to repeatedly copy/paste each other's comments and veiled personal attacks. They act uniformly to give the false appearance of consensus and to bolster their baseless allegations, conclusions, and reverts.

In addition to this meat-puppetry, DPeterson et al. almost always avoid substantive discussion, opting instead to make repeated and unfounded WP:COI and WP:ATTACK allegations. This most recently occurred on a declined mediation request. The shear volume of these allegations and refusal to participate in meaningful discussion makes it exceedingly difficult to discuss content. The discussions typically degenerate into personal comments. The net effect of this behavior is to stall, delay, or avoid any meaningful discussion.

The most troublesome behavior is their refusal to compromise, discuss, or admit wrong on the issues ranging from the large and important to small and irrelevant. For example, a claim inserted into Advocates for Children in Therapy concerning the leaders of this organization was opposed by a few editors on the basis of it being unverified, irrelevant, and a violation of WP:BLP. Rather than participate in meaningful debate about this issue, Dpeterson et al simply formed an echo chamber and repeatedly asserted their conclusion that the material was relevant and sourced. They provided no argument, no evidence, and no discussion aside from this conclusion. They promptly revert any changes whilst simultaneously chiding editors about WP:OWN, consensus, and so forth. Such behavior is the de facto standard from this group of editors. (Partial statement redacted by clerk, see clerk notes below)

In short, there are some interesting and thick content disputes on the Attachment Therapy related articles. This is a highly controversial subject and such disputes are inevitable. This request for arbitration does not seek resolution of these content disputes, rather, it seeks intervention in the user-conduct issues that have made it impossible to move forward. I believe the talk pages of Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy, Advocates for Children in Therapy, and Attachment Therapy speak for themselves. shotwell 11:33, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Statement by StokerAce

There have been many accusations tossed around in this case. One of them is that Dpeterson and some of the others mentioned by Shotwell above have been pushing the views of Dr. Arthur Becker-Weidman, a practitioner of Dyadic Developmental Psycotherapy. (http://www.center4familydevelop.com/) Dr. Becker-Weidman's wikipedia page is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/User:AWeidman While it is difficult to sort through all of the issues, it seems that much of this Misplaced Pages dispute is a spillover from a real life dispute. The Advocates for Children in Therapy (ACT) web site lists Dyadic Developmental Psycotherapy as a possibly harmful practice (scroll down a bit here: http://www.childrenintherapy.org/essays/overview.html) In the early stages of the Misplaced Pages dispute there were some testy exchanges between Dr. Becker-Weidman and Jean Mercer, one of the leaders of ACT. Dr. Becker-Weidman was taken to task by a Misplaced Pages administrator for one of his remarks: http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=User_talk%3AAWeidman&diff=50362263&oldid=42052871 Within a month after Dr. Becker-Weidman received this criticism, DPeterson opened an account and began editing: http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Special:Contributions&dir=prev&target=DPeterson There have been some allegeations that Dr. Becker-Weidman and DPeterson have made contributions from the same IP address (see the following that someone left on my talk page: http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=User_talk%3AStokerAce&diff=130616429&oldid=130574829), but this issue remains unclear. What is clear is that DPeterson, in one of his first contributions, created a Misplaced Pages article about ACT that was clearly POV, where he called ACT "not part of the mainstream". See http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Advocates_for_Children_in_Therapy&oldid=65117165

In sum, it is not clear exactly who DPeterson et al. are and what their relationship with Dr. Becker-Weidman is. In my view, though, it would be very useful if a neutral arbitrator would look into all of the pages mentioned by Shotwell and offer an opinion on the editing that has gone on there.

Statement by SamDavidson

This content dispute has been going on for at least one year, fueled by the rigidity of certain users, a group of whom are leaders of the group, Advocates for Children in Therapy (User:Sarner & User:Jean Mercer) who have a WP:COI in this dispute since they are leaders of this group with a specific agenda they pursue against Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy, attachment therapy, and a variety of others. They have a financial interest in this dispute (books they publish, a career built on this dispute, etc.) It has escalated over time with a variety of Personal Attacks (Link redacted by clerk Penwhale -- See clerk notes below) and unsupported accusations by that group against various editors (accusations of being sockpuppets, meatpuppets, etc.). Several of those editors have been sanctioned (Sarner, for example and recently Maypole was banned).

There have been several related mediations which appear to have been resolved/settled, only to be reinstated when the group did not get their way.

On the surface the dispute is centered on the inclusion of material about Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy, which is a treatment with empirical support in several professional peer-reviewed publications, in several related articles. The ACT group and its supporters seem to be waging a concerted effort to have these references removed, despite the fact that the references and statements they support meet various wiki standards, such as being from verifiable and reliable sources. SamDavidson 16:38, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Comment

I don't know that Lsijohn is uninvolved. I've seen his comments on various talk pages: examples: ] ] and there are others. SamDavidson 16:48, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Statement by Fainites

I support the statements of Shotwell and StokerAce above. I attempted to edit the Attachment Therapy page by 'consensus' using good sources and by trying to avoid the past feud between ACT on one side and DPeterson et al who support Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy on the other. I had little success. The group of 6 editors named is unmovable in their determination to use various attachment and other articles as platforms to advertise Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy. In pursuit of this they refuse to sensibly discuss content from sources, misquote and misrepresent sources and alter quotations (bottom edit). The most striking example of misrepresenting sources is edits designed to make it appear that Becker-Weidman was cited positively by a major Taskforce report on the subject whereas he was in fact specifically criticised. They do not allow and indeed revert any edits that do not have their 'permission' and if an editor disagrees with them they conduct frequent polls to enforce their 'consensus'. This can be seen on all talkpages. Their consensus is invariably the same, the inclusion of DDP, inaccurately, as 'evidence based' and mainstream, the obfuscation of the meaning and nature of 'attachment therapy' and the controversy surrounding the diagnosis of attachment disorder and the use of attachment therapy, and the denigration and misrepresentation of Advocates for Children in Therapy, their opponents in the real world. They repeat and copy each others edits and personal attacks. It is almost impossible to discuss content because of the constant admonishments against others of WP:OWN or AGF or W:PA,and because of their constant accusations and attacks against members of ACT or anybody who opposes them whom they accuse of being supporters of ACT.

AWeidman started the page on DDP in December 2005 and described it in glowing terms. He started inserting DDP into other articles at about the same time editing as IP 68.66.160.228 . These pages descended into edit wars with Sarner from ACT and independent editors. This situation was resolved by the arrival of DPeterson,20th May 2006 (who has also edited as IP 68.66.160.228), MarkWood, 20th May 2006, JonesRD 18th June 2006, JohnsonRon 19th June 2006, SamDavidson 30th June 2006 and RalphLender 5th July 2006. All of these editors went more or less straight to the attachment pages (see John Bowlby, Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy and Attachment disorder and Reactive attachment disorder) and have edited in total support of Becker-Weidman and Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy ever since. This support includes resistence to fixing dead links, 'consensus' that sources say the opposite to what they actually say and constant repetition of attacks against opponents. All opposition is swamped by this group of aggressive, cohesive editors and as a consequence these pages have stagnated.

It is inserted into about a dozen other articles not primarily concerned with attachment such as Emotional dysregulation, Adoption, Child Welfare and so on.

Other editors do not object to the accurate inclusion of DDP but do object to the warping of the attachment articles in DDP's defence.

I urge the committee to accept this case as without some kind of resolution from Arbcom this dispute will not go away and it is affecting an entire range of articles on attachment. This is considered an important topic within child development. Fainites 17:48, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

(Note: Maypole was banned as a sock of HeadleyDown, referred by me to FT2. He was a recent arrival and had very little involvement in the attachment pages and was not specifically sanctioned for disruptive editing there.)

Statement by Jean Mercer

Although discussion of Wiki articles generally seems to deal with processes and goals internal to Wiki, in this case I would like to point out a responsibility to vulnerable members of the public. Families dealing with children's mental health issues deserve complete and accurate information from organizations that claim to be reliable sources. Deceptive or incomplete material can cost families dearly, both financially and emotionally. If Misplaced Pages is not willing or able to enforce relevant guidelines, articles dealing with children's mental health should be deleted. No print encyclopedia attempts to deal with every complex topic, and there seems no reason for such an attempt here, unless some quality control is possible. Jean Mercer 19:58, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Comment by party with minor involvement: Lsi john

I urge the committee to accept this case. I'm not directly involved in this dispute, but I've been watching it for some time, and have made one or two attempts at mediation.

This dispute has been going on for several months. Attempts at WP:DR have been met with extreme resistance, to the point of disruption (supporting claims of WP:COI), and it does not appear that anything short of committee involvement will resolve the issue.

While I can't address the content dispute, I can support the claim that Dpeterson, RalphLender (and others) appear to be working in concert, and are unwilling to move toward compomise. Instead they divert discussions with accusations of WP:NPA, WP:SOCK, etc (example). I believe the mediator had to 'clean up' numerous {{spa}} tags. It appears there may also be some validity to the claim of meat puppets (though I dislike the term) and COI.

Sample of behavior:
After a post on AN/I against FatherTree failed to gain support (here), DPeterson and RalphLender opened 3 virtually identical threads on the admin boards (here, here and here), each falsely claiming prior 'admin support' (from a non-admin), in an apparent effort to 'kick start' their threads. Ironically these 3 noticeboard posts claim WP:CANVAS against another FatherTree, and actually appear to be an attempt to canvass support and game the system. And by acting in concert it appears to be a form of puppetry.

When I realized that they had failed to notify FatherTree about any of the posts, I notified FatherTree (here). DPeterson's responsed by attempting to involve another admin, claiming that I was 'unhelpful' (here). Another time, when I was attempting mediation on Shell's page, SamDavidson attempted to involve yet another outside party, with whom he presumably thought I was in conflict (here).

When I suggested that the multiple open threads constituted canvassing (here), and recommended that he close two of the threads (here), DPeterson replied "...Since each one gets a variety of comments from a variety of editors it may make sense to keep all open..." (here).

Shell (admin) ultimately realized that multiple threads were open, and closed one on AN (here), and later also closed the other two.

DPeterson copied Shell's AN comment to both AN/I threads, and misrepresented her as supporting his charges (here and here).

RalphLender, (team mate), copied Shell's AN comment to the article talkpage here and falsely claimed: "... the administrator did find that the issue of FatherTree knowinlgy making false accusations of sockpuppetry is real and valid ."

Shell responded with a categorical denial (here):

"Whoa - I did not support your accusation; I said if he was doing it to warn him and then let me know if he continues. You would need to provide some kind of proof to back up those accusations and his continuing after your warning. That in no way was a finding that FatherTree had done anything improper. Also, I specifically noted that the accusations of canvassing against FatherTree were false"-Shell

Again I encourage the committee to accept this case, as the situation is disrupting the community. Peace.Lsi john 14:19, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Fact note by uninvolved party FT2

I an uninvolved in any way, but aware of this dispute since it overlaps with another. Information note when assessing the parties involved: Note that Maypole (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) (referred to above) was a LTA/HeadleyDown reincarnation. A reasonable assessment might be that some sock activity or meat recruitment is more likely to be happening. FT2 20:03, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Update confirming above: Addisababa (talk · contribs) blocked as sock. FT2 13:31, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Statement by JonesRD

The dispute here is a content dispute that has been going on for a while. Leaders Advocates for Children in Therapy, which is an advocacy group ] that is “dedicated to halting the dangerous cruelty done to children by Attachment Therapy (AT), its associated Therapeutic Parenting practices, and other unvalidated, pseudoscientific interventions,” and their supporters have been unrelenting in their opposition to the inclusion of material about Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy and other issues. Two leaders of ACT user:Sarner and user:Jean Mercer ], ], ], as well as their followers, have been very vocal in this dispute, representing the views of their organization. The issues have been mediated in the past and when not resolved in their favor, they continued to raise the same or similar issues in other venues. For example, see prior mediations and other venues:


While there have been some user-conduct issues from time to time, the primary issue is a disagreement about several content items, including, but not limited to:

1. Is there evidence to support the statement that Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy is an effective treatment? This has been debated on several pages. There are several professional peer-reviewed publications and at least three empirical articles to support the statement, which meet the standard of being reliable and verifiable. Despite this, the group continues to dispute inclusion of such material in the articles.

2. Is the inclusion of information about Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy appropriate in several of the articles, such as Child Welfare or Adoption or Emotional dysregulation appropriate? Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy is a treatment for children with Reactive Attachment Disorder and trauma. These articles, and others, discuss such children and have material about the treatment of such children. Therefore the disputed material is relevant….but the group of ACT and supporters continue to dispute that.

3. Is the fact that the leaders of ACT are not licensed mental health professionals a relevant fact? Again, this is a content dispute. On one hand is the position that since the group is an advocacy group regarding mental health treatment, the professional credentials of it’s leaders is a relevant fact. On the other hand, the ACT leaders and supporters dispute the relevance of this fact.


There are other related content disputes, but the above three cover and include most of the others. JonesRDtalk 16:07, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Statement by DPeterson

This is a content dispute regarding several articles such as articles: Attachment Therapy, Reactive attachment disorder, Bowlby, Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy, and Advocates for Children in Therapy. The dispute initially was driven in part by the unique positions of two leaders of the advocacy group, Advocates for Children in Therapy (Sarner and Mercer) and their supporters. This group and its supporters have as their mission, “ACT works to mobilize parents, professionals, private and governmental regulators, prosecutors, juries, and legislators to end the physical torture and emotional abuse that is AT” ] (retrieved 03 July 2007). Their advocacy is the basis for this content dispute. Several in this group, which includes two of the three leaders of the advocacy group, Advocates for Children in Therapy, User:Sarner and User:Jean Mercer, and later supporters, have led a dispute regarding Attachment Therapy and the treatment of children with Reactive Attachment Disorder, focusing on Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy and several other issues. They have brought this dispute into the Misplaced Pages forum. Several disputes were mediated and resolved, only to be re-raised by the same group of editors when the outcome was not to their liking. See:

  1. Misplaced Pages:Mediation Cabal/Cases/2006-10-07 Advocates for Children in Therapy
  2. Misplaced Pages:Mediation Cabal/Cases/2006-05-21 John Bowlby
  3. Misplaced Pages:Mediation Cabal/Cases/2006-10-18 Sarner's reverts-edits of Bowlby and Candace Newmaker

Also see talk page discussions (there are others that exemplify the extent of this content dispute, but these will serve as an example):

  1. Talk:Attachment Therapy,
  2. Talk:Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy,
  3. Talk:Advocates for Children in Therapy.

When material has been added to the articles that meets the Misplaced Pages standard of being verifiable (several articles in professional peer-reviewed publications of empirical studies) regarding Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy, various members of the group continue to dispute the inclusion of that material. ACT and its supporters dispute that Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy has evidence to support its effectiveness and that it is not a coercive treatment as defined in the Attachment Therapy article. They and their supports continue to argue this point despite repeated attempts at dialogue and the provision of ample evidence to support a view different from their view.

At times it has appeared that they are purposely baiting me and trying to be provocative and I must admit that I have risen to the “bait,” and said things that I regret. There have been a number of instances in which my comments were personal and not directed at content. Several of these comments probably rise to the level of personal attacks. While I feel I was “baited,” I also feel saddened and some shame about my conduct. It isn’t what I expect of myself or others. I apologize for this now and will apologize more directly and formally to any editor who feels wronged by me or my words. In the interests of conciliation, I will not at this time raise any concerns I have had regarding the conduct of other editors since I view the dispute here as predominantly a content dispute.

ISSUES:

1. Many of these content issues were mediated in the past and resolved, only to be resurrected. See, for example, the following initiated by Shotwell: ] (request for advocate) Sarner: ] (mediation) Shotwell: ] (mediation) DPeterson: ] (mediation)

2. Content dispute largely focusing on the issues described above by RDJones, so I won’t repeat those here. However I will provide a link in each instance as an example of the extent of the content.

A. Treatment effectiveness: ] ] ] ] ]


B. Leaders of ACT not licensed mental health professionals: ] ]

In summary, this is a content dispute around a few related topics (listed above and in RDJones), which has gotten heated at times. I will refrain from listing those instances at this time since the focus of my comment is on the content dispute, which seems most significant.

Statement by Sarner

The behavior of the six users in question (DPeterson, RalphLender, SamDavidson, JonesRD, MarkWood, JohnsonRon) are difficult in many respects. The specific complaints of Shotwell, Fainites, StokerAce — all experienced Wikipedians — are well taken, and I endorse them in every particular. And a review of the documentation in those complaints, and edit histories of the articles effected, also disclose a number of tactics by the six users in question which are not mentioned by Shotwell, Fainites, or StokerAce — tactics which particularly frustrate the objective of trying to produce accurate and reliable articles dealing with the emotional attachment of children. To wit:

  1. Bullying. They enforce their singular point of view by edit-warring over the slightest change in article texts. They automatically revert changes by certain other editors, even those legitimately marked as "minor" or which make an indisputable correction.(Partial statement redacted-- see clerk notes)
  2. Graffiti. They tag opposing users for "vandalism" for making changes they disagree with. My own talk page, for example, has been "tagged" many times by DPeterson. The talk pages for the articles are littered with tags of all sorts.
  3. False Claims. They persistently mischaracterize actions by or about opponents. Lsi john has listed here one significant example. Another is the oft-repeated claim — again seen here by SamDavidson — suggesting that I have been "sanctioned" for my editing activity on the pages in question, when in fact that has never happened. Still another is the mischaracterization of good-faith comments on talk-pages as "provocative" and "inflamatory" .
  4. Padding. Shotwell has mentioned the cohesive nature of the six users during disputes. An additional concern is that they almost always come in with the exact same arguments as the first one made by their ilk, often even with the exact same wording, right down to identical misspellings. Occasionally, the same user repeats his own arguments, just changing a word or two from the original.
  5. Wiki-lawyering. This would be reprehensible enough, but it's worse because in their case it's particularly bad wiki-lawyering. The arguments made are invariably irrelevant, immaterial, and illogical. They stretch or misinterpret Wiki policies/guidelines, deliberately misstate facts, falsely cite references, and repeatedly breach witiquette under the pretense of enforcing it.
  6. Gaming. The six repeatedly try to game the Wiki system, as for example, by round-robin changes of subject. They attempted to thwart mediation — where article content is the stated focus — by harping that the "important" issues were really the conduct (or participation) of their opponents. Then they have attempted to thwart arbitration — where user conduct issues are actually at issue — by arguing (as done here in this request) that the really important issues are the content disputes.

It is impossible for reasonable editors to deal with such behaviors without recourse to an authoritative referee. Such behaviors chill Misplaced Pages editing by truly knowledgeable people who do not have unlimited time and patience to deal with rogue users or situations on their own. My hope is that the Arbitration Committee will either install a referee for the articles in question, and/or impose truly enforceable sanctions that not only resolve this situation but set precedents. Misplaced Pages readers would be better served if truly knowledgeable people could make good-faith contributions to the encyclopedia without being abused, bullied, or hounded into silence.

Statement by RalphLender

I concur with the statements by User:SamDavidson, User:DPeterson, and User:JonesRD and will try not to duplicate their material here.

This is a content dispute. It is about a year old. It has focused on a variety of articles, all related to the evaluation and treatment of children with disorders of attachment. The content dispute has been led by the leaders (User:Sarner and User:Jean Mercer) of the advocacy group Advocates for Children in Therapy, some of their supporters, and others. (Bowlby, Attachment Therapy, Advocates for Children in Therapy, Reactive attachment disorder, Candace Newmaker, Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy, Attachment Theory, among others). The content issues have been extensively mediated and after resolution in each case, the same or similar issues are disputed again in another article or in a slightly different form; although the substance remains the same.

The substance of the content dispute revolves around the issues outlined in the statements by SamDavidson, DPeterson, and RDJones, and I won’t repeat those here.

I do not intend to raise issues of user conduct at this time regarding many of the others involved since those are secondary to the primary issues, which are content disputes. However, if that becomes an issue later I can provide a number to diffs to show such conduct on the part of Sarner, Mercer, FatherTree, and many of their supporters. I also don’t know if this is the venue to comment on other editors statements and will leave that for later, if it is appropriate. However, I feel I must point out one glaring inaccuracy in Sarner’s statement. His point 3, “False Claims,” he states, “suggesting that I have been "sanctioned" for my editing activity on the pages in question, when in fact that has never happened.” When he has been sanctioned before: ], ]. If this is not the appropriate place for this, the clerk can delete these lines.

Clerk notes

  • Per Mediation Policy, statement during mediation attempts may not be used for arbitration process. I've redacted statements based off RfM due to a mediator request. - Penwhale | 09:46, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
    • I've redacted further statement from a party. Statements/actions during mediation attempts (with the obvious exception of refusing to mediate) cannot be used as evidence for arbitration. - Penwhale | 10:38, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Arbitrators' opinion on hearing this matter (4/0/0/0)

DreamGuy

Initiated by DashaKat at 13:02 1 July 2007

Involved parties

Confirmation that all parties are aware of the request
Confirmation that other steps in dispute resolution have been tried
WP:3O has been attempted within the context of several articles with which DreamGuy has been involved, and this only led to increased escalation of negative behavior; on-on-one discussion with DreaGuy has been consistently attempted, to no avail. Several editors apart from those named here will testify to this.

Statement by DashaKat

DreamGuy has been consistently ed-warring on articles related to (most recently) Psychology and Parapsychology, although this is on-going behavior. His edits often appear agenda-driven, rather than content driven. He relies heavily on referencing policy to support his changes, but that reliance is more often than not a distortion of the policy quoted.

In addition, attempts to quell contention by several editors have only resulted in an escalation of non-community behavior on DreamGuy's part, as well as arbitrary reversions. This is consistent and on-going across articles and Talk pages, and is a situation that can be corroborated by editors other than those named in this arbitration request.

Further, the public edit comments attached to DreamGuy's edits will confirm his positionality and general interference with attempts to interject quality content, as well as shaping quality presentation, with regard to (most recently) Dissociative identity disorder, Multiple personality controversy, Parapsychology, and Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Psychology.

DreamGuy's consistent POV positionality is most flagrantly demonstrated in the public personal attacks that he visits upon other editors. These attacks can viewed on his Talk page, as well as the Talk pages associated with the articles mentioned above and those of other editors. It is important to note that these attacks often include fabrications, falsehoods, and out-and-out lies.

Finally, a review of DreamGuy's Talk page history will reveal that he consistently deletes contentious or controversial entries that cast his behavior and submissions in an unfavorable light.

IMHO DreamGuy presents a liability to editors committed to providing reliable encyclopedic content to Misplaced Pages, and that his consistent efforts to rest power and control within the forum undermine the entire ethic upon which Misplaced Pages is based.

ADDENDUM - As you can see by the positional, accusatory, and falsehood-ridden nature of his statement, DreamGuy makes my point for me.
A review of my edits will reveal that the opening statement made by DreamGuy, "DashaKat and Empacher (possibly a sock of DashaKat's) have a very strong POV on the Dissociative identity disorder, Multiple personality controversy articles to try to hide the fact that the diagnosis is controversial and to minimize any mention that many professionals think there is no such thing." borders on the absurd.
For the record, Empacher is well-known as the sock puppet of another editor. --DashaKat 23:17, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

Statement by Annalisa Ventola

DreamGuy has proven to be a disruptive editor and has demonstrated in his recent edit warring to the Parapsychology article that he has little regard for community of Misplaced Pages editors and even less interest in achieving consensus in controversial articles. In addition to being the victim of his ad hominem attacks, he has assumed bad faith in my edits, and has falsely accused me of being party to another ArbCom case repeatedly on the pages of Talk:Parapsychology. Frankly, my recent brushes with DreamGuy have already cost me a beautiful Saturday afternoon, and at the risk of losing my Sunday evening, I'm going to keep my statement short.

Statement by Empacher

Statement by DreamGuy

This is a bad faith request from a person whose only concept of taking other steps to resolve the conflict has been to toss off insults and revert to old and extremely POV-pushing versions of articles and then run to file an arbitration request when his tactics didn't immediately result in him getting his way.

DashaKat and Empacher (possibly a sock of DashaKat's) have a very strong POV on the Dissociative identity disorder, Multiple personality controversy articles to try to hide the fact that the diagnosis is controversial and to minimize any mention that many professionals think there is no such thing. There is no edit warring that rises to the level where it could be legitimately called that going on there, as it was resolved after other editors came back a month or more ago and agreed to a consensus to mention the controversy prominently, which an a new user with no edits recently undid, reverting to an old pre-agreement version almost entirely removing the controversy from the lead and only saying that any professional with experience all agree that it is valid, which of course is incorect and major POV-pushing. After I reverted DashaKat and Empacher reverted to the non-consensus version, along with misleading edit statements. In fact, based upon User:Empacher's extremely limited number of edits in the time, as well as the lack of edits of the person who put the POV-pushing version of the article that they reverted to, it could very well be that these are sockpuppet or meatpuppet accounts. Either way, Empacher's idea of trying to resolve the conflict has solely been to leave misleading edit comments when reverting the article in question and to post a false warning that I would be blocked on my talk page, which an admin removed as improper and told Empacher that he was being abusive. DashaKat's idea of trying to resolve the conflict was to put harassing comments on my talk page, an example of which is here (and not that the topic being discussed was spam to a highly active and disputed page which had previous been discussed on Wikipedia_talk:External_links#Find_A_Grave, which I was only enforcing, and which other editors came later to remove after the account in question (that's a non-existent user page, don't recall how to link to his contributions, but from his edits he's someone here specifically with an agenda of massive linking to the sites discussed on the EL talk page) put it back. In this case DashaKat was not only not trying to solve our existing conflict but was trying to escalate another one which was resolved quickly by editors from the WP:EL talk page.

Another example of DashaKat's not taking any steps at all to try to resolve a conflict and instead to try to create more can be shown by his immediately looking to find other people to complain to and try to drag into his conflict. He ran to the Parapsychology article, at which the people involved there are already involved in an ongoing arbitration over broad scale POV-pushing related to paranormal articles. See the comments by the editor DashaKat is trying to drag into this, where she actively encourages completely ignoring longstanding principles of WP:NPOV so that her views on Parapsychology can be pushed. Certainly, other than the already open arbitration matter, no steps have been taken to try to resolve any conflict on Parapsychology either, other than a mass of people blind reverting to an old version and posting insulting comments to the talk page.

As this arbitration has been filed in bad faith, completely bypassing all normal steps for conflict resolution and in fact instead purposefully trying to exaggerate minor and previously resolved conflicts at the Dissociative identity disorder, and because DashaKat is clearly trying to use it as a club so that his preferred version of Dissociative identity disorder will stay, I would suggest that this particular request be quickly rejected.

(And, for the record, DashaKat's claims that I push POV or distort policies for my own positions is completely false, as backed up over the results of many conflicts over the years, which almost without exception have gone my way when other editors come in from outside to look at the conflict and give a third opinion. I am well known for my ability to make spam and bias go away, and as equally well known for having problem editors trying to cause problems because they want that POV and spam there. You'll note that the last RfAr and RFC tried to be filed against me were created by editors who all ended up permanently banned from Misplaced Pages for disruptive edits, POV-pushing, harassment and etc. I tend to edit articles with controversial topics, so it's not surprising I'd have a lot of people complaining when they don't get their way)

DreamGuy 23:16, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

Questions by uninvolved User:Bishzilla

Where talkpage discussion? Where article RfC? Where mediation? Where user RfC? bishzilla ROARR!! 07:23, 2 July 2007 (UTC).

Clerk notes

(This area is used for notes by non-recused Clerks.)

Arbitrators' opinion on hearing this matter (0/5/0/0)

Vision Thing

Initiated by -- infinity0 at 19:39, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Involved parties

Confirmation that all parties are aware of the request
  • Vision Thing:
  • Etcetc:
  • Full Shunyata:
Confirmation that other steps in dispute resolution have been tried
  • WP:3O has been attempted on Anarchism which Vision Thing has ignored; discussion with Vision Thing is consistently attempted with no success. Other editors apart from me will testify to this.

Statement by Infinity0

Vision Thing has been consistently edit-warring on articles related to politics, especially those related to anarchism and anarcho-capitalism, for over a year. His usual pattern of attacks is consistent reversion to undermine attempts by other editors to make contributions to the articles. (Eg. quickly scanning through his contributions, one finds that around 1/3 of his past 100 edits have been reverts of good-faithed edits (ie. not vandalism).)

He has a habit of supporting edits made by banned users User:RJII and User:Billy Ego and their sockpuppets, and re-inserting them into articles when other editors attempt to remove them.

He has undermined attempts to change a part of Anarchism to a version reached and agreed upon by numerous editors from WP:3O.

Evidence of above will be provided if this case is accepted; or you can browse through Vision Thing's contributions and see for yourself.

P.S. If this case is accepted or rejected, please can someone email me to tell me.

Addenum 12:22, 30 June 2007 (UTC). Vision Thing is continuing to edit war even as this request is being made. He has just reverted about 8 editors on Anarchism back to his own version: . -- infinity0 12:22, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

In reply to Vision Thing's comment about dispute resolution, I am bringing this case not on behalf of only myself, but the great many editors you have consistently prevented from contributing to wikipedia over the past year. -- infinity0 12:28, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

Statement by Vision Thing

Although it seems to me that infinty0 hasn't tried to use other steps in resolving this dispute, I'm willing to participate in arbitration with listed involved parties. -- Vision Thing -- 11:48, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

Statement by Full Shunyata

Statement by Etcetc

Statement by Vassyana

I am not directly involved in the conflict, but I have reviewed the behaviour of Infinity0 and Vision Thing and given them warnings in the past. Both editors have been blocked for edit warring. Please note this. Relevant discussion can also be found here and here. Vassyana 14:57, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

Clerk notes

A prior case involving some of the same parties is Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/Infinity0. Newyorkbrad 20:01, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Arbitrators' opinion on hearing this matter (3/0/0/0)

Spoiler Warning

Initiated by Ken Arromdee at 16:59, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Involved parties

Confirmation that all parties are aware of the request

Tony Sidaway:

Phil Sandifer:

David Gerard:

Kusma:

Confirmation that other steps in dispute resolution have been tried

Link to current spoiler talk page as of now. . See also the archives at Wikipedia_talk:Spoiler/archive5 with much relevant discussion, including longer presentations by others of the problems with current anti-spoiler activity. Discussion has been going on for months with no result. Moreover, a RFC was tried and closed with no useful result. . The policy has had a disputed tag since June 9 with no result. A request for AWB revocation was also tried but cancelled.

Statement by Ken Arromdee

This is in some ways an unusual request for arbitration. The problem has to do with the spoiler policy, where need for consensus has been bypassed by users deleting tens of thousands of spoiler warnings and claiming to have consensus because not enough of them are being restored. There are less than two dozen currently out of a former 45000. . The guideline is *not* settled and has *not* achieved consensus, as can be seen just from reading the pages or looking at the index.

The users listed above are three users who have participated in the spoiler page discussion and whose edit histories show a substantial number of recent removals of spoiler warnings, plus Tony Sidaway, who is the most prominent public supporter of the claim that the 45000 removals have consensus because they have not been reverted. There may be others, but my intent is to establish whether this is proper behavior for any user. I don't have the technical skills to determine the full set of users responsible for all 45000 removals.

As a way of establishing consensus, deleting 45000 warnings is inappropriate for several reasons:

  • Deleting a spoiler warning is much easier and faster than adding one. Adding one requires carefully reading the article and deciding on where to put the warning; deletion requires no such consideration. Moreover, spoiler warnings to be deleted are easily found with the "what links here" feature, but spoiler warnings to be restored can't be found in the same way. This makes the procedure imbalanced towards deletion (particularly with AWB assistance); restoring the warnings means facing a nearly impassable logistical barrier.
  • Spoiler warnings have been deleted with comments such as "(rm per WP:SPOILER (redundant with section title))", which would imply to most users that the deletion was done according to a settled policy/guideline. Users not intimately familiar with Misplaced Pages processes won't think of reading the spoiler guideline talk page to determine if the guideline has really been settled.
  • Once a user does restore a spoiler warning, it will get deleted again (almost always with no discussion). It's impossible to keep a spoiler warning without edit-warring. Under these circumstances, claiming that the policy has consensus because the spoiler warnings don't stay restored is absurd.
  • Using the lack of reversions to prove that the guideline has consensus, but also invoking the guideline to *prevent* reversions, is circular reasoning.
  • Part of the controversy is over editing the spoiler warning template itself. The current template doesn't include the words "spoiler" or "warning". This discourages users from restoring spoiler warnings by making spoiler warnings themselves vague and almost useless.
  • The template also includes disputed parts of the guideline (particularly the one about no warnings in plot sections) with no mention that they are disputed. Again, an average user would conclude that there is no dispute and that he is not permitted to restore most warnings; if so, the failure of users to restore warnings cannot prove consensus for one side of the dispute.

As this guideline enforcement has been done on a Misplaced Pages-wide scale, it has gone far beyond content disputes on any individual article. Policies not followed include the AWB policy ("Do not do anything controversial with it"), WP:POINT, and particularly WP:Consensus. Note that this RFA case isn't about whether the spoiler guideline itself is good; the case is about whether the activity of deleting 45000 warnings and enforcing a disputed policy is appropriate.

Response to arbitrator FloNight: I don't understand how to follow advice that says "continue following the process", when the complaint itself is that the other side is not following process. Ken Arromdee 21:06, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
The RFA is about the propriety of making massive changes based on a disputed policy. You're trying to argue that this is okay because the disputed policy is actually correct. That's Wikipedia_talk:Spoiler and is irrelevant. Ken Arromdee 21:10, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
There is no "common consent". In fact, one problem is that the failure to restore the warnings is used to *deduce* consensus. Now you're saying the warnings need to be kept out *because of* consensus. That's the circular reasoning I noted: failure to restore warnings proves consensus... but consensus justifies not letting people restore warnings.
And in 45000 of anything you can find some that are unnecessary. Ken Arromdee 13:15, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
to Moreschi I've already argued why spoiler warnings belong on plot sections. I've argued it elsewhere. Whether spoiler warnings are good is unrelated to this RFA, which is about prematurely claiming consensus and enforcing policies in hard-to-reverse ways before consensus. Falsely claiming consensus for a policy and taking extreme measures to support it does not become good just because you can argue that the policy is itself good. Ken Arromdee 12:52, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Statement by Tony Sidaway

There seems to be a small amount of disagreement over a new guideline that has almost universal acceptance. There have been numerous accusations of abusive behavior. A little ugly, but I suspect mainly resulting from lack of experience of Misplaced Pages on the part of the objectors. --Tony Sidaway 17:12, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

I have withdrawn from the mediation case . I felt that by participating in mediation I was giving too much weight to petty objections, while there were actual policy violations by the objectors (personal attacks, 3RR). These are better dealt with as conduct issues, rather than pandering to those violating policy. --Tony Sidaway 11:39, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

Statement by JoshuaZ

I'm not sure that this is ripe for arbitration at this time, but Tony's claim above that there is a consensus is far from true and the repeated removal of spoiler warnings as a way of testing their consensus is frankly disruptive bordering on making a point. JoshuaZ 17:52, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Statement by JzG

Note: Significant plot details follow.

By common consent almost all - 99% being a guesstimate frequently touted - spoiler warnings were redundant (in plot sections), unnecessary (works of fact, not fiction), fatuous (Plato, Dickens) or downright absurd (nursery rhymes). All the pro-spoiler crowd have ever had to do is go to the Talk pages of articles they think need spoiler warnings, and make a case, on an article by article basis, showing that the plot element or device is generally identified as a significant spoiler in current critical discussion of the work in question.

As far as I can tell, they refuse to do this, preferring instead either to edit-war over the tags, or to complain endlessly that there is no "consensus" to remove the spoiler warnings. In article space, of course, the onus is always on the editor seeking to include a tag or other content to justify that inclusion.

The real question here is why tens of thousands of spoiler warnings were placed in mainspace in the first place. Can someone show where it was discussed? The debate that justifies 45,000 spoiler tags in articles as diverse as Catch-22, the Book of Ruth and The Three Little Pigs? There is no evidence that editors were discriminating in adding these tags, or that they ever served any encyclopaedic purpose in more than a very small proportion of articles (and only debatably in those).

This request is baseless. Tony and Phil are responding to criticisms, this entire request appears to be functionally equivalent to: we don't like this, we can't be bothered to go and justify the tags on an article by article basis, but nobody else agrees with us that it's a Huge Big Problem that needs enormous effort from lots of other people to fix.

Somehow I doubt that the arbitration committee will see the removal of spolier tags form articles where their inclusion shows no evidence of critical judgement to be anything other than a reasonable action. This is, after all, an encyclopaedia: it is not exactly a surprise that the plot section on a 1930 film includes a discussion of the plot, and warning the reader of this does look rather silly. Guy (Help!) 20:45, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Significant plot details end here.
No, the RFAR is about you wanting to revert the removal of a large number of essentially self-referential templates fomr articles in almost all of which they were, by common consent, completely unjustified. There was significant discussion before, during and after the event. As far as I can tell the vast majority of editors think the vast majority of spoiler tags were useless; if you think spoiler tags genuinely contribute to the encyclopaedia then all you need to do is go to the articles you think need them and a case for the inclusion of spoiler tags in those articles, on a case-by-case basis. I haven't seen a justification for a spoiler tag on a Talk page yet so I have no idea what one would look like, but I'm guessing there would be a pretty low bar. If the sources agree that knowing X about film Y is a spoiler, and if the cat is not out of the bag long since, it should be trivially easy to persuade other editors that a spoiler is needed. I repeat, though, that the onus is on those seeking to include content to justify its inclusion. No evidence has been presented that David and Tony were acting in bad faith, they have given an extensive justification of why they thought their actions were to the benefit of the encyclopaedia, there was extensive discussion on the mailing list before the large-scale removals, and I have not yet seen a rationale for undoing this action other than "but you didn't ask me first!". Sufficient examples of plainly indiscriminate use have been rpesented that the action of remove all, allow reinsertion if editors can make a case, looks entirely reasonable to me. The fact that it would take you for ever to reinsert 45,000 spoiler warnings is irrelevant, because almost all of the 45,000 were clearly unnecessary. Guy (Help!) 10:01, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Statement by apathetic User:MastCell

This looks like a case in which a reasonable and laudable project, which ought to have universal support, has been somewhat sabotaged by a ham-handed and counterproductive approach (disrespect for newer contributors, high-handedness, etc), and not for the first time. It might be useful as a case study in how we can keep our metaphorical teapots tempest-free in the future, but it's hard to see an ArbCom case here. MastCell 21:44, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Statement by David Gerard

The problem with the spoiler tag was that it was being applied indiscriminately to anything and everything someone might conceivably consider discussed plot details. This led to ludicrousness such as spoiler tags on non-fictional topics such as Anagram, Kiss (the article about kissing), Roger Bacon or Ultimate fate of the universe, Shakespeare, fairy tales and so forth - and people edit-warring to keep the spoiler tag on articles such as Three Little Pigs! In addition, it was causing serious problems with neutral point of view on some articles, as people were considering spoiler tags more important than the fundamental policy of neutrality. More than a few of the pro-spoiler edit warriors also got blocked for going over three reverts in twenty-four hours.

What I did: I removed quite a lot of spoiler tags (10-20,000?) from sections headed "Plot summary", "Character history" or something equivalent that would tell the reader to expect plot details. I did keep an eye on what I was doing. In some cases I was in error, and these were flagged on my talk page. On a few articles I erroneously removed the tag again when someone put it back, and when this was flagged I apologised and made sure the article in question was taken off my list for processing.

At present there are only a few uses of the spoiler tag remaining. I have tried in many such cases to re-edit the article so that it gives adequate warning of plot details for those who care without using an (in my opinion) problematic tag that has directly encouraged unencyclopedic writing and violations of fundamental policy - e.g. putting such things in a section titled "Plot summary" or "Character history", or using the {{future}} tag as appropriate - David Gerard 09:34, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

  • I just added the following to the mediation cabal page. Ken has put forward there the notion that all 45,000 removed spoiler tags should be replaced (presumably including fairy tales, the Bible, Shakespeare, non-fiction, etc), and not removed again until discussion on spoilers has been carried through to his satisfaction:
Restoring all 45,000 spoiler warnings whether they make sense or not? That's ridiculous. They were removed because their spread was actually problematic to the encyclopedia. Now they can be added as justifiable. What's so hard about justifying the spoilers?
I am reluctant to bother with this given that requests like adding back all 45,000 deleted spoiler tags are being made seriously. That shows a disconnection it's hard to reason with.
This "mediation" looks like frantic venue-shopping (RFC, WT:SPOIL, wikien-l, AWB checklist, RFAr and now here), searching for someone who's actually interested in taking up the cause of spoiler tags. If anyone cared, I'd have been taken out and shot by now. They observably don't - it's a few spoiler advocates looking for someone who cares.
On the assertion the spoiler removal was a violation of AWB policy: well, it appears no-one involved in AWB actually thinks so, and those in favour of spoilers couldn't raise interest there either . So please stop asserting this as if it's a fact.
I ask again: What is so hard about even attempting to discuss the spoilers on a case by case basis? Ken's been asked this many times by many people and has yet to state what makes him unable to hit "edit" and add a justification to a talk page - David Gerard 10:46, 30 June 2007 (UTC)
  • The mediation may be dead - Phil declined to participate, I think there's little common ground to negotiate on and Tony attempted involvement but gave up in the face of personal attacks from spoiler advocates who keep getting 3RR blocks for indiscriminately edit-warring the tag back onto articles - David Gerard 11:39, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

Statement by Kusma

A few months ago, spoiler warnings were a common and accepted practice on this Misplaced Pages, but overused to a ridiculous degree (one of my favorite was the tag on The Very Hungry Caterpillar). Then, Phil Sandifer initiated an MfD (later turned into an RfC), showing how spoiler warnings interfere with core policies (NPOV) and more important encyclopedic considerations (WP:LEAD). Many people agreed that spoiler warnings were overused, and redundant in sections with clear section titles. I started removing spoiler warnings from classical literature and from clearly marked sections, sometimes adding headers in place of the warning tags. I did not remove all tags that I (or AWB) came across, but left many tags in place. After some weeks, I was surprised to see that spoiler warnings have almost completely disappeared, and there is surprisingly little demand for them given that they were so ubiquitous recently. Whether there was community consensus to remove all tags in the discussion is hard to say (the discussions are so long and confusing), but it was clear that not all of them should stay. It seems that editing boldly has overcome the inertia that made people believe spoiler warnings are a standard feature of Misplaced Pages. They have ceased to be used by default, and many Wikipedians now remove them on sight (not just the parties mentioned here). This is a nice example of how consensus can change. Kusma (talk) 10:02, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Comment by Moreschi

It may be of interest to some to note that even before I arrived on Misplaced Pages, editors of opera articles had made a collective decision of get rid of spoilers. Glad to see this is being followed up. The archived discussion can be found here. The header "plot summary" or "synopsis" should be more than enough warning without ugly and silly tags, particularly when the "plots" in question are often literary traditions going back hundreds of years, or even, as pointed out above, fairy tales!

Regardless, I don't see an arbitration case here. I often get rid of the things when I see them, and anyway, while the encyclopedia can surely suffer badly as a result of spoiler abuse, it surely cannot suffer in any way as a result of spoiler absence. Misplaced Pages is an encyclopedia, not a film trailer. Certain people seem to have forgotten that. Moreschi 10:15, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Statement by ElC on statement by JzG

It looks interesting and all, but in light of the {{spoiler}}s, I'll wait till after I review every-related-thing before read it. (gotta start from the beginning!) El_C 10:27, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Statement by WJBscribe

It seems to me that if nearly all of 45000 spoiler tags have been removed and not replaced, that is a pretty clear consensus that they shouldn't be there. This seems to confirm the change in policy - on those pages the consensus has presumably also been that the tag is not needed. It is not as if it (the template) has been deleted- on each page arguments can be raised for why {{spoiler}} is needed. For example if the tag is removed with the summary "redudant to section title", an editor could restore the tag and explain why it is not redundant. The fact it exists on only about a dozen pages is therefore telling. There will always be those unhappy when consensus shifts, but it seems consensus is against spoiler tags in the vast majority of cases. There are ongoing discussions and editors can make arguments for retaining the tags on specific articles - but policy represents current practice however vocal the dissent by a minority might be. It appears that current practice is to do without spoiler tags, but those who have removed them have been willing to discuss and compromise in individual cases - looks like everything is going fine without assistance from ArbCom. WjBscribe 14:49, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Statement by Phil Sandifer

I personally would hope the arbcom does not accept this case until Ken is able to point to an actual case of a spoiler tag where a consensus has not been able to form on the talk page of the article in question. I am unaware of one, which suggests to me that what we had was a careful (over a matter of weeks) removal of 45,000 tags, the vast majority of which were either uncontroversial or relatively quickly settled. Phil Sandifer 20:16, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Statement by FunPika

There is currently an open medcab case on this matter. I suggest that arbitration waits until that medcab case closes. FunPika 23:01, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Statement by Kierano

Being the one who called for medcab case, I second that. While the users named in this case have certainly been engaging in behavior that is disagreeable to a large number of other users, jumping directly to ArbCom isn't in line with the dispute resolution process. We should at least try to reach a compromise first. Hopefully having an external mediator will be enough for this. -Kieran 01:55, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Statement by Amarkov

There is definitely a problem here. However, it needs to be framed as a user conduct issue, not a policy issue. The problem is in no way with the policy, but how people are trying to enforce it and claim consensus on a particular version.

Statement by Ned Scott

Had this been about something more interesting I don't doubt it would become an actual arbcom case. I will say this, while I myself have become numb to the situation, it must be extremely frustrating for others to be basically shut up by those who are removing the warnings. Those wanting to remove spoiler warnings used scripts to do a massive removal in a sudden period of time, when the community probably should have been given a moment to breath and adapt, phasing out the warnings. I'm not saying I disagree with it, I'm just saying it was really harsh, and made the transitional period much harder than it needed to be. -- Ned Scott 07:09, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Comment by Proabivouac

Encyclopedias do not use spoiler warnings.Proabivouac 07:13, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Statement by Ghirlandajo

As so often happens these days, there seems to have been some sort of consensus on IRC, there is certainly no consensus on-wiki, and there is some activity to enforce IRC consensus in the face of lack of on-wiki consensus. It's hard to see how ArbCom enters the picture and why its precious time and energy should be wasted on reviewing this particular situation. Misplaced Pages would not collapse or fall into disrepute because of the spoiler template. The matter is so trivial that it pains me to see how it was blown out of all proportion. It looks like an archetypal case when, for lack of substantive knowledge of Misplaced Pages problems, a bunch of admins create a non-existant problem that would divide the community, instead of tackling some very real challenges that the project faces these days: lack of content arbitration, prevalence of off-wiki decision- and policy-making, proliferation of nationalists and cranks, etc, etc. --Ghirla 17:18, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Comment by Lsi john

I noticed that numerous spoiler warnings were removed in bot-like fashion. As a fairly new editor, I assumed (like most others probably did) that there had been some official decree that {{spoiler}} was being 'officially' deleted en masse from wikipedia.

To claim justification after the fact, on the basis of 'lack of complaints' or 'lack of tag-readding', is absurd. Clearly some people did complain. The fact that some articles may not be watched, or that many editors will not challenge a bot or an admin, is a reason for 'caution' and not a justification for the action.

IMO the editors, for any article which was to be affected, should have been notified in advance of any such bot action and should have been given an open opportunity to object. (as a simple courtesy if nothing else).

Otherwise each of the (45,000) pages should have been individually looked at prior to deleting the tag.

For those who supported such a broad bot-edit, please give careful consideration to the concept of 20-newbie editors forming a 'concensus' about any similar wikipedia issue and then having a bot make massive global changes. I strongly suspect they would be immediately banned for disruption.

Should the spoiler tags have been used so broadly? probably not. But the end does not justify the means and nobody should be 'above the law' or 'above the process'.

Peace.Lsi john 11:35, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

Comment by Kizor

First, I'd like to request Proabivouac to stop sidetracking the discussion; he comments on a matter that has been repeatedly stated to not be an issue here. He is welcome to take it up on the appropriate talk page, though preferably in a more productive form than the one he demonstrates here, ignoring each and every argument to the contrary and stating the truth of things. --Kizor 12:47, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Statement by Nydas

There is not, and has never has been, any consensus for the removal of spoiler tags. The anti-spoiler brigade rewrote the guideline two days into the discussion, and began the mass removal of spoiler tags using automated tools shortly afterwards. The initial justification was the underpublicised MfD that was closed after a day, with its 2:1 support of removal. The TfD (which supported spoilers) was ignored.

The justification quickly changed to the now-familiar 'there is no significant resistance' line. The arbitary definition of 'significant resistance' makes it unlikely that resistance would ever be 'significant' enough. At one point, Tony Sidaway stated that hundreds of people reverting tags would count as significant, without explaining how this could be easily measured. At another, David Gerard said there was no significant resistance based on no-one phoning him to complain.

In actual fact, thousands of spoiler tags were restored on a small scale basis by local editors - this can be confirmed by examining the edit histories. This was not enough to stop the AWB juggernaut. Someone making thousands of edits an hour isn't going to notice if they do the same page multiple times. They won't even notice the context; Ultimate fate of the universe has been cited as a 'ludicrous' example, but the tags were in the 'popular culture' section. Perhaps not ideal, but certainly not 'ludicrous'.

Nobody can restore the spoiler tags on large scale, since the anti-spoiler admins threaten anyone that tries. Sometimes this was for 3RR violations, but sometimes it wasn't, instead based on sock-puppet allegations or simply being 'disruptive'.--Nydas 17:50, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

The question for this arbitration is not the policy, but the heavy-handed methods used to rewrite and enforce it, and whether consensus can be claimed by reference to 'no significant resistance'. The disrespectful (at times, outright rude) attitude of some anti-spoiler editors may also be worth noting. I have been unfairly accused of making personal attacks, as well as 'poisoning the well' with my single comment on Talk:Halo: Combat Evolved. It has been suggested that those who oppose the removals are lacking in education of how Misplaced Pages works, and Tony Sidaway in particular has been vocal in asserting that those who like spoiler tags are 'stupid and perverse'.--Nydas 12:19, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Clerk notes

(This area is used for notes by non-recused Clerks.)

Arbitrators' opinion on hearing this matter (2/5/0/1)

Mark Kim

Initiated by — Selmo at 00:25, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Involved parties

Confirmation that all parties are aware of the request
Confirmation that other steps in dispute resolution have been tried

Statement by uninvolved Selmo

I am filing this case after reading Mark Kim's RfC. I feel after analyzing the evidence, that an RfC won't solve this dispute that has been ongoing for over two years because it requires all participants to want to come to some resolution. Mark has shown no interest in listening to others' opinions, as evident here, here, and here. The description from the RFC is as follows.

Mark Kim (previously known as Vesther) has been acting in an uncivil manner for an excessively long time. Several editors have tried to speak with him and help correct his behaviour but all attempts to do so are met with more incivility, denial, and his own assertion that he should be allowed to do whatever he deems necessary to "protect" articles and to get his point across in articles, which includes violations of WP:CIVIL, WP:NPA, WP:OWN, as well as threats to edit war. He also maintains a double standard where he thinks its perfectly acceptable for him to do certain things (like try to moderate his user talk page with an iron fist) but then warns other users for doing the same thing (a diff will be provided where he warned a user for removing warnings from his talk page). Mark Kim also maintains that any disagreement with his behaviour is a personal attack of the utmost degree (and has referred to them as "damaging his persona"). This demonstrates his inability to work in a group setting. In a place as large as wikipedia you're never going to be able to avoid coming across someone who disagrees with you. I have never been involved in a content dispute with him. My only observations with him were as a third party recently and a year ago as I stumbled across two disputes he was involved in. After the second I dug a little deeper and found just how prevalent this behaviour was.

— Selmo 00:25, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Statement by Crossmr

I have little to add to the above, since its my summary that was being used to open this case, but I felt that this should be given as further evidence of the editors behaviour. Even though he claims to have closed his account, he continues to edit as an ip here . Same articles, same language (he can be seen writing "screw it" in a couple of earlier edit summaries) plus the IP edits Mark Kim's talk page. As far as I'm concerned this an attempt simply to dodge the arbitration case as he knows it will finally be binding and he'll have no choice but to edit by the ruling laid down.--Crossmr 01:54, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Statement by Theresa knott

Despite Mark Kim's stating that he is leaving wikipedia he continues to edit with yet another IP here User:71.57.74.109. (evidence is in the account history) Theresa Knott | Taste the Korn 15:45, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Clerk notes

Mark Kim has deleted his userpage, and his talkpage currently reads, "Note: Due to excessive disputes, the user has voluntarily cancelled his/her Misplaced Pages account." (However, see above for an allegation that he continues to edit as an IP.) Newyorkbrad 01:56, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Arbitrators' opinion on hearing this matter (1/0/0/0)

Request to re-open Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/Pigsonthewing

Initiated by Moreschi at 21:32, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Involved parties

(others may add themselves as they see fit)


Confirmation that all parties are aware of the request
Confirmation that other steps in dispute resolution have been tried

Statement by Moreschi

Misplaced Pages is a community project. If someone can't work with others, eventually it has to end in tears.

User:Pigsonthewing, hereafter known as Andy Mabbett, has a long history of problems with the rest of Misplaced Pages's community. Previous dramas culminated in the requests for comment and arbitration linked above, where he was sanctioned heavily by the ArbCom of the time. He has also been blocked a considerable number of times, including a one-year arbitration committee ban after the initial case. Since then, he has recently accumulated further blocks for revert-warring and repeatedly adding insults against other users to his userpage, after multiple uninvolved administrators had removed the offending material. He has also been in several tussles that have lead to multiple reports to WP:AE, and my personal involvement with this user has come over a move to remove infoboxes, where they are inappropriate, from classical composer and opera-related articles. After a self-evident consensus to do just this was reached, Andy Mabbett has continued to bang the drum against this for months on end, a lone voice in the wilderness, working on the principle that "no consensus == I disagree", and all because a lack of infoboxes mess up his Microformats. Others will go into that in more detail later.

Andy Mabbett has a singularly lengthy and entirely infamous history of disruption to the project. Recent events have brought this to boiling point. Given Mabbett's past history and current refusal to acknowledge, in multiple incidents, when he might possibly be wrong, I am asking the ArbCom to re-open the previous case to consider further sanctions at the very least. An outright indefinite ban, in my opinion, is to be preferred. Thank you. Moreschi 21:32, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Re: I have no problem with dissent. Excessive dissent is disruption, and that, we block and ban for. Anything to the contrary is nonsense. Moreschi 13:28, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Statement by Folantin

I second what Moreschi has written. As one of the admins writes in Andy Mabbett's block log, "This user appears to be here to make nuclear war with contributors; not to write an encyclopedia". AM is a belligerent editor who insists disputes cannot be concluded until he has his own way, even though majority opinion is clearly against him. This is true of his activities on the infobox topic (as documented by Moreschi). Mabbett has used various techniques, including violation of WP:POINT, canvassing and forum-shopping to keep that argument going for over two months and has tried to block any moratorium on the subject. I can provide evidence of this if necessary but I think this thread at WP:ANI shows AM's arguing technique in a nutshell . AM refused to remove inflammatory material from his user page, engaged in an edit war and was blocked for 72 hours . The material in question was intended to keep a quarrel he had with User:Leonig Mig still burning, although it is over 18 months old. The first thing he did on his return yesterday was to dig the dispute out of the ANI archives, insisting it was not over, to the frustration of other users involved. This is the same method he has used elsewhere and it is an enormous waste of time for other editors who simply want to get on with writing an encyclopaedia rather than using WP as a battleground. Since AM seems incapable of learning from experience, I think a lengthy (possibly permanent) enforced absence is in order. --Folantin 07:02, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

(Oh, and I'm really not impressed by CBDunkerson's rhetoric. Now I understand why the AMA was disbanded by popular demand. WP has an effective system for dealing with vandals, but it's woefully inadequate where trolls, cranks and other disruptive elements are concerned and these are the people who drive good editors - both actual and potential - away. Mabbett's supposedly wonderful contribution history this year seems to consist mainly of inserting microformats everywhere possible and quarrelling at enormous length with anyone who dissents). --Folantin 12:52, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Statement by Semi-Involved SirFozzie

I agree that ArbCom should pick up this case with an eye to determining how to handle Andy's behavior. He still is insisting that his latest escapades, that it's everyone else that's wrong, not him, and has shown no better behavior now then that which earned him his one year ban already.) He brought the latest dispute out from an archive and insisted on having the last word, refusing to accept what people were telling him. I finally gave up trying to discuss the case with him, because his insistence on hanving the last word. SirFozzie 19:05, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Statement by slightly involved Durin

I saw this come up at Misplaced Pages:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#User:Pigsonthewing and reviewed for myself what was happening. I made a posting on the matter to the thread, noting that PoTW rapidly embroils people in the conflict, when they came to the conflict as uninvolved parties hoping to help resolve the matter. Subsequent to that post of mine, three other editors who responded were attacked by PoTW as being dishonest, making ad hominen attacks and censoring PoTW, which I noted in a subsequent post.

PoTW conducted more than a dozen reverts over several days of the removal of a personal attack from his userpage. Three of the users conducting the removals are administrators. I am deeply troubled that despite being warned he would be blocked for continuing to place what was widely regarded as a personal attack on his userpage , PoTW once again put the text back on his userpage just three minutes later . When he was blocked for this, he then put the text on his talk page , in the process referring to the people against him as "the lynchmob". When this was removed from his talk page, PoTW complained calling it a "totally unacceptable act of censorship" . Even now, he's placed a message on his userpage saying it is being censored and people should review the history of his userpage for what was censored .

It is clear from the recent and past record both that PoTW does not respond well to feedback, and insists on taking to task anyone who disagrees with him. He is not amenable to making changes in his manner, and seems singularly incapable of working in a cooperative editing environment when he comes into conflict with other users. --Durin 20:59, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Statement by previously involved CBDunkerson

This is perhaps the single identifiable thing which Misplaced Pages is worst at handling... users who hold steadfastly to their views. Andy Mabbet can be stubborn to the point of being a major pain in the ass. Moreschi above calls him "a lone voice in the wilderness" - continuing to protest a decision he doesn't agree with seemingly ad infinitum. How dare he! Clearly we must stomp this foul miscreant into paste. Disagreement is not allowed! Or so it would seem. Do we block people just because we (or some of us) don't like what they have to say?

Let's look at the accusations being made here:

  1. Feud with User:Leonig Mig - Both users had long (as in many MONTHS now) denounced each other on their respective user pages. This was incivil and IMO petty, but also in my opinion not worth making a brouhaha over. There are worse statements than either of those on thousands of pages throughout Misplaced Pages... including this one. Notably, both users also allowed the statements to be removed before this arbitration case was filed.
  2. Infoboxes / Microformats dispute - Andy Mabbet wants to embed microformat data into articles for machine reading and indexing purposes. To that end he wants them included in infoboxes and the infoboxes used consistently on articles. Others disagree. He argues. They don't like that. They get him banned from editing infoboxes. He abides by that, but continues to present his views (as the Arbcom ban encouraged him to do). Therefor we must now have an Arbitration to 'muzzle' him?
  3. Not here to write an encyclopedia - This statement from an admin, quoted and endorsed by Folantin in his statement above, is not only a clear personal attack, but so utterly and obviously untrue as to insult the intelligence. Anyone who looks at Special:Contributions/Pigsonthewing and says that this person is not trying to improve the encyclopedia is lying... either to all of us or to themselves. These false claims serve no purpose except to inflame the situation.
  4. Claims 'censorship' - Andy Mabbet described the removal of his complaints about Leonig Mig as, "censorship". Guess what... he's right. That's exactly what it is. Whether we agree that the statements should be removed or not... forcibly doing so IS censorship. Look it up. The edit war over whether he is allowed to say so is typical of the problem here. People get so annoyed with Andy's dogged advocacy of his views that they go out of their way to antagonize and dispute him. Indeed, the fact that he had that denouncement of Leonig Mig on his user page only became an issue after these many months because people were looking for ways to 'get' him. (Note: This is not a criticism of the admins who were trying to stomp out the incivility - rather of the whole, 'look what he did! Get him!', finger pointing.)

What should be done? It'd be nice if people had thicker skins and could just say, 'I disagree' and not feel the need to 'win' / get Andy to stop disputing them. Unfortunately, historically we have seen over and over again that there is always someone (or several someones) who casts themself in the role of 'defender of Misplaced Pages' and goes after Andy and others who dare to disagree with their 'consensus'. It'd be nice if Andy could just accept 'defeat' and move on, but we've seen that while he abides by blocks and restrictions he will criticize the decisions and continue to press his viewpoint long past the point that most would give up.

So do we 'criminalize' dissent? Do we block people who object to and try to stifle the dissent? Or do we allow the argument to go on forever? That's the essential question here. Personally, I'd choose the last and keep the role of blocks as checks on actions and behaviour which are crossing the line into disruption and insults. We should not be getting rid of people, either temporarily or permanently, just for disagreeing... no matter how long they do so. --CBD 12:10, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Clerk notes

Recuse from any clerk activity in this case. Newyorkbrad 10:13, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Arbitrators' opinion on hearing this matter (4/0/0/0)

Requests for clarification

Place requests for clarification on matters related to the Arbitration process in this section. Place new requests at the top.

Misplaced Pages:Requests_for_arbitration/MONGO

Per this ruling, is this good-faith edit grounds for blocking? Is it acceptable to use said ruling as the justification for this? Kamryn Matika 00:54, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Please note that the link in question contains no personal information or attacks. Kamryn Matika 00:56, 26 June 2007 (UTC)
Arbitration rulings are not policy. They apply only to the specific situation considered, in this case, a link to dem attic. Inserting such a link into Misplaced Pages is a blockable offense, although, a warning is appropriate if it seems the user was unaware of the status of that site. In your case, the 24 hour block seems appropriate as you were apparently both aware and warned. Fred Bauder 21:31, 30 June 2007 (UTC)
Attempts to generalize the remedy in that case into more general policy have not been happy. I don't think it is good general policy. Such a remedy should only be applied in egregious circumstances, after a hearing which considers the particular site. Fred Bauder 21:31, 30 June 2007 (UTC)
You seem to contradict yourself here... you say it's not policy, but then you say it's enforceable anyway. It doesn't help things to suppress the link here that shows the specific instance being discussed, even though the link is to a Misplaced Pages diff, not directly to the so-called attack site. You also don't even address the point that the particular link in question was being used to source an article, and was relevant in that context, so the supposed attack-link ban (which you yourself agree is not actual policy) is not directly relevant... in fact, this instance is one of those "attempts to generalize the remedy" that you're supposedly against. If it's "not policy", then how is the fact that somebody was "warned" about it relevant? I can warn you that using the letter "e" in your postings makes you subject to getting blocked for it... does that mean that if you persist in using that letter you can properly be blocked? A "warning" not backed by valid policy should have no effect. By the way, there has never been a hearing considering the particular site in question for the particular link discussed here, although it's hard for anybody to check when even the link to the diff is being suppressed. *Dan T.* 13:05, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

With respect to the banned site there is an enforceable remedy. Attempts to make that remedy into a policy are misguided as there needs to be a determination that a site is systematically engaged in destructive behavior before it is banned. Misplaced Pages has a number of legitimate critics. It would be grossly inappropriate to ban every critical website. Fred Bauder 14:45, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

Of course, but websites that routinely post personally reveiling information about our editors should never be linked to nor advertised.--MONGO 15:30, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
I think this just about does it for me. Kamryn Matika 17:01, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

I think I misread the link you made. It is to Misplaced Pages Review, not to the banned drama site. I doubt a block was justified. Fred Bauder 17:26, 2 July 2007 (UTC)


Clarification: We did not write a proposal about, or vote on, linking to ED. Rather, we voted on a general principle. The MONGO case was quite clear when we voted on it, and the vote was unanimous:

"A website that engages in the practice of publishing private information concerning the identities of Misplaced Pages participants will be regarded as an attack site whose pages should not be linked to from Misplaced Pages pages under any circumstances."

Given the contents of WR, which has had dozens of threads and hundreds of posts devoted to attempts to "publish private information concerning the identities of Misplaced Pages participants", it is clear that the site meets the definition of "an attack site" as outlined here, that its pages "pages should not be linked to from Misplaced Pages pages under any circumstances", and that the block (after warning), was appropriate. Jayjg 21:53, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for that correction. However, it is still a matter of degree. I post on Misplaced Pages Review. I would not even consider creating an ED account. Fred Bauder 03:52, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
I certainly don't condemn anyone for posting there, so long they are in fact "reviewing Misplaced Pages" and not trying to "out" anyone. But I have seen plenty of efforts by many contributors to that site who have tried to overtly ID the real life ID's of some of our contributors. That little to nothing is done to eliminate these postings demonstrates that they condone stalking and I find that to be unacceptable and thus I cannot see any reason why linking to any site that does this should be tolerated.--MONGO 04:10, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Blocks should never be used as a penalty, but rather as a means to protect the encyclopaedia from harm. Linking to Misplaced Pages Review in an article, with an informative purpose, is not "damaging the encyclopaedia", and a block for this makes no sense. SalaSkan 20:25, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Motions in prior cases

(Only Arbitrators may make and vote on such motions. Other editors may comment on the talk page)


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