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Requests for arbitration

Arms of Bagrotioni

Initiated by Fry1989 (talk) at 21:40, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

Involved parties

• Fry1989 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log), filing party
• Adelbrecht (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Confirmation that all parties are aware of the request

• http://en.wikipedia.org/User_talk:Adelbrecht#Arbitration

Statement by Fry1989

Here is the problem. Adelbrecht is under the distinct impression that just because he knows more about heraldry than myself, that any arguments I have are invalid. It started on the page regarding the Coat of Arms of Luxembourg, were he proposed to insert a new style of Arms, that do not resemble in any way the Arms as they are styled by the Luxembourg Government. Instead of seeking consensus for his change, he edit warred te the extent that the page required protection. He is now trying to force the "new flavour" on the Coat of Arms of Bagrotioni. This is the original look, and is in keeping with the style on the Royal House Website, while this is the new style initiated by the file's original author. My original edit to the page restored the original look, as was the consensus for some time, and Adelbrecht has reverted me 3 times because he is under the distinct impression that there is already consensus for this new style, which looks nothing like the original. I am therefore seeking mediation from the Community to decide which version is the appropriate one to use. I have not been able to try other dispute mediation methods as there is absolutely no civility between this user and myself, due to his attitude that because he knows more than myself about some ancient tradition, that in his own words, I shuold "leave it to the people who know things". Fry1989 (talk) 21:52, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

Consensus on Commons does not transfer to Misplaced Pages, and just because an author of a file likes a new look, that doesn't mean it can be forced upon Misplaced Pages without a discussion on the new style. I have every right to upload the original style for discussion. Supporting the opriginal style, and asking for consensus for the new look, IS NOT vandalism. On the other hand. Adelbrecht has vandalism my talk page by reverting discussions I have removed from it. He is trying to force new styles and looks without discussions, and has been utterly rude to me, insinuation that I'm an idiot, Whose the real vandal? Fry1989 (talk) 22:06, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

What "Evidence"? It has ALWAYS been my policy to remove discussions from my page that either are complete, OR are going nowhere and are insulting. If they are important, they can always be viewed through the file history. Calling it an attempt to remove evidence is really grasping at straws. Fry1989 (talk) 22:15, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

Statement by Adelbrecht

The problem is that Fry refuses to follow the heraldic tradition and the law of Luxembourg. I corrected this error, and I son't think I need consensus for correcting errors. To counter my correction, he gave me sources which proved that I was right. Some of the errors he created have been fixed by Katepanomegas, but others are still there. I have marked them in the file description. Katepanomegas, who also drew the alternative correct versions in his own style, has provided the text of the law on his versions.

The arms of Bagrotioni he keeps reverting were updated as per consensus and the author's intent, yet he uploaded a separate version just so he can avoid the consensus on there. Admin Zscout has approved this consensus. I have not seen anything on the royal site concerning the old version he is forcing on wikipedia.

I should have been the one to ask this arbitration. Fry is a disruptive editor who has been blocked before; his previously vandalism concerning heraldry has been pointed out by Roux n Fry's talk page. He also rebels against the MOSICON policy, and has started an edit war against Gnevin about this. Adelbrecht (talk) 22:02, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

Talk page. He has tried removing evidence. Adelbrecht (talk) 22:10, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

The whole Luxembourg problem has been ended. He has seen that he was wrong. The consensus about the Bagrotioni arms have changed, so that is not an issue for Misplaced Pages right now. Adelbrecht (talk) 07:18, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Statement by tangentially-involved roux

Vandenberg left me a note on my tpage saying I'd been named as a party here. It looks like my name has been removed, but I have a few general comments to make.

First of all, this will not be news to Risker (I'm guessing), but the most basic rule of heraldry is that the blazon is definitive. Any depiction of the arms which recognisably follows the blazon is by definition heraldically correct. Considerable artistic licence is permitted; one may look at e.g. the Arms of Canada and evolution thereof; in the 1950's, without changing the blazon, the version in official use was slightly redrawn. The previous version, however, was still heraldically correct, though the official depiction was changed to fit The Queen's personal preferences.

Second, there is a trend amongst heraldists and heraldic artists on Misplaced Pages to perhaps prize the above consideration over that of real-world applications. I would argue in a general sense that heraldic depictions which follow official usage (particularly when we are discussing such high-level achievements of arms) should be preferred over those which are, strictly speaking, heraldically correct. For example, one could describe the logo of FedEx, and then generate a drawing from it, which would be fairly similar to the actual corporate logo and thus accurate in one sense, while missing the point entirely. As COAs at the state level are functionally indistingushable from corporate logos (and other forms of identification), we should err on the side of what the officials use; to do otherwise is to subtly and unintentionally mislead our readers.

Third, this dispute has been elevated to ArbCom prematurely, and with a bunch of mistakes along the way. Both Adelbrecht and Fry1989 are editwarring, and frankly both should be blocked for doing so. Editwarring is not new to Fry (and anyone interested can look at my block log to see I'm not on any high horse here), and by this point I should think patience is exhausted when it comes to his actions. This is not something coming out of any personal animosity; Fry does valuable work on Misplaced Pages, and I recently mediated a dispute between him and another user which appears to have been resolved if not amicably, then cordially.

That being said, Fry needs to understand that when he is running into multiple identical problems, he should perhaps look in the mirror for the source of those problems. To be more blunt: yes, Fry, experts know more than you do, and not all opinions are of equal weight. Particularly in a field such as heraldry, around which so many myths and half-truths abound.

And to be fair, Adelbrecht is being just as truculent. Reading the talkpage of the article in question (as well as Fry's talkpage), one sees only two edtors talking right past each other, both saying "I'm right, deal with it," with very little supporting documentation provided by either side.

Should ArbCom decline this--which seems inevitable--I would be happy to mediate the discussion between the two parties and come to a solution which reflects the sources. Heraldic tradition, official usage; these are both red herrings. Verifiability, not truth.

Clerk notes

This area is used for notes by the clerks (including clerk recusals).

Arbitrators' opinion on hearing this matter (0/10/0/2)

• Awaiting further statements, but leaning decline. Out of curiosity, why is it that both of the Wiki(m)(p)edia versions of the coat of arms show St. George facing dexter, when the official coat of arms per the website has him facing sinister? Risker (talk) 22:17, 12 June 2011 (UTC)
• Waiting on other statements, but I noticed that I don't see any prior attempts to resolve this dispute listed - is that correct? Shell 00:32, 13 June 2011 (UTC)
• Decline unless evidence of other attempts at Formal Dispute resolution have been tried. (ArbCom is not the first step of Formal DR, it is the last) SirFozzie (talk) 02:47, 13 June 2011 (UTC)
• Decline we have ample venues to look at this and gain consensus before coming here. Casliber (talk · contribs) 07:16, 13 June 2011 (UTC)
• Decline per Roux. John Vandenberg 07:39, 13 June 2011 (UTC)
• Decline per Roux. Kirill  10:19, 13 June 2011 (UTC)
• Decline, with my thanks to Roux for his offer to mediate. — Coren  11:02, 13 June 2011 (UTC)
• Decline. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs 11:50, 13 June 2011 (UTC)
• Decline per comments above, particularly Coren's. As a passing observation by someone without expertise, if the issue here is whether the "official" or "everyday" version of a coat of arms should be used, then it might be that both have their place, and it might be that there should be a wikiproject-wide RfC to get consensus beyond a particular article. However, I'll leave to those who know more about the topic to figure out. (Note to Clerks: Although this request is obviously being declined, please leave it posted for long enough that the parties will see the comments.) Newyorkbrad (talk) 12:36, 13 June 2011 (UTC)
• Decline per no apparent prior attempts at dispute resolution. –xeno 13:39, 13 June 2011 (UTC)
• Decline Jclemens (talk) 00:01, 14 June 2011 (UTC)
• Decline --Elen of the Roads (talk) 14:16, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

Political activism

Initiated by — Coren  at 14:38, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

Involved parties

• Coren (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA), filing party
• Cirt (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)

Given the large number of peripherally involved editors and administrators, it is probably unwise to make them all involved at this stage. I will notify the two principal venues of the dispute instead.

Confirmation that all parties are aware of the request

Confirmation that other steps in dispute resolution have been tried

• The dispute has spread to multiple venues with no end in sight, and RFCs fail to reach anything resembling consensus. Amongst other, the dispute can be viewed on Talk:Santorum (neologism), User talk:Jimbo Wales, Template talk:Sexual slang.

Statement by Coren

We have, I think, a novel problem.

Misplaced Pages is being willfully used as a weapon for political activism against a specific person: there is a concerted effort to manipulate and misuse our policies into giving exposition to a political campaign against an American politician.

There is a campaign by Dan Savage to associate the name of former US Senator Rick Santorum with an unpleasant scatological and sexual meaning. That campaign, and the word "santorum", have indeed received sufficient press coverage that an article on the attack is most certainly justified (albeit the dispute has spread to the naming of that article) to give heightened prominence to "santorum" as an insult.

The problem is that many recent editorial acts made by Cirt (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA) and a number of supporters have obviously been designed to support the campaign to attack the reputation of a living person by promoting the use of the pejorative. By promoting Savage himself, adding the attack word to a number of templates in order to increase its visibility all over the course of six days. Add to that the large number of attempts to promote that walled garden to the Main page (GA submission, numerous DYK hooks), and it's self-evident that the objective is the attack on Santorum.

The latter misuse of templates to promote a BLP violation by pretending that the attack is part of genuine sexual slang in any community in particular is so egregious and vicious that I intervened personally to remove it. I was immediately edit warred over the removal and things would have likely escalated without DeltaQuad's protection of both surviving templates.

I'm looking for the Committee here to intervene and declare clearly that BLP overrides local consensus on those templates before protection runs out and things go boom again. Misplaced Pages must not be allowed to become a weapon in the hands of political activists, no matter how savvy they are about our rules.

As a disclosure: I did not know of Santorum's existence before that particular dispute broke out here. I am not an Amercian, but my political leanings would place me as far away from Santorum's politics as possible, if I were.

No opposition to Cirt not being officially involved

While I believe that Cirt has been the precipitating editor, I've no objection, of course, to his not being a specifically named party given his family situation.

Besides, I believe that the issue can be decided without any particular editor being named given that it is mostly about policy interpretation than behavioral issues.

On good faith

There have been a number of comments saying that I need to "assume good faith" regarding this. I'm a little confused by those comments: I'm not sure how assumption either way change the actual effect of promoting "santorum" as though it was a real world is a BLP violation regardless of intent.

The fact of the matter is, one template was edited and two templates created for the sole purpose of having Santorum (neologism) linked from as many articles as possible. That is the BLP violation regardless of whether it was done with the intent to harm Rick Santorum or borne out of a genuine (if misguided) belief that this "neologism" needs to be documented on as many pages as possible. (As opposed to documenting the campaign itself which some people below confuse the issue with).

About timing

Not being aware of American politics, I decided to examine the situation as viewed outside Misplaced Pages to see how relevant this whole kerfuffle is when not wearing our project glasses. I was more than a little surprised to note that Santorum has made official his intent to run for the US Presidency this very month(!) (And, a quick news search shows, that was rumored to be the case since, roughly, the beginning of may).

I'm all for assuming copious amounts of impeccable good faith by all involved, but am I the only one who is more than a little stunned that this whole mess gets imported to Misplaced Pages at that very time when the actual original controversy dates from 2003? I'm sorry, but I'm not naive enough to believe this is a coincidence.

@Avanu

Yes, exactly. Personally, I have absolutely nothing against the presence of a good article discussing the entire campaign; a better name would assuage my concerns, but it's not a dealbreaker.

What I do object to is pretending that "santorum" is a real part of sexual slang or a true neologism. It is not. I remain convinced that trying to link it around templates or using it in articles has the effect of not only agreeing with Savage's campaign but of actively participating in it. I don't particularly care if supporters are doing this because they want to increase the attack's circulation or out of a genuine concern for "truth" against "censorship". The effect remains that Misplaced Pages then becomes a tool in a political advocacy campaign and that cannot be allowed.

@macwhiz

"Can a link be a BLP violation, when the article is not?" Yes, and so can placing an otherwise okay article in a category, for instance. Placing Jimmy Wales in Category:Serial killers would be a clear BLP violation, for instance, so would linking some random instance of "idiot" to Barack Obama.

The point is, placing "santorum" in lists of actual sexual slang lends unsupported credence to the campaign by taking its objective as a given. It isn't documenting a new piece of slang in genuine use, it's attempting to create one as a means to attack a living person.

On acceptance

It seems clear that the Committee is just as divided as the community on the substantive matter, and the votes for acceptance reflect that. I understand reluctance about ruling on contents, which is why I wanted to make the case I feel should be accepted clear: It's not about whether we cover the "santorum" campaign, or even how it is covered that is at issue. I've no doubt that within WP:V and WP:NOR the community can craft a good article covering that rather notable (on the US scene) spat between a journalist and a politician.

The case I seek is about the manner of our coverage: whether publicizing the word used in the campaign as though it was a true coinage is, effectively, participating in a googlebomb and running afoul of both our BLP policy and our ethical responsibilities to remain neutral. I do not intend to bring the existence, name or contents of the core article describing the campaign to arbitration, nor do I think it should be.

Statement by JoshuaZ

I don't think this is ripe for arbitration at this time. This is primarily a content dispute. There's a fair bit of nuance in this situation. For example, I'm an editor who is in favor of retaining the Santorum (neologism) article, but support removing it from the sexual slang template. In that context, I think that Coren is demonstrating an assumption of pretty bad faith in his claims about Cirt and other editors. The basic fact is that Cit frequently produces a large number of articles of extremeley high quality about a narrow subject. It also isn't at all clear that his claim about trying to get things on the main page makes any sense, given that the DYKs in question about about Dan Savage, and don't mention Santorum or santorum. (Incidentally, the claim that those articles constitutes a walled garden is also wrong in so far as they all have many incoming links and are all clearly reliably sourced.) Moreover, it isn't at all clear how inclusion of the term on the template constitutes a BLP problem. Is it making a libelous comment about Rick Santorum? No. Is it making any claim about him? No. So what is it doing other than including a term? The only actual BLP issues are those directly on Rick Santorum and Santorum (neologism) and they are getting resolved with reasoned discussion, and are essentially content issues. There's no issue here that the ArbCom needs to intervene in at this time. JoshuaZ (talk) 15:29, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

Statement by Cirt

Personal life issues

• One close family member had major surgery in the hospital in the last week.
• A 2nd close family member then also had to have urgent major surgery in the hospital, also last week.
• I am helping both with recovery at this time, and helping other family members deal with that.
• As you can imagine, this is an incredibly difficult time for my family.
• As of one week ago I had removed myself from any further edits and (still ongoing) discussions regarding "Santorum (neologism)", the WP:RFC and its associated WP:Dispute resolution processes, which are still ongoing with 100 other editors participating.
• I respectfully request the Arbitration Committee not to have me as a party to this case.

Summary of my disengagement from "Santorum (neologism)" and from DYK submissions

1. My last comment to the talk page of the "Santorum (neologism)" article was on 4 June 2011, to say that I will not be editing it or watching it anymore: diff.
2. I also have stopped watching templates {{Sexual slang}} and {{Political neologisms}}.
3. I changed my comment at a deletion discussion for the latter template, requesting it be deleted diff.
4. I commented on the now deleted template's talk page, requesting the term in question be removed from the template diff, I then actually did remove it myself diff.
5. I removed all of my DYK self noms from consideration at DYK diff
6. I stated that I will no longer be watching or nominating to DYK in the future diff
7. I requested that another nom already in the DYK queue be removed from consideration diff
8. I removed my DYK self noms a 2nd time diff
9. I posted to WT:DYK, requesting that all of my DYK self noms that I had just removed, not be considered as candidates, diff
10. The "Santorum (neologism)" issue is currently still undergoing the WP:RFC part of the WP:Dispute resolution process. Over 100 editors have contributed to it (Talk:Santorum_(neologism)#Proposal_to_rename.2C_redirect.2C_and_merge_content). There have been over one thousand edits to the talk page at Talk:Santorum (neologism) since I last edited it, when I said I was no longer going to be contributing to that page — here is a diff of all that has gone on at the article's talk page since I stopped contributing to it over a week ago diff.

Thank you for your time, -- Cirt (talk) 15:41, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

ArbCom please see statement by Coren

• ArbCom, please see this statement by Coren diff. Thank you, -- Cirt (talk) 15:47, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

Statement on my Misplaced Pages editing

I've made a statement on my user talk page, diff. -- Cirt (talk) 14:20, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

Statement by Macwhiz

I am not a party to the dispute narrowly defined by Coren above, but I am among those who have been discussing the ultimate fate of Santorum (neologism), the nexus for this and a great many other arguments.

I understand Coren's desire to get a ruling on the template issues, and I see how the editing pattern concerns him. I agree with JoshuaZ that Coren's interpretation of Cirt's actions seems to assume bad faith. I agree that ARBCOM intervention on the issue of the templates may be useful.

However, I don't think the Santorum (neologism) issue is ripe for ARBCOM yet. There is an RFC underway that has yet to conclude, so not all steps in dispute resolution have failed yet. There's been longstanding community consensus to keep the article; it's survived three deletion discussions. An ARBCOM ruling now, short-circuiting the RFC, would seem premature. So, I ask that you consider Coren's question in a narrow and generic fashion.

In considering this request, I hope ARBCOM takes note that although Coren's statement could be read to imply some broad conspiracy to besmirch Rick Santorum, that has yet to be proven (and I WP:AGF that Coren did not intend for his statement to be read that way). While there are definitely partisan editors, there are also a great many who support retention of the santorum article in the reasoned belief that it is not an intentional attack on Santorum, but exists because Savage's attack on Santorum is unquestionably noteworthy and of encyclopedic value. I think this distinction has been at the root of many disagreements on the topic, and I would ask the Committee to be mindful of it when considering the case. // ⌘macwhiz (talk) 16:28, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

Response to Risker

Regarding community sanctions: The argument seems to be that santorum is not a word, or if it is that it is not a neologism. Assume for argument that it is a neologism; in that case, it's definitely a sexual one, so it's not unreasonable to add it to Template:Sexual slang. Consensus on that template's talk page was running 16:6 in favor of retaining santorum when Coren unilaterally decided to remove it, citing BLP. Shortly thereafter, Coren removed it from Template:LGBT slang, with no prior talk page discussion, again citing BLP and referring to Template talk:Sexual slang. Given the lack of consensus that Santorum (neologism) violates BLP, those edits trouble me, and I can't see community sanctions arising out of Cirt's edits there. The Euroscepticism edit I'm not so sure about, but as the template was deleted, seems moot.

Regarding SEO techniques: I don't see how it's possible to AGF and still assume that these edits were an attempt at SEO. The question is, could a reasonable person make a good-faith edit adding the term to those templates? I think so. Whether or not the templates inadvertently cause SEO-like effects, and whether those effects are desirable, is a whole other question. Absent a clear reason to believe Cirt's edits were intentionally malicious, characterizing them as deliberately SEO or "egregious and vicious" seems unsupported. // ⌘macwhiz (talk) 19:16, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

Response to SirFozzie

I find the concept of the word santorum and its genesis pretty distasteful myself, but looking at it objectively, I can't find any Misplaced Pages policy that clearly and unambiguously demands its total removal, nor that would justify overturning the multiple AfDs. Whether or not the article was once created as "a revenge platform", I don't think it is—or at the very least, has to be—now. On the balance, I think we'd look worse ignoring or minimizing the phenomenon of the word than we do for having it. If ArbCom decides to consider the santorum BLP issue from any angle, I would say it should be a litmus test for WP:WELLKNOWN: Is the coining of santorum notable? Relevant? Well-documented? If so, your qualms and mine become exceptionally difficult to turn into a BLP claim. If Santorum (neologism) doesn't violate BLP, then deleting links to it on BLP grounds is shaky. // ⌘macwhiz (talk) 20:32, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

Response to Coren

My question would be: How can one clearly and without error distinguish between listing an article in a category template because there is a reasonable belief that the article is a member of that category, as opposed to listing it to promote the use of a term documented in that article? The point of category templates is to increase the number of links. "Linking through hyperlinks is an important feature of Misplaced Pages." How does one know which articles are "bad" to link? How do we distinguish between promoting a term and promoting the article? If Cirt had added links to those templates for any other article, we wouldn't be here, but because it's santorum, there seems to be an assumption of ideological motivations. Can a link be a BLP violation, when the article is not? // ⌘macwhiz (talk) 22:06, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

Regarding "Activists"

Some parties posit the existence of an externally-organized campaign with a vested interest in this article, with agents infiltrating the editing process, as reason why ArbCom should accept the case. I would remind everyone about WP:CONSPIRACY. // ⌘macwhiz (talk) 23:05, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

Response to Kirill

I'm sensitive to Misplaced Pages's press reputation,but it should not drive our policy decisions; that would be a reaction expected of a political, not academic, body. Also, while a Google News search for "Santorum wikipedia" returns a large number of recent results, note that most of them stem from an AP news brief article that does not actually link Misplaced Pages to Santorum. A blurb about Santorum's presidential campaign is in the brief, as is a blurb about recent edit-warring over Sarah Palin's statements about Paul Revere. Someone checking quickly might not realize this and draw the wrong conclusion from the numbers. // ⌘macwhiz (talk) 12:44, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Response to Iridescent

I disagree that the dispute resolution process has broken down at Santorum (neologism). An RfC is still pending. If it fails, it is almost certain that another, less ambitious one, will be proposed shortly after. ArbCom's Principles, under Consensus, are clear that the dispute resolution process, including RfCs, should be used. ArbCom's decision in Naming Conventions supports this. ArbCom is the final step in that process. The template issue may properly be in ArbCom's court, but santorum as a whole isn't ready, and ArbCom shouldn't predict the future of the process.

Statement by Tryptofish

I've been watching this case with interest, and came here because I saw Coren's note at Talk:Santorum (neologism), but my only involvement has been to offer an opinion in response to the RfC at that talk page.

I would encourage the Committee to either decline the case, or accept it only as some sort of way of formulating general principles about BLP, without using it to enforce any sanctions for conduct, or worse, preemptively deciding a content issue. Actually, I agree with pretty much everything that JoshuaZ, Cirt, and Macwhiz already said. Cirt has disengaged from the issue sufficiently that there is nothing to prevent by making him a party. If the Committee decides that the community has been incompetent to decide the content issues at the "neologism" page and that community consensus must be overruled to reflect the Committee's view of BLP, the community will likely come to lose trust in the Committee, and the consequences will be a fiasco. If there is a constructive role for the Committee to assume, it might be to define unresolved issues surrounding the question of how Misplaced Pages should deal with outside campaigns to subvert BLP policy, and then instruct the community to develop revisions to WP:BLP to close those loopholes. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:06, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

@Risker: I would imagine that it would make little difference whether a user were new or experienced when they have explicitly disengaged from the editing area. Yes, search engine optimization is definitely a big part of the discussion of the topic, but I'm not aware of any evidence that editors are trying to make it happen, only that it is a part of what Dan Savage and those who agree with him have done. There has also been discussion speculating that persons associated with Santorum's campaign might be editing for his advantage. Objectively, insignificantly few of the RfC respondents have been new users or single-purpose accounts. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:57, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

@Jclemens: Thanks, agreed. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:59, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

As ArbCom ponders whether or not it is within their responsibilities to draft WP:FECES, I thought I would look back at the RfC on the neologism article talkpage. At about the time of my timestamp, there were 129 numbered responses to the RfC. Of these, 5 have been challenged by other editors, as coming from users who have made few edits outside of this subject. It's hard to see how 5 out of 129 would subvert the process. I don't doubt that there are plenty of editors on both sides who have strong personal opinions, but I think it may be hard to find objective evidence that our processes are really being subverted by any outside campaign. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:45, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

@Rob: I figure I should acknowledge here that I read your comment back to me. I don't have a substantive reply, because I don't know enough about it. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:33, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Statement by Sadads

I would like to first say that my sentiments towards this request for ARBCOM case is very similar to Tryptofish, Macwhiz and JoshuaZ. I have been following the issues on the various talk page discussion related to Santorum (neologism) since very early on. It is interesting the tenor of the community discussion that has followed, and I have recently attempted to withdraw myself from the discussions because the tenor of the discussion had moved away from BLP at the RFC and central discussion at Talk:Santorum_(neologism) and moved on to actual content issues. The RFC and related discussion on that central page has brought some very powerful insights into the communities understanding of BLP and related issues of notability of neologisms, and is still in process of ironing out where the current article Santorum (neologism) fits into our content on Misplaced Pages.

I feel that Coren's intervention against consensus at Template talk:Sexual slang has been extremely premature. So too is Coren's action to bring the discussion to ARBCOM, while hinting at rulings on BLP and other issues while the RFC at Talk:Santorum (neologism) is still in process. In addition, It is also very disconcerting that Coren would suggest that Cirt and very many other experienced editors are somehow supporting a political use of Misplaced Pages. I would like to Assume good faith in Coren's actions, however, Coren's actions at Template_talk:Sexual_slang have been very aggressive and the comments have assumed deliberately malicious intentions by other users. His rhetoric has been very similar to several users who have overtly assumed bad faith of other editors, especially Cirt, in discussions related to Santorum (neologism). I am alarmed at the persistent assumptions of bad faith related to this discussion on the part of people wishing to remove reference to Santorum (neologism) on various pages and fear quite the opposite set of politicking then Coren, however the community appears to handle this when it crops up.

I feel that any intervention by ARBCOM at this point would be extremely detrimental to community proccesses, and, as Tryptofish points out, intervention could jeopardize community trust in the Committee, Sadads (talk) 17:19, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

@Risker, I don't think anything in the way of deliberate SEO techniques are happening. Cirt is always very thorough in developing content in swaths related to whatever topic he is researching at the moment, and his activities seem to be well within the standard efforts for curation of Misplaced Pages content (creating templates to deorphan articles, creating related notable articles, etc.), Sadads (talk) 19:37, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

@Fetchcomms: First of all, cleaning the article off the map doesn't solve anything. If anything it looks like coverup or censorship. Addressing why you think this should be deleted, I think there are other underlying reason for the escalation of the articles issues: users with vendettas against Cirt are forum shopping. The same group of editors have taken this controversy as an opportunity for forum shopping for the same issues, many of them in bad faith, at Jimbo's talk page, the various templates Cirt has created, ANI, AN, BLP noticeboard, Cirt's talk page, Misplaced Pages-en, even Did you know's talk (and now apparently ARBCOM requests about content issues , I feel like I have seen this set of evidence several times now). We have a concentrated group of editors that show up in opposition to Cirt's content in almost all of the conversations and connecting them, no matter what the position and what the consensus of other editors is (as far as I can tell, Jayan466, SlimVirgin and Off2riorob are the most prominent). This has created a very large pool of people being drawn into discussions from all over the place, and finding their way to other areas and making decisions based on gut political opinions, misrepresentation of policies to meet certain ends and in defence against bad faith accusations (and these same gut opinions have led to edit warring). Recently, the conversations have all become focused on the talk page for Santorum (neologism), but some of the embers are still burning on some of the side arguments. Killing the central issue, is still going to leave a lot of users out on a limb, and a lot of personal pressure on various editors, chief amongst them Cirt, still under the surface, and not prevent a pot like this from exploding again. That being said, hardly any of this has to do with solving the problem of the template which brought us all here to comment, and many of these direct conflict issues have been overcome at Talk:Santorum (neologism) and other editors have moved in to make the conversation much more content focused. So if ARBCOM does become involved, which I still strongly recommend they don't, they should not fix that particular article (or even at this point to deal with individual editors, because I think the issues that is currently causing the most disruption now has nothing to do with any of the names mentioned), at this point the community is handling it in proper fashion, but nail down the principles that expedite the community handling this in the future that way people with grudges can't cause disruption in every forum in the community using policies to their advantage. But again, I think right now nothing is pressing or completely unresolved after a long and hard road, so ARBCOM should sit back until more of the issues have ironed themselves out, there are plenty of people finding balance at Talk:Santorum (neologism), Sadads (talk) 20:12, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

@SirFozzie: I have to agree with BeCritical, we need to push the community to actually solve these kinds of policy issues with community create policy, not some arbitration up on the bench. A lot of people are making decisions and opinions based on underlying personal opinions, and it seems like current policy does not help circumvent opinion based arguements in order to find a straight forward set of answers, Sadads (talk) 20:16, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

@Newyorkbrad, I appreciate if there are reasons to take this case to ARBCOM, however I am afraid a rushed case would be causing difficulty on Cirt per his statement above. As Jayen has been yet to realize in his picking apart of Cirt's contributions, most of his recent activities have been low emotion, low intellectual input activities which fall into the editing Misplaced Pages to relax realm and gnomish activities. It is common practice amongst many frequent contributers, myself include, to participate in such repetitive low input editing as part of their own set of relaxation activities. Additionally, I am in the middle of writing 3 papers for school and preparing for a Misplaced Pages Ambassador training for this upcoming weekend, an expedited push through ARBCOM would make it very difficult for me to adequately form and write my thoughts on the subject and would have a decidedly negative effect on my ability to complete these other activities. As consensus has shown on Talk:Santorum (neologism), it is not the impression of the community that this is a need-for-immediate-response BLP issue, though some very vocal and ax grinding individuals are trying to make it that. I suggest that if the case does get taken up, I would ask that proceedings be delayed for a bit (at least a week) to accommodate some of the long involved individuals, primarily Cirt and myself (and perhaps yourself as well based on the initial comments you made), Sadads (talk) 10:39, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Statement by Anthonyhcole

I've been discussing this topic on Talk:Santorum (neologism) for about a week. An article has been written about a notable prank: a columnist's campaign for the adoption of a neologism, defining a politician's unusual name as a mixture of shit and lubricant. The article has been wrongly named after the failed neologism rather than after the campaign, which is clearly the topic. This gives the false impression that the neologism is notable of itself. According to the article's only serious source on the question of the term's (as opposed to the campaign's) notability, a dictionary of slang and unconventional English, whose editors declined to include the word in its alphabetical listing:

"In point of fact, the term is the child of a one-man campaign by syndicated sex columnist Dan Savage to place the term in wide usage. From its appearance in print and especially on the Internet, one would assume, incorrectly, that the term has gained wide usage."

The article is very poorly written, mostly a litany of press mentions of the campaign, saying nothing of consequence (but "proving" over and over again that the campaign is notable) and OR attempting to controvert the reliable source's appraisal of the term's degree of acceptance and usage. It can be cut down to a tenth of its current size without losing one relevant, reliably sourced fact. This opens the question, Does it deserve its own article if that's all that's relevant that can be reliably asserted about this campaign?

The current RfC on the talk page proposes that this topic article be renamed, then merged into an existing article about the politician's position on homosexuality. There is considerable support for renaming (another editor has counted it as around 50:50, and a lot of the RfC "no" votes didn't declare a position on renaming without merging) but less for the merge. The false impression of notability that Misplaced Pages is presently giving to this term ("The term ... has a Misplaced Pages entry as thoroughly researched as the one about the former senator himself") is harming the encyclopedia and abetting a political campaign. I think the community should consider very carefully whether it is appropriate to wait another month or so, while we all chew it over on the article's talk page, to correct the obvious misnaming of this article.

Santorum (neologism) does not belong in the "Sexual slang" template because it does not warrant an article. The template problem will be resolved when the root problem is resolved. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 17:50, 12 June 2011. Updated 11:10, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

It is true that progress is being made in the generally respectful and collegial discussions. I would far prefer that the community deal with this on the article's talk page. My concern is that it be dealt with promptly. I don't see the present RfC passing, but believe another on renaming might. So, I'd like to see the current one wound up, and another begun on renaming as soon as good manners permits. When the naming issue is resolved, so will many others be, including the template question. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 18:33, 12 June 2011

Statement by Jayen466

This is part of an ongoing and very troubling pattern of political activism on the part of Cirt, spanning several Wikimedia projects and including the use of the Misplaced Pages main page for activism. I posted my concerns to his talk page a couple of weeks ago, and SlimVirgin echoed those concerns in a post of her own to his talk page a few days later. I repeat the salient points here.

It's a longstanding issue, concerning one of the project's most prolific editors, that deserves the Committee's attention. Given that Cirt has stepped back from editing the Santorum article, there is no hurry in addressing it. However, it is vital to this project's integrity that it be addressed. Cirt should be given time to take care of his family commitments, and the case opened once the crisis is over.

Note though that Cirt has made more than 500 edits to Misplaced Pages over the past 96 hours. There is an apparent mismatch between words and actions. --JN466 18:16, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

@Risker: SEO is an issue, as the template creations, as described here, added about 300 in-bound links to the article. The political neologism template was deleted after long discussions at WP:TFD and on the deleted template's talk page (in which a majority of editors agreed that "santorum" was not a political neologism at any rate, comparable to terms like "Euroskepticism" and "Adopt a Highway"). The LGBT slang and sexual slang templates actually have a fair amount of shared content, raising redundancy issues. As for the comparison between new users and established admins, there is a difference in scale and duration. New users often arrive naively; they may make tendentious edits, unsourced edits, BLP violations, etc. – that is completely normal. If they stick around, they eventually learn not to make them. New users typically make few edits; they don't have any idea how DYK works, how to get an article on the main page, and how to create templates. The situation is very different with an established administrator, who knows the ins and outs of Misplaced Pages and its sister projects as well as anyone, and regularly makes more than 100 edits a day. If such an editor persists in committing BLP and NPOV violations, over a period of years, and has the clout to get non-neutral campaign material onto the main page, this is a totally different kind of threat to the integrity of this project than a newbie making poor edits. For one, it cannot be put down to unfamiliarity with site policies, but rather reflects a wilful and skilful intent to flout or game them, always pushing the envelope as far as possible as long as there is no substantial challenge, and then quickly backing down when it becomes clear that the waters are getting too hot. That is what we are dealing with here. --JN466 01:55, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

(Clerk note) I have removed a substantial amount of content from this section, per the restrictions on statement length. AGK 11:16, 13 June 2011 (UTC) Diff --JN466 15:35, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

@Coren: Yes, the timing is crucial here. AGF is not a suicide pact. AGF would imply that Cirt's interest in the Jose Peralta, Joel Anderson, Kenneth Dickson and Hiram Monserrate articles, and their Misplaced Pages main page appearances close to election day, were also coincidental.

• Cirt added Jose Peralta, with glowing endorsements of Peralta, to the Wikiquote main page on March 10, just in time for the New York State Senate election on March 16. It stayed there the entire week.
• Presently, Cirt has three pages on Werner Erhard, another pet subject, featured on the Wikiquote main page.

The assumption of good-faith, accidental interest in these articles is emphatically contradicted by Xenubarb's comment that she "helped Cirt" with "the Jeff Stone/campaign articles" for Misplaced Pages.

Please, people, open your eyes. Our processes are being ruthlessly gamed here, and our main pages put in the service of one editor's political and social agenda. --JN466 02:29, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

@Tony: I simply see no slow-down in Cirt's editing rate over the past few days, prior to this request by Coren. His last 500 edits occurred over the period 12–8 June. The preceding 500-edit time periods are: 8–4 June, 4–3 June, 3 June – 31 May, 31–27 May, 27–25 May, 25–20 May, 20–15 May, 15–11 May, 11–7 May. I see that Cirt has an article at FAC, and has responded promptly to reviewers since nominating it on June 6. Any family matters have not prevented Cirt from nominating an article for FA, shepherding it through FAC, and editing at the same rate as in May. There is no question that Cirt does a ton of useful work. That does not mean we should close our eyes to the problems that come along with it. Cirt's expansion and promotion of the santorum article created one of the biggest disruptions this project has encountered in a good while. --JN466 09:14, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

@Wnt: Is it okay to criticize an editor for making "too many" edits that push the envelope of BLP policy? Cirt was asked in December, January, and February to step away from the Scientology topic area, because of a consistent pattern of BLP violations. They took a long wikibreak, and coming back in May pretty much straight away started working on santorum (neologism) in a way that appeared to many editors to be, again, a BLP violation. --JN466 02:02, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

Statement by BeCritical

This may make it to ArbCom at some point, but I don't see why it would be now. We are in the midst of an RfC, and further discussions which have the potential for resolving the issue under Misplaced Pages rules. The reason this may eventually be a matter for ArbCom is that there is a basic disagreement of what is appropriate under Misplaced Pages rules: when we have RS, can we write a neutral separate article based on those sources with as much text as warranted by the sources? Or do we have to consider outside effects such as Google ranking and harm, or WEIGHT relative to other articles? But this is not the right time to bring this to ArbCom. Wait a couple of weeks and see what we can accomplish. We need time to make the article as close as it can come to being appropriate for WP. At that time, if there are still issues, we should bring it to ArbCom. BE——Critical_{__Talk} 18:37, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

@SirFozzie. You say "I have strong feelings that the article in question is inherently problematic with our BLP policies." This is the position of a lot of people, including Jimbo. I tried to find justification for eliminating this information under Misplaced Pages rules... and I failed. I've considered each of the arguments presented on the talk page. If this ever gets accepted at Arbitration, what the Committee needs to decide is if there is any justification under Misplaced Pages rules which would disallow an article like the one in question. I believe interpretation of existing policy is within your remit? If you can't find such justification, then perhaps you will refer it back to the community to develop policy that applies to such cases. BE——Critical_{__Talk} 20:05, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

I have no previous involvement in these matters, and no affiliation to the POV-groups such as the "gay community."

One of the reasons this Arbitration would be premature is that we are in the process of attempting to form consensus to recast the article as about the campaign rather than about the word. While covering it as a word has many problems, covering it as a notable campaign is much more viable for WP. If this case is accepted, the arbitrators should consider whether there is any policy violation in covering the campaign, rather than the word.

Further, unless ArbCom is going to be open to taming the rampant, system-wide series of campaigns by individual editors to lend notability to their favorite subjects, the ArbCom should not consider punishment for Cirt or other such editors. Without these campaigns, whether for Manga characters or politics, the Encyclopedia would not exist. The only thing to be considered is whether the individual edits or articles adhere to NPOV... and even then, whether it's merely a matter of an editor's bias or whether the editor has taken steps to eliminate the opposing POV or opposing editors. So we need to be realistic here about how Misplaced Pages is built, and the fact that editors may edit with some bias without being disruptive. If the Committee does accept with an eye to curbing/punishing editor's conduct, are they willing to "act only on a maxim whereby they can will it should become a universal law"? That said, I don't know the background, I merely note some red flags in what people are saying. BE——Critical_{__Talk} 20:05, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Statement by pretty much uninvolved Fetchcomms

The only involvement I have had is editing Talk:Santorum (neologism) a few times (one or two?). I don't care for either Santorum or Savage, frankly.

Easy solution: delete Santorum (neologism) and be done with it.

Hard question: Is Savage funding the (creation of, continued existence of, and drama caused by) Santorum (neologism) article?

I urge the ArbCom to accept this case and beat some sense into the involved parties. This cannot be a big enough deal to prompt admins to go nuts and start edit warring—unless there are some external motivations involved.

/ƒETCHCOMMS/ 19:31, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

Statement by Avanu

We have reliable sources that say this is a continuing campaign to place the term in wide usage. We have reliable sources that indicate the term's presence in Misplaced Pages is seen as evidence of widespread usage. "There's even an entry in Misplaced Pages." We have sources that say the neologism is also defined as "shorthand for 'social conservative'". Besides the obvious BLP concerns, we have evidence that shows this is an intention coining rather than an organic development of language, and as such the question becomes, do we cover the phenomenon and event, or do we cover it as a word?

It seems that by covering it as an event, rather than as a word as it is now, we avoid much of the contention that has been in play since this was added to Misplaced Pages. -- Avanu (talk) 21:08, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

@Casliber -Respectfully, the main thrust of the case is presentation of content, rather than content itself. We deal with a similar concern when we evaluate WP:DUE. My belief is that most people will be satisfied if they can reasonably believe Misplaced Pages is not being gamed or used by outside parties to hide information *or* to manipulate coverage. If we can address that, then the actual content will be able to work itself out without a problem. -- Avanu (talk) 00:06, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Statement by uninvovled Griswaldo

This case needs to be accepted because Misplaced Pages has been seriously gamed here for political purposes. Personally I would love to see Rick Santorum's political career end, but I find it completely inappropriate for Misplaced Pages to be a pawn in any efforts to do so. "Santorum" is not a neologism of note because it is simply not used by anyone other than the political activists who are working hard to keep it at the top of Google search results. Is the Google bombing effort itself notable? Perhaps, but in that case we need to cover it responsibly in a manner that does not aid it. This issue needs attention because we need to send a message to other activists that Misplaced Pages's reputation will not be sacrificed for their gain.Griswaldo (talk) 20:58, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

@Wnt. I'm troubled by the idea that you think this issue is about "suppressing all negative comment about Republican candidates." The same goes for what you said to Kirill, "... if Misplaced Pages declares that political bias is going to be up for grabs for any organized group who can say that the facts are too nasty and we should just forget about good sources ..." This isn't about "negative comments" or "nasty facts." Indeed it is not about facts at all. Santorum controversy regarding homosexuality is about "facts." An entry about the Google bombing campaign and its aftermath would be about "facts." The current entry purports to be about a neologism which isn't a neologism at all, it's a fake neologism, a wanna be neologism. By covering this topic in the manner we have been covering it we are not covering uncomfortable or controversial facts, we are playing into a political game. Many of us who are dismayed by this situation would be very happy with coverage of the the "facts" about Dan Savage's google bombing campaign. What I don't understand is how anyone purporting to defend Misplaced Pages against censorship as you seem to be can be against the efforts to rename the entry in a manner that accurately describes the notable "facts" but does not censor any of them. Cheers.Griswaldo (talk) 20:36, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

@Wikidemon. WP:NOTNEWS. We are an encyclopedia, and encyclopedias (and other reference works) do not partake in the informational process you describe. They never have - not now, and not at the time of Ben Franklin. You are also arguing against a straw man, namely that those who oppose the current content want all reference to this matter removed from the encyclopedia entirely. That is not true at all. Most of us want coverage, in a manner fit for an encyclopedia, of the real and notable aspects of this issue. Let me ask you the same question I asked Wnt. Why should we have an article on a fake neologism that doesn't exist instead of an article on a successful googlebombing campaign that does indeed exist? It makes absolutely no sense at all to oppose the name changes that have been proposed unless one wishes to continue to participate in the googlebombing effort as opposed to reporting, as a respectable reference work would, on notable events. Cheers.Griswaldo (talk) 10:48, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

Statement by Orderinchaos

This is both premature and unnecessary - it appears to be over a content dispute. I find very little to disagree with in what JoshuaZ, Cirt, Macwhiz, Tryptofish and a couple of others have written here. There seems to have been a concerted effort by a few people - and they are a minority on the article's talk page - trying to blast the article out of existence, but I'm not seeing any situation for which BLP currently applies. I think there are some people who genuinely believe BLP should be about censorship, and that any negatives whatsoever must be avoided by Misplaced Pages. However, BLP basically means "cover it sanely and safely", not "don't cover it at all". It says as much itself: "Material about living persons added to any Misplaced Pages page must be written with the greatest care and attention to verifiability, neutrality, and avoiding original research." I cannot find any evidence that the content of the page is either unverifiable, non-neutral or original research, even though the entire subject offends some people's sensibilities. Interestingly, this article was the first time I'd ever seen the Senator's own response to it (something which presented him in a significantly more mature light than the comments which sparked this off), although the neologism and the broad circumstances behind it have been public knowledge for years. Orderinchaos 21:20, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

I also wish to endorse Will Beback's statement below - he's said basically what I wanted to but didn't have the time to research out. Orderinchaos 13:26, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Statement by Off2riorob

I think there is a case worthy of Arbitration here specifically in relation to User:Cirt's editing patterns. In this case User:Cirt has created a large amount of work that appears clearly designed to affect the real world in support of an external partisan campaign and not to simply report it in a neutral balanced manner. User Jayen466 has outlined clearly in his extended content section above other similar situations at multiple articles. This is not a content dispute it is an established editors usage of the project as a kind of campaigning tool and the User:Cirt is experienced in how to do it. The use of the wikipedia main page to further the campaign is detrimental to the projects integrity and NPOV reputation. The situation is made all the worse by the fact that the user is so experienced in comparison to the partisan additions of passing unconfirmed contributors which are quickly and easily removed. It is because of the partisan nature of these contributions of User Cirt that they are so divisive and disruptive to the community. Its a repeat problem and the community would benefit from Arbcom investigation of this case Off2riorob (talk) 22:14, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

@reply to Tryptofish's update to his statement - The issue here is not that a few users have come to subvert the process, the issue is the creator of the divisive disruptive content. Without user Cirt's contributions this community wide battlefield and partisan division would not exist at all. It is user Cirt's contributions here that are the issue not the communities response to them. Clearly if the community is divided reflective as per the population then if you write content that is NPOV down the middle according to what is requested of us you will get the kind of articles, templates and DYKs that are generally acceptable to both sides. one side looks and goes, well its a good NPOV representation of the situation and the other side does the same, this results in a working consensus community. User Cirts contributions do not do that, they are not NPOV and have such completely divided the community and disrupted it at multiple locations this is not because users wp:dontlikeit or because of users pov but because of the bias that was created in user Cirts contributions all of which was cited and developed by an experienced user, immediately dividing the community down partisan lines and creating a battlefield. - The fact that Cirt claims he then stepped back from the battlefield he had created is not a positive thing he can claim, "I removed myself from the divisive battlefield I created" - well thanks very much .and we are left with it to clean up and repair the division and the trust. User Cirt has a history of such content creation and if the repeat pattern is not restricted it will be repeated again you can be sure of that. Off2riorob (talk) 20:44, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Statement by Cla68

There is at least one possible gorilla in the room here that should be asked about. Is Misplaced Pages being used by activists to promote a campaign against a political figure? If the answer to this question is possibly "yes", then it behooves ArbCom to get involved and put a stop to it. The community can't stop it by RfC's and the like, because the activists involved canvass each other by email and/or Facebook to go vote in the RfC's, AfDs, etc., and prevent the correct consensus from developing. C'mon ArbCom, show some leadership. Cla68 (talk) 22:34, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

Statement by Alanyst

The committee should pass a motion aimed at providing guidance for resolving this dispute. The motion should state:

1. WP:BLP is applicable to the article. (Some participants in the discussion reject this premise, and it is in the remit of Arbcom to determine which policies apply to a particular case.)
2. To the extent that Misplaced Pages covers the subject, it must not explicitly associate a living person's name with a scatological substance, since doing so perpetuates the harm intended by the person who promoted the term.

The second point follows directly from BLP as applied to the facts of the case. The internet columnist sought to harm an ideological opponent by crafting and promoting a slang term that associates the opponent's surname with a scatological substance. To promulgate that association directly is to participate in the ongoing harm of the target and others who share the surname. Without dictating how the content is to be altered to satisfy the second point, the committee can draw the appropriate boundary that will ensure satisfaction of the BLP policy. Personally, I would suggest that the article simply state that the neologism has a scatological meaning, without explicitly defining it further in the article text. The curious reader can follow the references to find the explicit definition if they wish. But this is one of possibly several viable solutions that might satisfy the motion, and the community can collectively find the best one so long as they know which lines should not be crossed. alanyst 23:42, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

Statement by ResidentAnthropologist

There are two elements from my perspective we need to address here:

• Misplaced Pages is being willfully used as a weapon for political activism against a specific person: there is a concerted effort to manipulate and misuse our policies into giving exposition to a political campaign against an American politician.

• Cirt's continued behavior of using Misplaced Pages (but also Wikimedia sites in general) as a platform for online Activism against and for individuals and organizations.

Cirt has shown a years long campaign of activism against Scientology on Misplaced Pages, creating a multitude of articles that though neutrally written clearly intended to demonize Scientology. To me this Santorum issue is no different but rather an extension of preexisting editing patterns within Cirt's editing. Cirt to my knowledge has never actually deliberately broken the letter of policy, but Cirt has always danced the line of the spirit of our policies. The Resident Anthropologist (talk)•(contribs) 00:19, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Statement by Flatterworld

User:Risker asked about using SEO techniques. I would say yes, that was a major part of the 'attack' (both outside and inside of Misplaced Pages) as opposed to any sort of grassroots development of the word - which is why it appears to be 100% 'astroturf'. Savage even created a website specifically designed to 'spread' the use of the word. (And note that most new words are created in an attempt to describe something which is actually new.)

Using Google advanced search, I found 278 links to Savage's website for the 'word'. 32 links directly to Santorum (neologism). 63 links to Rick Santorum. 3 links to Santorum. There are about 110 about to Template:Sexual slang and [http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:LGBT_slang&limit=50 about 65 links to Template:LGBT slang. Both external and internal links affect search engine results. It's very likely the near-constant updating of the two Misplaced Pages pages also moves up their 'popularity' and 'relevance' rankings.

As for which article our readers are trying to view, you can check the page view statistics for Rick Santorum, Santorum (neologism), Santorum, and Santorum disambiguation). (Until recently 'Santorum' was a disambiguation page rather than redirecting to Rick Santorum, although I believe that's gone back and forth somewhat.)

Perhaps the article should be renamed Dan Savage's SEO attack. Or anything else which does NOT include the word in question in the title. It really has more to do with Savage than with Rick Santorum. Flatterworld (talk) 00:40, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

You can see the results for yourself by googling 'Santorum' (Savage's website, Misplaced Pages Santorum (neologism), Misplaced Pages Rick Santorum, followed by Google's 'news' section) and more surprisingly 'Rick Santorum' (Savage's website, Misplaced Pages Rick Santorum, Misplaced Pages Santorum (neologism), followed by Google's 'news' section).

This is not the only time political articles have been trying to use SEO techniques. For example, the insistence and oddball 'reasons') that one candidate for office 'deserves' his/her own article and someone else does not. The SERPs are very different, even if one name is set up to redirect to the election article. We need to be fair ad keep the playing field flat and level. imo.

Hope these numbers and links save you some time as you review the situation. Flatterworld (talk) 00:40, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

In reply to Wnt's comments, I would suggest most people were unaware of this until Rick Santorum was in the news. That's generally when people start googling for someone's name, in an effort to learn more about that person. The results are usually relevant. When they aren't, people are surprised, and want to know why. That doesn't make it some conspiracy. Flatterworld (talk) 16:01, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Statement by Tarc

This is not just a simple content dispute. The source of the matter here was a journalist who disliked a politician, and attempted to coin a sexual word using said politician's last name in hopes of getting it to the top of the search engines. The word itself does not exist; not as a neologism, a sexual slang, or even a meme. To attempt to have an article on the word itself, or to try to include it into templates of slang, is ridiculous, and does nothing but perpetuate the original google-bomb.

What needs to be decided here is if the Misplaced Pages is going to allow itself to be manipulated in this fashion for political gain, and what to do with editors who clearly violate WP:BLP policy to carry out personal ideological battles.

I would also note that this case is largely useless without Cirt's involvement, as this mess is largely the creation of this editor. Tarc (talk) 01:12, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Statement by Will Beback

There are two background issues that seem to be involved here. One is that Cirt has a standing interest in editing articles related to cults or new religious movements, including Scientology, Rajneesh/Osho, Twelve Tribes communities,, est, etc. Several of the editors who have commented here have also edited those articles but from the opposite POV. There may some axe-grinding going on.

Second, a year ago there was an AFD for a different politically oriented neologism that was coined to denigrate a living person, The Gore Effect. Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/The Gore Effect. Several of the editors who have posted here or elsewhere with strong condemnations of the "santorum" article took the opposite position on the "Gore Effect" article. Since BLP has not changed significantly it appears that some of the difference can be attributed to the political, scientific, or cultural biases of editors.

As for writing articles about Dan Savage, we're all here to write articles. That's the point of Misplaced Pages. No one has claimed that the articles themselves were non-neutral or otherwise unsuitable for the project. If writing neutral, well-sourced articles becomes a cause for punishment then we might as well shut down this website.   Will Beback  talk  02:35, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Statement by Looie496

Responding to SirFozzie's comment, I view this as a content dispute, and I specifically would like ArbCom to rule on the content issue. There are some content issues that only ArbCom can decide, BLP questions in particular -- almost every Misplaced Pages procedure outside ArbCom requires consensus, but BLP policy is not a matter of consensus. A BLP violation is a BLP violation reqardless of whether a significant fraction of the community are in favor of it. I have not been following all the back-and-forth play here, but I do not see punishment of individual editors as what is needed -- what is needed is for this article to go away, at least in anything resembling its current form. Looie496 (talk) 02:40, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Statement by Wnt

There is much made here of alleged "activism" by some people who, over the past five years, have provided factual, sourced material about the santorum neologism and the campaign to make it a household word. No doubt there is some substance to it, though the conspiracy may well be as wide and diffuse as the American gay community itself, which generally took exception to Santorum's remarks.

But there is another activism, another conspiracy, which doesn't seem to be receiving due discussion. Namely, we saw the campaign to stamp out this article, or greatly reduce it, or suppress all mention of it, start just a few days before Rick Santorum's announcement of his candidacy for the American presidency. I don't believe that's a coincidence, and it suggests that one or more people on the other side here is very closely tied in with Rick Santorum's organization.

I don't think that ArbCom or anyone else should make a business out of suppressing all negative comment about Republican candidates. I think that we are dead center in the middle of the political cross-hairs, in territory formerly known as WP:WELLKNOWN. If you can't simply tell readers what the sources say about a major American politician in the middle of a presidential campaign without judgment or censorship, who can you tell the truth about? Wnt (talk) 04:57, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

@Kirill: I agree that Misplaced Pages is "at risk of being abused for advocacy". But by making a strong community decision to include discussion of all reliable sources about well known politicians, we limit people to what the sources actually say. By contrast, if we allow the deletion of things people don't like, there is no bound to the distortion and whitewashing that can happen, as different groups of people try to blot things out. When I look at the Anthony Weiner sexting scandal, the debate for suppression there involves an almost nonoverlapping cast of characters. (Sure, Cirt was there, voting to Keep like a true inclusionist. Collect was there, surprisingly enough, also voting to Keep.) Now if Misplaced Pages declares that political bias is going to be up for grabs for any organized group who can say that the facts are too nasty and we should just forget about good sources, we're going to have a very ugly time indeed in 2012. Wnt (talk) 16:19, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

@Jayen466: I believe it is entirely wrong to criticize an editor for making "too many" edits, when those edits individually are appropriate. People should never lose rights because they registered for an account rather than contributing as a variable IP address. The decision of which articles to work on and what sources to look up and summarize is one of the few legitimate ways Wikipedians have to express their bias, and it underlies nearly every edit made to the encyclopedia. Scientists create articles about their favorite species and tools and concepts; nationalists write articles about their state parks and famous forefathers. And political supporters write the truth - when we're lucky - about their candidates and opponents. If you had no bias about a topic at all, you would never think to write about it. The role of Misplaced Pages administration should be simply to ensure that those contributions are in fact verifiable and accurately reflect the source, and to encourage people to look for and correct imbalances by adding material other editors have missed. Wnt (talk) 16:45, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Your links mostly show that Cirt was harassed from Misplaced Pages Review, and foolishly tried to compromise by giving ground, only leading to more harassment. Sometimes it looks like the primary purpose of BLP is to protect Scientology, a group devoid of truth or principle which is more than capable of infiltrating and subverting Misplaced Pages. Wnt (talk) 17:29, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

@Risker: In the straw poll on Talk:Santorum, nearly every Support vote mentioning Google considered the effect of having the article name and content on the Google results, while nearly every Oppose vote mentioning it was either unconcerned or skeptical that it had an effect. Jimbo Wales weighed in that we should rephrase the lead sentence so that the part Google quoted would make it clear it was a political attack by Dan Savage. Furthermore, I suspect the page's high rank comes because many respected news sources have linked to the page directly . There was actually some discussion early on, though I'm not sure who was behind the idea, of completely breaking the old redirect into the article, which would have invalidated those links - thereby actually causing a great reduction in the Google ranking. So who is using SEO? Wnt (talk) 17:18, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Statement by Tony1

Disclaimer: I've done a bit of work on-wiki with Cirt, and I've formed the view that he's a valuable member of the community and contributes in good faith. Please discount my comments if you believe this represents significant CoI.

I've carefully considered the comments of all editors above. I agree with those who are saying that this matter seems to be essentially one of content rather than behaviour, and that the RFAR might be premature. (Heavily content-based RFARs usually don't solve the underlying problem.) There also appear to be the makings of endless "he said this, he said that" accusations if this went to a formal case. Would that be productive?

I see no compelling evidence that Cirt has actually behaved in bad faith, although some of his actions in the past might have been better handled. He has certainly backed off in a big way now, and that indicates a willingness to disengage: I don't see this as temporary or disingenuous. Someone mentioned 500 edits he's made in the past day or two. I've checked his contribs list, and it seems to be largely auto-edits, including on Commons, and the closing of AfDs. Nothing suspicious.

I wasn't acquainted with the article(s) concerned, and really, it all seems too stupid. I'm particularly keen to avoid a scatological case, which would be a gift to Fox news and other bad-faith external media; they love to take things out of context to make the WMF look bad – that is why some things are routinely dealt with out of the public eye, and a good thing, too. It's not that we should allow such a consideration to dictate how we deal with things, but in this case, it looks like we don't need to air our dirty laundry in public. Thanks. Tony (talk) 06:44, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Statement by Sandstein

I note with dismay that my concerns about the new arbitration policy about to be ratified, which enables the Arbitration Committee to make binding decisions about issues of content and governance rather than only about conduct issues, seem to be well-founded. So far, three arbitrators (Jclemens, Kirill and Newyorkbrad) have voted to accept a case apparently with a view to making a policy and/or content decision, that is, to influence how Misplaced Pages should cover the "santorum" neologism. While I agree that this is a highly problematic issue, the only acceptable way to address such content issues is through consensus-based processes as long as these remain functional, such as the ongoing RfC – even though I believe that the view of the current majority of participants in the RfC is mistaken. The only issue that the Arbitration Committee can legitimately address is whether there has been user misconduct in the conflicts surrounding this matter, and if yes, how it should be sanctioned. Such misconduct may well include systematic nonadherence to WP:BLP and other policies, but the Committee should defer to community consensus (if any emerges) about whether the current article is policy-compliant or not.  Sandstein  11:14, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Prior question by FT2

@Coren - the original case statement describes "RFCs" (plural) as well as templates, and assertions of edit wars and other improper conduct. There is little evidence given of current disorderly behavior and the presented evidence tends to show significant reasonable discussion rather than failed dispute resolution. Can we have a summary and links to the key case history rather than allusions to it, then it will be possible to comment in an informed manner. Thanks. FT2  13:35, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Statement by Hasteur

I encourage the committee to either take the case or to levy some stringent injunctions regarding this topic. I note that last week I got irritated enough to start liberally trouting any editor who tried to get a content ruling on this article (moving, renaming, deleting, screaming abuse, etc.) on any noticeboard they thought their viewpoint could get a good showing. This article is the locus of drama across many discussion threads and has gotten to the point that I stop participating in any discussion about it. Hasteur (talk) 14:51, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Statement by Khazar

I can't speak to Cirt's actions more broadly, but I'm troubled by those who appear to suggest that including coverage of the neologism campaign at all is bad-faith soapboxing, and a subject for ArbCom in itself. Savage's "santorum" crusade has been discussed as a major issue for RS's presidential campaign in ABC News,, Mother Jones, Rachel Maddow, The Concord Monitor , CNN , Slate.com , The Washington Post , The Village Voice , the Capitol Hill paper Roll Call , the conservative National Review , New York Magazine , The National Journal , and CBS News . It's also been extensively referenced in the monologues of television hosts, the popular US humor programs The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, and dozens of blogs. It's clear that the genie is out of the bottle, with or without Misplaced Pages. I think there's room to reasonably disagree about how this content should be titled, framed, and balanced, as with any article. But I'm alarmed at the repeated suggestions that ArbCom should preempt or overrule an RfC to erase this content outright, or disguise the increasingly famous fact that Dan Savage coined a nasty neologism that's hindering a well-known ex-senator's presidential ambitions. Suppressing some or all coverage of a political candidate's widely-reported problems--no matter how sympathetic we may be to those problems--seems like a precedent that will cause problems in many future articles. I think a better model is to do as we've always done, with controversies like Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and the Bill Ayers presidential election controversy and political neologisms like Bush Derangement Syndrome or macacawitz--report the smears, report the responses, and report the reliable sources that cover both. (I'm on board for a name change, though. It's a shame SlimVirgin bundled her very sensible name change proposal with the request to cap all neologism coverage at "a paragraph or two", or I think this issue would already be heading for consensus.) -- Khazar (talk) 14:59, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Statement by Doc James

Seriously? Looks like some are making a mountain out of a molehill. Is what is written verifiable? Are the sources reliable? Is it NPOV? If not we have places to address that. If it is than move on. We do not need policies to "protect" people who say what they shouldn't have. Does not look like ARBCOM material and why propagate the Streisand effect. --Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 18:12, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Statement by involved editor Protonk (talk)

I doubt this case is ripe for Arbcom just yet, but I also suspect that community processes are unlikely to resolve the underlying issue. I find Coren's claim that Misplaced Pages is being misused by Dan Savage to be rich. At the very least the nascent crush of interest in the article corresponds not with Dan Savage (who came up w/ the idea years ago) but with Rick Santorum's presidential campaign finding itself in the unenviable position of being ranked below a cruel joke played at the candidate's expense. Even excluding all of this skullduggery, there have been multiple attempts (both within and without process) to censor the article or rename it to something ludicrous--all under the banner of BLP. Well let me tell you (with apologies to the expectation of courtly language), the buck fucking stops with you. If we are to use BLP to cover up this article or bend it to the will of some 3rd string candidate we can just shutter the place right now as we are no longer an encyclopedia. Either we allow sourced and vigorously edited content within the confines of our policy or we give it up. Protonk (talk) 17:39, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Statement by Thenub314

(Disclaimers: I have !voted in the current RfC to keep the name and title as is. Also, I have recently tried to convince Cirt to returning to editing DYK's). I find this request as a serious failure to assume good faith. I have taken no part in editing templates, and an extremely minor role in the whole issue. Specifically allegations that Cirt (and his supporters?) sole purpose for creating templates was political activism seems to be assuming a lot about their motivations then could possibly be known. I consider my self a moderately active wikipedian, but I notice that Cirt's edit count in the template namespace outnumbers my edit count across all name spaces. He also seems to create a number of new templates. Even templates about bacon! Frankly I don't personally see how it could be possible to have a template a long standing LGBT slang, but call a template for more general sexual slang as part of a political agenda? Choose to have one or choose to have neither, but what ever they are they are of the same ilk.

There is a pattern in this I find very disconcerting. Several days ago SlimVirgin left a comment, (which came across as threatening to me) that Cirt should desist his editing activities or he would face problems in Arbcom. He ceased and desisted, to the point that he stopped editing almost entirely. Now I understand his family issues are part of his absence, but I am sure he no longer feels welcome to edit. Now he is named in this case after have been out of the fray for several days.

I would like to suggest that perhaps people's strong emotions have skewed Coren's reaction, as well as almost everyone else's. There is no particular reason to view political activism in this Cirt's behavior over this content dispute. We all (hopefully) edit within the confines of what we are knowledgeable about. For Cirt this seems to involve Dan Savage, religion and perhaps bacon. My knowledge is even more narrowly focused to doctor who and a fairly distinct, narrow subfield of mathematics. He is no more guilty then I of pushing a political agenda. And I hope the committee sees fit to not single him out on this particular matter.

Finally I would like to point out, as this issue is raised by a fellow Arbitrator. Even though she/he (sorry I don't know which) recused, the rest of the committee I am sure is used to working with Coren closely. I assume the committee is used to placing a very high value on Coren's opinions, and this makes it almost impossible for any sort of impartial judgment about editors Coren is in conflict with. Nonetheless there is no higher court, so there is not much to be done about the situation, accept to acknowledge it specifically, and reflect upon that fact before final judgments are made. Thenub314 (talk) 03:05, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

Statement by Reo On

Preamble: I had no prior involvement with the article/topic before RfC, in fact being from Czech Republic, I am personally quite oblivious to the partisan positions here. I had been drawn to the issue by the SlimVirgin's RfC and saw it important and difficult matter to deal with, so I am among those who have been discussing the way out.

I would like to discriminate two sub-issues related to the difficult debate about Santorum_(neologism).

Firstly the one most heavily discussed part is the actual content dispute. I fully agree with the many above me that this part is premature for the ArbCom to step in; RfC is just running, discussion bellow voting shows signs of coming to a compromise. I saw through the last few days new fruitful approaches to address the disagreement; pattern is emerging to overcome the previously strong partisanship. I see the potential for consensus (how to deal with all the alleged/real policy-violations and applications of Wps:BLP|BLP1E|NEO|TITLE|DUEXCENSOR|N|WELLKNOWN...BLP1E renaming to avoid NEO and BLP?). I have full faith in the community to deal with it in the spirit of the Misplaced Pages policies and well so.

SEO techniques inside Misplaced Pages

Nevertheless I think there is a issue worthy of ArbCom's consideration; I would like to ask ArbCom as whether Misplaced Pages policies could be potentially misused/circumvent to SEO. I believe this case might be novel, so what I am asking the ArbCom to do, is not content related or Conduct related request, but rather policy interpretation/formulation of general principles about new policy.

I just from the start assume for argument that Cirt or any other involved party worked just in good faith so far. As much as I know the rules, the contributor's willingness to write neutrally the content is considered per each page contribution separately: whether the statements are true and due.

Thinking through this issue I see emerging loophole allowing experienced user to overcome all the restrictions provided by the policies; If he is motivated and skilled enough, he might be capable to sway his way through, and use Misplaced Pages for the political or any other agenda (At least myself, from now on, I could imagine, how to do it myself) through SEO on chosen term in chosen context.

Too many links to 'promoted term' in templates and other pages, while relevant in narrow sense (just barelly relevant template), may inadvertently (or intentionally) cause SEO-like effects. It is ironical and poisonous in cases where the word is WP:notable just for being SEO pushed in 'real world'. (examples by others)

We can't force some Global DUE policy. What prescription might force individual Wikipedists to spread attention to all potential search terms equally and Glob'DUE' link them inside Misplaced Pages? With any policy being missing here, however, now even I realized I could devise such an editing pattern, which can intentionally manipulate more heavily the reality then just describing it, -and still all in compliance with Misplaced Pages conduct standards. Looking from outside, I might either assume (in AFG), that the contributors may be working just diligently on area within they interest (they can) or to think they are intentionally working hard on manipulating search engines, either way, we have no position how to deal with such conduct. And before their/his contributions might be attributed to the bad faith editing, there should be some policy, precedent to point on, to guide each of them if they may act in GF. (We cant be retroactive right?)

How do we distinguish between promoting a term and promoting the article? (Macwhiz) Couldn't there be some addendum to the NEO regarding its usage in templates?

Policy (?)

I would propose terms notable to be 'GoogleBomb' should be dealt separately in new paragraph of WP:NEO. 'Promoted term' should be excluded from the normal practice of being put in many circulating templates. If Misplaced Pages needs to write about important GoogleBombs, we still should be mindful, to ensure that Misplaced Pages does not participate in the purported SEO effect, BLP being just one of two justification.

wp:BLP1E is intended to protect people involved, it should be also valid equally with personal proprieties involved like the said surname (word or subjects generally) being notable for one event Reo 07:06, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

@ Risker There seems to be few new accounts and some few of them might have some previous experience with Misplaced Pages, but (IMHO) they are far from prevailing in the discussion. More pressing is, the situation as already is creates quite SEO effect (no need for amateur single accounts for mass canvassing). But as long as all rules seem to be uphold (notability, neutrality, due), so many many contributors will just defend the articles in earnest - just for upholding the rules (and if I am right, then in part - in case of the article - even rightly so, because instead of deletion, reshaping the article to the event, retitling and delinking seems be the best practice to me).--Reo 07:06, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

Statement by (mostly uninvolved) Wikidemon

This is a content matter with some on the losing side refusing to accept that the majority of Wikipedians, with whom they disagree, are editing in good faith. They speculate that people on and off Misplaced Pages are manipulating our article in order to badmouth a politician. Those making the accusations are seasoned and well respected editors, as are those they accuse. This polarized approach is harmful to the editing process, more so so if ArbCom wades in.

One of the first rules of editing political articles is to focus on the content, not editors. When disagreeing on content, lay out the sources, the content policies, and your opinion about them, participate in a civil discussion and see who has the better argument. Accept the will of the community following well-worn principles to come to an informed decision on how to cover a given subject.

"Misplaced Pages is a liberal whitewash", "this article is an embarrassing joke", "the bias confirms what everyone knows about Misplaced Pages", and "you must be a campaign volunteer" (to paraphrase) are the exact opposite of collaborative editing process and sounds a lot like the battleground arguments that beset some of the hot political topics. If ArbCom says anything here, it should be that those accusations have no place here and that people should stick to things like verifiability, sourcing facts, and writing good articles.

As I see it the case rests on two claims:

• The content of the article so obviously inappropriate that no editor sincerely applying the rules could support it. Hence, those who do must have ulterior motives.
• The article's subject was promoted by activists through deliberate use of Internet optimization tactics. Even if Misplaced Pages editors are not intentionally conspiring with the activists, by acknowledging them and their campaign in the encyclopedia they are unwittingly doing their bidding.

The first is simple refusal to accept consensus outcome. As a content matter, either this neologism is notable or it is not. Factors that may or may not relate to notability include whether the term has taken on a secondary meaning beyond the initial activism campaign, and whether it has escaped from the lab, as it were, and entered common usage. I see a lot of personal opinion there and think some people just have strong opinions. But at the end of the day we just have to look to the sources and hash it out. We make a decision based on the rules and sources. It may be the right decision, it might be the wrong decision, but it's our decision. That's how it works, and ArbCom is not the arbiter.

The second is a fallacy. Nearly everything that's part of public awareness got there because someone promoted it at some point using the publicity tools of the era, or else it became viral, or was a news story. That's true from Ben Franklin's sayings (he used to write fake anonymous letters to his newspaper, so he could answer them - an old time sockpuppet) to Lady Gaga's latest song and Sarah Palin's train tour. The cycle goes something like this: (1) operative publicizes something; (2) it enters the public realm; (3) newspapers report on it; and (4) Misplaced Pages writes an article. Public awareness is the fruit of public relations work whether volunteer, paid, self-promoting, or political activism - and having a Misplaced Pages article is one of the fruits of public awareness. That's not a feedback loop, that's Misplaced Pages reflecting the state of the sources. If we refused to report on things that got spread through seach engine optimization, for fear that we would reward people's SEO efforts, we wouldn't write any new articles.

Statement by Nomoskedasticity

I see several references below to "failure to reach resolution" and the like. I find these statements mystifying. Various people have made proposals for changes; most of them have failed to gain consensus. How is this evidence of failure of normal processes here? Some people would no doubt like to paint "failure to reach the 'right' answer" as failure of process -- does Arbcomm really want to adopt that perspective?

I could understand Arbcomm addressing the narrow issue of SEO techniques (with attention to Cirt's behavior). But even here it can't be said that normal community processes have somehow failed -- they haven't even been tried yet (w/rt templates, etc.). Nomoskedasticity (talk) 11:05, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

Statement by involved John Vandenberg

I think the committee should decline this case at this time. There are ongoing content RFCs, and there are no relevant user conduct RFCs.

I doubt that the committee can fix the SEO aspect sooner or better than the community, and concerns about Cirt's actions will boil down to the motive behind the creation of this mess, and the committee is extremely unlikely to make a determination about motive.

At the heart of this problem is the broad acceptance of WP:NOTDONE and its effects—that our content grows organically based on the (usually harmless) motivations of Misplaced Pages editors, and that, at any one time, the result is a malformed encyclopedia with large clumps of great articles about (almost) useless topics while critical topics are brief or rubbish. (WP:POKEMON was a well known and even self-deprecating example of this; WP:BACON is becoming another example; both are deemed to be harmless at worst) WP:AGF says we dont care what the motivations are, provided the resulting content is a net positive. There is an incredibly fine line between encouraging contributors to write about whatever interests them, in excruciating detail, and accepting an intentional over-exposure of a topic, in turn causing or contributing to (we think) a Google Bomb effect, which in turn is contributing to a nasty problem that a living politician has. This isn't the first time it has been done on Misplaced Pages, but it is the most obvious, high profile, and clearly distasteful. The current discussions have shown that there are a lot of people who think the current situation is unsatisfactory and counter-productive to the objectives of Misplaced Pages, and inroads are being made. The community has agreed that the template "Political_neologisms" was bullocks and it has been deleted; misrepresentation of sources has been highlighted causing some people to see the article in a different light; etc. The community is wrapping their head around this, with numerous ongoing RFCs. Letting these RFCs run their course will mean that, if this needs to come back to arbitration, the committee can see who was putting up roadblocks. John Vandenberg 15:04, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

Statement by LadyofShalott

It seems to me that editors create articles on topics that have intrigued them in some way or other. Cirt tends to produce a number of articles on topics related to one another that have caught his attention in some reason or another, whether it be bacon or Dan Savage. This really is no different from any other writer who writes a series of article on plants, or Pokemon, or Palin. The issue of how the term 'santorum' and the campaign to promote its use is handled in Misplaced Pages is a content question, and is being handled as such elsewhere. There is no misconduct here. I don't see any need for arbitration. LadyofShalott 18:18, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

Question by Prioryman

What exactly is the Arbitration Committee being asked to arbitrate here? I gather that this issue is the subject of ongoing RfCs. Is the intention of the petitioner(s) that the Arbcom should terminate or overrule the RfCs and impose a solution? If so, that looks very much like asking the Arbcom to adjudicate a content question, which as far as I was aware is outside its remit. Prioryman (talk) 18:53, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

Clerk notes

This area is used for notes by the clerks (including clerk recusals).

Arbitrators' opinion on hearing this matter (5/4/2/1)

• Accept This is an intriguing question: Does Misplaced Pages bow to or turn a blind eye to external manipulation of reliable sources by partisans in order to meet our inclusion guidelines? Does the fact that the target is a living person make a difference? Does the fact that this particular living person is a controversial politician make a difference? While I agree that this is a content dispute, the fact that it involves BLP in a grey area means it is appropriate for the committee to set how we are to implement the foundation's directives on the matter. Jclemens (talk) 15:36, 12 June 2011 (UTC)
  • @Tryptofish, your point regarding sanctions is well taken. If the committee must act to fine-tune boundaries where good faith editors differ (rather than our usual role of conduct evaluation), then the appropriateness of sanctions is considerably less. While it's certainly possible something sanctionable would arise in evidence, I can certainly see such a case ending with no particular sanctions for prior conduct applied. Jclemens (talk) 18:54, 12 June 2011 (UTC)
• Comment: Awaiting further statements; I am aware of some of the issues that have arisen related to this matter, but do not consider myself fully informed. One of the questions I ask myself in differentiating content-only vs conduct disputes is "If this same edit/series of edits was made by an unregistered or newly registered account, is it likely that community sanctions would have been applied or at least discussed?" Perhaps those making statements may wish to address this point. SEO techniques are potentially harmful to this project regardless of whether they are applied by a new editor or a longterm editor; I'd also like to hear from those making statements as to whether or not this is an issue in this matter. Risker (talk) 18:46, 12 June 2011 (UTC)
• Comment I have strong feelings that the article in question is inherently problematic with our BLP policies. I understand that thanks to the campaign and the politician's own actions, it's widely spread. However, that does not release it from our own policies. It is my opinion (and my opinion only), that in the balance of things, the encyclopedia would be better off without this article. Misplaced Pages should not be used as a revenge platform. But that is only my opinion, and I don't think anyone wants ArbCom to rule on the content here, just the conduct. I'd like a bit more discussion if a RFC can at least ameliorate the worst of this issue, or if this has to be handled here and now. SirFozzie (talk) 19:40, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

After review, voting to Accept. SirFozzie (talk) 01:42, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

• Awaiting additional statements or developments; I have limited wikitime right now but will vote in a day or two; leaning toward acceptance. Newyorkbrad (talk) 20:20, 12 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Accept. The Committee should provide guidance on the important BLP and related user-conduct issues raised by this case. I know that other dispute-resolution processes are being used; if they lead to a consensus outcome that would make this case moot, I am open to changing my vote, but that strikes me as unlikely. If accepted, the case should be relatively straightforward and we might consider putting it on an expedited timetable (one week from the opening for evidence). Without prejudging the case in any way, I agree with Jclemens that a decision need not include sanctions against specific editors to be useful in providing guidance. Newyorkbrad (talk) 00:41, 13 June 2011 (UTC)
• Decline. Is it unfortunate that people skewer politicians and other celebrities to gain favor or publicity? Of course. However, as long as this is a significant (and even accepted) part of American culture, we're going to end up covering these kinds of issues. This doesn't mean we repeat these stunts as if they were fact (i.e. good editorial decision making and BLP), but we can explore the instances and their effects. Whether or not this term should be its own article or covered elsewhere and what navigation templates it should be in is purely a content decision. I see a lot of strong opinions on both sides that are making this a difficult discussion - I think the best course is to let the RfC run its course (perhaps even with some additional advertising to get more of the community involved) and revisit if evidence of behavioral issues or intentional malice surfaces or the community gets stonewalled. Shell 20:42, 12 June 2011 (UTC)
• Decline. pending RfC. Main thrust of case is content. Await more broad-based community input and urge editors to make their opinion known. Casliber (talk · contribs) 21:55, 12 June 2011 (UTC)
• Recuse per User:Jayvdb/recusal#WS and I've also been involved in this. --John Vandenberg 02:14, 13 June 2011 (UTC)
• Recuse; obviously. — Coren  02:32, 13 June 2011 (UTC)
• Accept, primarily per Avanu. This appears to be a case where the coverage of a topic in Misplaced Pages has in and of itself become a substantive aspect of the wider, off-wiki dispute about the topic; and thus one where Misplaced Pages is at risk of being misused as a platform for advocacy even if said coverage appears, at first glance, to comply with NPOV. I note that the closest precedent we have for such a scenario (Regarding The Bogdanov Affair) is ancient in Misplaced Pages terms, and must be updated to reflect both more recent policy developments and Misplaced Pages's increased prominence. Kirill  10:41, 13 June 2011 (UTC)
• Provisionally accept, very grudgingly. I dislike the idea of Arbcom dictating policy by fiat, but I think this may be necessary; the dispute shows no sign of reaching a compromise. Per the Ireland article names precedent, "The Committee has traditionally concentrated its attention on conduct disputes, and has avoided issuing binding rulings that would directly resolve matters of content or policy, leaving those questions to the community at large. However, in cases where the community has proven unable to resolve those questions using the methods normally available to it, and where the lack of resolution results in unacceptable disruption to the project, the Committee may impose an exceptional method for reaching a decision." This shows all the signs of being one of these cases. As with the similar case on hyphens, if those involved can come up with a process which generates a result which most of those involved can live with (be it a full-scale RFC, a formal vote or a coin-flip by which all parties agree to abide, the process isn't as important as the fact that all those significantly involved agree to abide by it), I'd be extremely happy to have Arbcom step aside completely (or sign off on the community-generated result, if people feel it would be helpful to bring said result into the scope of arbitration enforcement). This situation will occur more and more often, as people wake up to the fact that manipulating the nature of the sources that fuel Misplaced Pages is a way to subvert Misplaced Pages's neutrality as regards a topic; one way or another, at some point we need to formulate how we deal with these situations when they arise. – iridescent 16:56, 13 June 2011 (UTC)
• Decline in its present form, with the greatest respect to my colleagues. This isn't the dispute about naming these fairy isles - it hasn't a 200 year old history with blood spilled. Nor is it the coin-flip hyphen vs ndash argument. This is just a politician who has decided to run for president, who has become the subject of a memorabl(y unpleasant) joke. The discussion as to whether to reference and include it is not any different to whether to include that Hitler only had one ball, or Lloyd George knew my father. Elen of the Roads (talk) 21:31, 13 June 2011 (UTC)
• Decline. The article content is about a high profile individual, and is covered by the biography of a living persons policy, however that doesn't override the principle that in general the Arbitration Committee doesn't resolve content disputes. I suggest trying mediation or a 'full scale' Request for Comment, and if that doesn't work re-applying for arbitration. PhilKnight (talk) 12:57, 14 June 2011 (UTC)