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Youreallycan

Initiated by Rschen7754 at 03:49, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

Involved parties

• Rschen7754 (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA), filing party
• Ironholds (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)
• Youreallycan (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Alison (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)
• Prioryman (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Jdforrester (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)
• Someguy1221 (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)
• Nomoskedasticity (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Viriditas (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Dominus Vobisdu (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Snowolf (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)

Confirmation that all parties are aware of the request

• Ironholds
• Youreallycan
• Alison
• Prioryman
• Jdforrester
• Someguy1221
• Nomoskedasticity
• Viriditas
• Dominus Vobisdu

Confirmation that other steps in dispute resolution have been tried

• WP:ANI#Repeated violation of RfC restrictions - site ban proposed for Youreallycan
• User talk:Youreallycan
• Misplaced Pages:Requests for comment/Youreallycan
• Previous ArbCom request

Statement by Rschen7754

Today Youreallycan (talk · contribs) was accused of outing another editor, and repeatedly revert warring with other editors to reinsert this information. The outing diffs were oversighted by Alison (talk · contribs). A discussion has been started at ANI, but there is no clear consensus, and revert warring over closing part of it has begun.

The fundamental questions issues here that determine the appropriate response are:

• Was this outing? I don't see this as something the community can resolve, because the community cannot review oversighted diffs.
• Was this outing if the "outed" information was already public, as is alleged at the ANI?
• Has Youreallycan broken his 1RR agreement that came out of his RFC in terms of revert warring? This is a contentious issue that is highly divisive in the community, and a RFC has already been filed. An interaction ban has already been proposed and has consensus so far, but the site ban is divisive. --Rschen7754 03:53, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

Noting that Ironholds blocked Youreallycan indefinitely. --Rschen7754 23:06, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

@Jclemens: A completed ANI discussion was what I was hoping for, but it's spiraled out of control with revert warring over hatting, an interaction ban being proposed, another interaction ban being proposed, and the discussion continues drawing more heat to the issue of Prioryman's outing, and outing isn't exactly something we want to draw public attention to on ANI. --Rschen7754 04:15, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

Further comment: we have a {{checkuserblock}}; why not have a {{oversightblock}}? --Rschen7754 07:52, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

@ArbCom: Any voluntary interaction ban needs to be made official, in my opinion, or we'll be back here in a few months. --Rschen7754 07:59, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

I would like to withdraw this request. (I can do that, right?). I'm a bit skeptical as to if this will work, but it is something that we need to try. Also, the outing issue seems to have been resolved. --Rschen7754 21:55, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

Statement by Dominus Vobisdu

User has been blocked NINETEEN times before (under this and his previous account), and very narrowly escaped a community ban by making abundant promises never, ever to slip up again in the slightest, or he would be community banned per his own proposal. He violated three of the conditions of his settlement.

1) He outed another user. Not once, but four more times after being reverted and warned not to.

2) He was expremely uncivil in doing so, blatantly taunting the target of the outing.

3) He reverted four times after being warned not to, in spite of the fact that he was under a 1rr resriction, proposed by himself as part of the settlement.

This user has amply demonstrated, time and time again, that, regardless of any promises he might make, he is completely unable to control his behavior, which is highly combative and incivil, even stooping to anti-semitic and homophobic comments and attacks on other editors.

That makes TWENTY blocks now, and literally HUNDREDS of hours of editor and administrator time wasted on ANIs, RfCUs, appeals, etc. etc. etc. and now arbcom.

This user is a net loss to the project, and that will never, ever change. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 04:14, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

Statement by Ironholds

In my (admittedly, not-worth-much) opinion, if this is a case solely to consider the questions Rschen has brought up...it's sort of a waste. Iff arbcom want to discuss the wider issue of outing, what it is, what it isn't, and what to do with people who engage in it (in good faith or bad faith), that's certainly a case matter. But if arbcom doesn't want to look at the wider picture and instead plans on answering these specific questions (which is not, imo, a bad or good thing in and of itself) then a motion would be more appropriate - particularly since some of the questions relate to an ongoing community discussion and the ability of the community to hold it, and are thus time-sensitive.

I'll have more to say about how everything went down and what my perspective is after the dust settles around the community ban discussion and ArbCom makes clear how they plan on hearing this, if at all. I would note that on the question of whether the now-OSd diffs constitute outing, we've had two arbitrators chip in and say "they were outing", and the mere fact that they were oversighted should be a hint. Ironholds (talk) 04:03, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

Statement by Snowolf

For transparency purposes, as I have not intervened in the ANI thread or anywhere on-wiki, I think it's appropriate to disclose that I performed (indipendently) part of the suppression of the edits in question. As for the case at hand, I believe the matter is being discussed effectively on WP:ANI and the nature (not content, nature) of the suppressed edits has already been disclosed by the affected party (Prioryman) there, and as such there seem to no need for an Arbitration case to discuss the private aspects. Snowolf 10:10, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

Statement by Jayen466

Could I request that the committee confirm one simple thing: that the mere mention of User:ChrisO's (and thus Prioryman's, as ChrisO redirects to Prioryman) surname on Misplaced Pages does not constitute outing? There are some of you who were active in ARBSCI, and who probably have a fairly good memory of that case. For those of you that weren't:

1. The surname is perfectly apparent from an arbitration finding of fact noting that ChrisO linked to self-published material.
2. It is even more apparent from a previous draft of that finding of fact.
3. It is apparent from statements ChrisO and others made in the course of the arbitration that he was the author of those works; see e.g. Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_arbitration/Scientology/Proposed_decision#ChrisO_findings_of_fact, diff link 67, and the attendant statement by ChrisO himself.

So there are disclosures by the 2009 arbitration committee, and a voluntary disclosure by ChrisO himself on a very high-profile community page. YRC was well aware of this history.

In addition, people like Tony Sidaway and Terryeo have used ChrisO's full name to his face, with him and others acknowledging it, on multiple occasions in Misplaced Pages, and it remains present on multiple pages of Misplaced Pages to this day. I fail to see how referring to his previously disclosed name can possibly be outing. But the good folks at ANI seem to have real trouble with that.

Our community processes around this sort of thing are extremely erratic, and regularly gamed. Prioryman recently used Volunteer Marek's real-life name, was indefinitely blocked for outing, and got unblocked by claiming in his unblock request that he did not know that Marek objected to the use of his name on Misplaced Pages.

Unlike Prioryman, however, Marek had redacted a previous reference he had made to his own name here, had asked Prioryman to stop using that name, and Prioryman had promised to comply with that request. This was only a few months ago. And the administrator who unblocked Prioryman is well aware of that.

Diffs do not lie. Prioryman either has a significant memory problem, or a significant honesty problem. From where I'm standing, Prioryman got away with an actual outing, by the letter of WP:OUTING, and succeeded in having a wiki-enemy blocked indefinitely for something that wasn't an outing. And the community is in the process of compounding the error. If giving away ChrisO's surname is outing, would you not have to block all the editors who were arbitrators in 2009, including some members of the present committee?

I am asking this question because Youreallycan is an online friend. I am not saying he is blameless, but I would not like to see him leave Misplaced Pages like this, on trumped-up charges. AndreasKolbe JN466 16:52, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

Statement by Tijfo098

I think that if the latest ANI thread fails to adopt any community measures, then ArbCom should accept the case or at least rule by motion. This is a long-term drama/feud between two editors, Prioryman & Youreallycan, sucking a vast amount of community time and being very polarizing. The community is in fact so polarized that some voters even reject the solution of an interaction ban between the two because they think that one party should be site-banned. Tijfo098 (talk) 19:18, 27 October 2012 (UTC) (Amusingly, both Prioryman & Youreallycan now support an interaction ban, but somehow the ANI crowd opposes it. Tijfo098 (talk) 22:53, 27 October 2012 (UTC))

I see that Ironholds blocked YRC indefinitely while leaving a message at ANI. I don't know if in the "no consensus" back and forth this is a long-term solution. Any admin could unblock YRC, as it often happens with controversial editors. Tijfo098 (talk) 19:24, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

@Wnt: Off-topic here, but so was your post. Dan Murphy disagrees with you that the article is any good even now, after Prioryman's work on it. See Talk:Ya`fūr. Tijfo098 (talk) 22:24, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

Statement by Prioryman

The facts of this incident are simple enough. YRC is on a community-imposed restriction that prohibits BLP editing, incivility and edit-warring, among other things. The penalty for breaching the restriction is a site ban. This restriction was proposed in an RfC that I started, was overwhelmingly supported by a large number of editors and was agreed to by YRC.

My present choice of username makes no link with my RL identity. If Collect says that in a single edit "some years ago" (how many? 4? 5? more?) I might have made a linkage, I'm not going to argue - he may well be right (it's hard to tell without seeing the edit). So was what YRC did outing? I considered it to be, because of the context. I had had no contact with him since August. He had had no previous involvement in the discussion that was taking place on Jimbo's user talk page. His very first post to that discussion - not even in response to me - was to name me on a page with over 2700 watchers. He also falsely claimed that I had edited under that name. My RL identity was not under discussion and wasn't even relevant to the discussion or to any point he was making. It was completely gratuitous and plainly intended to be antagonistic. I told him to stop posting it and did what WP:OUTING says ("Any edit that "outs" someone must be reverted promptly, followed by a request for Oversight to delete that edit from Misplaced Pages permanently"), citing WP:OUTING in my edit summary. While I was talking with an oversighter YRC began edit-warring with five different editors to restore it to Jimbo's talk page and to his own, with edit summaries along the lines of "Prioryman, you are . You should look in the mirror=LOL". I consider his conduct a gratuitous personal attack and overt harassment. There was no prior "baiting" because I'd not even interacted with him since the RfC back in August.

This incident is very similar to the one that precipitated the RfC. It simply isn't true that I had some kind of feud with YRC. I had previously defended him against bids to ban him and had sought to help him with constructive criticism and assistance to Dennis Brown in mentoring him (see ). Back in August, he made what I considered to be an unprovoked personal attack on Jimbo's user talk page. I contacted Dennis Brown, only to be told that YRC had "fired" Dennis, and I found that he had racked up yet more blocks. That's why I started the RfC, and at no point did I propose to ban him or even wish to do so (see the desired outcome ). The purpose of the RfC was to create a framework for him to become a more collegiate editor. He agreed to the outcome, but he hasn't complied with it.

A very final important point is that I did not ask for YRC to be blocked for outing. A thread which accused him of outing was started by Nomoskedasticity. I later retitled it to clarify that the issue was his violation of his RfC conditions. I proposed a site ban on the grounds of violating two of those conditions through incivility and edit-warring (he is on a 1RR). Ironholds blocked him on a different basis, that of outing, which I had not asked for. But this dispute is ultimately about labels. Was YRC repeatedly incivil? Yes, clearly. Did he edit-war? Obviously. Did this breach the RfC conditions? Categorically so. Was a site ban justified? Since that was the remedy that he agreed to, it's hard to see how it couldn't have been. If Ironholds had chosen to block on the grounds of a breach of the RfC conditions, I don't think we'd be having this discussion, since the violations are plain to see. An indefinite block was the right thing to do, as that was the agreed-upon remedy for a violation of the RfC restrictions, but it's arguable that Ironholds may have chosen the wrong reason to do so. If so, then perhaps a solution to this problem would be to unblock him for the outing violations and reblock him for the restrictions violations - though that seems a bit of a token effort. The bottom line is that he repeatedly and intentionally disclosed my personal information, against my explicit wishes, using taunting language in a deliberate bid to cause confrontation and distress. That's not just incivility, that's textbook harassment. It was completely unnecessary and gratuitous. Prioryman (talk) 08:21, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

@Collect: It is absolutely, unequivocally false to claim that I outed myself to the Village Voice. I didn't even find out that they'd mentioned me until months afterwards. They certainly didn't contact me, and nobody mentioned it to me at the time; I have no idea why they made that mention (I guess someone else, I have no idea who, suggested it). Their piece makes no connection with my Misplaced Pages username. Ironically it was YRC who brought it to my attention. And why are you describing L. Ron Hubbard as a BLP when the man has been dead for 26 years? Prioryman (talk) 14:37, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

@AndyTheGrump: Bare-Faced Messiah is not my own work. It's a book by Russell Miller, published in 1987. I had absolutely no involvement in writing, researching or publishing it. My sole involvement was putting it on the web with the author's permission. That's no different in kind to uploading something to Wikisource or Project Gutenberg - there's no COI involved. Nor did I add the link you mentioned. It was added in the very first edit to the article back on 15 July 2005‎. When I rewrote the article earlier this year I simply moved the link up in the text. I might add that before this May I had never touched the article. Prioryman (talk) 18:28, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

@Update: I think this is moving towards a solution. YRC has now been unblocked and has agreed not to repeat his original actions. An interaction ban has been proposed on AN/I and has widespread support, and both YRC and I have agreed to it. I have offered to withdraw my request for a site ban in order to ensure that the matter can be resolved amicably without wasting any more of each other's, or the community's time. If he is agreeable then all that remains is for the IBAN to be formally put into effect. I have asked Dennis Brown (YRC's former mentor) to make it official. Prioryman (talk) 07:49, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

Statement by Peter cohen

I think Arbcom needs to take this case as Prioryman's behaviour needs scrutinising in as much detail as YRC's. As Courcelles says below, the community has not been told clearly exactly would happened. If all that was given was what the "O" stands for, then this is public information already stored on Misplaced Pages. Prioryman has given that impression in his reply to my first comment in the ANI thread. He has then gone and redacted the name from just one of the pages on which it appears (a 2006 archive) and incidently redacted the evidence that he was being dishonest back in 2006. Given that he outed Marek recently it makes his behaviour seem hypocritical and displays the same tendency to selectively interpret the rules that was visible in the Fae case. Given the whole business of how the banned ChrisO reincarnated as Prioryman whilst apparently banned by Arbcom, this is another matter that really lies in Arbcom's territory without our having to first go around the houses with an RFC/U. Prioryman has also been quite inflamatory around the Gibratarpedia business.--Peter cohen (talk) 20:34, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

Comment by Wikiwind

I think that you should accept this case if the AN/I discussion is closed as no consensus or something among those lines, because that means that community is unable to resolve this dispute.--В и к и T 20:48, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

Statement by Youreallycan

I think as the whole discussion was removed from view its unfair that people have to support a ban when they can not see the diffs - I did not WP:OUT anyone - As I have protected many living people from attack I have a lot of opponents in my almost 100 thousand edits to this project I don't support the ANI hanging party and as there are issues also regarding Prioryman's hounding of me. I request a Arbitration case to resolve this - I would appreciate an interaction ban from him. ChrisO/Prioryman has been identified and the user himself has pointed to his real name on-wiki, he's been addressed by his real name on multiple occasions, claims and a block for outing is simply false. Also is false is that I have violated my conditions - I am allowed to edit the BLPNoticeboard, allowed to discuss edits to BLP articles, and allowed to remove clear BLP violations/vandalism and I am on a one revert condition - consider my own talkpage exempt from this - Youreallycan 19:35, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

At Brad - New york - I sent brad a email - entitled - nonsense - in response to his comment in this diff - this diff - Youreallycan 22:08, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

Statement by Dennis Brown

I had to oppose at ANI, and expect everyone should since even admin can't see the diffs. That alone is enough reason to accept. Essentially, everyone who is supporting the ban is having to based on zero information except one opinion. It doesn't matter if the community was unanimous here, as anyone without oversight access simply can not review the very material necessary to make a fair and equitable decision. There simply is no way WP:AN/WP:ANI can be fair without all the info. It is literally impossible. I would expect the same opportunity for any member of the community, no matter how popular or unpopular, as every editor facing a ban deserves that the evidence against him be accessible by those deciding his fate. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © Join WER 01:06, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

• @ Newyorkbrad I wrote an essay on that, Don't bludgeon the process, 4 years ago. But it is just an essay, as YRC himself has recently noted. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © Join WER 01:33, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

Statement by The Devil's Advocate

My involvement in this matter has mostly been limited to comments as well as providing evidence and analysis regarding the case. I believe that, whatever the ANI decision, it would be a good idea to accept this case to examine some of the underlying issues and this could be considered a de-facto appeal should there be deemed to be a consensus for a site-ban for YRC. Dennis gives a good reason for why the claim about outing should be brought before ArbCom, but there is another aspect to it as Prioryman's last name seems to be the only thing being noted as outing and if so this allegation is based on an overly rigid, and apparently selective, adherence to the letter of the policy in defiance of common sense. Under the circumstances, when such a claim is disputed it would be reasonable to expect ArbCom to make a finding. Another point to consider is whether this would have to be accepted as a case about Youreallycan or about the Prioryman-Youreallycan dispute as the latter more appropriately touches on the nexus of the problem, in my opinion. There should also be an evaluation regarding the integrity of the RfC/U and "self-imposed" restrictions as Prioryman's manipulation of the evidence and misuse of the process, both things I would be more than willing to elaborate on during a full case, put a giant cloud over the whole matter.--The Devil's Advocate (talk) 03:29, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

Here are some cases that can give some background as to the dispute between Youreallycan/Off2riorob and Prioryman/ChrisO: Misplaced Pages talk:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Cirt and Jayen466/Evidence, Misplaced Pages talk:Requests for comment/Cirt, Misplaced Pages:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Manipulation of BLPs/Workshop. Notably they all relate to their differing attitudes on BLP editing. I also think if this were accepted as a case Jayen would have to be named as a part given his prominent connection with this dispute.--The Devil's Advocate (talk) 17:53, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

Statement by Jehochman

The ANI discussion is a mess. This case needs arbitration. The involvement of oversight is another confounding factor. The "don't block him" faction are citing "we can't review the evidence, so there's no proof of outing" as an argument. Please accept this case before anybody else does anything silly. Swift acceptance will help avoid collateral damage. Youreallycan would presumably be unblocked to participate. That way he can state his case and get a final resolution. It also may be necessary to look at the other party to see if there has been needling. Jehochman 03:40, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

It doesn't matter if an editor once used their real name on Misplaced Pages. Each of us is free to reconsider. After an editor says, "please don't use my real name", somebody who reposts it again, and again, and again is engaging in harassment, and needs to be blocked. Jehochman 13:10, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

Statement by very marginally involved Beeblebrox

I was the closing admin at Misplaced Pages:Requests for comment/Youreallycan, and it was clear to me then that we have here two users who very much despise each other.

I think a thorough examination of this antagonistic relationship is needed, and that ANI is not going to give us that. We need you guys to do it, more so since a suppression action is at the center of it. Regardless of whether or not YRC is banned the situation should be thoroughly examined. The two of them seem to me to share a trait of digging in to entrenched positions, with YRC blaming his "haters" for his own poor decisions and Prioryman engaging in endless wikilawyering. I don't think the community is going to do a good job of handling this or they would have done so by now. Beeblebrox (talk) 05:16, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

Comment by Collect

Beeblebrox is absolutely correct. There are now monthly proposals to ban YRC, all involving the same cast. This is not a productive situation, and what is needed is for ArbCom to make a single bold motion:

Prioryman and YRC are mutually banned from mentioning each other directly or indirectly on any pages other than those under the 'direct aegis' of ArbCom proper.

This motion would have prevented many hundreds of hours of discussions in just the past few months. And end the use of noticeboards to make repeated demands based on complaints from the same people over and over. Cheers. Collect (talk) 06:05, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

@NYB see WP:Collect's Law. Collect (talk) 06:06, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

@JClemens: IIRC, the editor in question removed material some years ago, which had been written by him as the source for claims in the article, and so noted the fact that the material had been written by him. The cite for the source noted the author's name - which suggests that the editor was making a direct connection between himself and that name. This would make the connection between the editor and the name overt and done by that editor. Misplaced Pages is not skilled at putting genies back into bottles. Collect (talk) 22:55, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

@JClemens et al: Prioryman above has dropped the "outing claim" and now asserts that Nomo was the one who made the charge (though I suspect Prioryman's comments at AN/I were strongly asserting "outing" as a rationale for a ban). Now he sticks to "RFC violation" i.e. that a person under 1RR can not be allowed to add or remove material from his own user talk page. This is quite plainly a silly interpretation -- we allow people, for example, to remove "warnings" etc. without any penalty therefor, and to remove posts ad libitum from their user talk pages, and we do not assert "edit war" fr people who edit their own user talk pages. At this point, with the absolute withdrawal of "outing" as a charge, the committee should pretty well assert that the "ban" is improper, and that it should adopt the resolution I propose above. Cheers. Collect (talk) 12:05, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

Noting where ChrisO removes a reference as "non-RS source". shows ChrisO's concerns. pretty much completely demolishes "outing" concerns as he someone appears to have given the information to the Village Voice. He was "outed" on Misplaced Pages by Terreo at . shows ChrisO making comments about his research and his FOIA request ... and outing by CSI LA, Justanother, Antaeis Feldspar, and others back in 2007. What I find troubling is that ChrisO was acting as major talk page participant, editor and as admin at the time - which would be cause for immediate desysoping if done today. With his own website as one of the reliable sources for the BLP biography. And Prioryman still edits the same article as recently as 29 Aug 2012. So much foir any claim of "outing" whatsoever at this point - and long past time now for the "outing" block to be excised. Cheers. Collect (talk) 13:10, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

Also noting Bare-faced Messiah with a foreword by "Chris Owen" (and which is on Owen's website . , ) - and which article has been extensively edited by Prioryman. Quelle surprise! So much for keeping away from any COI, I suppose? Collect (talk) 14:03, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

I emended the above in response to Prioryman's concerns, though whether a subject of a biography is alive or dead would seem, to me, to have zero connection to a COI problem for an editor. Clearly he feels that COI does not count on BDPs? And I note he makes no apologies for heavily editing an article on a book for which he, himself, wrote the foreword. Collect (talk) 14:48, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

Comment by Anthonyhcole

@Jclemens, Prioryman pointed out his RL name on-wiki at 11:04, 2 May 2009 (UTC): "My first edit to it was in September 2006, specifically to remove my own work as a non-reliable source.." (68 links to his real name.)

His real name has since been used on-wiki with no challenges or drama from him, by Tony Sidaway here and here. There may be others, I haven't looked. These were pointed out in the current ANI discussion by Andreas Kolbe (Jayen466) here and here, and in his statement above. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 07:53, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

YRC has abided by his BLP editing restriction, Prioryman now concedes that on ANI. He did edit war to protect his user talk content though. The 1RR provision was in place to control a behaviour problem in article space – not user space, where there was no edit-warring problem. Edit-warring to preserve your user:talk comment is something most of us would do. Prioryman did it a week earlier under eerily-similar circumstances – somebody redacted his comment that was believed to be outing, and Prioryman reverted. And it wasn't even his talk page. It, too, wasn't actually outing, it was just Prioryman being disrespectful to Volunteer Marek. (He had been asked not to link VM with VM's previous account name because that was associated with VM's real name. He agreed. Then did it again a week ago and edit-warred to keep it on the project.)

Though editors are often addressed here by their real life names, it may have been inappropriate for YRC to address Prioryman thus because he seems to want to keep his real name off-wiki now. If it was inappropriate, was it inappropriate enough to warrant permanently banning YRC, considering that level of offensiveness is never sanctioned here usually? --Anthonyhcole (talk) 14:43, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

YRC has said he will never use Prioryman's real surname on-wiki again, and has asked for an interaction ban between them, and between himself and Nomoskedasitcity (the editor who opened the thread at ANI that caused all this, and who has been gunning for YRC for years). Prioryman is agreeable, we're waiting to hear from Nomo. Nomo has rejected the proposed mutual interaction ban. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 06:40, 30 October 2012 (UTC) Added 10:13, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

YRC's behaviour has been minutely scrutinised and he has come out of it intact. I did an edit-by-edit analysis of what he's done on BLPN since returning from his break, and it has been in perfect accordance with his topic ban. He tidied pages, argued on many policy grounds (but not BLP), and reverted unambiguous vandalism; all of which is exactly the kind of behaviour prescribed by his RfC undertaking. His "edit-warring" was shown to be the kind of thing most of us would have done under the circumstances. His "insult" was found to be exactly the same insult that Prioryman had visited upon Volunteer Marek a week before. In short, YRC has come out of this well. Prioryman's behaviour has not been subjected to the same degree of focussed, formal attention. At ANI, the boomerang discussion is unresolved. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 08:39, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

Comment by Alanscottwalker

I have voted for the ban in the AN/I (but am otherwise uninvolved). The user is under community restrictions (1RR, Civility Parole, BLP issues) subject to a ban remedy. In the view of many, he has violated his restrictions. That issue could be decided here by motion. (See also, WP:USERBIO; WP:UP#POLEMIC (bullet point 2); WP:NPA and WP:Civility). The attempt above to "relitigate" the adoption of the community restrictions should be rejected. (I did not participate in the RfC that resulted in the restrictions but there is lots of evidence there for them, and that was the community resolution to that matter -- it would be very damaging to the community to now have a collateral attack on the RfC outcome.)

The "break the back" issue, which would appear to surround much of this, is battleground/importing of grievances/politics issues related to the governance of an outside group, WMUK (See eg.,this discussion). That should all stop, as those grudges have nothing to do with editing EN:Misplaced Pages, and all editors on this project are enjoined from pursuing those outside grudges on Project, or involving other editors in them, here. Discussion here is focused on edits and policy, not these off-wiki political disputes. For that, though, you would need a case, perhaps expand the parties, and consider recusals. Alanscottwalker (talk) 12:02, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

Comment by Mark Arsten

As with Alanscottwalker above, other than having supported YRC's banning at ANI I'm uninvolved. Last I checked, it looked like the ban discussion on ANI was heading for no consensus, so I urge Arbcom to take this. The community has tried to resolve this situation through an RFC/U and possibly dozens of noticeboard reports ... and has failed. We need Arbcom to solve this. Mark Arsten (talk) 13:40, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

Statement by Hell in a Bucket

I personally see gaming the rules of wiki by Prioryman. This is WP:COATRACK claim, it covers a nominal breakage of policy and used as a beard to meet a end, the end in this case a banning of a user they have a disagreement. I'd also like to say that yet again we have hasty Admin like Jehochman and making overt threats to other admins considering a unblock before a consensus is made. Based on experiences with him on other arb cases I really think he is unsuitable for the bit cause a big part of what he's done here and in the past is act like a child with a can of gas fanning the flames for his own entertainment but unltimately making the situations far worse.

Background by Wnt

A month ago, during the riots over Innocence of Muslims, I started an article Ya'fur to explain where the story about the donkey first originated. This wasn't my field and I simply scraped together such sources as I could find to get things going, but I was able at least to verify that it was a real story, but one seen as a fable, and put up a DYK. So it sat for a month unnoticed, until some people on Wikipediocracy put up a thread mocking it. Then all of a sudden it was raining nasty arguments at Template:Did you know nominations/Ya`fur. This was on October 24, two days before Youreallycan's redacted comments. But among the nasty comments there was one exception - Prioryman, though he disagreed with me about covering the partisan opinion sites on the Web, managed to add a whole lot of stuff about the story itself, tracking it back to at least the 12th century, perhaps much further, and really made a respectable looking article about it. I'm not sure if that's the reason why he was graced with top billing on their Misplaced Pages Governance forum after that (they have a lot of different axes to grind). What's pretty clear is that the gloomy, argumentative attitude that ensues from canvassing on their forum continues to rain down here now, as now this page is being linked from there. Wnt (talk) 20:06, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

@AndyTheGrump - I had not known, but if your assertion is true, then Prioryman is one of the great heroes of the Internet, and we should be honored to be in his presence. The very notion that he could be singled out for special penalties for a good edit, a very basic edit that stands in the article to this day, solely because you think you have an ID card for him - that is why Misplaced Pages editors must remain scrupulously anonymous, even when it means forsaking access to resources such as free Highbeam memberships or involvement in Wikimedia chapters or meetings. We must always keep our commitment to the project as a distant second to avoiding bullying by groups hostile to Misplaced Pages's mission. ArbCom, by failing to acknowledge policy against "opposition research" in the Fae case and sticking to a tautological standard that only editors who can avoid any possible detective work to their identity are entitled to remain anonymous, has given this type of attack the green light across the board. Wnt (talk) 17:34, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

Comment by usual suspect Nobody Ent

Also commenting "early" due to Hurricane Sandy.

I'll be brief -- look at the sequence. Before retraction of the edits Prioryman posts a notice on a page with lots of watchers (141 the day of the incident) that seems more concerned about sanctions than the fact that YRC used a name that appears to be pretty much an open "secret." Nobody Ent 02:35, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

Comment by Nomoskedasticity

Far too much attention has been focused on whether it "was outing" or "wasn't outing", as if there were an "ontological truth" of some sort here. For those who knew the RL identity, it looks like it wasn't outing -- but a great many editors did not know it. The effect of YRC's action, then, was outing -- and that effect could have been large, if not for the oversighting. It is also clear that this was YRC's intent. Seen that way, it was a hostile -- and thus deeply uncivil -- act, particularly when it was repeated 4 or 5 times after Prioryman first removed it. Nomoskedasticity (talk) 09:20, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

Comment by AndyTheGrump

I'll not comment on the merits of any action against Youreallycan. However, if Collect is correct in asserting that Prioryman is the author of the introduction to the online editions of Bare-faced Messiah, it would seem on the face of it that this edit , where Prioryman provides a link to the book is in violation of WP:COI, and more specifically of the Scientology arbitration case guidelines. Can I ask that Prioryman's apparent undisclosed promotion of his own work be investigated further? AndyTheGrump (talk) 16:04, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

Comment by Stephan Schulz

@Andy: I fail to see any problem with WP:COI and WP:ARBSCI. Bare-faced Messiah is a generally well-regarded biography, originally published by Penguin (under an imprint) and the Sunday Times. It is a reliable and useful source. The half-page foreword to the internet edition is very much irrelevant. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 23:41, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

Comment by Dayewalker

Please take this case. You have a user who seems to thrive on conflict who's been blocked twenty different times yet the community can't decide to cut loose, simply because the other side of the argument may or may not be manipulating names, things, events, Misplaced Pages articles, COI links, current events, and entire timelines of parallel universes. YRC's situation seems pretty easy to discern, Prioryman's is stunningly complex, and ANI isn't deep enough decide one without the other. ANI has become the quagmire it always becomes, and there's enough attention there to indicate a major problem with this situation, and enough confusion to assure everyone that nothing will happen. Please make a decision. Dayewalker (talk) 03:55, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

Statement by Deryck

This case request reveals a deeper problem which I've urged ArbCom to consider for a while. The current boundaries of "outing" are unclear: distinctions need to be made between the outing of information that have not previously been made public, and outing of information which are public on the internet (or even on past revisions of Misplaced Pages pages which haven't been deleted).

It is a basic principle in journalism and copyright that one cannot "unpublish" things that have been made public. It is extremely hypocritical that we regularly deny public figures' requests to delete Misplaced Pages articles about them, yet go heavy-handed on Wikipedians who post information about one another that were (often intentionally) made public in the past.

Of course, at a simple level, YRC's repeated attempt to re-insert personal information, after being told to stop, obviously constitutes harassment. However, at a deeper level, we clearly have double standards about what constitutes "outing" on Misplaced Pages, and I would urge ArbCom to take this case to clarify the boundaries. Deryck C. 10:07, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

Heads up from Salvio giuliano

I have just closed the remaining ANI discussion and enacted an interaction ban between Prioryman and Youreallycan. Salvio 18:05, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

Clerk notes

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

Arbitrators' opinion on hearing this matter (1/7/2/2)

Vote key: (Accept/decline/recuse/other)

• Isn't this just a wee bit premature, since the ANI discussion is still open? Jclemens (talk) 04:06, 27 October 2012 (UTC)
  • @YRC, I'd like to see diffs of Prioryman, under any incarnation, announcing his RL name on-wiki. If you have such evidence, please email it to Arbcom. Jclemens (talk) 03:05, 28 October 2012 (UTC)
  • @Prioryman, whether you've ever used your real name on-wiki is a key element of the accusation of outing "... unless that person voluntarily had posted his or her own information, or links to such information, on Misplaced Pages." being the operative clause. Hence, I'm asking a very pointed question of YRC, yet not giving him any excuse to repeat any allegedly inappropriate posting of such information. Jclemens (talk) 05:00, 28 October 2012 (UTC)
  • @Anthonyhcole, (and anyone else who has relevant information) that statement does not qualify, in that it is simply one username removing a link to a similarly named author. In neither the edit nor its summary does the user explicitly self-identify with the author. Whether or not Prioryman's RL name is reasonably easy to discern from his pattern of editing isn't as important as whether he himself ever explicitly made that linkage. Also, in the future, would everyone please direct such correspondence to the committee via email? I recognize that nothing posted in this response is suppressed, but I would still prefer to avoid the discussion of real names on-Wiki in an OUTING-relevant case. Even though I do not support retrospective suppression of previously freely disclosed information, there's also no need to add to it. Jclemens (talk) 19:36, 28 October 2012 (UTC)
  • @Collect, Ah, I see now. Yes, the combination of edits does seem to establish the user's self-disclosure. Prioryman, any comment on that? Jclemens (talk) 01:13, 29 October 2012 (UTC)
    • Decline per the community-forged remedy. This can be closed by a clerk at any time, as acceptance, even under the revised rules, is now mathematically impossible. Jclemens (talk) 02:58, 2 November 2012 (UTC)
• Why is this here? The edits in question have been suppressed, YRC has been blocked, and a ban discussion is ongoing at ANI. If there are concerns that the suppressions were made inappropriately, those concerns should be sent to the Audit Subcommittee (although it's probably worth noting that the request for suppression was discussed on the oversight mailing list prior to any action being taken). As for the rest, those are community restrictions which the community is discussing how to enforce or if they should be at all. I see no reason for the Committee to intervene in any of this, certainly not with discussion ongoing. Unless it can be demonstrated that the community is unable to answer those three questions, and the matter hasn't been rendered moot by the continued presence of YRC's block, I'm voting to decline this. Hersfold 04:18, 27 October 2012 (UTC)
• Somewhat inclined to accept this as falling on the ArbCom docket, though not necessarily as a case. The issue that would make us look at this is purely that the case stands or falls on oversighted information. ANI is competent for a lot of things, but asking people to express opinions on a ban that is based largely on edits they cannot see is tricky. No matter which way the ANI goes, this Committee will almost surely see this issue again, either after the ANI thread ends and someone comes back here, or as an appeal to BASC if ANI does ban, or just leaves Ironholds' block as-is. But for now, I sort of think wait-and-see what comes out of ANI is best. Courcelles 05:15, 27 October 2012 (UTC)
  • Conditional Accept. This is unusual, but, I'm in the sights of Sandy, and may not have power from tonight for a few days. So, if the ANI goes to the no consensus it looks like it is doing, I'm willing to accept this as a case. So, provisional accept fearing a week without power. If by some miracle I have power for the early part of next week, I'll revisit. Courcelles 20:27, 28 October 2012 (UTC)
• Recuse due to interactions with both parties. SirFozzie (talk) 07:39, 27 October 2012 (UTC)
• decline as in the process of being resolved by the community. Casliber (talk · contribs) 09:37, 27 October 2012 (UTC)
• Hold pending the ongoing ANI discussion, but I expect that the discussion will be inconclusive, in which case we may need to get involved, whether via a case or via a motion. Two random thoughts in the meantime:
  • I dislike the term "outing" as used in the Misplaced Pages context, for a number of reasons, and I know I'm not the only one. Unfortunately, in six years of trying, I haven't been able to coin a better name for it. In decisions, I've resorted to something like "revealing the identity of contributors who have chosen to edit anonymously," which is in using eleven words for one is Bradspeak at its worst. Can someone come up with a better term?
  • The ANI discussion has been marred by some of the poor practices that afflict many such discussions. New rule, effective immediately: No individual user, whether involved or uninvolved in the dispute, may post to the same ANI thread more than 85 times. Newyorkbrad (talk) 22:48, 27 October 2012 (UTC)
    • Decline as otherwise resolved. As several people have observed, it's not quite clear why two editors who don't want to interact with each other need a formal community sanction in order to resolve not to interact with each other ... but if it works, fine. I will add that while Youreallycan narrowly escaped a community ban (or a case before this Committee that could have resulted in a ban), his conduct toward Prioryman was gratuitous and objectionable and should never be repeated, vis-a-vis him or any other user. I will also add that Prioryman should do his best to steer well clear, not only of Youreallycan, but also of a handful of others with whom he has been in conflict. I hope not to see any aspect of this entire debacle come before us again. Newyorkbrad (talk) 21:30, 1 November 2012 (UTC)
      • I've received Youreallycan's e-mail have replied to it. I don't think it will be helpful to him to post on-wiki again regarding this soon-to-be-closed request. Newyorkbrad (talk) 22:30, 1 November 2012 (UTC)
• Recuse. AGK 17:05, 28 October 2012 (UTC)
• Hold, per NYB. If the ANI discussion does peter out, I would prefer to start a full case, looking at the behaviour of all the usual suspects who seem to be connected to this kerfuffle. Elen of the Roads (talk) 17:49, 28 October 2012 (UTC)
  • Decline Let's try the community remedy first Bold text
• Decline - I gather that Youreallycan and Prioryman have agreed a voluntary mutual interaction ban. In this context, I think we should allow some time to see if this arrangement is sufficient to solve the problem. PhilKnight (talk) 12:55, 30 October 2012 (UTC)
• Decline per Phil. Parties working things out voluntarily is always an option that should be given time to see if it's effective. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs 13:39, 30 October 2012 (UTC)
• This is very close to the sort of dispute that ArbCom is intended to deal with: a user who has been a problem for some time, and which the community are split over in deciding how to deal with. It is a waste of the community's time and energy to have to focus on problematic users, especially when the same users crop up again and again. However, ArbCom is not intended to be a replacement for community decisions - indeed, it should not be forgotten that ArbCom is a part of the community and the Committee members are also community members; what ArbCom is for is when the community are completely unable to resolve a matter and so ask some members of the community (ArbCom) to make a final and binding decision in order to stop the disruption. It's not that the Committee will make a better or fairer or more intelligent decision - simply that whatever decision we make will (by policy) be accepted by all (bar the necessary criticism to ensure we are not sloppy in our decision making). However, while this matter is close to what ArbCom should accept, the community are still actively working through solutions, so we should wait to see what transpires. It looks like an interaction ban is agreeable to both parties, and that is what the community are voting on, and appears to be getting consensus; so I think it's appropriate to hold deciding on taking or rejecting this until the community have either resolved or failed to resolve the matter.
• I note that there have been several case requests this year while the community are still actively engaged in reaching a solution. It is generally better all round to wait until community discussions have been resolved before opening a case request. SilkTork 09:19, 31 October 2012 (UTC)
  • Decline, now that an interaction ban has been agreed. SilkTork 20:10, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

Race and intelligence 2

Initiated by Cla68 (talk) at 22:24, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

Involved parties

• Cla68 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log), filing party
• Mathsci (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• The Devil's Advocate (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Zeromus1 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Collect (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• MastCell (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)
• Timotheus Canens (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)
• Future Perfect at Sunrise (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)
• NuclearWarfare (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)
• Nyttend (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)
• Wee Curry Monster (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Confirmation that all parties are aware of the request

• Mathsci
• The Devil's Advocate
• Zeromus1
• Collect
• MastCell
• Timotheus Canens
• Future Perfect at Sunrise
• NuclearWarfare
• Nyttend
• Wee Curry Monster

Confirmation that other steps in dispute resolution have been tried

• Misplaced Pages:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Race and intelligence
• Administrators Noticeboard request - 3 June 2012
• Arbitration Enforcement (AE) request - 6 June 2012
• AE request - 12 June 2012
• AE request 22 September 2012
• AE request - 22 October 2012

Statement by Cla68

In the May 2012 modification to the Misplaced Pages:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Race and intelligence, Mathsci was admonished for BATTLEFIELD conduct. The conduct has continued and has caused unnecessary disruption. Unfortunately, Mathsci's conduct has been enabled by the actions of a few administrators.

Evidence in the case was presented that Mathsci had been wikihounded by a now banned editor. Since the case closed, administrators, notably Future Perfect at Sunrise, have done a good job at reverting edits made by the banned editor and blocking the IPs used for the edits. Nevertheless, Mathsci has repeatedly reinserted himself into the conflict with the banned editor, including reverting comments on editor's talk pages, then requesting administrator intervention when editors disagree with his actions. In the AN thread linked above, he complained about an administrator (Nyttend) who objected to his conduct. Although Mathsci has stated he will no longer edit the Race and Intelligence articles, he still takes an active role in policing them and pursuing involved editors with which he does not agree. In the AE requests linked to above, evidence was presented that he has wikihounded The Devil's Advocate. Collect was formally warned when he had done nothing more than criticize Mathsci's actions, and the warning was logged in the case sanctions section.

The most recent AE request was closed yesterday. Mathsci opened the request after interjecting himself in an unrelated AE request in which The Devil's Advocate was involved. Evidence was then presented in that request that Mathsci was mischaracterizing editor's actions and using their disagreement with his interpretation of an ArbCom action in order to push for their sanction. During the request, Mathsci selectively reverted a suspected banned edit from my user talk page. When I complained, he again used the tactic of saying that I was violating an ArbCom mandate and pushed for my sanction (a debate between I and Mathsci in my evidence section was hatted by Future Perfect at Sunrise). Once I realized that he was using a baiting/bear poking tactic with me that he had used before, as the above threads illustrate, I provided evidence of it (all the links/diffs are in that evidence). The evidence includes a link to an AE action that Mathsci attempted to initiate against me for disagreeing with him, which Future Perfect at Sunrise speedily closed. Five minutes later, Wee Curry Monster hatted my evidence section, then, about an hour later, Timotheus Canens imposed one-way interaction bans on me, The Devil's Advocate, and Zeromus1 and closed the request without allowing time for the other admins who had commented to comment on the new evidence. In a similar example, one of the AE requests linked above, MastCell decided to block an editor before that editor had even responded to the AE request. As far as I know, I have never edited the Race and Intelligence topic area.

Mathsci states repeatedly that the stress from the Race and Intelligence topic area has caused him heart trouble and other kinds of hardship. Yet, he repeatedly involves himself in pushing for administrative action against involved editors, actions against banned editors, and aggressively pursuing administrative action against editors who have concerns with his behavior. If he really does have a heart problem, I believe some intervention may be necessary before he harms himself, which is of course more serious than the disruption he is causing with his continued, BATTLEFIELD conduct. For example, since the imposing of the interaction ban yesterday, when The Devil's Advocate asked the sanctioning administrator for clarification on the admin's talk page Mathsci responded with a confrontational comment. Mathsci responded to this case request by filing another AE request.

If the case is accepted, I believe the evidence will show that:

• Mathsci is treating the issue with the banned user as an ongoing battle that he must win through his own, constant, personal intervention
• Mathsci wikihounds, hectors, baits, and pokes editors who disagree with or criticize his actions
• Two or three admins have been effectively rubber-stamping his AE requests, (such as MastCell approving that block before the target even had a chance to defend himself) and intimidating or unfairly sanctioning editors who get in the way, such as the formal warning to Collect, almost blocking The Devil's Advocate based on shaky evidence, then imposing one-way interaction bans instead of mutual interaction bans

• I'm kind of confused as to how someone could counsel one of the parties here for being too aggressive, yet at the same time say that only a one-way ban is better. If one checks the AN and AE links above in the "prior dispute resolution" attempts section, plus some supporting statements by others here on this page, I think one will note that one of the parties here is extremely agressive and confrontational in pursuit of editors with whom he disagrees. AE admins, please compare the measured, calm responses from The Devil's Advocate, Zeromus, and SightWatcher on this page with the behavior of the other party. I believe one of the reasons that Treveylan was banned was because he violated his one-way interaction ban to warn TDA of the wikihounding he should expect from having disagreed with Mathsci somewhere, a warning which appears to have come true. Cla68 (talk) 13:37, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

Responses to Arbitrators

• SirFozzie, as far as I know, I haven't filed any other ArbCom requests or AE actions against Mathsci. If I have, someone please point it out to me. I believe most, if not almost all, of the AN and AE requests linked to above were initiated by Mathsci. Cla68 (talk) 04:43, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

• Ah, I understand what you mean. The problem is, in the most recent AE request, Mathsci had almost convinced the participating admins into blocking The Devil's Advocate (TDA), even though the evidence Mathsci presented had serious problems when examined in any great detail. Somebody has to speak up when someone is about to be unfairly trampled. And yes, I do believe the evidence shows that that was the case (see TDA's statement below, which I think is fairly clear). Is it always fair or accurate to label the people who speak up as holding grudges? Cla68 (talk) 05:51, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

• AGK, I agree with you. If interaction bans are going to be used as a reactive remedy for AE requests, then, as this diff shows, they should be mutual, not one way. Cla68 (talk) 11:19, 24 October 2012 (UTC)
• Committee, based on this, do you think it might be a good idea to ask Mathcsi to stay away from Spar-Stangled at least until the SPI is concluded? I think labeling someone's user page as a banned editor's sock when an SPI has so far been inconclusive lends support to two of the allegations I made above about Mathsci's behavior. Cla68 (talk) 22:58, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

Statement by User:Collect

As noted, I have essentially zero connection to the R&I controversy, and found the "warning" issued to me to be incomprehensible. I would leave it to individual editors to try explaining precisely why it was made at the time, though I suspect Cla68 may, indeed, be correct in his assessment thereof. If any motions are made, I would appreciate one removing my name from the "sanctions" page at this point. Cheers. Collect (talk) 00:28, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

TC misstates the actual facts behind the "warning" since my posts regarding a case were on point, and actually further demonstrate litigiousness on the part of Mathsci, and had absolutely no connection whatsoever with R&I at all -- in fact the use of such a "warning" is against Misplaced Pages policy that some actual rationale be given other than "he attacked a person who was routinely attacking others." In any event - the presence of my name on the R&I board is not only risible, it is a sign that the complaint here about that editor is proper and well-founded, alas. BTW, thet TC finds that having one's name mentioned in a case is a "transparently weak justification" for giving a comment is also risible utterly. That sort of claim would mean that one could say anything about anyone at all and charge then with a "transparently weak justification" when they dare to give a comment. I find such a claim to be contrary to the five pillars of Misplaced Pages ab initio - the aim is to edit in a collaborative and collegial manner, not to charge then with "transparently weak justification" for daring to post where their name has already been brought up. Cheers.

Statement by Wee Curry Monster

I have no idea why I have been named as a party, my only role in the matter was to hat a thread with a suggestion that Cla68 drop the stick. He had been warned about his comments and as a neutral 3rd party who unfortunately happened by, it seemed obvious to this bystander he seemed to have a fixation on Mathsci, for what seemed a bizarre reason to me (ie that Mathsci following policy was somehow involved in a vendetta against a banned user). My only motivation in doing so was to try and stop an editor who I previously thought of as a good content creator, self-destructing and being sanctioned. Frankly I wish I hadn't bothered, I would urge arbcom not to take this on as a waste of everyone's time. Cla68 received more than fair warning where his conduct was headed and I am unsurprised it ended as it did. A good close in my book, lets not waste any more editing time on this drama fest. Remember the encyclopedia we're supposed to be building people? Wee Curry Monster talk 00:54, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

Addendum

An addendum resulting from a conversation with Cla68 yesterday evening. See , where I invited anyone who thought my intervention inappropirate, including Cla68, to simply revert me. I believe I made it plain why I hatted the conversation, that I considered Cla68 had clearly lost perspective and appeared to have a fixation on Mathsci. From a personal perspective, it saddens me to see an editor who I considered in good standing at WP:MILHIST for his work on WWII self-destructing like this. Please could someone hit him with a clue stick and shut down this drama fest quickly. Wee Curry Monster talk 09:56, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

Statement by Nyttend

Ditto the first half of WCM's first sentence; I'm quite confused. I've never even read a summary of the original race and intelligence case; I assume that it's something about an alleged correlation between people of some races being more or less intelligent than people of other races, and if that be the issue, I've never edited anything close to that. Nyttend (talk) 04:02, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

Statement by Fut.Perf.

Why, oh why can't people just shut the f... up?

This filing is a breach of the ban just imposed, and I hope that arbitrators will have the sense to decline it speedily. There is a difference between an appeal (which of course Cla is entitled to file, on AE or here), and this kind of request for a full case. An appeal would be narrowly restricted in scope to discussing the justification of this particular sanction, and would involve only Cla and the administrator(s) who imposed it. But what he's asking for instead is a whole big case with everybody involved, with the scope of discussing not Cla's sanction, but Mathsci and everybody else. Mathsci and everybody else hacking on each other again and again is precisely what these sanctions were meant to stop, so no, "Cla must not discuss Mathsci" means precisely what it says, and it does include Arbcom pages.

For the same reason, I hope Arbcom members will leave no doubt about it that this request is also not a free pass for the other sanctioned editors to misuse it for resuming their behaviour here. Please close this down quickly. Every day this whole ugliness is allowed to keep boiling is a day too much. Fut.Perf. ☼ 05:56, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

Addendum: At this time, I strongly oppose the idea brought up by some arbs, of making the interaction ban two-way, for two reasons:

1. It unduly and unnecessary interferes with the discretion of administrators at AE. If the committee trusts us with administrating discretionary sanctions, it should not arbitrarily override admins' decisions without good reason. Good reason, in this case, would be concrete evidence – and not just somebody's guesswork – that the one-way interaction ban is unworkable. That would be the case if Mathsci were seen unduly taking advantage of the situation, e.g. by initiating unwanted contact with the other parties, hounding them, etc. Such evidence does not exist, because since the AE decision Mathsci evidently has not engaged in any contacts with Cla68 or any of the others beyond this process, which was initiated by Cla68, not by him. For now, let's see how Mathsci behaves when left alone. If and when he becomes a problem, that can be swiftly dealt with.
2. Such an add-on sanction would effectively reward Cla68's misuse of the Arbcom process in filing this case. What we have here is a pattern that I'm sure we've all seen in other cases before, and it needs to be stopped: (1) Editor A is engaged in a pattern of inappropriate conflict with editor B. (2) Editor A gets an interaction ban against B. (3) Instead of disengaging from B as intended, A files an Arbcom case against him. (4) As a result, A now gets a free ticket out of jail: the Arbcom process offers him a privileged forum where he can continue exactly what he was asked to stop – pursuing his conflict with B –, at least for the week or so until case acceptance/dismissal, if not for the whole duration of a case; moreover, he gains immunity from administrative enforcement because the admins who imposed the sanctions will now be listed as "parties" to an Arbcom case (and other previously uninvolved admins will be unwilling to do anything for fear of interfering with Arbcom). Finally, while A runs only a small risk of ending up with a heavier sanction than the one he already has, with only a bit of luck he may end up with the satisfaction of having his opponent sanctioned too.

The only reasonable course of action against this pattern is for Arbcom to make it a rule that such case filings in breach of an existing interaction ban be thrown out summarily and speedily. Of course people must have a right of appeal, but an appeal is something different from what happened here. An interaction ban does not mean: please shift your conflict with editor B to another, more formal venue, such as Arbcom. What an interaction ban means is: you have no business pursuing conflicts with B at all, anywhere. "Disengage" means just that: disengage. (Or, more directly: "shut up" means just that, "shut up".) Arbs, please restore some sanity here. Fut.Perf. ☼ 11:48, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

Statement by The Devil's Advocate

For a variety of reasons I don't really want to participate here, it gives me a headache just thinking about having to deal with even more of this drama, but I think we should all understand how this recent situation went down. After weeks of me having no contact with Mathsci, not even so much as speaking his name as I recall, he suddenly decided to accuse me of tag-teaming and meatpuppetry without a shred of evidence at an AE case where I was not involved, an AE case that concerned an article I have not even edited. I responded to ask him not to make such serious claims without evidence and he reacts to that civil request by bringing up all the garbage from the request for amendment that ended weeks before his comment and making a bunch of other bizarre accusations. At one point he accuses me of putting forward a "grotesque conspiracy theory" that he was lying about his heart condition as part of some "morbid game" on my part, despite me plainly acknowledging his health problems in the comment directly preceding that one. In fact, what I stated was that he keeps pursuing me at multiple noticeboards and I did not in any way try to cast doubt on the seriousness of his health issues.

After his attempt to hijack that case didn't pan out, Mathsci initiated an AE case against me and Zeromus claiming it was enforcing the new remedy on restoring edits from banned editors, even though neither of us had done such a thing. One of the two diffs concerning me was me clarifying on Zeromus' talk page that the new restriction does not prohibit interactions with any editors, including Trev, after Mathsci claimed it did. Mathsci claimed this was me encouraging people to talk to Trev. The other diff he cited was a comment from several weeks ago at the request for amendment where I stated that Trev had requested via e-mail that I file an RfC/U against Mathsci, but that before Trev even made this suggestion I had already considered such action may prove necessary at some point should Mathsci's conduct continue unabated. Mathsci claimed that diff showed me threatening to file an RfC/U on Trev's behalf. Neither of these explanations were accurate descriptions of my comments. Beyond that, Mathsci left additional comments making all sorts of accusations about harassment and proxy-editing that he made no effort to substantiate with actual evidence.

This was just forum-shopping after Mathsci's numerous attempts to get me sanctioned during the request for amendment didn't pan out, plain and simple. In the AE case I provided the very same diff above demonstrating that Mathsci was the one who started this recent mess by trying to hijack another AE case to go after me on completely frivolous claims of tag-teaming and meat-puppetry. For any admin to take Mathsci's vexatious, evidence-starved request for enforcement seriously was a major lapse in judgment.--The Devil's Advocate (talk) 07:10, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

Let's clear things up a bit here. The only reason I mentioned Trev's request for an RfC/U was to be clear that if I should pursue such a measure in the future it would be because I felt it was necessary because of the conduct I had witnessed and not because anyone else requested it. I told Zeromus that the recently-passed restriction did not prohibit interactions with banned editors or Trev because other editors were seemingly trying to mislead Zeromus into thinking that interacting with Trev or banned editors was a violation of the restriction and thus could lead to sanctions. That is essentially the whole basis for the indefinite one-way interaction ban.

While I don't expect or want an arbitration case on this matter, would the Arbs consider putting forward a motion on this interaction ban, either to lift it or make it mutual? Honestly, I think any sort of interaction ban was pointless as I am more than happy to ignore Mathsci as I did in the weeks preceding this latest flare-up and in the numerous instances before that where he showed up at unrelated noticeboards to go after me. Hell, I ignored the vast majority of his comments about me on the request for amendment as well. Still, if Mathsci was just prevented from interacting with me as well I would be willing to accept the sanction, though I would prefer if it had a time limit rather than being indefinite.--The Devil's Advocate (talk) 16:09, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

Future and Tim are exhibiting questionable judgment in their defense of the one-way nature of the interaction ban. The claim that they supported allowing Mathsci to interact with us when we could not reciprocate because they wanted "to see how he behaves if and when he is finally left alone" seems to be completely ignoring my statements and evidence at the AE case where I plainly said that I had ignored Mathsci for weeks until he tried to hijack an AE case to go after me with spurious accusations (see evidence above). In particular, Future had previously suggested that Mathsci had followed me to unrelated articles in an inappropriate manner so his comments are even more questionable.--The Devil's Advocate (talk) 13:58, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

Elen, I think we can safely say that the star-spangled account is somebody's sock, most likely Echigo mole, and without question the comment below is just disruptive trolling on an arbitration page. The last thing alone is enough to justify removing the comment and blocking the account if you aren't yet satisfied that this is Echigo mole. Knowing who the account belongs to is more of a formality at this point and doesn't justify keeping such absurd accusations on an arbitration page.--The Devil's Advocate (talk) 21:33, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

A little less conversation, a little more action please. All this aggravation ain't satisfactioning me.--The Devil's Advocate (talk) 03:20, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

Future and Tim aren't relenting on their position in spite of the evidence I provided above that directly contradicts their alleged basis for supporting the restriction and in spite of my subsequent response to them noting that evidence. Would they please explain why they apparently think the evidence above doesn't point to a likelihood that Mathsci will abuse a one-way restriction? I mean, the whole reason Mathsci is going after me is because I provided evidence and argumentation that he had abused another one-way restriction with Trev in order to get that editor indeffed.--The Devil's Advocate (talk) 18:20, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

@AGK If your suggestion to not amend the one-way interaction ban at this time is referring to Mathsci's professed intention to stop contributing then I find that acceptable, but if he should return to editing I would very much not want a situation where Mathsci is free to confront and provoke me as he sees fit, while I am unable to report him for it. The admins at AE should have been more than familiar with the evidence that Mathsci was initiating incidents with me as evidence was presented right at the outset of the AE case and another was familiar with a previous such incident. Please make it mutual.--The Devil's Advocate (talk) 17:33, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

Mathsci plainly stated in this very discussion that he had talked to Calisber about exercising his right to vanish and made numerous other comments suggesting that he was going to stop contributing altogether. I fail to see how I have misrepresented anything.--The Devil's Advocate (talk) 22:04, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

I commented on the RFAR talk page a few hours ago in response to Future's claims about this case not being used to address the sanction in question to clarify that I had been doing just that and asking him to address what I have said in this case. Mathsci commented just two hours later above my comment in a way that made it look like I was responding to him so I moved my comment up so it would be clear that was not the case. Unfortunately, the diff makes it look like I moved Mathsci's comment instead, but I moved my comment up to avoid the appearance that I was responding to Mathsci.--The Devil's Advocate (talk) 03:26, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

NW, you are a named party to the case and were specifically involved in the AE case that led to the one-way interaction bans that are being disputed. I see nothing in the statement by Zeromus that is fundamentally different in nature from what Cla68 was saying and the Arbs plainly stated that Cla68's comments were appropriate. Seems to me that it is wildly inappropriate and completely inconsistent with WP:ADMINACCT for a WP:INVOLVED admin such as yourself to be collapsing relevant statements and evidence in a de-facto ArbCom appeal of an AE case where you were pushing for sanctions at the duplicitous request of an opposing party. Please undo your action and formally recuse yourself from your clerking duties with regards to the case. Let uninvolved Arbs or clerks handle these types of dubious complaints.--The Devil's Advocate (talk) 21:01, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

The comment Mathsci was complaining about directly mentioned his conduct towards me as a basis for changing the one-way interaction bans to mutual interaction bans. It did not actually involve any personal attacks as the claims about Mathsci's conduct towards me were backed up by diffs and everything else was quite civil. Mathsci was making a spurious claim of personal attacks to get a WP:INVOLVED admin to redact evidence of Mathsci's misconduct towards me.--The Devil's Advocate (talk) 22:46, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

Noting for the record the comments Mathsci contributed to this case that he has now removed.--The Devil's Advocate (talk) 03:27, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

Statement by Zeromus1

I know I'm expected to provide a statement here, but I won't be able to if I'm not allowed to comment on the case's other parties. I assume interaction bans have an exception for commenting on arbitration requests in which I'm a party, especially as The Devil's Advocate already has done so.

I think that Arbcom should accept this case, but it should be called something other than Race and Intelligence II. A lot of the editors involved, such as Nyttend and Collect, appear to have not edited articles in the R&I topic area. The focus of Cla68's complaint is Mathsci's apparent battleground attitude, and the way admins seem to enable it by sanctioning any editor who Mathsci reports without carefully examining the situation. If this is the case, then it can't be resolved at AE, because the way AE requests are handled is part of the problem. But the problem also applies to more topic areas than R&I, so if Arbcom accepts the case its name should reflect that.

In this amendment request made by The Devil's Advocate, nine editors commented that this was something which Arbcom should address, most of them editors who have not participated in R&I articles as far as I know. But Arbcom chose to not address it, and instead addressed the (mostly) separate issue of Echigo Mole's socking. In that amendment request, some people also commented that if Arbcom did not address the concerns of the community, this conflict would likely continue to expand and come back to Arbcom again and again. That appears to be what's happening now. Considering the multiple arbitration requests there have been about this conflict already, I think Arbcom should carefully consider, can the community really be expected to resolve it without arbitration? And if so, where? (Certainly not at AE.) Up to this point, the effect of Arbcom's reluctance to take on this conflict seems to be that there's a new arbitration request about it from a new group of editors every few months, and I see no reason to assume that would be different in the future. Zeromus1 (talk) 10:22, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

• I am a little troubled by Mathsci's comment here, "I will not respond now except privately through you or other AE administrators." This comment appears to be saying he can get AE admins to post what he wants in this thread by contacting them privately. Isn't part of the point of AE that admins there are supposed to be impartial judges of the situation? The fact that some admins are willing to post what he tells them to seems to imply they aren't truly impartial, which might explain what Cla68 has complained about that they effectively rubber-stamped his AE report about us. Zeromus1 (talk) 04:26, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

• Mathsci, how am I "twisting your words"? What does it mean for you to say you are "responding privately through AE administrators", except that you privately tell them what to post here? Zeromus1 (talk) 09:51, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

I recently took a look at the past amendment requests listed at Wikipedia_talk:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Race_and_intelligence, and apparently this conflict has been ongoing for almost two years. The behavior in question and one of the parties never changes, although the group of editors that he's in conflict with has changed a few times. This issue was brought before ArbCom in November 2010: February 2011: August 2011: September 2011: , and July 2012. That doesn't count the review that happened this spring, which would be a sixth time, and also doesn't include the dozen or more AE threads. The issue that's before ArbCom now has come before them an average of once every four months for the past two years. I think it's apparent that if the committee decides to take no action, this cycle will continue indefinitely, either involving the current group of editors or a different group. I think the committee should carefully consider whether allowing that to happen really is what they want. Zeromus1 (talk) 01:29, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

• Mathsci, you point out here that most of the editors you've been in conflicts with have eventually quit the project or been blocked, and I can see what you're saying is right. But what I'm saying is that these conflicts always seem to go the same way. First you choose an editor you don't like and follow them to various unrelated parts of the project. In the case of the Devil's Advocate, you followed him to unrelated threads at WQA BLPN AE and brought him and me up in an AE thread that had nothing to do with us or you. After a while, whoever you're doing this to starts to react, and then they get sanctioned or blocked by AE or ArbCom. That's what happened to me, The Devil's Advocate, Cla68, and TrevelyanL85A2. (Here is where TrevelyanL85A2 explained how this happened in his own case.) A lot of the time admins seem to think the easiest way to resolve the conflict is by sanctioning whatever current editor your conflict is with, and maybe ArbCom thinks that also. But what can be seen with a big-picture perspective is that this does nothing to prevent the same cycle repeating with whatever editor you choose next. If it were enough to always sanction the other party, and just give you warnings and admonishments, the same cycle wouldn't have repeated with at least eight different editors over the past two years. Zeromus1 (talk) 05:03, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

You've challenged me to provide diffs of this in regard to the other editors you brought up. I'll present some evidence about it if ArbCom accepts this as a case, but I'm not sure if this is the right time or place to present it. Zeromus1 (talk) 09:32, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

Statement by TC

I broadly agree with Fut. Perf., and do not have much to add to his comment. I'll just add a few points:

• Collect was warned because he hijacked an AE appeal by TrevelyanL85A2 with unrelated complaints on Mathsci with a transparently weak justification (that his name was mentioned in passing in the appeal). He was free to start a new complaint on Mathsci, but not derail an existing one.
• As to the sanction on Cla68, AE surely has the inherent power to sanction editors for disruption on its own case pages. Cla68 was already warned by Fut.Perf. to disengage; when he refused to heed that warning, resorting to sanctions is necessary to control the disruption on the AE process.
• As to the one-way nature of the interaction bans, I'll just quote Fut. Perf.'s comment on his talk page, which is exactly my intent:

Well, I'd say to test that we first need to see how he behaves if and when he is finally left alone. If he misuses that then, we can still add something to the sanctions. Fut.Perf. ☼ 06:08, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

Also, @Penwhale: If you are expressing an opinion on the merits of the case ("which is odd", "one-sided IBAN never seems to work"), I don't think it's appropriate for you to continue acting in a clerk capacity. T. Canens (talk) 10:25, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

I strongly agree with Fut.Perf.'s additional comment, especially his first point. If arbcom is going to modify AE sanctions based on nothing more than a hunch that the particular sanction employed may not work, then the word "discretion" becomes meaningless. I, for one, would certainly reconsider my participation at AE if the committee is going to micromanage every sanction applied by motion. Why spend time reading and evaluating AE requests when arbcom will just substitute their judgment for yours instead? T. Canens (talk) 13:01, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

@NE: I don't mind being overturned. What I do mind is being overturned on a flimsy rationale that "two-way ban is more likely to be successful". In handing out the one-way bans, I decided that there's a good chance that one-way bans would be sufficient to address the issue. No arb has yet bothered to explain exactly why in this case a one-way ban is so unlikely to be successful as to be outside my discretion, or why the fact that I'm planning to keep an eye on it and make it two-way if necessary is not enough to address any potential for gaming from the one-way ban. All I see are generalized statements about how one-way bans are easily gamed (without any explanation how Mathsci is likely to game it) and are less likely to be successful than two-way bans. Well, arsenic trioxide is a deadly poison, but is also be used to treat certain diseases. If this committee is going to modify AE actions based on essentially nothing more than a collective hunch, then it can enforce its own decisions. T. Canens (talk) 11:46, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

Statement by {Party 10}

Statement by {Party 11}

Statement by Count Iblis

So, what is this dispute about? Count Iblis (talk) 22:29, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

Cla68, so if I understand it correctly, your involvement in the topic area as far as editing articles is concerned, is minimal; the dispute is primarily about dealing with banned editors like when they post on user talk pages as happened in the recent incident? Count Iblis (talk) 00:32, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

Question and comments by TheRedPenOfDoom

I thought the filer was indefinitely prohibited from commenting on, or interacting with, User:Mathsci, broadly construed, anywhere on Misplaced Pages. You may appeal this ban at AE or to the arbitration committee at WP:A/R/CA. This does not appear to be either of the approved forums for addressing the filers concerns.-- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 23:47, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

If this is the standard procedure, then fine. By the wording of the notice, however, the filing here seems to be jumping to one of the most vexatious methods of interacting in an attempt to bypass the AE sanctions. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 00:06, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

I support the analysis and comments of Fut.Perf. That this has been allowed to linger in a broad manner and not merely been swiftly shut down or limited to a review of Cla's ban is (yet another) pretty poor reflection on the process here. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 21:49, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

Comment from The ed17

@RedPen, this seems to be an appropriate venue for the filer, despite the nominal restriction. Arbitration enforcement was tried (and failed, in the filer's view), and this isn't a request for clarification or an amendment. Ed  23:59, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

Statement by MBisanz

Red Pen seems to point out a technical flaw in the filing that I'll defer to Arbcom on depending on how rigidly they want to interpret the rules. That said, I think the Committee should just make it so IBans done under this case are mutual, not unilateral and that only the individual upon whom the ban is personally placed may appeal the ban. This would prevent professional advocates or opposing parties from gaming the system to negate the effect of the decision. MBisanz 00:05, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

Statement by Johnuniq

Rather than finding matters than might need arbitration, those interested in Mathsci should empirically determine whether any perceived battlefield conduct would be apparent if Mathsci were left alone. Mathsci only commented on Cla68 because the latter chose to make a statement at AE (diff—a complaint that Mathsci had removed a message from a banned user at Cla68's talk). That statement followed a comment at the same AE made by Cla68 two days earlier with the implication that Mathsci's behavior should be examined (diff). It may be the case that a different strategy for dealing with socks should be employed, but blaming the victim is never helpful, and WP:DENY is the best strategy. Particularly given the history, why would anyone consider that the removal of "a harmless remark" warranted a statement at AE? Johnuniq (talk) 00:47, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

Comment by Mathsci

This request has not been made in good faith and is tenuously related to WP:ARBR&I, despite the title. It has been made when I was known to be in ill health. It includes claims that reverting or making an SPI report on a banned wikihounder (with serious outing issues) is a form of battle. It has not been used as an appeal of AE sanctions to higher authorities by the sanctioned parties, Cla68, The Devil's Advocate and Zeromus1. It has been used for making personal attacks on me, unrelated to the RfAr. In particular I have been blamed for sanctions or bans proposed, discussed and enacted by arbitrators and administrators. Mathsci (talk) 02:49, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

Comment by Tijfo098

The TLDR version: Cla68 started to attack Mathsci in an AE thread in which Cla68 showed up after being canvassed from a tor exit node . FPaS tried to hat the conversation , but since Cla68 would not drop the WP:STICK , he was banned by T. Canens from commenting on Mathsci . The last thing we need are enablers for Echigo Mole's trolling; he was simultaneously active at that WP:AE, probably with two accounts and several IPs. There is a SPI ongoing. Tijfo098 (talk) 08:10, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

@SirFozzie: I think Mathsci should take the time to file a WP:LTA report on Echigo Mole, so others can have easier access to the background info. Mathsci's behavior in this case has been a bit sub-optimal, first by making an aside about TDA, Zeromous1 and YvelinFRance in a R&I case involving a different group of editors (which degenerated in a large side-conversation, but was eventually filed as a separate report) and then by filing an AE thread on Cla68 (eventually merged with the ongoing one on TDA and Zeromus1 .) I suspect this was a contributing factor to Cla68's continued presence at AE. But I think Mathsci's behavior is not out of the ordinary and is perfectly understandable under the circumstances, so I don't think it warrants further committee attention. Finally, Mathsci filed a 2nd AE request against Cla68 , this time for Cla68's filing of the present Arbitration request; AE admins can deal with that request on its merits. Tijfo098 (talk) 09:13, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

Request: Since nobody seems to want to block User:Spar-stangled, we might as well add him as a party per . Tijfo098 (talk) 16:10, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

Ok, I see he is blocked now. Tijfo098 (talk) 09:29, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

Comment by Enric Naval

This request completely fails to address the real reason for the ibans. The Devil Advocate's was restoring a edit by a Echigo Mole's socks, and telling Zeromus1 that it's ok to do so and that Mathsci doesn't have any right to undo the edit of a banned sock in someone else's page. The Devil's Advocate was explaining to Zeromus1 that an indef blocked editor is not banned, and "The restriction also does not prohibit interactions with such editors, only restoring their edits". Here TDA is missing the goal of the last motion, where the goal is discouraging banned socks from participating in wikipedia. Encouraging Zerosmu1 to interact with indef-blocked editors, for that matter is bad advice and it's just throwing gasoline to the flames. Specially when the edit had already been identified as originating from Echigo Mole, who is a banned sockmaster, not from an indefblocked editor. Zerosmus1 seems to have believed completely this incorrect idea that it's OK to interact with editors that have been indef-blocked from editing wikipedia, and TDA is reinforcing this belief. And Cla68 was basically defending the whole thing and attacking Mathsci. Cla68 seems to have lost the perspective, in his request he claims that this comment by Mathsci is confrontional, when its actually helpful and contains good advice. --Enric Naval (talk) 13:10, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

When the problems originate just from one of the parties, the logical sanction is a 1-way interaction ban. You should establish a 2-way iban only when both parties are responsible for causing the problem, which is not the case here. AE es perfectly well-equipped to upgrade to a 2-way iban if necessary. Please don't start applying gratuitous sanctions to people who haven't earned them, just because it's "fair" or "unfair" to someone who has made merits to receive a sanction. Please don't repeat one of those cases where you simply ban a few people in both "sides" without looking at who is really causing the problems, thus rewarding the troublemakers. That motion would just make play right into Echigo Mole's hands. --Enric Naval (talk) 13:02, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

Comment by Penwhale

This was moved from below, by myself, at requests towards me. I think filers were asking "How can editors, who did not edit articles related to the original request, be put on sanctions from that case?", which is odd. Furthermore, one-sided IBAN never seems to work (especially when stalking is not really the case here). As to this case's filing - well, T. Canens specifically said in his post that it can be appealed to AC, so personally I think it's okay...? Either way, one-sided IBAN does not work, in my opinion, and creates cans of worms. - Penwhale | 14:58, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

• @Heim: As far as I could remember, when IBANs are issued by ArbCom, two-way IBANs (instead of one-way) are issued, generally, to prevent gaming. Remember that IBANs include replying to editors which generally implies that editors much work in different areas (as IBAN will prevent them from working on the same article together, generally speaking). One-way IBAN, however, could allow editors to "drive" others out (if you couldn't reply to me, and I add a comment to anything, would prevent you from refuting me - unless, of course, it's discussion about the ban itself, etc). I'm not saying MathSci would do it, but if you stare down the center you'd get why IBAN generally needs to go both ways. Also - IBAN isn't technically a "sanction" in this sense, or at least I don't think it is. I feel it's more "people need to take a step back from the center and carry on with their separate lives" - without destroying each other. It's not a good analogy, but it would have to do, for now. - Penwhale | 05:22, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

Comment by SightWatcher

As Mathsci has mentioned me by name in his statement above, I assume I'm allowed to comment here.

Could the mutual interaction bans please cover me and TrevelyanL85A2 as well? We're also under one-way interaction bans, and are basically in the same boat as Cla68, Zeromus1 and The Devil's Advocate. Even when I've avoided both Mathsci and the R&I topic for many months at a time, he hasn't stopped paying attention to me and seeking sanctions against me. TrevelyanL85A2 gave more detail about our situation in this comment. This situation makes me very uncomfortable at Misplaced Pages, and is part of why I haven't edited much for the past few months. I have no desire to return to the R&I topic area, but making my interaction ban with Mathsci mutual would make it easier for me to return to constructive editing elsewhere.

Comment by SB_Johnny

Mathsci's comment above describing Cla68's request as "a cynical escalation by a user who knows I am in ill health and wants to cause me even more distress for a nonexistent dispute and non-existent incident" is concerning on a number of levels. I suggest enacting the ban 2 way quickly and without drama, and perhaps revisiting when he has recovered from his procedure.

Comment by Heim

I too am rather concerned about the arbs' statements in favour of making this a mutual iban. As FutPerf and TC say, it's undermining the AE admins with no refutation of their actions, suggesting there's no good reason at all. I can say that I too would rethink my willingness to participate at AE if ArbCom's going to micromanage like this. That's a mild loss coming from me, since I rarely have time to, anyway, but you really ought to listen to TC, at least, since he's one of the more active admins there. At the least, if the Arbs are truly convinced one-way ibans don't work, they ought to spell that out in the discretionary sanctions.

I also am rather concerned the committee discussing placing Mathsci under sanctions, as far as I can tell, purely on procedural grounds. Sanctions leave a mark on your record, whether deserved or not, and no one should be tarred with that brush without good behavioural grounds, which I haven't found any arbs have cited at all. It's a particularly poor way to reward someone who's being harassed by a banned user. Heimstern Läufer (talk) 03:15, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

Community input from Nobody Ent

Per AGK's solicitation

• While I am sad to hear that Mathsci is in poor health and wish him a speedy recovery, health issues should not be a reason for steering the course of dispute resolution. References to them come across as condescending (as in the request) or patronizing (elsewhere here). If WP editing has become a significant stressor for Mathsci (or any other editor), I urge them to just stop. It's just a website, the pay sucks, and real life health and happiness are far more important.
• I'm sympathetic to the perspective that restrictions, such as interaction bans, leave a "mark" on an editor's record. However on Misplaced Pages, the quest for "Justice" is too frequently a Siren leading to hazard. There is not, and should not, be justice here. Common sense should indicate the beneficiary of a one-way ban does not edit the bannee's talk page. The committee should either extend the bans to two-way, or make strong suggestions to Mathsci that he be more discreet in the future.
• The anyone can edit ethos of Misplaced Pages which, if I recall correctly, is mandated by the foundation, means that socks and trolls will be with us always. Again, while sympathetic to the stress cause by chronic harassment, Mathsci's behavior is reminiscent of the person whose car is stolen after being left running in the street keys with the door unlocked. Mathsci's actions -- going around reverting edits, frequent posts on Elen's talk page et. al. are providing positive feedback to the harasser(s). As he suspects socks, he should simply file SPIs and let the rest of the community deal with rest of it.Nobody Ent 12:13, 26 October 2012 (UTC)
• Per the consensus ethos of Misplaced Pages, the actions of every editor are subject to review. No topic ban not imposed directly by the committee should be considered to apply to the ArbCom spaces: complaints of ban violation because a case was filed are frivolous bureaucracy. Misplaced Pages:Arbitration spaces are actively monitored and managed by the clerks, so banning is not necessary to prevent disruption.
• Likewise, review of AE actions by the committee are not, and should not be perceived, micromanagement but rather just part of the consensus process. The majority of AE actions are upheld with little comment; that the committee occasionally takes a look at a particularly contentious issue should not be taken personally. Nobody Ent 12:26, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

Comment by Alanscottwalker

If the commitee is interested in "evening" the burden (regardless of merit) it should just consider rescinding one or more of the one way interaction bans, altogether. On another matter, it seems frankly bizarre, patronizing, or insulting to try to make the case that Mathci needs to be saved from himself. The only question should be whether others need to be saved from him? (Or alternatively whether others need leave him alone). But if Mathci is "harassing" you would need a case (and lots more evidence) to establish that. In particular, more than isolated AE spats. - Alanscottwalker (talk) 00:07, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

Comment by Professor marginalia

Just noting: Zeromus1 couldn't make themselves more conspicuous if they were busting these moves wearing nothing but headphones and a "Sock.I.Am" sandwich sign. Professor marginalia (talk) 04:29, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

and this is akin to the Sock.I.Am lighting fuses to the rockets in their sneakers. Professor marginalia (talk) 05:43, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

Clerk notes

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

*I think filers were asking "How can editors, who did not edit articles related to the original request, be put on sanctions from that case?", which is odd. Furthermore, one-sided IBAN never seems to work (especially when stalking is not really the case here). As to this case's filing - well, T. Canens specifically said in his post that it can be appealed to AC, so personally I think it's okay...? - Penwhale | 21:31, 23 October 2012 (UTC) Moving this upwards; Recuse at suggestions given to me. - Penwhale | 14:56, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

Arbitrators' opinion on hearing this matter (0/5/1/3)

Vote key: (Accept/decline/recuse/other)

• I tend to think that while this issue is not ripe for a full case (in my opinion, Mathsci probably would best be served in letting other people do the banned user hunting). I would suggest that the parties agree to completely disengage from each other and stop filing nine billion ArbRequests in the various flavors. SirFozzie (talk) 04:22, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

  As to the charge that filing a case is a violation of the one way interaction ban.. we allow folks to appeal AE sanctions to us when they feel it's justified, as this is the final stop of dispute resolution. Normally, we have a high bar towards accepting these requests (as we would have to be shown that the AE admins were clearly outside of reasonableness when placing or enforcing a sanction). However, one sided interaction bans are so game-able (as this request shows), that it would probably be best to make the interaction bans mutual. SirFozzie (talk) 04:36, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

  I was referring to everywhere in the RfArb family, including this request, Cla.. :) SirFozzie (talk) 04:45, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

  Mathsci, please do not do that. We are aware of the situation, and we can review the interaction bans placed at AE as part of our mandate. Should they cross the line here, we will take care of it. SirFozzie (talk) 04:51, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

• Recuse. If accepted as a case, I would be providing evidence. Jclemens (talk) 04:36, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
• Decline as a case. One effect of opening a case here would be to provide entertainment value for the malicious banned user(s) who has, wittingly or otherwise, provoked this entire drama. A second effect might be to cause stress to an editor with a self-identified serious health issue. Whether or not there are issues here that would otherwise be worth arbitrating, they are not of such importance that it is worth doing either of these things. I urge the AE administrators to resolve related threads there in as drama-free a fashion as possible for similar reasons. Most of the editors involved in this situation need to step back and ask themselves whether they may have lost their sense of perspective. If this doesn't happen then at some point we may have to do something, but opening a Race and intelligence 2 case is unlikely to be the best way to do it. Newyorkbrad (talk) 04:52, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
  • Having caught up on the discussion of the past few days, I stick with my vote to decline the case, and I do not see the need for any kind of motion. (I think that Mathsci would be well-advised to step back a bit from the fray here and leave some of the burden of dealing with the banned user(s) in question to others, but that is personal advice and not something that needs to be addressed by formal means.) I would like to strongly second the sentiment that for the ArbCom to modify a decision at AE is not any form of reflection on the administrators who made the decision at AE—just as when I as an arbitrator make a proposal and it is voted down by my 14 colleagues, I do not take it as a reflection on me. The work of the administrators who assist the Committee and the community by participating in arbitration enforcement, which is one of the more thankless administrator tasks, is appreciated by the Committee, and that is no less so even if we modify a decision made at AE on occasion. Newyorkbrad (talk) 15:54, 1 November 2012 (UTC)
  • Further comment below, in separate section for emphasis. Newyorkbrad (talk) 22:04, 2 November 2012 (UTC)
• Decline nothing here of such complexity as to warrant a new case. Standard mechanisms are sufficient. Casliber (talk · contribs) 09:42, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
• While I do not agree with Cla that a full arbitration case is necessary, I do believe that some amendment to our current decision is necessary, because the current remedies seem to be as large a source of drama as the dispute itself was (before it came to arbitration). In my mind, the problem has morphed from a prolific content dispute into a more limited "personality" dispute, and in mulling over how to resolve that, I think SirFozzie's suggestion that the interaction bans be applied both ways has merit. I'd be interested in views on the prospect of extending the I-bans from my colleagues and the community. AGK 08:26, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

• Decline and prefer not to amend the current sanctions at this time. In response to the AE administrators' concerns about this review of your work, I fully echo NE's last point (above); we have enormous respect for your judgement, and a solicited review of a single action should not be interpreted to be anything other than part of Misplaced Pages's usual arbitration process. AGK 09:24, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

• Interaction bans are generally best applied to both users as it does generally take two to cause a dispute. When people's interactions are distracting users from building the encyclopaedia, and then end up here, it does seem appropriate to consider an interaction ban on all the involved users, so I would agree with my colleagues views above to decline the request, but open a motion making the bans two way. SilkTork 12:54, 24 October 2012 (UTC)
• I think SilkTork got this exactly right. One way ibans do not work, and that needs to be addressed, but otherwise, decline as a case, and draft a motion to enact this. Courcelles 02:39, 25 October 2012 (UTC)
• I also agree with SilkTork, one-way interaction bans are rarely successful, while two-way bans have a much better success rate. Of course, very often the parties on the receiving end of a two-way interaction ban aren't equally guilty, and there is sometimes a tension between imposing a remedy that is practical and a remedy that is entirely equitable. In this instance, I think we should replace the one-way interaction ban with a two-way ban, which would make the remedy more practical, although I accept this isn't entirely equitable. PhilKnight (talk) 11:01, 25 October 2012 (UTC)
• While I can see that mutual ibans might not be considered fair, they may well reduce the overall drama. I also think that Mathsci and Mole are locked in a pattern that isn't doing Mathsci any good. Mole undoubtedly intends that Mathsci spend the rest of his life looking over his shoulder, and Mathsci is giving him that satisfaction by putting massive energies into sock hunting, where ignoring him would probably do more good. As it is, anyone (not just Mole) who wants to get at Mathsci knows exactly how to do it. Elen of the Roads (talk) 00:07, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

Additional arbitrator comments (beginning November 2)

Comments here have the same weight as in the preceding section; I've broken this out simply to ensure that they aren't lost in the lengthy section above. Newyorkbrad (talk) 22:04, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

• Enough. The further bickering as reflected in the parties' comments in the past couple of days has not been helpful to me and I doubt very much whether it has been helpful to my colleagues on the Committee or to anyone else. Everyone is directed to find something else to do, instanter. My personal opinion is that this request should be closed now as declined; despite that, it needs to stay open on this page until my colleagues decide whether they are going to post any motions, but that doesn't mean that there is a need for editors to post duplicative and counterproductive comments and addenda just because they open the page and the request is still here. Newyorkbrad (talk) 22:04, 2 November 2012 (UTC)