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Revision as of 19:16, 6 February 2013

What a travesty

Well Arbitration committee, I certainly hope you are pleased with this outcome. Due to the ridiculously vague way that Rich Farmbrough's Arbitration restriction was written and the preposterous way that you determined constituted automation, Rich is likely about to be blocked for a year, see this discussion because he used excel to sort a table off wiki. Now I know that Rich had a restriction and I know that some of the Arb folks don't like him. But certainly, it should not be the policy of Arbitration that editors be blocked for a year, for using excel. This is just absurd. Kumioko (talk) 00:23, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

You're right. He should have used Calc. Tarc (talk) 00:29, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

Lol, I just do not think that Arbcom or any reasonable editor would consider the use of excel to sort or even word to build an article offline, would consider that automation. Kumioko (talk) 00:35, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

I do use Calc. I just choose not to call people out over it. Rich Farmbrough, 20:43, 19 January 2013 (UTC).

A travesty indeed. I'll just have to count to ten using an off-wiki automated tool (my fingers). --Beetstra (public) (Dirk Beetstra on public computers) 08:27, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

Just note that it Rich's claim that he only used Excel to sort a table, while the evidence very strongly suggests that he used automation (a script, a macro, whatever) to edit the table much more significantly (and that he didn't check the results afterwards, but just copied them to the article). Sorting a table through Excel doesn't introduce systematic errors in the reference notation used in the table, not does it cause the loss of a lot of data from it. The edit was a clear violation of the restrictions in letter and spirit, not some borderline case. Fram (talk) 08:26, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

I do a lot of work with tables, and while a spread sheet works well to sort the table, as was done, the references get all messed up and have to be put back in by hand. There is a way to do it in the spread sheet but it is harder. I do not see that using fingers, toes, or a spread sheet constitutes using automated editing. The edit window was opened, text was entered, and the edit window closed. However, this after the fact discussion means nothing. I do think though that it would be worth asking is it appropriate in my case for a non-clerk and non-arb member to have issued a warning and closed the case? Is the closer a former arb or arb wannabe? Have the new arb and new clerks not taken their desks yet, and need outside assistance? Apteva (talk) 14:50, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

If you mean this request for arbitration, it was declined by a trainee clerk. Alexandr Dmitri (talk) 16:19, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

And if you meant AE, it is always handled by volunteer administrators rather than arbs/clerks. T. Canens (talk) 17:41, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

Speaking for me personally I don't have so much a problem with the AE admins determination on Rich's case. It wasn't their fault how Arbcom wrote the case. What I have a problem with is the extremely vague way the case was written so that nearly anything would be a blockable offense. I mean Excel as automation, come one. Cut and pasting a URL rather than typing it out, please. I think we need to add a helping of common sense to these cases. I admit I didn't agree with the determination in the first place and I think that the terms "community" and "majority" were grossly exhaggerated I think that punishing an editor for months at a time for doing constructive edits is just plain stupid and mean. Kumioko (talk) 17:48, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

Personally, I think it decidedly unlikely that Rich manually inputted the data into his excel table. He used an automated tool to create that table, and regardless of what other utilities served as middle men in this process, the output that ended up on Misplaced Pages was errors. That is exactly why he was under restrictions. This is neither the fault of ArbCom nor the AE admins. Resolute 20:22, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

Well we can argue about the symantics forever but the end result is the pedia loses whenever an editor is forced out. Especially one who had something like 5 million edits between him and his bots, many of the tasks BTW have still not been picked up. Its just another reason that I need to leave Misplaced Pages in the rear view mirror. No matter how much I believe in the project itself I also feel that the project is destined for failure because we have become so politically driven and too much power has been pushed into the hands of too few. When we have longterm editors who can't even edit a protected template and have to ask for someon else to post their work, who cannot do simple things because it requires admin tools they will never be allowed to have. Each day saddens me more and more. Every day I see good editors run down. It truly is time for me to go. Kumioko (talk) 20:29, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

Well, if you are simply going to use every issue as a platform to whine about how you can't edit protected templates, don't expect me to hold you back. I didn't comment in Rich's AE case, though I was aware of it. But there does come a point where users who cause work for others need to be told to stop. And if they won't, then they need to be stopped. I hope that Rich returns in two months, and returns a productive editor willing to uphold both the letter and spirit of his topic bans. Resolute 20:45, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

There are HTML to spread sheet converters that can be used, but the method I do is CTRL A to highlight the page, or just highlight the table, copy and paste it into a text window, use CTRL H (global replace) to change the spaces to tabs, use copy and paste to paste it into the spread sheet which puts it into columns. Do the sort. Copy and paste back into the text window. All of the spaces will be tabs, do a global replace to change all the tabs to space pipe pipe space " || ", and copy and paste back into the table. Now you just have to put the |- in between each of the table rows. Now if that is automation, ... There certainly are many other methods of doing this. Apteva (talk) 22:21, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

As an aside while there are many editors who choose to leave Misplaced Pages, and fewer joining right now, it is totally impossible to end Misplaced Pages. No matter what happens, the body of knowledge we have created can be picked up from a mirror and continue on from there. Misplaced Pages does not exist as a domain name or as a corporation or organization, but as a body of knowledge, and that part will never go away, and will always be added to by someone. Apteva (talk) 22:28, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

Arbcom requests and consensus

Here'a general question I'm curious about, this came to mind after watching some specific discussions, but I'm more interested in the general stance on things. In some AN/ANI discussions about proposed sanctions for editors, in addition to support sanction and oppose sanction people will sometimes !vote send to Arbcom (usually due to the complexity of the situation). My question is: how much weight does consensus in this situation influence Arbcom's decision to accept or reject a case? I know that Arbcom can always choose not to accept a case, but would an ANI consensus that a situation should be sent to Arbcom (because they feel unable to find a good solution) make you more likely to accept it? Or would the result of the ANI thread not weigh very much in your decision making? Mark Arsten (talk) 21:10, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

As an IP I cannot comment on the requests page, but a reading of the ANI thread shows that this is an issue going back years and spanning multiple areas of sexology and involving multiple editors. The behavioral concerns are the use of Misplaced Pages to promote one's biases, either personal or professional, in the latter case being called COI around here. And lampooning the opposition when it does have Misplaced Pages biographies. Voting one's opponents off the island is the typical battle stance at ANI, so ArbCom should take on this given the number of editors involved and length of time the Cantor-Jokestress antinomy appears to have been going on. 188.26.163.111 (talk) 08:54, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

"Voting one's opponents off the island is the typical battle stance at ANI" -- very true. You are unusually wise for an IP ;) Yeah, that was the specific conflict that brought this question up, and at this point I suspect that it will be accepted. I asked here because I was wondering in a more general sense--how much does community sentiment in favor of a case weigh in Arbs' minds during a request. Mark Arsten (talk) 13:45, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

• In response to your question, Mark - each request is addressed based on a larger reading of the situation. If the only time that an issue is raised is a single noticeboard thread, an "Arbcom should take this" is probably not going to have the same effect as the same comment following a very extended period of behavioural concerns across multiple articles. Risker (talk) 15:02, 30 January 2013 (UTC)
• I generally agree with Risker's response. A question I ask when deciding whether to accept any serious request for arbitration is whether arbitration or some other dispute-resolution method is most likely to produce an expeditious, well-informed, reasonable resolution of the dispute. A community discussion on AN or ANI is a dispute-resolution method (I've never really understood the statement sometimes made that the noticeboards are not part of dispute resolution) that has advantages over arbitration as well as disadvantages. If the community is able to resolve something via discussion and consensus, then arbitration isn't needed unless we think something went wrong with the discussion or we need to look beyond the discussion. If the community is unable to resolve the dispute, either because it is simply too complicated for AN/ANI or because the discussion doesn't reach consensus in a reasonable time, then an arbitration case may be needed. Observations that "someone should take this to ArbCom" are most helpful to us when they explain why the matter should come to ArbCom, e.g. "this should go to arbitration because this is the fourth ANI thread on this dispute in three months and we don't seem to be getting anywhere," or "this should go to arbitration because private information is involved," or "this should go to arbitration because of 30 people commenting on the proposed topic-ban of User:X from Topic:Y, 15 have strongly supported it and 15 have strongly opposed it, so we aren't going to come to a consensus." Newyorkbrad (talk) 16:43, 30 January 2013 (UTC)
  • The ArbCom request unfortunately fails to list all previous ANI incidents involving Cantor and Jokestress (uusually both). Here are some more:
    • Misplaced Pages:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive458#Please_ban_Jokestress_from_editing_the_article_about_Simon_LeVay
    • Misplaced Pages:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive526#COI_edits_by_user:Jokestress_putting_WP_at_potential_legal_risk
  • And probably some I've missed. 188.26.163.111 (talk) 16:54, 30 January 2013 (UTC)
  • Besides, I'm not sure how even admins, never mind less editors are supposed to evaluate ANI arguments, such as the last one on Hebephilia, based on edits which have been oversighted . 188.26.163.111 (talk) 21:03, 30 January 2013 (UTC)
• Thanks for the responses, it's definitely helpful to hear your perspectives. Mark Arsten (talk) 16:49, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

Are some editors are more equal than others?

I firmly reject this statement. Admins have no special authority. They're simply entrusted with the tools to carry out community consensus. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 05:50, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

To save people the bother, that link shows a diff of one editor commenting on a statement made by another editor. In the admin discussion area, one admin (AGK) stated "Any action taken in enforcement of an arbitration decision may be heard in appeal by a panel of uninvolved administrators...", and an editor commented to point out that the link used says "uninvolved editors" (and another admin has now made the same point). The comment in the above diff is pointing out the correct situation about the AE noticeboard (which is where uninvolved admins make decisions on certain matters). Probably the confusion is just confusion, and of course AGK does not think the word in the link is "administrators"—that's why he said "derives from"—the procedures link talks about uninvolved editors at a noticeboard like ANI, and it follows that an admin unilaterally imposing a sanction per some arbitration remedy can be overridden. One method to override is for a community discussion of uninvolved editors somewhere like ANI, and my guess is that AGK was suggesting that it would also be reasonable for the arbitration enforcement noticeboard to overrule a sanction imposed by one admin—since AE considers requests about sanctions, that seems unremarkable, although not codified. Johnuniq (talk) 07:04, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Johnuniq has stated things correctly. My understanding from Misplaced Pages:Arbitration_Committee/Discretionary_sanctions#For_administrators is that an administrator can impose arbcom discretionary sanctions off their own bat, logging it on the relevant page. These sanctions are formulated by arbcom and not the community, so it was unhelpful of AQFK to suggest otherwise. That is what Fluffernutter did in this case. Any appeal then has to be made at WP:AE or directly to the arbitration committee. For community bans or topic bans, WP:ANI and WP:AN are the normal venues. At WP:AE decisions are made by uninvolved administrators, so there is a difference between their input and that of non-administrators. Users commenting there, in their own section, can be ignored or even be subject to warnings or sanctions for contributing in a disruptive way. Mathsci (talk) 07:47, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Responses to discussion at the case page

I think that it would be wise if the ArbCom would limit the case to the on-wiki problem. The off-wiki debacle hasn't been resolved in a satisfactory way, with people at both sides claiming they are right. Various editors here have already added links to stories that 'explain' the issue, but those stories are often as biased as the next. I think it would be wise to add an explicit limitation to this case once it gets opened. If not, it can be expected to add a shitload of additional drama to the case. In the end, there are two issues to be dealt with. 1) The on-wiki interactions between Andrea and James. 2) COI. Once these two are removed, this area will be pretty decently editable. -- Kim van der Linde 01:32, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Re to Silktork: I do not think this can be handled with a motion, because the issues at the surface might seem clear, when you start digging deeper, a totally different picture arises. At the surface, it looks like that Jokestress is a major problem, but what I see is a typical case (James) of a WP:SPA with a clear WP:COI pushing a specific WP:POV who has mastered to stay WP:CIVIL and knows how to write things to get his distortions by the bulk of the editors. They keep doing this till an opposing party makes an error (brusk, incivility, 3RR, etc), and use that to get the person banned from the pages. Superficially, it looks like Jokestress is the major issue, under the surface, it is the other way around. -- Kim van der Linde 13:37, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

reply: The issue is not just James and Jokestress. They are the core of the problem, but there are a few people, who often jump in disputes and pretty reliably can be expected to take either side (most with Cantor). -- Kim van der Linde 23:11, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Re to Thryduulf: I think the difference in your impression between Cantor and Jokestress is exactly one of the largest problems. Based on my double checking of sources they cite, Jokestress is generally much more to the point than Cantor. But because Cantor has the civil POV pushing down, he is perceived as the more neutral. Jokestress edits in a lot of areas, and I have not gotten the impression that she has the same degree of trouble outside of this groups of articles. Misplaced Pages wants quick fixes. Most people because of that would ban Jokestress from these articles and be done with it. Exactly because of how the perceive the two. Unfortunately, it does not fix the issue, to the contrary, it yields the article to the POV pushers. -- Kim van der Linde 23:36, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Which is exactly why I've been saying that the sanctions I proposed at AN/I were not final solutions, they were intended to solve the immediate, obvious problems so as to give the time and space necessary to solve the deeper problems. Thryduulf (talk) 14:22, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

And IMHO, it would sanction someone who does not need to be sanctioned. Therefore, I object. -- Kim van der Linde 14:57, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

Request for input by ArbCom members concerning an AE action

Two days ago, I closed the request at WP:AE#Noetica (permalink) by issuing discretionary sanctions warnings to four editors, with the agreement of the one or two (depending on the editors warned) other uninvolved administrators who commented at the AE thread. These warnings have been the subject of much and exceptionally harsh criticism, both by one of the warned editors (permalink), which is to be expected to some degree, but also by other experienced (although apparently involved) editors at my talk page (permalink). In view of this, I would like to informally ask the opinion of members of the Arbitration Committee,

• whether they consider that it was appropriate to issue these warnings, and
• if not, whether I should (or even meaningfully can) rescind any of them, and
• what (if any) venue exists for appealing such warnings, so that I can advise the warned editors about that venue.

Should any other editors also want to comment, I would appreciate it if they would make clear whether or not they have been involved in the underlying Manual of Style and/or conduct disputes.

I'm uncertain about who I might possibly need to notify about this request for input, so I'm linking to it from my talk page, which is where most of the criticism has arrived. I'll probably be away from the Internet for much of the next week owing to military service, so I may not be able to act promptly on any advice. Thanks,  Sandstein  09:52, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

• I would like to draw attention to my comment at "03:53, 3 February 2013" at the bottom of User talk:Sandstein#Appalled and dismayed at your destructiveness where I asked Sandstein to resign. Johnuniq (talk) 11:41, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

• Well, no chance of that, sorry. If anything, the tone of SMcCandlish's extremely lengthy and confrontative response to my warning, below and linked to above, as well as that of Ohconfucius's response, tend to confirm my assessment that my warning not to personalize conflicts in accordance with the Committee's reminder was appropriate, as least as concerns these two editors.  Sandstein  15:45, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

• I am afraid I have to agree with Sandstein here. There is no chance that he will resign. I can't remember him ever admitting one of his mistakes. Hans Adler 17:43, 3 February 2013 (UTC)
• Sandstein, an editor responding poorly to a provocative and misguided warning does not vindicate you for leaving such a warning in the first place. As far as I'm concerned the only problematic comment by any of the editors prior to your warning was SMc's mention of Wikid77 and LittleBen.--The Devil's Advocate _{tlk. cntrb.} 18:40, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

As I've already noted several times, the general consensus at the discussion at AN regarding Apteva also found that Wikid77 and LittleBenW were acting as a tag-team with him on the issues they were being tendentious about (though ultimately only Apteva was topic-banned, since the other two repeatedly assured everyone they would avoid those issues henceforth). It would have been wrong in both the incorrect sense and the ethical sense for me to have blamed Apteva alone for the disruptive editing when mentioning it at AE as the proximal cause of Noetica's obvious frustration. I was simply being accurate. In retrospect I could have said something like "Apteva (and others found disruptive by a consensus at AN)" or something otherwise vague. However, "failure to use weasel words" is not a policy violation, and does not warrant an administrative warning, especially not the "special" warning available as a remedy under ARBATC, which translates to a threat that I can now be long-term blocked by any admin for virtually any reason if style or titles are even a tiny part of the conversation and anyone complains for any reason, more or less. You don't get threatened with 5 years in prison for failing to come to a complete stop at a stop sign. The fact that I did not violate policy, but am subject to immediate blocking with no warning as a result of Sandstein's bogus warning, is itself a massive violation of WP blocking policy! I repeat that the ArbCom badly needs to revisit and modify the wording of the discretionary, broadly construed sanctions available under ARBATC because they have a palpable chilling effect against legitimate editor expression here. I also must categorically deny that presenting a list-formatted, point-by-point analysis of why Sandstein's warning was inappropriate, on logical, factual and policy bases, constitutes "responding poorly".

Or maybe you were referring to Ohconfucius's mini-rant on my talk page, which, while I understand his anger, does not represent my take on the matter and which I refactored off my talk page as unhelpful to anyone or anything. If so, please note that Ohconfucius has not posted in this thread and is not a party to this discussion, or relevant in any pertinent way; if consensus determines that a warning was appropriate for Ohconfucius, that's an entirely different and severable case from whether the Sandstein threat I received was justified, and the same goes for those received by the others. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖכþ Contrib. 10:16, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

• The rather large number of reasons Sandstein's decision to issue threatening warnings was inappropriate have been enumerated in detail (mostly ignored by Sandstein) at User talk:Sandstein and User talk:SMcCandlish. Some of them are repetitive because Sandstein has been playing the WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT game, and simply re-asserting his assumptions, most of which have been demonstrated to be false, instead of addressing the mounting criticisms of them. Please note that two of the four editors sanctioned by Sandstein, User:Noetica and User:Neotarf, have already resigned editing Misplaced Pages in protest; I am also considering doing so. Not because receiving a warning from some admin is a big deal generally, but because:

In summary, Sandstein is demonstrably wrong on virtually everything about what was going on with regards to that AE, and consequently made a mistake, but refuses to admit and undo it, or even entertain reasons why his actions were not appropriate, no matter what evidence and logic are brought to bear, and has instead put his head in the sand, taking a haughty, nonchalant attitude about the fallout of his decision. Those of us wrongly shamed with the stigma of the scarlet letter he's stuck on us – and the hanging Democlean Sword of impending willy-nilly blocks without due process that come with it – do not find this acceptable, just or tolerable. Noetica at least also believes that Sandstein cannot be considered an uninvolved admin to begin with, due to his history with (i.e. against) Noetica, and this bears further examination.

What I hope to see happen is a vacating of the bogus warning. That's all I want. I don't care if Sandstein admits he was wrong, apologizes, resigns, is overturned by a consensus at AE while continuing to protest that he was righteous, rescinds it himself to keep the peace while maintaining he did nothing wrong, or whatever; it's not about him, it's about his tarnishing my reputation and those of three other good, productive editors for unjust reasons that cannot be rationally defended, yet tendentiously defending his mistake anyway. We're supposed to be able to have trust in admins, not fear them as capricious tinpots who get to make up the "law" as they go along, to suit their whims and prejudices. People often cite abusive admin actions like this as "what is wrong with Misplaced Pages" and why they won't participate. This mistake has already cost us two editors, and I'm probably next if this not resolved – I'm not going to devote another 7.5 years and 80,000+ edits to a project in which I can, without recourse, be falsely accused, and badgered into silence, by someone who supposedly doesn't have any special power but just "no big deal" tools. Assaulting someone with a hammer or chisel isn't somehow acceptable just because what was used was nominally a tool not a weapon, and doing so is still wrong whether you did it out of malice, negligence or a misguided belief that you had to for righteous reasons.
— SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖכþ Contrib. 14:17, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

• I would like to make four observations:
  • These editors made a case at AE that the request had been brought in retaliation for Misplaced Pages:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement/Archive129#Apteva (and possibly other things). I'm not sure how much weight if any that should have carried in Noetica's defense, but I don't think this, in itself, is a reasonable thing to issue DS warnings about. Hopefully that is clear, and we are not trying to send that message with this warning. Other than that, it is difficult to say for sure exactly what these warnings are about. HaugenErik (talk) 20:06, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

Just to clarify, the two most salient "other things" that lead up to the /Archive129#Apteva case was the WP:AN report about Apteva, and before that the RFC/U about his conduct; they were all essentially the same discussion, spread out over mutiple forums because of Apteva's WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT refusal to accept that consensus was against his disruption and in fact finding it disruptive. All of the editors involved in the Apteva vs. Noetica second AE, the one Sandstein reacted to, were also involved in these previous rounds. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖכþ Contrib. 09:37, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

• • Cailil noted in the result section that The comments at SoV were sufficiently ad hominem (and needlessly so) to have crossed the line set by ArbCom in the RFAR.—But please note SoV's comment here that Noetica is INVOLVED. The capitalization there makes people think SoV was referring to our policy about involved administrators, violations of which, of course, are very serious. These comments that Cailil says were needless were in fact defense of Noetica against that accusation, so hardly needless! HaugenErik (talk) 20:06, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

    As SoV points out below, Cailil was not referring to the comments made about SoV at the AE discussion. My point here remains that this commentary made at AE was relevant to the AE discussion and so can't fall under Their comments here serve no useful purpose with regard to deciding whether the reported edits are sanctionable, the rationale given by Sandstein for the warnings given. HaugenErik (talk) 21:01, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

As Sandstein said on my own talk page he did not read the background material that led up to the Apteva vs. Noetica AE filing that he gave us "warnings" about, so what was said earlier at AT is not relevant in any way to those warning/threats. Even if Cailil was in fact referring to AT (which isn't clearly the case just because SarekOfVulcan suspects that's what Cailil meant – it would in fact have been a total non sequitur unless he clearly explained and linked to the discussion at AT), Sandstein has stated and linked to the AE discussion as the sole reason for the warnings, and all indications are that he had no knowledge of the other parts of the extended dispute, at AT, AN, RFCU, etc., etc. SarkekOfVulcan's bringing up AT is a clear red herring. The Jedi hand-wave does not work here. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖכþ Contrib. 09:47, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

• • The warnings seem to include the phrase "cast aspersions", and Sandstein referenced a prior arbitration note on "casting aspersions" in the AE discussion. I think this is about Misplaced Pages:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Mattisse/Proposed_decision#Casting_aspersions (Sandstein, please set me straight if you were referring to something else). That principle (and Sandstein's comment) both invoke the idea of making unsupported allegations: a consistent pattern of making objectively unsupported or exaggerated claims. But if nothing else, plenty of evidence was given by the 4 warnees, I think, in this AE discussion for any claims made of misbehavior. In particular, after reading Ohconfucious' remarks I can not fathom what could possibly lead to this warning? HaugenErik (talk) 20:06, 4 February 2013 (UTC)
  • Sandstein says here SMcCandlish's extremely lengthy and confrontative response to my warning ... tend to confirm my assessment that my warning not to personalize conflicts in accordance with the Committee's reminder was appropriate — Not necessarily, they confirm that the warning is a nontrivial matter to this editor and that Sandstein's justification for it so far is unconvincing (to him at least). Was anything in them an unsubstantiated attack? Defending oneself against sanctions like this is a reasonable thing to do, this isn't "personalizing conflicts" about titling or capitalization, or anything remotely like it. It's probably not helpful to make comments like this, Sandstein. HaugenErik (talk) 20:06, 4 February 2013 (UTC)
    • • This is absolutely correct with regard to me being "lengthy". Even aside from AN/ANI, ARBCOM and AE being pseudo-legalistic to begin with, Sandstein's approach has been both wilfully obtuse and hyper-legalistic, resting on fallacious argument-from-authority and what comes across as a belief in administrative infallibility. This left me in a position of having no choice but to document my side of the dispute in as much detail and nit-picky specificity as possible, because basic logic and common sense were just not working. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖכþ Contrib. 09:34, 5 February 2013 (UTC)
    • Erik, the "needlessly ad-hominem" comments Sandstein refers to weren't on the AE request, but on WT:AT. See these comments for an example.--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 20:24, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

      That was Cailil who said they were "needlessly" ad-hominem. Hmm, you're right, Cailil wasn't referring to the other three with that comment, beg pardon! The warnings were for behavior at AE, however: Their comments here serve no useful purpose with regard to deciding whether the reported edits are sanctionable, and are also mainly concerned with casting aspersions on others, further personalizing the underlying dispute(s).—I'm still wondering what Sandstein was referring to there! The episode you linked to (and Apteva linked to in the AE request) is regrettable, but again as I noted in the AE it needs to be seen in context: here Noetica is defending himself against your assertion that the proposal was made in bad faith. He notes that you issued block threats to try to win this very same dispute in the past, etc, so your opposition might not be as detached as your initial comment there might suggest, etc. While it would have been nice if this discussion had happened somewhere else or not at all, his comments there were relevant to his defense against your assertion of bad faith. They were not totally out of the blue. HaugenErik (talk) 21:01, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

    • @SarekOfVulcan. Please also note 1) Sandstein said very explicitly on my talk page that his warning/threat to me was about one specific post of mine at AE (which he described as casting vague, unsupported aspersions just to personalize the dispute, when I have already demonstrated that they where references to proven and community-consensus-supported findings at WP:AN, given as a warning to AE that Apteva was simply disrupting AE as another forum to shop, since the reason he was brought to AN to begin with was incessant forum shopping and disruption). 2) Sandstein has made it clear at both my and his own talk pages and at AE itself that his warnings to the other 3 recipients of them were also in response specifically to the comments made in that particular AE case, and not anything else (such as AT). 3) Sandstein stated flatly on my talk page that he did not read the pre-AE-request background material at all and did not even know it existed (this fact, coupled with his refusal to read that material and reconsider, is part of the large pile of evidence that his actions against me, Noetica, Neotarf and Ohconfucius were not and still are not reasonable to begin with. He's acted like an Arb who has already made up his mind and won't actually look at the evidence!). So whatever was said – and whatever could have been said administratively in response to whatever was said – at AT (and AN, RFC/U, MOS, VPP, and various RM pages, all of which Apteva and his tag-teamers forumshopped for months on end) is not relevant in any way to Sandstein's reaction and "warnings". He acted in a total vacuum of information about the case aside from what he saw right then and there on AE. I can't find any evidence that he even knew that Apteva had already been subject to scrutiny at AE not long before he tried to abuse AE just to get back at Noetica for AN'ing him.

      WP does not need "hangin' judges", and Sandstein isn't even a "judge" (Arb), just an admin, from back when RfA was easy, who is acting like a cop who thinks it's okay to shoot suspects just for being suspects. WP does not need to be patrolled by Judge Dredd. It's not just, and that's why I've stood up to it. It's the principle of the thing, and such principles matter to me. I've been a professional civil liberties (especially freedom of expression and privacy) activist since the early '90s for a reason. Yes, this colors the way I respond to censorious nonsense on WP. That doesn't make me more guilty, as Sandstein almost unbelievably suggests, just someone with more integrity that some are used to, and one who is harder to push around.

      Another way of looking at this: Doesn't everyone think it's really remarkable that four editors who took action to stop a blatantly disruptive POV-pusher, who was clearly found to be such by a consensus at AN, end up being sanctioned themselves by an admin totally unfamiliar with what was going on, and that zero of the four accept the threat/warning as valid in any way, two resign immediately, one is on the verge of it, and the fourth is also incensed to the boiling point? When is the last time you saw a reaction that consistently appalled and taken so strongly in response to a simple warning from an admin? If that's not enough to make you question whether the admin action was appropriate, then WP is already a lost cause, suffering from an administrative autoimmunity that is blithely attacking its own healthy editor-cells as if they were a disease. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖכþ Contrib. 09:34, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

• Proof that Sandstein and SarekOfVulcan are not uninvolved: Noetica, in e-mail (he refuses to ever participate on WP again except in a formal ArbCom proceeding about this particular matter), has provided a link to the evidence that Sandstein and SarekOfVulcan are not uninvolved (Cailil's name didn't turn up in this one). At Sandstein proposed to topic-ban Noetica and five others (several of whom are also participants in the Apteva-related proceedings that brought us here, though not recipients of his recent warning/threat like me and Noetica); he also proposed that anyone else, unnamed as of yet, could be topic-banned for editwarring on the topic, by any uninvolved admin, without further warning (sound familiar?). The topic in question: Dashes vs. hyphens in article titles, the exact same issue that Apteva's disruptive editing about resulted in him being RFC/U'd and then topic-banned at AN, then AE'd for violating at AT, and which he counter-AE'd about just to be vexatious. It's the same issue that, following Sandstein's reasoning, as long as the topic ultimately originated, in any way at all, from a style or article titles issue it must be ARBATC-enforceable, "ergo" I and Noetica, Neotarf and Ohconfucius received "special warnings" over it. This alone must surely be enough to render these warning/threats invalid. (The cited page is long; just in-page search for the string "The issue is entirely too lame").

  As a side note, it's salient that Sandstein effectively declared the issue stupid and unresolvable, after indicating little understanding of it, and just wanted to shut everyone up, and was quite explicit about this. Meanwhile, in point of fact, what actually happened is that ArbCom demanded an RfC, endorsed the results of it, and MOS has been stable on the matter ever since, with no trouble except from PMAnderson, who got long-term blocked for disruption and sockpuppetry over it, Apteva, who got topic banned for disruption over it (and blocked for socking on a different issue), and (note that I'm not mentioning any "unrelated" names, lest Sandstein or someone else block me for all year or whatever, since "I've been warned"!) a handful of other editors who have dropped the issue like a hot potato after a majority of respondents at WP:AN suggested they were being tendentious and might get topic banned, too. Sandstein was simply wrong then, as now, that the issue he was skimming and having an incensed "just shut up" reaction to was actually intractable and the participants really unable to be trusted to resolve the matter civilly with community input. This Sandstein approach is directly mirrored in his issuing of these recent threat-warnings; he did not really know or care what was going on, but only cared that people just STFU, regardless of the merits of either side of the dispute. This is not how good admins approach editorial disagreements, be they over content, style or behavior. It's like a police officer responding to a domestic violence call and just shooting both the husband and the wife because he has a headache and wants some peace and quiet. Sounds like someone who needs to find a different kind of job.

  Next, page-search down to the subsection "Recommend topic ban proposal be dropped", started by Avanu who had earlier well-summarized what was wrong with Sandstein's "drive-by" solution to just shut everyone up with impunity instead of working toward a solution. The first respondent to Avanu's counter-proposal there, to drop the blanket topic-ban idea and find a responsive admin who could help work toward a consensus, was (guess who) SarekOfVulcan, who's entire one-word !vote was "Oppose" (i.e., with no rationale given, support Sandstein's idea to topic-ban Noetica and a few others by name, and anyone else who dares to argue about and revert a few times over that punctuation-in-titles topic, ever). The only other "oppose" !vote was a weird comment from a noob who thought contracts where involved (?!?). At any rate, this is a clear conflict of interest; both Sandstein and SarekOfVulcan sought to topic-ban, on pain of blocking, Noetica specifically and everyone else involved in the topic, then and in perpetuity, on the sole basis of believing the issue to be intractable and "lame". What has resulted – even after the community and ArbCom did resolve the matter, and all that remained to deal with is literally a handful of tendentious, forum-shopping, consensus-battling, and in two cases sockpuppeteering, disruptive editors – amounts to precisely the topic ban that Sandstein proposed but which consensus clearly rejected, because the "special ARBATC warning" means that anyone can be blocked for allegedly violating it without further notice or process of any kind. If that's not a topic ban, I don't know what is. Procedurally, it's a blatant violation of WP:CONSENSUS (both directly and as a form of telling, not even asking, the other parent by misusing AE to administratively get what they couldn't get by consensus at AN), and an abuse of administration authority and trust. I, like Noetica and Neotarf (I don't know about Ohconfucius, and don't endorse what little I've seen him say on the matter), refuse to volunteer for this project any longer with this unbelievably bullshitty and false-accusations-based Sword of Damocles hanging over my head. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖכþ Contrib. 11:45, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

• I have to agree with Sandstein's comment that <quote> If anything, the tone of SMcCandlish's extremely lengthy and confrontative response to my warning, below and linked to above, as well as that of Ohconfucius's response, tend to confirm my assessment that my warning not to personalize conflicts in accordance with the Committee's reminder was appropriate, as least as concerns these two editors </quote>. SMcCandlish continues to repeat his blanket smear tactics and spewing of streams of insults, abuse, and totally-unsubstantiated and false accusations like <quote> most agreed they were acting as a WP:TAGTEAM </quote> even after being warned repeatedly to stop. This is his WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT game. Then, when he receives a formal warning for his behavior, he starts beating his chest. In his long, rambling, "Specialist sources are all rubbish" rant at Misplaced Pages:SSF he says that, "Chest-beating to drive away the opposition is very effective—if you're a gorilla". I'm wondering, is he...?  LittleBen (talk) 12:04, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

• You can see that he even had to apologize to DCI for splashing the muck a bit too far, when DCI was only trying to cool things down. LittleBen (talk) 12:25, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

• LittleBenW, the majority of respondents to the proposal that you also be subject to the same topic-ban as Apteva were in support of the idea, even more so than for imposing on the other editor mention there. This, very shortly after you were already topic-banned from a very, very similar pattern of forum shopping and disruption over another MOS issue. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖכþ Contrib. 18:45, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

Well, that didn't work; suggestion for what to do instead

Sandstein, you posted this request for arbitrator input/advice more than two days ago (=an age, in wikitime), and there has been no response from any arb. It's generally difficult to get opinions out of arbitrators on any heated and conflict-filled matter, because they don't want to risk having to recuse if the thing comes to arbitration. I think that's the reason for their silence here. The possibility of arbitration has already been mooted, by Noetica in particular. So, an "informal" but public request for advice never had much chance, I think, though I can well understand and respect your motives in posting it.

It's hard to know what to do next. The question needs resolving — respected and productive users are leaving over it, others are feeling "chilled", and you obviously feel under pressure from all the anger. You could take it to mediation — except mediation is for content issues, and medcom would surely defer immediately to arbcom. You could take it to the community — but there has already been a lot of community discussion, without resolution. I suggest you (or somebody else) take it to arbitration. It's an AE matter, so in that sense arbcom's baby. What you've asked in particular is whether you should, or even meaningfully could rescind your warnings, and if there's any venue for the warned editors to appeal. That venue is Requests for Arbitration, no doubt. RFAR is the only remaining venue. Now, a request by whom? You, Sandstein, can hardly request arbitration "against" the editors who have criticised your admin action harshly; people get to do that, and I'm sure you have no notion of anybody being sanctioned for it. You could request arbitration against yourself, I suppose. By that, I mean, you could pretty much repeat your questions, but on the real RFAR page, and then those layabouts would have to say something. A less unusual procedure would be for one of the four warned editors to request arbitration, as a way of appealing your warnings and/or possibly of requesting sanctions against you. Finally, a third possibility: a neutral editor could post a request for arbitration. If neither of my first two suggestions comes to fruition, I'd be willing to do that. Not with any enthusiasm, since I'm so uninvolved that I'm pretty uninformed about Apteva's topic ban and related matters — and altogether uninformed about MOS discussions, to be frank — and would have to do some research, groan. But I'll do it if that's what remains, as I absolutely don't think this should be left hanging any longer. It's harmful. Bishonen | talk 14:15, 5 February 2013 (UTC).

• It's even more harmful to allow people to continue warring—Misplaced Pages is not a crusade for absolute right against absolute wrong. Surely the real problem is excessively big egos—people who feel that they absolutely must be right every time, and that anyone who appears to be on the other side must be punished or banished. Misplaced Pages will not fall flat on its face if a few people, the people who feel that they "own" MOS, take a Wikibreak from warring over trivia at MOS and WP:AT—there is a small possibility that they will contribute to Misplaced Pages content rather than continuing to insist that their vocation is to make and enforce even more detailed and prescriptive rules. LittleBen (talk) 15:40, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

• I'd suggest LittleBen stop stirring the pot. It's not as if you weren't in the thick of it. -- Ohconfucius  02:14, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for your advice, Bishonen. I find it very regrettable - although understandable to a point - that the Committee is unwilling to provide advice here. I intend to open a formal a clarification request pertaining only to the issues of appellate procedure, rather than to the merits of my warnings, as soon as I have the time for it later this week. Once the issues of how to appeal such warnings is clarified, I think that it would be incumbent on the warned users themselves to file an appeal (and thereby allow a more formal review of their own conduct also). If they are unwilling to do so, they will have to live with having been warned. I do not recommend initiating a formal dispute resolution procedure such as an request for arbitration without an indication that at least one of the involved users actually wants that to happen.  Sandstein  17:24, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

I'd suggest "request for clarification" (relating to the Article Titles RFAR and the specific enforcement measure) might be a more appropriate venue than a new RFAR, since its not a new issue just a subset of the original RFAR (this has been done before with a WP:TROUBLES ruling at AE), but I'd echo Sandsetin its up to the effected users to make the request not the sysop--Cailil 18:06, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

Works for me. If I have a clear avenue of appeal, I will use it. I'm not interested in appealing the warning/threat because I don't like being warned, or whatever – I'm not a baby, and someone having harsh words for me isn't going to make me cry – but because it is provably based on false accusations and amounts to unjustifiable character assassination. Meanwhile the nature of the "special" warning type under ARBATC amounts to an out-of-process topic ban; ARBCOM needs to modify the language at ARBATC to prevent its application in such a manner. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖכþ Contrib. 19:16, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

@Sandstein: of course not. I hope a request for clarification does the trick; it should at least get an arb or two out of the high grass. Bishonen | talk 18:43, 5 February 2013 (UTC).

In the past, few people have taken notices or warnings so seriously that they would try to appeal one of them. But someone once tried edit warring to remove his name from the Troubles notification log. In that case an arbitrator finally told him to stop. EdJohnston (talk) 19:57, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

When considering how to close an AE complaint, I would be reluctant to sanction for a comment anyone made at the AE unless it was truly outrageous. I would prefer that AE commenters be able to speak freely. But this February 5 edit by SMcCandlish does not suggest a calm, sensible approach to the Manual of Style. It looks like he is injecting his own editorial opinion about WikiProject Birds to the text of the Manual. Behavior when editing the Manual is exactly what WP:ARBATC is about, and this kind of an edit *is* subject to warnings. As a technical matter, since Noetica and SMcCandlish were among the named parties of ARBATC they can be assumed to be aware of the discretionary sanctions even without an explicit notice. EdJohnston (talk) 20:30, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

I think you're reading that edit to MOSCAPS all wrong. I endorse its reversion—if nothing else it is an ugly display of sausagemaking—but this doesn't seem like an "editorial opinion about WikiProject Birds" to me. If anything, the link to LOCALCONSENSUS is the real zinger, and that was already there before this edit. There's an appeal to avoid trying to go around changing capitalization on bird articles, as that has caused disruption in the past. Ed; can you be more specific about what you see as problematic here? HaugenErik (talk) 22:02, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

The place to find consensus is the talk page. The BRD process has limited appeal for something as fragile and hotly disputed as the MOS. The long-running disagreement about capitalization involving WikiProject Birds should be settled by dispute resolution, not fought out in the pages of the MOS itself. EdJohnston (talk) 23:15, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

Are you responding to me? SMC's edit doesn't change anything from a policy perspective, it pretty much outlines what well-established consensus is; the status quo "on the ground". It gives some history, etc, mentions that there's dispute (which probably isn't great for the guideline page, but that's a separate issue). The long-running disagreement about capitalization involving WikiProject Birds should be settled by dispute resolution—that's almost a quote of SMC's edit. It's an appeal to not go changing bird pages to use lowercase etc, it's not an attempt to force his will (on the contrary!) I still don't understand what you find objectionable here. Did this edit seem to you to be an attempt to push a side on this issue? HaugenErik (talk) 00:15, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

Indeed. The bare facts of the matter are that WP:MOS, which explicitly supersedes MOS:CAPS, has said "do not capitalize common names of species" for five years now. No amount of editwarring, canvassing, poll disruption, tagteaming and other tendentious tactics by certain members of the birds project, much less reasonable argument by them, has had any effect to change consensus at MOS on this. There is no out-standing issue to discuss at the talk page of MOS:CAPS. It conflicts with MOS, and there's no way around that other than by editing it to stop doing so. A few members of ONE project continue to resist this clear consensus. The conclusion to an protracted repeat debate at WT:MOS in Feb.–Mar. 2012 was that MOS would note the birds case as an ongoing controversy, not endorse it as an exception and not recognize any other such cases as controversies (since there are in fact no such controversies; no one at the insects project has launched a WP:BIRDS-style debate about the MOS provisions in question). Despite this, a handful of editors keep trying to modify MOS:CAPS to suggest a) that MOS endorses an exception for birds, and b) that there are additional exceptions as well. This flies in the face of WP:POLICY, WP:CONSENSUS, WP:BRD, etc. All I've done is try to (again) make MOS:CAPS agree with MOS itself, which is effectively required by MOS. If someone else wants to do it, fine, but accusing me of some nonsense about inserting my own opinion is a red herring and an ad hominem fallacy that ignores the fact that WP:SOAPBOX/WP:BATTLEGROUND/WP:ADVOCACY POV-pushing is keeping MOS:CAPS out of synch with MOS in a way that has direct impact on article text and titles, by continuing to encourage people to randomly go around capitalizing common names of animal species. Bringing up any of this here is simply an exercise is "personalizing the debate". What this thread is about is Sandstein issuing bogus warnings/threats, that make false accusations, otherwise do not match the facts of the case he was responding to, and which do not even apply a remedy that was applicable, because ARBATC was not relevant to the then-ongoing discussion of whether Apteva was abusing AE simply to retaliate against Noetica. And I've already shown that Sandstein was already trying to get Noetica topic-banned to begin with, which is clear "involvement" in the issue. EdJohnston, please do not continue to try to cloud the issue by personalizing it against me in ways not related to this actual discussion. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖכþ Contrib. 19:16, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

I concur with EdJ. Sandstein is sensitive because one editor is making a real ruckus about it. I vented it on my talk page and I'm over it now; the other editor should be allowed to vent and cool down on his own talk page. I, for one, am not going to try having the warning rescinded. I fully respect Sandstein for his generally doing a good job, and I accept that he sometimes has to bang heads together to end disputes. Whilst I don't accept that I did anything that warranted such a warning, I'll just forget it was made by Sandstein in his admin capacity. If he or some other admin seeks to act upon that warning (to any of us four musketeers) supposing, if ever , Apteva or LittleBen or Whoever continues to be obtuse, pointy, lawyering, belligerent or serially disruptive about full stops, dashes, capitalisation or other such style matters in article titles, then I'm certain it will escalate to arbcom. -- Ohconfucius  02:14, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

It's not safe to "just forget it was made by Sandstein in his admin capacity"; that's half the reason I'm not just ignoring it like you are (the other being that admins do have some magical right to make false accusations against good-faith editors with impunity). — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖכþ Contrib. 19:16, 6 February 2013 (UTC)