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A request for arbitration is the last step of dispute resolution. Before requesting arbitration, please review other avenues you should take. If you do not follow any of these routes, it is highly likely that your request will be rejected. If all other steps have failed, and you see no reasonable chance that the matter can be resolved in another manner, you may request that it be decided by the Arbitration Committee (ArbCom).

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Currently, there are no requests for arbitration.

No cases have recently been closed (view all closed cases).

Currently, no requests for clarification or amendment are open.

The Arbitration Committee considers requests to open new cases and (exceptionally) to summarily review new evidence and update the findings and decisions of a previous case. Review is likely to be appropriate if later events indicate the original ruling on scope or enforcement was too limited and does not adequately address the situation, or if new evidence suggests the findings of fact were significantly in error.

The procedure for accepting requests is described in the Arbitration policy. If you are going to make a request here, you must be brief and cite supporting diffs. If your case is accepted for arbitration, the arbitrator or clerk will create an evidence page that you can use to provide more detail. New requests to the top, please. You are required to place a notice on the user talk page of each person against whom you lodge a complaint.

0/0/0/0 corresponds to Arbitrators' votes to accept/reject/recuse/other. Cases are usually opened at least 24 hours after four accept votes are cast. When a case is opened, a notice that includes a link to a newly created evidence page will be posted to each participant's talk page. See the Requests section of the arbitration policy page for details.

This is not a page for discussion, and Arbitrators or clerks may summarily remove or refactor discussion without comment. Please do not open cases; only an Arbitrator or clerk may do so.

See also

• Arbitration policy
• Misplaced Pages:Arbitration policy/Past decisions
• Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/How to present a case - Recommended reading: An (unofficial) guide to presenting effective Arbitration cases.
• Arbitration enforcement - Any user can request help here if it involves the violation of an ArbCom decision
• Administrator enforcement requested (shortcut WP:RFAr/AER)
• Developer help needed
• Arbitration template

How to list cases

Under the Current requests section below:

• Click the "" tab on the right of the screen appearing above the section break line;
• Copy the full formatting template (text will be visible in edit mode), omitting the lines which say "BEGIN" and "END TEMPLATE";
• Paste template text where it says "ADD CASE BELOW";
• Follow instructions on comments (indented), and fill out the form;
• Remove the template comments (indented).

Note: Please do not remove or alter the hidden template

Current requests

Gillberg affair

Initiated by Daphne A at 08:44, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Involved parties

• Daphne A (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Denis Diderot (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Pia L (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Fred Chess (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Confirmation that all parties are aware of the request

• Denis Diderot:
• Pia L:
• Fred Chess:
• Article Talk (unrequired, but perhaps helpful):

Confirmation that other steps in dispute resolution have been tried

I requested mediation on August 1st, both on the Talk page of the main article and on the Talk page of Denis Diderot. At this point, User:Fred Chess intervened, protecting the article and putting up a Request for Comment. On August 10th, there had been no real progress and little substantive responses to my statements from Denis Diderot; so Fred Chess removed the protection. There were more edit wars; and as before, discussion on the Talk page resolved little. On August 19th, I again asked the other parties to agree to mediation. At this point, User:SandyGeorgia got involved, making some suggestions about how to resolve the dispute, which also had little success. I repeated my request to agree to mediation on August 23rd. Denis Diderot made no response to this, though he did afterwards respond to other issues (raised by another editor) on the Talk page; so he must have seen my request. Pia L did respond to my request: she claimed that there was "no dispute" and she then removed the POV sticker from the article. In conclusion, my repeated requests to agree to mediation have either been ignored or treated rhetorically. (Many of the points that I raised on the Talk page were met similarly.)

This dispute pertains to the article Christopher Gillberg and two daughter articles: Gillberg's Gothenburg study and DAMP.

Statement by Daphne A

BACKGROUND. Christopher Gillberg is a psychiatrist in Sweden. He did a study of 141 children, which lasted many years. (The study suggested increasing the use of psychiatric drugs on children.) Gillberg was alleged to have fabricated much of the data in the study. The study data contains personal, private information about the children, and Gillberg had made promises to all concerned that it would remain confidential. A court, though, ordered Gillberg to make the data available to the two people who made the allegations. Gillberg's wife and two other co-workers then destroyed the data, saying that they had acted to maintain confidentiality. Investigation of the allegations was thereafter infeasible.
____________________

Briefly, I am asserting that the versions of the articles written by Denis Diderot and Pia L have an excessively-positive POV. There are many things in the articles that exemplify this. I list only a few examples here.

1. The articles Christopher Gillberg and Gillberg's Gothenburg study each claim that the "accusations were investigated by the Ethics Council" at Gillberg's university. This claim has also been made in the media. Because of that, the four people who were on the Council at the time published a letter (in 2005) saying "the question about scientific fraud never has been investigated". The letter also explicitly criticized those people who said otherwise. Thus, the claim in the Misplaced Pages article is false. (More details about what the Ethics Committee did and did not do is here. How Denis Diderot and Pia L talk their way around this is here.)

2. The fraud allegations, data destruction, etc. have come to be called the "Gillberg affair" in Sweden; there have tens of stories in the major newspapers, TV programs, etc. about this. The affair has also been the subject of two stories in the British Medical Journal. Gillberg has not received anywhere near such extensive media coverage for anything else. Thus, if someone outside Gillberg's field of research in psychiatry has heard of Gillberg, the affair is what very likely sparked their interest. For that reason, the Introduction of the article on Christopher Gillberg should discuss the affair. The current Intro states only that "Gillberg is also known for his concern about the confidentiality of medical records and his role in a related controversy"; that seems to me to be far too bland and extremely-positive POV. Compare that with the above BACKGROUND paragraph, or the last paragraph of the Intro that I wrote here.

3. Gillberg was awarded a prize for his work (Philips prize). The prize was awarded in part because Gillberg is "well-known in promoting important medical ethical questions in order to defend patients' and participants' personal integrity rights in regard to research studies" (quoted from the official prize announcement). This is a clear reference to Gillberg's refusal to allow the study data to be investigated. Gillberg was later criminally convicted (by a Swedish court) for refusing to hand over the data. I believe that if the article is going to mention the prize, then it should also mention the reasons for which the prize was awarded (the other reason was his work generally in neuropsychiatry and pediatric psychiatry). Denis Diderot and Pia L do not want the quoted reason mentioned in the article. I have tried to discuss this issue in Talk more than once; see especially the discussion here.

4. The article states that "When the study participants were asked if they would be prepared to have the data released, all but one family refused" and that "the participants of the study were strongly opposed" to investigation. Again there is more to this. Gillberg told the participants that if they agreed to the investigation, then all their personal data would become public, and so available to reporters, their worst enemies, etc. Of course participants would be against that. But Gillberg was misleading: the court actually authorized only two people to scrutinize the data, and those people would have been required to sign confidentiality agreements. I pointed this out in Talk. If the article is going to mention what the study participants thought of making the data available, then what Gillberg misleadingly told them should be described. (I did not try to make the requisite change to the article, because by this time it was clear that such a change would be quickly reverted; the false reply that I got in Talk essentially confirmed this.)

5. Gillberg has also done much work on things other than his Gothenburg study. In particular, he developed the concept of "DAMP". The main article has a short section on this. I have written a separate article on DAMP; the last version that I saved is here. The impression given by the main article is that DAMP is an important advance in psychiatry. As my version of the separate article makes clear, that impression has been agreed to by almost no one other than Gillberg's co-workers and is seriously misleading.

I could give other examples, especially because changes to entrench the POV have been accumulating while I requested agreement to mediation (particularly during the past few days), but this statement is already long. My purpose here is to establish that the other parties are trying for an extreme POV. I believe that the above does so.

—Daphne A 08:44, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Someone has pointed out to me that ArbCom does not resolve disputes over content. Before filing my request, I read Requests for arbitration/How to present a case which states that ArbCom cares "much more about product than process". I am not a newbie, but neither am I an expert Wikipedian, and I interpreted "product" as meaning article; for that reason I worded my request to focus on the article/content.

But I am confused. Consider example 1 in my statement (where the article claims that an investigation was done, but the people who supposedly did it published a letter saying that they didn't). So I changed the article to say they didn't. My change got reverted. And again. Discussion on the Talk page lead nowhere. A RfComment lead nowhere. My repeated requests to agree to mediation were ignored or rejected. So how can the dispute be resolved?

Example 2 is similar: edit wars, etc., and requests to agree to mediation ignored or rejected. (For links to evidence regarding mediation requests, see above section "Confirmation that other steps in dispute resolution have been tried".) Again, how can the dispute be resolved?

Example 3 is similar. Example 4 did not have an edit war, because by this time I saw little point. For example 5, I did not try much.

Perhaps two other examples will help illustrate.

6. For Gillberg's Gothenburg study, Denis Diderot added many unsourced statements. I reverted the change , and politely explained in Talk that the statements needed sources . Denis then reverted my revert, and ignored what I had said in Talk.

7. A question arose as to whether the Swedish term Etiska rådet should be translated as "Ethics committee" or "Ethics council". I preferred the former and explained why in Talk. Again my change got reverted and what I said in Talk was wholly ignored.

These examples are smaller, but part of the pattern.

—Daphne A 20:47, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Statement by party 2

(Please limit your statement to 500 words. Overlong statements may be removed without warning by clerks or arbitrators and replaced by much shorter summaries. Remember to sign and date your statement.)

Statement by party 3

(Please limit your statement to 500 words. Overlong statements may be removed without warning by clerks or arbitrators and replaced by much shorter summaries. Remember to sign and date your statement.)

Statement by party 4

(Please limit your statement to 500 words. Overlong statements may be removed without warning by clerks or arbitrators and replaced by much shorter summaries. Remember to sign and date your statement.)

Clerk notes

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

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

• Reject. I don't see any evidence that this has gone beyond a debate over content. - SimonP 18:30, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
• Reject as per Simon. James F. (talk) 09:50, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

Marudubshinki

Initiated by Snottygobble and I@n at 11:28, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

Involved parties

• Snottygobble (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• I@n (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• SCZenz (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Marudubshinki (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Confirmation that all parties are aware of the request

• Snottygobble, I@n and SCZenz have made statements below, so no further confirmation is needed.
• Marudubshinki: ,

Confirmation that other steps in dispute resolution have been tried

Other steps in dispute resolution were tried during earlier stages of the dispute. The situation has now escalated to the point where a number of editors feel that removal of Marudubshinki's sysop flag is an appropriate remedy. As only the ArbCom has the power to direct such a remedy, other steps are no longer relevant.

The ArbCom is invited to consider whether Marudubshinki should be desysopped for running an unauthorised admin-bot through his own account; unblocking himself in order to re-start the bot; and evading a block through the use of a sockpuppet.

Statement by User:Snottygobble

Marudubshinki was promoted to admin in October 2005. On 10 May 2006 he began running an unauthorised, unsupervised bot at Bot-maru (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log). This was blocked on 22 May, and a WP:B/RFA request denied. He then began running the bot on his own account. In addition to these violations, the bot ran way too fast, and made mistakes. Marudubshinki was asked many time to stop violating WP:BOT policy. His responses can be summaried by this exchange between Marudubshinki and SCZenz:

Hi Marudubshinki. Can you please stop running unauthorized bots in any form? There's a reason for the authorization process, which is that if more people think about what the bot is doing and then it has a trial period, mistakes are less likely to be made. It is against policy to run unauthorized bots; see Misplaced Pages:Bots, please. -- SCZenz 08:09, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

That is true, but I find running a bot to be extremely useful. Finding all these bugs are simply handy side-effects. --maru 11:26, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

On 28 July, following discussions at User talk:Marudubshinki and WP:AN/I (now at Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive124#User:Marudubshinki running unauthorized robots), I@n blocked Marudubshinki indefinitely with edit summary "(blocked per misuse of bot - see note on users talk page)". During the AN/I discussion it came to public notice that

1. Marudubshinki had previously unblocked himself despite being explicitly told not to by the admin that blocked him. In that previous case the block was for running an unapproved bot; Marudubshinki unblocked with edit summary "(bot's shut down)", then restarted his bot the next day.
2. Marudubshinki had lent his bot his sysop flag, allowing the bot to make deletions.

Essjay described this as

...greatly concerning, as the use of bots with admin privs is opposed very strongly on en.wiki... and by the Foundation.... Given that he's been warned numerous times not to run a bot under his admin account, has refused to comply, has added features which utilize his admin status without approval, and has unblocked himself in order to re-start the bot, I'm inclined to request a desysopping.

A number of editors expressed similar opinions re: desysopping, but nothing was done to instigate that remedy. Marudubshinki was told that he must not unblock himself, and that he would not be unblocked until he agreed to abide by the WP:BOT policy. He was also told that he was extremely close to losing his sysop flag.

On 18 August, Marudubshinki placed the {{unblock}} template on his talk page, with reason

The editors concerned wanted a promise from me to go and sin no more against the bot policy. They have it. --maru 00:03, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

I@n then unblocked, and posted a message to that effect at WP:AN/I#User:Marudubshinki. One of Marudubshinki's first edits after unblocking was to add to his user page a disclosure that he sometimes uses the alternative account Rhwawn (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log). An examination of Rhwawn's contributions revealed that Marudubshinki had created the account three days after he was blocked, had used the alternative account to evade his block, and had made over 500 unauthorised bot edits through the account. Snottygobble then restored the indefinite block with edit summary "evasion of previous block - see AN/I discussion", leaving on Marudubshinki's talk page the message:

I have blocked both your accounts indefinitely while we thrash out the implications of you running unauthorised bot edits through an alternative account created to avoid an indefinite block applied for running unauthorised bot edits. --Snottygobble 01:57, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

Following further discussion at WP:AN/I#User:Marudubshinki, User:ZScout370 unblocked Marudubshinki with edit summary "reducing to time served; but user is reminded to not run any automated edits until a new account is set up and approved)".

The AN/I discussion showed some support for Marudubshinki to be deprived of his sysop flag; and also some support for Marudubshinki to be given one last chance. The ArbCom is now asked to consider this question.

Snottygobble 00:47, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Statement by User:I@n

I concur with Snottygobble's summation above. A timeline of applicable actions of Marudubshinki and others can be read here.

I first encountered Marudubshinki (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log) on July 27 when I noticed a page on my watchlist was updated with an edit summary of "(robot: Reporting unavailable external link)". The bot had incorrectly identified an external link as being unavailable because the link had a pipe "|" character immediately following a url address. This was a perfectly normal occurrence when the url was inside a template such as {{cite}}. I had a dialog with Maru on his talk page concerning these edits and suggested that he should fix the bot. I found Maru to be strangely dismissive of what seemed to me to be a reasonable request. I noticed many similar incidents in his talk page.

In this edit on August 18, Maru said "Henceforth I promise not to run fully automatic bots without a bot flag; I shall go and sin no more. Is that sufficient?"

I feel that Maru's violation of WP:BOT policy and deliberate evasion by use of a sockpuppet to be behaviour unbecoming of an administrator. He cannot plea ignorance as he has been blocked 5 times over several months (once on User:Bot-maru, three on his main account and once on sockpuppet account User:Rhwawn). He has been requested to modify his behaviour on numerous occasions and promised to do so, presumably to get his block removed. I see no reason why he won't continue to violate policies in the future. He has unblocked himself in violation of WP:BLOCK ("...Sysops are technically able to unblock themselves ... but should absolutely not do so") policy.

Maru is a valuable editor. Arbcom needs to consider whether his sysop rights should be removed or retained.

Statement by SCZenz

I am involved party, as I was involved in encouraging Maru to reform his bot use from a relatively early time. His bot scripts had a tendency to break things or upset people (i.e. by changing talk page comments to fix typos), and he was at times rather insensitive to requests to change them (for example, he argued at some length that changing talk page comments was ok, despite many requests. They also ran too fast for unauthorized bots. I blocked a preliminary bot account he had after it persisted in unwanted behavior despite requests, and told him it could be unblocked if it behaved properly for an unapproved bot. He never dealt with this, but instead started intermittently making the same edits from his main account, resulting in this colorful blocking history. In short, it took an extraordinary amount of time and drama to convince Maru to follow bot policy, even though he was fully aware of it.

Then of course there are the issues of self-unblocking, running bots with admin powers, and evading blocks through sockpuppetry as described above.

In short, Maru has shown extraordinarily poor judgement and set a very bad example for other users when as an admin he should have been doing the opposite. All this must be balanced against the fact that he is a solid contributor aside from these issues—in particular the question of whether we might lose his contributions entirely if ArbCom reacts strongly to misbehaviors that may now have ceased.

Comment by Cyde Weys

I was the one who originally advised on ANI that Maru be indefinitely blocked (per the bot policy) until he stopped running his unauthorized bot. I thought that was the end of it, but evidently it wasn't. I'm very saddened that Maru went back to the same stuff that got him in trouble in the first place and would ask the ArbCom to take action, since apparently no one else can get through to him. --Cyde Weys 02:16, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

Statement by Marudubshinki

(Please limit your statement to 500 words. Overlong statements may be removed without warning by clerks or arbitrators and replaced by much shorter summaries. Remember to sign and date your statement.)

Clerk notes

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

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

• Accept. Matthew Brown (Morven) (T:C) 17:59, 23 August 2006 (UTC)
• Accept. Sam Korn 09:02, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
• Accept. Charles Matthews 16:18, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
• Accept. Dmcdevit·t 05:18, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
• Accept. - SimonP 18:27, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Rainbow Gathering

Initiated by Oceankat at 17:36, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Involved parties

• Oceankat (talk · contribs)
• Lookingheart (talk · contribs)
• Bstone (talk · contribs)
• Twofeathers (talk · contribs)
• Hawker@xxxxxxxx.org Not a registered user but took part in informal mediation.
• Dante420 (talk · contribs)

• I will post on the user's talk pages as well as the Rainbow Gathering discussion page.

• Misplaced Pages:Mediation Cabal/Cases/2006-07-01 national rainbow gatherings

• http://en.wikipedia.org/Wikipedia:Requests_for_mediation/rainbow_gathering

• There is an unresolved disagreement and edit war occuring over the additions of several gatherings by to the list of National/Annual Rainbow Gatherings.

Statement by oceankat

• Several gatherings have been added to the list of National/Annual Rainbow Gatherings by Lookingheart (talk · contribs). Lookingheart (talk · contribs) has stated in discussion that next year he intends to add more. Most of my attempts at discussion before informal mediation were ignored by lookingheart as well as most of my posts during informal mediation. Lookingheart refused formal mediation. Without arbitration I see no way to end this edit war. These gatherings are not National but small local gatherings. The National Gatherings have 10,000 to 25,000 people in attendance, Lookiingheart's additions have maybe 200. There have been several hundred similar and larger local, regional, or alternative gatherings over the last 34 years. These rainbow gatherings, which have been called "a gathering of the tribes" or AGOTT or among the newest and the smallest of the expansions or alternatives. I could easily list over a hundred on the east coast that have been in existance far longer than AGOTT and have the same or much greater attendance. I'm sure those on the west coast could list twice that. If lookingheart's gatherings are listed then any equavalent gathering can be listed and eventually would be. Every little local gathering of 25 people as well as gatherings that have never happened before with no reasonable expectation that it even will occur. Often on rainbow calanders people would list gatherings that were only a wish and a dream but the energy never manifested to pull it off. The article would be flooded with trivia as well as non-factual information, ie. gatherings listed that will not occur. I have seen no independant verification of these gatherings. No newspaper articles. No discussion on rainbow websites with reports from the gathering. While its rumored maybe 200 people were at the Mossouri AGOTT, I have no rumors at all about the WV AGOTT lookingheart listed and all requests for information before and during informal mediation were ignored. I can't with any assurance state that the gathering even occured or that anyone besides the few focalizers showed up. The WV AGOTT was clearly in violation of wikipedia guidelines concerning the posting of future events. In my opinion, no alternative gatherings should be listed, not even the florida annual which has had annual gatherings for over 20 years. None are sufficiently notable and the difficulty of manufacturing a standard to include some and exclude others is nearly impossible. Yet if we were to craft a standard any standard for inclusion would have to exclude AGOTT as it is the among the smallest and newest of the expansions and any standard that included it would include all gatherings that have ever occured or will occur. Oceankat 18:48, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Statement by Bstone

I hope some thoughts from me might be helpful. I fully admit I have been in a constant edit war with Lookingheart regarding the listing of National/Annual Rainbow Gatherings. I attempted to work out these issued by participating in informal mediation located at Talk:Rainbow Gathering. One will see there that various Administrators attempted to work through the process. While I admit I was not the most open minded, I was willing to compromise on some issues. Lookingheart, however, was entirely unagreeable to any form of compromise. As a result, information mediation failed.

After informal mediation failed, a request for formal mediation was put in. This request failed due to Lookingheart's utter refusal to participate in the mediation attempt. This can be found at Misplaced Pages:Requests for mediation/rainbow gathering.

As a result of this I put in a request to have the page fully protected, even from myself, until this arbitration process could proceed.

It should be noted that Lookingheart has made some striking and entirely basless accusations against myself. On the request for mediation page he likened my response to "Nazi tactics" and "detract from your earning concerning your personal Paypal account for what you call a CALM Unit", referring to the free, volunteer medical team which sets up shop at the Rainbow Gathering and alleging I embezzle donated funds for my own purpose. This is undeinabley false for a variety of reasons which I shall not get into there. This does, however, paint the picture of Lookingheart as someone who is incredibly difficult to work with, unwilling to accept impartial mediation and alleging actual legal crimes without any sort of proof.

I do hope that this arbitration process can proceed and investigate all the various infractions and settle this issue, once and for all. Bstone 12:41, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

Statement by uninvolved User:JzG

I have looked into this and find that Lookingheart's contributions in mainspace are restricted almost exclusively to this subject (the single exception being to create an article on Cottman Transmission, which contradicted some of the information in AAMCO, and to link a single local franchise of Cottman in both the aforementioned articles. Make of that what you will).

So, to all intents and purposes, Lookingheart is a single-purpose account, and the sole proponent of adding these minor local gatherings to the Rainbow Gathering article. At this point I guess we could go one of two ways: Lookingheart could be banned from the Rainbow Gathering article, in the hope that he begins to contriute content in other areas, or he could be politely shown the door as having demonstrated obstinate refusal to accept the way Misplaced Pages works. Just zis Guy you know? 13:14, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

Statement by party 2

(Please limit your statement to 500 words. Overlong statements may be removed without warning by clerks or arbitrators and replaced by much shorter summaries. Remember to sign and date your statement.)

Clerk notes

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

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

• Reject, local Rainbow Gatherings don't belong in a list of the national Gatherings. I suggest an article on local Gatherings. Fred Bauder 14:18, 26 August 2006 (UTC) On looking at the contributions I see this is about A Gathering of the Tribes, not about local gatherings. If A Gathering of the Tribes will not support its own article it should not hijack the Rainbow Gathering article to publicize its Gatherings. Fred Bauder 14:25, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
• Reject. Mainly a content dispute. - SimonP 18:25, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
• Reject as a content dispute. James F. (talk) 09:50, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

Request for Clarification on Arbitrators Decision

Sorry for asking such a seemingly foolish question. I am still rather new to wikipedia and entirely new the arbitration. Does the "reject" decision from the arbcom mean that the "A Gathering of the Tribes" will *not* be allowed on the listing of Annual Gatherings? Thanks for the feedback. Bstone 00:36, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

No, just that the Arbitration Committee will not decide the matter one way or another. Fred Bauder 01:09, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, Fred, for the reply. I wonder what you might suggest in the meantime? Since Lookingheart has entirely rejected mediation and the edit war continues I am wondering what the next step might be? Thanks. Bstone 02:46, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

I, too, have the same question. Will the page remain protected? For how long? You state, "local Rainbow Gatherings don't belong in a list of the national Gatherings" which is my contention. But that hasn't stopped them from being added again and again. You, "suggest an article on local Gatherings." So did Aguerriero during informal mediation. Lookingheart rejected that suggestion. That didn't stop the on-going edit war. What happens if lookingheart adds 10 AGOTT gatherings before next year's National as he said he might in discussion? At the moment I see only 2 options, continue the edit war or let lookingheart post what ever he wants. Oceankat 03:19, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

MyWikiBiz

Initiated by Cyde Weys at 14:29, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Involved parties and confirmations

MyWikiBiz

Confirmation that other steps in dispute resolution have been tried

ArbCom is the only kind of dispute resolution that is liable to work in this instance.

MyWikiBiz (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) has been writing and influencing articles on Misplaced Pages on a contract basis for pay.

Statement by Cyde Weys

MyWikiBiz is admittedly writing articles on a for-pay basis. This was noticed and he was briefly blocked and then unblocked by Jimbo after he promised that he wasn't going to do anything bad. Well, it appears that he has. Here we see him voting delete in an AFD, saying the subject of the article should have employed him if they wanted an article that should be kept. This reeks of a protection racket. He's also nominated a few other articles about businesses for deletion; one wonders if he did so because he offered to improve their articles for pay and they refused? I believe this case needs to be accepted to establish some sort of precedent about whether such an egregious conflict of interest with the core goals of the project should be tolerated. --Cyde Weys 14:29, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

More stuff to look at: Look at the deleted edits on Gregory Kohs and Gregory J. Kohs. I'm not quite sure what's going on here but User:Thekohser is self-admittedly an alternate account of "MyWikiBiz", and appears also to have been doing some suspicious business-related edits. --Cyde Weys 16:20, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Statement by MyWikiBiz

OFFICIAL STATEMENT: I hope that the Arbitration Committee will review the entire legacy of Conflicts, of PaidEditing, of the threads at WikiEN-l and of Options (which took quite some time and effort on my part, to create a fair discussion forum), and weigh the effort and thoughtfulness of those discussions against the three-word reply of "Absolutely unacceptable, sorry" by Jimbo Wales, regarding Conflicts. In light of that, I hope that (a) my most recent juvenile attempts at WP:POINT will be understood as a one-off spurt of activity (where I actually identified some pretty awful non-notable or spam-linked articles, but did so in the wrong way), and that (b) the ArbCom will elect to view this "case" not so much as a means to punish MyWikiBiz, but to address the larger issue of "paid editing" on Misplaced Pages. The herd of horses is already out of the barn, as evidenced by the Reward Board and by PRSA article. Are Misplaced Pages admins resolved in attempting to remedy the situation one AfD, one block, and one IP ban at a time? If so, then Misplaced Pages admins will have a ton of arduous work before them, and the prejudice against MyWikiBiz is going to be insurmountable, anyway, and this "statement" will have been just more wasted time. -- MyWikiBiz 15:40, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

(posted on behalf of MyWikiBiz --Deathphoenix ʕ 15:47, 22 August 2006 (UTC))

• Misplaced Pages dispute resolution