This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Noetica (talk | contribs) at 05:24, 28 January 2012 (→Involved parties: Adding 11 parties; confirmations of notification coming soon). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

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Requests for arbitration

Article titles/MOS

Initiated by SarekOfVulcan (talk) at 22:23, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

Involved parties

• SarekOfVulcan (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA), filing party
• Born2cycle (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Dicklyon (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• JCScaliger (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Noetica (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Tony1 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Amatulic (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Greg L (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Kotniski (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Mike Cline (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)
• GTBacchus (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Blueboar (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Kauffner (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Vegaswikian (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)
• ErikHaugen (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)
• SMcCandlish (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Jojalozzo (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• David Levy (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)

Confirmation that all parties are aware of the request

• Born2cycle
• Dicklyon
• JCScaliger
• Noetica
• Tony1

Statement by SarekOfVulcan

There has been long-term disruptive editing on the MOS and article naming pages. As far as I can tell, no single RFC/U or edit warring block is going to solve the problem, so I'm bringing it to Arbcom in an attempt to break the back of the problem and make working in this area of the encyclopedia less unpleasant. For examples, see the recent history of Misplaced Pages:Manual of Style/Capital letters and Misplaced Pages talk:Article titles. There have been huge amounts of discussion spent on these topics, as well as related arb cases like WP:RFAR/DDL, so I'm not providing specific diffs of previous dispute resolution attempts above.

Response to AGK

Actually, I urge you not to put a temporary injunction in place, because I suspect part of the case will be figuring out its actual scope, and putting an injunction in place that doesn't cover the complete scope may lead to wikilawyering and bad feelings, instead of solving the problem at hand.--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 23:57, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

Statement by JCScaliger

On the other hand, I do believe that a single block (or better, a single mentoring) will solve this problem. A timeline of the events behind this is at User:Born2cycle/DearElen; long, and one of you has been faced with it already, but full of diffs.

Noetica and two of his friends have a tendency to engage in "campaigns" to "improve" Misplaced Pages, and assert the "authority" of our manual of style; I believe some of them have come before ArbCom before. They are a close-net little community, that tends to write about gaining territory, subversion, and, again, subversion. (They behave as though they were one mind; they appear on the same pages, they make the same arguments, they use the same language. I have not seen them disagree.) They are led by Noetica, who speaks for Order, in his own vocabulary.

The three of them are engaged in two of these crusades (or should I say internal security investigations?) and happen to have encountered me at both of them. At WP:TITLE, they came up with an idea for unnecessary disambiguation, which did not get a warm reception. They decided that one of the phrases in the first section of the policy was responsible, and began to boldly edit it. There were objections, and a poll; WT:AT#RFC on Recognizability guideline wording; it seems fairly decisive, but their response was to denounce the poll, boycott the page, and edit war for the wording they prefer.

This produced a month of discussion, and continual war; the page was protected twice. A couple of alternate versions were suggested by various people, and widely approved of. Two of these three editors did not object, but they reverted the results. Eventually I was bold enough to put both on in succession (together with the text that had been there when all this began), in the hope of at least novel wording from the dissentients, on the grounds that consensus should finally prevail.

(A hitherto uninvolved editor said: that there was clear consensus and one of Noetica's wikifriends said: it appears there is quite clearly a consensus and reverted in support of the language on familiarity. It has just had another RFC, this one unanimous.)

A policy with this amount of support has been disturbed for a month, almost entirely by Noetica alone, with some support from his friends and the admin Kwamikagami. This has cost us User:Kotniski; who quit Misplaced Pages, as explained in this edit because of the "month of smoke and mirrors".

Their other campaign has been to make all articles be lower-case, based solely on a vague expression in the lead of WP:MOSCAPS. Five editors joined in disliking this, and deploring the language, only to be told that the text, which had been boldly written by Noetica two weeks before, was "long-standing consensus"; Dicklyon has now reverted to the version he himself wrote in December. This is at least progress, and why I believe that mentoring Noetica may be enough. JCScaliger (talk) 00:32, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

Note. Another reason for leniency is that these three are merely exporting the poisonous environment of MOS to other pages. For example Wikipedia_talk:MOS#Species_capitalization_points is a lengthy current discussion whether MOS should "tolerate" or expunge a widespread custom used by many editors over a whole group of pages. Clearly five or six editors (none of them in this case) think their discussion in this corner is legislation, to be obeyed by all editors and left stable and unedited (unless there is consensus to change it, which is unlikely as long as the five or six decline to do so). It is unusual only in that a member of the group being discussed is actually present. If the five or six go forth to enforce their edict, there will be scattered protests, which will be ignored or brushed off (unless perhaps "consensus" can be as unmistakably shown as at WP:TITLE); changes will be revert-warred, because the protesters are tampering with the Law. This is what happened at WP:MOSCAPS too; Noetica was doing the same thing at TITLE, but was outnumbered (and Dicklyon is still arguing whether there is a consensus). If ArbCom can make a dent in this mindset, that would be most helpful. JCScaliger (talk) 04:14, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

Statement by Amatulic

Until some articles on my watchlist (including two I created) got caught up in a mass-renaming spree by Tony1 (the vast majority of which, upon examining his move log, constituted excellent work with just a few errors), and subsequently became aware of this ArbCom request, I had not known that there was a coordinated campaign to enforce an imagined "authority" of MOS:CAPS as written by two or three editors without the involvement of a larger community.

My involvement here has to do with the naming of technical analysis indicators. The entire page Talk:True strength index contains arguments from those well-versed in the field and familiar with the mass of reliable sources (most of which are not online) against renaming to lowercase. It amazes me that a handful of editors wielding an incomplete style guideline would try to force-fit it to every article, effectively re-writing decades of standard usage by reliable sources.

The discussions on Talk:True strength index and Talk:Relative Strength Index pointing out that MOS:CAPS is a guideline that should be applied with a modicum of common sense seems to have fallen on deaf ears on the part of those who seem to want to treat it as absolute policy. The MOS:CAPS defenders, while civil, do appear to give higher priority to this guideline than to policy (such as WP:RS). In my view, their entrenched position on this matter borders on tendentiousness while not quite reaching it.

I was going to suggest a change to MOS:CAPS to include technical analysis indicators as creative works in the MOS:CT section, but then realized that this would be futile without wider community involvement, because the primary participants there are the same ones who promote the disruptive renaming of articles about technical analysis inventions in the first place.

I will note that the debate on Relative Strength Index has been closed as keeping the original uppercase version of the title, while the debate that started after Tony1 changed True strength index to lowercase is still open with no consensus. ~Amatulić (talk) 02:30, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

Statement by Born2cycle

The month-long dispute at WP:TITLE is about whether the recognizability criterion should be restricted to those familiar with the article's topic, or not. This dispute is really part of a larger one that extends to interpreting WP:PRIMARYTOPIC and many RM discussions in which Noetica, Tony1 and Dicklyon are involved, because they hold a view contrary to long-held community consensus about titles. In particular, they want more descriptive information in titles in situations where the relevant policies, guidelines and conventions indicate otherwise, primarily because of our convention to add more descriptive information to titles only when needed to disambiguate the titles from others uses in Misplaced Pages.

• Dec 20, 2011 22:35 Tony1's edit alerts me that familiarity clause of the Recognizability criterion at WP:CRITERIA is gone.
  
• I researched history of wording.
  • Aug 17, 2010 Originally inserted
  • May 20, 2011 Discussion about simplifying recognizability wording
  • May 21, 2011 Familiarity phrase removed inadvertently
    
• Knowing some might oppose re-inserting the phrase despite it reflecting usage and consensus, I simultaneously fixed the policy page and added explanation to talk per BRD:
  • 23:13 Dec 20, 2011 Phrase restored
  • 23:13 Dec 20, 2011 Explanation on Talk
    • Discussion section: Wikipedia_talk:Article_titles#Clarification_of_recognizability_lost
  • 23:15 Dec 20, 2011 Reverted by Tony1 (talk · contribs)

• I was prepared to discuss it. I wasn't prepared for a discussion about why there needed to be a discussion.
  • 40 minutes of non-substantive discussion
  • 23:53 Dec 20, 2011 Born2cycle re-inserts phrase
  • 00:07 Dec 21, 2011 Phrase removed by Dicklyon
  • 00:15 Dec 21 2011 Noetica (talk · contribs) launches personal attack
  • 00:58 Dec 21, 2011 Dicklyon suggests "make proposal" and "wait for some discussion".
  • 01:09 Dec 21, 2011 Kotniski restores phrase
  • 01:26 Dec 21, 2011 Noetica removes phrase

This stonewalling insistence to discuss the change, while simultaneously not discussing the change, has been continued by Tony, Dicklyon and Noetica for over a month (see WP:AT); not one of them has said anything substantive about the edit.

Every editor who has spoken substantively about this edit has supported it. Consensus support for the change was established in the early discussions (which Noetica et al denied), but was confirmed again just this week in a poll in which re-inserting the phrase was supported unanimously.

Yet any time anyone tries to insert the change clearly supported by consensus , they revert , or manage to get an admin to revert to their preferred version , or even protect the page at their version

Their behavior is way beyond disruptive. It's so exasperating, Kotniski left on a break because of it.

I urge ARBCOM to find that Noetica, Dicklyon and Tony1 must adjust their behavior:

1. They must acknowledge that the community consensus is to disfavor additional precision in titles that is not needed to disambiguate from other uses of that title on WP.
2. If they revert an edit, they must address any good faith substantive argument in favor of making the edit. --Born2cycle (talk) 07:52, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

Statement by Tony1

I'm unsure why the filer believes there's an intractible situation that warrants an ArbCom case, rather than community action if necessary. While there are disagreements at both wp:title and wp:moscaps (not wp:mos, as in the heading), this is hardly unusual in the evolution of policies and guidelines. The community needs to work through the issues calmly and gradually; there should be no hurry, since complexities are involved.

I don't understand why I've been named as a party, since my input has been only to participate with civility and in good faith in talk-page debate, and then only sporadically (I did revert a change I thought was premature and unwarranted, but that is hardly a behavioural transgression requiring arbitration; please examine my contributions). I don't have a solution for the scoping of article titles—I'm still trying to come to grips with the issues—and while the issues are interesting, I don't care enough about them to get worked up.

I've skimmed through the long posts above, and note that I'm being closely associated with Dicklyon (who upbraids me on technical and procedural matters) and Noetica; there is much I don't agree on with these editors, and I am my own person on these matters.

I hope this will be the only post necessary on this page. I ask that an arb or clerk ping me if a further response is required. Thanks. Tony (talk) 11:54, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

Statement by Dick Lyon

It's unclear what behavior this AC proposal is intended to address. A few comments:

Born2cycle has pledged at AN to improve his contentious behavior; I don't see huge progress yet, but suggest we wait and see how that goes.

JCScaliger seems to have learned that his campaign to change the guidelines on capitalization was disruptive and elicited a lockdown at CAPS; I expect he'll pursue it still on the talk page, which is as it should be.

Noetica has made only 4 edits at MOS:CAPS in the last month, and has started a good discussion of the capitalization guidelines. His suggestion has a lot of support, and also a lot of opposition (including some from me), but it seems like a good discussion. His bold change, however, I have rolled back along with JCScaliger's bold change, after the unlock, since neither has yet gained consensus in the ongoing discussion. That seems stable.

Tony and I have been active in fixing over-capitalization, though not always in agreement with each other. These are mostly uncontroversial moves, unopposed RMs, and successful RMs, but there has been some pushback from editors in specific areas like the technical market indicators. Amatulic seems to be asking for an area exception in CAPS, but I don't see any behavior issues there.

I have been active on both the CAPS and TITLE talk pages. On the corresponding guideline/policy pages, I have made 2 reverts on each, and no other edits in the last month or so.

If anyone has an issue with my behavior, I'd like to hear about it first on my talk page, not at ArbCom. I'm open to input from anyone there (with the exception of Born2cycle, who I have asked to stay away from my talk page).

– Dicklyon (talk) 18:58, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by completely uninvolved Thryduulf

I have not been involved at all in this dispute, indeed I wasn't aware of it's existence until just now. However it doesn't surprise me in the least, nor does the appearance of certain names in the list of parties (most notably Tony1, noetica and Born2cycle) having encountered them in similar warring over article titles and similar MoS issues over the years - see for example WP:ARBDATE, hyphens/dashes and the history at Talk:Yogurt (the latter dispute given a good précis at WP:LAME#Yoghurt or Yogurt).

If accepted this will be at least the third arbitration activity regarding applying the manual of style to the encyclopaedia at large, following Date de-linking (case) and Hyphens and dashes (motion), with a large crossover involved parties. Given this, I think that the committee should at the very least consider investigating the broader issue here of the interaction of consensus at MoS pages (often involving only a relatively small number of users) vs "local" consensus of editors at affected articles, especially when they weren't aware of the discussion. Thryduulf (talk) 10:27, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by uninvolved Masem

This feels like a repeat of the Date Delinking case all over again, and represents a persistent problem at MOS that I observe but see no immediate means for correction, in that the named editors in addition to others form a small clique that, though their editing actions, seem to suggest that have full power and control over the MOS and reject any attempt to change MOS away from that. This is not to say that what they want the MOS to say, at times, doesn't have consensus nor that others don't agree with them; furthermore, some of these editors based on what we know are probably some of the best people to discuss the implementation of a MOS. However, it is the air of authority, and the lack of any ability to compromise on a different approach that makes trying to suggest changes or improves to the MOS an extremely bitter affair, if those changes are contrary to what this niche group believes is best. I will note that sometimes, these are started by editors with their own chip on their shoulders against the named editors here, and that certainly doesn't start the discussion in a positive light, but this case, here, I believe, is one where absolutely no type of personal vendetta was intended by the changes and yet these editors are power-playing their "position".

That said, its an extremely difficult situation to be remedied through WP's processes. As Sarek notes, because it involves numerous editors, no one single RFC/U can do this justice, and issuing a block at this time seems completely pointless. What would be best if there was a way for ArbCom to assess the situation, explain and detail why it is undesirable and harmful (if they find it as such), and issue warnings adn recommend future remedies should those editors excise this type of behavior again. --MASEM (t) 13:18, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by uninvolved Fetchcomms

This has to be one of the lamest disputes ever. The MOS is not worth wasting hundreds of hours of users' time arguing over. I support consistency, but I support WP:DGAF more. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 15:29, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by involved Enric Naval

The behaviour of some of the participants has been more than wanting. In August 2011 a new female editor specialized in dogs scrambled her name and left wikipedia very shortly after Tony left her several insulting and condescending messages. Ironically, at that time the Foundation was discussing the low ratio of female editors. He also left a general message in the talk page. In his first edit he had blindly mass-changed the article, breaking interwiki links, and tagged three times for copyedit the entire prose of all the article because of the name lacking a hyphen, he didn't leave any explanation in the talk page beyond complaining about the hyphen removal.. The editor removing the tag complained in Tony1's talk page, and Tony1 reverted as "vomit" and "more vomit".

When I confronted Tony1 here, he didn't find any problem with his behaviour, and he said that he couldn't be blamed for the departure because the editor didn't make explicit reference to him when departing.

Dicklyon then tried a "compromise" by inserting the hyphen anyways, after the RM failed. This keeps happening all the time, this small group of editors supporting each other, and trying every excuse to cram their preferred version into articles and into MOS pages. This sort of behaviour burns out good editors, like User:Kotnisky (as commented in JCScaliger's statement).

In this other complain you have Tony1 telling an expert that he doesn't know how to spell names in his profession. Several editors disagree and say that the edit is mistaken, and against reliable sources. Tony1 refuses to change his mind, Dicklyon changes the rest of the article anyways. After this RM failed, Tony1, Dicklyon and Noetica kept badgering in the talk page, trying to force the renaming anyways, rebuffing all arguments by expert editors that were familiar with the sources. Small examples of the usual problem: a small group of determined editors edit areas where they have no expertise, and rebuff the advice of experts and the usage in reliable sources. Expert editors give up in despair and stop trying to correct articles in their area of expertise. I suspect that this causes a slow and semi-invisible bleeding of expert editors.

On the other "side" of the capitalization and proper name arguments, we have User:Born2cycle, who has caused GTBacchus to leave, see User_talk:GTBacchus#Why_I.27m_leaving. I'll leave others to comment on this one.

I'm sure that we can find many more editors who have either retired or completely given up on editing MOS pages. --Enric Naval (talk) 20:28, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by uninvolved roux

Anything which gets the denizens of MOS to finally understand and accept that MOS is a guideline and thus not enforceable by any stretch of the imagination is a good thing. Anything which makes them finally shut up and stop their insane nitpicking is a good thing. If that takes an Arbcom case, so be it. → ROUX ₪ 20:45, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by uninvolved Beyond My Ken

Some years ago, I noted " tendency among some editors to treat policy guidelines as absolutes" and commented that

When guidelines are followed slavishly, with no allowance for deviation or experimentation, they are no longer guidelines, they are absolute rules. Since Misplaced Pages was made ex nihilo, if what was wanted was absolute rules, that's what would have been created – but, instead, we have guidelines, and the spirit of Misplaced Pages lies in treating them as such, as guidance and not as dogma. We need to allow them to breathe, to live and grow and, if necessary or desired, to evolve; but evolution cannot happen unless change is permitted, and change cannot happen if every time someone tries something very slightly different, their efforts are automatically snuffed out by those wielding the guidelines as if they were absolutes.

With these remarks in mind, I concur with the comments by Fetchcomms and Roux above, and urge the committee to take on this case. Beyond My Ken (talk) 22:58, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by uninvolved Greg L

Please forgive this long post. I tried my best to break up the paragraphs into bite-size pieces.

I’ve been thinking about this for the last day and reading what others have to say here. There is truth in everyone’s comments, above. What is also true is that many of the involved parties are bright, highly educated individuals and Misplaced Pages benefits from their input. But when conflict arrises, human nature gets the better of us all. And when disfunction arrises on Misplaced Pages and the normal mechanisms for intervention no longer work, things can spiral out of control.

The dispute on Misplaced Pages talk:Article titles and the related WP-space reminds me of when one reads of a hobo killing another in a dispute over a pair of shoes: it generally isn’t the shoes that were so bitterly fought over that resulted in the loss of life, it was the conflict and perceived slights and disrespect and frustration leading up to the taking of the shoes. The shoes were the catalyst; the fuel was the interpersonal disfunction and the lack of a properly functioning supporting social structure capable of intervening in the conflict.

So it is in this case. The dispute over the threshold at which article titles should have comma- or parenthetical-separated disambiguation, such as “Collins Street” v.s. “Collins Street, Melbourne”, was merely the catalyst. The fuel was the idiosyncrasies of the personalities and desires of the individuals clashing in a venue in which there were no interventional processes capable of defusing the situation.

I consider myself wikifriends with many of the named parties. And, though it might not seem like it, I have no enmity towards Born2cycle (B2C) and think he has much to offer Misplaced Pages. I have tried to straighten him out though because he strikes me as being much like the character Sheldon Cooper on The Big Bang Theory TV show (YouTube video illustrating this). He is bright, mechanical in his reasoning, astute, well educated, but approaches social interaction mechanically. And he is tendentious beyond all comprehension. And he is prone to wikilawyering to get his way. As others have alluded to above and provided evidentiary links, this has driven some editors to distraction and taken much of the fun out of what is supposed to be an enjoyable hobby.

Having said all that about B2C, he was quite correct in seeing that those who were advocating a particular policy on WP:AT were working against consensus. However, his manner of going about his business to make that point drives others away from the discussions. That leaves only the most stridently motivated individuals (combatants) at each others throats. With so few “outside” editors interested in stepping into the doggy poo, it is hard to establish a consensus about even the most fundamental issues underlying the conflict. Not too long ago, I wandered in, saw the conflict, and inquired if someone could explain the distinction between the two versions being advocated. The first time around, my inquiry was answered with posts that tended to inflame others. On about the third time I asked someone to explain the difference, Dicklyon responded I tend to agree that there's not a heck of a lot of difference, which is why I wanted to not pick a side until after discussing it, but the titling discussion…

Part of this “not being able to explain”-phenomenon is that the partisans are often loath to openly admit what certain wording means because the wording being discussed is purposely ambiguous and wholesome sounding but has hidden meaning; openly explaining the practical effect would expose the individual’s agenda.

What is quite clear is that as discussions drag on, talk pages fill up, individual posts become far too long to wade through, fewer and fewer middle-of-the-road editors are willing to set foot to mediate and break the deadlock, personal enmity gets out of hand, and nothing gets accomplished besides WP:Battleground.

When this is done with intelligent individuals as we’ve had here, then you will seldom find bright-line, flagrant fouls like Screw you; you're a fucking retard, which Misplaced Pages truly excels at dealing with so that our talk pages can exhibit the wholesome goodness of a religious boarding school for second graders. Misplaced Pages’s ability to reign in tendentiousness is truly abysmal. RFC/Us don’t work because allies, pleased that someone who has similar leanings as they do, are too quick to overlook the harm tendentiousness causes the community. And many consider an individual’s right to participate here as nearly an inalienable human right that ranks up there with with the Magna Carta.

The end result of rampant tendentiousness is an utter crumbling of all manner of things: As I said, it drives others away, which deprives the venue the ability to discern a consensus, deprives the combatants the social-support fuse of intervention, frustrates the living tar out of those who remain, drives some good editors clean off of Misplaced Pages, and results in a profoundly prejudiced attitude in those who remain.

All it took to get the rest of the community to join back in was a post of mine here on WT:AT#Request to Kotniski (beginning with “FWIW”) in which I opined out of the blue that I rather preferred a particular guideline. That shortly brought out User:Dohn joe who said Long-time listener, first-time caller. The poll there quickly brought in editors who had previously stayed away. They welcomed the opportunity to weigh in on an issue that was being strictly moderated. And that is where I’m finally going: how I moderated.

The major rule, I think, that made things functional there was a 300-word limit in the !voting section. It works like magic and breaks the back of tendentiousness. Sure, the tendentiousness merely moved down the page several inches, but the rule provided a small refuge for collegial collaboration and sharing of views without discussion threads filling up two-feet of space before one finds the next bulleted vote.

I propose that rather than throwing good, knowledgeable editors clean out of certain areas of Misplaced Pages or other remedies like interaction restrictions, ArbCom consider identifying which parties mostly contributed to a climate that drove others away from Misplaced Pages and from specific areas of Misplaced Pages such as WP:AT and WT:AT. Once those editors are so identified, I propose that they be muzzled to a 24-hour total of (something like) 600 words across all venues combined in which any of the other restricted parties is also present. Like this:

• Party A is on WT:AT advocating something.
• Party B sees this and weighs in with disagreement.

(now the 600-word per day limit kicks in}

• Party A takes offense and goes to Party B’s talk page to profess grief.
• Party B goes to Party A’s talk page.

All the above interactions, in total, count to the 600-word limit for the day.

The solution is simple for each party: If they avoid each other, they are unrestricted. If they want to mix it up, they had best learn to be succinct.

The beneficiaries will be the rest of the community. They will still benefit from the restricted party’s expertise and insight. When things are humming along smoothly and the parties aren’t mixing it up, there are no restrictions. If they want to mix it up, the disruption it causes is minimal. The word limit breaks the back of tendentiousness. If Party A and Party B actually learn to agree on something, they can *break the rule* of their limitation since they can merely elect to not report the foul.

That’s my 22¢, anyway. Greg L (talk) 02:52, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment by uninvolved Johnuniq

I have occasionally attempted to work out what the dispute was about, but have always been driven away by the pointless walls of text. I am posting to thoroughly endorse the excellent comment by Greg L above, and implore Arbcom to follow Greg's proposed solution (despite how that would infringe the human rights of those involved!). Johnuniq (talk) 03:50, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

Clerk notes

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

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

• Awaiting statements. The statements so far are concerning, but there are two sides to every story... Jclemens (talk) 00:45, 27 January 2012 (UTC)
• Accept. This is an obvious mess and no other means of dispute resolution appears likely to resolve it. Our task in addressing the situation will be to help solve the problems, rather than to compound them; if accepted, suggestions on how we best can do so will be at a premium at the workshop stage. Newyorkbrad (talk) 21:22, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

• Accept. I disagree with the statements that this dispute could be solved by community-based discussion, and I agree with the assessment that this is a protracted, messy dispute. If this case is accepted, we might give thought to a temporary injunction that prohibits the continuation of this dispute during arbitration proceedings. AGK 23:45, 27 January 2012 (UTC)
• Accept I have to agree with NYB, I see little hope anyhting short of arbitration will o anything but create more drama and strife while not leading to a solution. Courcelles 04:29, 28 January 2012 (UTC)