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Misplaced Pages:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Historical elections closed

Original announcement

What is a "sub-national election"? Does that specifically mean "elections exactly one level down from national", or more generally "any election below national level", which basically means "all elections"? Walter Gladwin includes a discussion of the results of the New York State Assembly elections. Does this mean that Walter Gladwin is now a CT? I would hope not. This could use clarifying. RoySmith (talk) 23:13, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, I have to agree, the meaning of this should be clarified, to do otherwise invites wiki-lawyering at AE. Just Step Sideways 23:39, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

I assume it means all elections (although it begs the question whether supranational elections are in scope). Number 57 01:15, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

@RoySmith: As worded "the results of any national or sub-national election" would be any election result that is national or below, not just one level below. That would include the results from state, county, and town/municipal elections in the United States or regional, department/canton, and municipal elections in France, as examples. The contentious topic covers election results, so the entirety of Walter Gladwin would not be a contentious topic, though the results of elections he was in would be. @Number 57: The wording of the CT would not cover supranational elections. - Aoidh (talk) 02:48, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

@Aoidh:, thanks for clarifying that, although the more I think about it the more it seems overly-broad. By my read this means every single election in the history of the human race that was not supranational is now designated as a CT. Now, the case is called Historical elections and 99.99% of Wikipedians have not seen any of the evidence, so maybe this was intentional, but it seems overly broad to me. Just Step Sideways 21:14, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

@Just Step Sideways: I agree it is very broad, but unfortunately so was the scope of the disruption, which wasn't limited to the level of government, geography, nationality, or timeframe. Narrowing the scope to one level below national, Western governments, or elections within the last 200 years wouldn't have covered all of the disruption, for example. - Aoidh (talk) 23:05, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

@Just Step Sideways: Very few articles are entirely under the CT, just the parts on the results of the election. The politics and campaign are CT-free. -- Guerillero 07:20, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

• Separately, one matter that wasn't addressed in the outcome – how should we deal with future disruption of this kind, particularly the off-wiki canvassing? One of the now-banned editors has been at it again, resulting in disruption on Georgian election articles (see e.g. here), canvassed talkpage comments and more trolling on my talkpage (including from another editor involved in the off-wiki stuff). Given this is happening off-wiki and taking into consideration outing rules, how can/should it be reported? Can social media posts be linked to to demonstrate what is happening? No criticism of Arbcom members who are volunteers and have real life commitments, but in my experience emails to Arbs often aren't responded to quickly (or at all in some cases), so I think there needs to be a way to report this on-wiki. Cheers, Number 57 01:15, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

  Can't do much to really stop a banned user, but ECP should probably be enough to stop most of the canvassed edits? And if someone is showing up again and again in the topic area in a disruptive way, that's what AE is for. Elli (talk | contribs) 06:32, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

  @Number 57: Any admin can protect pages as a CT action. CUs can block accounts based on off wiki evidence (per WP:BLOCKEVIDENCE) if they follow the procedure from this 2022 motion. -- Guerillero 13:03, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

  I am not sure this is enough – for example, you've protected the Georgian election article, but in the state that the offline canvassers wanted it. IMO action needs to include rollbacking to the pre-canvassing state. Number 57 15:56, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

• "Starting in 2026 and checked yearly afterwards, this designation expires on 1 January if no sanctions have been logged in the preceding 2 years." Am I missing something or shouldn't this mean either 2027 or that would it expire in 2026 if no additional sanctions are recorded? (Otherwise, the 2026 check doesn't make sense to me since these four sanctions would be noted.) --Super Goku V (talk) 07:45, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

  If no sanctions are recorded between the close of the case and 1 January 2026, the designation will expire. Primefac (talk) 12:06, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

  Ah, with both replies I now get it. Thank you for the clarification. --Super Goku V (talk) 05:42, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

  (edit conflict) AFAIK, sanctions and restrictions issued by arbcom aren't logged at Misplaced Pages:AELOG which intended for sanctions and restrictions issues by admins under CTOP. (E.g. Misplaced Pages:Arbitration enforcement log/2022#Conduct in deletion-related editing doesn't have arbcom's sanctions.) So while perhaps the wording could be clarified, to my read, the wording already means that the sanctions would expire in 2026 if no additional/admin sanctions are issued. Although on a related note, does this mean CTOP expires if admins are making new page restrictions but not issuing any editor sanctions? Was this intended? If new page restrictions count as sanctions, can an admin "renew" a page restriction which they feel is still needed for the purpose of keeping CTOP in place? Also does a warning count as a sanction? Nil Einne (talk) 12:16, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

  Your read of the timing is correct. As for warnings and page restrictions, I personally think they are included. The intention is that the CT should only be around if it is being used. -- Guerillero 13:08, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

  And now it makes sense why the word "logged" is used instead of issued, which I didn't pick up on until now. Thank you for the clarification. I just didn't consider enough that there is a difference between a sanction that comes directly from a case and a sanction that comes from enforcement. --Super Goku V (talk) 05:49, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

• This explains the bizarreness that was going on at South African general elections in May/June. I was chasing edit wars for days on ~ten articles over an infobox. It was crazy, the level of passionate participation over a not-that-major change at multiple not-that-prominent articles, but the participants seemed plausible, few were brand new, I figured they were all members of some wikiproject who all just happened to have the same opinion that the new infobox was "ugly". And in the end, what I now realize were meatpuppets got consensus ownership. I wonder if that close should be reviewed. Pinging Czello. Also wondering if the editors involved should be notified of this finding, for their own future reference. Valereee (talk) 12:22, 14 September 2024 (UTC)
  • This is part of the issue – the off-wiki campaigning was ultimately successful in changing virtually every article (probably somewhere between 50 and 100) they wanted to, either by edit warring or canvassed talkpage consensuses (one of which overrode a previous RfC). The latest bout has seen several Georgian election articles changed to the canvassers' desired state. While the editors driving it can be blocked, their meatpuppets still succeed. How do we stop this? Number 57 15:53, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

    ECP maybe? That would cut some of it down, probably. Like this new entry here below. Valereee (talk) 16:12, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

  • Also, re the last point, numerous editors (some of whom are fairly longstanding) enthusiastically joined in the disruption and have not faced any consequences. I personally don't think this should be tolerated, but again the question is how to deal with them. Number 57 16:01, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

    Looking at it again, it looks to me like some otherwise levelheaded editors let themselves get swept up into the whole "major change without discussion first" accusations. It wasn't really a major change, it was one infobox template vs. another. Barely even a bold move unless you happen to be someone passionate about infoboxes. But there was so much gnashing of teeth from the meatpuppets that all I can think is it made usually levelheaded editors just kind of get caught up in it. Valereee (talk) 16:53, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

    There was a large amount of disruption on French election articles that went well beyond the infobox matter and involved blindly reverting a wide range of changes, including properly referencing and correcting election results tables. Number 57 16:57, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

• I don't follow arbcom cases that closely so forgive me if the answer to this is obvious but why wasn't Talleyrand6 topic banned? I did look at the proposed decision and didn't see a definite answer. Was it because they were already blocked and it seemed clear they weren't going to be unblocked; but for the other ones the topic-ban was partly there in case there wasn't enough for site ban as happened with DemocraticLuntz? I'm aware that a topic ban could and probably would be part of any successful appeal. Also that all the others who received both technically could appeal them both at the same time (although I suspect doing so would probably harm their chances of the site ban appeal succeeding). Nil Einne (talk) 14:54, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

  Talleyrand6 wasn't topic-banned because their ArbCom-confirmed block (now siteban) made it moot. The others weren't blocked at the time of the case, which is why both topic and sitebans were on the table for them. —Jéské Couriano v^_^v 18:10, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

  personally i think number 57 should be stripped of his admin privileges Hthompson2000 (talk) 02:45, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

  @Hthompson2000: Why? —Jéské Couriano v^_^v 06:42, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

  It seems we have another partisan. _WADroughtOfVowels 15:57, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

  Indeed. That user page, however accurate, is merely trolling, and they should be blocked. SerialNumber54129 14:31, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

Changes to the CheckUser team, September 2024

Original announcement