Misplaced Pages

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Arbitrators active on this case

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Article probation

Can this please be extended to, at the very least, Race of ancient Egyptians? Both these articles would be better than one, in my opinion. Picaroon (t) 22:09, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Aye. Moreschi 22:12, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Rollback

Rollback is now to be made available to non-admins, is already available to non-admins through Twinkle, and can also be accessed via the inbuilt Undo function. I don't think use of rollback is such a big deal these days. Guy (Help!) 10:06, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Comment: rollback and undo are both violations of WP:REVERT, part of which I'll paste below. To sum-up, reverts are appropriate for vandalism or removing your own edits, which is not how dbachmann has been using it. It's a form of edit-warring that has long gone unchecked here. It NEVER leads to productive editing. Before the "undo" feature came about, revert was almost exclusively abused by administrators as no one else could do this, except with add-ons like popups or Twinkie. Since this issue has been raised in a documented manner, a ruling on this behavior is appropriate. I'm not saying dbachmann should be banned or blocked for this; he was probably just following the lead of other more experienced users, but a ruling would make sense here that could apply to future cases.

Justforasecond (talk) 20:13, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Do

• Reverting is a decision which should be taken seriously.
• Reverting is used primarily for fighting vandalism, or anything very similar to the effects of vandalism.
• If you are not sure whether a revert is appropriate, discuss it first rather than immediately reverting or deleting it.
• If you feel the edit is unsatisfactory, improve it rather than simply reverting or deleting it.

Do not

• Do not simply revert changes that are made as part of a dispute. Be respectful to other editors, their contributions and their points of view.
• Do not revert good faith edits. In other words, try to consider the editor "on the other end." If what one is attempting is a positive contribution to Misplaced Pages, a revert of those contributions is inappropriate unless, and only unless, you as an editor possess firm, substantive, and objective proof to the contrary. Mere disagreement is not such proof. See also Misplaced Pages:Assume good faith.
• Generally there are misconceptions that problematic sections of an article or recent changes are the reasons for reverting or deletion. If they contain valid information, these texts should simply be edited and improved accordingly. Reverting is not a decision which should be taken lightly.
• There's sometimes trouble determining whether some claim is true or useful, particularly when there are few people "on board" who are knowledgeable about the topic. In such a case, it's a good idea to raise objections on a talk page; if one has some reason to believe that the author of what appears to be biased material will not be induced to change it, editors have sometimes taken the step of transferring the text in question to the talk page itself, thus not deleting it entirely. This action should be taken more or less as a last resort, never as a way of punishing people who have written something biased. See also Misplaced Pages:Neutral point of view/FAQ
• Do not revert changes simply because someone makes an edit you consider problematic, biased, or inaccurate. Improve the edit, rather than reverting it.

To Uninvited

You might as well deal with the issues concerning Bakasuprman and Deeceevoice now. If you don't I will simply request brand new cases the minute this one closes, copy-pasting the evidence submitted here and doubling the Arbcom's case load :) Both these users commented very vociferously at the RFC and have long histories with Dbachmann. They were a major part of the build-up to this case. Given that, it's not unreasonable to make them parties to the case and examine their conduct as well. Thinking practically the problems concerning these users should be dealt with now, because if they are not I will not let the matter die. Moreschi 22:06, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Moreschi that another case should not be required, but it will be filed if necessary. I had considered filing a case regarding the edit-warring and incivility on race-related articles, but held off; had I filed it, it would not have been about any specific user, but instead about the generally unacceptable situation. Is the only reason you don't want to consider these directly involved users now (as opposed to in a few weeks, when another case has been accepted, as it surely will) the fact that Futurebird filed a case first, and made it exclusively about Dbachmann? Dbachmann's behavior is clearly not the extent of the dispute; why not address the whole issue here? Kirill voted to accept saying "Accept to examine the behavior of all parties", after all.Picaroon (t) 22:28, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Moreschi and Picaroon. "Kirill voted to accept saying 'Accept to examine the behavior of all parties', after all". Exactly. I think many people devoted time and effort to giving evidence in this case on the understanding this was its scope. --Folantin (talk) 22:32, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I agree with Picaroon and Moreschi. And our policy and case pages make it clear that we look at all involved parties. They were aware of the case. I see no reason to put off the inevitable. FloNight (talk) 22:35, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Including Bakasuprman was a mistake. He is just a distraction in this case. So what if he splatter-bombed the RfC? Just file that away as more evidence, for the time when his actions are the focus of an ArbCom case. Including him just to let him off (as is bound to happen, for all too obvious legalistic reasons) will only strengthen the impression that he can get away with anything he likes by way of disruptive behavior. rudra (talk) 03:15, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Question regarding proposed remedies

Out of curiosity, what will happen if both proposed remedies for Bakasuprman (1. Banned for 1 year; 2. Restricted) are passed? Would the revert restriction be applied after Baka is unbanned? Nishkid64 (talk) 22:45, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

The closing clerk would round up the arbitrators and get them to work out which they prefer (if the support comments didn't make the general preference clear). If both pass, the ban would be applied as it is worded; the restriction would be moot, as it is assumed to run contemporaneously with the ban unless otherwise stated. Picaroon (t) 22:52, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Right now the two proposals are alternatives. It is possible for remedies to be combined or run consecutively, but I don't see a need to do that here. Newyorkbrad (talk) 23:03, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Rather late in the day

I've chucked some new evidence in: Moreschi 23:33, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Proposed decision

Back in July, when Newyorkbrad blocked Dangerous-Boy for "harassment and trolling in violation of Arbitration Committee decision", Bakasuprman leapt to Dangerous-Boy's defense, insisting that Newyorkbrad was not an "uninvolved admin" and that therefore his block of Dangerous-Boy was invalid.

It took the appearance of 3 members of this Committee on WP:AN/I to make unambiguously clear that Newyorkbrad's block of Dangerous-Boy was, in fact, exactly the type of sanction intended by the ArbComm decision.

Have no doubt—the edit-warriors whom Dbachmann has protected Misplaced Pages from will construe a carelessly formulated remedy to mean that he cannot touch them, and they will be left to admins who will in all likelihood be less familiar with their history and less likely to show the necessary firmness.

The members of the Committee must consider the big picture, What best serves the purpose of producing an encyclopedia: restricting Dbachmann, or restricting those who would turn Misplaced Pages into an ideological battleground?

I fear what will happen if this Committee's Final Decision gives encouragement to the latter, however inadvertently.

JFD (talk) 06:25, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

When you provide the dilemma, it is because of Dbachmann's views on Hindus, not because of other editors, that these articles have degenerated into a battleground. Dbachmann has had his account longer than every other user termed as a "nationalist troll/BJP member/etc". Allowing users with a history of admin abuse to further continue abuse sends the wrong message to contributors. It almost sounds like admin abusers are getting special treatment, for what reason, I don't know why.

An indef block for somewhat insane comments that were neither personal attacks nor really uncivil is extremely harsh. Certainly ranting about Rome is nowhere near the level of "hopeless Hindus/fascists/shithole".Bakaman 23:39, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

The block, as I explained very carefully at the time, was never really anticipated as being permanent. I patiently explained that it would be lifted as soon as Dangerous-Boy agreed to stop making the completely unnecessary comments that he was making, which were perpetuating the extremely unhealthy situation at issue in Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/Hkelkar 2. He did agree to stop one day later and another administrator immediately lifted the block with my approval. In any event, I don't see that incident from 6 months ago as particular relevant one way or the other to the appropriate sanctions in this case. Newyorkbrad (talk) 23:47, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

As JFD's diff indicates, I agreed with you that he needed to stop (though I disagree with the block), and encouraged him to quit with the rants as well. JFD's statement above is suggesting allegations of a "Hindutva cabal", one that was summarily rejected in Misplaced Pages:Requests_for_arbitration/Hkelkar_2#Lack_of_evidence. I agree with you in terming it irrelevant to sanctions, but it is relevant to the case, since Dbachmann believes in the cabal as well, as does Moreschi/Akhilleus/Fowler.Bakaman 23:55, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Bakasuprman, unsurprisingly, has the facts exactly wrong.

Bakasuprman even contradicts himself and his longstanding claim that some articles are inherently battlegrounds, for reasons which have nothing to do with Dbachmann: "There are two wikipedias. One for soft articles with little controversy, and the wikipedia of controversy."

Dbachmann is never mentioned in AMbroodEY's assessment of these editors as "the most quarrelsome, chauvinist editors with an axe to grind in the Wiki-world".

The dilemma is because of the editors themselves, not because of Dbachmann.

Dangerous-Boy was not blocked because of "Dbachmann's views on Hindus". One of the members of this Committee even told Dangerous-Boy, in no uncertain terms, "Stop battling. Stop game playing. Not only do we expect you to comply with the letter of the arbitration ruling, we expect you to comply with the spirit....Contrition is what's required of you now."

As for Bakasuprman himself, he was blocked 6 times even before the unpleasantness of last spring, not once by Dbachmann.

As for myself, Bakasuprman insinuates that I'm doing this for stars.

Who does he think I am, Mario?

I mean every single word I write, and if Bakasuprman has evidence to the contrary, he can either put up or shut up.

JFD (talk) 04:59, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Question

At least one of the arbitrators who indicated support for a proposal before the end of 2007, User:Fred Bauder, is apparently no longer an arbitrator. Given that there has been a counterproposal on some of the decisions created since his term ended, would he still be eligible to vote on the counterproposal, or would he be ineligible to vote on the counterproposal, and how if at all would that change the number of supporters required for proposals to be approved? John Carter (talk) 20:16, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

Fred is still an arbiter for the purposes of this case; he is eligible to act on all proposals. Paul August ☎ 22:08, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

Agreed. The practice for several years has been that if a case is accepted and opened before the end of the year, the outgoing arbitrators remain eligible to participate in deciding the case. Among other advantages, this eases the transition between the old and new committee memberships. Regards, Newyorkbrad (talk) 22:25, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the information, both of you. John Carter (talk) 20:53, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Evidence for proposed FoF

Proposed FoF says Dbachmann "reverted content edits without offering any explanation". the linked evidence doesn't exactly back this up - here are the November edits and the corresponding discussions. Doldrums (talk) 20:36, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

This analysis could be extended father back. I know that in some of these cases Dbachmann was reverting sockpuppets of banned users, in which case no discussion should be required; in other cases, Dbachmann was actively discussing the reverts. --Akhilleus (talk) 20:56, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

For instance, most of the October diffs relate to the removal of maps made by User:Talessman, discussed here, here, and here. --Akhilleus (talk) 21:06, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

I agree. The evidence doesn't seem to have been weighed properly here. For instance, these diffs that were presented in Nearly Headless Nick's list show Dbachmann reverting an anti-Semitic troll (User:Alex_mond) who launched several personal attacks on him and was subsequently banned (see ANI report here ):

--Folantin (talk) 21:19, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Postscript User:Alex_mond also made many edits (generally on Armenian topics) using IP addresses and I'm pretty sure some of Dbachmann's rollbacks cover those too. --Folantin (talk) 21:27, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Yes, User:Alex mond is the sockpuppet of a banned user that I was talking about. I'm not sure of the timeline here, but at some point it became clear that Alex mond was the banned user Ararat arev. It looks to me like all of the reversions listed above come after it was evident that we were dealing with a problematic edit-warrior rather than a bona fide editor--e.g., after this post.

Some of the semi-protections that Dbachmann made to Armenia and related articles are relevant here, because Alex mond/Ararat arev was using a range of IP addresses to afflict these articles; Dbachmann sprotected to stop the IP sockpuppets. To me, it seems perfectly legitimate to use admin tools to protect against sockpuppet attacks, even if you've already edited the affected article; banned users are not legitimate editors, and one can therefore not have a content dispute with them. --Akhilleus (talk) 21:31, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

The "Protection while in content dispute" FoF is flawed

The "Protection while in content dispute" section cited as evidence in the FoF has me puzzled. Is it the case that ArbCom must not evaluate the evidence presented, as that would require judging actual content (a prerequisite for any putative dispute)? As far as I can tell, a fair reading of the histories would show that Dbachmann was not trying to secure an advantage for himself. In each of the six pieces of evidence presented, he reacted to hostile anonymous edits, as stated. In more than one case, the "dispute" was with accounts that are now banned indefinitely. And where the disputants were not suspect, they were able to edit the page anyway. Viz,

• http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Assyrian_people&diff=prev&oldid=141340123

Judging by the ongoing disucussion on the talk page at the time, the content dispute was with user:Šarukinu and user:EliasAlucard. The protection was in reaction to this, an anon edit as claimed, and as far as the content dispute was concerned, EliasAlucard was able to edit 15 minutes later.

• http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Armenia_%28name%29&diff=137924730&oldid=137924624

The protection was in reaction to anon edits, as stated. The "content dispute" was with user:Alex mond, exposed as a sock of a banned account.

• http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Chaldean&diff=141012032&oldid=141011963

The protection was in reaction to anon edits, as stated. user:Chaldean, who was on the opposite side of the dispute, was able to edit 7 hours later.

• http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Armenian_hypothesis&diff=136138778&oldid=136138663

The protection was in reaction to anon edits, as stated. On the opposite side of the dispute was user:Alex mond (a sock, see above), who nevertheless accounted for the next 14 edits to the page.

• http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Indo-Aryan_superstrate_in_Mitanni&diff=135808785&oldid=135808691

The protection was in reaction to anon edits, as stated. There were no other disputants.

• http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Slavic_peoples&diff=134631308&oldid=134631219

The protection was in reaction to an announced anon troll, as stated. The dispute was with user:Nasz, who is now banned indefinitely.

So, exactly what does this Finding of Fact mean? That an editor cannot exercise any administrative functions whatsoever, regardless of circumstances, on any page he is actively editing, simply because a content dispute could be inferred? That sounds like a policy statement, and should be included in among the Principles stated for this case. rudra (talk) 04:12, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

If it becomes a finding of fact that most of these rollbacks and protections were made against socks and obvious vandals, the Committee should explore why this information was missing from Evidence. Ovadyah (talk) 18:07, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

I agree. I always thought the burden of proof was on the prosecution to make their case. Listing loads of alleged evidence of misuse of rollback and protection with no regard to the context of the disputes is really not on. For instance, it's pretty obvious those Armenian protections were a response to banned User:Ararat_arev (a.k.a User:Alex mond) who is notorious for using multiple IPs to attack pages in quick succession. As Rudrasharman shows, the other accusations against Dab are pretty hollow too. --Folantin (talk) 18:17, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm shocked to see that Dbachmann's actions against the most disruptive user that I have ever seen on Misplaced Pages, banned User:Ararat arev and his sockpuppets were questioned in this matter.-- Ευπάτωρ 23:29, 10 January 2008 (UTC)