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Requests for clarification

Misplaced Pages:Arbitration/Requests/Clarification/Header

Request for clarification: Climate Change case (3)

Initiated by JohnWBarber (talk) at 04:50, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

List of any users involved or directly affected, and confirmation that all are aware of the request:


Statement by your name

In the discussion of the previous clarification, I made this point:

I assume requests to modify the CC case decision are exempt from this, and discussing on Arb election pages actions by Arbitrators in this case is also exempt. I may do both (if I have the time and the stomach for it), but in recent days I haven't even had time to think about it. Those possible future posts would be discussing actions of arbitrators, but that might touch on behavior of other editors. If I make any statements, it will be clear that I'm focusing on arbitrators and their decision and not trying to coatrack some kind of attack on other editors. If that's disallowed, please tell me now. This case should be brought up in the upcoming elections, and that shouldn't be a part of any topic ban as long as editors aren't trying to use discussions to fight among themselves.

No ArbCom member directly addressed my concern. Please address it now. I think it's absurd to have to bring this up, but a lot of things I think are absurd become reasons admins use to issue blocks, and Jehochman just announced on Newyorkbrad's talk page that he'd block editors sanctioned in this case from bringing up the actions of ArbCom members as they relate to this case in discussions about Arb elections. Please confirm that you haven't taken away our right to criticize you. I think we should be able to do so on your talk pages (to the extent that individual arbs agree to that discussion) or on pages reserved for discussions about the elections.

I realize this is not a government and that no one has actual "rights" here on Misplaced Pages, but gagging editors when what they really want to do is discuss ArbCom actions in an ArbCom election, even if the ArbCom actions under discussion are about how ArbCom members acted in the CC case, seems to take a desire for order in the CC topic area to a ridiculous extreme. We're not editing the articles. We're not discussing CC topics. There is a desire to discuss how ArbCom members judged editors who edited CC-topic articles. By necessity in such a discussion, some CC-topic edits, or at least edits to ArbCom pages that link to CC-topic edits, will come up. There's a point at which a ban on discussing a topic becomes absurd. This is that point. We're not a government, but we're not East Germany either. Or am I going to be blocked for posting this?

Statement by other user

Clerk notes

Arbitrator views and discussion

Request for clarification: Misplaced Pages:Requests_for_arbitration/Badlydrawnjeff

Initiated by TS at 21:31, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

List of any users involved or directly affected, and confirmation that all are aware of the request:

  • All admins are affected by this so perhaps the clerks should make a note at WP:AN
  • The Committee of 2007 should be informed as a matter of courtesy
  • Clerks please inform me if they would prefer me to perform all relevant notifications.

Statement by Tony Sidaway

A long time ago on an internet far away...

(I cut a load of superfluous mumbo jumbo that is better covered by Doc, who knows a lot about what has happened since 2007).

I take the point Carcharoth makes about "tailing off" of enthusiasm in recent months. It's quite noticeable in a graph that has been plotted. Won't it always be a problem moving forward that we'll always have more BLPs than anybody can be bothered to watch over except to jump the hoops they're forced to jump to keep them alive? The answers to those questions must await the arrival of a strategic deletion policy. I wrote something about this about five years ago, must dig it out. --TS 05:03, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

I really love Uncle G's suggestion. It answers all of my concerns without upsetting anybody. --TS 13:17, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

Here's the fruit of an idea I had about improving our day-to-day coverage of BLP edits:

8 editors have volunteered already but we could always use more eyes on these sensitive edits. The system is quite simple but I promise that the targeting of the most vulnerable BLPs will improve in the course of time. --TS 19:48, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Statement by Thparkth

Contrary to the wording of this request, the issue at hand is not "was the Committee of 2007 wrong?" but rather "what did the Committee of 2007 mean?". Did they mean that any unsourced BLP could be summarily deleted by any admin who might choose to do so? Or did they mean that any unsourced BLP which was contentious or negative could be summarily deleted?

This is the key issue about which it would be helpful to obtain clarification.

The 2007 decision said that administrators might summarily delete a BLP "if they believe that it significantly violates any aspect of the relevant policy." The relevant policy is, I believe WP:BLP. Nowhere in this policy does it state that merely being unsourced is grounds for deletion of an article. It says that If the entire page is substantially of poor quality, primarily containing contentious material that is unsourced or poorly sourced, then it may be necessary to delete the entire page as an initial step (my emphasis). So my understanding is that unsourced BLPs may be (and should be) deleted summarily if they are signifantly contentious or contain negative material - but the great majority of unsourced BLPs do not.

Obviously I read this in conjunction with WP:BLPPROD which does specifically allow for the deletion of unsourced BLPs created after March 18th this year; but even then it is not a summary deletion.

It would be very helpful if we could have clarification on which interpretation is correct for unsourced BLPs created before March 18th; summary deletion on sight, or summary deletion for problematic articles only? To be fair to all the people involved in this discussion, a significant degree of interpretation is required to determine what the practical effect of the 2007 wording is, and there is room for good faith disagreement at present.

Statement by Scott MacDonald

Pertinent here is the more recent Misplaced Pages:Summary motion regarding biographies of living people deletions.

I took this to mean that while speedy deleting unreferenced BLPs was consistent with policy, the community would be better served achieving the goal (not having unreferenced BLPs) by "less chaotic means". And that the hope was that this would be secured through a centralised discussion "on the most efficient way to proceed with the effective enforcement of the policy."

With that in view, speedy deletion were discontinued (indeed as soon as the case opened there was a moratorium - the speedy deletion ended as soon as their was some momentum to find a "less chaotic" way) and I an others worked for an agreed "way to proceed with the effective enforcement of the policy" ( here and elsewhere). After many months the best we got was stickyprod. Stickyprod only deals with new unreferenced BLPS (created since May) - and it took a lot of effort to get through.

It was suggested at that point that the backlog could be fixed. I can't find the diff, but I agreed that we should give this some time (months) to see whether that was realistic. I was not at all sure it would prove the "way to proceed with the effective enforcement of the policy" arbcom desired. It has turned out not to be.

Ten months later 24,000 articles are still tagged as unreferenced BLPs - that's 24,000 individuals who are written about in this encyclopedia with nothing checked and no quality control or evident maintenance. The rate of decrease has slowed. If the current rate continues, I estimate it will take three years to eliminate the backlog. (And this is only one of many aspects of the BLP problem.) I regularly scan these articles using Google metrics and find serious BLP violations. This is simply not a ""way to proceed with the effective enforcement of the policy".

I agree with arbcom that a "less chaotic" means is desirable - but it also has to be "effective enforcement". I have judged that there comes a point where some chaos may be a lesser evil than continued ineffective enforcement of the BLP policy. That is, after all, the spirit of "if the rules prevent you improving..." which I think arbcom was referencing.

I'm still earnestly, but not optimistically, hoping there can be a better way, which is why I have not resumed any speedy deletions. Any help you can give would be appreciated.--Scott Mac 22:51, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Ways forward

  • Two fairly sane solutions have been offered, which ensure a certain end to unreferenced BLPs, but don't entail mass deletions.
  1. UncleG's proposal to blank (and I'd add {noidex}) the remainder. A category can be kept, and they can be unblanked by any user who references them. If more are discovered they can be instantly blanked too. No adim actions.
  2. Set deadline and use stickypod: My own suggestion was set (say) 30 weeks, stickyprod 1/30 of the backlog per week. End deadline, no backlog - but as many saved as possible. (Remember prods can be undeleted if anyone offer to fix them up.)
  • Both of these are better than mass-deletions (I'm marginally more excited by UncleG's). However, if mass deletions are taken off the table, the thing will stall with filibustering. That's why I suggested a deadline for an agreed process: it focuses minds and says "no" to an endless status-quo.--Scott Mac 13:30, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

Statement by Milowent

TS stated on his talk page that, under this 2007 arbitration decision, "All admins are empowered, on their own cognizance, to kill unsourced articles about living persons." I asserted in response that such a claim was "bullshit," hence TS referenced that term in his statement. But its also true. TS also stated "I have absolutely no intention of ever sourcing an unsourced BLP." TS started this same ill-advised assertion at Misplaced Pages:AN#Huge_backlog_of_tagged_unsourced_biographies_of_living_persons, and with consensus clearly against him, has now come here.--Milowent • 22:43, 27 October 2010 (UTC)Note: I revised my language slightly once smoke started coming out of my ears.--Milowent • 01:57, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

Response to request for additional information from Kirill

  • How large of a problem are we faced with? In other words, how large is the backlog, how quickly is it being processed, and how much new material is added per month?
  • I believe the backlog of uBLPs was about 50,000 in early 2010 and is now about 23,300. However, about 6,000 of the current number are uBLPs tagged since March 2010, so the original backlog would be down to about 16,000, but we have found more along the way (not surprising, as I am sure there are more to be found).
  • How effective are the currently available community processes in dealing with the backlog?
  • Everyone can easily access backlog articles to source them (and can search by topic), or evaluate for prod, afd, or copyright problems, etc. New articles are subject to BLPPROD to prevent new unsourced BLPs for adding to the burden.
  • Projects which are doing the sourcing such as Misplaced Pages:Unreferenced BLP Rescue have found very very few occurrences of defamatory material in the backlog.
  • Can the existing processes be improved to deal with the backlog more efficiently, and how?
  • see below

What can we do to clear the backlog by the tenth anniversary of Misplaced Pages's founding? Do we need some sort of centralized drive to source and/or remove these articles? Is there some other method we haven't tried yet?

  • Its a simple matter of work that has to be done, and can be done. More volunteers, and the backlog can easily be eliminated by that anniversary -- a centralized drive would be great, if that sort of thing even works. We have 3.5 million articles, attending to 23,300 is a drop in the bucket. Its a shame that those re-raising this debate aren't actually sourcing articles or know what the true landscape is like in the backlog.--Milowent • 15:19, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

Statement by Snottywong

It is the responsibility of the article's creator(s) (and/or those who argue against the article's deletion) to ensure that reliable sources are cited. If they failed to do so, then the article clearly "significantly violates an aspect of the relevant policy", in particular WP:V. So, per the 2007 ruling, these articles are all fair game for deletion by an administrator. Any deleted BLP's which are actually about a notable person will eventually be recreated by an interested editor who will take the time to cite sources. However, in the interest of preserving some of the work that was put into creating these articles, I think it would be best to set a deadline and delete them in phases, per this proposal. SnottyWong  23:12, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Statement by The Pope

I'd disagree with a few statements made by others that overstate the problem. TS said " the unsourced BLP problem is far greater than it was then". I don't know how bad it was in 2006 or 2007, but we have brought the number down from over 50,000 at the beginning of the year to about 16,000 of them, plus we've found or had created or had tagged another 7000. We have allocated to WikiProjects over 10,000 articles. That is a lot of checking and cleaning that's been done this year.

Scott Mac said "that's 24,000 individuals who are written about in this encyclopedia with nothing checked and no quality control or evident maintenance" This is also plainly not true. The true number of individuals written about in the encyclopedia with no quality control is MUCH HIGHER than 24,000 and includes most referenced stubs and articles. Watchlist stats, other cleanup tags, "Newly created article still tagged from 2009", etc etc show that focussing only on UBLPs is, in a way, pretty stupid and misguided. And lots of the UBLPs do have some form of referencing in them - to IMDB, to related organisations (ie University faculties, sporting organisations) or offline or poorly formatted links. Not good enough, but higher than the "nothing checked and no quality control" that Scott refers to. I would guess that MOST people (not bots) who tag an article with the BLPUnref tag would give it a quick check for unreferenced negative comments.

The bottom line is that we are working on it, and what we need is more involvement from more editors, a better way to stop new articles being created without references (force new editors to edit before creating?) and more involvement from more editors. Deletion by "unusual means" isn't the solution. By all means attempt to delete them, but one at a time, AfD, PROD or BLPPROD please. The-Pope (talk) 23:31, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Statement by Will Beback

I don't see how this issue is within the mandate of the ArbCom. This decision sets policy. The community should develop policies through the traditional means. I suggest that the decision be withdrawn and parallel language be added to the BLP policy with community input and consent.   Will Beback  talk  23:41, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

It isn't necessary to withdraw an old decision to de-emphasize it. What's needed here is more community action, not less ArbCom action. Rather than revisit an old decision it'd be better to update the policy itself. I agree to action on this topic, but this is the wrong venue for it.   Will Beback  talk  11:16, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

Statement By WereSpielChequers

Deleting unsourced or poorly sourced uncontentious material on notable subjects is very controversial and disruptive to the community, especially when done insensitively and without informing the authors. The shift to a hierarchical and threat driven editing environment with priorities and targets set by deletionist admins has been disruptive and damaging to the whole project. It has also been counterproductive for the BLP project, as the uBLP debates and RFCs have been a major distraction that has diverted attention away from more contentious material elsewhere in mainspace. The drive to focus on articles identified as unreferenced BLPs ahead of various higher risk areas such as unreferenced BLPs not yet identified, and high risk words and phrases, is a classic example of the pitfalls of targeting that which is easily measured above that which is truly important. Arbcom should reaffirm that admins are to respect the work of goodfaith contributors, give a ruling that part of the deletion tagging process is the informing of goodfaith editors, and encourage those who wish to remove unsourced content because it has been tagged as unreferenced BLPs to prioritise unsourced controversial content instead. ϢereSpielChequers 23:45, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Response to Kirill - how well is sticky prod working?

Arbcom want to know how effective the changes are that were made earlier this year. User:Epbr123 has now gone through several thousand of the uBLPS tagged in recent months and reports that:

"I've prodded about 210 and I think I'll be prodding about another 40 (although I should probably make an effort to source some instead). There are about a further 400 "unsourced BLPs" created after March which I'm hesitant to prod because they contain a source of some kind, usually a primary source or imdb. The number of old uBLPs I found was about 3,000. Epbr123 (talk) 01:51, 6 November 2010 (UTC)"

That broadly confirms my experience. BLPprod works fairly well at dealing with newly created uBLPs, but as with any new system some bedding in is necessary. Totally unsourced articles are now being deleted or sourced fairly quickly, we still have some work to do in re-educating some longterm editors about the new minimum requirement, I've deflagged 3 Autopatrollers and I suspect we will need to identify and deflag more. Of course a system where every month hundreds of goodfaith articles are tagged for deletion, and in many cases deleted is close to institutionalised newbie biting and we need to improve the way we communicate our article requirements to new contributors.

The vast majority of the articles being added to the backlog are actually old articles that are being found, and we have no idea how many there are still out there to find, though one can assume it is a small subset of the 2.9 million articles we have that are not currently tagged as living people. Setting a target for eradicating the unknown backlog of unreferenced BLPs that have yet to be identified is probably not helpful as it is a "known unknown" situation.

That still leaves an anomaly re articles that are tagged as uBLPs but have some sort of link that names the subject. These are still coming in and whilst some are simply tagging errors, poorly sourced articles are a bit of an anomaly re BLPprod. Some of them can simply be corrected/amended to {{BLP sources}} {{BLP IMDB-only refimprove}} or {{BLP IMDB refimprove}}, but there is a difference between the criteria for BLPprod and unreferencedBLP. In the last RFC I tried unsuccessfully to broaden the sticky prods to ignore articles where the only attribution was to MySpace, Utube, Facebook or LinkedIn, and I suspect that many of the 400 will be in that group.

The way forward

I would suggest to Arbcom that:

For the known backlog of 23,000 uBLPs the community should celebrate a successful major cleanup exercise, and encourage the team that has been working on this to continue doing so. A message from Jimbo to the 600 or so participating projects would be timely, and might well prompt people to see how much more of this could be cleared by the tenth anniversary. Replacing a successful and hardworking team with a different approach such as batch deletion or mass blanking would not in my view be the best way to improve the pedia.

For new articles my preference is that we tighten the BLPprod criteria as I've previously suggested, though I appreciate such a policy change is outside of Arbcom's remit.

If we were to launch a major initiative with the aim of completing it for the tenth anniversary, then I would suggest that we do so for one of the higher priority BLP problems. The known uBLPS are by definition a lower priority in BLP terms than the unknown uBLPs, so completing some sort of audit of our old articles to identify unspotted BLPs should be a higher priority than tackling the known uBLPs. However the work this year by various people has established that the old uBLPs are rarely our articles with problematic BLP material, so if we want to encourage editors towards a particular task for the tenth anniversary, there are more pressing problems elsewhere. Other much higher priorities include auditing all the articles containing certain troublesome words or phrases and blanking or referencing unsourced negative statements. Using reports generated by User:Botlaf from the whole of mainspace I've checked through "Douchebag" and am working through other high risk words and phrases at User:Botlaf/Abuse, and for less serious vandalism at User:Botlaf/Poop Patrol I've got a regular patrol for pubic and similar vandalism. ϢereSpielChequers 23:56, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

Statement by Resolute

As noted by others, parts of the statements by Scott is at best disingenuous and at worst deliberately deceptive. He seeks to portray his pet peeve in the worst possible light in the hopes that Arbcom will overrule community consensus to allow a resumption of the indiscriminate destruction of Misplaced Pages articles. Indeed, Scott will complain that there are still 24,000 articles in the backlog, but he'll never admit that at the start of the mess he helped create, it was over 50,000. Given the number or articles tagged this year, it means that over 35,000 articles have been sourced in some way in the last 10 months and argues that the process the community agreed upon is working.

For whatever reason, this is not good enough for some, and so they come here in the hopes that ArbCom will once again step outside of its scope and try to behave like a legislative body. ArbCom has no right to dictate policy, and ArbCom frequently makes it clear its mandate excludes content disputes. What to do about any class of article is related directly to content, and as such the 2007 ruling, the 2010 motion and this request are all outside of ArbCom's mandate. ArbCom needs to do the right thing here and vacate all existing decisions that attempt to set policy, and instead show its respect the work of the community, which has already proven that it can deal with the issue. As there is no issue brought forth related to user conduct, there is nothing ArbCom can do to satisfy the wishes of certain editors.

But since it has been raised, now would be an excellent time for ArbCom to fix its past mistakes. Resolute 01:14, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

@Kirill: "The BLP policy will be enforced, one way or another" The BLP policy is being enforced - unless you can show me that contentious unsourced material is consistently not being removed or sourced once identified. What purpose does your veiled threat serve? Resolute 14:56, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

@Scott MacDonald - either solution has potential, but this is not the proper forum to propose or decide upon either. A clean discussion in a centralized location that focuses on presenting ways to ensure the backlog continues to be cleared, done so in a positive rather than thretening way, should achieve a desired result. Certainly the first set of BLP RFCs resulted in good policy changes. Resolute 16:07, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

Statement by Jclemens

I propose the following two findings of fact, each of which can be substantiated, and one conclusion:

  • "Unreferenced BLPs" and "problematic BLPs" are orthogonal classes. No evidence exists that Unreferenced BLPs are more likely to be defamatory than those which claim to have references. Anecdotal evidence from Joe Decker and DGG suggests that the vast majority of unreferenced BLPs are innocuous, sourceable, and appropriate encyclopedic content.
  • The community has developed a number of mechanisms for dealing with BLPs which do not meet V. The evidence that this has been working is the decline in unreferenced BLPs, despite their ongoing creation, since this issue was last brought up.

Conclusion: While the use of administrator discretion to deal with inappropriate or problematic BLPs on a case-by-case basis should continue unfettered, the use of wide-spread deletion without individual review of potentially problematic BLP articles is harmful to the encyclopedia's content and should be avoided. The Arbitration Committee should remand the processes involved in cleaning up the rest of the "BLP not meeting V" issue to the community, and specifically disallow mass deletions of unreferenced articles for which no specific assertion of a problem exists. Jclemens (talk) 01:18, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

Statement by The Wordsmith

This is not just about libel. The question of whether or not unreferenced BLPs are demonstrably more problematic than sourced ones is irrelevant. This is about our basic commitment to verifiability, as well as our responsibility to living people in particular to get it right. Some people point out that the 23,000 unsourced BLPs is not our biggest problem. They are correct. However, that is not an excuse to do nothing. The unsourced BLPs are a good place to start, though. After that, we can work on improving the poorly sourced BLPs, of which there are more than 36,000. When you add the number of unsourced BLPs to the number of inadequately sourced BLPs (most of which were unsourced BLPs before this sourcing drive) the total is startlingly close to the 57,000 we originally had, with plenty of room for those BLPs that were discovered later. Just how much has been accomplished, then? I urge Arbcom to uphold the principles behind Badlydrawnjeff, and allow us to handle the problem where the community has failed. The Wordsmith 02:54, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

Statement by Llywrch

There are a number of biographical articles on living people (referred to in Misplaced Pages jargon as "unreferenced BLPs") which lack sources. Many of these have been identified, although reportedly more exist. Over the last several months a small group of Wikipedians have worked to reduce the number of known unreferenced articles from roughly 52,000 to somewhere around 23,500. Now comes Tony Sidaway who, instead of complementing these Wikipedians for their diligence, declares this number is unacceptable & wants the remaining articles deleted. He had first gone to WP:AN/I with his demand, but apparently failed to find there a response he was satisfied with, so now he seeks from you his desired response. Based on these facts, I ask that the ArbCom decline Sidaway's request for the clarification he seeks, & ban him from further petitions to the ArbCom in any form relating to these articles, until he has provided sources for a specified number of these biographical articles on living people. I leave it to my fellow Wikipedians Milowent & Jclemens, who have been working on these articles & have participated in this petition, to specify this number -- or anyone they believe should help decide. -- llywrch (talk) 04:38, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

Statement by Collect

The earlier discussions this year and the processes instituted to remove unreferenced BLPs make this now a "content dispute" where the underlying policy issues have been properly addressed already. Collect (talk) 12:27, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

Statement by Casliber

I used to be strongly opposed to mass-deletion, however having some method of indexing removed ones makes it much more acceptable. Uncle G's proposal has merit in that regard.

To carcharoth 'maintenance of wikipedia' is such a non-concrete term as to defy description. To what level? Ask SandyGeorgia about watching medical articles or anyone in any one of many contentious areas. You simply can't assign an absolute and anyone looking for perfection or anywhere near that may as well leave now, as it won't happen. We just try and make the best 'pedia we can.

Statement by Joe Decker

How large of a problem are we faced with? In other words, how large is the backlog, how quickly is it being processed, and how much new material is added per month?

As per Millowent, we've reduced the total backlog size by about 25K from about 50K to about 25K. There were a lot of articles newly tagged in this period, and it was my observation that many of those predated the BLPPROD cutoff date, so I think the actual rate of sourcing was somewhat higher than this. At the present rate, how long it's going to take to catch up is a matter of how much people are willing to put time and effort into it. (I've done my thousand articles and more) I'd guess as little as six months, as much as three years, if nothing at all changes.
As per several folks, in my experience only a tiny tiny fraction of these articles are deeply problematic (BLP attacks, copyright violations, etc.)

How effective are the currently available community processes in dealing with the backlog?

Sourcing articles continues to make progress every month. I suspect BLPPROD has helped, although that's difficult to measure. There was an increase in newly-tagged-as-unsourced-but-unsourced-for-longer articles, or seemed to be, this Summer, which confounds making precise guesses. Would I like the process to be easier and faster? Sure. But it's still making relatively consistent progress, with occasional plateaus but not... yet... .consistently stalled. Still, I understand impatience, I feel impatient too. I think the critical variable for solving this problem is "the number of hands on deck."

Can the existing processes be improved to deal with the backlog more efficiently, and how?

I suppose this depends on what one means by efficiency. As I don't support mass deletion, I won't recommend that option but would have to admit that it's highly efficient. It also probably bites ten thousand relatively unfrequent, many "new" editors, of course, and throws out a lot of content, some of which (by my observation) has been worked on pretty well. There's nothing "efficient" to my mind about throwing out an hour of editing work because someone hasn't spent five minutes searching in Google News. Similarly, there's nothing to my mind efficient about mass BITEing.

What can we do to clear the backlog by the tenth anniversary of Misplaced Pages's founding? Do we need some sort of centralized drive to source and/or remove these articles? Is there some other method we haven't tried yet?

We have some wikiprojects, I'm not great at marketing so I don't know how we can get people actually excited about doing the "work" that's required to source articles. But, Shell asks:

I strongly suggest everyone commenting here re-read Uncle G's highly relevant comments in the recent AN thread. There are ways to resolve this situation without drama.

I've been enormously impressed by the copyright cleanup effort Uncle G refers to. Enormously impressed. As an initial impression, and realizing I haven't thought out every possible unintended consequence, it seems to me that such an approach might be a very constructive way of getting more hands on deck for sourcing. Leveraging the BLPunsourced tag, or another like it, having it blank the page, etc., might allow for lots of hands to go and put sources on those articles without every step requiring administrator assistance. That seems huge to me, and I would fully support a trial of this solution on a scale of 1000-2000 articles immediately (I think that a smaller set wouldn't really show how effective this tactic was at recruiting new people to the effort of sourcing), with a full rollout a few weeks later if we didn't get bitten by some "surprise" in the process, and assuming that this really did expedite the process of getting those articles well-sourced. In a full rollout, there might be a (completely correct) increase in CSD/PROD/AfD activity, I doubt that would be huge (in my experience the vast vast majority of these articles can be well-rescued), but if it was too large an effect I'd recommend simply throttling the blanking process. --j⚛e decker 19:48, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

Statement by other user

Clerk notes

Arbitrator views and discussion

  • I have views on this topic, but will await further statements. Newyorkbrad (talk) 22:29, 27 October 2010 (UTC)
    • In terms of what would be useful going forward, I largely agree with Kirill's comments (except that I think he meant to refer to SirFozzie rather than Risker). The most useful input will be along the lines he outlines. Newyorkbrad (talk) 03:02, 28 October 2010 (UTC)
    • It looks like productive discussion is continuing in other forums. This should continue and result in further progress. I agree with the comments of several of the other arbitrators. I don't see any need for clarification or action by the Arbitration Committee at this time. Newyorkbrad (talk) 13:31, 30 October 2010 (UTC)
  • Gee. I'm surprised this argument made it from ANI to here. Really I am. (deadpan). I'm going to wait for further statements, but I also have views on this topic. Also, please consider this a fervent request... keep all statements brief, concise and cordial. The Clerks will have full reign to refactor or remove overly lengthy, or flame-fanning statements. SirFozzie (talk) 22:44, 27 October 2010 (UTC)
Here's my suggestion, not as an arbitrator (we dealt with this in January as arbs, and while the problem has lessened, it's still there), but as a fellow editor. Looking at the WikiCup and the honoring of those who do the most Featured (X)/GA/DYK (and thus, honoring those who do the most to improve the encyclopedia's content), let's create a competition.. starting, say, December 1, and running through Feb 1, 2011 (three months). The top 10 editors who add references to bring articles up to basic Wiki standards get special one-of-a-kind barnstars or banners (I'm thinking the Bronze BLP Barnstar for 10th through 6th, the Silver BLP for 5, 4, 3, the Gold BLP Barnstar for #2, and the Platinum BLP Cup for the top editor who brings them up). Harness Wiki-editors basic competitiveness and creativity while we make sure that we never get in this state again, where the threats of mass deletions are considered necessary. I will participate, either as a judge or as a plain participant, although I certainly do not have any designs on winning one of the prizes myself. I'm going to post this to the ANI Subpage to see what people think. SirFozzie (talk) 05:43, 30 October 2010 (UTC)
  • It should be possible to increase efficiency here and for people to work together to both: (a) clear backlogs; and (b) identify the truly problematic areas and prioritise cleaning those areas up (e.g. the metrics Scott MacDonald mentioned). I hate to say it, but more and smarter work, and less discussion, might be better here, with the encouragement of staged batches of BLP prods, but certainly no 'threat' of mass speedy deletions. The backlog may look big, but generate and maintain enthusiasm for good-quality work, and it is possible to tackle such things. The problem here seems to be that the motivation tailed off. Find a way to keep people motivated to continue working on this, and watch the backlog go down. The bigger problem is making sure that the growth of the encyclopedia doesn't outstrip the potential for editors to maintain it, if it hasn't already done so (or at least find ways to counter that problem). But whatever happens, please don't fight and argue over it. There are enough clueful people out there to reinvigorate and drive existing processes, rather than coming over all heavy-handed and full of drama. Carcharoth (talk) 00:19, 28 October 2010 (UTC)
  • I find myself in agreement with RiskerSirFozzie: I am shocked, shocked to see this come up again.

    The question of whether the Badlydrawnjeff decision technically "authorizes" the course of action that Tony is proposing is a bit complicated—note, in particular, that the clause in question is a principle, not a remedy, and thus might arguably better be characterized as stating the Committee's understanding of existing policy at the time—but strikes me as ultimately uninteresting. Whether or not the suggested mass deletions are permitted, I think it's obvious to just about everyone that they are hardly an ideal solution, in that they are difficult to sustain in the long term, and cause significant collateral damage of various sorts.

    Rather than continuing to debate the wording of a three-year-old ruling, I would ask that those commenting here submit statements that address the following questions:

    • How large of a problem are we faced with? In other words, how large is the backlog, how quickly is it being processed, and how much new material is added per month?
    • How effective are the currently available community processes in dealing with the backlog?
    • Can the existing processes be improved to deal with the backlog more efficiently, and how?
    • What can we do to clear the backlog by the tenth anniversary of Misplaced Pages's founding? Do we need some sort of centralized drive to source and/or remove these articles? Is there some other method we haven't tried yet?
    The BLP policy will be enforced, one way or another; but I would very much like to see this discussion result in an approach that we can all collectively move forward with, rather than resulting in further division within the community. Kirill  02:58, 28 October 2010 (UTC)
  • I strongly suggest everyone commenting here re-read Uncle G's highly relevant comments in the recent AN thread. There are ways to resolve this situation without drama. Shell 03:20, 28 October 2010 (UTC)
  • An expansion on Uncle G's postings now that the thread has been moved to a subpage is located here. A pointer to this discussion has been placed at WP:VPP. It would be of considerably more benefit to the project if this can be resolved at the community level. I note particularly Uncle G's reference to the "editors with the teaspoons" - and urge everyone to remember that this project is largely built and maintained by such editors. Thinking out of the box is useful in situations like this. Risker (talk) 21:13, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

Request for clarification: WP:ARBR&I

Initiated by Looie496 (talk) at 21:03, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

List of any users involved or directly affected, and confirmation that all are aware of the request:

Statement by Looie496

This arises from WP:AE#WeijiBaikeBianji, filed by Ferahgo the Assassin, who is currently subject to a topic ban in the R&I domain. I believe that the AE request is an attempt to lawyer around the topic ban, but other admins are divided on this, hence this request for clarification. To keep this simple, I would like to propose that ArbCom endorse the following statement: "An editor subject to a topic ban imposed by ArbCom or resulting from ArbCom discretionary sanctions may only file arbitration enforcement requests that fall into the domain of the topic ban, or comment on such requests, if there is a reasonable possibility that a resulting enforcement action will directly affect that editor." Such a statement would disallow this enforcement request, and it would also disallow the comments that Mathsci has made in the request. Note that the statement as framed would have a scope that goes beyond the R&I case.

Statement by WeijiBaikeBianji

Thanks to Looie496 for raising this issue and for the notice of this request to my talk page. One observation about the policy behind this request is that decisions in cases should generally allow for certainty of disposition and for repose of persons who were not parties to the case. (I have legal training and was once a judicial clerk for an appellate court and then a lawyer in private practice, so these sorts of policy considerations come to mind.) I certainly acknowledge the wikipedian's privilege of any other editor to ask me questions about my editing behavior and especially to insist that my edits and all article edits be verifiable and neutral in point of view. But once an editor is under a topic ban, it seems to me that there has already been a finding that that editor (we hope only temporarily) is misunderstanding what proper sourcing is or what neutral point of view is, so it seems best to hear primarily from editors who are not under such bans about fresh editing disputes on the same topic. Arbiter Carcharoth has pointed out that ArbCom decisions are meant to improve article text. It frustrates the purpose of the arbitration process to have content disputes continually relitigated in ArbCom rather than referred to article, user, and project talk pages for mutual discussion among editors who are not sanctioned. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 22:53, 25 October 2010 (UTC)


Statement by Mathsci

I'm not quite sure why Looie496 has made this clarification request.

I will have to admit from the start that I am friendly with some members of ArbCom. I have twice communicated in private when irregularities have occurred connected with WP:ARBR&I. On both occasions the irregularities were not of my making, but I had what I perceived to be useful input to offer in discussions. Misplaced Pages processes are not covered by my voluntary but binding topic ban.

A member of ArbCom suggested I comment on the first occasion when the topic ban of Ferahgo the Assassin was under discussion (I made 3 postings). I have also had positive feedback about my comments this time, with no objection to what I wrote or the tone (I made only 2 postings).

My topic ban, by mutual consent, covers articles and their talk pages and any content discussion on wikipedia related to race and intelligence, broadly interpreted. It is not a ban that I will ever appeal. I would never remotely consider making any request on a noticeboard connected with this subject area.

But when irregularities in process are concerned that have nothing to do with content and are not of my making, I believe my input has been useful and is not discouraged by either administrators or arbitrators.

As a third example an administrator cautioned Suarneduj (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) for making personal attacks in September. He had not noticed that the user name spelt "Juden Raus" backwards. I pointed this out on ANI and he was blocked indefinitely. He then reappeared as Juden Raus (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log). Separately a CU confirmed him as a likely sockpuppet of Mikemikev (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) here. He has also reappeared as RLShinyblingstone (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log), which, with its user page, was a not so nice reference to Slrubenstein.

In the immortal words of the great sage Aervanath: IF IT AIN'T BROKE DON'T FIX IT.

Statement by Ferahgo the Assassin

The way I understand this, every topic ban has a slightly different scope, and that scope is determined by the admin implementing the ban. In my case NuclearWarfare, the admin who topic banned me under the discretionary sanctions, did not intend for the scope of my topic ban to include preventing me from posting about this issue at AE. He has made this clear both when we were discussing his topic ban and in his comments in the AE thread. When he granted me this permission, he was aware of what conduct issues I intended to post about, since his suggestion that I post at AE was in response to me saying I wanted admin attention for these exact issues. Therefore, I don’t think I have violated my topic ban by posting about them there.

That said, if arbcom decides that from this point forward topic banned editors should never have the right to post AE threads like this, then I will accept that decision and will never do this again. However, if arbcom does decide this, this would be a new rule that didn’t exist before, so I don't think I should be punished for having not followed it.

In general, I’m also not sure it’s a good idea for individual admins to lose the power to choose the scope of topic bans they implement under discretionary sanctions. That is the effect that this proposal would have - it would mean that if at any point an admin wants to ban an editor from articles but not from AE, that would not be allowed because all topic bans automatically extend to AE also. This seems like it would go against the spirit of discretionary sanctions allowing admins to implement whatever type of sanction they think is appropriate.

Statement by Timotheus Canens

Topic bans are meant to get an editor to disengage from a topic area. I do not understand how allowing them to file reports related to the topic area serves that purpose. And I certainly do not see the "slew" of AE requests Shell is referring to. T. Canens (talk) 04:58, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Statement by Tijfo098

While the report on AE was not actionable in an administrative way, I for one did not find it entirely without justification. It is a little weird that FtA is not allowed to comment in other venues because a post on WBB's talk page or even a RfC/U would have been more appropriate.

Statement by Captain Occam

I would appreciate it if ArbCom could clarify whether Mathsci’s comments in the AE thread are allowed under his topic ban, because what the rule is about this is something that affects me also. I’ve generally avoided commenting in threads like that one, because I was under the assumption that if the thread didn’t directly concern me and I hadn’t been given explicit permission for it by whoever topic banned me (the way Ferahgo was), participating in it would be prohibited by my topic ban. But Mathsci and I were both given the exact same type of topic ban in the arbitration case, so if participating in these threads is permitted under his topic ban, it’s presumably permitted under mine also. I’d like to know whether that’s the case, or whether neither of should be participating there.

Since none of the arbitrators seem to object to Mathsci's comments in Ferahgo's AE thread, and according to him some of the arbitrators have actually invited him to comment in this thread or similar ones, I'm going to assume that commenting in these threads is allowed in my case also. Arbitrators, please tell me and Mathsci otherwise if this isn't the case. At this point, I've done everything I can do to try and learn the answer to this: I've asked ArbCom about it in a request for clarification, and haven't received an answer.

Statement by other user

Clerk notes

Arbitrator views and discussion

  • I don't think there's any need for such a sweeping statement. While this may have been a disappointing use of AE by Ferhago, we don't generally prohibit editors, even those that are topic banned, from reporting others; this would certainly invalidate a slew of the recent reports on AE. Whether or not a report is productive, useful or "necessary" can be left up to the discretion of the admins responding. Especially in cases where discretionary sanctions are active, prohibiting an editor from making reports (if they prove to be disruptive) is well within the realm of administrator discretion. Shell 23:21, 25 October 2010 (UTC)
Looking again T. Canens is right - the ones I was thinking of were people who have been admonished, warned or otherwise involved and ask to disengage but not specifically topic-banned. However, this case is a topic ban set by an administrator rather than ArbCom and should probably be addressed the same way. Shell 13:09, 26 October 2010 (UTC)
  • Agree with Shell. Give some latitude at first, and take steps if repeated WP:AE requests fail and are clearly becoming disruptive. See also my comment elsewhere that topic-banned editors should in general let others comment, and should feel free to politely decline requests to comment themselves, citing a wish to remain disengaged from the topic area. Carcharoth (talk) 05:53, 26 October 2010 (UTC)
  • I am very reticent to curtail any editor's access to normal dispute resolution channels, even in the case where they would fall under an otherwise very wide topic ban. The rare cases of bad faith, or vexatious filings, can be handled as any other disruption without needing a sweeping statement that would prevent much genuinely needed appeals or enforcement. — Coren  19:55, 26 October 2010 (UTC)
  • Generally agree with my colleagues. SirFozzie (talk) 17:21, 31 October 2010 (UTC)
  • Also generally agree with my colleagues. Risker (talk) 01:47, 7 November 2010 (UTC)