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A request for arbitration is the last step of dispute resolution for conduct disputes on Misplaced Pages. The Arbitration Committee considers requests to open new cases and review previous decisions. The entire process is governed by the arbitration policy. For information about requesting arbitration, and how cases are accepted and dealt with, please see guide to arbitration.

To request enforcement of previous Arbitration decisions or discretionary sanctions, please do not open a new Arbitration case. Instead, please submit your request to /Requests/Enforcement.

This page transcludes from /Case, /Clarification and Amendment, /Motions, and /Enforcement.

Please make your request in the appropriate section:

Arbitration Committee proceedings Case requests

Currently, there are no requests for arbitration.

Open cases
Case name Links Evidence due Prop. Dec. due
Palestine-Israel articles 5 (t) (ev / t) (ws / t) (pd / t) 21 Dec 2024 11 Jan 2025
Recently closed cases (Past cases)

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Clarification and Amendment requests

Currently, no requests for clarification or amendment are open.

Arbitrator motions
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Arbitrator workflow motions 1 December 2024

Misplaced Pages:Arbitration/Requests/How-to

Current requests

NathanielPoe and Clarityfiend

Initiated by NathanielPoe at 14:51, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Involved parties

Confirmation that all parties are aware of the request

http://en.wikipedia.org/User_talk:Clarityfiend#Notification_of_arbitration_case http://en.wikipedia.org/User_talk:FrankWilliams#Notification_of_arbitration_case

Confirmation that other steps in dispute resolution have been tried

http://en.wikipedia.org/Talk:The_Black_Swan_%28film%29

Statement by {NathanielPoe}

This dispute involved the article The Black Swan (film). User user:FrankWilliams inserted a DVD Commentary section into this article. The paragraph describes a unique situation where the DVD version of the film in that article contains commentary by one of the stars of that movie Maureen O'Hara. Ms O'Hara is well into her eighties and describes many anecdotes and valuable information regarding this film. The paragraph's intent is to advise readers of the existence of this commentary track so that they may pursue further information into film without transcribing all the commentary information in the article itself.

User user:Clarityfiend continues to remove this information based on his opinions without citing any specific wiki policies that is being broken. He is coming close to breaking a specific wiki policy of 3 reverts in a row. His actions are also on the verge of vandalism as there was a current discussion going on when he reverted the article. Further more I and user user:FrankWilliams have attempted to compromise with him and offered him a chance to "tweak" the paragraph to address his concerns. His only option to to remove that entire section with no compromise. I find this unsatisfactory and outside of the Wiki spirit of cooperation.

Please read the discussion section of the article for further information. Thank You NathanielPoe 14:51, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Statement by Clarityfiend

I reverted the DVD commentary section because it contains next to no content. It mentions "valuable historic information", "anecdotes", "details" and "information", but fails to provide any, despite my repeated requests.

At one point, I was (grudgingly) willing to compromise to the extent of a small one-line section, but when User:FrankWilliams started to expand it, I felt I had to take action, explaining my reasons. FrankWilliams has, IMO, failed to address those. Clarityfiend 15:26, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Statement by Fordmadoxfraud

Addition/removal of section about DVD commentary tracks has been a slow-boiling edit war for some time. I personally remain fairly firm in my conviction that the section, in the form it's taken so far, is POV, unencyclopedic in tone, and is a WP:PEACOCK problem. It is also copied almost word for word from another website, and thus violates WP:COPYVIO. Yet somehow these two editors User:NathanielPoe and User:FrankWilliams feel justified reverting its removal. Ford MF 16:02, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Clerk notes

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

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

Killian Documents

Initiated by Ryan Postlethwaite (on behalf of User:callmebc) at 00:55, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Involved parties

Confirmation that all parties are aware of the request

CWC Alabamaboy htom Durova Jehochman Charles Matthews EdJohnston Andyvphil Athaenara

Confirmation that other steps in dispute resolution have been tried

I contacted ^demon about what to do, and this was his response

Statement by callmebc

Hi

I had made a series of posts and engaged in debates on the Killian discussions page back in the fall, and then left it for a while until recently, when I thought to post some updates regarding 70's office tech (it wasn't quite as primitive as certain people have claimed) and some new and rather (so to speak) interesting bits of info that I had come across in the DoD database of Bush's records

I was going to post, get into some debates and then leave. But everything I posted was met, with one slight exception, with outright hostility, insults and absolute rejection without discussion of everything I had posted, including even an extensive IEEE article on 70's word processing systems from this past January. This is the abstract for the full article.

Since the forgery charges started with assertions of what 70's office equiptment could or could not do, this article seemed like a worthy topic among other things, no? Apparently not in the minds of certain people. Ironically an even longer post of mine in the separate Killian Authenticy wiki has been relatively untouched save for being moved to its own section: (Originally I just added a long post to existing sections, but then CWC, Chris Chittleborough, moved both to their own sections.)

Anyway, the acrimony escalated, including my being emailed a "Loss of Privacy" threat by apparently the lead editor of the page, CWC. An admin named Alabamaboy appeared (CWC has denied bringing him in) who arbitrarily, and with demonstably bogus reasons, deleted the entire discussion, which included postings from other people, and which I put back after he failed to respond to any of requests to point out exactly I was in violation. See this, this, and this.

Actually, while most of the Wikipedians I've dealt with have been consistently unresponsive to specific questions, Alabamaboy was exceptionally unresponsive -- go see: this, this, and this.

It finally dawned on me why these people might be so hostile, and a little investigation showed that the main culprits, CWC, htom (OtterSmith), and Alabamaboy, all had something to do with the right wing Little Green Footballs (LGF) blog site in one way or the other. And LGF was a key player in pushing along Rathergate. What this all meant is that basically the main Misplaced Pages article on Rathergate/the Killian memos was being run by right wingers with no interest in anything that diminished the forgery charges in general and LGF in particular.

I set up a little trap of sorts that got one of the editors, htom, to publicly admit to being an active member of LGF. I told him that this meant he had a major conflict of interest, which is not arguable (Rathergate was huge in giving LGF notice and status), so told him "sayonara". This led very quickly to my being given a 72hr block from posting. This brought in another editor, Jehochman, who made some random comments, and then finally an admin, Durova, who put the 72 hour block on me.

One extremely frustrating aspect to all this is that almost nobody responds to questions. I asked Alabamaboy 3 times how he got involved and he refused to answer. I did likewise with Jehochman, and I got evasion (although CWC popped in to deny bringing in Alabamaboy).

I came across this entry on the COI/Noticeboard, which made it sound like some 3rd party named Athaenara had put the block on me and not Durova. I asked Durova in an email about this, but she never responded. I also asked about this in that COI/Noticeboard post, but some random, and evidently not exactly well-informed, person named EdJohnston responded, and he said that Durova put the block on me.

The only helpful person in all this was Charles Matthews -- I contacted him during my block and at least he gave CWC a hard time about the email threat. And it also looks as though hecontacted Durova about my concerns about who was running the Killian Documents wiki.

I have Andyvphil listed as a party, and while he was actually the most directly adversarial of the editors on the discussion page, he was really the only one who actually discussed and debated things actually related to the Killian memos. Htom mostly only sniped insults and posted nonsense, while the others involved here merely made factless statements, especially Alabamaboy, that they refused to defend or even discuss. That being said, of course Andyvphil was the only other person reprimanded by an admin, and that was for calling me "shit for brains" at one point.

Encyclopedias are suppose to be things use for knowledge, and not for nonsense and comforting myths. In Misplaced Pages's on entry on encyclopias, they are suppose to include "Works of encyclopedic scope aim to convey the important accumulated knowledge for their subject domain."

I don't see any anything being mentioned about them also being petty fiefdoms run by right wing libertarians. If you guys are serious about having Misplaced Pages be a very serious, very credible, and very vast enclopedia, you really need to put your more active editors and admins on notice that they are to help add to knowledge and not subtract from it, and to not avoid answering legitimate questions about their decisions just because they don't want to.

With that said, I request the following:

1) CWC be banned from any further editing, at least temporarily. He obviously has not business being involved in editing an encyclopedia given his behavior with me.

2) Alabamaboy be stripped of his admin rank -- he's demonstrated far, far too much arrogant misuse of his position. Also, that he explain how he got involved in all this.

3) Jehochman to explain how he got involved. Also his apparent desire to be admin should be questioned due to his SEO position, as well as his behavior in all this. Both seem to conflict with the best interests of Misplaced Pages, which ranks very high in any Google search, which makes it problematic to have as admins people whose job is to get the client companies rank higher in Google searches.

4) Durova to explain how she reached the decision to block me for 72 hours -- did she read any of the exchanges or did she just take the word of more familiar editors and an admin.

5) EdJohnston to explain his "logic" of how I have "don't have a bona fide COI complaint" in regards to htom, even though htim is a member of LGF, who's very reputation and status is explicitedly tied to Rathergate.

6) htom and anyone else connected as active members of Little Green Footballs, and well as the two other blogs who were major players in the Rathergate saga, the Free Republic and Power Line, to with be banned from anything connected to the Killian documents, and well as Dan Rather and Mary Mapes.

As far the others listed go, I have no real issues with them. Athaenara was unresponsive to my request, but EdJohnston finally, after a lengthy (and somewhat pointless) exchange, told me that she, like he, is a COI volunteer who normally monitors that board. Still, though, considering how many times and people I had asked....

Statement by Ryan Postlethwaite

It seems that this arbitration case is a little early. With respect to the initiating party (well the original initiating party), I feel it would be better to explore other methods of dspute resolution before bringing this to aritration. The community is more than able to handle this case. Ryan Postlethwaite 01:09, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Statement by Jehochman

Upon investigating a WP:COIN report about Callmebc and the Killian documents, I noticed that Callmebc had made several appalling violations of of WP:CIVIL and WP:NPA. I reported these to my admin coach, Durova, and noted exactly what I'd done on the WP:COIN thread. After he was blocked, Callmebc hounded me with accusatory questions. Instead of arguing with a user who was angry about getting blocked, and who claimed to have set "traps" for other users, I limited myself to making friendly responses and suggesting ways that Callmebc could use his energies to help the project. I agree with Ryan Postlethwaite that this arbitration is premature. Jehochman (/contrib) 06:15, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Statement by Charles Matthews

I'm not clear why I'm being cited as a party. I looked into a complaint by User:Callmebc, around an email from User:Chris Chittleborough. I wasn't very happy with the content of that mail, as shown to me; User:Chris Chittleborough gave a rambling and not specially convincing justification on User talk:Charles Matthews. I have pointed out to User:Chris Chittleborough that his archiving of the Killian papers Talk page, by page move, was eccentric; it mangled the history of a contentious discussion.

I advised against the bringing of an ArbCom case on the matter. I haven't looked closely into why User:Callmebc has been blocked for policy violations, but have no reason to believe these blocks were ill-considered. Charles Matthews 07:46, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Statement by Durova

Similar to Charles Matthews, I wonder why I have been named as an involved party and respectfully request that my name be removed from the list if a case indeed opens. My sole involvement in this situation was to issue a brief and routine block for several rather obvious violations of WP:NPA, WP:CIVIL, and WP:POINT. That block was implemented without comment or prejudice as to the merits of any surrounding dispute. Callmebc raised serious allegations that appeared to be irrelevant to the basis for the block and had far too little evidence to merit serious investigation. Now this request for arbitration constructs ominous implications around the perfectly normal noticeboard discussion that was background to my intervention. I seriously doubt the Committee's intervention is necessary to conclude that one editor was impolite until a block became necessary, then afterward created a fuss over it. That is all I can say from experience and that much experience inspires no confidence in the rest of the basis for this arbitration request. Durova 08:17, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Statement by Alabamaboy

I agree with other editors who have questioned this RfA. The editor creating this RfA was blocked for policy violations. In addition, a major portion of User:Callmebc's RfA appears to be that most editors refused to respond to his inquiries for information. There is no WP requirement that editors must respond to a request for information, especially when that request (such as the one from Callmebc) implies that an "investigation" is being conducted w/o any official WP approval.

That said, here is my summary of events: As part of my work as a Misplaced Pages editor, I monitor blog mentions of Misplaced Pages. I first became involved in the Talk:Killian documents page after seeing the essay posted there by User:Callmebc mentioned on Little Green Footballs, a high-traffic conservative blog (see ). Most of Callmebc's essay can be seen here (due to User:Callmebc's posting style, the essay wasn't created all at one time).

After investigating the matter, it appeared to me that User:Callmebc was breaking a number of Misplaced Pages policies and guidelines, including making numerous incivil statements and engaging in personal attacks, violating WP:BLP (see , where Callmebc states "And that's my case for labeling Charles Johnson a fraud."), using the talk page for his own personal view (in volation of Misplaced Pages:Talk page, where it states in bold that article talk pages "should not be used by editors as platforms for their personal views."), posting original research, and using Misplaced Pages as a webspace provider or a discussion forum for his views (in violation of Misplaced Pages is not). I then removed the problematic edits as original research and told User:Callmebc that I'd done this (see ).

Callmebc has been warned numerous times about all of these issues, both by myself and several other editors (such as this warning at , where I also provides diffs to the personal attacks). Since then, Callmebc has continued his personal attacks and lack of civility (such as where he calls me "Hick boy," where he calls an editor "dimwit," and , where he repeatedly uses "idiotic" to describe another editor's work and closes with "It'll be time for cheers when you're banned from here.") and repeatedly threatened to have anyone who disagrees with him blocked or banned from Misplaced Pages (again, see )

As can be seen from Callmebc's talk page, I repeatedly raised the issues of Callmebc's personal attacks and incivility, providing links to such attacks and incivility. Callmebc repeated denied any problem. Because Callmebc had begun to personally attack me, I decided that I would not block him myself to avoid any potential conflict of interest. Eventually another admin blocked him for these attacks.

As for Callmebc's claim of me being involved with the Little Green Footballs website, that is wrong. While I read the site, it is one of a number of blogs and media outlets I read, both liberal and conservative. Otherwise, I have no involvement with the site.

I should note that my involvement in this whole process was as an editor trying to maintain Misplaced Pages policies and guidelines and I never used my administrator abilities. In this respect, I also warned another editor in this affair for also making personal attacks against Callmebc (see ). Ironically, Callmebc then stated that I'd "issued that reprimand without (his) consent" even though personal attack warnings are not dependent on the consent of the one attacked.

In short, Callmebc has been disruptive, combative, and engaged in a pattern of violating Misplaced Pages policies and guidelines (including WP:BLP and WP:NPA, especially with regards to the Talk:Killian documents page. --Alabamaboy 15:18, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Statement by Andyvphil

Since no action is requested against me, and I'm not requesting any action, I'm not really a party to this case. I was demonstratively uncivil to Callmebc and he was, before that, repeatedly uncivil to me, but he seems to have taken my point and we can work that out without intervention. Andyvphil 13:12, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Clerk notes

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

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

Cabalism

Initiated by Rama's arrow (just a sexy boy) at 21:17, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Involved parties

Confirmation that all parties are aware of the request
  • , , , , , ,
Confirmation that other steps in dispute resolution have been tried

Statement by Rama's Arrow

I submit this request for arbitration over an issue that is complex and ugly. It recently came to my attention that Bakasuprman, Dangerous-Boy and Sbhushan were colluding with the banned Hkelkar via e-mail. Much of the evidence was sent to me by user:AMbroodEY. It later came to my attention that Sir Nicholas de Mimsy-Porpington (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA) was involved to a degree in recruiting and protecting them. The conduct of these individuals grossly violates the spirit and letter of this committee's ruling in Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/Hkelkar. Rama's arrow (just a sexy boy) 21:17, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Consequently I took action against Bakasuprman, Sbhushan and Dangerous-Boy. I did not act against AMbroodEY because he was helping in fighting the cabalism. I also did not act against Sir Nicholas de Mimsy-Porpington because I didn't receive the evidence until recently. The question may be asked - what is the validity or relevance of off-WP activities? The answer is that collusion with a banned user is a gross violation of WP:SOCK/WP:MEAT as well as the rulings of ArbCom over the activities of Hkelkar. If off-WP evidence points to the fact that other users are working with a banned troll, it is indeed a subversion of ArbCom's decision and Misplaced Pages's policies. Rama's arrow (just a sexy boy) 21:43, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

I apologize to the Misplaced Pages community and the arbitration committee over the display of private e-mails. Unfortunately, it is fairly easy to diminish or dismiss e-mail evidence but as the committee and much of the community is aware, off-Misplaced Pages interactions have a substantial impact on what happens on Misplaced Pages - even Jimbo Wales founded an off-Misplaced Pages IRC channel for better administration. If one can rely on IRC for better administration of on-Misplaced Pages issues, why can't off-Misplaced Pages evidence be admitted as legitimate evidence to stop violations of policy? We are not a law enforcement agency and neither is the ArbCom a court of law - we have no established investigation process or standards for evidence so we must work with what we can get. Evidence based on e-mails exchanged is an important weapon in stopping violations of Misplaced Pages policies. There are several precedents in which e-mails played a vital role in exposing sockpuppetry of users such as Shiva's Trident/Hkelkar. And do we expect meatpuppets and sockpuppets to be so stupid as to give on-Misplaced Pages evidence of their activities? One would naturally expect a banned user to communicate via e-mails, for he does not have access to editing Misplaced Pages, nor does he want his sockpuppet to be detected.

The case I am requesting the committee to investigate is not about personal disputes, mudslinging or rivalries against other users. I was given administrative tools with a great degree of support from the community, which I have done my best to redeem. I will venture to say that the question at hand is not about me. The summary of the issue is this - I obtained e-mail based information that Bakasuprman, Dangerous-Boy, Sbhushan were interacting with Hkelkar about Misplaced Pages business, discussing ways to tackle Dbachmann and some explicit strategies to subvert Misplaced Pages. It is true that I had to enter this ring and interact with a few of these users before I could obtain the evidence. I would like to thank AMbroodEY for providing me with this evidence so this ring could be exposed. These users should not have been discussing these issues with a banned user, and especially not ways to tackle other users or ways to subvert Misplaced Pages. Another administrator was found to have been providing tacit support for sockpuppetry and recruiting meatpuppets - he is not foolish that he will provide on-Misplaced Pages evidence of his activities. If the committee decides to ignore or reject off-Misplaced Pages evidence, it will effectively permit the normalization of meatpuppetry and violate its own rulings over banned users, as well as violations of WP:SOCK/WP:MEAT, WP:EW, WP:NPOV, WP:POINT and WP:CIV/WP:NPA. D X-Rama's arrow (are u ready) 13:46, 25 April 2007 (UTC)


What my friend Konstable is conveniently forgetting is that Hkelkar is an active sockpuppeteer. If Bakasuprman is discussing other users, content issues and strategies to take advantage of the system with him, it is advice for Hkelkar to use over a sockpuppet, which may then escape the scrutiny of the community - remember User:Rumpelstiltskin223? Nobody could be convinced that it was indeed Hkelkar for a long time. And if Konstable's attitude is valid, then I request permission to unblock user:Shiva's Trident and user:Hkelkar, who were identified as sockpuppet(er) based on the email they sent with the same email address. Yeah sure, they slipped up, but does one expect such buffoonry to be repeated? If Baka is permitted to advise Kelkar how to game the system, it effectively permits Kelkar and Baka to violate the committee's ruling on Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/Hkelkar. It permits any Misplaced Pages user to exchange advice, instructions with banned users, who can then create effective, long-lasting sockpuppets as they will be able to game the system better. The ArbCom is not a court - it is a body setup to do its best for Misplaced Pages. So I suggest it stop behaving like a court and understand the reality that if "gaming the system" off-Misplaced Pages is permitted, then its function and the preservation of policies is practically useless. D X-Rama's arrow (are u ready) 13:51, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
And it is not just off-Misplaced Pages evidence that is the basis of this case. There is a substantial amount of on-Misplaced Pages evidence which I will present if/when this case is accepted and the proceedings begin. As far as breaching any law regarding e-mail privacy, I was sent these emails by a user who was the primary recepient. Willful transfer of emails is not a problem, especially when the parties are situated in the US, India and UK respectively. D X-Rama's arrow (are u ready) 13:54, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Statement by SBhushan

Sorry of long statement, the reason will become clear as you get to end. Rama’s arrow (RA) accused me and few others of sock/meat puppet on April 22 and banned me indefinitely claiming that I had done "editing for his purposes as proxies" (banned user Hkelkar). RA has confirmed in his statement above that there is no evidence of "editing for his purposes as proxies". RA claims that he has emails which show Hkelkar requesting people on mailing list to do some edits, it is very easy to confirm that I have not done any edits that Hkelkar requested. As I showed in my note on ANI, this is my history of edits ] and this is Hkelkar’s history ]. There is no common pages between us. As a side note to admin who declined my unblock request, this 5 minutes check is all that is required to see if the charges against me are accurate. My question to ArbComm, since RA has confirmed that his first accusation is baseless, what penalty will be imposed on RA for his action. Also, RA has already demonstrated that he is selectively using email evidence and doctoring some of it.

More on selective using evidence and doctoring it; this is to clarify some of the claims made by RA against other people. I did receive emails addressed to few participants since about March 24th; Dangerous Boy was one of the people in the address list. During all that time I did not see even a single email from Dangerous Boy to that mailing list. Similar thing regarding Bakaman, he answered question when a specific question was asked. I have the emails sent to me since March end, on question of sharing those emails, my values/convictions are not for sale. There are few other people on those emails who shared their frustration about DBachman and I see no reason to share any private discussion in public forum. But one thing is clear that RA is selectively sharing emails and doctoring the evidence. If a confirmation is asked from me of what was said in any specific email, I will confirm the content without sharing the original email.

RA’s current accusation of cabal and collusion against Dbachman, with time and effort I can find enough evidence to show this is also game playing and politicking that RA is doing. Some evidence that is already in open; (1) the cabal was setup by AMbroodEY and the original members included DaGizza ]; (2) DaGizza, helped by AMbroodEY, solicited Hkelkar and encouraged subversion of Misplaced Pages (AMbroody posted the email earlier, interestingly both of these people were not charged by RA – game playing???); (3) RA was aware of the cabal since Jan 2007; (4) I was not part of the arbcomm regarding Hkelkar. Some evidence that is not in open (1) I was sent an email on March 24th by DesiGeek; I have no way of knowing this person is Hkelkar; (2) I did not seek any cabal; my name got added to the list since DesiGeek was aware of my email address (I had turned on that option earlier). The question for me is do I want to spend the time and energy to fight this meaningless accusation.

Next is question of root cause of the problem, some people shared their views on DBachmann in that mailing list, since all of us have been frustrated due to his behaviour. Please see the welcoming note I received from Dab ], can you see the number of WP policy violations in that single note. Since Nov 2006, I have tried every single suggestion on WP to resolve the dispute. When I can to ArbComm, my request was rejected. At this point are you wondering why I am frustrated. Someone else on that list does not edit any article because of Dab. Few people have left WP due to Dab. The question to ArbComm is would Dab’s behaviour be discussed as part of this. If you don’t fix the root problem, don’t try to ban free speech. Also expect something similar in few months again, since Dab is not going to stop.

Dab and few other users work in tag team to do POV pushing, evidence of this is on Misplaced Pages. Should this cabal be addressed too? Everyone here makes claims of improving encyclopaedia, isn’t enforcing WP:V evenly on everyone the best way to stop POV pushing and improve quality of controversial articles?

Last the reason for this long statement, this ArbComm request looks like a witch hunt. In any good witch hunt, it is already decided who is going to be burned on stake; only thing left is a good excuse. So my personal decision is that unless ArbComm is going to address root cause of the problem, this is my last contribution to Misplaced Pages. Thanks for reading and please go ahead and block me permanently.Sbhushan 15:42, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Comment by ArbCom Litigant

I would be wary of setting dangerous yet unenforceable precedents here. --ArbCom Litigant 14:57, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Comment by uninvolved party Konstable

  1. Disclosing private email conversations is a seriuos breach of privacy, email etiquitte, and in some cases in some countries it could even be a crime.
  2. Emails from most mail hosts are very easily forged, I'm not about to give you the technique but anyone could do it - the receipient of a forged email would not know that the email address is forged unless they compare IP addresses. Of course the receipient himself could, even more easily, forge emails. There is no such thing as "Email evidence"
  3. "Off-wiki" is somewhere the Misplaced Pages ArbCom has no place in, these are not official IRC channels that we're talking about. Or are we going to pass wiki-laws enforcing every single person that has ever edited Misplaced Pages to abide to Misplaced Pages policies in their daily lives?

This is a ridiculous request which if granted would probably lead to further breaches of privacy, even if this so-called "evidence" is just shown to the ArbCom members. Unless there is some on-wiki evidence I cannot see how the ArbCom can even consider accepting this.--Konstable 11:18, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Comment by uninvolved party Johntex

  • In response to the statement above by Konstable: E-mail has actually been used in courts of law, including in criminal cases where the burden of proof is very high and the evidence is vetted very carefully. Johntex\ 17:31, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Clerk notes

Private e-mail should not be posted here. E-mail it directly to any arbitrator if you feel it is important to the case. Thatcher131 02:22, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

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

Bates Method

Initiated by Famousdog at 14:28, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Involved parties

Talk:Bates_method#Culled_links - original accusations of sockpuppetry and arbitration alert
Misplaced Pages:Mediation Cabal/Cases/2007-02-10_Bates_Method - previous fruitless mediation.

Statement by Famousdog

Seeyou, after many months of not getting his/her own way on the Bates method page (see above mediation that got nowhere) has now started accusing Famousdog of being a sockpuppet of AED (another user who seems not to have edited for a while) on the talk page. I am appalled by his baseless smearing of both myself (Famousdog) and this completely innocent user (AED). A look at our IP addresses should clear this up and I request that Seeyou be given a warning and put on probation to cool off.

Statement by {party 2}

Clerk notes

An earlier case involving the same article was declined, see here. Newyorkbrad 15:35, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Arbitrators' opinion on hearing this matter (0/4/0/0)

Block of User:BLueRibbon and subsequent events

Please present evidence and statements regarding this matter directly to the arbitration committee at arbcom-l at lists.wikimedia.org

TingMing

Initiated by Ideogram at 17:30, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Involved parties

Confirmation that all parties are aware of the request

Confirmation that other steps in dispute resolution have been tried

Discussion. Discussion. Discussion. ANI.

Statement by Ideogram

TingMing (talk · contribs) showed up recently and immediately started making controversial edits to dozens of Taiwan-related articles and reverting any opposition. He has already been blocked for 3RR. He is clearly not a new editor; it is possible he is a sock of Nationalist (talk · contribs) and his style is similar to Heqong (talk · contribs) who was banned for a month for personal attacks and tendentious editing.

Attempts to discuss are generally met with insults and lies. He has edit-warred with me over the placement of an insult on my talk page. --Ideogram 17:30, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Statement by Jerrypp772000

I had been involved in the RfArb case for Nationalist that Vic226 was talking about. As a result, I know the editing patterns that Nationalist has. TingMing (talk · contribs), which I suspect is another sock of Nationalist, has edited a lot of Taiwan-related articles. Not only that, almost every edit is political. This user had been blocked once for violating 3RR, and has insulted other users such as Ideogram, and myself. In short, he has been disrupting Misplaced Pages.--Jerrypp772000 19:58, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Here's the evidence in which TingMing insulted Ideogram. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Jerrypp772000 (talk • contribs) 00:40, 24 April 2007 (UTC).

Statement by TingMing

The accusations that I am a sockpuppet of either Heqong or Nationalist is completely unfounded. The Check user on Nationalist confirmed that I was not a sockpuppet. My enemies keep lying and keep accusing me of being so, even though the Check user has confirmed that I am Not. Heqong is a really old user who stopped editing and I welcome any Check user on me to prove that I am also not Heqong. TingMing 00:22, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

I don't know about Nationalist. However, I am not him. I would not like to be grouped with him. Please assume good faith. Thanks Loren. TingMing 06:56, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Ideogram and Jerrypp772000 have insinuated and insulted me blatantly. I am taken aback by the disturbing behavior of both users. And out of no where, another user appears to attack me. Vic226. The check user has proved that I am not a sock puppet of Nationalist. I welcome any new Check user to test again. You guys have serious issues if you think you can group me with crazy users like Nationalist and Heqong. TingMing 00:26, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Evidence that Ideogram first insulted me gravely for no apparent reason. Then I responded with the above comment that Jerry supplied. Check for yourself about the order. Clearly Ideogram's behavior has to stop. This really hurt me. TingMing 07:01, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Comment by Vic226

Previously, I filed an Arbitration request against Nationalist, but it was considered unnecessary by the ArbCom because Nationalist will eventually get indef. banned should the sockpuppetry continue. However, I would like to stress that block evasions are quite easy in this internet world, and I find it surprising for sockpuppetry to be an excessively recurring problem in Misplaced Pages. Now that TingMing was checked only to be a possible but not confirmed a sockpuppet, I would rather like to see some actions taken from the higher powers. I do not doubt the ArbCom's last decisions, but I feel that it was being treated too lightly as it was taken for granted that the problem will solve by itself. Instead, half a year has passed, but nothing has changed about this struggle with one of the more aggressive editors who pushes his own POV (I can claim this as I have yet to see any support for his standpoint) throughout the Misplaced Pages, therefore disrupting it in general, without taking in any opinion from other editors. Vic226 19:38, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

I would like to urge TingMing not to translate the CheckUser result to his own flavor. It is written clearly that he is a possible sockpuppet of Nationalist, and that warrants our suspicion on him. While we can't rule that he is definitely a sock of Nationalist, there are no grounds for him to change the meaning of "possible" to "unrelated". I would like someone to get a dictionary to look up "possible" and tell me in what part would "possible" mean "innocent" in any way. Vic226 03:21, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Also, for the CheckUser case, I am only pointing out the obvious part, which is the decision made by CheckUser, rather than trying to spur up more offense against TingMing with make-believe facts as he accused me to be. Simple as this: there is no apparent evidence in the CheckUser result that "proved" TingMing's "innocence" of being Nationalist's sockpuppet as he suggested. I also want to say that I have nothing to do with the accusation of TingMing being a sockpuppet of Heqong or anything because I barely have any knowledge about Heqong.

About TingMing's claim (), I would like to state that it does not matter what the original was as it could be factually wrong/POV-biased in its first edit anyway. One does not engage in revert war when a change was made, but instead start a discussion for an agreement between both parties. And by that it does not mean presenting one's opinion and attempt to completely convince another almost by force. Oh, and saying someone is "extremely counter productive" is not really assuming good faith.

Quoting from Certified.Gansta-Ideogram decisions proposal: "Misplaced Pages editors are expected to adhere to policy regardless of the behavior of those they are in disputes with; inappropriate behavior by others does not legitimize one's own." In addition to the evidences both TingMing and Jerrypp772000 provided (either for defense or for accusation), here is another attack message left in Ideogram's talk page: . After Ideogram reverted it as personal attack ("Comment on the content, not the contributor" and ArbCom's ruling of individual freedom to edit/revert own talk page even if offensive to others should apply), TingMing started a revert war against him, reverting his attack message back and forth again and again. In addition, his self-contradicting statement informing others to have good faith (while he himself isn't) and further attempt to defame Ideogram, followed by his attempt to twist the CheckUser result to his flavor, suggest his belligerent personality against other editors, and should be dealt with proper actions. Vic226 20:55, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

I also welcome a CheckUser request against Jerrypp772000 and me for "possible" sockpuppetry as TingMing claimed. If proven wrong, however, it would suggest his tendency to pull out baseless accusations against other editors who go against his edits. Vic226 21:16, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Comment by Loren36

For reference, the CheckUser on User:TingMing returned plausible, based on geographic region. It should be noted that Nationalist has been known to create new sockpuppets using other ISPs in an attempt to defeat CheckUser requests (see User talk:Chunghwa Republic for example), though such socks are easily identifiable from their common belligerent behavior. -Loren 04:37, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Clerk notes

Threaded dialog from various users has been refactored to their respective sections (created new sections where necessary). Each party or non-party should please edit his or her own section only. If you believe this rearrangement has made your comments more difficult to follow, please edit your sections to clarify. Newyorkbrad 13:43, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

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

Soviet occupation of Romania

Initiated by Biruitorul at 16:08, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Involved parties

Confirmation that all parties are aware of the request

Anonimu 18:50, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

- I am aware. Biruitorul 16:14, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

- I am aware. Daizus 16:38, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

- I am aware. Dpotop 18:19, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

- I am aware. Petri Krohn 23:57, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

- I am aware. Turgidson 21:45, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

- I am aware. —  Pēters J. Vecrumba 17:51, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Confirmation that other steps in dispute resolution have been tried

Statement by Biruitorul

Since March 26, a dispute has been ongoing at this article. The main issue revolves around the title and whether the presence of Soviet troops on Romanian soil from 1944 to 1958 should be labelled an "occupation". A subsidiary matter is whether the article should be split and a new article called "Liberation of Romania" be created, although meanwhile a new article called King Michael Coup has appeared. Still, in an edit war just today, User:Anonimu kept replacing the split proposal tag as well, so it seems there is still a desire to split. I believe this case needs arbitrators' involvement because a third opinion was solicited, given and ignored by the other side; mediation was not accepted by two users. Biruitorul 16:08, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Comments

On Irpen's statement regarding "the falsehood that I rejected the mediation": let's not split hairs here. Mediation requires "yes" votes from all parties involved. Not voting is thus equivalent to voting "no"; had Irpen and Anonimu voted "yes", mediation would have happened, so in effect they did in fact reject mediation.
I reject Anonimu's assertion that the third opinion was invalid: the opinion provider was perfectly capable of providing an opinion contrary to the one I may have intimated he should provide. While I was not aware of that clause in the WP:NPA policy, so I apologise if it was construed as a personal attack, I thought it was important to point out that Anonimu is indeed "an avowed communist", because that fact is intimately bound up with his disruptive, baseless tagging of this article (and others). -- Biruitorul 19:27, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Further Comment

I don't want this to turn into an endless back-and-forth between me and Anonimu, so I'll likely stop here. First, I note your reservation. Second, third opinions are an established part of the process, so of course they're relevant. Third: you'll find people who dispute that man landed on the moon, that Elvis is dead, etc. - it's not our job to accomodate every single viewpoint; once one side has demonstrably proved its case, to me that signals the end of the reasonable part of the dispute, and any further disputation, while I don't deny it exists, I reserve the right to deem it disruptive and baseless. Fourth, to reciprocate, I want the fact that Anonimu is an avowed communist to be noted, considering the subject of the disputed article. -- Biruitorul 00:16, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Preliminary statement by Irpen

For a start, and most importantly, I take a liberty to respectfully concur with the statement of the just voted Arbitrator. I urge everyone to review that ill-fated Latvia arbcom and, sorry for being blunt, that ArbCom was a massive waste of time that did not produce any solution. Nor was it able to from what I understand what the functions of the ArbCom are and how similar is this case to a previous one. I would also like to refer everyone to the original statement I made at that arbcom. Substitute few words by few others, for what sorts of accusations were brought up here in comparison with there, and you get the exact same thing.

ArbCom is welcome to study users' behavior of course, like it did in the Latvia case. I've seen a good amount of abusive statements at that article's and several related talk pages which IMO still does not reach the level of the ArbCom's concern, but I don't mind if ArbCom examines that if it has time and interest and I am known to be rather thick skinned towards users splashing incivilities. Granted some of the talk page participants in case of Romania were more abusive than the participants in the Latvia page. However, the most important thing, I don't see much difference between the disputes and the previous dispute is not anywhere closer to the solution after the Arbcom than it was before it.

IMO, the solution in seemingly "reconcileable" content disputes, is in continuing the discussions, widening the participants' circle and treating curtly the users that disrupt such discussions. The quick-fix solution would be to appoint a talk-page guardian who would quickly step in and crack down on the disruptive users. So, should the ArbCom issue such injunction and mothball the case? I don't know but arbitrators tried creative measures in the past.

Finally, I would like to dismiss the falsehood that I rejected the mediation. I did not. My entry on this matter was made at the mediation's page talk. I outlined my concerns about the prospects of the success of the mediation and requested some feedback to address them. Unfortunately, the feedback to my entry only emphasized the validity of my concerns despite I repeated afterwards that in no way I reject the mediation effort.

Comment

A quick comment to the statement below by Piotrus. There are no examples of incivility brought by anyone (yet) to this page, including Piotrus himself who claims the degree of incivility warrants the ArbCom intervention. It is difficult to tell what exactly Piotrus means here but since no examples are assume he means that the ArbCom members should set aside a little time and read this and related talk pages to decide whether there was a arbcomable amount of incivility and whose incivility that was. I know ArbCom is a busy committee but if this is indeed doable, I would only welcome their attention. --Irpen 05:40, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Comment by Piotrus

The content part of this dispute certainly is not the issue for the ArbCom. However if incivility and other disruptive behaviour took place, it should be analyzed; particulary as with fall of PAIN and RFI it is much more hard to control such behaviour. And if some parties who are guilty of it here are the same who come up in other cases (like mentioned Latvia case), I think ArbCom should consider doing something about such repeated offenders: looking over Romania case, I certainly see disruption by some people whose behaviour has been condemned by both past ArbCom cases, and in other DR proceedings.-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk  03:55, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Comment by Anonimu

I'm still trying to understand how arbitration works, so for now, I'll just comment on the statement by User:Biruitorul. I dispute the neutrality of the "3rd opinion". The main reason is that the request for a 3rd option included a personal attack against me (i.e. "Using someone's affiliations as a means of dismissing or discrediting their views -- regardless of whether said affiliations are mainstream or extreme." See WP:NPA). Second it surely wasn't a "a short, neutral description of the disagreement", since the comment tried to impose a certain POV. Anyway, I consider the 3rd opinion given irrelevant to the discussion. As for the mediation, the uncalled-for personal attacks from one of the parts involved (on an unrelated subject) made me refuse it.Anonimu 18:50, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Further comments

First, even if I assume good faith, I reserve the right to doubt the sincerity of Biruitorul's second statement. Second, I consider the 3rd opinion given (which I still deem non-neutral) not relevant to the dispute. Third, I fail to understand why Biruitorul considers the tag "disruptive, baseless", especially since, in his first comment, he acknowledges the existence of an ongoing dispute. Fourth, I want the anti-communist bias present in Birutiorul's statement to be noted, considering the subject of the disputed article.Anonimu 20:16, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Clerk notes

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

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

NYScholar

Initiated by Notmyrealname at 22:48, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Involved parties

Confirmation that all parties are aware of the request

- I am aware. Crockspot 23:45, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

: See User talk:NYScholar/Archive 4#ArbCom/Lewis Libby; Temple Rodef Shalom. where I have posted my response and updated and archived the notification; my shorter statement posted below. --NYScholar 08:23, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

- I am aware now Fermat1999 15:53, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

- I am aware, and have commented briefly below. Hornplease 00:25, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

-- Aware, responded. Quatloo 13:09, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Confirmation that other steps in dispute resolution have been tried

Scroll down to "Lewis Libby" and click on "show" to see the content of this notice: it was declared "inactive" by administrator in both incarnations. --NYScholar 15:26, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Scroll down to "Lewis Libby" and click on "show" to see the content of this notice: it was declared "inactive" by administrator in both incarnations. --NYScholar 01:13, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Requests for comment/Biographies: Scroll down to "Lewis Libby"; two filed within 10 mins. of each other; a prev. RFC filed even earlier resulted in no comments at all (see editing histories and talk page archives in Talk:Lewis Libby --NYScholar 13:33, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Statement by Notmyrealname

NYScholar has made it impossible to have a civil discussion regarding identifying Lewis Libby as Jewish, whether to include various Jewish category labels to Libby, and whether to include Libby as the sole identified member of the Temple Rodef Shalom. Fermat1999 also made inappropriate entries on the Temple page, but NYScholar has repeatedly engaged in behavior that violates WP:OWN, WP:NPA, WP:BLP, among others. He has rejected my previous attempt of mediation, rejected the result of an rfa on the Libby talk page, and made personal attacks against myself and others on NYScholar's talk page, on my talk page, and on the Libby talk page. I have made several efforts to involve other editors into the original dispute by posting twice on the WP:BLPN page, and by encouraging other neutral editors to weigh in. An administrator that blocked NYScholar for a 3RR violation (and extended the block due to continued abusive edits by NYScholar) suggested that I bring this to arbitration.Notmyrealname 20:37, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

To be clear, I am not seeking arbitration regarding the labeling of Libby as Jewish or not, but rather about NYScholar's conduct that has prevented everyone from being able to reach consensus on this issue. These actions include hundreds of edits per week (often per day), name calling and personal attacks against me and others (his recently archived talk page contains excellent examples), conspiracy theorizing, edit warring (including actions that led to a recent block), a rejection of the outcome of an rfc, and a refusal to engage in peaceful debate either on the relevant talk pages or through mediation. Additionally, I and several other editors are concerned that one of his main arguments in the content debate has been that the issue of Libby's Jewishness is relevant due to the fact that he was involved with US policy towards Israel, and his insistence in including Libby as the sole entry in a list of members of his Temple. Notmyrealname 22:21, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Statement by Crockspot

I'm really only peripherally involved with this dispute. I am sure that I have removed Jewish categories from the article, citing WP:BLP, but I couldn't tell you when the last time was. I have made comments on the talk page regarding the use of religious categories as well. I haven't been paying much attention there lately, I'm working on other wiki stuff right now. But I am surprised that this dispute is still going on. Misplaced Pages:Biographies of living persons#Use of categories is unambiguous. To continually violate it should result in a block for the user. It's a pretty cut and dried case. Not much else I can say. - Crockspot 00:03, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

  • Addition to statement - For me, the only question here is this: Has the subject ever publicly self-identified as Jewish? I don't believe he ever has. If not, then we can't call him a Jew on Misplaced Pages. That's the current policy. It's really as simple as that. - Crockspot 16:53, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Statement by NYScholar

I have just seen this heading; the user is engaged in a personal vendetta that she/he seems unable to let go of. I have pointed out these problems before way back on 25 Feb. 2007]: see my archived talk page 4 (linked below) for the history.] I changed the heading of this arbitration request to focus on the content of articles rather than on contributors. Having reviewed the block history of some of the administrators involved in disputes concerning subjects relating to Jewish topics and particularly to Israel, I have noticed that they remove one another's blocks and engage in trying to block users who disagree with them. I strongly suggest that any administrators involved in this arbitration request not also be involved in editing articles on those subjects so as to preserve neutrality and impartiality, so as not to violate WP:Neutral point of view and WP:POV in these articles. So far it appears that truly "neutral" editors and/or truly "neutral" administrators have not been "weighing in" on this content dispute. By repeatedly appealing in talk pages to clearly non-neutral administrators and clearly non-neutral users, Notmyrealname has not been seeking out Misplaced Pages:Neutral point of view; instead, the user has been seeking out users who already agree with her/his POV and repeatedly rejecting the arguments of those disagreeing with him/her (See linked archive 10 of the BLP Noticeboard on Lewis Libby). I moved my full statement to my archived talk page 4: User talk:NYScholar/Archive 4#Archived fuller statement of response to the ArbCom; it provides links to various relevant talk page discussions. --NYScholar 11:05, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

. This so-called "arbitration request" is clearly premature, since this other request is still open and unresolved. This user has not disclosed (in the section on "other steps" above) that this Members' Advocates request exists and is still open and unresolved prior to the filing of this (I think premature and highly inaccurate, misleading, and self-serving) so-called "arbitration request" focusing on another contributor (me). As the other "interested parties" whom I have added (not added by Notmyrealname) comment in their statements and talk pages, the matter concerns a long-standing editing content dispute, not me. Notmyrealname seems unable to acknowledge this fact, as her/his own emendation of the request indicates. --NYScholar 17:00, 25 April 2007 (UTC)]

Statement by Fermat1999

While I have not always agreed with NYScholar (in terms of including Libby's temple membership for example), I think some of his hyperediting and frustration has been caused by undue harrassment and even trolling by , and . In particular, not so subtle suggestions of anti-semitism with no proof, and at times remarkable rude comments and personal attacks. A simple review of the history will show that.

Much like Tony Judt, I almost feel like I should disclose my background before I type further, even though I had no desire to originally. I don't consider myself jewish at all, but ethnically from my father's side I am, and I did do both church stuff and reform temple stuff as a kid. I also went to camp as a kid, and birthright as a teen. I of course support Israel's existence, but my politics have strong sympathies for palestinian rights, and I am strongly anti-war. Full disclosure. I try to be very non-biased in my editing, and previous to registering recently, primarily edited medical articles or pop culture on a semi-occasional basis.

What I thought was a harmless honest biographical comment on Libby being jewish has turned into a wiki nightmare. I remember being in early undergrad and having to verbally spar with friends who jokingly talked about a jewish conspiracy. While I knew they were joking, it still pissed me off deep down. But the relentless censoring in this case, is the type of behaviour that probably fuels such idiotic conspiracies. Here we have a politician that is powerful, involved in policymaking in Israel, and indicted for the crime of perjury, and somehow the fact that he is jewish is deemed 'not notable'? Virtually EVERY major politician has their religion and ethnicity noted. Gonzalez, Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rice, ad nauseum for example. But in this case, with reliable documentation of Libby's ethnicity/religion, it is continiously being removed. And not only that, but those that support the inclusion of such information are being tagged as anti-semitic, initially indirectly and more recently directly. That is simply intolerable, and unfortunately such slander can lead to people to respond back with strong emotions. That is what I think has occured to nyscholar, and to some degree myself.

Lastly, I think some sort of audit needs to be done on jayjg in particular. His behaviour has crossed the line on what I think is reasonable administrator behaviour. I feel a bit guilty critisizing a longstanding member, being relatively new myself (at least in registered form), but I think to many NON RACIST and REASONABLE members of wikipedia, he has been amazingly hostile and rude. This is not to say that I myself can't improve. We all can strive to be better people I suppose.

To finish off, I never commented on the TEMPLE PAGE EVER. Not one edit. Anywhere. I never agreed with the inclusion of the Temple comment, and have stated that previously in the Libby article. Not sure where Notmyrealname came up with that total untruth, but I hope it helps explain some of the frustration some of us editors have had with Notmyrealname, jayjg and humus sapiens. Fermat1999 16:20, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Statement by Quatloo

I became aware of this issue only after reading about it on the BLP noticeboard, and I do not have involvement in editing articles on Jewish or political topics, with the exception that I once voted for keeping a category on Jewish Fencers because of the special relationship between those two groups (though I think I would vote against other Jewish sports categories unless such a situation existed also for that sport). I do have a general interest in BLP policy and in copyright. Some observations:

The fact that Libby is Jewish is supported by a reliable source, namely the Tulsa Jewish Review. That publication has been published continuously for over 70 years. In the point of Libby's case it is very specific to identify his temple. There are additional online sources for Libby's Jewishness which are not reliable, and I have noticed that editors will indicate those, and attempt to argue that the sources do not meet WP:RS. But the Tulsa Jewish Review meets WP:RS (it gives no requirement that the source not be regional or provincial, and indeed such a requirement would be absurd), and the question is moot. One cannot argue for exclusion of the fact based on its source.
We are thus reduced to the question, under BLP: Is this information germane to the article? The religion of all high government officials (elected or not, it makes no difference) ought to be included in the article. Religious issues often impact on questions of policy, and this is one of the most important pieces of background information on an individual. If reliably known it should be included. But even if one were to disagree with that postulation, the question boils down to: For a person involved in policymaking regarding Israel (as Libby definitely is), how can we possibly omit the fact that he is Jewish?
Any analysis beyond mere statement of religious affiliation would require citation of highly reliable sources. But statement alone does not require additional proof of relevance -- involvement in policymaking makes it relevant.

For this specific dispute, I am not familiar with the parties involved (I do not monitor the article in question), but if someone is forcing the deliberate omission or removal of this information from Libby's article, it is likely agenda-driven and that person should probably be stopped. As for the article on Temple Rodef Shalom itself, I express no opinion other than it is possible/likely the article lacks sufficient notability to warrant an entry in Misplaced Pages. Quatloo 13:04, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Statement by Hornplease

I frequently review the BLP noticeboard, but was moved to intervene in this article following the posting of an RFC. My involvement in this is as best minimal, however, for reasons I discuss below.

My first statement was to point out that self-identification was central. In the absence of self-identification, a living individual cannot be categorised as belonging to a particular religion, or, indeed, identified as such in WP's voice. I feel very strongly about this; I have spent a lot of valuable time in the past keeping dubious religious identification out of political articles. (After one tiresome exchange with the now blocked Bakasuprman over Jyotiraditya Scindia, I had to go on extended wikibreak to recover my peace of mind.) I further stated that the linked article from the Israeli press clearly stated that prominent academics - Joshua Muravchik, whom I know and respect - thought that Libby's Jewishness was irrelevant to his status as a neocon. Given that, I was doubtful about the addition.

NYScholar's response to this was perfectly courteous, and indicated that he thought that membership in a temple, if a matter of public record, was tantamount to self-identification; and if reliable sources discuss a connection between notability and background, even if to dismiss it, it is encyclopaedic to note that. (I presume that the dismissal would be similarly noted).

The conversation moved on, to my surprise, to whether NYScholar was yellow-badging. This isnt a pleasant accusation. I tried to steer the conversation back to the point that was raised - is public membership of a religious organisation tantamount to self-identification? - as that is a question of profound importance to other articles. I asked Jay, who had brought up the yellow-badging, to comment on this issue, as I value his opinion on this precedent, but asked him to keep it civil.

This didnt go down well. "A rather odd thing to request; perhaps you can lead by demonstrating it in the first place". Err. That got rid of me pretty quickly.

Overall, I'd like to say that this looks less like ownership and more like a user that is convinced of the applicability of a particular fact on this page; and that he should be encouraged to discuss policy more carefully. He doesnt seem to have a problem with incivility as an automatic reflex.

I would like to add my voice to that of others on the page indicating that shutting down discussion by readily flinging around accusations isnt helpful; and I, personally, decided not to edit the page further as I didnt want to be accused even tangentially by Jay of being anti-Semitic. As a distinctly philo-Semitic person, that kind of thing hurts.

If the problem was NYScholar's excessive energy in thousands of edits to the talkpage before anyone has a chance to reply, I would like to point out that there are many other people who do that kind of thing, and some of them are represented on this page.

I urge ArbCom to take this up.


Clerk notes

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

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

Piotrus

Initiated by M.K. at 10:13, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Involved parties

Confirmation that all parties are aware of the request
  • Talk page notifications:

Please note that user:Halibutt informed that he is leaving Misplaced Pages , but looking to the related users contributions, he wasn’t not. In any case left message on talk .

Confirmation that other steps in dispute resolution have been tried

Statement by M.K.

Piotrus contributing to Misplaced Pages for several years, sadly his valuable edits are marked and with history of inadmissible actions, starting from misused of administrator tools ending with mocking from contributors and trolling . Preserving time I will keep to the minimal. His actions still are the major problem to contributors, who have dealing with related articles, some examples:

  • removal referenced information, which not suits his POV with edit summary “rv inappopriate tag and preposterous claim”
  • reverting with edit summary “you are joking? please stop restoring Soviet propaganda”
  • removes referenced terminology which not suits his POV, important to note he personally expanded his part some time ago, but did not classified it as POV back then
  • removal of info continues
  • referenced information removed again…
  • same: referenced info removed…
  • again removal referenced information with edit summary “npov”, worth noting that with referenced info, which was lastly removed due to “nopv”, Piotrus moved it several times without removing it completely , (quite strange arguments – “lead should summarize the lead” as well as “it fits there better”)

And of course such selective removal of information promotes revert wars and these are only few examples. And different contributors noted and stated many times that such behavior is inappropriate . For violating reverting policies he was blocked . Administrator Piotrus also, in my view, violated WP:LIVING. He began to inserting badly attributed sources to living person article claiming that presented source is an embassy web page while it was just some sort tourist-information center . Seeing such poor handling of sources I found more inaccuracies and misuse of sources in related article , and I asked for check quotation and references , but was reverted and suggested that WP:Living is not applied in other articles which relates with living persons , in contrary to the policy and leaving Misplaced Pages vulnerable. Worth noting that after few minutes he began to finding serious flaws himself . (also worth noting with which intentions article was created too please observe edit summary). Nevertheless misuse of sources were present and much later . It should be stress that Piotrus continued to mock from person in question too . Once again violating the policy. Even the neutral mediator warned that there is a problems with related articles and even warned not to remove NOPV version but in vain . Only active and systematical actions from mediator made progress to these articles, but problems still present. Another problem of Piotrus that he mocked from contributors in different cases, starting from name-callings in his native language , stalked users , other examples ,, etc. It should be noted that problems with Piotrus behavior has many contributors – Germans, Lithuanians, Russians etc, starting from quite newly contributors and ending with established ones . But the most disgusting event to place then another contributor started labeling 1991 events as annexation. Instead to prohibiting such actions Piotrus launched shameful comment directly towards me and the state. And yes I regard this and this as tragedy of Lithuanian people in 1991. My attempts to communicate and resolve the problems usually ended with threats . So I ask ArbCom to accept this case for scrutinizing such systematical Piotrus misconducts.


Statement by Piotrus

Note: refactored to reduce length.

M.K.'s accusations are groundless and certainly not motivated by any "good faith" (in two words - caveat lector). It is my belief that ArbCom should discard this case and warn M.K. that such disruptive attempts to slander his opponents will not be tolerated, per Misplaced Pages:Harassment and related guidelines; or if the case is accepted, behaviour of both parties should be scrutinized. Below is my reasoning for such a strong-worded reply.

This is not the first time that user has attempted to portray me as 'evil incarnate' following the same modus operandi: 1) take a few controversial edits (we all make mistakes, especially in a space of ~3.5 years...) 2) ignore that most of those controversial edits were discussed by community and dismissed or supported (in a few cases I apologized for certain actions and never repeated them, which doesn't prevent M.K. from bringing them up again and again) 3) spice them up with ten times as many innocent edits with extreme bad faith interpretation to 4) create an illusion of serious pattern of wrongdoings, and 5) clamor for attention of other editors with presumed goal of misleading neutral editors into condemning me. His claims - although seen by many (RfC, etc.) have never been supported by neutral editors (all support he ever gets is from users representing his content POV and/or having a grudge against me from other content disputes). The best example is his comment at my RfC; despite his comments being posted at the very beginning of the RfC, they were supported by only two people out of 40 who commented (both of which with a grudge against me (, )). Another example is his attempt to get me for 3RR (3RR report with consensus for no action, followed by a complain at AN that was ignored by the community...).

Second, his "attempts to resolve dispute" can be hardly considered that (the only two real attempts to resolve the disputes involving me and M.K were IMHO the informal Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Lithuania/Conflict resolution which yielded no consensus and my RfC in which 5% of users supported M.K. claims; other links concern local content disputes or don't involve M.K.). Other than agreeing with the claim that I am a vandalizing troll and withdrawing from this project I can hardly resolve this in a manner acceptable to him. Consider that most of his 'attempts to resolve the dispute' by posting on my talk page are basically personal attacks, accusing me of wrongdoing and unsupported by evidence. Here he is stating that I "have been warned by different contributors and mediators " - note no diff provided (I have never been warned on that by a neutral editor, and certainly no mediator or other DR official). Here he accuses me of bad faith, using socks/canvassing, censorship and such; claims are of course not supported by neutral editors and backed with misinterpreted innocent edits. The post is not even directed at me - only at other editors, to inform them (on my talk page...) of how 'evil' I am. This MedCabal case is another example: opened by one of M.K.'s friends in a content dispute, it was closed immediately by the mediator with the comment "You need to assume good faith and participate in the discussion". ArbCom case he mentions is an even better example of twisting all facts: see Misplaced Pages:Requests_for_arbitration/Piotrus-Ghirla for details, but briefly: most comments by observers supported my statements, and case was dismissed because of other party's withdrawal (note that the solution discussed was a civility parole on the other party, not me). How can anybody call this slander by a user with growing block log a 'dispute resolution attempt' is beyond me - unless, of course, it is cited here solely to draw readers attention that somebody accused me of 'falsification, trolling, vandalism' and such. The other links of the 'dispute resolution attempts' - content disputes on article's talk pages, peppered with personal attacks on my person and other users - are hardly acceptable 'dispute resolution attempts'.

His arguments about my wrongdoings can be taken apart in the same way as above. They either link to innocent edits portrayed by M.K. as wrongdoings, or edits that have been discussed by the community and consensus reached I was right (most of them are discussed at my RfC in detail). Let me draw attention to how he presents those issues with few examples: even through consensus has been reached on my RfC (as well as in a MedCabal case) that I have never misused my admin tools, he repeats this claim presenting the same evidence as was shown and discarded previously. In most cases M.K. is also interpreting my actions in bad faith. His claims that I was criticized by a 'neutral mediator' at Kazimieras Garšva and Vilnija is a gross misrepresentation of the case, in which mediator criticized the behavior of both parties (involving more than just two users), not mine specifically, and which ended in a compromise which only M.K. occasionally disputes (ask User:DGG for details). Virtually all content disputes mentioned ended in a consensus I find acceptable - but he doesn't - something that may explain reason behind this RfArb. His repeated claims that my actions were criticized by many fails when we note that this critique is carried out by the same small group of editors, whose arguments have never held up to public scrutiny (re: my RfC, MedCabs or ArbCom examples again). His claims of me promoting revert wars are amusing when we consider that articles he mentions (ex. ) are often FA-class articles written by me where I am merely ensuring POV remains neutral as it has been judged by the community during FAC process. His claim that I was blocked for repeated revert wars should be contrasted with the fact that the only time I was blocked was because of a controversial report by a single-purpose sock that I thought was purely vandalizing, a conclusion that was reached by many (ex. this discussion). All of his other claims can be denied in the same way; forgive me but I don't have hours to take comment on every innocent link he tries to portray as an abuse, although I will be happy to do so if an ArbCom member contacts me for clarification for any particular example.

Lastly, I will just comment on the strange selection of users M.K. have chosen to contact with information of this ArbCom: with few exceptions they are users who are often involved in various content disputes with me, and who are likely to present their individual grudges in support of M.K. claims (be on a lookout for many content disputes brought up, not policy violations...). I strongly urge neutral editors to consider what angle such editors may have in commenting here.

Concluding: M.K.'s "evidence" against me is primarily bad faith interpretation of non-controversial edits or repeated claims on issues discussed and closed by the community. His claims were most tellingly reviewed and discarded in my RfC. His behavior towards me violates several WP:CIV/WP:NPA policies, primarily Misplaced Pages:Harassment: nitpicking good-faith edits, repeated personal attacks (false and bad-faithed claims of my wrongdoing), user space harassment. I'd particularly ask arbcom members to look at parallels with The Recycling Troll case, and consider how M.K.'s behavior, repeating groundless claims against my person - on various discussion pages, talk pages, and in wikipedia namespace - resembles that of the TRT, who was harassing RickK in a similar manner.-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk  18:49, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Statement by Durova

As the Committee is already aware, I attempted to mediate the dispute between Piotrus and Ghirla a few months ago. Piotrus remained willing to pursue that process but Ghirla declined. I proposed Misplaced Pages:Community enforceable mediation afterward, partly as a non-arbitrated alternative to some of the longstanding Eastern European editorial conflicts. Piotrus has been amenable to that option but on no occasion did his opponents agree to it. I write this without comment on the actual merits of the case. Yet it is my considered opinion that lack of resolution on this issue has hindered Misplaced Pages's smooth functioning in a number of ways, not the least of which was its connection to the immediate events that brought down Misplaced Pages:Requests for investigation. I consider the loss of that undermanned noticeboard to be a considerable detriment to Misplaced Pages. As a group, the involved parties in this proposed case have consumed substantial volunteer resources in fruitless endeavors and it is my opinion that they have sometimes pursued unhealthy structural changes to Misplaced Pages in pursuit of narrow goals. I request that the Committee accept this case to examine all sides. Durova 18:56, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Statement by Darwinek

A short comment. It seems to me M.K. arguments don't hold water per Piotrus analysis, but M.K's behaviour indeed violates WP:HARASS in my opinion and he should be warned to stop it. I constantly witness M.K.'s behaviour and can say he has got a personal problem with Piotrus (which is not Piotrus fault) and therefore this "case" shouldn't be accepted by ArbCom. - Darwinek 19:51, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Statement by Novickas

Having earlier filed an arb against Piotrus , I support this investigation. That case was based on ethical research issues. Just two more recent problems out of many: he removed a reference from the Žirmūnai article on the grounds that the source was POV - a misstatement of WP policy; the use of the phrase "evil incarnate" in his statement above is inflammatory. The limited number of editors working in this region, and his frequent use of Polish-language references, means that his work is not as thoroughly reviewed as other English Misplaced Pages articles are. The LT editors must then exercise a disproportionate amount of oversight. More scrutiny from the wider WP community is needed. Novickas 12:14, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Addendum: I disagree with the description of this case as a collection of content disputes. It's about ethical conduct.

  • His removal of referenced material that discusses Polish anti-Semitism really needs to be addressed. In this case the reference he removed referred to the book Vilna, by Israel Cohen, which has been reviewed, referenced, or cited by the Holocaust History Project , the University of Washington , the journal of the Royal Institute of International Affairs , Oxford Journals , the English Historical Review , and by other journals and publications. In this case , the material he removed was from the Genocide and Resistance Research Centre of Lithuania, a state institution. .
  • Supporting a page move (name change) by citing Google hits on WP articles he has edited, or that clearly refer to other people with the same name, is dishonest.

Surely these are conduct issues. Novickas 18:10, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Statement by frequently involved Irpen

It would be easier for me to just state my views on the issue but I am at a real difficulty on how I can make a recommendation to an ArbCom because the issue is somewhat unique. Yes, we have a huge problem here but I don't see how it can be solved at all by any method including the ArbCom. That Piotrus is an extremely productive, committed and prolific editor is plain obvious. In fact, after Ghirla moved his activity from en- to ru-wiki (without doubt Piotrus is primarily responsible for this huge loss that will never heal), the place of the most prolific editor in the topics of my interest (Eastern and Central Europe) is undoubtedly held by Piotrus. I will not waste time praising his commitment and a huge amount of work he is giving to this project simply because those are already known, the room at ArbCom page is precious and this is not what brought us all here. Piotrus' editor's quality narrows the choices of the remedies but does not make problems non-existing. So, I will concentrate on the latter.

All these controversies take root in a huge stack of interconnected content disagreements between multiple editors with strong views, sometimes affected by nationalism or, at least, differences in narrattives in national scholarship and/or education. Piotrus, an experienced editor, knows perfectly all the tricks to get an upper hand in such disputes.

Using double standards
  • applying loaded terminology selectively: if he defends the terms, like "occupation", "invasion", "massacre", etc, it is because they are "referenced"; but when he strives to remove these exact terms in cases when the usage does not fit his POV, he calls such terms "POVed"
  • Double standards with Proper names: defending certain national terms as "more authentic" but rejecting other national terms as "non-English" or "counterhistoric"
  • Double standards with sources: attempts to impeach certain statements claiming their being referenced to "non-Western", "non-English", "not online", "non-academic" or "Cherry-picked" sources but persisting and vigorously defending sources of similar origin/standing when they happen to advance his POV
Misplaced Pages:Tendentious editing
  • especially the WP:TE#Undue weight clause by flooding many articles with marginally or irrelevant material that happen to give prominence to his pet issues
Next, and perhaps worst, is what I would call "ungentlemanly conduct", such as
  • Gaming the civility policy in order to prevail in content disputes (I mean invoking WP:CIV in discussions where civility concerns, while possibly existing are clearly minor).
  • Frequent baseless accusations of opponents in WP:NPA violations
  • Threats to report an opponent to the "proper" venue
  • (Especially unbecoming) resorting to such reports, including running to boards and other admins' talk pages with complaints aimed at achieving some sort of his opponent's sanctions (up to blocks) which may include even false reports to a 3RR board. His style of using WP:PAIN and WP:RFI made the boards to be deleted If it does not work in one board, Piotrus occasionally runs hectic sprees from board to board in the projectspace as well as selected admin's talk pages.
  • In such instances, Piotrus, if he can, prefers to act through proxies, inviting other editors to act and telling them exactly what to post and where to post it.
  • Another demonstration of double standards, when Piotrus is confronted about his actions he makes persistent and excessive pestering for diffs; but since he knows that the diffs are there this is aimed at nothing but forcing the opponent to waste time. OTOH, when presented with diffs, Piotrus accuses the opponent in "digging through dirty laundry".
  • Another highly unbecoming habit, especially in view of demonstrating such a heavy-handed approach towards the content opponents, is the persistent refusal to curb disruptive editors who advance the POV he favors but instead cleverly using them as battering rams or for a Good cop/Bad cop trick in the content disputes (no need to elaborate, the comparison is exact and explains it all)

I gave some of the issues that are rather narrowly specific to Piotrus and make working with him particularly difficult. It does not mean that he is clear of the more usual human wikisins, such as occasional sterile just under 3RR revert-warring, occasional incivility and personal attacks but I can tolerate those, especially since there are plenty of editors much worse in this respect.

I must confess that I am at loss as to what ArbCom can do with all this. The problem is obviously there and it is huge. Forcing Ghirla out of en-wiki alone is the profound loss that came from this host of controversies. But at the same time, I am at loss on what could possibly be done with this mess, and, frankly, I am not sure that ArbCom could help. It may but I just don't see how. Blocking Piotrus, even temporary, is out of question since he is writing content and a lot of it. Deadminning would simply not affect anything as incidents of admin abuse that I have seen are long in the past. I have not noticed any admin actions made by Piotrus in the past year or so (which means that if there were any they were not notable in a bad way) and adminship is in no way involved in this host of problems. As we all know too well (examples are abundant) WRT to all editors who commit so much time to the project, it is especially dangerous to have them humiliated, including by an insensitive ArbCom decision, a consideration that ArbCom should take very seriously.

At the same time, the lasting effects of this mess bring lots of bad blood felt by every community of editors around Poland as the Russian, Lithuanian, Belarusian, Ukrainian and German editors have all shown the huge frustration from this all. Until now, I was living with the idea that we will just have to take it as is since no solution seemed in sight. Loss of Ghirla is so far perhaps the highest damage Misplaced Pages suffered from this. Maybe others will follow but I remained under the impression that nothing can be done. If ArbCom can come up with some creative measures that would work, it should and we will all be better off. If it can't or won't, this frustrating state of affairs will continue indefinetely or until it gets solved by itself, which is rather unlikely.

It took me all the time I have for now to write all this and I realize that diffs would help the arbitrators. I assure you that I can provide diffs to every assertion and I will do so over the weekend. That is unless the Arbitrators decide that even with diffs this is the kind of a problem that ArbCom cannot help and we just have to live with it. --Irpen 12:36, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Statement by Renata3

I was about to post my opinion, but Irpen beat me to it. So I have really nothing to add, except that I urge ArbCom to take this case and (hopefully) solve this mess once and for all. Renata 13:04, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Appendum: several people said "oh, this is harassment!" Nonsense! This mess with Eastern Europe has been going on for at least three years now. And if one user has the will, nerves and patience to initiate several requests for comment or arbitrations, it's not harassment. That's trying to find a solution for this deadlock. Renata 23:54, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Statement by Jadger

Piotrus is constantly revert warring with editors. we should look up to Admins, not see them as hurdles to get over. I have seen someone post a reference many times and for him to then only allow the parts that he supports into the article. for instance, on Institute of National Remembrance, I supplied a number of references that describe the IPN as being a witch hunt, and he then edits it to say "if less realistically" he did that repeatedly, revert warring despite the fact that the source was very reputable ([[the Guardian).

--Jadger 02:08, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

And as you can see by his statement above, Piotrus is degrading to editors, no matter who they are. He constantly cries foul while letting lose his own cannonade.
--Jadger 02:15, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Statement by Appleseed

Just about everyone listed as an involved party is part of a relatively small but dedicated group interested in articles about Central and Eastern Europe. However, it is not the entire group, and it is skewed heavily toward Piotrus' detractors, few but vocal. This skew is the first red flag of what I believe to be a bad-faith RFAr by M.K.

The accusations presented here are not new: M.K's vague accusations of "violating policy"; Dr. Dan's calls to desysop; Irpen's accusations of "tendentious editing" and his claims that Piotrus drove away Ghirlandajo, etc. Most were previously presented in Piotrus' RFC, and in the end the community decided overwhelmingly in Piotrus' favor.

As Irpen points out, there are indeed difficulties among this group of editors, but for the most part they are content disputes. It is my belief that with enough editors, POVs cancel out, and Piotrus' opponents are trying to do an end-run around this (sometimes difficult) process. Since Piotrus is familiar with WP policy, and his opponents are unable to win content disputes on a technicality, it appears they have resorted to dragging a prolific and respected editor through RF*s.

Please note that in addition to filing this RFAr, M.K also cosponsored Piotrus' RFC, and is inexplicably using it against him despite a favorable outcome for Piotrus. M.K also authored Halibutt's RFC. It is my understanding that M.K's harassment of Halibutt in that RFC and elsewhere led to Halibutt severely cutting back his involvment with the project; prior to this, he had been a very prolific editor. Repeating that achievement appears to be M.K's motivation in this RFAr.

The Piotrus-Ghirlandajo conflict was previously scrutinized in this RFAr. Later on Durova offered to mediate, but Ghirlandajo left just when a compromise (which involved cility parole) was about to be reached. I am not sure why Irpen thinks Piotrus caused this. Ghirlandajo, who was the other sponsor of Piotrus' RFC, has since been making some under-the-radar edits while avoiding this outstanding issue. Ghirlandajo's RFC can be found here. So here we have another issue that's already been addressed.

To summarize, I think that M.K.'s accusations are a rehash of accusations that were previously addressed in several venues. It has been initiated by an editor who resolves content disputes by dragging his opponents through RF* pages. It would be unfair to put Piotrus and everyone else through this again. Appleseed (Talk) 03:01, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Statement by Chris Croy

I have no connection to this case or any of its participants. After reading all of the above and looking over M.K.'s diffs, I have no clue what's going on. For example, M.K says Piotrus abused his administrative powers by...unblocking a user who was blocked for 24 hours. I'd like for someone who knows the situation better to create a chart detailing the POV everyone is supposed to be pushing, e.g. Piotrus favors a Canadian point of view while M.K. favors a South Western Sahara point of view. The chart should include examples of specific disputed facts, e.g. Piotrus believes the First Canadian Spork Division was right to invade the Southwestern Sahara to stop the on-going genocide of the Lilliputans by the Yahoos while M.K. believes it was all about the South Western Sahara's camels and furthermore the use of sporks in mortal combat was a crime against humanity. Would someone please do that?

Statement by Poeticbent

Sifting through the list of grievances by User:M.K I have a nagging feeling of dejavou and wonder how much of what is being said here was inspired by Misplaced Pages:Requests_for_arbitration/Piotrus-Ghirla. Yet another editor is counting “South Western Sahara's camels” (see statement by User:Chris Croy) and protesting against the misrepresentation of their possibly inflated numbers which has been revealed by the “Canadian Yahoos” promoting the actions of “First Canadian Spork Division” in the region.

But seriously, as Peter Cheremushkin of Moscow State University wrote: “the twentieth century provides a striking example of the difficulties involved in the process of potential reconciliation . The Poles have historically viewed Russia as a foe, and for their part the Russians regarded Poland as a kind of appendage to their country. In one way or another this was true both for the Soviet period of history and for the post-Communist world. The burden of the past has continued to hamper the creation of new relations."

Meanwhile, according to David A. Crocker: "If reconciliation is understood as the transformation of a relationship, then reconciliation systems can be visualized along a continuum, ranging from “thinner” to “thicker”. At one end is the so-called “thin” version of reconciliation in which former enemies can peacefully coexist and are willing to listen to each other. At the other end is a “thicker” version, which implies the achievement of a harmonious relationship."

"This process begins with the acknowledgement by opinion-makers (journalists, historians, intellectuals, or in this case, Wikipedians), who can speak openly of the wrongs wrought by their nation on another nation."

________________________
1. Peter Cheremushkin, “Russian-Polish Relations: A Long Way From Stereotypes to Reconciliation”, Moscow State University (pdf file)
2. David A. Crocker, “Reckoning with the Past Wrongs: A Normative Framework,” Ethics and International Affairs, 13 (1999): 60

--Poeticbent  talk  17:55, 22 April 2007 (UTC)


Statement by evrik

It seems to me M.K. arguments don't hold water per Piotrus analysis, and may be harassment. Personal feelings on M.K.'s part have almost nothing to do with Piotrus' actions (which is not Piotrus fault). Having followed the RfA between Piotrus-Ghirla I think that this is just a continuation of harassment of Piotrus. This "case" shouldn't be accepted by ArbCom. I would like to see Piotrus cleared of the allegations of bad behavior simply to clear his name.--evrik  18:31, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Statement by Beaumont

I do not agree with Irpen who seems to imply that a respectable editor is to be considered with a greater attention to not to 'hurt' him. I do not see why - otherwise great - contributions by Piotrus have anything to do with judging his conduct and why it may narrow possible solutions. If Piotrus deserves a warning, desysoping, a ban or whatever for a reason, let's apply this regardless editcount or FAcount. Please remember that one prolific but problematic editor can make a problem for many other 'simple' contributors. And why shall we not respect the many 'little' ones?

That said, I agree that WP:HARASS and curious bad faith assumption is to be considered on M.K.'s side. Conversely, what he provides against Piotrus, does not look seriously. His interpretations of diffs are sometimes offending reader's abilities to analyze. This is why I hesitate a bit. If it was Piotrus who initiated the case, I'd probably recommend opening the case. I believe that a sincere examination of mutual conduct could be beneficial. But long standing problem is not easy to solve in 5 minutes and it could also be a waste of time. Further, I have impression that more than 50% of M.K.'s accusations are just content disputes, see e.g. what M.K. qualifies as "Confirmation that other steps in dispute resolution have been tried". So initiating this case can be viewed as an attempt to eliminate/disturb the "enemy" (initiating a pointless case on this page, does it cost anything?). It makes me recommend rejection of the "mutual examination" up to the time when Piotrus initiates a case too. If this happens one can consider that both of them see no way but to proceed by ArbCom. Now, I did not see any real attempt, as e.g. direct discussion or mediation, to solve the problem before coming here (just content disputes). Perhaps it would be better to dismiss the case and not to waste the time that some productive editors normally devote to content creation.

Statement by //Halibutt

I would post a lengthy reply with diffs and links if only I believed this changes anything. However, I'm afraid the issue will be brought back again and again, regardless of the outcome of this arbitration request. Sure, I'm not impartial in this case. After all M.K., Renata and half of the people listed as involved parties were responsible for me leaving this project. I've been a target of a similar campaign of slander and harassment for roughly a year now. Now I returned, but limited my activities to the minimum and apparently M.K. wants the same with Piotrus. If you can't beat your opponents by presenting your own sources in a content dispute, accuse them of fancy things and make them loose their time trying to defend their good name. Slander thy neighbour is a nice tactics, isn't it.

Having said that, I agree that most of M.K.'s specific accusations do not hold the water. It's a mixture of empty accusations mislabelled as proofs of disruptive behaviour (, , ), links to diffs clearly showing Piotrus' devotion to verifiability, NPOV and all the rules of this project (, ), and random links from Piotrus' edit history (, User_talk:Dr._Dan#Hope.3F). In several cases the links prove one thing: that M.K. should apply to standard content dispute process - and use the talk pages of related articles. Instead, he is spreading false accusations. //Halibutt 13:25, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Statement by now-non-involved Ghirla

I don't see why my name should be dragged into this case, since my conflicts with Piotrus happened primarily in late 2005 and in the summer of 2006. I have made it clear that Piotrus and his many friends made my life in the project intolerable. JzG and Durova suggested that I edit only those topics which have nothing to do with Poland (and history). Having followed their advice, I have not written a single English-language article during these four months, and all my mainspace edits in English Misplaced Pages may be qualified as minor. This year I work full time for a more friendly project where my contributions are appreciated.

Having left the project (or at least its Eastern European segment), I assumed that Piotr, Halibutt, Darwinek, Appleseed, Beaumont, and other Ghirlaphobic editors have seen their dreams come true and now may edit in peace, but now I see that I was in error. This case demonstrates that ruthless POV-pushing continues to plague the Eastern European segment of English Misplaced Pages (see the Romania case above and Piotr's edits for today for some intimation of what's going on). As Renata says, "this mess with Eastern Europe has been going on for at least three years now". Irpen's statement illustrates how Piotrus is able to wade his way through myriads of simultaneous conflicts with numerous editors and retain the appearance of credibility. In my experience, his belligerent attitude and double standards have generated adversarial conditions in the community. In June, his protégé Molobo will be finally unblocked, so I expect the atmosphere to become even more poisonous here.

I don't expect anything to come of this case, since there are scores of pro-Piotrus meatpuppets ready to defend his every action and turn the workshop into a quagmire. For my own part, I'm not willing to edit under any restrictions (and I won't). Currently I take very little interest in Piotr's reformation, either. The only good thing is that nobody can say now that the fabled rudeness of Ghirla (or any other Russian scapegoat) is to blame for Piotr's revert-warring ways. The problem with Piotrus cannot be reduced to the parlous state of Poland-Russia relations. For what it's worth, this case is initiated by an editor known for his hostile comments on Russia. I have left the project months ago, but in my absence Piotr's aggressiveness and the problems caused by it seem to have been aggravated. Laus Deo, that's not my problem any more.

Statement by Lysy

I'm not sure why my name was mentioned as one of the "involved parties", probably because I'm mostly editing Central-Eastern Europe related articles, and I had witnessed much of the editing behaviour of Piotrus, M.K and the others mentioned. Anyway, my statement is that: This is not an ArbCom case. Unless we want to waste some time on this. Indeed, the history of CE-Europe is a difficult issue, influenced by a number of conflicting POVs and every editor involved would be seen as a controversial person by some others. There are good reasons for this complexity but I won't go into this for the sake of the space here. Every editor has his style, and particularly Piotrus has the habit of insisting on others providing sources to support the views they present. This persistence, however, often annoys his opponents in the content disputes, as most of the people involved with the history of Eastern Europe tend to believe that their POV is "the right one" and does not need to be documented. While Piotrus is one of the most cool-headed editors involved in this domain, M.K, often being impatient, is the opposite. So, my opinion is that these are two different editors' personalities and I don't see any work for the ArbCom here. After reading M.K's statement again and again, I fail to see the merit of the RfArb. This RfArb is nothing more than an attempt to slander an inconvenient content disputes opponent. --Lysy 20:59, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Statement by Dr. Dan

I have decided to refactor my short statement from above as a result of what I think is a great error on the part of Prokonsul Piotrus' belief regarding the motivations of this request, and some others who would like to quash it. I am therefore making this amended statement for the benefit of all. P.P., no one thinks you are 'evil incarnate', and this request is not an attempt to continue some type of harrassment of you that was not successful in the past. Nor is this request only about "content disputes" regarding Eastern Europe, or Poland, etc. It is true that the issue of your conduct has not been resolved, and as stated by many, needs to be resolved once and for all. In truth this could have easily happened if after being told by various editors, what their objections were, that you took a good look at your own editing and behavior and made some changes. More than anything, this would have helped to lead to the harmony and consensus that we all want, and would make the Misplaced Pages project better for it. Personally I do not believe that it is too late to do so. But only if this request is accepted, will we be able to examine the whole picture and get it right, this time. As to your objection to the people called to be involved in this matter, it would have been nonsense not to include the parties that have had a problem with you. Why is this so strange? Furthermore, other than User:Evrik (who to the best of my recollection has never been involved in these disputes, but volunteered a statement here pretty much mirroring Darwinek's statement), the inclusion of Halibutt and Lysy were not added to oppose your position, but to help and support you. Finally, I believe we are at the point where this matter can be resolved, if this request is accepted and everyone can get it all out in the open. Dr. Dan 01:17, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Statement by FrankB

I have tangled with Piotr on several occasions in the past (outside the 'European Theatre', save for a fictional series!) on categories, content, references and such, and I while I have at times felt he was a bit too sure of himself, and perhaps a bit brusk now and again (I got the definite sense, if you will, overbusy and rushed), I have yet to have had anything like 'a bad experience' in dealing with him. He won a few. I won a few. We compromised on a few more. NBD. I've had the same experience with many another admin or quality editor.
Unexpected use of template {{2}} - see Template:2 for details.In each case, he was but polite, responsive, civil, and willing to discuss the merits of the matter, and even a good loser when my arguments swayed him, or a vote in CFD gave a consensus against his desires. Peering through the above links (and from what I recollect of the RFC), I see no reason to involve the members of the ArbCom in what seems to be mostly a clash of personalities leavened with sociological differences in natal training and the memes of different societies, and perhaps a healthy dose of differences in cognative capability and training.
Unexpected use of template {{2}} - see Template:2 for details.Were the hearing to go forward, might I suggest the committee to just limit the matter (outside of egregious repeated behaviors) by perhaps

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This page was last edited by Thatcher (contribs | logs) at 18:45, 26 April 2007 (UTC) (17 years ago)

A) just ordering all the parties concerned to take a topical break and edit in other parts of the world for 3-6 months, Template:Iconcurrent with

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This page was last edited by Thatcher (contribs | logs) at 18:45, 26 April 2007 (UTC) (17 years ago)

B) A blatant request on WP:AN and the VP that some (say six plus) admins or experienced editors volunteer to watch over or involve themselves in the articles during the enforced interregnum.
Unexpected use of template {{2}} - see Template:2 for details.These kinds of squabbles are going to occur in a world with as diverse in backgrounds as ours is, and historical and cultural biases are not something that can be easily recognized without occasional sparks and in a few cases, alas, flames. I don't see these articles as the disaster some are portraying. A few months enforced break to reflect on such without participation there while providing some much needed expansion, referencing, or copy editing elsewhere, may well be the proof some of these folks need to realize we are all replaceable, and that getting frustrated in any article is a sure sign it's something to leave behind for a while or forever whilst others carry the ball. I just don't see enough smoke to credit bad faith, but certainly see enough grounds to suspect those without the wisdom to not get too involved, have in fact, done exactly that and need to withdraw fort a while and gather perspective. // FrankB 05:38, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Statement by Balcer

As pointed out by others, the accusations made by M.K. do not hold much water. Nevertheless, his action here and the statements by other editors are an excellent illustration of the poisonous and unhealthy relations which have developed over the past two years among some of the most active editors working in the area of Polish-German-Lithuanian-Ukrainian-Russian history. This in turn has led to many excellent editors abandoning work in this area, or at least greatly reducing it (I myself fall in that category), to the detriment of Misplaced Pages.

From my point of view, the explanation for this state of affairs is relatively simple. This particular subsection of history is relatively obscure and little known, hence the only people writing about it will be Wikipedians from the respective countries. It is also a part of history filled with many controversies and contradictory interpretations of events. In a nutshell, these controversies mostly arise from each country attempting to present (consciously or subconsciously) its own role in history in the best possible light, while at the same time darkening the role of its neighbours. This bias is natural and a number of contributors here have acknowledged it at one time or another. However, its existence makes it altogether too easy to assume that the other editors are acting in bad faith. Once such an assumption is made, things can only go downhill, as the easiest response seems to be declaring war on the "nationalist POV pusher" (or whatever), tracking their every move, and jumping on him any time he makes another "biased" edit. It is also quite common to bundle all the editors from one country into a single group of "POV pushers working in concert", and hence turn discussions over controversial articles into long and drawn out "Polish-Lithuanian", "Polish-German" etc. mini-wars.

What is sorely lacking is involvement by neutral outsiders, ideally people not from any of the affected countries, (but simply people not involved in the ongoing disputes would work almost as well) who would look at the situation impartially and act as honest brokers, so to speak. In this way the cycle of bad faith accusations and assumptions could be broken. In this way, an intervention by ArbCom might be beneficial here, to look at the general picture and suggest possible remedies. Let me say also that it is well worth to invest time and resources of ArbCom in solving this problem, since Misplaced Pages offers an ideal venue to produce a balanced version of the history of that part of Europe, incorporating the view points of all sides in a neutral way, something which is sorely needed. Sadly, with the current conflicts, that potential is not being realized. Balcer 17:35, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Clerk notes

The previous arbitration case, Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/Piotrus-Ghirla, was closed without prejudice due to inactivity. Thatcher131 18:59, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
Talkpage notes left asking M.K. and Piotrus to reduce their statement length per request by Charles Matthews below. Newyorkbrad 14:08, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

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

John Smith's and Giovanni33

Initiated by Deskana (fry that thing!) at 22:19, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Involved parties

Confirmation that all parties are aware of the request
Confirmation that other steps in dispute resolution have been tried
  • I attempted my own form of dispute resolution, detailed at Talk:Mao: The Unknown Story#Let's try something. I would only have implimented this had every party in the article agreed, as attempting to enforce an agreed version when they didn't agree to the decision process would have been a very bad idea. John Smith's agreed to the mediation, but Giovanni33 has so far not said either way, but said he is tempted to reject it on principle, though he appreciates the effort at dispute resolution.
  • I do not believe an RfC or formal mediation request will lead to any results between the two, thus my request.

Statement by Deskana

Both John Smith's and Giovanni33 have been disagreeing with each other on a lot of articles, including, but not limited to, Mao: The Unknown Story, Theory of everything and The War Against the Jews. Both users blame each other for the arguments . They have also both had requests for checkuser filed against them (see this and this) because both accused each other of using sockpuppets, although it is worthwhile noting that both accusations were backed with evidence on the RFCU pages. Giovanni33 has used sockpuppets abusively in the past. Both users (and others) have discussed an issue regarding Mao: The Unknown Story at great depth at Talk:Mao: The Unknown Story#All change without any sense of a final decision being made. The discussion (including comments by other users) now totals at 9479 words including signatures and timestamps. I believe there is very little chance that the users will ever agree on anything at all, and the constant accusations and off-topic remarks about each other. Both have violated 3RR before, and been blocked for it . I am attempting this RfAr not only to attempt to see some resolution of the conflict between them, but also to seek guidance on their history of edit warring across multiple articles, even when neither of them are involved. --Deskana (fry that thing!) 22:19, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Statement by ElC

At a glance, it dosen't appear that Deskana is being even-handed in this case. I voiced similar concerns when John Smith was reported for 3RR and Deskana did not impose a block and instead opted to protect the page on his version. I'm open for corrections, but it does not appear the full lengths of dispute resolution were attempted, and, as such, I provisionally recommend that the Committee decline these content disputes. El_C 22:36, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

I did not claim Deskana is partisan, and any lack of even-handedness may well be inadvartant (I have no reason to believe otherwise). In my email response to John Smith, I requested he submit an accounts on my talk page (with diffs), but he argued against it. So I let it go. El_C 23:11, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Statement by John Smith's

I think it is unfair for El C to make allegations about Deskana being partisan. If you look at the Mao: The Unknown Story page it was locked to the version that Giovanni supported - and Deskana overruled another admin to make it into a permanent lock until the matter was resolved. So in all fairness he has shown complete impartiality when it has come to locking the page.

If anything, I do not believe El C is being even-handed. I e-mailed him about your block even though Deskana had lifted it (because he had responded to the 3RR report first). He flatly refused to discuss the matter privately with me - why was that? There is no requirement I make all correspondance public. Also all the other admins who contributed to the discussion on the lifting of my block concurred that they should be used to prevent edit-warring and as the page was locked it was not necessary. So I think he's being rather unfair in alleging Deskana has done anything wrong/acted incorrectly.

As to dispute-resolution, I cannot see how non-binding methods will resolve anything. It would, unfortunately, just be a waste of time. Giovanni and I have tried talking things over - third-parties have also got involved but to no avail. Getting more third-parties involved would be just as pointless. So, as incredible as it seems, I think abritration is required. John Smith's 22:59, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Although I do not wish to tell anyone how to suck eggs, I would like to point out that according to WP:DR we have actually tried the previous recommended steps. Under step 4 we had third-party involvement (it doesn't have to be Rfc) and mediation by Deskana was rejected by Giovanni. So WP:DR has been followed. John Smith's 23:13, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
Comment to Charles Matthews. How is getting more admins involved going to change anything if they have no ability to impose a resolution? John Smith's 17:09, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Statement by Giovanni33

Without touching upon the nature of the content disputes, or making any accucastions, my position regarding this proposed case and the proposed arbitration offered by Deskana on the talk page to resolve it, echo's El C's statement above. Although I appreciate the efforts of Deskana to attempt to resolve the impasse, binding arbitration is still premature. As I previously commented on the page, arbitration would be the step to seek only after mediation and/or a Rfc was tried and failed. See my comments on this here: These have not been tried yet, and I am in favor of them. I think the dispute resolution process should work, and should be followed, without taking these short cuts in the name of expediency, however tempting. If it comes to this in due course, then I welcome it as a resolution, even if it has to be unfortuanately, forced. Also, when and if it comes to this we will have a lot more evidence to get a clear picture of the nature of the disputes having gone through the other formal steps.Giovanni33 23:06, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Statement by HongQiGong

As I have been actively involved in one of the disputes between Giovanni and John Smith's, I think I am obligated to comment. At some point during the past few weeks I was requested by Giovanni to join the dispute at Mao: The Unknown Story. I agree with Giovanni's edit and disagree with John Smith's, and I have given my reasons in the Talk page. After much edit warring (and I fully admit that I participated), the article is now in permanent protection until the dispute has been resolved. Please note that in the defense of everybody involved in that article, the dispute has become a very black-and-white disagreement (whether or not to make mention of a certain academic according to a source provided) and so there's not much room for compromise.

Now I have been aware ever since I became involved in that dispute that John Smith's and Giovanni are also disputing on Cultural Revolution. But I found out recently that they are also disputing on, as far as I am personally aware, Jung Chang, Theory of everything, and The War Against the Jews. That would make 5 articles, and I don't know if there are more. At this point I don't know if this is still just a content dispute. As I have said, I agree with Giovanni's edit on Mao: The Unknown Story, and I have given my reasons in the Talk page. But at this point, I can't vouch for Giovanni that he's in the dispute for good faith reasons. Of course, the same goes for John Smith's as well.

I don't know how long the two editors have been disputing with each other, if it was before I became involved in the one particular article. But please note that Giovanni has accused John Smith's of wikistalking him. Hong Qi Gong (Talk - Contribs) 02:39, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

New comment

Ok, is it just me? Or is the back-and-forth comments between the two editors becoming a bit disruptive? Most of what they're saying doesn't even seem to concern how to edit the articles anymore, but seems to be more about each other. Just my personal observation though. Hong Qi Gong (Talk - Contribs) 15:31, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Statement by Xmas1973

Having joined the debate just as it was taking off, I feel equally entitled as HongQiGong to comment on this matter as a third party. Throughout, without being partisan but merely swayed by logic and what I see as the rightful realm of comment by Misplaced Pages, I have agreed with John Smith's in the edit war on the matter of the Chang and Halliday book. (I have not been involved in the other pages, except some limited discussion on Talk:Jung Chang.) Non-binding resolutions have been strenuously attempted, only to be rejected by Giovanni33 (on a matter of principle, as noted above). A binding resolution therefore seems the only way forward. As HongQiGong has suggested, there is no room for a third way.

Deskana has added utterly properly from my perspective. He has been impartial and fair, and whilst it explicitly does not amount to endorsement of the current page, the protected version favours Giovanni33, so such claims are apparently rootless.

Just to refer to one earlier item, Giovanni33 is a proven sock puppeteer. No such action can be ascribed to John Smith's. It was at one point suggested that he and I were the same person. I can say quite definitively that that is not the case. I cannot comment on the other pages in the alleged personal war - as opposed to content objections - but I do know that where cause has arisen I have agreed in principle and on the facts with John Smith's. Xmas1973 10:25, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Clerk notes

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

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

Requests for clarification

Requests for clarification from the Committee on matters related to the Arbitration process. Place new requests at the top.

Requests for clarification with regard to Misplaced Pages:Requests_for_arbitration/Billy_Ego-Sandstein

  1. Category:Fascist Wikipedians has been recreated. This category was mentioned in the finding of fact but there appears to be no remedy requiring it's deletion. Should I delete and salt it? It's gone. --kingboyk 10:31, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
  2. Billy Ego has edited his talk page since the ban, and it is now protected. However, User:Billy Ego appears to remain unprotected. I propose protection but wish to check with ArbCom first. --kingboyk 16:15, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
  3. A lot of the users don't make sense to be on the sockpuppet list, so I am asking for where the IP logs as evidence for this are and if I can see them. After looking at the banned users list, a lot of these have had very differing opinions and I've ended up arguing against. Especially User: Instantiayion, with whom I had to compromise on the Planned Economy article with (actually, that running debate was about to be solved until he got banned), Anarcho-capitalism here whos position (as much as I can tell ideologically) does not line up with either User: Instantiayion nor User: Billy Ego. I find it hard to believe that even if it were true, that one person would be able to so accurately portray so many personalities and ideologies. This just doesn't seem to line up at all. Fephisto 17:32, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
Regarding #2 - why protect it? Is it being vandalized? Regarding #3, no, you don't get to see the IP logs; they're confidential -- see m:CheckUser policy. --jpgordon 04:45, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Requests for clarification with regard to Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/Protecting children's privacy

I've looked over the case of children's privacy protection, and I feel that there is several ambiguities I'd like to ask for clarification:

  • "When a user self-identifies as a child, especially if they provide personal information, the matter is frequently a subject of discussion among administrators"

What is the definition of a "child" on Misplaced Pages? Is a seventeen-year-old high school student a child? Where is the precise age to define a "child"?

  • "users who self-identify as children, project a sexually tinged persona, and disclose personal information such as links to sites devoted to social interaction are engaging in disruptive behavior and may be banned."

What is the specific meaning of "sexually tinged persona"? And If a teenage editor post the URL of his blog on Misplaced Pages that has his real name on it, does it constitute disclosure of personal information?

I hope the ArbCom will give the answers to those points. Regards. Wooyi 22:15, 16 April 2007 (UTC)



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