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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.

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Current requests

Moreschi

Initiated by Scott Mac (Doc) at 22:43, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Involved parties

• Moreschi (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)
• Charles Matthews (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)
• FT2 (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)

Confirmation that all parties are aware of the request`

• Moreschi notified
• Charles
• FT2

Confirmation that other steps in dispute resolution have been tried

Since he's calling into question the final step of the dispute resolution process into question, there is little point.

Statement by Scott MacDonald

I've no dog in the Giano fight. I gave up caring a long time ago about that one. It is arbcom's to sort, because that's what we elect you to do. Arbitration is the final step in dispute resolution, arbcom's decisions are from from infallible, and should never be beyond question, appeal, or revision. The community elect arbs, and if people don't like what they get, then they've just had the chance to elect others. However, if admins feel free to overturn and reverse arbcom decisions, then all hell breaks loose. That way lies chaos and madness.

Giano was recently blocked by arbcom for incivility (rightly or wrongly.) Charles Matthews then, on behalf of Arbcom then extended that block for "block evasion" (rightly or wrongly). Moreschi, an admin not unknown for controversial actions, without any discussion whatsoever (see his logs), then overturned that block. 20:47, 16 December 2008 "Petty block based on wrong-headed thinking: per Bishonen's statement this was not block evasion, was trivial evasion in the first place, and Matthews' arbitratorial authority has been very bankrupt for a while now anyway" (I note in passing this is the third Giano block Moreschi has overturned.) If Charles Matthews was wrongly applying arbcom's decision, then it is surely for arbcom and not any admin to overturn him. Wheelwaring without discussion is intolerable enough, doing it with arbcom is unacceptable.

I have already stated that it is past time for arbcom to put the boot into any vested user who crosses the line. The drama this minority cause in their petty partisan soap opera is waaaay past beyond their utility to the project. See User:Scott MacDonald/When to shoot an admiral for my reasoning.

You desysopped SlimVirgin for this very same behaviour, I call on you now to desysop Moreschi. Otherwise, arbcom's authority is bankrupt and any forceful minority can get its way.

Resp to Brad. Well, you can accuse me of stoking drama by bringing this. But, I'd say, the drama is caused by the constant unwillingness of arbcom to stamp any type of authority on vested users. Wimpy solutions and assuming good faith to ridiculous levels, and your inevitable "on one hand, on the other hand" approach has created this whole absurd mess where powerful cliques run a mock. The pathetic lack of leadership, evidenced by jpgordon's ridiculous recuse is simply allowing this awful soap opera to be prolonged. (If you want to be biblical see Judges 17:6!) No, perhaps an arbitration case isn't the best way, but you really do have to start slapping people like Morsechi. I have no quarrel with Giano, and no comment on his block, but bishonen's defense of block-evasion which is being used by you and Flo to make this go away is patently ridiculous. When blocked Giano announced he was leaving. He then changed his mind on seeing a way to test the limits - he got Jehochim to move his talk page to a subpage to allow him to edit articles on his talk page and issue instructions to others. Heck, who can object to him creating great content? But anyone who think it wasn't gaming and stirring - aided by proxying admins - to defeat a block isn't awake.

Statement by Viridae

Ahh but arbcom's authority IS bankrupt as indicated by blocking Giano for block evasion in the first place (apologies to those of you who disagreed witht he block) and then blocking Moreschi for misusing tools. Oh and there is FT2 refusing to answer questions about whether or not he knew that material pertinent too his candidacy was oversighted during the arbcom elections in which he ran. Viridae 22:56, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Statement by John254

In response to Moreschi unblocking Giano, FT2 reblocked Giano, and blocked Moreschi for violating Misplaced Pages:Requests_for_arbitration/Motion:_re_SlimVirgin#Restriction_on_further_enforcement. Discussion on User_talk:Moreschi#Block indicates a strong community consensus against both blocks. LessHeard vanU has indicated his imminent intention to reverse FT2's block of Moreschi. I have requested the assistance of Jimbo Wales in this matter at User_talk:Jimbo_Wales#The_Giano_II_wheel_war. John254 23:00, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Statement by Cyde Weys

I disagree with Doc's final sentence that ArbCom is bankrupt if it does not apply the exact same punishment to Moreschi as it did to SlimVirgin. It is my understanding that SlimVirgin's desysopping was a result of a large combination of factors, of which the unblocking of Giano was simply the final straw. The situation is not necessarily the same in Moreschi's case, though I do not think a desysopping would be too harsh. And John254, a bunch of people commenting on Moreschi's talk page does not a community consensus make. That is a bit of a biased crowd. --Cyde Weys 23:01, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Statement by Mackensen

If Moreschi knows better than those damn fools on the Committee then he should submit his name to the community to become an arbitrator. I suspect half the people who run do it in anger--I know I did. As to whether this case (if accepted) should be delayed until the new intake assumes office, I'm split. The decision might have more legitimacy coming from a mix of new arbs and old arbs. On the other hand, the new arbs will be getting their feet wet and don't know the full history, inevitably leading to long, drawn-out, drama filled case. Just like last year. Mackensen (talk) 23:10, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Statement by Charles Matthews

I volunteered to implement a decision of the ArbCom to reset a 72 hour block on User:Giano II. That decision was split 7-5, and details are on User talk:Giano II. Moreschi unblocked, with a misleading summary suggesting this was in some way or fashion my decision alone, or taken carelessly. He made no effort to contact me about this matter. Moreschi was certainly acting way outside any sort of process and protocol, and his attempts to personalise the issue are just a smokescreen. I think this is clearly use of admin tools to grandstand, and I think the matter should somehow or other be dealt with by the ArbCom. A full case may not be the way, but it is not for me to say. I do think that formal Arbitration decisions should not simply be brushed aside. And I think any attempt to play divide-and-conquer when ArbCom decisions are not unanimous should be taken very seriously. Charles Matthews (talk) 23:19, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Statement by Maxim

Since none of the present ArbCommers are impartial enough to actually arbitrate wrt to Giano, I propose that a sub-arbcom be elected to arbitrate this case. Maxim_(talk) 23:05, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Statement from Moreschi

I have little more to say. My thoughts are in extensive detail on my talk page. Here I will keep it short and clean.

1): The original block of Giano may have been right or wrong. I have not looked and care little. Regardless, it was made with proper authority, and I was doing other things.

2): The decision by Charles Matthews to extend Giano's block was not only wrong but also a violation of the Giano special restriction. In extending the block he failed to obtain consensus ("agreement", in the text) among arbitrators: 7-6 (5?) is simply not consensus. NYB publically stated "I dissent", and 5 others evidently did so privately. My reversal of this block was merely undoing a violation of arbcom's own Giano special restriction.

3): FT2's block of myself and reblock of Giano constituted wheel-warring: they violated both WP:BLOCK and WP:WHEEL.

Moreschi (talk) 23:16, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

• There is, of course, a much simpler argument to the effect that I am right, everybody thinks I'm right, and that Matthews and FT2 are hopelessly wrong, and this is what WP:IAR is for. Even without, that, however, I am confident I violated no arbcom motion: that Charles Matthews did: and that FT2 wheel-warred. I am astounded that Matthews can confuse a 7-5 majority with "agreement" or "consensus". Clearly we have nothing of the kind: in such a scenario the default option is not to block, much as at AFD "no consensus" defaults to keep. Moreschi (talk) 23:25, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
  • And can someone PLEASE unblock Giano? Moreschi (talk) 23:33, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Statement by Sticky Parkin

This is mainly a reply to Maxim. None of the arbs are impartial?:):) There is constantly a debate about who is allowed to do anything about Giano and if people disagree with his actions people claim they are biased. Arbcom are arbcom; i.e. they're the one's who are supposed to decide some things, as Scott says. I'm sure they're not all equally partial- those who are may recuse. We all have an opinion when it comes to Giano, (even if some people's is just boredom) but that doesn't mean some of them can't be impartial. Sticky Parkin 23:14, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

A bunch of them are not impartial, and most importantly they've utterly failed to resolve this dispute. Maxim_(talk) 23:17, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

What G did on his talk page (use of it for editing, getting one of his mates to move his talk page so he could do so) and then editing as an IP on someone else's talk page, was block evasion, he's not thick he's been around long enough to know what those blocked are allowed to do. I agree with Folantin (and perhaps Sam, though maybe permanently, rather than just for a couple of weeks.) A moratorium on Giano drama- just permaban him, or let him write his high-gloss, deeply profound articles so vital to the educational task of the project, which cover such philosophical, theological and sociological subjects, which those seeking knowledge are bound to google so frequently, so vital to our encyclopedia, without disruption. Though of course he can never just do that, can he? Sticky Parkin 23:29, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

What seems to have happened possibly is that some people weren't sure if extending the block was enforced by arbcom or by charles acting alone. There's been the same confusion in previous recent cases as to whether an arb was acting as themselves individually or as arbcom enforcing itself. What I suggest is the creation of an account called "arbcom" which enforces/makes actions which are by order of the arbcom and have their consensus. That way individual arbs won't be blamed individually when they were enacting the arbcom consensus, and people can't be confused. Sticky Parkin 01:17, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Statement by Folantin

Moreschi is one of the few admins with the guts to deal with the numerous ethnic and national conflicts on Misplaced Pages. The vast majority of the 1600 or so other admins on the corps couldn't give a monkey's. Mainspace content would suffer a dramatic deterioration were he to be desysopped. But let's not lose sight of the big picture because, as we all know, nothing is more important to Misplaced Pages than the Giano Wars and the endless drama and bureaucracy which accompany them...

Seriously, let's get a grip. Can we have a complete moratorium on Giano-related drama for 2009? It seems no incident involving Giano can be allowed to pass without at least 50 users having their say on the matter. As far as I can see, none of it ever has any bearing on encyclopaedic content. How about wiping the slate clean on all sides of the dispute and trying to start from scratch on January 1? People must have better things to do, like write a reference work.

Statement by Black Kite

Agree with Maxim - all 12 Arbs who voted on the Giano re-block will have to recuse from this, which leaves practically no-one. Sam's idea below is one possibility (though that would still leave very few uninvolved). Meanwhile, this is pointless. Unblock Giano and Moreschi and let's get on with more important things. Black Kite 23:12, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Note by Ryan Postlethwaite

I got in contact with FT2 and he agreed to a partial unblock to partipate in this request for arbitration. He was away from the computer, so I did the honours. For the length of the original block, Moreschi is only allowed to edit this page and his talk page. Ryan Postlethwaite 23:13, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

I disagree with the presumption that the original block is valid. You cannot restrict an editor by conditional unblocking of a controversial block. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 23:39, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Comment by uninvolved User:B

Could someone explain arbiter Sam Blacketer's statement here that Giano was "compelled" to request a separate talk page? I may be missing something here, but it looks like Giano is using his/her real talk page for proxy editing while blocked. There are several directions worth going here. (1) There's nothing about that use of the talk page that would preclude also having a conversation there - so that is no compelling need for a separate page. (2) Blocked means blocked. Blocked doesn't mean "on a brief vacation, but continuing to edit through proxies." I have no strong opinion on Giano other than that special Giano rules are silly. Blocking Giano for things that nobody else would be blocked for is silly as is the reverse. It astounds me that this committee is so woefully unable to deal with this situation. Whatever blockworthy disruption Giano may be causing at some point in time, this committee amplifies that disruption by its own actions. --B (talk) 23:12, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

(Sam answered the above question on my talk page. I disagree with his reasoning, but thank him for explaining it.)

In regards to the block of Moreschi by FT2, I am shocked that anyone is defending it. There was obviously nothing to be gained by a preventative block here. That action could only possibly be seen as not only punitive, but petty. You don't block an admin because you disagree with a block. Regardless of the correctness of Moreschi's actions, FT2's block was wholly inappropriate and abusive. If this case ends with anything short of desysopping both Moreschi and FT2, it is a failure on the part of arbcom. --B (talk) 02:04, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Statement by Majorly

It is time for arbcom to be abolished, or, at the very least, enforced to learn where they're placed. This is completely petty retaliation. I have some respect for FT2, but this is just childish. ArbCom is no longer respected by the vast majority of the community, and with each and every stupid move they make, the more sure I am of that. It's time the power was given back to the community from whom it was wrongfully taken, so that these stupid moves don't happen. It's just a shame some admin didn't unblock Moreschi and Giano II, then block FT2 and Charles Matthews. That would have been funny. Majorly 23:14, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Part of his block evasion was daring to reply to a request of mine to help me out in working on Bramall Hall, which he kindly assisted with me last year. It's unbelievably stupid that I would have had to wait an extra three days because he dared to tell me that he'd help, uh, improve an article. Pathetic. ArbCom needs abolishing, and fast. I'm sick and tired of their bullshit. Majorly 23:24, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

To Elonka: Arbcom do not have the backing of the community, at least, not the current one. People overwhelmingly voted against current arbitrators, not supported them. People voted because they wanted different people, who have more of an idea of what's what. Oh and I didn't vote against Kurt because of his platform. I ignored his platform completely, and opposed him because he's a troll. As did many others. It shows nothing for confidence in arbcom at all, moreso against it. We elected the current batch a year ago, some two years ago, and a couple in 2006. We no longer have their confidence. Majorly 00:30, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Statement by Apoc2400

• Moreschi wheel-warred the same way SlimVirgin did and was temporarily de-sysoped for.
• The background of Moreschi is different from SlimVirgin, so consequences may be other or none at all.
• The block of Moreschi was unprecedented, as was his action.
• Reclusion will be controversial, as any arb could be said to be involved. Still, if what arbs do in their duty as arbs is seen as involvement, then anyone can choose their own jury by picking fights with parts of ArbCom.
• Cue all the other drama llamas. Yee haw! --Apoc2400 (talk) 23:18, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

• Arbcom will makes mistakes sometime. I believe the block extension of Giano was a mistake, though technically he did evade the block. ArbCom was already reconsidering the block, as Moreschi should have known. Admins rushing to undo any Arbitration remedy they disagree with is completely unacceptable, whether he has the crowd assembled on some user talk page behind him or not. No community consensus can ever be established on a user talk page. --Apoc2400 (talk) 00:04, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Statement by Dtobias

• Is that a 'lama' (as in a priest) or a 'llama' (as in a beast)?
• In my uninvolved opinion, the whole Giano mess from start to... not actually finish, because it's unlikely to ever be over... is entirely silly. Everybody needs to chill. Whoever's still blocked should just take a wikibreak and enjoy the so-called real world until the block expires, and everybody should stop stirring up more drama by commenting on it (including me... :-) )... and do no more blocks, unblocks, escalation of sanctions, starting a federal (or ArbCom) case, or anything else... just find something better to do like watching paint dry. *Dan T.* (talk) 23:30, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Statement by LessHeard vanU

(five or six ec's - sorry Theresa) I believe that either ArbCom is unable to take this case, being a party per the block rationale provided by FT2, or that individual Arbiters need to be made parties. I had intended to unblock Moreschi per this rationale, since I saw no basis upon which the block could stand, but found that Moreschi was unblocked a little over 5 minutes before the time I had given had elapsed. I stand, as someone who has used and appreciated the ArbCom in the past, in desperate disappointment in the practice of blocking someone, and then taking arguments on whether a trial is necessary. As there is no apparent basis for the block of Moreschi I would ask for the Committee members acknowledgement that the block is lifted in its entirety. LessHeard vanU (talk) 23:30, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Response to FT2; Where are the wordings within policy or guideline, or given practice, that supports your arguments? ArbCom do not make policy but interpret and act upon existing descriptive ones, and at the behest of the community or Jimbo Wales specifically. Where was a request for review of the actions of Moreschi made, and by whom? I find your justifications sound in logic, but utterly bereft of reference to the policies of which sysops and even more so ArbCom are the servants. I do not believe that ArbCom has the power to extend their authority over tangential actions relating to their past decisions unless requested to do so by outside parties, their ability to extend the scope of a case only exists while it is being discussed, and I see here no desire from the community to grant that ability. I ask you to consider that your actions were bankrupt, for you had no basis upon which to make them. LessHeard vanU (talk) 14:00, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Response to Newyorkbrad; the extension/reset of Giano's block was for block evasion, which is not in respect of the civility parole specifically noted in the SlimVirgin wording; ArbCom has no specific remit in adjacent areas to its previous determinations, so Moreschi was not defying ArbCom. LessHeard vanU (talk) 22:28, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Statement by CharlotteWebb

Why is Sam voting to accept this when he has already indicated that he intends to recuse? That doesn't make any sense. — CharlotteWebb 23:20, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Statement by Jossi

A royal waste of time. It is about time that restrictions imposed are respected. I would also argue that bringing forth an argument against the ArbCom in this manner is quite unbecoming. What about abandoning the bloody politics and focus on productive stuff? ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 23:26, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Statement by Rootology

Everyone, including the arbiters, and everyone affected and involved in this, needs to read Misplaced Pages:Misplaced Pages is not about winning, and this needs to be policy. The AC is not entitled to "win", admins are not entitled to "win", editors are not entitled to "win".

Misplaced Pages is not about winning. Disputes over content or behavior are not meant to be "won". They are meant to be resolved per consensus, with all users here for the betterment of the project at all times willing to yield to consensus. Ego does not matter to Misplaced Pages; egos and pride are not helpful to building encyclopedia articles, and ego and pride need to yield to consensus if a conflict between them somehow occur. Any editors using Misplaced Pages who at any time feel they should win are incorrect; there is nothing to win.

What Misza13 says below is also accurate: The Committee either needs to stamp down anything and everything by force, and let the chips and proverbial bodies fall where they may, or else cede to letting the AC be remade by membership from the ground up by the editors and toss the body as it existed. The middle ground of playing to and serving personalities and egos is a model for failure. Do one or the other, please.

Statement by Thatcher

Moreshi's reading that "agreement" means "consensus" is clearly incorrect; Arbcom is one body on Misplaced Pages that does act by voting, and 7 votes is a clear majority of the active Arbitrators. That doesn't mean the decision was sensible or morally correct, just procedurally correct. There are worse reasons to be desysopped than standing up to lunacy. Thatcher 23:47, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

"I still am not sure whether I should be congratulating the top finishers in the election, for getting their wish to serve on the Arbitration Committee, or the lower-ranked finishers, because they will not have to do this job." (Newyorkbrad)

I'm sure. Thatcher 00:41, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Statement by Jehochman

No articles have been damaged. No editor has been seriously attacked or harassed. Therefore, reject this case and go do something productive instead. Allow the community to sort out the blocks and unblocks as needed. They could hardly do worse than the unnecessary interventions of this committee. Jehochman 23:57, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Cases that are primarily political in nature should be rejected. Do not reward those seeking to cause chaos by taking the bait. Jehochman 00:24, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Statement by Elonka

I haven't commented on this Giano block until now, but here's my $0.02 on the progression here: Giano was uncivil, the ArbCom discussed it on their mailing list, and voted to block. As per usual ArbCom decisions, it's a simple majority that counts, not consensus, and that's fine. Giano was blocked by Sam Blacketer, acting on behalf of the Committee. Giano then decided to evade his block, by coming in as an anon and posting on other pages than his talkpage. ArbCom debated this, and voted to extend the block, 7-5. Charles Matthews, acting on behalf of the Committee, extended the block. Moreschi then came in, and made a decision to overturn the block entirely. It's also worth pointing out that this is the third time he's overturned a Giano block. I have respect for Moreschi in many things, but not on his decision to unblock Giano. When an administrator simply decides to overturn an ArbCom decision on their own, that administrator should be de-sysopped, immediately. This is what happened a few weeks ago, when SlimVirgin was de-sysopped for overturning an ArbCom enforcement decision. And Moreschi knew about this, because he participated on that page, offering a statement where he even said, "I can see why SV is being temp desysopped here," and that it was necessary for the ArbCom to be "clear and consistent in application of rules".

ArbCom has the backing of the community, as was clearly shown by the many Wikipedians who voted in the elections this month. The Committee definitely has my support, and if ArbCom chose to temporarily de-sysop Moreschi over this, I would support that decision. We elect the arbitrators to make decisions in the most complex cases we've got. When the arbitrators go to the trouble of making decisions in those cases, those decisions should be respected. --Elonka 02:32, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Statement by Alex Bakharev (talk)

First, original block of Giano may or may not be correct, extension of the block by Charles may or may not be correct (I, personally, would accept its characteristic by Thatcher as a procedurally correct lunacy), unblocking of Giano was not procedurally correct (although it was IMHO a right decision), reblocking by FT2 was probably a right decision although of all the arbitrators he was probably the less suitable to perform this reblock taking into account the long history of hostilities between him and Giano. What I cannot see is how blocking of Moreschi satisfy WP:BLOCK. Was the block preventative? What it was suppose to prevent exactly? Reunblocking of Giano? Moreschi was still able to unblock while blocked himself. A stern warning to Moreschi not to reunblock would be as sufficient as the block. Do FT2 expect Moreschi to go on a rampage, delete the main page and block Giano? I do not think so. Thus, why block? Similarly, I applaud to the decision to unblock Moreschi, but what those restrictions are suppose to prevent? I see them nothing but punitive. Can we repell them?

Secondly, the story is important for well-being of the community and would generally warrant an investigation. The problem is that the current Arbcom is a wrong forum for solving those problems. Even if the arbitrators would act in good faith the community would have huge difficulties trying to assume it. To much of conflict of interests here. I think it would be better to leave decision to community by doing an RfC or some other community fora.

Thirdly, being an optimist I hope that the newly elected arbcom would find some better things to do rather than coninue Giano Wars. Thus, doing nothing and waiting for the events to unfold maybe a sensitive option. Alex Bakharev (talk) 00:38, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Comment by Sean William

If any member of the Arbitration Committee believes that their banhammer outweighs that of another fellow administrator, then they've got another thing coming. Props to Moreschi for doing the right thing here; if he wasn't around, I would have unblocked Giano myself. There was absolutely no reason to extend Giano's block past what it already was. (I'm a bit tired of the "ArbCom authority" as it is. It's the things like this that make me more and more disillusioned with the powers that be at Misplaced Pages.) Sean William @ 00:43, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Comment by Cube Lurker

Reply to Elonka

Elonka your second paragraph is severely flawed. The two sitting arbs received 27.4 & 20.5% support. I dare to suggest that most of the sitting arbs would find their situation the same if they had to face the community again. The community voted for arbcom to try to find arbs that would be a change from the way arbcom has bungled this past year down to today. Not as a support for this current group.--Cube lurker (talk) 00:58, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Statement by Angus McLellan

A man goes to the doctors. "Doctor", he says, "when I do this it hurts." "So," says the doctor, "don't do that!"

The committee has created, by its own egregious past decisions, a situation where a vote of arbitrators is required to modify blocks on an editor. Is there anyone who thinks that this ridiculous circus, with arbitrators voting over blocks, and sitting arbiters getting involved in enforcement as a matter of routine, really reduces drama and conflict? So here's a radical new concept for the committee to consider. Go back to arbitrating the difficult cases and leave the small stuff alone. If Giano's a grumpy old so-and-so, well, that's what he is. He might get blocked sometimes by the lunatic civility police, but he'll probably be unblocked by someone else eventually, or the block will expire in its own good time. There may be some minor kerfuffle, but it will be on nothing like this scale. Please follow the doctor's advice. Angus McLellan (Talk) 01:12, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Statement by enraged SirFozzie

I hate to start my statement with something that will offend some (or many) people... but in this case I think it's necessary.

HAS EVERYONE LOST THEIR FUCKING MIND?

Right now I'm disgusted with several people who I have held in high regard's actions in this. People who I thought were beyond this kind of thing. I do not completely support the block, and I do not support the extension of the block, as I've said on Giano's page. I do understand that the actions had a bare majority amongst active arbitrators. I'm not sure that it really was useful to take such an action with such a bare majority. But rather then spend paragraphs on that, I've said enough about the actions of the outgoing Arbs on this and other issues. All I can do is thank them for their time in harness, no matter what I think of their judgement and actions, and hope that Jimbo makes the selection soon.

However, to unilaterally unblock, as was done, and especially with the message that he did, is not useful to anyone. Not to the original blocking administrator/arbcom member. Not to the community, and not even to Giano. (He may have been unblocked, but there was no way such a incendiary message in an unilateral unblock was going to stand, so it had the net effect of LENGTHENING Giano's block.)

I strongly suggest that everyone involved go off and have a spot of tea, commute Giano's sentence to time served, and look for the place they lost their freaking mind. Because the actions of all involved reflect badly on Misplaced Pages, it's policies, and the community, and they've placed us in a very bad situation where the base authority of the Arbitration Committee and the person who appoints them is being questioned. SirFozzie (talk) 01:43, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Statement by uninvolved Horologium

If this case is accepted, I would strongly suggest that a) Giano be added as an involved party, b) the blocking policy be formally rewritten to include the statement User:Giano II may not be blocked for any reason whatsoever, as determined by previous community consensus, and C) that a remedy banning Giano from interacting with members (past or present) of the Arbitration committee be implemented, except where Giano has a history of editing the article in question or a related article. I, for one, am damn sick and tired of seeing The Giano Show over and over again on AN and ANI (especially when it is in reruns), and so much of the endless drama comes from Giano's endlessly repeated statements of disdain for arbitrators past, present, and likely future. Yes, he contributes featured content. No, he's not the only one. In fact, there are 21 editors who have contributed more featured articles; about 15 of them are still active. (See Misplaced Pages:List of Wikipedians by featured article nominations.) Few of them are the subject of tedious, interminable discussion threads. (Only Cla68 and Piotrus show up more than once or twice in recent episodes of As The Wiki Turns; most don't appear at all, and those two editors have both been active in contentious areas. Giano's contributions are primarily to the field of Architecture, not a hotbed of strife and POV pushing on Misplaced Pages.)

At the same time, while I think that Moreschi's wheel-warring with the arbcom was monumentally stupid and ill-advised, I don't support de-adminning him; a simple admonishment should do the trick. He is one of the few admins who is able to function in the nationalism wars areas, an area where angels fear to tread, and without the tools he would not be at all effective in stopping the endless stream of sewage that pours forth from jingoistic edit warriors. Horologium (talk) 01:54, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Reminder by Bishonen

Is the voting on the Peter Damian "request for clarification" finished yet? Is it conclusive yet? Is any conclusion to be drawn, any action to be implemented, any ban to be rescinded? Or will Peter Damian be left dangling ad infinitum while y'all remain stuck in the doorway, trying to get out of sight of that unedifying slow-motion execution and into the latest, apparently (don't ask me why) enticing Giano drama? Responsive replies from the committee welcome! Bishonen | talk 02:50, 17 December 2008 (UTC).

What do you think? Thatcher 03:00, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Grumble by Privatemusings

This is all clearly terribly important, but I really must object, deserving a higher spot than 10th really. When are the arbs going to do anything about that? Privatemusings (talk) 03:32, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, but I don't understand your comment. Newyorkbrad (talk) 03:40, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Take a number. ++Lar: t/c 03:44, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

then you lost the game, I guess :-) - I think it's best to ignore me in this instance...(oh and probably many others, though I hope not!) - this is a silly attempt to be humourous, brad, and I apologise if your time was wasted at all in reading both it, and this reply. Merry Christmas to all :-) Privatemusings (talk) 03:47, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Statement by SlimVirgin

The ArbCom has lost the confidence of pretty well the entire community at this point. I don't know who suggested extending Giano's block, but I'd bet every penny I have that it was FT2, who should not be involved in any ArbCom or admin action against Giano. Moreschi was right to unblock. I ask the ArbCom to deal with FT2's misuse of the tools in blocking Moreschi, and to ensure that FT2 stay away from any further action against Giano, or against admins who help Giano.

In closing, the ArbCom should bear in mind that, when you damage your own standing, you damage Jimbo's too. SlimVirgin 04:26, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Musings by User:Deacon of Pndapetzim

Here again, what a surprise! As I frequently point out, everyone but a few pro-Arbcom ideologues and groupies realise that all this is but a undignified power struggle, the amelioration and glorification of which derive from little more than a few deluded pseudo-legalistic pontifications. Misplaced Pages has no rules except those "of the jungle" and few true laws except those people happen to agree to obey.

At stake, a bunch of egos, the status and authority of the arbcom, the Incivility policy and the balance of power between a huge range of forces.

This is where FT2 et alii might be right. Giano's case could be interpreted as the arbcom versus those who would oppose its authority. More realisitically, this would be the arbcom drama-lovers versus non- or anti-arbcom drama lovers. In these circumstances the future authority of the arbcom could be in the air. Unfortunately for one side, Moreschi probably has too much gravitas in the drama-loving part of the community to be punished easily, and given this his actions are a great boost to those who oppose any emergence of a kritocracy from an institution designed merely to resolve a few hard-core disputes.

Or perhaps FT2 et alii should recognize that the best kings can't always enforce their will over their strongest nobles. They recognize the fights that they can win in advance, and those they can't, and thus avoid the loss of face and instability resulting from unsuccessful demands for compliance.

So yes, this Giano matter has dented the prestige and respectability of Arbcom, but only because a few hard liners continue with Misplaced Pages:Requests_for_arbitration/IRC/Proposed_decision#Civility:_Giano. Please arbs, the foolishness of the original decision may not have been obvious at first, and doubtless FloNight et alii thought it would be for the best, but the foolishness is clear now. Sure, you can go for end stakes now, but you cannot do this without a terrible cost. By adhering to it still you are just advertising your own foolishness, no virtue for those who are attempting gain the position of de facto community leaders. Misplaced Pages needs arbs with leadership skills derived from intellectual competence and practical insight, not a bunch of moralising egoistical proxy wheel-warriors. Blocks of Giano for the kind of "incivility" that most adults can cope with easily are pointless drama-inducing farces, and will continue to be such, so the charge of being fools or power-mongers cannot reasonably be avoided unless the goal is to create more pointless drama-inducing farces.

This continuing dispute though is boring even me. Charles Matthews was entitled to make the block (no policy violation, potentially enforcing a remedy of his own arbcom), while Moreschi was entitled to reverse it (no clear policy violation ... could just ignore all rules anyway :p ). Scott MacDonald, you're right, but I recall you saying over and over that this drama shouldn't be perpetuated. It hence surprised me greatly to see that you opened the case, though doubtlessly you only saved some pro-arbcom authority drama-lover the job. That SlimVirgin got desyssoped was always rather arbitrary in relation to her Giano unblock, that's just the way wikipedia and arbcom work, and yet another arbitrary action doesn't make it less so.Deacon of Pndapetzim (Talk) 06:24, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Statement by FT2

The action by Moreschi, executed knowingly barely 3 weeks after SlimVirgin's case, was extremely likely (in my assessment) to open the door for an exceptional degree of disruption and harm to the project and its community.

This prompt prevention, in almost the only way permissible and possible, has quite likely saved many well known users users from a complex and protracted RFAR case, sanctions "under a cloud", ANI, and so on. It has also helped in other ways.

(Background on user:Giano II -- Usually the community can work well with conduct issues of even difficult users after arbitration. This was expressly forbidden in November for "Giano enforcement issues", because after 3 years the community had sadly shown itself incapable in any way of avoiding the divisions on these.)

Arbitration process is important for editors and for content development A very wide range of disputes, resolutions, and nuanced case conclusions, are kept workable by the fact that Arbitration decisions are not the same as usual communal debates. These are workable because Arbcom decisions are tighter, and often far less debatable:– the dispute is done, this is then enforcement. We do not have a better way to handle very divisive issues. We should develop one but we don't have it now.

Moreschi's action was a direct stab at that means of keeping serious disputes under control. As with SlimVirgin, Giano was not a party in this admin action -- indeed I proposed and supported a reduction in his initial block; I proposed and supported a reduction in the reblock; and I had noticed and proposed Bishonen's point to Arbcom as worth considering. Giano was a completely innocent bystander in Moreschi's action. Moreschi almost certainly knew that the matter was in fact, already under review -- I'd said so myself, at 18:46, 2 hours earlier.

This could have harmed the project in a very serious way. We need the process Moreschi in effect tried (for whatever reasons) to undermine, in a practical sense, right now. However any given user may feel, Arbcom's somewhat more hardened processes back-stop a huge number of disputes that the community has never yet managed to back-stop for itself (I hope as a wider community we do find a way).

Response and handling - There are two practical ways to prevent an administrator being disruptive, desysopping and blocking. Both work, but desysopping and not blocking is the usual response to serious tool misuse. I could have found a steward for an emergency temporary desysop. However, we don't usually do that even in wheel wars and it felt unnecessary. I decided a simple block would be better.

A block is to protect the project, and my view was the project needed very urgently to be protected against possible further admin actions by Moreschi, until he was no longer an active risk in this incident, or until the Committee had been able to review. It was of the utmost urgency, to "prevent imminent or continuing damage and disruption to Misplaced Pages" (WP:BLOCK). Either a temporary block, or a temporary removal of admin tools would work, but either way, speed was important.

Moreschi was risking something that (at the time of his action) had a very good chance of imminent escalation. That needed to not happen -- too much harm. (Also crossref the resulting war at RFAR/IRC for an example how a Giano+tools issue can spiral into a wheel war, and the number of users who ended up unnecessarily under a cloud, wasted effort, drama, and harm, if spiralling were allowed to take place. All of which was completely avoidable.) I took strong action on a temporary basis, wrote simultaneously to Arbcom to review it, and wrote on Moreschi's talk page that any arbitrator could reverse it if unhelpful.

The block did its job. There was some strong objection, but there was not one issue of wheel warring or other warring between admins whatsoever, the integrity of the community's final means of dispute handling was not degraded, there was talk page discussion but it was reasonable, and the case was then referred to Arbitration. The case has ended up in appropriate dispute resolution. Only a block or desysop, and then probably only by an arbitrator enforcing the previous decisions, would have been so sure to block the possible/incipient warring and direct any escalating actions into safe dialog, for the hour or so needed for a return to usual dispute resolution (ie talk and RFAR).

Not one other admin or user was suckered to their detriment into the morass, which has often happened, the "out of hand" situation Moreschi created was resolved without further ado within an hour, Giano's block review is undisturbed and awaiting the last few votes, and the sole RFAR case resulting is concise and simple.

The decision was apt - The block, as a means of Arbitration Enforcement itself, was one of two means available (and the lesser of the two) to procure this. It's doubtful whether it would have been better to wield the bigger stick and ask a steward to emergency desysop Moreschi, so I could later claim not to have reverted an (arbitration breaching) unblock of his. I think that's a bit 'lawyer-ey.

In an urgent and difficult situation, there was a slightly more important priority, which was killing the imminent wheel war/admin war/Giano war that Moreschi's action threatened to spark. The block was temporary, and marked as "any arbitrator may overturn" to prevent warring on that either. It threw a bucket of cold water over any temptation to war it other than by dialog, and made sure Moreschi would not war on any Giano block related issue any further at that time, which was exactly its intention. Within 1.5 hours the risk of such warring was not likely, and I had endorsed an unblock (I wasn't online at the time but even so I'd noted any arb could decide to do so instead).

I have recused completely, both on the mailing list and here, without stating an opinion, on whether Moreschi should be desysopped or not. This statement is not to further any case for or against desysopping of any kind - that's left to the Committee. It is to explain the reason for my action, and the "eyes wide open" seriousness of Moreschi's.

FT2  04:54, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Question by John Vandenberg

In regards to SlimVirgin statement, I am curious why should FT2 not be involved in any ArbCom or admin action against Giano? (Ignoring other unresolved matters, please.) John Vandenberg 05:07, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Statement by Fut.Perf.

The original 72h block on Giano was legitimate, the arbs decided it on the basis of an ongoing discussion on wiki, everybody had the facts, and it was a reasonable thing to do. The re-block, on the other hand, was cooked up in private entirely, when it didn't have to be. The arbs made that decision without having all the relevant facts to begin with (failing, e.g., to see the extenuating circumstances arising from Bishonen's information: that the arbs didn't have that extenuating information before they acted was entirely their own fault). They also shut themselves off from any chance of getting a sanity check from the community, before they acted. When that sanity check came, after the fact, it was roundly against them. Moreschi was acting on the basis of a very clear, unanimous community consensus that the re-block was a bad idea. This was as clear a case of a valid community consensus as any I've seen. The unblock was therefore legitimate. The block against Moreschi, in contrast, as well as the second re-block on Giano, served no purpose than intimidation and protection of the committee's dwindling authority for its own sake. Fut.Perf. ☼ 06:43, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Statement by uninvolved Gladys J Cortez

FT2: "This could have harmed the project in a very serious way. "

Stepping back from the individual leaf on the individual branch of this very particular tree, and looking at the forest as a whole, I find this statement...well, wrong.

The project = a functioning, accurate, thorough, complete, and well-written encyclopedia. 99.99999% of people who use Misplaced Pages, read Misplaced Pages, and even edit Misplaced Pages, do not know Giano, Moreschi, or any of the rest of us from a hole in the ground, except inasmuch as we cross their paths while editing. John Q. Architecture-Buff doesn't know or care about the internal politics of en:WP; he just wants to read well-written articles in his area of interest. He doesn't care whether the person who wrote them called someone an idiot somewhere in the dark recesses of Misplaced Pages's guts; if you said the words "wheel-war" to him, like as not you'd get a blank stare for your troubles.

My point: It's not any one individual's actions that could have harmed the project. What CAN and WILL, and perhaps ALREADY HAS, harmed the project in a very serious way, is the extension of, and indulgence in these repeated Wiki-political gun-battles. Every minute we spend on these miserable little verbal showdowns is a net loss to the project as a whole. It needs to stop, and the only question (and it's meant to apply to EVERY one of these Wikipolitical disputes, not just the one at hand) is this: Which side is going to put their guns down first? GJC 07:09, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Comment on your talk page on this, for interest's sake mainly. FT2  13:31, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Statement by uninvolved George William Herbert

We didn't elect you to take half measures. We didn't elect you to quit on us. We elected you to be the arbitration committee.

If you aren't the arbitration committee anymore, send Jimbo notes of resignation so he can appoint a new one.

If you are Arbcom, get your act together. If you are Arbcom, then Christiano had no authority to do what he did unilaterally and you need to set that straight. If you are Arbcom, admit that the second Giano block was a goof, but that the process for dealing with Arbcom goofs is not any random admin saying they know better and overriding you, and make sure it doesn't happen again.

If you are Arbcom, then get with it.

If you aren't then have the decency to quit. Abdicating responsibility after taking it out of the rest of all of our hands explicitly is irresponsible. You built this house - either fix it or get someone in who will. Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 09:19, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Statement by User:Tony Sidaway

This affair will eventually be reconsidered by the new arbitration committee. It isn't going to go away.

I predict that the new arbitration committee, however it may be composed, will arrive at substantially the same opinion as the 2007 and 2008 arbitration committees. At that point those who believed that there was some illegitimacy in the decisions of prior arbitration committees will be faced with the fact that three separate incarnations of the arbitration committee, the third sharing no members in common with the first and with two intervening elections during which issues could be raised, have decided that there is a problem that needs to be resolved by reining in the behavior of one user. Where the community does not do that the Committee has the legitimacy to do it, and that's why the Committee exists in the first place.

Claims that the arbitration committee as an institution has outlived its usefulness are incorrect. What has happened is substantially as I predicted in 2005: the sysops do much more work summarily and are given much more leeway than they had back then and have better tools to do that work, and Committee time has been freed up to make inroads into resolving deepseated and formerly intractable problems. People who don't want those longstanding problems resolved tend to disagree, and in all honesty this is very much harder work than the earlier (2004-2007) committees had to face. But it's certainly being done and I welcome that.

Claims that the arbitration committee per se no longer has the support of the community are false. The recent election attracted more candidates than were fielded in 2007 and (with the exception of Newyorkbrad's record-breaking vote count in 2007) the winning candidates attracted comparable (in most cases higher) numbers of votes for or against. A candidate who stood on the platform that the Committee was illegitimate, and pledged if elected to decline all cases presented, came bottom of the poll attracting 294 opposing votes. The community still thinks the Committee matters.

Having said that this is the wrong time to consider yet another Giano case. Like a Number 7 bus, another two or three will be along by-and-by. Sysops should know better than to do what Moreschi did. --TS 10:37, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Question by Casliber

The idea of intervention is to assist in the smooth running of the 'pedia. This is an open question to Giano really; I wonder if, instead of the thread escalating, if Theresa Knott, or some other admin, had reverted comments that were clearly vented in anger, with a edit summary or comment, "Look Giano, I can see you're angry but I have just reverted/deleted your last comment to help cool things down a bit." - would this (a) have been acceptable, and (b) hence this whole situation avoided. I am thinking maybe quick reverts of comments said in anger might be preferable to escalating blockes etc. Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 13:51, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Question by White Cat

A very large number of arbitrators (three so far) and a clerk seems to have recused themselves. I think that is a serious problem with Giano's remedies. Think of a slightly more elevated case of this dispute! There would be no arbitrator left to hear the case...

As for the actual dispute I am recusing myself from commenting. :P

-- Cat 14:45, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Statement by SDJ

Restricting Moreschi for doing what a vast majority of the commenters thought should be done is wrongheaded on its face. For doing what was right, he's restricted? Seriously? It would seem that several of our Arbcom need to step back, look in the mirror, and see where the problem really lies. SDJ 17:48, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Statement by Caulde

I am particularly unimpressed by the abhorrent decision making that has been demonstrated over the past 48 hours or so. Moreschi may not have had the full 100% community support (unfortunately, this includes the now seemingly self-righteous arbitrators) when unblocking Giano, however, that is no excuse for a unilateral block of Moreschi - what gets 100% endorsements now? Nothing. People have to act on their will when there is sufficient need to do so - I lobby the arbitrators to decline this particular case, otherwise they will only be catalysing their own demise. Caulde 17:39, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Statement by Sceptre

No comments about the original block, but blocking him for accidental block evasion was extremely silly (Giano thought he was unblocked, so we should assume good faith and believe him). Especially seeing as it was done by an outgoing arbitrator who, to be honest, kind of screwed up SVgate, and that a sizeable portion of the committee dissented (to Elonka, I think AC decide on four net supports, not a simple majority, but I may be wrong). Sceptre 18:23, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Statement by uninvolved Ottava Rima

It's a little anti-climatic to say anything. Its probably not my right to say anything. However, I just wanted to say that Moreschi has been around a long time, and probably knew how this would play out. Is that fair? No, but he knew. However, Charles, FT2, et al, also knew. People talking to Giano to begin with knew, and Giano knew. This is the same cycle that will always happen, and probably always will happen. We all know that part of the community doesn't want to see Giano around, and the other part of the community will bend over backwards to ensure that he sticks around. Giano, you are a great editor, but you don't mix well with others. Is it your fault? Who knows! You have people willing to end up in this mess to protect you. You should realize that the mere desire should be enough to justify you sticking around and waiting out a block. Protect them like they want to protect you and keep them from starting this mess. What was the old rule of thumb? "Defend each other"? Well, we should defend each other by stopping our friends from doing things that we know will only cause destruction. Giano and your friends, Giano's loyal opposition, Arbs on either side, lets just remember that we are working on an encyclopedia, and disruptions make it impossible to do just that. Turn some cheeks, hug your enemies, and realize that sometimes we need to give up a little dignity, suck it up, and do what is best for the security of our friends and for this encyclopedia. Ottava Rima (talk) 19:04, 17 December 2008 (UTC

Statement by Theresa Knott

Whether the decision to extend the block was right or wrong , and I believe it was right, undoing such a block was spectacularly unhelpful. I don't for one minute believe that Giano thought that he was unblocked and free to edit. He IMO quite deliberately edited while logged out in order to evade a block. The arbitrators discussed it, and came to a joint decision to reset the block.(the normal thing to do for block evasion) Undoing such a block was beyond belief and should lead to a loss of admin tools. Theresa Knott | token threats 20:07, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Statement by Doug Weller

So far as I can see (and there is much I don't know abut this), none of this would have happened if Giano had been dealt with as though he was an ordinary editor. No way should Moreschi be de-sysopped for doing something that had so much support and that would probably have been done by someone else if he hadn't unblocked Giano. We need to get out of the situation we are in with Giano, not get deeper in the mire, and without losing good Admins and editors. Removing the mop from Moreschi won't make Misplaced Pages any better and I think would make it worse in the areas he works in. dougweller (talk) 19:46, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Statement from tznkai

I blessedly missed out on all this drama, and for reasons I may share privately later, this could well be the beginning of the end for me in Misplaced Pages-governance affairs. That having been said would people please stop claiming any sort of consensus existed? Consensus is discovered through discussion over time - not taken by measuring the opinion of people who happened both be on-wiki and to show up on the relevant page (anyone here take a statistics class or a science class in their life?). As I have said elsewhere, and I say again now - please give the new committee a chance - don't undercut them before they've even started. I'd like them to be proud, happy and energized - full of hope - when they begin their terms this January - if not for them, for all of us.--Tznkai (talk) 19:54, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Statement from WJBscribe

ArbCom need to regain the confidence of the community. This incident makes it pretty clear that ArbCom cannot operate without that support. I think current arbitrators need to think carefully about how that support might be regained and what is in the best interests of the project. It may be that some of them need to resign (or that the committee may need to encourage some of their colleagues to resign) in order to achieve this end. If the presence of certain editors on the Committee prevents it from functioning then it may be necessary for them to quit even if they do not think they are not felt by other members to have done anything particularly bad. That may not be fair, but it may now be necessary. WJBscribe (talk) 20:10, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Comment by GRBerry

We've got a real problem, but this isn't the case to address it with, because this isn't the problem. Indeed, a case is not the appropriate vehicle for addressing it.

The problem is that arbitration enforcement in general is basically dead now. There have long been more arbitrators than admins regularly doing arbitration enforcement. Of the admins who have actively done enforcement, many are now burnt out or unavailable. Thatcher has resigned as an admin. I (who never was a primary handler) got burnt out and have resigned as an admin. Rlesve, Risker, and Jayvdb have (presumably) been elected to the committee and (presumably) will have the good judgment not to enforce. MastCell is basically burnt out and on long term break. Alison who was working on the Troubles is on long term break. Moreschi was a primary enforcer for the nationalist cases; his respect for the committee is obviously limited. Tznkai who has been picking up a large portion of the slack recently says above "this could well be the beginning of the end for me in Misplaced Pages-governance affairs". Sir Fozzie is still handling The Troubles, but hasn't handled much else. Elonka is still active. Jehochman is still active. Those two regularly disagree with each other and are also sniped at by others. Tiptoety might be active, I'm not certain. I can't name anybody else regularly active.

Clerks are dealing with the immediate actions upon the close of a case, but the entire model assumes that admins as a whole will deal with ongoing enforcement. The recent history and recent archives of WP:AE make that a dubious assumption for the future. No case is going to deal with this issue, but it is in my mind far more important than the particular issue presented here. GRBerry 20:40, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

• Moreschi IS still very much active on this stuff. It's basically all I do now in my limited wiki-time. See WP:ARBMAC, Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/Digwuren, Assyrian/Chaldean/Syriac people, etc. But yes. We don't have enough people dealing with this crap. We never have. That is mostly due to the dynamics of RFA and a lack of suitable people with good judgment in the first place. That said, there seems to be very little in active meltdown at the moment. Balkans is OK (nothing more than the usual idiocy which FPAS and I usually get to promptly: Dieter has Kosovo under control), Armenia-Azeri has gone quiet with Ararat arev seemingly out of energy, Russian-Baltic is quiet, Jacob Peters is locked out, EE in general is all taken up with the Piotrus 2 case (where Kirill has written a very decent proposed decision), Indo-Pak is surprisingly tame, Afrocentrism is moribund since Lar and I nailed two major sockfarms operating in this area, and although the Troubles is a mess and pseudoscience is just plain fucking horrible, we can fix this eventually, as we fixed the SRA article. EE will get worse after the Piotrus 2 case as the non-banned users there go back to causing drama in the encyclopedia rather than on the case workshop, but overall the effect of that case should be positive. That said, I worry about what will happen when I'm not around. There have been few others looking at Armenia-Azeri, FPAS often needs someone from the outside to help with the Balkans, EE just needs an outside voice pure and simple, Afrocentrism is something that I spent a lot of time reading up on and is also something I would trust to few others, given the easy potential for American-style political correctness to be abused by trolls. It could all go wrong. And so easily. But we don't need many people to do all this. Just a couple dedicated ones who know their stuff. Maybe start an academy? Moreschi (talk) 23:25, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Comment by uninvolved Миша13

This comment abstracts from whether the blocks were valid or not. I want to reflect on the numerous voices that arbitration enforcement is dead or ineffective - it is 100% in your (ArbCom's) hands whether it is or not. Your decisions are supposed to be binding - whether people agree with them or not, such they are. WJB wrote "ArbCom need to regain the confidence of the community" - that's incorrect - you must regain authority. If you let it slide, you are undermining it. Even worse, if you allow yourself be dragged into deliberations to "outline what the authority of the Committee is", we're all screwed - those lines are already drawn. If you admit there's a consitutional crisis that has to be clarified by the community, we're screwed - the more of a community is involved, lesser the chances of achieving consensus. Despite what Sam Korn told me a long time ago, what ArbCom says is binding. Use terror to enforce that, if you must, but you're the one island of true authority on an ocean of anarchy and diffused power. If you give that up, Misplaced Pages fails; it's that simple. Миша13 21:50, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Comment by Orderinchaos

Sadly I think ArbCom's standing in the community has been greatly damaged this year by its unwillingness to act or resolve in some instances, and its egregious hyperactivity in others. There's a lack of consistency and justification in many of the things coming out of ArbCom at present, and for quite a while now. I realise the nature of the complicated factors that have led to this, and that it is nobody's intention, that it's more a case of a well-intentioned process working imperfectly. But bringing out the pack wolves in the current climate against an admin trying to do the right thing, especially when such an action appears to be taking place "outside the norm" in special enforcement kinds of circumstances (which should be reserved for emergencies only), was clearly the wrong action to take, and I broadly agree in all parts with the statement WJB made above. Orderinchaos 23:52, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Clerk notes

This area is used for notes by non-recused Clerks.

• Recuse - Administrative action done on a relevant party, within 3 months per my previously declared recusal practices-Tznkai (talk) 01:00, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Arbitrators' opinion on hearing this matter (1/5/3/2)

• Accept a case wider, encompassing Giano's original blocks and unblocks on 13 December; open the case not before 00:01, 1 January 2009, from which time I will recuse as an involved party. Sam Blacketer (talk) 22:57, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
• Comment. I support having on site arbcom discussion and actions related to the situation. All aspects of the situation should not wait until Jan. I see no reason that Moreschi's unblock should be limited to participation in an ArbCom case. As well, I think that Giano should be unblocked as I think a warning for block evasion was all that was appropriate. Given Bishonen's comment, I think we should assume good faith and unblock him by the time he wakes up in the morning. FloNight♥♥♥ 23:22, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
  • I'll be off line for now. As I leave, it is my understanding that Moreschi's unblock is unconditional. Also, I'm hopeful that Giano's block length will be reduced. I will support either a motion about Moreschi's unblock of Giano, or a RFC by the Community about it. FloNight♥♥♥ 01:03, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
• Recuse (Also notified the Committee I would be recusing from the internal arbcom mailing list discussion on this, at the time of blocking). FT2  23:52, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
• Recuse. This is the sort of crap that led me to quit early. --jpgordon 00:13, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
• Decline with comments:
  • The civility block imposed on Giano a couple of days ago was an Arbitration Committee action, although it was voted on off-wiki, and was announced as such, pursuant to the previously adopted motion on blocks of Giano. The seven arbitrators who voted on that block supported it unanimously. I was offline during the period when the block was being discussed, so I did not vote on it. When I saw it I had serious reservations about the block, which I viewed as an overreaction and an invitation to drama, although I did not appreciate some of the things Giano said and the way he said them that night. (I know, there I go again, being, pace Scott MacDonald's essay, the worst member of ArbCom. Tea, anyone?)
  • The extension of Giano's block was voted on by the committee, albeit again off-wiki, and was also a formal Arbitration Committee action. That being the case, a majority vote, even a narrow one, was sufficient to carry a motion; unlike other aspects of the process, the ArbCom may decide motions by voting, rather than !voting. Whether it was wise to proceed with what would obviously be a highly controversial action by that narrow a margin is debatable, but that does not affect the validity of the action.
  • My position in the committee discussion was opposed to the block extension, for reasons similar to those offered by other arbitrators and administrators on Giano's talkpage. The subsequent comments on Giano's talkpage, particularly by Bishonen, confirm my initial impression that the severity of any "block evasion" here was slight, bordering on trivial.
  • When Charles Matthews announced the extension on-wiki on behalf of the committee, he commented that some arbitrators had dissented from the action and that dissenting comments would be posted shortly. I took that as an invitation to mention that I disagreed with the action taken, which I did in one sentence. I subsequently learned that Charles meant that he had intended to post the names of those who had supported and opposed the action, but I interpreted his words to mean that he was expecting arbitrators in disagreement to do so. Two other arbitrators did the same thing giving their reasons for dissent. Nonetheless, to the extent that Charles feels that I stepped on his lines, so to speak, this was not intentional.
  • Whether to overturn or shorten the block extension in light of the additional information posted on-wiki was under discussion among the arbitrators at the time that Moreschi unilaterally unblocked.
  • An individual administrator, no matter how strong his or her feelings, may not overrule or override a formal action of the Arbitration Committee, which is what Moreschi did. The incivility in his log summary for the unblock, which becomes a permanent record, was also unhelpful. As a mitigating factor, it appears that Moreschi may not have fully understood that he was overriding a valid action of the committee. I also see no allegation that Moreschi has made any previous problematic unblocks of this nature or had any personal involvement in the dispute.
  • Blocking an administrator purely for an administrator action, albeit an improper administrator action coupled with an inappropriate log summary, is generally unhelpful. Blocking typically is reserved for misuse of editing privileges, while other remedies are available for misuse of administrator privileges. This presumption, however, is not ironclad.
  • FT2's block of Moreschi was run by the arbitrators briefly before being implemented but was not voted on in the same way as the block and block-extension for Giano, and in that sense, was not an action of the committee itself.
  • The proposed opening of a full-fledged arbitration case to review any or all aspects of this matter is an invitation to open-ended and unusually bitter and divisive drama, made worse by the recusal-related issues (but see my comment on the talkpage), and worse still, by the suggestion that the case be held in abeyance for two weeks so that we can be sure it will torment not only the incumbents but the new arbitrators as well, who must already be shell-shocked at what they are getting themselves into (I still am not sure whether I should be congratulating the top finishers in the election, for getting their wish to serve on the Arbitration Committee, or the lower-ranked finishers, because they will not have to do this job). To the extent that Scott MacDonald's stated goal is drama reduction, he has chosen a poor vehicle for that task. My vote is to decline the proferred case.
  • In the alternative, we have the option of proceeding by motion. In view of the mitigating factors, I find the suggestion of desysopping Moreschi to be overkill and excessive, particularly given the significant, if imperfect, administrator work he does at other times (including, ironically enough, on arbitration enforcement). I also do not find a suspension of administrator privileges to be necessary, even though Moreschi might benefit from the rest. I could support an appropriately worded motion confirming that Moreschi's action was improper and is not to be repeated. (Analogies to SlimVirgin's six-month desysopping are off-point for several reasons, and in any event, I was not convinced that that action was warranted for the offense she committed, either.)
  • I would support the immediate reduction of Giano's extended block to "time served" if that has not already happened by the time I hit "send" and deal with the ensuing seven edit conflicts.
  • I will be offline for a couple of hours tonight, and nothing should be read into any delays in my posting anything further on this topic.
  • I've just updated the tally in the header, and this is the first time I recall a tally being 1/1/1/1, which is certainly symbolic of something, although I am not sure just what. (Jpgordon has now ruined the symmetry, but meh.) Newyorkbrad (talk) 00:27, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
• Decline, as below:
  • We seem to have wandered into a constitutional crisis of sorts. In my opinion, the binding nature of any official decision by the Committee as a whole is clear not only in our local policy, but also in the Wikimedia-wide foundation issues. Clearly, some editors disagree, and believe that such a decision may be overturned by individual administrators acting either on their own behalf, or with the agreement of some small group of other editors. I do not think that a ruling on this by the Committee itself—whether that Committee happens to include the outgoing arbitrators or the new ones—will gain us anything; while I think it is almost certain that any Committee vote will endorse my viewpoint here, editors who reject the authority of the Committee will obviously reject any such pronouncement as a matter of course. At the same time, merely debating the issue ad infinitum will not produce any actionable guidance either.
  • Instead, I propose that we arrange a general community referendum to establish certain basic constitutional principles to outline what the authority of the Committee is, and whether (or how) its decisions may be overturned. I recognize that this manner of constitutional process is somewhat unprecedented; but I think the nature of the situation warrants something different from the usual methods in order to produce a clear and binding result that will be accepted by the community as a whole. Kirill 01:00, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
• Recuse as party. Couple of comments. NYB has done a decent job of trying to summmarise some considerations clouding the issue on what went on Giano II's talk page; obviously the dissent was going to be made explicit, and obviously I thought we were going to agree together what to say about that before posting it. If Moreschi didn't completely get the situation, that simply goes to show that the very clear rule about consulting before unblocking is vital. Those who ignore it wilfully put themselves into a false position. Charles Matthews (talk) 09:36, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
• Decline. There's approximately zero chance of anything decisive actually happening here. I don't want to leave this as a present to next year's lucky Arbcom, either, although I'm sure someone will regift it again in short order. Could someone please reword the blocking policy with that explicit Giano exemption that nigh-on everyone who seems to offer an opinion seems to want, and have done? I'm so through with this. Frankly if it wasn't that we only have a couple of weeks left and would rather try and clear up some outstanding business, I'd quit. Thanks, you all. (struck since it was an expression of frustration but could have been interpreted literally) Matthew Brown (Morven) (T:C) 09:54, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
• Reject. Moreschi should definitely not have unblocked regardless of what he thought about the block extension. The Arbitration Committee agreed that the block should be extended using exactly the same method of voting that is used here on RFAR. Regardless I think nothing would be accomplished by opening a full case, but if anything happens regarding Moreschi I will try to make sure the votes take place on the site, as opposed to the mailing list. --Deskana (talk) 14:39, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
• Reject, per Kirill. James F. (talk) 18:12, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

• The motion below should resolve the matter without the need for a case. No matter how much an administrator disagrees with a block, unblocking without any attempt at discussion - or in this context, without voicing concerns to the Committee to convince members to change their votes - is not acceptable. I should add firstly that the criticism of Mr Matthews here and elsewhere is all completely unfounded, he was merely the one posting out the decision as it was voted for; and secondly I note this which should resolve the other aspect here. --bainer (talk) 17:05, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
  • We need to clarify whether Charles and jpgordon recuse, and adjust the majority down if they do. FloNight♥♥♥ 17:38, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Motions

There are 12 active arbitrators, so 7 votes are a majority.

1) Moreschi (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA) is restricted from reversing any block for a period of three months, and is admonished to avoid reversing blocks without discussion in the future.

Support:

1. bainer (talk) 16:15, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
2. Matthew Brown (Morven) (T:C) 16:27, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
3. FloNight♥♥♥ 16:32, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
4. Second preference. Sam Blacketer (talk) 20:46, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Oppose:

1. Prohibiting him from reversing any block for three months because he (very inappropriately) undid a single block feels to me like we're just punching him in the face, even if it was a block made under Arbitration Enforcement. I am not aware of a pattern of abuse of the unblocking ability so I do not think he should be treated as such. -Deskana (talk) 17:35, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
2. Per Deskana. This is punishment, rather than treating an obviously-identifiable cause. James F. (talk) 18:13, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

   Yesterday, I was opposed to the rush to judgment to desysop and block Moreschi. But we need to address the issue today. FloNight♥♥♥ 18:36, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Abstain:

1. We can't have a practice of administrators unilaterally overturning decisions of the Arbitration Committee, no matter how strongly they (or I) might disagree with the decisions. If that were to develop, there'd be little point in having a committee, and instead we'd have the "constitutional crisis" posited by Kirill (although I don't think this is an opportune time to convene the Constitutional Convention). However, there are some mitigating circumstances, as discussed in my comments above. It's a close question for me but on balance I prefer a variation of 1.1. Newyorkbrad (talk) 18:46, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

1.1) Moreschi (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA) is admonished to avoid reversing blocks without discussion in the future.

Support:

1. Equal preference to 1. FloNight♥♥♥ 18:36, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Oppose:

1. Too weak in the circumstances. Sam Blacketer (talk) 20:46, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Abstain:

1. This seems generally appropriate, but the phrase "without discussion" is debatable per the comments by Fut. Perf. on the talkpage, so a minor rephrasing might be in order. I was going to suggest "without consent of the blocking administrator or an on-wiki consensus," but I anticipate the response that there was a consensus against the merits of the block on the part of many people other than the arbitrators. (That is not to say that there was a consensus to actually unblock and thereby seek to overrule the Arbitration Committee, which is a very different thing.) Newyorkbrad (talk) 18:46, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

1.2) The administrative privileges of Moreschi (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA) are removed. After three months they will be automatically restored.

Support:

1. Proposed. As I made clear I was strongly opposed to the extension of Giano's block, but it was a properly agreed decision. Moreschi's decision to unblock was unilateral and carried out without the required discussion with the blocking administrator. His subsequent conduct in defending his actions has included a personal attack. The effective functioning of the arbitration system relies on administrators not unilaterally sabotaging its decisions, even if they are profoundly opposed to them. Sam Blacketer (talk) 20:46, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Oppose:

1. Per comments above. Although, this proposal is not unthinkable; yesterday's incident and actions should not be regarded by anyone whatsoever as any kind of a model or a precedent. Newyorkbrad (talk) 21:01, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
2. Agree that doing a desysop is not an entirely unreasonable idea. But I do not think that the particular facts of the situation make a desysop the best course of action. FloNight♥♥♥ 21:27, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Abstain:

Arbitrator Discussion of motion:

1.3) By reason of the events of December 16, 2008, Moreschi (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA) is admonished:

(A) Not to reverse blocks imposed by another administrator without the consent of the blocking administrator or on-wiki consensus;

(B) In particular, not to reverse actions taken by or on behalf of the Arbitration Committee acting as a committee, and to consult with an arbitrator if he finds the status of an action unclear; and

(C) To refrain from making disparaging comments about other administrators in log entries of his administrator actions.

Support:

1. Proposed, as the best way to make the points that need to be made and end this. See my general comments above. Newyorkbrad (talk) 21:08, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
2. Equal to 1 and 1.1. FloNight♥♥♥ 21:27, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Oppose:

Abstain:

Maria Thayer

Initiated by Rwiggum (/_Contrib) at 17:21, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Involved parties

• Rwiggum (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log), filing party
• G.-M. Cupertino (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Dismas (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Verdatum (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Confirmation that all parties are aware of the request`

• G.-M. Cupertino
• Dismas
• Verdatum

Confirmation that other steps in dispute resolution have been tried

Statement by Rwiggum

This issue began when G.-M. Cupertino reverted one of my edits to the article. The article is one of an actress, and my edit consisted of putting her filmography into a table format, removing what I felt to be ancillary information (including the number of episodes she appeared on for each television series and several DVD extras) and un-linking several non-existent articles. I later reinstated my edits. When they were again reverted, I took it to his talk page to try and discuss why he felt my edits were harmful to the article. He believed that my revisions removed important information, while I believed that such information was not necessary and hurt the visual layout of the page. This is not an isolated incident, either. On several occasions, the user has replaced tabled filmographies with direct copy-pastes from IMDB. 1 2 3 4

Since my very first interaction with him, G.-M. Cupertino has been largely hostile and unwilling to reach a common consensus. I have tried to work with him to get this issue resolved, but he has been extremely resistant to my attempts. He has also deleted all of my postings on his talk page, so here are the revision histories that make up the most complete versions:

Likewise, in addition to being openly hostile toward me, he has continually removed his postings from my talk page as well. Here is the most recent revision of that, in case he removes it again:

After my continual insistence that he stop deleting content from my talk page, he chose instead to vandalize it twice under an IP:

Throughout this entire process I have been civil, cordial and willing to work to a conclusion. However, G.-M. Cupertino has been hostile and unwilling to make an effort, and has continued making unconstructive edits with no regard for other editors and a general indignation to those who tried to help him. (I am not the first one to bring this issue to his attention). I simply ask the arbitration committe to help me bring this incident to a peaceful conclusion. Rwiggum (/_Contrib) 17:21, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Additional Note Another user has brought to my attention some more instances of G.-M. Cupertino's difficulties with others. (I tried to keep it to more substantial edits to the user's talk page, as G.-M. Cupertino has made several edits and additions to his posts. The full messages can be found here.)

Rwiggum (/_Contrib) 17:35, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Additional Note #2 Yet another user has come forward to express their frustration with G.-M. Cuperiono.

And the user also brings up a very valid point: It isn't that I feel that Cuperino's contributions are entirely worthless, on the contrary. A lot of these pages need filmographies. The major problem is his complete unwillingness to work with other editors to improve the articles. Rwiggum (/_Contrib) 17:37, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Additional Note #3 and Question It appears that I misunderstood the initial comment by Dismas on my userpage. He wasn't just directing me to his talk page and Cuperino's previous postings, but he was posting me here, to a user page he created to chronicle his dealings with Cuperino.

This leads me to my question: Now that the request for arbitration has been started, would it be too late to include him in this discussion? It seems as though he has quite a bit of insight into this situation as well. Rwiggum (/_Contrib) 22:15, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Additional Note #4 Dismas and Verdatum have been added as Involved Parties. Rwiggum (/_Contrib) 22:26, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Additional Note #5 It seems as though he's getting worse. He's taken to making personal attacks, as well as removing some of the disputed content from pages wholesale. Rwiggum (/_Contrib) 14:59, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

Additional Note #6 Here are a few more: At this point, he has moved past unconstructive edits and into the territory of pure vandalism. Rwiggum (/_Contrib) 15:11, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

Additional Note #7 I apologize for making so many additions in such a short time, but he has now moved onto nominating all of the articles for speedy deletion, in addition to continue removing filmographies. At this point it is clear that his edits are intended to be viscious and in bad faith, and if arbitration isn't the correct way to go about this, then I need to know what to do with him. Rwiggum (/_Contrib) 15:16, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

UPDATE The user has been temporarily blocked for his edits: Rwiggum (/_Contrib) 15:25, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

Statement by G.-M. Cupertino

Statement by Dismas

I am not involved in the article for which this arbitration was started. I have however dealt with Cupertino on several occaisions. In almost every case he has been difficult to deal with.

When I put links to WP guidelines and policies into my edit summaries, he does not take the time to read those guidelines and policies. He has claimed that he doesn't have time to be reading pages of rules even when specific parts of policies are pointed out to him. I could understand if he didn't read every word of a particular guideline but he won't even take the time to skim them for relevant info. Although, somehow he has been able to hold onto the line at the top of every guideline that says that guidelines are not to be enforced on every page and are left to editor's discretion. He uses this excuse liberally to explain his edits. Due to having to re-explain guidelines to him, he now smugly inserts the word "mandatory" before every instance of using the term "guideline".

He has been uncivil on many occasions, whether on my talk page or in edit summaries.

Only by having an admin intervene or get a third opinion, through WP:3O, have I been able to speed up the process of reaching an agreement with him. For a long time now, he's had an "admin for emergencies" listed on his talk page. As far as I have gathered, this admin at one time helped Cupertino out and has since been listed there. They seem to be one of the few people that Cupertino listens to.

Only by posting things to his talk page does he ever engage in any sort of communication and even then it's spotty. He doesn't seem to have learned that this is a collaborative project. Instead of reading an edit summary and asking what something stands for, why someone has reverted his edit, or why someone has tweaked an edit that he's made, he simply reads it, dismisses it, and puts the article back to his version. When going through the effort of getting him to realize that dates were not to be linked 100% of the time, one of his rants was about how some 'powers that be' made some changes to the rules and didn't make him aware. When the recent notice was put at the top of everyone's watchlist about the discussion over dates, I made sure to point out to Cupertino that he could have his say on the matter. When I checked the discussions just now, he had still not weighed in with his thoughts even though this was such a hot button item with him previously.

Due to the fact that I've had to deal with him in so many cases and have had to go to such great lengths, I felt that at some point things may come to arbitration with him. Therefore, I have been building a record, of sorts, of his actions. You can find this at a sub-page of my user page, here.

With all that being said, I do have to say that he is able to do a large number of tedious edits seemingly without any scripts. When they are good edits, it is a very good thing to see. I just wish that he was more communicative and more receptive to changes because then he wouldn't waste so much time undoing various things. Dismas| 19:34, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

Statement by Verdatum

I am not involved with concerns on this article itself, but instead regarding the actions of User:G.-M. Cupertino. I first had a disagreement with him in regards to the Kyra Sedgwick article. It resulted in in the following discussion , where he made Legal Threats, Personal Attacks failed to Assume Good Faith, failed to remain Civil, and acted as though he owned the article. The first argument, regarding WP:BLP, was resolved eventually, and the second argument, regarding Filmography, was eventually resolved through a compromise after making a request for a third opinion.

I found interacting with this user most off-putting. His correspondence were consistently in an aggressive tone (as seen in the above link). He overlooked requests for discussion, instead choosing to voice brief agressive arguments in the Edit Summary . I added messenges to his talkpage , both of which were immediately removed by him, which as I interpret WP:TALK is alright, but it makes threaded discussion difficult. I scanned the user's contributions and found a general history of the same agressive argument style. I gave him the benefit of the doubt, assuming it was just a matter of a language barrier, and unfamiliarity with some guidelines and policies, still I continued to watch his talkpage, in case I could try to aid with any future altercations he might have with other editors.

Shortly there after, I was contacted by User:Dismas regarding concerns about this editor . I believe that resulted in Dsmas opening a RFA/UC which was quickly closed for not yet being a last resort.

After noticing a long string of back a forth edits on User talk:G.-M. Cupertino‎, between Cupertino and User:Rwiggum on my watchlist, I glanced through them, and decided to drop Rwiggum a note about Cupertino's editing style .

Any other issues on the matter are merely practices I've witnessed in sporadically monitoring his contributions, but I'm not yet comfortable enough with this process to know what level of detail I should cover, and would mostly be redundant to the statements of the other editors involved. -Verdatum (talk) 23:50, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Suggestion by uninvolved Sandstein

In view of G.-M. Cupertino (talk · contribs)'s comments at , noted by Kirill below, I suggest that this issue is most expediently resolved by indefinitely blocking G.-M. Cupertino for gross incivility and personal attacks, as well as threats of physical harm. An arbitration case is not required for this.  Sandstein  18:04, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

Comment by uninvolved NVO

I "met" with G.-M. Cupertino (talk · contribs) only once on a subject not worth any quarrel. We did not agree then on notability issue, but, again, it is unimportant. However, I was bemused by G.-M. C.'s deletion of that discussion from my talkpage . When this arbcom case popped up, I realized that this is G.-M. C.'s routine modus operandi that has been complained about by other editors to no avail. This arbcom case is an example of current "administration" failures. G.-M. C.'s incivility and 3RR violations had to be handled by admins way before. Where were the admins when they were needed? the first block of G.-M. C, ever, was effected by User:Orangemike after the arbcom filing. Contrary to what User:Sandstein said above, arbitration is required, because of the admins' failure. NVO (talk) 13:37, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Comment by uninvolved Ncmvocalist

There are some real issues with this user's conduct; a clear lack of receptiveness to any sort of feedback, let alone community feedback. This reminds me of certain conduct I unfortunately experienced with certain other users (example) - though the conduct issues are somewhat different, it comes down to the same problem. The example nearly managed to let his disruption go unnoticed for a long period of time (nearly greater than 2 years) - I note that it was only after several community discussions, and an unfortunately horrible wait that the example recently received a 3 month block for a lack of receptiveness to community feedback, among a couple of other issues. However, the sense of disruptive off-wiki coordinated editing with certain other editors (example) was something that could not be addressed. Perhaps, one day I will have no choice but to make a request for arbitration on these examples...but that'll be another case for another day. Back to this case....

Fortunately, there is no sense of such disruptive off-wiki coordinated editing yet, and G M Cupertino's lack of receptiveness to feedback is more clear cut; as with his conduct issues. An RFC is likely to prolong the dispute more than necessary in this case. It would take more than a couple of community discussions to demonstrate that the conduct has not ceased before sanctions may be imposed - even though we are reasonably confident that regardless of how much we AGF, the conduct will recommence in the future. There is no doubt that it is one form of problem editing that has adversely affected other users contributions.

Based on my own experience with the above examples, this user's conduct will continue to be a problem, sometime in the future - unless there are measures in place to prevent it from happening. If the Committee is willing to provide long term solutions/sanctions (such as bans) for this sort of problematic conduct, then this case should be accepted - if ArbCom will only go to the extent of providing minor sanctions or admonishment, then this case should be rejected. Ncmvocalist (talk) 08:10, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Clerk notes

This area is used for notes by non-recused Clerks.

• Recuse from clerking duties on this case.
  In the course of my work for the Mediation Committee, I recently rejected a Request for Mediation pertaining to this dispute.
  AGK 23:35, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Arbitrators' opinion on hearing this matter (2/2/0/3)

• Comment. At first glance this does not look as if the situation is ripe for an Arbitration Committee case. There may be user conduct issues, but it is not clear to me that others attempts to resolve the problems have been tried. Since Arbitration is the last step in dispute resolution, some preliminary steps need to be tried if they have not been done yet. See Dispute resolution for methods of to give users feedback. For example. Request for commentFloNight♥♥♥ 21:31, 10 December 2008 (UTC) FloNight♥♥♥ 21:37, 10 December 2008 (UTC)
  • Any user with knowledge of the situation is free to add a comment to this request. FloNight♥♥♥ 22:19, 10 December 2008 (UTC)
  • Reject. At this time, I see no evidence that Arbitration is needed to resolve this situation. Open an User conduct RFC. Even if the user conduct issue continue, I want to give the Community a chance to resolve the situation first. FloNight♥♥♥ 11:27, 12 December 2008 (UTC)
• Awaiting more statements. There are very real conduct and civility concerns here, but per FloNight, it might be possible to address them short of arbitration. Newyorkbrad (talk) 00:39, 11 December 2008 (UTC)
• I agree with what has been said above, and would reject the request at this time. G.-M. Cupertino's refusal to participate in mediation is worrying. Nevertheless, there are other methods of dispute resolution available. I would recommend making a request for comments; see the instructions here. If that fails to reach a suitable outcome then arbitration may be appropriate. --bainer (talk) 02:12, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

• Accept. The nature of the comments here suggest to me that a user RFC would not accomplish anything substantive; there are some concrete problems we can address here. Kirill 05:44, 13 December 2008 (UTC)
• Accept a case dealing with G.-M. Cupertino's wider editing. Sam Blacketer (talk) 23:45, 13 December 2008 (UTC)
• Recuse. I'm outta here too soon. --jpgordon 00:06, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
• Recuse, as with Josh, though I would urge the Committee to accept it. James F. (talk) 18:15, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Clarifications and other requests

• WP:RFAC
• WP:RCAM

Place requests related to amendments of prior cases, appeals, and clarifications on this page. If the case is ongoing, please use the relevant talk page. Requests for enforcement of past cases should be made at Arbitration enforcement. Requests to clarify general Arbitration matters should be made on the Talk page. To create a new request for arbitration, please go to Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration. Place new requests at the top. Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/How-to other requests

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Currently, there are no requests for arbitration.

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Currently, no requests for clarification or amendment are open.

Request for clarification : Peter Damian

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

• Joopercoopers (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) (initiator)
• Peter Damian (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) notified
• Thatcher (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA) notified
• Tznkai (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA) notified

I've also notified out of courtesy; FT2, Jimbo Wales and David Gerard

Statement by Joopercoopers

Peter Damian was given a limited unblock by Thatcher in the last 24hrs on the conditions:

1. He may edit within his own user space.
2. He may edit WP:RFAR and any associated pages (including arbitrators' talk pages, if appropriate) for the specific and limited purpose of appealing his ban and requesting an unconditional (or less conditional) unblock.
3. He may contribute to and offer comments on FT2's discussion of "the situation" (Damian's edits to the Arbcom 2007 election, subsequent block, oversight, etc) at whatever page FT2 designates.
4. He may not edit other pages without permission of Arbcom.
5. Any harassment or wikihounding of FT2 shall be grounds for reimposition of the indefinite ban.
6. Any admin may re-impose Jimbo's block for violation of these conditions.
7. These conditions will remain in force until vacated by Arbcom.

He has since been blocked for attempting to improve the encyclopedia in mainspace. To my knowledge Peter's mainspace contributions weren't fundamentally at issue and he is widely regarded as a good content contributor. Have we only invited him back to participate in drama and/or dispute resolution, or whilst he's here should we allow him to contribute? I respectfully ask the committee to allow him to edit mainspace. Thanks --Joopercoopers (talk) 21:19, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

Comment II by Joopercoopers:Brad's motion

I agree with Bishonen above. What's needed here is separation as far as practicable between FT2 and PD. We are left with a little problem though in that FT2 has presented considerable evidence above which Peter Damian should, in all fairness, have a right to reply to. However, there's clearly a potential flash point in that. I suggest Peter gets a week to formulate a reply and then a line is drawn firmly under the whole affair and the motion comes into effect. If there is any follow-up to be made it must be made by others after that time. Regards --Joopercoopers (talk) 19:58, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Statement by Peter Damian II

Statement removed due to excessive length. Kirill 05:31, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

My original statement is here. In summary: Principled and good-faith criticism of another person is not the same thing as a personal attack or harassment. Everyone accepts that fair and principled criticism of another editor's action is essential to the continued survival of the Misplaced Pages project. But the evidence below shows that my criticism of the editor called FT2 has been principled and in good faith. I am particularly concerned about the pseudoscientific contributions FT2 has made to the project, and about the way he has abused his influence (both personal and administrative) to have anti-PS editors blocked or banned. My actions should not therefore be labelled as 'harassment'.

I accept that more than once these often voluble criticisms have exceeded the bounds of good taste and propriety. I apologise for that.

Thank you Peter Damian (talk)

Statement by William M. Connolley

He has since been blocked for attempting to improve the encyclopedia in mainspace. - wrong: and it would be nice if you could show more respect for Tznkai. More accurately, he has since been blocked for violating condition 4 of the unblock parole. He was fully aware of this condition, and chose to break it, which is hardly a good sign William M. Connolley (talk) 21:28, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

Update: PD has resumed editing outside his parole, after an explicit warning. I conclude that he is deliberately violating it, and have re-blocked him for 12h. In my opinion Thatchers parole conditions are quite clear, and have been re-affirmed below, as has his desire to "punt the matter to arbcomm". Two arbs have commented below, but neither has explicitly suggested any variation in Thatchers conditions, so I believe they are still in force. I hope that other arbs will express an opinion on this matter, possibly even paying some attention to the numerous complains of slowness that have previously been raised William M. Connolley (talk)

Statement by Thatcher

See my unblock message here for additional background.

Peter Damian created his new account Peter Damian II (talk · contribs) and began editing before he had been notified of a formal unblocking and before his old accounts were unblocked. He was immediately blocked. When I was available to do so, I unblocked his accounts and prepared to write an unblock message contain some minimal conditions. However, after I unblocked the accounts but before I could compose my message, I was contacted by FT2, who strongly objected to the conditions I had proposed and pressed me to either leave Damian blocked until an agreement could be reached (notwithstanding the agreement I thought had already been reached) or to unblock but impose a series of topic restrictions to which I was opposed. If Damian had not jumped the gun, this could probably have been handled by email with merely an additional 24-48 hour delay in the unblocking. However, as Damian had jumped the gun, and as I had been contacted at just the wrong moment, I found myself forced into a corner. I could not leave things as they were, and I could not do what I originally planned to do. Therefore I restricted Damian to his user space and RFAR pending further word from Arbcom.

I note also that FT2 wants to prepare an explanation of all the events surrounding Damian's original blocking, the oversight, Damian's claims against FT2, and so forth. It is his right to do so, and I understand why he still feels aggrieved, but I have advised him to let the matter go, and I advised Damian not to contribute to the discussion, as FT2 seems to get under his skin in a way that other editors and admins don't.

I have never had a problem with Damian's content contributions. FT2 feels that after Damian's first block and reincarnation as "Peter Damian" this spring, that Damian began targeting topics formerly edited by FT2 that Damian had never before shown an interest in. FT2 feels this is a case of Wikihounding. FT2 also believes Damian is taking advice from banned user HeadleyDown (talk · contribs) and acting as his proxy. I understand why FT2 feels he was being targeted by Damian, and I agree there is an appearance of targeting at least in some edits, but Damian is a smart guy and was willing to take responsibility for the edits that were being suggested, so I think the charge of proxying for a banned user is not as clear-cut as FT2 thinks it is. FT2 asked me to restrict Damian from editing a broad list of topics for the reasons of Wikihounding and proxy editing; this is one of the conditions that I objected to.

It was my judgement that Damian should be unblocked with the understanding that he was being given enough rope to hang himself with. Damian has done a number of things since the original block in December 2007 that he needs to not do again in order to regain/retain his editing privileges. Either he understands this and will be able to edit, or he does not, in which case someone will eventually ban him again. I felt I was unable to act on my judgement, so I restricted Damian to his user space and RFAR and punted the matter to Arbcom. Perhaps I simply chickened out. Thatcher 21:50, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

Statement by Enric Naval

*sigh* so much wikidramah. I ask the Arbcom to unblock him for the sake of the project so he can edit mainspace, on the condition that he will re-banned ipso facto if he brings up the oversighted edits again. Also, a ban from interacting with TF2 or commenting about him could be appropiate. --Enric Naval (talk) 22:28, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

P.D.: As rootology said, FT2 should asked not to interact with him either, as the dynamics between the two of them will cause cause the issue to explode again --Enric Naval (talk) 23:46, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

Statement by Privatemusings

what enric said. Really guys - an arb should propose, and the committee should pass a quick motion lifting the ban, and separating FT and PD and the wiki wins. Or just copy this;

Motion re Peter Damian

1) Peter Damian (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) is unbanned.

2) Peter Damian (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) and FT2 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) are instructed to make an effort to avoid all contact with each other.

Privatemusings (talk) 23:24, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

Statement by Durova

A ban does not suggest that an editor is unable to make useful edits; it simply means that the disruption outweighs the positives to an unacceptable extent. Yesterday I was reviewing the ArbCom results and discovered to my surprise that Peter Damian had attempted to vote on a candidacy. He linked to his old user account, which stated that time time that he was banned by Jimbo Wales. So I struck through his attempted vote per WP:BAN.

I was and am concerned about the integrity of our election process; a different issue regarding the elections had reached the administrators' noticeboard the day before. It turned out that Peter had jumped the gun and exceeded the very limited terms that Thatcher had negotiated, although during the interim a fair bit of confusion arose between several longstanding contributors. A few of the exchanges were heated and I regret my part in that.

Now Peter Damian has exceeded Thatcher's terms again, and Peter's unblock request fails to acknowledge the legitimacy of the blocking rationale. If Peter wishes to persuade consensus that his presence is a net gain this is not the way to do it; a conservative and modest approach in strict accordance with the unblock terms would inspire more confidence. Unfortunately his recent antics probably also have the effect of reducing the pool of people who would give serious attention to his claims regarding FT2.

That said, I see no actual need for the Committee to intervene. FT2 has invited Peter to present his criticisms and evidence onsite; Peter can do that via a transclusion template even if all of his accounts are blocked, as long as one of his user talk pages remains unprotected. So an adequate solution is merely a technical matter.

Since Peter's editing status has come under broader consideration, it's been high drama so far and the proposals here are unlikely to succeed. Everyone knows that Peter can contribute useful content. But can he accept limitations? Every seasoned contributor has been on the short end of consensus discussions and accepts those outcomes. All of us encounter no in some form. Peter has demonstrated a distinctly aggressive response to limitations. It is unreasonable to suppose he would become more collaborative if the Committee validates his persistent refusal to respect his ban or keep his word. The rest of the community is not a testing ground for shaky hypotheses; we are encyclopedia editors--not guinea pigs. I'd like to see him back as much as anyone; he has much to offer. But on principle I go for the opposite approach. Let him sit on the sidelines an appropriate period of time, then ease his restrictions in stages and under mentorship. I've seen much better results that way. Durova 03:01, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

This request has exceeded the normal complexity for its current format. At its present size it undoubtedly creates accessibility problems for users with slow connections. Respectfully request this proceed on its own page as a new case. Durova 20:41, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

Suggestion from rootology

If Peter has said he understands what went wrong now, and just wants to get back to editing articles and avoiding FT2, and FT2 wants to avoid Peter, why not just ask them to both just avoid/recuse from each other on anything (if someone has to Arb or Admin on Peter, it's not like we have any great shortage of people) so that everyone can get back to what they do best and end any silly drama? Probably just a quick up and down motion from the AC confirming that Peter is unblocked and asked to avoid FT2, and FT2 is asked to avoid Peter, and then a year of drama goes away and we get back a good content writer and free up FT2 to do his AC stuff on other issues. There is proof that such things work, asking parties to just avoid each other. FT2 actually suggested himself the very same solution in regards to myself and the other fellow in August...

It's going to be hard for him if he gets addressed with critical or skeptical comments whilst trying to reacquaint himself with editing. That tends to be hard for anybody. I think your point's made, that you have concerns whether he should be considering proposing remedies, but I'd ask that the concern is dropped. It's been stated a few times; doubtless noted too. He'll have a fair chance, same as anyone else unblocked. If you'd be able to avoid interacting with him, it would possibly make it easier on him to avoid interacting back with you as well. - FT2

...and it's worked out pretty darn well, I think. If everyone is willing to suck it up for the good of everyone else, then a year from now this could be a historical footnote and nothing more. rootology (C)(T) 22:58, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

Suggested proposal

1) For the sake of everyone, FT2 and Peter Damian are banned from any interaction or commentary about each other, broadly construed, and are required to recuse from each other on any issues or Misplaced Pages functions, up to and including the Arbitration process. Additionally, both users are barred from editing, commenting, or administrating on any topics or disputes related to Neuro-linguistic programming, broadly construed, up to and including the Arbitration process.

Comment: I can't see how else else we're going to ever have peace. See also here. rootology (C)(T) 19:11, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

Reply to AGK. I agree, but no one is exempt from the greater good of this site--not Jimmy, not sitting arbs, not ex-arbs, not admins. If a user dug their hole, it is what it is unfortunately. rootology (C)(T) 19:43, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

Statement by Tznkai

Get a move on. Wikipedian, an administrator, and an Arbitration Committee clerk, I feel a duty to protect our processes from their failures, so let me be blunt. This situation must be resolved before the new Committee terms take effect. The impact of being asked to resolve a dispute involving a fellow Arbiter as the first order of business risks unraveling the working relationships within the Committee before they begin to form. Aside from being blatantly unfair and cruel, this situation will exaggerate the consequences any newbie mistakes by new Arbiters and the bad blood may well stain the Committee's reputation with the community for the entirety of the new Arbiters' terms: three years of already difficult work undercut by this Committee's failure to act. This request must be resolved - that need is paramount, perhaps even at the price of doing it "right" - because doing nothing is far more wrong. You have a responsibility: fulfill it.

My position in summary:

• Peter Damian needs to stop violating his terms, which at this point do not include anything in main or article talk space.
• Blocks are the logical consequence to Peter Damian's actions, and the two short ones so far implemented are reasonable, if not always desirable.
• The Committee should review Peter Damian's editing terms and modify them to allow some sort of article editing OR specifically refer the matter to the Community (Please don't, see below)
• The regular cast of Wikipedians surrounding Peter Damian and related fora and subsequent drama should kindly stay the hell out of it. I'll leave myself if so desired.
• Whatever is decided should attempt to give both Peter Damian and FT2 some sort of piece of mind and ability to work in the environment - vindication however, should be the lowest of all priorities. If one or both is unwilling to bury the hatchet (I do not care who) I would like both of them to at least stop talking about it for the time being.--Tznkai (talk) 17:01, 6 December 2008 (UTC)
• As I've said already, what Rootology proposes is a good idea - I just want this over and done with.--Tznkai (talk) 19:31, 13 December 2008 (UTC)
• The Arbitration Committee has an obligation to resolve this dispute before the new arbitration committee begins their terms. --Tznkai (talk) 18:51, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Statement by FT2

Statement removed due to excessive length. Kirill 05:31, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

Evidence being summed up in a redacted form here.

Unfortunately Damian's behavior is not simple, and a large number of people have been misled by his repeated claims. A number of smoke screens exist which need daylight to disinfect. The evidence in summary shows:

1. Peter Damian's unblocks have almost all been obtained via untruthful statements, or reneged promises.
   Specifically, every unblock given on good faith or on promise of improvement or cessation, was followed by a return to this behavior. Most block appeals were marked by either at least one dishonest statement to present the request for unblock in a more favorable light, or by reneging or other disruptive conduct afterwards.

   Examples from 5 different unblocks or unblock requests, and 3 examples of serious other conduct (threats, etc) are evidenced.

2. Damian has a track record of heavy duty pov warring on certain mainspace topics.
   Although a "good editor" in his historic areas of interest, on a few topics which he associates with myself (and/or, has gained an interest via the banned pov warrior HeadleyDown who also warred those topics), Damian is a heavy duty and repeated pov warrior and engages in repeated "bad faith" editing.
3. Damian does this in conjunction with a user previously banned for the same edit warring.
   He edits with, moves to the same topics as (and fervently defends), a user who has multiple Arbcom-related and community bans for exactly this behavior. Evidenced, and also evidenced he has played "hard and fast" with the truth, denying that a sock was such when he almost certainly knew.
4. I have tried to avoid Damian, but he has not been willing.
   There is no "grudge", that's a Damian invention. I've tried my best to avoid him for a year now, but he's continued. In this RFAR, I have made an open willing commitment to avoid him, which will be kept regardless.
5. Damian continues to see threats and coercion attempts as a way forward.
   Even at RFAR: " is not acceptable... quite happy... to continue the work I have begun with academics who are concerned about all sorts of conflict of interest in Misplaced Pages. Very happy."
6. Other points.
   1/ Damian's block was an "Arbcom only" unblock, as he requested, but this was apparently not publicly known; 2/ HeadleyDown's blocking was widely and carefully checked, not just "one person's view"; 3/ virtually none of Damian's claims stand up when tested; and in summary, 4/ Damian has overall been highly untruthful.

Evidence is about 80% done, needing some cites and tidying/brevifying to be ready. The draft can be found at the above link. I will note when it's done.

FT2  17:38, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

Statement by Uncle uncle uncle

The previous Jimbo block stated: "User says he is leaving. Good timing. Please do not unblock without approval from me and/or ArbCom"

Now Jimbi has said: http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=User_talk:Peter_Damian_II&diff=255936935&oldid=255936051

I responded to an inquiry by Thatcher saying that I neither support nor oppose this. I should not be considered any obstacle in this situation. Apparently there is an agreement which resolves all the outstanding issues. I am hopeful for the future.

Why is the arbitration committee looking into it? Are they really parsing the original block statement "without approval from me and/or Arbcom" to mean that now that Jimbo has removed his opposition that the ArbCom approval must also come to satisfy the 'and' portion of the requirement?

Does every single issue that people have a disagreement on need to be decided by the to the Arbitration Committee?

Can't anyone blow their own nose any more? Uncle uncle uncle 00:46, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

Statement by WJBscribe

Just a procedural note that I have, per his request, renamed User:Peter Damian II to User:Peter Damian as a partial solution to the password issue. As a more general point, one way or another this user should be able to edit articles. It seems ludicrous to me to have unblocked this person but not to allow him to get on with editing content, something clearly to the project's benefit. WJBscribe (talk) 10:27, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

Statement by SlimVirgin

I ask the ArbCom or Thatcher to allow Peter to edit in mainspace. FT2 seems to be exercising a veto, which isn't appropriate. I've several times been in a situation where users who tried to out me were unblocked without my being consulted, and I know how hurtful it is — e.g. Jimbo unblocked Brandt and FloNight unblocked Poetlister, both without even telling me — so I agree that FT2 should have input. But that can't amount to a veto. SlimVirgin 00:20, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

Question for FT2

FT2, you invited people to ask about any conduct of yours that appeared problematic.

You wrote on July 4, 2008 that you didn't know your early edits to Zoophilia had been oversighted. These were the edits Peter Damian drew attention to during the 2007 ArbCom elections, because he felt they showed a POV that concerned him. David G oversighted them in December 2007.

Your post implies that David took it upon himself to oversight your edits. You didn't ask him to do it, and he didn't tell you he'd done it. In fact, the first you heard of it was seven months later. Is that correct? SlimVirgin 02:08, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Asking once more

FT2 declines to answer my question, arguing that it's irrelevant.

I disagree. The impression I get here is of a less-than-honest arbitrator who managed to get a good editor, Peter, banned because he tried to draw the community's attention to certain issues during the election; who has hounded another editor, Giano, who pointed out some of the same concerns; and who succeeded in getting an admin (me) desysopped for reversing his block of Giano — referring, as background to the desysopping, to previous cases I was involved in, some of which the same arbitrator had succeeded in distorting. And who is now trying to ensure that, if Peter is allowed back, he's restricted in what he can say and where he can edit, even though he has a PhD that's directly relevant to at least one of those areas.

If I'm doing you an injustice, FT2, I ask you most sincerely to answer the question of whether your statement of July 4, 2008 was true, namely whether that was the first time you'd heard of the oversighting, during the 2007 ArbCom election, of your early edits.

If you can show that it was true, I'll happily apologize in public. If it was not true, I ask that you resign from the committee. SlimVirgin 04:10, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

FT2's edits

I took a look today for the first time at FT2's edits to articles on Neurolinguistic programming. Quite a bit of NLP touches on philosophy, particularly where the nature of knowledge and perception is discussed. As someone with a background in philosophy, I agree with Peter Damian (who is a philosopher) that the material FT2 has written needs to be cleaned up. A great deal of it consists either of platitudes or nonsensical original research, and Peter's brief involvement has led to improvement.

One example: FT2 created Principles of NLP. This is a version of it that consists entirely of FT2's writing. Some of it is meaningless; for example, "Objectivity attempts to be the study of reality." (Objectivity is not the study of anything, nor does it "attempt" to be anything at all.) Or "Subjectivity ... assumes that ... there may be an absolute reality, and knowing it may be beneficial ..." (But subjectivity neither assumes nor knows anything, least of all that absolute reality may be "beneficial," whatever that might mean.) The whole article is written in this tone, with no sources.

In August 11 this year, Peter Damian nominated it and several others for deletion. It was agreed that, instead of deleting them, they'd be redirected and merged into the main article on NLP, so thanks to Peter, it has gone.

What's needed now is for others with qualifications or knowledge in this area (philosophy, psychology, psychiatry) to clean up anything that's left. I would also ask the ArbCom why they're tolerating this. Brad, if you knew an editor was writing poor material about law, would you consider even for a minute placing an editing restriction on a law professor who had tried to clean it up — and, further, a restriction suggested by the person who had written the poor material in the first place? Something has gone badly wrong with this project if that's the situation we're in. SlimVirgin 05:24, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Patience exhausted from Bishonen

Can the committee please promptly decide whether this ban/unban is within their remit? Is it really up to FT2, a highly involved user, to speak for the committee and to rescind the unban agreement already reached, through Thatcher's efforts? ? It's intolerable to keep Peter Damian dangling, and unable to edit articles, while FT2 composes his statement. It's unseemly, this arrant contrast between the tender princess-and-the-pea consideration of FT2's ancient grudge shown by the committee (I assume, "the committee" in the sense of the majority of arbiters?), versus the blind eye they (again, presumably most of them?) turn to the situation of a banned, snubbed, ignored, and mobbed user—a hard-working expert contributor, yet—with a certain propensity for losing his temper—and wouldn't you have by now, dear reader? I urge the committee to approve, for the duration, the original unblocking terms, according to which PD would be able to edit freely: the terms which Thatcher was pressured to abandon at the instigation of FT2. Please apply these unblock conditions as originally planned. When FT2's statement eventually appears, the (IMO absurd, but whatever) ban from editing mainspace can always be reinstated, if FT2's statement should give a basis for it. Bishonen | talk 01:59, 7 December 2008 (UTC).

Comment II by Bishonen: Brad's motion

The central part of Newyorkbrad's motion below reads: "Peter Damian is directed not to interact with, or comment in any way (directly or indirectly), about FT2 on any page in Misplaced Pages." This is an unusually one-sided remedy. Having to some extent followed the exchanges between PD and FT2 over the past year or so, I urge that the motion be made symmetrical. Something like this: "Peter Damian and FT2 are directed not to interact with, or comment in any way (directly or indirectly), about each other on any page in Misplaced Pages.". I've grasped that you "do not approve of certain aspects of Peter Damian's conduct", Brad, but do you approve of all aspects of FT2's conduct? Whether or not, you are surely aware that not everybody does. It's unreasonable and unjust to leave FT2 free to "interact" with PD—say, by posting accusations and self-praise on PD's talkpage—while enjoining PD from "interacting" with FT2—say, by replying. The motion offered has the smell of compromise and exudes unease. It reads uncomfortably. Its central idea of a single individual "interacting" is incoherent, since "interact" is a word expressing reciprocity. See Oxford English Dictionary, interact: "To act reciprocally, to act on each other." Peter Damian and FT2 have been acting reciprocally, acting "on" each other. Please provide for this in the motion. Bishonen | talk 19:01, 8 December 2008 (UTC).

Addition:Bishonen III on motion 1.1

I'm happy to see Kirill's motion 1.1 proposing the kind of mutual ban on interaction between Peter Damian and FT2 which I proposed just above, instead of merely a ban on Peter Damian interacting with FT2. But IMO the present situation calls for a wholly mutual motion. If Peter Damian is to be blocked if he comments on FT2, then FT2 should be blocked if he comments on Peter Damian. Again, interaction is a two-way street; you can't interact all by yourself; and in this affair, there has been baiting by both users. It would be great to see the ArbCom take the moral high ground and acknowledge that, other things being equal, it is more, not less, important to restrain the more influential of the two users. As Flo points out in the "Arbitrator views and discussion" section below, FT2 and Peter Damian have been "advised" to avoid each other. Please carry through this symmetrical advice in a symmetrical motion! Suggestion: Peter Damian and FT2 are directed not to comment to or on each other in any way (directly or indirectly) on any page in Misplaced Pages. Should either of them do so, he may be blocked for an appropriate period of time by any uninvolved administrator. Please note that this suggestion leaves out the "or make any other comment reasonably regarded as harassment or a personal attack," both because it's not appropriate to FT2, and because the ArbCom seems to be belatedly coming round to managing without "civility paroles". (See Question by Tex below: sorry I missed that, Tex.) Bishonen | talk 19:06, 9 December 2008 (UTC).

Statement by Snowded

Peter has made outstanding contributions to content over the years and his absence from editing reflects badly on WIkipedia. The edits which got peter banned in the first place were no worse (in fact milder) than many a comment and exchange which goes unpunished on controversial pages daily (come to those on Ireland if you want examples). While Arbcom members may need some additional protection they also need a degree of robustness and should not need protecting like some tender and fragile orchid. I fully endorse the comments by Bishonen above. --Snowded TALK 09:24, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

Comment by GRBerry

I was one of the administrators trying to clean up this mess last December. I've watched it since, though largely stayed out of it since then. Having watched FT2's conduct in past periods when Damian was unblocked, I agree with the prior commentators that the two should both be restricted from commenting on one another. Indeed, FT2's conduct toward Damian and descriptions of Damian were in my eyes part of the problem even before Damian was first blocked, and they haven't really gotten any better. GRBerry 21:20, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

P.S. I doubt the email evidence from last December is still particularly relevant, however I still have copies of all that was sent to me. GRB

Meta-comment by Apoc2400

Could we avoid bringing in the whole wiki-drama cast? I don't think that benefits Peter Damian or anyone else.

Question on Motion 1.1 by Tex

I have no dog in this fight whatsoever, but the new motion doesn't sit right. The new motion says that Peter and FT2 cannot interact with or comment on each other on any page on the wiki. It then sets forth how Peter can be blocked if he comments on FT2. What happens to FT2 if he comments on Peter? This motion cannot be enforced unless there are consequences for FT2 as well as for Peter. Are we going to be fair about this? Tex (talk) 15:34, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Comment by Will Beback

Motion 1.1 says: "Peter Damian and FT2 are directed not to interact with or comment in any way (directly or indirectly) about each other on any page in Misplaced Pages." But already there is a dispute over "territory". Peter Damian says: "It also includes him not interfering with my work on articles related tangentially to linguistics such as Neurolinguistic programming. Can I simply point out my PhD is in a linguistics related area?"

First, Neuro-linguistic programming has little to do with linguistics in the conventional sense. Second, FT2 has been editing that article since 2004 in addition to editing related topics. A simple way of determining who has the "right of way" on a topic would be who edited there first, rather than who has a tangentially related academic degree. Or maybe there's a better way. But I suggest that the committee provide some guidance on this matter, otherwise it appears that there will be future disputes over who has to get out of the way. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 20:28, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

Rootology's proposal to ban both editors from NLP topics would address most of this problem. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 19:37, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

Comment by Black Kite

No further comment, except to say that I, like FT2, have had extensive experience of perma-banned User:HeadleyDown, and that User:Phdarts is definitely another incarnation of said editor. Black Kite 02:03, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Statement by Sticky Parkin

My only concern is that people bringing a sceptical viewpoint to articles are not all labelled as being socks or meatpuppets of HeadleyDown. Peter Damian's views on NLP etc are not unusual ones, and while he may have interacted with Headley on a messageboard, I'm sure he already had his own opinions on NLP or formed his own when he considered the topic. They are views I share due to my own experience and study (I hope I'm not making myself the next target by saying that.) I would hate to see people wanting to bring WP:NPOV to these articles being driven off by even more claims they are socks, proxies etc. Damian should avoid them perhaps, but only because of the existing tension between him and FT2, not because of his opinions on the subject which are by no means rare, in fact he was very conciliatory when discussing those articles with FT2 in my humble opinion. He made concession for reasons of collegial spirit that there was some evidence for some of these therapies etc, where I would not have done. I hope this makes sense and is slightly relevant.:) Sticky Parkin 12:06, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Statement by Random832

Where exactly do we imagine Thatcher has obtained the authority to unilaterally impose sanctions anyway? Can I simply ban FT2 from the article space with no discussion? These "conditions" are wholly illegitimate and I hope the committee is willing to recognize this. --Random832 (contribs) 14:42, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

To FT2: The ban said "Arbcom or Jimbo only". - precisely, arbcom or Jimbo only. Not arbcom and Jimbo - when Jimbo "stepped aside", the ban was gone. This "clarification" is an attempt to impose new sanctions, and should properly be a full case. --Random832 (contribs) 14:47, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

A concern from AGK

I find it concerning that it is being proposed that an Arbitrator be placed on a topic ban. That an editor is even contemplating topic banning FT2 is a poor reflection in the Community's confidence in the Committee (although I make no comment as to the merits of that proposal). AGK 19:42, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

Statement by Ryan Postlethwaite

This isn't going to stop is it? I was largely supportive originally for the unblock - I felt Peter deserved one last chance, with the good faith understanding that he'd drop the FT2 matter completely. By that I also mean NLP and Headley Down accusations. Yet he's still at it on WR. This is precisely the sort of behaviour that got him banned last time, and now he's continued during his unblock request. I don't understand why the committee are even considering an unblock whilst this sort of behaviour is carrying on. I would certainly suggest that a full case is needed before any unblock, especially when the motion that is currently being supported is effectively an editing restriction being placed on a sitting arbitrator. Ryan Postlethwaite 19:48, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

Statement by User:Tom harrison

"...the motion that is currently being supported is effectively an editing restriction being placed on a sitting arbitrator." That shouldn't make any difference. Like some other recent cases, this isn't going to be settled until it's settled right. I hope the arbs will open a new case, go through all the evidence transparently and openly, and decide impartially. Tom Harrison 14:39, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Statement by wholly uninvolved S. Dean Jameson

Having reviewed this mess -- and it is a mess -- in toto, I can see no reason not to open a full case here. We have a sitting arbitrator who is posting novella-length missives here, having them removed, and then opening pages in userspace for them. You have questions raised as to the legitimacy of this arbitrator's edits and interactions with an editor who has been previously banned for attempting to raise questions during the election of said arbitrator. This is more than a request for clarification, it's a case. It's as simple as that. The actions of all involved parties need close examination, which a clarification request does not adequately allow. SDJ 05:47, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Statement by other user

Clerk notes

• Recuse - party --Tznkai (talk) 22:04, 5 December 2008 (UTC)
• A number of statements have been delisted at the request of Arbitrator Kirill Lokshin (and by Kirill himself, also). I would note that if parties wish to resubmit their statements after they have been condensed to an acceptable length, they may do so in the space their initial statements were located in (rather than at the bottom of the thread). For editors who are unsure whether their statement is acceptable or not, this utility will evaluate the number of words used therein. Headers (of the format "Statement by User X") and end-signatures should not be included in the text you enter in for counting, but everything else ought to be. Thanks, AGK 14:15, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

Arbitrator views and discussion

• The request for clarification is noted. This situation should be addressed, but I am not certain what is the best procedural vehicle to do so. Please note that I will have very limited online time this weekend (per comment on my talkpage the other day), so no inference should be drawn from any delay in my posting further here. All persons are requested to observe appropriate decorum in connection with this case. Newyorkbrad (talk) 22:19, 5 December 2008 (UTC)
  • I see that there is ongoing controversy and drama. All statements and relevant information should be submitted (here or via e-mail) within 24 hours so that we can decide whether the committee has a role here, and if so, what it is, as the current confusion should not be allowed to continue. We also need a complete understanding of each party's position as to what action (if any) we or the community should take, if not already provided. Newyorkbrad (talk) 16:42, 6 December 2008 (UTC)
  • I have completed my review of this request and offer a motion. Newyorkbrad (talk) 22:55, 7 December 2008 (UTC)
• My understanding of the email exchange with Jimbo, Thatcher, and myself, Peter Damian, and FT2 was that we advised that FT2 and Damian needed to avoid each other. If Damian is unblocked it makes much more sense to have him writing articles then debating a year old conflict with FT2. Damian has told us that FT2 comments push his buttons the wrong way so I think that putting them in contact with each other now will scuttle his comeback before it starts. FloNight♥♥♥ 22:35, 5 December 2008 (UTC)
  • FYI, there has been zero substantive discussion about Peter Damian's unblock request by arbcom during the past week. All of the discussion about the matter was between Thatcher, FT2, Damian, and Jimbo, except for a few comments that I added yesterday when I joined the discussion. So the Committee has no background information about the recent situation. FloNight♥♥♥ 23:16, 5 December 2008 (UTC)
• Further discussion about this is needed before I can make up my mind as to what to support here. Matthew Brown (Morven) (T:C) 00:45, 8 December 2008 (UTC)
• It's unfortunate, but I think we're going to have to start generally enforcing the word limit; the lengths of some of the statements above are rather excessive. Kirill 01:51, 9 December 2008 (UTC)
• Oppose on the grounds of common sense. If we revisit this tangled mess, we need a proper case in due form of an appeal. It makes little sense for NYB to be saying "little time", since rushing at the matter is unlikely to resolve it; we should have a case, the ad hominem arguments should be replaced by evidence, and due account should be taken both of Peter Damian's apparent boundary testing and FT2's possible over-involvement in the matter. So I suggest we ask for an appeal case, and Peter Damian be allowed to edit in giving evidence for it. A case once accepted, an injunction could be voted on that would clarify what enforcement and mutual avoidance should be required pro tem. A straggling discussion here is unlikely to sort this out, in my view. Charles Matthews (talk) 08:16, 9 December 2008 (UTC)
  • Two months of listen to Damian and FT2 debate the issues in this matter? No thank you! A simple unblock of Damian as Thatcher planned to do would have solved the situation, really. The Community is tired of high profile users engaging in soap operas instead of writing the encyclopedia. If Damian can come back an write article with out harassing FT2 off or on site, then let him do it. FloNight♥♥♥ 08:56, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

• I have removed several statements which greatly exceeded the 500-word limit. Individuals whose comments have been removed are invited to resubmit them once they have been condensed to a reasonable length. Kirill 05:31, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

Motions

There are twelve active arbitrators, so seven votes are a majority.

(FT2 is recused but is inactive and thus not counted in the majority anyway.)

1) Any ban, block, or editing restriction currently in force against Peter Damian (talk · contribs) is terminated, and Peter Damian is permitted to edit Misplaced Pages subject to the terms of this motion. Peter Damian is directed not to interact with, or comment in any way (directly or indirectly) about, FT2 (talk · contribs) on any page in Misplaced Pages. If Peter Damian violates this restriction, or makes any comment reasonably regarded as harassing or a personal attack, he may be reblocked for an appropriate period of time by any uninvolved administrator. Peter Damian is also strongly urged to refrain from inflammatory rhetoric concerning FT2 on other websites. If Peter Damian wishes to regain access to his original Misplaced Pages user account, a developer is requested to assist him in recovering his password.

Support:

1. Proposed. I do not approve of certain aspects of Peter Damian's conduct but believe that this motion may resolve the concerns. Newyorkbrad (talk) 23:07, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

   I will review whether any modification of the motion is warranted by FT2's statement. Peter Damian is requested to comment on this issue, by e-mail if appropriate. Newyorkbrad (talk) 02:38, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

   Support, except the last sentence. Thatcher explored the issue and was told by developers that it was not done now and other arrangements were made that seem satisfactory to Peter Damian, I think. FloNight♥♥♥ 00:25, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

   If there is concern about the last sentence I will strike it; I believe there is precedent for this remedy in the Giano case, but it is not integral to the proposal and I do not want it to divert attention from the main issues. Newyorkbrad (talk) 00:33, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

   I seem to remember reading that, after the Giano case closed with the request to developers to help Giano recover his password, the developers said it was not possible in practice. Certainly Giano never regained access to his original account. Sam Blacketer (talk) 00:38, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Oppose:

1. Prefer 1.1. Kirill 01:49, 9 December 2008 (UTC)
2. Informal advice was ignored so need to make it formal. FloNight♥♥♥ 07:16, 9 December 2008 (UTC)
3. Sam Blacketer (talk) 15:26, 9 December 2008 (UTC)
4. Prefer 1.1. Note that the original account has been usurped, so there is no need to say anything about access to accounts (other than that this is the old block log). --bainer (talk) 02:20, 12 December 2008 (UTC)
5. In favour of 1.1. James F. (talk) 18:17, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Abstain:

There are twelve active arbitrators, so seven votes are a majority.

1.1) The editing restrictions currently in force against Peter Damian (talk · contribs) are rescinded, and he is permitted to edit Misplaced Pages.

Peter Damian and FT2 are directed not to interact with or comment in any way (directly or indirectly) about each other on any page in Misplaced Pages. Should Peter Damian interact with or make any comment concerning FT2, or make any other comment reasonably regarded as harassment or a personal attack, he may be blocked for an appropriate period of time by any uninvolved administrator.

In addition, Peter Damian and FT2 are strongly urged not to interact with or comment about each other on any other website or public forum.

Support:

1. Let's leave no loose ends here. Kirill 01:49, 9 December 2008 (UTC)
2. With regard to FT2's request for topic limitations on Peter Damian's editing, this can be addressed should future editing indicate significant ongoing problems. I hope and expect that this should not be necessary. Newyorkbrad (talk) 02:11, 9 December 2008 (UTC)
3. FloNight♥♥♥ 07:16, 9 December 2008 (UTC)
4. Simple as that. FayssalF - 21:57, 9 December 2008 (UTC)
5. YellowMonkey (bananabucket) 02:16, 11 December 2008 (UTC)
6. With recognition that this will be a final chance. --bainer (talk) 02:20, 12 December 2008 (UTC)
7. Though yes, it was a good block. James F. (talk) 18:17, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Oppose:

1. The block was fully justified and I have no confidence Peter Damian will abide by any conditions of an unblock. Sam Blacketer (talk) 15:26, 9 December 2008 (UTC)
2. Charles Matthews (talk) 15:42, 9 December 2008 (UTC)
3. It was a good block. Actions have consequences. --jpgordon 00:38, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

   But the principal question isn't whether it was or wasn't a good block ab initio; it's what the editor's status today should be. Newyorkbrad (talk) 00:43, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

   Actions have consequences; among other things, they show the character of the actors. --jpgordon 00:51, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Abstain:

Motion adopted. Clerk to post and notify. Newyorkbrad (talk) 18:19, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

• Misplaced Pages arbitration