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Requests for clarification

Misplaced Pages:Arbitration/Requests/Clarification/Header

Request for clarification: Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/Badlydrawnjeff

Initiated by   Will Beback  talk  at 01:49, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

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

• Will Beback (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA) (initiator)
• Scott MacDonald (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)

Statement by Will Beback

Does an ArbCom decision made four years ago have precedence over current policy? Specifically, does Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/Badlydrawnjeff#Summary deletion of BLPs override Misplaced Pages:Biographies of living persons#Summary deletion, salting, and courtesy blanking? If so, do all ArbCom decisions nullify community-written policies indefinitely?

The context of this question is that Scott MacDonald has been deleting sourced articles on the grounds that they are inadequately sourced, with no apparent effort to improve them and without notifying anyone, in violation of both WP:BLP and WP:SD (IMO). He cites Badlydrawnjeff as justification. At least two of the articles did not qualify for deletion under those policies: Swami X and Jerry Mezzatesta. Scott has indicated that he will continue doing so unless the ArbCom tells him otherwise.   Will Beback  talk  01:49, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Note: This is not a request for any enforcement nor for any determination of a policy violation. I am simply asking which text takes precedence: WP:BLP or Badlydrawnjeff.

• To Cla68: The ArbCom policy gave a general principle. The current policy fleshes out that principle with some additional requirements, including a requirement to try to fix the article and a requirement to initiate a discussion after the deletion. The question is, if there is a conflict between a current policy and an ArbCom decision made four years ago takes precedence, which takes precedence?   Will Beback  talk  02:08, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

• To Scott: I respect the authority of the ArbCom. The decision they made four years ago is a definitive interpretation of the policy as it existed then. But I don't think that a four-year-old decision by nine people binds the community indefinitely. Is the community not allowed to adopt any policies that modifies Badlydrawnjeff by setting limits or imposing reasonable requirements on admins before and after deleting articles? Does the community set policy or are any parts of WP:BLPDEL which contradict or aren't included in Badlydrawnjeff void and inapplicable?   Will Beback  talk  02:26, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

• See also: User talk:Scott MacDonald#Swami X User talk:Scott MacDonald#Bonnie Bleskachek and User talk:Scott MacDonald#Incorrect use of G10   Will Beback  talk  02:45, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

• To SirFozzie: I'm asking for this clarification to find out if a four-year old ArbCom decision binds admins instead of a current policy. The details of Scott's deletions aren't relevant to that question. No evidence is required to determine which page has precedence. That said, my specific concerns are that he made little or no effort to improve the articles before deleting them, that were not so bad they they had to be deleted outright (as opposed to just deleting the under-sourced material), and that he should have initiated discussions following the deletions. Those are all part of BLP but not necessarily of Badlydrawnjeff.   Will Beback  talk  03:45, 15 December 2010 (UTC)
• Also, I don't see anything in Misplaced Pages:Arbitration/Index/Cases/2010 that seems relevant to this matter. Was there a recent case that says Badlydrawnjeff trumps WP:BLP?   Will Beback  talk  03:52, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

• To SirFozzie: Are you saying that the ArbCom makes policy instead of the community, and that the ArbCom's current statement of the BLP policy is Misplaced Pages:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard#Motion regarding BLP deletions? If so, should we copy that text into WP:BLP and delete any text that disagrees with it?   Will Beback  talk  04:26, 15 December 2010 (UTC)
• Also, after that January motion, the community conducted a very large RFC. Misplaced Pages:Requests for comment/Biographies of living people/Phase I. The conclusion drawn by the closing admin in that (and the subsequent Phase II and Phase III) seems to be that the community has not supported summary deletions outside of policy. The BLP policy has been amended to cover summary deletions since then. My question is whether that current policy is superseded by Badlydrawnjeff, or even by the January 2010 motion. If it is, does the ArbCom have the general power to nullify community-written policies?

• To Coren: WP:BLP adds details about how and when summary deletions should be conducted. That policy says, in part:
  • Biographical material about a living individual that is not compliant with this policy should be improved and rectified; if this is not possible, then it should be removed. If the entire page is substantially of poor quality, primarily containing contentious material that is unsourced or poorly sourced, then it may be necessary to delete the entire page as an initial step, followed by discussion. Page deletion is normally a last resort. If a dispute centers around a page's inclusion (e.g., due to questionable notability or if the subject has requested deletion) then this is addressed via deletion discussions rather than by summary deletion. Summary deletion in part or whole is relevant when the page contains unsourced negative material or is written non-neutrally, and when this cannot readily be rewritten or restored to a version of an acceptable standard.
• Does the ArbCom feel that it is unreasonable to ask admins to try to improve or rectify articles before deleting them, that it is unreasonable to say deletion should be the last resort used only for articles that can't be fixed, and that it's unreasonable to ask them to start a post-deletion discussion? If so, then I suggest those provisions should be removed from the policy in order to bring it into compliance with the ArbCom' old motions.   Will Beback  talk  05:26, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

• FWIW, all ArbCom candidates were asked about this exact issue in question #5 a month ago.
  • ArbCom and policies: Do you agree or disagree with this statement: "ArbCom should not be in the position of forming new policies, or otherwise creating, abolishing or amending policy. ArbCom should rule on the underlying principles of the rules. If there is an area of the rules that leaves something confused, overly vague, or seemingly contrary to common good practice, then the issue should be pointed out to the community". Please give reasons.
• Similar questions have been asked in past ArbCom elections.   Will Beback  talk  06:07, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

• From Misplaced Pages:Arbitration/Policy/Draft#Policy and precedent:
  • The arbitration process is not a vehicle for creating new policy by fiat. The Committee's decisions may interpret existing policy and guidelines, recognise and call attention to standards of user conduct, or create procedures through which policy may be enforced. Previous Committee decisions are considered useful and informative, but are not binding on future proceedings.
• If the ArbCom decides that its motions override WP:BLP or other policies then this section should probably be removed or altered significantly.   Will Beback  talk  07:04, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Note: There's no reason this needs to be decided immediately. Given all factors, it'd be fine to defer this to January. Maybe it'd be best to put his on the back burner to develop slowly.   Will Beback  talk  10:58, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

• To Tony Sidaway: This clarification request is not intended as a referendum on Scott's administrative work. It is simply a question of which text is the governing policy: the ArbCom's Badlydrawnjeff/January motion or the community's WP:BLP.   Will Beback  talk  23:15, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Statement by Scott MacDonald

I review hundreds of BLPs every month using various methods to hunt for unreferenced negative material. Mostly I simply remove the material from the articles when I find it, and there is not controversy.

Occasionally, when the violating material is basically the entire article, I delete it. My justification is found in the arbcom ruling:

Any administrator, acting on their own judgment, may delete an article that is substantially a biography of a living person if they believe that it (and every previous version of it) significantly violates any aspect of the relevant policy. This deletion may be contested via the usual means; however, the article must not be restored, whether through undeletion or otherwise, without an actual consensus to do so. The burden of proof is on those who wish to retain the article to demonstrate that it is compliant with every aspect of the policy.

Of course, an administrator acting on their own judgement can be wrong - and I sometimes am. (I could point to dozens of horrible things I've uncontroversially removed using this policy in mitigation of any alleged errors. Although in truth I delete very few articles.) Be that as it may, when someone approaches me about any deleted bio, I am always open to finding a way forward. I've regularly undeleted articles where an established user has agreed to fix the violations, or I've userfied it. If the challenging user isn't satisfied, then we can always amicably take the thing to DRV for a wider discussion.

The discretion given to admins here is an essential tool in dealing with BLP problems. The principle is simple, if an admin judges there to be a problem, he may remove the material, and delete when necessary. The action is always open to challenge through discussion and review - but we err on the side of keeping the material OUT until either the deleting admin, or a consensus on DRV is satisfied the article can be restored. It is better that a few marginally notable BLPs are gone for a bit, than we weaken our already inadequate safeguarding against problematic material.

In the case in point. Will beback didn't agree with my deletion. Fair enough. However, what he then did was simply restored the BLP prior to our discussion. That's clearly not acceptable and could be dangerous - even if he was right here, he's not infallible enough to be reversing BLP deletions without discussion. (After the discussion, I restored the article myself.)

Worryingly, Will rejects arbcom's authority on this matter - but insists on the exact letter of the deletion policy being followed, in the way that he, rather than the Committee interpret it. I believe arbcom has given admins more discretion: because on balance the danger of bad BLP material remaining outweighs the minor loss of some debatable stuff occasionally being unnecessarily removed.--Scott Mac 02:13, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

• To be clear. One of the negative BLPs I deleted did have some reliable sources - it also had deadlinks and unsourced statements. It would have been possible, on that occasion, to have taken a different view and repaired rather than deleted the article. As I said to Will when he brought it to me attention, I am always happy to admit mistakes and back up. The price of my willingness to make difficult calls on the margins is that occasionally I get it wrong. In this case, after discussion, and Will's indication he'd reviewed the off-line sources, I restored the article and improved it myself. My difficulty was with Will restoring it himself prior to any discussion, and with his demand that I stop using my judgement to delete BLPs. I have always been willing to make bold judgement calls and then listen carefully to any comments and objections - the mantra with debatable BLP material is: REMOVE - DISCUSS - REPLACE (where appropriate). In this one case it was appropriate.--Scott Mac 09:19, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

• • Nutshell - 2 separable things: 1) My interpretation of policy is correct. Arbcom don't need to "clarify" anything, the admin discretion on poorly sourced BLPs is quite clear to everyone except Will beback. 2) The article in question may have had better sourcing that I gave credit for. Thus my deletion may have been mistaken or over-zealous. However, that was resolved on my talk page (and if it hadn't been belongs at DRV) - there is nothing to arbitrate here.--Scott Mac 13:03, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Perspective. Slap me for my mistakes if you must, but surely Will et al should be more concerned with things like this and this (found my me just this morning) than with stalking my deletion logs looking for any mistakes on marginal articles.--Scott Mac 14:28, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

@Carcharoth. I'm not sure what you mean. Naturally, I'd encourage as many people as possible to seek to identify and remove BLP violating material. The fact that I can pretty much guarantee to find a significant violation with less than 10 min looking speaks for itself. However, I'm not sure how I'd do that collaboratively. I'm not working through any backlog. If there were a queue of "BLP violating articles" to work through that would be a worry in itself. My MO is to use various metrics to search for unreferenced negative material. Once I've found it, there's generally little to discuss - I remove it. I salute those who systematically work through unreferenced BLPs and source them - but that's not by chosen area. I spent nearly a year searching the unreferenced BLP categories and removing negative material - I've now moved back to searching for offending material more widely. More people should do this, but I'm not sure how one does it collaboratively. For me it is simply a "seek and remove" mission. That's my contribution.--Scott Mac 00:37, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Statement by Cla68

If the entire page is substantially of poor quality, primarily containing contentious material that is unsourced or poorly sourced, then it may be necessary to delete the entire page as an initial step. Current policy supports summary deletion of contentious material awaiting verification. So, any assertion that the past ArbCom decision is contrary to current policy is false. Cla68 (talk) 01:55, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

I agree with Tony Sideaway's fairly strong statement below on this matter. In my opinion, admins who don't seem to understand that we should err on the side of caution with regards to BLPs should be barred from further involvement with BLP articles. Cla68 (talk) 00:40, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Statement by Lar

A review of Scott's talk page recently is quite enlightening, Will Beback gave the appearance of rules lawyering. In this case Will Beback gives the appearance of putting a false spin on this by suggesting that current policy and the cited precedent are not in harmony. Scott's analysis of how he is in full compliance with both the case finding and current policy is spot on. I ask that ArbCom swiftly and clearly affirm Scott so we need not waste more time and effort on this. As a bonus, please admonish Will for restoring BLP material without first discussing matters. ++Lar: t/c 02:32, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

I too agree with Tony Sidaway's strong statement, as well as with Cla68's assessment of those admins who obstruct progress. ++Lar: t/c 05:24, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Statement by Cyclopia

I endorse the statement of User:Resolute on Scott talk page: But whether you like it or not, a fully fleshed cite to a newspaper article that is not online remains "fully compliant with every aspect of the policy". If you don't like that fact, go build a consensus to change WP:V. As an administrator, your job is to enforce policies as they are, not as you personally wish they were.

The only thing that worried Scott Mac was that references to negative statements were not directly accessible online. To delete an article on the suspicious that offline references are false is way beyond the standards that we require for BLP and it is a requirement not written in any policy. BLP requires the article to be fully verifiable and sources to be fully reliable, but it doesn't require, to the best of my knowledge, for them to be online.

In deleting the article and in arm-twisting with Will Beback about the restoration of the article, Scott Mac did not enforce BLP, because there is nothing in BLP that requires fully online sources. So we can be sure that an enforcement of BLP policy is out of the discussion. Scott Mac could have at most asked for confirmation of the sources' content at WP:REX if he wanted to be sure, and raise perhaps the issue at the BLP noticeboard to get some editor's attention: but even if both attempts yielded no result, in no way deletion of the article was proper.

I also want to personally note that this is only the last in a long number of attrition incidents between Scott Mac's overzealous interpretation of BLP policy versus the rest of the community. While a significant number of members of WP community are sympathetic with Scott Mac's reasonings and actions, it must not be forgotten that an at least equivalent, if not larger, number of members of the community -including myself- feel that firm enforcement of BLP policy must not become a regular jolly card for administrators to act regularly outside of policy. Such actions have a deep impact in the community by endangering the delicate relationship between admins and common editors, and making many editors feel that BLP overzealous application has a generic, negative chilling effect on editing and consensus-building. I recommend this essay as an interesting read on the subject. Scott Mac in particular seems regularly unable to understand that his own personal interpretation of BLP spirit and ruleset and his personal ethical weighting of BLP interests versus the other encyclopedia interests is not necessarily the only right one.

I hope ArbCom, while recognizing that Scott Mac acted for sure in good faith and with the best intentions, will warn Scott Mac that his own personal interpretation of BLP spirit and policy is not necessarily the only right one, and to confront the concerns of other editors on his actions less defensively and more collaboratively.--Cyclopia 03:27, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Question from Timotheus Canens

Coren, in your statement that "BLP trumps consensus", do you mean the version that is viewable at WP:BLP, or the committee's view on what WP:BLP should be? T. Canens (talk) 05:32, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Okay. First, can the committee give an up-or-down answer on whether the deletions at issue here are acceptable? I think no one here disputes the basic rule that unsourced or poorly sourced controversial or negative information must be removed; it's the applications that are generating the controversy.

Second, since you seem to think that the "general principle" is something separate from what is written in WP:BLP: if I were someone new to this whole BLP thing, where would I be able to find the documentation of this "general principle" that you are referring to? That is, if someone, who has never encountered this BLP business before (perhaps because they only wrote about, I don't know, moths?), wants to figure out if a particular action is consistent with the "general principle" you refer to, how can they learn about it? T. Canens (talk) 20:18, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Statement by Resolute

Cyclopia already stated my position on Scott's talk page, and I suspect my opinion of the January 2010 motion is quite well known, so won't rehash that either. What is highly concerning here is that Scott has moved beyond his habits of attacking unsourced articles and has now turned his zealotry towards sourced articles. And he is using an ArbCom judgment that pre-dates the current WP:BLP policy. Coren - your statement is nothing more than the canned response I've come to expect, but the facts of this issue go beyond simply unsourced material. Scott is attempting to unilaterally re-write WP:V, WP:RS, WP:BLP and WP:AGF because he disagrees with how those policies are currently interpreted, and he is using an ancient ArbCom decision to justify it. Scott deleted an article that was sourced. It met BLP, V, RS. He deleted it anyway because *he* couldn't read the offline cites, and because *he* disagrees with these policies as written. To be blunt, this is borderline abuse of power. As someone who routinely spends time digging up offline sources and old newspaper articles to turn crap biographies into something valuable, this attitude is highly concerning to me, as I would hate to think my work could be so easily deleted because another admin simply disagrees with policy. Deleting unsourced negative articles? Wholeheartedly endorse. Remove unsourced contentious content, reducing an article to a sub-stub if necessary? Endorse. But to delete properly and sufficiently sourced content on a whim? Surely ArbCom was not so shortsighted in 2007 or January 2010 to believe this is a logical extension of those decisions. Resolute 05:44, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

@TS, Lar and Cla68 - Administrators who show an utter disregard for Misplaced Pages's policies and community and who willingly choose to abuse both in the name of their zealotry should be regarded as incompetent, and lose their bits. BLP is not a shield that grants immunity from the consequences of that incompetence. Inappropriate deletions in the name of BLP are just as wrong as inappropriate deletions based on any other policy. Resolute 14:34, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Statement by Nomoskedasticity

To emphasize Resolute's point: the material Scott deleted was not unsourced. It appears (though he hasn't answered my question to this effect) that Scott was simply unwilling to make the necessary effort to acquire them himself. The sources in question were entirely normal newspaper articles, and so there was not even a problem of "poorly sourced". Nomoskedasticity (talk) 07:36, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Statement by user without an account

There's a false conflict being set up here between policy on the one hand and Arbcom's well established power to apply remedies that give additional enforcement options to administrators in areas in which Arbcom has identified problems. Arbcom have found severe problems in the area of BLPs. Arbcom have remedied this by giving administrators discretionary powers to act in supporting the policies requiring e.g. reliable sourcing of all contentious material, and the Foundation's mandate. That's the clarification. A review of Scott's and Will's particular actions might be warranted, that's something else entirely.

Questions to Coren by Cyclopia

Given that the articles under debate were not (I repeat, not) unsourced, but that the sources were merely not immediately available online:

1. Could you clarify the meaning of your statement below in this respect?
2. Do you have anything to comment on articles that are fully verifiable and sourced but from offline sources, as apparently were the articles herein discussed?

Also, when you declare that "BLP trumps consensus"

1. Do you mean that every editor claiming BLP for an edit/action has a free card to do whatever they want disregarding every policy? Should I delete statements fully sourced but from offline sources in BLPs today, against all consensus of editors, would my actions be endorsed by BLP policy and ArbCom?

--Cyclopia 11:12, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Question to Coren (and other arbitrators) by Cyclopia (II)

Thank you Coren for your reassuring answers. It is now clear that your statement is not an endorsement of Scott Mac's actions. Now, however, an unsolved point remains, that is, the problematic statement that "BLP (or any policy FWIW) trumps consensus".

1. If you declare that "BLP trumps consensus" and then say that "just claiming something is done to enforce BLP doesn't give a free pass" ; then, how can we distinguish mere claims of a single editor from genuine BLP enforcement? For, if BLP application does indeed trump consensus, in practice a free pass is given, since whenever I claim I am applying it, this gives my actions freedom from editorial consensus, and I can safely ignore any claim of my actions being not proper. Conversely, if the genuinity of BLP concerns are to be decided by consensus, then BLP application does not trump consensus but merely applies it. For example, this very RfClarification is basically done to build consensus around an action claimed in the name of BLP. So, actually, consensus seems to be queen. Could we clarify the relationship between BLP and consensus?

--Cyclopia 14:51, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Statement by WereSpielChequers

Whilst Scot is to be commended for his removal of unsourced and poorly sourced BLP material, his attempted broadening of the definition of poorly sourced to include offline sources and deadlinks is more troubling. I would accept that if the editor who originally added that information had subsequently turned out to be faking their references then we should regard all of their offline sourced info as poorly sourced. But it is the way of the Internet for links to go dead or be hidden behind paywalls, and if we concede the principle that only currently clickable online sources can be treated as good sources then we do great damage to the pedia.

I appreciate that if we were to start getting vandals who assert fictitious offline sources then we would need to put measures in place for trusted users to check and mark such references as confirmed. But that would be a more logical route than to arbitrarily redefine offline sources as poor sources and start deleting such information. ϢereSpielChequers 12:34, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Statement by Milowent

Epic breaching experiment fail. Mezzatesta was a rash and unnecessary deletion; obviously many folks are monitoring Scott's actions to catch these things. I traipsed through Will and Scott's discussion when it started, saw the deleted article via google cache, and quickly was able to verify that the content of the article was substantially accurate. All the bad news stories about the guy are among first hits on google. In the past, Scott has stubbed out articles like this, like he did with Anita Bryant here on October 27. That move was also criticized and the article restored with sources, but it was no doubt a less drastic and much preferable move to outright deletion. We don't want to discourage Scott from removing truly unsourced contentious BLP content, but don't endorse this deletion.--Milowent • 13:59, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Statement by Tony Sidaway

As far as I can tell Doc is quite happy to restore a deleted article whenever somebody undertakes to improve it to Misplaced Pages standards. Hounding him like this can only deter other willing admins from doing the right thing, and gives the general users the false impression that substandard BLPs are acceptable. --TS 22:39, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

The problem, and it's a pretty obvious one over five years after Siegenthaler, is that we knowingly and perversely retain crappy articles that we're not prepared to maintain, on the subject of living people. Only arbcom can motivate us to resolve this problem, which has only grown since the principle of deletion was established in 2007. I will ask the new Committee to take this problem on as a matter of urgency. The community is not only failing in this primary objective, it's openly and vociferously thwarting reasonable attempts to mitigate the problem. --TS 00:32, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Statement by Gigs

One of the major points of WP:V is that "the principle of verifiability implies nothing about ease of access to sources". This is a fundamental and important part of WP:V. We should not allow any concern, no matter how important, to override this principle. If we let this happen, we become a mere summary of public internet sources instead of an encyclopedia. The policy of verifiability is not a policy of verification. While I'm aware of breaching experiments which have exploited the fact that we AGF on offline and otherwise inaccessible sources, we must not let these rare exceptions drive our rules.

I share the concern of TS and Scott that we are allowing the creation and existence of thousands of articles that we are not fully able to maintain. I see this as a fundamental problem with our notability standards, the subject specific ones, which allow for articles to be created on subjects which have not drawn much or any biographical secondary source coverage. I don't think the problem with notability should be addressed through perhaps more expedient means of invoking BLP or perverting Verifiability standards, but rather we need to address that at the core. Gigs (talk) 00:56, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

To clarify, I'm not saying we should retain exceptional claims sourced to dubious sources, especially inaccessible ones. I view our policies as minimum standards for inclusion, and subscribe to the ideas in WP:Editorial discretion. That said, I don't think we should let exceptions shape the rules. Gigs (talk) 15:49, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Statement by other user

Clerk notes

Arbitrator views and discussion

I'm disappointed that things have flared up again. My personal thoughts, both as an editor who's gone through multiple iterations of the BLP policy, and as an arbitrator... Misplaced Pages must take the utmost care in its articles as they can mislead or actively do harm. BLP articles are especially prone to this. The Arbitration Committee has specified time and time again in rulings (as recently as the beginning of this year) that the utmost care be taken with these articles, and mandated that editors and administrators take every reasonable precaution against doing unjustified harm with BLP articles.

So, my thoughts fall to the following point of evidence. Was the action taken to remove the un-verified (or inadequately verified), negative BLP information and as necessary delete the article (with no prejudice against recreation should a NPOV, sourced article be written) fall under the phrase "reasonable precautions" ? That's what I'll be looking at in this clarification request, and I would request that the parties and interested onlookers answer. SirFozzie (talk) 02:49, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

@Will, Here is a 2008 case regarding BLP and the January 2010 motion that affirmed the deletion of unverified or poorly verified BLP articles as a reasonable action. SirFozzie (talk) 04:20, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

I wouldn't go so far as what you say.. the Committee knows that the community is deeply divided over the issue, as the care taken in those two motions state. Those are the facts on the ground. SirFozzie (talk) 04:36, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

• The fact of the matter is that, in the end, BLP does and must trump consensus. While the efforts of the community in crafting a reasonably orderly manner of dealing with biographies of living persons that are "merely" unreferenced is to be commended, negative statements not supported by a reliable source must be summarily removed, and if the article as a whole is substantially negative and unreferenced then it must be deleted (provided there isn't a proper version in its history to revert to).

  The onus of providing references for a BLP lie on those wishing to keep it, not on those protecting the article subject (and the project) by removing unsourced negative material. — Coren  05:04, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

  • @Cyclopia: No, offline sources are just as good as online sources, if a little less convenient for verification (which is why it's preferable to point at online source when possible).

    To answer your second point, just claiming something is done to enforce BLP doesn't give a free pass— but I was answering the general question posed and not commenting on the precipitating incident specifically. Like any other policy, it can be abused or misapplied. — Coren  12:21, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

  • @Timotheus Canens: I mean to the general principle, but WP:BLP is clear there too: "Remove immediately any contentious material about a living person that is unsourced or poorly sourced or that relies on sources that fail in some other way to comply with Verifiability." — Coren  12:29, 15 December 2010 (UTC)
• I think a point is being missed here: the claim that Scott MacDonald deleted articles because the sources were not available online for him to verify. I think this does need clarification, though on balance I agree that the approach Scott MacDonald takes is OK, as long as he does continue to discuss any contested deletions. Pointing to other clean-up work he does (e.g. the years-old BLP diffs he removed) makes a case for more people getting involved with that - Scott, have you tried to get a group of people together to adopt your approach and do more work than you could do alone? You could, for example, include people that had access to sources you might not have access to. The administrator discretion clause doesn't mean administrators have to work alone - they should still work with others as needed where needed, rather than rely too much on their own judgment. What tend to happen there is that admins end up in a 'defensive' mindset, which can be avoided if you work within a group steadily clearing backlogs. Carcharoth (talk) 00:24, 16 December 2010 (UTC)
  • • Scott: My point was simple, "I spent nearly a year searching the unreferenced BLP categories and removing negative material - I've now moved back to searching for offending material more widely. More people should do this, but I'm not sure how one does it collaboratively. For me it is simply a "seek and remove" mission. That's my contribution." - you can still do that, but why not work with other people as well, unless you think you can do all this by yourself? Efforts such as the one you are undertaking have to scale, otherwise they make very little impact. Discuss with others how you find and remove negative material, and encourage more people to do what you do. It is possible that others will find ways to improve what you are doing, and discussions will reduce the chances that standards will diverge widely among those doing this work. Carcharoth (talk) 01:22, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

• I do not see any direct contradiction between the BLP policy and this Committee's decisions in cases such as Badlydrawnjeff. With regard to the appropriateness of outright deletion of problematic BLPs, this needs to be addressed on a case-by-case basis rather than through a uniform rule or practice. In general, deletion (rather than removal of particular bits of problematic content) is more likely to be warranted where the problems with the article are of long standing, they are serious (rather than more technical in nature), and where the notability of the article subject to begin with is borderline. Of all the BLP related priorities (and there are several), the greatest focus should be on article content that actually poses a thread of harm to the article subject. Newyorkbrad (talk) 17:20, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Request for clarification: WP:ARBR&I/scope of topic ban of Mathsci

Initiated by Mathsci (talk) at 03:55, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

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

• Mathsci (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• EdJohnston (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)
• Timotheus Canens (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)

Statement by Mathsci

Response to arbitrators

Many thanks to arbitrators for suggesting (unexpectedly!) that my topic ban could formally be lifted. If other arbitrators agree that my name could be removed from the list of those under personal sanctions from ArbCom, I would adhere to my voluntary undertaking never again to edit articles or their talk pages related to race and intelligence, broadly construed.

Statement by Captain Occam

Since this thread discusses both me and Ferahgo, I think Mathsci should have notified us about it, but now that I’ve found it I’ll offer a statement here.

As someone who was accused of meatpuppetry in one of Mathsci’s recent AE threads, I beg to differ with the assertion that Mathsci’s participation in process pages has been completely harmless. I would recommend that arbitrators read this thread before concluding that Mathsci is correct to claim this. Apparently Mathsci is convinced that Woodsrock and Sightwatcher are both meatpuppets of mine, and this has resulted in a week-long AE thread, although almost none of the people commenting (and no admins) have believed that there’s a good reason to assume this. Even so, Mathsci is continuing to claim that I am violating my topic ban (as in the statement above), and bringing up this accusation in unrelated discussions where the accounts that he suspects of being meatpuppets have participated. (Such as here). I have neither been blocked nor warned for violating my topic ban since the end of the arbitration case, and as far as I know Sightwatcher and Woodsrock are just a pair of new uses who happen to disagree with Mathsci (although I admit it wouldn’t hurt for Woodsrock to improve his civility), and for Mathsci to keep bringing up this accusation against us is very irritating.

More importantly, dealing with these accusations first from Muntuwandi and now from Mathsci has made it very difficult for me to work on the other articles that I’d like to. My style of editing is that I prefer to fully focus on one article at a time, and not allow myself to be distracted by anything else until I’m reasonably satisfied with it, but this requires me not having to constantly deal with accusations being made against me. During the three months since the end of the arbitration case, there has only been around one month during which I was left alone sufficiently to do this, during which I wrote the New Black Panther Party voter intimidation case article. I had been hoping to get started on my planned rewrite of the William Beebe article over the past week—I’ve now done all of the research that I need to for it—but while Mathsci is continuing to badger me, that’s not possible.

As can be seen from the proposed decision page before Mathsci volunteered to be topic banned by consent, when he agreed to this the arbitrators were already voting in favor of him receiving a topic ban identical to the one received by me and David.Kane, and opposing the lesser remedy for him. The only reason Mathsci received a topic ban that was voluntary rather than involuntary is because he volunteered for this four days before the case closed. The “Review of topic bans” decision also states that applications for topic bans to be lifted will not be considered less than six months before the close of the case. To make an exception to this in Mathsci’s case because his topic ban was voluntary would send a message that any time an editor is clearly going to be sanctioned in an arbitration case, he can avoid being subject to some aspects of the ruling by volunteering to receive the sanction that arbitrators are already voting for. --Captain Occam (talk) 05:41, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

Additional comments

Although it’s correct that Mathsci is no longer participating in the RFC, he’s still using unrelated fora to snipe at the people who express disagreement with him there. Is Mathsci’s participation in discussions like that one really helpful, and something that ought to be encouraged? --Captain Occam (talk) 19:56, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

Response to Mathsci

By any objective standard, it’s disruptive for you to hijack an unrelated discussion in order to accuse an administrator who disagreed with you in the RFC of “silliness and absurdity”. I’m obviously not a party to your private communications with ArbCom, and neither are the admins who will be closing the AE thread, but I don’t see how any kind of private communications with ArbCom would justify acting this way. You’ve made it clear what your excuse about this is—that all of what you’ve been doing recently is acceptable in light of your private correspondence, but that since you can’t actually tell anyone else about the content this correspondence, the admins closing the AE thread will have to just take your word for this. You’ve been in private correspondence with ArbCom for around two weeks now. Isn’t it a little inappropriate to use this secrecy as a one-size-fits-all excuse for whatever you want to do in the meantime? --Captain Occam (talk) 20:47, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

Questions about EdJohnston’s new sanctions

I don’t think it’s a bad idea in principle to extend topic bans to all discussions related to the articles in question, and I know this has been done with topic bans from other arbitration cases. But I have some concerns about the process by which EdJohnston made a decision in this particular case. When I discussed this with EdJohnston in his user talk, he said that I should ask ArbCom about it in this thread, so I’m doing so. The thread where I explained my concerns to him is here. Since EdJohnston has suggested that ArbCom examine this situation, I think arbitrators should read the thread there.

As I stated there, EdJohnston originally suggested in the AE thread that this expansion of topic bans from the R&I case be extended for Mathsci as well as me and Ferahgo, because he and Timothy Canens both felt that all three of us have contributed to the continued conflict over these articles. Mathsci subsequently contacted both of these admins privately via e-mail, and shortly thereafter, EdJohnston and Timothy Canens decided to sanction me and Ferahgo but not Mathsci. No other admins commented in the discussion about this. As far as I know, after EdJohnston’s original proposal to sanction all three of us, the only thing that changed about the situation was Mathsci e-mailing him. (Unless you count Mathsci’s new comments directed at Cirt, but those would argue in favor of him being included in the additional sanctions, not against this.)

In the discussion in his user talk, EdJohnston has said that his decision in the AE thread was not influenced by Mathsci’s e-mails. He also said in this comment there that once Mathsci began e-mailing him, it would have been a good idea for him to close the AE thread with no action, in order to avoid the appearance of being influenced by private correspondence. But even though EdJohnston clearly agrees that it would not have been appropriate for him to let e-mails from one of the involved parties in an AE thread influence his decision there, he has not been willing to explain what other than Mathsci’s e-mails caused him to change his mind about his initial proposal to sanction all three of us equally.

I consider this a problem for two reasons. First, even though EdJohnston is basically agreeing that it might have been a better idea for him to close the thread with no action in order to avoid the appearance of being influenced by private correspondence, he is not willing to do anything to reverse the fact that he’s created that impression. He’s unwilling to reverse the decision he made there, and he’s also unwilling to explain what caused his reversal of opinion about sanctioning all of us equally. And second, according to this decision from a past arbitration case, EdJohnston has a responsibility to explain why he chose to sanction me without sanctioning Mathsci. EdJohnston has not explained this, despite my asking him about it several times in his user talk. According to this arbitration principle, if EdJohnston was not prepared to justify the reason for this decision in public, he should not have made it. (And as stated in the comment that I linked to, EdJohnston seems to agree that perhaps he should not have made this decision, but he’s still not willing to undo it.)

Can ArbCom clarify what’s the appropriate course of action here? This is the first time I’ve ever had an admin sanction me and then later express uncertainty over whether it might have been a better idea to take no action, while still being unwilling to reverse their decision. --Captain Occam (talk) 03:24, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

Statement by VsevolodKrolikov

I'd like the ban to include RfCs connected to the topic, broadly construed. I struggle to see how the involvement of any of these three editors at the RfC concerning user:WeijiBaikeBianji is not going against the purpose of the topic ban. I also think that MathSci's repeated allegations that the RfC has been instigated by the other two need to stop. There is no evidence for this that I have seen, and it heightens tension when all the active editors in the area want WBB to do is WP:HEAR the concerns of other editors, and not edit against consensus or be "bold" when it's really unwise to be. RfCs are not there to enforce sanctions, and we are not "reporting" WBB, but trying to bring him into a better mode of editing.VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 06:02, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

Question for Shell Kinney You don't think the repeated allegations of meatpuppetry are at all problematic? The calling for an AE enforcement in what looks rather like a response to a genuine RfC, on fairly flimsy grounds? I have to disagree with you that his involvement has been entirely benign. I simply don't see the need for topic banned people to be involved in the RfC. RfCs don't hand out sanctions. They're meant to be attempts to sort out problems in an area without resort to sanctions. It shouldn't happen with topic banned editors snipping from the sidelines trying to influence how people edit in the topic.VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 12:46, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

For Professor Marginalia I find your statement somewhat contradictory. You emphasise how MathSci has only been civil, yet you think the claims of Captain Occam instigating interference are not justified. Civil accusations are still accusations, and the way that they seemed to rope in more than just these two editors raised tensions. My own feeling getting involved in all of this is that far too many people were just too jumpy. What do we have? One uncivil editor who got blocked without any complaints, and another who has accepted - albeit grudgingly, that the RfC should come to an end - an RfC suggested by an admin. MathSci also endorsed the statement "This RfC seems to be ideologically motivated, I think you're hoping for ArbCom to overreact and hand out a topic ban. Do try proper dispute resolution rather than bringing out the big guns to get people banned", an aggressive, accusatory statement that certainly seemed unnecessary. (Remember, it was an admin who suggested RfC as the way forward in the dispute). MathSci of course wasn't the only endorser - the jumpiness seems more widespread than that. "Suspicion" has been used a few times here to imply guilt on the part of the suspected. There's communication going on off-wiki with arbcom that we're not all party too; dark hints about what might be found regarding meat puppetry also haven't helped. Having someone whose only role is to "sniff out socks and trolls" sounds all very nice. The thing is, even if there are no witches, having a witchfinder general around the place doesn't make for a happy community. VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 10:15, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

Statement by Tijfo098

The constant stream of administrative complaints from topic banned users is a proxy way of influencing articles in this area. The single-purpose accounts is probably another. Presumably NYB & Shell intend to carve a "whistleblower" role for Mathsci, who will exclusively deal with filing administrative requests in this topic area from now on, in contrast to the other topic banned users who, by emerging AE consensus, aren't going to be allowed to do this anymore. Tijfo098 (talk) 11:52, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

Statement by Timotheus Canens

I remain of the view that input by topic-banned editors in topic-related processes, including DR, is neither necessary or helpful in general, nor useful in this case. All it seems to accomplish is to encourage the topic-banned users to continue to snipe at each other and watch the topic area closely, personalizing the disputes further and fostering battleground behavior, instead of properly disengaging. The fact that no admin was inclined to address the bulk of Mathsci's most recent enforcement request before it was archived for the first time is telling. T. Canens (talk) 16:04, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

@Mathsci: In case it isn't clear: so far no one has purported to actually expand your topic ban. Admin comments at AE are not sanctions until and unless they are acted upon, by means of a notification on user talk, logging at the case page, and so on; and as long as WP:ARBR&I#Discretionary sanctions has not been vacated, administrators have the remit to impose sanctions they deem necessary and appropriate. T. Canens (talk) 19:08, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

Statement by Professor marginalia

The ambiguities in arb comm's sanctions and/or advice only inspired Captain Occam and Ferahgo the Assassin to explore all manner of alternatives to influence the articles *besides* directly editing them after their topic bans, including the one-sided schmoozing and prospecting for proxy edits on user talk pages. The both of them tune out what they don't want to hear, so hints and fuzzy lines merely open doors to crazy-making. For their own sakes they should be given bright white boundary lines.

Mathsci's continued involvement seems to have limited itself to sniffing out socks and trolls, which have been springing up like mushrooms. It's a delicate balance - between WP:BITE and WP:DUCK. But he's not shooting wildly - his targets (rightly or wrongly) fit the profile of socks (new and sleepers) - and he's got a lot of company sharing his suspicions. I'm suspicious too--we're seeing a rash of newly hatched newbies who are just way too comfortable with wp, with policy, editing tools, userboxes, with template and article creation, with subscription only access to professional journals used in references, and several (most bizarrely) adopting a peculiarly skewed interest in the tedious arbitration conducted months before they registered. Off-site recruitment was an objection raised against some of the now topic banned users during the arbitration. Despite sharing some of his suspicions, I myself wouldn't go so far as Mathsci to blame Captain Occam of instigating here. Yes, there is a history, a pattern, but for me I know that the editing of articles with kinds of back-page baggage as these involved articles have inherited can get derailed by juvenile hijinks and intrigues pointing in any number of directions, always at the expense of those focused on the "substance" in disputes.

With that said, I really don't see that mathsci's involvement has been disruptive. He's been civil-magnanimous even. I generally try to "tune out" or wp:DENY those I suspect of being trolls, socks or proxies--but I realize they are disruptive and somebody needs to meet them head on. Since the accusations against him he acknowledged when he voluntarily imposed (later ratified by arb comm) his own topic ban narrowly focused on incivility, I again come back to--I don't see where he's being uncivil. In other words, I think the disruptions were already there--Mathsci's involvement simply forced attention on them via the dispute channel or WP styled "chain of command". Professor marginalia (talk) 08:57, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

Answer to VsevolodKrolikov: Let me clarify that I do think Captain Occam has instigated interference--but I can't say he's the mastermind responsible for socks and meatpuppets. And I disagree that Mathsci's accusations have "roped" anybody here-others have been posting these allegations weeks before he weighed in. WBB inherited three newly registered antagonists and a fourth whose account was inactive for years at the exact moment his old one, Ferahgo the Assassin, is delivered a topic ban. Just one week after benign disagreement between the two following his first and (at the time) only edit to a race/intelligence related article and Sightwatcher is backing Ferahgo against WBB over on AE. There's no "witch hunt" here. Professor marginalia (talk) 17:43, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

Statement by EdJohnston

Please see the result of a request at Arbitration Enforcement. Wider topic bans were imposed on Captain Occam and Ferahgo the Assassin. For convenience the Sanction portion of the AE is reproduced in the box below:

This thread was closed with no sanctions on Mathsci. Obviously Arbcom can make a decision to lift Mathsci's ban if they want to. The AE request mentioned the behavior of two new editors who have recently become active on R&I, and might possibly be socks:

• Woodsrock (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) and
• SightWatcher (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Woodsrock has made some personal attacks, and was notified of the R&I discretionary sanctions by MastCell on 22 November. He has not edited Misplaced Pages since then. SightWatcher seems to be more of a good-faith editor, and I don't see any misbehavior yet that would justify notification under the R&I sanctions. EdJohnston (talk) 19:11, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

I personally believe that, with the closing of the AE request without any change in the scope of Mathsci's topic ban, the main reason for Mathsci to seek a clarification here has gone away. My own opinion is that the strengthened sanction on Captain Occam and Ferahgo will help to reduce the unneeded process activity around Race and intelligence. The closure of the AE request does reflect a lesser concern about Mathsci's process activities around R&I (and those of David.Kane) than those of the two others. I can think of some reasons why Arbcom might want to continue their review of Mathsci's clarification request anyway:

1. If they believe it is time to lift Mathsci's topic ban, as suggested by one arb.
2. If they think that sockpuppetry and meatpuppetry around Race and intelligence are significant and require their attention. If so, then the need to handle confidential information might be a reason for the further study to take place within Arbcom rather than at AE. This clarification request could serve as a dialog to receive input from the community regarding possible violations of WP:SOCK. At present we know little (except for what Mathsci has said in various requests) about the status of Arbcom's review of the possible meatpuppetry. We have heard that a checkuser was run, presumably at the request of the arbs and not per SPI, regarding Woodsrock and SightWatcher. I asked this question of Captain Occam on my user talk: "I would welcome any clarification you can give as to whether you think SightWatcher or Woodsrock could be anyone you know personally or have communicated with electronically". He replied that that he had sent email to Shell Kinney. This does suggest that at least some of the arbs may be interested in pursuing this question. EdJohnston (talk) 05:23, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

Statement by Xxanthippe

I find the extent of alleged private e-mailing in this case to be disturbing. Although I expect it does not breach the rules, it gives the impression, true or false, of backstairs cronyism. Disciplinary matters of this nature should be conducted in a completely transparent manner. Xxanthippe (talk) 03:50, 16 December 2010 (UTC).

Requested clarification from Vassyana

I would ask the Arbitration Committee to briefly review two AE threads: this thread discussing multiple editors and this recent appeal by Captain Occam. Could MathSci and ArbCom please note some specificity regarding involvement insofar as complained areas? I, as an administrator currently active on AE, would like some bright line clarification. I want a nice clear line drawn between mudslinging/battling and useful good faith assistance with disruption. If this is not an all or nothing disengagement, I want to the exact limits of that something explicitly in a short statement. It will cut through a major portion of noise and answer a major, recurring point. Thank you. Vassyana (talk) 20:30, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Statement by other user

Clerk notes

Arbitrator views and discussion

• Awaiting statements. I am specifically open to the possibility of lifting Mathsci's topic-ban at this time, to avoid disputes about its precise borders, given his statement that in any event he does not intend to return to editing the articles themselves. It may also be that we need to review the behavior of various editors on these articles since the case closed. Newyorkbrad (talk) 04:00, 29 November 2010 (UTC)
• Waiting for additional statements here, but I don't believe Mathsci's participation in process areas for this topic has been disruptive. Shell 04:19, 29 November 2010 (UTC)
• Willing to lift the topic ban, given Mathsci's voluntary withdrawal of editing articles in the topic area. SirFozzie (talk) 19:34, 30 November 2010 (UTC)
• I am also open to the idea of removing Mathsci's restriction if he so wishes.  Roger 11:37, 8 December 2010 (UTC)
• Recused on this case. Risker (talk) 05:13, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Motion (WP:ARBR&I)

Proposed

That Remedy 6 ("Mathsci topic-banned by mutual consent") of the Race and Intelligence case is terminated, effective immediately.

There are 10 active arbitrators, 1 of whom is recused, so the majority to pass is 5.

Support

1.  Roger 10:08, 15 December 2010 (UTC)
2. — Coren  12:17, 15 December 2010 (UTC)
3. SirFozzie (talk) 16:50, 15 December 2010 (UTC)
4. Carcharoth (talk) 23:26, 15 December 2010 (UTC)
5. Shell 23:31, 15 December 2010 (UTC)
6. Newyorkbrad (talk) 04:34, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Oppose

Abstain