Arbitration case pages exist to assist the Arbitration Committee in arriving at fair, well-informed decisions. The case Workshop exists so that parties to the case, other interested members of the community, and members of the Arbitration Committee can post possible components of the final decision for review and comment by others. Components proposed here may be general principles of site policy and procedure, findings of fact about the dispute, remedies to resolve the dispute, and arrangements for remedy enforcement. These are the four types of proposals that can be included in committee final decisions. There are also sections for analysis of /Evidence, and for general discussion of the case. Any user may edit this workshop page; please sign all posts and proposals. Arbitrators will place components they wish to propose be adopted into the final decision on the /Proposed decision page. Only Arbitrators and clerks may edit that page, for voting, clarification as well as implementation purposes.
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Proposed final decision
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Proposed principles
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Analysis of evidence
Place here items of evidence (with diffs) and detailed analysis
JohnPackLambert and 7&6=thirteen
Despite these editors being right on each side of this pesky ideological divide, I believe they're both at least trying to be productive. However, they both can't help themselves when it comes to deletion related issues. I believe the evidence provided by Ritchie333 (about JPL) and by Beccaynr (about 7&6) are both the most relevant here, and don't come from anyone obviously with an axe to grind (there may be others, but I'm picking these two as the most straightforward as to why ArbCom need to take action). I don't have a particular view on the other two editors. Comment by BlackKite. Moved from evidence page by Barkeep49 17:29, 20 June 2022 (UTC)
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On the statistical evidence
There is one significant deficiency in the keep vs. delete statistics which needs to be kept in mind: participation in discussions is utterly voluntary, except for the nominator. Therefore one potential meaning of the voting ratio is that a user may prefer to vote in cases where they would vote "keep" or "delete" rather than that, for any random discussion, they would vote one way or the other. Also, most of us (I imagine) tend to reserve our participation to certain classes of subject. For example, I rarely vote in biography or band or album/song discussions. I haven't tried to run the numbers, but I have to think that the success ratio for nominations in different subject areas varies considerably.
Rather than focusing on who is a deletionist or inclusionist, I think it is more worthwhile to look at the accuracy. From the table I compiled it's clear that there is quite a bit of variance in this, and that some editors have fairly poor accuracy, while at least one editor whom I did not list has a 95% accuracy. I note that Mr. Lambert is reasonably accurate on voting but has a poorer record on nominations, as an example. I am hard pressed to believe that someone who mostly votes delete, accurately, is doing anything wrong in that respect. Mangoe (talk) 22:22, 23 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
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I have been thinking recently a fair amount myself about the topics Aquillion Diff/1094738138 and Paulmcdonald Special:Diff/1094789297 discuss below (even before this case). When someone is in the minority of community consensus are there (or should there be) right places and wrong places to advocate for your point of view? So, for instance, in this case if you know (or should know per WP:COMPETENCE) that you have a minority view about the notability of topic Foo, is it ok to vote that way at AfD anyway? If the answer to that is yes, what expectations do we have for closers about weighting such viewpoints? If the answer is no, just what kind of discussions are appropriate to join in an attempt to convince others so that consensus changes? These are not rhetorical questions for me, but ones I've been struggling with and ones that may have some bearing on how this case is decided. Barkeep49 (talk) 15:23, 24 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
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There is nothing inherently wrong with voting keep or delete in nearly every AfD that you participate in. However, analyzing an individual's voting patterns helps to provide additional insight into the potential motivations and agendas that some voters bring to AfD. This voting analysis can be combined with a behavioral analysis of an editor at AfD to draw additional conclusions. In many cases, an editor might simply be searching out a certain type of AfD, and that could explain their innocent tendency to vote one way more than the other. However, if you see that someone tends to vote one way nearly all the time, and you simultaneously note that this person also demonstrates a pattern of behavioral problems (like getting overly emotional/argumentative at AfD, or nominating tons of article that are unlikely to be deleted, or trying to cite dubious sources in attempt to artificially inflate the notability of a subject, or canvassing other editors who are likely to vote the same way as them), then you can start to piece together the clues and understand that this editor has a problematic battleground mentality. Looking at the keep vs. delete ratio is not itself an indicator of a problem, but it's one of many signs that can be viewed simultaneously to put together the bigger picture.
Apart from that, I absolutely agree that the accuracy statistic is another critical stat that needs to be included (which is why I originally built that stat into the afdstats tool in the first place). If I had more than 500 characters to use in the evidence phase, I would have devoted some to that. Thanks to Mangoe for including that in their evidence. —ScottyWong— 22:43, 23 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The comments and discussion about "accuracy" to me should not be considered. I disagree with the named parties (and others) from time to time or even quite often in AFD discussions. But I should hope that there would be no harm in just disagreeing--worst case scenario is the editor is "wrong" and I can't think of a single reason to take action against someone for that. Now--for civility, that could be something that violates the Five Pillars and that would be a different story. But just... making a mistake? Disagreeing with consensus? I just don't see it. I hope that there is more being considered than just "accuracy" here.--Paul McDonald (talk) 02:22, 24 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Again, there's nothing inherently wrong with having a low "accuracy" statistic at AfD. There's obviously no policy that says you'll be blocked or topic banned if your accuracy falls too low. But this is just another indicator among many. If an editor has low accuracy, that means they're frequently going against the mainstream view of what articles are generally kept or deleted around here. That could be a sign that they fundamentally misunderstand notability and WP:NOT policies, or that they disagree with the policies and are attempting to battle against them one AfD at a time. It's just a data point, not necessarily a sign of a problem in all cases, and certainly not actionable on its own. But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't consider that data (in combination with all of the other available evidence) if it's available. —ScottyWong— 13:40, 24 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Although I appreciate your view that alignment with outcome is one data point to consider, in my view, it's more relevant for identifying cases to be investigated further. But since we're already here, I feel we should just look for battleground behaviour being exhibited in discussions. Undesirable behaviour can and does happen independently of alignment with outcome. As you noted, disagreement with others is not a problem in itself. How editors express their disagreement is what's key, no matter what viewpoint they are supporting. isaacl (talk) 15:40, 24 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Conversely, if you have a very high accuracy stat, it could be a sign that you're just "piling on" to discussions that have already reached a consensus, not contributing anything of substance. – Joe (talk) 16:16, 24 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
A close look at civility and policy/guideline compliance tells us far more about an editor's conduct than statistics ever could. The evidence I presented regarding Lugnuts shows four AfDs [1][2][3][4] where articles with no SIGCOV sourcing whatsoever were kept based on spurious votes such as "meets NCRIC". These would show as "accurate" votes in the statistics despite running counter to what the guideline actually says. This also reflects either a lack of familiarity with the relevant guideline or an unwillingness to go against the numerical vote count on the part of closing admins, which is another issue that should be addressed here. –dlthewave☎ 03:59, 24 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
This also reflects either a lack of familiarity with the relevant guideline or an unwillingness to go against the numerical vote count on the part of closing admins, which is another issue that should be addressed here. 1000x this. We get like 1-2 DRVs a week on sportsperson closes that apparently failed to consider !votes by weight rather than number and/or were completely unfamiliar with NSPORT. This is exactly why it's problematic we have zero consequences for editors who consistently push non-guideline-based rationales. JoelleJay (talk) 04:42, 24 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I share the nervousness some editors above express about focusing on accuracy. Being in the minority (that is, holding views on the subjective aspects by which we make decisions, or holding good-faith interpretations of policy that are reasonable but uncommon) is not against policy, and we should not sanction someone for that alone. If someone is constantly in the minority in discussions, it might be a reason to look carefully at their arguments and how they conduct themselves in order to ensure that their positions are at least defensible, but as long as their arguments clearly pass WP:COMPETENCE, are made in good faith, and are based on at least some plausible interpretation of policy then I don't think it's appropriate to sanction someone for consistently holding a minority position, not even if they are a constant AFD participant who is in the minority in every single discussion they take part in. Constantly creating AFDs that go nowhere is mildly more concerning (because unlike just participating, they could be wasting the community's time), but even then, the underlying reason for sanctions needs to be something more basic like WP:COMPETENCE or an WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT / WP:DEADHORSE / WP:BLUDGEON refusal to admit that some specific interpretation of policy they hold isn't widely enough shared for their repeated discussions to go anywhere. That requires looking at the actual arguments they make; simply being wrong a lot isn't sufficient. --Aquillion (talk) 07:23, 24 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
One more thought and I'm done entering: remember that consensus can change. So if we sanction someone just for being "wrong" against consensus, and the consensus changes later so that they are now "right" -- do we "un-sanction them" ?--Paul McDonald (talk) 14:10, 24 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Just remember that when we're talking about accuracy, only one or two editors may comment on a particular AFD -- this is the case in several of the ones I linked to on the evidence page -- so their votes may not reflect the consensus of the wider community. -- Vaulter 14:43, 24 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I'll also note there's an issue inherent w/re "accuracy" when multiple members of ARS all !vote the same way. That can affect outcome and make all of them look "accurate" for that AfD. So even "accuracy" stats need to be looked at with care. valereee (talk) 16:22, 24 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
On Lugnuts "misleading" other editors
If I were one of the participants in the AFDs referenced here, I'd be somewhat peeved with the insinuation that Lugnuts misled me. We have no reason to believe those editors didn't arrive at the same opinion on their own because, believe it or not, the push to deprecate (or whatever term you want to use) sports notability guidelines does not enjoy widespread community support. -- Vaulter 14:54, 24 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
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The drafters have already decided that conflict about the RfC is out of scope. The question that is relevant for this case is whether there is evidence at AfD of local consensus overriding global consensus which the committee has addressed in previous cases (3 times according to the linked page). Barkeep49 (talk) 15:12, 24 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Vaulter does it mean that editors who cite a current sports notability guideline are at risk of sanction? No. Does it mean that editors who cite a previous sports notability guideline that no longer has community consensus are at risk of sanctions? Well that's trickier for me which I elaborate on more above. Barkeep49 (talk) 15:26, 24 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
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@Barkeep49: Does that mean editors who cite a sports notability guideline in an AFD are at risk of sanctions? -- Vaulter 15:20, 24 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The version of NCRIC that Lugnuts, and others (including in part myself), would have cited at those AfDs was established at this discussion started by RandomCanadian and which was contributed to by only two other editors - one of whom is now banned. Lugnuts wasn't one of them - and there wasn't really very much discussion about it. The proposal was then taken to NSPORTS and discussed briefly before being imposed - again without input from Lugnuts. To be honest, none of the people who would typically have input into major changes in terms of the cricket project had any input whatsoever - so this really isn't a case of a wikiproject gathering local consensus for anything at all - I'd argue that it's more a case of a "solution" imposed on a wikiproject. All that the editors who contributed to those AfDs were doing was taking what was given to them as an SNG - I don't think any of the editors involved in the drafting of NCRIC contributed to any of those AfD did they?
Compare the two discussions linked about to this one from 2021 if you'd like to see what I'd expect to have been the level of discussion.
Fwiw I'd also argue that Lugnuts' position at those AfD is rather more nuanced than is being suggested here. In none of the cases do they "vote" as Keep: passes NCRIC by itself. Blue Square Thing (talk) 15:35, 24 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Barkeep49: just for the absence of doubt, the version of NCRIC being cited at those AfD was the current one. Blue Square Thing (talk) 15:36, 24 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
