Wikipedia Arbitration
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Wikipedia Arbitration
About arbitration Talk Arbitration policy (CU/OS) Guide to arbitration Noticeboard + Talk Search archived proceedings Ban appeals Report
Open proceedings All open requests Case requests Clarification and Amendment requests Arbitrator motion requests Enforcement requests
Active sanctions Contentious topics (Log) General sanctions Editor sanctions
Arbitration Committee Discuss + Contact Members Procedures Elections Talk History Clerks + Talk Clerk procedures
Audit Talk Statistics Talk Reports (pre-2016)
Track related changes
v t e

Important — please note The Committee, in passing the motion to open this case, provided explicit direction to all editors participating in this case: "Editors are expected to observe appropriate decorum on the case pages and in any other discussion of this incident." "Editors are instructed to refrain from disclosing on-wiki the name or other identifying information concerning any editor who does not edit under or disclose on-wiki his or her real-world identity. Any evidence that would have the potential effect of making such a disclosure shall not be posted on-wiki, but shall be e-mailed to the Arbitration Committee. The committee will take appropriate steps to ensure that no editor is sanctioned based on private evidence without an appropriate opportunity to respond to such evidence, while also seeking to ensure that editors' identifying information is not unnecessarily disclosed." "All editors, whether or not they are potential parties to the case, are strongly urged to exercise consideration and discretion in dealing both on- and off-wiki with all aspects of this highly sensitive situation. Any behavior that would unnecessarily inflame or widen the dispute should be avoided." The Clerk for this case is KnightLago (talk · contribs) who will be assisted by non-recused members of the Clerk team in enforcing the above rules. The Clerks will, wherever it deems necessary, refactor and remove statements where they violate the above directions, or where they violate the general standards of decorum and Wikipedia policies. The Clerks will, where required for particular egregious or repetitive violations, ban participants from the case pages for an appropriate period of time. Both the refactoring of statements, and case page bans, that are implemented by the Clerks, can be appealed to the Committee. If any user requires assistance in submitting private evidence to the Arbitrators in the method requested by Committee (see the second bullet point, above), please contact a member of the Clerks or, alternatively, an Arbitrator directly. —User:KnightLago (talk) 02:17, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Given the exceptional nature of the case (insofar as it centers on the alleged contents of a private mailing list), the normal workshop format is not appropriate. This page will be used by the drafting arbitrator (Coren), or other arbitrators as required, to post redacted summaries of privately submitted evidence when appropriate and to ask questions to the participants in a format closer to that of an inquest. Please refrain from responding directly to statements made by others; this page is not appropriate for threaded discussion and such comments will be refactored. The prohibition against posting private information remains in force here. When in doubt, submit evidence to the committee directly.

This is some of the evidence from the mailing list used in crafting the decision. It is to be noted that the quotes were selected for being representative, and as typical as possible, without risking privacy. None of the selected email are isolated incidents; and the decision will reflect this.

Please be aware that, because of time zone differences, some of the times might be off by plus or minus four hours. I tried to make sure everything was in GMT but translation to or from my own time zone might have mangled a timestamp on occasion.

Complete copies of the quoted email will be provided on request to members of the mailing list only, and only if they were a member at the time of the email.

Do not respond to anyone on this page. The sender of quoted email may place a brief response below each, but any threaded or extended discussion must happen on the talk page. Clerks are requested to enforce this systematically. — Coren ^(talk) 02:39, 12 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Digwuren

• 20090201-0919 "Furthermore, he may have been swayed by the recent 3RR warning by Hillock directly above his message [...] We might consider adopting as standard tactic the practice that before the 3RR report is filed, somebody else should add a 3RR warning to the user's talkpage."
• 20090205-1811 "Essentially, I believe this a good candidate for [Biruitorul]'s suggested "At long last, have you no sense of decency left?" manœuvre. But for it to stick, I may need somebody else to back me up when Deacon's ire is turned against me."
• 20090209-1435 "I think I know a reasonably safe place to provoke BFF into 3RR. See <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Victory_Day_(May_9)&action=history>. Who wants to participate, and when is a good time?"
• 20090215-2039 "Either way, I consider Jehochman dangerous, and will seek to "poison the well" re his neutrality in a few days. I hope to make it socially unacceptable for him to take administrative actions concerning me in the future. Ideas are welcome, and somebody please support me when the time arrives -- because I can't do this alone."
• 20090216-1722 "I have left a message to his [JHochman] talkpage, and his response fits with my scheme nicely. Please join in. The plan is to develop appearance of a minor personality conflict -- not large enough to cause immediate trouble for anybody, but sizable enough so that if Jehochman attempts to do anything similar in the future, a plausible case of he being biased against me can be made by referring to this thread. A few other people censuring the attitude he's displaying in his response, and perhaps a close-up post by me, should be enough to get that done.[1]"
• 20090731-0518 "If you find an opposing party is reverting you repeatedly, call in help through the list. There are about ten of us; we can easily out-revert any single opponent *and* thus demonstrade wide consensus if it's necessary. Then, 3RR will work for us, not against us."
• 20090816-0919 In thread discussing how to "win" an ongoing edit war:

• Jacurek self-reverts to Lokyz' version, then reports and explicitly says in the report that he got carried away, but self-reverted as soon as he realised it's an editwar;
• with a little bit of luck, the passingby administrator takes it into account;

• if Jacurek gets blocked, it can be reasonably argued that such a block has no preventive utility, which may lead to reversal;

• once Lokyz is blocked, somebody else points out that Lokyz' redirect is patently silly and restores the content.

Piotrus

• 20090206-2304 Molobo suggested we try to desysop Deacon. I like the idea in principle, but how to go about it in practice? Note: before ArbCom, we could launch an RfC about Deacon - this may be a good way to irritate him and gather info on who else would like to see him taken down a peg...

Discussing whether an admin should be desysoped is not against the rules, is it? Although I do regret some of the word choices I used in that email (the "irritate" part - I must've been quite irritated myself when I wrote it, apparently). I will make sure that I review the word choices in my future Wikipedia-related emails to avoid possible battleground-influenced wording. However please note that in the end, neither an RfC nor a request to desysop were ever made. Evidence of thought crime...? The quote is also very selective, as this email also contains my discussion of whether such an action would benefit the project or not. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 18:06, 22 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• 20090216-0055 Even not knowing him previously I've criticized him on ANI. This should be a good start. * in re Jehochman at ANI in response to 15/02/2009 20:39

Vaguely recall this; it was the first time I looked into his judgment and that time I've decided to publicly disagree with him. Nothing more, nothing less. In hindsight, I should've probably avoid commenting at all, or disclosed I was asked to look into it by another editor; I will make sure to do so in the future. But I think my comment from that time was sound. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 18:06, 22 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• 20090506-1615 "Help appreciated, I would like to avoid more then 2 reverts per day..."

I should have announced this on a public forum (which didn't exist at that but exists now - see my comment below); I see now how this could be misinterpreted. I will certainly do that from now on. And yes, I would like to avoid making more than 2 reverts per day on any given article :) --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 18:06, 22 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• 20090602-1804 This [being blocked for 3RR] only speaks of the need not to revert by yourself more then twice a day and if reverts are needed, request them here or on IMs or such. Revert warring by yourself leads only down this path. Learn from it.

Per my above argument, I would now rephrase this to "if reverts are needed, try to get community involved in discussing and editing by announcing the article on a public wiki forum." Please note that before recent creation of the EE noticeboard there was no place on wiki where one could bring broadly EE-themed articles to attention of other editors. Since I've helped establish the EE noticeboard last month, there should be no further problems with any off-wiki EE related canvassing, as the appropriate public forum now exists. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 18:06, 22 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• 20090731-0652 "[...] known defusing strategy is to blow hot air and make the [3RR] thread so confusing it will be closed with no action"

Well, yes, I've seen it happen time and again with my (and others) 3RR reports being turned into a battleground and the closing admin avoiding a block because of that. I've even written a wiki essay on that. What's wrong with discussing the inefficiency in the current ANI/3RR board? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 18:06, 22 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Martin

• 20090404-0554 "One thing we could perhaps exploit is the fact that Russavia claims to be Australian not Russian. Maybe if we could subtlety suggest that his antics are a gross parody of a Russian nationalist, a wannabe Russian who is over doing it by being more Russian than a Russian. Will it work?"

• The list was primarily a social mailing list, and as such there were all sorts of discussions, including idle "what if" banter about all sorts of things that were never intended to be implemented on-wiki, but was just fun to discuss never the less. Since when did Wiki policy extend off-wiki into our personal lives, private discussions and thoughts? Please point to any on-wiki evidence that this was in fact implemenented. --Martintg (talk) 03:52, 12 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• 20090615-0607 "What if one of us creates a new Wikipedia account [...] We could fake little edit wars with our mole, even have our mole violate 3rr, to make it convincing"

• Ditto per above. Please point to evidence where idle "what-if" musings expressed here in private extended to specific on-wiki disruption. --Martintg (talk) 03:52, 12 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• 20090813-0025 "Could somebody post this to AN3 please (I would do it but I just recently escaped a similar report, so I don't want to be seen as combative)" [followed by post verbatim]

• Okay, I was frustrated that PU had just lodged a AN3 report against me. It was better to blow off steam off-wiki than on-wiki, which would have been much more disruptive. In the event no one posted this report in any case, indicating the restraint of list members and the moderating effect causing less on-wiki disruption. --Martintg (talk) 04:31, 12 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• 20090818-0353 "Can someone revert PU [PasswordUsername] on Neo-Nazism and Nochnoy Dozor (group), I need hime to make a third revert for this 3RR report I'm writing."

• Again in the event no one on the list heeded my request for a "Go ahead, make my day" moment by reverting PU in either Neo-Nazism and Nochnoy Dozor (group) at that time, again pointing to the fact of restraint on action by list members and that "co-ordination" was never the central purpose of the list. So where is the on-wiki harm in this instance of expressing frustration at PU's edit-warring in private? --Martintg (talk) 04:44, 12 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

During a content dispute at Battle of Konotop:

• 20090916-0602 "Since most of the edits are from IPs/newly registered editors, I slapped a semi-protection on it instead of reverting" [2]
  • 20090915-0610 "I'll follow it up with a revert to the "good" version in a bit."

Tymek

• 20090708-0445 "I am going on vacation of Friday [...] If any of you need my help, you guys can always log yourselves as Tymek, and do whatever you feel necessary. My Wikipedia password is [redacted]"
• 20090728-1745 "Jacurek, please log yourself as me in such situations."
• 20090814-0455 "If you guys want to report him on my behalf, please do, you know my password."

To the best of my knowledge, a checkuser revealed that the breach of my account occured only one time - when the list was leaked. No member of the EE mailing list has ever used my account for any purposes. And for the record - these were private messages, written from my private e-mail account. It takes a real pig to read somebody else's letters, whether they are related to Wikipedia or not. Yes, I am writing to all ArbCom members involved in this debacle, those who read these e-mails. Now go and open somebody's mailbox, and check their letters. Perhaps there is something on Wikipedia there, too. Looks like honor means nothing these days. This is all, thank you. Tymek (talk) 04:32, 14 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]