Request concerning the Nagorno-Karabakh article[edit]

Relevant article

Nagorno-Karabakh (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

Sanction or remedy to be enforced

Wikipedia:ARBAA2#Standard discretionary sanctions

Notes

Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Xebulon/Archive#08 February 2012 has a fuller description of the issue, courtesy of Golbez (talk · contribs). See also #Nagorno-Karabakh, above. Opening a formal report to allow for fuller discussion as to potential sanctions to address this situation. T. Canens (talk) 10:48, 26 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Notification

[16]

Discussion concerning the Nagorno-Karabakh article[edit]

I have two objections against this idea, and one proposal.

1. The text of standard discretionary sanctions says
   (i) that the subjects of discretionary sanctions are some particular users, not articles;
   (ii) that the sanctions are applied after the user has been properly warned.
   In connection to that, the very idea to impose editing restrictions on some article as whole is not in accordance with the discretionary sanctions concept, because
   (i) that means that all users (not only those who edit war in this area) appear to be sanctioned, and
   (ii) the Sandstein's sanctions had been applied without proper warning. For example, if we look at the Mass killings under Communist regimes and at the WP:DIGWUREN, we see that I had never been formally warned (I have never been mentioned on the WP:DIGWUREN page). Nevertheless, my editorial privileges (as well as the privileges of overwhelming majority of the Wikipedians) appear to be restricted. That restriction of my editing privileges is almost tantamount to topic ban and I do not understand why have I been placed under such topic ban. Similarly, although I have no interest in the Karabakh area, however, I cannot rule out a possibility that I may decide to edit some Karabakh related area in future. In connection to that, I do not understand why should my editing privileges to be restricted in advance, despite the fact that I committed no violations of WP policy.
2. Whereas the Sandstein's sanctions made the admin's life dramatically easier, the result is by no means satisfactory. The article appeared to be frozen in quite biased state, and tremendous work is needed to fix a situation. If we look even at the very first opening sentence, we will see that it starts with the data taken from The Black Book of Communism, arguably the most influential, and the most controversial book about the subject. Do we add credibility to Wikipedia by using such sources without reservations? My attempts to move this statement to the article's body and to supplement it with necessary commentaries had been successfully blocked by the users who, by contrast to myself had been already sanctioned per WP:DIGWUREN, and the only reasons they appeared to be able to do that was masterful usage of formal nuances of the Sandstein's sanctions. As a result, I (as well as other reasonable editors) decided to postpone our work on this article, because the efforts needed to implement even small improvements are not commensurate with the results obtained. As a result, we have the article, which appeared to be frozen in totally unsatisfactory states. This fact does not bother the admins, because there is no edit wars any more, but the fact that some article gives a totally biased picture (and that this situation cannot be fixed) is extremely dangerous for Wikipedia. Yes, there is no visible conflict, however, the most harmonious place in the world is a graveyard.

By writing that, I do not imply that no sanctions are needed. However, these sanctions should be in accordance with the discretionary sanctions' spirit, i.e. they should be directed against the users who had already committed some violations in this area, and who had alrfeady been properly warned. In the case of WP:DIGWUREN, we already have a list of such users, so it would be quite natural to restrict only those users (more precisely, those who had been warned during last 2-3 years). For other users no restrictions should exist (although, probably, article's semi-protection to exclude IP vandalism would be useful). For Karabakh articles, I suggest to create a similar page (if no such page exists yet): starting from some date, every user committing 3RR or similar violation is added to this list, so s/he cannot make any edit to this article until the change s/he propose is supported by consensus as described by Sandstein. I fully realise that that may initially create some problem for the admins, however, that will allow us to develop Karabakh related articles, which is much more important.--Paul Siebert (talk) 16:56, 26 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
PS. In addition to the MKuCR, we have other articles that were placed under restrictions (such as Communist terrorism, which is under 1RR). This is also not in accordance with the discretionary sanctions spirit: nowhere on that page can you find a statement that the admins are authorised to place unspecified number of users under edit restrictions without proper warning. I think by applying these sanctions the admins exceeded their authority. In my opinion, such a restriction may exist only for some concrete users, and should be implemented in a form of the list which is being permanently modofied by adding those who abuse their editing privileges, and by excluding those who committed no violations during, e.g. last 2-3 years.--Paul Siebert (talk) 17:09, 26 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I see you point, and understand your concerns. But the problem in this article is caused not by the established editors. Those are known very well, and more or less behave. The problem here are new and recently created accounts with very limited history of contributions, which pop up one after another just to rv or vote. Some are quacking very loudly, but nothing is done. For instance, I mentioned in the CU request the account of Spankarts (talk · contribs), which was created only to vote for deletion of an article. Do we need a CU for such accounts? As for sanctions, those affecting only the established users are not effective, because such measures benefit only those who use socks to evade restrictions. For instance, the sanctions imposed on Caucasian Albania clearly did not work. The edit warring there was waged by User:Vandorenfm and User:Gorzaim, both of whom eventually turned out to be socks of the banned User:Xebulon (btw, the edit warring on Nagorno-Karabakh was started by the same 2 accounts). At that time Sandstein imposed a sanction that read: All editors with Armenia/Azerbaijan-related sanctions are banned from editing this article and its talk page. For the purposes of this ban, these editors are all who have at any time been the subject of remedies, blocks or other sanctions logged on the case pages WP:ARBAA or WP:ARBAA2, irrespective of whether or not these sanctions are still in force or whether they were imposed by the Arbitration Committee or by administrators. But since all long time editors in AA area were at some point under some sort of sanctions, this pretty much opened the doors for sock and meatpuppetry, since new accounts were not under any prior sanctions. The result is that the article reflects the views of the sockmaster, who was free to make any edits he wished, and established editors could not remove even unreferenced OR claims. This is why the article about Caucasian Albania is in such a poor condition now. The sock account even managed to place an established user on a 1 year topic ban: [17] Note the complaint of the sock: The immediate concern is his editing of the article on Caucasian Albania, where User:Twilight Chill continues waging an edit war against 5 (five) other unrelated editors (Aram-van, Gorzaim, Vandorenfm, MarshallBagramyan, Xebulon). 4 of 5 accounts that he mentioned turned out later to be socks (User:Aram-van, User:Gorzaim, User:Vandorenfm, and User:Xebulon). Nice, isn't it? I have a reason to believe that the sockmaster is happily editing under a new account now, and having a good laugh at arbitration enforcement. Something similar is now going on in Nagorno-Karabakh. I don't know whether they use socks or not, but clearly a lot of SPAs are being engaged. Therefore I think the solution implemented by Sandstein on Mass killings under communist regimes is much better. At least something should be done to prevent mass edit warring with the use of new accounts. Otherwise this is not going to work. Grandmaster 18:42, 26 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

No. You simply don't understand what those sanctions mean. Such sanctions may work well only if they are directed against a limited set of users who, despite being warned, continue their disruptive activity. It is ridiculous to effectively block WP community from editing of some particular articles simply because a limited amount of users appear to be unable to collaborate.--Paul Siebert (talk) 19:52, 26 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

But I'm not proposing to block the whole wikicommunity. I believe well established users should be allowed to edit freely any article. However the activity of new and recently created users should be limited on contentious articles. I agree with the proposal that the user should have at least 500 edits, preferably outside of AA area, to be allowed to edit an article like Nagorno-Karabakh. Otherwise you will get a bunch of SPAs which turn up only to rv or vote. Grandmaster 21:36, 26 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

@ T. Canens. Thank you for providing a link to the Armenia-Azerbaijan 2 discussion. Unfortunately, I overlooked this discussion and was not able to present my arguments timely. Let me point out, however, that Kirill's idea that "(a) that the editnotice on the article constitutes a sufficient warning as required by ¶2" is not fully correct: ¶2 implies that a warning is issued to the editor, who "repeatedly or seriously fails to adhere to the purpose of Wikipedia". In other words, the full sequence of the events that lead to discretionary sanctions is:

1. Some editor working in the area of conflict "repeatedly or seriously fails to adhere to the purpose of Wikipedia";
2. A warning has been issued for him (obviously, this warning is supposed to contain a reference to some wrongdoing)
3. If violation continues, sanctions are imposed.

However, in a case of article wide sanctions the edit notice is being issued to everyone and in advance, so the user appears to be sanctioned simply by virtue of his interest to this topic. That is a blatant violation of our WP:AGF principle. Moreover, whereas one can speculate if 1RR itself or block for its violation is the actual sanctions, the article's full protection is already a sanction, which has been applied to whole WP community. I have a feeling that the idea of a possibility of article wide sanction should be re-considered as intrinsically flawed.--Paul Siebert (talk) 19:47, 26 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

@ T. Canens. Re you "we have never required evidence of "repeated or serious" misconduct before a warning may be issued." Well, my # 1 was probably too strict. However, you have to agree that some misconduct is supposed to take place before the warning is issued. The discretionary sanction text says

"Prior to any sanctions being imposed, the editor in question shall be given a warning..."

In other words, according to this text a warning is issued to the editor, whose behaviour seems problematic. A typical example of such warning contains a reference to some concrete example of misconduct by the user in question. Alternativelly, the warning may be issued as a result of the AE request [ http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3AVolunteer_Marek&action=historysubmit&diff=428783293&oldid=428236720 ], however, I am not familiar with the case when some good faith user appears to be arbitrarily warned for no reasons. Nowhere in the sanction's text can you find allowance of a blanket warning to everyone who just happened to express interest to Eastern Europe, Karabakh or Palestina-Israel. Therefore, the edit notice is just information, not a formal warning.

Moreover, you forgot one more important fact. Per WP:DIGWUREN, the Mass killings under Communist regimes article is fully protected, so the editorial privileges of all users appeared to be revoked before they got a chance to commit any violation. That means that sanctions have been applied even before the user got a change to read the "warning" (which, as I have demonstrated, is not a warning at all). Do you see any logic here? --Paul Siebert (talk) 17:58, 27 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

PS Re you "in fact, the provision does not require any misconduct before a warning". If that is the case, then that such warning simply becomes a new rule that all Wikipedians are supposed to observe, i.e. a new policy. Does that mean that we have different policies for different fields within the same Wikiproject? And if this is a local policy, then why only admins/arbitrators are allowed to participate in its creation? As far as I know, admins and ordinary users have equal rights to write and modify policy...--Paul Siebert (talk) 18:20, 27 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I would like to ask admins to have a look at the most recent SPI request by an uninvolved user on one of the accounts engaged in Nagorno-Karabakh article: [18] While there's no technical evidence to prove sockpuppetry, behavioral evidence provided by The Devil's Advocate is pretty alarming. There are user accounts that only act as revert machines. What are we supposed to do with those? The fact that 3 unrelated editors, including an admin, filed SPI requests mentioning the same accounts I believe demonstrates that there are reasons for concern. Grandmaster 16:57, 29 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

There is a reason for concern and that is Grandmaster/Tuscumbia/TheDevil'sAvocate own disruptive sock-machine that continues churning foul-faith SPI reports which are now disregarded and closed without much ado [19]. See my full comments. Dehr (talk) 20:56, 29 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

That's quite an interesting accusation. If you check, The Devil's Advocate is registered in 2007 and has about 4000 edits, and almost none of them in AA area. I never knew this user before I encountered his name on Xebulon's SPI request. If you still believe that we are each other's socks, you are more than welcome to file an SPI request.Grandmaster 21:46, 29 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

That is a clear problem with User:Grandmaster. He invents policies but does not want such policies be applied to him. One can argue that The Devils Adv is part of your sock-farm but you conspired to hide him so well that SPIs would not help. So, let's then disregard SPIs and ban you both on charges, as Dehr suggested, for WP:TROLL, WP:AGF and WP:BATTLEGROUND. Winterbliss (talk) 05:09, 1 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Nice. So I've been hiding him for 5 years, but we've never edited the same article, and our paths only crossed now? Compare that to all those accounts that popped up since September 2011, after the previous bunch of Xebulon socks were banned, and who all edit the same articles, and some appear only to rv or vote. I would like to ask admins here a question. Are there any reasons to consider the accounts of Oliveriki (talk · contribs) or Spankarts (talk · contribs) to be good faith accounts? I think the latter account is the most blatant one, other than deredlinking his user page, it only made 3 edits, all of which are votes for deletion of contentious articles at AFDs. If it is not an SPA, then what is it? Grandmaster 10:22, 1 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Both of them seem rather blatant to me. Oliveriki's only significant contributions have just been to get involved in edit wars to support Xebulon or his socks. The January 24th revert restoring a 28k Xebulon sock edit that had been reverted months before was pretty damn disruptive.--The Devil's Advocate (talk) 17:25, 2 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I appreciate the comment by WGFinley, but I want to ask a question. Is it Ok to create SPAs just to rv or vote? Should the votes by such accounts count, and the rvs in highly contentious articles amidst heated disputes not considered disruptive? Everyone can ask his friends, relatives, acquaintances, etc create accounts to promote a certain position. How can disruption by SPAs be stopped? Shouldn't the activity of new accounts be restricted on contentious articles? As for SPIs, admins are involved in filing them as much as everyone else is, see for instance this: [20], the very first SPI was filed by the advice of the admins. And later SPIs were filed by unrelated users, some of whom do not even edit AA articles, and a wikipedia admin. That shows that there are serious reasons for concern that make all these people file the SPI requests. When one sees new accounts that pop up one after another to rv contentious articles or take part in AFDs, it makes him think that it is not just a mere coincidence. And also, filing SPIs is pretty useless nowadays. There are so many mass puppeteers (Paligun, Xebulon, Hetoum I, Ararat arev to name just a few), that figuring out who's who is almost impossible. But something needs to be done to stop disruption. Grandmaster 17:13, 2 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I find certain statements by Winterbliss to be a rude violation of WP:AGF. For instance, a generalizing statement like "Azerbaijanis are not interested to develop the article Nagorno-Karabakh because academic sources are not on their side" are unacceptable. He implies that a user cannot be a good contributor to an article because of his ethnicity. And secondly, there's no consensus at talk for the edits of the banned user, who was using a number of socks to have the article his way. Please note that the edits by Bars77, Vandorenfm, and Gorzaim were made after their master (Xebulon) was banned, so the sock accounts were editing in defiance of the ban, which justifies the revert. Not a single established editor supported the edits of the banned user. Those supporting are all recently created accounts. Vandorenfm and Gorzaim were banned as socks on 15 and 18 September 2011, and here are user creation logs of all accounts currently supporting the edits of the banned user at talk of NK article:

October 1, 2011 Dehr (talk | contribs) created a user account
November 11, 2011 Sprutt (talk | contribs) created a user account
November 16, 2011 Zimmarod (talk | contribs) created a user account
November 19, 2011 Winterbliss (talk | contribs) created a user account
January 9, 2012 Nocturnal781 (talk | contribs) created a user account

I find it highly unusual (to say the least) that all those editors created accounts and flocked to a certain page to support edits of a certain editor, who happened to evade his ban using multiple sock accounts. Grandmaster 22:46, 4 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

First, it is clear from the context that I never meant to generalize about ethnic Azerbaijanis but meant instead users who declared themselves to be from Azerbaijan on their talk pages and who participate(d) in tendentious editing in the AA2 area. I should have been more clear on that though. Secondly, Grandmaster's position that above mentioned accounts are socks has been argued out WP:Ad nauseam by repeating the same points over and over again, a method of filibustering a consensus on talk pages and applying psychological pressure on administrators in this talk. That is a rude violation of WP:AGF. You have been warned and are way over your head on that already. You created this discussion in bad faith and it should be closed immediately. Furthermore, I believe that some previous accounts were blocked as sockpuppets under similar pressure/brainwashing as per WP:SOAP. This tactic might have numbed the judgement of admins so that they developed prejudicial position visavis the victims of bad-faith SPIs filed by you, User:Tuscumbia and other users banned in RusWiki as meat-machine. User:Gorzaim and Vandorenfm might have been targets of such pressure tactics and could have been blocked unfairly. You placed a sock tag on User:Gorzaim in violation of the fact that User:Gorzaim was NOT a confirmed sock of User:Xebulon. Please be aware of WP:TROLL, WP:AGF, WP:BATTLEGROUND, WP:SOAP and WP:NPA as per [21] where it is said: a personal attack are accusations about personal behavior that lack evidence. Grandmaster should also understand that he is engaged in a campaign to drive away productive contributors as per [22], a disruptive tactic described in Wikipedia:Disruptive editing. Winterbliss (talk) 04:50, 5 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

First off, I did not accuse the above accounts of sockery, I just drew attention to their user creation logs, which strangely coincide with the period following the ban of 2 sock accounts, Gorzaim and Vandorenfm. And I find your arguments in defense of the socks of the banned user to be unconvincing. You repeatedly said that Gorzaim and Vandorenfm became innocent victims of misjudgment and prejudice by the admins. But if one looks at the SPI requests that resulted in their ban, the CU showed that Vandorenfm was the same as Bars77: [23], and Bars77 was a CU confirmed sock of Xebulon: [24] Can you see any prejudice here? As for Gorzaim, the result of CU on him was " Likely. He edits from different ISPs, but they geolocate to the same general area. There are many overlaps with user agents as well. J.delanoy." [25] Please note that sockpuppetry is established not just on the basis of a perfect IP match. Eventually, it is up to the admins to decide on the basis of technical and behavioral evidence if an account is a sock. In this case we had 2 users with the same geolocation making identical edits to the same pages. Their IPs might have not been absolutely identical, but the behavioral evidence showed that this could have been home/work situation, so the evidence available to the admins allowed them to rule that Gorzaim was also a sock. And wikilawyering is pointless, you said that I "created this discussion in bad faith and it should be closed immediately", but I started this AE request because I was advised to do so by the admin who handled the SPI requests. This is yet another violation of WP:AGF on your part. Grandmaster 09:24, 5 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Grandmaster, given that you have filled your above posts with "tuscumbiaobsession"-style allegations about sockpuppets, and that you have cited my name, I now consider myself free to be involved in this RfA. Meowy 14:12, 6 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I don't make any rules here, so you are free to do what you want. But I don't think that I ever brought up your name. The only time that I mentioned you was when I responded to Winterbliss reposting your post from another board. I thought that it was resolved at that thread. But I don't see that this particular discussion has any direct relation to you. Grandmaster 15:40, 6 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

As part of your case (rather than just as a warning of a possible restriction like you did earlier) you cited my name using a wikilink that is the post that is above the one I just made. Because you also initiated this arbitration request, I consider that this means I am now part of the subject of your request and so I am free to comment (though I have not yet decided if I will). Meowy 21:08, 6 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

According to your restriction, you must be a subject of the request to be able to comment. However I don't see your name in any post above, so I don't see how you can have any involvement in this matter. Of course it is up to you whether to comment or not, and up to the admins to decide whether your appearance here is a violation of your topic ban. Grandmaster 21:37, 6 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You did not make specific editors the subject of this request. But you are now giving, to support the request you initiated, a long list of editors that you seem to want blocked, most of which at one time or another, as you know, were falsely accused by Tuscumbia of being sockpuppets of me. And when doing this you made an explicit connection by placing a link to a page about me. So I am included. Given Tuscumbia's obsession, I think many people are now included. Meowy 22:30, 6 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I would like to propose a solution that could possibly reduce the disruption on the article in question. As one could see from the evidence posted here, this article attracts a lot of sock and meat puppetry, and it is not a recent problem. This happened in the past as well: [26] I think we need a solution that would bring to minimum the disruption that could be caused. There was a proposal here that I think made a lot of sense. To decrease sock/meatpupetry, the accounts that have less than 500 edits, including substantial number of edits outside of AA area, should not be allowed to revert the article. This would prevent accounts like Oliveriki from coming out of nowhere and reverting the article back to the 5 months old version created by the socks of banned user. If new users have any ideas, they are free to propose them at talk. Also, no large rewrites should be allowed without the general consensus on the talk of the article. And by consensus I mean not the agreement reached by 5 recent accounts among themselves, but the consensus reached by both sides of the dispute, or when that is not possible, consensus reached with involvement of a larger Wikipedia community in accordance with WP:DR. At present what we see is that the article is still being reverted to non-consensus version, sometimes with misleading edit summaries: [27] Grandmaster 17:26, 6 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Unarchived, since this report was not formally closed. Grandmaster 08:44, 26 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Winterbliss[edit]

This report filed by User:Grandmaster represents yet another spasm of endless bad-faith, baseless complaints pushed over, over, and over again by a tightly-knit team of Azerbaijani users who target unrelated accounts in a coordinated fashion with the purpose of limiting editing activity on specific pages. They falsely accuse unwanted editors in sockpuppetry and try to discredit their productive work by making false statements about their editing practices. Now these efforts are getting really desperate and disruptive because Grandmaster’s earlier pranks to discredit his opponents and filibuster consensus-building on talk Nagorno-Karabakh pages are failing. But regardless of Grandmaster's filibustering and manipulating (e.g. WP:WL) discussion and consensus building on Nagorno-Karabakh talk pages proceeds as planned and according to Golbez's earlier recommendations (despite his declared exit from the scene). Various issues and parts of the texts are discussed one by one, and neutral, third-party and high-quality sources are used to support write-ups. This may not be am super-ideal process but most people involved seem to try hard to comply with the earlier guidelines set by Golbez. All participants were CU-checked and are unrelated. Golbez asked to "re-own" earlier texts and one of the participants (Zimmarod I beleive) did that promptly, explaining rationale of every good-faith addition that was deleted → [28].

Grandmaster’s report is based on lies, and he came to AE forum with unclean hands. One is that User:Xebulon “has been disrupting Wikepedia for years.” Xebulon’s account was created 10.24.10 and closed on 7.7.11, and no connections between him and earlier accounts were established.

Grandmaster filed and SPI request [29] accusing as many as 9 (!) editors of being sockpupptes but not only his effort went bust but his SPI was categorized as disruptive when CU showed lack of any relation among the editors by User:Tnxman307. Furthermore, per User:Tnxman307’s comment [30] “As far as I can tell, the same group of users accuse the same opposing group of being sockpuppets. Nothing has ever come of this. Frankly, I think it's disruptive and pointless and am inclined to decline these on sight.”

It has been known that Grandmaster was coordinating editing of a large group of Azerbaijani user in Russian wiki from here information on meta-wiki and here [31] by being the head of 26 Baku Commissars. There is also evidence that Grandmaster uses off-wiki coordination on the pages of English wiki as well: take a look at this curious exchange - [32], [33], which are requests of off-wiki communication between Grandmaster and User:Mursel.

In the recent past such reports, mainly AE and SPI requests, were routinely filed by Grandmaster’s friend User:Tuscumbia, who got recently topic banned for one year on the charge of WP:BATTLEGROUND and racist comments about ethnic origin of academic references [34]. Just a few examples of Tuscumbia's fishing trips: [35], [36], [37], [38], [39]. That is how Tuscumbia’s practice of harassing SPIs was described by an independent Lothar von Richthofen:

• "Checkuser is not for fishing. If you can present actual evidence other than "they make edits that I don't like and it makes me mad so I want to harass them with SPIs on the offhand chance that they will turn up to be the same people, then maybe a new Checkuser might be in order. Otherwise, your invocation of phantom sockpuppeteers is borderline disruptive.→ [40]

User:Grandmaster who was so far editing on an on-and-off basis with rather long periods of absence from WP suddenly hit the Nagorno Karabakh talk pages one day after Tuscumbia’s removal from AA area, picking up right where Tuscumbia left off [41]. Grandmaster’s and Tuscumbia’s behavior is identical: conspiratorial accusations in sockpuppetry, repeating the same points over and over again, a method of filibustering a consensus used most recently by User:Tuscumbia in talks on Murovdag. User:Grandmaster acts as User:Tuscumbia’s placeholder, if not as his loudly quacking meatpuppet who came to man the post of his banned comrade as soon as Tuscumbia got into trouble.

It is high time to restrict Grandmaster’s disruptive conduct by limiting his access to editing AA-related topics.

"(despite his declared exit from the scene)." I just want to point out that my recovering sanity allows me to take a disconnected view at the topic, rather than avoiding it altogether. So my declared exit was from caring and being involved; I can still observe and perhaps even discuss. --Golbez (talk) 01:14, 27 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Zimmarod's point of view[edit]

User:Paul Siebert said it well above [42]. Sanctioning simply by virtue of someone's interest in a topic, or because of loose suspicions that there are some users who are proven not to be sockpuppets in multiple SPIs but can theoretically be found socks or meats in an unspecified time in the future is a blatant violation of the WP:AGF principle. This is in fact total absurdity. Imagine a court issuing a verdict clearing the accused of charges; but then the complainant pops up and suggests to incarcerate or execute the formerly accused right away simply because of his lingering suspicions or because in the future the accused can be found guilty of something else. It is like I may suggest to run a CU on Golbez or T. Canens accusing them in being Grandmaster's socks, and when it turns out that they are not socks, I will propose to get rid of their administrative powers on WP:DUCK charges simply because I am not happy with the results of SPIs and want to get rid of Golbez or T. Canens anyway. We on the Nagorno-Karabakh article try to be as constructive as possible and work toward a consensual input of edits after discussion. I now own the old edits, not some Xebulon. Many are tempted to restore the old edits at once but we decided not to do that and be selective and work incrementally, discarding non-consensual parts as we go. What is the problem? Ah, I know. All this runs counter to the strategy of User:Grandmaster who is unhappy. Instead of him writing long passages on this topic he could be more succinct, and say honestly: "I want to own the article Nagorno-Karabakh by excluding everyone from editing. I tried to play the old game of accusing a bunch of users in being socks, and that did not work out. Now I want them all excluded on absurd excuses simply because I exhausted my arsenal of disruptive tricks, and my meat-pals like User:Tuscumbia cannot help me since they are (again) banned for racism and wp:battleground." Zimmarod (talk) 20:40, 26 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by George Spurlin[edit]

• Reading the above comments I see intense wiki lawyering and users attacking each other. Let me take a different approach and talk about myself. I have been a wikipedian for about 9 months, and this subject area happens to be one of my interests, and if I was limited to participate, most likely I would've found a better place to spend my time. Lets not forget that this is the Free encyclopedia that anyone can edit! --George Spurlin (talk) 20:07, 27 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

• Is there anyway to ask the wider community to bring this article to a better shape? I'm sure if the article was written by non Armenian and Azeri users they wouldn't have anything to fight about. --George Spurlin (talk) 07:26, 1 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by The Devil's Advocate[edit]

My assessment of this situation is that SPI has proven inadequate at dealing with some of the obvious sockpuppetry going on. Vandorenfm and Gorzaim were two accounts that got subjected to three separate checks before it finally came to light that they were socks of Xebulon once new accounts popped up to compare them with. This suggests these sockmasters have proven very capable at evading detection from checkusers. I am not sure how many of these editors are socks, but there is definitely something shady going on with some of them. Not sure if doing anything about this one page will address that issue.--The Devil's Advocate (talk) 18:28, 29 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It seems that User:Gorzaim's account was NOT found to be a sock of Vandorenfm or Xebulon based on SPIs. It was closed simply because of an arbitrary decision of the administrator HelloAnnyong [43]. I am inclined to believe that since those 3 accounts which were showing as unrelated in so many previous SPIs are truly unrelated and were closed as a result of a mistake or a technical glitch. Dehr (talk) 21:41, 29 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

This is alarming but also reveling: same tactics, same phrases. User:Grandmaster and The Devil's Advocate QUACK painfully similar. Both were defending the banned User:Tuscumbia who was editwarring in Nagorno's article [[44] and [45]. Both filed similar SPI useless and disruptive reports on the oft-cited user Xebulon. They are coordinating their SPI operations [46]. Dehr (talk) 21:12, 29 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Nothing revealing about that. I saw the case and was planning to comment even before Grandmaster commented at my talk page. The first SPI was filed because an AE case was closed on the basis that accusations of sockpuppetry be taken there and several of the admins commenting at the AE case felt strongly that there was something to the accusations of sockpuppetry against users such as Winterbliss and George Spurlin.--The Devil's Advocate (talk) 21:57, 29 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yes indeed The Devil's Advocate, please be aware of WP:TROLL, WP:AGF (as per Dehr) and also WP:BATTLEGROUND.

On the Sandstein restriction, one thing I think makes sense is having a 1RR per week limit on the article.--The Devil's Advocate (talk) 15:27, 3 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by Dehr[edit]

This issue has now clearly transformed into a WP:TROLL and WP:AGF concern, when a coordinating cluster of editors attack and harass the other group on highly suspicious pretenses (e.g. the conspiratorial but baseless "SPIs do not show anything but SOMETHING is going on"). The loudly QUACKING User:Grandmaster and The Devil's Advocate shoot one foul-faith SPI after next attempting to disrupt the development of the Nagorno and related articles. One of these SPIs was filed today by The Devil's Advocate. I am calling on the administrative operatives to stop these attacks and deal with the disrupting account User:Grandmaster. Dehr (talk) 21:28, 29 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Comment about User:Golbez and WP:CIVILITY[edit]

User Golbez has acted as a self-appointed watchman of the article for some time and there are people who believe that his participation had been generally helpful. But as of late he has been outright disregarding WP:CIVILITY which casts serious doubt on merits of his endorsement of this AE request. Some examples of incivil conduct by Golbez:

• See edit summary: “you know what, fuck it, i yield. i don't have time for this petty bullshit, not until arbcom can give us the power to summarily ban every last nationalist on wikipedia.” [47]
• “Sir or madam, you have made my fucking night.” [48]
• “This idiotic revanchism, this useless irredentism, means nothing to me” [49]
• “A pox upon both your houses.” [50] - written in a pamphlet by Golbez which is not too bad in fact, but it shows that he was determined not to develop any subject-matter expertise and wrongfully praised that attitude as impartiality.

It would be helpful if Golbez could act as an arbiter distinguishing filibustering from honest disagreements on talk pages but he failed to be such an arbiter. Instead he chose profanities and sided with disruptive users. So far he supported felonious User:Tuscumbia and User:Brandmeister (each are/were recently topic banned of one year for disruptive conduct), and was freezing the Nagorno-Karabakh article on the versions supported by these two users. He praised User:Tuscumbia as someone who “follows the rules” on the very day (!) when Tuscumbia got banned after exhausting himself in multiple WP:BATTLEGROUNDs [51]. Here Golbez teams up with Grandmaster, supporting his disruptive idea [52]. Just too many inconvenient facts. I would also like to bring you comment by User:Meowy who well characterized Golbez as a careless and failing administrator [53]:

• Regarding the comments by Golbez (who, if my memory is right, I consider to be one of the better-informed administrators and generally OK in his aims and actions): "Shall I start issuing blocks based solely on the duck test?" Is this a warning or is it meant to be ironic? "Since they were found to be unrelated, I am left with few civil options." ....erm .... since they were found to be unrelated you really have no business making further discussion about them in relation to sockpuppetry, and to continue otherwise is an example of bad faith.

Winterbliss (talk) 04:54, 1 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hold on - since you are pushing my name into this - I did not characterise Golbez as "a careless and failing administrator", I was saying that I was disappointed that he was failing in this instance by refusing to just accept the finding that proved the accounts he thought were related were not related. Meowy 21:34, 1 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

• It is probably worth mentioning that the above mentioned Meowy (talk · contribs) is just back from a 1 year block for sockpuppetry. [54] So his comment at SPI request page is not surprising. Meowy is also indefinitely banned from commenting at WP:AE on AA related matters, [55] so I don't know whether it is Ok to repost his comments here. Grandmaster 10:35, 1 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

  My above comment, made to clarify a misrepresentation of my views, will be the only post I intend make here. If Winterbliss's misinterpretation of what I had written elsewhere were to be removed along with the quote, then my comment about it can also be removed. However, it is just you who say this is an AA2-related thread. The comments from all the unconnected editors indicate that it is NOT that because the powers you wish to see simply do not exist under AA2, and that to make them exist would mean making a fundamental change to the way Wikipedia editing works. So it is actually a policy change that would affect all of Wikipedia. Meowy 22:06, 1 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I am amused that my attack on irredentism and revanchism is somehow incivil. Or that thanking you for giving me a good larf is somehow bad.

So, I'm not sure what the point of this subsection is, seeing how I'm pretty much out of the Caucasian clusterfuck at the moment - are you suggesting there be sanctions placed upon me, or are you just filling space? If the former, there's an actual place to go to do that; if the latter, you've at least made me grin. I seriously thought this was going to be about all the time I've characterized the editors of those articles as children, so this really could have been done better. I give it a C-. Also, I've been here a skosh longer than you, so I actually know what I'm talking about. Anyway, I think the fundamental problem here is, for some reason I thought the provisions of AA2 had expired or at least had been tempered; if I knew I could throw any of you kids on a 1 revert restriction, my sanity might still be with us. Is this still the case, anyone who is familiar with the situation? Then again, looking at the list of bans and blocks placed because of AA2, and still no long-term change... clearly it would seem that AA2 has failed.

Meowy, I accepted the finding that the accounts weren't related... that doesn't change the fact that at the very least, Oliveriki should be blocked for disruption - reverting back to a four-month-old version with a blatant lie for an edit summary on an AA-related article should be an instablock. My failure was not in executing it, but actually trying to get people to discuss before going all revert happy.

I guess I've burnt bridges on my way out, so I probably won't be able to go back in with the same cachet I had before (You know, the cachet that got me accused of being both Armenian and Azeri? Those were the days. You don't know how hilarious it is that you accuse me of being pro-Azeri. Oh, newbies, what would life be like without their naivete?), but ... eh. It's Wikipedia's loss, not mine. If I really was THE only person holding those articles together, then that appears to be a structural problem that the whole project needs to figure out how to fix. Someone else can pick up the pieces; I have maps to make and governors to list. --Golbez (talk) 22:41, 1 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Reply to Gatoclass[edit]

Hello Gatoclass. Thank you for taking the time to take another look at the issue again. However, I regret to notice that you at times misreport on the facts and have taken an approach that is not well balanced.

• First, User:Tuscumbia was recently blocked from AA2 for one full year and not for six months (as Gatoclass misreports). Take a look one more time: [56]. This misreport shows that Gatoclass failed to invest enough time and effort to inspect the entire situation honestly. I do not want to assume at this moment that he intentionally tries to protect users banned for WP:BATTLEGROUND.

• Second, in the bigger order of things, it does not really matter if texts in WP articles are developed by socks, fox, schmocks or frogs. The only thing that matters is the quality of the text itself i.e. if it complies with the WP standards for neutrality and accuracy. I don’t and no one really should care if there were xebulons, babelons or schmebulons writing the text. If it is good, it should be in the article. You are right, however, that since someone was banned (in good or bad faith), it makes re-inputting good quality texts a bit tricky, procedurally speaking, and certain rules should be observed. And some (big or small) parts of the previous writeup can be thrown away. The users were warned about this by Golbez, and they are complying by discussing these issues before they change the article. Please familiarize yourself with the part “Proposed Rewrite” [57]. Per Golbez’s recommendation, User:Zimmarod took a look at the parts of the article deleted last year, looked at sources and assessed the quality of the deleted paragraphs in the section “Restored part of the text discussion by Zimmarod” [58]. Ideas how to develop the article should be discussed on talk pages but there should be a policy punishing repeating the same points over and over again per WP:IDHT and filibustering honest discussions per WP:FILIBUSTER.

• One favorite method of users like User:Grandmaster to disrupt editorial process is to repeating the same points over and over again alleging that consensus is not reached (although it is reached). Please understand that it is WP:TE, specifically subsection “Disputing the reliability of apparently good sources” [59], “Repeating the same argument without convincing people” [60] and above everything “deleting the cited additions of others” [61].

• I talked about this before but let me repeat this again: Azerbaijanis Many Azerbaijani WP users are not interested to develop the article Nagorno-Karabakh because academic sources are not on their side. To familiarize yourself with this argument please take a look how User:Tuscumbia was trying to filibuster and stonewall against academic references on talk pages in Murovdag [62]. They try to ban their Armenian opponents as socks so that edits they made would forever be silenced or suppressed. In other words, they try to ban people in order to suppress ideas that these people express. Imagine a situation that there is a WP dispute in the article about the Moon. One group of editors believes the Moon is a pancake hanging in the air, the other thinks it is a natural satellite of the Earth. The group saying it is a celestial object was found to be a sock who gets banned. Does this mean his the notion that the Moon is a natural satellite of the Earth shall be forever removed from and suppressed in the article? Nonsense, right? That is exactly what the Azerbaijani editors want to happen and that is why they harass their opponents with SPIs – they believe this creates pressure on administrators who would eventually get tired and would concede in arbitrarily declaring the opposite group as socks, regardless of actual evidence. This is not an excuse to be biased against them all but is something to keep in mind.

• Your allegations about accusing Zimmarod in WP:SOAP and WP:NPA are unconvincing. There were no personal attacks and no propaganda or advertisements. And what about bad-faith SPIs that were criticized by several administrators??? Gatoclass ignores this entirely. Comparing users from Azerbaijan, which is a nationalist dictatorship indeed, with China or the USSR makes sense. In all three cases, we deal with people who are likely to be brainwashed by state propaganda, and have a lack of understanding of how open-source collaborative projects like Wikipedia should work in terms of WP:NPOV.

• One last point about User:Vandorenfm and User:Gorzaim who were accused and banned for supposedly being socks of User:Xebulon. I really did not want to go into that but the more I hear about them the more I am convinced that they these two were banned under pressure and with no or little evidence of sockpuppetry, especially User:Gorzaim, who as someone (Dehr?) mentioned previously, was banned by User:HelloAnnyong without any technical evidence of sockpuppetry. And banning User:Vandorenfm could be a mistake made under the psychological pressure of relentless bad-faith SPIs, which blurred the vision and numbed the senses of the administrators. Winterbliss (talk) 22:07, 3 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by EdJohnston[edit]

As some participants may be aware, I've been working up a proposal that is intended to make it more arduous to create socks that would tilt the discussions in the AA domain. Some conversations have been happening at User talk:Timotheus Canens#Next steps for WP:AE#Nagorno-Karabakh and at User talk:EdJohnston#"low-seniority single-purpose accounts". Here is the proposal:

1. The Nagorno-Karabakh article would be placed on seniority restriction, which would be a modified 1RR restriction.
2. The authority for this is WP:AC/DS under the WP:ARBAA2 decision
3. An established account is one that has made 500 article edits *and* has existed for at least three months.
4. 'Low seniority accounts' are accounts that don't meet those requirements
5. All low seniority accounts and all IPs are under a plain 1RR per day with no exceptions
6. Established accounts can revert edits by IPs or low-seniority accounts without breaking the 1RR, but are still subject to the general edit warring policy.

A requirement of 500 article edits is similar to what is needed to get approval for WP:AWB. It is accepted that people need to be experienced to use AWB. My proposal would give an advantage to experienced editors when working the Nagorno-Karabakh article, while still allowing all editors to make uncontroversial improvements.

So far, a number of editors who often support the Armenian side of the dispute have expressed unhappiness about this proposal, and User:Grandmaster, who is often associated with the Azeri side, has been in favor. I hope that editors can temporarily set aside their outside loyalties to see what is most likely to lead to the creation of neutral articles. A fault of this proposal is that long-running socks may be entrenched, but the long-running socks are those for which we can see a behavior record and apply sanctions. It is the brand-new accounts that cause the most trouble for admins, since there is no time available to review every edit by a brand-new account that might have been created to evade previous sanctions. The SPI system can be evaded by people who have a strong incentive to do so, and some rather flimsy-looking new accounts have been reported at SPI and the case closed due to lack of evidence.

It is the brand-new accounts where lack of evidence is the main problem. I am just suggesting a way that the brand new accounts can be given a slightly higher hurdle, so that the existing climate of sock charges and countercharges can be ameliorated. If you are wondering whether concerns about socking are important, please see all the comments above me in this thread. EdJohnston (talk) 18:56, 30 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

@Wgfinley: I think the history of discussions of my proposal already lives up to point #3 of WP:AC/DS:

Best practice includes seeking additional input prior to applying a novel sanction or when a reasonable, uninvolved editor may question whether the sanction is within the scope of the relevant case;

That section is probably addressed to single admins who make up a new kind of sanction on the fly, without going through a noticeboard. In my opinion, the discussion here meets the requirement for getting additional input. AE is a place where it is reasonable to propose and enact new sanctions, if the previous ones didn't work, and if necessary revise or remove them in the future if their effect is not what was expected. You may recall that Sandstein enacted some new sanctions from time to time on very troublesome articles, a couple of which are still in place, such as the one at the top of Talk:London Victory Celebrations of 1946. Reading the log of WP:DIGWUREN shows many examples of specialized topic bans. There was even a ban on changing names in Eastern European languages from one national variant to another. The 500-edit proposal seems to be well within the bounds of Arbcom's intentions for how discretionary sanctions would be carried out. EdJohnston (talk) 15:57, 2 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Draft template proposed for use at Talk:Nagorno-Karabakh:

WARNING: ACTIVE ARBITRATION REMEDIES The article Nagorno-Karabakh is currently subject to active arbitration remedies, as laid out during a 2007 Arbitration case. Per a 2012 complaint at WP:AE about apparent sock editing, Nagorno-Karabakh is under a seniority restriction. This is a modified 1RR restriction to limit the power of newly-created accounts to prevail in disputes, while still leaving the article open to editing: An established account is one that has made 500 article edits and has existed for at least three months. All others are low-seniority. Low seniority accounts and IPs are under a plain 1RR per day with no exceptions Established accounts can revert edits by IPs or low-seniority accounts without breaking the 1RR, but are still subject to the general edit warring policy. Violations of the special 1RR by old or new accounts can be reported at WP:Arbitration enforcement or to any admin.

— EdJohnston (talk) 04:27, 6 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with above in general, but I also think that new accounts should not be allowed to make any reverts, unless they revert obvious vandalism. Otherwise a person who controls multiple accounts can make multiple reverts without technically breaking 1RR. For instance, he can make 3 rvs by using 3 different accounts, and then bring in more accounts which can perform 1 revert per day. I think once an edit by a low seniority account is reverted by an established user, it should not be reinserted by the same or another low seniority account unless there is a consensus for the insertion of the content with the established users, or the wider Wikipedia community in accordance with WP:DR. Im currently travelling and have a limited access to the Internet, so sorry if I missed any important discussion. I think another useful idea would be to put a limit on how many times the same content could be inserted in the article without the consensus at talk with established accounts. Or something like that. Grandmaster 22:20, 6 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Paul Siebert[edit]

Ed, in my opinion, you take #3 out of the context. According to my understanding, the additional input mentioned in #3 is an input regarding the actions after the warning (per #2) has been given. In other words, the sequence of actions (as I see it) is:

1. Some user starts an edit war (or commits similar violation);
2. An admin gives a warning to him (per #2), which identifies misconduct and contain as advise how the editor may mend their ways;
3. If needed, the situation with this user is discussed with uninvolved users (per #3)
4. If the user in question continues his disruptive behaviour, the sanctions are imposed on him (per #5)
5. The sanctions can be appealed (per #6).

The step No 1 is a condicio sine qua non: WP:AC/DS does not authorise admins to restrict editing privileges of the users who committed no violation of our policy. In connection to that, the #3 criterion is not met. It would be met only if the current thread discussed the sanctions for one or several concrete disruptive editors, who have been warned previously. In actuality, the proposed sanctions can potentially affect an unlimited amount of users, majority of whom committed no viotation of our policy (simply because they never edited this article so far).

However, if you modify your proposal in such a way that "low seniority accounts" will be substituted with "the users who recieved a due warning per WP:ARBAA2", I would support your proposal, with one minor correction: the text should specify a procedure of appeal (for instance, the users warned per WP:ARBAA2 can request their name to be removed from the list after 1 year problemless edit history).--Paul Siebert (talk) 18:05, 2 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

In addition, I find illogical that your sanctions do not stipulate permanent article's semi-protection. In my opinion, that is the first thing that is necessary to do: to force all potentially troublesome IPs to register, and then, if they will continue to demonstrate discruptive behaviour, to add them to the list of problem users whose privileges are restricted.--Paul Siebert (talk) 18:09, 2 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Dehr[edit]

I am afraid there is an awkward misstatement about "brand new accounts" that travels from one discussion to next. There are no "brand new accounts" working on Nagorno-Karabakh article now. All accounts are either months or years old. Mine was created in September 2011 (half a year ago). A couple of other accounts are 4-5 months old and some are three months old. No one is new. Bear this in mind. Dehr (talk) 20:03, 30 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Grandmaster[edit]

The edit warring on NK was started by Vandorenfm and Gorzaim, who were banned as socks on 15 and 18 September 2011. Now let's look at user creation logs of the accounts who tried to restore edits of the banned user, or supported that at talk:

• October 2, 2010: Oliveriki (talk · contribs) created a user account
• October 1, 2011: Dehr (talk · contribs) created a user account
• November 11, 2011: Sprutt (talk · contribs) created a user account
• November 16, 2011: Zimmarod (talk · contribs) created a user account
• November 19, 2011: Winterbliss (talk · contribs) created a user account
• November 22, 2011: Hablabar (talk · contribs) created a user account
• January 9, 2012: Nocturnal781 (talk · contribs) created a user account

As one can see, except for Oliveriki, all other accounts were created after the socks were banned. Most of these accounts were created in November 2011. Oliveriki has just 13 edits in about 2 years that he was registered, many of those are reverts for Xebulon and his socks. Nocturnal781 is the most recent, but has more than 500 edits to article space. The rest have less than 500 edits, some very few. Hablabar has 30, Sprutt has 41, Dehr has 143, Zimmarod has 122, Winterbliss has 342 (only half of them to article space). So those accounts may not be brand new, but they are recent, and have a limited number of contributions. The strange thing here is that they all appeared at a very convenient time to restore the edits of the banned user, soon after he became unable to use his blocked sock accounts. Grandmaster 22:36, 30 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

If you believe those accounts are socks, please start SPI, otherwise I see no reason for any allegations against them. If you think those users are edit-warriors, report them. If none of that is the case, I see absolutely no reason to restrict their user privileges: WP policy does not allow us to restrict user rights simply because we disagree with the edits they make. However, by writing that I do not imply that I oppose to imposing strict sanctions on those users in the case if their have been engaged in persistent edit warring. My only pint is that those sanctions should be imposed personally.--Paul Siebert (talk) 23:00, 30 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I understand your concern. But I do not say that those accounts are necessarily socks, since SPI results at this point do not support this conclusion, but it is quite obvious that they edit in a coordinated manner with the banned user. Otherwise how can you explain that all those new accounts suddenly felt the need to restore 4 months old edits of the banned user? And personal sanctions may not work, I know by experience that we will unlikely hear of most of these accounts after they are placed on an editing restriction. For example, Xebulon, after the topic ban and enforcement block simply evaded it: [63], and his socks happily edited contentious articles until they were banned a few months later. How could personal sanctions prevent that? It took a few months for CU to detect connection between Xebulon and Vandorenfm. Grandmaster 23:49, 30 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Please, never throw the accusations you cannot prove. I myself have to deal with some users who are, in my opinion, either the socks of the banned users, or who coordinate their efforts off-wiki. However, since I have no direct evidences of that, I never blame anyone. In addition, I may be simply wrong: what if those users simply share a similar viewpoint?--Paul Siebert (talk) 16:42, 31 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

What are the chances that all those accounts created in October-November (4 accounts out of 7 were created between 11-22 November) are genuine new editors, who just happen to like the edits of the banned user so much that after almost simultaneous user account creation they decided to flock to this article to reinsert the content added by the banned user? What are the chances that Oliveriki with 13 edits in 2 years who suddenly decided to restore a 4 month old edit of the banned user is a genuine good faith editor? One must be really naive to believe in that. I don't say that they are socks, since I have no technical evidence to support such a claim, but I do say that something very suspicious is going on, and it is not just me. The admin who has been looking after this article for years endorsed my report. Grandmaster 18:02, 31 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Paul Siebert[edit]

I am not sure the EdJohnston's proposal to comply with our policy. The only non-discriminative editing restrictions stipulated by our policy is article's semi-protection or temporary full protection. I am not familiar with the policy that allows restrictions of a whole sub-category of users. The text of standard discretionary sanctions explains that any sanctions can be applied to some concrete editor, not to an unspecified number of them or to some sub-category of users. The sanctions can be applied only after giving due warning, not before or concurrently with the warning (#2); this clear and unambiguous warning should identify misconduct (#3); it should contain the advise how the editor may mend their ways (#4); and, finally, when the sanctions are applied, they should contain an explanation or the appeal process (#6).
Therefore, by placing some article under seniority, or other similar restrictions, as proposed by EdJohnston, we apply the discretionary sanction to the whole category of users, overwhelming majority of whom committed no violation of our policy, give no due warning about previous misconduct (simply because no misconduct occurred), and provide no opportunity for them to appeal this restriction.
I simply do not understand how that step would be in agreement with the letter and the spirit of the discretionary sanctions. (I know that some admins have different opinion about that, however, I think this opinion is based on incorrect interpretation of the sanctions' text).

In addition, the EdJohnston restrictions can be easily circumvented: it is not a problem to make 500 edits (especially taking into account that talk page posts are considered as edits), and to wait for three months.
In my opinion, the most reasonable way to resolve the problem with this article (as well as with other articles of that type) would be:

1. To semi-protect the article indefinitely;
2. To create the rules similar to the Sandstein's rules for the Mass killings under Communist regimes article (with some variations); those rules will be applicable only to the limited set of problem editors;
3. To create a list of the users who are placed under the restrictions (from #2); the users who were previously warned will be added to this list immediately after the first case of edit warring;
4. To allow the users from this list to request for a removal of their name from the list after one year of good faith editing (no blocks, no warnings).
5. To indefinitely topic ban the users whose names are in the list if they get 2 or more blocks for the violation of the Sandstein-type restrictions.

The major advantages of this proposal are that (i) it is in full accordance with the letter and spirit of discretionary sanctions; (ii) it does not affect good faith users, independently on their experience, (iii) it applies escalating restrictions on problem users, both old and new; (iv) it allows the users whose behaviour has improved to appeal these sanctions; (v) it may become a universal approach to the problem articles of that type.--Paul Siebert (talk) 20:49, 30 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

That approach already has not worked. It only works with established editors, i.e. those who use only one account to edit. However there are users who create new accounts once the old ones get banned or placed on restriction. I don't think that measures proposed by you could address this problem. For example, there was edit warring at Caucasian Albania, another troubled article in AA area. Admins reacted by banning from the article everyone who has ever been sanctioned. Since most established editors were sanctioned at some point, that meant that all established editors were banned from this article. As result, the article was taken over by new accounts who started the edit warring that lead to sanctions. Eventually, those new accounts turned out to be socks of the banned user, who had carte blanche to do whatever he wanted in the article. Right now I cannot even remove original research by the banned user which is not supported by any reference, especially by the source used: [64] [65] (the line "Whether Arranian is related to Caucasian Albanian languages cannot be determined" is the personal idea of the banned user, Iranica, to which the article refers, says quite the opposite. This OR was in the article for more than a year now).

So what you propose will affect only long time contributors, but then an SPA like Oliveriki may come out of nowhere and restart an edit war rolling the article back to a 4 month old version by the banned user, like it was in Nagorno-Karabakh. Once you place him on a restriction, he's gone, and another SPA takes his place. How your proposed remedy could address this situation? Grandmaster 21:47, 30 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Also, EdJohnston proposed to set the limit of 500 article edits, which means that only edits to the articles would count, edits to the talk, user page, boards, etc would not. Grandmaster 21:55, 30 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I see two type issues with the your/Ed's proposal. The first is fundamental: the proposal, as well as the very idea to impose article-wide sanction that affect good faith editors, is intrinsically flawed and dangerous for Wikipedia in general. That is arguably the most direct way to non-free and totally bureaucratically controlled Wikipedia (i.e. to its death).

The second type objections are purely technical:

1. The situation when some users create new accounts once the old ones get banned or placed on restriction is called sockpuppetry, and should be treated according to the standard procedure. As a rule, Wikipedia appeared to be able to protect itself against socks. Why some specific procedure is needed in this particular case?
2. The 500 article edits rule can easily be gamed by making de facto minor non-controversial low quality copy-editing of low importance articles.
3. The modified 1RR, as proposed by Ed, will not work at the software level: as far as I understand, it stipulates that new users are being carefully monitored, whereas they retain a physical ability to make edits. If that is the case, I do not see what advantages it has over normal SPI of questionable accounts.
4. In connection to that, it seems to be more useful (in this particular case), to immediately start SPI of new users who made questionable edit, rather than simply revert him. The longer is a sockpuppeter's history, the easier is to identify him.

In connection to that, a following edit notice may be added to this article:

"Warning. Since this article is a subject of active sockpuppetry, please be advised that SPI may be started against you if you make some controversial edit or exceed 1RR limit. Happy editing."

--Paul Siebert (talk) 22:31, 30 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

SPIs are not so effective. The banned users know how to evade them. I described above how a whole bunch of new accounts appeared in this article to restore the edits of the socks of the banned user. Those banned socks evaded 3 CUs, only 4th one detected connection. At this point CU shows no connection between the new accounts, but their simultaneous appearance and time of creation cannot be a coincidence. Could also be a meatpupetry, but they all edit in the same manner, and many have very few edits. The account that started the last round of edit warring made only 13 edits in about 2 years, many of them reverts. Most of those accounts were created in November 2011, and some have less than 50 edits. Something needs to be done to prevent disruption by such accounts. Grandmaster 23:10, 30 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that 500 article edits rule can easily be gamed by making cosmetic edits, but it will make the life of puppeteer harder. Imagine how many edits he will need to make to create a bunch of legitimate accounts that could pass 500 limit. It might be an impossible task, and time consuming too. As for legitimate newcomers, their editing privileges will not be affected, unless they start making controversial edits. Such edits need to be discussed anyway, so age limit might encourage discussion, instead of edit warring. Grandmaster 23:17, 30 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The idea to restrict all new users is extremely dangerous. It reminds me of a Stalitist maxima: "we better punish 100 innocent people rather then leave one criminal unpunished".

In the situation described by you, a solution could be to impose 3rr limit not on a user, but on a viewpoint, so if users A, B, C share the same viewpoint, they totally cannot make more than 3 reverts. Last year, I proposed that as a general modification of 3RR, however, this idea was opposed...--Paul Siebert (talk) 23:34, 30 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia content should be based on content derived from acceptable authoritative sources and not on the viewpoints of editors. It is the sources that have the viewpoints and the subjects and the areas of interest. That proposal sounds like a proposal to excluded valid sources based on what someone might claim is the "viewpoint" of those valid sources. Meowy 01:44, 31 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I would say the opposite. In a situation when the number of the users supporting one or another viewpoint plays no role, the quality of sources becomes more important. In other words, my proposal creates a situation when a single editor who uses good quality sources can prevail over a group of users relying upon garbage sources: since both parties can make just 3 reverts, the dispute will move soon to WP:RSN and WP:NPOVN, where, as a rule, common sense prevails.--Paul Siebert (talk) 17:25, 31 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Revert limit on viewpoints is also a very good idea, I think it should be used in many AA articles (if not all). But considering the recent history of contributions by new accounts to the article in question, I still favor imposing age limit and seeing how effective it would be. Nothing is set in stone, if the remedy does not work as intended, it could be reversed. Grandmaster 00:45, 31 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with Paul Siebert's objections to this "Low seniority accounts" proposal. Such a sanction would give a carte-blanche approval for any editor with more than 500 edits to remove from Wikipedia articles the edits of any editor with under 500 edits, regardless of what those edits might be. Why should any new editor be given these automatic sanctions for no reason? Why should their edits be removed without any consideration of their content? If there is a genuine problem with "low seniority accounts" then that problem can't be on just one article, so any solution surely has to be Wikipedia wide. If there is a problem only on one article, then there is no justification for departing in such an extreme manner from the usual way that sanctions are applied. A draconian law produced for an exceptional circumstance makes for a very bad law. However we all know that this one article solution will soon expand to become 10 articles, then 100 articles, then 1000, and so on, and the proposed 500-article edits requirement will be extended to 1000-edits and then to 2000-edits, and then into the size of the edits. Already Grandmaster has been advocating extending it to another article (Caucasian Albania), and the ease that the 500-edit threshold could be reached has been pointed out. This proposal, however well intentioned, needs to be rejected. Grandmaster thinks that "the situation in the Nagorno-Karabakh article is intolerable" yet what he is doing here is accusing anyone who inserts content he disagrees with of being sock-puppets. Another administrator, Golbez, complained in the article’s talk page "Do any of you actually care WHAT is in the article, or just who puts it there?" The answer is to start caring much more about accurate content, and stop obsessing about who puts it there. Meowy 01:50, 31 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Don't forget that Golbez endorsed my request here: [66]. He also filed the original SPI request. So saying that I accuse anyone who disagrees with me is not correct, others also see that something fishy is going on in the article in question. As for Caucasian Albania, at the moment I do not support application of age limit to that article, but I'm going to propose amendment of the remedy applied there, because only those who used multiple accounts benefited from the ban on everyone who has ever been sanctioned. Grandmaster 09:33, 31 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I reflected about Paul Siebert's proposal on revert limit on viewpoints, I think it should also be implemented in parallel with the age limit. Age limit would prevent disruption by sleeper accounts like Oliveriki, and viewpoint limit will minimize edit warring by established users. Grandmaster 10:23, 31 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Whereas your primary concern seems to be this concrete article, I, being a totally uninvolved user am concerned about Wikipedia as whole. The idea to apply some article-specific or topic specific restrictions that affect a whole category of users majority of whom committed no violation of our policy is extremely flawed and dangerous for Wikipedia; in my opinion, such step directly contradict to the letter and the spirit of the discretionary sanctions.

However, I think we can discuss the following proposal: to authorise admins to add a following edit notice to the articles that are the subject of ongoing edit war:

"Warning. Due to ongoing edit war, the article is currently under the modified 3RR restriction. Three revert limit has been imposed on viewpoints, not on users. If you continue a series of reversions started by others, you may be considered to be edit-warring even if you make only one or two reversions."

I propose to create a template that will be placed on the top of the talk page of problem articles, and will be clearly visible to anyone who opens the article's edit window. In my opinion, the most convenient way to deal with the violators of this restriction would be a procedure described on the top of this section.

In my opinion, adoption of this procedure would make impossible many similar incidents in the past, for example, it would make impossible the activity of notorious WP:EEML cabal.--Paul Siebert (talk) 16:32, 31 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

If you look at the history of Nagorno-Karabakh during the last 2 years, you'll see that very rarely new accounts made really useful contributions to that article. Quite the contrary. It was proposed quite a few times to place this article on a permanent semi-protection, and SPA attacks are nothing new: [67] [68] A notice is a good idea, and it should be placed to notify good faith editors, but SPAs are unlikely to be scared away. I understand the reasons for your concern, but the age limit does not ban new accounts from editing the article. They could still make uncontroversial edits, or edits that gain the support of the established users. But it is pretty obvious that new accounts were often used in an abusive way, and therefore their editing should be controlled. Established editors at the moment are forced to behave due to AA2 remedies, but there's no reliable way to control the activity of the newly created accounts, or that of the sleeper accounts. Grandmaster 18:23, 31 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Reply to EdJ's proposal, by Winterbliss[edit]

What in the beginning was an AE report filed by User:Grandmaster in bad faith, gradually mutated into a process that poses a risk not only to the article in question but to the existence of Wikipedia as a free intellectual resource. Although EdJohnston's proposal is well intentioned, its effects will likely be counterproductive and long lasting. This is because of the new and unprecedented suggestion to rank accounts by "seniority." First, as argued by Paul Silbert and Meowy, this will signal a shift from intellectual merit and quality of references to a system where textual inputs will be evaluated based on longevity of accounts. I also agree with Paul S. on that “The idea to apply some article-specific or topic specific restrictions that affect a whole category of users majority of whom committed no violation of our policy is extremely flawed and dangerous for Wikipedia; in my opinion, such step directly contradict to the letter and the spirit of the discretionary sanctions.”

Flawed as the seniority idea is on its own, it is also dangerous for AA2 specifically since some user accounts in this area evidently enjoyed prolonged existence due to a division of labor in cabals. In such cabals, junior accounts are assigned the higher-risk role of edit warring all the while cabal leaders are in business of chain-slamming opponents with SPIs and AE reports over, over, over and over again to have them banned and their edits erased. In other words – I think Meowy or Dehr mentioned that – some accounts with higher “seniority” in AA2 are likely to be those who found a method to game the system in the most cynical way.

This report targets “new” accounts but the fact is that the most troublesome accounts for this article specifically have been the veteran “higher seniority” users not coincidentally clustered around Grandmaster. The history of contributions to the article shows that edit warring in Nagorno-Karabakh was done by a group mentioned in ruwiki as members of the notorious 26 Commissars cabal information on meta-wiki, [69]). These accounts include User:Grandmaster himself, User:Brandmeister, User:Tuscumbia, User:Quantum666, User:Parishan, User:Interfase and others. All these users, which have matching account names both in English and Russian wikis, were sanctioned by ruwiki’s Arbcom as a meat team that coordinated edit wars and engaged in vote-stacking. User:Brandmeister, User:Tuscumbia, and User:Quantum666 ended up banned in enwiki several times. If administrators in this report decided to treat accounts created in 2011 prejudicially, it would be fair if the edit warring “higher seniority” accounts from User:Grandmaster’s Russian cabal that have matching user names in other wikis are treated with equal if not higher level of concern. While we all understand that ruwiki and enwiki are two different projects, by no means should these matching accounts in EnglWiki be given an advantage over any other accounts. I intend to raise this issue on all levels in Wikipedia.

Secondly, EdJohnston’s suggestion will actually stimulate edit wars - higher seniority accounts are already misinterpreting the proposed rules as a carte-blanche for removing the edits of lower seniority accounts (designated bad guys) regardless of the quality of contributions. This will stimulate more needless AE complaints and more administrator involvement. Then the administrators will get really mad (as happened already with Golbez, who proposed to start banning “every nationalist”), and will raise the edit count requirement for "higher seniority" in order to further limit participation in the article to wash their hands of this trouble. Lastly, the article will simply be forever locked with all the crap inside. Alarmingly, EdJohnston or T.Canens (don’t remember) hinted that such scheme can be extended to ALL AA2 articles. This fate will gradually spread to ALL more or less controversial subjects in WP - a recipe of WP's slow and agonizing death.

Third, see how Grandmaster has already begun intentionally misinterpreting proposals from peer users and administrators. So far Grandmaster and his suspected meats harassed opponents with SPIs and AEs to get them banned as socks or impose sanctions upon them. When bowing to this pressure sysops banned foes of Grandmaster and his suspected meats (I inspected and roughly half sock bans lack sufficient ground), Grandmaster would make sure that viewpoints associated with edits of the wrongfully banned users are forever erased regardless of their quality. See how Grandmaster already mis-interpreted Ed’s proposal as a notion that newer editors are ostensibly required “gain the support of the established users” [70]. And he already began acting on this mis-interpretation. See how Grandmaster trashed and removed my reply to his comments on Nagorno-Karabakh talk pages [71], already behaving as an empowered “higher seniority account.” His excuse was that in his opinion a reply cannot be posted inside/within a commentary.

Also, my comments about a couple of statements by EdJohnston and Paul Siebert:

• Ed said: “The SPI system can be evaded by people who have a strong incentive to do so, and some rather flimsy-looking new accounts have been reported at SPI and the case closed due to lack of evidence.” Ok, but what about this suggestion: The SPI system can be misused by people who have a strong incentive to do so, and new accounts reported to multiple SPIs can be banned as socks mistakenly with little or no evidence, by nurturing prejudice among tired administrators and those ones who just want to wash their hands of controversies. Example: User:Gorzaim was banned without technical evidence in hand. No matching IPs, no duck tests, no proof. WP:DUCK is also about (mis)interpretations and (false) intuition.

• Paul Siebert said: I agree with Paul S. that “The idea to apply some article-specific or topic specific restrictions that affect a whole category of users majority of whom committed no violation of our policy is extremely flawed and dangerous for Wikipedia; in my opinion, such step directly contradict to the letter and the spirit of the discretionary sanctions.” But Paul further suggests to add a warning banner for editors, which would read: “Three revert limit has been imposed on viewpoints, not on users. If you continue a series of reversions started by others, you may be considered to be edit-warring even if you make only one or two reversions." This is mostly a benign proposal but it requires to define a viewpoint, which is about getting stuck in interpretations and requires subject matter expertise. This cannot be enforced easily but can be easily abused by bad faith users eager to ban ideas and facts regardless of intellectual merit, veracity and quality of sources.

My suggestions:

• If administrators treat accounts created in 2011 prejudicially (calling them SPAs etc.), it would be fair if the edit warring “higher seniority” accounts from User:Grandmaster’s Russian cabal that have matching user names in other wikis are treated with equal if not higher level of concern. Lack of a fair approach supports moral hazard – see how Grandmaster is gradually getting rowdy and disruptive, offering to ban viewpoints, removing others’ comments on talk pages, slamming his opponents with ever dubious AE reports like the one filed against User:Oliveriki below. Grandmaster also took the liberty to unarchive his AE report although unarchving is the prerogative of sysops not rank users.

• Sysops should develop a process against bad faith SPIs and bad faith AE reports (which now are coming to replace wrongful SPIs). If they suggest that the SPI system can be evaded by people who have a strong incentive to do so, they should also acknowledge that it can also be abused in harassing SPIs, and innocuous accounts can be banned mistakenly as apparently happened already. Accounts banned under pressure from bad-faith SPIs filed with insufficient evidence by problematic users (e.g. coming from Grandmaster’s ruwiki cabal), e.g. User:Gorzaim, should be given another chance. Also see how carefully Grandmaster tries to remove all the traces of his recent edit warring history by "archiving" the inconvenient evidence of misconduct on AA2's most contested articles [72]. Winterbliss (talk) 00:56, 2 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

• I would like to clarify just one issue. You complain that I removed your comment: [73], but you are not allowed to insert your comments into other editor's comments. After you did that, it was impossible to understand where was me posting and where you. Whatever you have to say, you can say it without altering my text. All your comments made below my text remain intact, but those inserted were impossible to separate. You can repost them as a separate comment. I would also appreciate if you always kept your comments separate from mine. That is a normal practice here. Thanks. Grandmaster 00:05, 2 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

EdJohnston’s proposal: the rule of unintended consequences and self-fulfilling prophecy[edit]

That's what I think. So far EdJohnston's proposal targets just one article Nagorno that is. Ok. But what if tomorrow I or someone else from the group of accounts that are considered suspicious by [User:Grandmaster] decide to edit OTHER articles in the process running into conflict with Grandmaster? Will you propose to extend the 500 edit and 1RR rule to that article as well giving advantage to so-called seniority users?? Consider the Shelling of Stepanakert article. User [Nocturnal781] started it, and users [Winterbliss], [Grandmaster] and [Brandmeister] all contributed and re-edited. What if I decide to edit it too and bump into a dispute with Grandmaster and Brandmeister, the two meatshop buddies from ruwiki who kept the Nagorno article in a f*cked up condition for years (just take a look at the history of the article)?? Will you extend the 500/1RR rule to ALL ARTICLES which Nocturnal781, Winterbliss and I choose to edit?? This is just one example of how quickly EdJohnston’s proposal can metastasize into a true mess. Also, by keeping this AE request open for some many weeks and by putting a pressure on several accounts like mine you are inadvertently creating a common identity for all these accounts which did not exist in the first place. Now after being treated unfairly in the numerous SPIs and in this AE report this group of users are more likely to follow each other’s edits, which makes this AE report is a Self-fulfilling prophecy with a toxic potential for unintended consequences. Will you risk spreading the 500/1RR rule to the entire AA universe to simply satisfy the whimsical impulse of Grandmaster, a convicted meat-puppeteer in ruwiki?? Or will you start arbitrarily and randomly banning every new account that begins editing in AA without any evidence of misbehavior simply because someone thinks that “something is going on”?? Think about it … Sincerely yours, Dehr (talk) 18:52, 2 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

• I had not finished typing when I noticed a living example of unintended consequences bulging out from a different corner [74], in which [User:Shrike] asks EdJohnston to spread the 500 edit count rule to the Israeli-Palestine wiki dispute. Opa! Did someone open Pandora's box? Dehr (talk) 19:04, 2 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Exactly. This is a first but important step to turn Wikipedia into a moderated resource (and, accordingly, to turn admins and senior users into moderators). The next possible step may be a revival of the pending changes idea for problem areas, increasing the seniority level (up to 1000. 5000, or up to the admin level), etc. Of course, it would be easier to administer and write such an encyclopaedia, however, would it lead to its improvement? I doubt...--Paul Siebert (talk) 19:40, 2 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Result concerning the Nagorno-Karabakh article[edit]

This section is to be edited only by uninvolved administrators. Comments by others will be moved to the section above.

• The Sandstein sanction (the one used on Mass killings under Communist regimes) is a rather drastic remedy, so I'd like to hear from other uninvolved admins before taking any action on that front.

  Also, the status quo is rather...unsatisfactory, and I have a feeling that this thread will take a while to conclude. I'll be interested in hearing suggestions as to any temporary sanctions on the article while this thread is pending. T. Canens (talk) 11:10, 26 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see what a sanction like that will achieve, because if an article is already in poor shape (and it usually is when it is a BATTLEGROUND topic), then all it's going to do is empower POV pushers to prevent improvement to the page. That certainly seems to be the case with the Mass killings article mentioned - after more than a year under this sanction, I don't think that article could be described as either neutral or well written. In fact, I'd say there's probably a good case for vacating that sanction at this point.

As regulars at this page will probably be aware, I did start work on an alternative "lightweight" AE-type process about a year ago, although other commitments have prevented me moving forward with it. I still think it would be worth a tryout, but it needs a rewrite and I haven't been able to find the time yet.

I'm not sure what else might be done in the meantime to improve articles in contentious topic areas, but one possible option would be to require anyone who wants to edit such pages to have, say, 500 mainspace edits outside the topic area before editing within it, as well as at least half their ongoing contribution outside it. A restriction like that might at least put a break on sockpuppetry, and hopefully encourage erstwhile POV pushers to make positive contributions elsewhere on the project. That is one option.

Another might be to give one or more respected admins draconian powers over particularly troublesome articles, allowing them to make decisions about what content is or is not permissible. An option like that would of course run the risk of the article coming to reflect the particular bias of the admins in question, but an article controlled by a couple of responsible administrators should still end up better than one in the control of POV pushers and their socks. There would still be some problems to resolve however, such as how to choose the admins in the first place, and what method of appealing their decisions might be put in place. Regardless, whatever method might be chosen, I think there must surely be a widespread recognition by now that current methods of dispute resolution are not doing the job and that new approaches must be tried. Gatoclass (talk) 14:26, 26 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Having now read through the Xebulon sockpuppetry thread linked above, I think Grandmaster's suggestion of permitting admins to simply block any account per the duck test, as Moreschi did on previous occasions, might be the simplest solution for the current problems with this article. Gatoclass (talk) 14:59, 26 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'm inclined to agree with you on that last suggestion; that's de facto what happens in some places already (Chinese-Taiwan issues, for instance), so formalizing it might not be a bad idea. I have enough faith in our admin corps to know it when they see it. The other ideas are certainly worth discussing, but I think that would require broader community input. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 18:23, 26 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

That's true. Sandstein's sanction pretty much froze that article because nobody can get consensus on anything, and that is pretty unsatisfactory. DUCK blocks don't need AE authority though; they have always been allowed. We could hand out a bunch of sock/meatpuppetry blocks (which is which doesn't matter since we treat them identically). However, SPI didn't see enough evidence for a block and that does concern me. Another possibility is to put this group of editors under a collective revert restriction. T. Canens (talk) 19:03, 26 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I must say I have some misgivings about the notion of DUCK blocks, as a possible side effect is the alienation of new, good faith users. A revert restriction that favoured established users would be another alternative. I would like to take a closer look at the article before commenting further however. Gatoclass (talk) 07:36, 28 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

• On the technicality issue, article-level discretionary sanctions are permitted under Wikipedia talk:Requests for arbitration/Armenia-Azerbaijan 2#Request for clarification: Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Armenia-Azerbaijan 2. The edit notice serves as the requisite warning; the block for failure to obey the article-level sanction is the actual discretionary sanction. T. Canens (talk) 18:50, 26 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

• @Paul Siebert: we have never required evidence of "repeated or serious" misconduct before a warning may be issued; in fact, the provision does not require any misconduct before a warning. DSN allows for sanctions on an editor who "despite being warned...repeatedly or seriously fails to adhere to the purpose of Wikipedia, any expected standards of behavior, or any normal editorial process". Repeated or serious misconduct is required for sanctions, not for a warning. T. Canens (talk) 17:36, 27 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

• I too have concerns about the "Sandstein Option" having the desired effect for the article. The way these folks scrap regarding Nagorno-Karabakh is remarkable though, I've had to admin disputes over an abandoned mosque and the name of a mountain range of all things. The national tensions in this area of the world are profound and, like other areas, those folks want to bring their battles here. I have great concerns about the misuse of SPI as well. Yes, a lot of people sock in this area and there's probably off-wiki canvassing in this area but we can't use that as justification for immediately assuming an editor is from that without proof. I am also having growing concerns about the "SPI Patrol" that is, those who regularly submit largely unfounded SPI requests. Therefore, what I would suggest, is a more stringent approach to single purpose accounts. Simply put, they are politely warned they are editing in a conflict area as an SPA and as such they can find themselves subject to sanction quite readily if they're engaging in TE or causing disruption. This eliminates a lot of the guesswork in socking and just brings them to account for their behavior. There's nothing wrong with being an SPA, it just opens you up to scrutiny in conflict areas. --WGFinley (talk) 15:09, 2 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Having found the time to do a little more research on the history of the article and the users concerned, it seems the following has occurred:

Between about June and August 2011, the article was gradually taken from about 60k to 95k bytes by several users since banned for sockpuppetry, including Bars77, Vandorenfm, and Gorzaim. After these accounts were banned, Ehud Lesar reverted the article back to the 60k version in September, per WP:BAN.[75] Lesar then found himself in an edit war with several other users, most of whom also turned out to be socks. The article then remained relatively stable on the 60k version for about five months, until January 24, when Oliveriki, a user with only a handful of edits, reverted back to the 95k version with the misleading edit summary "rest references".[76] This triggered a renewed edit war over the two versions, with the participants this time including Tuscumbia (currently serving a six-month one year ban for another issue) Zimmerod, Brandmeister and Winterbliss.

My initial conclusions are, firstly, that Oliveriki renewed an old edit war and did so with a highly misleading edit summary,[77]] also failing to explain his reasons for restoring about 30k of content on the talk page. The fact that this user has only a handful of edits is also a concern. Secondly, Zimmarod restored the contested 95k version three times,[78][79][80] the last time justifying his restoration per WP:BAN due to Tuscumbia's ban,[81] ignoring the fact that the content he was restoring was itself originally added by sitebanned users. Zimmarod has also made disparaging remarks on the article talk page about his opponents, in breach of WP:SOAPBOX AND WP:NPA: "Azerbaijani editors always discard anything that runs against the spirit and letter of official state propaganda of their bizarre oil dictatorship headed by the uncrowned KGB monarch Aliyev. Azerbaijani futile fight against Western academia is like the objections of of the state-brainwashed Chinese or Soviets against Western accusations of human rights abuse"[82] and "I think five editors spend a month in empty talk with a stubborn POV-pusher."[83] As a consequence, I think both editors should as a minimum be formally warned of AE sanctions.

With regard to the edit warring, most of the reverts on both sides have been made on the grounds of WP:BAN, presumably from the clause which states that Anyone is free to revert any edits made in defiance of a ban. I do not see however, where the policy states that edits made by a user before his ban can be reverted on sight. Regardless, the policy also states that Wikipedians in turn are not permitted to post or edit material at the direction of a banned editor (sometimes called proxy editing or proxying) unless they are able to confirm that the changes are verifiable and they have independent reasons for making them. From this, I conclude that if an edit originally made by a since banned user is restored by another user in good standing, then that edit should be discussed as a legitimate edit and not simply re-reverted per the first WP:BAN clause.

Finally, with regard to the contested content itself, I agree with Golbez,[84] who suggested that it is not appropriate in such a contested article to add so much content in a single edit without discussion, and that the additions need to be discussed section by section by the parties concerned so that outstanding issues can be properly addressed. Gatoclass (talk) 08:39, 3 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'm concerned that Winterbliss has seized upon a minor error in my conclusions above to cast aspersions on my honesty and integrity.[85] Since his comments were directed at me personally, I think it best to leave it to other admins to decide whether or not such comments are acceptable in the light of the evidence presented in their support. Gatoclass (talk) 08:06, 4 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Before making any further comments on this case, I intend to wait for resolution of my recently filed request for clarification. Anyone with an interest in the topic area is welcome to comment on the request. My apologies for any inconvenience while this issue is being resolved. Gatoclass (talk) 08:23, 8 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Unarchived. T. Canens (talk) 02:50, 18 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Had I realized my request for clarification would still be open almost two weeks after filing it, I would have withdrawn from the case at the outset. I think it best that I do so now since I have no way of knowing when the request will be closed, and I think it unfair to the respondents to expect them to wait any longer. Once again, my apologies to all concerned for the inconvenience. Gatoclass (talk) 10:04, 21 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

• The ability to craft an 1RR restriction by definition includes the ability to limit it to a subset of editors. I agree with Ed's proposed restriction. If it turns out to have undesirable side effects or fails to serve its purpose, we can revisit the issue. T. Canens (talk) 02:33, 31 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Now that I see this is specific to the article in question I am in favor of Ed's proposal. It could be a good trial to be used elsewhere in highly problematic areas. --WGFinley (talk) 14:12, 5 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

• I've looked over Ed's proposal, and I think it's worth a shot. If it's a fiasco, we can reconsider our options, but I don't think it will be. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 21:42, 6 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Venue[edit]

Attention: This request may be declined without further action if insufficient or unclear information is provided in the "Request" section below.

Request concerning Shuki[edit]

User who is submitting this request for enforcement

    ←   ZScarpia   14:35, 29 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

User against whom enforcement is requested

Shuki (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Sanction or remedy to be enforced

WP:ARBPIA#Discretionary_sanctions

Diffs of edits that violate this sanction or remedy, and an explanation how these edits violate it

Violation of the 1RR restriction and disruptive behaviour on the Israeli settlement article.

1. 19:46, 25 March 2012 Ignoring the issues raised, particularly the neutrality requirement (multiple sources contradict the statement), reinsertion of problematic text which had been removed by Dlv999 after discussion on the talkpage.
2. 22:44, 25 March 2012 (+ 2hr 58min) After several intervening edits to the article by other editors, the removal of the phrase "the occupied territories" from the text reinserted in diff 1.
3. 05:08, 26 March 2012 and 05:10, 26 March 2012 (+ 9hr 24min from the first edit) WP:POINTy removal (see the edit comments and the one made by Shuki at 05:12, 26 March 2012 (UTC)) of two citations and the substitution of a fact tag for the second, which had been there to verify that Human Rights Watch had made the statement cited to it.

Diffs of notifications or of prior warnings against the conduct objected to (if required)

1. 02:07, 12 February 2012 (UTC): indefinitely banned from the Golan Heights article by HJ Mitchell (talk · contribs) as a result of this AE request
2. 23:08, 2 December 2010 (UTC): blocked for 6 months for abusive sockpuppetry in the ARBPIA area by T. Canens (talk · contribs)
3. 21:57, 29 November 2010 (UTC): banned from all articles, discussions, and other content within the ARBPIA area for 6 months by T. Canens (talk · contribs) as a result of this AE thread.
4. 18:39, 1 November 2010 (UTC): restricted to 1RR per day for the entire set of Arab-Israeli conflict-related articles for 2 months by PhilKnight (talk · contribs)
5. 22:16, 15 September 2010 (UTC): restricted to 1RR for all articles which relate to Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Golan Heights for two and a hhalf months by PhilKnight (talk · contribs)
6. 08:23, 27 July 2010 (UTC): topic-banned for 1 month from articles about towns, cities, settlements, and other places or locations in Israel and neighbouring countries by Stifle (talk · contribs)
7. 16:36, 10 April 2010 (UTC): limited to one revert per page per day for three months as a result of this AE thread by Sandstein (talk · contribs)
8. 16:33, 7 October 2009 (UTC): ARBPIA notification by CIreland (talk · contribs)[reply]

Additional comments by editor filing complaint

On 25 March], a discussion started about a statement in the Lead of the Israeli settlement article. The principal problem is that the statement is asserting a condition currently persists despite the fact that the source cited dates back to 1997 and that other sources contradict the statement. After a discussion, the sentence containing the statement was deleted.

Shuki re-inserted the deleted sentence, ignoring the previous objections raised, in particular, the policy requirement that, as other sources contradict the statement, it cannot be expressed as an unqualified statement of fact. In the following ten hours, Shuki made a number of other reversions. A couple of these were, based on the edit comments left and the remark made by Shuki beforehand on the article talkpage, done for a WP:POINTy reason. The second of these was senseless; a citation to a Human Rights Watch document used to verify that a statement made by that organisation had been made by them was deleted and a fact tag inserted.

When Dlv999 reverted Shuki's re-insertion just outside the 24-hour 1RR limit, Shuki requested that Dlv999 be given an ARBPIA warning. I pointed out to Shuki that, whereas he was complaining that Dlv999 had come close to violating the 1RRR restriction on the article, it looked to me as though he had actually violated it.

On listing the edits which I thought might violate the 1RR restriction, Shuki replied that the edits shown by the third diff listed above are "not a reversion at all, merely a copyedit" and that (my interpretation) the edit shown in the second diff doesn't count because it reverts part of the text that Shuki had (before intervening edits by others) added back in in his previous edit. Unfortunately, I can't remember all the precedents set here which determine what does or does not count as a reversion as far as the 1RR restriction is concerned, so Shuki may be right about the edit in the second diff, but I feel pretty sure that his claim about the edits in the third diff is fairly incredible.

Sometimes it looks to me as though editors are projecting their own behaviour onto others. I think that this is a classic case. Shuki is accusing other editors of POV-pushing and ignoring what other editors have written. Given that Shuki ignored issues other editors had raised and the supplied sources which contradict the statement he re-inserted, I think that those descriptions can fairly be applied to him. By pointing out to him that it looked to me as though he had broken the 1RR restriction, my behaviour has become aggressive. I think that the one acting most aggressively is Shuki. In my opinion, he shows a distinct lack of self-awareness. At one point, he takes a pop at Nishidani over the indefinite ban he was given. Perhaps, as someone with a less than salubrious ban and block history himself, including a block for sockpuppeteering, should show a bit more reserve over pointing the finger.

I think that Shuki shows some signs of having had a bit of a meltdown. He lapses into incoherence at one point. He gets confused about who has said what. And he seems to take Zero, a long-term admin and contributor in the IP area, as a new editor.

Shuki has asked for a retraction of the suggestion that he may have violated the 1RR restriction. I think that there is a case that he did and, therefore, I have brought it here.

    ←   ZScarpia   14:35, 29 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

@Shuki -
You wrote: The second edit of the same sentence was not a rerevert (2RR) of anything or any other edit beforehand. The two edits had no related intervening edits and should be not be considered a R at all.
In actual fact, there were two intervening edits between your first and second revert, that is, 1 and 2, both of which altered the same sentence you edited in your first and second reverts.
Therefore, your claim is as false as the one you made about your third revert being a copy-edit.
    ←   ZScarpia   05:58, 3 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Notification of the user against whom enforcement is requested

[99]

Discussion concerning Shuki[edit]

Statement by Shuki[edit]

I'm organizing my thoughts on this frivolous battleground AE but first I'd like to ask that The Blade of the Northern Lights not handle cases regarding ARBPIA. The admin either has a POV on one side or is simply not informed in the area and has shown it on the few AEs that they have participated here already. The admin makes quick and uninformed character judgments without bothering to first verify if the claim even holds water. This is the second time I've seem a blatantly ignorant comment from Blade. --Shuki (talk) 23:11, 29 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Blade. I would expect you be above that... Anyway, it isn't a personal attack, but rather my perception because I see that you handle the other AEs fine. I don't think you have anything against me at all, in the sense that I don't think that you are against me or like-minded editors, but again, your 'first impressions' leave much objectiveness to be desired. I am arranging my reply, but the issue is not ADL here at all and I'm sorry that that is the only thing you see here. --Shuki (talk) 23:31, 29 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

With regard to the issue at hand: Apparently, ZScarpia seems to be using AE to fish for a sanction and innocently verify with the project if I have violated 1RR rather than actually risk accusing me of it. And he has made a few misleading personal comments in the process trying to discredit me. ZScarpia is claiming that I violated 1RR when in fact I reverted once (reinserting the sentence while a discussion was underway) and then shortly after removed problematic wording that does not appear in the source anyway. The second edit of the same sentence was not a rerevert (2RR) of anything or any other edit beforehand. The two edits had no related intervening edits and should be not be considered a R at all. Peculiar though that in this case, the 'not pro-settlement' editors claiming the sentence was not accurate had decided to first remove and then discuss instead of leaving in and discussing. They similarly did not object to another like-sided editor who had just previously insisted [100] that we leave in the 'original' wording of another line while a discussion was underway, and I had accepted that as the 'Jewish-Israeli' discussion was indeed underway.

This is a content issue that can be discussed collaboratively instead of combatively. One editor suggested a compromise [101] and another editor posted an opposing opinion but the 'not pro-settlement editors' would not have anything to do with that, especially the Dlv999 editor who waited 24hrs +6 min, to make a revert insisting that the sentence be removed. DLv999's edit was clearly gaming though I chose to AGF him when I refrained from being antagonistic when I chose to warn him and did not run to open a kneejerk AE instead. ZScarpia did not have a problem with that skirting of 1RR.

Blade automatically chose here to remark about ADL 'an organization with an obvious agenda' instead of reviewing the actual issue whether any settlements had been created after the ADL source date. Blade, in fact, a side-discussion had almost started about settlements and outposts (are settlements?) but at that time, but I was already pulling back since I found that the other editors continued to make article edits ignoring the discussion and it was frankly overwhelming. I think we could have civily discussed if the ADL line was accurate or not (if any real settlements had been established afterwards or not) but I was already distanced from taking part, not feeling that I was talking to editors who were even willing to hear reasonable opposing voices (who were scared away).

In the last two paragraphs of this AE, ZScarpia has made unfortunately uncivil claims, including a direct personal insult of my use of the English language he calls a 'lapse into incoherence', and merely dragging up my history, some of which has nothing to do with the discussion at hand, in order to attack my character. His perception of my 'confused' interaction (another personal attack judgement on my mental state) between other editors is frankly, none of his business, irrelevant to the 1RR claim (if this really is the issue here or not). His accusation of belittling Zero is preposterous. If I was aggressive, I'd open an AE about ZScarpia. I choose not to be. --Shuki (talk) 01:13, 30 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

WG and other admins, please refrain from making misleading general claims about me, especially the one about socking during a tban. I certainly was not socking during/conflicting with my tban. Please check for yourselves. One can then evidently see here as well as in past judgement that there is out of proportion generalizing for certain editors and bend over backwards leniency for others (and even here, no mention of Dlv999s gaming of 1RR of course). The mention about ADL is not the issue here, but rather then non-collaborative behaviour of the other editors surrounding this incident who seem to be allowed to edit first then discuss but others are sanctioned for demanding discussion first before changing the status quo. I request that you indeed do go through that timeline of edits and see who in fact was gaming and being aggressive. --Shuki (talk) 21:20, 2 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

WG, gimmee an AGF. Notice how no one bothered to come here to comment for me or the AE in general. Why? Because they simply already know the outcome (especially given Blade's kneejerk response rather than trying to at least show some objectiveness) and they don't want to take a risk of getting judged themselves as was demonstrated by Cptnono, who simply made an inane comment. It is not productive that many editors lose faith in the WP process when admins only do half their homework as demonstrated here by you. Do yourself a favour, check again the edits of my other user. It was not used to bypass the ban. I was Tbanned, not blocked. Do you know the difference??? FWIW, not that anyone cares, that duplicate user (which is allowed on WP) was not supposed to be a sock at all or used for I/P edits but I don't have a criminal mind and slipped up when browsing around. The incriminating duplicate 'vote' was really a dumb lapse of memory that I had already 'voted' with my principal Shuki user and definitely not worth the risk in the first place like some important policy guideline. FWIW, I accepted the sanction that was given and paid a very heavy price. That heavy price should have been enough, but it seems that that one-time mistake of the past is being dragged out to affect my character now and I am punished again. You should have actually reprimanded the filling editor for bringing it up because it has absolutely nothing to do with the current AE. What disturbs me now is that the admins are expecting me to suck up to them and refusing to accept the criticism by simply dismissing it. Now, you should yourself understand and encourage the proper collaborative process, by other editors at that discussion, that should have first discussed and calmed down themselves, rather than spiking the issue with what I think is a frivolous 1RR AE which no one has even bothered to comment on. --Shuki (talk) 20:41, 3 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Comments by others about the request concerning Shuki[edit]

Comment by The Devil's Advocate[edit]

Calling the removal of a source a "copyedit" seems like a blatant lie. It is clearly a pointy revert so it seems Shuki not only violated 1RR with that edit, but lied about the nature of the edit. Seems like a topic ban is definitely in order absent a vociferous apology.--The Devil's Advocate (talk) 15:45, 29 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by Cptnono[edit]

Comment by Dlv999[edit]

In my opinion Shuki's defense and re-insertion of the statement and associated ADL reference does not reach the level of tendentious editing. The statement in question had been part of the article for some time, so Shuki was defending the status quo, not seeking to insert new material. As a content dispute, Shuki had every right to advocate and re-introduce the material that he/she honestly believed was best for the article. The issue with Shuki's conduct arises in his/her behavior once it became clear that the weight of evidence and editors was against his/her position. Instead of acknowledging that consensus was broadly against inclusion, Shuki decided that all the editors that had disagreed with him/her were "POV editors making edits without bothering to take this discussion seriously" variously accusing us of "animosity", "battleground mentality", "combative POV insertion". He/she decided to start deleting other references in the article to make a WP:POINT by claiming to use "Zero's logic", but at the same time still arguing for the retention of the statement in question (thus denying "Zero's logic"). One of these deletions was particularly egregious as ZScarpia has already pointed out. I think the violation of 1RR is pretty clear, but had it not been for Shuki's aggravating behavior I doubt the issue would have even been raised, let alone reached this noticeboard. As it was, Shuki essentially goaded Zscarpia into bringing the complaint. Even now he/she refuses to acknowledge breaching the rule and seems to have brought the same problematic behavior from the talk page to this noticeboard, now even accusing admins of POV, when they do not support his/her interpretation of events. I have already addressed the accusation that my edits were an attempt to "game the system".[102]. Dlv999 (talk) 09:52, 30 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Dlv999, so one time you choose to AGF me, another time you do not. Did I do that to you? Please do not put words in my mouth. I did not accuse 'admins' and there has yet to even be an interpretation of events. Since no one has officially informed you of ARBPIA as I requested, you commenting here is essentially a self-notification. I did not goad ZScarpia at all. I asked him to either retract or stand by the claim. Read WP:CIVIL You should know that one should not make accusations unless they are willing to stand by them. If I were you, I would have stayed out of this, but since you came here, you are now dragged into this AE yourself with your innocent non-violation of 1RR by 6 minutes. --Shuki (talk) 11:07, 30 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting piece of advice, that I should have stayed out, considering prior to my comment, I had already featured prominently in your own statement. Anyway, I have given my honest opinion, I would simply ask that uninvolved editors and admins read the relevant talk page discussion and associated edits with an open mind and come to their own conclusions. Dlv999 (talk) 11:39, 30 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Result concerning Shuki[edit]

This section is to be edited only by uninvolved administrators. Comments by others will be moved to the section above.

• I have to agree that using the ADL, an organization with an obvious agenda (whether one agrees with their agenda or not is irrelevant), as the sole source for that kind of claim claim is plainly tendentious. An article ban would certainly seem to be in order, I'll leave it up to other admins whether or not they think something broader should be put in place (I happen to think a 3 or 6 month break from the IP area would do everyone some good, but I'd like to hear from other admins before instituting anything that drastic). The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 22:48, 29 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

  @Shuki; you may want to read WP:BUTT before proceeding; while I'm not particularly bothered by personal remarks they really don't help your case. Does or does not the ADL have a specific agenda? The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 23:19, 29 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

  • Without looking at the edits, I'm not a big fan of two article bans. That someone needs to be banned from two distinct articles suggest that we would be better off simply banning them from the topic. T. Canens (talk) 02:55, 31 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
• Concur with Tim, it's time for the article ban to be replaced by a TBAN for Shuki. ADL is clearly not a reliable source, they are a special interest group. Removing the sourced HRW material is also problematic. It all pales in comparison to Shuki's conduct on the talk page though, checking the supplied diffs I could deluge this response with diffs, including this one which are just full on battleground behavior. Given the fact Shuki has previously been TBAN'd from ARBPIA for 6 months, was blocked 6 months for socking during that ban and has a current ARBPIA related indefinite article ban I think the time has come for the indefinite ARBPIA TBAN. Some editors just can't learn from past behavior it seems and editing in this topic area is not a right if you are prone to continually disturbing it. --WGFinley (talk) 15:34, 2 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

@Shuki: You are TBAN'd by Tim on 29 Nov 2010 from ARBPIA[103]. On 2 Dec 2010 an SPI request was filed against you and found to be valid by Tim. [104] Coming here accusing admins of misrepresenting clearly established facts is not very productive. --WGFinley (talk) 03:02, 3 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Actually the case was filed against Epeefleche, but checkuser evidence showed that it was actually Shuki. T. Canens (talk) 20:32, 3 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, but the outcome was as I indicated - Shuki was found to be socking and blocked for it. --WGFinley (talk) 23:59, 3 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

• Golan Heights and Israeli settlement are two of the hot-button articles within the I/P area. If the question is whether it is better to ban Shuki from both articles or to impose a ban from all of ARBPIA, the latter seems better to me. My plan is to close this request with an indefinite ban of Shuki from ARBPIA, and I'll do so within 24 hours unless there is reasoning to the contrary, or some other admin does so first. EdJohnston (talk) 02:57, 6 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Cptnono[edit]

Regarding the comment by Cptnono (talk · contribs) above, invoking m:DICK is a dick move and has earned him a 7 day block from me despite any claim to be retired for disrupting AE. --WGFinley (talk) 15:45, 2 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]