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The primary scope of this case is to examine the actions of MZMcBride (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) and whether his actions are within acceptable practices in accordance with Wikipedia policies, particularly administrator conduct, including but not limited to communication, judgment and interpretation of other site policies. Content issues will be reviewed only to the extent that they relate to MZMcBride's actions and should be framed to discuss relevant existing policies or practices. Arbitration clerks may move evidence submissions that do not fall within this scope to the talk page. Editors are also reminded to try to keep evidence within 1000 words and 100 diffs.

Create your own section to provide evidence in, and do not edit anyone else's section. Keep your evidence to a maximum of 1000 words and 100 diffs. Evidence longer than this will be refactored or removed entirely.

Anyone, whether directly involved or not, may add evidence to this page. Create your own section and do not edit in anybody else's section. Please limit your main evidence to a maximum 1000 words and 100 diffs and keep responses to other evidence as short as possible. A short, concise presentation will be more effective; posting evidence longer than 1000 words will not help you make your point. Over-long evidence that is not exceptionally easy to understand (like tables) will be trimmed to size or, in extreme cases, simply removed by the Clerks without warning - this could result in your important points being lost, so don't let it happen. Stay focused on the issues raised in the initial statements and on diffs which illustrate relevant behavior.

It is extremely important that you use the prescribed format. Submitted evidence should include a link to the actual page diff in question, or to a short page section; links to the page itself are insufficient. Never link to a page history, an editor's contributions, or a log for all actions of an editor (as those will have changed by the time people click on your links), although a link to a log for a specific article or a specific block log can be useful. Please make sure any page section links are permanent. See simple diff and link guide.

This page is not for general discussion - for that, see the talk page. If you think another editor's evidence is a misrepresentation of the facts, cite the evidence and explain how it is incorrect within your own section. Please do not try to re-factor the page or remove evidence presented by others. If something is put in the wrong place, leave it for the Arbitrators or Clerks to move.

Arbitrators may analyze evidence and other assertions at /Workshop. /Workshop provides for comment by parties and others as well as Arbitrators. After arriving at proposed principles, findings of fact or remedies, Arbitrators vote at /Proposed decision. Only Arbitrators (and clerks, when clarification on votes is needed) may edit the proposed decision page.

I was cleaning out some of my old subpages today. When I reached User:NuclearWarfare/List of African American United States Cabinet Secretaries, I was surprised to see that something did link to there. That page was User:MiszaBot/PSP, which basically gives the links of all the "secret" pages (My page had "secretaries" in it). A typical link on that page has (delete) and (rogue delete) links on it, which give you the lolcat edit summaries that MZMcBride had been using. I'm not sure if anything should be done to that page, but Wizardman (talk · contribs) told me to post that link after I told him about it. NuclearWarfare _(Talk) 21:14, 2 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The "secret user page" deletions that are the subject of this proceeding are one aspect of what I believe is a regrettably cavalier approach to deletions, adherence to our policies and interactions with other registered users.

MZMcBride's bot-like deletions aggravate problems

On 1 March, User:MZMcBride deleted approximately 8,000 pages, deleting continuously throughout the 24-hour period. (5000-edit user logs:[1][2]) Either he was running an unauthorized bot on his main account in contravention of our bot policy or else he was drinking a lot of Red Bull. A whole lot of Red Bull in fact, since, editing around the clock, he deleted another 13,000 pages during the immediately preceding 43-hour period. (More 5000-edit user logs: [3][4][5])

I first became aware of MZMcBride's frenzied/automated deletions in an unrelated incident when he deleted a number of spammer IP talk pages on my watchlist in January. While technically within his rights in accordance with our user page guideline for deleting old IP pages, this was creating difficulties for WikiProject Spam efforts to track spammer accounts and warnings over time. After restoring spammer talk pages for several days^[6], I finally left him a message; see User talk:MZMcBride/Archive 13#Spam-tracking pages. He continued deleting pages anyway and I kept leaving him messages, puzzled as to why he would continue deleting pages and not even respond. Finally, several hundred page deletions and 3 hours later, he finally replied and you can read the exchange for yourself. This continued at Wikipedia talk:User page# OLDIP (permanent link); eventually he grudgingly conceded to not delete pages containing one of three keywords. From his comments,^[7] he clearly wasn't even reading these IP talk pages.

Looking at MZMcBride's block log, he's had a Red Bull problem for some time, having been blocked before for running unapproved scripts on his main account.^[8] --A. B. ^{(talk • contribs)} 21:21, 2 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Still hitting the Red Bull for the last two days, continuously making multiple deletions per minute around the clock: [9][10][11]. --A. B. ^{(talk • contribs)} 22:26, 3 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

MZMcBride does a poor job of communicating with affected users

A review of his 2009 edits in User talk space shows little or no interaction with authors of user space material he's been deleting.^[12] His talk page deletions have not all been anonymous IP pages; see his string of "secret page" deletions late 23 February 2009.^[13] I see no evidence he bothered to explain the issues to the editors involved, some of whom have been useful contributors.^{[14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22]} I believe he's probably deleted 100,000 to 300,000 pages so far in 2009 but that's just a guess -- I got tired of loading so many 5000-edit log pages just to see one week's worth of his deletions. --A. B. ^{(talk • contribs)} 21:21, 2 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Everyone has known about this adminbot business for months

Some people seem to want to make this a general RFAR regarding adminbots. Most people – certainly those in the "bot community" (of which I am not a part, having never run or worked on a bot) – have known about MZMcBride's adminbots since Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Adminbots in July 2008, and they weren't secret before that. This is not analogous to, for example, Betacommand's running of bots after he'd be explicitly told to stop. As far as I'm aware, nobody at any point has explicitly asked MZMB to stop running bots prior to this flareup. – iridescent 02:08, 3 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

MZMcBride has been blocked for admin-bot operation

MZMcBride's block log records at least two instances, where from the looks of the block summary, he was blocked for what appears to be like unattended operation of an admin-bot to delete several talkpages, after the RfAr/Sarah Palin protection wheel war. Before that, the log records one instance where Pilotguy blocks MZMcBride for running a bot script.

Bot-deletions at high speeds whilst not following policy or/and communicating in a timely manner has previously been problematic, and has resulted in revocation of administrative privileges, as illustrated in RfAr/Betacommand. - Mailer Diablo 21:37, 3 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

MZMcBride has made a disruptive and frivolous renomination for deletion

See Wikipedia:Templates_for_deletion/Log/2009_March_5#Template:Rescue. Two discussions previously closed as keep and the third is so far looking like a snow or speedy keep. Consensus might change, but after two "keeps" rather than "no consensus", a third nomination is pointed. Sincerely, --A Nobody^{My talk} 18:26, 5 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

MZMcBride makes weak "argument" in AfD

See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of fictional characters by IQ. The discussion closed as keep, but he wanted it speedily deleted with no explanation why. Now, I thought his arguments at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 113 were actually quite good and show promise. As such, I encourage him to use that level of compellingness in such other discussions as the one above cited one concerning fictional characters. Sincerely, --A Nobody^{My talk} 18:26, 5 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Script assisted deletion of user talkpages while policy is still under discussion, and even continuing when it was removed from policy

MZMcBride has actively deleted many user talkpages of IP-users. Although the majority of these pages is indeed rather useless, there are many cases which concern data that is, to some specialised admins of interest. MZMcBride did adapt the script for that, but as easy examinations show (vide infra), that adaptation was not enough. Previous cases were not repaired, deletion just went on with the new script. I started this morning to work out some examples, one of them mentioned below.

MZMcBride's main (repeated) argument not to adapt the script further seems "I still don't see the use of old user talk pages, the user is already gone for long" (not a quote). During the discussion, the deletions were ongoing, while there was obvious resistance of some sysops against it (discussions: perm.link,perm.link).

Deletion is often warranted, if the case involves simple vandalism. However, when vandalism is wide scale using a specific modus operandi, deletion removes valuable information. A reason to remove the old warnings is that the new user of the IP is probably not the same, and the warnings are not meant for that person. However, deletion also includes talkpages with 'non-offending' welcome messages, and other solutions have been presented (e.g. blanking/removal of old warnings, archiving and/or replacing with another welcome template).

Example 1:

• The users User talk:213.59.221.158, User talk:213.59.221.236, User talk:213.59.221.30, User talk:213.59.221.36, User talk:213.59.221.11, User talk:213.59.221.58, User talk:213.59.221.89, User talk:213.59.221.179, User talk:213.59.221.19, User talk:213.59.221.157, User talk:213.59.221.175, User talk:213.59.221.181, User talk:213.59.221.57, User talk:213.59.221.69, User talk:213.59.221.233. 15 editors, 9 active also on en (6 not active here). 2 have been warned, one for spamming using a spam template, one for spamming using a custom warning which does not include the words 'spam', 'promote' or 'promotion'. The 2 talkpages were deleted before the adaptation of the script, however, one would still have been deleted after the adaptation. Say that this editor comes back now, spamming again. It is for non-admins impossible to track if this editor (which is very likely to be the SAME person or organisation) has been warned before (note, there is also an account involved, not all tracks are gone in this case).

Example 2 (User:Beetstra/DeletedTalkPages#XWiki_spam_range (partially) worked out data of this example):

• The users User talk:89.216.66.9, User talk:89.216.66.19, User talk:89.216.66.32, User talk:89.216.66.36, User talk:89.216.66.54, User talk:89.216.66.77, User talk:89.216.66.80, User talk:89.216.66.99, User talk:89.216.66.107, User talk:89.216.66.164, User talk:89.216.66.174, User talk:89.216.66.183, User talk:89.216.66.204, User talk:89.216.66.209, User talk:89.216.66.213, User talk:89.216.66.224, User talk:89.216.66.231, User talk:89.216.66.232, User talk:89.216.66.237, User talk:89.216.66.248 are the editors in a /24 range which a) have been involved in spamming a link cross-wiki, or b) have been editing the en.wikipedia. All but one are involved in the spam case, most have been active on en, but some haven't. 4 have been warned here regarding the link. Only one has been warned for spam/promote/promotion, the other three have not. According to the current scheme, three of the four talkpages are up for deletion in 2010 (all of them would be before the above mentioned adaptation of the script).

Having the tracks available for everyone to see helps in seeing the tracks of editors with a specific modus operandi. The editor may already have moved to a new IP, it is still the same editor as the editor using the old IP, and when the editor was warned somewhere in ancient times, then the editor should know better, and then that track is of interest for future actions. Also, these warnings are part of proof for used for blocking, or blacklisting here or on meta. Deleting the warnings makes these track invisible for contesters of e.g. blacklisting, and the work on these cases then solely depends on local admins, local non-admins and cross-wiki helpers will simply not be able to examine the full evidence.

The presentation of the first example did not convince MZMcBride, he did not understand why there were IPs without contribs on en, and hence I don't think he appreciated the work involved in only finding these IPs and checking all of them, even using other databases, specialised tools, and range-contribs information. Deletions were ungoing. The rule has been removed from policy at 3.05 this morning (UK time, diff), after the first example. Deletions were still ungoing after that. At 14:05 (UK time) I presented the second case to MZMcBride, asking him to stop immediately. I also posted the case on AN/I (diff), with the remark that I was planning to block MZMcBride if the deletions did not stop, and also notified MZMcBride of the AN/I thread (diff. MZMcBride was blocked shortly after by User:Mangojuice (block log, diff), just before I would have blocked him. Unfortunately, the damage caused is immense, and very, very difficult to repair (short of undoing ALL deletions and re-evaluating every single case again). My problem here is not the use of the admin bot, it is not directly the deletion of talkpages (which is in some cases fine with me), but the unwillingness to closely look at the concerns of other users in these cases, and waiting for a proper solution. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 16:20, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

MZMcBride has shown egregiously poor judgment

I am adding this evidence under the administrator conduct prong of the scope/evidence limiting instructions above. Specifically, these instances deal with poor judgment.

MZMcBride has created a couple of pages recently providing detailed instructions on how to disrupt Wikipedia with an Administrator account, and defeat a checkuser. These pages served no other purpose than to educate those who wished to harm Wikipedia. Any useful information in these pages could have been forwarded to developers privately.

• The first page was alluded to by Newyorkbrad in the discussion over whether the ArbCom should accept this case [23]. As such the ArbCom is already aware of it. The creation of this how to guide was a gross violation of WP:POINT. As mentioned above, if MZMcBride wanted to bring developer attention to this he could have done so in private. Instead, he chose to publicly display his "knowledge" for the world to see. After the dangers of this page were brought to MZMcBride's attention he could have deleted it. However, fearing his work would be removed, he copied the how to guide to another Wiki where it remains. The history of this page also remains on Wikipedia. MZMcBride's actions here show extremely poor judgment.

• The second page MZMcBride created provided detailed instructions on how to circumvent a checkuser [24] (admin only). The page is now deleted, and as far as I know is not on another Wiki. In this instance, he deleted the page after it had been on Wikipedia for about a month and was undergoing an MfD. This page, like the one above, served no other useful purpose than to educate those who wished to harm Wikipedia. As such, MZMcBride's actions again show extremely poor judgment.

"The golden rule of contributing to the project is to make an edit only where it actively benefits the project." These pages provided no such benefit and only served to hamper the efforts of already overworked admins and checkusers. KnightLago (talk) 18:32, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It is also worth noting that the first page was created and "deleted"/copied in January, the second page was created on February 5th and deleted on the 28th, the same day this case was opened. See the links above. KnightLago (talk) 18:57, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

MZMcBride violated due process as set forth by xfd instructions

Wikipedia:Guide to deletion and Wikipedia:Deletion policy outline the process by which articles that do not qualify for Copyright deletion, Speedy deletion, or propposed deletion are to be dealt with. The absence of concensus at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Secret pages means that any attempt to delete the article must first be reraised at mfd and a conclusive consensus recieved, yet MZM ignored the process and on his own behalf deleted the articles himself without consensus [25]. As a result of his failure to use due process the arbitration committee was forced to accept the case since the anger felt toward the matter poisoned any other attempt for people to aproach the issue in manner of good faith. There is no excuse for this; even Esperanza was granted a stay of execution until consensus was reached at a second xfd. One of the five pillars of wikipedia is our code of conduct, and it explicitly states that wikipedians are to "Find consensus..." and "...never disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a point", yet MZMcBride has seen fit to ignore both of these guidelines. Regardless of the content of the pages deleted, this behaviour is inexcusable. TomStar810 (Talk) 21:30, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Deletion accuracy and rate

MZMcBride has deleted 804435 unique pages from Wikipedia. Of these 19102 (2.4%) have been recreated or undeleted and are presently active on Wikipedia.

These restored pages are not uniformly distributed in time as most are related to his earliest 200000 deletions. At the same time, MZMcBride's pace of deletions has picked up considerably with 500,000 deletions between December 28, 2008 and March 6, 2009.

Note that these numbers say nothing about how many pages were undeleted versus recreated. It is also entirely possible that a deletion was correct at the time even if the page was later recreated legitimately.

Undeletions

I randomly sampled 1200 of the 19102 pages which now exist despite having been deleted by MZMcBride. For this sample I found:

ST47 is also an adminbot operator. Based on his logs [26], it appears he systematically restored more than a thousand of MZMcBride's deletions in June 2008. His motivation is not immediately obvious though he uses the summary "Restoring pages per request and consensus at WP:AN/I" for all of these.

So extrapolating from these figures, of MZMcBride's 800000 deletions, approximately 1.9% were recreated and 0.5% were undeleted. Further, about half of the undeleted pages are attributable to a single bulk action performed by ST47.

Addendum

Carcharoth pointed me at this incident and this page which seem to explain ST47's restores.

MZMcBride maintains a segregated log

MZMcBride maintains User:MZMcBride/Sandbox 4 as a list of his last 800 admin actions excluding his Non-old IP talk page deletions. He occasionally updates the page.[27] Prior to the secret page deletions, it had not been updated since 2009-01-30. After he stopped deleting the secret page, the page was updated at 2009-02-24 22:12:10 UTC.[28]

MZMcBride secret page deletions

According to User:MZMcBride/Sandbox 4, MZMcBride deleted the following secret pages.

User

Pages in the User namespace

Note: No. 18 has been moved, so this number is 1 too high.

• User:Mjpresson/secretpage contained a "toolbox" of links, commented out with <!-- -->
• User:Bapunque/Hidden Barnstars contained

  "!

User talk

User talk: pages that had content.

• User talk:Ceranthor/Secret_Page is for the oldmfd template for this MfD.
• User talk:Seffworm/SuperSecretHiddenPage is for the oldmfd template for this MfD.

Redirects

These pages were redirects to one of the above pages at the time of deletion.

Author requests

These pages were empty at the time of deletion

Administrative drama discourages participation

As the editor whose question before WP:AN about the secret page game indirectly lead to this case, I've got to say that the resulting wikidrama makes me less inclined to report potential problems to the notice board. I made the initial report because I was sincerely concerned that the game could encourage participants to engage in harmful activities like creating fake accounts, hoaxing, hacking, etc. At the same time I did not want to rain on anyone's parade. Most of the damage from the incident is to the pride, enthusiasm, and mood of some of our editors who were told in an abrupt and seemingly rude way that their fun would not be allowed on Wikipedia. But the fighting and grandstanding on WP:AN was also a problem. Seeing the dispute and conflict that resulted, first on the notice board and then what looks to be some rogue adminship, I feel awkward about the whole thing. People ought to behave with a little dignity on the administrative notice board, not just the deletion logs. That leaves me with an appreciation that if I see a problem in the future, bringing it to AN could easily lead to dispute, recriminations, argument, and hasty action rather than thoughtful contemplation and action on the issue. This is mostly a statement of how it affects me personally, but I may add a few diffs to illustrate the state of discussion on that board Wikidemon (talk) 19:03, 5 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

before using the last evidence template, please make a copy for the next person

{Write your assertion here}

Place argument and diffs which support your assertion; for example, your first assertion might be "So-and-so engages in edit warring", which should be the title of this section. Here you would show specific edits to specific articles which show So-and-so engaging in edit warring.

{Write your assertion here}

Place argument and diffs which support the second assertion; for example, your second assertion might be "So-and-so makes personal attacks", which should be the title of this section. Here you would show specific edits where So-and-so made personal attacks.