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Hi. this is Sm8900. I would like to add my input. i have contributed to discussions in these articles. sorry , but i do somewhat question the need for this arbitration. this request makes no specific statements as to what actually needs to be done or addressed. it's my understanding that Arbcom proceedings exist mainly to sanction other users. I have a concern about the wholesale nature of this proceeding. I would like to see more details about what needs to be addressed here.
I am concerned that starting a case like this might actually create greater conflict than the discussions which it would supposedly address. Sorry, I disagree with statements in the request; I feel that this community has been manifestly able to frequently have positive discussions. There are some articles (and some editors, according to some allegations here), where that has not been the case, but I feel that those articles and those editors can and should be addressed individually, not wholesale in a manner which invites the most minute problems and individual flaws to end up taking up most of the time and energy. --Steve, Sm8900 (talk) 17:30, 8 January 2008 (UTC)..
Reply to PR
General comment.
I am greatly disturbed by the tone which is already emerging here. Since no specific article is the focus here, editors are already piling on allegations and counter-allegations of various misconduct. this is sort of inevitable, since ArbCom does not address content disputes, and can only address user conduct.
i would suggest that a slightly better route might be to focus on disputed articles and on questionable editors individually, on a case by case basis. It is possible to start Arbcom cases for individual editors, as you may know. I truly don't have anyone particular in mind here. My only point is that if some here do feel that certain editors need attention, there are ways to do that, in a manner which would keep the focus much more steady, and would not result in a whole slew of counter-allegations to confuse the matter.
Going on this current route will only lead us into fuirther acrimony, and furthermore we may also find that nobody ends up with a useful resolution, because everybody is so involved in making allegations and counter-allegations. --Steve, Sm8900 (talk) 19:07, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
I strongly encourage the committee to review editing patterns across a broad spectrum of articles here. We have factionalized editing occurring, and also individually problematic editors from both factions. I haven't been interested enough, nor willing enough to suffer the inevitable personal attacks consequent upon acting, to take a wholistic view and determine which editors Wikipedia would be better off without, if any, nor what other solutions would work. I believe there is a pattern of "edit war, page protected, change page to war over, don't discuss the original edit war" occurring. Some of this is a natural consequence of attending to a watchlist, some seems to reflect users who don't want to collaborate and/or create a NPOV article. As an example of the sorts of problems that are encountered routinely consider the following sets of protections on Nov 29 and Dec 5.
I don't edit in this topic area as much as I used to; I hardly recognize the names of half the listed parties. But, I agree with Sm8900 that this could quickly devolve into a witch hunt which won't be good for anyone involved.
Insomuch as I can answer Kirill's question, the situation in Category:Israeli-Palestinian conflict is more or less the same as every other part of the Wikipedia trying to cover an ongoing civil war. There is always a slow influx of zealous new editors on both sides, and either they learn the ropes in a few months or they don't. If they remain problematic -- and I admit to cringing a little when I saw Jaakobou had installed Twinkle -- then an RFC is a better first step. Meanwhile, occasionally an article gets enough neutral editors going on it at once, as I recall occurring lately with Palestinian exodus for example, and the quality of the category does slowly improve.
Update: Ah, I am now caught up per the AN/I thread and User:Jaakobou#Detwinkled. Glad I wasn't the only one cringing.
Reply to Eleland: The thinking is correct as there are two sides to this little chess game, and instead of an RFC on the behavior of particular editors individually, bringing this to ArbCom puts all the pieces into play. The AN/I thread comments regarding WP:KETTLE forebode the likely attempt by one side to sacrifice one editor in exchange for an editor of greater value on the other side.
Reply to ThuranX: Yes, I also don't understand why you'd be a party here; Ryan seems to have listed just a lot of people who commented in the AN/I.
Reply to Durova: I concur that other dispute resolution would be a better first step; the examples Ryan give above are either rather ancient or ongoing or not even dispute resolution per se. P.S. You shouldn't get upset at G-Dett's little poke in your belly -- it just wouldn't be a cabal without you!
This probably ought to go to ArbCom since there are real problems here, and no admin who values his residual sanity would get involved in trying to resolve them given the prevailing atmosphere and history. The only suggestion I have is that, if this goes to Arbitration, an uninvolved party (clerk or Arbitrator) seriously needs to ride shotgun over the Workshop and discussion pages to prevent them from turning into yet another front on the WP:BATTLEfield. MastCell Talk 18:56, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
I also strongly urge the Arbitration Committee to examine this case. Resolving this issue, or at least issuing remedies related to it, would go a long way to defusing the minefield that is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict articles and Middle East articles in general. I have not assessed the full situation, but every time my actions intersect with these articles, I see what appears to be an attitude a lá "I'm right, everyone else is wrong; thus, my edit-warring is okay (or actually not edit-warring at all) and everyone else is a disruptive POV warrior". Not good, to say the least. -- tariqabjotu 21:23, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
Jaakobou has undertaken mentorship with me. This mentorship regards Wikipedia policies only, not the related content dispute. He tells me he wishes to pursue other dispute resolution at this time. Arbitration in general is a last resort, and I ask in good faith for the other parties to consider whether a brokered solution would be feasible.
I am neutral regarding the underlying conflict and, I hope, sufficiently respectful of both sides. About two years ago I started a short article on a Judaism-related topic and at present I'm doing a little bit of editing that relates to uncontroversial parts of Palestinian social history. DurovaCharge! 21:56, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
I strongly support this request for arbitration. I only rarely edit Middle Eastern-related articles, for exactly the reasons that MastCell alludes to in his statement above. However, I've kept an eye on a number of editors and articles for some time, and I can confirm that there is indeed a serious and systematic problem in this topic area. I'd like to offer a few observations for the arbitrators:
(Added) In reply to Quadell's query about Jayjg being added as a party, I believe Cla68 is alluding to this accidental e-mail from Jayjg to the WikiEN-l mailing list in which he invites a number of "allies" (namely User:Avraham, User:Beit Or, User:Humus sapiens and User:PinchasC) to "watch my back" as he makes controversial edits to Messianic Judaism. It's hard evidence of exactly the kind of cliqueish behaviour that I mentioned above and it's arguably a violation of WP:CANVASS. It certainly isn't good practice to try to stitch up an article by recruiting a team of ideological allies using back channels and inviting them to fight over an article; it's particularly depressing that experienced editors (two of them administrators!) should have sunk to this. I'm sure this sort of thing is going on on both sides, but it's something that should be strongly discouraged given the amount of disruption that it causes. Other subscribers to WikiEN-l certainly weren't impressed by Jayjg's inadvertent disclosure, and I hope it's properly reviewed by the Arbitration Committee. -- ChrisO (talk) 19:25, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
While happily I'm not named above! - and this is NOT my primary area of editing interest (except last couple days!) - I have observed the problems on some of the pages mentioned above, as well as on Carlos Latuff (where there is an absurd on going editing war I don't much get involved in); on Samson Option (where any attempt to mention the controversial things said about the Samson Option by Israel leaders and supporters was repeatedly deleted, no matter how well sourced, even when placed in a "controversies" section); and on Jewish Lobby (refusal to allow there to be ANY mention of NON-antisemitic use of the phrase Jewish Lobby, even though many prominent uses of the phrase are by Jews and/or mainstream publications and/or are NOT antisemitic).
Having just started intensely editing in last 6-8 months, I confess I have sometimes lost my temper and ranted and even made a couple personal attacks, but I'm learning how to use to the process instead! :-) Yes, it has taken me longer than it should to really read and re-read and understand the Wiki Pillars, but the more I understand them, the more outraged I become at the behavior of these editors. See my most recent complaining entry attempting to get NPOV version of page. At the end of it I list multiple violations of WP:NPOV from the tutorial.
Besides whatever steps Arbitrators might take, I really think wikipedia needs a neutral AND courageous Ombudsman just for the Israel-Palestine and related issues to keep people in line with the wikipedia process.
An additional idea: I noticed that Wikipedia:Naming_convention has manuals of styles for several nations. Maybe there should be a "Israel-Palestine" manual of style, or maybe one on Arab/Muslim/Jewish issues, to set up some guidelines -though there'd be a massive debate on creating that!
Also, I agree that User_talk:Jayjg should be added to the list of problematic editors on this topic. Carol Moore 02:36, 9 January 2008 (UTC)CarolMooreDC talk
I am relieved to see that this issue is being addressed. I was happily contributing in many areas of Wiki until I tried to edit a picture caption at Media Coverage of the Arab-Israeli Conflict and came across a stubbornly persistent Jaakabou. I am currently working to add recently-released casualty figures to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict article, and again I see what seems a coordinated effort by some editors to control content, with open talk about "sides," referring not to the subjects of the article, but to the editors themselves. This is a serious threat to Wiki. I would suggest interested parties also consider looking at some of the activity in our little edit war, I know Timeshifter for one has already studied the problem and made an interesting exposition on his user page. Good luck! RomaC (talk) 03:17, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
Sigh of relief, I am happy, ecstatic, naively optimistic and very much appreciate the decision to accept. You will need the wisdom of Solomon and I wish you luck. It is long overdue; much longer that I have been around Wikipedia or on the Internet (Sept07). That said, I have already been labled as being on one of the ‘sides’, but only on the talkpages, not on edits (largely because I’m still learning to Be Bold. My POV is Pro-MidEast Peace, although a good friend of mine termed it the ultimate oxymoron, and even I consider that it is pushing the limits of the Serenity Prayer. I look at the I-P conflict situation from a civil/human rights perspective and, therefore my bias tends to be pro-Palestinian, but my support for Israel is based on, well, Biblical proportions. The admins will decide what they decide and I hope to be helpful along the way, but that is well over my head. Most of the heavily involved users with whom I am familiar are included above, although I could name a few more, if asked.
As pointed out in other’s statements above, I too feel that a broad range of topics with content disputes should be included and an ombudsman might be helpfull. I also believe for Wikipedia to gain more credibility, the systematic bias with respect to this subject must be addressed. More critically for Wikipedia viability is to address the issues noted here and to that I’ll add CAMERA and it’s multitude of talk-alikes, Hasbara and, for those computer literate types Megaphone. The import of these on NPOV should not be discounted. CasualObserver'48 (talk) 08:17, 9 January 2008 (UTC) So, why is it Red?
I would also strongly urge the arbitration committee to look at this case. As possibly the largest single contributor to articles on Israeli politics, I have come across almost all the editors listed in this case (hence listing myself as uninvited rather than uninvolved), and I am thoroughly sick of the endless disputes which a number of them create and prolong. Unfortunately for the project, whenever an edit by at least five of the editors listed above comes up on any of the 500+ articles on my watchlist, I know that in the vast majority of cases (for two of the editors the figure is 100%) that edit will not conform to WP:NPOV.
Unfortunately my past attempts to diffuse situations and correct POV have led to me being labelled as a POV pusher by both sides, but particularly by the pro-Israelis (possibly because I tend to stick to articles on domestic Israeli topics rather than Israeli-Palestinian ones, and pro-Palestinian editors are not common in that sphere). This has meant that despite being well-placed to do so, I am now effectively hamstrung from carrying out administrative actions against the numerous violations of policy carried out by many of the editors listed above. I hope that a thorough investigation may allow me more room to take prompt action against both sides in the future.
In addition, I would also support adding User:GHcool and User:Beit Or to this case, as they are both involved in reverting on some of the articles listed above. пﮟოьεԻ 57 11:09, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
I have to agree with Sm8900's "General Comment." There may be something for the ArbComm to accept in Ryan's initial "example", in which he specifies what a few specific editors did in a few specific articles. After that, Ryan identifies a few other articles, but with no specifics about what events concerning those articles might require arbitration. And in the comments of some subsequent editors, this potential arbitration case has taken on a life of its own. It would not be a particularly happy life, either for the parties, potential parties, the arbitrators or anyone else. If the committee accepts this case without specifically limiting what the case is about, the case is potentially going to be about every dispute that has occurred among dozens of editors on dozens of articles. I wouldn't be surprised if 150 or more editors are "named" before this is all over. And how far back does this go? All Israel- or Palestinian-related articles (and antisemitism-related articles? and other religion-related articles?) for the past six months? A year? Three years? Five years? And what kind of disputes are we talking about? I have already seen mentions of articles that would involve the ArbComm in content disputes, but I know that the ArbComm does not accept those. I hope that the arbitrators, if they accept this case, will tell the rest of us what it is about. Otherwise, this is going to become one big, ugly, nasty, confused and contentious scene, and it isn't going to produce anything good for anyone. 6SJ7 (talk) 20:35, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
General comment. Now that the case has been accepted I urge the arbitrators to look for a broad solution to this. AN/I threads like this will keep appearing if ArbCom does not come up with some sort of centralized solution to these disputes. The number of articles and the number of participants in these disputes would otherwise make it very difficult for the arbitrators and those enforcing the remedies to keep this from reappearing here. EconomicsGuy (talk) 11:19, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
I added Jayjg to the case because of this thread [2] on WP:ANI. I believe that more evidence of problematic behavior by Jayjg can probably be presented on the evidence page once the case formally opens. If Jayjg is still on the ArbCom mailing list, I formally request that he be removed, at least until this case closes. Cla68 (talk) 13:12, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
I don't understand why Cla68 added Jayjg to the case above. The thread he quotes above regards Jayjg's comment to Wayne, which Wayne regarded as a personal attack. (I don't see why that was ever on AN/I, actually, since it didn't involve Jayjg's admin abilities and was not requesting admin abilities be used to resolve it -- it just looks like a general complaint filed in an inappropriate place.) Jayjg's comment to Wayne doesn't involve the issues of "ownership", etc., in the description of this case. I don't think it's appropriate for him to be included as a party. – Quadell (talk) (random) 16:03, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
I have withdrawn from editing, tired of the futility of trying to get attested and verifiable book sources in, and internet propaganda sources out in many articles. But, since I note User:Jaakobou has named me as a contentious editor, I should like at least to jot down this one point. In my experience, User:Jayjg, whose inclusion here many editors wonder about, certainly has edited frequently in an incomprehensible, and, in my view censorious fashion, riding shotgun to keep disagreeable information off many pages because he deems it personally unwelcome. As just one example of his ignoring Wiki editing norms concerning sources in order to wikilawyer an item of information or a respectable author I could cite for example the following edit exchange with myself, [4].
The reason given was ‘remove claim attributed to an unknown and possibly non-existent rabbi'’
The quote came from an eminent authority on the region, Professor Ian Lustick. Lustick’s source was in turn the New York Times. Thus it was doubly grounded in reliable sources. Jayjg has enough experience to know that information must be grounded in verifiable and reliable sources, yet he challenged the use of this information because he doubted its truth (which is not at issue). In the subsequent exchange on the talk page [5], (Talk:Baruch Goldstein. See the present talk sect.5 'fingernail speech'), he endeavoured apparently to get me to engage in a violation of WP:OR, by trying to lure me to verify the truth of Lustik's remark.
That said, I do not think the issue is primarily one of putting up individual editors to intense scrutiny, to weed out malefactors. Given the structural problem, even the best can find themselves dragged into violations of rules, out of sheer exasperation with patent abuses of the rules by editors cunning enough to avoid, themselves, a technical breach. And in any case, a person by person examination of the record would lead to a Kafkian or Borgesian archive of unmanageable intricacy. The articles in this area perfectly fit the cruxes (cruces) outlined in Wikipedia:WikiProject Countering systemic bias. The contentiousness in good part arises from the anomalousness of articles dealing predominantly with Palestinians (almost invariably entwined with Israel as occupying power). The history of the Palestinians is being written with hardly any Palestinians on board (User:Tiamut is a notable exception), by (a) complete outsiders (Westerners) who, for a variety of distinct motives, take on the task of representing a 'Palestinian perspective' as that is available in books and reliable sources, and (2) by Jewish/Israeli editors who are either present in the area or deeply committed to the country. Both are potentially defective sources, in that the Westerners who stand in as locum tenentes for the missing Palestinian voices, often have no intimate personal grounding in the area, and lack as often or not familiarity with the appropriate languages(User:RolandR provides an exception), and the Jewish/Israeli editors, some living in the West Bank, can often confuse their task with a national mission to define the people their nation has effectively colonized (after 1967), and over which Israel exercises a preponderance of legal, military, economic and, in a discursive sense, cultural power. User:Chesdovi 's home page is all for national liberation movements everywhere, for example, but in the relevant window on Palestinians, they alone effectively do not exist, since he locates their homeland in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.
There is, in addition, a general Western cognitive bias against Palestinians and Arabs, one that has deep historical roots, and which is complicated by the intense politics concerning terrorism, identified in the public mind with Islam, over the past decades. A lesser one, often suspected as motivating some 'pro-Palestinian' editors, is anti-semitism. Personally I have not encountered editors whose work lends itself to this suspicion, but then again, I have relatively little experience. I judge this to be a concern among 'adversaries' because more than twice my work here has be hinted as implying such a bias, and the innuendo is often encountered.
Several practical measures can be taken, with, I suggest a series of experiments. Here are two suggestions of many that come to mind. (a) Competitive page writing in which editors from both 'sides' (not always a valid marker, since many of us get on well with posters on the other 'side') take on an article, and compete to produce a GA/FA standard according to strict Wiki rules, while the original page is locked. The natural consequence will be to eliminate edit-wars between opposed groups, since say one page on Palestine will be done exclusively by Jewish/Israeli editors, the other page by 'pro-Palestinian' editors, in which the conflicts will be respectively inframural. The psychological logic of such testing would be, I should think, one that presses each group to modify internally its own natural biases, reduce ideological antagonism, and strive harder towards both neutrality and excellence in order to impress neutral arbitrators called in, at the end of the experiment, to cast a vote as to which article best fits Wiki's quality standards. (b) have a rule obliging patent and consistent violators or edit-warriors to justify their continued presence on the encyclopedia by creating, within a month or two, an article dealing exclusively and neutrally, with some event, figure or episode in the history or culture of either Israel (in the case of a 'pro-Palestinian' editor) or Palestine (in the case of a 'pro-Israeli' editor'.
Excuse my longueur. Nishidani (talk) 20:42, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
I generally have tried to stay away from Wikipedia articles about Palestine and Israel — despite my life-long personal interest in the subject — because of the venomous atmosphere that surrounds them. Like several others, I strongly recommend the addition of Jayjg to the involved parties: As a member of the Wikipedia community who has been entrusted with considerable authority, Jayjg should be setting a positive example; instead, he usually pours gasoline on the fire. — Malik Shabazz (talk · contribs) 23:06, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
There's been some minor trouble over at Jewish Lobby from some of the same parties named in this arbitration, but it hasn't yet risen to the level of needing ArbCom attention. There have been some sizable deletions by Armon (talk · contribs), but they're usually follow-ups of similar actions by Jayjg (talk · contribs).
It's worth noting that during Jayjg (talk · contribs)'s first arbitration of 2007 (Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Allegations of apartheid) when he left Wikipedia without explanation for some months, these issues seemed to quiet down. ArbCom noted this in closing that arbitration.
Incidentally, if Jayjg (talk · contribs) is still on the ArbCom internal mailing list, ArbCom might want to consider removing him during this arbitration. --John Nagle (talk) 01:55, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
Unless the arbs revert themselves, do not add this user to the case. — Rlevse • Talk • 02:25, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
Is there any chance the wording of the "discretionary sanctions" remedy could be tweaked to allow uninvolved admins to place a specific article (or closely related set of articles, if necessary), on article probation? I believe this would help, given the current thread at WP:AE and attendant squabbling at Jewish lobby. I suppose you could argue that article probation here might be redundant (seeing as all Arab-Israeli articles are kind of on article probation anyway) but it helps as a solution on especially problematic articles - the tag at the top lets people know there is a long-term issue. Furthermore, it means the article as a whole can be monitored and you don't have to pick through contributions elsewhere if deciding when to topic-ban. Best, Moreschi If you've written a quality article... 17:39, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
aybe one of you guys could take a look. Now my request for clarification: would such an article be covered by this arbitration in the first place? I'm not certain how broadly the link with the Palestine-Israeli conflict is going to be interpreted, though looking at the article's content it does seem to be indirectly related to that conflict (which is mentioned at various points). Does an article have to be about Palestine-Israel, or is it sufficient that it should have some sort of non-trivial link to the conflict? -- ChrisO (talk) 23:32, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
(unindent) The remedies were deliberately wide, to indicate in a way, simply, that we feel that
Note that a stricter application of "drawing a line on unproductive behavior" is not the same as "anything an admin does will be okay". However a user who cannot or will not take note of the need to edit productively and appropriately in their conduct ("WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT"), has now basically got only two choices in this arena: voluntarily do not edit there, or be prevented from editing in an unhelpful manner, by admin action. What counts as "unproductive" or "inappropriate" is pretty much "any action that contradicts high quality collaborative creation of a neutral encyclopedia article for readers".
Bottom line: the encyclopedic community is not expected to endorse some areas being a perrenial edit war, for any reason, and the belief that somehow they should, is misplaced. Disputes are fine provided they are carried out appropriately, which includes non-disruption, listening to uninvolved administrators, and editors actively and genuinely working to achieve resolution via NPOV.
An approximate summary of my own personal thoughts. If in doubt the remedy wording overrides any comment I might make. FT2 (Talk | email) 01:59, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
(If it's ok to comment. Aside for broad interpretation, which is fine by me, another method is to search for terms like "Israel" and "Palestin"* on the Talk page. By this means, I suspect that uninvolved admins would find that Jewish lobby is within the topic area. My 2 cents. See also the (unofficial) list of disputed articles being developed here. Thanks.) HG | Talk 19:46, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
Note: A new Sanctions template has been developed which could tag articles and notify users about possible sanctions. //FYI, without opinion about tagging, HG | Talk 18:18, 31 January 2008 (UTC)
List of any users involved or directly affected, and confirmation that all are aware of the request:
I wish to appeal a page ban applied by Elonka after I removed an obvious copyright, BLP and NPOV violation from an article. The background is as follows:
I would therefore be grateful for outside views on this matter. Please note that I fully support Elonka's mediation efforts; this unfortunate misunderstanding should not be taken as criticism of the rest of her work on the article. -- ChrisO (talk) 20:53, 18 June 2008 (UTC)
I've been watching these discussions from afar, as I'm way too busy with RL to contribute to Wikipedia on a solid base. Elonka has been reasonable and helpful in moving the page forward, though it would be even more helpful if people stopped making sarcastic and pejorative comments on the talk page, directly and indirectly calling each other's position into ideological questioning. I haven't been following up on the page with enough persistence to make any further comment but I felt a vote of confidence in Elonka's efforts was due. Eternalsleeper (talk) 22:10, 18 June 2008 (UTC)
Personally I think that ChrisO is wasting his time here, but this appeal might actually benefit from an ArbCom review, as a few editors have been sharply critical of the conditions for editing that I placed on this article. So I wouldn't mind hearing from ArbCom as to whether or not I have been working in accordance with the Discretionary Sanctions that they envisioned in January. To describe the situation in a nutshell: ChrisO, an admin who was participating as an involved editor, was edit-warring at the Muhammad al-Durrah article, which is within the scope of the Palestine-Israel articles ArbCom discretionary sanctions, and had been in a state of dispute for quite awhile. I, as an uninvolved admin (and member of the ArbCom-appointed Working Group on ethnic and cultural edit wars), decided to take a look at the situation, and chose to place a civility and 0RR (no revert) restriction on the article. Most editors complied, but ChrisO kept reverting. Since he's an admin, I tried to give him lots of leeway, but it's obvious that he felt that the restrictions were for other people, and not for him, and he kept on with warring and incivility, such as referring to loony conspiracy theories. So I gave him a steadily increasing set of cautions.[22][23] [24][25][26] [27][28] After his second revert,[29][30] I told him clearly that if he did one more, he risked being put on tighter restrictions.[31] The next day, he reverted again,[32] with a misleading edit summary of "blatant POV pushing" (his edit summary didn't describe it as a revert, but it was clear that he had cleanly wiped out 8 intervening edits, back to his own last version.[33]) I then put him on (what I felt was) a mild ban of avoiding the talkpage for one week, and avoiding edits to the article for one month.[34] He immediately started wikilawyering with multiple messages to my talkpage about why he was allowed to revert,[35] and then he came up with this after-the-fact "BLP" angle,[36] saying that it excuses his total revert. I disagree. The case is pretty simple as far as I'm concerned, and has nothing to do with BLP. ChrisO was edit-warring, he was told to stop, he didn't, I put a brief page ban on him.
I would also like to point out that when I first learned of the situation, the article was already protected, the talkpage was in the middle of a severe dispute, and ChrisO was begging for an uninvolved administrator to help out. When I offered my assistance, he said it would be appreciated.[37] I am proud to say that since I placed my conditions on the article on June 10, the article has become much more stable, with some very constructive conversations going on at the talkpage. And all of this was accomplished with no blocks and no page protection. Instead, three editors (two new editors, and ChrisO) were placed on temporary bans (see our admin log), and everyone else is back to work. I acted in the best interest of the project, and got rapid control of a situation that was in near chaos, with only very minor course corrections on my part. I wish that ChrisO could recognize that my system works. That he is continuing to escalate and is now trying to spin this as a BLP issue, is disappointing. There were many ways that he could have edited the article to remove anything that he found problematic, by changing the text rather than just reverting. It is also disappointing that he's going to the trouble of filing what will probably be a lengthy appeal, which will probably take weeks to resolve. I had pointed out to him that an easier route would be to simply avoid the talkpage for the rest of the week (until June 22), and then if he resumed participation in a civil and constructive manner, that I would consider lifting the article editing ban early, rather than requiring that he sit out the full 30 days. I've already done this with one of the other editors, Tundrabuggy (talk · contribs), who had been banned for 90 days. We instructed him to work on other articles for awhile, and he did, so we lifted his talkpage ban to allow him to resume discussions. But evidently ChrisO would rather stir things up here at ArbCom for a few weeks, rather than just waiting until the weekend to participate at talk, so here we are. --Elonka 23:01, 18 June 2008 (UTC)
Just a brief comment here. Elonka's system is interesting, and is in fact similar to what I have advocated elsewhere. I'm glad to see that some of these (rather obvious) ideas are at least being put into practice. I am concerned though that sometimes it can end up looking like some individuals (in this case Elonka) are the gatekeepers for the article. To avoid this, I suggest a system of rotation, whereby the uninvolved admins move on to different areas and different articles every few months. This will ensure things do not go stale, that grudges do not fester and build up, and that the admins involved get a fresh look on different articles rather than deal with the same things over and over again (ie. avoid burn out). This would also address the perennial question of whether admins are truly uninvolved and committed. If the admins in question are uninvolved, then they will not mind moving on a different article every few months. Possibly all this has been suggested elsewhere. If not, please do pass it on to whatever board is considering these things this month. :-) Carcharoth (talk) 23:39, 18 June 2008 (UTC)
Elonka has done a commendable job of stepping into a controversial article and, through the imposition of strict editing conditions, eliminated edit warring while allowing for continuous improvement of the article. As she notes, ChrisO was given plenty of warning about his behavior, and much more leeway was given to him (presumably because of his status as an admin) than to other editors, who were subjected to similar sanctions for behavior that was, in my opinion, much less disruptive than ChrisO’s. He has clearly edit warred on the page, and reverted on multiple occasions, despite being notified of both the 0RR restrictions and the general ArbCom decision related to I-P articles.
The "BLP" issue is a Red herring. As Elonka notes, ChrisO came up with the "BLP" angle [38] after the fact, and used it as an excuse for a revert that encompassed much more than any potential BLP issues. I’d like to highlight he fact that this is apparently a common modus operandi with ChrisO. On May 23rd, he was reported for a 3RR violation by an uninvolved editor on the same article (prior to the recent restrictions and Elonka’s involvement). He did not claim he was reverting BLP issues in any of his 5 reverts, 3 of which consisted of removing "Category:Violence in media", which is clearly pure edit warring over a content issue that has nothing to do with BLP. But once the 3RR report was filed, he suddenly came up with the "BLP" angle, to excuse his behavior ex post facto, and without pointing to any actual BLP issues that his reverts were aimed at.
His behavior on this article has been problematic from the get go. He has abused his admin privileges by posting warning notifications on the Talk pages of all those who opposed him, even though he was an involved admin. This behavior was found problematic by several uninvolved admins ([39], [40],[41]) and he was told it was improper (though not sanctioned for it).
Unable to get consensus for his views on the Talk page of the article, he has engaged in egregious forum shopping, seeking to get his opponents banned or otherwise sanctioned and his own actions vindicated, on no fewer than 6 different venues: [42], [43], [44], [45], [46], [47]. In fact, this most recent appeal follows on the heels of yet another appeal, his 7th (!!) this time here, after he had been told by the responding admin that “I would tread on the cautious side and say that if it's not obvious, then note it to someone else and let others do it, if 0RR applies to one of the editors involved.”
Given this extremely disruptive behavior, the length of time it has been going on, and the fact that similar behavior has been exhibited on other articles as well (see this, for example, where he has blocked an editor with whom he has an active content dispute) – I think that ChrisO got off extremely lightly (a 30 day ban from a single article), and that a more appropriate sanction would be a topic ban, from all I-P related articles, for a substantially longer time period.
I find it rather hard to believe that, in the name of "mediation", one administrator can simply ignore policy and guidelines on NPOV and BLP and such. All edits and/or reverts are not created equal; if someone edits in violation of Wikipedia policy, to sanction someone else for addressing and removing such violations is a serious error in judgment. Mediating in this or any I-P related article is a thankless task that few if any have the time, patience, or willingness to undertake, and Elonka should be commended for taking a stab at a difficult task. But a bit more flexibility is called for here, and a hard "no reverts ever" is simply bad practice and completely unworkable.
Like everyone else, I have to say that Elonka has done a wonderful job on the talk page. This was definitely a mop and bucket job. I can see how the editing conditions may seem a little draconian but the alternatives are worse.
When I first read Chris' statement I thought it did raise an interesting policy question: can editing restrictions override our policy restrictions. But, having looked everything over once again, I'm not sure that there is an actual policy difference here. Elonka's conditions seem to have exclusions that go far beyond just BLP: "If something is added that is unsourced, that is obviously troublesome (such as very biased or potentially untrue), it can be deleted on the spot." Chris’ initial arguments seem to be that his edit was within the limits of Elonka’s restrictions. I think this is just a simple disagreement over the nature of Chris' particular edit.
Chris does acknowledge that he did not adequately construct his summary. If he did alter content beyond what was necessary to satisfy BLP concerns, it is easy to see why Elonka would have felt this was a reversion in violation of the editing conditions.
I am sympathetic to Chris’ feelings. I think that his general concern was having the article within policy. But I think that an admin in Elonka’s position would have had to have given Chris the benefit of the doubt to think that his edit was not a reversion. And at that point nobody on the talk page deserved such a benefit. --JGGardiner (talk) 12:27, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
I fully endorse Elonka's actions - as someone who tried to make a foray into this article as an uninvolved party, I can testify that a firm hand is needed in handling this article. ChrisO's behavior has been problematic at times, as Elonka states (particularly his continual use of derogatory terms like "conspiracy theories" to describe other viewpoints; I believe this provokes other editors into inappropriate actions). This is not to say that the editing of his "opponents" has not also been problematic. But, as an experienced user, ChrisO should know better. Frankly, I'm impressed with how Elonka has handled the situation, and feel this approach should be used with other contentious articles. No ArbCom action needed here. Kelly hi! 14:48, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
Based on the user's comments below, I guess I would ask why Tundrabuggy's sanction was so much more severe than ChrisO's, for what seems to be a much lighter offense. If anything, Tundrabuggy should have gotten more leniency than ChrisO, given that Tundrabuggy is relatively new and ChrisO is, and has been, well aware of editing practices here. Kelly hi! 02:45, 20 June 2008 (UTC)
This seems to be about the imposition of a fairly routine discretionary sanction as provided for by the remedies in the case in question. If someone thinks an administrator erred in imposing such a sanction, their first avenue of redress is surely to seek input from other administrators, say by raising the matter at WP:AN/I and establishing a consensus that the application of the sanction should be reversed. I don't think the Arbitration Committee's input is needed unless the community is unable to resolve the matter, or clarification of the remedy is needed. Neither appears to be the case here. The Committee will waste a lot of time if they're to agree to provide "first instance" review of every discretionary sanction imposed by an administrator. I think other avenues of redress should be explored first. WjBscribe 15:34, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
I think the problematic part is the fact that some people would read the original wording as only sanctioning AFTER warning, and not to start with blanket 0RR. - Penwhale | Blast him / Follow his steps 16:10, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
As a new user I started my account 28th May and the first article I edited was Muhammad al-Durrah. On June 2, the first external contribution to my talk page was the notification posted by ChrisO [48] without comment or discussion, and logged here: [49]. Until "tidied up" by Moreschi [50] later, the edit read: "notified of the case in relation to single-purpose account editing and promotion of personal views and original research"
Since then I've had a quick lesson in navigating, editing, rules and general "culture" of WP. I believed my half-dozen edits on the article were fair and neutral.
With the recent court decision, the release of the raw footage, and the latest articles, the equation has changed such that to continue to insist that that the opposing viewpoint is "fringe" or "conspiracy theory" becomes not only insulting, but rather a barrier to productive editing. Thus I tried to use neutral terms such as "was reported." This edit, however, became proof of being a 9/11-style thruthers [51], a sentiment endorsed by Moreschi, at the FTN with this highly POV edit [52]. The following day Moreschi goes to the Admin Noticeboard asking for an uninvolved admin to ban me and Julia1987. [53]
Later (ChrisO (talk) 23:44, 5 June 2008)labels other editors: Canadian Monkey, Gilabrand, & Leifern "... to put it bluntly the SPAs and conspiracy theory advocates are not listening and are attempting to edit-war their view into the article. There is some very blatant soapboxing..."
Elonka stepped in and volunteered to mediate. She was accepted by all including ChrisO. As part of her ongoing mediation, she lifted protection on the article in exchange for some simple edit restrictions.
On June 10th I made the first single-word edit on the newly unprotected article -- "reported" -- and was surprised by a 90 day edit-ban on both article and talk page by previously uninvolved admin MZMcBride[54] Elonka asks for reconsideration: [55] and suggesting the ban is excessive, explains her rationale: [56]
I didn't challenge my ban until discovering ChrisO had received a much lighter restriction despite numerous warnings. Indeed, one might suppose he could have been expected, as an administrator and experienced editor, to have required fewer warnings, to have been held to a higher standard than I.
MZMcBride said of my ban of three months: "There truly isn't any need for this level of discussion for something so minor." [57]
If three months is acceptable for one party in a mediated dispute, how is a week and one month from the article so egregious? I believe that ChrisO abused his administrative powers to shoe-horn his POV into this article, and is now trying to break an agreed-upon mediation. He should accept the mediator's decision(s) in good spirit, and abide by them. To me the terms seem generous, and I think he could use his time to consider his own behavior in regard to this article, rather than trying to find fault in the behavior of others. Tundrabuggy (talk) 20:22, 20 June 2008 (UTC)
Prior to the ban ChrisO violated 3RR but escaped a block for technical reasons (report filed too late). He intimidated other editors using his admin "rank". His contribution page (prior to the ban) almost all his 500 edits are in one article. (or this request for arbitration plus related talk page - arguing about the ban) [59] --Julia1987 (talk) 18:15, 20 June 2008 (UTC)
I do not know the background, but let's assume for the sake for the argument that the editing sanctions were rightfully applied. If a removal is done per BLP, and it is recognized as such by the mediator and others, then it is a granted exception to the editorial ban. This has to be a very cut-and-dry case, though, where it is unambiguously in compliance with the ArbCom statement which goes along the lines of "BLP must be enforced at all costs". Otherwise, it is a breach of the ban and should be reverted.
I have no problem with banned ones requesting others to make edits, BUT BUT BUT BUT BUT the proxy editor must acknowledge that they have passed the request through their own judgment and they are willing to be responsible for their edits. That way, it is like proxy editing, but with the benefit of a human filter to prevent bad stuff from going through.
If the editing ban was wrongfully placed, then that's for the ArbCom to deal with.
MessedRocker (talk) 02:12, 28 June 2008 (UTC)
I half expected to see this request when I commented on the issue a little bit ago. I'm not sure on the specifics, but I will say that a blanket no-revert rule on an article, applied to all editors, isn't wise. Sometimes someone will make an edit with no redeeming qualities at all, negatively effecting the article, but without it being vandalism (or a BLP issue). My suggestion to Elonka was to make this restriction more.. restricted. Apply it to certain editors, certain texts, or something that wouldn't debilitate one of our most basic cleanup functions.
This may or may not be an issue yet, and this may or may not apply to ChrisO, but that's my two cents. -- Ned Scott 08:55, 29 June 2008 (UTC)
More detail. |
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More detail on the actual points raised:
To sum up, ChrisO has admitted that he was at fault for stepping over previous restrictions. But in removing this item, and persisting, he's on target and has got BLP right, and given it the priority it needs. I put the issue down to communication and forethought rather than anything else, with good points coming out of it to go forward. ChrisO especially could have notified it better, and explained it more on the talk page. It wasn't well explained and was in a contentious area. An exceptional issue may need exceptional communication. Editing a contentious area with poor communication following on from prior breach of restriction is a risky proposition. In their intentions and the aim of their actions, both were impeccable - Elonka managing the dispute, ChrisO spotting the genuine serious BLP issue and persisting with removing it. The communication and understanding failed. Above average care, and above average communication, are needed on more sensitive contended areas... a person who doesnt, will often have a problem as a result. ChrisO didn't communicate. |
User talk:MeteorMaker has been banned from 'removing citations to reliable sources' in the Israel/Palestine topic area - and he subsequently violated that ban with this edit. NoCal100 (talk) 00:59, 15 February 2009 (UTC)
because almost no one calls it "Palestine-Israel," except the most leftist groups, even most of them call it "Israel-Palestine," tho "Israel-Palestinian" is optimal.Tallicfan20 (talk) 07:03, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
I've modified a line in the notification template that said:
which I've changed to:
I'm not sure why that language was in the template in the first place; the case remedies say merely that "Prior to any sanctions being imposed, the editor in question shall be given a warning with a link to this decision; and, where appropriate, should be counseled on specific steps that he or she can take to improve his or her editing in accordance with relevant policies and guidelines." They don't specify that only an admin can do this. That approach would, in any case, be inconsistent with current practice - the three general sanctions regimes currently in force (Climate change, Sarah Palin and Barack Obama) all permit anyone to notify anyone else, although of course only admins can impose sanctions. -- ChrisO (talk) 21:54, 26 May 2010 (UTC)
I dont support the change. One of two things should happen, either any user who makes any edit in the topic area is given the notice or uninvolved admins should give the notice as needed. In my opinion it is unhelpful to have an involved editor, likely an editor with whom the person being notified is engaged in a dispute with, give these "notices". nableezy - 22:45, 26 May 2010 (UTC)
I agree with Nableezy that involved editors have absolutely no right to deliver this notification. I'm not sure about the proposal for an automatic message to anyone who edits an article, because it might scare away editors who are new to the area. I also completely agree with Elonka that this cannot be used as a tool to intimidate other editors, something that was done yesterday. That is completely unacceptable, and contrary to the spirit of ARBPIA in general. The requirement for an uninvolved admin to delivery the notification solves this problem. The fact that not only non-admins, but editors involved in extreme edit wars and even former admins who have lost their title, are giving out this template to people who they disagree with, is highly highly troubling. Equally troubling is the fact that non-admins are pretending to be admins by taking admin actions such as unilaterally editing the ARBPIA template and logging notifications to the list. To top it all off, current admins who are friends with these editors are protecting them and blocking other users who notice the abuse and point it out. Does anyone see the problem in this picture? Breein1007 (talk) 20:51, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
And even with this discussion ongoing, the template is still being used by editors in dispute as a form of intimidation. I am going to be bringing this to a noticeboard soon, because enough is enough. Breein1007 (talk) 14:39, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
As only uninvolved admins may act on discretionary sanctions after warning, it follows that they should be the one giving such warnings. The template is for convenience and should not be used as a bludgeon against editors whom someone is in conflict with. Shell babelfish 23:28, 29 May 2010 (UTC)
There' a discussion regarding ArbCom Enforcement in regard to the Israel-Palestine articles at Wikipedia:WikiProject Arbitration Enforcement/Israel-Palestine articles. The discussion is considering a number of options concerning how to deal with the apparent deterioration of editing of this topic. PhilKnight (talk) 16:28, 6 November 2010 (UTC)
Initiated by Cptnono (talk) at 08:24, 19 November 2010 (UTC)
1/rr was just rolled out across the topic. It has already proven to not mean much but the main reason I am bringing this up here is because editors do not know where to take requests for enforcement. There will be violations even though we all wish they didn't come up. Does it come to AE or the edit warring noticeboard?
I think that edit warring noticeboard is more adept at handling simpler, first-time infractions of the 1RR sanction, while more problematic, long term, serial sanction violators should be referred to AE. Just my two cents. ← George talk 08:34, 19 November 2010 (UTC)
Requests to enforce the 1RR itself can be taken to AN3. If you ask for action to be taken under the discretionary sanctions provision (i.e., beyond a simple 1RR block), take it to AE. T. Canens (talk) 08:54, 19 November 2010 (UTC)
Some 3RR cases from October 2010 involving Arbcom sanctions
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Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/3RRArchive142#User:Sulmues reported by User:Athenean (Result: 2 weeks/1RR 6 months) 16 October, 2010 User was cited for long-term edit warring on articles subject to WP:ARBMAC2. Blocked two weeks, put under 1RR per the discretionary sanctions. Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/3RRArchive142#User:Hammer of Habsburg reported by User:Taivo (Result:48 hours ) User:Hammer of Habsburg reported by User:Taivo (Result:48 hours ) 19 October 2010 Violation of a 1RR restriction imposed under WP:ARBMAC Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/3RRArchive142#User:Prunesqualer reported by User:Jiujitsuguy (Result: No violation) 20 October 2010 Claimed violation of a 1RR restriction imposed under WP:ARBPIA. The admin did not judge that it was a violation of 1RR; closed as No Violation. (Eventuallly he got blocked anyway for 24 hours, not sure where it was discussed). |
-- EdJohnston (talk) 06:25, 23 November 2010 (UTC)
I feel that the decision made will benefit Wikpedians evertywhere.
GrammarSpellingWatch (talk) 20:02, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
This was added to the 2010 section:[61] --Supreme Deliciousness (talk) 11:00, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
Initiated by Cptnono (talk) at 19:04, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
List of any users involved or directly affected, and confirmation that all are aware of the request:
Prunesqualer is indeffed from the topic area.[62] Another user and I have a disagreement at Racism in Israel. I "warned" him (he had been warned about his conduct before) on his talk page. In hindsite, I should have been nicer and made it sound less scary. But the point of this request for clarification is that Prunesqualler decided to chime in.[63] Is he allowed to comment in a discussion about the I-P/I-A topic area?
Also, I would be worried about the potential hounding of him following my "career with interest" but he is not prohibited from checking me out. I believe he he is prohibited from joining in discussion, though. If an admin would clarify that an indef does not need to be forever it would be helpful too. If Prunesqualer would stop going out of his way to make attacks and proved his editing could be a benefit to the project then he could request to come back.
On a side note, Guinsberg and I have not gotten off on the right foot. I am tempted to request counseling in a separate request but would like to stop rocking the boat now. It would be appreciated if an admin could formally notify him of the arbitration case and give him advise in a friendlier fashion than I am capable of. Edits of concern include this pointy bombardment of the article with fact templates when there are sources provided for some of the lines.[64]Cptnono (talk) 19:04, 5 April 2011 (UTC) (this has now been done by an admin, although it has not been logged at Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Palestine-Israel articles#Log of notifications
Prunesqualer continues to violate his topic ban. No other editor has been allowed to edit in a discussion based on the conflict area they were banned from. This request was a formality. Can an admin advise Prunsesqualer to stop commenting on discussions that originated in the topic area. He is not commenting based on anything else. It is only the I-P/I-A topic areas that we have been involved in and he even mentions them in his initial comment. Can an admin take care of this or do I need to jump through more hoops? If he gets blocked then he cannot edit anywhere so that is my next option.Cptnono (talk) 02:26, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
This is still unresolved. Although I am happy to see this dropped sooner than later, some clarification is still needed.Cptnono (talk) 06:43, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
Stop dodging th quesiton admins. Xeno: Can he edit or not? I am not going to open an AE just to see it devovle into garbage. I want something clarified and that is the point of this board. Either you can do it or you should not comment here ever again since you have proven that you are not interested. Can he edit or not in a discussion about a topic area. Yes or no. I ti s an easy question. I get the reluctance but go ahead and answer.Cptnono (talk) 05:41, 12 April 2011 (UTC)
I realise that the following is almost certainly not being presented in the correct form, or forum. However I can only hope that interested parties will sympathise with the following: I am doing little harm here, and that: one should not have to be a Wiki-Lawyer in order to contribute to Wiki.
I believe my contributions, before my indefinite topic ban, were "a benefit to the project".
Re. my ban (to which Cptnono has linked/referred) I can now see that I committed naive breaches of Wiki editing rules. In the case of my first ban I didn’t even know what 3RR meant (I realise ignorance of the law is not an acceptable defence, I'm just pointing out where I stood as an inexperienced editor). I noted during my resulting 21 October 2010, 24 hour, editing "block" that Wiki software made it impossible to edit. I made the following wrong assumption: that when I was allowed by the software to edit the Gaza war article before my longer ban on that page had run it's time I must have been forgiven or had slipped through the net (accepting the second possibility was not a noble thing to consider acting on, I admit) . This excuse may seem a little lame but I would add that if you follow the "Gaza War" discussion page at that time, you will find a fair bit of acceptance for the edits I proposed, even from previous opponents (this added to the "green light" feeling I had about making the edits). I realise now that that is not how Wiki works. For these relatively harmless mistakes I received an indefinite ban on editing IP/IA articles.
By contrast here are some Cptnono Wiki quotes:
"Call it Palestinians getting screwed with giant dildos as far as I am concerned"
"If you fuck with the mainspace I am going to fuck with you"
"How many separate articles do we need on the Palestinians being sad?"
"So you have enough time to write an AE but it took you this long to comment? Prick."
Action taken for the previous comments "blocked 3 hours for incivility"
Frankly, I admit, that since these events my attitudes and actions have reflected more than a touch of bitterness towards Cptnono. I believe Cptnono is more biased in IP/AP outlook than I am. I see no good reason beyond his (admittedly) superior Wiki-lawyering skills, as to why- he should be allowed to edit on IP/AP articles, and not I. PS I would be very happy to discuss the issue of subjectivity, which is so central to these matters (and all human affairs), with any interested party.
— Preceding unsigned comment added by Prunesqualer (talk • contribs) 23:03, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
I'm not a great connaisseur of wikipedia's protocol. Even though I am aware that user Prunesqualer has been banned from contributing to Israeli/Palestinian articles, I can't understand the basis for Cptnono's complaint against him. User P. was not contributing to an Israeli/Palestinian article: he was using my Talk Page to warn me about the rather sly argument style Cptnono adopts on discussions about that topic - that is, user Prunesqualer wasn't even actually discussing Israeli/Palestinian politics, the only subject he has been forbidden to contribute to on Wikipedia. From what I can see in Cptnono's conduct, he has a very provocative communication style. He frequently accuses me of being disruptive and threatens to file a complaint against me for doing exactly what he's done before - even on instances where he recognizes I was right in acting in such a way. That he decided to pick on user Prunesqualer even though it is very hard to see what he has done wrong in communicating with me, only goes to confirm the pattern argumentative behavior. Plus, what he says about me - that I have been warned by an adm on my editions - is not true. Guinsberg (talk) 01:52, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
This area is used for notes by the clerks (including clerk recusals).
Initiated by Ravpapa (talk) at 04:49, 14 June 2011 (UTC)
This rather unusual case is a proposal for a general amnesty of Wikipedia users who have been blocked or topic banned from articles dealing with the Israel-Arab dispute. The proposal is the result of a discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Israel Palestine Collaboration#Taking stock and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Israel Palestine Collaboration#Amnesty for topic banned and blocked users. It is our belief that an amnesty could alleviate tensions in the project, improve the editing environment and improve the quality of the articles.
In those discussions, editors looked at some of the measures implemented to improve the quality of editing on the project. On the one hand, we felt that centralized discussions had helped to resolve numerous editing conflicts over general issues (such as the way to treat settlements in articles) and that the 1RR restriction had added to the stability of articles and succeeded in moving disputes from the article to the talk page.
On the other hand, we felt that vigorous enforcement by Arbcom has done little to reduce the level of conflict on disputed articles. We feel that an amnesty of banned or blocked users would not increase conflict, and, on the contrary, would improve the overall atmosphere and restore a number of productive editors to the project.
We suggest that the conditions for amnesty should be:
In our discussion, two editors came immediately to mind: User:Gilabrand and User:Nishidani. I am certain that there are other editors that also meet these criteria.
This amnesty proposal is supported by editors from both sides of the conflict. It should be clear that granting amnesty does not suggest that administrators condone the acts for which the editors were blocked, but only that they believe that these editors' commitment to improving the Wikipedia will override any recidivist tendencies they may have.
In addition to myself, User:Nableezy and User:CarolMooreDC support this proposal.
Unsubstantiated accusations about ignoring topic bans or "problematic behavior" aside, the topic area needs knowledgeable editors. Both Gila and Nishidani have a lot to offer, more than most. Gila's only real problem here has been ignoring a topic ban/block. If she were to commit to not doing so in the future I see no reason why she should stay blocked. As for Nishidani, there are very few editors here that have the patience or skills to do such in-depth research using the best sources. The topic area has not improved as a result of the WB/JS case, and I honestly cannot tell why after 2 parties of that case were discovered to be socks ArbCom has not simply vacated the case. As it stands right now, the only editors that are not editing in the topic area as a result of the case are Nishidani, G-Dett, MeteroMaker and Pedrito. Jay had his ban rescinded following an appeal, which is great, but NoCal/Canadian Monkey have never left us (see Category:Wikipedia sockpuppets of NoCal100). So the net result of that case is that one of the more prolific sockpupeteers on WP was able to instigate edit-wars with several users, using several user names, and succeed in the aim of having them topic-banned. Should the editors not have reverted as much? Sure. But you cannot look at what happened without keeping the fact of Isarig's multiple personalities wreaking havoc across the topic area coloring your view.
This is not a "general amnesty", there are two users listed for consideration. Ravpapa, with good intentions no doubt, may have made this a bit more complicated by suggesting conditions that would apply to others. Id prefer to talk about just those two users as those are ones that a. show an interest in improving the articles, and b. know what they are talking about.
If you wish to increase the quality of the articles in the topic area there is no reason to not lift these users sanctions.
As proposed this seems like a bad idea. Each editor is a unique case. Some have been better than others about keeping in line with the sanctions than others. Some have been more productive in other areas than others. And there may be other considerations. I would rather have each editor considered individually with each editor in question making a case for the removal of their sanctions. Since there are now only five editors who are relevant this should not be that much more work. But a blanket pardon in this context seems like a recipe for disaster and is also unfair to the editors who have toed the lines and worked hard to rehabilitate themselves. JoshuaZ (talk) 14:12, 14 June 2011 (UTC)
Amnesty no. individual topic ban reviews yes. --Rocksanddirt (talk) 22:13, 14 June 2011 (UTC)
The topic ban on Nishidani is rescinded. The indefinite block of Gilabrand is lifted, subject to her agreeing to use one account and not editing as an IP.
I doubt a general amnesty will go through, but I think ArbCom should consider these two specific cases. Gilabrand has, for many years now, made important contributions to a wide range of articles, both within the topic area and outside of it. Her refusal to abide by her topic ban was frustrating, and the disingenuous nature of her response to being caught pretty much red-handed socking did her no favors, but her block does nothing but punish Wikipedia. Nishidani is, in my opinion of course, one of the most thoughtful and well read editors that was willing to spend any time at all in this time suck we call the ARBPIA topic area. Both of those editors have much to offer, and Wikipedia loses by restricting their accounts. We need editors like these. The bans have not done anything to make the topic area better in any way. Instead, the same fights with lower quality arguments are being played out over and over. This is repeated from above, but if you wish to increase the quality of the articles in the topic area there is no reason to not lift these sanctions. By keeping them in place you damage Wikipedia. By that I mean the articles, not some imaginary harmony among users, you know, what is supposed to count here.
{Other editors are free to comment on this amendment as necessary. Comments here should be directed only at the above proposed amendment.}
Since evidence has been asked for, here's a sample:
Has he really reformed?-- cheers, Michael C. Price talk 16:22, 14 June 2011 (UTC)
In case anyone wonders, I stand by my description of Nishidani's behaviour. And as usual he protests his innocence. As Boris says, "it is not easy to earn a permaban by a slip of the tongue". Indeed. -- cheers, Michael C. Price talk 16:46, 17 June 2011 (UTC)
Cptnono and Michael C. Price have stated that Nishidani has ignored his topic ban multiple times. Given Nishidani's block log and the ARBPIA log of blocks and bans, I doubt that they can substantiate their claim. Given the ARBPIA log of blocks and bans and Cptnono's own block log, perhaps Cptnono in particular should be being a little less condemnatory. ← ZScarpia 16:02, 14 June 2011 (UTC)
I don't work in this area, and don't recall interacting with any of the named users, but the thought of a general amnesty scares me. The ending of topic bans and other restrictions should be considered on an individual basis taking into account the reasons it was imposed, when it was imposed, what they have been doing since the imposition, etc.
I equally don't think that a meta request like this is the right way to go about examining the merits of removing restrictions on specific editors in several different cases. It is of necessity either going to be an unwieldy list of sections containing comments for and against ending restrictions on several users; or it's going to be a complete mess with little structure making it very difficult to determine which comments are about which people. Chances are there will be few commenters who hold the same opinion about everyone discussed, and it would not surprise me if one or more arbitrators felt the need to recuse with regards to one or more of the people being discussed, but I would be quite surprised if any felt the need to recuse for all cases under discussion.
In short, I just can't see this working. Thryduulf (talk) 09:26, 14 June 2011 (UTC)
I like the spirit of this proposal but I think the two conditions are not enough. Additional conditions are needed, in particular admission/remorse concerning past transgressions for which they were sanctioned. If an editor thinks he/she has done nothing wrong, then it is obvious they will do so again (they have done nothing wrong!). Basically if they have done nothing wrong, then they should have a regular appeal, not amnesty.
I have been generally suspicious of some of these bans, though reading the above does make the reasoning more clear. I basically agree with BorisG. The one time I got blocked after getting angry at harassment and attacking another editor, I felt very righteous and it took some real prodding to make me see for myself that the specific attack I made was just a variation on the ones that others have used against me. So when I understood that, I did feel remorse and learned better not to make that mistake again. So if a person keeps making the same mistake, they haven't "gotten it" yet. Maybe they just have to keep communicating with a sympathetic editor who can explain it again and again til they get it and then can have block/ban lifted. Also, if they keep slipping, they can always be reblocked as a "time out" for a week or two until they realize they went too far. CarolMooreDC (talk) 00:40, 15 June 2011 (UTC)
I am strongly against the proposal in its current form. The I–P area has the same problems today as it ever had, but each time one of the problematic editors is banned, the area becomes much nicer to edit, and gives good editors more time to concentrate on contributing content, instead of arguing. I think we should be lenient with editors who actually contribute to the encyclopedia, even if they make serious mistakes, but most of the editors permanently banned in I–P were banned after not one but a large number of serious mistakes. Most of them (except one editor whose ban was already lifted) have not shown that they can contribute constructively to the encyclopedia post-ban. Making small contributions here and there as some have is just not enough to justify bringing back more major problems to I–P. —Ynhockey (Talk) 19:50, 14 June 2011 (UTC)
Okay, you have convinced me. I agree with Nableezy: let's limit this to Gilabrand and Nishidani. Do I need to open two new motions for this, or can we continue to discuss them together here? Because, in my mind, they are related - both outstanding editors, on opposite sides of the dispute, and their return is supported by editors from both sides. It would only do the project good. --Ravpapa (talk) 17:43, 15 June 2011 (UTC)
I would support the lifting of the restriction on Nishidani. His three edits that have been picked out above are all over a year old. Nishidani has made thousands of edits in the interim. So, if he has a continuing pattern of problematic behaviour, it should be possible to find more recent issues. Also the three edits were brought to Arbcom's attention during the SAQ case in which Arbcom chose to act against the fringe theorists with whom Nishidani was in disagreement and not against Nishidani.
I don't know the context of the issues with Gila. My presence on Wikipedia dropped in the latter part of last year and has only picked up somewhat recently and I think I must have missed the drama around this. I know she was on the "other side" of the I/P business from me but she had not stuck in my mind as someone particularly problematic. I notice she has been indef blocked only recently for socking. If the problematic behaviour has been through the socks, I don't see what Wikipedia gains through the blocking of the main account. She is fairly prolific and if she has not recently been problematic with the main account then this seems to be a use of blocking as punishment rather than as a means of protecting Wikipedia. Maybe someone who has looked at things more recently could explain the logic of the block.--Peter cohen (talk) 22:57, 16 June 2011 (UTC)
Permanent Link: [70]
The arbitration enforcement block placed on Gilabrand (talk · contribs) related to the Palestine-Israel articles case is provisionally suspended as of 25 August or the passage of this motion, whichever is the latter. Gilabrand is reminded that articles in the area of conflict remain the subject of discretionary sanctions, and are currently subject to a 1RR restriction. Gilabrand is further reminded that any future problematic editing following the removal of editing restrictions will viewed dimly.
For this motion, there are 14 active non-recused arbitrators, so 8 is a majority.
A motion has been proposed that would amend a sanctions remedy in this case. It would replace the remedy in this case that allows administrators to unilaterally apply sanctions to editors within the designated topic area with a standardized remedy that essentially allows for the same thing. Any extant sanctions or warnings made according to the older wording found in those decisions (as applicable) remain unaffected. To comment on this proposal, please go to Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Motions. NW (Talk) 20:36, 18 October 2011 (UTC)
The restriction is worded thusly: "Clear vandalism, or edits by anonymous IP editors, may be reverted without penalty." I've just unblocked a user who was blocked for violating these sanctions. Their argument was that they received a big fat notice on their talk page that contained this wording from the decision, and that they therefore believed they could revert IP users without penalty. I assumed the notice was misrepresenting the decision, but that is in fact exactly what it says. I'm a bit confused by this, it seems to suggest that any and all IP edits on articles covered by this sanction can be treated as vandalism. Am I missing something here? Beeblebrox (talk) 20:15, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
It seems harmless to make the change in wording recommended by Sphilbrick, but I don't think it is necessary. The ((ARBPIA)) template already reads like this:
"Certain edits may be reverted without penalty. These include edits made by anonymous IP editors, and edits which are clearly vandalism."
I find it hard to tell the difference between that and Sphilbrick's version:
"Reversions of clear vandalism, or reversions of edits by anonymous IP editors, are not subject to the 1R Restriction."
It goes without saying that IP edits should only be reverted for a good reason and that the WP:EW policy still applies. For background, the exemption that allows reverting IP edits seems to come from a proposal by T. Canens in November 2010, which got included in the result of the discussion at Wikipedia:WikiProject Arbitration Enforcement/Israel-Palestine articles. From there it made its way into the wording of the ((ARBPIA)) template, and then got added as a community supplement to the WP:ARBPIA decision. The sentence in WP:ARBPIA was tweaked by PhilKnight in January 2011 to agree with the language in the ((ARBPIA)) template. 1RR rules which exempt IP edits are not common, and it is logical that they might create some confusion. The special 1RR rules that exempt IP edits still appear to serve a purpose in the most contentious areas. EdJohnston (talk) 17:11, 25 February 2012 (UTC)
On a purely cosmetic point, in the motion below saying "reverts of edits made by IP editors that are not clear vandalism" are still covered by edit-warring policy is a tad redundant. Edit-warring policy also provides an explicit exemption for reverting vandalism. Rather, I think after noting reverts of IP editors are not subject to 1RR the subsequent statement need only say that the usual edit-warring policy still applies.--The Devil's Advocate (talk) 16:35, 8 March 2012 (UTC)
The 1RR exemption for IPs was intended as a discouragement to sockpuppetry. I am concerned that making reverts of IPs "subject to the usual rules on edit warring" will expose established accounts to the fiat of admins who not infrequently decide to hand out bans in contentious topic areas for perceived "edit warring" even when 3RR has not been violated. This is likely to make it difficult for established accounts to discourage sockpuppetry as intended as they will have to be looking over their own shoulder when reverting IPs. I suggest therefore that the phrase "subject to 3RR" be substituted for "subject to the usual rules on edit warring". This should help ensure that established editors retain a useful advantage over IPs without being accused of edit warring when doing so. Gatoclass (talk) 00:21, 10 March 2012 (UTC)
Moved from WP:ACN as this is the right venue. Courcelles 20:20, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
For this motion, there are 13 active non-recused arbitrators, so 7 is a majority.
In an area subject to IRR restrictions -
Elen of the Roads (talk) 20:17, 8 March 2012 (UTC)
Initiated by Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 > haneʼ at 10:47, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
This request for clarification is rather short and straightforward; a discussion about whether or not Jesus is part of the Palestinian people has spilled over to the page about Jesus. For future reference and to avoid misunderstandings: Is discussing and editing "Jesus as a Palestinian" within the scope of the case? Should it be? Thank you.
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Initiated by Ankh.Morpork at 21:08, 23 September 2012 (UTC)
List of any users involved or directly affected, and confirmation that all are aware of the request:
After a spate of edit-warring at Zoological conspiracy theories (Arab-Israeli conflict) in which material was repeatedly added and removed on WP:OR grounds, Timotheus Canens unilaterally imposed these restrictions to address this.
Can I suggest that since the Zoological conspiracy theories (Arab-Israeli conflict) article is clearly in violation of at least the spirit of WP:ARBPIA rulings in that it is nothing more than a collection of anecdotes cobbled together to 'make Arabs look stupid', WP:IAR is invoked, the article is summarily deleted and salted, and the warring parties get back to arguing about something a little less infantile than this petty little propaganda piece... AndyTheGrump (talk) 21:18, 23 September 2012 (UTC)
I'm not involved in I/P or AE in general, but I saw this go by earlier today and attempted to clarify this matter a bit to Ankh on T. Canens's talk. My explanation doesn't seem to have done the job. To my linked explanation, I'll just add that the description provided for Arbcom's standard discretionary sanctions appears to be deliberately broad, encompassing things like revert restrictions, topic bans, mandated external review (which is very similar to what T.C. has imposed wrt Ankh's "Problem 1"), as well as "any other measures which the imposing administrator believes are reasonably necessary to ensure the smooth functioning of the project". We're not intended to be bound strictly by exactly what words are used in the DS decription, because the DS description provides the, er, discretionary area of "any other measures." This means that opposing these sanctions on the basis of "restrictions can only be on people, not articles" is missing the point. Admin judgment is deferred to, within reasonable limits, in placing these measures, and there's nothing in what T. Canens has done here that looks particularly unacceptable (though I will admit to having had to read the restrictions twice to parse exactly who was being restricted from what). A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 22:44, 23 September 2012 (UTC)
Honestly, I think the restriction is a bit too restrictive under the circumstances. The problem was with material being added that did not make any claim of the accusations being conspiracy theories. I think the requirement for discussion of any addition is restricting all editors and all content work for something that is a little more focused. At issue is specifically whether the additions involved conspiracy theories as no reliable sources provided used that description in any sense. Should reliable sources clearly cover a relevant incident as a conspiracy theory then I fail to see why discussion would be necessary on whether to include it in the article. If the material undeniably fits then requiring discussion is little more than bureaucratic regulation for its own sake.--The Devil's Advocate (talk) 23:39, 23 September 2012 (UTC)
I have nominated the article for deletion as I feel Tim's concerns point to this being about the overall content of the article and incredibly restrictive sanctions are not the best way to resolve that problem.--The Devil's Advocate (talk) 21:15, 24 September 2012 (UTC)
IP 24.177.121.137 commented below that he/she disagrees, which is fine. But the IP is also encouraging people to ignore all rules and simply ignore the restrictions T. Canens has imposed, because they feel it fits ignore all rules. I don't think this is acceptable behavior, and find this problematic. --Activism1234 01:38, 24 September 2012 (UTC)
Fluffernutter's comment on my talk page captured my thoughts quite well - in fact, probably better than I could say. I just want to add a few points:
I think the restriction imposed is too broad and unfair. I also don't think that the discretionary sanctions provision of WP:ARBPIA authorize it. The language at WP:ARBPIA#Standard discretionary sanctions authorizes imposition of sanctions by uninvolved admins against users after an initial warning. There was no warning, the restrictions don't apply to "users" but to everyone, and the administrator imposing sanctions wasn't sufficiently uninvolved. 24.177.121.137 (talk) 01:34, 24 September 2012 (UTC)
A quick look at the article's editing history is all that's needed to see what's going on here. Basically, two editors have been trying to use that article as a coatrack to hang out as many looney, animal-related incidents as possible. I think T. Canens could just as easily have topic-banned the two editors primarily responsible instead of giving them playground rules. At least, he is giving the topic some adult supervision, which was obviously necessary. Cla68 (talk) 01:40, 24 September 2012 (UTC)
This article has been a hotbed of propagandist efforts and poor sourcing. See the 2011 DYK for example: dyk that "... that Saudi Arabian officials detained a vulture (example pictured) and accused it of spying for Israel?" Editing restrictions on this article appear warranted. Also, one has to wonder if the Noleander RFAR may be of some relevance to certain editors involved in that article and similar ones. It's interesting that Apes and pigs in Islam also passed AfD with "flying colors" but was boldly moved out of article space by one admin and then deleted. (As an side, I'm thinking of a DYKing "... Ronald Reagan was an important champion of Idiot America". Easily referenced from the press: [71].) Tijfo098 (talk) 07:16, 25 September 2012 (UTC)
Just a quick response to Ankhmorpork's accusations against me. I am not trying to game the system. The article came under my radar because of the current AFD Discussion. Many arguments for deletion are that a lot of the content is WP:OR, WP:SYNTH and WP:COATRACKING, some of the arguments to keep the article accept that some of the material does not meet Wikipedia standards, but maintain that this is not grounds for deleting the entire article.
My aim was simply to remove the material that does not meet Wikipedia standards, I think it will be easier then for the community to decide whether the remaining material that is well sourced warrants an article or not. The basic rationale for deleting the content is here[72] if anyone is interested. I will be happy to explain and discuss further should anyone query the edit on the article's talk page.
Of course Ankhmorpork is responsible for adding a significant amount of the WP:OR and WP:SYNTH material to the article, so it is understandable that he may not appreciate the kind of restrictions on adding such material that has been suggested. Dlv999 (talk) 23:02, 26 September 2012 (UTC)
I'm one of the other regular AE admins, and the only reason there's an appeal of Timotheus Canens' actions here is because he beat me to it. The last thing we need in this area is people using these articles to soapbox about whatever conspiracy theory strikes their fancy, and this is as good a way to handle it as any. I don't really care whether or not this solution is in The BookTM, it's already proven its worth in putting a stop to what was going on there before it, and I see no reason to remove it if it's working. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 20:33, 28 September 2012 (UTC)
Initiated by Tijfo098 (talk) at 19:43, 3 October 2012 (UTC)
List of any users involved or directly affected, and confirmation that all are aware of the request:
I simply submit to you that the creative restrictions imposed are not working as expected, but are simply gamed to arbitrarily remove content from that page, cf. WP:AE#Dlv999. I request that the imbalance be addressed by a similar restriction on removing content without consensus. This has been done before, for example at Mass killings under Communist regimes. Tijfo098 (talk) 19:43, 3 October 2012 (UTC)
@KC & TC. If they are working as intended and you saw no gaming from the deletionists, then why is Dream Focus not blocked for this and his open defiance [82] of ArbCom sanctions? TC, you have made promises to met "longish blocks" to editors under your creative restrictions [83], which clearly indicate that you approve of Dvl999's actions. Please explain why you think his deletion was appropriate. Tijfo098 (talk) 12:05, 4 October 2012 (UTC)
Update: I see that TC has tweaked the wording on the restrictions in the meantime. Tijfo098 (talk) 12:50, 4 October 2012 (UTC)
I was also considering reporting to AE the insertion of some original research in the article [84] [85] [86] and direct accusation against two editors of being on a mission "to spread hate" [87], but given that the two admins always ruling over this appear to share that viewpoint, I won't bother with AE anymore. And if T. Canens wants that article deleted on such grounds, he should do it himself. It's not unheard of [88]. Oh, and Elen of the Roads should be immediately ejected from ArbCom. She's definitely up to no good; see [89] [90]. Tijfo098 (talk) 16:24, 4 October 2012 (UTC)
@Jethro B: My last sentence was a pun on Wikipedia's own conspiracy theory involving User:!!. There's no chance anyone on ArbCom would take that as anything but a joke. I hope. Tijfo098 (talk) 19:06, 4 October 2012 (UTC)
I hope this meets AGK's approval. Oh, and enjoy the new article: Persecution by Muslims. Muslims == KKK?? [91] [92]; Muslims == Nazis? [93] Tijfo098 (talk) 14:58, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
This echoes my previous concerns regarding these novel restrictions and their susceptibilty to abuse - which took all of two days to manifest itself. I support the need to reevaluate the efficacy of these restricitons and to consider extending them to equally cover existing content in this article. Currently, they simultaneously preclude good-faith additions and improvements, yet allow unilateral content removal by individual editors that totally eschew any attempt at collaborative discussion seeing as the need for it has now been obviated. While the restrictions were well-intentioned, they are proving wholly inadequate. Ankh.Morpork 19:57, 3 October 2012 (UTC)
I concur with the proposal -- to add to the restriction to anyone removing sourced material or at least to exclude from the restrictions any sourced content that was already in the article before the restrictions took place (grandfather in). The current rules leave the article open to gaming. Anyone can remove material with some vague edit summary and then demand another consensus for its inclusion, which will have to be approved by an uninvolved administrator that will have to be tracked down somehow. --brewcrewer (yada, yada) 20:03, 3 October 2012 (UTC)
I agree that the restrictions imposed by are not working - but not for the reasons given above. They have simply been ignored, whether wilfully, or by accident, and material has been added without consensus to an article which has widely been seen (at for example the recent AfD discussions [94]) as burdened with WP:OR, poor sourcing, and significant POV-driven editing. Frankly, at this point I can see no hope for any consensus-based solutions short of topic-banning the more overt POV-pushers, and fully protecting the article. Loosening restrictions to encourage more edit-warring makes no sense whatsoever. This is a contentious subject, for which much source material seems intended to cast people in a negative light, and as such it seems entirely reasonable that the burden of proof should be on those wishing to add material to our article - as is normal Wikipedia policy. The restrictions are in fact little more than WP:BRD extended and formalised in such a way as to prevent further questionable editing of a contentious article. What is necessary is that they be enforced, and that the article be made to conform to WP:NPOV standards - and if it cannot (which seems entirely possible, given the subject matter), regardless of (rather equivocal) AfD decisions, Wikipedia may have to do without it entirely. That is probably outside the remit of this discussion, however... AndyTheGrump (talk) 20:06, 3 October 2012 (UTC)
I am completely uninvolved. The only way I have even touched this is to comment in the Uninvolved admins section on an AE request regarding this. That said, in the very short time that case has been open it has become clear that loosening restrictions is not in the best interest of this article. One puppy's opinion. KillerChihuahua?!? 20:16, 3 October 2012 (UTC)
One of the main issues with the restrictions is that it allows editors to get away with violating 1RR as long as they're removing "original research." By this, editors are gaming it, so that if RS wrote about how aliens invaded Palestinian farms and destroyed the crops as requested by Israel, it'd be removed as "Source doesn't say it's conspiracy, so how is the connection made that it's a conspiracy?" Or if the reference writes that a "myth circulated" about it, it'd get removed as "source doesn't write it's a conspiracy, only a myth" (this actually happened). In other cases, you have editors who will remove sections and violate 1RR in doing so, knowing that despite the 1RR violation, it will allow for the content to be simply removed without discusion, and any attempts to reinsert it will require a discussion, which that editor will just object and thus not allow for consensus.
There have been cases where sections have been removed that even uninvolved editors disagree with removing. There wasn't any discussion to remove it. But once removed, no matter what the reason, it's very tough to get it back in - because a lengthy discussion with consensus is needed, and that consensus will just be broken by one editor who opposes putting it in. So what we're getting here are bogus excuses to remove content that even uninvolved editors disagree with, all in "compliance" with the restrictions.
I think they should definitely be changed. I really don't see how this article can be that much more special and contentious than some other I-P articles here. The normal rules in ARBPIA should suffice here, and they've been working up until two weeks ago, when the restrictions were made in response to a report filed because an editor violated 1RR. --Jethro B 20:53, 3 October 2012 (UTC)
@Dlv99 - with respect to Tijfo, as far as I'm aware he wasn't involved in the previous Arbcom clarification/amendment thread here, and opened up this one recently as a result of the AE thread. In addition, although not commenting on admin bias at ArbCom, the admin who blocked Bali was not an admin this AE thread or the ArbCom clarification thread here, so I don't think that'd count as rejecting proof of bias, if bias does exist here. --Jethro B 16:04, 4 October 2012 (UTC)
@Dlv99 - thanks, didn't notice that, although in both cases it's been opened by 2 different editors in response to two different stimuli, both of which I feel are legitimate. However, you should be aware that this thread isn't meant to sanction you, which is the AE thread, but rather as an offshoot of the AE thread to discuss the restrictions as a whole. --Jethro B 16:27, 4 October 2012 (UTC)
@AKG - Really? Let's forget the glaring issues with Bali's version... He tried to insert it into the article once. He got reverted. Rather than discuss it and try to get it inserted, what does he do? He waits a few days, maybe the editors will go away, and then inserts it again. He doesn't explain in his edit summary "Reinserting content that was reverted a few days ago," giving people like me the impression this is completely new. If your edits are reverted, how can you just come in a few days later and expect to put it back in without a discussion? Then we have some glaring issues with it. Firstly, the attempt to minimize the conspiracy as very brief and quick, along with WP:OR (exactly what the restrictions are meant to eliminate), weasel wording, and a POV editorial bias. In short, if Bali felt his edit was the best version, he should've participated in the WP:BRD process. Not "bold, revert, revert a few days later" process. --Jethro B 00:47, 7 October 2012 (UTC)
@Tijfo - I don't see the connection between some article called Persecution of Muslims and this article. I've never edited that article or its AfD, and others involved in this dispute haven't either. There aren't restrictions on that article like there are here. In short, it's not relevant here, unless it's a cunning attempt to get some editors here to vote on its AfD, but I know you to be a better editor than that so I'm really perplexed at the reason for mentioning it. --Jethro B 21:41, 7 October 2012 (UTC)
As far as I can see, the restrictions appear to be working as intended. Neither our resident puppy nor I have seen any actionable gaming. Some people may not like how they are designed to operate; that does not mean that they are broken. As to the "Mass killings restriction", it was the consensus among AE admins, when it was last discussed in this lengthy AE thread, that it is not a particularly useful restriction in many cases.
In imposing the restrictions, I have already considered and rejected the possibility of "grandfathering in" existing material. Given the lengthy partisan wrangling over this article, I had, and still have, little confidence in the quality of the existing material. I opted for the present approach of permitting easy removal of existing material, which will still preserve uncontroversial instances, rather than a significantly more aggressive approach seen in this BLPSE action.
I also don't see why this couldn't have been handled at the currently open AE thread. This is striking me more and more like running to the other parent when AE admins don't see any gaming, especially since the last arbcom thread on these very restrictions was closed less than a week ago. I respectfully request that the committee close this one speedily. AE simply can't properly operate if the restrictions applied are brought to the committee, and the admin who imposed them forced to defend them, every few days. T. Canens (talk) 04:16, 4 October 2012 (UTC)
The primary purpose of discretionary editing restrictions on an article is to to create an acceptable collaborative editing environment in contentious areas prone to misconduct. When this has been created, Wikipedia assumes that editorial discussions and the ensuing consensus will adequately govern the nature of an article; this is a fundamental policy - that all editors can contribute equally to the make-up of an article, that there exists a clear separation of powers between the executive (admins) and the legislature (editors). Admins should facilitate discussion and not attempt to foist their views on others.
That being said, you have twice explained that your restrictions were predicated on your personal views regarding the subject. The imposition of the restrictions should not determined by whether you "had, and still have, little confidence in the quality of the existing material." Yet, you unilaterally imposed unique restriction designed to promote your particular point of view in a content dispute without deigning to seek admin consensus for this measure. In the words of Silktork: "I also share AnkhMorpork's concern that general editing restrictions are being applied to all users without there being a discussion first." Why are you of the view that your view is of pre-eminent importance that you, by yourself, can seek to forcefully alter the shape of this article through use of administrative privilege? I remind you of discretionary sanction guidance: you are expected to balance the provision of "responsible contributors maximum freedom to edit, with the need to reduce edit-warring and misuse of Wikipedia as a battleground". I submit that the you have restricted good-faith improvement entirely and compounded this by allowing for pernicious abuse of the restrictions, to the extent that exasperated editors that have never previously participated in these discussions or topics are imploring for an alteration or arbitration enforcement.
As to your comment that this was recently discussed, I would assume that you are cognisant with what PhilKnight said: "Obviously these restrictions are innovative, and it may well be prudent to evaluate their effectiveness in due course". Well the answer to that is obviously they're pathetically useless and when you have editors returning from 6 month sabbaticals, two days after your restrictions, to remove vast sections with nary a talk page comment, I am surprised that you see this in any other way. Or then again, based on your above predilections, perhaps not. Ankh.Morpork 13:58, 4 October 2012 (UTC)
As an aside, do you feel that the previous discussion at Arbcom in which I questioned the efficacy of your novel restrictions and their susceptibility to gaming, coupled with your personal declaration that " I had, and still have, little confidence in the quality of the existing material", might affect your objectivity in assessing at AE whether content removal games your restrictions that you previously vouched for? Ankh.Morpork 14:13, 4 October 2012 (UTC)
Seems like WP:FORUMSHOPING to me. The issue was already raised at the previous request for clarification last week. [95] The editor was told that any evidence of gaming should be presented to AE. [96] An AE case was filed [97] - the two uninvolved admins who have commented so far have not seen evidence of gaming or actionable behavior in the diffs provided. And now we are back here with the same issue being raised again. Are we just going to keep going round in circles with this until the editors get their own way? Dlv999 (talk) 07:14, 4 October 2012 (UTC)
@Tijfo098 Regarding the most recent diffs you have presented: The editor in question has already been given a week block so I don't really think this is a credible case of Admin bias as you are suggesting. Dlv999 (talk) 15:59, 4 October 2012 (UTC)
@Jethro B, Tijfo098 was in fact a party to the previous Arbcom clarification/amendment discussion last week [98]. With the greatest respect, if you do not know what the facts are I'm not sure why you feel the need to make such a comment. Dlv999 (talk) 16:12, 4 October 2012 (UTC)
@AGK Are you serious? Bali's edit was 80% editorial and consisted mainly of his interpretation of the sources. Moreover, he did not seek consensus for it on the talk page per the additional sanctions being discussed here, but chose to edit war his preferred version into the article. He could have just removed any problematic text which would then have needed to gain consensus to be put back in the article.
Nobody needs to "bait" Bali for him to lash out, he does that regularly and frequently. In fact, if you look at some of the edit summaries he used, he "lashed out" against living people who have wikipedia articles as well. I wonder what they did to bait him. No More Mr Nice Guy (talk) 01:20, 6 October 2012 (UTC)
This would be a good opportunity for ArbCom/WP's administration to show that WP:NPOV in an enforceable policy. Look at the article's edit history, look at the article's talk page, note which editors are tring to use it to disparage Arab/Palestinian culture and/or politics, make a decision, then act on that decision. Now's a good time. Cla68 (talk) 12:11, 6 October 2012 (UTC)
I do not care if Bali Ultimate's edits improved the article or worsen it, but AGK's comments demonstrate his extreme immaturity. An arbitrator must conduct arbitrations in an impartial manner. An arbitrator should avoid any conduct that might give the appearance of partiality towards any party. AGK writes: "Somebody needs to bring to AE the editors who reverted Bali ultimate's edits about the Shark attacks section." and then "(As an arbitrator, I'm unable to be involved in the enforcement process, or I would hand out AE blocks myself.)"? What kind of arbitrator AGK is?
Bali Ultimate, you say you are a named professional except you behave as a named idiot. Named professionals come to Wikipedia to write articles and not to be ""meanie" on talk pages." Now you are blocked, and when the block expires you'd come back with your tail between your legs or else. It is the only thing you've achieved so far. — 108.60.151.4 (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. The preceding unsigned comment was added at 23:18, 6 October 2012 (UTC).
I concurr with Bali Ultimate answer on this talk page : "AGK, you have just illustrated the dysfunction of the website's approach, and why it fails so badly in these areas. Someone like me, a named [person], will be easily blocked for being a "meanie" on talk pages. People who skew content in service of a cause (frequently one, as in this case, that seeks to advance its agenda by dehumanizing a whole culture) are left to merrily go about their business on the articles (the stuff the general public sees) so long as they are "civil." Please also note that this is going on in a great many more articles, most of them of far more importance and general interest, than the one I tried to make a point of fixing.Dan Murphy (talk) 02:13, 6 October 2012 (UTC)"
I fully agree with this analysis and it is proved by what is written just here above : "I do not care if Bali Ultimate's edits improved the article or worsen it (...)."
The 1st pillar of wikipedia is that it is an encyclopedy. 2nd and 3rd pillars remind the quality standards should be high. The 4th pillar that requires politeness and civility is very important but it is used in this area of articles to canevass their development. One way or the other, external observers (Arbcom members, uninvolved sysops) should analyse the context of the conflicts based on this problematic. Pluto2012 (talk) 07:18, 7 October 2012 (UTC)
I request that all of T. Canens' September 2012 edicts be suspended from this page. In contradiction to the Talk Page notice, I see nothing here or here calling for prior restraint on edits. Eventually I tracked down the history to [99] in which the policy is unilaterally decreed, and editors either vehemently disagree with it or go off on tangents. This directly contradicts Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Discretionary sanctions which says "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;" more to the point, it is not a sanction against "any editor working on a page within the area of conflict (or for whom discretionary sanctions have otherwise been authorized) if, despite being warned, that editor repeatedly or seriously fails to adhere to the purpose of Wikipedia, any expected standards of behavior, or any normal editorial process." To the contrary, it includes a sanction against even a completely naive and good faith editor who, coming to the article page, and not seeing any special edit notice, adds a story that seems relevant in his consideration. The talk page notice explicitly says that "Editors who violate the above restrictions may be blocked without warning by any uninvolved administrator, even on a first offence."
I should also point out that the scope of this article is very arbitrary. Of all the animal conspiracy theories in the world, we've singled out those about Israel for a special article based on one or two articles connecting them. More plausible allegations have been made, for example, about the U.S. airdropping thrips on Cuba. A reorganization, e.g. by species, is very much appropriate, which to me suggests that either these special restrictions should be eliminated, or eventually they will spread to infect articles even less related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, let alone to the original editors in the arbitration case.
The mere fact that some editors have had an interpersonal squabble based on their opinions in the Israel-Palestinian conflict does not mean that new editors a random article about allegations about Israelis in Egypt and Saudi Arabia should be subjected to unreasonable sanctions!
I should add that I am curious how many other articles have been subjected to such unusual sanctions as this one. I should point out that there is a risk that, if a lot of Israel-related topics are treated to sanctions that affect even new good-faith editors, Wikipedia itself may become the object of a Zionist conspiracy theory. Wnt (talk) 16:34, 7 October 2012 (UTC)
I'm only involved in that I blocked Bali Ultimate for a week for hate-speech, having previously warned him for using similar language in a different area. Several parties including another arbitrator have suggested that 'the other side' are successfully gaming the restrictions, cannot be brought to AE etc. Is this the case? If so, this ought to be addressed. Elen of the Roads (talk) 13:34, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
To me, the problem is that edits to this article are being policed only for decorum, and that obvious POV-pushing is being disregarded. I therefore advise the enforcement team to examine complaints about this article in more detail, and to look at the substance of incidents and edits. Rarely is only one side to blame, and sometimes editors lose their head for reasons which are actually valid. AGK [•] 22:34, 5 October 2012 (UTC)Somebody needs to bring to AE the editors who reverted Bali ultimate's edits about the Shark attacks section. While I do not condone BU's comments on the article talk page, his edits neutralised some glaring problems with the POV in the Shark attacks section. The POV of that section was totally skewed, whereas Bali's re-write restored some balance and reason—and made it clear how laughable the "sharks" theory really is. This is a classic case of POV-pushers baiting somebody like BU into verbally lashing out.
This is an archived request for arbitration.
Initiated by tariqabjotu at 19:38, 16 December 2012 (UTC)
Withdrawing. -- tariqabjotu 19:20, 22 December 2012 (UTC)
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The Jerusalem article has a problem. For nine years, discussions have raged on the talk page regarding the point in the lead that the city is the capital of Israel and, to a lesser extent, that it's the capital of the State of Palestine. Around April 2007, just before the article achieved FA status (yes, I know, unbelievable), it was decided that the point would be settled by inserting a footnote explaining the controversy. In October 2010, a (further?) compromise was struck that called for noting immediately after the contested point that Jerusalem's status as capital is not widely recognized. While that seemed to maintain calm for the better part of both 2011 and 2012, over the past few months, the issue has been rekindled with a fire and desperation like never before. While there have been more than ninety threads on this matter, at least four RfCs, and at least two attempts at mediation (both rejected, including one rejected just this month), we have been left with zero ends in sight. The impetus for this mediation is less a direct accusation of misconduct by some of my adversaries, but more a request to consider the accusations made by them. Over the past few weeks, there have been an increasing number of accusations from them that some people are "blocking" any sort of resolution (e.g. [100], [101], [102], [103]). There have been claims that those supporting the current wording are just pushing the Israeli POV (e.g. [104], [105], [106]). These accusations have been countered by allegations that some are pushing the Palestinian POV, reminding them the current formulation is the result of the October 2010 discussion (in which some of the current proponents of change were actually participants). Unsurprisingly, this has fostered an environment in which the improbable has been rendered impossible. Several people from both sides (myself included) have said that even attempting to discuss this matter with one or more adversaries is a waste of time. A few editors have stated that there are no policy-based arguments for maintaining the current wording, with one saying he has "consensus by default" because of that. In recent days, it seems like there has been focus on a particular wording that mentions, but distinguishes between, Israeli and Palestinian claims, but some are still arguing that's not far enough. Throughout, there have been threats of bringing people to WP:AE or WP:RfC/U or ArbCom for the alleged "blocking" and accusations of ownership. So I'm calling the bluff, requesting that these accusations (and any other issues) be considered. Unaddressed, any sort of resolution is impossible, as it is impossible to discuss with people who believe your every word is in bad faith and intended to push a point of view. Further, I personally -- and I'm sure I'm not alone in this -- am worried that if a compromise is struck again, there is no guarantee, without a third-party observer, that the editors involved in this discussion will drop it for good. I'm not confident an arbitration case will end this matter either, and I'm sure this time of the year and the ArbCom calendar is not ideal, but we need to try and I urge the Arbitration Committee to consider this case. -- tariqabjotu 20:12, 16 December 2012 (UTC)
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I really don't give a shit anymore. When whatever process or medium is set up to resolve this issue once and for all, feel free to ping me and I will provide my input as appropriate. But, until then, I have no interest in the proceedings here and on the talk page. No one is going to change his or her mind. Some people are going to hold fast to their positions that their opponents are guilty of blocking or filibustering or violating some policy. Some people are going to continually misstate their opponents' positions. Some people are going to continue to respond to straw-man arguments, and insist that the straw-man arguments be defended. I did not sign up for Wikipedia to be subjected to such abuse and stress, and it is a colossal waste of time, especially at this time of year, to be dodging that while discussing some text that has no importance or consequences on Wikipedia, let alone in the real world, with people who care so much more about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And without any third-party observation or intervention, this will continue.
MedCom rejected this issue. ArbCom has rejected it. Some aren't even sure this needs some direction. I'm sorry, but if that's the way the Wikipedia community feels about this, if a hundred threads over nine years, with the current talk page containing more than 500KB of heated text from at least a dozen editors, only necessitate rejection, the weakest of imperatives, and the suggestion from an elected member of the most powerful committee on Wikipedia that this matter might have been brought to its attention "earlier than necessary", well, forgive me for ever giving a shit. -- tariqabjotu 19:20, 22 December 2012 (UTC)
I support this request for arbitration. We've been to formal mediation twice (or, more exactly, twice the formal mediation didn't go ahead due to incomplete assent). Overall editors have been discussing the issue for years with RFCs and threads. Progress in content has been glacial to put it gently, there may be significant WP:Stonewalling behaviour involved, and frustration has manifested as uncivility in the long discussions. This does, of course, relate to a significant real-life controversy that arouses strong passions so this shouldn't be surprising. --Dailycare (talk) 22:33, 16 December 2012 (UTC)
As I stated in my previous comments I favor no particular final solution because it will never happen. The unreliability and poor quality of articles on the Arab-israeli conflict will be a permanent feature of wikipedia for decades to come. As long as prominent notices alert the reader to the manipulations of the more active/effective side (currently Israeli nationalists) little more can be done.
Ravpapa nicely states it as "[failure means] there are some topics about which we cannot write objectively" This I think is absolutely correct and I believe the failure is inevitable.
The bad acting partisans are intelligent calculating and don't give a hoot about wikipedia and are acting based on nationalistic motivations. So the realistic energy-optimal strategy towards them is not confrontation or arbitration but containment. Anyone who thinks the interests of their precious nation is more important than wikipedia should be barred from editing it. In lieu of that poor quality tagged dispute ridden articles will have to do.Alertboatbanking (talk) 03:20, 17 December 2012 (UTC)
I dont honestly see what an ArbCom case would do to resolve this issue. There hasnt been any edit-warring, or at least nothing on the scale as to require a case to resolve, and while the talk page may be a bit uncomfortable it hasnt reached a point that the standard discretionary sanctions couldnt deal with. If this were to be accepted as a case, the outcome would likely follow the pattern of you banning anybody who knows anything about the dispute, resulting in a new group of partisans arguing on an even lower level. The Wikipedia way, tried and true. nableezy - 05:54, 17 December 2012 (UTC)
Binding mediation would be a good idea. I dont think an RFC would be a good idea for this, its too involved an issue for *Support. nableezy - 07:08, 18 December 2012 (UTC)
I dont know if any of the arbs are reading this or not, or anything else, but in the hopes that you are could I ask that you play this out and answer a few questions? What brief, neutral statement could possibly exist that would summarize this dispute? What do you think the chances of an RFC getting significant uninvolved input in this topic area? What do you think the chances are that this ends in anything other than a "no consensus" result? Is a "no consensus" result binding for 3 years? If so, does that mean that the current wording is enshrined for 3 years? If not, where would we be other than right back here? How would the RFC question be formulated? Why not binding mediation instead of a binding RFC? nableezy - 21:24, 22 December 2012 (UTC)
I wrote on the Talk page that I would ask the ArbCom to study the issue if we could not find a way to move forward on the article. Tariqjabotku did it before.
The referees asked the right questions :
Pluto2012 (talk) 10:16, 17 December 2012 (UTC)
I agree with much of what Pluto2012 has said. The content issue is embarrassingly simple to resolve in principal because it is about correcting a basic error. Many sources have already solved it in ways that comply with our policies. All that is required is for editors to follow the sources and comply with our policies and guidelines. It should be easy but it has not been possible, largely it seems because the information in the sources gets convolved with editor's personal opinions on the real world issues. If the only thing that came out of this was that it stopped editors from writing their personal opinions/personal analyses based on what they think they know about the real world issue without "utilizing reliable sources for contentious or disputed assertions" (to quote the discretionary sanctions) or what they think about other editors, it would be a huge leap forward. It's difficult to convey how low the signal to noise ratio is on that discussion page or how rarely people actually survey and look at how sources handle the contested status of Jerusalem. Sean.hoyland - talk 13:17, 17 December 2012 (UTC)
Arbitrators asked for an example of behavioral issues. Here is one that just happened. It's typical, so I'm by no means singling out this particular editor.
Thank you NMMNG, that is another example of a behavioral issue, misrepresentation, NMMNG saying that I am "pretending the people they disagree with do not base their views on reliable sources, which is patently false and obviously dismissive." Of course I know what the sources say because I'm one of the people there who actually does what they are supposed to do, surveys them and cites them in discussions. Of course I know that there are sources that say Jerusalem is Israel's capital. Of course NMMNG knows that I know this because I have explicitly acknowledged it on several occasions and I have told him many times that there is diversity in the sources and that we have to deal with the mess. And NMMNG should know by now that I never pretend about anything. There is no possible justification for this kind of misrepresentation, no one should have to deal with it. It needs to stop. Is the example I gave above dismissive of the views expressed by the editor in the diff ? I hope so. I'm not interested in what editors think is true, I'm only interested in what the sources say and how we can deal with that data. Sean.hoyland - talk 18:47, 17 December 2012 (UTC)
Some comments on mediation - According to Wikipedia:DR#Last_resort:_Mediation, binding mediation is about "reaching an agreement that can be acceptable to everyone". I don't think anyone should be concerned whether I, as a party to the mediation, find a solution acceptable. The objective should be to reach an agreement that maximizes compliance with policies and guidelines whether I or anyone else likes it or not. It should be possible to demonstrate that it is a near-optimal solution based on evidence in the sources, not the happiness of the participants. Having watched this issue for years, it seems to me that it is not possible for some editors to agree to a solution that does not include the unattributed statement of fact in Wikipedia's voice that "Jerusalem is the capital of Israel". No amount of evidence in the form of sources that present the information in ways other than a statement fact will persuade these editors that the inconsistency matters and is a policy violation. It's therefore not possible to reach "an agreement that can be acceptable to everyone" that also maximizes compliance with policies and guidelines at the moment. They are mutually exclusive and will remain so unless the behavioral issues are fixed and editors are forced to follow the rules. I can see mediation working if it had zero tolerance for various behaviors such as voicing a personal opinion on an issue rather than citing a source/repeatedly making demonstrably false statements/using original research/arguing from first principals etc and the editor was immediately removed from the mediation process. At the moment there is zero cost for behavior that disrupts the process of finding a solution that complies with policy. Until that changes so that this is only about the sources, the policies and the guidelines, I don't think mediation can resolve it. Sean.hoyland - talk 15:17, 18 December 2012 (UTC)
Casliber, you said "reports of transgressions should be brought to Arbitration Enforcement". I see this kind of comment quite often but do you have any evidence based reason to believe that AE can handle it ? I don't. I've been editing in the ARBPIA topic area for years. I don't know how many AE reports I've watched but it goes back to at least Archive34 and AE is currently on Archive127. What I haven't seen is evidence that complicated issues covered by ARBPIA like persistently biased editing, anything that could involve large amounts of evidence, can be handled at AE. AE hasn't dealt with issues like that for ARBPIA. It has been used to deal with technical violations/edit warring and editors who make patently disruptive edits in the topic area. If AE could deal with (and editors could be bothered to file reports about) the longer term more fuzzy behavioral issues, I don't think we would be here today. The only people who could survive in the topic area would be those who follow the rules and edit neutrally. I would like to see AE become a venue that could deal with these kind of issues but that would probably involve filing test cases (and a lot of drama). Sean.hoyland - talk 20:07, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
I concur with Pluto's suggestions and Sean.Hoyland's follow up remarks, though I think Nableezy has made the right technical call, unfortunately, because it's realistic enough to appreciate that there is no clear behavioural issue in the extensive discussions that would call for the kind of corrective punishment Tariq's outline seems to suggest. Arbcom's remit is not to fix impossibly compromised pages.
Writing that recent discussions have been 'rekindled with a fire and desperation like never before', is hyperbole, and would appear hysterical were it not from the fact that that is not Tariq's style. Very level headed people (not myself) have honestly tried to work out a compromise and met a stone wall, but manners (AGF compliancy) have been almost impeccable. Just for the record, the humongous threads may be summed up in a thumbail form (Wikipedia#Jerusalem-lead for dummies), which you can without offense take as a time-saving device to avoid reading those massive archives.
There are two deeply problematical assertions in the lead, problematical because the form they take, is, per sources, self-contradictory, and represent poor compromises because of their clumsiness, which confuses two POVs with two facts, while pretending their is no POV problem.
A. 'Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, though not internationally recognized as such.'
Put the sentence in propositional form, and you immediately see the problem.
B. '(Jerusalem) is Israel's largest city in both population and area, if East Jerusalem is included.
Put the sentence in propositional form, and you immediately see the problem.
In both these sentences, (a) an ostensibly factual proposition is asserted, and (b) then challenged as not true. The Israel POV is first asserted as a fact, and then denied as a fact.
Those who are unhappy at the way WP:NPOV appears to be deftly sidestepped here have endeavoured over several years to find a more balanced formula, in which the clash here between truth propositions that contradict each other would be replaced with a perspectival phrasing that clarifies neutrally the competing claims. The issue is resolvable by using the word 'claim' for both parties in (A). (B) should not be in the lead since it is based on a highly dubious if. Every suggestion that tries to address this has failed, in the face of a resolute preference for the text more or less as it stands, which, some argue, privileges the Israeli POV by prioritizing its basic claims as facts (is).Nishidani (talk) 17:47, 17 December 2012 (UTC)
This request is an exact mirror of the problems on the article talk page.
I am not convinced that Arbitration on this matter is the right way forward although i agree with a lot of what Tariqabjotu has said. There are three primary problems at present it seems to me and as Arbcom does not usually rule on content matters only one aspect of the situation might be resolved with arbitration and not the wider problem. Firstly we have in recent months seen a number of attempts to change the article, some of which have not been specific proposals, merely the fact some editors believe the current article introduction is wrong. There have been clear opposition to proposals and more editors times seem to support the current wording than any change, let alone a specific change.
Those of us supporting the status quo (which was based on the compromise agreed around two years ago) have on a number of occasions been accused of breaking the rules or doing something wrong, merely for supporting the status quo. So one thing Arbcom could probably help with is reinforcing the fact people are free to support the status quo, and that a change should only take place if there is a consensus. Not a change imposed by a minority of editors seeking to push aside objections.
The other two problems are content issues. The current wording is neutral and balanced. It states that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel but that this is not internationally recognised. That is accurate and balanced, and was a significant change prior to two years ago when the introduction did not mention at all the international community view in the first sentence, because it is handled in detail in another paragraph of the introduction.
Certain editors are insistent that the article introduction be changed to treat Palestine and Israels current situation in regards Jerusalem as entirely equal. That is not the case, and if we tried to treat them as equal it would be giving clear undue weight to the Palestinian POV. Jerusalem is the defacto, and dejure capital of Israel, rightly or wrongly that is indisputably the situation, although the future status of the city is certainly part of the dispute and that is already explained in the introduction.
Yet a few editors are demanding the introduction say Jerusalem is the Capital of Israel and Palestine. When I challenged one of the editors demanding the change to provide sources for this claim saying it would help justify the proposal [107], they initially said they would [108], then when I asked for specific reliable sources that say Jerusalem is the capital of Palestine [109] (which is what they have been demanded be added to the article).. the editor in question all but admits there are not the sources to back up such a statement. [110]. Not only did they never provide the sources requested, none of the other editors demanding change stepped in to provide sources either.
So theres no case based on Wikipedia policies, and no case based on sources for the change they propose. Also there is a third problem that is often overlooked. If we are to change the article to pretend that Jerusalem is not the defacto and dejure capital of Israel (and in Israel), then many other things about the article have to change too. For example at present the infobox shows the Israeli flag of Jerusalem, Israeli emblem for Jerusalem, the mayor of Jerusalem. These would all have to be changed along with huge amounts of the article if the small number of editors got their way and had the article act as though Jerusalem is not the capital and a city in Israel. Also none of those demanding change have produced evidence that a country cannot decide its own capital, or that a capital is dependent on international recognition. The international community officially do not recognise Jerusalem as the capital (something that is made clear) but there are numerous sources showing that Jerusalem does serve as Israels capital. Some countries do not recognise the fact the state of Israel even exists, we do not seek to say it may not exist in the first article of the Israel article.
So again, im not convinced arbitration is the right way forward, but if there was a ruling that editors are entitled to oppose proposals and support the status quo, it would at least help bring to an end some of the dismissive tones by those demanding the change, as though we have no right to take the positions we do.
Thanks BritishWatcher (talk) 01:03, 18 December 2012 (UTC)
There is so little one can add to a discussion so prolix! But I feel two things must be said:
First, editors and arbitrators who are looking for a permanent solution to this problem should be disabused: there is no permanent solution, because the situation is not permanent. The political forces affecting Jerusalem's status are constantly changing, and the article should reflect that. What we decide (or, more likely, don't decide) today will not be right tomorrow.
Second, arbitrator SirFozzie has suggested "binding arbitration" as a solution. I would strongly support such an approach if one existed. But, as far as I know, there is no such thing as binding arbitration (am I wrong?). The latest attempt at arbitration failed because not all the parties agreed to participate. Which is why, I believe, Tariq chose this forum to move toward a solution.
Nishidani and others are right that this case is outside the formal purview of the arbitration committee. I would suggest, however, that this is a time for you to take a bold step, live by the spirit of the fifth pillar, ignore all rules, and accept this case. To do otherwise would be to admit that the Wikipedia way has failed: that there are some topics about which we cannot write objectively, and that there are content disputes so intractable that the collaborative editing approach is doomed to failure. --Ravpapa (talk) 06:43, 18 December 2012 (UTC)
Arbs who are suggesting a binding RFC or mediation, are you going to make a motion mandating one? If not, I can't see how this is going to happen. Number one, there's no guarantee the parties will make an agreement to such a method, and number two, without ArbCom's stamp, there's no guarantee the result of such a process would be honoured. The naming of Macedonia-related articles was dealt with by an RFC mandated by the committee itself and has as such been clearly enforceable. Leaving it to the community to sort it out without ArbCom's authority tends to lead to more and more discussion with no results. Heimstern Läufer (talk) 08:26, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
I've been thinking about the same thing for days, and Heimstern beat me to it. What makes the binding RFC binding is ArbCom's say-so. Otherwise, one of the parties won't agree to it just as they wouldn't agree to the mediation, and the whole thing will be a wash. You need at least a motion for it. --Rschen7754 08:28, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
The issue at hand is no doubt a complex one which has been an issue almost since the inception of Wikipedia. Some community members and arbitrators have suggested a method of binding content resolution for this dispute (which sounds very familiar), however I note that preference seems to be leaning towards holding a binding RFC as opposed to some other form of binding resolution (like mediation). If I could offer my thoughts on the matter, binding RFCs have been used now and then on Wikipedia, with varying results. Some have success and bring peace, others are hopeless failures. Sometimes this is because the issue is so bitter that reconcilliation between editors is impossible, and the period in which an RFCs result is binding serves only as a brief ceasefire in a bitter war. In other situations (like the Abortion RFC), the structure of the discussion/vote is the cause of downfall. I would suggest mediation to be the better alternative, under the guidance of an experienced mediator. I am quite surprised that the Mediation Committee rejected a request for mediation when fourteen out of the sixteen listed participants who commented on the case (out of a total nineteen) accepted the request (and the requirements of acceptance was changed earlier this year to not require unanimous acceptance), but nevertheless, what's done is done.
I agree with what Nableezy said about a binding RFC being a bad idea. This situation seems to be too entrenched for anything except a split vote to occur, with minimal community input due to the contentious nature of the dispute, ending with a result of no consensus. Binding mediation has no real precedent that I know of, but it may be what's needed. For what it's worth, I'd be happy to mediate such a dispute - I think I'd be able enough to do so. But it all comes down to what's best for the dispute. I'd suggest mediation, failing that, a salted earth remedy like the Scientology case may be required. Steven Zhang Help resolve disputes! 14:09, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
The talk page has obviously failed. Editors are filibustering to the point that it is almost as disruptive as edit warring and it appears that no one wants to budge out of fear of hurting their cause. As mentioned on the talk page, a request for mediation with certain parties not invited could be a solution. For example: I don't want to spend hours discussing the issue. Nableezy not being invited would also be beneficial (he declined mediation but kept on arguing on the talk page) while others could also take a step back and let those without such passion hammer it out in a more structured, concise, cooler, and objective manner. An RfC might be fine but a select group of editors already involved might fix this in mediation. Conversely, people are going to argue over this issue no matter what the wording is so maybe the status quo is perfectly fine. The article might actually be sufficient as is and the issue is primarily talk page behavior instead of how the article currently comes across to the reader. I lean towards the former since there is nothing that cannot be improved.Cptnono (talk) 08:14, 20 December 2012 (UTC)
Irrelevant to this case request. --Lord Roem (talk) 20:57, 19 December 2012 (UTC) |
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The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it. |
The problem is obviously one of excess demand. This suggests that filing and commenting on Malleus related cases is simply too cheap. What we need is an entrance fee. Every time someone feels the need to file such a case they need to cough up, say, 70$ (I dunno, give it to the Wikimedia Foundation, or better yet, some charity). Every time someone feels like they must comment on the case, it's 10 smackeroos. If you wanna translate this into Wikipdia-costs, then make it an automatic week long block for filing a case, and a day block for commenting. Standard procedure, no stigma, you just got to lay off for awhile. That way, if there's a truly serious problem which really is deserving of a case, the person or persons concerned will be perfectly willing to cough up the cash, forkout the funds, bankroll the blocks. If it's the standard frivolous bullshit, they'll think twice about it.VolunteerMarek 20:27, 19 December 2012 (UTC) |
I'm in the camp which views the current wording as a prolonged case of prima facie point-of-view pushing. Since about 2007, I've participated in a couple of the futile, labyrinthine and archive-spanning attempts to change it by means of talkpage discussion.
That the current wording violates Wikipedia's neutrality principle has been shown (and ignored) time after time in the nine years that the current wording has stood.
Wikipedia:Neutral point of view:
Further Clauses ...
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Some history: after the 1967 War, the UN passed a series of resolutions stating that any current or past unilateral Israeli attempts to change the status of Jerusalem, East and West, were invalid, including Israel's Basic Law of 1980 which declared Jerusalem its capital.
Example UN resolution text ...
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As one example, see Resolution 478 of 1980: "[the UN Security Council] determines that all legislative and administrative measures and actions taken by Israel, the occupying Power, which have altered or purport to alter the character and status of the Holy City of Jerusalem, and in particular the recent 'basic law' on Jerusalem, are null and void and must be rescinded forthwith." As another example, see Resolution 267 of 1969: "that all legislative and administrative measures and actions taken by Israel which purport to alter the status of Jerusalem, including expropriation of land and properties thereon, are invalid and cannot change that status." (see article Positions on Jerusalem) |
Example repercussions od UN resolutions ...
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Accordingly, the UK government, for example, takes the position that: "... no state has sovereignty over Jerusalem. The UK believes that the city's status has yet to be determined, and maintains that it should be settled in an overall agreement between the parties concerned." One recent demonstration of the disputed status of Jerusalem was at the London Olympics, where the BBC listed Jerusalem as the seat of government, rather than capital, of Israel (and East Jerusalem as the intended seat of government of Palestine). Another concerned a complaint made to the UK Press Complaints Commission about The Guardian stating that Tel Aviv is the capital of Israel. The Commission ruled that there had been no breach of its code (The Guardian subsequently updated its style guide so that it no longer calls Tel Aviv Israel´s capital, instaed just stating that Jerusalem should not be referred to as the capital of Israel). |
Given the above, I cannot see how "Jerusalem is the capital of Israel" is not a seriously contested assertion and that making it in the Lead of the article does not, therefore, breach the neutrality policy. In fact, the first sentence in the Lead doesn't even properly summarise the body of the article.
In line with the neutrality policy, editors have been asked to modify the Lead so that it either states something that it is not disputed, such as that Jerusalem is the declared capital of Israel or that it is the capital under Israeli law, or that it represents the claim that Jerusalem is the capital as the Israeli point of view. Nobody is particularly exercised over the form of words used, so long as the neutrality policy is adhered to. However, ignoring the Wikipedia definition of what a fact is, it is an article of faith with editors taking the Israeli view that it is a fact that Jerusalem is Israel's capital. Therefore, what looks as though it should be a trivial matter to fix, has taken on the dimensions of an ideological struggle. To support their position, editors taking the Israeli view have advanced identical, partisan arguments to those advancing the Israeli position outside Wikipedia, ignoring the counter-arguments and falsifying the position of what is commonly referred to as the international community. A set of double standards has been applied in order to minimise, or avoid, mentioning the Palestinian position on Jerusalem in the Lead.
(more to follow) ← ZScarpia 12:03, 20 December 2012 (UTC) (hats placed in text -- 12:41, 21 December 2012 (UTC))
Perhaps two discussions should be held, one on how to observe the neutrality policy and one on the actual wording, with the former being the more necessary. Some previous discussions have ended with a show of hands on who thinks that it´s a fact that Jerusalem is Israel's capital, subverting the principle that, in Wikipedia, facts are based on sources, not editors's opinions. A bit of regard for policies would be nice. On the question of whether there have been any behavioural issues, I'd say, definitely yes, nine years worth. ← ZScarpia 13:01, 21 December 2012 (UTC)
Noting the suggestion that RfC closers should be appointed in advance. I don't strongly mind if this happens, but in past successful binding RfCs (e.g. VnT, Muhammad), these details have been left to disputants and have not been imposed by anyone. Editors have put out their own "adverts" for closers, held their own auditions and applied for mediation in the normal way (e.g. to formulate an RfC question). I don't think there would be any clear benefit to ArbCom assuming this role. The risk, on the other hand, is that disputants may decide not to respect the outcome, on the grounds that ArbCom chose badly. For the Muhammad RfC, the in-advance/when-the-time-comes issue was decided (by disputants) in favour of the former, so that editors would not be able to bypass the RfC and instead appeal directly to the closers. The decision here might be different, but I think it should not be a matter for ArbCom. Formerip (talk) 01:46, 21 December 2012 (UTC)
I wish to point out, that the initial question of this subject was the both part of this sentence. Those two parts namely "Jerusalem is the capital of Israel" and "although not internationally recognized as such" were equally but separately viewed as they are already balanced. Numerous sources are relating to this subject, without mentioning international dispute in the lead. F.x CIA fact book [111] National Geography and [112] and [113] Index mundi [114] even in sports and entertainment [115] etc. So if this sources without any dispute point out that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, our lead is at least already balanced with the negation of this claim through "international community" --Tritomex (talk) 12:28, 22 December 2012 (UTC)
We need better management of case requests. Something is very wrong when an experienced administrator has an expletive-containing hissy fit after the arbitration committee refuses to take a case related to an intractable dispute. Would you all please stop abdicating your responsibilities: you Tariq, and you The Committee. Jehochman Talk 14:15, 23 December 2012 (UTC)
Vote key: (Accept/decline/recuse/other)
The community is asked to hold a discussion that will establish a definitive consensus on what will be included in the article Jerusalem (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views), with a specific emphasis on the lead section and how Jerusalem is described within the current, contested geopolitical reality. As with all decisions about content, the policies on reliable sourcing and neutral point of view must be the most important considerations. The editors who choose to participate in this discussion are asked to form an opinion with an open mind, and to explain their decision clearly. Any editor who disrupts this discussion may be banned from the affected pages by any uninvolved administrator, under the discretionary sanctions already authorised in this topic area. The discussion will be closed by three uninvolved, experienced editors, whose decision about the result of the discussion will be binding for three years from the adoption of this motion.
Enacted - Alexandr Dmitri (talk) 22:08, 27 December 2012 (UTC)
Proposed:
1) On 27 December 2012, the Arbitration Committee asked the community to hold a discussion concerning the Jerusalem article. The committee also resolved to appoint three uninvolved, experienced editors to decide the result of that request for comment (the "Closers").
We appoint the following three editors to close the discussion:
We appoint Mr. Stradivarius (talk · contribs) as the discussion moderator.
Our sincerest thanks go to these four editors, for accepting these appointments and for assisting the community in conducting and closing this discussion. We suggest that this discussion be publicised at appropriate community venues, and we invite experienced, uninvolved editors to assist with creating the discussion pages.
Enacted - (X! · talk) · @231 · 04:32, 12 January 2013 (UTC)
Do y'all deal with obvious socks? The problem, naturally, is that there's no way yet to know whose it is. Nomoskedasticity (talk) 18:35, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
Hi there, all. this is just a suggestion. In the future, I think that any time that Arbcomm launches a process to discuss an RFC, they should ask the moderator to provide a set of the possible wordings or options which may be offered in the future RFC.
Then participants in the process for designing that RFC should be given the chance to say whether they are for or against each of those options, and why.
if we permit all discussion participants to offer their own options and to argue over that, then the process can become quickly derailed, and we may never get around to the RFC itself which was the reason for convening that process in the first place. just a thought. hope you don't mind. thanks. --Steve, Sm8900 (talk) 19:41, 23 April 2013 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
This is the page which is the subject of this proceeding: Talk:Jerusalem/2013_RfC_discussion.
Initiated by Steve, Sm8900 (talk) at 02:00, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
List of any users involved or directly affected, and confirmation that all are aware of the request:
I am reposting a note which I posted elsewhere, with a suggestion on how perhaps we could improve this processs. this suggestion was sort of my reason for posting this whole thing in the first place. --Sm8900 (talk) 17:34, 1 May 2013 (UTC)
by the way, one reason I made this a request for clarification is that I left notes on the personal talk pages for several arbitrators. However, I did not receive a reply,. So, based on the fact that I did not receive any reply at all, even when i tried to conduct this discussion on an informal basis with individual members of Arbcomm, I felt that it was advisable to post this. I appreciate your help. thanks. --Sm8900 (talk) 13:51, 29 April 2013 (UTC)
I would like to thank Salvio for his note, and would like to reply. Salvio, I will try to be equally frank. In my opinion, I think this process really started out with some good intentions. but I think the results are not what Arbcomm had hoped for, since their goal was to provide a process which would make the design process for an RFC more easier. I know it is not Arbcomm's intent to inflict counter-productive processes on Wikipedia, and they intended to make things more better for our editing community. in my opinion the the resulting process is very much counter to what Arbcomm intended or desired. I don't think the design process for an RFC should take so long that actually launching the RFC itself becomes an afterthought, or is even made to seem relatively unimportant due to the length of this design process. my point is, Arbcomm itself should be notified if a process which it mandated turns out to not have achieved the desired result, and in fact ends up being just as laborious as the conventional process which it was meant to replace.
I do appreciate all the hard work which Arbcomm does, and all the multiple benefits which it provides to the Wikipedia community. I hope it will be possible for Arbcomm to have a full discussion of this item, to discuss both the intent of this process, and the actual course it took, and to also lay out some clear and specific guidelines on how the process should be designed in the future, and what guidelines Arbcomm should define for itself for any similar process which it may mandate in the future. if this came up now, then it could possibly come up again. so I appreciate any progress which we as a community might be able to forge together. I appreciate your help and input. thanks. --Sm8900 (talk) 13:38, 29 April 2013 (UTC)
By the way, one more note in regards to what Arbcomm should do. in my opinion, of course Arbcomm should intervene if possible to do so. the whole point of Arbcomm mandating a process, imo, is so that they will intervene when necessary at various intervals, in order to maintain that process and to keep it viable. I really see no reason for Arbcomm to be hands-off if it mandates a process, and then that process does not show some viable progress. --Sm8900 (talk) 13:59, 29 April 2013 (UTC)
I would like to request a clarification of the RFC process for Jerusalem article, which Arbcomm mandated, in regards to the points raised and queries in the following note on an Arbcomm talk page.
thanks. --Sm8900 (talk) 14:11, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
I would like to thank Arbcomm for replying to this. please note that my motion on this item is not necessarily a point of contention with any other editor who is part of this, but is rather a suggestion on the nature of this process itself. thanks very much. --Sm8900 (talk) 02:26, 29 April 2013 (UTC)
I would like to reply and say that I do appreciate all the hard work which the moderator has put into helping this process to develop. I don't think it is any fault of the moderator that this has taken so long. I think that the structure of this process was flawed from the beginning. in the future, I feel that Arbcomm should be the one to provide the possible options to be used in a future RFC. then, as part of the design process for the RFC, all participants should simply comment on the possible options which Arbcomm has provided. I feel that this might allow the process to go much more smoothly. --Sm8900 (talk) 11:24, 29 April 2013 (UTC)
I'm not sure what exactly the "clarification" needed is, but, yes, this process is taking forever. I don't know what the problem is. A desire to get every minutae related to this RfC nailed down? Lack of participation (from those commenting or the mediator)? Excessive arguing over minor points?
That being said, while this process has taken a long time already, I feel the RfC discussion is close to its conclusion. On Wikipedia talk:Arbitration/Requests, Looie496 said there are four steps left in the discussion before the RfC commences. However, that's not true; there are only two. One of them has been going on for more than a month now, so hopefully that should be drawing to its final conclusion (provided the moderator doesn't insist on several more questions). The last step is the finalization of implementation, which I imagine is just discussion of how the RfC will be advertised. The last two steps Looie referenced are the launch of the RfC and the analysis and implementation of the results -- i.e. the RfC itself.
I'm not a fan of this current drawn-out process, and I feel a small team of reasonable editors (maybe ArbCom itself?) could have come up with an RfC with a similar format months ago. But now that we've gone down this road, we might as well see it to its end -- although perhaps with a greater understanding from all parties involved that we need to speed this up. Many people, myself included, are becoming fatigued and losing interest in this whole thing. -- tariqabjotu 02:42, 29 April 2013 (UTC)
For those unfamiliar with the background, I'm the moderator of the RfC discussion. I'm a little surprised to see this clarification request, as I think this could have been sorted out on my talk page without involvement from the committee. Sm8900 did leave a note on my talk page a few days ago, but we didn't discuss the issue of the basic structure of the RfC discussion, which seems to be what this request is about.
Having said that, I do agree with him, with Tariqabjotu, and with Looie496, about the fact that this process has been taking too long. This is mostly the result of my decisions on how to structure the process, and I'm sorry for any unnecessary work or discussion that this has caused. It wasn't my intention to make the discussion last as long as this, and I might have been able to avoid this state of affairs with more foresight.
To add to this, there has been discontent among the participants at the latest stage of the proceedings. I made the mistake of posting what turned out to be very contentious questions for the participants to answer, right before I went travelling for a few days (on April 11). I wanted to post the questions before I left, as otherwise the process would have basically been stalled until I got back. However, this backfired, and resulted in a series of acrimonious exchanges which I wasn't able to moderate effectively due to my limited internet access. I think it is the negativity in this latest round of discussions that has led to the fatigue that Tariqabjotu mentions.
However, as Tariqabjotu also mentions above, this process is actually fairly near to completion, and I don't think there would be any benefit to radically changing its format at this stage. There are certainly lessons to be learned from this experience for the next time ArbCom tries something similar, and I myself have many things to reflect upon. What the actual process needs now, though, is for me to summarise the consensus from the latest discussions and to assemble a draft of the RfC text, not for there to be a change of procedure or of personnel. After the participants see an actual draft of the RfC, with any luck the fatigue should disappear. I have set aside today to do this, so you can expect to see some results later on. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 04:57, 29 April 2013 (UTC)
In response to Salvio, let me note that this request is here because Carcharoth said it should be -- the issue was originally raised on the ArbCom talk page. In my view, the most important aspect of this is that ArbCom really needs to be conscious of how far off track the process has gone, otherwise similar things are likely to happen again. This is a remedy that did not work properly. Can the concept be modified to make it workable, or should remedies of this sort simply be avoided?
It would also be helpful, for the current case, to have the moderator set a more or less definite target date for when the RfC should go live. Looie496 (talk) 15:03, 29 April 2013 (UTC)
I agree with the editors above in that the process, while long, is quite close to completion and in that regard prospects are bright. Mr. Stradivarius has been doing an admirable job in guiding the discussion toward the eventual goal of starting the RFC. I don't see why we shouldn't just finish the planning according to the agreed plan. Cheers, --Dailycare (talk) 19:28, 29 April 2013 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Initiated by Greyshark09 (talk) at 17:28, 11 July 2013 (UTC)
FutureTrillionaire notified here. Marianian notified here. Jake Wartenberg notified here. FunkMonk notified here; Pug6666 notified here; ItsZippy notified here.Greyshark09 (talk) 17:28, 11 July 2013 (UTC)
The ARBPIA 1RR restriction was enforced in Syrian civil war article in order to prevent constant edit-warring. The 1RR restriction was made by admin Jake Wartenberg on March 24, 2013, as an answer to editors' request to limit edit-warring on that page (request[142] and enforcement[143]). The enforcement of ARBPIA was made simply because it is the most convenient 1RR tool available and not because of an affiliation with the Arab-Israeli conflict. However, there might be a serious flaw in using the "Arab-Israeli arbitration enforcement" tool on Syrian civil war articles: first of all Israeli involvement is so far very limited in that conflict and hence Israel is not present in the infobox yet; secondly, even if considering Israeli involvement, the context is clearly not a part of the Arab-Israeli conflict (conflict between Israel and Arab League), but actually part of the Israel-Iran proxy conflict (Iran is not an Arab country and of course is not part of the Arab League). Considering that Syria is suspended from the Arab League (see [144]), thus the "Arab-Israeli arbitration enforcement" on Syrian conflict is irrelevant. I suggest creating a new arbitration tool named "Syrian conflict arbitration enforcement" for 1RR enforcing on Syrian civil war related articles instead of ARBPIA to resolve this issue.Greyshark09 (talk) 17:28, 11 July 2013 (UTC)
As an editor who has made many edits to Syria-related articles (although I've recently been less active), I can safely say that the Syrian civil war is definitely not an Arab-Israeli conflict and should not be restricted by ARBPIA. However, the main Syrian civil war infobox often does suffer from edit wars. An 1RR restriction might be helpful there, but the Syrian civil war battle articles usually don't experience edit-wars, and therefore a 1RR restriction for those articles is unnecessary, maybe even inappropriate. I support restrictions for the infobox template, but do not support restrictions for the main article or related articles.--FutureTrillionaire (talk) 18:37, 11 July 2013 (UTC)
I have only got involved in the Syria article alone to try to resolve the infobox issue where international events at the time could pose a conflict of interest into how the country's infobox was presented.
Although the RfC initially went towards a neutral solution where the government would be in separate infoboxes preferable at the politics and government section, the ultimate consensus was keep the status quo for now, for which I respect.
However, my talk page and user page was subject to personal attacks on 25 April 2013 (see this and this). This resulted in me posting a complaint about their actions, yet a user known as Eliastoma (talk+ · contribs · deleted contribs · tag · block user · block log · CheckUser) tried to silence me on that, resulting in a another complaint to an administrator. Further investigation resulted in the said account blocked on suspicion of sockpuppetry.
My last recent edit to Syria was to remind users that the consensus was the status quo.
Therefore I could support a new Syrian conflict arbitration enforcement tool with tougher measures against personal attacks. Even where my experience has been completely independent of the Israel question, it seems that the civil war needs its own taskforce to deal with the present issues, although I tried my best to respect WP:NPOV. --Marianian(talk) 01:54, 12 July 2013 (UTC)
I am not sure if it is okay to have sub-headers under my space for asking questions, but I was wondering how it would be possible to have an article under two Arbcom cases? --Marianian(talk) 07:53, 12 July 2013 (UTC)
My involvement in this issue began in late March when I responded to a protection request that was made as the result of an edit war over whether Israel should be considered involved in the conflict. It seemed initially as if I had been able to broker a compromise between some of the editors involved, but the situation quickly deteriorated after I lifted the protection. I read through the talk page archives and found that this was a dispute between entrenched editors that had been going on for months with little progress, despite extensive DR. ARBPIA reads, "any article that could be reasonably construed as being related to the Arab-Israeli conflict falls under 1RR. When in doubt, assume it is related." In light of this, there seemed to me little question that the sanctions were applicable. This is the first and only time I have worked in AE. I apologize if my actions have not embodied the same finesse that might be expected of an administrator more experienced in this area. ⇌ Jake Wartenberg 23:04, 11 July 2013 (UTC)
Will cool the many hot-heads down, and force them to use the talk-page, which is a good thing. FunkMonk (talk) 17:49, 11 July 2013 (UTC)
I agree with the statement that Greyshark09 made. I support putting 1RR the article. However it must be labeled appropriately. Labeling the Syrian civil war as part of the Israeli-Arab conflict without reliable sources calling it part of said conflict could be seen as POV pushing. So we could make the category Syrian Civil war protection as a temporary category and clearly state that fact. I hope I am not posting too late if so I apologize. Pug6666 19:10, 15 July 2013 (UTC)
I have no strong opinion, really - I'm not incredibly involved in this dispute. I did block a user recently for a 1RR violation, as a result of the 1RR restriction on the page. The block itself was slightly contentious, and I asked for other admins to review it at AN, though I don't think the main points of contention would not really be resolved by an ArbCom motion either way. ItsZippy (talk • contributions) 17:52, 11 July 2013 (UTC)
Israel as a state is already directly involved in the conflict, as clear from the text of article, for example here, airstrikes by Israeli aviation and a lot more [145]. Therefore, I think this particular article falls under ARBPIA. There is no need in any clarification, amendment, new case or ANI/AN discussion. This can be decided by admins on AE if anyone files a complaint.My very best wishes (talk) 03:45, 12 July 2013 (UTC)
In'm not involved in anything Syrian Civil War-related, although I have long experience in dealing with ARBPIA-related AE requests. In my view, this civil war is at most partially and indirectly related to the Arab-Israeli conflict. As such, I think that the civil war as a whole is outside the scope of that conflict, and consequently outside the scope of the case's remedies, except as concerns edits that relate to Israel's involvement in the civil war. In addition, as I've said elsewhere, I have concerns that WP:ARBPIA#General 1RR restriction is not enforceable as written, because it was voted on by the Committee only indirectly in the context of a motion amending it, and, if it is considered a discretionary sanction by an administrator, it would need to be the subject of individual prior warnings per WP:AC/DS#Warnings.
Because arbitration is the last resort of dispute resolution, if I were on the Committee, I'd request more specific evidence that community- or admin-level dispute resolution efforts or tools have failed to effectively prevent continued edit-warring before considerint imposing any arbitral sanctions. Such evidence has not been presented here. I therefore recommend that administrators first make use of normal anti-editwarring measures such as warnings, protections or blocks, or ask for a community sanction at WP:AN, before asking the Committee to impose sanctions. Sandstein 04:57, 13 July 2013 (UTC)
It should be made known that the Syrian civil war topic area suffers from a fairly high level of sockpuppetry, both account- and IP-based. ArbCom member User:Salvio giuliano can well attest to this. Any 1RR restriction should explicitly take this into account with a clear exemption for the reversion of sock-edits. ~~ Lothar von Richthofen (talk) 20:56, 14 July 2013 (UTC)
I have only taken a cursory look at the article but it seems that 1RR is generally working there (and the statements by users here suggest likewise). If this is so, then I don't think that a community sanction authorising discretionary sanctions (or just 1RR restrictions) at the discretion of uninvolved administrators for all articles (and templates, etc) related to the Syrian Civil War would be hard to come by. However, ArbCom sanctions normally supercede community ones, and there is the potential for wikilawyering during a period until the community sanction is passed. As such I'd say that an arbcom motion retroactively authorising the existing sanctions and authorising their continuance until such time as the community reaches a consensus about whether to authorise sanctions or not. Although I don't think it likely, the community could decide not to authorise them, and at the same time it allows the status quo to remain in the event of no consensus. Thryduulf (talk) 23:12, 11 July 2013 (UTC)
The phrasing of the discretionary sanctions regime from ARBPIA is as follows:
“ | All Arab-Israeli conflict-related articles, broadly interpreted, are placed under discretionary sanctions. | ” |
Looking over the article and talk page, it is clear that Israeli involvement in this inter-Arab conflict is of significant editorial interest, which reflects the interest shown by reliable sources. ARBPIA doesn't pertain solely to Israeli-Palestinian conflicts, but even if it did the PFLP-GC (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command) are involved in the conflict and have threatened to attack the Golan Heights currently occupied by Israel. Since the discretionary sanctions apply to "related articles, broadly interpreted" I would say this falls roughly within the lines given all these facts. From my reading, however, this is strictly a question of the 1RR restriction on the article as any edits relating to Israeli involvement would be normally covered by the discretionary sanctions anyway. The general 1RR restriction actually has similar wording as the discretionary sanctions saying:
“ | All articles related to the Arab-Israeli conflict, defined as: any article that could be reasonably construed as being related to the Arab-Israeli conflict falls under 1RR. When in doubt, assume it is related. | ” |
The bolded wording would clearly accommodate the position that the article falls under the 1RR restriction. My impression would be that sanctions wouldn't apply to every article regarding the Syrian civil war, just those where Israeli involvement would be a significant point of interest.--The Devil's Advocate tlk. cntrb. 23:54, 11 July 2013 (UTC)
I am posting at this point only to respond to NW's comment. It's hard enough for admins to decide whether a particular article belongs under sanctions. Now, you're saying that we have to parse the actual circumstances to see if the violation occurred in a part of the article that relates to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. That's like putting sections of articles under sanctions. I see that as a practical nightmare. Also, although you recommend NYB's option #3, you appear to ignore NYB's first #3 (" no one so far seems to disagree that having the article under DS (in particular, a 1RR) is a good idea"), a statement rather than an option, and seems to contradict your view as how to apply the sanctions to this article.--Bbb23 (talk) 15:28, 13 July 2013 (UTC)
It is my understanding that motion proposal shall result in retroactive change of ARBPIA sanctions to be moved to appropriate Syrian civil war sanctions log and the ARBPIA sanction (considered to be inappropriate by most) be replaced with a temporal tool, specific for Syrian civil war article to extend for three months. In my opinion, it would be a reasonable (though temporal) solution for the issue. However i should ask to clarify whether template:Syrian civil war infobox (which is also a big source of edit-warring) shall also be included in this proposed change.Greyshark09 (talk) 09:23, 14 July 2013 (UTC)
We use the phrase "broadly construed" a lot in our decisions. If the Syrian civil war would count under this, so too would the Egyptian revolution, the Gulf War and the US-Iran naval tensions. With all three of those topics, there are situations where the Arab-Israeli [or I guess more broadly Middle Eastern-Israeli] sanctions would apply: upheaval in the Egypt-Gaza region, the decision by Saddam to fire Scud missiles at Israel, and I'm sure the occasional presence of the IDF navy operating alongside the Fifth Fleet respectively. But for those three larger topics to qualify for discretionary sanctions, ArbCom would have had to have passed a motion putting all of MENA under discretionary sanctions, which it has not.
What I would not be opposed to (and indeed, which I might propose if it sounds good to everyone) would be a motion implementing 1RR / discretionary sanctions for one month with respect to the Syrian civil war. This should give enough time for the community to authorize sanctions of its own if it wishes; should it not, that's its own prerogative and the matter can be brought back to ArbCom when there is a genuine "serious conduct [dispute] the community has been unable to resolve" (WP:ARBPOL). NW (Talk) 20:48, 13 July 2013 (UTC)
For a more permanent solution, I think there are two routes we can take. One would be what I suggested earlier. Another would be to simply pass a motion adopting discretionary sanctions for the Syrian civil war topic area. I think the former latter might be better and preferred here; it is pretty clear that the article is a long-term minefield. The fact that the (wrong) implementation of discretionary sanctions and 1RR calmed down the topic area is almost evidence in and of itself that Arbitration enforcement was if not necessary, highly helpful, in helping calm down the topic area. NW (Talk) 22:07, 13 July 2013 (UTC)
These motions did not pass
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Motion 1: Syrian civil war[edit]In March 2013, Jake Wartenberg (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA) notified the editors of Syrian civil war and several associated pages that the topic area fell under the scope of ((Arab-Israeli Arbitration Enforcement)), which provides for a blanket one revert per editor per article per day restriction as well as discretionary sanctions. The Syrian civil war is a broad-ranging conflict, but any connection to the Arab-Israeli conflict comes largely from Israel's geographic proximity to Syria and not any significant involvement of Israel in the article. While content that involves Israel in the Syrian civil war topic area does fall under the scope of ((Arab-Israeli Arbitration Enforcement)), the overall topic area does not. However, the revert restriction and the presence of discretionary sanctions has been helpful in calming the editing atmosphere. Accordingly:
Motion 2: Syrian civil war[edit]In March 2013, an administrator notified the editors of Syrian civil war and several associated pages that the topic area fell under the scope of ((Arab-Israeli Arbitration Enforcement)), which provides for a blanket one revert per editor per article per day restriction as well as discretionary sanctions. Concern has been raised that the Syrian Civil War does not fit within the category of Arab-Israeli disputes, although certain specific issues relating to that war might fall within that topic. Nonetheless, there appears to be a widespread view that placing these restrictions on the Syrian Civil War topic area has been helpful to the editing environment and that they should remain in effect. No one has requested that the Arbitration Committee open a full case to consider the issue. Accordingly, Standard discretionary sanctions are authorized for the Syrian civil war topic area, broadly construed. In addition, a one revert per editor per article per day restriction is established for the Syrian civil war topic area, broadly construed. Any editor who believes the discretionary sanctions relating to the Syrian Civil War or the 1RR limitation should be lifted or modified may request a change either on the Administrators' Noticeboard or by a Request for Amendment to this Committee. However, we recommend that editors wait for a reasonable amount of time before making any such requests for amendment. Notifications and sanctions made pursuant to this motion are to be logged at Talk:Syrian civil war/Log. All sanctions relating to the Syrian civil war made pursuant to the ((Arab-Israeli Arbitration Enforcement)) prior to the passage of this motion are to be relogged at Talk:Syrian civil war/Log.
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In March 2013, an administrator notified the editors of Syrian civil war and several associated pages that the topic area fell under the scope of ((Arab-Israeli Arbitration Enforcement)), which provides for a blanket one revert per editor per article per day restriction as well as discretionary sanctions. A request for clarification or amendment has now been filed raising the issue of whether the topic-area of the Syrian Civil War falls within the scope of the Arab-Israeli topic-area for purposes of arbitration enforcement.
The Arbitration Committee concludes that the topic of the Syrian Civil War does not fit within the category of Arab-Israeli disputes, although certain specific issues relating to that war would fall within that topic.
However, the administrator action extending discretionary sanctions and the 1RR limitation to Syrian Civil War was taken in good faith. Several editors have commented that the restrictions have been helpful to the editing environment and that they should remain in effect. No one has requested that the Arbitration Committee open a full case to consider the issue.
Accordingly, the existing sanctions and restrictions applied to Syrian Civil War and related articles will continue in effect for a period not to exceed 30 days. During that period, a discussion should be opened on the Administrators' Noticeboard (WP:AN) to determine whether there is consensus to continue the restrictions in effect as community-based restrictions, either as they currently exist or in a modified form. If a consensus is not reached during the community discussion, any editor may file a request for arbitration. In the interim, any notifications and sanctions are to be logged at Talk:Syrian civil war/Log.
Roger Waters (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) I don't know if this falls within scope of this page. I don't know if I am posting in the right place. The article, talk page, and BLPN seem to indicate it warrants posting here though.--Canoe1967 (talk) 11:22, 5 August 2013 (UTC)
We seriously need a change in ARBPIA rules as they are not only doing nothing to stop socks but are also enabling them by disabling fine editors. As it stands WP:ARE and WP:SPI are ineffective against editors using swarms of throw-away accounts. I and many others desire a change with the focus being on "new" accounts editing in the IP area.
I suggest we begin a formal discussion on the matter where editors may propose and discuss ideas on curbing socks in the IP area with minimal damage to honest new accounts and IPs. If someone with more wiki-bureaucratic knowledge could start such discussions and post notices to the relavent boards that would be great. Sepsis II (talk) 03:02, 30 June 2014 (UTC)
About Template:Largest Israeli cities (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs). Yesterday I asked semi-protection against drip-drip editing by IPs [150]. Protection was added by Callanecc [151].
In my request I cited that the page was under the workings of WP:ARBPIA. And in their editsummary, the protecting editor used that statement as an argument. I made this statement because of the template's content (esp. Jerusalem). However, I just discovered that its talkpage does not have the ((Arab-Israeli Arbitration Enforcement)) warning.
My first question is to add the warning to the template, and so make my assumption/statement correct, albeit afterwards. Or, of course, this could be denied and we should somehow cleanup my by then wrong assumption (reassess the protection setting).
My second question is a parallel one, about List of Israeli cities (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views). In preparing this post, I discovered that the similar page List of Israeli cities has no ARBPIA warning either. The page currently also lists cities in the West Bank (like Ariel, itself with WP:ARBPIA warning), and so this page also could be under WP:ARBPIA, needing the warning. In fact this page even more so, because it explicitly addresses West Bank locations. So I propose adding the ARBPIA warning to its talkpage (or decide not to). -DePiep (talk) 07:10, 14 October 2014 (UTC)
Why does the list of DS warning notices end abruptly in April 2014? Does it mean that notices are no longer given? Or are they logged on a different page now? 24.188.185.162 (talk) 16:22, 21 January 2015 (UTC)
I was surprised to learn the area of nuclear proliferation in Iran was not included under WP:ARBPIA. I often see the same sorts of Islamophobic and POV-pushing editing in this area as in other WP:ARBPIA areas. What is the reason for not including it? Gouncbeatduke (talk) 15:58, 3 May 2015 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Initiated by Jeppiz at 19:01, 8 November 2015 (UTC)
I believe neither Jews nor Palestinians to be covered by WP:ARBPIA, and I'd suggest that amending this situation may benefit the project and discourage much edit warring. Having watched both articles for a long time, I notice that Jews (and to some extent Palestinians) see quite intense disputes. As the edit history of Jews show, there have already been over 20 reverts in November alone. Below user:Debresser asks for examples, so a short non-exhaustive list from the last days [152], [153], [154], [155], [156], [157]. These disputes are never about Jewish culture in 17th century Poland or Palestinian culture in 17th century Palestine, but very often about the origins of both peoples, along the lines of "who was there first", "do modern Jews descent from ancient Jews", "are modern Palestinians the descendants of ancient Jews" etc. These questions are directly linked to the Israel-Palestine conflict, as both sides try to up their own claim to the land by invoking history. Furthermore, the most active editors engaged in these disputes are almost always the same few editors engaged in other ARBPIA-covered articles about the conflict. As the disputes at Jews and Palestinians are directly linked to the area covered by WP:ARBPIA, and see much more conflict than many articles currently covered, I suggest ARBPIA be extended to these two articles. It would benefit everybody involved, except a handful of people who frequently revert, and would benefit the whole project.
No individual user is concerned, so I have not named anyone, but I will post a short information notice at the talk pages of both Jews and Palestinians.
The nominator of this amendment first proposed this at Jews, claiming that discussions about the origins of Jews should be subject to the 1RR rule, because often the issue is raised in connection with the IP-conflict. I will comment only on the merits, or more precisely the lack thereof, of this proposal in regard to the Jews article.I have no clear opinion regarding the Palestinians article, although I think that the issue is much stronger on that article than it is on the Jews article.
I think the claim of the nominator, which is not backed up by any links to discussions either on Wikipedia or outside of it, is incorrect. In addition, I think that the proposed measure is not proportionate, even if the claim were correct. Ergo I feel strongly that the proposed 1RR restriction should not be considered. My arguments are as follows.
I agree with Debresser that putting Jews under 1RR is disproportionate.
In addition to Debresser's points, I'd like to add that overall the discussion seems pretty civil to me, and I see no reason to stop WP:AGF, certainly not to the point of imposing 1RR. I don't think the intensity and nature of the discussion merits it. Jeppiz himself links to my only counter-revert, where I specifically note that the discussion had a three-day gap of silence in it after I requested an explanation of a previous revert. My request was answered soon afterwards. 1RR is unnecessary.
I don't think the article Jews should be placed under ARBPIA IR restrictions, while I think this should apply to Palestinians. I gave my reasons here. That said, Jeppiz does have a serious point however. It is absolutely impossible to discuss Jewish origins on Wikipedia in a rational, rigorously high RS source based manner. One is just over-ruled, as are the relevant sources and the reason is that the definition is perceived by a majority of editors as one which must contain a political statement about Israel and the Law of Return, meaning that whatever sources say to the contrary, the definition of a Jew must state that (s)he comes from ancestors who lived in Palestine, which is total nonsense.. But this, which relates to one or two sentences in the lead, should not translate into making the whole article, which has nothing to do with the I/P conflict, lie under an ARBPIA sanction. Nishidani (talk) 21:54, 8 November 2015 (UTC)
I think the question ultimately on the table is whether or not any article with the word Jew, Israel, Palestine, etc. is subject to arbitration. I think it's a far stretch to include Jew within the scope of ARBPIA. I haven't seen any solid evidence of major edit warring or even minor edit warring to warrant inclusion. It should be a last resort to include articles within a sanctionable area, and we should be working to remove articles, not add them.
I'm not really seeing any common sense reason, or for that matter any other reason to do this other than as an attempt to chill speech. Ending major disruption is generally the only reason to even consider it. The diffs provided, I'm not sure if they even show minor disruption. -Serialjoepsycho- (talk) 01:42, 19 November 2015 (UTC)
I just wanted to add an additional comment, especially regarding my below request. If this is a request to have Jew be placed under sanctions, then how did any article get placed under sanctions? The template should make mention of a discussion where it was voted on. It is quite possible that somebody just decided that sanctions apply to my article below, or to some other article Jew included and just puts in the sanction template and then that article is now under sanctions. There ought to be a safeguard in place to prevent that. Sir Joseph (talk) 04:55, 26 November 2015 (UTC)
Other editors are free to make relevant comments on this request as necessary. Comments here should address why or why not the Committee should accept the amendment request or provide additional information.
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Initiated by Sir Joseph at 19:57, 18 November 2015 (UTC)
The article Haredim and Zionism has nothing to do with the ARBPIA arena, or if it does 5%, and it should be removed to clean up those areas under ARBPIA sanctionable spaces. This article used to be edited heavily back in the early 2000's and had some disputes involving some sockpuppets but the article and disputes if any in general do not involve Israel-Palestine and just involve intra-Jewish halacha response to Israel as a Jewish State.
This article seems fairly stable. It doesn't seem to be much of a focus of the Israel and Palestine partisan divide that causes so much disruption on Wikipedia. Removing the cumbersome discretionary sanctions such as 1RR doesn't seem to be an unreasonable request. If an issue later arises it can always be put back under these sanctions. You can leave it to administrator discretion.-Serialjoepsycho- (talk) 04:35, 19 November 2015 (UTC)
I just want to add one more thing, something similar to what I wrote on the Jew case above. How do I know that the ARBPIA template was even added correctly to this article? For all I know some admin assumed it to be in the same sphere as Israel-Palestine and just copy-pasted it. Looking at the original ARBPIA articles, I could not find this article listed. I do think it would be a good idea that when articles are added/deleted/amended/etc. a record is kept, so that when a template is put on the page, we know where to look to find out why, and we can see the reasoning behind it. It could very well be that there was a discussion about this page years back in some archive long gone, but that's neither here nor there (but it is somewhere), but I do ask you to consider that in the future for all ARBCOM cases, when you add articles, to please maintain or track on the talk page of the article the date of the discussion. Thank you. Sir Joseph (talk) 18:43, 30 November 2015 (UTC)
Not every mention of Jerusalem means that the article is under ARBPIA. I don't think EdJohnston was correct when he blocked that user, and he even said that all ARBCOM said with regards to Jerusalem was arbitrated the lead to the article. We should not be having secret articles subject to restrictions. There ought to be a process to how articles get placed under sanctions and "broadly construed" does not mean just mentioning the word "Israel." That is pretty ludicrous. Regardless, you can't have a system where people get sanctioned for something as "broadly construed." Sir Joseph (talk) 17:42, 21 December 2015 (UTC)
This articles deals with a very contentious topic in the I-P conflict, which is the anti-zionism of some Jewish communities. Some of them, the Naturei Karta are well-known and even used in the propaganda war between Israel and its ennemies and opponents (eg Iran). Sir Joseph himself added a tag several weeks ago stating the article was disputed. I think it should remain the ARPBIA list. There is no added value to remove this and at the contrary it could be used a a pretext of edit war. Any improvement can be discussed on the talk page. Pluto2012 (talk) 10:48, 19 December 2015 (UTC)
An article about Zionism is an article about the I-P conflict. I think the argument to the contrary is simply mistaken. Zerotalk 12:23, 19 December 2015 (UTC)
@Sir Joseph:, you have your facts slightly wrong regarding NoCal100's typically hypocritical behavior on behalf of the State of Israel using his All Rows4 sock account. He warned the user on 1 June 2015 here, reported him the same day here, and placed the ARBPIA template on the talk page on 3 June 2015 here as a result of comments at the 3RR report. The edit warring was covered by 1RR, regardless of the presence or absence of the ARBPIA template, because it was about the status of Jerusalem i.e. whether Wikipedia can use its neutral narrative voice to refer to places in West Jerusalem as being in Israel. Yes, the sock successfully gamed the system, as has happened countless times (even the ARBPIA discussions are contaminated by evidence presented by socks), but it wasn't dependent on the presence or absence of the ARBPIA template or the notion of the article being a member of a set of 'ARBPIA articles'. It's because, in practice, 1RR has been enforced at the content level, even if it is just one word or sentence that is interpreted as being related to the Arab-Israeli conflict, broadly construed, despite the ARBPIA restrictions talking about things at the article level. Since the 500 edit/30 day restriction is currently being enforced by editors rather than by software, perhaps that restriction will also be enforced at the content level rather than the article level in practice. Sean.hoyland – talk 17:14, 21 December 2015 (UTC)
But you can and do have a system where people are sanctioned for something as "broadly construed". You can and do have a system where an edit war over a sentence that is related to the Arab-Israeli conflict, like the status of Jerusalem, is treated as being within scope of ARBPIA regardless of the article in which the edit war takes place. That seems better to me because it means that the restrictions can be enforced at a finer scale than the article unit. It's often not possible to decide whether something is an 'ARBPIA article' in a repeatable way, but it's very often possible to decide that specific content in an article, and editor actions related to that content, are within scope of ARBPIA. It's usually obvious. Admins, unlike bots so far at least, can usually recognize when something, a sentence, a paragraph, a section, an edit war, is within scope of the ARBPIA restrictions. I agree that not every mention of Jerusalem means that the article is under ARBPIA. If editors could simply refer to Jerusalem as Jerusalem throughout Wikipedia these issues would never occur. But if an article says "Jerusalem, Israel" for example and an editor thinks that violates policy, everything that follows from that point will be within scope of ARBPIA and admins are likely to treat it as such. Ed blocked the editor for an ARBPIA 1RR violation. It wouldn't make sense to have a situation where similar edit wars, over the status of Jerusalem for example, something that is clearly within scope of ARBPIA, were treated differently because they took place in different articles. Sean.hoyland – talk 18:30, 21 December 2015 (UTC)
Other editors are free to make relevant comments on this request as necessary. Comments here should address why or why not the Committee should accept the amendment request or provide additional information.
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Initiated by NE Ent at 00:56, 14 December 2015 (UTC)
The 1RR rule prohibits editors from reverting non-IPs more than once a day and no newbie rule says low edit registered editors can be reverted, so when Huldra reverted new editor Terrible towel7 per the no newbie rule Ks0stm blocked her per the 1RR rule. Please fix the 1RR rule, and then get a clerk to change the wording on ((ARBPIA)) so this doesn't happen again. NE Ent 00:56, 14 December 2015 (UTC)
The long standing WP:BOLD pillar explicitly states "The Wikipedia community encourages users to be bold when updating the encyclopedia." (emphasis original). A remedy that a good faith editor "may be blocked without warning" is, I believe, unprecedented in arbcom proceedings, and in any event, an incredibly bad idea. NE Ent 14:57, 2 January 2016 (UTC) Corrected. Nonetheless, remains incredibly bad idea. The editing atmosphere is, of course, an artifact on longstanding real-world animosity between Palestine and Israel and not a reason to comprise Wikipedia principles. It costs very little to require an editor receive a 1RR warning before using administrator tools. NE Ent 17:29, 2 January 2016 (UTC)
Fixing this would be helpful. At first I assumed based on ((ARBPIA)) that the 1RR restriction did not include an exception for non-IP new users, but apparently the restriction against new editors says that it can be enforced through reverts? It's quite confusing the way it's set up right now. Either way, I've unblocked since I now assume that the intent was for such reverts to not be subject to 1RR. Ks0stm (T•C•G•E) 01:07, 14 December 2015 (UTC)
ARBPIA only applies to 1RR, but as I understand it, "regular" WIKIPEDIA policy applies to everything else, such as 3RR, which she did violate. The user should have been reported to 3RR or EDITWAR and have been sorted out. Once the revert goes past 3RR, doesn't that mean everyone is in violation of WIKI policy? As I understand it, from 1-3 revert, there is a free pass on reverting an excluded user, once three reverts , then that user should be reported to AIV or the like. Sir Joseph (talk) 02:24, 14 December 2015 (UTC)
Due to Arbpia3, Terrible towel7, with less than 500 edits is under ORR. They inserted their own original research, interpreting the meaning of a primary source and effectively created a BLP violation. Huldra was neither in violation of 1RR, 3RR, 6RR, or 20RR, due to the BLP exemption. Terrible Towel was in violation due to their first single edit. The edit warring that followed is enough not to consider any leeway in whether or not they were aware of ARBPIA3 in the first place as they went well beyond a 3RR violation. I hope in the future Huldra will go to the edit war noticeboard instead of continuing on with such an edit warrior but they did nothing wrong. It would probably help to clarify what procedure to take when an ip editor or other user under 500 contributions makes an edit. Are they exempt from revert rules?-Serialjoepsycho- (talk) 02:59, 14 December 2015 (UTC)
She WAS reported for 3RR, and initially blocked for that – correctly. Then we had her usual supporters bully and mislead an inexperienced admin into unblocking her. When Other Legends Are Forgotten (talk) 02:27, 14 December 2015 (UTC)
@Ks0stm:, the newer restriction adds newbie editors to the same category as IP editors, and puts both into a 0RR restriction, which means they can be reverted without violating 1RR. But it does not mean (at least not as worded in the ARBCOM decision) that they can be reverted without limitation. In fact , the wording of the original decision strongly suggests that this is NOT the case, since that decision said that while IPs can be reverted without violating 1RR, they are still subject to regular edit warring rules like 3RR.
@Serialjoepsycho: "BLP" is not some magic pixie dust whose invocation grants you immunity. The BLP exemption makes it clear that "What counts as exempt under BLP can be controversial. Consider reporting to the BLP noticeboard instead of relying on this exemption.". It really strains credulity to suggest that quoting a person verbatim would be a BLP violation. regardless, this smacks of ex-post facto rationalization. When Huldra made this report – [160] – she was claiming "vandalism " (which it is of course NOT). On Terrible Towel's page, she was invoking the WP:PIA3 restriction.
@Guerillero: - you state that "The GP already allows for users to revert edits made by IP editors and accounts with less than 500 edits and 30 days tenure an unlimited number of times. " - but it seems administrators don't currently see it this way (see my recent exchange with User:Bbb23 here. It would be good to have explicit language that says this, or alternatively, replace the current proposed language that says " Reverts made to enforce the General Prohibition are exempt from this limit." (which could be construed to en exemption from 1RR, only) with the following: " Reverts made to enforce the General Prohibition are exempt from this limit and the 3RR limit" . When Other Legends Are Forgotten (talk) 01:54, 2 January 2016 (UTC)
@DeltaQuad: - if the intention is, as Guerillero states above, to allow for an unlimited number of reverts of edits made by IP editors and accounts with less than 500 edits and 30 days tenure ', then adding the text "standard exemptions to 3RR apply" makes is worse, not better, since this means 3RR is still in force with its standard exemptions. When Other Legends Are Forgotten (talk) 16:37, 2 January 2016 (UTC)
Wow. What a mess. Huldra was doing the right thing, enforcing Arbcom sanctions and protecting an article. That's quite clear, under the provisions of the "GP", and the partisan wikilawyering about 3RR is irrelevant and unseemly.
Ks0stm thought they were doing the right thing, but the Arbcom sanctions were confusing. Once they realised this, they continued to try to do the right thing by unblocking and coming here, asking Arbcom to help fix it.
Let's hope Arbcom can continue the theme, by doing the right thing themselves: fixing the confusing sanctions, and allowing the unnecessary block notations to be deleted from the record of a 10 year user with a clean block log. Of note is that Huldra does valuable, important work in this difficult, fraught area, where many would not be willing to, so that clean block log is both highly commendable and very important to them – allowing the notations to stand would surely hinder their valuable work, as opponents abuse their existence "in battle". Begoon talk 07:22, 14 December 2015 (UTC)
Thryduulf, you say "Ks0stm's block was though made in good faith and they should not be sanctioned for it, and for the same reason I'm initially reluctant to revdel the entry in the block log" – I agree that the block was a good faith error, caused by confusing ARBPIA/ARBPIA3 wording, and that sanctioning Ks0stm would be ludicrous. I don't think anyone has suggested that.
I don't, however see how the "same reason" makes you reluctant to remove this error from Huldra's block log, particularly given their 10 year clean block log, editing in a troublesome area, where any entry in a block log is likely to be used as a "cudgel" against them in inevitable encounters with tendentious editors. In fact, I'm sorry, I can't parse that "same reason" logic at all. Apologies if I'm being dumb...
It does concern me greatly that an editor doing good work in a difficult area should be left with a stained record, through no fault of their own, when the remedy is simple, and obvious. We should be thanking and encouraging work like this – not potentially hindering or discouraging it. Begoon talk 10:15, 14 December 2015 (UTC)
To the arbitrators basically saying "we never revision deleted a block log before, so we don't think we should now", that says a couple of things to me.
To the arbitrator who has opined that they have no issue with this simple, obvious remedy – thank you, not for the first time. Begoon talk 00:52, 18 December 2015 (UTC)
This is a rather simple request. The General Prohibition WP:ARBPIA3 remedy obviously supersedes all other remedies. It explicitly states that the remedy may be enforced by reverts. One only needs to update the text of ARBPIA template to match it. Guerillero's proposed text seems ok to me. For Huldra, in the future, you may want to use the magic word "WP:ARBPIA3" in your edit summaries, to instantly get a "win" (example of me doing it is here, and WOLAF here). The wikilawyering by WOLAF, arguing that Huldra should be reblocked, is truly disgusting; I will not comment on it any further. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 11:14, 14 December 2015 (UTC)
For the record: I do not want any sanctions against Ks0stm (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) ...we all do mistakes, and he did unblock me very soon afterwards, and apologised. Also, for the record, I *did* report the "new" editor to the vandal board. (If anyone checks, you will see that what they tried to add to the article was not actually supported by the sources. So IMO it was both a BLP-violation, in addition to ARBPIA3 violation.)
However, I would *really* like to see my block-log wiped clean. User:Thryduulf: I think the gloating here would be very disheartening to any editor. Please rev-del my block-log....and then we can all move along, Huldra (talk) 00:13, 15 December 2015 (UTC)
Some people above say that WP:3RR restrictions still applied, but this seems like a clear case where they don't per WP:3RRBLP, and Huldra did in fact mention she was reverting a BLP ("bop") violation in her first revert's summary. Furthermore, she stated she was under the (most probably correct) impression that the editor she was reverting was a WP:SOCK of a blocked editor, which is of course another exception to 3RR.
Therefore, given there was in fact no misbehavior at all on Huldra's part, I not only support the unblock, but I second the request (which actually comes from the admin who originally blocked her) to strike the block from her otherwise 10-year clean block log. LjL (talk) 00:24, 15 December 2015 (UTC)
As a heads up, at one of my usual haunts, WP:AN3, I was already assuming 1RR/3RR exceptions for reverting 30/500s in response to this remedy, as this seems self-evident and logical given a lack of active technical enforcement alternatives (e.g., no edit filter or new usergroup+page-protection option). As such, I had already made changes to ((Editnotice IP 1RR))
toward the beginning of this month with that assumption in mind so that it also reflected that it's an exception to 1RR to enforce the remedy. I only stumbled upon this now, but given the input here, I'm assuming that's what everyone's agreeing with anyway, but should Arbcom believe differently, feel free to either ping me to update it or obviously just update it with whatever wording's appropriate. :P --slakr\ talk / 00:51, 23 December 2015 (UTC)
The proposal by Guerillero is ambiguous and I'm not even sure what it is supposed to mean. The premise "When not impeding the enforcement of the General Prohibition" lexically appears to refer to the actions of the editors who are limited, but I expect it is intended to refer to the actions of an enforcing administrator. Who exactly is impeding what, exactly? Please rewrite it more clearly. Zerotalk 08:11, 30 December 2015 (UTC)
@Guerillero:'s proposed amendment of the 1RR rule massively widens the existing rule. The Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Palestine-Israel articles#General 1RR restriction previous version of the rule says "any article", not "any page". Please be sure that you are really voting for what you think you are voting for. Zerotalk 08:00, 2 January 2016 (UTC)
The blocking incident here was obviously an accident waiting to happen. It's very problematic to revert IPs/New users without linking to the General Prohibition in the edit summary and also inform the user on their talk page about the rule. It is natural that good-faith editors otherwise will be confused and feel mistreated; and may try to reinsert what they believe is an adequate edit to the encyclopedia and the result will be an edit-war requring blocks. Of importance is also that a "new user" in English Wikipedia can be a well-established user at a project in another language which don't have these rules; and for such users it will be upsetting to be reverted without explanation and then end up blocked if they reinsert a fully valid edit. Otherwise, I think the blocking of Huldra reflects the problem of many administrators on Wikipedia blocking serious users for a simple (perceived) mistake without warning them and giving them a chance to explain themselves first. Iselilja (talk) 10:45, 1 January 2016 (UTC)
I know this request is basically completed, I just want to jump in here and say this is exactly what I said would happen if the (what we're now calling the "no newbies rule") were to be enforced by reverts and not by a technical restriction. This revision isn't going to fix that problem. Ivanvector 🍁 (talk) 15:39, 5 January 2016 (UTC)
Other editors are free to make relevant comments on this request as necessary. Comments here should opine whether and how the Committee should clarify or amend the decision or provide additional information.
From everything that I have seen as an arb and as a clerk, newer arbcom decisions overrule older decisions when they conflict (lex posterior derogat priori for you legal nerds). Normally this involves striking text that conflicts. However, the 1RR as it stands is such a convoluted mess that this is impossible. If we were going to reform it, which I think we should, the remedy should be no more than a few lines. Something like When not impeding the enforcement of the General Prohibition, editors are limited to one revert per page that could be reasonably construed as being related to the Arab-Israeli conflict per day. Editors who violate this 1RR restriction may be blocked without warning by any uninvolved administrator, even on a first offense. sounds the best to me.
As for how to enforce the new GP, I think, as the drafter who voted against it, that This prohibition may be enforced by reverts, page protections, blocks, the use of Pending Changes, and appropriate edit filters. pretty much gives any use a unlimited authority to revert someone who is violating it. --Guerillero | Parlez Moi 02:59, 14 December 2015 (UTC)
Proposed:
(2) In its place, the following remedy is enacted: Editors are limited to one revert per page per day on any page that could be reasonably construed as being related to the Arab-Israeli conflict. Reverts made to enforce the General Prohibition are exempt from this limit. Also, the normal exemptions apply. Editors who violate this restriction may be blocked without warning by any uninvolved administrator, even on a first offense.
At the moment as I don't understand how Salvio's suggestion of "clear vandalism of whatever origin and edits made by IP editors and accounts with less than 500 edits and 30 days tenure may be reverted without restriction." is covered by this. It appears to contradict it. Doug Weller talk 19:28, 29 December 2015 (UTC) Abstention struck after support vote. Kharkiv07 (T) 00:58, 4 January 2016 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Initiated by Debresser at 20:44, 24 February 2016 (UTC)
List of any users involved or directly affected, and confirmation that all are aware of the request:
Confirmation that all parties are aware of the request
Is the topicban for Chesdovi (talk · contribs) on ARBPIA articles that was decided upon at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement/Archive106#Chesdovi still in force?
Then can any of you please explain to me why he created an article like Palestinian wine, which gave rise to much ARBPIA-related controversy? Debresser (talk) 00:00, 26 February 2016 (UTC)
I see that there was an appeal of a topic-ban-related block in 2012.[162] Though the initial topic ban was for one year [163], it was later changed to indefinite. I checked the user's talk page archives and I don't see any notice of a subsequent appeal of the topic ban, successful or otherwise, though I guess Chesdovi could have removed it. Darkfrog24 (talk) 22:22, 24 February 2016 (UTC)
Chesdovi's most recent edit to Palestinian wine is here. The article itself doesn't seem to contain any allusions to the Israel-Arab conflict, though it does mention kosher wine and Jewish wineries. If there's something in here that violates the topic ban, you could file a complaint at AE and provide diffs to the ARBPIA-related controversy in question. Darkfrog24 (talk) 00:53, 26 February 2016 (UTC)
Other editors are free to make relevant comments on this request as necessary. Comments here should opine whether and how the Committee should clarify or amend the decision or provide additional information.
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Initiated by Huldra at 23:11, 23 November 2016 (UTC)
In the Azzam Pasha quotation, Editor1 makes an addition, Editor2 removes it, Editor1 then makes the very same addition a few hours later (which Editor3 removes), and Editor1 argues they did not break 1RR as "the first edit was an edit, not a revert".
I believe that the issue raised is not only limited to ARBPIA3, but is more generally applicable. I respectfully invite the committee to make general comment on "first mover advantage" in revert wars (described more fully at WP:WINWAR#Intermediate tactics and gambits), particularly as applied to contentious topic spaces; and on if & how this should be addressed. I also respectfully invite the committee to examine the impact & effectiveness of the combination "1RR/consensus" restrictions applied to multiple articles in the ARBAP2 topic space. - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 16:02, 26 November 2016 (UTC)
This is definitely a "bug" when it comes to all types of revert rules. Deference is automatically given to the position that is not the status quo, contrary to all our usual processes. The solution is to accompany all 1RR restrictions with the "Consensus required" restriction, as noted by Doug below. This has worked well on certain American politics articles this past election cycle, and it wholly addresses the issue here. This should be looked at in a context beyond just ARBPIA3. A motion amending all previous cases that currently have active 1RR restrictions to include the "Consensus required" restriction would be ideal. ~ Rob13Talk 19:42, 28 November 2016 (UTC)
Changing the definition of the 1RR rule could have wide-ranging effects. User:GorillaWarfare has recommended a community discussion. Another option is to encourage the admins who issue page-level restrictions under discretionary sanctions to try out different restrictions and see what the results are. Note that the proposed improvements to the 1RR rule by User:Huldra (above) and the one described by User:BU Rob13 to add 'consensus required' are quite different. While Huldra's rule is simple enough to be automated, BU Rob13's rule that requires consensus could make deciding a 1RR complaint more of a judgment call. Thanks to Template:2016 US Election AE we are gradually accumulating some experience with the 'discussion required' rule, the one favored by Doug Weller and BU Rob13 though some analysis would be required to see what the actual effects are. EdJohnston (talk) 06:55, 29 November 2016 (UTC)
The proposal makes sense, since the status quo should get the advantage in a dispute between two editors. However, I'll mention one thing about the wording that doesn't seem to have been noted: it would allow one editor to do multiple reverts in the same article within 24 hours provided they were to different parts of the article. So this proposed wording is in one way less restrictive than before. However, on balance it would still be an improvement. Zerotalk 12:08, 1 December 2016 (UTC)
Other editors are free to make relevant comments on this request as necessary. Comments here should address why or why not the Committee should accept the amendment request or provide additional information.
The general 1RR restriction in the Palestine-Israel articles case is modified to read as follows:
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Initiated by GoldenRing at 09:32, 9 June 2017 (UTC)
List of any users involved or directly affected, and confirmation that all are aware of the request:
Confirmation that all parties are aware of the request
I recently took arbitration enforcement action pursuant to the ARBPIA case. Part of my reasoning was that the user has violated 1RR on a page (Acid throwing) which I think is reasonably construed as related to the Arab-Israeli conflict, especially since the dispute related to parts of that page specifically about Israel, Palestine and attacks on Jews by Palestinians. Several experienced editors have opined that this was wrong because there was no notification on the page that it was subject to 1RR and no 1RR restriction was logged at WP:DSLOG.
The current text of the relevant sanction reads:
Each editor is limited to one revert per page per 24 hours on any page that could be reasonably construed as being related to the Arab-Israeli conflict. If an edit is reverted by another editor, its original author may not restore it within 24 hours. Reverts made to enforce the General Prohibition are exempt from the provisions of this motion. Also, the normal exemptions apply. Editors who violate this restriction may be blocked by any uninvolved administrator, even on a first offense.
That seems to me clear that any page reasonably construed to be related to the conflict is subject to 1RR regardless of editnotices, talk page notices and the like, and that any editor who has been correctly notified of the ARBPIA restrictions is expected to abide by 1RR there. Editnotices and talk page notices may be applied, but they act as a reminder and are not required for 1RR to be enforced.
The 1RR violation was only a small part of the decision to impose a topic ban in this case and I'm not here to ask whether the sanction was correct (though of course the user in question can appeal it if he wishes; he has indicated he will not). But as I'm fairly new to this business, and several editors who generally know better than me have disagreed with my interpretation, I'd like the committee to clarify one way or the other: Is 1RR enforceable on any page related to the Arab-Israeli conflict, or does a page restriction need to be enacted and logged as WP:DSLOG first?
Pinging User:NeilN, User:Kingsindian, User:Zero0000 and User:Capitals00 here. They're not parties as such but they've opined on this one way or the other. I've chosen not to name the sanctioned user here as I'm not asking for review of the sanction imposed as such; if I've erred, perhaps the clerks would let me know and I'll rectify it. Also note that some have opined that me closing the request only a few hours after it was opened, before the accused responded, was out of process; I'm confident that this was well within AE practice, but if arbs feel differently then we may as well cover that here as well.
All sanctions and page restrictions must be logged by the administrator who applied the sanction or page restriction at Wikipedia:Arbitration enforcement log." But these are not page restrictions applied by an administrator, they are applied directly as a remedy by the committee. You pointed to elsewhere WP:DSLOG where I would expect to see such restrictions being placed - but I don't. Not in the PIA area. I see plenty of editors being sanctioned for 1RR violations on pages that are not mentioned in the log. Am I missing something? GoldenRing (talk) 13:44, 9 June 2017 (UTC)
The editor has been notified in the last 12 months that discretionary sanctions are in effect for the *topic* of the IP conflict. So the fact that a specific article does not have a reminder (talkpage notice etc) does not matter, since the editor is well aware when they make edits (or edit-wars) anywhere in the IP area, they can potentially be sanctioned. The only credible defense would be if the editing was unrelated to the IP conflict. Its also procedurely silly to require any page that may have a section related to the IP conflict even if the rest of the article is unrelated - to have a DS warning and be logged. Thats why the DS are in place for the *topic* and not individual pages. So while this article might not already have a specific 1rr attached to it as a result of a previous administrator applying a discretionary sanction, its well within any administrator's rights to topic ban a serial edit-warrior in the IP area from the topic when they start editing problematically in a section that is IP related. Only in death does duty end (talk) 09:58, 9 June 2017 (UTC)
AC/DS applies wherever the topic is being mentioned on any article or space of this Wikipedia. Entire Israel-Palestine is treated as 1RR so if there is a separate section for West Bank and Gaza Strip on Acid throwing, the section comes under DS of Israel-Palestine. The editor was also notified of 1RR violation which he totally rejected,[164] and made a total of 4 reverts. Such disruption contributed to topic ban. Its that simple. Capitals00 (talk) 12:29, 9 June 2017 (UTC)
The particular event that led to this question is not a worthy topic for ArbCom, but the general issue that GoldenRing raises can benefit from a clarification to remove existing confusion among both administrators and regular editors. So I hope we can focus on the general question.
On source of confusion is the recent decision on logging sanctions, which some people have taken to mean that ARBPIA restrictions like 1RR don't apply to a page until that is logged at WP:DSLOG. That interpretation would immediately remove ARBPIA protection from the majority of the 5,000 or so A-I articles and I find it hard to believe that it is the intention of ArbCom to do that. Please disagree if I'm wrong.
So, please clarify that the ARBPIA sanctions apply automatically to all pages related to the Arab-Israeli conflict without the need for a tag or an administrative decision. Or, if that's not case, explain what is. Thanks.
NeilN points to a related problem of articles that contain a small amount of A-I-related text but are mostly not about the A-I dispute. Not long ago there was big fight and AE case over a very long article with a single Palestine-related sentence. Such cases are a problem only if a too-legalistic approach is taken. Many times I have seen sensible administrators applying ARBPIA to editors warring over the A-I parts of an article and allowing editors of the unrelated parts to work in peace. Editors who want to war over A-I text know exactly what they are doing and should be subject to ARBPIA no matter where the text is. Conversely, there is an editor (Gilabrand) who is topic-banned from A-I but edits in unarguably A-I articles every day without molestation precisely because she avoids the parts about the A-I conflict. Nobody minds. So it isn't really a problem if handled by the spirit of the rules, but I'm aware that it can be problematic shoehorning all this into the technical wording of the rules.
Zerotalk 14:12, 9 June 2017 (UTC)
To editor NeilN: The rule is clear and prescriptive: "All IP editors, accounts with fewer than 500 edits, and accounts with less than 30 days tenure are prohibited..." It doesn't say that an administrator has to decide to apply it first. It also doesn't say that E-C protection is "mandated" but only that it is a "preferred" way to enforce the 500/30 rule. Tons of editors have been sanctioned for violating 1RR on I-P articles that are not E-C protected. Finally, it is simply not true that "Palestine-Israel articles are typically put under 500/30-protect"; actually the great majority are not and nearly always E-C protection is only applied when it becomes necessary for enforcing the IP+500/30 rule. Post-finally, as GoldenRing noted, there no logs at WP:DSLOG of admins applying ARBPIA to articles but only logs of admins 500/30-protecting articles. Zerotalk 14:37, 9 June 2017 (UTC) @NeilN: I read the ARCA case you referenced and what I see there is a discussion of how ArbCom's rule should be enforced, plus the degree to which admins are required to enforce it. Nobody there, including you, suggested that the rule didn't apply to an article at all, no matter how obviously the article was about the Israel-Palestine conflict, until some admin decided to enforce it. I work in the I-P area every day and stand by my statistical statements. Zerotalk 15:36, 9 June 2017 (UTC)
My only comment was in regard to the 3RR restriction on the page. The article in question: Acid throwing has, largely, nothing to do with Israel-Palestine. IMO, most of the edits have nothing to do with Israel-Palestine; they are mostly internal to Palestinian politics, but some of them are about Israel. But let's leave that aside.
The talk page of the article does not have a 1RR tag. None of the "belligerents" in this case treated the article as falling under 1RR. I can point out that Capitals00 themselves broke 1RR on the page (1st diff 29 May - reverting this edit, 2nd diff 30 May), indicating that they were themselves not treating the page as bound by 1RR. There was a request on the edit-warring noticeboard by one of the other parties in the dispute, which only talked about 3RR violation (there was no violation, and the request was declined). These things could have been brought up if the request had been kept open more than three hours, and/or the "accused" had been given a chance to reply, but apparently this step was not deemed necessary.
Now, I know that rules don't matter much on Wikipedia: the aim is simply to get your opponent on one pretext or another. There are so many rules that it's easy to find one to match the crime. Also, the discretionary sanctions system gives admins wide powers to act as they wish. And, to be fair, the way Al-Andalusi was behaving, they were going to be sanctioned soon one way or another. However, to repeat, my comment was not about discretionary sanctions in general. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 13:15, 9 June 2017 (UTC)
Page restrictions need to be logged per Wikipedia:Arbitration_Committee/Noticeboard/Archive_11#Arbitration_motion_regarding_the_logging_of_sanctions: "All sanctions and page restrictions must be logged by the administrator who applied the sanction or page restriction at Wikipedia:Arbitration enforcement log." There is no exception for ARBPIA articles. It is folly to expect editors to guess if an admin has placed a non-obviously-related article under a restriction. With no page talk notice, no edit notice, and no logging, how many of you would expect Acid throwing to be under WP:1RR? Extrapolate that to any well-meaning editor working on the Medical section of the article. The restriction reads, "Each editor is limited to one revert per page per 24 hours on any page..." It does not specify the revert has to be ARBPIA-related. There's enough editing traps in this area - let's at least make sure these traps are clearly marked. --NeilN talk to me 13:24, 9 June 2017 (UTC)
Arbcom should consider this clarification request carefully because it has implications across the project. Generally, admins assume that any page that can be reasonably construed as belonging to the sanctioned topic is automatically restricted, and that action can be taken against an offending editor if they have been warned about the sanctions in the past 12 months. It is unreasonable to expect that every page in the sanctioned area be logged (there may be hundreds, perhaps thousands of them). If we were to follow a log first policy we're going to get bogged down with logs of unwieldy length and "cat and mouse" games with editors who flit from page to page while the logging trails slowly behind. Requiring that each and every page in a sanctioned area be specifically logged is impractical, will defeat the purpose of the sanctions (which was, presumably, to minimize disruption), and will exponentially increase the burden on individual administrators. Imo, in the case at hand, the questions that should be asked addressed are: whether the acid throwing article could be reasonably construed to belonging to the sanctioned area, whether the editor was given adequate notice and whether, perhaps, a warning first approach would perhaps have been kinder. --regentspark (comment) 17:33, 9 June 2017 (UTC)
Thank you for pinging me to this, NeilN. With respect (and a hint of amusement, since we seem to always disagree at ARCA), I think you're badly misinterpreting this. The 1RR is not applied as an arbitration enforcement action, and therefore it does not need to be logged. Following your logic, we'd need to log each ArbCom remedy (even blocks or bans placed by the Committee!) before enacting them, which just isn't the intended or usual practice. The AE log is a log of arbitration enforcement actions authorized by the Committee but carried out at the discretion of individual administrators. In this case, the 1RR is part of a remedy to a broad class of articles. No individual admin is applying or can rescind it. Arbitration enforcement actions occur when admins push a button to enforce a remedy (including the edit button, when placing a topic ban, etc). That's why we log page protections; it's a button pushed by an administrator to enforce the remedy. ~ Rob13Talk 20:41, 9 June 2017 (UTC)
GoldenRing closed the request with sanctions, less than four hours after the request was made. I am concerned (1) that Al-Andalusi did not have an opportunity to respond. I lurk at Arbitration Enforcement, and do not recall seeing sanctions imposed so swiftly. Whether or not an editor responds, they are usually (always? almost always?) accorded reasonable and sufficient time to do so. I am further concerned (2) that there was no comment by an uninvolved administrator, and no attempt to reach consensus among uninvolved administrators. With other requests I've seen an admin claim that the request was clearly valid, and that the sanction that should be imposed is X, and then wait for others to agree or disagree. It's a process that works, and that generates a certain amount of respect, even when individual editors disagree with the outcome. It feels like a different process from what occurred. Jd2718 (talk) 22:21, 9 June 2017 (UTC)
GoldenRing's closure was here. There is a comment (above) that GoldenRing should not have closed the AE so quickly (less than four hours elapsed) and that Al-Andalusi didn't have time to respond. The logical action on this request by the Committee would be to take no action, but suggest that Al-Andalusi follow the usual steps of WP:AC/DS#Appeals and modifications. For example, he could open his own ((Arbitration enforcement appeal)) at AE. The question of Al-Andalusi's conduct doesn't depend crucially on whether a 1RR existed on the I/P material at Acid throwing. I am in agreement with User:Doug Weller's comment below. My opinion is that the scope of the ARBPIA restrictions is already sufficiently clear and there is no big weakness in the system that Arbcom ought to be addressing. EdJohnston (talk) 16:28, 15 June 2017 (UTC)
Other editors are free to make relevant comments on this request as necessary. Comments here should opine whether and how the Committee should clarify or amend the decision or provide additional information.
Hi there, could there be an enforcement of this extended to Nazi Germany or any related articles related to it? Just wondering. Wrestlingring (talk) 04:55, 30 September 2017 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Initiated by Huldra at 23:17, 1 December 2017 (UTC)
List of any users involved or directly affected, and confirmation that all are aware of the request:
Confirmation that all parties are aware of the request
How is the above statement: "Each editor is limited to one revert per page per 24 hours on any page that could be reasonably construed as being related to the Arab-Israeli conflict. If an edit is reverted by another editor, its original author may not restore it within 24 hours" to be interpreted?
I have discussed it with User:Opabinia regalis and User:Callanecc at some length here.
There are presently 2 different interpretations, lets call them Version 1 and Version 2:
I can live with either version (both are an improvement on what we had), I just need to know which one is the correct interpretation. Huldra (talk) 23:17, 1 December 2017 (UTC)
...then what should editor A relate to: can A edit 24 hours after editor B’s edit, or is it 24 hours after editor C’s edit?
(In Version 1, it is easy: it is 24 hours after editor A’s first edit.)
I’m sorry to be so nitpicking here: but 12+ years in the I/P area has thought me that there is absolutely no issue so small that it cannot be quarrelled over, or get you reported, so this really needs to be clarified. Huldra (talk) 20:33, 2 December 2017 (UTC)
User:Newyorkbrad I tried to answer that above, and here: User_talk:Opabinia_regalis/Archive_15#that_pesky_I.2FP_area_again...
The short answer is: if you revert after almost 24 hours, yes, then the new stuff will stay in, most of the time.
If you revert immediately, then the new stuff will stay out, most of the time.
If, on average, a revert is done after 12 hours, then the new stuff will stay in half of the time. Actually, this is much the same both for Version 1, and Version 2. However, lots of complications might ensue with Version 2, if there are more than 2 editors, and/or partial reverts, Huldra (talk) 23:31, 7 December 2017 (UTC)
If I have understood correctly, according to Version 2, editor C (User:Shrike) has broken the rule? He has not broken the rule according to Version 1, AFAIK, Huldra (talk) 20:04, 8 December 2017 (UTC)
Ok, I think Option 3 is a definite improvement to Option 2. Huldra (talk) 23:25, 14 December 2017 (UTC)
I support Callanecc's interpretation that "the original author may not restore it within 24 hours after the other user's revert." These restrictions are designed to encourage broader talk page discussion leading to consensus, and slowing down article space reversions serves that goal. Cullen328 Let's discuss it 05:21, 2 December 2017 (UTC)
Only version 2 is logically feasible. Example of why: I make an edit at 00:01. No one notices it until 23:59, and they revert it. Two minutes later, at 00:02, more than 24 hours has passed under version 1, so I'd be free to re-revert. Not cool, and not the intent. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ< 06:35, 2 December 2017 (UTC)
The wording could probably be clarified as "If an edit is reverted by another editor, the same editor may not restore it within 24 hours of that revert.
" That would cover every instance. E.g. to continue with the same example of rapid-fire editwarring: if E restores, F reverts, and G restores, G's restoration is an edit, and B, D, and F cannot revert it the same day. If H reverts, that's an edit, so A, C, E, and G cannot restore the same day. Easy-peasy. The problem here is the word "original", which implies only A is subject to the special 1RR. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ< 23:29, 7 December 2017 (UTC)
Re: "If, as you agree, nobody actually follows version 2, and everyone follows version 1, then the clarification should ..." – The longer Arb comment I see down there disagrees. ArbCom isn't bureaucratically bound by what label a request has; the committee is here to do what makes the most sense for the project in the context. And various clarification requests have resulted in amendments (though ArbCom is officially not bound by precedent anyway). PS: I don't agree that no one follows version 2; I just take your word for it that many presently do not (otherwise this ARCA would not be open). I have been advising, when people ask me [I'm not sure why], that they should follow version 2 since it is clearly the safest bet in the interim, regardless what ArbCom might ultimately decide; it's not possible to be sanctioned for revert-warring less. :-) — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ< 16:28, 11 December 2017 (UTC)
Option 2 was definitely the intent. ~ Rob13Talk 15:02, 2 December 2017 (UTC)
May I remind people that this rule was simply a tweaking of the 1RR rule. In 1RR, a person is allowed to make 1 revert per day. This mechanism depends entirely on their edit time, not the other person's edit time. Therefore, version 1 is the only logically consistent and easily-understandable interpretation here. I have always interpreted the rule that way, and as far as I know, everyone else in this area has as well. To take one example of out hundreds, see this AE request, where the complainant, the defendant, and everybody else in the discussion works with version 1. Indeed, if version 2 was applicable, this revert would have been a 1RR violation. Please don't change the interpretation now. There is no evidence that version 1 is creating any problems: if it's not broke, don't fix it.
Btw, there is nothing unfair about version 1. It slows down the edit-war, just as version 2 does. In the hypothetical example floated above, the second person can make a revert of their own after 24 hours from their edit. May I remind people that most consensus in Wikipedia is achieved through editing: often what is needed is simply a rephrasing which everyone can live by. If version 1 is unfair, so is 3RR, which is policy. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 06:02, 3 December 2017 (UTC)
I remind ArbCom that the original amendment process just wanted you to tweak the standard 1RR a little bit to get rid of the "first mover" advantage. Initially you capriciously added the "consensus required" provision, which was only removed after lots of strife. Now you want to capriciously change the remedy again. If ArbCom failed to write the original remedy properly, fix your wording to match the practice, instead of trying to make everyone change their practice to match your wording. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 15:59, 6 December 2017 (UTC)
Having established that version 1 is indeed the current practice, here's the point. Nobody asked ArbCom to change the practice from version 1 to version 2. Why would you do such a thing anyway? Where is the evidence that version 1 is not working, or that anyone has complained about it? Why are you insisting that everyone in this area change their practice to match the wording which ArbCom screwed up? Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 05:18, 7 December 2017 (UTC)
One surefire way to avoid this situation is to wait 24 hours after the last person's edit. But then some other editor can swoop in after 23 hours, so you may have to wait 24 more hours after that person's edit.
The whole thing is absurd. It beats me why people want to change a perfectly fine provision which was working without a hitch for the past several months. "Just because you can" is not a good enough reason. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 05:39, 7 December 2017 (UTC)
As for your "gaming" comment, it is a guarantee that every rule in this area will be gamed, or to go one level deeper: people will accuse other people of gaming the remedy (see the AE request I linked above, for an example). The remedies should be simple and clear. Version 2 is neither. Btw, this was the problem with the "consensus required" provision as well: it was neither simple nor clear. Version 2 is just a wannabe "consensus required" remedy. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 06:53, 7 December 2017 (UTC)
Here is how I respond to SMcCandlish's comment and Newyorkbrad's comment.
A strengthening of the 1RR rule for articles under ARBPIA: That one should not be allowed to add, or remove, the same material twice in a 24 hour period.There were zero mentions of edit-warring or tag-teaming or all the other bogeys which are now being shoved into the discussion. If only ArbCom had simply done what had been asked of them, we wouldn't be here. ArbCom first screwed up by using a sledgehammer to kill a fly. Then when after lots of strife, that "consensus required" provision was removed, ArbCom now wants to impose another capricious remedy. Because they don't carry any of the burden of their screw-ups. How about, the next time the remedy blows up in everyone's faces, instead of blocking the perpetrators, we block a member of ArbCom or the wise guys who propose these fancy schemes?
This mindset that you can or should control editor behavior minutely must be jettisoned. We are not children to be disciplined by adults, especially when the adults in question can't even get their own act straight. Finally, let me plead for some perspective. What is the damage people are afraid of? How much damage can a person inflict if they're only allowed to make the edit once per day? Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 06:02, 8 December 2017 (UTC)
Meanwhile, people are ignoring the really "obvious" thing here: the wider the restrictions and the more untested they are, the higher the potential for gaming. Indeed, if I was the type to make a malicious sockpuppet, I would do the following. First, I create a new account, get it to 30/500. I go to any of the pages and find an old dispute. Then I rephrase the text to take one side of the dispute (taking care to not explicitly mark it as a revert) and wait for someone to revert me. Voila! That person has "restored a reverted version within 24 hours". Rinse and repeat with another user. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 08:01, 8 December 2017 (UTC)
@Mkdw: At this point, I have to ask: is there any kind of evidence or logic which would change your mind? Or are you simply lawyering for some outcome which you have already decided? If it's the latter, why are we even arguing? You have the power to do whatever you want. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 04:30, 12 December 2017 (UTC)
The discussion about option 3 or whatever are all beside the point. What exactly is gained by all the rigmarole, except forcing everyone to learn new rules? In all this verbiage, nobody has given a single reason why version 1 should be changed at all. Nor is there any evidence that it isn't working as intended, or that there is any doubt about how it works. There was one point of ambiguity raised by one editor who doesn't even regularly edit in ARBPIA, which led to this clarification request. All ArbCom had to do was affirm the current practice and remove ambiguity. For some reason, people are loath to take this simple, commonsensical and completely logical step, but are floating all kinds of fancy schemes, including going back to original 1RR and creating some new "option 3".
Sometimes the status quo is good for a reason. See Wikipedia:Chesterton's_fence. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 06:45, 16 December 2017 (UTC)
Callanecc's "Callanecc version 2" does not help to fix any of the problems described in this edit (see point 3 1) and the scenario in this edit. The reason is simple: unlike 3RR, 1RR and the currently practiced by everybody version 1, "Callanecc version 2", can allow the original edit which was reverted to be indefinitely long in the past. Therefore, one must in theory (and sometimes in practice) check one's own entire edit history when making a revert: to check if the edit in question reverted one of your past edits.
This is not merely a theoretical issue: in this area, many things are litigated over and over again, by many different people. Thus an edit can be a revert of an edit long in the past. I'll give a simple example which happened right in the middle of this ARCA (I swear I did not set this up deliberately; I didn't even realize it till Icewhiz brought it up). Please read this talk page discussion. This state of affairs makes no sense, which is why everyone in this area, who don't agree on anything, instinctively and without communication, follow version 1 (it's a Schelling point).
Overall, as I point out repeatedly above, "Callanecc version 2" requires no more thought, determination or work to game or edit-war, as compared to version 1. There is no evidence that "Callanecc version 2" was the intent, or that version 1 is not working. Version 1 should not be changed, because it will require that everyone change their practice from a clearly working remedy to a clearly bad and untested remedy which requires more cognitive load by editors but brings no advantages. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 03:49, 22 December 2017 (UTC)
Instead, consider a slightly tweaked alternative scenario: suppose, a year ago, I and some other editors got consensus that a paragraph belongs in the lead. Suppose I was part of that discussion and wrote the final version of the paragraph. One year hence, some editor with 22 edits comes along and removes the passage. I see the change on my watchlist and undo it. Then I have broken "Callanecc's version 2".
There are two points here:Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 11:35, 22 December 2017 (UTC)
Newyorkbrad says that both version 1 and version 2 have good arguments. I don't believe that there's really any good argument for #2 but let's concede this point for the sake of argument. There is a crucial difference between #1 and #2: #1 is the accepted interpretation by every single editor in this area. Therefore, changing to version 2 will force everyone to change their practice. And for what? As I have showed multiple times above, version #2 requires no more effort, thought, bad faith, or determination to circumvent. Indeed, it is an open invitation for people (including trolls and socks) to dredge up past conflicts to get people sanctioned. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 04:27, 2 January 2018 (UTC)
I think option-2 makes sense. Lets play this by a case scenario on case1 - suppose an edit is reverted 27 hours after it is inserted into the article - the original author is then free to immediately revert the revert - moving the article away from the status-quo? I don't think this is wise. The original author should back off, discuss, and if there is going to be a revert-war (not advisable for all involved!) - revert after 24 hours. If a 3rd editor comes along - he is free to re-revert if he sides with the author.Icewhiz (talk) 12:36, 6 December 2017 (UTC)
Callanecc's version 2 is clearly superior. Counter should start from first revert (causing a 24 Hour discussion period or intervention by other editors) - and not from the original edit (which could be "sneaked in" - see below).
Regarding the recent example brought up by user:Kingsindian - it is a case where the rule worked perfectly. Kingsindian inserted a large chunk of text to the lead [165] This got reverted due to already in infobox. This is not a summary of section 3.3 (Casualties) - but rather a POVish fork relying on questionable sources.. We discussed (which is what should be done!) in the talk page over the course of half an hour - he saw some of my points (that what was added didn't match the body), I saw some of his points (that this was removed "sneaked out" in 2015 and no one noticed). I self-reverted - self-revert - will modify to match body. - and then made a series of edits to match the body, we discussed some of these edits, and I made a further edit based on Kingsindian's comments Reverting the final paragraph of the lead: re - Add Protection Clusters figures for civilians.. Or in short - two editors coming to an agreement on the talk-page, in a contentious subject area, within 5 hours (2 hours (7:25-09:08) on the initial exchange, one followup to the followup edit was discussed in a laid back fashion as was finally resolved in another 3 (additional edit at 12:46)).
Now - lets imagine Kingsindian's original edit had "sneaked in" - and someone noticed it 48 hours later (just as the original removal in 2015 was sneaked out without anyone noticing). And for the sake of argument (of the original author clause) lets consider Kingsindian's original edit as an addition and not a revert (we could wikilawyer this at AE - but bringing back a paragraph from 20 months ago does seem like authorship and in any event this is an illustrative example):
Version 2 makes the most sense and seems to be the only option for editing here. Sir Joseph (talk) 16:04, 6 December 2017 (UTC)
Version 2 is the most reasonable. Version 1 is simply pedantic and can be used as a blunted weapon. Further I'm under the understanding in the case of a 3RR that consecutive edits by the same editor count as one edit. It would seem reasonable that the same logic should apply here. And in such a conflict ridden area of wikipedia its better not to give people a cannon to fire.-Serialjoepsycho- (talk) 04:05, 7 December 2017 (UTC)
At some point you really have to draw a line in the sand. Consecutive edits aren't fundamentally different than one single edit. This is fairly normal behavior across wikipedia. Gaming is considered disruptive across wikipedia whether the article is under sanctions or not. Here you are being asked to make an ungameable system. You can't. If gaming would be an issue here with people reporting others for making consecutive edits then your actions would be more fruitful in taking on that gaming.-Serialjoepsycho- (talk) 17:07, 9 December 2017 (UTC)
Version 2 makes far more sense; version 1 potentially allows controversial material to be reverted back into an article almost immediately (if their original edit is reverted more than 24 hours after they made it) rather than making the editor adding it to take time out to reconsider the material; this also follows Wikipedia norms like WP:BRD. Number 57 22:31, 7 December 2017 (UTC)
I hope that everybody who supports Version 2 suffers from a painful itch from which there is no relief, just like the hell you will be creating in the arena of editing in a contentious area. What you're describing works fine if people are edit-warring over the inclusion or exclusion of the same bit of information; no editor who has already participated in the edit war may take part again within 24 hours of the last edit. It is absolutely unworkable in situations in which one editor edits another editor's contribution in a manner the first editor doesn't like, or in which three or more editors make their tweaks to a bit of contested text. What will it mean in those situations? We'll see you at WP:AE and find out. — Malik Shabazz Talk/Stalk 04:27, 8 December 2017 (UTC)
I'm inclined to think that Option 2 sounds like a better idea, but that it is unworkable in cases where multiple editors edit. On normal articles, restoring to a past version would be considered one revert. But within the 24 hour rule, I would support an Option 3 , it should be within 24 hours of the first revert to the editor's work. This would address the concerns on both sides. Seraphim System (talk) 05:05, 12 December 2017 (UTC)
Let's have Option 2. It allows me to permanently prevent another editor from editing. All I have to do is revert them within 24 hours, then re-revert them (using different wording of the essentially the same content) every 24 hours. Eventually they will get tired of waiting and go away. Zerotalk 01:55, 16 December 2017 (UTC)
Incidentally, Callanecc's suggestion "If an edit is reverted by another editor, its original author may not restore it within 24 hours of the first revert made to their edit." will prevent this and is acceptable as an alternative to Option 1. The plain Option 2, however, won't work; I won't repeat Kingsindian's proofs. Zerotalk 02:02, 16 December 2017 (UTC)
@Callanecc: Yes, of course that is what would happen eventually. However a rule that requires admins to monitor the situation and make frequent judgement calls in situations that are technically within the rule is a bad rule. As much as plausible we should write the rule so that obeying the rule is acceptable behavior and disobeying it is unacceptable behavior. I submit that both Option 1 and your revision of Option 2 come reasonably close to that, but the original Option 2 does not. Zerotalk 02:35, 16 December 2017 (UTC)
@SMcCandlish: You wrote "Zero000's idea that version 2 could be use to permanently prevent someone from editing is implausible, since the editor wanting to game that way is subject to the same restriction", but this is not true since self-reverts are not counted as reverts at all. Zerotalk 03:26, 16 December 2017 (UTC)
I concur in Kingsindian's belief that virtual all the editors in this area have always assumed that Option 1 is what the rule is. I was surprised when one (exactly one) editor interpreted it differently. I'll also point out that revert limits in the past, including the all-important 3RR rule, have involved the time between the reverts of one editor, not some complex calculation involving the edits of multiple edits. So without a doubt Option 1 is the clearest and least surprising option. I agree with Kingsindian's conclusion. Zerotalk 08:55, 16 December 2017 (UTC)
The irreparable vagueness of Version 2. What is "the first revert made to their edit"? Suppose (1) editor A adds something, (2) editor B removes it, (3) editor A adds it again, (4) editor B removes it again. Is editor A allowed to edit the material 24 hours after edit 2 (the first revert of A's insertion of this material), or 24 hours after edit 4 (the first revert of edit 3)? The confusion gets worse if the edits are not so clear-cut as this but overlap only partially, or if edit (3) adds material that can argued as equivalent but isn't the same. These are not artificial scenarios but just everyday editing. As it stands, Version 2 is an open invitation for wikilawyers to take their editing opponents to AE in the hope that some admin will agree with their interpretation, and sometimes that tactic will work. In contrast, what is allowed under Version 1 will be clear to almost everyone in most practical situations. Zerotalk 01:23, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
Other editors are free to make relevant comments on this request as necessary. Comments here should opine whether and how the Committee should clarify or amend the decision or provide additional information.
The General 1RR prohibition of the Palestine-Israel articles arbitration case (t) (ev / t) (w / t) (pd / t) is amended to read:
The General 1RR prohibition of the Palestine-Israel articles arbitration case (t) (ev / t) (w / t) (pd / t) is amended to read:
I have the page on my watchlist and I noticed this request. I am not sure how to proceed. Do we have any policies for this case? (Posting it here since it is highly relevant for ARBPIA and likely to be noticed; the page has been ec protected for quite some time.--Ymblanter (talk) 13:46, 13 January 2018 (UTC)
A recent dispute at Antisemitism in the UK Labour Party has led to a claim that this is covered under this AR, can an article about a UK political party be reasonably construed as being part of Palestine-Israel articles AR?Slatersteven (talk) 11:59, 11 September 2018 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Initiated by Shrike at 13:08, 15 October 2018 (UTC)
List of any users involved or directly affected, and confirmation that all are aware of the request:
Confirmation that all parties are aware of the request
In my view the only requirement to enforce the 500/30 remedy is notification via Template:Ds/alert. In recently closed WP:AE request [166].Admin AGK commented that user didn't received any clear warning so the AE action could not be taken in this regard.If the ARBCOM agree with AGK then I ask what kind of wording is required and add this as standardized template if not then clarify and amend the decision that the only requirement is notification about discretionary sanctions in the area.--Shrike (talk) 13:08, 15 October 2018 (UTC)
I'd like some clarification here, seeing that I posted "Please note, that until you are WP:EXTENDEDCONFIRMED, you are not supposed to edit Arab-Israeli conflict related pages (see WP:ARBPIAINTRO) - you can post talk page comments, but not edit the article themselves.
[167] specifically due to the 500/30 restriction and Wickey's prior edits - but this got dismissed at AE as a "helpful postscript"
. Now this was framed politely (and not - "if you continue editing ARBPIA articles, I will take you to AE and try to get you banned") - but I did specifically say Wickey was not supposed to edit Arab-Israeli conflict related pages. Are we not supposed to be polite? When posting this, I was suspicious this was Wickey-nl (and was considering a SPI filing), however I was framing this (per WP:AGF) in the manner I would approach any new user. Icewhiz (talk) 14:02, 15 October 2018 (UTC)
The committee reviewed and replaced the prior generation of standard discretionary sanctions in its 2013–14 term. I think we easily forget how troublesome the concept of "awareness" became in the community. At the time, we frequently heard from editors who – out of the blue – received sizable sanctions without having been formally made aware that standard discretionary sanctions were in effect. Obviously, a page notice on every affected article and talk page was impractical. We therefore adopted ((alert)) (and its ancillary systems, ((Z33)) and Filter 602).
The committee has adopted language (WP:ARBPIA3#500/30) that the general restriction should be enforced, preferably, using extended-confirmed protection – or using reverts, warnings, blocks, etc.
In this matter, petitioner requested enforcement of the 30/500 general restriction – an entirely different remedy to discretionary sanctions. The enforcement requested was not to revert the respondent's edits or warn them about the general restriction. The enforcement requested was a heftier sanction (for anyone can revert). I denied that request. I am rarely minded to decline enforcement where there has been a breach.
The petitioner complained to me that the separate DS alert, served on the editor in summer 2018, included a warning that the 30/500 restriction was ineffect. However, the alert template links to many pages about discretionary sanctions; none discuss the general restriction. There was indeed a single sentence appended to the alert, but it read to me like a string of alphabet soup attempting to warn about one remedy in the same breath as another. The explanation was inadequate for a remedy that the committee, by its own language, thinks ought to be enforced by technical means. Respondent's edits were to pages that lacked the standard talk banner or editnotice.
For these reasons, I denied the request to hand down a more rigorous sanction. I do not think we need the general restriction modified or a new template created. I do suggest editors like petitioner use the existing language to begin warning (clearly) and reverting at the first opportunity rather than requesting enforcement at the second. AGK ■ 17:13, 15 October 2018 (UTC)
Well, observers of the IP area will know that I don't often agree with Shrike and Icewhiz (and that is putting it diplomatically), but here I agree with them: with this alert on 15 July 2018, I would have considered Wickey warned, Huldra (talk) 23:23, 15 October 2018 (UTC)
I am also of the opinion that the warning was adequate. If the committee concludes that there was something inadequate about it, please spell out what the problem was so that we can issue better warnings in the future. Zerotalk 09:57, 16 October 2018 (UTC)
Other editors are free to make relevant comments on this request as necessary. Comments here should opine whether and how the Committee should clarify or amend the decision or provide additional information.
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Initiated by Kingsindian at 13:28, 6 November 2018 (UTC)
[I will quote real people throughout in this ARCA request -- this is not to fault them, but simply to show that the problems I'm talking about are all real.]
This ARCA request is about this "modified 1RR" rule instituted by ArbCom in January 2018. I will first state what the rule means (because absolutely nobody understands it); give multiple reasons as to why it is, to put it bluntly, stupid; and then show a way forward.
The rule, stated precisely, is supposed to handle the following situation:
If A and C are the same person and (T3 - T2) < 24 hours, then A has committed a violation.
Note that T1 is irrelevant for breaking the rule, but it is necessary to check if A and C are the same person.
I will first enumerate the reasons, then go into details:
What's the solution? Go back to 1RR with no frills. The crying need is for a clear, simple bright line rule, which everybody understands, is proven to work, and most importantly: something ArbCom cannot screw up.
To illustrate the absurdities I'll take two recent AE cases, one from "each side" of the ARBPIA spectrum (just so tiresome arguments about partisan motives can be put to rest).
This AE case. The case is a violation because of the following argument: Person A is GHcool, Person B is Veritycheck. T1 is 20:22, 7 September. T2 is 19:48, 20 September. T3 is 22:44, 20 September.
This AE case. The case is a violation becaue of the following argument: Person A is Onceinawhile, Person B is Icewhiz. T1 is 27 October, T2 is 2 November, T3 is 2 November.
Two absurdities in these cases are worth highlighting:
I predicted these absurdities when I urged ArbCom not to impose this stupid rule. At that time, I proposed (somewhat tongue-in-cheek): let's block a member of ArbCom when I am inevitably proved right. Which one of you wants to volunteer?
Coming back to the rule, absolutely nobody understands it. The first AE case should give plenty of evidence on the score. Some admins at AE, like Sandstein, have stated explicitly that they don't understand the rule and they cannot enforce it.
Finally, as I showed in my arguments at the time, absolutely nobody asked for this rule, and nobody followed this rule before ArbCom decided to capriciously institute it.
The issue which the "tweak" was supposed to fix was a "loophole" in which an initial addition of text is not considered a "revert". Namely: A adds some text, B reverts, then A can immediately re-revert. Thus, A has the initial advantage in this edit war.
But notice: this advantage lasts for 24 hours at most. After that time period, A and B are on equal terms. Indeed, since WP:ONUS and rules against edit-warring exist, A is actually at a big disadvantage. After the third or fourth revert, A is gonna get blocked without the need for any fancy rules.
Let's go back to the beginning. The purpose of the 1RR rule was to tweak the 3RR rule. The rule slows down edit wars and tries to encourage discussion on the page. That's all it does. It is not a panacea, and endless tweaking to handle every instance of bad behaviour should not be a goal (unattainable, at any rate). By all accounts, the institution of 1RR in this area succeeded on its own terms. So let's bring it back again.
1RR is a completely fair and completely transparent rule. 1RR is fair because everyone get a "token" every day, which they can spend for a revert. It is transparent because whether you violate it or not depends exclusively on your own actions, not anybody else's actions. All you need is to check your own 24-hour editing history. You don't need to pore over the edit history of the page, and if you edit a page once a day, you are guaranteed to be within 1RR. (Hopefully you also spend some time editing the talk page).
Also, consider the way watchlists work on Wikipedia. Let's take the case of person A who edits Wikipedia every day for an hour before bedtime. They makes some edit on a page on their watchlist. Five days later, while they're sleeping or working, some editor removes text from the page. Editor A logs in, checks their watchlist, reverts the edit, and BAM!, they're hammered by this stupid rule. To avoid running afoul of this rule, they would have to wait till the next day before reverting, which is not how watchlists work. 1RR makes perfect sense in this scenario, but the stupid rule doesn't.
ArbCom, please clean up the mess you've made. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 13:28, 6 November 2018 (UTC)
As I have said above, I prefer a plain 1RR rule. However, several people have commented on WarKosign statement. It seems that none of the people have picked up on a simple fact: Warkosign's proposal is exactly the same as "Version 1", which used to be the rule before ArbCom capriciously changed it. Let's see how this is true:
Warkosign's proposal is: "Use a plain 1RR with the provision that the initial edit counts as a revert."
How did "Version 1" work?
If A and C are the same person and (T3 - T1) < 24 hours, A has committed a violation.
Half a minute's thought will show that the two ways of wording the proposal are identical.
There are two key properties of Version 1 which make it desirable, and which avoid the absurdities I listed above:
To clear some more historical amnesia: this rule was the one everyone used, and it used to work fine before ArbCom decided to change it to "Version 2" for no reason at all.
Now, considering this history, you might appreciate why I would prefer that ArbCom not impose any more hare-brained rules on the editor population. Let's stop with the experimentation and go back to 1RR, which was perfectly fine and perfectly understood by all. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 02:55, 8 November 2018 (UTC) Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 02:55, 8 November 2018 (UTC)
The proposed remedy consists of going back to 1RR, together with some vague talk about admin discretion. I, of course, support the first part -- but the second part seems either meaningless or dangerous to me. Discretionary sanctions are already discretionary; there's absolutely no need to add some sort of boilerplate language to a remedy. If the intent of the remedy is to advocate for stricter action by admins at AE, I also oppose such things. As people who read my comments at AE probably know, I almost always advocate leniency in these cases.
In particular, I oppose the action taken by AGK, who seems to believe that he can fix the problems in ARBPIA by harsher sentences. There are several possible answers to AGK's position. Firstly, nobody elected anybody to fix ARBPIA's problems. Second, what makes you think you can fix it? You think you're so smart that you can fix problems going back a decade? Third, what if things don't work (as has happened repeatedly, including in the case under discussion). Do the people who makes these rules and/or apply "discretion" in enforcing them suffer any consequences? That was just a rhetorical question.
I would prefer the following situation. Clear-cut cases of violation / edit-warring should be discouraged by reasonable sanctions. Page protection and warnings can be used to handle less clear-cut cases.
Finally, a note about "tag-teaming", and Number57's comments. It is impossible to stop "tag-teaming" because nobody knows what it means. In this area, opinions are often polarized and predictable -- I can often guess people's responses by just looking at their username. It's dangerous to jump to the conclusion that two people who think similarly are "tag-teaming". Number57's solution can be gamed very easily: just wait 25 hours to revert, as much as you want. It takes absolutely no brain power (bad faith is already assumed to exist, so it requires no more bad faith). Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 06:21, 11 November 2018 (UTC)
The cases pointed out above involving GHCool and Onceinawhile are not the same. In the first case, GHCool "originally authored" (a picture link to a building!) on 23:38, 6 July 2017 - the article was subsequently edited by several editors over the next year+. The filing was claiming that GHCool's revert from 7 September constituted "original" authorship in relation to the subsequently revert on 20 September. In the second instance (Onceinawhile) this is bona fida new content introduced at the end of October 2018 and blanket reverted in the beginning of November 2018 (with little intervening editing).
The text of the remedy reads: "If an edit is reverted by another editor, its original author may not restore it within 24 hours of the first revert made to their edit."
There is a question of interpretation (and admins and editors have varied) here in regards to what may be construed as the "original author" and "first revert" (e.g. is this the first time a (non-revert - as reverts are already covered per 1RR) modification (usually addition) was introduced to the article? Or does this include subsequent times? How far back does one go for "original authorship" (a year+ ago and hundreds of intervening edits?)). Per Kingsindian's (and others) reading - the 24 Hour window applies after any edit - also after the "first revert". Per a different reading of the same text, if editor A introduces text at T1, B reverts at T2, someone (A or someone else) reverts at T3 (say >24hours), B reverts at T4, and A reverts at T5 - then the revert at T5 (even if T5-T4 < 24hours) is not a violation since A's originally authored material was already "first reverted" at T2 (assuming T5-T2 > 24 hours).Icewhiz (talk) 13:55, 6 November 2018 (UTC)
The intent of this rule is to avoid the following situation (which was allowed, and regularly happened under regular 1RR):
Now for 24 hours the article is stuck with a change that A edit-warred in. In theory, A can continue un-reverting B every 24 hours, effectively forcing their version of the article - until both are banned for slow-going edit war.
Perhaps the rule should be modified so any change by a specific editor that was reverted counts as a revert, so same user un-reverting it is a violation of 1RR. This seems to me far easier to explain and track. “WarKosign” 15:08, 6 November 2018 (UTC)
The current rule is extremely difficult to understand and police. I would suggest either a clarification spelling out exactly what the rule is, or more preferably, a new rule that takes us back to the simple times when everyone in the area understood the intent, rules and enforcement of such rules. Sir Joseph (talk) 16:19, 6 November 2018 (UTC)
The ruling is a pain in the arse, difficult to parse (as in KI's first example above where it confused the hell out of me, and I'm not a stupid person, honest), and just needs binning in favour of something that's easy to work out. Yes, we're still going to have the issue of tag-teams serially reverting to avoid 1RR, but this remedy doesnt' work against that either. Black Kite (talk) 17:00, 6 November 2018 (UTC)
I totally agree that the present situation is absurd, (and, if I recall correctly, stated so at the time...so did User:Zero0000)
However, WarKosign is also completely correct: all this started because in a one-to-one "wikifight", the one inserting something, always "won".
(And as this is the IP area, for "inserting something", read: "inserting something negative about a place, person or organisation")
That first insertion has to count towards 1RR, IMO, ...please, please do not change it to not counting. What WarKosign suggest is very sensible: that the first revert cannot be done within 24 hours their own edit. (and NOT the revert of their edit), Huldra (talk) 21:01, 6 November 2018 (UTC)
To refresh your memories: all this started with me coming to ARCA Back in November 2016. My goal was clear, as I stated then: "A strengthening of the 1RR rule for articles under ARBPIA: That one should not be allowed to add, or remove, the same material twice in a 24 hour period."
I had seen several one-to-one edit-wars, where the one wanting to insert something always won, as that first insertion did not count towards 1RR.
Iow: it was not because edit warring itself was a major problem in the IP area. It simply isn't any more, not after the 1RR and 30/500 rules. I see several editors referring to "slowing down edit warring"...I feel they are, as we say in my country, "shovelling last winters snow".
If we first can agree about the goal, then we can agree about the rule. Huldra (talk) 20:48, 8 November 2018 (UTC)
PS. (And to those of you who are still talking about "consensus required": to be blunt: to me you are living in a lovey dovey fantasy world. This is ARBPIA. Wake up and smell the gun powder.)
Thank you, User:Awilley, for nicely tabulating the options. (You could perhaps add an Option 0: roughly going back to 1RR, which is what they are voting over now.)
I would of course prefer any one of the variations of "Version 1".
As one with 70+ K edits, of which at least some 95% are under WP:ARBPIA, I would say that one of the greatest frustrations in the area, are the sub-par actions from some admins on WP:AE.
If you impose a draconian sanction on someone who clearly has made a good-faith mistake (and never given a chance to revert), then you can be absolutely sure that we will have many, many more reports on mistakes, where the "culprit" has never been given a chance to revert.
I.o.w.; it will lead to lots and lots of more time on the AN, ANI, or AE boards...
An editor suggested that a report to AE should not be acted on, if the "culprit" had not been given a chance to undo his/her mistake. I think this is an excellent suggestion.
Giving admins even more power than they already have wrt sanction is not needed, as far as I can see. What is needed is some training of admins so that they administer the rules more equally. (And not like now, when it is a roulette, as someone said.)
User:Opabinia regalis: you said "Version 1" was not "a good option for the same reasons cited in prior discussions - i.e. because it breaks what "xRR" means everywhere else on the project". Well, but so did "Version 2" (ie present rule).
Ok, ok, that didn't turn out well, but my argument has always been for "Version 1", as you will always very easily know if it was 24 hrs since last time you edited an article....but you have to look into each and every edit in order to ascertain that none of the stuff you added had not been reverted in "Version 2". Hence all the confusion and mess with the present "Version 2" option, Huldra (talk) 21:51, 12 November 2018 (UTC)
I've been editing in the I-P area for over 16 years and three rule changes during that period stand out as making a significance difference. The first was the introduction of 1RR in place of 3RR — this was a very big improvement. The second was the 30/500 rule, which I personally like a lot as it eliminates the need to endlessly defend articles against fly-by-night pov-pushers.
The third change was the "original author" rule now under discussion which, alas, has been a disaster. Nobody can even agree on what it means. Rules have to be clear bright lines that every good-faith editor can understand. This was an attempt to combat some types of edit-warring and system-gaming by adding a more complex rule, but the experiment has failed and it is time to end it. Zerotalk 07:01, 7 November 2018 (UTC)
In response to Huldra: the 1RR rule alone is probably not the optimal state, but I wouldn't like the "original author" rule to be replaced in this sitting by some other new rule. That would just risk bringing in a rule that turns out to be as bad as the current rule. I suggest taking it slower; perhaps we can have a working group of I-P editors to work up a proposal to bring to ArbCom for approval? Zerotalk 07:09, 7 November 2018 (UTC)
Responding to AGK: I strongly disagree with every word you wrote. (1) The 30/500 rule is easily explained to anyone and can be enforced objectively by e-c protection. (2) "instead forbid making significant changes without consensus...Leave the detail of when "consensus" was wilfully not sought in a given case as a question for enforcement." This would be the greatest catastrophe to ever hit the area. Article development would become tediously slow and the number of AE cases would skyrocket. Rules should be written so that editors know when they are breaking them. I'll be blunt: we know from experience that admins at AE do not maintain a consistency of judgement and sanction and we consider it a form of roulette. It also seems that you don't know the way editing in the area is conducted. Excessive reverting without a concurrent talk-page argument is in fact relatively unusual and in most cases everyone can claim to have "sought consensus".
Responding to WJBscribe: "editors are required to obtain consensus through discussion before restoring a reverted edit". When that one was removed there was a big sigh of relief. This rule would mean that pov-pushers can slow down article development by a large factor with almost no effort, since the rule does not impose any obligation on them to justify their reverts. They can just revert and sit back. Zerotalk 01:35, 8 November 2018 (UTC)
People who come to edit in the I-P area almost always have a strong opinion about it. The idea that "consensus" is always available for the seeking is simply wrong. The real problem isn't reverts anyway, it is neutrality. Editors who consistently push their politics into articles year after year while carefully obeying the revert limits are completely secure. I don't have a cure to propose for that. Zerotalk 01:35, 8 November 2018 (UTC)
Number 57's idea to reduce tag-team editing is worth looking at, but the actual proposal doesn't work. ("if A adds material, B removes it, then no editor is allowed to make any further revert within the next 24 hours") This enables B to keep something out of the article permanently even against a strong consensus of all other editors. Also, please, let's not have the phrase "original author" in any rule, since there is widespread misunderstanding of what it means. Zerotalk 12:25, 9 November 2018 (UTC)
Comments on the motion. The first part is good because it is a bright line that worked moderately well when we had it before. The "Editors cautioned" part reduces the brightness of the line established by the first part, and encourages exploratory AE reports to take advantage of the randomness there. The "Administrators encouraged" part is negative as administrators already have too much discretion at AE. Zerotalk 07:18, 11 November 2018 (UTC)
What is most broken about current enforcement is that it consists of punishing one of the participants chosen at random (according to who is reported). It is unfair as well as ineffective. It would be much better if administrators visited articles, mandated more discussion on problematic sections, required RfCs as needed, etc. Zerotalk 07:18, 11 November 2018 (UTC)
JFG's "enforced BRD" only makes sense if there is a clear starting point. Once some text has been in an out of an article a few times, it isn't clear who has what obligation. Zerotalk 12:45, 12 November 2018 (UTC)
DGG's analysis is quite correct. BU Rob13's system works like this: A and B have a dispute over content, A reports B to AE, B gets a topic ban, A throws a party and edits the article according to his/her own pov. This is only a good outcome if you think that the purpose of Wikipedia is to eliminate disputes, rather than to write balanced articles. Rather than promoting the "schoolyard of naughty children" model of the I-P area, we should be aiming to replace it by rules that promote compromise. Zerotalk 04:53, 13 November 2018 (UTC)
As an administrator active at WP:AE, I have on several occasions decided not to take enforcement action because I find the remedy at issue too complicated to understand and to apply fairly. I recommend that it be replaced, if it is still deemed necessary at all, with a simpler rule, such as 1RR or merely a reminder to not edit-war, because edit-warring can result in discretionary sanctions. Sandstein 08:55, 7 November 2018 (UTC)
Having seen a few of the associated ARE cases play out, I have noticed that there is a lot of confusion about this particular rule. What to do about it, there is the harder question, but the current rule is in my opinion too opaque and needs to go. ∰Bellezzasolo✡ Discuss 11:08, 7 November 2018 (UTC)
I support the rule's existence for the reasons noted by WarKosign, i.e. that it stops someone adding controversial information to force their edit back in.
However, I would also like it to go further (to stop tag teaming), so perhaps it would be clearer and simpler to simply have a 1RR rule whereby an edit can only be reverted once within a 24 hour period by any editor. So if A adds material, B removes it, then no editor is allowed to make any further revert within the next 24 hours. This would hopefully force people to follow WP:BRD rather than rely on weight of numbers to force changes on an article.
Alternatively, we could just reword the current rule so something like "If a change made to an article is reverted, the original author of the change is not allowed to undo the revert within the next 24 hours" – I don't think anyone could fail to understand this unless they were wikilawyering their way out of being caught.
Number 57 14:26, 7 November 2018 (UTC)
Since this rule was last amended earlier this year, I have the great pleasure of being the only editor ever sanctioned solely for breaching this “original author” rule (action has been taken two other times, but with additional circumstances). The only comment I will make on this here is please can those who implement ARCA rule amendments please ensure that they are properly publicized (eg on all three Wikiproject talk pages). Long term editors who only edit “once in a while”, and don’t have ARCA or AE on their watchlist, do not reread the banners every time to look for minor amendments to long-running rules.
As to the point at hand, I have recently taken the time to review all the other “original author” AE cases since the rule change; it is clear to me that the rule is not achieving its purpose.
I like Number 57’s first suggestion a lot (one revert for any editor in 24 hours), as it is easy to understand, deals with this “first insertion” point elegantly, and frankly reflects the way most of us already behave. The multi-editor revert wars have to stop.
Onceinawhile (talk) 16:30, 7 November 2018 (UTC)
You go back to the original 1RR you go back to the situation where somebody is able to force their edit in based off edit->revert->re-revert (that being the first revert by the initial editor). nableezy - 17:46, 7 November 2018 (UTC)Editors may not re-revert a revert of their edit for at least 24 hours from the initial revert of their edit.
I too am an administrator active at WP:AE. Seemingly, I am also part of the minority who do enforce ARBPIA 1RR, albeit reluctantly. The rule's name is indeed a misnomer.
In any event, an undercurrent to this amendment request was the perceived unjustness of the Revert Rule. Certainly, the rule no longer meets the tests of policing by consent. However, the committee's primary question is not really the due process (or unfairness) of the Revert Rule. We routinely enforce some other 'special' rules – like ARBPIA 30/500 – that are persistently miscommunicated. Respect for collaborators – well-meaning and otherwise – is imperative on a volunteer project. But it is a secondary question of execution or detail.
I rather think that the primary question is how to best secure an editing environment that is stable, produces balanced content, and is not off-putting to well-intentioned editors. In other words, does Wikipedia work there? By any measure, pages relating to the Arab–Israeli conflict, on Wikipedia, are not this kind of environment. Indeed, we've had more arbitration cases (and enforcement requests) about the conflict than any other topic.
ARBPIA 1RR was recently amended by the committee. I believe that amendment was a well-intentioned effort to go further towards bringing about the desired kind of editing environment. The effort failed, perhaps because it was over-concerned with minutiae.
However, there remains a need to address the editing environment. Dealing with the obvious symptoms of user conduct can only do so much. In my view, you should consider how to amend the restriction to instead forbid making significant changes without consensus. Leave the detail of when "consensus" was wilfully not sought in a given case as a question for enforcement.
That said, if this change were implemented, I believe the current environment at WP:AE is too used to "discretion". There is a wide scope of discretion allowed when dealing with more blatant manifestation of misconduct – ie the conduct that discretionary sanctions deals with. It wouldn't do to grant that latitude here too. But, again, these are secondary questions of practicality and implementation. AGK ■ 19:33, 7 November 2018 (UTC)
I think the purpose was partially to force editors to take 24 hours to think before hitting the revert button and I have found this to be helpful to de-escalate in the conflict area for the most part. But I also agree with concerns voiced in this discussion that sometimes it can be difficult to keep track of which edits are yours, especially if they are months old or years old and have been tweaked during that time. At what point does it stop being your edit? For me, the ideal solution would be to impose a time limit on this, but this might make it even more confusing for the enforcing admins. Maybe we can just leave it as good advice that editors can follow voluntarily? Seraphim System (talk) 19:40, 7 November 2018 (UTC)
I would prefer a return to the simple language we started with, i.e. "Editors are limited to one revert per page per day on any page that could be reasonably construed as being related to the Arab-Israeli conflict. In addition, editors are required to obtain consensus through discussion before restoring a reverted edit." 1RR, plus not restoring any reverted edit (regardless of who made it, and who reverted it) without discussion. The key here is to stop various forms of tag teaming or slow edit wars, and force editors to the table for proper discussions. The current sanction doesn't achieve that. I think we should stand firm that reverting is not the way to establish consensus, there needs to be proper discussions on talkpages about controversial edits. As a fall back, Number 57's approach is fine, but worry it still will lead to slow moving edit wars because people prefer to let the clock tick down 24 hours that engage on the talkpage. WJBscribe (talk) 19:47, 7 November 2018 (UTC)
When there are disputes between good-faith contributors as to the content of an article, there necessarily will be a dispute of some form; the purpose of Discretionary Sanctions should be to encourage this dispute to take the form of a civil discussion on a talk page.
The committee should clarify/adjust the rule so 1RR counts the addition of content as the one revert for the purpose of 1RR; if content is added, the person adding it cannot restore it within 24 hours of the initial addition. That seems fair and is simpler for editors to understand.
There seems to be some appetite for wider reform of the editing rules, but I don't see it as necessary. On long-standing articles with enough talk-page watchers, 1RR (with "consensus required") for additions works fairly well, despite grumbling. For rapidly-developing articles (think Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court nomination in the similarly-contentious American Politics area) 1RR does not work, but I don't see evidence of that kind of issue being frequent in this area. power~enwiki (π, ν) 20:10, 7 November 2018 (UTC)
I agree the wording is convoluted. However, the intent is absolutely sound, as noted by several, above, so if it is to be amended, please find a simpler wording that has a similar effect, otherwise the slow burn edit wars will resume afresh. In preventing that specific form of abuse, the rule as written is effective. Guy (Help!) 20:22, 7 November 2018 (UTC)
I'm not involved in this topic at all. However, I have been in other 1RR-imposed topics where the intent was to prevent this behavior, but the message often would get lost. The intent is basically if you make a WP:BOLD change, and it's reverted, you don't get to revert it back in without gaining consensus on the talk page (and blocked if you do that within 24 hours). That is functionally WP:BRD, which could be imposed as a remedy regardless of that page being an essay, but I feel like there has been concern linking to an essay in a remedy description before.
However, WP:ONUS policy is already clear that The onus to achieve consensus for inclusion is on those seeking to include disputed content.
I can't say I've seen it really integrated into 1RR DS descriptions yet. People forgot about the policy sometimes too. Would linking to that as part of a supplementary sentence clear things up at all in the remedy? Kingofaces43 (talk) 21:42, 7 November 2018 (UTC)
In what ever you do I think you need to ask your self if you KISSed it right and made it feel better. It's needs to be the simplest possible means with the maximum effect.
Two noteworthy suggestions here catch my eye, One by Number 57 and also the arbitrator BU Rob13. Perhaps a combination of both. In clear case of any system gaming, whether editor warring in the bounds of 1RR or what ever replacement editing restriction chosen or any other type of attempt at gaming the system for some benefit to a chosen cause in this dispute.-Serialjoepsycho- (talk) 09:20, 8 November 2018 (UTC)
I think there is too much bureaucracy, and this rule is a perfect example. However, once you get the idea, it's actually quite simple to follow or enforce. It is an additional step to keep things quite in an area which is in need of additional care, so we might as well keep this.
If we are looking for a rule that is not being enforced and should be scratched, remove #3 regarding tendentious edits and disruptive behavior. It is either not implemented or implemented arbitrarily. Debresser (talk) 01:41, 9 November 2018 (UTC)
Here's the problem as I see it:
Rule | Purpose of the rule | Negative side effects |
---|---|---|
Regular 1RR | Slow down edit wars, give time for discussion on talk page, encourage WP:BRD | Exacerbates the first mover advantage by allowing BRR (a Bold addition by Editor A, Revert by Editor B, Revert by Editor A). It takes two editors to maintain the status quo against one determined editor making bold bold changes to an article. |
Current rule (call it anti-BRR) | Eliminate the first mover advantage of 1RR by putting a 24-hr timer on reverts of reverts of bold changes. | Apparently tricky to understand and enforce; can result in the ridiculous situations mentioned by the OP. |
Consensus required | Eliminate the first mover advantage of 1RR by forcing a talkpage discussion for bold edits challenged by revert. | Can favor the status quo too much, allowing a single determined editor do dramatically slow down article development by forcing a discussion with clear consensus to implement any change they don't like. |
I would really like for someone to come up with something like the current rule that fixes 1RR (prevents BRR situations) that is easy to understand and enforce but that doesn't have the negative side effects of the more draconian "Consensus required" rule. ~Awilley (talk) 19:31, 11 November 2018 (UTC)
I took the liberty of tabulating some of the suggestions that have been proposed above, adding a couple ideas of my own.
Name | Rule | Notes |
---|---|---|
Current state or "Version 2" | If an edit is reverted by another editor, its original author may not restore it within 24 hours of the first revert made to their edit | Current Palestine-Israeli rule |
Restatements of "Version 2" | Editors may not re-revert a revert of their edit for at least 24 hours from the initial revert of their edit. | Suggested by User:Nableezy |
If a change made to an article is reverted, the original author of the change is not allowed to undo the revert within the next 24 hours | Suggested by User:Number 57 | |
1RR for Bold edits or "Version 1" | If an edit is reverted by another editor, its original author may not restore it within 24 hours of their own edit. | The original Version 1 mentioned by OP User:Kingsindian |
Restatements of Version 1 | Each editor is also limited to one addition of the same material per page per 24 hours on any page in the same area | Proposal from User:Huldra |
If an edit you make is challenged by reversion you must wait 24 hours (from the time you made the edit) before reinstating your edit. | My rewording of the same idea | |
Consensus required | All editors must obtain consensus on the talk page of this article before reinstating any edits that have been challenged (via reversion). | Restriction widely used in the American Politics topic area |
Enforced WP:BRD | If an edit you make is challenged by reversion you must substantively discuss the issue on the article talk page before reinstating your edit. | Another idea of mine |
Combinations of Enforced BRD and 1RR for Bold edits | If an edit you make is challenged by reversion you must discuss the issue on the article talk page and/or wait 24 hours before reinstating your edit | Possible combinations (either AND or OR), still weaker than "consensus required" |
I would have posted this on the talk page except this page doesn't have one. I can add to the table as needed, just ping me if you want me to add something. ~Awilley (talk) 02:29, 12 November 2018 (UTC)
I am not familiar with the Palestinian conflict domain but I have been heavily involved in American politics, where numerous articles are subject to the "1RR + consensus required" rule. Indeed, this rule is sometimes hard to interpret, with typical confusions about what constitutes an edit (adding or deleting material), what is a revert (restoring material that was boldly deleted is a revert, consecutive reverts count as just one), and how far in the past should an edit be construed as the stable version vs a recent bold change (depends on activity level at the article).
Despite its faults, this rule has a key quality, which matches a fundamental behavioural guideline of the encyclopedia: editors should resolve their disputes on the talk page rather than argue via edit summaries in a slow-moving edit war. With this consideration in mind, I would support Awilley's suggestion of an "enforced BRD", including a reminder of who has the WP:ONUS to obtain consensus for any change. Suggested wording for clarity:
Enforced BRD – If an edit you made is challenged by reversion, you must substantively discuss the issue on the article talk page before re-instating your edit. The onus is on you to obtain consensus for your change. Other editors who wish to re-instate the same edit are also required to discuss the issue first. This rule applies both to edits adding material and to edits removing material.
That should take into account most of the sources of confusion and wikilawyering that we have witnessed since this restriction has been in place. I think we don't even need 1RR if we switch to such an enforced BRD rule. — JFG talk 07:26, 12 November 2018 (UTC)
Once some text has been in an out of an article a few times, it isn't clear who has what obligation.Actually, it's been rather clear, based on activity level on each article, which version is longstanding enough to be considered the base version upon which a recent change is being disputed. Admins could certainly figure this out easily when complaints about rule violation arise. — JFG talk 12:52, 12 November 2018 (UTC)
As an administrator who makes occasional forays into adminning in discretionary-sanctioned topics, even sometimes intentionally, I endorse Kingsindian's statement absent the parts impugning the competence of the Committee members who arrived at this restriction. Even with Kingsindian's explanation and other supporting comments here I, probably one of the more provocatively "process-for-the-sake-of-process" administrators here, understand very poorly what is meant to be restricted by this restriction. I have no idea whatsoever why this word salad is preferred over standard 1RR. I think I see what the difference is but I read it as 0RR for the initial contributor and 1RR for every subsequent revert, and in any situation where I might be tempted to sanction an editor in relation to this restriction I'm going to end up giving them a "grace revert" so that I can be sure that a violation has actually occurred. How many reverts was that, anyway? I've lost count.
I suggest the "general 1RR prohibition" be replaced with this text, which is mostly copied from the three-revert restriction that everybody understands: An editor must not perform more than one revert on any single page that could be reasonably construed as being related to the Arab-Israeli conflict—whether involving the same or different material—within a 24-hour period. An edit or a series of consecutive edits that undoes other editors' actions—whether in whole or in part—counts as a revert. Reverts just outside the 24-hour period may also be taken as evidence of edit-warring, especially if repeated or combined with other edit-warring behaviour. In addition to the usual revert exemptions, reverts made to enforce the General Prohibition are exempt from this restriction.
As a tangent, the General Prohibition itself is redundant to standard WP:ECP, which was not available at the time of the prohibition's initial drafting. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 17:48, 13 November 2018 (UTC)
I don't think the essentially "be nice" motion below will help. Has an "Administrators are encouraged" or "editors are cautioned" motion ever helped? And certainly not in WP:ARBPIA, arguably the most controversial DS area. IMO, the rule is confusing simply because of the "original author" stuff creating confusion - if you restore a year later an addition made by someone else, are you prevented by this restriction to immediately revert a revert made to your edit?
Instead, use If an edit you make is challenged by reversion you must wait 24 hours (from the time you made the edit) before reinstating your edit.
, as proposed by Awilley above. As far as I can see, this is far clearer, and ameliorates the main issues brought forth by Kingsindian regarding absurdities, as it make sures that you can't get sanctioned if you make only one edit a day, and makes it so that T1 is limited to 24 hours. Galobtter (pingó mió) 17:14, 15 November 2018 (UTC)
Other editors are free to make relevant comments on this request as necessary. Comments here should address why or why not the Committee should accept the amendment request or provide additional information.
The General 1RR prohibition of the Palestine-Israel articles arbitration case (t) (ev / t) (w / t) (pd / t) is amended to read:
Further, the Palestine-Israel articles arbitration case (t) (ev / t) (w / t) (pd / t) is amended to include the following remedies:
Editors who violate this restriction may be blocked by any uninvolved administrator, even on a first offensewithout qualification. Too often for my taste, we have seen editors blocked or sanctioned this year for isolated, inadvertent violations of a 1RR or similar restriction. (In fact, I believe a lengthy topic-ban imposed for an isolated 1RR violation, by an editor who didn't realize that the 1RR rule in the I/P topic-area had been changed again, is what led to this very request for amendment. An appeal from that sanction is currently pending on AE, and if the appeal is not granted there, it should be brought here.) I understand the need for stricter rules in our most problematically edited topic-areas, but not at the expense of fairness and proportionality. Newyorkbrad (talk) 14:57, 12 November 2018 (UTC)
Second, the issues with this remedy do not represent a failure of wording or of this one remedy. They represent a failure of the entire approach the Arbitration Committee has taken with this topic area. We've continuously tried to prescribe narrower and narrower bright lines to prevent edit warring, and we're routinely met with either wiki-lawyering or confusion as the rules grow more complicated. If anyone currently on the Committee is to blame for that failure, it's myself, as I've championed that approach since before my time on the Committee. I have to accept the fact it simply hasn't worked. Number 57's suggestion continues this approach, and I think it would ultimately face the same issues. Instead, I think we need to start relying more heavily on administrative discretion. Our administrators know edit wars when they see them. Let's stop worrying about where the bright line is and start enforcing discretionary sanctions in cases like this. [170] ~ Rob13Talk 16:43, 10 November 2018 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Initiated by Doug Weller at 11:32, 16 February 2019 (UTC)
List of any users involved or directly affected, and confirmation that all are aware of the request:
My clarification request concerns the article for Ilhan Omar, a member of the United States House of Representatives. She's a controversial person in part simply because she is a Muslim and in part because of some comments on Israel. I added the usual ARBPIA template at the top of the page and have told some non-ECP editors about the ruling applying to them if they edit related content in the article. I've been asked at Talk:Ilhan Omar#ARBPIA if 1RR applies to the content relating to the dispute. I've always assumed that it doesn't automatically apply and only applies if the ((ArbCom Arab-Israeli enforcement)) is added to the talk page and the edit notice ((ArbCom Arab-Israeli editnotice)) added to the article.
I'd like to confirm that:
1. The plain talk page template without ((ArbCom Arab-Israeli enforcement)) means that the only restriction on the article applies to non-ECP editors editing within the area of the dispute. 1RR does not apply and cannot apply to only part of an article.
2. If edits to the article not relating to the dispute suggest that the subject is being targeted because of her positions on the dispute (or her Muslim identity) it's permissible to apply ECP to the article without the other restrictions or simply to apply the AE restrictions template even though the article as a whole doesn't fall within the area of the dispute. It's increasingly my opinion that this should be done. Interestingly the article on her fellow Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez also has a section on the dispute but Talk:Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez show it covered only by American Politics but with a 1RR and enforced WP:BRD (Template:American politics AE).
Doug Weller if you don't mind, I'd like to clarify the question(s) here a bit, as your original request is actually touching on multiple different issues that could be relevant for whether a page is ARBPIA... and I'd like to make clear the options among which we unsure which matches global (as opposed to local i.e. page-respective) en-wiki policy.
1) The simplest of all, that some of Omar's comments that drew controversy were about Israel. She is an American politician though and the controversy is in America. Does this mean it is (a) not ARBPIA at all, (b) ARBPIA for specifically those comments and the ensuing controversy or (c) ARBPIA in total.
2) Probably the comment Ilhan Omar that made the most controversy (aside from mostly religious Christian right-wingers flipping out about her hijab, which I don't personally think is relevant to ARBPIA) is her view that pro-Israel lobbyists have "hypnotized" people. To many Jews, including many progressive Jews, this is an offensive anti-Semitic canard that is all the worse because Omar herself is hypocritically the victim of religious bigotry, while for others, again including people who are Jewish, it is media (especially conservative media) taking what she said out of context. Without commenting on which side is "right", there are actually two questions here:
3) As it stands currently, Doug Weller's writeup mentions Omar's very visible Muslim faith. Islam is not definitively "Israeli/Palestinian domain", however just like antisemitism there is a lot of interaction, as there is a sense of pan-Islamic solidarity regardless of the reality of this solidarity, on both sides. Furthermore, although this fact may be regrettable, by wearing the hijab and by spearheading the effort to allow head coverings in federal government processes, Omar became an iconized living symbol of religious Muslims in the US (again, personally I find this incredibly problematic on many different grounds but it is hard to deny it has become the case) and has been punished for it time and time again by unabashed Islamophobes on social media elsewhere. At first glance this may not seem relevant, but since Doug brought it up, it is worth mentioning that issues of Muslim immigrant assimilation do play a role in debates about how Muslim Americans can relate to American foreign policy (I am not implying all Muslim Americans are anti-Israel/pro-Palestine/or anything whatever, but one cannot deny that this is relevant). Should this also be a consideration? Personally I think, no, but it has already been brought up and is worth asking because I can see another side here as well
Hope I've made the issues here more, not less clear?--Calthinus (talk) 14:11, 16 February 2019 (UTC)
@AGK: But per PIA General 1RR restriction it applies to "any page that could be reasonably construed as being related to the Arab-Israeli conflict" and not to the content. I btw agree with you AGK and think it should apply to the content but then the wording should be changed --Shrike (talk) 20:23, 16 February 2019 (UTC)
Agree with AGK and Shrike: when ARBPIA notice is place, then it is 1RR for the whole article.
As for changing the rules (so that ARBPIA is only for a part of the article)...Please don't. The usefulness of that does not make up for the added level of complication (The rules are more than complicated enough as it is!) Huldra (talk) 21:22, 16 February 2019 (UTC)
I'd like to introduce this AE case into evidence. The AE case involved, in part, edit warring in Acid throwing - which is mostly not ARBPIA - however Acid throwing#Israel, West Bank and Gaza Strip is very much ARBPIA related. Such ARBPIA sections are common in longer pages - and applying this on the section would make sense. Ilhan Omar is in the border-zone between reasonably and broadly (as much of the coverage of her, through the years, is focused on antisemitism/Israel/etc.) overall, and specific sections of the page are very much ARBPIA related. Icewhiz (talk) 07:30, 17 February 2019 (UTC)
I can't actually tell what everyone is proposing in this discussion. The question is whether to apply ARBPIA only to entire articles or selectively to parts of articles. The former would be a simpler rule, but it can also lead to absurdity. A year or so ago there was a huge edit war on List of state leaders in 2016 (or some other year) over the 3 lines that applied to Palestine. It would ridiculous to apply ARBPIA to the other 250 or so items in that list just because of those 3 lines. I think that what we need is something like this: if an article is largely related to the I-P conflict, it is covered in toto; otherwise the parts of an article related to the I-P conflict are covered. Zerotalk 08:22, 17 February 2019 (UTC)
To editor TonyBallioni: Your proposal to remove from ARBPIA articles about debate within other countries will impact articles like American Israel Public Affairs Committee and Christians United for Israel, both of them about American organizations that now carry ARBPIA tags. In my view, removing ARBPIA protection from such articles would immediately open them to edit-warring of the kind that ARBPIA is intended to subdue, involving the same editors who edit-war on other ARBPIA articles. I cannot see this as a step forward. Zerotalk 05:00, 24 February 2019 (UTC)
There's a lot of verbiage up there (says the long-winded guy), but the key thing to me is that unusual restrictions like 1RR should never be held to be applicable at a page without the admin-placed editnotices and other templates that explicitly make them so and which are hard to miss. Drama-frought topics are among the most likely to attract new editors, so there's a serious WP:BITE problem here. If I'd ended up blocked my first week of editing, for violating an obscure and excessive rule I didn't know about and which applied only to a particular page, I probably never would have come back. Consider also that new editors can't tell who's an admin, and which concerns to take seriously (lots of noobs get lots of grousing and templates from lots of people; a DS notice from an admin isn't likely to be interpreted as special by someone who doesn't know the ropes yet, but a big warning every time they edit a particular article is harder to ignore). — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 22:07, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
Speaking with my AE-admin hat on, I would not consider Ilhan Omar to be under 1RR or the General Prohibition.
Bans are generally constructed as either "pages related to...." or "pages and edits related to....". In this case, both the ARBPIA 1RR restriction and the General Prohibition are constructed as "any page that could be reasonably construed as being related to the Arab-Israeli conflict" - ie. the "and edits" is not there. Therefore, when assessing whether these restrictions are being violated, the question is not "Are the edits related to the conflict?" but "Is the page reasonably construed as being related to the conflict?"
I have always seen a difference between "broadly construed" and "reasonably construed" and my understanding is that the "reasonably construed" language was deliberately chosen to be narrower than "broadly construed." My understanding of this language is that "broadly construed" includes any page that has some connection to the conflict, while "reasonably construed" includes only pages on subjects that are mainly about the conflict (or subjects that are mainly notable because of a connection to the conflict). Ilhan Omar is notable as a member of the United States Congress and has made some controversial remarks about the Arab-Israeli conflict; she is related to the conflict, but her principle notability does not come from the conflict. Therefore, the page is not "reasonably construed to be related" and so is not subject to 1RR and the General Prohibition. However, the page is broadly construed to be related, and so is subject to discretionary sanctions.
Clear as mud? GoldenRing (talk) 12:47, 25 February 2019 (UTC)
The way things have worked in the ARBPIA area is quite sensible, although that and the wording of the rulings are probably out of kilter, which, I think, is the reason for the current request. The rulings have been applied to ARBPIA-related content in any page, no matter whether the topic can be construed as being in the ARBPIA part of the project or not. In the former case, the rulings have been applied only to the ARBPIA-related content; editors could edit non-related content on those pages freely. As the usage notes that go along with the template for the ARBPIA notice indicate, the notice does not have to be placed on a page in order for the rulings to apply there. In the page which is the cause of the current request, the Ilhan Omar one, that means that under the practice followed in the past at least, ARBPIA rulings would be enforceable on any ARBPIA-related material there without the notice having been placed. The problem that placing the notice has caused is that editors are questioning whether any of the majority, non-related material there is under editing restrictions or not. We possibly have two problems with the current rulings: one that the wording of the rulings may indicate that those rulings apply only on pages where the subject matter falls wholely within the ARBPIA area when in fact the practice has been to apply them to content anywhere; a second whereby we either don't have a second notice which indicates that only ARBPIA-related content on the relevant page or the notice that we do have does that. The practice that has been followed is sensible and I don't think that it should be altered to conform with what the wording of the rulings actually say. Altering the wording of the rulings and the notice would involve a lot of pain which would still not necessarily end up with a sensible form of wording. Given the wording of the notice which we do have, it would be better if it was only placed on pages whose subject matter, broadly constued, fell wholly within the ARBPIA area, those being ones where it would be sensible to apply the ARBPIA restrictions to most of the material. Following current practice, the absence of the notice would not prevent the restrictions being applied to relevant content in other pages. ← ZScarpia 13:32, 26 February 2019 (UTC)
@Doug Weller:: "I hadn't thought that this was even a grey area but to my disappointment I can't find anything to back my assumption." From following AE requests for years, I'm sure that the ARBPIA restrictions were applied to isolated sections of ARBPIA-related material in articles which weren't otherwise wholly within the subject area. ← ZScarpia 12:51, 27 February 2019 (UTC)
@Doug Weller:: "The problem (and the reason I've been wrong) is that 1RR and the general 500/30 rule are not actually discretionary sanctions. I think they should be part of DS as I see a lot of drive-by editors and IP addresses (and the cynical side of me says some of these are editors logged out) changing content that's only a minor part of an article." I'm having a little bit of difficulty construing the meaning and significance of the rules being part of discretionary sanctions, which makes me wonder whether I've mistaken what the case is about and whether I've been writing at cross purposes with others here.
My view is that 1RR, which was imposed to slow down edit warring, and 500/30, which was imposed to help combat the use of sockpuppetry to evade sanctions, are restrictions applied to to the editing of all ARBPIA-related material. Discretionary sanctions[173] in the form of, for example, topic bans may be applied by administrators in order to ensure, inter alia, that restrictions such as those are adhered to ("Discretionary sanctions – administrators may impose sanctions on disruptive editors and apply general restrictions on specific pages in the conflict area in accordance with the discretionary sanctions procedure."[174]). Viewed that way, the rules are restrictions that automatically apply to ARBPIA-related material which discretionary sanctions enforce, not restrictions which can be applied as sanctions at the discretion of administrators.
It looks to me as though, at route, the problem here is the ambiguity in the phrase "any page that could be reasonably construed as being related to the Arab-Israeli conflict". How may a page be "related" to the conflict? One interpretation is that the a page's subject matter as expressed in the page title itself should have an obvious connection to the IP conflict. Another interpretation is that the whole of the subject matter should have an obvious connection to the IP conflict. Yet another interpretation is that a relationship may be established if just part of the content is connect. The latter is the one which I'm maintaining is the one which is sensible in terms of reducing strife in Wikipedia and also the one which was traditionally followed on the AE and AI noticeboards. Other editors here such as Icewhiz and AGK seem to be supporting that interpretaion.
Taking the third interpretation, there then follows the problem of determining, in the case of pages where only part of the content is related to the conflict, whether the restrictions such as 1RR and 500/30 apply to the whole content or only the conflict-related parts. Unfortunately, WP:ARBPIA can be interpreted as requiring the restrictions to apply to the whole content, though that is neither necessary or sensible as far as the editing of the non-conflict-related material is concerned. A reason that it is not sensible is on display here: in articles such as the one on Ilhan Omar, editors with no interest in the IP conflict will resist the imposition of the ARBPIA restrictions being imposed if those restrictions are applied to the whole page; yet if they're not applied to the parts of those pages whose content is related to the IP conflict, the end result will be the appearance on those pages of the editing problems which the restrictions were designed to cure. Roger Waters is most significant for his music career in Pink Floyd. Because he is outspoken on Palestinian rights, though, on Wikipedia there is a struggle to insert conflict-related material condemning or defending him which threatens to swamp the whole article. Ernest Bevin was British Foreign Secretary at the time when the Cold War was developing and also when the various parts of British India gained independence, yet because he was Foreign Secretary in the couple of years surrounding the creation of Israel, there are similar problems on the article devoted to him. Jeremy Corbyn has had a long political career and is currently the Leader of the Opposition in the UK parliament, het because he is a strong supporter of Palestinian rights, issues surrounding that again affect that article. The United States is vital to Israeli interests: as a member of the UN Security Council it uses its veto frequently to protect Israel; Israel is the main beneficiary of US overseas aid; US military muscle is used to the benefit of Israel against opponents which Israel itself does not have the resource to fight; US financial muscle can be used to fend of the threat posed by the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement; US courts can be used to wage lawfare on Israeli opponents. Therefore there exists in the US a very strong lobby which protects those interests. The knock-on effect for Wikipedia is that a lot of pages have a partial connection to the IP conflict.
Perhaps a way of resolving the current interpretation problem would be to refer to administrators who were involved in the wording of the ARBPIA rulings and asking what their intentions were and also to administrators who have been involved long-term in enforcing them and asking what their interpretation was.
← ZScarpia 16:58, 1 March 2019 (UTC)
@Doug Weller:: Doug, looking at the Ilhan Omar talkpage, if I've read your comments correctly, you're stating that, in ARBPIA, 1RR and 500/30 are remedies, not discretionary sanctions, which sounds equivalent to what I was trying to say above. The article is interesting in that it contains material falling under two Arbitration Requests, i.e. American Politics and ARBPIA. I think the talkpage demonstrates why the ARBPIA remedies need to be applied to the IP-conflict-related material contained in the article. ← ZScarpia 01:29, 2 March 2019 (UTC)
The idea that a a notice and template should be a requirement for the 1RR restriction to apply to an article is a no brainer. I mean, the very fact that lots of people have no idea - including apparently some of the Arbs judging by User:Doug Weller's opening statement (not criticizing him, I had no idea either) - that it doesn't work that way, evidences that the way we have it now is just goofy. And sort of... mean. On all other areas under ACDS no notice means no restrictions. Editors who make edits go by the instructions that are visible to them. Yes, yes, I know that you get informed about the 1RR applying to anything "broadly construed" ... once a year. But seriously, unless you're very active in a particular topic area, who the hell can remember some notice they got EIGHT+ months ago on their talk page??? *Especially* since the rules are so different from how it works everywhere else.
The problem of course is that this whole "we'll make up a rule but keep it secret" approach was done by admins who didn't bother to even think of how it works from a regular editors' perspective. The flawed design is a result of "what will make it easier for me to block people" thinking by cowboy admins, rather than "what will make for a more collaborative editing environment". Come to think of it, most of the whole discretionary sanctions apparatus is set up on the basis of that (witness the lack of success that DS has had in most controversial areas) thinking, this is just the most egregious example of that dysfunctional approach.Volunteer Marek (talk) 10:36, 9 March 2019 (UTC)
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The General 1RR prohibition of the Palestine-Israel articles arbitration case (t) (ev / t) (w / t) (pd / t) is amended to read:
The community is encouraged to place the ((ARBPIA 1RR editnotice)) on any page that could be reasonably construed as being related to the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Enacted - Bradv🍁 02:20, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Initiated by Sir Joseph at 18:50, 21 May 2019 (UTC)
The purpose of this ARCA is basically two simple queries. 1. Can an AE action be reopened once closed, and if so, 2. does a re "certified" TBAN then become effective as of the newer date.
The problem I have with this is that it sets a bad precedent for several reasons. We can have 1, never ending TBANS if we allow AE actions to be reopened and then TBANS to be reset, but also not have some sort of policy that once an AE action is closed, it is closed. I understand it's not a court-room so there is no double jeopardy, but it doesn't seem fair to have a system where an admin can just days, weeks months or even a year go by and then undo an AE close. If we do allow it, we do need then to set up strict guidelines as to why, when and how a closed AE action can be reopened and how it can then be re-litigated.
As already mentioned, GoldenRing said "pending another admin closing" — I therefore closed it accordingly, having already evaluated consensus among uninvolved admins to do so. I note that both users involved in the dispute were subjected to 3-month TBAN, in the end. Which, ultimately, reflects well on how AE is able to operate in dealing with protracted ARBPIA disputes, despite its various imperfections. So, I don't think we need any additional guidelines at this time. El_C 21:25, 21 May 2019 (UTC)
I reversed the sanction I had imposed because I had qualms about the outcome but considered that my judgement was so impaired by the concomitant kerfuffle at AN that another admin should deal with it instead of me. The committee should direct Sir Joseph to WP:NOTBURO, perhaps warn about a distinct tendency to wikilawyer, and otherwise dismiss this request. If the committee want to spend some time on light entertainment, Special:Permalink/897199190#Notice that you are now subject to an arbitration enforcement sanction is a pretty good specimen of wikilawyering. GoldenRing (talk) 15:16, 22 May 2019 (UTC)
I think the only thing that might be needed here is to say that in situations like this that the clock start time doesn't change unless there is explicit agreement otherwise among the uninvolved admins. I think the likelihood of an AE being reopened after a significant length of time and are pretty slim as all the reported behaviour would be stale. Thryduulf (talk) 12:10, 22 May 2019 (UTC)
This "appeal-without-appealing" should be considered an appeal by the Committee, whether Sir Joseph wants it to be one or not. The attempt to claim this is merely a request for clarification about whether a topic ban is valid without that being equivalent to an appeal, presumably to retain the ability to appeal at other venues at a later time, continues the long pattern of wikilawyering that has repeatedly gotten Sir Joseph sanctioned. By making clear that this is an appeal, whatever the result of that may be, the Committee can send a strong message about whether it is susceptible to wikilawyering. ~ Rob13Talk 14:43, 22 May 2019 (UTC)
OMG, @GoldenRing: Don't link to something like that "discussion" on Sir Joseph's page and call it "light entertainment", please. It has melted my brain. I would actually warn the arbs against reading it. Bishonen | talk 19:46, 22 May 2019 (UTC).
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Is adding that David Ben-Gurion "worked on Yom Kippur and ate pork" a violation of an I-P topic ban? Chesdovi (talk) 20:50, 7 October 2021 (UTC)
The redirect Wikipedia:Zionism has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2023 May 16 § Wikipedia:Zionism until a consensus is reached. Q𝟤𝟪 22:32, 16 May 2023 (UTC)
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Don't forget to add ((pp-protected)) template above. 2001:4452:1A3:5600:3D3B:4026:4894:716D (talk) 06:51, 22 November 2023 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Initiated by Sagflaps at 16:11, 29 February 2024 (UTC)
List of any users involved or directly affected, and confirmation that all are aware of the request:
Confirmation that all parties are aware of the request
Does WP:ARBECR exclude editors who were granted the extended confirmed permission at WP:PERM? See Special:Diff/1205113976 and Special:Diff/1211048521.
Apologies, didn't realize you had been granted ECR, you can withdraw this. Selfstudier (talk) 16:19, 29 February 2024 (UTC)
editor was granted ECRafter all. This is a litany of poor moves demonstrating little but 'GOTCHA!' bad faith by Sagflaps, compared to a succession of apologetic and conciliatory responses by Seldstudier.
Selfstudier: do not apologise any more, you've done enough. Sagflaps, meanwhile, has continued editing throughout this report so should be sanctioned either for deliberately filing a report and then walking away, or not realising the importance of communication. Apart from this filing, they have not responded to anyone. In either case, I doubt the project will gain much by having them ECRd. ——Serial 17:00, 29 February 2024 (UTC)
@Serial Number 54129: I'm not following your point about Sagflaps' 8 February diff. The Sagflaps account was granted ECR on 21 January, 18 days before Selfstudier posted to his talk page on 8 February. So it is not the case that at that time—regardless of the status of the previous account—the Sagflaps account itself was not ECR
.-- Pawnkingthree (talk) 00:59, 7 March 2024 (UTC)
Other editors are free to make relevant comments on this request as necessary. Comments here should opine whether and how the Committee should clarify or amend the decision or provide additional information.