Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard/Archive 22

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Statement By NE Ent on resignations

Scope and responsibilities

The Arbitration Committee of the English Wikipedia has the following duties and responsibilities:

  1. To act as a final binding decision-maker primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve;
  2. To hear appeals from blocked, banned, or otherwise restricted users;
  3. To handle requests (other than self-requests) for removal of administrative tools;
  4. To resolve matters unsuitable for public discussion for privacy, legal, or similar reasons;
  5. To approve and remove access to (i) CheckUser and Oversight tools and (ii) mailing lists maintained by the Arbitration Committee.

To the extent that the resignation statements contain implicit and explicit attacks on the remaining members of the committee, I'll note:

  • "Doing the Right Thing" is not listed in the scope of responsibilities. It's wiki 101 that we're not here to Right Great Wrongs
  • "Handling problems that have long term consequences" is also not listed in the scope of responsibilities. Arbitrators are expected to have the experience and judgement and be willing to volunteer vast amounts of time to meet the above goals. They are not elected because they're smarter than the community and they are not elected to make policy.
  • Running to "fix" an "obviously ailing" committee is not consistent with good faith.

Conduct of arbitrators

Arbitrators are expected to:

  1. Act with integrity and good faith at all times;
  2. Respond promptly and appropriately to questions from other arbitrators, or from the community, about conduct which appears to conflict with their trusted roles;
  3. Participate conscientiously in the Committee's activities and deliberations, advising the Committee of upcoming inactivity if that inactivity will likely last more than a week; and
  4. Preserve in appropriate confidence the contents of private correspondence sent to the Committee and the Committee's internal discussions and deliberations.

It's the job of the 15 14 13 to figure out how to to work together. If an arbitrator finds they need to resign or become inactive due changing real life circumstances, that's understandable. If internal circumstances change such that an arbitrator feels they cannot continue in good faith for other reasons, a gracious withdrawn, per Hersfold's original statement is acceptable. But to leave with "parting shots," especially as the #4 of the arbitrator code above precludes those remaining on the committee from the opportunity to provide an effective rebuttal, is not consistent with one of the very pillars of the project we're all supposed to be about.NE Ent 12:36, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Doncram closed

Announcement

Regarding point #2 — does this basically mean anyone other than Sarek? Specifically, let's say that I notice something he's written in userspace, AFCspace, etc.; am I allowed to move it to mainspace as if it had been created by someone who'd never interacted with him before? Nyttend (talk) 06:08, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

Is this not a question of "wait and see"? The process of review was not described, but couldn't that happen on a dedicated subpage of WP:NRHP? (If there were problems with new articles or redirects changed to stubs in article space, they would presumably be reported at WP:AE.) Mathsci (talk) 06:31, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
No clue regarding your question, but I like the idea of a dedicated subpage — as long as we don't attempt to restrict it to there. Surely any uninvolved editor should be able to move pages, even without having heard of WP:NRHP. Nyttend (talk) 06:40, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
You're right that the scope has to be larger, for example to cover List of Anglican churches, List of Other Backward Classes, etc. Mathsci (talk) 07:12, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
I don't understand your meaning — I meant that we mustn't restrict the group of potential page-movers to people who are going to know about WP:NRHP. We have to give others the opportunity to review his creations by listing them elsewhere, too. Nyttend (talk) 12:40, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
I agree. But other topics, like the ones I mentioned, beyond NRHP have arisen. Perhaps a page in Doncram's user space? Or Doncram himself could post links to the proposed new articles on relevant project pages. Mathsci (talk) 14:57, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
Interesting question about who can move Doncram's pages to article space. At first glance, one would think that it would be helpful for other parties to this case to move his content out of article space. However, I can see one problem that could result if I reviewed his stuff and decided it was OK. That is, if someone else then proposed to delete the page, he could complain that I deliberately set him up for the AFD by moving the page before it was ready. (Similar accusations arose in the past.) Accordingly, I think it's best if I refrain from that activity, even if I think he's doing wonderful work. --Orlady (talk) 13:28, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
I agree, I would suggest that if you think he's doing wonderful work, that you refrain from doing anything other than telling him so. It looks like he's been going down the Afc route which while cumbersome, is ensuring uninvolved people are reviewing. dm (talk) 03:49, 18 March 2013 (UTC)
The intent of the remedy, at least as I voted on it, was that some third party would communicate with Doncram and ask whether he thinks a draft is ready to be moved, or vice versa. NW (Talk) 13:58, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
What if we suggest to Doncram that a page be created in his userspace at which he would add links to pages that were ready to go? Anyone could review a page that was linked there and move it, since his action of adding a link would mean that he believed that the linked page was ready. Nyttend (talk) 02:14, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
Oh, wait, Mathsci already suggested that. Nyttend (talk) 12:21, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

AGK's edit filter

Sorry if this has been raised elsewhere, but I would like to get some clarity on a couple of AGK's recent actions in the Wikipediocracy debacle. AGK added "wikipediaforum.com" and "wikipediocracy.com" to the spam blacklist with an edit summary of "added wikipediaforum". This may have been in response to a request filed by Sir Fozzie, but it is unlikely since there had been no discussion at that point and the domain wikipediaforum.com is not mentioned. When I pointed out that there had been a very recent proposal to blacklist wikipediocracy.com which had not been supported, AGK removed the links and stated that he was unaware of the earlier discussion. In a related ANI discussion, AGK said: "...nobody had [drawn] my attention to the VP discussion. When I was made aware of it a few moments ago, I removed WO from the Spam Blacklist (pending a decision on the blacklist talk page)". AGK did remove the domains from the spam blacklist, but despite being aware of the community's wishes, he subsequently created failed to delete an edit filter which (apparently) disallowed any mention of the word "wikipediocracy". That filter has been deleted with the comment "use the spam blacklist if necessary".

Were these actions done at the behest of ArbCom or was AGK acting on his own? Delicious carbuncle (talk) 17:58, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

There is a subpage of WP:ANI devoted to these issues. Please transfer these additional questions there. Thanks, Mathsci (talk) 18:20, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
For clarity, discussion is at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents/ExternalSites. Mark Arsten (talk) 18:23, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
  • No. This needs to be discussed here, not at an invisible subpage of ANI, because this is tool abuse by an Arb. (1) He created a filter to do a job equivalent to something that had been decided by community discussion was not to be done. (2) He created an edit filter despite clearly not having the ability to write one. (3) Which was quite lucky, because if written properly that edit filter would have disallowed any editor from making any edit to a page where the word "wikipediocracy" already existed close to that edit ... which recently, is a hell of a lot of pages. "Added_Lines" does not equal "stuff you've just added", it is anything that would appear in such a diff - i.e. anyone trying to make any edit to a page close to where the word "wikipediocracy" currently exists would be rejected. This is disruption, pure and simple. Black Kite (talk) 19:06, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
    • As I understand it the listing was undone upon discussion, so it's difficult to see this as "pure and simple" disruption. More like a minor mistake undone. With respect to the undone listing: no articles harmed; no users harmed; no living people harmed, nor individuals attempted to be disparaged. Alanscottwalker (talk) 19:26, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
      • Please read the above comments. We're not talking about the spam blacklisting here, but the edit filter, which AGK created to replicate the functionality of the blacklist after he had undone that because the community consensus was against it, and which was deleted by another edit filter manager because it didn't work. In other words (a) AGK edits blacklist (b) AGK is told that previous community discussion is against including that website on blacklist (c) AGK undoes blacklist edit (d) AGK creates edit filter which would have the same effect. Black Kite (talk) 19:48, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
  • So, it was deleted because it didn't work sounds like a mistake rectified. Also, was it not created to prevent linking per the outing or doxing policy? User's try different approaches to serving policy and sometimes they don't work. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 20:01, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
  • You're not understanding. AGK was told that he could not add wikipediocracy.com to the blacklist because there had previously been a community discussion that it should not be added. He then (correctly) undid that edit. But then he used his edit filter manager tools to create an edit filter to do exactly the same thing against community consensus - in other words, circumventing community consensus via tool use. The fact it was badly written and did not work is irrelevant. Also, the filter would not only have prevented linking, but would have prevented anyone from even mentioning the word "wikipediocracy", even in plain text, anywhere on Wikipedia. That's not preventing doxing, that's simply censorship. (Also, had it actually worked, it would have disrupted any page where the word already existed). Black Kite (talk) 20:07, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
  • So, and without commenting on the above, what measures do we put in place to prevent doxing? Or - despite the harassment and BLP policies, despite the WMF Terms of Use, despite legal restrictions in various jurisdictions, despite the opportunities it provides for malicious payback and score-settling, despite the possibilities for real life harm, despite the inability of the doxee to respond - should we just accept it as a fact of life?  Roger Davies talk 20:17, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
  • That's begging the question, Roger. What we don't do is use our toolset to say to the community "OK, you've had that discussion, there's a consensus, but I'm an Arbitrator and I'm going to use my tools to ignore it". If a "normal" admin did that they'd lose their bit in a second (as we've found out recently). As an actual answer to your question, though - we block people. Ask MZMcBride. Black Kite (talk) 20:21, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
  • In fairness, AGK didn't actually say that and, from the timetable below, that may not have been his intention. But to get to the substantive point, we are skirting the substantive issue and until that one is resolved, this series of dramas will just continue to run.  Roger Davies talk 20:33, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
  • It has not been pointed out, because to begin with it appears the allged timeline is patently incorrect, as shown below. Moreover, trying a little code-work to deal with conflicting policy concerns is not at all the crime your charges claim. Granted, not removing an unworking edit filter is poor mopping, but that deserves, at most, a doc in pay, nothing more, and certainly not a cause celebre, of high crimes and misdemeanors. Alanscottwalker (talk) 21:06, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
You're right, "trying a little code-work to deal with conflicting policy concerns" isn't a crime. It's bungling of the first water. — Hex (❝?!❞) 21:16, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
Except the water did not even reach the bilge. Alanscottwalker (talk) 21:21, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
Surely the edit filter was created 12 minutes before the the links were added to the spam blacklist. -- zzuuzz (talk) 20:22, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
You're right. But in that case, AGK should have deleted the edit filter when he reverted the spam blacklist entry, since they were designed to do the same thing. It would probably have been noticed earlier if it had actually worked. Black Kite (talk) 20:24, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
  • That's for articles. We're talking plain text, anywhere on Wikipedia here. Look at how many times that website was mentioned - not linked, just mentioned - (even by Arbs) during the recent Kevin Case at ArbCom. If AGK's edit-filter had been in place and working, no-one could have even mentioned the name of the site. Their edits would have been disallowed, How ridiculous would that have been? What if the website had been something more mainstream than the one it was? Black Kite (talk) 20:35, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Though BLP of course applies anywhere on Wikipedia. I really don't understand how people can support a strong BLP policy on Wikipedia and simultaneously condone doxing,  Roger Davies talk 20:37, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
  • OK, I get where this is going, because people are conveniently ignoring the main point to make their own points about other things. No-one is condoning doxing. No-one disgrees with the BLP policy. But there had already been a community discussion on this point, which was ignored, and tools were used to circumvent it. You can not then use your tools to override that decision, it doesn't matter what it is. That's tool misuse. If tools misuse is allowed now, so be it. But don't expect it not to be brought up the next time we have an admin desysop or similar Arbitration case. And as another point, please, Arbs, do not start fucking about with such a powerful tool as the edit-filter when clearly not understanding how it works. We've already had one episode of someone doing that and ending up disallowing every edit to Wikipedia. Black Kite (talk) 20:47, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
  • That's for articles... - the rest of Wikipedia only exists to support article writing. If it doesn't support article writing (or categorisation, or indexing, or...), we don't need it. Guettarda (talk) 20:42, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Quite right. But no, I mean the spam blacklist is only for clickable links (usually, those that get added to articles). The edit-filter is a completely different beast... not designed for this. Black Kite (talk) 20:49, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

I've corrected my original statement to reflect the comments made here that the edit filter was actually created before the domains were added to the spam blacklist. It does not change anything, since once AGK was aware that the community did not support blacklisting the site, he chose not to remove or disable the filter. My question remains unanswered - ArbCom, did AGK add those domains to the blacklist or create that edit filter on behalf of ArbCom? Delicious carbuncle (talk) 21:54, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

Am I the only one to notice that the filter has never been enabled? This is what an enabled filter's history looks like. Note the "Enabled" flag? Now compare the history of the filter at issue. T. Canens (talk) 22:56, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
Timotheus Canens, are you asking a question or stating that the filter was never enabled? In either case, my question remains unanswered. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 23:32, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
Any more Arbs willing to try half-arsed attempts to deflect from the actual issue here, or is that it now? Black Kite (talk) 00:06, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
Wikipedia Review or Wikipediocracy had the link needed to a report on ArbCom: "Unlike the Supreme Court, their robes are their bathrobes. Their appointments are lifetime, in that they last until they get a life." Kiefer.Wolfowitz 00:14, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
What exactly is the "actual issue" you want to talk about? You started from the premise that AGK created the filter after he reverted the edit to the blacklist, supposedly to circumvent the discussion; as it turns out, he created it before the addition of the links to the black list, which he reverted when he heard about the discussion. Then the claim is that he didn't delete it when he reverted his addition, except that deleting or not deleting a disabled filter makes zero difference. Then the argument seems to be "arbs should not be messing with filters that they don't know about", which actually has some force, except that the filter here was never enabled and could not have done any damage. So, what exactly are you complaining about with respect to the filter? T. Canens (talk) 01:23, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
I hope AGK will, at some point soon, let us know his intentions when he created the filter and if the filter was not activated due to a mistake on his part or if it was deliberate. In either case, he apparently created a filter to prevent anyone from writing "wikipediocracy". Whether or not it was enabled, are you not curious as to why he would do this? And why he would not delete such a filter when he learned that the community did not support adding that site to the spam blacklist? Given AGK's other actions in relation to this debacle, I would think that ArbCom would be more interested in an episode that seems to have damaged their reputation within the community. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 03:01, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Arbcom's rather astonishing reaction to Wikipediocracy's blog post almost justifies the post. I strongly suggest that those of you who have spent enormous amounts of hours and effort trying to figure out how to hermetically circle your wagons over the past 2 weeks take a breather from it all, because you seem to have hermetically sealed out the fresh air. You've somehow managed to recast a tempest in a teapot as the sequel to the Cuban missile crisis, which I suppose speaks well about the power of crowdsourcing, but doesn't seem healthy otherwise. --SB_Johnny | talk✌ 00:14, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Indeed; when you decide to construct a massive steel hammer to smash a small glass jar, and are then surprised when a genie escapes from it, you shouldn't be surprised that trying to glue the pieces back together is a difficult job. The best thing to do is say "OK, we can't put that jar back tgoether, but how can we learn for the next glass jar we encounter"? Black Kite (talk) 00:22, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
I agree. I kind of said that in one of the sections above (in the bit where I said critics need to examine their approach as well, and everyone needs to learn something from this), but sensible comments get missed in all this. It is much easier for people to argue over the more strident comments. I'm hoping people calm down eventually, but getting from here to there is not easy. Carcharoth (talk) 00:47, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
@Carbuncle: No. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs(talk) 00:28, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
The question wasn't a yes/no question, it was an either/or question. I wouldn't have done or endorsed the actions taken here, though some arbitrators might. Certainly the actions were not a formal action on behalf of the committee as a whole. Most actions by individual arbitrators rarely are, so you have to ask them in what capacity they were acting. Those actions that are "for the committee" tend to get formally voted on and signed off on. Carcharoth (talk) 00:47, 14 March 2013 (UTC) Oh, silly me, I was reading Delicious carbuncle's original question in his first post, when I see you were almost certainly answering his bolded question in his later post.
Thank you. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 02:51, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Note: it's generally considered courteous to raise an issue with the editor at question before bringing it to a noticeboard. Given no edits were harmed, it's unclear why this couldn't have been raised on AGK's talk page. NE Ent 01:46, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

To be frank, when dealing with ArbCom I have much more faith in the answers I get in public than on individual talk pages. You may note how difficult it was to get an answer to my question despite the participation of multiple Arbs here. And note also that I have not suggested that AGK needs to step down as an Arb, resign his tools, or anything of the sort. I'm just trying to ascertain what happened and who made it happen. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 02:50, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
On this whole point, I don't consider the VPP discussion to be indicative of a consensus against the spam listing as most of the opposition came from people such as myself who happen to post there. That said, no consensus was clear among non-WO participants and that an editor thought there needed to be a discussion on a major noticeboard before any action takes place speaks volumes in itself. Did AGK really think this was an uncontroversial action? Seems unlikely to me that any admin with a smidgen of understanding of the situation could have had such an impression and certainly not an arbitrator. Regardless of whether there was an ongoing discussion or not, such an action seems to be something that demands an attempt to garner consensus.--The Devil's Advocate tlk. cntrb. 03:40, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
  • DC drew my attention to this thread, and I offered the following response. I don't think I have anything to add to it at this point in time:

    Hi there. I see quite a lot of misunderstanding about the AbuseFilter situation. The filter was never enabled; I created it to see what edits it would have blocked had it been active. I would not have enabled such a far-reaching filter without community permission (because, unlike with the Spam Blacklist, administrators aren't allowed to unilaterally build hyperlinks into an AbuseFilter).

    BlackKite seems to be under the impression that I was shopping around for ways to block WO after I removed it from the Blacklist; this is both incorrect on the face of it, and also derives from the mistaken belief that I created the Filter after I edited the Blacklist. The other conclusions he comes to are also incorrect. Also, the Filter was never active, and it has since been deleted by another administrator. I think your accusations have been adequately rebutted by other members of the community, so I will not engage in protracted discussion on this issue unless there is some undiscussed point that you need me to clarify. I also do not wish to edit the noticeboard talk page thread at this point, because this issue has nothing to do with my work as an arbitrator. Thank you for having the courtesy to draw my attention to the thread; I appreciate that.

    Thanks, AGK [•] 09:46, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

PROTIP: Getting community permission before starting work on "far-reaching" tools means nobody will have reason to question your actions and you won't have wasted your time. — Hex (❝?!❞) 10:06, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
If you are talking about the edit filter, then I wonder if you are deliberately misunderstanding my actions, because it seems like you are. I did not enable the filter. I simply wanted to see if it was feasible, given that several administrators had suggested a filter could supersede a block in the case of MZ. AGK [•] 14:13, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
Yes, I know you didn't enable it. What I'm trying to get you to understand here is that preemptively programming unapproved site-wide tools (especially ones as little-understood as edit filters), just to see what they would do, during a highly contentious debate, as a serving arbitrator (and thus inevitably having your actions subject to intense scrutiny), was a very naïve thing of you to do. Not least because you didn't make it crystal clear exactly what you were doing and why - the result being the kind of reaction you've received here, above. I hope you will be much more careful in future. — Hex (❝?!❞) 14:59, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
I think that is unfair. A lot has been boiling around, and surely there was some discussion about whether we would be better off if certain locations weren't mentioned. There might be several technical ways of implementing such a prohibition, including policy, and software. Within software, there's blacklist and edit filters, maybe others. It is easy to imagine someone wondering - could this be accomplished with an edit filter? One does not invoke the mechanism of a community wide discussion to debate the merits of such a filter, taking thousands of man-hours of debate, then if approved, try it an a few minutes later realize it isn't even feasible. That would be a monumental waste of time. Instead, one tries to see if one can write one, test it on a test wiki, to see if the concept is even feasible before considering whether to go tot he trouble of getting it approved. This is pretty standard stuff, you do proof of concepts before you make major proposals. Arbcom has taken a lot of heat, much of it deserved, for locking the barn door after the horse has bolted. So now the plan is to blast Arbcom for trying to be pro active? Not fair.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 01:57, 18 March 2013 (UTC)
As a point of technical information, is there any sort of sandbox or test environment which AGK could have used instead? If I understand the coding issue properly, AGK was working with a "live" set of rules in general, but the particular BADSITES rule here was both buggily coded and not enabled itself. If it was an experiment, isn't there a better way of going about that? -- Seth Finkelstein (talk) 02:56, 18 March 2013 (UTC)
http://test.wikipedia.org, but nobody knows about it (I presume AGK didn't) and he would have to become an admin there (which would mean flagging down a testwiki bureaucrat on their home wiki since people only go there to test and don't patrol it on a daily basis). --Rschen7754 03:02, 18 March 2013 (UTC)
Sphilbrick, the point of this section was to ask if AGK was undertaking these actions on his own initiative or if he was acting for ArbCom. AGK has stated that he was not acting on behalf of ArbCom. Both of the actions under discussion here appear to have been undertaken without the benefit of community or expert input. One was actually against community consensus. AGK states that he was not aware of the consensus, but that does not excuse adding a site to the spam blacklist before the community has had a chance to discuss that addition. AGK says that he created the edit filter to see what would have been blocked if it were enabled, but the obvious answer is that if the filter were correctly written, it would have blocked all mentions of Wikipediocracy. If he simply wanted to know that this could be done with an edit filter, he could more productively have asked any number of people. I think it is perfectly fair to question such actions (and I think Arbs expect their actions may be questioned far more often than other admins). I am not "blasting ArbCom for being proactive", I am wondering aloud if AGK understands that being on ArbCom means he should stay away from these kinds of actions, not rush into them half-cocked. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 04:02, 18 March 2013 (UTC)
AGK's actions were not so much locking the barn door as loading a gun and doing some target practice, even though everyone had already agreed that shooting the horse was totally unnecessary. — Hex (❝?!❞) 10:13, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

@AGK. The filter you created, here, has as a setting "Prevent the user from performing the action in question" enabled. That is not the standard setting of a (new) filter, so you intentionally enabled it. But you say "... 'I created it to see what edits it would have blocked had it been active' (my bolding). If your intention, or ArbCom's intention, was to monitor, you would have enabled the filter, without enabling the block (which is actually a very common practice for blocking-intended filters). Moreover, you would have monitored the filter's output and see what was blocked - you could even have used the output of the filter to see who used it, and possibly when some edit triggered the filter, used that to assess whether the mentioning of the site in that case was a form of outing and take appropriate action. I would have found that a very legitimate use of the filter, even if it was never set to blocking in the end, I think no-one here would have complained excessively (at least, about the monitoring, they might have complained about the blocks). But the way that filter was created, even if it was not enabled, does not suggest that that was the intention of the filter (but please, correct me if I am wrong), that filter was intended to block, not to monitor, and that is perfectly in line with your unilateral blacklisting of the site. --Dirk Beetstra T C 06:44, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

New socks, new blocks, whose socks, whose blocks?

Apologies to Dr. Seuss, it needed a section heading.... — Hex (❝?!❞) 17:26, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

I'm not looking to get anybody blocked, banned, etc. But, why hasn't Malleus been blocked for sock-puppeting? GoodDay (talk) 01:38, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

"I'm not looking to get anybody blocked"... "why hasn't Malleus been blocked". That's a little contradictory (however, I'm kindof left wanting more closure on this issue too). gwickwiretalkediting 01:59, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
I'm more interested in learning if there's a change in how sockmasters are treated. GoodDay (talk) 02:01, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
Aren't you assuming a little too much GoodDay? Malleus Fatuorum 02:07, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
I'm seeking an explanation, that's all. If you haven't been socking, then what's all the fuss? GoodDay (talk) 02:11, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
The fuss is that I've been accused via an anonymous email, resulting in an out of policy checkuser. If I had access to the checkuser tool I'm quite certain I could "prove" that you were sockpuppeting yourself. Malleus Fatuorum 02:32, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
Has it been proven that you've been socking, though? GoodDay (talk) 02:37, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
Depends on what you call proof. Malleus Fatuorum 03:02, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
If 2 or more accounts are proven to be the same editor. Do you admit or deny having socks? GoodDay (talk) 03:21, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
How exactly would you go about proving such a thing GoodDay? And do you consider it's been proven in this case? Or are you asking a hypothetical "what if ..." question? Malleus Fatuorum 03:55, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
I can't prove or disprove anything at the moment. I'm asking for clarification from you. If GP's not your sock? then there's a chance GP is the secret informers sock. In that case, the GP account would've been created to get you banned. GoodDay (talk) 03:58, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
Not to put too fine a point on it, you're talking complete bollocks GoodDay. Malleus Fatuorum 04:07, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
And unsurprisingly, while two sections above, no arb can actually point out to any clear and blockable offenses committed by the two accounts to even justify running a CU, because it's Malleus, here comes to block bandwagon. Seriously, folks, check your WP:BATTLE attitude at the door. MLauba (Talk) 02:15, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
I'm not looking to tar & feather Malleaus. I've nothing to gain by that. Merely want to know what the heck's going on around here, it's all TLDR. GoodDay (talk) 02:18, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
(edit conflict)If you look at WP:SPI, very few accounts have done anything worth blocking on their own; they are reported because they look like a sock, blocked using behavioral evidence, and a CU is ran to check for sleepers. --Guerillero | My Talk 02:19, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
So, what's the ruling? GoodDay (talk) 02:21, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
But that's simply not true Guerillo. Malleus Fatuorum 02:36, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
  • I may not know the policy on undeclared sock accounts that well, so can't say that Malleus should be blocked just because he had a sock account. The Malleus and George accounts overlapped on 287 "pages" as shown here...so the only thing that matters is if Malleus was using George as a meatpuppet account (or vice-versa) to do something such as block evasion, vote stacking, content dispute, etc.--MONGO 04:44, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
    GoodDay and I have overlapped on 301 pages. Does that make me his sockpuppet or is he mine? Malleus Fatuorum 05:33, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
    My comment was rhetorical...unless arbcom can show evidence that these two accounts overlapped maliciously, then there is no issue I don't believe.--MONGO 05:40, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
    The issue is if that there was no evidence of any such maliciousness, and there isn't, then why did ArbCom initiate an out of policy checkuser? Are we all to be subjected to such investigations on the hearsay of an anonymous tip-off? Added to which I've had a brief discussion with Coren about his quite different reaction when his compadre Rlevse was accused of socking with his PumpkinSky account. Which was basically to do nothing, because Rlevse was his friend. I on the other hand have no friends in ArbCom, and am not even an administrator, just an easily replaceable unit of work. See the difference? And interestingly MONGO, you and I have have collided on 381 pages, time for another checkuser I think, as a major plank of ArbCom's evidence is that George and Malleus edited the same pages. Malleus Fatuorum 05:50, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
It's appalling that some get special treatment exempting them from rules everyone else must follow. Tom Harrison Talk 13:01, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
  • I don't know why they did Malleus...I'm out of the loop. I glaced at a few items on that overlap and nothing popped up. At the Little Moreton Hall FAC that George nominated, you made a few comments but didn't support the promotion. At the usertalks overlaps, all those editors are on friendly relations with you, so no reason to suspect that you would use two accounts to harass anyone there. On the Wikipedia space pages I can't see any evidence that you used two accounts in the same discussions, just on the same pages. In article space, unless two accounts were engaged together in a content dispute, using two accounts for ce isn't an issue. In my cursory glance, I cannot see any evidence of malice. Carcharoth, in a thread above, indicates you used a different account to evade a block and that you have (or applied) for Highbeam for both accounts. Again, I'm not a policy expert on SOCK or CHECKUSER nor am I here to undermine arbcom or you. For the record, if you have (had) multiple accounts its a unique thing since all the others I have encountered aside from Bishonen and her private army were here solely for disruption and POV pushing...neither of which is something you or George do. I AGF that all this will blow over and be nary a footnote in the annals of Wikipedia.--MONGO 06:26, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
    I could point you to a number of editors (but I won't of course, that would be to break confidences), some very high-profile, who are today using alternate accounts for the sake of a quiet life. And does anyone remember Chillum, an admin who admitted to having an alternate account but refused to reveal to anyone what it was? Much has been made of my William Leadford account as proof that I'm some kind of puppet master, but few seem to recall that the link between me and that account became public because of leaked emails to ArbCom, in which I was discussing how best to proceed. The answer in retrospect seems obvious; don't tell anyone, especially ArbCom. Malleus Fatuorum 06:43, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
Have to agree with "don't tell anyone." I don't see why anyone would share private information with the Wikipedia arbitration committee. Tom Harrison Talk 13:01, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
Hatting discussion about third-party editors. Mark Arsten (talk) 23:22, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
  • Malleus, I'm not sure dragging PumpkinSky into this is appropriate. As you may be aware, he was blocked for a violation of RTV, a policy that carries with it no penalty beyond having edits reattributed. This was done by Moni3, who had immediately previously called PumpkinSky a "dingus" and an "idiot". conversation, in which Malleus took part, here. Note that Moni3 blocked PumpkinSky indef at 0000 on 2 February. As you will recall, Hawkeye7 lost his bits for calling you a koala, I daresay "dingus" and "idiot" are worse and should have carried at least the same penalty, but no one seemed inclined to do anything about it. You will recall Moni3 of course, she unblocked you twice, each time without any request by you, and I believe you stayed blocked a combined total of nineteen minutes. PumpkinSky, on the other hand, for violating a policy which carries no penalty, was blocked for months until a brave admin had the guts to unblock him, and the community showed its opinion of that by electing him a crat. Accordingly, PumpkinSky was not in the least treated better than you. I would suggest that you consider PumpkinSky a victim. Can we agree on that? Or if we can't, can we agree to allow those who are choosing not to be a part of this to avoid being dragged into it?--Wehwalt (talk) 13:20, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
    I'm not criticising PumpkinSky, I'm criticising Coren, who under the exact same circumstances of the GP/MF anonymous tip opted not to run a checkuser because Rlevse was his friend, and he trusted his friend. Malleus Fatuorum 17:26, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
    Nor was his trust misplaced, because the person who was Rlevse did nothing wrong in returning as PumpkinSky.--Wehwalt (talk) 20:45, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
    Really? I must have missed that. Any proof for this claim? Did he return to clean up his copyvio mess or just to continue his social networking? I am talking about before he was caught. Hans Adler 22:16, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

This whole incident is regrettable. My confidence in Arbcom has been further weakend & I've less faith in an editor. GoodDay (talk) 17:35, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

Apologies to Malleus

I'm sorry for my conduct towards you yesterday. You're correct about not having to answer to me & your frustration with me was certainly valid & understandable. I will continue to AGF with you. You're a straight shooter & one of the few honest editors around. I freely admit to being frustrated with Wikipedia lately & shamefully let some of that frustration out on you (which was uncalled for) & I'm rightfully embarrassed. PS- I'm apologizing on this Noticeboard, as this is where I harrassed you. PPS: I wouldn't blame you, if you rejected my apology. GoodDay (talk) 02:42, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

I don't take much account of apologies GoodDay, as you may know. I'm much more interested what you do from here on, as words are easy. Malleus Fatuorum 02:59, 19 March 2013 (UTC)
There's very little left on Wikipedia for me to do, accept gnoming. GoodDay (talk) 03:06, 19 March 2013 (UTC)
GoodDay, I think the best way for you to show that you wish to disengage from this issue, would be for you to stop editing on this page. Regards, Newyorkbrad (talk) 03:09, 19 March 2013 (UTC)


Off topic, hatting before it descends into personal attacks
The following discussion has been closed by Risker. Please do not modify it.

Who's George Ponderevo suppose to be? GoodDay (talk) 02:53, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

So basically you're commenting on something about which you know nothing at all, you simply saw the word "Malleus" and decided to agitate for a block/ban. No wonder George didn't want that target painted on his back. Malleus Fatuorum 03:00, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
Malleus, you have been publicly caught socking, and lucky enough to get away with it. Wouldn't it be a good idea to stop digging yourself deeper by trying to deny the obvious, and just go edit some articles or something? Robofish (talk) 03:12, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
Just goes to show how little you know Robofish. When was the last time you edited an article BTW? Malleus Fatuorum 04:01, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
I have & will continue to defend you (or anybody) concerning WP:CIVIL. However, socking is another matter with me. I prefer honest demons over lying angels. GoodDay (talk) 03:18, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
Do you consider your behaviour here, agitating for me to be blocked/banned, is civil? Malleus Fatuorum 04:03, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
If GP's your sock? then you should be blocked for it, unless Administrators 'no longer' do this to sock-users. So far, you've haven't answered my question, yet. Again, is GP your sock? GoodDay (talk) 04:08, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
I have discussed this matter with ArbCom, and I am most certainly not answerable to you. I don't know what your agenda is, but I can smell something fishy even from here. Is it perhaps your intention to inflame me into some injudicious choice of phrase that will in your mind justify your running to ANI to demand a civility block? Malleus Fatuorum 04:16, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
I'd never drag you to ANI. GoodDay (talk) 04:23, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
GoodDay, is there a problem you are trying to solve? ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 04:19, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
Indeed. I wish to know if Malleus & George are the same person/editor. If 'no'? then I can continue to trust Malleus & if 'yes' then I can't trust him in future. GoodDay (talk) 04:23, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
Can't trust me to do what? Have your children? Malleus Fatuorum 04:26, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
Honestly, I've never seen such determination to not answer a simple yes/no question. GoodDay (talk) 04:29, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
Since when did I become answerable to you? Do you have any evidence that either Malleus or George, working together or separately, have ever done anything to damage Wikipedia? If you do then let's hear it, because ArbCom obviously don't. You'd be helping ArbCom out, and get them off the hook for their out of policy checkuser. And as I said, give me checkuser access for a day and I'll "prove" that you yourself are a sockpuppet, it won't be difficult. Malleus Fatuorum 04:33, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
If you suspect me of having socks? then I encourage you to open an SPI on me. GoodDay (talk) 04:42, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

I may not know the policy on undeclared sock accounts that well, so can't say that Malleus should be blocked just because he had a sock account. The Malleus and George accounts overlapped on 287 "pages" as shown here...so the only thing that matters is if Malleus was using George as a meatpuppet account (or vice-versa) to do something such as block evasion, vote stacking, content dispute, etc.--MONGO 04:44, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

Another section rapidly spiraling out of control
The following discussion has been closed by Sven Manguard. Please do not modify it.
I guess that went over your head - this editors should be contributing not dealing with this. Why people are still after you is puzzling.Moxy (talk) 16:31, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

The last 50 edits from the people in this thread.

User Mainspace Talk Wikipedia related User User talk
A Quest For Knowledge 2 0 29 8 11
Nick-D 22 0 22 1 5
Malleus Fatuorum 3 0 41 0 6
Epipelagic 24 5 16 2 3
gwickwire 14 4 20 2 10
GoodDay 42 0 7 0 1
MLauba 4 1 26 0 19
Guerillero 19 5 8 8 10
MONGO 9 5 23 1 12
Moxy 5 1 42 0 2

--Guerillero | My Talk 06:44, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

Do you understand what a "contribution" is Guerillero? To Wikipedia I mean, not to this poxy discussion? Let me give you a clue. I've made almost 85,000 edits to article pages, whereas you've made how many? A little over 3000 in four years? I've done more in a week than you've done in your entire time here. Malleus Fatuorum 06:57, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
Please Malleus, please show some respect: Guerillero is an 'Administrator of the English Wikipedia' a project full of the world's finest knowledge; that means he's infinitely superior to you, a mere content typist, in every way possible way. Administrators have many strenuous duties; they aren't just here for the kudos and to boss people around because they're nonentities in real life.  Giano  17:19, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
He should be a little nicer, Guerillero has actually contributed some valuable content and not just on trivial pop-culture matters. As far as content work he actually outclasses several on the Committee, including the two who just resigned. Certainly he is not akin to either of you, but, unfortunately, not many are as capable or active when it comes to contributing content.--The Devil's Advocate tlk. cntrb. 19:52, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
Crap. I could've had a perfect "0" for mainspace but I blew it. NE Ent 13:26, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

Once the committee decided to make an announcement about their findings there were only two things they had to avoid doing to prevent causing a ruckus, to wit:

  • Blocking the Malleus account
  • Not blocking the Malleus account

This was a Kobayashi Maru (No win for non-geeks) situation for the committee. Had they not made an announcement of some sort, sooner or later it would have come out and they'd be accused of collusion, cover-up and non-transparency.

The purpose of dispute resolution is to avoid escalating conflict so folks can concentrate on editing the encyclopedia. It's unfortunate the overlaps between MF and GP were detected by either someone with an axe to grind or a "law and order" Wikipedian who doesn't grok that sometimes selective blindness is in the best interest of the project. What's done is done; as this is an ArbComNonBlock it'd be incredibly stupid to pursue that avenue any further. Insanity is trying the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Fighting an MF / civility war skirmish here will come to no good end. (See also Note on civility ) NE Ent 13:56, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

With that thought in mind, I have issued an appropriate barnstar at Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee#Wikipedia:Arbs are people too. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 19:17, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

GP

This battle was already collapsed once. Enough already.

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.

(Gerda's POV on George Ponderevo) I checked my history and found that George Ponderevo silently copy-edited my articles at least since 2011. I am ashamed that I see that only now, I never thanked him. He wrote Little Moreton Hall, I translated it to German, it was liked on their Main page. He has been a blessing to the project, an awesome Wikipedian. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:44, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

There was a mistake in the lede of Andreas Scholl by GP which I corrected (I was at Glyndebourne in 1998 for Rodelinda: the WP article scarcely does justice to one of Handel's finest operas). I notice that MF has picked up editing Andreas Scholl where GP left off. Enough said. Mathsci (talk) 09:20, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
Nope, Mathsci, not "enough". You cowardly wrote too much innuendo.
A recent discussion at Good-Articles noted that MF conducted 300 GA reviews; the next most was c. 20. MF has similar editing at FA articles. You would find that MF has continued working on articles by most repeated GA or FA participants who are not writing illiterate articles about Rihanna. Kiefer.Wolfowitz 09:45, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
I asked him if he was willing to continue the interrupted work, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 09:31, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
Seems like the best thing to do. As I say, it would actually be nicer to find people to help improve the content in the core articles on baroque music, not just performers. (I resumed work on Orgelbüchlein.) Mathsci (talk) 12:37, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
No, what you said was that my helping Gerda out, at her request, with an article that GP had worked on, proves that GP and MF are the same person. Rather shameful of you to try and pretend otherwise. Malleus Fatuorum 17:41, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
It's not what I wrote. Mathsci (talk) 03:23, 18 March 2013 (UTC)
Collapsed topic. Sven Manguard Wha? 19:46, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
The discussion above 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.

It's time to weather the (non-existent) storm

There is no general outrage among the broader community. It's a only small group of vocal editors who are whining and complaining. The more attention you give their complaints, the more attention they will crave. No one outside this small circle takes these complaints seriously. To ArbCom and everyone else, I recommend that you just ignore them. They may or not go away, but it doesn't matter, because few, if any, in the broader community supports them. (Of course, this small, vocal group may vehemently disagree with this assessment, but that's all the more reason to ignore their complaints and move on.) A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 23:37, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

Agreed. Nick-D (talk) 00:26, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
(To paraphrase: let's quickly sweep all of this under the carpet and carry on as normal before the little people notice we have a problem.  Giano  11:15, 17 March 2013 (UTC))
Thanks for so nicely demonstrating the problem here you two. Malleus Fatuorum 00:31, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
There seem to be only two stirrers here who fantasise that there is no problem. Now that is a seriously small vocal minority. --Epipelagic (talk) 02:08, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

I'm sorry, when two sane arbitrators resign because the system is broken, and a lot of "vocal editors" believe it's broken, you say "it's only a small group" and basically tell ArbCom to "not feed the trolls". That's horrid that you'd even think that. If you really want to discount our claims, start an RfC, see how many people think ArbCom, or the community, or both are broken right now. Case in point, User:Cla is still blocked for what they did, when in any other situation they'd have been unblocked forever ago. Stop this attack on this not-so-small group, because your claim that "no one outside this small circle takes these complaints seriously" is flat out wrong. gwickwiretalkediting 01:17, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

  • Could we be quite clear on this: Two arbitrators resigned because the committee was not quite so compliant in breaking rules and acting in an overbearing matter as they wanted it to. That Coren persuaded them (against their better judgements)to sign a half-baked motion is to be regretted. That he obviously had to take some flak from his former colleagues when the community reacted as they had predicted is really his problem rather than that of the community. The question remaining, is does the community have confidence in the remaining Arbs?  Giano  11:26, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
Two sane arbitrators? Coren and who else? Rich Farmbrough, 04:37, 20 March 2013 (UTC).

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

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.

Werieth (talk) 14:27, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

As a reminder, this talkpage is for discussing Arbitration committee announcements. In the recent days, it has devolved into a free for all. If you wish to launch a debate on the Arbitration committee, please use the appropriate talkpage or start an RFC. --Alexandr Dmitri (talk) 16:53, 20 March 2013 (UTC)
The discussion above 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.

Unblock of Fæ

Announcement
Following an email, and my comment on Fæ's talk page, I should confirm that Remedy 2: Fæ limited to one account remains in place. WormTT(talk) 14:53, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
Remedy 2 states:

Fæ is hereby limited to one account, and expressly denied the option of a fresh WP:CLEANSTART. Should Fæ wish to change the name of the one account he is allowed to use, he must receive prior permission from the Arbitration Committee before editing under any other username. Fæ must provide a list of all accounts they have controlled to the Committee, with any objections to making the accounts publicly listed. The Committee will then advise Fæ of whether they will need to list the objected to account(s) publicly.

The wording suggests that it was ArbCom's intention to list the accounts used unless Fæ could supply reasonable objections to listing certain accounts. Will ArbCom be publishing the list of accounts? If ArbCom has agreed with Fæ that certain accounts will not be publicly listed, can the other alternate accounts be listed, along with a statement from either Fæ or ArbCom identifying the number of accounts that Fæ has supplied to ArbCom that will not be listed? Thanks. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 18:12, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
Hi Delicious carbuncle. I can confirm that the committee received Fæ's declarations of alternate accounts and comments regarding their publishing. These factors were taken into account when the unblock was agreed, and I don't see any further comment from Arbcom as a whole necessary. WormTT(talk) 09:52, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
Well yes, but the problem was the community felt the situation with the accounts was widespread and there was a lot more below the surface. Hence arbcoms wording that DC has quoted. Given that, does this mean Fae objected to ALL of his alt-accounts being listed in public? Or only a couple and that arbcom have not felt the need to release the ones that he didnt object to? Only in death does duty end (talk) 13:27, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
A just outcome. Fae's block was an unwelcome twist in a case that was otherwise handled very well. ThemFromSpace 22:15, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
One of the findings was Fæ has used ad hominem attacks to try to discredit others; was this addressed in the discussions with Fae? NE Ent 13:13, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
Yes, whilst the specific finding wasn't mentioned, it was addressed. WormTT(talk) 16:08, 13 March 2013 (UTC)


Closing off combative and irrelevant commentary
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
It is important to remember that Fae was subject to years of ongoing harassment, mainly by Delicious Carbuncle, backed up by others who were prepared to break policy to smear him in any way they could. In this context, Fae's intemperate comments to other editors who were not part of this harassment, while still wrong, was perhaps understandable. I find it fairly disturbing that we are still allowing this persecution to continue. Rich Farmbrough, 05:02, 20 March 2013 (UTC).
No, Rich, it is important to remember that Fæ made unsupported claims of harassment for years (as both User:Ash and User:Fæ). It is also important to remember that Fæ and his supporters made great efforts to associate me with and blame me for the actions of others, both on- and off-wiki. It is important to note, as I did in the ArbCom case, that Ash accused me of homophobia in our very first interaction. It is important to note that I tried for years, unsuccessfully, to follow dispute resolution processes so that I wouldn't have to deal with Ash's accusations of harassment. It is important to note that Fæ abandoned his Ash account and made a very unclean "clean start" during a dispute resolution process that would almost undoubtedly have seen him sanctioned. It is important to note that while I hoped that the ArbCom case would put an end to this, Fæ has continued to act in ways that lead to his ban, including unnecessarily incorporating misleading and inflammatory statements into his statement as out-going Chair of the Wikimedia Chapters Association just weeks ago. It is especially important to note that I am fed up with defending myself against these types of allegations. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 14:11, 20 March 2013 (UTC)
It was and remains clear that off-site conspiracy theorising, promoted by you and others, lead to a coterie of members of another forum, of whom you were the most profligate, pursuing actions on-wiki that were against both policy and common decency. It is irrelevant now as then whether these actions were motivated by homophobia, or a simple personal vendetta against certain editors. What is certain is that it was morally reprehensible, and that you either cannot see that, or claim that you cannot. Choosing to associate yourself prominently with a group of reprobates who constantly "out" Wikipedians (I reported yet more links to new outing threads since the Cla's affair) speaks as much about your level of integrity as that you continue, even now, to attack Fae at every on-wiki forum you can find. Even if all the (mostly absurd) claims you made were true, it is now well beyond time to drop the stick and walk away form the horse. Rich Farmbrough, 03:05, 22 March 2013 (UTC).

Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) closed

Announcement

While there is a lot to say about this case, I will for the time being just point out how strongly it supports Doncram's thesis on case naming in "Pinciple 5" In deciding what sanctions to impose against an editor who is the subject of an Arbitration case. This once again shows that the committee, consciously or unconsciously sees cases as a trials with prosecutors and defendants, rather than the arbitration that it should be. Rich Farmbrough, 03:27, 22 March 2013 (UTC).

Temporary cease fire?

Over the last 48 hours the Arbcom has had a well deserved kicking. However, constant shouting and demand for answers does not give anyone time to collect their thoughts. I think we should now have a few hours of silence while the remaining Arbs collect their thoughts, pick themselves up and decide the best way forward for them - assuming, they see a way forward and don't opt for a mass resignation. We need some good answers and explanations - the remaining Arbs need time to plan and respond to this. So what about 12 hours of peace?  Giano  12:54, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

OK - 24. But is anybody going to take notice?  Giano  15:17, 16 March 2013 (UTC)
I'm concerned that 24 hours of ceasefire will kill the momentum that seems to be building in the community. You know as well as I do that editors are easily distracted by something shiny. The WordsmithTalk to me 16:18, 16 March 2013 (UTC)
Unfortunately encyclopedias aren't very shiny. Regards, — Moe Epsilon 17:06, 16 March 2013 (UTC)
You need a tax for posting on time-wasting pages like this. One free post per month, and beyond that you need 100 mainspace contribs per post. That would improve the signal-to-noise ratio considerably, and help get people to contribute to the encyclopaedia project. Or, at least, help moderate the way that the "professional Wikipedian class" drowns out the actual content editors. Guettarda (talk) 17:55, 16 March 2013 (UTC)
I am fond of this idea. Even 2:1 would be a fine start. – SJ + 06:19, 23 March 2013 (UTC)
A mass resignation sounds good to me, but I'm prepared to wait before once again demanding some answers. This isn't going away. Malleus Fatuorum 18:11, 16 March 2013 (UTC)
What is this? All I see is a mass of the usual discontents, together with a handful of others, beating up on the arbcomm. We've been there before. The arbcomm is far from perfect, and deserved the occasional bashing. But the issues that have gotten so a few noses so badly out of joint are, as best I can tell, almost entirely irrelevant to the project. We're not going to gut the Foundation policy on privacy here. So what's the goal? Bully a few arbs out of the project? Guettarda (talk) 18:20, 16 March 2013 (UTC)
We were hoping for a few hours of quiet contemplation, but if all you can do is come here and attack those who are unhappy with the situation, why don't you hand in your tools too because it's obvious that all you want to do is inflame a situation. As an admin, try setting an example!  Giano  18:27, 16 March 2013 (UTC)
I agree with Guettarda: there's no 'momentum' for change here: it's a small group of editors discussing their (mostly) long-held position and agreeing with one another in a forum which can't actually be used to drive any change. There's nothing wrong with that per-se (people are free to discuss ArbCom's actions, which is why this noticeboard exists), but this is all a bit silly. Nick-D (talk) 22:47, 16 March 2013 (UTC)
There's no momentum for change anywhere, that's why Wikipedia is dying. Malleus Fatuorum 00:34, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
"...Wikipedia is dying."[citation needed] Neutron (talk) 01:15, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
Have you ever heard the phrase the "oh shit slide"? Malleus Fatuorum 02:43, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
No, actually. But I think I do understand what your general opinion of the "health" of Wikipedia is. "Dying" is clear enough, it doesn't need synonyms to make it clearer. What it does need is facts to back it up, otherwise it doesn't mean much. Neutron (talk) 04:06, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
There's a presentation by Sue Gardner that you probably ought to read in that case. Malleus Fatuorum 05:40, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
Imminent death of Wikipedia predicted — Hex (❝?!❞) 10:16, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

Coren's resignation

Original announcement
  • Actually it's a small, vocal, trollish minority that can find no middle ground or compromise. If ArbCom reveals too much it's "outing" and if not enough, it's a "star chamber". The reality is that it's neither and that those that spend all their time criticizing ArbCom, should hang it up for a while and let things take their course. Arguing that idenfying is a sockpuppet is "outing" while arguing that identifying the real life identity of a user is not, is disingenuous and counterproductive. Only the echo chamber wants to hear it so go take it to the echo chamber sites. --DHeyward (talk) 02:06, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
  • I usually keep quiet, while watching these pages, because the discussions here cause a lot of drama and I find it pointless to comment on those discussion as it ultimately causes more drama. I find it disgustful what this community has become. We wonder why Wikipedia has been dying, why the OMG unmentionable site has written bad things about this site. This is why. ArbCom is something that requires a focused mind. If you lose focus, or have a weak mind, you get absorbed and taken over and start to focus on what's easiest, and not what's right. Coren outlines it exactly how it is. While we have good members on the committee, some just work to get re-eletcted, the corrupt so to speak. That's their fault. Our fault is that we have essentially a community that supposedly picks the trusted members of the community to become ArbCom. Instead we turned into a community that pick them as our scapegoats, and I find it absolutely repulsive. If I had decent change of being elected, and I most likely don't, I would probably run myself, if only to try and stop the ongoing quibbling between ArbCom and community. But alas, that probably won't happen and we won't realize our mistakes until Jimbo himself gives up on the project.—cyberpower ChatOnline 23:46, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Cyber's comment is worth reading and we would also all do well to keep in mind that Arbs are people too. AutomaticStrikeout (T • C) 23:52, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Personally, I find the statement from Coren to be rather unfair, but as they are departing words I cannot blame him for expressing his opinion. I mention above that some members of the committee would have been unhappy with my attitude being unhelpful. Well, Coren's description does match my attitude, I do give a damn what the community thinks. I consider the repercussions carefully and try to minimise the controversy surrounding events. I also care about the image that the committee portrays, as without the community's respect, the committee is nothing. Clearly, given what's happened so far this month, I've not done a great job.

    I'm sure it's not only me that Coren's statement is reflecting, if it was I would be roundly ignored, but I believe I'm the most vocal about it. The leap that I cannot accept is that I'm doing this to be re-elected. I have no interest in being re-elected at the end of my term and thats after completing just 10%. So, instead, I'll leave it for the community to decide. I've updated my recall criteria slightly and now willingly apply it to my role as an arbitrator. I see no reason why we cannot do the right thing AND keep the community on side. If that's playing politics, then so be it. Something needs to change round here and accountability is a good way to start. WormTT(talk) 23:59, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

    I personally don't believe that Coren's statement applied to you in particular. I genuinely believe you serve for ArbCom to do the right thing, and not play to just have the title of ArbCom on you. Your words are well said, though.—cyberpower ChatOnline 00:11, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
    If Coren equates worrying about the image of the committee and the amount of drama caused with pushing for re-election, I'm pretty certain he means me (maybe others too, but certainly me). I don't equate the two. WormTT(talk) 00:17, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
    But you're not pushing for re-election. You're trying to do what's best for the community. Or are you pushing for re-election.—cyberpower ChatOnline 00:20, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
    I don't think I have much to add, might be worth re-reading what I've written and what Coren actually said. I don't think any arbs are pushing for re-election, I believe we are all trying to do what's best for the community. If you're still confused, you know where my talk page is. WormTT(talk) 00:25, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
    On another matter, you said "something needs to change around here." What are you referring to specifically? Alanscottwalker (talk) 00:32, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
    I believe there is a chasm growing between Arbcom and the community and I'd like to see it closed. Pretty much everything else comes down to that. WormTT(talk) 00:40, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
    Part of the problem, I think, is that ArbCom is intervening in things of its own motion, and I'm not sure the community's perfectly on board with that.--Wehwalt (talk) 00:49, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
    Very much so. I personally feel that certain members of ArbCom have long abused using motions, including but not limited to using motions to act on things that they have little or no official business touching. Sven Manguard Wha? 04:45, 16 March 2013 (UTC)
    If there is a chasm, what is its cause? Does the community (whatever that is) not understand what the committee is supposed to do? Does the committee not understand what it is supposed to do? Does the committee not understand policy? Has the community not articulated policy? Is what the committee decides only "right," if it is popular with whomever shows up to protest? Alanscottwalker (talk) 00:54, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
    Well, to answer those questions I would need to start really pushing into my own personal opinions and it is really tangential to the subject of this thread. If you would like to discuss my thoughts further, then please do wander over to my talk page or drop me an email. I'll hopefully reply in the morning :) WormTT(talk) 01:14, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
    A lot of editors who would be fantastic Arbs don't run for reasons mostly related to the fact they don't have the time to do the "job" or really can't be bothered with the hassle. Or, they seriously don't want to identify themselves to the WMF because they are unconvinced about the security of such. So what we end up with, every year, is an ArbCom comprised of such excellent editors mixed with a collection of hat-collectors who don't really contribute much to Wikipedia who've been elected because there was nothing better (I'll just, yet again, link this) and proceed to show their utter cluelessness. I do feel sorry for the competent Arbs who must get utterly frustrated with the incompetence of their fellows. Perhaps we should have restrictions on Arbs (a certain number of articlespace edits, FAs, GAs, whatever) as we do on those voting for them? Black Kite (talk) 00:57, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
    And I'll add that, given the snark in that announcement, that I'm pretty sure if the community was given the choice of WormTT or Coren on ArbCom, that would be a pretty one-sided result. Black Kite (talk) 01:07, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
    First, you suggest the pool is too small and then you suggest a more restrictive pool. And none of those restrictions you propose address why you say the pool is too small. Regardless of the value of those restrictions, the community would be the one to adopt such metrics but they have not -- so that would be a community problem -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 01:15, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
    You're missing my point, I think. ArbCom should be a collection of people who are simply interested in making the encyclopedia the best it can be. At the moment, we never elect anyone that's not an admin (despite the fact that most of our best article writers are not admins, and don't wish to be) and we do elect people who have done little/nothing except politicise for the last year (see the link above, again). Surely we should be reversing that trend? That would make the pool of potential Arbs bigger, not smaller. Black Kite (talk) 01:23, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
    Oh. I don't see that suggestion above but would editors have more time than admins to do the job, be more interested in the hassle, or trust the WMF more? Alanscottwalker (talk) 01:30, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
    I'm sure many wouldn't. But we don't need a lot. A collection of article writers together with the competent-type Arbs that I mentioned above would see the ArbCom in safe handds, I think. Black Kite (talk) 01:36, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
    I gotta disagree here. They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and I think that is what gets us into all this drama. I don't doubt for a second that all the Arbs want to make the encyclopedia the best it can be, but that is largely beyond the remit of Arbcom. Arbcom is the supreme adjudicatory body on wiki, and there is in most cases no appeal (or at least no practical appeal) beyond them. As such, for things to run smoothly, we need to trust both in their judgement, and restraint. They need to consider both what is best for the encyclopedia in the immediate case, but also what impact that decision will have over the long term, both for future cases, and for Arbcom as an institution. That may mean letting someone get away with something in the interest of not setting a bad precedent. (and I know Arbcom does not officially follow stare decisis, but its still a precedent). Sure we want Arbs who care deeply about making the encyclopedia the best it can be, but they also need to understand conflict resolution, and be sophisticated enough to consider the consequences of their action to the long term institution that Arbcom represents. Monty845 13:56, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
    My own guess would be that editors simply do not want to be involved in administration to any great degree. Alanscottwalker (talk) 01:35, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
    The problem is, of course, that by editing articles one ends up getting on folks' bad sides, and thus becomes unelectable. It seems as though the only way to avoid having one's candidacy torpedoed by a small group of determined sociopaths is to spend all of one's online time campaigning. I think you're addressing the wrong problem. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 13:41, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
    Don't know. If your interests are volunteer research and writing, and contributing to consensus (where you can). That would just seem not to leave alot of time for other responsibilities. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 18:01, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
  • An informative statement by Coren. Thank you for your candor. The Committee needs to focus on doing what it is good at: hearing cases about intractable disputes where the community asks for its help. The Committee should refuse to handle matters where it can't help so well: dealing with things that ought to be dealt with by paid WMF staff, such as stalking, Oversight, severe harassment and private or confidential matters. These are issues for a legal team, not a bunch of volunteers. Frequently when the Committee does some spontaneous thing via it's mailing list, it ends up in hot water. It should just stop making that mistake. Jehochman Talk 01:08, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Today's actions are hardly indicative of a smoothly functioning committee. Which is odd because; controversial though some recent actions may have been, it does seem like they managed to make quite a few tough decisions in the past week or so, and to find compromise on the issue with Kevin. Then this weirdness with Mal/George pops up and a different picture emerges. Beeblebrox (talk) 01:10, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
What happened in January? Volunteer Marek 05:18, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
MF/GP was first reported to us then. NW (Talk) 05:39, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
Well you would have saved yourselves an awful lot of trouble if you had referred the reporter to the on-site checkuser request page. You have no one to blame but yourselves for this mess.  Giano  09:24, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
Ah, endogeneity.Volunteer Marek 05:45, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
Btw, as a complete aside, one thing annoying about the Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee page is that if you click on an old version of it, like say this one, from June 2011, it lists some members of the committee and tells you "The following list is accurate as of 06 June 2011:" - but it lists the current members of the committee, not the members of the committee as of June 2011. This is annoying if one wants to quickly look up who the members of the committee where in June 2011, or December 2012.Volunteer Marek 05:28, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
That's because the information is transcluded from a sub-page: Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Current members.  Roger Davies talk 05:39, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
Well, then the history is inaccurate. Anyway, is there a quick way to click and find out who the members of the committee were at time "t"? Volunteer Marek 05:45, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
Look up here: {{ArbitrationCommitteeChart}}. — ΛΧΣ21 05:47, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
Relevant to this is Bugzilla:34244 "Transclude contemporary template states to page histories?". If fulfilled, the version of the template that was current on 06 June 2011 would be shown when viewing the version of the transcluding page from that date. Thryduulf (talk) 23:11, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

Benedict XVI resigns, Beatrix of the Netherlands will be abdicating, Raul Castro of Cuba announced he will be retiring at the end of his current term & now Coren has resigned. 2013, is turning out to be an active year. GoodDay (talk) 15:22, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

This is very sad to see, but I understand Coren's frustration, largely because his stated reason for resigning was one of the "other reasons" that led to my own resignation, and one that I did raise with the Committee in private. Unfortunately, I was hoping he'd be one of the ones to lead the charge against such politicization, as I know he is (was) one of the Arbitrators who was firmly dedicated to doing the "Right Thing;" what he believed was best for the project and best upheld the project's core values and policies. I say "one of the Arbitrators" because Coren's comments certainly do not apply to everyone on the Committee. However, over the course of my term, I noticed a steadily increasing emphasis from several arbitrators on avoiding actions that would look bad for the Committee's image or otherwise cause undue amounts of drama. As I told the Committee prior to resignation, arbitrators are not elected to make the Committee look good or avoid drama; or, phrased a bit differently, the Committee exists to handle problems that will have long-term consequences. The community is perfectly able to deal with most short-term problems itself, however is largely (however not completely) incapable of considering the long-term impacts of a particular action. The Committee is here to handle situations that have no ideal short-term solution, situations where the best option is whatever offers the best long-term outcome. It is impossible in these situations to make any decision without angering some people or causing at least some drama. However, if arbitrators focus on these short-term concerns, they are blinding themselves to the long-term outcomes that they need to be reviewing. Again, not every arbitrator has engaged in such conduct, but it nonetheless is a concern, and one that the Committee needs to address quickly. I again express my hope that the community offers them more support in their actions; while the Committee certainly has some issues needing resolution (what organization doesn't?) they still need your trust and confidence as they attempt to resolve those issues.
Coren, thank you for your service on the Committee, and I wish you the best of luck in your future endeavors. Hersfold (t/a/c) 16:37, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
  • That's one option - I would support: but I still think this individual case needs to be explored further. Who sent the email? What exactly did it allege? Who supported the secret checkuser d perfomred it rather than referring to the conventional public checkuser request? Someone needs to lose their checkuser tool - a simple resignation is not enough to quell this.  Giano  17:37, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Arbitration Committee 3, from about a year ago, is an interesting read on this subject. It deals with some of the same issues about sockpuppetry and secrecy as have been raised here. Mark Arsten (talk) 18:33, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

Arbcom should probably stick to full arbcom cases. Those issues that they handle through motions should be probably handled by someone else. Supreme arbitration body trying to quickly fix issues (Kevin was desysoped in less than 24 hours), is inevitably going to lead to significant fuckups that bring whole body's prestige down rapidly. Now we have case of checkuser usage on questionable grounds. This could be solid reason for starting a full arbcom case, but idea of arbcom case about arbcom's own potential fuckup is quite silly, who is going to "arbitrate" there?--Staberinde (talk) 18:38, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

Actually it's all rather predictable and symptomatic of a project that has outgrown its original governance/direction idea and is now spawning multiple shadow bureaucracies. The whole system needs to be examined and overhauled, not just ArbCom. They're just a symptom of the larger problem. Intothatdarkness 21:23, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

"Shadow bureaucracies" is an awfully fancy term for cabals. They're hardly new. ;-) I think Wehwalt and Staberinde are both hitting it above in their comments:
  • (a) ArbCom should get involved when the community asks it to (not when it feels it has to); and
  • (b) ArbCom should be deliberative and contemplative (more Newyorkbrad-y) and less rash (emergency level II procedures, section B red team deploy gogogogo!). --MZMcBride (talk) 05:32, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

Given what has been said above, and taking recent events into account, I don't believe an RFC on the role of Arbcom will be anything more than a temporary Band-Aid for a problem that has been growing and festering for years. The only way to fix the situation properly (that i can see) is something like a Constitutional convention to formalize the way the Committee operates, what falls within its jurisdiction, what it can do and what it must not do. And it needs to be binding. Currently, we have Wikipedia:Arbitration/Policy, in which any amendments must first be approved by the Committee before the community can vote on them. When the community has lost confidence in the Committee itself, this method is not sufficient. Hell, the Committee doesn't even follow it especially closely. It says "The arbitration process is not a vehicle for creating new policy by fiat" which is laughable. Even prior to the Kevin situation, Arbcom decisions have been inserted into policy going back at least to the Rachel Marsden decision in 2006, possibly earlier (that's just the earliest one I remember). What the community needs to do is take a good hard look at the role of arbitrators, and figure out whether we want them to be able to vote themselves more power by fiat. The WordsmithTalk to me 06:32, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

I suggest to you, and to many others who have written on this page, that what would make more sense is some sort of constitutional convention to develop a group that will handle matters that are outside of Arbcom's scope, so that there is no pressure on Arbcom to take on tasks that nobody else will do currently. Whatever you come up with, it should not have multiple layers of "oversight". And you should also give some thought to the qualities you would look for in potential members of such a group, and assess whether or not those qualities (combined with personal interest) exist within the community. Everyone contributing to this project in any way is only human. Risker (talk) 06:46, 16 March 2013 (UTC)
That is indeed one possibility. The Committee currently performs functions that are legislative, executive and judicial. They make policy, interpret policy and enforce policy. It might be a good idea to try to separate some of these functions. However, if the community does want to go this route, it is worth noting that there is a risk of making the existing bureaucracy even more massive and unwieldy. In addition, it has been argued that it is hard to get enough quality candidates for Arbcom and various functionary elections as it is (most people who have the good judgment to be an outstanding arbitrator also have the good judgment to stay far far away from the position). With more positions on more committees available, we run the risk of not getting any better candidates and then still being in the same position we are now. I'm not saying that your suggestion won't work, but there are additional things to consider. I'm curious what the community will want to do, if anything. The WordsmithTalk to me 07:11, 16 March 2013 (UTC)
Common sense might be a good start. As might opening up Wikipedia's governance to those others than administrators. This daft notion that administrators are more trusted than regular editors, and that arbitrators are even more trusted than them is just puke-making. I, for instance, trust very few of you, and the reasons for my distrust have been amply demonstrated in the past. You can't even keep your supposedly confidential email list private. Malleus Fatuorum 07:01, 16 March 2013 (UTC)
Yes, every level of Wikipedia governance should be open to non-admins, especially major content contributors. Given the absurdity that RFA has become in recent years, it should be no surprise that there are many excellent editors who are not masochistic enough to put themselves through that, or otherwise have no interest in the tools. The WordsmithTalk to me 07:11, 16 March 2013 (UTC)
You need to be careful Wordsmith, as I'm sure that even as we speak there's an email (allegedly) winging its way towards ArbCom. Your only hope for salvation is that we haven't edited too many of the same articles. But as I've edited so many I think it could easily be proved that you're one of my sockpuppets, or I'm one of yours. . Malleus Fatuorum 08:20, 16 March 2013 (UTC)
You would also have to have him move into your basement or bedroom. --DHeyward (talk) 12:33, 16 March 2013 (UTC)
What Malleus and I do in his bedroom is none of your business. The WordsmithTalk to me 16:12, 16 March 2013 (UTC)
Au contraire. If it's editing Wikipedia in his bedroom from the same IP on the same topic, the community can treat you as a single editor. WP:SHARE and supporting WP::SOCK policies are clear. Edit different topics and avoid mutual support and don't walk and quack like a sockpuppet duck. No one cares what you do when you are not editing wikipedia. MF and George can talk to themselves all they want. --DHeyward (talk) 17:15, 16 March 2013 (UTC)
Really? Have you not heard of this wonderful new invention called WiFi? It's really good, you should try it. Malleus Fatuorum 17:57, 16 March 2013 (UTC)
As a point of information, non-admins can become functionaries. The committee has always been keen on this; the community less so. bahamut0013 was a non-admin appointed to AUSC ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Bahamut0013/Archive_12#Congratulations he got the mop after the appointment). The CU and OS toolkits were tweaked accordingly.  Roger Davies talk 09:22, 16 March 2013 (UTC)
On an AUSC level that might be true, but for regular CU/OS use this would not be practical. Non-admin CUs would not have the ability to block, and other CUs would have to step in and do the blocking. Non-admin OSers would not be able to delete revisions, and considering that many OS requests are fulfilled with revision deletion, this would be a problem as well. --Rschen7754 09:35, 16 March 2013 (UTC)
(edit conflict) With all this talk about cabals and oversight and whatnot, I think that it would be an excellent time to point out that every currently sitting ArbCom member was asked during the election about whether or not discussions that do not directly concern private information should take place publicly. Several successful candidates seemed averse to the idea for no better reason than that email would be more convenient. Others were concerned that ArbCom wouldn't be able to discuss things as robustly/openly if people were watching, or that ArbCom's voice might get drowned out. All in all, the vast majority of reasons for opposing moving much more of the conversation on-Wiki boiled down to a "but it would be easier for us if we didn't", which is a fantastically inadequate excuse. I think that the candidates should feel lucky that the number of legitimately qualified applicants is so low that they can get away with that kind of statement. The fact of the matter is that until ArbCom stops clinging to secrecy the way Linus clings to his blanket, there is going to always be a massive trust deficit. Setting up new bodies and debating how much people's personal issues effect governance isn't going to fix anything. Kill off the unnecessary secrecy and a lot of the trust problem will go away. Sven Manguard Wha? 07:16, 16 March 2013 (UTC)
The mailing list leaks. Sometimes slowly, sometimes all at once. The ArbCom would be much better off conducting all business in public where they can be scrutinized by the people they report to (us). There does not need to be so much drama and intrigue. The cure is to do things in the open. If they propose an idea in the open, we can comment and convince them not to make mistakes. As for things that need to be cofidential, I suggest that ArbCom simply refuse to handle those matters. Foist them off on WMF's legal department. Lawyers are properly trained to handle confidential matters; our Arbitrators are not. Jehochman Talk 12:46, 16 March 2013 (UTC)
That would work in some cases, or even in most cases, but not in all cases. ArbCom shouldn't be touching complaints of threatened physical harm or pedos stalking children, both things that I know ArbCom has handled in the past, because the formal legal process covers those things. However things like outing or cleanstarts, where there is no formal legal coverage but there is a strong privacy component, do need secrecy. However there is no reason why ban appeals can't be made public, or deliberations on cases, or the selection process for advanced permissions, etc. Sven Manguard Wha? 18:50, 16 March 2013 (UTC)
A fine-grained transparency policy is long overdue.
Another thing that ArbCom and clerks could to do improve their standing would be for them to be less pompous. I'm serious. Which of the following sounds more friendly?

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.

For the Arbitration Committee,
Somebody 19:51, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

or

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.

Somebody (Arbitrator) 19:51, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

Using pseudo-legalistic language and phrasing does arbitrators no favors at all. Making pronouncements in the style of a Supreme Court judge only serves to make it look as if you're trying to put yourselves on a podium above the community. — Hex (❝?!❞) 19:51, 16 March 2013 (UTC)
I've never seen anyone sign statements with "(Arbitrator)". That is not any more 'friendly' than using the phrase "For the Arbitration Committee". The latter phrase tends to be used when publishing something on behalf of the committee (i.e. when a formal vote has taken place), which is why I used it recently. There is also an element of just copying the style from previous announcements to be consistent. I would almost only ever use that style on this noticeboard and not anywhere else. I deliberately avoided that style when leaving notices on user talk pages, and merely signed the talk page notes as I would at any other time. I try to be informal most times, but there are times when you are asked about certain things when you do have to be formal to avoid confusion. Carcharoth (talk) 20:58, 16 March 2013 (UTC)
As for transparency, the ArbCom should default to conducting business in public, and only handle things privately when the community agrees to it. I would agree that matters related to outing could be handled by the functionaries mailing list, and if appealed to ArbCom, handled on the ArbCom mailing list. Even then the situation should be described (anonymously) to the public so that the outcome is not a total surprise. These situations should be very limited. I do not like that ordinary cases are discussed on the mailing list or that ArbCom is took upon on itself to handle a very routine sock puppetry case. If Malleus was socking, the accusation could have been filed at WP:SPI and handled normally. How dare you all treat him as some sort of special editor. He should be treated just like the rest of us. I see no reason that ban appeals can't be disclosed to the public. Banned editors may have to email because they can't edit, but that email could be posted, comments received, and action discussed. We need to have more openness. Jehochman Talk 23:34, 16 March 2013 (UTC)
And why didn't you do any of this when you sat on the committee. I remember you being OK with arbcom business being conducted in private. --Guerillero | My Talk 01:36, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

Hex, if you sign something "(Arbitrator)", it does not make it clear that the editor is saying something that's the opinion of the committee, rather than the opinion of that Arbitrator. Can you come up with a form of words that's neither pompous nor ambiguous? --Dweller (talk) 13:31, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

Hrm, well. It depends on context, doesn't it? The noticeboard is only for official posts, so anyone placing text there should be doing on an official basis. There could be a bit of window-dressing via a template, a box with a title ("Arbitration Clarification", and so on). It's important, as I see it, to maintain a straightforward and unfussy tone when you're communicating with people that are in the middle of a dispute. We're not in a court of law here, so the further we get from "Signed, sealed and delivered by my hand on this the Eighteenth of March the year Two Thousand and Thirteen and entered into the record thereunto"-style language, the better. There are other signifiers available to us. — Hex (❝?!❞) 13:50, 18 March 2013 (UTC)
Dweller asked you to give an example of a less pompous way of expressing it. All you've done is come up with an example of a more pompous one. I'm sure if you can suggest a better alternative people will be willing to consider it, but if you're just going to criticize without suggesting a solution then people are less likely to change. SpitfireTally-ho! 14:35, 18 March 2013 (UTC)
Your critical reading skills evidently need a bit of polishing, old bean. Back to the bally drawing board and all that, eh? Pip pip. — Hex (❝?!❞) 14:45, 18 March 2013 (UTC)
That is extraordinarily rude, Hex; comment on the information, not the individual, and I suggest you consider striking it. As for a reality check, anything that requires the use of a template is by definition a more complex proess. Further, arbitrators and arbitration clerks also participate in the project in their personal capacities. Thus, it is important for them to make clear when they are acting on behalf of the committee, and when they are acting in their personal capacity. Risker (talk) 14:57, 18 March 2013 (UTC)
anything that requires the use of a template is by definition a more complex process If the prospect of putting words in a box is the complex part, then I suspect that this organization has far more deep-rooted problems to address. — Hex (❝?!❞) 15:03, 18 March 2013 (UTC)
On that, templates are a terribly difficult concept for some people to get. I include it in my adoption course and it's consistently something that people struggle with. I've spoken to multiple people who press the edit button but don't make a change because the first thing they see is an infobox. You should know that wiki-code is one of the most deep-rooted issues with Wikipedia and a barrier for many, hence the development of a WYSIWYG editor - templates exemplify everything that is difficult about editing. You may get it, I may get it, don't assume everyone does. As Risker says, adding templates adds complexity. WormTT(talk) 15:09, 18 March 2013 (UTC)
Oh, I agree entirely. Wiki markup is a massive impediment to new editors. But we're talking about arbitrators and arbitration messages here, not the general issue of templating. — Hex (❝?!❞) 15:47, 18 March 2013 (UTC)
(edit conflict) No need to be flippant. I actually agree with you that a lot of the language currently used by ArbCom tends to be superfluously pompous. But you haven't really suggested any specific improvements, or found a better way of expressing "For the Arbitration Committee", except vaguely proposing a template of some nature with a fluffy sounding title. SpitfireTally-ho! 15:07, 18 March 2013 (UTC)
(It was the signature more than anything else.) Well, being able to point out an issue doesn't require also being able to offer a solution. But I can see that we're on the same wavelength, and that's good. — Hex (❝?!❞) 15:47, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

I think someone speaking for Arbcom could be more personal and less pompous simply by saying things explicitly and making a little effort to put things nicely:

Hi, Sanctioned Editor, I am afraid I have bad news for you from the Arbitration Committee. We have collectively decided to ban you until the cows come home or something unexpected happens. Here is the text of the decision:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.

Somebody 19:51, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

As arbitrators are (theoretically) elected for their social qualities, this shouldn't be so hard for them. Hans Adler 15:19, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

I think that might have been a compliment, Hans, but I'm not sure there's any correlation between being elected to Arbcom and having exemplary social skills. I'm afraid that, speaking personally, I'd find the wording you're suggesting is far more insulting than something more straightforward; it implies a personal relationship, and distances the writer from the decision even more so than the current standard phrasing. Having said that, the softening of wording of some of the more common user templates by the Editor Engagement team reportedly had statistically significant improvement in editor retention, so examining their findings might inform the committee on some opportunities for changing some of its standard wording. On the third hand, most of the time the committee is sanctioning the user; I'm not sure it's a bad thing to sound stern when doing so. Risker (talk) 15:28, 18 March 2013 (UTC)
Yes, I meant the part about social skills in a positive way, and in fact if we are not supposed to elect arbitrators according to perceived chances that they can resolve conflicts fairly and efficiently, then I confess I'm a bit puzzled. I would count these as social skills.
Your point about the distancing surprised me, but it makes sense. How about this:

Hi, Sanctioned Editor, I got the short straw and have to notify you of the Arbitration Committee's decision:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.

Somebody 19:51, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

I think this could even work as a standard text for notification of sanctioned editors. In other cases, something more neutral might be better. Hans Adler 16:09, 18 March 2013 (UTC)
Don't you think this perhaps all a bit too flippant and could easily cause offence? These things need a degree of neutrality and gravitas (which is NOT the same as pomposity) simply to minimise the prospect that they'll be taken the wrong way. I'm not too keen on the legalese that sometimes creeps in but often it's the most concise way of saying something.  Roger Davies talk 17:27, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

I'm finding this interesting, as I used to sign emails from the Ombudsmen in the same way. What do others think of this suggested format?

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.

Somebody (On behalf of the Arbitration Committee) 19:51, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

Views/comments welcome. --Dweller (talk) 15:39, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

The only times I use "For the Arbitration Committee" in email (and then far from always) is if I'm cold-contacting someone via "Email this user". And then only because there's a reasonable chance they don't know who I am or that it's in an official capacity. Most of the time, I'll just sign Roger or Roger Davies. It's about speed of communication, I suppose.  Roger Davies talk 17:27, 18 March 2013 (UTC)


ArbCom is an inherently political body, as the members are elected. That being the case, one has to address the inherent problems associated with that (some of which made Coren resign). The solution is to elect political parties with well defined agendas. At least, almost every democracy (except Uganda, I think) uses such a system. Count Iblis (talk) 16:55, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

Narrowing ArbCom's focus

Related reading: User:AGK/Purpose of ArbCom and User talk:AGK/Purpose of ArbCom. --MZMcBride (talk) 22:00, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

Term limits/rights restrictions?

Granted I may be talking out of turn here, what with my measly edit count, but I really like/use Wikipedia a lot; and I must also admit an unhealthy “from the sidelines” fascination with all the politics found in boards like this one, ANI, BLPN, RFA, etc. . (My homepage is set to open to the ANI board when I get online, for instance.) So I have been following all this rather closely, and I have two questions/suggestions:

  1. Has a single term limit been considered for ARBCOM members?
  2. What about term/rights limits for Admins, Check users, Stewards, etc.?

I don’t have so much of a problem with all the extra rights assigned to certain users, as I do with that they are often bundled together, and also the whole “once an admin, always an admin (unless you are desyesopped)” mentality. No. You should be given the privilege to have the “power” above a “regular” editor, ONCE, and for a designated amount of time. Once that time has passed, you can display a barnstar on your page, or whatever, reminiscing of your previously elevated status, but then must go back to contributing just like everyone else, and let others have a turn. This is just a suggestion. Ditch ∝ 03:05, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

You may not have seen Wikipedia:Perennial proposals. Arbcom members have to be voted each time if they want a second term. It is a fearly involved learning curve and historical knowledge is a Very Good Thing. That said, I am benefitting from some time away....Casliber (talk · contribs) 03:31, 18 March 2013 (UTC)
I am familiar with that page...can you be more specific to the section you are referring to? "...have to be voted in each time" Response: Unless that wasn't an option...one and done, that's what I'm saying. Ditch ∝ 03:57, 18 March 2013 (UTC)
I agree there should be a set term for admins, as there is for arbitrators. As for term LIMITS for arbitrators (especially a one-term limit), why? The community is capable of deciding whether to re-elect someone or not. Why take away that option? Neutron (talk) 04:27, 18 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Hi Ditch - it is good to see a new face on this page. I'm actually quite shocked to hear that you start your usual Wikipedia experience on ANI; I don't even read it on a regular basis, but to each his own. I do agree with Casliber that since arbitrators must go through a community election on a regular basis, it's fairly difficult to justify a term limit; our recently resigned member Coren ran four times and was elected on three occasions, for example, and the community made its decision each time. On the other hand, I do think that the community may be overloading the committee with a large number of people from a very small group (i.e., current and former arbitrators, functionaries, and admins who work extensively in arbitration enforcement - well under 100 people) while shutting out candidates who don't come from these groups; in the last two elections, only one of 15 elected arbitrators did not fall into that small group. I think that Arbcom can benefit from a more diverse range of voices; in the past, its diversity was one of its greatest strengths, but I don't think it could be called diverse today. The decisions on who gets elected aren't made by Arbcom, though; they're made by the community. Risker (talk) 05:13, 18 March 2013 (UTC)
    The elections have been heavily influenced in the past by a few guide writers who get their guides promoted on the arbitration election pages. If this bit of corruption were eliminated, the elections might be more welcoming to a more diverse set of candidates. The election pages should not elevate the opinions of a select few to higher visibility. Jehochman Talk 11:44, 18 March 2013 (UTC)
    When in doubt, reduce the amount of information available to the editors? I think not. Nor do I have any reason to suspect such opinions are "corrupt" in any way. And since anyone can create a guide, it is not a matter of a "select few" that I can see. IIRC, I supported proportional representation for the committee in past discussions - I agree that diversity of opinions is essential. But eliminating guides will not help that cause. Collect (talk) 12:19, 18 March 2013 (UTC)
The reason why I think a single term approach for ARBs might be beneficial is because the motivation for making decisions, especially controversial ones, could be influenced by how it will effect one's chances for re-election, rather than the overall good of the project. Those two motivations are often at odds. Arbcom does not (or should not) have a set of constituents to please. They are the Supreme Court of en.wiki (except they are elected, rather than appointed). They are tasked and trusted through the election process to be the ones to make tough, often unpopular, choices, where all else has failed. But if an Arb feels he/she needs to maintain popularity in order to be re-elected in the future, perhaps they would avoid making unpopular decisions,or would tip-toe around controversial ones, rather than taking bold and decisive action beneficial to the project. I see a conflict of interest. Ditch ∝ 13:30, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

Two things I often bear in mind:

One: it is easier to be voted in as a member of the Arbitration Committee than it is any other elected position on Wikipedia - as such it is difficult to think of Committee members as some kind of elite. Essentially, the Committee is composed of the least offensive of the small bunch of people who nominated themselves. Note the 2010 results, where there were 18 eligible nominations, and 12 of those were elected (66%), 3 with less than 60% of the vote. It is difficult to become an admin with less than 70% of the vote, and in that same year (2010) there were 231 RfAs, of which 75 were successful (32%). There were 6 nominations for bureaucrat in 2010, with 3 being elected (50%). Two candidates were rejected even though gaining over 100 votes each. There are some WikiProjects which have their own process of appointing directors or administrators which may not have democratic elections, and which may not have an established process of removing a director.
Two: the Committee is one of the few positions which does have fixed, limited terms. Difficult to see Committee members holding lasting power when compared to some other positions.

The Committee has fewer powers and less influence than some users think. And there has been a gradual move over the years to limit what power and influence it does have. The power it should retain - and only by community assent - is that Committee decisions should not be reversed or undermined unless by the Committee itself. A direct challenge through appropriate channels such as Clarification Requests is both appropriate and vital. But no user should either directly (by unilateral action) or indirectly (by agitating others to inappropriate action) subvert the Committee, otherwise we might as well close ArbCom down. Its purpose is to serve as final arbiter in disputes. That doesn't mean the decision will always be the right one. But it does mean an intractable and disruptive dispute is ended. Subverting the decision through inappropriate channels simply reactivates the dispute. So we need to preserve that privilege. But other privileges can and should be challenged and questioned. I am strongly in favour of splitting off various aspects of the Committee's roles into discrete units.

Other than appeals by ArbCom banned users, I do not see the value of ArbCom listening to block appeals. I think having a group of users to reconsider appeals that have already been rejected by the community, or where the user's talkpage is blocked, would be useful.

Emergency desysopping decisions could be handled by the 'crats far better than by ArbCom. The 'crats are closer to the admin process, have the power to do it themselves, and are elected via a more stringent process than the Committee.

Oversighting, privacy, legal and sexual matters, threats, etc, should be WMF concerns, and it really is time that is taken on board by the WMF and not left to the volunteers.

I'd like the Committee to deal solely with disputes. And to do that openly on Wikipedia, with no email list or ArbCom Wiki to retreat to. To enable that to happen, I'd like to see a stronger enforcement on removing users who hassle and cloud the process with insults and inappropriate remarks to participants including Committee members. Criticism is vital. Insults are not. Insults are simply counter-productive. Abusing ArbCom for being secretive is a sure way of keeping it secretive. SilkTork ✔Tea time 15:44, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

I'd like to comment on your point about the WMF taking up the more sensitive occurrences, such as oversight, sexual matters, threats etc. I've pondered this myself, and I wonder what others think about this idea? Would you (or others) have a problem with simply "taking the word" of WMF representatives if something was acted upon (oversighted, deleted, etc.)? I remember in the early days, Jimbo would sometimes act unilaterally in this way, but it became rather unpopular, and he ultimately handed these concerns over to the community, which is one reason we have the system we do now. Ditch ∝ 17:14, 18 March 2013 (UTC) Sorry, I kind of stepped on Roger's post below...not sure why there wasn't an ec.
Oversighting, privacy, legal and sexual matters, threats, etc, should be WMF concerns - Yes, they should and I'd be delighted if the WMF took these over. I have made overtures but, if anything, their position against doing do has hardened rather than softened over the years. The WMF wishes to be the provider of technical infrastructure, with the component projects operating along the lines laid out in the Terms of Use.  Roger Davies talk 17:13, 18 March 2013 (UTC)
Regarding the WMF hardening their position against this: It is true that when one assumes the role of a monitor, one also assumes liability if something goes wrong on your watch. The smart move, from a legal standpoint, is to do nothing. This is why hotels and health clubs often do not have security cameras in their pool areas. Not for privacy concerns, but because if someone were to drown, an argument could be made by a lawyer that someone should have been watching (not saying it makes sense, but this is lawyers we're talking about...it's what they do.) The solution? Remove the camera; remove reduce the potential liability. Ditch ∝ 17:30, 18 March 2013 (UTC)
It makes sense from a legal perspective not to get involved at all, yes. But I wish arbcom would just declare itself not responsible on these matters, either, and force the WMF to act. The WMF is essentially dictating (quite sensible) rules about essential stuff (copyright, harassment, etc.) while simultaneously telling us that they're not going to act on these rules themselves, ever. It makes sense from a legal standpoint. From a non-legal standpoint, it's just bizarre. --Conti|✉ 20:28, 18 March 2013 (UTC)
What makes you think it would force the WMF to act? And what about the people who get hurt in the interim?  Roger Davies talk 20:33, 18 March 2013 (UTC)
I was only half serious, since I see no real way to do this without hurting people in the interim, as you say. But I don't see the WMF just standing there and watching, either. It's a weird situation. --Conti|✉ 20:45, 18 March 2013 (UTC)
I very much agree with what SilkTork said about what roles the Committee should give up. As for the WMF's resistance, that's unfortunate and might be worth some community-based requests for reevaluation. In particular, there are things that ArbCom has had to do by default, that really ought to be handled by attorneys, and WMF should realize that, in the long term, it's every bit as much in WMF's best interests as it is in the best interests of the editing community (and shouldn't those interests be the same, anyway?) to have those things handled professionally by WMF Counsel, as opposed to by volunteer editors. To Ditch's question, I think (hope) the community would accept decisions by Counsel in ways we might not automatically accept decisions by other WMF employees. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:29, 18 March 2013 (UTC)
I agree personally, but for the sake of continuing down the road of this discussion, when you start accepting WMF acting unilaterally in some situations, at what point to we lose the Wiki- in Wikipedia? I mean, yes, we are here with the purpose to build an encyclopedia...but am I crazy to think that the foundation of the Project was basically one big social experiment? Ditch ∝ 23:39, 18 March 2013 (UTC)
As long as whole issue is discussed quietly in private, WMF can simply bury their head in sand and pretend that problem doesn't exist. On other hand, if community publicly gives them a simple deadline for taking over handling of such issues, they will have to accept it or they will have potentially massive PR disaster at their hands. I am sure Sue Gardner is thrilled about possibility of having to start explaining on interviews, why WMF with its 100+ employees and 40+ million dollar budget, has left child protection issues on small group of overworked volunteers who never signed up for this and are only doing it because nobody else does.--Staberinde (talk) 18:11, 19 March 2013 (UTC)
Re Silktork's comparison of percentage support requirements for RFA, Crat and Arbcom, the percentage is not a meaningful comparison, partly because the voter criteria can be very different. There have been many RFAs which I've supported because I thought the candidate was ready to be an admin but where I wouldn't have supported the same candidate if they'd been standing for Crat or Arbcom. There have also been candidates that I've voted against for Arbcom but who I'd have been happy to see as, or continue as admins. Remember that in an RFA we are deciding if that particular candidate is ready to be an admin, in Arbcom elections we are deciding which of a group of candidates should get a limited number of posts on Arbcom. Some people will have sussed that if there are a couple of candidates who you strongly support then the most effective way to vote in Arbcom elections is to only support the candidates who you strongly support and to oppose the rest, I don't know how many people follow that voting tactic, but it obviously depresses average support levels. As for Jehochman's assertion that voterguides are somehow corrupt, I did a voter guide in 2010 and dispute that it was in any way corrupt, I didn't ask any of the candidates for any sort of reward for my endorsement and no candidate approached me with any offer of inducement to improve their standing in my voter guide. I'm familiar with a number of other editors who have written guides over the years and don't believe that any of the guide writers who I've come to know well were corrupt, as for the guide writer who I don't know, I'm inclined to AGF unless and until someone produces evidence of actual corruption. May I suggest that Jehochman either retract that allegation or provide evidence of corrupt practices. ϢereSpielChequers 23:55, 18 March 2013 (UTC)
Your point is well-taken that there are multiple differences between ArbCom and other votes, and these differences make comparison of minimum supports suspect. Regarding voter guides, I did not interpret Jehochman's comment re corruption as suggesting that all, or even any of the guide writers were corrupt, but that the practice of a small group of editors writing guides might lead to groupthink, even if not coordinated. I personally find the guides helpful, understand the potential for groupthink, so would be open to discussion on the issue. If my supposition is correct, wish Jehochman had used a less loaded term than "corrupt". If meant literally about specific individuals, as opposed to an unfortunate by-product of the process, it should either be supported with evidence or retracted.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 14:50, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

break

  • The call for lawyers to command the project is unimpressive. Not the least because, it's rather easy to call for something that someone else has to pay (quite a bit) for. User's should voluntarily follow the terms of use, as that is what they agree to, and that is the first line of enforcement. Sometimes they do not, so in order to function, we have voluntary policy and procedure to have that happen. Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:36, 19 March 2013 (UTC)
I'm not sure if it's my fault, for having expressed the opinion that WMF Counsel should do more, that editors think there's a proposal here to "start accepting WMF acting unilaterally" (Ditch) or to have "lawyers to command the project" (Alanscottwalker), but those things were not my intent. I totally agree that there is no conceivable reason for Counsel to set policies about editing, etc. What I was trying to talk about was the situations where someone contacts the ArbCom mailing list about an editor who is underage and where there are sensitive issues, or where someone contacts the list about alleged violations of the meta privacy policy, stuff like that. Those things have nothing to do with arbitration, and have just fallen to ArbCom by default. Those things are better suited to being handled by professionals than by volunteers.
If WMF is resisting such roles, perhaps a better approach than having ArbCom ask them privately (or giving them a deadline and an ultimatum) would be for the community to have a policy RfC, once there is a well thought out proposal for what WMF should or should not do. I think that broad based community support would be more difficult for WMF to brush off. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:21, 19 March 2013 (UTC)
Those things do have to do with arbitration. Arbcom does not set policies regarding editing either, but they are the only ones empowered to make binding decisions regarding conduct. Either the Pedia takes control over doing most of it themselves on a voluntary basis (through something like Arbcom), or the WMF pays someone to do it, without elections, consensus conduct policy, etc. The TOU is the floor, of course, as that has been the practice. Alanscottwalker (talk) 22:38, 19 March 2013 (UTC)
I disagree. Those things have to do with what ArbCom has historically done, but they rarely are outgrowths of requests for arbitration. I'd really like to see ArbCom focus solely on things that do arise from such requests for arbitration, where the community says there is a conflict that the community has been unable to resolve. Someone e-mailing ArbCom about a supposed underage editor, as in the leaked e-mails a year or so ago, is an entirely different situation. Many of the other ArbCom tasks should be delegated to other parts of the community (for example: checkusers or OTRS), but here I am talking about certain things that have nothing to do with resolving intractable community conflicts, but where people e-mail ArbCom because it's become the default "private" e-mail contact. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:53, 19 March 2013 (UTC)
(E/C) The community is not able to resolve conflicts regarding the underage editor, or private personal information, etc., so that falls within your criteria of intractable things the community cannot resolve. Alanscottwalker (talk) 23:09, 19 March 2013 (UTC)
No, it really doesn't, unless one simply plays with words. The reason that the community cannot solve those things is because the community does not see private correspondence, not because the community tried to deal with it and failed. ArbCom shouldn't be the only group of volunteers that can be contacted confidentially. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:14, 19 March 2013 (UTC)
The community cannot see "those things;" it cannot do the technical investigations. The community cannot put those things together and discuss them. What is the point of having multiple groups getting "confidential" information? It only makes it less confidential. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 23:24, 19 March 2013 (UTC)
Clearly, I don't mean that there should be some sort of open-wiki discussion of private material. I'm talking about a different group than ArbCom dealing with it, per below. If it's a single "different group", then there is no loss of confidentiality (in contrast to sending it to multiple groups, which I'm not advocating). And the point, ultimately, is having a less overburdened ArbCom, as well as having a more focused role for them, per the perennial complaints of them being both the prosecutors and the jury. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:44, 19 March 2013 (UTC)
  • TLDR version: Don't hold your breath waiting for the WMF to swoop in and take over this stuff.
  • Long version These issues actually came up rather recently on the functionaries mailing list. What is expected in cases where it is believed that an actual child predator is active on WP is that anyone who has gathered evidence of such is asked to submit it to the WMF, who are more than willing to take action on it, up to and including contacting the relevant authorities. Other less urgent matters relating to privacy are handled by the functionaries and/or individual arbs. This is why we must all identify ourselves to the foundation and undergo a vetting process to insure we understand and will uphold the Foundation's privacy policy. If you want the WMF more involved than that you are going to need to find a lot of money to facilitate it.
A site like Facebook has something like 300 paid full time staff who work such issues 24/7. We have exactly two WMF staff who deal with privacy and child protection issues not only on WP but across all WMF projects. They don't have the time to do the legwork, and it's already too late to ask the FDC to deal with it this year, funding proposals were due some time ago and already in the review phase over at Meta.
So realistically nothing of the sort is going to happen for at least a year, and even then it would have to be a formal proposal submitted through proper channels at the foundation level, not just a local discussion here. As a non-profit foundation the WMF is not free to just spend donations willy-nilly on a whim, there is a process, and it is fairly complicated. If somebody actually wanted to see this happen they should probably start working on it now if they want to determine how many staff it would take, what their pay would be, where they would work out of, etc, in time to even submit a proposal for next year.
Until then you'll have to accept that it is in fact a team of unpaid volunteers that do this job, and generally do it so quietly and efficiently that nobody even notices. Suppressions are going on all day, every day, and I would estimate that less than 1% of it is even noticed by the community, let alone problematic. Beeblebrox (talk) 23:05, 19 March 2013 (UTC)
That was very informative, thanks. In that case, I'll backtrack from what I said about needing professionals. But I still think that ArbCom are over-tasked. So who else is there in the volunteer community? Oversighters? OTRS? --Tryptofish (talk) 23:11, 19 March 2013 (UTC)
Yep, and I just checked, right at this moment there are 13 oversighters listed as currently online at OTRS, and only two items in the queue. And for the record the obversight OTRS queue is always the first place you should go with any priovacy related issue. We are usually able to handle it ourselves but we do sometimes kick things up to the committee or even the legal department if we don't think we can handle it. Beeblebrox (talk) 23:16, 19 March 2013 (UTC)
OK then, we still know from things that some Arbs have said, and from what some of us saw in the leaked e-mails, that stuff that ought to be handled by the oversight OTRS queue ends up going instead to the ArbCom mailing list. Maybe the "first place you should go" needs to be better enforced, perhaps simply by ArbCom forwarding some e-mails instead of feeling that they have to deal with them tehmselves. And, seeing that you do sometimes send things to legal, it's unclear why ArbCom has such a hard time doing so. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:24, 19 March 2013 (UTC)
Seriously, Tryptofish, if you wanted to have a major impact on our burden, coming up with a fair community process that would be the last resort for non-arbcom-related block/ban reviews would be the one. Most of the rest of this stuff takes very little time; I doubt the committee as a whole spent more than 30 hours on "child protection" issues last year, and a lot of the work was simply receiving reports of blocks done by administrators and logging them on the arbwiki. Oversight requests that don't get immediately actioned already go to the oversighters, OTRS-type requests are already referred to OTRS, and usually checkuser requests get dumped on checkusers. One more thing that concerns me is the "logging" of alt/cleanstart accounts. I'm not sure why anyone came up with that idea, that Arbcom should do it, because we certainly aren't watching those accounts. Risker (talk) 23:20, 19 March 2013 (UTC)
Interesting, I did suggest an AN review board (similar to deletion review or move review) a few months ago for that type of thing, but no interest. Alanscottwalker (talk) 23:35, 19 March 2013 (UTC)
(edit conflict) A couple of things. One is, I distinctly remember reading, in those leaked e-mails at that other website, a very lengthy exchange between you (Risker) and someone who pretended to be a little girl in a difficult situation, but who ultimately turned out to be a troll. I thought you handled it very well, but it's pretty clear to me that you personally spent many hours just on that, and it clearly was not in any way something that arose from a request for arbitration. But you are right to point out block/ban appeals, so thanks for drawing attention to that! I think there is probably wide agreement that ArbCom needs to be the body that deals with appeals of bans issued by ArbCom itself – otherwise you don't want to get into the situation of admins undoing ArbCom actions without ArbCom's permission, etc. But for anything not issued by ArbCom, ArbCom should not be hearing the appeals. If it's a community ban determined at WP:AN or a block issued by an admin, it should generally be redirected to WP:AN. When the party no longer has talk page access, there should be a way for them to e-mail someone, perhaps a dedicated OTRS queue, and trigger a discussion at AN. And yes, we should develop a new system for alt and clean start, perhaps growing out of the WP:SPI page. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:38, 19 March 2013 (UTC)
Indeed, Tryptofish, but since we handled that one fairly decisively, we've not been bothered with similar situations. Word does get around, you know. ;-) And yes, I think sanctions issued by Arbcom (or at AE) have to come to Arbcom, but the overwhelming majority of unblock/unban requests are just your run-of-the-mill requests. If you can drag Mackensen out of his train articles for a wee bit, he might have a list of the past discussions to try and develop something like that. I really don't think the discussion should be at AN; it should be a group of people who otherwise don't review unblock requests onwiki or through any other process, so they come to it with clean hands and no preconceived ideas. I think, actually, it's a bit abusive to have a discussion at AN where everyone and their brother gets another kick at the can, and the blocked user can't even respond. Risker (talk) 23:47, 19 March 2013 (UTC)
Agree. AN is not the place for such independent review. Alanscottwalker (talk) 23:50, 19 March 2013 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Sure, I'm open to it not being AN, and I'm certainly open to letting the person requesting the unblock/unban get a word in edgewise. But there also ought to be a way to assess community sentiment, without opening the door to abuse. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:00, 20 March 2013 (UTC)
I remember there was a proposal to expand BASC to have three non-arb members; did anything ever happen with that? --Rschen7754 23:52, 19 March 2013 (UTC)
Maybe a similar committee with only non-arb members? --Tryptofish (talk) 00:00, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

Removal of Arbitrators?

The question was answered and the commentary about the person who asked the question seems to be moving towards personal attacks. --Guerillero | My Talk 23:45, 18 March 2013 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

I don't have any particular Arbitrator in mind, but was just wondering. Is it possible to strip an editor of his/her Arbitratorship? GoodDay (talk) 16:36, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

The process is outlined at WP:ARBPOL. Risker (talk) 16:42, 18 March 2013 (UTC)
Thanks. GoodDay (talk) 16:50, 18 March 2013 (UTC)
GoodDay were you born tiresome, or did something make you that way?  Giano  20:05, 18 March 2013 (UTC)
Honestly Giano, what was the point of that question? If you're going to engage in such behavior you should at least do it on your victim's talk page. 174.226.65.157 (talk) 21:49, 18 March 2013 (UTC)
Errr, it was GoodDay's question not Giano's I presume you meant...? Casliber (talk · contribs) 23:04, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

The question was dodged by directing the asker to a TLDR policy page. The answer is:

"Any arbitrator who repeatedly or grossly fails to meet the expectations outlined above may be suspended or removed by Committee resolution supported by two-thirds of arbitrators."

In other words arbitrators do not answer to the community, only to each other. Risker opposed a suggestion to make arbs accountable on the basis that she would always be "looking over her shoulder". In my opinion Arbitrators are the only people who should be always looking over their shoulder. Risker suggests that this is fine and dandy for regular editors, but unacceptable for exalted arbitrators. Rich Farmbrough, 04:50, 20 March 2013 (UTC).

Rich, if you are referring to my belief that arbitrators should not have to tolerate constant harping from individuals dissatisfied by the outcome of arbcom cases in which they were sanctioned, you're kind of proving my point. Your case ended months ago, and you have not stopped harping about it since then. Risker (talk) 13:35, 20 March 2013 (UTC)
I didn't bring up that case, you did. The only relation that case has to this is that it brought ArbCom into focus for me, and a lot of what I see is not good, though it does seem to be improving. Rich Farmbrough, 03:50, 25 March 2013 (UTC).
Rich, Arbs have a fixed term after which they stand down or have to seek re-election. Now one could argue that an Arb who has decided not to run again is not answerable to the community, that Arbs are not usually answerable to the community for what they say in off wiki secret discussions, and that Arbs are somewhat protected by a cooling off period of up to two years inherent in their electoral cycle. But ultimately yes they are answerable to the community. ϢereSpielChequers 23:30, 20 March 2013 (UTC)
"Ultimately" yes they are, if they wish to be re-elected - except that we do not know what they get up to in their secret discussions. Previous leaks have shown that historically this has not been what the community has a right to expect. But ex-arbs still retain residual rights, which perhaps is a mistake. Rich Farmbrough, 03:50, 25 March 2013 (UTC).

Link

Reading the comment on Ched's page, where is a good place to put this? We have a 'sort-of RFC' that's not really an RFC in user space that has all the appearance of an RFC, yet is completely non-neutral and is an attempt to perform an end-run around an ArbCom decision. I think the page ought to be deleted or moved to a more appropriate venue where there's some oversight. Dreadstar ☥ 19:01, 24 March 2013 (UTC)
Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee would be a good place. (X! · talk)  · @910  ·  20:49, 24 March 2013 (UTC)
That page seems to be limited to discussions about the Arbitration Committee itself, this link is to a discussion of a formal announcement made by ArbCom banning an editor; a discussion meant to overturn that formal announcement - with portions of that discussion meant to discuss clarification of the specifics around that notice. This seems to be the better page...but, the whole thing over there is odd and doesn't really fit anything I've encountered on Wikipedia. Dreadstar ☥ 04:19, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Statement regarding Malleus Fatuorum and George Ponderevo

Original announcement

Following up here with some additional notes: notifications of the motion have been placed on the user talk pages of the users concerned, and courtesy notifications were sent by e-mail earlier today (around 00:20 UTC) prior to the motion being published. The template intended to be used is {{User shared IP address}}. Carcharoth (talk) 23:54, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

Courtesy? Really? I find that an odd word to utter under the circumstances. — Ched :  ?  12:11, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
Hi Ched. The word 'courtesy' is being used in a formal sense here. As in a head's-up notification that goes out just before something happens, so it doesn't come completely out of the blue. It would have been rude to post the statement without notifying Malleus first, hence the use of the term 'courtesy'. For what it is worth, these notifications were sent through the Wikipedia e-mailer system, and I got a reply to the e-mail sent to the Malleus Fatuorum account (a brief note thanking me for the notification among other things), but no reply to the one sent to the George Ponderevo account. It is the fact that I got a reply from the note sent to the Malleus Fatuorum account that makes me think that Malleus still technically has access to that account (I mention this in my other comment below). Even if the password has been scrambled, a password reset via e-mail is probably still possible. Anyway, I've proposed some steps below to tie up some loose ends. Hopefully that will help. Carcharoth (talk) 10:52, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
For the benefit of admins, does the editing restriction which has been imposed on Malleus also apply to the George Ponderevo account, and should these accounts be assumed to share the same overall editing history if any issues arise? (though I note that George has responded to this by saying that he will cease editing). I appreciate that the Committee probably needs to word things very carefully here and the situation may not be entirely clear. Nick-D (talk) 00:07, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
No. Risker (talk) 00:40, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
Thank you for clarifying that. Nick-D (talk) 00:50, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
Wait, what? If George is indeed a sockpuppet of Malleus, then the same restrictions should most certainly apply. Sanctions apply to people, not just individual accounts. That said, I am in favour of editors making a clean start regardless of their editing history, even if they do have active sanctions against them, so long as they do not return to their previous disruptive editing patterns. If that's what was intended here, then I couldn't care less. What's the issue? Why does this warrant an ArbCom statement? Kurtis (talk) 02:13, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
And if George Ponderevo is not a a sock, this motion publicly connected a relatively low profile editor to a controversial one, leading to the prior's retirement, all without apparent good reason. Monty845 02:54, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
Suffice to say, ArbCom is reminding everyone why they don't get a lot of respect. It apparently took them a month and a half to do what any other process would have resolved much more quickly and probably more appropriately, yet they still managed to achieve the least desirable result at the end of the process.--The Devil's Advocate tlk. cntrb. 03:13, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
  • I assume by the answer of "No" by Risker, that the editing restriction placed on Malleus does not apply to George. If that is the case, I'm lost as to why it was necessary to make this public.--MONGO 04:31, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
  • I'm assuming it's to make other CU's life easier? Public declaration that accounts have shared IP but are different people would help in certain situations. - Penwhale | dance in the air and follow his steps 04:36, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Per WP::SHARE, the restrictions would apply if they have editing overlap, but not general restrictions. It appears they have the same IP but it wasn't proved they were the same person. They can be treated as one if WP::SHARE is violated. I am awaiting the tag that links them. --DHeyward (talk) 07:54, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
*Sigh* This does tend to reinforce what's been said about process for process' sake. If George were not Malleus, then ArbCom have made him an innocent target of all the stalkers who hounded Malleus. If George were Malleus, then everyone can see that the editor was able to avoid controversy - proving Malleus' oft-repeated complaint that he was incivil only to those who were incivil to him. Either way, you can't blame George for retiring. Who actually benefited from this statement? Certainly not the encyclopedia. --RexxS (talk) 04:37, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
First, it certainly does appear that George is Malleus, considering the topics of the articles edited, being mostly a copyeditor and associating himself loosely with the same editors (whether or not they knew, of course). If the ArbCom statement is correct and they are sharing an IP, it would certainly make it harder to believe they are two separate people who didn't know of each other. On the off-chance these two are different accounts from two different people, then I don't know if the ArbCom statement was really necessary unless there was some kind of misconduct. Secondly, if George is Malleus, then I think Malleus actually made himself look worse, not better. Malleus and George make the same kind of good contributions to Wikipedia. George remained relatively low profile, made his contributions and avoided any major drama (with a clean block log). Malleus did the same thing, but reacted with incivility and repeatedly got himself involved in incident after incident, and chose not to modify his behavior after threads, topic bans, ArbCom cases, blocks, and a ton of drama. Were some of the people opposing Malleus uncivil? Yes, but if Malleus can contain himself for nearly two years editing as George, then why were we wasting time trying to get him to modify his behavior when it was fully within his ability to not be uncivil, and he continued to be? It'd be nice to know straight from Malleus/George, but since George has apparently retired, we may not here from him directly on it. Regards, — Moe Epsilon 05:53, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
  • This statement was written and passed as is after several previous motions failed to gain agreement among a voting majority of the Arbitration Committee. It does not say that the users are definitively different people; it only says that a majority of the Committee has concluded that a) there is at minimum a close association between the two accounts and b)at minimum, at a particular point in time, the user who uses the MF account used GP's account. It is not the motion I would have preferred (the one I proposed had the line "The Committee has analyzed the evidence as well as statements from Malleus and George and has concluded that [the assertion in the first sentence] is accurate.") but it was the only one that a majority of the Committee would agree to after it was decided that referring the matter to WP:SPI would be counterproductive. NW (Talk) 05:13, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
    • As I recall, this is within the normal shared IP policy and even if they are not definitively "sockpuppets" they can be treated as a single account per WP::SHARE which seems to be the finding here. I have not seen the {{User shared IP address}} tag added to either account, though as stated in the notice. --DHeyward (talk) 06:51, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
  • You folks are WAY out of line with this. Overreach much? WTH? You bitch about editors and the WP:OUTING policy, and you pull this kind of crap? You folks simply have no ethics at all do ya? How about you disclose your OWN undisclosed ALT. accounts huh? I'd do it for you, but I'm sure it would be the next "Shhhh .. OS" drama. You have not a second thought about walking all over the policies at all do ya? Sign me out as "User:thoroughly disgusted" — Ched :  ?  05:31, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
Are you talking about ArbCom, Ched, or about the rest of us? I would like to know why ArbCom didn't leave this matter alone, since what was happening before they interfered was entirely positive and and productive. Did they act this way just because they could? What constructive outcome does ArbCom imagine is going to result from their interference? --Epipelagic (talk) 08:01, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
Hi Epipelagic, No - my apologies if anything I've said was inferred to be an individual personal judgement. My post was merely to note what I perceive to be a severe lacking of common sense, common decency, and an outright violation of of rules in regards to wp:outing that they (the management) have recently dictated. — Ched :  ?  08:34, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
Why do you people expect ArbCom to use common decency in dealing with others? Nobody ever uses it in dealing with them. AutomaticStrikeout (T • C) 21:33, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
  • I thought I might make some sort of statement here to explain my personal point of view and to help people understand what's going on. The statement on the main page is quite simply the only option that we could get any agreement on, and I do support it. The evidence was contradictory enough in places that the the committee was divided as to what link existed between the two accounts. To give you an idea of the scale, since the allegations were made, the committee has sent about 1000 emails discussing the matter. The issue was as divisive within the committee as any other issue regarding Malleus Fatuorum would have been outside of the committee.

    There are those of you who will be asking, why on earth say anything at all? There was a do nothing suggestion, I believe I was the only one who actually voted for that, but it was soundly rejected. I can understand the reasons too, there really appears to be crossover on the editing. If we assume that it's one person, they've broken most of the rules of WP:SOCK. Indeed, there's a strong argument that even assuming it's two people, they had violated our policy on sharing an IP address - they have supported each other on a dispute. Doing nothing was simply not a valid outcome.

    Malleus' hard retirement wasn't sufficient to stop this, though I think it was a factor in the lack of sanctions here. George isn't a cleanstart account as they were both editing at the same time for over a year and there is persuasive evidence that there are multiple people involved here. The explanations given by George and Malleus did not help and I can't blame them particularly, given how Malleus has been treated in the past.

    I do want to make it absolutely clear here, Malleus has been treated differently than an other editor in the same situation would have been. There is no way that another editor would have had so much evidence put together and scrutinised, no way that so much more work would have been put in after the basic evidence had been checked. Indeed, Malleus (and therefore George) have been given the benefit of the doubt and I do not believe any other editor would have got the same. That alone is infuriating for those who believe that all editors should be equal. I'm not going to say the committee worked well together here, some actions taken by certain committee members I find to be unacceptable. Actions were taken in a reactionary way and I do think it's a learning point which has to be taken away, as the same reactionary attitude has exacerbated the DOXing issues above. I'm sure other committee members will have found my attitude to be more than unhelpful in this too.

    Finally, I would like to re-iterate statements I've made over the past days, I'm open to discussing anything that happens on the committee and giving my personal views. If anyone has suggestions for improvement that I could help implement, please bring them to me and we can chat about them. WormTT(talk) 11:13, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

    So...will any concrete steps be taken (in a transparent way) so that the community can be SURE that "lessons are learned" from this recent series of events, or are we simply to take it on faith? I keep seeing talk about "learning points" and "lessons learned", but frankly I see nothing that leads me to believe that these lessons will actually be learned or that behavior will really change. It's all well and good to say these things, but results are what matter here. And WE (the community) need to SEE those results, not simply be assured that "oh, they happened. Trust us." Sorry, but that doesn't work. Intothatdarkness 13:41, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Well, it's good to see a "do nothing" suggestion was at least floated. IMO, if you couldn't get enough people on the committee to agree that Malleus and George were operated by the same person, then you shouldn't have made any motions or whatever public – this only fuels more (loath as I am to use the word) 'drama' and provides no clear outcome or resolution. Also FWIW, I don't think I'm the only one who at least suspected Malleus was George but didn't feel the need to bring it up because the George account was doing a lot of great work and not causing any problems – to whoever did all the digging and so on to notify the AC, you should really consider whether your efforts have improved the encyclopedia in any way. Jenks24 (talk) 11:25, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
  • It's extremely disappointing and hard to assume good faith that after the User:Geogre fiasco, the Arbcom refuses to learn from its mistakes. Geogre and Malleus shared certain similarities - both were great content editors (amongst the finest Wikipedia had), both were in the habit of pointing out the Arbcom's errors, and both ultimately have been needlessly driven off by the Arbcom. I think that's a pity and to be regretted. A wise man does not need to see and hear everything. We now know there has been a case against Malleus - now we have a right to know who brought it, before further damage is done by wild speculation - who emailed the Arbcom about it. Be very sure: I shall find out - better from the Arbcom than me.  Giano  11:34, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
  • I think ArbCom lost sight, with this announcement of the fact that we are first of all here to build an encyclopedia. Continuing to do nothing would have been the best course of action. Those who voted "yea" on this motion should expect difficult questions should they seek community approval for another term.--Wehwalt (talk) 11:51, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

In short - there are indeed two separate people involved - else the committee should have simply shouted "Sock!" MF has edited over 10,000 pages. GP has edited over 6,000 pages. Their overlap is on under 300 pages - or a fairly small percentage as Wikipedia goes. MF has a substantially higher overlap with Wehwalt, whom I doubt is MF <g>. The urgency to make a public pronouncement and shaming is odd -- usually such stuff is given to those who need to know through the channels set up for that purpose and not simply placed in public. OROH, maybe this is simply a new way of OUTING or DOXING done by ArbCom as a committee? <g> Collect (talk) 12:10, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

  • The question which I am going to have answered is, if the accounts are so similar, why did the Arbcom not wait for a conventional checkuser request. Malleus had enough enemies - if crimes were being committed, it wouldn't have taken long. Why act on a secretive email. It's widely known that Malleus irritated the Arbcom. The only possible conclusion is that this secretive email cam from within the Arbcom itself or was set-up by an Arb. If it was not from one of them, they would never have been so stupid as to act on it.  Giano  12:17, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
    To put that speculation to rest, the request came from outside the committee and I have no reason to believe it was set up by an arb. The initial reaction including use of the checkuser tool was faster than I would have liked. This is at least part of the "reactionary attitude" that I was referring to, as I believe looking the other way would have been better. WormTT(talk) 12:26, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
Well you had better tell us who it was then; otherwise, it's a case of "You would say that woudn't you." How could you all have been so stupid as to not see these questions being asked and answers demanded?  Giano  12:29, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
You know full well I can't tell you that. I absolutely saw these questions being asked and am doing my best to answer them. WormTT(talk) 12:39, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
Buy your not answering, for reasons best known to yourself, you are standing up like a coconut on a shy - while your colleagues are no doubt thanking God for a Heaven sent opportunity. They've made a big mistake - we shall soon see how big that mistake is. Giano  12:49, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
Wow, so he violated policy? Well, Z frigging OMG, how horrible. Now, let's look at that for a moment. What's the policy in place for? To build Munchkin Land, where we all sing happily together with anxious glances at the castle? No, it's to get the best content to reader. I will say, now that Cas is off, that all of you combined can't replace Malleus in that role. So, you've stripped us of one of our top content contributors, who the community shouted very loudly at you late last year, "Leave him the hell alone". And what is the upside of having done it? Well, I don't see one, perhaps the committee can supply it. Was the exceptional treatment of Malleus discouraging other content contributors? Not obviously. Was George making a jerk of himself? Not clearly. Was George contributing content at a high level? Yes. Is he doing it anymore? No. Was it foreseeable that Malleus/George would leave once he was outed by the committee? Yes, very much so. Has the committee done a good day's work? Well, except for adding a bunch of oppose votes next time out for people I was appalled got elected in the first place, thus improving the committee over the long term, I can't say it has. However, the committee does little or nothing to improve content, and in this case is actively striking at content contributors, so I think the long term gain is greatly outweighed by the short term detriment.--Wehwalt (talk) 12:53, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
God it must be a cold day in Hell. I'm agreeing with Wehalt.  Giano  13:02, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
Yup. Lot's of Arbcom blunders recently, but this was one of the worst.
The big picture: WP:IAR/WP:COMMONSENSE and the principle embodied in the first sentence of WP:NOT ("Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia and, as a means to that end, an online community of individuals interested in building and using a high-quality encyclopedia in a spirit of mutual respect.") have been under attack from successive Arbcoms for a few years now. Hans Adler 13:05, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
  • If you are going to strip away the privacy of these two editors, who might be family, lovers, roommates, neighbors on a shared router, or whatever by announcing the "close relationship" in public, you ought to release the name of the editor who made the accusation so we can see if somebody is grinding an axe, if your actions are corrupt, or if there was a bona fide reason for your investigation. Why is the name of the accuser being kept secret? Why wasn't this filed as a public sock puppetry case, open for all to see? Jehochman Talk 12:57, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Why didn't you politely ask the accuser to file a sock puppetry report and let normal processing go forth. I'm not aware of any member on the Committee having particularly advanced computer skills, except Coren. Why not just let this matter be processed normally? Why turn it into a political matter and deny those involved the possibility of an independent, neutral review by ArbCom? No matter what happens next, you are all involved in the conflict, and unable to act as reviewers. Jehochman Talk 13:04, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
  • I'm not sure how much help it will be for more Committee members to give an account of what happened, but I will give my summary. The Committee were contacted with concerns that MF was editing from the GP account, and that he had violated the terms of the socking policy by posting from both accounts on a project page in support of each other. The matter was looked into by several CheckUsers, and the technical and behavioural evidence confirmed that the accounts were run by the same person. We also found some minor tag team edit warring, and a bit of block evasion. We discussed this at great length among ourselves. The view among the Committee was that MF was a special case, and so the whole Committee needed to be involved in decision making. Opinions varied as to what to do - not just among the Committee as a body, but also among individual members, who would change their opinion as the matter unfolded and various arguments were put forward. On the table for discussion was that MF was using the GP account to make a Clean Start, but that he had somewhat messed it up by a) violating policy and b) being spotted. A considerable part of the Committee was supportive of MF's apparent attempt at a Clean Start, and were wondering how best to help him achieve this, and yet stay within policy, and also stay within the Committee's responsibility to the community not to keep secrets, nor to turn a blind eye to policy violations when they are pointed out. MF was contacted. His response was to deny that the GP account was his, and gave an explanation that the GP account was run by someone else. He also wrote to us in the guise of the other person. While the majority of the Committee did not accept this explanation, a few felt it was worth considering. After discussing the matter further, and putting forward several suggestions how to proceed, including simply ignoring the matter, the statement that has been posted was the one that was felt to be the least harmful to Malleus, met the Committee's responsibility not to conceal policy infractions, even for special cases, and covered the possibility that the GP account may have been operated at some time by someone other than MF, but known to him. If anyone wishes to ask me any questions on this matter, please contact me on my talkpage, and I'll see what I can do. SilkTork ✔Tea time 13:29, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
  • So it seems that ArbCom received a sockpuppet complaint privately. Overwhelming evidence including same IP, same articles, same POV, and mutual support in discussions. This would have been a banning of both accounts for anyone else but in deference to the accounts contributions (Malleus' block log notwithstanding), they are able to continue with the understanding that this is a WP:SHARED account despite the polict violations. That seems like a rather toned down but reasonable response to a productive editor. A response that would not be afforded to many people. "Both" Malleus and George can contribute but their relationship as being shared IP has to be disclosed. That's policy. Nothing personal about those users has been disclosed. Please will someone who is complaining about this action explain why this very soft but necessary response is being met so antagonistically? --DHeyward (talk) 13:39, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
    • I assume that question was rhetorical, given many of the antagonizers are the type that will never give arbcom the benefit of the doubt, even if they issued a motion that the sun rises in the east, with a strong overlap of "MF should be able to do whatever the hell he wants" sentiment. But you are correct. It does seem that MF was treated far more leniently than anyone else would have been. Resolute 13:46, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Because Wikipedia should not be a Gestapo type state. It should not operate on the word of secret informers and in-camera trials. Now who was the informer and lets have some diffs for the serious crimes. Then we will be told how each Arb voted - or are the Arbs ashamed of their actions?  Giano  13:49, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Giano, Wikipedia is a Gestapo type state, and has been for quite some time now, and it is getting worse. 76.126.172.249 (talk) 14:18, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

If MF is/was running a sock? then he must be dealt with, the way other sockmasters were. GoodDay (talk) 13:54, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Yes. I don't think the community would want it any other way. That assumes that there was proper evidence to justify a check in the first place, which has not been established yet. Jehochman Talk 13:57, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
Oh yes they would. There are plenty of MF supporters out there who would (and did) stand behind him no matter what. Of course, they are half as nice to ArbCom. AutomaticStrikeout (T • C) 21:33, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
  • SilkTork, thank you for the informative comment about what happened. That's a good start, but we'll need to know more. (1) Why was the complainant unwilling to make their accusation and post their evidence in public? (2) Is there any reason a Checkuser could not have received the evidence and posted it themselves to a public page for discussion? I am sure the accuser is watching these discussions closely. Please do come forth, accuser. If you have acted correctly, you have nothing to fear. Jehochman Talk 13:57, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
  • I'm surprised more people aren't wondering why we didn't defer this matter to SPI. We discussed that option at length, and came to the following consensus. 1) At the time the allegation was made, GP was voting in RFAs. As we all know, SPI does not allow people to submit allegations about accounts that are voting in open RFAs; such allegations need to be submitted in private. 2) If the allegation was made in public, SPI would not have touched it. The venue does not lend itself to protracted discussion, which a Malleus SPI would undoubtedly have attracted. 3) We needed to establish that there was no compelling reason to keep the connection between the accounts off the public record. To do so, we needed to ask Malleus some personal questions, which the community could not do. When private or sensitive evidence is involved in a situation, that situation—by long-standing arrangement and convention, at least on this project—becomes the responsibility of ArbCom. We exist to handle this sort of thing.

    I suppose the petitioner did not make his identity known because whoever dropped this bomb on Malleus (I don't think the GP=MF connection was widely known until now) would undoubtedly have attracted a lot of ire. We arbitrators sign up to make difficult decisions, including in sensitive cases like this. The petitioner did not. AGK [•] 14:22, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Rubbish! Which Arb concocted the story of an email informant! Which one? and where are the diffs for the supposed crime.  Giano  14:25, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
AGK, your explanation sounds complex. I'm not familiar with the rule that open RFAs negate the ability to file a sock puppetry report. Can you link to that rule and explain where it came from? Are you suggesting that the accuser didn't want to reveal their identity because they were standing at RFA and knew this accusation would sink them? I'd really like to see the evidence to understand whether this was a bona fide complaint or a bogus one. I do not understand why the evidence of sock puppetry isn't revealed. If a checkuser had to ask Malleus some personal questions, they could have done so. I'm not aware of the need for ArbCom to be involved in this matter. If it were an administrator being accused and a desysop potentially necessary, then yes, ArbCom might be justified. In this case, I'm not seeing it. Please do share the info. Jehochman Talk 14:33, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
Giano, you're getting in the way of an actual conversation. Please don't be rude.

Jehochman, that an RFA was open was one minor reason why the allegation could not have been made in public. I gave three broad arguments. As for where that rule is set down, I can't link to it very easily, but it's at WP:SPI, underneath "Whether or not to request CheckUser in a case?", in the "In these cases, do not request CheckUser" collapse box, beside "Vote fraud in ongoing vote". There is also the overriding rule at SPI, contained within the yellow box at the top of WP:SPI, which requires cases that rely on evidence that is "sensitive" or includes "emails or any other information not on Wikipedia's public pages" be referred to the CheckUser team by off-site methods or to the Arbitration Committee. AGK [•] 14:43, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

In the second collapse box here: Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations/SPI/CheckUser_criteria. Which doesn't say not file an SPI -- it says not to request a checkuser with an SPI; the guidance is to file the SPI and wait for the Rfa to finish before requesting checkuser (or file at ANI if the vote outcome isn't in doubt.) NE Ent 14:56, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
That's what I thought. So nothing really has changed these last six years since I started looking at those reports. On the English Wikipedia, the Checkuser privacy-violating-tool is not employed unless there is substantial evidence of sock puppetry. This evidence should be posted in public. AGK, could you please post the non-confidental evidence of sock puppetry, or are you asserting that 100% of the evidence is confidential, which would be very odd indeed. Jehochman Talk 15:17, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
  • So the options are either it was an actual sockpuppet or it was someone else (likely someone related?) who was still acting as a meatpuppet, since the account backed up Malleus in discussions and in other places. Either way, it seems like a pretty clear violation, though I can understand why Arbcom would choose a more toned down response. SilverserenC 14:36, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Malleus self ID of the User:William Leadford account indicates he is a sockmaster. So the only question is if Malleus misused sock accounts in some manner...otherwise, I can't see why else to make this public.--MONGO 15:15, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

  • It's not the best response we could have wished for. George was editing constructively and politely enough. If it was Malleus, then the status quo before this announcement was exactly what I and most others have been hoping for for years: Malleus's talent without the dramas. Perhaps you had no choice, though. Perhaps the person who alerted you to the situation was going to create a ruckus (or one of you would have) if the committee hadn't acted. Perhaps the association was so obvious that more such reports were inevitable. Anyway. I hope George sees this for the unimportant blip that it is, and gets back to work soon. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 15:37, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
  • From User:Worm That Turned above: 'There was a do nothing suggestion, I believe I was the only one who actually voted for that, but it was soundly rejected... Doing nothing was simply not a valid outcome.' And yet, it seems nothing is exactly what ArbCom has done here. Apparently, you had reasonably convincing evidence that Malleus was operating multiple accounts in a manner prohibited by policy. But all you decide to do about it is post a notice about it, when standard policy in such a circumstance is to block the socks. Why has User:George Ponderevo not been indefinitely blocked? If this was any other user, it would have been. Once again, it's one rule for Malleus and one rule for everybody else. I for one am glad he finally quit of his own accord, because it had long since become obvious that no amount of misconduct would ever have been enough for ArbCom to do the right thing and ban him. Robofish (talk) 15:51, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
And the project would benefit from such a block exactly how?--Wehwalt (talk) 15:54, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
Not interested in the past, but if there are such editors who presently operate such sockpupppets, please tell the community. Socking attacks the governance basis for the project. Alanscottwalker (talk) 17:35, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

So I'm seeing criticism of Arbcom for (a) receiving a private allegation of sock-like connections between accounts (secret informer!); (b) conducting a discreet, off-wiki investigation of the allegations (star chamber!); (c) publishing the conclusion that the accounts are linked (persecution! invasion of privacy! driving off good content editor!); but (d) declining to indef block the accounts (favoritism!). Looks to me like Arbcom has endeavored to strike a balance between transparency, protection of privacy, respect for productive content contributions, and accountability to the community for violations of user account policy. Reasonable disagreement is fine, but can we please get out of the state of perpetual outrage here? Or at least, will someone please create an {{OUTRAGE}} template that can just be automatically added to every Arbcom announcement, to save time and electrons? alanyst 17:53, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Why do we care about sockpuppetry, anyway? The policy says "Using a single account maintains editing continuity, improves accountability, and increases community trust, which helps to build long-term stability for the encyclopedia." (emphasis mine). By supporting anonymous ratting out of other editors, the committee's action here works against the very goals the policy is trying to promote. I understand the trying to simultaneously protect editor privacy and provide governance transparency puts wikipedia between between Scylla and Charybdis; we already have a pretty good mechanism for that in sockpuppet investigations. The explanations provided thus far for not utilizing SPI -- one of which appears to be based on a misread of the policy -- aren't terribly satisfying.

Given that there was no ongoing sockpuppetry -- MF having retired -- I don't see how this motion improves the encylcopedia. WTT mentions share but that advises, but doesn't require, posting the notices.

On a secondary note, arbcom policy states "the Committee will make public detailed rationales for decisions related to cases, unless the matter is unsuitable for public discussion for privacy, legal or similar reasons." (emphasis mine). Given the edit histories of both accounts are public viewing I can't think of what reasons could exist for not providing a more detailed statement in the initial announcement. Given the historic interest the community has shown in dispute resolutions issues connected to MF, the committee should have anticipated there'd be many questions and addressed as many as possible with the initial statement. NE Ent 17:57, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

When was it given that no ongoing sockpuppetry was occuring? In fact, it appears there was a lot of sockpuppetry occuring and ArbCom decided for the benefit of the project to use a lower form of identification (i.e. WP::Share) instead of comming down with the ban hammer. This allows Malleus and "George" to continue editing. It also allows Malleus to contribute with a clean start. That is an incredibly gracious move considering the facts ArbCom has established about the two accounts (i.e. it's not credible that they are different people). If MF wants to contribute with a clean start, he is not banned and could do so. Why not do that instead of all this drama? --DHeyward (talk) 20:45, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
On 23 February when the MF account stopping editing Special:Contributions/Malleus_Fatuorum. NE Ent 20:54, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
Why do we care about sockpuppetry? Primarily, Wikipedia:Consensus (see, in particular, section on pitfalls and errors). -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 21:14, 14 March 2013 (UTC)


Evidence?

Allegations made without evidence violate WP:NPA.

I reviewed at least half of the pages featuring Malleus and George's names, and I don't see anything problematic.

  • There was a case where one reported fixing a problem on a GA/FA review, a day after the other edited the same page. One's signature appears below the others, with a day different.
  • There was a case when another impulsive editor mentioned Malleus, in a discussion involving George, and Malleus showed up to reply; again, not a problem.
  • Jack/B Rabbit made some suggestion about George and Malleus, and then outed one of his own socks. One or both replied on Jack/B Rabbit's page and then on G or M's page, again causing no problems.
  • The two accounts thanked an editor for their contributions.
  • George Ponderevo participated in Lord Roem's RfA2, which would only be a problem if the editors were the same person, rather than chums, etc.
  • More diffs to be added....

What was the problem? Kiefer.Wolfowitz 17:45, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

  • Someone else did and found a problem and guess what? They were right!! At a minimum it was a [[WP::SHARE]] and the minimum was the only punishment (i.e. "Hey, put an IP share tag on your user page so people know you both edit from the same IP."). No blocks, no bans, no great drama except faux-outrage that a sock puppet of people's favorite editor was discovered. There isn't even a punishment to complain about yet here they are. --DHeyward (talk) 20:32, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
    Also, personally identifiable information that can be used as evidence may have already been oversighted to protect MF and George so unless ArbCom provides it, your search is a fruitless waste of time. The rabble rousers demanding the evidence would be the first to complain if oversighted material was made public and the first to complain that it isn't. --DHeyward (talk) 20:37, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
    Please stop your personal attacks, WMFite and administrator. There is enough hypocritical personal attacks on this page already. Kiefer.Wolfowitz 20:42, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Yes. DHeyward, I don't know who you are or what you're going on about. I doubt there's a conspiracy of oversighters looking to protect MF--and we still do not know if the two accounts were used in some egregious way, like tag-team editing to avoid an edit-warring charge or something like that. Can you put your finger on a violation? Drmies (talk) 02:15, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Your are correct about not knowing who I am. But I'll give you a hypothetical example: If I made an FA comment, received a question on that and an IP answered i,say for argument a public IP 192.168.1.1, then a different user replaced the IP sig with his own, and finally my original account replaced that signatures with my own, you can see the obvious sockpuppet (i.e. same answer with with sigs going from User:192.168.1.1, User:CompletelyDifferent, User:Dheyward), this would rightly generate a checkuser request to see if these accounts are related. In addition, the CU could come back positive, the IP Oversighted to protect privacy. Now after all that, you should not expect to ever see the IP due to privacy (privacy is not given up due to Sockpuppet violations). The Checkuser, through many correlations over time, IP, articles, style, etc, confirm the sockpuppet. You still may not be entitled to even diffs if they compromise privacy. I have not heard it revealed whether this was work sharing, home sharing, cafe sharing, etc. It doesn't matter. In fact, despite the beyond a shadow of a doubt belief of the Checkuser, MF and George were given the benefit of the doubt that they are in fact separate users, under the caveat they disclose their IP relationship and avoid editing similar articles or supporting each other. The reasons are obvious. If it weren't the case, I could create accounts for me, my wife, and 17 children and claim they are all different and expressing their own views. By declaring "WP:SHARE" tags, ArbCom has said "Okay, benefit of the doubt, use WP:SHARE" and avoid each other." IF they truly are independent, this should be pretty easy especially as you can't find the correlation. But if the are socks I'd bet one account just disappears because whats the point of being a sock if everyone knows you share an IP? Different editors (like a husband and wife with different interests) wouldn't care, sock puppets would because it's additional work with no benefit. we'll see if both stick around. Haven't seen George though. --DHeyward (talk) 20:44, 16 March 2013 (UTC)
    And I doubt you'll ever be seeing George around again after ArbCom hung this target on his back. Who in their right mind would want to attract all the cranks and trolls I've attracted over the years? Three weeks ago I agreed to retire in an effort to protect George from that; didn't work though, obviously. But you have studiously ignored the question that Drmies posed. Where was the egregious violation that would have justified a checkuser? It would also be really helpful if we could use the term "sockpuppet" in its real sense, not in its Wikipedia non-sense. Malleus Fatuorum 20:55, 16 March 2013 (UTC)
    You agreed to retire to protect George? The impression I got from the correspondence with George was that he was OK with using the shared IP tag. I may have misunderstood that, but either George will agree to allow what he said at the time to be quoted, or we won't hear from him. What puzzles me about this is how you seem to speak for George, even to the extent of taking over his account. Can he not speak for himself? Can you see why people think you are in fact speaking for him, because you are him? I know you will say you are not George, but if George is not here to speak for himself, we can't conclude anything either way except go round in circles. Most of my views on this matter can be seen here, here, here, here and here. You probably won't agree with what I say here and there, but could you at least consider these points? I'm also going to reply to a post by RexxS below, so you may want to look at what I say there. Carcharoth (talk) 21:36, 16 March 2013 (UTC)
    Yes. Ask your fellow arbitrators. I'm not George's keeper, whatever you may think. And I'm not privy to your correspondence with George, but really, who'd want to be painted as me and attract all the same loons I've done? Why is it so important to you to flag the occasional use of a common BT WiFi access point anyway? There may well be dozens of people sharing the IP address I'm using right now for all I know. God help any of them if they're also editing Wikipedia. But if one of those unfortunates is also an administrator that may help you to flush out the secret admin account that Demiurge1000 is so convinced I have. Malleus Fatuorum 21:45, 16 March 2013 (UTC)
  • I don't know who DHeyward is either, but as a note, KW is incorrect - he's not an administrator. — Hex (❝?!❞) 13:24, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Question to Silk Tork from way above. You said "His response was to deny that the GP account was his, and gave an explanation that the GP account was run by someone else. He also wrote to us in the guise of the other person." How exactly do you know that the user wrote to you in the guise of another person? Do you have technical evidence that it was, in fact, Malleus that was writing to you? How would you know who wrote the email? Tex (talk) 18:16, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Necessity?

This is really a rather silly tempest in a teapot. I am quite frustrated that this dispute is taking up any bandwidth at all, let alone this much. Seriously, someone might have two accounts? If there IS a connection between the accounts, well, I guess I'm "shocked, shocked". I suspect that I may be one of the only longtime editors on WP that DOESN'T have an alternative account; kudos to the person above who suggested that anyone who wants to throw stones here should first identify all of their OWN alt accounts, previously disclosed or otherwise. Then, get a grip. WP:SOCK isn't an "off with their heads" axe, it's got a lot of wiggle room to consider the totality of the circumstances, and (if I may mix metaphors here) has in a lot of cases been applied as a sword, not a shield. George has been a very helpful editor and I have found him quite pleasant to work with. Malleus had baggage and was often too mean and snarky for his own good, but he was a very good content editor as well. If this is not the same person, then we are all wasting our time and need to just close this discussion and go elsewhere. If it is, there are multiple ways to keep a damn good editor AND handle a situation where there are two accounts that appear to be a "good cop/bad cop" team, the fastest is to keep the good cop and toss the bad cop, as was done here. Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Mizmontana/Archive One that would be slightly less likely to provoke dramahz in this particular situation is to ask these account holders to close one or both accounts if it IS the same person, and if it is not, then to promise not to simultaneously edit from the same IP unless they disclose identities privately to those who need to know, and in either case, then proceed to do their thing without prior baggage. Let these people edit. Let go of grudges. Montanabw(talk) 18:38, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

WP:SOCK has long since ceased to be anything BUT an "off with their heads" weapon. Your comments are sensible; trouble is, most of those in charge here are loons. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.85.76.177 (talk) 19:20, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
Except here where there was no real punishment after the sockpuppet was discovered. Pretty balanced and reasoned decision by arbcom considering all they have said. --DHeyward (talk) 20:34, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

The real problem

The real problem here is secretly checkusering on the flimsiest of evidence. The Arbcom (it claims) received an email making allegations; presumably it did not allege sexual malpractice, intimidation, outing or any RL crime. Yet it decided to secretly checkuser and hold a case in-camera. If the crimes of Malleus and George were so obvious a conventional checkuser request would have happened soon enough and all of this would have been avoided. The Arbcom has overstepped its remit and behaved alike a Fascist junta. We should be told who supported this course of action; they should then resign to restore confidence. That way a further witch hunt can will be avoided.  Giano  19:26, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

herein Resolute and Giano exchange barbs NE Ent 20:12, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
I think the most entertaining part of this has been your descent into hyperbole. The casting of aspersions was a nice touch. Resolute 19:38, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
Goodness Me! You and Coren are editing from the same country - I must drop the Arbcom an anonymous email; that's ground for a secret checkuser on you now - you must be a sock  Giano  20:07, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
All of this has to be put in the context of AGK possibly choking on his cup of tea at lunchtime in Scotland after being questioned by Giano. That is far more worrying than any possible misdeeds of Malleus and/or George committed in some unspecified part of the West Midlands. Please let's keep things in proportion. What kind of tea was it? Lapsang Souchong? Gunpowder Green? Two sugars or one? Milk in first or milk in last? These details are important and we have a right to know. Mathsci (talk) 20:13, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
  • While I certainly don't agree witht he approach of those who are basically screaming at you guys and making baseless accusations, I am left wondering what the community is expected to do with this information, if anything. Correct me if I've got this wrong but it seems you are saying that you all agree that at some point the two accounts were the same person but they may or may not be two people now, you can't decide which, and you aren't going to do anything real about it other than say so, and part of the reason for that is that Malleus is involved. Now, I get that Malleus is in fact a special case. The community has made it clear that it cannot come to a consensus when it comes to Malleus. Is that not what we have you guys for? Its clear there was significant internal dissent within the committee on this one, which is not surprising, but that the only thing you could agree on was requiring a talk page notice and issuing a wishy-washy statement about it is not a good sign. Again, this is what we have you guys for: to take the difficult problems the community can't handle and "break their back." This appears to have done the exact opposite, I can't imagine how anything but further problems can be expected to come of this frankly bizarre announcement. You guys have cleared a lot of difficult stuff from your plate in the last few weeks (who would have thought Fae being unblocked wouldn't be the big story of the week?) and I for one appreciate how hard you must have been working on all that, but maybe you should have held off on this one until you had something substantive to say as it seems clear that this is just another going to result in a lot of bad noise and essentially nothing else, except that we are apparently losing George, whoever he was/is. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:20, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
    Beeblebrox's statement is worth reading through to the end. Kiefer.Wolfowitz 20:26, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
    I think one of the major problems (That caused this statement to be issued) is the two accounts have been used in ways which contravene policy. According to the statements arbs have made above, the two accounts have editwarred together and supported each other in discussions. I think that if those violations are published, then the community would be a bit more understanding of this issue. But if true (and I have no reason to doubt my former colleagues), at least something had to be said, even if it's just a "Hey, there's reason to believe these two accounts may not be as independent as it may appear." SirFozzie (talk) 23:22, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
  • SirFozzie, I have not seen evidence of edit-warring and mutual support. A dozen of you probably have sharper eyes than lonesome me, but it seems to me that this charge goes to the heart of what is problematic about multiple accounts, and I just don't see any proof of such behavior. I suppose it's water under the bridge, maybe. Drmies (talk) 13:59, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
  • There wasn't and there were no grounds for a secret checkuser. The reporter should have been redirected to make an on-site check user requesr in the normal fashion.  Giano  14:06, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

If there are secret check-users going on? then only sockmasters should be concerned. GoodDay (talk) 21:46, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

"Trust us"

I for one don't. Somebody please post a few diff showing actionable sock puppetry by Malleus. This shouldn't be hard. There should be disruptive edits, and they should be reasonably fresh. The goal is to correct bad behavior, not beat people up. Can somebody explain why a quiet email to Malleus to the effect of "We're onto you, now cut the crap" wouldn't have served well enough? Jehochman Talk 21:19, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Setting aside your statement that you don't trust us, thank you for asking us questions in such a constructive and level-headed way. My colleagues and I signed up to be held accountable in our decisions to the community (and to explain them when asked to do so). We did not sign up to be hounded and abused, but recently others seem to be doing awfully much of that. Relevant, reasoned, and polite questions, such as the ones you have been asking, need—I think—to be recognised. It makes contributing here (yes, even as an arbitrator) a job that's actually bearable. As for the two points you raise:

If people would like to see the behavioural evidence we collated, I think that can be arranged. However, some of the following links may be useful if you wish to do your own research: [1], [2]. These edits in particular (by MF, GP, and MF respectively) were what pushed this from "account sharing and/or the use by a long-term contributor of an account 'on the side'" to "subverting consensus or outright lying to the community": [3] – [4] – [5].

One of the first things we did was e-mail both accounts. Malleus (and George, if you accept the notion that he is a separate person—I myself am of two minds) denied that there was anything illicit going on. We weren't left with much option other than to make the WP:SOCK breach known. Hope this helps to clarify things. AGK [•] 23:18, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

I don't trust anybody; I want to see the facts before the conclusions. Jehochman Talk 15:51, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
AGK,
Your first "evidence" lists a few pages where both have edited. The shortest time-delay was 11 minutes, with both making short sardonic comments, in a rather open-ended discussion---hardly an attempt to domineer a debate on policy. Yes, Malleus copyedited an RfA 16 minutes after his neighbor. Give a specific diff if you have any integrity.
AGK, try to imagine that there exist two editors who have family or friends. Maybe one of your Arbcomers does also? Such friends or family may well share an IP (or even a computer).
I would like to be able to wish that this was the end of your "net negative" campaign against Malleus, and attempts to bend Arbcom and WP policies to drive away better editors.Kiefer.Wolfowitz 23:48, 14 March 2013 (UTC)


That first so called incriminating diff is from 2010, when George's account was registered in 2011. What exactly are you trying to weave here? The other two you cited? That's worth WP:OUTING a retired user? The other possible overlap is on a FAC and doesn't involve voting. Where's the beef? Where's the blatant violation of policy? And why, since ArbCom has sat on this for two months (the only RfA George participated in was Lord Roem 2, voted on 24 January), was this non-statement something you felt was needed now? What was the majority trying to achieve? Demonstrate that in one of the most drama-laden times you could still find ways to add to it? Seriously, where's that sound judgement you all claimed to have when you ran for the job? MLauba (Talk) 23:56, 14 March 2013 (UTC)


Heh, and here I thought Malleus was going to scramble his password, leave the project, and never be heard from again... silly me. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 23:24, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

In the only announcement I read of his intention to leave, he referred to "Malleus" going - in the third person. I took that as meaning he'd still be editing but the Malleus account, and possibly it's associated signal behaviours, were going, and saw it as a new leaf situation, which he may have settled into. Now that the committee has linked George with Malleus, we have Malleus back. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 03:35, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
Probably bitten a bit by Poe's law (the "heh" and the emoticon were an attempt to indicate sarcasm). Of course Malleus was never going to actually leave. Same as Giano (who we can see is quite active on this very talk page, having stomped off from the project about a dozen times so far). I have deep respect for the work of both, but I really do wish they'd be a little less diva-y at times. In fairness, I imagine they'd say the exact same thing of me, though likely for slightly different reasons. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 07:46, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
You've never done a diva? I've done one ... or possibly two, I'm not sure. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 08:35, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
I've wanted to diva maybe a dozen or so times, I guess, but I've always tried to restrain myself. Having seen so many people (from stewards to checkusers to admins to regular users to...) burn out and stomp off, only to come back, it seems kind of silly to think I'd be any different. In terms of general resignations/retirements, I've probably witnessed a gross or more in my time here, if I had to guesstimate. But of course, that figure probably includes general resignations/retirements, not necessarily diva'ings. It all kind of depends how you count (does Giano count as 1 user or 12 diva'ings) and what you count (plenty of people just get bored and then decide to come back a few years later). --MZMcBride (talk) 02:23, 16 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Trust is curently impossible: I cannot believe that so many Arbs would have been so gullible, totally naive and acted like sheep going over a precipice. If the anonymous email made no allegations of RL illegal/intimidating activity, then performance a secret checkuser was a grave misuse of trust by the whole Arbcom. The sender should have been advised to request an onsite checkuser - that is the correct procedure. As it wae, it's claimed that as a group, the Arbcom performed a secret checkuser, then executed a secret kangaroo court and then agreed unanimity to protect themselves. I am concerned about this unanimity and don't want to believe it. That none of them foresaw the resultant furore shows a basic lack of understanding of what is expected from arbitrators.  Giano  08:40, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
    • Giano, I'm one of 1000 people in the world (I imagine) who know the English Wikipedia really well (too well) and I've been following it for years. And even I can't figure out what the hell it is you're talking about here. Something about ArbCom and CheckUser and Malleus, but being barely able to figure much out, all I can see is that both George Ponderevo and Malleus can edit freely right now (neither is blocked). So what exactly are we fighting for here? :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 02:23, 16 March 2013 (UTC)
  • AGK, I see the same thing Kiefer sees. Two off-the-cuff comments. Sure, they were made in a short time span, but it's not a election that's being rigged or an editor who's being censured on the basis of a vote. I'm sorry, but that's really very little. Drmies (talk) 18:45, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
    • GP was editing April 2012 when Malleus was blocked (e.g. [6], [7]), and also December 2011. But I seem to be missing something here. There was no admonishment. There was no censure. Not that passed anyway. NW (Talk) 18:58, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

Godwin's Law

information Note: The following post contains humour. You may wish to bear that in mind before replying. Added as a public service — Hex (❝?!❞) 13:20, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

Given Giano's post of 13:49, 14 March 2013 (UTC), I hearby invoke Godwin's Law. This discussion is now closed. Please move along. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 00:03, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

Who are you to close an ongoing discussion? Kiefer.Wolfowitz 00:27, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
The goings on here have gotten awful enough without people shutting down discussions and taking other ill-considered actions that will only make things worse. Please, let's all just remain calm, maybe take a day (or a month) off from arb-related drama and hope they get their house in order. This does seem like a Bad Time ™ but cowboy actions from any quarter are not the way out. Beeblebrox (talk) 00:41, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
Hex,
Your note labels AQFK's closure and edit-warring (with Automatic Strikeout) as humor; I labelled the closure and edit-warring (particularly the edit summaries) as (unintential) "surrealism".
Beeblebrox and I frequently disagree, but he correctly stopped this disruption.
The community should consider this question: How many many more episodes do we need before AQFK or Automatic Strikeout are finally banned from discussing or alluding to Malleus?
Kiefer.Wolfowitz 09:43, 16 March 2013 (UTC)
Bugger Godwin's Law: If the cap fits, wear it. And it certainly fits very well in this situation. You can't keep hiding behind a lot of silly little laws. I am glad that you've posted here again because we have yet to have a satisfactory answer from the ruling junta as to why they behaved in this deplorable fashion. It's becoming obvious that they were weak willed and easily swayed, the question is by whom - and who was the mystery informer who they clearly respect so much.  Giano  09:50, 23 March 2013 (UTC)
Who, me? I've been following this discussion on and off since the very beginning and I agree, I'm still looking for an explanation. I saw this "Godwin's Law" section as nothing more than humour, not an actual attempt to shut down a massive and legitemate community discussion. I too would very much like to know why this whole situation warranted an ArbCom statement, especially when it's just speculation and nothing has been confirmed as of yet. Kurtis (talk) 00:00, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

Some thoughts

It's difficult to know where to start. It's been just over 25 hours since I was last in a position to comment on-wiki on any of the matters being discussed here, and since then a large amount has been said and done. I have views on what happened here, and what has been said since, but responding to even a small portion of what has been said here (and on some user talk pages) would take more time than I have available right now. And things may not be much better in another 20 hours or so. That's part of the problem. Things move so quickly that it is difficult, impossible sometimes, to communicate effectively (with hindsight, with the committee being so divided on the issue, we should have either done nothing, or had individual statements to issue with the statement we were able to agree on). For now, I agree in large part with Worm That Turned's comments at 11:13, 14 March 2013, but there is more that hasn't been said yet. I'll note that Malleus now claims to be controlling the George Ponderevo account, so make of that what you will. I need to think about this a bit more, as there are aspects of this that haven't been mentioned yet and still don't quite add up, based both on what occurred when I e-mailed both accounts with the courtesy notifications around 2 days ago, and the initial e-mail correspondence with George (or whoever was controlling the account at that time). The simplest explanation seems to be that one person was controlling the accounts and has been (and still is) playing games with us. If anyone has questions for me specifically, please feel free to ask, but do allow at least a full working day for me to answer during the week. Carcharoth (talk) 02:48, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

Malleus now claims to be controlling the George Ponderevo account sounded to me like Malleus had admitted socking, but as the diff shows, Malleus has stated that George has abandoned the account and passed it to MF. I see now what Carcharoth meant but thought it worth noting the ambiguity so others wouldn't be thinking an admission of socking had occurred. EdChem (talk) 03:07, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
Its old news that Malleus was using the William Leadford account...I suppose when arbcom sent their emails to the Malleus and George, only then did Malleus tag the Leadford account as an alternate account of his. The only thing that matters is whether the Malleus and George accounts had influence on some outcome by working in tandem...such as a FAC promoted to FA...or the election or nonelection of someone, or to win a content dispute. I'd have to concur with Carcharoth that "one person is controlling the accounts", but this isn't a problem unless there is clear evidence that Malleus was using George as a meatpuppet.--MONGO 03:59, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
In addition to the William Leadford account (which as you say is old news) there was also the Nunez99 account (see this edit). As for the George Ponderevo account, it would be possible to lay out a fair amount of evidence, including some inappropriate overlaps if they are the same person. But I'm reluctant to do that until it is clear that there is any desire for that to be done, and until it is clear which account Malleus is editing from and which accounts he has access to (I think he still technically has [indirect] access to both accounts, even if he doesn't actually realise it himself), and whether the claim that someone else was controlling the George Ponderevo account should be taken at face value or ignored. It also wouldn't be right to do that while there is this amount of heated argument going on. This matter was discussed at length by ArbCom and we didn't get very far, though we did manage to carry on with other matters (two cases were dealt with and closed and several appeals heard). What I would propose if there was a remote chance that anyone would actually listen to and agree to it is the following (the WP:SHARE bit seems redundant now):
  • (i) ArbCom step away from this and carry on with dealing with the open cases it has on its docket (as that is its core business);
  • (ii) Previously uninvolved editors, including those that Malleus will listen to, approach him and get him to decide which account he will use and whether the contributions licensing issues are surmountable if the account was previously controlled by someone else (technically, there is also a need to prove that the person controlling the George Ponderevo account is indeed Malleus);
  • (iii) The other account be blocked indefinitely and redirected to the existing one, OR it is marked as an alternate account (the same way the William Leadford one was by Malleus);
  • (iv) Everyone goes back to doing productive things instead of arguing.
There are some extremely perceptive comments made above (I won't say what I think of the other ones). If I think it will help, I may link to some diffs later to highlight the comments that accord with my own views and that I think really get at what has been going on here. For now, read the last few sentences of Moe Epsilon's 05:53, 14 March 2013 comment. Also the 13:39, 14 March 2013 and 20:45, 14 March 2013 comments by DHeyward. It was entirely possible, given the feeling from some parts of the committee, that Malleus would have had the book thrown at him over this. Yes, it could have been handled better, but the end result is relatively lenient. If anyone would like to take the initiative and follow the steps suggested above, please feel free to do so. I'm open to further questions on this, but at some point we need to get to stage (iv) above. Carcharoth (talk) 10:38, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
Carcharoth, I have asked several times [8][9][10][11] for the evidence of disruption that justified use of the checkuser tool. Could you put an end to the stonewalling? Please post the diffs or generally summarize the reason for using Checkuser. We have a policy on this wiki against fishing expeditions,fish CheckUser is not for fishing and if that policy has been broken, a bunch of people need to admit error. Misleading Wikipedia editors, even the Arbitration Committee, to protect one's own privacy, is neither sin nor crime. Malleus fibbing isn't grounds to checkuser him or to publicize his info as J delanoy has done. Would it be correct to say that Malleus wanted a clean start, to get away from his past conflicts, and he messed up? Error or incompetence should be dealt with differently than malice. You guys outing Malleus doesn't look ethical, given the explanations thus far. Jehochman Talk 11:04, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
As I said above, there has been so much comment on this, it is easy to miss things. Thank you for the note on my talk page (though please note that I will not be around after the next few edits, I generally only get 2-3 hours in every 24-hour period to respond, and if that doesn't align with when others are available, conversations can drag out somewhat over several days). This was mishandled, as I said above. Are you going to get all 13 arbitrators to troop out and sign up to that and go into detail as to what happened. Probably not, though there is a partial timeline of the handling of this that I did when I realised that it was all getting very messy. To try and answer your question, I mentioned to Giano on my talk page that there were periods when one of the accounts was blocked and the other one was editing. There were also overlaps and behavioural signs. But as I said, I don't want to rake over the coals of this (i.e. reignite the embers) until it is clear precisely where Malleus goes from here and which accounts he has access to - at the moment, this is as clear as mud. And linking two accounts is not outing, both are pseudonymous accounts (if you object to what J delanoy published, take it up with him first and then come back to me if you still have concerns). Oh, one more thing "Would it be correct to say that Malleus wanted a clean start, to get away from his past conflicts, and he messed up?" Probably. But why would he then use his clean start account while the other account was blocked? I am now going to respond to a comment made by MLauba, and then that will be all I have time for today. I would also appreciate it if you could try and respond to what I actually said (the four steps I suggested) instead of just hijacking this subthread to ask your questions. Carcharoth (talk) 11:44, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
Without commenting on the use of CU in this particular instance, you are reading the policy too narrowly if you think CU may only be performed because of disruption. Investigating sock puppetry is a legitimate use of the tool and the bar for action is probably set somewhere between prima facie evidence and probable cause. For what it's worth, I agree with you that the right to individual privacy pretty much trumps everything else, though it is blatantly obvious - just from looking at some of the other discussions on this page - that this not a universally held view.  Roger Davies talk 12:00, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
(edit conflict)Thank you for a straight answer. How long ago did the block evasion occur? During the block evasion was Malleus peacefully editing articles, or was he performing vandalism or carrying on harassment of other users? Judging by what's been left unsaid, it sounds like he neither damaged articles nor editors. Given what I have been told after asking five times, there was a pretense for accessing Checkuser, but apparently no real justification.
Malleus tried to get a clean start, messed up a bit, and the Committee outed his new account, preventing him from getting beyond his past conflicts, preventing him from making useful contributions. This was a stupid act of following the rules for rules' sake.
I like your four thoughts. Add (v) Malleus may start a new account (and permanently abandon old accounts) to get away from his past conflicts. (vi) Committee vows to never again be party to fishing expeditions, in general. Jehochman Talk 12:04, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
I accept (and always have accepted) the clean start hypothesis. I also accept that some people find a clean break with their past accounts more difficult than others. But you have to draw the line somewhere and while we could turn a blind eye to an overlap period of say a week or so, perhaps even a month or so, I doubt that the community would regard transitioning over nearly two years as acceptable. If the community really does think this is acceptable, then both the WP:SOCK policy and the WP:Cleanstart guideline need completely re-writing.  Roger Davies talk 12:28, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

I agree that misuse of clean start is a problem, because that degenerates into good hand, bad hand. In this situation if a single, clever administrator or Checkuser had been involved, they probably would have emailed Malleus and said "Somebody suspects you are using two accounts improperly. You need to stop doing this henceforth, or else a sock puppetry case may be opened and you may be sanctioned." Maybe this already happened. If so, why did the Committee get involved instead of pointing the reporting party to WP:SPI? How can you guys review a matter (your job) after you involve yourselves in it? That's just not smart. Haven't you seen enough cases already where ArbCom action in the first instance created a huge mess? The public presentation of evidence, workshop discussion, and voting is what gives your actions legitimacy. The public posting of evidence substantiating a sock puppetry accusation is what gives Checkuser actions legitimacy. Jehochman Talk 12:45, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

First I agree with something Roger eluded too, that Clean start does need a rewrite. There are several problems with cleanstart, not the least of which is that its nearly impossible to do so without being dishonest to some degree. We shouldn't have a policy that inherently requires a user to purjur themselves in order to edit. Especially when we frequently run check user on them and then block them for socking. Its also very hard to expect someone to change their interests and expect them to be a different person. People tend to edit what interests them or what they have some experience in. So if they edited Military history and do a clean start they are unlikely to change that and start editing about cats (cool or otherwise). So its unrealistic to require folks to change themselves, their beliefs or the things they care about just so they can edit and continue to be involved in the drama of Wikipedia. If we truly want people to use the clean start policy and we are serious about it as a policy, then we need to allow it to be used, otherwise we should abolish it and just tell folks they can't come back (I don't recommend this BTW). The other problem is that many in the community do not have the faith of the Arbcom for a variety of reasons so telling folks that they can notify Arbcom of the new/old identity isn't realistic and most checkusers wouldn't ask Arbcom if they knew about it proper to accusing the user of being a sock anyway. 138.162.0.45 (talk) 13:13, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

A (sort of) outside technical view

Not sure if making a new section is the best way to present this, but hopefully it will make this post make more sense, since it will be a bit long.

A few weeks ago, an arbitrator (who is also a CheckUser) asked me, as I am a CheckUser who is not (and has not been) a member of the Arbitration Committee, to provide an outside, independent technical assessment of the possibility of a connection between the accounts User:George Ponderevo and User:Malleus Fatuorum. For what it is worth, prior to this communication, I had not investigated the case at all, and indeed was not aware that there even was any investigation surrounding either of those accounts. I understood and interpreted my involvement as simply a measure to guard against groupthink in the Committee (insert random jab here: Groupthink? In my ArbCom?! Who would ever make such an accusation??)

Here is a somewhat modified version of my findings (some details are not included for obvious reasons, and some phrasing is changed to make it more readable):

Preliminaries:
[During the 90 day period ending at the time that I ran the query], User:George Ponderevo and User:Malleus Fatuorum both accessed Wikipedia exclusively through IP addresses registered to [the same ISP, a large provider from which many users access Wikipedia].
Compared to all internet providers I have seen during my three years of experience using the CheckUser tool, [their ISP] allows its residential subscribers access to relatively large and diverse blocks of IP addresses. In addition, a given subscriber’s IP address will change very frequently, typically on the order of every few days. Consequently, a user consistently editing Wikipedia over even a relatively short period of time will use a number of different IP addresses. Because of the frequent IP address changes associated with accounts editing from [this ISP], it is extremely unlikely that two accounts contributing to Wikipedia from devices located in different physical locations will access Wikipedia from the same IP during the same period of time.
Evidence:
[A large amount of detailed technical evidence is redacted here, principally a spreadsheet showing in tabular form the exact times that each account used each IP address, and also including information about user agents (which incidentally did little to influence my conclusions in either direction). Essentially, the spreadsheet notes that out of a relatively large number of distinct IP addresses, except for a very few, each IP used was used by accounts]
In every case where both accounts accessed Wikipedia using the same IP address, they did so within the same time frames. In every case when one account changed its IP address to another that was used by both accounts, the other account changed during the same time period. In other words, there were no occasions where one account switched an IP, and after that account switched, the other account made an edit using the previous IP. In addition, in each case where edits were made with an IP by only one of these accounts, there are no edits made at all by the other account during the time period where that IP is in use. [Some emphasis in this paragraph is added]
Conclusions:
During my period of service as a CheckUser, I have run queries on many IP addresses and accounts [that access Wikipedia] using IP addresses registered to [Malleus' and George's ISP]. As I stated before, this service provider provides extremely dynamic IP allocation schemes.
[Given] the volatile IP allocation scheme utilized by [their ISP], for two accounts controlled by physically separate users ([both of whom subscribe to this ISP]) to exhibit such perfect correlation between editing times and IP addresses used is extremely improbable. In my opinion, it would be practically impossible for such a correlation to arise by random chance over such a long period.
Based on the [technical evidence] I received via my CheckUser queries, I cannot make any conclusion except that the accounts User:George Ponderevo and User:Malleus Fatuorum are being controlled by the same person.

At this point, I sent my findings to the Arbitration Committee. One of the arbitrators replied and told me that Malleus Fatuorum's "defense" (for lack of a more suitable term) to (what I assume was) their questions, was that he and George Ponderevo are co-workers, and therefore naturally share the same IP from time to time. The arbitrator also noted that it was worth mentioning that businesses do sometimes use residential accounts, so "residential" doesn't always actually mean it's a residence, and asked me to look at the CheckUser evidence once more with these notes in mind, and comment again on the issue. I did so, and here are the second-look findings which I sent to the Arbitration Committee

The fact that the IP addresses are listed [on their RIR] as being residential is irrelevant for my results. Malleus' claim that he and his coworker would "naturally share the same IP from time to time" is misleading. This is not a case of only a few coincidental IP matches; this is nearly a perfect one-to-one correspondence for every single IP address used by both accounts during the entire time in which I can view the relevant server logs. This is despite the fact that as I stated before, [their ISP] utilizes an extremely dynamic IP allocation scheme. The odds of such a nearly perfect lineup of IP addresses arising by random chance on that ISP is almost unimaginable.
In order for Malleus' claim to be true, both he and his coworker would have to only edit from work, and from no where else, since [as noted], with only a few exceptions, every single IP address that either account used was used by both accounts.
However, both accounts have, [within three-month period ending at the time I ran the queries], made edits at all hours of the day, and on Christmas Day, and from the same IP address on Christmas Day:
[exact IP/edit info redacted]
Based on this, I think it is obvious that these accounts are not editing solely from work. This is especially true when one notes that both accounts edit frequently on every day of the week:
[evidence redacted, but may be obtained from the external tool http://en.wikichecker.com/user/]
In my opinion, the only possible way that George Ponderevo could not be an alternate account of Malleus Fatuorum would be [if they] are rooming together. If this were the case, it would seem to me that Malleus would have mentioned it when you first contacted him about this issue. Assuming that Malleus Fatuorum did not claim that George Ponderevo is his room mate, in the absence of [an explanation] for the fact that he and his coworker are apparently at work all day, every day, even Christmas, the only possible conclusion I can make is that Malleus is not telling the truth, and that both accounts are being controlled by the same person, i.e. Malleus.

These letters represent both the start and end of my involvement in this matter. I am posting this in the hope that it will set right the (mostly) understandable but inaccurate accusations that the Arbitration Committee is (in essence) maliciously attacking Malleus Fatuorum and/or George Ponderevo. Far from this, there is extremely compelling evidence to suggest that the two accounts are being controlled by the same person. Of course, my post here will only work if people think that I am not part of The Cabal™. I clearly cannot say how others feel about my involvement with the Wikipedia Powers That Be. Regardless, I will state with absolute conviction that I undertook the investigation, assessed the evidence, and drew my conclusions from what I sincerely believe is a disinterested and impartial point of view.

I would also like to say (and this is purely my unqualified personal opinion), that were this any other user, both accounts would have been labeled socks almost instantly and likely both blocked. I say this without giving any opinion on the suitability of such an action, or even if such an action would be remotely necessary given the circumstances. In any case, far from maliciously attacking Malleus, or similar nonsense about Malleus "not being high enough up the Wikipedia tree to enjoy 'special protection'", I believe that the Arbitration Committee has done much less in this case than would have been done if this were any other user. I must admit that I was extremely surprised (when I saw it on my watchlist) that their announcement was not more pointed. As I stated, once the technical evidence is reviewed, I believe that it is almost impossible to imagine any realistic way that the accounts are not being controlled by the same person.

Sorry for the length of this post. Given that this was far from an ordinary case, I felt it would be extremely improper to give anything short of the most thorough and detailed results. If there is anything unclear in what I wrote, I will do my best to clarify any questions people may have, although it is quite late now where I live, so please do not interpret silence as me refusing to answer questions. J.delanoygabsadds 04:23, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

  • Hi J.delanoy. I'm just going to post here that during other aspects of the investigation, some information came out about a major ISP that had the potential to completely skew the results. I'm encouraging my peers who gathered that information to let you and the rest of the checkuser team know about it, because it could have longterm impacts on CU activities; I hope it will be out to you within the week. Risker (talk) 04:43, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
I will repeat what I said below in reply to EdChem: The CU evidence presents a picture that shows two accounts always being used in the same physical locations as the other at all times. The exceptions where only one account edited from one of the IP do nothing whatsoever to dissuade this view, since as I said, in each case when an IP was only used by one account, the other account made zero edits during the time said IP was in use. J.delanoygabsadds 14:22, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Completely overwhelmed by the correlation. The correlation beyond any reasonable persons doubt is by far the most important point. The "no planes theory" has more plausibility than independent editors. --DHeyward (talk) 05:12, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
(e.c.) Thanks for the detail, but there are a couple of things I find unclear:
  1. Were you given any evidence to justify running a checkuser, or did you accept the Arb's word that use of CU was justified?
  2. What sort of evidence would be required typically to justify running a check? Have you seen evidence (in this thread or elsewhere) that would justify a check being run without a request from an Arb?
  3. Does the CU evidence rule out MF running a small business at home with GP working there as a colleague, consistent with a description of "co-workers"?
EdChem (talk) 04:53, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
That is ridiculous...a conspiracy theory no less. Is part of this collegues job description to go and edit pages Malleus just did, or to comment at them...preposterous. I think sometimes editors think that only the checkusers can tell if they have the same editor...rest assured it isn't.--MONGO 04:59, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
  • Well, let's see: by your implication, somebody made some completely random fishing request and hit the jackpot! They should play the lottery. But no, ythereality is that someone made an observation and said Check A against B and it was spot on. As the CU above said, it's tevchnically not feasible to randomly check for socks with such a dynamic IP provider. The non-correlating data would swamp out anything except a very specific request. They pulled the signal out of the noise because the request already identified the signal. Most likely from previous revelations is that the correlation was made offsite screwup and matched to a Wikipedia effort. --DHeyward (talk) 05:12, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
  1. I accepted the CheckUser's word that the CU was justified, which is a somewhat subtle distinction. As I said, I undertook the investigation with the understanding that it was a sanity check. This is commonly done between checkusers when one is unsure of themselves, and also when a case deals with a long-term and/or high profile editor. From my experience, when such requests are made, CheckUsers will generally trust the judgement of the requesting checkuser that the case warranted a look.
  2. Each case is different on whether I will run a check, and it is hard to put into words what criteria I use to decide if a look is warranted. Generally, if two users have similar writing styles, similar content interests, I will take a look. One of the things I really look for is small idiosyncracies in writing and editing style. As an example, I have been informed that I use an unusually large number of adverbs; if I were to decide whether to look at my own account, that is one of the things that I would look for. Even for a determined and driven person, it is very, very difficult to suppress that sort of thing, so it is usually a dead giveaway. In the exact case at hand, I believe that if a non-checkuser had asked me to take a look, or if I had understood the check as anything other than a sanity check, I still would have taken a look.
  3. No, it does not. The CU evidence presents a picture that shows two accounts always being used in the same physical locations as the other at all times. The exceptions where only one account edited from one of the IP do nothing whatsoever to dissuade this view, since as I said, in each case when an IP was only used by one account, the other account made zero edits during the time said IP was in use. This is entirely consistent with GP and MF running a small business at their home, and at the same time, they room together. (Once again, this is my own interpretation of the evidence - which I believe is correct, but it is clearly not the only possible one). I concluded that this was not the case was because if this was true, it is an easy and logical way to explain the checkuser relationship entirely, and I personally felt that it would have been the first thing mentioned when someone inquired about their accounts. I do not deny, however, that not mentioning such a personal thing would, in my opinion, be entirely consistent with the personality that Malleus Fatuorum has, but a CheckUser is useless to determine that sort of thing.
I hope that this helps you understand my thought processes a little better, and I am sorry for being so vague with my answer to the second question. I know it's cliché, but each case really is unique, and it's really hard to give a blanket definition or description for what I believe represents sufficient cause to run a check. I have struggled many times without much success over the past couple of years, especially when trying to help new CheckUsers to get their footing, to convey this same concept. J.delanoygabsadds 14:17, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
Thanks, I appreciate your response. Your answer to (1) was what I was expecting, it makes complete sense that CUs would accept that a check was justified when asked for a cross-check, and (3) seems to me to be consistent with the statements we know about and the technical data. On (2), I understand what you mean about small clues that are hard to quantify - there are plenty of clues I pick up that tell me who carried out some task (putting out the washing, stacking the dishes, etc) at home, and I can usually tell when several people have written different parts of a document. As it happens, just a few minutes ago I was looking at an article I rewrote a couple of years ago and could see which parts others had redrafted, so I knew I could go back to "my" draft to find out how the meaning of the source had been slightly distorted. So, I do understand what you mean and why it is hard to describe the clues that just indicate a problem. What I am surprised by, and what disturbs me in this case, is that I have yet to see anything that even suggests justification for a CU being run. The positive CU evidence allows looking for editing where one editor was blocked, but I don't see the evidence that would lead a CU on an on-wiki case to say "yes, there is enough evidence to run a check". I realise this is not for you to address, it's for ArbCom and there are plenty of editors asking (me, Jehochman, MLauda, Giano, ...), but to me it is the critical point that is missing here. If ArbCom can post evidence that convinces reasonable critics that running CU was justified that aren't "well, it found evidence so it must have been justified", and then add some sort of abuse (double !voting, trying to influence consensus, etc) then a lot of the controversy will go away. Unfortunately, if no evidence is forthcoming then community fears that ArbCom CUs may choose to run checks whenever they wish will rise. I hope someone from ArbCom will clearly respond to this topic. EdChem (talk) 14:37, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
@Arbs & CU: There's several very simple explanations. Two computers set up by the same person sitting on the same router in the same household. Or one single computer used by two people in the same house. Claims "co-worker" because the nature of the relationship between both is none of your goddamn business. Could be father / son, spouse, landlord and tenant, two retirees in the same retirement home.
What is missing is any diffs of misbehaviour that justify this fishing expedition in the first place. Those posted by AGK above are simply laughably absurd and would only be evidence of nefarious activity to a paranoid body intent on seizing any pretext at all to get back at a controversial contributor.
Further, anyone reading George's interaction on talk:MOS/Infoboxes that thinks this was Malleus needs to get a grip. There's no way he would have held that discussion for so long without dropping a couple of choice epithets for which he is famous. MLauba (Talk) 11:05, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
That may be the case. But there are other discussions as well. Would you say the same about the one that was hatted here at WT:GAN? There are also a couple of edits around that period where George Ponderevo took over and signed for edits made by Malleus Fatuorum, saying that the latter had not logged out (I don't have diffs handy, but they should not be hard to find). That alone usually justifies a need to use WP:SHARE tags, and the thing that I find most strange about all this is that during the correspondence with George Ponderevo, I got the impression that he was OK with using such tags to indicate that the accounts edited from the same IP address. If that person is still around, maybe he will give permission to quote what he said? At times it looks crystal-clear, then things get murky again, which is why I think account sharing (two or more people editing from the same account) has occurred (whether intentional or not) and made it very hard to untangle Malleus's contributions as George Ponderevo from those of another person. This is in large part why we were unable to agree on what was going on, hence the anodyne end result that was published. Carcharoth (talk) 12:02, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
@Carcharoth, that WT:GAN link still doesn't show any good hand / bad hand violation that would justify a CU as only the George account edited from there. What could that have possibly shown? That's still one account.
Reading this discussion I can understand the inference that George started that thread and Malleus at some point posted under George's account, if they're separate people, OR that his temper gave him away later on. But here's the thing. On that date, Malleus was neither blocked nor restricted from anything but threaded comments at WP:RFA. So whether it's an account operated by two people or an undisclosed sock / botched cleanstart, that's still not something that should have triggered 2 months of hand-wringing followed by this drama generating announcement in one of the more drama-laden times Arbcom is in.
Has it ever occurred to you that keeping this matter private with simply a note to the George account that for the avoidance of any doubt, he should simply heed Malleus' RFA restriction (not too onerous) and avoid policy-based discussion in support of Malleus would have been the best way forward, not only to avoid yet another round of Arb-drama, but also to retain a source of good content contributions? Is the majority of ArbCom so beholden to "we do not rule on content" that they forget that their sole role is to foster the production of it? MLauba (Talk) 22:09, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
Carcharoth, did you mistakenly give the wrong diff? I agree with Mlauba that that diff doesn't seem problematic. Kiefer.Wolfowitz 22:32, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
The diff I gave shows another editor hatting the discussion. It is the discussion that you need to read (MLauba seems to have understood what I meant here). I'll reply here to MLauba as well: I should have been clearer, I wasn't pointing to that WT:GAN discussion as a justification for any check that was run, I was responding only to part of what you said, the bit where you said: "Further, anyone reading George's interaction on talk:MOS/Infoboxes that thinks this was Malleus needs to get a grip. There's no way he would have held that discussion for so long without dropping a couple of choice epithets for which he is famous." I was pointing to the WT:GAN discussion as a counterexample, and a discussion style that struck me as being very, to coin a phrase I saw somewhere recently, Malleusian. Anyway, I see from edits elsewhere that Malleus has now retired George Ponderevo ([12], [13], [14]) and has unretired the Malleus Fatuorum account (this is not a surprise if you look at what I said here), so whatever the backstory to this, there are clearly two accounts controlled by Malleus at this moment in time. If he is reading this, he could put an end to all this right now by marking George Ponderevo as an alternate account of Malleus Fatuorum (the same way he did for William Leadford), and then carry on using both accounts within policy. It would then be up to his fellow editors to point out to him if he starts to use the accounts inappropriately. Then we could all get back to doing other things. As for having negotiated better with Malleus at the start of all this? Has anyone ever been able to talk Malleus down from anything? There is more that could be said, but this looks likely to be one of those never-ending discussions where you try and explain something and the explanations just lead to more questions. If someone wants to go through everything slowly and reasonably (over days, not just a rushed discussion over a few hours), you know where my talk page is. Carcharoth (talk) 01:30, 16 March 2013 (UTC)
So...is it up to the community to sort through the contributions, assemble specific diffs and then submit then to the committee in an open case?--MONGO 13:43, 15 March 2013 (UTC)


The pseudoscience of Inspector Clouseau

I'll perform a brief autopsy next. Please give me 2 hours. Kiefer.Wolfowitz 09:09, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

It is obvious from this section header that you do not trust me as a CheckUser, and that you do not agree with my results. It is equally obvious from your comments on this page that you did not enter this discussion without a preconceived point of view. I did. I had zero prejudices at all when I was asked to look at the case, and that still remains. If the checkuser results had indicated that the two accounts were not related, I would have said so. Furthermore, I would have given just as much time and effort to support of my position regardless of what it was. I have no bone to pick with anyone here. There was and is nothing whatsoever for me to gain by agreeing with The Powers That Be, by "opposing" Malleus. If I had "gone against" The Powers That Be, I would have lost nothing - I would not have been banned, I would not have been desysoped, de-checkusered, or de-steward(ed?). I would not have lost any "karma" with The Powers, or with the "Legions of Sheep" that agree with The Powers, or with the "enlightened" who disagree, if these last two even heard about the case at all.
But by stating that I believed that the accounts were related, I opened myself up to attack by the many people who believe that any position "against" Malleus stems from a personal vendetta against him, and should be treated as such. I have already received a couple of quite nasty emails relating to this, and I knew that this would happen when I made my comment last night. What is more, I know that no matter what I say, no matter what I do going forward from here, there are people that I respect greatly who will not ever, EVER trust me again. This is not a trivial, flippant matter to me. I contribute to this project because I enjoy doing so. I enjoy being able to help people, and I find satisfaction in dealing with the mundane nonsense of vandals and spammers in order to help keep the project from disintegrating, and to free up time for those who are far better at writing that I am to grow the project. Because I have done what I did here, and publicly "opposed" Malleus in the eyes of many (despite all of my claims of neutrality and disinterest, I know that I will not be believed), I have irrevocably lost a large amount of positive karma, and I really do care about that, since it will harm my ability to help people in the future.
I had nothing at all to gain by presenting my findings, and I stood to lose a lot. Take that for what you will, and take the evidence I presented as what it is - the opinion of someone who is experienced with using the CheckUser tool, but by someone who has no illusions that he is part of the FBI, or MI5, or $awesome_spy_agency, regardless of what you may think or say. I laid out all of my reasoning and the basis for that reasoning to the Arbitration Committee, and I did not remove any of that in my post here, except for what I was bound to remove by the privacy policy. I am hiding nothing, because I have nothing to hide. J.delanoygabsadds 14:57, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
J, did you independently assess whether a Checkuser was warranted by evidence, or did you take the Arbitration Committee's word? I don't have a problem with the accuracy of your findings. The issue is whether the check should have been run at all or if the results should have been reported above. As you were appointed by the Arbitration Committee, it is understandable that you'd "follow orders" to run a check if asked, and that you have a reasonable reliance that they weren't violating policy by ordering the check. It's an unfortunate/uncomfortable position for you to be in now if it is the case that they gave you a bum steer, and you have my sympathy. Jehochman Talk 15:34, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
Jehochman, I've already asked that question, and the answer is in the section above - have a look there for the answer in J.delanoy's own words. EdChem (talk) 15:57, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
Yes, I saw after posting. The situation is clear. I have no further questions. Jehochman Talk 16:10, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
It's a minor quibble, but I was not appointed as a CheckUser by the Arbitration Committee - I was elected by the community during a time period when ArbCom was experimenting with a different way of selecting functionaries (I believe that fell away when it degenerated into a mess of political posturing and taking out personal vendettas on people for reasons that had absolutely nothing to do with being a CheckUser or an Oversighter, but I do not remember for sure). J.delanoygabsadds 18:34, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
Jdelanoy, thank you for your answers. I appreciate you taking the time to explain at length. If there's anything that might be both salvation and result, it's transparency, and you've given us some in regards to the investigation. What we are all looking for here, I hope, is a way to improve governance and the relationship between editors and functionaries. Besides that, I want MF quietly back in his FA corner, dropping choice epithets every now and then and improving articles--some of us still care about that. Drmies (talk) 18:58, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

This whole thing is TL;DR, but from a cursory glance at old contributions [15][16], there are several days where both accounts had edits at the same time. Sure, there are some holes where one stops and the other starts up at the same time that would be suspicious if there were nothing else, but there are two many sets like [17] and [18] ... [19] and [20] ... [21] and [22] ... etc where both users have edits at the same minute. I'm not a conspiracy theorist and I'm more than willing to accept the checkuser at his word that there's too much overlap of the IP addresses to be a coincidence, but it could just be that they live in the same apartment complex and mooch off of the same free wifi or some such thing. I would be utterly stunned if they are the same person. --B (talk) 16:07, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

Nothing that happens on Wikipedia stuns me in the least. And to have Malleus back, whether as Malleus or any other avatar, can only be a Good Thing. `Writegeist (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 19:00, 15 March 2013 (UTC)


Autopsy of discussion of coincidences
0. Request should have been rejected, per guidelines on check user tooluse. (This point has been made by others.)
  1. You state that you have "three years of experience" with check-user.
    1. Did you try to identify the algorithm used by the ISP?
    2. How many times have you dealt with an ISP using this algorithm? Or with similar patterns of reassignments?
  2. You state that the ISP had a lot of WP editors, and then you claimed that MF and GP were unusually close. What is the basis for this claim?
    1. Did you comply with the first rule of Baconian science, and so state the statistic you would use to evaluate the SP charge before looking at the data?
    2. You state that you "stared at your spreadsheet" and found that GP and MF were close, according some measure. Let's consider a half-assed method of analyzing the claim, before we begin to think like non-stupid high-school students.
      1. How many other WP editors have used this ISP since one of GP or MF first began editing? (Since you report having taken hours with just those two, I suspect that you considered no other pairs.)
        1. Did you try to examine the whole population of editors from this ISP? Did you construct a sampling frame of these editors?
        2. Did you bother to examine other pairs of editors from this ISP? Did you construct a sampling frame for such pairs?
        3. How many other pairs of editors did you examine with your metric? Were they randomly chosen? How many were as extreme as the MF-GP pair of those considered?
      2. The problem with this half-assed procedure is that it assumes that MF and GP are exchangeable with the other editors from that ISP. In fact, their editing histories (which includes expert discussion of IT and WP policy issues) suggests that they are among the most informed IT professionals writing on WP, and that there's no reason to consider most of the other WP editors using their ISP as providing a benchmark for their editing practices. A relevant comparison would be to other pairs of WP IT-expert editors whose ISPs use similar assignment algorithms; you would also want these pairs to have avoided disclosing publicly any connection. A valid comparison is probably infeasible.

Kiefer.Wolfowitz 20:29, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

  • Kiefer, sorry, but that's not really for this forum. The question came up why CU was considered and what the results were (valid questions, IMO). Given Malleus's comments, I'm not even sure whether it really matters anymore, though if Malleus feels that his privacy has been unduly invaded he is free to speak out on that. But what you're asking about is really whether this was an abuse of CU, or of the process. You can take that up at Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Audit Subcommittee--and there's even an ombudsman listed at the bottom. I'm not saying that your questions aren't valid, but I think there's a better forum for it, and a result from a complaint you can always bring back here, I suppose. I just don't think that a detailed investigation into motives and technical aspects is helpful in this particular discussion. Thanks, Drmies (talk) 00:36, 16 March 2013 (UTC)
(@Kiefer) Your questions indicate that you clearly do not understand even the most basic parts about how the CheckUser tool works, how IP allocation works, the means by which the CheckUser tool is useful for determining whether two or more accounts are related to each other, or even how to at a basic level actually read what I wrote about what I did. I will try to answer your questions to the best of my ability, but some of them are so completely off the wall in relation to the actual reality of how the CheckUser tool works and how the data it returns is used that they do not even remotely begin to make any sense at all.
  • You state that you have "three years of experience" with check-user.
  • Did you try to identify the algorithm used by the ISP?
    • This question is irrelevant. For this case, I was looking for two accounts using the same IP address at the same time. It did not matter exactly which ones were used, only that the same ones were used by both accounts at the same time. Go read Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol.
  • How many times have you dealt with an ISP using this algorithm? Or with similar patterns of reassignments?
    • This question is irrelevant. For this case, I was looking for two accounts using the same IP address at the same time. It did not matter exactly which ones were used, only that the same ones were used by both accounts at the same time. Go read Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol.
  • You state that the ISP had a lot of WP editors, and then you claimed that MF and GP were unusually close. What is the basis for this claim?
    • The IP addresses that MF and GP were not used by any editors other than MF and GP. The basis for the claim is detailed in the "evidence" portion of my original email, posted above. Since you clearly did not read that, I see no benefit in repeating it here.
  • Did you comply with the first rule of Baconian science, and so state the statistic you would use to evaluate the SP charge before looking at the data?
    • I have no idea what you are talking about. CheckUser is decidedly not a statistical analysis. You clearly do not understand how the CheckUser tool works. Go read Wikipedia:CheckUser#CheckUser_operation and mw:Extension:CheckUser#Usage. Actually, no, those won't help you. Go start your own wiki, give yourself CheckUser, get 10 million edits made every day consistently for several years from all over the world from every conceivable operating system and browser, make about 15000 CheckUser queries over three and a half years, and then talk to me. I do not want to be condescending, but what you are doing is similar to asking someone to teach a 10th grader quantum field theory.
  • You state that you "stared at your spreadsheet" and found that GP and MF were close, according some measure. Let's consider a half-assed method of analyzing the claim, before we begin to think like non-stupid high-school students.
    • I never once stated that I "stared at my spreadsheet", and I already explained exactly what my reasoning was. Other people seemed to understand it without problems.
  • How many other WP editors have used this ISP since one of GP or MF first began editing? (Since you report having taken hours with just those two, I suspect that you considered no other pairs.)
    • There were no other editors on the IPs that MF and GP used during the time that I could look at the records (which is a three-month period ending at the time I made the query). There was no reason to consider other pairs. You obviously didn't read what I wrote. You obviously don't understand how the CheckUser tool works.
  • Did you try to examine the whole population of editors from this ISP? Did you construct a sampling frame of these editors?
    • CheckUser is not a statistical analysis.
  • Did you bother to examine other pairs of editors from this ISP? Did you construct a sampling frame for such pairs?
    • CheckUser is not a statistical analysis.
  • How many other pairs of editors did you examine with your metric? Were they randomly chosen? How many were as extreme as the MF-GP pair of those considered?
    • There were no other editors on the IPs that MF and GP used during the time that I could look at the records (which is a three-month period ending at the time I made the query). There was no reason to consider other pairs. You obviously didn't read what I wrote. You obviously don't understand how the CheckUser tool works.
  • The problem with this half-assed procedure is that it assumes that MF and GP are exchangeable with the other editors from that ISP.
    • No, the problem is that you are inventing your idea of the manner by which the tool is used purely out of your own imagination. Your conception of how the tool is used is incorrect.
  • In fact, their editing histories (which includes expert discussion of IT and WP policy issues) suggests that they are among the most informed IT professionals writing on WP
    • This is irrelevant. If MF invented IP, TCP, and DHCP by himself, it would mean nothing for this issue.
  • and that there's no reason to consider most of the other WP editors using their ISP as providing a benchmark for their editing practices.
    • There were no other editors on the IPs that MF and GP used during the time that I could look at the records (which is a three-month period ending at the time I made the query). There was no reason to consider other pairs. You obviously didn't read what I wrote. You obviously don't understand how the CheckUser tool works.
  • A relevant comparison would be to other pairs of WP IT-expert editors whose ISPs use similar assignment algorithms; you would also want these pairs to have avoided disclosing publicly any connection. A valid comparison is probably infeasible.
    • CheckUser is not a statistical analysis.
Look, I am not trying to be a condescending jerk here, but I don't quite know how to respond to this. I honestly have no idea what it is that you think the CheckUser tool does. J.delanoygabsadds 04:12, 16 March 2013 (UTC)
@Mr. J. Delanoy:
Please fret about being a condescending jerk with bad karma on your talk page, and stick to business here.
I asked whether you had considered (besides these two accounts) other accounts/IPs from their ISP. Such accounts/IPs would provide a heuristic basis for comparison, and allow you and others to state something about MF and GP being closely linked (by being extreme) without bullshitting. You replied that the two accounts shared unique IPs at times, again not answering the question.
The discussion of your "report" has a lot of statements about such a link being unlikely without both accounts being operated. These statements seem to be bullshit, based on prejudice rather than on (even heuristic) evidence, because you never compared those editors with others from ISP.
I am sure that check-user is a wonderful tool, and must be an engineer's delight. But the relevant question is whether your analysis, following a failure to collect data that would enable a comparison, is relevant to a judgment of whether the MF account and GP accounts violated any policy.
Most importantly, you and arbcom have violated the check-user policy.
  1. Why haven't you resigned your checkuser privileges?
  2. Were you assured by WMF counsel that you were indemnified or would at least be represented if sued for violating our public guidelines? (In at least two states, you might be personally liable for misfeasance; I am ignorant of California's laws, but you should check.)
  3. Please resign immediately!
Why did you publish this analysis, which will lead to further harassment of the editor using the Malleus account, following Arbcom's still unexplained leaking of his confidential correspondence?
Kiefer.Wolfowitz 10:17, 16 March 2013 (UTC)
Kiefer, please stop and think for a minute... I suggest you are barking up the wrong tree here, for the following reasons: (1) There is (to date) zero evidence of CU misuse by J.delanoy because he was perfectly justified in running a check. He was requested to give a second opinion / sanity check by a fellow-CheckUser who is also an Arbitrator. I suggest it is entirely reasonable for one CU to offer a second opinion when a check has already been run and to accept that that basis for the original check was valid. (2) Before you say it, I agree that there is significant doubt surrounding the legitimacy of the original check(s) done by one or more arbitrators but that is not J.delanoy's fault. (3) Chasing after J.delanoy is distracting from the more critical question of the evidence used to support running a CU on MF and GP in the first place. (4) If J.delanoy had collected baseline evidence by comparing other users - even assuming such data would have been useful - would this not have been a gross breach of those users' privacy and a violation of WMF policy? (5) The report that J.delanoy has published was been redacted of identifying information and only adds a small piece to this puzzle - it shows that the CU checks provided evidence of a connection consistent with co-location or a single editor - which given the subsequent evidents is hardly surprising. MF's own posts since the ArbCom declaration confirm a close connection between the accounts. The problems are that (a) the evidence for disruption / policy violation given a connection is poor to non-existent (based on what I have seen to date) and (b) the evidence to justify a check (in line with the requirements of WP:CHECK) is even worse. Both of these problems need to be pursued with ArbCom, not by by chasing a functionary who responded to an apparently reasonable routine request in a routine way. (6) I suspect that if your doubts about J.delanoy's competence were held by others, there would have been posts supporting you. As he said, a CU check is not a statistical test and the methods of one are not applicable to the other. I recognise you may disagree with me, which is fine, but please at least stop and consider whether the approach you are taking is helpful. Thanks. EdChem (talk) 10:38, 16 March 2013 (UTC)
EdChem,
A claim that a pattern of interaction between the two accounts is too extreme to be anything more than one person controlling two accounts is a statistical claim, which, if it is not to be bullshitting or lying, needs to be based on statistical reasoning and evidence. (Engineers typically have little training in scientific investigation or statistics---far less than psychologists---and it is no excuse to make a statistical claim and then bleat "but checkuser is not a statistical tool".)
Of course, another problem is that the check-user exercise has negligible power to distinguish (1) two accounts always being controlled by one editor from (2) Malleus's explanation. Why publish the useless study after an explanation has been given (especially since no problem characterizes the interaction between the accounts, as EdChem notes)?
You are quite wrong in asserting that being the second (or later) WMF officer to violate the published WMF policy about user data be an excuse, either for the WP community---or civilly or criminally, based on my experience as an officer for non-profits in two states (not California); officers must show independent responsibility and avoid misfeasance. It is a simple question about WMF counsel giving advice or approval. (There have been many WMF discussions about indemnifying WMF officers, of course, and I am glad that you are not claiming that I am threatening legal action.) Kiefer.Wolfowitz 11:11, 16 March 2013 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Coren and I independently ran the first checks. I do not know what evidence Coren looked at before he ran his checks, but here's what I had:
  • The complaint we got was that George and Malleus edited the same VPP discussion: George Malleus. If they were the same person, that hits several points in WP:ILLEGIT: the first point says that "alternative accounts must not be used to give the impression of more support for a position than actually exists", and using two accounts to argue the same position has that effect; the third point broadly prohibits undisclosed alternate accounts to edit project space, and the VP is in project space; the fifth point prohibits using "more than one account to contribute to the same page or discussion in a way to suggest that they are multiple people", and GP's suggestion that he's an "outsider" can be considered misleading if he and MF are the same person. Therefore, if these were in fact controlled by the same person, there's a violation of WP:SOCK. Probably not a block-worthy one (the action I first proposed was a quiet email to MF), but enough to warrant a look.
  • The question then became whether there's enough evidence that they are the same person to justify a check. The type of edits done by the two accounts are similar, but what convinced me that there's reasonable cause to believe that the two are the same is [23] and [24]. In the first diff George added the restoration dates, and 8 minutes later, in the second diff, Malleus stated in the article's FAC that the dates have been added. There is no apparent reason why George couldn't have reported the addition himself, which'd be the usual step after you made an edit to address an FAC comment. To make it even more unusual, Malleus has not edited the article in more than a week, and he only made three edits to the FAC, with the other two immediately following this one. He expressed some strong disagreements in those edits ("Nonsense"), but George is the one who followed up on replies. This, in my view, connects the two sufficiently for a checkuser to be ran.
Checkusers can't give an exact statistical probability, but they do know from experience how dynamic an ISP's allocation scheme tend to be, and how the IP history of your usual user on that ISP tend to look like. The ISP at issue is a very big one, with a good number of sockmasters, and one of several ISPs notorious among the checkusers for its highly dynamic allocation scheme. Checkusers who have seen editors from this ISP before (and J.delanoy has undoubtedly seen a lot of them) know that the chance of seeing one person being repeatedly assigned the same IP to be, well, almost zero. In this case, Malleus and George shared almost a dozen IPs with the pattern J.delanoy described, with numerous cases of Malleus editing from one IP, then George, then Malleus, then George, and so on. If they were not editing from the same internet connection, it would require Malleus to get assigned an IP, disconnect, George to get assigned the same IP, disconnect, Malleus get the same IP back, and so on, and so on. This is simply not something that happens with this ISP. Can I give you the exact probability that they are not somehow related? No, I can't. Can I say that it is extremely unlikely that they are not somehow related? That I can, because whether that probability is 0.01 or 0.001 or 0.0001 or 0.0000001 is entirely immaterial. T. Canens (talk) 12:05, 16 March 2013 (UTC)
You alerted Malleus, but did you (or someone else) also somehow alert George? I didn't assume that it's something nefarious. At that time, I believed that if indeed Malleus was George, George's edit was probably an inadvertent slip (hence the original proposal for a quiet email).

Yes, if the algorithm were like something you say, then something like what we saw would be somewhat more likely. However, in that case we'd expect to see a lot more similar patterns on other editors from the same ISP. That is not the case; editors using that ISP usually go through a lot of IPs, and stay on each IP for a period that's significantly shorter than Malleus (and George) did. T. Canens (talk) 18:35, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

Hi Timotheus Canens,
I did not alert George, and I have no speculations about somebody alerting George either.
I am glad that you admit that the algorithm (including data structures) matters, a proposition that was denied by Delanoy.
Please watch Three Days of the Condor and consider, insofar as Max von Sydow's character was based on me (although my Swedishness influenced the choice of actor more than the Dutch characterization, to protect my identity), that Robert Redford's character---mark his encyclopaedic knowledge from "reading everything", the boyish charm, and ability to land the woman of his dreams, and most relevantly his expertise in telecommunications, including rerouting his calls to protect his privacy, etc.---was based on Malleus! ;)
I repeat that MF and GP seem to be experts in IT and telecom and I would be wary of speculating much about their behavior based on haphazard observations of other editors/IPs.
Experts grossly exaggerate their competence, particularly in making predictions and classifications (Meehl, Dawes, etc.). Kiefer.Wolfowitz 19:52, 16 March 2013 (UTC)
  • I'd like to reiterate something said above, in stronger terms. In these modern times of ours, people quite frequently work irregular hours, or hours and days other than 9–5, M–F, and it is not unheard of for people to work on the holidays of the dominant religion in their country. I am currently typing this at work at about 5:15 ack emma local time. On a weekend. After just finishing lunch. (And using someone else's wireless, with permission.) It is also not unheard of for people to work from home or sleep at work. Several such professions come to mind, but speculation would be invidious. I see no reason why having an unusual work/living arrangement, even if it involves sharing a computer as well as a router and volunteering here at godsawful hours, should imply malfeasance. (Also, either the wording of the roommate policy should be updated to recognize there are a deal more circumstances in the brick and mortar and the internet worlds than "roommate" and "living alone", or we should cut editors some slack when they don't perceive it as having a bearing on the merits of their editing if they share a router.) --Yngvadottir (talk) 12:19, 16 March 2013 (UTC)
  • The questions asked by Kiefer appear to demonstrate a lack of knowledge about CU and networking issues in general. So I'm left scratching my head about why someone, seemingly without the necessary prerequisites to judge the issue, is pouring scorn on a CU, IRWolfie- (talk) 14:03, 16 March 2013 (UTC)
    Scratch your head more and write less. You might examine my edits to articles on algorithms, especially randomized algorithms, etc., before speculating with cowardly adverbs, e.g. "seemingly". Kiefer.Wolfowitz 15:07, 16 March 2013 (UTC)
The necessary prerequisite is networking, not algorithms. IRWolfie- (talk) 19:17, 16 March 2013 (UTC)
You don't know what you are talking about. What are the algorithms and iterative methods used for the frequency assignment problem? [25] Have I edited or organized those articles or not? Kiefer.Wolfowitz 19:57, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

@J.delanoy :just two notes about you report: Some people do work on Christmas; and when you assume they are likely not to, you are using a statistic. Note that I have largely no idea of the main discussion here, nor I care much about it, and I am not trying to undermine your reasoning, which sounds quite sound overall (but I am no expert for sure) [no need at all to reply :-) ]- Nabla (talk) 21:34, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

A true outsider's view

Having done some of my own sleuthing on this matter, using the public information I regretfully have to agree with the conclusion. Initially I was skeptical, but a few things make this seem likely:

  • The two accounts have never clearly been editing at the same time. I looked through several months in 2012 and I often saw George and Malleus edit within minutes or a minute of each other, but never at the same time. A number of times it would be a few minutes between when one account stopped editing and the other started. Switching between accounts would certainly be possible in these short time-frames. Nost of the time there were larger gaps before one account would start editing again.
  • We have the previous account Malleus created "William Leadford" to indicate this is something Malleus has done in the past.
  • Although later edit summaries seemed markedly different from those used by Malleus (using "Copyedit (minor)" instead of "ce"), early on in the account's history the differences were minimal. This suggests the differences in certain behaviors were intentional deviations to throw people off.
  • Most importantly the Leadford account stopped editing on June 7, 2011. The George Ponderevo account was created that very same day and began editing that same day.

That all being said, B's point above about the accounts occasionally making edits within the same minute is curious. While seemingly possible to switch between accounts that quickly, I am not entirely sure about that explanation. It is possible that Malleus allowed someone else to use the account a few times to make it easier to throw someone off.

One thing I can observe is that there is nothing seriously wrong here. Any violations are trivial or technical, rather substantive or disruptive. Given the extensive editing histories of both accounts and the switch from Leadford to George on the same day, I don't think he operates any more than the two accounts. To me the most obvious explanation is that Malleus created the George account to basically be a "no drama, just content" account. In other words, using his main account to get involved in contentious areas, while using the other to focus on content work without having to deal with the usual wikidrama.--The Devil's Advocate tlk. cntrb. 14:21, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

Your last paragraph, if it stressed different points, would mention block evasion, tag team edit warring, use of multiple accounts to create an inflated sense of consensus, and a degree of good hand bad hand (we know from the GP account that the user is capable of editing collegially; he just chose not to using the GP account). That seems a little more than trivial to me, but your mileage may vary. NW (Talk) 17:15, 16 March 2013 (UTC)
My mileage does vary, Nuke, and as anybody who has met Malleus will tell you, he's really a thoroughly amiable person. When you recognise that he has been the target of far too many trolls, nutjobs and stalkers, you're not surprised that he responds to perceived incivility in like fashion. It's the reputation, not the person, that causes problems for Malleus. Have we forgotten this lesson so quickly? --RexxS (talk) 18:27, 16 March 2013 (UTC)
Ah, but how can you be sure I was telling the truth when I said I was MF? ;-) I didn't get into any fights, I didn't start shouting at anyone, nobody tried to throw me out of the pub, I didn't spit at anyone ... all completely out of character for Malleus I'd say.Malleus Fatuorum 21:36, 16 March 2013 (UTC)
@RexxS: I'm sure Malleus is thoroughly amiable in person. Most people I've met at meetups, including you, have been thoroughly nice people (I hope you'd say the same about me!). Which makes it a bit of a puzzle that people in general have the capability to get so confrontational when online. Well, its not really a puzzle, as it is commonly observed behaviour when people go online. But the real puzzle is why amiability and general laid-backness doesn't always transfer online. Some manage it, others don't. See also my comment below. Carcharoth (talk) 23:50, 16 March 2013 (UTC)
You can't have it both ways Carcharoth. If MF and George really are the same person then you have to explain how it is that in almost two years George Ponderevo got himself in no trouble at all. Do at least try to be consistent in your prejudices. Malleus Fatuorum 00:40, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
It is not difficult to maintain a persona like that when each account can act as a safety valve for the other (if you get frustrated, you switch to the other one). And you should give the full story. Towards the end George Ponderevo was starting to exhibit uncollegial tendencies. The WT:GAN discussion summed up by Wizardman here, and the editing of the Wells Cathedral article where insults were aimed at a fellow editor in edit summaries (example), culminating (after you publicly reclaimed the GP account as MF) in this gem. It is almost as if someone was tiring of keeping up appearances. Your point about prejudices is apt, though. Most people coming to a discussion like this will prejudge it unless they try very hard to put biases to one side. Most people also don't bother to actually look into things in any great detail (to be fair, the extensive editing history of both accounts makes that difficult). The Devil's Advocate has looked into this (based only on the editing histories that anyone with the time and inclination can review for themselves), and unsurprisingly he has concluded that we were, essentially, correct in our conclusions. Carcharoth (talk) 20:05, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
@ The Devil's Advocate: I'm grateful you took the time to look into this, rather than having the instinctive reaction that others have had, instead trusting us enough to at least look into it yourself. The three examples of overlap that worried me most among all the things mentioned in relation to this were: (i) the editing by both accounts at a FAC (the Little Moreton Hall one); (ii) the editing with GP while MF was blocked ([26] + [27] and [28] + [29]); and (iii) both accounts applying for access to a HighBeam Research Account ([30] and [31]). In all three cases, things are fine if the two accounts are controlled by two different people, but are not if only one person is controlling the accounts. I may be presuming too much there, so maybe RexxS and TDA (and anyone else who wants to comment) could say whether they think it would be acceptable in the scenario where one person controls both accounts, to edit while the other account is blocked, to both edit the same FAC (nominated by one of the accounts), and to apply twice for access to a limited resource arranged for the benefit of Wikipedia editors? If those examples hadn't been present, I would have been tempted to dismiss the whole thing, but it was the seriousness (to my mind) of those examples, that persuaded me that it was necessary to get to the bottom of this. I hope (RexxS, TDA and others) that this makes some things a bit clearer. Carcharoth (talk) 23:50, 16 March 2013 (UTC)
You're just making all this up as you go along. Let's get back to the fundamental question here; what was the policy-based reason for carrying out a checkuser in the first place? Malleus Fatuorum 00:43, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
One of the e-mails you received told you what the reason was for the check. I'm not sure I agree with that reason, but once the possibility was raised and I became aware of the three examples I've pointed out above, I personally (I can't speak for my colleagues) thought it was necessary to make sure there was an adequate explanation for those examples. If you can accept that I thought there was a reason to look into this further, would you consider responding to the three examples above, or is that a non-starter? Carcharoth (talk) 20:05, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
  • I have to say I find the comment by NW to be incredibly misleading on the point about "tag-team edit-warring" as he is making it sound like those accounts were being used in some horrific abuse of consensus. As best I can tell there was only one incident of inappropriate use of the accounts to revert edits, and the instance involved one revert from each account. The dispute was over a trivial issue with a template. The "good hand, bad hand" argument is misguided, as the key difference between the George and Malleus accounts is that the former barely edits any discussion areas and almost never a edits in a heated discussion area, which explains that account's lack of controversial activity far better. As to the points you are raising, I don't really see anything untoward in the comments at the FAC. The Malleus account made a few comments on some of the minor concerns, but I don't see any indication that any sort of manipulation took place. With the block evasion, they were basically pittances, during one block from nearly a year ago and another a few months before that. Mostly just to copy-edit, with a few appropriate speedies. Given how long ago these violations occurred I fail to see a serious issue. Evading short-duration blocks in order to improve content is hardly something I see as nefarious. Just so I am clear, did anyone actually suggest sanctions against Malleus for these things?--The Devil's Advocate tlk. cntrb. 01:52, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
    • Fair enough if you don't think those are serious matters, but can you accept that I thought they were and that this is what guided my thoughts? To be clear, I'm not referring to what NW mentioned, but specifically the three points I raised, one of which you ignored completely (did you forget to look at that one?). You may also want to look at what I've said above about 'George Ponderevo [starting] to exhibit uncollegial tendencies', and the timing of when GP's contributions to projectspace discussions started to increase. Carcharoth (talk) 20:05, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
Carcharoth, what article has been damaged by Malleus' activities? What productive editors have been run off the project? If you can't provide specific answers for either of those questions, you had no business investigating or enforcing any rules against Malleus. There's lots of stuff out there. Please focus on the activities that damage the encyclopedia. All else is primarily irrelevant. Jehochman Talk 00:48, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
Hi Jehochman. We talked about this earlier. I will answer, but it is frustrating to raise several points and then have them ignored by you in your reply. The point should be, in case it wasn't obvious, that editors engaging with an alternate account of Malleus who have edited with Malleus previously should not be deceived into thinking they are interacting with someone else. Anything else is evading scrutiny. I would be very happy for Malleus to edit with both accounts if he really must, providing that those who interact with George know the history here (i.e. both accounts are properly tagged and don't edit in the same discussions and the other considerations listed in the relevant policies). Surely that is not too much to ask? After a period of time, the older account could be discontinued and the process of leaving the 'bad reputation' behind would slowly happen, but it would be done publicly, not secretly. You yourself said earlier "How dare you all treat him as some sort of special editor. He should be treated just like the rest of us." But he is being treated as some sort of special editor. By you and all the other editors who, knowing that he is (right now, since the point he took over the account) controlling both the George Ponderevo account (which he could unretire at any time) and the Malleus Fatuorum account, but hasn't tagged them as alternate accounts. If you really want to avoid Malleus being given special consideration (and were not just using that as a rhetorical device), why don't you take that up with him? Carcharoth (talk) 20:05, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
Very, very good point at the end here. It would be extremely easy for MF to indicate that both accounts are operated by the same person, and that would pretty much resolve any issues regarding misuse of alternate accounts. And, honestly, under the circumstances, I really can't think of any reasons why such a rather obvious simple act hasn't already been done. Doing so would resolve many of the issues being discussed here, and basically remove any reason for there to be "special considerations," because there would be nothing requiring any degree of special considerations. John Carter (talk) 20:23, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
@John Carter, there's one reason you forgot. If there is genuinely a different George person who did control the account for a while (and there ARE enough examples of that in the editing history that this cannot be simply ruled out), that's in fact a good reason not to accept tagging one as a sock of the other, because it wouldn't be true.
@Carcharoth (belated), I disagree with some of your reading of the situation and many of your conclusions, but would like to thank you for engaging in the discussion in the manner you did. MLauba (Talk) 23:34, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
 Done NE Ent 22:13, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
Undone. Keep your hands off other users' user pages. The box was pointless, because of the WiFi miracle, etc., which I just heard about, that means that many of us share IPs. Kiefer.Wolfowitz 22:47, 17 March 2013 (UTC) 19:30, 20 March 2013 (UTC)
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