Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Clarification and Amendment
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Currently, there are no requests for arbitration.
Request name | Motions | Case | Posted |
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Amendment request: Article titles and capitalisation | none | (orig. case) | 7 June 2024 |
Clarification request: Extended confirmed restriction | none | none | 29 May 2024 |
Clarification request: mentioning the name of off-wiki threads | none | none | 4 June 2024 |
Amendment request: India-Pakistan | none | (orig. case) | 7 June 2024 |
No arbitrator motions are currently open.
Requests for clarification and amendment[edit]
Use this section to request clarification or amendment of a closed Arbitration Committee case or decision.
- Requests for clarification are used to ask for further guidance or clarification about an existing completed Arbitration Committee case or decision.
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{{subst:Arbitration CA notice|SECTIONTITLE}}
to do this. - Add the diffs of the talk page notifications under the applicable header of the request.
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Amendment request: Article titles and capitalisation[edit]
General consensus among participating Arbitrators is that nothing needs to be done at this point in time. Primefac (talk) 20:01, 7 June 2024 (UTC) |
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The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it. |
Initiated by HouseBlaster at 02:23, 13 May 2024 (UTC)
Statement by HouseBlaster[edit]The Manual of Style and Article title policy are jointly authorized contentious topics. Speaking for myself, I have It seems that others are also unaware (in the conventional sense) that article titles are CTOPICs; at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case#Persistent WP:IDONTLIKEIT behavior in WP:NCROY discussions it was about three days and 26KB of discussion before Guerrillero pointed out that article titles are already designated as a CTOP. The MOS and article titles are related, but distinct, issues. I think they should be split into seperate CTOPs to reflect the fact that they are distinct issues. HouseBlaster (talk · he/him) 02:23, 13 May 2024 (UTC)
Statement by Extraordinary Writ[edit]Splitting the remedy is probably more trouble than it's worth. But while we're here: there hasn't been a logged sanction under this case since 2020, and that's probably because its scope is so narrow that most title- or MOS-related disruption isn't covered. Honestly there's a strong argument for just repealing it altogether, although the timing may not be right for that. An alternative would be to expand it to include RMs and the like (certainly there have been plenty of issues there), but that would give administrators an awful lot of discretion. The status quo of having the CTOP cover just the policy/guideline pages (which are often less contentious than the RMs) doesn't really make sense to me, though, and the lack of use suggests it's not doing much of value. Extraordinary Writ (talk) 03:13, 13 May 2024 (UTC) Statement by SarekOfVulcan[edit]I would oppose splitting them, because the application of the MOS guidelines to the article titles policy was a large part of the controversy that caused me to file the case in the first place. See also Comet Hale–Bopp. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 18:48, 20 May 2024 (UTC) Statement by {other-editor}[edit]Other editors are free to make relevant comments on this request as necessary. Comments here should address why or why not the Committee should accept the amendment request or provide additional information. Article titles and capitalisation: Clerk notes[edit]
Article titles and capitalisation: Arbitrator views and discussion[edit]
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Clarification request: Extended confirmed restriction[edit]
There is a consensus among active arbitrators that the close of the conduct discussion was correct given that the initator did not have extended confirmed and the discussion fell with-in an extended confirmed restriction topic area. Barkeep49 (talk) 15:16, 29 May 2024 (UTC) |
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The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it. |
Initiated by Ivanvector at 13:20, 25 May 2024 (UTC)
List of any users involved or directly affected, and confirmation that all are aware of the request:
Confirmation that all parties are aware of the request Statement by Ivanvector[edit]This request concerns the extended confirmed restriction and its applicability to complaints about user conduct within an affected topic. A few days ago, editor BugGhost initiated a complaint at ANI regarding editor PicturePerfect666's conduct in discussions at Talk:Eurovision Song Contest 2024 (ANI permalink). The complaint was entirely focused on PicturePerfect666's allegedly tendentious conduct with regard to information critical of Israel's participation in the song contest, reflective of real-world criticism and activism regarding Israel's ongoing invasion of Palestine. BugGhost specifically asked that PicturePerfect666 be topic banned. Since BugGhost is not extendedconfirmed, and the complaint entirely concerns conduct within that topic, I advised that the complaint could not proceed, but made no comment on its merit. My rationale for closing is that non-extendedconfirmed editors are not permitted to edit in topics where ARBECR has been imposed in good faith, other than talk page edit requests, therefore (in my view) since a conduct complaint is not an edit request, it is not permitted for non-extendedconfirmed editors to file them regarding conduct within the topic, nor to comment on them. On this I would like clarification, because I agree with some implicit criticism on my talk page that it is unreasonable. I have listed Valereee as a party because she added the contentious topics notice to the talk page on 28 December 2023 (diff), but she is not involved at all in the incidents described. PicturePerfect666 and BugGhost should be self-explanatory, and Yoyo360 is an extendedconfirmed editor who asked about "adopting" (my words) BugGhost's complaint. -- Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 13:20, 25 May 2024 (UTC)
Statement by Valereee[edit]Statement by PicturePerfect666[edit]Statement by Bugghost[edit]As the newbie here that this request is concerning, I'm not completely certain what kind of comment is expected of me here, so I apologise if anything I say is irrelevant or out of scope. Before writing the AN/I, I looked at the ARBECR guidelines and didn't see any wording that said that my filing was against the spirit of it. My interpretation was that AN/I wasn't a page related to any specific contentious topic, and the filing I was making was about a specific user's conduct, not about the contentious topic itself, and so it wasn't against the spirit of the restriction. I still stand by that - I made sure that my filing did not in any way weigh in on arguments of the related contentious topic at hand, just the behaviour of the user as shown by their edits. My filing was neutral on the contentious topic itself, without editorialising and without any discussion of assumed motive behind the behaviour - only their edits were brought forward. A consequence from this closure is that raising an AN/I about someone who is being disruptive on a contentious issue is harder than raising an AN/I about someone who is being disruptive on a non-contentious issue. If PicturePerfect666's disruptive behaviour on the Eurovision page was instead about a different topic (say, the Dutch entrant's surprise disqualification), then an AN/I filing from myself would have gone ahead, because that part of the page is not under the ARBECR. But seeing as they were disruptive about a contentious issue, they have been able to deflect my concerns - which seems counter to the ARBECR's aims of reducing disruption on contentious topics. I think that the ARBECR is a good idea but can be hard to interpret, and has the ability to dismiss reasonable well intentioned actions. In my view, it can contradict the "assume good faith" mantra, as assumption that I filed the AN/I accurately and in good faith was "trumped" by the fact my edit count being too low. As I said on IvanVector's talk page, I spent a long amount of time compiling a long list of the user's disruptive behaviour for the filing, including very specific diffs to outline each example, and it being dismissed based wholly on my edit count was very demoralising. As backed up by Yoyo360 suggestion to "adopt" it, the AN/I has some merits worth considering. BugGhost🎤 16:07, 25 May 2024 (UTC)
Statement by Yoyo360[edit]I don't have much to add actually. I don't edit much on wiki:en, I'm mostly watching the talk pages of the Eurovision wikiproject to inspire me on the French-language counterpart (which is quasi inactive). I only come in when discussions have relevance for topics I also could add on wiki:fr and I noticed PP666 behaviour in the past weeks. I concur with everything BugGhost noted in their AN/I, they argued the case way better than I ever could. Noticing the topic had been closed due to the extended confirmed restrictions, I put myself forward to push the AN/I to be treated (as I now have the EC status on wiki:en) asking if it could be reopened in my name. I even have a few things to add to it but that's rather minor compared to the rest and off-topic here I think. Yoyo360 (talk) 15:02, 25 May 2024 (UTC) Statement by Selfstudier[edit]
Statement by Sean.hoyland[edit]I think the closing was entirely appropriate and I agree with Selfstudier's statement. However, I think it is fair to say that the situation with respect to Yoyo360 at the time of the complaint posted by PicturePerfect666 at ANI is more complicated than "Yoyo360 is an extendedconfirmed editor". They were granted the privilege early (from an enwiki perspective) because, as the log says, they are a "10-year-old user with over 25,000 edits across all projects". This seems reasonable, pragmatic and it resolved the issue (although I'm sure imaginative people could cite it as yet another example of anti-Israel bias or rewarding complainers etc.), but for me, it's another reminder that none of us really know (based on evidence) the best way to implement/enforce EC restrictions in ARBPIA, how strictly they should be implemented, and that there is a lot of (costly) subjectivity and fuzziness involved at the moment. This is by no means a criticism or an endorsement of anything that happened in that thread by the way. I have no idea how to figure out how EC rules should work in practice to produce the best result. Sean.hoyland (talk) 16:02, 25 May 2024 (UTC) On gaming, as far as I can tell (in ARBPIA anyway), the notion of gaming to acquire the EC privilege only becomes useful after a person has become extendedconfirmed and you can see what they did with it. Statements about potential gaming before someone has reached 500 edits are usually not verifiable (e.g. unreliable inferences about intent) and not based on agreed methods to reliably distinguish between gaming edits and normal edits (probably because we can't really do that without the benefit of post-EC hindsight). It's true that gaming happens in ARBPIA and that the gaming vs non-gaming signals can sometimes be distinguished, e.g. here, where all of the plots that look like gaming, anonymized ARBPIA editors 2,5,6 and 7, are for editors blocked as sockpuppets. But regardless, I don't think there is much utility in raising gaming questions until after someone becomes extendedconfirmed and there is post-EC activity evidence to look at. To do so asks questions that can't be answered without a lot of handwaving fuzziness about revision size, necessity, constructiveness, gnoming-ness, character witness-like statements etc. AGF until there is a reason not to seems like the best approach to gnoming-like pre-EC edits. Sean.hoyland (talk) 07:33, 28 May 2024 (UTC) I'll add some quick responses to Ivanvector's kindness and frustration from a different perspective (as someone only active in ARBPIA nowadays, and not to make content edits).
Statement by Bishonen[edit]After Bugghost was informed on May 19 about the EC restriction on Eurovision Song Contest 2024 and told they had "nowhere near 500 edits", they have started what looks like an attempt to game the 500 edits restriction by doing a lot of simple spelling corrections and are by this means now rapidly approaching the 500. In many cases the changes aren't even corrections — they changed the form pre-determined to predetermined in hundreds of articles yesterday, even though both forms are acceptable, and similarly changed lots of instances of pre-suppose to presuppose, where also both forms are acceptable. They made no spelling-"correction" edits before they were made aware of the EC rule for the Arab–Israeli conflict. I like to AGF, but this is ridiculous. See WP:GAME. Bishonen | tålk 10:40, 27 May 2024 (UTC). Statement by Novem Linguae[edit]Bugghost has been rewriting the article Windows Presentation Foundation over the last week or so. In my mind he is a talented newer editor that is doing good content creation and article cleanup work. In light of the gaming concerns above, I'd like to make sure the positive aspects of this editor are also considered. Thank you. –Novem Linguae (talk) 11:18, 27 May 2024 (UTC) Statement by {other-editor}[edit]Other editors are free to make relevant comments on this request as necessary. Comments here should opine whether and how the Committee should clarify or amend the decision or provide additional information. Extended confirmed restriction: Clerk notes[edit]
Extended confirmed restriction: Arbitrator views and discussion[edit]
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Clarification request: mentioning the name of off-wiki threads[edit]
Initiated by Just Step Sideways at 22:38, 4 June 2024 (UTC)
List of any users involved or directly affected, and confirmation that all are aware of the request:
- Just Step Sideways (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) (initiator)
Statement by Just Step Sideways[edit]
Two recent situations have revealed what appears to be some vagueness regarding when and if users should email private evidence to the committee, the utility of doing so when it concerns a curent on-wiki, but non-ArbCom discussion, and also if merely saying that a thread exists is not permitted.
(I seem to recall that there is a case somewhere where the committee discussed very similar issues, but I've been unable to locate it in the archives.)
- In one case a user posted nothing more than the name of a very long thread at an off-wiki criticism site (they actually didn't even spell it the same as the actual thread title). It turned out that within this off-wiki thread, if one dug through it long enough, there was a link to a different thread where the very user who had made the on-wiki post was outed. This resulted in a very large number of diffs on a busy page being supressed, even though there was no direct link to any outing.
- In an ongoing RFA, some users are opposing based on what could only be described as completely harmless posts on that same forum. The recent supression action would seem to indicate that even posting the name of the thread on-wiki would lead to further supression, which is obviously to be avoided. One of these users has stated that they contacted the committee before posting, but it is unclear what this was meant to accomplish or what the committee may or may not have said back to them, if anything.
- I considered reproducing some or all of the RFA candidates posts on-wiki to demonstrate the point that they are comletely unproblematic unto themselves, but given the events described above I don't know if that would also lead to supression actions.
I feel like this has the potantial to create a chilling effect where users will be afraid to post anything at all on off-wiki criticism sites, no matter how innocuous their posts are the topic being discussed may be, and that even mentioning the name of a thread on such a site is now forbidden, which seems a bit extreme to me.
I understand and agree that directly posting a link on-wiki to a specific post that contains outing is a clear violation of the outing policy. It is less clear to me that posting merely the name of an extremely long thread with no actual link to the thread at all is a violation. I would therefore ask that the committee clarify where the line is.
I've deliberately not named the individuals involved in these incidents as this is matter of interpretation of policy, specifically Wikipedia:Oversight. I can email more detailed information if needed but I imagine it should be fairly easy for you all to determine what I'm referring to. Just Step Sideways from this world ..... today 22:38, 4 June 2024 (UTC)
- Thanks Barkeep, I'm not sure what I've got wrong, because I had to kind of piece together what actually happened as the material was supressed. I was pretty sure I'd got it right but guesswork is risky that way. Just Step Sideways from this world ..... today 23:08, 4 June 2024 (UTC)
Statement by Tryptofish[edit]
I think it would be very interesting to hear ArbCom opinions on this question. In part, this issue comes up in the context of the 2024 RfA reform discussions heading in the direction of wanting accusations of wrongdoing against RfA candidates to be backed up with specific evidence, and the question comes up of how to provide specific evidence when it cannot be posted onsite. Does ArbCom want editors to submit such evidence about RfA candidates to ArbCom, and if so, can ArbCom respond to the evidence in a way that is sufficiently timely to be useful for RfA? --Tryptofish (talk) 22:56, 4 June 2024 (UTC)
Statement by Floq[edit]
I have lots of thoughts, but they boil down to: we will not link to (or obliquely mention) any thread with outing/doxxing; consider whether it is accessible to the public so it can be verified; and consider whether the WP user has linked themselves to the off-wiki account. If any of the 3 tests fail, then you can't bring it up at RFA (or anywhere else at WP). Sorry, the world is imperfect. Based on this, you would very often be able to discuss a Discord discussion, and very often not be able to discuss a WO discussion, but with exceptions in both cases. It seems like further details on this aren't useful until and unless I become God Emperor of WP, and can just implement it, but I can expand if someone wants. --Floquenbeam (talk) 23:28, 4 June 2024 (UTC)
Statement by Vanamonde[edit]
I see this as a matter for the community, rather than ARBCOM. To me the heart of the matter is if, and how, we can discuss Wikipedia editors' off-wiki activities. ARBCOM has a role to play when off-wiki conduct impinges on on-wiki matters enough; typically, for harassment, collusion, or other disruption of our core purpose. The off-wiki conduct that has become a matter of discussion at RFA is very different: it isn't a violation of any of our PAGs, it is just behavior some editors find objectionable in an RFA candidate. We treat the off-wiki lives of our editors as private, and rightfully so. Discord and WPO are weird, in that they are strictly off-wiki fora populated by a large number of Wikipedians in good standing. I don't think it's an unreasonable position to take that behavior there shouldn't be immune to on-wiki scrutiny if it becomes relevant to on-wiki matters; I also don't think it's unreasonable to say that what happens off-wiki should stay there until and unless our PAGs are being violated, and then it needs to go to ARBCOM. But that's an area in which current policy seems to not cover all the contingencies, and the community needs to grapple with that. I don't see how a comment like this is useful to send to ARBCOM, or what ARBCOM could do if it was; but we're clearly unsettled as a community that it was posted, and we need to figure out guidelines for it. Vanamonde93 (talk) 01:23, 5 June 2024 (UTC)
Statement by Joe Roe[edit]
I agree that some clarification from the committee on these matters would be helpful. This isn't entirely up to them—for example, the ban on discussing Discord discussions is the result of a community RfC and it would be inappropriate to modify it either way here—but ArbCom has historically played a role in making editors feel generally uncomfortable about linking to things off-wiki. More specifically, a 2007 remedy pronouncing that quoting private correspondence is a copyright violation is still on the books and still cited in WP:EMAILPOST. Does the current committee agree with this interpretation?
In addition, ArbCom has a responsibility to regulate the oversight team, and I've had a feeling for a long time now that they been enforce an extremely broad understanding of what constitutes "outing" that is not necessarily reflective of broader community opinion. Some direction there could also be very helpful: OS is used as "tool of first resort", or so the mantra goes, but we shouldn't underestimate how chilling it is to have an edit suppressed. – Joe (talk) 08:47, 5 June 2024 (UTC)
- Aoidh makes a good point below about current policy (WP:OUTING) requiring disclosure of personal information on Wikipedia before it can be discussed. There are two pivot points there: where the disclosure should happen, but also whether
profiles on external sites
, and by extension posts associated with those profiles, can reasonably be considered "personal information". For me it's the latter that is the problem here; the former is a good rule when applied to genuine personal information. Interestingly, it's also a relatively recent addition to the harassment policy,[4][5] following this discussion in December 2020. The reason given for the addition was to bring the policy in line with the practice of oversighters, which rather speaks to my point of the OS team pushing things in a more conservative direction, not necessarily the community as a whole. – Joe (talk) 06:36, 6 June 2024 (UTC) - @Moneytrees and Barkeep49: The "copyright email" correspondence is cited in WP:EMAILPOST, albeit in a roundabout way. I think it would be helpful for the committee to formally retract that remedy, even if it won't change things immediately, just to remove the spectre of that particular armchair lawyer from subsequent discussions. As Barkeep also alludes to, a lot of the appearance of support for these rules comes not from people really reflecting on the core issue, but transferring a (faulty) logic originally applied to emails to IRC, and then from IRC to Discord, and so on. If the sender of an email wants to control what happens to it, they can do so completely: by not sending it. If the operator of a Discord channel wants to control what happens to the logs, they can do so completely: by not making them public. But what we're talking about here is material that has already been published on the internet. It is not private and never will be again. All we achieve by trying to put the cat back in the bag is to create a charade where we have to pretend not to be able to see messages that we can all see, not to know things that we all know, and not to talk about things that we can all talk about elsewhere. Nobody's privacy is protected, it just makes it easier for editors who behave badly off-wiki to evade accountability, and makes good-faith editors look like idiots because they're not allowed to provide evidence for the opinions they've formed based on off-wiki activity.
- @CaptainEek: What is ArbCom supposed to do with it, though? The precipitating incident here is an RfA where there was opposition based on the candidates activity on Discord and Wikipediocracy (so no it's not just about WPO). The opposers (including me) could not point to specific incidents, because of the rules discussed here which, at least in part, stem from a prior ArbCom remedy on from the practice of the oversight team. How would emailing ArbCom help there? And in general, what role is ArbCom supposed to play when the off-wiki material that people want to discuss is relevant to on-wiki activities, but doesn't rise to the level of something needing ArbCom intervention?
- And to nobody in particular, I do think it would aid transparency if committee members who are active on the off-wiki forums we're discussing here disclose it when voting or offering an opinion. – Joe (talk) 07:44, 7 June 2024 (UTC)
Statement by Ferret[edit]
I'd like an opinion on this as well, not necessarily just for RFA. Specific to WP:Discord, I !voted in the Discord RFC to restrict copying and linking Discord messages. I did so based on my reading of OUTING, HARASSMENT, and the community expectations of IRC logs, rather than strictly what I'd prefer. That consideration included what Joe references about the copyright concern of "private" messages, which seems to be part of the long standing rationale around IRC messages. I've also seen several times people suggest that OUTING goes as far as covering someone outing themselves on another Wikimedia project (i.e. a user page on eswiki), meaning that's not good enough to mention here on English Wikipedia. Prior to SUL, that may well have been, but SUL is long done. So what I'm really driving at is: Where is the line on identifying yourself sufficiently to be mentioned on site? Particular to the Discord, we have OAuth integration through an open source bot hosted on WMF resources. Is this enough to count as self-disclosure? Or does the connection to Discord have to be on-site (i.e. a userbox or otherwise)? Revisiting the Discord RFC is on the community, but some of these questions, such as EMAILPOST and how OS will act, are at least partially under Arbcom as Joe notes. -- ferret (talk) 13:43, 5 June 2024 (UTC)
- @Barkeep49 Thanks. I have heard this said (Re: disclosure on other Wikimedia projects) repeatedly, but I did not know where it might actually be stated. -- ferret (talk) 19:09, 5 June 2024 (UTC)
Statement by Thryduulf[edit]
Regarding Ferret's comments regarding disclosures on other SUL wikis. I have a vague recollection that this was discussed previously, but I don't remember where. I don't think a single hard and fast rule can be applied to that, but it's a matter of how reasonable it is to expect en.wp editors to be aware of the disclosure. For example if you make a disclosure on another wiki and you prominently link to that page from your userpage here, that should count as disclosing it here. If you disclose something on your e.g. eswiki userpage and make it clear on your userpage here that you contribute to eswiki, then again it's reasonable to take that as having been disclosed to the English Wikipedia. However, if you state something on the e.g. Russian wikisource's equivalent of Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style, and don't link to that page here, then it has not been disclosed to the English Wikipedia. Obviously there will be many things in between the extremes that can only be decided on a case-by-case basis. However, unless you are sure it has been intentionally or obviously disclosed somewhere it is reasonable to expect English Wikipedia editors to be aware of, then assume it has not been disclosed. Thryduulf (talk) 18:54, 5 June 2024 (UTC)
- @Barkeep49 so basically what I said just more clearly and a lot more concisely! Thryduulf (talk) 19:05, 5 June 2024 (UTC)
- @Joe Roe: there are two issues with connecting accounts elsewhere. The first is ensuring that connections are actually correct, i.e. User X here is the same person as user X elsewhere - even sharing relatively unusual names like Thryduulf is not a guarantee (I remember finding a user Thryduulf that was nothing to do with me a few years ago, user:Thrydwulf is nothing to do with me). The second issue is that editors have a reasonable expectation of privacy and are allowed to choose to disclose things in other communities that they do not want to disclose here. Thryduulf (talk) 09:44, 6 June 2024 (UTC)
Statement by hako[edit]
I think the community wants to have pretty firm protections against doxxing
I'd like the committee to make an explicit distinction between persons involved in the act of doxxing (or say vote canvassing or any other misconduct) on third-party sites, and persons who participate on those sites but are not abettors. It's futile to overreach and police what editors do and say outside wikipedia. Hypothetically speaking, I can say whatever I want on any third party site with a fictitious name, without any possibility of repercussion on my activity on wikipedia. Arbcom should act exclusively on cases where they find evidence of misconduct by an editor off-wiki without attaching any vicarious liability to other participants on that off-wiki platform. — hako9 (talk) 19:40, 5 June 2024 (UTC)
Statement by {other-editor}[edit]
Other editors are free to make relevant comments on this request as necessary. Comments here should opine whether and how the Committee should clarify or amend the decision or provide additional information.
mentioning the name of off-wiki threads: Clerk notes[edit]
- This area is used for notes by the clerks (including clerk recusals).
mentioning the name of off-wiki threads: Arbitrator views and discussion[edit]
- Thanks for raising this issue JSS. As the OS who did the noticeboard suppression which named a thread, your facts aren't quite right there, but I don't think that takes away from the larger point you're raising. And it's one I admit to some discomfort with in an RfA context. As it stands I think the community wants to have pretty firm protections against doxxing. I also think the community would care about certain off-wiki activities. For instance, if User:Foo had lost Stewardship due to abuse on Miraheze/WikiTide there would be no cause for any action here, but I think the community would want to consider that information before passing someone at RfA. So don't have any answers (yet) but wanted to acknowledge some thoughts I had as I wait to see what other editors and arbs say. Barkeep49 (talk) 23:03, 4 June 2024 (UTC)
- I want to take more time to look into this so I can make a more informed opinion, but wanted to note that I am paying close attention to this and appreciate the statements given so far. I think it's important to note that the current wording of WP:OUTING requires self-disclosure on Wikipedia in order for the disclosure of off-wiki profiles to not constitute outing, and I think it's important to view these issues through that lens unless and until that policy is amended. - Aoidh (talk) 22:32, 5 June 2024 (UTC)
- I have a lot of thoughts about this but might take some time to make them digestible. One thing though, I agree with you @Joe that the "copyright" justification for not posting emails is pretty dubious, at least in a modern Wikipedia context, and I know at least one other Arb felt a similar way last year. That said, I think it's reasonable to prohibit the posting of emails (or at least discourage it), and WP:EMAILPOST doesn't actually cite the "copyright" portion of the remedy~-- so I'm not actually sure if it's something that needs to be amended? Moneytrees🏝️(Talk) 23:52, 6 June 2024 (UTC)
- I'm not sure if I'm the arb mentioned (could be!), but there was a reason in the Discord RfC mentioned above that I said it and IRC should be treated equally. I think there's a fairly reasonable case that channel/server operators should be able to decide if logs can be posted onwiki or not and for that decision to be respected onwiki. Further the copyright justification (as opposed to just straight up "Wikipedians are concerned about privacy and this is one way we choose to protect it) for OS'ing off-wiki stuff has always felt weak to me. Barkeep49 (talk) 00:08, 7 June 2024 (UTC)
- I see a lot of beating around the bush here, but it seems clear that the real issue here is Wikipediocracy. I do not recommend participation in WPO even as a "good guy" (the classic adage about wrestling with pigs applies). It has gotten more people into more drama than highschool theatre.With that said, there are two possible situations involving off-wiki content: 1) the content relies entirely on on-wiki evidence, but collates/comments on/brings to light the issue; or 2) the content relies on off-wiki/private evidence. In case of situation 1, if the underlying diffs could be posted on wiki without say outing someone, then just post the underlying diffs. No need to point people to WPO to hear ten blocked trolls give their opinions on it. Its not that you're forbidden from discussing the nonsense at WPO, but its not recommended and can in fact be avoided. In the case of situation 2, you shouldn't be posting that on-wiki, because you're linking to content that wouldn't be okay on-wiki, like doxxing. Alluding to it is not an improvement in my book, because then you're just casting aspersions. Instead, it should get emailed to ArbCom, who can take action as necessary. The moral is that there is never a situation that calls for linking to or discussing a Wikipediocracy thread. CaptainEek Edits Ho Cap'n!⚓ 03:43, 7 June 2024 (UTC)
Amendment request: India-Pakistan[edit]
Initiated by Jéské Couriano at 16:07, 7 June 2024 (UTC)
- Clauses to which an amendment is requested
- Contentious topic designation
- List of any users involved or directly affected, and confirmation that all are aware of the request
- Jéské Couriano (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) (initiator)
- Information about amendment request
- Contentious topic designation
- Adding the 500/30 rule specifically to the India military regiments topic area (defined as List of regiments and corps of the Indian Army and any page that is or could potentially be listed there)
Statement by Jéské Couriano[edit]
Over the past month or so we've been having members of the Indian Armed Forces either editing or attempting to create articles concerning military regiments in India. It's only recently come to light that this is a concerted effort by the Indian Army itself; practically all accounts involved have failed to disclose their connexions and very few have used their talk pages (and those that do tend to describe it as an order from higher up that they don't really have a choice but to obey). I'm not as concerned about the drafts, as they're G5-eligible. What I am concerned about are the pages already in mainspace that have been targeted by this campaign, such as 1889 Missile Regiment (India) and a host of others; see User:Jéské Couriano/2024 Indian Military Regiment Spam for a more complete list. I'm seeking to have the 500/30 rule apply specifically in the Indian military regiments topic area to stymie editing of this sort and to force these editors to the talk pages of the articles to make their case.
- @Guerillero: The community has been playing whac-a-mole and finding both older accounts and created-in-the-past-12-hours accounts on a daily basis, which get listed at WP:Sockpuppet investigations/832LT on discovery. The drafts as I said are easily dealt with, but there's little the community can really do to stop the article editing other than roll dice on protection (which will likely be ECP, due to the age and habits of several of these accounts) as the accounts appear to be under orders to violate WP:OWN and there's no realistic way to predict which specific article the newest sock, either registered or IP, is going to edit. All we know is it's going to be about an Indian military regiment. —Jéské Couriano v^_^v threads critiques 17:25, 7 June 2024 (UTC)
Statement by {other-editor}[edit]
Other editors are free to make relevant comments on this request as necessary. Comments here should address why or why not the Committee should accept the amendment request or provide additional information.
India-Pakistan: Clerk notes[edit]
- This area is used for notes by the clerks (including clerk recusals).
India-Pakistan: Arbitrator views and discussion[edit]
- Has the community gotten a chance to resolve this issue? If not, I am inclined to deny the request --Guerillero Parlez Moi 17:03, 7 June 2024 (UTC)
- I'm not convinced that 500/30 is the right response to this disruption. However, IPA along with PIA and EE are topics where I don't really expect much community attempts at resolution prior to arbcom given the nature of those disputes on and off wiki. So I am open to doing something here. Barkeep49 (talk) 17:12, 7 June 2024 (UTC)
- While I know we generally protect pages as a result of disruption and not pre-emptively, I think the argument could be made that because of past disruption at related pages, it is not unreasonable to extend that protection to a class of article (in this case Indian military articles). In other words, would ECP across all of the related pages solve this issue? WP:ARBECR doesn't seem like it would solve the issue because the edits/editors are already being reverted on-sight, and it is really meant more to restrict all editing to those who have been around for a while. Primefac (talk) 20:08, 7 June 2024 (UTC)
- I have to agree with Primefac with questioning the efficacy of this proposed solution. Jéské Couriano's assessment that
there's no realistic way to predict which specific article the newest sock, either registered or IP, is going to edit
means that short of applying ECP to most or all of the articles in this topic area (which isn't reasonable) WP:ARBECR doesn't seem like it would address the issue. It would, however, create more barriers to other editors who would like to edit those articles. - Aoidh (talk) 21:09, 7 June 2024 (UTC)