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A request for arbitration is the last step of dispute resolution for conduct disputes on Wikipedia. The Arbitration Committee considers requests to open new cases and review previous decisions. The entire process is governed by the arbitration policy. For information about requesting arbitration, and how cases are accepted and dealt with, please see guide to arbitration.

To request enforcement of previous Arbitration decisions or discretionary sanctions, please do not open a new Arbitration case. Instead, please submit your request to /Requests/Enforcement.

This page transcludes from /Case, /Clarification and Amendment, /Motions, and /Enforcement.

Please make your request in the appropriate section:

Request a new arbitration case
Request clarification or amendment of an existing case
This includes requests to lift sanctions previously imposed
Request enforcement of a remedy in an existing case
Arbitrator motions
Arbitrator-initiated motions, not specific to a current open request

Arbitration Committee proceedings

Case requests

Currently, there are no requests for arbitration.

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Open cases

Case name	Links	Evidence due	Prop. Dec. due
Palestine-Israel articles 5	(t) (ev / t) (ws / t) (pd / t)	21 Dec 2024	11 Jan 2025

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Recently closed cases (Past cases)

No cases have recently been closed (view all closed cases).

Clarification and Amendment requests

Currently, no requests for clarification or amendment are open.

Arbitrator motions

Motion name	Date posted
Arbitrator workflow motions	1 December 2024

Current requests

Betacommand

Initiated by NonvocalScream (talk) at 12:26, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Involved parties

NonvocalScream (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log), uninvolved filing party
Betacommand (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
LessHeard vanU (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)

Confirmation that all parties are aware of the request

Confirmation that other steps in dispute resolution have been tried

Link 1
Link 2

Statement by NonvocalScream (talk)

We have a contributing editor that is blocked for a technical violation of community imposed restrictions. I ask the committee to review the indefinite block. The editor has not actually disrupted the projected, appears to have edited within policy, but indef blocked due to technical set of restrictions. The editor is de facto banned, should there be no administrator willing to shorten the block. Someone feel free to place the other steps to DR if I've left any out. I'll note that I am uninvolved in the way that I've not acted. I have however, stated an opinion in discussions.

Note: that I did not expect for arbitrators to decide on this today, I figured there would be a few days for community discussion.

Statement by Ryan Postlethwaite

Please reject this case. The community discussion has only just begun (about 10 minutes ago actually!) and nobody knows what is going to happen. The quality of the edits aren't a problem - Betacommand was sanctioned by the community because he used poorly programmed bots and required to ask for permission if he was to do more than 25 repetitive edits. He's failed to do that and he's got blocked. When Betacommand messed up with automated edits, it required a lot of checking and clean up hence the ban on all automated editing. This restriction was last chance saloon and it's only right that the indef block was added. Now we can discuss this calmly and decide whether indefinite means infinie, but that's for WP:AN, not here. Ryan Postlethwaite^{See the mess I've created or let's have banter} 12:31, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by LessHeard vanU (talk · contribs)

I suggest keeping this case in abeyance until the discussion, as commented upon by Ryan Postlethwaite, runs its course at the noticeboard with no conclusion - or a conclusion that it should be referred to ArbCom, in which case indications on whether it may be accepted might be germane in that discussion. Alternatively, as I made clear in my notice to the admin board, Betacommand may wish to exercise the option of referring the matter to ArbCom. Lastly, the tariff of indefinite is specifically one that is open to be varied upon conclusion of any discussion. I thank NonvocalScream for acting so promptly and neutrally in this instance. LessHeard vanU (talk) 12:41, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Rootology (talk · contribs)

Please reject as premature, unless 1) someone tries to do an unblock or anything off-wiki (which has zero authority over on-wiki consensus at any time); 2) something isn't done about the binding enforcement that Beta himself agreed to at Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Betacommand_2#Community-imposed restrictions which spawned from Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents/I have blocked Betacommand#Ad hoc committee proposal.

I would actually ask the committee, if they're willing, to codify those restrictions (which again, Beta himself agreed to) as binding with the weight of the Committee as a motion. That would end any nonsense, and any trouble then if it happened would be from Beta not following the restrictions in the future.

Statement by Pascal.Tesson (talk · contribs)

Rejecting as premature is probably the smart choice but for the sake of argument, here are a few good reasons to accept the case.

This will end up at ArbCom. In particular, Betacommand has persistently told administrators blocking him that he'd take his case to ArbCom.
Blocks on Betacommand have often resulted in wheel wars. An ArbCom case would presumably avoid repeats of that.
The community has already repeatedly discussed BC's case. The latest result was a pretty strong consensus to impose clear and unambiguous restrictions which BC has failed to respect. In that sense, the community has pretty much done what it could.

Statement by Orderinchaos

For once the community actually seems to be handling something with relatively low drama. I think that BC has exhausted the community's patience at this point, and an indefinite (although not infinite) block seems to be the best way of managing the situation. ArbCom's role starts when the community can't handle something, either for technical or social reasons, and that point hasn't been reached.

Clerk notes

This area is used for notes by non-recused Clerks.

Recuse. Daniel (talk) 13:16, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Notice left at Betacommand's talk page. - Penwhale | ^{Blast him / Follow his steps} 14:55, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Arbitrators' opinion on hearing this matter (0/7/1/1)

Decline pending further discussion. Please feel free to bring this back here if the situation doesn't resolve itself in some reasonable manner after a few days; but I see no need to short-circuit the community discussion at this point, given that this is a community restriction to begin with. Kirill 13:04, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Monitoring and awaiting developments. If I had to vote right now it would be "decline per Kirill," but I have the unfortunate feeling that consensus on ANI will be elusive (but by all means keep trying). Clerks please monitor Betacommand's talk page for a statement (since he is blocked) and copy it here. Newyorkbrad (talk) 13:15, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Recuse, I unblocked BC during the last fiasco, and participated heavily in that discussion. I do agree that there is insufficient community discussion so far with regards to this current set of BC edits, but note that BC did indicate a few times on his talk page that anyone concerned with those edits of his should take the matter to arbcom, and also that anyone who blocked him would be taken to arbcom. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 13:18, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Reject unless the Community discussion does not find a consensus decision. I agree with Newyorkbrad that Betacommand needs to have his comments added to the discussion if he makes any. FloNight ♥♥♥ 13:44, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Keeping a holding pattern on this is wisest, I think, while community discussion is ongoing. — Coren ^(talk) 16:20, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Decline - Arbitration is the last step of the dispute resolution process. The community is handling it for the time being. -- FayssalF - ^{Wiki me up®} 16:56, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Decline. I was considering holding off for a while, but it looks like the community is handling this pretty well, not needed for now. Wizardman 21:54, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Decline Premature RFAR. The community's resources are not yet exhausted. — Rlevse • Talk • 21:58, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Decline Premature: let the community handle it for now. --ROGER DAVIES ^talk 22:03, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Decline process in play as is. Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 22:14, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Maria Thayer

Initiated by Rwiggum (^Talk/_Contrib) at 17:21, 10 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Involved parties

Rwiggum (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log), filing party
G.-M. Cupertino (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
Dismas (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
Verdatum (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Confirmation that all parties are aware of the request`

G.-M. Cupertino [1]
Dismas [2]
Verdatum [3]

Confirmation that other steps in dispute resolution have been tried

[4]
[5]

Statement by Rwiggum

This issue began when G.-M. Cupertino reverted one of my edits to the article. The article is one of an actress, and my edit consisted of putting her filmography into a table format, removing what I felt to be ancillary information (including the number of episodes she appeared on for each television series and several DVD extras) and un-linking several non-existent articles. I later reinstated my edits. When they were again reverted, I took it to his talk page to try and discuss why he felt my edits were harmful to the article. He believed that my revisions removed important information, while I believed that such information was not necessary and hurt the visual layout of the page. This is not an isolated incident, either. On several occasions, the user has replaced tabled filmographies with direct copy-pastes from IMDB. 1 2 3 4

Since my very first interaction with him, G.-M. Cupertino has been largely hostile and unwilling to reach a common consensus. I have tried to work with him to get this issue resolved, but he has been extremely resistant to my attempts. He has also deleted all of my postings on his talk page, so here are the revision histories that make up the most complete versions:

Likewise, in addition to being openly hostile toward me, he has continually removed his postings from my talk page as well. Here is the most recent revision of that, in case he removes it again:

[11]

After my continual insistence that he stop deleting content from my talk page, he chose instead to vandalize it twice under an IP:

[12]

[13]

Throughout this entire process I have been civil, cordial and willing to work to a conclusion. However, G.-M. Cupertino has been hostile and unwilling to make an effort, and has continued making unconstructive edits with no regard for other editors and a general indignation to those who tried to help him. (I am not the first one to bring this issue to his attention). I simply ask the arbitration committe to help me bring this incident to a peaceful conclusion. Rwiggum (^Talk/_Contrib) 17:21, 10 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Additional Note Another user has brought to my attention some more instances of G.-M. Cupertino's difficulties with others. (I tried to keep it to more substantial edits to the user's talk page, as G.-M. Cupertino has made several edits and additions to his posts. The full messages can be found here.)

Rwiggum (^Talk/_Contrib) 17:35, 10 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Additional Note #2 Yet another user has come forward to express their frustration with G.-M. Cuperiono.

[19]

And the user also brings up a very valid point: It isn't that I feel that Cuperino's contributions are entirely worthless, on the contrary. A lot of these pages need filmographies. The major problem is his complete unwillingness to work with other editors to improve the articles. Rwiggum (^Talk/_Contrib) 17:37, 10 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Additional Note #3 and Question It appears that I misunderstood the initial comment by Dismas on my userpage. He wasn't just directing me to his talk page and Cuperino's previous postings, but he was posting me here, to a user page he created to chronicle his dealings with Cuperino.

This leads me to my question: Now that the request for arbitration has been started, would it be too late to include him in this discussion? It seems as though he has quite a bit of insight into this situation as well. Rwiggum (^Talk/_Contrib) 22:15, 10 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Additional Note #4 Dismas and Verdatum have been added as Involved Parties. Rwiggum (^Talk/_Contrib) 22:26, 10 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Additional Note #5 It seems as though he's getting worse. He's taken to making personal attacks, [20] as well as removing some of the disputed content from pages wholesale. [21] [22] Rwiggum (^Talk/_Contrib) 14:59, 11 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Additional Note #6 Here are a few more: [23] [24] [25] [26] [27] [28] At this point, he has moved past unconstructive edits and into the territory of pure vandalism. Rwiggum (^Talk/_Contrib) 15:11, 11 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Additional Note #7 I apologize for making so many additions in such a short time, but he has now moved onto nominating all of the articles for speedy deletion, [29] in addition to continue removing filmographies. At this point it is clear that his edits are intended to be viscious and in bad faith, and if arbitration isn't the correct way to go about this, then I need to know what to do with him. Rwiggum (^Talk/_Contrib) 15:16, 11 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

UPDATE The user has been temporarily blocked for his edits: [30] Rwiggum (^Talk/_Contrib) 15:25, 11 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by G.-M. Cupertino

Statement by Dismas

I am not involved in the article for which this arbitration was started. I have however dealt with Cupertino on several occaisions. In almost every case he has been difficult to deal with.

When I put links to WP guidelines and policies into my edit summaries, he does not take the time to read those guidelines and policies. He has claimed that he doesn't have time to be reading pages of rules even when specific parts of policies are pointed out to him. I could understand if he didn't read every word of a particular guideline but he won't even take the time to skim them for relevant info. Although, somehow he has been able to hold onto the line at the top of every guideline that says that guidelines are not to be enforced on every page and are left to editor's discretion. He uses this excuse liberally to explain his edits. Due to having to re-explain guidelines to him, he now smugly inserts the word "mandatory" before every instance of using the term "guideline".

He has been uncivil on many occasions, whether on my talk page or in edit summaries.

Only by having an admin intervene or get a third opinion, through WP:3O, have I been able to speed up the process of reaching an agreement with him. For a long time now, he's had an "admin for emergencies" listed on his talk page. As far as I have gathered, this admin at one time helped Cupertino out and has since been listed there. They seem to be one of the few people that Cupertino listens to.

Only by posting things to his talk page does he ever engage in any sort of communication and even then it's spotty. He doesn't seem to have learned that this is a collaborative project. Instead of reading an edit summary and asking what something stands for, why someone has reverted his edit, or why someone has tweaked an edit that he's made, he simply reads it, dismisses it, and puts the article back to his version. When going through the effort of getting him to realize that dates were not to be linked 100% of the time, one of his rants was about how some 'powers that be' made some changes to the rules and didn't make him aware. When the recent notice was put at the top of everyone's watchlist about the discussion over dates, I made sure to point out to Cupertino that he could have his say on the matter. When I checked the discussions just now, he had still not weighed in with his thoughts even though this was such a hot button item with him previously.

Due to the fact that I've had to deal with him in so many cases and have had to go to such great lengths, I felt that at some point things may come to arbitration with him. Therefore, I have been building a record, of sorts, of his actions. You can find this at a sub-page of my user page, here.

With all that being said, I do have to say that he is able to do a large number of tedious edits seemingly without any scripts. When they are good edits, it is a very good thing to see. I just wish that he was more communicative and more receptive to changes because then he wouldn't waste so much time undoing various things. Dismas|^(talk) 19:34, 11 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Verdatum

I am not involved with concerns on this article itself, but instead regarding the actions of User:G.-M. Cupertino. I first had a disagreement with him in regards to the Kyra Sedgwick article. It resulted in in the following discussion [31], where he made Legal Threats, Personal Attacks failed to Assume Good Faith, failed to remain Civil, and acted as though he owned the article. The first argument, regarding WP:BLP, was resolved eventually, and the second argument, regarding Filmography, was eventually resolved through a compromise after making a request for a third opinion.

I found interacting with this user most off-putting. His correspondence were consistently in an aggressive tone (as seen in the above link). He overlooked requests for discussion, instead choosing to voice brief agressive arguments in the Edit Summary [32] [33]. I added messenges to his talkpage [34] [35], both of which were immediately removed by him, which as I interpret WP:TALK is alright, but it makes threaded discussion difficult. I scanned the user's contributions and found a general history of the same agressive argument style. I gave him the benefit of the doubt, assuming it was just a matter of a language barrier, and unfamiliarity with some guidelines and policies, still I continued to watch his talkpage, in case I could try to aid with any future altercations he might have with other editors.

Shortly there after, I was contacted by User:Dismas regarding concerns about this editor [36]. I believe that resulted in Dsmas opening a RFA/UC which was quickly closed for not yet being a last resort.

After noticing a long string of back a forth edits on User talk:G.-M. Cupertino‎, between Cupertino and User:Rwiggum on my watchlist, I glanced through them, and decided to drop Rwiggum a note about Cupertino's editing style [37].

Any other issues on the matter are merely practices I've witnessed in sporadically monitoring his contributions, but I'm not yet comfortable enough with this process to know what level of detail I should cover, and would mostly be redundant to the statements of the other editors involved. -Verdatum (talk) 23:50, 10 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Suggestion by uninvolved Sandstein

In view of G.-M. Cupertino (talk · contribs)'s comments at [38], noted by Kirill below, I suggest that this issue is most expediently resolved by indefinitely blocking G.-M. Cupertino for gross incivility and personal attacks, as well as threats of physical harm. An arbitration case is not required for this. Sandstein 18:04, 13 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by uninvolved NVO

I "met" with G.-M. Cupertino (talk · contribs) only once on a subject not worth any quarrel. We did not agree then on notability issue, but, again, it is unimportant. However, I was bemused by G.-M. C.'s deletion of that discussion from my talkpage [39]. When this arbcom case popped up, I realized that this is G.-M. C.'s routine modus operandi that has been complained about by other editors to no avail. This arbcom case is an example of current "administration" failures. G.-M. C.'s incivility and 3RR violations had to be handled by admins way before. Where were the admins when they were needed? the first block of G.-M. C, ever, was effected by User:Orangemike after the arbcom filing. Contrary to what User:Sandstein said above, arbitration is required, because of the admins' failure. NVO (talk) 13:37, 14 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by uninvolved Ncmvocalist

There are some real issues with this user's conduct; a clear lack of receptiveness to any sort of feedback, let alone community feedback. This reminds me of certain conduct I unfortunately experienced with certain other users (example) - though the conduct issues are somewhat different, it comes down to the same problem. The example nearly managed to let his disruption go unnoticed for a long period of time (nearly greater than 2 years) - I note that it was only after several community discussions, and an unfortunately horrible wait that the example recently received a 3 month block for a lack of receptiveness to community feedback, among a couple of other issues. However, the sense of disruptive off-wiki coordinated editing with certain other editors (example) was something that could not be addressed. Perhaps, one day I will have no choice but to make a request for arbitration on these examples...but that'll be another case for another day. Back to this case....

Fortunately, there is no sense of such disruptive off-wiki coordinated editing yet, and G M Cupertino's lack of receptiveness to feedback is more clear cut; as with his conduct issues. An RFC is likely to prolong the dispute more than necessary in this case. It would take more than a couple of community discussions to demonstrate that the conduct has not ceased before sanctions may be imposed - even though we are reasonably confident that regardless of how much we AGF, the conduct will recommence in the future. There is no doubt that it is one form of problem editing that has adversely affected other users contributions.

Based on my own experience with the above examples, this user's conduct will continue to be a problem, sometime in the future - unless there are measures in place to prevent it from happening. If the Committee is willing to provide long term solutions/sanctions (such as bans) for this sort of problematic conduct, then this case should be accepted - if ArbCom will only go to the extent of providing minor sanctions or admonishment, then this case should be rejected. Ncmvocalist (talk) 08:10, 15 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Clerk notes

This area is used for notes by non-recused Clerks.

Recuse from clerking duties on this case.
In the course of my work for the Mediation Committee, I recently rejected a Request for Mediation pertaining to this dispute.
AGK 23:35, 12 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
While this has passed 10 days without being accepted and hence could be removed as rejected, due to the impending start of the new arbitrators on January 1 and the recusals to that effect below, this request will be left for the first week of January for the new arbitrators to vote on it. Please do not remove this case from the page; anyone seeing a non-Arbitrator or non-Clerk removing this request under the 10-day clause should revert and provide a link to this comment. Daniel (talk) 05:14, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Update: The moratorium on delisting or opening Requests has been lifted, and the new Arbitrators are now fully voting. Requests may, effective immediately, be delisted per the 10-day clause as per normal operation procedures. AGK 11:13, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Recently an arbitrator has changed his vote, and as such, dismissal of this request should be delayed for more consideration, perhaps? - Penwhale | ^{Blast him / Follow his steps} 14:07, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, if you factor in CHL's one-week-in-the-future vote, this would be accepted on 1 Jan, assuming no one else votes. Right now, I'd say let this run til 1 Jan and take appropriate action at that time. — Rlevse • Talk • 14:12, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

~~This is on track to be opened as Request for Arbitration/G.-M. Cupertino upon Cool Hand Luke's vote kicking in - I will be clerking it.~~ --Tznkai (talk) 19:30, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Tally will be at net 3, so is actually on track for rejection. New arbiters should get their votes in ASAP.--Tznkai (talk) 07:18, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Some incoming arbitrators may choose to exercise their arbitrator power when the new year actually starts, as such, this request will still be kept for the first few days (if not a week) of 2009. - Penwhale | ^{Blast him / Follow his steps} 10:22, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Arbitrators' opinion on hearing this matter (8/4/2/1)

Comment. At first glance this does not look as if the situation is ripe for an Arbitration Committee case. There may be user conduct issues, but it is not clear to me that others attempts to resolve the problems have been tried. Since Arbitration is the last step in dispute resolution, some preliminary steps need to be tried if they have not been done yet. See Dispute resolution for methods of to give users feedback. For example. Request for commentFloNight♥♥♥ 21:31, 10 December 2008 (UTC) FloNight♥♥♥ 21:37, 10 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- Any user with knowledge of the situation is free to add a comment to this request. FloNight ♥♥♥ 22:19, 10 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- Reject. At this time, I see no evidence that Arbitration is needed to resolve this situation. Open an User conduct RFC. Even if the user conduct issue continue, I want to give the Community a chance to resolve the situation first. FloNight ♥♥♥ 11:27, 12 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Awaiting more statements. There are very real conduct and civility concerns here, but per FloNight, it might be possible to address them short of arbitration. Newyorkbrad (talk) 00:39, 11 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- G.-M. Cupertino has stated that he has stopped editing in an area where his edits have proved contentious. I would appreciate an update on whether alleged problems persist with his editing in other areas. Newyorkbrad (talk) 16:28, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with what has been said above, and would reject the request at this time. G.-M. Cupertino's refusal to participate in mediation is worrying. Nevertheless, there are other methods of dispute resolution available. I would recommend making a request for comments; see the instructions here. If that fails to reach a suitable outcome then arbitration may be appropriate. --bainer (talk) 02:12, 12 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Accept. The nature of the comments here suggest to me that a user RFC would not accomplish anything substantive; there are some concrete problems we can address here. Kirill ^(prof) 05:44, 13 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Accept a case dealing with G.-M. Cupertino's wider editing. Sam Blacketer (talk) 23:45, 13 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Recuse. I'm outta here too soon. --jpgordon^∇∆∇∆ 00:06, 17 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Recuse, as with Josh, though I would urge the Committee to accept it. James F. (talk) 18:15, 17 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Note: Our newbie arb hats aren't fully on but we're being asked to comment...The failure of GMC to participate neither in RFC or here does not bode well for the success of a full arbcom case. Therefore, I ask a sitting arb to make a motion to deal with GCM. — Rlevse • Talk • 01:07, 22 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Accept given events of past several days and that GMC would likely not participate in an RFC. Rename case to GMC and look at broad editing and behavior issues. 12:14, 27 December 2008 (UTC) — Rlevse • Talk • 22:02, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
~~Not-quite-Arb Motion? I echo Rlevse's comment and welcome a motion from a sitting arbitrator. --ROGER DAVIES ^talk 16:13, 23 December 2008 (UTC)~~[reply]
- I think a motion would be inappropriate in this case because there has been no previous case and it does not seem to be an emergency. Opening a full case is often useful in disclosing the background and sometimes shows up factors which are not apparent from the statements. Sam Blacketer (talk) 16:24, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Accept. From the looks of it, all a user conduct rfc would do is have the same few people saying GM's editing is bad, then it'd be archived with nothing coming out of it. Arbitration seems the best course of action to look at the conduct issues presented. Wizardman 16:49, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- Furthermore, a rename upon acceptance to GMC as opposed to Maria Thayer would be best. Wizardman 19:20, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  I concur with the propriety of a rename if the case opens. — Coren ^(talk) 19:40, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Accept as an RFC will seemingly achieve little. --ROGER DAVIES ^talk 17:03, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Accept; it would appear that an RFC will simply delay the inevitable landing of this case back on the Committee's role, and the matter is only likely to have grown more acrimonious by then. — Coren ^(talk) 19:14, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Reject. I see no reason that this cannot be handled at the community level. I believe that there are admin who would be willing to block based on a sensible ANI report and few to none willing to unblock. There is no indication that blocking or otherwise sanctioning this user would be divisive to the community. As for the "admin failure", I see no evidence that this has been raised for administrator intervention. Rather than ask where the admins were when they were needed, we should ask: Where are the 3RR reports? Where are the ANI complaints? Where are the efforts to inform the project administrators that intervention was needed? We cannot expect administrators to be all-knowing and interject in situations that have not been raised in the venues they watch for such reports. Regarding the assertion that this would require a long process involving multiple discussions to resolve, I have seen absolutely no evidence that this is the case. Regardless, at least attempting a community discussion to impose sanctions should be a necessary prequisite to asserting that such a discussion would not work. This is exactly the kind of request that arbs should reject. For this sort of situation, we're the last resort to be used when all other recourses fail, not the go-to crowd for obvious sanctions. Vassyana (talk) 17:55, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
conditional accept. I suspect that Vassyana is right—I think the community could handle this. If they do so in the next week, I would consider the matter moot, and so my vote should not be taken as a sign that ArbCom has taken over the case. That said, if nothing happens in the next week, we should take it. Cool Hand Luke 22:41, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Reject per Vassyana. Risker (talk) 05:23, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Accept per Kirill, Sam, Roger and Coren. I also agree with the renaming per Wizardman. -- FayssalF - ^{Wiki me up®} 17:04, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Accept I think we may be able to fine-tune a solution. Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 23:50, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Clarifications and other requests

Shortcuts

Place requests related to amendments of prior cases, appeals, and clarifications on this page. If the case is ongoing, please use the relevant talk page. Requests for enforcement of past cases should be made at Arbitration enforcement. Requests to clarify general Arbitration matters should be made on the Talk page. To create a new request for arbitration, please go to Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration. Place new requests at the top. Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/How-to other requests

Arbitration Committee proceedings

Case requests

Currently, there are no requests for arbitration.

[edit]

Open cases

Case name	Links	Evidence due	Prop. Dec. due
Palestine-Israel articles 5	(t) (ev / t) (ws / t) (pd / t)	21 Dec 2024	11 Jan 2025

[edit]

Recently closed cases (Past cases)

No cases have recently been closed (view all closed cases).

Clarification and Amendment requests

Currently, no requests for clarification or amendment are open.

Arbitrator motions

Motion name	Date posted
Arbitrator workflow motions	1 December 2024

Request to rename : Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Piotrus_2

List of any users involved or directly affected, and confirmation that all are aware of the request:

None.

Statement by Geoff Plourde

Ladies and Gentlemen of the Committee;

I am filing this request after consultation with others. I believe that the current title of this case is not accurate due to the immense number of sanctions in this case, on users other than Piotrus. I am proposing therefore that it be renamed Eastern european disputes.

Geoff Plourde (talk) 01:15, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Response to Rlevse: A motion was filed here, but Arbitrators did not act on it despite support from several members of the community. Geoff Plourde (talk) 01:56, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]; Clerk note: This remark moved from the Arbitrators' section. AGK 02:12, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Response to Kirill: The substantive benefit is that the name does not accurately reflect the scope of this case, even at acceptance. Geoff Plourde (talk) 02:01, 30 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Response to Newyorkbrad: Due to the Arbcom practice of reviewing the conduct of all involved, the scope of this case at acceptance automatically became Eastern European disputes. The scope has been and always was this, therefore the name should reflect it.

Response to Flonight: I agree that in the current Arbcom practice, cases should not be named after one person. If a case involves the conduct of one person, then such is appropriate, but in the current methodology of reviewing conduct of all involved, this is impractical. Geoff Plourde (talk) 02:06, 30 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by AGK

I concur with this. The Piotrus 2 arbitration case (t) (ev / t) (w / t) (pd / t) involved 19 parties (or so), a substantial number of whom remedies were passed on; I don't think the current name is an appropriate title—nor one which accurately reflects the scope of the case.

Inaccurate naming gives a poor impression to editors reviewing the decision; remedying this would be a step in the direction of ensuring all decisions are easy to understand—a direction which, when proposed in the recent ArbCom RfC, the Community quite eagerly assented to.

I'm hoping the Committee can agree to retitle the case.

AGK 01:40, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Durova

Good proposal. Durova^Charge! 01:42, 30 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

And to the arbitrators: this is too absurd to pass without a blog post.[40] Durova^Charge! 02:49, 30 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Clerk notes

I've moved 1 comment by Geoff to his own section. If you'd like to respond to a comment by another editor in the thread or by an Arbitrator, you can do so in your own section; by doing so we avoid unnecessary threaded discussion in-Request. Thanks, AGK 02:12, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Normally (as far as I know), case name is set when the case is opened (because there are numerous links and notifications). And there are various precedents where parties not indicated in case name have been sanctioned. - Penwhale | ^{Blast him / Follow his steps} 03:48, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I changed a case name at close once to more accurately indicate what findings and remedies were made (Kuban kazak - Hillock65 became Kuban kazak). Its not a bad practice.--Tznkai (talk) 18:53, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Arbitrator views and discussion

Question--did anyone ask this before the case closed, by any method? — Rlevse • Talk • 01:47, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
We have not, traditionally, renamed cases merely because the final decision dealt with users whose names did not feature in the original title; the only occasions I can recall where we undertook this sort of change involved removing names, not adding them. I'm not convinced that the idea of matching the title with the scope, in and of itself, is worth the confusion that radically renaming the case will cause; is there some substantive benefit to doing so? Kirill 03:20, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
It frequently happens that the final scope of a case winds up being different from what was anticipated, and we don't usually rename the case for this reason (except sometimes by dropping the name of a party who winds up not really being mentioned in the final decision at all). That being said, I might be willing to consider taking action here if Piotrus feels strongly about it; otherwise, there's really no reason to. Newyorkbrad (talk) 00:27, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I'm open to renaming this case. My preference is to never name a case after an user since it often causes them distress. In situation such as this one, I think that naming the case after a single user in not for the best since it over emphasizes his importance in the situation. FloNight ♥♥♥ 13:58, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I have no problem with renaming this recently closed case (to reflect final remedies). However, I'd recommend such requests be made within a week of the closure; otherwise we'll end up renaming cases closed years ago. -- FayssalF - ^{Wiki me up®} 17:15, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
It's a bit late but a rename would not be inappropriate if, as Brad says, Piotrus feels it is important. Sam Blacketer (talk) 19:55, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Request to amend prior case: Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/JarlaxleArtemis 2

List of any users involved or directly affected, and confirmation that all are aware of the request:

Martijn Hoekstra (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA) (initiator)
JarlaxleArtemis (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) Note that there is no effective means of notification.

Statement by Martijn Hoekstra

Following discussion on WikiEN-l I would like to ask the Arbitration Committe to review the effective options we have to limit the impact of the disruptive behaviour of the individual behind JarlaxleArtemis (better known as Grawp). The measures we have used so far (as listed by soxred93: Huggle, ClueBot, Notices on IRC, Spam blacklist, Abuse filter (in the future), and as added by Christopher Grant, adminbots as Miza's) haven't been able to effectively stop disruption to a satisfactory level. His ISP, Verizon, has so far been unresponsive. Options that have been suggested are stronger attempts at contacting Verizon, preferably by people who have a clear connection to Wikipedia and/or the Wikimedia foundation. Another option discussed are various forms of placing large rangeblocks if Verizon remains unresponsive. It is clearly preferable if rangeblocking is not needed, but there are some voices that rangeblocks may be an option to make it known to Verizon that we are nearing our last resorts, and without their assistance to stop the abuse, we may have no other choise.

Therefore I would like to ask the arbitration committe to guide the discussion on the enforcement on the ban on Grawp, and on additional measures that can be taken.

Statement by JzG

The user is already banned and is unlikely to be anything else this side of the heat death of the universe. Anything else should be down to the community, and perhaps the office.

For the record, I think we definitely should contact Verizon and inform them that if they do not take action then we will have no option but to rangeblock them, I strongly suspect that the adverse PR which would attach to that would be sufficient even for them, but I guess it depends on which Verizon business unit we're dealing with and at what level. I had the devil's own job getting a major outage sorted, but our man in the States called the VP of Verizon global customer services on his cell (at his barbecue at home) and there was an engineer on site 15 minutes later. Maybe Jimbo can make the call if I get him cell number :-)

Anyway, it's not clear to me what change ArbCom can make here, irritating though this vandal undoubtedly is. Guy (Help!) 23:43, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by SirFozzie

I mostly agree with Guy. On Wiki activity such as rangeblocks will be of limited use, he already recruits folks to do his dirty work on various messageboards and the like. Any action to be taken can be STARTED with rangeblocks at the EN-Wiki level, but probably either ArbCom or various OFFICE members will have to recommend to the Foundation that certain actions be taken at the Foundation level to minimize the disruption of this persistent troll. SirFozzie (talk) 00:18, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Jéské Couriano

Didn't it mention on Jarlaxle's LTA page and at WP:BANNED that Jarlaxle was banned Wikimedia-wide before? In any case, I think this may have to go to the Foundation level or directly to his (apparently largely-clueless) ISP; Jarlaxle's been using SUL to impersonate and harass other users. I don't think a rangeblock will work too well; he's been using open proxies, as far as I am aware. -Jéské Couriano ^{(v^_^v)} 23:10, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

ADDENDUM) Is Verizon a member of the BBB in Jarlaxle's area? If they are, we can put pressure on the BBB to cut off Jarlaxle, as happened with Mmbabies. -Jéské Couriano ^{(v^_^v)} 23:14, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by other user

Clerk notes

Arbitrator views and discussion

The Arbitration Committee is aware of this problem. Obviously, in terms of traditional arbitration or community remedies, we are maxed out here—JarlaxleArtemis a/k/a Grawp is clearly as banned as a user can be. There has been some internal discussion of possible steps that could be taken beyond that, which I am sure will continue, and we will report to the community if at any point we have anything useful to add. Newyorkbrad (talk) 00:31, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Confirming that ArbCom is aware of the problem and we have discussed whether ArbCom should be involved in taking further steps, and if not us, who if anyone should. FloNight ♥♥♥ 14:04, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Request to amend prior case: TTN

List of any users involved or directly affected, and confirmation that all are aware of the request:

Collectonian (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) (initiator)
TTN (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
Wikipedia:WikiProject Anime and manga
Wikipedia:WikiProject Video Games

Statement by Collectonian

I am requesting that the original restrictions against TTN be extended. Since they have lifted, he has returned to many of the behaviors that caused his initial restrictions, including wholescale merging of character lists to their main articles, characters to character lists, etc. He is doing all of these without any previous discussion and without performing any actual merging just redirects. He is doing no tagging before so issues may be addressed.[41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55] And he is completely ignoring/disregarding any on-doing merge discussions that may be happening on that page and falsely claiming he has "merged" the content rather than just redirected. While he is generally not edit warring after they are reverted, he has done some.[56][57] He is doing this silently, and ignoring all requests that he instead start discussions before doing such inappropriate merging as they almost always go against multiple-project consensus and a general overall consensus that fictional series can have a single character list.[58] If his edits are reverted, rather than start proper merge discussions, he takes the articles to AfD.[59][60] This seems to very much be the same sort of disruptive behavior that caused so much trouble before, and is causing hassles for multiple projects attempting to clean up articles. As such, I think the original restrictions need to be extended until TTN can learn to actually "work collaboratively to develop a generally accepted and applicable approach to the articles in question" rather than just clearing out dozens upon dozens of articles because he personally thinks "there is nothing to merge" despite consensus saying otherwise and thinks there is some deadline for cleaning up articles.

Addition: One of the most recent issues relates to List of D.N.Angel characters. This list already was tagged and had an active discussion to merge all of the character articles to the list. TTN came in, delinked the articles and redirected the individual articles to list, without performing a single actual edit nor really merging a single bit of content (despite his claim that he did by saying so in his edit summary).[61] When this was undone in favor of allowing them to be properly merged, he immediately took all of the articles to AfD. This is NOT following the normal nor proper process for dealing with fictional articles. There was already consensus to merge the articles, an AfD was neither nor appropriate. However, TTN wanted them gone NOW rather than allowing editors to do the merges properly, so he attempted to have them delete. And considering his earlier actions with randomly redirecting character lists to their main articles (wiping out almost all the information, then doing a mediocre "merge" of a few sentences to try to get around it)[62][63], it seems highly likely he would have revisited this list in another month and wiped it out completely.

I was one of TTNs supporters in earlier actions, but it seems he is getting worse and worse, acting purely on his own views rather than actual established consensus, guidelines, and project efforts. Regardless of the reason why, in the last ArbCom, TTN WAS restricted from this behavior. -- Collectonian (talk · contribs) 05:11, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Response to Guest9999: That is only accurate for a few of the minor characters. For others, much information was lost in the merges, such as Daiki Niwa's section. Also, proper merging should include going ahead and cleaning up stuff. If there wasn't some apparent rush, I would be really merging this PROPERLY by also adding the missing sources and doing fact checks, as was done with my many merges at List of Tokyo Mew Mew characters (currently being prepped for FLC). The lack of references is pretty irrelevant in this case, as he did not just leave out OR, but everything possibly salvageable from the original articles, including plot summary. And in the case of his redirecting character lists, tons of information was lost for no good reason at all. There is a right way and a wrong way to do this stuff, and TTN's methods are wrongs. He isn't even doing just one series, but doing some 10-20 per day, without discussion, falsely claiming he merged stuff when he did nothing but do a redirect, and leaving others to go back and clean up behind him. Yet some people act as if that's fine, yet will throw a right hissy fit over people doing "drive by tagging" because they didn't do any "real work." And though TTN has already been involved in multiple ArbComs, AN/Is, RfCs etc, he is still being allowed to continue being disruptive, despite requests and attempts to discuss alternative and better ways of dealing with the problem. He is showing no desire at all to actually work in a cooperative manner, only do what he wants the rest of the editing community be damned. Yet, others do similar things and its "hey, you stop that now because it isn't in line with consensus nor being a community." -- Collectonian (talk · contribs) 20:38, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by A Nobody

The most recent Administrators' noticeboard thread concerning the user in question is at Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive500#User:_TTN_blanking_pages_after_discussion_says_KEEP. These mass nominations are attracting negative attention as seen at Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion/Archive 48#Deletion_spree. TTN has also removed a caution/warning from an admin who brought this up earlier and saying he is merely trying to get articles merged and redirected given his recent Articles for deletion (AfD) record is just not true. Notice that only about 25% of his AfDs were outright deleted (it is not called Articles for Redirecting or Articles for Merging), which suggests a remarkably poor "success" rate. AfD is not for merging and redirecting, but he apparently does not mind misusing it for that purpose as he admits here. These AfDs are becoming increasingly frivolous with sources that the nominator can and should have easily found himself (see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Sissy and Ada, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Egon Olsen, and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Eddie Quist). Consider, for example, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Prinny. The article contains out of universe information easily found from Google searches (see Prinny#Cultural_impact) and yet at AfD it gets the same copy and paste bot-like nomination that once again does not accurately apply to all the articles being nominated. It is as if categories of fiction are just having their contents discriminately nominated even though some of the articles vary considerably in terms of potential and actual notability and verifiability. Even those who frequently argue to delete are starting to get annoyed with this (see [64]). Also, not sure where this was archived to, but there is a revealing diff there (this one), which shows TTN’s disregard for the community. It is telling when even admins who do close his nominations as delete are getting tired of the nominations as seen at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mainframe (C.O.P.S.) (yes, I know that nomination was actually by a different editor, but the wording is identical to part of the wording used in the copy and paste TTN nominations). From just today, see also [65] and [66] for additional quarrelling with other editors. In fact, he is driving people away from the project. So, the user is unwilling to discuss with admins who caution him (see [67]), is bringing articles to AfD that he admittedly wants merged or redirected but does not want to discuss with the actual article creators and writers on the articles' talk pages as they might argue against what he wants per [68], and has nominated well over 200 articles for deletion (see [69]), a minority of which were actually outright deleted (I gave a more detailed breakdown of his edits at Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship/Sgeureka#Oppose to contrast him with another editor). How many times does he have to be sanctioned before he alters his way of going about things? You know, to be fair, maybe there is something problematic about those of us with obvious biases participating in these discussions. Maybe they need new blood as it were. This is a big project and I think he can and should try his hand at something else like article creation or sourcing for a change. Show the community that you are not only about deleting things, but that you too can build content as well. Randomran and others with whom I have disagreed in AfDs have all made efforts to improve articles as well, as I tried to show at Sgeureka's RfA, and in some cases even offered the occasional “keep” argument in discussions. I cannot say to them, “You never argue to keep” or “You never add sources”, because they can prove that they have done these things. I urge TTN for his and the community’s sake to make a voluntary good faith effort to work on something other than deletions and you will at least make it that much harder for those to criticize you, because otherwise this copy and paste approach to nominations is very bot-like and thus does not truly consider the individual merits of the articles under discussion. Sincerely, --A Nobody^{My talk} 20:43, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Reply to Masem's 06:44 comment

Actually, he does focus on a large majority of articles from a single work of fiction at one time. Generally, he seems to pick one category or two a day and nominates a block of articles rapidly with the same word for word nomination regardless of the variance of the various characters or weapons notability (I have even seen some where characters are labeled weapons, weapons characters, etc.). Sincerely, --A Nobody^{My talk} 06:47, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comment on Sgeureka's pie chart

So, that pie chart essentially shows that the bulk of TTN's nominations have been way off mark. As it is articles for deletion an overwhelming and decisive majority of the articles have been closed as something other than outright deletion. Thus, that chart effectively demonstrates that AfD is being used to circumvent regular merge discussions, as TTN has himself acknowledged in order to avoid discussions in which the regular editors of the article would be more likely to oppose (put simply, to avoid the will of those who actually write the articles) and to force merges and redirects by using the wrong venue, i.e. a clear and undeniable abuse of process. The chart additionally shows the shear volume in nominations that in effect overwhelm projects' efforts to rescue articles, which given as we don't have a deadline, there is no pressing urgency to delete these articles and halt all work on them right now forcing those who are willing to improve them to start over rather than building from a foundation. Sincerely, --A Nobody^{My talk} 18:46, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Colonel Warden

I was picking up a few of the pieces of TTN's trail of destruction today. Aside from the aftermath of the unnecessary AFDs, I noticed that he took a big bite out of the Ringworld article in passing. This was done without any discussion and seems quite unhelpful since Ringworld is multi-award winning novel which certainly merits a good article here and the information included highly structured stats. I have reverted but might easily have missed this. As for Collectonian's complaints above, I have little direct knowledge of those articles but, if she considers TTN's treatment unacceptably destructive and dismissive then this is telling as I usually find Collectionian to be quite a hard-line deletionist. So, please restrain User:TTN again, as requested. Colonel Warden (talk) 20:55, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by not impartial and not-currently-but-formerly-partly-involved Casliber

I echo the above, and view Collectonian's position as highly significant and worth noting. I feel that TTN is unable to edit in a collaborative manner which is incompatible with the writing of an encyclopedia. Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 20:59, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by New Age Retro Hippie

I find it worrisome with regard to his use of the AfD process - he's got roughly 43 active requests for deletion, and he's participated in roughly only two or three of the discussions in any of those. - The New Age Retro Hippie used Ruler! Now, he can figure out the length of things easily. 21:07, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

And note, I'm not calling for probation or the b&, merely that TTN either needs to cut down on AfDs or increase his participation in them. - The New Age Retro Hippie used Ruler! Now, he can figure out the length of things easily. 04:43, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by TTN

I try work as collaboratively as possible with people, but there is a point where it is not possible to directly deal with fans or projects that feel the need to take two years to take care of small problems. I use a mix of merge discussions/strait merging, redirects, and AfDs to get things done, and of course some people will have a problem with it. Collectonian acts like I absolutely never deal with people, though I recently asked the video game project for input twice (here and here), and I do start merge discussions, though they are overshadowed by the number of articles that do not need to be merged at all. Other complaints are just issues of personal preference in dealing with bad articles (whether to tag first, only use talk page discussions for these kinds of articles, ect), so this is the kind of thing that belongs in a RFC/U or some other similar forum of discussion.

Statement by Ryan Postlethwaite

I believe this is being handled effectively by administrators and there's no need to sanction TTN at this point in time. The major problem we've had with TTN in the past is the edit warring to keep his merges/redirects in place. I still see the odd reversion, but nothing like what we were seeing 12 months ago. We encourage our editors to be bold and this is just what TTN is doing, if he steps back and starts edit warring again going against the bold, revert, discuss cycle then perhaps we can look again, but that's not happening at the minute. I do have some concerns about the way TTN merges his edits, and this led to a warning for not attributing edits properly (something which I will block for if he does it again, although a quick scan of his contribs shows he's attributing correctly at the moment), but that is a simple administrative issue which can be dealt with as such. To sum up - there's no need for the Arbitration Committee to step in here. Ryan Postlethwaite^{See the mess I've created or let's have banter} 22:34, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Goodraise

(Edit conflict) As far as I understand it, TTN has previously been restricted for edit warring, which nobody here seems to accuse him of. - He has been accused of going "against multiple-project consensus and a general overall consensus that fictional series can have a single character list". Note, that this quote is not covered by the link provided. He has been accused of misusing AfD for merging. The diff provided, where he supposedly admitted this behavior, only shows him talking about redirects, not about merging. Are people actually expecting of him, to start a merge discussion, after a redirect of his has been reverted? What would he be supposed to start the discussion with? Perhaps, "I suggest article A be merged into article B, but since I can't find anything in those articles worth merging, someone else will have to perform the merger." Then, he has been accused of having "disregard for the community", as is supposedly evident by yet another misread diff. - TTN has picked himself a dirty job. And he is doing that job in an admirably civil way. A hothead like myself probably couldn't do it. -- Goodraise (talk) 22:37, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Black Kite

I have sympathy for both viewpoints here, but I think TTN is stuck between a rock and a hard place. There are a lot of articles, mostly fiction, that are candidates for either deletion, a merge or redirection, but how to deal with them? The obvious answer is to be bold and redirect/merge them, but often (and probably because it's TTN to an extent) this will get reverted, leading to the edit-warring problems we had before, which at least TTN has generally avoided this time. Adding merge tags is generally fruitless because many of these articles are so obscure and ignored that no reasonable discussion will ensue. And so we go to AfD, where - yes - many end up with results of Merge, but at least they've then got the weight of an AfD behind that merge. I know this is another layer of bureaucracy, but possibly some sort of parallel discussion page such as Articles for Merging (AfM?) is an idea which would cope with this. Black Kite 22:50, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Randomran

I think we need to be very specific about the problem here.

First what this is not.

TTN's previous ArbCom case was not for merging or redirecting articles. It was for edit warring.
There are a lot of people who do not like that User:TTN is being too WP:BOLD. There is absolutely nothing wrong with merging, cleaning up, even redirecting entire articles WP:BOLDly.
If anyone, including User:TTN, makes a WP:BOLD edit that you disagree with, the correct action is to revert it.
If anyone, including User:TTN, is unhappy with being reverted... the correct action is to discuss it. (This failure to do so is what led to his last punishment, which I agree with.)
If the discussion results in no consensus, then solicit feedback from more editors.
I haven't seen evidence that User:TTN is misusing the WP:BRD process.

But that said, I can see why this case keeps on coming back to ArbCom in good faith. (Although I suspect that a few people really just want to be rid of someone they disagree with, regardless of whether or not he follows our behavioral rules.) I don't think TTN is breaking any policies in any clear way (being incivil, failing to assume good faith, edit warring...) But I think that we need ArbCom to answer a few specific questions about more gray-area behavior:

If your effort to redirect an article results in a revert, is it appropriate to solicit further discussion at an AFD?
Is it disruptive to boldly redirect an article for issues that haven't been described through either a discussion or a tag?
Is it misleading to summarize your edit as a "merge", when you've been highly selective in the content you've merged? (See: Wikipedia:Smerge#S)
Is there such a thing as WP:GAMEing the WP:BRD process through sheer volume? If so, what is an appropriate level of activity, keeping in mind that some Wikipedians are highly active, and others only check in once a week, or less.
Does the collective amount of these behaviors amount to WP:GAMEing the system? ("See #9: Borderlining".)

I would be uncomfortable penalizing TTN for any of these behaviors, because I think these are questions that nobody honestly knows the answer to. (At least, I sure as hell don't know the answer. Take #1 as an example: the vast majority of the AFDs that TTN puts together results in deletion or a redirect -- so it's not like he's particularly out of step with the community. But then again, it's not called "articles for redirection". It's not called "articles for discussion". It's articles for "deletion". Is an AFD an appropriate way to settle a disputed redirect? I think you'd get a different answer from everyone here.)

However... I do think we should find out if any of these behaviors are considered disruptive, so we can know once and for all where to draw the line. Once we have a clear line, there will be no excuse for crossing it. Vice versa, if these behaviors are acceptable, we also need to know. I'm a little tired of how ArbCom is being used here, when I don't think that other forms of dispute resolution have been tried. ArbCom should be used based on the quality of the behavior, not a judgment on the person. I don't see TTN doing anything remotely as bad as what he did around a year ago, and the fact that he was here a year ago should not turn every disagreement with him into a request for ArbCom to step in.

Additional comment: Something to keep in mind: TTN has no real power. AFAIK, he's not even an admin. He cannot delete content: only start an AFD. At most, he can redirect, which can easily be reverted if he's truly alone. Yeah, TTN has a lot of patience and time to go after lots of articles at a time. But he is not responsible for their deletion/redirection/merging any more than the article itself can be owned by a single editor. That responsibility belongs to the consensus of editors. It is literally impossible for TTN to singlehandedly override consensus. It is literally impossible for TTN to singlehandedly delete entire topics. Collaboration is too ingrained in WP's processes.

Despite being unclear as to what TTN is actually doing wrong, I think there are legitimate questions in this RFAR. (I tried to pick them out above.) But many of the honest questions are being overshadowed by hyperbole. While I hope ArbCom disregards the hyperbole, I hope they don't disregard the honest questions that people have. I think we ALL want to know where to draw the line. It will prevent us from wasting ArbCom's time unless there's a real problem, and it will also show everyone (including TTN) how to behave.

One more thing. The fact that most of us don't know where to draw the line would make it unfair to enforce some invisible behavioral policy upon TTN before it's been made clear. I think we should WP:AGF and presume that TTN has learned his lesson from the last arbcom case. We should assume that the new TTN wants to abide by our behavioral policies. (Indeed, he's stopped edit warring.) And if TTN is actually doing anything wrong (which many people don't think he is -- honestly and in good faith), then we should assume that the problem here is a lack of clarity in our policy, not a lack of cooperation. Randomran (talk) 03:48, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Reply to DGG Moved from DGG's section per rules against threaded discussion. Daniel (talk): Sorry to barge in, but I figured I could since you mentioned me by name. It sounds to me like your biggest issue is the quantity (or maybe the speed?) of the AFDs put forth by TTN. If so, then I don't really disagree with your overall message. Just that we need a clear statement about what a disruptive level of activity is. I would even be comfortable adding something to WP:GAME and WP:POINT for future reference, and would fight hard to make sure that rule stays there. Randomran (talk) 19:58, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Response to John Vandenberg

I'm very pessimistic about exploring how the restriction affected content. First off, this is a behavioral issue, not a content issue. Second off, since I expect a lot of people to take the bait on the question... I also expect a lot of people saying "things were so much better with the restriction! We need to stop TTN from deleting good content," while another group says "things were so much worse! TTN is helpful in that he flags a lot of bad content". In other words, you'll get an entirely partisan answer. Finally, TTN can't delete content. He can only nominate it, or boldly redirect it. Are we going to treat him as though he WP:OWNs the changes, when others added their analysis at AFDs, merge discussions, and assisted with redirects and merges? That seems like a double standard. Randomran (talk) 17:09, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Peregrine Fisher

Wikipedia is not cleaned up in a day, because it's a lot of work, and people's feelings will get hurt. TTN seems to have taken the job on by himself, and he's forced to cut corners and ignore other peoples feelings. TTN needs to learn to play nice and work with other people. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 23:14, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comment to a few of the TTN supporters here. I don't disagree that TTN enforces our policies and guidelines. This case reminds of a few other arbcom/ANI situations. It's the question of whether someone who is a "net gain" is allowed to, basically, be mean to other editors. It seems the answer to this is sometimes "yes". I personally believe the answer should be "no". I don't know if arbcom can answer this question in some general way, but it would be cool if they could/did. Let's say TTN correctly cleaned up 10,000 articles, and alienated 100 editors (I think those numbers are within a factor of the real numbers). Is that OK? If TTN alienated just DGG, that would be too much for me. 10,000 articles to 10 IPs? Maybe that's OK, I don't know. I think a positive result of this situation would be that TTN, under penalty of small blocks, must work collaboratively with others. A big block just makes him take time off, then go into maximum attack mode (within whatever restrictions are on him), as far as I can tell. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 09:02, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by DGG

Let me word this as a reply to Randomran, A occasional or closely targeted bold redirect without discussion is not disruptive--I've done this myself from time to time, even on characters when I see an obviously unsupportable article and a good target. [70] Dozens of them in close succession for multiple article groups are disruptive. It is not wrong to try for a redirect as a compromise, and if not obtained, to try what you really wanted, which is deletion. It is wrong to do so routinely for multiple article groups. Nominating 5 articles in one day for deletion is reasonable. Systematically nominating 5 items or more a day, every day, is not. TTN has a valid point--the articles on these subjects are horrific--anyone coming here will soon see this. But the way to improve them is through discussion and cooperative work, not rushing "madly off in all directions" Stephen Leacock, disregarding all opposition. To nominate articles for lacking references to show notability is useful.[71] To refuse to check first is not so good. (as in every AfD he's placed) To reject references when offered is not good. (multiple afds) To reject even awards as showing it is probably even worse [72]. It shows a determination to be rid of the articles regardless of how. To nominate for deletion or redirection or destructive merging in very large quantities without cooperative work results in random articles being handled in incompatible ways, which is not helpful--especially when done regardless of the importance of the underlying subject [73]. It results in decision by trying to wear out everyone else, and hope to be the last person standing. In desperation, to reduce our areas of interaction, I came on line today intending to propose to TTN that I would simply abandon defense of some classes of articles (games, and children's video), if he would cease trying for the deletion or quasi-deletion of som other classes (classic fiction & works based on classic fiction). Some people, even looking from outside at WP, have called me "patient," [74], (7 paragraphs from the bottom); for my discussions see my talk page archive on fiction. But he is driving me away from the topic to the extent that I am some days reluctant to start looking at the latest AfDs, or even at WP at all.

I have repeatedly online and offline offered to work with TTN on these articles, as I work with others--and when i do , I give very orthodox advice. [75]. I've worked cooperatively in a friendly & constructive way with people I consider rather extreme deletionists, such as Orange Mike. The only people who have ever not been willing to are a few trolls and SPAs--and TTN. I have specifically offered many times to help with proper merges, [76] (for example) since it is true that sometimes appropriate redirects or merges that he proposes are unreasonably rejected, and I've been ignored--possibly because I offer to help only for the appropriate merges. [77] WP:BRD only works if all three parts are followed--otherwise its bullying or obstruction. There are three things to which a wiki is extremely susceptible: zealots, refusal to discuss, and gaming. See the unanimous WP:Requests for arbitration/Episodes and characters 2#Principles arb com view on this DGG (talk) 00:12, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Reply to Masem

nobody but TTN does this quantity, and does it without discussion. The quantity is the problem. "Any sin if persisted in will become heinous" Samuel Johnson. I'm referring to refusal to discuss as the "sin," not deletionism) DGG (talk) 06:01, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Caissa's DeathAngel

It is tough to say whether TTN is actually breaking the rules here. Certainly, individually his actions are in agreement with WP:BRD. However, these are not isolated incidents, these are a huge number of incidents and I believe that collectively they may well be gaming the WP:BRD. Articles for Deletion is not to my mind a place for redirects and mergers. While merge and redirect may be an outcome of the process, no article should ever be submitted there with that intention in mind. I also believe that discussion should occur before an article is sent to AFD. It is very easy for us as editors to occasionally let something lie a little too long, and we may need a bit of prodding (no pun intended) to remind ourselves to sort an article which may be a candidate for deletion. But that discussion should to me come before the AFD. Attempting a redirect straight away I do not object to. I do however object to the article being sent to AFD immediately upon the redirect being reverted, especially when the revert edit summary requests a discussion. That discussion may lead to the merge/redirect being vindicated, but at least the discussion will have happened. To me, the best place for this discussion is on the article's talk page, or that in to which it is suggested it be merged. Not AFD, which is not in any way a discussion page.

Does the fact that so many cases of this amount to justification for extending sanctions on TTN? I would feel more comfortable if that were the case, but that is no what this is about and it would be a gross violation of policies to let my personal feelings affect how this judgement should be made. Perhaps the best solution is requesting that TTN cool off with his use of WP:BOLD and perhaps engage in discussion a bit more readily before sending articles to AFD rather than letting the AFD be the discussion. Whether there is any basis for this to be enforced or an official judgement however I leave to those better versed in such interpretations than I to decide however. Caissa's DeathAngel (talk) 00:26, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by nifboy

In my mind the discussion of many similar articles has, for articles TTN is not involved in, gone something like this:

Editor1: {{plot}} Editor2: {{sofixit}} 2 years go by without any substantial change. Maybe a small-scale edit war but nothing substantial unless Editor1 is dedicated enough to basically rewrite the article from scratch, which can only really be done for high profile articles (hence the success of the Final Fantasy Project, for which step 1 was basically "Merge together a whole bunch of middling characters").

I don't think this is tenable in the long term. So when TTN comes along as asks, "Guys, can we talk about these articles now?" I generally approve. Even if the article hasn't been tagged before, getting the issue on the table and making sure people know about it right away is preferable to letting it stagnate before doing anything about it. Nifboy (talk) 02:06, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by SirFozzie

Agreed with Ryan, I'd hope ArbCom quickly rejects this "Clarification" as yet another attempt to sanction TTN for behaviour that complies with Wikipedia policies. SirFozzie (talk) 02:09, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by KojiDude

FWIW, I beleive the statements posted by A Nobody and Collectonian bring up very real problems, (with evidence to boot, something many arguments here lack [including mine, ironicly]) which need to be considered. It seems to me that TTN has realized very little about the issues his rapid nominations and editting patterns raise, and it would be a net positive to have the sanction restored. Dude needs to chillax.--Koji† 03:24, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Protonk (talk)

As I am a poor writer, I will begin this with a caveat. While this issue itself appears perennially before Arbcomm without apparent differentiation from request to request, I agree that each request can be made in good faith. Like all content/conduct disputes, no one here has the benefit of speaking from stoic impartiality. The folks calling for TTN to be restricted are probably genuinely interested in stopping conflicts and encouraging dialogue. They are probably also interested in being rid of TTN. The folks (like me) calling for this to be dismissed are also genuinely interested in working in the 'pedia harmoniously. We are also interested in protecting folks like TTN from being censured, restricted or blocked. Both of our camps' concerns (where they are direct or proxies) are legitimate. TTN isn't the white knight simply because 90% of fiction articles are 'bunk'. Nor is he the bad guy simply because he proceeds aggressively and methodically.

Having equivocated, I'll try to move to the point. This motion should be rejected as it stems from a vague admonition in E&C2 ("The parties are instructed to cease engaging in editorial conflict and to work collaboratively to develop a generally accepted and applicable approach to the articles in question"), is largely unchanged from previous rejected motions, is (as Randomran points out) unrelated to the disputed issue in E&C2, and hinges upon what is a thorny community issue.

Previously rejected motions were argued before the committee with the same collection of information and basically the same motivation. Upon the expiry of TTN's restriction, he moved immediately into the prior area of dispute and began editing specifically within the guidelines set by the case. As he (and others) has said multiple times, the use of AfD and placement of redirects is the only venue allotted him to clean up or remove articles on fictional works. Unless we present some clear reasoning why this request is different from all the others we find ourselves in a position where the committee is being used as a standing threat against an editor proceeding along their normal editing path. The result is a chilling effect against editors who wish to clean up articles on fictional subjects. Either something novel should be addressed here or the motion should be rejected.
The impetus for E&C2 and the reason for restriction were the same. TTN was edit warring to maintain articles in his preferred state. If we want to ask for community action on his actions which are manifestly different from edit warring, we should be filing a new RFAR. If we think that the community cannot answer the questions his behavior poses, it might be time to do so. But we can't just keep using the result of E&C2 as an albatross around TTN's neck. Unless the suspect behavior is the same, the remedy should be different.
Finally, and most importantly, this problem isn't a user conduct issue. Or it isn't solely a user conduct issue. TTN is still doing this because he has the patience and the motivation to do so--not because of some unique malevolence or mania. The community is close to answering the fictional notability question (see WP:FICT), in the middle of answering the 'spinout' question (see the WP:N RfC) and nowhere near answering the merger/deletion/redirect question (in other words, answering the question of what the appropriate fora for these discussions are). Until those questions are answered and some process exists to discuss mergers centrally and enforceably within or without AfD, we cannot use the ARB as a blunt instrument to prevent those merger discussions from occurring.

TTN has a pretty impressive record at AfD of nominated articles eventually being deleted, redirected or merged. He's not doing it to prove a point. He's not tilting at windmills. If we don't like the outcome of his discussions or don't like the volume of them, that's tough. So long as we don't see deletion nominations rejected by the community or some recurrence of past behavior, we should not continue to bring these requests here.

An update with some comments

Ok, this request seems to be settling on two things:

Fait accompli: E&C 2 contained another provision that discussion is not to be overwhelmed by editing rate. If TTN is in violation, this is the likely problem. However, I want to caution the committee against interpreting this to mean discussion moves at the same rate in all venues at all times, nor should they treat discussions as a convoy where the pace is determined by the party wishing to proceed the slowest. More specifically: AfD discussions are centralized, semi-formal and predictable where talk page merger discussions are free form, local and relatively open ended. The expected speed that a talk page merger discussion would proceed at is not the expected speed that an AfD would proceed at. Consequently the rate at which new discussions can be opened or closed is different. 3-5 or even 8-10 AfDs a day is not an unheard of pace nor is it fast enough to presume that TTN is choosing the pace in order to disrupt opposition.
Out of process mergers: This is the second major 'charge' against TTN that appears to be materializing. To me, it is less compelling than the first. The community is currently at a point where policy (WP:DEL and WP:AFD) does not match with practice. The policy says that merger discussions are to be remanded to talk pages and not discussed at AfD. This plainly ignores practice--AfDs result in redirects and mergers all the time (fiction AfDs especially because they have a logical parent article). We should assume (this won't be hard to do) that TTN has a good faith belief that every article he nominates should be deleted. If we (the community of people that read the AfDs and comment) say "merge" or "redirect" that doesn't somehow void the AfD itself. Likewise the fact that every fiction article has a logical parent isn't grounds to force editors to engage in a merge discussion perfunctorily just in order to go ahead with an AfD. ArbCom stepping in and enforcing this will do just that. Protonk (talk) 08:24, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by MuZemike

I do not see what I would call any significant signs of edit warring as a result of TTN's extreme usage of the BRD process that would constitute any restrictions in terms of this RFAR case. If users wish to nail TTN for mass-AFDing articles or for abusing the BRD process to the point of gaming the system, then use the dispute resolution process as intended, just as the WP:BEFORE process should be used as intended prior to nominating articles for deletion. Hence, I believe this to be another attempt at forum-shopping with ArbCom until the desired effect is achieved.

However, (huge caveat not present in my previous statement in the last request for clarification) even I find it a trifle annoying when I traverse through the day's AFDs and see the same types of articles nominated with the same reasons for and against deletion and with the same users going after each other like in some sort of a dog fighting ring. If users wish to nail TTN for that (along with the merge/redirect issues), it seems that starting at RFC/U (as boldly recommended by a very conscientious editor here) would make more sense and then work from there. I am afraid, however, that the community's patience especially those returning to this RFAR case is wearing thin; I don't know if the community is willing to wade through the lengthy process anymore. Hence, I think, in the near future and especially with the new arbitrators coming in, there will be a lot of friction between the Wikipedia community in general and the ArbCom to get troubling issues resolved. MuZemike (talk) 04:37, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Sceptre

Yawn. Of course, it just wouldn't be RFAR without people screaming for E&C modifications to get rid of TTN... every other week. Sceptre ^(talk) 04:40, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Masem

I have to agree with others that TTN is following the same process than anyone can for approaching merges of content, and he is pretty spot-on in identify articles that are inappropriate per guidelines, including the in-progress FICT that has been developed across a wide range of editors. If this was anyone else but TTN, people would simply blink and move on, since these fall into the bounds of suggested methods of editing. As long as it's understood that a "merge" result from AFD is completely acceptable from discussion, and (as been pointed out before to TTN, which it looks like he's following) the merge is noted in the merge target per GFDL, it's hard to see what TTN is trying to do as requiring any action above and beyond what admins can do. --MASEM 04:50, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Reply to DGG's 06:01 comment

If TTN was focusing on a large majority of articles from a single work of fiction at one time, as to invoke the fait acomopli approach that he was warned about before, then yes. But from the checking I've seen, he does maybe a few articles from different works, or when there is a block, he will put a multiarticle AFD togther. (I don't think this is 100% perfect, but this is from spot-checking). Both of these help to make sure that the articles that should be kept will be caught by those that want them to be without overloading them. The other thing seems to be that TTN does monitor those article he deletes, which is much better overall than "drive-by" editing Given that the general barrier to deletion/merging of an article seems to be much higher than the creation, "rapid tagging of articles for AFD" does not seem to disrupt WP save for those whose areas of fiction of interest are being merged. --MASEM 06:44, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Nsk92

Basically I agree with everything Collectonian said. Agressive mass redirects without discussion on articles where there is an active and still largely unresolved controversy about notability are clearly disruptive and it looks like TTN's behaviour is getting worse. It appears that TTN has not learned the lessons from the previous arbcom sanctions. Extending and expanding those sanctions would seem appropriate. Nsk92 (talk) 06:55, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

A few general extra comments. Some editors here suggested that an RfC or a WP:AN discussion or individual administrator intervention may be more appropriate courses of action here than an arbcom action. I don't think that is correct. In view of the massive number of articles affected by TTN's actions, this is not a problem that can be easily dealt with by individual administrators (and, in fact, a coordinated approach is preferable). Given how divisive the fiction notability wars are, it is rather unlikely that a WP:AN discussion would produce any conclusive result and to some extent the same is true about an RfC (which may still be useful, but would take quite a long time whereas the disruption caused by TTN's continued actions is considerable and ongoing). It does seem to me exactly like a case where expanding arbcom's previous sanctions is the right and most efficient remedy, at least in the interim. It is true that the previous arbcom sanctions on TTN were concerned with edit warring, but their intent was clearly to prevent disruption and since as prectice shows they were not sufficient, it is appropriate to expand those sanctions. User:A Nobody raises some valid points and examples above. It does look like many of TTN's AfD nominations are done fairly indicriminantly, with something close to a templated nomination text and with no real attempt to find sources first and to see if an article is salvageable. This type of behaviour is contrary to WP:DEL's intent and, when done on a massive scale, is disruptive. I should say that personally I am fairly indifferent to the issue of notability of fiction articles and the related notability wars; but I do want them to be resolved in some way since these notability wars destabilize WP:N and other notability guidelines. To the extent that I do have a position on the issue of fiction articles, it is probably fairly close to that of TTN. But I think the kind of WP:BATTLE unilateral tactics TTN deploys are inappropriate and disruptive and some more constructive approach aimed towards establishing consensus on underlying issues is necessary. Waging a one-user all-out war against fiction articles on Wikipedia is not the answer. Nsk92 (talk) 14:10, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Nihonjoe

I think TTN means well. I don't think there is any malicious intent in what he is doing. However, his methods tend to be very disruptive and don't lend themselves to achieving a useful end result. As many others have stated here (and elsewhere), it's not what TTN is doing, it's how he's doing it. I think that if he made a more concerted effort to work with the community he is so intent on "reforming" he would find there is already an effort underway to make all the improvements he seems to want. Granted, they aren't moving as fast as he seems to want them to, but he needs to understand that there are only so many people who can do the work, and flooding them with additional work in the form of all the AfDs and other issues he piles on only makes them have less time to do the actual cleanup work already on their plates. While there may be members of WP:ANIME who may think they want TTN gone, I think what they really want is for TTN to work with them rather than rumbling over the top of them. If TTN shows that he can and will actually do this, rather continuing on his merry way—damn the torpedoes—when whatever restrictions are placed on him expire, then I think there can be a solution to this issue which will be good for everyone involved. ···日本穣^{? · Talk to Nihonjoe} 07:54, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Y|yukichigai

As Kirill pointed out, the fait accompli principle from E&C2 covers this situation. This is a perfectly rational request for clarification and/or amendment, because it looks like TTN is attempting to accomplish his goals (once again) by way of fait accompli.

I'm not going to say TTN is wrong in wanting to merge some of this content. I'm not even going to say he's wrong in declaring some of it completely unfit for Wikipedia. I will say he's not right about all of it. More importantly though, he's going about it completely wrong, proceeding on a delete/merge/redirect binge with no regard to the community or even existing merge efforts.

Yes, he isn't edit warring currently, but I'd argue it's only minimally reduced the, shall we say, "pissed off" effect his edits generate. Much of the community does not welcome his contributions or even presence, and strongly enough to complain to administrators and the arbcom semi-regularly. That sounds like reason enough to examine a re-extension of his editing restrictions. -- Y|yukichigai (_ramble argue ^check) 08:47, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by sgeureka

I have high respect for the work of Collectonian and TTN, and while TTN is doing a lot of good work by being bold, it will occasionally backfire when other good and sincere editors like Collectonian stand up to deal with the cleanup issue in a different manner (usually with the same end result - the unimprovable bad standalone articles will be gone). Nothing that a reminder of Wikipedia:Assume good faith and Wikipedia:There is no deadline can't solve (this applies to both parties), so no arbcom involvement is necessary. – sgeureka ^t•c 11:54, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statistics for User:Jayvdb (John Vandenberg)

File:TTN AfD results September through December 2008.JPG

TTN's AfD results Sept-Dec 2008

Following User:Jayvdb's request, I reviewed all of TTN's AfD noms since the end of his arbcom restriction in September 2008. You can see the proportional results of his ~550 AfDs in the graphic on the right (no guarantee for absolute correctness, and group nominations were still only counted once). I won't offer interpretations of these statistics, although I'd call attention to his does-this-deserve-an-article sensor (as opposed to the widely-held view that AfD is only for deletion). TTN still boldly merges and redirects, but now usually starts discussion (AfD or merge proposal) if he gets reverted.

In comparison, TTN initiated only 40-50 AfDs during his then-1.5-years wiki career before his arbcom restriction in early 2008 (with varying results), and he merged/redirected mostly boldly and edit-warred to keep redirects in place at that time. It's impossible to analyse other effects of the arbcom restriction on TTN's edit behavior, since he did not edit (much) during the restriction after the vagueness of the arbcom restriction had resulted in several AN/I and RFAR threads about his edits (I'd have done the same thing in his position). I will not provide specific examples either way, as e.g. 50 diffs of piss-poor decisions on TTN's part (which undoubtly exist) ignore the sheer volume of his area of work (thousands and thousands of affected articles) where he was spot-on. – sgeureka ^t•c 17:54, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

(replies)

Is that 550 AfDs, or 550 articles listed at AfD? - ~550 AfDs including maybe a dozen group noms (TTN rarely group-nominates articles these days, as they backfire so often as seen at e.g. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ring Mao, which was snow-kept and later deleted when individually listed)
why so many - I can only guess, but there may be no other option for TTN. Fan IPs can (and often do) revert any bold merger/redirect of popular yet nn articles, TTN can't revert them per his former arbcom restriction, and AfD is the only community-sanctioned way to confirm that the articles shouldn't (or should) exist.
Any chance of a cummulative line or bar chart of TTN AfDs? - What do you want to see exactly?
The number of merge outcomes is also a worry, as our procedure for merge is Wikipedia:MERGE#How_to_merge_pages - There is no wiki process like Wikipedia:Articles for redirection when an editor feels there is nothing to merge, e.g. when the whole article consists of WP:UNDUE WP:PLOT mixed with WP:OR and is already summarized in a parent list (my guess is that at least 80% of all individual fiction subarticles suffer from this).
Also helpful would be stats and graphs of AfDs in this topical area that were not raised by TTN. - Based on the history of Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Fictional characters during TTN's restriction, there seemed to be ~40 character AfDs a month that weren't initiated by TTN, and I guess there were and are an additional ~15 AfDs for episodes, fiction lists or other fictional elements per month. Let me be clear that these AfD results are in total ignorance of performed mergers. I rarely initiate fiction AfDs but have still successfully merged/redirected/prodded ~2000 bad fiction articles in the last 12 months (maybe 50% without discussion), but then again, my chosen focus are abandoned bad fiction articles.

– sgeureka ^t•c 14:28, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Sephiroth BCR

As people have previously noted, TTN was originally brought before ArbCom due to his edit warring, none of which is apparent here. What this report is ultimately about is TTN being impatient in attempting to subvert the existing venues for merging the articles of articles that fail our notability guideline when the Anime and manga WikiProject has a very effective cleanup task force that has a proven track record of successfully merging articles without loss of content or the mess of repeated AfDs. In several recent AfDs (see [78], [79], [80], [81]), he attempted to move around a merge discussion that was already in motion here. Whether he believes that there is "no content to merge" or not, he has no reason to take matters into his own hands when editors of the anime and manga project were fully capable of handling the situation and ensuring that the information was merged properly (and the merge discussion is in support of a merge too!). I realize that TTN may be cynical of any such efforts due to long experience of fictional walled gardens in which such merge discussions never produced any substantial change, but it has been repeatably pointed out to TTN (see [82], [83], [84]) that the cleanup task force for the anime and manga project is capable of performing such merges and that his intended goal will be fulfilled in any case. Now, I respect TTN's work. I believe that he does a lot of good for the project, but he needs to show the necessary discretion in realizing where his efforts can best be focused. If anything, I would ask him to respect the existing processes, and leave the job for them rather than going through everything with a chainsaw. — sephiroth bcr ^(converse) 12:49, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by MacGyverMagic

Finding the diffs to back all this up will take a while. Please be patient.

As User:MuZemike has said above, I have considered opening an RFC on this editor's behavior. While I can see merit in the idea that a lot of these articles need merging (I even defended a recent merge of his), I find that the way he goes about achieving his intended goal is disruptive.
TTN has nominated articles for deletion where a redirect or merge was undone even though the merge discussion was still ongoing with no concensus (and even though the redirect/merge could have been reinstated). The particular case I remember was split 2-2 between support and oppose on the merge. This seems to indicate that he wants immediate solutions.
Another indication of his immediatism is the sheer amount of deletion nominations he makes in a day. It makes it impossible for interested parties to improve all the affected articles in time because they're given too much work at once.
In a previous arbcom ruling which had as one of the supported principles: "Editors who are collectively or individually making large numbers of similar edits, and are apprised that those edits are controversial or disputed, are expected to attempt to resolve the dispute through discussion. It is inappropriate to use repetition or volume in order to present opponents with a fait accompli or to exhaust their ability to contest the change. This applies to many editors making a few edits each, as well as a few editors making many edits." TTN was restricted in that debate but has again started in the behavior that that RfArb found to be disruptive.
There is also no indication that he checks if the article is verifiable, rather than verified per WP:BEFORE before nominating an article for deletion. In his nominations he says that the subject is not independently notable from the main topic, which supports the idea that the articles does not warrant its own entry, but he never suggests or considers merging the articles he's nominating (in whole or in part). Just because something isn't independently notable, doesn't mean it's unverifiable or unencyclopedic and shouldn't be covered at all.
Furthermore, there are basic disagreements on what constitutes reliable sources when people make attempts to improve articles TTN nominates (contrary to what he says, you only need multiple sources to indicate notability, for verifiability only one suffices) Whether a source is reliable is something to discuss too if it is contentious and shouldn't be decided by a single editor.

In short: I believe this editor should be restricted from making mass nominations on AFD and only make merges/redirects after the extend of the merges in question have been thouroughly discussed (and editors have been given sufficient time to address any issues). - Mgm|^(talk) 13:21, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by TheFarix

The issue with TNN's recent actions is that he is refraining form the consensus building process because, as he already stated above, it is too slow and sometimes result in outcomes he disagrees with because of "fandom". While he and his supporters are citing WP:BRD to justify his actions, one must remember that WP:BRD is meant to initiate the consensus building process. Building a consensus is one of the fundamental cornerstones in editorial decision-making. Instead, TNN has is using WP:BRD to bypass this consensus building process altogether. --Farix (Talk) 14:15, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Kung Fu Man

I'm going to say up front this is pointless. TTN does do a lot of mass deletion and blah blah blah, but at the same time, so do many other editors, myself included. Yes, he can be a stubborn jackass and push things to an extreme when he feels something should be a certain way. Then again, we all can. I've butted heads with him on more than one occasion, but I've also seen him actively question himself if his standards were too high and back down when it was shown editors were working on an article.

In the cases of these merges and redirects he's getting the hammer for, I'll be blunt: almost every one (there are exceptions of course) I've seen has been an article with an extreme narrow scope where a merge or redirect would be a better idea than a full article, because notable or not enough information doesn't readily exists to make a full fledged encyclopedic article despite all the jumping up and down over how notability must exist because one brief mention is found. If that was enough for an encyclopedic subject we'd see an Ash McGowen article singing my praises; thankfully it isn't and common sense needs to apply, in that there is a lot of cleaning needing to be done on Wikipedia.

TTN should definitely cool his jets more, but other editors should too, and realize what discussions are worth having. Encyclopedic content is not being lost by a merge, nor by a removal of content than on the surface appears to be unsourced original research. I think if you want to enforce anything, push for editors to not go to him when they feel an article should be removed and instead take care of it themselves and get the blame good or bad.--Kung Fu Man (talk) 14:41, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Gazimoff

I have nemtioned this at at a Request for Clarification, both in one I initiated shortly after TTN's editing restriction came to an end here, and in one I commented in about a month later here. In both cases, the request for clarification was dismissed despite several concerns raised.

To clarify the point, for those who seem to miss it through my verbose discussion of the argument previously:

My concern is not regarding the edits as individual actions, but the large quantity of edits in a short space of time that presents a fait accompli.

By bombarding editors with a large quantity of redirects or AfDs, you reduce their ability to react meaningfully to each individual one. If there was a single AfD on a specialist topic at a given time, you would expect a deep and meaningful discussion along with some work to improve sourcing and other requirements. Once this is scaled up to 50 AfDs, the editing resource is stretched so thinly that it can't possibly meet the demands of every discussion happening.

My final concern is Arbcom's reluctance to grasp the nettle and deal with the issue one way or another. Either grant TTN carte blanche to perform contentious edits as heavily as he can manage, or call time on his actions and rein him. Without a clear message either way, I can assure the members of Arbcom that another Request for Clarification will be raised by another well-meaning yet concerned editor within another three month period. Gazimoff 15:34, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by PeaceNT

Wikipedia is a collaborative project; collaborative being the operative word. Though it would be unreasonable to require everything be discussed in advance, editors should not constantly force their way in the face of loud crticism from the community. It is true criticism doesn't automatically mean what TTN does is wrong, but it suggests TTN needs to use feedback and improve their manners. Only when TTN knows how to work with others should we deem a restriction on him unnecessary.

These days TTN is starting a myriad AfDs - too many that he himself would not be able to comment on. This is hardly a good method of discussion, not to mention the enormous pressure put on editors working on a rescue, and the likely damage on legitimate content because AFD commentors may mistake those "merge" nominations for normal "delete" nominations. We have a very heavy workload at AfD already. That Wikipedia doesn't have an "Articles for merge" page is not an excuse. Wikipedia has a process for merge: starting proposals on talk pages. Everyday editors all over the project are patiently following this merge process without much trouble. People do not flood AFD with merge nominations like TTN does.

It should be noted that TTN's comment on this very page suggests that he won't discuss with "fans" or projects who he knows will disagree with him. This is wrong. The more potentially disagreeable an action is, the more important it is to discuss. TTN was restricted by arbcom not because of what he wanted to do, but how he did it, and now after the restriction period it seems he is repeating the old patterns. --PeaceNT (talk) 18:02, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Stifle

TTN should be congratulated, not sanctioned. Sure, he's ruffling feathers, but that's bound to happen with the area he's involved in. Stifle (talk) 11:03, 22 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by ThuranX

I have seen a number of threads on TTN on AN/I in the past years. Now he's conforming to the restrictions placedon him by ArbCom and the community, and still those who won't really improve things can't stop gunning for him. I am constantly frustrated by the number of editors who see Wikipedia as a cruft farm, and expand things here based on their love for a character or notion, bloating articles with nonsense about episode 17, season 9, scene 4, line 36 or whatever. When editors who work hard to make more and more articles look comprehensive without looking childish fold things together ,or insist on some rigorous standards of writing, not unlike a term or research paper, too much of this community rebels, screaming bloody murder instead of looking at is as real editing. I support TTN in this, as I do in almost all his efforts, and think this is a colossal waste of ArbCom time. ThuranX (talk) 12:40, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Jtrainor

While individually some of these merges may have merit, the fact that a) many are being done very quickly, b) many of them are redirects instead of actual merges and c) TTN ignores discussion about them means that collectively, they are quite disruptive. Jtrainor (talk) 20:56, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Addendum: If TTN is attempting to use the AFD process to circumvent merge discussions, this is a textbook abuse of process. Jtrainor (talk) 23:27, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Kww

Another week, another unsupportable complaint to Arbcom about TTN. I repeat my normal request: reject this RFAR, and then make it clear that bringing this back to Arbcom again will result in blocks. This has gotten beyond ridiculous.—Kww(talk) 22:29, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Addendum: One recurrent theme that comes up is that using AFD for merge discussions is somehow an abuse of process. This is patently ridiculous. The only way to actually achieve a merge is to discuss it in a forum that isn't dominated by fans of the topic. The three prime authors of "Pikachu's left nostril" are never going to agree to merge it into a superordinate topic. Moving the discussion to the AFD gets a wider set of eyes on it, and in no way reduces the ability of the authors to participate: it only reduces their ability to dominate the discussion.—Kww(talk) 21:34, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by User:White Cat

Okay... As an involved party on both E&C rfars... and as an involved party on 3 other rfars (which are relevant as far as I care)...

user:TTN (and several others) has been mass removing articles for over a year now. Whether TTN is meaning well or not is besides the point. What he is doing is harming the site. This is a serious problem and is not a content dispute. The disagreement isn't over the phrasing of a certain piece of text. Instead it is over weather or not an ENTIRE TOPIC belongs to the site or not. This mass removal is a trend not based on policy or consensus.

Detailed coverage on fiction related topics such as articles on episodes and characters are not banned from Wikipedia the free encyclopedia. In addition at no point had there been any conclusive discussion in weather or not such articles should go. There is no policy or consensus basis for TTN's mass action.

“

Any mass action not based on consensus is disruptive.

”

In current practice very popular shows such as The Simpsons or Doctor Who enjoy the liberty of having detailed sub articles on them. Less popular shows such as works of fiction particularly older shows and shows from countries that are not native English speakers (like anime) are being mass removed under the guise of notability. Some of these articles are on wikipedias most visited articles. For example the Japanese anime Naruto is generally in the top ten of the most visited articles and yet we do not consider any of the shows episodes notable enough to have an article. If that is our metric for notability then it is seriously flawed and needs a complete overhaul.

This is because in TTN's words:

“

Now they only have any sort of "power" over the big series like Harry Potter due to numbers, but things like that will always go slowly due to numbers anyways. I'm just sticking with picking off smaller ones, and then trying to tackle larger ones every once and a while. Once the weaklings are fully gone, it'll probably get easier to deal with the larger ones.

”

This behavior prevents articles from developing. Development of an article is a long and painful path and it takes many years for an article to develop from being a stub to a featured article. In the time period it takes for an article to develop small communities are also formed within our community such as show-specific wikiprojects. These small communities work together and write articles in great speed and it no longer takes years for an article to become featured. Doctor Who wikiproject is such a "small community" that develops articles with great speed. TTN isn't willing to give articles a mere two years to mature which is not only preventing article development but also the development of "small communities" that would create. This creates an causality dilemma.

In addition to all that in the past some users have used this trend to cause various sorts of disruption including but not limited to trolling, vandalism, and harassment. For example User:Jack Merridew, a user convicted of harassment and sockpuppetry, had been making edits just like TTN which had lead to the circumstances arbcom is familiar with.

Arbcom to date has not made a very serious attempt to resolve this dispute so far and I'd ask arbcom to perhaps shoot Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Episodes and characters 3 instead of amending a past case. (no offense intended)

-- Cat ^chi? 22:10, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Maybe arbcom should sanction TTN to write a few featured articles on fiction. :) -- Cat ^chi? 17:39, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

Statement by User:Guest9999

The particular incident that seems to have started this whole thing off again involved TTN ignoring an active merge discussion (Talk:List of D.N.Angel characters#Merging character pages) and redirecting pages, then taking them to AfD after being reverted. However on further examination it is apparent that when TTN undertook these actions the merge discussion had been under way for almost two months and had not recieved any comments for approximately one month. I think it is fair to say that a discussion with no comments in a month cannot be considered to be active by Wikipedia standards. Looking at the initial three weeks or so of the discussion all five users who took part supported merging the pages. During the near two months the discussion was open - one month of which it lay idle - any of the users who were involved in the discussion could have merged the articles - likely without opposition - but none did. After TTN redirected the articles any interested editor could then have completed the merges but instead, the editors (who had all supported merging) decided instead to revert the redirects and revive an arbitration case. If anything this incident shows why TTN chooses to use - for the most part - AfD discussions rather than pursue merge discussions and other such measures. A process that after two months has yielded five comments and zero improvement to the encyclopaedia is not one that works well. AfD might not be designed for article merges but it is - in theory - a discussion based attempt at identifing consensus. The simple fact that TTN is able to nominate the number of articles he does every day shows the scale of the issue at hand; there are thousands of articles like them in the encyclopaedia and judging from the recent discussions he has started there appears to be a consensus to merge a large proportion of these. Having a page as a redirect for a while in no way prevents information from later being merged - be it the next day or a month later. Having hundreds of individual articles which can never meet Wikipedia's inclusion criteria not only encourages more similar articles to be created but impedes the implementation of a high-quality, encyclopaedic treatment of the topic (such as those found at Characters of Carnivàle and Characters of Final Fantasy VIII). What TTN does must be very repetitive and tedious (likely a major reason why far more editors do not carry out similar actions), I do not think there is any doubt that he thinks he is doing the "right thing" for the project and would not be doing so otherwise. If anyone is truly at fault here it is the community for our collective failure to define an inclusion standard for fiction or develop an effective process for implementing any standard over the thousands of articles which as free standing works have little chance of improvement to a state where they meet the standard of content and quality required by all Wikipedia articles. Guest9999 (talk) 09:21, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Your summary of "what started it" is incorrect, as is your presumption that the discussion was old or stale. Yes, it was clear to merge, but that doesn't mean merging will happen instantly, nor that it should be done without REALLY merging. The discussion ended a month ago, but hello, there are major holidays at this time of year and there is no WP:DEADLINE for doing the merges. The page needed a reformat first, and there are only a handful of us in the anime project working on doing this many merges PROPERLY. The fact is, yes, the individual characters were unnotable and merging was a go. TTN didn't need to do anything at all here, but he did. TTN also completely redirected a valid character list to the main article claiming the character list wasn't necessary either. The anime project IS working at dealing with those many bad articles and I'm not going to disagree on your last statement because I obviously don't think they are necessary either. However, simply redirecting wholescale dozens of character articles AND character lists without discussion, consensus, and proper merging is not a valid way of dealing with them. If TTN is too lazy or too busy to actually merge the articles he claims to be merging and to help fix up the target lists, he shouldn't be sending dozens of them to the projects to deal with and should let those projects deal with them on the schedule they can comfortably work with. -- Collectonian (talk · contribs) 15:07, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

To be fair in this instance all the articles to be merged are completely unsourced and most of them consist of only a description of the character. Given that the main - equally unsourced - list article already included a description of each character the amount of information to actually be merged from each article seems minimal. As an example your merge of Rio Hikari ([85]) didn't actually add any information from the individual character article it only involved rephrasing information already in the list article and including new information not found in either (note this is no way a criticism of the merge only a comment on the form it took). A similar pattern seems to be emerging for the other articles being merged. The discussion shows a consensus to merge the topic areas, with no sourced information from the individual articles and a brief character summary already present in the list article redirecting the pages seems reasonable and in no way prevents any information from being merged at a later date. As you say there is no deadline for merging but in the meantime isn't a redirect to a brief summary better than a poor article that will never meet Wikipedia's inclusion criteria, bogged down in original research and unnecessary plot detail? Especially if the article contributes little to nothing extra by way of sourced, encyclopaedia information over what is present in the list. Wikipedia will never be "complete" and all articles are - to a greater or lesser extent - a work in progress, I think the only disagreement is in how to manage the information that will eventually be retained. Using TTN's method a little information can be lost - at least in the short term - but the remaining "good" information becomes far less obscured by unsuitable content that is was always going to be removed at some point. The balance of article creation vs. information presentation has been skewed regarding fiction to such an extent that it is likely that a large proportion of Wikipedia's articles on fictional topics do not represent a standard - either in content or presentation - which reflects the consensus of the community. TTN's methods are clearly not perfect but during this whole lengthy saga neither "side" has shown any hint of a willingness to compromise and we are left with this situation. There is clearly a need for a visible process via which the community can consider fictional topics as a whole in a timely manner in order to determine how information pertaining to the topic should be presented and there is clearly a need to give interested editors the time to enact any consensus which is established. As it is we currently have one process which is likely to attract little attention and can proceed for months with no improvements and little impetus even when there is a clear consensus and one process that was never designed for the job and therefore often also results in no improvement for the opposite reasons. I think I've gone wildly off topic here but the point is frankly I don't really see how any further sanction against TTN would improve the situation, it wouldn't really solve the underlying problem that a lot of Wikipedia's coverage of fiction does not reflect our policies or guidlines or the content expected of a high quality encyclopaedia. This is accepted by most people on all sides of the discussion, the only disagreement is on how the problem should be solved. We are all working towards a common goal. Guest9999 (talk) 18:48, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Response to response from User:Collectonian to User:Guest9999

Broadly I agree that, ideally, your way is the "right way" to do things, the main problem with it is that it is seen by many not to work in terms of the project as a whole in its current state. Whereas TTN's methods are more visibly - and actually - effective in removing poor content from the encyclopaedia on a large scale and within a reasonable time frame. In terms of ignoring consensus I think the fact that this discussion comes up time and time again is an indicator that any consensus as to validity or otherwise of his methods is questionable at best. At this point I think there is reasonable evidence of a consensus that aspects of fictional works which have received no reliable third party coverage in their own right but are important in terms of the work of fiction (such as many fictional characters) should be covered in "List of..." articles rather than stand alone pieces. Currently we have thousands of stand alone articles on non-notable fictional elements of this type, sometimes with a grouping list article. To the typical user quickly getting rid of the stand alone articles, leaving only the list article - even without any true merge - looks more like moving towards the consensus position than any other method currently available. Personally I think some kind of "Fiction for discussion" process where users could bring a set of articles to a central forum would be a good idea. The process could involve a week of discussion to try and establish what the consensus was for the group (merge these, keep this, source that, etc.); followed by a set period for implementing the changes (maybe three weeks, a month - maybe dependent on the number of articles involved) at which point any "to merge" articles which hadn't been properly merged would be redirected (obviously any merging could still take place after the implementation period simply using the article's history). Most people would have some problem with such a process - even if it didn't devolve into the kind of battleground regularly seen on this page - and I can't see it being anyone's ideal but that's the nature of a compromise (Except on Wikipedia where the nature of a compromise seems to be writing out your unaltered opinion in the most stringent possible terms under the heading of "Compromise"). Guest9999 (talk) 00:38, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

There should also be discussion on what is good spinoff material in the first place. Many times I see material split off when it doesn't need to be or I see delete !votes for stuff not being "independently notable" while split-offs aren't independent to start with. - Mgm|^(talk) 11:59, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think that the counter argument to that is that if something isn't independently notable then it shouldn't have been "spun out" in the first place. I think the community is generally accepting of articles that have actually been been spun out for size or presentation reason and contribute to a high quality encyclopaedic treatment of a topic. The large tracks of independently created unsourced, original research and plot detail that make up a considerable proportion of the articles in question are another matter. Guest9999 (talk) 22:45, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by JzG

In many areas, Wikipedia leads the world in documenting minor fictional elements by direct summary from the primary source. TTN is not the only one who finds this a problem. I suspect that if the fanboys were better at self-policing then we would not have this recurrent problem, but as it is we get AfDs with snowstorms of "keep" votes because obviously Pikachu's left foot is waaaaay notable. Exaggeration for comic effect aside, the Wikiprojects are dominated by people who are fans and much of Wikipedia's coverage of fictional topics reads as fanwanks as a result. I would say that TTN's best approach would be to start a centralised discussion on a single series or group, establish what can and cannot be reliably documented by reference to independent secondary sources (because, after all, that is a very very long-standing principle) and work from there. And I think White Cat is just the editor to help him do it.

Alternatively, perhaps the time has come to change WP:NOT. At present, it says that Wikipedia is not a directory. In several areas, such as Canadian senior-school amateur hockey, Wikipedia is a directory because the fans will vote Keep to absolutely anything rather than have a single redlink in the series, even if there are no reliable independent sources about the team, only the occasional score printed in the local paper. Substantial sections of Wikipedia, including much of the fictional element coverage, is absolutely a directory compiled form primary sources by us. Guy (Help!) 12:14, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Flatscan

There exists variance in editors' interpretations of the scope of AfD, specifically relating to redirects and mergers. While an editor's inclusionist/deletionist stance may affect his/her interpretation, all I've seen are defensible. Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion#Mergers at AfD (due for archiving soon) has a few example AfDs and relevant discussion, but what I read as limited consensus. Nominations that propose a merge only and lack a recommendation to delete (example) seem to be closed early per Wikipedia:Speedy keep clause 1, but treatment is inconsistent otherwise.

There is no centralized Wikipedia:Articles for merging or Wikipedia:Mergers for discussion; there is Wikipedia:Proposed mergers, but it is explicitly optional. I had seen this "Mergers for discussion" mentioned and floated it at VPP myself, but I have not seen it gain traction. I would prefer to see an actual discussion if mergers will be formally blocked from AfD. Flatscan (talk) 07:18, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Sandstein

As a semi-regular AfD closer, but not otherwise (I think) involved in this issue, I recommend that the Committee take no action. As a closer, I've never found TTN's AfDs to be a particular problem, either in volume or in substance, and they generally result in a useful consensus, as indicated by the graph above. It also remains unclear what remedies exactly are requested here. Sandstein 19:06, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Clerk notes

Comments are welcome, but please keep in mind the rule in place that threaded discussion is not needed here. Editors should move their comments into their own sections. - Penwhale | ^{Blast him / Follow his steps} 16:37, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- Threaded commentary put back into the sections of the commenters. Daniel (talk) 16:55, 25 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Arbitrator views and discussion

Awaiting additional statements, but I am concerned, particularly by the allegation that encyclopedic content is being lost. Newyorkbrad (talk) 22:38, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Why am I not surprised... Kirill 03:37, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
FWIW, in case I am active yet or not, recused as I am non-impartial. Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 08:45, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Recuse, should this extend to after January 1. I'm trying to read this impartially, but in this case I don't trust myself due to my involvement in E+C 2. Wizardman 01:20, 22 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I may have a motion to offer once the new arbitrators take their seats or sooner if the currently sitting arbs request it to speed things along. — Coren ^(talk) 19:11, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Recuse. I have enforced sanctions against TTN as an administrator. While I unblocked under an agreement with TTN, my action was very controversial. Vassyana (talk) 01:03, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I am not inclined to reinstate a restriction if nobody has assessed how well that restriction affected the content. There are a lot of opinions about whether TTN should or should not be restricted, however there is not a lot of opinion about the effect of the TTN restriction over the last six months. It is obvious that TTN would prefer to operate unrestricted, and many think the project is benefiting from TTN being unrestricted, but how productive was he when restricted in this way? Did the state of this topical area degrade while he was restricted? Did it improve? The AFD Delsort list would be a good place to start researching. I'd prefer to see stats, graphs and specific examples. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 15:19, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks sgeureka; the graph is fantastic. You mention that TTN raised 40-50 AfDs over 1.5-years prior to the case, and 550 AfDs in three months since the remedy was lifted. Is that 550 AfDs, or 550 articles listed at AfD? Either way, that is a marked increase and a very worrying stat; I would like someone else to confirm those figures, and think it would be helpful if TTN can provide some background as to why so many. Any chance of a cummulative line or bar chart of TTN AfDs? I'd like to see the growth rate.

The number of merge outcomes is also a worry, as our procedure for merge is Wikipedia:MERGE#How_to_merge_pages rather than WP:AFD, so it appears as if AFD is being abused when so few AFDs are being closed as "delete" (only ~25%).

Also helpful would be stats and graphs of AfDs in this topical area that were not raised by TTN. It would be especially interesting to see how many AfDs occurred over the time when TTN was prohibited from raising them - if the topical area was being appropriately maintained when TTN was restricted, and TTN is causing this much drama and stress, I'd be more inclined to restrict TTN again in order to allow everyone else to return to steady and stress free maintainance. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 01:23, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I also extend my thanks to sgeureka, the graph is very helpful. I see that the larger community that opines at AFD agreed with TTN in 79.5% of cases that the nominated article should not exist as a standalone article, whether by straight deletion, redirect or merge; and that only 12% of the nominations were closed as clear keeps. Closing AFDs as redirect or merge is commonplace, and half a dozen AFDs a day (on average) is not flooding the system; at least, we are not seeing admins who routinely close AFDs posting to this request telling us that it is causing a problem. At this point, I am not seeing the need to extend or reinstate restrictions. Risker (talk) 07:25, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I continue to be unclear about which policy, guideline, or Community process or norm that TNN is violating now that would require the Committee to sanction TNN. I understand the concern about the rate of edits made on one topic. But, we don't sanction editors for adding too much content too quickly for the Community to monitor if the quality of the content is generally good, so I'm uncertain that it is wise for us to add editing restriction for an users doing a large number of edits that are slanted toward deleting or merging content. FloNight ♥♥♥ 19:43, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

@@ Line 68: / Line 68: @@
 ----
-=== GabrielVelasquez ===
-'''Initiated by ''' [[User:Icalanise|Icalanise]] ([[User talk:Icalanise|talk]]) '''at''' 16:55, 27 December 2008 (UTC)
-==== Involved parties ====
-<!-- use {{admin|username}} if the party is an administrator -->
-*{{userlinks|Icalanise}}, ''filing party''
-*{{userlinks|GabrielVelasquez}}
-<!-- The editor filing the case should be included as a party for purposes of notifications. -->
-;Confirmation that all parties are aware of the request
-<!-- All parties must be notified that the request has been filed, immediately after it is posted, and confirmation posted here. -->
-*[http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:GabrielVelasquez&diff=260341979&oldid=260341691]
-;Confirmation that other steps in [[Wikipedia:dispute resolution|dispute resolution]] have been tried
-<!-- Identify prior attempts at dispute resolution here, with links/diffs to the page where the resolution took place. If prior dispute resolution has not been attempted, the reasons for this should be explained in the request for arbitration -->
-*Attempted discussion on user talk page [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:GabrielVelasquez&diff=240204294&oldid=239852767] deleted by editor without comment [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:GabrielVelasquez&diff=242286727&oldid=240765958]
-*[[Wikipedia:Wikiquette alerts/archive51#User:GabrielVelasquez's conduct at Talk:Gliese 581 c and other articles.]]
-*[[Wikipedia:Requests for comment/GabrielVelasquez]]
-==== Statement by [[User:Icalanise]] ====
-[[User:GabrielVelasquez]] is a persistent violator of [[WP:CIVIL]] as can be evidenced by his conduct at [[Talk:Gliese 581 c]] (see the archives of that page) and by past filings at [[WP:ANI]] ([[Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive360#New problematic user|here]] and [[Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive358#New editor engaging in POV Personal attacks, etc.|here]]). He has accused me in the past of sockpuppetry/being a sockpuppet [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Gliese_581_c&diff=242289459&oldid=242289165] and of being "damage control" for various groups of scientists [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Gliese_581_c&diff=240125551&oldid=239975852] due to my disagreements with his viewpoints on various subjects. Attempting to discuss the matter with GabrielVelasquez Resolution through Wikiquette led to further sockpuppet accusations [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Bwilkins&diff=prev&oldid=243244267] and an accusation of bribery [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Bwilkins&diff=prev&oldid=243236242], so the matter was taken to RfC/USER (which also covered his attacks on several other editors which were in much the same vein). This itself has recently failed when GabrielVelasquez recently posted accusations that I am a liar who is motivated purely by revenge [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_comment/GabrielVelasquez&diff=259848701&oldid=250347916], that I run away from discussions [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Logical_Premise&diff=prev&oldid=259851843] and has made further negative comments about my character [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:BlueEarth&diff=prev&oldid=259854738], which have been posted several weeks after the closing of the RfC/USER and were apparently prompted by an edit I made to an article RfC (my edit [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Planetary_habitability&diff=259724765&oldid=259609527] and GabrielVelasquez's response [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Planetary_habitability&diff=prev&oldid=259829889]). I seek a resolution to this matter which results in an end to these attacks. [[User:Icalanise|Icalanise]] ([[User talk:Icalanise|talk]]) 16:55, 27 December 2008 (UTC)
-;Response to comments regarding mediation
-I am extremely sceptical that mediation, which is a voluntary discussion between parties, will help here, given previous history of attempts to communicate with this editor by several different parties. For example, the Wikiquette process (which is again a voluntary discussion approach) failed and led to more accusations that I am a sockpuppet and an accusation that I was bribing the third-party editor who had agreed to take on the case. Indeed it was the failure of the voluntary discussion approach at Wikiquette that led myself and [[User:Cyclopia]] (another editor who GabrielVelasquez accused of sockpuppetry, and who was then accused by GabrielVelasquez of harassment when he attempted to resolve the matter [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:GabrielVelasquez&diff=prev&oldid=235807346][http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Cyclopia&diff=237531608&oldid=236546595]) to pursue the RfC in the first place. [[User:Icalanise|Icalanise]] ([[User talk:Icalanise|talk]]) 20:22, 27 December 2008 (UTC)
-:Since I mentioned him, I have left a note on [[User:Cyclopia]]'s talk page about the existence of this discussion. [[User:Icalanise|Icalanise]] ([[User talk:Icalanise|talk]]) 20:29, 27 December 2008 (UTC)
-;Response to comments regarding the time of the dispute
-The latest attacks were on December 24th [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_comment/GabrielVelasquez&diff=259848701&oldid=250347916][http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Logical_Premise&diff=prev&oldid=259851843][http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Planetary_habitability&diff=prev&oldid=259829889]. Does this not constitute recent? Also is lower activity really a good reason for declining - if anything it implies that infrequent contributions are a valid way to dodge any kind of dispute resolution process. Nevertheless since this is looking like it is heading for decline, some advice on where would be a better venue to take this would be most appreciated, thanks. [[User:Icalanise|Icalanise]] ([[User talk:Icalanise|talk]]) 01:24, 30 December 2008 (UTC)
-==== Clerk notes ====
-:''This area is used for notes by non-recused Clerks.''
-==== Arbitrators' opinion on hearing this matter (0/8/0/1) ====
-*'''Decline'''; I see no highly divisive dispute here, or behavior lying beyond the participants' ability to work out using rational discussion.  &mdash;&nbsp;[[User:Coren|Coren]]&nbsp;<sup>[[User Talk:Coren|(talk)]]</sup> 18:14, 27 December 2008 (UTC)
-* Comment. Awaiting further statements. This dispute may be premature if other steps in dispute resolution have not been exhausted. [[User:FloNight|FloNight]][[User talk:FloNight|&#9829;&#9829;&#9829;]] 19:08, 27 December 2008 (UTC)
-**'''Reject''' as premature. The situation needs the involvement of more experienced users to help sort out the issue instead of ArbCom doing it. [[User:FloNight|FloNight]][[User talk:FloNight|&#9829;&#9829;&#9829;]] 19:32, 29 December 2008 (UTC)
-* Comment. Pending other stmts, have the parties tried mediation? <span style="font-family:Verdana,sans-serif"> — [[User:Rlevse|<b style="color:#060;"><i>R</i>levse</b>]] • [[User_talk:Rlevse|<span style="color:#990;">Talk</span>]] • </span> 19:14, 27 December 2008 (UTC)
-**'''Decline''' for now. But I fear this will be back. <span style="font-family:Verdana,sans-serif"> — [[User:Rlevse|<b style="color:#060;"><i>R</i>levse</b>]] • [[User_talk:Rlevse|<span style="color:#990;">Talk</span>]] • </span> 22:00, 29 December 2008 (UTC)
-* If Gabriel doesn't respond to this, then I'd lean towards acceptance of the case based on a skim through the issue. However, I won't make anything final yet, since if he were to consider Mediation then this would be moot. [[User:Wizardman|<span style="color:#060">'''''Wizardman'''''</span>]] 04:39, 28 December 2008 (UTC)
-**'''Decline''', on further browsing and Gabriel's relative inactivity, I think this could be solved by the community. If nothing else, doesn't hurt to try. [[User:Wizardman|<span style="color:#060">'''''Wizardman'''''</span>]] 00:14, 30 December 2008 (UTC)
-*Comment: Awaiting further statements and evidence of continued problematic behaviour; the RFC is from October.  [[User:Risker|Risker]] ([[User talk:Risker|talk]]) 05:56, 29 December 2008 (UTC)
-*'''Decline''' as premature. -- [[User:FayssalF|<font size="2px" face="Verdana"><font color="DarkSlateBlue">FayssalF</font></font>]] - <small>[[User talk:FayssalF|<font style="background: gold"><sup>''Wiki me up''® </sup></font>]]</small> 16:59, 29 December 2008 (UTC)
-*I too would '''reject''' this case. GabrielVelasquez stays mostly on topic, and I find that his unfortunate habit of including personal attacks and assumptions of bad faith, while no doubt aggravating, do not rise to the level which would justify a full arbitration case. An improvement in his behaviour is however long overdue. [[User:Sam Blacketer|Sam Blacketer]] ([[User talk:Sam Blacketer|talk]]) 19:53, 29 December 2008 (UTC)
-*'''Decline''' - Premature. --[[User:Roger Davies|<font color="maroon">'''R<small>OGER</small>&nbsp;D<small>AVIES'''</small></font>]]&nbsp;<sup>[[User talk:Roger Davies|'''talk''']]</sup> 22:04, 29 December 2008 (UTC)
-*'''Decline''' for the moment - the active phase of the dispute appears to be months old now ''(has it continued recently elsewhere?)'' and much was related to a difficult issue. Cheers, [[User:Casliber|Casliber]] ([[User talk:Casliber|talk]] '''·''' [[Special:Contributions/Casliber|contribs]]) 22:24, 29 December 2008 (UTC)
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 === Maria Thayer ===