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Disputes involving The Rambling Man after the motion enacted January 26. The Committee will also hear evidence setting those disputes in context, particularly on matters related to ITN and DYK.

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Main case page (Talk) — Evidence (Talk) — Workshop (Talk) — Proposed decision (Talk)

Case clerks: Amortias (Talk) & Ks0stm (Talk) & Lankiveil (Talk) Drafting arbitrators: GorillaWarfare (Talk) & Kelapstick (Talk) & Drmies (Talk)

The Workshop phase for this case is closed.

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Motions and requests by the parties

Proposed remedies by Banedon

If Arbcom feels TRM's behavior was acceptable then the obvious thing to do is "nothing".

If Arbcom feels TRM's behavior was not acceptable then these are what I'd suggest, in descending order of preference:

Block & Warn: the most common first step based on my experience on other forums. A short block (say one month) accompanied with a warning that continued incivility will lead to heavier sanctions.
Indefinite block: extremely harsh, this acts on the assumption that editors with as much experience as TRM ought to be familiar with WP's rules and so warrant heavier sanctions immediately. This would send a strong message that Wikipedia's 4th pillar is not to be trifled with.
Topic ban from ITN, DYK and Ref Desks: since most of the incivility appears to be centered in these venues. This attempts to stop the incivility and keep TRM's positive contributions at the same time. Problem with this is, it doesn't really solve the underlying issue, and incivility may well continue in other venues. Also if I were TRM I'd feel somewhat insulted by this, since at some level it's saying "we don't want you, but we want your contributions, and we're willing to go through contortions to keep that". Sort of like getting banned from a store unless you spend more than $100 there, when they welcome you.
Interaction ban between me and him: there are a lot of people out there who find TRM's rudeness aggravating, so I hope it doesn't come to this. On the other hand, this is better than doing nothing (a mere "all parties are reminded that civility is to be upheld in the project" warning ala all the ANI cases in the past is similar to doing nothing in efficacy). Exact terms of the interaction ban to be set out.

As for desysopping TRM: on the one hand I would not say he's abused the tools; on the other hand several editors have also expressed how they feel TRM being an admin puts them under more pressure when dealing with him. I've felt that way as well, especially before I understood better what being an administrator means on Wikipedia. This edit is illustrative of what less-experienced editors intuitively feel about other editors who hold special privileges: [1]. I would incline towards desysopping for that reason, but would not feel strongly if he's not desysopped.

Banedon (talk) 05:54, 26 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Comment by others:

Proposed motions and requests by George Ho

2) Statements, including preliminary ones, that lack diff links and other links to evidence should be dismissed as nothing more than pleas and mere comments. They add nothing to help the case other than to complicate arbitrators' inner conflict of interests.

Also, as proposed by others, I don't want TRM near me or Banedon until a year or more. His interactions with Baseball Bugs, Newyorkbrad, Sca, Calidum, and The ed17 shall be dealt with also. Not to mention with others.

Also, Wikipedia should be a very welcoming place to everyone, including new editors. The Rambling Man makes Wikipedia less welcoming than it is or should be.

TRM should either lose his administrative privileges or be banned from Wikipedia. But I don't know whether others would agree on either option or none. George Ho (talk) 07:22, 26 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

~~Also, ArbCom process shall not be affected by TRM's boycott and lack of participation in this case. Also,~~ conflict of interests among members of the committee shall be avoided and not influenced by pleas from those people who wanted the case dismissed. George Ho (talk) 07:31, 26 September 2016 (UTC) TRM no longer boycotts. --George Ho (talk) 06:17, 29 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Evidence and statements against Cwmhiraeth, especially by Fram shall be dismissed as irrelevant to this case. Also, Cwmhiraeth did not evidently have a conflict with TRM as I had.
- If motion to dismiss is denied, how about reminding Cwmhiraeth instead? Admonishment is a little harsher than reminder. Evidence of Cwmhiraeth as subject to ANI was not brought to light. Most of us focused on providing evidence against TRM and were too busy to concern any of our (mis)conduct. Also, Cwmhiraeth is not the main subject of the case.
I found this discussion from the evidence talk page (not the evidence page). There was no consensus to make TRM self-recall or self-impose privileges. Does this help the case?
- If so, let's include that as one of findings of facts.
- If not, ah well...
TRM resorted to accusing people of incompetence, especially in regards to images of deceased people. Scope too limited; I modified. George Ho (talk) 22:30, 28 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
~~TRM exploited trivial issues, like non-free images, to obstruct articles from being featured in the Main Page.~~ I now remember TRM was not alone in this, but ITN is not the main problem here. George Ho (talk) 21:28, 28 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

George Ho (talk) 21:27, 28 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

~~The Rambling Man is refrained from pinging and giving "thank you" messages to George Ho.~~

~~Prohibiting TRM from contacting and mentioning me is not enough. Pinging and "thanking" me is what I'm also worried about.~~

~~The Rambling Man and George Ho are refrained from pinging and giving "thank you" messages to each other.~~

~~Alternative to one-way ban.~~

~~02:53, 29 September 2016 (UTC)~~

Seems too much. Pinging should count as a form of contact, should it? What about "thank you" notifications? I hope it also counts as a form of contact. --George Ho (talk) 06:17, 29 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I moved everything else to Proposed Final Decisions section. George Ho (talk) 06:17, 29 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know whether raising the canvassing issue would damage or jeopardize the case against TRM. I removed proposed finding of facts about canvassing because I don't want to propose punishments against me and Banedon. ~~Nevertheless, I still retain proposed principles regarding canvassing.~~ I want to motion to dismiss the canvassing issue (though I made proposals in response), but I don't know whether it holds up well. In fact, Banedon and I were warned not to notify any more people, so he and I abided. However, if Banedon does not mind my proposing the findings of facts, I would add them again. However, that would risk me and Banedon being warned again if motion to warn us about canvassing passes. Nevertheless, Banedon and I were already warned, so the canvassing issue seems pointless at the moment other than to jeopardize the case and to distract the Committee from real, more serious disputes with TRM. George Ho (talk) 07:19, 29 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I removed proposals regarding canvassing because I was persuaded to either keep the principles about canvassing or remedies against TRM. I chose the latter. George Ho (talk) 09:09, 29 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

For those assuming that I was unable to see TRM in a good light, I didn't want to provide that to Evidence because I didn't want the case to be about me. I was chummy with TRM, but that was long before the motion installed in Jan 2016. I didn't remember seeing TRM's good light until... the case started, but I didn't want to bring it up. Now certain people think my Evidence part is starting to falter. The links Talk:List of Friends episodes#Disputed changes, Wikipedia:Peer review/Sam and Diane/archive2 might prove it, but that was 2012. If you want more recent evidence of my seeing good side with TRM, here you go: [2][3](well, someone else reverted the action)[4]. They were not in the Evidence phase, but I hope it counts, Fram and User:iridescent? --George Ho (talk) 16:50, 30 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, I didn't want to leave TRM out of the Evidence phase. I did ask for time extension in the Evidence phase. Nevertheless, I never intended to jeopardize the case against TRM. But I don't want TRM desysoped... yet. I just want TRM to adjust his behavior before he would go down the hole. As for me, I do have a lot of issues on my own. ArbCom is the last resort, right? Why hasn't anyone put me as the subject of a case? I apologize, kelapstick, for making too many proposals. I got too excited and didn't think about being careful. Speaking of careful, I was careful at WP:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Christianity and Sexuality, where I filed the request. --George Ho (talk) 16:55, 30 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

I mentioned you, Iridescent, not because I assumed you and TRM, but because you commented at the "George Ho blocked" proposal. I'll stop mentioning you if you want me to. George Ho (talk) 18:18, 30 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by others:

I have no idea why I'm being namechecked in the ramblings above. For at least the tenth time, I have no connection to TRM, Fram, Banedon, or anyone else mentioned in this case, I have not been on Arbcom for five years so have no power to affect the result of this case, and nor do I have any involvement in either ITN or in any of the incidents mentioned in your many walls of text, other than (1) once closing a thread you started in which you were either trolling or demonstrating severe WP:HIGHMAINT tendencies, and (2) making the mistake of AGFing and taking you seriously and trying to give you a considered response when you turned up on my talk page asking bizarre questions, rather than just telling you to go away or ignoring you. ‑ Iridescent 18:12, 30 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Statement from The Rambling Man

3) I initially declined to participate in this case because I did not have faith in the process for two primary reasons.

1) Egregious canvassing at the outset, to which Arbcom made no response.

The case was filed by Banedon on 18 August. This user then went on to canvass no fewer than 14 editors with whom I have had conflicts ranging from IBANs to minor scuffles. Following this, George Ho made similar edits, inviting 10 editors with whom I have had conflicts (including one who I have only ever interacted with at Simple English; he has been indef banned from there). Ho then invited Dweller, an act of fair play I suppose, before going on to canvass two more "anti" users. I am astonished that a case with such a serious bias would be even considered, but that's history, as we now can see.

2) The narrow focus on me in this case, when a number of seasoned editors called for a wide exploration of issues around ERROS/ITN/DYK/Ref Desks

I now see editors with whom I have not interacted for years appearing at the case to provide their caseload of diffs. I offer no defence for any of the diffs provided in the case that can be explained by simply reading the diffs. The contexts of the diffs is where the real case lies and I strongly suspect that no attention will be given to those. At some point during the case, it was established that that scope be broadened to include the behaviour of other editors, in particular at DYK and ITN, but also should not preclude areas such as the Reference Desks. This, apparently, is not an ongoing concern of Arbcom, the case is still heavily biased in its title and nothing is being done to examine the other involved party (George Ho) nor the behavioural issues of many users at DYK, ITN or the Ref Desks. I now see that certain editors are now seeking for me to be permanently banned from Wikipedia, some seeking for me to be "punished". I am once again astonished by this turn of events, and feel like I have no reason to attempt to defend myself or my record in the face of such analysis and conclusion. While I accept that my tone and debating style is deemed unacceptable to some, I have worked relentlessly for something like 8 years as an admin to maintain the integrity of Wikipedia and have never abused the tools to the detriment of the readers.

Summary

I have never held the "badge" of adminship as some kind of prize, it's a tool which should be used only to improve Wikipedia. I have only ever used the tool for that purpose, and will continue to do so until it is deemed I am not suitable to do so. I edit first, second, third and foremost as an editor. The admin thing is just an add-on that is helpful to upkeep Wikipedia. I am mystified by the masses of dialogue that appears to be directed towards my desire to keep the tool or regain it should it be removed. I have never made any such assertion anywhere, nor have I ever brought my admin tool into any kind of pure editing forum. I readily accept that I have had many scuffles with numerous editors, mainly because my eleven years on the project have been dedicated to maintaining high standards, ensuring the integrity of the mainpage by eliminating medicority and producing high quality mainspace content while reminding others that Wikipedia is not a social media website. I am abrupt, to the point, and cursory, but I can't recall ever directing a genuine "personal attack" to anyone, ever. To remind someone that competence is required is simply to remind them that we have an essay called WP:COMPETENCE. It may be hard to stomach, but I actually dislike upsetting others, and if nothing else, this "case" has reminded me that my approach and tone and correspondance style is not palatable to all. For what it's worth, I will address that. But it will not diminish my urgent requirement to keep Wikipedia alive and kicking and error-free, at least as far as our readers are concerned. If you wish to punish me for that, so be it.

There is nothing more for me to add. I know that I have had run-ins with many individuals, some Arbs, some 'crats, many admins, and thousands of editors, so I'm not surprised that over an 11-year career and 155k edits, the two users I noted at the top of this post could find a couple of dozen editors who were happy to see the back of me. I refrained from canvassing the couple of hundred editors who may be able to provide counter evidence, most of them are far too interested in improving Wikipedia and far too clever to get embroiled in this kind of thing.

I feel obliged to comment as to why I haven't responded to this case, in part because the protocol of being an admin requires me to explain my position, but mainly because I would like something at least on the record that needs further analysis, particularly the tacit acceptance by Arbcom of the overt negative canvassing.

Thank you to the many supporting voices throughout this ordeal. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:53, 28 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by Arbitrators:

The Rambling Man, thank you for the statement, although (following a warning by a clerk) I did tell George that he didn't have to notify everyone who had an interaction with you, I should have been significantly more clear about why it was inappropriate. --kelapstick^(bainuu) 02:32, 29 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by parties:

I want to rebut what he was saying about me, but I must put my standards a little bit high and not resort to sounding rabid. Also, I don't want this to be about me and to distract ourselves from this case. Instead, I created Wikipedia:Competence is not required. This should be a potentially important counter-speech to the "competence is required" essay. George Ho (talk) 23:11, 28 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

A few things:

This is more suited to the evidence page.
With regards to canvassing: ironically when I mentioned but did not ping LauraJamieson once on WT:ITN, TRM called me out for it [5]. When I filed this case request I therefore also messaged the people who I mentioned. Amortias later warned me not to do that either (see my talk page) so when I amended one of the diffs provided to include one by Flyer22 Reborn, I did not ping her. I also didn't ping Masem, 331dot, Tone, Thryduulf, etc, who I mentioned explicitly by name in the evidence page. My perspective on this is somewhat "damned if I do, damned if I don't". Nonetheless, for the rest of this case, I am not pinging anyone.
TRM claims he actually dislikes upsetting people. I don't believe him. He has gone out of his way to annoy people in the past, and the diffs provided in the evidence page is evidence of it. Here is another one. Removing non-errors from WP:ERRORS is something lots of administrators do, two examples being [6] [7]. When TRM did the same to another one of the errors I posted however he was more abrasive: [8] (the word 'pedant' carries negative connotations). If it were George Ho removing the error, I can look past it, because English is clearly not George Ho's native language. Since it is TRM however I interpret his action as being intentionally provocative. At most, what he truly believes is that he dislikes upsetting people except those he deems as incompetent, whom he goes out of his way to upset (and I am one of those who he deems as incompetent).
TRM claims he can't recall ever directing a personal attack at anyone. I don't believe this either, because he called Jayron32 a coward earlier this year [9] in a clear personal attack, and I linked that diff in my section on the evidence page.
Finally TRM implies that his incivility stems from reminding users of WP:COMPETENCE, i.e. that the people he is uncivil towards are incompetent. As I mentioned on the evidence page, this implies that Masem, 331dot, Tone, Thryduulf, etc, are incompetent. Are they? Let Arbcom be the judge.

If nothing else, I find this illustrative of why I do not think TRM reforming is possible. He does not think he has done anything wrong. Without this crucial admission, "I will address [my approach and tone and correspondance style]" is meaningless.

Banedon (talk) 01:29, 29 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Another thing: TRM had an opportunity to provide evidence for his own defense and against any of us. Unfortunately, he chose to skip the Evidence phase, and he missed it. All of the evidence against him still stands. Whether ~~that~~ his skipping the phase was either intentional or unintentional is irrelevant. The statement by him is nothing more than begging ArbCom to reconsider the case. As for those defending him, I still don't know why they provided just statements. Why not evidence instead to defend him? George Ho (talk) 04:24, 29 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Although I don't defend him and his actions, I asked ArbCom to extend the Evidence phase, so TRM might have an extended opportunity to provide his own words and proof. However, the Committee denied my requests. Therefore, turning back the clock, i.e. reopening the phase, is now impossible. --George Ho (talk) 04:44, 29 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

~~I created WP:competence is not required because the counter-essay~~ WP:competence is required may have been prone to misuse and abuse, especially by TRM. ~~Also, there had not been an essay to counter this until now.~~ A lot of pressure is put on us to do whatever pleases readers and administrators. Name-calling and scolding by TRM, especially in the case of images of Sally Brampton and Reg Grundy, show TRM's poor ability to have compassion for others, especially those from far distant settlements in other continents. Also, "competence" is treated like an unwritten rule because... that's what everybody does, right? No effort to make "competence" an official rule has been made, and nothing ever will. This "competence" issue does not excuse TRM's behavior overall. I see that the essay that I created is nominated for deletion, but I don't think deletion rationale will hold up. --George Ho (talk) 20:58, 30 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Great. Now consensus agrees to userfy the essay. No matter. I hope I didn't jeopardize the case, did I? George Ho (talk) 02:55, 1 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by others:

Although both are essays George Ho, WP:COMPETENCE has been around for eight years and is a commonly accepted idea and holds weight in discussions where as citing an essay you created today holds basically no weight in discussions. ~~Also WP:SELFQUOTE~~. - Yellow Dingo (talk) 23:19, 28 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Can you please elaborate your last sentence? I don't know which "why not?" part you refer to. George Ho (talk) 23:27, 28 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I have struck that part. - Yellow Dingo (talk) 01:36, 29 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

What matters is that the moment one wants to invoke a systemic problem with the editor, e.g. incompetence, then that discussion should be held at AN/I or some other appropriate forum meant for discussing editor conduct/behavior. If there is no intention to go to such a venue, then arguments about the editor should not be raised, you have to do with only commenting on the edits. Count Iblis (talk) 00:08, 29 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding the first point, there is a fine line between improper canvassing and notifying users who have something to add to the discussion. The message that I received was:

I just filed an arbitration request against The Rambling Man, citing an example in which you were involved in. You might be interested in the case. Link is here: [10]. Thanks, Banedon (talk) 05:23, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

The scope of the requested case in the preliminary statement by Banedon was "I'm filing this case request against The Rambling Man (TRM) for long-term civility issues." Among the appropriate notifications listed at WP:APPNOTE is (emphasis added): An editor who may wish to draw a wider range of informed, but uninvolved, editors to a discussion can place a message at any of the following:...On the talk pages of a user mentioned in the discussion (particularly if the discussion concerns complaints about user behavior). The notification that I received was appropriate and did not fall into any of the categories at Wikipedia:Canvassing#Inappropriate notification. I should point out that not every user is active at every community page; in my case, I haven't participated in any ARBCOM proceedings before, so the page isn't on my watchlist, nor are the talk pages of any of the parties on my watchlist, so without a notice I would not have been aware of the case request, despite being the person that brought one of the ANI discussions mentioned by a party's preliminary statements (link 17 here). In fact, I was not aware of the January case and may have commented then if I had been aware of it! This is not insignificant because, as happened in this case, actions before the previous case are not considered due to double jeopardy. For me, I can't present evidence of pre-January uncivil interactions because of the admonishment of which I was never informed! Isn't it only fair that people who have something to say in a case be informed about it? The Arbitrators shouldn't take the notifications into account, given these reasons. If there is any concern, the Arbitrators should clarify the difference—vis-à-vis (i) the WP:APPNOTE criteria mentioned above and (ii) notification of people with something to say in a case when their remarks can't be used in later cases/discussions due to double jeopardy—between inappropriate canvassing and appropriate notification of relevant parties to a case concerning a user's behavior.

Regarding the second point, TRM claims: I offer no defence for any of the diffs provided in the case that can be explained by simply reading the diffs. The contexts of the diffs is where the real case lies and I strongly suspect that no attention will be given to those. But then provides no examples. TRM further criticizes the scope of the case, but had TRM actually participated by responding to the case request, then TRM could have provided ample evidence that the scope of the case should have been broadened. It's a case of you get what you pay for; ignore the case request, where you could have provided evidence that the scope needed to be broadened, then you aren't really in a position to complain about the scope. And it's not like TRM was busy in real life and/or inactive during this period. The initial request was on 18 August and the case was accepted on 3 September. According to his contributions page, he made well over a thousand edits during that time (I simply selected from August and earlier, 500 edits, and there was about 2.5 pages of edits from 18-31 August, plus a little under a half page of edits from 1-3 September, so ~1300-1500 edits during the time the case request was open). In my opinion, the tacit acknowledgement of the admin responsibility in WP:ADMINACCT to respond "promptly and civilly to queries about their Wikipedia-related conduct" is too little, too late and shouldn't negate his refusal to participate up to this point. AHeneen (talk) 05:07, 29 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Arbitrators may ask questions of the parties in this section.

Proposed final decision

Proposals by Mike V

Comment by others:

This principle from 2015, mildly reworded, might be more appropriate, as it speaks directly to administrator conduct. --Hammersoft (talk) 12:55, 24 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Administrator standards

5) Administrators are trusted members of the community, who are expected to follow Wikipedia policies and are held to a high standard of conduct. Those who seriously, or repeatedly, act in a problematic manner or have lost the trust or confidence of the community may be sanctioned or have their access removed.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Comment by others:

See my evidence comment, citing WP:ADMINCOND and WP:ADMINACCT. The proposed statement should also cite TRM's refusal to participate in proceedings against him. Per WP:ADMINACCT: Administrators are expected to respond promptly and civilly to queries about their Wikipedia-related conduct and administrator actions and to justify them when needed. I don't think that's something which should be ignored. For Wikipedia, cooperation is an important underlying need and it is a dereliction of duty for admins be hostile to and completely ignore the various procedures underlying the community, such as explaining their actions in proceedings such as this. Of course, TRM hasn't participated in this case, and also see this diff, mentioned by Salvio when accepting the case (Dismissing those bringing the case as: "Yep. It's a lynch mob...I wonder how this is going to turn out in a month or two? In the meantime I'll be ignoring it and relying on those who can see through this mob mentality. I don't hold out much hope. Never mind, we should allow the project to be run by the social media rejects and admin wannabes, that really helps the reader after all.").

And while the subject of this case is only since January 2016, TRM's previous actions nonetheless need to be taken into account. Since the admin behavior guidelines I cite on the evidence page (and above) refer to recurring actions, not just actions once or twice, it should be noted that this dismissal of community proceedures has been made before (diff, in evidence from Banedon, beginning: "I'm loathe to respond to these kangaroo proceedings, but given the plethora of false assumptions and incorrect assertions I see (yet again), and given the absolute stone cold intensity with which some users wish to see me "punished", I felt compelled, even today, my son's first birthday, to say a couple of things.", after one comment, he doesn't respond to further comments). In another ANI case, also among evidence from Banedon, which I initiated, TRM never responded and his reaction to it is in the sub-section of that discussion titled "User's response when I raised issue on his talk page".AHeneen (talk) 22:08, 24 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Concerning TRM's participation in the case, the most relevant precedent probably is Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Kafziel#Kafziel: Administrator accountability (Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Kafziel#Administrator accountability). Back then, I voted against that FOF, but it passed nonetheless.

Salvio

^{Let's talk about it!} 12:35, 25 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Proposed findings of fact

The Rambling Man previously admonished

1) The Rambling Man (talk · contribs) was admonished by the arbitration committee in January 2016 for uncivil and inflammatory language and personal attacks. The Rambling Man was advised that future similar conduct may result in sanctions.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Since I wrote the text of that motion, I'll confirm that I did intentionally avoid the word "admonish", because I hate it. But it's still semantics. Opabinia regalis (talk) 05:28, 1 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by parties:

Comment by others:

The diff you provide doesn't show TRM been admonished but instead shows a different motion being enacted. - Yellow Dingo (talk) 05:06, 24 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Fixed. Amortias (T)(C) 12:23, 24 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Corrected. Amortias, the link you provided went to a motion that didn't pass. Nearly so, but did not. --Hammersoft (talk) 12:47, 24 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

This is flat out untrue. An admonishment is a formal remedy in the course of a case; what is linked is a motion that amounts to a mini-FoF and advice. GoldenRing (talk) 11:05, 27 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I disagree. An admonishment is simply a formal finding that a party's behavior was inappropriate and that continuing such behavior would result in a greater level of reprimand. The motion was passed by a majority of the committee and advised TRM that future similar conduct would result in sanctions. Passing the motion in lieu of a case doesn't diminish the committee's conclusion. Mike V • Talk 14:59, 29 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I concur with Mike V's assessment. Call it what you will, the point remains. It was a formal judgment made against TRM by way of a motion passed by ArbCom. Whether it was an admonishment, reprobation, rebuke, or any other word is a matter of semantics. --Hammersoft (talk) 15:28, 29 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The Rambling Man (edit warring)

2) The Rambling Man has engaged in edit warring.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Comment by others:

Given the evidence presented by Hammersoft. Mike V • Talk 03:46, 24 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It should be noted that in 2009 ArbCom in a FoF had found TRM had "edit-warred extensively" [11] and in the remedy from that case was "admonished for not pursuing appropriate dispute resolution methods" [12] --Hammersoft (talk) 12:50, 24 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hammersoft's evidence here seems fairly doubtful. Of the two incidents cited, the second claims three reverts in 24 hours - not quite the breach of WP:3RR you might think. And the first claims, "Four hours, five reverts." To put it in context, this was in a dispute over another administrators use of the tools which, it seems to me, was clearly in breach of WP:INVOLVED, editing through protection to make a change the admin in question had !voted for (and which, it should have been blindingly obvious, was always going to be contentious). Here's the history:

17:13 The first diff given is clearly not a revert, but a request to pull the item from ITN. This was then reverted by an IP editor (which was in turn patched up by George Ho.
20:28 TRM then re-reverted to request pulling the item (this is Hammersoft's second diff). This was then reverted by Calidum with no explanation.
21:09 TRM re-reverted (Hammersoft's third diff). Calidum re-reverted, with the summary, "the blurb has been posted, not pulled" (no-one had suggested the blurb had been pulled).
21:11 TRM re-reverted this obvious misunderstanding (Hammersoft's fourth diff - I'm AGFing here; if it wasn't a misunderstanding then it was tendentiously inaccurate). Calidum reverted.
21:13 TRM re-reverted and Calidum followed suit with the charming summary, "learn not to be a dick because you didn't get your way on some soccer player months ago." This is Hammersoft's fifth diff.

So, four reverts and not five. Calidum also edit-warred against consensus, making four reverts, but this doesn't seem to matter to those proposing this remedy, nor does it seem to matter that Caldium's reverts were an attempt to shout down an argument that there was no consensus and TRM's reverts were at least within the spirit of the exemptions to 3RR, "Considerable leeway is also given to editors reverting to maintain the quality of a featured article while it appears on the main page." TRM's reverts were in the context of ten editors calling for the blurb to be pulled from the main page, either on merit or because of the inappropriate process. Sanctioning an admin for this conduct would be counter-productive. GoldenRing (talk) 10:51, 27 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

First, from WP:3RR; "An edit or a series of consecutive edits that undoes other editors' actions—whether in whole or in part—counts as a revert". The first revert is indeed a revert, as it reverted the actions of administrator User:Patar knight who changed it from RD nom to posted with this edit. It needs to be noted that TRM reverted that editor while involved, as he had already voted on whether to post it or not. This is a clear revert. Sorry. Second, that Calidum edit warred is irrelevant. There's no special clause in 3RR that permits edit warring if someone else is edit warring too. It also doesn't matter if someone is being insulting while reverting; that doesn't grant special permissions to continue the edit war. Sanctioning ANY person, whether an administrator or not, for edit warring is entirely appropriate. TRM could have taken the opportunity to request assistance from an uninvolved admin. He chose not to, and instead continued the edit war. This is not the way it's supposed to happen. TRM knows better and was previously admonished for not pursuing appropriate dispute resolution methods. --Hammersoft (talk) 13:41, 27 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

By your definition of 'revert', every edit ever made to any page, after the first one, would be a revert. They all change what someone else has done. GoldenRing (talk) 14:49, 30 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The Rambling Man’s conduct

2) Since January 2016, The Rambling Man has continued to engage in uncivil and inflammatory behavior and make personal attacks towards other editors.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Comment by others:

Given the evidence presented by myself, Hammersoft, and Banedon. Mike V • Talk 03:46, 24 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Proposed remedies

Note: All remedies that refer to a period of time, for example to a ban of X months or a revert parole of Y months, are to run concurrently unless otherwise stated.

The Rambling Man desysopped

1) The Rambling Man’s administrator permissions are revoked. He may regain the tools at any time through a successful request for adminship.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Doesn't any time imply that TRM would regain his privileges soon after he loses them? Would that make this punishment less effective than it really is? Why not six months or one year after losing his privileges? --George Ho (talk) 16:01, 26 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by others:

Would this be effective, considering how many users during the request phase didn't care about civility policies? Other than a lack of civility, TRM has done a lot of work as an admin. My concern with this proposal is that TRM would immediately request adminship and, given how many users don't really care about the civility policy, he would be an admin within a couple of weeks. In my opinion, "[h]e may regain the tools at any time" is not effective and should include a time period. I am not familiar with Arbcom cases to know what an appropriate length of time would be, but I'll suggest 3 months? AHeneen (talk) 21:23, 24 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

This is effectively arguing that the TRM has the support of the community and so the community must be stopped. Remember we operate by WP:CONSENSUS. GoldenRing (talk) 10:54, 27 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure if I support this. I'll definitely concede that his conduct has been below the standards expected of administrators, and I actually think it'd be a good idea for him to take some time away from areas that have been causing him stress; however, his services at ITN and elsewhere have been virtually indispensible. If this were to pass, there should also be an additional ruling related to his former bureaucrat status, which he had resigned in good standing and can regain at any time via posting to the bureaucrats' noticeboard. Kurtis ^(talk) 21:28, 24 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The only problem is that this seems to be the only effective punishment to deter his uncivil behavior. An interaction ban with 1-2 editors doesn't really do much. Perhaps without admin status, it would force TRM into a cooling-off period. AHeneen (talk) 22:16, 24 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

TRM remains uncivil and attacks other editors. Desysopping him won't stop that, regardless for how long. It's not a remedy; it won't fix the problem. The only problem it addresses is that having an administrator act in this way brings disrepute to the project. I'm not seeing a remedy that addresses the incivility/personal attacks. --Hammersoft (talk) 22:43, 24 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@AHeneen: This is the typical desysop wording that has been used in the most recent cases. (1, 2) A while back the committee reserved the right to restore the rights upon appeal, however, that has fallen out of favor and the committee has almost always defers the decision to the community. With the current climate of RfA, I don't think a 2 week turn around for adminship is in the cards.

@Kurtis: Given that TRM has been admonished by the committee for uncivil behavior and you agree that it has continued, I'm curious to know what you think would be an appropriate alternative. As for the 'crat bit, if this were to pass the rights would be considered to have been removed under a cloud. Thus, I don't believe the 'crats would restore that right. If the committee feels there's an ambiguity, they can add a small blurb to the remedy. Mike V • Talk 22:46, 24 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure what other remedies should be considered, short of a second admonishment. There's grounds for desysopping in this case, but the question is whether or not it would be in the best interests of all involved were TRM to be given a third and final chance, after which he can perhaps be subject to summary desysopping. Kurtis ^(talk) 23:37, 24 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

TRM is probably the most prolific and efficient patroller at WP:ERRORS, WP:DYK and WP:ITN. In all seriousness, who will do his work if you get rid of his tools? Ritchie333 ^(talk) ^(cont) 11:34, 26 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The idea that one person is indispensable to the success of the project is contrary to what Wikipedia is. Plenty of people have come and gone on this project. Many more will come and go. In the end, so long as the Foundation doesn't royally mess up (as they seem wont to do), Wikipedia will go on. --Hammersoft (talk) 12:57, 26 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Banedon submitted evidence that "ITN is more collaborative without TRM" and Gatoclass's evidence seems to confirm that TRM's hostile manner tends to repel admins and editors that might otherwise get more involved in such activities. Most recently at ITN, we see TRM opposing a mention of Arnold Palmer's death. Palmer was a legendary golfer for whom "tributes have flooded in" from people like President Obama. Is it actually productive to obstruct such items – perhaps TRM's work is a drag on the process? We can stand to find out. Andrew D. (talk) 17:47, 26 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It should be noted that everbody called for improvement to the Arnold Palmer article, not just TRM. Anyway, we can't possibly measure what impact TRM's absence from anything will have. Are there people who have felt turned away? Yes. Would those people hold the same high standards? Unknown, and we can never know. We have no way of objectively evaluating TRM's impact on the process. What I do know is that Wikipedia would go on just fine without any single given editor. If there is some reason why a process on the project would fail because of the absence of one person, that to me is an argument for diversifying the process. Single point failure systems aren't going to work here forever. --Hammersoft (talk) 17:53, 26 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
His take on Palmer doesn't prove him as a good administrator. Rather his comments would influence the consensus, and nothing more. --George Ho (talk) 21:05, 26 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
In my opinion, there's nothing wrong with his opposition to the Arnold Palmer article since, as already pointed out, it was not of the quality appropriate for RD. AHeneen (talk) 04:40, 27 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

ITN is indeed generally dysfunctional. Currently, instead of Arnold Palmer, ITN leads with a picture of Kieran Read, a rugby player who was in the news two weeks ago. That article is worse than Arnold Palmer's and what's really significant is its readership which yesterday was 2,833 while Arnold Palmer had 691,642 – much more than all of ITN put together. We see from this that ITN is an ivory tower which is quite disconnected from what's actually in the news and being read. It seems stale and moribund and so it's arguably time for a change. We shouldn't worry that TRM's absence will leave a big hole as it seems that fresh blood is needed. Andrew D. (talk) 07:04, 27 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) Your point is misleading. Kieran Read isn't the ITN article but instead the ITN article is 2016 Rugby Championship which is a expansive and well referenced article. Palmer's article has a orange level tag on it due to poor referencing which, IMHO, is suitable at this point in time. - Yellow Dingo (talk) 07:12, 27 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The Rugby Championship doesn't have many readers either – only 5,864 yesterday. And look at the next one – Typhoon Meranti (2016) – which had only 4,497 readers and which has an orange {{update}} banner because it's so stale. ITN utterly misrepresents what is actually in the news and does not maintain good quality either. Andrew D. (talk) 07:29, 27 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Andrew Davidson: it has been explained to you on many occasions by several different people that your view of how ITN, and especially the recent deaths section, should operate is different to how it does operate, which is based on long-standing and continuing consensus that the quality of an article is one of the most important factors to consider. In the case of recent deaths, there was a month-and-a-bit long RfC with wide participation that explicitly supported changing to the now-current criteria that place article quality as the main consideration. The consensus in the RfC was affirmed less than two months ago when there was explicit consensus against revisiting the discussion. There was another recent discussion about removing items if the quality degraded after posting, and the clear consensus was that what matters is the quality at the time of posting - anything else should be discussed individually at an appropriate location (normally the article talk page or WP:ITN/C). Complaining at every venue you can find that other people are wrong and you are right does not help, nor does it change the fact that your view is not supported by consensus. TRM's manner leaves much to be desired to say the least, but this does not mean he, or anyone else who shares his opinion is wrong. Anyway, this is all off-topic for this page and, if the discussion had not been had several times already, would be best discussed at WT:ITN - bring it up there if you have any new arguments to make, otherwise please just drop it. I strongly encourage the next passing clerk to hat this section. Thryduulf (talk) 09:53, 27 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I won't offer an opinion about the proposed remedy, since I haven't been following the case closely enough, but I want to back up TRM's opposition to the Arnold Palmer article at ITN. It's very unfortunate that Mr. Palmer's article may not reach ITN, since he's such a global sporting icon. However, we cannot simply ignore project standards in determining what to post. The article is visibly deficient and not in good enough shape to post at this time, regardless of how popular an addition it might be. And this is coming from someone who believes ITN often doesn't update quickly enough with new content. If Andrew really wants the article to appear on the Main Page, perhaps he could pitch in and add some references to help improve it to the level needed. Instead of commenting on how TRM is "obstructing" a particular article from appearing at a process, or serving as a "drag" (which isn't really true when you consider that a consensus against the article was forming before he even commented), I suggest maintaining focus on whatever overall issues exist, and determining whether they merit such a severe remedy. Giants2008 (Talk) 20:20, 27 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The Arnold Palmer article has now been posted at ITN despite TRM's further comment that "Palmer's article is still crap". Such coarse and intemperate language seems to lower the tone of the discussion. The evidence is that ITN works better without TRM and that there are plenty of other editors willing to do any work which may be needed. Andrew D. (talk) 07:40, 29 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Please note that this was the state of the article before a burst of editing on the 28th; if TRM had checked the article the day before and was basing his opinion off that, he can be forgiven for not thinking much of it. Perhaps crap was a harsh choice of words, but there are a ton of tags on that version and it still wasn't in good shape. Fortunately, an interested editor substantially improved the article and it got posted, which makes me happy. This is a situation where having a few watchdogs who didn't give a popular article a rubber stamp paid off for the project, as the article received nice improvements. Although not perfect, it's in a state where we don't have to be embarrassed to feature it prominently; I'm not sure the same can be said about the old version. Giants2008 (Talk) 01:36, 30 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Giants2008 gives us the state of the article at 12:33. TRM made his "still crap" comment at 21:55, which is nearly half a day later. The state of the article at that time was actually fine – the only cleanup tag was for a dead link, which was no big deal. So, either TRM was misrepresenting the article without checking its true state or he was being obdurate. The evidence is that ITN works better without him. Andrew D. (talk) 14:12, 30 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I have observed The Rambling Man's work at ITN, DYK & main-page errors on and off for years now. He is a prolific & accurate contributor, who does an immense amount of thankless work behind the scenes and who has never, to my knowledge, abused the admin tools in these areas. If his tools are removed, these areas will be less well maintained. Espresso Addict (talk) 00:19, 29 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

While TRM may not have abused his admin tools, that is not what's being discussed. This case is focusing on admin conduct. Mike V • Talk 01:57, 30 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The Rambling Man interaction ban

2) The Rambling Man is indefinitely prohibited from interacting with, or commenting on, George Ho anywhere on Wikipedia. This is subject to the usual exceptions. This restriction may be appealed to the Arbitration Committee after no less than twelve months have passed from the closing of this case.

Comment by Arbitrators:

@George Ho: A two-way interaction ban is one in which both parties are prohibited from interacting with or commenting on each other. GorillaWarfare (talk) 01:12, 29 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by parties:

I would agree on that, but this needs clarity. At which venues is TRM allowed and/or forbidden to interact with me? --George Ho (talk) 21:03, 26 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

What is a "two-way" ban? I don't understand. George Ho (talk) 21:42, 28 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

You can propose both one-way and two-way, GorillaWarfare, instead of just either of them. However, I don't intend to mention him or to contact him ever. What about him "thanking" me or pinging me? I don't want to ping him or "thank" him. George Ho (talk) 01:18, 29 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@George Ho: That would be classed as interaction. Doug Weller talk 15:13, 29 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by others:

Given the evidence presented by Hammersoft. Mike V • Talk 03:46, 24 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@George Ho: It would be a standard interaction ban. Essentially, there would be no interaction at all. The exceptions allow for discussing or appealing the ban in appropriate venues and reverting 100% clear vandalism/BLP violating edits. Mike V • Talk 22:35, 26 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

If this is adopted, it should be a two-way IBAN. Not because George Ho has done anything in particular to merit it (I take no position on that), but because one-way IBANs are inherently unworkable. A one-way IBAN which restricts A from all interaction with B effectively gives B an unanswerable right to remove A from any discussion, no matter how involved they already are, just by commenting on it. It is wide open to abuse. GoldenRing (talk) 11:01, 27 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Wholeheartedly concur. --Hammersoft (talk) 13:44, 27 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Proposals by Count Iblis

Proposed principles

Discussing content without discussing the involved editors

1) When discussing the content of Wikipedia pages, editors should refrain from invoking personal behavioral issues, unless this is seen to be a very relevant issue w.r.t. to the content discussions. It's best to only invoke behavioral issues if the problem is of such a nature that requires considering taking the matter to WP:AN/I or some other dispute resolution venue.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Comment by others:

E.g. If an editor is consistently making mistakes, then there is nothing wrong with discussing these mistakes, but the moment such a discussion becomes personal (e.g. competence issues are raised), then that should be done in a way that seriously raises the option of going to AN/I (where one can e.g. ask for a topic ban). Count Iblis (talk) 22:04, 24 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Template

2) {text of Proposed principle}

Note: All remedies that refer to a period of time, for example to a ban of X months or a revert parole of Y months, are to run concurrently unless otherwise stated.

The Rambling Man instructed to refrain from inappropriate discussions of editors

1) The Rambling Man is instructed to focus criticism of content to only the content in venues where content is discussed. He is reminded that when sticking to only the content, there is no problem whatsoever to call a spade a spade even if the editor who produced that content would not like that and may be insulted by such a negative review.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Comment by others:

Personal attacks can paradoxically arise when we're actually trying to be nice. Suppose that someone has produced work that you think is well below the required standard. Then you can invoke personal issues instead of thrashing the work, our brains have evolved a tendency to do that to soften criticism and to steer people away from with collaborating with each other if that would lead to friction. This may have worked well in the Stone Age, but in today's society this yields bad results as usually you're not going to have your way with picking your collaborators. So, what one needs to do is to be as open as possible with discussing the content, if is seen to be thrash, then calling it thrash is justified (provided one can motivate why). If a person repeatedly is seen to be producing thrash, then going to AN/I to get a topic ban imposed should be the next step. Count Iblis (talk) 22:04, 24 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see what this helps. TRM is well aware of the NPA and CIVIL policies. This remedy does nothing more than restate those policies. Yet, we're here. So how is this a remedy? --Hammersoft (talk) 22:40, 24 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

This remedy makes enforcement possible. Note that the NPA and CIVIL policies are rather vague, they do allow comments on editors (provided it's not a personal attack, but where do you draw the line?). If we say to TRM that you should not discuss editors at all except at AN/I ArbCom or any other such venues where editor conduct is supposed to be discussed, then infractions are well defined. Count Iblis (talk) 00:04, 25 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

This remedy does nothing that was not already present in the admonishment of January. Sorry. --Hammersoft (talk) 00:36, 25 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Well, TRM was not hauled to AE for violations, so the previous remedy was not formulated in a way that was enforceable. All that's needed is to write down a similar remedy that explicitly states that TRM is barred from making comments on editors. Then if TRM makes any comment on any other editor such that the editor itself is the subject and not the edits (outside AN/I and other such venues where editors are discussed), then it's straight to AE. What I've written down here may need to be modified to make it workable in this respect (peraps also with some time limit after which the strict limits may be relaxed), but that's the job of the Arbs. Count Iblis (talk) 02:51, 25 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

He's already barred from doing so, as are all of us. As an administrator, he's barred even further. As a target of a previous ArbCom admonishment for the very behavior, he's even barred yet further. So, what, we really mean it this time? This remedy does nothing that hasn't already been tried (and failed). I'm open to ideas as to how to remedy the civility/peronal attacks issue, but this isn't it. --Hammersoft (talk) 15:53, 25 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Template

2) {text of proposed remedy}

Conundrum

Honestly, I'm at a loss. I haven't submitted any proposals because I do not know of any way forward. I see the problem as this;

We have an editor and administrator who has been uncivil and abusive towards others for many years. Ample evidence of this has been provided for his actions post January, 2016. Ample evidence could be provided for prior to January, 2016. Thankfully, ArbCom had the wisdom to place a scope on this case. We know the pattern, we know the history, we know it has happened and continues to happen without abatement, even when he claims to want to and will try to do better.
Juxtaposed with this, we have an editor who has done a considerable volume of very productive work over the years. I do not mean to say this volume of work excuses bad behavior. It most emphatically does not, and anyone suggesting we should tolerate his poor behavior because of this work is extremely in the wrong. The behavior is intolerable in all respects.

How do we retain (2), while removing (1)? Obviously we can not be Solomon; we can't ban (1) while not banning (2). You can't separate the editor into two halves. Is there a way to make (1) stop while retaining (2)? There needs to be, but I do not know what it is.

I wish TRM were part of this process. I believe we must have recognition on his part that he has been grossly uncivil and insulting towards his fellow editors and that this behavior is utterly intolerable. Without him as a party to this solution, any solution will not work. Every effort that has been made before has failed. TRM believes he's going to be shown the door. Yet, knowledge of this hasn't made him conciliatory in any respect with regards to his incivility and personal attacks. I think if TRM wants to stay, he needs to be part of this solution and actually want to do something to solve the issue. Insisting on being obstinate and disdainful does not inspire any confidence whatsoever that there is a pathway forward.

Without TRM as part of this process, there's really just two general options;

(a) Ban him now until he agrees to abide by the civility and personal attack policies
(b) Put in place a schema of increasing severity of blocks that can be applied by any administrator should that administrator detect incivility/personal attacks from him towards anyone, and such blocks can not be overturned unless agreed to by ArbCom.

Given TRM's obstinance towards the community and disdainfulness of this arbitration process, I see (b) as being just a slow form of (a). If (b) is the path, there likely is no pathway back to editing for TRM once we reach an indefinite block. If (a) is the path, we're likely going to be back here before ArbCom in the future.

The only way this turns out positively is for TRM to be involved in the solution. Any other pathway forward will fail. Ultimately, the only way to separate (1) from (2) does not involve sanctions of any kind. There is no remedy that can do that. The only way for that to happen is for TRM to do something about it, and the Sword of Damocles needs to be in place to ensure compliance. If TRM remains obstinate, there's no hope.

Regardless, TRM's administrator status needs to be stripped due to gross violations of conduct unbecoming an administrator. Though, again, the only way out of that is for TRM to be involved in this process.

Alternatively, if ArbCom fails to do anything here, they effectively void the civility/personal attack policies. The tacit acknowledgement would be that if you do good work here, you can be as rude and insulting as you like.

Ultimately, it is a great conundrum. --Hammersoft (talk) 16:39, 25 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Comment by others:

Proposed findings of fact

Parties named in a case name bias the case

1) The Arbitration Committee has traditionally and frequently named cases using one or more party's names in the case name. This has unduly biased these cases against those named, and in favor of parties to the case who are not named.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Thank you for providing this, this is interesting. The ArbCom has discussed how to approach naming cases before, often in the context of cases named after one particular editor. This input is useful, though perhaps as a broader discussion and not in the context of this case. GorillaWarfare (talk) 01:57, 1 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by parties:

Comment by others:

This Finding of Fact is based on evidence from Anchoring and in particular Anchoring#Difficulty_of_avoiding. When ArbCom identifies a party to the case by name in the case name, the evidence provided to the case and the proposed solutions to the case given by contributors to the case is unavoidably biased against the named party. Further, ArbCom biases itself against the title named parties. I personally conducted a study of this covering 35 cases where parties to the case were named in the title. In my study, title named parties received 9.5 times more sanctions than non-titled named parties. Of the 35 named, not a single one escaped sanctions. Of 109 non-title named parties, only 16 had sanctions applied. 93 non-title named parties escaped sanctions of any kind.

I bring this FoF to this case as a result of two things; (1) I previously raised this issue on the case request page. The issue was ignored, and the case went ahead being named "The Rambling Man" by ArbCom. In so doing, based on prior track record, ArbCom has guaranteed further sanctions will be applied to TRM and thus effectively found him guilty at the outset of the case. (2) TRM raised this issue himself in his statement above, and I am in strong agreement with him when he says the case is "heavily biased in its title".

Is TRM guilty of uncivil conduct and other breaches of standards? I've shown in my evidence that I certainly believe so. But the very fact of the bias of the name of the case calls into question the case's conclusions. Indeed, anything this case concludes will be dramatically weakened in its authority due to the bias effect. Had this case found TRM at fault WITHOUT naming him in the title of the case, having done so without the considerable burden of bias within it, the case conclusions would carry far more authority than they will now.

The effect that ArbCom generates in such case names is to "arrest" someone, and then ask the community to find evidence with which to convict him. This is wrong in every respect. --Hammersoft (talk) 14:13, 29 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not convinced that there is a bias. The named party has already gone through other forms of deescalation (talk page discussions, dispute resolutions, AN, etc) and it's reached a point where arbitration is the only option left. If the committee accepts the case, it shows that there is some element of behavior that needs to be examined further. As such, it's reasonable to anticipate some form of finding against the named individual. As for non-titled cases, being named in a case does not mean that you acted in an inappropriate manner, simply that you are involved in the issue at hand. That could be an admin who made a block, the filing party, or just someone who participated in a related discussion. This would account for the lower number of "non-sanctioned" individuals. Mike V • Talk 22:21, 29 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I think you should read Anchoring#Difficulty_of_avoiding. Science has rather proven that bias can not be avoided in situations like this. --Hammersoft (talk) 00:12, 30 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I don't believe anchoring applies in this situation. Anchoring involves establishing a set point on a spectrum and using that set point to influence the final outcome. That would be applicable in situations involving numbers, shades of colors, distances, etc. Here, we don't really have a spectrum; just a case titled after an individual with no modifiers. Furthermore, the case name and the final outcome are distinct elements. Again, the case is named after a username with no variation. In contrast, the outcomes can be varied. There could be a range in the number of remedies imposed and a variation on the degree of severity. If the case was titled, "Requested Admonishment of [User]", I would agree it would likely lead to lesser sanctions than a case titled, "Requested Ban of [User]". However, the committee avoids such naming schemes for a multitude of good reasons. As an aside, I could see a possibility of making a case to the contrary. By keeping a username as the case title, it retains a small amount of human connection. If cases were changed to something more generic (case # 1373), it could dehumanize the situation and make it easier to dissociate one's actions towards another individual. Mike V • Talk 01:29, 30 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I think perhaps the point is being missed. If a case is named The Rambling Man, people are going to come to the table presuming there's an issue with The Rambling Man. That's anchoring. The case names themselves are the problem, and science proves this. --Hammersoft (talk) 02:10, 30 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Proposed remedies

ArbCom is directed to develop a new case naming system

1) For future cases, ArbCom is directed to develop a new case naming system that does not involve the use of any party's name in the case name. Further, ArbCom will develop guidelines for crafting the scope instructions of cases to avoid bias.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Do we have to provide evidence again if renamed? George Ho (talk) 18:26, 29 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by others:

ArbCom needs to address this very serious issue. --Hammersoft (talk) 14:18, 29 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@George Ho; I've added "For future cases" to the above remedy proposal. --Hammersoft (talk) 18:58, 29 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Proposals by Pldx1

Proposed finding of fact

Just at closing time, most of this workshop is made of the enlightening contributions of User:Example 2 and User:Exemple 3. Pldx1 (talk) 10:50, 24 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Comment by others:

Proposed decision

Since the community has decided that nothing is to be said or done, Arbcom can only pass a motion to dismiss. Pldx1 (talk) 10:50, 24 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Comment by others:

Proposals by Thryduulf

I strongly endorse what Hammersoft has written here. It is an excellent summary of the problems with TRM and, generalised slightly, the problems with civility on Wikipedia in general:

If you do good work and remain civil, there is no problem at all - please carry on.
If you don't do good work and remain civil, then you will generally be given chances to improve, and people will try and work with you to help you improve - if you show willingness and effort to try.
If you don't do good work and don't remain civil, you will be blocked or banned (hopefully sooner rather than later) with little regret - you cost too much for editors to invest time and energy in turning you into a productive member of the community.
If you do good work and don't remain civil, we will invest tons of energy arguing with you and among ourselves trying to work out what to do and what relative weight should be given to your good work and bad attitude.

Ultimately though, I think there has to be a point where refusal to engage civilly with other editors has to lead to a separation from either the parts of the project where (most of) the problems occur or from the project as a whole. Thus the proposal below may seem draconian but it is a last attempt to avoid an indefinite block. Thryduulf (talk) 23:46, 26 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Proposed remedies

The Rambling Man restricted

The Rambling Man may edit only in accordance with all Wikipedia policies, specifically including the civility policy, and only the following pages:

Articles, set indexes, disambiguation pages and redirects.
Drafts of the pages listed in point 1
Talk pages of pages listed in point 1
His user and user talk page.
Deletion discussions related to a page in one of the categories above he was involved in editing before it was nominated for deletion.
Deletion discussions related to a page he created.
Dispute resolution pages for disputes he was directly involved with before the dispute resolution began
Any other page or pages explicitly allowed by Arbcom or Arbitration Enforcement
Arbitration Committee or Arbitration Enforcement pages for the purpose of appealing a sanction against him or requesting an exemption to edit a specific page or pages not covered above.
Other users' talk pages, but only as required to support the editing of pages listed above.
Any other page for sole purpose of succinctly noting that he is not permitted to answer a question or other request asked specifically of him on that page iff no other editor has done so already.

He explicitly not:

Contribute to any part of processes regarding main page content, specifically including the WP:ERRORS page.
Nominate any page for deletion that is not in his own user or user talk spaces.
Edit inciviily for any reason.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Comment by others:

Maybe with a time period, say, a year? - Yellow Dingo (talk) 07:14, 27 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
This is too difficult to follow. If something like this is to be attempted, it needs to be simplified. TRM is intelligent, and I'm sure would be able to untangle it and follow it. That's not the issue. Over the years I've seen several cases go right off the rails because of poorly worded motions/restrictions/etc. that the community struggles with interpreting and applying. --Hammersoft (talk) 13:47, 27 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Proposed enforcement

If The Rambling Man edits incivilly or otherwise breaches a restriction placed upon him he may be blocked by any uninvolved administrator for the following duration:

For a first, second or third block: between 1 week and 6 months.
For a fourth or subsequent block: between 3 and 9 months. The blocking administrator should inform the arbitration committee by email of a fourth or subsequent block.

Any block may be reversed only by the blocking admin, the arbitration committee, or following an active consensus to unblock at Arbitration enforcement.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Comment by others:

Any blocks under this remedy should be logged, not just from the fourth on. See example. This is common. Also, the fourth block could be 3 months and the third 6 months. If we're to specify duration, having an overlap seems odd. --Hammersoft (talk) 13:51, 27 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Proposals by Gatoclass

Proposed remedies

I had no intention of participating further in this case other than by making my initial statement, but given some of the rather drastic proposals being put forward on this page, I have decided to add an alternative of my own.

It has long been a concern of mine that the community has found itself unable to deal effectively with the phenomenon of the type of user who makes a first-rate contribution to mainspace but who struggles to remain compliant with other policies such as WP:CIV. The standard model for dealing with chronically uncivil users is escalating blocks, which works reasonably effectively when applied to users who are clearly more trouble than they are worth, but in other circumstances can prove extremely problematic. Highly productive but uncivil users (let's call them HPUs), for example, often have a lot of support in the community, and since every block of the offender is seen as the next step toward an indefinite block or ban, even a token block will typically result in a firestorm of debate as supporters try to get the block overturned. The wikidrama generated by such debates typically wastes a great deal of time, exhausts and demoralizes all participants, and often worsens relationships between the various parties. Moreover, the community is invariably the loser regardless, because either the encyclopedia ultimately ends up losing the positive contributions of the user in question through an indefinite block or ban, or else they tend to escape any kind of effective sanction at all, leaving their critics/victims increasingly bitter and disillusioned and leading to further wikidrama down the road when a new case is almost invariably filed.

I submit that a new model is needed to deal with HPUs - one that allows them to continue making their positive contributions to the encyclopedia, while minimizing their potential for generating disruptive wikidrama and also giving the victims of their incivility a degree of both justice and protection. To that end, I am going to propose such a model here. I want to emphasize that I am proposing this, in this particular case, only as a possible alternative to escalating blocks or other potentially divisive or draconian sanctions that the Arbcom committee may be considering. If Arbcom is not currently considering such measures but only lesser sanctions, please feel free to ignore this proposal with regard to this case.

Remedy: limited civility blocks (LCBs)

For a user - known hereby as the respondent - who is highly productive but has a well-established record of failing to comply with WP:CIV, the following remedy may be applied at the discretion of the Arbitration Committee:

The respondent may be blocked for incivility by any administrator for a period of one week. This will be known as a limited civility block (LCB).
Blocks thus imposed may only be overturned by appeal to the Arbitration Committee. The respondent will be unblocked while the appeal is resolved.
The appeal will be open only for a limited time, say, a maximum of 48 hours. The Committee will announce its decision within the alloted time.
If the appeal is unsuccessful, the block will immediately be reimposed and may not be overturned.
If the appeal is successful, the block will be vacated and the administrator who imposed the block may not impose another block on the respondent for a set period, say, a couple of months.
Administrators removing an LCB outside the appeals process will be immediately desysopped.
A record of previously imposed LCBs will not be used as a justification for imposing longer blocks. A respondent may incur any number of LCBs without prejudice to their ongoing participation on Wikipedia. The Arbitration Committee will always retain the discretion to impose longer blocks, or even an indefinite block or site ban, for truly egregious examples of inciviity or for other misconduct; however, such blocks or bans cannot be imposed through the LCB process and must be dealt with using other existing procedures.
Given that highly productive users often have the strong support of a part of the community, Arbcom may want to consider the possibility of deciding LCB appeals off-wiki in order to allow them to make a decision without fear of incurring the censure of those supporters.

I anticipate that the effects of the above process would be as follows:

The respondent is faced with a substantial, but not crippling, sanction for incivility. He knows that each time he offends, he is putting himself at the risk of a one-week block. The respondent himself, then, is given a clear choice - he may either indulge himself by being uncivil and thus lose a week of participation, or he may curb his propensity for incivility and continue contributing. I would expect that in a relatively short period of time, the respondent will learn to modify his behaviour so that he doesn't find himself continually in the sin bin.
While complainants do not get the satisfaction of seeing the subject of their complaints driven from the encyclopedia, they do see that a measure of justice is being imposed each time the respondent offends. They also get a respite of at least a week from any further attacks from the respondent.
Supporters of the respondent no longer have an incentive to fight tooth and nail to prevent a block, since the block is always for a limited period and does not threaten the continued participation on the project of the respondent. The result should be a lot less wikidrama.
The community benefits by the greatly reduced wikidrama and the fact that blocks are resolved one way or another within 48 hours.
Arbitrators can do their jobs quickly and effectively without the fear of backlash from one or other faction of the community dissatisfied either that the remedy is too harsh or too ineffective. Gatoclass (talk) 12:13, 27 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Comment by others:

We tried this with Eric Corbett and ended up having two more Arbcom cases centred basically around nobody agreeing what "civility" actually is Ritchie333 ^(talk) ^(cont) 13:10, 27 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Really Ritchie333? Somebody made this specific proposal and it didn't work? I have my doubts about that. This proposal doesn't rely on "anybody" agreeing on what civility means, it relies on Arbcom alone deciding on whether a particular block imposed by an administrator is justified or not. Gatoclass (talk) 13:19, 27 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

While I like many aspects of this proposal, it appears to have a flaw in that it virtually guarantees that an LCB will be quickly appealed anytime one is made. This is because the HPU and his supporters risk nothing by filing an appeal but have the potential of significant gain. Towards addressing this flaw I suggest the following points:

Wording needs to be clarified to ensure that time spent during the appeal process does not count against the block time. This is needed to prevent the appeal process from becoming an automatic means to turn a 7 day block into a 5 day block.
There should be an option for the Arbcom to rule an appeal as being frivolous. When such a finding is made, I would recommend the length of the block be extended. The risk of having a LCB extended, for example from one week to two weeks, should reduce the number of pointless appeals to a manageable level.
Consideration should be made for instances when an HPU re-offends during time he is unblocked during an appeal. At a minimum an LCB earned by an HPU who is unblocked due to an appeal should be served consecutively. The use of concurrent sentencing would come close to allowing an HPU to engage is incivility during the time for an appeal without the possibility of consequences.

--Allen3 ^talk 13:17, 27 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I have no objection to the proposed process getting a few tweaks to clarify certain aspects or improve overall effectiveness, but I thought it best to keep it simple to begin with. Besides, processes can always be tweaked a little later on to make them more effective with the benefit of experience. Gatoclass (talk) 13:27, 27 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Gatoclass, I compliment you for attempting to be Solomon. As I noted above, it is a conundrum. Unfortunately, I see several problems with the proposal:

How do we establish that an editor qualifies as "Highly Productive"? Lack of any measure sets the table for people wanting such special treatment, and arguing in favor of it using their edit history, articles created, etc. as proof. This will generate debates that can't be resolved. I could even see editors preemptively wanting to be declared "Highly Productive". Stranger things have happened. Another scary thought; do we automatically declare administrators to be "Highly Productive"?
How do we establish that an editor qualifies as "Uncivil"? Even in this case in the original case request, we had people arguing vociferously that TRM hasn't really been uncivil, or that if he has, it's been justified (and therefore somehow excusable). If we can't agree to what counts as uncivil, we'll have unending debates about this leg of putting a person in the HPU category.
This establishes a new class of editors. In effect, if you're a highly productive editor (which, point 1, is undefined) then you're allowed to circumvent certain policies to a degree.
"Editors should treat each other with respect and civility" is one of the five pillars of the project. Either we mean it or we don't. I've long held that the civility/npa policies are effectively void here. This remedy significantly undermines this pillar, effectively establishing exceptions to this pillar. We already have an extensive and seriously damaging middle ground that allows far too much incivility and personal attacks. This remedy dramatically expands that middle ground, ultimately making it far more difficult to enforce civility/npa policy. Imagine; "If you don't like how I'm saying something then take it to ArbCom and get an HPU applied".

It's a worthy attempt. I just think it's entirely untenable in practice. --Hammersoft (talk) 14:17, 27 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

How do we establish that an editor qualifies as "Highly Productive"? I am proposing this as an additional process for Arbcom's toolbox. Arbcom can decide for itself whether or not it wants to apply this particular tool to a given case. But as a rule of thumb, I would expect Arbcom to be considering employing this tool in cases where a user with a record of incivility also has significant support in the community for their mainspace contributions.

How do we establish that an editor qualifies as "Uncivil"? Again, "we" don't have to make the determination. An administrator decides in the first instance to block; if an appeal is made, Arbcom then decides whether or not the block was justified. Arbcom members may also disagree on whether the block was justified, but the issue will simply be decided by a majority vote, as with all Arbcom actions.

This establishes a new class of editors. I would argue that this "class" of editors already has de facto existence, by virtue of the fact that their cases already get treated differently. My proposed process is simply a method of acknowledging that reality and finding an effective method of dealing with the challenges it represents. Gatoclass (talk) 14:57, 27 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The best way to deal with that class is to remove it entirely. Either civility is a pillar or it isn't. Nobody should be treated differently, LEAST of all people that are "highly productive" combined with being problematically uncivil. Such people should know better, and don't. If a new editor says "<****> YOU!" they likely get blocked. If a "highly productive" editor says "<****> YOU!" they should get blocked as well, and for just as long. No special cases. No special exemptions. No special board to determine if they are highly productive or not. --Hammersoft (talk) 15:25, 27 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I hear what you are saying, and in many respects, I sympathize with your POV. It's hard to argue with the assertion that nobody should get "special treatment". However, I think it's also possible to argue that all users are not equal, in that some are far more valuable to the project than others and have thus earned more consideration.

I think the bottom line though, is that this is not a court of law, and our prime directive isn't justice and equal treatment for all. Our prime directive is what's best for the encyclopedia. In cases of this type, the community has often spent enormous amounts of energy trying and usually failing to sanction the offender. The lack of an effective process for such cases is very harmful for the encyclopedia, not only for the time wasted but for the disillusion in the project these cases generate. What I am proposing here is a process that allows for a quick resolution of such incidents with a minimum of fuss, which provides benefits for both sides. The ultimate aim is to get the offender to start self-policing so that offences aren't committed in the first place. Gatoclass (talk) 16:10, 27 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

This might sound strange, but I don't believe anyone has significant value to the project. If a million geese fly south and one doesn't make it, is the flock harmed? We've had millions of people come and go to this project. Somehow, it keeps going. Some aspects of the project have seen their lights turned out for inactivity, lack of use, etc. The project keeps going on. Wikipedia is an amorphous blob. It is perpetually wrong, perpetually victimized by vandalism, perpetually missing people. Yet, in all its perfections it attains a level of beauty beyond that of any other encyclopedia project the world has ever seen. Any one person's role in that is infinitesimal. If every person involved in featured article work were to disappear, others would fill in. It would be different, to be sure, but others would fill in. Would it be perfect? No. FA isn't perfect now. Same goes with any area that TRM works in. I also reiterate that if we have any one person who is far too valuable to lose, we have a serious problem. Single point failure systems are bad, bad juju.
What is good for the project is to have a fair approach to all good faith editors, whether they are making their first edit or edit one million. To treat anyone differently sets us on a path that is completely untenable, with arcane rules and all manner of social structures that are impossible to navigate. Such an environment works solidly against the aims of the project by preventing new users from being involved.
There's a culture issue here. Incivility and personal attacks are generally accepted. What needs to be the culture is that personal attack and civility warning templates are applied and recorded somewhere. If we did that, this problem would have been nipped in the bud years ago. We would not be having this case. By the way, did you know that while {{Uw-civil-qa1}} exists, {{Uw-civil-qa4}} does not? There's the culture. --Hammersoft (talk) 16:35, 27 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Certainly, nobody is indispensable, but that doesn't mean the project isn't harmed when a highly productive user ceases to contribute. IIRC some studies have shown that most of Wikipedia's content has been created by a core of about 3,000 users. The total number of users has also declined, though I'm not sure whether or not that figure has stabilized. Regardless, it's clear that the more productive users we have contributing, the healthier the project overall. Something that concerns me a lot as a long term issue, is that the number of contributors may eventually dwindle to the point that the project begins to atrophy and ends up as a sort of internet fossil. I have, quite frankly, been appalled over the years by Wikipedia's propensity for jettisoning fine contributors over incidents that often seem to me remarkably trivial. And I strongly believe that the sheer lumbering inefficiency of Wikipedia's dispute resolution processes weigh heavily on user retention rates.

Which brings me back to the topic at hand. Just how serious an offence should incivility be considered in any case? Imagine a user who adds 20 new FA-quality articles in a twelve month period. In that same period, he also bumps into somebody he doesn't like a couple of times, and calls them a useless prick. Is that really such an egregious offence that it warrants excommunication? Wouldn't a more proportional response be to simply suspend the offender's editing privileges for a few days? I think that if I personally were the offended party in those circumstances, I'd be satisfied enough to see that person's editing privileges so suspended. I'd feel vindicated and supported by the community, the offender would be out of my hair for a few days, and I know he would be reluctant to repeat the offence a second time with the same result. Civility would still have been defended as a pillar, but without the immense amount of ill-will generated by the kind of high-stakes this-means-one-step-closer-to-indef process we have now. Gatoclass (talk) 17:29, 27 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

When it comes to imposing restrictions one has to formulate these such that they are unambiguously defined. That's why ArbCom topic bans typically have a wider scope than just the area where the problem behavior occurred. Similarly, in this case we have a problem with civility, but merely restricting the editor to behave in a civil way won't work because the boundary between civil and uncivil behavior is not well defined. This is why I think the restriction has to be made a bit wider, it has to include making any sort of comments on editors that involve making judgments on editors. So, if editor X has written something that in his opinion is junk, he is allowed to say "editor X's text is junk". What he isn't allowed to say is e.g. "editor X is incompetent at producing a decent text, look at what he has done now." The first sentence sounds harsher than the second one, which is where the tendency to slip into personal attacks comes from, but what matters is that the text is the subject not the editor as in the second sentence. Count Iblis (talk) 18:20, 27 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I think what you are saying is that the user should not be permitted to comment on contributor, and I think that's probably a fair point. Gatoclass (talk) 18:26, 27 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, this then circumvents the problem about where to draw the "civility line", thereby preventing endless debates at Arbitration Enforcement in case of a (perceived) infraction. Count Iblis (talk) 18:32, 27 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I don't like butting in, but I have to disagree on one point I saw above, namely that no one "has significant value to the project." To me, a lot of us add significant value with our work. This often gets twisted into a count of how many stars/GAs/DYKs one has, or how many articles one has created, but those measures are simplistic. Everybody from vandalism fighters to image reviewers to typo fixers is adding something, and I would define many different kinds of editors as having added significant value. At the same time, we're finding out that editors in some fields aren't a renewable resource. I remember seeing one FAC talk page thread about how almost all of the new FAs were coming from editors with FA experience, and that newcomers were finding it hard to write articles to FA standards. It's unfortunate, but we seem to be losing more highly skilled writers than we're adding. I wouldn't say any of the major processes depend on one person, but if five or 10 left at once some of them would be hurting. This is not to say that great content work should always be a "get out of jail free card", but take it as food for thought. I'll leave the rest of you to it. Giants2008 (Talk) 20:36, 27 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I really don't want this taken out of the context I intend. I do not mean to say people do not have valued contributions. Rather, no one person here has made significant contributions compared to the overall work. Each one of us is a single user in a panoply of editors numbering in excess of a million people who have made contributions of one kind or another here. To say that any of us are somehow significant when compared to that mass quantity of work is overstating the case. Wikipedia has gone on without "significant" people before. We used to have an editor who did almost everything having to do with the main page. Now, he barely edits at all. Yet, the project has gone on. 850 million edits have been committed to this project. Think about that. You have about 20k edits. Your total contributions comprise about .0024% of the total project. Even the most prolific edit in the history of Wikipedia has been responsible for only .23% of Wikipedia...not even a quarter of 1%. None of is irreplaceable. That's my point. --Hammersoft (talk) 21:04, 27 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Proposals by User:Fram

Proposed principles

Disruptive editing

1) Editors may be accidentally disruptive because they don't understand how to correctly edit, or because they lack the social skills or competence necessary to work collaboratively. The fact that the disruption occurs in good faith does not change the fact that it is harmful to Wikipedia.

Comment by Arbitrators:

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Comment by others:

From the introduction to Wikipedia:Disruptive editing. Fram (talk) 08:14, 28 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The main page

2) The main page is by far the most viewed page of Wikipedia

Comment by Arbitrators:

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Comment by others:

See e.g. Wikipedia:Multiyear ranking of most viewed pages and User:West.andrew.g/Popular pages. Fram (talk) 08:14, 28 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Also ITN items are sometimes listed alongside prominent sources such as BBC, NYT, CNN etc. at Google News. Obviously we would not want a not so well written article getting listed there. Count Iblis (talk) 20:25, 28 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Shouldn't this be an FOF rather than a principle? Ppp ery 11:10, 29 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Proposed findings of fact

Cwmhiraeth nominates, reviews and promotes errors to the main page

1) Too often, Cwmhiraeth nominates, reviews or promotes errors to the main page. When confronted with this, he often doesn't seem to understand the problem. No progress has been made. This week alone, a hook has been pulled from the main page on Monday (Template:Did you know nominations/CMLL 83rd Anniversary Show, which was reviewed by Cwmhiraeth) and on Wednesday (Template:Did you know nominations/Girolamo Maiorica, promoted by Cwmhiraeth). The archives of WT:DYK are filled with other hooks that had to be pulled (from the preps, queues or main page) where Cwmhiraeth was one of the people who accepted the hook. With only 8 hooks promoted per day, this means that this week (so far) 2 out of 24 hooks have had to be removed from the Main Page.

Comment by Arbitrators:

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Comment by a non-party:

The purpose of this arbitration hearing is to examine "Disputes involving The Rambling Man after the motion enacted January 26. The Committee will also hear evidence setting those disputes in context, particularly on matters related to ITN and DYK."

I am not a party to the hearing but Fram is proposing that sanctions be taken against me. I think this is outside the scope of the hearing and invite you to dismiss Fram's proposals. ~~If you do wish to consider them, I would ask that you give me a week to mount a defence as I have currently been allowed only two and a half days from when they were posted here.~~ Cwmhiraeth (talk) 10:41, 30 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Fram's proposed Finding of Fact Cwmhiraeth nominates, reviews and promotes errors to the main page

Lets start with the first point: Cwmhiraeth nominates errors to the main page. Put like that you will see how inaccurate it is. At DYK, hooks get nominated and then reviewed, and probably at least half the hooks get modified along the way, often with multiple hooks being proposed during the process. So when one hook gets selected for transfer to the prep set, this is as a result of a number of inputs, not just that of the nominator. Fram produced only one example of an erroneous hook for one of my nominations: this one about a species of mouse. Fram thinks this is a dreadful example of a hook error, but I do not. The hook said " did you know that before the 1990s, owls were more efficient at catching Edwards' long-clawed mouse than were researchers?" The source stated "The low trapping success in areas where owls are apparently successful at catching them suggests that trap avoidance may be related to the use of traditional baits and traps." At the time, nobody else indicated whether they agreed with Fram's point of view or with mine, but Fram has been trumpeting this as being one of my gravest errors ever since. I nominate a lot of articles at DYK but I think this is the only actual nomination of mine which Fram has "pulled" in the last two or three months. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 18:34, 30 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

In his evidence, Fram does not give any specific examples of articles nominated by others that I have reviewed and approved and which have then been "pulled" by him, however I admit there have been some, and he mentions this one above. I review many articles, either by way of a QPQ requirement, or as nominations that I review voluntarily in an effort to reduce the backlog of unreviewed nominations (currently about 150). I do the best I can, but sometimes the hook facts are sourced offline or behind a paywall, or are in a foreign language and it is then necessary to AGF the hook. Fram however seems to have a mission to disprove hooks and will go to great lengths to do so. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 19:21, 30 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

In his evidence Fram mentions just one erroneous hook that I promoted to the Prep area Eleonore Büning hook in Prep 1. He does not like my response in the discussion that follows and when I mention that I don't speak German, states "If you lack even the most basic knowledge of German, then you can't have checked the hook, and should never have promoted the article. But lack of knowledge or understanding never seems to stop you from DYK participation". He does not like me mentioning that this is a ridiculous statement, and his following paragraph is a typical example of the disdain with which he treats others. Gatoclass then explains that there is no requirement to be able to read the language of the source. Yesterday we had some visitors who were interested in my Wikipedia activities. I told them about the problems we are experiencing at DYK and they wanted to see an example of Fram's input. I showed them this discussion and the immediate response was "He's so pedantic." and "He treats them like children." I entirely agreed. My sin in this instance was to promote this hook to the Prep area along with seven other hooks to create a balanced set. This is called an "error" in Fram-speak. I think Fram has an unrealistic view of what a prep-builder should do, because if one were required to do exhaustive research into every hook promoted, it would take hours, and nobody would build Prep sets. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 19:45, 30 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by others:

This isn't a recent issue but goes back for years and years, as can be seen in many of the DYK archives, and in the 2014 Wikipedia:Editor review/Cwmhiraeth which analysed a number of his DYKs and GAs. Fram (talk) 12:16, 28 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Cwmhiraeth was well aware that the evidence for this was added to the evidence page quite a while ago, since he responded there. He had plenty of time to rebut the evidence, but only choose to ask for it to be dismissed. This didn't happen, and he shouldn't be suprised that this ended up here. Fram (talk) 11:22, 30 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Cwmhiraeth uses personal attacks

2) Cwmhiraeth uses personal attacks to drive people (who try to keep the DYK section errorfree) away from DYK. This can be seen at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/The Rambling Man/Evidence#Evidence presented by Fram and Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/The Rambling Man/Evidence#Evidence presented by Cwmhiraeth, and has been continued after the evidence phase closed at Wikipedia talk:Did you know#Vanity. While I am the main target of these, he likes to include TRM as well, e.g. "The DYK project is undergoing a bit of a crisis, largely because of attacks by Fram, pulling hooks, naming and shaming editors, and generally trying to humiliate other editors that make mistakes, ably supported by TRM." (from his evidence section).

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Comment by a non-party:

I am not a party to the hearing but Fram is proposing that sanctions be taken against me. I think this is outside the scope of the hearing and invite you to take no action on the matter. I am normally a peaceable person but have become irritated by Fram's continual carping and denigration of my contributions on the DYK discussion page. Fram doesn't appear to understand how to treat us lesser mortals. I really became incensed however in this matter, and described Fram as "obnoxious" and acting in bad faith. I still think it was despicable behaviour but I may have been a bit outspoken. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 20:03, 30 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by others:

TRM tries to keep the Main Page up to standards

3) The Rambling Man is one of the few admins most active in keeping the main page error-free and up to basic standards.

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I would agree with Fram's assessment. TRM plays an important role in keeping the main page error free. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 09:54, 29 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. While TRM's goals might be noble, the evidence shows the way he tries to achieve them to be highly inappropriate. As it would require a mind reader to accurately determine TRM's motives, Arbcom should instead focus on his methodology. --Allen3 ^talk 11:07, 29 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

George Ho made frivolous complaints

4) My apologies for the length of this FoF, but a statement like this needs some detailed arguing.

George Ho says above "TRM should either lose his administrative privileges or be banned from Wikipedia.", but also "Statements, including preliminary ones, that lack diff links and other links to evidence should be dismissed as nothing more than pleas and mere comments." In this workshop alone, he proposed 11 FoFs without any evidence in them, and then 11 remedies based on thin air. He wants an interaction ban between TRM and himself, but has provided no evidence that this is needed at all.

When looking back at his evidence in the opening statement and the evidence round, I notice one probeblatic action by TRM from 2016 (stupidly edit warring over a section header on ITN talk). Apart from that, his evidence contains things like "TRM and some gang made fun of me", linked to a 130Kb archive page that may or may not contain anything relevant (searching for TRM on an ITN archive page is giving too many results, as could be expected, and there are multiple interactions with George Ho, so no idea what he is using as evidence here).

He also links to this: no idea what comment by TRM in that discussion is supposed to be problematic, George Ho claims they "see me as irrelevant and unnecessary", but I can't find that in that discussion. The remainder of his "evidence" (I use the word loosely) is pre-2016.

Turning then to Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/The Rambling Man/Evidence#Evidence presented by George Ho. He starts about the listing of Prince at ITN where he wanted it to be removed and TRM didn't. No evidence of problematic behaviour is given. His next link: he claims it was a complaint he made about incivility, but the link shows that it was not civility-related and not a problem either. He then posts three links to archives: doesn't even include TRM, neither does this: the third one has TRM in it, but nothing problematic here.

He then moves to TRMs behaviour. Your first link is to a frivolous complaint made by you about TRM, rejected by everyone who looked at it, with a trout for you.

You then provide 11 diffs indicating the stupid episode of TRM (and others) edit warring over a section header. Like I said above, the only problematic action you have brought to the discussion, and nothing to do with you. You continue this bit with "Worse yet, TRM lashed out at mike V" without any evidence for this. The same for "Also, TRM lashed out on some others at ANI". No diff, no link, no evidence.

A lot worse does your evidence become when you use this as evidence that "TRM threatened me (or made empty threats) ". No threat in that link, only good advice. "He also accused me of "pretending" to quit Wikipedia and accused me of acting all "high-maintenance" or something. He demanded that I spend time "improving" articles and less on social interaction (or something like that), but Wikipedia is already flawed and clunky." "Or something"? You don't understand what he is saying, but consider it bad enough to start an ArbCom case over it anyway?

I already discussed the Duncan Hill issue below. George Ho tried to badmouth TRM at another users talk page, and TRM (ahving already edited that talk page) shows up and replies. If there is any problem in the George Ho - TRM interaction there, it is with George Ho.

His last bit of evidence, already discussed below as well, is "TRM resorted to accusing certain people of "incompetence" and making empty threats, i.e. "dead, dead, dead." He did that again and again at WT:DYK." No threat was made at all, and the "incompetence" label was a general observation (and a highly correct one), not aimed at specific people. The two links to DYK contain no threaths or problematic behaviour either. Not every frank discussion is actionable, objectionable behaviour.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Fram for clarification, George Ho did not initiate this case, although he is a party to it. No worries on the length, there is a lot of material to cover, which I am continuing to review. --kelapstick^(bainuu) 08:16, 30 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by parties:

No comment on the bulk of this, but I'll say that George Ho did not file a frivolous complaint because he didn't actually file a complaint. The Arbcom case was initiated by me and me only; afterwards a member of Arbcom directed that George Ho be added as a party, see [13]. Banedon (talk) 08:17, 30 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by others:

Kelapstick and Banedon, thanks, I have corrected my error. Fram (talk) 08:20, 30 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Wow, User:Fram I'm glad someone had the time to do this sort of analysis. I didn't, but wanted to. GoldenRing (talk) 15:01, 30 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Proposed remedies

Note: All remedies that refer to a period of time, for example to a ban of X months or a revert parole of Y months, are to run concurrently unless otherwise stated.

Cwmhiraeth topic banned from DYK

1) Cwmhiraeth is topic banned from DYK.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

I don't see how this remedy helps. All the evidence against Cwmhiraeth is inadequate enough to merit this remedy. George Ho (talk) 06:29, 29 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

We have evidence that he promoted (as nominator, reviewer, ...) errors to the DYK section of the main page for years and years, and that this has been noted and explained to him for just as long; and we have evidence that this problem continues to this very week. How does this remedy not help to stop this, and how is the evidence inadequate? Fram (talk) 06:52, 29 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I see that he was subject to ANI two years ago, which lead to now-defunct editor review on Cwnhiraeth. In defense of Cwhiraeth, he felt pressured to improve his "competence", but that was two years ago. Since you proposed this remedy, I evaluated your evidence, and I just see "inaccuracy" issues about just one article. Also, Cwhiraeth made just one comment in that thread about how he feels being treated. However, I also see you and TRM involved in this matter and made more posts than Cwh did. Also, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/IWRG Máscara vs. Máscara (September 2016), created by you, would predictably result in "kept" because consensus as of now unanimously voted "keep". The link, Wikipedia_talk:Did_you_know/Archive_129#Wrestling_hook_pulled_from_Prep_1, which you provided, also shows an issue, nomination about wrestling, that should have been raised in Evidence phase since the scope was not limited to TRM. Nevertheless, you attempted to make Cwh look bad, but you didn't bring other (general and specific) issues about DYK, like accuracy claims. Also, Wikipedia_talk:Did_you_know/Archive_128#Eleonore_B.C3.BCning_hook_in_Prep_1, which you also provided, proved a resolve on the issue with his passing the Template:Did you know nominations/Eleonore Büning. Again, not addressed at ANI. ~~Well, I want to propose things about you (or Cwh), but I must reevaluate more.~~

On the note, apparently nominating an article for deletion might or might not have been your misconduct. The title was an issue that you made, which was remedied. --George Ho (talk) 08:19, 29 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

On second thought, I won't make proposals on you. Any of us didn't discuss you or Cwh as the main subject of the case in the Evidence phase. Just you and Cwh. George Ho (talk) 08:21, 29 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by others:

As an alternative, allowing him to nominate his own articles, but banning him from promoting and reviewing, and from discussing all but his own articles at WT:DYK may also be workable. Fram (talk) 08:14, 28 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Fram: But then how could he possibly satisfy the QPQ requirement? Ppp ery 11:19, 28 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

If someone has a restriction that makes it impossible to do QPQs, we should drop the requirement for them. Fram (talk) 11:21, 28 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@George Ho. I haev trouble understanding your comments. "On the note, apparently nominating an article for deletion might or might not have been your misconduct. The title was an issue that you made, which was remedied. " What does this mean? It's hard to reply in any meaningful way to comments like this. You also state "Again, not addressed at ANI." Why would I raise issues at ANI which are already discussed at WT:DYK and at ArbCom? "However, I also see you and TRM involved in this matter and made more posts than Cwh did." And this is relevant how? Few posts is good, more posts is bad? Perhaps only posts those bits that are actually relevant and important, and drop everything that is just a distraction? At the moment, it is very difficult to see which point, if any, you are actually trying to make here. An article by an editor not under discussion here, nominated at AfD, is apparently important for a discussion about the behaviour of me, TRM, or Cwmhiraeth at DYK? The fact that so far al editors have argued "keep" without addressing the actual AfD reason (NOTNEWS) is important because...? You could also point to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/IWRG Máscara vs. Máscara (August 2016), it would be equally irrelevant here. "Also, Wikipedia_talk:Did_you_know/Archive_128#Eleonore_B.C3.BCning_hook_in_Prep_1, which you also provided, proved a resolve on the issue with his passing the Template:Did you know nominations/Eleonore Büning". Again, no idea what you mean here: "proved a resolve on the issue?" It's not the first time in this case that your comments have baffled me, but (perhaps because I know the things you refer to) this time it seems worse than usual. Are your issues with TRM also related to this problem (perhaps a language barrier)? It would certainly explain some exasperation and dismissiveness of your comments. And yes, despite your brandnex essay, competence is required, and the more important or visible the process you want to contribute to (e.g. everything to do with the front page, but the same could be said for GA reviews, FA reviews, ...), the more you need to be competent; I'm e.g. not fluent enough in English to be a good complete FA reviewer (or to write a FA singlehandedly), although I'm fluent enough for most other things on Wikipedia. People must know their limits, and lacking that selfawareness sometimes people must be restricted from certain areas on Wikipedia. Fram (talk) 09:05, 29 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I would advise the committee to ignore this. No evidence has been presented to demonstrate that Cwmhiraeth's record is worse than that of any other DYK contributor, or of any content creator generally. If I'm not mistaken Cwm has a number of GAs and FAs to their name which if anything would suggest the opposite. As a long-time contributor to DYK myself, I am only too well aware of how commonly errors occur in nominated articles so I see no merit in singling out a particular party for sanction. It's the systemic problems that the DYK community needs to start addressing, not the alleged shortcomings of individual users. Gatoclass (talk) 10:48, 29 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

If you know of other editors who had their DYK contributions checked and found severely wanting in 2014, and who still pass errors at DYK (as nominator, reviewer and promotor) multiple times a week, then feel free to list them. Most editors who regularly have the same problems either haven't been around as long (so need more chances to improve) or cause less problems. As for GA's, that's a rather meaningless statistic. We had an editor like Nvvchar who had many DYKs and GAs, but upon closer inspection both his DYKs and his GAs were way too often filled with errors. Fram (talk) 11:12, 29 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Well I'm not sure it's accurate to say that Cwm's contributions were "found severely wanting" in the 2014 user review, I read a substantial chunk of it before posting here and my impression was that there was a considerable difference of opinion with regard to the significance and/or scale of the errors. I would agree that some of the errors were certainly concerning, but I get to see a lot of Cwm's DYK nominations as a queue promoter and haven't seen anything similar in recent months. And let's not forget that Cwm themselves opened that user review and accepted at the end that they need to do better. I have to wonder though, how many users would not show a similar record given the same close degree of scrutiny. With regard to GA, I agree that the process is not sufficiently rigorous and permits the promotion of articles that are nowhere near an acceptable standard. Nonetheless, if you have a lot of GANs, you are going to get thorough reviewers at least some of the time and AFAIK there have been no questions raised there about the quality of Cwm's nominations. I do think however that there seems to be no shortage of reviewers at GA who are not up to scratch and there should probably be a process for weeding them out, but that's another issue. Gatoclass (talk) 12:33, 29 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Cwmhiraeth admonished

2) Cwmhiraeth is admonished for the use of personal attacks.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Comment by a non-party:

As mentioned above, I am not a party to these proceedings and do not consider my conduct should be considered at all in relation to them. However, it will be quite apparent that Fram and I do not see eye to eye, so when I was made aware that Fram was dragging me into this workshop and seeking sanctions against me, I made a peace offer on Fram's talk page. Fram chose to reject it. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 10:35, 30 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by others:

Your "peace offer" was basically "you're a bad person, but I forgive you". No thanks. That you didn't feel the need for it earlier (e.g. when the evidence about your personal attacks was added to the case), but just happened to make the offer when remedies against you are proposed, doesn't help you either. Fram (talk) 11:28, 30 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

George Ho blocked

3) George Ho is blocked for filing a frivolous complaint.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Great, now you're all making this about me. If you want me block, how long? --George Ho (talk) 16:19, 30 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

~~Wait a minute, I didn't start this case. Banedon did. --George Ho (talk) 16:24, 30 September 2016 (UTC)~~ I see "frivolous complaint" does not mean starting the request. --George Ho (talk) 19:24, 30 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Also, I thought this is too harsh and less clear. Complaints about TRM specially or anyone else? George Ho (talk) 19:24, 30 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Please don't block me. Yes, I made too many mistakes and caused Begoon to turn against me and hate me more. I am not asking him to forgive me or give me another chance. Maybe I hope he would resent me less and less, but I have to make it happen first. Having "conflicts" with anyone besides TRM? I may have done bickering and manipulating and conniving and fighting in the past. I can't promise change in myself, but if I can improve my social interaction with others in-person and online, maybe I'll succeed in putting my vicious deeds in the past and make a bright future. If I fail to redeem myself, then... block me or ban me. As for this case, I thought I made clear about TRM, but people tend to refute that as incoherent and childish. I don't want this case to turn against me in favor of the main party of the case. If I did that, then I have failed. Never mind good contributions I made this year. I guess that means squat? I swear that I'll abide to whatever lesser penalties would put upon me if ArbCom decides that, but please don't block me. If people decide to ban me from interacting with or mentioning TRM, that's fine. I'll do my very, very best to avoid TRM in the future. If ArbCom decides to have TRM ban from interacting with or mentioning me, that's fine also. If ArbCom decides that I'm not that innocent, that's fine. But making TRM innocent from the accusations? Maybe I would have made myself more problematic than he. Otherwise, ArbCom would overlook TRM's evident misconduct. George Ho (talk) 07:58, 1 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

....All right Begoon. I will stop making people my enemies and "see the big picture" (i.e. listen and listen and listen, and listen to multiple viewpoints before I say anything). I owe all to you, and I promise that I will give you greatest gratitude. I will make an announcement about my plans after the case is over. --George Ho (talk) 08:29, 1 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by others:

Many, many hours have been wasted on this case. Detailed scrutiny of the "evidence" provided by one of the two complainants shows that there is nothing there that warrants a case, never mind the requested actions ("TRM should either lose his administrative privileges or be banned from Wikipedia." plus an interaction ban with George Ho). One problematic episode of edit warring is all he produced, everything else is not about TRM, not problematic, not supported by any diffs, or cases which show the main problem to be George Ho, not TRM. Coupled with the canvassing and the many incomprehensible posts, it becomes clear that George Ho has misused this administrative process and that a WP:BOOMERANG should be the result. I leave the length of the block to the wisdom of ArbCom. Fram (talk) 07:52, 30 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

In light of George Ho's conduct in this case—in which as best I can tell, his strategy is to make up as many accusations as possible in the hope that they won't all be checked and some of the mud will stick—I'd support an indefinite block provided it's clear that "indefinite" in this case means "until you agree to stop being disruptive" rather than "infinite"; a time-limited block wouldn't seem to have any useful purpose if he's just going to wade straight back into fights the moment it expires. Given his history of attempting to turn relatively straightforward issues into huge timesinks (were it not for his pot-stirring, this case could have been resolved in five minutes with a simple motion), and the fact that he doesn't appear to do very much on Wikipedia that doesn't relate to him trying to pick fights (at the time of writing, his last 50 edits have all been either attempts to derail this case, or adding spam links to this ridiculous essay he's just written, I'd consider it a reasonable preventative measure to remove him from Wikipedia unless and until he agrees to abide by basic standards of behaviour. ‑ Iridescent 16:11, 30 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I was George's mentor for a long period after his indefinite block was lifted, and I am very familiar with his "approach" to conflict. Recently, George asked me not to "criticise" him, and I have since, I hope, avoided doing so, that being the main reason I have not contributed to this case beyond initially urging it be declined. The situation of being an "ex-mentor" can present difficult lines to tread. I do have to agree with Fram's analysis and Iridescent's points above, though. I don't expect to add to this comment, for the reasons I indicate, but equally I don't feel comfortable making no comment at all. I hope the committee will understand my reticence to elaborate, in the circumstances, and I'm happy with whatever weight this is given. Thanks. -- Begoon 06:13, 1 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Although I said I wouldn't add to my comment, I do need to respond to George. George, I haven't "turned against" you, I don't "hate" or "resent" you. I have given an opinion, as neutrally as possible, and in doing so I have tried to balance what I think is best for wikipedia, for TRM, and for you. I urge you, for once, to stop seeing people as enemies, in your peculiar, binary way, and look at the big picture. I know that is not easy for you, but I urge it nevertheless. Now I really shall not comment here again, for the reasons I explained above. -- Begoon 08:22, 1 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

George Ho topic banned from the Main Page

4) George Ho is topic banned from all pages related to the main page and its contents, broadly contrued.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

See my latest posts under #Proposed motions and requests by George Ho. George Ho (talk) 17:27, 30 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Also, how would this help? DYK has too many rules, and the nomination process became less convenient. QPQ rule was updated to restrict a number of nominations. ITN has a lot of issues, like civility issues. Actually, I wanted some improvements, but I gave up because administrators like the processes this way and do not see how problematic editing nominations is. Nominations were done by copying-and-pasting everything, but the process still retains ~~the template that allows very limited number of blurbs~~ and level-4 heading when there is no level-3 heading at the moment. Also, what about editing articles featured on the main page? What about editing an article that is TFA? --George Ho (talk) 19:16, 30 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I see that Thryduuf added back the 3rd and 4th altblurb slots, which were previously removed by TRM (but one added back by me) and then Fuebuey. I don't know what prompted the community to add back ALT3 and ALT4. George Ho (talk) 19:30, 30 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Wait, I made edits for On This Day, such as proposing events to be featured on the Main Page. I did nothing wrong there. Also, I was either rarely or not involved in Today's Featured Articles, Featured Lists, and Featured Pictures. This is too broad. Other areas are not intense like ITN or DYK. George Ho (talk) 22:20, 30 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by others:

As can be seen from his own evidence, he has already retired fom ITN, and considers retiring from other aspects of the Main page as well. Coupled with his inability to see anything TRM does in a good light, his competence problems (both writing intelligible posts and understanding comments mae by others), his earlier block for incompetence with subsequent mentorship, I think it would be best for all involved and for Wikipedia if George Ho was removed from all Main page related pages (ITN, DYK, ...). Fram (talk) 07:52, 30 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Proposals by George Ho

Proposed principles

Canvassing is discouraged

Editors are reminded about committing whatever falls under inappropriate notification category.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

This is a response to AHeenan's comment about TRM's own belated statement and about issues of canvassing. George Ho (talk) 06:18, 29 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I added this (again) not on intent to harm myself or Banedon. Rather this is intended to test ArbCom's ability to make decisions on this case. --George Ho (talk) 17:57, 29 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by others:

User:George Ho: I've read this four times and I still can't parse it. As far as I can tell, it is nonsensical. What is it supposed to mean? GoldenRing (talk) 15:07, 30 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Not doing things like this :) . Count Iblis (talk) 20:05, 30 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Canvassing must be determined

The Arbitration Committee must measure how much canvassing was committed before it accepted the case.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

This is a response to AHeenan's comment about TRM's own belated statement and about issues of canvassing. George Ho (talk) 06:18, 29 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I added this (again) not on intent to harm myself or Banedon. Rather this is intended to test ArbCom's ability to make decisions on this case. --George Ho (talk) 17:57, 29 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by others:

Civility is central to Wikipedia

Civility is not just a policy. It is also one of five pillars of Wikipedia and must not be disregarded.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Comment by others:

Editors and administrators are responsible to give out their own statements, diffs, and links to influence the outcome of the case.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Comment by others:

Naming of the case

The Arbitration Committee must determine whether the name of the case was appropriate.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Comment by others:

Scope excluded The Rambling Man's pre-2016 actions

The scope of this case was too limited and did not extend to past actions by The Rambling Man before the January 2016 motion.

Comment by Arbitrators:

The Rambling Man is prohibited from administering In the News

The Rambling Man shall be refrained up to date from administering In the News. This includes but not limited to posting proposed statements (i.e. blurbs) into In the News section, making changes to the blurbs in the ITN section (errors and non-errors), and removing blurbs from the ITN section.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

If desysoping him is too much, how about forbidding him from using admin tools to modify or configure ITN and/or DYK? He can make comments there about nominations, but that's it. George Ho (talk) 00:55, 29 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by others:

You present (contradictory) principles and findings of facts which have absolutely nothing to do with TRM, and then present a series of remedies only about TRM. Normally, your remedies should address issues you show in the principles and FoFs. Fram (talk) 06:54, 29 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

No evidence presented of tool misuse in this area. —Cryptic 06:59, 29 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Either TRM should be blocked or heavily restricted due to the civility issues, or he should only be restricted from areas where there is evidence of specific misconduct AND restricting him will prevent further misconduct. No evidence has been presented that suggests this remedy is required. Thryduulf (talk) 10:28, 29 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Remedies should be based on findings of fact. And whatever being "refrained up to date" is, it sounds unpleasant. GoldenRing (talk) 15:13, 30 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The Rambling Man is refrained from the Reference Desk

The Rambling Man is prohibited from making comments at the Wikipedia:Reference Desk and its talk page and subpages.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Even without the admin tools, he would make comments there. I haven't experienced Ref Desk, but I heard his unpleasant conducts there. George Ho (talk) 00:59, 29 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by others:

~~No evidence presented of tool misuse in this area, either. —Cryptic 06:59, 29 September 2016 (UTC)~~ I misread this as proposing administrative restrictions only, as the others do. I haven't done any analysis of the evidence not involving tool use. —Cryptic 13:25, 29 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hearsay is not a sufficient basis for a restriction. Thryduulf (talk) 10:29, 29 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

This and a number of subheadings below make ungrammatical use of "refrained." I suspect the word you are looking for is "restricted." See also "limited," "prohibited," "barred," and "banned." Carrite (talk) 14:05, 30 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Remedies should be based on evidence presented in a FoF. "I heard his unpleasant conduct there" doesn't quite cut it. GoldenRing (talk) 15:15, 30 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The Rambling Man is refrained from administering "Errors in the Main Page"

The Rambling Man is prohibited from involvement in the Main Page. This includes but not limited to responding to reports about the Main Page, making corrections to the Main Page, and removing anything from the Main Page.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

I can't speculate what would happen to Errors without him, but some of his misconduct might have been evident. ~~ 01:07, 29 September 2016 (UTC)

Comment by others:

No evidence presented of tool misuse in this area. (See a pattern?) —Cryptic 06:59, 29 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I see it! I see it! Remedies must be based on evidence presented in findings of fact - actual evidence that shows the need for the remedy. This is turning into, "I don't like the way he talked to me so I want him banned from all the nice things he's interested in." GoldenRing (talk) 15:17, 30 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The Rambling Man is refrained from administering any content and process of the Main Page

The Rambling Man is prohibited from administering and monitoring the Main Page. This includes but not limited to In the News, Did You Know, Errors, and Today's Featured Article.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

If above proposals relating to DYK, ITN, and Ref Desk are not enough, perhaps TRM should stay away from the Main Page and processes related to the Main Page. That would include modifying Today's FA, OTD, Today's Feat. Pic. However, he was primarily involved in ITN and DYK, so this would be perceived as excessive. ~~ 03:26, 29 September 2016 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Almost no evidence presented of tool misuse in this area - just Andrew Davidson's section, as rebutted in Schrocat's. It doesn't even come close to justifying this sort of sanction. —Cryptic 06:59, 29 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The Rambling Man is refrained from contacting or mentioning George Ho by email

The Rambling Man must not contact George Ho by email and must not mention him in emails.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

What if TRM evades the on-Wikipedia ban and does email to contact me or mention me to someone else? George Ho (talk) 06:18, 29 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by others:

Use of Wikipedia email to contact you would covered by a standard interaction ban. There is no mechanism I am aware of that can stop a user who is not blocked from sending emails using en.wp. The only way to stop non-wikipedia emails is for you to configure your person email account/server to automatically reject emails from him.

Checkusers can see if and when an account being checkusered sent an email using Wikipedia, it is not possible to see the recipient or content of the email.

There is therefore nothing in this section or the next that is necessary. Thryduulf (talk) 10:24, 29 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The Rambling Man and George Ho are refrained from contacting or mentioning each other by email

The Rambling Man and George Ho are refrained from contacting each other by email and must not mention each other in emails.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Alternative to one-way ban. George Ho (talk) 06:18, 29 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by others:

Supposing that you mean "restrained," this is a staggeringly broad and draconian remedy. Are you really asking the committee to prevent TRM from mentioning you in any email he ever sends to anyone? What next? A restriction on mentioning you down the pub? GoldenRing (talk) 15:19, 30 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

This is possibly the single stupidest proposal I've ever seen at an arb case. How exactly do you suggest we monitor people's email, given that doing so would be require the technical resources of a reasonably large government, and that even attempting to do so would be grossly illegal as well as seriously unethical? ‑ Iridescent 15:55, 30 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Banedon reminded

Banedon shall be reminded about canvassing.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Comment by others:

Case naming is becoming one of Arbitration Committee's concerns, so the Committee shall discuss the issue of titling.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Comment by others:

Proposals by User:Example

Proposed principles

Template

1) {text of Proposed principle}

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Comment by others:

Template

2) {text of Proposed principle}

Note: All remedies that refer to a period of time, for example to a ban of X months or a revert parole of Y months, are to run concurrently unless otherwise stated.

Template

1) {text of proposed remedy}

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Comment by others:

Template

2) {text of proposed remedy}

Place here items of evidence (with diffs) and detailed analysis

Evidence by George Ho

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

correction, I contacted DuncanHill... Well, I did see that he had a conflict with TRM. However, I just wanted to talk to Duncan because I found out about him from his user page, and because he and I share the same sexualities. Too bad Duncan erased the whole discussion. In my defense, I did not intend to stalk TRM, and I did not stalk him. I read the story about the 2016 Orlando nightclub shooting and was concerned about it. I made some edits there, and I made one RfC regarding the article content. Also, I requested a correction on the Main Page. Later then TRM and Duncan encounter each other, and that's when I discover the dispute between Duncan and TRM. My mind was solely on the gay nightclub shooting instead of TRM himself. May the victims rest in peace. George Ho (talk) 12:13, 29 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I did point out that ITN has been full of incivilities, but I didn't want to make too much about ITN. Also, the preliminary statements within purple boxes are statements during the accept/decline phase. The Committee decided the scope of this case, so anything before the January 2016 motion might be dismissed. Actually, I did ask for extension of time scope, but the time scope became narrow at this moment. TRM popped up when I discuss matters usually unrelated to him. When I talked to other people, and TRM showed up, I did not resort to making catfights with TRM. Also, how is TRM's obstructing me tolerable? George Ho (talk) 07:39, 30 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know whether Fram wanted to comment on TRM's involvement in Wikipedia:Files_for_discussion/2016_May_21#File:Reg_Grundy_20_September_2010.jpg. He sounded inconsiderate about people's feelings, including those who mourn their loved ones, like Sally Brampton. He cared about uploading a free image, while people mourned Brampton, who committed suicide. He accused us of "incompetence" because he didn't consider our feelings for the grieving people. I, under pressure, asked copyright claimants to upload photos of deceased subjects for free to share. I didn't receive their responses. TRM somehow beat me to it. I didn't feel comfortable or good about myself or others exploiting grieving people and hard-working photographers (including ones who make money for photos) for just a single picture. I found this either immoral or amoral. Also, he told us to work hard and find a free photo of a deceased person. When I reported TRM at ANI about his conduct with Calidum, he did tell Mike V: "Seriously, just find a hobby you lot." Doesn't it qualify as telling Mike off? --George Ho (talk) 21:46, 30 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Also, I added the Prince thing to show TRM's possible double standards on "correcting" the error. The "Prince (musician)" had poor quality at the time when the article was featured on the Main Page as commemoration to Prince. I reported it (well, a few times), but TRM saw it as either one of my "disruptions" or just one of issues that is easy to fix. I am not sure whether TRM had double standards on fixing errors on the Main Page. However, his reluctance to remove the article... probably shows his fear of upsetting Prince fans... or something like that? George Ho (talk) 22:35, 30 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

When I was on the personal low, I asked other people for advice, but I didn't ask TRM. I didn't find him trustworthy enough to have a conversation with. Somehow, he pops up and tells me how to behave and stuff; none of them seen effective to me. Moreover, as said before, I didn't resort to making direct snarls or brawls at him. If I did, that would have been worse. --George Ho (talk) 00:31, 1 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by others:

I commented above about the troubles of parsing George Ho's comments. I also would like to draw some attention to my post at Wikipedia talk:Arbitration/Requests/Case/The Rambling Man/Evidence#George Ho's evidence with an example of George Ho completely misunderstanding a comment made by TRM, as if it was an "empty threat" by TRM. Like I said above, it may be a language issue, but in any case it indicates that all evidence and statements by George Ho should be taken with a grain of salt and checked carefully before being accepted as evidence, and it also indicates that if TRM has obstructed George Ho at ITN or other places, he may have had very good reasons to do so. Some of his evidence is more damning of himself than of TRM in any case. He e.g. points to [14] as evidence of TRM's behaviour. What the link makes clear is that George Ho notices someone in cloflict with TRM, and goes to the talk page of that editor to "warn" him about TRM. That's harassment (or stalking) by George Ho (note that TRM had already edited that page, so him appearing there again isn't strange). In his evidence, he shows a silly interaction at ITN talk over the heading of a section (not TRMs best moment admittedly). George Ho continues his evidence with "Worse yet, TRM..." making further accusations but without any links to check this.

His lengthy evidence contains links like this: can anyone explain what this may have to do with this case? I see links to discussions of 2012 and 2013 as well, and all kinds of other either outdated or unrelated discussions. Apart from the edit warring thing by TRM, I see no evidence that is relevant to the case. That seems to be a bit lightweight to base a case and calls for interactions bans and the link on (never mind an attempt to control what TRM may mention in emails to others, which is of course completely laughable). Fram (talk) 10:45, 29 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Evidence by Fram

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Note that Fram did not ~~make a statement~~ provide evidence in TRM's defense. Rather he added Cwh. I made an analysis on Fram's evidence at #Cwmhiraeth topic banned from DYK. I'll recap just in case. Fram linked to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/IWRG Máscara vs. Máscara (September 2016) in his Evidence section as part of evidence against Cwh. The AFD was opposed; the consensus voted "keep". Also, the links Fram provided Wikipedia_talk:Did_you_know/Archive_128#Eleonore_B.C3.BCning_hook_in_Prep_1 and Wikipedia_talk:Did_you_know/Archive_129#Wrestling_hook_pulled_from_Prep_1 proved multiple issues that weren't addressed in Evidence. Just Fram's issues with Cwh over... accuracy, inaccuracy? Hard work or something? DYK has a lot of issues, but very little number of issues were raised, i.e. seriousness of DYK was reduced to just Fram and Cwh. More like add Cwh as part of the case. --George Ho (talk) 12:38, 29 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

" The Committee will also hear evidence setting those disputes in context, particularly on matters related to ITN and DYK." That's what I did. This included evidence of Cwmhiraeth attacking TRM rather out of the blue. I linked to the AfD as this was an AfD Cwmhiraeth called on WT:DYK "bad faith" and "despicable behaviour". He ha since withdrawn the "bad faith" attack at the AfD. As for your analysis above, like I said there, it is largely incomprehensible. This post here is somewhat better, but still... "the links Fram provided [...] proved multiple issues that weren't addressed in Evidence." These are links from the Evidence phase. How can they prove mutilple issues but not address them? What issues? "accuracy, inaccuracy?" These aren't really two distinct issues, you know? "Hard work or something?" Hard work didn't come into play, "something" may have. "seriousness of DYK was reduced to just Fram and Cwh" No, the section was about Cwmhiraeths problematic behaviour at DYK, I didn't claim that everything at DYK could be reduced to Cwmhiraeth or would be solved by topic banning him. Is there any part of the evidence that you dispute, or which has no relation to the case? There is plenty of that in your evidence (see section above), including a complete misunderstanding of what TRM said and very little evidence of why an interaction ban between you and TRM would be needed (never mind other sanctions against TRM). On the other hand, my section is about "matters related to DYK" which put the TRM disputes "into context", including personal attacks from Cwmhiraeth against TRM, and general issues with his behaviour there and the resulting errors and problems in dealing with those errors. Fram (talk) 13:05, 29 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by Arbitrators:

George Ho. Please stop adding proposed principles, findings of fact, and remedies. You are up to about 30 now, most of them are either incoherent, inappropriate, or outright surveys. Again, Stop. --kelapstick^(bainuu) 08:19, 30 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thryduulf regarding "thanks" tool, it was brought up at an ARCA in January. It was determined (well agreed upon) that as a logged action, it would be a violation of a topic ban to thank someone for an edit to an area of which you were topic banned (and by extension a violation of an interaction ban to thank someone you had an iBan with). Although it is not possible for anyone other than the recipient to see who was actually thanked. The moral of the story was "just don't do it". --kelapstick^(bainuu) 04:17, 1 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Cryptic, that's my mistake. --kelapstick^(bainuu) 05:25, 1 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by parties:

~~Why should TRM's boycott affect the ArbCom process? Remedies should hurt him enough, making his boycott ineffective. Otherwise, ArbCom would be considered broken and useless.~~ I put faith in ArbCom and hope that TRM learns his lesson about treating others horribly. --George Ho (talk) 01:58, 26 September 2016 (UTC) Thankfully, TRM no longer boycotts this case. He made statements instead. --George Ho (talk) 23:08, 28 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Cryptic: No need to prove that he misused his admin tools to harm any Main Page venue. His conflicts with others would be remedied by prohibiting him from venues that he is frequently involved in if ArbCom approves. By the way, I removed proposed principles. --George Ho (talk) 09:06, 29 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

By the way, SchroCat didn't adequately rebut Andrew D.'s statements and evidence except the issue about "the" in one of DYK hooks. Apparently TRM acted as a middle-grounder of the "the" dispute, but I wasn't sure whether that was an "error" issue. Never mind that, TRM's edits on "Butt and Oyster" was similar to what happened to me at On This Day venue. However, I didn't bring that up because I thought it would be irrelevant, but ah well... George Ho (talk) 12:40, 29 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Can anyone here propose a remedy on TRM's absence from first two phases of this case? And what about editors' failures to widen the scope despite ArbCom's efforts to allow the editors to do so? George Ho (talk) 23:21, 29 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

If my English is the issue here, perhaps I'll let you know that I attended English-speaking schools, including elementary school since Kindergarten. Too bad the way I talked baffled them and has been mocked. I got used to people's misassumptions about my English skills. --George Ho (talk) 07:19, 30 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by others:

The point of any ArbCom proceeding is never to 'hurt' someone. We are never after a pound of flesh. What we are after is an equitable remedy that addresses the issue in such a way as to correct the issue. If that is demonstrably not possible, then protecting the project comes before the needs of any editor, no matter how seasoned. --Hammersoft (talk) 02:17, 26 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Arbitration/Policy doesn't put protecting the En Wiki as the ArbCom's agendum (possible singular of agenda). WP:IAR neither helps nor applies. The ArbCom and its process are not preventing us from improving Wikipedia. I could see the value of keeping TRM as an editor, but that's no excuse to absolve his behavior. George Ho (talk) 02:37, 26 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

When I mentioned TRM's refusal to participate in the arbitration process in my evidence section, I did so to illustrate it is difficult to work with him. Since Wikipedia is voluntary, I think that nobody should be obliged to participate, including TRM in this arbitration request. But refusing to participate shows how hard it is to reason with him: he more or less adopts an "I'm right you're wrong and if you disagree you're an idiot - so much of an idiot that even if you attempt dispute resolution I'm not going to bother with you" attitude. Banedon (talk) 05:24, 26 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I wrote about this subject in a long comment towards the top of this page. To reiterate the main reason, per WP:ADMINACCT: Administrators are expected to respond promptly and civilly to queries about their Wikipedia-related conduct and administrator actions and to justify them when needed. I think that it may also illustrate how difficult it is to work with him, but ADMINACCT is the main reason. AHeneen (talk) 04:36, 27 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Erm, has anyone presented any evidence of there being a problem involving TRM's use of email? Or is this just a matter of flinging as much mud as possible to see if it sticks? Honestly, a lot of the behaviour in this case by supposedly aggrieved parties is quite atrocious. Arbcom, if you are going to run this thing you need to police it. --Dweller (talk) Become old fashioned! 11:02, 29 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
- Thta's one thing these cases need in general: instead of clerks just counting length of statements, we need people openly evaluating evidence and questioning or removing all evidence not related to the case, or evidence that doesn't suport the statements it accompanies, and so on. And like you say, the "email" and "thanks" restrictions seem to be baseless fearmongering. Fram (talk) 13:07, 29 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  - @Fram and Dweller: I agree re Clerks. As for email and thanks, if you have an interaction ban with someone then sending them an email counts as a violation, but mentioning that person in an email to someone you don't have an iban with is not prohibited by default (and I see no reason for it to be in this case). I recall the issue of sending thanks being brought up in an clarification request (circa December or January I'd guess). I think the consensus was that ibanned users should not be sending thanks to one another but I'd have to double check and can't immediately find the discussion. Thryduulf (talk) 01:26, 30 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Re George Ho's message pinging me here - it's absolutely required to show evidence of tool misuse if you're proposing remedies to forbid him using tools in specific areas. Otherwise, they aren't remedying anything; they're punishment, plain and simple. You might as well propose a "remedy" banning him on working on articles related to the Boat Race. —Cryptic 13:30, 29 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@Kelapstick: Anyone can see who thanked whom at Special:Log/thanks. It what was thanked for that isn't logged. So much easier to track for interaction bans than topic bans. —Cryptic 04:59, 1 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]