Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Election/Workshop
This is a page for working on Arbitration decisions. It provides for suggestions by Arbitrators and other users and for comment by arbitrators, the parties and others. After the analysis of /Evidence here and development of proposed principles, findings of fact, and remedies. Anyone who edits should sign all suggestions and comments. Arbitrators will place proposed items they have confidence in on /Proposed decision.
Motions and requests by the parties
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Proposed temporary injunctions
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Proposed final decision
Proposed principles
Wikipedia is not a soapbox
1) Wikipedia is not a soapbox or a vehicle for propaganda advocacy or advertising. (Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not)
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- From Lyndon LaRouche 2, passed 7-0, February 2005. --Tony Sidaway 17:47, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
Holding a strong POV does not necessarily imply POV-pushing edits
2) A strong point of view expressed elsewhere on a subject does not necessarily mean POV-pushing editing on Wikipedia; that can only be determined by the edits to Wikipedia.
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- From Lyndon LaRouche 2, passed 6-0, February 2005. --Tony Sidaway 17:49, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
Assume good faith
3) Editors are expected to be cooperative with other users and to assume good faith on the part of others in the lack of evidence to the contrary.
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- This form was adopted 9-0 in Tony Sidaway, March, 2006. --Tony Sidaway 17:58, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
Ownership of articles
4) Although working on an article does not entitle one to "own" the article, it is still important to respect the work of your fellow contributors. - Wikipedia:Ownership of articles
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- Adopted 7-0 in FuelWagon v. Ed Poor, December, 2005. --Tony Sidaway 18:08, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
Verifiability and sources
5) Information used in articles, especially those whose content is contested, should be verified by reference to a reliable and scholarly source, see Wikipedia:Verifiability and Wikipedia:Reliable sources.
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- Adopted 10-0 in Zeq, March, 2006. --Tony Sidaway 18:14, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
Editing controversial articles
6) There is a special burden imposed on those who choose to edit hotly contested articles. Extra effort must be made to be courteous, communicate adequately with other users, and use reliable sources. Those who are unable to function productively in that context may be banned from such editing.
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- Adopted 10-0 in KDRGibby, February, 2006. --Tony Sidaway 18:25, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
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Proposed findings of fact
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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.
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Proposed enforcement
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Analysis of evidence
Place here items of evidence (with diffs) and detailed analysis
Tbeatty's "Intimidation" claims
In the "Intimidation" section of Tbeatty's evidence, he claims that RyanFreisling tried to "get administrative sanctions placed on Phil for a Speedy Keep". This is preposterous. In fact, if you read the very section Tbeatty cites it is clear that what Ryan is objecting to is not Phil's vote of speedy keep, but his administering and deleting the AfD itself: "it's my understanding that one general rule-of-thumb is that admins should not delete or otherwise 'administer' pages on which they have contributed substantively as editors... I'd like to get the response of some admins (from a policy perspective, not a 'Phil under attack' perspective) to whether such activity in essence amounts to unfair or excessive use of an admin's powers during the course of their routine editing of Wikipedia."
Tbeatty's second accusation is even more ridiculous: "In Cabal fashion, the group has tried to get Fred Bauder to recuse himself." The fact that the three of us agree that Fred Bauder has expressed bias against the article is evidence that we're acting as a cabal? Then any three editors who agree on anything must be a cabal. Or is what makes us a cabal in Tbeatty's eyes the substance of what we agree on (that we think an editor who has expressed bias against the article should recuse himself) ? Is it Tbeatty's charge that only cabals are capable of requesting the recusal of an arbitrator who has expressed bias? Both these charges are completely specious. -- noosphere 05:37, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
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- So I am not sure what remedy Ryan was looking for if it wasn't administrative sanction? Did he disagree that it was a bad faith nomination? If so, he could propose the article for deletion himself. Bad faith AfD nominations are deleted per policy, not because it was Phil. But in fact, Ryan agreed with the action. He believed it was a bad faith nomination. He just didn't like who administered the speedy keep and tried to use process to bring sanctions. Forunately, it didn't work. --Tbeatty 05:22, 20 May 2006 (UTC)
- "Bad faith AfD nominations are deleted per policy"? Could you quote me that policy, please? Stifle described the deletion as "suboptimal, but not wrong,"[1] and AmiDaniel admitted the nomination did not violate the only policy that was mentioned as justification: WP:CSD G5.[2] So I'll be curious to hear which policy you're referring to.
- It's on the AfD policy page. Bad Faith nominations that result in a speedy keep and the banning of the user have their logs deleted. --Tbeatty 03:46, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
- "An article can be speedily kept ONLY if... 5.the nominator is banned, so they are not supposed to edit. In that case, the article is speedily kept while the nomination can be tagged with {{db-ban}} and speedily deleted as a banned contribution."
- If this is what you're talking about, it's simply not relevant, as the nominator was not banned when he made the nomination.[3]
- And besides, even if there is such a policy, the fact is that RF was asking about policy regarding the administration and deletion of pages the administrator in question had himself edited. And all of this is getting rather far away from your original contention, which was that RF was seeking retribution for a speedy keep. Again, this is plainly false. -- noosphere 04:48, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
- Anyway, the issue RyanFreisling raised on the ANI wasn't whether deleting a bad faith AfD was wrong (much less wanting Phil banned "for a Speedy Keep", which was your contention on this evidence page) but Phil's administering and deleting a page in which he's involved as an editor. Which is something quite different.
- Phil deleted teh AfD discussion of a bad faith nomination that resulted in the user being banned. My contention is that Ryan was looking for a sanction since he put it on the page requesting adminstrative action, not the undelete page. Please show me that he requested undelete instead of sanctions. --Tbeatty 03:46, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
- I never claimed that RF was seeking an undelete. I'll let him speak for his motivations himself. My question is whether you have any evidence to substantiate your claim that RF was seeking retribution for Phil's vote of speedy keep (especially since you admit that RF had himself also voted speedy keep on that nomination). -- noosphere 04:48, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
- As we know, admins can ban users. But if they're involved in a personal dispute with a user then banning that user by that admin is frowned upon, even if the ban is otherwise justified. So this was a question for clarification of policy along those lines, not as seeking some kind of retribution for a speedy keep, which was what you contended on the evidence page. This is clearly false. -- noosphere 06:06, 20 May 2006 (UTC)
- As far as I can tell, Phil wasn't involved in any dispute with the user that was banned.
- I wasn't implying he was. I said RF was seeking for a policy clarification along those lines, namely, to once again quote RF himself, "it's my understanding that one general rule-of-thumb is that admins should not delete or otherwise 'administer' pages on which they have contributed substantively as editors... I'd like to get the response of some admins (from a policy perspective, not a 'Phil under attack' perspective) to whether such activity in essence amounts to unfair or excessive use of an admin's powers during the course of their routine editing of Wikipedia." In both cases the administrator is involved. In the earlier scenario I described there is a personal dispute with the user, in this case the adminstrator is involved in editing the page in question. So what is the policy in this case? That's what RF wanted to know. -- noosphere 04:48, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
- A cabal is a group of editors who work in harmony to advance their own agenda at the expense of the project. This "cabal" has worked over 18 months (longer than any other editors who contribute to this article) to thwart any attempt to bring NPOV to the article and they continue to use process (over content or substance) to stop other editors from contributing. I would hold you to your own standard if you actually believed it: all three of the editors have expressed bias for the article, yet you don't recuse yourselves from editing it. Why do you assume bad faith in Fred yet you believe you are acting in good faith with same biases? The answer is that there was a process avenue to stop the other editors from contributing, including Fred. Whether it's 3RR threats or sanctions against Phil or other procedural threats, the outcome is the same: 3 editors of the same POV working to stifle the work and effort of other editors in order to advance their POV. --Tbeatty 05:22, 20 May 2006 (UTC)
- You are welcome to contribute. In fact one of RyanFreisling's main gripes was that Phil wasn't contributing, and that he was just whining. And I don't assume bad faith on Fred's part. He has demonstrated bias by his statements. If he had not made that statement I'd have not had any reason to suspect he was biassed regarding the subject of this case and the editors involved in it.
- But once an arbitrator demonstrates bias in a case that you're involved with then what is the reasonable thing to do? Is it to keep quiet? Or is it to ask for the arbitrator's recusal? How is asking for the recusal of an arbitrator that's expressed bias evidence of being part of the cabal, that's what I'd like to know. You think that if we let that slide that would mean we weren't part of a cabal? That's simply preposterous. Any editors would have done the same.
- And talk about stifling work... the demand that this article be deleted would certainly stifle work on it. Yet that's precisely what Phil has demanded.[4] Banning editors who've contributed more to this article than all of you put together is certainly stifling and intimidating and would stop these editors from contributing. Yet that's what you yourself have advocated.[5] And Arkon and Merecat have consistenly supported the both of you. So which is the cabal here? -- noosphere 06:06, 20 May 2006 (UTC)
- And by your standard, you have demonstrated bias by voting keep. By taking issue with what Fred said, by your standard, you have deomnstrated bias. Either your standard of bias is preposterous, or you should recuse yourself from editing the article. --Tbeatty 03:46, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
- Yes, of course I have a bias towards my own position in this case since I'm one of the participants. But I'm not acting as an arbitrator! If I was an arbitrator and one of the participants (or had expressed bias in any other way) I'd recuse myself. Wouldn't you? -- noosphere 04:52, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
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Analysis of references
As has been submitted in to evidence, Phil Sandifer has characterized the article as "the paranoid ravings of the blogosphere," and "paranoid blog droppings," and "waste products of a month of blogging." In fact, per the summary of the references in this article (also submitted in to evidence), there are only 6 blogs and 2 personal websites used as sources. So 8 out of a total of 138 references, or 5%. Compare that to 26 mainstream media references like the BBC, the New York Times, and even FOX News stories.
This blog source count also contradicts Tbeatty's claim on the evidence page that "a lot of [the article's] sources are blogs". This is plainly false, unless you consider 5% "a lot".
Counting the less well-known media sources like Wired News and CNET, and local media sources, there are a total of 71 media references in the article, a full 11 times the number of blogs referenced in the article. Of the handful of blogs and personal websites that are used as references, I myself have recently advocated the deletion of four of them, per Wikipedia policy.[6][7] So hopefully soon we'll have even fewer of them.
There are 21 primary references, which are fully admissible under Wikipedia policy. This brings the total number of acceptible references in this article up to 92, or 62% of the total.
Apart from the handful of blogs and personal websites which I've already mentioned, there are 35 (or 25% of the total) references from political groups such as the Democratic party, the ACLU, NAACP, and voting rights groups. Some of these groups have strong views regarding the issues in this article. The NAACP, for example, is concerned with the disenfranchisement of minorities that they claim occured during the 2004 election. However, according to WP:RS, "political bias is not in itself a reason not to use a source." Furthermore, "that a source has strong views is not necessarily a reason not to use it, although editors should avoid using political groups with widely acknowledged extremist views, like Stormfront.org or the British Socialist Workers Party." And by no stretch of the imagination can any of the sources in this group of references be compared with Stormfront or the British Socialist Workers Party, or any other extremists for that matter.
Finally, there's the issue of Phil complaining some of the sources in this article were local (of which there are 11, or only 8% of the total number of references). As has been submitted in to evidence, Phil claims that "Unless the story got picked up nationally or widely reported, one-off local news stories do not provide acceptable levels of reliability." However, there is nothing in WP:V, WP:RS, or WP:CITE to support this claim. We are not quoting tabloids, after all. But even in the case of tabloids, WP:V says, "Sometimes a statement can only be found in a publication of dubious reliability, such as a tabloid newspaper. If the statement is relatively unimportant, remove it. If it is important enough to keep, attribute it to the source in question. For example: "According to the British tabloid newspaper The Sun...""
I hope this analysis of the sources in this article clearly demonstrates that Phil's allegations against the reliability of the sources in this article are utterly baseless. They are neither supported by policy nor by the sources that were actually used in the article. -- noosphere 04:13, 20 May 2006 (UTC)
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General discussion
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