Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement/Archive309

Statement by My very best wishes

Yes, we have content disagreements with Gitz6666 on page Denisova. We discussed them on article talk page, and all my edits have been fully explained there. There is also a related thread on RSNB started by Gitz6666, and I think the question he asked on RSNB boils down to this .

Speaking on the content I suggested to include, here is it: and . This is sourced to an article about Denisova published in New York Times . Author is a regular and well established contributor to NYT , this is not an editorial. Note that the content I wanted to include is mostly a direct citation from the article. The article in NYT is not an advertisement. I did not use any potentially problematic sources, such as the article in Ukrainska Pravda or the posting in Meduza noted by Gitz666 (the latter does even have an author ). Please note that none of other RS contradicts information I tried to include from the article in NYT (two my diffs above), contrary to claims by Gitz6666. The only contributor who objected to including this material was Gitz6666. I do not think he provided any legitimate reasons for not including it; simply saying "WP:ONUS" is not a proper justification.

No, I did not object to including info about "open letter by 140 Ukrainian journalists and human rights activists", and this info is currently included to the page. All I did was moving this info to a more appropriate section , contrary to claim by Gitz666. As about "exaggerated", the exactly meaning of this word is not clear, and I tried to refine what she said using more direct citation: , although I think that such citation adds little to the page and ultimately better be removed to provide proper balance on the page : the page includes a huge paragraph about her dismissal, but tells almost nothing about her actual work during the war (this is something I tried to include, but Gitz666 repeatedly removed "per WP:ONUS").

If it helps, I can voluntarily stop editing the page about Denisova for a couple of months. My very best wishes (talk) 08:33, 3 August 2022 (UTC)

@Dennis Brown:. Thank you, I got your point. No more reverts. A consensus is needed for including this or any other content. OK. But the consensus building may take a lot of effort, depending on the subject and participants. If I feel it takes too much effort, I will simply edit something else. There is nothing so exceptional about this subject. My very best wishes (talk) 19:19, 3 August 2022 (UTC)

Statement by GizzyCatBella

This appears to be yet another content disagreement brought to AE.

Sorry Gitz6666, you would like to know if MBVW violated this.. and that and that.. and something else? (!?) If you don’t know what has been violated, what are you doing here? Perhaps you should study our rules first or ask elsewhere? - GizzyCatBella🍁 09:39, 3 August 2022 (UTC)

@Gitz6666 - I don’t believe this board has been set up to learn WP policies. The way you produced this claim appears to me like fishing for sanctions. You should deliver clear policy breach pieces of evidence, not ask questions. (This board is being abused too often in my humble opinion.)

@My very best wishes - Why should you voluntarily stop editing the page about Denisova for a couple of months? You folks should ask for input from additional users (RfC) and resolve your disagreements this way. - GizzyCatBella🍁 17:05, 3 August 2022 (UTC)

Statement by Aquillion

The "remove on sight" aspects of WP:BLP apply to negative material - stuff that is potentially defamatory or harmful. It's hard to see how this could harm the reputation of the subject or any other living person, so there's no good-faith BLP objection and WP:BLPDS doesn't apply. That doesn't mean it should necessarily stay, of course, or that it was a good idea to repeatedly restore a WP:BOLD addition, but it's not a matter for AE. --Aquillion (talk) 18:24, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

Statement by (username)

Statement by SPECIFICO

Responding to request of Dennis Brown:

In case anyone is not aware, this complaint is the fourth concurrent open thread in which NadVolum has filed complaints against me, for whatever reasons. The others are, 1 2 3. All of these relate to the BLP articles in the Julian Assange orbit, where there have been ongoing BLP problems that I would say may be underlain by a few editors' insistent and unduly credulous acceptance of various narratives of Assange and his supporters -- even when acceptance conflict with WP content and sourcing policies. The community's lack of endorsement of any of those complaints does raise the possiblity that the current complaint is part of a campaign of forum shopping by OP to vent their personal frustration with me over content issues.

For those who are not familiar with OP, this is a Single Purpose Account that has made very few edits outside of pages on Assange or setting the table to support content on the Assange page.

There have been discusions on the article talk page for some time about the importance of trimming Assange's personal biography page so as to include only the significant details of his life (including those at Wikileaks) but not the actions of Wikileaks for which there is no content linking Assange to those action. Similar issues arise in many bio pages of public figures in politics and related fields. @Softlemonades: removed some such content, for which as far as I can tell no prior discussion that would privilege it as established consensus, and as I stated in my edit summary undoing OP's rapid reinsertion, I think there should have been talk page discussion prior to reinstating that content. It's evident that I think that's consistent with "consensus required" -- I would hardly cite own edit as a violation of the page restriction, as OP seems to claim. It is also evident (though not discussed in the past 6 months) that non-Assange but Wikileaks content creates BLP problems for this article. We should not be including every adventure and every scandal of Wikileaks as if it is Assange's hand at work or Assange's personal responsibility. OP has participated in at least one such discussion and is aware of various editors' BLP concerns One such discussion is here. This issue has come up many times. Softlemonades raised the issue on the talk page after she removed the content, which is what prompted my revert of OP's reinsertion.

We also have OP very carelessly posting clearcut BLP violations on several occasions, e.g. when he stated as fact that Hillary Clinton wanted to kill Assange with a drone, offering a sheepish retraction at the bottom of this thread, saying he really didn't check into it. This followed a long discussion of the issue at the David Leigh (journalist) page and OP's own posting of related thread at BLPN.

Finally, OP went straight to this AE complaint without even coming to my user talk page to voice his concern or warn me that such a complaint was imminent. I can't recall the last time a complaint was made on any editor no attempt at prior engagement. It wastes lots of editor and Admin resources.

@Dennis Brown: Could you explain "out of process by the number of reverts"? I am not understanding that. My reading of the sequence is that Softlemonades challenged the BLP/Wikilinks content and then NadVolum reinstated it instead of going to talk. Meanwhile, when Softlemonades opened the talk thread, I undid what I believe was the out of process reinstatement of challenged article content (with the associated BLP issues). As I said in my edit summary, I think the reinstatement of the challenged content violated the page restriction "consensus required". SPECIFICO talk 01:05, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

@Dennis Brown: Thanks for the reply. I am aware of that essay. In fact I made several edits to it a couple of years ago. However, there have been many discussions among longtime editors and among Admins in which that simplified rubrik is disputed or rejected, just as we have ongoing disagreement among Admins as to the definition of "revert". As you may know, there's current ongoing discussion of WP:ONUS and WP:NOCON at WT:V concerning the status of "longstanding" content that has not been positively affirmed consensus even though it's been in the article for a while. There is also discussion at talk page of the Consensus required essay. I don't think it's correct to state in absolute terms that my removal of the disputed content pending talk page was violating a consensus. Obviously, per my edit summary, I didn't think so at the time of the edit, and I am fairly experienced editing pages that require differentiating established consensus -- documented by prior talk page discussion, editing activity, or agreement in principle -- vs. content that's stayed in the article a while without much notice and attention. The Assange page's ongoing BLP issue viz a viz Wikileaks had been identified and repeatedly discussed on the talk page in the presence of OP. Editors never agreed, in effect, to transclude all of Wikileaks' controversies and alleged misdeeds into Assange's personal bio. As you already know, I do not agree that this Wikileaks content was consensus and I have not seen that essay treated as an absolute bright line, regardless of the content or circumstances. Anyway, that's why I did not hesitate to undo OP's reinstatement of the challenged content. And as I said, if he had informed me of his concern, I see no reason to think we would have ended up here at AE. SPECIFICO talk 02:36, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

@Dennis Brown: Thanks again for your reply. To be sure we are not talking past one another: No, I am not claiming there was consensus for anything. I said and still say there was no consensus for this BLP content that transcluded Wikileaks deeds and controversies onto the biography of Assange the man. Accordingly, when this was pointed out by Softlemonades and a discussion started on talk that it should have remained out. It's an ongoing problem that about half our editors would cite WP:ONUS to keep the problem text in the article as "implicit consensus" while half our editors would say to keep it out per ONUS. In this case, where there had been no affirmation of the content and the BLP problem had repeatedly been discussed and acknowledged, I felt that the immediate reinsertion without consensus in the talk page thread went against consensus required. Further, to be frank, it appears to have been another case of OP's long-voiced frustration and impatience with discussion and consensus-seeking on this page. SPECIFICO talk 12:48, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

{ping|Ealdgyth}} I think it's begging the question to refer to my edit as "this kind of edit warring". I'm careful not to edit war, and I and others have pointed out the issue relating to BLP material -- and prior and current talk page discussions of same. I've tried to present my view of the issues of implicit Consensus and ONUS and the ongoing discussions on WT pages about what constitutes implicit consensus for longstanding text, and other factors. I was the editor who requested DS page restrictions on this article due to repeated edit warring. As Dennis Brown points out, the CR page is an essay from one point of view, not a policy. I read the CR restricton in the context of the community's views on consensus, which do not provide a bright line rule such as 1RR. It's evident that my understanding is not something I cooked up to deflect responsibility for disruptive edit warring, because I cited CIR in my edit summary for the diff in question. I do not believe that any WP Consensus policy is intended to lock down content, recent or longstanding, that has been reasonably challenged. That having been said, any Admin who rejects my understanding and concludes that my handling of the content issue was disruptive is empowered by DS to sanction me on their own discretion, regardless of my intention or anything I say here. So I don't know that it's helpfiul for me to go on at length or repeat myself about the article, BLP, consensus, etc. and I'll stop. I'll only add that it's clear to me that this was a vexatious complaint by NadVolum after they failed to get me sanctioned or my BLP concern rejected in the 3 other threads they had open at ANI and BLPN at the same time they filed this complaint. Moreover NadVolum openly flouts BLP -- that was the subject of their trip to BLPN regarding David Leigh (jouirnalist) -- they recently posted another BLP violation, linked above, saying Hillary Clinton wanted to kill Assange. These overt and implied BLP violations have come up over and over on this page and a minority of editors there do greatly frustrate many others who do not share our concerns. SPECIFICO talk 14:25, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

@Dennis Brown: With considerable respect for your efforts, I don't think it's fair to conclude that I am "doubling down" by stating my understanding and documentation of Consensus and BLP issues regarding this complaint. SPECIFICO talk 14:25, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

Comment by GoodDay

Which Arbcom case, is being requested to enforce? GoodDay (talk) 12:28, 7 August 2022 (UTC)

It's the red-link above, that's confusing me. Thus my question, which Arbcom case is being referred to? GoodDay (talk) 19:51, 7 August 2022 (UTC)

Ok, now I know which case. GoodDay (talk) 22:35, 7 August 2022 (UTC)

Recommend the disputing editors open an RFC at the Julian Assange page, in order to clarify the consensus-in-question. If there's doubts about what that consensus is. GoodDay (talk) 01:56, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

@SPECIFICO: If it hasn't already been restored. I recommend that you restore the content-in-question (i.e. undo your revert). Then seek a new consensus at the Assange talkpage, to have the content removed. GoodDay (talk) 14:49, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

Statement by Aquillion

Unless I'm misunderstanding the situation... per WP:BLPRESTORE, in situations where BLP does apply, the default when there is a conflict over BLP-sensitive material is to leave it out, not in. This is a specific exception to the usual WP:BRD procedure and the way we handle WP:NOCON situations. In order to restore the text in question you would have to argue that it is not BLP sensitive or that there is an existing consensus for it, and even then, one revert removing it wouldn't normally be WP:AE-worthy. The "teeth" of WP:BLPDS - the stuff that calls for an immediate AE action even from one or two bad edits - is intended for things that could potentially harm the reputation of article's subject. --Aquillion (talk) 12:57, 7 August 2022 (UTC)

Statement by Mr Ernie

That isn't how it works and SPECIFICO knows it, as they were topic banned about two years ago for almost the exact same thing.. An editor removed long standing text (which implies it had consensus to be there), NadVolum reverts it back in, and SPECIFICO reverts it back out insisting on a new consensus. If SPECIFICO's edit summary was valid, it would give editors license to revert stuff they don't like out of controversial articles and require new, fresh discussions to find consensus for it to go back in, regardless of how longstanding it was. Mr Ernie (talk) 13:53, 7 August 2022 (UTC)

Nad - amend your request and replace the red text under “Sanction or remedy to be enforced” to link to WP:ARBAPDS. Mr Ernie (talk) 20:29, 7 August 2022 (UTC)

A possible reason why NadVolum didn't bring this up to SPECIFICO before reporting to AE - SPECIFICO went to NadVolum's page a few days ago to accuse them of making personal attacks, and has not bothered to substantiate these aspersions - link. Mr Ernie (talk) 12:48, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

Statement by NadVolum

In response to Aquillon, there is no BLP issue. Neither the person who originally removed the text nor SPECIFICO said there was a BLP issue and it has been around for a long time. In the discussion by the original person on the talk page Talk:Julian_Assange#Why_list_things_Assange_wasnt_actively_involved_in? you can see they talked about why if this was okay wasn't it okay to list all the major scandals and criticisms of Wikileaks too and I pointed to WP:BLPPUBLIC for that. They said at the end of the back and forth that their problem was bloat - which I can sympathize with to some extent but this is not the way to deal with that. NadVolum (talk) 19:22, 7 August 2022 (UTC)

In response to Gooday, I was following the instructions on the talk page under "WARNING: ACTIVE ARBITRATION REMEDIES"

• Violations of any of these restrictions should be reported immediately to the arbitration enforcement noticeboard.
• Editors who are aware of discretionary sanctions in this topic area and who violate these restrictions may be sanctioned by any uninvolved administrator, even on a first offense.

So that's what I did. It isn't as if SPECIFICO hasn't removed new text and warned people against adding it again and often an RfC is needed to establsh consensus before it can be put in. I think I'd prefer it left the way it was before and any discussion be about removing the long standing text instead. NadVolum (talk) 19:22, 7 August 2022 (UTC)

In reponse to Mr Ernie. It sounds a bit in what you say like I was involved in that previous discussion. I wasn't and didn't even know abot that. I looked up SPECIFICO's log when raising this and I didn't see anything about it. NadVolum (talk) 19:36, 7 August 2022 (UTC)

In response to Guerillero, I'm sorry I don't understand what you are asking for. Discretionary sanctions as talked about at the top of this page sounds fine to me or is there a list of possible sanctions I should try to choose from thanks? NadVolum (talk) 20:07, 7 August 2022 (UTC)

Thank you very much Jéské Couriano. Yes that sounds right, I see that WP:ARBAPDS was linked to in that text on the article talk page. NadVolum (talk) 20:43, 7 August 2022 (UTC)

In response to SPECIFICO I guess people can check most of it themselves but about the BLP violation I changed a sentence which had just been inserted saying "WikiLeaks asked Trump Jr. to share a claim by Assange that Hillary Clinton had wanted to attack him with drones." Assange did not claim that bit of conspiracy theory. The source cited this other conspiracy site that I did not recognize as such. This had nothing to do with anything else. And yes I did come here straight. SPECIFICO does not edit in a collegiate manner. they are very non-neutral on the topic , and slags off editors that don't agree and engages in canvassing . Worse than that I think they are a clear case of following WP:DE like a rulebook. fFr instance one of those things they complained above about me going to ANI was them not bothering to give a decent reply about what BLP problem they were supposed to be fixing with their edits. And they couldn't be bothered to find a source and said the actions of a grand jury are SKYBLUE in another. NadVolum (talk) 01:07, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

Here is a previous discussion in December 2021 in which SPECIFIO talked about removing non-biographic content Talk:Julian_Assange/Archive_35#Trimming_and_relocation_of_non-biographic_content. They removed all mention of the US diplomatic cables incident after stopping inclusion about the unredacted files and password being released. The content has finally been included after an RfC, see Julian_Assange#Release_of_US_diplomatic_cables which covers that content complete with the unredacted cables. As to going to their talk page and asking for a revert - I haven't seen anything here about being sorry they made a mistake or would have reverted! NadVolum (talk) 18:42, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

I am not sure why admins are so unwilling to do anything about SPECIFICO. Maybe you think they are doing a good job stopping Julian Assange's followers turning his article into a hagiography and biasing any connected articles? If that was just what SPECIFICO was doing I certainly wouldn't object. But they seem to be acting out of hate for Assange and determined to do anything they can to remove anything that might be in his favor even when well documented and obviously relevant and due. And that includes disruptive editing techniques to try and get their way and remove editors they don't like. NadVolum (talk) 08:44, 10 August 2022 (UTC)

Statement by Jéské Couriano

Based on the linked DS alert and the talk page notice referred to, I have to assume this is being filed under AP2 as the case and the post-1992 American politics DS regime as the remedy. @NadVolum:, when you file a request here, you are obligated to link the case and specify the remedy you're filing under. (For bans under DS, link to the DS authorisation and the ban notice/thread.) —Jéské Couriano v^_^v ^{a little blue Bori} 20:16, 7 August 2022 (UTC)

Statement by Firefangledfeathers

I encourage SPECIFICO to admit, as quickly as possible, that their understanding of the CR restriction was incorrect. I hope to see NadVolum commit to politely bringing up possible 1RR or CR violations at the offending user's talk page before bringing the issue to the next step of conduct dispute resolution. It would help if we discussed formalizing the CR restriction and including a link to the explanatory essay WP:Consensus required in any talk page banners or edit notices, as the text commonly used (and used at Talk:Julian Assange) is not explicit about how removal is handled. Assuming SPECIFICO and NadVolum can both own up to handling this imperfectly, I ask that admins refrain from sanctions in this matter and nudge us all to move on. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 01:52, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

Statement by ActivelyDisinterested

Eeurgh I came across this and was involved with the discussion on the talk page. I'm unsure if there was a BLP issue here, but the content was definitely highly skewed to paint as much blame on the articles subject as possible. I would still object to the content as is because of that (although that's not relevant here). It doesn't look like this is the only page with this issue. I dropped out once it became apparent that we were just going in circles. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 10:30, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

Statement by Nableezy

The number of times I see a report and think you know if you just apologize and say my understanding was wrong and Ill be mindful to make sure I follow the rules as you have just patiently explained them to me this would be closed without even a logged warning, but if youre going to argue no Im right and this is why youre going to get sanctioned increases by one more. Oh, and you could still probably say that and this would still probably be closed with at most a logged warning to be mindful of the CR restriction. nableezy - 14:32, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

Statement by (username)

Statement by Kendall Clarks

Statement by GoldenRing

User clearly not 500/30 qualified. Appears to be attempting to argue that Druze is not under ARBPIA sanctions eg this edit but the talk page has the ARBPIA template there, right at the top. @Kendall Clarks: I'd suggest apologising and abandoning editing in this area or a block to enforce the sanction seems the only option. This is now for the second time of asking. GoldenRing (talk) 11:58, 11 August 2022 (UTC)

Statement by (username)

Statement by Ghazaalch

This tool shows that NMasiha's first appearance in 2022 in this page was to vote in an RFC and has continued this job till now. I am not talking about other pages. So there are different accounts here with different jobs. NMasiha's job was to vote, Iraniangal777's job was to revert, TheDreamBoat's job was to edit on behalf of the blocked users and so on. (see Stefka Bulgaria, BarcrMac and Idealigic for the pro-MeK users who were topic-banned before the new ones Fad Ariff, TheDreamBoat, Hogo-2020 and Iraniangal777 emerged).

Concerning RFCs being an ideal place for pro-MeK users, see El C's comment here where they talk about a super-trim RfC launched ... which only redacted longstanding, agreed-upon text to one tenth of its original size.(link to the "super-trim RfC" that admin El C was referring to) and now the same supper-trimmed section (cult section) is subject to two new RFCs () in spite of the previous ones() to reduce the small section even more. Because the pro-Mek users (Now led by Fad Ariff) don't like the MeK group to be called a cult in spite of numerous sources confirming that.

Here I am quoting Vice regent's objection to another RFC attempt that aimed at removing cult description():

• ...I provided 15 scholarly sources that argue that MEK meets the definition of a cult. Despite this they amassed 10 votes in support (proposal "A" in this RfC) but Vanamonde closed the RfC as "consensus against proposal A" because "sources presented below using the "cult" descriptor are patently more reliable than those challenging that descriptor".

Here is another objection by another user():

• regarding the RFCs, there was a trend of launching super-trim RFCs aimed at "railroading" the opposing side. This made El_C suggest the idea of having an "outright requirement" for Stefka Bulgaria to avoid super-trim RFCs (he was "instructed" to avoid it). "New restriction proposal" suggested by me, contains the context to the discussion over those RFCs.

• @Dennis Brown: To tell the truth I don't know much about the wiki policies and I do not have a good command of English language, so I often try to imitate other people's language. I saw using "Pro-MeK" and "anti-MeK " expressions first here and then here in the same page so I thought it won't make a problem using them, and even considered myself as an "anti-MeK user" here. The same thing can be said about the other so-called aspersions. I won't use them again if they are against the policies.

Statement by MarioGom

And RFC is the ideal place for [...] Pro-PMOI users as I said in a previous arbitration, because finding some People to vote for them is much easier than convincing their opponents using reliable sources.

This part is a well established pattern by now . Although, to the best of my knowledge, there's been not enough presented evidence about the participation of currently active and non-(p)blocked users in the off-wiki coordination that has been going on for years in the page. MarioGom (talk) 22:10, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

Statement by Iraniangal777

Disagreeing with Ghazaalch in those RfCs is enough to qualify anyone as a "pro-MEK user", where "finding some People to vote for them is much easier than convincing their opponents using reliable sources". Nonsense. Editors in those RfCs have adhered to using reliable sources and even helped fix WP:RS problems.

Muddling RfCs with Ad hominems like this (or disrupting the natural development of RfCs , or edit-warring while using trumped-up edit summaries - all of which were noted in my last report about Ghazaalch) nullifies any meaningful attempt to solve a content dispute in that talk page. Iraniangal777 (talk) 18:58, 10 August 2022 (UTC)

Statement by Iskandar323

Ghazaalch is not wrong that the bent of the many recent and often bad RFCs on the page has been tendentious in the extreme. Without exception they have been geared towards drastically cutting out material that portrays the PMOI/MEK in a negative light. Now why anybody would be that fixated on this is beyond my ken (even if one is doggedly anti-Islamic regime for instance, that hardly requires one to embrace this particularly dubious opposition group), but fixated some editors do indeed seem to be - and this is of course why an arbitration intervention imposing discretionary sanctions became necessary in the first place (the material on cult-like attributions was equally one of the prime movers of the original arbitration). And when there are individual editors being so transparently tendentious in favour of the MEK, the term "pro-MEK" is not much of a stretch or an aspersion, at all. Iskandar323 (talk) 06:39, 11 August 2022 (UTC)

Statement by Hogo-2020

@Ghazaalch, stop pinging my name with baseless accusations. I have nothing to do with other editors. Hogo-2020 (talk) 16:16, 11 August 2022 (UTC)

Statement by (username)

Statement by Zekelayla

I engaged in a single revert (what nableezy calls "revert 3") to remove from the lede material which another user had already pointed out came from a notoriously controversial book. Zekelayla (talk) 14:43, 13 August 2022 (UTC)

Oh, you're right that the first one is a revert, but not of the same material. So, I did revert twice in 21 hours apparently. Zekelayla (talk) 18:06, 13 August 2022 (UTC)

(I must have missed the first revert since it wasn't one of the diffs linked at me on my talk page.) Zekelayla (talk) 18:16, 13 August 2022 (UTC) Responses moved to own section; please comment only in this section. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 18:35, 13 August 2022 (UTC)

Statement by (username)