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Initiated by Georgewilliamherbert ( talk) at 05:40, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

Case affected

Speed of light arbitration case ( t) ( ev /  t) ( w /  t) ( pd /  t)

Clauses to which an amendment is requested

1. Motion 4 - Brews ohare advocacy restrictions
2. Motion 5 - Restriction expiration

List of users affected by or involved in this amendment

• Georgewilliamherbert ( talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA) (initiator)
• Count Iblis ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• David Tombe ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Likebox ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Hell in a Bucket ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Confirmation that the above users are aware of this request

• Count Iblis
• David Tombe
• Likebox
• Hell in a Bucket

Amendment 1

• Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Speed of light#Motions Motion 4
• Proposed: Motion 4 ("Count Iblis, David Tombe, Likebox, and Hell in a Bucket are indefinitely restricted from advocacy for or commenting on Brews ohare, broadly construed. Should any of these editors violate this restriction, they may be blocked for up to 24 hours by any uninvolved administrator. After three blocks, the maximum block length shall rise to one week.") is reinstated, to run concurrently with and expiring simultaneously with Motion 6's 12-month topic ban on Brews Ohare.

Statement by Georgewilliamherbert

As evidenced by discussion at Wikipedia_talk:Arbitration_Committee/Noticeboard#Arbitration motion regarding Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Speed of light immediately following the Committee's reimposition of Brews' topic ban, for a 12 month new duration, the additional parties who were previously (now expired by motion) enjoined from advocacy on Brews' account have resumed disruptive advocacy on the exact same terms and approach as before. Requests to stop have been rejected, and as discretionary sanctions are not in place on the article admins evidently can't reimpose them on individual authority at this time.

I believe that reimposing them is appropriate under the circumstances. This case has been decided, no matter what the party and supporters feel. Georgewilliamherbert ( talk) 05:40, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

Replying writ large to several parties, Carcharoth, and other commenters...

Focusing more narrowly would certainly potentially be appropriate.

Regarding asking / suggesting / prodding people to change directions into things they can be productive in, that was done by several in the thread which started this, including myself. It went so stunningly well that I ended up doing this amendment... The discussion included outright refusal by some of the people previously enjoined to admit that the prior advocacy ban had been in effect, and that such behavior by them was obviously not just OK but righteous and necessary.

Perhaps with the amendment proposed the message is getting across that more productive pursuits would be preferable for everyone. I certainly don't see this as a good solution. But it looked for a couple of days like the bad old days of incessant advocacy were back, and if that was going to happen, there's no reason not to haul out the big gun again and point it.

If not firing it is ok now, then let's not fire it. Georgewilliamherbert ( talk) 07:17, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

To explicitly say something I should have been more explicit about last night - David Tombe's behavior now does not seem to be problematic, and I am happy to drop him off the proposed restrictions list. I cut and pasted the proposal from the prior amendment, when I should have been more selective. Georgewilliamherbert ( talk) 20:06, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

Reply to Hell in a Bucket -

The four of you were previously indefinitely enjoined from advocacy of this nature. There was obviously at that time a problem severe enough that you convinced Arbcom that there needed to be a specific restriction on the four of you continuing that advocacy.

That has since been amended to expire, but you seem to be missing the message. The message is, Arbcom and the community do have the right to act if disruptive behavior persists; that Arbcom and the community previously found this behavior by the then-four of you to be sufficiently disruptive to intervene; and that you and Count Iblis were at it again.

Persistent misbehavior after prior sanctions has a lower threshold and a stronger response, in general on Wikipedia. Someone who's been blocked for edit warring or disruption may find 3RR now effectively a 2RR restriction on them and then 1RR, and a first block of 24 hrs goes to 48 then a week then a month.

In the context of you and Count Iblis going back to the same behavior you previously were enjoined from doing, and are now defending again, perhaps I was somewhat premature in this amendment. But if you feel entitled to keep it up much longer then you're wrong.

The restriction I'm proposing has already been found necessary and applied to you. Reimposing it for repeat offenses is not a big deal.

If the repeat offenses have stopped and it's not worth any more preventive measures then great. If you can live by Carcharoth's comments below, great.

If you feel that it's simply a gross imposition on your WikiRights - again, it's been imposed against you before.

Georgewilliamherbert ( talk) 20:16, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

Statement by other editor

{Other editors are free to comment on this amendment as necessary. Comments here should be directed only at the above proposed amendment.}

• What? One is not allowed to express dissent with the disgraceful measures against Brews? Or what? This is just going to lead to more and more contributors being banned. / Pieter Kuiper ( talk) 08:04, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

• Likebox is permabanned of his own choice, David Tombe has done nothing in the recent cases involving Brews and Hell in a Bucket just commented on the outcome. Count Iblis's AN/I thread on this was perhaps ill advised but that's already over with. So I really don't think this is at all necessary now.-- JohnBlackburne ^words _deeds 08:51, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

• The claim that I have been advised to fight ArbCom “tooth and nail”, and that the named editors should therefore be subjected to sanction is wrong. First, no diffs support the claim. Second, suppression of comment on the basis that it is disruptive advocacy is disingenuous. It is really an example of killing the messenger. Third, I don't have to take any advice offered, even were it offered. Fourth, the only disruption that could result from my taking bad advice (were it offered) is that I would become sanctioned. On that basis, bring action against Stifle for his advice, and AGK for his poor advocacy, which led to very clear harm. ArbCom has demonstrated again and again that they will sanction me under virtually any possible pretext, so claiming some concern for my welfare is, well, worth a rueful smile. Brews ohare ( talk) 17:04, 29 August 2010 (UTC)
• Carcharoth has taken this venue as an opportunity to make various suggestions as to how Brews_ohare could attempt to “redeem” himself, penance for his sins that “might” be looked upon with favor, but no guarantees. This advice belongs on my Talk page, not here. Suggesting that there is a lot of WP that is open to me lying outside of my areas of expertise hardly mitigates castration, if that is what is intended. As for redemption: ArbCom has been extremely selective in evaluating my activities, ignoring myriads of helpful contributions I have made to instead value complaints in a few instances by a few editors with a history of altercation, and blow them up into a huge topic ban. ArbCom's one-sided view of matters and overreaction to complaints appears to be an idée fixe, unlikely to change. Brews ohare ( talk) 15:38, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

• This motion is unfortunately partly my fault, since I made the snarky comment [1] (a countersnark to Count Iblis's snarky comment [2]) that triggered the exchange leading to GWH's request. Count Iblis et al had been pretty well behaved in the amendment discussion earlier, as far as I noticed (I admittedly wasn't paying close attention) so I want to clarify that my suggestion for the involved parties to stay away from each other wasn't especially directed at the "advocates". Rather, I commented because in these past couple of actions, Brews's opponents, while technically "right", seemed way too eager to rush to AE when Brews messed up, rather than (say) first leaving Brews a talk message asking him to undo the problematic edit. Or better yet, try to disengage from Brews completely and let other users deal with it if problems occur. When we restrict an editor, the idea is not that we actually want to ban them and pounce on every possible slip. We're instead trying to channel their editing energy away from past problem areas, in the hope of getting good editing from them in other areas.

Regarding the current motion, given my role in it I can't bring myself to suggest anything other than that Arbcom let the thing slide this time, and just advise the targets to put a sock in it in rather strong terms. I supported the original restriction [3] [4] and I think it was the right thing at the time and that it helped, and that the rationale I gave back then still seems ok to me in retrospect. Arbcom should indeed be open to reinstating it if it again becomes necessary. But as before, a restriction like that is a fairly drastic step, to be reserved for really persistent disruption or bad influence. 67.119.3.248 ( talk) 04:37, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

Hell in a bucket--there are areas where Brews is a real expert, and we want his contributions in those areas. There are other areas where he only thinks he is an expert, and that has caused a lot of trouble. 67.119.3.248 ( talk) 06:23, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

Statement by Count Iblis

There never has been much of an advocacy for Brews from my side. I did utter my strong disagreements with the topic ban when it was imposed in late 2009. But in later discussions I tried to propose pragmatic solutions. It isn't much different now. JohnBlackburne is perhaps right when he says that I perhaps shouldn't have started that AN/I thread. A constructive discussion with Jehochman, Brews and me followed here, it would have been better had that discussion started straightaway, of course.

Note that this time, I haven't even said that I disagree with the topic ban. Sure, I do disagree, but before I wrote this sentence right now, I hadn't even said it here on Wikipedia explicitely. While you can read my long discussions with Brews on my talk page and guess this, a completely neutral Wikipedian who hadn't heard of Count Iblis before, couldn't have concluded this. I do after all suggest that Brews make the contributions he likes to make here, on Wikiversity or Wikibooks instead. I already explained my arguments in detail on my talk page, so there is no need to explain everything here. It suffices to say that Brews, Likebox and me share the same view about educational articles that the wider Wikipedia community does not agree with. Count Iblis ( talk) 15:03, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

Very long reply to Georgewilliamherbert which is necessary in order to take away suggestions of past misconduct on my part.

Georgewilliamherbert: "The message is, Arbcom and the community do have the right to act if disruptive behavior persists"

I agree 100%

Georgewilliamherbert: "that Arbcom and the community previously found this behavior by the then-four of you to be sufficiently disruptive to intervene"

Wrong, certainly as far as my behavior goes. It is true that a motion was passed, but without any valid grounds as far I was concerned. The motion could not be contested and I chose not to object to it, as I explained in detail on my talk page. The fact that you now intent to use the past motion as an argument without presenting any facts, shows that behaving in a reasonable way in that case (i.e. agreeing to disagree and moving on), may be problematic in the future as it can be seen as admitting guilt. Some Admin may dig up old dirt and use it against you in an unreasonable way. I find this very problematic.

Georgewilliamherbert: "and that you and Count Iblis were at it again."

This partially builds on the previous mistaken assumption and is thus wrong. What I do find troubling, though, is that you seem to see in something that I wrote on that Notification page that is problematic. But I don't have a clue what that could be. I.m.o., if someone makes a statement that is seen to be problematic, one should notify the editor on his/her talk page and ask for clarification and then settle the matter there. Adminstrative intervention should follow if it is clear that there is disruption and that this is going to continue without intervention.

I think I have made it clear already 3 or 4 times what my opinion of Brews is right now. Note that Jehochman supported my advice to Brews to make his physics contributions to Wikibooks and Wikiversity. So, I'm not sure how I'm advocating for Brews in a problematic way, let alone in a disruptive way.

If I do my best to WP:AGF and think hard at what is going on here, I can only come to this conclusion. You as an experienced Wikipedian and an Admin know that mere advocacy shouldn't get you in trouble. You may have seen cases of problematic advocacy and even in these cases people typically are not sanctioned (I've seen quite a few of such cases). Then you see that there was a motion passed against us, so you draw the conclusion that we must have done something enormously outrageous for this to have happened. So, in your eyes, we are extremely dangerous persons. The slightest hint of advocacy on our part must thus be fought with all possible means.

Then, how can we prevent this from happening? Clearly, not by staying silent. While we should agree to not do anything that others object to on rational grounds, what we should not do is let mistaken perceptions of past bad behavior pass unchallenged. This is a public Wiki-board read by many people, so your suggestions of misconduct on my part may be picked up by others, leading to further trouble in the future. Therefore, this very long reply belongs here. Count Iblis ( talk) 21:27, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

Reply to Guy

Guy writes below: "...the extension of the restrictions appears to have caused precisely the same issues of advocacy that were experienced previously"

And that's plain nonsense. Perhaps you didn't read the long text written by me above and only noted its length and concluded, without reading, that this text is an advocacy text for Brews. But if you take 5 minutes to read the above text, you'll see that I'm simply defending myself against unfounded accusations leveled at me.

Guy writes: "Obdurate refusal to accept a consensus decision is disruptive and a time sink for everyone else."

I agree, but this the case when process is abused. E.g. when someone repeatedly puts the same article on AFD despite consensus to keep it. In this case, if I were to email ArbCom every week, or email Jimbo every week or I would launch appeals to lift the topic ban against Brews every week, then of course, that would be disruptive.

But, I don't think there is any such repetitative abuse of process to push my view w.r.t. Brews. There wasn't any such problem with me the last time, although I had ben involved more with Brews then. This time, the main involvement has been one AN/I discussion and a discussion on my talk page with Brews, Jehochman and me. If you take the time to read that discussion, you'll see no trace whatsover of "advocacy". I adviced Brews to contribute to Wiki-Books or WikiVersity. Jehochman agreed with me that this would be a good solution, although by mentioning "original research" he hit a raw nerve.

What I do notice is the tendency of people to see things that aren't there. Take e.g. that template I made that I had to remove after an AN/I debate? At the end of that debate I said that I had replaced that template by an "invisible template". By that I meant that editors can always, by consensus, agree to stick to certain rules, without the template being there saying that explicitely. But some editors were so obsessed with opposing my template, that they panicked about my "invisible template". And what if an invisible template really had been added? I mean, it would still be invisible, right? So, what was all the fuss about? :) Count Iblis ( talk) 20:52, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

Guy

"Let them have a user sub-page where they rail against the unfairness of it all and leave it at that"

And how is that a good thing? That would exactly be something we should not tolerate on Wikipedia. Also, note that on the latest Enforcement Request against Brews, I could communicate that Brews is not going to edit Wikipedia for the coming few weeks. That's relevant information, that I would not be allowed to mention if the restriction is re-imposed. But I would instead be allowed to "rail against unfairness" on some userpage??? Count Iblis ( talk) 21:00, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

Statement by Hell in a Bucket

I would again ask for proof in the forms of diffs that Iblis or myself have engaged in disruptive or otherwise broke policy. I've asked several times but no one seems willing or able to do so. I see this motion as a retailatory response for disagreeing appropriately and not being willing to be lead around blindly. Hell In A Bucket ( talk) 15:10, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

@67.119.3.248, my question to you is what are we advocating? I've not been involved in Brews dispute until somone, I believe Sandstein had made a overstep on the Arbcom enforcement and he asked for clarification. After that it degenerated into accusations of bad advocacy. No one is telling Brews to do anything. My only concern was overstepping admin authority and the fact that while there is a vocal group of people that defend some of the things that happen for Brews there is a whole different group that howls for his head. I'm getting sick of it frankly on both sides. I was happy to see that some of those editors did come here and say this was a poorly thought motion. I do agree in principal that there should be someone who can govern these disputes that will be able to fairly look at both sides without making a full trial of it every time we go through stuff like this. Sometimes I think that wikipedia scorns experts, it's a love hate relationship though. We need experts to help with their expertise but the encyclopedia is also open to everyone so it doesn't always mix, inferiority complexes maybe? I'm not directing that at anyone just a general observation of possible issues here.

Reply to Georgewilliamherbert What message are you trying to send? To not disagree or that you will silence people? I take offense to your threats of a block and refusal to back up any of your claims that this was nec. Have you considered that while you may have been trying to help things there was no need to threaten or posture? All this does is make things worse, Iblis has been civil during this entire thing, I have not but I have made a hard effort to moderate my tone to focus on the issues I perceive, but comments like "there's no reason not to haul out the big gun again and point it" is not helpful in the slightest because it's clearly meant and insinuated as a means of intimidation imho. Hell In A Bucket ( talk) 07:29, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

General Comment, It's not entirely helpful to say that the first was entirely not needed but it didn't go the entire way that was needed to fully resolve the problem. For my part I made several references that were not always civil. However the opposite side has a sense of right and sense of duty that does not help tone down the fire. I'm sorry but I really think is a problem here is the perception that everything we do and have done have always been wrong however I'm more concerned with this incident and show whether or not wrongs perceived or not can be brought to the light of day within this conversation and incidents scope. The finger pointing back and forth is really getting old and is entirely not working for either side. Hell In A Bucket ( talk) 21:28, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

Comment by Headbomb

I don't see why this is needed. The advocacy ban was needed a few months ago because of the constant appeal, re-appeal, wikilawyering, etc... Tombe hasn't said thing about a thing here, Likebox is indef banned, Ohare kept to the enforcement request and participate in the "discuss the motion" after the closure as asked some people some clarification (which is again fine and normal), and I don't see what Iblis did that kept pouring oil on the fire. Threads like this however, does pour oil on the fire. There was an AE, and some people were unhappy with the result, and discussed and protested, as is usual. IMO, there's no sign that the advocacy problem is resurfacing, so there is no need to "nip it in the bud" or whatever. In other words, what JohnBlackburne said. Close this thread and let's be done with it. Headbomb { talk / contribs / physics / books} 02:55, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

Comment by Dr.K.

I am disappointed with GWH whom I consider a thoughtful and capable admin. But in this case HiaB and Count Iblis have done nothing to merit such a drastic proposal, in fact they have been constructive in their comments and overall approach. The worst mistake in bringing this proposal here however is the case of David Tombe. As Headbomb and John Blackburne already mentioned, David Tombe has done absolutely nothing to merit this. He has fastidiously stayed away from Brews as if Brews did not exist. David Tombe complied with the advocacy sanctions and continued complying even after they were lifted. He has conformed in every possible way to these sanctions and then some. He actually fell silent. By going after him what message do we send to those who reform? That we'll get them anyway? Dr.K.  ^{λogos πraxis} 03:47, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

Comment by David Tombe

I would agree with what Count Iblis says above. There was no behaviour in the first place that remotely warranted the original advocacy ban. It seemed rather like an attempt to give a free run to those who wanted to advocate adversely against Brews ohare by silencing those who had been speaking out in his defence. On my own part, I was very little involved in the period leading up to the original advocacy motion back in March 2010, and I was quite surprised that my name had even appeared on the original advocacy motion. I seem to recall that when I saw my name on the original motion back in March, that I said that I would support the motion if Brews's opponents were also named. But my perfectly reasonable compromise was completely brushed aside.

I think it's important, in order to prevent any distortion of history in the minds of readers, to remind readers that the original advocacy restriction was unprecendented and without any justification whatsoever, and in fact it was a matter of great shame for ARBCOM which I'm sure that they would all like to quickly forget about. It's time for everybody to move on from this unfortunate episode. David Tombe ( talk) 10:04, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

Further discussion

Statements here may address all the amendments, but individual statements under each proposed amendment are preferred. If there is only one proposed amendment, then no statements should be added here.

Nobody in the world has enough time to deal with these constant attempts to relegislate the Speed of Light case. The usual suspects have never accepted the outcome, and the extension of the restrictions appears to have caused precisely the same issues of advocacy that were experienced previously; therefore the same remedy would apear to be appropriate. Obdurate refusal to accept a consensus decision is disruptive and a time sink for everyone else. Let them have a user sub-page where they rail against the unfairness of it all and leave it at that. Guy ( Help!) 07:54, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

For a wonderful example of blindly commenting and assuming bad faith, I think Guy's attitude towards this is expressed best in his own words. "Wolf! Wolf! Guy (Help!) 17:35, 21 September 2010 (UTC) " [ [5]] How is this in anyway constructive or appropriate for a administrators actions. George William Herbert at least had the decency to discuss the situation rather then insult people. Hell In A Bucket ( talk) 19:45, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

JZG has replied with a clear position on these proceedings [ [6]]. I understand that each editor has a right to his own opinion and I have told him I will respect that. Hell In A Bucket ( talk) 22:05, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Statement by yet another editor

Clerk notes

This section is for administrative notes by the clerks (including clerk recusals).

Arbitrator views and discussion

• I've collapsed the above as I don't wish to be patronising to Brews. Both the above and the comments at the noticeboard talk page were a genuine attempt to advise him on his options here. Clearly the time is not right for this, but I hope he may consider it at some point in the future. Getting back to the topic here, my view is that nothing needs doing here, though GWH filing this can be seen as more of a warning than anything else. Not intimidation, though I can understand how it can be seen that way. Administrators need to be able to warn without being accused of intimidation, though equally they should be sensitive to being seen as acting in an intimidating manner. Carcharoth ( talk) 19:44, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
• Agree in general with Carcharoth, don't think it's necessary at this time to reimpose the advocacy restriction. SirFozzie ( talk) 01:26, 1 September 2010 (UTC)
  • I have asked that this be archived without action in 24-48 hours if there are no further actions from the Arbs on this. SirFozzie ( talk) 20:19, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
    • Sounds fine. KnightLago ( talk) 01:27, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

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Initiated by Beeblebrox ( talk) at 19:36, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

Case affected

ChildofMidnight arbitration case ( t) ( ev /  t) ( w /  t) ( pd /  t)

Clauses to which an amendment is requested

ChildofMidnight banned

1) ChildofMidnight ( talk · contribs) is banned from Wikipedia for one year.

Passed 10 to 0, 03:48, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

List of users affected by or involved in this amendment

• Beeblebrox ( talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA) (initiator)
• ChildofMidnight ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Confirmation that the above users are aware of this request

• [7] (diff of notification of this thread on Username2's talk page)

Amendment 1

Due to continued sockpuppetry and repeated resetting of the one year ban, ChildofMidnight is now indefinitely banned from editing Wikipedia.

Statement by Beeblebrox

Due to multiple incidents of sockpuppetry it seems clear that merely re-setting CoM's ban each time is not an effective remedy. I therefore suggest that the ban be extended to an indefinite full site ban. Beeblebrox ( talk) 20:12, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

Reply to NW: I suppose it could, but I thought it best if there was no disconnect between the block and the ban. Otherwise when the current year of banning was over it might be expected that the block would simply be lifted. Beeblebrox ( talk) 20:24, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

• Replies to several of the below remarks: There was quite a stack of behavioral evidence presented at the SPI case. No, there is not a "smoking gun" a single piece of evidence that trumps any argument to the contrary, but I firmly believe the various pieces of evidence taken as a whole add up to another CoM sock. I don't appreciate the accusations of vindictiveness or doing something just because I don't like somebody, and I'll thank you to either quantify such statements with evidence of your own or stop making them. In actuality I kind of liked CoM and I thought it was a shame he ended up banned, but he brought it upon himself because he didn't know when to quit. And since he apparently still hasn't figured out when to quit I don't see any logic in assuming resetting the ban timer yet again will suffice to get the message across. Sometimes even a user with as many great content contributions as CoM simply can't function within the minimum standards of civility required by this project and we have no choice but show them the door. Beeblebrox ( talk) 01:07, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

@Carcharoth: He was in fact given a chance to comment at the SPI, he was unblocked for part of the period that it was opened and made numerous edits to articles but ignored the SPI until after I blocked him as a sock. Beeblebrox ( talk) 01:13, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

"accusations of vindictiveness" In my case, I'd see the actions here as far less suspicious if it hadn't been for the CU. Why call for a CU if you're going to block anyway, no matter what the CU reports? If the DUCK evidence was overwhelming, there's no need for a CU (AIUI (admittedly poorly), CU is discouraged in such cases on privacy grounds). If the CU will have no influence on the outcome, then again, why have a CU? This looks too much like a CU that wasn't for investigative purposes, but for extra justification to a pre-judged decision. That's not a behaviour that I believe to be how we're supposed to work. Andy Dingley ( talk) 09:15, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

I thought I'd clarified this sufficiently, but I guess not. I requested the CU (not Beeblebrox) on the basis of enough evidence to persuade a respected checkuser to do it. For various reasons the checkuser took fully five days to conclude, in which time I collated rather more evidence - ultimately enough that I wouldn't have asked for CU in the first place if I'd had it all originally. Rd232 ^talk 09:55, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

• I opened this request today because the situation came to a head today, but this will likely be my last opportunity to comment on the matter until at least next Tuesday. Beeblebrox ( talk) 01:07, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

OK everyone, I am literally on my way out the door for the next four days, but if you would all have a look at my last posting to FSN talk page [8] you will find he has accidently given us the smoking gun we were looking for. Beeblebrox ( talk) 18:17, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

Well, looks like there has been an awful lot of discussion while I was gone, and CoM's "ban timer" has been reset once again, but no decision on my proposal. I'd like to clarify that I am seeking a modification because the one-year ban is not being respected and is therefore an ineffective remedy. An indefinite ban does not really solve that problem, but it would streamline things when these socks are detected in that they are generally disruptive users anyway so we wouldn't need to worry so much about whether they really are CoM or not as there would not be a clock to reset every time. In short, it would enable us to take a WP:RBI approach, reducing the drama level. Of course if the arbs are unconvinced despite the cumulative merit of all the various pieces of evidence then we are back to square one. Beeblebrox ( talk) 18:20, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

@Risker's latest remarks: It was never my intention for this to be about determining if FSN was really CoM or not. As far as I am concerned that was determined before I ever came here. My intent was actually to reduce the level of drama around this by simply banning CoM outright so that it didn't really matter next time he socked as the ban timer would no longer be in play. Clearly, this conversation has not gone as I had intended but I must say I am somewhat surprised at the attitude coming from the arbs, which basically seems to be that we ignore the behavioral evidence but don't overturn the block of FSN or the reset of the ban on CoM, and basically ignore the idea of extending the ban to indefinite, which would be a fairly normal and appropriate response to socking by a banned user. This ambiguity leaves everyone involved wondering what is supposed to happen now. If CoM was socking again, which I am obviously convinced of, he should at the very least be blocked indefinitely, as we would do to any other serial sockpuppeteer. If he wasn't, which seems unlikely, then the ban timer needs to be set back to where it was before this latest incident, and I suppose my block of FSN needs to be reconsidered as well. I never intended this to be a rerun of the SPI case, but it has turned into that instead of a discussion amending CoM's ban. Beeblebrox ( talk) 16:45, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

• I know you guys have a lot on your plate, but would it be possible to get some sort of unambiguous statement that represents an actual decision by the committee? A point that seems to have been missed by some is that I did in fact block FSN for being a sockpuppet of CoM. That is the logged reason the account is currently blocked. Yes, they were generally a disruptive user otherwise (just like CoM) and were particularly nasty and resorted to personal attacks when confronted or blocked (just like CoM) but I explicitly blocked them for being a sock. Right now another user is on FSNs talk page basically preparing to edit-by-proxy on FSN's behalf. If he is a ban evading sockpuppet, that needs to be stopped. If he isn't, then my block was invalid. Since no admin has seen fit to accept any of his unblock requests it seems the burden is on ArbCom to make that determination, whether you want to or not. Sorry guys, as I said this was never what I intended to this conversation to be about, but it is now and it appears the onus is on you to resolve it. Beeblebrox ( talk) 17:41, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

• There is now a pending unblock request and a thread at ANI regarding this, and nobody seems to want to take any action because the committee is involved. Beeblebrox ( talk) 19:51, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

Statement by NuclearWarfare

Could this not be accomplished just as easily with an indef block? NW ( Talk) 19:49, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

Further discussion

Statements here may address all the amendments, but individual statements under each proposed amendment are preferred. If there is only one proposed amendment, then no statements should be added here.

Statement by Andy Dingley

This appears to have arisen in response to sock allegations for Freakshownerd ( talk · contribs), as described at SPI/ChildofMidnight

Behavioural similarities were sufficient to justify use of CU, which didn't report any visible connection between the two accounts. Despite this, the instigating admin Beeblebrox has proceeded to indef block the alleged sock and is now seeking an indef ban extension for CoM. At least two editors have expressed concern over this action, in the absence of strong evidence to support the sock allegation. Andy Dingley ( talk) 23:18, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

[The following was intended for the SPI page, but I note an extremely rapid close and archiving of that page]

By "FSN has given up challenging", don't you mean "FSN has now been silenced by an indef block"?

It's all too easy to use phrases like "kangaroo court", but how about some evidence to back up these actions? As pointed out just above, WP:AGF still applies, particularly if contrary evidence isn't forthcoming. This is how we're supposed to work. Neither of these accounts are even vandals - "blocks are protective, not punitive", etc., etc. If either of these editors is secretly conspiring to undermine the foundations of the wikistate, then I'm sure their future actions will make that evident and we can get round to tarring and feathering them tomorrow, when it's obvious. In the meantime, a coincidental interest in obscure chocolate is no evidence for an indef ban! Andy Dingley ( talk) 23:27, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

@Heimstern"FSN most likely is a sock of CoM" I agree. But "most likely is" just isn't good enough when we're throwing around indef bans - particularly an indef ban of someone who, if we're wrong, wasn't even involved! Letting FSN run for longer isn't harmful - they're not one of our real annoyances of vandals and trolls. If they really are block-worthy / ban-worthy / CoM socking, then this will surely become very clear with time and we can act on them then, when it's unambiguous. Andy Dingley ( talk) 10:53, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

Statement by Rd232

The behavioural evidence at Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations/ChildofMidnight/Archive#Evidence_submitted_by_Rd232 proves beyond reasonable doubt that user:Freakshownerd is (a) a sock and (b) specifically, another sock of User:ChildofMidnight. Beyond that, a number of users commented on how familiar FSN's responses to a recent block were (reminiscent of CoM). FSN barely denied the socking allegation and made no serious attempt to critique the evidence, and appears to have given up. It appears likely that having had two socks discovered, CoM saw little mileage in challenging this instance, and is instead heading for further socking. Rd232 ^talk 23:48, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

@Andy Dingley: FSN has user talk access as well as email possibilities to challenge the evidence. So there is no question of him being "silenced". In addition, if you're going to pursue the same "ignore and downplay the evidence" tactic as FSN, you're just going to make me wonder who the hell you are (I don't know you from Adam, or why you'd defend FSN when he won't do so himself). Rd232 ^talk 23:48, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

If you're accusing me of being a sock, please come out and say so. You might note that I've also been critical of how RAN has been treated lately, so I'm clearly a sock! I very much do not appreciate your insinuation that anyone who does not support your actions is a useful idiot and dupe of Eastasia. 8-( Andy Dingley ( talk) 00:16, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

On the subject of RAN, it appears clear that FSN shares CoM's interest in drama. As the most exciting show on channel-wiki this season, RAN is a magnet to anyone so inclined. In other news, WMC sometimes talks about the weather. Andy Dingley ( talk) 00:25, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

If I was accusing somebody of something, they would know it. "wonder" was a precisely chosen word not implying any knowledge; and it would cover friendship or shared views as easily as socking, if I was inclined to pursue the thought, which I'm decidedly not. Rd232 ^talk 00:49, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

@Iridescent: well I'm disappointed you would say that. Would you address point 5 of my evidence, which I think is the single most damning point? (And incidentally, it is silly to say the negative CU was grounds for the block; it was held to be overridden by the strength of the behavioural evidence.) Rd232 ^talk 23:49, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

You don't find an 8-day old account jumping to RAN's defence on his user talk page and at ANI, with no apparent reason [not having previously visited either], at all strange - especially given the type of CoM-reminiscent remarks? You don't find it too coincidental that after CoM's sock creates a Pasco County nature reserve, FSN does so some time later? There are 3000+ counties in the US - what are the odds not only on creating a nature reserve article (let's say that's high, for a prolific user, though I dare say many prolific users haven't) but on the exact same county? At 3000:1 I find it highly unlikely that this is co-incidence. Rd232 ^talk 00:55, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

I find it hugely suspicious, but suspicion alone doesn't justify an indef ban. Andy Dingley ( talk) 00:59, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

Any one of the points listed in my SPI evidence looks suspicious. Added up, they are conclusive. You cannot treat each one in isolation as "not conclusive"; the evidence is additive and taken as a whole, conclusive. Rd232 ^talk 01:04, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

And we've barely even mentioned the "voice" evidence (cf CoM RFCU). Tarc indicated he might be willing to do a sort of linguistic comparison if necessary; I guess it's necessary. (Though for those most familiar with CoM, it doesn't seem to be.) Rd232 ^talk 01:05, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

@Iridescent: I find it odd that you mention the number of wikistalk overlapping pages when the SPI evidence does not. The SPI evidence is qualitative, not quantitative. Rd232 ^talk 09:58, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

@Iridescent:

• fine, then forget the wikistalk part of point 5; it was a lazy way of showing that CoM was aware of RAN's existence, and had some interest overlaps. I should have just relied on CoM's well-known tendency to stick his nose in absolutely everywhere at ANI without obvious need to do so, with the same chorus of "abusive admins". FSN did just that within a few days of account creation, jumping in unprompted to support RAN [9] and Giacomo [10] 2 days later, neither of whom the account had any prior connection with I can see. And the similarity of tone and content (check the diffs) speaks for itself, for those familiar with CoM.
• on the milagros thing - "pretty clearly just ran a search and created links" - hardly, not least since he added a link to just one article. Looking at the contribs, FSN had no obvious reason to be searching "milagros" at the time, and it's hardly a typical topic for him. I find it far more likely that he went to Todos (which is a typical topic, just a very obscure page), saw something that needed wikilinking, [11] searched for the appropriate wikilink, and found the need for a hatnote. What particularly clinches this sequence over yours (I hadn't wanted to point out this detail, it's more help for future socking!) is that Todos Santos had its first edit since January (when it was last edited by CoM) on 13 June (3 days before the FSN edit), when an anon removed the wikilink to milagros [12]. In consequence, the page would have appeared on CoM's watchlist as a recently edited page, which I have no doubt CoM was continuing to log in to check. Rd232 ^talk 15:00, 28 August 2010 (UTC)
• any particular reason you ignored the Pasco County evidence? Rd232 ^talk 15:00, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

@Iridescent: I'm increasingly astounded at this attitude coming from a fellow admin. Not only have you ignored my expansion on the Todos Santos Chocolates point, but you misread the Pasco County evidence completely. I made no claim that the users were in Pasco County (I said "connection to / interest in", which I guess was a clumsy way of putting it) rather I pointed out that the previous sock (Electroshoxcure) create a Pasco County nature reserve as one of his 7 article creations, and the very first nature reserve article FSN creates is in Pasco County. This is roughly a 3000:1 coincidence even if you assume that all users create nature reserve articles! (Which is clearly untrue, but the probability attached to that is much harder to say anything about.) Basically, Electroshoxcure started the job of expanding coverage of Pasco County nature reserve articles and some weeks later FSN continued it. The likelihood of the Pasco connection being mere coincidence ("I'm gonna create a nature reserve article, don't care where, how about ... there") is further decreased by the creation of several local school article redirects and a geo stub. (Also probability of coincidence can be contextualised by noting that no Pasco nature reserve articles were created between 2006 and 2010, when Electroshoxcure and FSN, plus what is now declared to be a friend of FSN's, contribute.) Rd232 ^talk 16:12, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

re CoM socking: unless I'm way off base, CoM has given up on the idea of rescuing the FSN account, and is enjoying some disruptive socking. [ Category:Suspected Wikipedia sockpuppets of ChildofMidnight. I find this particularly nice (though downplaying contributions here from Bigtimepeace seems a mite unfair). Rd232 ^talk 01:00, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

@Heimstern: It seems likely to me that FSN has already socked disruptively. User:Overturn_and_censure_Tarc (29 July) and User:Overturn_deletion_to_censure_Tarc! (29 Aug) are both SPAs for challenging an FSN DRV and attacking Tarc using (in the first instance) language directed by Tarc at FSN at that DRV. [13] FSN listed the same page at DRV twice - with the SPA appearing soon after in each case. Rd232 ^talk 12:11, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

@Risker: unless someone wants to argue that these abusive socks mentioned just above (plus this one who notably did this) are not in fact FSN (one preceding any blocking of FSN), then there is clear evidence that FSN was heading down a ban path anyway. Rd232 ^talk 17:38, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

@Coren: "Whether or not that account was under the control of — or associated with — ChildofMidnight is not especially relevant, so I don't think it is useful or necessary to attempt to tie them explicitly at this point." - ?? I think at this point Arbcom needs to make up its mind. Either it collectively thinks (a) FSN=CoM, and such socking, including previous socking and disruptive socking additional to FSN, is sufficient to extend CoM ban to indefinite to minimise cost of dealing with future CoM socking (b) FSN=CoM, but not worth extending the ban other than resetting the clock, which already done (c) FSN is in fact not CoM (or not conclusively so), and some kind of action relating to that conclusion be taken (be it requesting a re-opening of the SPI, taking it to WP:AN, or something else). If Arbcom basically thinks option c is the case but does nothing at all, that is not just. Rd232 ^talk 18:57, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

Statement by Iridescent

This absolutely reeks of an "I don't like you" block, and this request to extend CoM's ban on this weak foundation just looks like petty vindictiveness. I have looked over all the evidence here, and I see no smoking gun at all. Yes, they edited in similar areas, but "food" and "US politics" are hardly obscure fields, and the Wikistalk tool is generally virtually meaningless when one of the editors has a high edit count, as CoM did (I believe I have 20,000 pages in common with J.delanoy). I see no pattern of problematic edits from the Freakshownerd account—those blocks were all dubious and quickly overturned. While it may be CoM sneaking under the wire, he's not causing any problems if it is, and there's at least a reasonable chance that this is a legitimate new user being hounded off on " edits in a similar way" grounds. Filing a request for checkuser and using the fact that it came back negative as grounds for a block, which certainly appears to be what's happened here, is ABF in the extreme. –  iridescent 23:38, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

@Rd232: I really don't see anything there to link CoM and FSN. I've had numerous issues with User:Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) myself in the past (albeit none recently) and am certainly not going to jump to his defense; however, from my previous interactions with him, I know that he does have something of a "fan club" of talkpage watchers ( 126 of them), and don't find it at all unusual that two different users will jump in to argue his case. I think there's good evidence that FSN isn't a new user, but very little to suggest either that he's COM or that he's anything other than a former user making a clean start or an IP creating an account for the first time. Yes, he may be COM, but it's equally possible that he's not. As I've previously stated, MZMcBride's tool is not a useful tool for sockpuppet investigations ( 8 pages in common between Freakshownerd and ChildofMidnight; 31 pages in common between Freakshownerd and myself; 647 pages in common between you and me). If he is COM, then leave him until he's either actually caused a problem, or has done something to prove beyond reasonable doubt that they're the same person. If he isn't, then you've just hounded off a legitimate user, and are now lobbying to extend COM's block for something he didn't do.

@Rd232: re "I find it odd that you mention the number of wikistalk overlapping pages when the SPI evidence does not"—the first sentence of point 5 in your evidence—which is supposed to be the clincher, according to your statement above—is "CoM has a high wikistalk overlap (showing strong onwiki relationship) with User:Richard Arthur Norton (1958- )". The overlap between them is 102 articles, which for two users with high edit counts is utterly unconvincing. Comparing CoM with two random users having a similar number of total edits to Richard's (according to WP:WBE), shows CoM as having about the same overlap with Magioladitis and three times as much overlap with Can't sleep, clown will eat me. To put that in perspective, my overlap with CoM is 359 pages.

Regarding "There is a very notable wikistalk overlap between Freakshownerd and CoM at a very hard to reach page, outside the main political-interest arena they share: Todos Santos Chocolates was created by CoM", if you look at FSN's editing history for that day, shortly before his sole edit to that page, adding a link to Milagro (votive), he'd made this edit, so had pretty clearly just ran a search and created links. Honestly, this is all utterly unconvincing; you've decided that the accounts are linked, and are grabbing at any piece of 'evidence', however tenuous, to back it up. It's certainly possible that these accounts are socks, but if this is all you have, there's not even a balance of probabilities, let alone beyond reasonable doubt. –  iridescent 12:48, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

@Rd232: Re "any particular reason you ignored the Pasco County evidence?"—yes, because it's ridiculous. Not only is St Petersburg a major metropolitan area (and home, incidentally, to two of our most prolific long-term sockmasters, neither of which is CoM), the idea that "created articles on a place" indicates a connection with the place is ludicrous. In the last couple of months, I've created eight articles on rural Buckinghamshire, but I don't live anywhere near the place, while I've a grand total of zero articles about either the place I do live or the place I'm originally from. "Both accounts worked on Florida-related articles" is right up there with "speaks German in a similar way". –  iridescent 15:29, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

Statement by Tarc

Well, coming back from a weekend bender, I find it a bit bewildering to see this degree of skepticism over the FSN-CoM connections. Read the comment left at User talk:ChildofMidnight#Sockpuppetry case by him; one giant thumbing of the nose at all of us, masquerading as golly-gee-whiz "It's not really me!" innocence. Seriously.

Don't know if I have the time to tonight, but many, many diffs can easily be dug the archives for this page, Arb enforcement, and AN/I of CoM savaging every admin who dares to lift a finger to sanction or block him, or voice support of other admins doing same. Many bad editors do this of course, but there are peculiarities in the tone and the delivery of these tirades, how the circle ever-widens to include more and more people that are "against him". Anyone with a even a passing familiarity with CoM's brand of WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT-flavored aggression, especially when dealing with unblock requests, should be painfully obvious in FSN's talk page when he's dealing with same. Tarc ( talk) 21:58, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

• Further observation. Reposting this from AN/I. While not a smoking gun or anything, IMO it is something to consider.
  • Another telling clue that I realized recently is Freakshownerd's interactions with myself. We crossed paths at DRV over record label prods several months back, I still had his talk page on watch from commenting there, so a few months later when I noticed some worsening relations between him and WLU, I offered advice on dispute resolution, which he removed without comment 1 minute later. Obviously anyone can remove any comment they wish from their own talk page, but that is pretty drastic to do to someone with who you presumably have had only brief past contact with. It is something one would do to someone whom they are rather familiar with and have a history with. Tarc ( talk) 21:24, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

Statement by Heimstern

I'm afraid I must agree with Tarc. It's not really the common editing areas that constitute a smoking gun here, though they are useful as circumstantial evidence to abet the case. It's the discussion comments taking admins to task that really suggest that this is none other than ChildofMidnight. These diffs fit his style like hand in glove. His response on CoM's talk after the accusation was made, in which he addresses (and congratulates!) ChildofMidnight, an editor who was banned before the FSN account was created, rather than addressing the evidence or his accusers, isn't really the sort of behaviour I'd expect from an innocent party, either. Thus, contra Risker and Shell, I must conclude that FSN most likely is a sock of CoM. And do note that I'm not the type to go out trying to get CoM elimated: after his confirmed socking incident in May, I chose not to reset his block (someone else did) and tried to convince him not to sock again. I'm afraid my attempt failed. Heimstern Läufer (talk) 23:39, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

• I must echo Bigtimepeace here and ask why the general lack of useful responses on the part of the arbs. The evidence he has presented is compelling, and yet we still have a rather incomprehensible skepticism on the part of some arbs and even less comprehensible apathy from others. The implication seems to be "so it looks like probably he socked. Meh. Let's not worry about it." Heimstern Läufer (talk) 14:56, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Statement by Vaguely Involved, but Mostly Just Entertained, PhGustaf

We're not talking about capital punishment here; the criterion is not "beyond a reasonable doubt" but "by a preponderance of the evidence", and I think Judge Wapner would find against CoM, in whatever guise, in a New York minute. All the same, I see no difference in utility between an updated 1-year block and an indef. PhGustaf ( talk) 00:01, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

Statement from Bigtimepeace

I'm not very active right now but Tarc directed me to this situation, I guess because I know as much as anyone about ChildofMidnight's "style" through frequent interaction and even more so through looking at many, many diffs when preparing his user conduct RfC. Given some of the evidence already presented and looking at a few things myself, I would bet a significant amount of money that Freakshownerd is ChildofMidnight. Of course I could be wrong, but I would be pretty astonished if these were different people. The IP information is different--which could have multiple explanations--but all of the "duck" type evidence looks and sounds like C of M. Let me just mention two specific things in some detail.

• One example of language similarity, already mentioned above. This is really a textbook ChildofMidnight type statement, and no other editor comes to mind who writes quite like this. First, it uses the "shame on so and so" phrasing (as in [14] and [15]) which was a common tactic of C of M. Also the reference to "abuse" was incredibly common for C of M and not, I think, so much for the rest of us (e.g. [16] and [17], but there are dozens of similar examples). The comment demonstrates an affinity for the uncommon term "grotesque," which seems to be seldom used the way C of M uses it, i.e describing the behavior of other editors as "grotesque" (see here--two instances, and it also includes the regularly used C of M term "outrageous"--plus [18] [19] [20]). C of M had a very unique "voice" when he was angry and the traits included listing out names of "offenders" and using a canned set of terms to indicate outrage and injustice (abuse, vile, outrageous, grotesque, harassment, sick, bullying, etc.). I'm quite certain that if I had read the linked comment from Freakshownerd cold without having any idea who wrote it and with the user info removed, I would have quickly said, "that's ChildofMidnight." I know this is impressionistic "evidence," but I am pretty familiar with how this editor writes, and I just don't have the time or inclination to do a full blown linguistic analysis.

• One other point I stumbled across because I remembered an earlier reference to it. Freakshownerd made a small to Jonnycake, an article which is neither particularly heavily edited nor viewed. A lot of work was done on this article by User:Drmies, a Wiki friend of C of M's (I should point out that I've never seen anything problematic from Drmies, seems to be an excellent editor). Drmies actually told C of M about this work, saying "Come on over for some Jonnycakes tomorrow. With Tedder's help I'm trying to turn it into a GA." This was one of the few messages posted on C of M's talk page after the ArbCom case concluded to which he responded, so he was one of the few Wikipedians (and possibly one of the few humans) who had Johnnycakes on the mind at some point in the last few months. It's telling, to me at least, that one of C of M's closest Wiki friends would improve an obscure food article, tell C of M about it while the latter was banned, and that a few months later a fairly new account who sounds and edits like C of M would show up to edit there.

Along with the other common interests between the two accounts (and, yes, a strong interest in quirky food topics and hot button American political issues, from the perspective of a conservative, is not a common profile among prolific content contributors), the overall stylistic similarity points strongly to ChildofMidnight and no one else I can think of (this is clearly a returning editor, I assume we can all agree on that). It's surprising to me that Shell could suggest that it's "rather unlikely that this user is CoM." At the very least, it's pretty likely—there are just too many similarities here.

That said I have no brilliant suggestions about what to do, assuming I'm correct. While I found C of M's editing pattern atrocious, I argued pretty strongly against blocking him for a year, preferring a lesser remedy. In part this was because I thought it was worth trying but also because I thought there was a good chance C of M would sock and would be harder to keep track of once he did. That's happened at least once and quite likely twice now. Banning indefinitely and/or resetting the block again won't do much to change that. Assuming Freakshownerd is C of M, he's willing to have a lot of us waste time by failing to 'fess up, so I don't think the future looks very encouraging. Maybe we should just leave things as they are unless the committee or a discussion on a noticeboard determines that Freakshownerd should not have been blocked as a sock. I think the block was warranted, though probably the SPI case should have stayed open longer. -- Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 01:51, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

A couple of other things which to me almost add up to "case closed." First, Freakshownerd shows the same tendency to run over to Jimbo that ChildofMidnight did (I could find evidence of this tendency by C of M, but he did it over and over again which is I think is well known). Freakshownerd also recently engaged in heated argument on Jimbo's page (also like C of M). As you can see from FSN's 18:55 August 9th comment there the issue that was brought up was climate change, not really related to the topic, when FSN says "Has Arbcom acted yet to rein in the POV pushing fanatics of the Climate Cabal, who have clear COIs and hold Wikipedia's NPOV policy in disdain and want only their personal views represented?" That is again textbook C of M speak for his problems with the climate articles and with certain editors there (some context for that is here from the Arb case, but I'm sure that phrasing sounds familiar to everyone on the committee).

And one other specific point I noticed, again after a very cursory inspection of some edits. ChildofMidnight would sometimes create what I could only describe as "oddly general" or maybe "vaguely unencyclopedic" articles—the kind of thing that both seemed like a topic but not exactly, and which could not be expanded much. Examples would include Immediacy (philosophy), Religious values, and User:ChildofMidnight/vegetarian diet (the last was redirected to vegetarianism apparently). Upon registering FSN promptly created similar articles (now redirects) with Common language and Right (ethics). They also edited the articles Conscience, Moral compass, and Ethics. If you look at C of M's last 50 edits you'll notice a string of edits (actually the last article edits excepting one to Häagen-Dazs) to the Morality article. So C of M finished with some edits about morality, and within a day or two of creating an account FSN is editing the article on conscience and creating one on "right" in the ethical sense. To say that this is mere coincidence beggars belief.

Overall this passes the duck test, if we still use the duck test. C of M and Freakshownerd share all of the following attributes: pretty heavy editing; interest in contemporary political controversies in the U.S. from a conservative perspective ( this Barack Obama talk page diff is also highly reminiscent of C of M); interest in more obscure food-related topics; a tendency to make general edits related to morality or ethics; a tendency to create what could be described as "very general" articles; a tendency to create a lot of articles period; an interest in nature preserves in one particular part of Florida (iridescent is completely wrong about this point in my view—it's a significant piece of data taken along with everything else); edit made on Todos Santos Chocolates; intense anger over the global warming articles; a tendency to "appeal to Jimbo" and to argue at length with others on Jimbo's talk page (really, most people don't do that); a tendency to get angry with people who disagree with them and not listen to what they have to say very well (see User_talk:Freakshownerd#Civility_reminder for an FSN example); a tendency to lash out in a personal fashion when they do get angry and, more importantly, a tendency to use certain words and phrasings that are quite unique when they do so. Add to that that "Jonnycakes" bit mentioned above, and the simple fact that the FSN account was created two weeks after C of M's previous sock was blocked and I think we can be about 98% sure what is going on here.

And it does matter whether this is a C of M sock or not, because given the Checkuser data he's either moved or is spoofing an IP or something (or whatever the hell it's called). I'm open to contrary evidence to that which has already been provided, but I think further digging would only strengthen the case, because I've seen nothing to suggest that these are not the same two editors, and numerous items which indicate they are. -- Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 04:47, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

In reply to Carcharoth: sorry for crossing WP:BEANS, which I certainly thought about, but I'm not sure what else you would have had me to do (and bringing up WP:BEANS in the specific way you do is actually a good example of WP:BEANS on two fronts, ironically, as you actually made direct allusions to possible behavior). The socking was pretty obvious, I think, and a good amount of evidence had already been provided, but you and several other Arbs were not really buying it, frankly because I don't think you are as familiar with C of M as the people who worked on the SPI case. I considered e-mailing some of what I found to the committee, but I don't think that's fair because folks should not be "convicted" behind closed doors without understanding the evidence against them, even if that does reveal "investigative methods" and the like. You said you agreed with Risker when she found "the circumstantial evidence borderline at best," but when more was provided it was suddenly too much. Hard to know what you were looking for, and since the committee seemed on the verge of calling to undo the block of what seemed to me to be an obviously abusive sockpuppet I laid out a more detailed case. Had the Arb comments roughly followed Rlevse's initial response I would not mentioned any specific details.

As to your suggestions for how to proceed, they don't really make sense to me, though it may just be the wording. You say it's better "to wait for more evidence and to act on sanctionable conduct by the account independent of socking accusations." Well, Freakshownerd is blocked indefinitely, are you saying they should be unblocked, and then wait and see what happens, or just that that is what should have happened? Surely you noticed that the FSN account already was behaving in a not-so-great, sanctionable manner (e.g. this blog log, not to mention a slew of personal attacks). Also you make reference to ChildofMidnight appealing an indefinite block, but that editor is not blocked indefinitely, the block was merely reset. I think we should just leave things as they are now, but maybe you don't disagree.

It seems to me it was a mistake to bring this to the committee to consider an indefinite block/ban, because what was basically dealt with suddenly became un-dealt with. Color me confused by the reluctance to say, "this is clearly a sock of C of M" and by the suggestion that we shouldn't even worry about the socking per say but just the behavior of the new account. ChildofMidnight was enormously disruptive and has already socked before. We have a pretty strong interest in sussing out any C of M socks before they spend weeks disrupting multiple parts of the project the way C of M did. To respond, "well, I don't know if it's a sock or not, but let's just wait and see if something bad happens" seems foolish to me—the disruption already occurred, the socking evidence is quite strong, and here we are wasting time talking about it. Part of why I didn't care for the ban remedy for ChildofMidnight is that I felt it would likely encourage sockpuppetry, which it indeed has, as opposed to a restriction that would make it easier to see what C of M was doing on the account we knew while severely constraining his ability to edit. We ended up with problematic socking (which no doubt will continue—ChildofMidnight cannot quit editing apparently), and now the committee seems almost blase about it. In a way I'm sorry I even bothered to weigh in here, but y'all can deal with this going forward. -- Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 21:18, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

Statement by / question from Bongomatic

The arbitrators who have opined so far certainly do not indicate that there is a consensus to indef or reset the clock. However, SchuminWeb did just thatunilaterally (as far as I know) reset the clock. On what authority does an individual admin have to—contrary to CU results and consensus, and in the absence of AC conclusions—undertake such an action? ^Bongo _matic 04:02, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

Carcharoth—thanks for pointing out the ambiguity. Hope the above will assure others don't get the wrong impression. ^Bongo _matic 02:41, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

Statement by Fences and windows

The connection between CoM and Freakshownerd is blindingly obvious, especially after all the behavioural evidence has been laid out on a plate. I wonder at the analytical abilities of the arbitrators who aren't seeing it. Fences& Windows 00:03, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

To be fair, please give the arbitrators who commented earlier on time to review the evidence added after they made their comments. I was convinced by the later evidence, perhaps they will be too. Carcharoth ( talk) 00:53, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

Statement by FanOfBackyard

What if...FSO is an impostor? Someone who is playing games with the Amateur Detective Squad. It is not very difficult to mimic COM's behavior. As I see it, the more eccentric the editor, the easier it is to impersonate. Guaranteed: FSO is A) a sock or B) an impostor trolling COM's foes. Leave the FSO account blocked and end it. Worst that can happen is that COM was socking and got away with a some edits, no harm done. On the other hand, punish COM for something he might not have done...and you have a serious injustice. An expert on the whole affair is Baseball Bugs, unfortunately his knowledge of COM and impostors is sidelined by a topic ban. Oh, and the "Beans" thing, bad move. If COM was socking, he is now taking notes. Think about it, I have to go now. FanOfBackyard ( talk) 02:33, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

Statement by LadyofShalott

I'm not sure if this is the best way to raise this, but... FSN has a question regarding these proceedings and his/her block. As I think it is probably best addressed by the Arbitrators, I said I would point people to the question: User talk:Freakshownerd#Question regarding Arbcom and block. Ladyof Shalott 22:19, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Comment by Spartaz

Please see Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Freakshownerd Spartaz ^Humbug! 19:27, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

Statement by JzG

ArbCom does not hand down indefinite bans, but an indefinite community ban is unquestionably in place; it is extremely unlikely that CoM will find any administrator willing to unblock. ArbCom has done its job in impartially reviewing the original problems, the community has done its job in deciding to indefinitely ban (as is usual in such cases) someone who has engaged in systematic block evasion. ArbCom has always, it seems to me, allowed for the possibility of redemption. I think that's a good thing. Guy ( Help!) 07:59, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

Statement by yet another editor

Clerk notes

This section is for administrative notes by the clerks (including clerk recusals).

• Note that the ban was reset in May, when the last sock was identified. NW ( Talk) 00:49, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

Arbitrator views and discussion

• Support indef. Feel free to indef COM as far as I'm concerned. — Rlevse • Talk • 23:04, 27 August 2010 (UTC)
• I am quite unimpressed that Freakshownerd ( talk · contribs) has been blocked as a sock of ChildofMidnight ( talk · contribs). The checkuser evidence contradicts such a finding, and I find the circumstantial evidence borderline at best, to the point that I would say if you don't have grounds to block Freakshownerd independent of the alleged sockpuppetry, then you don't have grounds to block him. I don't mind the idea of resetting CoM's block to a year from the last confirmed sock, which I believe is Electroshoxcure, but I'm not convinced Freakshownerd is a CoM sock so I cannot support a change to indefinite ban based on what is presented here. Risker ( talk) 00:04, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

• Just to return to this: Checkuser data cannot prove that two accounts are *not* operated by the same person, but can raise a level of doubt that is sometimes almost impossible to overcome, and this is one of those situations. There is no checkuser similarity between Freakshownerd and CoM, and very significant differences are present. As to the issue of "behavioural evidence", simply put I can build an equally strong case for at least four other accounts being CoM socks (they aren't), and for this account to be a sock of at least two other indefinitely blocked accounts (it isn't).

  It is time to get back to what this project is about. Editing should be done with the sole intent of creating and improving content, not to provoke other editors or to try and draw out "socks". The enormous amount of time and energy that's been devoted to trying to link Freakshownerd and CoM indicates to me that once again we are seeing far too much attention paid to "social" issues that do not have a genuine effect on the growth and improvement of the project. Consider this a wake-up call, folks; this sort of administrative behaviour in the past led to at least as much disruption to the project as did the socking it was supposed to be addressing. If an account is consistently behaving outside of the behavioural rules of this project, it should be addressed in the usual manner; if it is not, then spending days and weeks to build a "case" against it can be every bit as harmful as anything that account is doing. Risker ( talk) 15:26, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

• I agree with Risker, though I would actually like to hear from Freakshownerd (who should have been given a chance to comment at the SPI page as well). But that is not really a matter for this page. I suggest resetting the ban for CoM from the last confirmed sock, and continuing discussion elsewhere as to whether Freakshownerd is actually a sock of CoM. Carcharoth ( talk) 00:11, 28 August 2010 (UTC)
  • Updating here to say that Bigtimepeace's evidence is more convincing, but it should be pointed out that going into such detail allows: (a) others to imitate CoM if they wanted to do so; (b) allows CoM to avoid such behaviourisms in future. This is why going into such detail is not best practice (per WP:BEANS), but too late for that now. It is better, if there is no abuse from the suspected socking account, to wait for more evidence and to act on sanctionable conduct by the account independent of socking accusations (as Coren has also said below). Regarding the indefinite block placed, CoM may appeal that to the arbitration committee. Indeed, Freakshownerd is also welcome to appeal any block to the arbitration committee. In such cases, being honest about what has happened will help. Carcharoth ( talk) 19:56, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
    • Further update, in response to Bigtimepeace: I was indeed talking about what should (maybe) have happened (i.e. block for the poor behaviour without even needing to bring up a sock case - sometimes people focus too much on difficult-to-prove socking and not on pulling up accounts on other conduct issues), but what is done is done. The danger of convicting on too-thin behavioural evidence is very real. In general, people do hold different standards for what passes a behavioural (or "duck") test, and it would be better if the generalities of such criteria were standardised. It does no good for such matters to become arcane arts with only a few experienced people willing to dig deep in difficult cases, and neither does it do any good if standards drop and anyone can be accused (and convicted) of WP:DUCK-like behaviour on a whim (none of this is directed at you, Bigtimepeace, but is a more general comment). How to balance proper discussion of WP:DUCK cases with WP:BEANS, I'm not sure. It is normally done off-wiki in complex cases, but, as Bigtimepeace says, there are good reasons for transparency as well. About the CoM block, I assumed from what Bongomatic said ("SchuminWeb did just that") that it had been set to indefinite. But I should have checked, and I see I was wrong and Bongomatic's statement could be interpreted in either of two ways and I interpreted it the wrong way. I've struck what I said, but as I said, any blocked accounts are always free to appeal to ArbCom. Carcharoth ( talk) 23:02, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
• Reviewing evidence; awaiting any potential response to the request I just made on Freakshownerd's talkpage. Newyorkbrad ( talk) 01:07, 28 August 2010 (UTC)
  • I know that I need to return to this and review the new evidence; I've been focusing on the Climate change case with my arb time this week, but will carve out time to look at this shortly. Newyorkbrad ( talk) 02:03, 2 September 2010 (UTC)
• As a procedural matter, the Committee does not normally issue indefinite bans under such circumstances. If a banned user violates their ban, the normal course of action is simply to reset their ban; there is no need to have us modify the original remedy. Kirill  ^{[talk]  [prof]} 19:19, 28 August 2010 (UTC)
• From my review, it appears rather unlikely that this user is CoM. Waiting to see if there's a response to Brad's comments though. Shell ^babelfish 20:10, 28 August 2010 (UTC)
• I admit I'm not convinced either way. Some of the behavioral evidence is convincing (Bigtimepeace's in particular makes me pause), but some of it is a little off and not that convincing. Given that the technical side of things gives us no help, would it not be simpler to handle the Freakshownerd account on its own merit and simply not bother trying to link it to CoM? If he's socking, it will become obvious in time; either way there is no need for a specific account to be tied to him now. —  Coren  ^(talk) 02:11, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

  The Freakshownerd account has been dealt with through the normal community process. Whether or not that account was under the control of — or associated with — ChildofMidnight is not especially relevant, so I don't think it is useful or necessary to attempt to tie them explicitly at this point. —  Coren  ^(talk) 18:33, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

---

Initiated by Wapondaponda ( talk) at 06:27, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

Case affected

Race and intelligence arbitration case ( t) ( ev /  t) ( w /  t) ( pd /  t)

Clauses to which an amendment is requested

1. Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Race and intelligence/Proposed decision#Captain_Occam_topic-banned

List of users affected by or involved in this amendment

• Muntuwandi ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) (initiator)
• Captain Occam ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Ferahgo the Assassin ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Confirmation that the above users are aware of this request

• Captain Occam
• Ferahgo the Assassin

Amendment 1

• Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Race and intelligence/Proposed decision#Captain_Occam_topic-banned
• The extension of the topic ban to include Ferahgo the Assassin who appears to be either a proxy account or a Sockpuppet account of Captain Occam.

Statement by Muntuwandi

This is a follow up to a request for enforcement found in this archive. According to the result two uninvolved administrators, Stifle and Slp1 stated that administrators who monitor the enforcement noticeboard were not in the position to make a decision concerning the request ( Stifle suggested a request for amendment).

Immediately after Captain Occam's topic ban was confirmed, Ferahgo the Assassin, a user who apparently is known to Captain Occam, took an interest in editing race and intelligence articles. According to Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Captain Occam/Archive, the closing admin recommended that the two accounts should be treated as one per WP:SHARE. However no ruling was made concerning this matter from the enforcement noticeboard.

Since no ruling was made, Ferahgo the Assassin has continued to be involved in race and intelligence matters. The user's pattern of editing on race and intelligence matters is similar to that of Captain Occam. Much of the evidence is found at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement/Archive68. More recent events include further canvassing. Captain Occam has on occasion tried to seek help from Dbachmann [21], [22], [23]. Recently Ferahgo the Assassin also tried to get help from Dbachmann, though it is the user's 'first time' communicating with Dbachmann, the user is already familiar with Dab stating. "You seem to be more active and responsive than him, so I figured I'd ask you" [24].

Others have argued that Ferahgo the Assassin should be treated as independent editor. I find this argument untenable. In the four years since Ferahgo the Assassin has been a registered user, all his or her edits prior to the arbitration were to support Captain Occam or his suggestions. I therefore see no evidence both post and pre-Arbitration of independent editing.

In summary Captain Occam appears to be gaming his topic ban, either by being a sockpuppet or by getting another editor to make edits on his behalf. I consider this a violation of his topic ban.

Wapondaponda ( talk) 06:27, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

Response to Ferahgo

"I've made a number of productive contributions to them".Forgive me in advance but my reservoir of good faith has been somewhat depleted by recent events. I am of the opinion that many of your so called "productive edits" are really token edits to muddy up the issue. I believe that you are Captain Occam and that you are trying your best to be disruptive and at the same time trying your best to not get discovered. The current trajectory of your edits is clearly in the direction of more disruption. These edits [25], [26], and [27] are clearly confrontational and reminiscent of Captain Occam. : Wapondaponda ( talk) 10:26, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

Isn't giving editors a chance in this respect the whole point of WP:ROPE?. How ironic, as Maunus has pointed out, after this statement. Indeed Captain Occam seems to be hoping that discretionary sanctions are applied to editors he doesn't agree with, see also User_talk:Georgewilliamherbert/Archives/2010/August#A_question_about_discretionary_sanctions. Seems like a continuance of WP:BATTLEGROUND. Wapondaponda ( talk) 05:44, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

Accusations of harassment

I understand some of the sensitivities associated with this incident. I don't think anyone would want a newbie editor to immediately get caught up in arbitration hearings, per WP:BITE. At the same time others may exploit WP:BITE, to deflect legitimate criticisms. I take accusations of harassment very seriously. According to Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Race and intelligence/Proposed decision#Single_purpose_accounts and Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Race and intelligence/Proposed decision#Captain_Occam_.28conduct.29, single issue editing was a cause of concern. Captain Occam had an intense fixation on race and intelligence issues, which in my opinion was a major contributing factor to the escalation of the dispute. Captain Occam received a temporary editing restriction in part to help deescalate the dispute. If Captain Occam were to circumvent this editing restriction by having someone else make his choice of edits, then it defeats the purpose of the editing restriction. I believe the behavioral evidence strongly suggests that Captain Occam is either Ferahgo the Assassin or Ferahgo the Assassin is working in concert with Captain Occam. I have followed the appropriate channels to have this concern addressed, and while not everyone agrees with me, a number of editors, including uninvolved administrators, have stated that WP:SOCK, WP:MEAT or WP:SHARE are legitimate concerns. As long as this request is resolved, I will respect whatever decision is made, and will move on.  : Wapondaponda ( talk) 08:51, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

Response to Ferahgo over chronology

Ferahgo states

"The arbcom decision was finalized on Aug 24. I stated my intention to get involved in these articles on Aug 21"

and

"For you to try and make your case look stronger by misrepresenting when I got involved in these articles is really disingenuous."

The point is that within a short time of the topic ban, Ferahgo decided to get involved in race issues. I was speaking in general terms when I wrote "something like within hours". Unfortunately I have to be pedantic and address this. According to Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Race and intelligence/Proposed decision, items that receive a majority vote, in this case 6 votes, would pass. Looking at Captain Occam's section, the sixth vote in support of a topic ban came in at 06:26, 20 August 2010 (UTC) and the seventh at 21:39, 20 August 2010 (UTC). At 04:42, 21 August 2010 (UTC), that is within less than 24 hours of the sixth vote, Ferahgo the Assassin declares intentions to edit race and intelligence articles [28]. Wapondaponda ( talk) 20:09, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

I find Captain Occam's recommendation that Captain Occam, in the form of Ferahgo the Assassin, be placed on probation quite comical. I want to respond to a few accusations. But I believe that if I were to add further comments to this thread, they wouldn't add much value to what is already in place. So I will avoid making more comments because I believe the pattern of editing of the involved editors is clear by now. Editors already familiar with Captain Occam will note that Ferahgo's conduct in this thread, responding to every post, conjuring up excuses for everything is certainly Occamesque.

I have mentioned before that I have only reluctantly requested for the account Ferahgo to fall under the scope of arbcom restrictions. It is possible that Ferahgo is a separate individual from Captain Occam so I do share the discomfort that a number of other editors have because it would be unfair to WP:BITE a newbie editor to the controversy. My concern isn't Ferahgo, rather it is Captain Occam. I would request others to not consider this thread a discussion about Ferahgo the individual, that is if he or she exists, rather it should be about whether Captain Occam is evading his editing restrictions by WP:SOCK, WP:MEAT OR WP:SHARE. If another editor is assisting Captain Occam evade his topic ban, then they shouldn't be surprised that that any restrictions on Captain Occam may be placed on them as well.

Just to specifically respond to accusations of coordinated POV pushing that Ferahgo/Occam are using to try to shift attention from their own conduct.

Ferahgo states

"It's about Muntuwandi and Weiji wanting to get rid of me - an easy target - so they can push their POVs more easily"

and

"Whether Weiji is right or wrong to want this, what matters here is that he and Muntuwandi shouldn't be trying to win a content dispute by getting arbcom to eliminate their opposition"

I think Weiji and I make our own independent decisions, we haven't agreed on everything. For instance here, I disagreed with Weiji over an article move (something which Ferahgo/Occam conveniently omitted from their evidence). Weiji later stated that his decision to move the article was based on a Britannica article and I understood where he was coming from. Wapondaponda ( talk) 04:49, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

Response to Kirill

I respectfully disagree that there is little evidence suggesting that Ferahgo the Assassin and Captain Occam are not independent. Two administrators have advised Ferahgo the Assassin that given her connection with Captain Occam, it wasn't a good idea for the user to be involved in race and intelligence matters immediately after Captain Occam's topic ban. According to Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations/Captain_Occam/Archive#Clerk.2C_patrolling_admin_and_checkuser_comments two uninvolved admins felt there was evidence. A checkuser was not carried out, as Captain Occam preempted it by admitting that he and Ferahgo the Assassin use the same Network/Computer when working on Wikipedia. As Stifle mentioned here , some declaratory relief would be helpful ie either Captain Occam and Ferahgo the Assassin are meatpuppets or they are not. I do think they are, I do not yet know what the broader community's opinion about this is, which is why have I filed this request. I will live with whatever is decided.

Wapondaponda ( talk) 18:00, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

Response to Vecrumba

"I've already commented that this sort of painful prolonging of the arbitration (now seeming more like insistence) is unhelpful". I think the editors prolonging the arbitration are Captain Occam and his proxy account. If Captain Occam had been observing his topic ban like Mathsci or David.Kane, I wouldn't have filed this request. I don't enjoy filing these requests and I am doing so reluctantly and after some thought and consideration. Until today, Ferahgo the Assassin had never edited the race and genetics article. The user's very first edit to race and genetics is to revert to the use of an image related to the image which Captain Occam had been edit warring over [29]. Is this just a coincidence? I can't help but think not. : Wapondaponda ( talk) 16:18, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

Response to Tim Song

I understand what you are saying. Basically even if F is a sock or meat of CO, as long as F is conducting themselves reasonably, then there are no problems. I have been thinking about that which was why I initially stated that I wasn't going to file another request after the enforcement request. The principle is found at Wikipedia:Ignore all rules, which would imply that even if Occam is violating his topic ban by proxy or sock editing, if his edits are not hurting the encyclopedia, then it shouldn't matter. Others will argue that for a community to function effectively, rules should be observed. It's a philosophical issue that is beyond the scope of this debate.

You state "Once again we focus too much on the users and not the conduct." This is also fair, but I would like to give some context. The current dispute is close to one year old. For several months there was a lot of bickering over content issues with no peaceful resolution in sight. The dispute was escalated to Arbcom for the precise purpose of investigating user conduct issues. As the saying goes, Arbcom doesn't deal with content problems. In short, based on the circumstances of this dispute, some focus on users is justified.

Wapondaponda ( talk) 17:56, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

Response to Occam

"One effect of his doing this was to once again remove a chart from this article that he edit warred to remove a year ago (described in my arbitration evidence here), which resulted in him being placed under a month of 1RR on this article". Once again you are cherry picking sanctions, as GWH chose not to take sides and slapped a 0RR restriction on the both of us. See his comment here. I suggest that you refactor your statement to reflect this. The issue of the image has not been resolved. The subject is quite technical so I will make it as simple as possible. Captain Occam inserted an image into the race and genetics article. On his talk page he provides a link to his blog where he discusses the image [30] in which he writes that the image proves the unpopular theory that there is a biological basis for race. Captain Occam admits on his blog that he hasn't read the book where the image was originally sourced from, that is Cavalli Sforza's History and Geography of Human Genes. Captain Occam learned of the image from reading Arthur Jensen's book, The G factor, a book that is concerned with race and intelligence, the topic which Occam is fixated on. My conclusion, Captain Occam is advocating a race and intelligence POV in a separate article race and genetics. In fact I consider this the worst form of POV pushing because Occam was edit warring over an image from a book which he admitted he hadn't read. A book which explicitly states that readers shouldn't attach a racial meaning to the image, when Captain Occam was in fact attaching a racial meaning to the image. I started editing the race and genetics article after I read Cavalli-Sforza's books, so I hope others can understand my frustration that someone else was edit warring over content from a book which they had not read and showed no intention of reading. Wapondaponda ( talk) 02:17, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

Response to David Kane

"I assume that we all agree that Ferahgo and Occam are, in real life, two separate people"'. I don't necessarily agree with this line of reasoning. For Wikipedia purposes, it is possible that two separate editors may be treated as a single entity. According to WP:MEAT,

"For the purposes of dispute resolution, the Arbitration Committee has decided that when there is uncertainty whether a party is one user with sock puppets, or several users acting as meatpuppets, they may be treated as one entity"

If the account named Ferahgo was indeed an independent editor, then this issue would never have been raised. Strictly speaking, this issue isn't about Ferahgo the Assassin, rather it is about Captain Occam and whether Captain Occam is using another editor or another account to try to evade his topic ban. The fact that an account named Ferahgo the Assassin decided to get involved in race issues something like within hours of Captain Occam's editing restriction being finalized demonstrates a lack of independence between the two accounts.

Wapondaponda ( talk) 18:06, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Response to Maunus

Regarding your statement

"Furthermore since David Kane and Occam have been topic banned I find myself feeling forced to make pro-hereditarian edits, simply because this viewpoint is now very weakly represented (among editors, not in the articles), I don't enjoy this as it is not a view I personally entertain"

I was intending to specifically address this issue, but Captain Occam's topic ban has never really worked because he has managed to evade it twice, first by claiming that the main race article didn't fall under the editing restrictions, and second by proxy editing. The notion that disruptive editing is somehow a necessary evil for the sake of neutrality just isn't true. Before Captain Occam and David Kane got involved in race issues, all the articles that included hereditarian arguments were already in place. So it isn't appropriate to give the missimpression that these two editors are the only editors who can represent "hereditarian theories" on wikipedia. You are implying that many editors involved in the articles are somehow non-neutral. There is general agreement among most or all editors involved that hereditarian or biological theories should be represented, the major concern is that they should not be misrepresented or given undue weight beyond the weight given to them by mainstream academia. In short, one doesn't need any elaborate excuses to make "pro-hereditarian arguments", one can simply go ahead and make them as others have done in the past.

As for "so what if Ferahgo is really proxy editing for Occam, as long as she is not displaying his behavioural problems as well". The decision will be up to the community through our representatives on Arbcom. That is should we allow Captain Occam to evade his topic ban (while others observe theirs) because FTA is allegedly not as disruptive as Captain Occam ( I still believe the user is disruptive). While we all have our POV, we should recall the guiding principles from the Arbcom case on single issue editing was

"Single purpose accounts are expected to contribute neutrally instead of following their own agenda and, in particular, should take care to avoid creating the impression that their focus on one topic is non-neutral, which could strongly suggest that their editing is not compatible with the goals of this project."

Wapondaponda ( talk) 05:47, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

Response to Michael Price

I have stated that I have no problem with the image when it is sourced to the original authors and discussed in the way the original authors discussed the image. The problem is that the controversial scholar, Arthur Jensen used Cavalli-Sforza's image in his book The G-factor in a way that was inconsistent with Cavalli-Sforza's original interpretation. Captain Occam, based on his own admission, had never read Cavalli-Sforza's work used the image based on Arthur Jensen's interpretation, not on Cavalli-Sforza interpretation. This in the nutshell is the origin of the dispute concerning the image. Wapondaponda ( talk) 05:49, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

Re "you don't have to read a book before posting an image from it -". True, there is no policy that requires users to read the sources the cite. But I think we can all agree that it certainly is helpful to a read source before citing it to make sure that one is citing correctly or not taking things out of context.

I have never stated that I do or do not like Arthur Jensen's publications, only that they are controversial. More importantly Arthur Jensen isn't a molecular geneticist but a psychologist, and his book The G-Factor isn't about molecular genetics. The book and the author are therefore not good candidates for a reliable source on the subject.

I have had some challenges with image. Humans are visual creatures and Wikipedians appreciate images and articles with images. As the saying goes a picture is worth a thousand words. Many casual readers find the image quite interesting, and I do too. However few readers seem to pay attention to the actual text in the article or pay even less attention to the original source. The authors of the image do not use the image in a racial way, and they specifically caution that the image shouldn't be interpreted in a racial way. So my question has been why is this image being used in a racial context when the authors of the image did not. In my opinion it is due to inappropriate advocacy. I have no problem with using the image in an appropriate article such as human genetic variation or human evolution. Wapondaponda ( talk) 02:38, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

Response to Maunus over topic ban proposal

I understand you have a good rapport with both Captain Occam and Ferahgo, and you have openly stated you would be happier if both had no editing restrictions. I am therefore aware that you have been uncomfortable with the discussions concerning FTA. I hope this is not the motivation for your proposal. I have persisted with this concern only because there was no decision and also because a number of uninvolved editors suggested the concern was legitimate. So far, I have not seen comments from uninvolved editors suggesting that my conduct has been inappropriate or way of line, so I have continued. I have stated on numerous occasions that I wish to voluntarily disengage from these topics for a while, and I haven't touched race and intelligence articles since the arbitration ended. I have maintained an interest in Captain Occam/FTA because the matter was one of the loose ends from the Arbcom case. If it is resolved, then I can move on as well. Wapondaponda ( talk) 05:35, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

To ANI

I have started a thread at ANI. A number of editors on all sides have expressed concern that a decision has not been forthcoming. Since Arbcom has already authorized administrative discretion, then maybe the community can reach a preliminary consensus over the matter, which would help deescalate some of the existing tension. Wapondaponda ( talk) 00:21, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Statement by Ferahgo the Assassin

In the few weeks that I've been participating on these articles, I've made a number of productive contributions to them, including suggesting new sources, rewording unclear sentences, seeking to achieve consensus on the talk pages, pointing out things I'd noticed, and striving to achieve neutrality. I have been using much of my free time recently to read and research this topic outside of Wikipedia in order to better contribute here. I had been under the impression that my presence here has been constructive and beneficial overall, and the other editors involved have been treating me like any other editor. Even editors like WeijiBaikeBianji and Aprock, who tend to disagree with me from time to time, have been willing to work with me to exchange ideas and improve the article. Of the currently involved editors, Muntuwandi - who is barely involved at all right now - is the only one who appears to think that I'm a sock or meatpuppet.

I have not violated a single policy since beginning to edit here: no tag-teaming, no edit warring, no false claims of consensus - nothing that Occam got in trouble for doing. The assertion that I was "canvassing" by asking DBachmann a question is ridiculous. I was specifically told by GWH [31] that I should ask an admin if I'm afraid there might be a policy violation on an article with discretionary sanctions, and that's exactly what I did. And yes, I'm familiar with DBachmann from watching these articles for a long time now, and his pattern of responsiveness is easy to see from his contributions. Other editors involved in these articles have contacted him for help recently: [32] It's also obvious that he's familiar with these articles in general: [33] There are very few admins who pay attention to R&I articles without being involved and are also very responsive, so it shouldn't be a surprise that there's some overlap in the admins Occam and I have contacted.

Muntuwandi's assertion that "In the four years since Ferahgo the Assassin has been a registered user, all his or her edits prior to the arbitration were to support Captain Occam or his suggestions" is downright ridiculous and demonstrably false. Take a look at my most edited articles: [34] Both before and after I became involved in these articles, most of my contributions have been to completely different types of articles from what Occam has been involved in, which does not fit the definition of Meatpuppetry given at Wikipedia:Sock_puppetry#Meatpuppetry: “A new user who engages in the same behavior as another user in the same context, and who appears to be editing Wikipedia solely for that purpose.”

I suspect that Muntuwandi chose to bring this arbcom case back from the dead today because I undid his revert on the Race and Genetics article. The reason I did this was because he reverted the article back to a version from over a year ago, undoing over a hundred edits in one revert without discussing it with anyone first. [35] Every time I've seen someone do this - which isn't many - it's always been regarded as disruptive.

Before I got involved in these articles, several people were worried my behavior and editing pattern would be too similar to Occam's. But I think it's unnecessary to be worried about this now that after being involved for a few weeks, all of my contributions to the articles have been constructive, and I have not engaged in any of the behavior Occam was sanctioned for. Sanctions are meant to be preventative, not punitive. Therefore I don't think it's reasonable to be topic-banned based on the fear that I might cause the same problems Occam did, when my actual contributions show otherwise. - Ferahgo the Assassin ( talk) 08:21, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

Response to Muntuwandi

Muntuwandi, all of the edits you've linked to were discussed on the talk pages and everyone except Weijibaikebianji agreed they were improvements. What you regard as confrontational almost everyone else sees as constructive. Your assumption of bad faith seems to be extending to twisting reality to make me look bad, when I haven't done anything wrong. - Ferahgo the Assassin ( talk) 11:14, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

@ Muntuwandi: "The fact that an account named Ferahgo the Assassin decided to get involved in race issues something like within hours of Captain Occam's editing restriction being finalized demonstrates a lack of independence between the two accounts."

The arbcom decision was finalized on Aug 24. I stated my intention to get involved in these articles on Aug 21 [36], though I didn't get involved right away due to being busy with Rahiolisaurus and Siamotyrannus at the time. My first comment after the case that had anything to do with R&I was on Aug 27 [37], three days after arbitration had finished. I already explained elsewhere in my statement why I got involved when I did. For you to try and make your case look stronger by misrepresenting when I got involved in these articles is really disingenuous. - Ferahgo the Assassin ( talk) 19:01, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

@ Muntuwandi 2: Once again, you're choosing to see what you want to see. I've already stated more than once that one of the main reasons I didn't get involved until after arbitration was because I couldn't stand Mathsci's behavior. So how about you take a look at whether there's any relationship between my getting involved and Mathsci's topic ban? Mathsci’s topic ban received the necessary number of votes from arbitrators at 23:30 on Aug 20. I expressed my intention to get involved around five hours later. And I stated this was because I expected to see improvements in the editing environment, which was due in large part to Mathsci's absence. My decision to get involved has a far closer and more obvious relationship to Mathsci's topic ban than anything else. - Ferahgo the Assassin ( talk) 21:29, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

@ Muntuwandi 3: "My concern isn't Ferahgo, rather it is Captain Occam. I would request others to not consider this thread a discussion about Ferahgo the individual, that is if he or she exists, rather it should be about whether Captain Occam is evading his editing restrictions by WP:SOCK, WP:MEAT OR WP:SHARE."

I underside the point you're trying to make, but from my perspective this just seems dehumanizing and unfair. It is about me, not about Occam. Your SPI concluded that he and I are separate people, though it did raise the issue of a topic ban based on WP:SHARE. If I get banned because of Occam, then I'm the one who suffers, not him.

There seems to be some deliberate ambiguity about what policy you think is being violated. The SPI concluded I'm unlikely to be a sockpuppet, and I don't fit the definition of meatpuppet either. A meatpuppet is "a new user who engages in the same behavior as another user in the same context, and who appears to be editing Wikipedia solely for that purpose." Around three-quarters of my edits are still outside of this topic area. [38] But when David.Kane pointed out that the WP:SHARE policy only applies to policies such as 3RR and not editing restrictions, you responded by claiming the issue isn't WP:SHARE but meatpuppetry instead. Can you please be specific about which of these three policies you think I'm violating? - Ferahgo the Assassin ( talk) 17:56, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

Response to Shell

Shell: I know that Occam and I could be considered closely-connected users via Wikipedia:SHARE. It says: "“Closely connected users may be considered a single user for Wikipedia's purposes if they edit with the same objectives.” Occam and I might have had similar objectives before the arbcom case, and at that point it didn't matter if we did. When he didn't have sanctions against him it only mattered that we observed policies like 3RR as though we were the same account, and we were careful to do so.

Things are totally different now. Occam is topic-banned and that means it's important that I don't edit these articles with the same objectives he did. Wikipedia:SHARE is very clear about this: if I edit the articles with the same objectives as him, then he and I can be considered the same account. If I don’t, then we can’t. That's why I've recently gone to so much trouble developing my own independent style and personality in editing these articles, researching outside of Wikipedia, reading a great deal on this topic, etc. Every other involved editor besides Muntuwandi seems to acknowledge this.

I don't feel that there's anything to indicate that my current editing style or objectives are more similar to Occam's than they are to many other editors. For example, my undo of Muntuwandi's revert of a year's worth of edits with no discussion. Even if this is something Occam would have done (and I don't even know if it is!) it's also something that loads of other editors would have done, since it was pretty obviously disruptive. You might as well accuse me of being Occam because I revert vandalism, since that's probably something he would do too! During the time since Occam's topic ban, is there anything about my edits that indicate they're more similar to Occam than they are to, say, Victor Chmara and Maunus? - Ferahgo the Assassin ( talk) 22:23, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

Response to Maunus

Maunus: As far as I know, the only pov I've been taking on these articles is a neutral one. That seems consistent with the fact that others like you and aprock have agreed that each of my edits has been beneficial. If there's something non-neutral about my editing patterns, it'd be nice if someone had pointed this out to me on the talk pages.

I honestly feel that avoiding repeating Occam's mistakes will be a pretty simple task. From my understanding he came to these articles before getting much experience with anything else at Wikipedia, and at a time when the editing environment on them was pretty terrible. He had no editing experience elsewhere and ended up copying and contributing to the same problematic behavior that was the norm there at that point. I'm coming here with a fair amount of experience, both from editing unrelated topics and from watching these articles for quite a while. I also obviously watched the arbcom case and I know exactly what everyone got sanctioned for. It shouldn't be hard to figure out how I can avoid doing the same things, especially with the improved editing environment.

Also I pointed out somewhere before (might have been the arb enforcement thread) that the reason I'm editing these articles now is because I've always been interested in this topic, but for ages have been afraid to get involved because of the editing atmosphere. As I stated in my evidence for the arbcom case, I've tried getting involved before and other editors were unwilling to respond to me with anything other than ad hominem attacks. Likely because of the discretionary sanctions, these problems have mostly gone away. I'd have begun editing here sooner if they'd gone away before the arbcom case. - Ferahgo the Assassin ( talk) 01:28, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

Response to Prof Marginalia

Prof Marginalia: Everything in your comment I've already addressed at length. I'd like to point out something else I've noticed, though. Of the people commenting here who are actually editing with me on these articles, every one of them is arguing against a topic ban. And these are the people with experience to know whether I'm being disruptive or not. The only people for the topic ban (so far just you and Muntuwandi) are people who haven't been participating in these articles since the end of the arb case.

I see two groups of people here. People who just care about the quality of the articles, and the people who want to continue petty drama leftover from the arb case. The active editors don't always agree with me on content, but we're willing to get along and make actual improvements when people like you and Muntuwandi aren't interfering. - Ferahgo the Assassin ( talk) 21:00, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

@Prof M: There wouldn't be any drama if not for these threads, since I've made nothing but constructive edits since the arb case and have not engaged in disruptive behavior. - Ferahgo the Assassin ( talk) 23:27, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

@ Prof M: I'd like to point out once again that nothing I was doing before the arbcom case violated policy. Occam and I were closely related accounts, and we also frequently edited with the same objectives, so Occam disclosed his off-Wiki connection to me immediately after I first became involved in the articles.   [39] (When you say I've been "dodgy" about this are you not including his having stated this last November? So you consider me the same person as him in every respect but this one?) Whether you like it or not, WP:SHARE makes it clear that none of what I did was a policy violation, as long as he and I disclosed our connection and observed policies like 3RR as though we were a single user - which we did.

As I described in my arbitration evidence, even though I was careful to follow this policy, I was never met with anything other than hostility when discussing these articles. Remember, this was months after Occam had disclosed his off-wiki connection to me in his user talk, which should have been all that mattered. Yet even though no one could ever point to a specific policy I was violating, every comment I tried to leave was pounced on by a small group of users with questions prying into the personal details of my relationship with Occam, bringing up things about it that should have stayed private. It really should come as no surprise that this reception caused me to lose interest in these articles for months at a time, and devote my energies elsewhere at Wikipedia where I knew they'd be more appreciated.

As I pointed out in my evidence mathsci was the one who first started treating me this way, and until his topic ban he did it more than anyone. It was part of the overall pattern of behavior (incivility and personal attacks) that caused his ban. During the case I was hoping the arbitrators would do something to keep the others from continuing to emulate his behavior, but the case didn't address that issue. Maybe something can be done about it now.

Some of the people who copied mathsci's behavior toward me in the past are doing almost the same thing now, but the situation has 2 big differences now. First of all I'm not following Occam anymore, or taking his lead in any respect. Secondly, in the past I was prevented from contributing in any meaningful way by this hostility, but now I'm actively engaged in helping to improve the articles, and most of the others currently involved seem to appreciate my participation. This is why I won't allow myself to be driven away as easily as before. It can't be good for the encyclopedia to allow editors who aren't contributing to a group of articles to run off someone who is, so I'm not going to give into your and Muntuwandi's efforts to do this unless arbcom decides I have to. - Ferahgo the Assassin ( talk) 03:46, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

Response to aprock

Aprock, I'm not sure if you think this is a problem, but I'll address it as though you do: Jensen's Clocking the Mind is the only book specifically about mental chronometry that's been published in the last 20 years. And it doesn't even mention race differences. From this book I added only historical information relating to early RT testing. You're expecting too much if you want a balanced and informative article on mental chronometry that doesn't mention Jensen, since regardless of your opinion on him, he's the most prolific modern researcher that there is on MC. I have several older books and papers in possession currently that I'm hoping to use to improve this article soon, like stuff by Carroll, but unfortunately this current case is eating up a lot of my time and energy.

I honestly can't believe that even my edits about the history of MC are being nitpicked now. People can't assume good faith about even this? Maybe things haven't improved here as much as I thought. - Ferahgo the Assassin ( talk) 00:01, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

I'd like to point out here that I wish the arbitrators would see the distinction between my behavior on these articles before and after the arb case. I am willing to admit that before arbitration I was not participating in these articles independently from Occam. When I commented on these articles at all I was following him around, watching what he was involved in. My involvement here changed for two reasons after the arb case. First of all, with Occam banned supporting him isn't acceptable, so in order to contribute here I need to stand on my own two feet. I mentioned the improved editing environment as the other reason for this, but to be honest, there’s also a more specific reason... I was a bit afraid of mathsci when he was here.

I find it really discouraging how my behavior in these articles before the arb case is continuously brought up as evidence that I can't edit here independently of Occam, as though nothing has changed about my editing here since then. If there are any lingering similarities between my style and his from when I used to follow him around, I'm confident those will disappear quickly if they haven't already. I'm also totally confident I'll be able to avoid the mistakes Occam made that resulted in his topic ban if given the chance. Isn't giving editors a chance in this respect the whole point of WP:ROPE? - Ferahgo the Assassin ( talk) 05:15, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

In light of Muntuwandi's last post above, I would like the arbitrators to consider whether what he's doing here (and at SPI... and at the arbitration enforcement board...) is a form of harassment. This is getting pretty extreme: even though no one has yet made a decision that I'm a sock, he's already referring to my edits as what "Captain Occam seems to be hoping" as if I'm nothing. Looking at his contributions [40], I see that over 90% of his involvement in these articles since the arbcom case has been for the sole purpose of trying to get rid of me. Is it healthy for these articles to include an editor whose only goal here is to get rid of another editor? - Ferahgo the Assassin ( talk) 07:30, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

Response to Weiji and comments on recent conduct

Paleontology articles do not require anywhere close to the level of discussion that R&I articles do. Additionally, I've been working on an illustration for Concavenator recently, and that takes a lot of time - most of my paleo energy has gone into that lately. (Paleo articles, by the way, are almost always based on primary sources for newly-described information and species, since it's often years before secondary sources begin to cover them - this is not new, nor is it a problem.)

The longer this amendment thread sits here, the more I think the real nature of this situation becomes apparent. A couple days ago Maunus (an administrator who usually disagreed with Occam) invited me to propose a draft for how to improve the "in biomedicine" section of the Race (classification of humans) article. As soon as I posted my draft there, Muntuwandi - who had not commented on this article in several months, and had not edited it since 2009 - immediately showed up and left this comment. The comment was then removed by Maunus. Maunus and I both tried to discuss this with Muntuwandi in his user talk, where Muntuwandi stated that he opposed my draft simply because I was the person proposing it: "From my experience interacting with Captain Occam, I believe it is within reason to be concerned if he or his associates choose to make any major changes to race related articles." The only other editors who expressed an opinion about my draft, Maunus and Terra Novus, both approve of it. Neither of them were allies of Occam while he was editing these articles.

I'm still not edit warring, tag-teaming, or making false claims of consensus, which are the things for which Occam was topic banned. And the vast majority of Muntuwandi's involvement in Wikipedia is still devoted to opposing me - even following me to articles I'm trying to contribute to that he hasn't touched in a good while. Several editors who generally disagreed with Occam, like Maunus and Aprock, seem to think I'm valuable. But among the few editors who have disagreed with both me and Occam, the attitude is to try and discredit any opinions and contributions I offer by equating me with him, even when the contributions are perfectly fine. In the case of both Muntuwandi and Weiji, I am far from the only editor who disagrees with them: Maunus and Vecrumba obviously have a problem with Muntuwandi's behavior (see the discussion in Muntuwandi's user talk that Vecrumba linked to), and in this discussion three other editors (Victor Chmara, Moxy and Dbachmann) all accused Weiji of POV-pushing on these articles. Where's the evidence for Weiji's claim that I'm engaging in "a pattern of editor conduct indistinguishable from Captain Occam’s," other than the fact that I disagree with him in areas where Occam probably would, and several other editors do as well?

Most of the accusations of POV-pushing and incivility from neutral editors on these articles are directed at Muntuwandi and Weiji, not me. I'm starting to think this whole issue isn't about meatpuppetry at all. It's about Muntuwandi and Weiji wanting to get rid of me - an easy target - so they can push their POVs more easily.

It can't possibly be a coincidence that the two editors involved in these articles that are trying to get me topic-banned are the only two whom neutral editors have accused of POV-pushing and incivility since the proposal of this amendment. - Ferahgo the Assassin ( talk) 02:34, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Weiji's new comment is probably the best demonstration so far of the purpose of this thread. This is obviously a content dispute, but he's still appealing to arbcom in hope that they'll get rid of the editor who disagrees with him.

If you look at the discussion Weiji linked to, you'll see that what actually happened is that he made a large edit without inciting discussion, which involved removing all of the positive or neutral links on Lynn, and leaving only the highly negative ones (such as the ones that call him a racist) and adding another negative one. [41] I made a partial revert of his edit, and posted on the talk page saying that we should discuss these changes and add them back one at a time, after which he immediately reinstated his edit without waiting for any discussion. [42] In the discussion on the talk page, Maunus eventually pointed out that the all of links critical of Lynn which Weiji had kept or added had all of the same WP:EL problems that the ones Weiji had removed, and removed those also.

The book Weiji added to "further reading," which refers to Lynn's research as "scientific racism," Weiji has posted on EIGHT talk pages, giving it effusive praise and suggesting that further edits to all of these articles ought to be based on this book. [43] [44] [45] [46] [47] [48] [49] [50] The book is a reliable source, but it's also strongly opinionated and it should seem obvious that not everyone would agree with rewriting all of these articles based on it.

Whether Weiji is right or wrong to want this, what matters here is that he and Muntuwandi shouldn't be trying to win a content dispute by getting arbcom to eliminate their opposition. - Ferahgo the Assassin ( talk) 22:08, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Statement by Vecrumba

I've already commented that this sort of painful prolonging of the arbitration (now seeming more like insistence) is unhelpful. Were this two or three months down the line and Ferahgo were employing disruptive tactics or questionable sources—regardless of likeness to Occam—then if that's the case it can simply be dealt with. Until then I am content to allow Ferahgo to establish their own edit history. As someone who, myself, was attacked simply for showing up at R&I and related and had derision, aspersions and innuendo heaped on my head, whether for no good reason or based on unrelated prior Wikipedia conflicts, this on the face of it looks, smells, and tastes too familiar for my comfort, regardless of anyone's best intentions here. I have already stated pretty much the same at Muntuwandi's talk. (Please leave that section in place for the duration of the proceedings here, thank you!) PЄTЄRS J VЄСRUМВА ► TALK 14:28, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

P.S. To Ferahgo's above, I respect WeijiBaikeBianji's editorial opinion as informed and non-extremist; "everyone except WeijiBaikeBianji agreed" is not an optimal representation of consensus, but that is a discussion not for here. PЄTЄRS J VЄСRUМВА ► TALK 14:36, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

@Muntuwandi ("If Captain Occam had been observing his topic ban like Mathsci or David.Kane, I wouldn't have filed this request."): Guilty until proven innocent is premature at this point is my only point. The only problem I've seen at the topic is that editors are still a bit on edge given the recent and ugly conflict; even if I accept that you may be completely correct, you are only honing that edge at the moment as there's not enough edit history to do much of anything else. If there isn't sufficient edit history, you can make someone out to be anyone you want them to be. PЄTЄRS J VЄСRUМВА ► TALK 16:38, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

Statement by Tim Song

Once again we focus too much on the users and not the conduct. So what if F. is editing on Occam's behalf? If there is disruption, it can be dealt with under the discretionary sanctions; if there is no disruption, what is there to complain about? We are spending a lot of time and energy here, and what will we gain from this? The ability to avoid the initial disruption needed for imposition of discretionary sanctions - if the disruption ever happens? Doesn't sound like a good deal to me, at all. T. Canens ( talk) 16:47, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

Statement by other aprock

To the extent that Ferahgo sticks to content issues, and is willing to read and quote sources her activity is productive. To the extent that she takes a revert first, then discuss non-content issues, her activity is counter-productive. Currently, there is a little of both, but not enough of either to make any strong conclusions. The biggest potential disruption is that Ferahgo will take on the role of gate keeper, forcing everyone to route all edits through her. This isn't a problem at the moment. aprock ( talk) 17:18, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

I'll just note here that Feragho has taken some time to rework Mental chronometry primarily to add Arthur Jensen related content. aprock ( talk) 23:12, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

Statement by Captain Occam

There are two important points here, both of which have already been made by other editors. The first is what Ferahgo pointed out in her response to Shell: Ferahgo’s current editing on these articles is no more similar to mine than it is to numerous other editors. Her editing style was much more similar to mine in the past, when I wasn’t topic banned and it therefore didn’t matter whether we edited these articles with the same objectives. But I think she’s made it abundantly clear by this point that she’s capable of editing these articles independently of me, now that my topic ban requires this from her if she’s going to participate.

And the other important point is the one made by Tim Song. The purpose of my topic ban was in order to prevent me from continuing to disrupt these articles by edit warring, tag-teaming, and making false claims of consensus. Ferahgo has done none of these things, and none of the other editors involved in these articles have had any problem with her behavior. At the same time, she’s been making a large number of constructive edits to articles in this topic area, particularly the Mental chronometry article. If she is to be topic banned on the suspicion that she’s a sockpuppet or meatpuppet, this will be an example of enforcing the letter of the law (if she actually is violating the letter of the law) in a way that completely contradicts the spirit of it. Although the purpose of my topic ban was to prevent me from continuing to cause disruption on these articles, the only effect that extending it to Ferahgo will have is to lose a constructive and civil contributor to these articles, who has not been accused of disruption by anyone other than Muntuwandi.

I think everyone who’s actively involved in these articles wants to put the arbitration behind them. I also want to put it behind myself, but Muntuwandi’s constant harping on it is making this very difficult. Other than his three recent attempts to get Ferahgo banned, Muntuwandi’s only involvement in these articles since the end of the arbitration case is his recent revert of a year’s worth of edits on the Race and genetics article with no prior discussion. One effect of his doing this was to once again remove a chart from this article that he edit warred to remove a year ago (described in my arbitration evidence here), which resulted in him being placed under a month of 0RR on this article. When the only thing Muntuwandi is currently doing on these articles is repeating the behavior for which he was previously sanctioned, his seeking of sanctions against a constructive editor who happens to disagree with him seems completely disingenuous. The problem here is not anything that Ferahgo is doing; it’s Muntuwandi’s repeated drama-mongering. -- Captain Occam ( talk) 23:26, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

Response to Muntuwandi

GWH placed me under a month 0RR on Race and genetics for going straight to AN/I about a conflict that I should have first tried to resolve somewhere like WQA, and I’ve avoided making this mistake again after being sanctioned for it. Your own 0RR was due to your continued removing of the image based not on anything about the image itself, but based on what you perceived as my motives for adding it, which in turn was based on something I’d written outside of Wikipedia. You continued trying to remove it regardless of how I changed it to address your objections, including when I read the relevant part of Cavalli-Sforza’s book and modified the image to closely match the original source, as well as after Varoon Arya created a new version of the image in an attempt to satisfy you. Yet despite being given a clear message from GWH that your doing this was not acceptable, you’re continuing to claim that “The issue of the image has not been resolved”, reverting the article back a year in order to remove the image yet again, and now are once again repeating the same justification for removing it that resulted in your original sanction.

Do you not see how bizarre this is? Your obsession with removing any and every form of this image has now lasted approximately a year, and since the end of the arbitration case this has been the entire extent of your involvement in these articles. And now, it’s resulting in an amendment request because someone felt that your reverting the article back a year in order to restore a version without the image was not a reasonable thing to do. Recidivism, article ownership, assuming bad faith… there are too many problems with what you’re doing here for me to cover them all. -- Captain Occam ( talk) 03:08, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

I don't think there's nothing you can say here at the moment that will diffuse matters, unfortunately. PЄTЄRS J VЄСRUМВА ► TALK 04:59, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

Additional comments

I think it needs to be pointed out how predictable the pattern of comments here has been. The four editors arguing in favor of a topic ban—Muntuwandi, Marginalia, WeijiBaikeBianji, and Mathsci—are not uninvolved in this dispute, nor are they neutral. All four of them were involved in the arbitration case, and for all four of them the overwhelming focus of their involvement in it was to try and obtain sanctions against me and the other editors who tended to agree with me. This is most apparent from looking at the arguments they presented on the “evidence” page. On the other hand all of the editors who didn’t display this us-vs-them attitude during the arbitration case, or weren’t involved in it at all, are opposed to a topic ban. This includes Tim Song, Maunus, and Vecrumba.

The editors who have a personal stake in getting rid of Ferahgo don’t actually outnumber the neutral editors, at least not on the articles or their talk pages. But what happens in discussions like this one is that when anyone just cares about improving the quality of the articles, they’re not going to care enough about what happens to Ferahgo to comment here more than once or twice, if they comment at all. Since she’s relatively new to these articles, she doesn’t have a network of supporters whom she can rely on to defend her here. But on the other hand, the editors who are devoted to eliminating as much of their opposition as possible are all going to make sure they comment here and accuse her of wrongdoing, and (in some cases) continue to make additional accusations if she tries to reply to them. It looks like in her own comments here Ferahgo has been trying to keep up with all of what the editors who want her banned have been saying about her, but when she’s basically on her own against all four of them, trying to do this is pretty futile.

What I find both interesting and discouraging is how this is apparently affecting the opinions of arbitrators. Kirill was the first arbitrator to comment here, and when he left his comment stating that a topic ban is unnecessary because Ferahgo isn’t causing any disruption, all of the same facts were available about her that are available now. (The issue of possible meatpuppetry and WP:SHARE had already been discussed both at the arbitration enforcement board, and during the arbitration itself.) But as soon as the editors who want Ferahgo banned showed up in this discussion and began to dominate it, every arbitrator who commented after that point supported a topic ban for her. Since none of the subsequent comments from Muntuwandi, Marginalia, WeijiBaikeBianji, and Mathsci involved any evidence that the arbitrators hadn’t seen already, what else could have changed to turn the arbitrators in favor of a topic ban? The only thing Ferahgo has been doing during this time is making constructive edits and suggestions for the articles, which are appreciated by most of the people involved in them.

I’m sure most arbitrators are aware that one of the negative aspects of Wikipedia’s reputation is that on articles on controversial topics, the viewpoint which wins out is usually the one favored by the largest number of editors involved in the article, regardless of whether or not this viewpoint is the most prominent one in reliable sources. Other people have told me this numerous times both before and after I became involved here, and during my involvement I’ve come to understand why it’s the case. A cabal of like-minded editors is always capable of defeating a lone user in an edit war, and will usually also win out at AN/I. (Consensus is supposed to be more than just a vote, but when 10 or 15 editors are clamoring for sanctions against a lone editor and completely dominating the discussion, it’s not often that the closing admin will base their decision on something other than what the vast majority of people commenting seem to want.) Until now, I had hoped that ArbCom was the one part of Wikipedia that wasn’t susceptible to this, but it looks like maybe I was wrong. -- Captain Occam ( talk) 00:57, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

@Roger Davies: I won’t deny that I’m involved also, which is why I haven’t participated in this thread nearly as much as Muntuwandi, Marginalia and Ferahgo herself have. I’m sure arbitrators could have predicted that I wouldn’t support a topic ban for someone I’m friends with in real life, so I didn’t expect my opinion that it’s unwarranted to have very much influence on the outcome of this thread. But the same principle should also apply to the other editors who have been heavily involved in seeking sanctions for whoever disagrees with them, and whose reactions here are every bit as predictable for this reason. Right now, these editors are the source of 100% of the arguments for a topic ban—if there are uninvolved and neutral editors who would support a topic ban (as Shell suggests), they aren’t commenting here. -- Captain Occam ( talk) 02:09, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Response to new comments from Maunus and Muntuwandi

Maunus’s updated comment expresses a very reasonable concern that with so few editors who are willing to edit from the hereditarian perspective, there’s a danger that the weight of the articles might shift towards the opposite extreme. I don’t think Muntuwandi’s reassurance that he and WeijiBaikeBianji are as capable as anyone else of preserving the neutrality of these articles is consistent with their editing patterns since the end of the arbitration case. I’m going to provide a sampling of their edits since then to show why I think Maunus’s concern about this is a reasonable one:

• [51] Muntuwandi reverts the Race and genetics article back a year without any discussion. When this was undone by an IP editor, the one-year revert was reinstated by WeijiBaikeBianji, still without any discussion. Muntuwandi is currently under an a revert restriction which limits him to one revert per day, so this is an example of him and WBB tag-teaming in order to get around the restrictions on Muntuwandi’s account.

• [52] [53] [54] [55] WBB renames four IQ-related articles without any discussion. Less than an hour later, he suggests that Race and intelligence be renamed in order to match the names of these other articles that he’d just renamed. When Ferahgo mentions Fertility and intelligence as an article that’s still named in a way that’s consistent with Race and intelligence’s original title, around three hours later WBB renames that one also.

• Three days later, after several editors have already expressed a problem with WBB’s undiscussed renames of IQ-related articles, he renames Race and genetics to “Genetics and the decline of race”, again without any discussion. This caught the attention of Dbachmann, an administrator who sometimes watches these articles, who described WBB’s behavior as “a rather crude example of pov-pushing by article title.”

• [56] [57] Two examples of WBB selectively adding and removing links from articles about researchers who favor the hereditarian perspective. The issue here is not that the links he removed necessarily belonged there, but that both of these edits had the overall effect of removing every link which described these researchers favorably, and keeping only links which were critical of them, some of which were no more relevant to the articles than the links he’d removed. When Ferahgo reverted one of these edits due to her believing it to be an NPOV issue, WBB immediately reinstated his edit without waiting for any discussion.

• [58] [59] [60] Another example of Muntuwandi and WeijiBaikeBianji tag-teaming in order to get around Muntuwandi’s revert restriction on these articles. Note that WeijiBaikeBianji reinstated Muntuwandi’s edit exactly twelve minutes after it was reverted by someone who disagreed with it. Also notice that in the discussion about this, Weiji has not responded to requests that he explain in what way he thinks the content he removed misrepresents the source, and Muntuwandi has insisted on making personal comments about other editors rather than discussing content. [61] [62] [63] [64]. What he says in the third diff is particularly pertinent—although Maunus had already asked him in his user talk to stop doing this, Muntuwandi is stating that he feels no need to follow Maunus’s advice.

I would have hoped that with discretionary sanctions authorized on these articles, admins would be do something about this sort of thing when it occurs, but no uninvolved admins seem to be paying attention to what’s happening on these articles. Ferahgo has asked two administrators (GeorgeWilliamHerbert and Dbachmann) in their user talk if there’s any way to get uninvolved admins to pay attention to these articles, but neither of them replied to her question.

There aren’t as many examples of edits from Muntuwandi that could be considered POV-pushing as there are from WeijiBaikeBianji, and this is partly because Muntuwandi has made very few content edits in this topic area since the end of the arbitration case. The issue in his case is the lengths that he’s gone to in his effort to drive off his opposition. Ferahgo already described one recent example of this in her own statement, but Muntuwandi’s last comment here accusing me of evading my ban on the Race (classification of humans) article is another example. Not only have I not participated in this article since the end of the arbitration case; I also made it clear on the talk page ( here) that I intended to voluntarily disengage from this article after my topic ban, even though I didn’t think my topic ban would cover it. The argument that resulted from me saying this was because several editors had a problem with me regarding this as a voluntary restriction. I’ve pointed this out to Muntuwandi before, so I know he’s aware of it; as far as I can tell, he’s claiming that I evaded my ban on this article just because it makes his case against Ferahgo look stronger.

The overall attitude I’m seeing from Muntuwandi and WeijiBaikeBianji is a lot of eagerness to get rid of the editors who tend to disagree with their point of view, combined with eagerness to make the articles conform to their points of view when most of the editors who would oppose this are out of the way. This is something that I think arbitrators ought to consider if they’re wondering why Ferahgo’s activity on the articles rapidly increased after the end of the arbitration case. In addition to Mathsci’s topic ban removing the main barrier to her involvement there, with me and David.Kane also topic banned she was one of the only people left on these articles with the knowledge and motivation to oppose behavior there that I think can be accurately described as POV-pushing.

Over the past several months, there has been an overall trend on these articles where one way or another, more and more of the people who edit from a neutral or hereditarian perspective have been driven off. Varoon Arya [65] and Distributivejustice [66] both said that this was because they couldn’t tolerate how others were treating them. Bpesta22 never specifically stated why he left, but one of his last comments before disappearing complained about “the treatment one gets here”. Even though topic-banning me, David.Kane and Mikemikev may have been for the best overall, it also had the unintentional side effect of reinforcing this trend—the three of us were the three most active remaining editors who tended to edit from a hereditarian perspective, while Mathsci was only one of a great many whose editing was primarily from the environmental perspective.

Maunus, who seems to care a lot about the neutrality of these articles, has recently indicated in his user talk that he might be quitting the articles out of frustration soon also. The more people like him leave, the more difficult it gets for people like this who remain, because the editors who are devoted to driving off whoever disagrees with them will be focusing their efforts at this on a smaller and smaller group of editors. It also makes the editors who’ve previously quit out of frustration less likely to return, because they’ll know that if they ever do they’re likely to be treated even worse than they had been originally. As arbitrators decide what to do here, I think they should consider how a topic ban for Ferahgo would encourage this trend, and how this trend may ultimately affect the articles. -- Captain Occam ( talk) 21:51, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

Updated to add: Ferahgo’s comment here seems to confirm that what I stated above is a major reason for her recent involvement in these articles. Arbitrators should take note of this. The central motivation here does not appear to be meatpuppetry or proxy editing; it’s the fear that the articles’ neutrality will be skewed in an environmental direction now that almost all of the editors who’ve cared about preventing this have either quit or been topic banned, and discretionary sanctions are not having any effect in preventing POV-pushing on these articles. Maunus appears to share this concern of hers, even though he personally disagrees with the hereditarian perspective, so I think it’s clearly a reasonable concern to have. -- Captain Occam ( talk) 20:29, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

@Slp1: I would like to point out that I don’t feel I’ve been given the opportunity to disengage from these articles. What I mean by this is that almost as soon as my topic ban was implemented, and I began editing in other areas, I’ve been faced with a repeated series of accusations from Muntuwandi that one way or another I’m not following my topic ban—first at the arbitration enforcement board, then at SPI, and now here. All three of the three most recent comments in my user talk are from him complaining about this. In most cases, my reason for involvement is not only for the sake of the articles, or for Ferahgo’s sake—if the SPI had ruled that Ferahgo was a sockpuppet of mine I probably would have been blocked as a sockpuppeteer, and in this thread Mathsci is suggesting additional sanctions against me.

I completely agree that it’s a problem for me to be involved here this heavily, and I would really like not to be. But to say that the effort to get Ferahgo topic banned is an appropriate response to my involvement here is to confuse cause and effect. The effort to get her topic banned, the repeated messages about this in my user talk, and the related efforts to implement additional sanctions against me are what’s causing this. -- Captain Occam ( talk) 22:45, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

Slp1 2: I don’t think you understand the reason why I’m bringing this up. All of the behavior I’ve described here is from after the case ended, so the goal here isn’t to argue about the validity of the existing arbcom decision, which obviously couldn’t have considered things that hadn’t occurred yet. The relevant question is whether going forward, Maunus is right that editors like Ferahgo are necessary in order to prevent the articles from being excessively slanted in an environmental direction, or whether Muntuwandi is right that he and WeiiBaikeBianji can preserve the neutrality of these articles without any help. Based on the examples of Muntuwandi’s and WeiiBaikeBianji’s recent behavior that I provided above, I think it’s clear that Maunus is right.

As I said, it would be vastly preferable if none of this were necessary. When threads like this aren’t going on, Ferahgo is contributing to the articles in a way that most other people find productive, and I’m focusing my attention on unrelated articles, which I think is the way things should be. But when editors are trying to obtain sanctions for her and additional sanctions for me, everyone involved gets distracted from what they ought to be doing and sucked into this drama. Any arbitration remedy needs to address the underlying issues that exist on these articles, not just the symptoms of the amendment thread itself. And those issues include Muntuwandi’s obsession with eliminating his opposition from these articles (which continues to make up the majority of his activity since the end of the arbitration case) and WeiiBaikeBianji’s apparent POV-pushing. -- Captain Occam ( talk) 00:46, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

Statement by Maunus

The only thing I find weird is that while Ferahgo claims that she is painfully aware that according to WP:SHARE she can be considered the same account as CaptainOccam is she edits with the same objectives as he did, and that she therefore should avoid editing patterns similar to his, but she has chosen to manifest this awareness by entering into the same debate in which Occam is topic banned, arguing from the same pov as he did. This seems contradictory to me. Now, I didn't advocate a topicban for Occam and will not advocate one for Ferahgo untill such a point that she might demonstrate that she is not interested in collaborative editing. However the discrepancy between her stated awarenes of WP:SHARE and her actions jars in my ears, and I would like her to elaborate on how, now that she has chosen to emulate Occams choice of editing topics, she is going to avoid repeating his mistakes. ·Maunus·ƛ· 00:06, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

update I don't think Ferahgo can be said to display battlegroud behaviour in her recent activity at R&I related articles. If she does it has clearly been from frustration by the way other editors have been treating her. She does edit from the pro-hereditarian viewpoint, which she apparently shares with Occam to a large extent and knows as much about. This is the only worry I have on grounds of principle I think it is an unfortunate situation that of two editors editing from the same computer on the same articles one is topic banned and the other isn't. This does open possibilities for gaming and loophole surfing. However I agree with Tim Song that this problem is best solved by being pragmatic about it and saying, "so what if Ferahgo is really proxy editing for Occam, as long as she is not displaying his behavioural problems as well." Occam wasn't banned because of his POV but because of his editing behaviour. Furthermore since David Kane and Occam have been topic banned I find myself feeling forced to make pro-hereditarian edits, simply because this viewpoint is now very weakly represented (among editors, not in the articles), I don't enjoy this as it is not a view I personally entertain. I would urge all editors to be mindful of balance and forexample when cleaning up articles not only remove the dubious or badly written material with which they disagree but also dubious and badly written material with which they agree and try to move towards a synthesis instead of just shifting the weight towards the other extreme. ·Maunus·ƛ· 23:47, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

@Michael Price - It is a pretty standard image, what made it misleading was the context. Cavalli-Sforza is qute upfront in saying that the tree does not illustrate "races" but bio-geographical genetic clusters. When taken out of that context as an illustration of genetic differences between races that is misleading. However you are right it is a content POV issue - but it is an that has been grossly aggravated by substandard editing behaviour from editors on both sides of the dispute. Please do read up on the entire case when commenting. The world is more often than not more complex than what it looks like at a quick glance. ·Maunus·ƛ· 17:30, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

Michael Price: Occam and David Kane and Mathsci have been topic banned because arbcom saw them as having a general pattern of problematic behaviour - not based on that one edit. ·Maunus·ƛ· 17:58, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

@MichaelPrice: We are all aware that there has been a long time problematic editing environment at Race related articles - we have gone through a several months long ArbCom case that attests to that. You are only pointing out what is obvious to everyone who has been involved: Race related articles have been a battleground for the last several months, this is what we are working towards changing. This amendment case I guess is part of that process. ·Maunus·ƛ· 18:16, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

comment to Captain Occam's comment:I want to make clear that the reason I am likely to stop watching race related articles in the near future is not due to frustration with the the editors, but simply with the long and tediouis process of arbitration during which progress on the topic has been stalled. ·Maunus·ƛ· 22:18, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

COMMENT I think ArbCom should strongly consider extending a topic ban to User:Muntuwandi. The user was displaying behavioural issues on race related articles before including Editwarring and Battleground mentality. (S)he wasn't made a party to the original case because he was observing a "voluntary topic ban" and was not editing the articles at the time when the ArbCom procedure was begun. S/He has apparently found the topicbanning of Captain Occam and David Kane to be an occasion to return to editing the articles, but as far as I can discern the original behavioural problems including edit warring, battleground mentality and a general lack of respecting other editors personal dignity are still present. I think it would be a good idea to pre-empt problems at the article by letting Muntuwandi edit elsewhere. I am not myself going to campaign more for this proposal, as I have decided to take an editing vacation from the Race and intelligence topic, but I think ArbCom should review Muntuwandi's recent behaviour and consider whether a topic ban would be likely to improve the editing environment. Best. ·Maunus·ƛ· 03:10, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

@Muntuwandi Contrary to what you suggest being in "good rapport" with other editors is not considered a crim at wikipedia, it is rather considered a requisite for being able to edit here in our collaborative encyclopedia - "being in good rapport" even with editors with whom one disagrees is established as a fundamental value in our policies WP:CIVIL and WP:AGF. That you would use the fact that I insist on being on good terms and enter into mature discussions even with those with whom I do not agree as an argument against me goes right to the core of what is wrong with your editing behaviour and philosophy. That you would choose to disregard the advice I have given you abut your behaviour in the past because I am not "uninvolved" is similarly disturbing. This is a clear case of battleground mentality where "those who aren't with me are against me" in your optics. This is not the way a collaborative encyclopedia works or can work. ·Maunus·ƛ· 14:01, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Statement by Professor marginalia

I've been too busy in the last few weeks to edit or follow the latest developments closely, but these assurances that Feragho and Captain Occam can be viewed as two distinct and independent accounts are not credible. They are partners in real life, and the only involvement of Feragho's in these involved articles prior to arbitration was to show up out of nowhere to "vote" or otherwise lend support to Captain Occam in various disputes, with he himself showing up right behind her to pointedly underscore her support to lend weight to his position. This edit, for example, was made to Ferahgo at a time when she'd only eight edits total in the entire encyclopedia, 5 of them minor edits--none of the edits were yet in the field of race or intelligence. Prior to arbitration, Ferahgo's only editing related to the involved articles followed Captain Occam's addressing her as an involved editor on her talk page. Then for the next 6 months her only involvement was over the course of about 10 edits to lend him backup in a single article (Race and intelligence) and in dispute resolutions on various other boards. But during, and now following, the arbitration in which Captain Occam was ultimately banned, Ferahgo was taken brand-new interest in at least seven more race/intelligence related articles. One of them is Race and genetics, never before edited by Ferahgo, yet she writes, here of content that she "remembers being there last October" -- uncanny the déjà vu to one of Captain Occam's disputes there then. I'd have hoped that with the degree of disruptive gaming going on over the past year that arbitration would bring an end to it. Professor marginalia ( talk) 19:41, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

Response to Ferahgo-the fact that often I have other demands on my time does not render me an "inactive" editor who doesn't "care about the quality of the articles" or that I am concerned only about "continuing the petty drama" of the arb comm case. The arb comm was as much about ending "petty drama" as anything else. And I steer as far clear of "petty drama" as I can, but to justify spending time on the arbitration means I won't watch idly by when its outcomes completely unravel via gaming. This means I won't go without commenting should spouses, roommates, partners, parents, children, siblings, friends, co-workers and other "stand-ins" assume a curious and intense new interest for editing just as article bans go into effect. It's not me who is the source of the drama here. My efforts are focused here on ending it. Professor marginalia ( talk) 23:06, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

Response to Ferahgo 2: Re: WP:ROPE--a) It's an essay b) You're ignoring the section "When not to use" which advises not to make such concessions against "Banned users – users blocked by community discussion or ArbCom". You asked now why your past behavior is relevant--it's because your edits then were challenged as meatpuppetry, and you and Captain Occam variously deflected, rebuffed and even attacked those who revealed your closeness irl. Now that he is banned from editing those articles, you've redoubled your efforts to edit them in his absence, and the pattern repeats itself.

Because you continue to profess how remiss other editors are to doubt you, it's relevant to lay the story all out once again. You opened your accounts minutes apart, you edit from the same IP ranges, you came to the disputes following Captain Occam's recruitment, your entrée was limited to that of backing him up in disputes, and both you and he took subtle but conscious steps to "keep up appearances" of independence. When allegations of meatpuppetry were raised, you vanished for 6 months, only to resurface in support of Captain Occam against accusations of tag-teaming and SPA: [67] (Captain Occam was later to be officially sanctioned for those same abuses by the arb comm.) When your tiny edit history raised eyebrows then, [68] you quietly slipped away from the dispute and your editing of unrelated articles soon jolted, a tripling in just 2 weeks of your previous year's output. You then resumed backing up Captain Occam in disputes, essentially forcing other editors to take a closer look and probe deeper into the WP:MEAT question. Your support on Captain Occam's unblock request to Jimbo [69] prompted Hipocrite to question your intentions to self-disclose your relationship when backing up Captain Occam in disputes. Your reply, "I think it's excessive to mention it in every comment," was both disingenuous and dismissive of a legitimate concern--in fact you had never before mentioned it on the wiki until after he'd posed the question to you on your talk page, and even after you did do so you downplayed it as merely "knowing" him and "irrelevant". You also continued, "but I don't try to keep it a secret and will answer honestly if asked." [70] However several days later in yet another forum where you popped in to back him up, you were less than forthcoming again, forcing the issue one more time. When Hipocrite then asked you quite directly, you and Captain Occam both tried to elevate it as a personal attack and an "outing". [71] [72] Much as you are now, claiming "harassment" by Wapondaponda.

Today you concede, "I am willing to admit that before arbitration I was not participating in these articles independently from Occam. When I commented on these articles at all I was following him around, watching what he was involved in." But this wasn't made clear when commenting on Captain Occam's behalf in content disputes, further exacerbating disruptions. You go on to say, "with Occam banned supporting him isn't acceptable, so in order to contribute here I need to stand on my own two feet." And as should have been clear to you from very early on, it was inappropriate not to be "standing on your own two feet" with each and every edit anywhere, anytime in the encyclopedia. The past year's efforts to dodge or diminish valid concerns about proxy editing, including attacks against those trying to pin down what's going on, will of course cast a certain light on your words and actions today. So the argument, "Yes, my past role was limited to being Captain's loyal helpmeet in the articles, but since he's been banned you are out of order to think that of me now" doesn't hold water with me. One reason things got so out of hand in the first place were dodgy shenanigans and skewed priorities, and I don't see how turning a blind eye now will shape things up. Professor marginalia ( talk) 23:53, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

Response to Ferahgo 3: I think we're on opposite sides of a gulf here. From your point of view, Captain Occam's acknowledgment that you two "knew each other" in real life on Captain Occam's talk page entitled the two of you to put all suspicions and questions about this to bed once and for all, in any and all disputes in wikipedia, in all forums, for ever after. And you expect us to understand his words are on behalf of the both of you, end of subject, while all the rest his and your editing are to be viewed as "independent". From your point of view, our concern should be limited to whether or not you've been faithful to the letter of policy.

While from my point of view, these articles have been plagued by gaming for quite some time. Once meat-puppet concerns were raised both you and Captain Occam should have become well aware that your relationship was of valid concern. Rather than pushing back, you might have realized that you both need to explore your interests at wikipedia completely independently or be prepared to disclose your relationship to fellow editors when lending support to each other in articles or disputes. And to realize that one invites "prying" if they don't "get it" and press on. From my point of view, the concern is that you, like Captain Occam demonstrated to me when I first came to the dispute, fixate on how out-play policy, via hair-splitting comments and policy, and canvassing "back-up" to help you do so. And from my pov I've invested too much time to this dispute just to diagnose and document one aspect of the problem to justify watching it repeat itself right under my nose. Professor marginalia ( talk) 05:02, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

Statement by WeijiBaikeBianji

• Comment by other editor WeijiBaikeBianji: this looks like a meat-puppet to me. Even though my user name is mentioned in this discussion, I somehow was not aware that this discussion was occurring. What I see on the article talk pages of several articles that are directly included in the recent ArbCom case discretionary sanctions is a pattern of editor conduct indistinguishable from Captain Occam's now occurring from the keyboard of Ferahgo the Assassin. Checking Ferahgo's contribs, it appears that her participation in race and intelligence topics far exceeds participation in paleontology topics, contrary to the advice she received from members of the Arbitration Committee. (And I note that several of the paleontology article edits consist of inserting statements from primary sources, perhaps unreplicated primary sources, rather than from Wikipedia preferred reliable secondary sources.) I see a lot of the same, old same-old that I saw before the decision in the recent ArbCom case. Assuming good faith, I'm happy to have any editor of any point of view request that editors refer to sources and back up content edits with citations to those sources. But I will not allow Wikipedia articles on the topics recently covered by the ArbCom case to become battlegrounds that keep us busier looking for phony "consensus" on the talk pages than doing substantive article edits based on recent, reliable secondary sources. The articles covered by the case have been in terrible shape for a long time because many POV-pushers who read blogs more than they read the professional literature refuse to believe what the current professional literature says and actively revert sourced content. The topic sanctions allow administrators to act with due discretion to keep single-purpose accounts from dominating those articles. I hope that administrators will not shy from using their mops to clean up the mess, so that an improved editing environment brings about much improvement in all the related articles. -- WeijiBaikeBianji ( talk) 23:30, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

• • Follow-up on disruptive edit by Ferahgo. Just today, Ferahgo made an edit [73] that reverted an edit of placing a highly reliable, well reviewed secondary source in a Further reading section (preparatory to using the source for article edits) and cleaning up the same article's external links section per WP:EL. Discussion of that series of edits can now be found on the article talk page, with participation by Ferahgo, me, an editor who participated in the recent ArbCom case (Maunus), and an editor unknown to me. I'm sure that Ferahgo considers her edit a good-faith effort to maintain what she regards as neutral point of view on Wikipedia. But after I spent time last week reviewing the external link policy (prompted by a question from another Wikipedian, as documented on my user talk page) and hours this week reading a lavishly documented source on the subject of the article in question (and other articles related to the ArbCom case), I can't help feeling that the edit was disruptive. Ferahgo pushed a point of view by that edit and did not uphold Wikipedia policy. Quite apart from the issue of meat-puppetry, the ArbCom decision was intended to leave in place a set of discretionary sanctions that would uphold Wikipedia policy and allow source-based improvements in the articles within the scope of the case. -- WeijiBaikeBianji ( talk) 18:55, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

• • Question for Michael C. Price I get the impression that you haven't been following all the contribs of the various persons named here if you think the entire fuss is about that diagram. But while we are on the subject of what is "standard" in the literature, what sources do you recommend on the general subjects of anthropology, human biology, or race to show what current standard scholarly practice is in treating those issues? Perhaps before you see this reply, I will be traveling again to the largest academic research library in my state to pick up more books on those subjects. I am always eager to hear source suggestions from Wikipedians who know of reliable sources to share with other Wikipedians. -- WeijiBaikeBianji ( talk) 16:31, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

Reply to question from Michael C. Price As also answered by Maunus in his comment space here, what can be misleading about that image is the context in which it is brought into an article. What I have thought is misleading about the image is the representation that it is the last word on a subject that has seen quite a bit of research since the book in which Cavalli-Sforza published the results summarized by the image. That is why I ask about sources: I am, thus far, not seeing the Cavalli-Sforza image used in standard secondary sources on the subject as a conclusive statement on human "race" groups. Quite the contrary, I have from the keyboard of Cavalli-Sforza himself rejections of the race concept as a scientifically valid concept; images and charts from a variety of authors, who disagree with one another in whole or in part, on lineage relationships of various human populations; and varied detailed maps of the distribution of human genes that show that genes under selection pressure can occur in more than one lineage group, even if neutral polymorphisms can distinguish lineages. The overall literature is much more up-to-date and much more nuanced than that image, which is why Cavalli-Sforza himself does not simply reproduce that image in his latest book (which I have at hand as I type this). -- WeijiBaikeBianji ( talk) 17:49, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the thoughtful comments by Slp1. I see that Slp1 noticed, before I did, the ridiculous comment by Captain Occam here. Captain Occam, who was properly topic-banned after a lengthy Arbitration Committee case in which he had ample opportunity to demonstrate what he has to contribute to Wikipedia, has the gall to suggest that I might endanger the neutrality of point of view on Wikipedia if I proceed to edit boldly on the basis of reliable sources. I took care before I did many article edits at all to let other Wikipedians know about valuable sources and to solicit all of them to suggest further sources to me. I did that during the discussion of the Arbitration Committee case and I continue to do that. (Indeed, I specifically invited Ferahgo to recommend sources for the source list, and Slp1 seemed to think that that was a helpful suggestion.) I discuss a lot with other editors before I edit. My edit count statistics show that I post to article talk pages more than I post to articles themselves, to date, although now I hope to change that balance to having more article edits. I mentioned in the ArbCom case file that I agreed with RegentsPark that POV-pushing by single-purpose accounts was violating the core Wikipedia principle of neutral point of view. (As I recall, and as seems to be confirmed by the diff, RegentsPark made his remark while commenting on the editorial behavior of Captain Occam.) While the case was still being decided, in the case file in full view of the Arbitration Committee, I forthrightly announced that I intended boldly to fix problems in the articles within the scope of the case as soon as the case was decided. (Yes, you saw a link to WP:BEBOLD with different link text in that diff. I know what the rules are here.) I have "not yet begun to" do that, to quote John Paul Jones. The current condition of most of the articles in the scope of the ArbCom case is not neutral point of view, because the articles have been skewed by poor sourcing and tendentious editing for a very long time. I am agreeable to working tirelessly and boldly to clean up a mess that others made before I became a Wikipedian. I am confident that there is no doubt in the scholarly community, as there should also be no doubt in the Wikipedia editing community, that the point of view preferred by Captain Occam and by Ferahgo the Assassin (and relentlessly pushed by them into Wikipedia article text) is not a point of view that would look "neutral" or "balanced" to most persons literate in English and especially not to most persons who are familiar with the research on IQ testing. (IQ testing is a subject on which I will be giving a public workshop presentation at a statewide meeting next month, as I have before and as I will again in Illinois early next year). Since everything that is being said here is once again in full view of the Arbitration Committee, and because I am possibly still the newest Wikipedian here, I call on the onlookers to give me a reality check: is it wrong, after traveling to a major academic library to find good sources (as I do every Sunday) and after actually reading those sources (I read Cavalli-Sforza 1994 the year it was published, from cover to cover, and have followed his subsequent writings with great interest) to then edit Wikipedia articles according to my best understanding of what reliable sources say? Is there some kind of rule against that? -- WeijiBaikeBianji ( talk) 02:00, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

General question for any administrator looking on: Isn't there now ample evidence here, from the keyboards of the involved persons, that discretionary sanctions from the recent ArbCom case should be applied to uphold Wikipedia neutral point of view core policy? -- WeijiBaikeBianji ( talk) 20:34, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

Replying to Maunus's comment about Muntuwandi (Wapondaponda), I respectfully disagree. I think Muntuwandi's conduct on these articles has been informed by sources, aimed at fulfilling core Wikipedia policies, civil and helpful to other editors, and specifically helpful to other editors. Maunus expressed a concern about Muntuwandi not drafting a lot of new material of his own, but I have found his deletions of POV-pushing statements from the articles to be some of the best editing the articles have received in the last few months. I know the professionally published sources. The articles currently suffer from bad violations of Wikipedia neutral point of view because they are very poorly sourced. It is at least as necessary to omit passages that put undue weight on minority positions as it is to add passages that update the articles based on the latest research. I have worked in editorial offices before in two different countries. One of the most essential skills of a professional editor is chopping out words that don't belong in a manuscript. Muntuwandi does that boldly but thoughtfully. I think most editors who have edited those articles in the last year will be happy to work with him, and I am confident he will be a net contribution to better articles on that always contentious topic. -- WeijiBaikeBianji ( talk) 05:39, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

Statement by Mathsci

Some weeks ago an arbitrator suggested that I should comment here.

Captain Occam has disclosed on wikipedia that he cohabits with Ferahgo the Assassin and that she is his current girlfriend. He himself edits very little at the moment (he is sporadically writing a race-related article in his user space). Ferahgo the Assassin's editing in articles/talk pages covered by Captain Occam's topic ban does seem to have taken on the character of his editing, with the subject of dinosaurs now secondary. There are some editing traits of hers that can only be explained by meatpuppetry, most significantly her attitude towards other wikipedians (Georgewilliamherbert & Dbachmann as administrative wikifriends, WeijiBaikiBianji & Muntuwandi as disruptive opponents).

In her statements above, Ferahgo the Assassin has presented with considerable determination a multitude of constantly changing excuses and justifications, some of them stretching the limits of credibility. At the same time she and Captain Occam have displayed a total failure to take any notice of very clear and helpful advice offered to them by arbitrators here and elsewhere. On balance all the information so far available suggests that Ferahgo the Assassin has adopted an editing strategy, worked out in consultation with Captain Occam, to aid him in circumventing his topic ban. Mathsci ( talk) 05:15, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Captain Occam's girlfriend Ferahgo the Assassin continues to wage his BATTLES on wikipedia in an ever-widening set of articles, all covered by his topic ban, and against the same perceived opponents. [74] [75] It seems essentially to be all she is doing on wikipedia at the moment. Captain Occam has revealed below that he engages in discussions with Ferahgo the Assassin concerning wikipedia and his topic ban. In view of that admission, the only reasonable presumption is that Ferahgo the Assassin's edits in the area of his topic ban are also the result of joint discussions between the pair of them. Both Captain Occam and Ferahgo the Assassin have been offered ample opportunity to comply with suggestions of arbitrators over a prolonged period of time (five weeks), but have been unresponsive. Because there seems to be no prospect of voluntary compliance, the only remaining option seems to be a formal amendment of Captain Occam's remedy, extending his topic ban to Ferahgo the Assassin. Since Captain Occam has shown no sign of taking any responsibility for his actions, some form of additional sanction might also be appropriate for him. Mathsci ( talk) 04:20, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

In addition to Captain Occam's new statements above, it might be worth noting a prior statement that he left on Maunus' user talk page: [76] "I’m sorry to bother you about this. I don’t know if I’ve made this clear, but I find this situation extremely frustrating also, and not just because I can observe in person how Ferahgo is affected by it. I share your concern that with so few editors left who edit from the hereditarian perspective, there’s a danger that the neutrality of the articles might suffer as a result, and Ferahgo is pretty much the only one of these left who hasn’t either been topic banned or quit out of frustration. Muntuwandi’s recent behavior on these articles does not give me a lot of confidence that he and WeijiBaikeBianji will be able to keep them neutral if given free reign over them. I’m very worried about what will happen to the articles if these editors manage to get rid of the only remaining editor who disagrees with them." Mathsci ( talk) 05:53, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

Statement by David.Kane

Although this debate does not involve me and I am topic banned in this area, MathSci's comments compel me to chime in.

1) Note Shell 's inadvertent (I hope!) mistake in describing Wikipedia:SHARE as "advis[ing] editors in this situation to treat edit warring and other restrictions as if they were a single account." But that is not what Wikipedia:SHARE says. Instead, "closely related accounts should disclose the connection and observe relevant policies such as edit warring as if they were a single account." (Emphasis added by me.) In other words, even though Occam is topic banned, that ban has no implications for Ferahgo. Restrictions placed on one account do not apply to the other account. There is all the difference in the world between restrictions and policies. (For the sake of argument, I assume that we all agree that Ferahgo and Occam are, in real life, two separate people. If Ferahgo were a sock-puppet then, obviously, restrictions which applied to Occam would apply to "her" as well.)

2) More productively, perhaps I can suggest a solution. We can all agree that Ferahgo's behavior (whatever legitimate complaints various editors may have about her) is not anywhere near as egregious as Occam's (or mine or MathSci's). Therefore, it makes no sense that she should receive as harsh a sanction as we (correctly) did. So how about probation? Or a one month topic ban, starting now? It seems unfair to Ferahgo that any restriction ever placed on Occam would apply to her as well. What if Occam were banned from Wikipedia completely? Would Ferahgo be sited-banned as well? That is not what Wikipedia:SHARE suggests. David.Kane ( talk) 16:52, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

As much as it pains me to suggest any type of sanctions for Ferahgo, I think that in general, some sort of sanction that’s less than a full topic ban is probably the best idea.

There are two lines of reasoning that need to be weighed against one another here. Because of Ferahgo’s close connection to me, it’s reasonable to be worried that at some point she’ll engage in the same sort of disruptive behavior for which I was topic-banned, even though there haven’t been any examples of this yet. But on the other hand, it seems completely counter-productive to ban an editor from a group of articles where they’re making useful contributions and not causing any disruption. Ideally, whatever solution ArbCom comes up with should be based on both of these concerns.

In terms of what’s best for the articles, probation looks to me like the best idea. It will ensure that Ferahgo doesn’t engage in the same behavior for which I was sanctioned—and if she ever does, the probation would very quickly result in a block or topic ban. But it also would not prevent her from participating constructively as long as that’s the only thing she’s doing. In fact, I would say that this situation is a near-perfect example of the situation in which WP:Probation is used: “Probation is usually used as an alternative to an outright topic ban in cases where the editor shows some promise of learning better behavior.” (Or perhaps in this case we should say, “shows some promise of continuing her existing good behavior.”)

In general, I would assume that the ultimate purpose of remedies imposed by ArbCom is to prevent disruption on the articles, so they should not extend beyond what’s necessary to prevent disruption. Is that an unreasonable assumption? -- Captain Occam ( talk) 18:19, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

After thinking about it for a while - and discussing it with Occam - I agree that the best solution is for probation. I would voluntarily consent to a probation lasting the term of Occam's topic ban. Odd as it may be I think this might improve things in general, since at the moment I can hardly make a single edit or comment on these articles without being accused of POV-pushing or disruption by Weiji and Muntuwandi. All of the other consistently involved editors - like Maunus, Aprock, Vecrumba, and Victor Chmara - seem to appreciate my contributions, which has kept me from getting too disheartened. But even for edits the majority finds helpful, these accusations have been obstructing legitimate content discussions and progress to the articles.

If I am placed on probation, it would be the job of an uninvolved admin to determine if I'm engaging in any policy violations. One reason this would be helpful is simply that it would hopefully mean Muntuwandi and Weiji no longer feel the need to accuse me of this in every discussion I'm involved in and constantly try to get me removed. If I really AM doing anything wrong, I'd also like that to be constructively pointed out by someone uninvolved so that I can fix my behavior. When I'm being accused of this incessantly by only two people, it's impossible for me to tell whether I'm really doing anything wrong. - Ferahgo the Assassin ( talk) 22:50, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Statement by Michael C. Price

All this fuss over a well sourced diagram.

Cavalli-Sforza, L.L., Menozzi, P. & Piazza, A are respected academics, not racists and these diagrams are standard. -- Michael C. Price ^talk 10:19, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

WeijiBaikeBianji says I can't have been following the entire discussion; you're right. What I did was look at Occam's insertion of the above diagram (since it was mentioned in this discussion) and see that it was reverted with the comment: "removed misleading image". How is the image misleading? It looks pretty standard to me. That tells me that we dealing with a POV issue, dressed up as a conduct issue. -- Michael C. Price ^talk 17:25, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

Manus claims that the insertion of the diagram, which seems a long running bone of contention, mixes up "races" and "bio-geographical genetic clusters". This seems to miss the point that neither term was referenced in anyway in Occam's edit.

I would encourage everybody to look at the contenious edit and judge for themselves whether it merited removal on the grounds of being "misleading", and draw their own conclusions as to which side is being disruptive or POV pushing.

-- Michael C. Price ^talk 17:53, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

I understand Manus's point that it was more than this edit that was responsible for the original topic ban. But my point is that when a single informative edit, such as this is, is reverted so summarily, it is a sign that not all is well with the status-quo. -- Michael C. Price ^talk 18:04, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

Muntuwandi, you don't have to read a book before posting an image from it - all that matters is that the new content confirm to policy, be relevant etc etc, which it does. That the image was later used by another source (Jensen) that you happen to not like is irrelevant. Judge content by ... content. Not inferred intentions and guilt by association. -- Michael C. Price ^talk 10:16, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

Muntuwandi's argument (now) is that drive-by readers might misunderstand the diagram at "race and intelligence", since "few readers seem to pay attention to the actual text in the article". In other words, no matter how it explained, he will object to it...... -- Michael C. Price ^talk 02:37, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

I agree with Maunus that, if the topic ban is be extended to other users, it should include Muntuwandi because of his battleground mentality. This saddens me, since I worked with Muntuwandi on Mitochondrial Eve, but he seems to not be capable of respecting boundaries and NPOV here. -- Michael C. Price ^talk 14:07, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Statement by User:Slp1

As full disclosure, I should mention that I am one of the administrators who very strongly suggested that User:Ferahgo the Assassin should not directly edit the Race and Intelligence set of articles while Captain Occam was topic banned. [77] It appears the advice has not been heeded and we are here. My understanding is that a topic ban is put in place in part to help an editor disengage from a subject. Captain Occam's recent post above makes clear that this has not happened, and that he is as involved in scrutinizing the topic and its editors as he ever was. I cannot believe, given the detailed level of his interest and the relationship between them, that Ferahgo is a truly independent contributor here. It would have been preferable if she had accepted to limit herself voluntarily as requested, but since she hasn't, I believe that extending the topic ban to her is correct, and likely to help both of them to disengage from the issue. -- Slp1 ( talk) 22:28, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

@Captain Occam. I think you miss my point; this post is a detailed list of complaints about the edits of other editors on articles from which you are topic banned. This is not the place to re-litigate the ArbCom decision or to seek admin enforcement; it is the place to discuss whether you and Ferahgo are truly independent editors or not. Your post has the curious effect of showing that you have not disengaged, and that it is all the more likely that the two of you can be considered a unit, discussing the latest WP goings-on over supper etc. Being a unit is not a bad thing of course, since it's a very good sign in a relationship when a couple support and uphold each other. But I also think it is better for Wikipedia, and for the two of you, to have a break from this topic. My personal advice would be for both of you to unwatchlist the articles; somebody else can worry about them while you are gone, exploring the world and the many other articles of WP. -- Slp1 ( talk) 23:18, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

Further discussion

Statements here may address all the amendments, but individual statements under each proposed amendment are preferred. If there is only one proposed amendment, then no statements should be added here.

Statement by yet another editor

Clerk notes

This section is for administrative notes by the clerks (including clerk recusals).

Arbitrator views and discussion

• I see little evidence that Ferahgo is a sockpuppet or otherwise acting in violation of policy; as has been pointed out, Ferahgo's primary editing interests to date seem to have revolved around obscure dinosaurs. If their presence becomes disruptive in the future, they can be dealt with by discretionary sanctions; I see no reason for us to presume wrongdoing at this point. Kirill  ^{[talk]  [prof]} 12:30, 10 September 2010 (UTC)
• The recent SPI case confirmed that Ferahgo and Captain Occam were related in a way that made the two technically indistinguishable and Ferahgo was advised that she should respect the topic ban; she ignored this conclusion. Given that Wikipedia:SHARE advises editors in this situation to treat edit warring and other restrictions as if they were a single account when they edit with the same objective (especially in controversial areas), I don't see why there is any question here. Of further concern is Ferahgo's contribution history, or frankly, the lack thereof. Of her 314 edits since she registered in 2006, more than 50 were comments to support Captain Occam in some dispute or against some sanction. Before the sanction, she only edited in the topic area to support Captain Occam on talk pages. Since the ban she's continued his arguments and in just the past three days has reverted material she (and Captain Occam) didn't agree with 3 times. Stick to the dinosaurs. Shell ^babelfish 19:32, 10 September 2010 (UTC)
  • @Captain Occam - You should be well aware that I held this position long before this request even opened and warned both of you of the likely outcome if you chose this path. In fact, many editors (not just those you consider opponents) have brought this concern to both of you; the SPI should have made things quite clear. It's unfortunate that you both chose to push the limits this way instead of heading the advice you were getting, but here we are. Shell ^babelfish 01:56, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
• On balance, the arguments that proxy editing of some sort is going on are much more persuasive than the denials and are a better fit with known facts and the applicable policy. I'd support a topic ban for Ferahgo.  Roger Davies ^talk 17:37, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
  • @Captain Occam. The point here though is that Ferahgo isn't a lone voice in this dispute. She has you by her side and you are as involved as those whose opinions you seek to have us exclude.   Roger Davies ^talk 01:09, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
    • @Captain Occam. As this is not an AfD and we're not weighing consensus, it doesn't much matter who says what ...   Roger Davies ^talk 02:21, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
• I agree as well. As far as topic bans are concerned, both accounts should be taken as one. —  Coren  ^(talk) 13:20, 27 September 2010 (UTC)
• Agreed with those above, that this is a situation that needs to be eliminated because it's being used as a meatpuppetry/proxy editing setup. SirFozzie ( talk) 17:04, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

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