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I do not know Mkdw well, but I did have some interaction with this editor several years ago in WP:WikiProject Vancouver. At the time, I found Mkdw to be friendly, reasonable, and easy to work with. Moisejp ( talk) 14:44, 22 November 2016 (UTC) reply

question

How do you plan on dealing with people who have are transition from other wikia to english wikipedia with knowledge of how to utilize the site but are thought to be socks? BlackAmerican ( talk) 12:50, 29 November 2016 (UTC) reply

@ BlackAmerican: If you're talking about as a functionary, I would handle an SPI in exactly the same way I have always handled SPI cases. I would examine the evidence against the editors based upon diffs, edit summaries, logs, tendencies, area of interest, history of the accounts (such as when they were created), and technical evidence. SPI is not a fishing expedition and there needs to be a convergence of evidence either behaviourally, technically, or both that surpasses a threshold for anything to be actionable administratively. Merely having experience with the markup language would not be sufficient grounds alone and editors investigating these cases must be careful to ensure they're not inadvertently outing someone using a legitimate alternate account. These are procedures and best practices (among many others) followed at SPI that all editors should adhere to regardless of their appointment to ArbCom or not. Mkdw ^talk 17:07, 29 November 2016 (UTC) reply

I have seen a number of people blocked after an argument or debate on AFD's based upon an admin saying they are not a new account. Even when they say they are from other wiki, they are ignored. I find this to be quite unfair and wonder if changes will ever come to this issue. BlackAmerican ( talk) 04:40, 30 November 2016 (UTC) reply

Were they engaging in meat or sock puppetry as outlined in WP:SOCK? Were they blocked based upon behavioural and technical evidence or did an WP:SPI determine there was enough evidence to reasonably indicate they were involved in meat or sock puppetry? There is typically a lengthy queue for unblock requests. Were their unblock requests eventually responded to and either granted or denied? Did they file multiple requests? Were their unblock requests in line with WP:GAPB? Did they eventually appeal their block via the UTRS or directly to ArbCom? Do you believe any of these blocks violated our current policies and guidelines? If not, have you or they attempted to amend our blocking policy through community consensus such as via WP:RFC? I'm asking all these questions because there are a lot of steps before an ArbCom case when it comes to editorial conduct.

It's important to note that ArbCom does not decide matters of editorial or site policy. If a case was brought against an admin for misuse of their tools such as blocking editors beyond the scope and provisions of WP:BLOCK and other relevant policies, then ArbCom would likely investigate the matter. Beyond that, actions taken that are deemed by some as "unfair" but fall within our policies and guidelines are not within the jurisdiction of ArbCom to address. Mkdw ^talk 20:06, 2 December 2016 (UTC) reply