Misplaced Pages

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Armenia-Azerbaijan

Misplaced Pages:General sanctions sounds like a good idea. I have taken the liberty to add the second Armenia-Azerbaijan case (with some rewording, for consistency) to it. I submit it to your and other members of the Committee's approval. El_C 09:55, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Good catch, but keeping the actual wording is probably the better approach, to reduce potential confusion. Kirill 14:08, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, Kirill. I take your point about confusion, but at the same time, this "Applicability to all disruptive editors" seemed to me as a de facto "General restriction" (or perhaps, proto-General restriction), which is why I went on to modify the wording to read something very similar, stylistically, with all the remedies remaining still quoted down to the word, of course. My question, then, is: whether you consider the distinction between "Applicability to..." and "General restriction" to go beyond simply being called different things...? El_C 14:29, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

There's little practical difference. Essentially, what we have:

• Armenia-Azerbaijan: General civility parole, revert parole, probation
• Digwuren: General civility parole
• Macedonia: "Discretionary sanctions" (which allows a much broader set of measures than the other two cases)

So, in practice, we could rename the A-A remedy to "General restriction" and not lose any meaning. As a matter of ease-of-use, though, I think the page will be easier to deal with if the wording of the decision is copied exactly, to avoid people arguing over whether the meaning is different, and so forth. (I've been trying to move towards standard wording in remedies, incidentally, to avoid this sort of situation.) Kirill 15:51, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

I see; I wasn't aware of the distinction between "GR" and "DS" — I don't know if they're actually defined anywhere (perhaps that's not even needed, at least at this stage, so long as it remains simply a matter of degrees and broad description, and limited to very few instances/arbitration cases; it is likely to increase though... and expect arguments about the meaning and scope of each "type," regardless of anything). At any event, I'm pleased to see you abandoned the "Applicability" confusion and just opted for "GR." I liked the uniformity of my wording, but I didn't realize that yours were whole (not fragmented and synthesized, as was mine) excerpts. Doesn't really matter. Latest additions look good. El_C 16:14, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Article probation

Do we want to merge the list of articles under probation here in those cases where a broad class of articles are included? - Jehochman 17:03, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

I see no problems with merging the entire article probation page here; no sense in having multiple places for recording these when one will do. Just put the list of articles into the "Applicable area" column and "Article probation" in the "Type" column. Kirill 17:12, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

I've merged the list of articles under probation, but not the description of article probation. - Jehochman 00:07, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

I've merged the (useful parts of the) definition. Some of these look like they need review, as they've been superseded by subsequent sanctions. Kirill 04:38, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps the template designer for the Article Probation template might include info on who imposed it, the date imposed, and an expiration date? I've been trying to update and improve the article Bybee Memo which has a Probation template on its discussion page, presumably leftover from some past feud to which I was not privy. I hope to discuss changes with previous contributers but I think they're all scared of the page now and won't respond. Probation needs to expire at some point. Mindful of the prohibition on altering another editor's work--especially when it comes to a 'disciplinary action'-- I don't think I should remove the template myself. But I don't know who to contact about it, and I think the template should tell me.ElijahBosley (talk) 19:39, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Admins?

"Editors making disruptive edits may be banned by an administrator from articles on probation and related articles or project pages." Is that correct? How would that be implemented? Would the admin just tell the person not to edit the article and threaten to block them if they did? 4.21.209.231 (talk) 10:48, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

• That's the norm, yes. - Penwhale | 10:51, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Generally it's uninvolved administrators, as well, following on from the principle in Misplaced Pages:Blocking policy. Daniel 10:51, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Scientology article probabtion

According to a banner on the talk page at Talk:William S. Burroughs, articles related to Scientology are under probation, yet this isn't listed here. Has it been missed, or has probation ended so the banner can be removed from the Burroughs article? 23skidoo (talk) 22:29, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

It's here, under "COFS". Kirill 22:30, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

One missing?

Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/Israel-Lebanon appears to place 2006 Lebanon War under article probation - should this be here? Moreschi 21:35, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Yes, it should (although it's been superseded now). Kirill 03:43, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Scope

Hiya, just checking, since this page specifically says that it applies to articles. However, that means that it applies to articles, and their respective talkpages, yes? I would also expect that there's some overlap such as "other talkpages where the article is being discussed"? --Elonka 21:46, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Arbitrators may impose article probation without taking a case?

I have proposed a means by which arbitrators may impose article probation without necessarily taking a case, at Misplaced Pages talk:Arbitration policy#Arbitrators may impose article probation without taking a case?. I invite discussion there. MilesAgain (talk) 17:09, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Sanctions template

A new Sanctions template has been developed which could tag articles and notify (otherwise uninformed) users about possible sanctions. Kudos to SEWilco for the template. —Preceding unsigned comment added by HG (talk • contribs) 18:23, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Yes, that could be useful. Kirill 23:09, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Confusing - articles vs editors - Am I over-reacting?

Okay - I have a couple of discussion points I'd like to cover:

Editors / Articles

The distinction between "editors placed on editing restrictions" vs "articles and subjects under sanctions" (my words). The way this page currently reads, it is very confusing. For instance, "Types of sanctions" talks mostly about editors, not articles. Also, the "Active sanctions" has as its first column an editor (as often as not).

The distinction is really "sanctions placed directly on a specific editor" versus "sanctions placed (or capable of being placed) on all editors of a specific article or topic". The sanctions here have a scope defined by articles rather than by editor names; but they still apply to editor conduct. Kirill 04:00, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Technical vs Subjective

Another confusion point: Dealing with editors that have restrictions is technical - they're blocked. Or the namespaces they are allowed to edit in are specifically defined.

Dealing with articles that have sanctions seems to be waay too subjective:

• "Disruptive edits" has no definition. As an administrator, can I decide to block someone for editing a particular article? Or can I go beyond 3RR in reverting a particular editor?
• "Administrators may impose one or more specific restrictions on editors." - that's not definitive at all. When can I impose them? And how far can I go? Do I have to have endorsement from any other administrators, or is my word fiat?

Each case may be different; you need to look at the specific sanction in question to determine what exactly you may or may not do under its provisions. (This is particularly true for the "General restriction"-type sanctions, which are very different from case to case, and are grouped together for convenience rather than due to true equivalence.) Kirill 04:00, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Clarification

Finally, who is allowed to add articles and subject areas to this list? I assume ArbCom, and that's inferred by having "Imposed by the Committee" and "Imposed by the Community", but it's not specified anywhere.

That's right. Most of the sanctions are imposed by the Committee, but there has been some movement recently to have the community impose at least the lower-level ones directly; hence the two sections. Kirill 04:00, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

I bring this up because I'm extremely worried about the subjectivity and possible power struggles involved in these issues. I'm only tangentially related to one of them, and I've seen how passionate editors can get on particular subjects. If a situation gets all the way to editing restrictions and/or article sanctions, we must be *very* clear about what can and cannot be done. Otherwise we're leaving ourselves open to even more disruption.

After writing all this, I realize I may be over-reacting - and I hope I am. But I would like to see some clarity on this page. BTW, is it a guideline? As it stands, I don't see how this has any weight behind it. Sigh. -- SatyrTN (talk / contribs) 02:57, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

This has the weight of the imposing authority (generally the Committee, but sometimes the community) behind it. Kirill 04:00, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Block unregistred users from Articles on Probabation?

I know that the issue of denying access for unregistred users has been discussed before. However, if the WP community make a formal decision that a small number of articles are to be put on probabation, I think is fair enough to block anonomous users from these articles. If newcomers wants to edit highly controversial articles they can spend 60 seconds to register. It is also helpful for good faith editors when they don't have to exhaust their 3RR reverting semi-vandalism. MaxPont (talk) 08:29, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

It'd also prevent "cheating". This appears to be such a case, probably by an involved editor trying to avoid sanctions for making a controversial edit: ·:· Will Beback ·:· 00:00, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

If a controversial article is getting a lot of vandalism or inappropriate edits from anonymous accounts, I would have no trouble with putting it on semi-protected status. But if the controversy is coming from established users, semi-protection isn't going to do much. --Elonka 00:24, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Additional Template for Article Probation?

I'm returning to WP after a rather long hiatus, and this policy is new to me. I can't say I entirely agree with it, but that aside, shouldn't there be some sort of template for inclusion on the front page of the article, and not merely the talk page? Given the consequences of violating the rule (banning people from participation), shouldn't every effort to advise people of the special nature of probationary articles without requiring them to tab over to the talk page, possibly further requiring that the editor sort through several other templates, in order to understand that they need to take special care in editing? Is this policy intended to be fair to all users, or to be used as a tool for a handful to play "Gotcha!"? Mael-Num (talk) 20:31, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Special BLP sanctions

I've added links to the special BLP sanctions. I'm not sure if this should be in a 'see also' section or part of the general sanctions. PhilKnight (talk) 14:35, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Request for clarification: Misplaced Pages:General sanctions

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

List of any users involved or directly affected, and confirmation that all are aware of the request:

• ChrisO (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA) (initiator)

Questions by ChrisO

I'd like to clarify a couple of policy questions concerning the general implementation of discretionary sanctions:

1) Do restrictions imposed under discretionary sanctions supersede the requirements of standing policy such as NPOV, V, BLP etc?

2) WP:BLP requires editors to "remove unsourced or poorly sourced contentious material" on living people and states that "The three-revert rule does not apply to such removals". If a 0RR is in force, does the same consideration apply - i.e. does the removal of such material count as a revert?

Grateful for advice. -- ChrisO (talk) 17:30, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

This section is redundant now given my request further up this page. I'd be grateful if a clerk could archive it, please. -- ChrisO (talk) 18:41, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

Statement by Penwhale

This is just my personal opinion, but...

1) Restrictions imposed under discretionary sanctions shouldn't trump NPOV, V, and BLP (although I'm having trouble picturing an issue where these would come into play at the same time). Can you provide examples?

2) Regarding the second part, I would tread on the cautious side and say that if it's not obvious, then note it to someone else and let others do it, if 0RR applies to one of the editors involved.

- Penwhale | 07:05, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

I think the example in question is here. Specific answers should probably go there, and general ones here. I note that in that example, Elonka refers to ChrisO's citing of BLP as "spin", so there seems to be disagreement there over how to apply BLP. Carcharoth (talk) 00:36, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

Statement by Kelly

Recommend merging this request with #Request for appeal: Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/Palestine-Israel articles, above. Kelly 15:48, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

Article probation/sanction not stemming from an RFAR

I was poking around at Talk:Barack Obama/Article probation and decided it seems a bit awkward for the page describing the sanctions to be in the "Talk:" namespace, and to include language specifically saying that discussion of the sanctions should not take place on the talk page but rather on WP:AN/I. I'm guessing part of the problem is that you can't have a talk page of a talk page, but I think we would be better off in the long run moving the above page and any similar ones out of the article talk namespace and making them to Misplaced Pages:General sanctions/Barack Obama, etc. That would also make it easier to keep the main General sanctions page updated. — CharlotteWebb 16:07, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Article sanctions and preemptive warnings

I've noticed a trend recently of people creating templated warnings that effectively say "Hi, you edited an article that is under probation/sanctions/etc. I'm not claiming you did anything wrong. But if you do, Bad Things can be done to you without any further warning." IMO, no matter how nice we try to make these they will still make newcomers feel bitten and will discourage them from editing those articles. I am not confident that we can rely on these templates to be applied impartially, and not as an excuse for one side's POV-pushers to bite anyone who looks like they will be on the "other" side. Did I miss the consensus supporting this sort of preemptive warning? If consensus does support preemptive warnings, wouldn't it be more fair to have a bot give a standard warning to everyone editing the affected pages instead of relying on potentially biased application by those watching the pages? Anomie⚔ 13:53, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

History: I first noticed this issue when {{uw-balkans}} was brought up at WT:UTM; discussion there was opposed to the template. Future Perfect at Sunrise rewrote it to apply only after someone exhibits disruptive behavior and a subsequent TFD kept the revised version, but then someone moved it to {{uw-balkans2}} and recreated the preemptive version at {{uw-balkans}}. We now also have {{uw-9/11}} and {{uw-probation}}, and there may be more without the uw-* prefix. Further attempts to raise discussion at WT:UTM have not gathered any response. Anomie⚔ 13:53, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

I should give a little background here. I developed {{uw-probation}} after a whole bunch of people (6-10) participated in various minor edit wars on the Obama Nation, which may or may not have been a violation of the terms of the Obama community article probation (see Talk:Barack Obama/Article probation) but in any event was making constructive work on the article all but impossible. I did not want to start tossing out warnings, or making judgment about who was violating probation and who was not - I am a non-admin, and I have been involved in article content. But I didn't think an admin could help because nobody had gotten warnings. The best I could think to do was to give a friendly reminder to all, without accusing them, that the article was on probation. With everyone on notice there would be no excuse for further edit warring, and if it does degenerate an admin can start enforcing things rather than being bogged down in concerns about who is on notice and who is not.

It is far to early to figure out the results - I think we should let this run for a while to see what happens. But after giving out 11 notices using the template, including one notice to myself, I got:

• one somewhat miffed WP:DTTR type response (which I quickly patched up, and then edited the template to be more friendly
• one slightly cynical comment that I was setting up people I disagreed with, so they would be blindsided by administrative sanctions
• two or three expressions of appreciation

I think that already demonstrates that giving notices beforehand, instead of warnings after the fact, is a more civil, calming way to go about things. It is hard to imagine an involved party giving out this many warnings without considerably more unhappiness resulting. We will see if it has the intended result of ensuring self-compliance with article probation, and making it easier for administrators who want to enforce the terms to verify that everyone is on notice and that notices have been given effectively and fairly. A bot would be great but it would take some work to make sure the bot knows which articles are covered, when to start and stop, to avoid giving duplicate notices, to save all the notices given to a log, and to avoid giving notice to other bots, minor edits, administrators enforcing article probation, etc. If anyone wants to volunteer to program and run a bot though, that would be great. Wikidemo (talk) 02:16, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Community-based discretionary sanctions proposal

Hello, I'm currently drafting a new, standardized community-based discretionary sanctions system, somewhat similar to Misplaced Pages:General sanctions (but, with approval, intended to supercede that system for future topic areas placed under probation). It is currently located at User:The Wordsmith/Community sanctions. Input would be appreciated in drafting a proposal ready for RFC. The Wordsmith 16:34, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

Sanctions display format

I recently proposed a format for displaying community sanctions that does not rely on a table and thus allows linking to individual sections, e.g. WP:GS#Abortion. This has been reverted by Ncmvocalist without explanation. What do others think?  Sandstein  10:57, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

Sandstein has once again unilaterally done something without having any regard for its purpose or the bigger picture; and he did it without discussing it with the Community. Yet again, he thought about discussion after his decision was reversed. Links, like WP:GS#BI, have always gone to the actual sanction pages themselves; this is merely a centralised location for users to know which sanction schemes are in place (or have been superseded) so that they can be juxtaposed. That is, in the original table format, they can be sorted by duration, name, type and area; I'd love to hear others opinions about Sandstein's ill-considered proposal which lacks this advantage. Ncmvocalist (talk) 11:13, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

I am a bit taken aback by the tone in the above message. Given that WP:GS#Sanctions placed by the Misplaced Pages community has only six entries, sorting the table is surely not an important requirement. And several sanctions, such as those decided on in ANI threads, do not have a sanctions page to link to. That's why a link like WP:GS#Abortion would be a useful shorthand.  Sandstein  11:17, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

Evidently, you failed to fully familiarise yourself with how these work or what the purpose of this page is, and this isn't a one-off. To put it more clearly for you, the abortion sanction does have a log of its own, and that is the page on which those sanctions live (in the same way that WP:GS/BI works - which is listed explicitly on the page, like several others). Ncmvocalist (talk) 11:42, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

Did we abolish WP:BRD? Apparently it's not a good idea to "leav a post on an article talk page which hasn't been used for a month" but it is unacceptable to not "discuss it with the Community" by, I assume, leaving a post on a talk page that hasn't been edited since October 2010. Anyway, {{anchor}} is probably good enough for this purpose, Sandstein, if ease of linking is what you are worried about. T. Canens (talk) 12:15, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

Ohh myyy...when a certain admin has previously indicated that changes to Community pages like this one require discussion beforehand, perhaps users should not observe when that same admin has later made such a change and only started discussion afterwards. Similarly, when 5 users have been the only force behind imposing a sanction scheme on an article, perhaps those users should NOT be notified individually (instead, a post should be left on the article's talk page which hasn't been used for a month, despite the fact that article talk page is not the place to be discussing such sanctions anyway). Apparently the fact that Sandstein expects users to notify him individually when they think about lifting, or discussing enforcement actions he has imposed/enforced, is something that should be ignored altogether. Of course, I wouldn't dream of suggesting that AE admin Timotheus Canens imported an irrelevant out of context statement from WP:AN to this discussion. Ncmvocalist (talk) 16:08, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

"when a certain admin has previously indicated that changes to Community pages like this one require discussion beforehand" - where? I'm not aware of that. If you actually mentioned that, it may put your comment in a very different light. Otherwise, I mentioned your comment at AN because I came to here from there, and noted an apparent inconsistency between your positions. Maybe I don't have all the information, though. Enlighten me. T. Canens (talk) 18:12, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

"The Committee"

"Imposed by the Committee" - what is this supposed to mean? In all of WP is there a single (only 1) committee? Kernel.package (talk) 23:59, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

Re 1RR

Is there some reason that this term isn't wikilinked to wp:1RR in the sanctions? LeadSongDog come howl! 19:10, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Time limit on sanctions

I notice that some of the sanctions specify time limits, e.g. "Asmahan" says "for six months" and "Election" says "will review the situation in one year". I have two issues with this: I think it would be helpful for the summary if these were given as specific dates instead of or as well as durations; and unless I'm mis-reading things, both of these have expired (14 December 2009 plus six months, and 1 July 2006 plus one year). I hesitate to be bold and delete them without discussion. Cheers, Bovlb (talk) 16:56, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

RfC: How should community-imposed sanctions be handled?

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There is general agreement that community-imposed sanctions can mirror their ArbCom counterparts. However, when it comes to making good on these sanctions, the community's lack of a comparable framework for enforcement presents a unique logistical challenge. How should this be handled?   — C M B J   23:15, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

Option 1: Common enforcement noticeboard

As one workaround, we could implement a unified noticeboard with standard procedures at Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard/Sanction enforcement. Optionally, Misplaced Pages:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement may be transcluded for ease of monitoring.   — C M B J   00:05, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

Option 2: Common enforcement procedures

As a cheaper workaround, we could implement a common set of procedures at Misplaced Pages:Sanction enforcement that are to be enforceable at either Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents or Misplaced Pages:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement, depending on the type of sanction. This would also help better facilitate the process while not increasing administrative workloads.

• Support as proposer.   — C M B J   23:44, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

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