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Summaries of some comments by Abd originally at Misplaced Pages:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Abd-William M. Connolley/Workshop

extended argument by Abd, reviewing this issue with respect to this case

(As summarized by Coppertwig)

Re proposal "Administrators blocks can be brought up for review by any editor":

Passing this would lead to more disputes taken to AN or ANI rather than less disruptive steps per WP:DR. Small-scale discussion by the parties could be disrupted by a third party taking it to a noticeboard, leading to mass decisions made by often poor-informed editors, voting based on prejudgment, distorted evidence, or shallow interpretations and biased arguments. There should be an RfC, which has proper process, before a ban is considered at ANI.

The situation between WMC and me could have been handled non-disruptively with, at most, use of an unblock template and possibly appeal to Arbcom (which happened anyway). If WMC had complained to a noticeboard about a non-disruptive edit by me, he would have found little support.

I took this straight to arbcom because a cabal-dominated RfC on WMC would have necessitated arbcom anyway, as in the JzG case. Proper process and examination of evidence at RfAr leads to different results than ANI, for example the NYScholar case in which a closing admin counted votes without paying attention to involvement.

Enric Naval, rather than pursuing dispute resolution with me such as discussion via a mediator, would prefer to go to a noticeboard to ask that I be banned. Arbcom should discourage this. -- Abd as summarized by Coppertwig 15:50, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

extended argument by Abd, reviewing this issue with respect to this case
RfC/JzG 3 was a process open for weeks, as I recall, so it had the opportunity to attract a lot of participation, and it was two:one for those calling for me to be banned for having the temerity to "beat a dead horse, vs those who supported my position, matching what I'd seen about a year before with RfC/GoRight. Very clear polarization, with editors taking positions predictable from prior involvements. Positions quite different from neutral editors -- in RfC/GoRight, I was naive, entirely neutral, when it began, and my findings were supported by many neutral editors, as can be seen by a careful review of that RfC. But when we went to ArbComm (Jehochman filed the case), ArbComm sustained my claim about JzG's action while involved, and ignored the calls for me to be banned. I expected quite the same with any process before a place where the cabal might mass, especially ANI. I did not contest the ban there, to avoid further disruption, but it must be noted that the editors piling in were not "uninvolved," as required by WP:BAN, though ordinary definitions of involvement may fail to be adequate when a cabal is involved; this is part of what is raised by this case. This proposed principle, if passed, will encourage more disputes to be taken to AN or ANI, which conflicts with dispute resolution policy, which encourages other, less disruptive steps. Those noticeboards are properly used for emergencies, situations calling for uninvolved administrator action. The other problem with this principle is that it encourages editors who are not involved to take a block or ban to a noticeboard without the consent of a party involved. Because independent dispute resolution may be under way, AN or ANI can bypass this low-level process, which might even be taking place off-wiki. Disputes which might never become a problem, but which might be resolved as contemplated in WP:DR, by small-scale discussions seeking consensus, become, instead, mass decisions made by often poor-informed editors, voting based on prejudgment, distorted evidence, or shallow interpretations and biased arguments, in an environment where there is no careful process, such as there is in RfC or RfAr. Bad Idea. It's not that editors can't do this, but that it can be more disruptive than the situation being taken to the noticeboard, and, I submit, that was true in this case. If I had defied the ban unilaterally issued by WMC, by editing the article, what would have happened? He blocks me. I put up an unblock template. A neutral administrator makes a decision, presumably on review of evidence provided by WMC and myself. I'm unblocked. Done. No disruption. Very few editors involved (though there might still have been a pile-on on my Talk page, it was less likely). I'm still blocked. I can appeal to ArbComm. Same result as we got as a result of the whole mess at ANI, etc. Just done faster, which ArbComm encourages. He doesn't block me. Done. No disruption. If my edits themselves are disruptive, someone else can block, but that's speculative and unlikely. Until this ban, I hadn't been blocked since the old Iridescent block last year, and that was for something completely different, a dispute that was resolved, very effectively. Alternatively, WMC could have gone to AN complaining about my "disruptive edit." This is, in fact, what policy would require if he were involved, as he was. And the likelihood of AN supporting that would have been low, unless the edit were disruptive. Hipocrite took ban-violating edits by ScienceApologist to AE, as part of what appears to have been a plan to disrupt arbitration enforcement, since those edits were being ignored. Even with an ArbComm ban, very clear, taking non-disruptive edits to a noticeboard was considered, itself, disruption, and if Hipocrite had continued, he'd have been blocked. WMC actually suggested this! A claim by WMC that I should be blocked, essentially because I disagreed with WMC on whether or not I should be allowed to edit the article? The cabal has some power, but not that much power, there are limits. Now, suppose an editor like Enric Naval thought that I should be banned. We already know that many editors thought this, they'd called for it before. So what could they do? Should they go to AN/I to suggest a ban? This is exactly what I consider a very bad idea, and I've seen it too many times. WP:DR would suggest an RfC before a measure is taken like that; once there is a collection of evidence that has at least been reviewed and documented, with prior efforts required to resolve the matter without an RfC, there is then a basis in evidence for a community ban, as a possibility, as well as an appeal to ArbComm if necessary. Alternatively, it can be taken directly to RfAr, but ArbComm prefers to see RfC first. Should I have filed an RfC for WMC? No, because it was already clear that there was a cabal involved, or at least many editors. RfC would have been disruptive, with, then, a requirement to go to ArbComm anyway, RfC/JzG 3 would simply have repeated. As an editor under a declared ban, even if illegitimate, I had the right to direct appeal to ArbComm, which I took. This was the path of minimum disruption, and if the cabal had not piled in here with massive and tendentious evidence and argument, the same names as I'd seen so many times, I would not have been forced to identify the cabal, an arguably disruptive action, I would not have done it if it were not necessary, even though I'd known about the cabal for more than a year. When a cabal is not involved, WP:DR works, but a cabal will avoid it, because dispute resolution process leads to different outcomes than the cabal wants; instead, they want decisions to be made at articles, where they can tag-team revert or dominate discussion -- that's real domination, not a few long posts by a single editor -- or a noticeboard, where the crowd-management skills of the cabal and especially its instinctive ability to quickly assemble many editors supporting its position, creating an initial snow, can often function in full flower. If these RfAr pages were AN/I, I'd have been history already, banned "by the community," being forced to claim that these were involved editors, under very difficult conditions, needing to make a claim of "cabal" without the careful conditions obtaining here that allow it to be done on the basis of evidence, and it takes a lot of evidence. WP:BAN requires a ban consensus to be of "uninvolved editors," but the recent ban of NYScholar showed that closing admins -- or at least one of them! -- pay attention, in fact, to the number of votes (he cited percentages to four figure accuracy), and no attention at all to involvement, and even though this was raised extensively at Misplaced Pages talk:BAN, there never was such an analysis except for the tentative one I did and reported, showing that after editors involved in content disputes with NYScholar were set aside, there was a tiny majority against the ban, or it was even, no consensus. If we look at the later votes vs. the earlier, we see an even greater majority opposed to the ban (later votes tend to be from less involved editors, early votes represent those whose minds are already made up, preferentially). The admin never responded to the problem, but cited cogency of the arguments, which is fine for an administrative ban, not a community ban. (I made no claim that the closing admin shouldn't have banned, only that this was not a "community ban," it was a decision by an administrator on what was best for the community, and I was not disputing that, but, rather, tried, for a time, to negotiate a settlement that would protect the community as well as providing an opportunity for NYScholar to become a more cooperative editor, which certainly won't happen while completely banned, it takes practice and experience. The difference is largely moot, except that an administrative ban is more flexible; what the admin decides the admin can undecide, and if the administrator is uninvolved, this has good prospects. As well, in theory, another admin could unblock NYScholar, without going back to a noticeboard, there having been no "consensus of uninvolved editors" there, whereas with a true community ban, appeal would be only to ArbComm.) Remember, when this case was filed, Enric Naval wrote that he'd take this to a noticeboard if ArbComm refused to take the case. Enric Naval has never pursued dispute resolution with me (except for what's happening with the mediation, which is specifically not about behavior, but about content). He's warned me, sure, but the discussions have all been on the level of "stop your disruption," and if I disagreed that what I'd done was disruption, it was then "See, you don't listen to what other editors are telling you." The next stage of WP:DR would be the involvement of a neutral mediator. Never attempted, and, since I wasn't trying to ban Enric, while I suggested that he, indeed, follow DR if he had a problem with my behavior, I didn't solicit a meditator myself. Maybe I should have. In any case, he'd rather go to a noticeboard, and that, precisely, is what ArbComm should discourage. --Abd (talk) 21:42, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

extended argument by Abd, reviewing this issue with respect to this case

RfC/JzG 3 was a process open for weeks, as I recall, so it had the opportunity to attract a lot of participation, and it was two:one for those calling for me to be banned for having the temerity to "beat a dead horse, vs those who supported my position, matching what I'd seen about a year before with RfC/GoRight. Very clear polarization, with editors taking positions predictable from prior involvements. Positions quite different from neutral editors -- in RfC/GoRight, I was naive, entirely neutral, when it began, and my findings were supported by many neutral editors, as can be seen by a careful review of that RfC.

But when we went to ArbComm (Jehochman filed the case), ArbComm sustained my claim about JzG's action while involved, and ignored the calls for me to be banned. I expected quite the same with any process before a place where the cabal might mass, especially ANI. I did not contest the ban there, to avoid further disruption, but it must be noted that the editors piling in were not "uninvolved," as required by WP:BAN, though ordinary definitions of involvement may fail to be adequate when a cabal is involved; this is part of what is raised by this case. This proposed principle, if passed, will encourage more disputes to be taken to AN or ANI, which conflicts with dispute resolution policy, which encourages other, less disruptive steps. Those noticeboards are properly used for emergencies, situations calling for uninvolved administrator action.

The other problem with this principle is that it encourages editors who are not involved to take a block or ban to a noticeboard without the consent of a party involved. Because independent dispute resolution may be under way, AN or ANI can bypass this low-level process, which might even be taking place off-wiki. Disputes which might never become a problem, but which might be resolved as contemplated in WP:DR, by small-scale discussions seeking consensus, become, instead, mass decisions made by often poor-informed editors, voting based on prejudgment, distorted evidence, or shallow interpretations and biased arguments, in an environment where there is no careful process, such as there is in RfC or RfAr. Bad Idea. It's not that editors can't do this, but that it can be more disruptive than the situation being taken to the noticeboard, and, I submit, that was true in this case.

If I had defied the ban unilaterally issued by WMC, by editing the article, what would have happened?

He blocks me. I put up an unblock template. A neutral administrator makes a decision, presumably on review of evidence provided by WMC and myself.

I'm unblocked. Done. No disruption. Very few editors involved (though there might still have been a pile-on on my Talk page, it was less likely).
I'm still blocked. I can appeal to ArbComm. Same result as we got as a result of the whole mess at ANI, etc. Just done faster, which ArbComm encourages.

He doesn't block me. Done. No disruption. If my edits themselves are disruptive, someone else can block, but that's speculative and unlikely. Until this ban, I hadn't been blocked since the old Iridescent block last year, and that was for something completely different, a dispute that was resolved, very effectively.

Alternatively, WMC could have gone to AN complaining about my "disruptive edit." This is, in fact, what policy would require if he were involved, as he was. And the likelihood of AN supporting that would have been low, unless the edit were disruptive. Hipocrite took ban-violating edits by ScienceApologist to AE, as part of what appears to have been a plan to disrupt arbitration enforcement, since those edits were being ignored. Even with an ArbComm ban, very clear, taking non-disruptive edits to a noticeboard was considered, itself, disruption, and if Hipocrite had continued, he'd have been blocked. WMC actually suggested this! A claim by WMC that I should be blocked, essentially because I disagreed with WMC on whether or not I should be allowed to edit the article? The cabal has some power, but not that much power, there are limits.

Now, suppose an editor like Enric Naval thought that I should be banned. We already know that many editors thought this, they'd called for it before. So what could they do? Should they go to AN/I to suggest a ban? This is exactly what I consider a very bad idea, and I've seen it too many times. WP:DR would suggest an RfC before a measure is taken like that; once there is a collection of evidence that has at least been reviewed and documented, with prior efforts required to resolve the matter without an RfC, there is then a basis in evidence for a community ban, as a possibility, as well as an appeal to ArbComm if necessary. Alternatively, it can be taken directly to RfAr, but ArbComm prefers to see RfC first.

Should I have filed an RfC for WMC? No, because it was already clear that there was a cabal involved, or at least many editors. RfC would have been disruptive, with, then, a requirement to go to ArbComm anyway, RfC/JzG 3 would simply have repeated. As an editor under a declared ban, even if illegitimate, I had the right to direct appeal to ArbComm, which I took. This was the path of minimum disruption, and if the cabal had not piled in here with massive and tendentious evidence and argument, the same names as I'd seen so many times, I would not have been forced to identify the cabal, an arguably disruptive action, I would not have done it if it were not necessary, even though I'd known about the cabal for more than a year. When a cabal is not involved, WP:DR works, but a cabal will avoid it, because dispute resolution process leads to different outcomes than the cabal wants; instead, they want decisions to be made at articles, where they can tag-team revert or dominate discussion -- that's real domination, not a few long posts by a single editor -- or a noticeboard, where the crowd-management skills of the cabal and especially its instinctive ability to quickly assemble many editors supporting its position, creating an initial snow, can often function in full flower.

If these RfAr pages were AN/I, I'd have been history already, banned "by the community," being forced to claim that these were involved editors, under very difficult conditions, needing to make a claim of "cabal" without the careful conditions obtaining here that allow it to be done on the basis of evidence, and it takes a lot of evidence.

WP:BAN requires a ban consensus to be of "uninvolved editors," but the recent ban of NYScholar showed that closing admins -- or at least one of them! -- pay attention, in fact, to the number of votes (he cited percentages to four figure accuracy), and no attention at all to involvement, and even though this was raised extensively at Misplaced Pages talk:BAN, there never was such an analysis except for the tentative one I did and reported, showing that after editors involved in content disputes with NYScholar were set aside, there was a tiny majority against the ban, or it was even, no consensus. If we look at the later votes vs. the earlier, we see an even greater majority opposed to the ban (later votes tend to be from less involved editors, early votes represent those whose minds are already made up, preferentially). The admin never responded to the problem, but cited cogency of the arguments, which is fine for an administrative ban, not a community ban. (I made no claim that the closing admin shouldn't have banned, only that this was not a "community ban," it was a decision by an administrator on what was best for the community, and I was not disputing that, but, rather, tried, for a time, to negotiate a settlement that would protect the community as well as providing an opportunity for NYScholar to become a more cooperative editor, which certainly won't happen while completely banned, it takes practice and experience. The difference is largely moot, except that an administrative ban is more flexible; what the admin decides the admin can undecide, and if the administrator is uninvolved, this has good prospects. As well, in theory, another admin could unblock NYScholar, without going back to a noticeboard, there having been no "consensus of uninvolved editors" there, whereas with a true community ban, appeal would be only to ArbComm.)

Remember, when this case was filed, Enric Naval wrote that he'd take this to a noticeboard if ArbComm refused to take the case. Enric Naval has never pursued dispute resolution with me (except for what's happening with the mediation, which is specifically not about behavior, but about content). He's warned me, sure, but the discussions have all been on the level of "stop your disruption," and if I disagreed that what I'd done was disruption, it was then "See, you don't listen to what other editors are telling you." The next stage of WP:DR would be the involvement of a neutral mediator. Never attempted, and, since I wasn't trying to ban Enric, while I suggested that he, indeed, follow DR if he had a problem with my behavior, I didn't solicit a meditator myself. Maybe I should have. In any case, he'd rather go to a noticeboard, and that, precisely, is what ArbComm should discourage. --Abd (talk) 21:42, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Diff of above:

Abd's analysis of the AN/I community ban discussion and his No Contest close

(As summarized by Coppertwig)

It was mostly involved editors commenting. I cut the discussion short to minimize disruption since I knew it was going to Arbcom anyway. If the cabal had not confronted the issue in this case I would not have had to name them here either.

I am not contesting the one-month community ban. However, my "plea" was "no contest," not "guilty," and does not constitute evidence against me.

Uninvolved editors don't tend to comment early on, especially when there is a lack of evidence so they see nothing to comment on, and when there's been an early pile-on by editors with prejudgements, some uninvolved ones naturally go along with the flow.

I'm not canvassing for support in this case. The arbitrators will decide based on whether they are convinced by arguments, not by number of votes.

If I were annoying a lot of people due to an incompatible personality or something, Arbcom might have to act. But I named the cabal so that can see that the opposition is from an identifiable faction. Being part of a cabal isn't wrong; it just needs to be recognized. Abd as summarized by Coppertwig 18:09, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Abd's analysis of the AN/I community ban discussion and his No Contest close
When I decided to ask for an early close of the AN/I discussion, it was indeed to avoid useless disruption; had I chosen to stick it out and contest it, I'd have had to raise the issue of the cabal then and there, and I was assuming that I wouldn't; but analysis of !votes had already made it plain to me that these were mostly involved editors, so had a ban been decided, it would have been by the uninvolved editors, and I cut that process short. Involved editors tend to !vote first, uninvolved ones later, due to the nature of involvement. By the way, at the time that I made that analysis, I was considering some editors as uninvolved that later analysis based on the diagnostic arbitration cases, which I hadn't reviewed, turned out to be actually involved. (Note that not all editors I would consider involved for that purpose are necessarily named in the current cabal evidence, there are a few marginal cases that I left out as insufficiently relevant here). Once I knew that this would go to ArbComm, as I did at that point, allowing further dispute below that level would be disruptive. In requesting rapid closure, my edit summary mentioned Durova. Durova resigned her admin bit to avoid disruption. She could easily have contested it, and, my opinion, might have prevailed. But the disruption would have been enormous. She placed the welfare of the community above her personal privilege, and I will never cease recalling that with admiration. ArbComm had requested me to avoid useless dispute that wasn't going to be resolved, and there was no way to resolve this at AN/I; give the number of exercised cabal editors, the most I could hope for was enough support to block consensus on the face. Asserting cabal involvement then was utterly impractical, and I hoped, perhaps foolishly, that the cabal would not confront the issue here, leaving the case fairly simple. Didn't happen that way! This is not a coherent, cunning cabal, or it would behave differently. It's dangerous, but more like a bull in a china shop. Now, when I decided to ask for rapid close, I was waiving my right to contest that ban. Forever. I am not, here, arguing that the ban was invalid. It was valid. And it's over. That's not why we are here. What I do argue, however, is that my "plea" was "no contest," not "guilty," and, without a separate finding, that closure should not be presumed to be evidence against me, and the "consensus" expressed there should be reviewed in the light of the cabal evidence. I think, in fact, I should get a barnstar for that no-contest plea. If there is not an appropriate one, it should be created! Call it the Durova Order of Merit for Avoidance of Unnecessary Disruption or something like that. But, of course, that's self-praise, deprecated, right? I could hope that I'd deserve it, but I won't make one and put it on my user page! One more point about AN/I pile-on. When the cabal shows up like that, and rapidly creates a mass of votes in a particular direction, it will almost always, if the cabal isn't easily identified, create a tendency for some neutral editors to agree with it, even if, by an independent examination of the evidence -- there wasn't any evidence presented!, that was one of the problems with the AN/I community ban -- they wouldn't !vote that way. The initial pile-on was from editors who had prejudgment from other contexts, most especially that RfC for JzG. I've seen this in other contexts where the cabal wasn't involved, a mass of supports for a ban, for example, can snowball in the absence of evidence. Why? Well, because editors who want to look at evidence, not having any, may abstain, or, in the case of the topic ban of Wilhelmina Will, they asked for evidence, and when it was not supplied, they didn't !vote. Other editors will assume good faith on the part of the claimant and the early voters and will support based on that, which is a problem. It's a human problem, we do this kind of thing. We tend to move in groups. I'm not operating a cabal. I didn't ask GoRight and Coppertwig to comment here, or notify them of this (but they knew it was coming, I'd been very open about that, anyone following my contributions would have known. There are many editors I've helped, and, I'm sure, if they knew about this RfAr, they'd be here commenting in my defense. But I have not informed them. I haven't asked anyone specific to come here. I discussed this at Misplaced Pages Review, but, note, this case was already being discussed there, Mathsci was already there. I could do a certain amount of canvassing to match what Short Brigade Harvester Boris did. I haven't. I'm depending entirely on the wisdom of ArbComm and its willingness and ability to see through what is happening here. I know that some arbitrators can, so I'm depending on them to point it out to others who might miss it. By the time I'm done, the evidence will be as clear and cogent as I can make it, given my time limitations, that's all I can say. In the end, it's not my decision, and I like it that way. See, I'm involved. I recuse. In the end, what some cabal members may not realize, the number of support or oppose !votes here means almost nothing, unless arbitrators are convinced by the arguments, and if it's a matter of arguments, it doesn't matter how many editors have supported a proposition. Except with one thing: ArbComm may legitimately be concerned about disruption. An editor who is "right" may also be disruptive, and if I were, as claimed, regularly pissing off otherwise uninvolved editors, by being unreasonable, as claimed, or even if I just had some incompatible personality, not even my fault, ArbComm may need to consider the welfare of the project over any possible unfairness to me. But, if the upset is coming almost entirely from an identifiable faction, it's a different matter. And that is why I had to name the cabal and identify members. It's not uncivil, and no specific wrongdoing is alleged for any cabal member, per se. If, for example, Woonpton did anything wrong, it would be visible in her personal actions. I'd say that there were problems with those actions, and it's visible here, but I've seen nothing that would require a personal sanction, nothing that isn't all too common. The cabal membership is asserted only to show prejudgment, or high likelihood of rapid formation of a negative judgment, based on POV position and prior opinion. --Abd (talk) 23:06, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Abd's analysis of the AN/I community ban discussion and his No Contest close

When I decided to ask for an early close of the AN/I discussion, it was indeed to avoid useless disruption; had I chosen to stick it out and contest it, I'd have had to raise the issue of the cabal then and there, and I was assuming that I wouldn't; but analysis of !votes had already made it plain to me that these were mostly involved editors, so had a ban been decided, it would have been by the uninvolved editors, and I cut that process short. Involved editors tend to !vote first, uninvolved ones later, due to the nature of involvement. By the way, at the time that I made that analysis, I was considering some editors as uninvolved that later analysis based on the diagnostic arbitration cases, which I hadn't reviewed, turned out to be actually involved. (Note that not all editors I would consider involved for that purpose are necessarily named in the current cabal evidence, there are a few marginal cases that I left out as insufficiently relevant here). Once I knew that this would go to ArbComm, as I did at that point, allowing further dispute below that level would be disruptive. In requesting rapid closure, my edit summary mentioned Durova. Durova resigned her admin bit to avoid disruption. She could easily have contested it, and, my opinion, might have prevailed. But the disruption would have been enormous. She placed the welfare of the community above her personal privilege, and I will never cease recalling that with admiration. ArbComm had requested me to avoid useless dispute that wasn't going to be resolved, and there was no way to resolve this at AN/I; give the number of exercised cabal editors, the most I could hope for was enough support to block consensus on the face. Asserting cabal involvement then was utterly impractical, and I hoped, perhaps foolishly, that the cabal would not confront the issue here, leaving the case fairly simple. Didn't happen that way! This is not a coherent, cunning cabal, or it would behave differently. It's dangerous, but more like a bull in a china shop.

Now, when I decided to ask for rapid close, I was waiving my right to contest that ban. Forever. I am not, here, arguing that the ban was invalid. It was valid. And it's over. That's not why we are here. What I do argue, however, is that my "plea" was "no contest," not "guilty," and, without a separate finding, that closure should not be presumed to be evidence against me, and the "consensus" expressed there should be reviewed in the light of the cabal evidence. I think, in fact, I should get a barnstar for that no-contest plea. If there is not an appropriate one, it should be created! Call it the Durova Order of Merit for Avoidance of Unnecessary Disruption or something like that. But, of course, that's self-praise, deprecated, right? I could hope that I'd deserve it, but I won't make one and put it on my user page!

One more point about AN/I pile-on. When the cabal shows up like that, and rapidly creates a mass of votes in a particular direction, it will almost always, if the cabal isn't easily identified, create a tendency for some neutral editors to agree with it, even if, by an independent examination of the evidence -- there wasn't any evidence presented!, that was one of the problems with the AN/I community ban -- they wouldn't !vote that way. The initial pile-on was from editors who had prejudgment from other contexts, most especially that RfC for JzG. I've seen this in other contexts where the cabal wasn't involved, a mass of supports for a ban, for example, can snowball in the absence of evidence. Why? Well, because editors who want to look at evidence, not having any, may abstain, or, in the case of the topic ban of Wilhelmina Will, they asked for evidence, and when it was not supplied, they didn't !vote. Other editors will assume good faith on the part of the claimant and the early voters and will support based on that, which is a problem. It's a human problem, we do this kind of thing. We tend to move in groups. I'm not operating a cabal. I didn't ask GoRight and Coppertwig to comment here, or notify them of this (but they knew it was coming, I'd been very open about that, anyone following my contributions would have known. There are many editors I've helped, and, I'm sure, if they knew about this RfAr, they'd be here commenting in my defense. But I have not informed them. I haven't asked anyone specific to come here. I discussed this at Misplaced Pages Review, but, note, this case was already being discussed there, Mathsci was already there. I could do a certain amount of canvassing to match what Short Brigade Harvester Boris did. I haven't. I'm depending entirely on the wisdom of ArbComm and its willingness and ability to see through what is happening here. I know that some arbitrators can, so I'm depending on them to point it out to others who might miss it. By the time I'm done, the evidence will be as clear and cogent as I can make it, given my time limitations, that's all I can say. In the end, it's not my decision, and I like it that way. See, I'm involved. I recuse. In the end, what some cabal members may not realize, the number of support or oppose !votes here means almost nothing, unless arbitrators are convinced by the arguments, and if it's a matter of arguments, it doesn't matter how many editors have supported a proposition.

Except with one thing: ArbComm may legitimately be concerned about disruption. An editor who is "right" may also be disruptive, and if I were, as claimed, regularly pissing off otherwise uninvolved editors, by being unreasonable, as claimed, or even if I just had some incompatible personality, not even my fault, ArbComm may need to consider the welfare of the project over any possible unfairness to me. But, if the upset is coming almost entirely from an identifiable faction, it's a different matter. And that is why I had to name the cabal and identify members. It's not uncivil, and no specific wrongdoing is alleged for any cabal member, per se. If, for example, Woonpton did anything wrong, it would be visible in her personal actions. I'd say that there were problems with those actions, and it's visible here, but I've seen nothing that would require a personal sanction, nothing that isn't all too common. The cabal membership is asserted only to show prejudgment, or high likelihood of rapid formation of a negative judgment, based on POV position and prior opinion. --Abd (talk) 23:06, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Diff of above:

Relevance to this case, comment by Abd

(As summarized by Coppertwig)

Re proposal "In enacting bans on an editor, administrators should take reasonable steps to ensure that the editor is notified of the block/ban and its duration."

There are several problems with an article talk page notification of a ban. User talk ensures the user knows about it, and also gives them a chance to reply in-situ, possibly with replies by others who watch their talk page. It also ensures that the user cannot deny knowing about the ban. Since I replied in-situ and was warned for it, I didn't receive a mere warning for my later one-character edit.

WMC not only refused to notify Hipocrite on user talk but editwarred with Rootology to keep any notice of this RfAr off, which serves the long-term goals of both himself and Hipocrite.

I've successfully used an article talk page notification as a gentler form of warning, suggesting that the user is free to act as if they haven't seen it. The editor reformed. Abd as summarized by Coppertwig 18:43, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Relevance to this case, comment by Abd
Related here: WMC notified me of the Cold fusion ban on Talk:Cold fusion. There are two problems with this. First of all, an editor could easily fail to see such, and thus unknowingly violate the ban. Second, an editor should, ideally, be able to respond to a ban notice in the place it is originally given. A notice on my Talk page will be seen by many editors who know my work and who might object, and I would respond there. A notice on an affected article Talk page is useful as an additional point of information; such notices, though, should be neutral and point to the Talk page notice, they should be secondary, not primary. Because the notice of this ban to me was on the article talk page, I responded to it there. I objected to the ban, but I also stated that I would respect it, pending resolution. The substance of my Talk page post was compliance. It was not long, and it was not tendentious, it was not disruptive in itself. However, WMC treated it as a violation. If we assume it was a violation, then he correctly, warned me on my Talk, he did not block. However, this, then, left no room for additional warning with the self-reverted edit that later came down. Small points. One of the issues here was symmetry. Hipocrite was not directly notified of the ban, at first. Someone looking through his Talk history would not have found any reference to it. WMC was asked -- by more than one user, as I recall -- to notify Hipocrite, but he declined. There was a hint of off-wiki communication and "deniability" about this, though that is not clear. Enric Naval did notify Hipocrite, but indirectly, with a diff or link that, again, on later review, would attract no attention. While this is a minor point in this case, notification on a Talk page is routine; and, routinely, a ban has not been considered to be violated until there has been such notice. Because my Talk page post acknowledged the ban, in itself, it was, in fact, evidence of sufficient notice for me, but not for Hipocrite, who could have deniably edited the page. If we hypothesize that Hipocrite and WMC were colluding, it would explain this odd behavior (why not inform him on his Talk?) and, as well, WMC's vigorous action to prevent notice of this RfAr to Hipocrite from standing on Hipocrite's Talk, to the point of edit warring with Rootology over it. What is quite apparent is that the long-term goals of both WMC and Hipocrite were satisfied by WMC's actions. One more point: sometimes I find it necessary to warn an editor about behavior. In order to make the point that I'm not attempting to get the editor blocked -- at least not yet! -- I sometimes place a warning as a section on the relevant article talk page, where the misbehavior is occurring, pointing out that it's not on the user's Talk, and suggesting that if there isn't any response, and if there is no repetition of the behavior, I'd delete it (or strike it if someone else responds, at least). I've seen it work; the editor reformed, I deleted the comment, and there was no further disruption. The whole point here was that the editor, if the editor didn't prove that he or she read the comment by responding to it, couldn't be blocked for ignoring the "warning." --Abd (talk) 20:45, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Relevance to this case, comment by Abd

Related here: WMC notified me of the Cold fusion ban on Talk:Cold fusion. There are two problems with this. First of all, an editor could easily fail to see such, and thus unknowingly violate the ban. Second, an editor should, ideally, be able to respond to a ban notice in the place it is originally given. A notice on my Talk page will be seen by many editors who know my work and who might object, and I would respond there. A notice on an affected article Talk page is useful as an additional point of information; such notices, though, should be neutral and point to the Talk page notice, they should be secondary, not primary. Because the notice of this ban to me was on the article talk page, I responded to it there. I objected to the ban, but I also stated that I would respect it, pending resolution. The substance of my Talk page post was compliance. It was not long, and it was not tendentious, it was not disruptive in itself. However, WMC treated it as a violation. If we assume it was a violation, then he correctly, warned me on my Talk, he did not block. However, this, then, left no room for additional warning with the self-reverted edit that later came down. Small points.
One of the issues here was symmetry. Hipocrite was not directly notified of the ban, at first. Someone looking through his Talk history would not have found any reference to it. WMC was asked -- by more than one user, as I recall -- to notify Hipocrite, but he declined. There was a hint of off-wiki communication and "deniability" about this, though that is not clear. Enric Naval did notify Hipocrite, but indirectly, with a diff or link that, again, on later review, would attract no attention. While this is a minor point in this case, notification on a Talk page is routine; and, routinely, a ban has not been considered to be violated until there has been such notice. Because my Talk page post acknowledged the ban, in itself, it was, in fact, evidence of sufficient notice for me, but not for Hipocrite, who could have deniably edited the page. If we hypothesize that Hipocrite and WMC were colluding, it would explain this odd behavior (why not inform him on his Talk?) and, as well, WMC's vigorous action to prevent notice of this RfAr to Hipocrite from standing on Hipocrite's Talk, to the point of edit warring with Rootology over it. What is quite apparent is that the long-term goals of both WMC and Hipocrite were satisfied by WMC's actions.
One more point: sometimes I find it necessary to warn an editor about behavior. In order to make the point that I'm not attempting to get the editor blocked -- at least not yet! -- I sometimes place a warning as a section on the relevant article talk page, where the misbehavior is occurring, pointing out that it's not on the user's Talk, and suggesting that if there isn't any response, and if there is no repetition of the behavior, I'd delete it (or strike it if someone else responds, at least). I've seen it work; the editor reformed, I deleted the comment, and there was no further disruption. The whole point here was that the editor, if the editor didn't prove that he or she read the comment by responding to it, couldn't be blocked for ignoring the "warning." --Abd (talk) 20:45, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

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why an absolutist interpretation of "ban" violates basic WP principles, comment by Abd

(As summarized by Coppertwig)

No rule established on Misplaced Pages supersedes IAR, which, as stated, actually requires an editor to make an edit if they see a way to improve the encyclopedia.

"Interacting with that section" is not necessarily covered by a ban. For example, I was encouraged to continue with mediation related to cold fusion during my ban. Some are taking an extreme position that any consultation with banned editors is meatpuppetry. The purpose of bans is to prevent disruption, not to punish for past disruption.

Administrative bans are different from community bans. They don't need to be logged because the administrator would only be able to block for disruptive edits anyway. Self-reversion or bot reversion could be useful ways to allow the edits to remain in the page history as suggestions.

Contrary to what some might think, I support administrative bans, but under certain conditions:

An identifiable administrator takes primary responsibility for them
The supervising admin can also decide to unblock as conditions change
The supervising admin should be uninvolved. Cooperation with the banned editor and use of mentors too can also help.
An administrative ban can be seen as a warning that the admin considers the edits disruptive and is likely to block.

A ban based on a discussion is often better viewed as an administrative ban by the closing admin. It can be difficult to establish whether there was true community consensus; and maintaining communication and ability to lift the ban can have long-term advantages.

Edits to an article from which an editor is banned can complicate enforcement. Some are obviously harmless at first glance and some are not. I had proposed self-reverted edits and there had been no opposition to the idea. A self-reverted pair of edits is normally harmless and actually indicates intention to comply with the ban in substance. It's much more efficient than describing a proposed edit in talk.

The cabal did not consider harmless edits to violate bans, when SA was involved, but only when it was me. This is tragic, because self-reverted edits were successful in a case involving User:PJHaseldine in getting two editors cooperating with each other. Self-reverted edits are a way for a banned editor to begin to establish cooperation and success, and are harmless at worst. Abd as summarized by Coppertwig

why an absolutist interpretation of "ban" violates basic WP principles, comment by Abd

IAR. No rule established on Misplaced Pages supersedes IAR. If an editor, no matter who, sees an edit that improves the project, IAR, as stated, actually requires -- as much as any rule can require us to do anything -- the editor to make the edit. This is why the attempts to strictly enforce the SA Fringe science topic ban, with respect to spelling corrections, was rejected by clear consensus. (It was only the disruptive intent behind those edits, independently determined, that led to his block. He was not blocked for ban violation, see the decision.)
"interacting with that section" is not necessarily covered by a ban. For example, some bans allow the editor to discuss an article on Talk for the article, SA's ban was like that. In the case of my Cold fusion ban, I was encouraged to continue to participate in the mediation being conducted by Cryptic C62, and we were considering content there, and certainly this is a form of "interaction." Likewise, an editor may be allowed to make suggestions to non-banned editors. Note that there are editors here who take an extreme position that any cooperation toward improving content between banned editors and editors in good standing is "meat puppetry." Hence if I consult with an expert in the field of Cold fusion, Jed Rothwell, seeking to find sources -- and we have reliable source on him being an expert (Simon, 2002), in spite of the derisive comments that have been routine -- I'm accused of MP.
The purpose of bans is to prevent disruption, not to punish for past disruption. How to treat bans varies with the nature of the ban; a community ban, determined by a consensus of uninvolved editors, is different from an administrative ban, which may be completely unilateral (as with WMC's original ban of me from CF), or based on a discussion with no uninvolved editor analysis or consensus, but closed by an admin based on the "weight of the arguments," or sometimes on !votes. A community ban is properly logged at WP:RESTRICT, and may be enforced by any admin without review of the original cause. Thus a primary concern in such a ban is ease of enforcement, to avoid useless debate over dead horses. Hence an administrator may presume that an edit is disruptive, if it violates a community ban, and any editor may revert such an edit on sight, with only one exception: the content being restored is illegal (i.e, BLP or copyright violation).
Administrative bans are different. There is no provision for logging them at WP:RESTRICT, and that's quite proper, because an administrative ban is often little more than the judgment of one administrator that an editor's participation at an article is disruptive. The administrator may enforce this ban, but definitely not strictly, i.e., an administrator should never block an editor for "defiance" of the administrator's ban, but only for disruptive edits, hence there is no question of "harmless edits." Blocking for defiance is practically proof of involvement, a sign that the administrator has become personally involved. However, I can imagine situations where short blocks would be in order, where it was difficult to judge whether an edit was disruptive or not. And the goal would be to shift the behavior, and, in fact, self-reversion, which I discuss below, is a ready solution. Another solution, Beetstra will understand, would be bot reversion. An editor could be effectively banned from any arbitrary set of articles, or articles under a category, through the use of a bot which would automatically revert such edits. So an administrative ban would simply represent an edit to a protected page that controls the bot. We could avoid many blocks with this. Another way to look at this would be as a flagged revision process taken back another step. The editor would know, would have been informed, that all edits satisfying certain conditions would be reverted. That leaves them in place in history as "suggestions." And they would have an edit summary referring directly or indirectly to the reason for the revert.
Contrary to what some might think, I support administrative bans, they are greatly preferable to community bans, but the conditions should be understood better.

Every administrative ban should have a supervising admin, who can determine conditions and application. Ideally, there should be backup, a process whereby another admin can assume this position. Administrative bans are not community bans, to be enforced by just anyone, they are enforced, generally, by the admin who declares them. That admin is expected to understand the situation better than others, to be able to tell if an edit is disruptive or not, whereas admins without sufficient experience with the situation may not be able to judge as well. This, though, leads to the possibility of abuse, which is addressed through ordinary recusal rules.
This concept of a supervising admin is actual practice; generally, an admin who blocks may unblock. An admin who deletes may undelete, even if there was an AfD preceding. One who decides may undecide, or may set conditions. Obtaining a "consensus of uninvolved editors" as required for a community ban can be a very disruptive process requiring wide discussion, which is why we have a system where decisions short of such a consensus are made by uninvolved admins, and then disagreements over this can be handled through ordinary dispute resolution process. Further, community bans are far less flexible, freezing in place an apparent consensus at one time, which may have been the result of what later can be seen as undue influence.
The supervising admin should be uninvolved, where possible. Generally, bans will be more successful, long-term, if the cooperation of the banned editor can be obtained, and the use of mentors, volunteers, who can advise the supervising admin, the banned editor, and the community regarding a ban, should be encouraged.
An administrative ban may be seen as a general warning: "I have decided that your edits to Cold fusion are disruptive, and that you have made so many of these edits that it is likely that future editing will also be disruptive. While I will not block you for useful edits, you are warned that your own judgment on this may be biased, and I reserve the right to determine that any particular edit is disruptive and I may block you for it. If you want to be safe from being blocked, do not edit the article. I do not have time to engage in debate with you; if you wish to have this ban lifted, get a mentor and ask the mentor to communicate with me about it, I assure you I will give it fair consideration, aimed at ensuring that your participation in the community is positive and productive. If you believe that my judgment is biased, here is how you may appeal this ...."
An administrative ban based on a discussion is little different, unless the discussion was sufficiently extensive to represent a clear community opinion and shows a consensus of uninvolved editors, which is actually difficult to determine. To do a primitive analysis on the NYScholar ban discussion took me three or four hours. It's much easier to consider a ban as an administrative ban, which can be just as effective, if not more effective in the long run. (A ban which maintains communication and a process for having it lifted is less likely to result in disruptive socking.)

Edits to an article from which an editor is banned can complicate enforcement. In fact, with a spelling correction, it is normally immediately visible that the edit is not disruptive; but with a more complex edit, determining if the edit is disruptive or not can be too time-consuming; hence there is a presumption that such edits may be reverted, and, as well, an editor editing contrary to a ban may be blocked, but if it was obvious that the edit was harmless at worse, this would be "stupid," as WMC called it in the case of SA's edits under ban (see my Evidence)
Self reverted edits were proposed in the SA case, by me, as a solution to the complication of enforcement by "harmless edits." Before suggesting this to SA, I cleared it with Carcharoth, who thought it a good idea. SA rejected it, and some editors rejected it, but not as being ban violations, but the opposite, as unnecessary, presumably if it's a good edit, why revert it? I also proposed this at WP:BAN, and there was a little support and no opposition, but I hadn't attempted to move it into the policy.
Unless there is something specially disruptive about it, a self-reverted pair of edits does not frustrate the purpose of a ban; on the contrary, if the edits are done as I suggested, with a summary including "will self-revert per ban," the edit represents cooperation with the ban, not defiance of it. It's easy to verify that a pair of edits has no effect, and the edit summary flags to look for that. Further, should an admin block an editor for such an edit, it should be easy to establish that there was no intentional violation of the substance of the ban.
The cabal did not consider harmless edits to violate bans, when SA was involved, but only when it was me. My suggestion was rejected by ScienceApologist, quite likely, because his purpose in finding and making the spelling corrections was disruption, to complicate ban enforcement, not to simplify it. However, note, he was not banned from the topic, per se, and he was allowed to post to the Talk page, and therefore he would be, presumably, not discouraged from reading the article itself. The same was true for me; whereas much of the flap over my block (which I likewise did not take to AN or ANI) was based on a assumption that I'd been banned from the topic and had no business even looking at the article. In any case, editors who had been very clear that what SA was doing -- absent that showing of disruptive intention -- was quite acceptable, including WMC, suddenly became attached to "strict interpretation, banned is banned, period, end of topic."
This is tragic, because I had suggested self-reversion to User:PJHaseldine, an editor whose topic ban (article only) I had supported. It reconciled him to the decision, because it still allowed him to efficiently "suggest" an edit. In order for that edit to be realized, he'd need the cooperation of another editor. And it worked. Self-reversion started a process where PJH and an editor who had supported his ban (not me, another) began to cooperate. When I was blocked for this, this is the editor that took the matter to AN, motive unclear. As to simple spelling corrections, the argument that the editor should suggest these corrections on article Talk, if permitted, or user Talk or by email, is preposterous. A self-reverted edit is a suggestion, ordinarily nothing more or less, a very efficient one. To describe a spelling correction would take so much time that I would not bother, and then the editor who decides to make the fix likewise has to find it.
In general, allowing self-reverted edits leaves open a path for any banned editor to begin to cooperate with the community, and to establish a pattern of success. Or it's harmless at worst. It leaves behind no mess that needs to be cleaned up, and arguing against the edit, if nobody picks it up and takes responsibility for it, would be useless disruption. --Abd (talk) 22:26, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

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