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More Longevity

I've already alerted EdJohnston about this. I don't think admonition is working. David in DC (talk) 14:13, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, I'm not familiar with this case and can't assess the problem.  Sandstein  18:18, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

My bad. I had meant to post to User:Amatulic's talk page. David in DC (talk) 18:34, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

AE for 9/11 questions

Hi, I had seen your sig a few times on the AE page, so I thought that you might be able to offer some advice on something. Ghostofnemo has been pushing hard for one conspiracy theory organization to be included more in the article on 9/11. This has been discussed on the talkpage a few times, on WP:NPOVN, and probably a few other places. Discussion ended up as no consensus or leave out. Unfortunately Ghostofnemo has taken it upon himself to continue this by now trying to use the talkpage of the noticeboard as a straw poll while complaining of censorship. He has been notified of the 9/11 sanctions, but doesn't seem to think that refusing to lick his wounds and move on is disruptive.--Terrillja _talk 15:46, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

The actual discussion has been going on for more than a year see this RFC and its discussion. That was the last time there was sizable input from the broader community, sadly the RfC was never closed by an admin, which let the issue fester, at this point most people have moved on to other topics - but at the time the headcount showed support for the inclusion. Subsequent discussions seem to have focused on pointing to immediate and local consensus and while I haven't been following them closely, it also seems that discussions that sought to bring in wider community input have be closed down fairly quickly. If anything a proper RfC should be reopened and the previous participants notified. un☯mi 16:04, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Ghostofnemo has been tenditiously pushing this for over a year now. Every single time, he's brought it up, it has failed to achieve consensus. Enough's enough. I warned the editor yesterday but he hasn't stopped. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 16:26, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

The discussion on NPOVN was open for a long time. There was no change in consensus given the "wider community discussion"--Terrillja _talk 16:30, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

For better or worse NPOVN does not employ the RfC system of a final adjudicator who weighs the strengths of the arguments, it is fairly easy to claim consensus on poor grounds if you are vocal enough. I note for example that your argument of WP:UNDUE on the grounds of giving preferential treatment to one petition over another is unsubstantiated seeing as how this petition has demonstrably been covered in a number of sources - I see no evidence presented that other petitions have received similar coverage in RS - which would be the test for that particular argument. As stated above, I think it is probably best to open an RfC on the matter. un☯mi 16:48, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

How will that end Ghostofnemo's disruption? If it fails again, he's just going to keep bringing it up. Bringing up the same thing over and over again is disruptive and it needs to end. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 16:56, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

I have ventured the idea of a final RfC on the matter to GoN, I expect that all involved parties will respect its outcome, in any case the resolution of one would make it easier to seek and get sanctions. un☯mi 17:36, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Making arguments on talk pages, even bad or repetitive arguments, is not normally grounds for AE sanctions. Only in the case of a severe WP:IDIDNOTHEARTHAT problem that persists even after a WP:RFC/U asked the user to stop could such sanctions be contemplated.  Sandstein  18:17, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Proposing less desctructive sanctions

Regarding this, there are still points I raised in my comment, waiting for a response. But regarding the proposed sanctions, I would like to implore you to reduce their severity. Please note that I am asking for reduction of their severity for both sides, and the "non-Polish" (if I may use such a generalization) side is getting sanctioned more heavily... In particular, I would like you to consider:

• changing "topic bans" to "1RR restrictions" (or even "1RR/week" ones), add "renaming ban" when it would be necessary (for example for Jacurek). This would apply to Jacurek, Lokyz and Dr. Dan. The reason is that most edits by those editors, outside renaming edit warring, tend to be constructive. Taking away their ability to revert war should be enough to mostly eliminate the battleground (although perhaps some civility parole could be useful, too).
• I would also like to ask you to reconsider whether any sanctions on VM are necessary. Sanctioning an editor for four reverts on four different articles means sending a signal that even adhering to 1RR and BRD can get you in trouble. Out of the editors involved in that situation, only VM followed our policies to the letter: one revert + discussion is not only allowed, it is recommended (WP:BRD!). I believe that instead of getting sanctioned, VM should be commended for his behavior, and shown to other four as an example of how they should behave (consider this: if all four behaved like him - single revert and discussion - there would be no edit war and no AE thread...). If you sanction him, you say that in fact all reverts are bad, something that I believe would make any editing impossible. Also, please consider: if at some future point an editor would like to add or remove a name to an article, thinking back to his sanction, they will have a really serious temptation to sock - because even if they have never edited the article, and will do only a single revert, they have seen somebody in the same situation sanction for such an edit... thus I believe his sanction, if passed in the form you currently suggested, will send the wrong message to the community (respecting policies can get you in trouble, too, so why bother?) and have a counterproductive effort (encourage further policy evasion).

Thank you for your consideration, --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 00:00, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the input. The reason why I am considering topic bans is that I believe that revert restrictions may not be enough, given how long (years!) the reverting has been going on on the same articles, and because the problem is not only edit-warring as such, it is also nationalist POV-pushing on both sides.

With respect to Volunteer Marek, what you say would be right (and I would not be considering sanctions) if his few reverts had been made in isolation. But they were not; they were part and parcel of the edit war conducted by the others, which means that he must carry at least a part of the responsibility for the edit war as a whole. In addition, I am disappointed by his continued confrontative "We are right and the others are wrong" attitude at WP:AE, which suggests that he does not understand the severity of the problem represented by nationalist battlegrounding.

But I will wait for input by other admins before making any decision.  Sandstein  06:42, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

That the edit warring has been going for years does not mean that when we finally decide to do something about it we should use nukes. More tailored restrictions should achieve the same result, and allow editors to continue editing. If you look at edits by Lokyz and Jacurek, for example, you'll note that they only edit EE subjects. Topic banning them is not different from a full ban. And both editors have more constructive edits there that are not part of any edit war. Why prevent them from making them?

I am afraid I don't sign for the guilt by association logic. VM edits should be judged by what they were, not as some weird association with the events. The way I see it, he was following WP:BRD, and tried to add constructive and policy-guided input to the conflict. To penalize him for following policies sends a very wrong message. Further, which policy says that making 1 revert can get you into a restriction? WP:EW clearly states that the editor needs to make repetitive reverts to be considered part of an edit war. You were always very respectful of clearly following the policies, please consider the situation here.--_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 16:43, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

If editors edit only EE subjects, they do so by choice. Their personal choice of topics is not relevant for determining what sanctions are needed to stop disruption of the project. After a certain number of topic-related problems, sanctions that are specifically tailored to previous misconduct are no longer enough to prevent continued disruption, and the editor needs to removed from the topic entirely. This is particularly so if the actions for which they are sanctioned were attempts to promote a particular nationalist point of view, because this makes it very likely that they have also tried to push that POV via their other edits, and would continue to try and do so if they were continued to allow articles related to the topic.

With respect to guilt by association, I cannot follow you when you say that "WP:EW clearly states that the editor needs to make repetitive reverts to be considered part of an edit war". I cannot find such a statement anywhere on that page. What WP:EW says is:

"An edit war occurs when editors who disagree about the content of a page repeatedly override each other's contributions, rather than trying to resolve the disagreement by discussion. ...

A potentially controversial change may be made to find out whether it is opposed. Another editor may revert it. This is known as the bold, revert, discuss (BRD) cycle. An edit war only arises if the situation develops into a series of back-and-forth reverts."

This means that an edit war is the whole series of reverts, and all editors who make one or more of these reverts (except for the first revert, which is the only one covered by WP:BRD), are taking part in the edit war and share responsibility for it. Even if they make only one revert, that one revert contributes to making the edit war go on, disrupting consensus-based dispute resolution. We can, however (and I do in my proposed sanctions) take account of how many reverts each editor contributed to the edit war when determining sanctions.  Sandstein  17:16, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

With regards to editing topics of choice, you are of course right it is a choice. But my point was that 1RR restrictions should be sufficient to stabilize the area. Topic bans will achieve nothing further that's constructive, instead they will hurt the project by denying it the otherwise constructive, non-edit warring edits those editors might have done.

I see now where we differ. I was under the impression that edit warring required one to make more than one edit to an article (I will ask for clarification on talk of WP:EW) and that 1RR/BDR allowed an editor one edit, no matter if there was (or wasn't) an edit war ongoing. For the second point, however, please note that BRD specifically suggests that it should be used (that I understand implies making a revert and then discussing) in cases where "Two factions are engaged in an edit war" and "Discussion has died out with no agreement being reached", which I think fits the situation. You also said yourself that "WP:BRD involves stopping after a single revert" - which is the case of VM edits under discussion. Does it mean that you state that VM followed BRD correctly but nonetheless is still guilty of violating EW?

After your explanations, I understand your concerns better. I still think that there is no need to sanction VM. Punishing an editor for a single, non-repetitive edit rests, I think, on quite a slippery grounds, and BRD seems to explicitly allow editors to intervene in an edit war with a revert and a discussion, to make their position visible. Single reverts are not disruptive, repetitive ones are, after all. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 17:30, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

One should keep in mind that WP:BRD is an essay and as such has very little weight for determining whether the edit-warring policy was violated or not. When I said that WP:BRD involves stopping after a single revert, I meant a single revert in total, not a single revert per editor. What WP:EW seeks to prevent are the edit-wars themselves, not reverts per editor; and an edit-war that consists of 30 editors each reverting once is just as disruptive to consensus-finding as two editors reverting 15 times each. (The only difference is that in the latter case, the responsibility for the edit war is distributed among only two editors rather than 30, so the sanctions for the two will tend to be higher than the sanctions for each of the 30.)  Sandstein  17:50, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Also, your opinion that "BRD seems to explicitly allow editors to intervene in an edit war with a revert and a discussion" appears questionable to me given that the essay advises:

"Don't invoke BRD as your reason for reverting someone else's work or for edit warring", and

"Revert-wars do not help build consensus: Try to avoid reverting a revert yourself. Go to the talk page to learn why you were reverted, or to try to get the reverting party to unrevert themselves, and/or get them to make an edit themselves", and

"Do not edit war. The BRD cycle does not contain another "R" after the "D"."  Sandstein  17:54, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Questions for you

From Risker. NW (Talk) 23:51, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

Looking on this page for the conversation we were having some days ago....

Hi Sandstein, I have been busy producing events, today I returned to your talk page to continue our conversation, but discovered that the conversation we were having has disappeared. Where might I find that? it wasn't that long ago... sometime last week. Thanks, Constance Demby Constancemary (talk) 00:28, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

(driveby) Try looking here.
⋙–Berean–Hunter—► ((⊕)) 00:33, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

DYK for 2011 Frankfurt Airport shooting

On 16 March 2011, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article 2011 Frankfurt Airport shooting, which you created or substantially expanded. The fact was ... that the Frankfurt Airport shooting of 2 March 2011, in which two U.S. airmen were killed, is suspected to be the first deadly act of Islamist terrorism in Germany? You are welcome to check how many hits the article got while on the front page (here's how, quick check) and add it to DYKSTATS if it got over 5,000. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.

—HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 08:02, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Thank you! It is now featured on Portal:Germany. If you have more DYK related to Germany, feel free to place it there yourself. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 16:34, 16 March 2011 (UTC)