Wikipedia talk:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Shakespeare authorship question/Proposed decision

Main case page (Talk) — Evidence (Talk) — Workshop (Talk) — Proposed decision (Talk)

Case clerks: AGK (Talk) & X! (Talk) Drafting arbitrators: Newyorkbrad (Talk) & SirFozzie (Talk)

Arbitrators active on this case

Active:

Casliber
Chase me ladies, I'm the Cavalry
Cool Hand Luke
Coren
David Fuchs
Elen of the Roads
Iridescent
Jclemens
John Vandenberg
Kirill Lokshin
Mailer diablo
Newyorkbrad
Risker
Shell Kinney
SirFozzie
Xeno

Inactive:

Roger Davies

Recused

PhilKnight

To update this listing, edit this template and scroll down until you find the right list of arbitrators.

Bishzilla Waited for Godot. Godot arrived on 10 February 2011. No, that was only the Godking. Bishzilla still waiting for Co-Founder.

Waiting for Godot

Oh template template template template template template template. Get on with it already. Please. Bishonen | talk 00:10, 9 February 2011 (UTC).[reply]

No need to send the 'Zilla, we are on time, and on target :) SirFozzie (talk) 00:31, 9 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Will the proposed decision be posted at the workshop first? Ncmvocalist (talk) 01:38, 9 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

At this point, it looks to be going straight to the PD page. SirFozzie (talk) 02:14, 9 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Why? Are there not enough (or too many) parties to comment on the proposals before they formally come here...or is it something else? Ncmvocalist (talk) 02:28, 9 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It depends on the case. While I speak only for myself (and not for the other arbs) Usually, when things are brought to the workshop level, it's not only to gauge the community's reaction to what could be a complicated decision, it's to get valuable input on whether the issue the parties see "match up" with what the issues the arbitrators see. This case is not only relatively straight-forward, I think in general, it's the sense of the drafting arbitrators and the community that things "match-up". Things have gotten relatively messy, discussion wise, over the last week, and we're taking into account the thoughts of parties above (and elsewhere) that it's about time to wrap things up. SirFozzie (talk) 02:37, 9 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The proposed decision will be posted this evening. Newyorkbrad (talk) 15:40, 9 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your answers (which have also answered the next questions I was going to ask). Ncmvocalist (talk) 15:43, 9 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm done. I thought I was doing too well, and I was right - I have reached the end of my tether; I am taking these pages off my watchlist. LessHeard vanU (talk) 21:16, 9 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

PFoF 3 - NinaGreen

Just a minor grammatical correction: "NinaGreen ... has engaged in ... repeated false ... failure to improve ..." – that should be "failed" as part of a list of past participles. --RexxS (talk) 14:49, 10 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

No, it's correct the way it is. The listed behaviours are examples of what she "has engaged in", and aren't required to use parallel grammatical construction. "NinaGreen ... has engaged in a persistent pattern of disruptive behavior, including (list of behaviours)." Tom Reedy (talk) 15:51, 10 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure about this. I thought I wrote it as a series of noun phrases: "advocacy, ... monopolization, ... allegations, ... failure, ... behavior." I will, however, defer to any consensus that may emerge on this important matter. Newyorkbrad (talk) 15:38, 10 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

As the local card-carrying expert on Bad Grammar, I hereby opine that "repeated false allegations" is syntactically ambiguous, allowing both a reading where "repeated" is an adjective modifying "allegations" and one where "repeated" is a finite verb and "allegations" its object, but that the first of these readings is by far the more plausible from the context, making NYB's version grammatically coherent. You don't really want me to start explaining the analysis of why the nominal interpretation wins out. Fut.Perf. ☼ 15:47, 10 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. For the record, though, I didn't actually write the sentence in question; the decision was drafted for me by Christopher Marlowe. Newyorkbrad (talk) 15:50, 10 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Tsk tsk. Poor Poet-Arb, that would be thought our chief. Now we understand why no eye-witness has come forward who has ever actually seen you writing a decision. Fut.Perf. ☼ 16:04, 10 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Ah I see now! You parsed the fragment as:

... has engaged in a persistent pattern of disruptive behavior, including [1] advocacy rather than neutral editing, misuse and extreme monopolization of talkpages to the point of rendering them useless, [2] repeated false and unsupported allegations against fellow editors, [3] failure to improve her behavior after having been repeatedly counseled in the past, and [4] continued disruptive behavior ...

making each of the past participles purely adjectival. Whereas I parsed it as:

has [1] engaged in a persistent pattern of disruptive behavior, including advocacy rather than neutral editing, misuse and extreme monopolization of talkpages to the point of rendering them useless, [2] repeated false and unsupported allegations against fellow editors, [3] failure[failed] to improve her behavior after having been repeatedly counseled in the past, and [4] continued disruptive behavior ...

making each of the participles the past tense after the shared auxiliary 'has'. Academics who are expert in analysing Brad's handwriting have commented that he often wrote a ligature to represent '-ed' in such a way that it resembled '-ure', so I can see how it was easy for you to make that mistake. But as you know, Wilson Knight in Wheel of Fire makes the exact point that I do. As my contention is the only one to be backed up by a reliable source, I expect that you'll be willing to relegate your reading to that of a FRINGE theory per policy. --RexxS (talk) 16:43, 10 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

He is listing noun phrases, not verb phrases. The phrase "has ... including advocacy rather than neutral editing" is nonsensical, and the "including" can only refer back to the "persistent pattern of disruptive behavior". To read it your way would require semi-colons instead of commas. Tom Reedy (talk) 18:07, 10 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

And for the record I parsed it as:

... has engaged in a persistent pattern of disruptive behavior, including [1] advocacy rather than neutral editing, [2] misuse and extreme monopolization of talkpages to the point of rendering them useless, [3] repeated false and unsupported allegations against fellow editors, [4] failure to improve her behavior after having been repeatedly counseled in the past, and [5] continued disruptive behavior ... Tom Reedy (talk) 18:12, 10 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Your [1] should really be [1] and [2], but other than that you make some valid points.

You know, I bet they aren't having nearly as much fun on the talkpage of that other case that I'm not drafting. :P Newyorkbrad (talk) 16:53, 10 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I'd heard it was an open secret that all of Kiril's work was actually written with Bacon. --RexxS (talk) 17:25, 10 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Mmmmmm... Bacon 198.161.174.222 (talk) 22:13, 10 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Push button, receive Bacon. bishzilla _ROARR!! 23:39, 10 February 2011 (UTC).[reply]

PP 11 - Review of community sanctions

As Luke says, it's probably too easy for any party to cry "unfair", and then there's no objective criterion to measure by. How about something like:

"... such as a finding that (1) some aspect of the community discussion fell short of usual standards, ..." ?

Then at least you can rely on a collective consensus about what the usual standards are (adequate discussion time, clear consensus to sanction, etc.). It's not a perfect recipe, but might be a starting point to improve on. --RexxS (talk) 00:12, 11 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I think its implied that Arbcom is the one that will decide its unfair. Any party can cry unfair all they want, but if it wasn't then their review gets rejected like any other case. 198.161.174.222 (talk) 18:08, 11 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I agree that it's too easy. We are likely to reverse (or freshly reconsider) alleged community bans that had almost no input, or where the participants were canvassed, or where the discussion was closed too quickly. It seems that what's NYB meant to capture, but this kind of shortcoming is a different thing than unfairness. Sure, ArbCom decides what "unfairness" means, but we should also let appellees know what we're actually looking for in appeals.

I think your proposed alternative is sufficiently unlawyerly; will ask Brad. Cool Hand Luke 20:23, 11 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

That's a good point, many sanctioned editors feel the sanction was unfair to them and I can see how, absent context, it could appear like we're encouraging people to appeal on that basis (which rarely ever gets someone anywhere). Shell ^babelfish 05:02, 13 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not entirely persuaded; we review almost every request that comes to us one way or the other, and have often decided not to overturn community-based sanctions even if they don't meet the fairly ill-defined usual standards to the letter. We've all seen community sanctions enacted in under 48 hours; I'm more concerned about longer discussions with few participants (several of whom are likely to be involved) than shorter discussions where there is a large number of participants who agree that the sanction is required. On the other hand, I'm also concerned that AN and ANI have become echo chambers to some extent, with the same small number of users and administrators consistently participating in these discussions, and little input from the larger community. Risker (talk) 07:22, 13 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

If we give no deference to community sanctions, shouldn't we be radical and say we give no deference? I tend to give deference proportional to the rigorousness of the procedure. Cool Hand Luke 16:02, 13 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

PP 10 — Revealing personal information

I had a little giggle at David Fuchs' declaration that "Restating a principle can't hurt". Isn't that Nina's motto, too.. ? Which suggests to me that if the restating is taken far enough, it can hurt like a bastard. Bishonen | talk 20:48, 11 February 2011 (UTC).[reply]

Restating a principle once is hopefully a reminder, restating it until people run away in frustration - yep, that hurts. Shell ^babelfish 04:59, 13 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

PFF 2—Persistent disruption

@Cavalry: Yes, IMO you do need the word "miserable" in there; it's well chosen. It expresses the state of mind of the unfortunate editors who work, with little enough thanks, to defend Wikipedia against persistent misuse and disruption. (Hello, MONGO, are you there?) A lot of misery has been in play while those 21 archives were produced, and it's surely not necessary to remove all words with any hint of feeling in them from the FoF's. If you'll all pardon my saying so, there's enough starch and lawyerspeak in the arbcom decisions anyway. Bishonen | talk 21:37, 11 February 2011 (UTC).[reply]

You're right in a way, it is miserable: but if I was to put my feelings into these votes, I'd get an incivility block no doubt! It's a thin line between appropriate and inappropriate language, and I don't want good faith editors to be censured because they were once involved in an 'officially miserable discussion'. People can make up their own minds about that sort of thing without us having to resort to adjectives. The Cavalry (Message me) 14:38, 12 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Bishonen is right as always...best never to argue with anyone whose alter-ego/best-pal is from the Cretaceous...unwise. Excessive article talkpage archives...more often than not, they allow one to review (if they wish to relive the horror) of what hasn't been accomplished rather than what has....how about 54 of them!...with little to no net improvement in article quality...how can there be when so much time is wasted dealing with SPA's and fringe/preposterous theory POV pushers....MISERABLE sums it up.--MONGO 19:08, 12 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Someone pointed out to me Talk:Race and intelligence with - 87! The Cavalry (Message me) 20:11, 12 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I did a brief search to find articles with lots of talk page archives. I'll post the results in a new section. Carcharoth (talk) 03:08, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Unusual Proposed Decision page

It's kind of unusual, at least among the cases I've followed, to see no proposals from individual arbs adorn a Proposed Decision page. While I hesitate to suggest that the rest of the committee are all cowering in fear of the primary drafter Brad (that would be unusual), I'm wondering if nobody sees any importance in the problem of the established users who built a Great Wall of China around Nina's talkpage, blowing off any counselling that could have been useful to her. (I name these users on the evidence page, the section "Nina's helpers".) Is Nina supposed to be the single guilty party, and to have achieved her confident disruption all by herself, without encouragement? See my evidence (just a few examples) and this workshop proposal: "It is disruptive for established Wikipedians to countermand good advice to new editors, or otherwise encourage them to continue flouting community norms."[1]. Shell and Luke commented favorably on it as a "useful corollary" (to RexSS' proposal, also ignored in the Proposed Decision), while MoreThings commented so grossly, in typical "helper" attack mode, that Shell removed his post.[2] Brad, Sir Fozzie, do you see the countermanding of good advice as having any importance for how NinaGreen's editing developed?

I am aware that most workshop suggestions go nowhere, and also that Brad, as he said somewhere (where.. ?), was leaving out some users from the Proposed Decision by way of giving them a "last chance". I don't know if that referred to the users I have in mind. But, whoever they were (Nishidani? Me? Helpers? Tom?), it seems a bit paradoxical to be giving people last chances without telling them they were ever in hot water (such as through an admonition). Can't be much of a learning experience for them. Bishonen | talk 15:32, 13 February 2011 (UTC).[reply]

It's a bit late in the date to be debating evidence, but I think Bishonen misinterprets Warshy when she says Warshy "Implies it's a goal in itself to prevent SAQ from becoming a featured article: [3][4]". In fact, if I interpret Warshy aright, Tom and Nishidani's plan is Far more Evil than that. They want an extremely biassed version of the article to become featured, so that they can parade it around and achieve glory and praise ("political and clear status gain"). They will achieve this because "the article they created, this biased hack-of-a-job of a brainchild, has achieved FA status". They will apparently "stop at nothing" to achieve this! They aim to "crush and to obliterate out of existence any opposition". Note that this imagery of plucky resistance to a ruthless war machine follows from Moonraker2's astounding claim that a request to edit in accordance with Wikipedia policy and guidelines sounds "just like what the professional classes (and, indeed, all other classes) were asked to do in Stalinist Russia, and it ended in the Great Purge." Paul B (talk) 15:47, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I did like that proposal. I can put it up quickly to see what happens, but there may be tomatoes lobbed for potentially stalling the closure vote. Cool Hand Luke 16:04, 13 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Go for it. Tomatoes are wonderful for the complexion! Bishonen | talk 16:08, 13 February 2011 (UTC).[reply]

My colleagues cowering in fear of me has not been an issue since, approximately, ever.

I've supported both of the proposed additions. Newyorkbrad (talk) 18:40, 13 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hehe. From your wistful tone, I bet you'd like it if they did cower. Bishonen | talk 19:49, 13 February 2011 (UTC).[reply]

Cower, no. Agree with me more, sometimes. (That's not a reference to this case, of course.) Newyorkbrad (talk) 22:00, 13 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

And I suppose going out of your way to get an editor called Nina Green banned and then dancing on her grave with Green die! is entirely within community norms. It is no way disruptive or provocative, nor is writing in green font on the arbitration page. It is exactly the kind of friendly, collegiate behaviour we want to encourage here. It's exactly the sort of admin behaviour we rely on arbcom to ignore. But do you think it might be indicative of the personal animosity that led to this case in the first place? Do you think it might qualify as just just plain nasty? As crowing? Provocative? As, heaven forfend, an attack? Nope, I'm sure you're right.

Anyhoo, now that we've had Green dye, anyone who makes a wisecrack about admins arranging for editors to be taken out back and shot should be taken out back and shot.

Ey up! It looks to me like there is something on the decision page about behaviour during arbcom cases, after all. Perhaps it's my monitor, or perhaps it's not green ink at all—perhaps it's ~~invisible~~ admin ink. MoreThings (talk) 19:54, 13 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Dude, seriously?!? You infer conduct unbecoming (and so forth) from use of text in a certain color? I mean, there are a bunch of complaints you could make about Bish—and I might even concur if you complained green text was illegible—but to make conspiratorial veiled gloating of it is just… Well, it's not WP:AGF at any rate. --Xover (talk) 20:09, 13 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sure you're right, X. And I'm sure Bishonen always refers to green text as "Green dye!" Or perhaps it's an exclamation she tags on to the end of posts at random. MoreThings (talk) 20:22, 13 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

More, to me you come off here as first outright asserting, and then merely implying, wrongdoing on Bishonen's part. The comments from Bish that you give diff-links to address this very question: the plain meaning of the words more than adequately explain why the word “green” appears in that context and what its intended function is. There are absolutely no grounds to infer that anything beyond the plain meaning of the words is intended. Your apparent habit of phrasing such accusations as sarcasm and rhetorical questions rather than stating them outright also comes across as rather manipulative and dishonest. If you have an accusation to make, make it; to make an unfounded accusation through implication and rhetoric is still an unfounded accusation (and unfounded accusation are considered personal attacks as well as disruptive behavior). I would encourage you to think hard on whether that is the perception you had intended to impart, and to strike out those parts of your comments above that, on reflection, do not accurately communicate your meaning. --Xover (talk) 20:53, 13 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Oh. Nina is called "Green"! At last the penny dropped and I got what MoreThings was talking about. You think I was making a stupid pun about Nina's name in a recent evidence section not about Nina, as it happens, but about Smatprt. Is that it? Believe me, that was just bad luck. I like to think my jokes are generally a little funnier than a "dye"/"die" pun.. ! (Not a boastful claim; most people's are.) Here (same link as yours) I explain the actual reason I used a green font, in answer to a question from AGK about it. I'm not going to discuss further with you, MoreThings. I don't see any point, and I get depressed enough from typing this one reply. I'll just record that I believe you sincere in ascribing all that stuff to me. Sincere but mistaken. Thank you, Xover, I appreciate your intervention. Bishonen | talk 21:23, 13 February 2011 (UTC).[reply]

I'm saying,that I believe in that diff "Green dye" = "Green die". I can't say it any clearer than that. I'm saying that the reason I made my very first post to Bishonen's talk page was that it seemed to me that she had taken a personal dislike to Nina Green. Everything that I've seen since has confirmed me in that belief. MoreThings (talk) 21:29, 13 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I have rarely seen such a far-fetched accusation of bad faith. Be mindful of the new discretionary sanctions, MoreThings. Cool Hand Luke 21:32, 13 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I find as a fact that the allegation by MoreThings is meritless. It should not be repeated, and discussion of it need not continue. Newyorkbrad (talk) 22:01, 13 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Articles with lots of talk page archives

FWIW (as the number of talk page archives was mentioned in this case), the articles on Wikipedia with over 50 talk page archives appear to be the following (17 at time of writing, in descending order, with number of talk page archives in brackets - someone could add the article date of creation to give more context, or even calculate the amount of text in these archives, and also indicate the article assessment level, and also whether lots of discussion necessarily equates to lots of editing of the article):

I found these by running the following search: intitle:archive intitle:50 limited to namespace 1 (talk pages). Similar searches can be done to find those articles with 30 or more archives (around 50 have 30 or more; for 20 or more it is over 100, for 10 or more is over 500). This presumes that talk page archives are of the form "Archive XX" - there are some of the form "ArchiveXX", but none for 30 or more archives - and that thematic talk page archiving (by topic rather than date) is not in place, as it is for some articles. Of course, the number of talk page archives is also a function of whether archiving is done manually or by bot, how large each archive page is, and when the article was created (older articles have had more time to accumulate talk page archives). It would be trivial to automate tracking pages with large number of talk page archives, and it might be worth the community keeping more of an eye on such articles, as talk page archive bloat is definitely one of the symptoms that can indicate an ongoing and unresolved problem. The key is finding someone willing to look at the quality of the talk page discussions if problems do exist. Carcharoth (talk) 03:17, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for making this interesting list. I think most of the highest-number talk page archives are predictable, if not sensible. The only ones at the top I find especially surprising are circumcision and R&I. Farther down, anarchism and Jehovah's Witnesses mildly surprise me—although I would have expected high numbers of archives in all these subjects. Cool Hand Luke 03:55, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

PP 3

The reason why proposed principle 3 causes difficulties (in my humble opinion) is that principle 2 is actually a consequence of principle 3, not the other way around. I also suspect that although the sentiment is clear, the vocabulary employed is not quite the mot juste at times. I'd suggest you might consider some minor amendments like these:

The purpose of Wikipedia is to create a high-quality, free-content encyclopedia in an atmosphere of camaraderie and mutual respect among the contributors.
Wikipedia works by building consensus through the use of polite discussion—involving the wider community, if necessary—and dispute resolution, rather than through adversarial editing. Sustained editorial conflict or edit-warring is not an appropriate method of resolving disputes.
Wikipedia users are expected to behave reasonably and calmly in their interactions with other users, and to approach even difficult situations with a constructive and collaborative outlook. Editors are expected to be reasonably courteous to one another, even during disputes. Confrontational conduct, such as personal attacks, incivility, and unwarranted assumptions of bad faith, is prohibited.

By means of explanation:

re-order since expectations of behaviour are predicated upon the description of the process;
'disruptive' -> 'adversarial' as it's not solely disruptive editing that is toxic, more broadly it is the attitude of editors who see a disagreement as a contest, rather than an opportunity to seek common ground; (usually disruptive editing is covered specifically in a later principle)
remove repetition of 'courteously/courteous';
remove 'in a dignified fashion' – a laudable objective, but impossible to quantify give the breadth of cultural norms here;
'Unseemly' -> 'Confrontational' as I believe most folks can agree on what constitutes confrontational conduct a lot more readily than they will agree on what unseemly means.

Cheers. --RexxS (talk) 03:44, 15 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This is good stuff. I'm not sure how many arbitrators will see it, though, at the tail-end of a case like this. Hopefully one of the arbs will comment here and propose new wording or ordering of these principles in another case based on what you've said here. Carcharoth (talk) 02:11, 16 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I tend to agree with these changes; "unseemly" always seemed unseemly for precisely that reason. I've found your proposals very helpful throughout this case, RexxS. Will try to remember this the next times these issues come up. Cool Hand Luke 05:05, 16 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

There are some good ideas in this, RexxS. Would you mind if I take advantage of this and do some work with our "boilerplate"? Risker (talk) 05:30, 16 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Please feel free to use and adapt any or all of it at any time, Risker; and thank you for your kind words, CHL. I'm only too pleased if I've been of some assistance. --RexxS (talk) 12:21, 16 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks from me also. I'm actually pretty satisfied with the current wording—which is not to say that it couldn't be improved, or that we shouldn't strive for a version that will make people more comfortable. You might want to draw this discussion to Kirill's attention, as I believe it was he who developed much of the phraseology; he's been using it since the fall of 2007 (the first time I can quickly locate was in Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Railpage Australia, though I might have missed one), and I have adapted it in some of my own drafts while fine-tuning it to particulars of the individual cases. Newyorkbrad (talk) 13:51, 16 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]