Wikipedia talk:Requests for arbitration/Blu Aardvark/Proposed decision

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[edit] Ban of Blu Aardvark from editing pages.

  1. Could this ban exclude his userpage, on the condition that any templates deemed required (indefblock, restricted editing, et al) remain? This would also include WP:NPA, WP:NOT a soapbox to some extent, et al.
  2. Are/Could the talk pages of his supporters/advocates/etc (by opt-in) be considered related to this arbitration or otherwise be excluded from this ban? To make it explictly clear: This exception would not include SlimVirgin and other editors he has been in conflict with.

--Avillia (Avillia me!) 03:37, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Further outside statement by Simetrical, regarding injunctions

I would like to comment on arbitrator Dmcdevit's note that his first action will be to propose "an injunction to ensure that Blu Aardvark stays banned until the case is concluded and we decide otherwise". I would like to respectfully disagree that such an injunction is appropriate, and in fact suggest that an opposite injunction would be a better idea.

In real-life common law, one condition for granting of a preliminary injunction is the likelihood of irreparable harm to the requesting party. Why? Because if one party will be subject to irreparable harm by the lack of injunction, and the other will not be subject to irreparable harm by the granting of the injunction, then the reparable harm is preferable to the irreperable. If the reparable harm turned out to be unjustified, that can be repaired once the full trial concludes that fact; if the opposite turns out to be true, no repair is possible.

I'm not suggesting that the ArbCom should as a matter of course follow common-law standards, only bringing this up to illustrate the merits of the injunction itself. Specifically: to my knowledge, the ArbCom has very rarely if ever permanently banned anyone from contributing to Wikipedia. For a severe first case, one year is a typical ban length. So consider. If the ArbCom concludes, one or two months from now, that Blu Aardvark didn't deserve to be banned after all, and he was kept banned by preliminary injunction, he will have lost those one or two months of Wikipedia editing forever, and we will have lost them as well (since if the ArbCom decides to unban him, his edits presumably were constructive).

But on the other hand, what about the opposite case? If Blu Aardvark were unbanned by injunction (obviously putting him under temporary probation of some sort, perhaps mentorship, so that if he acts up he isn't immune to blocks but on the other hand also can't be blocked for disproportionate periods by admins based mainly on past or off-site actions), and at the end of the case the ArbCom decided that he did need to be banned for a year after all, what would happen? Why, he would be banned for a year. The one or two months he spent editing (harmfully, one presumes, if the case turned out that way) would not harm Wikipedia overall, since they would just be transferred to an earlier period. Or to put it another way, the harm caused by his extra one or two months here would be reparable by blocking him for an additional one or two months.

Furthermore, if Blu Aardvark is present on Wikipedia during the case, he will be able to first of all defend himself (which is always a desirable thing), and second of all any claims of reform could be judged over the course of the case. This means, in my view, that minimal harm could come from Blu Aardvark's being unbanned for the duration of the case, compared to the opposite. This is all provided one accepts that any users' decisions to leave Wikipedia are their own, and doesn't consider them as consequences of such tenuously-related decisions as unbanning another user entirely; of course, this is an important proviso, but I do firmly believe that any contrary one invites exploitation and misconduct, whether fully intentional or less-than-conscious.

And to address one final point: if the ArbCom decides to pass such an injunction, it should be stressed that this is not an endorsement of Linuxbeak's actions, and is a purely provisional measure crafted a) to permit Blu Aardvark a fair chance to participate in a formal case against him and b) with the understanding that he may be rebanned after a period of time based solely on past actions even if he acts as a model Wikipedian in the interim. As such, it is an entirely different proposition from Linuxbeak's unilateral unblocking, which had different goals, and this injunction would not be inconsistent with a final decision censuring Linuxbeak for his actions.

Respectfully, Simetrical (talk • contribs) 03:12, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "A different administrator reversed all three unblocks."

This confused me when I read it. It should be "A different administrator reversed each of the three unblocks." —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 01:26, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] A question

Is the 1-year ban of this user meant as punishment, or is the intention to help prevent further escalation of problems and disagreements. If the latter, how is that expected to work? Zocky | picture popups 02:45, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

I question the length of the ban. If Blu Aardvark is ready to edit, he might as well get started sooner than that. However I suspect the war on SlimVirgin precludes a shorter ban. Fred Bauder 02:56, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
I was going to defend him some more until I saw this. "you trolls (Yes Ambi, I'm talking to you) . . . Cyde libelling me on WP:ANI, and admins I have never interacted with jumping into the fray at the apparent behest of such trolls." While I'm against any extension of WP:NPA to cover off-wiki personal attacks as offenses per se, I think it's reasonable to use them when determining how an editor may act in the future (such as when considering whether to rescind a block), and in this case Blu seemingly doesn't want to make a good-faith effort to play nice with others. Plus, see [1][2]. Oh well; let no one say he didn't bring it upon himself. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 03:08, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
At the time that I wrote that, I had just been banned from the IRC from Ambi, with no given reason - despite having chatted at length in the channel (by "at length", I mean I had been in the channel, clearly identified, for at least 24 or 48 consecutive hours, and had participated in discussion with relative frequency) When I questioned her about it, her response was "users who condone stalking of Wikipedians are not welcome in #wikipedia", and she continued in that vein for some time. If we're going to bring my off-wiki dispute with Ambi into play, I request permission to publish my available logs regarding our correspondence and her attacks towards me and my character.
As for my issue with Cyde, please read the relevant discusion on the ANI subpage. Cyde referred to me several times as an "anti-semite", which was nothing but a smear, with no basis whatsoever in solid fact. I believe it is perfectly healthy to be offended by such accusations. While my response may not have been perfectly civil, one will not that I restrained myself to keeping it off-wiki, and can agree to do so in the future.
As for my discussion with malber on my talk page, please look at what he wrote to me, and then try to honestly tell me that his statements could not be construed by any reasonable contributor as "trolling". --Blu Aardvark | (talk) | (contribs) 19:45, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
I think that, in general, lengthy blocks such as this are intended to allow people time to change. Blu Aardvark is clearly not ready to treat others with civility; perhaps in a year he will be, especially if he's young (I don't know how old he is). —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 03:10, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
In general, lengthy blocks like this are intended to drive people away from the project. If you ban a dedicated contributor, he'll keep coming back using sockpuppets, which may end up extending the ban indefinately as they are sniffed out. If you ban a dedicated troll, he'll come back and harrass users for as long as he can be satisfied by the reaction he gets by doing so, because a troll doesn't care about petty things like "bans". If you ban a non-dedicated contributor, he won't come back, period. The purpose of a lengthy block like this is to state "You are not welcome here". That message is quite strong, particularly in this case. And I can take a hint. Particularly when the Arbitration Committee determines to cite misrepresentative or just flat-out falsified evidence. (Yes, I did at one point, off-site, refer to Jayjg as "Jewjg" in an off-hand manner. There was, however, a degree of sarcasm in that post that was missed by those who just wanted to see a nazi. Yes, I did make a post to amorrow encouriging him to circumvent a ban that I [mis]understood at the time to be unreasonable. I did not, however, encourage him to harrass or stalk any contributors, nor was I aware that he was doing so at the time I posted that message.)
Yes, I have had problems with the assumption of bad faith. Yes, I have had problems with personal attacks on contributors. Yes, I've even vandalized three Wikimedia projects, created dozens of abusive sockpuppets, and trolled and harrassed several respected contributors. I recognize that my actions were wrong, however, and have taken steps to correct my actions, to the best of my ability. One who took some time to look into the evidence would realize that, first of all, such abuses were nearly two months ago. One would notice that even after vandalizing commons and meta, I was respectable enough to clean up my own vandalism to the extent that I could. (A meta or commons sysop who reviewed the deleted "On Wheels" redirs would note that an anonymous user from my IP range tagged the redirects for speedy-d). One would note that even while I was harrasing contributors (after the community ban, mind you), I still made a handful of constructive edits. And a user who really took the time to review my contribions would clearly see that the bulk of my edits were performed in the act of Recent Changes patrol, which included many vandalism reverts, redirect corrections, spelling fixes, stub tagging, and copyvio detection, among other things. All non-controversial, and I adhered strictly to the 1RR. I had problems assuming good faith of certain contributors in the "userboxen wars", but even then I was not horribly abusive. My most egregarious actions occured within a 48-hour period, in which a conflict I had with some other contributors escalated very rapidly due to bad faith decisions on the part of both parties.
Lets face facts here. If the Arbitration Commitee is saying "ban him for a year", it is only Wikipedia that will suffer from this. That will be one less person to revert vandalism, one less person to tag copyvios, one less person to correct formatting and spelling errors, one less contributor to your encyclopedia. On the other hand, I have thousands of other things I can do with my time. I am an adminstrator on an online forum (http://wikipediareview.org], I am a moderator on another online forum [3], I'm a respected contributor on several other wikis, and I play numerous online games. And then there's real life. In short, I lose nothing by being banned from editing Wikipedia, except for the fact that part of my "e-dentity" will shout that I've been banned, and give false pretenses.
The cost to Wikipedia of permitting me to edit, even if with restrictions? None whatsoever. This case is a simple one, really. The real question isn't "Should Blu Aardvark be unbanned?". The real question is, "Does the encyclopedia come first?". Judging by the votes of five Arbcom members, it looks like the answer is "no, in fact, it does not". --Blu Aardvark | (talk) | (contribs) 19:45, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Administrators admonished

5) All involved administrators are admonished not use their administrative tools without prior discussion and consensus,

This is going to case trouble.Geni 20:42, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

The term "tough" comes to mind. Wikipedia is not a playground in which people should power-trip (not that the individuals mentioned in this case did).
James F. (talk) 19:04, 9 June 2006 (UTC)


You know that some anoying person is going to cite this when they are blocked. You need to improve the wording. Currently someone could argue that becuase I fail to disscuss the block of a vandle it shouldn't hold.Geni 03:18, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
I agree with Geni, the wording is currently too broad and will very likely be cited by Wikilawyers and/or trolls. Admins are often accused being "involved" after issuing a warning or attempting to discuss a problem. Aren't I Obscure? 14:26, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Finding of Fact 2 - How many is "many"?

2) Blu Aardvark has created many abusive sockpuppets for block evasion and harassment, and engaged in vandalism of Wikipedia and many other Wikimedia projects.

Did he vandalize anything other than commons, meta, and here? I call three "a few" not "many." Kotepho 22:08, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

No, just a mistake in wording. Fred Bauder 23:10, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
See this change. --Tony Sidaway 00:13, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Recent vandalism

This project page has recently been vandalized several times over the course of a few hours. I've semiprotected it. Only arbitrators need to edit it anyway, and if you spot something that needs to be changed note it here and either an unrecused arbitrator or an uninvolved administrator editor or a clerk will perform any changes necessary. --Tony Sidaway 17:06, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Unprotected. --Tony Sidaway 03:14, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Enforcement wording

Enforced by block
1) For violations of his parole or Probation, using username or account, Blu Aardvark may be blocked for a short time, up to a week for repeat offenses. After 5 such blocks the maximum block period increases to one year. All blocks are to be logged at Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Blu Aardvark#Log of blocks and bans.

"using username or account"? tautological. "using any username or IP address" maybe? Kotepho 21:01, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Majority for mentorship?

I wrote Tony the following message enquiring about the nature of majority when there is an abstention among the non-recused active Arbitrators. His reply seems reasonable, but I thought I'd copy it here just in case. -Splash - tk 17:34, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Hi Tony. I'm not quite sure how the numbers rules work in cases like this. The "mentorship" remedy is currently 5-0-1. Given the numerics at the top, there are only 10 active Arbs on this case. With 1 abstention on that motion (rather than an opposition), it has quietly passed, I think, since if the other 4 active Arbs all opposed, there'd still be a 'support' majority, across the whole of the active Committee. On the other hand, ther would still be less than the 6 for majority given at the top; I'm not clear on how such things are split. -Splash - tk 12:35, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Arbitration cases normally go for a "hard" majority, so we'd count the mentorship motion as having passed only if it had (in this case) six or more supporting votes. However it may be a good idea to ask for clarification on the talk page of the proposed decision. --Tony Sidaway 12:47, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
So an abstention is, in other words, identical to an oppose. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 02:14, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

You'll have to ask for clarification on this. We can get it wrong. --Tony Sidaway 02:31, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

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