Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Betacommand 2/Evidence

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Notice Create your own section to provide evidence in, and do not edit anyone else's section. Keep your evidence to a maximum of 1000 words and 100 diffs. Evidence longer than this will be refactored or removed entirely.

Anyone, whether directly involved or not, may add evidence to this page. Create your own section and do not edit in anybody else's section. Please limit your main evidence to a maximum 1000 words and 100 diffs and keep responses to other evidence as short as possible. A short, concise presentation will be more effective; posting evidence longer than 1000 words will not help you make your point. Over-long evidence that is not exceptionally easy to understand (like tables) will be trimmed to size or, in extreme cases, simply removed by the Clerks without warning - this could result in your important points being lost, so don't let it happen. Stay focused on the issues raised in the initial statements and on diffs which illustrate relevant behavior.

It is extremely important that you use the prescribed format. Submitted evidence should include a link to the actual page diff in question, or to a short page section; links to the page itself are insufficient. Never link to a page history, an editor's contributions, or a log for all actions of an editor (as those will have changed by the time people click on your links), although a link to a log for a specific article or a specific block log can be useful. Please make sure any page section links are permanent. See simple diff and link guide.

This page is not for general discussion - for that, see the talk page. If you think another editor's evidence is a misrepresentation of the facts, cite the evidence and explain how it is incorrect within your own section. Please do not try to re-factor the page or remove evidence presented by others. If something is put in the wrong place, leave it for the Arbitrators or Clerks to move.

Arbitrators may analyze evidence and other assertions at /Workshop. /Workshop provides for comment by parties and others as well as Arbitrators. After arriving at proposed principles, findings of fact or remedies, Arbitrators vote at /Proposed decision. Only Arbitrators may edit /Proposed decision.

Contents


[edit] Evidence presented by east718

[edit] Arthur Rubin misused administrative tools to advance a dispute

On March 15, Arthur Rubin (talk • contribs • blocks • protects • deletions • moves • rights) deleted a subpage relating to opting out from BetacommandBot's messages out of process, a decision which he was harshly criticized for.

[edit] MickMacNee has been uncivil and disruptive

MickMacNee has engaged in disruption and harassment of Betacommand, which he has been blocked twice and topic-banned. The disruptive behavior includes personal attacks, [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] assumptions of bad faith, [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] [22] [23] [24] [25] [26] [27] [28] harassment, [29] edit-warring to restore content deleted at MFD,[30] [31] [32] [33] [34] forum shopping to win said war,[35] threats,[36] attempts to justify incivility with that of other parties,[37] [38] accusing established editors of sockpuppetry,[39] and sniping at Betacommand.[40] [41] [42] [43] [44] [45] [46] [47]

[edit] Evidence presented by ST47

[edit] Non-free content policy enforcement by BetacommandBot is necessary

I don't think anyone argues that BCBot is not useful and necessary. Nevertheless, I present Image:BCB tagging (2007).gif as a graph of the number of images tagged by BCBot. In an average week, between 10000 and 20000 images are uploaded ([48]) and BetacommandBot's tagging is significant when compared to that.

[edit] The BRFA for Non-Free Content Compliance Bot has been approved validly

Non-Free Content Compliance Bot (Approval Request) is a clone of an existing bot, BetacommandBot. The BRFA received a number of complaints against BetacommandBot. The Bot Approvals Group nevertheless approved the bot, because these complaints were invalid.

Any complaints against the functioning of the new bot were invalid, as BetacommandBot is already running and approved. Any issues with this new bot would also exist with the old bot. A simple migration is not going to fix them, and had we denied the migration to the new account and operators, the problems would not have been solved, because BetacommandBot would still run.

Furthermore, since the new bot would not run unless a BAG member had approved the code in addition to Betacommand, many bugs would be prevented.

[edit] Non-Free Content Compliance Bot has valid purposes beyond shielding Betacommand

As stated on the BRFA:

  1. People will find it much harder to demonize or blame if there's a trusted group of BAG people versus a single individual.
  2. BetacommandBot will be able to continue doing the various things that it does (archiving, ref fixes, etc.) without worrying about an uproar over image taggings.
  3. The script(s) are already written (no BAG time wasted) and the work can be divided among the trusted BAG users.
  4. Anti-fair-use people would be shielded from attacks.

Of particular interest is point 2. If this bot is used, Betacommand will have more time to develop the bot rather than deal with users. Also, it prevents bugs, as changes would be approved by the BAG member who runs the bot.

[edit] Bellwether BC has engaged in disruption

Bellwether BC has attempted to derail, disrupt, or extend the request for approval and other processes unreasonably.

Through his comments on the BRFA, he has attempted to incite arguments and to 'rally' the community against Betacommand, as demonstrated by his language [49], his re-addition of that language after it was removed [50], and his unhelpful and argumentative comments after the BRFA was closed [51].

He has also commented in an unnecessarily argumentative and off-topic manner on WP:AN/B, specifically regarding Betacommand's use of a non-admin secondary account for security purposes. ([52], [53], [54])

Note: It's been pointed out to me that Betacommand is not an admin, and his secondary account may seem useless if it isn't an admin. The Betacommand account nevertheless possesses a degree of influence and is his primary identity, so if it were stolen he would be less able to easily recover it than if he lost a secondary account and retained his primary account.

[edit] MickMacNee has engaged in disruption

MickMacNee has attempted to derail, disrupt, or extend the request for approval and other processes unreasonably.

Through his comments on the BRFA, he has raised issues in a ruleslawyering manner, where BAG was willing to IAR that particular point. ([55])

He has unreasonably engaged in personal attacks when his unreasonable comments were ignored, essentially arguing that since Betacommand isn't a 'real' programmer, he shouldn't be allowed to write bots. Despite his very moving language, he is absolutely wrong: many bot operators, myself included, aren't programmers for a living, and most editors don't write for a living. ([56])

He then violates a topic ban which was intended to stop his disruption and incivility. ([57])

And he continued to violate it by - yep, that's right - attacking Betacommand again! ([58])

[edit] BrownHairedGirl has engaged in disruption

BrownHairedGirl has attempted to derail, disrupt, or extend the request for approval and other processes unreasonably.

BHG's comments on the BRFA regarding the bot being a role account were grounded in ruleslawyering rather than legitimate concern, and her request that the bot be split is unreasonable, especially considering that the only legitimate concern, that it would be impossible to tell who was running it, was addressed (it was agreed that a log would be kept publicly by betacommand and the operators). ([59])

[edit] Protection of the BRFA for Non-Free Content Compliance Bot was valid

Due to the disruption of the BRFA by those listed above and by others, primarily the attempt to incite additional argument after it was closed, the protection of the BRFA was valid. This particular request should be a simple one, BAG saw it fit to approve/close it as a clone of an existing bot, and it was protected to prevent additional tiring argument, which we were not interested in participating in. I have mentioned this in my initial statement. I am not interested in arguing over the bot and policy with these people, because of their attempts to derail discussion.

[edit] Evidence presented by Bellwether BC

[edit] No "disruption" from Bellwether BC

ST47 has completely misrepresented my contributions to the project in regards to this dispute. He has intentionally done so, in an attempt to justify his misuse of tools outlined below. Here are the actual contributions he outlined--and described as "disruption" in his "evidence" against me.

  • Here is one example, where I asked a question regarding BC's combative "all or none" wording. Here's the "disruptive" quote:
    • "Are we, as a community, really going to allow a user to demand that no one modify his proposals or contribute in any way to the smooth functioning of a newly proposed bot? Am I the only one troubled by his "all or none" language, and his ever-increasing stridency? Bellwether BC 13:55, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
  • And here, I simply readded my question after he inappropriately removed it as "trolling." This readdition was the same benign question as above.
  • Here, I simply created a section for further discussion, as the archival box itself said was appropriate, after the BRFA was inappropriately closed. Shortly thereafter, ST47 reverted and protected the page, misusing his tools in a dispute to prevent non-admins from contributing to the page. Here's the "disruptive" content of the section I created:
    • Further discussion should go below, per the archival instructions above. Is this how business is always done in the BAG? Not very community-minded, it seems. Bellwether BC 21:09, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Here is what he calls "argumentative." This diff shows me clarifying that BC was editing as BC2 in a thread, an issue that several people had brought up in the context of trying to track down BC's contribs. This "argumentative" post led to productive discussion, where BC actually changed his BC2 sig to attempt to make it clear he was editing on his alt account. Here's the full content of this "argumentative" post:
    • Just for the record, BC is editing as BC2 in this thread, if anyone's ever needing to find these contribs. Isn't this one of the issues being discussed at the RFAR? The use of both accounts interchangeably, to the understandable confusion of many? Bellwether BC 00:16, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
  • In this diff, I was addressing Carcharoth, regarding letting him deal with BC's claims that his spamming Mick's talkpage was only a "minor violation." The "argumentative" content in full:
    • I respect you greatly, Carch, but I find it nigh impossible to work with an editor that refers to good-faithed criticism as "trolling" and then calls his own trolling a "minor violation." However, I'll back off from this page, and let you work with him, since I'm getting to a point that his behavior towards others is so distasteful to me that I find it difficult to maintain a modicum of civility with him. (Thus, the succinct "wow" in the previous post.) Bellwether BC 17:14, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
  • And finally, this diff was simply a support comment in regards to BC changing his unnecessarily draconian restrictions on his opt-out page. The content in full:
    • Strongly support; BC implements draconian "if you opt out, you can't comment on my bot" rules for his opt-out list. This is improper. If he won't change willingly, perhaps the community needs to let him know that's completely unacceptable. Bellwether BC 04:20, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

As the above full quotes clearly demonstrate, I have not been disruptive, and have (hopefully) maintained a relatively cool head throughout. The same can not be said for ST47, as he's referred to my good-faith contributions as "trolling", "disruptive", and "argumentative", and even used his administrative tools in furtherance of his position in a dispute, as will be outlined below.

[edit] Betacommand has been uncivil

  • Here he refers to BrownHairedGir's block of his bot as "bullshit."
  • In this thread he refers to "dumbass admins" and calls BHG a "dick."

[edit] Betacommand has engaged in personal attacks

  • Personal attack in an edit summary referring to me as a vandal for removing a hotly-disputed sentence from his opt-out page. There was wide consensus (even amongst many of the "keeps") that the sentence was inappropriate.

[edit] ST47 has misused his tools in a dispute

  • Here he reverts to his preferred version, and then...
  • Protects the page in that version, with an edit summary claiming, "users who are adding comments have nothing constructive to add."

I'm sorry, but this is a blatant misuse of tools in a dispute/disagreement, especially given that he'd already referred to good-faith comments as "trolling" previously, and had multiple edits to the discussion page. His misuse of tools effectively closed off discussion at that page for no reason other than he wanted it closed off.

[edit] ST47 has engaged in personal attacks

  • In the evidence section above, he refers to good-faith edits as "disruptive."
  • Here he refers to me as a troll for some reason.

[edit] Evidence presented by HiDrNick

[edit] Betacommand has run unapproved bot tasks

On 4 March Betacommand was asked about his bot's removal of redlinked categories across both the main and user spaces. He claimed that this was "CfD work", citing Betacommandbot's RFBA. A cursory review of the RFBA shows that the mass automated removal of all redlinked categories is not an approved task for Betacommandbot.

Betacommand also claimed that "removing deleted/non-existent categories is something that BCBot has been doing for a long time," but has been slow to provide diffs to substantiate this claim; it is possible that Betacommandbot has emptied categories after a CfD in the past, but had he engaged in the mass removal of redlinked categories it is very likely that it would have been noticed at that time. An analysis is ongoing at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Betacommand#Analysing previous bot run on categories.

The Arbitration Committee has previously found that Betacommand has misused automated editing tools.


[edit] Evidence presented by Happy-melon

[edit] BetacommandBot has several approved tasks

BetacommandBot has been approved by the Bot approvals group to perform a variety of distinct tasks:

  1. Substitution of templates which are encouraged to be substituted per Wikipedia:Template substitution (version at time of reference). Approved April 2007
  2. Clearing up after CfD and TfD decisions, taking tasks from Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Working. Approved April 2007.
  3. One-time replacement of templates in a finite list of "Governors of..." articles. Approved April 2007.
  4. Delivery of the newsletter for WikiProject Biography to those users listed at Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography/Members (version at time of reference). Approved April 2007.
  5. Adding {{orfud}} (version at time of reference, now a soft-redirect to {{di-orphaned fair use}}) to fair-use images which are not used in the article namespace. Approved May 2007.
  6. "tagging images without fair use rationale's[sic] (pages that are basically just templates)" Approved May 2007.
  7. Posting reports of usernames matching certain regexes to Wikipedia:Usernames for administrator attention/Bot. Approved July 2007. BetacommandBot was briefly blocked for editing Wikipedia:Usernames for administrator attention/Bot without approval.
  8. Automatically adding Wikipedia 1.0 Assessments to WikiProject banners, using heuristics including length, other project assessments, and stub templates. Approved August 2007.
  9. Moving free images to Wikimedia Commons. Approved September 2007.

In addition, Betacommand has made several requests for approval which have been denied, withdrawn or revoked:

  1. Adding the template {{AncientEgyptBanner}} to the talk page of all pages in Category:Ancient Egypt. Approved August 2006, revoked March 2007.
  2. Tagging empty categories with {{db-catempty}}. Withdrawn by operator July 2006
  3. Creation of categories which are populated by templates, but where the category was not created with the template. Approved October 2006, revoked March 2007.
  4. Compilation and posting of spam statistics in collaboration with, and in the project space of, WikiProject Spam. Approved March 2007, approved March 2007, revoked March 2007.

[edit] Evidence presented by Martinp23

Note: I am a member of BAG and am listed as an operator for NFCC bot.

[edit] The NFCC BRFA was closed prematurely

Despite being a clone of an existing bot, the proposal for NFCC Bot was sufficiently controversial that a full BRFA should have been completed, rather than a speedy approval. The BAG should have noticed that community input was important in this case and not have closed the BRFA early in order to, seemingly, protect the interests of the bot operators. One would hope that in hindsight the raft of criticism against the NFCC bot approval (and not only against the actual task - indeed how it is to be run) would make this abundantly obvious, however ST47's comment above demonstrates that this message has perhaps not sunken in.

[edit] BCBot's job is thankless but neccessary

The bot performs an important job which generates a lot of criticism for the operator, whoever he/she might be. It is of imperative importance that the complaints of these users aren't ignored and are treated fairly, however experience shows that Betacommand does not, at times, deal well with the strain of multiple disgruntled users.

[edit] Evidence presented by John254

[edit] Betacommand has an extensive history of bot and script-assisted disruption

Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Betacommand#Use_of_an_automated_tool_to_disrupt_Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment.2FUser_names, Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Betacommand#Disruption_of_WP:AIV, Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Betacommand#High-speed_removal_of_external_links, Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Betacommand#Inappropriate_link_removals, Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Betacommand#The_link_removal_was_conducted_inappropriately, Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Betacommand#Unsatisfactory_communication_regarding_link_removals, and Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Betacommand#History_of_poor_judgment. In December 2007, Betacommand inappropriately removed the edit links from thousands of stub templates using AutoWikiBrowser, then refused to reverse the disruption himself, as described in Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive346#Betacommand. I personally repaired most of the damage caused to the stub templates by individually reversing each edit with nothing but a rollback script, a task that continued for weeks -- see, for example, [60], [61], and [62]. More recently, Betacommand vandalized MickMacNee's talk page by programming BetacommandBot to post a large number of false notices alleging fair use violations in images that MickMacNee never uploaded, apparently in retaliation for MickMacNee's critiques of Betacommand's behavior -- see Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Betacommand/Archive_1#Edits_by_Betacommand_to_MickMacNee_talkpage. BetacommandBot was recently blocked indefinitely for running the unauthorized task of removing all red-linked categories from articles, which was considered to be disruptive since the categories removed might simply be mispellings of existing categories, as described in Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Betacommand#Categories. However, Betacommand refused to reverse the edits himself, as required by Wikipedia:Bot_policy#Bot_accounts, until BetacommandBot was indefinitely blocked again to force compliance with the policy -- please see Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Betacommand#Block_of_BetacommandBot_reinstated.

[edit] Betacommand has been uncivil

Betacommand has made frequent use of crude scatological language in responding to concerns regarding his behavior -- see, for example, [63], [64], [65], [66], and [67].

[edit] Betacommand has improperly attempted to silence discussion concerning him

As BetacommandBot places individual notices on user talk pages for each image that it tags for deletion, it can easily place a large number of notices on a single user talk page in a short period of time. To avoid the annoyance of a flood of bot-generated notices, many users wish to prevent BetacommandBot from placing notices on their talk pages. Recently, Betacommand offered to allow users to avoid receiving notices from BetacommandBot -- but there was a catch: the initial version of User:BetacommandBot/Opt-out provided, in relevant part, "that when you sign this list, you fully are aware that you... also lose the right to complain about the bots themselves or the issues they raise." When Arthur Rubin attempted to strike out the offending language, Betacommand restored the disruptive text with a highly uncivil edit summary, then edit warred against various users to remove a {{proposed}} tag deprecating the offending language, and to further restore the language itself [68] [69] [70] [71]. The offending sentence was seen as so objectionable that even one of the operators of BetacommandBot's successor, the Non-Free Content Compliance Bot, removed the disruptive language to avoid damaging the reputation of bot-assisted fair use enforcement generally.

[edit] Coren improperly blocked Arthur Rubin's account

On 19:12, 15 March 2008, Coren placed an indefinite block against Arthur Rubin with the following summary: "Apparent abuse of admin tools in dispute; bringing to AN/I for review", in reference to Arthur Rubin's deletion of User:BetacommandBot/Opt-out. Coren's block constituted a blatant violation of Wikipedia:Blocking_policy#Inappropriate_administrative_actions, which expressly provides that "Blocks may not be used to sanction administrators for the abuse of administrative privileges."

[edit] BetacommandBot's fair use enforcement is highly objectionable even to employees of the Wikimedia Foundation

On 21:00, 12 February 2008, Bastique requested that any images he uploaded be exempted from BetacommandBot's highly technical enforcement of the non-free content criteria:

Hi! Can you program Betacommandbot to ignore anything I upload, because I generally don't upload anything on Wikipedia absent the behest of someone else. (Commons, you know). I've transferred images from commons or uploaded fair use images for the Australian Football League, and still your bot bugs me! I don't want its ugly messages! Thanks, man.[72]

a request which Betacommand granted.

[edit] Evidence presented by MBisanz

[edit] Betacommand violated the consensus policy

In this edit Betacommand discloses that prior discussion on a clone-bot's approval were held off-wiki and structured to prevent on-wiki discussion of the matter taking place. In this discussion a bureaucrat confirms off-wiki discussion took place, however per the diff, the bureaucrat did not attempt to suppress discussion, but cannot state the behavior of the other parties.

In this edit Betacommand removes a proposed poll on his Bot's functioning.

In this edit Betacommand threatens to react negatively in the future if other users are not punished to his liking.

[edit] Betacommand has knowingly used his bot to make points

In this edit, he admits he used his Bot to make a point by spamming a user's talk page.

[edit] Betacommand violated WP:BOT policy

In this edit, Betacommand discloses he used his Bot to disrupt article pages for the purpose of forcing human users to correct non-critical mistakes. This violates all five core components of the Bot policy harmless, useful, not consume unnecessary resources, performs only tasks for which there is consensus, and adheres to relevant policies and guidelines

In this edit he admits he used his Bot to spam a MickMacNee's talk page. The spam is summarized in this diff and the threat to do so is here.

[edit] Betacommand has misued rollback

In this edit Betacommand followed MickMacNee to an unrelated page and used rollback to revert a valid content dispute.

[edit] Betacommand refuses to respect dispute resolution

In this edit, he states that an RfC on his behavior would be a waste of time and that an Arbcom should occur instead. Non-voluntary Dispute resolution steps should not be voluntary.

[edit] Betacommand does not understand the Bot policy

In this edit he accuses an admin of forcing him to violate BLP and V by reverting unauthorized edits. Bot policy restricts bot edits to person categories and Betacommand admits he cannot cite what those categories are.

[edit] Betacommand has violated WP:NPA

In this edit, he attacks another user for questioning his edits.

In this edit he attacks the same user.

In this edit he tells another user to stop questioning his bot at RFBA.

[edit] Evidence presented by Coren

[edit] Block of Arthur Rubin unrelated to the case at hand

This spat is entirely unrelated to Betacommand, his bot(s) or the dispute at hand save for an entirely unfortunate coincidence.

What I saw was (a) apparent abuse of deletion in a content dispute, (b) continuing dispute and (c) threats to continue using admin tools (blocking) in that dispute. Acting to stop further damage immediately, and bringing the matter swiftly to AN/I seemed to me to be the most straightforward and obvious reaction. While that assessment was disputed, my only objective was to stop further admin actions until it had been clarified (as I had made abundantly clear in the AN/I thread, and my talk page where significant discussion had taken place).

The fact that the dispute itself was involving Betacommand may be related to this case, but administrative actions I have performed were entirely unrelated to who Arthur Rubin was in a dispute with.

[edit] Evidence presented by Conti

This page instructs me to use descriptive section-titles for my assertions ("So-and-so engages in edit warring" and so on). I'm not sure if I can do that. The two sections below cover one event each that show that Betacommand has not changed since his last arbitration case. He is still uncivil, he is still quite unresponsive and hard to work with, and he is still misusing his bot and other automated tools, usually claiming that he did nothing wrong at all afterwards. But that would make for a very long section title. :-)

[edit] User:BetacommandBot/Opt-out

Betacommand created an opt-out list after multiple users supported a proposal to have BetacommandBot follow {{nobots}}, which he refused to implement. Betacommand claimed that this feature has been abused "for over six months now", but has not provided any evidence for that yet. Betacommand's personal opt-out page included the terms "Keep in mind that when you sign this list, you fully are aware that you lose the right to complain about deletions, reversions, etc. because you were "not notified" about them. You also lose the right to complain about the bots themselves or the issues they raise."[73] (emphasis mine). Attempts at removing or toning down the last sentence have been reverted and called vandalism. [74] [75] He also warned an administrator with a boilerplate template that's clearly supposed to be used on talk pages of newbies.[76] The page got nominated for deletion after it was speedily deleted[77] and recreated again by Betacommand.[78] The two deleted revisions got undeleted a few minutes later by another admin.[79] On the talk page, Betacommand said this, indicating that the sole purpose of that list is not to have an opt-out list for those who want one, but to "shut up the drama queens". Betacommand eventually requested the speedy deletion of the page, [80] stating that "its a take it or leave it attempt to end the harrassmet and t[r]olling that did not do that." The page got deleted. (It's currently undeleted for this arbitration case, and will probably be deleted again once this case is closed.)

[edit] Removal of redlinked categories

BetacommandBot started to remove countless redlinked categories[81] without having any kind of approval to do that task. The bot was blocked, and Betacommand stated he would stop making these edits. He claimed those edits were part of the CfD work the bot does.[82] The bot was unblocked, but later reblocked by another admin, User:BrownHairedGirl. [83] After some more discussion, the bot got unblocked eventually, and reverted the removal of the redlinked categories. Since then, Betacommand claims that the block by User:BrownHairedGirl was improper because it was a "content dispute". [84] [85].

[edit] Examples of incivility by Betacommand

  • "what I do see is a problem is dumbass admins using WP:BLOCK in a dispute to force their point of view."[86]
    • Removing the incivility warning that was a direct result of the above diff, calling it "vandalism" [87]
  • "its a attack page full of lies and miss-statements." [88] (talking about Wikipedia:Bots/BetaCommandBot and NFCC 10 c)

[edit] Evidence presented by WJBscribe

[edit] The role of bureaucrats in the bot approval process

The assignment of bot status was up until April 2006 within the technical remit of stewards, with requests being made on meta. In keeping with their usual role, the stewards deferred to local communities to determine the consensus for bots to run and issued flags based on the approval decisions of groups on local Wikis such as BAG, where these existed. When the technical ability to assign flags was given to bureaucrats, they assumed the same role as the stewards had previously played - acting on the advice of the Bot Approvals Group. In some situations where BAG have been unable to reach a consensus, they have asked bureaucrats to aid them in making certain determinations - e.g. whether there is consensus for someone to join BAG. However, the local community has never accorded bureaucrats an "oversight" role over bot operations. It is a misunderstanding to think that bureaucrats have delegated the task of bot review to BAG. Unlike the promotion of new administrators or the performing of rename, the bureaucrat role here is largely technical.

This is reflected in that fact that where the assignment of a flag is not needed, bureaucrats have no role at all in the approval process. Examples of such situations would be:

  • The approval of a bot to run unflagged
  • The approval of an additional task (however different) for a bot with an existing flag

BAG is mandated by the community to determine the technical suitability of a bot, its compliance with policy and whether a consensus for a task exists. It follows that bureaucrats are not empowered to make a separate judgments as to consensus and to refuse to flag, or to withdraw a flag by virtue of having the technical ability to do so.

When bots are approved, they are listed at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Approved and the next bureaucrat to check that list will assign the flag. Once a bot is listed, bureaucrats rely on the approval decision of BAG.

[edit] SquelchBot - a declined flag

In one recent case, I did decline to flag a bot [89]. This was expressly because I judged the approval to have been only partial - Tawker had only endorsed the technical merits of the bot. It was later decided this bot would run unflagged.

[edit] Non-Free Content Compliance Bot

As I have stated elsewhere, I was twice contacted off-Wikipedia about this bot. First when it was being proposed that a bot should replace BetacommandBot for FU image tagging work. I expressed my support for that idea but when it was explained to me that the bot would be operated by several users, I raised a concern about this aspect of the proposal. In particular I think this has the potential of making it difficult for users to know who they should contact if they have problems with the bot's edits, I also think it may lead to the operators being less responsive - if, say, they all think someone else is going to handle a particular complaint or question. I recommended that each operator should run the script on a separate bot account.

Secondly, I was contacted again when the bot was approved and ask to flag it. It is fairly standard for BAG members who use IRC to let me know when a bot requires a flag (as bots have languised waiting for flags in the past)- as I have expressed above, I do not believe that bureaucrats have the authority to refuse to flag bots which have been approved by BAG. In this case, there were no obvious defects in the approval as clones of existing bots are frequently speedy approved and I flagged the bot in accordance with its approval.

[edit] Evidence presented by GRBerry

[edit] Betacommandbot's image tagging approval does not demonstrate consensus

[edit] Wikipedia:Bot policy requires community consensus for a bot to run a task

  • Wikipedia:Bot policy#Requirements today lists includes a bulleted point "performs only tasks for which there is consensus"
  • The version of the Bot policy documented on 31 May 2007 was even more specific "The burden of proof is on the bot-maker to demonstrate that the bot: ... 5. has appropriate community consensus for each task" (the language changed in a 3 Jan 08 complete rewrite by Gurch)

[edit] Don't know if there is consensus for BCB to run this task

To the best of my knowledge, Betacommand has never attempted to get a clear demonstration of a community consensus to allow his bot to run this task. I have raised this issue before. [91] [92] [93] (All 3 diffs in same conversation, last is my final contribution to that November 2007 ANI thread.)

[edit] Evidence presented by x42bn6

[edit] Betacommand responds to bug reports quickly and appropriately

  1. User talk:Betacommand/20080101#Blocked - fixed in 2 hours.
  2. User talk:Betacommand/20071201#Your Bot is Broken. Take it offline, please, now. - answered within a minute. Not sure when it was resumed (too many edits from the bot to check)
  3. User talk:Betacommand/20071201#No idea what's wrong with this image now - fixed in 38 hours.
  4. User talk:Betacommand/20070901#Betacommandbot again - fixed in just over 3 hours.
  5. User talk:Betacommand/20070901#9/6/07 - 2 minutes response. Appears to be of a larger subset of mistakes by the bot.
  6. User talk:Betacommand/20070901#Error - taken to developers within around 9 hours.
  7. User talk:Betacommand/20070701#Knac.jpg - talked to developers after 12 minutes.

There's definitely more. There may be more on other users' talk pages and in the archives if Betacommand responds to other users' talk pages and not his own. However, from what I can see, he does respond to bug reports fairly quickly.

[edit] Evidence presented by Angus McLellan

[edit] Betacommandbot used for unauthorised task

User:Betacommand, usual suspect user:east718, and two or more other editors, decided to add garbage edits to the main page history with the idea of making it undeletable. To effect this, they employed the User:Betacommandbot account to make edits to user:east718/empty which east718 then merged into the main page history. Betacommandbot was not, and is not, authorised for this task. The subsequent comments by developers and editors argues that such a task would never have been authorised. The main page history was later recovered by a developer so that it is no longer possible (?) to provide diffs. This episode was discussed at WP:ANI, archived discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive126#Adding useless revisions to pages to make them undeletable and on the Wikitech mailing list (Wikitech-L archive 2008-02 in thread titled "[Wikitech-l] Deletion of large pages").

As a a result of this unauthorised activity, User:Tim Starling blocked Betacommandbot with the reason "abuse of system resources, see wikitech-l" for one week. He also called for east718 to be deadminned (Wikitech-l link). User:Graham87 blocked himself for his part in the events. User:Rich Farmbrough, unblocked Betacommandbot after 2 days with the explanation "System resource issue no longer an is[s]ue - bot not doing that." The evidence produced above shows this claim to be ill founded as the Betacommandbot account continues to consume system resources in making unapproved and/or unnecessary automated edits.

[edit] Evidence presented by AllyUnion

As a long standing member of the Wikipedia community, an inactive member of the BAG, has been involved with the development of bot policy, as well as a bot operator, I would like to comment a few things. First and foremost, the bot policy page has always lacked a true community consensus ratification, at least as it was 3 years ago. The funny thing about policy is that a great deal of it gets grandfathered in, especially if the consensus was merely between two individuals. Three years ago, the bot policy page was, well, frankly dead. No one was truly involved in the approvals of bots, and frankly, getting a bot flag was as easy as requesting it on meta. Honestly, the bot policy seems to come from the technical limitations and discussions between Tim, Brion and Ran-Man then refined over the course of several revisions. Essentially, bot policy as it is standing is really not an accurate reflection of the community's consensus, but limitations imposed by the developers with a bit of wisdom put in over the years.

The core of the principles of the Bot policy have been: (Old bot policy)

The burden of proof is on the bot-maker to demonstrate the following:

   1. The bot is harmless
   2. The bot is useful
   3. The bot is not a server hog
   4. The bot has been approved

I will not claim that the bot approval process was my idea, as it was an idea already in the policy page. However, I will claim that I did help jump start it slightly, and defined more accurately the elusive trial period that the bot page asked about initially.

[edit] The nature and psychology of Betacommand

Now, I won't say that what Betacommand did is right, but I would like to point out that his mentality is a state of one of a programmer's. Being one myself, I understand possible reasons of Betacommand's actions, but I don't necessary approve of them. I feel that is important for members of the Arbitration committee to understand Betacommand's mentality in this manner, as it sheds some light into his responses and actions.

Programmers tend to be what Alan Cooper describes in his book, The Inmates Are Running the Asylum, as mental jocks, for lack of a better term. Cooper describes that their attitudes are a result of being physically inferior, but intellectually capable through their lives. The scenario that Cooper describes is the stereotypical 'nerd' who is frequently beaten up in high school by the physical stronger 'jock.' What happens to the physical jock as this person steps into the real world, is a sense of humility and thus, grows up in the process. Essentially, the physical jock now finds himself struggling in a business world with the rules of society, and finds that he must use more of his intellect, and unable to really use his physical strength. Where as the nerd finds that in normal society, his intellectual skill makes him much more dominant, and really doesn't grow up as much and doesn't suffer the same humility as the physical jock. Essentially, a role reversal occurs for these two people... the powerless become powerful, and the powerful become the powerless.

As a result, Cooper describes that programmers tend not to respond to those who are at the same level of intellect, and unless some assertive dominance is shown, programmers will tend to dismiss that other person as 'stupid' or what not. It is clear to me that the evidence here seems to be somewhat along the same lines, and that Betacommand's programming mentality caused him to dismiss the valid complains of his bot. Also, most programmers are highly task-oriented.

Additionally, from a programmer's point of view, I believe Betacommand's view was that his bot was working fine, and really didn't have a problem. It perhaps that he took the view that what he was doing was a vial service to the community and that some error of margin was acceptable, as it is in the world of programming. Unfortunately, the world of programming and the world of reality do not intermix very well. Essentially, I would say that Betacommand's view was that he was driven to solve the problem -- the task at hand. Coupled by the fact that he possibly viewed the people who approached him about the problem were not at his level of technological prowess, he was therefore driven to ignore or to be rude to the people in question.

I wouldn't necessarily classify Betacommand as anti-social, but I do view that he could have handled it differently. Ultimately, I do wish the ArbCom to consider that Betacommand's social skills may not be on the par with those he was dealing with and his rudeness could have been misinterpreted. Granted, his rudeness may not be inexcusable, but that is up to the ArbCom to decide. But this is a judgment made based on reading some of the commentary, and not the evidence itself. The situation involving this is rather complex and delicate, in my opinion, coupled with the fact that the bot policy page has not been one that has gone under serious refinement and really needs a broader input from the community in general. --AllyUnion (talk) 04:27, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Evidence presented by MickMacNee

[edit] The BAG speedily approved a biased, incivil and disputedly worded Bot Approval in favour of bot operators after off wiki discussion

Approval: [94] containing,

  • incivility:
    • "People will find it much harder to demonize or blame if there's a trusted group of BAG people versus a single individual."
  • bias:
    • "Current issues: Betacommand and his bot are vilified for the work they do tagging images."
    • "Anti-fair-use people would be shielded from attacks."
  • favouritism towards bot operator:
    • [operators of the new bot] "Be trusted / approved by Betacommand"
    • (post approval comment from bc) "as long as the users in question follow my directions."

This approval was apparently after an off-wiki discussion [95]

[edit] User ST47 suppressed community discussion at the BAG

[96]

[edit] Betacommand is uncooperative toward community discussion

  • 'All or nothing' in response to a Bot approval[97]
  • A suggested proposal was made to make a point, no discussion will be entered into if beta's proposed solutions are not adopted [98]
  • A suggested change will 'rot in hell' [99]

[edit] Betacommand is unresponsive to reasonable requests

[edit] Specific reply to user ST47's evidence

Through his comments on the BRFA, he has raised issues in a ruleslawyering manner, where BAG was willing to IAR that particular point. ([100]) - I recognise no ruleslawyering in this summary, and the specific intention to ignore IAR by recognising this approval created a role account was never stated, this statement is made as a rewriting of the facts.

He has unreasonably engaged in personal attacks when his unreasonable comments were ignored, essentially arguing that since Betacommand isn't a 'real' programmer, he shouldn't be allowed to write bots. Despite his very moving language, he is absolutely wrong: many bot operators, myself included, aren't programmers for a living, and most editors don't write for a living. ([101]) - Wrong, I argued that if he could not respond properly to the issues and comments his activities produce, he should reconsider his position. I made no assertion that bot programmers are professional programmers.

He then violates a topic ban which was intended to stop his disruption and incivility. ([102]) Responding 30 mins later (the earliest time I saw it) to the notification of a topic ban is clearly not a purposeful violation of a topic ban as presented by ST here, especially when the blocking admin shows a clear COI.

And he continued to violate it by - yep, that's right - attacking Betacommand again! ([103]) Again, completely out of context, this is a comment relating to an attempt by beta on an unrelated article to bait me while under the (voluntarily agreed to by me) topic ban.

[edit] {Write your assertion here}

Place argument and diffs which support the second assertion; for example, your second assertion might be "So-and-so makes personal attacks", which should be the title of this section. Here you would show specific edits where So-and-so made personal attacks.

[edit] Evidence presented by Carcharoth

Due to time constraints, my evidence is mostly a set of narrative statements with some links and diffs. I will attempt to provide more diffs at a later date. For now, please ask if more direct evidence is needed or if you think any of the statements or claims should be disputed or questioned. More to come later - should be finished by Friday 28th March 2008. Unfortunately, I failed to find the time to add more, so ending my evidence submission for now. May add more next week depending on available time and whether any more is needed or not. 00:30, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] History of non-free image use and management is poorly documented

Currently, having failed to find any definitive statistics, I think the history of non-free image upload, use and deletion is poorly documented. I think it would be useful for those working in this area (including the arbitrators in this case) to have adequate statistics so they have an idea of what resulted from BetacommandBot's tagging runs (which presumably prompted most of the non-free image rationale additions and repairing, and non-free image deletions). The best I have been able to find specific to non-free images is in the history of this page, from which I calculated this, showing a net decrease of 40,449 non-free images between 22 September 2007 and 12 March 2008 (from 320,733 to 280,284 non-free images, a decrease of around 13%). Unfortunately, User:BetacommandBot/Non-Free Template Useage has not been updated since 12 March 2008, so I cannot work out any way to track the changes in non-free images after that date, so the following stats should be treated with caution. I have been unable to find reliable stats dating back to earlier than this. (Update: Betacommand has now fixed the template useage tracker part of BetacommandBot, so up-to-date stats are now available again).

The overall changes in image uploads (including free images) and various other stats are in the tables and stats here. I intend to do more work on these stats, though I was hoping others would do this as well, but from the initial comparison between September 2007 and March 2008, the biggest net decreases have been in non-free television screenshots (9,058 from 28,617) and non-free promotional images (8,095 from 16,316). It is noticeable that there have only been small relative decreases in non-free album covers (2,890 from 73,868) and non-free logos (1,515 from 69,193), which together still account for almost exactly half (49.5%) of the examples of non-free image use on Wikipedia.

More relevant to BetacommandBot's tagging runs would be some way of assessing how many images that previously did not 'have the articles they were used in named in their rationales' (or simply had no rationale at all) were fixed, and how many were deleted (either because they were invalid non-free uses, or because no-one responded to the messages or otherwise fixed the problems). One simple way of doing this (at least to a first approximation) would be to go through BetacommandBot's tagging runs and see how many of the image links are red and how many are blue. Hopefully someone will be able to do this at some point. Equally, documentation and tracking of all image categories and image uploads (both free and non-free) will hopefully become standard in the future (at present, tracking any category population or template useage, for images or articles, is difficult unless regular snapshots are taken).

A lot more could be written about this (both more coherently and more comprehensively), but this is neither the time nor the place. If I ever get round to writing more, it will be somewhere in or linked from WP:NFCC-C. Hopefully the preceding gives some flavour of both the volume of images uploaded and the volume of tagging, and gives some context to the efforts that have been ongoing for the past few years, which intensified this year, and reached a head in the first three months of this year (with the tagging of 'legacy' images).

[edit] Evidence presented by AKMask

[edit] BetaCommand is open about the methods the bot uses

BC has (numerous times, frequently to the same editors) stated exactly how the bot decides what to tag. To that point that this specific post of his was later moved to the top of the WP:AN/B board. -Mask? 06:49, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] BetaCommand is transparent with his source code

BC has released to editors who have demonstated understanding of NFCC through previous image work the source code to various parts of the bot on request so that its function and logic can be examined and ensure it fufills its goal on NFCC tagging. Through an email exchange I personally was given swaths of source related to its image function. This openness is crucial, as it allows the bot to have a rediculously low false-positive rate. -Mask? 06:49, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Evidence presented by {your user name}

before using the last evidence template, please make a copy for the next person

[edit] {Write your assertion here}

Place argument and diffs which support your assertion; for example, your first assertion might be "So-and-so engages in edit warring", which should be the title of this section. Here you would show specific edits to specific articles which show So-and-so engaging in edit warring.

[edit] {Write your assertion here}

Place argument and diffs which support the second assertion; for example, your second assertion might be "So-and-so makes personal attacks", which should be the title of this section. Here you would show specific edits where So-and-so made personal attacks.