Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Tobias Conradi

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Case Opened on 18:15, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Case Closed on 09:00, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

Please do not edit this page directly unless you wish to become a participant in this case. (All participants are subject to Arbitration Committee decisions, and the ArbCom will consider each participant's role in the dispute.) Comments are very welcome on the Talk page, and will be read, in full. Evidence, no matter who can provide it, is very welcome at /Evidence. Evidence is more useful than comments.

Arbitrators, the parties, and other editors may suggest proposed principles, findings, and remedies at /Workshop. That page may also be used for general comments on the evidence. Arbitrators will then vote on a final decision in the case at /Proposed decision.

Once the case is closed, editors may add to the #Log of blocks and bans as needed, but closed cases should not be edited otherwise. Please raise any questions at Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration#Requests for clarification.

1 Involved parties
- 1.1 Requests for comment
2 Statement by Tony Sidaway
3 Statement by Chairboy
4 Statement by Lar
5 Statement by MacGyverMagic
6 Statement by Alex Bakharev
7 Statement by Gnangarra
8 Statement by Ezhiki
9 Statement by Golbez
10 Statement by ShivaIdol
11 Preliminary decisions
- 11.1 Arbitrators' opinions on hearing this matter (5/0/0/0)
- 11.2 Temporary injunction (none)
12 Final decision

[edit] Involved parties

Tobias Conradi (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
Tony Sidaway (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
Several other partially involved editors

[edit] Requests for comment

Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Tobias Conradi (December 2005)

[edit] Statement by Tony Sidaway

Tobias Conradi is apparently an experienced editor whose content contributions are well regarded. However his conduct, particularly his interactions with administrators has excited much controversy for some time, and recently it came to a head. His user page was listed for deletion and speedied during the course of the discussion. A proposal for a community ban was taken to Wikipedia:Community sanction noticeboard but the result has been inconclusive. As something of an outsider in this my approach is that it is for the resolution of this kind of conflict that we turn to arbitration.

Addendum 12:56, 19 April 2007 (UTC): I'm encouraged by Alex Bakharev's statement and offer of mentorship. I hope the committee will pay serious attention to mentorship as part of the successful resolution of this problem, and remind them of the role mentorship has played in rehabilitating problem editors.

[edit] Statement by Chairboy

As one of the administrators who Tobias has identified as abusing him, I can attest that the user's behavior is terribly frustrating. But he is also a gifted contributor, something which makes his sometimes erratic behavior that much more perplexing. He has the ability to make great things, but he punctuates these wonderful creations with poisonous, community damaging accusations of conspiracy, abuse, and plain dirty dealing. The problem is not Tobias Conradi's ability to contribute to the project, it's his dogged determination to get revenge against people he feels have done him wrong. The complication, of course, is that inherent in his approach is the assumption that his own actions have always been fine, and everyone else has been wrong.

There are asshole administrators, everyone knows that. But their strongest and most viciously effective critics have always been other admins. We're a fiercely protective lot, protective of the project, not each other. The level of organization Tobias would need to assert to bolster the statement that his block log reflects an unending sequence of errors is astonishing. We can't even agree on how to interpret WP:U, and RfA reform is even more contentious. With that in mind, the block log must be viewed in a proper light, namely, that it documents a series of missteps by a respected contributor whom, nonetheless, is being held to the same standards as everyone else.

I do not advocate special dispensation for people with high edit counts. I do not think that there's a point where if you've written enough featured articles, you are no longer required to interact civilly with other volunteers.

But I also think that the passion Tobias Conradi has demonstrated in the scope and quality of his contributions demands that we work together as a community to try and talk him back from the precipice.

A civility parole, in my opinion, meets this requirement. But to succeed, it must have two things: An admin with whom Tobias has never tangled with who's simultaneously willing to listen to his concerns but isn't timid about nipping incivility in the bud, and second, a Tobias Conradi who is willing to assume good faith and consider the idea that the "admin abuse" he's documented may not be as entirely one sided as he thinks.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, we're all volunteers here. We aren't paid to do what we do, we contribute this time and effort because we love the project. Tobias has met any reasonable test of this commitment, and I'm asking that the community give him a chance to come back into the fold and address the concerns expressed. Regards, CHAIRBOY (☎) 16:22, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Statement by Lar

Lots of good counsel here in the above statements, so I won't repeat it, other than to say that I think Chairboy may have said it all best. I'd have preferred a civility parole to be what was tried next, rather than an outright community ban, or an ArbCom case... but now that it apparently has come to this anyway, despite efforts by myself and others to stave it off, I'd like to see ArbCom (and others) dig into a few things and share their considered opinions (and summation of their perception of community practice and policy) with us:

Civility blocks... they almost always don't work, it seems we now know. Tobias has gotten a lot of them, including some from me... what else should have been done? What else COULD have been done?
The Community Noticeboard process... it seems that there was a minor hiccup here in that consensus seemed to be forming, for the most part, for a civility parole rather than an indef block, but a well intentioned and competent admin decided to go for the other option (indef block) just the same, making good arguments for it, but overriding apparent consensus. The ensuing minor confusion wasn't really too bad in the end, but are there things to do to improve that process so it doesn't perhaps be worse next time?
How much is enough? How much effort should the community as a whole expend to rescue an editor that apparently doesn't want to be rescued? Where do we cut losses? A more subtle point... if someone is there to try to help (CBD springs to mind, he expended effort in previous occurances of issues around Tobias to make things go more smoothly for him) how much of a mitigating factor is that to stay the community finally deciding enough is enough?

I'll provide diffs of previous actions and reports and notifications and warnings and etc, etc, etc... if no one else beats me to it. But there are a lot of things to dig around in. Perhaps this case will be a spur for a bot to better index AN/I?? Finding stuff there now is a bit of a trawl. ++Lar: t/c 01:10, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Statement by MacGyverMagic

I was the administrator who performed the latest deletion of Tobias Conradi's userpage. I did this when Golbez commented on the MFD discussion and said that two discussions about similar material had taken place before at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:Tobias Conradi/2006 summer admin incidents and Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:Tobias Conradi/admin right abuse, both of which were deleted. The material wasn't exactly the same, but I took the concensus on the previous deletions to mean that accusations on one's userpage without going through dispute resolution were considered unacceptable. Hence also that these deletions. Despite claims to the contrary in the latter link, both these older discussions reached concensus as they were short one 'vote' of unanimity. Also, in all these discussions there was also participation by non-admins, so the result can't be solely the result of abuse by one or more administrators. -- Mgm|^(talk) 08:48, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Based on the other comments on this page, I believe some people have mistaken edits by Tobias as vandalism because they failed to check these edits in more detail. The real problem is his uncivil response to these blocks which are partly caused by people being unwilling to explain their actions to him. I do not believe he should be permanently banned. A civility parole is a better solution. - Mgm|^(talk) 07:43, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Statement by Alex Bakharev

Tobias is a very productive editor contributing to a wide range of topics from Unix to Indonesia. He used to be a relatively problem-less editor (one three-hour block for 3rr and one 24h block for been incivil arguing the first block) until June 29, 2006 when he blanked userpage User:Ezhiki. Apparently Ezhiki had given him something like permissions (I am going to a conference to Berlin and if would not meet you there your can blank my userpage...). Obviously, nobody guessed that Tobias had permissions to blank an admin's page so he was blocked. In a few hours he was unblocked, but almost immediately blocked back for been incivil when requesting unblocking. After this he insisted on having his grievances heard on a number of fora but his complains were removed. He insisted and been blocked. He complained on various fora on meta and was blocked on meta. He phoned Danny to his WMF office, Danny cracked a joke about Tobias' English (Tobias is a native German speaker) and hanged the phone. Tobias' remembered the incident on the recent Danny's RFA and was reverted by Tony Sidaway. Tobias put the list of diffs showing alleged admin abuses of him, the list was deleted via MFD. Due to a rare software glitch the deletion was not in the log so Tobias decided that his Userpage was oversighted and complained about it ...

Both Tobias' blocklist and his list of grievances grew as a snowball. We all know that there is no cabal, but all these series of misfortunes and miscommunications led Tobias to believe in conspiracy against him that hides and suppresses the truth. Lets him show all his grievances on the Evidence section so he can see that we do not suppressing anything.

The other problem is that many editors have with Tobias is the lack of communications, particular when moving articles. I think if we could impose some sort of a parole on undiscussed article moves it would alleviate the problem. The last I think Tobias needs a mentor he trusts, I think Ezhiki or CBD or me might be a suitable person for this Alex Bakharev 10:35, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Statement by Gnangarra

Tobias recently left this uncivil comment against one editor on anothers talk page. After reading this, I investigated further what was going on and found that Tobias had been moving articles that he hadnt had any prior association with to a different naming format. This was causing concern to other editors, I left a message asking that Tobias discuss the moves first. Then reading Tobias' user page there was listed one of two MFD's about the removal of a list of accusations against admin abuse. This list was now on Tobias' user page to which I asked him to remove the content, which included an accusation against an editor who had raised concerns with Tobias about the moving of Indonesian articles. Tobias response to my request for the content to be removed was "I comply with policies and not with "discussions""[1].

Given Tobias stated position of not complying with consensus discussions, Arbcom is the only place where a resolution to the conflict is likely to occur. Gnan garra 11:33, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Statement by Ezhiki

I have known Tobias as a Wikipedia editor for quite some time now. There had never been an occasion when I needed to doubt Tobias's motivation—all his edits are aimed at improving Wikipedia. However, I also found Tobias somewhat short-tempered and often uncooperative, which lead to a lot of mistreatment, distrust, and suspicion towards this user. Blanking of my user page as a joke (with my full consent), summed up by Alex Bakharev above, is just one example of the emotions run amok—Tobias was promptly blocked without the blocking admin putting any effort into figuring out what is going on. It might have not been the best joke to pull (including me giving a permission for such an action) but the fact that it was nothing more than a joke would have been immediately obvious after taking a short peek at my or Tobias's talk page at the time. Mistreatment snowballed from there. Shortly after, Tobias was accused of vandalism for something as benign as renaming a page from Eisenkappel to Bad Eisenkappel. The latter is the full official name of the community, yet the move was interpreted as vandalism based on "user history" alone (as far as I know, no effort had been made to check if the name was the valid one). When Tobias complained, he got blocked; when he complained about the block, his talk page was protected and the block extended. If that's not mistreatment, I don't know what is. The question we should be asking ourselves is thus the following: why are so many admins who dealt with Tobias reluctant to admit their mistakes or to simply explain their actions? If Tobias belives that some stub of his was deleted contrary to the Wikipedia policy, why not explain your interpretation of the policy and why you think there was no violation? Chairboy above made a very good remark regarding how we, the admins, ourselves can't decide what the best interpretation of certain policies should be; is it so hard to believe that regular editors would have even more trouble with that? Why every time Tobias perceives a violation, some admins rush to block him and to shut him up, instead of explaining their actions? Granted, Tobias's short temper does not always make it easy to communicate with him, but aren't we as admins supposed to be examples of patience, civility, justice, and other virtues? It's not like Tobias responds with "yo mamma" insults; his complaints always stay on issue at hand, even though he is often too quick to jump to "abuse" conclusions. If some admins don't have patience to explain policies they are supposed to enforce and uphold, then perhaps they are not such good admins after all.

All that said, I do not support the civility parole. If Tobias makes a personal attack or explicitly insults someone (as opposed to questioning someone's actions), those attacks can be dealt within the frame of existing policies. His previous block history, being largely a result of misunderstandins and mistreatments, should play no role from some set point backward. If Tobias makes a complaint, then involved admins'd better deal with the issues he raised. Not all of Tobias's complaints are "abuses", but some of them may very well be seen as such when no explanation is provided and with admins quick to rush to conclusions of their own. I would also urge Tobias to word his future complaints in as neutral tone as possible, preferrably in the form of requests rather than plain accusations, and to always pursue official dispute channels instead of dealing with issues on his own.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 16:07, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Statement by Golbez

I first started interacting with Tobias a couple of years ago, we both shared an interest in the administrative divisions of the world. I noticed after a while, however, that he had a habit of mass-moving groups of articles without getting or in many cases even asking for consensus, based on his own idea of what the names should be. At least one specific nation comes to mind (Afghanistan), I'm pretty sure there were a few others too. In response to this, I created a draft standard, Wikipedia:Naming conventions (subnational entities) (now historical, but has become a somewhat de facto standard). We tried to work together but there ended up being some rather strong conflicts.

It was during that that he took offense with an admin action I did (if I recall, I reverted what I perceived as a wp:point move) and put it on his userpage. Then this trend continued; he would anger people with his actions, but when he took offense at an administrative action, he never complained officially about it, he just put it on his userpage. When these administrator actions started to turn towards him, he never accepted responsibility for the cause, and simply kept putting it on his "list". This persecution complex and passive-aggressiveness created a very hostile editing environment around him. When he finally got a one-week block, he disappeared for a few months... before coming back, plastering Wikimedia Foundation and Angela Beesley with a long screed about his attempt to contact the foundation: [2] [3]. However, after a few weeks he seemed to calm down and settle back into his normal routine, but seemed to have a new chip on his shoulder with regards to the foundation and bureaucracy. I've said a few times that I wanted to bring arbitration against him, but never got around to it; I'm sure if I had a few days to spare, I could dive through his many many thousands of edits and collect a large list.

And therein lies the rub - he has many, many thousands of edits. He's one of the non-admins with the most edits, in fact. So this issue is not as simple as it might otherwise seem. I suppose the question before the Arbcom will be, is his personality too incompatible with Wikipedia? Perhaps a mentorship would be helpful, if he would only listen to the mentor.

[edit] Statement by ShivaIdol

Much is said about Tobias's contributions, and the volume of edits is certainly large - 25,000 article edits. His most significant article contributions by edit count ([4]) are: Matrix of country subdivisions (94 edits), ISO 15924 (78 edits), List of FIPS region codes (73 edits), ISO 3166-2 (65 edits), ISO 639-3 (60 edits). His editing style is mostly to make small changes across many articles ("drive-by editing"), with a particular focus on moving pages and creating disambiguation pages in place of existing articles. This approach can often lead to trouble with the long-time editors of these articles, particularly since he never seems to consult with anyone before making such changes even though the Moving a page policy states pages should moved via Wikipedia:Requested moves if the move might be controversial. An editor cited Tobias made >100 page moves in April 2007, and didn't once consult anyone before makes unilateral, and in some cases ill-advised action ([5]). When editors have asked Tobias to consult the community before making mass moves, they have been treated rudely and arrogantly [6], [7]. Furthermore, after putting disambiguation pages in place of existing articles Tobias rarely cleans up after doing so by fixing the wiki links to point to the new article name. These same complaints were central to the RFC raised against Tobias back in 2005 (Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Tobias_Conradi), but the behaviour persists regardless of this and numerous complaints by others since then. Tobias is often cited for being in conflict with admins, but I believe there is also a significant list of disputes he has had with normal editors, including one at Talk:ISO_15924 for which he was blocked. Incivility, bitterness and retribution seems to be a theme with Tobias (eg. [8], [9]). Maybe he believes his position here is privileged and the Wikipedia rules don't apply to him because of his large edit count([10])? Some of his grievances with admins may be legitimate, but instead of trying to resolve them through the dispute resolution processes available, Tobias retains a grudge with admins in general and even lists his grudges on his user page, making it hard for others to assume good faith with him. Tobias runs a number of dancing community websites (eg. [11]), and seems to have a cadre of friends who defend him regardless of his behavior (User:CBDunkerson comes to mind, and to a lesser extent, User:Ezhiki). If Tobias can be rehabilitated he will be a valuable asset to Wikipedia, but he has already been given many chances and we can't allow the disruption to the community to continue any longer. Tobias is not irreplaceable - there are plenty of people who can perform the same work who are willing to play by the rules. ShivaIdol 10:41, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Preliminary decisions

[edit] Arbitrators' opinions on hearing this matter (5/0/0/0)

Accept. The Uninvited Co., Inc. 16:40, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
Accept. Kirill Lokshin 19:36, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
Accept. --jpgordon^∇∆∇∆ 03:15, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
Accept. Charles Matthews 18:16, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
Accept. Matthew Brown (Morven) (T:C) 04:04, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Temporary injunction (none)

[edit] Final decision

All numbering based on /Proposed decision (vote counts and comments are there as well)

[edit] Principles

[edit] Civility

1) Wikipedia users are expected to behave reasonably in their dealings with other users and to observe the principles of assuming good faith, civility, and the writers' rules of engagement. If disputes arise, users are expected to use dispute resolution procedures instead of making personal attacks.