Wikipedia talk:Requests for arbitration/Mantanmoreland/Proposed decision

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[edit] Arbitrators active on this case

Active:

  1. Blnguyen
  2. Charles Matthews
  3. FayssalF
  4. FloNight
  5. FT2
  6. Jdforrester
  7. Jpgordon
  8. Matthew Brown (Morven)
  9. Newyorkbrad
  10. Paul August
  11. Sam Blacketer
  12. Thebainer
  13. UninvitedCompany

Recused:

  1. Kirill Lokshin

Away/inactive:

  1. Deskana


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


[edit] Comments by Newyorkbrad

I voted to accept this case in part to address the allegation that two accounts were sockpuppets, and in part to address the very serious problems that have arisen concerning naked short selling, Gary Weiss, and related articles. After lengthy examination of the evidence and proposals, and consultations with a number of my fellow arbitrators, I posted a proposed decision that was intended to represent a consensus view that would not only address the specific allegation of misuse of alternate accounts, but provide for a longer-term solution to the problems on these articles. Being something of a consensus work product, the proposed decision did not reflect precisely how I would have decided the case if I were the sole decision-maker, or what I would have proposed if I had just posted my first draft without checking with anyone. It was, however, a carefully reasoned and well-intended effort to resolve one of the most divisive and longstanding problems that the Wikipedia community has ever faced, and I had no qualms about presenting it as such.

In my 18 months of activity on Wikipedia, throughout almost all of which I have participated in the arbitration process in one capacity or another, I don't believe that I have ever seen as hostile a community reaction to a proposed arbitration decision. I am not just referring to mild disapproval, but to outright fury on the one hand and confusion on the other; and not just from partisans in the case but from some of my fellow administrators and including extremely respected functionaries (clerks and checkusers) whom the committee works with every day. There have been cries of abrogation of duty and cover-up, there have been calls for votes of no confidence in the committee, and then there are some users who seem simply bewildered about why the committee has limited the proposed findings and remedies to the extent that it has. As I observed the other day, at a basic level the proposed decision that I drafted seems to have failed in its fundamental purpose of communicating with those who read it: It is as if I drafted the decision in Martian. The allegations against me or any other arbitrator of bad faith and cover-up are bogus, but the allegation that I have not in the least succeeded in crafting a proposed decision that more than a handful of users have found convincing, appears to be sound.

Clearly a more detailed explanation of my position is required. In these comments, I speak for no one but myself.

[edit] Background

At some point after I became an active editor in July 2006 and an administrator in January 2007, I became aware that there was a longstanding feud outside Wikipedia concerning alleged short selling of the stock of a company called overstock.com and that this feud had reached Wikipedia. My editing interests generally do not include the financial articles and I don't believe I ever had occasion to look at the articles that were or allegedly were affected. During 2007, my general understanding was that a user on one side of the dispute had been banned for misbehavior and that there were concerns about some off-wiki conduct by people involved in this affair. I also knew there were allegations that a real-world individual on the other side of the dispute had edited articles despite an undisclosed conflict of interest. My general understanding in 2007 was that there was a consensus within the community that the problems had been examined and resolved. Although I spent a great deal of time on Wikipedia, it is not as much time as some people surmise, and I certainly do not reexamine every situation that I understand has already been reviewed and resolved at high levels within the community. My understanding, rightly or wrongly, was that most of the ongoing accusations of misbehavior were coming from partisans to the real-world controversy, and like many others I, rightly or wrongly, discounted them accordingly. This was particularly easy to do given that partisans on one side of the case were being accused, whether rightly or wrongly or some of each, of conduct that Wikipedians generally consider unacceptable.

One of the allegations that started to be bruited about was that a well-known real world individual was still involved in editing of articles concerning himself and financial topics of interest to him, as to at least some of which he had a conflict of interest. It was also alleged that this individual had created an alternate account to engage in more COI editing, even after having previously been admonished by an administrator/arbitrator not to do so after having been detected in a prior instance of doing the same thing.

Several weeks ago, a number of administrators and editors with no involvement in the off-wiki or, to my knowledge, the on-wiki dispute launched an independent investigation of the allegations that had been made, and particularly the allegation that Mantanmoreland and Samiharris were sockpuppets, and that the accounts were being used abusively, not just to conduct conflicted editing but also for double-!voting and the like. The group of editors who started looking into this matter put enormous time and effort into their project, and in the process they assembled what probably constitutes the largest body of evidence (whether compelling or not I will discuss below) that has ever been compiled in Wikipedia history to evaluate a sockpuppetry allegation.

I think it is fair to say that these editors' presentations and analysis have effected a sea-change in the conventional wisdom in the community with regard to these articles and editors. Two months ago, I probably would have been denounced had I suggested on-wiki that there was anything at all wrong with Mantanmoreland's editing, whereas in the past week, I have been denounced for not proposing that Mantanmoreland be ridden out of town on a rail. I for one (and again, I don't purport to be speaking for anyone but me; this is very much an introspection) have a very different view of this entire situation than I did just a few weeks ago.

While in general I am not at all a fan of users' conducting laborious "investigations" of one another, we must certainly acknowledge the impact that this one has had. Of course, none of the findings of misconduct by one side can or should excuse misconduct by other editors or individuals. In fact, one side's conduct probably delayed for a long time the realization and acknowledgement that there appears to be problematic conduct on the other side as well. But I think we do have a realization that the underlying situation going back to 2006 may have been dealt with— despite the best of faith on the part of all of the administrators and non-combatants who participated in addressing it—in a more simplistic manner than perhaps it best could have been.

[edit] The arbitration case

The investigative efforts of SirFozzie and others led to a request for comment in which a great deal of the sockpuppetry evidence was presented, resulting in a consensus among the editors commenting that the case had been proved. The matter was then brought at a high boil to arbitration and we took the case. My comment at the time was that we should try to resolve this unusually divisive dispute "in an expedited manner." That has not worked out.

The evidence presented expanded and built upon the findings in the RfC. Most, though by no means all, participants concluded that the evidence demonstrated that Mantanmoreland and Samiharris were most likely the same user. Various different types of evidence—ranging from choices of topics and editing times, to figures of speech and tics of punctuation, to the appearance of one account after the other had agreed not to edit certain articles—were cited in support of this conclusion. An array of different statistical analyses were presented, with varying degrees of methodological sophistication but generally at least somewhat corroborative of the "MM=SH" hypothesis.

No useful results could be obtained from the checkuser tool, because Mantanmoreland's edits were made from a conventional ISP whereas Samiharris edited through a paid proxy service. To those who believed that Samiharris was a sock, habitual editing through proxies plainly demonstrated an intent to evade being checkusered; Samiharris offered the explanation that he used an anonymizing proxy because another person involved in this situation had made attempts to out editors by exposing their ISP's.

Mantanmoreland and Samiharris each vigorously denied that they were the same user. The off-wiki individual who had been associated with the accounts denied that he was behind either of them. For the past month or so, Mantanmoreland's editing has been largely, though not entirely, confined to the RfC, this arbitration case, and related pages. Meanwhile, on February 8, Samiharris announced on ANI that he was leaving the project after asserting that he was being harassed by his opponents. He has not edited since.

Some editors, including an extremely senior member of the community, posted that they could not accept that MM=SH because their writing styles are very different. In particular, reference was made to hundreds of e-mails sent by Mantanmoreland and Samilarris, which it was opined could not be products of the same hand. I have had no access to any of these e-mails and therefore could not reach my own conclusions about what, if anything, they might show. There were also some general references to the writing styles of Mantanmoreland and Samiharris on Wikipedia itself, but in a brief review I did not find them either similar or dissimilar enough on their face to affect my analysis of the case one way or the other.

There were many sorts of evidence bearing on whether MM=SH, and in these already overlong ramblings I certainly am not noting every item or discussing every nuance, but this was my general overview and understanding of the evidence as it became time to move the case into voting.

[edit] Drafting a decision

There is no particular methodology within the Arbitration Committee for deciding who will draft which decisions. Fred Bauder, who wrote most of the decisions for over a year, is no longer an arbitrator, and Kirill Lokshin, who has written more decisions than any other arbitrator over the past several months, is recused in this case. On our internal mailing list, I volunteered to draft a proposed decision in this case. (No one offered to fight me for the honor. I will mention in passing that the fact that I suggested I draft this case is at odds with the meme that I am some sort of politician who aspires to popularity by never getting involved in anything controversial. But I digress.)

I thought the "principles" with which we lead off every decision would be particularly important in this case. I prepared a set of proposed principles—some borrowed from other cases and adapted, some novel, all carefully thought out—and posted them to the workshop. There, I received useful comments on the drafting from a number of users, who have my thanks. As you all know, I did not post the proposed findings and remedies in this case before I took them to the proposed decision page. I could legitimately be criticized for that omission, although oddly enough none of the dozens of people who have been critical of my work product in this case seem to have noticed it.

The most difficult aspect of formulating a proposed decision was deciding which topics to write about. One focus, of course, was on the sock allegations against Mantanmoreland and Samiharris. My personal opinion was that the evidence of sockpuppetry was strong. It was not altogether conclusive, and there were reasons (on which more below) that I thought we needed to avoid error in this case, but it was strong evidence nonetheless, particularly as the variety of different types of evidence corroborated each other. So that became a focus of a first draft decision that I started preparing.

The next question to face was whether to make findings about whether a well-known real-life individual was behind either or both accounts. Although I had, and have, a personal opinion regarding this issue, my view was that the official decision of the Arbitration Committee should stay away from this specific issue. In a case last fall, the committee noted in a principle that there is a conflict between Wikipedia's permitting anonymous or pseudonymous editing and our forbidding the revelation or "outing" of anonymous editors, on the one hand, and our guidelines constraining editing by users with conflicts of interest, on the other—creating conflicts and tensions that, of necessity, are imperfectly resolved. This case illustrates well the problem—one that we as a project have not yet found a good answer for.

Beyond that, I thought it important to bear in mind the context in which the on-wiki dispute arises. The off-wiki or "real world" feud over whether naked short selling of overstock.com stock has impacted that company's stock price is an extremely protracted and bitter one, involving very determined individuals with a great deal of energy to devote to the matter, and unfortunately for all concerned it shows no signs of ending. It is not the role of Wikipedia, either in our mainspace article content or in our dispute resolution procedures culminating in arbitration, to play any role in such disputes, beyond reporting about the disputes where they become sufficiently notable and documented in reliable sources. Already and for far too long, our editors and our articles had been or had allegedly been too involved with this off-wiki problem; and the main goal of the decision I would draft, I decided, was to put an immediate and definitive end to that unacceptable on-wiki situation.

I also reasoned that it would be highly undesirable to write anything in an "official decision of the Arbitration Committee" that was likely to be used, or misused, in the context of off-wiki disputes. Contrary to some speculation, I personally am not aware of any legal threats against Wikipedia from anyone involved in this matter, and no such threats influenced how I drafted the decision. On the other hand, given the real-world background to the on-wiki dispute, I did not desire through the decision itself to create evidence that could be used someday by any side in some other and very different kind of proceeding. I did not delude myself that the words of proposed principle 8, though I chose them with great care, could have a binding effect on anyone. And there is also the fact that no matter how confident I or other arbitrators might be in a conclusion we reach—we might be wrong. The Arbitration Committee strives to be right and not wrong—but our being wrong has one level of consequence if the question is whether SevenOfDiamonds is a sockpuppet of NuclearUmpf, and potentially a very different level of consequence if we set out to answer whether a well-known real-world individual has been messing around with his biography. I reasoned that we might have to decide a question of that nature someday if there were no alternative, but I thought (and still think) that I had developed some remedies that could address the problems with these articles in a different and forward-looking fashion. And so it is that no real-world individuals are mentioned, other than as article titles, in the proposed decision, nor do I think they should be.

It has been suggested that the case should have had a vastly broader scope, such as evaluating whether disputes arising from the overstock feud were handled well back in 2006. Although the community may reach conclusions on that issue, and I could imagine a request for arbitration that would encompass it, in general arbitration deals with the current and future operation of Wikipedia rather than matters of the past (and in wiki-time, 2006 is ancient history). Moreover, none of the administrators who historically were part of addressing these issues are parties to the case (we could add them, but no one suggested that we should). So again, I decided that the focus was better on the present, and even more importantly the future, rather than the past.

I finished writing up a proposed decision by crafting some remedies (on which more below) and enforcement provisions, and I circulated it to the Arbitration Committee distribution for comments. The discussions within the committee are, and must remain, confidential, but I believe other arbitrators have already acknowledged that an immediate consensus did not emerge concerning every aspect of how the case should be handled. I modified the draft with the desire to post a proposed decision that would reflect consensus.

There have been, incidentally, suggestions that the arbitrators should not work for consensus within the committee on high-profile cases, but that each arbitrator should be out front with her or her own position on every aspect of the case. That question of procedure and philosophy deserves a full community discussion sometime soon, preferably outside the context of a specific case and when this particular one is over. There are real-world analogs to the question posted by Jay*Jay above, which is when an individual arbitrator should insist on making his own voice heard even when he is in the minority and when consensus, which normally governs on Wikipedia, should be the order of the day. (I find it ironic that I, who dissented vociferously in Matthew Hoffman and on many of the findings and remedies in IRC and may soon be badly outvoted again in another matter, find myself the one accused of lacking in the expression of my own voice. That is far from true. But again I digress.) Suffice it to say that there are legitimate arguments on both sides of this discussion, and that I would be glad to engage both viewpoints when the time is right with specific examples of prior cases in which the committee reached internal consensus first versus those in which they or we hammered everything out blow-by-blow on the wiki, and in which things worked out well or they worked out badly. Whether this might turn out to have been a case in which the community would have benefitted from watching the early steps of how sausage is made is left as an exercise for the reader.

[edit] The proposed decision

With all this in mind, I took the draft decision that I had circulated and all of the comments I had received on it, and sat down to write a proposed final decision. My goal in doing so was to address the immediate issues before the committee, but at least equally important, to solve the issues that are affecting the reputation and content of the articles in dispute. I thought, quite honestly, that the purpose and effect of the decision would be clear to readers, whether or not they agreed with it—a prediction on which I missed very, very badly. (In retrospect, I may have gotten too steeped in our internal discussion, and lost sight of the fact that the vast majority of readers of the proposed decision, including partisans and others, would not have seen them.)

The principles set forth in the decision are meant to be straightforward and significant. Their drafting was improved by comments I received in both the on-wiki workshop and from fellow arbitrators. It has been suggested that the wording of the sockpuppetry standard may need clarification. I invite alternative proposals.

Proposed finding 1 is straightforward. Proposed finding 2 (note that it has been reworded a bit by another arbitrator since I first proposed it) is straightforward as far as it goes, which obviously is not far enough for practically anyone who has taken the time to comment on it. It's been pointed out on this page that this finding was an attempt to state a consensus, not the statement of any one arbitrator's individual view. My own view is that there is strong evidence we are dealing with two alternate accounts (either sockpuppets or conceivably "meatpuppets") of the same user. Again, I will not disclose our internal committee discussions, but from the comments that have been made on-wiki it should be clear that there are other arbitrators who hold differing views on this issue. Proposed finding 3 is also straightforward and is extremely important in defining the need for and the structure of the remedies. No one commenting on the draft seems to have paid much attention to it, including the provision where we acknowledge that the reliability of the articles under discussion and the fairness of our processes has been called into question.

The primary purpose of the remedies, which again have not been looked at in much detail by anyone, is to reclaim the affected articles from any allegedly conflicted, controlling, POV, or otherwise improper editing from any source. Whether or not there is some level of problem with the content of the articles (I am willing to accept that there probably is, although the Arbitration Committee does not make content rulings), there can be no dispute that they need to be protected as best we can from future effects of the off-wiki feud and its on-wiki manifestations. Remedy 1(A) bars socking on these articles or related pages; remedy 1(B) bars editing them through proxies, which is how it is alleged that Samiharris evaded being checkusered; remedy 1(C) bars using our pages for advocacy and insists that these articles be editing in strict accordance with our policies; and remedy 1(D) requires mandatory disclose of conflicts that editors on the articles might have.

I don't believe the committee has used remedies of this nature before. They were a sincere attempt to solve a serious problem. If editors abide by these strictures (and I concede that they may need some copyediting or tweaking), then a great deal of the problem with this group of articles may soon be resolved. If editors do not abide by them, then remedy 2 calls for them to be enforced. And remedy 3, which calls for new editors to take a fresh look at these articles, also has a role to play. Knowledgeable editors, not previously involved in editing these articles, will perform an important service to the community if they will evaluate the articles and help to improve them.

Enforcement provision 1 is the standard enforcement provision, but it emphasizes that the remedies are meant to be enforced. Enforcement 2, which again has not been picked up on, is an unusual provision for an arbitrator decision but emphasizes what I, and I hope what my colleagues who vote for the decision, are attempting to accomplish. And enforcement 3, which says that the committee should be informed if serious problems continue on this article, was my attempt to say that we are not going to leave cleaning this problem up to the administrators on Arbitration Enforcement, but are prepared to return to the problem and finish the job as and if it became unhappily clear that our attempt to banish the off-wiki dispute and the editors behind it from our pages had not yet succeeded. (I expressed concern that we were making the mistake of doing too little in our decision and leaving too much for the pour souls who monitor WP:AE in the Waterboarding case; it certainly was not my intention to do the same thing.) Unfortunately the intent of enforcement 3 does not seem to have come through clearly; even some of my fellow arbitrators who supported the balance of the decision were unable to discern its point, which certainly suggests that I was not as clear as I should have been.

The question that everyone is asking about the remedies, of course, is why there is no remedy against Mantanmoreland and Samiharris. One could certainly make a case that if MM=SH is regarded as sufficiently proved, there should be a remedy; and if another arbitrator were to propose such a remedy, I might very well support it. The consensus finding of fact on MM=SH, of itself, probably would not have supported a strong remedy. In deciding that I could live without remedies against Mantanmoreland and Samiharris, an important factor for me was that the problem had to a large extent been reduced by the publicity the situation had already received. Samiharris is no longer editing. Mantanmoreland is no longer doing much mainspace editing, certainly not on the articles in dispute. There has been no allegation that the individual alleged to be behind one or both of these accounts has created any new accounts. The community is watching very, very closely.

So I thought that on balance what we had here was a useful decision that actually would accomplish something. There were some portions that were improved from my original private draft as a result of input from other arbitrators, and others that I did not like as much as my original. But I didn't think it was a terrible decision. And though I knew there would be disappointment I didn't go farther, I didn't think, quite honestly, that it could be viewed as an outrage or a dereliction or certainly as a cover-up. We acknowledged that there was evidence of socking (with the caveat that at least some of us might have gone further), we acknowledged that there were issues with the reliability of the articles and with whether some of our processes had been used fairly, and we barred further use of specific tactics (socking, proxying, and so on) that had allegedly been misused.

The last time I worked with other arbitrators to carefully craft a compromise, consensus decision in a case arising from a dispute that was the main subject all over the noticeboards and the mailing lists for several days, it worked. The decision was generally accepted, the drama surrounding that issue disappeared, and those of our contributors who wished to remain active went back to writing an encyclopedia. When the history of Wikipedia for 2008 is written, that episode will be a semi-forgotten blip. I didn't think this case would become a blip, but I thought we had crafted something productive, even though it didn't shout "MM=SH and both are banned" from the rooftops. I thought that we had given some validation to those who had put in the investigative work, and stated that their concerns had been very legitimate and were being taken very seriously. On the other hand, when our own senior Clerk creates a thread on this page called "This decision fails the community," obviously I have swung and missed.

Clearly in my effort to reach a consensus decision, I satisfied virtually nobody. (The first editor above who seems to have picked up on what we were actually trying to accomplish is Avruch. Thanks.)

Note to my 2006-2007 self, as well as to future candidates for the Arbitration Committee: This job is harder than it looks.

[edit] Where do we go from here? To the community and the partisans

So, what now?

Arbitrators will continue voting on the proposed decision. (No one has voted in four days; I'm not sure why.) Any arbitrator is free to make new or alternative proposals. Any editor is free to make proposals on the workshop or on this page. (If an arbitrator wants to propose further findings on the MM/SH issue, Thatcher's drafts on the workshop are well-phrased.)

The question has been raised whether, if the ArbCom does not take action against MM/SH, the commmunity may. Above, I've cited the Archtransit matter as not exactly a precedent but the most similar situation that I could quickly think of. Here, I would not interfere to stop a community ban, imposed after a fair process, if the community took matters in that direction. However, I don't think that the drama of arguing about this in the immediate wake of the decision's passing would be necessary. I think, I hope (maybe naively) that the problem will take care of itself. If it does not and this situation recurs, then there will be time enough for the community to act, although if the evidence that the problem continues is clear then this arbitrator will certainly move to act first.

I have remarked above that an ill-worded committee decision in this case could have unpredictable real-world consequences. Other arbitrators may be more mindful of those than even I have been. For this reason, I do not believe that the findings (as opposed to the principles) regarding the "Duck Test" and related matters are well-suited for use as a precedent in any other case. Nonetheless, I would welcome any suggestions for improvement of the language used in either the principles or the findings, particularly by those with experience with the SSP board or with checkuser.

I do look forward to some discussion of the role of arbitrators and the committee, and how we balance between the development of consensus and the expressions of our individual voice.

Editors who have suggested that they feel disaffected or are thinking of leaving the project out of dissatisfaction with the proposed decision in this case are earnestly asked to reconsider. Maybe you'll read this long monolog and decide that it was a good decision after all. Maybe you'll read this long monolog and decide that that the decision remains "well, crappy," but that still we seem to mean well and it's not the end of the world. (Maybe you'll try to read this long monolog and fall asleep halfway through. I'm sorry about that, but when I'm asked this many questions about how I could possibly explain myself, this is what happens.)

And I want to close by addressing the people behind the accounts, on both sides of the off-wiki dispute. I name no names but you know who you are (and of course some of you have named your own names, and that is fine too).

Wikipedia is a novel, in many ways flawed, but in many ways so far successful attempt to create a collaborative, free-content, online encyclopedia. This project does not exist so that any side of a real-world dispute, relating to the financial markets or anything else, can perpetuate its point of view. We ask everyone to abide by certain basic policies: to edit from a neutral point of view. To avoid editing with conflicts of interest or at least to disclose them. Not to misuse multiple accounts. Not to embroil us in outside controversies. Not to create what is referred to as "drama"—endless, self-feeding discussion about a controversy, building upon itself until it reaches a crescendo of demoralizing, destructive fury. But to be part of our community and contribute to our encyclopedia. That is what matters; all the rest, including administration and arbitration, is ancillary.

The importation of the overstock/short selling controversy into Wikipedia has not helped either of the sides to the dispute. And it has not helped Wikipedia. Look at how many hundreds of hours of our contributors' time have been expended on investigating and suspecting and calling one another names. Look at the destruction that has been wrought on our morale and our work. Look at the pure anger and bitterness that are spilling out of this and the companion pages in all directions. Frankly, some of our editors are terrified of going anywhere near any of you. No good is done by continuing in this vein. No good for any of you, and certainly no good for us.

To the people behind the accounts, on both sides of the fight, or who might be or who allegedly are behind the accounts—here I will say nothing more about the past, for the moment. Forget briefly the question of what I or we or our community believe has been done to this point. But whatever else you can bring yourselves to do, please resolve, from this instant forward, that your battles will be fought elsewhere than on Wikipedia. We will do our job of watching the articles that concern you. But for your parts, you have your blogs, your columns, an entire Internet and an entire world in which to make peace with one another or (alas more likely) to fail to do so and to keep on fighting. But please, not here; no more here; no more, no more, no more. We need to stop the bleeding; we need our encyclopedia back. Newyorkbrad (talk) 04:46, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Reactions

[edit] User:Random832

I'll start my reaction with a general note: I think part of the reason for this reaction is hurt feelings because many users who have participated in this case have devoted a lot of energy to providing evidence on, e.g., the sockpuppet issue, or the GW issue, and these aren't being addressed. Some early guidance on the direction of the case would perhaps have been appreciated, particularly when the scope is unclear (certainly, I think the last thing anyone expected was for the scope to be narrow on something other than the sockpuppet issue.)

Some specific deficiencies in the case as it stands now, I think:

  • No way to enforce the ban on open proxy use. My proposed automatic periodic checkuser idea is rather less appropriate when it's on all editors to an article rather than to specific named editors. And requiring someone to request checkuser has an obvious deficiency: The fact that User:Palabrazo was blocked speaks for itself (and, even though he was indeed checkuser confirmed as a sock of WordBomb, this was not the case at the time of his initial block)
  • Relata made a statement almost a week ago that seems relevant: Really? Why? So you can bring a couple of sockpuppets in through open proxies and revert me? And then I'll be "involved" and subject to banning? No bloody thanks.
    • I think this goes to an issue that has, I've noticed, caused substantial problems for the community in the last month or so: The idea of involvement. Who is "involved" in a dispute? If you go in to try to resolve a dispute, and fail, or if someone on one side (both sides?) accuses you of being partial to the other side, does that make you involved?

Finally... I don't think it ever occured to anyone that Arbcom was going to try to address the content issue. I don't think anyone read the decision the way you intended, because arbcom usually explicitly doesn't focus on the articles.

One last thing, actually: I have a question. Is the GW issue getting in the way of the MM/SH issue? A lot of the complicating real-world factors that you and other arbitrators are talking about seem to apply more to the former than the latter - I'm finding it hard to accept that you think that "Samiharris is a sockpuppet of Mantanmoreland", without reference to any real identifiable person, is going to cause the kind of real-world issues you're talking about as reasons why this is different than SevenOfDiamonds.

—Random832 04:51, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Response by User:Mackan79

I agree that Wikipedia needs to be restored and should work to minimize the role it has played in this off Wikipedia dispute. What concerns me is the idea that to acknowledge abuses of Wikipedia should suddenly be given up for that goal. One side of the dispute has been banned and attacked on Wikipedia for years; now the other has been shown to have been abusing Wikipedia from before that time, but the committee seems to have suggested basically just that we can keep a closer watch in the future. If the aim is to extricate Wikipedia from the dispute and from now on to play a truly neutral role, that’s entirely a positive development, but then the treatment of both sides needs to be considered together. This should be equally strict or equally lenient. I don’t have a strong preference for either, but reevaluating for one side and not the other doesn’t in my view seem to justify the proposal. Mackan79 (talk) 05:40, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Response from User:Risker

Thank you, Brad, for sharing this in-depth analysis of your thinking as you developed this decision. It's been my contention all along that the vitriol on these pages (and in your inbox) is not really about you, it is about the disconnect between the decision the community hoped for and the one it got. That doesn't mean it is a bad decision, it means that it will take people longer than usual to analyse the proposed decision.

The community, I believe, viewed the sockpuppetry investigation and hoped-for finding as an essential first step in reasserting control of the articles involved; the committee has apparently decided that the issues with the articles can be addressed without making a specific sockpuppetry finding. I think Random832 is correct, that the community did not anticipate such significant focus on the articles themselves. That focus is probably well-placed in this particular case, given that the articles include three BLPs, a well-known public company, and a financial issue that has been extremely contentious in both the on- and off-wiki worlds. That these articles are problematic seems to have been taken as gospel by the committee, given the limited evidence submitted specific to editing practices on the articles. (I agree with the committee on that point.)

I think you are correct about the status of the accounts involved; both are so thoroughly discredited at this point that any edits they make to the articles involved are likely to be subjected to the same degree of scrutiny as those made by supposed WordBomb sockpuppets (that is, if we can find a sufficient number of previously uninvolved administrators to watch the articles like hawks). Sadly, I am nowhere near as optimistic as you when it comes to the likelihood of future sockpuppets; it wouldn't surprise me at all to find out there have been a few being worked up for a while now - and given the mountain of evidence developed to try to prove these two accounts were sockpuppets without having satisfied the committee, it will be more difficult to respond to sockpuppetry suspicions in the future. A suggestion for trying to ameliorate this effect would be to modify FoF2 as follows:

"...A majority of the committee concludes that the weight of the credible evidence taken as a whole is suggestive of or consistent with a relationship between the two accounts, but that the absence of usable checkuser findings and other factors prevent a definitive conclusion from being reached however a finding of sockpuppetry or meatpuppetry is not required to resolve this case." (emphasis mine to highlight the proposed wording)

The greatest challenge going ahead will be drafting knowledgeable editors with reputations for neutrality to carefully review each of the subject articles from the time of their creation to present day, and then reconstruct the articles. At least some of these editors will need to be administrators, as there are no doubt deleted edits, some of which may contain valuable information (particularly reference links). These editors will also have to have the visible support of the Arbitration Committee in their work; Relata refero is not being unreasonable in expressing concern.

As a closing thought: I've done a tiny bit of review of the history of the Naked short selling article over the last few days, and what little poking around I did revealed something unexpected. This article was created on 22 June 2005 by an IP registered to Hicksville NY. The article was created using text from a book, Naked Short Selling: The Illegal Hacking of the U.S. Financial System, by Alan Lomax. Unfortunately, it does not appear that such a book exists, and the only Alan Lomax I can find writes songbooks. The most useful information that can be found takes us to a press release website that appears to be discussing commercially-available software designed to detect naked short selling. The weblink that appears in both the original article and the advertisement is dead. In other words, the article started off as a fraud, and seems to have remained in questionable condition for most of its existence. And just today, there was an exchange of reversions, with one side removing clearly well-referenced information from the article with a dismissive summary. The sooner that good, knowledgeable, untainted editors can be found to clean up this and the other articles, the better the encyclopedia will be. --Risker (talk) 06:29, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Comment from User:Rocksanddirt

Thank you for your explaination. I do think that the content rememdies proposed are good (and I've said so in a couple of places). However, the abuse of the community through abusive sock puppetry must be acknowledged for the community to move on, and a finding that there were good faith but wrong actions to protect mm/sh and his pov is needed for much of the community to move on. This doesn't mean sanctions, neccessarily. I also think the idea of mm = gw is not important. The pov editing stands alone. --Rocksanddirt (talk) 06:35, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

and I endorse the effort anticipation is going to, I've read some of it, and I'll try to help out reviewing some of it more closely (likely not until this eve. at the earliest). --Rocksanddirt (talk) 17:22, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Response by User:Bigtimepeace

First off a major word of thanks to Newyorkbrad for providing such a lengthy, thoughtful comment to the community. I personally very much appreciate Brad's effort to communicate in more detail about this case and the obvious time and care he put in to formulating his thoughts. While Brad's comment might raise other questions, it also clears up/clarifies a number of issues. There is still going to be a rift between the committee and a number of editors about how this decision has come down, but it is certainly not the end of the world. And in addressing a number of the concerns brought up by members of the community I think Brad had bridged that gap somewhat.

Just a few points, the first one being very specific. Brad notes that he "had no access to any of these e-mails [from MM and SH] and therefore could not reach [his] own conclusions about what, if anything, they might show." I take this to mean that some members of the committee did have access to those e-mails, while others like Brad did not. As a general rule, is it not inadvisable for some member or members of the committee to be basing their decision (even in part) on evidence which other members do not have? I would hope that we can agree that all Arbs should have access to the exact same amount of evidence when they begin reviewing a case. Regardless of the effect or lack of effect it had here, ought we not establish the principle that individual Arbs should not base any part of their decision on evidence they cannot share with other members of the committee? Brad has answered a lot of questions on this page, so I'm hoping another committee member can address the numerous questions about the "e-mail evidence" - including this one - more directly.

Brad did well to describe his own thinking going into and during the case. Let me suggest, from my perspective, one reason why so many of us have been disappointed. As this was moving along, I basically took it for granted that there would be a finding of MM=SH and that some sort of remedy/restriction would be imposed. I'm sure I was hardly alone in that. Many had commented that the linking of those accounts to a real-life identity (though fairly persuasive) was problematic for obvious reasons and also unnecessary for our purposes, so I don't think there are too many angry about the failure to mention that. I expected the debate would be about the severity of the remedy imposed on the offending accounts (and the community had/has varying views on that) and whether or not the "enabling" (maybe not the best word) actions of certain admins who sided in favor of MM in the dispute should be examined. I never expected much in the way of the latter and was imagining the MM/SH remedy would be a bit more lenient than I would have cared for, but I certainly could have lived with an outcome like that. I think the community has been shocked that the committee did not even directly vote on (much less validate) the central accusation that has seemed so obviously true to so many. It was assumed that that was the least that would happen. When it did not, I think a lot of us were blind to the rest of the decision (as Brad suggests), which admittedly contains some good components.

Going forward I agree with Brad that we need to consider "the role of arbitrators and the committee, and how we balance between the development of consensus and the expressions of our individual voice." I'll just note that crafting consensus decisions is obviously desirable and I don't fault Brad for trying to do that. But when the community objects vociferously to the decision I think some measure of individual accountability from the Arbs (particularly when a couple of dozen folks specifically ask for it) is necessary. The committee is of course elected by the community, and there are times where we have a right to know where y'all stand on certain key questions, if for no other reason than to be able to evaluate your performance before we vote in the next elections. In this case, unfortunately, we only know the opinions of those few Arbs who have explained their thoughts on these pages. That fact has upset many and I think rightfully so.

We'll see how this all ends up when it goes "back to the community" - I'm not sure what will happen. I would close by stating the obvious: we don't need the ArbCom to deal with the easy cases, but rather with the hard ones. The community probably could have taken matters into its own hands after the RfC, but this was a radioactive case and we hand those kind of cases over to the committee. At this point it seems the committee is handing it back to the community, still radioactive. I know that was not the intention, I know this was a difficult case and the committee truly believed the proposed decision was the best way forward, but I don't think you can blame folks for feeling that there has been a bit of the proverbial passing-of-the-buck in this particular case. As of now many folks are feeling that it was a waste of time and/or detrimental to even bring this to ArbCom, which is perhaps the clearest sign that it has been a failure so far, the best efforts of Newyorkbrad and others notwithstanding.

Again thanks to Brad, and also my sincere sympathies to all on the committee as I know you have a difficult job and this has been a very trying case.--Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 06:40, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Response by User:Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The

I think the sheer volume of effort put into trying to establish whether Mantanmoreland and Samiharris are socks has distorted expectations of what this case is about. I don't doubt that the work was intended sincerely, but it clearly hasn't helped the Committee in resolving the issue, and in any case the community is perfectly capable of banning a suspected sock.

I can understand the disappointment, and ask editors interested in handling this in the interests of Wikipedia to examine how we might best resolve the problems with the articles.

If they are socks, damage has been done by the distortion of decision-making processes, and the articles may have suffered. The problem is that at the moment little effort has been put into deciding the more difficult question (which the Arbitration Committee traditionally steers clear of) whether content has suffered because of methodical distortion, rather than just because this is a very, very contentious issue in the real world. As a means of helping us to answer that I'm devoting a lot of time to cataloguing every single edit to the article naked short selling. Of course looking at nearly 1000 edits over a 30-month period is quite taxing and it's unlikely that I'll spot everything on my own, but I think it will at least provide a basic roadmap for others wishing to understand the nature of the editing that has taken place on the article, and the participants in the editing. I have currently reached as far as August, 2006.

I had to choose which article to spend time on, because one person alone could not reasonably be expected to map every single edit to the various articles involved in this dispute. I have chosen to concentrate on the article I consider the most important: naked short selling. Unlike the others it is about a subject that has been discussed at the highest levels of finance and government, and getting it wrong isn't an option. We must represent the issue fairly and fully, without a hint of advocacy.

The work might also conceivably be of use to arbitrators in deciding whether there are grounds for a remedy specifically targetted at named users in the dispute. It may highlight a pattern of egregiously tendentious editing, evidence of which User:Thebainer has recently requested.[1]


--Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 14:09, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Do continue with what is no doubt a mammoth effort, TS. I wonder, though, in the context of POV-pushing, and blatant socking, and vote-stacking, and argumentum ad bacularum, if it would be (more) fruitful to look at the article which Mantanmoreland and his socks Bowdlerized most extensively, which would be Patrick Byrne.
Apologies, I do not have the time (nor such expertise as yourself) for such an effort as yourself has undertaken, but please re-read the /Evidence page, where I outline my concerns, days and days ago it seems. Oh, and /Workshop, where myself and others also discussed, and uncovered further evidence and DIFFs, have a look (again) at that page, while we wait for further word fron the Arbs, whose /Proposals i am viewing in quite a positive light at this stage, other than the lack of direct findings concerning MM=SH, and remedies to that.
Thanks Brad, for the continuing elucidation. Newbyguesses - Talk 15:30, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
I think it's correct to examine the naked short selling article--it was a WordBomb target and there is extensive evidence that the article must have been targetted for advocacy purposes by some external site. Those circumstances shed a lot of light on the situation. I agree that editing on other articles should also be examined, but they have not in general attracted the same level of advocacy and abuse. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 15:42, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
I agree that there has been too much focus on the issue of identity with a real life person, but the failure to address the sockpuppetry issue directly bears on the enforcement remedies, as I have stated more than once. Mantanmoreland has already declared that he has no conflict of interest and has never used sockpuppets. Therefore, he is free to continue editing the articles until some admin (either at WP:AE or ad hoc) takes it upon him or herself to declare a conflict and issue a topic ban. I don't believe that closing the case out by stating "The committee can not agree on the issue of sockpuppetry, so we leave the decision to the first random admin who attempts to enforce the remedy" serves the community well. Arbitrators were elected to make the hard decisions that individual admins can't. I also question the fairness of a decision that bans (de facto if not de jure) an editor from a topic without a specific finding against that editor. Thatcher 16:46, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
One of the philosophical problems I have with the way this case has been framed is the presumption of guilt. It's as if Mantanmoreland, in the absence of checkuser evidence, were required to demonstrate that he is not Samiharris, and in the absence of any credible evidence he must prove that he is not Gary Weiss. This really isn't the way we normally go about these things. This is one of the reasons why I think it's absolutely paramount to examine these edits on their merits. The other reason is that I think we should audit the articles and decide whether or not they have been damaged. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 20:33, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
The issue with that assertion is that, although there is an absence of checkuser evidence, there is shedfuls of non checkuser evidence. I acknowledge that you and a small minority of others are not convinced by it, but most of us are. So examining edits is a useful exercise, yes, but not the be all and end all. ++Lar: t/c 21:15, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
(ec) Examining the edits on their merits, while dealing with the question of abusiveness somewhat, can't tell us anything about the sockpuppetry question that I can see. You seem to be conflating the two questions. Also, you seem to suggest that the many established editors who have been involved in this investigation have come into it with a presumption of guilt "in the absence of checkuser evidence". This is not the case. The conclusion of sockpuppetry has been arrived at independently by so many editors after having reviewed the large amount of evidence that all seems to point to that explanation, even if none of it by itself is conclusive. With the evidence pointing toward sockpuppetry, it's entirely fair to ask if MM, SH, or anyone else can come up with a plausible alternate explanation of what everyone sees. Nobody has done so; instead, we get a lot of dissection of individual bits of evidence to show that they, by themselves, can't prove sockpuppetry. I don't think anyone argues that there's one piece of evidence that indisputably shows sockpuppetry; it's the holistic view that admits no alternative. If you can come up with such an alternative, by all means put it forward so the arbitrators and community can judge its plausibility. It would have to satisfactorily explain all of these: (a) the common interest in these specific financial topics, (b) the same pattern of daily editing, (c) the low number of editing overlaps given the accounts' similar daily editing pattern, (d) the common periods of on-wiki inactivity and heightened activity, (e) the drop of MM's editing production in 2007 compared to his 2006 edit count, almost entirely offset by SH's 2007 edit count, (f) the shared use in edit summaries of uncommon terms and phrases that have nothing to do with the topics of common interest, (g) the checkuser-confirmed use of open proxies by SH, and (h) the known history of socking by MM on the same financial topics. There might be more I'm overlooking. If there's a non-sockpuppet hypothesis that fits these facts, I'd love to read it. alanyst /talk/ 21:23, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
We already know (and knew) Mantanmoreland to be a sock puppeteer before this case. While the betrayal of trust involved in further socking is considerable, that's nothing that can't be dealt with by blocking or banning, something we've done many times before.
Much more serious allegations have been made here: that Wikipedia has been edited abusively, used as a tool by a named individual, journalist Gary Weiss, in a campaign against another named individual, Patrick Byrne. While we do know that Byrne and his allies have used Wikipedia as a tool against Weiss, and seem moreover even glory in it, we know nothing of the sort about Weiss. We do not know whether Mantanmoreland is Weiss, and knowing whether Samiharris is Mantanmoreland would not make us any wiser.
What we can do is carefully examine the affected articles to see if there has been any systematic damage. Compared to the statistical work, which as a programmer I'm well aware is as glamorous and fun as its results are misleading, carefully combing and evaluating edits for a deliberate pattern of poisoning or even an unconscious personal bias is difficult. It must be done, however.
If we do find damage, then we may never know who exactly was responsible at least we will know how it was done. If we don't find damage, that will be good to know.
I know I may sound as if I'm saying that nearly everybody else has missed the point. This is because that is what I think. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 03:26, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
TS, when you're convinced everyone else has missed the point, that usually means that you have.
"...which as a programmer I'm well aware is as glamorous and fun as its results are misleading..." - as an econometrician, you are wrong on both counts. Especially the glamour part.
"...we do know that Byrne and his allies have used Wikipedia as a tool against Weiss.." For the record, I haven't yet seen or been directed to any signs that they have. Violated our protocols by allegedly outing an editor, and subsequently using ethically dubious methods against the sysops who blocked them, yes. Relata refero (talk) 19:26, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
User:Anticipation...The, I am one of the editors who came late here, and formed an opinion (that the sock-puppeting, and abuse are established) from reading all the evidence. Now, even if the questions I ask go unanswered, I have to believe that my hard-thought-over conclusion(s), and that of other editors like to myself, is/are of value, where it is obvious that myself and such editors have been reading and evaluating the evidence, from an initial Neutral stand-point. --Newbyguesses -Talk 23:29, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
I'm not saying you're wrong. I am saying I don't agree with you. We are permitted to have different opinions. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 23:41, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
Of course, but this business about a "presumption of guilt" doesn't really pass the smell test. The fact is, when you came into this discussion and began passing these sorts of judgments, you were absolutely unaware that any evidence beyond Luke's timestamp analysis even existed, and you've been fairly slow in getting up to speed since then. Only days ago you were asking who SH was, for G-d's sake. I am genuinely pleased that you are now providing detailed edit maps of the articles in question; thank you for that. Those will prove useful to everyone.--G-Dett (talk) 23:53, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
Don't presume. I was well aware of the evidence, having examined it all before editing this page. I find all of the statistical techniques being brandished to be ad-hoc and of little use in deciding identity. Your mileage may vary. Like many people I dislike having to guess who someone means by "SH" or "MM", and the use of initials instead of names is regarded as very rude in my culture. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 03:13, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
Risker's comment about the sourcing of the original version of the NSS article is interesting - are you double-checking the sources that users cite in each edit as part of your analysis? —Random832 17:14, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
It's not an extensive analysis (I also have a life!), so examining the quality of each edit is not going to happen. So far I've reached October, 2006, and there's a quite marked distinction between the quality of edits of different editors. A lot of references to thesanitycheck.com keep reappearing alongside very loaded language. While we all have our biases, and Mantanmoreland clearly shares a view congruent with that of Gary Weiss and tends to be over-dismissive even in the face of expressions of concern by present and former SEC chairs and the like, so far I'm not seeing agenda-pushing as obvious as that of WordBomb and the various other editors who were presumably directed to Wikipedia from another website. I could well be missing something others will easily spot, of course, and I still have about eighteen months of edits to work through so a lot could have happened in that period. This work is only intended to be a map, and I'm trying not to insert undue qualitative assessments except where an editor is obviously and deliberately flouting our neutral point of view policy. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 17:33, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
Incidentally, I'd be interested to see what other editors thought of this revision. It was a rewrite of the article made in late January, 2006, by ESkog and Mantanmoreland. While it will undoubtedly have its biases, I don't think it was a bad initial attempt, and for the most part it seems to be quite well sourced (time.com, sec.gov, businessweek.com, overstock.com, nytimes.com). I'm finding it hard to see Mantanmoreland, at least at that point, as the kind of single-issue pusher who would deliberately distort an article. Who knows, maybe all that changed. Stay tuned. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 17:48, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
Tony, we know Wordbomb is a baddie - he wouldn't be banned otherwise - but that is no mitigation to the socking and bias by Mantanmoreland; the evidence is that that account operated with just as much COI as the former, but in a manner which did not draw as much attention (and any of which was quickly deflected by incanting the banned users "memes".) We are not choosing the lesser of two evils; we are trying to determine and rid us of all evil. LessHeard vanU (talk) 22:56, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
I completely agree with you on sock puppetry (which Mantanmoreland did do in 2006, there is no argument about that). I am as yet unconvinced on the "bias" claim, which is one of the reasons I'm analysing naked short selling edit-by-edit. I've reached February of last year and have yet to notice what I regard as systematic removal of well sourced material or adding of contentious or tendentious material by Mantanmoreland (something nearly all the socks and meat puppets did as a matter of course). I'll keep plodding through, of course, and others are welcome to use my map for their own purposes which might involve far more rigorous analysis of his editing. Because the evidence does not (yet) reveal any obvious conflict of interest in that article, I find it hard to believe that his edits have done anything but good for it (and a lot of good edits, at that). That is a mitigating factor for his earlier sock puppetry. If he has socked more recently (and some people seem to believe this with a fervor that I find a little frightening, given the obscurity of the purported evidence) then he should stop. As far as I'm concerned he's too good an editor to waste his talents on such silliness. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 23:25, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
(ec)TS, the version you link to leaves out the SEC's stated reason for acting against naked short selling, assigning "blame" to microcaps; it doesn't mention Congress' reports against it in the 1990s; it repeats twice the "Weiss meme" (heh) which is unsupported in the academic literature (and appears to be a gross mis-statement of Diamond-Verrechio 87 anyway). Each statement is "answered" by "the views of supporters" of NSS, which is really not the way NPOV works, especially when those "supporters" are somewhat isolated in the academic and policy-making community. I don't know what you think, but that appears a heavily slanted article to me. Relata refero (talk) 23:28, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
Could you explain what you mean by the "Weiss meme"? --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 00:18, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
Read my evidence. Relata refero (talk) 07:51, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
As others have pointed out, I'm also not sure you are looking at the right article for what you are trying to find. From your comments it seems you chose it as the place where Bagley has been most active; the point I've tried to make is that MM has gone much further in areas where others have been less active. E.g., where many people aren't looking, he is using alternate accounts to go around getting digs at Overstock, often to the point of overwhelming entire articles. I'm interested to see the results on NSS, but I think we should recognize a finding that MM's account has generally made defensible edits on NSS would largely miss the point of what has been going on, particularly in terms of the abuse of multiple accounts. Mackan79 (talk) 13:47, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
I don't expect to see any findings in the case on the defensibility of anyone's edits. I was looking for a pattern of indefensible edits or at least a pattern of edits that taken in aggregate showed bias likely to destabilize the article. I haven't found any such thing but the work I did may enable others to find it if it exists. Now that I've completed that work (I've reached a point beyond which neither Mantanmoreland nor Samiharris edited the article naked short selling) I'm looking for another article to analyse. Which would you suggest as the most likely to reveal a pattern of tendentious editing? --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 20:26, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
Since you seem to have done a very thorough analysis of the edit pattern of MM and SH on that article, and you appear to be uninvolved, could you give us a bottom line summary of your conclusions? Crum375 (talk) 20:40, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
I don't have any conclusions yet. I'm hoping that if I miss something somebody else can point to it. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 22:03, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
My impression is that Patrick M. Byrne is worse than Overstock.com, and features editing from more of the involved accounts. That probably makes it the most relevant. Mackan79 (talk) 21:12, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, Mackan79. I had started on analysing overstock.com (because I'll probably do them all in due course so I might as well get started) but on your advice I'll switch to the article on Byrne with the aim of completing it next.

--Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 22:06, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Well I've taken the Patrick Byrne analysis up to Samiharris' last edit a couple of weeks ago. Samiharris sometimes edit wars where he should discuss or call for protection, he doesn't seem to have heard of the three revert rule, and he loves the more sensational columns that enjoy poking fun at people like Byrne. Things I haven't seen, though, are unreasonable or belligerent editing in the face of reason, unreasoned removal of well sourced and relevant information, or (with one exception I'm prepared to regard as acceptable over a period of an entire year's editing) pov-pushing. The latter incident involves Samiharris pushing no less than three links to a single Joe Nocera opinion column about Byrne.
I've noticed one particularly bad bit of editing, perhaps malicious, that may not have been picked up by the editors at the article. But it isn't associated with Mantanmoreland or Samiharris. See this:
Last October the whole of the first part of the "Press attention" section, relating to positive attention, was removed from the article and nobody noticed. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 19:50, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for reviewing this, Tony. If I can ask, then, what do you think Wikipedia should do about someone with an obvious agenda against a person, who uses alternate accounts to traverse various articles adding negative and blatantly POV writing about the person, then sharply denies that the accounts are his? If you disagree with the characterization, of course feel free to clarify. Mackan79 (talk) 20:22, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
As you know, having examined some 1500 individual edits, I now regard that as an utterly baseless characterization. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 21:13, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
You suggested that you don't see him edit warring with other knowledgeable editors, who'd presumably need to have invested a long effort to clean up the articles. I'm certainly not sure which other parts you disagree with. If you haven't seen any pov pushing, I'd suggest you must have been distracted by the single edits from what the various accounts have actually been doing to these articles. Otherwise, you can see my own review here for any discrepancies if that's of interest. Mackan79 (talk) 21:40, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
(ec) I'm concerned, incidentally, that your view may be based on a starting point that prevailing opinion on Byrne is pretty much as it's been presented by Mantanmoreland, and thus that this is how the article should be written. Your own comments that it's good to let Byrne speak here, so that people can get an idea of the kind of person we're dealing with, suggests this. This is why I AGF when some others don't, but I think it's also the source of the differing views. Mackan79 (talk) 21:46, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
I acquired my whatever opinion I may have of Byrne (or at the person who describes himself as Byrne on Wikipedia) not at second hand but largely from observation of his behavior on Wikipedia. He is as deserving of an accurate Wikipedia article conforming to all policies (including conflict of interest) as everybody else. Had I found a distorted, baseless view of Byrne, not based on reliable sources, being pushed by anyone editing the articles I looked at, I would unhesitatingly have identified it as a clear sign of tendentiousness. I did not. Your mileage, as they say, may vary. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 22:15, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
You don't find, "Byrne has claimed that his company's shares have been attacked by 'miscreants' in the stock market, headed by a 'Sith Lord,'" to be distorted?[2] I think you may also still underestimate the extent Byrne's actions, and views here of how he is covered in the media, have been colored by the long-standing campaign against him on Wikipedia. But your point to G-Dett is well taken, and probably more useful. Mackan79 (talk) 22:34, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
I haven't examined 1500 edits, but I have examined several hundred, and in many cases followed up on the sources to get a picture of what was going on. The evidence unambiguously shows (a) an agenda against Byrne, Bagley, and Overstock; (b) abusive use of sockpuppet accounts; (c) pervasive addition of negative and blatantly POV writing about the persons in question; (d) sharp denial of proven sockpuppetry (TS, LE) when confronted. I'm not sure which part of Mackan's characterization you find baseless, and I confess to being puzzled by that.
A correction. You say above that Samiharris " loves the more sensational columns that enjoy poking fun at people like Byrne." That's actually false. He hates these columns when they come up on the Weiss page, and he loves them when they come up on the Byrne page. He was also happy with them on the short-lived Bagley page. A better way of putting this is, Samiharris doesn't hate or love a particular kind of sensational journalism, any more than he loves or hates a particular kind of promotional puffery. He just finds the first useful in pursuing his agenda against Byrne, Bagley, and Overstock, and the second useful in his promotion of Weiss. This, of course, is a form of POV-pushing. Negative BLP pushing, to be exact; one of the worst types.--G-Dett (talk) 21:42, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
Don't make your case to me. Make your case to the arbitration committee. Present the right evidence and you'll get a finding of tendentious or disruptive editing and an appropriate remedy. Even if you managed to convince me, I do not have the power to make the committee do whatever I want it to do (whatever anybody says). --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 21:53, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
Evidence has already been presented to the committee on this. I'm aware that they, not you, constitute the relevant audience. You are presenting new research, in the form of an inventory of edits with summaries expanded by you, followed up by your conclusions on this page (quality editing by SH and MM, no POV-pushing, no agenda, etc.). I am grateful to you for your inventory, but since your conclusions are presented impressionistically and don't in my view match the evidence, I'm posting rebuttals. This seems to me an appropriate course of action.
Sometimes your examination of edits seems unduly sketchy to me. Of course this is understandable when you're going through 1500 edits in a day or two, but then that's an argument for slowing down. To take something almost at random, from January of this year. You inventory seven Samiharris edits together with the following summary: SH "Quotes Byrne in an April, 2006 letter to the WSJ, forecasting 'a few million Americans are going to show up at the corner of Wall and Broad with pitchforks and nooses.'" Let's look at one of those seven edits in detail. With an edit summary reading 'Jihad' against naked shorting: replacing with different SEC comment; Nocera was referring to fails to deliver, not overall problem, Sami deletes the following sourced material:

SEC Chairman Christopher Cox called abusive naked short selling “a fraud that the commission is bound to prevent and to punish.”[1] In an effort to curb whatever level of naked shorting may exist, the SEC has enacted Regulation SHO, which is intended to help control Failures to Deliver. [2]

The first source is the New York Times; the second is an SEC publication, “Key Points About Regulation SHO,” Securities and Exchange Commission, April 11, 2005. Samiharris replaces these with the following:

The Securities and Exchange Commission has said that naked shorting does not create counterfeit shares, and that "fails to deliver" securities are not evidence of naked shorting.

This is sourced to a different SEC document. Sami's sentence to the effect that "'fails to deliver' securities are not evidence of naked shorting," is cherry-picked and misleading; what the source actually says is "fails-to-deliver are not necessarily the result of short selling, and are not evidence of abusive short selling or “naked” short selling." In other words, because other causes are possible, they are not conclusive evidence. The source moreover says nothing at all about "counterfeit shares." This sort of massaging of sourced material is representative of Sami's editing, but it isn't my main point here, so rather than go into any more detail about it I encourage editors to check it out themselves.
My main point is that Sami is deleting well-sourced material with a misleading rationale. It's true that the passage in question follows a quote from the Nocera article, and that Nocera is talking specifically about "fails to deliver," but so are both of the sources Sami deletes. His edit summary strongly implies that they aren't, but in fact they are. The net effect of Sami's wikilawyering is that very well-sourced, relevant material critical of naked short selling is deleted, and the material substituted for it is rhetorically massaged to downplay a problem the new source acknowledges. This kind of POV-pushing and wikilawyering isn't that subtle, but it's subtle enough to miss when you're galloping through 1500 edits.--G-Dett (talk) 23:07, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
I cannot emphasize too strongly that I constructed the pages for precisely this purpose. But there is also another requirement: if you can find substantial evidence of some kind of agenda-pushing (and surely with so few other editors on the articles in question, the results would be an obviously distorted article anyway) then please put it onto the evidence page or (better still, because the evidence page is rather cluttered with statistical analysis) email it to the arbitrators. At least one arbitrator, Thebainer, has twice solicited such evidence, and it was because of his request that I did what I did.
There is a third requirement, which I'll only touch on briefly. Be more careful. While Samiharris does reword and does change things around in course of the seven edits, he does not remove the two sources you cite above. There are minor problems with the edit (he's trying to synthesize a response to a point which in itself, it was later decided, is a synthesis constructed to advance a position; he should simply pluck out the synthesis and demand a proper source for the position advance) but the string of seven edits did not remove those sources. They are references 15 and 16 respectively in the final revision of that series of edits. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 02:43, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] User:Cool Hand Luke

Thanks first and foremost for your reply.

It's fair enough, but if you really believe that a community ban effort will hurt the community, you have a duty to try to end this madness here and now. Without adequate sanctions, there will be a community sanction effort, and I agree that it could be a lot more acrimonious than a few arbitrators dissenting against findings of sockpuppetry. Even if such a proposal fails, it will force dissenting arbitrators to articulate their views—which they've predominantly been unwilling to do. ArbCom is the path of least drama. Cool Hand Luke 16:30, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Oh, looks like someone said what I waffled later. LessHeard vanU (talk) 22:44, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Overly simplistic view by User:Jehochman

A bouncer
A bouncer

Is there any reason not to ban everybody involved in this war? It would be the equivalent of a bar bouncer grabbing all the participants of a brawl and tossing them out into the street. This would be a good idea. Jehochman Talk 16:42, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Who is "everyone"? Anybody who has ever expressed any opinion whatsoever on any related issue? That would, I guess, include both me and you. *Dan T.* (talk) 16:45, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
The decision as written references an off-wiki conflict but does not state as a finding of fact that any editor (on either side) is part of that dispute. It would be a significant improvement to the decision to at least vote out a finding that "Regardless of the issues of sockpuppetry and identity, it appears that Mantanmoreland and Samiharris are participants in, or are significantly influenced by, the off-wiki dispute. Thatcher 16:49, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
It might help greatly, Dan T, if you and I were both thrown out by the bouncer (glances at Thatcher), but no, that's not what I meant. Weiss, Byrne, Bagley/WordBomb, Mantanmoreland, and Samiharris seem to be the participants. If we say, "Enough already!" and ban these folks, and block their accounts and any sock puppets that may appear, that would be a significant improvement. Jehochman Talk 16:55, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
To me, that would send the message very clearly to "take your dispute elsewhere". I share the same view as Jehochman here. Banning the participants of this dispute (WB is already banned), along with the article restrictions, is very definitive action which would reduce Wikipedia's prominence in this dispute. The current remedies aren't as definitive. daveh4h 17:28, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
Well, I already stated (an extreme version) of this position in my#Evidence at Non-notability, and I echo u:Jehochman's more moderate suggestion now. However, toning it down even more, we do not need to reference the person WEISS, nor the person BYRNE nor the person BAGLEY. We should call the chuckers-out to chuck out Mantanmoreland, SamiHarris, and, um, WordBomb, and any other socks, or abusers, or abusive sockers. No RL persons need suffer any inconvenience or blow to their reputation. They simply keep their dispute off our encyclopedia. Newbyguesses - Talk 18:01, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
Is there any compelling reason to keep the battle ground (the articles) on the encyclopedia pending the arrival of the NPOV posse? There are many subjects that are worthy of an article that are not represented here, would the removal of these harm the encyclopedia than the potential for harm that they hold? LessHeard vanU (talk) 22:42, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
User:Thatcher, though you recuse, may be interested in this, at /Workshop, (a proposed finding based on your thoughts), and this which is TS's comment by others. --Newbyguesses - Talk 06:26, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] SirFozzie's Viewpoint

I understand where Brad is coming from. There seems to be a fundamental disconnect in what the community wanted to see happen in sending this to the Arbitration Committee, and what the ArbCom saw as within its remit in taking this case.

I still think that any decision that does not at least have a vote on the Mantanmoreland=Samiharris link is a fundamental failure, but that is my viewpoint and mine only. I can understand where the problems are with linking this to real-life person GW, and can understand why that is not part of the case, but the decision otherwise is "Well, there's an obvious problem with the articles and conflict of interest, so let's tie it down for future reference, but let's not deal with the underlying issue."

When I suggested to bring this to ArbCom, it was an attempt to head off drama at the pass. Instead, we had weeks of the stuff (from both sides) and thanks to this decision, we're not getting any closer to a real resolution to the issues that necessitated the investigation.

Due to a lack of guidance from ArbCom, folks have spent tens of hours of effort on something the Committee isn't actually even using. Several times during the ArbCom case, there were requests asking the Committee where they needed evidence so to better assist ArbCom in coming to a decision. There was no guidance forthcoming at all on what the Committee wanted to look at.

Instead, we get the feeling that no amount of evidence would convince some folks. Some arbitrators apparently have based their decision on evidence not available to other ArbCom members, nor the public. We've seen it in the statements . "The writing styles in emails I have (that no one else has) are different, so they can't be the same person", basically. We had another arbitrator try to shut down one of the previous steps in this whole process, against the vast consensus of the community, because he didn't think "there was any dispute to be answered."

I have a funny feeling that we'll all be back here again, the consensus of the community is such that shortly after this all ends, then Mantanmoreland will get blocked/community banned, and someone will consider this harassment (probably with several references to "mind control", "Paid stalkers", "Corporate Conspiracy", you can fill in the rest), and unblock Mantanmoreland. As some one reminded me, it only takes one administrator willing to undo such a ban to undo such action. I do agree that it would be best if all the major parties in this off-WP war were firmly shown the door and told "Keep your off-Wikipedia disputes off-Wikipedia."

But my base thought? Anything that does not have at least a vote on a link between Mantanmoreland and Samiharris has been a waste of time. The people who have contributed have wasted their time, ArbCom has wasted their time, and the community has had their time wasted. SirFozzie (talk) 17:35, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

I endorse this view. --Rocksanddirt (talk) 17:38, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
Your time has not been spent in vain. Jehochman Talk 17:39, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
These are certainly not your views alone. I also endorse this view. Cool Hand Luke 18:29, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
Hear, hear! Steps to isolate the committee from the community seem not good for both. Maybe all arbitrators should give very careful thought to UninvitedCompany's suggestion that you change your method of hearing cases so that you no longer consider any non-public evidence. Perhaps the benefit outweighs the cost. Thanks -- luke (talk) 04:15, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Durova's comments

Thank you for posting, Brad. I hope the community's responses will not discourage arbitrators from posting similar statements in the future. One point that probably has general agreement is that the community does appreciate open and candid explanations.

A matter that worries me here--a carryover from the Matthew Hoffman case--is the Committee's readiness to frame the scope as if the case occurred in isolation. I urge each member of the Committee to volunteer for one week at either the conflict of interest noticeboard or the suspected sockpuppets board: those of us who have months of field experience (Jehochman, SirFozzie, myself, and others) are speaking - quite independently - with essentially one voice. The Committee does deal with sock issues at arbitration, yet it's a very different matter to be down in the trenches working virtually alone, trying to reassure productive editors whose good faith has been exploited, watching some of them damage their own reputations in frustration or quit the project entirely. The working reality is that we have a shallow pool of volunteers addressing an ocean of problem.

We are an open edit project with no formal means of authenticating contributor identity, and we are one of the world's ten most popular websites. Or to put this another way: add the total visitor traffic to Britannica.com, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times, multiply that sum by ten, and that's us.

One of the most salient points articulated by Judd Bagley of Overstock.com and also by Greg Kohs of MyWikiBiz (people who know the history on the latter are probably snickering to see me agree with him about anything) is that they were essentially banned for not being devious enough. Sure they broke policies, but they also admitted who they were, and if they had pursued the same goals through more sophisticated and underhanded means then they would probably remain editors in good standing. Neutral observers have asked me about that contention, and until now I have been able to reply that Wikipedia does care, and although it may take longer to uncover certain types of manipulation we'll handle the matter just as firmly and perhaps more so, taking into account the long term damage to the site. Reading this decision, and the comments of the arbitrators, I'm not sure I can give that answer anymore.

Perhaps the most troubling aspect is to characterize this decision as forward-looking. Only in the narrowest of senses can it be called that: if we accept as premises that this case is extraordinary, and unlikely to be replicated, and creating no precedent, and exerting no pressure on community standards, then yes it is forward-looking. I view it in a different context, and see many elements that are extreme examples of routine dynamics. It is as if we went fly fishing and pulled some strange creature out of the water and agreed call it a freak of nature, forgetting that we've left the small pond and have cast our rods above the Mariana Trench. DurovaCharge! 18:53, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

interesting point regarding treating each case in isolation. I pretty much agree. --Rocksanddirt (talk) 19:01, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
Exactly my feeling in many respects, thanks for putting it so well. Mackan79 (talk) 19:03, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
I agree with Durova. Further: Brad's comments appear to me to reflect a choice to put anonymity above COI resolution in a way that makes Wikipedia less of a NPOV encyclopedia and more of a place to play power games in that it expects to prevent COI damage to a handful of articles while ignoring the larger damage done to expectations of behavior. Expectations that up to now included banning for this sort of behavior on far less evidence, because we are not a game we are an encyclopedia and this behavior makes creating a NPOV encyclopedia far harder. This decision says we are only a game and there is no penalty for gaming us. WAS 4.250 (talk) 20:06, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
A point of information here. Bagley did not admit who he was until he was outed by others, as I recall by the New York Post. From July 2006 until January 2007, he operated anonymously using a variety of handles, both on Wikpedia and on his blog, and also when he e-mailed complaints and threats to admins. SlimVirgin (talk)(contribs) 20:02, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
I think that's generally true with WordBomb, although I believe there are other examples such as potentially User:Sparkzilla. In WordBomb's case I think the problem has been slightly different. Either way, I personally don't see that as Durova's most important point so much as her comments on the damage of this type of sockpuppetry and failing to prevent it. Mackan79 (talk) 20:34, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
You may have a point there regarding WordBomb, although that also applies to me (I didn't admit who I was until other people outed my identity). Mantanmoreland doesn't admit his identity at all. DurovaCharge! 20:41, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Reaction of interested onlooker Dr. Extreme

I came upon this arbitration case looking for a controversy to read, one that was on-going and would be interesting to observe. As it went on, I became enormously invested in this case. I think this is because of the vast amounts of effort gone into it by all sides, the extremely compelling (to me, at least) presentations of evidence by Cool Hand Luke and SirFozzie, the enormous statistical analysis by Alanyst, and the both amusing and probing investigations of G-Dett. I read the WikBack forums too, becoming acquainted with all parties, including parties whose voices were not on Wikipedia. Speaking as perhaps the voice of the uninvolved user, I feel that this case is not entirely a waste of time, even if the proposed decision as it currently stands is approved and the case is closed. This case has thrust quite a few contentious points in the community to the forefront, where they can be dealt with. It was, in a manner of speaking, the symptom that identifies a long-running disease. We have all seen the evidence, and we have all been able to come to our own conclusions.

I believe that Newyorkbrad's characterization of the case above, especially the last three paragraphs, is one of the finest pleas for decency and sanity I have ever read in regard, not only to this case, but the entire encyclopedia's mission.

While I could not help but feel a bit disappointed at the proposed decision, I have since come to the decision that it's a much needed Potsdam conference in lieu of a Treaty of Versailles. If we ban Mantanmoreland for abusive sockpuppetry, what then? Does he leave the encyclopedia, or does he muster an army of puppets to nurse his grievance? The last thing we need is a new subpage of Wikipedia:Long term abuse. We don't need a User:General Tojo wreaking havoc on this article set, especially given its already tortured past. I think this is one of the rationales behind the decision. We need a disengagement, not an eviction.

That's my view. But like I said, I'm just an interested onlooker.

Dr. eXtreme 19:04, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Suggestion from SlimVirgin

When editors are accused of sockpuppetry, especially in a controversial case like this, the best thing they can do is make themselves available to help disprove the allegation. This can be done in a variety of ways without disclosing real-life identities. The two editors could have a conference call with a trusted ArbCom member on Skype, for example, and certain questions could be asked to make sure the arbitrator really was speaking to the people editing under those user names. Or there could be a meeting in real life, again without disclosing real names.

Neither of those things was done in this case, though they were suggested. Given the hostility surrounding the case, I can't really blame MM or SH for declining to do this. But the upshot was that the situation has been left hanging, which isn't good for the community.

There's nothing we can do about it now. SH has gone and, when I last asked him, he was very reluctant to help sort this out in any way. But for the future, I'd like to see something added to the ArbCom ruling, that editors accused of sockpuppetry are expected to do what they can (short of being forced to disclose their identities) to show the allegation to be false — that there is, if you like, no right to remain silent. SlimVirgin (talk)(contribs) 20:17, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Considering the situation where Jimbo apparently offered to do just that for MM, and the natural conclusion that Jimbo apparently reached when it was met with hostility, I agree with SlimVirgin on this. Maybe something like "In situations where sock puppetry can be suspected by a reasonable person, it would be helpful in drawing conclusions if the person could be asked to provide non-identity disclosing information to draw a line between the two accounts?" This is completely off the cuff, and I need to think about it. SirFozzie (talk) 20:30, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
No, its too easy to game, and we really should not make a policy out of forcing some editors to prove their identities. I would rather consider community topic bans for editors with apparent undisclosed conflicts of interest. Call it WP:Please stop quacking. "The community believes, based on your editing behavior, that you have an undisclosed conflict of interest regarding this topic and does not have confidence that you can edit this topic to uphold the principles of NPOV and Undue Weight. Rather than require you to prove your identity, or prove that you do not have a conflict (proving a negative is always impossible anyway) you are banned from editing this topic for X months." (The idea of a time-limited ban is to give other editors time to clean up the article; at that point if the COI editor returns to making disruptive non-consensus edits it will be even more obvious and further steps can be taken.) Thatcher 20:38, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
People can be expected to cooperate short of disclosing their identities. I disagree that it's easy to game. If you get the right people asking the right questions, it would be extremely difficult to game. For me, the point is that I think the community has a right to expect Wikipedians in circumstances like this to make themselves available for discreet questioning -- so long as it really is discreet, completely confidential, with a senior member of the community who is trusted by the accused, and that they're never expected to reveal their real names.
I agree that a topic ban is appropriate. But it's not enough in some cases. SlimVirgin (talk)(contribs) 20:47, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
It's something that the Foundation ombudsman could be asked to do in very tricky and sensitive cases — where, for example, established editors are accused of sockpuppetry, and the only way to sort things out is for people to talk to each other by telephone, Skype, or through a real-life meeting. I would like to see an ArbCom ruling to the effect that if an editor refuses to cooperate with this, and also fails to suggest a realistic alternative, the refusal is likely to be held against him by the Committee, should the case reach arbitration. SlimVirgin (talk)(contribs) 20:54, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
Well, until you end up with a situation where you have User:Discreet Senior Member saying, "I talked with User:Poohbear and he does not have a conflict of interest, trust me," and the rest of the community saying, "Poohbear has been making advocacy edits on behalf of real person Christopher Robin and we no longer trust him to be neutral unless you tell us about your secret conversation, (or are you part of the coverup). Better maybe to say, "For the sake of the encyclopedia, considering all factors, and recognizing that it may ultimately be unfair, nevertheless User:Poohbear is banned from making edits related to Christopher Robin." Thatcher 20:57, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
I agree with Thatcher. For his stated reason, the Committee is reluctant to allow disclosures that the whole committee can not verify. This came up recently in a request to remove an indef block, iirc. FloNight♥♥♥ 21:04, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
The point of having a Foundation ombudsman is to investigate sensitive complaints. I see no reason the ArbCom wouldn't trust the ombudsman's judgment. Bear in mind that most sockpuppetry allegations aren't about COI, so the topic ban remedy won't always be appropriate. SlimVirgin (talk)(contribs) 21:32, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
I'm also inclined to agree with Thatcher. Having dug through more of this stuff than I ever really needed to know, it seems to me that the articles in question suffer from a perception of bias that will not go away unless certain editors step away from them. And at this point it really doesn't matter that Byrne and Bagley may have essentially created that perception; we want to prevent people like them from gaming us in the future, but in the present restoring/preserving the perception of NPOV is more important. Mangoe (talk) 22:01, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
I'm obviously not making myself clear here. My fault — maybe this was the wrong section to post the suggestion in. Once again, my suggestion is not about this case, where I agree that a topic ban is essential. My suggestion was also not about COI or about forcing editors to disclose their identities. It is a general suggestion for the future, about sockpuppetry not about COI, as I said above: "But for the future, I'd like to see something added to the ArbCom ruling, that editors accused of sockpuppetry are expected to do what they can (short of being forced to disclose their identities) to show the allegation to be false — that there is, if you like, no right to remain silent." SlimVirgin (talk)(contribs) 22:25, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

outdent While this suggestion has some issues, I like it for helping to deal with sockpuppeting issues. Likely we need to have a full discussion of it somewhere to iron out all the questions. If a program like this existed mm/sh could have easily shown that they were not the same user (or not). --Rocksanddirt (talk) 22:31, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Yes, but they took offense at the proposal. DurovaCharge! 23:01, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
Which is one kind of answer. --Rocksanddirt (talk) 00:44, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
This idea is sensible, and the objections don't seem to be that strong: Editing Wikipedia is not a right, and in cases even a tenth as involved as this one it would be easier for all parties if a meeting could be set up (people innocent of sockpuppetry would probably welcome this kind of meeting). It's possible this could be gamed, but I don't think it would be easy at all, and even if it were, that doesn't mean it wouldn't be an improvement: each person would not only demonstrate knowledge of the password but should have some knowledge about the subjects that editor edited. It may not be the equivalent of a smoking gun, but it doesn't have to be, and the interviewer's report can be submitted just like any other evidence, to be judged just like any other evidence. Face-to-face meetings would be much harder to game than a telephone-like set up, but video conferencing could also be used. I don't fully understand FloNight's objection: I'm assuming the interviewer would ony be used if the committee first asked for it, the interviewer would be appointed by the committee and the committee would appoint someone they trust. How many editor-hours have gone into this case just since Arbcom accepted it? 500? More? Anything that would lower the time wasted by monumental diversions like this should be embraced. Noroton (talk) 01:10, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
When editors are accused of sockpuppetry, especially in a controversial case like this, the best thing they can do is make themselves available to help disprove the allegation. SlimVirgin 20:17, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
Well-said, to the point, I say.
and (responding to a suggestion of private meetings to establish a contributor's "identity") --> No, its too easy to game - Thatcher 20:38, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
That seems right to me, and others, it would seem.
For the record, I am not in favour of such private communications, other than to the Arbcom email address. What does it achieve, even if the ombudsman, The Shah of Persia and Walter Mitty all get together for a cuppa and a chat, one day? Who takes Minutes of the meeting, Bob the builder? (the last bit is facetious) Newbyguesses - Talk 03:54, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Response by Pascal.Tesson

Thank you NYBrad for these thorough explanations. For the most part, I've already expressed my thoughts on the matter in an earlier section of this page. But I'd like to respond to a few of your points.

  • You are presenting the first proposed remedy as a key (if not the key) component of the decision. But what is this "remedy" saying? It says: these articles should be edited within the usual bounds imposed by fairness and honesty on Wikipedia. It's not a remedy: it should be a principle that applies on every article. Nobody should be editing the same article using two accounts, whether the article is Gary Weiss or Raisin. Nobody should bring off-wiki disputes on wiki. Nobody should be using Wikipedia as a soapbox or battleground. Nobody should edit an article without disclosing COI. Note also that since the committee refuses to address the GW = MM issue, MM can continue to deny that connection and continue to deny he's not in a COI but simply a concerned citizen fighting for The Truth.
  • Remedy 3 is also problematic since it fails to acknowledge that a number of people who have tried to work in that direction have had an extremely difficult time doing so, precisely because of the paranoid, toxic atmosphere on the talk pages.
  • But what bothers me the most about your comments is the motivation for not addressing the question of whether GW=MM. In particular, you say "I also reasoned that it would be highly undesirable to write anything in an "official decision of the Arbitration Committee" that was likely to be used, or misused, in the context of off-wiki disputes". With all due respect, this simply does not make sense. Whether or not the ArbCom addresses this question, the evidence presented in this case is already being used in that off-wiki dispute and, if anything, it will now be accompanied by conspiracy theories about how GW and his friends control the ArbCom or some similar nonsense. We can't force MM to disclose his identity, but the ArbCom is missing an opportunity to say "MM is topic-banned on all GW and Overstock-related articles until his identity can be established by the ombudsman or some other trusted member of the community". This is not unreasonable. I suspect that most, if not all members of the ArbCom would agree with the minimal assertion "the MM account is closely tied to GW, so much so that COI should make him stay away from these articles". Editing with a conflict of interest is unacceptable and it is most definitely not forward-looking to say "ok, you can resume editing but your POV pushing will need to be more subtle in the future." To me, allowing MM to contribute is equivalent to allowing WordBomb to return, provided he doesn't go utterly beserk.
  • And I'd like to stress again: fairness should not be an objective. There's no such thing as a right to edit Wikipedia and it's ok for the ArbCom to say: "you know what, it's just best if you all leave. We're not sure you're sockpuppeting, we're not sure you're Gary Weiss. But we're sure that we can do a better job without you". And in fact, we all know that this is true, just like we know that we're better off without Bagley and Byrne editing these articles. Pascal.Tesson (talk) 21:39, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Response by LessHeard vanU

The sign from President Truman's desk.
The sign from President Truman's desk.

One aspect that has not been touched upon, not altogether surprising because it hasn't formed a major part of the debate, is the role of ArbCom as the most august of the bodies of dispute resolution - the "The Buck Stops Here" aspect.

Agreed. Example added above. DurovaCharge! 22:03, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
Copyeditted the tag, but yes, that's the hugely disappointing part of this: That this is just a waystation, and not a destination. SirFozzie (talk) 22:11, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
Hope you don't mind that I toned it back down to the original. DurovaCharge! 22:39, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
Boo, hiss, I'm being censored! Come see the violence inherent in the sysadmin... (Ok, former sysadmin, but you get the general gist).. Seriously, no problem, D. SirFozzie (talk) 22:41, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

(ec. Um I expanded it quite a bit - which I will post following this break - but people can respond to either or both. It waffles a bit, but does include some aspects not covered by the short version.)

It would seem churlish not to thank Brad for the time, effort and sheer comprehending manner in which he has addressed the issues arising from some of the communities response to the proposals etc. Thanks. I think that most if not all had belatedly begun to re-asses the purposes and positions of the original set of proposals and even if continued to view them with dismay did engage civilly in querying what they saw as inconsistencies.

One aspect that has not been touched upon, not altogether surprising because it hasn't formed a major part of the debate, is the role of ArbCom as the most august of the bodies of dispute resolution - the "The Buck Stops Here" aspect. One has to wonder why it was felt necessary why an investigation that formed the basis of an RfC, which lead a number of experienced wikipedians of good standing to conclude there was sufficient evidence to pronounce that Mantanmoreland was an abusive user of alternate accounts, was referred to ArbCom. It is quite simple; no one admin was brave enough to enact the block, mindful of precedent regarding acting against the perceived interests of a group of established wikipedians, and aware of the drahma that would ensue. When the cry of "Take it to ArbCom!" was raised it was met with almost universal agreement. Here was the body that could take the information, review it, and make decisions that the community would adhere to (even if the decisions were disagreed upon - the process had the gravity that the community needed). This is one of the major aspects to why there was a sense of dereliction of authority - the decision that a sysop will make whether their interpretation of the wishes of the community and the betterment of the community is worth risking their reputation and peace of editing for the future. The buck has been passed, albeit with a note saying "I quite understand if you felt that this was necessary - in many ways the evidence is quite compelling, I suppose." I was and remain disappointed in this lack of realisation.

I would also comment on the situation regarding the future editing to the contentious articles (adapted from my previous slash and burn recommendation); When you find your unbiased yet knowledgable editors, willing to provide the encyclopedia with NPOV content, allow them to work from clean sheets of paper. We don't need to try and harvest the bitter fruit of a poisoned tree - let them start afresh. LessHeard vanU (talk) 23:04, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Response by Crum375

I believe that NYBrad's work, both in crafting the decision and presenting his arguments here, should be commended. This is a tough case, and there are no easy solutions. I prefer not to comment on the specifics of the case, but would like to focus on the general issues raised. As I see it, there are two separate issues: COI and SOCK. For COI, our policy is to allow it in principle, if the user agrees to carefully adhere to NPOV and other content rules. If the edits become disruptive, or excessively tendentious, the user may be restricted to the talk page. If disruption continues, then a total ban may be required. As for SOCK, the simple cases are easy; the problem raised here is the possibility of more sophisticated socks, which are harder to nail down. Historically, ArbCom had a simple DUCK rule: if accounts seem too much alike, and they edit the same topics disruptively and tendentiously, with identical POV, they are assumed to be either MEAT or SOCK, and no specific distinction need be made. I see no reason to change that precedent, but clearly it is up to ArbCom to make that determination of tendentious editing and disruption, after viewing and weighing all the evidence. I think the community needs to take a step back, and give ArbCom's decision, once finalized, a chance to work. Crum375 (talk) 22:15, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Honestly, I don't think that's going to happen. There's still a lot of disappointment that the decision will not have anything about what a lot of folks consider the key element in what brought the case before ArbCom, and I fully expect things to be moving on that shortly after the ArbCom case is officially closed. SirFozzie (talk) 22:29, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
While I agree, I'm pretty sure any sanctions will be shot down by the infamous one admin who is willing to appeal it back to the committee. --Rocksanddirt (talk) 22:33, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Thoughts by User:Alanyst

Brad has gone the extra mile (and not just in screen real estate :-D ) to make his position as transparent as possible. I sincerely appreciate this and agree with him on many points. My comments below probably carry a more negative tone than I feel at this point, as they voice my remaining concerns and not those areas about which I feel more appeased. I am hopeful that Arbcom is still willing to reconsider given the community's residual concerns.

My view is that undisclosed sockpuppetry is an inherent abuse of the system and a violation of the community's trust. Sockpuppetry used to gain and maintain an advantage in a dispute is worse. Doing so for a dispute that should not have belonged on Wikipedia in the first place is even worse.

My impression of Arbcom coming into this was that it was responsible for resolving the thorniest disputes concerning editor behavior. Content disputes have always been rejected by Arbcom to my knowledge, but until now Arbcom has basically made the ultimate findings and remedies concerning editor behavior.

My surprise at the proposed decision stems from the unwillingness of Arbcom to address the alleged behavior in the same way as similar allegations have been addressed in previous Arbcom cases. Granting that Arbcom cases do not set precedent, there still should be a rational basis for deviating from the normal course of action. That this involves a nasty off-wiki dispute does not suffice, since judgments were rendered for other cases that involved real-world disputes (I'm thinking of The Troubles, Armenia-Azerbaijan, etc.).

The key difference here seems to be the involvement of Overstock and WordBomb, which have posed a threat of organized corporate efforts to undermine the neutrality of the encyclopedia and attack prominent editors. I feel that if this case had not had the specter of WordBomb and his odious behavior hanging over it, the matter would already have been resolved with a finding of sockpuppetry and a ban. I am led to wonder whether WordBomb's obnoxiousness has made various Arbcom members simply unwilling to take action or even voice an opinion that would allow WordBomb to gloat. I don't mean to imply whatsoever that their positions are taken in bad faith, but rather to suggest that revulsion against WordBomb has led to unconscious bias that is difficult to overcome.

My purpose in conducting the extensive analysis that I did was to devise tests for sockpuppetry that were more objective than the Duck Test (which I dislike) and could be useful when checkuser could not be applied, as in this case. I came into this with no preconceived notion of the truth of MM=SH. I believe that my techniques were fair, objective, and verifiable. I do not believe that any of the tests I devised can prove or disprove sockpuppetry by itself; they can only express similarity based on certain metrics, which can in isolation admit to various interpretations besides sockpuppetry. But the fact that various independent tests by myself and others showed strong similarity and coordination between the accounts leaves little room for doubt.

This is the other element that surprised me: that some Arbcom members have discounted the evidence by conjuring up seemingly arbitrary and ill-defined standards of rigor that these new tests must meet. At the same time, they have apparently accepted exculpatory evidence that falls far below these new standards, such as a subjective assessment of verbal style in a private collection of emails of uncertain origin. From an outside perspective, the inconsistency is hard to understand, and what little justification has been given is deeply unsatisfactory. I honestly wonder if the tests would have been challenged at all by these Arbcom members if they had instead yielded results that purported to exonerate MM and SH.

The rest of my feelings about the proposed decision have already been voiced by many here, especially SirFozzie, Jehochman, Thatcher, and Durova. alanyst /talk/ 22:56, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Comment by Cla68

I noticed NYBrad's comments implying that if anyone wanted the scope of this case enlarged, such as to scrutinize the actions of various admins involved in this issue in 2006, then we should have asked for additional parties to be added. I guess I'm a victim of a chilling effect when it comes to that. I tried to add Jayjg as a party to the latest Israel/Palestine dispute ArbCom case, and was reverted and admonished for doing so by Morven. One of the administrators most involved in 2006 has presented some evidence here, but didn't address all of the issues concerning her involvement, such as issues of retaliation and suppression of discussion concerning the issue. I guess another ArbCom case could be requested on that aspect of this issue, and I'm going to consider doing that.

On the Mantanmoreland/Samiharris issue, I will say this. Although there isn't a definite smoking gun, that isn't the only issue here. Evidence has also been presented of bad-faith POV pushing by both editors and personal attacks and retaliation by Mantanmoreland. That, to me, is enough to warrant a community ban for both, apart from the sockpuppetry issue. Cla68 (talk) 23:30, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Adding myself to the list of named parties. In case there is a procedural doubt as to whether a dispute exists, the dispute is this: I want to know whether I stuck my neck out for someone who wasn't honest with me. On 20 October 2007 I performed a userblock related to an article where Mantanmoreland and Sami Harris frequently edited. It was my belief at the time that I was acting in the interests of the biographies of living persons policy, and I was acting upon the good faith assumption that Sami Harris and Mantanmoreland were separate people who had no conflict of interest there. Now I see reason to be concerned about whether those assumptions were correct. DurovaCharge! 22:07, 13 February 2008 (UTC) - My statement at RFAR. DurovaCharge! 23:42, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
The admin I'm referring to in my comment above isn't Durova. Cla68 (talk) 23:50, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
Understood. What I'm pointing out is that one side seriously argued that there was no dispute back around RFAR, so I provided one. Does the proposed decision look like it was affected by that? DurovaCharge! 03:51, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Comment by Lar

So it comes down to this, then? It almost feels like a decision by exhaustion. Someone reading this from the top to the bottom would have a fair piece of work. This case is complex, yes, but the millions of characters spilt haven't changed the outcome much. ArbCom's decision is likely to remain narrow, for what are felt to be good and valid reasons. I think there are going to be issues from that, but I won't recount them all, they've been given above by others. I don't think ArbCom's decision will be the end of it, though. The buck didn't stop where it should have, the community will act. There was a chilling effect all right (I think we most of us know who Cla68 chooses not to mention by name), but maybe one good outcome of this case is that some of the chill will be lifted? I'd caution any admin who now thinks their lone "nay" can stand in the way of a community sanctioned ban, to think again. That wasn't the case 2 months ago, but it is now. And that's something anyway. ++Lar: t/c 03:40, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Well said. Cla68 (talk) 04:41, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
Indeed, and I think it's conceivable that an admin will take it upon himself to leave a short note on ANI announcing that he has blocked MM and SH indefinitely. But I see two possible scenarios after that:
  • a) overall support on ANI amid protests that this isn't what the ArbCom recommended. ANI thread eventually archived.
  • b) some sort of wheel-war or other über-drama leading us back to the ArbCom.
The community was provided with evidence about MM=SH (which I find compelling, but that's just me), evidence that MM=GW (which I don't think anyone in their right mind wouldn't find at the very least quite troubling), a well-documented history of POV-pushing by both accounts on already troubled articles, well-documented evidence that a bunch of idiots are trying to settle real-life scores on Wikipedia, Jimbo's now infamous quote, the story of MM's reluctance to disclose, even to a trusted party, his true identity. The community consensus is, I believe, that these accounts are not helping and are thus not welcome. The ArbCom's decision is essentially "we have no clue what to do about this complex case beyond reaffirming Wikipedia's basic principles and asking everyone to take a chill-pill". Though I'm impressed by NYBrad's willingness to detail his decision and defend it, Lar's characterization of it as a "decision by exhaustion" is quite fitting. ArbCom decided to not decide on the SH=MM question because of reasonable doubt and lack of unanimity in the ArbCom. It then decided not to address GW=MM because that might be unfair to GW and provide ammo to Bagley and Byrne. It chose to completely avoid the important question "did MM and SH use these articles as a battleground?", which, after all, is what initially led to these investigations. Continuing the slippery slope of inaction, it then decided it could live without remedies against these accounts because the community now knows full well that these accounts are to be monitored carefully! To top it off, this is all presented as an invitation to look forward, which frankly, might be seen as a bit of chutzpah. In essence, the ArbCom is saying: thanks for all the hard work, now we clearly see that there's some sort of a problem here. Oh and please send more uninvolved editors to these articles so that they stay neutral. If I was, say, Cla68, I'd find this mildly insulting. Pascal.Tesson (talk) 06:09, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
I think the question "did Mantanmoreland and Samiharris use these articles as a battleground?" is precisely the question we should be looking at. Assuming the answer is not an option. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 23:45, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] The REAL WORLD aint so real

  • This The Australian (newspaper) Friday MARCH 7 2008 front page headline MARKET cowboys reigned in can only be a joke, I think. That could never happen. They would immediately sue.
Anyway, the article <byline Adele Ferguson & David Uren> goes on

The ASE ..."will close a loophole"... to crack down on the practice of stock lending.

...Wayne Swan [Australian Treasurer is] investigating...?

Now, this stock lending bears (close) resemblance to (guess) - right: Naked short selling! That is it consists in rorting prices, and stealing, by one set of cowboys, from another set, and the general investing pool gets ripped off, severely, as it happens.

[T]he traders with borrowed stock use short-selling techniques to target particular companies...

However, no mention in the newspaper of our non-notables, Mr(s) X,Y, Z or their companies, let alone BLOGS. Only for Your Information, it's a funny ol' world, innit? Newbyguesses - Talk 02:14, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
Lay-person's view here only, Newbyguesses hastens to add. Newbyguesses - Talk 02:44, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
For reference: [3] There were also stories in yesterday's Australian (digs out business section). It's not really the same; the story here in Australia is about disclosure rules around regular shorting rather than naked shorting. Also bear in mind that the rules around shorting are somewhat different in Australia, and tend to utilise options rather than stock lending to achieve the short (or at least, that is my lay understanding). --bainer (talk) 02:38, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] "To edit on these from only a single user account"

I hate to be a nag, but I just realized that the wording of remedy 1 allows editors to use sockpuppet accounts to edit the topic area as long as they do not use more than one and do not use their main account. (It says "single user account" not "their single user account" and "on these" rather than "Wikipedia".) This would allow any non-banned user (such as, hypothetically, Patrick Byrne or Mantanmoreland) to create a sockpuppet to edit these articles. Of course, Byrne has an openly declared conflict of interest and would be required to disclose his identity on the talk page per 1D, so that an undisclosed sock would be a violation. But as Mantanmoreland has vigorously and repeatedly stated he has no conflict, and no finding of conflict of interest is made, a strict reading of this remedy allows him to use an undisclosed sock to edit this topic area with no restrictions whatsoever, as long as the sockpuppet's behavior is not overt enough to trigger sanctions under article probation (that apply to all editors).

Is this really what the Committee intends? Thatcher 12:50, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Proposed: "Editors may not use alternate accounts to edit the articles covered by this remedy."
It is not necessary to prove the real life identity to establish WP:COI. When the nature of the contributions reveals a close relationship with the topic, combined with a pattern of WP:NPOV violations, action can be taken. In retrospect, it would have been better to focus this case on the admins who have been protecting Mantanmoreland. Without their cover, this would have been a rather boring sock puppetry and COI case that would have been handled through normal procedures. Jehochman Talk 13:30, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
"it would have been better to focus this case on the admins who have been protecting Mantanmoreland." I don't think the case would have gotten this far had we done that as Jimbo himself was a key member of that group. It is in fact only due to Jimbo's change of a "shoot on sight" instruction to a "let the case progress but in the end what is best is to find MM innocent" that has let the case progress this far. The English language Wikipedia needs a better governance system than "do what Jimbo says and you are above the rules but violate what he says and you are blocked regardless of the rules". We have to decide if we want NPOV or JPOV (Jimbo Point of View) in our articles. Guy deleted a sourced claim from a friend of Jimbo based solely on her say so and deleting that sourced claim made her look better and made another living person look worse. Is Jimbo responsible for Guy's behavior? No, but he is responsible for protecting people who do what they think will please him so that they think the rules do not apply to them. Which creates Drama and POV claims in the articles. We must have better governance if Wikipedia is to have credibility. WAS 4.250 (talk) 14:50, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
Can we not get sidetracked? Thatcher 16:26, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
I agree that Thatcher's is an important point that should not get sidetracked. For what it is worth, my original wording of the draft decision was that editors on these articles must edit Wikipedia from only a single user account, but another arbitrator asked me to change it because an editor might have another valid reason for using an alternate account.
WAS 4.250's comment does require a response, however, which is that other than expressing his personal opinion that he found it hard to believe MM=SH because of differences in their writing styles in e-mails (see the evidence page), Jimbo Wales has provided no input or instructions to the Arbitration Committee on how to decide this case, or any other case at least since I have been a member of the Committee. (Any response to this paragraph should be moved to a separate thread.) Newyorkbrad (talk) 16:36, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
I think the need to avoid further sockpuppetry outweighs any legitimate need to edit the article under an alternate account (excluding those that replace a retired account). If someone has a legitimate alternate account and wishes to contribute, they can ask on the talk page for someone else to make the edit for them. It's stricter than the usual rule, but I think the history of the relevant articles requires it despite any inconvenience. alanyst /talk/ 17:02, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
I have no problem with restricting the editors of these articles to using their primary account to edit and not an alternative account. The way the original proposal was worded by Newyorkbrad, any editor with any alternative account could not edit the articles and I think that is too restrictive give the large number of users that have legitimate alternative accounts (some openly declared and some not.) for reasons totally unrelated to the issues in this case. FloNight♥♥♥ 18:19, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
Newyorkbrad says "Jimbo Wales has provided no input or instructions to the Arbitration Committee on how to decide this case, or any other case at least since I have been a member of the Committee." and not only do I believe him, but it is exactly what I expected. I believe Jimbo is doing his best to make Wikipedia NPOV without content corrupted by COI; but that he is as blind to some negative results of his behaviors as some others are blind to the many positive results of his behaviors. Example: Jimbo actually believes he is the sole founder of Wikipedia and asked others to make Wikipedia say so. But third party reliable sources are quite clear that two people have been called co-founders back to the very beginnings of Wikipedia. I don't think Jimbo is maliciously rewriting the past. It is a proven scientific fact that every time we remember something, our mind rewrites its memory of that thing. Jimbo appears to not accept that just because he is sure of something that doesn't make it true. COI is not merely or even mostly about deliberate POV pushing; it is that when we are close to a subject we honestly believe things about that subject that are objectively false. WAS 4.250 (talk) 18:10, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
I hate to be pedantic, but you're misquoting NYBrad. The full quote would be "other than expressing his personal opinion that he found it hard to believe MM=SH because of differences in their writing styles in e-mails (see the evidence page), Jimbo Wales has provided no input or instructions to the Arbitration Committee on how to decide this case, or any other case at least since I have been a member of the Committee." I am taking that to mean that Jimmy did have input, it is at Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Mantanmoreland/Evidence#Evidence_presented_by_Jimbo_Wales, but there was no other input or instructions. Is that correct? Hiding T 22:38, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Judd Bagley article

For the purposes of my investigation of systemic toleration of character assassination directed at Bagley and Byrne on Wikipedia, I would like to request that the deleted article on Bagley be made available. Is this possible? --G-Dett (talk) 15:33, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Unless there are specific deletions, I believe it was only redirected to Overstock.com. The history appears to be here. Mackan79 (talk) 15:38, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
Thanks Mackan, sorry everybody. Feel free to delete this section.--G-Dett (talk) 15:40, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
No deletion of sections (or soup for you)! you might need someone to undelete the original Bagely article. The history of the redirect is only a couple of weeks long prior to afd redirect. The previous was deleted in Jan 07. --Rocksanddirt (talk) 17:26, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
Rocksanddirt beat me to it - see this AfD on the original article. That version was perhaps biased in favor of Bagley rather than against him, but G-Dett you still might want to ask an admin to take a look at that original version and let you know if there's anything worth examining there.--Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 17:33, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Why a topical ban won't work by itself

In a way, it's already been tried. SlimVirgin asked Mantanmoreland to leave off editing the articles in question.. shortly there after Samiharris showed up. Needless to say, I'm sure that everyone in question will be watching the articles, and god help the newcomer who comes in and looks like WB/MM. I know a full ban in this case will not be miles better, but it can be fairly said that after the first time that MM was asked to walk away, someone popped up and took his place. This is a supplemental action, not a problem-resolving action. SirFozzie (talk) 17:17, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

My mind is open on this issue, but—assuming that it were decided to adopt a remedy beyond those proposed in the original decision (on which I express no view right now as it is time for me to pass the baton at least temporarily to other arbitrators)—there are two possibilities: either the subject of the remedy would abide by it, or he wouldn't. If he did, then your concern about possibly evading the remedy by socking would be moot. If he didn't, then presumably he would disobey an outright site ban as well, and at least having the original account would leave something to checkuser etc. against. Just thinking out loud here. Newyorkbrad (talk) 17:27, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
We have discussed various approaches to use. All have strengths and weaknesses. Per Newyorkbrad's comment, allowing MM to edit the talk page has some advantages. The other advantage will be reducing the need for OTRS or Office involvement if MM notices issues that need to be addressed in the articles. FloNight♥♥♥ 17:53, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
Re NYB,checkusers (please would any CU refactor this if I am wrong) often pronounce upon socks being controlled by dormant puppetmaster accounts - so whatever method that is used there can be used here, should MM not be permitted to edit on the site. I thus don't see that as a concern. FloNights other comment about there being issues that MM might perceive... if only MM can see them then the concerns might not be as valid as suggested. LessHeard vanU (talk) 23:08, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
Checkuser information is stored only for a limited time. (Not commenting on any other issue; I think I've said enough for awhile on this page.) Newyorkbrad (talk) 23:12, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
I will explain by email. FloNight♥♥♥ 23:19, 7 March 2008 (UTC)(replying to LessHeard vanU).
The argument has been attempted before at community ban discussions that User:so-and-so could evade it anyway, so don't ban. It's never carried weight that I've seen, and it's unsettling to see an arbitrator seriously entertain that line of reasoning. If a siteban is appropriate, we ban. And then we play whack-a-mole if necessary (there appears to be no shortage here of administrators who would be willing to do so). The difference between topic banning and sitebanning carries an enormous deterrent effect. DurovaCharge! 01:07, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
I get the impression that a topic ban may be moot; it appears to me unlikely that Mantanmoreland any longer has community confidence as an editor. Samiharris has stopped, and all the checkusered socks have been blocked. The range of articles is limited enough to be watched closely. The proposed disclosure rules and a ban on proxy editing will do the trick; leave the rest up to the community.
Should the community not decide to ban, and I hope it does not, an editing restriction to the talk page should be enough. Mantanmoreland's knowledge of the subject is good, and he has contributed considerably to both of the articles I have examined in any detail. I do not know why people claim that he is Gary Weiss, but the idea does seem to have taken hold in the community. If he is, then he should not be permitted to edit the article on Gary Weiss, nor perhaps that on Patrick M. Byrne. The community might want to add other restrictions, though I'd say that from his edits on naked short selling they would be unnecessary. He is certainly a sock puppeteer (even discounting the questionable Samiharris evidence) and he has certainly betrayed our trust, but he is not a bad or even a particularly biased editor. Whether he can recover from this unpopularity is another matter. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 03:01, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Oversight deletions in the Weiss article

Unless I missed it somewhere, I haven't seen it mentioned which oversight admin(s) oversighted edits from the Weiss article and associated talk page. Would one of the arbitrators please state here who it was? Thank you. Cla68 (talk) 23:48, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

I understand that some of the material was oversighted by DMCDevit. Was he the only one to oversight edits from the article? Were edits from the talk page also oversighted? If so, was it DMCDevit that oversighted those? Cla68 (talk) 00:49, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
Have you asked themself if they did the oversighting, if that is not too presumtious might i suggest?--Newbyguesses - Talk 05:20, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
Where is this leading? Did any party to this case make edits that needed to be oversighted? --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 05:33, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
I asked this basic question in my evidence section and here, and all I get in response from the ArbCom is complete silence. Why? Give us the name(s). If those oversight admins were following the guidelines in selecting which edits to delete, then there's no problem. Is there a "can of worms" issue here? Cla68 (talk) 10:25, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
Yes, Oversight is enforcement of the privacy policy, so by definition it's a "can of worms" issue. If you think an oversighter has breached or abused his powers on Gary Weiss or its talk page, ask a steward to take a look. A steward can summarily deal with any such abuses by removing oversight power (and presumably, by restoring the wrongly removed edits, or at least its content). --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 12:10, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
Tony: I believe you misunderstand policy with respect to stewards in this area. While I have the technical ability to flip oversight on for myself, check the matter in question, and then desysop whomever I choose, I do not have the ability to do so under policy. (nor would I keep my Steward bit for very long if I did so) Stewards act on consensus as they best understand it. They never act as a judge or examiner or investigator or anything else at a wiki with community, as that would go against the local communities policy, except in extreme emergency siguation. Community policy at en:wp is that ArbCom appoints oversighters. We have a large number of them. Further, policy WMF wide is that only those with oversight permission at a particular wiki should use it, and that if there is an issue where satisfaction is not obtained locally, the matter should be taken to the Ombudsman commission. As a note, the oversighters on en:wp are just about all arbcom or former arbcom members. Perhaps someone should petition to ArbCom to have some local oversighters appointed who are not ArbCom members, if there is a concern in that area. See also my talk where this issue was raised (I was requested to look into this matter, and declined, since it is outside my remit). Tony if you have further questions, I suggest a thorough review of policy in this area. ++Lar: t/c 19:48, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
I was referring to Wikipedia:Revision hiding#Revocation. It may be out of date or inaccurate, or I could have misread the following when I took it to imply summary revocation: "Just as easily as the oversight permission can be granted, it can be revoked. If a Wikimedia Steward feels that the editor has abused oversight by hiding revisions which do not qualify under one of the above criteria, they will immediately remove the permission from the editor." I agree that the ombudsman commission may be a better bet, and also suggested that route. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 20:22, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
That is interesting. Thanks for pointing that out. It seems an exception to the general WMF wide policy, if it indeed is in force. (and it is an interesting twist on the general steward philosophy of not judging, not acting in the absence of clear consensus, etc... I wonder if it was introduced prior to the Ombudsman function coming into existance?) I've asked ArbCom for clarification on that via email. ++Lar: t/c 21:35, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

<-- Right, however I and another editor have also asked simply for a confirmation that WordBomb did post the material to the article that he has been alleged to have added. I have asked this several times, and User:Random832 has formally asked on the evidence page. Considering this is obviously relevant to public discussions about this case and its related issues, the appearance is not concern over privacy or information about the nature of oversight. Perhaps they are concerned people will raise a storm over 2 or 3 edits that didn't need to be oversighted, but even that doesn't add up; it wouldn't seem difficult to explain that 2 or 3 too many edits were oversighted in removing a banned user's edits generally adding allegedly identifying information. On the other hand, the question about whether a statement in evidence by a major party to these events is correct should obviously be known, and should be answered without some very important reason not to. Mackan79 (talk) 18:23, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Could you explain a bit more about this? WordBomb is a banned nuisance. Whether or not people say he posted something he shouldn't have done, which has now been oversighted, we know enough about his activities that were not oversighted to say with certainty that he's never going to be welcome here, so in view of this how will your question help us to resolve this case? --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 18:28, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
I think that having a basic chronology of how this issue developed is very important for this case as well as for determining what went wrong. Even now, the current ArbCom decision, while an improvement, suggests that Mantanmoreland will be allowed to continue editing while WordBomb will not. If the answer to future questions is that WordBomb is a banned nuisance, then I'd like to know why he was banned. I'd also like to know if the statements that have been and continue to be made about him are correct. There are other concerns, such as the indications of not providing basic information to verify public statements, but I think these reasons alone are more than enough. Mackan79 (talk) 19:11, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
WordBomb was banned by normal community mechanisms. He could be unbanned by the same mechanisms. By the same token, Mantanmoreland could be banned by the community. If you think something funny has been going on and the privacy policy has been abused, it might be worth going to metawikipedia and asking an ombudsman to take a look at the matter. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 20:23, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
It's not the privacy policy; I'm solely interested whether WordBomb added the allegation after he conceded not to, as SlimVirgin has now said.[4] The reason I question her statement is that I had just asked her about this,[5] and she didn't answer, but then in evidence she added a list of times for his edits to jusify her block, that clearly included one after the time WordBomb had conceded to stop adding the material. Thus I asked her again, but she did not answer, and so I have asked others with oversight access to clarify. I don't question that his edits would be oversighted, but I do question her statement, as I think is necessary. Of course it is also difficult to raise the issue of his block without knowing why he was blocked. Mackan79 (talk) 20:45, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
I think you may be getting deletion mixed up with oversighting. I followed your link and it appears that you're referring to statements by User:SlimVirgin who very clearly describes deleting edits by WordBomb, and gives links to those deleted edits. Any administrator can see them. Just ask one to confirm that it conforms to SlimVirgin's description. If it turns out that they're perfectly innocent edits that shouldn't have been deleted, ask for them to be undeleted. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 21:09, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for your clarification. But are you saying that the edit to WordBomb's talk page was at 21:49? The sentence I am questioning is "Over several edits on that day (at 07:57, 15:39, 16:46, 16:49, 19:18, 19:51, and 21:49), WB had added to the article that Weiss was editing Wikipedia as MM, and that an anti-naked short selling group had 'launched a campaign' against Weiss to show that he was posting to certain message boards." Since that time, I have found that WordBomb actually conceded not to add the material to the article again at 17:00. Thus, I've asked whether there were edits to the article at 19:18, 19:51 and 21:49 that readded the allegation. If you're saying the edit at 21:49 was to WordBomb's talk page that seems to resolve that edit, but I'd still like to know then if he added the allegation at the two other times (19:18 and 19:51). Mackan79 (talk) 22:06, 8 March 2008 (UTC) (Also, see here where an admin clarified that edits to the article were not deleted.)
SlimVirgin's statement is quite clear and can be checked by any admin. I've no idea why you might think I know or am making any statements about deleted edits by another user. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 00:06, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
Except that I asked an admin who said that there were no deleted edits visible on the article.[[6] I'm not asking about where she says WordBomb responded on his talk page, but about the seven edits she says were made to the article, at the seven listed time stamps. Random832's explanation clarifies that these must have been oversighted, since they're not in the deletion log. Mackan79 (talk) 00:13, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
So we're back to oversighting. I do think it's a job for a steward or ombudsman. This is something that has to be handled with delicacy. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 00:15, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

<--Can details please be supplied as to the POST by WordBomb at 21:49 on 7 July 2006 which is referred to by user:SlimVirgin at Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Mantanmoreland/Evidence#Evidence presented by SlimVirgin. This would seem a vital matter, in that WB offered to refrain from further posts at 20:28 on 7 July 2006.

User:SlimVirgin's evidence -

On July 7, I responded to a post on AN/I from Mantanmoreland (MM), who asked for help with WB's edits to Gary Weiss. [7] Over several edits on that day (at 07:57, 15:39, 16:46, 16:49, 19:18, 19:51, and 21:49), WB had added to the article that Weiss was editing Wikipedia as MM, and that an anti-naked short selling group had "launched a campaign" against Weiss to show that he was posting to certain message boards. WB had restored the edits when reverted. These were violations of BLP and HARASS, so I deleted the edits and blocked the WB account. I left a note on his talk page explaining that posting another user's personal details, accurate or not, was a blockable offense, and that I'd unblock if he gave an assurance that he wouldn't repost them. [8] He responded by reposting them on his talk page, [9] so I deleted the edit, protected the page, and let the block stand....

The block was enacted after this post by WordBomb -

I will indeed refrain from further edits until the process can begin. Say...you know an awful lot about Gary Weiss. How exactly is that? Do you know him? Let the truth be told. 20:28, 7 July 2006 (UTC) DIFF.

[emphasis added]. Without breaching OVERSIGHT, or reasonable confidentiality, can some Admin, Clerk, or perhaps Steward give heed to this request? --Newbyguesses - Talk 02:51, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Have you thought of trying the ombudsman page on meta? I think this discussion has gone on long enough for most people to get the gist. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 03:20, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
Someone suggested I comment here. As I said in my evidence, WB was adding material to Gary Weiss that was an attempt to out an editor, and was also making claims about Weiss's alleged posting on message boards. My memory is that, in response to this complaint, I deleted the edits, blocked the account, and told him I'd unblock him if he would assure me he wouldn't post the material again. I can't check the times of the edits because they were subsequently oversighted, so in order to prepare my evidence for this case, I asked someone for the times of WB's edits to Gary Weiss that day, and those were the times I was given. That's all I know. I also can't see what difference it makes. SlimVirgin (talk)(contribs) 04:09, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
I think it matters a great deal if he'd conceded to pursue mediation rather than post the allegation further, in two places, nearly five hours before you blocked him indefinitely. Considering it was also clearly stated in his edit summary, it's hard to see how you wouldn't have looked at what had happened in the last five hours before indefinitely blocking him. To be honest, I also do not find it particularly credible that you simply asked someone with oversight for the times he edited the article that day, considering I had just specifically asked you whether he added the allegation after he conceded not to.[10] You responded to that post, but did not correct the timing. When you then added your evidence, you made specific reference to the times he allegedly added his claim, which had no relevance other than in response to my question, to suggest that indeed he had added the allegation after he conceded not to. I'm sorry for having to say so, but it does not strike me as a candid representation of these rather important events. Mackan79 (talk) 05:58, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
I don't appreciate the assumption of bad faith, and still don't see the point. WB was blocked because he tried to out someone. He was offered an unblock, but in response he did it again. He continued doing it, using dozens of accounts, for many months, so it wasn't exactly a misunderstanding. All he had to do was say to me, the blocking admin, that he wouldn't post the claim again, and I'd have unblocked him.
I also didn't offer evidence in response to anything you said or asked. I don't even have this page on my watchlist, and haven't read most of it. I offered what I know, either in my evidence or in an e-mail to the ArbCom. If the Arbs have questions about it, I'm sure they'll ask me. SlimVirgin (talk)(contribs) 06:18, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
I am not talking about any discussions on this page, but a discussion we had on our talk pages, in which I asked you whether he posted the allegation again to the article after conceding not to. We went back and forth about it three times. How you claim not to see the relevance I'm not sure, but I also find it inconsistent with your having added the specific times in your evidence. It's one of several things that concerns me about these events, but I'll stick to that for now. Mackan79 (talk) 06:34, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
You'll be looking for a way of arguing that she shouldn't have blocked him, I presume? --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 06:46, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
It's fairly clear to me that she shouldn't have blocked him, but even that is one of my smaller concerns, compared to the way his actions have been represented since that time. It concerns me, for instance, that WB makes a questionable statement about someone violating 3RR when they didn't really and now his credibility is shot, but the other side can say pretty much anything they want without question. But yes, if Wikipedia wishes to reconcile this issue at some point, it may be worth noting that the basis for his original block was, at best, questionable. Mackan79 (talk) 07:03, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
The clanging sound you heard was my jaw hitting the floor. I didn't expect you to come out and admit it, I was just making a wild and hopeful stab. You admit that the miscreant several times deliberately inserted material that breached the privacy policy into Wikipedia. Yet you think the block was questionable at best. Okay, mission accomplished, good day. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 07:09, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
I think you're mistaken; the miscreant alleged that an individual was editing his own biography with sockpuppets, and that the individual was acting similarly in other places on the Web. The miscreant in particular wasn't a Wikipedia editor at the time. One can talk about the privacy policy, but this is rather vastly different from one Wikipedia editor trying to out another that perhaps he or she doesn't like. To clarify, if a new user violates the privacy policy, but is then told about it and twice agrees not to post further, then no, I don't believe it is necessary five hours later for an admin to start by indefinitely blocking the person until they agree a third time not to post further. That does appear to be what happened here. I also question the term used to describe him, but I'll have to simply ask for your AGF on that one for now if to stay a little focused. Mackan79 (talk) 07:30, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
From the above, I take it you don't take the privacy policy seriously and you think those who do are acting questionably, "at best". Moreover you think newcomers should need to be told twice not to act in a disgusting and unacceptable way. As a game with myself, I'm trying to work out what you'll say next. I predict that next you'll be saying WordBomb is a nice fellow really, well meaning, just misunderstood. What's the privacy policy when we're talking about somebody heinously editing his own biography on the internet! His subsequent behavior can be written off as a protracted cry for help. Am I close? --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 13:39, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
Close to having future correspondence addressed to "Under The Rickety Rackety Bridge"? Yes, I would hazard. What is so "disgusting" about an individual, then a newbie here, stating their belief that the individuals editing the article (under account names) regarding himself are - or are related to - a person with whom he is in a real world dispute. I mean if blurting out what is believed to be the truth (even though they violated some of this websites rules in doing so - but how were they to know that?) makes you nauseous then you really need to take something to settle your stomach before editing here. I know that verifiability trumps truth, but there is still a lot of it around. I guess you haven't been looking too closely to have survived for so long. LessHeard vanU (talk) 14:36, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
No I don't think Mackan79 is a troll, and I'm sorry if I've given anyone that impression. I think he's just misguided. WordBomb, a newcomer who suddenly evinced a magical ability to reliably recognise multiple fake personalities (a feat which our own infinitely more experienced arbitration comittee, checkusers every one, admit is beyond them) is obviously not here to create an encyclopedia, and when he vandalized the articles by inserting material in breach of the privacy policy he was making his purpose as clear as day: to abuse the popularity of Wikiedia in order to damage the reputation of his target.
Many people who have become caught up in this affair seem to have an absolute belief in the certitude of certain propositions that is very worrying for outsiders. I don't know whether it makes it more worrying that those beliefs are often expressed in a cryptic algebraic code involving pairs of capital letters and equality signs, but this "XY=AB"-style expression of belief certainly looks bizarre, seen from the outside. While believers could still be right and the non-believers wrong, the believers are not excused the requirements of basic human decency simply because they have strong beliefs.
Nor are the non-believers too stupid to recognise an abuse-only account when they see one. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 19:48, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
We'll see if I can clarify my position on the matter as I consider it. I do care about the privacy policy, I only don't see it as exempt from WP:Bite any more than others. Of course it may be that people violating it are more often at cross-purposes with Wikipedia than others, but nevertheless, blocking after someone agrees not to post further so that they agree to this again doesn't make much sense. It's likely a part of what started this off on the wrong foot, as may be discussed in further detail if or when we reexamine the broader issues. Mackan79 (talk) 20:07, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
Have you actually read the mediation application? This guy comes to Wikipedia and say he wants to mediate with someone over his intent to insert defamatory statements about a third party into articles. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 00:39, 12 March 2008 (UTC)


There's a problem with calling someone a miscreant at a discussion where he's almost certain to be reading and is banned from defending himself. I agree that the conduct was deeply problematic, but let's confine ourselves to discussing his actions rather than his character. It's important to remain neutral enough that we defend BLP equally on all sides. Perhaps one of the reasons this dispute became so bitter and so protracted is because some observers (and some Wikipedians) perceived a favoritism--that a tight knit group of people were jealously protecting BLP for Gary Weiss while violating it with respect to the top personnel of Overstock.com?

Showing someone the door is one thing, but delivering a kick in the pants on the way out is counterproductive. The natural human reaction is to pick up a stone and throw it at the window. That doesn't justify the broken window, of course, but it's no fun to sweep up broken glass. DurovaCharge! 19:37, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm sorry if my use of the term appears inappropriate. I'll settle for whatever term is considered acceptable and means "person who deliberately and unapologetically abuses Wikipedia with a specious justification over a protracted period." --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 19:56, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
If the fact that you've framed the history of this case non-objectively is taken into account, the correct term appears to be hero (and I believe this term should be allowed if "miscreant" is allowed). This is an outsider's view and it's possible that expressing this view is grounds for "blocking" or "banning". However, as far as I can tell, from the start of these events straight through to the present arbitration, people have dealt with the situation primarily by framing it a certain way (and by "blocking" or "banning" anybody who expressed a contrary viewpoint). This went all the way to the top (the phrase "shoot on sight" comes to mind). There's been no serious attempt to address issues that are readily apparent to anybody who isn't part of your community. I won't link to a site that isn't supposed to be mentioned here, but I'll note that the "miscreant" has made assertions of fact on the site and asked you to contradict any of them. Not one of you has done so. He states that one of your top-level people responded by telling him to "f*ck off" and blocking an entire ISP. If there are "good guys" and "bad guys" in this situation, some people outside your community would view you as the "bad guys". If a movie is made about the past few years, it's unlikely that you'll be wearing the white hats. WordBomb and Byrne will be portrayed as underdog outsiders fighting for the truth against heavy odds. Additionally, Byrne's statements about "circularity" and "paradigms" are too abstract to have the effect he was aiming for, but he's essentially correct. The fact that you've defined yourselves as the "good guys" makes you the "good guys" inside your community, but you're not running a private role-playing game. You don't get to behave as though you're sealed off from the real world. You affect the real world and it's going to affect you back. It's possible that future "miscreants" will be more aggressive than WordBomb (who has arguably exercised more restraint than some of your top-level people). You need to move towards a better interface with the real world. This arbitration was an opportunity to do so, and you seem to have missed the opportunity. Comment From the Outside World (talk) 23:12, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

<-- Reply to User:Comment From the Outside World the Outside world, user - Byrne is not argung his case, here at all, except in a few polite posts, and /Evidence. And, user:WordBomb has commented not at all. Much has been heard about them, of which I gleaned little detail, but not much heard from them, to address or amplify at least I think one of the points that you are making. --Newbyguesses - Talk 23:32, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your response (I didn't expect to see one). I posted here specifically in response to Anticipation's remark. It seemed like a good example of the "circularity" and "paradigm" that Byrne has talked about elsewhere. I believe you're correct when you point out that Byrne hasn't said much on this page, but my remarks seemed appropriate as a response to what Anticipation did say here. As a side note, Anticipation was responding to speculation by Durova about how "observers" might perceive these events and I'd like to add that Durova is correct. Comment From the Outside World (talk) 01:01, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

See also Wikipedia talk:Requests for arbitration/Mantanmoreland/Evidence#Now wait just a cottonpicking minute before we close this down, particularly the comments "What I would like to verify is simply whether WordBomb indeed readded the allegation at 21:49" per Mackan79 (talk) 22:45, 28 February 2008 (UTC) and I asked SV about this the other day and she didn't respond, which is why I was surprised to see her list an edit at 21:49 in evidence per- Mackan79 (talk) 22:48, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

These questions, over a week old, have not been addressed. The POST of wordbomb may not impact much on Mantanmoreland's fate, however it is very important to a number of editors, for a number of reasons, that this matter be rendered more transparent, soon. --Newbyguesses - Talk 20:34, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Voting

Congratulations, I believe are due, to the arbitrators. It appears that 13 Proposed decisions, at least, will now pass. I believe I can live with those, in fact, it is better than I expected. There are a number of issues left unresolved, but that was always going to be the case. The arbitrators have deliberated long and well, I hope my congratulations are sincerely taken, and may be joined by further and respected editors. --Newbyguesses - Talk 11:51, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Plus not so respected editors, like me...? ;~) LessHeard vanU (talk) 10:15, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
Nice to start the wiki-day with a smile. ;-) FloNight♥♥♥ 12:01, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
I faced an extremely frosty reception the other day for simply expressing my parsimonious view that the findings of fact in proposed decision at the time were sufficient. Except for a tweak to finding 2 to avoid the reading of some kind of precedent, there has been no change to the findings in the case since then [11]. This sea-change can only have been due to Newyorkbrad's careful and patient work of explanation. Congratulations to Brad for...whatever it was he said that changed minds (Brad of course will be aware that I never listen to a word he says ). --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 12:25, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
I am uncertain that that the Proposed decisions are sufficient for all the aspects that have concerned most of the parties participating here, but I acknowledge that within the remit that they gave themselves the arbs have performed admirably. I am also uncertain that reaching definitive conclusions within a narrow focus rather than possibly having fractured findings over a wider range of concerns is better or worse for the community in the long run. I guess we are going to find out. LessHeard vanU (talk) 13:35, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
Yes, New Lover Etc, you did face a frosty reception the other day, but mostly for the way you seemed to emerge from a long nap and proceed, heavy-lidded and silk-pajama'd, to pronounce judgment on the merits of a discussion you had missed in its entirety and knew nothing about. We know that you want people to accept the wisdom of the Arbcom decision; do you think your advocacy has been a help or hindrance in that? From where I sit, NY Brad's earnest thoroughness is going over better than your exquisite boredom; why not leave the diplomacy to him?--G-Dett (talk) 19:47, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
That's a bit naughty. To set me up as if I were an arbitrator, or some kind of PR agent, is a ridiculous distortion. I'm just this guy, you know? --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The
I don't read what has been said as setting you up as an arbitrator or PR agent - but G-Dett is suggesting that your advocacy is not helping other editors to accept that the ArbCom decision is a wise way forward. NYBrad's comments are much more helpful in encouraging a move forward, because they show a lot of serious thought (albeit to an approach with which others disagree), and reflection on the community response. Your evident disinterest in the extensive evidence presented, along with the related discussions, is not suggestive of either of these - hence the suggestion that your actions and hindering the achievement of your goals. You are, of course, entitled to contribute as you see fit, but I'd encourage you to consider the point G-Dett is making. Jay*Jay (talk) 00:48, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] The majority conclude...

Josh suggests that this phrase might be removed from FoF 2 Allegations (or, I guess, 2.1). Note that this would not force an aritrator to publicly dissent by opposing; simply failing to register a vote would be enough. As it stands though, the FoF states that the arbitrator voting yes believe that the majority of arbitrators agree... there is question of individual responsibility... there is a question of when private polls are necessary (if one indeed took place)... there is a question, if it were a narrow majority, of what happens if an arb changes their mind, or becomes unsure. While Newyorkbrad's extended comments (above) were welcome, clarifying, informative - they did not really address this. Removing the phrase would be a quite welcome modification in the FoF. Jd2718 (talk) 15:26, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

  • It still strikes me as odd -- what would it actually mean if I voted against it? That I didn't believe that the majority felt that way? (I'm pretty sure the majority feels that way.) Certainly the plurality feels that way. It doesn't really hurt anything, which is why I voted for it, but it feels to me very much like "It should be noted that" -- self-evident and redundant. But I'm not in the mood for fine-tuned language crafting. --jpgordon∇∆∇∆ 16:12, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Good enough

The Committee members have made a sincere effort in a difficult case. The proposed decision appears to be moving a direction that will allow this matter to be resolved. If the various players continue to stir up trouble, I am confident that the remedies here will lead to full sitebans. Eventualism is a reasonable strategy in many situations. Jehochman Talk 16:06, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Observations

For what it's worth, some thoughts on this case and the way that it has progressed.

This case was presented to us as essentially an up/down sockpuppetry question. An enormous amount of evidence was presented as to the question of whether two accounts were sockpuppets, a small amount as to what the consequences would be if the accounts were indeed sockpuppets, and essentially no evidence indicating why such great attention ought to be paid to these accounts in particular (instead we received page upon page of speculation about the identity of the operators of these accounts).

The first question is that of evidentiary standards. In order to make a determination of sockpuppetry, there must, to quote the proposed decision, be a "substantial weight of credible evidence" giving rise to the possibility of sockpuppetry; I would add further that the possibility of sockpuppetry ought to be, on the balance of probabilities, the most likely possibility. No, CheckUser confirmation will not always be necessary to establish sockpuppetry. Nevertheless, CheckUser is presently the most preferred type of evidence because, although it is possible to manufacture negative results (through the use of open proxies, for example) it's extremely difficult to manufacture positive ones (depending on the target's Internet setup, it may well be impossible without physically sharing their connection).

In this case there has been a great volume of evidence presented: some credible, some not so credible; some using accepted methodologies and some using novel ones. Some of the presented evidence has been entirely irrelevant to the questions at hand. My own conclusion is that the evidence does indeed raise sockpuppetry as a possibility; however, I cannot say that it is the most likely of all possibilities. Impersonation, for example, is as consistent with the majority of the evidence as sockpuppetry is, and some of the evidence suggests that it is marginally more likely.

It should be noted that in certain cases, where there is similar uncertainty, the Committee will nevertheless be moved to act in order to avoid further imminent disruption, regardless of which alternative is correct. Such a risk was not demonstrated in this case, and indeed recent analysis in fact largely suggested an absence of disruptive patterns of editing over a long period of time by the accounts concerned.

Ultimately the question must be asked, what does it matter? As Brad has discussed above, the Committee is endeavouring to give the community a framework within which to address the problems with these articles for the long term. We've looked beyond the simple question that we were asked to answer and tried to consider what is best for the articles. We should all bear in mind that, where problems such as non-neutral or self-interested editing are alleged, the best remedy is to expose the articles concerned to more and more independent eyes – indeed, this is essentially the premise upon which the project operates.

So what is to come of this case? First of all, I would hope that the focus of all this energy is directed where it belongs: towards improving the relevant articles. Secondly, I would hope that the community turns its mind towards some of the limitations that we have found ourselves pushing up against in this case, namely a sockpuppetry policy that encourages sockpuppetry, an (no) open proxy policy that encourages open proxying, and a conflict of interest policy that rewards deception and punishes disclosure. --bainer (talk) 14:27, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

I've pretty much moved on, as it had become clear ArbCom intended to go through this sort of hand-waving exculpatrory process, but just a note to say that if anyone genuinely think Tony's "recent analysis" has "largely suggested" anything, then I am afraid I view the remainder of anything they have to say with considerable doubt. (Particularly if that "analysis" is considered largely suggestive but alanyst's is "open to alternative interpretation". I would love to know how an impersonator pulls off the no-collisions pattern. Relata refero (talk) 00:13, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
This response, although it is gratefully received, does beg the question at what point do plaintiffs (or whatever phrase is appropriate) need to stop assuming prior knowledge? Are you saying that we needed to demonstrate that there has been a festering source of dispute and discontent in articles relating to Gary Weiss? That we should have mentioned that various accounts had been banned in relation to edits on those articles? That there has been off-Wiki campaigns which have had consequences otherwise on Wikipedia (you might remember a little arbcom called BADSITES)? Do we have to point out that, when comparing editing times and sequences to evidence socking, that the same articles were appearing in both editors history - and thus indicating that if they were socking then they were doing so in the same articles and were thus falsely creating an appearance of consensus?
It was presented as a simple up and down case of socking because, generally, that is what had already been determined at the investigation instigated by SirFozzie and the subsequent RfC, but the community needed the authority provided by ArbCom to take action is what had (well, in the consideration of those on the frontlines anyway) historically been a very sensitive area.
On the basis of this consideration, next time it would be easier if the parties requiring further advice would draw lots, the loser enact an indef block on the subject under suspicion, likely instigate a wheelwar and retaliationary blocking, cause great furore and drama at WP:AN/ANI, devide the community into various camps, and then have the sorry mess up before ArbCom so they can judge if the grounds for the original block was appropriate..... although presumably some other individual whose poor choice of words will likely be the person mostly sanctioned by the committee.
Notwishstanding the above, I do endorse the final paragraph. Yes, the dichotomy between intent and application of some policies do need investigation. LessHeard vanU (talk) 15:01, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
Bainer's objections to a finding of sockpuppetry have been answered repeatedly on this very talk page, which I have to believe Bainer hasn't bothered to read. On the Workshop page on February 19, I asked the members of the ArbCom to tell us whether they were satisfied with the evidence provided or whether they needed more. Did Bainer even read that? Now he complains about lack of evidence in certain areas. Now he brings up "evidentiary standards" when evidentiary standards have been discussed to the point where he looks as if he's either ignored the discussion or never read it (more on that below). He ignores the double voting by GW/SH in AfDs and Mongo's RFA and by only focusing on several content pages he's able to ask, "what does it matter?" (GeorgeWilliamHerbert also ignores it or hasn't reacted to it; Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The also ignores it or hasn't reacted to it. The ArbCom decision also ignores it. Dammit, is repeated double voting by a repeat sockpuppeteer a serious, bannable offense or not?) At least Bainer doesn't ignore the How-to manual for successful sockpuppetry that this case has laid out: Anyone reading through this case now knows how to successfully game the system. Where is the ArbCom request to the community to address this? Why hasn't Bainer or any other arbitrator put that up on the Proposed Decision page and had the members vote on it? Can't ArbCom as a whole ask the community to consider the concerns that Bainer brings up in his last paragraph?
As to evidentiary standards: Bainer's standards are impossible to meet, as has been discussed. Bainer, in actual courtrooms where actual people are actually sent to the hoosegow, centuries-old legal practice has set the standard beyond a reasonable doubt, at least in the United States. This is supposed to be a higher evidentiary standard than "substantial weight of credible evidence", the one you're supposedly using. People far smarter than you or I -- and many thousands of such people -- have thought about what it takes to convict, and their standard is lower than the one you're actually using. Go buttonhole a lawyer or a law professor (you're at a university, aren't you?) and you can get an earful on it in five minutes. In the court trials I've been at, judges will patiently and excruciatingly go over these points with jurors: You can convict in circumstantial evidence; expert evidence can be considered by ultimately using your common sense; you can have a doubt about guilt but only if that doubt is reasonable should you vote not guilty; in a case in which the circumstantial evidence is in separate parts, individual parts do not need to meet the evidentiary standard separately but only taken as a whole (that is, if you believe enough individual parts are true, do you believe beyond a reasonable doubt that, taken as a whole, they prove guilt?). This isn't novel, this is so established that it's boilerplate, and I don't know of a higher evidentiary standard worldwide than the one used in U.S. criminal law. My point, which has been made before, is not that the committee needs to adopt legalisms but that even when these legalisms are adopted by courts bending over backward to protect the rights of the accused, responsible juries can convict. If you're going to hold up statistical evidence to greater scrutiny, no one objects to that -- but don't raise the standard for that far above even courtroom standards. (Any lawyers reading this are invited to correct me.)
As to not having enough of a case here to convict, I refuse to go back over the discussions to find the spots where Alanyst and others have summarized the multiple strands of evidence that in very different ways show similarities between these two accounts. Looking that up would be Bainer's job. The idea that there wasn't enough evidence here to prove sock puppetry isn't just wrong, it's ludicrous. The idea that SammiHarris could have been a ringer, imitating MM for a false sockpuppet accusation has been shot down by Durova at the bottom of the Workshop page and by another editor elsewhere (again, it's Bainer's job to look it up). I'll say plainly what I said politely before: The committee hasn't just come up with a wrong decision or one in which it has made mistakes in judgment; no, what the committee has done is fail to show it has considered the evidence responsibly, and Bainer has failed to show that here. A serious statement on Bainer's (or the committee's) part would show that he or it has actually considered the major points by stating why he/it believes those points were not convincing. Far more responsibility has been shown by outsiders on the talk pages, where serious people have made sober arguments. The committee has all the authority and all the evidence it needed. What it lacked was guts. Noroton (talk) 16:57, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
I am not at all surprised to read the response above from Noroton, as my first that was that the fire NYB has been trying to contain will not be put out by throwing petrol onto it. NYB's response, I thought, was worth a considered response, and given that some progress seemed to be being made, I decided to hold back and see what developed. Unfortunately, the post above from Bainer just highlights again why the community is entitled to know the positions of individual Arbs. ArbCom members are supposed to exercise good judgement - and the judgement evident from several members in this case is undermining confidence in ArbCom more generally. The end of Bainer's post raises some issues that need attention, but the rest of it sounds (at best) like someone who hasn't read the evidence or doesn't understand it. Jay*Jay (talk) 17:10, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
Noroton, I don't think you've read what I wrote. See particularly the reference to the Re Ted Kennedy case and the principle adopted there (although the wording has been refined since then). I entirely agree with you that the evidence demonstrates that the accounts share certain similarities. Where we disagree is on the next step, determining what that means.
As the Ted Kennedy principle indicates, where there is a background of significant disruption by some accounts, and there is no way to distinguish whether the accounts are, say, sockpuppets/meatpuppets/closely related editors advancing the same POV, then the Committee can simply deal with the effects, independently of the cause. Consider the facts in that case (what you might call a textbook example of that principle), where a number of registered accounts, as well as a number of IP addresses, had all engaged in a pattern of edit warring to insert exactly the same disputed text. There was clearly a background of significant disruption by those accounts, and although it couldn't be precisely determined whether this was the work of one person or a group of people pushing the same POV (this was the pre-CheckUser era, remember), the disruption was such that the Committee was moved to act essentially on the presumption that they were the same editor.
There was no such compelling pressure shown in this case, and so we've put the question aside to deal with the real problems here, the articles, and tried to find remedies to deal with them. --bainer (talk) 01:04, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
LessHeard vanU, we're obviously aware of the general problems with these articles, as are we aware of the external disputes in this area. My point was that some people have seemingly taken it for granted that these accounts alone are the sole proponents of all this disruption. --bainer (talk) 01:04, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

"Impersonation, for example, is as consistent with the majority of the evidence as sockpuppetry is, and some of the evidence suggests that it is marginally more likely." I'm astonished that the impersonation hypothesis is still being considered viable. The editing timestamps alone seem to debunk it, since in many instances the impersonator would have to have been able to predict the future in order to finish their string of edits minutes before the impersonated account began editing. And the edit summary similarity test gives little credence as well, since the impersonator would have to consistently mimic the idiosyncrasies of the victim, not only in occasional phrases but also in punctuation, capitalization, and grammatical habits—a rather difficult feat to accomplish over a year's time and 1200+ edits. There's also the argument about why the impersonator wouldn't have made a screamingly obvious "slip-up" to frame the accused instead of dithering for a year waiting for an independent investigation to be launched. In this light, what is the specific evidence that suggests it's more likely, and what makes it compelling enough to outweigh the considerable evidence against the idea? alanyst /talk/ 18:04, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

(ec with Alanyst) I agree with Jay Jay here - while NYB's comment left me feeling better (though still not that great) about the case, Bainer's comment has sent me in the opposite direction. I very much appreciate the fact that he commented here, and the final paragraph is spot on (though, as Noroton says, if Bainer and other Arbs have concerns along those lines they could have put some stuff in the findings about it). However the rest of the comment makes me think as though Bainer read a different set of evidence than most of the rest of us.
I echo LessHeard vanU's answer to Bainer's complaint that "essentially no evidence indicating why such great attention ought to be paid to these accounts in particular" was presented. First of all that is simply not true (significant evidence was presented showing double-voting, attempts to gerrymander consensus on talk pages, and using socks to POV push - these are violations of policy which is why paying attention to these accounts matters). Second of all, was it really necessary to explain the back story here? As LessHeard says, do we need to demonstrate there has been a huge dispute, one which has been raging on and off wiki? Some of the evidence might have done that (I don't remember) but if it didn't it would have been the easiest thing in the world to add that evidence. I don't believe an Arb ever said "explain why we should pay so much attention to these accounts," and I think most of us assumed that when ArbCom took the case they knew why we were here and why these sock allegations needed to be examined much more carefully than is typical. If Bainer is simply trying to say "where is the evidence of abusive sockpuppetry?" (even though that's not what he wrote) then there has been a strong effort to do that (for example evidence from Relate refero, Mackan79, G-Dett, and a small piece from me) and thus his claim of "essentially no evidence" is demonstrably false. If he did not find the evidence of abusive socking persuasive so be it, but it is not true that it was not presented. The way I read Bainer's comment though is that he does not see what the big deal about these accounts is and why we are spending so much time on this stuff (the first interpretation) and I find that rather incredible.
Even more disturbing is the claim that "Impersonation, for example, is as consistent with the majority of the evidence as sockpuppetry is, and some of the evidence suggests that it is marginally more likely." I have to question the judgment of anyone who can make that statement, unless they are privy to information which the rest of us have not seen. I assume you are basing it on this but cannot imagine why you think that tiny piece of evidence outweighs all of the COI evidence and/or common sense (the idea that WordBomb - or anyone else - would spend a year developing the SamiHarris account to look like MM, agree with MM on everything even though it went against WordBomb's interests, somehow manage to perfectly separate the SamiHarris edits from MM (i.e. no interleaving), and yet would fail to provide an obvious "smoking gun" like Sami editing one of Mantan's posts so that it would be an open and shut case is utterly, utterly fantastical). If Bainer is willing to elaborate, citing evidence, on why he thinks it is just as likely (or more so) that the SamiHarris account is operated by an enemy of MM to undermine him than I would love to hear that.
Despite the preceding I again thank Bainer for commenting. While it makes me feel worse about where we are, it does provide a better understanding of how we got there.--Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 18:12, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
My point is simply that there is an abundance of evidence demonstrating a similarity between the accounts, and a number of plausible theories explaining that similarity, but nothing clearly placing sockpuppetry as the most likely explanation.
To give an example, Alanyst's revised vector space analysis (not the erroneous original results) is a good piece of work indicating a similarity between the accounts, yet, as Alanyst's own analysis of his results indicates, it is at least as suggestive of the hypothesis that the operator of Samiharris has adopted selected key traits of Mantanmoreland as it is of the hypothesis that the accounts are socks.
As to your last point, knowing the emnity that this issue has generated among many people in the real world, I would simply say would you put it past them? --bainer (talk) 01:04, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
Two points in response to comments by various editors here:
LessHeard vanU says
It was presented as a simple up and down case of socking because, generally, that is what had already been determined at the investigation instigated by SirFozzie and the subsequent RfC, but the community needed the authority provided by ArbCom to take action
There is no requirement for arbitration committee authority to take action in the presence of consensus based in policy, and the arbitration committee tends to have a mind of its own (correctly believing its responsibilities to be somewhat broader than acting as a rubber stamp for the most popular view)
If you have community consensus to take action then you should do so. If you do not, and the committee won't do it, appeal to Jimbo. If he won't, go back to the community and if there is still no consensus then you have your answer.
Noroton says
I refuse to go back over the discussions to find the spots where Alanyst and others have summarized the multiple strands of evidence that in very different ways show similarities between these two accounts. Looking that up would be Bainer's job.
No. Arbitration cases are decided by arbitrators who examine and compare evidence, and it's a very hard job. Expecting an arbitrator, in addition to that, to trawl through over 300 kilobytes in search for some crucial point is not acceptable. Please all of your evidence submissions either on the evidence page or in email to the arbitrators, and make it brief and to the point. It is your personal responsibility to ensure that you present your evidence. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 19:13, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
Expecting an arbitrator, in addition to that, to trawl [...] in search for some crucial point is not acceptable. Precisely wrong. We can should be able to expect arbs to pay attention to the major discussion points over time, to note the cogent arguments on the talk pages and make note of the holes in the arguments. through over 300 kilobytes If Arbs had given direction when they were asked for it weeks ago, there'd be fewer kilobytes overall but more on the topics that concerned them. If Arbcom deliberations didn't at times draw from the better points made in the discussions here, their deliberations would've been pointless. The alternative is to come out with a decision making errors that the outside discussants had already overcome -- which, come to think of it, is precisely the hole Arbcom fell into here. It is your personal responsibiliy ... to contribute an occasional insight if I don't expect anyone else to do so, not to repeat evidence and arguments already given, especially to someone who's indicated he's not listening. To the extent that Alanyst and I repeated ourselves just above, I think we made a mistake. Bainer has held my little contributions and the much greater contributions of Alanyst, CoolHandLuke, SirFozzie, Durova, G-Dett, Relato Refera and so many others in contempt. The proper response for us is to note that and withdraw. I recall a college professor of mine discovering 10 minutes into his 75-minute class that not one of 70 students had done the reading, demonstrating similar contempt. His response was elegant: "No one seems to have done the reading. This class is over." He said nothing further. Neither will I. Noroton (talk) 21:11, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
I read all of the statements, evidence, workshop proposals, and talkpages in every case. I do not believe that any arbitrator has disclaimed having studied the evidence page. Newyorkbrad (talk) 22:10, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
I shouldn't be here, but I would like a follow-up on this point. Did you intentionally decide to ignore my several requests about what sorts of evidence would be helpful? If so, how was this not a show of disrespect—if not contempt? Cool Hand Luke 21:48, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
Are you speaking to me? Whatever other criticisms I might be subject to in this case, I really don't think I can fairly be suggested to have failed to interact with questions and comments from users on this page. At all times I welcomed all evidence of every nature, and I found the evidence that was submitted to be sufficient to reach my own conclusions about the facts, subject only to new evidence in the form of a deus ex machina in the form of new and probative evidence whose importance would be obvious to everyone. I've discussed my view of the evidence above, at enormous length. Other arbitrators' mileage in evaluating the evidence may vary.
If you wish to pursue this or any other aspect of the matter, please post to a new section or something, either here or on my talk. I almost missed this question in this location. Newyorkbrad (talk) 21:54, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
If you are serious about this, I suggest you consider circulating a question about speed reading abilities around the candidates at the next elections.
Perhaps you're new to arbitration procedures (I don't know because I've never seen your username before). If so then you could be foregiven for not realising that this is one of two cases currently in the voting phase, another two are in "motion to close" and there's another in evidence phase. In addition to that there are one pending application and three open requests for clarification of prior cases. There are only fifteen arbitrators. In this case, there are about 200 kilobytes, two dozen public submissions of evidence, some of them many times the size of the guideline of 1,000 words and 100 diffs. Some of them are (as I've remarked elsewhere) so cryptically written as to be essentially useless, while still others are devoted to ad hoc statistical techniques of untried reliability. The Workshop page is half a megabyte. The talk page of the workshop is 91 kilobytes. There will be who knows how many megabytes of email discussion on the arbitrators' mailing list. I suggest that your standards are unrealistic. We have evidence pages for the purpose of presenting evidence in a digestible form. If you can't convince an arbitrator in 1000 words and 100 diffs, I don't think asking him to trawl through a 300 kilobyte discussion page is likely to impress him either. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 21:51, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
We don't have to ask him, its in the job description, apparently. What we want is a sense that it was understood why it was felt necessary to bring the matter to ArbCom. LessHeard vanU (talk) 22:04, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
Your evidence, your choice. If burying a needle in a haystack is what works for you, go for it. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 22:42, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
(edit conflict)I am not surprised that Ant is siding with the bainer regarding reviewing evidence, since he similarly misses what I have said - and which has been supported - previously. To repeat myself; no one admin was prepared then to execute the block, being fully aware of the possible consequences personally and to the community in acting in such a sensitive manner. The fact that there are Arbs and other experienced contributors of good standing prepared to argue the findings and relevance of sockpuppet abuse in this enquiry is evidence enough that any action prior to having all avenues of resolution exhausted may have resulted in an extremely protracted struggle between those who felt the actions by MM deserved such sanction, and those whose opposition to anything that hinted at the "disgusting" WordBomb being given some credibility in their position attempting to protect that position by pardoning MM and condoning his actions as necessary. In short, a block before the matter was reviewed by the ArbCom would have lead to a situation in which the ArbCom would have been involved in anyway - in dispute resolution - with a whole lot more issues than the simple up and down question on whether alternate account abuse had occured.
Evidently this wasn't apparent to enough of the ArbCom to make them decide to deal with that specific question, although in its absence I wonder why the matter was so quickly accepted. It seems obtuse to agree to an ArbCom that hinges on the point that articles may historically have been manipulated through the device of sockpuppetry, yet only concern itself with the current consequences and how to control future potential for corruption. I have invoked George Santayana previously, and got a response, but will again and hope that it isn't overlooked like so much seemingly has. LessHeard vanU (talk) 21:40, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
As I said, you cannot act unless and until you have consensus to act. It's my opinion that a community ban would attain consensus. Your mileage may vary. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 21:55, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Thebainer says "Impersonation, for example, is as consistent with the majority of the evidence as sockpuppetry is, and some of the evidence suggests that it is marginally more likely." Elaborate on this. Even Mantanmoreland, while saying that it possible, admits that it is far fetched. It is embarrassing, although it is also telling, that at this point people are still floating this possibility.

Thebainer cites "recent analysis" by Tony here. LOL. Analysis? It seems like a recreation of the history tab, with editorial comments thrown in. 1) did you read through the diffs? Because of the way it is presented, if one were to check Tony's work, they are to take on a time consuming process of reviewing everything that Tony as reviewed. There must have been an easier way to present this evidence, and I wonder why Tony chose this way to do so. 2) Where has Tony went beyond a one liner summary after doing all this time consuming work? I do not see a summary of his findings. It is also telling that you choose to cite this evidence, even though it was submitted so late in the case, and in the face of volumes of evidence that has been submitted for weeks. Could you please rid of us this case already, and stop insulting our intelligence? End this arbcom and if there is a community solution to any perceived problem let the community handle it. daveh4h 21:44, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

See this edit in which I encourage an editor who seemed to be about to use my two plod-throughs for the purpose for which I constructed them--as an easier "map" to get around in than the history tab. Sadly he doesn't seem to have decided it worth the effort. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 22:00, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
Tony, I've already posted analyses of diffs far more detailed than your own (which are actually summary impressions, not analyses), and I may provide still more. The question for me in deciding whether to do so is this: does there remain a significant contingent of so-called "skeptics" (I contest the term here) who are open-minded as opposed to predetermined in their take on the evidence? Several of Bainer's conclusions – especially but not only his belief that a Rube-Goldberg-designed shaggy-dog strawman hoax on the part of Wordbomb is as probable a scenario as a two-time sockpuppeteer and POV-pusher creating a third abusive sock and being more careful with it – have left me feeling that further, painstaking analysis of evidence makes as much sense as baking fresh bread for my cat.--G-Dett (talk) 22:58, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
(ec with G-Dett) Probably because she felt that further evidence will do little or nothing at this point given that this case is essentially over. I think we are past the point where any kind of new evidence (barring some horribly horrific edit somewhere, and that's not the kind of evidence we have in this case) is going to cause the committee to radically shift course. I think most of the folks who have worked on this just want this thing to be done. I do find it rather telling that the only specific evidence referred to by Bainer was Anticipation's recent evidence (added well, well after the initial proposed decision was posted and therefore not a factor in Bainer's initial decision about this case) and (apparently) a fragment of evidence added by SlimVirgin. How that evidence was any better (or indeed even equal to) the reams of other evidence added is not explained, and indeed none of the other evidence of abusive sockpuppetry is even specifically referenced by Bainer so we don't know why it was so unpersuasive or how carefully he studied it. Since Tony has been upfront that his evidence is "a map" without much analysis I found it odd that Bainer says the evidence "suggested an absence of disruptive patterns of editing over a long period of time by the accounts concerned." The evidence is a slightly more fleshed out version of the history tab (obviously the history tab itself is not evidence) and of course a good amount of evidence was presented by several parties which showed disruptive editing. I guess Tony's presentation somehow overrides that in Bainer's mind (for reasons which will probably remain unexplained).
Like many others I'm now past the point of caring and am going to do what I already should have and stop commenting here. I hope the arbs close this mess out soon so we can move on.--Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 23:00, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Bainer's comments are beyond disappointing, in particular his statement with regards to no evidence indicating why such great attention ought to be paid to these accounts in particular (instead we received page upon page of speculation about the identity of the operators of these accounts). Bainer voted for finding 3.1 and clearly MM and SH have been extremely active on these pages, so why exactly should we not pay attention to these accounts? Labeling the evidence tying MM to GW as "speculation" is stubborn and almost dishonest. The evidence is extremely compelling: can Bainer actually come up with some sort of alternative explanation for the incredible accumulation of odd coincidences? Yes, it is possible that they're different people, who happen to both be at the other end of the world at similar periods, happen to both know about Varkala, happen to both have strong interests in the GW/overstock/naked-short-selling articles, happen to know the same little things about somewhat obscure places, etc. In isolation, all these things can be discarded as speculation. But as a whole, they establish clearly that MM is either GW or, as I said earlier, his wife, his brother, his son or his dog.

Bainer's comments on the evidence is so vague that it's almost insulting. "some credible, some not so credible; some using accepted methodologies and some using novel ones"? Unless you are ready to detail which evidence was credible and which was not, this is just a cheap way of saying your evaluation of the case is completely unrelated to the evidence presented. (And presenting Tony's "evidence" as the most pertinent to the case is laughably inappropriate.) If the two competing theories regarding the Samiharris account are sockpuppeting and impersonation, why not ban SH? The next time the community identifies a group of editors (or in this case, possibly a single editor) that games the system, edits tendentiously on sensitive subjects, transforms Wikipedia into a battleground, its best option is to avoid the ArbCom.

Bainer, you claim that we now have to revisit the COI policies in light of the fact that they reward deception and punish disclosure. While we all acknowledge this problem, it's just unexpected to see these rewards coming from the ArbCom. In your list of "limitations that we have found ourselves pushing up against in this case", you might want to add an ArbCom that is too busy arbitrating its own internal disagreements to produce anything but watered-down compromise-decisions in though cases. The decision is being promoted as wisely forward-looking, when in fact, especially in its awful initial version, it is a cowardly refusal to reflect more deeply about the issues at work.

All that being said, I will now follow Bigtimepeace's example. I'm also past the point of caring and I've learned my lesson: be pro-active as an admin, use the SSP board, impose indefinite blocks to the best of your judgment if you believe this in the best interests of the community, be ready to face the heat, avoid ArbCom at all costs for this type of issue. Pascal.Tesson (talk) 17:34, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Pascal, you say:

The next time the community identifies a group of editors (or in this case, possibly a single editor) that games the system, edits tendentiously on sensitive subjects, transforms Wikipedia into a battleground, its best option is to avoid the ArbCom.

That is precisely correct. When the community, by consensus, identifies such a situation. it takes action. When it does not have consensus to act, it comes to the arbitration committee to resolve the issue. The Committee is not a rubber stamp and no such rubber stamp is required for action where consensus exists. If consensus to act existed prior to this case, the case was unnecessary. If consensus to act exists after this case, then nothing the arbitration can say or do, or would wish to say or do, could override that consensus nor any appropriate community-decided actions resulting from it. The Arbitration Committee has always been firm on this to my recollection: that it does not pre-empt the decision of the community made by consensus based in policy. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 18:36, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

There was not consensus to act prior as at least one arbiter commented at AN that there was no dispute to evaluate the allegations of sockpuppetry against. And had a community ban discussion happened on the basis of the Rfc discussion, I can think of at least two admins who would have objected and asked for it to go to the committee, and several other "users in good standing" (such as yourself) who would have similarly objected. Most of those folks, now would not oppose a community ban/community sanction discussion as they've had time to really look at the community abuse that mm's deceptions have caused. --Rocksanddirt (talk) 19:53, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
I don't know whether I would have even noticed a community ban discussion on Mantanmoreland, let alone lodged an objection to such a ban based on consensus. But that's by the by. Yes, if there were experienced editors in good standing objecting to such a proposal, I agree that consensus to ban seems unlikely to have emerged. I also note, and am convinced by, FT2's comment of March 1:
Sometimes it's seemed that the really difficult heated issues need some means to vent, or to reach RFAR, before being sure a more balanced view will be found when remitted back to the community. This was the case at WP:SRNC, the Gdansk naming issue, and many other disputes. Consider the opposing question - if the community had proceeded from the RFC to a ban, how long before it would have been interminably contested as unfair, gloated over by some, paraded by others, and so on? Sometimes even though it may seem to do nothing on the surface, it's got a lot of value to have a second independent review, because our concern is not just "now" for the community, but the reduction of future harm too. [12]
The heated issues have been discussed, and set into perspective, and illuminated in many other ways, by a committee that appears to me to contain several fine minds and a huge preponderance of cool and sober heads. I've already stated my opinion on the question of whether Mantanmoreland's edits have harmed the content (they don't seem to have harmed it significantly) and whether his proven socking as found by checkuser has been disruptive (it has, and moreover has exacerbated the problem of dealing appropriately with WordBomb's attacks). The community as a whole will make an evaluation and I have already stated that I don't think a community ban unlikely. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 22:02, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
Presumably because the wisdom of the community does not match up to a committee of several fine minds and a preponderance of cool and sober heads. Sorry, huge preponderance. Yes, that's the wikipedia spirit all over. Relata refero (talk) 23:13, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
You'll have to explain that one to me. Slowly. How do you get what you said out of what I said? --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 00:32, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Topic ban

I believe some commenters may have overlooked proposed remedy 4, which has been added to the proposed decision on the proposal of FloNight. Newyorkbrad (talk) 17:55, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Actually, that was one of the major things that I had in mind when I noted that some progress is being made. That was certainly a welcome - and necessary - addition, in that it deals with the problem of MM declaring he has no COI. Unfortunately, there remain positive steps that can only be taken by ArbCom, and it is disappointing that the Committee collectively does not recognise the desirability of some actions to try and help the community to move forward. (For the record, I am not only referring to the missing MM = SH vote.) Jay*Jay (talk) 18:02, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
I think a topic ban is satifactory, and I also think Principle 4.1 is being overlooked by those who wish to know where individual arbitrators stand.--BirgitteSB 18:16, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
I'm glad this was added and am sure others will be as well. I'm far from an expert on ArbCom cases, but doesn't this remedy have to be rooted in some finding of fact? I assume the FoF in question which would apply is 2.1 (it seems like that's what will probably pass), but given the watered-down nature of that FoF including "various factors prevent a definitive conclusion from being reached," is that finding really enough basis for topic banning an editor? Maybe it is, as I said I don't know much about these cases, but I'm wondering if a stronger fact-finding is necessary to justify an outright topic ban. As of now there is nothing in the proposed decision which says that Mantanmoreland has definitely done anything wrong. One way you might strengthen this is by putting in an FoF that says MM has socked in the past (quite frankly that should be there anyway since we know that - not sure why it was not included given it's obvious relevance to the case) and then use that fact combine with the suspicion (but not certainty) in this case as a justification for topic banning him.--Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 18:31, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
Findings 2/2.1 (Allegations), although weaker than many editors are satisfied with, makes it plain that the committee has grounds for doubting the honesty of Matanmoreland's participation. Moreover although the fact that Mantanmoreland was caught socking by checkuser on various related articles does not appear as a finding in this case, it also clearly weighs in as a factor. Any evidence that Mantanmoreland has engaged in egregiously tendentious editing seems to have been too thin to prompt a finding, or perhaps it's still under internal discussion. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 23:12, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Role of WB and SV

I've added some additional evidence, aimed at removing some of the mystery surrounding certain aspects of all of this. I know some have considered having further discussions on some of these things, and that some have suggested it's not really relevant to this case. Submitted here for any thoughts either way. Mackan79 (talk) 04:47, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

I would love for this to be irrelevant to this case, but unfortunately comments by committee members on potential imping of MM socks seems to make it more relevant. In reality, the only way a community ban/sanction of mm can proceed is if sv is the one who actually makes the block, or lists the sanction. Else, someone will veto it or appeal it. --Rocksanddirt (talk) 15:03, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
"imping"? Newyorkbrad (talk) 15:13, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
Impersonating, I'd guess. alanyst /talk/ 15:18, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
(ec) sorry, it's used on another forum I waste time in as "pretending to be someone you are not", in that forum there is no real rule about sockpuppetry (I have about a dozen handles) and the only rule about identity is to not pretend to be another poster. so, in this case is would be the allegation that someone is pretending to be a mm through sockpuppetry. As has been discussed, that supposition is madness. --Rocksanddirt (talk) 15:20, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
With the site already infested with trolls, why shouldn't there be some imps too? Maybe some elves and dwarves and goblins too. *Dan T.* (talk) 15:24, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
It's unfortunately been standard operating procedure for Slim and her clique of friends for some time to marginalize critics and opponents by making overblown accusations of "stalking" or "harassment", which the entire clique forms a unified front in circling their wagons about. Anybody who objects is then accused of "belittling the very real problem of online harassment" and called part of the problem, and even threatened with blocks and bans in some cases. *Dan T.* (talk) 16:14, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
How is it possible to belittle the very real problem of online harassment? There could be nothing worse in the whole wide world than for it to be revealed at INFODOTCOM that Newbyguesses wears pink tights, could there? --Newbyguesses - Talk 17:45, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Changes to proposed decision

I have edited the wording of proposed remedy 1(A) per discussion above on this talkpage. I have also added a new proposed remedy 5 to assure that there is compliance with the topic ban (proposed remedy 4) that FloNight proposed and which is about to pass. Newyorkbrad (talk) 16:27, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

I support both additions. FloNight♥♥♥ 16:39, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
Both steps in the right direction. Given the choice between controlling a disruptive editor and trying to ban him or her entirely, it strikes me that control has a greater success rate and reduces the onsite misbehaviour. Risker (talk) 17:00, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
i agree with the direction the proposed decision is taking. I disagree with risker's comment on success rate of control of disruption. --Rocksanddirt (talk) 18:12, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Suggestions

I'd like to make a couple of suggestions:

  1. FT2 added a note to the 'Allegations' finding of fact, but not to its alternative version. Since the alternative version is the one likely to pass, I suggest that a similar note be added, for the same reason that the original note was included.
  2. The sense of the ArbCom members seems to be avoid delving into the past to rule a line and make a new start. As I argued earlier, I believe that this is extremely difficult without some acknowledgement (however generalised) that there were mistakes and / or questionable decisions. ArbCom appears to want the community to deal with MM, and whilst I disagree that this is the best way forward, it is possible for the community to take some future steps. I am unaware of any mechanism for the community to make the gesture of reconciliation that is necessary for moving forward; ArbCom, however, can. The 'Impact of Dispute' finding of fact makes some progress in this area, and FT2's alternative version goes closer. I wonder whether two separate findings - 'Impact of Dispute' and 'Internal Disruption' - might offer a better way forward. The former would support remedies 1, 2, and 3, whilst the latter, flowing in part from principles 7 amd 8, would support the remainder of the remedies. Perhaps something like:

Impact of Dispute: A series of controversies concerning the articles in question has embroiled or threatened to embroil Wikipedia in bitter and protracted off-wiki disputes. There have been persistent concerns about the reliability and neutrality of these articles and the fairness of our processes, which have damaged the reputation of Wikipedia externally and led to internal disruption of various kinds.

Internal Disruption: The Wikipedia community has been divided and seriously disrupted as a consequence of the off-wiki dispute. Disruptions have included suppression of concerns about the appropriateness of administrative actions, unacceptable personal conduct (including gross incivility and personal attacks), and misuse of editing priviledges for the purposes of advocacy (including violations of policies such as WP:BLP). Collaborative efforts towards consensus, which should be the hallmark of the development of encyclopedic content, have been impeded as internal divisions motivated by speculation and bad-faith assumptions have developed. Editors on both 'sides' of the dispute have at times acted in ways not in the best interests of encyclopedic content or of the community. Without commenting on the merits associated with any particular circumstance in this protracted dispute, the Committee declines to make specific findings against any individal user(s). However, in the best interests of the encyclopedia, the Committee will impose remedies that it believes are necessary to end the disruption and assist the community in moving forward.

Thoughts? Jay*Jay (talk) 03:02, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your thoughts. I think a portion of your analysis may be slightly outdated. As you've seen, the proposed decision now contains both a topic ban as well as a single-account limitation for Mantanmoreland. I don't mean to pretermit any community discussion, but these additions to the remedies strike me a reasonable attempt to "deal with" issues surrounding this user, whether or not anyone thinks that more (or less) serious remedies or sanctions are called for.
With respect to your specific proposals, I don't see all that much substantive difference between the ones you have offered and what is either express or at least strongly implicit (and brought out by my comments higher on this page) in the proposals already made. Perhaps you can clarify? Newyorkbrad (talk) 03:19, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
As Jpgordon has noted, the single account restriction is unsupported by any finding of fact. The alternative form of the 'Impact' finding is not going to pass, and this option might (?) have a better chance; this is much more definitive about the internal disruption than it is the present finding.
Leaving both of these points to one side, it seems to me that the present decision does not help to draw a line under other actions taken. The initial WB block is presently a topic of debate. The block placed by Durova is also an area of concern. I suggest that my formulation recognises some of these areas as potential errors in a way that the finding that will pass does not. I deliberately tried for broad language because my impression is that anything too definitively worded will encounter considerable opposition from certain ArbCom members - in fact, I would prefer to add recognition that some editors have been sanctioned incorrectly (even if it was done in good faith). Without an explicit recognition of faults on both sides that extends to admin actions and editors other MM and his socks, and recognition of the damage that was done, I believe that closure will not occur. I believe FT2 is correct - the vague and nuanced nod in this direction in the present 'Impact' finding will not be read in the way you seem to intend. Jay*Jay (talk) 03:35, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
What we want the community to deal with, Jay*Jay, is the articles. --bainer (talk) 07:57, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
Bainer, I wish you luck on that - because you are going to need it. The Committee may want the community to focus on the articles, but to facilitate this it needed to deal with the disruption. The fact that even the quite moderate steps I have suggested are unacceptable to some Committee members looks a lot more like the dogged pursuit of a personal belief than it does trying to end the disruption in the best interests of the community moving forward. The community will act to deal with those parts of the disruption that it can - like SH and MM. Those actions may or may not end up back here - and if ArbCom tries to overturn a community ban of MM, may even make the problem worse. There will, in my view, remain substantial reluctance to try to work on the articles - except possibly to watch for a new MM or WB sock to pop up. The Committee is so far away from the community consensus position that the decision will likely further errode confidence in ArbCom itself. The most disappointing thing is that ArbCom has declined to act in areas where the community can't effectively resolve the issues. Jay*Jay (talk) 00:22, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
Why will there be substantial reluctance to try to work on the articles? What is stopping people from working on them? --bainer (talk) 07:43, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
Bainer, I was going to provide a detailed response - diffs, etc - but with recent events don't see the point, so here is the short version: there is going to be a lot of heat around dealing with MM and SH in the way ArbCom have declined to act. We may see wheel warring, a return to ArbCom, or even retaliatory action against ArbCom members. New editors to those articles will be viewed with suspicion - but the lack of protection from blocking for asking for CU will keep some editors away, whilst others will be sure to raise any suspicions off-wiki. Fear of ArbCom - particularly of views like those of UC - will also deter participation. The tone of the decision does not suggest ArbCom will act to support improvements - it is 'sort it out yourselves', not 'we'll back you for whatever is necessary to fix the articles'. These pages demonstrate that resentment could also be a factor - "ArbCom wouldn't do its job, which should we? - you made the mess, you fix it". Some on these pages clearly still think there isn't a real problem. WB and MM will continue to pseudo-war. Even if I was knowledgable about the topic, I wouldn't touch them - it's all down side. Jay*Jay (talk) 20:11, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
I haven't commented here in a while for various reasons, but I want to say this:
The ArbCom has within its power to head off any future community action by not shirking its responsibility here. The wiki-community will be able to handle the articles given time, but only ArbCom, here and now, can stop the probable "blood-letting" animosity which will in all likleyhood result, if Samiharris is not blocked as a result of his actions/history; when this is brought to AN for community banning. Multiple editors waded into this with very little in the way of pre-conceived notions and ultimately decided , based on the evidence, that there was one editor, editing with some kind of conflict of interest, in a non-neutral POV manner, for more than a year. I don't believe that regular editors and admins intentionally meant to facilitate this, but that was the result.
I have to stop typing now, thanks, R. Baley (talk) 08:26, 11 March 2008 (UTC) (edited at 10:05, 11 March 2008 (UTC)) Perhaps it will not be as bad as I thought, I have probably over-estimated the willingness of many editors to continue to advocate on behalf of Samiharris in the case of a community sanction. R. Baley (talk) 10:05, 11 March 2008 (UTC) Struck, in light of the protection MM has received/is receiving. R. Baley (talk) 17:31, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
So the "blood-letting" resulting here is that if somebody believed to be a sock is not banned by the arbitration committee, he will be banned by the community? Sorry but how is that a problem. The community is supposed to run itself. When it can't do that, then the arbitration committee has to step in. It has seldom been a case of vice versa. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 09:10, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Open proxies

As someone who participated in these discussions, I'm not sure the change as it was intended is being fully understood. The revision to NOP in July was from stating that users are prohibited from using open proxies, to stating that open proxies are blocked as a matter of policy. The issue had to do with whether someone who uses open proxies should have their account itself blocked from editing or receive other types of sanctions. A very large number of people spoke up against this on Meta and here to say that the proxies should be blocked, but not that users should be sanctioned just for that.[13] This had some to do with a recent RfA, and some to do with a recent comment from Jimbo that a lot of editors agreed with, largely as to wanting to allow editing from China.[14]

At least from my perspective, the point of this clearly wasn't to say that proxy use is perfectly normal and shouldn't be noticed. Rather, the point was that some people rely on them, and if one starts quacking then the fact that they're using open proxies is all others should need to know.[15] I didn't think it was necessary, but I'd certainly support a change to say that using open proxies is a privilege contingent on not acting strangely. In any case, I'm not sure how the issue is directly relevant here, since whichever theory one prefers, it seems agreed upon that SH was a sock. Mackan79 (talk) 22:03, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Indeed. Editing from open proxies is sort of like showing up to a bar pool-table in ski-mask and surgical gloves. If you show up on WP in a way that evades checkuser, and immediately start to edit tendentiously and expertly without introducing yourself, it's going to raise suspicions. Acting strangely does indeed include jumping in like an old hand. Wikipedia's the only place I know where a person can essentially hit a golf ball 200 hundred yards down the center of the fairway on first swing, then sink it with a couple of long putts, and have everybody stand around and say "Gee, some people take to this game like a duck to water." To which my comment is: Hey, folks, if you're in a poker game for 15 minutes and you don't know who the pigeon is, then you're the pigeon. Block this creep for being secretive, pool-shark-like, and for his history of being a real pest in a nasty war. If he wants to come back, let him do it in a more open way. SBHarris 23:46, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Question regarding the account User:Samiharris

This account was blocked as a sock before this ArbCom case began, and was unblocked as to participate in the ArbCom case, which the account has declined to do. The question is: Should the account be reblocked at the conclusion of this ArbCom case? SirFozzie (talk) 22:24, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

I was planning to, but I'll ask the committee to be sure. — Rlevse • Talk • 22:29, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
There is no urgency about this. Should Samiharris resume editing, and should that editing prove disruptive, he can be blocked. Otherwise leave open the possibility that he may contribute.
I wouldn't object to a block now although my personal feeling is that the evidence is a very long way from demonstrating that Samiharris is anybody's sock puppet. His apparent unwillingness to plead his case, in the absence of other convincing evidence, tips the balance. Editing isn't a right. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 22:51, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
Yes, we know you think that. You and half+1 of ArbCom. Whoopee.
If anyone cares about minimising drama, that account should stay blocked. Let MM find another account. Relata refero (talk) 23:09, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
"We"? How many of you are there in there? :) --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 00:30, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
I suspect "We"=="many of the readers of this page" although for clarity perhaps RR shouldn't have phrased that way. I am frankly surprised that the SH account is currently unblocked. That needs fixing and I see no reason to wait till the end of the case. The SH account can post an unblock request on the SH talk page if the person controlling the SH account changes his or her mind and wants the SH account to participate before the case closes. I suspect that's not going to happen, though. So then why leave it unblocked? No need really, as it's a disruptive sock of MM, a disruptive user, as "we" all know. (phrased that way for rhetorical effect :) ) Regardless of how ArbCom cases went before. We don't necessarily go by precedent. ++Lar: t/c 16:55, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

This has come up at arbitration more than once before. For clarity, it may help to explain how it's handled, so everyone can see the Samiharris account being handled in a fair way.

The main case I'm familiar with on this (RFAR/Attachment Therapy) was very blatent sockpuppeting. Cold beyond cold. The user, User:AWeidman, had six sockpuppets with identical IPs, linguistic mannerisms, spelling errors, agendas, and parroting like clones on the identical articles in support of each other. The activities of the sockmaster included defamation, subtle vandalism, pov pushing to a fairly vast extent. The case was held in June - August 2007; but some time before that time, the AWeidman account ceased editing, leaving User:DPeterson the main active sock in the ring through to arbitration.

I was not on arbcom at that time. The decision of the committee then, was to block or ban the DPeterson sock army - but the AWeidman account was left untouched. It was not even named in the ruling. The reason (after some very alarmed inquiry it should be said) was not that there was question. It was that the account was dormant. If the account became active it could then be considered what action was appropriate. As it happens, it did become active a month later. Within days it was likewise banned based upon the evidence at the case. Users who come under scrutiny at RFAR usually find their actions so watched afterwards, that abuse - if they were doing any before - is simply no longer possible in any practical sense.

One cannot say what "should" happen if Samiharris returns. At the least the Committee would probably have a rapid consideration whether measures were needed in light of the present case, and as with most motions, this can a very quick process if needed. (If the account does try to reactivate I hope he will edit well, neutrally, and recognize the restrictions and "heat" related to the overstock articles. Failing which I fear the ensuing editing career may be a short one. Or indeed, the account may never activate.) But the above case may indicate that non-mention is no bar to action if circumstances change, which is the main concern of this thread. (For avoidance of doubt, it's also not a bar to usual decision-making based upon usual norms and standards and such.) An aspect of arbitration is we do not tend to use an atom bomb, if a simpler measure will be likely to have a sufficient impact, or is a sensible step. Nor do we necessarily rule against absent users, even ones where there seems a case, except perhaps to remove enhanced rights if they have any.

Hope this clarifies a bit.

FT2 (Talk | email) 00:48, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

  • My interpretation is that the committee is leaving the matter up to the community. Certainly a "no decision" on the matter does not immunize Samiharris from any action that the community might decide is appropriate under any given set of circumstances. Thatcher 14:23, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
    • I think it is very unlikely that Samiharris will resume editing. Newyorkbrad (talk) 14:41, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

I told the committee of my intention and asked if they did not want me to reblock him. I've nothing telling me not to. He was unblock for this arb case, it's over. He should be reblocked. That is my intent. — Rlevse • Talk • 23:45, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Question for the arbitrators

FT2 writes (00:48, 12 March): If the account does try to reactivate I hope he will edit well, neutrally, and recognize the restrictions and "heat" related to the overstock articles Here we come up against the inadequacy of the committee's apparent decision: The committee's findings of fact include recognition that MM and SH voted in Mongo's RfA and in various AfDs and took the same side in forming consensus on various talk pages (FoF #1 "Locus of dispute"), and the committee acknowledges that sockpuppetry could have taken place (FoF #2.1 "Allegations"). Yet while the committee restricts MM in certain other ways, it fails to address the following problem.

If Samiharris were to politely add his voice in some future RfA elections along with MM, on what possible basis could anyone object? SH and MM could point to this RfAr for support of the idea that there is nothing wrong with the two votes being cast because the committee noted the voting and proposed no restriction on it in the future -- a silent endorsement. Or for that matter, they can vote in any AfD or any other matter together. Along with who knows how many other sock puppets.

Am I missing something that everyone else gets? Does the committee care that Wikipedia elections and other forums are left open to sockpuppetry? My main question: If MM is restricted from editing certain articles, then why not restricted from voting in elections or AfDs? If the committee wants to prevent disruption from this MM/SH team in the future, it seems to me that extending the restrictions to not voting would make sense. If the committee is trying to prevent disruption going forward then perhaps it should consider how incensed earnest editors will be to see those two user names voting somewhere. After the rage, expect cynicism and despair as people wonder how many other socks are voting that they can't identify as socks. Noroton (talk) 04:12, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

  • I think and hope that it is quite unlikely that this scenario will arise. Newyorkbrad (talk) 14:42, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
Yes -- you're missing something (sorry!!) What you're missing is that our judgement is, this won't be necessary to make a formal ruling on, because like most arbitration cases, there are now enough eyeballs alert to potential problems, that anything except clean editing is very unlikely to get traction. In other words, the community being clued in, you're very much underestimating the ability of the community to handle it from here on. If it's unlikely to happen, we don't need to rule on it. If two accounts with such concerns were to be perceived as editing inappropriately -- then history suggests the community acts very quickly. A ruling here is likely to be superfluous, is what you're missing, so we don't need to write one. There is no reason not to politely hope Samiharris will edit well, if he returns. The corollary is that if by chance he does anything that does not look like editing well, then very likely the community will be asked to consider how to handle it, in light of this extensive discussion, that same day. FT2 (Talk | email) 15:01, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
On the other hand, just let the community handle it preemptively. Block SH and MM and that's that, if that's what the community decides... I expect that very shortly after this case has sufficient votes to close, there will be just such a proposal made, which I fully intend to support. ++Lar: t/c 16:57, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
FT2 and NewYorkBrad, and Lar for that matter, are all more familiar with community reaction than I am, and I hope each is right. No need to apologize at all, FT2, it's more important to me to confirm that the scenario was considered. If a community ban goes into effect, I've got a bottle of champagne that'll be coming out of the refrigerator. Noroton (talk) 18:32, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

With regard to a community discussion, I posted some late evidence to explore the hypothesis that Samiharris might be a WordBomb sock created to frame Mantanmoreland for sockpuppetry. In light of the arbitrators' decision to close the case I have suspended phase 3 of that research (comparing Samiharris to known socks of WordBomb), but am willing to resume the work if members of the community request it for a community sanction proposal. DurovaCharge! 17:12, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

See my proposal on AN. Personally I'm not sure I think there's a lot of need for that particular research. ++Lar: t/c 17:17, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
I'd be interested in seeing the research, if it's not too much trouble. I do not know if it would help or hinder the current discussion, but at some time I think it would be interesting to see. Just a thought. --daveh4h 20:07, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
Well, last night I posted a request to have a look at a deleted talk page where Samiharris had a conversation with a known WordBomb sock. I might not glean much more than we already know due to the relative shortage of total edits from known WordBomb socks during 2007 and early 2008. Preliminary research indicates that Samiharris's behavior is markedly different from all confirmed WordBomb socks, and the differences are counterintuitive. For instance, if Samiharris had been created to frame Mantanmoreland then we would expect Samirarris to behave in ways that attract negative attention (incivility, personal attacks, edit warring). Instead he was scrupulously courteous. DurovaCharge! 20:30, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Note to Arbitration clerk

As of this writing, there appears to be an error in the implementation notes:

  • Proposed principles 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 pass. 4.1 and 9 do not pass (noting due to sequential successful principles which may result in an error if the entire section was accidentally copied).

AND

  • Proposed principles 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 pass.

I suspect the second "proposed principles" are actually proposed remedies. Could this be verified and corrected, please? I hesitate to make changes on the decision page, having been involved in commenting on this decision. Risker (talk) 05:19, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

  • Fixed. Thatcher 14:21, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Request for clarification at WP:AN

Will an arbitrator please clarify at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#Proposed community ban of Mantanmoreland and Samiharris whether they intended this decision to be the final word, or else see further community action taken against Mantanmoreland and/or Samiharris as permissible? Some commenters there seem to think that community bans would constitute overturning or otherwise interfering with the Arbcom decision, while others think that the Arbcom intended to defer such remedies to the community. I think a word of clarification over there would be helpful in guiding the discussion. Thanks, alanyst /talk/ 20:54, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Further

I think you may wish to keep any notes you were keeping in the "pending" file; David Gerard has already made this comment; and as this is actually outside the wording and intent of the section it would be just a matter of time before it returns to this place... LessHeard vanU (talk) 22:19, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Is the AC or WMF aware of any legal threats?

Is the AC or WMF aware of any legal threats in regards to this case that could affect users that have participated in it? Lawrence § t/e 23:18, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

I mentioned in my lengthy comments above that I am not aware of any threats and I certainly did not take any into account in drafting the decision, nor in considering and deciding to support the later-added remedies.
At the same time, it is noted that the on-wiki dispute here is part of a much broader controversy or set of controversies. See generally proposed principle 8 for an expression of an attending concern. Newyorkbrad (talk) 23:21, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
Thank you. I asked for this official statement due to the very, very wide deference being given to Mantanmoreland on the puppetry allegations today, including by individuals with access to arbcom-l, and factoring in the fact that the AC wouldn't rule on that for "undisclosed factors" of some sort. If this factors included known risk of litigation of any sort, it would have been the fault of the WMF or the AC to notify users in public. I assume we can take your statement here then that no one has issued or alluded to any sorts of such actions, here (correct me if I'm wrong). Thank you. Lawrence § t/e 23:25, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
I think the well crafted arbitration remedies and enforcement provisions have impressed a lot of editors. It's not so much deference to Mantanmoreland as recognition of, and agreement with, the committee's decision that there is no need to ban. Perhaps there has been some perception that banning is what we always do to people caught using sock puppets. It is an incorrect perception. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 23:29, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
What else do we do with people that double vote in RFAs, and engage in long-term double action like this? There's even intense, heated efforts to minimize the impact of the sock tag on Samiharris's user page, despite the fact that the AC kicked the question, and that at least 3-4 dozen people if not more between the RFC, RFAR pages, and now AN have agreed with the evidence. Lawrence § t/e 23:32, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
Mantanmoreland is under a remedy that requires him to use only his main account. That's what we do. The sock tag as originally placed erroneously said that the sock charge was confirmed. The error was corrected; that isn't minimising the description, it's just making it more accurate. Neither the checkusers nor the arbitrators could make a determination. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 23:42, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
And the community can supercede, or override the AC's decisions if they need to. Leaving Mantanmoreland free to edit leaves open the possibility that this three-time confirmed sockmaster can do it again with news accounts to support himself. The error wasn't corrected. The community decided his presence is no longer required on Wikipedia. The AC has to honor this.
The AC can certainly try to overturn such a compelling consensus and evidence, but it would be foolhardy for them to try, as was often alluded to in the various pages of this very RFAR. The first time the community does decide to tell the AC firmly, "No," as I mentioned a few weeks ago, it would immediately change a lot of dynamics that many people don't want to see changed, which is probably, if there are no legal threats, why the AC didn't want to push hard back against the community here. And that makes total sense and is understood if so. I could be wrong. Who knows? In the end, the AC and everything up to and including the WMF has to obey consensus. Lawrence § t/e 23:46, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

( Sorry lawrence, something wrong with your signature, had to fix by hand)

The community can do many things, but making a definitive determination of sock puppetry, except in an obvious case, is not one of them. The evidence was impressive in its volume, and highly suggestive, but doubts remain. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 23:50, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
Stupid signature unclosed tags. Thanks. However, we do this daily, with confirmed sockpuppets. The community does it, and lone admins even do it. The voiced doubts are not sufficient that anyone has demonstrated to supercede a community decision here. The only possible dispute is in banning MM. The SH=MM question is settled per consensus, unless someone presents resounding new evidence to sway consensus. Remember, the community can do anything with enough support that does contradict Foundational principles. The community can certainly definitively name puppetry, and even go so far as to set up a competitor to the Arbitration Committee, ala the Papal schism, and if they wanted, or even go so far with enough support to simply end the AC (not likely, but theoretically possible). I think you understate what can be done around here with consensus to a great degree. Lawrence § t/e 00:01, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
I agree that the community can ban this chap on the balance of probabilities (just don't say he is definitively a sock puppet). However there does not seem to be consensus to ban at the moment. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 00:11, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
Are you saying that only Checkusers and the current formulation of the AC can "name" one a sockpuppet? Did the rest of Wikipedia not get the memo over the past five years? Lawrence § t/e 00:12, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
I think it's obvious and hardly worth stating that when the checkusers and arbcom are unable to make a definitive pronouncement that sock puppetry has happened in a given case, the community cannot call it "confirmed". They can, as I say, make a finger-in-the-air guess (which they had done before this case). --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 00:19, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
The AC only declined to rule because of no Checkuser evidence. Do not misstate. You yourself have blocked users as socks.[16][17][18][19][20][21]. Were all these Checkuser or AC confirmed? This is our standard process. Process is policy. We block and name puppets and puppeteers. Lawrence § t/e 00:23, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
It is not correct that we declined to rule because of the lack of checkuser evidence. I even wanted to remove the language about checkuser from the finding of facts, because the lack of checkuser evidence is information-free. Many of us were uncomfortable with the methodology, the statistical-analytic approach. I think it's possible that this approach could yield true results; it could be a case of how the authorities felt about fingerprints before Sir Francis Galton did the footwork. Also, many of us saw enough contradictory evidence (in the form of writing styles and other contextual issues) to cast doubt on the evaluation. --jpgordon∇∆∇∆ 22:14, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
Jpgordon (or any other arbitrator), can you explain why the arbitrators can't give details about the writing styles and contextual issues that seemed to contradict the sockpuppet hypothesis? alanyst /talk/ 22:26, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
There aren't real details; there's a large amount of text from the parties (email, postings, comments) that make the parties look sufficiently distinct to cast doubt upon the analysis, in the eyes of a number of arbitrators. In other words, we can't provide a list and say "these are different, these are different, these are different" -- it's the body of material, not any individual items. --jpgordon∇∆∇∆ 23:58, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
I don't believe I've misstated anything. You however have misstated the reason for declining to make a definitive determination. In blocking abusive editors it makes sense to record the fact that they appear to be a sock or impersonator as I did, true. Straightforwardly abusive editors. Mantanmoreland is certainly not one of those. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 21:20, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
You mean he's not abusive unless acting in concert with an admin he's perverted befriended. You've seen him "warn" (as though MM was an admin!) a newbie three times and then go and get an admin to get him indef-blocked, over what was really a violation of WP:BITE. See [22]. When all along, the newbie (who had been editing on WP about 12 hours, and was NOT a sock, but real newbie) was simply trying to point out the same exhaustive COI in all these articles, that we've just gone through proving above, here. Now, THAT whole process was abusive to the newbie. You can blame MM for it, or you can blame SlimVirgin for it. On the whole, I don't care, so long as SOMEBODY takes the blame for the abuse which surely occured on this topic, this POV, this bunch of editors, and this entire issue, extending from finance out into the real world, but most particularly in the indef block of the guy who brought up the problem to begin with (his Arbcom case was allowed to lapse also, since he'd be blocked, remember?). WP screwed up. So, who's going to take the fall, here? SBHarris 23:07, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
You're talking about WordBomb, right? We don't want people bringing their battles to Wikipedia. It's an encyclopedia, you know, not a Usenet forum. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 23:18, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
Mantan brought the battle here well before Wordbomb, New Lover Etc., as everyone here knows by now. And he has kept the battle here well after the banning of Wordbomb. He's done this by (a) rank POV-pushing and policy distortion, (b) abusive sock-puppeting, (c) turning articles on living people into tabloid hit pieces, (d) creating a self-fluffing promotional piece on Gary Weiss, and (e) filling up talk pages with defamatory attacks on real-world people. All of these but this last especially have created a bitter polarization of the community, by inculcating and cultivating a general hysteria, a mindlessness which still reverberates here, first in the Samiharris-as-Wordbomb's-strawman-shaggydog-sock theory, and then even more spectacularly in the (now reversed) perma-banning of Mackan79 as a Wordbomb sock. Your whitewash hasn't washed, because it relies on statements the community now knows to be false; let it go.--G-Dett (talk) 15:19, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Tony, do not edit the language in other's posts as you did here to Sbharris, if there is no BLP violation or major infraction. Changing the meaning of others' comments is forbidden. Lawrence § t/e 23:22, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Please see my comment on Tony's talkpage. Newyorkbrad (talk) 23:42, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
Yeah, just some kind of glitch. Sorry, sbharris. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 23:53, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
It was a glitch-- all those edits are me, re-editing myself. It is not Anticipation's fault. Sorry if that somehow wasn't clear.

Now, as to his comment, no, we don't want people bringing their battles to Wikipedia. The problem is that this had already been done by MM and his socks, before Wordbomb showed up, to complain about it. And he got stomped on, as a newbie. Whereas MM and SH were allowed to go on editing, dispite the fact that MM had already been caught operating LastExit and Tombstoner, as you all know, to POV-push in all these topics. So what kind of "justice" is that? We just let the guys who get to WP first, push any old POV they want, with any kind of sock, and then when somebody shows up later to fix and complain, we block then and their arbcom complaints, too, for "bringing a battle"? I don't think so. SBHarris 00:41, 14

March 2008 (UTC)

Respectfully, you folks still have the accent on the wrong syllABle here. 1) "We just let the guys who get to WP first, push any old POV they want, with any kind of sock, and then when somebody shows up later to fix..." The deference shown MM and SamiHarris is not because "they" (haha) happened to be "the guys who [got] to WP first, push any old POV they want..." There are deeper reasons for that deference you have to dig deeper to understand. 2) also, I can promise you that Gary Weiss did threaten NPR to force them to take an interview with me down off their stie (it is still available here), and has repeatedly threatened another media outlet with lawsuits since the day they began following this story to keep them from running it. I have that first hand from reporters at both outlets. Both reporters have told me things like, "I have never heard anything like it... This guy screaming and ranting on the phone. He's insane." But in both cases, NPR and the other outlet folded (they are all waiting for someone else to run the story first, then they can follow). I would be shocked if Gary had not been making the same threats to WP, unless he didn't because he never really had to (see #1, previous paragraph). PatrickByrne (talk) 20:05, 16 March 2008 (UTC)