Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2007-02-26/War of the Wheels

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Three users temporarily desysopped after wheel war

By Ral315, 26 February 2007

After a wheel war involving multiple administrators over the existence of the article on Daniel Brandt, a Wikipedia critic and activist, three sysops had their administrative powers temporarily stripped on Friday. Jimbo Wales then referred the case directly to the Arbitration Committee.

The incident occurred on Friday, 23 February, beginning at 12:53 UTC, when Yanksox deleted the article, with the summary "privacy concerns, more trouble than it is actually worth. Are you people even human?". At 13:54, Cool Cat placed the article on deletion review. Beginning at 15:47, and continuing over the next two hours, the page was deleted five more times, and undeleted six times. While some of these moves were for various housekeeping moves (including worries over possible libelous revisions, and a minor GFDL violation), it was not immediately clear during the war which moves were done for good reason and which were not. At 22:48 UTC, nearly 5 hours after the last action, Jimbo Wales desysopped Yanksox, Geni, and Freakofnurture (the three administrators that had made more than one deletion or restoration), and made this statement on the incidents administrators' noticeboard:

I am referring this case directly to the ArbCom to look at possible remedies for all parties involved up to and including desysopping, blocking, etc. I have absolutely no opinion on the actual content question (Should we have an article about him? I don't care) but [its deletion log] is a disgrace.

Different people played different roles. I do not have time to sort it all out today, so I am referring most of it to the ArbCom. I have instantly desysopped Yanksox, though, because he's basically begging for it. I have temporarily desysopped Geni and Freakofnurture pending the ArbCom thinking it through.

Here's the action count:
Yanksox - out of process deletion coupled with an insult, 2 deletions
Geni - 3 restores
Freakofnurture - 2 restores
Bumm13 - 1 restore
Deskana - 1 delete
Doc Glasgow - 1 restore
Mailer Diablo - 1 restore
CesarB - 1 delete

I know how these things go. Some of the people involved were trying to calm things down. Others were merely trying to cause more disruption and fighting by engaging in inflammatory actions designed to outrage the other side. It is hard to sort it all out. This is why wheel warring is so bad.

The arbitration case mirrors that of a February 2006 wheel war case on a pedophilia userbox; in both cases, Wales temporarily desysopped key participants in the dispute. In that case, five administrators were desysopped; of those, one was resysopped immediately upon the case's closure, two were resysopped after a 3-14 day wait, and two (Carnildo and Karmafist) were not automatically resysopped (Carnildo was re-adminned in a contentious adminship request nearly seven months later, while Karmafist was banned by the community following other incidents).

The case is, as of press time, in the evidence phase. The workshop page has over 60 proposed principles, findings of fact and remedies. Among these are the desysopping of Yanksox, with the option to ban him from seeking adminship for one year, the desysopping of Bumm13 and Freakofnurture for three days, the desysopping of Geni for thirty days, with or without automatic resysopping, and the banning of Gaillimh for 10 days. In an intriguing development, Fred Bauder expressed a belief that Yanksox might be a sockpuppet of Brandt himself; however, a request for checkuser confirmed that the two were unrelated.

The case continues this week.

Also this week: Wheel war — Brian Peppers — Golfer sues editor — Interwiki report — WikiWorld — News and notes — Features and admins — Technology — Arbitration