Did you actually read this case? An editor is topic-banned from editing pages about Indian religions after a pattern of advocacy is detected. The ban expires, and the editor resumes contributing to pages on those topics, but without the advocacy; for instance, the user adds negative material about topics he'd previously advocated for.
Another Wikipedia editor notices the resumption in editing and goes nuts, trying to out the user, appealing for the user to be banned, and picking intractable fights.
What conclusion was this case supposed to come to?
Is it your belief that the whole of ArbCom are secretly in the tank for commercial transcendental meditation?
Also, look at how much time Wikipedia sunk into trying to resolve this case carefully. How do you find a way to make that a bad thing?
> Sometimes that abuse is relatively easy to identify. In 2019, ArbCom disciplined the two editors most involved in this subject area, instituting a topic ban for their “incivility and inflammatory rhetoric.” But what about the more insidious cases when there are no blatant signs of harassment? Wikipedians told me that these “civil” disputes are much more challenging to resolve because of a key jurisdictional issue: ArbCom has authority to decide on user conduct disputes but is not permitted to rule on article content.
Also Wikipedia's toxic culture often refuses to call a spade a spade, and gives some favored problematic editors a long leash to be uncivil, so long as they learn to avoid a few of the most blatant unacceptable behaviors. IMHO, they need to be more consistent and more final with their bans, because a community with a lot of individuals who've been taught how to obscure their misbehavior and/or expertly push it right up to the line is still a shitty community.
Tldr; it's a combination of wikipedia policies and practical execution; WP:SEALION lays it out in practical terms.
ArbComm and Administrators are by design incapable of blocking users based on disputes over page content. This is fine on paper, but it has resulted in the side effect that if an argument arises, the main thing that Wikipedia ends up policing is less the accuracy of what's being edited (because no authority on Wikipedia may comment on that) but rather the civility of the editors involved.
In practical terms, it's basically impossible to edit or comment on the site without breaking a policy somewhere - Wikipedia's massive list of policies and essays are self-contradicting, meaning that if you complain about a policy violation, a different editor can complain about you breaking another policy.
This means that should a discussion get to the point where administrators (let alone ArbComm) has to be involved, the default outcome is basically that both involved parties will get sanctioned; ArbComm and ANI closure notes have openly stated in the past that they've just given a page/topic ban (or worse) by community consensus to all editors involved because "it might put fresh editors on the page instead".
It's an issue further amplified by the Randy in Boise problem (aka the "fuck experts" policy), where a "sock" user can just behave in extremely polite and civil ways, yet says things that hold absolutely zero ground to the frustration of all involved. All with the goal of eventually escalating it to AN/I or ArbComm so that when their sock gets banned, at least the article is down an expert editor.
Wikipedia largely gets away with this policy on the basis that they'll accrue new editors with time anyway.
If there is enough evidence to start a arbitration request, then start there. A editor who has already received a topic ban is more likely to get a second ban, or harsher because of the repeat offense.
That said, if you go after a person for their personal social media comments and succeed, the common result is that people clam up about their personal opinions in social media. This is the common argument against the recent trend of digging through peoples social media in order to find something to hang them. All it does is to make people less open and more closed minded.
Looking at the archived discussion at the Administrator noticeboard (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_no...), the big issue seems to be the lack of any actually edit conflict. On Wikipedia, that is a problem if one want to sanction an editor for doing biased editing.
The whole discussion seems to be similar to the one about hardware back doors by NSA (if produced in a country where the US has influence), china or both. We can suspect there is a security problem, we can point towards incentives and capability to do it, but trying to do a proper response to the threat without anything concrete is difficult.
> a user who has passed some threshold of number of edits to a single article (say 100) would be automatic grounds to block the user from further edits to the article
This would not be without precedent. I was an active Wikipedia editor in 2004-2006, and I recall an editor (later admin), who was otherwise a great contributor and a positive force in the project, who had a seemingly unhealthy obsession with singer Ashlee Simpson. After multiple arbitration proceedings, he was restricted from editing her Wikipedia entry under threat of 24-hour bans for each edit.
Here is the notice of the final arbitration ruling [1], mentioning the prolonged history of the case.
To be fair, it was a different time back then. Not sure if a ruling like that could or would be done today.
It's a long story, I was a legitimate editor for a about a year and just built up a grudge which turned into making more unhelpful edits until I got banned. Wikipedia is not a good environment for when things go wrong.
> If you see something problematic, why don't you click the edit button and address it? Or if you don't have the necessary know-how, why don't you click the talk tab and bring up the issue there?
In my case, I can't.
I began editing Wikipedia in 2004, and I got banned last year after leaving a message on the talk page of another user telling them not to use aggressive language when interacting with new users. The way oversight on Wikipedia works is that it's incredibly easy for someone to block you if you do something that they read as a slight towards them.
It's something you know all along if you spend any amount of time on Wikipedia. Over the years I was constantly running into people talking about things like overreach and abusive admins, but as an editor, you don't really look into those cases. When you're more interesting in creating content than getting involved, you trust that the admins are doing their jobs properly, and if they ever aren't, then the conflict resolution process will take care of them.
All you have to do is find a bored wikipedia nerd "editor". They will gladly take on the bureaucratic battle to get that PR firm banned from editing wikipedia content.
The people who make editing wikipedia their identity have A LOT of time on their hands, and LOVE fixing these kinds of things because it makes wikipedia better, and look better.
If you were a bad actor or a member of a group with malicious intent, how could you abuse or circumvent the policy you have just proposed? This editor is either a front or insane, but a hundred edits to an article on the subject of one's own long-term research is totally reasonable. This is why Wikipedia has a manual intervention process for people who appear to be abusing the system.
Back in the days I was actually doing some campaigns for companies on Wikipedia. Those would be based on creating high quality content and adding link to our customer in exchange as a source (we were placing nice article on customers page researched by knowledgeable folks from uni). We were doing a lot of work creating pages, adding really nice content. Some moderators knew about our actions but they were cool about it as they liked content we have been creating.
Because of how many edits we were making (at least 20 a day) we have witnessed politics and lobbying on Wikipedia.
The worst are unfortunately subjects that could by any extent critique US, UK, French or Russian governments, history, monopoly or news.
We have seen highest placed people with absolute power just removing any content without reason and blocking further changes.
One day I got in to the conversation with one of the "untouchable" - admin with small amount of edits etc but for some reason high in ranks. I got in to argument as he removed 500+ words improvement of pretty dead article about some delicate subject (heavy industry related) - this included removal of some links to large companies (they were unrelated though and we placed in exchange links to government institutions and few scholar research). Argument was something like "I would like you to let us know the reason for removing our edits." after no answer for 7 days I sent "If we wont get answer within 48 hours we will be forced tp take this case up as reverse seem as selfpromotion".
Result - around 2 thousands quality edits removed (we had probably links to our related article customers on only ~200 edits). Complete removal of our accounts, blacklisting WHOLE IP ranges from our office and probably hundreds of other regular users. That is how Wikipedia is neutral...
It’s interesting, I edited the Salim Mehajer article and provided extensive citations, yet I got banned. This guy makes thousands of edits and continues with impunity? Wikipedia is rotten.
Wikipedia is struggling hard against misinformation, POV-pushing and edit wars on almost every controversial topic - the big ones being politics(American, Eastern European, Israel/Palestine) and medicine(gmos, pseudoscience healing, etc)
These are places where the fighting is so common, admins are allowed to ban on a hair trigger. This doesn't really lead to "high quality" - instead it leads to massive gamesmanship as people try to smear each other and get the "other side" banned so they can freely edit the topics to their content. Just click through some of the cases to see the issues leading to them(beware, this is an endless black hole of drama).
> The rabbit hole begins with controversial scientific topics and "edit wars", which rage since forever and no sensible solution was ever proposed...
Yeah, table stakes for editing Wikipedia on anything even remotely controversial is an obsessive personality, limitless time, and patience for an huge amount of toxicity.
> ...instead wikimedia arbitrarily blocking and banning editors, even on the pages about themselfes, trying to rectify information.
IMHO, it's quite sensible to not allow people to edit pages about themselves, because people tend to have a strong-well understood biases on that topic.
I once tried to edit an article about a scientist who had developed a bit of surrounding controversy over his studies in parapsychology. Having no real knowledge of the debate, I didn't add or remove any information; I just felt the introduction had been written in an overtly non-neutral way by a past editor. So, I removed a couple of words like "hoax" and trimmed one or two sentences so that they didn't come off as a character assassination (they had contained unsourced editorializations). Specifics aside, the article had explicitly violated Wikipedia's policies on using NPOV language.
My edits were reverted within 24 hours, and the talk page was updated with an admonition to my IP address (I'd posted without logging in) claiming I'd been implicated in "unsavory" activities that could be found by Googling the IP (it was a dynamic IP, but of course I tried and found nothing) and making vague threats that I should not attempt such edits again. That's the last time I edited anything on Wikipedia.
I suggest, perhaps, that the current focus should be on the evidence that I, and others, are now uncovering and presenting, rather than on my alleged improper behaviour in the past.
A month ago I had very little interest in Wikipedia except as an end user. I joined Wikipedia as an editor because I read that some information that I regarded as common knowledge, and a matter of public record, and as in the public interest to be disclosed as widely as possible, was being edited off the Oliver Kamm page by someone again commonly believed to be a partisan gatekeeper acting as the judge of what should and should not be disclosed on many Wikipedia articles.
I knew nothing of Wikipedia procedures, and made many mistakes, and stuck to my guns, and battled more experienced people in edit wars, and as a result I am banned from Wikipedia. Shrug. I am resigned to that as an entirely understandable result. My heart is not broken that I will never edit Wikipedia again. I accept my fate.
While I was edit warring, I looked into other pages edited by this alleged gatekeeper, and what I found astounded and outraged me. I suggest that people go and look at the circumstances under which the pages "Tim Hayward (academic)", "Piers Robinson", and "Tara McCormack" were set up. In particular, go and look at the Hayward article just after it had first been finished with by Philip Cross, but the Robinson article has also been described by a Wikipedia editor, certainly not myself, as an "attack page". The timing is important. These three pages were set up on, or the day after, an extremely hostile report on these three academics by the British "Sunday Times". It is as clear as daylight that the purpose of setting up these pages was to attack and discredit them. There does not seem to be any evidence that they were added as new work to be set up in any normal way. One editor, "Philafrenzy", was perhaps privately requested to set them up by Philip Cross, who then stepped in to edit them all a day or two later.
These three academics were also tweeted about by a well-known journalist. The hostile accounts were set up the same day. Twitter users are currently documenting what appears to be a very peculiar symbiosis between this journalist and Philip Cross. On the face of it, there seems a most unhealthy conflict of interest issue here.
If the Hayward account in particular is examined closely, it is clear that the original articles referred to in the Wikipedia page contain a good deal more balanced material than was originally included on the page. The selection of material appeared to me to be thoroughly partisan. This is also the opinion of Professor Hayward himself. Professor Robinson has expressed similar opinions. Doctor McCormack had no idea that her page had even been set up, and was most unhappy about the matter when I informed her of it.
Rightly, or wrongly, that is how the Hayward-Robinson-McCormack situation presented itself to me. There were other aspects to the matter. For example, the McCormack page cited opinions of hers, which were accurately cited, certainly, and were also very controversial. It appeared to me that the reason these opinions, and these alone, were cited, were to make her look like a radical lunatic. It was particularly notable that "Spiked", a publication which I had no doubt would have in any other circumstances have been booted from Wikipedia by this gatekeeper as an unreliable source, was retained and cited as a footnote. The obvious reason was that it contained opinions by McCormack that seemed ridiculous and outrageous. There appeared to me to be a very unpleasant agenda behind these pages.
Since then, of course, the number of people looking at this matter has substantially broadened and more evidence has come to light, and more is forthcoming all the time. I welcome that. I am not in the least interested in publicity. All I am interested in is getting this evidence out there and shown to people so that they can judge for themselves. I make no claim to be any sort of hero. Five Filters did not consult me before they quoted me, and the only reason they seem to have quoted me is that I have presented evidence which they believe is worth bringing to light. I concur with that.
There is an enormous amount more to say - I have presented only one example, which barely scratches the surface - but I have probably said enough for people to understand that, however wrong-headed I have been, I am not simply some random vandal, and I have not acted out of some personal animosity, or even thought-out agenda. I have simply wanted some information out into the public domain. That has led me to the discovery of other matters, which I also think properly belong in the public domain.
Never mind me. Please focus on the evidence that is being brought forth, on Twitter and elsewhere, and use your own judgement as to whether or not it is reasonable.
I did that once. Got banned, with no recourse. It was a country-specific Wikipedia though, not the English one. But I did not even edit the page, just made the case for it on the Talk page, someone else edited it and I got banned with a bunch of others. Never again.
On the one hand, this is hardly the first time I've seen someone complain about the arcane ways Wikipedia sometimes seems to be policed by an army of smart teenagers on a power trip. Many years ago, there were some stories about highly qualified academics writing articles, only to see them ruined by well-established wikipedians. And for an outsider it can be hard to figure out how to correct this.
At the same time, there does need to be some degree of policing, or anyone could make any article say anything at all. Of course it's frustrating for a qualified author or academic to not immediately be recognized as such, but to Wikipedia, it's hard to tell the difference between a qualified author and a clever con man. All they can really check is the sources.
So it's a complex issue.
And considering their ban, it's not surprising that the Daily Mail likes to discredit Wikipedia as much as possible. In this case, they do kinda have a point (although from the discussion pages, it seems these people were far more arrogant than the Wikipedians they accuse), but the writing of the article takes it ridiculously over the top in a painfully transparent way.
For example: "‘Axl’ then informed me it was most unlikely that what he called ‘The Community’ of Wikipedia would permit my entry to be deleted. ‘The Community’ sounded like something from George Orwell’s 1984 novel and the faceless men in Big Brother’s Ministry of Truth."
Does the author really think his readers won't know what a community is in this context?
>Have you attempted to contribute to Wikipedia and had that experience, or is this based on your guess as to what would happen?
I have. I was a very active WP editor (mostly on religion articles) in the 2005-2007 timeframe. From what I can tell, it's only gotten worse. There are some articles that you can change without having to bicker for three weeks before your changes finally stick, but at least in the fields I'm interested in, that's definitely not true. These days when I make a change (only a handful per year now), I get accused of violating WP "canvassing policies", which didn't even exist back in my day, assuming bad faith, and whatever other stupid acronym the adversarial side can come up with.
Wikipedians who don't like your edits will drag them through so much bureaucracy only the most determined editors care enough to push through it. Even then there's no guarantee the bureaucracy will make the correct decision; you almost have to get something to the Arbitration Committee to know you're dealing with someone that at least sort of understands what they're talking about.
Like a lot of people here, I have sporadically read Wikipedia for years. I came on board as a Wikipedia editor in May 2010 after meeting the project's co-founder and his family in person the year before. I've since seen some of those immediate family members on another lengthy occasion. My children regularly interact with that family in an online education community. Through a web of mutual friendships, I thought I had some sense of what the community norms would be like on Wikipedia before I started. Moreover, I began editing only after reading the several published books about Wikipedia available at that time (as disclosed on my Wikipedia user page), and came on board as someone who has actually had both academic journal editing positions and paid journalism editing positions before Wikipedia even existed.
Even at that, I get a lot of well sourced edits reverted by ideologically motivated drive-by I.P. editors as part of an ongoing process of edit-warring on articles that I happen to know sources for.
For some controversial topics, no amount of good-faith editing by editors who actually know how to look up reliable sources and how to have civil discussions of controversial issues can overcome the flood of point-of-view pushers (both I.P. editors and registered editors who are sock puppets or meat puppets of previously banned editors) who want to drag down the project to below the level of a partisan blog. There simply isn't any incentive in today's atmosphere on Wikipedia for readers who actually know what encyclopedias look like and who have actually engaged in careful research on controversial topics to devote any of their time and effort to Wikipedia.
My number of edits per month has plummeted, and mostly I wikignome to clean up copyediting mistakes on miscellaneous articles written by young people or foreign nationals who didn't write grammatical English in the last revision of the article. The way to increase participation by productive, knowledgeable, literate editors is to drive away the ideologues and enforce some reasonable behavioral norms on article talk pages and user talk pages. I see no sign of that happening over at Wikipedia, and until I do, I will heartily support anyone's effort to build a competing resource, either limited to a specialized topic or a direct attempt to build a better quality general online encyclopedia.
I think the "Lamest Edit Wars" page in project space sums up much of what is amiss about Wikipedia.
Another Wikipedia editor notices the resumption in editing and goes nuts, trying to out the user, appealing for the user to be banned, and picking intractable fights.
What conclusion was this case supposed to come to?
Is it your belief that the whole of ArbCom are secretly in the tank for commercial transcendental meditation?
Also, look at how much time Wikipedia sunk into trying to resolve this case carefully. How do you find a way to make that a bad thing?
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