Brews ohare site-banned; climate change topic-ban broadened
The Arbitration Committee opened no cases this week, leaving none open.
Closed cases
A request for amendment was initiated by User:Timotheus Canens, seeking to expand the topic ban on physics-related pages and renew the general one-year probation on Brews ohare (talk · contribs) which had recently expired. Following complaints of persistent disruption and edit-warring at mathematics-related articles, Timotheus Canens filed for the remedies to be broadened to cover such articles, where Brews had become active since the physics-related topic ban.
The arbitrators generally agreed with the complainant and other respondents, finding him unrepentant and unable to edit in a collegial manner. The complainant and Arb Roger Davies expressed concern that the disruptive behaviour would resume on the expiry of the site ban. Dissenting, Carcharoth agreed that Brews had been disruptive, but believed a six-month ban would have been more appropriate. The Committee voted 8:1 in favour of banning Brews ohare from Wikipedia for 12 months.
In a motion enacted on 9 November, the Committee prohibited the 15 editors already banned from editing articles about climate change and the biographies of living people associated with climate change, together with their talk pages, henceforth from "participating in any process broadly construed on Wikipedia particularly affecting these articles; and ... initiating or participating in any discussion substantially relating to these articles anywhere on Wikipedia, even if the discussion also involves another issue or issues."
A second motion was adopted, that the editors involved may apply for the topic-ban to be lifted or modified no earlier than six months after the close of the amendment, with time-restrictions on additional reviews. The Committee made it clear that to succeed in those applications, they must demonstrate "their commitment to the goals of Wikipedia and their ability to work constructively with other editors".
Discuss this story
Prof. Dr. John R. Brews was never really disruptive. While there were certainly issues with the way he edited Wikipedia, this was never a serious enough problem that would warrant a broad topic ban for all of physics, let alone a site ban. Brews was basically bullied/pestered away from Wikipedia. The ArbCom system is set up in such a way that they will always choose the side of a cabal that opposes a single editor or a small group of editors without much regard for content issues.
In case of the climate change topics, the opposition against climate sceptical editors was far more justified than the opposition that existed against John Brews. At least this is true if we assume that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not some online social medium like facebook. However, the ArbCom system focusses only on social interactions. Then, because the climate sceptics form a rather large cabal, ArbCom appeased them. They topic banned good contributors including two out of the only three expert editors we have in this area (definition of expert I'm using: someone who has published papers in peer reviewed journals on the topic area).
The motion ArbCom passed was prompted by complaints by some editors that a topic banned expert was placing notifications of compromized articles on his userspace. That expert was blocked for two weeks even though what he did fell within the boundaries of the topic ban. A motion was passed that explicitely forbids this sort of activity. The fundamental issue of maintaining Wikipedia articles was not addressed, largely because it is politically incorrect to contradict the official rationale for the topic bans: Topic banned editors are supposed to have nothing useful to contribute to the topic area, even if they are big experts in the topic area.
Count Iblis (talk) 02:18, 29 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]