Manning naming dispute case closed

The Committee closed the Manning naming dispute case with a strong and unanimous statement against disparaging references to transgendered people. Sanctions were enacted against six editors.

The workshop phase of the Ebionites 3 case has finished, although the formal closing date of the workshop phase has been extended to October 19, and the date for the proposed decision to October 20.

A final decision has been posted in the Manning naming dispute case, which involves the move of the Bradley Manning article to Chelsea Manning, after Manning’s attorney announced his client's wish to be known as Chelsea. The article was moved back to Bradley Manning, then to Chelsea Manning again, after reaching consensus in a discussion that included a comprehensive survey of sources.

The committee has unanimously endorsed a statement that:

The following findings of fact were passed regarding individuals:

• During the course of the dispute, Hitmonchan engaged in discriminatory speech on the basis of gender identity ("Only when his testicles are ripped out of his scrotum ... will I call Manning a 'she'").
• During the course of the dispute, IFreedom1212 engaged in discriminatory speech on the basis of gender identity ("He is clearly mentally unstable and his ... desire to be called Chelsea should not be regarded with any merit", "I will continue to refer to him as a male as long as he has a dick").
• During the course of the dispute, Tarc intentionally engaged in inflammatory and offensive speech ("Putting lipstick on a pig doesn't make a heifer become Marilyn Monroe", "Bradley Manning simply doesn't become a woman just because he says so") in a self-admitted attempt to disrupt Wikipedia to make a point.
• Josh Gorand has adopted a problematic battleground approach to the discussion
• Phil Sandifer has exhibited signs of having a battleground mentality, feeling that all who oppose his position are transphobic.
• During the course of the dispute, Baseball Bugs frequently accused other participants in the dispute of malice; engaged in discriminatory speech based on his personal view of the article subject's actions; and needlessly personalised the dispute.
• During the course of the dispute, David Gerard used his tools to protect the article from being moved back to "Bradley Manning", mentioning "MOS:IDENTITY, WP:BLP" and, after another administrator moved the article back to its original title, he reversed that administrator's action. Finally, after getting involved in the content dispute on the article's talk page, he reversed the full edit protection imposed by another administrator. After acting in his capacity as an administrator, at first, David Gerard failed to provide a detailed explanation of why he thought the title "Bradley Manning" would have violated the biographies of living persons policy and, when questioned, replied in an uncivil manner, accusing his interlocutors of disruptive behaviour. David's actions violated the administrator policy sections on accountability, wheel war and involved administrators.

The committee passed remedies against six individuals. Editors Hitmonchan, IFreedom1212, Tarc, Josh Gorand, and Baseball Bugs were banned from pages relating to transgender topics. David Gerard was admonished and restricted from using administrator tools on topics pertaining to transgender. The discretionary sanctions adopted in the Sexology case are now to apply to articles dealing with transgender issues.

The Ebionites 3 case, initiated by Ignocrates involves a long-running dispute between two editors over a 2nd century religious document. The workshop phase of Ebionites 3 has finished, but the closing date has been extended, since the drafting arbitrator wants to post parts of the proposed decision on the workshop page for comment. Participants have been requested not to add large amounts of additional material to the workshop page at this point, as it may be missed by the arbitrators.

• Clarification request:Infoboxes: A request was made by Anthonyhcole for clarification regarding the restriction on Gerda Arendt's restriction on adding infoboxes except on articles that they create; whether this applies to adding infoboxes to articles that are expanded significantly; or in cases where she is restricted from adding them, whether another editor, Neutralhomer might add them on her behalf.
• Clarification request:Ayn Rand: An amendment request was initiated by TParis regarding an administrator editing through protection on an article with Arbcom sanctions.
• Clarification request:Race and intelligence: A request made by Cla68 regarding the possible posting of personal non-public data in response to off-site provocation was closed with an indefinite site ban for Mathsci, which can be appealed after six months.
• Arbitration Committee Elections RFC: The yearly Arbitration Committee Election request for comments is now open.
• Morning277 sockpuppet investigation:There is a discussion on the Arbitration Committee talk page concerning the role of the committee in the Morning277 investigation (see previous Signpost coverage: "Extensive network of clandestine paid advocacy exposed") .

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Wikipedia truly is becoming more globalized, well, at least more European. We have a content-based speech discrimination now... I really don't see why Wikipedia just doesn't go the extra step and require real names in registration and mandatory reporting to national authorities of violations of freedom-of-speech-exception laws. I guess because that's not commonplace in Europe (yet). I see this as nothing but a bias against Asian speech restrictions norms (e.g., China, Russia) in favour of West European ones. Two wrongs don't make a right. Int21h (talk) 22:48, 18 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• It really can't be emphasized enough that (1) ArbCom never had purview to settle the content dispute that was at the heart of the Private Manning case; (2) that the settlement of this dispute was delayed by two or three weeks due to their ridiculous decision to bureaucratically "chime in" on a matter that didn't really concern them; (3) that the community wasted 1.5 million bytes of text on the various pages and subpages arguing about this matter at ArbCom — the equivalent of 150 beefy 10k articles flushed... It was a huge waste of time and effort all because ArbCom didn't think things through before accepting the case. Carrite (talk) 01:20, 19 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Well, we can't say that Arb Com passed the buck back to the community now....can we. I don't fully understand the difference between discretionary sanctions and just handing out ridicule to those who's behavior was not to standards but I guess we get what we pay for, don't we. Having said that, let me be as clear as possible, this case is a social issue. We can't tell society how to react and to me, this comes very close to that.....and I am a gay activist in real life, have worked at the LA LGBT center and have been employed by controversial figures for their own activism against gay rights. Forgiveness, acceptance and just plain...getting over it and attempting education instead of criticism may work in the real world, but perhaps I need to understand that it doesn't in these virtual sites....and is not always the route people take....it's just the route I try to take....and in all honesty, I often fail. So others have failed in their expression of their own beliefs. I just see the above as outing behavior....if they were not sanctioned.....that is just pushing them further to the extreme. Can't say I am either happy or exactly unhappy with the decisions express above, but I will say this....I won't hold anything against any editor for expressing what they feel is right or wrong. We don't exactly have a policy to cover everything but we do need to be sure and let all of the editors who are criticized for their lack of sensitivity know that they are not being marked with a scarlet letter. Seriously, these issues need education not blame. I said my piece...and feel better.--Mark Miller (talk) 01:33, 19 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Int21h, I don't think saying this is some Western European thing is a particularly accurate characterization because you're talking about governments while Wikipedia is a private entity. The United States, for example, doesn't have the sort of discriminatory speech laws that many European countries do, but a private entity in the United States (and I suspect the majority of countries without discriminatory speech laws) may forbid you from using discriminatory language within their domain. That's all that's happened here. Nothing out of the ordinary. Heimstern Läufer (talk) 11:00, 19 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

And as for speech norms from Russia and China, I'm not sure about the former, but under the latter, large sections of Wikipedia are not even allowed, so I can't see that going that direction is compatible with Wikipedia's core mission. Heimstern Läufer (talk) 11:10, 19 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I really hate Arbcom remedies that solve nothing. There is, apparently, no previous problematic behaviour by David Gerard related to transsexual articles; his actions were roughly in line with standard policy and practice of the time, and yet he now not only has a restriction, but an infinitely long restriction that can only be appealed once every six months. A disgracefully inappropriate and counterproductive remedy. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 04:56, 20 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. This remedy was far too heavy-handed, and is the kind of response that in the long run communicates to admins that they should be extra cautious rather than perhaps suffer being desysopped or hobbled by a topic ban for being bold in defense of policy. Steven Walling • talk 06:26, 20 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

You know what? We need a principle that bad decisions get immediately appealed. I've filed an amendment request at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Clarification_and_Amendment. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 21:26, 20 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]