Editor conduct the subject of multiple cases

The author apologises for the recent absence of the "Arbitration Report."

The Arbitration Committee has an unusually large case load at present. Although perhaps not on a par with the high-profile, multi-party cases seen towards the end of last year and the beginning of this year, with five open cases the arbitrators are likely to be kept busy for the next several weeks.

Collect and others and American politics 2 were opened simultaneously after a single case request. This request focused on the conduct of Collect—a prominent and sometimes controversial editor on articles related to American politics—both in that topic area and elsewhere on Wikipedia. The filing party, MrX, alleged that Collect's editing demonstrated a "battleground mentality", which manifested itself in edit-warring and other combative behaviour. Collect rebutted that the case request was vexatious and grounded in a minor content dispute. During the evidence phase, several editors accused Collect of attempting to game the system in content disputes, disingenuously invoking the biographies of living persons policy ("BLP") to justify his position in disputes, misrepresenting source material, edit-warring, and other misconduct. A handful of editors submitted evidence in Collect's defence, praising his use of the BLP policy and suggesting that the case was politically motivated. The committee's final decision was posted on 10 May, with the result that Collect was topic-banned from American politics and subject to a one-revert restriction. Although almost two weeks elapsed between the posting of the proposed decision and the closure of the case, no drastically different remedies were discussed.

As mentioned above, this case was opened concurrently with the Collect and others case; this one has a wider scope, and is intended to evaluate the conduct of multiple editors—at the time of writing, the list of parties contains 22 names (including Collect), making it the largest the committee has handled for some time (for comparison, the long and acrimonious GamerGate case had 27 named parties, see the Signpost's coverage). Despite the apparently broad scope, participation in the case has been relatively sparse—six editors presented evidence and only one made proposals in the workshop. The proposed decision is two weeks overdue, but such delays are not unusual for large cases, especially when the committee has a large caseload.

This unusual case was opened on 23 April to examine a block, and related accusations, made by checkuser, admin, and former arbitrator Chase me ladies, I'm the Cavalry (talk · contribs). Chase me ladies blocked an account he believed was being used by (or on behalf of) Grant Shapps, a senior UK politician (see previous coverage in ITM). It emerged that Chase me ladies' actions were prompted by the receipt of evidence from a journalist at The Guardian (a left-leaning newspaper which had previously criticised Shapps), and several editors raised concerns about his handling of the case. Due to the potential sensitivity of the matter, the committee is hearing the case entirely in camera. The period for evidence submission has passed (after having briefly been re-opened until 18 May), and a proposed decision is now due by 26 May.

Full disclosure: The author is a named party to the OccultZone case.

The main party to this case, OccultZone requested this case himself after being involved in a series of disputes and noticeboard threads which resulted in his being briefly blocked four times and three of those blocks being reversed by other administrators. OccultZone alleges that several administrators have behaved improperly towards him and that the blocks were unjust; other editors allege that—since the incident which led to the first block (on 23 March this year)—OccultZone has embarked on a pattern of disruptive editing, including accusing opponents in disputes of sock-puppetry, and has failed to heed advice to modify his behaviour. OccultZone observes that some of his accusations of sock-puppetry have been proven at least partially accurate. Evidence closed on 14 May, and several proposals are under discussion in the workshop. The target date for the committee's proposed decision is 28 May.

Opened on 3 May, this case was requested to examine the conduct of Lightbreather (talk · contribs), whose involvement in topics relating to gun control and to Wikipedia's gender gap (both sensitive topics on Wikipedia, prone to heated disagreement between editors) has been a source of controversy for around the last year. The case focuses on accusations that Lightbreather, who is a party to four interaction bans, has perennially behaved disruptively and that community-based attempts to address the problem have failed. Lightbreather, meanwhile, alleges that she has been harassed by other editors, and has requested that another eight editors be added as parties in order for their conduct to be examined as far as it affects Lightbreather. Due to the unusual number of interaction bans among editors mentioned in the case, the committee has waived interaction bans for the purposes of presenting evidence, and for the other phases of the case has decided to treat all one-way interaction bans as though they were two-way. The case has generated controversy elsewhere on Wikipedia, as requests have been made to two arbitrators to recuse themselves from the case (GorillaWarfare, who some felt was biased in favour of Lightbreather, and Salvio giuliano, who some felt was biased against Lightbreather); neither request was granted, resulting in a request to the remainder of the committee to forcibly recuse Salvio giuliano—a request which was debated internally by the committee and denied. A proposed decision is anticipated by the twice-revised date of 16 June.

At the time of writing, there are three open clarification and amendment requests, relating to Infoboxes. Complementary and Alternative Medicine, and Scientology respectively. At the time of publication, none had gained significant traction.

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My suggestion for a title: "Collect"ing socks among the occult politics breathing in high altitudes -- for some reason the wiser members of the board didn't think that was a good idea . Go Phightins! 23:54, 20 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• It's great to see the Arbitration Report back, Harry! I always enjoy reading it. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 00:28, 21 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • I never enjoy reading it, because every arb case is a sign that something has gone wrong. However I am very glad that it is there to provide a balanced overview of these, sometimes important, cases. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 23:06, 21 May 2015 (UTC).
    

• Given that ChaseMe redacted the part of his initial comments that linked his block to a specific individual (and the SPI was deleted at least in part because of the same BLP issue), perhaps the Signpost might consider doing the same. This is a google-searchable page, after all, and it comes across as though the Wikipedia "house organ" is perpetuating an unproven allegation against a living person. Risker (talk) 20:51, 21 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • I wouldn't. We very deliberately use the words "he believed." Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 21:10, 21 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    • Well, he "unbelieved" it long enough to remove it from the page before it got deleted. In other words, he had the sense to realise he'd made a BLP violation. Risker (talk) 01:20, 22 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
      • Which, of course, is why we're using the past tense of the word. You would have us bury our head in the sand and pretend this never happened? (a) we're far from the only ones on the Internet reporting on this. (b) we're not judging whether it was initially a BLP violation. (c) what we have is in no way a BLP violation. It's an entirely neutral account of the events. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 02:01, 22 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
        • You have an odd definition of "neutral". The arbitration report does not normally include images of article subjects. If you'd had an image of ChaseMe in the article (he's open about his identity and there are several images of him uploaded by him or others on Wikimedia projects), I'd believe you were at least trying to be neutral. Risker (talk) 03:51, 22 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
          • It's clear that we're not going to be able to convince each other of the veracity of our views. ;-) We'll have to agree to disagree. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 08:10, 22 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
          • @Risker: I was the Signpost editor who added the image of Shapps. I didn't consult anyone else about this, nor did I have any involvement in writing the Arb Report, so the idea that including the image is some indicator of the bias or non-neutrality of the report is inaccurate. The Arb Report does not typically include images because the content does not generally lend itself to that, not because of any deliberate editorial decision about whether or not to include images. In this case, since Shapps was a public figure whose image was available, I made the decision to include it. I didn't even think to consider whether or not to include an image of Chase Me. It might be something to consider in future coverage, but in this case it wasn't a matter of me deciding between a picture of Shapps or a picture of Chase Me, it was a matter of me checking to see if there was an image of a public figure available. Gamaliel (talk) 02:57, 23 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Gamaliel, it *is* a bias, although I'm certain it's not a conscious one; it's the bias of using an image, any image, without consideration of the potential harm to the individual whose image is used. Would you use an image of the Prime Minister of Israel in relation to any of the Israel-Palestine cases (even though edits about him would likely be involved), or an image of Richard Dawkins in relation to a Darwinism case? There's just no reason to include the current image (or any image) here, either. In fact, the public figure is pretty peripheral to the case itself, except for the real-world impact that it has had on his life, and the use of the image perpetuates that real-world impact by continuing to associate him personally with the behaviour of an administrator, which is what has led to an arbitration case. You'll notice the case is not named for him, it's named neutrally. (It's also not named for the administrator involved, something the Arbitration Committee started doing some years ago where possible to reduce the real-world impact on individual editors.)It is even a non-public case, at least in part to avoid the spread of the BLP issues involved. The fact that very experienced editors and administrators can't even see the BLP implications of continuing to name and shame the public figure is worrisome. I'd like to hope that you can see that the same point could be made without the image, and without even naming the public figure; "a British politician in the midst of an election campaign" would be sufficient here. I'll return to this tomorrow; if it's still there, I'll invoke the special BLP provisions. Risker (talk) 03:33, 23 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

On reflection I agree with Risker here. The image isn't a good illustration of the purely internal Wikipedia matter being reported on here, for all the reasons that led to the case being accepted in the first place. Andreas JN466 07:06, 23 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Risker, the Signpost is carefully considering the issues you raise. I can't speak for the whole editorial board, but personally I don't find the attempted analogy with the Israeli prime minister to be relevant: that would be pointed and undue weight, whereas here, the photograph is from the article that is specifically at the core of the ArbCom case. I have no problem with the presence of the image here. Tony (talk) 16:52, 23 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Again, Risker, you'd have us stick our heads in the sand when the rest of the world is using the politician's name. I still see no problem here and would resist the use of BLP provisions as you interpret them. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 23:30, 23 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

HJ Mitchell, note that the dates for evidence submission and posting of the proposed decision in the SPI block case have once again changed: [1]. Andreas JN466 08:04, 28 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]