Wikipedia talk:Requests for arbitration/IRC/Evidence

message: Blocks are always preventative. Once east718 protected the page, and effectively stopped the edit war, Giano did not touch that page. He also explicitly noted that he would no longer be editing the page for the night (). As 3RR blocks are intended to stop the edit warrior, then this block was rather foolish and had nothing to accomplish other than to piss off everybody.
While it is true that only Giano violated the letter of 3RR, you can't deny that there was at least some degree of tag-team reverting on both sides of the dispute. It is rather unfair and one-sided to block only one participant of a large edit war. In this particular case, when there are definitive "teams" and a line is drawn in the sand, protection is the optimal solution. (This relies on the idea that administrators should have the sense not to edit war on protected pages, which seems to be floundering at the moment.) Sean William  @ 01:30, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: In addition, I did not suggest blocking everybody. I suggested not blocking anybody and protecting the page. ("Protection is optimal in a situation such as this.") Sean William  @ 01:34, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: You undid my block on the grounds that I did not consider the non-3RR violating behavior of other people. This is not a sensible test to apply in 3RR violations. Phil Sandifer (talk) 01:46, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Then what is sensible? The whole idea of tag-team reverting is to spread the load of reverts so that the "enemy" breaches the 3RR, and gets blocked. That's more disruptive, and overall more malevolent, then the 3RR violation Giano was blocked for. Again, protection would have been better. Sean William  @ 02:27, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed. See my proposed principle 2.1 on the workshop page. Carcharoth (talk) 03:22, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

text: What evidence do you have that tag team reverting was engaged in? (As opposed to editors actually and individually believing that Giano was making crappy edits?) Phil Sandifer (talk) 05:47, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

text: *What "evidence" would you accept? E-mails between the users, saying, "Hey, I'm at 2R, can you take over?" Notes on talkpages to that effect? No, you know damn well that the only "evidence" in these type of tag-teaming efforts is the "evidence" that they were all reverting the same material over and over. Yet, you keep the mantra of "where's the evidence" going. What's your motivation for this, when you know that the only "evidence" is that they (as a team) continually reverted the same material again and again? Mr Which??? 10:48, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed. And sometimes tag-team reverting involves no communication. It can be as simple as "I don't like what he's saying. I agree with the other side. I'll step in and help do some reverts" - that is still edit warring if you don't contribute to the discussion on the talk page or otherwise make clear what is going on. Let's make this clearer, because I can say here that if I had been around I would have tried a different wording, or something, rather than reverting, and I would have discussed what was going on. I wouldn't have just reverted and then waited until Giano breached 3RR and gone off to find someone to block him. I would have thought, oh, more drama involving Giano, how can we minimise the drama. I would then have requested page protection, and left a strongly worded warning on Giano's talk page and the others who were edit warring, making clear that I felt that all of them should be blocked for edit warring unless they could explain themselves, and that they should discuss on the talk page. This is effectively what Alison eventually did. The blocks and the bickering over the blocks, were unhelpful. Carcharoth (talk) 12:28, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, I'm offended, but this is illuminating. Apparently this whole case is just another construction of the evil cabal of admins. Evidently when I saw Giano violate the 3RR on my watchlist, I must have been engaged in tag-teaming! The problem here is that Giano's apologists can't assume good faith. David Fuchs (talk) 15:04, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: As an outsider, I find it somewhat hilarious to contemplate apologists who are unable to assume good faith. Would be kind akin to a car mechanic that can't fix motors. -- Cimon Avaro; on a pogostick. (talk) 05:55, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

text: David Fuchs, this particular discussion doesn't have anything to do with Giano's first 3RR violation, which you blocked for. This is regarding the second 3RR violation, the most recent, that Phil Sandifer blocked for and I unblocked. Sean William  @ 15:23, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I know, but I still think the same thinking applies here. I'm hardly vouching for Phil's actions, but it's pernecious to assume that some sort of 'secret handshake' actions were going on to revert. David Fuchs (talk) 16:03, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I am not suggesting anything of the sort. The point is that even if an uninvolved editor comes along and disagrees with what has been said by either side, they should have the sense to see that an edit war is in progress. Rather than jumping in and doing a revert, or getting the calculator out and working out who will reach 3RR first, the sensible course of action is to check the talk page and contribute to, or start discussion. Even if the editor is not an admin and can't protect the page, a null edit with an edit summary saying "PLEASE TAKE THIS TO THE TALK PAGE" is preferable to stoking the fires with yet another revert - even better would be requesting page protection. Sure, 3RR is an electric fence, but that doesn't mean that people don't still have an obligation to look a little deeper and try and resolve what is going on, instead of arguing about a block. Carcharoth (talk) 16:53, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

text: (edit conflict) It's important to note that one can be part of a tag-team revert war without being in cabal-like communication. I bring up the case of  (The situation was arbitrated at Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Armenia-Azerbaijan). The history from about May 18 to May 22 is the sort of tag-team revert war that I'm talking about (albeit with less accusations of bad faith - the Armenia-Azerbaijan situation is really a mess). The editors with similar viewpoints about the version participated in the revert war, but would always revert to their preferred version. They probably aren't a cabal, they just have ideas similar to one another, and revert accordingly. Sean William  @ 17:01, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

text: Page protection early on would have worked. Maybe renaming the page as "SANDBOX - property of <insert various names from both sides here>" would also have worked. And Giano will discuss things if you actually talk to him, not past him. Carcharoth (talk) 17:44, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Re: Phil Sandifer 

message: Maxim, can you please correct your spelling of Geogre's name? You also linked to the uninvolved User:George and there is a header level typo as well. Carcharoth (talk) 01:40, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Although in general editors should not change anyone else's words on an arbitration page, any editor may fix obvious typos of this nature. Make a note in the edit summary that it is just a typo fix and not a substantive change. Newyorkbrad (talk) 01:50, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Seems to be online. I'll wait a bit and let him do it first. No rush. Carcharoth (talk) 01:51, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Woops, I didn't see this discussion.  I just fixed the George spelling on two pages.  —Wknight94 (talk) 02:06, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Spelling 

message: I only reverted once; you're really exaggerating my involvement in the WP:WEA edit war. --Coredesat 04:35, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: My level of involvement was also really small. I admit that I did revert, but it was not to the extent of several of the other listed users.—Ryūlóng (竜龍) 07:31, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Re: Maxim 

message: What's the deal with log presentation in this case.  I'm tempted to IAR the whole thing (what do I have to lose, after all), but why fan the flames any further currently.  What's the preferred practice by the ArbCom in this case? --Badlydrawnjeff (talk) 17:08, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Email the committee's mailing list if you want to provide them with IRC logs. --Michael Snow (talk) 17:42, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: And the public verification that they were received will be placed where? --Badlydrawnjeff (talk) 18:05, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: If you email it to me as clerk, I will forward it to Arbcom-L and place an acknowledgment here.  If you forward it directly to Arbcom-L, you could simply ask one of the Arbitrators to post an acknowledgment. Thatcher 19:08, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Forwarded.  I await a confirmation of reciept. --Badlydrawnjeff (talk) 00:06, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Received by the arbitrators. Thanks. Newyorkbrad (talk) 04:13, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Aren't you an arbitrator-elect, rather than an arbitrator... :-) Carcharoth (talk) 04:30, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Apparently he's already been given the Arbcom-L secret decoder ring. Thatcher 04:39, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

text:  Bow! Bow! To His Arbitrator-in-law Elect! (with apologies to WS Gilbert).  --Tony Sidaway 03:33, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

text: There are no rules for how to handle IRC logs.  IRC forbids it, but there is no policy on Wikipedia about it.  If someone really, really, really, really thinks the log is fabbed, it can be easily checked against any one of a dozen other logs of the same time period.  That said, no one should post IRC logs unless she or he believes that it is absolutely integral to a case.  It should not be done trivially, as the person who does so may lose access to Freenode, but there is no privacy to IRC.  Furthermore, the fact that people are so ... school girlish about logs... means that IRC is subject to abusive action.  Geogre (talk) 13:33, 29 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Current rules on logs 

message: There is current discussion at Wikipedia talk:Requests for arbitration/IRC/Workshop#Developments on whether to undelete Giano's talk page, since diffs contained in its page history are cited numerous times as evidence. - Mtmelendez (Talk) 02:26, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Note

message: I am having difficulty reviewing much of the evidence due to Giano's user page being deleted. Diffs are indexed by a revision ID and deleted revisions are indexed by a timestamp so the are difficult to line up. Is there any good reason that this user page is deleted? 1 != 2 04:09, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes. As someone who "vanished" and resurrected like phoenix with an admin bit in event that caused much controversy, you should know better. --Irpen 04:11, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I understand why you are passionate about this, Irpen, but please tone the rhetoric down a notch. Sean William  @ 04:16, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Indeed. As far as Giano's talk page is concerned, see my comments on the workshop talk page. Thatcher 04:40, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

text: I have to basically agree with Irpen.  1==2 should know about right to vanish, of all people.  There was "evidence" there?  I don't recall there being any discussion of that dreadful page anywhere on Giano's page, ever.  If people want to pick through his talk page and try to collect up half sentences to stitch together, that's ... their desire.  There was no evidence about the "edit war" on Giano's talk page, and that is presumably what people would be looking for.  Geogre (talk) 13:22, 29 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It's clearly related. There is also extremely important evidence to the effect of Giano saying "I'm not going to edit that page anymore - goodnight". In that light, the consequent block was clearly punitive, if still allowed by 3RR policy. Carcharoth (talk) 18:41, 29 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Deleted revisions 

message: What happened to Bishonen's evidence section?  It seemed appropriate and relevant to me in what it presented.  Cla68 (talk) 12:49, 29 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yep.  Well, if we're going to post evidence, then we have to post evidence.  The evidence was from IRC, and yet people are treating 1) IRC as if it were e-mail, 2) IRC as if its rules (Freenode's rules) were Wikipedia's rules, 3) as if there were a policy forbidding whistleblowing.  Well, that's as wrong as it can be.  In fact, Bishonen is central to the issue, and she posted evidence.  Yes, people can see it in history, but that's absolutely not the point.  It's hypocrisy, in fact.  Geogre (talk) 13:19, 29 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Why not post the IRC log evidence and then let the ArbCom state in their decision whether that will be acceptable or not from now on? Cla68 (talk) 21:06, 29 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  To avoid confusion, I've unequivocally granted Bishonen the absolute right to quote whatever evidence, from IRC logs or elsewhere, she may believe necessary to pursue her grievance.  She may solicit evidence from others.  I want to resolve this grievance. --Tony Sidaway 02:51, 30 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  To elaborate and qualify: obviously I cannot grant her permission to quote the words or others who might have been around at the time.  If she thinks it's necessary, I ask her to be polite and ask those people for permission. She always has the option of submitting evidence privately, and I don't think arbcom would object to any relevant evidence. --Tony Sidaway 03:10, 30 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Bishonen's evidence section

message: Rereading all of this, it seemed to be implied a couple of times, on these pages and on the talk page of the IRC article, that some of the information inserted by Giano was false information. I don't know if the Workshop and Evidence pages here bear out such an idea. Could someone clarify for me what false information Giano posted to WP:WEA? Lawrence Cohen 17:28, 29 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Clarification: what information was false, or incorrect? 

message: There is an excellent timeline that has been put together by the bainer. See here. I can't find anywhere suitable to discuss the implications of some of the points raised here, so I thought here would be a good point.
*(1) The block by Fuchs and the revert by Fuchs occurred at the same time (in the timeline the revert appears first, but it could have been the other way around). What is the correct protocol here? Was Fuchs correct to carry out the revert at all, given that he was carrying out a block?
*(2) One thing that doesn't appear in the timeline is a null edit that Giano made to correct a spelling mistake in an edit summary. Giano did this in several other places as well. The irony here is that when you look at the page history, it looks like Giano has reverted twice in quick succession. A closer look would reveal that this is not the case, but is it possible that a misreading of this is what precipitated the first 3RR block?
*(3) Did David Fuchs block for this sequence of edits (A: , , , ? Or was it for this sequence of edits (B: , , , )?
*(4) Does this sequence count as breaching 5RR (C: initial addition of text, revert removal, add back in similar text, add back in similar text, revert removal, and finally, revert removal). The text all those edits have in common is:"One of the anomalies of the channel is that permitted and privileged non-admins are allowed to insult female administrators using base language. "bitch" and "bastard" being favoured terms of derision if a female admin dares to challenge the opinion of a non-admin. When this takes place (or the female becomes disconcerted and uncomfortable) the other males in the channels, most of them admins, look at the floor, talk to each other or try and pretend they have not noticed. This prevents them having to risk their own popularity or status as macho men." David Fuchs might say yes, this is what he blocked for, but if this was the case, should he not have provided the diffs to show Giano this? Essentially, if you line up those six edits, Giano tried six times to add very similar content with minimal rewriting. My question here is whether that counts as the specific form of edit warring known as breaching 3RR or, whether it is the broader activity known as edit warring? It may not matter much, but I would be interested to pin down the exact difference. Others were edit warring as well, but were rewriting the text or only doing a few reverts. Was Giano singled out because he didn't rewrite what he was trying to say, or purely due to the number of attempts to add what he was saying?
*(4a) It should be noted here that Doc Glasgow removed the text quoted above three times (, , ).
*(5) The quotes from Giano's talk page are not complete. In particular, the 00:16, 26 Dec quote is truncated. The missing bit is: "I see the page owner is now editing the page, go and give him some advice. I'm not editing it any more tonight anyway because I have other fish to fry. So why not read my statement yourself, is it not true, are you afraid of #admins or are you more interested in me than the accuracy of information?" (typo silently corrected and emphasis added). What we see here is that Giano has engaged in discussion with FT2, who is telling him not to edit war. The response from Giano is not great, but it does make clear that he is not going to edit the page any more. Was Phil Sandifer aware of all this when he blocked Giano? He should have been.
That's probably enough for now. I'd like to thank the bainer profusely for doing this timeline. It is not complete yet, but it is very nearly there, and it does make lots of things much clearer, though it is important to read the times carefully to realise how long the time period is between each entry. Carcharoth (talk) 20:00, 29 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: All, as Tra suggested back when I first did this kind of table, you can work it out using the mw:API (I should have done it when I was putting it together but was slack :) ). It's pretty easy, you just give it the revision id and it can tell you what time the edit was made. Log entries are also pretty straightforward. I've added links to the relevant API queries and fixed the order for the two items that were the wrong way round. --bainer (talk) 03:26, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

text: I think the point you are trying to make here (correct me if I'm wrong) is that the short timing (18 seconds) means it is unlikely that Geogre saw David's talk page post before carrying out the unprotection. In other words, the timeline and surrounding comments unintentionally makes it look like Geogre was responding to David Gerard's talk page post, but this is actually very unlikely. It seems more likely that Geogre noticed the page protection after he edited, and then unprotected, and only later saw David Gerard's talk page post. There is a similar case with David Fuch's block (as I state above), namely that the timeline makes it look like Fuchs warned Giano not to continue reverting on that page, Giano edited that page (not reverting), and then Fuchs blocked - the problem being that there were all of six seconds between Fuchs's warning and Giano "next edit to the page". In other words, it is likely that at the time Fuchs was leaving the warning, Giano was still writing the edit that he supposedly got blocked for (according to the blocking admin). Giano probably got the "new message" bar after saving his edit. In other words, if admins leave warnings, they should allow time for the warning to be seen. Carcharoth (talk) 04:56, 1 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Note I've added hyphens, above. I wonder if Geogre carried out these two actions (edit, unprotect) as a single act? I am not concerned, in this instance, with the intervening David Gerard edit, as the time between is so brief. Jd2718 (talk) 05:11, 1 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Can't be a single act. But being close together means that effectively Geogre was not trying to leverage any advantage from having edited a protected page. Carcharoth (talk) 05:20, 1 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: That's what I meant, thanks. They are two separate acts that may have been intended to be part of one sequence. But then we get into intent. Perhaps Geogre will tell us (or perhaps it's already in evidence. I'll look through again). Jd2718 (talk) 05:28, 1 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Some points arising from the timeline 

message: subsection header added and numbering removed. Carcharoth (talk) 02:36, 30 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: All, as Tra suggested back when I first did this kind of table, you can work it out using the mw:API (I should have done it when I was putting it together but was slack :) ). It's pretty easy, you just give it the revision id and it can tell you what time the edit was made. Log entries are also pretty straightforward. I've added links to the relevant API queries and fixed the order for the two items that were the wrong way round. --bainer (talk) 03:26, 30 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: (1) David Fuch's block

message: TheBainer's timeline makes it quite easy to read the sequence of events. 
At 16:43 Geogre made this edit while the page was protected and at 16:44 unprotects.  The analysis indicates that Geogre edited the page while protected. Should the edit-then-immediately-unprotect sequence be indicated? Does it make a difference? Jd2718 (talk) 04:19, 1 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I think the point you are trying to make here (correct me if I'm wrong) is that the short timing (18 seconds) means it is unlikely that Geogre saw David's talk page post before carrying out the unprotection. In other words, the timeline and surrounding comments unintentionally makes it look like Geogre was responding to David Gerard's talk page post, but this is actually very unlikely. It seems more likely that Geogre noticed the page protection after he edited, and then unprotected, and only later saw David Gerard's talk page post. There is a similar case with David Fuch's block (as I state above), namely that the timeline makes it look like Fuchs warned Giano not to continue reverting on that page, Giano edited that page (not reverting), and then Fuchs blocked - the problem being that there were all of six seconds between Fuchs's warning and Giano "next edit to the page". In other words, it is likely that at the time Fuchs was leaving the warning, Giano was still writing the edit that he supposedly got blocked for (according to the blocking admin). Giano probably got the "new message" bar after saving his edit. In other words, if admins leave warnings, they should allow time for the warning to be seen. Carcharoth (talk) 04:56, 1 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Note I've added hyphens, above. I wonder if Geogre carried out these two actions (edit, unprotect) as a single act? I am not concerned, in this instance, with the intervening David Gerard edit, as the time between is so brief. Jd2718 (talk) 05:11, 1 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Can't be a single act. But being close together means that effectively Geogre was not trying to leverage any advantage from having edited a protected page. Carcharoth (talk) 05:20, 1 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: That's what I meant, thanks. They are two separate acts that may have been intended to be part of one sequence. But then we get into intent. Perhaps Geogre will tell us (or perhaps it's already in evidence. I'll look through again). Jd2718 (talk) 05:28, 1 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: (2) Geogre edited a protected page?

message: In Carcharoth's summary, he states:
# User:Jouster - three edits (one revert, one null edit to comment in the edit summary, and one minor edit)
Reviewing my own contributions, I find the following:
*  : I readd some content that had been deleted.  I did not know the initial state of the page, but I felt that Geogre's comments were far less weasel-y than the text I saw there ("many complainants"?  Who?  Why?  Where?  References, citations, context of any sort!?).  Knowing now the original state of the page, I would probably not make this same edit again, but I stand behind the edit as generating a better page than the one that existed previously; I would avoid repeating the edit only because it came across as inflammatory instead of the policy-based page enhancement I was attempting.
*  : Minor edit.  Having gone to all this trouble to remove weasel-y content, I realized the content I'd taken from Geogre was, itself, weasel-y.  Corrected.
*  : Minor edit.  Hyphenation.  In the edit summary, I mention, "quite frankly, [the phrase] 'distinguished and well-trusted [administrators]' is unnecessary and self-aggrandizing as hell, but I'm not willing to step into that snake pit by removing it".  At this point, I've realized that the page is undergoing some sort of edit/wheel war and I'm purposely trying to make only non-confrontational, mechanical edits.  Given dictatorial authority, I would have removed this phrase, but I avoided doing so, knowing it would trigger chaos.
*  : Minor edit.  Changed displays of on-wiki usernames from (f.ex) User:Jimbo Wales to Jimbo Wales.
Given this log, I do not see the null edit, nor do I see only one minor edit; the correct count is one revert, and three minor edits.
In addition, I hope this serves to clarify my goals when editing the page.  If I was incorrect in trying to increase the number of direct, sourced, and explicated statements, please tell me why so I can learn.  If I was incorrect to make mechanical corrections to an article under dispute, please tell me that as well.  As it stands, as mentioned above, I feel I was quite firmly in the right both to make the original reversion, and not to revert-war it when it was reverted against my opinion of how the page should read.
Lastly, nobody has mentioned my WP:IAR edit here, nor has it been removed.  I presume, then, that this exceptional situation (I was concerned that the case might not be taken up due to the statement from the supplicant, that, as Giano had been banned, "I would therefore request that voting on whether to accept this case be delayed until Giano II has a opportunity to respond to the filing.") warranted the invocation of IAR; as before, please tell me if I am wrong.
Jouster  (whisper) 20:14, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for pointing this out. Sorry for getting that wrong (I failed to see the hyphenation and miscounted the number of edits). I've corrected myself. Your IAR edit looked fine - it was probably very helpful in fact. You didn't do much wrong here at all, really, in my opinion, and you showed clearly when you backed off why you were backing off. The only thing to learn from this (and you are not the only one) is to maybe take a closer look at the page history before reverting the first time. To be fair, though, this was a slow-motion edit war spread over days and hours, so it is understandably easy to have missed what was happening. Carcharoth (talk) 22:54, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[User:Jouster]] and Carcharoth's Summary of Events 

message: Giano's edit summary for his edits from 14:35 - 14:36, 23 Dec is incorrectly copied; "depth" and "known" should probably be within square brackets, as they are likely what he meant, but not what he typed.
Doc's edit on 20:49, 23 Dec was marked (inappropriately, no?) as minor.
AzaToth's edit on 20:52, 23 Dec was marked (inappropriately, no?) as minor.
Jouster  (whisper) 12:30, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Giano corrected his own edit summary. First try was here. Second try was here (note the "(undo)" in the edit summary - looks like Giano copy and pasted and corrected the typos in the edit summary, but left the "undo" bit there and missed some typos in the post - but that's par for the course for many people here, including me). Doc and AzaToth made several edits marked "minor", most probably due to them using some script (eg. TWINKLE) to assist their editing - you are right though, their edits should not have been marked minor. Carcharoth (talk) 13:07, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  A couple timeline corrections