Wikipedia talk:Requests for arbitration/India-Pakistan

message: ==== Statement by AMbroodEY ====
User:Unre4L has been unnecessarily odefying some dumb statements i did make. I apologised to him for those statements and decided to wipe the slate clean and give the whole situation a new try. Yet User:Unre4L and his friends have continued on their confrontational attitude. Whats more they've engage in petty revert wars over talk-page tags. I've had a hard time convincing these guys that talk-page tags are not meant to signify page ownership. 
User:Unre4L for his part has engaged in bltant genocide denial of my people, the Hindu Sindhis, during partition in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan . Given my  personal and academic commitments it will be difficult for me to participate in this Arbitration case until mid-March. I request a continuation till 13th of March, as I believe in my absence my role in this whole business may be misrepresented. 
Response to Nadirali: I'm nobody's associate. I'm here to write an encyclopedia not engage in nationalist flamewars. Wikipedia is not a battle ground. I'm always willing to co-operate on any article of mututal interest, whatever differences we may have on others.
 Amey Aryan DaBrood© 05:30, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: In response to Szhaider's latest comment, those were honest mistakes since you get removing the india tags.--D-Boy 07:40, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

text: Do you have an alternate suggestion that does not involved naming particular editors (we try to avoid Tom and Dick vs Harry for example).  Ultimately, however, the title is just a bit of necessary bookkeeping, and I have never seen a case where the title alone framed the outcome. Thatcher131 22:15, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, how about "India-Pakistan Nationalism" or "Pakistan-India Nationalism" or "South Asia Nationalism?" Fowler&fowler«Talk» 00:06, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

text: I'm thinking just India-Pakistan at this point. We'll see if it get a fourth vote to open. Thatcher131 03:31, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Comments by uninvolved editors

message: User:Unre4L has been unnecessarily odefying some dumb statements i did make. I apologised to him for those statements and decided to wipe the slate clean and give the whole situation a new try. Yet User:Unre4L and his friends have continued on their confrontational attitude. Whats more they've engage in petty revert wars over talk-page tags. I've had a hard time convincing these guys that talk-page tags are not meant to signify page ownership. 
User:Unre4L for his part has engaged in bltant genocide denial of my people, the Hindu Sindhis, during partition in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan . Given my  personal and academic commitments it will be difficult for me to participate in this Arbitration case until mid-March. I request a continuation till 13th of March, as I believe in my absence my role in this whole business may be misrepresented. 
Response to Nadirali: I'm nobody's associate. I'm here to write an encyclopedia not engage in nationalist flamewars. Wikipedia is not a battle ground. I'm always willing to co-operate on any article of mututal interest, whatever differences we may have on others.
 Amey Aryan DaBrood© 05:30, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by AMbroodEY 

message: In response to Szhaider's comment I would like to note that I never removed any pak tag and I only added the india tag since pak and indian history overlap.  Szhaider repeatedly removed the indain tag even though it was generally agreed that the tag should stay.--D-Boy 06:00, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: In response to Szhaider's latest comment, those were honest mistakes since you get removing the india tags.--D-Boy 07:40, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by [[User:Dangerous-Boy|Dangerous-Boy]] 

message: I notice that the title of this Request for Arbitration has been changed to "Pakistani Nationalism."  I think the new title unfairly tilts the balance in favor of the initiator, Rama's arrow.  I am not sure if everyone knows that the RfArb was initiated by Rama's arrow at 16:59, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Do you have an alternate suggestion that does not involved naming particular editors (we try to avoid Tom and Dick vs Harry for example).  Ultimately, however, the title is just a bit of necessary bookkeeping, and I have never seen a case where the title alone framed the outcome. Thatcher131 22:15, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, how about "India-Pakistan Nationalism" or "Pakistan-India Nationalism" or "South Asia Nationalism?" Fowler&fowler«Talk» 00:06, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

text: I'm thinking just India-Pakistan at this point. We'll see if it get a fourth vote to open. Thatcher131 03:31, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by [[User:Fowler&fowler|Fowler&fowler]]

message: I've had disputes with Indian nationalists on Wikipedia and I can say with confidence that Rama's Arrow is no Indian nationalist.
He's the admin who slapped the indefinite ban on Hkelkar, the Indian Wikinationalist par excellence.
What I have noticed is that Wikinationalists throw around cheap—not to mention hypocritical—accusations of vandalism and bigotry with abandon.
Wikipedia is lousy with Indian nationalists, but Rama's Arrow is not one of them.JFD 06:59, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by JFD 

message: I'm not sure if it's common to do so here, but I would like to offer to help mediate here. I have no prefence to India or Pakistan. Just H 03:12, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Outside Statement by Just H

message: ArbCom previously denied  a request to hear a new case . At the time, I opined that I thought this issue would remain unresolved, and it has. Since that time, numerous discussions, blocks, and threads on ANI have occurred, and yet the only difference between now and then is that both TopGun and Darkness Shines have received a 1RR probation.
It is my opinion the editor Darkness Shines is an unrepentant POV-pusher who sees the world through the lens of "us" vs. "them", an opinion echoed by other editors at ANI threads and other editors not involved in this dispute (cf. Talk:British Pakistanis). JCAla has been just as bad, but has not edited as much in the past several months. TopGun faces POV-pushing issues himself, as does Mar4d.
As you can see from the links below, this has been a huge drain on community time, and I respectfully ask Arbcom to amend the remedy of the case to allow the sanctions. All previous attempts at fixing the issue have failed, and the only reason RFC's have not been tried is that everyone knows they would fail. To not allow an amendment would leave the community once again to try to implement a fix, something which it has failed at before (cf. with the interaction ban, which was eventually lifted as ineffective).
The following has a link to the discussions that have occurred just revolving around a few different users, all attempts to get the parties in line with proper conduct (the noticeboard links are just the ones that have occurred since ArbCom's rejection of the case 6 months ago; there are more in the archive, if an arbcom member wishes to look at the link I provided above of the previous decline):
*Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents/Top Gun & Darkness Shines
*Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive739#Personal attacks, canvassing, editwar by IP sock
*Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive740#Block review and admin issuing 1RR
*Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive741#Clarification required on interaction ban
*Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive741#Another question about this IBAN
*Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive750#IBAN violation
*Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive751#User:JCAla, source falsification and tendentious editing
*Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive754#Iban violation
*Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive756#Appeal
*Darkness Shines block log and unblock request block 1 (expired), unblock request block 2 (expired), 3 unblock requests block 3,  one unblock request block 4 (withdrawn), 2 unblock requests block 5 (last one accepted), 3 unblock requests block 6, 5 unblock requests block 7 (last one accepted), 1-34 unblock 8 (all denied) - note, these are all just in the past 6 months.
*TopGun block log  (I don't have the patience to go through all the unblock requests on this one too, but I assure you they are manifold; they can be provided upon request; otherwise, Arbcom is encouraged to look through the talk history here)
PS. I am willing to remove myself from any action related to any one or more of the above parties regarding enforcement if ArbCom, the community, or any non-involved party whatsoever thinks this is important. Magog the Ogre (talk) 00:00, 8 July 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by Magog the Ogre

message: I have to disagree with Magog the Ogre's statement. I don't think that DarknessShines is a "unrepentant POV-pusher". Magog has blocked him many times, and this one specially raises concerns. So does this. As of TopGun, he shows serious neutrality concerns. Along with attacking editors on the basis of their nationality, he has a history of making highly controversial and questionable edits and reverts, citing WP:BRD; and when someone reverts him, he harasses him crying hounding. The sad point is that he also gets support for his false accusations. The main purpose of TopGun, while editing Wikipedia, is evidently to push Pakistani POV, and he is also supported by other editors. This, and even this, shows some signs of blockshopping. Another point which I noticed, is that this case case came when DS was all set to open a case against MTO. ♛♚★Vaibhav Jain★♚♛ Talk Email 14:28, 8 July 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by Vibhijain 

message: # The editors in the mentioned content area are currently engaged in a mediation process. An arbitration process for these issues is currently not warranted because it would be a parallel process disrupting mediation efforts. There is no urgent dispute which would cause disruption going on currently. Editors are discussing content disputes on talk pages. 
# This arbitration request was initiated by Magog the Ogre not because of any urgent need with regards to a specific content issue (as mentioned above, mediation is already proceeding as a means of dispute resolution). Instead this request was made because Magog the Ogre's administrative competence has been questioned just yesterday by Darkness Shines. This was, according to Magog himself, the "that's it" that compelled him to open this arbitration request. 
# Both administrators asking for sanctions, Magog the Ogre and Future Perfect at Sunrise, are involved editors/administrators in the topic area. Uninvolved administrators have said that Magog the Ogre appears to be involved and to lack neutrality. Magog bears bad feelings towards one part of the editors which makes him take unbalanced actions. Future Perfect at Sunrise is himself involved as an editor in a content dispute.
# Conclusion from me: An arbitration process for the content area is currently not warranted as a mediation is in full process. During the mediation period any wrong behavior can be dealt with by uninvolved administrators according to normal policy and procedure as agreed on at ANI just a short time ago. If the mediation fails, arbitration can still be requested. On Magog, he keeps refusing to accept that he is neither considered neutral nor uninvolved by several editors and administrators. Starting arbitration to get an editor who has criticized oneself off wikipedia is yet another sign. There are plenty of uninvolved administrators who have successfully acted in the content area, which do not lack the appearance of being neutral. Please accept this. JCAla (talk) 16:34, 8 July 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by JCAla 

message: *Since back in around November since I edited the Taliban article, the two editors who disputed my edits there (DarknessShines and JCAla) now have a dispute with me in all the articles I edit after they followed me there one after another. I reported DS's admitted and unrepentant stalking/hounding  which resulted in an IBAN, after the administrators failed to enforce the IBAN (through which the stalking continued with vios only being on DS's part), the IBAN was removed on the pretext that admins would act on normal vios to make decision making easy for them. Yet many many requests to deal with the situation of the editors have been rejected with the excuse that it is difficult to gauge hounding/stalking even after I've presented with hard evidence of diffs . Another editor Vibhijain has started hounding me soon after his interaction with DS and who did not back off after a civil warning (    ) and is not being dealt with the very same way . This has gone a step further   and the editor continues to unambiguously follow me around to revert my edits or oppose me. The same was the case with DBigXray who now tries not to appear following me around but games my 1RR restriction when ever he can with edit summaries about some thing completely different . As noted in his SPI he has also been suspected of meat and sock puppetry and only got away with it because I was reporting him and had content/conduct disputes with him. This user also pretended to be an administrator clearly lying . Based on this and the subsequent administrative failure I very strongly oppose discretionary sanctions as admins have already shown that they've been extremely poor in enforcing sanctions with the filibustering that goes around in this specific dispute and support that either arbcom takes the fully case or asks admins to make swift blocks when provided with hard evidence of diffs and patterns of diffs. Also agree with Fut perfect that the Afghanistan topic is very much in the range of this dispute. --lTopGunl (talk) 13:29, 10 July 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by TopGun 

message: Regarding blocks
# His first block was for edit warring which was completely unfounded in policy. I had but one revert on that article, and it has been my first revert in four days.
# His second block was also a violation of policy, wherein he accuse me of hounding I explained that I had gotten to the article in question via an RFC which had been posted on a user talk page He ignored this and allowed the block to run it's course.
# His third block was again entirely wrong.  Accuses me of edit warring and stalking. I explained how I had gotten to the article in question via internal links and it was obvious an article on a non existent word would be deleted. There had been no stalking nor edit warring on my part at all.
#The fact the Magog so blithely calls me a bigot in his statement above shows he has not an ounce of neutrality towards me whatsoever, such a blatant personal attack is proof of his attitude towards me. Darkness Shines (talk) 02:28, 11 July 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by Darkness Shines 

message: #. Edit wars uncited content into an article.
# Reverets in unsourced content.
#Other states of India:- Citation needed. Various editors arguing with TG over his edit warring uncited content into an article.
#When pointed out on his talk page his habit of reverting unsourced content into articles he says "Blah"
# Reverts out reliably sourced content. He did not like it.
# Files an AN3 report, even though 3R was never broken by myself.
# Misrepresentation of sources
#Battlefield mentality, talks of "sides"
#Inter-Services Intelligence was locked for two weeks due to TG edit warring, his first action upon the article being unlocked, He reverts again. I endeavor to use only the best of sources, all are from academic publishing houses.
#Taliban we have the same issue again, TG reverts out huge amounts of content, all of which is sourced to academic publishers. He quite simply reverts out content which he thinks sheds a poor light on Pakistan.
As I pointed out to Magog I began to look into TG's edits after the fiasco at the Taliban article per WP:HOUND Correct use of an editor's history includes (but is not limited to) fixing unambiguous errors or violations of Wikipedia policy, or correcting related problems on multiple articles. Magog ignored all the above infractions of policy by TG and focused on my actions for reasons known only to himself. Darkness Shines (talk) 14:05, 10 July 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: On accusations of hounding

message: Well, to tell the truth, I'm not sure discretionary sanctions will be particularly helpful in this case due to the peculiarities of the topic area. First of all, it has been plagued by constant blockshopping, with users complaining about their opponents' edits on the talk pages of many different admins  disclosure: I have received several requests to examine somebody else's edits . This is the area where an interaction ban between two editors had to be lifted because it was creating more drama than it was preventing, after all. Furthermore, only very few sysops have acted in an administrative capacity and, on top of that, some, though not all, have not always appeared neutral when brandishing their mops  disclosure: and in a couple of circumstances, I have commented to that effect on the blockee's talk page . This does not mean they were not neutral, merely that they did not appear to be. Besides, owing to the incredible litigiousness of all editors involved, the sanctions imposed have not always received the appropriate level of review by the community. Actually, the reaction on ANI has been either aww, jeez, not this **** again or a chorus of let's ban them all and be done with them. Moreover, the editors involved in this topic area are very few (fewer than ten). I realise that the ongoing disruption needs to be stopped; however, as I have already said, I'm not sure the imposition of discretionary sanctions is the best way forward. That said, if the Committee were to consider them unavoidable, I'd like to urge you to consider not imposing the standard set of discretionary sanctions, but to shape them in a way that takes into account the peculiarities of the topic area (particularly the litigiousness, lack of appearance of neutrality and blockshopping).   Salvio  Let's talk about it! 22:11, 10 July 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by Salvio giuliano 

message: *I was not a party to this case as the nominator Magog had only mentioned 5 names as involved users and TopGun has wrongly dragged me here by adding 2 more names to make this a soup and distract the case. This also comes after I was recently threatened by topGun for commenting at ANI. I hope the arbcom members will  note this and remove the extra names as attempts to distract,  noting that  I have never been blocked or accused by any editor other than TopGun (who because of a few content disputes likes to take my name everywhere) 
#User:TopGun (previously edited as User:Hassanhn5)  keeps pushing Pakistani POV in Wiki articles (and can be clearly seen in his edits) using unsourced or poorly sourced (blogs, SPS) contents and is often met by resistance from other editors. In past I had disputes when he tried to disrupt (insert POV and remove sourced content) in india related articles under my watchlist. To get me out of his way he had desperately tried all attempts of getting me blocked by all possible means and failed in all of them. 
#Its not easy for a such edits to go un noticed on wikipedia. And whenever the other editors complain of his behavior he prefers calling them  Sockpuppets  and  . TopGun has made failed attempts to get me blocked by falsely accusing me for Sockpuppetry  . Inspite of the fact that I  was cleared and the case was closed, he keeps wrongly accusing me for his imaginary socks. 
#TopGun has tried block shopping against me by canvassing on talk pages of admins and editors , ,(many more..) and called me a vandal and presented a content dispute at AIV for a quick block on me 
:;On accusations by TopGun: 
#TopGun makes controversial edits on articles and whenever the page watchers revert him he accuses everyone else (with whom TopGun has content disputes) of hounding. this  observation has also been supported by Magog himself . In past  also TopGun tried to get me blocked my making a concocted report at ANI hoping that he might get me banned by incorrectly accusing me of "hounding", for editing my watchlisted articles and failed.
#In response to an 11 month old diff presented by TopGun above on accusing me of posing as admin where I was trying to warn a proven Vandal about Vandalism is  yet another ill-intentioned attempt to show me in a bad light. I was new to wikipedia and was  trying to discourage  a vandal only account from vandalizing wikipedia. later on I learnt that there are templates to warn them so started using them. The very next day that account was blocked indefinitely for being a Vandalism only account. But the Arbcom members must also note that TopGun brings this incident with carefully worded phrases  every time he makes a complaint against me and here as well.
#The diff of the revert  pointed by TopGun above was done by me in accordance with the talk page discussion here, when other editors had pointed source misrepresentation by TopGun. 
*Unlike TopGun who follows  WP:BATTLEGROUND mentality and has a block log filled with edit warring and disruptive editing,  I have never been blocked neither have I been warned for any issue. 
*It is to be noted that TopGun makes regular visits  to Magog's page for block shopping instead of  taking the issue to the ANI as his attempts of block shopping have a much higher success rate at Magog's page than at Admin notice boards. 
*It must be duly pointed out that block shopping at admin's talk pages need to end and if there is a genuine concern then it should be posted at appropriate noticeboards where "uninvolved" admins can take proper actions (or boomerang if appropriate). I am in complete agreement with Salvio's comment above. --DBigXray 07:52, 11 July 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by DBigXray 

message: AS evident by the comments of admins User:Magog the Ogre and User:Future Perfect at Sunrise above, I will also request the arbcom to prevent these two admins from taking administrative actions against the editors in this topic area, as they are clearly involved and their admin actions are biased while dealing with few specific editors in this topic area. --DBigXray 19:59, 23 July 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Request 2

message: I completely disagree when MTO calls DS an "unrepentant POV-pusher who sees the world through the lens of "us" vs. "them"". DS's edits may look controversial but none of them are disputing neutrality or using unreliable sources. As far as his reverts for TGs edits are concerned, TG's edits were controversial and subject to eventual talks or RFCs at talk pages or user talk pages. MTO being an admin has made few uncivil kind of personal attacks to DS (). Especially this didn't look appropriate at all as the editor wasn't even warned or asked for clarification prior to the block. This isn't my main point at this statement. I will have to say that it is actually TopGun and at times Mar4d who have pushed POV and they seem to remove addition of any content that sheds a poor light on Pakistan. They have also been adding data which is not so in favor of Indian authorities at Jammu & Kashmir or related issues negatively. The best example of this "biased behavior" can be found at  where TG and M4 introduced links (I Protest, Rape in Jammu and Kashmir, Human rights abuses in Jammu and Kashmir and Media curbs and usage of social networking sites in Kashmir) which have no connection whatsoever to separatist movement. These links don't even have any content related to the movement and still get a place in the template. Another example is Pakistan Zindabad where TG removes data which is completely sourced with WP:RS and the incident is notable enough to have a mention but still it was removed just because it was proving a bad point for his country, I was totally shocked by such biased behavior (Pakistan Zindabad incident lead to a Talk:Pakistan_Zindabad#Controversial_Usage RFC where editors are in clear support of inclusion). This is nothing but clear POV pushing. He also accused Vibhijain of HOUNDING which was not a case there. HOUNDING says that edits that are intended to dispute or badger the editor in a wrong way is HOUNDING but addition of material and other fixes in good faith are not HOUNDING. Since long TG has accused people of HOUNDING and still does as he doesn't seem to understand what WP:HOUND is. Since long TopGun has followed such behavior and has faced many blocks due to incivility or personal attacks (hostile editing against Darkness Shines, improper calling of "sock") or breaking IBAN or Disruptive editing. He has since long continued to make this site WP:BATTLEGROUND and one of the instances can be found here. This dispute doesn't look like it is going to end. I believe that a ban from Indo-Pak related articles will be the best possible solution to this continued conflict.  — TheSpecialUser (TSU) 05:23, 12 July 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by TheSpecialUser 

message: I have been an active Wikipedia editor for the past 6 months. I edit many articles, and that includes articles about my country, India. I have observed the process of edits, reverts and ANI proceedings from the sidelines for some time. I am here as an editor whose willingness to edit, add content and removed vandalism/violations from these articles has been diminished. This is because of two reasons:
#Fear of swift administrator intervention, due to a complaint against me by an opposing party. I am here to devote my time on Wikipedia's article space. Being caught up in ANIs, with a possibility of being handed out blanket bans is terrifying to me. I would not like to be dragged into an official mess for cases that ideally require more discussions on the talk pages.
#Distractions caused to regular editing, by users who hold opposite views but are reluctant to discuss them, and are willing to enforce them using tactics like talk page intimidation (as illustrated in the examples linked in the previous sections).
;In my opinion, 
#Placing blanket sanctions on the topic area will not be very effective as it won't solve the root of the problem, which, in my opinion is a user conduct issue here.
#Administrators on Wikipedia are like administrators anywhere. In all progressive democracies, there is a time-bound change of guard, of elected politicians and behind the scene bureaucrats. This i believe is done to ensure that an administrator appointed to a particular 'region' does not become all-powerful and start to 'intimidate' his/her subjects. Similarly, when an administrator on wikipedia remains associated with a disputed subject for a long time, any action by him/her that might even appear to be biased causes further agitation among opposing users. The problem is made worse by the fact that other/uninvolved Wikipedia administrators do not like to intervene on seeing an admin already 'handling business'. A vicious cycle is formed, which might discourage other editors from contributing to such articles/topics.
I would urge the ArbCom to ponder over these issues.
Thanking you all, 
Anir1uph (talk) 21:37, 14 July 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Statement by Anir1uph

message: I completely disagree with Magog the Ogre's description of Darkness Shines as a unrepentant POV-pusher.Darkness Shines has been doing great service to neutralize the POV pushing that plagues many(most) of the Indo-Pakistani articles.Magog the Ogre was always involved in the dispute when he repeatedly blocked Darkness Shines.There was obviously some kind of blockshopping due to which Darkness Shines was indiscriminately blocked many times.MTO ridiculously accuses DS of Anti-Pakistani editing while he supports TG and Mar4d who openly push anti-india propoganda.
:User:TopGun has always been trying in extreme magnitudes to push Pakistani POV in any article he finds..TopGun has been Templaring and warning regular and established editors as they stand against his pov pushing.  .He regularly(and baselessly) accuses DBigXray and Vibhijain(sysop elsewhere) for hounding .TopGun has a good history of edit-warring due to which he was blocked quite a good number of times and was even stripped off his rollback privelages.It's ridiculous to see him accuse another established editor for edit-warring and hounding.
Mar4d's follows a different pattern of POV pushing where he pushes his point silently so that no one notices his edits.He doesn't appear on other user talk pages as frequently as TG but his effect on articles is quite high too.
I hereby request the ArbCom to take necessary action against TopGun and Mar4d-Discrete Sanctions or Ban.Darkness Shines and JCAla, who have been working for NPOV in the conflicted articles must be freed of the charges.Vibhijain and DBigXray who were dragged into the dispute by TG have no major role in it and hence I think must be removed from the list.
Sincerely, TheStrikeΣagle  13:06, 17 July 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by Strike Eagle 

message: The only major POV dispute I have ever been involved was a userbox I created.Mar4d nominated it for deletion saying that it was not in use and unnecessary.Who is he to decide what is necessary here? Unfortunately(for Mar4d) the MfD was closed as keep with no delete !vote other than Mar4d's.perhaps his friends were off-wiki that time .It is clear that Mar4d accuses other users for POV pushing while he himself does it all the time.Hope this clears the accusation. Regards TheStrikeΣagle  13:06, 17 July 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  On Accusations of POV Pushing by Mar4d 

message: I don't know why my name was added here as none of the statements given up till now state my name. As I edit in this topic area so I will like to share my observation: that whenever an editor persistently pushes his/her POV in a topic area giving an impression that he/she is working on some agenda here at Wikipedia, the editors contributing to the same topic area how much neutral they may be but a time will come that they will be forced to push the opposite POV instead of coming to neutral ground. The problems in this topic area are so difficult to handle that most of the admins avoid using their tools in this area or even try to understand what the actual problem is and what is its cause? I have been viewing Darkness Shines’s (DS) edits in the Pakistan topic area, for the last 7 months. Per my observation he is continuously pushing his POV and disrupting any good effort put by most of the other editors working in this topic. I have raised this issue previously many times (some other editors also did this). Some of his edits that don’t need much explanation describing his POV:  , , , , 
Not to mention his uncivil behavior, creation of article to piss other editors, hounding other editors, as they are separate and lengthy chapters.
On calling an admin involved I will just say that DS calls anyone involved/not neutral admin whoever supported Bwilkins idea of blocking him for six months,in the last discussion at ANI so that includes: Bwilkins,The Bushranger, Dennis Brown,  Future Perfect at Sunrise, Magog. Though till now he has called only Bwilkins, Magog and Future Perfect as involved, with this argument but I don’t see it far that all the other admins who supported his block will be accused of being involved whenever they take some action against him. So I think an editor should not be given the right to call an admin being biased/involved just because he/she blocked or supported/upheld a block of that editor previously. It will set a bad precedence leading to problems for the administrators dealing with disruptive editors.
There is much more happening in this topic area that most of the outside editors are possibly not aware of, like creation of retaliatory articles, hounding, teaming up, defending an editor or his/her actions whenever an action is (or going to be) taken by an admin, accusing any admin who takes action of being involved/biased, accusing editors (including admins) of being friend of the other editor, giving barnstars to each other with inflammatory comments against other editors soon after a discussion is concluded, etc. All this is now increasing with more editors following the path of others who did this successfully and have become a role model. Also the frequency of these kind of disruptive activities is increasing. Actually this is one of the reasons that my contributions are declining too as I avoid these disputes as much as I can. That is why I think Arbitration Committee should take a thorough look into this (that unfortunately most of the admins avoid), that I guess is possible if a full arbitration case is taken. Apparently it looks like that discretionary sanctions will solve the problems in this topic area but it will not be plugging (only) the right hole, instead it is like plugging all the holes, that will have collateral damage to some extent as issues which arise in this topic area are so complex sometimes that it is difficult for an admin to act without thoroughly checking the lengthy history of the events, so sometimes they avoid using the (sysop) tools. So my only concern about giving admins the powers of discretionary sanctions is why ArbCom is leaving this case once again for the admins, majority of whom are probably reluctant to act in this topic. Besides I would like to mention about the more visible display of Battleground mentality .i.e. the addition of my name to the involved/affectee list that apparently looks like an "us vs them" approach. --SMS  Talk 22:14, 17 July 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by Smsarmad 

message: In addition to India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, I suggest including Bangladesh in the list of countries covered by the motion. There has been extensive battling by the same editors over articles related to it. --Stfg (talk) 09:52, 19 July 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by Stfg 

message: Just ran across this by accident while looking for more context on the change-of-username motion; I'm not at all involved with Indo-Pakistani disputes.  If this motion pass, does that mean that this arbitration decision would be binding on random people who dispute sports stats for Vijay Singh or who disagree on the US political aspects of business process outsourcing in India?  Nyttend (talk) 02:37, 20 July 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Ignoring rules to respond inline here: see the discussion at the very bottom by the arbs. Magog the Ogre (talk) (contribs) 13:58, 20 July 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by Nyttend 

message: Although I haven't been particularly involved in the situations leading up to this, I do have a lot of experience dealing in the closely related topic specifically covered already.  I'm fine with adding discretionary sanctions, but I'm not sure how effective they'll be.  Setting aside the problems that Salvio giuliano says above about experienced editors, anyone who's done any NPP or editing in the topic area will recognize the substantial problem created by new users as well.  Many seem to treat Wikipedia articles as a place to practice their English, which wouldn't be a bad thing were it not for the fact that most of their English skills are atrocious and create another layer of communication problems; looking at Talk:Nair and its archives is fairly demonstrative of the problem.  Discretionary sanctions can only do so much to solve those sorts of problems; what's needed is more admin attention, which from what I can see isn't forthcoming.  So while I think discretionary sanctions will help, the underlying problem to me seems more like the lack of admins willing to head this off at the pass.  The Blade of the Northern Lights  (話して下さい) 21:37, 24 July 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Comment by The Blade of the Northern Lights

message: Arbitrators ought to be aware that there is an existing community sanction of general discretionary sanctions regarding caste and sub-groups.  This community sanction will of course keep running regardless of your decision—some day you may reverse yourselves, correspondingly the community must reverse itself on its sanction that overlaps with this one to some extent. Fifelfoo (talk) 02:15, 26 July 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Comment by user Fifelfoo 

message: Ugh. Usually I do an excellent job of avoiding controversy, contentious topics, disputes, and anything that remotely smells of "trouble" but it seems I have somehow stumbled into this, mostly because I began editing some articles related to Bangladesh out of a personal interest.
So.
First, whatever is done, you should add Bangladesh to the "India, Pakistan, Afghanistan" list since this stuff has already began spilling over there.
Second, I'm torn between, on the one hand, my established disdain for "discretionary sanctions" and the sincere belief that these often do nothing but pour gasoline on the fire - in many cases instituting "discretionary sanctions" is like exporting arms to war torn countries, it just provides another weapon for people to fight with - and, on the other hand, the obviousness that there's plenty of trouble going on here. So it's a sort of  60% Salvio Guiliano 40% Future Perfect kind of thing going on here.
What really would work at this point is involvement in the topic area of some knowledgeable, respected and diplomatic uninvolved editors. If you know of any, you should hire them. Or just record their existence, before that species goes extinct (again). In absence of that, discretionary sanctions *could* work as long as it's not just a "we'll put in the discretionary sanctions and then abandon the issue and pretend it's solved" ... kind of thing. If you do put in discretionary sanctions, be prepared to deal with follow up complaints, with a whole new slew of WP:AE reports (most of which, but not all, will be petty and stupid, and further proof that Wikipedia IS in fact a battleground) and more work for yourselves (which you can always evade by pointing out that the ArbCom is not concerned with content disputes).
Honestly, to deal with these perennial consanguineous areas you're going to have to start appointing "Tsars" (like the "Education Tsar" or "Drug Tsar") or at least "Surgeons Generals". Or maybe Consuls. And with the consuls, there was always two of them. So I nominate Salvio Guiliano and Future Perfect as the first two Consuls of the "India-Pakistan-Afghanistan-Bangladesh" topic area. With Fifelfoo as the tribune, just to watch over them.VolunteerMarek 03:30, 26 July 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Comment by Volunteer Marek 

message: Were the relevant Wikiprojects notified (eg via noticeboards for related topics) - that you intend on putting this DS regime on anything related to these countries? Next, should we expect you to also put the entire project on DS without properly consulting community first? Ncmvocalist (talk) 15:43, 27 July 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Comment by Ncmvocalist 

message: Like Ncm above, I'm a little disappointed that we have arbs voting on sanctions without seeking wider input from the community that will be affected by those sanctions. However, if that's the way things are then that's the way they are.
I think discretionary sanctions are unnecessary. To the contrary, I think the problem in this area has been an excess of admin involvement and admin action. Punitive blocks applied at will, restrictions imposed on the various participants that are really not warranted, gratuitous lectures about behavior that are better suited to parent child interactions than to admin/editor interactions, stuff like that. This has lead to a poisonous atmosphere marked mainly by block shopping and a constant low grade complaining about other editors. My suggestions, perhaps too late since arbs seem to have already made up their minds, are the following:
#Remove all restrictions on all participants in these areas. This has more or less been done through ANI though there may be other restrictions on these editors that I am unaware off. 
#Remind admins that they should use their tools minimally, only when there are clear transgressions.
#Remind admins that they should be sparse in their comments. Comment only on the transgression not on editors.--regentspark (comment) 16:51, 27 July 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Comment by RegentsPark 

message: Now that I've had the time to look at this further, I think Magog is overstating the "disruptive" nature of what is going on here. A look at the block log of both DarknessShines as well as TopGun shows that most of l the blocks were for violating one restriction or another. The restrictions were the problem and the predictably unfortunate effect of discretionary sanctions is going to be more blocks not less. The ANI cases were largely initiated by two of the editors, DarknessShines and TopGun, probably because block shopping on technical violations of the restrictions was, partly anyway, turning out to be an effective weapon against each other.  I believe this is better handled on a case by case basis using the normal way of dealing with edit warring or tendentious editing rather than through adding to the bureaucratic overhead by placing more restrictions on both these editors (and, incidentally, on any other editor who may happen to be editing these pages). --regentspark (comment) 18:36, 27 July 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Additional note

message: This very bizarre.  Discretionary sanctions are being considered for India and Pakistan related pages, yet, none of the significant contributors to these pages (see, for example, here) know about this.  No announcement had been made on WikiProject India, until NCMvocalist just made his.  Most editors making statements above (who edit South Asia-related pages), on the other hand, seem to be relatively new users; all are seasoned at edit-warring and POV pushing; all know enough wikilawyering to template me for writing this sentence.  Fowler&fowler«Talk» 16:43, 27 July 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Comment by Fowler&fowler

message: : This section is for administrative notes by the clerks (including clerk recusals).
*Recuse - I'm one of the two mediators in the RfM before the Mediation Committee. -- Lord Roem (talk) 16:57, 23 July 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Clerk notes 

message: * Seems a good idea - a preliminary circuit breaker on pages with ongoing troubled history which can be installed with a minimum of effort for (hopefully) some settling of behaviour. I'm inclined to post a motion as requested but will wait for some more input. Casliber (talk · contribs) 12:52, 8 July 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Arbitrator views and discussion 

message: During this initial case mention was made of how editors should not restore edits by sockpuppets. I recently discovered that a motion was passed by the committee regarding this behaviour on articles pertaining to R&I I request an addition to the arbitration enforcement be laid down for the India-Pakistan which is the same. "no editor may restore any reverted edit made by a banned editor" As recently edits made by the banned user:Nangparbat are continually being restored. And there have been others previously. Darkness Shines (talk) 21:43, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Really? Under which policy would that be then? I have already reported that sock to Elockid who is now keeping an eye on it for when it returns. If I suspect a sock I will tag it as such. Or would you have blocked me for tagging these I believe I have had a few wrong, and self reverted. Darkness Shines (talk) 06:07, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

text: O shit tim, I did it again  Really. what a wanker I am, I accuse people of being socks, ask yourself , how often am I wrong? Darkness Shines (talk) 17:04, 25 October 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by Darkness Shines 

message: This appears to be an issue for AE to decide based on the principle that an editor restoring edits by a banned editor takes responsibility for those edits, as well as the issue of edit-warring. If Darkness objects to these edits and Mar restoring them repeatedly then it should be examined in that respect and not be used as a way to slowly chip away at the exemptions allowed in WP:BAN through bureaucratic fiat.--The Devil's Advocate (talk) 22:56, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Sockpuppets are typically a bane in every topic area.--The Devil's Advocate (talk) 23:38, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by The Devil's Advocate 

message: The analogy present here is incorrect; any user who restores a sock's edit does so on their own behalf and it is usually when he/her feels that this edit was valid. What if a sock revert vandalism, will you revert that too? Furthermore, an amendment like this will not go down well because Darkness Shines has a history of targeting innocent IP editors 86.x, 109.x, 39.x IP ranges who were not related to a sock. There are hundreds of people using these ranges and if this gets passed, then DS will pretty much revert anyone whom he thinks to be a sock on hindsight without evidence, as he is doing with another long-established User:Jozoisis using his poor judgement. He is kind of topic banning all editors from editing using the sock label even when usually in those cases there is nothing to suggest that this particular editor may be a sock. Mar4d (talk) 01:56, 25 October 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by Mar4d 

message: If there's to be an restriction here, it needs to be on DS, who had been restricted from filing SPI requests related to Nangparbat because it was getting disruptive.
So what did they do? Why, reverting edits by new accounts as Nangparbat socks, of course. Tagging them, too. The catch is, they've done all this without any actual case or checkuser done, as far as I can tell. In fact, the account he reverted as a sock remains unblocked to this day. This is, to put it simply, not how things are, or should be, done. 
It is simple common sense that sockpuppet tags should never be placed on a user page, unless the sockpuppetry is established and the account is blocked. Twinkle used to have an option to tag accounts at the time of filing an SPI report; that option was removed and for a very good reason: tags when socking has not been established provides virtually no benefit, yet alienates innocent editors and clutters the tracking categories. I fully intend to block DS the next time he tags an account as a sockpuppet that is not currently blocked. T. Canens (talk) 06:00, 25 October 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by TC 

message: I was the administrator who put the original restriction on DS because of there being issues of baseless SPIs being filed. One of the conditions was that DS may not file against Nangparbat. This is now worse off than it started, we are going from baseless SPIs to not even presenting evidence, but making a closed decision on who's a sock of who. While I admit (although I haven't looked for the behavior to verify it, i'm trusting the administrator's judgement) that DS has done some correct reverts like User:109.145.251.152 which was blocked, reverts and tags like those to User:Desiray09 are not appropriate as there is no trail of evidence to link this to the master, and it's one edit. If there is a block or something because DS emailed another admin or something, that's fine. It shows a second step in the process which is critical, especially when users can present bias from editing in the subject area. This is why a ruling that "editors may not remove suspected sockpuppet tags from suspected sockpuppet user pages", as requested by DS, would be problematic. It also creates a horrible restriction if people are wrong and need to remove the tags, which i've had to do in my wiki-lifetime a few times.
On to the actual request for clarification, the request for a restriction that "no editor may restore any reverted edit made by a banned editor" actually undermines the policy at WP:BAN in which the community policy says that editors take responsibility for any edits restored. While I agree it's not optimal to restore banned editors contributions, if it's a good improvement, then why should we chuck it out the door? Were already blocking them, or protecting articles, making it harder for them to edit, it's not like we are giving too much attention to the issue. I haven't specifically looked over the R/I ArbCom motion yet, but as Rich stated above, . There has been no presented evidence to indicate that this area is hostile, and further more, I don't see the extensive disruption. So there is no precedent to go on, and it undermines community policy in a way that would hurt it, not help it. -- DQ (ʞlɐʇ)  09:19, 25 October 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by DeltaQuad 

message: Now that this issue has been brought here I request attention of people (who allowed administrators to issue discretionary sanctions in this topic area) to look how this (current) issue began. About a month back a probable sock of Nangparbat removed this massive POV links from the see also section, which was reverted by User:Darkness Shines. Just take a look at pre-sock edited version (I am referring to note at the top of the page and links in the see also section) and tell me how effective Discretionary sanctions are to stop disruption and POV editing in this topic area. Edit war still continues on this issue at multiple articles by some editors avoiding the talkpage discussion. --SMS  Talk 17:49, 25 October 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by Smsarmad 

message: Tagging suspected socks even before they blocked or confirmed is not an uncommon practice. However, I do not advise in tagging socks until there is sufficient evidence to warrant a tag. By sufficient evidence I mean something usually in the case of more than one edit though there are exceptions. In the particular case where DS asked me to take a look a suspected while subsequently tagging it, I feel that perhaps tagging the account was a bit early. It might be possible that the suspected account is indeed a sock but I feel the evidence isn't really there at the moment. Was the tagging inappropriate? Some would say yes, some would say no. IMO, there really isn't an established standard on when to tag socks. I believe that DS is helpful in the aspect that he's reporting suspected socks to me, however as I said previously, greater caution should be taken. 
@DS This isn't NP. That's  if memory serves me right. Elockid   (Talk) 14:28, 26 October 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by Elockid 

message: Commenting on the narrow clarification and amendment request by DarknessShines. It is true that these areas are plagued by socks of banned editors and that DS is good at detecting their presence and therefore we should cut him some slack for the occasional error, but that doesn't mean he gets a free ride to template at will.  However, since these banned editors are merely here to cause disruption (as Elen writes, this is unlike in the R&I case where the banned editors are committed agenda driven pov pushers), I think that we need only assert a couple of principles that are already self-evident rather than escalating it with revisions or extensions of the original sanctions. 
# It is true that any edit by a banned user is subject to reversion, however useful it may appear to be. But, a corollary to this is that if a banned user's edit is restored by an editor in good standing, with an explanation as to why the content is useful, then that edit may no longer be considered to have been made by a banned user and inclusion or exclusion of the material should be determined solely on its merits. However, as a matter of prudence, I'd suggest getting consensus on the talk page before attempting to restore the material. 
# If someone restores a banned editor's content addition then, rather than getting into an edit war over the material, ask for help from an admin. These topic areas are under discretionary sanctions and any uninvolved admin can take whatever action (blocks, protection, topic bans) that is necessary to restore order.--regentspark (comment) 15:10, 26 October 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by RegentsPark 

message: : This section is for administrative notes by the clerks (including clerk recusals).
* I've asked the clerks to delist this request as declined after 24-48 hours, absent any change in the balance of arbitrator opinion in the next section (or objection to archival from my colleagues). AGK [•] 01:29, 5 November 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Clerk notes 

message: *Without a clear pattern of abuse and disruption, and evidence of the community trying and failing to deal with that disruption, ArbCom would not get involved. ArbCom are not the Wikipedia police, nor any form of authority - we are a group of fellow Wikipedians who have volunteered to temporarily act in a committee which by agreement of the community makes final and binding decisions in cases of dispute which the community have been unable to resolve. The nature of our role is that we do not step in too early. This request appears to be too early. SilkTork ✔Tea time 11:55, 25 October 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Arbitrator views and discussion 

message: There are currently multiple WP:ANI threads concerning the hypothesis that the Indo-European languages originated in India, as opposed to the hypothesis accepted by most scholarship that these languages originated to the west of India and spread both east into India by migration and west into Europe by migration.  They include Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents# Massive POV pushing problem at WP:FRINGE and Indo-Aryan topics.  My question is whether tendentious and disruptive editing about this aspect of the ancient history of India is subject to WP:ARBIPA, in which case discretionary sanctions are applicable, or whether WP:ARBIPA only applies to the modern history of the subcontinent.  Robert McClenon (talk) 17:14, 27 January 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by [[User:Robert McClenon]] 

message: No need for clarification: of course DS applies. The ideological fight over the origins of the Indo-Aryans is a classic hotspot of modern nationalist discourses in India, and the backdrop of modern Hindu nationalism is the one thing that keeps these disputes alive on Wikipedia and makes them so much politically charged. This is precisely what the DS are for. Fut.Perf. ☼ 17:19, 27 January 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by [[User:Future Perfect at Sunrise]] 

message: I am surprised to see this asked. The sanctions are exactly what they say. Time is not of the essence and, as Fut. Perf. notes, the particular issues being referred to are a well-known hotspot on WP, certainly in part because of what is often descrived as the Hindutva "revisionist" approach to history. - Sitush (talk) 21:57, 27 January 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by Sitush 

message: *"Standard discretionary sanctions are authorized for all pages related to India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, broadly construed."  No time frame is given, or in my opinion, implied.  If it was desired to limit the DS to the modern era, the remedy would say so.  And I think a time-frame would be a horrible idea, one cannot disconnect the long (even ancient) history of this region from the modern states.    Agree with FPaS on his interpretation. Courcelles 20:53, 27 January 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ancient History of India-Pakistan: Arbitrator views and discussion 

message: Bishonen accuses me of "battleground editing","tendentious editing", and an "aggressive discussion style" while imposing the ban. With respect to the first two accusations, i will point to Jawaharlal Nehru; all my edits have been accepted on this page even though it is a very disputed page and even the major political parties in India have commented on the editing on this page. I will also point out that even though i earlier had some personal friction with  and  i now have cordial relations with both of them. With respect to Sitush, one may see the talk page on Eckankar where we have interacted in a very civil way. Regarding  one may see the talk page of Two Truths Doctrine where i express confidence in her editing and she endorses a source used by me in the main article. Bishonen's claim that i have an aggressive discussion style is totally undercut by my two responses to two different editors as per this diff: [diff1]. Additionally,  with whom i have collaborated on some WP pages has argued that Bishonen's action against me was completely unjustified: [diff2]. In the present case, there is an editor  who repeatedly called Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya a fringe source on the talk page of Carvaka and proceeded to delete content in Carvaka that was sourced from Chattopadhyaya. Mohanbhan and i have repeatedly pointed out to her that Chattopadhyaya is not a fringe source in the talk page of Carvaka giving various pieces of evidence. I showed her that  has endorsed Chattopadhyaya's scholarship. When Sarah Welch continued with her tirade against Chattopadhyaya in the talk page of Carvaka and also on my talk page i referred her to lacking in competence  and mentioned that i would be henceforth referring to  lacking in competence if she continued her tirade against Chattopadhyaya. This resulted in Bishonen imposing a 6 month ban on India related articles on me. 
One clarification: Regarding diff1, one notes that Sitush had thrown lacking in competence at me when i had simply expressed disagreement over whether the book India as a Secular_State is 'outdated' or not. , declaring himself to be an uninvolved Admin, has expressed the view that i deserve a one year ban for my present infraction. SpacemanSpiff, who is occasionally found exchanging friendly exchanges on Sitush's talk page, will i am sure reconsider his clearly biased opinion when comparing Sitush's behavior with mine and studying the provocations involved. I will also point out  that Spaceman cannot declare himself to be an uninvolved Admin considering our somewhat rough interactions on my talk page, and considering  his comment concerning me to another Admin () on Dennis's talk page which he later retracted (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Dennis_Brown/Archive_35#Caste_system_in_India).
Spaceman, Bishonen and others are welcome to cherry pick my edits to portray me in a poor light; what cannot be denied is that i happen to be a content creator, and content creators need to be respected and protected.Secondly, i would like uninvolved Admins to compare my behavior towards other editors with the behavior of the highly experienced editor   towards me (prior to our new friendship as revealed by the recent editing on the talk page of the Eckankar page). The diff that i gave (diff1) is fairly typical of my interactions with Sitush (prior to our editing on the Eckankar page)--leaving aside my tiff with Sitush when i was a new WP editor. I have almost always been at the receiving end of Sitush's barbs, for instance: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Jawaharlal_Nehru&diff=671007963&oldid=671007789  If no action is being taken against Sitush for behavioral issues, and concurrently action is taken against me, then the process smacks of double standards and hypocrisy. Bishonen had earlier created a unique pseudo complaint generator to protect Sitush: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Bishonen/Clueless_Sitush_complaint_generator So many complaints came up in this complaint generator--complaints of a serious nature as revealed by the history of this page--that the page had to be shut down. This is further evidence of double standards and hypocrisy and not treating all editors as equals. 
Bishonen had earlier insinuated that i was editing anonymously using an IP address and when i protested against this she had withdrawn her accusation and even deleted the edit summaries, and from what i can  tell even her edit. Please see Link1: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Soham321&dir=prev&limit=500&action=history ; and do a Ctrl-F for Bishonen. When i was new to WP, i had been involved in an ANI dispute. Not knowing WP rules I wrote a review of the discussion together with my thoughts on my talk page and Bishonen deleted my comments with what i thought to be an unduly harsh edit summary considering i was new to WP. This edit summary may be seen in Link1 (if you do a Ctrl-F on Bishonen ). There were also some harsh words exchanged on Bishonen's talk page relating to her insinuation or accusation that i was using an IP address to do editing (which she later retracted after my strong protest), but since this was on her talk page it will take me forever to retrieve the diffs. But as evidence for this one may see this diff containing two separate comments of mine: [diff3], one of them in reply to . Bishonen mentions the one year topic ban on Digvijaya Singh imposed on me by Kim Dent-Brown;my answer is that i was new to WP at the time and didn't know the rules. I also respected the topic ban and didn't approach Kim for a review after 6 months even though he offered to review my topic ban in 6 months. Finally, i am pinging , , and  since i have done collaborative editing with them. Soham321 (talk) 21:40, 20 July 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by Soham321 

message: Here's the conversation on my page from 2013 that Soham321 mentions above. Bishonen | talk 07:46, 21 July 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Link from Bishonen 

message: This is Sarah Welch's revert to the Charvaka article. There is no doubt that Soham's contribution to the article had enriched it, making the article a systematic exposition of Charvaka philosophy. Charvaka philosophy itself is unrelentingly critical of the Vedas and Vedantic thought, which, as I have suggested on Charvaka talk page, may have ticked off Sarah Welch who usually edits pages related to Vedantic philosophy. She has made it her one-point agenda to denigrate and exclude references from the greatest authority on this topic Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya. Whenever I have edited or tagged the article she has shown a tendency to make the argument personal by adopting an aggressive hysterical tone, positioning responsible editors as vandals, and herself as the custodian of the page. Instead of discussing the cited references objectively and responding to the specific objections she repeatedly makes statements like "'The book @Mohanbhan likes' is not Wikipedia's definition of RS". She also quotes selectively and distorts the sources to push her POV, as can be seen in the discussion. She also uses the word "tainted" to refer to Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya's dialectical materialist/Marxist viewpoint, and in spite of our objections repeatedly uses theis word] to refer to Chattopadhyaya. She is explained here that Chattopadhyaya is a philosopher who has made hermeneutic claims about Charvaka philosophy, and, as such, his work can't be said to be dated. After this discussion on 9th July Sarah Welch stops her disruptive edits and the article is substantially improved with sourced content. She shows up again on 20th July and starts haranguing about Chattopadhyaya as an unreliable source in spite all our previous explanations. She indulges in disruptive edits and her edits are reverted by Soham when she has no consensus for her view on the talk page. She then continues her rant on Chattopadhyaya, which I ignore, but which Soham responds to by advising her to read WP:CIR. But Sarah Welch repeats her rant, calling Chattopadhyaya "controversial and fring-y", citing non-existent "abundant evidence and review summaries" on the talk page. When she repeats her "Chattopadhyaya is not a valid source" comment for the third time, Soham says this, "Your repeated tirades against Chattopadhyaya have exhausted my patience. Whenever you declare him to be a fringe source i reserve the right to point out lacking in competence to you." 
Soham has contributed constructively to the article, his content is cited and includes direct quotes from sources -- and he has used sources other than Chattopadhyaya like Bhattacharya and M Hiriyanna -- to avoid disputes about POV, and his arguments for their inclusion have been erudite and sophisticated. Sarah Welch, as can be seen on the talk page, has distorted the sources and pushed a POV; she has also indulged in disruptive editing, canvassed against me when her edits have been challenged and her rationale refuted, and has generally adopted an inflammatory tone, denigrating certain sources for their viewpoint instead of discussing the content and sources objectively. Given all this, I think it is Sarah Welch who is to be blamed for edit-warring and being disrespectful to other editors rather than Soham who has contributed constructively to the article. He has been provoked to lose his cool, and he should not be punished for it. I sincerely hope that ArbCom takes an impartial view of the matter and does justice to Soham. -Mohanbhan (talk) 02:29, 21 July 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by Mohanbhan 

message: I did not want to post on here earlier, but as Floq brought up the length issue I'll slightly modify and transfer my post from the RfAr filing that preceded this to provide a summary and some general info.
Soham321 has been issued multiple warnings by multiple admins and other editors for various forms of disruptive behavior as well as on ARBIPA sanctions. He has had a topic ban in the past, yet the disruptive behavior has not stopped. The warnings and disruptive behavior have dated to at least as far back as mid to late 2013 by my checking. While demeaning other editors is part of the disruption, it is not the only one. There's a refusal to accept any form of feedback as well as misrepresenting opinions(including here where he says in the complaint above that I retracted something while I was just saving the ever so polite Mr Brown the necessity of replying.)
(Pinging , , , , ,  as some of the warnings/notes have been from them in the diffs listed above.)
A little over two weeks back, I was ready to issue an AE block and six month topic ban, but switched to a warning instead, thinking that some of the input he has received will have some impact. Despite his response I expected that the warning will probably cause an impact. However, that has proved to be not the case. Today, I was ready to issue an ARBIPA one week block and a one year topic ban from India articles and was getting the explanation and diffs ready, but Bishonen beat me to it with a lighter sanction.
The issue here is Soham321's behavior, which has been disruptive over the course of two years. He has received blocks, topic bans, and numerous warnings. The question for this appeal is should other editors have to spend time and effort on this going forward as that is essentially what the ARBIPA sanctions are for. It's still a light sanction as Floq says, but that's what's on appeal, and I think ArbCom should decline that.—SpacemanSpiff 12:31, 22 July 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by SpacemanSpiff 

message: Soham321 placed a message on my talk page asking for my commentary, presumably because of our brief interaction editing Sach Khand. I would say that if Soham is reaching out to me to show an example of collaborative editing on an India-related topic, then he needs to do some work on his collaborative editing skills. I tagged the page in question first because it was presenting Sikh views on religion as though they were true, and then because it was a close paraphrase of a book (something about which Soham had already been warned). I would characterize our interaction as following along the lines described in Bishonen's talk page post imposing sanctions. Four talk page posts and less than 36 hours into the discussion, Soham was accusing me of abandoning the discussion, and threatening to invoke dispute resolution. When I pointed out the copyright problem, Soham's response was to tell me to fix it myself instead of tagging it, even after I said that I didn't have access to the full source.
To Soham's credit, after the initial interaction, which I would characterize as relatively unpleasant, things got more productive. He did change the article so as to avoid the close paraphrasing, and he edited collaboratively after that. No further accusations followed, and while the article needs expanding, I think it's not an unreasonable stub at this point. Soham obviously is knowledgeable about the topic, and he was able to fix errors that I introduced in clean up (because my grasp of Sikhism is, to put it mildly, tenuous).
From my interactions, I think that Soham is capable of contributing productively here, and I think he has a desire to get things right. However, I also think that he gets angry (or what others perceive as angry), and makes changes and comments rashly. Further, I think that he has trouble understanding Wikipedia policies, like copyright and reliable sources, when they don't align with his views. I also understand that some of these edits are in a heated topic subject to discretionary sanctions. Between my personal experiences, Soham's previous topic ban, and Soham's participation in the discussion at Talk:Cārvāka, I think the sanctions imposed are warranted. I hope that Soham will take these six months to edit articles in other areas to which he has less emotional attachment, so he can understand the kinds of talk page discussions and consensus building that are productive here. agtx 22:26, 20 July 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by agtx 

message: Allow me to skip an analysis of the content @Soham321 has recently tried to delete, replace or add to various wiki articles from RS, NPOV and other wiki policy perspectives.
In this admin-issued-sanction arbitration matter, allow me to focus on: Are there facts to persuade that the admins of wikipedia in recent past have been reasonable? Is @Bishonen's latest sanction in this matter reasonable? My answer: "Yes, abundantly". Here is some of the recent evidence relating to @Soham321 sanction:
#Edit warring with @Joshua Jonathan, despite @JJ request to stop edit warring in early July here, here and here
#Edit warring with @Sarunfeldt in mid July here, here and here
#Edit warring warning by @Shrikanthv here
#Uncivil behavior and personal attack on a wiki article's talk page against @Joshua Jonathan here in Carvaka article, and more recently here in Two truths doctrine article; Quote of edit summary:  "Joshua Jonathan's editing is making this article worse as i have explained in the talk page. The more he edits, the worse this article becomes in terms of clarity, accuracy, and cogency. - @Soham321"
#Uncivil behavior and personal attack against @Ogress here; Quote: "I will say though that my assessment of you is that you have very little to contribute to the encyclopedia in terms of knowledge at least on pages concerning Indian philosophy. You bring very little to the table. - @Soham321"
#Uncivil behavior and personal attack against me, see links here
#Request to be civil with other wikipedia editors by admin @Abecedare here
#Warning in June 2015 by admin @Dennis Brown here
#Warning in June 2015 by admin @The Blade of the Northern Lights here
#Warning in July 2015 by admin @SpacemanSpiff here
How has @Soham321 responded to recent comments and warnings? @Soham321 has been combative with admins as evidenced here, and to requests by @Sitush here. Quote: "Soham, I am trying and trying to show you how to write well and you simply keep fighting it at every opportunity. I'm not known for a saint-like patience and sooner or later I will snap unless you start to come to your senses. - @Sitush"
Summary: The veteran members of the Wikipedia community have been patient. Admin @Bishonen's sanction on @Soham321 was reasonable.
FWIW, when I began considering evidence for this statement, my intent was to request reduction of the 6 month sanction to a 3 month sanction on @Soham321. But, after looking at @Soham321's pattern of behavior with numerous wiki editors over the recent months, I now feel that @Bishonen has already been kind and generous. The evidence points to a stronger case of WP:NOTHERE than what I felt a while ago. Ms Sarah Welch (talk) 15:36, 21 July 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by Ms Sarah Welch 

message: *Comment It is a real shame I have not had the time to develop my Rfc on the Indian articles, perhaps then Soham321's patience would not have been quite so tested. I have found he has demonstrated a clear and concise willingness to present a neutral, balanced edit doing so with good manners and a clear methodology, however, he is energetic, a state some might wish to use against him. In my experience he has the patience of a saint when dealing with Sitush and others who have shown themselves to be prejudicial, labelling other editors as incompetent if they do not agree with their dogmatic position and quick to suggest bad faith. I have found Soham to have been a victim of combativeness rather than as presented a perpetrator, particularly on Indian history articles. With that in mind, together with my experience collaborating with Soham who has been a study in Wiki best practice, I would recommend you approve his appeal. Twobellst@lk 18:36, 21 July 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by Twobells 

message: After the reply by Soham321 to Ms Sarah Welch, I think it's time for me to respond too.
* At the Carvaka talkpage, Ms Sarah Welch has explained her doubts about Chattopadhyaya as a source, and suggested that he should appended with more up-to-date sources, a proposal which has been endorsed by Abedecare. neither Soham321 not Mohanbhan has seriously responded to this proposal; instead, MSW has been accused of "incompetence." Given the quality of her edits, this is a gross misqualification.
* Caste System in India: five editors agreed that the Caste System in India, as it exists today, was shaped by the British. This was based on reliable sources. And, as Sitush mentioned, also to our surprise. Yet, Soham321 and TwoBells kept insisting that this wa suntrue, and that we were biased. Despite repeated requests, they were unable to present reliable sources which gave a different opinion.
* Adi Shankara: Soham321 introduced a section on "Allegations of plagiarism." A wildly anachronistic qualification. Abecedare and I immediately responded, see Talk:Adi Shankara#Shankara and Buddhism. We responded so soon, very short after each other, that I hadn't even noticed that Abecedare had already responded, and I opened a new thread. When I found out, I merged the sections, to the dismay of Soham321, who wrote he became confused. He reverted me twice at the talkpage, meanwhile removing my comments twice. Incredible. Anyway, it ended with Soham opening an ArbCom-case on "talkpage etiquette (yes, serious!).   
* At the Two Truths Doctrine article, Soham321 made a series of edits, based on one single source, in a writing-style which was difficult to follow. I smoothed his contributions; Soham321 reverted them en masse, with the statements he's already been given. At this point I'd already given up to discuss with him; it's impossible. Soham321 doesn't discuss, he makes statements, and seems to be incapable to understand what other editors are saying. And to say that I don't seem to understand the topic - well, had he taken the care to check my edit-history, he would have known that I'm one of the top-editors on Buddhism-related articles. Or just User:Joshua Jonathan/Sources.
All in all, I've seriously been wondering if Soham321 just doesn't understand at all how to work at Wikipedia (I put it friendly here), or that he is simply trolling. I'm still not sure that it is a lack of understanding.
I had refrained from responding here so far, since I've had my share from POV-pushers and the like. But now that he also mentions me, I felt I had to respond too. Best regards, Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 20:20, 21 July 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by Joshua Jonathan 

message: I saw yesterday that Soham321 had squeaked in just under the 1000 word limit.  However, counting responses, he's now up to 4100 words.  If "Decline - TL:DR" is a legit vote, that's what I would suggest.  6 pages (single spaced, 11 pt type), with no sign of stopping... if that's what people he's editing with have had to put up with, then getting off with just a topic ban is generous. --Floquenbeam (talk) 22:56, 21 July 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Comment by Floq 

message: I would suggest Soham321 would be better put under a mentorship with an admin or senior editor related to topics he is editing, I see that he edits with passion and sometimes(most of the time) steps on wrong foot !  with some exp he could be well off rather than banning him ! would suggest JJ as mentor for him Shrikanthv (talk) 16:54, 22 July 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Comment by shrikanthv 

message: I see my name mentioned a few times, so here are my 2c, based on my interactions with and observations of Soham321 since July 2nd, when I first came across the editor.
Soham's article space edits have some problems (reliance on a single and often dated source; quote-farming; undue weight; (good faith) misinterpretation of sources etc), but these are routine issues that are typically handled easily through talk-page discussion. The main problem is that Soham doesn't react well to even the politest of feedback and responds by 
* insulting other editor's intelligence, good faith, ideology etc,
* endless repetition and filibustering (eg, see Talk:Cārvāka, or just the ARCA section above),
* continual editor/admin/forum-shopping and needless escalation. This being the classic example; also note the number of totally unconnected editors/admins Soham contacted about this ARCA appeal alone. Another example  here in which Soham (IMO, pointily) pinged >50 editors.
* refusal to concede even the tiniest of errors. For example, Soham's insistence that Bishonen misguided them into originally filing this appeal at the Arbitration Request page (the error itself was of course minor; I am only pointing to failure to simply say "oops" and move on). Also note the number of editors, admins, and arbcom members who told Soham that they were wrong about the issue of the previous arbitration request; yet Soham repeats the complaint unchanged. Ditto for the claim of an 8th century philosopher being guilty of "plagiarism", which Soham again repeats on the page (won't bore the audience of this page with the details, which can be read here).  
All this makes collaborative editing with Soham321 virtually impossible, and I'm afraid the issue is unlikely to be confined to India-related pages covered by the current topic ban. Frankly  Soham's statement above, by itself, provides ample examples of IDHT/TE/Battleground conduct that led to the topic ban, and the fact that the editor doesn't even realize this is not a promising sign. As I have recommended a couple of times earlier, and as Shrikanthv advises above, Soham should consider getting a mentor who they trust and can consult, because unless their conduct changes drastically,  I see a perma-block or site-ban coming a few months down the line. Abecedare (talk) 20:24, 22 July 2015 (UTC)
thread_title: Comment by Abecedare

message: * that's rather a large wall of text you've written there. Could you please trim it down to focus on the essentials, thanks. Thryduulf (talk) 22:25, 20 July 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Imposition of an Arbitration Enforced Sanction against me by Bishonen: Arbitrator views and discussion 

message: I have argued my case at WP:AE: Link. The banning Admin (Bishonen) and other Admins have given their views on this venue. 's views on my case (diff) in the WP:AE discussion encourage me to ask for a second opinion on the decision taken by WP:AE. I have nothing to add to what i have stated at WP:AE except to reiterate that i am seeking the exemption under WP:NORULES, and that i now seek exemption from the WP pages related to not just Voltaire but all European philosophers. These include pages of European philosophers like Immanuel Kant, René Descartes, and George Berkeley. The reason is that i would like to add a section on the WP pages of the European philosophers giving parallels with respect to their thoughts and opinions with their Indian counterparts. For instance, it has been argued that Kant's philosophy has similarities with the philosophy of Adi Shankara (see for example Will Durant's "Our Oriental Heritage"); and Descartes's framing of the Dream argument has a clear parallel with the treatment of this subject by Kumārila Bhaṭṭa (see "Kumarila's refutation of the Dream Argument" by John Taber). This would add an extra dimension to these WP articles in my opinion. Here is an example of the source material i might use in editing the pages of the European philosophers: Link. 
One might argue--why not wait the ban out (4 months more) and then put the material in. My response is that i am moving to another city in the next few months and i may not have the source material (specifically the books) with me anytime soon after my move.
Reply to : as a sign of good faith i am offering to not go beyond 1RR in any edit where i do the comparative analysis that i mentioned in my appeal. Soham321 (talk) 21:12, 22 September 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by Soham321 

message: These permanent links to Soham321's previous requests may be useful:  Bishonen | talk 20:19, 22 September 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by Bishonen 

message: As I concluded there, the sanction appeared to be reasonable when looking at the totality of the editor's edits.  My opinion hasn't changed. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 20:53, 22 September 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by Dennis Brown 

message: In my opinion, Soham's rationale for amending this sanction lacks any substance. Soham's reason for allowing edits in this area appears to boil down to not much beyond the fact that xe really really wants to. Guy (Help!) 20:39, 22 September 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by JzG 

message: @ Floq.
There is no compulsion to comment on Soham's requests - or even to read anything Soham posts.
@ Soham
I think it's worth reading what I wrote a little carefully.  My objections were not endorsements of you. or your editing of the Voltaire talk page.  Rather I respect the opinions of those who said that giving you this latitude was likely to cause problems.  Pragmatically denying you the ability to make these edits may well be in your best interests (in terms of further conflict and sanction), as others hold - though the heightened scrutiny may mean that problems will be headed off before it comes to that.
My objection was I suppose to some extent a procedural or conceptual one, in that the area you wished to discuss on Voltaire seemed (to my not particular well informed ear) sufficiently divorced form the subject that you were sanctioned on for a good faith request for an exemption to be granted.
This argument does not support your broader request to compare European philosophers to Indian philosophers.
All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 21:38, 22 September 2015 (UTC)
thread_title: Statement by Rich Farmbrough

message: If we're invoking WP:NORULES, does that mean I can just block this guy as a timesink if I think it would improve the encyclopedia? That was mostly a rhetorical question - I suspect it would suddenly become very important to Soham that the rules be respected - but here's a serious one: when ArbCom rejects this, as I am sure they will (AE was closed 5-0 against revising topic ban) could Arbcom please shut this guy down, and shut him down hard, so he doesn't waste quite as much of everyone's time after this?  For example, forbidding future appeals in any forum for the duration of the topic ban. --Floquenbeam (talk) 20:22, 22 September 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by Floq 

message: Soham321, in your reply to Yunshui you offer not to exceed 1RR. Unfortunately, past history suggests even that will not avoid timesink issues. Bishonen is pretty conservative (imo) when issuing sanctions and there is little doubt in my mind that such issues will have played a part in her decision. She may, of course, disagree but the very fact that you have appealed again immediately after the AE appeal was closed rather supports the point even if not my assumption regarding Bish's thought processes. - Sitush (talk) 23:08, 22 September 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by Sitush 

message: *Decline There's no substance here; it boils down to, "I want to make edits that I'm not currently allowed to make." No indication that the original reasons for the topic ban have been considered and addressed, no suggestion that previous behaviour will be avoided - just a complaint that the TBAN is inconvenient. This is not a reason to amend or rescind it. Yunshui 雲水 21:10, 22 September 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  India-Pakistan: Arbitrator views and discussion 

message: This isn't new, it's been happening since day 1, and a classic case of WP:IDHT. I came across this on WP:AN3 -- Sardarji joke where Js82 (as an IP first and then as an account) was editing against consensus and blocked the IP and then the account. Point in time snapshots of the user talk page show the various warnings on issues spanning copyright violations, edit warring, original research, NPOV, personal attacks etc across multiple articles. I have sought a second opinion from  in the past regarding this as I have been unable to get through to the user, but sadly that doesn't seem to have helped either. There has been an enormous amount of discussion at various talk pages (, ,  -- the full page from those sections provides the necessary context). Today it was this response to a critique of sources. Given the editing pattern and behavior since creation of the account, unless the editor shows that they can adhere to policies and guidelines in other areas, this sanction is necessary. Please ping me if you need any clarification. —SpacemanSpiff 10:17, 18 October 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: @Rich Farmbrough: Islam and Christianity would not be included but Islam in India and Christianity in India would be, this is per the AC motion listed at WP:ARBIPA. —SpacemanSpiff 04:06, 19 October 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by SpacemanSpiff 

message: I do encourage User:Js82 to withdraw the request, and take the six months to learn about how Wikipedia works.  There is every chance that had the topic ban not been considered available a similar length block would have been used.
But I am concerned with the interpretation of "broadly construed".
"Standard discretionary sanctions are authorized for all pages related to India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, broadly construed."
If we are to include the major religions of the region, Hinduism, Jainism, Sikhism, Islam and Christianity, we are including 98% of all our religious articles, at a guess.  And that is only one facet of knowledge
All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 02:42, 19 October 2015 (UTC)
thread_title: Rich Farmbrough (IPA)

message: *Decline Indian religions are in the scope of the discretionary sanctions authorization. Based on the information provided, the sanction in question seems appropriate. "They started it", even if true, does not give one a pass on civility or disruption. LFaraone 20:02, 18 October 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  India-Pakistan: Arbitrator views and discussion 

message: At Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement/Archive227#MapSGV I outlined my reasons for what was initially a non-AE indef block and which I later changed to a topic ban. Specifically, MapSGV had then made only 223 edits, and of these, some 10% had been problematic as reported in the AE thread. This is not an acceptable signal-to-noise ratio, especially in a high-tension topic area subject to discretionary sanctions. I concluded then that MapSGV's contribution to this topic area is not a net benefit to Wikipedia.
What is being submitted here on appeal does not make me change this view. The discourse about supposed socking by others is beside the point because the conduct of others is not relevant to sanctions imposed on MapSGV; see WP:NOTTHEM. The comments on the individual diffs are also immaterial, because it is the number of problematic or at least questionable edits by MapSGV, in proportion to their other editing, that made me impose the sanction, and not the particulars of any one of these edits. Afghanistan is included in the topic ban because it is part of the real-world conflicts affecting the topic area. 
Moreover, the fact that MapSGV has not made any edits unrelated to the sanction since being sanctioned 18 days ago indicates that they are not interested in productive editing outside of issues related to the conflicts in India and Pakistan. We do not need more WP:SPAs dedicated to ethno-nationalist conflicts. 
I therefore recommend that this appeal be declined.  Sandstein  17:18, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Newyorkbrad: The conduct at issue was mainly about Siachen conflict, a conflict between India and Pakistan. I suppose one could omit Afghanistan from the ban, but a frequent practice at AE is to make the scope of topic bans correspond to the DS topic area to avoid issues of boundary-testing, gaming, etc.  Sandstein  19:30, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

text: You ask me to comment on whether "the block is no longer preventative". The block has already been lifted. What is being contested here, insofar as I understand it, is the subsequent topic ban. In my view, MapSGV's edits linked to in the AE request indicate that they would not be a net benefit to Wikipedia if they were to continue to contribute to articles related to India-Pakistan conflicts. I would therefore prefer to maintain the topic ban until MapSGV has demonstrated substantial productive editing in other topic areas, but would be open to restricting its scope further if MapSGV intends to edit uncontroversial India- or Pakistan-related articles.  Sandstein  15:04, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

text: In response to your question on my talk page, I have taken note of the comments made so far but do not have anything to add to what I wrote above.  Sandstein  15:29, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by Sandstein 

message: Most of the diffs concerned a ban evading sock who was on verge of getting blocked, hence the credibility is not just limited with reporting but the evidence itself. SPI showed that the sock was Wikihounding every page that had been edited by MapSGV, and had the tendency of Wikihounding other editors and then calling them a sock for justifying his harassment and he was calling MapSGV a sock as well.
As for other diffs, anyone can point out a number of diffs about just anyone from a heated content dispute where a couple of editors are engaging in original research, making personal attacks and disregarding reliable sources. You need to read what MapSGV was replying to, and he tried not to fall into their level at first. I don't see any "personal attacks" for which he could be sanctioned by any other admin and Sandstein himself refuses to take action against users engaging in long term pattern of egregious personal attacks, misrepresentation of sources, gaming of system, edit warring, and other forms of disruption as seen in these two  recently closed AE reports. One of them directly involving a user who had offensive interactions with MapSGV as well as other editors not only on Talk:Siachen conflict, but also an AfD. If other users are allowed to scot-free for their egregious personal attacks and long term pattern of problematic editing, then MapSGV should not be singled out just for trivial civility issues.
Later on, MapSGV had interactions on AfD of Research and Analysis Wing activities in Pakistan, where the AfD result ended up supporting MapSGV's opinion and not his opponents. Here, MapSGV was again attacked by the same user but MapSGV remained civil.
WP:IDENTIFYUNCIVIL describes how to make judgement on incivility and MapSGV couldn't be sanctioned in this regard if we go by the policy and standards.
Again, I have also never seen anyone getting sanctioned like MapSGV has been and without even a single warning. That's why this topic ban as well as the block lacks any merit and contradicts the policies and standards. Lorstaking (talk) 03:41, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by Lorstaking 

message: Blocking and then topic banning a well-meaning editor over small civility issues (that weren't one sided) without even a prior warning and solely relying on report lodged by disruptive ban evading sock is objectionable and also out of process. Sandstein should've considered making a discussion with MapSGV first and had to make similar discussion with other involved users that engaged in incivility.
Most editors agree with MapSGV's contributions to Siachen conflict, because they were important and his edits brought back focus on result of the battle, which is also emphasized by scholars and academics. MapSGV's edits contradicted the long term POV version that was pushed by FreeatlastChitchat, and MapSGV became target of FreeatlastChitchat who would abuse his sock to harass MapSGV and then file an AE report after failing to get his POV on articles. Since incivility is judged after reviewing entire incident and MapSGV was clearly provoked by others who made false accusations against him, there was no way he had to be singled out while leaving others. The AfD pointed out above is a good example, where MapSGV was again attacked but he was civil. FreeatlastChitchat always had a tendency of filing frivolous complaints and he had done same with me with his main account. Talk:Roti#RfC about the origin of the roti also ended up supporting MapSGV's opinion, hence MapSGV should be allowed to edit this subject since he happens to be correct with his edits, unlike those who engage in disruption to right great wrongs.
In all fairness, Sandstein is clearly incorrect and his failure to understand the errors with his actions is concerning. This is not happening for the first time but just another time, despite issues have been raised before about his mishandling of AE reports, and given Sandstein's disappointing responses here, I am inclined to think that Sandstein's mishandling of AE reports is going to create problems in future. D4iNa4 (talk) 16:51, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
thread_title: Statement by D4iNa4

message: Although I disagree with this sanction in the sense that it's not what I would have done, I think it was within administrator discretion and would be unlikely to be overturned on appeal at AE (I would certainly opine that way in an appeal there).  I still think it would have been better to let the SPI play out before taking action on this request, because although it is true that we expect editors to behave calmly and civilly even with socks of disruptive editors, and the fact they were responding to disruption does not excuse or give them license for being disruptive themselves, it should IMO be taken as a mitigating circumstance when deciding a sanction for that disruption.  To do otherwise is to be seen to be enabling harassment.  I would therefore urge Sandstein to commute this to time served plus a warning not to respond to disruption in kind.  GoldenRing (talk) 09:17, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by GoldenRing 

message: :This area is used for notes by the clerks (including clerk recusals).
* Recuse see above.  GoldenRing (talk) 09:18, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  DS appeal by MapSGV: Clerk notes 

message: *I am reviewing this appeal, bearing in mind the discretion accorded to administrators in AE/DS areas. As I read the history, however, the sanction against MapSGV was based primarily on incivility and allegations (at least some of which proved correct) that other editors were socking. As the sanctioning administrator, Sandstein, himself recognized while unblocking MapSGV, the editor has agreed to improve his level of civility. I see no prior warnings and there is no prior block history, and the sanction does not seem to have been based on substantively improper content editing. A lengthy topic-ban based primarily on first-offense civility concerns strikes me as an unusually severe sanction. ¶ In addition, I note that while Sandstein has expressed concern above about MapSGV's editing on "the conflicts in India and Pakistan" and about MapSGV's failure to edit on other subjects since being sanctioned, the scope of the topic-ban goes well beyond "the conflicts in India and Pakistan." Rather, the topic-ban specifically bars MapSGV from any editing about "everything related to India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan." (Emphasis added.) That scope goes far, far beyond a topic-ban from editing about conflicts between India and Pakistan. (The equivalent in scope might be my being topic-banned from "everything related to the United States," or Sandstein's being topic-banned from "everything related to Europe.") I would ask Sandstein to comment on whether, even assuming a topic-ban is otherwise warranted, the one imposed is overbroad in scope to the extent indicated. Newyorkbrad (talk) 18:39, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: In regards to AE/DS, the primary basis of MapSGV's request relies on two arguments: the filing was done by a disruptive party and the diffs used should be deemed "stale". It is not uncommon at AE, ArbCom case, and AN/ANI requests, to continue to be reviewed by administrators or the Arbitration Committee if there are merits to the request. The Arthur Rubin case as a recent example. As for whether the evidence submitted to AE is inadmissible, the operative word "may" in the instructions means possibility, not absolute requirement. Using such a technicality to argue "there was not even a single diff for which I could be sanctioned", when it comes to personal attacks and disruptive editing, is not reasonably going to extricate the party from sanctions. I see a troubling pattern of behaviour where MapSGV fails to acknowledge their part in the dispute with comments such as "... I am confident that I was blocked for no reason", despite a lengthy list of personal attacks listed at AE. The topic ban expires after 6 months of problem-free editing. I welcome other comments from the community, but I am inclined to uphold the sanction. Mkdw talk 22:25, 22 March 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  DS appeal by MapSGV: Arbitrator views and discussion 

message: ====Motion 1====
The discretionary sanctions appeal by MapSGV is sustained, and the topic-ban imposed on MapSGV on March 2, 2018 is lifted. MapSGV remains on notice that the India/Pakistan topic-area is subject to discretionary sanctions, and is reminded to edit in accordance with all applicable policies.
:
Enacted - Miniapolis 17:13, 7 April 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: ;Support
#Per discussion above. Second choice. Newyorkbrad (talk) 16:13, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  DS appeal by MapSGV: Motions 

message: The discretionary sanctions appeal by MapSGV is sustained, and the topic-ban imposed on MapSGV on March 2, 2018 is lifted. MapSGV remains on notice that the India/Pakistan topic-area is subject to discretionary sanctions, and is reminded to edit in accordance with all applicable policies.
:
Enacted - Miniapolis 17:13, 7 April 2018 (UTC)
thread_title: Motion 1

message: The discretionary sanctions appeal by MapSGV is sustained to the extent that the topic-ban imposed on March 2, 2018 is modified to provide, "MapSGV is topic-banned from editing regarding conflicts between India and Pakistan until September 2, 2018." MapSGV may edit regarding other topics involving India, Pakistan, or Afghanistan, but remains on notice that the India/Pakistan topic-area is subject to discretionary sanctions, and is reminded to edit in accordance with all applicable policies.
:
;Support
#Per discussion above. Second choice. Newyorkbrad (talk) 16:13, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
thread_title: Motion 2

message: First, some formalities:  I have received an appeal by email from SheriffIsInTown which I haven't processed in detail yet.  My apologies for the delay.  Also,  as far as I am aware, MapSGV was not notified of the AE discussion and there is no requirement that they be notified, only that they be formally aware of DS, which they were (documented in the AE discussion).
To the substance of the appeal, this ban was not particularly directed at MapSGV, it covered ten editors who, between them, have turned subjects related to the India-Pakistan conflict into a battleground and MapSGV is clearly part of that battle.  I realise that much of the evidence on which I included MapSGV in the ban comes from before their recent successful appeal here; nonetheless, reading back through the committee's comments on that appeal, they seem to have been of the opinion that the ban Sandstein issued was too broad, not that it was unwarranted, and it seems fairly clear that their basic approach hasn't changed (eg diff - a significant part of the problem here is editors constantly lobbying to get each other banned).  MapSGV tried in their last appeal to argue that diffs older than one week were inadmissible; the suggestion was shot down then and their trying the same argument now is not impressive.  Every admin who made a substantive comment on the AE report - me, Seraphimblade, Bishonen, Drmies, Sandstein, Ivanvector and Vanamonde93 (the last being INVOLVED) - agreed that the sanction was necessary.  For completeness, NeilN commented without supporting, to say that he had not the time to investigate.  Several editors (both admin and not) complained that the sanction I proposed was too lenient.  The sanction was not indiscriminate - it took some convincing from others for me to include MBlaze Lightning and some argued for the inclusion of Lorstaking as well, which in the end I thought was not justified.
MapSGV is as culpable as any other editor for the mess that India-Pakistan conflicts have become and banning everyone but them on procedural grounds would be both manifestly unjust and to the detriment of the project.
If a clerk could please notify the admins involved at AE of this discussion, I would be grateful.
I would like to comment on MBlaze Lightning's statement below.  It is extremely disingenuous of them to claim I obviously haven't read the threads I linked because MapSGV didn't participate in them; while that is true, one of them is an SPI investigation of MapSGV and another is an ANI review of that SPI.  Although the SPI was closed with no action on socking grounds, both present diffs of MapSGV's battleground attitude.  It is also difficult to square their statement here that  with his arguing not three weeks ago that Mar4d should be indeffed because  (diff); accusing JosephusOfJerusalem of  and  (diff) and filed an SPI against them with evidence such as both using phrases "there needs to be a", "a conclusion not", "policy based arguments", "strengthens my", "it does not matter", "I am afraid", "for a long time", "into the article" and "this comment is" (see here - Capitals00 chimes in with even more ludicrous evidence which in any other context I would suspect of being satirical); accused SheriffIsInTown of  (diff); accusing Mar4d of defending a  (diff); it really is quite the turnaround, but I think the above amply demonstrates the need for the ban, in their case.
TripWire's statement below is also hard to take seriously; I would indeed urge the committee to read that discussion as it includes gems from TripWire like  and .  It's also simply not true that that is the only one of the pages I linked where TripWire participated; they also commented on the Capitals00 SPI case (diff), where they took the opportunity to accuse MBL of , and to accuse Kautilya3 of off-wiki collaboration with a banned editor on ridiculous evidence.  He doesn't deny that it's a problem, it's just all those other editors baiting him with their battleground mentality.
Capitals00 below argues that  but this is simply not true.  Use of administrative noticeboard reports to carry on a dispute is classic battleground behaviour and squarely in the domain handled at AE.  Otherwise, I'm not sure what to make of their comment; apparently, sanctions I impose are unjustified... and should be replaced with a different set of sanctions they've devised?  Anyone who thinks that there are no problems related to Donald Trump should not be devising AE sanctions.
JosephusOfJerusalem seems to think that as soon as a boomerang appears, he can avoid it by withdrawing the complaint.  It says in the big red box at the top of AE,   It's fairly clear that the "unnecessary trouble brewing" that he saw was sanctions proposed against himself.  I explained their inclusion in the ban here and don't see a particular need to expand on that.
NadirAli claims here that  yet there were clear examples of edit-warring presented which led to full protection of Princely State.  In retrospect, I wish I'd looked at the edit history of that article as it would have been a pretty good shortcut to most of the names that ended up banned.
I will close this statement by saying that these are all capable, competent editors who need to go and find something else to do because their interactions on this topic has become so toxic that there have been repeated calls for them to all be indeffed.  I think that would be a loss to the project.  The ban is not infinite, it is indefinite, with a specific recommendation that it be lifted after six months of productive editing elsewhere.  GoldenRing (talk) 10:58, 24 May 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: I trust that the irony of JosephusOfJerusalem turning up here to berate me for imposing sanctions when I "should assist cooperation instead of neglecting genuine issues and then punishing people after for problems they could have themselves easily averted" is not lost on anyone - it was him who brought two complaints to AE with the comment "a very long block is in order" and arguing that "that the problems are entirely one-sided."  I know he thinks he answered the accusations against him satisfactorily, but that's rather a different thing.  GoldenRing (talk) 12:29, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

text: It's entirely up to the committee, of course, but I think my preference would be to deal with this as an appeal en masse.  Seven of the ten sanctioned editors have indicated that they wish to appeal here, so dealing with them piecemeal is going to create a lot of work, both for you and for me.  As far as I can tell, there is no realistic defect in the process here; all the editors involved were aware per the terms of WP:AC/DS#aware.aware and this was carefully documented in the AE case.  The sanctions were duly logged and editors notified of them.  I was not INVOLVED and no-one has alleged that I was.  Are there any other process questions?  If not, then the appeal comes down to whether the sanction was warranted, and that I think is a question better dealt with en masse, as the evidence is largely the same in each case and reading through the evidence will give you a pretty good idea of the reasons the sanctions were imposed and the culpability of each editor.  If this approach is taken, the clerks should notify the remaining sanctioned editors who haven't commented here (Raymond3023, D4iNa4 and Mar4d) that their participation is invited in this appeal.  GoldenRing (talk) 08:58, 25 May 2018 (UTC)

text: I structured the ban as I did to avoid waiting it out; I agree that a ban from all things IPA would effectively end the careers of some of these editors and I didn't want that, and that is indeed why I chose the scope of ban I did (though some at AE argued for a full IPA ban, and others elsewhere have argued for indefinite blocks).  My reason for not giving the ban an automatic expiry is that the problem is not one-off, egregious behaviour but long term, mid-level disruption.  If we had an automatic expiry with further disruption leading to an indefinite ban, I think there is a fair chance that the first sign of disruption would be the filing of an SPI, ANEW, AE or similar complaint.  Almost any such complaint from these editors, especially against each other (but in general against anyone who is active in the IPA area) would amount to further disruption; but it would not be obvious to someone who is not familiar with the situation that six months absence, a bit of only-slightly-disruptive editing and a noticeboard complaint (which might itself, on the face of it, seem plausible) is justification for an indefinite topic ban; I think in this case the community's time would be wasted to a large extent on meritless appeals.  Essentially, I'm saying I prefer a positive appeal, on the basis that they've demonstrated six months of positive collaboration on other topics, to a negative appeal, that what they did didn't really merit an indefinite ban.  Perhaps this is overly cynical of me, but on balance I think the history of noticeboard complaints, in particular stupid SPI reports (see the examples above) justifies it.I would also like to comment briefly on D4iN4a's text below.  The idea that I merely "cited [their] particpation" in the topic as justification for the ban is risible.  Their involvement at AE was pure battleground, arguing that everyone they disagreed with should be banned and that everyone else was as white as the driven snow; their participation at here includes such wonders of collaborative editing as  and ; their comment on this SPI is also well worth a read; their comment here includes ; this was all cited as evidence in the AE case and I could go on but I think the point is clear.  On this basis, the statement  should be sanctionable in itself.I am sorry to disagree with someone with as much experience as Newyorkbrad; but, while I see various claims here that the editors are willing to work together in a spirit of collegiality, I don't see much of   What I'm seeing is essentially a lot of editors saying, "Problems, what problems?  We're all ready to play nice together, just like we've always done."  The only thing they can agree on is that the ban should be lifted, despite most of them arguing in the very recent past that the other half should be subject to just such a ban (in the cases where they didn't instead argue for an indefinite block, which are admittedly few and far between).  GoldenRing (talk) 20:12, 29 May 2018 (UTC)

text: I have so far avoided compiling lists of diffs concerning each editor in this appeal.  In making the decision at AE, I relied on a list of discussions, not specific diffs (which I can only suppose is where the mistaken accusation that "no evidence" was advanced comes from) and thos same discussions have been linked to again here.  Other editors have advanced extra bits of evidence here, in particular with regard to MapSGV.  If the committee want, I am prepared to compile specific lists of diffs regarding each editor, but it will be a major investment of my time.  I am generally not active at weekends so I would begin this on Monday and likely wouldn't finish until mid-next-week.  Would you like me to do this, or are you happy to evaluate the appeal on the basis of the evidence already presented?  GoldenRing (talk) 17:50, 1 June 2018 (UTC)

text: * Regarding your statement that  is there going to be some sort of limit on this?  NadirAli initially joined this appeal, but less than four hours after the first bolded denied vote appeared, they have decided to withdraw from it.  As this seems a fairly obvious tactic for other editors to follow, how does the committee propose to deal with it?  Also pinging User:L235 to get the clerks' attention.  GoldenRing (talk) 08:26, 7 June 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by GoldenRing 

message: Prior to Sandstein's topic ban
Here's a selection of their editing approach from this year:
* Attacking other editors' motives / accusations of trolling:     
* Accusations of incompetence: 
* Wikilawyering / misrepresentation of policy (to put it kindly):  (the "diffs older than one week" nonsense)
Although the above is all prior to the overturning of their TBAN at ARCA, it is important background.  
Since the ban was overturned
* Their third, fifth and sixth edits after the ban was overturned were to resume the Siachen Glacier dispute.  The response from someone who "remains on notice that the India/Pakistan topic-area is subject to discretionary sanctions" should not be to jump straight back into a territorial dispute between India and Pakistan and start removing disputed categories.
* This edit is continuing the battleground approach, accusing other editors of incompetence and bringing up 3-year-old socking to sling mud at another of the group.
Those four edits on their own wouldn't move me to impose a topic ban; against the backdrop of the their editing before their previous appeal, it seems clear to me that they are part of the problem pattern in this topic and need to stay away from it.  GoldenRing (talk) 10:12, 5 June 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  MapSGV 

message: The links mentioned by GoldenRing were not sanctionable in ARE, since admins had already acted upon them. ARE has no jurisdiction on those boards and chances are nil when there was no discussion of content related to Indo-Pakistan conflict in those links. In place of finding a solution, GoldenRing went to hand topic bans without making it sure that he is correctly banning the users or not, or his evidence is credible enough to justify the topic bans.
I was not sanctioned or warned ever before neither any of the 10 diffs presented from last 4 months were good enough for sanctions or even a warning because none of those diffs evidenced actual violation and those diffs only proves that there is no smoke without a fire. Indefinite topic bans are tried when reminders, warnings, temporary sanctions have been failed. GoldenRing didn't even read my response nor he came up with a solution.
I am also supporting removal of everyone's sanctions. We can agree that these editors are an asset to Wikipedia. They make 100s of edits and likely a couple of those edits happen to be disruptive but they are capable of avoiding it if they have been properly told.
The correct solution of this problem is to impose further restrictions on the subject of India-Pakistan conflict. I would urge everyone to read the following and let me know if they agree my proposed additional restrictions:-
*1RR imposed: No more than 1 revert under 24 hours.
:*This will end the revert-spree.
*Consensus required: so that no one can restore the removed content unless it has clear consensus.
:*Currently the editors describe their preferred version as "STATUSQUO", and a lot of problems have been caused due to a lack of this restriction. This restriction will encourage editors to abide by consensus.
*Civility restriction:  Obviously any personal attacks. It should be clarified that "any allegations based on the user misconduct, credibility, including the concerns about incompetence, sock puppetry, should be made on appropriate noticeboards or any admin".
:*Mostly because it is often difficult to decide what really constitutes as a personal attack. It would be best to forbid all remarks about the editor on content pages, especially when they are negative.
These sanctions have worked on Donald Trump. They also used to work on India-Pakistan conflict subject but later on, 1RR was changed to 2RR, and civility restriction was removed. There was no "consensus required" restriction before. I am 100% confident that restoration of past subject restriction as well as addition of "consensus required" restriction will improve things.
Overturning sanctions of all users and imposing the new subject restrictions would definitely work. It is time to move on from everything that happened and give a new start. Capitals00 (talk) 03:39, 24 May 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Having described my case above, I have added my name to the list. I further agree that the appeals should be judged as independent from the analysis that was done in ARE because the decision on ARE was distorted given the severe issues with notifications, evidence, scope, and the total duration from the proposal to implementation of the sanctions was also very small. I am pleased to see that I have received support for subject restrictions that I proposed. This positive response from the editors who were a party in disputes is a further indication that we have managed to find a solution. Capitals00 (talk) 05:07, 31 May 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by Capitals00

message: I have been a productive editor on Wikipedia ever since I have been allowed to edit again. The AE requests which were behind the topic ban were badly mishandled. In all that discussion no evidence was provided by the sysops that I had done any sort of misconduct. It appears my name was dragged in unfairly, without basis and became accepted in the list of sanctioned users through unquestioned repetition.
I had broken no 3RR nor done anything sanctionable in itself. In short, the sysops handed out an unfair blanket ban on me without even explaining what exactly they were sanctioning me for. I agree with Capitals00, SheriffIsInTown and JosephusOfJerusalem that the proper approach should be that these sanctions should be lifted off all the involved editors and the ban can be replaced with their proposals. That will be a better substitute if the encyclopedia is to be improved.--NadirAli نادر علی (talk) 05:49, 24 May 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: I just want to state that I am quite saddened to see that the arbitrators have not as of yet performed an individual assessment of each editor. The editing behavior of some editors should not be regarded as the behavior of all. No recent policy violation has been alleged of me and my history in the original ArbCom case is now no longer relevant. So I believe I should be let off.
I would also like RaviC to be estopped from making aspersions against users who have history on that article even before they themself were ever active there. What I said on Owais Khursheed's talkpage was friendly advice to RaviC and not an entry into the topic area.--NadirAli نادر علی (talk) 15:46, 7 June 2018 (UTC)
thread_title: Statement by NadirAli

message: I'm confused: this says it's an amendment request, but it looks like an appeal.  Which is it? Beyond My Ken (talk) 07:59, 24 May 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: BU Rob13: Thanks for the clarification. Beyond My Ken (talk) 16:01, 24 May 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by Beyond My Ken 

message: I support what GoldenRing did as being the absolute minimum needed and as having consensus, and I support their statements above. That the topic banned people are now piling on here with ludicrous statements etc is just more evidence that they are tendentious and cannot let it go. - Sitush (talk) 11:18, 24 May 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by Sitush 

message: Commenting to make it clear that I'm aware of this, but honestly, I don't have too much to add here; the evidence I presented at AE covers most of it. These editors have demonstrated a pattern of battleground editing that makes it near impossible to build consensus. Problematic aspects of their behavior include edit-warring, making blanket reverts where those are not required, constant low-level incivility and personal attacks, sock-puppetry on the part of at least five of the principals (admittedly in the past), and constant attempts to get folks they don't liked sanctioned at any cost. A perfect example of the last phenomenon is Sdmarathe, who made a grand total of 21 edits between opposing my RFA in September 2016 and attempting to get me sanctioned in the AE case under discussion here . Their evidence? Claims that I filed a frivolous AE (which had in fact resulted in a warning ) against an editor who was duly topic banned for the same behavior a brief while later . I believe the sanction GoldenRing eventually imposed was, if anything, lenient, and uninvolved folks who make it through the reams of evidence will come to the same conclusion. Vanamonde (talk) 11:50, 24 May 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by Vanamonde93 

message: I'll just chime in here that I had read the original discussion (and all the various supporting bits) and fully support what Golden Ring imposed. I was just too busy to get my support of the topic bans into the original AE action before it closed (since reading all the stuff involved took a while). Ealdgyth - Talk 12:44, 24 May 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, I gotta say, BuRob's statements here certainly don't make ME want to even think about stepping into enforcing ArbCom remedies. Sure looks like they are basically cutting GoldenRing off at the knees and abandoning them to the sharks. And people wonder why admins aren't tougher on enforcing sanctions... well, look at what happens when an admin (with backing from other admins) takes a tougher line to enforce ArbCom remedies in an area that's just plain nasty. They get hauled before ArbCom and an ArbCom member doesn't support them at all. Sure makes it seem a lot easier to just ignore ArbCom remedies and not expose yourself to the headache. Ealdgyth - Talk 13:09, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by Ealdgyth 

message: I endorse GoldenRing's statement in all particulars, and urge BU Rob13 to recollect that Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy. Are we really going to have to do this ten times, with ten topic banned editors weighing in each time to complain about their own bans, and all the admins explaining over and over the benefit of the bans, and specifically of giving the disrupted topic a rest by topic banning these editors together? As for the mass topic ban violations you mention, inasmuch as the topic banned editors are commenting on another's appeal, we can hardly blame them on that score, since MapSVG listed them as involved and alerted them.. I don't actually blame MapSVG for doing that, either; I suppose they thought this could be handled at one go, without being crushed by the full weight of the rulebook. Mass banning is certainly unusual, but where nationalist timewasting and disruption is concerned, there's a logic to it. Is it not possible for ArbCom to deal with this case in a simpler way? How about a motion of some kind? Bishonen | talk 16:38, 24 May 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by Bishonen 

message: Why not just hear the appeal collectively and then make individual judgements for each editor? There is no reason to tie the outcomes together nor is there a reason to present the same/similar evidence ten times. Much of the disruption which resulted in the TBANs arose from the collective interactions between and among these editors, not just from individual behavior in isolation so examination of one's behavior will, often, necessarily lead to the examination of at least one other's behavior who was in the same events. Jbh Talk 15:48, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by Jbhunley 

message: *I, for one, completely endorse Golden Ring's mass T-Ban per Ivanvector's reasoning(s) over here and the evidence presented in the original AE thread.shall probably consider lucky enough to have escaped a TBan.Going by his net contributions, umm........
*--Can you please expand upon ? 
**And, umm....your candidature statement said:--We need less courtroom.Surely:)~ Winged BladesGodric  16:33, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by WBG 

message: I specifically noted the problem with MapSGV's sanctions in this diff, and feel that it 
would be reasonable for the committee to only lift MapSGV's sanctions.
If the committee feels that other sanctions from that discussion are also problematic, I think the only feasible option is to vacate the entire action, with the understanding that if disputes continue, the next discussion will be a full ARBCOM case. power~enwiki (π, ν) 16:39, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by power~enwiki 

message: A number of statements here are as misleading as they were in the concerning AE. There were a couple of users who were seeking sanction against all editors, and they had to be sanctioned similarly if seeking sanction is really a justification for imposing indefinite topic bans. FWIW, what I have read from the statements of sanctioned users that at least they are not asking for sanctions on each other now and showing their willingness to collaborate by opposing sanctions, yet some are still asking for sanctions. MapSGV, TripWire, Mar4d,, Raymond3023, NadirAli, were not notified and they weren't even editing when case was being established, though NadirAli came before the near end but clearly his comments were ignored, which is another issue, but still it doesn't means that he was notified. What about others who were being discussed yet weren't notified? Process was completely flawed. 
I urge Arbcom to vacate all bans at one go and implement the subject restrictions as proposed by Capitals00. The ARE decision was faulty since it lacked necessary process and evidence as a whole was largely unconvincing when compared with the actual outcome or anywhere close to that. I don't see how it will benefit encyclopedia that we should be observing harassment of each of the 10 experienced editors on daily basis by those who are not willing to get over a faulty ARE.  Razer(talk) 17:56, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by Razer2115 

message: The arbitration committee is well aware that ARBIPA is a system of discretionary sanctions, whereby uninvolved administrators can impose sanctions for edits to the topic area. No prior warning or notification is necessary other than . But in practice many of the sanctioned editors have received additional reminders too.  did not go by just the complaints made in the ARE case, but took the trouble to read entire discussions on the relevant talk pages and come to his own judgement about the editors that needed to be sanctioned. There were several other editors involved in these discussions who did not receive any sanctions. Other than me, such editors included , ,  etc.
As far as this appeal is concerned, it makes sense to treat the appeals from  and  separately, on the grounds that they did not participate in the ARE case and, therefore, did not have an opportunity to present their side of the picture. All other appealing editors were part of the ARE case.
In my view, MapSGV merits special consideration because he is a newish editor,  his overall contribution has been positive, and his apparent combativeness in the talk page discussions is mostly reflective of what he himself received.
On the big picture, I would like to submit that, for the first time in the last year so, I am able to spend time on other important matters, like, e.g., the ongoing GA nomination of Shivaji, instead of getting bogged down with daily fire-fights on India-Pakistan conflicts. Many of us are breathing a sigh of relief. GoldenRing is to be commended for his bold and decisive action. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 19:55, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by Kautilya3 

message: *I've been following the India-Pakistan conflict mess for a while (for example, I imposed the restrictions that Capitals00 mentions above) and I think GoldenRing did an excellent job in identifying the root of the problem and the solution they proposed was just the right one. The crux of the problem is that these editors are fighting a proxy India Pakistan battle on Wikipedia. Some of them are good and useful editors who just lose it when it comes to the conflict (Mar4d, Capitals00, perhaps others), while it is less clear about others. GoldenRing took a surgeon's scalpel to the problem and crafted a narrow topic ban that should help separate those editors who are here with broader agendas from the ones that are narrowly focused on the India-Pakistan conflict. Six months of editing on other areas (both India as well as Pakistan are underserved on the pedia) and then ask for the topic ban to be lifted. This was explicitly supported, both in content as well as in procedure, by other admins and, clearly, discretionary sanctions and AE worked exactly as they should. This issue is consuming the spirit of neutral editors on Wikipedia, is dispiriting for admins in the area, and the long term consequences of overturning the ban are not going to be good. 
*About MapSGV. They are not quite correct in their activity summary post ARCA overturning their topic ban. While they have not edited much in the India Pakistan conflict area, they actually have barely edited elsewhere as well (approx 8 edits in the conflict area out of a total of 17 or 18 over the space of a month and a half).  This edit illustrates the very "who won the battle" and "go after the other guys" attitude that is at the root of the problem. GoldenRing was, imo, justified in including them in the topic ban. 
--regentspark (comment) 22:41, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by RegentsPark 

message: I think the comment above by RegentsPark is disingenuous because it seems that every time an issue was reported, he tried to rescue the reported editor in violation of WP:INVOLVED, even when the issue was very clear that sanctions on the reported editors were definitely warranted. RegentsPark cites a user talk page discussion that only shows continued harassment from Mar4d that could have been avoided had RegentsPark made efforts to curb reported disruption or simply stayed out of the reports but RegentsPark has been himself a part of the problem, as my diffs show. RegentsPark seems to be using his own failure to handle the issue as evidence of escalation though without admitting his own guilt. Similarly, GoldenRing has has failed to act on the reports where the topic ban was the obvious solution, but now he has to confuse one editor's behavior with other to justify a large number of problematic bans and that speaks of nothing but problems with his own actions in this case.
 is right -- the problem here is that 10 concerning editors are being treated as same by GoldenRing. Cherrypicking ten editors and handing them same sanction only for editing the subject makes no sense. GoldenRing in his statements has only proven the existence of the editors in the subject, however, disruption is limited only with two or three editors, not more than that.  According to GoldenRing, if one editor refutes other editor's argument with accordance to policy and other editor begins to engage in blatant policy violations, then we should ban both editors because there would be no such situation without both. There is an article on False equivalence that I think GoldenRing would benefit to read.
I also believe that even if GoldenRing's philosophy is correct, his list was still largely incomplete. You missed Kautilya3 who has been a party of the disputes and has engaged in edit warring, incivility, and advocated WP:SPS. I see no reason why you left out Adamgerber80 who misrepresented sources, and edit warred on Sindhudesh  (3 reverts), Indian Line of Control strike,   India–Pakistan border skirmishes, and more. False balance is a bad choice. Since there was no particular analysis of everyone's behavior and it took sanctioning admin less than a day to sanction 10 editors in good standing for mostly outdated issues and without even notifying half of those editors, it would be better if the same sanctions are removed in this appeal for lacking necessary evidence and procedural basis. --1990'sguy (talk) 01:25, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by 1990'sguy 

message: I wish to emphasize one thing before I make this statement, that I am only making one because (a) I was mentioned in this discussion by  and (b) I subsequently discovered that another editor had raised some concerns with some of my edits. I don't have a strong opinion on the WP:ARE which took place or this subsequent appeal. A discussion on  my talk page which incidentally occurred before the entire WP:ARE discussion represents my view on this entire situation. In general, I wish to stay away (and have made an earnest attempt to do so) from the numerous WP:ANI, WP:ARE, WP:SPI, and other discussions that have gone down in the past six months. My attempts have been to ensure that constructive discussion occurs and here are some recent edits which represent that. (, undoing incorrect closure,talk page discussion). , You have very right to question and raise issues about my edits but I would implore you to assume WP:AGF and to please have a look at my respective discussions on the talk pages of those articles to understand the complete picture. Second, it is common courtesy to at least ping/mention the editor such that they are notified about the concerns one has raised. In my opinion, it would have been nice if you had indeed extended me that courtesy here. Thanks. Adamgerber80 (talk) 03:45, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by Adamgerber80 

message: Enforcement was based on clearly weak evidence, mainly stale diffs (often outside scope) and topic bans were recklessly imposed. I am failing to find any evidence of main page disruption from the editors. It is  worrying  that many editors were not notified as evidenced by Razer211. If someone was disruptive then smaller sanctions (warnings, reminders) had to be tried first but I am not seeing any previous attempts to deal with the editors and forced breaks including blocks are contrary to Wikipedia policies per WP:COOLDOWN, let alone handing topic bans. 
I also agree that there was no reason not to consider Kautilya3 and Adamgerber80 as suited editors for topic bans when they caused more disruption than nearly all named editors. 
 To show you the frivolity of the entire topic bans, I will say that there was a classic display of admin favuoritism. The administrators totally ignored evidence that several users had shown of Kautilya3's misconduct such as his incivility and his breaking of the  aspersions restrictions which he is under. GoldenRing did not even consider all that but somehow found this conduct from JosephusOfJerusalem deserving of sanction. I will leave that up to you to decide whose behaviour was worse. You should note that admins have let Kautilya3 off the hook before too despite his abusing multiple accounts and edit warring. And this supports my idea that this the entire process had favouritism and selectivity all over it.
To support my point that the evidence was really weak I will show you another example. GoldenRing's evidence of TripWire's supposed misconduct are what he calls these "gems";  and  But how is that any different to this sort of "gem" from Vanamonde93 ? Either both are bad or neither are bad.
We can undoubtedly agree that whatever ideology was being used for justifying the ban, it's use was totally incomplete and the result was too unsound.
Since the entire mechanism was abused like a joke I believe it's better to overturn these bans and implement the subject restrictions  (as Capitals00 proposed)  as per agreement between most editors here. They describe where the problems exist and how they can be easily avoided. DarSahab (talk) 05:41, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by DarSahab 

message: I must applaud the spirit of conciliation which has come about on this appeal between the T-banned users. This willingness to let go of past grudges and work cooperatively in future is not something I have ever seen here before and should not be ignored either as it sets a good precedent for the encyclopedia. We must give them a chance to demonstrate their friendship and collaborative attitude. The subject restrictions will be a good substitute for the T-Bans. I support the idea that the T-bans be lifted en masse from everyone. 
I would not only suggest that these t-bans be lifted but I would advise that they be supplemented with proper and more stern administrative action for Kautilya3's misconduct. I advise more stringency in their case because most of the topic banned users here were not already under an indefinite ARE sanction. Kautilya3 was. As a user who was restricted from casting aspersions this sort of verbiage: "don't make deceptive POV edits again","your soapboxing for Pakistan", is quite across the end of the line. This is also the case with his ethnicity claims restriction which he is which he is noted to have violated. The only solution is that User:Lord Roem's warning be made true and a due block be served. As an administrator myself over at Urdu Wikipedia I don't know what the administrators here have been doing. It is apparent that these topic bans has given them a false sense of self-righteousness and superiority over other users. This conversation does not make for pleasant reading. Kautilya3 calls one edit, involving the removal of large amounts of unsourced text, a month after the last major edit, an "edit war" and refers to NadirAli's sanction in what clearly looks like a bullying attempt.--Obaid Raza (talk) 10:45, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Lift topic bans and give Kautilya3 the penalty for breaking their ARE sanctions: To those arguing that this is not the right place to bring it up, this is ARCA. Amendments are requested and made here to fix whatever deficiencies there were from the ARE in question. Since violations by Kautilya3 of his ARE-restrictions were repeatedly brought up (and ignored) at that ARE, that failure now has to be corrected here. I would advise English Wikipedia administrators to complete here the action that was missed at ARE. Of course, the original failure to do so also now raises question marks over the credibility of the original decision, which is another reason why the mass topic ban should be lifted. Obaid Raza (talk) 18:46, 28 May 2018 (UTC)
replies: text:  Can a motion be passed to take some sort of action on Kautilya3's misconduct? If you go through the original ARE report and even the diffs regurgitated here, its clear that that user's behaviour has been worse than the rest. They also violated their own ARE sanctions. Ignoring his behaviour which was reported at that same ARE is one of the main reasons the original decision was so faulty. It let the prime wrongdoer off the hook, and this user has been given too much leeway already by English Wikipedia administrators (abusing multiple accounts, edit warring, you name it).Obaid Raza (talk) 09:12, 7 June 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by Obaid Raza 

message: For the sake of my own sanity, I do not admin in this particular area, except for blocking known socks and the like and therefore did not participate in the ARE. With that out of the way, I agree with NYB below that this should be held as a mass appeal. It's far simpler for all involved. There's no reason why individual issues can't be evaluated in a mass appeal. That said, I'm not sure where this "single/individual admin" imposing a sanction comes from (from BU Rob13 below and some others above the line). This was imposed after a discussion and at least three admins (in the uninvolved section) agreed and came up with the final sanction while two others agreed with the general principle. In fact many of those appealing the sanction here were vociferously supporting the same or stiffer sanctions for some of the others in that same discussion, just the fact that all their opinions were taken into consideration, evaluated, and all of them sanctioned seems to be an inconvenient outcome for them. I think NYB has hit the nail on the head with 
"" and we shouldn't forget that the WP:ARE outcome was taking into consideration what was best for the encyclopaedia. As for the other comment on why some others were left out, well, they seem to have been considered and deliberately left out of the sanctions. As for MapSGV's appeal, right after the ARCA appeal this edit which plays into the tag teaming aspect within the sanctioned topic area. So, while I do agree to an extent with power-enwiki's statement above reg there being very minimal contribution since the ARCA appeal, that kind of contribution is actually just "ARBCOM has accepted my appeal, now I'm untouchable", so in effect suggesting that 's original sanction there was warranted. (Note: In the interest of unnecessary notifications, I've only pinged those not already participating this discussion.) —SpacemanSpiff 10:48, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by SpacemanSpiff 

message: Briefly. My knowledge of these topic-banned editors is only at SPI. Without analyzing each one separately, on balance, SPI would be better off without their largely disruptive factionalized back-and-forth on many cases. It's true that some are worse than others, but to the extent this ban prevents them from filing reports, I'm in favor of it. As an aside, I agree with 's preliminary procedural statement. Separating this would be an unnecessary nightmare.--Bbb23 (talk) 18:00, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by Bbb23 

message: tldr: Ban good, proposed alternatives bad.
I edit in the normally anodyne periphery of this topic area, and I haven't looked at most of the events that led here. But I've witnessed other, similarly toxic, discussions between the editors concerned, and I've followed the recent AE reports. I can say I agree with Goldenring's selection of editors to place restrictions on and I believe that these restrictions were long overdue. Further noting that the narrow topic ban is probably the most lenient of all the options that were considered in the last AE request.
Regarding Capitals00's proposal for a new set of editing restrictions in this topic area, this doesn't seem to be gaining traction, but I think it's worth emphasising why it might not be a good idea. This is likely to have a disproportionate effect on new editors (who will not be familiar with the strict letter of this new law), and it won't do much to solve the underlying issue with the currently t-banned group of editors. I don't see the relevance of either 1RR (the problem was the constantly horrible environment on talk pages and noticeboards, not so much the occasional instance of mild edit-warring), and I don't see how the proposed civility restriction could work: I don't remember ever seeing civility proper to have been a major problem (and two of the worst offenders banned are the poster childs of WP:Civil POV pushing). If civility is defined broadly enough to encompass all the neutrally-worded recriminations or the polite, but persistent, mutual litigation that we had become used to, then the definition will be too broad to make it enforceable.
Starting a full-blown arbitration case was recently suggested, but I don't see how it could help at this point. What is the way forward from here? These editors have been banned from the major heat source – the India–Pakistan conflict – but they remain free to edit in the wider subject areas of India and Pakistan. These topics have been an area of conflict between some of those editors in the past, but if this time round they show they can work constructively and collaborate, they can follow the standard path of individually appealing their topic bans after six months. If the battleground behaviour carries on, then stricter restrictions can be selectively imposed on the those responsible.
Maybe MapSGV's topic ban could be overturned, in the interest of fairness, because of their overall low level of participation in the most recent skirmishes. – Uanfala (talk) 22:43, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by Uanfala 

message: I have worked with few of these editors and had my share of agreements and disagreement. We can debate about their behavior being good or not. But their contributions to articles speaks volume about their commitment and hours they have put in. Thus, I highly oppose this hasty and heavy handed topic ban, that was clearly put in place without any consideration or considerable proof of disruption. For example all the (stale) evidence used to ban Mar4d was rehashed from an AE of two months ago, then dismissed as a "wall of minutia", so it should not have been actionable at all. I thank the rest of the editors for their productive contributions, I also thank Capitals00 for a good set of good-faith proposals, and look forward to work with them. I wish them best of luck with this appeal. --Spasage (talk) 04:33, 28 May 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by Spasage 

message: Nothing is actually wrong with banning multiple editors but such action still requires firm evidence of disruption and that is badly missing here. I condemn such approach of banning anyone without following the right procedures. Given the lack of evidence, no implementation of preventative measures and justification through misleading conjectures, I oppose the topic bans and request committee to undo the damage by overturning all bans.
Disagreements are a part of daily life but to punish someone over common disagreement is simply unjustified. ARE must not be used as a tool for clearing feuds of your favorite editor. desmay (talk) 14:45, 28 May 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by Desmay

message: According to the policies and general understanding, the topic bans are imposed after failure to abide by the warning issued for clear evidence of disruptive editing which most importantly includes problematic main article edits, failure to abide consensus, personal attacks, etc. however, none of that can be discovered anywhere in my editing record since I have joined Wikipedia.
No evidence of sanctionable editing had been produced that concerned me. Looking at time when the list of bans was proposed and implemented, it is evident that I never got the opportunity to defend myself as my contribution history shows. GoldenRing cited my participation but that is really not enough and I have never seen anyone before being sanctioned for such. So far, I have never engaged in any edit warring, canvassing, personal attacks, bludgeoning or any kind of sanctionable conduct. My participation showed by the links provided by GoldenRing involved the instances that were either outside scope or they were no longer actionable. If GoldenRing found them to be actionable, still, my overall motive was all about working on improving the credibility of Wikipedia and abide by its core policies. I admit that I have been critical a couple of times in participation but at the end of the day it was also apparent that it didn't took me long to restore the collegial atmosphere.
We are ought to be building a collegial atmosphere and after hearing the reactions from the involved users with whom I had disputes, I am happy that they are also ready to collaborate in building a collegial atmosphere and I welcome their commitment as a net benefit to encyclopedia. D4iNa4 (talk) 16:45, 29 May 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: * I am aware that appeals can be made on ARE and AN prior here, but the reality is that those options largely depend on the popularity of the appealing editor. It has been frequently observed that even if an editor has carried out gross violations of policies, he would get away with those violations with reviewing admin citing the consensus among editors/admins and at the same time if an editor has not carried out any violation or even participated in the diffs used for banning then the sanctions are still going to be endorsed only because the appealing editor have a low bar on popularity, like we have already seen here in the case of MapSGV. At first I was avoiding this ARCA because I had doubts whether multiple editors can appeal or not. After receiving your ping I decided that this should be treated as most likely as the only venue that nonetheless has highest chances of making a fair review of the decision at AE. D4iNa4 (talk) 05:04, 2 June 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by D4iNa4 

message: Thank you for allowing me to appeal.
GoldenRing notifies the people whom he has mentioned in his ARE comments, but this time GoldenRing failed to notify the people he mentioned. I was one of them who weren't not notified about being sanctioned, and my name was added without any consideration and there was no evidence provided by anyone to backup the topic ban proposal. At first, GoldenRing didn't agreed with the idea of including me in the list,[ however GoldenRing suddenly added my name without providing any reason to topic ban me neither any evidence was provided to him. 
To this day, I have never engaged in disruption and whenever anyone told me about a mistake that I have made, I realized it and made the improvement. I had been temporarily topic banned before by NeilN, who swiftly removed the topic ban on appeal but put me under temporary restrictions and 3/4 of these temporary restrictions were successfully appealed on 18 April, after I had cited the evidence of lack of disruption and the faults in the evidence that had been used for putting me under restrictions. However this indefinite topic ban from India-Pakistan conflict is overtly unwarranted and there are no reasons why I had to be banned when I have not disrupted this area or in fact any other area at all.
My overall view of this issue is that it can be easily resolved and it has already begun to be resolved. The unanimous agreement between involved editors to allow implementation of subject restrictions from protecting the area from disruption is a positive sign. Furthermore, I would like to thank JosephusOfJerusalem that he has countered a sock who keeps disrupting my contributions. This is an evidence that we are contrary to what the admins had assumed, that we will move conflicts to other areas but clearly we haven't done that at all, instead we have evidenced the fact that we can collaborate together. Raymond3023 (talk) 11:15, 30 May 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Where is the evidence of me being disruptive? I was not even a part of most of these disputes. To me this sounds more like a sanction for only having involvement than violating any policies or engaging in this disruption that is necessary before getting topic banned. Raymond3023 (talk) 10:30, 7 June 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by Raymond3023 

message: As I wrote in the AE thread, I have not reviewed the evidence with respect to each individual sanctioned editor, but support the general approach by GoldenRing. Nothing submitted here on appeal makes me believe that the sanction was completely outside the discretion granted to administrators by the discretionary sanctions provisions. Even if with respect to individual users other admins might have come to different conclusions, or indeed even if the one-size-fits-all approach might be perceived as not equally reflective of the degree of culpability of each sanctioned editor, in the aggregate I believe these sanctions will help quell battleground-type editing in the area of conflict.  Sandstein  15:08, 31 May 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by Sandstein 

message: , thanks for letting me know about this. There's an awful lot to wade through, but I'll try to get a statement put together tonight. It would indeed seem to make sense to notify admins who participated in the AE review of an ARCA appeal. Seraphimblade Talk to me 18:19, 1 June 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by Seraphimblade 

message: No comments on these appeals yet. I should note however that I had requested Doug Weller due to his heavy involvement with a few editors listed in this request. Whilst Doug Weller has not disagreed that he is involved, he seems to be refusing to recuse. --RaviC (talk) 15:42, 2 June 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: I must note that something is very fishy going on here. Also linking an ARE report that concerned NadirAli, highlighting the alleged meatpuppetry. --RaviC (talk) 15:10, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

text: And now  (who I have already mentioned) has violated his topic ban by misrepresenting the edits on Kashmiris, from where he is topic banned. RaviC (talk) 15:35, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

text: Looks like you really don't understand what a topic ban is. Since you referred to talk page (Talk:Kashmiris) you must have been aware of this message by GoldenRing. You are not allowed to refer to any edits that are related to your topic ban, but given that you have violated your topic bans and have been blocked, I don't think that this is something particularly new to you. RaviC (talk) 15:59, 7 June 2018 (UTC)
thread_title: Statement by RaviC

message: I had looked into this request sometime before but didn't commented then because I couldn't really make up my mind at that time. But having now read through the statements at AE and here, I feel that at least three topic bans should be preserved since these three editors have caused massive amount of disruption, and as pointed above, that if they had been topic banned at the right time as the result of the strong AE reports against them, there would be no such collateral damage that we are seeing now.
1) TripWire: he says here that he was topic banned during his "younger days", and then was eventually "blocked for 48 hrs for no fault of mine", which is a clear misrepresentation of the credibility of his block that was imposed because he himself violated 2RR.  has surprisingly omitted the ARE report from July 2016, where I had participated as well. This ARE resulted in a 3 months topic ban on TripWire from entire Balochistan subject, not to mention that TripWire is currently still under a "casting aspersions" sanction as a result of that ARE.
2) NadirAli: needs no introduction. He was site banned as result of the original ARBIPA case and topic banned, which he later appealed. He claimed here that "I had broken no 3RR",  while technically true, the statement is unconvincing to defend his record, given his 3 reverts on Princely state well under an hour.
3) Mar4d: his actions include source misrepresentation, edit warring on 2016 Indian Line of Control strike while misrepresenting established consensus as no consensus, harassment of MapSGV, poor AfD nomination and then he went on to tag the article with CSD A10 while the AfD was still running, in fact, no longer than a few hours before the ARE was filed. His disruption is clearly highest among all other editors. Add to this: the topic ban violations as pointed above in this edit further leaves me with no doubt that the topic ban ought to be preserved in Mar4d's case.
At present, this is my stance regarding this case. Bharatiya29 09:04, 4 June 2018 (UTC)
thread_title: Statement by Bharatiya29

message: This is the situation where you have to select between what is right and what is easy.
I was aware of these bans but not this request that I got to know only after following up events related to JosephusOfJerusalem, after he violated his topic ban multiple times, for restoring pseudohistory/fringe content that never had consensus. At this moment, I would just mention that the necessary details of background are missing that can significantly decide the outcome of this request. It is necessary to tell that this kind of frivolous ARE reports submission citing insignificant issues to get away from own mass disruption dates back to January this year. One side has tried almost every way to engage in disruption for the sake of POV pushing, while other side has only attempted to fix the problems created by other side or helped them clearing their misunderstandings of policies and content disputes. I know that I am saying this is a one-sided disputed, but this is not a new thing. Same was the case in the original case where only one side was sanctioned and NadirAli was a part of it, just like he is in this case.
Situation has not changed. I would bring unwarranted admin leniency into attention that widely exists here and it's existence has been further proven post-topic bans. Interestingly, Mar4d and JosephusOfJerusalem have violated their topic bans multiple times but they haven't been sanctioned even after the clear logged warning agreed by several administrators that any violation will lead to "either an indefinite topic ban from all topics related to India, Pakistan and Afghanistan or an indefinite block, without further warning."
Should I just say that no one should be reporting topic ban violations? Because nothing happens as it has been already proven and if anyone tried to report the violation, then the reporting editor would be instead blocked/banned for "battleground mentality". If the reports of topic ban violation increased then one side will falsely accuse other side of topic ban violation and then all editors will get blocked indefinitely or topic banned from whole subject only for being "part of that battle", even if most editors never violated the topic ban. I mean, this is what has happened here that half of the editors have been sanctioned for disruption caused by others and apparently we are moving there again. I know that would be wrong if it happened and I would definitely advise against such practices.
I will expand my comment with relevant diffs soon. My Lord (talk) 12:21, 7 June 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Just noting here that I have my evidence ready for proving my above statement. I feel it is important because such evidence has not been mentioned here by anybody yet. At this moment, it appears that several members of the committee have already made their votes. I guess I am probably late. Please ping me if you are interested. My Lord (talk) 13:02, 7 June 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by My Lord 

message: :This area is used for notes by the clerks (including clerk recusals).
* Recuse obviously.  GoldenRing (talk) 11:02, 24 May 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  India-Pakistan: Clerk notes 

message: * Please link the diff where MapSVG was alerted of the AE discussion before he received sanctions. ~ Rob13Talk 18:59, 23 May 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  India-Pakistan: Arbitrator views and discussion 

message: The discretionary sanctions appeal by MapSGV is sustained, and the topic-ban imposed on MapSGV on May 15, 2018 is lifted. MapSGV remains on notice that the India/Pakistan topic-area is subject to discretionary sanctions, and is reminded to edit in accordance with all applicable policies.
;Support
: (Now moved to oppose) Proposing this to start chipping away at the outcomes here. The wording is the exact same as last time (with an updated date of sanction). MapSGV is saying this in a rather polemic way, but he's essentially correct. His topic ban was removed by ArbCom, and then GoldenRing replaced it even though he had almost no involvement in the topic area between the time he was unbanned and the time the ban was reinstated. He seems to have greatly reduced his participation in the area in response to the warning issued when the previous appeal was sustained, and I simply don't see any disruption in his post-appeal contributions to justify a topic ban. We can't have an admin overruling an ArbCom decision, and even if that wasn't the intent, I think it's the practical effect of letting this topic ban stand.   proposed a suspended topic ban above, but that's not needed here. In the past, we've suspended ArbCom remedies instead of lifting entirely because we wanted to provide some mechanism for admins to sanction the editor if they resumed acting disruptively. Here, the active discretionary sanctions in this topic area already provide that mechanism. `~ Rob13Talk 14:17, 2 June 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm currently weighing whether I still hold this stance after the diffs from . I don't appear to have to think very hard on it, since the consensus is likely against either way, but I probably am also leaning decline now. On one hand, those diffs would not be enough to topic ban someone without considering the wider disruption in the topic area and past conduct. On the other hand, it probably pushes things well into administrator discretion territory, which is the same reason I'm agreeing to decline the other appeals. I will note that, regardless of outcome, those diffs probably should have been provided prior to the ban being placed. A topic banned editor has a right to know the exact reason for their ban, which is usually necessary both to defend their conduct in the original discussion and to formulate an appeal. The specific diffs/evidence of wrongdoing shouldn't be coming out only multiple weeks into the appeal process. ~ Rob13Talk 15:06, 7 June 2018 (UTC)
thread_title: India-Pakistan: Motion

message: I am seeking clarification on whether the article on the geographical feature Siachen Glacier is covered by the scope of the aforementioned sanction in its entirety because it contains a section describing the Siachen conflict (actually two sections) which itself is a dispute between India and Pakistan. This is in response to DBigXray posting a note () to SheriffIsInTown that their semi-automated filling of a reference within the description of the conflict () was a violation of their topic ban, which they acknowledged and self-reverted (). While nobody here disagrees that this specific edit was strictly a topic ban violation, I've been challenged on my interpretation () that hypothetical constructive edits to the significant portions of the article which do not concern the conflict would not violate this sanction, and so I am seeking clarification on that point.
I'd also like to point out that I restored the ref-fill edit as it was clearly constructive. I was then referred to the "banned means banned" section of the banning policy, which does not state that edits made in violation of a ban must be reverted; on the contrary it states that "". And I'd also like to draw the reviewers' attention to an essentially concurrent discussion () in which another editor was sanctioned for attempted frivolous enforcement of this same decision. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 14:48, 2 October 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: thank you, that was a silly omission on my part. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 19:04, 2 October 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by Ivanvector 

message: Although, I am thankful that 's message on my user talk allowed me to remediate the blunder I made in form of an inadvertent violation of my ban, I am bit disappointed in the choice of language in their message. There is quite a bit of assumption of bad faith in their comment when they put it like "I saw that you are still editing Siachen Glacier", it conveys as if I was a long term habitual editor of that article and I am still continuing to edit that article in defiance of my ban but in reality that was my first ever edit on that article. I never ever edited that article in good ole days of freedom to edit any article on Wikipedia then why I would knowingly and willfully violate my topic ban just to fill a reference so assuming good faith, the message could have better read as "I see that you might have inadvertently violated your topic ban in this edit, please be careful in future as your ban is broadly construed and it does not matter whether you are fixing a reference or adding content about actual conflict." No matter the disagreements or different backgrounds, why cannot we give space to our fellow editors by assuming good faith towards them when we have a choice between both (good or bad). While we are here and being thankful to the admins to give me a leeway, my question to them and more specifically to ARBCOM members is that would not it be a good idea to exclude purely technical edits such as the one I made out of the scope of such topic bans. I am unable to see what could be the risk of such edits spiraling the conflict out of hands or starting an edit-war or battleground editing pattern which could be risks when an edit is truly content related. Sheriff | ☎ 911 | 15:03, 4 October 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by SheriffIsInTown 

message: Before I looked at the article I was expecting to opine that the parts of the article related to the geographical/geological/environmental/etc aspects of the glacier would be fine to edit. However, after having read the article it seems that everything is intimately tied up with the conflict, or its origins, history or effects. I would recommend topic banned users give this article a miss in its entirety.
Ivanvector is correct though regarding reinstating the self-reverted edit. WP:PROXYING is the relevant policy here - "Wikipedians in turn are not permitted to post or edit material at the direction of a banned or blocked editor (sometimes called proxy editing or proxying) unless they are able to show that the changes are either verifiable or productive and they have independent reasons for making such edits. Editors who reinstate edits made by a banned or blocked editor take complete responsibility for the content." [emphasis in original]. The edit in question was clearly productive, and there is no suggestion that it was performed at the direction of anyone else. Thryduulf (talk) 16:02, 2 October 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by Thryduulf 

message: I do not have an affinity for boundary-testing-experiments but IMO, if Sheriff can manage to edit the article excluding anything tangential to the conflict, there's no problem.
The entire second paragraph of lead, etymology-section and drainage-section ought not be any related to the conflict.
I would advise against the seemingly-innocent section of Environmental issues courtesy that they are caused by the presence of forces et al, which links up to the conflict.
The rest of the sections are a .
I concur with Ivan's restoration and commend him for rising above petty process-wonkery. Whilst I agree that this particular edit violated Sheriff's T-Ban, I don't have any idea as to why DBigXray asked for a revert; a plain note of caution would have been sufficient.∯WBGconverse 16:54, 2 October 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by WBG 

message: I agree with the current action taken by Ivanvector and believe that this was a constructive edit. IMO, as long as we are here, there is an issue with this topic ban from the point of view of it's scope. Just to be clear I am not arguing for or against the ban or trying to dig into the reasons behind it. My intention here is to clearly list what is allowed and what is not allowed under this topic-ban, for the sake of the editors who are under the ban and other editors who edit in the general area. When the ban was crafted there was some degree of ambiguity to it (not certain if that was deliberate or not) which has led different administrators to derive different interpretations from it and impose it per their view. I think it would be a worthwhile exercise to maybe make a small list of gray areas to remove procedural overhead of people reporting each other and leading to more discussions. I would present two scenarios which happened recently because of the aforementioned ambiguity. There was a WP:ANI discussion about an editor who was involved in the area and some editors who participated in the discussion were briefly banned since this was considered a violation of their topic ban. Another scenario which is currently playing out on another talk page discussion where there was a discussion about inclusion/exclusion of countries (along with India and Pakistan). I don't have a strong opinion in either of these cases or other gray areas but feel listing no-go zones and okay zones might be easier for all of us. Thanks. Adamgerber80 (talk) 21:58, 2 October 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by Adamgerber80 

message: :This area is used for notes by the clerks (including clerk recusals).
* , just a heads up I added the diffs of your notifications for you. --Cameron11598 (Talk)  18:33, 2 October 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  ARBIPA topic ban clarification: Clerk notes 

message: *General comment: I should know better to ask this after almost nine years on the ArbCom, but is it altogether impossible for common sense to govern this sort of question? My thanks to those who have already employed this underutilized dispute-resolution tool. Newyorkbrad (talk) 17:13, 2 October 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  ARBIPA topic ban clarification: Arbitrator views and discussion 

message: ;Case or decision affected
:Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/India-Pakistan
:Some editors "indefinitely banned from edits and pages related to conflict between India and Pakistan, broadly construed. "
List of any users involved or directly affected, and confirmation that all are aware of the request:
* (initiator)
Confirmation that all parties are aware of the request
===Statement by Orientls===
Would it be a topic ban violation if an editor topic banned from "edits and pages related to conflict between India and Pakistan" edits Regional power with the purpose to debate the status of India or Pakistan?
The description of India and Pakistan in the context of regional power heavily focuses on conflicts between India and Pakistan. Reliable sources largely emphasize on conflicts between two countries in this subject when they discuss their "power". Some more factors including "regional power" that falls within the India-Pakistan conflict area are mentioned by this reliable source.
Historically we have considered subjects like Khalistan movement, Insurgency in Balochistan to be a violation of this particular topic ban since these subjects are also tied up with conflicts between India and Pakistan.
Even if an editor edits such subjects without actually making mention of India-Pakistan conflict, then still it could be still considered a topic ban violation because India-Pakistan conflict is among the major factor involved and ultimately the coverage of India-Pakistan conflict is significantly affected. Orientls (talk)
: This is not about a particular editor but  clarification concerning  treatment of this subject (Regional power) when the editor is editing this subject with purpose to debate the status of India or Pakistan as regional power. 
:Topic banned from India-Pakistan conflict or not, both types of editors treat the subject as a part of India-Pakistan conflict. This question was also raised by Adamgerber80 above as "scenario which is currently playing out on another talk page discussion". FWIW, I have presented both sides that those who don't consider this subject to be a topic ban violation (from IP conflict) would only claim that "I made no mention of any India-Pakistan conflict", while influencing the very same conflict by editing this subject.
:I don't know if topic banned editors (and how many of them) could be named as party since they are not the ones seeking clarification or raising any demand for one. Non-topic banned users have shown no interest in seeking clarification either. Given these uncertainties, I saw no need of naming anybody as a party unless they had shown interest anywhere. Nevertheless, I also believed that anyone interested can ask clerks if they want to be a party to this request. Orientls (talk) 04:16, 6 October 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Don't we use ARCA instead when there is uncertainty over the scope? Reporting an edit without being sure if it constitutes a violation or not would likely result in sanction on the reporting editor and that is what we need to avoid. Orientls (talk) 05:27, 6 October 2018 (UTC)

text: This area is used for notes by the clerks (including clerk recusals).
*
=== Clarification request: IP conflict: Arbitrator views and discussion ===
*This is ultimately a decision for the community, in my opinion. ~ Rob13Talk 17:42, 5 October 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Clarification request: IP conflict 

message: Would it be a topic ban violation if an editor topic banned from "edits and pages related to conflict between India and Pakistan" edits Regional power with the purpose to debate the status of India or Pakistan?
The description of India and Pakistan in the context of regional power heavily focuses on conflicts between India and Pakistan. Reliable sources largely emphasize on conflicts between two countries in this subject when they discuss their "power". Some more factors including "regional power" that falls within the India-Pakistan conflict area are mentioned by this reliable source.
Historically we have considered subjects like Khalistan movement, Insurgency in Balochistan to be a violation of this particular topic ban since these subjects are also tied up with conflicts between India and Pakistan.
Even if an editor edits such subjects without actually making mention of India-Pakistan conflict, then still it could be still considered a topic ban violation because India-Pakistan conflict is among the major factor involved and ultimately the coverage of India-Pakistan conflict is significantly affected. Orientls (talk)
: This is not about a particular editor but  clarification concerning  treatment of this subject (Regional power) when the editor is editing this subject with purpose to debate the status of India or Pakistan as regional power. 
:Topic banned from India-Pakistan conflict or not, both types of editors treat the subject as a part of India-Pakistan conflict. This question was also raised by Adamgerber80 above as "scenario which is currently playing out on another talk page discussion". FWIW, I have presented both sides that those who don't consider this subject to be a topic ban violation (from IP conflict) would only claim that "I made no mention of any India-Pakistan conflict", while influencing the very same conflict by editing this subject.
:I don't know if topic banned editors (and how many of them) could be named as party since they are not the ones seeking clarification or raising any demand for one. Non-topic banned users have shown no interest in seeking clarification either. Given these uncertainties, I saw no need of naming anybody as a party unless they had shown interest anywhere. Nevertheless, I also believed that anyone interested can ask clerks if they want to be a party to this request. Orientls (talk) 04:16, 6 October 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Don't we use ARCA instead when there is uncertainty over the scope? Reporting an edit without being sure if it constitutes a violation or not would likely result in sanction on the reporting editor and that is what we need to avoid. Orientls (talk) 05:27, 6 October 2018 (UTC)
thread_title: Statement by Orientls

message: I am generally suspicious of these generic "I won't tell you who I'm asking about" questions.  ArbCom should decline to answer without background info. Doing it this way denies the targets of the filing the opportunity to comment. If ArbCom doesn't decline, someone should notify all the editors in the linked enforcement log addition. --Floquenbeam (talk) 18:00, 5 October 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by Floq 

message: *This is ultimately a decision for the community, in my opinion. ~ Rob13Talk 17:42, 5 October 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Clarification request: IP conflict: Arbitrator views and discussion 

message: I was issued a topic ban from India-Pakistan conflict pages almost ten months ago on 15 May 2018. I am requesting this ban to be lifted now as a lot of time has passed since this ban and I have contributed in other topic areas since then. I have made a determination to change my behavior to avoid conflict when editing India-Pakistan conflict pages by engaging in discussions more and avoid the language or behavior which can make the editing more toxic which was the primary concern when the ban was issued that the participation of many editors in this topic area was making the environment toxic and the conflicts were spilling out to other areas/noticeboards.
Personally, This ban has affected me deeply as it was the first ever ban or block issued to me and I blame only myself for getting this stain on my editing. This ban has also affected my editing deeply as well, as it being a broadly construed, i could not improve those articles as well which were not conflict related, for example I was looking into splitting Nawaz Sharif into multiple articles but I could not do so as the foreign policy section contained content regarding relations with India. Similarly, I started First 100 days of Imran Khan's prime ministership and Prime Ministership of Imran Khan after Imran Khan assumed power but I could not improve those articles especially when it came to content regarding relations with India and a lot has happened regarding these relations since Khan took helms of affair in Islamabad.
Thus citing these hardships and time which has passed since the ban was issued, I will like to request the committee to repeal this ban. I promise to be more careful when editing this topic area as iterated by me above. Sheriff | ☎ 911 | 18:37, 4 March 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by SheriffIsInTown 

message: No opinion on this request, but for those (like me) who vaguely remember SIIT's request for a topic ban removal a week or so ago, it was for a different subject, and is found here: . --Floquenbeam (talk) 18:50, 4 March 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by Floq 

message: I am the banning administrator.  I have not kept a check on the contributions of SheriffIsInTown and, for various reasons, don't have the capacity to go digging.  But, absent any evidence of poor behaviour in other areas, I support lifting this restriction.  I think the recent lifting of an unrelated restriction by the community speaks well to this appeal also.  GoldenRing (talk) 10:12, 6 March 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by GoldenRing (SIIT) 

message: I would recommend declining this appeal for the following reasons:
SheriffIsInTown's claim that "" is false, as SIIT was earlier topic banned from "Muhammad" in 2016.
Similarly, he has failed to mention his multiple topic ban violations and topic ban from Judaism and one-way interaction ban. 
It was barely 8 days after the decline of a previous WP:ARCA appeal, that SIIT was subject to a report on WP:AN for his disruptive editing: Wikipedia:Administrators%27 noticeboard/Archive300#Vandalism.
The first topic ban violation occurred when SheriffIsInTown was misrepresenting sock puppetry by one of the sanctioned user in this area who was getting site banned for his socking. Once SIIT saw he is not getting his way, then he went ahead to derail a sensible site-ban proposal against that editor by disrupting WP:AN and seeking sanction against others. SIIT was blocked and later unblocked for this topic ban violation.
The second topic ban violation was obvious since SheriffIsInTown edited Siachen Glacier. Soon this issue was brought to WP:ARCA for clarification. Per SIIT's statement on that ARCA, we can see that SIIT assumed bad-faith towards other editor instead of being thankful that the editor didn't reported SIIT, and SIIT asked for leeway towards topic banned editors like himself instead of promising to be more careful.
I am also surprised that SIIT confirms right above that he still doesn't understand the very basic procedure that he could appeal on WP:AN or WP:AE before appealing here.
In light of these incidents, I find it very unfair of SIIT to pretend that no problems with his editing existed before or after this topic ban.
The very fact that SIIT has continued to engage in same WP:BATTLE and WP:DE that originally resulted in sanctions and caused more problems, it seems that encyclopedia won't benefit from removing topic ban from this editor. I would instead recommend SheriffIsInTown to edit (which is more than just using the refill tool) for another 6 months -- 1 year without violating a topic ban or being subjected to more sanctions before appealing this topic ban again. --1990'sguy (talk) 13:27, 7 March 2019 (UTC)
thread_title: Statement by 1990'sguy

message: I really didn't want to comment here as I don't have a strong opinion either way, but I don't feel like enough of substance has been said so far. On the one hand, it's great to see that after the massive ANI thread that resulted in the topic ban from Judaism, SIIT has managed to stay out of trouble whilst continuing to edit at a good pace. He's created a large number of stubs about politicians, both from the US and Pakistan, and he certainly deserves praise for this work. But on the other hand, there is huge gap between creating articles consisting entirely in content like "So-and-so is a politician from such-and-such party who won that many votes in the election of year N", and navigating the enormous body of literature and the cacophony of contradictory sources about one of the world's most intractable conflicts.
I don't think there's anything in his recent experience that is comparable to what he might face in the India–Pakistan area. His very strong views on these matters, and the severity of the past problems (some distant echoes of which can be seen in two more recently raised issues  , minor though they are), make it seem to me that starting to edit there again might be risky. And I really don't see a way to tell whether SIIT has indeed fundamentally changed his ways, or he simply recognises that being contrite is the only way he can get rid of an editing restriction which he sees as a stain on his honour.
And one minor point: being recognised as one of the top medical contributors is based on an automatic process that counts edits to medicine-related articles; I should be corrected if I'm wrong, but all, or almost all, medicine-related edits that SIIT has made consist in expanding bare urls using the semiatomated tool reFill().
In case the topic ban stays in place, I think it will be perfectly alright to add an exception covering the Imran Khan articles if SIIT is interested in working on them. – Uanfala (talk) 04:06, 9 March 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by Uanfala 

message: There has been an interesting variety of responses to last year's mass topic ban. Some editors, from both "sides", have drastically reduced their participation on Wikipedia; others have focused almost exclusively on anti-vandalism patrol and AfD; still others have continued to contribute content, including in contentious areas. SIIT is one of those; he has also engaged in considerable self-reflection. If the appeal is granted, he will also obviously be on a tight leash, because there's a very large number of people watching him.  makes a good point, but I think it's a little too much to ask that an editor dive into a different but equally contentious area before an appeal; work in Pakistani politics is good enough. Vanamonde (Talk) 01:09, 10 March 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: You mean ARBIPA, surely? Vanamonde (Talk) 19:51, 10 March 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by Vanamonde93 

message: I concur with Vanamonde and will urge the committee to grant the appeal. He knows that his editorial activities will be immensely scrutinized and shall he return to his previous ways; the ban would be re-instated in a jiffy.∯WBGconverse 09:58, 10 March 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by WBG 

message: I concur with Vanamonde above. One of the purposes of a topic ban is to allow an editor to demonstrate that they aren't narrowly focused on one area and that they do have the broader interests of Wikipedia at heart. Sheriff has more than adequately shown that and we should grant this appeal. It would be wrong, given their history of aggressive editing, to say I'm not concerned, but I'm  sure that they know they're on a tight leash, so let's see if something positive can come out of a topic ban. --regentspark (comment) 01:23, 11 March 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by RegentsPark 

message: *Have you appealed at WP:AE? ~ Rob13Talk 19:38, 4 March 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: Sigh. I think I NEED an IPA now, thanks for that. RickinBaltimore (talk) 22:27, 10 March 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  India-Pakistan: Arbitrator views and discussion 

message: As WP:ARE comes under the jurisdiction of Arbcom and Arbcom has the authority to overturn and/or modify any of the enforcement made on WP:ARE, I am bringing to your attention a case related to a topic ban appeal by User:Mar4d at the above-mentioned board,  in which the evidence of a number of violations was not taken into consideration while granting the appeal.
It is important at the outset that I clarify that there are no issues with the closing admin's closure, as he merely carried out the agreement amongst administrators.
However the problems, which are major in nature, pertain to  the way the appeal was handled, which I deem to be not in consonance with the relevant Wikipedia guidelines and policies. I shall enumerate them below:
*To begin with, the very first sentence of the user's appeal was not borne out by facts. It read, and I quote: "I would like to humbly appeal for lifting a topic ban restriction which dates back to May 2018. The restriction in question was applied collectively amongst at least nine other editors at the time, with the option to appeal in 6 months' time, which I did not choose to exercise until now." (emphasis mine) The veracity of this statement was never tested or questioned and the user was taken at his words despite there was a glaring prevarication in what he stated because Mar4d was amongst the users who had collectively appealed their sanctions to Arbcom on WP:ARCA, and was notified of the subsequent rejection thereof. This revelation was never made in the appeal and the user thereby committed open perfidy; the failure of the admins to see through this betrayed a lack of due diligence on their part.
* Several instances of unambiguous topic ban violations, misrepresentation of sources while adding text to articles committed by the user were bought to the attention at AE, none of which were addressed by the admins who took part in evaluating the appeal.
*Two edits by Mar4d were mentioned on AE which dealt with the subject of Partition of India, per here, here, and here.
*A page move of Persecution of Biharis in Bangladesh, a subject which is much about 1971 Bangladesh genocide and Bangladesh Liberation War was also mentioned here,  and here.
*Misrepresentation of sources in the recent edits by Mar4d was also brought into attention on here, here, here as per these edits by Mar4d:  where the sources do not support the controversial information added by Mar4d.
::Note that the topic ban concerns "conflict between India and Pakistan, broadly construed" and "any further disruption or testing of the edges of the topic ban are likely to be met with either an indefinite IPA topic ban or an indefinite block". WP:BROADLY is very clear in this topic ban from the beginning. 
* The very first comment under the section devoted to the "uninvolved admins" was made by RegentsPark, an involved party who commented in the aforesaid section in disregard of WP:INVOLVED, and even when the same was pointed out to them they didn't pay any heed to it and nearly all other admins who commented based their views on Regentspark's comment.
The fact that the user deliberately omitted any mention of past appeals, and in fact denying having appealed in the past at all, coupled with a series of topic ban infringements, among other issues, and the failure of administrators to address these issues before granting the appeal makes this case ripe enough to be considered by the Arbcom. Shashank5988 (talk) 16:53, 22 June 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by Shashank5988 

message: Please take a look at the closure of the said appeal dating to June 2018, of which  gives the impression that I was substantially involved in. Of all the editors who received the TBAN, I was the only user who didn't lodge a single statement there or verbally challenge the sanction. I could have easily chosen to get involved, but that's besides the point. Shashank5988 only got one part right, I did indeed add my name to the "List of any users involved or directly affected, and confirmation that all are aware of the request", and even that was a procedural edit and because the filer had left a message on my talk a week earlier. That was my only edit to the "appeal". Shashank5988's claim that I  is laughable at best. Mar4d (talk) 18:38, 22 June 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: Dear , , , , , ,  etc.: In my ten plus years of editing, I have had virtually zero direct interaction with this user (Shashank5988) across a single article, discussion, you name it, anywhere. That hasn't stopped Shashank5988 from appearing first at an ARBIPA-infested ANI thread in December 2018 to oppose me, then at my recent arbitration enforcement appeal out of nowhere, and if that wasn't enough, this fresh ARCA despite the admin who closed my AE advising them otherwise. Given this won't be the first or last time I've been frivolously hounded (to wit), I just don't understand why can't we topic ban this user already for wasting everyone's time? I hope I haven't committed blasphemy by suggesting so. I'm not even touching yet the other deliberate, obfuscating accusations. I've been largely patient, honestly. Mar4d (talk) 19:06, 22 June 2020 (UTC)
replies: text:   Thanks for your closing view. In my comment above, I had expressed concerns regarding possible hounding from the filer. Could you advise what would be the correct course of action if this pattern were to continue in the future? Many thanks, Mar4d (talk) 16:42, 26 June 2020 (UTC)
replies: text:  : Noted, thanks. Mar4d (talk) 18:15, 26 June 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by Mar4d 

message: I don't consider myself involved re Mar4d but do apologize to Shashank5988 for not seeing their comment on the AE page (I see a ping in there, which I somehow missed, so the fault lies with me). Regardless, doubtless the other admins did look into the various allegations I see on the AE thread and made their decisions independently. I don't really see a big issue with not removing the ban from Mar4d. As I said on AE, they've complied with the spirit of the ban and we can't ask for a whole lot more from an editor.  --regentspark (comment) 19:41, 22 June 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by RegentsPark 

message: I don't really have much more to add beyond my evaluation at AE. The risk of further disruption by lifting the ban seems low enough to be worthwhile. El_C 17:08, 22 June 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't see how some previous interactions with Mar4d make regentspark an involved party. That assertion has not been established to my satisfaction. El_C 17:33, 22 June 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree with Black Kite that the basis for this request could be viewed as problematic. The Committee may wish to impose sanctions on the filer themselves for making a frivolous request. El_C 19:32, 22 June 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by El C 

message: Just a thought, but perhaps the admins at AE did actually look at the alleged "several instances of unambiguous topic ban violations (and) misrepresentation of sources while adding text to articles committed by the user" and decided that they either weren't violations or were very minor?  And perhaps they did look at the claim that User:RegentsPark was WP:INVOLVED, and dismissed it?  As I said at the AE, I take a very dim view of people that spend a significant amount of their time on Wikipedia trying to keep ideological opponents banned from articles, something which the filer of this (and a number of other editors in this area) have done recently - though I certainly didn't expect them to double down on it by taking up many people's time with an ARCA request as well.  It suggests to me a battleground mindset rather than one that is dedicated to actually improving an encyclopedia. Black Kite (talk) 19:07, 22 June 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by Black Kite 

message: puts it so well I can only agree with every word he says. Plus a technicality: sorry, but it itches me to see  apologising for "missing" Shashank5988's ping, when the ping wasn't correctly done and therefore didn't work. , please see Help:Fixing failed pings for how to fix a faulty ping. Bishonen | tålk 21:41, 22 June 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by Bishonen 

message: I’ll just say what I said on my talk page: I don’t think there are any procedures allowing the committee to overturn a successful appeal of a discretionary sanction if there’s actually consensus to do so (I guess I could see it if the closing admin badly misread, but this was unanimous.)On the merits, this was an older sanction and there was consensus to lift it to give them another chance. I’m typically very anti-ROPE and think any argument that relies on it is usually a bad argument, but here we had a user who was generally constructive and demonstrated that the potential benefits outweighed the known risks. That’s my standard, which I think was met here. TonyBallioni (talk) 17:09, 22 June 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by TonyBallioni 

message: Surely the simplest thing is to let matters stand, and move for another ban should Mar4d resume disruptive editing in this area? If Mar4d is as deceptive as Shashank5988 says, surely they will be back at this board in short order, with past sanctions being taken into account. Guy (help!) 17:07, 22 June 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: note the word "if" in the above ;-) Guy (help!) 20:59, 22 June 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by JzG 

message: The original topic ban should be extended to Shashank5988 for this bad-faith request, which has no purpose other than to harass someone they perceive as an ideological opponent. What else could possibly be the point of this admin-shopping request? We have ARBIPA DS and WP:GS/IPAK general sanctions to stamp out exactly this sort of drama-mongering and battleground behaviour, which has plagued this highly contentious topic area for years and years; we should use the tools available to us here. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 00:28, 23 June 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by Ivanvector 

message: Arbcom could theoretically impose the same exact sanction as the one lifted at AE as a sua sponte action of the committee, but that is the only way, under the current procedures, that a lifted sanction by a consensus of AE admins can be reversed by the committee. --Guerillero | Parlez Moi 17:17, 26 June 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by Guerillero 

message: This is already heading the general way I agree with, so I just want to make a more specific aspect: I question whether ARBCOM have the right to overturn appeals made on the grounds of misapplied factual judgements, as opposed to incorrect cited policy or a poor close. Still, that aside, I would generally say that ARBCOM not only should lead most judgements to AE but a higher limit must be reached before they start overturning successful appeals than either overturning blocks or unsuccessful appeals. That's somewhat on a reading of the applicable appeal policy but also on a sense of balance. The arb comments seem to suggest that it's hardly a bizarre viewpoint. Nosebagbear (talk) 17:17, 2 July 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by Nosebagbear 

message: *I trust the consensus of the five very experienced AE admins who reviewed the appeal. Newyorkbrad (talk) 22:44, 22 June 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  India-Pakistan: Arbitrator views and discussion 

message: moved from the arbitrators discussion section. This comment is in reply to Primefac's comment in that section.  Dreamy Jazz talk to me | my contributions 14:01, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by Interstellarity 

message: Just chiming in as I saw NYB's comment pop up on my watchlist. I don't think a scope reduction is needed. The scope was increased because the disruption wasn't restricted to just the India-Pakistan dispute, and also general sanctions from the community (e.g. WP:GS/Caste) were added under this for the sake of convenience. To answer NYB's point about sanctions being too broad, please see the log at Wikipedia:Arbitration enforcement log#India-Pakistan 2 for 2020 or 2019 and you're likely to see only very narrow sanctions except for a few cases. I was one of those who complained when the scope was increased from just the dispute to what it is now, but I'm quite happy to say that I was wrong that time and the current scope of ARBIPA is actually beneficial to the 'pedia. I believe that most of us who admin this particular area keep the scope of sanctions to the level necessary and do not just apply a broad brush unless it is absolutely necessary. It would be good if a bot could notify those who admin this area so that you get more opinions on this. —SpacemanSpiff 13:23, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by SpacemanSpiff 

message: I urge arbs to look at the DS log instead of the 14 year old case when determining the scope for DS. As for broad topic bans, sometimes it is best to remove an editor from the entire area than to play whack-a-mole across topics --In actu (Guerillero) Parlez Moi 14:48, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by Guerillero 

message: Normally I'd agree with this, as well as perhaps slightly narrowing the constraints (or enabling either a narrower or the broader one to be used), I do think given we have an ongoing DS consideration, it should be limited to there. Even if it delays it by a month or two, best to handle it cohesively. Nosebagbear (talk) 16:02, 30 March 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by Nosebagbear 

message: Just wanted to note for the record that  are having an ongoing discussion about this specific DS authorization here. I also wanted to ping Chess to ensure  this. –MJL ‐Talk‐☖ 07:05, 31 March 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by MJL 

message: I only occasionally venture into those topic areas, but my impression has been that the disruption is not at all restricted to events of the last 25 years. The bloodbaths that take place over current events are the same sort of bloodbaths that occur over the Kashmir War since 1947, which are the same as the ones occurring over Mughal history, the same as the ones occurring over the events around the advent of Islam over a millennium ago. It's not the current relevance, it's the cultural significance that works people up. – Uanfala (talk) 13:00, 31 March 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by Uanfala 

message: I'd like to thank  for pinging me here.
The biggest issue with the sanctions as currently written is they apply to ALL articles relating to India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan to putatively address the India-Pakistan conflict. It's far too overbroad and it's evidence of a double standard. For example, despite the numerous conflicts and issues in the US or primarily based there, there is no authorization of DS for all US related topics broadly construed. Instead there's September 11 and post 1992 US politics because it would be considered overkill to put the US under discretionary sanctions broadly construed. Same for how with the Northern Ireland conflict sanctions are limited to only that conflict and the Arab-Israeli conflict has its sanctions limited to just that conflict. 
We need to narrow these sanctions significantly in where they are authorized, although not remove them entirely as they're still necessary for some areas. MJL over at DS review gave a good wording of what the sanctions are meant to apply to (political, geographical, ethnic, religious, sociological, and cultural disputes related to those countries) and that would definitely be a more preferable wording to broad sanctions over all India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan related articles. 
While currently there appears to be a norm (according to the discussions I've had at least) of only applying discretionary sanctions to conduct actually relating to the aforementioned disputes (let's call it PCREGS since we need more acronyms), I don't believe that's a good implementation of discretionary sanctions. First of all, we shouldn't have singular admins deciding by fiat what topics discretionary sanctions needs to be applied to. That's the job of ArbCom or alternatively the community (in cases of community authorized discretionary sanctions). Secondly, relying on unwritten norms to decide what topics are "actually" under sanctions is unfair, unjust, and goes against the fundamental principle that editors should be aware of what discretionary sanctions are before they are enforced against them. It can lead to problems when enforcing administrators have different ideas of what the unwritten norms are as well. 
If it turns out later that discretionary sanctions need to be broadened or there are areas not covered by the existing wording, there is nothing preventing an amendment request or asking the community for general sanctions on whatever topic needs it. 
For what it's worth though, I disagree with adding a fixed cutoff date for Indian and Pakistani politics. Many current conflicts stem from ancient historical disputes, for example the Babri Masjid where one of the primary justifications for its destruction was the belief that an Indian temple existed on that site before the mosque was built. There's still a lot of tension over things that happened thousands of years ago. While in the United States "old" disputes aren't really that controversial in India and Pakistan many still are. Chess (talk) (please use  on reply) 04:36, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Based on what I've seen at DS review I've noticed that some admins have raised the point that it can be difficult to craft narrower topic bans due to a lack of experience editing in the area. While I wish I was able to say this at DS review, I think it would be a good idea to standardize some sort of phrasing for narrower topic bans so rather than admins being left to individually craft narrow sanctions (done unevenly and sparingly; admins have often demonstrated an unwillingness or inability to do so) they could instead choose some kind of ARBCOM approved wording of the areas in question. Even if arbs are unwilling to reduce the area of the DS authorization admins would likely benefit from being able to apply prescoped tbans. Chess (talk) (please use  on reply) 19:31, 26 April 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by Chess 

message: I would oppose this request and recommend declining it. 
Just like all pages related to Eastern Europe and Balkans and all pages related to Horn of Africa are under Arbcom sanctions because their histories date back to thousands of years ago, there is nothing surprising about keeping India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan under the same sanctions. Shankargb (talk) 05:36, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
thread_title: Statement by [[User:Shankargb|Shankargb]]

message: Widespread, persistent, and exceptionally disruptive behavior of the sort that requires discretionary sanctions occurs on a far greater range of topics than content related to the last 25 years. Within the scope of current ARBIPA DS, these topics include, at a minimum; the Indo-Pakistani conflict (1947-present, arguably beginning earlier); religious violence (spanning many centuries, if not millennia); caste-related matters (likewise, spanning centuries, if not millennia); and content about the origins of humanity in South Asia (a very long time indeed). The scope of the current DS regime is certainly very broad, but unless ARBCOM wants to craft a number of different DS to replace the current regime, the current scope seems entirely appropriate to me. Vanamonde (Talk) 22:41, 9 April 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: , the final decision in this case authorizes discretionary sanctions for "all pages related to India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan", not just "Indian AND Pakistan". I find your statement quite confusing. Vanamonde (Talk) 03:25, 19 April 2021 (UTC)
replies: text:  We're in agreement that messing with these sanctions at the moment would be the wrong thing to do. My point was that day-to-day implementation does not focus on the Indo-Pakistani conflict. It's the most well-known sub-topic, but if you look at the enforcement log, content directly related to that conflict is at issue only in a minority of cases. Caste-related conflict and Indian politics unrelated to Pakistan both require a lot of sanctions, and there's other minor topics, too. I say this not to change your decision here, but because if we're considering revisions, ARBCOM needs to be aware of the entire spectrum of disputes these sanctions cover. For the record, I've already made this point at the consultation page. Vanamonde (Talk) 17:17, 19 April 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by Vanamonde 

message: Sure. I suggest 1947, since that's when the trouble kicked off. Guy (help! - typo?) 20:43, 26 April 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by JzG 

message: * , is there any particular date range that you want us to look at, or are you just throwing out an idea and seeing if there's interest?  Primefac (talk) 12:48, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  India-Pakistan: Arbitrator views and discussion 

message: The philosophical aspect (that the community should be able to pass remedies without ArbCom's help) is not really supported by the evidence. Community-authorised discretionary sanctions ("GS") are, per the GS logs, often ineffective. That's presumably part of the reason this Committee took over the COVID GS, and that has been more effective since it became a DS. The reasons why are speculative, the common idea that it's due to access to AE is not supported IMO --
The IPAK remedy is identical to the Israel-Palestine 30/500 restriction. Except, there are literally thousands of pages protected under the auspices of the Israel-Palestine ArbCom sanctions (regardless of actual or potential disruption, which for many of these protected pages is zero). In contrast, there are ~25 pages protected under WP:GS/IPAK. Unless we think Wikipedia only has 25 articles , it's pretty safe to say this is a largely unenforced GS, and in practice protections are more or less ECP protections under admin discretion (i.e. DS).
This amendment is probably not just clerical. If the Committee takes over this restriction, it will probably be enforced better. In part because more admins will be aware of its existence (how many know GS/IPAK even exists?). So on the topic of community control, this poses the question whether the community really wants it enforced better? I imagine an AN section to revoke this authorisation would fail, but at the same time I doubt there's community support to actually enforce the restriction the community passed, nor do I think proper enforcement would improve the project. The remedy just seems questionable. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 22:49, 21 September 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by ProcrastinatingReader 

message: I don't think this is a good idea. Community sanctions tend to be passed by a small group of editors and don't receive the level of scrutiny that a full arbcom case does (Disclosure: I was one of the few editors that opposed the ECP sanctions). In this particular case, the facts on the ground (so to speak!) are that very few pages are actually under ECP and the level of disruption is, at best, minimal (many pages see hardly any traffic at all). A wholesale ECP protection would not be in Wikipedia's best interests. --RegentsPark (comment) 14:03, 22 September 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by RegentsPark 

message: Arbitrators, I've tentatively closed the discussion at AN (perm link) that saw consensus to dissolve the IPAK GS regime, with the view that ARBIPA suffices. Please review my work. Thank you. El_C 15:36, 1 October 2021 (UTC)
thread_title: Statement by El_C

message: *I would prefer that the community do this instead of us. Is there anything preventing the community from modifying its restriction to mirror the new language? It seems a bit heavy-handed to exercise the authority of the committee to overrule consensus when there seems to be a much less intrusive way (go to WP:AN, start a thread, and get consensus to change it, which probably wouldn't take much effort at all). ArbCom's authority, and ability to overrule consensus, is justified by us focusing on disputes that the community is unable to resolve, which is less present here. (And this doesn't quite parallel the practice of superseding community-authorized DS ("GS") when it's not working, because when we authorize DS we bring enforcement over to AE.) Best, KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 00:04, 21 September 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  India-Pakistan: Arbitrator views and discussion 

message: I'm just continuing about why the Ram Mandir article as been classified under Afghanistan/Pakistan/India? I understand there is controversy about the situation of a mosque and mandir on the same site, similar to Temple Mount in Jerusalem. But why is this placed into a conflict between Pakistan and India? It's related to Indian Muslims and Indian Hindus. There's no particular reason why Pakistanis care more about this mosque than Arabs or Indonesians, they have a kinship over religious beliefs.
This idea that all Indian Muslims have some affiliation Pakistan, Persians and Arabs needs to be put to bed. The friendliness is almost purely over shared Islamic heritage that you can also find with Indonesians for example.
How does it cover Afghanistan and Pakistan in particular? It's controversial among a section of Muslims throughout the world, but especially India. It's no more controversial to Pakistanis and Afghanis, than it is to Arabs, Indonesians or Bangladeshis. The dispute is almost entirely within the realms of Indian politics. CollationoftheWilling (talk) 17:28, 22 January 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  The use of this topic to cover all Muslim related conflicts in India? 

message: Sri Lanka has a common cultural history with India, and a common political history with India including British rule in the nineteenth century and early twentieth century and resistance to British rule.  
====Disputes over Sri Lanka and the Sri Lankan Civil War are common====
I have just failed a dispute at DRN over an atrocity that was a prelude to the Sri Lankan Civil War:
*Wikipedia:Dispute_resolution_noticeboard#1977_anti-Tamil_pogrom
Declined Arbitration Cases
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=1159486635#Liberation_Tigers_of_Tamil_Eelam (10 June 2023)
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=1158663393#Sri_Lanka_Armed_Forces (5 June 2023)
Archived Disputes at WP:ANI
*Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive1151#User:Cossde_flouting_Wikipedia_policies 
*Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive1069#Sri_Lankan_Civil_War_Dispute_(again)
*Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive1113#The_Sri_Lanka_and_unsourced_WP:RGW
Archived Disputes at WP:DRN
*Wikipedia:Dispute_resolution_noticeboard/Archive_205#Sri_Lankan_Civil_War
*Wikipedia:Dispute_resolution_noticeboard/Archive_205#2019_Sri_Lanka_Easter_bombings
*Wikipedia:Dispute_resolution_noticeboard/Archive_215#Sri_Lanka_Armed_Forces
*Wikipedia:Dispute_resolution_noticeboard/Archive_147#Talk:Sri_Lanka_Matha#Tagore_claim_has_been_rebutted
*Wikipedia:Dispute_resolution_noticeboard/Archive_107#Northern_Province,_Sri_Lanka
*Wikipedia:Dispute_resolution_noticeboard/Archive_135#Talk:Tamils#Are_Tamils_a_stateless_nation_or_only_Sri_Lankan_Tamils?
*Wikipedia:Dispute_resolution_noticeboard/Archive_128#Talk:Sri_Lanka_Matha
====Explanation and Clarification====
I thank User:Oz346 for submitting an RFC to resolve the question of language in the article about the 1977 pogrom.  The RFC and this amendment request are independent of each other, to address a specific content issue and a general problem of disruptive editing about Sri Lanka, resulting in too many disputes.  The purpose of this amendment request is to identify Sri Lanka as a contentious topic, which will authorize administrators at Arbitration Enforcement to deal proactively with disruptive editing with sanctions such as topic-bans.  I have also initiated one RFC concerning the UN report on the Sri Lankan Civil War, and am about to initiate another RFC concerning the reported sexual abuse by Sri Lankan peacekeepers in Haiti.  The frequency of content disputes about Sri Lanka illustrates a need for a contentious topic designation.  I could have submitted a Request for Arbitration, but it seems less difficult to expand the area of the existing designation.  Robert McClenon (talk) 01:53, 19 March 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: I thank User:Pharaoh of the Wizards for mentioning WikiProject Sri Lanka Reconciliation.  I see that that project says:    I think that any conclusion that the project has been successful is premature.  I do not mean that the project has been a failure, but that declaring victory and going home was premature.  I think that the contentious topic designation can be and should be used concurrently with other efforts at reconciliation.  Any reconciliation project is voluntary.  The contentious topic procedure is binding.  The editors who do not participate in a reconciliation project are the editors who should be topic-banned.  The admins at Arbitration Enforcement can and should make a distinction between editors who work for reconciliation, and those who do not.  It will take longer for peacemaking editors to revive the reconciliation project than it will take for the arbitrators to expand the scope of a contentious topic by adding another South Asian country.  As User:Vanamonde93 points out, the colonial histories of Sri Lanka and of India were separate, but the modern histories of the two countries are entangled. Robert McClenon (talk) 21:22, 19 March 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by Robert McClenon 

message: I thank User:Oz346 for submitting an RFC to resolve the question of language in the article about the 1977 pogrom.  The RFC and this amendment request are independent of each other, to address a specific content issue and a general problem of disruptive editing about Sri Lanka, resulting in too many disputes.  The purpose of this amendment request is to identify Sri Lanka as a contentious topic, which will authorize administrators at Arbitration Enforcement to deal proactively with disruptive editing with sanctions such as topic-bans.  I have also initiated one RFC concerning the UN report on the Sri Lankan Civil War, and am about to initiate another RFC concerning the reported sexual abuse by Sri Lankan peacekeepers in Haiti.  The frequency of content disputes about Sri Lanka illustrates a need for a contentious topic designation.  I could have submitted a Request for Arbitration, but it seems less difficult to expand the area of the existing designation.  Robert McClenon (talk) 01:53, 19 March 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: I thank User:Pharaoh of the Wizards for mentioning WikiProject Sri Lanka Reconciliation.  I see that that project says:    I think that any conclusion that the project has been successful is premature.  I do not mean that the project has been a failure, but that declaring victory and going home was premature.  I think that the contentious topic designation can be and should be used concurrently with other efforts at reconciliation.  Any reconciliation project is voluntary.  The contentious topic procedure is binding.  The editors who do not participate in a reconciliation project are the editors who should be topic-banned.  The admins at Arbitration Enforcement can and should make a distinction between editors who work for reconciliation, and those who do not.  It will take longer for peacemaking editors to revive the reconciliation project than it will take for the arbitrators to expand the scope of a contentious topic by adding another South Asian country.  As User:Vanamonde93 points out, the colonial histories of Sri Lanka and of India were separate, but the modern histories of the two countries are entangled. Robert McClenon (talk) 21:22, 19 March 2024 (UTC)
thread_title: Explanation and Clarification

message: I thank Robert McClenon for attempting to reach a resolution in the DRN. This is not a decision I take lightly and hence I took some time to think it over and I feel I agree with Robert, Sri Lanka needs to be designated as a contentious topic and the on-going  disruptive editing about Sri Lanka needs to end. Cossde (talk) 14:38, 19 March 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by Cossde 

message: Due to the failure of this discussion:
Wikipedia:Dispute_resolution_noticeboard#1977_anti-Tamil_pogrom
I have opened up a RFC. I believe that RFC have a much higher chance of solving these disputes, due to the input of multiple voices, and will be probably be less time consuming for all involved. Oz346 (talk) 01:11, 19 March 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by Oz346 

message: The Sri Lankan Civil War directly involved India which initially supported the LTTE and later carried out a military intervention where Indian forces clashed with the LTTE resulting in the LTTE assassinating the Indian Prime Minister. The presence of the Indian forces within the country was also a major cause of the Marxist uprising in 1987 which happened alongside the Civil War. It is certainly related to India and Pakistan in the greater context.  - UtoD 17:20, 20 March 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by UtoD 

message: I thank Robert McClenon for trying to resolve disputes in this area and Oz346 for submitting a RFC to resolve a dispute. But having edited in this area for years.I do not see it at having raised at this point to the level of the need for Contentious_topic_designation.Wikipedia:WikiProject Sri Lanka Reconciliation has taken care of disputes in this area for years and think we can revive it.Pharaoh of the Wizards (talk) 09:20, 19 March 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by Pharaoh of the Wizards 

message: I have not read the specific disputes linked above, but I want to note that as a consequence of Indian intervention in the Sri Lankan Civil War, and the subsequent Assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, a substantial portion of this conflict (though by no means the entirety) is already covered by the ARBIPA CT designation. Vanamonde93 (talk) 19:03, 19 March 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by Vanamonde 

message: There appears to be sufficient evidence of Sri Lanka being a (lowercase) contentious topic, as evidenced by Robert, that should warrant it officially becoming a Contentious Topic; whether that's as part of an existing India-Pakistan coverage or it's own independent CT, is rather immaterial given that the India/Pakistan CT doesn't have any additional topic-wide restrictions beyond the standard ones. 21:28, 19 March 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by Swatjester 

message: As stated by , a substantial portion of this topic area overlaps with WP:ARBIPA already. I'd also like to note that parts of it are also covered by WP:GS/CASTE, which includes political parties and other social groups in Sri Lanka. It might be worth a review to see if these topic areas can be rolled into one umbrella case, similar to WP:GENSEX. If Sri Lanka is designated as a separate Contentious Topic, we could have articles covered under the new CTOP plus WP:ARBIPA, WP:GS/CASTE and WP:BLPSE at the same time. That may create more confusion than it would to just merge them. The WordsmithTalk to me 22:00, 19 March 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by The Wordsmith (2) 

message: I would recommend against inclusion of Sri Lanka to ARBIPA. Sri Lanka is not as controversial compared to Pakistan, Afghanistan and India. Whenever disruption is happening in Sri Lanka-related topics, we can easily deal with them under our general guidelines like WP:DE. Abhishek0831996 (talk) 17:06, 20 March 2024 (UTC)
thread_title: Statement by Abhishek0831996

message: This might be resolvable with a time-period inclusion, along the lines of "modern American politics": Include Sri Lanka under that CTOP regime (or create a new similar one for it), but only for the period of British rule to the post-colonial present. This would avoid making thing about Sri Lanka/Ceylon be CTOP-covered.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:59, 1 April 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by SMcCandlish 

message: *While there is geographical proximity to India, and obviously the shared British Colonial rule, the issues with Sri Lanka strike me as distinct from the issues for India/Pakistan. As a shortcut to this Sri Lanka appears 4 times in our India article, while Pakistan appears 29 times. So I'm initially inclined to say it would not fall under that umbrella and would need its own evidence to justify the creation of it as a contentious topic. Barkeep49 (talk) 15:07, 19 March 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  India-Pakistan: Arbitrator views and discussion