Wikipedia talk:Ombudsmen

message: *The issue of clique behavior is increasingly widespread on Wikipedia and may be demonstrated in the form of frequent disputed page protections. In my own experience I encountered a clique operating at an article, during which approximately 4-5 administrators who shared the same view on content issues there and who also frequently tag team with each other on other disputes were active participants in a sustained revert war. Moments after a version of the article that was favored by this group got reverted to, another administrator who is active among them (who had also commented extensively in support of their position on a related dispute at another similar article & briefly to the same effect on that article) came in and page protected it. Multiple non admin editors, myself included, objected to this but nevertheless worked through the talk page to produce a compromise text. When a compromise version began to emerge the non-admin editors started raising the issue of when the page would be unprotected. What followed was a lengthy period of delay tactics by the admin editors (one of them even made the unreasonable demand that I shouldn't be editing the article period, all to let her version stand uncontested), which were essentially little more than excuses to keep the page protection up long after any justifiable need existed. Curiously, even though some 4-5 different admins with unprotect power were watching and participating on this page and thus were well aware that the content dispute had been resolved by a compromise text (not to mention being aware of the posts seeking unprotection on the talk page), none would even entertain the idea. They were all content with preserving what they apparently deemed to be the "right" version of the pre-compromise revert war.  Eventually I posted a request for unprotection to get a neutral non-clique admin's input, and within a day or so the article was unprotected and the compromise adopted.
*In another case I encountered an administrator clique that tag teamed a WP:POINT allegation on my user page aimed at sinking a new Wikipedia guideline proposal that I was advocating. The posting of this allegation was threatened openly on the proposal talk page by one of the admins, and a few days later he posted it to my user page. Moments later and in direct coordination with him, another allied admin made two separate sarcastically worded attacks on the proposal to its Village Pump listing that linked to the coordinated WP:POINT allegation the other had posted on my user page. During the incident these same two admins engaged in revert warring and imposed a page protection on my user page under the guise that they were "fighting a vandal," who had edited it. In reality it was aimed at preserving the WP:POINT allegation and its coordinated Village Pump listings for the purpose of sinking the proposal I supported. Much like the first case, this incident also involved two admins who frequently tag team around Wikipedia in support of each other. I have also subsequently had to file an arbitration case against these two admins for this incident.
*I've also seen and experienced cases where Administrator cliques vote down or attempt to bury user conduct RfC's when filed against one of their own. In a recent case I filed an RfC against an administrator for behavior that included clear policy violations (such as using inoccuous edit summaries to describe major content changes) and clearly abusive POV pushing (among other things he was inserting irrelevant quotes from David Duke to discredit and smear article subjects). The RfC drew several non-admin editors who immediately saw this as a problem and also contributed at great lengths to repair and improve the article where this behavior had occurred. Though RfC's are always open to different interpretations, in the very least the evidence that this admin had misbehaved was incontrovertable for the major examples (such as the David Duke quotes). Shortly thereafter all his admin clique buddies showed up and tried to sink the RfC by "voting" against it en masse (even though "voting" is not the purpose of RfC's to begin with). A couple of them also then lingered on the RfC's talk page for the purpose of stirring up disputes while contributing virtually nothing toward a solution at the article itself.
Anyway, these are just a couple examples that demonstrate a need for some sort of policy of this type. In the interest of full disclosure it should also be noted that certain persons presently expressing doubts that incidents of this type exist on wikipedia are the admins themselves who were the problems in the cases described above, and very likely in many others. Not all admins are bad, and in fact there are many good ones. But if I were an admin who abused Wikipedia policies or engaged in coordinated revert warring and bullying of non-admin editors with other admins i'd probably stand to lose by some sort of check being placed over my behavior through a policy such as this proposal. With that in mind it should be little doubt why certain admins will be disinclined to admit that this proposal is warranted. Rangerdude 00:21, 30 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Need exists