Wikipedia talk:Requests for arbitration/Waldorf education

message: ::Copied from the original request and placed on this talk page
: Three of the four articles I listed above have been protected in the last month due to edit warring and/or are under protection currently. Thatcher131 16:43, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thatcher131, one of the articles mentioned in the arbitration "Rudolf Steiner's views on race and ethnicity" has been deleted.  It is now impossible to collect diff's from that article.  I have asked that it be made available in locked form during the arbitration so that we can collect diff's.  I hope I haven't overstepped any boundaries here... maybe it should have been your call.  Pete K 14:04, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I can do that if and when the case is opened. Thatcher131 14:23, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: OK, but won't that be too late for those of us who are preparing for the case?  We've been advised to start collecting diffs and evidence.  I'm just trying to be prepared.  Thanks! Pete K 14:52, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Generally there is a minimum 7 day grace period after the case opens before the arbitrators start considering the evidence.  In the event that the case never opens, I'd rather not undelete it early. Thatcher131 15:19, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: OK, thanks - I thought somebody said 24 hours.  I was thinking this whole thing could be done by the Thanksgiving, but it looks like we're shooting for Christmas. Pete K 16:04, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

text: Are you the one to address the question I posted above?: "HGilbert's statement is now 950 words long and growing. Both Diana W and myself have indicated that we would have provided more in the way of a statement if we weren't trying to be brief and stay within the guidelines (I know my statement went over the 500 word limit too). Are we suspending these guidelines now (can I expand my statement too) or should Mr. Gilbert be asked to trim his statement? There are allegations made here that are out of order and that need to be addressed. Thanks! Pete K 04:50, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

text: Generally, arbitration cases look at editors' behavior.  Be prepared to show evidence of bad behavior, such as revert warring, misrepresenting sources, article ownership, etc. Conflict of interest would fall into this category if it led to inappropriate editing.  The arbitrators will likely consider the actions of editors on both sides of the dispute. Thatcher131 02:30, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: OK thanks.  Pete K 05:32, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Clerk notes 

message: I for one feel that the evidence phase has pretty much reached the limit of its usefulness now. I'm left with the question how this process can go forward, and now await the arbitrators' deliberations. Some general impressions I am left with:
*It is clear that these articles need to be extremely solidly grounded to avoid any appearance of bias on either side. One of the problems hitherto has been a lack of citations to support them. Though much of the content's factuality is not in question, rather its appropriateness to the articles, I see this as an important step towards improving their professionality.
*The edit warring is fruitless; somehow conversations that go somewhere have to take their place. We have tried agreements in the past. One example was a painfully arrived at agreement that all sites containing original research should be avoided as links. (Questions then arose: what about objective material, such as a trial transcript, that resides on such a site. We took a conservative position: avoid any appearance of questionable linkage, and this seemed to function.) Such agreements, including the Wikipedia guidelines themselves, when held to, have had a degree of success. When not held to, there have been problems. Perhaps a set of agreements could be laid down with a zero-tolerance policy: if the agreements are violated, or personal attacks or incivil comments are made, the violating editor is blocked from the whole group of articles for an extended period of time. 
*I hope that some way forward is found that allows everyone's, and I mean everyone's, creative energies to find more productive channels. Hgilbert 00:19, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  A way forward 

message: Fred Bauder has wiped out my user and discussion page. I don't believe I am/was in violation of any Wikipedia rule or ArbCom ruling. Can the ArbCom please explain this action or if I am correct in my view, give me permission to restore my pages. There is currently discussion on my talk page about this issue.  Thanks! --Pete K 03:24, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you JP.  After pages and pages and months and months of Arbitration and Arbitration review, I think the ArbCom had abundant opportunity to establish my boundaries.  They need not be interpreted again - I'm excluded from editing Waldorf and related articles and talk pages.  No mention of my user page and wouldn't it be absurd if the ArbCom restricted me from editing my user page.  If they intended to put THAT kind of restriction on me, they would have said so - or just banned me completely from Wikipedia.  They didn't.  The excluded me from editing certain articles.  Their ruling was vague as to exactly which articles leaving it completely up to me as to whether I want to venture into articles about Eurythmy or Biodynamics or Associative Economics and take my chances on being banned by someone's interpretation of whether those articles are far-enough removed from the topics I was banned from.  What is clear, however, is that the ruling was related to articles and their talk pages - NOT my user page or anyone else's user page.  This unilateral, and completely unprovoked action by Fred - to completely wipe out my user pages should be reviewed carefully.  --Pete K 05:22, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Nonetheless, I'm free to discuss this here - so far... Pete K 13:50, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Please Help (User:Pete K)

message: The original arbitration indicated that "Information may be included in articles if they can be verified by reference to reliable sources. As applied to this matter, except with respect to information which is not controversial, material published in Anthroposophy related publications, especially by persons deeply involved in the movement such as teachers or theoreticians, are considered self published and thus not reliable sources."
There are frequently sources proposed that are from peer reviewed presses or journals, but whose authors have a strong or weak connection to Waldorf education or anthroposophy. Some editors of this article argue that these sources are to be considered reliable due to the peer-reviewed publishing process. Other editors argue that any connection of an author to Waldorf/anthroposophy makes all publications by that author unreliable sources for an article on Waldorf education, independently of how they were published. 
It seems to me that the latter stance would be in flagrant violation of NPOV. My understanding is that any publication that would satisfy RS (e.g. peer reviewed journals and academic presses) would be a RS for this article, independently of the author's institutional affiliation or world-view. In addition, though anthroposophic presses and journals would be completely excluded as sources for any controversial or disputed material, they should be available as sources about factual information regarding their own institution (e.g. numbers of schools, content of the curriculum, etc.), in line with ABOUTSELF. 
A currently disputed source, as a concrete example, is: 
* Carlo Willmann, Waldorfpädogogik, Kölner Veröffentlichungen zur Religionsgeschichte, v. 27. Böhlau Verlag, . The press is a highly regarded academic press, the book volume 27 of a highly regarded series on the history of religion. The author is a Catholic theologian who has been connected with Waldorf schools in various ways.
====NPOV====
If anyone glances at the article as it now stands, I suspect that they will find that the article, though surely imperfect in many ways, is quite neutral in tone. Discussions I have been involved in recently have been over such issues as
* Whether to implement the recommendations for wording and sources made by an outside editor at Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard#Other_sources (I have wanted to implement these, Alexbrn has not). 
* Whether the following quote, introduced by me, is NPOV: "A UK Department for Education and Skills report noted significant differences in curriculum and pedagogical approach between Waldorf/Steiner and mainstream schools and suggested that each type of school could learn from the other type's strengths: in particular, that state schools could benefit from Waldorf education's early introduction and approach to modern foreign languages; combination of block (class) and subject teaching for younger children; development of speaking and listening through an emphasis on oral work; good pacing of lessons through an emphasis on rhythm; emphasis on child development guiding the curriculum and examinations; approach to art and creativity; attention given to teachers’ reflective activity and heightened awareness (in collective child study for example); and collegial structure of leadership and management, including collegial study. Aspects of mainstream practice which could inform good practice in Waldorf schools included: management skills and ways of improving organizational and administrative efficiency; classroom management; work with secondary-school age children; and assessment and record keeping."
* Whether to include the many studies done of Waldorf education (Alexbrn removed every one of these to a subarticle, I believe they are important here and have tried to bring these back). 
Frankly, I don't see how my role in any of these can be seen as POV-pushing or evidence of COI. hgilbert (talk) 03:46, 25 January 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by hgilbert 

message: If anyone glances at the article as it now stands, I suspect that they will find that the article, though surely imperfect in many ways, is quite neutral in tone. Discussions I have been involved in recently have been over such issues as
* Whether to implement the recommendations for wording and sources made by an outside editor at Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard#Other_sources (I have wanted to implement these, Alexbrn has not). 
* Whether the following quote, introduced by me, is NPOV: "A UK Department for Education and Skills report noted significant differences in curriculum and pedagogical approach between Waldorf/Steiner and mainstream schools and suggested that each type of school could learn from the other type's strengths: in particular, that state schools could benefit from Waldorf education's early introduction and approach to modern foreign languages; combination of block (class) and subject teaching for younger children; development of speaking and listening through an emphasis on oral work; good pacing of lessons through an emphasis on rhythm; emphasis on child development guiding the curriculum and examinations; approach to art and creativity; attention given to teachers’ reflective activity and heightened awareness (in collective child study for example); and collegial structure of leadership and management, including collegial study. Aspects of mainstream practice which could inform good practice in Waldorf schools included: management skills and ways of improving organizational and administrative efficiency; classroom management; work with secondary-school age children; and assessment and record keeping."
* Whether to include the many studies done of Waldorf education (Alexbrn removed every one of these to a subarticle, I believe they are important here and have tried to bring these back). 
Frankly, I don't see how my role in any of these can be seen as POV-pushing or evidence of COI. hgilbert (talk) 03:46, 25 January 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: NPOV

message: I have been editing the Waldorf education article for several weeks now, and I am personally not convinced the issue at hand is contested for most editors. As I have written on the talk page there, I use the following rough rules of thumb for evaluating sources in the light of the Arbcom ruling:
:* Peer-reviewed nearly always okay; University Presses nearly always okay; mainstream news media nearly always okay for reportage.
:* Of the remainder:
:* Authored by somebody "involved in Waldorf", or from an Anthroposophical source: generally bad.
:* Dissertations, general books, conference papers, research reports etc.: assess on the basis of whether there is evidence of editorial oversight, whether they are cited by good RS publications, and how "heavy" the claim they are making is.
:* Normal WP caution to apply to web sites, self-published, primary, etc.
I don't think any editor is contending that peer-reviewed sources by Waldorf-involved people should be automatically out-of-bounds – and indeed we do include such sources: e.g. Robert A. McDermott is a leading anthroposophist and Waldorf advocate yet his work is frequently cited by us when it appears in peer-reviewed journal articles.
Any difficulty has arisen for statements which are maybe controversial and/or maybe written by a Waldorf-involved-author and/or from a source which may be of high quality. This is the case for the Willmann source that hgilbert mentioned. Willmann is senior academic at a university teaching Waldorf education but appears to be published in a reasonable (but not peer-reviewed) book. Because this case is unclear, I tagged this source  rather than remove it, and was expecting some Talk page discussion.
In such cases as these, my view is that if the statement being sourced is truly uncontroversial, and notable enough for WP, then a neutral non-Waldorf source will exist for it that can be used. This was indeed the case for Willmann, where hgilbert graciously changed the source to a better one: a peer-reviewed journal article by Heiner Ullrich. The problem was solved, and solved well.
I would be reassured if the committee could re-affirm the original ruling and its intepretation as evidenced by the current Waldorf education article. Furthermore, it would be good to know if the current selection of sources used there meets its approval in the light of its request that editors "remove all original research and other unverifiable information, including all controversial information sourced in Anthroposophy related publications" – something I have been striving to do. Alexbrn talk|contribs|COI 14:37, 21 January 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by Alexbrn 

message: I agree with several comments here that in these articles sources can generally be dealt with using the current WP:RS guidelines.  I think we're generally all on the same page regarding treating sources closely related to WE as WP:SELFPUB. 
However, there's a few cases where I think the original ruling is still important and could use some clarification.  In particular, WP:SCHOLARSHIP states in part that materials published "well-regarded academic presses" are reliable sources, but this is not a very well defined category, and longer works can end up being used to cite blips of information that are only peripherally related to the thrust of the work.  Similarly, Ph.D. dissertations are WP:RS under certain conditions, but there is some confusion about when the condition "they have entered mainstream academic discourse" is satisfied as regarding WE publications.  (For example, a dissertation from a distance-learning "university" is currently being used to source this, and as far as I know it has not been cited except in WE related literature).
I also have some lingering concerns about cherry-picking of sources in many of the articles related to Steiner's work, but this was not addressed in the original arbitration, and I don't know any way it can be addressed except by the very dedicated on a case-by-case basis.  a13ean (talk) 00:06, 22 January 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: I would expand my original comment to note that I believe civil POV-pushing is still a problem at WE and related pages.  a13ean (talk) 17:52, 24 January 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by a13ean 

message: Though few of us who are currently active remember the Waldorf case, it was serious enough to be handled by Arbcom twice before, once in 2006 at Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Waldorf education and again in 2007 at Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Waldorf education/Review. An editor named in the original case, User:Pete K has been continuing to sock very recently, as documented in WP:Sockpuppet investigations/Pete K.  At least one editor named in the case (hgilbert) is currently active and is vigorously presenting his views in the article and on the talk page. Due to the possibility of civil POV pushing and COI editing, it would be helpful to have at least  a remnant of the original remedies available for use. At present, article probation remains on the books, but in a special form that requires Committee review of any violations. It is not enforceable by regular admins.  I suggest that if any remedies are kept, they should be in the form of discretionary sanctions. If Arbcom agrees that the original concerns that led to the filing of the case haven't completely gone away, I hope they would consider vacating the probation and authorizing discretionary sanctions. It is plausible that WP:RS/N could handle some of the issues that only the Committee could deal with in 2007, but even the RSN board sometimes can't reach a consensus and its verdict may or may not be accepted by the people who ought to be listening. There should be some way that admins can take action on this problem if it  recurs again without having to spin up an entire new consensus at ANI. Also, complete abolition of the remedies would mean that no review of any future problems would be possible at WP:AE. Everything requiring any joint action by admins would have to go through ANI.  EdJohnston (talk) 01:04, 22 January 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually, there is one admin-enforceable sanction in the Remedies of the original case: there is a link to the standard definition of article probation. This allows admins to ban someone from the probationary article if necessary. If the Committee wants to modernize this case in the simplest way possible, and get themselves out of the business of approving sources, they might consider passing a motion that shortens the Remedies to include only its first sentence, and removes the rest. The first sentence is:  If that change were made, editors would no longer be obliged to remove "all controversial information sourced in Anthroposophy related publications" as the Remedy currently provides. Instead they would be expected to follow normal consensus processes when finding sources for these articles (including WP:RS/N if needed), and if they would not do so, they could be restricted from those articles by any admin. EdJohnston (talk) 03:46, 23 January 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by EdJohnston 

message: I do not have time for an extensive comment, but I have observed that biased pro-Steiner sources have crept back into the article since the 2006 Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Waldorf education, an ArbCom final decision. Hgilbert especially seems to push for pro-Steiner sources, in violation of the ArbCom ruling, and he works against negative material. Binksternet (talk) 13:11, 27 January 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: Statement by Binksternet

message: *Since nobody has commented on this request so far, in order not to give the impression that we are ignoring you, I'll start by saying that I'm awaiting further statements before expressing my opinion (also, I need to familiarise myself with the original case, which was quite before my time).   Salvio  Let's talk about it! 13:46, 21 January 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: As regards Alexbrn's question regarding this line in the remedy: "Editors of these articles are expected to remove all original research and other unverifiable information, including all controversial information sourced in Anthroposophy related publications." I think Alexbrn's own comment, "if the statement being sourced is truly uncontroversial, and notable enough for WP, then a neutral non-Waldorf source will exist for it that can be used" matches that in WP:SELFPUBLISH which says: "if the information in question is really worth reporting, someone else will probably have done so". As for the actual sources used in the Waldorf education article - that is a matter for contributors to discuss, not for ArbCom. SilkTork ✔Tea time 22:41, 21 January 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Agree with EdJohnston that the main points are made in the first sentence of the remedy. And it does seem that Wikipedia:Discretionary sanctions appears to do the same as Wikipedia:Article probation. Though wording does differ in some places, it appears as though the intent and effect is the same. Is it worth us looking at Article probation, and which articles are affected by that remedy, and perhaps updating that remedy to be replaced in its entirety with Discretionary sanctions? SilkTork ✔Tea time 18:16, 23 January 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: I note that last year Prem Rawat was updated from probation to Discretionary sanctions. SilkTork ✔Tea time 18:20, 23 January 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Arbitrator views and discussion 

message: Back in March 2007, I placed a template on Talk:Waldorf education as part of the requirement when an editor was banned from contributing on articles. The wording at the time allowed Pete K to contribute to the talk page, until a later motion (Remedy 1.1) also limited Pete K's ability to edit the talk page.
Nonetheless, it is unfortunately clear that Pete K may have missed the additional restriction, and recently has taken to both Talk:Waldorf education as well as my talk page to rant about both his inability to edit the talk page as well as the template message on top of the Waldorf education talk page. I believe the best solution would be to modify Remedy 1 and 1.1 of the Review to use the current TBAN wording; this way, the templates could in theory be removed since there will be a centralized place to log the edit restrictions.
As a side note, back in 2012  asked me whether the templates could be removed; I agreed that it could be commented out; however, it was restored before the end of the year by . - Penwhale | dance in the air and follow his steps 04:46, 12 September 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by Penwhale 

message: Sounds fine to me.  I asked if the template could be removed because at the time Pete K had not edited for several years, although he resumed editing shortly thereafter using an IP.  a13ean (talk) 17:03, 12 September 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement by a13ean 

message: : This section is for administrative notes by the clerks (including clerk recusals).
:* Recuse as initiator (and due to certain reasons at my talk page). - Penwhale | dance in the air and follow his steps 04:46, 12 September 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Clerk notes 

message: :Original discussion
Enacted - GeneralNotability (talk) 23:27, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Waldorf education (February 2022) 

message: ;Support
#No sanctions since 2014 and no other signs of recent disruption. Barkeep49 (talk) 16:46, 27 January 2022 (UTC)
thread_title: Waldorf education Arbitrator views and discussion

message: *Aw, my favourite example of the Weird DS Topic. I read the case for this one a while back; it seemed more circumscribed than most things we'd put under DS, and the parties involved seem to have left the topic. Vaticidalprophet 00:09, 28 January 2022 (UTC)
thread_title: Waldorf education Community discussion