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Possible alternatives to a sockpuppet finding

Perhaps it is time to provide the committee with some alternative considerations that they might find more acceptable. One possibility would be to article-ban Mantanmoreland and SamiHarris from the articles named in the decision. Another would be to ban those two accounts from editing under any other account name, either anywhere on Misplaced Pages, or in those specific articles. A third possibility would be to hold both of those accounts to 0-revert status on those articles and any related articles.

While it still leaves a bit of a bad taste in the mouth, any of these solutions would likely be more palatable to the community than the current proposal, which leaves open the door for continued drama. Crossposted to a similar discussion on Wikback Risker (talk) 05:55, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

The problem is, if they _are_ the same person, your proposal amounts to "you may only have the one sockpuppet". Which you can probably see the problem with. —Random832 06:28, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

I for one would be open to hearing more evidence about the edits made by these accounts to the relevant articles with respect to content policy, of which there has been essentially none presented so far (save for a brief section by Relata Refero). --bainer (talk) 07:27, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

If someone had mentioned at the time that more was required, I would have provided more. Gary Weiss history is a treasure trove; and I didn't even look beyond a few months for examples. I was under the impression that this ArbCom was about sockpuppetry, so I merely demonstrated that if sockpuppetry had occurred, it was disruptive. I didn't know at the time that ArbCom would cop out again, of course. (Though if I'd known I wouldn't even have bothered to the extent I did.) Relata refero (talk) 08:26, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Hmm. Risker just suggested that we misunderstand how the Committee has framed this case. I guess that Risker's right.

I suspect that some editors would be willing to work on such evidence if you're willing to accept it. This is precisely why I thought you should have posted findings long ago; it's not at all clear what kind of evidence you would find useful. Cool Hand Luke 07:34, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Bainer, a workshop proposal was presented here based on Relata refero's and my evidence sections. I also addressed the issue in more detail here. At least on Gary Weiss, I think a couple examples of what has kept other editors from improving the article can be seen here and here. I'd note this may not be worse than WordBomb’s early editing, but it doesn’t seem much better either. Mackan79 (talk) 20:53, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

The Samiharris diffs there need to be viewed in the context of the original discussion, archived here , after which was this.. These edits were in keeping with talk page concensus, and were certainly not tendentious or disruptive.--Mantanmoreland (talk) 21:09, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

The context of that original discussion is indeed important. Cla68 argued that a New York Times article on Weiss was valid per WP:RS; Sami responded aggressively with a familiar speech about "Bagley memes," saying "we are not going to link to Bagley's smears in any way, shape or form," even if it's the New York Times, and accusing Cla68 (and me, and a few other editors) of being fixated on advancing the "agenda of Judd Bagley"; Jimbo eventually stepped in and said something ominous about "shooting on sight"; Cla68 was blocked and I was threatened – all for holding steadfast that the New York Times was a reliable source. This took place shortly after the banning of Piperdown as a Wordbomb sock, a determination made on no other evidence than that he had edited articles of interest to Mantan and Sami and showed the temerity to disagree with them. (I asked one admin involved in the ban, "would it be fair to say that Misplaced Pages's current working definition of a WordBomb sockpuppet is anyone whose edits focus (either wholly or in part) on naked-short-selling-related articles, and who opposes User:Mantanmoreland and User:Samiharris?" to which he responded, "I would say so.") In the link provided above by Mackan, Sami pointedly warns Cla68 that he was already blocked once for suggesting the New York Times as a reliable source, suggesting the perils of revisiting the topic.

So yes, a certain tense calm had descended upon the article by that time, an atmosphere of fear which Mantan refers to here as "consensus." That "consensus" – and in my view it does considerable violence to the English language to call it that – was arrived at through a fallacy known as argumentum ad baculum, a problem indeed at the heart of this whole matter for the last two years.--G-Dett (talk) 22:28, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Question to FT2

The statement "In this case a more cautious and conservative standard was needed, due to confounding issues discussed internally by the Committee." has two possible meanings. Did you mean this:

• "the confounding issues that everyone is familiar with create a necessity for a more cautious and conservative standard", or did you mean

or this?

• "there are confounding issues that are not known to those outside the committee, which reate a necessity for a more cautious and conservative standard"

The former interpretation has been disputed, so if this is what you meant, a little more justification should be provided. The assumption that the latter was meant (the statement about it having been internally discussed, and the fact that the former seems ridiculous on its face, lend themselves to this conclusion) has led to a lot of unhelpful speculation, and if this is the case you should tell everyone as much as you can about what issues exist. —Random832 08:03, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

If this ArbCom whitewash makes the scales fall from your eyes, may I suggest how to get around it? – Patrick M. Byrne

Joseph Kennedy said, "Don't get mad, get even." No reason to get mad about this whitewash. For me, it was pretty much entirely expected. However, instead of banging your head on what the Jesuits called "impenetrable ignorance," may I suggest an alternate course of action? This not only bypasses the whitewash, it goes to the heart of their purpose in the whitewash.

http://en.wikipedia.org/User:PatrickByrne/Whitewash_essay

Respect, Patrick PatrickByrne (talk) 04:40, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

This really isn't an extraordinary case. Since the first arbitration case I attended, there has always been at least one faction, and often two or three, in any case, that believed its case so fanatically that it would brook no dissent. The arbitration committee was wrong, the evidence was being skewed, or ignored. Evil was being done without recourse. If only we would listen!

Editors have gone off into the wilderness of a twelve month ban with dire warnings that Misplaced Pages was being manipulated by evil forces that we in our naive and idealistic way were powerless to comprehend and against which we were defenseless. Misplaced Pages, we were warned, was doomed. Now if you've any idea what has happened in the three years or so since then, you'll know what I think of such warnings. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 04:54, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, Jeremiads are routine, but this case has at least one distinguishing feature: it inspired an admin to revert about 10 times against everyone, getting himself blocked. I hope no one tries that again on PatrickByrne's new subpage. Cool Hand Luke 05:00, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

"if you've any idea what has happened in the three years or so since then.." yeah, Misplaced Pages's got a lot more political crap. IF you ever spent some time in the real conflict areas - those that correspond to intense RW disputes - you'd know how ridiculous you sound. Relata refero (talk) 12:52, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

I probably do sound ridiculous to someone who gauges the quality of Misplaced Pages by its most contentious and abuse-prone articles. The general quality of the articles has improved immeasurably in my experience of Misplaced Pages, and its popularity as a reference work has gone through the roof. Problem areas remain, and there will always be problem areas, given our open editing model. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 13:51, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Interesting information, PatrickByrne. The financial information largely corresponds with what I was told by some real world stock specialists of my acquaintance. Of course, until this RFAR is complete and the final decision is rendered, Jimbo's "shoot on sight" instructions may well remain operative, so like many others I am hardly inclined to edit the subject articles at this time. (In fairness, even with the various reading lists, I do not feel conversant enough with the subject to do it justice.) If nothing more comes of this ArbCom case than that the subject articles are returned to the conservancy of the community as a whole, the encyclopedia will still be further ahead than it was three weeks ago. Risker (talk) 05:31, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

I think that Patrick's piece overestimates his own importance. For me, the problems in ArbCom are two-fold: (1) the judgement of some ArbCom members is so far off that they should not hold their positions; and (2) the rest of ArbCom seems to believe that consensus and collegiality are better for WP than is transparency and allowing the community to evaluate the problems and act. In the short term, they are correct - questions over the judgement of ArbCom members will be very disruptive - but the longer term consequences of not acting will (I think) be worse. The institution of ArbCom itself is being damaged by the push for least common denominator consensus. This single case is not a great revelation of a massive conspiracy - it is just a symptom of a system under strain from internal pressure, and for which I can see no solution that will restore confidence and address the problems without transparency and some change in personnel. Jay*Jay (talk) 06:10, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Byrne's essay doesn't seem to me to saying that there is a "massive conspiracy," nor that Misplaced Pages has fallen into the hands of "evil forces." Such melodramatic interpretations seem almost like willful misreadings of what Byrne actually wrote. BCST2001 (talk) 06:32, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Maybe we did read different essays at that.

• "Sadly, as you have seen through this evidence page, throughout this evolution an enormous amount of energy has been expended spinning this story by certain Wikipedians and their protectors, culminating in this whitewash by ArbCom"
• "As many others here have noted, Mantanmoreland made sure that within Misplaced Pages every possible misrepresentation of my position was cited, from blogs and the very journalists whom I had accused of being part of the problem, yet any news stories that accurately portrayed my position (let alone said something positive about me) found themselves dismissed on the flimsiest of excuses. Thus, did a self-reinforcing Kafkaesquilibrium come into existence."
• "I am a guy who is trying to use his position to expose a financial crime that may be worse than any we have seen in our lifetimes"
• "an obvious whitewash by an agenda-ridden ArbCom."

Now I don't know anything about stocks and shares, but I do know when a fantastic amount of handwaving is going on, and I do know when someone is claiming that two editors (or one, if the sock claims are to be believed) have secured the connivance and complicity of the arbitration committee and a substantial number of administrators and other editors in order to effect some terrible injustice involving the Russian mafia and other distasteful types. Ten out of ten for ambition, but really it's the same old jeremiad we've seen on arbcom month in, month out for years. At least we've been spared, so far, comparisons to Minister President Vidkun Quisling. But I don't want to put ideas into Mr Byrne's head. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 07:39, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Respectfully, your posts in this arbitration have looked to me like a fair amount of handwaving, while openly acknowledging a lack of familiarity with the discussions. Several article have been kept in a very poor state; this has been shown to the extent it isn't obvious, and has happened by a couple of aggressive accounts who have convinced various authority figures to take their side. I think we look better the less we look for ways to ridicule outside commenters, and the more we read for content, particularly if the idea is being pursued that ArbCom's hand is forced by a desire not to take sides. Mackan79 (talk) 08:15, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

We're faced in any arbitration with a number of parties who know they are right; all I know is that I don't know who is right and who is wrong. If I appear to be waving my hands it's because I am--it's a case thin on evidence but thick with accusations. You're in the same boat, so are all the people waving their statistics around. We have our suspicions but we don't know.

But obviously Misplaced Pages doesn't want to get involved in this fellow's fight, which for all I know is very good and will improve life for all of us. We don't want to get involved on anybody's side. This applies to the whole of Misplaced Pages, not just to the arbitration committee. We don't want to take sides, we just want to produce the best 💕 we can.

The good news (and the reason all this socking stuff is just a sideshow) is that we can easily get the article back on track, and the committee has already formulated a methodology for doing it. Simply ban use of proxies on the articles covered by the dispute. Sorry, there's a lot less drama in that, because it doesn't require us to make a rather controversial sock puppetry determination. But I'll take parsimony over drama any day. Let's leave Mr Byrne to get on with his battles. We've got an encyclopedia to write.

What, you say, the arbcom is being manipulated? Not a bit of it. If as I suggest the committee simply leaves the sockery stuff to one side and addresses the problem (that proxy use sometimes makes it impossible to resolve an accusation of socking, so in certain limited cases such as this it may be appropriate to ban its use on certain articles) then the encyclopedia wins, the Committee saves itself an unwinnable fight to convince everybody it made the right decision in the absence of decent evidence, and we all get on with it. Those who want us to fail are left gnashing their by-now badly worn teeth, as usual. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 08:48, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Interestingly, that's not so different from what Byrne said. Unfortunately, I'm not sure the neutrality issue has been answered. If Misplaced Pages unblocks WordBomb and decides that a tighter behavioral leash is all we need in these situations, that's one approach. It will just start to send the message: go to ArbCom often and early, because unless you've been there recently they aren't going to do anything. But somehow I don't think that is what people want. Rather, people seem to be saying if someone has abused the community to the extent of making it go through all of this mess just to figure out what happened, that the committee owes it to the community to resolve the issue or next time people may just stay away. I'm not sure if that's what the committee wants either, but I think it would fail the committee's mandate to resolve the community's larger disputes. Mackan79 (talk) 09:42, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Yes, in some arbitrations you are left with a fringe that wants revenge, retribution, punishment, etc. That isn't what arbitration is about. This isn't such a big dispute, really, it just has a higher profile than usual. I don't think the arbitration committee is going to feel like making huge remedies when it can resolve the problem with very small, very economical ones. I can get an arbitration call wrong, and completely misread the committee's mood, but it doesn't often happen. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 09:57, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Ah! The ArbCom makes little economic adjustments, while leaving the scorched-earth tactics to individual administrators who are never held accountable? What happened to little economical adjustments back when people were being indef-blocked as Wordbomb socks after writing just one wrong line in one wrong place? And hundreds of people got blocked because they shared an ISP with Bagley in Utah. And Jimbo was saying "Zero-tolerance, shoot on sight." So now that the OTHER guys are caught socking and COI editing, just as was originally alleged, what happens? Moderation. We wouldn't want to have any revenge, retribution, punishment. I could go on, but I'm going to quit, because if I say what I really think, I'm going to be in for some retribution and punishment. SBHarris 10:15, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

You're probably not going to get anywhere sensible if you see it as a matter of taking sides. That's part of what we mean when we say that Misplaced Pages isn't a battleground. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 10:48, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Taking sides? You mean like "Your friend Mr. Bagley and my friend Mr. Wales"? Are you so blind, Tony, that you are unaware of the fact that people don't like the feeling that authority is arbitrary? And if you continue to think that ArbCom has resolved any problem with "small, economical remedies" recently, you are really pitifully out of touch. Hop over to WP:AE, why don't you. (Try not to comment the moment you're there.) Relata refero (talk) 13:11, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

You may not be aware that for a long time I was practically the only admin servicing arbitration enforcement requests. Please don't talk cryptically, though. Say what you mean. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 13:56, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Simply ban use of proxies on the articles covered by the dispute. No mechanism for doing this has been proposed - what, I'm supposed to stick my neck out and file a RFCU request on people who are editing the article in one direction or the other? I'd rather keep my clean block log, if it's all the same to you. —Random832 13:39, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

You don't even need to file a checkuser request publicly. Simply contact the Committee; they all have checkuser permissions. I don't see what filing a checkuser has to do with being blocked, however. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 13:53, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Well, the fact that the person who filed the checkuser request that started this case was immediately blocked (and though it turned out they were a WB sockpuppet, there was initially no checkuser confirmation of this) might have something to do with a connection between filing a checkuser and being blocked. I really think you should familiarize yourself with the case more before commenting. —Random832 13:59, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Well, we already know that this is a very dirty culture war. Crum375 seems to have blocked on a heavy hint by Thatcher that Palabrazo was a ringer. I think it's somewhat disingenuous to imply that any user who asks for such a checkuser faces a similar certainty of being blocked (though of course people asking for a checkuser should be expect to be checkusered as a matter of course). --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 14:33, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

When users have been in the past blocked for suggesting the use of the New York Times as a reliable source in an article, I don't think there's anything disingenuous about implying that people may be blocked for anything at all. —Random832 14:59, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

New Lover, etc., it's hard to say what whistleblowers will face in the future. But before this case, anyone who tried to bring NPOV to naked-short-related articles, and in doing so had the temerity to contradict Sami or Mantan, was accused of being part of an Overstock conspiracy to spread "Bagley memes." The most vociferous conspiracy theorists (after Sami and Mantan) were several influential admins.--G-Dett (talk) 15:19, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Relate refero has, in the course of trying to demonstrate that Samiharris and Mantanmoreland were engaged in tendentious editing, cited several examples of people with whom they disagreed on the subject of the naked short selling article. Because he neglected to say that they were accused of anything, and has rather concentrated on the polite but dismissive character of Samiharris's response, I've gotten the impression that attempts to improve the article have foundered on neglect and incompetence. And (if he can show it by providing good evidence) possibly deceit. Your account is inconsistent with his. Did these accusations of "Bagley memes" and "overstock conspiracy" occur on the talk page of some other article?

In any case I notice that, apart from a few fiddling edits on a scandal-related list article and a few perfunctory tweaks related to Harry Potter and the like, I've been spending far too much time on this discussion. I hope my dissection of the rather weak evidence presented so far will spur those of a diligent cast of mind on to document cases such as those you suggest, all the manipulation, unmerited banning and blocking that is supposed to have taken place on the articles at the behest of these two (or one) editors. Their methods of manipulation (I hesitate to say mind control) should also be documented. The perhaps the arbitration committee, seeing the true extent to which Misplaced Pages has been abused by the anti-Overstock conspiracy, can take appropriate action. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 15:51, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Bwahahahahahahaha. You're funny, Tony. Oh wait, you're serious. My apologies. The level of evidence provided is 900% as much as normally needed for a DUCK block. And I see you take you're talking up the Mantanmoreland "This is all a vast Overstock conspiracy" points. They have pills for that, you know. SirFozzie (talk) 16:24, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

"Dissection"? "Mind control"? "Anti-Overstock conspiracy"? Are you a troll, Tony?--G-Dett (talk) 16:18, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

The scales fell off my eyes a long time ago. I've spent a little time editing in some of the social conflict articles, where there is no end to the supply of culture warriors on both sides to keep disputes going forever. One should hope that when all the various people with a vested interest in the combat over this specific set of issues are persuaded/forced to back off, those with no immediate interest in the matter can write something that is accurate and complete. My personal suspicion is that all the accusations are true and that all parties are guilty, but then I've gotten rather cynical of late. But if uninvolved parties survey the literature and find that the world judges you culpable, Mr. Byrne, your beef is with the world, not with us. Ditto for you, Mr. Bagley, and for you, Mr. Weiss, wherever you may be. Fix the world's opinion, and we will fix ours to match. Mangoe (talk) 14:09, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

• Mr Byrne - I fully intend to get even. I want to ensure that nobody with an agenda gets to manipulate these (or any other) Misplaced Pages articles in the future. That I have been acting to have Mantanmoreland's bias and corruption of WP principles brought to light and held accountable does not mean that I would wish to allow another party to include their bias in the same articles. This may come as something of a surprise to you and AoaNLA,T but being anti the influence of GW does not mean being pro Byrne/Bagley - we are just dealing with the parties that have been allowed undue weight, and are not proposing that any other should be allowed too either. LessHeard vanU (talk) 14:35, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

  Hear hear. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 14:37, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Folks, I believe that there is an acronym that addresses what might best happen in this thread: WP:DFTT. Tony Sidaway, or as he likes to be called now, "Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The", has been booted from Arbcom cases before for this type of editing. There is no need to respond to the arguments of people who expansively expound on a serious matter while admitting that they haven't bothered to read up on the issue, and think that Lolcats are appropriate commentary for adult conversation. Risker (talk) 14:45, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

It's the standard memes and character assassination, no more, no less. It wasn't impressive when MM did it, and it's even less so to see someone else come in, take a five-second brief scan of the situation, and then to throw out terms like "mind control", etcetera. SirFozzie (talk) 16:26, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

It occurs to me it's a little funny some have paired the idea that the evidence doesn't indicate much along with the idea that it could all be Bagley's ruse. Some subtlety on his part, I guess? This may be part of what doesn't seem totally square. Mackan79 (talk) 20:33, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

To put this in other words upon a little more thought: anyone who was struck by the possibility that SH could be Bagley, but now claims the evidence may not show anything, should consider whether they are neutrally evaluating the evidence. Mackan79 (talk) 04:13, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

argumentum ad baculum

Hmm - argumentum ad baculum - what a wonderful phrase, redolent with meaning. To be followed up, (after) Arbcom finds, I guess. Newbyguesses - Talk 05:04, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

heh. I would be surprized if we didn't go back to that situation in the locus of dispute of this hearing within just a few weeks. --Rocksanddirt (talk) 17:15, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

I am afraid I don't quite follow these comments. Please clarify so I can try to respond. Newyorkbrad (talk) 19:32, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

I believe they are referring to the comment by G-Dett above, where he indicates the blocking of Cla68 for using the New York Times as a reference, and Jimbo's "shoot on sight" post, could be interpreted as argumentum ad baculum. Risker (talk) 19:35, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

See also Samiharris' warning to Cla68 here, for an example of argumentum ad baculum in action.--G-Dett (talk) 19:56, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Yes, Risker is correct (about my response anyway). --Rocksanddirt (talk) 19:59, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Transparency, elections, and the Arbitration Committee

I think that the community is entitled to know what position each arbitrator takes on the issue of "is SH a sockpuppet of MM" so that each editor can make his/her feelings known come December. If this is not done, I for one will be voting against all members of the current committee in the next three elections, for this shocking rejection of answerability. —Random832 19:49, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

One is recused, see above. One is inactive and became so in the 24 hours prior to the posting of the proposed decision. I'd recommend giving at least the recused Arbitrator a pass on that. But in general, this possibility is why "private opinions" is not a reasonable rationale for the committee to decline to come on record individually about this. GRBerry 19:54, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Agreed. There's a couple arbcom folks who have let me know publically or privately their feelings on this issue (one each publically and privately, and also one seeing it as compelling and the other not seeing it as actionable). Even though I disagree quite strongly with UC on his viewpoint, at least he had the common courtesy to not duck the question and take the heat for his beliefs. I'd rather vote for someone who has the courage to state their thoughts, no matter how wrong I consider it, then someone who hides behind a star chamber wall and try to speak as if they're a monolithic entity. SirFozzie (talk) 19:58, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

I do have to agree with that - I do respect UC more for that (even though he's completely wrong), and I'd go so far as to say that I'll exclude him as well as the recused arbitrator from my own oppose votes on this issue. And make no mistake, I'm reasonably sure everyone here knows where this "anti sockpuppet finding" attitude is coming from, but if neither they nor the ones who are convinced are willing to stand for anything, I'm not sure they deserve the confidence of the community. —Random832 20:13, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Not sure how I feel about this. My sense is that I won't be active enough come december to bother with arbcomm advisory votes. --Rocksanddirt (talk) 20:22, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

I voted only for Giano at the last election on the premise that Jimbo has the ultimate choice and need not follow the wishes of the community. Unless there is another Giano (or a change in the procedure) I shall not be voting again. I also refused to vote in the recent Stewards election on the same principles. Anyway, I wouldn't want an Arb to be beholden to my vote... LessHeard vanU (talk) 21:46, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Agreed. People cannot make their nomination for ArbCom talking about their beliefs, philosophies and so forth, and then go to an anonymous pool when it comes time to see accountability and answerability. Achromatic (talk) 23:00, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Tons of sentiment already in this section. Should have a show of hands. Cool Hand Luke 20:28, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I count 17 editors seconding (and seventeenthing!) Lar's suggestion in the section above that we "poll the jury" so to speak. Add to that two editors who did not comment there but have in this section, plus a number of editors who did not specifically ask for a poll of the arbs on the sock question but who clearly want it, and I'd day we have between 25-30 folks taking this position. This is a significant number for any Arbitration case, I think, and it also seems significant that most all of these editors are very experienced and a good number are administrators (i.e. the complaints are not coming from run-of-the-mill POV pushers and other problem users as often happens in controversial cases).

Unfortunately it seems that the Arbs are not going to be persuaded on this particular issue so I don't know how much it good it does to continue to bring it up. Holding their ground is, of course, their prerogative, but it seems very likely that the reputation of this committee will take a hit as a result. If the Arbs want to stand on whatever principle they are standing on when they refuse to vote on the key allegation in this case they are welcome to do so, though I personally hope they feel at least some discomfort at being so out of step with the strongly held (and eminently rational) point of view of so many respected users who have given this case a great deal of serious thought and effort. I think we can all agree that there is nothing good about the disconnect there.--Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 22:29, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

The purpose of arbitration is to resolve a problem that the community cannot. The problem, as I see it, is a series of conflicting claims about interference in the editing of certain articles related to naked short selling. Focussing on sock identities seems to me to be a bit of a sideshow. If the socks are as good as alleged, merely banning won't help, or rather banning won't stop further accusations of socking, on the same grounds that the socking is almost impossible to detect except by certain specialised behavioral analysis methods whose discriminatory power is, to be charitable, unevaluated. Presumably the solution to the socking allegations is to make some kind of more sock-resistant environment. I'm glad I don't have to do that job.

I therefore suggest that it's a mistake to focus on sock identity. Further, since arbitrators aren't experts in evaluation of socks, pushing them to a vote if they're not comfortable with it won't get us anywhere. We elected them to resolve otherwise intractable disputes, not as glorified checkusers. The checkusers themselves have come up with a blank on this matter, so recruiting non-specialists is unlikely to resolve anything. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 23:13, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

"the checkusers themselves have come up with a blank on this matter". That's not exactly true, or perhaps it's too narrow a framing. This checkuser said, and stands behind, the statement that the results from using the checkuser TOOL are inconclusive, but I also have endorsed the pattern analysis material worked up as showing a strong likelihood of correlation. Other checkusers can speak for themselves, and have. Some of them, among them some ArbCom members, have said they are not as convinced as I am. Facility with the CU tools does not imply facility with evaluating pattern analysis results, of course. ++Lar: t/c 00:25, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

With that caveat, then. As I've said elsewhere, I'm impressed by the quantity of the analytical work, but it's very easy to see pattern where there is none. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 03:45, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Speaking for myself alone, the adverse community reaction to the form and content of the decision is troubling. This does not mean that the decision is incorrect, but I intend to provide a more detailed description of why the decision reads as it does, at some point when the real world allows me to come up for some air. Newyorkbrad (talk) 23:23, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Speaking as an avid kremlinologist, the more light on the thinking of the arbitrators the better. I notice that some proposed findings have been carefully tweaked in order to make them more refractive to misinterpretation, and that's good, too. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 23:35, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks Brad, I'm not at all trying to rush you into a response to that question (which I also asked above in the "What effect...?" section obviously) and appreciate your willingness to engage with it whenever you get a chance.--Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 23:40, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

The truth is that I thought that, with the input of other arbitrators and with a goal toward achieving consensus among the committee members, I had drafted a decision whose methodology and goals would be clear to all sides of this dispute. I did not expect everyone to agree with the form or content of the decision, but I did not at all expect the degree of disagreement nor the expressions of the view that it represented an abrogation, a dereliction, or a cover-up—expressions that have come not just from partisans in the dispute, but (minus the last) from administrators including respected experienced admins (including clerks and checkusers) who work daily with the committee. In fact, I seem in this decision not to have communicated effectively with many editors at all: it is as if I had written the decision in Martian. I clearly owe it to the community to make another try at explaining myself here, and when I am sure I have found the right words this time, I plan to do so. Newyorkbrad (talk) 23:52, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Thank you very much for that, Brad. Durova 00:13, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

I agree, and hope that we understand better where the committee is coming from, as I still don't get it. My view: moving on is fine, and needed, but there has to be an expression of understanding of the past before that can happen. So, the decision needs to address a)sockpuppet and coi, b) administrative good faith error that protected one side of a content dispute, c) content dispute remedies that move foward (we have that part). If the committee really cannot address a) due to internal divisions, then a finding that the community should in no way be restricted from addressing those issues, would go a long way towards actual lessening of the disruption this off site dispute has engenendered on en.wikipedia. --Rocksanddirt (talk) 00:17, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

I certainly look forward to the response from Newyorkbrad, as there are so many unanswered questions swirling around in this case. It is good to see that a few ArbCom members - most notably NYB and FT2 - have been participating here and trying to shed some light onto the proposed decision. It may be a misinterpretation on my part, but the proposed decision reads to me like an attempt to draft a decision to which almost all the ArbCom members can agree, and to paper over the internal divisions in the earnest (but, in my view, mistaken) belief that ArbCom consensus is important for the community to have confidence in their actions. Again in my view, NYB has acted in this way previously - choosing not to formally propose his alternative for the MH decision, not posting a motion on the present EK appeal, and I gather something similar happened in the IRC case (which I didn't follow in any detail).

In my opinion, the community is entitled to know what individual committee members think. I accept that their reasoning may at times be based on evidence unavailable to the community, and that is fine. But it seems to me that consensus for the sake of protecting the reputation of ArbCom is actually undermining that confidence. Of course, it is true that ArbCom members must exercise their individual judgement, and must be allowed the discretion to act as they see fit. But, is that discretion completely unrestricted - and if so, should it be? Surely discretion should be limited to a range consistent with community expectations of reasonableness. Further, when discretion wanders beyond that range, shouldn't there be a mechanism for this to be addressed. At this moment, I would support motions of no confidence about several ArbCom members on the grounds that they have lost the confidence of the community. Going down such a route - especially whilst trying to figure out the rules, since no mechanism appears to exist - would be disruptive, but I think less disruptive than allowing ArbCom to be diverted from its task. Forward looking approaches are fine, and this does at times mean treating the past as past - but when the past is still here, and the wound still open, moving forward without treatment is not forward looking; it is procrastinating - putting off acting until tomorrow in the hope that it will become easier. Perhaps it will be easier - MM and SH will be community banned, in my opinion, but I am unsure that it will stick. But, the rancour about 'shoot on sight' inspired misdeeds will not abate - justice delayed is justice denied, and asking the community to rule a line and move on from past injustices without acknowledgement will not work.

There has been a lot of debate in Australia over the injustices to the Aboriginal people associated with the 'stolen generations'. Former Prime Minister Howard spent 10 years refusing to make an apology, and urging the community to move on - and the wound festered, and outrage (whilst quietened) did not diminish. In a symbolic gesture, the new Prime Minister issued an apology at the first sitting of the new Parliament, and this ws absolutely necessary for closure to be possible. This case is vastly different in scale and scope, but the same issue arises. Without an acknowledgement that wrongs have occurred, no ruling off of the issues is possible. This need not necessarily include sanctions against individual admins, but it is my view that refusal of formal recognition that they happened will simply perpetuate the community division. Jay*Jay (talk) 01:14, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

I very heartily endorse Jay Jay's last paragraph. The rest, I'm not so sure about. --Rocksanddirt (talk) 04:37, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

At one time the UK Princess Diana inquest was going to be strictly limited in scope, but Mohamed Al-Fayed successfully argued for the inquest to cover all the issues. In the interest of openness and transparency there should similarly be no attempt to hobble this arbitration case. Any unpalatable facts which have a bearing on the case need to be faced head on, rather than swept under the carpet because they will surely cause further rancor if they are not honestly and openly discussed prior to a final decision. Now is as good a time as any to bring closure. Relevant issues to be placed openly before the committee in full view of the community for an open and transparent vote to be held. Also, suggest that the committee invites amicus briefs from recognized experts in the articles concerned - this could aid both the case itself and also help to benchmark the articles--luke (talk) 05:22, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

While I shudder to think that we might as a community ever descend to the level where we identify with the bitterness and delusion of Mr Fayed, tragic and untimely though his bereavement was, I agree that it's Misplaced Pages's custom to keep things out in the open wherever possible. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 19:44, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

The 'conspiracy theories' of Diana's death (one such theory was presented to the inquest by Mohammed Al Fayed) may perhaps be far-fetched, but the judiciary decided that it was best that they should be heard by a jury in a transparent manner in open court. This was contrary to the view of Baroness Butler-Sloss who thought a jury wouldn't be able to cope with the issues, and later stepped down as coroner. -- luke (talk) 22:36, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

...and then what?

Before too much more goes under the bridge...

For the sake of argument, assume that the case that there's been sockpuppetry by SH and MM is given and that everyone accepts that they're likely to be the journalist of the day.

Let me now ask: ...and then what?

There are numerous claims that there was a conflict of interest. Failure to disclose real-world COI issues policy violations are self-evident, but actual abuse of WP:NPOV, WP:V, and WP:RS are not well documented in evidence.

There are numerous claims that there was abusive sockpuppetry in violation of policy. Backing each other up on arguments / creating the impression of more support for a position? A few cases. One listed double vote, some time ago. Possible further abuse by older, apparently abandoned socks which were not acknowledged but are old news.

The level of sockpuppetry abuse demonstrated here, with diffs, is insufficient for permanent sanctions.

Where are the diffs? I just went through all the diffs, and half of them were to other unrelated people's edits, or edits outside the timeframe, with the rest largely diffs without any context to show evidence of inter-account sockpuppet policy abuse.

If you assert Arbcom is clearly wrong for failing to act more stridently here... what's the specific evidence that argues that abuse requiring serious sanction is there?

I don't think anyone other than MM is likely to object to a pro forma finding of duck test similarity here. And the double vote and a couple of other things in evidence are enough of a sockpuppet policy abuse for a pro forma month block and warning to not do it again, sure. But surely we didn't just go spend weeks figuring this all out just to block someone for a month. There has to have been some more serious abuse going on which justifies having spent all this effort to make the identification.

I assumed for the sake of argument as this started, that the "prosecutors" here not only had a case for sockpuppetry which would hold up, but a case for abuse which would hold up. The former is advanced effectively, the latter not. Without the latter, this was in fact a collossal waste of time.

Please point to it. Links and diffs, in the evidence page. Please start new subsections for it so that it's clear what you're pointing to.

Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 04:48, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

I believe some folks are compiling that right now. The challenge is that comments from committee members during the first part of the evidence phase gravitated towards questions about the sockpuppetry investigations, so other than a few examples evidence of abusive action was not researched. While the abuse may be limited (even sensitive by usual pov pushing nutjob standards), it is also pervaisive and was ongoing for 18 months after warning by an arb FOR ABUSIVE SOCKPUPPETRY. so, while a first time offense of this magnitude might get a month and stern admonition to knock it off....this is beyond that. And even without a ban for it, the community needs the committee to stand up against abusive coi pushing in all it's forms. --Rocksanddirt (talk) 04:59, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

A couple of points to GWH. First of all, there do seem to be members of the ArbCom who "object to a pro forma finding of duck test similarity here" - that's why there is no finding relating to that as of now. Given that, it does seem to be a bit of a waste of effort (at least right now) to develop further evidence of abusive sockpuppetry since the committee will not even agree that socking happened at all. I happen to think that the history of past abusive sockpuppetry, for which the user was warned, combined with double voting and a number of efforts to influence discussions (including an ArbCom case) using two accounts is certainly abusive enough for a long term block. But if that is not good enough for you George, what about Mantan's behavior in this entire weeks-long process? Assuming the allegations are true as you do above, do you not find it incredibly disruptive for Mantan to deny these allegations for weeks at a time, lash out at those veteran editors developing evidence and accuse them of carrying water for a banned user, all the while wasting an enormous amount of time of folks who could be doing better things - yourself included? I think that's arguably the most disturbing thing of all and I would ask George whether or not that bothers him. If the allegations are true than the blame for the "collossal (sic) waste of time" should be placed squarely on Mantan's shoulders - why not just come clean and deal with the consequences? And do we really want someone so willing to bend and even break the truth working on this project? Again this assume the socking allegations are true, but that's the assumption with which George started this thread.

In general I'm all for more evidence of abuse along the lines of that presented by Relata Refero, I just personally think the current evidence is sufficient to demonstrate abuse and at this point am not willing to dig up more when it might well have no effect whatsoever. If an Arb asked for it that would be different obviously.--Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 05:34, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

For the sake of argument, what Arbcom decides and what the Community then do are both in play. Even if Arbcom decides as a body not to act on the sockpuppetry complaints, there's an active discussion lifting off about a community ban. Regardless of where it comes into play, what was done with the presumptive sockpuppetry is entirely appropriate. If the current set of presumptive socks committed serious abuses, it should be easy to lay out what those were. The diffs posted to date aren't persuasive. I don't presume that there isn't evidence there... but there's no evidence in evidence, as it were. Might as well lay out the case in its entirety here. Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 05:42, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

I didn't see/forgot about this at first (maybe you did or maybe you didn't, there has been so much evidence presented one loses track of it) but see FT2's chart on SirFozzie's original investigation page here which lists most if not all of the pages which both Samiharris and Mantanmoreland edited. FT2 listed a couple of instructive diffs at the end - and - which show both users commenting on the "Attack Sites" Arbcom and on WT:NPA (obviously two of the more contentious issues in recent Wikihistory, though I personally had nothing to do with either of them and know little of the specifics). If you don't have a problem with a user double voting in AfD's and one RfA, double commenting on a contentious ArbCom case and on an important (and equally contentious) policy page, giving the impression of consistent agreement by two different users (who are in fact operated by one person) about articles in which the user in question has a COI (again using your initial "journalist of the day" scenario here), while all the while going through great lengths to maintain the non-socking fiction and refusing to be forthcoming about the socking when it is revealed then so be it.

But let me actually rephrase that as a direct question. Do you really want someone who engages in abusive socking (even if it is limited, but you cannot deny that the sock policy was violated repeatedly) after doing it once (or twice) before and being warned by an Arb, and who uses socks in an effort to advance their own real world interests (i.e. editing articles with two accounts about which they have a COI), and who when confronted with evidence denies it ad infinitum while casting aspersions on their accusers and forcing into a weeks-long process ending (maybe) in this messy arbitration - do you really feel that person should just run off and edit away happily? Stripping away all of the background noise of this case and pretending this is totally hypothetical situation about "Editor X," would you seriously argue for anything less than a one-year block?--Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 06:06, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

There's nothing I can find in evidence that the COI led to other violations of the policy such as non-neutral articles. It raises the question in a big way, but we know that the people who started this aren't anywhere near neutral either, and their claims that the mere identity means bias have to be taken with a grain of salt. This isn't a question of "They edited!", it's a question of "This thing they inserted is wrong/biased/unsourced" or "This was tag-teaming here and here and here and 3RR violations" and that sort of thing. We know they edited the articles. Please show us the specifics where it was abusive.

There's nothing I can find in evidence that the SH or MM edits would in fact advance the real world interests of the journalist in question. I don't see how the journalists' employement, income, professional reputation, or other factors are improved by the articles one way or the other. There certainly could be such - there are ways that someone could do those things, using Misplaced Pages articles, we've seen them elsewhere - but the specifics aren't in evidence here.

How bad the abuse was is directly related to how bad it was. Say hypothetically we discover that Cla68 and G-Dett are the same person in real life - ok, they're socking. Then what? I don't know of anything other than this debate and some ANI edits where they're editing together. One could make a case that they're to some degree violating the policy by both participating in the same administrative discussion and reinforcing each other. One can easily make the case to block one indef for policy violations - but the other one? This is traditionally "Roll your eyes in frustration at them".

What's alledged about MM and SH is more than that. But how much more? Cut the hyperbole - supply diffs. I will read diffs. I may argue about interpretation of them, but they're evidence. I want the evidence. Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 06:24, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure where I used hyperbole, but I'll try even harder to avoid that. Before continuing I really want to make sure I understand one thing (I mean this as a very straightforward, albeit lengthy, question and would appreciate a direct answer). Assuming the content of the edits were kinda "okay" in some vague sense, are you saying you would find it at least somewhat acceptable (i.e. a lengthy ban would not be necessary, for both accounts) if, after I had been warned for policy violating sockpuppetry in the past, I used two different accounts to edit no less than 25 of the same pages (in article and Misplaced Pages space) often with weeks, days, or hours of each other? Forget about the COI stuff or new diffs for a moment, I just want to clarify that first.--Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 06:47, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Ok? No. Block all your accounts indef except main for a year? Would be overreaction. Further abuse could change that to not an overreaction. The hyperbolic suggestions are potentially into that range - the question is, are the underlying facts of what was edited when and how. Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 07:18, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm afraid I cannot parse all of that last comment, but in any case I started a new section below with a diff and some evidence and such. Let me know what you think.--Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 07:32, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

I strongly believe that undisclosed sockpuppetry is inherently bad and reason enough for a long, if not indefinite, block. I'm not talking legitimate alternate accounts (those that disclose the link, or edit completely different articles/topics, or else take the place of a retired account), but two accounts secretly operated during the same timeframe by the same person and interacting with the same articles or individuals, superficially appearing as independent accounts. I can think of no justifiable reason to do this. Not only does it undermine the "one editor one voice" underpinning of the Misplaced Pages concept of consensus, but it's a fundamental betrayal of every other editor's willingness to follow one of the core pillars of Misplaced Pages: Assume Good Faith. I need to be able to assume that the editor I'm dealing with is editing on the same basis as myself and not gaming the system. Deceiving others to amplify one's voice or gain an advantage over single-account editors is plain wrong. There may be mitigating factors allowing for nuanced remedies where necessary, but the general principle should be to block such sockpuppets because they undermine good-faith collaboration. alanyst 08:07, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

I agree with that. Deceptively maintaining distinct identities in the same field of discourse distorts the community decision-making, even if it's just two socks discussing matters on a talk page. When a number of separate identities are maintained by just one or two people to keep focussing on a subject, the impression given by the multitude of identities can be quite intimidating and, for instance, will tend to chill attempts to explore other side of the subject. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 10:43, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Generally agreed, but the damage done is in proportion to the proximity in time and topic that the multiple accounts appear to support each other.

I would like to see the Evidence page lay out those proximity edits properly to assess that. If the edits tended to be days apart or in different subsections of a Talk page then there's less damage than if they're in the same subsection ping-ponging back and forth in a debate between one and the other. Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 21:14, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Well per your suggestion I made a point of laying out some evidence both below and on the evidence page. Can you please explain what you think of that evidence here? Is it a persuasive single example of abusive, COI socking? Combined with other evidence already mentioned how concerned are you now? How much more do you need to see? I'd appreciate your thoughts since you were the only person asking for evidence like this and I took the time to provide some for you.--Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 22:01, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Some evidence from Talk:Gary Weiss

This may or may not be worth my time, but per Georgewilliamherbert's request I found a diff (this diff) which is an old version of the Gary Weiss talk page. Above GWH asks the following: assuming SH is a sock of MM, and assuming MM is a certain journalist in the real-world, where is the sockpuppet abuse? Well for one example scroll down to the sections "RfC" and "Replies to RfC" in the diff above and read through that (perhaps someone already mentioned this somewhere in this terabyte-long discussion...I have not bothered to check as this is just the first thing I found after a lengthy 240 second search of the first page that came into my mind).

You'll note that Cla68 opens an RfC about including some material which references criticism of Weiss by Judd Bagley, including the notion that Weiss had engaged in "unethical or bad faith behavior." Now remember we are assuming that SH is a sock of MM and MM is that one guy. The first reply, in a "replies" section, comes from MM who says "This material is clearly not relevant to Weiss' notability." Less than 24 hours later (in a different section, the original "RFC" section above that), SH chimes in with "In the past, three editors -- myself, Mantanmoreland, JzG and Jayjg -- have opposed adding the material" and then goes on to explain why. (I would point out that, though it could actually be an honest and routine counting error, Samiharri's reference to "three editors -- myself, Mantanmoreland, JzG and Jayjg" is mildly hilarious given...well you know). Before JzG archived that and other talk page discussion, both SH and MM had weighed in twice (each in different sections) arguing that information critical of Weiss should not be added to the article.

Maybe they were even right about that, but that's hardly the point. GWH wanted evidence that MM/SH/a certain reporter (assuming they are one and the same) had used sockpuppets in an abusive fashion which also violated our COI policy. As I said I found that example in a matter of minutes. It probably does not do much good in this ArbCom, but might be of use for the community later (assuming someone else did not already lay this out and I just missed it). I'm curious as to what GWH thinks about this example.--Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 07:32, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Not forgetting, of course, that somewhere in the terrabytes of the evidence is MM warning off Cla68, by invoking the overstock meme, regarding the GW question whereupon SH shows up recommending that Cla68 take heed of MM's warning. I don't have the diff to hand, but I am sure Cla68 can supply it. LessHeard vanU (talk) 10:02, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Wow, "how many fingers, Winston?" (of course if I were him I would have said "all five, dammit!", counting Mr. Weiss as a separate entity). Hopefully this has been or will soon be added to the evidence page on the off chance that somebody is still reading it. — CharlotteWebb 13:43, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm going to go ahead and add this to the evidence page just so it's on the record in the appropriate place.--Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 17:47, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Further examples? Certainly that was not the only thing we had this huge fight over... Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 03:35, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

How many more do you need George? 2, 5, 10? Can you ballpark it for me? What's your threshold as far as when this gets into problematic territory for you (and don't forget about the other evidence on the evidence page)? Is that threshold based in policy, or is it just your own opinion? As I said I found that example in just a few minutes and wanted to see what your reaction was but you did not offer a reaction other than "more?" If you are honestly maintaining (let's recount the evidence again) that a user who has abusively socked in the past; been warned for it; then used socks to votestack, influence discussions on policy pages and an ArbCom case, and help prevent critical material from entering that user's own BLP article does not deserve a block than I'm afraid I'm a bit nonplussed. If we took your view we would have to conclude that it is okay to use sockpuppets abusively to influence a BLP article about yourself so long as you don't do it that often. I hope you understand that that appears to be exactly what you are arguing for.

I really don't care for the way in which you keep demanding more evidence without even explaining how you feel about what was already provided. What do you think of the new piece of evidence I brought in? How big of a problem is it for you? How about the new stuff Mackan79 added here? This evidence was added specifically at your request (and no one else's), yet rather then react to it (or even offer a polite thank you and then your thoughts) you simply say "Further examples?" That's rather uncouth from where I sit.--Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 06:36, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

More evidence, please

We are now rapidly approaching a half megabyte of text on this page alone discussing this. Why is this level of energy not being put into finding diffs of specific policy violations for the evidence page? Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 04:47, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't know George, but maybe you should ask that question of yourself. A lot of the "half megabyte of text" on this page is you asking other people to produce evidence so you can look at it. Why not have a go at gathering evidence yourself man? A couple dozen other editors have already done that (some for hours on end), so maybe it's your turn. Scroll through the Naked Short Selling article and talk page histories, see what you can come up with, and go from there.

You already asked for diffs once, myself and Mackan provided some, and then you asked for more without commenting on the new evidence provided. Until you're willing to contribute a little more light and a lot less heat to this discussion I'm not going to bend over backward providing evidence to convince you of something of which most of us on this page are already convinced. Quite frankly at this point I'm not sure you can ever be convinced, though if you were willing to do a bit of digging on your own that would help matters.--Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 06:52, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

With a little looking; MONGO RfA - support #'s 24 & 73. LessHeard vanU (talk) 14:06, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Submitted for consideration: 1) GWH's opinion here means no more than anyone elses. The fact that we should try to convince him with evidence, or him require certain users to personally convince him with evidence, is a bit offensive. 2)GWH is very unlikely to change his views, in my opinion. Further, it seems he would like you to submit evidence to him so he can dismiss and rebuke it--which is fine--if this was a time period when evidence collecting was in full force. 3)If GWH is indeed curious enough about this case, he would take the time he uses to discuss and use rhetoric here and investigate it himself—indeed, it appears that the only way he will be convinced is if he stumbles upon evidence himself, which isn't necessarily a bad thing (I'm a bit like that myself).

In conlcusion, I humbly state that submitting evidence here simply to convince GWH is not worth the time. This case has been done. Burnout for those who have contributed heavily to this case is imminent. The same old questions are being asked and the same old answers are being given. There is no progress. I wish that the arbom would do whatever they feel necessary and, respectfully, get out of the way. daveh4h 16:49, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

To repeat what I said above:

"I for one would be open to hearing more evidence about the edits made by these accounts to the relevant articles with respect to content policy, of which there has been essentially none presented so far (save for a brief section by Relata Refero)."

By that I mean what has the nature of the editing on these articles been, and has any editing been problematic in terms of the core content policies (for example, have any editors on these articles misrepresented sources, or have they introduced unsourced statements into articles on living people)? --bainer (talk) 02:01, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Do you think further evidence at this point could actually have an effect on the outcome of the case? Also new evidence has been presented (by G-Dett, Mackan79, I think, and my brief example above). Obviously there is nothing about introducing unsourced statements or similar policy breaches - the examples all deal with using socks to push a certain point of view while excluding others, i.e. the core content policy being violated is NPOV.--Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 06:54, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Yes, the section I added to evidence is here, while G-Dett discussed similar problems in detail here. Bigtimepeace states the problem well, though it also has to do with an almost jokingly tendentious style in the various alternate accounts, including statements such as, "Byrne has claimed that his company's shares have been attacked by 'miscreants' in the stock market, headed by a 'Sith Lord.'" There are many others like this as well, as are discussed in the linked sections. Mackan79 (talk) 13:54, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Request for Clarification regarding secret evidence

We're getting conflicting stories here (I'm talking flat out black/white things here), so I'm posting it here, so both FT2 and Uninvited Company can respond to it, and see if we can get our stories straight here.

(quote of UC on WikBack)

Second, the committee does have some evidence which cannot be made public, which tends to support the view that MM and SH are different people.

Which flatly contradicts what we're being told ON wikipedia, from another ArbCom member

From FT2 here on the Proposed Decision Talk Page:

We could then have openly confirmed for the record that in fact, there was no "secret evidence" in this case of any note. The only non-public evidence was the great amount of prior discussion and past incidents reviewed that indicated how matters in this dispute have tended to go. No new or recent "secret" matters of any kind were presented of any note here.

Is there, or is there not secret evidence in this case? This is flat out contradictory here. SirFozzie (talk) 05:52, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

I echo SirFozzie, and note also that UninvitedCompany has referred to postings by MM and/or SH to a mailing list ("notably different writing style in offwiki (mailing list) participation"). I have not seen any evidence presented regarding this mailing list: which list, who participated, and how it was ascertained that the identities of those posting to the list correspond to the operator(s) of the MM and/or SH accounts. I asked UC about it on his talk page but have had no answer (not unjustifiably; I'm sure UC is very busy). If anyone can shed light on this I'd appreciate it. alanyst 06:02, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Yes, well as SirFozzie says that does need to be explained, though I would not be surprised if there is a valid explanation. To Alaynst, I believe (and someone can correct me if I'm wrong and/or elaborate on this) that the list in question was the "stalker/harassment" list (I'm sorry but I don't remember the exact name, but it was to deal with issues of harassment of Wiki editors apparently). Both JzG and Jimbo Wales had referenced receiving hundreds of e-mails from both MM and SH (many if not most from this list I assume) and both suggested that the writing style for SH and MM was different. As far as I know it is still unclear whether the ArbCom formally reviewed those e-mails, and there was some discussion about whether some of those e-mails might (with the appropriate users' permission) be released for a review by editors not on the committee but obviously nothing came of that.--Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 06:18, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Questions to nobody in particular: Why has this silly conjecture about Samiharris == WordBomb been put forth if MM and SH were trusted members of a stalker/harassment mailing list? Certainly the operators of that list would take great pains not to let WordBomb infiltrate it. And, if checkuser cannot show that MM and SH are related, and word analysis and editing time patterns are not to be trusted, then how can anyone claim that MM and SH here on Misplaced Pages are known to be the same individuals who posted to the mailing list? If their emails reveal their identities, why are the arbitrators not saying that the two are known to be unrelated? Conversely, if the emails don't reveal their identities, what makes them reliable sources of evidence regarding the WP accounts in question? alanyst 06:42, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

The problem with the Samiharris == WordBomb theory is that it has neither evidentiary basis nor explanatory power. Even the rankest conspiracy theory usually has something juicy to offer by way of the latter. This brain-belch by contrast substitutes Rube Goldberg for Occam's Razor, and for what heuristic payoff? The right of "skeptics" to believe that the CEO of Overstock paid somebody to do everything he could to defame said CEO and said company on one of the most popular websites in the world, for over a year, so that in the fullness of time a sockpuppet investigation would take place and possibly get covered by major international news organs, such as The Register. And the right to believe that the genius charged with carrying out this complicated shaggy-dog hoax wouldn't think to have his strawman sock, Samiharris, go in and edit a Mantanmoreland post and give this tribunal of head-scratchers their smoking-gun. As WAS 4.250 elegantly phrased it, "it is absurd to doubt a near certainty using the possibility of a near impossibility." And it is distressing that at this late stage, people presenting themselves as 'skeptics' are doing just that.--G-Dett (talk) 16:39, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

There exists a quite reliable method of tying a particular email address to a particular wiki account. We use it all the time on the Checkuser list to validate new checkuser subscriptions. It does nothing to validate that either the email or the wiki account are anyone in particular, but it solidly links the accounts. Basically, you email the account claiming to be the wiki ID with a nonsense string, and ask them to make an edit while logged in with the account, with that nonsense string as edit summary, and mail the diff back. There is no meaningful way to spoof that unless you're dealing with a compromised wiki account or meatpuppetry (in which case it doesn't really matter). It does nothing to establish different identities but it could definitively link MM on-wiki to the email used by MM on a given list. ++Lar: t/c 15:59, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

I appreciate the additional insight, Lar. Is there any evidence that this took place for MM or SH? alanyst 16:43, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you are asking, could you clarify? I have no knowledge about what list moderators of lists I am not a moderator of may or may not have done. ++Lar: t/c 18:24, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Sorry. What I mean is, if the technique you describe was used to verify their identities, we should see an edit summary (or enigmatic edit) with the nonsense string, somewhere in their user histories. I haven't seen anything resembling that sort of thing in their edit summaries, but I wonder if anyone with a better idea of what to look for might have spotted something. alanyst 19:39, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Nod. I was not moderator of any list that SH or MM was on, to the best of my knowledge so I really can't say one way or the other what either or both of those IDs were asked to do. I would however point out via an example: "nonsense" edit (with apologies to fr:user:Clem23 for picking that example but it's recent and remembered so...) A nonsense string doesn't have to be gibberish per se, it just has to be one that I (or whoever) selected and specified in advance. If you were scanning contributions, would you necessarily pick that out as a nonsense string? I don't know if I would have if I hadn't known what to look for. I don't know if that helps you or not... did want to offer it up though. Different people's nonsense strings can be different. I go for witty, and sort of related to the userid, sorts of things rather than gibberish. No one could guess in advance exactly what I would specify so it's not spoofable. ++Lar: t/c 23:03, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

"Great pains" does not include requiring providing real-world identification to the list operator or members. Nor, let's be clear, do any other Misplaced Pages related groups inside or outside, other than OTRS and Foundation Board elections. Do you actually factually know who anyone on Misplaced Pages Review really is, for sure? Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 07:30, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Just pointing out the obvious: This type of thing is what "conspiracy theories" are made of, whether they are simply misstatements or not. What is causing all these strange actions and statements coming from the very few arbom members that are commenting? Information/evidence/case overload? Thankfully you all aren't commenting! Can you imagine that? Perhaps now I understand why so few arbs are commenting; It doesn't appear they know what they are looking at or what they should be deciding. That may sound terrible; I wish I could word it more tactfully. However, it seems that if deliberations were carried out more publicly, gaffs and blatant contradictions like this and others could be avoided. This is getting stranger by the day, isn't it? daveh4h 07:17, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

"Tis best to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt"? Is that the gist? LessHeard vanU (talk) 10:10, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

(ec)May I suggest an explanation? Perhaps various members of ArbCom saw different levels of significance to the offsite evidence. Reasonable people can weigh a circumstantial case differently. Durova 19:42, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Normally, that would be the good faith way to view it, Durova, and I can agree that could be the case. I'm just looking askance at the sheer black and white nature of things. "There was evidence the public is not privy to that confirmed the belief that MM/SH are different people". versus "There was no non-public evidence at view here". SirFozzie (talk) 21:49, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

But that no new evidence had an important caveat: significance. It could simply be a matter that one arbitrator thought something was insignificant and another found the same thing persuasive enough to raise reasonable doubt. Durova 23:36, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

The various hypotheses on identity are beside the point. If it was discovered that I (who have never been involved in this affair) am WordBomb, or that Sheila Knott (who as far as I am aware has never been involved in this affair) is Samiharris, it shouldn't change things much except that I might get a little less fan mail. If we cannot tell whether or not Samiharris is WordBomb, it does count for something, but perhaps only if you think who they are matters more than what they do. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 19:35, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Actually I think we should worry, because if we don't worry then that would send the message that recent double voting isn't important. Durova 19:42, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Sorry if my example was misleading. As far as I'm aware, Samiharris, Sheila Knott, WordBomb and I have never participated in the same discussion. Of course it would matter if we had deceptively socked (and perhaps my choice of example wasn't so clever). --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 19:47, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

What's actually at issue, though, is the linkage between Mantanmoreland and Samiharris. They voted together as recently as MONGO's RFA, and also at arbitration elections. That compels us to treat this seriously, and not attempt a myopic interpretation of forward-looking, because the next time there's legitimate reason to question whether two established accounts are vote stacking, people need to have enough trust in the process that they believe it's worth the enormous effort of doing things the right way. It took a year and a half to uncover Runcorn, remember. If the Committee and respected Wikipedians sidestep that issue with it's not important/don't do it again, then the inevitable result will be more Wikipedians creating their own vote stacking socks. It's much easier to make them than to catch them, so why not do it if people get off with a caution? Durova 23:45, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

On Sirfozzie's question above, I've argued on wikback that, by my parsing, there is nothing contradictory about Uninvited Company's and FT2's statements. I don't know the facts about which they're talking, but the statements do not seem to be contradictory. They use different words to describe what they're takling about, and there's no reason to believe that they're subdividing the evidence in identical ways. FT2 sees no "new or recent "secret" matters of any kind...of any note", while Uninvited company speaks of "some evidence which cannot be made public, which tends to support the view that MM and SH are different people".

Firstly, what Uninvited company thinks is significant may not be of note as far as FT2 is concerned (this is because FT2 and Uninvited Company are different people). Secondly, when FT2 speaks of "new or recent" matters he may be excluding older matters of which Uninvited Company is speaking.

Thirdly they're both grown-ups and can presumably clarify if the feel the need to. :) --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 19:59, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

I have not relied on any non-public evidence in this case.

As promised above, I have been drafting some comments further explaining my thinking behind the proposed decision. At the moment, the draft of my thoughts is thrice as long as it should be and contains too many stream-of-consciousness ramblings. As soon as it is honed to a reasonable level I will post it here. Newyorkbrad (talk) 21:05, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Again thanks for that Brad, but if any Arbs have relied on non-public evidence should that not be clearly stated in the decision? Is it not possible, without breaking any confidences, to characterize the nature of that evidence (most of us assume it is the "600 e-mails") and give a general sense of why some Arbs felt it belied the possibility of a Mantan-Sami sock connection? I fully understand privacy and confidentiality and all that, but can we not have a bit of a rough idea of what (if any) the off-wiki evidence was, who was persuaded by it, and why? Uninvited Company seems to be suggesting (over on WikBack) that he can say absolutely nothing about it, but it's extremely hard to imagine a reason why that would be so. As GDett has pointed out on UC's talk page (a question that remains unanswered) it's also hard to imagine how someone who rejects the "word choice analysis" (which UC does apparently) would be convinced by a side-by-side analysis of writing styles (I'm not trying to pick on UninvitedCompany here, in fact I appreciate the fact that he has been relatively forthcoming with his opinion).

There are clearly questions which need to be answered here. Since Brad has not relied on any non-public evidence, I hope that those who (apparently) have will step forward and give us a sense of what was going on there. This "secret evidence" ball has been in the air since the beginning of this case - Arbs who relied in small or large part on off-Wiki evidence cannot pretend that the rest of the community is going to take it on faith that they evaluated that evidence appropriately. We are well past that point and we need as much open discussion of this as possible (we certainly need more than "none"). This is an important case, we all know that, but the waters only seem to be getting muddier as we go along. Not good.--Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 21:54, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Yes, thanks Brad, and hi to FT2. Now I do not wish to speculate in any way, so I wont, I will ask for clarification, regarding the nature and extent of secret evidence, if it is being taken into account at some weight by some Arbs. If such secret evidence is being taken into account, and if some substantial part of the evidence concerns the 600emails, then why was not a satisfactory answer offered to my evidence at /Evidence#Evidence presented by Newbyguesses, months ago days ago, at the/Evidence page?

Or has an answer been given that i did not see? And, if the 600emails do constitute evidence, to what extent is the Arbcom going to disclose the (non-BLPvio) nature of that evidence, and the reason for considering it?

That is, to be clear, if the 600emails are not under any condideration, then I have no question, and have wasted this post, sorry. Newbyguesses - Talk 22:58, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

I have been following this case for a while and never felt the need to really get involved in the discussion but Newyorkbrad's latest comment really kills me. If the ArbCom is not relying on significant non-public evidence then the timidity of the proposed decision is baffling. I don't understand how anyone can look at the evidence presented over the last few weeks and arrive to any other conclusion: in all likelihood, SH and MM are either sock accounts or at the very least meatpuppets who have repeatedly, deceptively and often destructively worked in tandem. "Ah but what if SH is just a devilish long-term joe-job stunt?" say the conspiracy theorists. So what? Either way, this account needs to be blocked indefinitely.

The proposed "Allegations" says that evidence is inconclusive about SH = MM: I'm kind of scratching my head over this one, but hey, let's say I can understand how a very very careful ArbCom may arrive at that compromise statement. But the statement completely avoids the MM = GW issue. (or MM = GW's wife, GW's son, GW's dog or anyone else so close to GW that for all practical purposes MM = GW) The latter has been established beyond the shadow of a doubt and if ArbCom thinks otherwise, they should definitely say so. Because it's also a well established fact that MM has repeatedly denied being tied to GW, it's established that MM has used sockpuppets abusively in the past, it's established that he's been editing the Gary Weiss article without disclosing his conflict of interest, has systematically been involved in editing disputes concerning articles in which he has very personal reasons to edit tendentiously.

In its obsession to be fair to MM and SH and to avoid sanctions on these accounts without 100% steel-grade über-smoking-gun evidence, the ArbCom is forgetting that its prime responsibility is to make decisions which, all in all, will

a) help Misplaced Pages grow as a NPOV, quality encyclopedia,

b) help safeguard Misplaced Pages from the growing pressure from pseudo-editors who are interested in promoting their personal agenda and

c) ensure that the Misplaced Pages community can continue to self-regulate effectively.

Fairness? We, the community of responsible editors, are not asking you to be fair. We're asking you to help us. And your answer is "look, this is too delicate for us to really make a definite call, so why don't you handle it?" Well, gee, thanks a lot, but we're kind of sorry we asked your opinion.

In the process, you are setting a precedent which will make it almost impossible to impose sockpuppet blocks without going to RFCU and actually getting the smoking gun. You are refusing to acknowledge the fact that, regardless of the irresponsibility of WordBomb, Byrne, Bagley and co, and regardless of the harassment that MM, SH, GW (all three of them...) may have been the target of, the contribution of these accounts has been overall quite negative. Speaking as an admin who has never been involved in protection of these articles or blocks on the various parties, I believe it will be difficult for the ArbCom to dispel the impression that this case has not been treated in a transparent way and that who you know actually matters on Misplaced Pages.

I think it would be interesting for individual ArbCom members to say whether they agree with the following: "I believe that keeping the accounts of SH and MM unblocked will make Misplaced Pages a better place in the long run". This, we can all agree, is the real question. So why are you voting on absurdly convoluted statements such as "It has been alleged that editing of these articles may have been affected by abusive sock- or meat-puppetry, and/or conflicts of interest" and "A majority of the committee concludes that the weight of the credible evidence taken as a whole is suggestive of or consistent with a relationship between the two accounts, but that the absence of usable checkuser findings and other factors prevent a definitive conclusion from being reached."?

This case is extremely disappointing and I can only hope that very very few wikipedians will be made aware of it, because the little faith that they may still have in structures of authority on Misplaced Pages will vanish. What ArbCom is telling the community is "come to us if the case is sooooo simple that you could have handled it without coming to us". Pascal.Tesson (talk) 03:28, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

PS: in light of Dave4h's comment below, I've just added a few line breaks to (hopefully) help in reading. Pascal.Tesson (talk) 16:22, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Immediately above are fantastic comments by Pascal.Tesson. It could use some line breaks, but it's very good nonetheless! I suggest anyone interested in this case read it. (Incidentally, many good comments are lost in the shuffle on these talk pages—I find wiki talk pages a very difficult system in which to communicate with more than about 10 people, but that's another issue entirely) Thanks for your thoughts, Pascal. --daveh4h 08:16, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Editing content

In response to numerous comments, I created another section in evidence here on why the socking is relevant. The main point is that this is part of a long pattern of using alternate accounts to push POV, before asking that only the edits under the main account be considered. I think this is why the socking issue would ordinarily and should be addressed. Mackan79 (talk) 22:52, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Mackan's post makes for essential reading.

An important thing to realize here is that while traditional forms of sock abuse have occurred (double-voting, false consensus, etc.), examples of these are limited because there was a sort of baton hand-off to the SH account just as the MM account was leaving the articles in question – having been, as we now know, warned off of them because of the appearance of COI. Unacceptable as vote-stacking and so on are, the larger pattern of abuse here was one of gross POV-pushing by multiple socks, backed up by an implicit argumentum ad baculum. In light of strange comments by New Lover Etc. about "mind control" and so on, I want to stress here that I absolutely do not join him in conflating such a systemic failure of encyclopedic neutrality – even one as apparently total as this – with some kind of "conspiracy." There are many reasons admins backed Mantan so solidly, despite his occasional deceptions and regularly awful editing. Widespread concern about off-wiki harassment was a big factor, obviously, and was to some extent justified, and certainly deserves our understanding; strategic alliances MM cultivated seem also to have been a factor, and these deserve our cynicism – or better, our self-scrutiny. But in general I think it would be fair to say that a zealous institutional culture developed around the Bagley-Weiss wars on Misplaced Pages, attributable to both of the above factors and probably others, but not at all to any conspiracy, or to any top-down problem, Jimbo's "shoot-on-sight" episode notwithstanding. The fact that the block against Cla68 in the wake of Jimbo's comment – a block that in my view epitomized the institutional culture that had taken hold – was carried out by Durova, who has in turn been one of the most sober, circumspect, and assiduously fair-minded voices in the present investigation, is itself an excellent piece of evidence that the issue of systemic bias does not mean bad faith, and has no taint of "conspiracy," whatever New Lover Etc. might say.

I had planned to add an evidence section of gross POV-pushing, which would overlap significantly with Mackan's, but wondered (and continue to wonder) if anyone needs it? I have organized diffs if anyone wants them, but as Mackan says on the evidence page, the best thing to do is go and read the articles, especially in the state they were in before this case opened, and look at their histories.--G-Dett (talk) 00:50, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

I agree very much with Gdett's comments here. I think for many editors it is exactly this lack of acknowledgement of good faith but wrong actions by a number of folks that is lacking from the proposed decision and a lacking of a specific pov/coi finding about both mm and sh if the committee cannot find it in their hearts joint the two accounts. The acknowlegement doesn't mean desysopping anyone, or other sanctions, but just acknowlegement that folks were wrong in the way they protected mm in the offsite dispute that has festered here. --Rocksanddirt (talk) 00:58, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

To the extent I've been able to observe, that has been fueled by a mix of disbelief and surprise. We're all human beings and it isn't easy to back away from a position that one has acted upon for a while. Some individuals honestly doubt the strength of the circumstantial evidence, and others who have been persuaded maintain public silence because they still have a strong distaste for the methods that had been used to pursue this case for so long. This isn't a black and white situation. People who know that the "Misplaced Pages cabal" conspiracy theory is false have an understandable reluctance to attach their names to a position that might lend credence to other conspiracy theories they seriously doubt. Durova 01:18, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Well, nobody would blame the ArbCom for noting that some of the harassment that went into pursuing this case is unacceptable. But the unacceptable behavior of one party does not prevent us from recognizing that the other party has also acted way beyond what is considered acceptable. Sure, it isn't easy to back away from a position that one has acted upon for a while. But if anyone here is acting to save face rather than to help the project, shame on them. Pascal.Tesson (talk) 03:56, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

(ec) This issue was another reason I chose to introduce the enabling meme to this conversation back on the Workshop page. In reality, it can take some enablers years to realize that they are helping someone to abuse them - and some never realize it. Once we understand that people really thought they were doing the right thing, we also realize that for various reasons different people will take longer to realize that their actions were not actually helpful in effect, despite the good intent. To the committee, I will point out that you can't successfully lay these peripheral issues to rest without first solving the central issue. Putting dealing with MM back in the community's court will inevitably lead to the community also discussing the enabling again. GRBerry 04:03, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Not a single one of us has exercised the wisdom of Solomon throughout this situation. Some remedies do need to be enacted, yet it's also gracious to look inward and ask What did I contribute to this mess? How could I have acted better? The more people who step forward with that and state their own role candidly (on both sides), the more likely we'll be to learn from it and avoid a similar mess in the future. Durova 04:50, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Whatever the Arbcom ruling is

I have lost all faith with the way Misplaced Pages works over this. For me, as soon as the Varkala evidence was shown, it was clear that Mantanmoreland = Gary Weiss. Before all of this I had no idea who Gary Weiss was. Random US financial journalists do not register on my radar, to be honest. But an encyclopedia that is meant to offer a real and neutral view on the world did once hit my radar. That a person can clearly game the system and use it to further their journalistic career is a disgrace, and shame on everyone who has allowed it to happen. I don't care if I am banned for this or whatever. But I will take to my grave the knowledge that Gary Weiss used Misplaced Pages to further his career. And I think everyone involved in that case knows that. Thanks for building a project we can all use as a resource, but no thanks for building an infrastructure that people can use to enhance their careers. Whitstable 02:54, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

I can sincerely understand where you're coming from, and your frustration all over this. All I can say is, the fight will likely continue, no matter how ArbCom works out. It sucks, but that's the way it is. The project needs more editors to stand up and say "no, that's not right.. and I won't stand for it". Illegitimi non carborundum, Whitstable. SirFozzie (talk) 03:06, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

I understand whitstable's frustration (though I wouldn't go as far), and I will say that this has cut into my enthusiasm for the project pretty substantially. --Rocksanddirt (talk) 03:25, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

This is the Nth time I've seen the "...W used Misplaced Pages to further his career...". I still haven't seen anyone put forwards a good theory or evidence of how doing these edits would, in fact affect the career in any way. Will someone making the claim please explain how you feel this is so? I don't dispute that it's possible to advance off-wiki interests on-wiki, but nothing I've seen or seen alleged here seems to do so. Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 03:32, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

George, did you see the comments from the Gary Weiss AfD discussion I posted in my evidence section? The Weiss article was so obviously being used for publicity by the article's subject that most of AfD participants commented on that. Cla68 (talk) 03:38, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

...And? We knew that. There's a (again, presuming the ID / sock conclusion) COI there, but the article's been under extreme NPOV review pressure for some time by uninvolved admins and editors. If there are specific diffs of MM or SH making non-NPOV edits there and so forth, present them.

It is not evidence to point to controversies that these accounts were involved in. Evidence is "They were involved here, and did ], linking to a diff or a specific comment or so forth which shows a specific policy violation.

Don't be lazy. Make the case. Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 03:46, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

The case has been made in the context of Naked Short Selling, where a marginal theory unsupported in academic literature was aggressively pushed on the page. Do try not to be lazy and do some reading. Relata refero (talk) 09:05, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

I disagree that there has been substantive NPOV work by "uninvolved admins and editors" on the articles that are the locus of dispute. Cla68 was blocked for a reasonable attempt to work on NPOV of one of the articles, not that long ago. And the founder said to shoot on sight anyone who esentially disagreed with mm/sh's pov. --Rocksanddirt (talk) 03:52, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

There have been a truly ludicrous number of Wordbomb socks involved over the last few years. Those, we are nuking with prejudice and without formal reading of charges, yes.

Normal editors are not being sanctioned for getting involved.

The specifics of the Cla68 block were, as I recall and without going back to the complete discussions, Cla68 repeatedly reinserting stuff which had been inserted originally by Wordbomb, after being warned not to. That's not NPOV review - that's the specifically prohibited acting as a proxy for banned user meatpuppetry abuse that we can and do regularly block people for. Cla68 does not come to this with clean hands.

I have seen other editors and admins edit those pages, who haven't been involved on or off wiki with SH or MM discussions to my knowledge, who appeared to be working on NPOV stuff. That said, I have tried to stay out of the content disputes, because I neither care about the Journalist's career / biography nor the technical financial topics involved, and it's all been rather unseemly. My knowledge on the specifics of who's done what is mostly "what perked up to ANI or I happen to have seen on a quick article history review?". This is part of why I'm asking for the specific diffs. In the past I've looked at claims of COI or other abuse, and not been satisifed that the claims were well founded. But I am not living and breathing this incident, and if one accepts the posited identity / sock conclusions it's worth revisiting. So, I'm asking for diffs. Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 04:01, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

This is an absurd interpretation of Misplaced Pages's banning policy. You seem to be saying that anything put in by a banned editor must be taken out, no matter what. Suppose WordBomb found a blatant copyright violation on Misplaced Pages and blanked it, marking it with the standard {{copyvio}} template. Would we be obligated to restore the copyright violation, and block anyone who restored the template or tried to delete the infringing material? What if a banned user fixes a spelling error — do we keep the bad spelling in place permanently to spite them? How far does this go? No, banned users don't get any say in how the encyclopedia is written, but Cla68 is not a banned user. He, using his own independent judgment, decided (correctly, in my opinion) that The New York Times was a reliable source for the article and that keeping it out on the grounds of "Bagley memes" was a clear violation of WP:NPOV. I don't care if the original edit was by Satan himself. To interpret the banning policy in the way you want is to institutionalize the ad hominem and Reductio ad Hitlerum fallacies into Misplaced Pages. *** Crotalus *** 04:18, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Thank you, Crotalus, for this excellent summation of what, to many people, is one of the core issues here. Achromatic (talk) 04:41, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Cla68 was blocked for acting as a proxy for a banned user. Anyone who'd spent time to discuss on the talk page and justify the action, as opposed to merely and promptly reverting the banned users' edits back in when they were removed, would have been treated differently. The same action preceded by consensus-building on the talk page would not have resulted in sanctions. Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 04:43, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

he was blocked because the normal consensus building procedure of a content rfc was responded to by archiving and shoot on sight comments from mm/sh protective folks. --Rocksanddirt (talk) 04:56, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Cla68 and others including you are still quite grumpy about this. But we still have mountains of evidence of actual CU confirmed WB socks and IPs and meatpuppet accounts, and a number of other editors who behaved in a similar manner and timeframe. When you walk like a duck and talk like a duck in the middle of a duckpond, in duck season, you get quacked from time to time. Wordbomb and Byrne's ludicrous actions at the time required a ludicrous amount of response from a wide variety of editors and administrators. There are something like 100 known socks with thousands and thousands of edits. If someone wants to set up a side Request for Arbitration on it, Cla68 can lay out the case that they were sanctioned by an evil secret cabal, others can lay out the case for Cla68's proxy edits for banned users, others can lay out the context of the number of blocks, bans, reverts, socks, and so forth we've been dealing with, and Arbcom can determine who was misbehaving, who stepped in front of shitfans by accident, and who stepped in front of them on purpose. That's not this case. I'm still waiting for more diffs here in this one. Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 05:11, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Um, WBsocks have nothing to do with this case, which is about/Mantanmoreland. WB is banned, cannot give evidence, and everyone agrees, probably, that WB is not the "elephant in the room". I really do not see what point you are making here. Newbyguesses - Talk 05:19, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

I understand that it's not the normal pov pushing nut job stuff, but when I read the talk page of GW, it looks alot like sh or mm scolding users for being wb socks/meats/following the lead of evil people. I have not studied the articles, as I don't give a crap about the subject, I'm concerned with abuse of the community. --Rocksanddirt (talk) 04:16, 5 March 2008 (UTC) And as far as normal editors not getting sanctioned? see User:Piperdown. --Rocksanddirt (talk) 04:22, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

I concur with SirFozzie, Whitstable, and I'd encourage you to stick around. While this particular case may be pretty blatant, I'd venture to guess that many, many Misplaced Pages editors have enhanced their careers in some form or other by writing here. I personally know of two editors who have only ever written here for the pleasure of writing and sharing information, but who have been offered paid writing jobs in the real world based on their Misplaced Pages work. Hundreds of students have honed their writing and researching skills, indirectly boosting their grade point average and thus their marketability. I've become a better copy editor, a skill that's translated into heightened esteem for my work in my field of employment. We're all here for our own personal reasons, some of which are more altruistic than others.

Misplaced Pages is not a utopia, no matter how hard some people try to make it that. The current emphasis on "civility" (which seems to be defined as "behaving like me, except when I'm being a jerk") has overridden some of the other behavioural norms within the project. This is probably a temporary situation, and the pendulum will swing again. Sadly, despite all of the other evidence people have or could come up with in respect of this case, SamiHarris and Mantanmoreland haven't been particularly rude to anyone, so it may be impossible to sanction them in this current climate where social niceties are of prime importance. Again, stick it out - in a few months, there will be a bigger issue - probably COI or something similar - that will become the focus. (And George - I think I have answered your question here as well.) Risker (talk) 03:44, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Again presuming the conclusion, but how would someone already established as a professional journalist and book author gain experience with writing, research, etc by contributing pseudonymously or anonymously here? Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 03:54, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Respectfully, I feared precisely this interpretation. The main event is not whether or not Gary Weiss used Misplaced Pages to further his career. That is incidental. The main event is that Misplaced Pages is being used as an instrument of mass mind control in the cover-up of a financial crime that, just today, the SEC denounced in a public hearing while proposing a change of rules to address. Misplaced Pages is now downplaying a crime that even the last-to-get-it regulators are now pursuing. ArbCom has reinforced Misplaced Pages's hermetically-sealed version of the truth so that the gap between it and reality grows wider every day. If you want to make sense of this whitewash, see more here: http://en.wikipedia.org/User:PatrickByrne/Whitewash_essay PatrickByrne (talk) 04:05, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

You have contributed nothing to these discussions that did not violate our policies WP:BATTLE and WP:SOAP. Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 04:13, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

George, did you read the above section? I had your concerns specifically in mind. Mackan79 (talk) 04:10, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Which above section by whom? Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 04:14, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

The section immediately above; it references the evidence section added here. As to Byrne you might also consider that he's speaking not as a standard Wikipedian but as an affected individual, which should come with different expectations. Mackan79 (talk) 04:19, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

As far as violating Misplaced Pages policy - regrettably it is likely true. I have not, in fact, mastered the intricacies of Misplaced Pages policy. Once all of this is over, and I have a better sense of the standard oeprating procedures around here, I would love to come back and edit the articles relating to Daoism and Zen. However, in the meantime, I am trying and, as someone points out, for better or worse, I am at the heart of this controversy. If you folks promise not to hold my neophyte errors against me I will promise not to rely too much upon that indulgence. PatrickByrne (talk) 04:27, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

(ecx2) George, advancing a career also takes other forms than merely gaining experience, though I can see how Risker's post misled you to think that was what was going on here. Beyond a certain point in the career, knowing the basics of a field pretty much becomes taken for granted. Making more money by promoting a book (GW's explicit reason for starting his blog), moving from C list to B list blogging by spamming links to the blog and gaining peer prestige, being seen as good at understanding controversial areas because a reference work backs you up... All of these are ways of advancing a career. And MM did all of that here for GW. GRBerry 04:12, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

...And all of which should have easily citeable diffs for specific COI / NPOV violations. Why are we not yet flooded with diffs? Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 04:15, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

GeorgeWH, this is classic diversionary tactics. If you truly just do not want to know, despite anything, why not just put in some ear=plugs and be done with it? I don't know whom you are trying to represent here, but it is not any set of editors who have actually read the evidence. Are you off noah's Ark, or a visitor from the fairies at the bottom of the garden? Either way, between your posts and tony's, there must be some prospect of an ig-Nobel prize being awarded here for the advancement of pseudo-scientific theories. Have you really not seen enough evidence? This page alone takes over a minute to load to my computer. Best of luck,Newbyguesses - Talk 05:06, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

That's a little harsh. GWH is one of the folks who has been involved in the constant blocking of wb hosiery. --Rocksanddirt (talk) 04:53, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

That rather badly broaches WP:NPA and WP:CIVIL. Uninvolved admins / clerks? Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 04:54, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Newbyguesses: this page is almost entirely populated by people arguing with each other. People arguing with each other is not evidence of MM / SH / GW Conflicts of Interest, sockpuppetry policy abuses, etc.

This case was alledgedly brought not because MM / SH are sockpuppets, but because they were violating sockpuppet policy abusively. The evidence for the abusive behavior is being posted in bits and pieces here and there. There are some votes, some bad hand / good hand, some reinforcing each other / making it appear that more people support a position. But there have only been... eight? total diffs posted along those lines last I looked, which actually showed something which might be abusive. Why are we not buried in diffs? If they've been abusively sockpuppeting for years, why are there not hundreds of diffs?

We cannot possibly have spent all this time and effort for eight specific point policy violations. Can we? Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 05:18, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Whilst determining violations of NPA and CIVIL, do be sure to cast an eye over this assertion: "You have contributed nothing to these discussions that did not violate our policies WP:BATTLE and WP:SOAP". Achromatic (talk) 05:20, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

I put a motion up on the Workshop page, with diffs, to support that statement. Patrick Byrne has admitted such above in a civil and constructive response. Whether the motion is taken up by Arbcom is up to them, but I did not make the statement without having appropriate backing evidence. Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 05:33, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

In reverse order, I see no such admission, indeed, no comment from User:PatrickByrne above, but perhaps I'm missing it (Struck after reading it - that being said, I don't think it invalidates the following point, and even a "regrettably likely" isn't a "confession"/admittance). Perhaps also worthy of consideration is that your motion was almost universally opposed - perhaps this means that other editors are unconvinced that any such violations took place. Definitely not as clear cut as you make it out to be. Achromatic (talk) 02:21, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

User:Georgewilliamherbert, my personal apologies for the ill-considered post, which I struck. One thing, I do know for sure that yourself has been following this case closely, from the start, since I have read your#Evidence. I meant no disrespect, as you say there is a lot of wasted argument on this page, which is frustrating, it takes too long to load, and to read, so I lashed out.

Now, I would urge people, whether new to this case or not, to again review the material on the/Evidence page, and the/Workshop page, that material is superior to this page for finding facts, and DIFFs. maybe it's a big ask, TERaBytes of stuff, i don't know, I am no giant brain and i have read it over; I cannot claim any clever understanding of what is going on here, but I try. I know you are trying too, User:GWH, thanks, I urge others all respected, to review those pages, that's where it's at. Newbyguesses - Talk 07:00, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

George, it doesn't appear that you are listening. I have never seen it required to provide a list of 50 difs that are completely absurd on their face. That isn't how POV pushing happens. It happens through a large number of subtle problems, and then every now and then something extreme that jumps out of the rest. I am sure that I could find many more examples, but frankly it would seem you owe it to give a better response to what has already been provided if you'd like to keep demanding more evidence. People don't have limitless time to pull up difs for every new person who comes along and doesn't appear to be reading what is already there. Mackan79 (talk) 05:31, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

And yet they do have time to write a half-megabyte of argument here? I am listening. I see some stuff in evidence. I don't see a slam-dunk case, the sort of thing we instaban people for.

People are alleging the slam-dunk case. Over and over again. But won't provide enough or more evidence? This makes no sense. People have spent what appears to be many man-weeks on statistical software generation and analysis, on correlating real-world activities with on-wiki edit patterns on times and dates.

Why is the same standard not being applied to the "...and it was abusive..." clause of the "abusive sockpuppetry" suggested finding?

I want to be convinced one way or the other. Evidence has come to light regarding identities which If ind decently convincing; I can quibble with bits of it, but some pieces are unanswered and pretty strong on the face of it.

I want you and everyone else to step up to the plate, and convince me that beyond that assumption, enough actual serious abuse happened that I should support a community ban following this, even if Arbcom doesn't impose one.

So... ? Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 05:43, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

"onvince me that enough actual serious abuse happened" Here's a start: Double voting -- Lastexit and Mantanmoreland. Yes, this is not SH and MM, and yes, the matter apparently was dealt with by Fred Bauder to Fred Bauder's satisfaction (not to mine, and I hope not to anyone's), but it's abusive sockpuppetry and helped Mantanmoreland get in the habit of further abusive sockpuppetry. More to the point, take a look at votes #24 and #73 at this Mongo RFA. And there's more at SirFozzie's investigation page. I'm not sure this goes so far as to say "asked and answered", but it's abusive sockpuppetry, if you accept the evidence given that there was sockpuppetry, and it doesn't rely on deciding whether or not the two accounts were POV-pushing.Noroton (talk) 15:41, 5 March 2008 (UTC) (rewrote last sentence to expand and clarify Noroton (talk) 15:44, 5 March 2008 (UTC))

I don't think you see how your tone is coming across. You claim to be listening, but I don't see that you have spent more than 10 minutes between your various posts here to actually review what has been presented. You come back instead with the number of difs that you claim to have seen. That tells me you aren't listening. Mackan79 (talk) 06:11, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

(Outdent) Part of this discussion hinges on why Cla68 got blocked. So I'll clarify: he did not get blocked for adding a New York Times citation to an article. The reason for blocking was this: JzG had archived the article talk page because the talk page contained looser speculation than the article itself. I endorsed that decision and so did Jimbo, who added the shoot on sight statement. Cla68 followed up with a post which, in my opinion at the time, amounted to turning on the gas stove beneath the frog in the saucepan. I didn't want the page to degenerate into a free for all. Obviously there were flaws in that decision, but that was my thinking at the time, and that's why I was obligated to look into this situation more thoroughly later on. Durova 05:52, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Reviewing Cla68's edits at the time, I find Jimbo's statement and the block utterly incomprehensible. It's notable that Samiharris thought Cla68 was blocked for suggesting the New York Times. Cool Hand Luke 05:59, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

The context is WB sockpuppets and ongoing abuse. Assume potential for overreaction or mistaken targeting in the immediate vicintity of any WB sightings. As further context - the offsite harrassment campaigns which were going on and being discussed offsite contemporaneously. Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 06:09, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Also assume what was in fact the case: that the failure of legitimate editors to explicitly distance themselves from problematic behavior raised questions about their judgement, and that pushing the envelope at that particular juncture was not a good idea. At the time, I had trouble imagining why Cla68 was tarnishing his sterling reputation over the matter. Durova 06:17, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Because NPOV matters. It's Foundation issue #1 - not just a core principle, but the core principle of this website. And he clearly thought (and I agree) that excluding an article from one of the US's most respected newspapers that makes two people both look bad from one of their articles while including it in the other's article is as clear a violation of NPOV as you'll find. Having an article on someone who's such a "non-public figure" that we can't even include criticism of him that appeared in one of the US's most respected newspapers, is a NPOV violation. I guess some people care more about our core principles than their own reputation. —Random832 17:06, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

That's a cogent argument. It would have been much clearer at the time if so much drama hadn't been surrounding it. Durova 18:53, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

There did seem to be, on the part of the side you were on at the time (the side I sometimes referred to as "the Clique"), a pretty thorough lack of assuming of good faith, in that you seemed to assume that anybody who didn't quickly fall in line with your own reasoning on the "drama-producing" issues was clearly a troll, a sockpuppet, a meatpuppet, a jihadist, or some other unsavory character involved in a harassment campaign... instead of it even entering your mind that somebody on the "other side" might actually have valid principles they were attempting to uphold. *Dan T.* (talk) 01:44, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

You can see how skilled Mantanmoreland was at encouraging people to paint with a broad brush. At the time when I started encountering this set of issues he had a lot of material to work from. It is very easy to assert that argument and make it stick when some people are doing things that are really over the top (such as Slashdotting the conspiracy theory about SlimVirgin being a spy) and others who ought to have more clout don't distance themselves from it. That dynamic played right into his hand. Durova 02:24, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

I have thought about this point for some time, user:Durova, but I am not sure if I grasp it. If someone were to post at CRAPDOT.com that Newbyguesses was a SSHHH! (spy), would newbyG care, and would (I) care,? Not a bit, it is a pseudonym. Just as SlimVirgin, she/he is using a pseudonym, and BettyBoop/WordBomb used a pseudonym. What is the total harm, of that particular instance? Before shooting me down, I will admit that I came late, I have no direct experience of ALL, the specific abuses that WBsocks done, or did, over an extended period of time, and if any editor did suffer genuine distress from some outing, somewhere, which I haven't taken into accout, I of course apologise for seeming dismissive. If I have a point, Durova, or even not, I know your response will be most well-considered, thanks, Newbyguesses - Talk 23:48, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Don't give up on the project yet

Yeah, it's demoralizing, but it's not worth quiting yet. I admit there might be good reasons that ArbCom is doing this. It's surely chilling to realize that a Misplaced Pages verdict might find its way into a real-world court battle some day. I would hesitate to sign such an opinion myself.

So I'm just waiting for the community to get the case back. I have a lot of real life work to do in the next two weeks, so I've got to stop following this impotent ArbCom; I'm taking a Wikivacation.

I find that this discussion has become unreadable anyway. It's also increasingly populated with people radically unfamiliar with the evidence, who ask asinine questions about what "SH" means. I've also been disappointed with the Arbitrator's candor. For example, I'm not sure how many times I've asked about the supposed stylistic dissimilarities between Mantanmoreland's and Samiharris' emails, but no one to date has answered this question. I can only assume that either (1) we're found contemptible by certain members of the community, or (2) that these claims are based on analysis significantly more prone to selection bias and mysterious methodology than anything I've posted.

Someone email me when the community has the case back. I suggest three remedies as a starting point for discussion:

1. Indefinite block of User:Samiharris, an account which has engaged in prolific POV-pushing, and is also apparently a sockpuppet. Some suggest that he might actually be WordBomb. I think that claim is absurd on its face, but if you really believe that, then he should still be blocked—unless we honestly believe that WordBomb is welcome to edit here. Pascal.Tesson summarizes this case very well.
2. Topic ban for User:Mantanmoreland on W/Overstock topics, including naked short selling. I think the community can safely draw a conclusion of COI from this evidence, and based on apparent promotional and POV-pushing edits. I also think it's a reasonable restriction. We're only talking about five articles here. Except NSS, Mantanmoreland has been avoiding these articles since September anyway. I should hope that the Misplaced Pages community, acting on sound and public evidence, should command as much respect as SlimVirgin's private request based on a hunch.
3. Optionally, a block of Mantanmoreland for sockpuppeteering. I don't think this is absolutely necessary, but there has been severe gaming of the community's trust here. I think the block on MM should be shorter; perhaps three or six months, and certainly not over a year.

Anyhow, good luck with this ArbCom. Cool Hand Luke 05:59, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Sorry to hear that, but enjoy, u:Cool Hand luke, you have contributed majorly, and will again, so you certainly deserve a break if you want to take one! Now, you have reminded me, that, many days ago in my#Evidence, I posed this very question concerning the 600emails, and have had, I think no satisfactory reply, which is to say, no reply at all. Therefore, I with low esteem at this point, do assume that i newbyguesses is also found contemptible here, but, helpfully, not by all here. I respect the Arbs. and their deliberations, and may not give up just yet, though I am due a break, especially as i mis-speak at times, and am harsh in my own ears, Ah, well—Newbyguesses - Talk 07:29, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

The community has always had the case - delaying community action to allow arbcom to finish is done out of respect for the committee - respect it seems to be rapidly losing (I'm waiting for Newyorkbrad to post his thoughts as he said he would, before I give up hope.) —Random832 17:09, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

The real harm to the project

"Comment on the content, not the contributor" it says in the nutshell for WP:NPA, but that very philosophy is what the entire encyclopedia is all about. GWH in this edit summarizes one philosophy: that edits by a banned user are automatically bad edits, and once a banned user makes an edit, anyone repeating that edit is by definition acting on behalf of the banned editor. I describe this philosophy as the socialization of content. The other philosophy is that it does not make a difference who makes the edit, the only issue is whether or not it adds or detracts from the article. I call this the who cares, is it good for the encyclopedia? philosophy.

It doesn't matter who is a sockpuppet of whom here. The harm that Mantanmoreland and SamiHarris (whoever they may be in real life) have brought to our encyclopedia is the ritualised restriction of content, regardless of the value of the content, in several articles. That other good faith editors were blocked, humiliated, and threatened when pursuing the improvement of the encyclopedia is the real damage. That administrators, many no doubt acting in good faith or having had their own personal foibles taken advantage of, protected articles, deleted RfCs and blocked editors, and have now had their own reputations tarnished by those decisions is another harm that has come to the encyclopedia.

We keep being reminded that we're here to write an encyclopedia. Anyone who gets in the way of good faith editors doing that, not once but repeatedly, should not be here. Risker (talk) 05:55, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm going to give a concrete example of the issues I raised above with regards to "proxying for a banned user" and how broadly this should be interpreted.

Not long ago on WikBack, Gregory Kohs posted a question that asked whether certain BLP articles were appropriate. I reviewed the examples he gave, and determined that some of the articles he pointed out were indeed not appropriate for Misplaced Pages. I nominated Leah Mates for deletion (and it was deleted), and I moved Elecia Battle to Mega Millions lottery fraud incident to reflect the content (this article was later prodded by another editor, and then deleted). In my judgment, these actions were appropriate by Misplaced Pages policy and helped to improve the encyclopedia by removing material that clearly failed WP:BIO1E and WP:NOT#NEWS. Other editors clearly agreed with this.

But Gregory Kohs is a banned user (MyWikiBiz). Does that mean I was obligated to disregard his statements on WikBack? Was I acting as a "proxy for a banned user" by making these changes and should I be blocked as a result? Again, I did not make these changes simply because he said to; I made them because in my own judgment they were the right thing to do. (Other articles named by him, in my opinion, did not fall into the same category, so I did not propose deleting them.) If Daniel Brandt pointed out another instance of plagiarism on Misplaced Pages (as he did before) should we refuse to correct it on the grounds that this would be proxying for a banned user?

We ban users. We don't ban ideas or concepts. The notion of "proxying for a banned user" was obviously meant to apply to cases where people were posting whatever else someone said to, without applying judgment or discretion. It was not meant to apply to established editors. *** Crotalus *** 06:21, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Well I must say that I concur with u:Risker's setting out, and with u:Crotalus' supporting the case for the "who cares, is it good for the encyclopedia? philosophy." as well. So, I will state then as I should, a counter-argument; and that is: this philosophy is most appealing when it is evident that all observers are, um, intelligent and independent-minded. There does arise the danger, however, of a feedback loop, and the bandwagon effect, whereby more and more (people) become convinced, in toto by actually less and less (real evidence). I believe it was this type of worry which was uppermost in some minds at the time of the banning of u:Cla68, and perhaps is still uppermost in some minds, I wonder, User:GWH.

I will ask then, for now, as I sure have no answers at this stage, sorry: on behalf of which set of abusers, and sock-puppets is it that we should be most afraid, if we are afraid, at this time.

And if we are not afraid, then what considered and conclusive action do we, in our full splendour, and candour, take? Newbyguesses - Talk 07:15, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

A case study in “Jihad”: BLP, smear campaigns, and Misplaced Pages’s complicity in same

GWH, you’ve asked people to “step up to the plate” with diffs that convince you serious abuse has taken place. Others have provided you with excellent evidence of traditional sock abuse – vote-stacking, manufacturing consensus, 6RR, and so on. As you may know, I’m much more concerned about gross violation of NPOV by Weiss’s sock farm, coupled with a systemic failure to correct it so absolute that it amounted, in effect if not intent, to systemic unwitting complicity in a campaign of propaganda, self-promotion, and defamation. In other words, pretty much the worst sort of abuse conceivable on Misplaced Pages.

The components I’ve studied most closely are self-promotion on the Gary Weiss article and character assassination on the Patrick M. Byrne article. In this post I’ll focus on the latter, both because I think long-standing defamation on Misplaced Pages (in this case almost two years) is a more serious issue than promotional puffery, and because I think your tart remarks directed at User:PatrickByrne above are inappropriate. He’s not here to improve articles on tree frogs; he’s here representing his real-world self, as a victim of a campaign of defamation in which we are all somewhat complicit, some of us more than others; we owe him a collective apology, not smug links to guidelines covering our internal etiquette, which isn't his problem.

The problems with the article Patrick M. Byrne are manifold, but my case study will focus on a single word: “Jihad.” From early 2006, when the first pair of Weiss socks arrived at the article, until last week or so, when the article was finally released from Weiss’s OWNership, the word “Jihad” was used (with ever-increasing prominence) to describe Byrne’s campaign against naked short selling. The word was first added to an ordinary paragraph by one Weiss sock, then was promoted to a subheading by another Weiss sock, and at one point was even installed into the lead sentence (!) by Mantanmoreland himself. Once ownership of the article was handed off from Mantanmoreland to Samiharris, the latter did any necessary revert-warring to keep it in. In the history of the article, apart from a couple of whole-sale reverts by Fred Bauder of multiple edits by WB socks, I can’t find any non-Weiss-sock who supported the material, or who generally thought “Jihad” was a good NPOV synonym for “campaign” – in the English language generally, or in this article on a living person specifically.

The various Weiss socks argued that “Jihad” was the preferred term of Byrne himself for his campaign. Two minutes of research reveal that claim to be a rank deception. Here’s the background: in late 2005, after a particularly bad third quarter for Overstock, Patrick Byrne said self-deprecatingly, “Some will criticize me for taking my eye off the ball to pursue a jihad." Then, when Byrne's father stepped down as chairman of Overstock, he told the Wall Street Journal that he "couldn't tell whether this jihad adds to the value of the stock or subtracts from it, but what it does is take from Patrick's time." That's it. ]

The real-life Gary Weiss immediately seized upon the possibilities for character assassination afforded by Byrne’s self-deprecating comment. In early 2006, on his attack/harassment site, garyweiss.blogspot.com, Weiss wrote that Byrne’s use of the word “jihad”

got me to thinking about his politics. What other "jihads" does Byrne endorse? After all, my only personal experience with jihads is this one, which happened down the street from me a few years ago. It was unpleasant, but I'm willing to keep an open mind on the subject. Maybe there are some good "jihads" out there that Byrne can suggest...

...and so forth and so on, blah blah jihad blah blah. "This one" in the passage above is hyperlinked by Weiss to photographs of the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center.

In early April, Weiss’s “Tomstoner” sock added a brief paragraph about the father’s resignation, quoting the word “jihad.” This is a justifiable edit. If foregrounding the word “jihad” skirts the edges of WP:UNDUE, it does at least give the flavor of fatherly exasperation with the junior Byrne’s management style, which after all is what made the story notable in the first place. But then a couple weeks later Weiss’s other sock Lastexit changes the title of the section on "Media Attention" to "'Jihad' against naked shorting"; LE's new edit also featured a sentence that read "Byrne subsequently commenced what he described as a "jihad" against naked short selling."

In October of that year Mantanmoreland joins in with the "jihad." After a series of skirmishes with a WordBomb sock over whether The Register was a reliable source (nota bene: this was before The Register had published material critical of Weiss, and both Mantan's position and Misplaced Pages's at that time was that The Register was reliable), Mantan performed a curious edit, which claimed in its edit summary to merely "rv POV pushing" by the WB sock, but in fact installed a new lead sentence that had never been introduced or discussed before. It read, "Patrick M. Byrne is President and CEO of internet retailer Overstock.com best known for his "jihad" against Naked short selling." He then edit-warred four more times in October to protect this extraordinary lead. After more edit-warring from WordBomb socks, Mantan finally settled for a lead that read "Patrick M. Byrne is President and CEO of internet retailer Overstock.com. He is best known for his allegations that naked short sellers, whose alleged leader he referred to as the "Sith Lord", targeted the stock of Overstock.com." The last clause – this is the lead sentence of a BLP, remember – refers to a jokey Star Wars reference Byrne made in a phone interview.

One thing should be clear by now. As awful as the Byrne article has been for the last two years – that is, as grossly as it violates BLP and NPOV – we have, by and large, only WordBomb socks to thank for its not having been much worse. No ordinary editor was going to go in there and fix the grotesquerie, and when Cla68 – an editor of sterling reputation – tried to fix problems in related articles – he was accused of being a WordBomb sock. One of the wilder conspiracy theorists on Misplaced Pages – the same editor now floating the theory that Samiharris might be Wordbomb – even suggested she had undisclosed evidence that Cla68 lived in Utah. And you, GWH, are still claiming – with what I would call breathtaking audacity – that Cla68 acted as a sort of meatpuppet, that his hands are somehow not clean, to which I can only respond that no hands remain clean after scooping up Weiss’s leavings. I do not think that statement of yours merits much response, but I will say that either your impossibly high standards of evidence for sockpuppetry and COI are coupled with alarmingly low standards of evidence for meatpuppetry, or pridefulness has gotten the better of your reason with regards to the present matter.

Back to “jihad” on the Byrne page. After the baton hand-off from Mantan to Sami, Sami took up the mantle of edit-warring over prominent references to “jihad.” Here he is in March of 2007, “adding reference to "jihad" oddly omitted from article", but of course not simply adding a reference but adding a prominent heading, changing “Campaign against naked shorting" to "'Jihad' against naked shorting." Then again here ("reverting POV changes and removal of sourced material and links by SPA") and here ("rv vandalism by SPA"), and here ("rv", no further explanation).

This is a case study of one word. As Mackan has eloquently pointed out, however, the process of strangulation of an article by propaganda has to be looked at holistically.--G-Dett (talk) 17:35, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for this excellent evaluation of one piece of the problem. --Rocksanddirt (talk) 18:31, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

The various Weiss socks argued that “Jihad” was the preferred term of Byrne himself for his campaign. Two minutes of research reveal that claim to be a rank deception. One minute of research reveals seventy media references to Byrne's use of the term "jihad.". Multiple references in Fortune, the New York Times and Wall Street Journal.--Mantanmoreland (talk) 18:43, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Well, putting "Patrick Byrne" in quotes in your search bar eliminates such curiosities as the local Charleston Gazette 's list of high-school honor roll students – Keely Dawson, Phillip Hall, Peyton Jackson, Jihad McGraw, Kalik Ross, Andrew Yianne ... Scott Adams, Brandon Beasley, Natalie Byrne, Kelsey Crookshanks – limiting the raw haul to thirty-four. Eliminating mirror-sites and non-RSs brings it down to about a fifth of that. What remains, I should hastily concede, include CNNMoney, Forbes, Salt Lake Tribune, The Wall Street Journal, and a piece in Salon by our very own Gary Weiss. So your septuapedal point still stands, or sort of staggers anyway, on the half-dozen legs remaining to it. I should however concede that in an interview with one of the non-RSs, Byrne does say, in another bit of gauche self-deprecation that I confess to finding poignant, especially when I think how fully you've exploited it on Misplaced Pages and in the real world: "I developed a bit of a heart issue that has slowed me down. Really, for the last year-and a half, this fight has sucked up all my spare time. I spent 10 to 12 hours a day at Overstock, and I spent sometime each evening working on the 'jihad' – that's what I call it."

Irony aside, in light of that quoted comment, even if it is in a non-RS, I wish to retract what I said above about "rank deception," with apologies.

Given that the same search engine gives 1840 hits for "patrick byrne" + Overstock, do you think this handful of passing mentions provided a solid basis – per WP:NPOV and WP:BLP – to change the "Media attention" section to a "Jihad against Naked short selling" section? And change the article's first sentence to "Patrick M. Byrne is President and CEO of internet retailer Overstock.com best known for his "jihad" against Naked short selling"? How do you square this with Mantan/Sami's vehement opposition to even a single sentence in the Gary Weiss article about the New York Times' observation that Weiss "has made a second career out of ridiculing Mr. Byrne on his blog"?

Hard though it may be to give them a Tombstone twist, "Kelsey Crookshanks" and "Jihad McGraw" would make excellent names for future socks.--G-Dett (talk) 20:06, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Brilliant, G-Dett! Please put this up on the evidence page. Also, I hope you have a copy handy in case anything here is ever wiped away for BLP reasons. This should be useful in the community case. In the Google search I saw, the results got cut down from 70 to 34 with the quotes added around "patrick byrne". In almost every remaining case, "jihad" is attributed to Byrne or his father (prominent exceptions being articles in Forbes and Red Herring, or opinion pieces). Misplaced Pages articles, particularly BLPs are not supposed to be written in the breezier style of a magazine article or a comment in an ArbCom talk page, especially with something considered negative. Oh, by the way, Mantanmoreland, you wouldn't happen to be LastExit or Tomstoner, would you? You never have answered that question after Durova and I repeatedly asked you, have you? Noroton (talk) 20:33, 5 March 2008 (UTC) (edited to add the first word & "!" Noroton (talk) 20:36, 5 March 2008 (UTC))

Oh, and just in case any editor at all doesn't understand the full weight of the WP:BLP references above, it's useful to quote just what the policy says about that:

Biographies of living people should be written responsibly, conservatively, and in a neutral, encyclopedic tone. The article should document, in a non-partisan manner, what reliable third party sources have published about the subject The writing style should be neutral and factual, avoiding both understatement and overstatement.

And let's not forget the Jimboquote in all its gray-ensconced glory:

Template:Jimboquote Noroton (talk) 20:52, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

One final point. I do not present the following as evidence against Mantan per se, but rather as food for thought when we consider the possible stakes and consequences of all this. In sifting through the raw haul (i.e. including blogs, mirror sites, non RSs, etc.) of the 34 citations from Mantan's corrected search (Jihad + "Patrick Byrne"), I can't help but notice that only a few had occurred before Lastexit made his April 29, 2006 edit elevating "Jihad against Naked short selling" to a prominent subheading. My point is not that Lastexit's sourcing was problematic; though his edit was an obvious violation of WP:NPOV, WP:UNDUE, and WP:BLP, his source – a brief AP article hosted by MSNBC – was good enough. My point is that the bulk of media references came afterward, in the late spring, summer, and fall, and in 2007 – at a time, that is to say, when the first hit anyone (blogger, stringer, journalist, what have you) googling for information on Patrick Byrne would get would have been a Misplaced Pages article with a prominently featured section titled "Jihad against Naked short selling."

Remember that Weiss is simultaneously flogging "jihad" for all its worth on his blog, having invoked it some twenty-four times. The first of these was posted on February 19, 2006, at a point when only one mainstream outlet had mentioned the word (in the fifth paragraph of a breezy, sarcastic piece on the "phantom menace" of naked shorting). This post is the one I quoted above, where Weiss wonders to himself, "What other 'jihads' does Byrne endorse?" That post begins:

I see that the CEO of Overstock Inc., Patrick Byrne, got heat last week from some bloggers for describing a suit he is pursuing against short-sellers as "my jihad."

"Some bloggers" is hyperlinked to a single piece by the anonymous blogger Mediacrity, who – if Bagley is to be believed – is Weiss himself. The question of Bagley's online ethics aside, I sense we're at a tipping point towards faith in his forensic claims. And Mediacrity certainly sounds like Weiss ("next time Byrne is in downtown New York, he may want to stop by Ground Zero to see what a real ’jihad’ is all about. And it ain’t about hiring some guys in pinstriped suits").

Now, of course Weiss is free to do whatever he likes with his blog or blogs, including "socking" with them to create the illusion of a consensus of outrage at Patrick Byrne. But insofar as it's indicative of Weiss' agenda, the techniques employed to advance that agenda, and the strategic dovetailing of these techniques with the ones he's employed on Misplaced Pages, I think it merits our consideration, in the same way that Bagley's off-wiki actions have been seen to merit our consideration.--G-Dett (talk) 23:45, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

<--Good catches all. To the extent anyone might still question your first point, I'd also note one of the more blatant uses of the same method with the "Sith lord" quote, where Byrne's entire argument is reduced to the following:

The company has received attention, not all of it favorable, for CEO Patrick Byrne's battle against alleged naked short selling of his company's shares. Byrne has claimed that his company's shares have been attacked by "miscreants" in the stock market, headed by a "Sith Lord." Critics maintain that Byrne is seeking to divert attention from the company's failure to turn a profit.

G-Dett has covered the point such that I won't try to repeat it. Mackan79 (talk) 01:36, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Comments coming

I have intended for the past couple of days to post some additional comments regarding my views of this case. Unfortunately, real-world time constraints plus my desire to make sure that I speak with greater clarity this time around have interfered. I expect to post my further thoughts sometime this evening (east coast US time). Newyorkbrad (talk) 19:24, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the update! While many are eagerly awaiting your thoughts, I think we understand the need to think it through carefully. --Rocksanddirt (talk) 19:28, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Oh, you're such a tease... LessHeard vanU (talk) 21:21, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Comments

I voted to accept this case in part to address the allegation that two accounts were sockpuppets, and in part to address the very serious problems that have arisen concerning naked short selling, Gary Weiss, and related articles. After lengthy examination of the evidence and proposals, and consultations with a number of my fellow arbitrators, I posted a proposed decision that was intended to represent a consensus view that would not only address the specific allegation of misuse of alternate accounts, but provide for a longer-term solution to the problems on these articles. Being something of a consensus work product, the proposed decision did not reflect precisely how I would have decided the case if I were the sole decision-maker, or what I would have proposed if I had just posted my first draft without checking with anyone. It was, however, a carefully reasoned and well-intended effort to resolve one of the most divisive and longstanding problems that the Misplaced Pages community has ever faced, and I had no qualms about presenting it as such.

In my 18 months of activity on Misplaced Pages, throughout almost all of which I have participated in the arbitration process in one capacity or another, I don't believe that I have ever seen as hostile a community reaction to a proposed arbitration decision. I am not just referring to mild disapproval, but to outright fury on the one hand and confusion on the other; and not just from partisans in the case but from some of my fellow administrators and including extremely respected functionaries (clerks and checkusers) whom the committee works with every day. There have been cries of abrogation of duty and cover-up, there have been calls for votes of no confidence in the committee, and then there are some users who seem simply bewildered about why the committee has limited the proposed findings and remedies to the extent that it has. As I observed the other day, at a basic level the proposed decision that I drafted seems to have failed in its fundamental purpose of communicating with those who read it: It is as if I drafted the decision in Martian. The allegations against me or any other arbitrator of bad faith and cover-up are bogus, but the allegation that I have not in the least succeeded in crafting a proposed decision that more than a handful of users have found convincing, appears to be sound.

Clearly a more detailed explanation of my position is required. In these comments, I speak for no one but myself.

Background

At some point after I became an active editor in July 2006 and an administrator in January 2007, I became aware that there was a longstanding feud outside Misplaced Pages concerning alleged short selling of the stock of a company called overstock.com and that this feud had reached Misplaced Pages. My editing interests generally do not include the financial articles and I don't believe I ever had occasion to look at the articles that were or allegedly were affected. During 2007, my general understanding was that a user on one side of the dispute had been banned for misbehavior and that there were concerns about some off-wiki conduct by people involved in this affair. I also knew there were allegations that a real-world individual on the other side of the dispute had edited articles despite an undisclosed conflict of interest. My general understanding in 2007 was that there was a consensus within the community that the problems had been examined and resolved. Although I spent a great deal of time on Misplaced Pages, it is not as much time as some people surmise, and I certainly do not reexamine every situation that I understand has already been reviewed and resolved at high levels within the community. My understanding, rightly or wrongly, was that most of the ongoing accusations of misbehavior were coming from partisans to the real-world controversy, and like many others I, rightly or wrongly, discounted them accordingly. This was particularly easy to do given that partisans on one side of the case were being accused, whether rightly or wrongly or some of each, of conduct that Wikipedians generally consider unacceptable.

One of the allegations that started to be bruited about was that a well-known real world individual was still involved in editing of articles concerning himself and financial topics of interest to him, as to at least some of which he had a conflict of interest. It was also alleged that this individual had created an alternate account to engage in more COI editing, even after having previously been admonished by an administrator/arbitrator not to do so after having been detected in a prior instance of doing the same thing.

Several weeks ago, a number of administrators and editors with no involvement in the off-wiki or, to my knowledge, the on-wiki dispute launched an independent investigation of the allegations that had been made, and particularly the allegation that Mantanmoreland and Samiharris were sockpuppets, and that the accounts were being used abusively, not just to conduct conflicted editing but also for double-!voting and the like. The group of editors who started looking into this matter put enormous time and effort into their project, and in the process they assembled what probably constitutes the largest body of evidence (whether compelling or not I will discuss below) that has ever been compiled in Misplaced Pages history to evaluate a sockpuppetry allegation.

I think it is fair to say that these editors' presentations and analysis have effected a sea-change in the conventional wisdom in the community with regard to these articles and editors. Two months ago, I probably would have been denounced had I suggested on-wiki that there was anything at all wrong with Mantanmoreland's editing, whereas in the past week, I have been denounced for not proposing that Mantanmoreland be ridden out of town on a rail. I for one (and again, I don't purport to be speaking for anyone but me; this is very much an introspection) have a very different view of this entire situation than I did just a few weeks ago.

While in general I am not at all a fan of users' conducting laborious "investigations" of one another, we must certainly acknowledge the impact that this one has had. Of course, none of the findings of misconduct by one side can or should excuse misconduct by other editors or individuals. In fact, one side's conduct probably delayed for a long time the realization and acknowledgement that there appears to be problematic conduct on the other side as well. But I think we do have a realization that the underlying situation going back to 2006 may have been dealt with— despite the best of faith on the part of all of the administrators and non-combatants who participated in addressing it—in a more simplistic manner than perhaps it best could have been.

The arbitration case

The investigative efforts of SirFozzie and others led to a request for comment in which a great deal of the sockpuppetry evidence was presented, resulting in a consensus among the editors commenting that the case had been proved. The matter was then brought at a high boil to arbitration and we took the case. My comment at the time was that we should try to resolve this unusually divisive dispute "in an expedited manner." That has not worked out.

The evidence presented expanded and built upon the findings in the RfC. Most, though by no means all, participants concluded that the evidence demonstrated that Mantanmoreland and Samiharris were most likely the same user. Various different types of evidence—ranging from choices of topics and editing times, to figures of speech and tics of punctuation, to the appearance of one account after the other had agreed not to edit certain articles—were cited in support of this conclusion. An array of different statistical analyses were presented, with varying degrees of methodological sophistication but generally at least somewhat corroborative of the "MM=SH" hypothesis.

No useful results could be obtained from the checkuser tool, because Mantanmoreland's edits were made from a conventional ISP whereas Samiharris edited through a paid proxy service. To those who believed that Samiharris was a sock, habitual editing through proxies plainly demonstrated an intent to evade being checkusered; Samiharris offered the explanation that he used an anonymizing proxy because another person involved in this situation had made attempts to out editors by exposing their ISP's.

Mantanmoreland and Samiharris each vigorously denied that they were the same user. The off-wiki individual who had been associated with the accounts denied that he was behind either of them. For the past month or so, Mantanmoreland's editing has been largely, though not entirely, confined to the RfC, this arbitration case, and related pages. Meanwhile, on February 8, Samiharris announced on ANI that he was leaving the project after asserting that he was being harassed by his opponents. He has not edited since.

Some editors, including an extremely senior member of the community, posted that they could not accept that MM=SH because their writing styles are very different. In particular, reference was made to hundreds of e-mails sent by Mantanmoreland and Samilarris, which it was opined could not be products of the same hand. I have had no access to any of these e-mails and therefore could not reach my own conclusions about what, if anything, they might show. There were also some general references to the writing styles of Mantanmoreland and Samiharris on Misplaced Pages itself, but in a brief review I did not find them either similar or dissimilar enough on their face to affect my analysis of the case one way or the other.

There were many sorts of evidence bearing on whether MM=SH, and in these already overlong ramblings I certainly am not noting every item or discussing every nuance, but this was my general overview and understanding of the evidence as it became time to move the case into voting.

Drafting a decision

There is no particular methodology within the Arbitration Committee for deciding who will draft which decisions. Fred Bauder, who wrote most of the decisions for over a year, is no longer an arbitrator, and Kirill Lokshin, who has written more decisions than any other arbitrator over the past several months, is recused in this case. On our internal mailing list, I volunteered to draft a proposed decision in this case. (No one offered to fight me for the honor. I will mention in passing that the fact that I suggested I draft this case is at odds with the meme that I am some sort of politician who aspires to popularity by never getting involved in anything controversial. But I digress.)

I thought the "principles" with which we lead off every decision would be particularly important in this case. I prepared a set of proposed principles—some borrowed from other cases and adapted, some novel, all carefully thought out—and posted them to the workshop. There, I received useful comments on the drafting from a number of users, who have my thanks. As you all know, I did not post the proposed findings and remedies in this case before I took them to the proposed decision page. I could legitimately be criticized for that omission, although oddly enough none of the dozens of people who have been critical of my work product in this case seem to have noticed it.

The most difficult aspect of formulating a proposed decision was deciding which topics to write about. One focus, of course, was on the sock allegations against Mantanmoreland and Samiharris. My personal opinion was that the evidence of sockpuppetry was strong. It was not altogether conclusive, and there were reasons (on which more below) that I thought we needed to avoid error in this case, but it was strong evidence nonetheless, particularly as the variety of different types of evidence corroborated each other. So that became a focus of a first draft decision that I started preparing.

The next question to face was whether to make findings about whether a well-known real-life individual was behind either or both accounts. Although I had, and have, a personal opinion regarding this issue, my view was that the official decision of the Arbitration Committee should stay away from this specific issue. In a case last fall, the committee noted in a principle that there is a conflict between Misplaced Pages's permitting anonymous or pseudonymous editing and our forbidding the revelation or "outing" of anonymous editors, on the one hand, and our guidelines constraining editing by users with conflicts of interest, on the other—creating conflicts and tensions that, of necessity, are imperfectly resolved. This case illustrates well the problem—one that we as a project have not yet found a good answer for.

Beyond that, I thought it important to bear in mind the context in which the on-wiki dispute arises. The off-wiki or "real world" feud over whether naked short selling of overstock.com stock has impacted that company's stock price is an extremely protracted and bitter one, involving very determined individuals with a great deal of energy to devote to the matter, and unfortunately for all concerned it shows no signs of ending. It is not the role of Misplaced Pages, either in our mainspace article content or in our dispute resolution procedures culminating in arbitration, to play any role in such disputes, beyond reporting about the disputes where they become sufficiently notable and documented in reliable sources. Already and for far too long, our editors and our articles had been or had allegedly been too involved with this off-wiki problem; and the main goal of the decision I would draft, I decided, was to put an immediate and definitive end to that unacceptable on-wiki situation.

I also reasoned that it would be highly undesirable to write anything in an "official decision of the Arbitration Committee" that was likely to be used, or misused, in the context of off-wiki disputes. Contrary to some speculation, I personally am not aware of any legal threats against Misplaced Pages from anyone involved in this matter, and no such threats influenced how I drafted the decision. On the other hand, given the real-world background to the on-wiki dispute, I did not desire through the decision itself to create evidence that could be used someday by any side in some other and very different kind of proceeding. I did not delude myself that the words of proposed principle 8, though I chose them with great care, could have a binding effect on anyone. And there is also the fact that no matter how confident I or other arbitrators might be in a conclusion we reach—we might be wrong. The Arbitration Committee strives to be right and not wrong—but our being wrong has one level of consequence if the question is whether SevenOfDiamonds is a sockpuppet of NuclearUmpf, and potentially a very different level of consequence if we set out to answer whether a well-known real-world individual has been messing around with his biography. I reasoned that we might have to decide a question of that nature someday if there were no alternative, but I thought (and still think) that I had developed some remedies that could address the problems with these articles in a different and forward-looking fashion. And so it is that no real-world individuals are mentioned, other than as article titles, in the proposed decision, nor do I think they should be.

It has been suggested that the case should have had a vastly broader scope, such as evaluating whether disputes arising from the overstock feud were handled well back in 2006. Although the community may reach conclusions on that issue, and I could imagine a request for arbitration that would encompass it, in general arbitration deals with the current and future operation of Misplaced Pages rather than matters of the past (and in wiki-time, 2006 is ancient history). Moreover, none of the administrators who historically were part of addressing these issues are parties to the case (we could add them, but no one suggested that we should). So again, I decided that the focus was better on the present, and even more importantly the future, rather than the past.

I finished writing up a proposed decision by crafting some remedies (on which more below) and enforcement provisions, and I circulated it to the Arbitration Committee distribution for comments. The discussions within the committee are, and must remain, confidential, but I believe other arbitrators have already acknowledged that an immediate consensus did not emerge concerning every aspect of how the case should be handled. I modified the draft with the desire to post a proposed decision that would reflect consensus.

There have been, incidentally, suggestions that the arbitrators should not work for consensus within the committee on high-profile cases, but that each arbitrator should be out front with her or her own position on every aspect of the case. That question of procedure and philosophy deserves a full community discussion sometime soon, preferably outside the context of a specific case and when this particular one is over. There are real-world analogs to the question posted by Jay*Jay above, which is when an individual arbitrator should insist on making his own voice heard even when he is in the minority and when consensus, which normally governs on Misplaced Pages, should be the order of the day. (I find it ironic that I, who dissented vociferously in Matthew Hoffman and on many of the findings and remedies in IRC and may soon be badly outvoted again in another matter, find myself the one accused of lacking in the expression of my own voice. That is far from true. But again I digress.) Suffice it to say that there are legitimate arguments on both sides of this discussion, and that I would be glad to engage both viewpoints when the time is right with specific examples of prior cases in which the committee reached internal consensus first versus those in which they or we hammered everything out blow-by-blow on the wiki, and in which things worked out well or they worked out badly. Whether this might turn out to have been a case in which the community would have benefitted from watching the early steps of how sausage is made is left as an exercise for the reader.

The proposed decision

With all this in mind, I took the draft decision that I had circulated and all of the comments I had received on it, and sat down to write a proposed final decision. My goal in doing so was to address the immediate issues before the committee, but at least equally important, to solve the issues that are affecting the reputation and content of the articles in dispute. I thought, quite honestly, that the purpose and effect of the decision would be clear to readers, whether or not they agreed with it—a prediction on which I missed very, very badly. (In retrospect, I may have gotten too steeped in our internal discussion, and lost sight of the fact that the vast majority of readers of the proposed decision, including partisans and others, would not have seen them.)

The principles set forth in the decision are meant to be straightforward and significant. Their drafting was improved by comments I received in both the on-wiki workshop and from fellow arbitrators. It has been suggested that the wording of the sockpuppetry standard may need clarification. I invite alternative proposals.

Proposed finding 1 is straightforward. Proposed finding 2 (note that it has been reworded a bit by another arbitrator since I first proposed it) is straightforward as far as it goes, which obviously is not far enough for practically anyone who has taken the time to comment on it. It's been pointed out on this page that this finding was an attempt to state a consensus, not the statement of any one arbitrator's individual view. My own view is that there is strong evidence we are dealing with two alternate accounts (either sockpuppets or conceivably "meatpuppets") of the same user. Again, I will not disclose our internal committee discussions, but from the comments that have been made on-wiki it should be clear that there are other arbitrators who hold differing views on this issue. Proposed finding 3 is also straightforward and is extremely important in defining the need for and the structure of the remedies. No one commenting on the draft seems to have paid much attention to it, including the provision where we acknowledge that the reliability of the articles under discussion and the fairness of our processes has been called into question.

The primary purpose of the remedies, which again have not been looked at in much detail by anyone, is to reclaim the affected articles from any allegedly conflicted, controlling, POV, or otherwise improper editing from any source. Whether or not there is some level of problem with the content of the articles (I am willing to accept that there probably is, although the Arbitration Committee does not make content rulings), there can be no dispute that they need to be protected as best we can from future effects of the off-wiki feud and its on-wiki manifestations. Remedy 1(A) bars socking on these articles or related pages; remedy 1(B) bars editing them through proxies, which is how it is alleged that Samiharris evaded being checkusered; remedy 1(C) bars using our pages for advocacy and insists that these articles be editing in strict accordance with our policies; and remedy 1(D) requires mandatory disclose of conflicts that editors on the articles might have.

I don't believe the committee has used remedies of this nature before. They were a sincere attempt to solve a serious problem. If editors abide by these strictures (and I concede that they may need some copyediting or tweaking), then a great deal of the problem with this group of articles may soon be resolved. If editors do not abide by them, then remedy 2 calls for them to be enforced. And remedy 3, which calls for new editors to take a fresh look at these articles, also has a role to play. Knowledgeable editors, not previously involved in editing these articles, will perform an important service to the community if they will evaluate the articles and help to improve them.

Enforcement provision 1 is the standard enforcement provision, but it emphasizes that the remedies are meant to be enforced. Enforcement 2, which again has not been picked up on, is an unusual provision for an arbitrator decision but emphasizes what I, and I hope what my colleagues who vote for the decision, are attempting to accomplish. And enforcement 3, which says that the committee should be informed if serious problems continue on this article, was my attempt to say that we are not going to leave cleaning this problem up to the administrators on Arbitration Enforcement, but are prepared to return to the problem and finish the job as and if it became unhappily clear that our attempt to banish the off-wiki dispute and the editors behind it from our pages had not yet succeeded. (I expressed concern that we were making the mistake of doing too little in our decision and leaving too much for the pour souls who monitor WP:AE in the Waterboarding case; it certainly was not my intention to do the same thing.) Unfortunately the intent of enforcement 3 does not seem to have come through clearly; even some of my fellow arbitrators who supported the balance of the decision were unable to discern its point, which certainly suggests that I was not as clear as I should have been.

The question that everyone is asking about the remedies, of course, is why there is no remedy against Mantanmoreland and Samiharris. One could certainly make a case that if MM=SH is regarded as sufficiently proved, there should be a remedy; and if another arbitrator were to propose such a remedy, I might very well support it. The consensus finding of fact on MM=SH, of itself, probably would not have supported a strong remedy. In deciding that I could live without remedies against Mantanmoreland and Samiharris, an important factor for me was that the problem had to a large extent been reduced by the publicity the situation had already received. Samiharris is no longer editing. Mantanmoreland is no longer doing much mainspace editing, certainly not on the articles in dispute. There has been no allegation that the individual alleged to be behind one or both of these accounts has created any new accounts. The community is watching very, very closely.

So I thought that on balance what we had here was a useful decision that actually would accomplish something. There were some portions that were improved from my original private draft as a result of input from other arbitrators, and others that I did not like as much as my original. But I didn't think it was a terrible decision. And though I knew there would be disappointment I didn't go farther, I didn't think, quite honestly, that it could be viewed as an outrage or a dereliction or certainly as a cover-up. We acknowledged that there was evidence of socking (with the caveat that at least some of us might have gone further), we acknowledged that there were issues with the reliability of the articles and with whether some of our processes had been used fairly, and we barred further use of specific tactics (socking, proxying, and so on) that had allegedly been misused.

The last time I worked with other arbitrators to carefully craft a compromise, consensus decision in a case arising from a dispute that was the main subject all over the noticeboards and the mailing lists for several days, it worked. The decision was generally accepted, the drama surrounding that issue disappeared, and those of our contributors who wished to remain active went back to writing an encyclopedia. When the history of Misplaced Pages for 2008 is written, that episode will be a semi-forgotten blip. I didn't think this case would become a blip, but I thought we had crafted something productive, even though it didn't shout "MM=SH and both are banned" from the rooftops. I thought that we had given some validation to those who had put in the investigative work, and stated that their concerns had been very legitimate and were being taken very seriously. On the other hand, when our own senior Clerk creates a thread on this page called "This decision fails the community," obviously I have swung and missed.

Clearly in my effort to reach a consensus decision, I satisfied virtually nobody. (The first editor above who seems to have picked up on what we were actually trying to accomplish is Avruch. Thanks.)

Note to my 2006-2007 self, as well as to future candidates for the Arbitration Committee: This job is harder than it looks.

Where do we go from here? To the community and the partisans

So, what now?

Arbitrators will continue voting on the proposed decision. (No one has voted in four days; I'm not sure why.) Any arbitrator is free to make new or alternative proposals. Any editor is free to make proposals on the workshop or on this page. (If an arbitrator wants to propose further findings on the MM/SH issue, Thatcher's drafts on the workshop are well-phrased.)

The question has been raised whether, if the ArbCom does not take action against MM/SH, the commmunity may. Above, I've cited the Archtransit matter as not exactly a precedent but the most similar situation that I could quickly think of. Here, I would not interfere to stop a community ban, imposed after a fair process, if the community took matters in that direction. However, I don't think that the drama of arguing about this in the immediate wake of the decision's passing would be necessary. I think, I hope (maybe naively) that the problem will take care of itself. If it does not and this situation recurs, then there will be time enough for the community to act, although if the evidence that the problem continues is clear then this arbitrator will certainly move to act first.

I have remarked above that an ill-worded committee decision in this case could have unpredictable real-world consequences. Other arbitrators may be more mindful of those than even I have been. For this reason, I do not believe that the findings (as opposed to the principles) regarding the "Duck Test" and related matters are well-suited for use as a precedent in any other case. Nonetheless, I would welcome any suggestions for improvement of the language used in either the principles or the findings, particularly by those with experience with the SSP board or with checkuser.

I do look forward to some discussion of the role of arbitrators and the committee, and how we balance between the development of consensus and the expressions of our individual voice.

Editors who have suggested that they feel disaffected or are thinking of leaving the project out of dissatisfaction with the proposed decision in this case are earnestly asked to reconsider. Maybe you'll read this long monolog and decide that it was a good decision after all. Maybe you'll read this long monolog and decide that that the decision remains "well, crappy," but that still we seem to mean well and it's not the end of the world. (Maybe you'll try to read this long monolog and fall asleep halfway through. I'm sorry about that, but when I'm asked this many questions about how I could possibly explain myself, this is what happens.)

And I want to close by addressing the people behind the accounts, on both sides of the off-wiki dispute. I name no names but you know who you are (and of course some of you have named your own names, and that is fine too).

Misplaced Pages is a novel, in many ways flawed, but in many ways so far successful attempt to create a collaborative, free-content, online encyclopedia. This project does not exist so that any side of a real-world dispute, relating to the financial markets or anything else, can perpetuate its point of view. We ask everyone to abide by certain basic policies: to edit from a neutral point of view. To avoid editing with conflicts of interest or at least to disclose them. Not to misuse multiple accounts. Not to embroil us in outside controversies. Not to create what is referred to as "drama"—endless, self-feeding discussion about a controversy, building upon itself until it reaches a crescendo of demoralizing, destructive fury. But to be part of our community and contribute to our encyclopedia. That is what matters; all the rest, including administration and arbitration, is ancillary.

The importation of the overstock/short selling controversy into Misplaced Pages has not helped either of the sides to the dispute. And it has not helped Misplaced Pages. Look at how many hundreds of hours of our contributors' time have been expended on investigating and suspecting and calling one another names. Look at the destruction that has been wrought on our morale and our work. Look at the pure anger and bitterness that are spilling out of this and the companion pages in all directions. Frankly, some of our editors are terrified of going anywhere near any of you. No good is done by continuing in this vein. No good for any of you, and certainly no good for us.

To the people behind the accounts, on both sides of the fight, or who might be or who allegedly are behind the accounts—here I will say nothing more about the past, for the moment. Forget briefly the question of what I or we or our community believe has been done to this point. But whatever else you can bring yourselves to do, please resolve, from this instant forward, that your battles will be fought elsewhere than on Misplaced Pages. We will do our job of watching the articles that concern you. But for your parts, you have your blogs, your columns, an entire Internet and an entire world in which to make peace with one another or (alas more likely) to fail to do so and to keep on fighting. But please, not here; no more here; no more, no more, no more. We need to stop the bleeding; we need our encyclopedia back. Newyorkbrad (talk) 04:46, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Reactions

User:Random832

I'll start my reaction with a general note: I think part of the reason for this reaction is hurt feelings because many users who have participated in this case have devoted a lot of energy to providing evidence on, e.g., the sockpuppet issue, or the GW issue, and these aren't being addressed. Some early guidance on the direction of the case would perhaps have been appreciated, particularly when the scope is unclear (certainly, I think the last thing anyone expected was for the scope to be narrow on something other than the sockpuppet issue.)

Some specific deficiencies in the case as it stands now, I think:

• No way to enforce the ban on open proxy use. My proposed automatic periodic checkuser idea is rather less appropriate when it's on all editors to an article rather than to specific named editors. And requiring someone to request checkuser has an obvious deficiency: The fact that User:Palabrazo was blocked speaks for itself (and, even though he was indeed checkuser confirmed as a sock of WordBomb, this was not the case at the time of his initial block)
• Relata made a statement almost a week ago that seems relevant: Really? Why? So you can bring a couple of sockpuppets in through open proxies and revert me? And then I'll be "involved" and subject to banning? No bloody thanks.
  • I think this goes to an issue that has, I've noticed, caused substantial problems for the community in the last month or so: The idea of involvement. Who is "involved" in a dispute? If you go in to try to resolve a dispute, and fail, or if someone on one side (both sides?) accuses you of being partial to the other side, does that make you involved?

Finally... I don't think it ever occured to anyone that Arbcom was going to try to address the content issue. I don't think anyone read the decision the way you intended, because arbcom usually explicitly doesn't focus on the articles.

One last thing, actually: I have a question. Is the GW issue getting in the way of the MM/SH issue? A lot of the complicating real-world factors that you and other arbitrators are talking about seem to apply more to the former than the latter - I'm finding it hard to accept that you think that "Samiharris is a sockpuppet of Mantanmoreland", without reference to any real identifiable person, is going to cause the kind of real-world issues you're talking about as reasons why this is different than SevenOfDiamonds.

—Random832 04:51, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Response by User:Mackan79

I agree that Misplaced Pages needs to be restored and should work to minimize the role it has played in this off Misplaced Pages dispute. What concerns me is the idea that to acknowledge abuses of Misplaced Pages should suddenly be given up for that goal. One side of the dispute has been banned and attacked on Misplaced Pages for years; now the other has been shown to have been abusing Misplaced Pages from before that time, but the committee seems to have suggested basically just that we can keep a closer watch in the future. If the aim is to extricate Misplaced Pages from the dispute and from now on to play a truly neutral role, that’s entirely a positive development, but then the treatment of both sides needs to be considered together. This should be equally strict or equally lenient. I don’t have a strong preference for either, but reevaluating for one side and not the other doesn’t in my view seem to justify the proposal. Mackan79 (talk) 05:40, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Response from User:Risker

Thank you, Brad, for sharing this in-depth analysis of your thinking as you developed this decision. It's been my contention all along that the vitriol on these pages (and in your inbox) is not really about you, it is about the disconnect between the decision the community hoped for and the one it got. That doesn't mean it is a bad decision, it means that it will take people longer than usual to analyse the proposed decision.

The community, I believe, viewed the sockpuppetry investigation and hoped-for finding as an essential first step in reasserting control of the articles involved; the committee has apparently decided that the issues with the articles can be addressed without making a specific sockpuppetry finding. I think Random832 is correct, that the community did not anticipate such significant focus on the articles themselves. That focus is probably well-placed in this particular case, given that the articles include three BLPs, a well-known public company, and a financial issue that has been extremely contentious in both the on- and off-wiki worlds. That these articles are problematic seems to have been taken as gospel by the committee, given the limited evidence submitted specific to editing practices on the articles. (I agree with the committee on that point.)

I think you are correct about the status of the accounts involved; both are so thoroughly discredited at this point that any edits they make to the articles involved are likely to be subjected to the same degree of scrutiny as those made by supposed WordBomb sockpuppets (that is, if we can find a sufficient number of previously uninvolved administrators to watch the articles like hawks). Sadly, I am nowhere near as optimistic as you when it comes to the likelihood of future sockpuppets; it wouldn't surprise me at all to find out there have been a few being worked up for a while now - and given the mountain of evidence developed to try to prove these two accounts were sockpuppets without having satisfied the committee, it will be more difficult to respond to sockpuppetry suspicions in the future. A suggestion for trying to ameliorate this effect would be to modify FoF2 as follows:

"...A majority of the committee concludes that the weight of the credible evidence taken as a whole is suggestive of or consistent with a relationship between the two accounts, but that the absence of usable checkuser findings and other factors prevent a definitive conclusion from being reached however a finding of sockpuppetry or meatpuppetry is not required to resolve this case." (emphasis mine to highlight the proposed wording)

The greatest challenge going ahead will be drafting knowledgeable editors with reputations for neutrality to carefully review each of the subject articles from the time of their creation to present day, and then reconstruct the articles. At least some of these editors will need to be administrators, as there are no doubt deleted edits, some of which may contain valuable information (particularly reference links). These editors will also have to have the visible support of the Arbitration Committee in their work; Relata refero is not being unreasonable in expressing concern.

As a closing thought: I've done a tiny bit of review of the history of the Naked short selling article over the last few days, and what little poking around I did revealed something unexpected. This article was created on 22 June 2005 by an IP registered to Hicksville NY. The article was created using text from a book, Naked Short Selling: The Illegal Hacking of the U.S. Financial System, by Alan Lomax. Unfortunately, it does not appear that such a book exists, and the only Alan Lomax I can find writes songbooks. The most useful information that can be found takes us to a press release website that appears to be discussing commercially-available software designed to detect naked short selling. The weblink that appears in both the original article and the advertisement is dead. In other words, the article started off as a fraud, and seems to have remained in questionable condition for most of its existence. And just today, there was an exchange of reversions, with one side removing clearly well-referenced information from the article with a dismissive summary. The sooner that good, knowledgeable, untainted editors can be found to clean up this and the other articles, the better the encyclopedia will be. --Risker (talk) 06:29, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Comment from User:Rocksanddirt

Thank you for your explaination. I do think that the content rememdies proposed are good (and I've said so in a couple of places). However, the abuse of the community through abusive sock puppetry must be acknowledged for the community to move on, and a finding that there were good faith but wrong actions to protect mm/sh and his pov is needed for much of the community to move on. This doesn't mean sanctions, neccessarily. I also think the idea of mm = gw is not important. The pov editing stands alone. --Rocksanddirt (talk) 06:35, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

and I endorse the effort anticipation is going to, I've read some of it, and I'll try to help out reviewing some of it more closely (likely not until this eve. at the earliest). --Rocksanddirt (talk) 17:22, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Response by User:Bigtimepeace

First off a major word of thanks to Newyorkbrad for providing such a lengthy, thoughtful comment to the community. I personally very much appreciate Brad's effort to communicate in more detail about this case and the obvious time and care he put in to formulating his thoughts. While Brad's comment might raise other questions, it also clears up/clarifies a number of issues. There is still going to be a rift between the committee and a number of editors about how this decision has come down, but it is certainly not the end of the world. And in addressing a number of the concerns brought up by members of the community I think Brad had bridged that gap somewhat.

Just a few points, the first one being very specific. Brad notes that he "had no access to any of these e-mails and therefore could not reach own conclusions about what, if anything, they might show." I take this to mean that some members of the committee did have access to those e-mails, while others like Brad did not. As a general rule, is it not inadvisable for some member or members of the committee to be basing their decision (even in part) on evidence which other members do not have? I would hope that we can agree that all Arbs should have access to the exact same amount of evidence when they begin reviewing a case. Regardless of the effect or lack of effect it had here, ought we not establish the principle that individual Arbs should not base any part of their decision on evidence they cannot share with other members of the committee? Brad has answered a lot of questions on this page, so I'm hoping another committee member can address the numerous questions about the "e-mail evidence" - including this one - more directly.

Brad did well to describe his own thinking going into and during the case. Let me suggest, from my perspective, one reason why so many of us have been disappointed. As this was moving along, I basically took it for granted that there would be a finding of MM=SH and that some sort of remedy/restriction would be imposed. I'm sure I was hardly alone in that. Many had commented that the linking of those accounts to a real-life identity (though fairly persuasive) was problematic for obvious reasons and also unnecessary for our purposes, so I don't think there are too many angry about the failure to mention that. I expected the debate would be about the severity of the remedy imposed on the offending accounts (and the community had/has varying views on that) and whether or not the "enabling" (maybe not the best word) actions of certain admins who sided in favor of MM in the dispute should be examined. I never expected much in the way of the latter and was imagining the MM/SH remedy would be a bit more lenient than I would have cared for, but I certainly could have lived with an outcome like that. I think the community has been shocked that the committee did not even directly vote on (much less validate) the central accusation that has seemed so obviously true to so many. It was assumed that that was the least that would happen. When it did not, I think a lot of us were blind to the rest of the decision (as Brad suggests), which admittedly contains some good components.

Going forward I agree with Brad that we need to consider "the role of arbitrators and the committee, and how we balance between the development of consensus and the expressions of our individual voice." I'll just note that crafting consensus decisions is obviously desirable and I don't fault Brad for trying to do that. But when the community objects vociferously to the decision I think some measure of individual accountability from the Arbs (particularly when a couple of dozen folks specifically ask for it) is necessary. The committee is of course elected by the community, and there are times where we have a right to know where y'all stand on certain key questions, if for no other reason than to be able to evaluate your performance before we vote in the next elections. In this case, unfortunately, we only know the opinions of those few Arbs who have explained their thoughts on these pages. That fact has upset many and I think rightfully so.

We'll see how this all ends up when it goes "back to the community" - I'm not sure what will happen. I would close by stating the obvious: we don't need the ArbCom to deal with the easy cases, but rather with the hard ones. The community probably could have taken matters into its own hands after the RfC, but this was a radioactive case and we hand those kind of cases over to the committee. At this point it seems the committee is handing it back to the community, still radioactive. I know that was not the intention, I know this was a difficult case and the committee truly believed the proposed decision was the best way forward, but I don't think you can blame folks for feeling that there has been a bit of the proverbial passing-of-the-buck in this particular case. As of now many folks are feeling that it was a waste of time and/or detrimental to even bring this to ArbCom, which is perhaps the clearest sign that it has been a failure so far, the best efforts of Newyorkbrad and others notwithstanding.

Again thanks to Brad, and also my sincere sympathies to all on the committee as I know you have a difficult job and this has been a very trying case.--Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 06:40, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Response by User:Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The

I think the sheer volume of effort put into trying to establish whether Mantanmoreland and Samiharris are socks has distorted expectations of what this case is about. I don't doubt that the work was intended sincerely, but it clearly hasn't helped the Committee in resolving the issue, and in any case the community is perfectly capable of banning a suspected sock.

I can understand the disappointment, and ask editors interested in handling this in the interests of Misplaced Pages to examine how we might best resolve the problems with the articles.

If they are socks, damage has been done by the distortion of decision-making processes, and the articles may have suffered. The problem is that at the moment little effort has been put into deciding the more difficult question (which the Arbitration Committee traditionally steers clear of) whether content has suffered because of methodical distortion, rather than just because this is a very, very contentious issue in the real world. As a means of helping us to answer that I'm devoting a lot of time to cataloguing every single edit to the article naked short selling. Of course looking at nearly 1000 edits over a 30-month period is quite taxing and it's unlikely that I'll spot everything on my own, but I think it will at least provide a basic roadmap for others wishing to understand the nature of the editing that has taken place on the article, and the participants in the editing. I have currently reached as far as August, 2006.

I had to choose which article to spend time on, because one person alone could not reasonably be expected to map every single edit to the various articles involved in this dispute. I have chosen to concentrate on the article I consider the most important: naked short selling. Unlike the others it is about a subject that has been discussed at the highest levels of finance and government, and getting it wrong isn't an option. We must represent the issue fairly and fully, without a hint of advocacy.

The work might also conceivably be of use to arbitrators in deciding whether there are grounds for a remedy specifically targetted at named users in the dispute. It may highlight a pattern of egregiously tendentious editing, evidence of which User:Thebainer has recently requested.

• User:Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The/Sandbox/Analysis/Naked short selling

--Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 14:09, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Do continue with what is no doubt a mammoth effort, TS. I wonder, though, in the context of POV-pushing, and blatant socking, and vote-stacking, and argumentum ad bacularum, if it would be (more) fruitful to look at the article which Mantanmoreland and his socks Bowdlerized most extensively, which would be Patrick Byrne.

Apologies, I do not have the time (nor such expertise as yourself) for such an effort as yourself has undertaken, but please re-read the /Evidence page, where I outline my concerns, days and days ago it seems. Oh, and /Workshop, where myself and others also discussed, and uncovered further evidence and DIFFs, have a look (again) at that page, while we wait for further word fron the Arbs, whose /Proposals i am viewing in quite a positive light at this stage, other than the lack of direct findings concerning MM=SH, and remedies to that.

Thanks Brad, for the continuing elucidation. Newbyguesses - Talk 15:30, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

I think it's correct to examine the naked short selling article--it was a WordBomb target and there is extensive evidence that the article must have been targetted for advocacy purposes by some external site. Those circumstances shed a lot of light on the situation. I agree that editing on other articles should also be examined, but they have not in general attracted the same level of advocacy and abuse. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 15:42, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

I agree that there has been too much focus on the issue of identity with a real life person, but the failure to address the sockpuppetry issue directly bears on the enforcement remedies, as I have stated more than once. Mantanmoreland has already declared that he has no conflict of interest and has never used sockpuppets. Therefore, he is free to continue editing the articles until some admin (either at WP:AE or ad hoc) takes it upon him or herself to declare a conflict and issue a topic ban. I don't believe that closing the case out by stating "The committee can not agree on the issue of sockpuppetry, so we leave the decision to the first random admin who attempts to enforce the remedy" serves the community well. Arbitrators were elected to make the hard decisions that individual admins can't. I also question the fairness of a decision that bans (de facto if not de jure) an editor from a topic without a specific finding against that editor. Thatcher 16:46, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

One of the philosophical problems I have with the way this case has been framed is the presumption of guilt. It's as if Mantanmoreland, in the absence of checkuser evidence, were required to demonstrate that he is not Samiharris, and in the absence of any credible evidence he must prove that he is not Gary Weiss. This really isn't the way we normally go about these things. This is one of the reasons why I think it's absolutely paramount to examine these edits on their merits. The other reason is that I think we should audit the articles and decide whether or not they have been damaged. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 20:33, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

The issue with that assertion is that, although there is an absence of checkuser evidence, there is shedfuls of non checkuser evidence. I acknowledge that you and a small minority of others are not convinced by it, but most of us are. So examining edits is a useful exercise, yes, but not the be all and end all. ++Lar: t/c 21:15, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

(ec) Examining the edits on their merits, while dealing with the question of abusiveness somewhat, can't tell us anything about the sockpuppetry question that I can see. You seem to be conflating the two questions. Also, you seem to suggest that the many established editors who have been involved in this investigation have come into it with a presumption of guilt "in the absence of checkuser evidence". This is not the case. The conclusion of sockpuppetry has been arrived at independently by so many editors after having reviewed the large amount of evidence that all seems to point to that explanation, even if none of it by itself is conclusive. With the evidence pointing toward sockpuppetry, it's entirely fair to ask if MM, SH, or anyone else can come up with a plausible alternate explanation of what everyone sees. Nobody has done so; instead, we get a lot of dissection of individual bits of evidence to show that they, by themselves, can't prove sockpuppetry. I don't think anyone argues that there's one piece of evidence that indisputably shows sockpuppetry; it's the holistic view that admits no alternative. If you can come up with such an alternative, by all means put it forward so the arbitrators and community can judge its plausibility. It would have to satisfactorily explain all of these: (a) the common interest in these specific financial topics, (b) the same pattern of daily editing, (c) the low number of editing overlaps given the accounts' similar daily editing pattern, (d) the common periods of on-wiki inactivity and heightened activity, (e) the drop of MM's editing production in 2007 compared to his 2006 edit count, almost entirely offset by SH's 2007 edit count, (f) the shared use in edit summaries of uncommon terms and phrases that have nothing to do with the topics of common interest, (g) the checkuser-confirmed use of open proxies by SH, and (h) the known history of socking by MM on the same financial topics. There might be more I'm overlooking. If there's a non-sockpuppet hypothesis that fits these facts, I'd love to read it. alanyst 21:23, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

We already know (and knew) Mantanmoreland to be a sock puppeteer before this case. While the betrayal of trust involved in further socking is considerable, that's nothing that can't be dealt with by blocking or banning, something we've done many times before.

Much more serious allegations have been made here: that Misplaced Pages has been edited abusively, used as a tool by a named individual, journalist Gary Weiss, in a campaign against another named individual, Patrick Byrne. While we do know that Byrne and his allies have used Misplaced Pages as a tool against Weiss, and seem moreover even glory in it, we know nothing of the sort about Weiss. We do not know whether Mantanmoreland is Weiss, and knowing whether Samiharris is Mantanmoreland would not make us any wiser.

What we can do is carefully examine the affected articles to see if there has been any systematic damage. Compared to the statistical work, which as a programmer I'm well aware is as glamorous and fun as its results are misleading, carefully combing and evaluating edits for a deliberate pattern of poisoning or even an unconscious personal bias is difficult. It must be done, however.

If we do find damage, then we may never know who exactly was responsible at least we will know how it was done. If we don't find damage, that will be good to know.

I know I may sound as if I'm saying that nearly everybody else has missed the point. This is because that is what I think. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 03:26, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

TS, when you're convinced everyone else has missed the point, that usually means that you have.

"...which as a programmer I'm well aware is as glamorous and fun as its results are misleading..." - as an econometrician, you are wrong on both counts. Especially the glamour part.

"...we do know that Byrne and his allies have used Misplaced Pages as a tool against Weiss.." For the record, I haven't yet seen or been directed to any signs that they have. Violated our protocols by allegedly outing an editor, and subsequently using ethically dubious methods against the sysops who blocked them, yes. Relata refero (talk) 19:26, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

User:Anticipation...The, I am one of the editors who came late here, and formed an opinion (that the sock-puppeting, and abuse are established) from reading all the evidence. Now, even if the questions I ask go unanswered, I have to believe that my hard-thought-over conclusion(s), and that of other editors like to myself, is/are of value, where it is obvious that myself and such editors have been reading and evaluating the evidence, from an initial Neutral stand-point. --Newbyguesses -Talk 23:29, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm not saying you're wrong. I am saying I don't agree with you. We are permitted to have different opinions. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 23:41, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Of course, but this business about a "presumption of guilt" doesn't really pass the smell test. The fact is, when you came into this discussion and began passing these sorts of judgments, you were absolutely unaware that any evidence beyond Luke's timestamp analysis even existed, and you've been fairly slow in getting up to speed since then. Only days ago you were asking who SH was, for G-d's sake. I am genuinely pleased that you are now providing detailed edit maps of the articles in question; thank you for that. Those will prove useful to everyone.--G-Dett (talk) 23:53, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Don't presume. I was well aware of the evidence, having examined it all before editing this page. I find all of the statistical techniques being brandished to be ad-hoc and of little use in deciding identity. Your mileage may vary. Like many people I dislike having to guess who someone means by "SH" or "MM", and the use of initials instead of names is regarded as very rude in my culture. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 03:13, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Risker's comment about the sourcing of the original version of the NSS article is interesting - are you double-checking the sources that users cite in each edit as part of your analysis? —Random832 17:14, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

It's not an extensive analysis (I also have a life!), so examining the quality of each edit is not going to happen. So far I've reached October, 2006, and there's a quite marked distinction between the quality of edits of different editors. A lot of references to thesanitycheck.com keep reappearing alongside very loaded language. While we all have our biases, and Mantanmoreland clearly shares a view congruent with that of Gary Weiss and tends to be over-dismissive even in the face of expressions of concern by present and former SEC chairs and the like, so far I'm not seeing agenda-pushing as obvious as that of WordBomb and the various other editors who were presumably directed to Misplaced Pages from another website. I could well be missing something others will easily spot, of course, and I still have about eighteen months of edits to work through so a lot could have happened in that period. This work is only intended to be a map, and I'm trying not to insert undue qualitative assessments except where an editor is obviously and deliberately flouting our neutral point of view policy. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 17:33, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Incidentally, I'd be interested to see what other editors thought of this revision. It was a rewrite of the article made in late January, 2006, by ESkog and Mantanmoreland. While it will undoubtedly have its biases, I don't think it was a bad initial attempt, and for the most part it seems to be quite well sourced (time.com, sec.gov, businessweek.com, overstock.com, nytimes.com). I'm finding it hard to see Mantanmoreland, at least at that point, as the kind of single-issue pusher who would deliberately distort an article. Who knows, maybe all that changed. Stay tuned. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 17:48, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Tony, we know Wordbomb is a baddie - he wouldn't be banned otherwise - but that is no mitigation to the socking and bias by Mantanmoreland; the evidence is that that account operated with just as much COI as the former, but in a manner which did not draw as much attention (and any of which was quickly deflected by incanting the banned users "memes".) We are not choosing the lesser of two evils; we are trying to determine and rid us of all evil. LessHeard vanU (talk) 22:56, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

I completely agree with you on sock puppetry (which Mantanmoreland did do in 2006, there is no argument about that). I am as yet unconvinced on the "bias" claim, which is one of the reasons I'm analysing naked short selling edit-by-edit. I've reached February of last year and have yet to notice what I regard as systematic removal of well sourced material or adding of contentious or tendentious material by Mantanmoreland (something nearly all the socks and meat puppets did as a matter of course). I'll keep plodding through, of course, and others are welcome to use my map for their own purposes which might involve far more rigorous analysis of his editing. Because the evidence does not (yet) reveal any obvious conflict of interest in that article, I find it hard to believe that his edits have done anything but good for it (and a lot of good edits, at that). That is a mitigating factor for his earlier sock puppetry. If he has socked more recently (and some people seem to believe this with a fervor that I find a little frightening, given the obscurity of the purported evidence) then he should stop. As far as I'm concerned he's too good an editor to waste his talents on such silliness. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 23:25, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

(ec)TS, the version you link to leaves out the SEC's stated reason for acting against naked short selling, assigning "blame" to microcaps; it doesn't mention Congress' reports against it in the 1990s; it repeats twice the "Weiss meme" (heh) which is unsupported in the academic literature (and appears to be a gross mis-statement of Diamond-Verrechio 87 anyway). Each statement is "answered" by "the views of supporters" of NSS, which is really not the way NPOV works, especially when those "supporters" are somewhat isolated in the academic and policy-making community. I don't know what you think, but that appears a heavily slanted article to me. Relata refero (talk) 23:28, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Could you explain what you mean by the "Weiss meme"? --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 00:18, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Read my evidence. Relata refero (talk) 07:51, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

As others have pointed out, I'm also not sure you are looking at the right article for what you are trying to find. From your comments it seems you chose it as the place where Bagley has been most active; the point I've tried to make is that MM has gone much further in areas where others have been less active. E.g., where many people aren't looking, he is using alternate accounts to go around getting digs at Overstock, often to the point of overwhelming entire articles. I'm interested to see the results on NSS, but I think we should recognize a finding that MM's account has generally made defensible edits on NSS would largely miss the point of what has been going on, particularly in terms of the abuse of multiple accounts. Mackan79 (talk) 13:47, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't expect to see any findings in the case on the defensibility of anyone's edits. I was looking for a pattern of indefensible edits or at least a pattern of edits that taken in aggregate showed bias likely to destabilize the article. I haven't found any such thing but the work I did may enable others to find it if it exists. Now that I've completed that work (I've reached a point beyond which neither Mantanmoreland nor Samiharris edited the article naked short selling) I'm looking for another article to analyse. Which would you suggest as the most likely to reveal a pattern of tendentious editing? --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 20:26, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Since you seem to have done a very thorough analysis of the edit pattern of MM and SH on that article, and you appear to be uninvolved, could you give us a bottom line summary of your conclusions? Crum375 (talk) 20:40, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't have any conclusions yet. I'm hoping that if I miss something somebody else can point to it. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 22:03, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

My impression is that Patrick M. Byrne is worse than Overstock.com, and features editing from more of the involved accounts. That probably makes it the most relevant. Mackan79 (talk) 21:12, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, Mackan79. I had started on analysing overstock.com (because I'll probably do them all in due course so I might as well get started) but on your advice I'll switch to the article on Byrne with the aim of completing it next.

• User:Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The/Sandbox/Analysis/Overstock.com
• User:Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The/Sandbox/Analysis/Patrick M. Byrne

--Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 22:06, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Well I've taken the Patrick Byrne analysis up to Samiharris' last edit a couple of weeks ago. Samiharris sometimes edit wars where he should discuss or call for protection, he doesn't seem to have heard of the three revert rule, and he loves the more sensational columns that enjoy poking fun at people like Byrne. Things I haven't seen, though, are unreasonable or belligerent editing in the face of reason, unreasoned removal of well sourced and relevant information, or (with one exception I'm prepared to regard as acceptable over a period of an entire year's editing) pov-pushing. The latter incident involves Samiharris pushing no less than three links to a single Joe Nocera opinion column about Byrne.

I've noticed one particularly bad bit of editing, perhaps malicious, that may not have been picked up by the editors at the article. But it isn't associated with Mantanmoreland or Samiharris. See this:

• User:Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The/Sandbox/Analysis/Patrick M. Byrne#October 2007

Last October the whole of the first part of the "Press attention" section, relating to positive attention, was removed from the article and nobody noticed. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 19:50, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for reviewing this, Tony. If I can ask, then, what do you think Misplaced Pages should do about someone with an obvious agenda against a person, who uses alternate accounts to traverse various articles adding negative and blatantly POV writing about the person, then sharply denies that the accounts are his? If you disagree with the characterization, of course feel free to clarify. Mackan79 (talk) 20:22, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

As you know, having examined some 1500 individual edits, I now regard that as an utterly baseless characterization. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 21:13, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

You suggested that you don't see him edit warring with other knowledgeable editors, who'd presumably need to have invested a long effort to clean up the articles. I'm certainly not sure which other parts you disagree with. If you haven't seen any pov pushing, I'd suggest you must have been distracted by the single edits from what the various accounts have actually been doing to these articles. Otherwise, you can see my own review here for any discrepancies if that's of interest. Mackan79 (talk) 21:40, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

(ec) I'm concerned, incidentally, that your view may be based on a starting point that prevailing opinion on Byrne is pretty much as it's been presented by Mantanmoreland, and thus that this is how the article should be written. Your own comments that it's good to let Byrne speak here, so that people can get an idea of the kind of person we're dealing with, suggests this. This is why I AGF when some others don't, but I think it's also the source of the differing views. Mackan79 (talk) 21:46, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

I acquired my whatever opinion I may have of Byrne (or at the person who describes himself as Byrne on Misplaced Pages) not at second hand but largely from observation of his behavior on Misplaced Pages. He is as deserving of an accurate Misplaced Pages article conforming to all policies (including conflict of interest) as everybody else. Had I found a distorted, baseless view of Byrne, not based on reliable sources, being pushed by anyone editing the articles I looked at, I would unhesitatingly have identified it as a clear sign of tendentiousness. I did not. Your mileage, as they say, may vary. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 22:15, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

You don't find, "Byrne has claimed that his company's shares have been attacked by 'miscreants' in the stock market, headed by a 'Sith Lord,'" to be distorted? I think you may also still underestimate the extent Byrne's actions, and views here of how he is covered in the media, have been colored by the long-standing campaign against him on Misplaced Pages. But your point to G-Dett is well taken, and probably more useful. Mackan79 (talk) 22:34, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

I haven't examined 1500 edits, but I have examined several hundred, and in many cases followed up on the sources to get a picture of what was going on. The evidence unambiguously shows (a) an agenda against Byrne, Bagley, and Overstock; (b) abusive use of sockpuppet accounts; (c) pervasive addition of negative and blatantly POV writing about the persons in question; (d) sharp denial of proven sockpuppetry (TS, LE) when confronted. I'm not sure which part of Mackan's characterization you find baseless, and I confess to being puzzled by that.

A correction. You say above that Samiharris " loves the more sensational columns that enjoy poking fun at people like Byrne." That's actually false. He hates these columns when they come up on the Weiss page, and he loves them when they come up on the Byrne page. He was also happy with them on the short-lived Bagley page. A better way of putting this is, Samiharris doesn't hate or love a particular kind of sensational journalism, any more than he loves or hates a particular kind of promotional puffery. He just finds the first useful in pursuing his agenda against Byrne, Bagley, and Overstock, and the second useful in his promotion of Weiss. This, of course, is a form of POV-pushing. Negative BLP pushing, to be exact; one of the worst types.--G-Dett (talk) 21:42, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Don't make your case to me. Make your case to the arbitration committee. Present the right evidence and you'll get a finding of tendentious or disruptive editing and an appropriate remedy. Even if you managed to convince me, I do not have the power to make the committee do whatever I want it to do (whatever anybody says). --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 21:53, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Evidence has already been presented to the committee on this. I'm aware that they, not you, constitute the relevant audience. You are presenting new research, in the form of an inventory of edits with summaries expanded by you, followed up by your conclusions on this page (quality editing by SH and MM, no POV-pushing, no agenda, etc.). I am grateful to you for your inventory, but since your conclusions are presented impressionistically and don't in my view match the evidence, I'm posting rebuttals. This seems to me an appropriate course of action.

Sometimes your examination of edits seems unduly sketchy to me. Of course this is understandable when you're going through 1500 edits in a day or two, but then that's an argument for slowing down. To take something almost at random, from January of this year. You inventory seven Samiharris edits together with the following summary: SH "Quotes Byrne in an April, 2006 letter to the WSJ, forecasting 'a few million Americans are going to show up at the corner of Wall and Broad with pitchforks and nooses.'" Let's look at one of those seven edits in detail. With an edit summary reading 'Jihad' against naked shorting: replacing with different SEC comment; Nocera was referring to fails to deliver, not overall problem, Sami deletes the following sourced material:

SEC Chairman Christopher Cox called abusive naked short selling “a fraud that the commission is bound to prevent and to punish.” In an effort to curb whatever level of naked shorting may exist, the SEC has enacted Regulation SHO, which is intended to help control Failures to Deliver.

The first source is the New York Times; the second is an SEC publication, “Key Points About Regulation SHO,” Securities and Exchange Commission, April 11, 2005. Samiharris replaces these with the following:

The Securities and Exchange Commission has said that naked shorting does not create counterfeit shares, and that "fails to deliver" securities are not evidence of naked shorting.

This is sourced to a different SEC document. Sami's sentence to the effect that "'fails to deliver' securities are not evidence of naked shorting," is cherry-picked and misleading; what the source actually says is "fails-to-deliver are not necessarily the result of short selling, and are not evidence of abusive short selling or “naked” short selling." In other words, because other causes are possible, they are not conclusive evidence. The source moreover says nothing at all about "counterfeit shares." This sort of massaging of sourced material is representative of Sami's editing, but it isn't my main point here, so rather than go into any more detail about it I encourage editors to check it out themselves.

My main point is that Sami is deleting well-sourced material with a misleading rationale. It's true that the passage in question follows a quote from the Nocera article, and that Nocera is talking specifically about "fails to deliver," but so are both of the sources Sami deletes. His edit summary strongly implies that they aren't, but in fact they are. The net effect of Sami's wikilawyering is that very well-sourced, relevant material critical of naked short selling is deleted, and the material substituted for it is rhetorically massaged to downplay a problem the new source acknowledges. This kind of POV-pushing and wikilawyering isn't that subtle, but it's subtle enough to miss when you're galloping through 1500 edits.--G-Dett (talk) 23:07, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

I cannot emphasize too strongly that I constructed the pages for precisely this purpose. But there is also another requirement: if you can find substantial evidence of some kind of agenda-pushing (and surely with so few other editors on the articles in question, the results would be an obviously distorted article anyway) then please put it onto the evidence page or (better still, because the evidence page is rather cluttered with statistical analysis) email it to the arbitrators. At least one arbitrator, Thebainer, has twice solicited such evidence, and it was because of his request that I did what I did.

There is a third requirement, which I'll only touch on briefly. Be more careful. While Samiharris does reword and does change things around in course of the seven edits, he does not remove the two sources you cite above. There are minor problems with the edit (he's trying to synthesize a response to a point which in itself, it was later decided, is a synthesis constructed to advance a position; he should simply pluck out the synthesis and demand a proper source for the position advance) but the string of seven edits did not remove those sources. They are references 15 and 16 respectively in the final revision of that series of edits. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 02:43, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

User:Cool Hand Luke

Thanks first and foremost for your reply.

It's fair enough, but if you really believe that a community ban effort will hurt the community, you have a duty to try to end this madness here and now. Without adequate sanctions, there will be a community sanction effort, and I agree that it could be a lot more acrimonious than a few arbitrators dissenting against findings of sockpuppetry. Even if such a proposal fails, it will force dissenting arbitrators to articulate their views—which they've predominantly been unwilling to do. ArbCom is the path of least drama. Cool Hand Luke 16:30, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Oh, looks like someone said what I waffled later. LessHeard vanU (talk) 22:44, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Overly simplistic view by User:Jehochman

Is there any reason not to ban everybody involved in this war? It would be the equivalent of a bar bouncer grabbing all the participants of a brawl and tossing them out into the street. This would be a good idea. Jehochman 16:42, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Who is "everyone"? Anybody who has ever expressed any opinion whatsoever on any related issue? That would, I guess, include both me and you. *Dan T.* (talk) 16:45, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

The decision as written references an off-wiki conflict but does not state as a finding of fact that any editor (on either side) is part of that dispute. It would be a significant improvement to the decision to at least vote out a finding that "Regardless of the issues of sockpuppetry and identity, it appears that Mantanmoreland and Samiharris are participants in, or are significantly influenced by, the off-wiki dispute. Thatcher 16:49, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

It might help greatly, Dan T, if you and I were both thrown out by the bouncer (glances at Thatcher), but no, that's not what I meant. Weiss, Byrne, Bagley/WordBomb, Mantanmoreland, and Samiharris seem to be the participants. If we say, "Enough already!" and ban these folks, and block their accounts and any sock puppets that may appear, that would be a significant improvement. Jehochman 16:55, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

To me, that would send the message very clearly to "take your dispute elsewhere". I share the same view as Jehochman here. Banning the participants of this dispute (WB is already banned), along with the article restrictions, is very definitive action which would reduce Misplaced Pages's prominence in this dispute. The current remedies aren't as definitive. daveh4h 17:28, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Well, I already stated (an extreme version) of this position in my#Evidence at Non-notability, and I echo u:Jehochman's more moderate suggestion now. However, toning it down even more, we do not need to reference the person WEISS, nor the person BYRNE nor the person BAGLEY. We should call the chuckers-out to chuck out Mantanmoreland, SamiHarris, and, um, WordBomb, and any other socks, or abusers, or abusive sockers. No RL persons need suffer any inconvenience or blow to their reputation. They simply keep their dispute off our encyclopedia. Newbyguesses - Talk 18:01, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Is there any compelling reason to keep the battle ground (the articles) on the encyclopedia pending the arrival of the NPOV posse? There are many subjects that are worthy of an article that are not represented here, would the removal of these harm the encyclopedia than the potential for harm that they hold? LessHeard vanU (talk) 22:42, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

User:Thatcher, though you recuse, may be interested in this, at /Workshop, (a proposed finding based on your thoughts), and this which is TS's comment by others. --Newbyguesses - Talk 06:26, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

SirFozzie's Viewpoint

I understand where Brad is coming from. There seems to be a fundamental disconnect in what the community wanted to see happen in sending this to the Arbitration Committee, and what the ArbCom saw as within its remit in taking this case.

I still think that any decision that does not at least have a vote on the Mantanmoreland=Samiharris link is a fundamental failure, but that is my viewpoint and mine only. I can understand where the problems are with linking this to real-life person GW, and can understand why that is not part of the case, but the decision otherwise is "Well, there's an obvious problem with the articles and conflict of interest, so let's tie it down for future reference, but let's not deal with the underlying issue."

When I suggested to bring this to ArbCom, it was an attempt to head off drama at the pass. Instead, we had weeks of the stuff (from both sides) and thanks to this decision, we're not getting any closer to a real resolution to the issues that necessitated the investigation.

Due to a lack of guidance from ArbCom, folks have spent tens of hours of effort on something the Committee isn't actually even using. Several times during the ArbCom case, there were requests asking the Committee where they needed evidence so to better assist ArbCom in coming to a decision. There was no guidance forthcoming at all on what the Committee wanted to look at.

Instead, we get the feeling that no amount of evidence would convince some folks. Some arbitrators apparently have based their decision on evidence not available to other ArbCom members, nor the public. We've seen it in the statements . "The writing styles in emails I have (that no one else has) are different, so they can't be the same person", basically. We had another arbitrator try to shut down one of the previous steps in this whole process, against the vast consensus of the community, because he didn't think "there was any dispute to be answered."

I have a funny feeling that we'll all be back here again, the consensus of the community is such that shortly after this all ends, then Mantanmoreland will get blocked/community banned, and someone will consider this harassment (probably with several references to "mind control", "Paid stalkers", "Corporate Conspiracy", you can fill in the rest), and unblock Mantanmoreland. As some one reminded me, it only takes one administrator willing to undo such a ban to undo such action. I do agree that it would be best if all the major parties in this off-WP war were firmly shown the door and told "Keep your off-Misplaced Pages disputes off-Misplaced Pages."

But my base thought? Anything that does not have at least a vote on a link between Mantanmoreland and Samiharris has been a waste of time. The people who have contributed have wasted their time, ArbCom has wasted their time, and the community has had their time wasted. SirFozzie (talk) 17:35, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

I endorse this view. --Rocksanddirt (talk) 17:38, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Your time has not been spent in vain. Jehochman 17:39, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

These are certainly not your views alone. I also endorse this view. Cool Hand Luke 18:29, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Hear, hear! Steps to isolate the committee from the community seem not good for both. Maybe all arbitrators should give very careful thought to UninvitedCompany's suggestion that you change your method of hearing cases so that you no longer consider any non-public evidence. Perhaps the benefit outweighs the cost. Thanks -- luke (talk) 04:15, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Durova's comments

Thank you for posting, Brad. I hope the community's responses will not discourage arbitrators from posting similar statements in the future. One point that probably has general agreement is that the community does appreciate open and candid explanations.

A matter that worries me here--a carryover from the Matthew Hoffman case--is the Committee's readiness to frame the scope as if the case occurred in isolation. I urge each member of the Committee to volunteer for one week at either the conflict of interest noticeboard or the suspected sockpuppets board: those of us who have months of field experience (Jehochman, SirFozzie, myself, and others) are speaking - quite independently - with essentially one voice. The Committee does deal with sock issues at arbitration, yet it's a very different matter to be down in the trenches working virtually alone, trying to reassure productive editors whose good faith has been exploited, watching some of them damage their own reputations in frustration or quit the project entirely. The working reality is that we have a shallow pool of volunteers addressing an ocean of problem.

We are an open edit project with no formal means of authenticating contributor identity, and we are one of the world's ten most popular websites. Or to put this another way: add the total visitor traffic to Britannica.com, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times, multiply that sum by ten, and that's us.

One of the most salient points articulated by Judd Bagley of Overstock.com and also by Greg Kohs of MyWikiBiz (people who know the history on the latter are probably snickering to see me agree with him about anything) is that they were essentially banned for not being devious enough. Sure they broke policies, but they also admitted who they were, and if they had pursued the same goals through more sophisticated and underhanded means then they would probably remain editors in good standing. Neutral observers have asked me about that contention, and until now I have been able to reply that Misplaced Pages does care, and although it may take longer to uncover certain types of manipulation we'll handle the matter just as firmly and perhaps more so, taking into account the long term damage to the site. Reading this decision, and the comments of the arbitrators, I'm not sure I can give that answer anymore.

Perhaps the most troubling aspect is to characterize this decision as forward-looking. Only in the narrowest of senses can it be called that: if we accept as premises that this case is extraordinary, and unlikely to be replicated, and creating no precedent, and exerting no pressure on community standards, then yes it is forward-looking. I view it in a different context, and see many elements that are extreme examples of routine dynamics. It is as if we went fly fishing and pulled some strange creature out of the water and agreed call it a freak of nature, forgetting that we've left the small pond and have cast our rods above the Mariana Trench. Durova 18:53, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

interesting point regarding treating each case in isolation. I pretty much agree. --Rocksanddirt (talk) 19:01, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Exactly my feeling in many respects, thanks for putting it so well. Mackan79 (talk) 19:03, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Durova. Further: Brad's comments appear to me to reflect a choice to put anonymity above COI resolution in a way that makes Misplaced Pages less of a NPOV encyclopedia and more of a place to play power games in that it expects to prevent COI damage to a handful of articles while ignoring the larger damage done to expectations of behavior. Expectations that up to now included banning for this sort of behavior on far less evidence, because we are not a game we are an encyclopedia and this behavior makes creating a NPOV encyclopedia far harder. This decision says we are only a game and there is no penalty for gaming us. WAS 4.250 (talk) 20:06, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

A point of information here. Bagley did not admit who he was until he was outed by others, as I recall by the New York Post. From July 2006 until January 2007, he operated anonymously using a variety of handles, both on Wikpedia and on his blog, and also when he e-mailed complaints and threats to admins. SlimVirgin 20:02, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

I think that's generally true with WordBomb, although I believe there are other examples such as potentially User:Sparkzilla. In WordBomb's case I think the problem has been slightly different. Either way, I personally don't see that as Durova's most important point so much as her comments on the damage of this type of sockpuppetry and failing to prevent it. Mackan79 (talk) 20:34, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

You may have a point there regarding WordBomb, although that also applies to me (I didn't admit who I was until other people outed my identity). Mantanmoreland doesn't admit his identity at all. Durova 20:41, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Reaction of interested onlooker Dr. Extreme

I came upon this arbitration case looking for a controversy to read, one that was on-going and would be interesting to observe. As it went on, I became enormously invested in this case. I think this is because of the vast amounts of effort gone into it by all sides, the extremely compelling (to me, at least) presentations of evidence by Cool Hand Luke and SirFozzie, the enormous statistical analysis by Alanyst, and the both amusing and probing investigations of G-Dett. I read the WikBack forums too, becoming acquainted with all parties, including parties whose voices were not on Misplaced Pages. Speaking as perhaps the voice of the uninvolved user, I feel that this case is not entirely a waste of time, even if the proposed decision as it currently stands is approved and the case is closed. This case has thrust quite a few contentious points in the community to the forefront, where they can be dealt with. It was, in a manner of speaking, the symptom that identifies a long-running disease. We have all seen the evidence, and we have all been able to come to our own conclusions.

I believe that Newyorkbrad's characterization of the case above, especially the last three paragraphs, is one of the finest pleas for decency and sanity I have ever read in regard, not only to this case, but the entire encyclopedia's mission.

While I could not help but feel a bit disappointed at the proposed decision, I have since come to the decision that it's a much needed Potsdam conference in lieu of a Treaty of Versailles. If we ban Mantanmoreland for abusive sockpuppetry, what then? Does he leave the encyclopedia, or does he muster an army of puppets to nurse his grievance? The last thing we need is a new subpage of Misplaced Pages:Long term abuse. We don't need a User:General Tojo wreaking havoc on this article set, especially given its already tortured past. I think this is one of the rationales behind the decision. We need a disengagement, not an eviction.

That's my view. But like I said, I'm just an interested onlooker.

Dr. eXtreme 19:04, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Suggestion from SlimVirgin

When editors are accused of sockpuppetry, especially in a controversial case like this, the best thing they can do is make themselves available to help disprove the allegation. This can be done in a variety of ways without disclosing real-life identities. The two editors could have a conference call with a trusted ArbCom member on Skype, for example, and certain questions could be asked to make sure the arbitrator really was speaking to the people editing under those user names. Or there could be a meeting in real life, again without disclosing real names.

Neither of those things was done in this case, though they were suggested. Given the hostility surrounding the case, I can't really blame MM or SH for declining to do this. But the upshot was that the situation has been left hanging, which isn't good for the community.

There's nothing we can do about it now. SH has gone and, when I last asked him, he was very reluctant to help sort this out in any way. But for the future, I'd like to see something added to the ArbCom ruling, that editors accused of sockpuppetry are expected to do what they can (short of being forced to disclose their identities) to show the allegation to be false — that there is, if you like, no right to remain silent. SlimVirgin 20:17, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Considering the situation where Jimbo apparently offered to do just that for MM, and the natural conclusion that Jimbo apparently reached when it was met with hostility, I agree with SlimVirgin on this. Maybe something like "In situations where sock puppetry can be suspected by a reasonable person, it would be helpful in drawing conclusions if the person could be asked to provide non-identity disclosing information to draw a line between the two accounts?" This is completely off the cuff, and I need to think about it. SirFozzie (talk) 20:30, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

No, its too easy to game, and we really should not make a policy out of forcing some editors to prove their identities. I would rather consider community topic bans for editors with apparent undisclosed conflicts of interest. Call it WP:Please stop quacking. "The community believes, based on your editing behavior, that you have an undisclosed conflict of interest regarding this topic and does not have confidence that you can edit this topic to uphold the principles of NPOV and Undue Weight. Rather than require you to prove your identity, or prove that you do not have a conflict (proving a negative is always impossible anyway) you are banned from editing this topic for X months." (The idea of a time-limited ban is to give other editors time to clean up the article; at that point if the COI editor returns to making disruptive non-consensus edits it will be even more obvious and further steps can be taken.) Thatcher 20:38, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

People can be expected to cooperate short of disclosing their identities. I disagree that it's easy to game. If you get the right people asking the right questions, it would be extremely difficult to game. For me, the point is that I think the community has a right to expect Wikipedians in circumstances like this to make themselves available for discreet questioning -- so long as it really is discreet, completely confidential, with a senior member of the community who is trusted by the accused, and that they're never expected to reveal their real names.

I agree that a topic ban is appropriate. But it's not enough in some cases. SlimVirgin 20:47, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

It's something that the Foundation ombudsman could be asked to do in very tricky and sensitive cases — where, for example, established editors are accused of sockpuppetry, and the only way to sort things out is for people to talk to each other by telephone, Skype, or through a real-life meeting. I would like to see an ArbCom ruling to the effect that if an editor refuses to cooperate with this, and also fails to suggest a realistic alternative, the refusal is likely to be held against him by the Committee, should the case reach arbitration. SlimVirgin 20:54, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Well, until you end up with a situation where you have User:Discreet Senior Member saying, "I talked with User:Poohbear and he does not have a conflict of interest, trust me," and the rest of the community saying, "Poohbear has been making advocacy edits on behalf of real person Christopher Robin and we no longer trust him to be neutral unless you tell us about your secret conversation, (or are you part of the coverup). Better maybe to say, "For the sake of the encyclopedia, considering all factors, and recognizing that it may ultimately be unfair, nevertheless User:Poohbear is banned from making edits related to Christopher Robin." Thatcher 20:57, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Thatcher. For his stated reason, the Committee is reluctant to allow disclosures that the whole committee can not verify. This came up recently in a request to remove an indef block, iirc. FloNight♥♥♥ 21:04, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

The point of having a Foundation ombudsman is to investigate sensitive complaints. I see no reason the ArbCom wouldn't trust the ombudsman's judgment. Bear in mind that most sockpuppetry allegations aren't about COI, so the topic ban remedy won't always be appropriate. SlimVirgin 21:32, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm also inclined to agree with Thatcher. Having dug through more of this stuff than I ever really needed to know, it seems to me that the articles in question suffer from a perception of bias that will not go away unless certain editors step away from them. And at this point it really doesn't matter that Byrne and Bagley may have essentially created that perception; we want to prevent people like them from gaming us in the future, but in the present restoring/preserving the perception of NPOV is more important. Mangoe (talk) 22:01, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm obviously not making myself clear here. My fault — maybe this was the wrong section to post the suggestion in. Once again, my suggestion is not about this case, where I agree that a topic ban is essential. My suggestion was also not about COI or about forcing editors to disclose their identities. It is a general suggestion for the future, about sockpuppetry not about COI, as I said above: "But for the future, I'd like to see something added to the ArbCom ruling, that editors accused of sockpuppetry are expected to do what they can (short of being forced to disclose their identities) to show the allegation to be false — that there is, if you like, no right to remain silent." SlimVirgin 22:25, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

outdent While this suggestion has some issues, I like it for helping to deal with sockpuppeting issues. Likely we need to have a full discussion of it somewhere to iron out all the questions. If a program like this existed mm/sh could have easily shown that they were not the same user (or not). --Rocksanddirt (talk) 22:31, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Yes, but they took offense at the proposal. Durova 23:01, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Which is one kind of answer. --Rocksanddirt (talk) 00:44, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

This idea is sensible, and the objections don't seem to be that strong: Editing Misplaced Pages is not a right, and in cases even a tenth as involved as this one it would be easier for all parties if a meeting could be set up (people innocent of sockpuppetry would probably welcome this kind of meeting). It's possible this could be gamed, but I don't think it would be easy at all, and even if it were, that doesn't mean it wouldn't be an improvement: each person would not only demonstrate knowledge of the password but should have some knowledge about the subjects that editor edited. It may not be the equivalent of a smoking gun, but it doesn't have to be, and the interviewer's report can be submitted just like any other evidence, to be judged just like any other evidence. Face-to-face meetings would be much harder to game than a telephone-like set up, but video conferencing could also be used. I don't fully understand FloNight's objection: I'm assuming the interviewer would ony be used if the committee first asked for it, the interviewer would be appointed by the committee and the committee would appoint someone they trust. How many editor-hours have gone into this case just since Arbcom accepted it? 500? More? Anything that would lower the time wasted by monumental diversions like this should be embraced. Noroton (talk) 01:10, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

When editors are accused of sockpuppetry, especially in a controversial case like this, the best thing they can do is make themselves available to help disprove the allegation. SlimVirgin 20:17, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Well-said, to the point, I say.

and (responding to a suggestion of private meetings to establish a contributor's "identity") --> No, its too easy to game - Thatcher 20:38, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

That seems right to me, and others, it would seem.

For the record, I am not in favour of such private communications, other than to the Arbcom email address. What does it achieve, even if the ombudsman, The Shah of Persia and Walter Mitty all get together for a cuppa and a chat, one day? Who takes Minutes of the meeting, Bob the builder? (the last bit is facetious) Newbyguesses - Talk 03:54, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Response by Pascal.Tesson

Thank you NYBrad for these thorough explanations. For the most part, I've already expressed my thoughts on the matter in an earlier section of this page. But I'd like to respond to a few of your points.

• You are presenting the first proposed remedy as a key (if not the key) component of the decision. But what is this "remedy" saying? It says: these articles should be edited within the usual bounds imposed by fairness and honesty on Misplaced Pages. It's not a remedy: it should be a principle that applies on every article. Nobody should be editing the same article using two accounts, whether the article is Gary Weiss or Raisin. Nobody should bring off-wiki disputes on wiki. Nobody should be using Misplaced Pages as a soapbox or battleground. Nobody should edit an article without disclosing COI. Note also that since the committee refuses to address the GW = MM issue, MM can continue to deny that connection and continue to deny he's not in a COI but simply a concerned citizen fighting for The Truth.
• Remedy 3 is also problematic since it fails to acknowledge that a number of people who have tried to work in that direction have had an extremely difficult time doing so, precisely because of the paranoid, toxic atmosphere on the talk pages.
• But what bothers me the most about your comments is the motivation for not addressing the question of whether GW=MM. In particular, you say "I also reasoned that it would be highly undesirable to write anything in an "official decision of the Arbitration Committee" that was likely to be used, or misused, in the context of off-wiki disputes". With all due respect, this simply does not make sense. Whether or not the ArbCom addresses this question, the evidence presented in this case is already being used in that off-wiki dispute and, if anything, it will now be accompanied by conspiracy theories about how GW and his friends control the ArbCom or some similar nonsense. We can't force MM to disclose his identity, but the ArbCom is missing an opportunity to say "MM is topic-banned on all GW and Overstock-related articles until his identity can be established by the ombudsman or some other trusted member of the community". This is not unreasonable. I suspect that most, if not all members of the ArbCom would agree with the minimal assertion "the MM account is closely tied to GW, so much so that COI should make him stay away from these articles". Editing with a conflict of interest is unacceptable and it is most definitely not forward-looking to say "ok, you can resume editing but your POV pushing will need to be more subtle in the future." To me, allowing MM to contribute is equivalent to allowing WordBomb to return, provided he doesn't go utterly beserk.
• And I'd like to stress again: fairness should not be an objective. There's no such thing as a right to edit Misplaced Pages and it's ok for the ArbCom to say: "you know what, it's just best if you all leave. We're not sure you're sockpuppeting, we're not sure you're Gary Weiss. But we're sure that we can do a better job without you". And in fact, we all know that this is true, just like we know that we're better off without Bagley and Byrne editing these articles. Pascal.Tesson (talk) 21:39, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Response by LessHeard vanU

One aspect that has not been touched upon, not altogether surprising because it hasn't formed a major part of the debate, is the role of ArbCom as the most august of the bodies of dispute resolution - the "The Buck Stops Here" aspect.

Agreed. Example added above. Durova 22:03, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Copyeditted the tag, but yes, that's the hugely disappointing part of this: That this is just a waystation, and not a destination. SirFozzie (talk) 22:11, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Hope you don't mind that I toned it back down to the original. Durova 22:39, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Boo, hiss, I'm being censored! Come see the violence inherent in the sysadmin... (Ok, former sysadmin, but you get the general gist).. Seriously, no problem, D. SirFozzie (talk) 22:41, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

(ec. Um I expanded it quite a bit - which I will post following this break - but people can respond to either or both. It waffles a bit, but does include some aspects not covered by the short version.)

It would seem churlish not to thank Brad for the time, effort and sheer comprehending manner in which he has addressed the issues arising from some of the communities response to the proposals etc. Thanks. I think that most if not all had belatedly begun to re-asses the purposes and positions of the original set of proposals and even if continued to view them with dismay did engage civilly in querying what they saw as inconsistencies.

One aspect that has not been touched upon, not altogether surprising because it hasn't formed a major part of the debate, is the role of ArbCom as the most august of the bodies of dispute resolution - the "The Buck Stops Here" aspect. One has to wonder why it was felt necessary why an investigation that formed the basis of an RfC, which lead a number of experienced wikipedians of good standing to conclude there was sufficient evidence to pronounce that Mantanmoreland was an abusive user of alternate accounts, was referred to ArbCom. It is quite simple; no one admin was brave enough to enact the block, mindful of precedent regarding acting against the perceived interests of a group of established wikipedians, and aware of the drahma that would ensue. When the cry of "Take it to ArbCom!" was raised it was met with almost universal agreement. Here was the body that could take the information, review it, and make decisions that the community would adhere to (even if the decisions were disagreed upon - the process had the gravity that the community needed). This is one of the major aspects to why there was a sense of dereliction of authority - the decision that a sysop will make whether their interpretation of the wishes of the community and the betterment of the community is worth risking their reputation and peace of editing for the future. The buck has been passed, albeit with a note saying "I quite understand if you felt that this was necessary - in many ways the evidence is quite compelling, I suppose." I was and remain disappointed in this lack of realisation.

I would also comment on the situation regarding the future editing to the contentious articles (adapted from my previous slash and burn recommendation); When you find your unbiased yet knowledgable editors, willing to provide the encyclopedia with NPOV content, allow them to work from clean sheets of paper. We don't need to try and harvest the bitter fruit of a poisoned tree - let them start afresh. LessHeard vanU (talk) 23:04, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Response by Crum375

I believe that NYBrad's work, both in crafting the decision and presenting his arguments here, should be commended. This is a tough case, and there are no easy solutions. I prefer not to comment on the specifics of the case, but would like to focus on the general issues raised. As I see it, there are two separate issues: COI and SOCK. For COI, our policy is to allow it in principle, if the user agrees to carefully adhere to NPOV and other content rules. If the edits become disruptive, or excessively tendentious, the user may be restricted to the talk page. If disruption continues, then a total ban may be required. As for SOCK, the simple cases are easy; the problem raised here is the possibility of more sophisticated socks, which are harder to nail down. Historically, ArbCom had a simple DUCK rule: if accounts seem too much alike, and they edit the same topics disruptively and tendentiously, with identical POV, they are assumed to be either MEAT or SOCK, and no specific distinction need be made. I see no reason to change that precedent, but clearly it is up to ArbCom to make that determination of tendentious editing and disruption, after viewing and weighing all the evidence. I think the community needs to take a step back, and give ArbCom's decision, once finalized, a chance to work. Crum375 (talk) 22:15, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Honestly, I don't think that's going to happen. There's still a lot of disappointment that the decision will not have anything about what a lot of folks consider the key element in what brought the case before ArbCom, and I fully expect things to be moving on that shortly after the ArbCom case is officially closed. SirFozzie (talk) 22:29, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

While I agree, I'm pretty sure any sanctions will be shot down by the infamous one admin who is willing to appeal it back to the committee. --Rocksanddirt (talk) 22:33, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Thoughts by User:Alanyst

Brad has gone the extra mile (and not just in screen real estate :-D ) to make his position as transparent as possible. I sincerely appreciate this and agree with him on many points. My comments below probably carry a more negative tone than I feel at this point, as they voice my remaining concerns and not those areas about which I feel more appeased. I am hopeful that Arbcom is still willing to reconsider given the community's residual concerns.

My view is that undisclosed sockpuppetry is an inherent abuse of the system and a violation of the community's trust. Sockpuppetry used to gain and maintain an advantage in a dispute is worse. Doing so for a dispute that should not have belonged on Misplaced Pages in the first place is even worse.

My impression of Arbcom coming into this was that it was responsible for resolving the thorniest disputes concerning editor behavior. Content disputes have always been rejected by Arbcom to my knowledge, but until now Arbcom has basically made the ultimate findings and remedies concerning editor behavior.

My surprise at the proposed decision stems from the unwillingness of Arbcom to address the alleged behavior in the same way as similar allegations have been addressed in previous Arbcom cases. Granting that Arbcom cases do not set precedent, there still should be a rational basis for deviating from the normal course of action. That this involves a nasty off-wiki dispute does not suffice, since judgments were rendered for other cases that involved real-world disputes (I'm thinking of The Troubles, Armenia-Azerbaijan, etc.).

The key difference here seems to be the involvement of Overstock and WordBomb, which have posed a threat of organized corporate efforts to undermine the neutrality of the encyclopedia and attack prominent editors. I feel that if this case had not had the specter of WordBomb and his odious behavior hanging over it, the matter would already have been resolved with a finding of sockpuppetry and a ban. I am led to wonder whether WordBomb's obnoxiousness has made various Arbcom members simply unwilling to take action or even voice an opinion that would allow WordBomb to gloat. I don't mean to imply whatsoever that their positions are taken in bad faith, but rather to suggest that revulsion against WordBomb has led to unconscious bias that is difficult to overcome.

My purpose in conducting the extensive analysis that I did was to devise tests for sockpuppetry that were more objective than the Duck Test (which I dislike) and could be useful when checkuser could not be applied, as in this case. I came into this with no preconceived notion of the truth of MM=SH. I believe that my techniques were fair, objective, and verifiable. I do not believe that any of the tests I devised can prove or disprove sockpuppetry by itself; they can only express similarity based on certain metrics, which can in isolation admit to various interpretations besides sockpuppetry. But the fact that various independent tests by myself and others showed strong similarity and coordination between the accounts leaves little room for doubt.

This is the other element that surprised me: that some Arbcom members have discounted the evidence by conjuring up seemingly arbitrary and ill-defined standards of rigor that these new tests must meet. At the same time, they have apparently accepted exculpatory evidence that falls far below these new standards, such as a subjective assessment of verbal style in a private collection of emails of uncertain origin. From an outside perspective, the inconsistency is hard to understand, and what little justification has been given is deeply unsatisfactory. I honestly wonder if the tests would have been challenged at all by these Arbcom members if they had instead yielded results that purported to exonerate MM and SH.

The rest of my feelings about the proposed decision have already been voiced by many here, especially SirFozzie, Jehochman, Thatcher, and Durova. alanyst 22:56, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Comment by Cla68

I noticed NYBrad's comments implying that if anyone wanted the scope of this case enlarged, such as to scrutinize the actions of various admins involved in this issue in 2006, then we should have asked for additional parties to be added. I guess I'm a victim of a chilling effect when it comes to that. I tried to add Jayjg as a party to the latest Israel/Palestine dispute ArbCom case, and was reverted and admonished for doing so by Morven. One of the administrators most involved in 2006 has presented some evidence here, but didn't address all of the issues concerning her involvement, such as issues of retaliation and suppression of discussion concerning the issue. I guess another ArbCom case could be requested on that aspect of this issue, and I'm going to consider doing that.

On the Mantanmoreland/Samiharris issue, I will say this. Although there isn't a definite smoking gun, that isn't the only issue here. Evidence has also been presented of bad-faith POV pushing by both editors and personal attacks and retaliation by Mantanmoreland. That, to me, is enough to warrant a community ban for both, apart from the sockpuppetry issue. Cla68 (talk) 23:30, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Adding myself to the list of named parties. In case there is a procedural doubt as to whether a dispute exists, the dispute is this: I want to know whether I stuck my neck out for someone who wasn't honest with me. On 20 October 2007 I performed a userblock related to an article where Mantanmoreland and Sami Harris frequently edited. It was my belief at the time that I was acting in the interests of the biographies of living persons policy, and I was acting upon the good faith assumption that Sami Harris and Mantanmoreland were separate people who had no conflict of interest there. Now I see reason to be concerned about whether those assumptions were correct. DurovaCharge! 22:07, 13 February 2008 (UTC) - My statement at RFAR. Durova 23:42, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

The admin I'm referring to in my comment above isn't Durova. Cla68 (talk) 23:50, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Understood. What I'm pointing out is that one side seriously argued that there was no dispute back around RFAR, so I provided one. Does the proposed decision look like it was affected by that? Durova 03:51, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Comment by Lar

So it comes down to this, then? It almost feels like a decision by exhaustion. Someone reading this from the top to the bottom would have a fair piece of work. This case is complex, yes, but the millions of characters spilt haven't changed the outcome much. ArbCom's decision is likely to remain narrow, for what are felt to be good and valid reasons. I think there are going to be issues from that, but I won't recount them all, they've been given above by others. I don't think ArbCom's decision will be the end of it, though. The buck didn't stop where it should have, the community will act. There was a chilling effect all right (I think we most of us know who Cla68 chooses not to mention by name), but maybe one good outcome of this case is that some of the chill will be lifted? I'd caution any admin who now thinks their lone "nay" can stand in the way of a community sanctioned ban, to think again. That wasn't the case 2 months ago, but it is now. And that's something anyway. ++Lar: t/c 03:40, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Well said. Cla68 (talk) 04:41, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Indeed, and I think it's conceivable that an admin will take it upon himself to leave a short note on ANI announcing that he has blocked MM and SH indefinitely. But I see two possible scenarios after that:

• a) overall support on ANI amid protests that this isn't what the ArbCom recommended. ANI thread eventually archived.
• b) some sort of wheel-war or other über-drama leading us back to the ArbCom.

The community was provided with evidence about MM=SH (which I find compelling, but that's just me), evidence that MM=GW (which I don't think anyone in their right mind wouldn't find at the very least quite troubling), a well-documented history of POV-pushing by both accounts on already troubled articles, well-documented evidence that a bunch of idiots are trying to settle real-life scores on Misplaced Pages, Jimbo's now infamous quote, the story of MM's reluctance to disclose, even to a trusted party, his true identity. The community consensus is, I believe, that these accounts are not helping and are thus not welcome. The ArbCom's decision is essentially "we have no clue what to do about this complex case beyond reaffirming Misplaced Pages's basic principles and asking everyone to take a chill-pill". Though I'm impressed by NYBrad's willingness to detail his decision and defend it, Lar's characterization of it as a "decision by exhaustion" is quite fitting. ArbCom decided to not decide on the SH=MM question because of reasonable doubt and lack of unanimity in the ArbCom. It then decided not to address GW=MM because that might be unfair to GW and provide ammo to Bagley and Byrne. It chose to completely avoid the important question "did MM and SH use these articles as a battleground?", which, after all, is what initially led to these investigations. Continuing the slippery slope of inaction, it then decided it could live without remedies against these accounts because the community now knows full well that these accounts are to be monitored carefully! To top it off, this is all presented as an invitation to look forward, which frankly, might be seen as a bit of chutzpah. In essence, the ArbCom is saying: thanks for all the hard work, now we clearly see that there's some sort of a problem here. Oh and please send more uninvolved editors to these articles so that they stay neutral. If I was, say, Cla68, I'd find this mildly insulting. Pascal.Tesson (talk) 06:09, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

I think the question "did Mantanmoreland and Samiharris use these articles as a battleground?" is precisely the question we should be looking at. Assuming the answer is not an option. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 23:45, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

The REAL WORLD aint so real

• This The Australian (newspaper) Friday MARCH 7 2008 front page headline MARKET cowboys reigned in can only be a joke, I think. That could never happen. They would immediately sue.

Anyway, the article <byline Adele Ferguson & David Uren> goes on

The ASE ..."will close a loophole"... to crack down on the practice of stock lending.

...Wayne Swan investigating...?

Now, this stock lending bears (close) resemblance to (guess) - right: Naked short selling! That is it consists in rorting prices, and stealing, by one set of cowboys, from another set, and the general investing pool gets ripped off, severely, as it happens.

he traders with borrowed stock use short-selling techniques to target particular companies...

However, no mention in the newspaper of our non-notables, Mr(s) X,Y, Z or their companies, let alone BLOGS. Only for Your Information, it's a funny ol' world, innit? Newbyguesses - Talk 02:14, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Lay-person's view here only, Newbyguesses hastens to add. Newbyguesses - Talk 02:44, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

For reference: There were also stories in yesterday's Australian (digs out business section). It's not really the same; the story here in Australia is about disclosure rules around regular shorting rather than naked shorting. Also bear in mind that the rules around shorting are somewhat different in Australia, and tend to utilise options rather than stock lending to achieve the short (or at least, that is my lay understanding). --bainer (talk) 02:38, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

"To edit on these from only a single user account"

I hate to be a nag, but I just realized that the wording of remedy 1 allows editors to use sockpuppet accounts to edit the topic area as long as they do not use more than one and do not use their main account. (It says "single user account" not "their single user account" and "on these" rather than "Misplaced Pages".) This would allow any non-banned user (such as, hypothetically, Patrick Byrne or Mantanmoreland) to create a sockpuppet to edit these articles. Of course, Byrne has an openly declared conflict of interest and would be required to disclose his identity on the talk page per 1D, so that an undisclosed sock would be a violation. But as Mantanmoreland has vigorously and repeatedly stated he has no conflict, and no finding of conflict of interest is made, a strict reading of this remedy allows him to use an undisclosed sock to edit this topic area with no restrictions whatsoever, as long as the sockpuppet's behavior is not overt enough to trigger sanctions under article probation (that apply to all editors).

Is this really what the Committee intends? Thatcher 12:50, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Proposed: "Editors may not use alternate accounts to edit the articles covered by this remedy."

It is not necessary to prove the real life identity to establish WP:COI. When the nature of the contributions reveals a close relationship with the topic, combined with a pattern of WP:NPOV violations, action can be taken. In retrospect, it would have been better to focus this case on the admins who have been protecting Mantanmoreland. Without their cover, this would have been a rather boring sock puppetry and COI case that would have been handled through normal procedures. Jehochman 13:30, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

"it would have been better to focus this case on the admins who have been protecting Mantanmoreland." I don't think the case would have gotten this far had we done that as Jimbo himself was a key member of that group. It is in fact only due to Jimbo's change of a "shoot on sight" instruction to a "let the case progress but in the end what is best is to find MM innocent" that has let the case progress this far. The English language Misplaced Pages needs a better governance system than "do what Jimbo says and you are above the rules but violate what he says and you are blocked regardless of the rules". We have to decide if we want NPOV or JPOV (Jimbo Point of View) in our articles. Guy deleted a sourced claim from a friend of Jimbo based solely on her say so and deleting that sourced claim made her look better and made another living person look worse. Is Jimbo responsible for Guy's behavior? No, but he is responsible for protecting people who do what they think will please him so that they think the rules do not apply to them. Which creates Drama and POV claims in the articles. We must have better governance if Misplaced Pages is to have credibility. WAS 4.250 (talk) 14:50, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Can we not get sidetracked? Thatcher 16:26, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

I agree that Thatcher's is an important point that should not get sidetracked. For what it is worth, my original wording of the draft decision was that editors on these articles must edit Misplaced Pages from only a single user account, but another arbitrator asked me to change it because an editor might have another valid reason for using an alternate account.

WAS 4.250's comment does require a response, however, which is that other than expressing his personal opinion that he found it hard to believe MM=SH because of differences in their writing styles in e-mails (see the evidence page), Jimbo Wales has provided no input or instructions to the Arbitration Committee on how to decide this case, or any other case at least since I have been a member of the Committee. (Any response to this paragraph should be moved to a separate thread.) Newyorkbrad (talk) 16:36, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

I think the need to avoid further sockpuppetry outweighs any legitimate need to edit the article under an alternate account (excluding those that replace a retired account). If someone has a legitimate alternate account and wishes to contribute, they can ask on the talk page for someone else to make the edit for them. It's stricter than the usual rule, but I think the history of the relevant articles requires it despite any inconvenience. alanyst 17:02, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

I have no problem with restricting the editors of these articles to using their primary account to edit and not an alternative account. The way the original proposal was worded by Newyorkbrad, any editor with any alternative account could not edit the articles and I think that is too restrictive give the large number of users that have legitimate alternative accounts (some openly declared and some not.) for reasons totally unrelated to the issues in this case. FloNight♥♥♥ 18:19, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Newyorkbrad says "Jimbo Wales has provided no input or instructions to the Arbitration Committee on how to decide this case, or any other case at least since I have been a member of the Committee." and not only do I believe him, but it is exactly what I expected. I believe Jimbo is doing his best to make Misplaced Pages NPOV without content corrupted by COI; but that he is as blind to some negative results of his behaviors as some others are blind to the many positive results of his behaviors. Example: Jimbo actually believes he is the sole founder of Misplaced Pages and asked others to make Misplaced Pages say so. But third party reliable sources are quite clear that two people have been called co-founders back to the very beginnings of Misplaced Pages. I don't think Jimbo is maliciously rewriting the past. It is a proven scientific fact that every time we remember something, our mind rewrites its memory of that thing. Jimbo appears to not accept that just because he is sure of something that doesn't make it true. COI is not merely or even mostly about deliberate POV pushing; it is that when we are close to a subject we honestly believe things about that subject that are objectively false. WAS 4.250 (talk) 18:10, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

I hate to be pedantic, but you're misquoting NYBrad. The full quote would be "other than expressing his personal opinion that he found it hard to believe MM=SH because of differences in their writing styles in e-mails (see the evidence page), Jimbo Wales has provided no input or instructions to the Arbitration Committee on how to decide this case, or any other case at least since I have been a member of the Committee." I am taking that to mean that Jimmy did have input, it is at Misplaced Pages:Requests_for_arbitration/Mantanmoreland/Evidence#Evidence_presented_by_Jimbo_Wales, but there was no other input or instructions. Is that correct? Hiding T 22:38, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Judd Bagley article

For the purposes of my investigation of systemic toleration of character assassination directed at Bagley and Byrne on Misplaced Pages, I would like to request that the deleted article on Bagley be made available. Is this possible? --G-Dett (talk) 15:33, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Unless there are specific deletions, I believe it was only redirected to Overstock.com. The history appears to be here. Mackan79 (talk) 15:38, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks Mackan, sorry everybody. Feel free to delete this section.--G-Dett (talk) 15:40, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

No deletion of sections (or soup for you)! you might need someone to undelete the original Bagely article. The history of the redirect is only a couple of weeks long prior to afd redirect. The previous was deleted in Jan 07. --Rocksanddirt (talk) 17:26, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Rocksanddirt beat me to it - see this AfD on the original article. That version was perhaps biased in favor of Bagley rather than against him, but G-Dett you still might want to ask an admin to take a look at that original version and let you know if there's anything worth examining there.--Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 17:33, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Why a topical ban won't work by itself

In a way, it's already been tried. SlimVirgin asked Mantanmoreland to leave off editing the articles in question.. shortly there after Samiharris showed up. Needless to say, I'm sure that everyone in question will be watching the articles, and god help the newcomer who comes in and looks like WB/MM. I know a full ban in this case will not be miles better, but it can be fairly said that after the first time that MM was asked to walk away, someone popped up and took his place. This is a supplemental action, not a problem-resolving action. SirFozzie (talk) 17:17, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

My mind is open on this issue, but—assuming that it were decided to adopt a remedy beyond those proposed in the original decision (on which I express no view right now as it is time for me to pass the baton at least temporarily to other arbitrators)—there are two possibilities: either the subject of the remedy would abide by it, or he wouldn't. If he did, then your concern about possibly evading the remedy by socking would be moot. If he didn't, then presumably he would disobey an outright site ban as well, and at least having the original account would leave something to checkuser etc. against. Just thinking out loud here. Newyorkbrad (talk) 17:27, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

We have discussed various approaches to use. All have strengths and weaknesses. Per Newyorkbrad's comment, allowing MM to edit the talk page has some advantages. The other advantage will be reducing the need for OTRS or Office involvement if MM notices issues that need to be addressed in the articles. FloNight♥♥♥ 17:53, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Re NYB,checkusers (please would any CU refactor this if I am wrong) often pronounce upon socks being controlled by dormant puppetmaster accounts - so whatever method that is used there can be used here, should MM not be permitted to edit on the site. I thus don't see that as a concern. FloNights other comment about there being issues that MM might perceive... if only MM can see them then the concerns might not be as valid as suggested. LessHeard vanU (talk) 23:08, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Checkuser information is stored only for a limited time. (Not commenting on any other issue; I think I've said enough for awhile on this page.) Newyorkbrad (talk) 23:12, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

I will explain by email. FloNight♥♥♥ 23:19, 7 March 2008 (UTC)(replying to LessHeard vanU).

The argument has been attempted before at community ban discussions that User:so-and-so could evade it anyway, so don't ban. It's never carried weight that I've seen, and it's unsettling to see an arbitrator seriously entertain that line of reasoning. If a siteban is appropriate, we ban. And then we play whack-a-mole if necessary (there appears to be no shortage here of administrators who would be willing to do so). The difference between topic banning and sitebanning carries an enormous deterrent effect. Durova 01:07, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

I get the impression that a topic ban may be moot; it appears to me unlikely that Mantanmoreland any longer has community confidence as an editor. Samiharris has stopped, and all the checkusered socks have been blocked. The range of articles is limited enough to be watched closely. The proposed disclosure rules and a ban on proxy editing will do the trick; leave the rest up to the community.

Should the community not decide to ban, and I hope it does not, an editing restriction to the talk page should be enough. Mantanmoreland's knowledge of the subject is good, and he has contributed considerably to both of the articles I have examined in any detail. I do not know why people claim that he is Gary Weiss, but the idea does seem to have taken hold in the community. If he is, then he should not be permitted to edit the article on Gary Weiss, nor perhaps that on Patrick M. Byrne. The community might want to add other restrictions, though I'd say that from his edits on naked short selling they would be unnecessary. He is certainly a sock puppeteer (even discounting the questionable Samiharris evidence) and he has certainly betrayed our trust, but he is not a bad or even a particularly biased editor. Whether he can recover from this unpopularity is another matter. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 03:01, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Oversight deletions in the Weiss article

Unless I missed it somewhere, I haven't seen it mentioned which oversight admin(s) oversighted edits from the Weiss article and associated talk page. Would one of the arbitrators please state here who it was? Thank you. Cla68 (talk) 23:48, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

I understand that some of the material was oversighted by DMCDevit. Was he the only one to oversight edits from the article? Were edits from the talk page also oversighted? If so, was it DMCDevit that oversighted those? Cla68 (talk) 00:49, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Have you asked themself if they did the oversighting, if that is not too presumtious might i suggest?--Newbyguesses - Talk 05:20, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Where is this leading? Did any party to this case make edits that needed to be oversighted? --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 05:33, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

I asked this basic question in my evidence section and here, and all I get in response from the ArbCom is complete silence. Why? Give us the name(s). If those oversight admins were following the guidelines in selecting which edits to delete, then there's no problem. Is there a "can of worms" issue here? Cla68 (talk) 10:25, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Yes, Oversight is enforcement of the privacy policy, so by definition it's a "can of worms" issue. If you think an oversighter has breached or abused his powers on Gary Weiss or its talk page, ask a steward to take a look. A steward can summarily deal with any such abuses by removing oversight power (and presumably, by restoring the wrongly removed edits, or at least its content). --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 12:10, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

<-- Right, however I and another editor have also asked simply for a confirmation that WordBomb did post the material to the article that he has been alleged to have added. I have asked this several times, and User:Random832 has formally asked on the evidence page. Considering this is obviously relevant to public discussions about this case and its related issues, the appearance is not concern over privacy or information about the nature of oversight. Perhaps they are concerned people will raise a storm over 2 or 3 edits that didn't need to be oversighted, but even that doesn't add up; it wouldn't seem difficult to explain that 2 or 3 too many edits were oversighted in removing a banned user's edits generally adding allegedly identifying information. On the other hand, the question about whether a statement in evidence by a major party to these events is correct should obviously be known, and should be answered without some very important reason not to. Mackan79 (talk) 18:23, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Could you explain a bit more about this? WordBomb is a banned nuisance. Whether or not people say he posted something he shouldn't have done, which has now been oversighted, we know enough about his activities that were not oversighted to say with certainty that he's never going to be welcome here, so in view of this how will your question help us to resolve this case? --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 18:28, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

I think that having a basic chronology of how this issue developed is very important for this case as well as for determining what went wrong. Even now, the current ArbCom decision, while an improvement, suggests that Mantanmoreland will be allowed to continue editing while WordBomb will not. If the answer to future questions is that WordBomb is a banned nuisance, then I'd like to know why he was banned. I'd also like to know if the statements that have been and continue to be made about him are correct. There are other concerns, such as the indications of not providing basic information to verify public statements, but I think these reasons alone are more than enough. Mackan79 (talk) 19:11, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

WordBomb was banned by normal community mechanisms. He could be unbanned by the same mechanisms. By the same token, Mantanmoreland could be banned by the community. If you think something funny has been going on and the privacy policy has been abused, it might be worth going to metawikipedia and asking an ombudsman to take a look at the matter. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 20:23, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

It's not the privacy policy; I'm solely interested whether WordBomb added the allegation after he conceded not to, as SlimVirgin has now said. The reason I question her statement is that I had just asked her about this, and she didn't answer, but then in evidence she added a list of times for his edits to jusify her block, that clearly included one after the time WordBomb had conceded to stop adding the material. Thus I asked her again, but she did not answer, and so I have asked others with oversight access to clarify. I don't question that his edits would be oversighted, but I do question her statement, as I think is necessary. Of course it is also difficult to raise the issue of his block without knowing why he was blocked. Mackan79 (talk) 20:45, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

I think you may be getting deletion mixed up with oversighting. I followed your link and it appears that you're referring to statements by User:SlimVirgin who very clearly describes deleting edits by WordBomb, and gives links to those deleted edits. Any administrator can see them. Just ask one to confirm that it conforms to SlimVirgin's description. If it turns out that they're perfectly innocent edits that shouldn't have been deleted, ask for them to be undeleted. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 21:09, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your clarification. But are you saying that the edit to WordBomb's talk page was at 21:49? The sentence I am questioning is "Over several edits on that day (at 07:57, 15:39, 16:46, 16:49, 19:18, 19:51, and 21:49), WB had added to the article that Weiss was editing Misplaced Pages as MM, and that an anti-naked short selling group had 'launched a campaign' against Weiss to show that he was posting to certain message boards." Since that time, I have found that WordBomb actually conceded not to add the material to the article again at 17:00. Thus, I've asked whether there were edits to the article at 19:18, 19:51 and 21:49 that readded the allegation. If you're saying the edit at 21:49 was to WordBomb's talk page that seems to resolve that edit, but I'd still like to know then if he added the allegation at the two other times (19:18 and 19:51). Mackan79 (talk) 22:06, 8 March 2008 (UTC) (Also, see here where an admin clarified that edits to the article were not deleted.)

SlimVirgin's statement is quite clear and can be checked by any admin. I've no idea why you might think I know or am making any statements about deleted edits by another user. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 00:06, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Except that I asked an admin who said that there were no deleted edits visible on the article. I'm not asking about where she says WordBomb responded on his talk page, but about the seven edits she says were made to the article, at the seven listed time stamps. Random832's explanation clarifies that these must have been oversighted, since they're not in the deletion log. Mackan79 (talk) 00:13, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

So we're back to oversighting. I do think it's a job for a steward or ombudsman. This is something that has to be handled with delicacy. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 00:15, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Voting

Congratulations, I believe are due, to the arbitrators. It appears that 13 Proposed decisions, at least, will now pass. I believe I can live with those, in fact, it is better than I expected. There are a number of issues left unresolved, but that was always going to be the case. The arbitrators have deliberated long and well, I hope my congratulations are sincerely taken, and may be joined by further and respected editors. --Newbyguesses - Talk 11:51, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Plus not so respected editors, like me...? ;~) LessHeard vanU (talk) 10:15, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Nice to start the wiki-day with a smile. ;-) FloNight♥♥♥ 12:01, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

I faced an extremely frosty reception the other day for simply expressing my parsimonious view that the findings of fact in proposed decision at the time were sufficient. Except for a tweak to finding 2 to avoid the reading of some kind of precedent, there has been no change to the findings in the case since then . This sea-change can only have been due to Newyorkbrad's careful and patient work of explanation. Congratulations to Brad for...whatever it was he said that changed minds (Brad of course will be aware that I never listen to a word he says ). --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 12:25, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

I am uncertain that that the Proposed decisions are sufficient for all the aspects that have concerned most of the parties participating here, but I acknowledge that within the remit that they gave themselves the arbs have performed admirably. I am also uncertain that reaching definitive conclusions within a narrow focus rather than possibly having fractured findings over a wider range of concerns is better or worse for the community in the long run. I guess we are going to find out. LessHeard vanU (talk) 13:35, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

The majority conclude...

Josh suggests that this phrase might be removed from FoF 2 Allegations (or, I guess, 2.1). Note that this would not force an aritrator to publicly dissent by opposing; simply failing to register a vote would be enough. As it stands though, the FoF states that the arbitrator voting yes believe that the majority of arbitrators agree... there is question of individual responsibility... there is a question of when private polls are necessary (if one indeed took place)... there is a question, if it were a narrow majority, of what happens if an arb changes their mind, or becomes unsure. While Newyorkbrad's extended comments (above) were welcome, clarifying, informative - they did not really address this. Removing the phrase would be a quite welcome modification in the FoF. Jd2718 (talk) 15:26, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

• It still strikes me as odd -- what would it actually mean if I voted against it? That I didn't believe that the majority felt that way? (I'm pretty sure the majority feels that way.) Certainly the plurality feels that way. It doesn't really hurt anything, which is why I voted for it, but it feels to me very much like "It should be noted that" -- self-evident and redundant. But I'm not in the mood for fine-tuned language crafting. --jpgordon 16:12, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Good enough

The Committee members have made a sincere effort in a difficult case. The proposed decision appears to be moving a direction that will allow this matter to be resolved. If the various players continue to stir up trouble, I am confident that the remedies here will lead to full sitebans. Eventualism is a reasonable strategy in many situations. Jehochman 16:06, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

1. Floyd Norris, The New York Times (June 14,2007). "S.E.C. Ends Decades-Old Price Limits on Short Selling". {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
2. “Key Points About Regulation SHO,” Securities and Exchange Commission, April 11, 2005