Procedural notes: The rules governing arbitration enforcement appeals are found here. According to the procedures, a "clear, substantial, and active consensus of uninvolved administrators" is required to overturn an arbitration enforcement action.

To help determine any such consensus, involved editors may make brief statements in separate sections but should not edit the section for discussion among uninvolved editors. Editors are normally considered involved if they are in a current dispute with the sanctioning or sanctioned editor, or have taken part in disputes (if any) related to the contested enforcement action. Administrators having taken administrative actions are not normally considered involved for this reason alone (see WP:UNINVOLVED).

Appealing user

Maudslay II (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) – Maudslay II (talk) 17:06, 14 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Sanction being appealed

Topic ban from the subject of Arab-Israeli conflict.

Administrator imposing the sanction

Newslinger (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)

Notification of that administrator

The appealing editor is asked to notify the administrator who made the enforcement action of this appeal, and then to replace this text with a diff of that notification. The appeal may not be processed otherwise. If a block is appealed, the editor moving the appeal to this board should make the notification.

The original request was here

Maarakeh bombing article, which is accusations 1 and 2

Geshem Bracha moved the page without discussion, then changed the infobox title & lead name (which should reflect the article title) before reaching consenus. That's why I reverted it. Nableezy pointed that out later and reverted it as well.

Geshem Bracha added a "hoax" template because of a lack of sources. I added extra sources and removed the template. After realising that I broke the 1RR rule, I reverted my last edit.

Zrarieh raid article, accusations 3 and 4

The editor Free1Soul did this: changed the infobox title & lead name, before reaching any consensus, removed references and removed categories. He also moved the page without any discussion. The same thing was done by Shrike earlier. How is this good faith edits? That's why I called it vandalism. All of this is clear in the page's history ~ 10 April.

Deir Yassin images, accusation 5

I thought that the Deir Yassin massacre was missing out on a photo. Given the subject is important and well-known, I downloaded a bunch of images from google and uploded them to commons. I realised that they are unrelated to the even when @Huldra: pointed that out and I supported deleting them when it was later proposed for deletion. It was an honest mistake and I agree that I did not put enough effort in the begining.

Canvassing, accusation 6

I invited Alexandermcnabb to participate in a related discussion of which he actually talked about but did not know it existed. My invitation can not be described as canvassing in any way. According to this guidline: "it is perfectly acceptable to notify other editors of ongoing discussions" and it is acceptable to invite "Editors who have participated in previous discussions on the same topic (or closely related topics)". My notification was limited, neutral, nonpartisan and open.

Admin Newslinger indefinitely topic banned from the Arab–Israeli conflict, and linked me to "policy on verifiability, policy against edit warring, and guideline on canvassing". I do not think this is fair. It is too harsh. I appelead in his talk page but did not recieve any answer.

Edit 1: @Shrike: My sv was about the removal of the hoax template, as seen above. The problem was about that. Earlier, SoarlingLL deleted sourced material without a valid reason. My revert was to restore those. This edit was after 25 hours of the first revert.

Why you continued to edit war[1] after your self rv? --Shrike (talk) 18:07, 14 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

You always should count 24 hours from the last revert not from the first anyhow If you self rv you shouldn't continue to edit war even if 24 hours have passed. The Topic ban is needed so you will know who to properly interact with other users and how to use WP:DR --Shrike (talk) 06:47, 15 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Unless there are things I don't know about, I stand by what I said previously, a tban seems a bit ott to me despite the CIR issue. A stiff warning and maybe a week break might have done the trick. Maybe I'm a softie.Selfstudier (talk) 18:15, 14 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I can see now it is a more severe case than I had thought, the proposed sanction seems fair in the circumstances.Selfstudier (talk) 09:45, 18 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Johnuniq: this is not a new user. This account was created in December 2020, but Maudslay II has confirmed they are Maudslayer (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log). Maudslay (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) has also confirmed they are Maudslayer (itself "one of the accounts I can't get access to"). Maudslayer was created in August 2015. The edits themselves are atrocious, Maudslay II consistently portrays every single Israeli action as a "massacre" against innocent civilians despite reliable sources, even the same sources they are citing, describing the event in other terms. Uploading an image that is a famous image of "Rows of bodies of dead inmates fill yard of Lager Nordhausen, Gestapo concentration camp" from 1945 and falsely presenting it as an Israeli atrocity is either malicious to the extreme or alternatively so grossly incompetent that productive neutral editing on the topic is impossible to foresee.--Geshem Bracha (talk) 08:31, 18 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

This section is to be edited only by uninvolved administrators. Comments by others will be moved to the sections above.

• The result of the previous WP:AE discussion is archived here. Maudslay II's account was created in December 2020. It is unfortunate that a new editor has been (apparently) mislead by hoax images/sources on the internet, but Newslinger went to a lot of trouble to spell out problems in the previous report and they would need to be addressed for a successful appeal. Are they addressed above? A feeling that a topic ban might have been unduly harsh for a new editor has to be balanced against the fact that this is a super-charged topic where meticulous care and collaboration is required. I'm not seeing a reason for the topic ban to be lifted at the moment although some months of constructive work in other areas might be sufficient for an appeal if the original points are addressed. Johnuniq (talk) 07:32, 16 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • In view of the comments above by Geshem Bracha (Maudslay II is very much not a new user, and the extremely hoax picture is much worse than I realized) and the lack of response to substantive issues, the appeal should be declined. Johnuniq (talk) 09:40, 18 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Maudslay II, could you respond to two of Newslinger's comments from the last AE discussion, specifically their analysis of the first two diffs from Geshem Bracha's comment (which can be found by checking the archived link provided by Johnuniq above, or at Special:Diff/1020638246)? _signed, Rosguill ^talk 23:55, 16 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

This request may be declined without further action if insufficient or unclear information is provided in the "Request" section below.
Requests may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs (not counting required information), except by permission of a reviewing administrator.

User who is submitting this request for enforcement

FDW777 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) 07:34, 16 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

User against whom enforcement is requested

TrottieTrue (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Search CT alerts: in user talk history • in system log

Sanction or remedy to be enforced

Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Editing of Biographies of Living Persons#May 2014

Diffs of edits that violate this sanction or remedy, and an explanation how these edits violate it

1. 01:15, 16 May 2021 Adds a year of birth referenced by this, in violation of WP:BLPPRIMARY. Where is the evidence "Kate Osborne" and this "Katharine Helen Osborne" are the same person? The disclaimer at the bottom of the page is particularly troubling, We make no warranty whatsoever as to the accuracy or completeness of the FreeBMD data.

Diffs of previous relevant sanctions, if any

1. 20:39, 4 May 2021 logged warning to use only high-quality sources for information relating to biographies of living persons

If discretionary sanctions are requested, supply evidence that the user is aware of them (see WP:AC/DS#Awareness and alerts)

Notified

Additional comments by editor filing complaint

At Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive1066#TrottieTrue at least two editors suggested a ban on BLPs might be needed entirely, I'd suggest the bare minimum that's needed is a topic ban relating to dates of birth.

From the comments below, They claim to have little interest in UK politics, yet are picking up on my mistakes in this topic area quite readily - leading me to suspect they are watching my activity . . . these bad faith accusations against me . . . Wikipedia:Assume good faith The history of Kate Osborne (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) clearly shows this edit by me on 3 May. Obviously if someone truly was assuming good faith, like they insist others do, they might consider that the only "watching" going is because I watchlisted the article.

Also from the reply below, Searching at FreeBMD only brings up one matching result for Katharine Helen Osborne. My jaw has literally hit the flaw on reading this. It is wholly unacceptable to assume that they are the same person based on the results of a search. That they would consider doing this so soon after the close of the previous enforcement request (which was again solely relating to dates of birth of living people) is staggering. FDW777 (talk) 15:03, 16 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Note this change to their post after my previous reply. FDW777 (talk) 15:29, 16 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Also the claim that I said They claim to have little interest in UK politics is misleading. The post referred to is this, and I said Not because of any pressing interest in the vast majority of UK politics, the vast majority generally being politics unrelated to Ireland. As now admitted below, I had edited Kate Osborne before to remove an unreferenced date of birth, and as Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement/Archive285#TrottieTrue demonstrates, TrottieTrue has a tendency to restore dates of birth with questionable references. This is aptly demonstrated by the fact I'm even posting here now, as TrottieTrue did indeed restore a partial date of birth at Kate Osborne with an unquestionably bad reference. So it would seem my prudent watchlisting of that article was in fact correct. FDW777 (talk) 15:50, 16 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Further to my reply about searching FreeBMD, the website's home page states FreeBMD is an ongoing project, the aim of which is to transcribe the Civil Registration index of births, marriages and deaths for England and Wales . . . To search the records that have so far been transcribed by FreeBMD. Should certain points of that not raise giant red flags? Point 1, it only covers England and Wales. What if someone had been born in Scotland, Northern Ireland, or even outside the UK? Point 2, it says it's a work in progress and that the records are not complete. Thus, even if it was permitted per WP:NOR (which it isn't) and WP:BLP (which it isn't), it should be glaringly obvious that simply searching for a name and only finding one result gives absolutely no guarantee that the record you've found is the same person you're looking for. FDW777 (talk) 17:52, 16 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Valereee: I'd have been happier if I'd not have had to waste time filing this at all. But despite several previous discussions (as well as the previous AE report see User talk:TrottieTrue#BLP:PRIMARY, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Politics of the United Kingdom#Dates of birth for politicians and an IP User and Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive332#Disruptive and uncivil IP user, including vandalism) TrottieTrue thought it was acceptable to clearly violate WP:BLPPRIMARY again regarding the date of birth of a living person. I didn't seek out this edit, they violated it on an article on my watchlist. My belief, based on past and present history, is that TrottieTrue will continue to add dates of birth to articles about living people, and if the BLP policy just happens to get in the way of the edit they want to make they'll simply ignore the policy. FDW777 (talk) 20:46, 16 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

they haven't taken issue with List of living former United Kingdom MPs, which includes hundreds of unreferenced years of birth, are you saying that with a straight face? I have made numerous posts at Talk:List of living former United Kingdom MPs about that exact issue. In face, you are 100% aware of this because you made a complaint about my post on that page at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive1066#Incivility by User:FDW777. There is one very good reason I haven't removed all the dates, because I can't be bothered to manually remove hundreds of dates from individual fields. There is no quick way of doing it, it's a time consuming process and I simply don't want to waste time doing it at present.

The issue here appears to be that FDW777 claims I have violated BLP policy by using FreeBMD. There is no consensus on this website. I understand that it could be viewed as "public records", and therefore a violation of BLP policy, but I didn't violate it on purpose, as has been suggested. Anyone looking at FreeBMD can see it's nothing other than public records, it's a clear and unambiguous violation of WP:BLPPRIMARY. In their earlier statement they said Where is the evidence that Kate Osborne and the BMD entry are the same person? . . . Searching at FreeBMD only brings up one matching result for Katharine Helen Osborne. As detailed in my comment at 17:52, 16 May, FreeBMD only covers England and Wales and is not complete. Therefore to perform a search, find only one record, then assume "Aha, that must be the same person" is not acceptable under any circumstances. FDW777 (talk) 07:24, 17 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Since this point has been ignored before, I'll emphasise it. There is currently no evidence Kate Osborne was born in England. There was an unreferenced claim she was born in Folkestone, Kent, but I can find absolutely no evidence it is true. I assume, unless evidence to the contrary can be provided, it was originally added based on the assumption that the FreeBMD does indeed refer to her. Let's say for the sake of argument she was born in Scotland. Would a record of her birth appear by searching FreeBMD? No, since it only has (partial) coverage of England and Wales. That would make the "Katharine Helen Osborne" born in Folkestone in 1966 a totally different person. Or let's assume she was born somewhere and/or in some year that FreeBMD have yet to transcribe records for. That would again make the "Katharine Helen Osborne" born in Folkestone in 1966 a totally different person. This is precisely why searches of databases of public records are not acceptable references, and they are absolutely not high-quality sources for information relating to biographies of living persons as required by the logged warning from the previous AE report. FDW777 (talk) 07:40, 17 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Andrew Gray:, while you make some valid points you fail to understand or aim to tackle the root of the problem, which is TrottieTrue's date-of-birth-must-be-included-at-all-costs attitude. Although this information is spread across various posts and discussions, I will collate it here to demonstrate this attitude. Edits related to the history of John Finucane (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views), unless specificed otherwise

• 01:58, 17 March 2021 Adds partial date of birth referenced by Companies House. This is reverted hours later by me here clearly mentioning WP:BLPPRIMARY in the edit summary.
• 11:05, 25 March 2021 Amends "1980/81" birth date to simply "1980" with a reference. No problems whatsover with that edit, but it does demonstrate they were aware their previous edit was reverted
• User talk:TrottieTrue#BLP:PRIMARY, discussion about WP:BLPPRIMARY from 24 March to 4 April, again demonstrating they were aware Companies House information was unacceptable for dates of birth
• Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Politics of the United Kingdom#Dates of birth for politicians and an IP User, discussion about dates of birth including Companies House from 27 March to 16 April
• Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive332#Disruptive and uncivil IP user, including vandalism, discussion about dates of birth including Companies House from 14 April to 24 April

• In particular from that discussion there is a post by TrottieTrue at 16:58, 9 April 2021 where they say I accepted their initial post on my Talk page about not using Companies House as a DOB source

• 23:15, 2 May 2021 Despite all that, back at John Fincane they add a full date of birth referenced by Companies House (note the URL from that diff doesn't work, it was subsequently fixed in this diff). This edit was reverted here with an edit summary stating WP:BLPPRIMARY. "Exercise extreme caution in using primary sources. Do not use trial transcripts and other court records, or other public documents, to support assertions about a living person. Do not use public records that include personal details, such as date of birth, home value, traffic citations, vehicle registrations, and home or business addresses
• 12:36, 3 May 2021 Adds back the full date of birth claiming the fact it is public record implied the subject does not object

That full date of birth isn't something that's been accidentally found, it's been deliberately looked for. Only a partial date of birth appears on the Companies House page for John Finucane. To find his full date of birth, you have to click on the Finucane Toner Limited page, and it's hidden away on page 3 of one of the PDFs. This is the attitude you need to change. Rather than be content with a 1980 date of birth appearing in the article, they go to extreme lengths despite knowing they shouldn't be using the reference anyway. At Kemi Badenoch (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) you see similar behaviour, although without the earlier history. If you check the footnote you will see it links to the records of Charlton Triangle Homes Limited, and it's page 4 of 8! That's clearly not something accidentally found. At Kate Osborne (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) they added a date of birth on 01:54, 18 March 2021. I don't know why the reference has removed the information, but it doesn't appear on the current page. Rather than accept there is no reliable reference for Kate Osborne's date of birth, TrottieTrue starts looking on FreeBDM and upon only finding one record assumes that must be correct, despite the warning from the previous AE to only use high-quality references. Again, that's the date-of-birth-must-be-included-at-all-costs attitude you need to change. FDW777 (talk) 19:03, 18 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Notification of the user against whom enforcement is requested

Notified

Statements must be made in separate sections. They may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs, except by permission of a reviewing administrator.
Administrators may remove or shorten noncompliant statements. Disruptive contributions may result in blocks.

I feel like I'm being harassed by FDW777, since their recent complaint about me resulted in a one-way interaction ban preventing me from contacting them. They claim to have little interest in UK politics, yet are picking up on my mistakes in this topic area quite readily - leading me to suspect they are watching my activity (they note they've edited Kate Osborne before, but it was only to remove my edit!). Anyway, I did not realise that FreeBMD was a source to be avoided, although it appears to have a good reputation. I used it because I had seen it used on BLP articles before: see Frank Kitchen, Tony Barrow and Karl Sabbagh. A search for FreeBMD in BLP articles brings up 877 results. Nonetheless, I apologise if this is a source to be avoided, as I can see how it might be interpreted as "public records". I was only using it to cite the year of birth and place though, not the full date. Where is the evidence that Kate Osborne and the BMD entry are the same person? The election results from South Tyneside council state the winner of Jarrow was "Katharine Helen Brooks-Osborne Commonly known as Kate OSBORNE". As she is married to Pamela Brooks, it can be deduced that this is her double-barrelled married name (see also [2]). Searching at FreeBMD only brings up one matching result for Katharine Helen Osborne. The marriage was actually unreferenced, but I have now added a citation for it. I didn't see the logged warning about only using "high-quality sources" because it was added after the case had closed. I suffer from chronic health problems, and these bad faith accusations against me exacerbate the issues. I have made thousands of edits (particularly on BLP articles) without issue, and spent time researching better sources. User:Johnuniq misunderstands my issue with the IP editor - it was not the first time they had alerted me, and I found their comment violated WP:CIVILITY: "No. You should see WP:BLPPRIMARY and learn the policies and learn your facts." I think a topic ban would be highly disproportionate: "at least two editors suggested a ban on BLPs might be needed entirely" is mentioned. This was from two editors who are not administrators (one of whom was abusive towards me in their reply), and WP is in danger of being ruled by the court of public opinion on these matters. I'm happy not to use FreeBMD again, and exercise extreme caution with anything similar, but I don't think arbitration requests like this are the right way to treat an editor like myself who has made a big contribution to the site. See Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy and Wikipedia:Assume good faith. FDW777 actually suggested years of birth being used for another BLP article here (no mention of references being needed), a solution enacted by the administrator who created the article, User:Andrew Gray. I have been adding full DOBs with RS citations to that article since then. I think a sense of perspective is needed here, and some compassion. There’s a lot of smears about me here - I’m clearly being victimised. I certainly didn’t violate policy intentionally.--TrottieTrue (talk) 14:53, 16 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• User:Johnuniq: Well, it feels like it is "bad faith accusations against me". Surely I'm entitled to say how I perceive a situation, whether others think it is "correct" or not. I previously left a message on FDW777's talk page asking them to refrain from harassment of other editors. Surely that message should be taken seriously too, instead of removed with the comment "don't post here again". The comment left by the IP editor wasn't the first time they had posted on my talk page, and I don't think "you should learn your facts" is the most constructive way to draw my attention to BLP policy. The issue here appears to be that FDW777 claims I have violated BLP policy by using FreeBMD. There is no consensus on this website. I understand that it could be viewed as "public records", and therefore a violation of BLP policy, but I didn't violate it on purpose, as has been suggested. However, that source has been used on hundreds of other BLP articles. If I see it used regularly, am I not going to think that it's acceptable as a source? Not to mention the fact that FDW777 is picking and choosing when policy gets enforced, and who for; they haven't taken issue with List of living former United Kingdom MPs, which includes hundreds of unreferenced years of birth. Hence it feels like they are singling me out for this treatment. Surely the best way is to build consensus; it could have been politely pointed out to me if there was a problem with my edit on Kate Osborne. Instead, yet again, FDW777 is escalating it to AR. If you look at my list of edits, you'll see that I have been adding DOBs with reliable sources, to improve the articles; I was just under the impression that FreeBMD was acceptable as a source. As ever, this discussion has got way out of hand, when a more consensual discussion could have resolved things sooner. But there's probably little point in me arguing my case here, as I won't get a fair hearing. My good work at WP clearly counts for nothing. I apologise for using FreeBMD, if that's the issue, and won't use it again for BLP, but I'm uncomfortable with the same editor repeatedly reporting me for such issues.--TrottieTrue (talk) 00:21, 17 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Further to the additional comments above by the complainant, I would like to emphatically state that I already accept the point about avoiding FreeBMD as a source for BLP articles, and apologise for using it on this occasion. However, if such policies are not enforced consistently across WP, it’s easy to see why an editor like myself might be misled into thinking they are acceptable. Last night I actually removed Findmypast as a source for a DOB at Martin Whitfield, and replaced it with a better reference.

I have contacted User:Valereee by email about my health conditions, which I didn’t want to mention before, for obvious reasons - for one thing, they are private, and I don’t want to share personal information in a public forum like this. However, a volunteer-run organisation needs to take these things into account - it is in fact standard practice, and could lead Wikipedia open to accusations of discrimination, especially when multiple editors and administrators join together to harangue an editor who has a disability.

Incidentally, my reverted edit to Kate Osborne included her full name (as cited on the election results statement), so it was unnecessarily removed by the complainant. There were other unreferenced statements about her on the article which I have now cited or removed: for example, her spouse has been referenced, and the "birth name" in the infobox has been taken out, as it was (wrongly) assumed that the name she used to be sworn into Parliament was her birth name.—TrottieTrue (talk) 12:23, 17 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I recommended a topic ban from BLP at the ANI. At this point TT has made it abundantly clear that they are either unable or unwilling to consistently follow the requirement to properly source biographies. (t · c) buidhe 17:38, 16 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

For full disclosure, I got caught up in this a couple of weeks ago, with a dispute about dates on List of living former United Kingdom MPs, a list I had produced after an initial suggestion by TT. That was resolved to everyone's satisfaction, I believe. I have not otherwise been involved. TT contacted me and asked me to comment here, though I probably would have done anyway once I had noticed the ping.

Having spent this evening reading over the dispute, TT is clearly struggling a bit with the standards the community has for BLP sourcing, but it looks to me like they are trying to work to improve the quality of their edits. They have moved away from the individual sources which were causing problems (and a comment above indicates they have taken on board the problem with this one, as well). They are perhaps having trouble being able to step back and reflect on some of this, but that seems to be in part because things are mired in a very combative dispute model.

TT has been editing steadily in this area between the last set of warnings on 7 May and this edit on 14 May. I would estimate 50-100 sources added to articles in those ten days, predominantly from Historic Hansard, which I believe is widely used for dates. The sanctions were to "use only high-quality references" - and while it is true that birth records are not suitable sources (per WP:BLPPRIMARY), thinking that 'official' trumps 'primary' is an understandable mistake to make and many other editors have done likewise. That edit was immediately escalated here to ask for a topic ban, rather than challenged.

Both parties are understandably very frustrated at this point, and I appreciate that FDW feels they are just trying to protect the articles from badly-sourced material, but it seems to me that approaches like this don't help resolve the issue - they just perpetuate the dispute, and drive things inexorably towards a topic ban.

To try and avoid a ban, as someone who has already been working with TT occasionally, I would be happy to offer to work with them for a while to try and help them improve to a point where they are confident in understanding the BLP sourcing issues that are causing concerns. I feel confident that they would be willing to engage and able to improve. Perhaps an appropriate approach would be for me to discuss the sources they'd like to use with them, and approve/disapprove their suggested sources for BLP content? Combined with the existing interaction ban, that feels like it would go some way to solving the problems here, if the community is OK with it. Andrew Gray (talk) 23:32, 17 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

(I should add it has been a long time since I engaged with AE, so apologies if that suggestion would have been better made somewhere else Andrew Gray (talk) 23:34, 17 May 2021 (UTC))[reply]

I've been away from Wikipedia for a while and came here having noticed TrottieTrue's excellent work in tidying up articles about new UK MPs, many of which were a mess before he got to them. Without his suggestion, we wouldn't have the List of living former United Kingdom MPs, which will be an invaluable resource for journalists, academics and researchers (great work, Andrew Gray!). This is useful for keeping the Records of members of parliament of the United Kingdom article updated. The article about the oldest living former MP, Patrick Duffy, has been greatly improved thanks to TT. So many BLP articles are full of spelling, grammar and formatting issues, which damage Wikipedia's reputation. The way that TT goes about correcting these errors is a highly useful but a thankless task. A topic ban would therefore be detrimental to Wikipedia. I am also very uncomfortable with the way other editors are going about this. Coming at this from the viewpoint of someone not immersed in the internal workings of Wikipedia, it looks like a case of harassment directed at TT, and borderline bullying. I'm a secondary school teacher, and in my experience, this is not the way treat someone who may have unknowingly broken a rule. As Andrew Gray suggests, it would be better to help TT to become a more valued editor by educating him on how he can improve. It's obvious he didn't mean to violate policy, and if the average editor sees FreeBMD used as a reference on so many BLP articles, would they not be fooled into thinking it is acceptable? There's no training required to become an editor here, which means one can easily edit for years (like TT) without full knowledge of the many detailed policies on Wikipedia. Volunteer-run organisations generally have confidential forms for new people, in which they can disclose any health conditions or adjustments that might need to be made. Sanctioning an editor who it sounds like has a disability for some relatively minor mistakes is not a good look for Wikipedia, and doesn't foster an inclusive environment. It also looks like these policies are not enforced consistently, so singling out one user like this at the behest of another user comes across as vindictive and unfair. A topic ban here would be excessively harsh and punitive; I wouldn't ban one of my students from a subject area for making some honest mistakes. That isn't the way to help someone learn, no matter what age they are.

It's clear from TTs statements that they are not maliciously violating policy and are willing to work with other users to improve the quality of Wikipedia. TT has apologised and vowed to learn from this. I oppose sanctioning for this. Denham331 (talk) 16:51, 18 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

This section is to be edited only by uninvolved administrators. Comments by others will be moved to the sections above.

• I see an IP providing correct advice to two editors at User talk:TrottieTrue#BLP:PRIMARY. I would be inclined to endorse a BLP topic ban based on the dismissive reply to the IP in which TrottieTrue asserts that being provided a correct link to policy is a civility problem. The previous AE report resulting in "logged warning to use only high-quality sources" from Seraphimblade is here and that further demonstrates the need for a topic ban. Any thoughts on this? Indefinite? Johnuniq (talk) 07:54, 16 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • @TrottieTrue: It is not correct to describe the situation as "bad faith accusations against me". Also, I do not misunderstand your issue with the IP editor. If someone leaves a message on your talk, that message needs to be taken seriously. Of course it might be wrong but it would be better to ask for independent advice, say at WP:BLPN or WP:Teahouse rather than dismiss the reporter. What is needed on this page is a focus on the issue—do you know what that is? Johnuniq (talk) 23:53, 16 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• I am not experienced here at AE, but I'd like to register that I'm a little uncomfortable with a situation in which editor X has a one-way iban from editor Y, and editor Y brings editor X to AE. Is that something that makes other people uncomfortable, or am I way off base here? (Please ping, IRL is crazy right now). —valereee (talk) 19:03, 16 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• valereee, it looks like the IBAN is a community sanction, not AE. That said, if only one party is subject to that sanction, the other is, well, not. (Of course if the editor who is interaction banned is the direct subject of the report, they are permitted to defend themself, and have already done so here.) So no, the filer did nothing wrong here by putting forth the request. That aside, it looks like the warning did not have the desired effect, so it is time for an actual sanction to be issued. I would agree to an indefinite BLP topic ban, with the usual note that "indefinite" need not necessarily mean "permanent" and it could be relaxed after some reasonable period of time, if there is a clear desire and ability to do better. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 20:26, 16 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  @Seraphimblade, I'm sorry, to clarify it's not that I think FDW777 did anything wrong. I just that I think one-ways are really difficult situations for the person who has the restriction, and my very strong feeling is that best practices are that the other editor just try to ignore the person who has the iban from them. —valereee (talk) 20:31, 16 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  @FDW777, I get it. I really do. I've also filed reports that I felt like were a waste of my time. I am actually not questioning you as much as I am our processes and policies. Honestly I'm wondering if we need to require that reports can't be filed by someone on either end of an iban. Because if we know FDW777 can't keep an eye on this user, someone else will. —valereee (talk) 21:02, 16 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  @Valereee: There is no problem about the one-way iban. While they are rare, the usual situation is that user X notices that user Y is repeatedly introducing some problem. Rather than fixing the problem, Y sometimes retaliates against X but a discussion finds that Y's complaints about X are sufficiently unfounded and repeated to warrant a one-way iban. The whole point of making it one way is so X can continue to monitor the situation because often they are the only editor willing to do so. At any rate, that is a discussion for WP:VPPRO. Johnuniq (talk) 23:44, 16 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  Well, this probably isn't the place, but if editor X is the only person willing to monitor editor Y, and no one else is even noticing what editor Y is doing, maybe we need to rethink how bad editor Y's issues are. Because if editor X can't and still no one else puts it on their watch list...how bad is it? I mean, I get it. I've been the only one who was willing to keep monitoring the problem, and when it became clear I was involved, other people stepped in. —valereee (talk) 00:25, 17 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  And, er, I'll shut up now, as I'm the newb here. —valereee (talk) 00:39, 17 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  TrottieTrue, to be clear, FDW777 is quite correct about the issues with your editing, and your statement Incidentally, my reverted edit to Kate Osborne included her full name (as cited on the election results statement), so it was unnecessarily removed by the complainant. is actually further evidence against you. My concern here is not that FDW777 is not bringing a valid concern. It's that as a matter of policy Wikipedia probably should be strongly encouraging those in an i-ban -- even a one-way i-ban -- to ask another uninvolved editor to bring such concerns. —valereee (talk) 13:04, 17 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  @Johnuniq, FDW777 actually said they'd be fine with a 2-way as they didn't want to feel like they had to monitor TT. They were talked out of it because they were advised it might affect their ability to edit in their primary interest because if TT had edited there, they wouldn't be able to undo something. So, no, the point of this i-ban wasn't to make sure they could still monitor this person because no one else would. I'm sorry to derail this discussion, I really will shut up now other than to say I think a 1-year topic ban from BLPs probably is needed. I'd like an exception for their own user talk, as I'd like to make an attempt to see if I can make a dent in their understanding of sources for BLP facts. —valereee (talk) 13:11, 17 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• User is yet again adding unreliable primary sources, days after being let off easy with a warning after declaring that they understand the issue and will not repeat it going forward. Also concerned that they appear to go straight to claiming that they're being harassed and victimized any time they're under scrutiny for their edits. Clearly time for a TBAN. ~Swarm~ ^{sting} 18:38, 17 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• It was only 12 days ago that TrottieTrue was given a logged warning about the necessity to use only high quality sources in BLPs and warned specifically against using public records. Since the editor did not take the warning on board, and instead reacts with indignation when the latest problem is pointed out, I see no alternative to a BLP topic ban. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 21:24, 17 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

This request may be declined without further action if insufficient or unclear information is provided in the "Request" section below.
Requests may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs (not counting required information), except by permission of a reviewing administrator.

User who is submitting this request for enforcement

Nableezy (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) 13:51, 21 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

User against whom enforcement is requested

Debresser (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Search CT alerts: in user talk history • in system log

Sanction or remedy to be enforced

ARBPIA topic ban

Diffs of edits that violate this sanction or remedy, and an explanation how these edits violate it

1. 21 May 2021 Participates in an ANI thread related to the topic area

Diffs of previous relevant sanctions, if any

1. March 2021 Was blocked just two months ago for exactly the same type of violation, and said at the time he had not realized the topic ban included ANI.

If discretionary sanctions are requested, supply evidence that the user is aware of them (see WP:AC/DS#Awareness and alerts)

N/A

Additional comments by editor filing complaint

The idea that after asking for an unblock for exactly the same violation while saying they will not do it again, and then the very next opportunity where I am at ANI does exactly the same thing makes me not want to wait for an opportunity for a self-revert. I dont know when WP:NOTHERE applies to a user who insists on repeatedly violating a topic ban, but I feel like we are fast approaching that point.

Debresser has chosen to double down. nableezy - 21:08, 22 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Notification of the user against whom enforcement is requested

Notified

Statements must be made in separate sections. They may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs, except by permission of a reviewing administrator.
Administrators may remove or shorten noncompliant statements. Disruptive contributions may result in blocks.

This section is to be edited only by uninvolved administrators. Comments by others will be moved to the sections above.

• It has been pointed out to me elsewhere that it is now Shabbat in Israel, and therefore Debresser, an Orthodox Jew, will be unable to comment until well after sundown tomorrow. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 17:26, 21 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Given that Debresser has now said 1. My edit was indeed a violation of my topic ban 2. My topic ban is unjustified., I can only conclude that a block is needed. Since I was the last blocking administrator, I would appreciate it if another administrator makes the final decision. Thank you. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 21:34, 22 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

This request may be declined without further action if insufficient or unclear information is provided in the "Request" section below.
Requests may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs (not counting required information), except by permission of a reviewing administrator.

User who is submitting this request for enforcement

Nableezy (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) 13:51, 21 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

User against whom enforcement is requested

Debresser (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Search CT alerts: in user talk history • in system log

Sanction or remedy to be enforced

ARBPIA topic ban

Diffs of edits that violate this sanction or remedy, and an explanation how these edits violate it

1. 21 May 2021 Participates in an ANI thread related to the topic area

Diffs of previous relevant sanctions, if any

1. March 2021 Was blocked just two months ago for exactly the same type of violation, and said at the time he had not realized the topic ban included ANI.

If discretionary sanctions are requested, supply evidence that the user is aware of them (see WP:AC/DS#Awareness and alerts)

N/A

Additional comments by editor filing complaint

The idea that after asking for an unblock for exactly the same violation while saying they will not do it again, and then the very next opportunity where I am at ANI does exactly the same thing makes me not want to wait for an opportunity for a self-revert. I dont know when WP:NOTHERE applies to a user who insists on repeatedly violating a topic ban, but I feel like we are fast approaching that point.

Debresser has chosen to double down. nableezy - 21:08, 22 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Notification of the user against whom enforcement is requested

Notified

Statements must be made in separate sections. They may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs, except by permission of a reviewing administrator.
Administrators may remove or shorten noncompliant statements. Disruptive contributions may result in blocks.

This section is to be edited only by uninvolved administrators. Comments by others will be moved to the sections above.

• It has been pointed out to me elsewhere that it is now Shabbat in Israel, and therefore Debresser, an Orthodox Jew, will be unable to comment until well after sundown tomorrow. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 17:26, 21 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Given that Debresser has now said 1. My edit was indeed a violation of my topic ban 2. My topic ban is unjustified., I can only conclude that a block is needed. Since I was the last blocking administrator, I would appreciate it if another administrator makes the final decision. Thank you. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 21:34, 22 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

This request may be declined without further action if insufficient or unclear information is provided in the "Request" section below.
Requests may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs (not counting required information), except by permission of a reviewing administrator.

User who is submitting this request for enforcement

Berchanhimez (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) 23:44, 19 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

User against whom enforcement is requested

JzG (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Search CT alerts: in user talk history • in system log

Sanction or remedy to be enforced

Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/American_politics_2#Discretionary_sanctions_(1992_cutoff)

Diffs of edits that violate this sanction or remedy, and an explanation how these edits violate it

1. [9][10][11] - making a comparison to Holocaust/Nazis on an AMPOL topic.
2. [12][13][14][15][16] - repeatedly referring to anyone who doesn't agree as a "cult" and personalizing disputes by attacking other editors and playing the "experience card"
3. [17][18][19] - repeatedly making comments in a discussion to inject personal opinion, with no policy rationale or furthering the discussion, which have the effect of derailing the discussion into asides on his comments
4. Further information:
   1. [20] - clearly expresses that he is the "least Trumpy Wikipedian"
   2. [21] - comment with virtually no content that doesn't violate NOTFORUM
   3. [22] - talking about "martyrs" and related topics when nobody brought that up in the discussion

If discretionary sanctions are requested, supply evidence that the user is aware of them (see WP:AC/DS#Awareness and alerts)

• Placed a {{Ds/aware}} template for the area of conflict on their own talk page - see his talk page - he is aware of AMPOL discretionary sanctions.

Additional comments by editor filing complaint

I don't like drama boards, but I feel this is necessary at this point. JzG is a well respected editor, and I have agreed with him on multiple issues aside from anything Trump-related. Unfortunately, his participation on Talk:2021 storming of the United States Capitol and other pages related to Donald Trump and the events of January 6, 2021 has been unhelpful at best. His comments on that and other talk pages have been quick injections of his personal opinion (in violation of WP:NOTFORUM), and have done virtually nothing to further the discussion or provide a viewpoint that's beneficial to reaching a consensus. I have observed this since the first rename request in early 2021 for this article, where he made a comment that I include the diff of above not as a pure example of misconduct but as more information. When JzG comments on that talk page (or any talk page related to that subject), his comments have never to what I've seen provided an actual policy based comment for discussion. On the contrary, his comments are personal towards editors, frequently refer to "cults" or other personal opinion/inflammatory language, and frequently result in others having to reply to his comments and further derailing the discussions. I fully understand his frustration with the "brainwashing" that has gone on - I get it - but we are all here to build an encyclopedia, and his comments within this topic area have not helped in that endeavor. I attempted to limit the diffs to those I consider the most important - other comments may also be worthy of considering, and I am happy for anyone to add diffs to the section above (if that is allowed) that they think would be beneficial to examine here. I think the most beneficial thing for the encyclopedia at this point is for JzG to be prohibited from making comments related to the events of January 6, and perhaps from making edits related to Donald Trump as a whole - as it's clear to me that he is unable to separate his personal opinions/feelings from the encyclopedia, its policies, and rational discussion between other editors. Discussions on the topic seem to repeatedly go well until he shows up and then they get derailed based on his comments which at best are NOTFORUM violations, and are at worst attempting to push a POV into encyclopedia articles.

For full disclosure, I asked User:Premeditated Chaos off-wiki for advice and was advised this was the best venue to get a resolution to this issue on. I will also be notifying JzG of this discussion shortly and will post the diff of the notification here after I do so.

@GeneralNotability: - sorry - the "instructions for submitting the request for enforcement" in the editnotice didn't make clear how to do that so I assumed it would be automatically done. I think it's done now. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez (User/say hi!) 00:19, 20 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Valereee: he has apparently been asked to tone it down or disengage multiple times over the past months - I opened this case because it never works, and maybe at least a formal warning will solve it. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez (User/say hi!) 13:00, 20 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The existing back and forth between Viriditas and Rusf10 makes me think that a sourcing policy similar to WP:MEDRS may need to be implemented here. Apparently, Viriditas, a very experienced editor, sees no problem in citing opinion/commentary/similar sources - which are generally not fact checked or peer reviewed - as proof that their opinion is (in their words) "superior" and should be the only opinion allowed. This is fundamentally an editor problem - where editors are feeling that their opinions are better, and so they bend sourcing policies that are already clear on these sorts of issues, but if AE is unwilling to implement sanctions against editors doing this (including JzG) then maybe the solution is to explicitly codify a "politically opinionated material" sourcing policy that makes clear that WP:PRIMARY applies to politics too - especially A primary source may be used on Wikipedia only to make straightforward, descriptive statements of facts. An opinion by someone, no matter how "experty" they are in a field, is only reliable for their opinion on something. Even having 4-6 sources as Viriditas presents that are all opinions of experts still does not do anything to prove that's the expert consensus - and in fact, there's an expert consensus that lumping all Republicans or Trump supporters into this "cult" designation is actually damaging to political discourse and civility in the US. Perhaps a WP:POLSOURCING guideline is necessary since these blatant violations of our already clear sourcing policies are being overlooked simply because enough people agree with the opinions being presented. "All opinions are equal, but some are more equal than others"... especially if they are left-leaning opinions, as there are enough established editors who can simply shut down conversation of opinions that they disagree with, no matter how policy bending or outright violating they are being in doing so. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez (User/say hi!) 01:30, 22 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Viriditas' response to this comment, which doesn't address my point whatsoever but again just basically amounts to "my opinion is more equal than yours", and also fails to mention that there's quite a few left-leaning sources on RSP as generally or questionably unreliable as well (ex: The Canary, CounterPunch, Daily Kos, HuffPo politics articles, Media Matters, and more). The issue here is that unfortunately many more right-wing sources have had to have RfCs because there are more "POV pushing conservatives" who come to WP than "POV pushing liberals". The fact that Viriditas uses this to support their attempt to silence opinions they disagree with, and then laughs, suggests that this is a much bigger problem with multiple editors than people are seeing here - an effort by multiple editors, whether coordinated or not, to attempt to silence editors simply because they disagree politically with those editors. This sort of dismissive, opinionated, and just downright uncivil response from JzG and now Viriditas is the problem that led me to open this request for enforcement - because as even those who have advocated for no action to be taken admit, it is disruptive to Wikipedia's goal of building a NPOV encyclopedia with consensus and collaboration. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez (User/say hi!) 02:02, 22 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Aquillon's attempt to place blame on me ignores the fact that in the diff he provides as "forumy" by me, I am using a comparison to other articles to discuss consistency within Wikipedia - which while not a policy, is certainly a valid argument to make. I'll note that I was responding to a civil discussion regarding the "attackness" of the topic by comparing it to another topic covered in Wikipedia - and my comments were intended to be a continuance of the discussion as to what to name the article. That's precisely not "forumy" - I was making comments that expressed my opinions on how other articles on Wikipedia could be looked at to improve that article on Wikipedia. On the contrary, most of JzG's comments on that talk page provide no rationale/logic for why their opinions are beneficial to improving the article - which is exactly what makes his comments violations of NOTFORUM and mine not. Perhaps it needs reminding that NOTFORUM doesn't bar editors from expressing their opinions on talk pages - it merely bars doing so without a clear connection to improving articles - which is what JzG is doing, not me. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez (User/say hi!) 04:12, 24 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Notification of the user against whom enforcement is requested

• Notice provided -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez (User/say hi!) 23:45, 19 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Statements must be made in separate sections. They may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs, except by permission of a reviewing administrator.
Administrators may remove or shorten noncompliant statements. Disruptive contributions may result in blocks.

Some people don't like the fact that sources describe the Jan 6 events as an attempted coup. Some people don't like the parallels drawn between the insurrection and the beer hall putsch. Some people think that Ashlii Babbit was the One True Victim of the Jan 6 insurrection. I have opinions. They are largely mainstream, and in line with sources. I am not a huge fan of pretending that the Jan 6 insurrection was a peaceful protest about legitimate concerns with election integrity, where a few bad apples stormed the Capitol and tried to overthrow an election. That's not what I saw on the screen, and it's not what I read in the sources. But regardless, Wikipedia is a mainstream encyclopaedia and we don't pretend that neutrality is the average between mainstream sources and OANN. Guy (help! - typo?) 00:07, 20 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I don't like Guy's irrelevant commentary, his political commentary, his choice of insults, his constant moving of the goalposts or his seemingly unquenchable desire to repeatedly ping me in particular, despite several clear notifications that I do not want any of what he is selling. InedibleHulk (talk) 00:55, 20 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I was (and somewhat am) also troubled by a recent outburst on his talk page regarding "a small group" of what he seemed to clearly describe as Nazis (among other epithets) disagreeing with him on the Capitol Hill talk. I genuinely tried to help him specify which ones exhibited signs of Nazism, so I could help hunt them down and exile them from Wikipedia, because Nazis shot down, captured and tortured my grandfather (among other terrible, horrible things). Three users denied the charges, one didn't dignify my interrogation with a response (right call, IMO) and Guy clarified nothing. [23] Not cool. Picture an anti-Harris guy fighting this hard and getting away with it for so long...impossible! InedibleHulk (talk) 01:36, 20 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

As for his interactions with editors who aren't me, I agree with the complainant that it almost always appears to get heated, disruptive and incivil when Trump's involved; if a topic ban can be that narrow, it would certainly help the majority of editors who aren't zombie Nazi Confederates and simply want to tone down some serious anti-Trump POV that legitimately sometimes goes way too far around here. InedibleHulk (talk) 04:09, 20 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

In light of three things I read below, I'd like to clarify. First, I have nothing to do with a right-wing attempt to rewrite history; the only news show I watch with any regularity is The National on CBC's YouTube channel (and Colbert's openings, if those count) and have no online accounts or communications off-Wiki (besides e-mail, nonpseudonymously and unrelated to any of this). Next, I have no problem with swearing or flowery speech, just when it's used constantly rather than on-topic rational argument with someone disputing content. Finally, when Guy removes bullshit from political articles, I'm happy he's here, but in this case, the ideas that an insurrection A, occurred that day and B, killed five people are the bullshit (per many RS that aren't from January, acknowledge that the word was political ammo for a no-longer relevant impeachment effort and admit only one death was officially ruled a homicide). And no, I'm not lying here, either. InedibleHulk (talk) 23:27, 20 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

MastCell, since you mentioned it, I'll openly agree that my perception of these two core truths about the January 6 attack does align with the right-wing narrative. That's just because the left-wing narrative is not reflected in available pertinent medical and legal reports. It's based on the current political and social sentiments, exactly like Robert Todd Carroll's signs of pseudohistory. Leftist editors see that the medical examiner ruled three deaths natural and one death accidental (self-administered overdose), and they point to a political news piece from the day after that counts five. Horsefeathers! For months now, no federal property has been captured, no federal officials assassinated, no federal departments overthrown. But hey, leftist media prefers "insurrection" to a fairer word for a right-leaning protest/riot/storm/attack/whatever, in certain select sentences, so "RSP, Conservapedia's that way, racist pig." Horsefeathers! The less we can all stop thinking about equivalency and dualism and OTHERSTUFFEXISTS, the more we can accept that in a reality-based system with only two supposed sides, the actual true story of any well-documented dispute is always going to better suit one of those sides than the other, so long as it's been politicized by American cable news. There is no unbiased political news channel, but CBC's YouTube channel at least tries to not root for the obvious party when covering U.S. history. InedibleHulk (talk) 05:29, 21 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Johnuniq I've come up with some crazy ideas on talk pages before, no question. If one of those is called OR, that's fine by me. But the idea of an insurrection requiring at least the intent to seize power, not merely challenge or nullify it, was first written into federal law, which was analyzed by David Kilcullen, which was covered by Michael Patrick Mulroy. InedibleHulk (talk) 08:50, 21 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Going through those links:

making a comparison to Holocaust/Nazis on an AMPOL topic.

[24] This is just an analogy, not a comparison.

[25] Making a point about far-right American political figures by discussing Strom Thurmond's views.

[26] This one is actually a comparison to nazis. There's nothing wrong with it, though.

repeatedly referring to anyone who doesn't agree as a "cult" and personalizing disputes by attacking other editors and playing the "experience card"

[27] Referring to the "Trump Cult," a concept which is broadly popular, and which has been advanced by cult experts, such as Steven Hassan, with the book The Cult of Trump. Hardly a reference to "anyone who doesn't agree with him". Not accusing any editor of being a part of it.

[28] Doesn't mention or even hint at a cult in this one.

[29] Says participants in the Jan 6 insurrection "exhibit some or all of the qualities of cult victims".

[30] Says "cults are shitty that way" in reference to broken implied promises. Hardly a controversial statement. Cults are shitty that way.

[31] Claims to have more experience editing Wikipedia than the filer. That's a simple statement of fact. JzG has 148,496 edits to 66,697 pages compared to filer's 2688 edits to 755 pages.

repeatedly making comments in a discussion to inject personal opinion, with no policy rationale or furthering the discussion, which have the effect of derailing the discussion into asides on his comments

[32] JzG dared use the word "bullshit", I guess?

[33] No "injectiong of personal opinion" here. JzG is stating a well-accepted fact.

[34] Oh, this one is bad. This one is real bad. You guys aren't going to believe this one... JzG had the absolute audacity to use sarcasm. I know. Feel free to rush your kids out of the room and clutch your pearls to your chest in shock.

Others

[35] clearly expresses that he is the "least Trumpy Wikipedian"

Well, here we have an editor asking that another editor be sanctions for having political views that differ from their own. WP:BOOMERANG comes to mind.

[36] comment with virtually no content that doesn't violate NOTFORUM

No. Not a chance. JzG is quite clearly discussing the topic at hand. This is just a lie.

[37] talking about "martyrs" and related topics when nobody brought that up in the discussion

Another lie. JzG is discussing the actual topic at hand, a topic in which some people are portraying someone as a martyr. The fact that JzG was the first to use the word is immaterial.

None of these diffs show bad behavior. Taken as a whole, they show that JzG has political views just like everyone else. I'm particularly troubled by the notion that the filer seems to think JzG being honest about his political views is somehow evidence of malfeasance. Isn't that the exact sort of thing those who disagree with JzG keep claiming is happening to them, despite all evidence to the contrary? ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 01:15, 20 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Valereee: I get that some people are rubbed the wrong way by bad language, and I know that sometimes, plain language is not the best choice. But as much as it's incumbent upon us as editors to recognize that and make smart choices to play nice with others, it's also incumbent upon us to recognize that not everyone sees these things the same way, and to make allowances for those who are a bit more potty mouthed.

About the opinion thing: The RSes are all in virtually lockstep agreement that the Trump rally on the 6th and the riot/insurrection/protest/"tourism" that came after were inexorably linked to the point that attempts to distinguish one from the other will invariably boil down to exercises in pedantry. What Guy said was, in fact, a fact, and not an opinion, and there is no reasonable (but many unreasonable) way for an informed person to interpret it as the latter. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 18:00, 20 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Valereee: The point is that if you're going to edit in one of the most contentious places on the project, you need to be especially careful of treating other well-intentioned editors with respect and to try that much harder to understand where they're coming from. I agree with you on that. My point is; WP:CIVIL runs both ways; by the same token we expect editors not to act like dicks, we should expect editors to shrug off the stuff that doesn't matter, like saying "bullshit" instead of "there's no factual basis for that claim." ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 12:50, 21 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• To all the admins involved: Whatever your decision, I strongly urge you to consider a boomerang. The number of people complaining about JzG shows that a serious editor could very well have put together a request here that deserves consideration. But this initial filing grossly mischaracterized literally every diff provided. Even if you decide that Guy has acted out of the bounds of expected behavior, this is one of the most blatantly obvious WP:BATTLEGROUND filings I've ever seen.

And for what it's worse, I really think it's time to for Wikipedia to stop asking if any individual editor is getting too uncivil in these topics, and start asking why so many experienced editors are getting uncivil, or coming close to it. It's a lot easier to solve a problem when one can work on the root cause, rather than just trying to tamp down the consequences. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 12:50, 21 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I think JzG's statement here is fairly typical of what the complaint is about. He refers three times to what some people think or don't like, with links to sources that talk about people involved in the real-world conflict, yet the whole direction of his comment seems to imply that he is talking about other editors, thus identifying the latter with the former. It's like a structural failure to assume good faith, often resulting in a subtle (and I think mostly unintended) form of personal attack. It seems to me that JzG is just too involved in the real-world conflict to remain appropriately dispassionate about it. Apaugasma (talk|contribs) 01:26, 20 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@PaleoNeonate:, with regard to the tendency to claim that the view of reliable sources are only opinions, did you note that two ([38], [39]) of the four sources cited by JzG in his statement above are opinion pieces? I'm not saying that the tendency you speak about does not exist, on the contrary, but isn't it clear that on the other hand, it is a challenge for every editor in this area to keep fact and opinion neatly separated? Isn't it clear, too, that JzG has had great difficulty in rising up to that challenge? Moreover, while JzG may be perfectly right on content per WP:FALSEBALANCE, this is not about content, it is about conduct. What is of concern is not article content, but the disruption caused in creating and maintaining a collaborative environment. Apaugasma (talk|contribs) 13:54, 20 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Some editors making statements here have expressed the concern that JzG is not the only one to engage in this kind of behavior. I would like to ask these editors to present a case against all others whom they regard as habitually crossing the same line. However, please do draw a line. It doesn't need to go any further than a warning at first, and a tban if they need to be brought here a second time. Apaugasma (talk|contribs) 20:40, 20 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

If anyone's interested in an exposition of the logical fallacy behind the bizarre claim going around here that the Republican Party is a cult, they may find it here. Apaugasma (talk|contribs) 04:24, 22 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know why we let Jzg (and others) get away with notforum comments just because they are seen as being correct. In my experience it just leads to more issues and encourages disruptive use of the talk pages. Aircorn (talk)

JzG is obviously an editor with a political opinion. This is not uncommon among editors in the AP2 topic area, and not cause for sanction on its own. Of the diffs given, I don't see any that justify sanctions; though I will note the Nazi comments aren't helpful and the comments about Strom Thurmond would be a BLP issue if he were recently alive. There's widespread belief, including from some of their own lawyers, that some of the participants in the events of January 6th exhibited cult-like behavior in their loyalty towards Trump, I don't see any of his comments suggesting editors here are exhibiting that behavior.

I am more concerned about JzG's recent behavior at User talk:Jimbo Wales in antagonizing and edit-warring [40] [41] with FloridaArmy than anything here. User:力 (power~enwiki, π, ν) 03:03, 20 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

(Not directly involved in the above articles but have commented enough at BLP/N and NPOV/N that would not feel appropriate to be included at uninvolved)

I'll lead that I don't think there's anything immediately actionable here on JzG, but this is because they are not the only such editor that have shown this type of attitude that create these types of problems in the AP2, and thus would be wrong to single one editor out. Articles involving alt and far right figures, entities and concepts generally suffer from being written in a strongly negative tone and/or as an attack piece, and while the justification "this is what the reliable sources say per UNDUE" is very much true, we are still behold to writing in an impartial and dispassionate tone. And to that end, on talk pages of these articles or related areas, having these types of strong ideals that are used as diffs (again, to stress, not isolated to JzG) are extremely difficult to talk around in discussions, as such editors tend to react that they are dead set on these facets and will not accept any other change. Those strong feelings these editors have in their talk page comment reflect into the mainspace articles. And while what JzG says above "Wikipedia is a mainstream encyclopaedia and we don't pretend that neutrality is the average between mainstream sources and OANN", the key word is encyclopaedia and that we shouldn't be presenting any view as right or wrong; we'll reflect the most common or popular viewers reported in the mainstream sources and avoid including the fringe (like OANN), but we absolutely must avoid injecting our own feelings into the Wikivoice in how we write that into WP. Unfortunately, the last several years has led to many articles that reflect the vitrol that many editors have towards the alt/far right and related topics and we need to correct that.

Now, I am very much aware that a majority of the time, these editors have been repeatedly fighting off-site campaigns to make changes wholly incompatible with WP principles, work that is absolutely need. This type of work is going to darken one's attitude quickly given some of the baseless attacks against these editors. But there have been plenty of valid ideas (perhaps difficult to bring about but compatible within WP policy) presented from both existing and newer editors that have been met with the same "nope, can't do it" attitude, some of which are within the diffs above (but again, stressing, this is not limited to JzG). This is why when editors start throwing around WP:NONAZIS, a rather dangerous essay, to try to label other editors within these discussions that may be raising valid points, that's also souring the entire process.

There is something that over the last 5-6+ years of external events reflected onto WP that have subsequently broken some of the fundamentals of how WP should be approaching these topics. This case is a tip of the iceberg and points to a need to do a lot more retrospective to figure out what's gone wrong and how to bring it back, but it absolutely should not result in any immediate actions against JzG from this request. --Masem (t) 03:51, 20 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Just as one comment based on the back-and-forth since this post, hopefully as an idea to work from: we need editors to remember as an encyclopedia we should be taking a 60,000-ft view and looking to how these topics should appear 10-20 years down the road. We absolutely need to summarize RS, but that doesn't necessarily mean reflecting them, from this distance. And part of the problem is when editors (not JzG alone here) are passionate about a topic whether on a talk page or mainspace is that they tend to want to reflect the sources in agreement with their view and not consider the more proper summary approach of these sources. We have to be aware of the big picture even if we're not writing to that when we are on controversial topics, as if we're blindly taking a side that mirrors RSes without considering the larger picture (in talk page discussions towards article content), that itself can be a problem. Much of what I see can be helped by editors stepping back to look at the big picture and what an encyclopedia's role is, in trying to document and summarize that. --Masem (t) 18:58, 24 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I recuse myself from commenting on JzG's derailing comments, lobbying of insults, and overly liberal misapplication of the contentious Nazi label in discussions, as they have recently insinuated in AE that I am a Neo-Nazi apologist. Terjen (talk) 04:18, 20 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

No idea why JzG is being so forumy, but this is not new. JzG should just be making reliable reference supported arguments once and walking away. JzG should avoid ludicrous comparisons between a small band of half wits that broke into the US Capital to a highly organized military composed of 10 plus million that exterminated millions more. That comparison is absolutely preposterous and an insult to all that died at the hands of Nazi thugs. Alternately one could easily not feed JzG, simply don't respond to him as he is obviously looking to have a fight, or at the very least insult his ideological opposites and/or their reasonings.--MONGO (talk) 04:24, 20 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Viriditas:I stand by my comment. I cant elaborate further, but will say what I do allows me access to the details you listed and a whole lot more than that.--MONGO (talk) 03:09, 21 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

JzG doesn't even get his facts straight when he is out there pontificating "...In 2016, for example, when Trump lost the popular vote by the largest margin of any winning candidate in history?"...maybe he meant modern history because the margin of fewer popular votes for a winning candidate for US President was higher in 1824 and 1876. But that is besides the point because the US has the electoral college and does not elect the US President based on popularity. This is just one glaring detail of many of his ramblings that lack historical accuracy and indicate he is just being reflexive for the sake of arguing. That in conjunction with his belittling narratives about his ideological opponents and/or their stances indicates that if he is reported again to AE with similar issues presented, a TB may be needed. JzG definitely needs an admonishment here.--MONGO (talk) 17:25, 21 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Viriditas:Of course, Trump lost by more total popular votes, but that is because there were more people voting! Doh. As a percentage of votes cast, Trump had 2.1% fewer popular votes than Clinton. In 1876 it was 3% and in 1824 over 10%. [42] Its idiotic to say just raw numbers when the total numbers are not the same! There were only 5 million votes in 1876, over 125 million in 2016, so of course total votes would be higher, but the percentage is still lower overall.--MONGO (talk) 00:13, 22 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

What I see is not NOTFORUM use of talk pages by Guy, but the refutation of arguments posted there. An expression of impatience may perhaps show at times, which is not surprising considering the repetitive task. Moreover, there is a tendency to claim that the view of reliable sources are only opinions, it's not surprising also to see arguments that editors who remind them that WP articles are based on those sources are also only expressing their personal opinions (WP:GEVAL may be useful). —PaleoNeonate – 09:40, 20 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I like JzG, so I doubt I can opine here with any impartiality, so I won't. But I will link in this ANI for whichever admin reviews this. Haven't reviewed it closely, but the assertions made here remind me of valereee's comment (For the record, I do think JzG needs to take a step back from their own POV-pushing. If someone were to gather the diffs, I think it's quite likely there'd be a warning in that direction for AP2.) Again, I haven't reviewed that situation closely so not necessarily saying there is or isn't a problem there, or anywhere else for that matter. ProcSock (talk) 10:07, 20 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I’d like to associate myself with Levivich’s well-written remarks however. As a frequent closer of AP RfCs, I can say that’s my experience as well. There are unbelievable levels of FORUMing in general in this topic area. At times I perceive this makes unwelcome reasonable policy-based content opinions that might imply the ‘wrong’ POV in articles. This is not healthy for content or community. ProcSock (talk) 11:44, 23 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Some of this was just discussed in Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Incivility By _Admin_User:JzG, which was closed without action. - MrOllie (talk) 13:08, 20 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I've been concerned by JzG's participation in a couple AP2 areas lately. Here he starts what can only be described as a forum post, linking to Twitter and drawing a bizarre comparison to The Red Skull. It was rightly removed but JzG added it again, requiring another removal. JzG's personal opinions of people holding differently political views than him have long been a net negative for editing in that space. Mr Ernie (talk) 14:37, 20 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

In relation to the ANI thread raised by ProcrastinatingReader, I raised my concerns to JzG earlier this month [43]: Guy, I'm concerned about your conduct in Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Innican Soufou. When you started the discussion, you did not go into detail and you did not provide individual diffs [44]. Later in the discussion, you digressed to BLM and Antifa [45], Derek Chauvin, George Floyd, [46] and Republicans stopping an federal anti-lynching law [47]. You've hindered your own report with this manner of posts. I'm sure you can do better than this. Here are JzG's later responses to myself. [48] [49] starship.paint (exalt) 15:05, 20 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Atsme: - How can we ignore the possibility exists that left-wing media is also active in an effort to rewrite the history of Jan 6th? They just got caught doing it. - seriously, I don't think you are properly appraised of the situation here. You should read this Reason piece (right leaning outlet). On the day of Sicknick's death the Capitol Police attributed Sicknick's death to injuries while engaging with protesters. On the next day the Department of Justice's acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen attributed Sicknick's death to injuries due to a violent mob. The WSJ's source [50] said that the fire extinguisher claim was spread by Capitol Police. The AP [51] reported that the fire extinguisher claim was based on statements collected early in the investigation. Both the WSJ (right-leaning) and the AP also initially reported the fire extinguisher claim, so this wasn't a left-wing media thing. This was the mainstream media getting it wrong because the government and law enforcement got it wrong. The mainstream media couldn't independently verify the claims, because the Capitol Police refused to release footage, and D.C. autopsies are confidential, as the Reason link above states. starship.paint (exalt) 02:54, 21 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

To add on, Sicknick's own father said that Sicknick was hit in the head [52], and the outlet that broke the news of 'no blunt force trauma found' was left-leaning CNN. [53] starship.paint (exalt) 03:57, 21 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Adding, in light of Valeree's comment and regarding the specific issue of the January 6th attacks: there is an active effort underway by right-wing media and politicians to rewrite the history of what happened on January 6th. That's a fact attested to by numerous reliable sources; see, for example:

• "Some Republicans are rewriting history about January 6", NBC News
• "Jan. 6 commission’s fate uncertain as Republicans seek to rewrite history", Boston Globe
• "Republicans Rewrite History of the Capitol Riot, Hampering an Inquiry", New York Times
• "Rewriting January 6th: Republicans push false and misleading accounts of Capitol riot", Washington Post
• "Trump's triumphs extend to GOP rewriting history of Nov. 3 and Jan. 6", ABC News

Unsurprisingly, this real-time effort to rewrite history has spilled over, to some extent, onto Wikipedia. JzG is entirely right to push back against it. The language he uses in doing should probably be more temperate, but in our haste to tone-police him I don't want to lose sight of the context, which is that he (and others) are fundamentally defending the site's goals and principles by pushing back against a campaign of politically motivated falsehoods. MastCell ^Talk 18:11, 20 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Valereee, comparing the January 6th attacks to BLM protests is, itself, a right-wing talking point, and a misleading one at that, according to experts and reliable sources. See:

• "False equivalency between Black Lives Matter and Capitol siege: Experts, advocates", ABC News;
• "(Republicans) have argued that the attack was no worse than the rioting and looting in cities during the Black Lives Matter movement, often exaggerating the unrest last summer while minimizing a mob’s attempt to overturn an election", New York Times
• "No, an Iowa BLM protest was not like the Jan. 6 US Capitol riot", Politifact; etc.

But I don't think it's worth belaboring that further. My point is that you, like all of us, choose what to spend time and energy on here; what to prioritize; what to confront and push back against, and what to let slide. By tone-policing JzG without clearly acknowledging the context in which he's acting—a context in which false equivalences and narratives are being actively promoted, in some cases by some of the people seeking to have him censured—you're making a choice, and it's one I don't fully agree with. That's all I'm saying. MastCell ^Talk 03:30, 21 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

In response to Valereee: "you need to be especially careful of treating other well-intentioned editors with respect and to try that much harder to understand where they're coming from." This is based on the assumption that they are well-intentioned (here is a hint: they are not) and that we are obligated to try and understand supporters of child-caging, women-groping, racists. After careful consideration of all the relevant facts, I dont feel the need to be careful at all actually. Only in death does duty end (talk) 18:52, 20 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Given the statement by OID right above, I think it would be a good time to excuse them from the AP area as well. It's not so much a failure to adhere to AGF as everyone who disagrees with me is a Nazi. That has no place in Wikipedia let alone contentious areas. PackMecEng (talk) 19:18, 20 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I've interacted with JzG many times over the years and I often disagree with him, often, and I will again, I'm sure. But stating an opinion as fact especially when the the so-called opinion is supported by compliant Wikipedia reliable sources is not sanctionable. Further seeing and stating an opinion as a fact is pretty standard for human beings everywhere let alone here. Are we going to sanction every time someone states their opinion as if a fact or believes their opinion is a fact? No we're not! Inflammatory language is not necessarily the best way to communicate but then I've recently seen some less than optimal language by editors posting here. Are we going to use discretionary sanctions every time someone uses less than optimal language, something everyone does sooner or later? We must be even-handed. Discretionary sanctions if I remember was created to take the load off arbitrations. As such there should be a degree of seriousness to an AE Enforcement. In communicating with SlimVirgin before her death, pillar of Wikipedia that she was, with the insights that came from her intelligence and long-time experience, she was incredibly distraught by Arbitration and especially some of the most recent ones where situations that demanded small interventions blew up into big cases. We have to stop using arbitrations and AE to deal with small-time problems. They tax the community. They tax all of us. JzG can be warned that he needs to tone it down, better yet warn everybody on the article and its talk page. That's it. If there are problems on an article then everything and everyone on that article must be scrutinized. This is a community and as such, very often, it's the multiple-driven, editor interactions that create conflict. No games, no gotchas, just even handed fairness and mature judgement on what will truly impact the community. Littleolive oil (talk) 19:22, 20 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The usual suspects are just tryna' remove someone who stops bullshit from appearing in the articles. It comes without fail that when there aren't any good policy reasons for allowing bullshit into articles, that defenders get worn down into little nubs by constantly having to engage in bad-faith arguments. Eventually patience wears thin and out come the "civility" knives because if you can't remove an opponent through truth or justice, you create a propaganda war.

Please do not fall for this.--Jorm (talk) 19:27, 20 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Goodness, there's a lot of robust hyperbole and partisanship on articles JzG tends to edit, but even if "quick injections of (...) personal opinion (in violation of WP:NOTFORUM), and have done virtually nothing to further the discussion or provide a viewpoint that's beneficial to reaching a consensus" applied here (which it doesn't in general), then a lot of participants of articles on American politics would fall in the same category. Don't single out, and don't be so restrictive/officious. ---Sluzzelin talk 20:12, 20 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding User:Apaugasma's last edit, I do not wish to "present a case against all others whom they regard as habitually crossing the same line". Apart from trolling, egregious personal attacks, and perhaps other crass violations of WP polices, there's no need for talk-page intervention. I believe it's best to let such discussions run their course ---Sluzzelin talk 21:04, 20 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Oof, pretty terrible to see WP:OTHEREDITORSEXIST as the main reasoning to avoid dealing with this by some of the above. To address it (though I really think that shouldn't be needed), Many editors have tried to curb the reported behavior directly, and it hasn't seemed to have resulted in any improvement. What exactly is the next step then if not some kind of official warning/tban/whatever? Arkon (talk) 20:21, 20 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

In the above, MastCell briefly addressed how JzG's opinions are backed by good media sources. I also wanted to add four names whose research and published work supports JzG: Joan Donovan at Harvard, Lee McIntyre at Boston University, forensic psychiatrist Bandy X. Lee, and author Steven Hassan. Viriditas (talk) 21:03, 20 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@MONGO: you wrote, "JzG should avoid ludicrous comparisons between a small band of half wits that broke into the US Capital to a highly organized military composed of 10 plus million that exterminated millions more." According to DHS spokeswoman Sarah Peck, "Domestic violent extremism poses the most lethal, persistent terrorism-related threat to our homeland today."

The NDAA mandated reviews of the domestic terrorism landscape for 2017, when racially motivated violent extremists were “the primary sources of lethal and significant violence” and law enforcement and racial minorities were the top targets; 2018, when domestic violent extremists “were primarily enabled by their use of the Internet” and militia violent extremists “continued to espouse violent rhetoric, often lacking intent or credibility, to engage in violence against Muslims, political activists, and protestors to protect their vision of public safety, such as border-related issues”; and 2019, when the FBI and DHS assessed that racially motivated violent extremists, “primarily those advocating for the superiority of the white race, likely would continue to be the most lethal DVE threat to the Homeland.”

Although most experts have known this for about 15 or more years, right wing conservatives have worked night and day to prevent authorities from investigating extremism in their ranks. This is an ongoing problem at this very moment, as Trump-supporting conservatives continue to try to block official investigations into the Capitol insurrection in the ultimate act of "defunding the police". Viriditas (talk) 21:53, 20 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@MONGO: "Donald Trump lost the popular vote in [the 2016] US presidential election by a bigger margin than any other US president in history...That deficit is more than five times bigger than the 544,000 by which George W. Bush lost to Al Gore in 2000 - the second biggest popular vote deficit in history for a candidate who has still gone on to become President...Only five US presidents in history have been elected despite losing the popular vote: John Quincy Adams in 1824, Rutherford Hayes in 1876, Benjamin Harrison in 1888, George W. Bush in 2000 and Donald Trump..." The Independent. See also: List of United States presidential elections in which the winner lost the popular vote. Viriditas (talk) 21:29, 21 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Atsme: are you willing to acknowledge and recognize that QAnon is a real and existing Trump cult believed in by millions of Trump supporters? Because to me, it sounds like you are ignoring its existence and pretending it isn't real. The cult of Trump is very real and has been documented in reliable sources. It is based on a litany of conspiracy theories and operates without any kind of evidence. It is essentially a new religious movement that believes Trump is a manifestation of the second coming of Christ in some form or another. Christian evangelicals have been promoting Trump from their pulpits as the savior of the world. This is all extensively documented. It is a cult. Viriditas (talk) 21:48, 21 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Rusf10: you wrote, "Calling a major American political party a cult is unacceptable". With all due respect, we have dozens of reliable sources, academic experts in their respective fields, and former members of the GOP who call the current Republican Party a cult. It is not "unacceptable", it is a general description of the current state of the party, as much as you might not like it. In addition to the four experts who agree with the cult description that I listed above in my first comment, I will add Brian Hughes at American University and Janja Lalich, professor emerita of sociology at California State University, Chico. I will keep adding to this list as necessary. Viriditas (talk) 23:11, 21 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Rusf10: ask yourself what kind of evidence you are open to and would accept to change your mind. The Republican Party is described as a cult today by experts because it meets a set of criteria for cults. For example, cult members are often willing to die for their leader, which the Arizona Republican Party made a point of tweeting on December 7, 2020, approximately a month before the January 6 insurrection and attack, when they asked their followers if they were willing to die for Trump. You can go down the list, and in the majority of cases, the Republican Party meets the definition of a cult. Again, will you accept the evidence? Viriditas (talk) 23:36, 21 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Rusf10: you wrote, "This is WP:NOTAFORUM, so I refuse to debate such topics as your strongly held belief that the Republican Party is a cult." To recap, you previously claimed it was "unacceptable" to refer to the Republican Party as a cult. I responded, showing that for people in the reality-based community, it was acceptable, since it is an evidence-based statement. You responded twice, that this description can only be considered an opinion, and you refused to state what kind of evidence you would accept that would change your mind. You then accused me of having a "strongly held belief". For the record, I believe in data, evidence, and provisional facts. That means I don't hold any beliefs unless the evidence supports them. For example, we know that cults are characterized by charismatic authoritarian leaders and extremist ideologies, which the Republican Party supports. We also know that Trump and the Republican Party reinforce social hierarchy and skew towards authoritarianism, another known facet of cults. Thomas F. Pettigrew's 2017 research, "Social Psychological Perspectives on Trump Supporters", supports this statement. Again, we aren't discussing my beliefs. We are discussing the evidence that the Republican Party is a cult. What evidence will you accept that will change your mind? Viriditas (talk) 00:04, 22 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Rusf10; you wrote, "[It] says 'Commentaries'. Thank you for proving my point." I don't see any "point". It's a published commentary in a scholarly journal with 54 cited references to research and supporting documentation. I think reasonable people will give that more weight and consideration than an opinion piece in Newsmax, OANN, the Gateway Pundit, or Natural News. Again, you haven't addressed my question. What kind of evidence will change your mind? If the answer is "none", then you may want to ask yourself if you are engaging in denialism. Viriditas (talk) 00:39, 22 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Rusf10, you wrote, "Even after someone points out to you that what you are citing is in fact an opinion, you start argueing about the superiority that opinion." I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding about how reliable sources work. The opinion of a professor in the relevant field published in a scholarly journal is superior to an opinion published on a right-wing, lunatic fringe website by a Trump supporter. While I could write 10,000 words as to why this is, suffice it to say that your favorite, Trump-supporting blogs (that I mentioned above) are considered and evaluated as unreliable. This is because they have a record and history of propaganda and disinformation. In other words, the majority of sources connected to pro-Trump commentary are considered inferior for good reason. Viriditas (talk) 01:11, 22 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Berchanhimez, you wrote, "Apparently, Viriditas, a very experienced editor, sees no problem in citing opinion/commentary/similar sources - which are generally not fact checked or peer reviewed - as proof that their opinion is (in their words) "superior" and should be the only opinion allowed." You almost got it right. See WP:RSP for references. All of the Trump-supporting sources I mentioned are on that list as unreliable, prohibited, blocked, banned, and some are even on a spam blacklist. This is apparently a conundrum of some kind for you and others, but it's really quite simple: the vast majority of right-wing, Trump supporting sources cannot be evaluated as reliable, and therefore, cannot be used on Wikipedia. You need to ask yourself why this is true, as it says something fundamental about the state and quality of right-wing, conservative ideology in the United States. If your own sources are considered unreliable, then maybe it's time to look deeply at the problem. Instead, what are you doing? You're here claiming that the problem is one of editors who rely on reliable sources! Thanks for the laughs! Viriditas (talk) 01:52, 22 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Berchanhimez, you wrote, "Viriditas' response to this comment, which doesn't address my point whatsoever but again just basically amounts to "my opinion is more equal than yours". Then, you must not be paying attention. I'll repeat myself in a succinct manner: reliable sources support JzG, both those in the popular media, and those in the scholarly journals. Opinions on Wikipedia are based on reliable sources. Is there anything else to say? Viriditas (talk) 02:09, 22 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Apaugasma, the Republican Party's embrace of Trumpism is the reason, according to Reuters, that dozens of former Bush officials have left the Republican Party, calling it a 'Trump cult'. It's the same reason multiple experts on cults listed above in this section call it a cult, and it's why the Republican Party has staked their future on a big lie—like all political cults before them. If this statement is controversial for you, then we might not inhabit the same shared reality. Viriditas (talk) 08:41, 22 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with most of Guy's political opinions, but his incivility with regards to people on the other side of the political spectrum should not be tolerated. If other people are being similarly incivil towards their political adversaries, the solution is to warn or sanction them as well, not to let Guy walk free.Jackattack1597 (talk) 23:50, 20 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

How can we ignore the possibility exists that left-wing media is also active in an effort to rewrite the history of Jan 6th? They just got caught doing it. How many times have they not been caught, or were simply ignored - they own most of today's media outlets, right? What if that autopsy had not been performed, or the results not made public? Sounds pretty ridiculous, right?

The pushy, bullying attitudes are what needs to stop - the my way or the highway approach - it has no place on WP, and should not be allowed or ignored. Those types of editors are not collaborators - they're warriors. And if you don't go along with them, be prepared to defend against Alinsky's Rule #13 or a POV railroad, or a unilateral action you didn't expect. They are serious about their mission to RGW and they are certainly not neutral. We've seen a few examples of questionable behavior right here. It has created an environment on WP that, when arguments get heated, it sometimes feels like we're sitting in the hot seat of a Senate interrogation led by Joe McCarthy and our entire WP future is on the line. All the unwarranted accusations and incivility toward one another has to stop...the excuses have to stop...the PAs have to stop. I don't want to see anybody t-banned or blocked. I'd much rather get along - agree to collaborate and work together to get the article right - that should be our goal - give and take - listen to one another - share a bit of levity and laugh. Whatever it takes to get us to that point - I SUPPORT. Atsme 💬 📧 01:49, 21 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• @starship.paint - you took my comment out of context, but generally speaking the latter happens quite a bit at the drama boards, and at RSN when judging entire sources; i.e., context matters. And btw - similar arguments can be presented for the originating comment but that is off-topic. We're here to discuss behavior, not sources. Atsme 💬 📧 10:57, 21 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Thank you, Johnuniq, for your thoughtful and well presented response. I think something our admins may be overlooking is the portion of our policy that specifically states what constitutes a PA (my bold underline): Abusive, defamatory, or derogatory phrases based on race, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, religious or political beliefs, disability, ethnicity, nationality, etc. directed against another editor or a group of editors. Disagreement over what constitutes a religion, race, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability or ethnicity is not a legitimate excuse. Derogatory comments about political parties or allegations or innuendos made against an editor in an attempt to discredit them is unacceptable behavior, especially when it's politically motivated. We also have MOS:LABEL which states: Value-laden labels – such as calling an organization a cult, an individual a racist or sexist, terrorist, or freedom fighter, or a sexual practice a perversion – may express contentious opinion and are best avoided unless widely used by reliable sources to describe the subject, in which case use in-text attribution. The NoNazi or neoNazi or white supremacy and racist labels, etc. that have been hung on people who are conservatives/Republicans are contentious opinion as is calling an entire political party a "cult". We should not be insulting millions of people because of their political beliefs. Doing so totally dismisses millions of people of color, certain ethnicities and religions who are members of that party. From my perspective, research surveys (again opinion that is dependent upon respondents, numbers, demographics, questions asked, etc.) and articles in news media (again journalistic opinion in biased sources) are a long way from being peer reviewed, historically accurate, high quality scientifically based journals. The labeling, targeting and polarizing of editors has to stop, and that means ArbCom putting their foot down. It is causing harm to the project, and we're losing editors as a result. Atsme 💬 📧 14:25, 21 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• My final thoughts in response to the pings, as well as in closing - I'm of the mind that when top quality news anchors like Ted Koppel are speaking out about the same issues we're facing on WP, and what may be the reason we're here now, it's time for us to pay closer attention to what's being said. We also have available for our perusal a faculty research paper by Pippa Norris, a Paul F. McGuire Lecturer in Comparative Politics at Harvard Kennedy. Excerpt: "A progressive orthodoxy, it is argued, has silenced conservative voices and diverse perspectives. This development, it is claimed, has ostracized contrarians, limited academic freedom, strengthened conformism, and eviscerated robust intellectual debate. But does systematic empirical evidence support these claims?" I highly recommend it because so much of it applies to our own issues, and the trend that is being promoted, inadvertently or otherwise, by some of our well-meaning by rather aggressive administrators, many of whom I truly appreciate despite our disagreements, but they need to know they are behaving in an unacceptable manner that some editors consider reminiscent of McCarthyism in so many ways, and it creates a chilling environment to work in, not to mention that their own behavior projects what they are trying to prevent. Changes are needed if we ever hope to reduce these occurrences, but that doesn't necessarily mean we have to eliminate good editors/admins or silence opposition voices to resolve conflicts - that only serves to create more issues, just different ones. A much better approach would be to put the POV warriors to use productively by my making them attend WP:NPP school under the guidance of NPP teachers who have promoted and/or reviewed GAs/FAs. Atsme 💬 📧 15:04, 22 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The problem is not only. politics. JzG acts and talks similarly in many different fields, including anything relating to unconventional medicine or pseudoscience, and more widely . I am in complete agreement with his actual views on most scientific topics, , and substantially in agreement with his actual views on politics, though in some things I may be further towards the left, and this includes much less trust in the reliability of any publication that will support any of the present US political parties. But we're supposed to be an encyclopedia and give proportional coverage, especially in situations where he actual facts are in dispute. History (or just plain experience) has shown that no conclusion is absolutely final, and that it is quite possible for everyone to be deceived at the time. JzG has commonly taken the position that a source is either reliable or not, without any consideration of various degrees of reliability. When one take such a sharp distinction, there's an inevitable tendency to draw the line between the two in a position where your own views will be the ones considered reliable. If one take as a more realistic position where no source is completely reliable, and very few completely useless, it tends to be much easier to adopt true NPOV proportional coverage, because there much less basis for throwing out the sources favored by one's opponents. In politics, one needs to at least mention the bias of all sources , especially the less common ones-- we can pretty much assume any reader knows the politics of the major sources in AP, In para-science, where he facts are much less in dispute, we have much more basis for indicating what sources represent the currently accepted view and which do not, and we can distinguish between the various degrees of skepticism and nuttyness. So we do have to at least once in an article indicate this, because many readers may not realize. But if we don't at least include example of the far-out sources, how will people coming to the subject recognize them?

JzG is certainly welcome to give his own views on the reliability of sourcing. What is may not do here is insist on them, or attack others because of them.

I note to my dismay that some of the admins positing in the secition below seem to regar the other parties as equally guilty of this. They may try just as hard, but they don't have the same skill or power or support, so they';re not a danger to NPOV. The one who is in a position to shut out his oppoenents is JzG, as he's the one who needs sanctions, The others I think can be left to the free play of ordinary WP dispute. Sanctions are for when they;'re needed,. The few times we use DS, and AE, the more effective it is.

I decided to post here, rather than in the section below, because I realize I'll be accused of partianship as I was in a previous not unrelated AE case. And I want to emphasise that my personal interactions with JzG have always been friendly. Many years ago, we reached an understanding that we would try to to directy oppose each on individual issues, at least with respect to deletion, to avoid an endless circle of trying to outargue each other. I've held off directly posting against him on this as long as possible, and I post in the hope that something can be found that would avoid losing him entirely. But If despite my equally strong convictions can substantially avoid participating in AP, so can he. If I can avoid getting more down in psudoscience, so can he. DGG ( talk ) 07:18, 21 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

FeydHuxtable, whether he is correct about the nature of what happened on Jan 6, is not the issue here. This isn't an RfC on article content. Trying to suppress views of those who disagree with us is the issue. DGG ( talk ) 23:31, 21 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

JzG sometimes seems over forceful with his pro liberal & skeptical views, and in suspecting bigotry as the motivation for those with different POVs. I hope he takes onboard the DGG & Valereee criticism. But on the broad specifics (not his over harsh judgement of Trump supporters, most of whom seem to sincerely believe Trump was a victim of election fraud) JzG is correct. His comparisons to early 20th century Germany are apt. A coup was undeniably attempted. By 06 Jan it was already > 99% likely to fail regardless of Pence, but if a few key folk had yielded to pressure in the previous 3 weeks, it might have worked.

Even before 2010, RSs used to praise us for having the single best Obama article on the web. IMO reasons we're nowhere near that with Trump related articles is nothing to do with JzG, but down to a small group of obstructive accounts who are too tactical to get sanctioned. Probably there is no immediate solution. By the 2030s the obstructors will likely have moved on, and we can accurately describe the Donald and his power plays. FeydHuxtable (talk) 08:30, 21 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The diffs:

1. Somewhat inflammatory, but mostly on-point and in direct response to other editors. I don't think there's anything sanctionable here, but I would advise Guy to avoid these as they distract from his otherwise solid arguments.
2. I'm not seeing this at all. There are lots of sources referring to Trump supporters as a "cult" (there's even a book), including from the right side of the map.[54][55] The only thing I object to is Guy's comment to Berchanhimez ("pretty sure I have more experience of Wikipedia and its sourcing policies than you do"), but as a sole instance of such wording it's not sanctionable.
3. WP:FORUMy, but not sanctionable unless it can be shown to be part of a pattern of commentary that is unusually distracting for the TA (in other words - with respect to other editors). I don't think it is.
4. All of these are on-point, if a bit argumentative, and not sanctionable.

Guy may be opinionated, but so are most editors in the TA. He's also reasoned and thorough, and I've never found him to be unpleasant. None of these diffs is sanctionable; I would dismiss the complaint with a friendly suggestion for everyone to relax and follow the sources. François Robere (talk) 13:21, 21 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Guy and I have butted heads often enough, so I was planning to sit this out. But I'm concerned, in that while I don't believe that the best articles are necessarily created by having all major viewpoints hash it out, I have found that they are not made by having one side have free reign. Guy is a damn good editor, but where he has strong opinions he can use them to create a space where the other side feels unwelcome. When we repeat talk of the "cult of Trump", we suggest to those who come from Trump's pespective that they are just part of a cult, and as such their opinions are lessened. When Guy repeatedly points out that he has more edits than someone, [56][57][58][59][60][61], we create an envoronment where they risk feeling that their contributions are not given consideration simply because of a difference in experience. It isn't whether or not these statements are true that is the issue, but the envronment they create when repeatedly stated, and this is something that I've seen Guy create before. Thus I'm going to agree with Masem - if nothing else, there is a situation being created around these articles which seems to be made to prevent one side from being heard, whether or not that is deliberate. Is it sanctionable? I don't think we have the will to do that here, and I don't see this as the issue that will force it, but I hope we have the will to tackle these issues at some point in the future. - Bilby (talk) 14:03, 21 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• I note the appearance here of the same old group of editors who always show up whenever anyone dares to cite reality-based reliably-sourced information in the AP2 subject area that dares to contradict right-wing talking points. That a number of them are admins is ... disturbing. Beyond My Ken (talk) 21:36, 21 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I've been watching this form the sidelines for a while. I mostly agree with DGG's views who I believe has been treated very unfairly recently. I admire DGG's ability to put his own views aside and look at things objectively. I will say I am only slightly less concerned about JzG's behavior since he is no longer an admin, but he still has a large amount of influence. At best, his behavior violates WP:NOTFORUM. But making Nazi comparisons really pushes things beyond that. What is even more concerning is MastCell's response here. He not only defended JzG, but doubles down by saying JzG's comparison of the modern Republican Party to a cult was justified, but then passive-aggressively walks it back by saying I'm just not sure it's helpful to express it on article talkpages where a significant subset of editors are adherents of that party and will feel attacked. [62]. Well, MastCell you just said it again, so how was that helpful? Calling a major American political party a cult is unacceptable, especially when it comes from an admin. This is just further proof of MastCell's blatant bias in this topic area. So if we are going to look at the behavior of others as MastCell wants, he should be first on the list.--Rusf10 (talk) 22:31, 21 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• @Viriditas:With all due respect, just because someone writes an op-ed does not establish something as fact. Just because someone is considered an expert, does not turn their opinions into facts.--Rusf10 (talk) 23:28, 21 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Viriditas:This is WP:NOTAFORUM, so I refuse to debate such topics as your strongly held belief that the Republican Party is a cult.--Rusf10 (talk) 23:47, 21 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    • @Viriditas:At the very top of the source you chose[63], its says "Commentaries". Thank you for proving my point.--Rusf10 (talk) 00:25, 22 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
      • @Viriditas:See this is exactly what we don't need here. (and what got JzG in trouble) Even after someone points out to you that what you are citing is in fact an opinion, you start argueing about the superiority that opinion. Anyone who doesn't agree with your views must be in denial because your opinion is so far superior that it might as well just be a fact. --Rusf10 (talk) 01:02, 22 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

What's happening on this page (people forum-ing to an extreme, almost laughable, degree; bludgeoning by repeating themselves ad nauseum; claiming opinion is fact; asserting that anyone who disagrees doesn't understand or acknowledge reality; asserting anyone who disagrees is either ignorant or malicious, etc.), happens all over AP2, has been for years, and I think this page demonstrates well just how out of control it is. It's very much true that JzG isn't the only or the worst. I don't believe in singling any one editor out, but I do believe in giving warnings where warnings are due. There are several due, just on this page alone. I think some of the comments on this page are worse than the diffs in the report, but that doesn't mean nothing should be done! Just the opposite. We wouldn't allow this WP:RGW foruming in other topic areas. We wouldn't allow anyone to go on about Israeli or Palestinian or Kurdish or Turkish politics like some have gone on about US politics (on this very page). Our discussions about MEK, ISIS, and Hamas are better-behaved that our discussions about US politics. It really gets in the way of productive editing in AP2 when there's a contingent of true-believer culture-warriors, from both sides, arguing endlessly every day. Levivich ^harass/_hound 15:19, 22 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Almost everyone on that page (JzG included) could stand to be less WP:FORUMy, but his statements are hardly out of line with what most people are saying on both sides; in fact, many things people arguing against JzG have posted to this discussion are equally-forumy and get into "well yes but it's fine because I'm right and they're wrong" silliness. In particular, in several of the exchanges Berchanhimez posted, Berchanhimez themselves was obviously engaging in similar arguments before JzG replied to them - you can straightforwardly see that in their diffs. Here, for instance, Berchanhimez opened up by expressing their broad opinions on the entire topic by relating it to the George Floyd protests; they plainly don't have clean hands to object to JzG responding to that. Likewise, this comment by Berchanhimez strikes me as obvious provocation, so it's a bit silly for him to then object to JzG's reply being snippy. And while a lot of people who commented here could stand to tone down their rhetoric on that page, it is unreasonable for him to demand sanctions against JzG simply for mentioning the comparison to Nazis and fascists, which is discussed extensively in reliable sources. --Aquillion (talk) 22:42, 23 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Another week, another thread concerning American politics brought to this board. Sooner or later it will be time for this to be taken up by arbcom. -- Calidum 17:52, 24 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Valereee:} I think it's quite unwarranted and unfair to say ...JzG needs to be warned to stop using AP2 talk pages as forums and stop using language that makes clear their contempt for editors who aren't in agreement with them politically. The more straightforward conclusion is that JzG's edgy comments are directed at editors who reject Wikipedia Reliable Sourcing and collaboration. That's quite a different matter, and while there are some editors who are motivated as you suggest, these false equivalences are very corrosive to any kind of due process, tending -- as they do -- to dumb down discussion and resolution. SPECIFICO talk 17:57, 25 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

AP2 can at best be endless polite Wikilawyering until we update and fix some policies. But what are in essence ad hominem argument conversations involving other editors is certainly outside of that. And while assuming the ideal in WP:AGF may be unrealistic (and demanding the ideal there is weaponizing wp:agf), positing bad faith and making such prominent in arguments is the other extreme. Increased by heated forum type discussion. There is even a lot of that on this page by others so JZG is not alone. Also IMO this may be broader WP:ANI rather than narrow wp:AE. I think that a strong shift overall to expect more in avoiding such things is required and a warning here and a statement to that effect for all would be a good start. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 18:29, 25 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I am quite keen on enforcing civility, which I find is not done too often around here. That said, I've reviewed the first three diffs, described as "making a comparison to Holocaust/Nazis on an AMPOL topic", and I am not seeing anything particularly objectionable there. Assuming the OP would put the best diffs first, this doesn't seem very actionable. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 07:59, 27 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Though I'm sure editors raising concerns about JzG are well intentioned, this reminds me of civil POV pushing, where unending foruming drives editors to distraction when trying to base changes on mainstream sources, and any perceived rudeness is taken as grounds for sanctioning these editors. Perhaps unsurprising that Trump brings this out. InedibleHulk doesn't like "Guy's irrelevant commentary, his political commentary, his choice of insults," etc., but seems content with unsourced discussion aligned with the right-wing narrative, and responded to attempts at sourced discussion with what looks awfully like sarcasm.[64] Bound to happen, and not actionable in my view. It does get tricky when meeting distrust of "Reliable, independent, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy", "which is to say virtually entirely left wing mainstream media",[65] and I'll admit to suggesting Conservapedia as an option,[66]but I don't think sanctions are the way forward. . . dave souza, talk 12:38, 27 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

This section is to be edited only by uninvolved administrators. Comments by others will be moved to the sections above.

• Berchanhimez, looks like you didn't fill in the "sanction or remedy to be enforced" - guessing you meant AP2, but probably should get that filled in. GeneralNotability (talk) 00:16, 20 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Pinged here. Ugh, I literally just posted to the storming of the US Capitol article asking JzG again to tone down his language re: Trump supporters. —valereee (talk) 12:09, 20 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  @Berchanhimez, yes, I'm aware. —valereee (talk) 13:15, 20 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  @MjolnirPants, your [67] JzG dared use the word "bullshit", I guess? and [68] No "injectiong of personal opinion" here. JzG is stating a well-accepted fact. are exactly what prompted me to again ask JzG to tone it down just now at that talk. No, it's not the word bullshit, although it would be nice if he'd stop using that kind of dismissive language on contentious talk pages, too. And no it's not stating fact that's the problem. It's stating opinions as fact that's the problem. —valereee (talk) 13:45, 20 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  MjolnirPants, it's not the pottymouth that bothers me. My pottymouth is much worse than bullshit. The problem here is that when you call someone else's opinion bullshit, what you're doing is completely dismissing that opinion rather than making an attempt to understand it. He could have called it horsefeathers for all I care. The point is that if you're going to edit in one of the most contentious places on the project, you need to be especially careful of treating other well-intentioned editors with respect and to try that much harder to understand where they're coming from. —valereee (talk) 18:22, 20 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  @MastCell, I'm not saying don't push back on falsehoods. In fact it seems pretty likely it's a falsehood that there is ZERO chance there were ANY peaceful protesters at the Jan 6 speeches, which is what calling that "mythical" is. I'm sure that , just like for a lot of BLM protests, some people showed up intending to wreak violence, some showed up intending to be part of a peaceful protest and got caught up in the riot, and some showed up for a peaceful protest and left when things got crazy. —valereee (talk) 18:33, 20 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  @MastCeII, sorry, but I'm not going to be able to let that go. I'll answer at your talk. —valereee (talk) 11:17, 21 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  @MastCell sorry, for some reason the reply tool wants to ping some other MastCell —valereee (talk) 11:20, 21 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  Only in death, I don't actually know all of the editors in this argument, but I do know InedibleHulk, with whom I've disagreed on many, many things. I object to the assertion that editor isn't well-intentioned. —valereee (talk) 21:10, 20 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• I am in full agreement with MastCell. If this is sanctionable, I can think (even without pausing) of another dozen editors whose behaviour is functionally equivalent, including at least a couple that have posted here in support of the OP. Black Kite (talk) 18:21, 20 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  Then let's log a warning to all three. Seriously. —valereee (talk) 18:23, 20 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  Well, this is the problem. I don't think that's a good idea, because I was only referring to AP2, and we could expand that to a lot more of other hot-button subject (indeed, some of the other areas are even worse). This is a functional problem with WP, in that whilst we deal with disruption in articlespace reasonably well, we don't deal well with it elsewhere. To give a hypothetical - and somewhat simplistic - example (and apologies for the Godwin), editor A says "editor B accused me of being a Nazi". Editor B says "No I didn't, I suggested that your talkpage post was supportive of Nazi ideology". Immediately, any action taken by an administrator will be taken to mean that admin is supportive of A or B's political viewpoint. It's difficult. And I suggest that any random swearing or insults - whilst obviously non-optimal - are far less important than removing seriously problematic editors from that topic area. Black Kite (talk) 18:32, 20 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  Though I note that one of those editors is already back at ANI after a block for nonsense like this. An AP2 ban would be better for everyone there, IMO. Black Kite (talk) 18:41, 20 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  I'm not an admin, but will note I was also brought back to AN/I today, for all sorts of nonsense, but the complainant withdrew. InedibleHulk (talk) 00:47, 21 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  I don't think swearing is equivalent to insults. "That source is bullshit" is not the same as "Your opinion is bullshit." And I hate Trump at least as much as JzG does. Also I'm not going to avoid dealing with a behavioral issue out of concern someone will think my stance on the specific behavior is somehow evidence I'm not behaving fairly due to my personal political stance. For anyone who thinks I'm advantaging Trump supporters: I despise Trump. I think he's possibly the worst thing to happen to the US in modern politics, and that's a big ask after Bush II's war decisions. —valereee (talk) 18:44, 20 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  For the record: I believe JzG needs to be warned to stop using AP2 talk pages as forums and stop using language that makes clear their contempt for editors who aren't in agreement with them politically. I don't care whether there are others as bad or worse. Other editors exist. If they also need to be warned, fine. But the fact they exist doesn't mean we should just throw up our hands. —valereee (talk) 16:12, 25 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• Re Nazis: Blanket prohibitions are rarely appropriate because context matters and exceptions exist (and, I think, some reliable sources have made comparisons similar to those by JzG). Nevertheless, I confidently state that mentioning anything connected with Nazis in AP2 discussions is undesirable and JzG should restrict himself to no more than one mention a month. However, diffs 1 and 3 for this issue are part of one brief discussion that started with JzG's problem-free "there's really only one event. It started down the National mall and moved to the insurrection". That comment might be regarded as forumy but in context it is an opinion that is relevant to the issue (a proposal to split the article in two: peaceful protest + Capitol protest). The discussion degenerated when people responded to JzG with equally policy-free pronouncements.
  Re cult/personalizing: The first diff is a repeat (probably a mistake). Another diff is from the Nazi discussion and is part of an exchange of personal opinions among participants—not good but not particularly worse than the others except for use of a bad word. A suitable response would be to point out that claims of "cult" are unsourced and irrelevant to the discussion (and say nothing more, that is, do not continue to exchange opinions). The "experience" issue was a claim by JzG that he had a better understanding of sourcing policies—a glance suggests it is off-topic but in context (to split the article) it's not too bad and is part of the unproductive exchange of opinions.
  Re repeatedly making comments: The first two diffs are part of the one discussion already covered. The third diff is a claim that someone's opinion was "WP:OR" along with a provocative suggestion for an alternative to an apparently sourced "insurrectionist". The WP:OR claim is literally correct as the comment referred to was an unsourced opinion (that was fine in context where people are exchanging opinions, but it was OR).
  Re further information: The first diff is a mistake? The second is a bit off but again is part of the exchange of opinions. The third has a very good first two sentences. The third sentence mentioning "martyr" is defensible in that it is anticipating a possible answer to the question in the first sentence.
  Re what to do: That's difficult. Frankly JzG wouldn't post so many comments if people didn't reply to his initial statements. I'm not saying those replying are at fault, but a good way of dealing with someone posting opinions you don't like is to ignore them and focus on actionable proposals to improve the article based on reliable sources. Johnuniq (talk) 07:55, 21 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• I have serious doubts that this can be resolved here. It's been some 6 years since WP:AP2, and I suspect that WP:AP3 is drawing near. — Ched (talk) 01:42, 22 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Ched: I was the drafting arb for AP2 and the temptation to file AP3 grows by the day... --In actu (Guerillero) ^{Parlez Moi} 16:19, 24 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• It would be wise for JzG (and all editors commenting on controversial topics) to focus on what reliable sources say and how best to improve the article instead of spouting opinions like a political pundit. As JzG is well aware, there are plenty of opportunities for all of us to opine on social media, but here on Wikipedia, we should strive to conduct ourselves as encyclopedia editors and not as activists. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 21:28, 22 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Discussing "Nazis" on any talk page which is not related to World War II or its surrounding time frame is, shall we say, rarely going to be a helpful contribution to the discussion. That said, while some of JzG's commentary could certainly be toned down and better focused on how to best write articles rather than impugning the motives of other editors, I think he's neither the only nor the worst offender on those things in the topic area. While I certainly would not be happy to see an AP3 case (I was on the ArbCom for the second round, and it was not an enjoyable experience), I don't know that there's another viable alternative at this point. If we removed all the editors from the AP2 topic area who had violated NOTFORUM or had a heated discussion at some point, I'm not sure we'd have any left. In the meantime, though, I think everyone needs to consider their own contributions to problems in the topic area. Calling other editors names because they disagree is not acceptable behavior, and failing anything else, at some point action will need to be taken on that. I'd much rather see Wikipedia be one of the few places where such topics can be discussed based upon what reliable sources have to say and how to best present that, without it degenerating into name calling and bickering. I'd also encourage some thought about Masem's statement that even when reliable sources are substantially in agreement on something, we still must present that information in a neutral way. As to this request, I would say to treat it as a warning, not just to JzG but to everyone involved in the area, that the name calling, bickering, and tangents into subjects unrelated to improving articles must stop, or it will need to be stopped. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 19:13, 24 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Reading over the above, one thing that nearly everybody seems to agree on is that JzG's tendency to veer off topic and into WP:FORUM territory is unhelpful. WP:AE can deal with that, even if there are other editors elsewhere who behave worse. Just close this with a warning or whatever asking JzG to stay on topic. I assume JzG is a responsible adult, and should be able to change his behavior based on this feedback. I personally think he'd benefit greatly from following the advice of Masem.
  I don't agree with the calls for WP:AP3. FORUM behavior is something we can handle just fine without punting to it Arbcom. And while we can't handle the sourcing issues that keep popping up here (for instance see comments about NPOV by DGG) neither can Arbcom, because Arbcom doesn't make content decisions like that.
  I suspect what is really motivating the calls for AP3 is that every week we have a new TLDR AP2 thread here where the same editors show up to defend their allies and attack their opponents. (oversimplifying a bit) I think our tendency as admins is to look the other way in hopes that letting people vent a bit will cool things off. But that results in these big long contentious threads that sit open for a long time. Perhaps a better approach would be to be more strict about enforcing word limits and to close these threads quickly as soon as it's apparent what if any action is needed. ~Awilley (talk) 22:39, 24 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

On the subject of word counts, here's what they are as of right now:

To those of you under 500: thank you. To those of you over 500: don't bother refactoring, this will probably be closed soon. To those of you over 1000: Really? Please try to be more concise in the future. ~Awilley (talk) 22:47, 24 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

This request may be declined without further action if insufficient or unclear information is provided in the "Request" section below.
Requests may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs (not counting required information), except by permission of a reviewing administrator.

User who is submitting this request for enforcement

Nableezy (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) 15:05, 25 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

User against whom enforcement is requested

Enthusiast01 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Search CT alerts: in user talk history • in system log

Sanction or remedy to be enforced

Wikipedia:Arbitration/Index/Palestine-Israel_articles#ARBPIA_General_Sanctions (1 revert rule)

Diffs of edits that violate this sanction or remedy, and an explanation how these edits violate it

1. 24 May 10:24:16 labeled a revert
2. 24 May 13:25:16 revert of [69]
3. 24 May 21:03:12 labeled a revert

Diffs of previous relevant sanctions, if any

N/A

If discretionary sanctions are requested, supply evidence that the user is aware of them (see WP:AC/DS#Awareness and alerts)

N/A, general sanction which ArbCom has clarified requires no awareness besides the edit notice and talk page notice (both present)

Additional comments by editor filing complaint

The user was asked to self-revert their latest revert. The user has continued editing since that request but has neither responded or self-reverted

Um, edit 1 is a revert of this (which follows the MOS on not bolding descriptive titles). Edit 2 removed "When the ultimatum expired without Israel complying with their demand" that was placed in the edit I listed, an obvious revert (it also distorts the cited source which says that rockets were launched after the ultimatum expired, whereas the edit made claims that rockets were fired before, so it is both a revert and distortion of the cited source, and other sources confirm that timeline (eg Shortly after the Hamas ultimatum expired at 6 p.m. Red Alert sirens were heard in multiple areas in Israel, indicating a likely rocket being fired toward population centers in the vicinity, including in Jerusalem). And notification of the arbitration decision is not required for enforcing the 1RR, as I already noted in my comments here, and my notification of the arbitration decision isnt anywhere cited here, making the claim that it is deceptive, well, deceptive. I waited till the next day before coming here to make sure that the user had seen the request to self-revert before reporting him. He continued editing without responding. So, after 3 reverts and refusing to self-revert, I reported him. And none of that has anything to do with notification of the arbitration decision. Kindly dont make things up on AE, that itself should result in sanctions for misusing this board. nableezy - 15:38, 25 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Seraphimblade: please see this clarification request. General sanctions, such as the 1RR, do not require any prior notification of discretionary sanctions besides the edit notice in the article. nableezy - 22:51, 25 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Notification of the user against whom enforcement is requested

Notified

Statements must be made in separate sections. They may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs, except by permission of a reviewing administrator.
Administrators may remove or shorten noncompliant statements. Disruptive contributions may result in blocks.

For those who are curious why I have not commented on this complaint, I acknowledge having noted the views expressed here and will take it on board. Enthusiast01 (talk) 23:32, 29 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Edit #1 is placing standard boldface on the article title. Edit #2 is not a revert, but an edit.

Enthusiast01 was not notified of the ARBCOM decision. Nableezy notified them at 21:47, without signing his post, and after all of these edits. Nableezy waited until the next day, and then made the post over here. This after the fact, unsigned, and undated notification is deceptive. 11Fox11 (talk) 15:20, 25 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

This section is to be edited only by uninvolved administrators. Comments by others will be moved to the sections above.

• As Enthusiast01 did not receive the discretionary sanctions notification until after these edits were made, and had not received one for this topic area within the preceding twelve months, it is not possible to sanction for these edits under the current rules regarding awareness of sanctions. However, Enthusiast01 should take this as a rather lucky break and a warning, as further such breaches will lead to being sanctioned. 1RR means that only one revert may be made per article per day at all, even if the reverts are of different content from different editors in different parts of the article. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 21:25, 25 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• I am worried that Enthusiast01 continued editing Wikipedia but has not come here to at least acknowledge that they are aware of the issue.--Ymblanter (talk) 19:53, 27 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• I am a bit puzzled as to why Enthusiast01 hasn't at least dropped by here in response to multiple pings over the course of several days, during which they've continued to edit. —valereee (talk) 19:29, 29 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hm...they haven't edited a talk page in a month or their own user talk in three. P-blocking from article space to get their attention. Thought better of it. This is an experienced editor, no doubt intentionally not responding. —valereee (talk) 19:32, 29 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]