User talk:Fram

Arb Case

So:

• I'm banned and desyssopped based on ... what? No one knows but ArbCom, and they don't consider it sufficient to ban or desysop me apparently.
• For some unclear reasons, it took ArbCom weeks to open a case with unknown support or oppose votes (not unprecedented that they accept things this way, but shown to be a very bad idea in the past already, and goes against all accountability we expect from them)
• People now get to post evidence until 7 August, and then, in just one week (7 to 14 August), they will summarize and anonimize it, post these things somewhere between these two dates, let me react in the remaining time, and post a decision? Basically, everyone holding some grudge (or, who knows, having a legitimate complaint) has had weeks to prepare their posts to ArbCom, and I get considerably less than a week to react to it, and then only based on summarized and anonimized results, not on anything concrete (will the summarized results even have any diffs?)
• The 2016 date seems totally arbitrary
• No reason has been given why the case needs to be held in private. Nothing happened off-wiki, all evidence is onwiki, and my contributions have already been checked by multiple editors over the past month+. When you publish the evidence summary, either you will need to summarize it beyond recognition, in which case no defense is possible (e.g. "we received multiple complaints that Fram targets vulnerable editors", well, all I or anyone else can say is "no", but no actual rebuttal of something so general is realistically possible); or you will need to publish recognizable cases, which will then get scrutiny from me and the community anyway, and may present unwanted comments about the supposedly targeted editors even if they have nothing to do with the complaint against me (since e.g. editor X may feel the need to take up the defense of editor Y, even if editor Y wisely decided to keep quiet if they realise that the fault is largely with them).

I don't know what the conclusion is ArbCom is aiming for, but this procedure has all the indications of being a show process trial to justify a foregone conclusion as if some actual openness and right to defend myself has been given.

Proceeding like this will only result in unhappy editors on nearly all sides, as anyone who disagrees with or doesn't understand the result will be reacting rather negatively to how the decision was reached. A lack of openness will only boomerang on the ArbCom, no matter if you indef siteban me or completely unblock and reinstate me.

"How much weight we give to the report will very much depend on what is submitted by the community, I personally intend to give the community more weight than the T&S report. WormTT(talk) 15:52, 24 July 2019 (UTC)" This makes no sense, how can the weight of the report no one in the community has seen depend on whatever the community submits? No one is able to provide evidence countering claims in the T&S document, since we don't know what claims have been made, apart from the very limited info they gave me (which I already shared here). Let's say it includes info like the two more detailed complaints in the infamous Signpost article; it reads as if you would believe these complaints if some people made the same fake complaints directly to you through email. That's not a way to have a fair result, but an echo chamber weighted extremely in favour of those having complaints. If you don't have permission to share the T&S document, then you should simply toss it out. Any sanction which is, even partially, based on that document where I have no chance to defend myself (nor any way to avoid the same behaviour after a sanction would expire, nor any way for others to avoid the same behaviour), is not acceptable.

"If you refuse to allow Fram to respond to evidence you have accepted and reviewed, its in direct violation of how ARBPOL is written and intended. That editos have a chance to defend themselves. Only in death does duty end (talk) 17:58, 24 July 2019 (UTC)" True.

I don't like it as a method and the outcome seems to be a foregone conclusion in such circumstances. At least a separate workshop would enable some review of anonymised evidence because, after all, arbitrators are no more infallible than the rest of us when it comes to sifting through stuff. But here we are, I guess: I pity Fram, who not only has to go through the torture of an arbcom case but now effectively will be trying to counter what is almost certain to be evidence biassed by weight and, possibly, connections. That is a lot of stress. - Sitush (talk) 16:13, 24 July 2019 (UTC) Again, true.

"Yes, I believe that we intend to package up all the evidence at the end of the phase and send it to Fram. They therefore do not have 7 days to comment, and any extension would simply afford others more time to send in evidence and delay when Fram gets to begin responding to arbitrators. AGK ■ 21:33, 25 July 2019 (UTC)" Thank you at least for confirming that I won't even have 7 days to reply...

All in all, everything I have seen so far gives me very little trust in this ArbCom case. Fram (talk) 09:32, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

Arb Case: Cwmhiraeth

Allright, it looks from comments made by Cwmhiraeth at the Arb noticeboard, and edits he made here, that he plans to submit basically the same request they already provided in 2016, and which was rightly rejected then ([1]: this case was also included in the deleted Signpost page as evidence of something or other).

Can Arbs perhaps indicate if it is useful to defend myself against the exact same rejected accusations again, or will they go with the "we already dealt with those, please don't try to relitigate the same issues"? Many of the issues on that page are from before 2016 anyway, but e.g. blocking Jaguar for a week for repeated copyright violations is hardly a case of harassment, or disagreeing with the C of E about an incorrect DYK hook they tried to insert into an article repeatedly and promote to the main page? Apparently, according to Cwmhiraeth, my revocation of talk page access to globally banned user Russavia is evidence of something as well, but since it is from 2014, he probably hasn't again included it now?

Who else... LavaBaron? Since indef blocked as a sock of another indef blocked user; but even without this: in this and other cases mentioned (Cwmhiraeth themselves, Nvvchar, LauraHale) I noticed them during my near-daily DYK checks, which I did for years (but severely reduced after getting tired of all the crap I received in return from disgruntled editors like Cwmhiraeth). If it becomes obvious that an editor repeatedly is responsible for incorrect DYK hooks, and shows no indication that they really care about this or understand the issues, then it may become necessary to ask for sanctions at ANI or some such. This is what happened with Lavabaron (and with LauraHale for that matter), and is what admins (or other concerned editors) should do. That some of these sanctioned editors then retire, blaming the admin who checked their edits and tried to reduce the number of factual errors on the main page, is to be expected; but this is not evidence that that admin (in this case, me) did anything problematic. On the contrary even.

Basically, if there are complaints about my 2016 (or earlier) treatment of LauraHale, LavaBaron, Sander v. Ginkel (also included by Cwmhiraeth, I invite the Arbs to check the ANI archives for what the community view of their edits was in the end), Cwmhiraeth, the C of E, Russavia, Kumioko, Nvvchar, Jaguar, ... then please treat them as "already dealt with at ArbCom" and don't waste more time (yours and mine) in rediscussing these. Or refer them back to the community so they can first agree on which edits may be problematic and which are perfectly acceptable ones, and then only take the potentially problematic ones into account. Of course, I suppose that this is what you could expect by accepting anything from as early as 2016 for some reason (because the T&S report started then? So what? If it had started in 2007, would you then open a case investigating everything from back then as well?). If I have to discuss all these cases in the few days that will be alotted to me, then it will be a rushed, incomplete job, and basically a pointless exercise in going over old stuff already brought up at AN(I) and ArbCom in many cases. If it wasn't deemed an actionable problem in 2016, then why study it in 2019, when many editors have commented that taken in toto, my behaviour has significantly improved in 2018-2019 anyway? Fram (talk) 16:43, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

Cwmhiraeth is a lady. Raystorm is also a lady, although you were unaware of it at the time you interacted with her, and may still be unaware of it. 86.128.213.49 10:43, 30 July 2019 (UTC)

I don't believe Cwmhiraeth self-identifies onwiki? I can't find it on their userpage in any case. I would rather not discuss Raystorm, I have no idea if my almost-but-not-quite interaction ban includes Raystorm or not. Fram (talk) 11:49, 30 July 2019 (UTC)

Fram, I read your case and was disappointed that the office stepped in on what they called "harassment". Harassment appears to be handled on Wikipedia, at least that's how I parsed the guildelines on that. Then they didn't let you have a say or appeal whoever office is, and gave only boilerplate for answers.

Now arbcom wants to try you again ? You've already been tried once. I don't see any merit for this. If they aquit you, they can't rescind the office, if they side with the office are they going to ban you again ? This is a shit-show. (Arbcom explained that WP:Office gave them the authority to ban or unban you, so I take back what I said earlier )

Also - I realize you can't say yea or nay, but I think the ban was over Ms. Laura Hale, as her lover is part of the Wikipedia board (its all over multiple boards dedicated to Wikipedia). If so, that's pretty nepotic of them! Fight the good fight - many support you over at the Wikipedia! NecromongerWekeepwhatwekill 15:35, 30 July 2019 (UTC)

Off-wiki

Oh dear...

"::I believe the community is aware that certain things have happened off wiki, including the actual complaints to T&S and emails between T&S and Fram. In addition, the document is redacted in places. So, I disagree with Fram's assertion that "nothing happened off-wiki". Moreover, the committee has accepted that this case needs to be heard in private. I hope that helps. Worm^TT(talk) 15:26, 30 July 2019 (UTC)"

"Future Perfect at Sunrise, I'm not accusing Fram of lying - I'm disagreeing with his characterisation of the case. If that did not come across, I apologize. Since it seems I'm being misinterpreted here, I'll stop trying to answer questions. Worm^TT(talk) 18:11, 30 July 2019 (UTC)"

WTT, that's not what is meant by "nothing happened off-wiki", and you know it. If you can't answer straifght questions in such wikilawyering ways, then don't answer at all. If this is the kind of fair treatment I may expect, then just close down the case and indef me already, as this is really becoming a farce. I see that many others have objected to your statements as well.

Arbcom, if you may not even answer the most basic things about the T&S document, then you should just exclude it from the case altogether. One of the main complaints about the T&S action was the total lack of a right to defend myself, but you are doing the exact same thing if you include the T&S document in your decisions in any way. Instead of the independent board I (and most people) thought you would be after the WMF sent this back to enwiki to deal with, you look more and more like lackeys of WMF instead of an independent body.

You could have looked at the T&S document and made an independent decision on it. You could have started from scratch and created a normal case, with the standard procedures. But you have instead created some hybrid monster with rules, deadlines, secrets, ... all set up to reach some conclusion which seems predetermined. Such a conclusion, no matter if it postive for me, negative, or something inbetween, will leave many more people unhappy than if you had conducted a proper case, in the open, with equal rights for both sides. The conclusion reached might be the same, but the perception would be totally different. Now, we don't even know who proposed and supported this procedure, who objected, ...

Things may improve still, but with each passing day and with each prejudiced or poisonous comment by an Arb it seems more and more unlikely. Fram (talk) 07:38, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

Is it possible that you and WTT are going by different definitions of "off-wiki"? For example, I recall a dispute on MediaWiki that led to you being blocked. (I recall this because I was asked for advice privately at the time by one of the people involved who was very upset by your behavior.) Do you consider MediaWiki "off-wiki" for the purposes of an ArbCom case? Would ArbCom consider if off-wiki? How about other various auxiliary sites such as phabricaror? So far I have no reason to believe either you or WTT would say something untruthful, so I am trying to understand if you are simply using different definitions of the same term. 28bytes (talk) 20:03, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

Possible, but unlikely. I don't consider mediawiki as "off-wiki", but to be more precise; since 2015 or so, to the best of my recollection, the only times I have moved a discussion to another wiki-part was when I noticed an editor putting copyvio images in enwiki; in those cases, I went to Commons to start a deletion discussion (of the top of my head, this happened with Richard Arthur Norton a few years ago, and more recently with Rama and with Elisa Rolle). I have not edited phabricator ever (I have used bugzilla in the distant past), I haven't edited Mediawiki in years, I haven't edited Wikidata ever (my "edits" there are fake software entries, page moves made on enwiki which trigger an edit in my name but without my knowledge or support in Wikidata), ... The only other things I did were two replies to the first mail I received from T&S, a few posts to oversight for very serious BLP problems unrelated to any of the cases I was involved with (so not posts about established editors, but e.g. a newbie with serious cross-wiki defamatiory articles), and a post to legal about a website falsely claiming to have an agreement with Wikipedia. My reply to contacts through wiki-email is usually that I prefer to have my business onwiki, my only longer mail discussion concerning another wikipedia editor was with Bishonen in 2017, and they can confirm if necessary that it was a) not about anyone I was in conflict with, b) with the best of intentions (and results!), and c) necessarily private. I have never used wikimail to harass or otherwise annoy other editors. Fram (talk) 07:24, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

Trickles

"*I expect we'll address questions like this in the proposed decision, as usual, once we've had time to look at all the evidence and draft accurate findings of fact. Letting out FoFs in trickles while the case is ongoing isn't how we do things normally, and I don't think it would be fair to any parties here. I understand that this has been going on a long time now, but interrogating us about particulars isn't going to speed the process up. – Joe (talk) 08:27, 31 July 2019 (UTC)"

No, but letting out evidence in trickles is how we do things normally, and would be fair to all parties. And I don't think anyone wants to speed up the process even more now that the case has finally started. What people want is a fair case, and some answers to very, very basic questions the WMF refused to answer, and WTT answered in a very misleading and troubling way. Acting as if answering such a simple question in an accurate way would be slowing down the process is bizarre...

If you are only going to answer questions like "has there been off-wiki activities by Fram leading to the WMF ban (or to new arbcom sanctions)" in the proposed decision, then you will not even honour your own promise to release a summary of the evidence to me and the enwiki community in general to react to (or that summary will be utterly meaningless). If that summary doesn't make it clear if there has or has not been offwiki activity by me which lead to complaints and/or sanctions, then it should not be in the proposed decision either. Fram (talk) 08:58, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

Yes, this is an unusual case and it's unfortunate that we can't be as open with the evidence as normal. We will definitely release summarised evidence to you and the rest of the community as promised.

But it's one thing for things to presented as evidence by a party or commentator, quite another for an arb to state it as fact. The latter creates the impression that the committee has made up its mind on that point, when in fact we are still gathering and looking at the evidence, and there is also a lot to be said for the importance of drafting and re-drafting by multiple people to make sure that FoFs are communicated clearly. The confusion created by different arbs' understandings of and answers to SchroCat's question I think illustrates why asking us to individually comment on specific matters, while the evidence phase is ongoing, is a bad idea. Joe Roe (talk) 07:44, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

Thanks, but you've had the T&S document for what, 3 or 4 weeks now? You looked at it rather thoroughly. You also have received all mail communication between T&S from me and from T&S (I presume). Confirming (or denying) that there is no claim of off-wiki issues in the T&S document, and confirming (or denying) that my posts about the T&S communication were all correct, should surely be possible by now? I mean, there must have been something you did in the weeks between your reception of the T&S document, and the final opening of the case, and I would hope that that would include reading the document, reading the mails, and checking whether I had been making up stuff to diabolize the WMF, or not? And if I had been making up such stuff, one would suppose that you wouldn't need a kind-of case to sanction me, but could just have said so and be done with it?

If the T&S document contains no claims of offwiki problems, then it should not be a problem for an Arb to state this as fact. If the document has claims of offwiki conduct, but you aren't sure if they are truthful or not (or if they are by me or by some joe job), then how are you going to determine this if you don't even ask me or the community to check into this? You will have to include this in the summary of evidence anyway, if you want to base a FoF on it.

I can't see this case ending well with the way you (collectively) are proceeding now. If you are not even allowed to answer the most simple questions about the T&S document (not "Has Fram done this or that?", but "Does the document contain allegations of this or that?"), but still insist that it may be used as evidence, then I don't see how these positions are in any way both tenable in a fair case.

What the purpose is of keeping me banned, desysopped, and without even talk page access for (at least) two months, while allowing me to communicate from here anyway, is completely unclear as well. If the full authority for the case has been handed back to enwiki and arbcom, then you have the authority to proceed in a normal way with this; under enwiki rules, there is no reason to ban and summarily desysop me, and even less reason to deny me talk page access. Either this is now an Arbcom decision, and then I would like some explanation of the reasoning; or this is a WMF requirement, and then you have not been given free rein but the WMF has imposed requirements from the very start, without they or you disclosing these (as far as I know at least). Fram (talk) 08:09, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

This case or no case?

"Please bear in mind that the effect of supporting this will not be to give Fram full access to the private evidence in his case, because we are contractually prohibited from giving it to him. What it will do is stop ArbCom from having a case, sinking the only compromise solution we have yet found to this deadlock between enwiki and the WMF. I don't think we are breaching ARBPOL: we are making every effort to give Fram a reasonable opportunity to respond to what is said about him in what is a complex and exceptional circumstance. This is a process we have had to put together quickly, with little precedent and no time to consult the community on alternative formats. As WTT has said, it won't be the template for how private cases will or should look in the future. – Joe (talk) 07:57, 1 August 2019 (UTC) "

No. Unless you have been given rather precise instructions by the WMF (and if so, then please say so and either reveal these instructions or tell us you are not allowed to do this either), you should be able to hold a case in whatever way you (ArbCom) see fit, within the arbcom policy. Why you would have a case where you not even allow pubolic evidence, only private evidence, is completely unclear. Why you would not have a regular workshop phase after you have published the summary of the evidence is again completely unclear. There is no reason at all not to consult the community if you are going to publish the evidence summary anyway (unless you believe the summary will be so generic and meaningless that it wil serve no purpose to have a discussion about it at all, in which case there is little point in sending it to me for a reaction either). You claim "we are making every effort to give Fram a reasonable opportunity to respond to what is said about him", which is not the impression I get (nor many others it seems). The timeline you have decided on is not tenable if you really want to give me a "reasonable opportunity" to respond and will take that into account when making your proposed decision.

In a case like en:Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Antisemitism in Poland, you gave yourselves 14 days after the workshop closed, and that deadline is already more than 2 weeks in the past. So you need at least a month to post a decision in that case, but here you will, in one week, summarize the evidence, give me a chance to respond, and post a proposed decision? And I have to believe that that proposed decision isn't already written and just needs to be signed and dated, and spiced up with some juicy bits of evidence you received, and some token acknowledgment of my responses? Because, from where I am sitting, it surely starts to look like this a bit more with every passing day and every deflective response by the Arbs. Fram (talk) 08:38, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

Private information

A lot of discussion currently is about private information, and whether I and/or the community should get access to all information or not. What no one expects is that you indiscrimnitaely reveal everything that has been mailed to you or T&S. If e.g. someone includes "outing" information on themselves or others in mails (accidentally, or because they think it is relevant to you), then I would not expect you to distribute such things of course. I also don't think many people are waiting to see what kind of nonsense "evidence" you get from cranks which you simply discard in the trash bin anyway.

What I (and I guess others) object to, is the withholding of evidence that a) you will consider in your verdict, and b) is available onwiki anyway. This includes deleted stuff. If e.g. you would in your summary include things like "Fram is banned because they deleted too many articles from one editor", then it would be impossible to reply to this as it is way too vague. If you in such a case don't name the editor (the article creator, not the editor who provided this evidence), then no one can check whether this was harassment or just good admin work. The same goes for warnings, reverts, blocks, ...

This applies as well to vague accusations like me targeting "vulnerable editors" or "sexually harassing people". Without some concrete evidence, this is again impossible to confirm or deny. For e.g. this accusation made in the deleted Signpost article, it was only because the circumstances were somewhat recognisable to me that I was able to effectively rebut this. But if the accusations would be even more obscure (or the siutation described differed even more wildly from reality or was less prominent), then all I could have done was react with "I don't recognise myself in this description and have no idea what you are talking about", which would be truthful but hardly an effective method of defending oneself, nor would it be useful to anyone else to judge whether I really was acting in such a way.

Now, imagine that the T&S report or your summary / FoF will not include one such pseudo-anonymous story, but something like "25 editors have complained that Fram is doing these horrible things", would that make them any more true? We have already seen that some people are more than willing to repeat such accusations, even when they could check for themselves if there was any truth to them. But when stated as a dry bit of evidence, it looks rather damning to uninvolved watchers.

Private evidence may mean that more victims are willing to actually tell their true story, but it also gives much more power to others to fabricate or (more likely) twist and exaggerate their story. It happened in the Signpost story, so it is likely to happen even more in this case where they get more privacy and secrecy.

TLDR: I (and others) don't need to know who made accusations (although I would expect ArbCom to treat blatantly false evidence given in private the same as blatant personal attacks onwiki would be), but I (we) do need to know as precisely and completely as possibly what exactly I am accused of. And of course given enough time (i.e. a true workshop phase) to discuss these things, after which an acceptable, fact-based proposed decision can be written. I have not seen a good reason from the ArbCom why this approach is not possible here. Fram (talk) 14:28, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

SilkTork

• "I have said previously, but I don't mind repeating it for clarity, that we intend to hold a case on Fram."

Uh, that case is ongoing, so this is a really strange start...

• "We will have a workshop, and will publish findings and reach a public decision."

We will have a workshop? When will that be? The time between the closing of the evidence phase and the closing of the workshop pages is exacty ZERO seconds. I would urge the committee to truly have a workshop phase here, but then make this a lot more obvious and change the posted timeline. As it stands, your comment contradicts everything else said about this case so far.

• "If there are any off-wiki activities that are a cause for concern that will be revealed as the case unfolds."

The ban is nearly two months old (and kept in place without good reason), you have had the document for nearly a month and the evidence phase is nearly closed: perhaps you could finally have "revealed" if so far, there are any "off-wiki activities that are a cause for concern" instead of treating this like some blockbuster with a cliffhanger?

• "I understand that there is still frustration over T&S banning an enwiki contributor for one year, but we are past that stage."

Which "we" is that?

• "The protests were listened to by the Foundation, and progress is being made. We are moving on and looking forwards. There are still areas of concern, but the T&S Fram document is no longer one of those areas, as the enwiki elected Arbitration Committee is making its own decision as to what to do with Fram."

Apart from Arbs saying that their opinion is already tainted by the document, or that they will take the document into consideration depending on other evidence. Apart from the fact as well that T&S basically dictated the terms under which this case should be held, including that I needed to remain banned (or why else have I not even been at the very least given access to my enwiki talk page to have these discussions?)

• "However, I will repeat what I have said previously about the document, that I found it to show sensitive awareness of Wikipedia roles and policies, of the workings of the community, of Fram's place in the community and the positive contributions he has made, and of the difficulties in identifying and dealing with incivility."

I thought it was about harassment? or are you equating harassment and incivility now?

• "As a gathering of information about a user who is causing concern, I find it on the whole to be a fair and broadly useful document."

Yeah? Did they contact anyone to perhaps shed some different light on things? A "gathering of information" only based on what protesters post to the WMF is not "fair".

• "SilkTork (talk) 02:50, 4 August 2019 (UTC)"

The remainder of your post again seems to indicate that this whole case is about incivility, not about harassment. I already indicated in 2018 that I would change my approach and avoid incivility, and in general editors seem to agree that my behaviour since then has markedly improved. Still, here I am desysopped and banned since nearly two months before any evidence has even been presented that such drastic action was or remains necessary at all. Fram (talk) 07:25, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

Geo Swan (an example of how this is supposed to work?)

As an example of hos this is supposed to work (or more likey, not) after the evidence summary is provided and I get the chance to reply for a few hours or so:

Geo Swan posts [2]: "The invitation requested evidence from the last three years. If I feel recent incidents show Fram is continuing a counterpolicy focus on my activities that dates back a decade should evidence I submit include or disclude diffs that document instances that are older than three years? Geo Swan (talk) 14:59, 3 August 2019 (UTC)"

I have just checked my posts to his talk page, [3] and the most recent ones are from January 2016, asking him to deal with his countless user space articles kept their for many, many years. Many of these were deleted as BLP violations (as were many BLP violations) around 2010, ending in an RfC/U in early 2011 (here). After 2012, I mainly left Geo Swan alone, as people were claiming (mostly incorrectly) that others would deal with it.

In January 2016, I noticed Geo Swan's name again (don't recall where now), and checked on his userspace drafts. Noticing that not much had changed, I asked him about these here in the section "old userspace articles. I got no reply, and dropped the issue even though these userspace articles contain many serious BLP violations, as I pointed out in the AfDs and the RfCU, and in the talk page comments.

Something like en:User:Geo Swan/Amir Hamza (Balkh) was created in April 2012 (i.e. after the RfCU), and has never been edited since (so more than 7 years old). It contains the claim "X, a police chief in Afhganistan who was accused of atrocities" (with X an actual redlinked name which never had an article associated), a typical serious BLP violation.

I did, at the time, not act upon this uot of fear of being accused of harassment, even though the right thing to do would have been to take up that cause again, delete that user space draft immediately for BLP reasons, and bring the general issue of these Geo Swan drafts to ANI for discussion.

Even so, I apparently have somehow harassed Geo Swan in 2016 or more recently (no idea where, I have checked AfD but can't find interactions in the last 5 years).

So I ask again from the arbs, will anything be done about frivolous, meritless complaints? Or can anyone post privately to the Arbs whatever they like without any consequences, where I will have to spend hours to defend myself from this kind of claims? From here, it looks as if I will get a torrent of editors ho have had articles deleted or other problematic editing revealed and now try to get revenge, no matter that the actual problematic enwiki editing is usually theirs, not mine. Someone like Geo Swan should have his userspace and mainspace articles thoroughly checked and lots of it deleted, but I will probably be accused of harassment simply by posting this, even though I left him alone for years even when I was aware of ongoing BLP problems, and when it was obvious that they had no plans to do anything about this at all. A public workshop phase would seriously help with all of this, where other editors could deal with the obvious revenge posts and I could focus on the cases where my edits truly were problematic. Fram (talk) 09:48, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

Ritchie333

I'm not helping myself here, but I'm beyond caring frankly. The current discussion at en:Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard#Arbitration motion regarding Ritchie333 and Praxidicae shows how totally out of sync ArbCom is, and makes me fear for what I may expect (ceryainly when coupled with the way my case has been handled or not so far, with many contradicting statements but in the end still a completely impossible timeline).

As far as I can see:

• R and P have haed troublemsome interactions for quite a while now, but an AN case 8 months ago decided that an Iban was premature
• Things continued in the same vein, but instead of asking An again for an Iban considering the continued situation, someone went straight to ArbCom (or to T&S?)
• R was asked to give his reaction to some diffs, but without any indication that this was the full evidence/workshop phase of a secret case, and not just some preliminary questions to e.g. decide if a case was needed.
• R received no further questions, reactions, proposals...
• Two weeks later, R gets topic banned as the aggressor; this comes for him and for the community at large completely out of the blue, and R retires

Then follows a lengthy discussion at the noticeboard, with people mainly arguing over the way the Arbs handled this case (both the general situation of a secret case, and the poorly worded announcement).

Of the 8 currently active Arbs, we have

• One complaining that "By re-posting his emails here weeks later, it only accomplishes two things: (1) places a considerable amount of pressure Praxidicae to make their statement and evidence public; (2) it forces a private dispute resolution process to become public without the consent of the others involved. It sends the message that anyone who comes to the Arbitration Committee with privacy concerns should expect the other party to go public with anything they receive if they do not like the outcome. It also says you can continue to potentially talk about another person with whom you have an IBAN as long as you're continuing to litigate your case even if a final decision has been reached. Mkdw talk 22:20, 7 August 2019 (UTC) "

Oh no, weeks later, truly? Because from where I stand, it looks as if Ritchie was notified on 6 August, and posted the emails the very next day.

And again, oh, no, "forces a private dispute resolution process to become public without the consent of the others involved."; has R given his consent to a private dispute resolution process in the first place?

• Two others saying (well, one said it and one agreed): "I am incredibly disappointed by the community's reaction to this situation. This kind of public circus of speculation was the exact kind of thing we were trying to prevent by handling this situation privately. The response here has now confirmed for anyone who wishes to report any kind of harassment that they will receive nothing but scorn and scrutiny until they are driven away entirely. For anyone who made the argument at the FRAMBAN discussion that the WMF should leave en.wiki alone to solve its own problems, this is conclusive evidence that we not only cannot constructively handle complaints of harassment and misbehavior, but that we, as a community, actively choose not to. Instead, we nitpick over the meaning of common-sense wording, complain that the behavior can't possibly have been that bad, and dredge up everything negative we can find to make involved parties look as bad as possible. This could have been a good opportunity to show the WMF that we are mature adults who can handle our own problems; this discussion has demonstrated exactly the opposite. As a community, we failed here today, and there is no doubt in my mind that the WMF will take this situation into account when making decisions about the future governance of the English Wikipedia. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 07:41, 8 August 2019 (UTC) "

As others have pointed out, the lengthy discussion is not about P, and the only editor driven away by this whole mess is R, and his retirement is not due to the discussion but due to how the Arbs handled this. "conclusive evidence that we not only cannot constructively handle complaints of harassment and misbehavior, but that we, as a community, actively choose not to." Not really, no. It is only evidence that the Arbs, in the wake of my situation, seem to have no clue any more how to deal with bog standard cases, and are panicking and trying new and worse ways to solve things. If the WMF will take this discussion as a pretext to make decisions about enwiki, then it should be about the dysfunctional current ArbCom, not about the community. Fram (talk) 11:35, 8 August 2019 (UTC)

Thank you Fram, that's a pretty good appraisal of the situation. I can't see myself editing Wikipedia mainspace again, and that's not out of anger or "screw you, community" but simply that I'm doing other things in my life. I can't think of what article I'd write next, I have to force myself to make time for editing these days, and if I don't think I'm welcome it makes it very easy to do something else - particularly if I get paid for it. I don't really give a flying monkeys who produces WP content as long as the end result looks good for the reader; if an article's worth writing, somebody will eventually do it.

To answer another conspiracy theory floating around (FWIW I've known about Wikipediocracy for years and occasionally been "head hunted" to join the forums; while some of it is puerile "har har isn't admin x a total douchebag", other stuff can be seriously insightful and illuminating), no I didn't complain about you to T&S (as if I could be bothered to do that!) and I haven't sent any evidence in the Arbcom case because it sounds too much like hard work.

I will say this to those claiming I've been guilty of "harassment" and "mysogony". I've disclosed on-wiki that I'm mostly asexual and "a bit queer" (but only a bit) and am suffering from depression. I've been fortunate enough for women to confide actual harassment to me (such as the person who opened up in a pub and told me she'd been raped as a teenager, and another one who said sexual abuse towards women is more common than you think - that was an eye opener). I've also met people who I think are actual mysognoists (when you go around gigging in pubs you run into them) and I think they're all fucking scum. I don't think anyone realises who profoundly upset I am to be tarred with that brush. Ritchie333 (talk) 06:58, 9 August 2019 (UTC)

Re: Two weeks later, R gets topic banned as the aggressor. Has ArbCom imposed a topic ban on R? All I see is a 1.5-way interaction ban (Tryptofish’ coinage). I’m not defending ArbCom’s handling of the R-and-P case here, or their wording of their decision; I’m just checking whether I missed something. (Maybe you reclassified the interaction ban as a topic ban because R and P share mutual topical interests. That’s just guessing on my part.) — Adhemar (talk) 12:31, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

I think that must have been a typo. It was a clear and unambiguous semisymmetric interaction ban with R as the no-fault aggressor. And there wasn't any secret case, it was just a preliminary investigation as to whether a case regarding the sysop bit was needed, followed by the unrelated i-ban out of the yellow, if I'm understanding the latest clarification correctly. Cyp (talk) 13:36, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

Yes, I meant "interaction ban", not "topic ban", thanks. Fram (talk) 06:46, 16 August 2019 (UTC)

New timeline

Thanks. Fram (talk) 06:23, 9 August 2019 (UTC)

Have they sent you anything yet? Did they provide proof of any transgression at all? Jehochman (talk) 14:46, 15 August 2019 (UTC)

Nothing yet. "Proof of any transgression at all" won't be too hard, I have made e.g. in the last years two blocks which were overturned by community consensus as either just wrong or way too harsh, and I have stated at ArbCom that at some point I started too often crossing the line between being blunt and being a dick about it; but these issues were out in the open, dealt with by the community, and in general my approach was a lot better since then. It wil be interesting to see which issues will be raised, and from when. And if that will include any guidance for me (and for others) where they draw the line between checking the edits of problematic editors ("problematic" as in having some specific issue they struggle with, like e.g. good editors with too many BLP violations, or "problematic" as in just lacking the competence and/or the necessary basic knowledge of English to contribute in a generally positive, productive way) and "harassment". Fram (talk) 07:22, 16 August 2019 (UTC)

Arbitrator Opabinia regalis stated yesterday, Thursday, August 15, 2019, 08:21 UTC: Still wrapping up the evidence, but almost finished; should be out in a day or two. diff — Adhemar (talk) 07:48, 16 August 2019 (UTC)

Evidence

(text copied from the mail I received from ArbCom, some layout and numbering added by me)

The following is a public summary of the evidence passed to the arbitration committee by community members. In addition, we have received copies of emails sent between Trust and Safety and Fram, as well as another individual and Fram. Information which was significantly out of date has been removed, as has anything which has been significantly dealt with elsewhere.

Administrator actions

1.1 Earlier this year, Fram blocked Martinevans123, which was then quickly reversed as "excessive" by Floquenbeam: Log: [4] AN/I: [5]

1.2 August of last year, Fram's block of GorillaWarfare was criticized and then immediately reversed: [6]

1.3 Block of Mathsci: [7]

1.4 Fram threatens to block Martinevans for having YouTube links on his user page.[8]. He follows through. The block was seen as vindictive and transfer to ANI for a community discussion was recommended (Note past history with Martinevans)

1.5 Excessive block length of Martinevans [9]

Incivility

2.1 "Fuck off" in both edit summary and revision text. [10]

2.2 "F off" in edit summary [11]

2.3 Fram accuses Cwmhiraeth of using personal attacks, tells her to "fuck off". Fram remains confrontational, but shrugs it off.

2.4 "I couldn't give a flying fuck about how I come across"

Harassment / Bullying

3.1 Laura Hale retirement [12] (NB Nov 2012 Jan 2014)

3.2 "I'm an admin, you are not. You may have your own stupid opinion". Fram causes Ybmlanter to resign

3.3 Hounding Gatoclass [13][14][15]

Past attempt to be dealt with by the community

Arbcom declined

4.1.1 The committee declined to hear a Fram case in October 2016 [16]

4.1.2 Also in February 2018:[17] (including not asking for more evidence when told Fram often assumes bad faith here: [18] )

4.1.3 More recently, an arbitration remedy against Fram was not passed by the Commitee: [19] Noting also multiple cases raised by Fram, some of which considered his behaviour [20][21][22]

ANI threads

4.2.1 Wikidata and fallout [23] (raised by Fram)

4.2.2 User Fram and incivilty [24]

4.2.3 Misuse of tools by Fram [25]

Individual editors

4.3.1 Ritchie333 advising Fram to be more civil [26][27]

Disputes highlighted to look at

5.1 Here's Fram's full interaction with Magioladitis and Izno from September 2017: [28]

5.2 Signpost article (deleted content - [29])

Other notes

6.1 There's one instance where Fram undid his own mistakes, like one block on one editor: [30] [31]

6.2 Fram has a history of commentary on various software projects, which was not appreciated by a few WMF employees, who were ready to use their tools to block him for that reason: [32]

Evidence passed to us from over 3 years ago

7.1 Richard Farmborough case, Fram was prominent in pursuing the named party

7.2 Nvvchar, Fram targeted, leading to him quitting - evidence at Nvvchar's talk page first copyvio discussion, DYK for Carrie A. Tuggle DYK for Anil de Silva, second copyvio discussion, Tracy Edser, discussion at WT:DTK, Good Articles review, immediate delisting of two just-passed GAs: [33] and [34], immediate delisting of another recently-passed GA

Replies

• Martinevans (1.1, 1.4, and 1.5, which is identical to 1.1). The first block of Martinevans followed multiple warnings over a long period, with no improvements. After this block, they seemed to have stopped posting links to copyright violating youtube pages all over the place (to his own user page, but also to many other talk pages), and I left them alone. The second block happened when they reposted a page I had deleted as a copyvio (by another editor where Martinevans, as far as I know, had no history with). While my block was justified (they had been warned about copyvio often enough), the length was excessive.

• Gorillawarfare (1.2): blocked for a personal attack, but it was too harsh to block for this kind of comment which happens all the time all over the place. No prior or later negative interactions with Gorillawarfare as far as I know, and no hard feelings remain from either side (see [35]

• MathSci (1.3): no idea what this is evidence of; yes, it is an administrative action, that's what admins do.

• Fuck off and similar: yes, I sometimes use this, though not as often as it may seem from this section; 2.2 was a "F off" towards myself, as I was struggling to get the page right (both the edit before and after this one were mine as well). 2.3: the first diff[36] is hardly an example of me being incivil or using "fuck off" or so, is it? And the last diff[37] is me talking about the use of fuck off, and that it is uncivil but no a personal attack. For 2.4 I apologized the next day at the user talk page[38].

• 3.1 LauraHale diffs are from 2012/2014, so not in scope for this case. Statement on her page is not about her retirement at all.
• 3.2: see 4.2.2, diff is completely taken out of context and summarizes something said by Ymblanter, not by me!
• 3.3: What's the problem with these diffs? I went to the talk page of an admin who I thought was out of line, they didn't see a problem with their statements, so I posted it at ANI, which concluded that "Gatoclass should back down"[39]. I thought the lesson we were supposed to take from this whole Framban thing was that we shouldn't let "bad" behaviour by admins go unchecked for too long?

• 4.1 to 4.3: how are they evidence of problematic behaviour by me? If the cases were incorrectly declined, then that is an issue with the arbs then. The actual issues with me should be in the other sections here (e.g. some parts are about Gatoclass or Ymblanter, so things already raised elsewhere), but this part is just filler. That a statement by Ymblanter about me is removed as a clerk action[40] is supposedly a diff of problematic behaviour by me ... how?

In February 2019, two arbs supported an admonishment (or reminder) about my conduct, 8 others disagreed[41]. This is the most recent diff in this whole evidence page, as far as I have seen, yet 4 months later I was banned for one year and remain so two months later. It is clear from the evidence that my conduct has significantly improved and that my conduct in 2019 was in general not a problem (apart from the MartinEvans block of course). The reward for improving one's behaviour is banning?

• 4.2.2 (see also 3.2): [42] concluded with no action taken, and if you read the actual discussion, it looks as if every single commenter saw no merit in the section at all and agreed with my comments: "I entirely concur with Fram's 'interpretation'.", "Fram really didn't do anything wrong in this situation", "I would have interpreted the first two sentences of this diff exactly how Fram did", "it's clear that Fram has done nothing wrong", "what I'm seeing is Fram quoting you and offering their interpretation, most of which seem resonable.", "I'm not seeing any civility problems here. I think Fram's paraphrasing of what you've said is reasonable.", "I don't see any intentional incivility or gross misrepresentation on his part. " How such a section can be used as evidence of ArbCom-worthy misbehaviour by me is quite incomprehensible.

• 4.2.3; [43] basically the same problem as 4.2.2, i.e. a title included in the evidence against me which makes the list of problems longer and more impressive, but which in reality closed as "withdrawn" because again no one agreed with the original poster that any misuse of tools had happened.

• 4.3.1: the two diffs have nothing to do with "Ritchie333 advising Fram to be more civil" as far as I can see? No idea what this is doing here, the whole section 4 should probably be removed (or kept as evidence of the fact that many complaints are simply invalid)

• 5.1: isn't this the same as 2.1?

• 5.2: this was deleted as a BLP violation against me, and the two actual identifiable issues were exposed to be complete misrepresentations.

• 6.1: I mistakenly blocked, immediately self-reverted, and apologized. This is a good thing, no?

• 6.2: this is on another project, in 2014 (so out of scope anyway).

• 7: old stuff.

It would have been nice if ArbCom had used that week+ they took to summarize the "evidence" to actually weed out the wheat from the chaff, and remove duplicates, things out of scope, and things which are not evidence of anything problematic, so that this case could have focused on a fair, accurate summary of what I actually did wrong, and how this has improved (or not) more recently. ArbCom just reposting whatever nonsense accusations someone posted on the Internet without checking if the claims about me had any merit at all is disappointing.

I see that most of the above "evidence" (the actual evidence and the ridiculous bits) all appear on [44] so it seems as if whoever posted to the Arbs took it from there (and it also seems as if not too many people bothered to post evidence, which would have been obvious with an open case instead of this hopefully never repeated experiment). Fram (talk) 07:35, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

Oh god I see the Ymblanter thing is on there. I see the tradition of taking a series of events and taking exactly the opposite thing away from it they should have is alive and well at T&S. Only in death (talk) 08:51, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

@Only in death: The above evidence does not stem from T&S; it only contains an anonymised summary of whatever the heck was mailed to their mailing lists, after opening the case. The arbs have rejected divulging the contents of T&S report in any minimal manner and WTT has even declined to answer an elementary query about the %overlap between this evidence and the T&S one. Winged Blades of Godric (talk) 09:08, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

Ha, good point. Well I can take an educated guess as to which bits originated with T&S. Today's Sesame Street has been brought to you by the letters 'L' and 'H'. Only in death (talk) 10:26, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

(ec)Well, the evidence given to me through the Arbs didn't come from T&S, but from unknown members of the public. The above "evidence", apart from a few more recent things, is basically a repeat of this failed attempt to desysop me which included the exact same nonsense accusations (Mathsci, my supposed "you're not an admin" quote, previous AN threads which found no fault at all, ...) and which was dismissed after people started actually looking at the diffs. How many times do I have to defend myself against the same bullshit accusations before the people raising them again and again are perhaps reminded that such actions are, truly, harassment? People raising issues with my behaviour is totally acceptable: people reposting "issues" with my behaviour which have already repeatedly been shown to be false claims should get a boomerang from ArbCom though. Fram (talk) 09:09, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

• So, the first line of evidence is about a block by you that was undone by .. User:Floquenbeam, the very admin that .. unblocked you? Is this supposed to be ironic or what? --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 11:12, 19 August 2019 (UTC)
  • Ironic and completely fitting into the reversed chronology we seem to be headed for. If only there was still time to prevent it from ever happening. EllenCT (talk) 02:47, 20 August 2019 (UTC)

WTT

• [45]

"I've made it perfectly clear that I cannot give more information about what is contained in the T&S document, I've been as forthcoming as I can be. There is a clear statement about the document which is on the evidence page. I've also stated that I understand T&S's decision to ban, based upon it - whether Arbcom would have made the same decision with the same evidence, I don't know. Worm^TT(talk) 14:23, 20 August 2019 (UTC)"

I don't quite get it. "whether Arbcom would have made the same decision with the same evidence, I don't know." Um, you are on ArbCom, and you have been sent the T&S document. So why then don't you know whether ArbCom would have made the same decision? What have you been discussing all these weeks? I (and I think many others) presumed all along that if you would have made the same decision based on the evidence in the T&S document, you would have said so, done. Instead, you eventually opened a case to ask for evidence in the widest possible way (anonymous, going back three years). But when the feedback you received from this was insufficient to support a one year ban or a desysop, you suddenly switch back to "well, maybe the T&S document is good enough to ban Fram anyway"? In which case this whole ArbCom case was a time-wasting charade.

It looks a lot as if you want to ban me, but hoped that you would get enough community input to make a clear-cut case with public evidence (or at least a public summary). When that failed, you had to fall back on the T&S document anyway. But of course, many people looked at my contribs during the past months, and everyone with a grudge or a valid complaint had the perfect opportunity to raise all kinds of issues with ArbCom, yet none of them found that bannable offense the T&S document refers to???

Whatever sanction ArbCom would apply now, based on the T&S document, would be utterly pointless. I then don't know what I did I was sanctioned for, and have no way to avoid the issue once the sanction has expired (no matter if that is after one year, or some "time served" resolution). Other editors are still left in the dark as to what kind of edits are suddenly bannable. All you and T&S will have done is create an atmosphere of fear and anger, not one of trust and safety.

The way you are approaching this (or at least how you are communicating about it) gives me very little confidence in a fair result. Fram (talk) 14:43, 20 August 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for your thoughts, which I'll certainly take on board. With regards to the case, can I suggest you mark a sub-page or a subsection for clerks to watch and copy across to the workshop page? As you're the only party, you have a convenient spot in each section for them to copy to. Worm^TT 18:34, 20 August 2019 (UTC)

How about instead you just unblock me with the indication that this is only for the duration of the case, and only to edit case pages? This has been done in the past with people who had an actual enwiki block, and worked fine. Having me comment here instead of on enwiki serves no discernable purpose and only gives the impression that this whole case is still being ruled over by the WMF and not by ArbCom, and that you are very limited in what you are allowed to do (but apparently can't disclose this). IF you are truly allowed to take over the whole case, all aspects of it, then there should be no reason not to let me participate directly on enwiki. Fram (talk) 10:03, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

There are afraid to let the beast out of his cage, apparently. Jehochman (talk) 06:27, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

Sneaky evidence addition

I see now that the evidence you posted to me is not the same as the evidence you posted on the evidence page. I got

"The following is a public summary of the evidence passed to the arbitration committee by community members. In addition, we have received copies of emails sent between Trust and Safety and Fram, as well as another individual and Fram. Information which was significantly out of date has been removed, as has anything which has been significantly dealt with elsewhere.

Administrator actions[...]"

On the evidence page, you posted[46]

"The following is a public summary of the community evidence passed to the arbitration committee by community members. In addition, we have received copies of emails sent between Trust and Safety and Fram, as well as another individual and Fram. Information which was significantly out of date has been removed, as has anything which has been significantly dealt with elsewhere.

Although the identity and related content of initial reports was redacted, we understood after review of the 70+ page Trust and Safety document that there were over a dozen reports to the Foundation. The report detailed long-term disputes with several community members, Arbcom as a body and its membership, and Foundation staff members. We did not see any evidence of off-wiki abuse.

Administrator actions[...]"

Any reason you couldn't post the same thing to me, or at least drop me a note that you had added those lines? I was supposed to reply to the evidence you posted, not to the evidence minus the most extensive summary of the T&S document you ever posted. Again, perfect communication. Fram (talk) 14:50, 20 August 2019 (UTC)

• As the sentence concerned the T&S document, which was still being negotiated when we sent the email to you. I had intended to forward it on to you once we had it, but you decided to move straight on. I had the final nod on Monday morning and included it. If there's anything you'd like to add to your response, please do, I'd be happy to copy it across for you. Worm^TT 18:34, 20 August 2019 (UTC)
  • So you negotiated with the T&S from what, 5 July or so until 19 August, and you just received the "final nod" the same morning I posted the evidence and my replies? What an unhappy coincidence, reminds me of the time Legacypac wasn't allowed to post directly to cases, and when after two days I posted it instead, you just happened to arrive within the hour while no one bothered to respond the two days before this. Karma is a bitch sometimes. Fram (talk) 07:19, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

Let's bring in some random unsupported "evidence", shall we?

So, WTT, you are now using statements not in the Arb case, without any supporting evidence, as the basis for your upcoming support of a siteban?[47]

The text by HJMitchell is

"Fram has an ugly habit of railroading good-faith but somewhat troubled editors like this by taking a legitimate but relativley minor issue, then subjecting an editor to levels of scrutiny nobody could withstand, then blowing the issues out of all proportion, all the while badgering the editor incessantly so that they feel they can't breathe without Fram coming down on them like a ton of bricks. Of course, I do not wish to make light of copyright issues, but the solution in this case was clearly discussion and education, not enforcement and blocks. If Fram can't or won't discuss and educate, they should bring the matter to a noticeboard where other editors can assist. Yes, he may be within the letter of WP:INVOLVED, but the spirit is surely that if it isn't an emergency, there are ~1200 admins who can share the load. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 19:17, 30 January 2019 (UTC) "

And you use this as justification, even though it contains no evidence of this observation at all, and wasn't even correct in this particular case (where I had first tried to steer Martinevans in the right direction multiple times, then blocked them when nothing changed, and then left them completely alone until they decided to repost a copyright violation I had just deleted (made by another editor wher Martinevans had no prior involvement in the situation)? I did not "badger the editor incessantly", I did not contact them at all between the end of the first block (February 2018) and the (too long) January 2019 block.

You can actually check such things, e.g. by using this, where you can see that the "incessant badgering" was some posts in April 2017 explaining the problem (to no avail), then some posts in February 2018 about the same issue (still to no avail), and then a block two weeks later, which solved the problem. "If Fram can't or won't discuss and educate", well, this was exactly what I did in this instance...

This is why we need to handle situations like this in the standard manner, with a normal evidence and workshop page, where people can see, check, discuss the actual allegations: instead we get a secret evidence page, but when that doesn't produce the results you like, you indicate that the T&S document will be the basis for your decision anyway, and that you also consider throwaway comments outside the actual case as evidence.

"the document establishes a pattern in the way Fram behaves towards people - one that has been picked up on Wikipedia": as shown above, if the evidence of such a "pattern" is as good as it was in the case of Martinevans, then this is again a clear indication that there is no case to answer (at least not a case of this magnitude), and that you (and T&S) are grasping at straws to justify the contuning ban and desysop.

People were free to send you (anonymously!) all the evidence they wanted to establish such a pattern of behaviour, and yet they failed to do so. And still your conclusion is that such a pattern exists, that it justifies the sanctions, but that sadly you cannot share it with the community. Fram (talk) 07:51, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

For the record, I repeat - I did not submit any evidence for this case, the diffs in the section marked "Ritchie333 advising Fram to be more civil" don't appear to have anything to do with me, and I can't help thinking that if I did directly complain about another editor saying "fuck off", it would be a superb case of the pot calling the kettle black. Ritchie333 (talk) 11:44, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

Thanks. I didn't think it came from you (and I don't think an advise to me to be more civil is problematic anyway). The diffs have indeed nothing to do with you, so no idea why ArbCom kept them like this in their summary. They have not really responded to any comment about duplicate or wrong inclusions, instead shifting the message to "but the T&S report is so bad that the lack of actual damning evidence here is not a problem". Fram (talk) 12:04, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

More

" indeed, I believe that would be a helpful principle to make. The fact is that Fram did not just make comments about the committee as a body (that diff above), but also directly against committee members, within cases. Worm^TT(talk) 06:56, 22 August 2019 (UTC)"

Then you (or anyone) should have added this to the evidence during the evidence phase, no? Are you considering using these things (see also the section above) during the workshop and decision phase or not? Because if you do, then why did you bother with an evidence phase at all if you will add whatever pleases you anyway? And if you do plan to use these, then at least have the decency to use actual diffs to support your statements, not just vague accusations (here) or hearsay (above). Or am I now making "comments directly against committee members, within cases" again and do I need to be punished for this? Fram (talk) 07:16, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

The statement can be cited to the cases themselves, which are linked, or to the T&S document - where the one line summary mentions it. However, I will do my best to pull some diffs through on the analysis of evidence section, so you can see what I'm referring to. Worm^TT 07:37, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

As an Arb, you should now that that is not how evidence in an Arb case works.

"The parties and other interested editors are encouraged to place evidence on the case's Evidence subpage, in the form of diffs demonstrating contested behavior along with explanations and context. Be clear and concise. The parties should be aware that argument is not evidence, and that thirty words and five well-chosen diffs may speak more eloquently than a 500-word diatribe.

Serious allegations require serious evidence, with each aspect of the evidence supported by illustrative diffs. An arbitrator or clerk may remove statements which are not adequately substantiated. "

And from en:Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Fram/Evidence

"Supporting assertions with evidence

Evidence must include links to the actual page diff in question, or to a short page section; links to the page itself are inadequate. "

Please don't now try to use inadmissible evidence (full cases), nor invisible evidence (the T&S document). There are already very few rules remaining in this case, it would be appreciated if you at least stuck to those rules and not proceed any way you want.

Now, looking at the fundamentals: you refer to the 2019 case, where you have a remedy about me failing 2 to 8, probably because the one finding of fact about me, which was not about comments towards arbitrators, failed as well (again 2 to 8). Your reply to Beetstra[48] refers this FoF (the "Fram" section in [49]. Your original statement was about me making comments against committee members in cases, but the FoF (and thus the comments about "exhausting", "less than ideal", "I went back and forth", "I have concerns" were not about comments against committee members in cases, but about comments towards others, and not even in the case.

This is why we normally have a full evidence phase, to make sure that evidence can get scrutinized before it is erroneously used in the workshop. Now we have an Arb including evidence willy-nilly, to support their claims even when these claims are not supported by the evidence they use.

Conclusion

It is very exhausting having to check every statement you make in this case to see if it is actually supported by the evidence (usually it isn't), or if you are dragging in "evidence" which wasn't included in the evidence phase in the first place, and doesn't support your claims in the second place. It very strongly gives the impression that you have long made up your mind about what the outcome of this case should be, and do everything in your power to assure that said outcome will happen. Now, this impression may be way off base, and I may be attributing intent to what are simple mistakes, but there comes a point when the number and direction of the mistakes makes it hard to continue to AGF. I hope you will rethink your position, look back at how cases are supposed to be handled, and strike all claims not supported by actual admissible evidence. Fram (talk) 08:02, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

Addendum

If you don't strike your comments, then at least copy over my replies to them please (also about the martinevans case above). If you want to present new "evidence", then you should allow the accused to have his reply posted there as well. Fram (talk) 08:04, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

Certainly, which comments and where. I did suggest you start a subpage for the clerks to copy comments from and to, but I haven't see you do that as yet. Worm^TT 08:33, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

And I said that you could, as is often the case, unban me with the sole purpose (or permission) to edit the case pages, nothing else (or open my enwiki talk page, which would make things considerably easier as well). But I haven't seen you do that as yet (or answer to it) either. So I gather that you are not goind to strike or correct your comments, even when they are demonstrably incorrect? Any good reason for this? Fram (talk) 08:40, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

Things to post

I still would prefer it if you just struck through all your uses of inadmissible evidence (too late, no diffs, doesn't support your point), but if you won't, then please post the following:

• Here (in the comments by parties section I suppose):

"And you use this as justification, even though it contains no evidence of this observation at all, and wasn't even correct in this particular case (where I had first tried to steer Martinevans in the right direction multiple times, then blocked them when nothing changed, and then left them completely alone until they decided to repost a copyright violation I had just deleted (made by another editor where Martinevans had no prior involvement in the situation)? I did not "badger the editor incessantly", I did not contact them at all between the end of the first block (February 2018) and the (too long) January 2019 block.

You can actually check such things, e.g. by using this, where you can see that the "incessant badgering" was some posts in April 2017 explaining the problem (to no avail), then some posts in February 2018 about the same issue (still to no avail), and then a block two weeks later, which largely solved the problem. "If Fram can't or won't discuss and educate", well, this was exactly what I did in this instance...

This is why we need to handle situations like this in the standard manner, with a normal evidence and workshop page, where people can see, check, discuss the actual allegations: instead we get a secret evidence page, but when that doesn't produce the results you like, you indicate that the T&S document will be the basis for your decision anyway, and that you also consider throwaway comments outside the actual case as evidence.

"the document establishes a pattern in the way Fram behaves towards people - one that has been picked up on Wikipedia": as shown above, if the evidence of such a "pattern" is as good as it was in the case of Martinevans, then this is again a clear indication that there is no case to answer (at least not a case of this magnitude), and that you (and T&S) are grasping at straws to justify the continuing ban and desysop.

People were free to send you (anonymously!) all the evidence they wanted to establish such a pattern of behaviour, and yet they failed to do so. And still your conclusion is that such a pattern exists, that it justifies the sanctions, but that sadly you cannot share it with the community. Fram (talk) 07:51, 21 August 2019 (UTC) "

AND

• here as a reply to your post:

"WTT, as an Arb, you should now that that is not how evidence in an Arb case works.

"The parties and other interested editors are encouraged to place evidence on the case's Evidence subpage, in the form of diffs demonstrating contested behavior along with explanations and context. Be clear and concise. The parties should be aware that argument is not evidence, and that thirty words and five well-chosen diffs may speak more eloquently than a 500-word diatribe.

Serious allegations require serious evidence, with each aspect of the evidence supported by illustrative diffs. An arbitrator or clerk may remove statements which are not adequately substantiated. "

And from en:Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Fram/Evidence

"Supporting assertions with evidence

Evidence must include links to the actual page diff in question, or to a short page section; links to the page itself are inadequate. "

Please don't now try to use inadmissible evidence (a section of a case which wasn't linked to in the evidence phase), nor invisible evidence (the T&S document). There are already very few rules remaining in this case, it would be appreciated if you at least stuck to those rules and not proceed any way you want.

Now, looking at the fundamentals: you refer to the 2019 case, where you have a remedy about me failing 2 to 8, probably because the one finding of fact about me, which was not about comments towards arbitrators, failed as well (again 2 to 8). Your reply to Beetstra[50] refers this FoF (the "Fram" section in [51]. Your original statement was about me making comments against committee members in cases ("The fact is that Fram did not just make comments about the committee as a body (that diff above), but also directly against committee members, within cases."), but the FoF (and thus the comments about "exhausting", "less than ideal", "I went back and forth", "I have concerns") were not about comments against committee members in cases, but about comments towards others, and not even during the case but before it started.

This is why we normally have a full evidence phase, to make sure that evidence can get scrutinized before it is erroneously used in the workshop. Now we have an Arb including evidence willy-nilly, to support their claims even when these claims are not supported by the evidence they use. Fram (talk) 08:57, 22 August 2019 (UTC) "

What an utterly impractical way to hold a case. Fram (talk) 08:57, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

I have taken the liberty to copy this. Threading becomes a mess now in these discussions ... --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 10:08, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

Thank you! Fram (talk) 11:40, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

Since Meta doesn't have wikilove or barnstars

Here, have a molehill, it's versatile. EllenCT (talk) 21:56, 20 August 2019 (UTC)

@EllenCT: versatile maybe. But you can't hide an elephant in there ... the elephant does not fit. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 06:11, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

@EllenCT: my mistake ... it does fit.

Incivility

At the workshop, most attention seems to go to the "incivility" section, and probably rightly so. A few points (some of them already made, but repeating them perhaps won't hurt):

• In general, these four cases precede my "self-admonishment" from 7 March 2018 [52] (one from 2016, one from 2017, one which wasn't incivility, and then one from 5 March 2018). If people want to change this to a formal admonishment / reminder, fine by me.

• In 2016, I told Cwmhiraeth to "fuck off". While I shouldn't have phrased it like that, let's look at the "why" perhaps? This was a thread about Cwmhiraeth (again) showing that they don't have even the most basic knowledge of German (following a similar case where they didn't know the meaning of "er", which is a truly basic aspect of German), but deciding to change a hook they promoted to "improve" a translation anyway, and then refusing to accept that they might have been the wrong person to do so (and using Google Translate to defend themselves). When everyone agreed that Cwmhiraeth wrong in both the factual aspects of the case, and in their approach to it, they replied with "Thank you Fram and Gerda, but not TRM. I still think the word "of" should be changed to "for". Cwmhiraeth (talk) 11:13, 19 December 2016 (UTC) ". The only thing TRM had said in that discussion so far was "Quite why anyone would consider Google Translate to be preferable to a native German speaker's version is beyond me. How insulting. The Rambling Man (talk) 10:50, 19 December 2016 (UTC)". So in that response they not only decided to take a potshot against TRM out of the blue, but to insist that their translation was better than the one provided by people who actually know German (as a native speaker, like Gerda Arendt, or to a much lesser degree through school and reading, like me).

Anyway, discussion continued, and was finally closed by EdChem, resulting in this. Cwmhiraeth then decided to reopen this closed thread more than a day later[53] and next explained the reopening: " to give @Fram: a chance to respond to Kevmin. TRM has already responded (hidden above) and need feel no obligation to respond on Fram's behalf." [54]. Another unwarranted potshot at TRM (who was pinged by Kevmin, so had every right to answer anyway), and another indication of the lack of self-awareness displayed by Cwmhiraeth in that thread. I have little patience for editors unnecessarily trying to prolong a thread which had ceased to be productive, and where they caused the problems in the first place.

• My 2017 comment against Izno was clearly over the top. While they were rather rude in telling me "I'll save you the burden of saying it: Don't reply to me again unless obviously invited. --Izno (talk) 17:46, 27 September 2017 (UTC)" in a thread I started on the user talk page of a thir person, where Izno was the one to butt in uninvited (which is not a problem) and with wrong information, my reply escalated this unnecessary.

• The "F off" comment has been shown to not be a problem at all.

• The March 2018 comment against Iridescent again was too strong, which is why I apologized the next day at Iridescent's talk page[55], and as indicated above posted my "introspection" or self-admonishment the day after that.

F. Arbcom

Could you comment on the "Fuck ArbCom" incident of May 4? You can find my discussion and diffs in the workshop. AGK’s responses seem weird and I’m not sure I understand why he’s talking about. It looks like he or another observer may have gone to T&S, triggering the ban. If that’s the case, it is very worrisome from the perspective of ArbCom using T&S to banish a critic. If that’s not what happened, can you identify any other possible final trigger for the ban? Jehochman (talk) 11:55, 26 August 2019 (UTC)

To start with the end, no, I don't know of other potential triggers, and the "fuck arbcom" one is the only one provided by T&S. AGK was the main author of the "use 2FA or else get desysopped" note which had to be retracted. Criticizing the problems their shoddy writing created is a "personal attack" apparently. This is the page history of the text ArbCom sent around. "The notice was written on a public wiki page by several editors." is AGKs defense, but as had been pointed out, 90% or so is written by AGK. I previously had clashed with AGK during en:Wikipedia talk:Arbitration/Requests/Case/GiantSnowman, so apparently I was no longer allowed to comment about AGK. Note that at the May incident at least two others commented on AGKs writing skills, and at the GiantSnowman case multiple other editors had serious problems with AGKs writings (then about me) as well.

AGK was the drafting arb (together with WTT) at the GiantSnowman case, and felt the need to first add me as a party, and then to propose a FoF and a Remedy about me, which both clearly failed (8 opposes, 2 supports). Coupled with the prejudiced comments at that case, and then the reply about me ("Fram is overlooking that fact in order to take unwarranted shots at an editor who is on Fram's "blacklist". It's something Fram does with shocking regularity") seems to indicate more the fact that I'm on AGKs blacklist than the other way around. Criticising an Arb for producing shoddy writing when they themselves claim " And I was elected as an arbitrator whose record is one including clear, plain questions like the ones I asked you.[...] AGK ■ 11:56, 8 January 2019 (UTC)"

But whether AGK or ArbCom had anything to do with my ban is something I know nothing about. And since this whole episode isn't even part of the actual evidence in this case, I see little point in rehashing it. Fram (talk) 13:27, 26 August 2019 (UTC)

I've tried to get ArbCom to deny that AGK or somebody else ran to T&S to have you banned. AGK gave a straight up denial.[56] Were there any other events between May 5 and the ban date that could have been a trigger? Was there an incident with BU Rob13? Did you have any clashes with WMF-DC people, or with WMF-UK people, or other WMF chapters? I'm just trying to understand what happened and why. It's very frustrating. People should be proud of their actions and own them. Jehochman (talk) 23:04, 26 August 2019 (UTC)

BU Rob denied going to T&S before the ban as well. No one else has come forward (even for the case, I think Kusma is the only one who has said that they provided evidence, which is appreciated). Fram (talk) 04:31, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

Rob has said that he was in contacts with T&S about you prior to their action but was not the complainant -- something like that; need to dig the diffs. Winged Blades of Godric (talk) 09:33, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

Yes, I believe (but haven't checked) that it was between the time T&S informed ArbCom that they were planning an action against me, and the moment they actually executed their, um, protective action? Fram (talk) 09:44, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

Didn't you have a conversation with somebody in late May where they accused you of mis-gendering them (or using the wrong pronoun). Do you recall that? Jehochman (talk) 12:23, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

No, someone else was accused of misgendering when what they did was use the "wrong" pronoun but without it indicating a wrong gender (using "xe" instead of "they", IIRC). The person in the discussion has repeatedly said that they didn't contact T&S (and I don't think there was anything worth contacting T&S, ArbCom, or AN over in that discussion anyway). Fram (talk) 12:26, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

There needs to be more pronoun tolerance, especially for any pronouns other than the standard English ones (he, she, they). People make mistakes. I suspect you may have been the target of an organized attack that is working down a list of editors to be banned. Eric Corbett is in the cross hairs at the moment. Jehochman (talk) 13:02, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

@Jehochman: - I suspect you may have been the target of an organized attack that is working down a list of editors to be banned Indeed. And that is why I am concerned about my own position and have massively reduced my input recently; unfortunately, my bad temper as a consequence of these recent "attacks" is actually making me a worse contributor than previously even on a reduced input. Any such cull will indubtiably be sacrificing quality for quantity and making up policy etc on the hoof to achieve the goal. It stinks and I'm sorry that Fram and Eric are in this situation. - Sitush (talk) 20:31, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

@Sitush: Watch yourself or you may be next. What's really curious is that Jorm and Gamaliel came out of the woodwork to slag me at en:WP:AN when I called out the unfairness of Eric's ban. Jehochman (talk) 02:22, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

user talk page deletion

@Yamla:, or anyone else, can you please undo the deletion of en:User talk:Vanished user adhmfdfmykrdyr. This deletes all entries I (and others of course) made to that talk page, which is a part of an ongoing ArbCom case. User talk page deletions are normally not done, precisely because you are deleting contributions by many others (there are talk page archives, but these are cut-and-paste archives: there is nothing wrong with this, I use the same method, but this means that one should only delete these archives, but not the original, which should be courtesy blanked if needed). See en:Wikipedia:CVUT for the policy behind this.

And if anyone wonders; I have a 40K watchlist, including most yser talk pages I ever posted on. Seeing a user talk page getting deleted is rather unusual. Fram (talk) 11:30, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

Done :-) Winged Blades of Godric (talk) 14:23, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

Thanks! Fram (talk) 14:27, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

There are only one or two (irrelevant) deleted revisions, so either they have been oversighted or shifted to en:User talk:Vanished user adhmfdfmykrdyr/Talk page history archive. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 16:18, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

How to deal with criticism

[57]. Great timing too, less than an hour after a controversial indef block following a series of controversial or badly handled cases and actions. Fram (talk) 15:24, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

And this is what the addition of that text was meant for. We are no longer allowed to criticize ArbCom on the ArbCom noticeboard, and they don't even have to dirty their own accounts to keep their noticeboard clean! Time to rename this board to something without ArbCom in the name, then the clerks can't claim it is under their purview. When a "government" gets criticized, and it feels the need to use repression to silence the criticism, then you know that your "country" really is in trouble. That the WMF did this was expected, but it seems to be trickling down now... Fram (talk) 04:35, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

Just linking to en:User_talk:Bradv#Was. Winged Blades of Godric (talk) 15:23, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

Farce

Apparently (dropping a note here was too hard?) the proposed decision is being posted. And lo and behold, what do we get?

Findings of fact including evidence never disclosed, never sent to me (or the communoity) for review, comments, ... Basically, inadmissble evidence, the kind of things the ArbCom could not disclose at ant time in the proceedings until now.

This is an unacceptable way to proceed, and simply shows that this whole arb case was a farce right from the start, and that the decision was made before this started.

Do whatever you please, you have turned yourself into a handpuppet for the T&S anyway.

Utterly, totally ridiculous waste of time. I hope the community shows their displeasure with the way the Arbs have handled this case.

This

"6) The Office provided case materials to the Arbitration Committee, upon which they based their conduct warnings and ban. The materials were partially redacted, notably removing the initial complaints as well as other information within the file. These unredacted materials show a pattern of borderline harassment against multiple individuals, through hounding the individuals and excessively highlighting their failures. In the period after receiving their second private conduct warning, Fram was abusive towards the Committee as a whole and specific members. The Office subsequently enacted a 1-year ban and desysopped Fram. "

should have been posted at the start of the workshop phase, or earlier. To post it now, after claiming for months that no, you couldn't disclose anything from the case at all, just shows how for you are willing to go with your lies over and over again to get the result either you wanted from the start, or where instructed to get from T&S right from the start, or both.

A farce and an utter discgrace.

Fram (talk) 18:28, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

Does "unredacted materials show" mean that they got to see the unredacted report? EllenCT (talk) 09:56, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

Examples of nonsense at the Proposed Decision

" appropriate correcting or commenting on the edits of a fellow editor making problematic edits, which is acceptable and in some cases even necessary"

No, it is always necessary. When is it not necessary to correct problematic edits someone else makes? Oh right, when they "feel" harassed, boohoo.

" relevant factors include whether the subject editor's contributions are actually viewed as problematic by multiple users or the community; whether the concerned editor raises concerns appropriately on talkpages or noticeboards and explains why the edits are problematic; and ultimately, whether the concerns raised reasonably appear to be motivated by good-faith, substantiated concerns about the quality of the encyclopedia, rather than personal animus against a particular editor. " So, in which cases of supposed harassment did I not raise my concerns on talkpages and noticeboards, and in which cases did you not find other editors agreeing with my concerns. Which only leaves us with you claiming that my actions were not done "in good faith", which is, oh irony, of course deeply uncivil and a personal attack.

"If an administrator finds themself in repeated disagreement with another good-faith but allegedly problematic editor, or if other editors disagree with the administrator's actions regarding that editor, it may be better practice for the administrator to request input or review from others, such as by posting on the appropriate noticeboard, rather than continue to address the issue unilaterally. " Which I did with LauraHale, or (to take older examples raised on the evidence page) Rich Farmbrough or Geo Swan. Thank you for outlining that the way I acted was perfectly aligned with what you expect, and is probably the reason that no good evidence of supposed harassment by me has been found at the workshop.

FoF 4. "I would weigh the community evidence higher than the Office evidence." 5. " does not reflect any conduct for which desysopping would be a proportionate response. "

Remedy? Desysop. Er...

As I said above, FoF 6 suddenly contains much more details about the T&S document than ever before provided. Is there any reason that you were not allowed to post these things earlier, but now that it is too late to discuss, support, reject, ... these (for me and the community as a whole), they suddenly are the key things which warrant a three-month block and a desysop (because otherwise "time served" means that you find a three-month block a correct first sanction for my offenses, i.e. three cases of incivility over three years, one too long block, and one wrong block)? How convenient.

"As noted in the principles, "harassment" and "abuse" carry a deal of subjectivity. Personally I would not call the conduct in the T&S report harassment, rather incivility or possibly wikihounding, and I don't consider his comments towards arbs/ArbCom abusive, at least in the context of the dismally low standard of civility which the community currently appears to consider appropriate when offering 'feedback' to the committee. But semantics aside, I can support the substance of this finding of fact: that Fram sometimes takes his criticism of other editors too far, that multiple people have experienced this as harassment, and that he consistently fails to assume good faith in ArbCom and other 'authorities' within the movement. – Joe (talk) 15:53, 5 September 2019 (UTC)"

Remember, people, if you want someone removed, just claim that you "feel" harassed when your constant problematic editing is pointed out repeatedly and correctly by the same editor.

Since when is "consistenly failing to assume good faith in ArbCom and other 'authorities'" a problem? And what other authorities? I have not, as far as I remember, criticized bureaucrats, oversighters, stewards, ... I have often criticized the WMF, usually with very good arguments, and these criticisms were usually at general noticeboards or discussion places, and lead to actions by "the community" against these "authorities within the movement", or more precisely against there bothced software implementations.

Basically, you are here siding with "the movement" (WMF) against the enwiki community. Or am I again not assuming good faith of ArbCom here (or worse, harassing you by criticizing you)? Feel free to report my to T&S then.

And so on and so on, I'll probably find more of the same if I continue reading that page, but why should I bother wasting even more of my time with this charade? This stinks, just like too many other decisions and actions of this ArbCom. Fram (talk) 20:49, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

One final thing for tonight: "Also, I hope as we move forward on the civility front, such comments as "yet another demonstration of power by the arbs and their clerks" will be universally found to be unacceptable. SilkTork (talk) 20:54, 5 September 2019 (UTC)"

Why? If something is another demonstration of power by arbs and their clerks, then why would it be uncivil to say so? The main problem in that case is not that someone says it, but the actual powergrab. If someone would start calling the clerks the ArbCom-Gestapo (or the Arbs the T&S-Gestapo or so), then it would be uncivil and the same thing can be said without these terms. But clear criticism should remain possible, even when directed against arbcom or clerks. Fram (talk) 20:58, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

Power is "the ability to make a decision and cause others to comply." Adolph Berle, I think. Accusing Arbcom of exerting power again isn't uncivil and might not even be critical — just an assertion of plain fact. Carrite (talk) 21:46, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

Valid criticism is never universally unacceptable, although some (notably those being criticised and those who prefer to wear rose-tinted spectacles) may find it disagreeable. - Sitush (talk) 07:48, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

No, but there are ways to express valid criticism which may be, if not "universally" unacceptable, at least "generally" unacceptable. However, the example given by SilkTork is so far removed from "generally unacceptable" that it becomes frightening. If that becomes the new standard imposed by T&S / WMF / ArbCom (and, oh coinicidence, highlighted by an example criticizing ArbCom), then hardly any form of criticism will remain possible. Good luck to SilkTork to convince the community that statements like the one in his example are so unacceptable (and thus presumably blockable / deadminnable?). I guess many in the community will be more likely to find people taking such a position to be unacceptable as arbs / admins / ... but I may of course be wrong here. Fram (talk) 08:11, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

It's never too early to start preparing candidate questions on these points for the upcoming Arbcom elections. I already have half a dozen. EllenCT (talk) 09:46, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

Desysop

At the moment, it looks as if the Arbs are going for a desysop based on

• Three counts of incivility, the most recent dating to March 2018, the other two from 2017 and 2016; even though this was then part of an Arb Case, after which I indicated that I understood that my comments were out of line, and said that I would improve my behaviour, which has been indicated by many people during the last few months to have been the case. So these concerns by the community can be dismissed.

• One wrong block (Gorillawarfare), and one correct but too long block (MartinEvans). I quote the closure of the ANI discussion surrounding the MartinEvans block: "Consensus below endorses the block of Louis, as well as the overturning of the block of Martin, due to excessive length (though not due to illegitimacy of the block itself). "

Apparently one bad block and one block that was too long are now sufficient grounds to desysop someone, even when no one at the time thought this serious enough to start an Arbcom case about it? This smells alot like trying to find a stick, or better yet a straw, to beat me with since the community didn't provide you with the wanted smoking guns even when they could produce evidence in secret.

Speaking of which, I note that the Arbs still don't have any problem with people providing false evidence, as was the case here? No FoF, proposed remedies, ... about this behaviour, which is way more toxic and problematic than what I have been accused of? Basically, you are sending out an invitation to people to post whatever they like to get people into trouble. Much of the evidence had already been debunked in the past, but was allowed by the Arbs (and clerks). This all again shows that keeping a civil appearance is for you lot more important than actually being honest and truthful, and that civilly making nonsense accusations is the way forward if T&S and ArbCom get their way, with the efficient support of the clerks. Fram (talk) 08:29, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

I bet you can sail through RFA. EllenCT (talk) 09:42, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

I think ArbCom are basically passing the buck. Rather than do the obviously right thing, they're running scared of overturning everything T&S did because that will make them look weak in the eyes of the WMF. So, passing responsibility to the community regarding the sysop flag allows them to abnegate their responsibilities. - Sitush (talk) 10:18, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

Showing prejudices yet again

User:Worm That Turned now claims:

"The fact is that the community had a chance to bring any evidence during this case, but declined to - largely because they just wanted to watch and see what happened. "

That is not a "fact", that is your interpretation. A neutral observation would be that the community was invited to present evidence, and returned very little evidence of any value. Whether the community "declined" to bring more evidence, or searched hard and didn't find further evidence they thought warranted to be included in a case, or were fed up with the Arbs strange ways of conducting the case (see e.g. Rich Farmbroughs repeated questions about this, which were all ignored completely), is all speculation.

If the community didn't bring evidence when invited to, not even in secret, then the logical conclusion would be that the community doesn't feel that I should be banned, blocked, desysoped, ... and that the complete T&S action should be vacated, not just the ban.

Oh, and could you clarify your sentences "The WMF removed the tools as part of a ban, which has since been vacated. They've made very little song and dance about the tools, and have seemed far more concerned about the ban in general. " It is very unclear to me whether the "they" in the second sentence is about the WMF, the community, or myself. Fram (talk) 09:41, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

All of those people who combed through your edit history and typed the better part of a megabyte just wanted to see what happened -- if they signaled their opinion of the evidence by responding to the Committee's request by withholding it. Another excellent elections candidate question. EllenCT (talk) 09:50, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

But I should be the better person and not bring up these issues with statements by Arbs while they are deciding my fate. Don't you love it when you are being accused of being arrogant by people who clearly know it all better? Fram (talk) 10:11, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

Opabinia knows better

":# Honestly, I am really weakly in support here. Especially after reading Fram's comments on meta since the PD was posted - yes, under the circumstances it's understandable to be upset and angry, but that did weaken my feelings here. I'm always surprised at how infrequently people in this community take advantage of golden opportunities to be the bigger person. It doesn't even have to be out of altruism, or a desire for warm fuzzy feelings. If you respond graciously to being wronged, and acknowledge your own part in the situation, people are more likely to respect you, and your ability to persuade the community of your views will improve. The right tactical approach here is "You know, I really care deeply about this project; I hoped to use my research skills to improve the accuracy of our content, and I never meant to cause anyone any distress. I regret that I had that effect and now commit to changing my behavior in the future by [fill in the blank] so that we can continue to improve the quality of our content in a less stressful way." That would be a convincing demonstration that the interest really was in quality and not in Being Right, and an acknowledgment that there are less unpleasant ways of pursuing the same positive goal. The wrong response is "here are many many paragraphs about why I was right about everything and everyone else is wrong wrong wrong." But. Buuuuuuut. If this had all come to us as a normal case, I really doubt I would have supported a desysop. So I can't convince myself to get on board the "new RfA" train now. Opabinia regalis (talk) 08:52, 6 September 2019 (UTC)"

I'm deeply sorry that I didn't grovel deeply enough to your liking. I am seeing more and more evidence that this ArbCom, for some reasons, is interested in only one thing, stifling criticism of this ArbCom. All else seems to be of secondary importance. I have no interest in being "the bigger person", and I have acknowledged my own part in the situation. I have not seen any arb acknowledging any of the many poor decisions, statements, twists and turns they made during this three month episode though. One should think that it is easier to be the "bigger person" when one isn't banned, desysop'ed, chased from your own talk page, and submitted to a farcical arb case, but apparently your comments are a one-way street, not something you should practice as you preach.

""You know, I really care deeply about this project; I hoped to use my research skills to improve the accuracy of our content, and I never meant to cause anyone any distress. I regret that I had that effect and now commit to changing my behavior in the future by [fill in the blank] so that we can continue to improve the quality of our content in a less stressful way."

I will not say this, I will never say this. If this is what you expect, then you might as well ban me. I will not change my behaviour in the future beyond what I said and did since March 2018. You know, after the three incivility incidents (i.e. one per year) which are now a crucial part of the evidence against me apparently. I know that some actions cause distress, but that doesn't mean that one should stop making these. Blocking causes distress. Starting ArbCom cases about an editor causes distress. Asking for sanctions at ANI causes distress.

What is important is that I didn't make these actions because they caused distress, but because they were necessary to uphold our basic policies. I don't regret that such actions caused distress, and I will not lie to make me look better in the eyes of Opabinia or anyone else, or to improve my chances of being unblocked and reinstated.

I don't regret it, but I don't enjoy it either. A police officer who stops a speeding driver shouldn't regret this, they shouldn't enjoy it either: they do it knowing that the distress it causes to the individual is a sorry but unavoidable byproduct of trying to uphold some basic laws.

"That would be a convincing demonstration that the interest really was in quality and not in Being Right, and an acknowledgment that there are less unpleasant ways of pursuing the same positive goal. "

If you are not convinced, after all these years and edits, that my interest really was in quality, then I can't help you. And no, often there are no "less unpleasant ways" to deal with long-term problematic edit patterns, unless you advice turning a blind eye.

"The wrong response is "here are many many paragraphs about why I was right about everything and everyone else is wrong wrong wrong."" Too bad, you just received another "wrong response" from me. Fram (talk) 09:58, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

They're still trying to appease Raystorm by assuming that repeated corrections of the editor whose mistakes have near-universally been seen as problematic but with whom she is in a relationship was "hounding" and "borderline harassment." As someone who was actually hounded away from economics articles by a cadre of editors pushing "secular stagnation" which has since been entirely discredited, this is deeply offensive to me. EllenCT (talk) 10:22, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

Question for SilkTork

":Some good questions on WP:HOUNDING. The wording "This is with an apparent aim of creating irritation, annoyance, or distress to the other editor", is probably not useful, and could be tightened up. The aim of following someone who is editing inappropriately may not be to cause distress, but to make and keep them aware of their inappropriate edits, but if repeatedly making someone aware of their errors is not making them change their editing pattern, then continuing to make them aware is now becoming counter-productive and simply turning nasty. Any issue which cannot be resolved by one individual (admin or otherwise) within a reasonable space of time should be brought to the attention of others, otherwise it can appear to be hounding (willfully causing distress) rather than usefully attempting to address the problem. SilkTork (talk) 10:17, 6 September 2019 (UTC)"

Any examples of where I kept on following editors without bringing it to the attention of others? If I'm supposed to do better in the future, it would be helpful if I knew where I went wrong in the past (which largely happened with the incivility thing since March 2018, and with e.g. the wrong block of GorillaWarfare or the too long block of MArtinEvans, where I got feedback and know what went wrong; see e.g. my final reply to MartinEvans in the ANI discussion about that block).

Here, you are giving advice which, to my knowledge, I already followed. The evidence section has three examples (no matter how badly presented otherwise). In all three cases, I brought the issues to ANI and/or ArbCom.

I did the same with other issues that continued for longer periods. Take e.g. the (otherwise uncontroversial) block of Mathsci, also included for some unclear reason in the "evidence" section. When the problems persisted, I started an AN discussion, including presenting my own potential bias in the very first post where I outlined the problems (probably using more than 500 words in the process...). [58].

There may have been cases which you feel I should have brought to wider attention but didn't, but without any indication at all of what these cases could be, and with all cases in the evidence section directly contradicting this position, I fail to see what you are actually proposeing or supporting here wrt me, or how I am supposed to change my behaviour based on this.

TLDR; you are urging me to do things I have done all the time, which isn't helpful or logical. Fram (talk) 10:30, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

Again; " If someone is to be desysopped for something, whatever it is, they would need to show understanding of the reasons for the desysop, and commit to not doing so moving forward before being resysopped. And I'm not in favour of making Fram or the community wait any longer before sorting this out. SilkTork (talk) 11:19, 6 September 2019 (UTC)"

See above. If the desysop is in any way related to your (or your colleagues) definition of hounding, harassment, distress causing, ... then no, I have no understanding of the reasons for the desysop, and no idea what I'm supposed to stop doing. Like I said, in the examples of supposed hounding or bullying that have been given, I always went to the community to raise my concerns and seek consensus for sanctions. If the arbs are unwilling or unable to provide actual examples of cases they base their desysop on (and let's not beat around the bush, it is the decision of ArbCom, not T&S, to desysop or not), then your conditions for a resysop can impossibly be met. Fram (talk) 11:25, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

And again: [59]: no indication at all that these issues, apart from my comments about ArbCom, are all 1 1/2 years old or older, and that my "abrasive" behaviour clearly improved afterwards? Once you attack ArbCom, any old evidence can be revived and a case with a randomly large timescope created to make sure that this old, infrequent behaviour can be misused? Using evidence-free comments from old rejected cases, because the actual evidence in this case doesn't contain enough to justify your words, FoFs and remedies, makes a mockery of the whole evidence phase (and thus the case in toto). Not really a surprise, but it is being shown today again and again. Fram (talk) 13:11, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

Re "boo hoo"

...and "I'm deeply sorry that I didn't grovel deeply enough to your liking." Many of us believe you have been treated unfairly and are fighting to correct that, but when your comments are soaked with withering sarcasm and a seeming lack of empathy towards people who (perhaps wrongly) feel "harassed" by your scrutiny of their edits, it does not sway anyone towards your point of view but only gives your detractors an example of jerkish behavior to point to when advocating to keep you banned and desysopped. Are you willing to tone down the sarcasm? 28bytes (talk) 14:18, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

I only feel a lack of empathy towards the Arbs which come to lecture me about my many errors, without providing any evidence of these errors in the first place. Apparently, strengthened by the mistreatment T&S gave me, they feel safe in doing the same. When people use "harassment" (and/or the influence they have as "'authorities' within the movement." or being closely aligned with one) as a weapon to stifle criticism, then yes, my reaction is "boohoo", not empathy. Equally, when people try playing the gender card (like the IP here now, or Gamaliel or Raystorm earlier) without any evidence to back them up but just as a way to score points and get extra sympathy, then "boohoo" to them as well.

I have no interest in toning down anything when it comes to pointing out the rather bizarre actions and claims made by some Arbs. It is, yet again, a perfect example of people caring more about how you say things (oh no, sarcasm, how dare you) than what you actually say (the many things by the arbs I pointed out above, including their fast-and-loose with the basic rules of what is acceptable in an arb case, or what they can or can't reveal of the T&S document: nothing at all, except when it suits them for some reason).

Would it be smarter to pretend to be a good puppy? Yes. Do I care? No. They are more than happy to sanction me for things for which they can't present any evidence, and to "advise" me to act in ways when I have done so for years already. They are very good at ignoring everything said here (easy, isn't it, when you sideline the only subject of your case?), until my tone is not to their liking, and then they can pounce on me for being arrogant, not being the bigger person, ... If that's all they have to say about what I post, then they can keep their sanctimonious twaddle to themselves. Fram (talk) 14:34, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

Re "perfect example of people caring more about how you say things (oh no, sarcasm, how dare you) than what you actually say". People care about both things, and have since the dawn of humanity. If you're truly incapable of or unwilling to point out someone's errors of logic or fact (or principles, or consistency, or fairness, or...) without larding it with scorn and sarcasm then that's your choice. I won't (further) lecture you about it. I've long ago learned it's pointless to try to help someone when they're not willing to help themselves. 28bytes (talk) 15:20, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

Oh, I much prefer your approach (of coming here, talking to me, and trying to help or at least trying to indicate specifically what you find problematic with my comments) than the approach of ArbCom (ignore everything said about their statements, internal contradictions, ignore/use evidence however it suits them, etcetera) but then comment (on the case, not here of course, a very civil way to treat someone) solely on how they try to help me but my tone here is contraproductive. "People" may care about both things, but ArbCom is showing no signs of actually doing this, just like they show no signs at all of taking into account things like improved (or deteriorated) behaviour, but just treat a few separate points from 2016, 2017 and early 2018, long since addressed, as compelling evidence of an ongoing problem that needs to be dealt with now. Fram (talk) 16:16, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

Krakatoakatie

"The WMF document isn't pretty. It's full of belligerent, arrogant, in-your-face conduct by a long-time administrator. Fram should know better than to treat people, any people, like this. That said, I agree with GW that it's not cut-and-dried "harassment" of the kind normally associated with that word, and I agree with SilkTork that we have to adjust our expectations and tolerance regarding this kind of behavior. Katietalk 14:38, 6 September 2019 (UTC)"

And since I nor anyone else in the community knows to what conduct you are referring (from when, in what circumstances, ...), there is no way that anyone can adjust their behaviour based on this case. Is it an ongoing problem? Is it against newbies? Is it an immediate approach I take, or the culmination of interactions starting off reasonably enough? Without any indication of what you (arbs, T&S) consider problematic, and what not, this is useless (actually, in normal circumstances such statements without providing evidence for them is considered a severe personal attack, but I guess we won't go there?). Your colleague stated that when encountering problem editors, I should eventually bring them to AN or the like instead of continuing to confront them on my own. That this is exactly what I did in these cases is apparently not important enough to note, giving my useless advice is better? Whether my conduct improved after March 2018 or not is of no importance either, it seems? Doesn't it give you pause that no one in the community either could find more than a few shreds of evidence for this kind of behaviour in the last three years, or thought it serious enough to send it to you? All these victims, all of them, have been scared off enwiki and no one remains to post the dirt on me?

If no one knows what you are no longer tolerating, then either people will continue like before, or you create a state of fear where people are afraid to scrutinize edits and give warnings where necessary. Neither is your intention, but the way this case is unravelling will not produce any other result. Fram (talk) 14:53, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

Looking for a solution

I'm here looking for a solution to this situation. The Committee have three proposals on the board which are essentially resysop, leave it to the community, decline to resysop (which effectively amounts to a desysopping). The wording is a little unclear, and I for one put my vote initially in the wrong place (the effective desysop). I am actually in favour of letting the community decide, and have moved my vote, though there is a feeling amongst those who are commenting that some kind of admonishment or restriction accompanied by a resysop by the Committee would work better than the community resysopping you. I am not in favour of an admonishment, and wouldn't support one, as I think the situation we are in is more about the way the community has developed rather than you going rogue. Do you feel we can chat here for a bit to find the best way forward to you returning to Wikipedia? SilkTork (talk) 17:41, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

Newyorkbrad has some good solutions proposed. Rollbacks may also be specified by time. EllenCT (talk) 11:03, 7 September 2019 (UTC)

If this end up with Fram going through another RfA, I predict that Fram will be resyssopped with a huge margin, for the following reasons:

• A lot of people are pissed off at T&S and will vote to reinstate Fram just to tweak their noses.
• Fram has a compelling argument: "X was brought up Y months ago, I took the advice to heart, changed my behavior, and haven't done anything like that since" -- which I believe his edit history supports.
• Whether of not Arbcom chooses to address the issues raised at en:Wikipedia talk:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Fram/Proposed decision#Comment by Jbhunley, the RfA voters certainly will.

If Fram chooses to give me a heads up as to the exact time the RfA will be filed, I would be honored to immediately post a prewritten comment bringing the Jbhunley issues up so that it is the first thing that the voters see. Who knows, maybe we will get an honest accounting of who has been paid to edit by the WMF who has been paid to edit as a Wikipedian-in-Residence, who has been paid to edit, research and/or travel by the WMF, when they were paid, and what the rate was. One can only hope.[60] --Guy Macon (talk) 21:18, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

Guy Macon, I believe your comment should be recast as "who has been paid to edit as a Wikipedian-in-Residence, who has been paid to edit, research and/or travel by the WMF..." Many thanks. Hlevy2 (talk) 03:22, 7 September 2019 (UTC)

Good idea. Done. --Guy Macon (talk) 03:40, 7 September 2019 (UTC)

SilkTork, thanks for adressing me directly. I may have limited time this weekend, I'll have more time to reply on Monday probably. I have no objection against some restriction or probation or something similar, as long as it is clear and workable (I don't consider e.g. the 500 word limit proposal as in any way workable, but e.g. a "block once at most, then if continues go to the community" (except for clear vandalism, which isn't part of the disputes) or something different ArbCom and I would believe to be workable and to adress some of the concerns? Feel free to propose something, I'll think about possibilities as well. Fram (talk) 08:44, 7 September 2019 (UTC)

Oh, and while I obviously can't decide how the Arbs should vote (wouldn't that be nice?), I don't think "we have the power to overturn the ban, but not to overturn the desysop" makes sense. How I see it, you either undo the desysop, or impose a desysop decided by ArbCom based on the evidence (which I and momst others seem to agree doesn't merit a desysop). Just washing your hands of the whole desysop thing makes your role rather superfluous. Fram (talk) 09:11, 7 September 2019 (UTC)

I'm still thinking through what authority and expectations the community have given ArbCom for dealing with this situation. I am uncertain, for example, if the community have given ArbCom the authority to resysop someone. 'Crats decide who to resysop not ArbCom. The most that ArbCom can do in this situation is request the 'Crats resysop you. I'm not seeing where we can demand that as a right. We can perhaps suggest it, and at that point it would be up to the 'Crats to decide. So we would passing the buck to the 'Crats rather than the community. And if I were a 'Crat I think I might want more confirmation from the community, than just 9 individuals, to establish a consensus.

I didn't have a hand in shaping the PD - I haven't communicated with the rest of the Committee for over a month; if I had I might have suggested shaping the wording along the lines of a normal case because I see this case as Wikipedians examining the conduct of a fellow Wikipedian rather than Wikipedians upholding or rejecting WMF because I don't see what T&S did as being valid anyway, so it is an irrelevance ArbCom making any rulings on it. What I would have preferred, and certainly what I rather gruffly demanded of T&S, was that they vacate the ban, and let us deal with the matter of your conduct. What we got was this compromise in which they gave us their document on you, and a back up from Jimbo that he would support the outcome of an ArbCom case, including an unban (which as far as I'm aware, T&S still hasn't agreed they would abide by - rather like Boris Johnson hasn't agreed to abide by Parliament). By saying that ArbCom vacate the ban we are somehow acknowledging and legitimising it. I would prefer "Fram is site-banned" and we vote to accept or reject that. However I'm not going to squabble over semantics on the case pages - I don't think that would be helpful. What I think is important in the long term is a) sorting out the community's expectations for conduct moving forward (we can all reflect a little more on how we behave online compared to how we behave face to face) and b) sorting out our relationship with the Foundation. I see it as vital that the community and the Foundation work together more closely, particularly in establishing who is responsible for what. I consider it likely that voting not to ban you (and therefore asking the Foundation to reverse their Office Action) will cause some strain on the relationship. There is some work to be done. And I hope that the work will be done in a collegial and respectful manner in order to facilitate progress.

Anyway, I'll give some thought to appropriate and workable restrictions. I feel it may be more appropriate for them to be applied before blocking, as I don't think there is a serious issue with your blocking so much as with your persistency in pursuing a complaint. SilkTork (talk) 00:52, 8 September 2019 (UTC)

I would feel better discussing sanctions if I saw some evidence that the Arbs are playing this fair. As it stands, we have arbs making personal attacks while ignoring the fair criticism of their unparseable comments (AGK), arbs trying to change a well-supported FoF because it makes their proposed remedy impossible, arbs not asnwering basic questions about the total lack of evidence (and FoFs) for their proposed remedies (see e.g. my question to you in a section above, where you haven't replied either), ... The well-known "ArbCom 2019 special circular" stated "the Committee often resysopped admin accounts as a matter of course once the admin was back in control of their account. " I objected against this because the Arbs don't resysop, they may advice bureaucrats who then decide to resysop or not. 'None of you agreed with this, and this wasn't changed in the corrected circular either. But now, when it suits you, that very rule is the reason you can't resysop? That's not playing fair. Fram (talk) 06:01, 8 September 2019 (UTC)

FWIW, I also don’t think the committee has the authority to actually grant sysop rights either, but can determine, for example, that a particular desysop was out of process (with the explicit or implicit recommendation that it be reversed). –xeno 11:22, 8 September 2019 (UTC)

Looking for fairness in any bureaucracy is searching for unicorn dust. I think we have to be realistic and proportional in our expectations of others. SilkTork (talk) 15:36, 8 September 2019 (UTC)

The desysop was out of process. I don't have a problem with that. I have a problem with the case in front of us and the PD as presented which is part ArbCom case and part review of the T&S ban. I think if we wrote this up as a straight ArbCom case with the option to desysop on the table, I think that would alter my perspective. The quasi-legal technicality of what to do after the case if the decision is NOT to desysop would likely fall back into the hands of the Foundation. My assumption is that Jimbo would back up what he promised, and the Foundation would reverse the ban and the desysop themselves. That actually might be the most appropriate scenario. However, where we are now is looking at an effective vote for a desysop, with a decision to allow a RfA immediately. Now, where does that leave us in the quasi-legal mess of Wikipedia and the Foundation? Well, I suppose, Jimbo has to support ArbCom's decision to leave the decision up to the community. SilkTork (talk) 15:36, 8 September 2019 (UTC)

Extended content
@SilkTork: but why the desysop? A three month undeserved ban and then enforce an undeserved desysop as an extra kick? And then, on what evidence? You don’t want to resysop, but you can just not take over the desysop and then leave it to the community. Formally Fram can ask for the bit back, there is a 24 hour discussion/waiting time for the crats to weigh in. —Dirk Beetstra T C (en: U, T) 15:54, 8 September 2019 (UTC) Beetstra "but why the desysop?" - are you asking me why I would favour a desysop or asking a more general question? Either way, I would rather use my time here to work with Fram on a possible solution. Could you ask me those sorts of questions on my user page on Wikipedia? That would be easier. And, forgive me, but I would prioritise working with Fram, so I may not answer you quickly - but I will answer you. SilkTork (talk) 16:06, 8 September 2019 (UTC) @SilkTork: I will consider that, though I found your post of 16:01 to Fram was giving me the answer and, for me, the solution that seems very obvious. For now, I'll collapse this. --Dirk Beetstra T C (en: U, T) 05:18, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

I've looked at your question section above, Fram. You ask: "Any examples of where I kept on following editors without bringing it to the attention of others?" My thinking there in saying "should be brought to the attention of others" was actually "should be brought to the attention of others, and then left alone". I can see that I made an error in assuming the later part was understood. Do you think you could give recent examples (ie, post the warning from T&S) of where you raised a concern regarding a contributor, and then stopped your involvement in the issue, and allowed others to take over? If you could, that would be very useful; and potentially a powerful argument for not going for a desysop. SilkTork (talk) 16:01, 8 September 2019 (UTC)

Thanks. The warning was March 2018. Since then, looking simply at cases raised in the evidence section, I have already given this example: [61]. Basically, I had had previous interactions with Mathsci, including blocks. Problems continued, but I didn't believe that it would be good that I continued dealing with this alone, so I brought it to ANI, specifically noting my perhaps one-sided version of the facts and inviting others to both scrutinize the dispute and suggest solutions. Mathsci hasn't edited since, but I hope that it is clear from my comments in that discussion that I had no intention to further take any admin actions against Mathsci.

Looking at other cases: I have had a run-in with Ymblanter, and have since left them alone (and vice versa). I was seriously involved with the case about GiantSnowman, but when the case was concluded, I have had one positive interaction with them about going forward (about how to deal with a prolific sock who was only trying to help), and otherwise haven't checked their edits or confronted them. In these (and other similar) cases, when we both were in a discussion, there was no problem working together. While I remember specific recurring problems with some editors and may check if they recur, I don't hold grudges.

I clashed with Rexxs in 2017, and afterwards we left each other mostly alone (we interacted at discussions, but not in the same heated manner, and neither followed the other around or so). At their RfA, they explicitly invited me to comment, but instead I left a friendly comment at their talk page. I probably could have sank his RfA if I really wanted to (seeing how close it was, and as I had some minor issues from Rexxs not yet mentioned, which were in themselves not really important but could have been enough to sway some final doubters), but I am not in the business of getting revenge (see [62] for the RexxS RfA), from April 2019)

I saw issues with Legacypac at AfC, and after having raised these problems with them, I brought it to the attention of the community at [63] (November 2018). I didn't follow their AfC edits (or other edits) afterwards, and even tried to help them when they were rather poorly treated by the Arbs in January 2019 (see [64]).

I hope this answers your question? If you meant something else, please clarify. Fram (talk) 07:02, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

Thanks Fram. I'll look into those and get back to you. SilkTork (talk) 09:52, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

Other recent examples (thoug of more newish editors, but perhaps still of interest as well?). user Reddragon7 is at the moment up at ANI for a discussion of a site ban or other serious sanction. I deleted a few of their pages through NPP, as did many others (see [65]), and I gave them a message indicating the problems with their edits[66], to no avail. I didn't contact them further but left it to others. User:Amitamitdd: I moved a page to draft space, noticed at their talk page that many of their pages had the same issues as noted by others but that they never replied or changed their approach, so I raised it at WP:ANI ([67]) instead of taking action myself. The end result was the same though, an indef block. Wikipevi.acc was another user I recently encountered through NPP: I gave them three personalised messages describing the problems with their editing[68], but they were blocked for a short while almost immediately after my third message, and indef since (neither block by me).

So yes, I try to discuss the problems good faith editors have with them, on their user talk page, and I try to get outside input before taking action (well, I do delete articles or move them to draft, but I mean outside input before blocking), or let others deal with it. Fram

Thanks for the above, and sorry for delay. I'm looking again closely at the T&S document for incidents after the 2018 warning. The Foundation received two complaints in late 2018. The names are redacted, but looking at the dates and the incidents and the wording, it is clear that the complaints were from two different people, though both were about your attention to one particular user. T&S examined the complaints and while there was some concern that you were continuing to breathe down the neck of that particular user, there was both sufficient justification for your concern about that user's edits and sufficient doubt that you hadn't deliberately targeted that user that the complaints were logged but no action taken. We need not discuss that any further - I raise it here in the interest of completeness and openness in examining your behavior and complaints about your behaviour since the warning. I am now clearing away from my consideration all behaviour prior to the warning, and am interested only in behaviour after the warning. The prior warning behaviour will now only be considered in relation to any infringements of the warning. So if there are no infringements the prior behaviour is no longer significant. I'm stressing this both in terms of clarity as to where I am (I am now looking only at your behaviour since April 2018), and that we need not muddy the water by churning up discussion of any person involved prior to the warning.

The complaints in 2019 all relate to ArbCom. Four complaints. I think we should examine that in detail. Also, an incident that was not raised in the T&S document, nor in the community material, but which made a significant impression on me, and for which I'd like to get your viewpoint. I have mentioned it before, so you may be aware of it. And it may be helpful to get that one out of the way first. In the Rama case you used your admin tools to edit through full protection on an ArbCom page to revert a sitting arbitrator: [69]. Can you talk me though your thinking on that - particularly why you chose to do the revert yourself rather than either raise the concern with the arb in question, or notify the Clerks? SilkTork (talk) 11:28, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

AGK

It must be nice to be an Arb. You are free to make sweeping personal attacks without providing any evidence, or to support remedies for which no evidence has been provided at all.

":# This is good and strikes at one of the problems. Fram is not a particularly incisive user, but for that they compensate by making their criticism lengthy and vociferous. Fram's tends to express a single point of debate by trying to pose many sub-points and examples to the other user. The other user then feels the need to answer each aspect in turn, which creates this bizarre paradigm where making ten times the noise about something than was deserved is, coming from Fram, something other than counter-productive and unprofessional. The community has been hearing far too much from Fram and I think this remedy would address that problem. I don't get my colleagues' opposition (other remedies have failed, therefore this one will?) and I can think of dozens of remedies we have imposed that addressed the specific problem with broad success. Colleagues are actually not really explaining why they think this remedy will be ineffective; I encourage them to address that. AGK ■ 11:19, 7 September 2019 (UTC)"

Where to start? "The other user then feels the need to answer each aspect in turn, which creates this bizarre paradigm where making ten times the noise about something than was deserved is, coming from Fram, something other than counter-productive and unprofessional. " I don't think, oh particularly incisive arb, that this rambling sentence actually expresses what you probably had in mind. Perhaps reread and rewrite it? If not, then I should thank you for the compliment.

"The community has been hearing far too much from Fram and I think this remedy would address that problem." Any indication from the community that this is true? I don't see anything in the evidence supporting this, and I don't see how you get this from the many discussions about my ban and desysop either. If by "the community" you mean "AGK", then say so. But don't pretend to speak for the community when the community, after having been asked by the Arbs, has not provided anything that supports your claim. Nothing here has anything to do with what you claim here. Fram (talk) 12:12, 7 September 2019 (UTC)

Background & fair process

There is very strong evidence out there that one of the editors that Fram has been accused of harassing (to be called X) is married to a member of the board of trustees of WMF (to be called Y). Y has spoken publicly in defense of X, arguing that X is being harassed, without disclosing this relationship. Given that Fram has been accused of harassing X, it seems plausible that Y was referring to Fram as a participant in the alleged harassment. Interestingly, in the ArbCom case involving X, another editor, to be called Z, failed to disclose their personal relationship (X and Z seems to have lived together and traveled together, the latter sometimes paid for by WMF). There are also allegations out there that X and Z received money from WMF to give away as a prize (in a form of a trip), but gave the prize to themselves, allegedly because there were no worthy participants. If true, that behavior also involves a fairly obvious ethical conflict of interest. This raises several questions:

• Given that there are two instances of people close to or in WMF neglecting to mention their conflict of interests, is there a culture of ignoring conflicts or interest (or worse) at WMF? Note that in my opinion, favoring those you are close to is part of the human condition and not a moral failing, but therefor also not something that can be easily avoided with diligence. This is why a common standard is to avoid even an appearance of impropriety.
• Are there other people involved in this process who also have a conflict of interest? Given that we already had two instances, it may be helpful to demand an explicit statement from everyone who votes or otherwise wields power, with a clear and serious penalty for not divulging a conflict of interest.
• Given that in both cases, this benefited the same editor (X), is this editor so close to various people in power that they are unable to see X's flaws as an editor and/or fair treatment of X seems like harassment to them?
• Was Fram banned because various people are heavily (emotionally) invested in X being an editor and any threat to this, even due to a fair application of the rules, is seen unacceptable? If so, is removing Fram going to establish a culture of fear, where people will worry less about the fair application of the rules, but more about whether the people they interact with are close to people in power? To prevent this, it might be necessary to ensure that WMF doesn't get involved in cases where there is a conflict of interest with influential people at WMF and editors. If this cannot be ensured, it might be necessary to remove X as an editor, not because of impropriety on her part, but because conflicts of interest involving her threaten rule of law at Wikipedia.
• Given the less than ethical behavior by Y and Z & the rather unfair way in which this arbitration process is being performed (with fishing expeditions, secret evidence, etc), is it fair to make demands of Fram, including Kafkaesque demands that he stops with undisclosed behavior? Should there not first be an investigation in the background of these accusations and whether there is even a level playing ground in the first place?
• If this investigation can't be done in public, it might be helpful to seek out one or more highly respected, independent people to investigate the secret evidence, as well as the way in which T&S decided to ban Fram. This can include handing over the relevant (email) correspondence to this independent investigative committee. Aapjes (talk) 13:41, 7 September 2019 (UTC)

It would be better if you posted this on the proposed decision talk page on enwiki probably. I can't comment on this without the risk of getting banned. Fram (talk) 13:48, 7 September 2019 (UTC)

Meanwhile, at Wikidata...

Enjoy! Fram (talk) 08:45, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

Seems like the link is broken, although I have a pretty good idea of what it is about... Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 08:56, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

? Works for me? Perhaps the title triggers some filter at your side? It contains NSFW words like "sex" and "porn" (though with good reason, sadly). Fram (talk) 09:00, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

Now it shows. Perhaps a hiccup in the connection. And yes, it was exactly what I was expecting. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 09:34, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

No idea if that is a bad sign for me or a bad sign for Wikidata (or both of course). Neither the topic nor that it comes from me are probably really surprising indeed, but I was personally still amazed that the problem was so deep-rooted, widepread and visible (see also [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Fram#Meanwhile_on_Wikidata_(and_thus_here_on_Commons!) my earlier post on Commons for similar problems and the impact they had on Commons). Fram (talk) 09:44, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

Meanwhile? I have an item on my list that was edited in on December 22, 2017 (the link is globally blacklisted for over a year now, disabling updating of the official website throughout all Wikipedia's that draw from WikiData in their {{official website}}). I am waiting for the moment that it gets repaired, and hope that that is in a serious drive to improve the data that they have. But meanwhile User:LiWa3 regularly has hickups because of bots en masse adding external links to many pages on WikiData. 'Data, data, more data!' seems to be their motto, and 'people from other wikis will repair it when they notice something is wrong'. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 11:04, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

Oh yes, Wikidata has many problems, some of them directly impacting enwiki in sneaky ways, many more only impacting Wikidata or other sites like Commons. Wikidata may be as good or bad as they want to be, but other sites depending on it, and the WMF promoting it, should be well aware of the many problems which don't seem to improve at all. My blog post only highlights one specific type of issue (which the WMF, with their focus on gender, harassment, #metoo, ..., should be especially worried about), but there are enough other problems to write about. Fram (talk) 11:30, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

Next steps

A bit of advice. There are a lot of good ideas out there on what you should do next - I think you should consider some of them. The arbitration case is close to concluding. I would advise you take time to consider what to do next, and not do anything too hasty. If you can to come up with a plan and stick to it that would be best. There will also be a new entry in your block log after the case closes, I hope whoever does that uses appropriate wording. Carcharoth (talk) 12:18, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

Reply / question to Joe Roe

[70]

"::As an aside, I don't agree that the boundaries for admin conduct are vague or made up by this committee. They're spelled out in black and white at WP:ADMINCOND. The problem is we've been inconsistent in enforcing it. – Joe (talk) 13:12, 9 September 2019 (UTC)"

and [71]

":::Even if Fram had not been subject to an office action, I find it hard to believe that they could have carried on as they were much longer. In the last few years they have been the subject of multiple ANI discussions and party to multiple arbitration cases. Earlier this year, they were close to being admonished in another case (I regret voting against that now; I was also excusing their bad conduct because they were 'right'). We all know that this is the trajectory of an admin that is likely to end up subject to an ArbCom case sooner or later. T&S' involvement muddied the waters considerably, but we're here now. We opened a case called Fram, about Fram's conduct – not about the circumstances of their ban, or T&S' processes, or what anyone else did. We have to do our best to cut through the surrounding controversy and come to a fair decision as if this was a fresh case. I for one don't want to end up having to have another case about this just to hammer home the point that T&S overstepped their bounds. – Joe (talk) 12:08, 9 September 2019 (UTC)"

You are making a few logical errors here. For starters, "In the last few years they have been the subject of multiple ANI discussions and party to multiple arbitration cases. ": being the subject of multiple ANI discussions is not really relevant if all or most of these discussions ended without finding fault in my actions. This is one of the perverse aspects of allowing clearly incorrect evidence to stand, it colours the judgment and instead of remembering the clear rebuttals, you end up with getting painted as a black sheep because of three ANI threads, one of them started by me, and the other two ending with "consensus: no action" and "withdrawn by original poster". That "no action" case is the same as the second, long rejected piece of evidence in the "harassment/bullying" evidence section.

Then: "party to multiple arbitration cases": yes, usually as the one that started a case about problematic editing by another admin, with nothing in the case being about me (no evidence, FoF, remedies). There has been one case where I was, like you said, "close to being admonished", i.e. it was voted 8 against and 2 in favour, which is nowhere near close (I mean, you were only 2% away of not being a member of Arbcom, should I then give your opinion less weight or consider you an almost-not arb?)

"(I regret voting against that now; I was also excusing their bad conduct because they were 'right')" is rewriting history: you voted against the admonishment because "I read the cited diffs as fair points expressed in a tone which, while perhaps not ideal, matches those of the users he is responding to and is mild by ANI standards.". A "not ideal" tone has now changed into "bad conduct", which seems to match the way you pushed to change the FoF 5 from "does not reflect any conduct for which desysopping would be a proportionate response." (agreed upon by almost all arbs) to "does not consitute misuse of administrative tools.", since otherwise you collectively had a hard time justifying the wanted desysop apparently.

Basically, I am now judged again by the same people who already voted against even an admonishment for my behaviour in the previous case, who agreed that my conduct was not desysop-worthy in this case, who can't really point to many clear recent behavioural issues (anything apart from the Fuck Arbcom thing?) and then conveniently ignore the age of the few items of evidence that withstand scrutiny, who can't point to actual issues of harassment but continue using it as justification for a desysop, ...

"We have to do our best to cut through the surrounding controversy and come to a fair decision as if this was a fresh case. " Except that you aren't treating it as a fresh case. No fresh case is held by using on the one hand secret, redacted evidence no one may see (not even in summary), and on the other hand secret, summarized evidence stretching three years back and containing very little substance. If someone had started this case presenting the "evidence" available here, it would have been declined with a boomerang for posting (nah, reposting) such misleading evidence, containing a few real problems but padding them with false claims, ANI discussions where there was no problem with my editing, duplicate entries, ...

Now, if you want to change this, then the fair way would be to make some general announcement that things which were accepted in the past would no longer be tolerated: not by re-visiting old material on the instigation of T&S (and whoever was behind their action), but by drawing a clear demarcation line. You know, the kind of thing you tried to do with the failed ArbCom circular (about 2FA).

You could have (and still should, if this is your intention) send a note to all admins that from now on, admincond would mean that things which had been tolerated in the past (even in ArbCom cases) were from now on verboten. But it looks more as if things which were until now not allowed as ArbCom actions, are now the new normal (judging not only from this case, but also from Ritchie, or the ArbCom-sanctioned deletion saga, or the ArbCom circular). All of this makes it less, not more clear to most admins and editors to know which things are allowed, and which are now punishable quite hard. Fram (talk) 14:36, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

It's kind of my prerogative to explain the history of my own thinking, no? To expand a bit, at the time of the GS case I wasn't as familiar with your background as the other arbs. I don't think we'd interacted before. I was the newest person on the committee, and I came in with two priorities: try to get it to stop cutting people so much slack in desysop cases, and do what I could to reduce the general atmosphere of hostility in the project. It seemed to me that you were helping with the former but hurting the latter cause. I honestly have a great deal of respect for your commitment to scrutinising people in positions of trust (admins, ArbCom, the WMF). As I said at the time, it's a vital job but not an easy one. I thought you were right about GS (still do – and their conduct was more damaging to the project than yours), so I put more weight on the first priority than the second.

But then yeah, let's talk about the 2FA fiasco. You really went all out on that one. It gave me and the rest of the committee firsthand experience of what it's like to be in your firing line, and I suppose you've sussed that it was a major factor in one of us resigning and leaving the project. And for what? Was it really necessary to be so intensely and personally critical of what was, at the end of the day, some bad writing and a minor policy mix-up? (Please don't take this as an indication that the outcome of this case will be retaliation for that dispute. It's not. We're still in this role because we have thick skins and are capable of dispassionately evaluating evidence. If anything, the conflict has led us to studiously ignore your interactions with ArbCom in the decision, even though it would ordinarily be quite relevant. I mention it now only because it's the clearest example of how others experience your criticism that I personally can articulate.)

Your reaction to this case seems to have been essentially to dismiss the whole thing. But come on, the vast majority of admins manage to avoid drama altogether – why do you think this has happened to you? Can it all be a T&S conspiracy, with no substance? Why does it matter how long ago the incidents in the evidence happened? Somewhere I saw you express the desire to be seen as a "blunt but fair" admin. Why not just "fair"? Is shouting and swearing at people necessary to do what you do? I'm honestly interested in your thoughts here, as someone who's spent a lot of time looking at others' conduct. Joe Roe (talk) 15:42, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

Thank you for your reply. "the vast majority of admins manage to avoid drama altogether – why do you think this has happened to you?" You gave the answer earlier in your post; contrary to most admins, I take on a lot of difficult cases as well. Perhaps it's simplistic, but I'm one of the only people I know of who do new page patrolling for all editors, including autoconfirmed, autopatrolled, admins, whatever. This means that I also come across problematic articles which escape the attention of most others. I also do (and did a lot more) DYK patrol, which again brings me in contact with established but sometimes problematic editors ("problematic" meaning having problems in one or more areas, not vandals or bad faith editors). Some welcome it when I correct Main Page hooks, some react very defensively. I have a very extensive watchlist (at the moment 40K+ pages), which increases the chance that I see patterns in gnomish editors, including patterns of problematic minor edits. The chance of seeing such a pattern when only one or two pages on a watchlist get "hit" is obviously a lot smaller, and most people won't even open such gnomish edits to check them. As a (former) admin, I also had the chance to check the admin actions of others, which is rarely done as well. This enabled me to e.g. find problems in the editing of admin / candidate arb Hahc21[72], leading to his resignation.

But criticizing edits by established editors is more drama-prone, as they have often more wikifriends, and people are less willing to believe that prolific editor X or admin Y truly may cause such problems. Blocking a vandal is easy. Making an entrenched, well-connected editor change his approach is much, much harder in many cases.

When you look at the ANI cases about me, they are "drama", but they closed as "no fault". Not all of them, the GW block was clearly wrong, so it's not as if I never make serious errors or am completely innocent wrt drama. I also had a period where I went too far in being harsh in my criticism, around March 2018 mainly.

The "bad writing" is sadly a recurring theme with some ArbCom members, even those who claim to have been elected for their good writing skills. Please check AGKs comment on the PD page (highlighted above, and by WBG at the PD talk page), and his dismissive reply (to WBG, none here) when this is pointed out. I just try to imagine how the reaction would be if I would describe them as for example "AGK is not a particularly incisive arb, but for that they compensate by making their statements important-sounding but largely incomprehensible". Throw in perhaps a description of their behaviour as "uncollegial and arrogant." or something similar, and calls of "personal attack" would be flying high and low.

Most worrying in your reply here is probably "Why does it matter how long ago the incidents in the evidence happened? " Really? It doesn't make a difference for you, as an arb, to decide about sanctions, restrictions, ... if the evidence is from (as here) 1* 2016, 1* 2017, and 1* 2018, or if it is 3 times from the last few months only? An infrequent occurrence, where many people have indicated that they have seen clear improvement in behaviour since March 2018, is to be treated the same as an acute, frequent current problem? I get a self-admonishment, a T&S warning, and a desysop (plus 3 month long but vacated ban), all for the same set of evidence? And that doesen't bother you? Fram (talk) 16:15, 9 September 2019 (UTC)