Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement/Archive238

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

User who is submitting this request for enforcement

Icewhiz (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) 06:33, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

User against whom enforcement is requested

Volunteer Marek (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

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

Sanction or remedy to be enforced

Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Eastern Europe#Standard discretionary sanctions, WP:BLPDS. NPA, ASPERSIONS, not adhering to BLP policy, NPOV and V.

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

1. 23:09, 1 July 2018 - WP:ASPERSIONS emphasize the "if", Icewhiz contacted you off-wiki and asked you to comment here on his behalf and/or throw in some reverts on the article (your blind reverts, coming out of nowhere and always restoring Icewhiz's version make this a possibility).
2. 17:40, 2 July 2018 - ...and are here just to revert on someone else's behalf - WP:ASPERSIONS, no "if".
3. EW report filed 18:50, 3 July 2018‎ - Edit warring report filed against user that was reverting apparent vandalism. VM also reverted in this dubious info and did not participate in talk.
4. 00:50, 18 June 2018 obscurantist WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT on the part of Thucidydes - WP:NPA.
5. 00:40, 1 July 2018: incivility: your comments are sort of unclear and incoherent.
6. 04:23, 20 June 2018 - personal attack - "your extremist views", per VM - 14:12, 20 June 2018 this is not a PA, and furthermore please cease making personnel attacks is a false accusation and a PA.
7. 15:01, 12 June 2018 - PA: your extremist bias ... your extremist POV.
8. 22:58, 9 June 2018 PA your own extreme bias.
9. 07:22, 23 June 2018 - calling academic source "garbage" or "sarcastic" + personal attack.
10. 23:29, 13 June 2018 - I have no idea what your source is or who the author is, but there's some grade-A stupidity and nonsense in it. ... Where the hell did you dig this piece of junk up? - acdemic source.
11. 15:17, 11 June 2018 - (and any source which describes AK as "conservative nationalist" is garbage. Yes, that applies to Christopher Browning. - attack on BLP Christopher Browning, clear NPOV problem given that the AK is often described in that manner.
12. 04:03, 10 June 2018,23:04, 9 June 2018 - attack on Mordecai Paldiel and KTAV Publishing House.
13. 15:02, 22 June 2018, 08:12, 25 June 2018(more on TP), - repeatedly denying the professional credentials of an individual (who is a historian of literature, cultural anthropologist, photographer...
14. 06:17, 4 July 2018 - misrepresentation/BLP issue - removed HUGE HOWEVER regarding "anti-Polish bias" of a BLP present in source.
15. 18:08, 13 June 2018 - PA/ASPERSIONS 3rd, because it's paywalled it's hard to verify this stuff, and given the editor's track record with sources, that is a matter of concern
16. 04:05, 25 June 2018 - calling a grossly defamatory WP:HOAX, discussed in this AE report as It wasn't a HOAX. It, like a lot of articles about small towns that really nobody gives a flip about, had sloppy sourcing.
17. (following cleanup of a similar denialist HOAX on another article) 15:59, 3 July 2018 + re-revert - 16:26, 3 July 2018 - VM entered a defamatory misrepresentation (the source isn't about Radziłów, doesn't speak of families, and covers why this false labeling occured). After a too-long discussion he did self-revert.

Diffs of previous relevant sanctions, if any

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

Alerted BLP, EE.

Additional comments by editor filing complaint

VM has also been showing up quite frequently at articles I've edited, including articles he's never edited, and his main contribution has been reverting - see editor interaction tool with 1 March 2018 start date.

There are also issues with misrepresenting Polish language sources (general stmts on Jews in an area => specific Jews, specific Jews => general stmts on Jews), which I did not present, but diffs are available (requires reading the Polish).Icewhiz (talk) 06:40, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

How about assessing who is right and who is wrong here? I have not engaged in personal attacks, I have been removing outright WP:HOAX material - e.g. at Stawiski and Radziłów (in both of which Polish pogroms against Jews morphed into Jews persecuting Poles and Germans massacring Jews with no Polish involvement). And I have been adding well sourced content to several articles.Icewhiz (talk) 17:55, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

I strongly support better sourcing standards. I have taken several sources to RSN in this topic area in the past few months, however RSN is somewhat "dead" in terms if uninvolved editors of late - there is little outside input. In regards to Polish language sources, while there are some top notch sources there are political influence problems pre 1989 and post 2006 (and legal issues post 2018) - as a search for "memory politics"+IPN in relevant journals readily shows. The more notable authors tend to publish English language journal articles in leading journals. There have also been several instances in which non-English sources have been misrepresented - including cases in which the source said the opposite of what it was sourcing - this was at RSN (). Few editors will fully verify + vet credentials of non-English sources (when the credentials are not in English).Icewhiz (talk) 07:52, 6 July 2018 (UTC)

Finally I apologize for any offense I may have cause, and for some TP threads devolving into TLDR walls of text.Icewhiz (talk) 07:52, 6 July 2018 (UTC)

@GoldenRing: - the sourcing restriction would do the topic good. There are however very limited situations (e.g. investigations from the past 5 years, other recent material) where news orgs are relevant sources. Also 1RR (see Koniuchy massacre and the mess there) would lead to more discussion and less edit warring.Icewhiz (talk) 12:51, 6 July 2018 (UTC)

Notification of the user against whom enforcement is requested

notified

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

Lol. Obvious "revenge report". Did I mention Icewhiz has a WP:BATTLEGROUND problem?

Since April of this year - in the last three months, there has been a total of ELEVEN WP:AE reports in this topic area. For comparison, between April 2015 and April 2018 there have been FIVE total reports in this topic area. This means that regarding Eastern Europe, there have been twice as many reports in last 3 months as there have been in the preceding 3 years! Something's obviously not working. Guess what the common factor is? That's right, all eleven of those reports had involvement from Icewhiz (6 as filer, 5 as subject, 1 as commentator casting WP:ASPERSIONS). Why is April 2018 the month in which the number of WP:AE reports in EE just exploded? Well, March 2018 is when Icewhiz began editing this topic area aggressively, quickly coming into conflict with every established editor in the topic area, from User:Malik Shabazz, to User:Piotrus, to User:E-960, to myself, to users which avoid WP:AE (such as Chumchum7 and Nihil novi). Why has he pursued this strategy? Because his behavior has been tolerated and rewarded.

And this is of course ignoring all the WP:AE reports that Icewhiz has been involved in other topic areas, such as Palestinian-Israeli topics. He uses WP:AE as a weapon. And admins here tolerate it.

Anyway. #1 not a PA. I sincerely couldn't understand what the user was saying. #2, #3 not an aspersion but explanation of policy to a user who showed up to support Icewhiz in an edit war and make WP:IJUSTLIKEIT votes in support of Icewhiz, without prior engagement on talk. #3 uhh, what?

Wait, wait, wait... #4 isn't even from this topic area. Icewhiz is just diff-stuffing.

6,7,8 - yes, comparing the main Polish anti-Nazi organization to the Nazi party is extremely biased not to mention offensive. Only reason I can think of why Icewhiz would make such a claim is that he was attempting to provoke other editors ... so that he could use the diffs at WP:AE. Hey! That's exactly what he's trying to do! Whoa! This is covered in MyMoloboaccount's report above.

9 Actually Icewhiz has already brought this one up at User:NeilN's talk page . NeilN already explained to him why this wasn't a problematic statement. So this is Icewhiz WP:FORUMSHOPPING for a sanction.

10 Same as #9, already discussed at NeilN's page. And yes, the source did have serious nonsense in it (it claimed that a local partisan commander and a major in Abwehr had the authority to negotiate over Poland's post war borders!)

11 Same as #9, already discussed at NeilN's page.

12 ... just ridiculous. Criticism and evaluation of a source is not an "attack".

13 Same as #12. The individual in question is actually a photographer.

14 Content dispute, discussed extensively on talk. After failing to obtain consensus for this material in early June, Icewhiz snuck back to the article about a month later and tried to reinsert his WP:OWN version again, without discussing on talk. I have no idea how there is suppose to be a BLP issue here. Icewhiz regularly makes false allegations along these lines. See for example this discussion where Icewhiz made particularly fantastical false claims of BLP vios. I didn't include that in my report above so as to keep it concise. But if you want to see WP:GAMEing in action, there you go.

15 This was shortly after Icewhiz was caught falsifying sources and using far-right anti-semitic sources on the Chodakiewicz BLP as described in my report above (though that happened earlier, it wasn't discovered till then).

16 Argument on User:Ealdgyth's talk page. What exactly is suppose to be actionable? There was no "HOAX". Icewhiz was just using hyperbolic language to attack and misrepresent other editors.

17 Again, not everything that Icewhiz disagrees with is a "HOAX". The fact that he chooses such language is a problem itself. This one actually demonstrates just how WP:BATTLEGROUND Icewhiz's approach is. See discussion on talk . Initially Icewhiz argued that Dov Levin was being misrepresented. I disagreed, because, well, he wasn't (certainly not a "HOAX"). Then Icewhiz said that Levin's statement does not specifically mention this locality. I say "hmm, that's a good point" and remove it myself. So, I agree with Icewhiz and do what he wants, yet... he still comes running here with that diff!!! That's some low shit. You can see him actually getting frustrated with me agreeing with him (because that makes it harder for him to try and use this diff to get me sanctioned! How dare I?!?) in this comment where he tries to keep arguing or pretends that I haven't just agreed with him, even after I have.

This report just shows how dysfunctional WP:AE has become in the past few months. You incentivize bad behavior, you get bad behavior.

(note: Icewhiz went back and changed his ordering and numbering of his diffs, so I don't know if my responses match up properly. I'm not going to waste my time chasing his numbering around)

Other WP:TENDENTIOUS and WP:BATTLEGROUND behavior by Icewhiz

User:Vanamonde93 mentioned lack of conciseness above, but honestly, if I were to bring every instance of Icewhiz's disruptive behavior to AE it would go on for pages. So, the following episode would be sufficient basis for a separate report on Icewhiz, but since here we are... It illustrates perfectly why it's impossible to have a normal content discussion with Icewhiz, how combative he is, how petty and antagonistic, and how he engages in WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT behavior which drives everyone who is forced to deal with him nuts.

• So after some back and forth the article on the Koniuchy massacre was fully protected by User:TonyBallioni after Icewhiz filed a bogus 3RR report which Tony closed. Notice how Icewhiz continues commenting AFTER his report was closed, how he wants to keep on arguing and fighting: . This is part of the WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT pattern that I'm referring to.
• After the full protection, User:Ealdgyth, who's been doing some clean up work at the article, lists some formatting and sourcing issues which need to be fixed that should be worked on . She specifically says: " let's work together to FIX the issues rather than playing blame-games. "
• I tell Ealdgyth that I'm fine with her editing through full-protection (she an admin) and try to help resolve the issues
• But then ooop! Here comes Icewhiz who rather than helping, immediately starts an argument and does EXACTLY what Ealdgyth asked editors not to do.
• Ealdgyth responds to Icewhiz and repeats that she's not interest in having the argument. I don't want to mis represent her (she can correct me if I'm wrong) so here a quote: "Let's NOT rehash who did what or why or when ... I don't care who did it. The thing is... it needs fixing and recriminations do not help with the collaborative nature of the project."
• Icewhiz responds by... starting ANOTHER argument, this time about whether or not he started an argument. Seriously. First start an argument and when someone objects, start a second argument about whether he started an argument! It's like a bad sitcom.
• This one's a mistake on my part - I let myself get drawn in for one comment (Icewhiz has a very annoying practice of calling his WP:OWN version "the stable version", even if there is absolutely no basis for that)
• Icewhiz keeps going
• I give up.

This is WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT to a tee. It creates an impossible situation. It's badgering. It's antagonistic. It's WP:BATTLEGROUND.Volunteer Marek (talk) 07:56, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

Text (far) in excess of 500 words removed as an admin action. Sandstein 20:07, 7 July 2018 (UTC)

I am curious if this time Sandstein will find time to review more then 3 diffs. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 08:21, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

The discussion here is actually serious and relatively topic (a bunch of topic bans for people - and I stress, plural - who mostly talk/revert rather then create new content is not a bad idea, unlike the same approach when applied to prolific content creators). That said, I'd personally suggest starting with 1RR rather then a topic ban, and escalate to topic ban if disruptive behavior continues. One final point, however, re: User:Paul Siebert, User:K.e.coffman - I'd be vary of restricting local (i.e. non-English) sources. There's a lot of research in this area that is done only by local (Polish, for example) historians. It is also against WP:NOENG. I'd strongly oppose any restriction on sources; current rules are good enough. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 10:27, 6 July 2018 (UTC)

@Paul Siebert: In theory, this sounds nice, but in practice, I am still skeptical. For example, vast majority of Polish historians publish in Polish, not English. This is because a) they often don't know English and b) there are relatively few English academic outlet interesting in Polish history. Google Scholar is pretty bad at indexing non-English citations, not to mention that a requirement to be cited means that you are discarding all new works (sometimes it takes years for a work to get cited after publication). Allowing a single user to veto is an invitation to censor perfectly reliable sources, for example pl:Biuletyn Instytutu Pamięci Narodowej is a popular science magazine that publishes a lot of quality historical research by reliable historians, but I know that there is a user active in this discussion who consider anything IPN-related to be biased due to his view that IPN is a political tool, and he will be happy to veto it. I refuse to allow a user with fringe views to effectively censor work of dozens of professional historians on their whim.--_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 18:40, 6 July 2018 (UTC)

• Please. Stop. Lying.
• Please stop making shit up.
• Please, come up with better excuses for reverts.
• Yes, yes, we all know you're very good at cherry picking the most negative aspects of this article's topic.
• How about you "focus" your RfC... so that it doesn't propose one thing, and then tries to sneak in another?
• And once again you're borderline violating BLP by trying to smear a prominent historian... At least this time you're not misrepresenting sources and trying to use anti-semitic far right publications to make your attacks
• As for your clumsy attempt at an explanation ... bunkum!... YOU. DIDN'T. READ. WHAT. YOU. WERE. REVERTING. And your attempts to blatantly, um, present a false picture of your actions, right here and now, just makes your behavior worse!

Earlier examples:

• You've invented that part yourself and you're pretending not to understand the objection (WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT)... And that's on top of blatantly misrepresenting some sources (not to mention the fact that... you were just making shit up).
• There are also quotes and sources... which you appear to be purposefully ignoring
• Stop. Making. Stuff. Up.

Admin notifications:

This attitude isn't helpful or fun. François Robere (talk) 11:27, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

@Beyond My Ken: This isn't only a matter of group membership, it's also a matter of group dynamics. Some of the other editors are perfectly amiable to discussion and compromise, but when you have people like Bella or Marek around they tend to either disrupt the discussion or affect the rest of the group in ways that are counter-productive. We've already seen some progress since Bella was removed; I believe that if this AE request is accepted things will shift. François Robere (talk) 18:34, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

@GoldenRing: neither editor's conduct is egregiously awful unless you can tell which is right about the argument: With all due respect, this attitude is one of the reasons we keep finding ourselves in these discussions. When you allow an editor to act like Marek does because it's not "egregiously awful", you're guaranteeing a sour experience for the rest of us. I'm not here to spar with a guy who always assumes I'm lying, or to swallow insults from some virtual personality I never met and don't care to. I could just say "fuck it" and go about my merry business, but how would Wikipedia look then? How would it look if others quit? (Oh, wait - they do) This is a ridiculous standard for "civility" for a place that depends on people participating. If someone told your mother "Betty, I think you're making shit up, I don't like your excuses and you should really keep your grade-A junk to yourself" it would (I hope) upset you just a bit, but here? Here it's fine! François Robere (talk) 14:11, 6 July 2018 (UTC)

This entire situation has moved past ridiculousness into farce. This is very close to a zero-sum situation: either Volunteer Marek and MyMolobyAccount and friends are right, or Icewhiz and Francis Robere and friends are right. These can't both be the case at the same time. One of these two parties is distorting historical fact and using unreliable sources to do so, or misusing reliable sources, and somebody with authority needs to sort through all these claims and diffs and find out who is telling the truth and who is dissembling. It is no longer enough to punt, these need to be settled, or it's going to go on ad infinitum. It is not a matter of a mere content dispute, the very legitimacy of Wikipedia is at stake. We cannot allow our articles to be based on the misrepresentation of reliable sources or the use of unreliable sources, so which ever group is doing so needs to be stopped and shut down. Beyond My Ken (talk) 13:32, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

I endorse the direction pointed to by K. e. coffman and Paul Siebert, that adopting s strict sourcing rule for ARBEE would help tremendously. I still believe that topic bans for the more disruptive editors have a role to play right now, but their comments are useful for a long-term strategy. Beyond My Ken (talk) 04:24, 6 July 2018 (UTC)

BMK - feel free to take my source check here and figure out who added what to that article. It took me quite a while to do that and I was trying to model good editing behavior by not digging further to find blame. Ealdgyth - Talk 14:22, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

Echo BMK word by word.∯WBG^converse 14:24, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

Those diffs of Icewhizz' require rather an elastic interpretation of the policy ("personal attacks"—upon sources?). If this filing is deemed retaliatory, then, of course, there is only one immediate course of action to be taken here. —SerialNumber54129 ^{paranoia /cheap sh*t room} 15:39, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

User:My very best wishes: Regarding your comment, I think you made a mistake. Refering to a "green" statement Icewhiz made - which he did not actually make - he was quoting a Holocaust historian's assessment of the former literature. Icewhiz actually did not offer his own opinion (which is probably inline with Zimmerman's opinion - and differs from the quote of prior research) - he quoted a fairly respected scholar.... That's not POV pushing!--יניב הורון (Yaniv) (talk) 17:23, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

I really don't have enough knowledge of the topic to know who's right or wrong in the content dispute. Yes, it should be a long-term goal to figure that out, but its not going to be decided here. What is clear is Volunteer Marek's behavior is extremely disruptive. His constant personal attacks should result in sanctions. He also made unsupported claims of collusion among other editors.

His claims that another editor is making too many AE reports is laughable. Overall, Volunteer Marek makes more AE requests that any other single editor. When doing research on AE requests related to Donald Trump, we found that he was involved with 15 cases over the past two years and of those he filed 8, more than any other editor. Over the same two-year period Volunteer Marek filed 18 AE requests overall. In contrast Icewhiz filed only 11. Many of volunteer marek's requests are frivolous, with at least two one resulting in boomerangs, so there is actually a good case to be made to ban him from filing future AE requests.--Rusf10 (talk) 18:48, 5 July 2018 (UTC)
@Tryptofish: To be clear, I am not saying that filing 11 cases is okay or that the cases were justified. I was just pointing out the hypocrisy of Volunteer Marek.
@Volunteer Marek:How many sanctions have you ducked? You are not going to drag me into re-litigating the last request. And I don't believe there is any requirement for me to be involved to comment here. There were certainly a large number of people who were not involved who commented in the request you made against me, yet I didn't see you complaining then. Here is your boomerang warning. I was going off of analysis by another editor, maybe I missed something,@Lionelt: please correct me if I'm wrong. Volunteer Marek, you can't just cherry-pick data and focus on a brief three month period and predict the future based on that. Maybe Icewhiz has filed requests that are bad, but it does not excuse your behavior. Even if they haven't boomeranged a good number of the requests you filed resulted in no action meaning that they probably should not have been filed to begin with. The way you operate here is to throw out whatever allegations you can come up with and see what sticks, that to me is an abuse of the system and a waste of time. The reason you brought the request against me was primarily for a BLP violation which no one seemed to agree with.--Rusf10 (talk) 20:50, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

I had not planned to comment here, but the assertion that filing 18 AE requests is a problem, whereas filing "only 11" is not, seems to me to be rather creative quantitative reasoning. The link to the sandbox study is a link to something that reflects the problems with the AP2 topic area, and the data there should not be taken at face value. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:16, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

First of all, I agree with GoldenRing and NeilN suggestions, i.e. to request that in the subject area "Only high quality sources may be used... Anyone found to be misrepresenting a source...". This is main issue here, not the alleged incivility or whatever. But I do not think that only English-language sources can be requested. Doing so would be against the policy and beyond the mandate of this noticeboard. Yes, WP:MEDRS might be a good approximation, but it needs to be modified for the area of history.

Now, speaking about misrepresenting a source, there is an example of this by Icewhiz: (diff #10 in the previous request). Using this source to justify and promote the idea that the partisans of Home Army were just as dangerous to Jews as were the Nazis is an obvious misrepresentation of this source. In this example, Icewhiz selectively quotes whatever he likes, instead of reading and objectively summarizing the entire publication, just as he fights with historians and sources he does not like. Please see the comment by Nishidani in the previous request for more detail . Was VM engaged in such misrepresentations? No, I do not see it at all.My very best wishes (talk) 16:13, 6 July 2018 (UTC)

However, if admins do not want to look at the sources and their potential misrepresentations, I think they should simply close these two cases as "no action". Then it should be up to the sides of this case if they want to follow mediation or other peaceful WP:DR, or they want to submit a case to Arbcom. But I think that must be their choice. My very best wishes (talk) 14:27, 7 July 2018 (UTC)

The recent AE filings have brought to the surface problematic sourcing and material in articles touching on Polish-Jewish relations during WW2. Some examples:

• A fringe author Mark Paul was widely used in these articles — and defended by some editors. Paul puts forth a theory that Jews in the Soviet zone of occupation "collaborated" with Nazi Germany in 1939-41, that is before these areas were occupied by Germany; please see: Paul's thesis. There's on-going support for this position here on Wikipedia; see bottom of diff: (courtesy ping Tatzref).
• Undertones of "Judeo-Bolshevism" canard were / are present. For example, in the context of the murderous policies that Nazi Germany was about to unleash on the Polish and Soviet Jews, "in the personnel of the Soviet security police at the time, the high percentage of Jews was striking" reads uncomfortably close to Nazi propaganda. See also: "Juxtaposition" (TP discussion).
• Here's an example of where the content was deemed to be "anti-semitic propaganda" by Sandstein: AE. Etc.

If I were to pinpoint where the issues exists in Wikipedia articles, it would be the use of shoddy sources and inappropriate synthesis, resulting in distorted content such as the above. I agree that some articles (i.e. Home Army) are a can of worms due to evolving historiography and conflicting academic positions, as GoldenRing points out. However, the murder of Jews during the early months of Barbarossa is not such an area. The scholarship is clear and unambiguous.

• My suggestion would be to adopt the sourcing restriction across the ARBEE area: . That would reduce the amount of conflict and improve the quality of articles.
• An alternative is, perhaps, to have a new ArbCom case to examine the use of sources and editor behaviour. A more in-depth exploration of the topic area may be beneficial.

K.e.coffman (talk) 00:14, 6 July 2018 (UTC)

We are in a very difficult position due to current profound disagreements between governments and academic schools of thought on this topic. ]. This, for instance is the latest Yad Vashem statement. The project can only record what is stable and consensual in the academic real world. I would support K.e.coffmans assertion that "Shoddy sources and inappropriate synthesis" being a major factor in our present trouble. I would support K.e's second proposal in the longer term, and in the meantime adopt his first proposal. Irondome (talk) 00:56, 6 July 2018 (UTC)

I support what Volunteer Marek wrote. It's time for admins, Sandstein in particular, to stop sheltering Icewhiz and encouraging his behavior. On 30 May, I warned Icewhiz about his disruptive behavior. He e-mailed Sandstein, complaining that I had violated a topic ban two weeks before the topic ban had been imposed. Even more outrageously, Sandstein accepted his accusations at face value. Either Sandstein is a moron or an idiot, but he has no business being an administrator, certainly not passing judgment on those with whom Icewhiz battles. — Malik Shabazz ^Talk/_Stalk 01:25, 6 July 2018 (UTC)

These two AE requests actually reflect a broader collision, and this collision is a clash between local nationalistic narratives in the areas that are not in the scope of a broader scientific community. In a situation when high quality sources describing these events are scarce, local writers, journalists or fringe theorists privatised this area and advocate a very specific point of view that support one or another nationalistic myth. Accordingly, some users non-critically choose the sources advocating one or another myth, and in that situation "a plague on both your houses" seems a very reasonable approach.

In this battle of nationalistic narratives, poor, questionable and obscure sources become an essential tool. Accordingly, instead of banning certain users, which inevitably is a temporary solution, it would be more productive to apply more strict rule for source selection. That would resolve not only this particular problem, but many problems in this area. I think, Wikipedia in general will benefit if we decide that the articles describing historical events that are covered with ARBEE should be written primarily based on peer-reviewed sources written in English, because western authors are more neutral when they write about EE, and majority of good EE historians either publish their works in the West, or their books or articles are being cited by western peers. In contrast, questionable and poor quality local sources are being essentially ignored in the West. By applying more strict rules in the EE area, we can eliminate the ground for many conflicts.

Possible rules may be as follows:

1. English peer-reviewed sources published by reputable western publishers are accepted as the sources. The sources that have been cited at least 5-10 times, according to Google scholar are accepted without reservations.
2. Monographs and books written in English are acceptable without reservations if they have been cited or if positive reviews on these books are found in Jstor or similar databases.
3. The sources written by local authors are acceptable if they have been cited according to google scholar (1-2 citations by foreign authors, excluding self-citations, should be enough)
4. If other works authored by some local author have been cited more than 10 times, the writing of this authors in local peer-reviewed journals or books published by local publishers are also acceptable. The below example demonstrates that many EE authors can be easily screened out by applying this filter.
5. Other local sources are acceptable only if a consensus is achieved between users about that. In that case, any user has a right of veto.
6. Finally, more strict sanctions should be applied for misinterpretation of sources. The user who has committed more than 2 serious misinterpretations may be topic banned.

I realise that these rules may lead to deletion of some articles. However, I don't think it is a big problem, because if no good quality sources exists about some topic, Wikipedia as whole will benefit from deletion of such an article: it is better not to have an article at all than to have an article written based on some obscure writings.

I think we can easily clean Wikipedia from a significant amount of questionable content if we take these measures in the ARBEE area. For example, such a "renown" author as Volodymyr Viatrovych (one of major nationalistic historians in Ukraine) was cited in the West just 3-4 times, some of citations contain a serious criticism. That means, this "scholar" essentially is not existing for international community, however, his writings fit Wikipeda's sources policy. By applying the procedure proposed above, we can easily get rid of most of highly questionable claims that can be found in Viatrovich's books and decrease tensions around many EE related articles. I am pretty sure the same will work for the articles about Polish, Lithuanian, Russian etc history. --Paul Siebert (talk) 03:18, 6 July 2018 (UTC)

@Seraphim System. I was probably not clear enough, but my I did not propose to delete any article. My proposal just sets more strict standards for sources, and that looks pretty reasonable in the areas where passions are high. If you read carefully what I wrote, you probably noticed that foreign sources are allowed if they appear in google scholar source and have been cited by good quality sources. As a rule, good foreign authors meet these criteria quite well. With regard to your "there is no source that is so reliable that it can't be misused by an editor who wants to misuse it", I respectfully disagree. If these two users were acting in bad faith, they must be banned. However, since that haven't been done yet (and I hope that will never happen), we should assume their good faith, which means there was some objective reason behind this conflict. In my opinion, if some sources are excluded, the ground for a conflict will be eliminated, at least partially. Good quality sources are less provocative, they leave less freedom of manouevre for misinterpetations, and are less likely to cause hot debates.--Paul Siebert (talk) 14:10, 6 July 2018 (UTC)

@Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus, please, do not misinterpret my words. I did not propose a global ban of non-English sources, I just propose more strict procedure for its selection. An additional argument in support of that is as follows: a major part of the dispute is about misinterpretation of sources, and such a dispute is much easier to resolve when all parties have an access to the source in question and they have common tools for their evaluation. If the source is published in peer-reviewed journals, or the English review on that book exists, that provides us with an additional information to make a judgement. However, if one party can read Polish (Russian, Ukrainian, no matter), but another party can not, and it cannot independently evaluate a quality of this source (sometimes, it is not possible to tell if some EE publisher or journal is trustworthy), a situation is somewhat unbalanced: one party has to trust to another party about reliability the information taken from this source and accuracy of its interpretation. If more strict procedure is applied (see above), this problem will be essentially eliminated. By the way, good EE writers are now a part of an international community: they publish their works in international journals, they are being cited by their peers, and all of that is easy to see. However, if some EE author has no articles published in the West, that might be an indication of some problem with their reliability. Sometimes, it would be better to avoid writing something in Wikipedia than to write questionable things.--Paul Siebert (talk) 15:14, 6 July 2018 (UTC)

@Nug. I am very disappointed with this your post. You perfectly know who I am, and how I am selecting the sources, which means you should be aware that the procedure for source selection I propose here is exactly the same procedure as I myself am following. I never (with, probably very rare exceptions) use Russian sources (I have no idea why do you focus on Russian sources: do you mean I am Russian?), and I am always trying to avoid the sources that do not meet the criteria I outlined here. Which means not only I have really thought this proposal through, I demonstrated that it works perfectly, at least, for me.

Secondly, you are right, I returned after a 5 year break, and that gives me an ADVANTAGE: I perfectly remember the old WP:EEML story, and this your post reminds me old days when some members of that notorious email list demonstrated the same battleground behaviour that I am currently seeing in your post. I even found something new: nobody was accusing me in xenophobia 5 years ago, so my conclusion is that the situation is getting even worse. In connection to that, I recommend Sandstein , GoldenRing, Awilley, Drmies and other admins who are analysing this case to re-read that old EEML story and check the history of some users who are commenting here under new names, because some of them have more dense personal connections to this story than it seems, which means their opinia may be more partisan than neutral, and should be treated accordingly.--Paul Siebert (talk) 02:20, 7 July 2018 (UTC)

@power~enwiki, it was not my intention to remind people the names of ex-EEML members. I personally see absolutely no problem in VM, Piotrus or Molobo's behaviour, and I didn't plan to resurrect the EEML story. However, the recent Nug's post, which was factually incorrect and redundantly aggressive, demonstrated that not all ex-EEML members abandoned their old style behaviour. The original Nug's name was Martintg (talk · contribs), and, as far as I know, five ex-EEML members voiced their opinion here.--Paul Siebert (talk) 06:04, 7 July 2018 (UTC)

@Paul Siebert:'s proposal is interesting, though a bit detailed. It's probably how WP should be handling all topics that require primarily scholarly research. In spirit, it's essentially the same approach as WP:MEDRS, just different as to exact details. I've long thought that MEDRS's model should be generalized at least to all of the sciences. It might be interesting to see if a limited-time (1 year? 3?) ArbCom editing restriction in this particular topic proved that a stricter sourcing approach was tolerable to the community and beneficial (both in output quality and in a lower conflict level) at a socio-historical academic topic, too. I guess this would require a motion at WP:ARCA.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:24, 6 July 2018 (UTC)

As to Paul Sieberts statement, I have to strongly disagree. We can't change overnight rules on reliable sources that were made in different process and required extensive discussion. Some of the topics of Wikipedia aren't researched in the West at all, others have little coverage.As such information about these will be only found in local reliable sources, however still fulfilling WP:RS criteria. For example information about Wehrmacht war crimes in 1939 Poland is mostly covered by scholarly publications in Poland and there is little information about them in Western sources when it comes to details.Likewise a lot of information about atrocities and resistance in communist occupied Europe will be only found in local sources that of course need to fulfill WP:RS criteria.Again, research or coverage is often scarce in Western literature. We have WP:RS as guidance and for example to ban reputable, scholarly sources if they weren't discussed by Western publications seems too much to me like suble historic colonialist attitude.Also such decision would effect such wide range of articles that much wider discussion than here would be needed to enact such policy.As Wikipedia is a global project, we can't restrict our sourcing to just sources in Anglosphere world. However I think one of the problems is using authors that have been widely criticized as having bias or have been controversial. If a view has been widely seen as controversial and is subject to debate, it should be restricted to the author and not be a basis for writing the whole article from such point of view.I would also be fine with restrictions demanding only high quality sources may be used, specifically peer-reviewed scholarly journals and academically focused books by reputable publishers or that anyone found to be misrepresenting a source, either in the article or on the talk page, will be subject to escalating topic bans.--MyMoloboaccount (talk) 06:39, 6 July 2018 (UTC)

Regarding the above proposal, I think the deletion of articles where foreign language sources are needed to establish notability would be a problem. Instituting this kind of restriction of sources is not going to be a substitute for addressing behavioral problems. There is no source that is so reliable that it can't be misused by an editor who wants to misuse it. Consulting multiple sources, and varying the sources used, so the article doesn't become too locked into a single narrative is crucial, as is recognizing where the author is developing original ideas the acceptance of which needs to be checked in other secondary sources (easy to spot as it usually follows the format of "The past scholars were wrong. What they didn't understand was x. I propose ....") The main problem presented by foreign language sources is that they can't be verified by other editors. Seraphim System ^(talk) 12:49, 6 July 2018 (UTC)

@Paul Siebert: Bad faith is a bit stronger than what I intended - editors don't need to be acting in bad faith for the types of sourcing issues raised in this discussion to persist. We've seen discussion here of cherry-picking facts which can often misrepresent or subtlely distort the source - this is probably one of the most common sources of sourcing disagreements, and I don't think bad faith needs to be assumed. It is more often non-neutral editing, which doesn't have to be bad faith to create the types of issues we are seeing here. But, I also absolutely agree that using stronger sources will improve the discussion and be more persuasive and that editors should be willing to do this voluntarily to at least try to achieve a consensus. Its fairly disheartening that may need to be formalized at ARCA, when reasonable editors could mutually agree to implement without being forced to.Seraphim System ^(talk) 15:42, 6 July 2018 (UTC)

To be honest, the idea of excluding foreign language sources seems somewhat xenophobic. Surely we don't want to go down that path. Given that many WW2 articles use Russian language sources, I don't think Paul Siebert has really thought this proposal through. Paul has just recently returned to Wikipedia after a five year break in April 2018, I'm not sure how much weight should be given to his statement, as it seems more about perpetuating his past battleground grievances rather than any real new insight on the present situation.

@Paul Seibert, EEML was nearly ten years ago and that caravan has long moved on, it had nothing what so ever to do with misrepresenting sources and their reliability. After an absence of five years, what is one to think of an editor who immediately wades into conflict,,, against their old opponents within the last two months of their return? Not my idea of a clean start. --Nug (talk) 04:22, 7 July 2018 (UTC)

One could accuse Volunteer Marek of many things, but misconstruing sources or use of unreliable sources definitely is not one of them. Note that IceWhiz has filed this case against VM two days after a similar case was filed against himself. That smacks of a classic battleground tactic on the part of IceWhiz. I think WP:BOOMERANG applies here. --Nug (talk) 01:24, 7 July 2018 (UTC)

I agree with various editors (including GoldenRing) that this dispute is not suited to WP:AE. I recommend referring this to WP:MEDCOM to attempt to determine which references are reliable on the various disputed articles, with an explicit note that discretionary TBANs of either Volunteer Marek or Icewhiz from ARBEE (excluding MEDCOM proceedings) are permitted to any admin that feels it necessary; I don't believe they are necessary now but feel there is consensus to allow any admin to apply such a TBAN without appeals/drama if these editors continue to be disruptive (though both editors should be allowed to participate in any MEDCOM proceedings). power~enwiki (π, ν) 04:05, 7 July 2018 (UTC)

Separately: Volunteer Marek is the subject of the largest volume of spurious complaints at administrative noticeboards of any editor, and he should not be punished for that. power~enwiki (π, ν) 04:07, 7 July 2018 (UTC)

As EEML has come up: I believe MyMoloboaccount, Piotrus, and Volunteer Marek were parties to that case, and no other editors who have commented here. I don't believe anything beyond that statement is relevant here; while comments here may be biased, the concerns about article content are largely matters of fact. Those facts can be determined by neutral parties without concern as-to any bias of the participating editors. power~enwiki (π, ν) 04:42, 7 July 2018 (UTC)

After making yet another effort to understand this mess, I have to agree with GoldenRing that understanding who is being disruptive requires understanding who is wrong or right with respect to the source material. I do not believe AE is equipped to handle that, and I do not think we would be serving the encyclopedia if we t-ban both parties simply because we do not have the time and knowledge to discover who is in the right. Aside from being unfair and potentially counter-productive in this case, such a sanction would have the effect of provoking disruption in a number of other areas, because there is no shortage of editors (well, accounts, anyway) who would be willing to face a t-ban if their "opponents" also received one. I acknowledge that I recently recommended a "plague on both your houses approach", but that was in a case where the disagreements did not involve subtle points in non-English sources, and the attitude problems were much worse. My advice at this point would be to kick this to ARBCOM, much as I hate to say so. Vanamonde (talk) 09:59, 7 July 2018 (UTC)

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

• As has been pointed out by various editors, and as is apparent from the many recent AE requests about it, the history of Poland in World War II has become a WP:BATTLEGROUND, and the diffs provided by both parties as well as by François Robere indicate that both Volunteer Marek and Icewhiz have been engaging in battleground-like conduct. Unsubtle instruments seem to be needed. I'd start off with a topic ban of Volunteer Marek and Icewhiz. Sandstein 16:24, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

• Taking into consideration on the discussion below, I am imposing three-month topic bans on both Icewhiz and Volunteer Marek in response to the WP:BATTLEGROUND editing both have exhibited as per the diffs mentioned above. All other editors are encouraged to continue to resolve content disputes (which we at AE can't and won't do for you) in a civil and collegial manner. Sandstein 20:20, 7 July 2018 (UTC)

• Because it will take a great deal of time and effort to figure out who's right or wrong or neither here, I'd support a short-ish (3 month?) topic ban from the area for both VM and Icewhiz (per Sandstein), and strongly encourage both to agree to a voluntary interaction ban between themselves (in the sense they should be aware to avoid interacting like this with each other but shouldn't have to worry about tripping up over each other as strong ibans usually require), and only if this ends up here again, we're not going to take that constant amount of discourse between the two lightly. --Masem (t) 16:38, 5 July 2018 (UTC)
• I've spent somewhere between four and five hours so far reading through talk page discussions and I'm no closer to having a handle on this. My problem in approaching this is that neither editor's conduct is egregiously awful unless you can tell which is right about the argument. They argue back and forwards a lot over which sources are reliable, and which sources are primary, and which are secondary, and which should be preferred, and which translation of foreign sources should be preferred. If one is clearly right about the sources and one is clearly wrong, then the one who is wrong is being tendentious. I doubt that any uninvolved admin is going to have a sufficient view of this subject to be able to judge which is right, and I also think it entirely possible that the historiography is disputed in the RS and so each is coming from a particular perspective that is supported by a "camp" of academics. This is also quite possibly related to the current arbitration case (German War Effort) which likewise is an area where changing historiography causes sharp divisions over which sources should be considered reliable. I'll keep digging around this, and it's possible that another admin will come to firmer conclusions than anyone who's commented so far, but if not then we have two possibilities: We could declare "a plague on both your houses" and ban them both; this is giving up but might be the only way we can prevent disruption in this forum. Or we ask the committee to open a full case to investigate something which is too complex for this forum to handle adequately. GoldenRing (talk) 19:26, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

• I agree with this assessment. Option two would be a good approach as well, but I suspect that option one, which I proposed above, leads to roughly the same outcome for a fraction of volunteer time absorbed. Sandstein 20:12, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

• I'm still plowing through this, but have some initial thoughts. If uninvolved editors want a clearish introduction to what it's all about, the history of "Polish death camp" controversy starting on January 29 and extending a week or two into February gives you something of a flavour of it. My initial inclination is to impose across the whole subject of the holocaust in Poland broadly construed similar restrictions to those User:NeilN has applied to Collaboration in German-occupied Poland, namely: Only high quality sources may be used, specifically peer-reviewed scholarly journals and academically focused books by reputable publishers. Anyone found to be misrepresenting a source, either in the article or on the talk page, will be subject to escalating topic bans, and are subject to discretionary sanctions while editing this page. There is far too much use of news sources for a subject which (as far as I can tell, anyway) has a reasonably developed academic literature. I'm a bit ambivalent about including NeilN's preference for English-language sources, recognizing that there is a sharp difference of perspective between Polish sources and Western ones. @Icewhiz and Volunteer Marek: and any uninvolved admins who happen by, I'd value your thoughts on this. GoldenRing (talk) 12:31, 6 July 2018 (UTC)

• @GoldenRing: That clause was a watered down version of Sandstein's suggestion to limit source-evaluation to English-language academic sources only. He correctly noted that most admins here can't read Polish when the issue of source misrepresentation comes up. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 13:17, 6 July 2018 (UTC)

• Just now starting to dig into this. NeilN, do you have any feedback on how this worked? (saying English sources are preferred when available and equal quality and relevance?) ~Awilley (talk) 18:56, 6 July 2018 (UTC)
• @NeilN: I'm aware of the difficulties non-English-language sources create for enforcement, but in this case it does seem that Polish historians take a significantly different view of history to others. I'm worried that by encouraging the deprecation of Polish sources, we are excluding a significant POV from the articles. Your thoughts?
  @Paul Siebert: I think most of us here are pretty well aware of EEML, thanks. As for your proposed restrictions, I think the concept has merit but experience has shown that such restrictions need to be as straightforward as possible to make enforcement feasible, and to discourage lawyering. GoldenRing (talk) 08:13, 7 July 2018 (UTC)

• I kinda want to stay out of this, for a couple of reasons. First of all, VM is a prolific editor and there's too much to dig through for this admin. Second, I've blocked Marek before, for personal attacks--but I will note that I have not seen reason since then to even consider blocking. Yes, he has feisty rhetoric (and I can't stand the Whole. Thing. Where. You. Do. This, though I'm sure he's not the only one), but again, I have not seen personal attacks. The whole area is already a battleground, so that some editors (on both sides! haha) have some measure of battleground isn't unexpected. But I have not yet seen that VM ever misconstrues evidence or uses unreliable sources, and that is hugely important here. I cannot say the same for Icewhiz because I just don't know them well enough, though I have some doubts. Drmies (talk) 20:41, 5 July 2018 (UTC)
• Note that I have blocked Malik Shabbaz for 31 hours for personal attacks made on this noticeboard, after giving them a chance to strike it themselves. GoldenRing (talk) 11:52, 6 July 2018 (UTC)
• Whatever the outcome of this, a reminder that brevity is a virtue is also in order. There are word limits for a reason. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 18:33, 7 July 2018 (UTC)

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

User who is submitting this request for enforcement

Nauriya (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) 22:35, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

User against whom enforcement is requested

Adamgerber80 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

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

Sanction or remedy to be enforced

Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/India-Pakistan#Standard_discretionary_sanctions :

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

1. 03/07/2018 Reverted a vandal-undoing IP with a misleading edit summary.

Diffs of previous relevant sanctions, if any

1. A stray IP vandalized Regional power by erasing a longstanding sourced content.
2. Another IP then came along and undid that vandalism.
3. But then Adamgerber80 steps in to revert the vandalism-undoing IP with the misleading edit summary of "Back to sourced version.
4. This is shocking. Everyone can see that this was a misleading edit summary because in the edit Adamgerber80 actually removed longstanding sourced content. Since this edit involved erasing Pakistan's name from the list of regional powers in South Asia, this comes under the purview of ]. Adamgerber80 made no sign of accepting this as a "mistake", no self-revert was made and the edit war was continued by others soon after. Thus, I believe this is a case of WP:TE One diff may not be deserve a sanction but again this user is not a newbie making first timer mistakes that we just pass over it.
5. Not sure how its relevant, but displaying the block log just in case its needed.
6. @Sdmarathe, the IP on History of Gilgit Baltistan shows geolocation in Pakistan. You have provided a link to Wiki-explorer's long term abuse case but all of their IPs have geolocation in India. So you are incorrect when you say Adamgerber80 was reverting a Wikiexplorer sock. It was an edit war over content.

Notification of the user against whom enforcement is requested

Notified

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

This seems to be a misrepresentation of the series events of not an assumption of WP:AGF. First, I have numerous (greater than 10 edits) on Regional power going all the way back to 10 September 2017. Also, I have been extremely active on the article talk page regarding discussions of multiple countries (nothing to do with Pakistan's inclusion or exclusion). Yes, that edit was a mistake on my part but not out of malice. If you look carefully, there is another editor who edits (June 28) between the vandal IP edit (June 28) and the restoration of the content by the other IP (July 3). On a page, which sees a high degree of vandalism, I reverted back to an edit by a registered editor. This is what I tend to do and add a summary like back to good version or sourced version. Yes, I should have paid more attention to the content but the gap of days between those edits might have caused me to make a mistake. In my defense, when you have more than 2000 pages on your watchlist with a limited time, one can make a human mistake. Now, I have not edited since then to be able to rectify my mistake which I would not have, given no one notified me including the person who filed this WP:ARE. I do see now that another editor did revert me and there is some discussion regarding that on the article talk page which I will join in. If some admins do feel that I have a partisan view of this (give my nationality), like this editor here, then please feel free to go through my edits(,, , ). I have watched over numerous South-Asian military related pages (which is my interest) and have not shown any bias against anyone. On the contrary, I overlook many pages of Pakistani Armed Forces and have reverted vandalism on them multiple times. If it matters, please free to have a look at my block-log which was sometime ago (year 2016) because of a WP:COPYVIO and little understanding of policies. The blocking admin can testify to the fact that I have been very careful since then and even helped her with other WP:COPYVIO issues. Just as a final note, here I am not accusing anyone, but merely making an observation. The filing editor and I have no previous interaction whatsoever. Our intersect of pages is extremely limited and moreover the editor has no contributions on Regional power even now. In a different world, an editor would revert your edit and ask you to explain your edit if they are unfamiliar with you. Here the editor is not even involved on that page and yet files a complaint here based on another editors edit comment. This leads me to believe that there is something more to this complaint then meets the eye. Also, I am happy to have the CU check if the original vandal IP was me in disguise. Happy to answer any more questions or concerns anybody might have. Adamgerber80 (talk) 20:40, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

To illustrate my point further, I present exhibit A. An unrelated incident which happened with me soon after this WP:ARE was filed. @KNHaw: reverted my vandalism reversal on Dawood Ibrahim and left me a note at User_talk:Adamgerber80#July_2018. When I engaged him, he realized his mistake and self reverted. His first instinct was to leave me a warning on my page and my first instinct was to engage them which seemed like an honest mistake, not to report each other to WP:AE. KNHaw is in a very similar position with experience and having no interaction or intersection with me whatsoever. @KNHaw: Sorry for using that incident as an exhibit, this was not to report you or accuse you but simply show that we are all indeed human and make genuine mistakes. In addition, having some time looking around, I have a strong suspicion that this editor filed this WP:ARE at behest of other editor(s) who are unable to do so because of policy reasons. In saying so, I do "not" wish to cause a WP:BOOMERANG but illustrate a concern I had raised sometime earlier at an admin's page User_talk:Vanamonde93#Proxy_war_brewing. I do "not" wish to point fingers or file a formal complaint because I am honestly tired of following the numerous forum discussions that have occurred in the last few months. Even currently if you have look at Regional power has turned into a WP:BATTLEGROUND with many editors (including the complaint filer who has not edited the page but somehow discovered this edit) having suddenly turned up there with no prior history of editing the page. Adamgerber80 (talk) 01:06, 6 July 2018 (UTC)

Replying to the question raised (based on looking at the history), there is a registered editor whose edit 4 mins later and inadvertently masks the first vandal IPs edit (). This is probably what did me in because when the vandal undoing IP came in 5 days later, I went back to the most stable version which I wrongfully assumed was this one. I am a little disconcerted with the continued assumption of bad faith in both filing this ARE and the current comments (,) partly because of my nationality. I have watched the page for some time (8-9 months), reverted vandalism on it multiple times, and even discussed inclusion and exclusion of countries (Nigeria, Egypt, Kazakhstan, others). None of these edits on that page even once had anything to with India or Pakistan. If I had an "agenda" to fulfill then I would have showed up there pushing for my supposed POV (Talk:Regional power is a great testament of it). I still fail to understand what was the motive to file this ARE from a then uninvolved experienced editor, having never interacted with me even before they requested a clarification from me. Nor did any of the other editors who watched over the page, notified me of my error (I assume they were done in by the reason as me). If they had found my clarification unsatisfactory then the filing of this ARE would have seemed justified (in my mind). Another note, my edit was "not" a content dispute and there was "no" content dispute nor has this point been up for debate when I edited the page. Lastly, I will be offline and might not be able to reply for the next 48-72 hours.

From an uninvolved standpoint, i'd say Hanlon's Razor applies. Why suspect malice when a mistake suffices to explain the facts presented? Intervening good faith anons have confused me more than once. Errare humanum est. A (lifted) block in 2016 has no bearing on this case. Kleuske (talk) 20:16, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

I do have some difficulty understanding why Adamgerber80, who says they have been active on Regional power since 2017, did not revert the first IP which did the vandalism instead of the second IP which reverted the vandalism. The vandalism in which Pakistan's name was removed from the list by the IP took place on 28 June. Another IP corrected it on 3 July. Where was Adamgerber80 during those 5 days? His edit history shows he was active in those five days. So why did he not revert the vandal IP? Why did he only step in to revert the vandalism-undoing IP?

Of course, Adamgerber80 can be given the benefit of the doubt. So I think this incident can be passed over Nauriya, especially in light of Adamgerber80's retrospective talkpage comment here. But what can't be passed over is the behavior of User:Orientls on that same article.

The real problem on Regional power is this edit by Orientls. In it, Orientls basically blanked references added by Mar4d, as well as any old content about Pakistan's status as a regional power, without even providing an edit summary for explanation. This is a vandal as well as tendentious edit.

Nor has Orientls been active on the article's talkpage nor had any activity on that article before that. What is interesting is that Orientls is an account which has only made 182 edits in the past 4 years which raises socking and sleeper account questions.

His edit history also looks aggressive. See for example his aggressive/incivil comment to Joshua Jonathan here and his condescending demands (to which he has no right anyway) on TurboCop's talkpage here.

I would recommend no action, besides perhaps a mild warning, for Adamgerber80. The real problem is Orientls. He is the one admins will need to deal with.--NadirAli نادر علی (talk) 03:08, 6 July 2018 (UTC)

Sdmarathe, I looked at the thread you linked and wasn't aware of it until you pointed it out. Not being prior aware of it means I did not participate in it. You shouldn't accuse me like that unless you can point out which one of those people is me.--NadirAli نادر علی (talk) 20:51, 6 July 2018 (UTC)

@NadirAli: I haven't got time to look into this in any sort of detail, but if you believe that action against Orientls is needed it will likely be much better to file a separate enforcement action request regarding them as they are neither the filer nor the subject of this request. Thryduulf (talk) 10:58, 6 July 2018 (UTC)

Filer never edited this board before or participated in the discussion or the article and has botched a number of edits while he was filing this report.

This is a simple content dispute that has been inflamed by a number of editors preparing for tag team edit warring on an online forum, dedicated towards propaganda and bias.

Mar4d used the term "vandalism" for describing a good faith edit.

NadirAli is distracting from one-side and blaming other side for their completely constructive edits and calling them a "vandal", "socking", "sleeper" and misrepresenting a valid concern as "condescending demands". @GoldenRing: have a look at the conduct of NadirAli here, he is again trying to deceive others for clearing editors of one side by engaging in gross misrepresentation, personal attacks and battleground mentality. Also have a look at his recent topic ban violation while he was engaging in same battleground mentality as evidenced by the edit summary he used.

I am surprised by the actions of Nauriya, Mar4d and NadirAli that they are deliberately referring a good faith and potentially constructive edit as "vandalism" which strikes me as battleground mentality.

NadirAli's misrepresentations are large in quantity. He mentions that Adamgerber80 restored to a "vandalized" version of the page that removed Pakistan. If the NadirAli bothered to look into the diffs, he would realize that the "longstanding" version in fact DOES NOT LIST PAKISTAN as a regional power. Please avoid spreading falsehood NadirAli. The diffs are there for everyone to see :) Sdmarathe (talk) 16:22, 6 July 2018 (UTC)

Masem, another thing I'd like to point out is that these certain users misrepresent evidence by making mole out of hill. Adamgerber80 and everyone else on History of Gilgit-Baltistan was actually reverting an active LTA. These certain users attempts to deceive others to get their opponents sanctioned anyhow, and that is the biggest reason behind this whole mess as evident by this original report as well as the report below. Neither are actionable, however they never really take rest from throwing mud into the wall after already knowing that it is not going to stick. Sdmarathe (talk) 16:18, 7 July 2018 (UTC)

Confirmed sockpuppet's comments removed, please see Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/FreeatlastChitchat Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 12:34, 7 July 2018 (UTC) 2Joules (talk) 08:12, 7 July 2018 (UTC)

I cannot recall previous interactions with the filer, but I've been on the periphery of this conflict for a while, and am acquainted with the other protagonists. Adamgerber generally keeps their head down and edits with due regard for source material and consensus, rather than blindly warring over content they dislike. In this particular instance, they have stated that the first revert was a mistake (an easy one to make) and I'm inclined to take that at face value. I would not recommend action here. All the rest of you, meanwhile, please go and read WP:NOTVAND. Calling people vandals when they aren't can get you blocked. Vanamonde (talk) 11:15, 7 July 2018 (UTC)

I will just make an exception to Sdmarathe's claim regarding the longstanding version. As was noted in the section below regarding WP:TAGTEAM, the content which got removed has been present in the article along with sources for several years . Please don't attempt to mislead fellow editors on something as obvious and easy to verify. Mar4d (talk) 11:18, 7 July 2018 (UTC)

The more I am reading the article histories the more I believe the former AE case did not successfully deal with all the problem editors. Thats why the nationalistic war has, instead of becoming history, has carried on to the remaining editors who escaped the mass topic ban. I think we can add RaviC and Razer2115 to the list of problem editors. RaviC's editing is hostile and he has a habit of reverting others, who are adding non-contentious citations, with vague edit summaries claiming "POV", just like My Lord. Rzvas does the same. The modus operandi of stonewalling is alike. Similar story with Razer2115 who ironically supported the same users at ARCA who he opposed at ARE with aspersions.

Adamgerber80 also seems to do edit wars, for example broke 3RR with 4 reverts here. In some of his edit summaries he claimed the IP was a block evading sock. No evidence was provided for this claim. He also edit warred quite a bit on Sindhudesh. — Preceding unsigned comment added by مھتاب احمد (talk • contribs)

• Masem Have you checked Adamgerber80's history of edit warring, he broke 3RR with 4 reverts here. He also edit warred on Sindhudesh. In some of his edit summaries he claimed the IP was a block evading sock. No evidence was provided at the time for this claim. No definite finding existed at the time to justify those reverts and edit summaries either. مھتاب احمد (talk) 14:18, 7 July 2018 (UTC)

• {{U}Masem}} Obvious vandalism? Really? I think thats just stretching it too far. It was a content dispute when you look back to when the constant reverting started on 29 April. Follow the series of reverts after that diff and you will see that it was not reverting blatant vandalism at all. It was participation in edit warring , (with users who were later topic banned), over a content dispute. And are you telling me that Adamgerber80 knew in April about IP socks from an off site forum's thread of July? Thats anachronism. And how does WP:AGF mean every IP should be treated as a sock? مھتاب احمد (talk) 16:27, 7 July 2018 (UTC)

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

• I cannot see how Adamgerber's actions given their history on the page in question and in relationship to actions on other pages could be seen as anything other than an AGF mistake - I know I've done similar when I see IP edits on my watchlist on articles that draw vandals, myself restoring the wrong version. If someone pointed out that they restored the wrong version, Adamgerber would have been able to rectify it under WP:3RRNO. Based on history of these other pages, I agree that the situation is similar to what Sdmarathe above describes: an off-site forum upset with how WP's handles Pakistan's status and fighting it with propaganda. I don't believe Nauriya here is coupled with that, nothing in their immediate history shows such problems, and in fact they seem well aware of the socking issue in the I/P topic area; this again to me seems like Nauriya may have been jumping the gun in making sure this off-site forum wasn't using a sock. In other words, this is a case where two accidental wrongs do make a right - I don't see any need for any action here, just a reminder to Nauriya to AGF, and first try to alert the user to make sure it was a mistake (see the next immediate section on Adamgerber's talk page that shows them quickly helping to clarify a situation; I'm pretty confident that they would have done the same if they were alerted to the mistaken wrong version.) --Masem (t) 13:06, 7 July 2018 (UTC)
  • @مھتاب احمد: the first set of 4 reversions all look like it is restored content removed by one IP address over and over (following MBlaze's own reversions, and followed by yet another editor to revert). That's reverting obvious vandalism, which is exempt from 3RR. And while the other set of three is just at 3RR, it is in response to another editor that was not engaging in BRD; nor was 3RR exceeded (plus, that was back in April, a bit too long ago). And given the situation with this offsite forum, calling an IP a sock evader, making the same changes the sock was making without comment, is not too far out of line. --Masem (t) 15:34, 7 July 2018 (UTC)
• Looks like a content dispute and/or a mistake. I'd close this as no action. Sandstein 20:31, 7 July 2018 (UTC)

• Without objections, so closed. Sandstein 19:16, 9 July 2018 (UTC)

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

User who is submitting this request for enforcement

SMcCandlish (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) 23:26, 12 July 2018 (UTC)

User against whom enforcement is requested

Han Jo Jo (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

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

Sanction or remedy to be enforced

Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Race and intelligence#Editors reminded and discretionary sanctions (amended) : Talk:Race (human categorization) is within DS scope (article itself is semi-protected, so disruption in this case is constrained to talk page)

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

1. 8 July 2018 – Accusation that article controlled by "American sociologists not biologists". Reality: article dominated by biological sourcing
2. 8 July 2018 – Starts a trolling WP:FRINGE thread about classifying human races infrasubspecifically (idea rejected by scientific consensus since early 20th century); declares RS used in article 'copy paste self-evidently false material from "reliable sources"'. WP:CIR problem: We can't have editors working on scientific topics who reject mainstream scientific sourcing.
3. 8 July 2018 – Doug Weller adds {{Spa}} tag (AnomieBOT subst'd it later). Han Jo Jo (HJJ) reverted
4. 8 July 2018 – HJJ starts "voting" subsection on their idea, as if WP determines reality.
5. 9 July 2018 – I, Maunus, and EvergreenFir note it's inappropriate and why, hat the discussion per WP:NOTFORUM.
6. 9 July 2018 – HJJ reverts; PaleoNeonate restores hat.
7. 12 July 2018 – HJJ ignores hat, resumes thread; now making off-topic pronouncements about ICZN, as if this made any sense in the context.
8. 12 July 2018 – Aspersions against other editors: "Why are the sociologists here cherry picking extreme minority views ..." – a delusional assessment of the sourcing (and the editors). Resumes nonsense about ICZN.
9. 12 July 2018 – Cites alleged "personal correspondence" from ICZN (still off-topic). Pointed to WP:V policy .
10. 12 July 2018. Continues correspondence angle; attacks sources already used in the article, without any basis for doing so.
11. 12 July 2018 – I patiently explain why ICZN isn't relevant and that taxonomy of humans isn't done infrasubspecifically in the RS, and why.
12. 12 July 2018 – HJJ: "If you don't have the integrity ..." (NPA/CIVIL/ASPERSIONS). Totally WP:NOTGETTINGIT; produces double straw man nonsense (details: ), mingled with conspiracy theorizing about other editors. Right back to "WP is my forum" stuff, already refuted and observed to be off-topic.

Diffs of previous relevant sanctions, if any

1. WP:SPA is a "new user", yet knows our lingo. Editing pattern similar to previous Mikemikev socks (they are legion) at the page (Слагмастер, A10000000000975, Felicity Wangmeister, Commissariat for Approved Egalitarian Views, Wikipedia NKVD, Pant Wrangler, Robert the Noose, KirkegaardEmil, Vekimekim, Emil Kirkegaard, David Smythe5, Diane Diamond, Rupert the Frog, etc.). Maybe insufficient evidence for WP:SPI at this stage, but one is open. Always trying to make "biological" arguments not found in RS, and HJJ fits this pattern. Note similarity of "Mikemikev" and "Han Jo Jo" usernames.

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

• Received {{Ds/alert|r-i}} at 02:56, 9 July 2018 (UTC) (and a {{uw-chat2}} at 10:08 ), both relating to the same page).

Additional comments by editor filing complaint

User hasn't (yet?) raised "intelligence" side of WP:ARBRI, but page is under discretionary sanctions regardless. No one makes arguments like these unless on a mission to push some superiority/inferiority narrative. Editor clearly WP:NOTHERE except to abuse WP for trollish crackpot "theories". See, scientists are just doing a WP:GREATWRONG because they aren't classifying us all as Homo sapiens sapiens africanus, H. s. s. caucasensis, etc. So WP:ADVOCACY must be used to stop Wikipedia, since its editors are a sociology conspiracy copy-pasting from fake/obsolete "sources" to hide the WP:TRUTH, which can be got from private e-mails (about something else entirely) that HJJ has in his secret stash. We should waste zero more seconds entertaining this stuff.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:26, 12 July 2018 (UTC)

Notification of the user against whom enforcement is requested

Notified:

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

Thanks for filing. I was only an observer of the discussion (although I indeed intervened once to assert that the discussion was undue) and it was clear that the editor had a particular obsession with this article, was determined to endlessly pursue discussion about a fictitious scientific debate in violation of WP:NOTFORUM, WP:NPOV, WP:RS, etc. Resorting to attacks against the reliability of existing sources and competency, honesty and good faith of other editors when failing to reach consensus for their suggestions. The "Sad article, sad website" comment somehow appeared familiar... In any case, I agree about the WP:NOTHERE assessment. —PaleoNeonate – 00:12, 13 July 2018 (UTC)

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

• No more time will be wasted here... well, it took me about 30 seconds to execute a WP:NOTHERE block, so a little bit of time was wasted. ;) Courcelles (talk) 23:48, 12 July 2018 (UTC)

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

User who is submitting this request for enforcement

NadirAli (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) 00:10, 7 July 2018 (UTC)

User against whom enforcement is requested

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

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

Sanction or remedy to be enforced

Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/India-Pakistan#Standard_discretionary_sanctions :

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

1. 5 July 2018 Vandalism, removed old content sourced content and he also blanked additional scholarly refs added by Mar4d. Provided no explanation in edit summary. He also had no edit on that page or its associated talk page before that vandal edit.

Additional comments: What is interesting is that Orientls is an account which has only made less than 190 edits in the past 4 years which raises socking and sleeper account questions. This diff also seems to indicate a botched attempt of meatpuppetry where he inadvertently seems to have copy pasted something else, probably from a chat browser, which indicates that he is doing edits under instructions for somebody else. This diff confirms my suspicions further.

His edit history also looks aggressive. See for example his aggressive/incivil comment to Joshua Jonathan here and his condescending demands (to which he has no right anyway) on TurboCop's talkpage here.--NadirAli نادر علی (talk) 00:10, 7 July 2018 (UTC)

To editor Winged Blades of Godric: it doesn't have to be a chat browser. It could be something else. This diff shows a botched attempt at copy paste of the entire talkpage, with the result that the talk page became duplicated. My feeling is that this sleeper account (indicated by their low levels of activity since it registered in 2014) was given a whole talk page to replace the existing talk page but messed up. I am also quite surprised that you aren't taking this diff seriously because I recall in another case you took similar activity seriously.--NadirAli نادر علی (talk) 03:33, 7 July 2018 (UTC)

To editor Sdmarathe: This unexplained blanking of old content and sources was vandalism. There is no definition by which it can be called a "constructive edit". This blanking edit was even before Orientls came to the talkpage.

This diff is incivility. Read these parts "Do you understand what is an WP:OR or WP:SYNTH? You clearly don't. " and "since it doesn't you can't make connection only because you feels to".

The message to TurboCop is inappropriate because that disclousre is TurboCop's business and not Orientls'. We can't say its a case of impersonation with certainty when admins have not even decided on that yet.

I also find your AE statement inappropriate.--NadirAli نادر علی (talk) 03:56, 7 July 2018 (UTC)

Notification of the user against whom enforcement is requested

Notified on talk page--NadirAli نادر علی (talk) 00:13, 7 July 2018 (UTC)

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

Responding as I have been asked below. I wanted to describe my edit on Regional power in edit summary but I pressed "enter" key before I would type edit summary. I have checked before if there is a way to modify edit summary and I never found one. Nonetheless, it is apparent to everyone that the edit was an acknowledgement of the problems with the disputed content that were already described on talk page and the disputed content should not be restored until consensus is reached. On talk page, I have properly backed my argument with high amounts of WP:RS. There was no vandalism per WP:NOTVAND. This report is not making any sense and it is just a personal attack and a clear misrepresentation. I was editing the talk page where I pasted the content twice as my key got stuck and I later removed the duplicate parts. In the last two diffs I raised appropriate concerns that you are not allowed to synthesize content or impersonate identity of other users. You would know better about these edits by reading the whole discussion and conclusion would support that my edits are well within policies and constitutes no violation. Orientls (talk) 09:16, 9 July 2018 (UTC)

Replying the below message, WP:NPOV is irrelevant because the main concern is with the quality of sources per WP:IRS. If there are quality of sources that support the scholarly consensus then the named country can be added. This source names a few "countries as regional powers" and Pakistan is not included. My comment reads that there are many sources that talks about the regional powers and they don't name Pakistan as the regional power, while my other comment reads that we can't add those sources that fails to describe the context and are contradicting the main article and scholarly consensus regarding the list of regional power. The logic that some sources make mere mention thus they are perfectly acceptable then would you support inclusion of India as Great power? Sources describe India as one, but not all. The same is case with Pakistan when it is about regional power or emerging power. Also read this source that thoroughly describes the issues with this statement, and let me know if you can produce similar source that has also thoroughly studied and described if Pakistan is a regional power.

This is why, already I have stated below that RfC or feedback from WikiProjects is needed that how we should organize the list and even if there should be a list as paragraphs are more preferred. Orientls (talk) 13:35, 11 July 2018 (UTC)

• I didn't have time to look through the diffs. in their entirety (me thinks that it is a content-dispute and out of scope for AE but I might be wrong) but if we were conferring awards for lack of assumption of good faith, the diff. provided in support of the aspersion that some chat forum is being used will make it.

• NadirAli, can you please leave your creative thinking skills, (which borders on nonsense), for some time?∯WBG^converse 03:21, 7 July 2018 (UTC)

• Decline report-I fail to see a single problematic edit, in the area, post the alert of the sanctions.∯WBG^converse 16:20, 8 July 2018 (UTC)

Regardless of my above message, NadirAli is still WP:NOTGETTINGIT that there was no vandalism.

There is nothing wrong with that message, and this other message was absolutely correct given that impersonation is not allowed and the suspicious account never addressed the impersonation obviously because the account's purpose was to engage in disruption while using identity of a long dormant account. I wonder why NadirAli feels this offended. We cant allow impersonation only because you feel otherwise and you are testing edges of your topic ban by talking about an account who's edits are not supposed to be discussed by you since you are topic banned from the entire subject.

NadirAli lacks the understanding of what is a vandalism and wants to treat everyone to be as deceptive as him or even a little bit, given his own history of siteban and topic ban evasion that was never brought into attention until very recently. NadirAli has been making these allegations against other editors by falsely claiming that others are making edits for someone else and he never interacted the editor contrary to great deal of with NadirAli.

NadirAli is bordering on objectionable behavior - noting his gross WP:CIR issues and battleground mentality here alone, including the recent topic ban(link) violation where he was engaging in same disruptive battleground mentality per his edit summary. Ping GoldenRing. I think we might need to consider some reprimand about this behavior . Sdmarathe (talk) 03:30, 7 July 2018 (UTC)

• Mar4d's misconduct and assumption of bad faith is concerning. Here's an example of Mar4d's continued misconduct on Talk:Regional power, where he says other user is "hiding behind one non-Western source". And on this board, he dismisses his opposition as "WP:TAGTEAM", and seeks sanctions against them when they are not in violation. If I recall correctly, it was this same misconduct that led topic ban on him. But now I see it is becoming worse that he evaluates sources by their ethnicity and terms good faith constructive edit as "vandalism". Sdmarathe (talk) 12:20, 7 July 2018 (UTC)

I note that NadirAli and Mar4d have now resorted to misrepresentation of sources on Talk:Regional power and Mar4d has misrepresented sources on Emerging power by making an edit where none of the sources of Mar4d mentions Pakistan as "emerging power".

@Sandstein: Have you confirmed that if Orientls was notified of discretionary sanctions? NadirAli has not mentioned it though he knows it better. I have found that Orientls was not aware of them and according to you as well it is necessary prior the report. Sdmarathe (talk) 12:35, 8 July 2018 (UTC)

I'll try to keep this short.

The content concerned (which was blanked unilaterally) has been present on the article for several years . Until it was removed in drive-by IP vandalism. I won't comment on Adamgerber80's restoration of the IP, given he has claimed it was in error. But right after a user restored the article to its longstanding version, Sdmarathe's first ever edit on that page is to restore the IP's vandalism. Then Lorstaking makes his first ever edit, restoring the IP's edit with the misleading summary "your SCO/G20 references don't make point", even though it included old references.

When the longstanding version was reinstated along with references, Orientls' first ever edit is blanking the section back to Lorstaking's version with no edit summary, which itself should be sanctionable. He did not explain his revert, and commented on the talk 13 hours later. All three of course have no history on the article, but edit the same topics, and added similar original research and personal opinions on the talk.

Regarding NadirAli's concerns on WP:MEAT, at the very least there is substantive indication of WP:TAGTEAM which ought not to be ignored. I would like to see scrutiny of the named accounts in addition to monitoring of the article for WP:NPOV issues, and at the very least actionable measures with regard to Orientls to prevent conduct-related damage. Best regards, Mar4d (talk) 10:58, 7 July 2018 (UTC)

@Sdmarathe: Source details are certainly an issue, as you are emphasising one source in opposition to ten strong references. You have been long enough on Wikipedia supposedly to know by now what WP:WEIGHT stipulates. Please don't diverge this discussion off-rail. I'm not the one who's mysteriously turning up on articles, or edit warring and reverting WP:NOCON edits. Mar4d (talk) 12:30, 7 July 2018 (UTC)

@Sandstein: I am also going to request actionable measures for Sdmarathe, because it is clear this user is not capable of contributing to Wikipedia in a constructive or neutral manner. In addition to cherry-picking and source misrepresentations on Regional power, please see this latest revert where he followed me to a new page, restoring this IP edit. Mar4d (talk) 12:26, 8 July 2018 (UTC)

Masem, @Sandstein:: Both Orientls and Sdmarathe are obfuscating the reality when they use the term "disputed". As at least one other user noted, the content in question has been cited on the article since at least 2009. WP:STATUSQUO already stipulates the pre-dispute version is preserved, not the disputed version which in this case is Orientls and Sdmarathe's, and which was forced onto the article. I am also not convinced by Orientls' statement, given he made this cover edit right after the previous one where he blanked references, and would have had enough time to leave a null edit summary. His response on the talk page was half a day later as noted above. And neither am I buying the story about his keyboard getting stuck not once but twice. I wish to be proven wrong, but in my view, this is not the last time both these users are found creating problems, and their extended responses in the sections below are examples of the stonewalling we encounter. Mar4d (talk) 12:13, 14 July 2018 (UTC)

I have now had a chance to review this. Orientls's behavior on Talk:Regional power is concerning. Their first comment shows a complete misunderstanding of NPOV: they say "We don't have to voice opinion of minority but mainstream", which is a grotesque misrepresentation of WP:DUE.

It also provides the following quote "But it also reflects that secondary regional powers and entities such as ASEAN, Russia, South Korea and India have proved unwilling to chose between the two" from this source as evidence that Pakistan is not a regional power. Not only does that source not refer to Pakistan at all, it isn't even describing India as a regional power; indeed that quote says nothing about which entities are regional powers. If Orientls is unable to recognize this, it's a problem.

Similarly, this source makes it clear that it isn't providing an exhaustive list of "regional powers". Again, Orientls's comment betrays no awareness of this .

Furthermore, Mar4d provided a number of sources. I have spotchecked these sources; the ones I checked support the claim they are used for. Yet Orientls's only engagement with them has been to state "We can't treat opinion of Robert Pastor that is added to the footnote by the source itself and Iraq is not a regional power, thus Pastor's opinion is extremely flawed and same goes for "Buzan, Barry; Wæver, Ole", it is flawed too" . Textbook stonewalling.

That said, Orientls has made all of 206 edits to Wikipedia. WP:ROPE would suggest only a warning at this point. Vanamonde (talk) 11:44, 11 July 2018 (UTC)

@Orientls: I think you're missing the point. Do you stand by your statement that "We don't have to voice opinion of minority but mainstream"? Vanamonde (talk) 13:47, 11 July 2018 (UTC)

Agree with Vanamonde93, leaving aside the content dispute (which is a whole separate can of worms), Orientls's actions are indeed concerning, but can be attributed to a lack of experience. Erasing reliable sources by claiming they are a "minority view" seems to be a misunderstanding of WP:FRINGE. All FRINGE claims are minority claims, but not all minority claims are FRINGE. There is a difference, and it is an important one for new editors to understand and respect. Since the user is inexperienced, I suggest he be given some advice on this issue by an admin and perhaps a warning. Code16 (talk) 13:00, 14 July 2018 (UTC)

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

• Waiting for Orientls to respond. Sandstein 20:33, 7 July 2018 (UTC)

• This looks like a content dispute. I would take no action. Sandstein 19:14, 9 July 2018 (UTC)

• Only as a comment to @Orientls:, when I feel that I made an edit misclicked and forget to include an important edit summary, the usual trick seems to be a "null edit", adding a single whitespace character somewhere like in a template, call that a null edit, and then explain the edit summary I should/wanted to leave on the immediately prior edit, to be clear what I did. No statement on the validity of this report otherwise at this time. --Masem (t) 13:58, 9 July 2018 (UTC)
• It looks like admins are not interested in adjudicating the bickering about whether or not Pakistan is a regional power. I'm therefore closing these requests as no action, but @NadirAli, Orientls, Sdmarathe, Mar4d, 1990'sguy, Adamgerber80, Usman47, and Vanamonde93: I am warning all of you that if this comes back to AE then the result may be long topic bans for everybody who has ever edit-warred about this. Please use the fora provided in WP:DR, such as an RfC, to amicably resolve this content dispute. Please remember that this is not a question that necessarily needs a yes-or-no answer. This is the kind of question about which sources are often ambiguous and contradictory, and if that is the case then Wikipedia should reflect the disagreement among neutral, reliable sources rather than take one position or the other. Sandstein 13:41, 14 July 2018 (UTC)

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

User who is submitting this request for enforcement

1990'sguy (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) 04:25, 11 July 2018 (UTC)

User against whom enforcement is requested

Mar4d (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

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

Sanction or remedy to be enforced

WP:ARBIPA: Per , topic banned from conflicts between India and Pakistan, with a warning that "any further disruption or testing of the edges of the ban will be met with either an indefinite topic ban from all topics related to India, Pakistan and Afghanistan or an indefinite block, without further warning."

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

1. 8 July: Made pretty extended response to a comment that deeply discussed India-Pakistan wars such as Indo-Pakistani War of 1971 by adding "after the successful vivisection of Pakistan in 1971", "per his comments on Talk:Indo-Pakistani War of 1971", "When Pakistan in 1971 was divided into (West) Pakistan and Bangladesh, losing about half its population".
2. 8 July: Replies a comment that not only said "it lost its status due to defeat in 1971 war against India", but also included a warning that "I strongly recommend you and NadirAli to stop replying to this argument since it is not going to move without clarifying the India - Pakistan wars"
3. 9 July: Points a diff that discussed "controversial articles like Talk:Rape during the Bangladesh Liberation War".

I don't see why Mar4d is even editing this subject of Regional power. It largely borders and is sometimes focused on India-Pakistan conflict when it comes to adding Pakistan to this article.

Misconduct is more than just violating topic ban:

• Refers a good-faith edit as "vandalism" and alleges Sdmarathe, Adamgerber80 of restoring "vandalism". This is a personal attack. See WP:NOTVAND.

• Mar4d restored problematic content in the Regional power article even though the content was already disputed on the talk page. Mar4d joined the talk page after 27 hours and started assuming bad faith towards his opponents by adding that he "find it extremely odd that a revert of longstanding sourced content, later called a 'mistake', triggers at least three users with no immediate history on this article effectively trying to restore the same vandal's edits. This article needs to be put under extensive monitoring." Mar4d assumed bad faith and targeted only the opposing side (see WP:BATTLE) since the two new editors with low edit counts on his side also never edited the article before.

• Mar4d has been invoking WP:BANREVERT by hounding contributions of other editors which constitutes harassment. Mar4d has been restoring problematic edits of socks while having no clue about their validity.

• In the above report, he falsely claimed Orientls was "blanking the section", when Orientls only removed a single disputed entry.

• WP:BATTLE: Mar4d also requested "actionable measures for Sdmarathe, because it is clear this user is not capable of contributing to Wikipedia in a constructive or neutral manner." Sdmarathe only restored the consensus version and removed source misrepresentation on Emerging power.

• Mar4d misrepresented sources in the Emerging power article, given none of the references make mention of Pakistan as an "emerging power."

On Talk:Emerging power#Pakistan, he still hasn't provided sources to support his edit and has attempted to justify the source misrepresentation by alleging other editors of "WP:HOUNDING".

Mar4d was already warned by NeilN in June 8 to "tread carefully in this area", following the AE that reported topic ban violation.

This seems like a recurring issue of a long term problematic attitude of Mar4d. --1990'sguy (talk) 04:25, 11 July 2018 (UTC)

Diffs of previous relevant sanctions, if any

Topic banned from India-Pakistan conflict, with a warning as already noted.

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

Additional comments by editor filing complaint

Notification of the user against whom enforcement is requested

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

I don't see any of the three diffs listed as violating the TBAN imposed. Linking to an SPI report, or replying to a comment which mentions an India-Pakistan conflict (without discussing that conflict in response) are not violations. While the dispute at Regional power is mostly a content dispute, the behavior at Talk:Regional power may need the attention of admins willing to impose Discretionary Sanctions. power~enwiki (π, ν) 04:48, 11 July 2018 (UTC)

The main problem is that there is no agreed-upon definition of "regional power". Pro-India editors want a definition that excludes Pakistan, and pro-Pakistan editors want a definition that includes Pakistan. Without such an agreement, we resort to the fool's errand of trying to get a majority of reliable secondary references, and the editors cannot even agree on whether specific references give evidence for or against Pakistan being a regional power. power~enwiki (π, ν) 04:55, 11 July 2018 (UTC)

Sdmarathe definitely should be added to the sanctions imposed against a host of other editors in this diff, for what appears to be an attempt to weaponize that sanction in this discussion. Nauriya, Orientls, and Adamgerber80 may need some sanctions or warning, but I haven't investigated enough to make a specific recommendation. (Orientls and Adamgerber80 have been the subject of other AE filings in the very recent past) power~enwiki (π, ν) 05:20, 11 July 2018 (UTC)

Topic ban extends to talk page discussions as well as referring anything that focuses the area from the user is restricted, be it large or minor in form, it is a topic ban violation.

@Power~enwiki: The reports NadirAli and Nauriya had filed above are closed/closing with no action. Both of these editors are on verge of getting blocked indefinitely for their sock puppetry and Nauriya recently started an SPI against 4 opposing editors which included me and the SPI has been closed as insufficient without even a CU. To sum it up, NadirAli and Nauriya are leaving, and only Mar4d is here and he is violating topic ban, calling good-faith edits a vandalism, misrepresenting sources, trying to the last word on talk page while turning them into battleground and that's all after that stringent warning as mentioned already, that any more disruption or testing edges of the ban would lead to topic ban or indefinite block.

To add further, I went through a number of discussions on Talk:Kargil War, Talk:Indo-Pakistani War of 1965, Talk:Battle of Chawinda. These discussions also involved Adamgerber, 1990s guy, Orientls, and they were really smooth and finally ended up supporting the universal consensus regarding these conflicts. You need to think that why those pages didn't had any conflict but only this one article (Regional power) is having the conflict while those India-Pakistan war articles are having no conflicts despite major changes? The answer is pretty obvious. Sdmarathe (talk) 05:49, 11 July 2018 (UTC)

This again? The behavior at Talk:Regional power and Talk:Emerging power is bad, and probably requires sanctions on multiple users. It also isn't the best place for t-banned users to be. That said, The diffs as presented are not topic-ban violations. Mar4d is not permitted to discuss the India-Pakistan conflict. He is quite free to participate in discussions on more general issues, even if other participants are discussing the India-Pakistan conflict. It's also worth noting that the t-ban has been brought up in those discussions far more than necessary. In the AE discussion which resulted in the mass topic ban, I had warned that the conflict was likely to spill over into other IPA areas. That's what seems to be happening here. In sum, if sanctions are considered, I would recommend looking at broader topic bans/new topic bans rather than a block. Vanamonde (talk) 06:12, 11 July 2018 (UTC)

Regional power in the context of India and Pakistan concerns major subjects including the Indo-Pakistani conflict. Initial argument was if Pakistan is mentioned by majority of sources as a regional power and the later argument was about if the sources make efforts to describe the emergence of Pakistan as regional power.

Mar4d replied to the sources added by Sdmarathe, detailing India-Pakistani conflicts with relation to emergence as regional power. Mar4d said: "your arguments and sources unfortunately are completely deficient, and therefore have been rejected."

Sources have described that India emerged as regional power as a result of Indo-Pakistani War of 1971 because Pakistan was divided. I don't see sources that would make efforts to describe Pakistan as a regional power and/or provide significant details about Pakistan's emergence as a regional power. Sources are meant to be detailed and descriptive, more than simply giving a passing mention. Some sources support that India is the only regional power in South Asia.

I stopped participating in the talk page because Mar4d has been replying without addressing these issues. This has also happened earlier on Talk:Umayyad campaigns in India#Infobox where he was ignoring every reliable source on the subject.

I plan to resolve this by organizing an RfC or seek feedback of multiple WikiProjects. Orientls (talk) 10:54, 11 July 2018 (UTC)

Concerning Regional power, please see my comments in the section above. Also, I have not violated any restrictions. Happy to respond if any admins have questions. Mar4d (talk) 12:19, 14 July 2018 (UTC)

Mentioning the user's topic ban is irrelevant to this "regional power" topic, and seems to be an effort to stifle debate, which is bordering on bad-faith. I suggest that all editors focus on the content and stop attacking and launching arbitration cases against each other ad-hominem. Code16 (talk) 13:14, 14 July 2018 (UTC)

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

• Closed per my comment regarding Orientls above. Sandstein 13:44, 14 July 2018 (UTC)

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

User who is submitting this request for enforcement

Vanamonde93 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) 11:01, 11 July 2018 (UTC)

User against whom enforcement is requested

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

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Sanction or remedy to be enforced

Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/India-Pakistan#Standard_discretionary_sanctions.

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

Sdmarathe's behavior at Talk:Regional power is in breach of WP:BATTLE. There is an ongoing dispute about whether Pakistan should be listed as a regional power. Stating that it should be listed, Mar4d provided 8 sources: . I spot-checked some of the sources, and they did support the content Mar4d wished to add. These sources were provided partially in response to Sdmarathe asking for them.

Sdmarathe's responses have been discouraging. He has indulged in speculation , made claims about source misrepresentation , and tried to use lists of other regional powers as evidence (a logical fallacy) .

Most importantly, he has repeatedly discounted the sources previously presented , , , and then slipped into original research: .

While this may seem to be a content dispute, the problem here is not that Sdmarathe has not accepted Mar4d's version of the text. There would be no problem if they were engaging with the material. The problem is that Sdmarathe persistently refused to engage with the sources provided in response to his request, and instead indulged in original research and textbook stonewalling.

This behavior wasn't limited to that discussion. Their attitude at SPI and AN has been extremely combative, , , , and a warning from Cullen328 made no difference to their behavior .

In sum, Sdmarathe is treating Wikipedia as a battleground, and is not displaying the level of decorum expected in an area under discretionary sanctions.

Diffs of previous relevant sanctions, if any

1. 15 May 2018 Sdmarathe is under an indefinite one-way interaction ban with me. To be clear, they are permitted to reply to this report, as it is covered by the "necessary dispute resolution" clause.

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

Sdmarathe has participated in a number of AE requests in the last couple of months, all of which invoked the ARBIPA discretionary sanctions.

Additional comments by editor filing complaint

To be clear; I don't give two hoots whether Pakistan is listed as a regional power or not. Personally, I think the dispute is silly in the extreme; geopolitical power exists on a spectrum, and any such classification is going to engender dispute. I am not exculpating the "other side" in this dispute; the behavior of Mar4d and Nauriya is far from ideal, and in their haste they have obfuscated what some sources say. I'm not excusing Lorstaking and Orientls either. But Sdmarathe's behavior has been a problem, and needs to be looked at: the other users can be dealt with in other sections. Vanamonde (talk) 11:01, 11 July 2018 (UTC)

Notification of the user against whom enforcement is requested

notified. Vanamonde (talk) 11:02, 11 July 2018 (UTC)

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

First set of diffs concern content dispute, as far as I know they are not handled at AE. Still I would like to make a few things clear. First, my arguments are basically policy-based and similar to those put forward by many other editors on that discussion page. I have been analyzing the sources that have been presented so far in accordance with WP:CONTEXTMATTERS, a core criteria for evaluating sources. The crux of my argument lies here; the sources provided by Mar4d completely fail the aforementioned criteria since they are making passing mention of Pakistan, just like the sources make passing mention of Venezuela, North Korea, and many other non-regional powers, without actually explaining in detail how and why Pakistan is a regional power; while, on the other hand, I have provided many reliable sources that describe how Pakistan is not a regional power and completely refutes Mar4d's arguments (e.g. )

I would not prefer to go into the details regarding the misrepresentation of sources by Mar4d and NadirAli, but just mention a few diffs that illustrate my point: Also noting the existence of reliable sources rejecting Pakistan as a regional power, it is even more necessary to take into account policies like WP:CONTEXTMATTERS and WP:EXCEPTIONAL. Generally, it is possible to find two or more sources supporting many types of statements, including pseudo-scientific beliefs, that's why we need sources which completely comply with Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources.

ScrapIronIV had just restored the version that supported my comments on talk page with edit summary "Per talk page".

I understand the concerns. I can only assure the admins that I will be more careful in future, especially in what I say.

Also, it must be noted that on Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Faizanali.007, my responses were made in response to misleading comments of Nauriya on SPI, and Nauriya had filed Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/RaviC against me in the form of personal attack and harassment. The suspicion, whether it was filed by Nauriya himself or it was provided to him has been raised by an uninvolved editor like Kautilya3, and patrolling admin Abecedare has also talked about it on the SPI. On WP:AN, Nauriya made more false allegations and personal attacks against me and others like, "personnel grudge and vendetta from Indian editors who themselves are involved in sock puppetry and edit warring". This is completely untrue.

I will urge the participating admins to check my recent interactions on much more controversial articles like Talk:Indo-Pakistani War of 1965#Change in result in the infobox, Talk:Kargil War#Result in infobox, where you won't see a single problem with my conduct.

I was mostly concerned about the aforementioned SPI and those continued personal attacks from Nauriya. I acknowledge that this doesn't justify my behavior--but like I said, I will be more careful in what I say. I had already realized after the second reply of Cullen238 to leave it alone and that's why I chose not to engage any further and I started editing something else as my contributions show. I rest my case. Sdmarathe (talk) 15:43, 11 July 2018 (UTC)

Replying the ping here. All I have to add is that Sdmarathe is correct with his assessment of sources on Regional power and it is true that the sources in this context are meant to be descriptive per WP:IRS. Mere mentions don't fulfill that necessary requirement. Sources must describe the emergence of Pakistan as a regional power, same way sources describe the emergence of India as a regional power. There should be no contradictions against the generally accepted names. Sdmarathe has only asked for such quality sources while provinding such sources for backing his argument. To make it more simple, can you find a particular date or year when Pakistan is said to have been emerged as a regional power? For India it is 1971. I think you have ignored Mar4d and NadirAli incorrectly claiming that "all" sources mention Pakistan as regional power. There are mere mentions of Pakistan, but also omissions as regional power in many lists, while other sources saying India to be the only regional power in South Asia and/or finding issues with the disputed statement. Such contradictions are concerning and that needs to be addressed properly. Like I have mentioned above, RfC or assistance from WikiProject will help us to decide a standard of sources and if the list needs to be replaced with paragraphs.

SPI is still open and unhelpful comments are swiftly removed by the clerks there. If you are observing problems with statements of Sdmarathe then you can ping Bbb23 or Abecedare and request to deal with them. I disagree that his "attitude at SPI and AN has been extremely combative". It was not a very ideal one but you are ignoring that Nauriya filed an extremely flawed SPI with apparent motive to get rid each of the opponents around. I don't see a logic for stoking this sort of rhetoric. I prefer ignoring such reports even though I was also falsely accused of sock puppetry by Nauriya who has assumed bad faith of the highest order. In these circumstances you can expect worse if not better. Bigger concern is that why Nauriya is not addressing the concerns regarding his lack of prior interaction with any of the editors?

To be fair, such issues are not really significant and should be best discussed on the relevant talk page since the both discussions (SPI and Regional power) are still open. Orientls (talk) 14:38, 11 July 2018 (UTC)

I will comment on a statement Sdmarathe made above, which indicates bad faith in the context of this dispute, and moreover, a dangerous redefinition of WP guidelines: QUOTE "Generally, it is possible to find two or more sources supporting many types of statements, including pseudo-scientific beliefs, that's why we need sources which completely comply with Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources." END QUOTE. The user is claiming that this argument applies to ignoring sources like Samuel P. Huntington, who is one of the leading scholars in the field?! Wow. If this user was unaware of the difference between FRINGE and RS, I would chalk this up to a misunderstanding. But in this case, he seems to be fully aware of the difference, and has proposed a new synthesized guideline which converts any RS into FRINGE, arbitrarily, based on his own judgement. That is a major red-flag, and should merit more than a mere warning. Code16 (talk) 13:41, 14 July 2018 (UTC)

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

• I don't have time to look into this. I do want to say, though, that Vanamonde93 checked with Sandstein before filing this, that it doesn't cause a problem with respect to the one-way IBAN prohibiting Sdmarathe from interacting with Vanamonde93 and neither Sandstein nor I have a problem with the filing. I do want to caution Sdmarathe that BANEX allows them to respond to this filing, but any attempt to re-open their wider dispute with Vanamonde93 will be a violation of the ban. GoldenRing (talk) 11:10, 11 July 2018 (UTC)
• Closed per my comment regarding Orientls above. Sandstein 13:45, 14 July 2018 (UTC)

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

User who is submitting this request for enforcement

יניב הורון (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) 22:37, 9 July 2018 (UTC)

User against whom enforcement is requested

Seraphim System (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

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

Sanction or remedy to be enforced

WP:ARBPIA#General 1RR restriction, third ARBPIA bullet :

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

1. 16:41, 9 July 2018 Unjustified removal of long-standing sourced content related to Hamas (therefore ARBPIA) based on spurious reasons
2. 22:21, 9 July 2018 2nd revert shortly after. This part of article deals with ARBPIA.

Additional comments by editor filing complaint

In addition, user violated third ARBPIA bullet as well: "If an edit is reverted by another editor, its original author may not restore it within 24 hours of the first revert made to their edit."

Notification of the user against whom enforcement is requested

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

None of the content in that edit has anything to do with the Arab-Israeli conflict. Turkey isn't an Arab country. This has been discussed here before and the result has usually been that the content actually has to be about the Arab-Israeli conflict. (Especially on a broad article like this one, where the article is not actually covered by ARBPIA). And there are academic sources for this topic that should be consulted is not a spurious reason. Nothing in the edit even discusses state sponsored terrorism - all it says is they have a headquarters in Istanbul and gave some speeches. That has nothing to do with the conflict, broadly construed or otherwise.

I just want to add that I am not even trying to work on conflict articles, but some of the articles I'm working on like 1973 oil crisis and Terrorism may have some overlap and I try to be careful about it and self-revert when I think it's relevant. I will self-revert here also, but only if admins decide it's within ARBPIA's scope, because I sincerely don't think it is.

I first encountered this user when I proposed to move Yom Kippur War to Arab-Israeli War of 1973, ever since then he has followed me around to revert me on multiple articles, some that he had never previously worked on like here removing sourced content with edit summary "restoring sources" and here adding citation needed tags to content that is already sourced (I responded by adding two more sources). I just don't think this edit falls within the scope of ARBPIA, and it's frustrating to have someone following me around and starting ARBPIA-related disputes on articles that are mostly outside the conflict area.

I already stopped working on 1973 oil crisis when this happened, which I was hoping to nominate for GA, but he keeps following me from one article to another. This complaint seems like part of the same pattern. Seraphim System ^(talk) 22:49, 9 July 2018 (UTC)

@DavidBena: I actually did not remove anything for any reason related to ARBPIA and I didn't remove any content about Gaza or Israel or Arab-Israeli relations. I'm not sure if the editors who are objecting to the removal are doing so based on a thorough understanding of the academic sources available. State-sponsorship is not about inclusion on the FTO list — there has been a lot of academic literature published. A subject like this with an abundance of academic sources available shouldn't have been sourced to media sources in the first place—these sources do not even discuss state sponsorship of terrorism. I'm open to discussion, and I'm sorry this has escalated to another routine ARBPIA dispute. I'm entirely indifferent as to whether the content is included in another article. Seraphim System ^(talk) 02:09, 10 July 2018 (UTC)

I see now that Israel was listed along with all the other countries that consider Hamas a terrorist organization - ok, I still don't think it's within the scope of ARBPIA - its just a basic fact that was in an irrelevant section that is about a topic that is not within the scope of ARBPIA (in my opinion). It seems to me the conflict here is limited to the one between Turkey and Israel - if the edit included something like Hamas' response to Turkish-Israeli discussions, than maybe, broadly construed it would be within the conflict area, but there is nothing like that - only Turkey's disagreement with Israel about whether Hamas is a terrorist organization. What about this could not have been resolved in good faith on the article talk page? Seraphim System ^(talk) 03:50, 10 July 2018 (UTC)

@Icewhiz: There is nothing in the edit about a conflict between Hamas and Israel, only a conflict between Turkey and Israel about Hamas. This doesn't seem like something that needed to escalate to Arbitration. I opened a discussion on the talk page right after I removed the content - he only replied at the talk page after he filed this complaint. So much for AE as a last resort — not how it's supposed to work, especially for something as borderline as this. Obviously, I reverted because I don't think it's within the scope of ARBPIA and he was not responsive on talk - not to be disruptive. And if admins decide this is within the scope of ARBPIA, I won't do it again — it's no problem for me to abide by that.Seraphim System ^(talk) 04:04, 10 July 2018 (UTC)

@SMcCandlish: 82% Muslim country (the rest being almost entirely secular, not Jewish or Christian) - excuse me, what? It's Arab-Israeli conflict - that includes Nasser, btw, but not Iran. I've seen other recent proceedings here where admins have excluded Iran from ARBPIA, so I also resent being accused of Wikilawyering when I am just going by what I have seen in the past. Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement/Archive231#Mhhossein - this would really have to go to ARCA if the scope was going to be broadened to non-Arab countries.Seraphim System ^(talk) 04:42, 10 July 2018 (UTC)

Then again, if you are going to put academic sources in scare quotes, I don't think we are going to see eye to eye. I don't really have anything more to say about this ... Seraphim System ^(talk) 04:55, 10 July 2018 (UTC)

@SMcCandlish: Yeah, I knew it was going to be controversial, that's why I opened a talk discussion after I removed the content. Yaniv reverted without replying to the discussion. What should I do BDDD with myself? No, obviously not. You should strike the incorrect parts of your statement. If you want to file at ARCA, then do that, please don't opine about Muslims or whether Arabs are an ethnicity or a nation, if you are saying something that offensive about an entire race or religion you definitely need to back it up with sources, and this is not the right forum for it. The fact that this is AE should not be a pass on these types of comments (saying Arabs are not a nation, or that the disruption has to do with religion, not ethnicity) - these comments reflect such a deep ignorance of the subject matter, and personal bias, that I really don't understand why you would choose to share them with us during an unrelated AE proceeding.Seraphim System ^(talk) 05:50, 10 July 2018 (UTC)

Well, I should probably let you guys know, at this point, that I'm going to be going out of town again so I won't be able to respond further and I won't have internet access for pings (As I said before, I would be in and out all summer so this is just bad timing). I was hoping this would be closed before then, but I think I've already covered what I wanted to say (plus some extra).Seraphim System ^(talk) 06:46, 10 July 2018 (UTC)

I find it strange that our co-editor, Seraphim System, defends his deletion of well-sourced material in an article entitled State-sponsored terrorism, and yet claims that the edit had nothing to do with the Arab-Israeli conflict, for which reason he deleted it. I'm astounded, insofar that while the article does NOT limit itself to the Arab-Israeli conflict (ARBPIA), it does treat on terrorism in a general way, including what happens in Gaza under Hamas rule. The edit, therefore, was applicable and should not have been deleted by Seraphim System.Davidbena (talk) 01:46, 10 July 2018 (UTC)

Relations with Hamas (hosting a HQ, etc.) is clearly ARBPIA related, Hamas being a Palestinian movement that is a side to the conflict - this is ARBPIA not because of Turkey, but due to Hamas.Icewhiz (talk) 03:52, 10 July 2018 (UTC)

ARBPIA scope seems pretty firm to me, Hamas being deeply embedded in the Arab–Israeli conflict. Whether Turkey qualifies or not is immaterial (though it does; it's an 82% Muslim country (the rest being almost entirely secular, not Jewish or Christian), barely on any kind of speaking terms with Israel at all, and threatening to break off all diplomatic relations with Israel again – i.e., to once again be allied with Arabs and the rest of the Muslim world against Israel – since 2017). The disruptive nature of nuking the entire section of source information because Seraphim System prefers "some academic sources", and then editwarring to re-delete it all is clearly within DS range. The fact that Seraphim System doesn't seem to recognize that this kind of thing is disruptive, and just wants to wikilawyer about whether the page qualifies under ARBPIA then disclaim involvement in the topic area, is a strong indication such behavior will continue.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:25, 10 July 2018 (UTC)

Re "broadened to non-Arab countries": I'll just repeat: "Hamas deeply embedded in the Arab–Israeli conflict. Whether Turkey qualifies or not is immaterial". More to the point, SS's response is just more lawyering about whether ARBPIA scope can apply instead of any concession that deletion sprees (and revert warring to "enforce" them) of sourced material isn't how we do things. I don't do any editing in this topic area at all aside from drive-by gnoming, and have no "dog in the fight", being completely agnostic; my interest is as a reader. I just see mass-deletion of sourced material, in a way that the deleter knows is going to be controversial, at a page wracked with controversy, and does it again anyway after it is definitely controverted. This is loose PoV cannon behavior. And the waving around of alleged academic sources that the party doesn't actually cite, much less use to build better material, even less to show that the extant source material is faulty, simply doesn't cut it. That's not working on the encyclopedia, it's handwaving to distract from destruction being done to it.

When it comes to these "your ethnicity/religion/country versus mine" pissing matches, admins should be handing out at least 3–6 month topic bans right and left; it's what ArbCom had mind when they created discretionary sanctions in the first place. Turning AE into an "ANI2" for endless blathering on and sleight of mental hand, then not doing anything about patently disruptive editing, is a waste of everyone's time. It's not an exercise of discretion but of bureaucracy.
PS: SS is confused; "some academic sources" isn't scare quoting "academic sources" it's directly quoting SS's edit summary.
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:19, 10 July 2018 (UTC)

Arabia hasn't been a single nation in centuries. Your attempt to throw shade on me as unqualified to have an opinion on the behavior simply because I don't agree with your views of the subject matter is silly and transparent. I decline to get drawn into a circular debate with you; AE is not a forum. What matters here is unrepentant PoV revert-warring, section-blanking behavior in a topic covered by DS.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:57, 10 July 2018 (UTC)

A simple preventative measure would be for those who do patrol and edit neutrally in this topic area and who can well-diff disruptive editing relating to Muslim–Israeli conflict to, in fact, open a WP:ARCA request to expand the scope of WP:ARBPIA to cover the actual scope of the Israel-related disruptive editing. It was basically a mistake to have limited this to Arabs, who are an ethnicity, not a nation, religion, or alliance. The disruption, like the real-world conflict, has mostly to do with religion, not ethnicity.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:35, 10 July 2018 (UTC)

@Mhhossein: What's a GMAE? I thinking "general at/of Arbitration Enforcement" but am coming up blank.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:21, 14 July 2018 (UTC)

Similar to Iran-Israel, Turkey-Israel relations generally do not fall under the ARBPIA sanctions, but they can when they relate to support for Hamas. The page State-sponsored terrorism does not appear to explicitly be under any page-level Discretionary Sanctions, though content on the page might fall under several different sanctions (American Politics, Syrian Civil War, India-Pakistan). As discussion of the content dispute is now proceeding on the talk page, I see no reason for any action against any editor, though there may be a need for additional page-restrictions. power~enwiki (π, ν) 06:05, 10 July 2018 (UTC)

@Black Kite: That GMAE is not something new by the mentioned user. You might want to see this archived AE report, specially and . --Mhhossein ^talk 13:51, 13 July 2018 (UTC)

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

• In my view, the edit is not within the scope of the 1RR restriction, even though it may well be within the scope of other remedies of WP:ARBPIA (which we need not decide here). That's because the 1RR restriction has a specific, relatively narrow scope. By its wording, the 1RR restriction applies to "any page that could be reasonably construed as being related to the Arab-Israeli conflict". Whether an edit is in its scope therefore depends on the page that is being edited, not the content that is being edited (as would be the case, e.g., with a topic ban). The page at issue is State-sponsored terrorism. I do not think that this page, as a whole, can be "construed as being related to the Arab-Israeli conflict", because state-sponsored terrorism is a very broad topic that does arise in relation to the Arab-Israeli conflict, but also in relation to many other conflicts, as the article makes clear. (However, the article does directly address the Arab-Israeli conflict in parts other than the one related to Turkey; there are 33 mentions of "Israel" and 7 of "Palestin*", so I could see how other admins could come to a different conclusion.) As to whether the content removal itself was justified, that's a content issue outside the scope of AE. I would therefore take no action. Sandstein 07:05, 10 July 2018 (UTC)
• I'm ambivalent on whether this is in scope, but whilst looking at it I do note that the filing party's last 3 edits to this article, two of which were obvious reverts and another removed material (making it one as well), were at 23:00 on July 7, 23:02 on July 8, and 23:20 on July 9. Gaming much? Black Kite (talk) 08:00, 10 July 2018 (UTC)
• No administrator has expressed a desire to take action in the 5 days since this was filed. Closing it as no action. TonyBallioni (talk) 20:25, 14 July 2018 (UTC)