Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard

Arbitration motion regarding User:Δ

Original announcement

• Well, he's in complete denial, as always. There are still issues though. While comments like this will not fall into 'enforcement edits' broadly construed, they are still wholly problematic. We do not reach for the most destructive and blind course of action when enforcing any policy here simply because it 'educates' people on how to do it right next time. In other fields this is classed as what it is - WP:POINT making disruption. I still intend to file an arbitration request regarding his general failings which continue outside NFCC work. In his state of denial, the formal reminders of his civility restriction and other terms were being ignored by Delta even while the motions were tabled, and he continues to ignore it now, through behaviours that are all long standing and unmodified. Admins clearly cannot or will not handle this, and the general atmosphere of rank incivility toward anyone critical of Delta irrespective and irregardless of the facts continues inspite of these findings, albeit carefully rephrased at times to avoid the possibility of action. MickMacNee (talk) 14:37, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

Well he's correct in both instances. And now here is a whine of my own: there is no such word as 'irregardless' John lilburne (talk) 15:22, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

For the record: yes there is, it's in Wiktionary[1]. It's just discouraged and considered incorrect by many. Robofish (talk) 17:17, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

I was under the impression ArbCom was supposed to enforce policy, not help people violate it. Clearly I was wrong. --cc 08:31, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

In the case of the motion to topic ban Delta

Moved from WT:Arbitration

Here the community, in the shape mainly of admins (I forget exactly who) had castigated the combatants for forum shopping. In addition a number of admins (and others) had worked to centralise the discussion. The Arbcom motion, and some of the arbitrator votes, undermined this by giving weight to the number of pages on which the discussions had appeared. Moreover, having jumped the gun they did not avail themselves of the opportunity to support cooperative solutions parts of the community were trying to develop, by taking the procedural opportunity to propose a solution, rather than a sanction, put together by User:Worm That Turned and offered by me, instead expending their energies in other directions. I would ask Arbcom to seriously consider finding a way forward rather than the current situation where they are simply supporting one side in a dispute, based on two factors, firstly the fact that a previous Arbcom case of some years ago went against Delta, and secondly the determination of his opponents to spread the dispute as widely as possible. Rich Farmbrough, 22:31, 16 July 2011 (UTC).

• Shall we just delete WP:NFCC then? This motion has completely undermined it (so much for "policy with legal considerations"). I'm far from Δ's biggest fan, but 9 times out of 10, the only people who complained were the people who don't understand the policy or have no interest in complying with it. There are problems with the way he conducts his enforcement and with his responses when challenged, but there were ways of dealing with that without banning him from enforcing the policy at all (cf. baby and bathwater). If we replaced "NFCC" with "BLP", and Δ with a controversial BLP enforcer (of whom there are a few), there'd be a massive outcry. But because Δ is unpopular and enforcing a controversial policy, it seem it doesn't matter. What a shame. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 16:53, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

• • Just how many more years do you think we should spend trying to teach Delta how to work with other human beings? Delta is unpopular mainly because of his extremely long history of bitey, unco-operative, arrogant, and unlistening behaviour in NFCC issues. When he concentrates on making rather clever new gizmos that help other editors he gets popular again. I'll allow that he has been encouraged to be bitey, unco-opertive, arrogant and unlistening by a number of admins over the years, and to that extent it's not surprising that he retains a belief in the acceptability of such behaviour. DuncanHill (talk) 17:21, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

HJMitchell, will you get with the program, have you forgotten that you and me are supposedly wiki-BFFs? You're supposed to think the way I think, remember? For the record, I think even with Delta fouling up just 10% of the time, he would still be causing more drama and losing us more editors and content, than anyone else could manage, or even all other editors combined. And as I've said elsewhere, the aggressive BLP enforcers wised up to their failings long ago and engaged with those in the community who disagreed with their methods, but still wanted to address their issues, so that community supported methods could be developed, to deal with all the people who simply didn't understand or didn't want to follow the policy. That's why things like unreferenced BLPs are now no longer a problem, and the BLP policy is taken as seriously now as it ever was, and none of those people are whining any more about being harassed or victimised for simply 'standing up for policy'. NFCC enforcement by contrast, is still as backlogged, marginalised and unpopular as it ever was. Delta has at best, always been a temporary sticking plaster in that regard, clearing out thousands of violations at at time with no care or attention with all the attendant drama, and then just waiting for it to build up again and rinse repeat, if necessary waiting out intervening bans from the activity. If we really wanted to do it his way, namely remove violations and hand off the responsibiltiy, some of that, 10c at least, could be done by a bot very easily. We all saw what that led to the last time. And nobody in their right mind has ever seriously proposed a BLP enforcement bot, even though the unreferenced issue is as enforceable by a bot as 10c violations are, and BLP is as serious as NFCC, if not more so. If you recall, ScottMac (another supposed Wiki-BFF of mine) has seen countless proposals to ban him from BLP enforcement, there's been plenty of outcries about his actions, but he at least makes sure that the BLP policy can be read in such a way as to support his end goal, if not all of his methods. Delta never really does that and always argues that both his goal and his exact methods are always 100% supported by all policies. Thus, unlike Scott, he hasn't a prayer of arbcom ever coming down on his side 100% when his activities are disputed. And I certianly don't ever foresee a time when any of Delta's work is proactively 'commended' by Motion after a particular new shitstorm, as Scott has been before. It's a shame that he never has and never will understand why that is, and is happy and content to claim that this is always because he is a victim or under appreciated, or the very best one, that arbcom are NFCC deniers. The idea that NFCC is less respected than BLP, certianly when using Delta's treatment as an example, never has and never will stand up to actual comparisons usng actual facts. MickMacNee (talk) 18:13, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Tree shaping

Original announcement

• Is this really the type of dispute that ArbCom was set up to decide upon? From reading the RfAR main page it is fairly clear that the answer is "Yes", and that it is the drama filled, attritional warfare, "constitutionally challenging" cases that should be the exception. That they are not is a subject for another place, perhaps. LessHeard vanU (talk) 11:21, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

• Thank you. I do think it is a good example of Arbcom acting as the final dispute resolution body, and I do hope the parties can go on to work together productively. --Elen of the Roads (talk) 11:40, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

Changes in advanced permissions

Original announcement

• Effective today, David Fuchs is commencing a term on the Audit Subcommittee. –xeno^talk 14:07, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

Appreciate both notifications, but it might be a good idea to append the above to the announcement for posterity. Skomorokh 14:18, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

Hmm... As far as I can tell, we haven't typically regularly made announcements about lateral changes to arbitrator members in the subcommittees. Do you think we should? –xeno^talk 14:36, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

Not suggesting announcement inflation by making separate note of each, but if you're announcing a permissions change already, why not? It would be nice to be able to get a chronological history of a given subcommittee by using ctrl+F through the ACN archives. Skomorokh 14:39, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

Fair point. There is WP:AUSC/H, I don't know if BASC has a similar history page. –xeno^talk 14:43, 19 July 2011 (UTC)