Wikipedia talk:General sanctions/Climate change probation/Requests for enforcement/Archive 1

Collapses

Suggest that we collapse/hide requests (as is common elsewhere) as they are dealt with. Suggest that the admins and others who participate not be the collapsers, leave that to uninvolved folk who come by later. ++Lar: t/c 05:20, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

Eventually these get archived off presumably. ++Lar: t/c 07:27, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

It does not yield the prettiest layout in the world, but I gave us Wikipedia:General sanctions/Climate change probation/Archive navbox based on AE, and set MiszaBot to autoarchive at 7 days. Both can, of course, be tweaked as desired. As none of the archives exist at present, it is just a sea of red. They just have a link to the sole archive over at Obama probation, so that box may be a bit of overkill.

Also, I would appreciate it if someone else were to check my syntax in case I missed anything. - 2/0 (cont.) 09:19, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for doing that! I'm afraid I can't check the for you syntax as I don't use MiszaBot myself but it looked good from the outside. ++Lar: t/c 21:41, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

Y The bot just ran - threads successfully archived. One week feels about right for how this board is going so far, but it is easy enough to tweak later. - 2/0 (cont.) 08:01, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

Section titles

Suggest that maybe we need to put something in the section titles to distinguish one from the next or else we have multiple copies of the same title. ++Lar: t/c 07:27, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

Edit notice... Should? Can?

Should there be an edit notice? That big template at the top maybe could go in a collapse box if it won't work well in an edit notice (I think edit notices are nifty so I have one User talk:Lar/Editnotice )... but I'm not sure it would work with a page that has slashes, the page would be at Wikipedia:General sanctions/Climate change probation/Requests for enforcement/Editnotice ... A quick test didn't show it. ++Lar: t/c 21:45, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

There is an editnotice at Template:Editnotices/Page/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement for WP:AE, but displaying the template in the page header is also fine.  Sandstein  22:20, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

Clearly I don't understand edit notices very well, then. :) Maybe just collapse the template but leave it in the header. ++Lar: t/c 22:43, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

Please clarify warnings

So there's a probation notice on a bunch of talk pages, there's discussion of an editnotice, there's an example of a general EW warning by 2/0 [1] which claims no authority from CC probation. These are all good, but they don't constitute the actual "warning" mentioned in this probation, right? The wording is the editor in question shall be given a warning...counseled on specific steps.... This to me can only imply an individual warning, as in user talk page or somewhere where you can demonstrate the editor must have seen the warning. Presumably this would have details on the problem and some attempts at communication. Note this is entirely separate from common-or-garden edit-war blocks or protections, but for this special enforcement, I thought individual notice ended up as part and parcel. Franamax (talk) 10:42, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

The warning is Template:uw-probation, which can be referenced with: {{subst:uw-probation|PAGE NAME|Wikipedia:General sanctions/Climate change probation}}. This is already documented in Wikipedia:General sanctions/Climate change probation#Notification of probation. -- ChrisO (talk) 10:53, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

To constitute 'official' warnings, they must be logged. Whilst you don't have to use the boiler plate template to issue an official warning, you should make it clear to the user in question that they now come under the sanctions of the probation. Once this has been done, it must be logged at Wikipedia:General_sanctions/Climate change probation/Log#Notifications. I got the impression that GoRight's warning from the enforcement page was an official warning, but as nobody has left a warning on his talk page and it hasn't been included in the log then I suppose it wasn't. Ryan Postlethwaite^{See the mess I've created or let's have banter} 10:59, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

I did copy the text of the warning to GoRight's talk page but I didn't know about the logging requirement. --TS 11:09, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

I've just copied the text and diff of the warning to the log. Hopefully that closes the loop. By the way, since GoRight had demonstrated awareness of the probation regime prior to his disputed edit, I think the notification requirement was functionally satisfied even if he had not been formally templated/warned. Isn't it the case that notification is intended to ensure that editors can't say "but I didn't know" when potential violations are raised? If so, I think the requirement was effectively met in this case without needing a formal notification. -- ChrisO (talk) 11:14, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

They need to be aware that from that point forward, they could be subjected to sanctions, not that general sanctions merely exist. It's a subtle difference, but an important one. Ryan Postlethwaite^{See the mess I've created or let's have banter} 11:23, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Good point. -- ChrisO (talk

Clarification

What should be done about things like this? Previously we've just removed the comment as a straight-forwards breach of WP:SOAP, but with the new "regime" i'm confused as to whether i should file a report, give a warning - and whether i should remove or hat the text. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 17:41, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

I should note that the same editor vandalised WP:NPOV itself a short time ago. See [2]. Since s/he has just come off a block, a further block is probably needed. -- ChrisO (talk) 17:50, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Whether it is a warning or a block doesn't really matter to me. The clarification needed is more on what the correct "new" way of handling incidents like the above is. These kinds of rants are rather common on climate change pages - so a clarification on this would be appreciated. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 18:43, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

The editor in question has just been blocked for a week. I don't think there's anything in the probation that would prohibit normal refactoring of talk pages, per WP:TALK#Editing comments, which allows for the removal of "Deleting material not relevant to improving the article". If an editor restores such material I'd advise against trying to delete it again. However, I think repeated instances of talk page soapboxing should be reported to the enforcement page as a form of disruptive editing, which this probation prohibits. -- ChrisO (talk) 18:52, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Enforcement action appealed by GoRight

For the record, GoRight (talk · contribs) has appealed the latest enforcement action against him. Please see WP:AN/I#Appeal by GoRight.

Question: is AN/I the right place for appeals, or should they be appealed elsewhere? What is the standard practice for the existing Obama and Palin article probations? -- ChrisO (talk) 19:40, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

WP:GS/CC says that sanctions should be appealed to ANI.  Sandstein  19:56, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

I missed that; thanks for the clarification. -- ChrisO (talk) 20:04, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

At least I got something right. --GoRight (talk) 02:00, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

A question about trolling

Why do edits like the following, from WMC, go unchallenged?

It was a scibaby sock, and is now blocked. You were correct. GR is an SPA so doesn't like the way they are put to the hiss of the world; he'll just have to live with it William M. Connolley (talk) 10:34, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

I happened to notice it as I was reviewing the sanctions page, and it seems little more than trolling to get a rise out of GoRight. I would have challenged it, had it not been a bit stale, so I decided to simply ask the question here. It seems that those (like Connolley) who believe that AGW is incontrovertible fact, are given much more leeway in such things, at least at first blush. UnitAnode 19:09, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

It would have been more honest to point out that you've added the bolding - it wasn't in what I wrote. As to the text: this is an attempt to explain (to TS, as I recall, though I could be wrong) why he has accidentally rubbed GR up the wrong way. "It was just an SPA" is commonly used as a justification for devaluing an account; indeed, TS used it as a justification for a revert. GR is an SPA (this isn't in dispute; it is self-admitted). Nor does GR object to being called an SPA (he can't, obviously). He just objects to the opprobium that SPA's invariably meet with William M. Connolley (talk) 19:23, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

Be that as it may, It's still a bit sharp elbowed, though. Up your game. ++Lar: t/c 20:22, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

I thought GoRight's complaint about the loose use of the term "SPA" was quite valid, but I also think the essence of William M. Connolley's response (which was echoed by others in a slightly less stark fashion) made a good point. Lar put it as follows: " if you don't want to be called something, don't be that thing." William's way of making the same point skirted the bounds of civility in a way that is probably not appropriate in the context of a process that is intended to dampen down the tendency towards warfare on the global warming articles.

I would urge all participants in the editing of global warming articles to be on their best behavior, for the sake of Wikipedia. In particular, we should all know to be on our best behavior here. A little less "sharp elbow" and a little more civility would make the editing environment of the articles more pleasant, attract fewer trouble makers or at least make their behavior stand out by contrast, and reinforce the trust and good faith we must all build in order to realise the ideal of a collegial editing process.

This is especially important lately since many people are coming to the articles after being told untruths about how our global warming articles are edited. They're understandably angry and it's our job to absorb their criticism and correct misconceptions. I've seen some great examples of patience and forebearance from all parties, and I think we're so close to seeing a lasting improvement in conditions. I would hate to see that spoiled by careless words. --TS 12:10, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Can I just add the William Connolley turned up on my IP-address user page and started acting as if he owned Wikipedia. Fortunately, I've edited Wikipedia and I know he was barred as an admin - but isn't there some kind of rule about impersonating someone with authority? At the very least, if I had been a newby, then this was far from the welcome an experienced editor like William should be introducing people to Wikpedia with. 89.168.179.31 (talk) 21:18, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Request time period

Hi, Can someone point me to guidance on how long a request should stay open (is there even a guideline guidline). I notice that ArbCom requests must stay at leaste 48hrs. As I never have made a request, I am concerned about observations from other request which were closed on technical matters ... I would like to see the guidelines here. Sorry if I the missed obvious. Thanks Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 22:52, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

Requests for enforcement pages on Wikipedia are simply pages to bring behaviour to the attention of administrators that infringes on various sanctions that either the community or Arbitration Committee have placed on an article or editor. There is no time frame - if the administrator is satisfied that the behaviour merits a further sanction (e.g. a block, page ban, editing restriction) then they are free to close the request whenever. Look at it like this; if an uninvolved administrator sees this behavour themselves they simply take action there and then - they don't go and request enforcement - This is why we don't have a time frame because some requests may be actionable straight away. Ryan Postlethwaite^{See the mess I've created or let's have banter} 22:57, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

I think if we're going to have these requests structured formally, we need to have some minimum time periods here, and some agreement from more than one admin. The one that you closed (with sanctions) in less than 20 minutes probably moved way too fast. Especially when there are other ones on the page that have been open for a day or more with no sanctions contemplated.... ++Lar: t/c 02:13, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

I think waiting until the subject responds should be the minimum (except for something exceptional), and if the proposed resolution is a general sanction, such as 1RR on an article for all editors, then the request should be open at least 48 hours to give a range of editors the chance to comment. Jehochman ^Brrr 02:58, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Article-level sanctions are not allowed under the terms of the probation, just sanctions on individual editors. The probation reads: "Any editor may be sanctioned", my emphasis, and requires individual notification of the sanctioned editor(s).  Sandstein  11:46, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

I'd like to see "at least until the subject responds" except for (a) really really egregious stuff, as you say, and (b) where the subject wanders off editing elsewhere clearly ignoring the request despite notification (which could be cleanly covered by saying "until the subject has had a clear chance to respond") William M. Connolley (talk) 10:03, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Yes, listening to the other party is a basic requirement of justice in any proceeding - audiatur et altera pars. In the case of a formal request on this board, no sanction should be imposed until the subject responds, unless he continues with the sanctionable conduct after being notified of the request.  Sandstein  11:46, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

If, as Sandstein suggests, article-level sanctions are not covered by the wording of this probation, I suggest that we update the wording to correct the error. We're not just facing naughty users, here, but a systemic problem pertaining to a set of articles. Sometimes we have to say "we don't identify a single culprit, but rather the editing environment is breaking down and so this article-level sanction is imposed in order to encourage civil discussion and discourage edit warring by multiple parties." --TS 12:17, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Well, the wording is very clearly tailored to individual editors, with individual notification requirements and what not. To expand it to article-level sanctions would need a new community discussion and consensus. Some might feel that unlike individual sanctions, article-level sanctions ought not to be imposed as a discretionary measure by a single admin.  Sandstein  12:19, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

If you look at Wikipedia:General sanctions/Climate change probation/Log you'll see listed already two cases of article-level sanctions: 1RRs posted at Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and Climatic Research Unit e-mail hacking incident. The same admin who imposed those could quite justifiably have instead imposed full protection on his own cognizance ("unilaterally" to use a fashionable but emotionally loaded word) so I see this less onerous alternative as a matter of common sense, and would hate to see such sensible actions thwarted by appeal to unnecessary bureaucratic notions. We should not stand in the way of administrators, who are watching and posting on the talk pages in an administrative capacity, taking necessary steps to foster civil discussion and the development of consensus. That's a big part of what they're supposed to be doing. --TS 12:31, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Agree. See below where I broke it out separately. Let's thrash this out and get to an agreement to do this, it's needful. ++Lar: t/c 14:14, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Decisions and logging

To ensure fairness and prevent hasty actions, I recommend that sanctions be proposed by one uninvolved administrator, and then confirmed by a second. The second would close the thread, log the sanction, and notify the subject. This way we develop a bit more consensus to be sure that sanctions are proper before they are activated. (Normal one administrator actions to block per usual policy would still be possible if a speedier response were required.) Jehochman ^Brrr 03:16, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Why would we do this? If an uninvolved admin sees behaviour themselves then they can sanction - they don't have to report it here so why should we require 2 admins to close a case when it's reported here? It doesn't seem logical to me. Ryan Postlethwaite^{See the mess I've created or let's have banter} 10:06, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

That would be a very substantial change from the community-endorsed probation, which provides for discretionary (i.e., unilateral) sanctions. I don't see a reason to change this now. Of course, in complicated situations, admins will normally leave a request open for some discussion before acting, but that is not required. There is always the possibility of an appeal if a sanction is imposed too hastily.  Sandstein  11:39, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Bear in mind that if a problem is reported it is quite likely to be ongoing, and therefore may need a rapid response. Taking Jehochman's approach could introduce unnecessary delays in such circumstances, so I don't think it's the best way forward. -- ChrisO (talk) 14:08, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Disagree. An admin can say "hold up, this is being discussed" to freeze things, without imposing actual sanctions, pending consensus. If someone persevered in the face of such a request, things would go much harder for them. ++Lar: t/c 14:11, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps I read the proposal too fast but my support for it was based on this process assumption. If the action is a good one, a second admin will surely voice support quickly. I don't understand the resistance here, Ryan... you seem to want to act unilaterally, in great haste. Better to act with consensus (or at the very least a second voice in support), with all deliberate speed. ++Lar: t/c 14:11, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Well what's the point in the sanctions then? What you're advocating could be done on AN/I for each individual editor without probation. The probation that the topic is now under gives administrators the right to impose sanctions as they see fit. There isn't a discussion requirement. What would you say if I went and sanctioned an editor off my own back without it even coming to the enforcements page? Ryan Postlethwaite^{See the mess I've created or let's have banter} 14:54, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

The point is to put a process in place that works well. While it "could" be done on AN/I, sans templates, with the usual large horde of dramamongers and hangers on, instead of admins and other editors who have shown some interest in working this area, it wouldn't work well, if it worked at all. I sense most folk here are not comfortable with your approach, and want longer times before imposition in non emergency situations, and more discussion, not just a unilateral action. I could be wrong, here, and I am sure discussion will bring that out. But if we are going to have unilateral imposition of sweeping sanctions with less than 20 minutes of discussion, and no chance for the person affected to even speak up, I am afraid I will switch to opposition of this regime, and will start reviewing your actions with a view to reversing them. Shoot first and ask questions later, if at all, is not a good approach.++Lar: t/c 15:29, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

You haven't answered my question; What would you say if I went and sanctioned an editor off my own back without it even coming to the enforcements page? I'm content to let discussion run a bit when it comes here (not 48 hours as a minimum though), but if administrators see disruptive behaviour worth sanctioning, then I don't see why they shouldn't be able to impose sanctions. Ryan Postlethwaite^{See the mess I've created or let's have banter} 16:29, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

I think I implied this answer already... if you acted against an editor in ways that are not normal (not run of the mill blocking for edit warring or whatever) but that are contemplated by the regime in place here, (that is, they would be enabled once defense offered, consensus had been achieved, and so forth) and you did it rogue, on your own, without working the process here first (which is what I think you're saying), I'd take it to AN/I and ask for reversal. If you persisted in the face of consensus that what you were doing was wrong, I'd consider stronger action such as an RfC/U or a recall, or an arbcom case. I hope that clarifies matters. ++Lar: t/c 17:59, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Above, Sandstein said "discretionary (i.e., unilateral) sanctions". Discretionary doesn't mean unilateral, it means regulated by one's own discretion or judgment. That means it is up to your judgement when it is appropriate to immediately impose a sanction, verses when discussion would be beneficial first. Use that judgement. Prodego ^talk 18:04, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

In that case, I'm outta here - I'm not investing any more time when you're already making threats of shopping me to ArbCom. The whole point of discretionary sanctions was to give admins more leeway - what your advocating is exactly the same as we had before. Anyway, I know when it's time to leave. Ryan Postlethwaite^{See the mess I've created or let's have banter} 18:12, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Hold on please, both of you. What is the normal practice with the Obama and Palin article probations? Are you involved with them? I suggest that you should seek to follow the same approaches and standards as with those probations - not least because they've been in place for some time and will already (presumably) have worked through these issues. Plus it would be a good idea anyway to have a consistent approach across the board. -- ChrisO (talk) 19:18, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Reasonable advice. I think Ryan's misreading or overreacting a bit here, though. Unless he really actually wants carte blanche. Which I don't think he does. ++Lar: t/c 19:29, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

For reference, these 3 (CC/Obama/SP) are worded mostly the same, with the exception that the CC set has the extra sentence "Prior to any sanctions being imposed, the editor in question shall be given a warning with a link to these provisions; and, where appropriate, should be counseled on specific steps that he or she can take to improve his or her editing in accordance with relevant policies and guidelines." included. ++Lar: t/c 19:29, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

• Even without article probation administrators can exercise their discretion in a unilateral way (although a careful admin will ask for discussion or review depending on the circumstances). Article probation is supposed to have more teeth and streamline things, so it would be awkward if the "prior notice" and "after discussion" makes things harder and slower. Our experience with Obama article probation was that most people were okay with the templated notice once they realized that participants on both sides were getting them. In some arbcom-imposed sanctions only administrators were allowed to give notices, and notices were generally a sign that an editor was crossing the line. With Obama probation the notice is supposed to alert all editors new to the page that there are some special rules, so the notices is worded in a friendly way and is explicitly not a claim of bad editing (though in practice, people are a lot quicker to warn an aggressive new editor than a copacetic one). Regarding enforcement, it's pretty clear that an editor must know about article probation before being sanctioned under it. Maybe half or fewer of the actual sanctions came through the article probation path. Others came through AN/I, AIV, 3RR, or an administrator who happened to be watching the page and acted without citing the specific policy. Finally, on the subject of logging, editors who templated each other were pretty good about adding the names to the list of editors on notice. The list of sanctions imposed was compiled by unofficial volunteer clerks (me, mainly) because most administrators were too busy to maintain that page. As a result there were a number of sanctions (I would guess 1/3) that simply didn't get logged there, and a few false positives, e.g. editors who were sanctioned for vandalizing other pages but happened to have also been difficult on the Obama pages. There were one or two cases where people objected to some additions to the list, and some very minor edit warring over that, but in general the keeping of the sanctions log itself was not a major battleground. Climate change probation will probably be a little tougher to enforce because the conflict here is more subtle and involves lots of experienced editors, whereas the vast majority of sanctions under Obama probation were SPAs doing very clearcut things like vandalism, blatant trolling, and sockpuppetry. Hope that helps. - Wikidemon (talk) 21:26, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Individual vs. article sanctions

Started a separate section for this to avoid muddying other topics.

It has been pointed out that the enacted provisions only provide for individual editor probation/sanctions, not article probation or article 1RR restrictions. As Tony said, above, that is an apparent oversight, and we should correct it, rather than standing on formality and not doing what will help matters. I'm not sure how best to effect such a change (my suggestion is to just "do it" and note that we are but that's me, I'm a descriptivist as far as policy goes) ++Lar: t/c 14:13, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

I do not want to see individual administrators changing the standard rules of editing. If an article needs 1RR, that is something that should be thoroughly discussed here, or possibly at WP:AN, before any action is taken. Jehochman ^Brrr 14:15, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

I am curious, is this and example of changing the standard rules of editing? --GoRight (talk) 19:15, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

Well... if we're talking about one admin unilaterally imposing, yes, I agree, not a good idea without more discussion than that. BUT, if we're talking about a more robust discussion/consensus process here (which I advocate, as do you I think), then I think this board can impose such on articles within scope. ++Lar: t/c 14:28, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I feel that this page is a good venue to discuss such sanctions. The community at large set this up to handle problems. Anybody interested in editing these articles or administering them is likely to find and watch this page. Jehochman ^Brrr 14:41, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

If we want admins to have the authority to impose discretionary article-level sanctions, which are not now covered by the probation, we need to get explicit community consensus for it through an open process. If we want article-level sanctions to be imposed after discussion and consensus, we might just as well stick to WP:ANI.  Sandstein  19:31, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Obviously admins are now, as we speak, imposing article-level sanctions, and I'm not convinced that we need further discussion on this. Such sanctions can be appealed to the admin, or here, or via dispute resolution. And more to the point, they're being accepted by editors on the relevant articles because they're seen as sensible steps that are in the interests of Wikipedia and fair to all. On whether this forum is no improvement on WP:ANI, I think it is, so far. There has been far less drama here and the decisions are focussed and progress quickly and without undue fuss. For the future, we also have a permanent, centralized record of the process by which the global warming articles are being tamed. This will be useful as a knowledge resource for other problem areas. --TS 10:50, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Well, yes, and that works fine as long as nobody complains. The idea of article-level sanctions is very reasonable, I think, but we really need to get consensus for it first. As an arbitrator in the event of a complaint by a sanctioned editor, I would not be very sympathetic to a few admins deciding on their own, in this relatively quiet corner of Wikipedia, that they have the authority to unilaterally impose general sanctions on editors working in a particular topic. We have seen from the rejection of WP:Discretionary sanctions - which I proposed - that the community does not like this.  Sandstein  17:50, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

I think that Tony's "accepts" is a bit overstated. I object to rules such as the one I point out above that impose consensus only editing and lock in a particular version of anything that has ever been contested on a given page. I am just not willing to test the resolve of the admin in question because the underlying point that precipitated the restriction is not, generally speaking, worth the risk of a block. When I asked that similar sanctions be applied fairly on other articles I was rejected. The haphazard setting of article level rules is a problem. You almost have to start every conversation on a new page with "so what are the editing rules for this page again?" --GoRight (talk) 19:23, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

What you see as haphazard I see as administrator discretion with reference to the editing conditions and available resources. To insist on exactly the same article-level restrictions on all articles covered by the probation seems unnecessary; ideally, only those on which edit warring has happened very recently and would otherwise be likely to resume should be considered for this restriction. --TS 09:17, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Protection: Global cooling

We don't have a place to ask uninvolved admins to look at edit wars with a view to protection or other action to quell them.

The reason I raise this is because we now have on Global cooling what must be the lamest edit war ever: over the inclusion of a section containing only a title and a {{section-stub}} template. Perhaps just a calming word on talk will do. --TS 15:53, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

We already have a long talk section; in fact we have the same thing, several times over. TML just doesn't like the answers William M. Connolley (talk) 16:45, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

There are plenty of places to ask: WP:ANI, WP:RPP, WP:GS/CC/RE, etc. I'll take a look at it.  Sandstein  17:39, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

We don't seem to have a formal way to ask on the latter page. The only template we seem to have is for behavioral stuff concerning a single editor. --TS 17:41, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

TS, just because there is a template for editor sanctions does not mean that editors may not open threads the normal way.  Sandstein  17:44, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

Ah, I don't know whether I may do something as an admin in a dispute that involves William M. Connolley, since I have made content edits to the article about him, William Connolley (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views). Best to ask somebody else, unless Mr Connolley does not mind my taking action.  Sandstein  17:44, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

The dreaded cornflake of interest strikes again. --TS 17:55, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

I think it is fairly safe to assume that S doesn't know much about me, or he wouldn't have written the above. User:William M. Connolley/For me/The naming of cats refers William M. Connolley (talk) 23:25, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

I considered protecting it last night, but decided that the edit history was better described as one new editor making occasional undiscussed changes + one editor aware of the probation frustrated by long talkpage conversations. I offered the latter advice at the time and warned them for 3RR just now, which has some hope of restoring a normal editing environment without protection. And TS - so far as I am concerned that is a perfectly acceptable and even praiseworthy use of this board. - 2/0 (cont.) 23:06, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm sure you've seen [3] William M. Connolley (talk) 23:25, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

I think the solution to that problem is confidence building. We're all too quick with the accusations and the snide comments, too slow to trust, and that's what turns controversial editing situations into arbitration cases. --TS 23:30, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

GoRight, again

GoRight was unblocked with some kind of promise to be good; I forget the exact wording, but good he isn't being. He is now indulging in wikilawyering again over a photo he doesn't like [4] (also elsewhere on that page) and edit warring the pic out [5] (oops, and another revert since I filed this [6]) while claiming a spurious BLP exemption William M. Connolley (talk) 00:00, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

The image in question comes from a clearly WP:SPS (i.e. it was uploaded by some random individual to Flickr). Flickr exercises no editorial control over the content uploaded, nor does it have a reputation for fact checking such things. As such it clearly fails WP:BLPSPS. Since there is no way to verify that this actually IS a photograph of Monckton (as opposed to some imposter), or that it has not been manipulated in some way so as to disparage and denigrate the man with an clearly unflattering image, I claim that it is obvious that this image violates WP:BLPSPS and as such is a clear violation of WP:BLP and it must be removed immediately. --GoRight (talk) 00:08, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

There's a whole parcel of pictures in that group on flickr:

• http://www.flickr.com/photos/matmcdermott/tags/lordmonckton/

They're obviously of Monckton and some of them are nicer than the one GoRight doesn't like. GoRight, do you see any of those as acceptable? --TS 00:19, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

It is not a matter of whether I like them or not. It is not a matter of whether this truly is Monckton, or not. These ALL would be absolutely clear violations of WP:BLPSPS and therefore a violation of WP:BLP which requires violations of that policy be removed immediately. As such the issue is non-negotiable. --GoRight (talk) 00:23, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

Note that I have reported this matter to ANI. See [7]. --GoRight (talk) 00:20, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

GoRight, I agree the photo is not flattering, but it seems pretty clear that it is Monckton, and that it has not been altered in any significant way. It's not a BLP violation; it's just a poor photo that we should try to replace. I think you should self-rv and stop this fight. There are many more significant things to focus on. ATren (talk) 00:24, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

Whether it is or is not Monckton is irrelevant here. Whether it has or has not be manipulated is irrelevant here. Neither of these are for us to determine per WP:RS. WP:BLP requires only the most reliable sources be used on WP:BLPs and images uploaded by random people onto a photo hosting service fail that test miserably. That's all I have to say here. I intend to keep enforcing the WP:BLPSPS restrictions, per the WP:BLP mandate that violations be removed immediately and without regard to WP:3RR until such time as this ANI makes a final determination on this matter. --GoRight (talk) 00:49, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

That's an interesting take on matters. Did you know that our policy on images of living people is to encourage sourcing from flickr and the like? --TS 00:52, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

If that is true then it needs to be reconciled with WP:BLPSPS because as it is written now WP:BLPSPS does not allow for this. To quote:

"Never use self-published books, zines, websites, forums, blogs or tweets as sources for material about a living person, unless written or published by the subject (see below)."

Emphasis is mine. This seems clearly unambiguous. Please take any further discussion to the ANI page. I shall not respond here further. --GoRight (talk) 01:04, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

Really, GoRight, I'm at a loss here. Claiming BLP on a photo is something I've never seen. Maybe if there were obvious signs of manipulation or something like that, you might have a point, but this is just completely unsupportable. The image is not good, but it's not a violation of anything. ATren (talk) 00:57, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

The use of SPS as quoted above is unambiguous and it clearly covers images. Flickr is not a back door for including disparaging material into BLPs. If I am wrong I am sure that I will hear about it. Either way I seek to have neutral parties at ANI to make the determination. I shall abide by any community consensus that is reached at that venue. --GoRight (talk) 01:04, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

It's a crap photo--really we could do better, even from the others in the same batch at flickr. There are one or two showing him in profile, and with a suitable bit of blow-up-and-crop, we'd have a decent picture. I don't really see that this would answer GoRight's concerns as expressed, but maybe a compromise could be reached. --TS 01:06, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm all for finding an alternative image. Another editor has already offered to look for one. But GoRight's claim of BLP is just facetious. -- ChrisO (talk) 01:39, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

Or factitious. --TS 01:47, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps fictitious would be closer to the mark. -- ChrisO (talk) 01:52, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

I don't think using an image from Flickr raises BLP issues, particularly when there's no dispute that it is an image of Monckton, but any time there are three or four CC-licensed images available, and someone deliberately or otherwise selects the least-flattering of them, an editorial decision has occurred. Something is being said about the subject, BLP is definitely in play, and it's reasonable to ask about that person's motivation. Thparkth (talk) 01:56, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, but that's not what GoRight is claiming. He is claiming that a pic from Flickr violates WP:BLPSPS. I'm going to suggest that GoRight doesn't like the photo and that he is wikilawyering to get it removed by straining the interpretation of wikipedia policies beyond any reasonable interpretation. I'm going to suggest that this is exactly what got him blocked the last time. --Enric Naval (talk) 02:10, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

I asked the photographer to allow us to use his images under a free content licence, and he agreed to release that one. That's all there is to it. -- ChrisO (talk) 02:11, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for clarifying that, I see now that all the other images of Monckton in that pool are, though CC-licensed, no-commercial and no-derivative. Still though, that just means the editorial decision has been taken by the photographer (who was apparently protesting against Monckton and so hardly neutral) rather than a Wikipedia editor. Thparkth (talk) 02:16, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

We don't actually need a photo right now. We could wait until a more suitable one becomes available. Just a thought. --TS 02:25, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

I certainly don't object to finding a better image. But it's exasperating to find us, yet again, chasing our tails because of GoRight's incessant wikilawyering. This has to stop. -- ChrisO (talk) 02:29, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

I believe that my good friend ChrisO intends this statement in a pejorative sense of the term "wikilawyering". As such, I would again ask him to review WP:NPA for a third time. --GoRight (talk) 02:40, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

I see this discussion has derailed into a discussion of the photo, which should be on the article talk page. You miss the point: the issue is GR breaking his unblock conditions by editwarring and wikilawyering William M. Connolley (talk) 11:25, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

I would file this under "testing the limits." Not promising, but not actionable at this point. --TS 11:37, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

NOTE: "Use the correct venue for these complaints, please. This talk page is not for complaining about other editors." [8]

Talk:Global warming#FAQ A22 edit war

Would someone else mind closing that section and editing the FAQ appropriately? The discussion seems to pretty much have exhausted itself, but I am afraid I have an opinion. - 2/0 (cont.) 02:44, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

Dismiss the three pending cases

I propose that the two three pending cases (one of which was opened by me) be dismissed. They've all stalled and nobody seems to think further action is merited. Holding them open in these particular circumstances is unnecessary. --TS 18:12, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

I'd like to see some uninvolved admins come in and actually look at these cases, closing them if that is the appropriate action William M. Connolley (talk) 22:29, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

Please be aware of these edits

Content disputes should be handled on the talk page of an article: Talk:Criticism of IPCC AR4. Address the content and not the editor.

I'm not raising a request for enforcement at this time, but I would ask admins frequenting these parts to keep a close eye on Criticism of IPCC AR4 and in particular edits made by User:William M. Connolley including those of early January. The initial edit is extremely POV, and probably constitutes OR to boot (per talk page there). Furthermore, blatant factual inaccuracies (IPCC criteria for non-peer-reviewed material, contradicts cited material) are included to support the POV. (for the record: I am not philosophically opposed to WMC on climate issues) ‒ Jaymax✍ 09:41, 20 January 2010 (UTC) I think Jay,ax is going to look very silly here. His claim of blatant factual inaccuracies is, itself, blatantly factually inaccurate William M. Connolley (talk) 10:36, 20 January 2010 (UTC) My search of the relevant documents initially turned up the exact same thing as Jay has commented on. I used the "site:" command in Google searching for "peer" at www.IPCC.ch and my first find was at page 10 of IPCC Meetings Session 28: "The credibility of the IPCC reports is based on the fact that they summarize and integrate existing research, which itself has been scrutinized through publication in peer-review journals." Now, I recognise that WMC is correct and other parts of ipcc documentation say that peer-review is not necessary to put material into the IPCC report, but with this much confusion and contradiction all round it would be nice if sober heads were worn by everyone. I am not philosophically opposed to WMC on climate issues either, but I do have serious concerns about the article and others in the same suite. MalcolmMcDonald (talk) 14:49, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Collapsing Talk manners

I reverted a Collapsed talk here [9], [10]. While collapsing can be beneficial in some instances to keep discussions on topic, like any other tool, it can be abused to prematurely shut down discussion and obscure the talk with a spin (possible disruptively). I've looked for guidance for appropriate collapsing; however, there's little available ... is there any? I guess collapsing (and archive boxing) are primarily a notice board process, which has carried over to talk pages. Seems like most folks will not dispute reverted collapses on talk pages, while administrative notice board actions have higher formalities for "incident closure". Article talk is somewhat different from incident closure because the remedies differ for NPOV content v.s. admin actions on users. Would folks agree, that if collapsing or archiving talk is abused ... this could be a basis for an enforcement request? Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 15:55, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

I've reverted it. You edit comment isn't even close to acceptable: rvt disruptive close is pointlessly provocative William M. Connolley (talk) 16:05, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Let me clarify the point ... It was to prevent a disruption to talk that was progressing productively. Can you (WMC) accept that closing without talk or motion (and second) can be disruptive? What would be an acceptable reason to reopen the discussion? Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 16:09, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

The discussion is pointless. Your edit comment *asserting* that the collapse was disruptive was itself disruptive. However, if you want to witter on in that thread a bit longer it will do no more than waste a few electrons and clutter up the talk page pointlessly; I don't think anyone of moment is going to bother talk there much. We can let it die it's obvious natural death and bury it later William M. Connolley (talk) 19:06, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Let me invite you for faith in the point that article can make it to peer review quality. I agree reverts in themselves can be disruptive; however, here ... peaceful talk has prevailed. Now this talk thread (before disruption) was about abusing the collapses ... would you agree this tool could be abused? Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 19:32, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

I haven't got a clue what you mean by "article can make it to peer review quality". It looks like gobbledegook to me. The article is already WP:FA which is wiki's highest standard. Any tool can be abused; I haven't abused it; you have acted disruptively by pointlessly aggressive reverts and edit summaries. This discussion here appears to be pointless William M. Connolley (talk) 19:50, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Take it as a warning on a talk page, since I am not invited to yours. (FA was nearly 4 years ago, and the article talk page take tag invites improvements, unlike you have.) Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 20:02, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Zulu, whenever you feel a discussion is prematurely collapsed, just revert it with a neutral edit summary and leave a note on the collapsing editor's talk page. If he/she refuses to stop collapsing talk page discussions that you want to keep open, report it to this board for admin review and possible action. Cla68 (talk) 23:56, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

To Zulu and to Atren, whose comment seems to have been removed, and I don't really have the energy to figure out why: please do keep in mind that there is the question of how things should be, and then the question of what can be done in the environment that exists. As things are, you may be right that it's damned if you do and damned if you don't in certain respects. Nevertheless, one of the worst things someone can do is to make unfocused complaints, as these have almost exclusively the effect of giving the impression that a.) you are too emotionally involved, and thus likely at least part of any problem, and b.) you are not willing or able to focus on specific issues at hand. Unfocused complaints, meaning complaints that are not made specifically in dispute resolution with hard evidence to back up clear violations of community standards, are really one of the worst things editors can do to themselves. Which leads to the correllary, that unless you are making focused complaints in dispute resolution, then you should really be making every possible effort to work in good faith with other editors, completely untainted by any concerns you have aboout their conduct. Is it easy? Certainly not, but that is pretty much the way Wikipedia works, when it works. One aspect that can be impressive is that if you do this, you will often find that people start working much more cooperatively so that the complaints become unnecessary. Optimistically this is because you've succesfully created a good faith environment. Cynically it's because you're no longer providing cover for obstruction. Doesn't really matter in the end. Apologies if this sound like a lecture; obviously it's just one editor's view, provided to any extent you find it helpful. Mackan79 (talk) 02:44, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Mackan, I am not emotionally involved whatsoever. I really don't care about this issue. What I do care about is the rampant double standard that is not only accepted but seemingly encouraged when dealing with editors in this topic. I care about the mockery that Wikipedia is becoming as a result of the unapologetic POV pushing on these articles. When JPatterson makes TWO edits to the Email Hacking article, he is article-banned for a whole month; when WMC disruptively removes talk page comments and calls other editors a "waste of time", he not only gets a pass, but editors who report him are reprimanded. That's ridiculous.

And, yes, I am starting the process of building evidence. See User:ATren/sandbox. But collecting such evidence takes time, and it shouldn't have to be this way. This isn't Conservapedia, no matter how hard some editors try to make it so. ATren (talk) 03:51, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Mckan79, I agree with you. I presume you are talking about these [11], [12], [13], [14] removals (3RR are these)? Anyway, I've expressed my intent to improve the enforcements by talking here [15], which seems to be aligned with your comments. I have yet to file a complaint here becasue the process seems shaky to me nor the the action progressing with accepted warning. Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 04:42, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Why has the "Griefing" section not been removed as an attack?

Okay from reading the essay I gather that it describes a certain mode of disruptive activity on Wikipedia. That being so, why isn't this matter being raised, with diffs, on the project page? As it stands, it appears to of to be there solely to act as cover for a personal attack on an individual who, although he is not explicitly named, is clearly identifiable. So again,why has this attack not been removed? --Tasty monster 18:24, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

I've (re)done it William M. Connolley (talk) 19:28, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Eyes needed?

Ok, so I reaaaaalllly don't want do a request for enforcement. Seen some heads roll for doing just that. BUT, could someone please take a look at this talk page section and review the behavior? Arkon (talk) 22:50, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

This has also been discussed at User talk:2over0#User:Jpat34721. I've asked Jpat to desist from reopening settled questions (see User talk:Jpat34721#Unbanned from Talk:Climatic Research Unit hacking incident). Unfortunately he seems to have rather unwisely reignited a dispute that would have been better left alone. I should add that I've not otherwise been involved in this latest dispute. -- ChrisO (talk) 01:11, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Honestly, it was the behavior of Hipocrite (the reporting user in the thread you mention) that prompted this from me, but I welcome any and all eyes. Certainly couldn't hurt. Arkon (talk) 01:20, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Rules of the game

Some admin attention is needed to stop the nonsense on the project page from degenerating further.

However, I'd like one specific point cleared up: is off-wiki evidence permitted? If it is, then I think some people who post on WR and misc blogs are going to look very silly. If it isn't, then can an admin go in and strike all the material related to off-wiki posts William M. Connolley (talk) 20:56, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Generally not, as behaviour off-site is largely irrelevant. Further, we do not want to unfairly disadvantage people who choose to use the same identity here and elsewhere. For instance, I do not blog as "2over0", so nobody would be able to bring conflict of interest or pov-pushing charges for my off-wiki statements that people who claim violations of the second law of thermodynamics are deluded, engaged in fraud, or both. - 2/0 (cont.) 00:00, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

I think if person X posts here saying "see what I said at my blog" as a response to someone, it is perfectly valid to treat that as if person X said it here... that is, the offwiki exception doesn't apply. You don't get to say nasty things elsewhere, point to them with a link, and then say "neener neener, that wasn't said here so you can't touch me". We've had some of that, I think, and it's Not On. ++Lar: t/c 05:02, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

So it's perfectly fine for someone to give others a slagging on an external site as long as they make a pretense of civility here? Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 05:23, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

I don't know that it's perfectly fine or not, but that's not at all what I said. Please review it and let me know how to make it clearer... what i said was that you shouldn't say stuff elsewhere you are not comfy saying here and link to it and then claim it doesn't count because you didn't say it here. That's dirty pool. And unless I'm much mistaken, it's a tactic WMC has used more than once. Or so his detractors claim. I think they even gave links. Clear yet or do I need to try again? ++Lar: t/c 05:41, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

So then the crux of the objection is not that he said it, but that he linked to it? Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 06:00, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

The crux of the objection is neither of those things, actually. It's that he is apparently trying to avoid being judged for what he said by saying it wasn't said here. ++Lar: t/c 19:19, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

I agree with Lar that in that case the linking editor would effectively be making the statements here. Exhorting or organizing misbehavior here might also be an exception, depending on the circumstances; EEML might be relevant. Generally, while we can try to require it here, I think expecting civil rational discussion everywhere online has been a lost cause since at least 31Sept. - 2/0 (cont.) 06:29, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

OK, I can see that. It bothers me when certain so-called "respected admins and content contributors" give people a reaming in offsite forums and then dissimulate here. I accept that we can't outlaw hypocrisy, though I still don't like it. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 06:39, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Looking over, I *think* all the off-site diffs refer to the complain which was closed no-action. If that is so, and none of the diffs concern the currently open report, can you confirm that none of those off-site diffs are being taken into account in formulating teh current close? William M. Connolley (talk) 08:58, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

For my part, the external links were not considered. They are, quite simply, irrelevant to this case. I am not sure they need to be removed, though, as I think this board needs to be fairly open in terms of allowing evidence and would not like to set a precedent. I will defer to the judgment of others in this instance. - 2/0 (cont.) 17:35, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

I think folk should stop linking to their own remarks unless they're willing to stand behind the remarks (in both content and tone) as if they had been written here. I'm not so sure what's confusing about that view although SBHB seems to be trying to spin it around to complain about people having views that they articulate offsite, period... or maybe it's only people having views that conflict with his, or something. I can't speak for anyone else but if I say something, and it's a serious comment, not a jocular remark, I'm willing to stand behind it, because if I wasn't, I wouldn't have said it. You won't ever see me saying "you can't hold me to what I said because I said it somewhere else". ++Lar: t/c 19:17, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

If they aren't being considered in 2/0's close that will do. @Lar: consistency William M. Connolley (talk) 19:46, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Eh? Feel free to explain further (here, or stop by my talk if you like) ++Lar: t/c 20:48, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Disruption by CoM

I draw your attention to the disruptive and distinctly non-consensual page move by CoM Talk:Climatic_Research_Unit_hacking_incident#Article_move. If he won't learn to behave (and he doesn't seem to be in the least repentant) sancitons will be required William M. Connolley (talk) 21:04, 25 January 2010 (UTC)^{[Inappropriate under WP:TPG - The front page is the place for this.]}

Please move this to the talk page for discussion, or else contact the user in question (Child of midnight? I'm guessing because I don't speak acronymese) and tell him of your concerns. Dispute resolution, you see. --TS 22:10, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

The article has been move-protected now, so this is probably moot for the moment. -- ChrisO (talk) 22:27, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

CoM has not heeded the message of his recent RfC - well summarised by the closing administrator - and seems to be targeting WMC because of some old grudge. He might end up with a lengthy block. Mathsci (talk) 00:34, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Why has this not been removed? We were clearly told this page is not to discuss other editors. I tagged it. Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 03:31, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Lack of action on open enforcement requests

It seems that the 2 existing complaints against WMC are not being handled. Should we ask for uninvolved admin input on AN/I? ATren (talk) 22:03, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Working on it, thanks. I think the giant refactoring thread may need to be added to the main probation page, as this seems to be a recurring issue. - 2/0 (cont.) 22:53, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

If you are talking about this, Wikipedia_talk:General_sanctions/Climate_change_probation/Requests_for_enforcement#Collapsing_Talk_manners .... I'll be happy to move it up front. Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 03:36, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

That one informs the discussion at Wikipedia:General sanctions/Climate change probation/Requests for enforcement#Edit war at Talk:Global warming, which might lead to some advice for talkpage discussions being added to Wikipedia:General sanctions/Climate change probation itself. Given how often this issue comes up, it could be useful to have some more specific guidance than the talk page guidelines. - 2/0 (cont.) 06:20, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Divisive bickering

I think this needs to be raised. Recent filings and responses to them on this page have taken a sadly all-too-predictable partisan path, with people apparently taking sides in the same way we've seen on the talk pages, sparring for advantage, which itself led to this probation.

I don't yet propose action, but I want to give uninvolved admins a chance to remind everyone involved in this page that it isn't to be used as a weapon in trench warfare. If that's all that's going to happen, then on balance it will have become another locus of the ongoing problem and, in my opinion, we'd be better off just tossing it back to the Arbitration Committee. If editors are going to engage in that kind of bickering they might as well do so under the noses of arbitrators who have rather less patience with nonsense than the average administrator. --TS 00:39, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

I would like to reiterate what Tony says above. In a case like this, the winner is the first side to stop rising to the provocations of the other. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 00:42, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Usually the diffs say it all (like sources) and the editors bring in a NPOV. I'll agree there is a elephant in the room folks seem to ignore. Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 01:04, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Don't be cryptic. Name the elephant. I certainly don't know what you're referring to. --TS 01:08, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Dumbo. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 06:40, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Nellie? -- ChrisO (talk) 09:21, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

LHVU? William M. Connolley (talk) 11:39, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Sarcasm/silliness aside (how is it helpful, guys?) I suspect ZP is alleging the elephant is WMC (and/or the allegations of control of this area by WMC (and allies?) that have been raised), but I could be wrong. ++Lar: t/c 19:01, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

I suspect you are right Lar, @ WMC Why would LHVU be an elephant? nellie and dumbo i get, not lhvu :) mark nutley (talk) 19:23, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Oh, c'mon! It is a small "v", with the rest capitalised... LessHeard vanU (talk) 20:57, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Locking of articles for edit warring

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and Lawrence Solomon

Recently two climate change probation articles have been locked with the reason cited as edit warring, I spoke to the two administrators involved and noted to them that the articles were under probation and that I thought that considering the probation on the articles that if they were in need of locking, full protection for edit warring then they a report should be made as regards the editors involved as edit warring and article protection are two of the main issues that the probation was created to stop. Here on the 24th the article Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was locked for edit warring by admin User_talk:JForget . The admin User_talk:2over0 also locked Lawrence Solomon another climate change article on th 22nd January for edit warring here . I have asked both admins about the fact that locking articles under probation is worthy of a report here and I have requested this of both administrators here . Off2riorob (talk) 01:08, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Could you indicate which two articles you're referring to, and for convenience point to the discussions with the admins? --TS 01:05, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

I can't speak for any other articles, but I think it was improper to semi-protect Talk:Global Warming. Ips and new editors can't even leave a suggestion to improve the article.--Jojhutton (talk) 01:12, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

The article was locked because of relentless edit warring by IPs. Which you did nothing to help stop William M. Connolley (talk) 11:40, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia's credibility and the need for public support

I'm a former Wikipedia editor with about 2,000 edits, almost all of them copy edits that improved articles. I don't have 16 hours a day to learn Wikipedia policy to the point of becoming a Wiki lawyer like Sidaway and Connelley, who use the rules to maintain their personal hold on some articles and shut down anything and anyone that they don't want to hear. When that fails them, they indulge in insult, tag-team and arbitrarily decide what constitutes reliable sources. In the case of climate change articles, they try to create the idea they have raised the standard of "reliable" to that of peer-reviewed. I read the CRU e-mails dealing with manipulating editorial personnel on journals and discussing article referees I hold a PhD in History, and I can tell lousy scholarship and peer review manipulation when I see it. As well, the wheels have already come off the claim that the IPCC is a sort of peer-reviewed Gospel. The Himalayan glaciers claims are not a small part of the report. They are actually cited in the Nobel Prize citation to IPCC and Gore. Now we are seeing citations in the IPCC report to WWF and Greenpeace documents, and the head of IPCC is under pressure to resign. I hardly call that "settled science." In fact, I call settled science "religion", and believe that people who try to enforce religious dogma on others to be anti-scholarship. So I'm gone. People like this have moved Wikipedia from an encyclopedia written and edited by ordinary people to one that is controlled by a cadre of full-time agenda-pushers. People aren't stupid (despite WC's insults to the contrary). Wikipedia depends on public contributions of money and effort, and its credibility rests on the idea that it's collective wisdom. Wikipedia is in trouble.69.165.150.81 (talk) 16:32, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

The Nobel Peace citation reads, in full, "The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided that the Nobel Peace Prize for 2007 is to be shared, in two equal parts, between the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and Albert Arnold (Al) Gore Jr. for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change." No glaciers there, Himalayan or others. Retreating glaciers are mentioned in the presentation speech, in general terms that are not affected by the detected error.[16] --Stephan Schulz (talk) 17:01, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

I see that you are one of Connelley's defenders and tag-team partners. "The detected error" is a claim, now refuted, based on a non-scientific claim by a conservation group, laundered through various press, that the Himalayan glaciers that provide water to some 40% of the people of the world would be gone by 2035 because of man-made global warming. The government of India, using real science, has proven that this claim is bunk. This is not a clerical error. It is sloppy science, facts deliberately chosen from dubious sources. And, of course, the crux of my argument is ignored, one item is pulled out and addressed in a rather dubious and tricky way, and the agenda-pushing goes on.

And here's the presentation quote: "The ice is melting more rapidly in the Arctic, the desert is spreading more quickly in Africa, the glaciers are shrinking in the Himalayas." It doesn't say "some" or "a few" or "many". Any reasonable person can see exactly what they are talking about: the now-debunked IPCC claim, based on a WWF publication and a New Scientist quote from a scientist who now says he was misquoted, debunked by his own government's top glacier scientists, that the Himalayan glaciers are disappearing.

When it's the IPCC report, it's a "detected error." When it's a failing by people who argue that the science does not seem settled at all, these people are "ignorant," "septic," etc. I see no one cares that people like me are leaving Wikipedia. I doubt many of the agenda-pushers really care about the project. 69.165.150.81 (talk) 17:41, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

This is a place to seek probation enforcement, not a soap box. Nor is it a place to accuse Wikipedians of good standing of being "tag-team partners". Modify your approach or find yourself the subject of an enforcement request. -- Scjessey (talk) 17:51, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

He has the right to put his point across, try to be civil and not just throw threats at people. mark nutley (talk) 17:57, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Are you serious? The IP just used this enforcement request page as a soap box and to make bad faith comments about other editors. Nobody has "the right" to use this page for that sort of thing. That's totally unacceptable, and even actionable. -- Scjessey (talk) 18:05, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

A lot of our new colleagues have strange ideas about their 'rights' on Wikipedia. I've also seen people claiming their right to 'post' their views onto Talk pages and of course to add them to the articles too. --Nigelj (talk) 18:14, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Actually when he first posted it was up above, in an enforcement section were he had every right to say his piece as you have done and i have done on several of these enforcment actions. I don`t know who moved it to it`s own section but it certainly started off in the right place. So yes he does have the right, he also has the right not be be threatened by you for speaking his mind. mark nutley (talk) 18:13, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Actually, you are wrong about the section being moved (see the History) and what you say about "rights". -- Scjessey (talk) 18:17, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Wrong [17] Response from Kenosis: my views --mark nutley (talk) 18:24, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

The IP posted these comments here themselves. Whether or not they existed before is irrelevant. -- Scjessey (talk) 18:32, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Appeals

Whats the best way to appeal the enforcement cases here? I assume first to talk with the closer, after that where should it go ... to ANI? Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 21:34, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

I am not sure you will get a lot of sympathy at ANI unless it is on grounds of something flagrant. The probation terms give a pretty strong position to the admin who closes a decision, basically to allow argmuments to stop so we can move on. --BozMo talk 22:00, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Ok for flagrant cases. Maybe appeals are possible after a concerning pattern of closure? I guess ArbCom might hear something, if it were discussed here first. Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 22:37, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

I guess yes, it would have to be arbcom. I can never tell what they will take as cases but in general again everything in probation is intentionally stacked towards shutting down discussion which is not about improving the articles. The fact that some people want to carry on arguing does not distract from the process here; that someone flags a probation violation and an uninvolved admin closes the discussion as soon as all is clear to them. The pages are not for any other purpose, and not for everyone to express their view on everything anyone else has done. To explain further, underlying this IMHO is that it has been impossible in general to discuss reasonable improvments to the Climate change articles on talk pages for a very long time because there is too much argument about shifting positions. The articles have ended up in places unclear and personally I think the bios are not respectful enough of living people. But I watch the argument always deteriorate into partisan sides. --BozMo talk 22:53, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Interesting, by being "stacked towards shutting down discussions" then probation would lend itself to Wikipedia:WRONG. Thanks ... seems like the productive thing to do, is all to work together and have probation lifted. Its not clear when this will happen, seems like maybe after a round robin of enforcements, and the really bad actors self select themselves out. This probation may go on for months. Too bad for Wikipedia. Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 02:48, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

There are quite a few probations that go back years. I'm certain this will end up being one of them. -- ChrisO (talk) 17:06, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Closing the Probation

Seems early now, but as a side, it would be good to frame some goals for when to achieve closing this probation. Say maybe when enforcements complains stop occurring for some period, maybe? Or, maybe something else? Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 17:55, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps we'll know it when we see it. From the Obama article, editors weren't too eager to lift probation even after a period of a few months without any major cases. But I wouldn't place any bets on this subject becoming less contentious anytime soon on or off Wikipedia. - Wikidemon (talk) 21:41, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Undoing administrative closes

This is just a general note that when an uninvolved administrator closes a thread, it's closed. Twice now, editors have reverted an admin's closure of an enforcement thread. Even by the abysmal behavioral standards of this page, that is over the line. To the editor's credit in the most recent case, they self-reverted. This is a general warning that if complainants continue to revert administrative closures, I will block them. Regardless of how strongly you feel that you're right, there are some absolute-minimum behavioral standards that need to be in place here. MastCell ^Talk 18:26, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

• Oh, stop. The administrators at this enforcement page routinely take your antagonistic attitude toward those who don't fall in line, while kid-gloving WMC's blatant violations. I self-reverted, despite the egregious sweeping-under-the-rug that Prodego's close entailed. Save your outrage for people who deserve it. UnitAnode 18:31, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

• Mastcell, the "uninvolved admins" turn this "enforcement page" into a farce, yet your only concern is this action which UA has already self-reverted? ATren (talk) 19:34, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

If you have a valid complaint against an administrator then talk to the administrator or take it to an appropriate forum like WP:ANI or WP:RFC or whereever. Personal attacks against them have no place on talk pages. Dmcq (talk) 19:53, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Guys, there is a question: how do I build consensus for a position? Option A: Express outrage at every opportunity. Option B: Calmly explain how things could be better. So which should one use where? Just one editor's view, but in my experience expressing outrage only works with others who already agree with you; expressing outrage to people who disagree with you rarely works. On Wikipedia, expressing outrage to people who are ambivalent is almost as bad. So what is the point? Considering that it's useless, that it only entrenches our problems, and that it is not especially civil, I think it should stop. I think there are problems in the area, but I certainly won't support editors who can't control their tempers. If there is a concern, editors should state it civilly and respectfully; if they oppose the process they should take it to ArbCom. I don't think that shouting and incivility should be tolerated here as the standard mode of communication. Mackan79 (talk) 20:23, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Mackan, I've done the "civil and respectful" route. A couple of months ago, when WMC and a couple of his friends were removing talkpage posts right and left, I tried to step in (as, at that time, a wholly uninvolved editor), and asked them to stop. Suffice to say, they didn't. The reason normal people become somewhat "radicalized" is because over and over and over again, all enforcement sways in one direction. If a skeptic had done what WMC did in referring to other editors as "idiots" and "yahoos" in the very thread where he was informed that he was restricted from such language, they would have been blocked on the spot, and/or topic-banned. This is going to end up in front of the arbcom again, and it's not going to be pretty. UnitAnode 20:47, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Right, so the area has problems, but MastCell still wasn't attacking you, and Atren's comment that this is a farce still doesn't help. The fact that civility doesn't work at first isn't a reason to stop trying. One has to keep focusing on the real problems as they arise. MastCell is right that editors should not be reverting closures, and credited you for reverting yourself. People need to strongly resist the urge to get exorcised about every little thing, find places where they agree along with where they disagree, and work from there. Mackan79 (talk) 22:32, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Mackan, I've been involved in the GW articles on and off for over a year, and nothing ever changes. I could probably find a hundred aggressive diffs from WMC over that time, but nothing is ever done. It is a farce. You're right, I probably shouldn't say it even though it is, but after months and months of the same garbage, it gets very tiring. In a year, you'll be saying the same things. ATren (talk) 00:42, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

I'd hope not. The fact is that where editors are not treated evenly, there are reasons for it, even if you have to search for them. On these articles I believe there is a significant concern that, based purely on behavioral policies, uninformed activists would bait and overwhelm the more scientifically competent editors. Whether that's legitimate we could debate, but I don't think it's outlandish, or a simple issue. Of course some responses to this concern can be less reasonable than others. But, frankly, to go about complaining as if improvements are impossible is to become part of the problem. Mackan79 (talk) 02:50, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

The problem of "uninformed activists" is overblown. Again, this is based on my observation of this debate over the last year. Yes, there is the occasional problem editor, as with any contentious topic. But the "uninformed activist" problem is matched (and likely exceeded) by the "vested contributor ownership" problem. WMC is at the center of this, with his aggressive, uncivil, even attacking style in enforcing the status quo. Without WMC, there would be plenty of editors to step up and protect against uninformed claims, and I myself would be one of them if the skeptical view became too prominent, but the level of discourse would not be so hostile without the combativeness of WMC. Look at the heat that has been generated on these pages, all originating with the actions of one editor. There are no Scibabies on this page -- in fact, I think most of us are not even skeptics -- yet the level of agitation is extreme, because admins continue to mis-identify the root cause of this dispute. ATren (talk) 03:12, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Hmm. Maybe but I don't think "all originating with the actions of one editor" is quite fair. "Unformed activist" comes and goes. I think there is also a fair bit of Dunning Kruger editing where a few people (not you) greatly over-estimate their own understanding of complex issues and get extremely upset when all that happens is their lack of understanding is pointed out without great attempt to wrestle with their thoughts. Of course we would rather this was all done in a softer and more civil manner, but also I would rather it was done by someone else not me because it is not an easy thing to point out without violating WP:DICK. --BozMo talk 13:04, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Shutting down threads (often with further PA) is one of the top 6 things wrong with these articles. I know, because I asked. MalcolmMcDonald (talk) 20:44, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Or more accurately I guess one of the main things people have complained to you about. Dmcq (talk) 22:10, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Or perhaps more accurately, the complaints or proposals you didn't delete. In my view politely keeping offtopic soapboxing under control is a good way of minimising disruption. New users should of course be introduced to talk page guidelines and invited to make positive proposals backed by sources. . . dave souza, talk 13:30, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Ok i`m getting fed up of this anti-scientific denialist views being pasted all over WP. It is not anti-science to be sceptical of AGW. The use of the term Denier has connotations to the holocaust and is used purposefully to conjure up images of bigoted, knuckle dragging right wing lunatics. I believe the use of this term is a violation of WP:CIVIL and i will ask for enforcement action next time i see it used. --mark nutley (talk) 13:39, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

mark nutley, are you sure you posted this in the right thread? I can't find "denialist" mentioned in this section. . . . dave souza, talk 13:57, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

didn't delete yes dave i posted in the right thread. mark nutley (talk) 14:06, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Ah, got you now. Among my proposals for action was that "Global warming controversy should include extreme fringe scientific views and anti-scientific denialist views", which in my understanding do exist but are outside the scientific fringe. Perhaps you have a better term? Agree that it's about as bad at framing as "Climategate", and similarly appears to be in use in media reports. . . dave souza, talk 14:13, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Can`t you just say sceptic? As in those sceptical of AGW, to the best of my knowledge nobody denies that climate changes, it always has done. People however are sceptical of the theory of AGW. Just go with that, i`m quite proud of the fact that i`m sceptical, it`s how science progress`s. mark nutley (talk) 14:17, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Unfortunately "sceptic" or "skeptic" is a much misused term, and has other common meanings such as atheist. All scientists are indeed sceptical in broad principle, which is why both anti-globalwarmingists and anti-evolutionists like the term. You may not have noticed my preceding sentence, "the range of views in Scientific opinion on climate change should include those who think it's worse than IPCC reports indicate, as well as various minority views such as AGW existing but not being statistically significant etc." – all of these would fall under a "skeptic" label but not be denialist. There are also those who deny that global warming is occurring from an anti-science perspective, not sure how small a fringe they are. I think we should also ensure that a summary style statement in main global warming science article briefly mentions that there is a range of views, indicating broad outline but not going into any detail. There seems to be too much polarisation of arguments. . . . dave souza, talk 14:35, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Bozmo

I find Bozmo's accusations that Lar is attempting to "filibuster" by introducing KDP to the enforcement extremely problematic. I've outlined very clearly the scope of the edit war, and KDP was a clear participant. The fact that the initial report didn't contain KDP's username is a minor technicality, at worst. I'm beginning to wonder if Bozmo's even looked at the page where I outlined the scope of the edit war? If he has, and still wishes to keep KDP out of the sanctioned group -- and make accusations against Lar -- I feel that this is the final straw as far as demonstrating his clear lack of objectivity. KDP is an SPA that engaged in an edit war. If that's not sanctionable, they should shut this enforcement page down. UnitAnode 13:55, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

How is the above helpful to creating a collegial atmosphere? Hipocrite (talk) 13:56, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

How is Bozmo accusing Lar of a "filibuster", and refusing to sanction KDP based on a technicality "helpful"? How is your one line response, "helpful"? My post is helpful because it sheds light on a situation that needs such light. I'm tired of one-sided enforcement. UnitAnode 13:58, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

I think your language distracts from your point. Consider rewriting your request. Hipocrite (talk) 13:59, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

What particular portions do you have a problem with? Nothing I posted was untrue, or even all that inflammatory. Bozmo DID make accusations that Lar was simply filibustering. In my view, that DOES demonstrate further his clear lack of objectivity. How is my wording problematic at all? UnitAnode 14:24, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Sure, I'm happy to help you with your civility. If I were to write the intitial complaint, I'd say the following:

"I am concerned that Bozmo has not fully researced recent complaints that he has responded to, and is becoming less than objective. For example, I attempted to outline the scope of a recent edit war (User:Unitanode/GW edit war), and I feel my evidence clearly shows that KDP was a participant. While my initial complaint did fail to include KDP, that was little more than a technicality. I'm worried that Bozmo hasn't thoroughly reviewed my evidence before excluding KDP from sanctions. Further, I think that accusing other admins of "filibustering" isn't really conducive to creating a collegial atmosphere."

But that's just me - I mean, I don't think saying "I'm beginning to wonder if Bozmo's even looked" and "If that's not sanctionable, they should shut this enforcement page down," doesn't do much to allow the other side to try to agree with you. There's no compromise that anyone can reach with your position, so why would they even try? Hipocrite (talk) 14:36, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Your condescension ("Sure, I'm happy to help you with your civility.") is noted. UnitAnode 14:48, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm not trying to be condesending. I've striken the phrase you found problematic. Hipocrite (talk) 14:54, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

UnitAnode: I think Hipocrite's version is better. It makes the same points but does so in a more collegial way. He's "written for the enemy" here, as I've been encouraging him to do. Thanks for that, H. ++Lar: t/c 20:18, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

I am curious about your word "accusations". As far as I know a filibuster is not a crime, nor morally dubious, nor forbidden by wikipolicy and indeed is often celebrated by participants? I had read your argument for extending the action to KDP and disagreed with it. As far as I understand it, it is not intended that I get entangled in discussion with you on that kind of judgement but I note 2/0 also presumably dismissed it as well. So Lar stating we cannot close unless KDP is included basically prevents this sanction from closing which is a form of filibuster. I don't have a particular problem with it assuming he has the energy to deal with the situation in another manner and intended this consequence. In terms of uninvolved I refer you to the wording of the probation and invite you to challenge my status as uninvolved if you believe me to be through the proper channels. --BozMo talk 14:32, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Filibustering is a political tactic, not one that ought to be employed in encyclopedia projects, and use of the term could be considered pejorative. I also don't think it fits the facts. I said I wasn't comfortable closing it without including KDP, not that we can't. We operate on consensus and if all the other admins felt differently, my discomfort stops nothing. ++Lar: t/c 20:18, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

See - look - no compromise presented, and because he didn't go saying you were not even reading what he wrote and that you should shut the page down he looks far more reasonable than you did. I'm not even sure if you can walk it back now. Hipocrite (talk) 14:36, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

• There have been questions raised as to 2/0's objectivity as well. This issue -- where both of you are, for some reason, protecting KDP from sanction for his edit-warring -- seems to confirm these concerns. This perception of this page is that it has been pretty one-sided since its inception. This incident is doing nothing to allay those fears. UnitAnode 14:46, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Again, you're not presenting an avenue for compromise. You state that they are "protecting KDP from sanction for his edit-warring." At least you give in presenting "perception" of the page, and asking that people allay your fears without actually stating that they are evil bias-monsters, but still, consider writing the kind of thing that people on the "other" side would be willing to accept. Here's an example here

"Some of the editors have complained about 2/0 as well. I think it's important to convince editors who feel this process is biased that we're actually being fair - I know it seems like I'm scalp-hunting by asking for KDP's head here, but please consider that the sanctions requested are minimally intrustive if users are on even good behavior, and the positive benefits that creating the appearance of neutrality would have."

Of course, at this point, I'm not sure what you anyone would actually get out of having KDP put under 1rr except that you they can more easily "win" edit wars (right up untill someone notices youthey are "winning" edit wars). Perhaps gracefully losing would work better, now. Just a thought. Hipocrite (talk) 14:53, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Wow. For someone so concerned with civility, accusing me of only looking to "win edit wars" is way beyond the pale. I don't believe that I've ever even reverted KDP on an article. I could be mistaken about this, but perhaps you may want to think before you click "save" as well. UnitAnode 15:00, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm sorry I wrote something that was so easy to misunderstand. I didn't mean to accuse you of looking to "win" edit wars. I was merely stating that putting Kim on 1rr didn't do anything for anyone, except help them "win" edit wars. I realize looking back that it was unfairly directed at you, and for that I apologize. I've edited my statement appropriately. Hipocrite (talk) 15:04, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Current wording proposal

The current wording proposed by 2/0 seems even-handed, and alleviates my above concerns. UnitAnode 17:18, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Thank you, Unitanode - we strive for fairness, though not necessarily balance; I know I at least reply directly only rarely, but productive comments in the discussion section are always considered. Thank you as well for preparing the evidence page, that was very helpful. - 2/0 (cont.) 18:08, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

No problem. I was wondering if any of the admins had really read it. UnitAnode 18:12, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Well if you mean [18] sure although you excluded two edits of the Good locust, one to introduce the original material and one to add to it. Also the intervals between the edits mattered but I am sure you know all that. --BozMo talk 18:28, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Those were clearly not simple reversions. It wasn't even close. And initially introducing the material is never considered part of an "edit war." Why the hang-em-high mentality about TGL, Bozmo? UnitAnode 19:42, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

You are counting the material I added? And adding/restoring references? If anything you should checkuser the guy who removed all the references and replaced them with "icecap," which, oddly enough, became the battle cry for reversion even after I restored (and added to) the original sources - it definitely looked kind of fishy. Also, on the talk page, most people keep on pointing out the flaws in KDP's "Just Say No" style of discussion. TheGoodLocust (talk) 19:38, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Negatively characterizing other's styles of discussion is unlikey to foster a collegial atmosphere. Please don't do it. Hipocrite (talk) 19:39, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

WP:SPADE TheGoodLocust (talk) 19:51, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Agree with Hipocrite. ++Lar: t/c 20:18, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

This has to stop

These quick "article bans", "topic bans", and all that on the anti-AGW crowd, while quickly proposing "Close as no action" on blatant civility violations by WMC. This one-sided enforcement has to stop immediately. UnitAnode 16:47, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

• Given what's been done to Gavin Collins, this probation is being shown to be almost entirely one-sided. It has to stop, or we need to take this to the arbitration committee for clarification. UnitAnode 19:06, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

For someone who pretends to be so keen on civility, you seem to throw the word "troll" around rather carelessly [19] William M. Connolley (talk) 22:17, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Are you seriously complaining about him removing your comment from his talkspace? I've seen you do that numerous times to myself and others so you could give the appearance that you had the last word in. In fact, that seems to be one of your favorite "counter-arguments."TheGoodLocust (talk) 00:12, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Looks clear to me that WMC is pointing out that "troll" used without reasonable justification is a personal attack. . . dave souza, talk 01:20, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

The word was "trolling", which is a word describing an action, unlike "idiots", "yahoos", "septics" and "fools" which are words labeling editors. I personally don't agree with either, but the latter is worse, especially when it happens as frequently as it does. ATren (talk) 01:37, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

That's odd, I'm certain he has called me a troll (and worse) many times in the past. Or, if you like, we have this lovely comment from WMC:

"You're a broken record. Find something of value to say, or better still something of value to contribute to the actual encyclopaedia."

I guess I must be reading something into that to think he is being uncivil - no admin who's seen it finds it rude at all. TheGoodLocust (talk) 01:40, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Commentary from others

I wonder if people are taking account of the quality of actual article-space contributions. That would explain quite a lot William M. Connolley (talk) 17:00, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Casting aspersions on people's work probably isn't the best plan for you right now. UnitAnode 17:07, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

You must understand that topic bans will always be more likely applied to editors who adopt a non-neutral approach to editing Wikipedia. Editors who do not subscribe to the overwhelming scientific consensus and evidence saying that humanity has played a significant role in recent global warming are adopting a minority (perhaps even fringe) position. Continued attempts to push this minority point of view into articles related to global warming and climate change without respecting the neutral point of view are disruptive. Furthermore, these actions are intensely frustrating to the editors who support the majority (and frankly, neutral) position. The result of these frustrations can be incidents involving incivility. WMC is very familiar with both the subject and the science in this topic, so it is understandable that he would be particularly frustrated by the activities of those pushing the minority agenda. He is, therefore, more easily provoked into making the odd comment that offends. He has been warned about this behavior, and if he doesn't do better to curb this sort of thing he will doubtless have his ass kicked. But the provocation and POV-pushing is a serious problem that must be stopped. Proponents of minority positions that deny science must not be allowed to use Wikipedia as their propaganda tool. -- Scjessey (talk) 18:01, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Scjessey, suggesting that fringe applies to "Editors who do not subscribe to the overwhelming scientific consensus and evidence saying that humanity has played a significant role in recent global warming are adopting a minority ... position" is the type of unreasonable POV that is contributing adversity to these disputes. I suggest you reconsider. Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 18:11, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

You may think whatever you please, but these are the undeniable facts. There are editors trying to push a fringe view, and this frustrates neutral editors. It is similar to the problem at Barack Obama that was, for a while, the target of Birthers. My feeling is that there would be a lot less incivility and edit warring if Wikipedia didn't have to deal with fringe types. -- Scjessey (talk) 18:29, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

I'd like to highlight this post for whoever it was that claimed that no one had brought the Truthers or Birthers into the discussion. I knew I'd seen people do it before, and here's an immediate example. UnitAnode 18:34, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Hate to break the news to you, Scjessey, but neutral point of view means that Wikipedia doesn't take sides. Saying that Wikipedia should take the side of the scientific consensus means that Wikipedia is no longer neutral. Also, I make a clear distinction between scientific consensus and science. Disagreeing with the "scientific consensus" is not disagreeing with "science" itself. So anyway, what's it going to be? Do you prefer to be pro neutrality, or pro scientific consensus? You can't be both. Macai (talk) 04:15, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

It's an apt analogy. This topic attracts all sorts of fringe types. Just a few moments ago, a Truther posted on the CRU hacking article, for example. -- Scjessey (talk) 18:36, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

• "Minority positions that deny science" is just a blatant mischaracterization of the problem here. And please let one of the administrators who keeps shuffling off the WMC complaints as "no action" respond. I think everyone is well-aware of your position, Scjessey. UnitAnode 18:19, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

  And what is that supposed to mean? My position is that Wikipedia must remain neutral. -- Scjessey (talk) 18:29, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

  It means that you are blatantly mischaracterizing your opponents' position. It also means that you've many times jumped into content disputes on the pro-AGW/they're-just-harassing-WMC side of discussions. UnitAnode 18:32, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

• Minority positions that deny science is actually the exact problem. I think everyone is well-aware of your position - yes, and you are fairly predicatbale as well William M. Connolley (talk) 18:33, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

  "Predicatbale" only in that I'm very tired of your attacks on good-faith editors, and want to see something done about it. UnitAnode 18:36, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

  Scjessy, science does not run on consensus, politics does. The evidence of AGW is dubious at best as seen by the code released from CRU. To say that those who deny AGW are in a minority is not even remotely accurate, thousands of scientists say AGW is not real, yes climate changes it always does, weather man has anything to do with it is not proven. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Marknutley (talk • contribs) 18:35, 29 January 2010

  LOL is that what you really think? -- Scjessey (talk) 18:46, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Agree with Unitanode, the "minority position" discussion belongs elsewhere, not here, and propose to tag or remove if it continues. Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 18:38, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Well you would say that. -- Scjessey (talk) 18:46, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Comment on content, not on editors. MalcolmMcDonald (talk) 18:52, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

I agree with Scjessey on this. I've been around here for a while and have viewed the incessant pushing he speaks of. The so-called s(c/k)eptics have been trying every trick in the book to push their views and distort the reality of anthropogenic global warming and the scientific consensus that has developed. That consensus and the evidence it's based on is even stronger now than when I first hit it five plus years ago. WMC and others have been tirelessly keeping the Wiki articles covering the science of global warming on track and based on the science. Back in Oct. 2004 I made my first Randy in Boise edit to greenhouse gas article, something about water vapor... Anyway, guess who promptly reverted the edit ... yeah him. What was my reaction? As a newby, I first said what??? then backed of and evaluated. I was wrong with my edit due to simply not knowing the details - so I brushed up on the science of global warming and joined WMC and others in debating the fringe view pushers in the climate wars of spring 2005. Quite a switch, considering my background in geology (even worked for an oil company at one time). Now, five years later it's the same old song. Newbies read some blog, listen to a ****-wing radio talk show, read some news reporter's blurb ... and becomes an instant authority pushing the anti-science fringe view. And it gets most tiresome. I can excuse those Randys, but their edits must be corrected. And there is a deeper problem ... that of scibaby and others purposely promoting denialism. Thank you, Vsmith (talk) 19:15, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Hear, hear. This is not Conservapedia or the Urban Dictionary, people do not have the 'right' to put their ill-informed or badly motivated opinions onto the pages. Stopping them doing so, at the same time as reviewing all the new science and commentary as it comes out, and so keeping the articles up to date, is hard work. People with a one-note drum or a one-string fiddle cannot be given the same 'rights' as those who actually know what they're talking about. --Nigelj (talk) 19:49, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

I see now, some are more equal than others, four legs good and all that nigel? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Marknutley (talk • contribs) 19:54, 29 January 2010

Ah, good, perhaps you're beginning to get the idea of WP:WEIGHT – NPOV is not Foxfairandbalanced. . . dave souza, talk 20:18, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

VSmith, your biased generalizations have little to do with the current situation. Most of the current conflicts are not about the science, but the refusal to document current controversies. The problem is that pro-AGW editors unashamedly push their POV on these pages and refuse to consider even the slightest deviation from the way they wish to see this material presented. The AGW POV pushers currently own these articles, and the content reflects it. ATren (talk) 21:02, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

I suggest considering that we need constructive suggestions here, not just complaints. Even if complaints are valid, they can't be the end-all. So what is the request? I personally believe that 2/0 is making a good effort to be neutral here, which is to say I don't see him leaning in any direction much more than the general consensus (and I think that lean has some basis in WP:ENCYC). I think he's making a good effort to articulate his standards, which already puts him at about 7 out of my possible 10 points. I have no complaint. I am concerned on the other hand that BozMo has shown too much frutstration with one side, too much camraderie with the other, and for that reason may be adding fuel to the fire. So I'm going to register my view that anyone can comment, but I don't think BozMo should be evaluating these disputes as uninvolved. That's my suggestion, perhaps I'm alone, but I think if others want to improve things they should make theirs. Mackan79 (talk) 21:47, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

• My main problem is with 2/0's quick "recommend no action" on the on-going civility problems from WMC, while also supporting a draconian 3-month article ban on the other side of the content issue. UnitAnode 22:02, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
  • I think the divide and conquer approach will be more effective. I agree (admittedly just my opinion) that the Gavin Collins sanction is too harsh, that something ought to be done to encourage William M. Connolley to cut back on insulting other editors, and that 2/0 appears to have acted inconsistently. However, linking all three of those issues together makes it triply hard to deal with. Concerns of administrator bias, page ownership, etc., are much harder to resolve than individual issues, particularly on the talk pages where they are said to be occurring. My prescription would be to welcome Gavin Collins back here in a few weeks once he's ready to start fresh, to gather thoughts about William M. Connolley in an RfC or some other structured discussion and then ArbCon if necessary (or has that already been tried?), and to assume the best of 2 / 0. - Wikidemon (talk) 22:12, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
    • I think, when boiled down, my concern is actually one-fold: this probation is being applied in an entirely one-sided manner. The multiple underlying issues are merely symptoms of this larger problem. UnitAnode 22:53, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
      • If you have concerns about 2/0's enforcement actions, then you have a number of options. If you honestly believe that he is consistently adminning in a biased and inappropriate fashion, then you could consider a request for comment to solicit some input from outside the echo chamber. You can take the case to ArbCom. Everyone could make a small personal effort to reduce the level of poisonous, snide, venomous combat on these pages, and then maybe more admins would be willing to spend their volunteer time helping 2/0 referee it. There are potentially a number of ways forward. MastCell ^Talk 23:08, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
• I feel there are two major problems within this range of topics, from what I have seen in my brief participation on these pages. The first is to do with content, and the bitter struggles to include/exorcise content that reflects negatively upon the "established" pov that climate change is backed by reliable science; skeptics wish to promote all content that criticise and diminish pro GW arguments, on the basis that such challenges undermines the fundamental argument for climate change - witness the very recent Himalaya Glacier Melt debate (You published that the glaciers would be gone by 2035! Wrong!! Which means your "science" is wrong!!! Which means global warming is wrong!!!! ADMIT IT IS ALL A LIE!!!!! - and nobody noting the vast amount of unchallenged data that points to the conclusion that glacial retreat appears generally correct), and this is acerbated by the refusal of the pro-GW orientated editors to allow such "controversies" or viewpoints any meaningful inclusion in articles relating to global warming - mistaking the purpose of an encyclopedia to that of a scientific publication (encyclopedia's use science to explain the facts, but also record the controversies and pov's that inform the interest within the subject). Not only are the two parties unable to establish a npov, but they immediately seek to place any third party as within one of the two camps and then reject/advance that viewpoint according to their own interests. As such, the subject remains a battleground. The second problem is the attitude of the two groupings - generally they show little or no respect either for "the other side" nor the conventions of the venue (except where they believe it promotes their "cause"). The incivility, gamesmanship, non-observance of guideline and policy, poor conduct, and - ironic to the point of pain - attempts to have sanctioned those of one side for behaviour they themselves commit remains a serious problem. There is, in my view, little or no appetite to change it, either.
  My opinion is that regardless of whether the editor in question is devoted to The Truth or the truth that the majority of interaction on talkpages by content editors is actionable under WP policy. None of the major players in either camp are reflecting well upon the part of the community they believe they represent; there is harassment, personal attacks, copious bad faith, gamesmanship, sock and meatpuppeting, and overall an atmosphere of poisonous distrust of all but fellow travelers. As I noted, there is not one group that can claim (justifiably, since I am sure they will claim it regardless) that they are only the victim of this abhorrent behaviour. The reasons why this probation was placed upon these group of articles remains abundantly clear - the historical contributors are incapable of creating encyclopedic content without them. LessHeard vanU (talk) 23:27, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Unfortunately I find it rather difficult to follow your reasoning here, you don't seem to be giving due weight to due weight. We should properly show the majority expert view, and also show significant minority expert views where appropriate. As for the Himalayan glacier issue, it's been clear for some time that the IPPC paragraph concerned does not reflect the majority expert view, and the way that this occcurred has recently become a bit clearer. This is properly reflected in the article. Please assume good faith. . dave souza, talk 01:55, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Actually it isn't properly reflected in the article and if you had participated in the struggle to actually get that included, and WMC's removal of a section that had been in there since 2005 as some sort of "revenge," then you might have a different point of view. TheGoodLocust (talk) 00:14, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

@ - LessHeard vanU - I have a list of 7 possible editing problems with these articles here, of which my biggest personal concern is "not written to be informative". You may think censorship is the problem, or perhaps you feel that the root of the problem is the rejection of any discussion of "politics". This latter point has suddently become much more significant now we know how very political the IPCC has been and, perhaps as a corollary, how many serious errors there are in the AR4 document. I'd be grateful if you were prepared to add your name and views to my list. MalcolmMcDonald (talk) 09:41, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Responses: Due Weight within an encyclopedia article is a tricky concept - you have to look outside the cold statistics and note what is being discussed. Within the science of climate change, skepticism is a minority so small as to regarded as insignificant by most - however, skepticism drives a lot of the mainstream (non-scientific commentary) and thus needs to be discussed within an encyclopedic article. For instance, the article on the Catholic Church does not exclude everything outside of its history, its hierarchy and the current holders of important offices; it also includes its (alleged) sexual scandals, its viewpoints on contraception in relation to expanding populations, its attitude to homosexuality, the rights of women (and their role in the church), etc., etc. even though these concerns do not reflect directly upon the primary focus of the establishment, nor the vast majority of its work. In short, the encyclopedia should reflect the concerns of the general public with the subject - which concern may not be representative of the viewpoint of that community. My view is that one group wishes to emphasise the concerns, and the points that give rise to those concerns, far in excess on their impact upon the scientific and world viewpoint (because they see that as a means of altering the perception of the science?) while the other group wishes to ignore the public debate as far as possible and concentrate on the scientific community values only in an apparent effort to diminish the impact of the public debate and thus its ability to deflect the message of that community. Neither of these editors are inclined to give sufficient ground to the other pov that a neutral article might be. So that is my problem with Due Weight in these articles, neither party is prepared to accept the others determination and neither are they interested in how third parties - no matter how patiently they explain the problem - may suggest a middle way; so determined are they that the others side arguments are minimalised.

(@MalcomMacDonald)I will take a look at the 7 points, and comment if I think I can add anything useful. However, my views on the subject are not as important or useful, I believe, as my efforts to try and enforce good practices and compliancy with policies, guidelines and probations so that the existing editors can produce a group of articles that are accurate, informative, and encompass the entire debate relating to the subject. If the existing editors are incapable of writing those pieces, because they are too entrenched in their WP:BATTLE mindsets, then perhaps there needs to be fresh input from other article writers who should be kept free from being influenced by the "bad old pov warriors". Most of the data is already here, after all. LessHeard vanU (talk) 14:38, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for that thoughtful response, LessHeard vanU. I think we're in agreement that when dealing with the science of global warming, due weight is given to the majority view that anthropogenic global warming is occurring to a significant and serious extent. Minority views should also be shown where applicable: the nuances of various positions tend to get lost in the polarised political debate. Thus scientists introducing new views are having to be explicit that these don't overturn the general consensus. In dealing with social and political controversies, we should be clear about the majority scientific view, and really should base the article on third party sources describing these controversies. The difficulties I'm seeing are that most sources are engaging in the debates, and some editors seem to feel strongly that the views in these debates overturn the science. As for dealing with these controversies, there are articles devoted to them, and a concise summary style section is included in the main article about the science. Not dissimilar to, say, evolution. We should certainly cover the concerns of the general public with the subject, presenting the majority and minority scientific views of these concerns proportionately. We should also cover the political and economic influences raising these concerns. What we need is sources, as ever. . . dave souza, talk 19:11, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

I think that pretty much sums it up; the science generally holds up the argument that human activity derived climate change is occurring, but the readership comes to the article from many different viewpoints and it is not enough to deny skepticism as anything more than a fringe view - as it does get much more public airing than its premises might suggest - unworthy of consideration within the article. There are as many RS available for the fact that some are skeptical toward the concept as there is a paucity of good science references to evidence that viewpoint; we can source the science, and we can source the counter arguments - it should be easy to find a middle way to encompass both, no? LessHeard vanU (talk) 21:46, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

I would agree, but then the pertinent question becomes: Isn't this already done? We have a myriad of articles on climate change, and iirc there isn't a single tiny-minority opinion that isn't described somewhere on the relevant article about that opinion. True fringe views aren't, that is correct. Perhaps they should be, but the question is where and how.

The major problem (imho) is not the lack of description or mention, but rather that some editors insist on putting information into articles where it is completely out of focus, and extremely undue weight. (goes for both "hoxers" and "catastrophists" [note: general description of two extreme outlier views]). A minority view on the carbon cycle, which is an integral part of the basis for the science about climate change, is relevant on the article on the carbon cycle - not on the main Global warming article. A discordant view on mitigation of global warming belongs in the article about Mitigation of global warming not on the main Global warming article etc etc. Global warming is a whole spread of sub-articles of sub-articles, who each get summarized upwards to their respective super-article. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 22:00, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

<ec> Easy to find a middle way to encompass both for someone with expertise on the subject, such as WMC, but commonly very difficult to do without synthesis. We can find "skeptic" arguments and put together published science as a counter argument, but publication of such counter arguments tends to be in blogs. While science blogs by expert authors are usable as selfpublished sources, that tends to increase arguments on talk pages. Some editors see such experts as part of the conspiracy to deny denialism, and so untrustworthy. We can hope that more reliable commentary on the issues will be published, but unfortunately much of the press coverage is superficial if not actively misleading. Which, of course, reflects the political dimension of the controversy. . . dave souza, talk 22:09, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

The science and rationale for the pro GW community is indeed readily available in RS, as compared to the "information" provided by denialists/skeptics - but it appears that there is fairly available sources to the fact there is a vocal minority who criticise the larger community and its interpretation of its science. Noting that, and not commenting upon the imbalance between sourced date on one hand and mostly opinion on the other, seems to me to be a neutral way of evidencing the conflict within the world community - from which links to more specific examples where appropriate. I would be interested in the response of uninvolved third parties to that viewpoint. LessHeard vanU (talk) 00:11, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

The trouble basically comes from the MSM (unintendedly (i hope)) presenting a False balance picture. When they report on an issue, they will go and find someone who disagrees.. Now that is all fine, as long as we get presented a picture of what the proportional view is for each side (is it 50:50, 80:20, 99:1 ..), but the MSM doesn't present us with such. So the public ends up with an impression that there is a substantial minority viewpoint.[20] --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 00:48, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

This kind of argument is disruptive, because skepticism is either legitimate or must be treated as legitimate. The UK's chief scientific advisor, professor Beddington just said that climate scientists should be less hostile to sceptics who questioned man-made global warming. And that's especially relevant to us, writing articles. MalcolmMcDonald (talk) 03:06, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

<outdent>Well Kim, since you like science so much, here is a paper, far newer than the one you just posted, that says the liklihood of publication bias regarding AGW is essentially 100%. Any comments on this? Did you want to add this to the global warming article or shall I? TheGoodLocust (talk) 01:25, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

That's written by climate skeptic Patrick Michaels of the conservative Cato Institute, and formerly of the Greening Earth Society that was setup by the coal industry to provide doubt about climate change science. Just sayin'. -- Scjessey (talk) 01:40, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

And the IPCC report was written and promoted by people who stood to make millions from the new carbon credit industry - and the Cato Institute is libertarian. Just sayin'. TheGoodLocust (talk) 01:59, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Interesting. Can you reference that without resorting to blogs and unsubstantiated claims? --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 02:47, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Of course I can, but unlike Scjessey's obvious BLP violation against Patrick Michaels, if I were to name names and provide evidence then I'd be banned for making BLP violations. That double standard again. :) TheGoodLocust (talk) 03:08, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Erm, sorry no BLP violation there. Try reading a bit on Patrick Michaels, everything Scjessey said is verifiable. Note that that isn't an endorsement of him actually saying it, since i normally find it unproductive to go down this particular aisle of debate. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 03:21, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

<outdent> No, Scjessey said he was a plant from the coal industry to cast doubt on AGW. From what I read he publicly stated that he needed money and an energy company collected donations for him. If he was being paid to be a skeptic then it would've happened before he got the money - causality does not work backwards in my universe. TheGoodLocust (talk) 03:38, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Three problems Thegoodlocust. First of all that it isn't peer-reviewed (E&E is a social science paper - with a rather bad rep. for PR), and thus isn't a good source for science. Secondly you are misrepresenting what the paper is about, it is not on "pro/contra AGW". Thirdly the article doesn't address the same problem as we see in the MSM. It concerns whether new research has a likelihood of lowering or raising expected projections of global warming (ie. AGW is implicitly assumed). The premise that Michaels says should be the baseline - that papers should have equal likelihood, is faulty, since most scientists actually believe that the IPCC is underestimating projections [21], thus there really should be a higher likelihood for raising projections. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 02:45, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Can you reference that without resorting to blogs and unsubstantiated claims? TheGoodLocust (talk) 03:08, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Yes, i can. Perhaps you'd want to notice that Hans von Storch & Bray (the info from Die Klimazwiebel) are publishing their survey results; See Energy and Environment for details on the PR status (specifically Boehmers comment); and of course you'd just have to read the paper you linked to assess the rest of my comment. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 03:21, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Wait a second, you are linking a wikipedia article that you are your friends have essentially controlled since its inception? Umm....really? You knew I'd check right? TheGoodLocust (talk) 03:38, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Oh, and I did a quick google search, and this says that E&E isn't a social science journal - it says it is interdisciplinary, which does include both social and natural sciences. TheGoodLocust (talk) 03:42, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

@LHVU: There are as many RS available for the fact that some are skeptical toward the concept as there is a paucity of good science references to evidence that viewpoint; we can source the science, and we can source the counter arguments - it should be easy to find a middle way to encompass both, no? - are you looking for global warming controversy? The reasons why this probation was placed upon these group of articles remains abundantly clear - the historical contributors are incapable of creating encyclopedic content without them. - don't believe you; the content *has* been created without them; the probation has left, e.g., the GW itself quite untouched, because no-one has suggested a way to improve it (and the current unrefactorable state of the talk page guarantees that no agreement is possible). and this is acerbated by the refusal of the pro-GW orientated editors to allow such "controversies" or viewpoints any meaningful inclusion in articles relating to global warming - you've missed criticism of the IPCC AR4 then. Other errors abound William M. Connolley (talk) 22:42, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

This is perhaps the essence of the difficulty in understanding the encyclopedic nature of article presentation to that of the scientific communities perception of the matter - the controversy is a fork of the main article, yet the main article is where those whose awareness of the subject is informed by the knowledge of there being a controversy will turn to. Should there be an article called The science of global warming, so the scientific communities near unanimous viewpoint may be placed without significant opposing viewpoints? I suggest that the major article(s) within the subject need address the controversy (that is, the claim of suppression or inflation of information tending toward a pro GW slant) in far greater, and neutral, detail than it now does because it reflects the general public's perception of the debate.

I am aware of both the global warming controversy and the criticism of the IPCC articles, since coming to these pages. They serve a purpose in detailing aspects of the skeptic/denialist sentiment specific issues with the subject of climate change - they should not be used as a process by which content contrary to the perceived consensus of the scientific community should be solely presented (even if linked to, under a sentence or two from the main article). The general topic article(s) need address both the science and the counter opinions per WP:Due weight of the public's understanding of the issues.

The inflexibility of some of the editors working within the scientific communities consensus of opinion as regards editing these topics is exampled, it seems, by you, WMC. Your failure to countenance the validity that there is a legitimate place within the main articles to address that there is substantial criticism and denial (under whatever basis, no matter how unsound) because it rejects the near totality of your own peer groups determination of the issues does as much drive problems regarding editing issues as does your intemperate and frequently childish resort to belittling other editors and their viewpoints rather than attempting to engage them. As such your opinion upon my efforts, likely based upon your prejudices and lack of confidence in being able to construct effective counter arguments, is irrelevant to the matter of acknowledging that part of the problem is the efforts of editors including yourself have been working against the ethos of consensual, collegiate and npov editing. You might not be able to comprehend the need to inform the public neutrally upon all major aspects of a subject, generally within the main topic, but you could make the effort in recognising that there are those that do, in good faith. LessHeard vanU (talk) 23:56, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Can you summarize the above a little more clearly and concisely? It's clear that you don't like WMC (which is hardly news), but I'm having trouble understanding specifically what you want to see in terms of content. Your opening remarks sound like you want us simply to parrot back to the public what they expect to hear, but I doubt that's what you really mean. At least I hope it isn't. 00:14, 31 January 2010 (UTC)—Preceding unsigned comment added by Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk • contribs)

I don't know WMC, and I don't therefore have an opinion on them as a person. I understand that their real life background is in climate change research, and recognise they are well informed as regards that aspect of the debate. I find WMC's apparent stance (among others who I know even less about, individually) that because GW denial is based upon poor or non existent science then the lack of credibility disallows noting the fact of skepticism within climate change to be in error, and I have serious reservations regarding WMC in particular and some other "pro GW" ability to conduct themselves in the appropriate manner when interacting with editors with a skeptic viewpoint.

No, we don't parrot back the public's perceptions (sourcing it would be a nightmare, anyway); we address it. All of it. The science, and its acceptances and its mistakes, and the skepticism and its reliance (on inexpert) opinion. Notable achievements (the various Protocols adopted) and major errors (2035 Glacial disappearance) should be note neutrally in the body. Make the article reflect the reasons why the majority would wish to read it, a comprehensive review of the issue - not just the science. LessHeard vanU (talk) 13:33, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Since you've read Criticism of the IPCC AR4 I'm sure you'll appreciate that the 2035 typo for glacial disappearance was not about the science, but about the IPCC report wrongly using the WWF and the mainstream press as a source without properly following IPPC rules. If it becomes established as a "major error" then it should be covered in Global warming controversy. How much summary style coverage is appropriate in the article about the science should be discussed at Talk:Global warming, but complaints that this hasn't yet been addressed seem a bit premature. . . dave souza, talk 14:04, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

One persistent meme of those who currently control these articles has been "too early", when anything critical comes out. UnitAnode 14:16, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

One persistent meme I've noticed is a tendency for some editors to assume that the Daily Mail is right when it proclaims that an error in a paragraph of a huge scientific/political report overturns the whole of climate science. Perspective can take a little longer, Wikipedia is not news. . . dave souza, talk 14:28, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

My Simple Take

Much that's been said above is true, but as has been said, the positions of the editors (and their attitudes) won't change because of this probation. Now, what this probation should be doing, at least in my eyes, is getting rid of those that got us here. If there are diffs provided that show that the editor in question isn't following the probation, topic/page ban. The problem becomes that when certain editors are -not- sanctioned for their behavior, others see this as free reign to act the same way themselves. Particularly those on the 'other side'. The current enforcements are just leading to further escalations, and the eventual arbcom case that this was meant to avoid.

Proposed solution: Handle enforcement requests checkmark style. Example: This diff is either civil/uncivil. If the checks end up on the wrong side of probation, topic/page ban. The only way this can work is if there are a set of standards, which is applied equally. This is not currently happening. Arkon (talk) 23:56, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

The checklist approach is a bit too bureaucratic for my taste. I'd prefer stricter enforcement of the probation. In turn the strictness would be ameliorated by escalating rather than initially severe sanctions: say, stern parental warning -> temporary page ban -> topic ban -> block. In this way every infraction would be addressed but people would get to decide where on the sliding scale of enforcement they're willing to see the light. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 00:25, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

The checklist approach would instantly select calling other editors "septic" as being out of order. This would avoid having to ban people for saying "but I'm not skeptical", thereby committing a different and even graver crime, that of expressing an opinion. MalcolmMcDonald (talk) 10:25, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

I mentioned this on 2/0's talk page, but one thing I am seeing here that I have not seen in other areas, even very contentious areas, is the pattern where editors are banned for expressing a view too many times. This seems to be the assumption here, that if someone keeps saying something, then we just need to get rid of them. I'd note for one thing that it's quite a broad interpretation of ArbCom's ruling, that editors can be sanctioned "for disruptive edits, including, but not limited to, edit warring, personal attacks, incivility and assumptions of bad faith." I suppose "disruptive" can mean anything, but I certainly don't see "persistence" listed. I also notice the advice to "Avoid making repeated comments unrelated to bettering the article." This is being interpreted to say that editors should avoid making repeated comments even if they are directly related to bettering the article, and even where discussion on related matters continues. In the end, I think it creates perverse incentives, particularly to stone wall as far as possible to show a strong consensus against a particular editor, after which that editor can no longer make the argument without risk of being banned. It gives editors little incentive to compromise. Of course I realize that editors get tired of explaining the same point over and over, but I don't believe that banning should immediately be on the table simply because an editor doesn't immediately have success. Certainly ignoring should come before banning, and only if the editor abuses the silence should any other options then be pursued. It's a matter of respecting dissent, but also of angling people toward productive compromise, rather than toward obstructive and confrontational tactics. Mackan79 (talk) 07:59, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

In the Cold Fusion case Arbcom did indeed topic ban an editor for a year for behavior somewhat resembling what you are talking about. Cardamon (talk) 08:50, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

I didn't follow that case, but I doubt it's the type of thing I'm talking about. If the content is plainly unencyclopedic, or the methods are disruptive, then sanctions are appropriate. It isn't even really a type of behavior I have in mind; I'm simply noting that if you get too far from what can fairly be termed "disruptive" conduct into prohibiting the expression of viewpoints, it can make the process too susceptible to gaming that aims to exacerbate conflicts rather than working, out of necessity, to resolve them. Mackan79 (talk) 09:31, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Some of the issues in the Cold Fusion case were similar, although I suspect your view of them would differ from mine. One of the issues was whether, if there is substantial consensus among scientists about a scientific subject, Wikipedia should write about that subject from the point of view of that consensus. I believe that it should, and that this follows from the principle that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. Significant bodies of opinion that differ from the scientific consensus should be written about too; we can do this because Wikipedia is not short of paper, but they don't have the right to be written about from their own points of view. Some debate can often be helpful or even necessary in deciding what to write in article space. However, such debate is just a means to an end, and Wikipedia is not primarily a platform for expressing viewpoints, not that you said it was. There seems to be a considerable degree of consensus among climate scientists that global warming is occurring now, and is largely caused by human activities, so we need to write from that point of view. There is also a significant amount of dissent, which also needs to be written about; we should do so from the consensus point of view, in a neutral tone, without mockery. Cardamon (talk) 10:39, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

That's all fine, I'm just not sure it speaks to all or most of the disputes that we're seeing. To say that AGW is accepted fact doesn't tell us how to write a BLP about an AGW skeptic. It doesn't tell us how to write an article on Climate change denial, or even whether there should be an article like Scientific opinion on climate change rather than perhaps an article on the science of climate change, and an article on the debate about climate change that discusses various "opinions" (where does opinion fit into the scientific method anyway?). An editor was just banned for pursuing his view on this latter question, where to say that Wikipedia should not promote skepticism of AGW does not really address the issue. The editor doesn't appear to be an "idiot," which strongly suggests to me that something in the process is going wrong. My point is that the questions are often more complex than whether Wikipedia should be pro or anti-AGW. I don't know that I'm disagreeing with you. Mackan79 (talk) 21:12, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

I am going to disagree with an aspect of that conclusion, that WP should write from the consensus scientific view, because Wikipedia does not write to be read by that community, but by the general public and WP:NPOV - a Pillar, not just a policy - notes that we should reference everything dispassionately and allow the reader to follow the sources and form their own opinion. Even if the evidence is overwhelmingly (as it seems) for global warming the risks of appearing to be an authority in the matter rather than a compodium of references is that if mistakes are made (even sourced mistakes) then the encyclopedia's reputation falls with it. Appearing as an authorative source also does not gel with being an open editing environment, since not all editors will agree (in good faith) with that viewpoint and the temptation to use that percieved authority to disseminate other facts (such as a classmate being "teh ghay") becomes greater. The scientific consensus should, I feel, certainly guide us but it would be a mistake to simply adopt it. LessHeard vanU (talk) 22:02, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

A practical problem is that there isn't a single minority view that can easily be summarized, but a wide range of views that each are held by tiny minorities: one says temperature changes are due to variations in solar flux, another says they're due to cosmic ray fluctuations, another that they're due to mysterious variations in low clouds, another due to variations in ocean circulations, another that Earth's atmosphere doesn't actually have a greenhouse effect, another this, another that. Each of these are tiny-minority views with the possible exception of "natural variability" of unspecified provenance. How do we summarize each of these tiny-minority views without overwhelming the majority viewpoint? In the main GW article we discuss cosmic rays and solar variation because they're the ones that are taken at least semi-seriously by the scientific community (and in fact we give them far and away more weight than in the literature). But what about the other dozen or so tiny-minority views? Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 22:17, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

I agree with this. The scientific consensus is a consensus as a result of over a hundred years of research comprising thousands of papers. Most of the minority views have vanishingly small support in the scientific community, as well as being mutually contradictory. As far as public perception is concerned, it is certainly an important topic, but should not inform an article about the actual theory of global warming. I don't think that this contradicts WP:NPOV. Hal peridol (talk) 00:12, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

That "most of the minority views have vanishingly small support in the scientific community, as well as being mutually contradictory" is quite normal. Science develops both through gradual changes AND radical revisions. In the xase of the first one can expect a consensus, in the case of the second one can expect a fierce debate with the majority defending the status quo. If the consensus/majority position changed into dogma while the alternative views of minority were excluded the science WILL STOP being science! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 141.157.189.3 (talk) 02:13, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

I would agree that you could expect a fierce scientific debate, rather than a fierce political and ideological debate, were this one of the rare cases of a shift in scientific paradigm. Hal peridol (talk) 02:38, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

If the scientific debate is supressed or constrained and the conclusions have tremendous economic consequences the debate must spill into political arena. General public wants to know what is going on. There is a reason why the court trials allow both sides to speak and that are open to public. The true science benefits from public scrutiny because scientists are corruptible human beings same way as everyone else. They are not superhuman, they are not angels. And do not forget who is paying for the reasearch and salaries. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 141.157.189.3 (talk) 02:52, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

To SHBH; there is no need to detail every aspect of skepticism/denialism - just note that there is quite a lot of it, and most of it is based on opinion rather than good research.

To Hal peridol; the public's perspective should not inform the article, but it should inform what the article addresses. LessHeard vanU (talk) 13:43, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

LHvU, that sounds good in theory but is out of touch with Wiki-reality. Try saying "most of it is based on opinion rather than good research" and see how far you get. To the contrarians, their hypotheses deserve just as much weight as the scientific findings; e.g., many have explicitly argued against a preference for the peer-reviewed literature and instead to prefer popular-press sources on matters of science. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 19:09, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

I don't see that Wikipedia needs any special leaning towards science, it deals with science topics quite well within its current policies. As far as scientific opinion of climate change that deals specifically with scientific opinion and as far as climate change consensus is concerned that deals pretty well with the public side. A science only matters leaning would remove the second article and a leaning that said science didn't exist as a valid enterprise only what joe public says would eliminate the first (plus every single maths article except perhaps Monty Hall problem which would now say you shouldn't switch).

As to removing editors for being persistent, I guess I'm one of the people that refers to because of my complaint about someone going on and on and on and on and on and on (I could go on for a few more pages but I think persistence can be disruptive). My complaint is that they did not follow the dispute resolution process. An experienced editor should finally come to the conclusion that they are not getting anywhere on a talk page, preferable a while before they start throwing around allegations like being stonewalled. They should then either accept the consensus or follow the next step in WP:dispute resolution. And when they have exhausted their steps they should stop. Going on and on is disruptive behavior and drives away good editors. If a mediation is set up I will only accept it if it is time limited and the editor agrees to accept the conclusion under pain of sanctions, otherwise it should go to ArbCom. There is no point going through the months of stuff they pointed out they did when someone set up a previous fruitless mediation for them never mind the various RfCs, all of which seems to have been totally ignored. Dmcq (talk) 11:28, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

I had a look at theAfD referenced from a VPP discussion about forking and here just in for example is exactly why I'd want strong assurances that the results of any mediation were adhered to. I wonder where that talk page will be in six months time. Dmcq (talk) 14:52, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

@LHVU: Your failure to countenance the validity that there is a legitimate place within the main articles to address that there is substantial criticism and denial - you need to take some time off to actually read the articles you're talking about. Global warming is largely about the science. There isn't a lot of skeptic stuff in there, because that is the correct weight (in fact there is somewhat too much skeptic stuff in there, but never mind). If you *had* read the article, you'd know that the lede contains Political and public debate continues regarding global warming, and what actions (if any) to take in response. Put another way: your complaints are baseless, *if* you actually trouble yourself to read the articles. If you read the fantasy version in your own head, well, I've no idea quite what you might come up with William M. Connolley (talk) 21:26, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Not sure I agree with you Dr Connolley. Specifically rereading the lede and first part of the article although it says "public debate... continues" there is no clear statement that "many members of the general public remain sceptical of these "basic statements" (listed further up the lede), for a variety of reasons, regardless of the scientific consensus". Maybe this statement is OR, but roughly the reasons LHVU gave are valid ones for including it in the intro if adequate sources is available. Also I think your comments to LHVU are gratituous aggressive; desist please whatever the history between you it spoils the atmosphere. --BozMo talk 13:39, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

But is it correct that "many members of the general puplic remain sceptical of these "basic statements""? And is it notable? Would we state the same in our article on Big Bang, Evolution and other science areas, where the general public is poorly informed? If one looks at scepticism globally, then (afaik) only the US has a political divide on this, and while the US is an important country - it isn't the world. On this particular issue, i'm looking forward to getting Public opinion on climate change summarized somewhere... but important enough in pure WP:WEIGHT to be in the lead of global warming? --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 14:01, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

The bottom line is that - just like evolution - it's both a scientific issue and a political controversy. Just like evolution, the basic scientific facts are very firmly established, even if some of the details are still the subject of scientific dispute. Just like evolution, only a minority of scientists dissent from the mainstream view. Just like evolution, political activists play up the minority of scientific dissenters and the disputes over the fine details to cast doubt on the basic science. Just like evolution, political activists see the science as a surrogate for an opposing ideology (atheism or socialism). Just like evolution, political activists systematically misrepresent the science and make false claims about it, using the infamous "Gish Gallop" approach. The challenge that we face is how to represent the science and the political views fairly without the political views displacing or overwhelming the science. The Conservapedia article on global warming is a case study in how not to tackle the issue. -- ChrisO (talk) 17:59, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks very much for those links. The Express 100 reasons why climate change is natural in the Gish Gallop is interesting, I didn't know people in England wanted to be fed that sort of silliness too. The conservapedia article though is a real eye opener. I had a look at their homosexuality and abortion articles too to see how some rednecks would treat them. It's very interesting that they seem to form a group mindset. It's like Dr Strangelove, I get the feeling they'd form common cause with islamic fanatics to kill off all the wishy washy liberals who are polluting their water. By the way, on that theme, you might like to look at the conservapedia article on Water fluoridation Dmcq (talk) 18:32, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Climate Change

Apologies if I missed something, could someone help me see why are there discussion ongoing here Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Climate Change which seem like topics for this project? Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 02:32, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

I guess that was my fault. I filed a formal request to this project page[22] and notified the editor. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 04:15, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

For Connolley and Hipocrite

Since they seem to think I'm a blind partisan then here are some diffs (as requested) that suggest otherwise [23][24][25][26]

There are a few recent ones, where I'm either defending AGW proponents or agreeing with them at least partially.

Oh, I almost forgot, as you know Connolley, I kindly pointed out that you'd broken 1rr (again) and civility probation instead of reporting you or filing a report. TheGoodLocust (talk) 08:38, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Only the first one is anything, and that is trivia. The second doesn't count, until it is on the article talk page. The others look meaningless. If that's the best you can do, it isn't any good William M. Connolley (talk) 13:29, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Those are just recent ones, I'm not going to pour through my entire history to find something to find dozens of diffs to prove something to you. Also, you've misunderstood my good intentions in the past and so I'm not terribly surprised that you don't recognize how those diffs demonstrate that I'm not some blind partisan. Regardless, I'm quite done with this, anyone with an open mind can see what I'm all about. TheGoodLocust (talk) 18:43, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

You were asked for diffs; you've supplied nothing at all convincing. But your last sentence is correct William M. Connolley (talk) 14:42, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

It may be true that you are not a blind partisan but the fact that you think those contributions show that indicates to me the exact opposite. Why are you worried about such an impression?, everyone writing anything on these articles will be typed one way or the other, even the uninvolved admins have all be accused of being partisan one way or the other. Just do what you think you should for improving the encyclopaedia and let your edits speak for themselves. Dmcq (talk) 14:57, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

I was accused on the article space with the accusation of (something along the lines of) "you would say that because he supports your POV you'll always defend him and not me." I said that was ridiculous could easily show that I wasn't and Connolley asked for diffs on this talk page. TheGoodLocust (talk) 18:43, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Hold on, TGL *is* a blind partisan, as his edits show, and his inability to find anything convincing "the other way" William M. Connolley (talk) 20:28, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Couldn't the same be said about you? ATren (talk) 02:04, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Only by someone unfamiliar with my edits. I could point you to numerous substantive article space edits in which I tone down alarmism. The "AJL wars" spring to mind - do you remember that? William M. Connolley (talk) 09:42, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Off wiki, but maybe you'll like [27]. Or [28]. So lets seem something of yours even vaguely equivalently bunker-crossing or whatever it is we're calling this William M. Connolley (talk) 14:41, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Suggestion

The signal-to-noise ratio on enforcement threads is atrocious. I think this contributes somewhat to the difficulty in satisfactorily addressing complaints raised here. I would suggest one of the following approaches:

• Uninvolved admins proactively remove off-topic argumentation to the talk page
• Active combatants are limited or completely excluded from commenting on requests that do not directly involve them

I'll refrain from listing "active combatants" by name, although it should be relatively easy to determine. I'm not going to act on this myself; I prefer to sharply limit my administrative input here to addressing only the most egregious abuses, but I see essentially no good, and a lot of harm, coming from the fact that every thread is turned into a schoolyard fight. MastCell ^Talk 21:48, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

I agree re S/N, and that your solution is worth trying William M. Connolley (talk) 21:57, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Rights for new editors is an obvious candidate section for moving William M. Connolley (talk) 22:00, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes well, the latest accusation that I was bringing up Scjessey out of the blue was patently false since he was not only named in the diffs, but had been making really disruptive edits. I was just explaining the context of Macai's edits since I happen to think context is important. TheGoodLocust (talk) 01:10, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Do you think your input to that thread improved or worsened the situation? MastCell ^Talk 04:29, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Point taken. Let me be the first to withdraw from the battlefield (with honor, or otherwise). Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 04:43, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

I think it improved the understanding of the situation. Nobody said truth was an easy thing. TheGoodLocust (talk) 05:59, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Apparently not. MastCell ^Talk 23:02, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Rights for new editors

off-topic - 2/0 (cont.) 15:56, 7 February 2010 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
It's tiring how many new editors are called scibaby accounts and driven away. Can we stop the lies and let him back?—Preceding unsigned comment added by 32.168.57.210 (talk • contribs) WP:Standard offer applies. However, the actual number of new editors affected seems to be around 0. And unfortunately we have no control over hir lies. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 09:24, 6 February 2010 (UTC) how can you know if you block them all?

Content editing restrictions

I just commented here that the content revert restrictions, where editors can be blocked for reverting anything that has been reverted in the last 24 hours, seems like a bad idea. Briefly, the result is that anyone who wants to make an edit has to look through every single edit over the last 24 hours to see if they are undoing any part of an edit that undoes something else... even a straight comparison of all edits in the last 24 hours wouldn't do the trick, since an edit that is then reverted would show as no change. I understand the point is that we don't want people jumping into edit wars, even with one revert, but it seems to me this goes too far. Has all of this been considered? Mackan79 (talk) 00:01, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

On further consideration, setting up too many byzantine rules like that is not a good idea for Wikipedia. Main discussion at Talk:Climatic Research Unit hacking incident#Content restriction. Thank you for your rationations. - 2/0 (cont.) 06:55, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

The article has a name

[Note:text below was a response under Request For Restrictions on Article Renaming Discussions and was moved here. It opposes the restrictions on discussing renaming that have been suggested on the main page (where this originally resided).

This page is not for article naming discussions

The article has a name. It is Climategate. It is not the least ambiguous. It is a 'slam dunk'. By chasing people away, bullying, threatening and generally wearing them down, people who wish Climategate did not happen have consistently steered the debate away from its only sensible conclusion. It is a testimony to how badly wrong things have gone on the Climate pages that someone was able to erase Climategate as a page title and is now cheeky enough to suggest the term be rubbed out altogether. Climategate is a subject all by itself and has only a tangential relationship to the thing that is being used to erase it from Wikipedia. There is no doubt that there is a thing called 'Climategate' in the rest of the world. There is little doubt that people have an interest in it. It is clear from all the sound and fury around it that it is notable. From what I can tell from the substance of and the fallout from the scandal it is a big subject and an important one. It is, BTW, a scandal for heavens sake. There are more Google hits right now for "Climategate scandal" than there are for "Watergate scandal" (571K vs 337K). If something is going to lose it's 'gate' suffix it sure as heck should not be Climategate. It seems as though nothing will reach the camp that decided that the salient points of Climategate were that it was an alleged hacking of a server at a 'research unit' and that it was merely an 'incident'. The awkward name of "Climatic Research Unit hacking incident" is NOT best under Wikipedia guidelines. Trumping its actual name in current usage (Climategate) is not even allowed from my reading of guidelines. No other entity on earth called Climategate by this name, even after millions of pages had been created. In fact, even though Wikipedia and that embarrassing name was at the top of a Google search for months, less than one hundred pages refer to it by that name. Whatever this thing should be called it is clear that the current title is not it. Nothing should trump its actual name in current usage (Climategate). Wikipedia has very clear guidelines for such a dispute. They are unambiguous and clearly call for the article to take the name Climategate and no other. Here is the relevant section from the Wikipedia guidelines for naming an article (emphasis is mine): Where proper nouns such as names are concerned, disputes may arise over whether a particular name should be used. Wikipedia takes a descriptive rather than prescriptive approach in such cases, by using the common English language name as found in verifiable reliable sources; proper names for people or events which incorporate non-neutral terms - e.g. Boston massacre, Tea Pot Dome scandal, Edward the Confessor, Jack the Ripper - are legitimate article titles when they are used by a consensus of the sources. Here is how the examples above stack up in 'googlespace' vs Climategate right now: Name/Hits "Boston Massacre"/310K "Tea Pot Dome scandal"/<2K "Edward the Confessor"/536K "Jack the Ripper" 2,180K "Climategate" 12,100K Google is hardly the arbiter, of course. However, it is pretty clear from the above that if you are to go to major newspapers, networks, any involved institution, congressional records, blogs and other current reference sources you will find this thing and it will be called 'Climategate'. There are six thousand times as many references to Climategate than there are to the least prominent of the examples given in the guideline. Climategate has more than four times the references than all the examples combined. There is no judgement call here. According to Wikipedia guidelines and its customs this article belongs under the name 'Climategate' and WP visitors deserve to see a proper treatment of the subject. There is no reasonable argument for keeping up the charade that Climategate does not exist. Redirecting 'Climategate' to its current ridiculous name is tantamount to claiming 'Climategate' either does not exist or is not called 'Climategate'. Neither are true. It is not going to go away, even if the most likely place anyone would look (Wikipedia) tries to 'disappear' it. The thing to which the term 'Climategate' currently refers misleads the reader into thinking that the term (or even topic) 'Climategate' is entirely promoted by non-neutral sources. It attempts to misdirect attention from the real topic to a supposition about how it started. That supposition is needlessly prejudicial and likely not even correct. Worse, it tries to put that front and center in the title and the leading paragraph. At one point, there was a ridiculous discussion as to whether or not the term 'Climategate' should appear in the lead at all, even though the actual subject is Climategate. It is well beyond ridiculous how long this sore has existed here at Wikipedia. It is a dreadful embarrassment, not just that we get it wrong, but that we seem simply unable to correct the mistake. Worse, as the title of this section implies there exist mechanisms at WP sufficiently poisonous that they might be able to permanently block even any attempts at putting it right. Regardless of how one feels about Climategate, surely anyone with a sense of fair play would agree that the article on Climategate should bear the name of its subject. This has been hashed over, but should be mentioned to be complete. The supposed argument against the moniker 'Climategate' is that it is 'POV'. Setting aside the fact that WP guidelines are clear that in this case it is OK to be POV, the current title is not only much more *POV* it is entirely misleading. It attempts, under the guise of creating a neutral point of view, to prejudice the reader into thinking the salient point is that a computer crime occurred. That is, first off, not the salient point and second, not proven. In my opinion, it is not even correct. It also minimizes what has happened. When this initially broke, the AGW camp (not moi, obviously) tried to say 'nothing to see here, move along'. For while, I think they came within a whisker of pulling it off. Clearly, though, there was quite a bit to see. Using WP:AGF, one might be able to argue that the original name change was a well meaning mistake. As of this point in time, though, this is not just on the radar, there has been serious fallout including discussion by major governments, investigations at Universities, calls for resignations, (finally) the release of information, a promise by the MET to undertake a major review of part of the data, etc. Unlike the 'alleged hacker' and their 'alleged crime', there is now evidence that a real crime *was* committed and it was committed by at least one of the subjects of the revealed information, not the person who (allegedly) released it. This went well beyond the 'incident' stage months ago. Only Climategate is appropriate. I think that elsewhere I chipped in to say I oppose a title change to some other thing intended to substitute for Climategate. If people are not going to call this by its real name, then it is preferable to me that it continue with its current ridiculous name -- name and shame, I say. I am, since I am pretty opinionated on the topic, going to recuse myself from entering material in any of the Climate articles for the foreseeable future. I strongly suggest that anyone with strong opinions do the same. The topic has clearly been dominated by a group of people who are much, much too close to this to speak sensibly to the subject matter. The only honorable thing to do is to stand aside and let cooler heads prevail. In case someone is confused -- if you have made more than two dozen edits to Climate articles you should probably step aside for a while. If any truly neutral editor sees this, I hope you will intervene to at least correct the optics here. Let people who think Climategate is a manufactured smear campaign complain about that on the talk page. Heck, I don't think it would be out of line to have a section on that dissenting opinion in the article even if it turns out to be a minority opinion. However, the current state of affairs is just plain wrong and it is not getting any less wrong as time passes. DeepNorth (talk) 00:13, 8 February 2010 (UTC) Please see WP:NC#Descriptive titles where -gate names are specifically deprecated as a matter of policy, and WP:WTA#Controversy and scandal, which states specifically that -gate names are not to be used in article titles other than in historical cases supported by reliable historical sources. It's curious how the proponents of POV article naming somehow never seem to acknowledge the fact that policy specifically rejects the use of their -gate names. -- ChrisO (talk) 00:35, 8 February 2010 (UTC) Chris: if you re-read the references you have given me you will notice that the text I quote is quite literally 'the last word' from the very items you reference -- WP:WTA#Controversy and scandal. The wording and meaning of that text is crystal clear and points inexorably to naming the article 'Climategate'. If you read the whole works, 'policy' is modified by the text I quote, not the other way around. One is also advised to use common sense and even if you have strong feelings to the contrary, it is pretty clear that a majority opinion calls this 'Climategate'. There is little more to discuss except to simply refer you back to the note above, the section I quote and the comparison of how 'Climategate' (more than) fits the prescription.

It might be interesting

I was thinking that it might be interesting to compare how many editors from one side of this content issue have been sanctioned versus those from the other. It might also be interesting to compare the severity of sanctions for similar offenses. I think that this would speak to the efficacy of the probation, and the fairness of its enforcement. I'm particularly thinking of the kid gloves with which the incivility of WMC is treated, versus the swift and brutal "justice" meted out on some from the other end of the spectrum. Does anyone have any data on this? Is there a central holding area for such sanctions that could be used to compile such data? UnitAnode 22:58, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

I don't think such a survey would be of any value, partly because of how the "sides" are defined. The "skeptical" side of the debate is pushing a largely fringe theory with an emphasis on scandal and controversy, so of course it is more likely that editors of this persuasion fall foul of sanctions related to edit-warring and content disputes. Conversely, the "other" side is more likely to receive sanctions for lack of civility due to their frustration with the former group. In any case, what purpose would such an analysis serve? Are you seeking to embolden those who have been sanctioned, so that we can have yet more drama? -- Scjessey (talk) 23:12, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Actually it wouldn't be interesting at all, since all signal would be drowned out by the noise of Scibaby socks. If we could set them aside (difficult, because some of them will end up blocked without a CU), we'd still have to eliminate all the editors who came here angrily riled up by the likes of Solomon and Delingpole. Even if you could somehow leave them out, we'd need to take into account experience. Again, if you look at the "skeptical" side, you'll find that, on average, there are more new editors and fewer established ones. So again, of course, you'd expect newer editors to get into more trouble because, quite simply, they're less acculturated. Simply counting numbers will provide meaningless results. You'd need to carefully weight for experience, for attitude, for interactions between the two (if you talk about "the administrators", you don't get it)... If only we could get Nate Silver involved... Guettarda (talk) 23:41, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

If you're interested in surveys, another interesting idea would be to look at the ratio of talk page chatter to actual valuable contributions. Or you could look at who does the reverting of anon vandalism on the GW-type articles. Or who welcomes new or anon editors. Or who shamelessly talks about "sides" William M. Connolley (talk) 23:18, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

• I am shocked -- shocked! -- that the above three editors have weighed in against such a statistical analysis. <rolls eyes> UnitAnode 03:41, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

That comment does an excellent job of encapsulating one of the main problems faced by people trying to write about "controversial" science in Wikipedia (and in the wider public sphere). The problem with the proposal is glaringly obvious to anyone with a passing understanding of hypothesis testing. It should be obvious to anyone familiar with Wikipedia that (a) new editors are much more likely to run afoul of our policies than experienced editors (for a variety of reasons), (b) SPAs are more likely to run afoul of our policies than people who edit a wider range of topics, and (c) people who arrive here with an axe to grind are more likely to run afoul of our policies than people who come here for other reasons. Given the distribution of editors into these two "camps" here, the underlying expectation is that more people from one "camp" are likely to end up as the subject to engage in behaviour that is worthy of sanction here. If you understand hypothesis testing, the very idea of comparing the raw numbers of people sanctioned pointless. We would expect that substantially more new SPAs will run into trouble than experienced editors. Documenting that the pattern which holds for Wikipedia as a whole also holds here is meaningless. Especially since the pattern we're comparing it to is purely anecdotal.

If you edit "controversial" scientific articles, you'll be familiar with this sort of problem. People show up making comparisons like this all the time. "If evolution is true, why don't we see new species evolving all the time?" Well, because the rate of speciation is low enough that we shouldn't expect to see new species in our lifetime. "If global warming is true, why haven't we seen any warming in the last 10 years?" Again, look at the last 50 years and tell me if you see a trend, don't look at the last 15 minutes. Similarly, if you want to look for bias in the way that decisions are handed out here, you either need to come up with a statistical model that takes into account the underlying patterns, or you need to compare like with like (only compare editors with more than xyears and y-thousand edits over z articles). Otherwise you're simply comparing today's temperature with last July's, and trying to see whether there actually is such a thing as global warming. Guettarda (talk) 14:51, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Eternal problem with trying to introduce facts and nuance into a discussion - I can't be as pithy as Unitanode's snark. Guettarda (talk) 14:52, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

It's a good snark, though. Not a valid one, but short and witty. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 14:57, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

I beg to differ. Invalid and short, but not witty. Compare this recent gem, which is pertinent here, valid, not quite so short, but witty enough: "If the bias you discern is that the sanctioned editors tend to be (but are not always) acknowledged to be here explicitly to push a fringe scientific point of view, you're also probably right. Coming to this Wiki for that purpose probably shows a certain lack of clue, and such poor judgement typically manifests itself independently in other problematic behavior." Bertport (talk) 15:45, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Discussion on project page is out of control again

I think it would be better if one of the admins tackled this, but if the discussion is repeatedly permitted to degrade to refighting old battles from talk pages, such as the merits of "Climategate" or whether the press templates should be used to link to a tirade against William Connolley by Delingpole, then in my opinion its primary focus--to prevent such discussions becoming endless slugfests with rising tempers all round--will be significantly blunted. --TS 19:23, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

We're basically putting on a clinic on how discretionary sanctions should not work. Someone makes a complaint, an uninvolved admin assesses it and proposes a response. Then someone else pops up and says, "Wait a minute, not so fast - let's leave this open for a few days to see how things shake out." Not surprisingly, those few days are spent in continuous schoolyard-level bickering. And then the thread is such a mess that the original issue is long since muddied over. The idea of probation/discretionary sanctions is to empower admins to act more decisively. We've totally lost the point. MastCell ^Talk 22:37, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Agreed. I suggest one of the uninvolved admins makes a WP:BOLD decision to simply remove ill-formatted complaints, as a start William M. Connolley (talk) 22:54, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Wait, let me get this straight. They're arguing over an op-ed piece in a college newspaper? Anyway, I see violations of WP:CIVIL, WP:AGF and WP:NPA. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 03:13, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

From my observations, someone complains with a few diffs, then an admin (2over0) goes hunting for a raft of diffs to support their action. Meanwhile, the new diffs aren't open for discussion in the community. The accused is left in helpless defence against admin action with prejudice. If new diffs are going to be introduced, they should be open for community input in this project. Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 03:51, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

I don't think you get it. These aren't the public stocks. The point isn't to present a few diffs and then have "the community" (meaning, in this case, the same 4 or 5 partisans) go to town for a few days. The point is that someone makes a request → an uninvolved admin evaluates the request and acts on it. If people have something useful to add (that is, not a continuation of their petty bickering), then they could concisely add it. If another uninvolved admin has a different idea about the appropriate response to the request, they could open a discussion with the first admin. The last thing this process needs is more of what you refer to as "community input" (which is not really anything of the sort). And really, I don't know how many times this needs to be said: if you feel that 2/0, or any admin, is acting abusively, then you need to pursue dispute resolution instead of keeping up a constant stream of ineffectual, unpleasant abuse. This ArbCom finding about casting aspersions might be useful reading. MastCell ^Talk 05:38, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

"Administrative bias"

It does absolutely no good to constantly whinge about biased, corrupt, unfair admins on this talk page or in various enforcement threads. If you really believe that 2/0, or any other admin, is acting in a sustained and improper fashion, then WP:RFC/U is → that way. If the more unrestrained among you honestly believe your own inflammatory rhetoric about maliciously aiding and abetting disruption and using the administrative tools to push a POV, then you might even want to go straight to ArbCom and make a case for emergency de-sysopping - that's certainly what I would do if I honestly believed an admin was engaging in the sorts of activities that are routinely charged here.

Alternately, you could accept that 2/0 is doing his level best, and that not every difference of opinion over a judgment call is driven by bias or malice. More strategically, you could lower the level of abuse to the point that other admins might actually want to get involved, which would dilute 2/0's impact. Right now, I can tell you that any uninvolved admin who takes a brief glance at the abuse directed at 2/0 is unlikely to want to spend their volunteer time refereeing you guys, which is to the general detriment. MastCell ^Talk 00:00, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

• Then there shouldn't be any problem with looking at the stats for how similar complaints brought against each side are handled. UnitAnode 03:39, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
  • I think it's a waste of time to try to statistically "prove" bias here, in large part because your starting assumptions are not universally shared. But go ahead if you like. That's not my point. I'm telling you that there is a process in place to address the concerns you and a few others have voiced. If you're serious about your concerns, you should pursue that process. On the other hand, incessant griping and sniping here, without any attempt to productively address the situation, suggests that the goal is simply to make life unpleasant for any enforcing admin whose verdicts are disagreed with, in hopes that they'll be driven off. I hope that's not the case. MastCell ^Talk 04:04, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

    My only interest is in seeing the probation enforced fairly. As it stands, WMC gets away with calling people "yahoos", "the mob", and "idiots", in the very thread where he's informed of his civility restriction. I won't be starting an RFC/U on 2over0, but I may well take this before Arbcom if this one-sided enforcement for substantially similar breaches continues. UnitAnode 05:07, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

There's still my outstanding complaint against WMC for edit warring and I'm not a member of the skeptic side so hopefully that adds some legitimacy to it. Per WP:TE, one of the behaviors of problem editors is "in returning from a block, your first action is to head right back to the article and repeat the edit." WMC's first action after the sanction was to head right back into the article and resume his edit war. LessHeard vanU's initial findings were that WMC was, in fact, edit-warring. Let's assume good faith from our beleaguered admins and hope that something more significant will be done in this case. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 05:31, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

• Unitanode should try to get some grip on reality. Any request to ArbCom is likely to be refused: on the other hand he could end up being sanctioned by motion for wasting time. Looking at the bar for bad editing behaviour, it's edits by users like TGL that have hit rock bottom. Why is Unitanode supporting a user whose positive contributions to wikipedia are so hard to name? It's becoming very hard to understand his arguments - are they politically motivated? - no matter how many times they are repeated. Like CoM, he will end up being ignored. Mathsci (talk) 08:07, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

  Arbcom wouldn't be sanctioning me for anything, Mathsci. And I'm not "supporting" TGL, I'm opposing an obvious inequality in how enforcement is meted out. UnitAnode 11:20, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

• and I'm not a member of the skeptic side so hopefully that adds some legitimacy to it. - first Lomborg, then ATren, then LHVU, then you: "take me seriously because I'm not a skeptic!". {{cn}} I think. As to your meritless complaints of edit warring: they are meritless William M. Connolley (talk) 08:57, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

• Nah, I was ensuring you did not look foolish by mislabelling me, as might be expected from your history, given that you were unhappy with my actions in this matter. As ever, you have confounded my best efforts on your behalf. LessHeard vanU (talk) 14:04, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

  I'm confused. Is LHvU also A Quest for Knowledge? UnitAnode 14:08, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

• WMC, I've been tried to mediate between the two warring faction for 3 months and have to say that both sided have repeated violations of behavior conduct. If it were up to me, I'd topic ban the whole lot of you. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 14:17, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

• I'm sure you would, but fortunately, its not. If that is your idea of "mediation" then... well, the obvious really. You snarking above seems all-too-typical of your style. Perhaps you might care to go and deploy your mediation skills elsewhere? William M. Connolley (talk) 15:36, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Even if it were true that I had a dog in this fight, it pales in comparison to someone who has clearly taken a side, even on-wiki (e.g. repeated references to "septics", the "torygraph", etc.) Why is it OK for you to express such clear partisan sympathies, but anyone who expresses even the slightest sympathies for the so-called "skeptic side" is viewed with suspicion? ATren (talk) 12:27, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

• Oh, and just noticed WMC's first action after the sanction was to head right back into the article and resume his edit war - I'm pretty sure that is false. Are you really asserting that my first edit after the sanction was to that article? If so, I'll bother review my edit history. Though if you really believe it, why don't you supply the diffs? William M. Connolley (talk) 09:01, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, didn't mean to be so literal. My comment was meant to say that you were sanctioned and immediately the next day, you went in and continued edit-warring. If there are any intermediate actions, I did not look. You violated the spirit of WP:TE, if not the letter. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 14:12, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

OK, you were wrong, thanks for admitting it. The edit warring allegations ar also without meritl; it is regrettable that you're still pushing that dead horse William M. Connolley (talk) 15:36, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

But your first action after being warned not to use divisive language was to call us "yahoos", and not so long after, "idiots", so you do have a history of immediately spurning a formal warning, no? ATren (talk) 18:12, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Your statements above are *all* wrong. Do you care? Did you bother check before making them? It would seem not William M. Connolley (talk) 23:06, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Of course they're not wrong. You responded to 2/0's warning by calling it a "victory for the yahoos". Under what interpretation is that NOT spurning the warning? Please answer, because if I am missing something I'd like to know why. ATren (talk) 00:30, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

For the record, WMC refuses to answer this, so his misrepresentation that I'm "all wrong" remains unstruck and unanswered. ATren (talk) 23:13, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

MastCell, I have never suggested 2/0 is acting in bad faith. But whether he intends it or not, his decisions show a tendency to overreact to some while under-reacting (or even defending) others, and the distinction between the former and latter seems to correlate strongly with the perceived ideological stance of the editor. That's bias, and I've tried repeatedly to make 2/0 aware of this tendency without taking formal action because I really do believe his intentions are good, and I would prefer if he would consider stepping back voluntarily. Note: this does not imply complete withdrawal, only to withdraw from making hasty, unilateral decisions like he did with JPat, GoRight and now TGL. BozMo, for example, is more outwardly partisan than 2/0, and I strongly disagree with some of his analysis (particularly JPat), but it's less of a concern to me since BozMo has not been taking such a strong enforcement role.

In any case, I do believe this will require escalation, so I've begun moving in that direction. ATren (talk) 13:08, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

@ATren, I am just curious about the distinction between subjectively "biased" which as a complaint seems to mean "does not share complainer's general POV" versus "uninvolved" per probation "an administrator will be considered "uninvolved" if he or she is not engaged in a current, direct, personal conflict on the topic with the user receiving sanctions". I am not sure anyone is really in a position to evaluate bias because of the relativity, and I certainly don't think any administrator playing an active role on WP has escaped the accusation at some point (not to mention all the other accusations). What I think we want to avoid is admins being "prejudiced". If you believe I, for example, tend to evaluate whether an editor is good faith based in part on their views on contraversial topics then you would have a fair complaint of prejudice, and I would be interested in examples. --BozMo talk 17:11, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

BozMo, for a specific example, I think you way overstated the case against JPat, whose actions were far less disruptive than others (you know who) have been. But in that case you didn't specifically act - 2/0 then came in and pulled the trigger on a topic ban with no more discussion. There were similar quick, strong decisions from 2/0 on GR, GC, and TGL. This, when contrasted to his strong defense of WMC's similar behavior, is an indication of prejudice, and I believe an objective case can be made to show that. I plan to contrast his analysis of WMC's diffs with similar analysis of diffs against GoRight. The level of misbehavior by both GR and WMC was similar (and I believe I can make that case compellingly), but GR got an indef ban while WMC got a valiant defense. Again, I am not arguing per se that GR's block was bad, only that the enforcement be even-handed. In any case, I think it will probably have to go to arbcom, so I am not going to argue it further on these pages unless specifically asked to clarify. ATren (talk) 18:06, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

I don't know about the others, but GoRight's block was after a lenghty ANI thread where many people (including myself) asked for a block or a ban, and he was reinstating a block that other admin had already placed, so I don't think it can be called unilateral.

P.D.: Then again, as Mastcell says, WP:RFC/U is thataway. --Enric Naval (talk) 15:47, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

Triage is needed urgently

Further to my comment on the use of the enforcement page as an extension of the battleground that so many editors seem to treat climate change articles as, I suggest that triage is needed urgently. The page is getting out of control and the probation, far from containing the problem, is simply providing another venue where administrators are intimidated and feel unable to act.

• There are editors who are doing productive work in the area and just need to get a clue.
• There are editors who are treating climate change as a battleground but not primarily so. They need to be told to stop on pain of immediate exclusion.
• There are editors who have come from other battleground areas (Obama is one of the more notable ones) and have brought their bad habits with them. These should be identified and topic banned immediately. Some of those have shown that they are capable of splendid work elsewhere and they should be encouraged to do so.

In addition the warlike behavior we've seen on the enforcement page must not be permitted to continue. Specifically, abusing the page to continue arguments about the merits of the topic must be removed completely. Certain repeat offenders who do not merit complete topic bans should perhaps be warned to stop abusing the enforcement page to advance vendettas.

I am convinced that the community at large will support firm action taken now by admins. This probation is supposed to empower them, they need to take back this page as part of that process of empowerment. --TS 18:13, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

I agree completely. I am very concerned by the way the process is blatantly being abused for partisan purposes, something which is abundantly clear in the repeated, vexatious enforcement requests against William M. Connolley. Marknutley is by far the worst offender in this regard, filing no fewer than three WMC-related enforcement requests, all of which have been frivolous and unactionable. He's clearly pursuing a vendetta. This needs to be stopped. I've filed an enforcement request against Marknutley to request that he be restrained from filing any more enforcement requests; there needs to be a clear message to all editors that abuse of process will not go unanswered. -- ChrisO (talk) 22:52, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

Meanwhile an experiment

Meanwhile. I've collapsed all discussion sections except those for (borrowing legal terminology) the plaintiff, the accused, and the admins. At the very least this cuts down the noise so that one has a chance of seeing what each complaint is about and what the admins think. Please do discuss here before uncollapsing. And try not to use ther terms "climate change", "global warming", etc, in doing so. This is just a procedural measure to stop the page getting completely out of control. It isn't part of a secret plot to censor skeptical voices. --TS 19:03, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

WP:BLP, WP:AGF and WP:NPA violations on Climatic Research Unit hacking incident talk page

I'm not sure where I should post this, so if there is a more appropriate venue please let me know. Scjessey has twice violated WP:BLP on the Climatic Research Unit hacking incident article talk page[29][30] (the source does not say anything about the person "trashing" anything) and has now launched a personal attack against me.[31] I tried discussing the situation at his talk page but he deleted the discussion both times I tried to talk to him.[32][33] Scjessey has said that I should never post on his talk page again.[34]. I'm not sure if his request is valid, but I will honor it unless told otherwise. For now, his WP:BLP violations have been addressed, but his WP:AGF and WP:NPA violations remain. Can something be done about this disruptive editor? A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 21:17, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

It looks as if he misread the report he cited. I'm so used to seeing climate change skeptics perform such gross misreading as a matter of course that it's a bit surprising to see the misreading go the other way. But yes, he misread it, and reacted badly to your response. I haven't gone into the details but if he persists in his misreading perhaps file an enforcement request because he'll make a bit of a nuisance of himself. adding to the ridiculous amounts of chatter already on that talk page. --TS 22:04, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

Actually, you're the one who misread the report. No where does it say anything about the person "trashing" anything. That's pure original research on the part of Scjessey. In any case, WP:BLP violations are supposed to be removed immediately and without waiting for discussion. I did exactly what I was supposed to do. And even if I was mistaken, the proper course of action would have been to discuss it on the talk page. As you should already know, the burden of evidence is on the person who adds or restores material. Instead of discussing the situation in an attempt to resolve my WP:BLP concerns, Scjessey restored the edit (clearly in violation of WP:BLP) and then proceeded to launch a personal attack against me. This is not acceptable behavior for a Wikipedia editor. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 22:17, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

Er, I could be wrong, but I think Tony is agreeing with you, and agreeing that Scjessey misread the report. MastCell ^Talk 22:30, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

Well, if I misunderstood I apologize. The pronoun "he" could refer to either of us. I'll strike through my comments. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 22:33, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, I could have been more clear. Mastcell's interpretation is correct. And I agree with you on the strong application of BLP. --TS 23:11, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

What was completely unacceptable here was the heavy-handedness of AQFK in this matter. My interpretation, made in good faith, of the Channel 4 story was that McIntyre was part of the group pushing (and succeeding) in getting one of the members of the investigation removed from the team. The manner in which AQFK responded to my comment was guaranteed to create drama, when all that was necessary was a polite request to refactor (which I did after re-reading the article). While the article didn't explicitly state the relationship between McIntyre and the resignation, the implication was certainly there. There would be a lot less conflict here if people would think before they act. AQFK's comment about "discussion" first is laughable given the fact that his tool of discussion was the revert button, and when I posted on his talk page about the matter, his response was to give me a BLP warning - exacerbating the situation. Bad form. -- Scjessey (talk) 23:50, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

WP:BLP violations should be removed immediately and without waiting for discussion (emphasis NOT mine). Remember that the burden of proof lies with the editor who adds or restores the material. So, after I removed it the first time,[35] you should have discussed this on the thread I opened on your talk page.[36] Instead, you deleted the discussion[37], re-added the WP:BLP violation[38] and launched into a personal attack against me.[39] A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 00:56, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

I think a formal request for corrective action is appropriate in this case. Cla68 (talk) 00:59, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm working on one right now. Let me know if I make any mistakes in content or formatting. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 01:06, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

I see you have wasted more time on this matter. More heavy-handedness. More escalation. More mock outrage at being called "heavy-handed", which you have characterized as a "personal attack" for some reason. Well, at least I know what to expect from you in the future. -- Scjessey (talk) 12:18, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

I looked at that, and would have restored the comment myself if it weren't so forum-ish. It's iffy to remove good faith comments on the article subject from an article talk page made by active contributors to the article. It is indeed heavy-handed, and from the outside looks petty. There's no reliable sourcing standard, and no burden of proof, for discussing things on talk pages. Wikilawyering that as a BLP violation is silly. You can quote policy text all you want but BPP-wise it's a harmless comment that is neither going to get anyone sued nor harm their real-world lives. It's essential to writing articles that editors work through sources and events as they emerge, and that process involves stating opinions. You got the response you're usually going to get - the original poster reverted you and upped the ante by complaining about you to boot. If there's a pattern of not getting along with other editors it would make some sense to try to work with that constructively. But rushing to file a case every time someone voices an opinion about the subject of the article or reverts your attempt to police the talk page is pointless. If everyone did it would throw arbitration enforcement into chaos, assuming it's not already there. - Wikidemon (talk) 15:27, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

Off Topic Comments

Apparently 2over0 has made a round of User Talk Page notices in an effort to have folks stay on-topic in the enforcement request. I was a little miffed at my diff examples, but such is the nature of a form letter. Really, this issue does require better attention; however, I am concerned that we will be seeing enforcement requests here on this off-topic issue, which would create further distraction from creating productive article content. Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 04:49, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

Did everyone else get one too? Humph. Now I'm feeling miffed. I think I'll go and take some pot shots at the admins starting with 2over0! ;-) Dmcq (talk) 14:26, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

Cheap Shots

There seems to be broad agreement that Ccp/ReF page should not be used to simple move the talkpage battle lines to another forum. A lot of cheap shots have been taken at the editor in the dock. I propose that any comment not directly related to a diff either supplied with the comment or one that is already been provided, should be quickly removed. This should apply to admins as well. No more unsubstantiated "X has been a bad boy". How is one supposed to defend themself against that kind of accusation? Talk about diffs or don't talk at all.JPatterson (talk) 15:32, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

I don't know all the formatting to file a formal request, but...

Is this acceptable? One redirect has been explicitly explained as being much more accurate. The other is simply supported as "well, it's four years of status quo." In my view, Hipocrite is simply digging further into his bunker (see GoRight's talkpage where he accuses me of being a supporter of GR's proposal -- as he stated clearly he would do when a request at this page didn't go as he thought it should -- when I explicitly declined to support the proposal), and reverting anyone who he perceives as being on the "other side", with very little attempt at actual, rational reasoning. As I said, I'm not sure exactly how to do a formal request, and I'm headed out the door right now, but Hipocrite needs to stop with this kind of behavior. Scottaka UnitAnode 13:53, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

"No, you" is pretty much the response that came to mind first - you reverted the article stating "see talk," but I had responded on talk, and I continue to respond on talk. You apparently believe that your 1-2 "no consensus" on the article talk page means the redirect should point where you want it to (you're the 1), not where it has pointed for four years and where the majority of talk page commentors think it should point. You think your arguments have carried the day, but I contend they have not. Further, I don't know why you are dragging our unrelated dispute into this - perhaps you are getting too caught up in the content, not the contributor. Finally, I haven't accused you of supporting the proposal. The individual I accused of supporting the proposal was Eraserhead1. Hipocrite (talk) 13:56, 18 February 2010 (UTC) (comment after the fact "too caught up in the contributor, not the content." Hipocrite (talk) 14:10, 18 February 2010 (UTC))

PS - the first step in resolving a dispute is to get more eyes - which I did. I sugget that you strongly consider if your approach across all of your various reversion is really constructive, at this point. Hipocrite (talk) 13:58, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

No, I think that common sense should be applied, and that people should come out of their "bunkers." I also think that the mentality you have been adopting is counterproductive and very unhelpful. Especially the type of accusations you level at people. Scottaka UnitAnode 14:00, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

I believe I am applying commonsense, and physician, heal thyself. Hipocrite (talk) 14:02, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

This looks like a content dispute. Please try to resolve it amicably on the relevant talk page. --Tasty monster 14:08, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Is edit-warring actionable on an editor basis?

Due to an edit-war, the Climatic Research Unit hacking incident article has been blocked for three days. I'm not sure that this is the best course of action since not all editors are guilty of edit-warring. Instead of locking the entire article, why not simply warn or ban those editors who were doing the edit-warring?

As far I can see, Grundle2600 was the first editor to add this content to the article.[40] This edit is fine as we assume good faith.

Scjessey then reverted the edit.[41] This is fine, too, as again we assume good faith.

After this point, there should be no further reverts, correct? We're supposed to discuss this on the talk page until consensus has been reached. Any further reverts is edit-warring, correct?

Well, this content was reverted an additional 9 8 times:

• Unitanode reverts.23:28, 15 February 2010
• HaeB reverts.23:40, 15 February 2010

* Grundle2600 reverts.[42]

• Nsaa reverts.08:35, 16 February 2010
• William M. Connolley reverts.08:48, 16 February 2010
• Arzel reverts.14:46, 19 February 2010
• Tony Sidaway reverts.17:58, 19 February 2010
• Unitanode reverts.18:01, 19 February 2010
• ChrisO reverts.18:10, 19 February 2010

As far I understand the situation, it appears that Unitanode, HaeB, Grundle2600, Nsaa, William M. Connolley, Arzel, Tony Sidaway, Unitanode and ChrisO all engaged in edit-warring. These editors are well aware that this article is on probation. They have no excuse as far as I can see. In fact, many have already been warned and sanctioned for previous violations on this vary same article. By placing the article on protection, everyone gets blocked. Why not go after the editors who are actually causing the problem? A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 20:18, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Well, if I were to block everyone mentioned above for edit warring there would be much the nett same result... Tempting, but then I would be left alone to stop the proxy edit war. Of course, the talkpage remains open for consensual edit requests - I wonder why the talkpage has not flashed up on my watchlist? Lastly, and this is a serious point, the right to edit should not be a war of attrition, because that leads to proxy wars. I shall seek the comments of the other admins previously involved in this. LessHeard vanU (talk) 20:28, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

My procedure in this was, on seeing the link added while there was a discussion I was aware of,[43] to check the discussion, ascertain that consensus had not been reached, and revert, adding a comment to describe my findings on the discussion.[44] There were a few more cycles of reversion after that, and as soon as I noticed this I asked for page protection.[45] I later noticed that there was a second discussion on the same subject, further down the page, and I then merged the two discussions. [46]

Edit warring? I don't think so, though I'm aware that a higher standard of behavior is expected of me (as an ex admin, veteran editor, and because dammit the article is on probation) so a reasonable argument could be made. I think I would have asked for protection rather than the first revert if I had realised that the second thread (whose section heading I did see on the talk page) was about the same edit war, and that there had been far more than just William M Connolley's revert on 16th. --TS 20:45, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

With all due respect, I waited for three days after the previous removal. There seemed to be little discussion within talk, nor was there any apparent real concensus for removal. Absent that I made a bold move and reinserted material that some seem to be against for no really valid reason. It doesn't violate UNDUE, NPOV, SEEALSO, or a myriad of other rules. The main objective is that a few don't think it is related, which is really subjective. By that logic I can simply revert anything I want once because of my subjective reasoning and be assured that there is very difficult to be put back in. I don't think that was the purpose of this ruling, and I don't think subjective reasoning is a valid approach for removal in the first place. Arzel (talk) 21:03, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

I understand the reasoning behind your restoration of the link. I don't think you did anything particularly wrong--any more wrong than I did by observing the lack of consensus and removing it. I think we all could (and should) do better. As Lar has said, we all need to raise our game. I agree that subjective judgements are involved, as always in content matters. The point is that talk pages exist for us to resolve such matters. I regret that my inattentiveness contributed to an ongoing edit war. --TS 21:11, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

I am getting weary of this overzealous use of BRD - because there is some question whether placing something like a link in a See Also section meets the definition of WP:BOLD. I feel that such link does not need to meet the criteria of content inclusion, because by its nature it is only related somewhat - not enough to be included in the main body - per

Links included in the "See also" section may be useful for readers seeking to read as much about a topic as possible, including subjects only peripherally related to the one in question. (My bolding of a point already made in the discussion)

My reading of that is that there is a wide degree of inclusion permissible, and that to remove something from that list requires the consensus, not the other way round.

There is also the question of the "edit warring", insofar that as soon as an editor of one perceived party makes an edit which is done by a member of the "other group" there is a reflex revert war - perhaps regardless of the value of the initial two actions - by the aligned editors. This is an example of the WP:BATTLE mentality that so frustrates the collegiate editing of this article. Even minor edits, elsewhere considered regular, are squabbled over. It is unseemly, and to the discredit of the editors concerned. LessHeard vanU (talk) 21:56, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

So you think there is a relationship, if perhaps a peripheral one, between the CRU hacking and the fuss about the IPCC? Please don't explain, that's a matter for the talk page. --TS 22:10, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

What I think is irrelevant, what the guideline says is not. When a guideline provides a wide criteria for inclusion, then consensus is required for what is not allowed - the reverse of what appears to have happened here. Thus I don't need to explain anything anywhere. LessHeard vanU (talk) 22:26, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Er. no. Read the full text of the guideline you yourself have cited. And I did warn you, this is a matter for the talk page. I must add that I consider the notion that consensus is required for non-inclusion to be a little novel in this case. So you wouldn't object if somebody added pedophilia in the "See also" section of an article about a famous deceased pop singer? After all, some people thought Elvis was a pedophile, and Albert Goldman openly depicted him as such, so anything goes. Right? --TS 22:30, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Strawman, and disappointing. I have written to your talkpage anyway. LessHeard vanU (talk) 22:54, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

I think Tony is right in terms of interpreting the guideline. I think the burden is on anyone who wants to include anything to get consensus. I'm not sure if this applies to longstanding elements, but it might -- and therefore we could end up with a stub. (On the other hand, "topic" seems to refer to something beyond the "subject" of an article -- but it's a content question not for this page.) I endorse the idea of permanently topic banning every editor who participated in that series of reverts. It would be totally unfair and very probably overturned at AN/I, but who would disagree that it wouldn't be ultimately better for the encyclopedia, whether or not those editors "deserved" it? We're not here for just desserts, we're here to improve the encyclopedia. You could use WP:IAR as a justification. If you do it, you could ban me, too, or I'd ban myself, just for good measure. Another idea would be to permanently topic ban anyone who edited the article or talk page in the last month or two. Let other editors take over. Think of how efficient it would be. Much less difficult than an ArbCom case or continual battles everywhere else. -- JohnWBarber (talk) 23:12, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

That's a novel idea: turn the articles over to sockpuppets and those who have no background knowledge in the subject matter, and see what they make of them. Hmmm. --Nigelj (talk) 23:41, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

It was William F. Buckley Jr. who famously said that he'd rather have the government run by the first 400 people in the Boston telephone directory than the faculty of Harvard University. Same issue here. It doesn't take a content expert to improve this article. Expertise ain't the issue. -- JohnWBarber (talk) 17:01, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

I might have been misunderstood, so I will try again; In among the links above (per a JohnWBarber) there was a reference to WP:SEEALSO for inclusion. If those who wish to not have the content are unable to provide rationale why there is reason of policy or guideline to keep it out, then the consensus is that it is included because it apparently satisfies the guidelines. Thus to remove it requires a consensus it does not. WP:IDONTLIKEIT and WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT do not over-ride the apparent guideline under which the content was included - so yes, consensus is required to remove it. LessHeard vanU (talk) 13:42, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

LVHU, this part of WP:SEEALSO simply throws the whole decision over to consensus: However, whether a link belongs in the "See also" section is ultimately a matter of editorial judgment and common sense. Although I wouldn't want to have to defend the proposition that there's either "editorial judgment" or "common sense" around these precincts, the passage clearly indicates a content decision is to be made on the spot in individual cases, and that's always a consensus decision. It isn't up to anyone but the editors on the article talk page (or a consensus formed elsewhere) to figure out what common sense and editorial judgment means for an individual article. No admin can take that away from them. I think only copyright and BLP overrides that. If admins can override content decisions of any type, I've got a bunch of POV violations throughout the encyclopedia I'd like to suggest you fix, since I think you'd be more sensible (even if we disagree on a lot of things) than the current consensus on those pages, and in my view they're out of whack with that policy. -- JohnWBarber (talk) 16:54, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

(Unindent a bit) That part you refer to, as I read it, is judgement and common sense regarding the application of the guideline's wording - not an option to disregard it. Therefore the primary concern is whether there is a good faith application of the guideline, and the need to find a consensus that there is not to disallow such content. All guidelines and policy, bar one or two, have the proviso that the wording is descriptive and not prescriptive, is open to change, and is to be applied thoughtfully - but that is not an open invitation to disregard it (with the exception of IAR, of course). Not much point in having these pages if everything is marked "Please note, optional!" at the end. ;~) LessHeard vanU (talk) 21:25, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

I've taken the liberty of annotating the links in A Quest For Knowledge's original comment with timestamps. I have not annotated the edit attributed to Grundle2600 at http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Climatic_Research_Unit_hacking_incident&diff=next&oldid=344301605 because it did not involve the disputed content but rather was a tag proposing the merger of this article with the other. I think that can be classified as bold editing. --TS 22:06, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

I've amended the OP to exclude the edit by Grundle. Thanks for the correction. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 22:49, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Are posts to this project page required?

Can one file a request that would otherwise go here over at WP:AN/I?--Heyitspeter (talk) 10:38, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

WP:ANI is a good place to go if a rapid response is required, but the vexatious litigants and frequent filers will find themselves less well tolerated than here. -- Scjessey (talk) 13:25, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Scjessey, is that barb aimed at Heyitspeter? Yes or no question. Cla68 (talk) 22:54, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

It wasn't intended as a barb, and I apologize if it was perceived as such. I was simply stating that if you are going to go to WP:ANI, it is better to be "one and done" (to use a NASCAR qualifying term) because the admins there are generally annoyed when there are multiple reports covering the same individuals or topics. That is contrary to the system here, where it seems multiple filings are encouraged. I was berated a few hours ago for adding a second issue to an existing thread, which is apparently discouraged, but would definitely be the normal approach at WP:ANI. -- Scjessey (talk) 23:36, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

I should point out that my barbs are way more obvious! -- Scjessey (talk) 23:37, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

If it wasn't aimed at anyone, then there's no problem. Cla68 (talk) 23:39, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Yeah I didn't take it as a jab, but thanks for taking the time to explicate, Scjessey. Comments tend to be viewed through varying degrees of tint on these protected pages.--Heyitspeter (talk) 22:09, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

Archiving and a header

I found that the archive nomenclature set up wasn't quite standard (for automatically listing archives in an index you need the space between the word and the number) so I moved the first archive /Archive1 to /Archive 1, adjusted the instructions to MiszaBot at the top, and then added the {{talkpageheader}} with search box option and a notice that this is bot archived. I think maybe 7 days is a bit short but whatev... If anyone thinks I erred in making these changes, or spots any errors please advise. ++Lar: t/c 17:20, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

If I recall correctly, that breaks the archivebox that I stole closely copied from Template:Arbitration enforcement/Archive navbox. On the other hand, a more standard archivebox would probably work just fine and be more aesthetically pleasing. I will go dig one up in a day or three if nobody gets to it first. I would tend to think that any shorter than seven days would be off, but longer would be fine as long as it does not leave the page enormously large. - 2/0 (cont.) 04:12, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Oops, I see now that you were referring to this page, not the RE page itself. I just added the |minthreadsleft = 5 parameter so the bot will leave 5 open threads no matter how old they get. This can, of course, be tweaked at will. This takes care of some of the worry about a high archiving frequency, but feel free to up that as well if you would like. - 2/0 (cont.) 04:28, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

1RR for admins?

Perhaps there should be a 1RR limit for admins closing / reopening this. Sauce for the goose, no? William M. Connolley (talk) 17:40, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps... see next section. The problem there is that the reopen wins, as the closer will then have shot their bolt. As experienced tacticians in this area presumably already know. ++Lar: t/c 17:43, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

You're happy enough with 1RR's on people editing articles. Why only "perhaps" for yourself? William M. Connolley (talk) 17:51, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Let's work this example, then. J closes, I reopen. 1RR adhered to, all is well, lots of discussion happens. J closes again, within 24 hours of first close, by the way. HE gets sanctioned under your regime for a 1RR violation and a previously uninvolved admin would have to reopen the matter. Are you sure that's what you meant? ++Lar: t/c 17:57, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

You're wriggling. No-one gets sanctionned; for this, simply having the rule would be enough - you're admins, you don't edit war, yes? So come on: behave William M. Connolley (talk) 18:40, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

You're stuck either way. Because if we were all behaving as you would like, Jehochman wouldn't have closed again, that was the 1RR violation. Sorry if you're still confused about that. ++Lar: t/c 18:54, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

You're inventing imaginary confusion. I'm not suggesting re-writing the past. I'm suggesting a rule for the *future*. Clear now? William M. Connolley (talk) 19:27, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Sure. That's perhaps something I can support. But it's important to note that I was running a scenario to see what would happen, and I drew it from recent past, assuming that the regime you proposed was already in place, and I got (presumably) unsatisfactory outcomes. Twice. Hence the "perhaps"... In the branch of science I work in, that's called use case testing. ++Lar: t/c 20:06, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Who are these outcomes unsatisfactory for? William M. Connolley (talk) 20:38, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Jehochman, presumably, since he wanted it closed when others were discussing matters, but the outcome would be that it remains open. And perhaps you, since the close Jehochman prefers leaves you untouched. That's just a guess though. ++Lar: t/c 21:39, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Please don't try to guess for me; you don't understand me, obviously. I'd suggest you don't try to guess for JEH either. So, to be clear: you're happy to accept 1RR for yourself in these matters in future? William M. Connolley (talk) 22:02, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

That conclusion is unwarranted from the facts in evidence. ++Lar: t/c 22:36, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

As a rule I'd suggest that reverting a close made by an admin on this page should be strongly discouraged because this is supposed to be a lightweight, not talk-heavy, process and protracted discussion should be discouraged.

Instead, if there are still serious matters arising, other admins should take the discussion to the closing admin's talk, and if multiple admins oppose the closure consensus on re-opening can be achieved by discussion on this talk. I'm sorry to get all meta, but this is the only way I can think of to discourage admin edit warring and restore the credibility of this process.

I'd also like to repeat my past encouragement to admins to use this probation as a vote of confidence and empowerment. Action under this probation does not require any discussion. It's enough to warn an editor prior to imposing a sanction, and if Connolley should merit action under the probation no further discussion is needed. Too many cooks spoil the broth. --TS 18:43, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure what that last paragraph means, exactly. But If we are going to go with a "first admin acts when they get here" approach, I fear we are going to have wildly inconsistent outcomes. ++Lar: t/c 18:54, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Inconsistent outcomes are part of Wikipedia administration. No two admins will have the same approach. What we need to avoid is having competing admins treading on one another's toes. The final paragraph means that admins should take the probation as what it is: encouragement to use their powers as they see fit in order to restore some kind of order to this fractious field. The last thing we need is a talking shop where nothing gets done. --TS 19:57, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Talking beats fighting. And I think we are getting things done. The process where several admins comment, a consensus seems present, someone proposes a close, and it gets enacted... that process worked well for many many of these requests. I've never myself been the closer I don't think, but often the close incorporated my ideas as well as those of others. If w are going to move to unilateral actions, then I will try to be first as much of the time as possible. Which seems a recipe for more fighting and less talking, and most importantly, less innovation. But if that's what all the other admins want that's what we will do. ++Lar: t/c 20:00, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Too many cooks

It has suddenly become too sysop heavy? Wow. That is a distinct change from when I waded in only a couple of weeks ago. My first efforts, when I arrived, were to block two content editors for removing other editors talkpage comments - something I would not have blinked at doing in any other area of dispute - and caught a fair deal of shit for doing so. I would not do so now, because I now understand there does need to be an acknowledgement of the issue being addressed, and that there are parties attempting to use process as a means of shifting the editing balance toward their viewpoint. I found myself needing to discuss aspects within the existing sysop reviewship, so I might be certain that any action of mine was not going to be appealed to one of the others (I think revert would be unlikely, but I wanted to take care not to fractionalise the admin contingment - see what is happening to Lar, right now). Really, if we are going to make the probation work we are going to have to have working majorities within the admin function. As this progresses the processes will streamline and practices will standardise. If we don't talk, then there will be as much continuing dispute within the enforcement as there is in the article space (oh, and while we are talking those who will be effected by consensual sysop action have the opportunity to effect it). I am currently confident in those admins involved that I would not oppose any action, regardless whether I agree with it or not - simply because there is sufficient internal discussion that the decisions are transparent and open to dialogue. Were that the content talkpages so open to diverse comment and opinion. LessHeard vanU (talk) 22:34, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#More eyes needed at Wikipedia:General sanctions/Climate change probation/Requests for enforcement behold the power of AN/I? - 2/0 (cont.) 04:35, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

My "too many cooks" reference is not to "too many eyes" but rather, to "too many voices". Administrative discretion, and respect for it, should be prominent if this probation is not to become over-bureaucratic. More action, less talk. --19:11, 26 February 2010 (UTC)