Knowledge:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Portals/Workshop

8949:. This creation was not uniformly approved by the WikiProject, but was also not immediately deprecated, though there were comments on the variability of quality, which were answered by claims that they would be improved over time, a principle that applies in article space. There were a few suggestions that this was too much too soon. A minority, but probably a significant minority, were more carefully created by other project members, in a significant number of cases specifically to supplant traditional model portals which had no-one maintaining them, as can be shown by their history, and that they displayed outdated information. Some also by people who had been maintaining specific portals, because they were seen as a better option by those editors. At that stage in the project, great care was taken not to antagonise people with different ideas about what a portal should be and what uses it might have. It was a time of enthusiasm and experimentation. Automated portals were considered to be a cheap experiment. Little work was invested in them directly, so changes were easy to make and could be deployed automatically in many cases. Basing the content on existing structure such as a navbox or outline list were seen as lightweight flexible structures worth investigating for their foreseeable and unforeseeable potential. It also encouraged the improvement of the navboxes or outlines that were used for the structure, when one was producing a single portal. The mass produced portals showed up some shortcomings in the tool set which might otherwise have been missed. Those were usually fixed reasonably soon. We had some fun and developed some potentially more widely useful templates and modules which could do things previously unavailable. There was no policy that was clearly against any of these experiments at the time. Attention from the rest of the editing community was minimal until large numbers of links were added from articles to the relevant portals. I may have left out something important, and this is how I remember the story. Other versions may differ. 2506:

regards such a wide dismissal of portals as she is reaching for, however, to punish her while her peers are unsure or afraid to defend her will set a precedent for these relatively quiet voices. We need criticism of portals. BHG has been incivil and persistent variously, but that is a minor part of the input. She has been the most rigorous against the portals, and while that should have an extent, it should not be completely rebuked. There were valid concerns about the automated portals not making very much sense. The idea of disfavouring them completely does not appeal to me, but it is meritable as an opinion, and they did require a rigorous review at the start of (what is a rehash of an ancient debate really, nobody seems to be picking that up on either side, this debate has came and went since portals original conception, I've read through much of it last year in the course of a related mission). Let's put an extent on any obsessive behaviour, but let's be careful to protect dissent and contrary opinions. I do not subscribe to the idea that BHGs insults have actually damaged the site as they have not devolved into debasive language or aggression, but to be fair, insulting complaints must be based on the attempt to found them only, and insults aimed at groups are an underacknowledged behaviour across many forms of social interaction. Arbs are going to want to restrict things here, but they don't need to desysop anything as serious unless time proves that they are not in control here. If you are not in control once you take charge, well that's hammer time, but please don't roll over immediately for the crowd here, until it is necessary,

12121:

more specific portals, or a specific (proposed) policy or guideline such a ban includes making any changes to the portal(s)/(proposed) policy or guideline being discussed before the discussion is formally closed or (for discussions that do not require formal closure, and for which formal closure has not been requested) has received no non-minor edits for seven consecutive days (excluding edits by bots and reverted edits). Such bans must be logged on the talk page of the discussion, or in a separate (sub)section of the discussion if it is taking place on a talk page in addition to the discretionary sanctions log. B: Any editor who disrupts multiple discussions about portals in general or about one or more specific portals may be topic banned from contributing to all, or a specified subset of, discussions about portals for up to 6 months for a first topic ban from some or all portal discussions, and with no limit for a second (or subsequent) or expanded topic ban from portals. Disruption includes, but is not limited to, incivility, harassment, casting aspersions, posting walls of text, repeating accusations already fully responded to or before the editor concerned has had a chance to respond, re-presenting arguments there is prior consensus against, gaming the system or attempting to achieve a goal by means of a fait accompli.

2501:

couldn't understand and projects they couldn't seem to manage. It is easy when ignored in a dispute to continue to advertise your ignored inputs if you consider them particularly relevant without reposting the full content, of what is a case, each time you mention it. It has went further than acceptable yes, and this series is extended over a period yes, but it is otherwise confined to a narrow niche, i.e. portals. BHG may be exhibiting obsessive input around the portals, but she has also fallen into a situation where she is the loudest voice in a complaint which seems to have produced minimal returns. BHG and NorthAmerica1000 in particular are tireless and recognisable contributors to the site. It has taken a long time to get to the ArbCom stage, but I wish to call for you to defuse it rather than go straight to the cells. It seems like you can do that easily, but at the side of that situation, there are mounting calls to go straight to the whip here with little defence for BHG, even from herself. I see that as unfair. BHG

5633:

responses, delete them, write politer responses, post them. Have another coffee, cuddle the cats, and down some more sugary food to fortify before venturing to MfD. Open all the new portal deletion discussions in separate tabs, then open all the nominated portals and quickly triage by determining on what basis they run (including had they been recently converted), & whether they were once featured. Write a list of urgent portals to investigate, as well as new deletion rationales to consider. Have another coffee. Investigate all old-style portals carefully, including the recently automated, write keep/delete comments and make sure any WikiProjects had been notified. Deal with another round of pings from BrownHairedGirl. This usually took a minimum of several hours. If time/energy, investigate all the purely automated portals too. Then go back to the best nominated portals and consider whether & how they might be improved. Also revisit older MfDs and attempt to respond to comments/concerns.

8276:

portals, the content browsing system needs put forward, not held back. It's a deeply serious issue nobody is considering in terms of the general mission. If that was in the awareness, we would all still disagree, but we'd be heading the same direction, and consequently less critical of each other individually. Please agree with this. It is like a fact of nature for an encyclopaedia. We need not to have winners and losers in this instance, to prevent further clashes and debates, but to get our goals straight, so that we might continue without rejecting each other. Build, a tree, which defines where the information intersects, and put the portals at the intersections, like all the other encyclopaedias did, and you'd have a goal which both guided portals and embedded them in a way which would prevent disagreements turning into major rambunctions...

13133:

abandoned, decrepit relic of a solution in search of a problem, so no, I was not going to waste my time trying to "improve" what shouldn't exist in the first place. It's also not my fault that there are editors who treat portals as playgrounds, which is what portals have always been, which is why over 1000 long abandoned portals existed to be deleted last year after being abandoned by their fan-creators. That many editors do not understand worthwhile time use on an organizational level (the Salvation Army doesn't send Santas to collect donations at vacant lots, they send them to busy stores and streets - on Knowledge, portals are vacant lots with burned out frames of buildings never built, while articles are like Walmart or Macys) or that Knowledge lacks the central planning to implement common sense is neither my fault nor my problem.

12697:– This would delete the entire portal namespace, and some portals are viewed fairly often. This would also remove a navigational feature that many readers utilize. Perhaps tag outdated ones as historical instead. Deletion of all portals per some of them being outdated, and subjective reasons such as some users not liking or using them, some thinking they are useless, pointless, etc. equates to throwing out the baby with the bathwater, and in the process would throw out thousands of hours of work performed by hundreds of editors in one fell, overarching swoop. It would be quite overly drastic and hasty to mass-delete all of the work that has been performed on portals in such manner. North America1000 04:32, 12 April 2018 (UTC) 12905:, and many reviewers referred to these in their reviews. They do (on rereading) appear to concentrate on appearance (1b) but 1a, 1c & 1d all touch on content selection. I can only speak for myself, and most of the other frequent reviewers are retired, but in my featured portal reviews I always considered the selection of articles & other content. In general, I don't find filling in checklists (eg reviewing GAs, DYKs) to promote detailed, thoughtful analyses, but I tried to be systematic in my reviews, which often took several hours to complete. It's also worth noting that many successful portals had previously gone through a detailed peer-review process that addressed major flaws, such as content choices. 4761:

system. Gaming the system might include trying to prevent accusations of gaming the system by claiming such accusations are actually aspirations on motivation, intent and mentality. The gaming part there would be:- presenting a large scale proposal to the community is restricted in the sense that you can't end one large debate today to restart it tomorrow. But... if you could convince people that such a restriction was about attacking the proposers character, rather than protecting the community from being worn down, thereby changing perspective of the issue, from what should be done on the site, to a clash of personalities, you'd have gamed the system in a textbook manner.

7539:

issues about the conduct of administrators. Incivility is always a factor, usually the key factor, in content-conduct disputes, because the conduct issue always includes incivility. Incivility is usually a factor in issues about administrative conduct, either because the administrator is said to have been uncivil, or because the administrator has been required as an administrator to deal with incivility by editors Almost every ArbCom decision should include an appropriately worded civility principle. This case is a content dispute that has been complicated by conduct issues including incivility.

3441:. If Bagumba actually believed that there was such a trend, they should have sought and presented actual evidence rather thanking arbcom to endorse an untested "suspicion". The reality is that I personally made about 500 MFD nominations, of which the ~400 which dealt with non-autoated portals set out in structured form evidence of problems such as indiscriminate article selection, long-term neglect, narrow scope, low readership, lack maintainers, lack of of interest from related WikiProjects. Many other editors (e.g. 12705:. Whatever the theoretical benefits of portals, the reality is that most of them are woefully under-maintained, and v little used. This been the case for years, so all the talk of "keep and improve them" is dreaming: there simply are not enough editors with a sustained interest in doing so, Worse, given the viewing figures, anyone advocating widespread improvement is unintentionally encouraging editors to waste their time. That would actively damage Knowledge by diverting effort away from actually improving en.wp 13377:; where he comments: "Examination of the (reverted) efforts to renovate the portal shows that it would have displayed 22 Featured Articles, 30 Good Articles, and 21 selected articles (with no explanation of how the 21 articles were selected). That might have been an improvement, although it should have been discussed. It is very unlikely that any improvement in the portal would increase the viewing rate by a significant factor." but appears to make no attempt to check the 21 articles for appropriateness. 6810:

validity of evidence for or against something does not imply that one supports or opposes the thing that the evidence is purported to support or oppose. When applying the duck test one should check that more than one of the characteristics of a duck apply, and that there is no contradictory evidence. I give as an example the hunter using a duck call in the vicinity of a decoy floating in a lake. Looks like a duck, sounds like a duck. The shotgun is a fair indication that it is not a duck.

8111:), and an unquantifiable number of people might join WikiProjects having first seen the invitation in a portal, or respond to the list of red-linked articles or requested images by supplying them. (If the main page counts as a portal, which it functionally is, then there's a clear reader-to-editor conversion, particularly for In the news.) But my "claim" was intended to go along with "are intended to..." in Robert McClenon's principle, rather than to assert that this happens in practice. 8250:

than fifty years, until they went out of print a few years back. Their content tree/system was their flagship. We've buried it with the claim that we have outmoded everything about Britannica... but not its content browsing system. Can we not adopt the most extremely diffusing attitude in this circumstance, and continue to criticise portals when we can see criticisms as valid, but give up on deleting them off the face of the planet or considering them some wild unprecedented idea?

43: 187: 4771:

were told no. Accept your answer, and "motivate" yourself with "intent" to the "mentality" of respect for that answer. Although the request would need a timer put on repetition, in fact, the spirit of such restriction, is no to ask again until the situation may have changed, or a fresh outlook on the proposal is possible. That cannot be the case with a major proposal repeated every few months. This is an oft repeated situation on the site. It is

5618:. It could also be argued that many of the points she reiterates again and again and again are based on a guideline sentence fragment using entirely subjective and contestable language. So "Editors who do not wish to engage with the mass of detail of an MFD of a large multi-page portal are free to recuse themselves from the discussion." is no idle threat. This practice appears to be a winning strategy at gaming the system in good faith debate. 13370:, with the edit summary: "Reverted to revision 919061811 by Northamerica1000: Revert undiscused change of format; unexplained, sneaky addition of dozens of articles which are neither listed anywhere visible nor disclosed in edit summaries, let alone discussed (TW))" BrownHairedGirl also made no attempt to engage the Wikiproject, which could be said to have accepted the edits, as no-one there had reverted them in the intervening 11 days. 6587:

but are all there to support and enable the project to present human knowledge on a continuum from directly (e.g. categories of articles, MediaWiki pages that define reader-facing interface elements, etc) to very indirectly (e.g. humour pages that facilitate community health, ACE RFCs, etc). Portals are at least partly reader-facing, but their exact position on the continuum is not fully defined and surprisingly controversial.

4486:

it felt as if I had offered cogent points refuting a particular argument on one MfD only to find it was repeated verbatim on the next, and the next, and the next. Apologies for repetition, but there were often 10 or more or MfDs opened on one day (not necessarily by the same nominator) in which one had to respond to the same material again and again, without either side ever convincing the other one iota.

12690:

doubtfuul either of them knew it would reach this point. From that perspective, it might provide an unfiltered lens to prove or disprove the gaming allegations. !Votes below for convenience, listed chronologically and in full to avoid accusations of misleading (feel free to remove if inappropriate, as the link is still above; diffs possible but a bit harder due to copied comments from main Village pump):

12023:? You're putting words in my mouth and creating a quote I never said. Your comment below is all the evidence needed that Knowledge isn't worth a competent person's time if this ArbCom case ruling can't uphold a need for skill and honesty to be an editor. Once again a portal advocate (or at least that's my impression of you) focuses entirely on tone and feelings, not hard evidence or hard realities. 13297:

extracts were taken in November 2007. Many were substantially unchanged since then, but three had been improved by editors/IPs other than the creator. One had been copied complete with "citation needed" notes. The latest news was dated 1 November 2007. The creator states that he is semi-retired, and has also been blocked since 1 February 2018, so is unlikely to return to improve the portal.

10139:. These points are missing in your evidence submission, which I believe you are using to justify this remedy; other currently present evidence submissions only mention TTH as part of a general background to the dispute. Effectively, the proposal amounts to sanctioning a user a second time for generally the same behaviour, which has not been an issue since original sanction. 8987:, an RFC which ejected a narrow proposition made but did not try to settle what the actual consensus was about what portals should exist and how they should be built. The move to mass rollout of automated portals was clearly controversial, but those pushing it did not open an RFC to seek support. This was at best reckless, and at worst gaming the system by creating a 13024:

utility as navigational devices, and how else can a rational person measure this basic utility other then in page views? What mattered most to Certes was that the portal looked good, not that the portal would take nearly five years to get the total number of views the head article gets in a single day, and Kusma displayed the same irrational keep criteria

8406:. There were pages marked as guidelines, whether or not we were able to find a drawn-out discussion. I've seen this quite a bit with guidelines from the early days. Who's to say they didn't just made sense back then and became de facto guidelines, even if they didn't have enough discussion by today's standards? And that it wasn't until recently that 523:

for review and comment by others. Components proposed here may be general principles of site policy and procedure, findings of fact about the dispute, remedies to resolve the dispute, and arrangements for remedy enforcement. These are the four types of proposals that can be included in committee final decisions. There are also sections for analysis of

5615:

exhaustion and frustration; I have seen several comments by contributors in various stages of this process refer to the same effect. Remember, BrownHairedGirl, mostly to her credit, was in the last year by far en.wikipedia's most prolific editor. In 2019, she performed a record 671K edits, roughly twice as many the next editor (per wikiscan)

7370:. Civility may not be compromised even in pursuit of truth. Certain allegations, such as that an editor is lying or that an editor is stupid, should not be made even if they are believed to be true. Editors who repeatedly violate this principle may be sanctioned, because uncivil conduct is contrary to the concept of collaborative work. 9528:: "An editor gaming the system is seeking to use policy in bad faith, by finding within its wording some apparent justification for disruptive actions and stances that policy is clearly not at all intended to support." I have not seen a diff in the evidence showing that any of Northamerica1000's edits met this definition: which 5660:: many of her edits were using AWB to replace links to something like Portal: Minnesota with Portal: United States. (Performed too fast, and not quite in accordance with the bit policy, but most people didn't care). The point that she did dominate and sometimes overwhelm portal MFD discussions is absolutely valid, of course. — 8534:. I know there have been various views on some issues, but it was dominated in 2018 by supporters of the automated portalspam, and dominated in in 2019 by angry opponents of deleting even abandoned junk portals. My point however, was that the project never set about building a community consensus on any of these questions. -- 11948:

vacant lots with burned out frames of buildings never built, while articles are like Walmart or Macys) and b). that however well done, an encyclopedia doesn't need to create and maintain in perpetuity a second set of pseudo-main-pages just as the United States doesn't need to maintain in perpetuity a second land Army (the

5485:. It's effectively a walled-off discussion, as any non-portal editor who wanted to help would be overwhelmed. Loads of analysis, and no background for an outsider on the basis for the selected criteria. Part of this is systemic from Portals not having existing guidelines or explanatory essays. Am I the only one: what is 6939:

When there is a good-faith dispute, editors are expected to participate in the consensus-building process and to carefully consider other editors' views, rather than simply edit-warring back-and-forth between competing versions. Sustained editorial conflict is not an appropriate method of resolving content disputes.

10701:

assumptions and premises. BHG gave a better explanation: portals were an imitation of web rings, navigation tools that were common before the advent of good search engines (which predate Knowledge). The conception, purpose, etc, of portals is disputed, and the arbs should not slip in any such implied facts. —

13357:

options. The portal model he used is the same one I use in my attempt at a fully automated portal dating from July 2018. It might not now be the best currently available, but it was what was being trialled at that time. I see no evidence that Northamerica1000 attempted to hide what content he was adding.

8143: 13356:

Northamerica1000's edit summaries appear appropriately informative and not obviously fallacious. They do not list the individual articles, which are however clearly listed on viewing the portal code, and can easily be made visible by putting the code sections into a page and adding "|showall=" to the

13182:

Be careful with raw numbers, my figures are also heavily skewed towards Knowledge space (xtools isn't loading for me atm, so can't give numbers). Not every constructive editor edits primarily in article space, for example much of my work is at RfD with the aim of ensuring readers can find the content

12712:

My ideal solution would be too keep about 20 major portals(art/science/etc plus continents), and delete the rest. But given the unhelpful binary nature of this proposal, I'd prefer outright deletion to either keeping them all or to having 1500 MfD debates. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 04:38,

11592:

Got it: it wouldn't be easy to recreate a portal at, for example, DrV so people could readily review it. I agree. The one or two portals I ever tried to make minor edits to, it was difficult for me to navigate to the relevant trancluded part, and I have a technical background. (These were the older

11085:

It may not be helpful to consider "sanctions with respect to BHG and NA1K" as a unit. The case hinges on BHG's allegations of misconduct by NA1K. If the evidence submitted proves them then sanction the guilty party and consider separately whether the phrasing of the reports requires further action;

11070:

I'm undecided whether I think BHG should be dysopped but her conduct has been significantly below the accepted standard that it needs to be actively considered. No evidence has been presented that comes close to showing NA1K has done worthy of being desysopped. The Transhumanist is neither a party to

10458:

are designed to complement main topics in Knowledge and expound upon topics by introducing the reader to key articles, images, and categories that further describe the subject and its related topics. Portals can also assist in helping editors to find related projects and things they can do to improve

9828:

I disagree with this. There is a widespread problem with discussions of portals (not just deletion discussions) and the problem in other deletion discussions of other pages is related to specific users. The evidence presented is also vastly insufficient to justify such a massively broad imposition of

9110:

I see no need to mention who created the portals since there is no reason to assume that the deletion discussions would have been less problematic if the portals were created by users A, B or C instead of TTH. And as Nosebagbear correctly points out, "The Transhumanis and others" encompasses everyone

8773:

the portals came into existence is ultimately irrelevant with regards to the behavioral problems this case is to examine. There is no evidence or FoF to assume that the behavioral problems would have been different or non-existent if the portals had been created by someone else or at some other time.

8460:

Similarly, the portals project was happy for years with a document labelled as a guideline, and made no attempt to deprecate it until other editors upheld it as grounds to delete abandoned junk portals. That failure by the portals project to build a community consensus for the purpose and nature of

7736:

There was a page that was long thought to be a guideline, and the supporters of portals cited it for a long time, and it contained a great deal of common sense. When the critics of portals began citing it in detail, the supporters of portals found that it had never been enacted. It is 'interesting'

7538:

clause in its decisions. Cases that are accepted by ArbCom almost always have at least one of two characteristics. Either they are combined content-conduct disputes, in which disagreements over content cannot be resolved in a collaborative fashion because of the conduct of some editors; or they are

7102:

The problem comes when trying to discover the motive for apparent baiting. I think that sometimes people are not aware that they are baiting. Which is more important, the intention or the consequence? Clearly the consequence is evident, but the intention is not easily proven. As is often the case, it

6809:

that context matters, but the issue of judging and categorising a person as part of a group based on one or two comments can easily be wrong, even if not obviously derogatory. If one defends or supports one aspect of a thing it does not imply that one supports or approves all aspects. Questioning the

6586:

I get where you are coming from, but it is overly simplified and so more wrong than right. Articles are the main way Knowledge presents human knowledge to readers, but they are not the only way we do so (e.g. images, reader-facing templates, etc). The other namespaces are not "incidental" to articles

6573:

Herein lies a core problem with portals: They are not in article space. The rules of portal space are poorly defined and personal interpretations appear to differ. If all the rules of article space were to apply, there would be no substantive reason to have a separate portal space, so one must assume

4506:

stated that as portal non-regular, I had no guidelines to refer to, and people either assumed I knew all the history or presented points in a manner a non-regular could not readily comprehend. It's hard to get an outsider prospective when the details require institutional knowledge that's either not

4245:

4) Long posts risk being misunderstood, if not ignored. They can hinder communication. Detailed posts, when necessary, are generally clearer when points are seperated and organized. Discussions should use basic English, inasmuch as possbile. To be inclusive to all Wikipedians, specific terms or ideas

3165:

I find it plausible that some Wikipedians do not realise that they are making personal attacks when they do so. This may be partially an external cultural problem, and partly a Knowledge cultural problem. I do not have any silver bullets, but this kind of behaviour often appears to correlate with the

2993:

I urge editors and the ArbCom to reflect very carefully on the consequences for consensus-forming processes if using harsh terms to describe misconduct is treated as a more serious problem than the misconduct itself, such as gaming the system and repeating asserting falsehoods to consensus formation.

2299:

I think this point should be clarified before discussion. Does it simply confirm the principle that misconduct can set a bad example, without implying that anyone has done so? If it is a finding that one or more admins have recently misbehaved then it needs to name names, both to allow the proposal

2104:

I am concerned that this is too narrow, and would be interpreted as "protect Knowledge article content": for example, some restrictions clearly exist to protect Wikimedia (not Knowledge) from legal liability, and some (such as anti-harassment) seem to me to exist to protect the community of editors.

923:

As a general comment: even arbitration decision principles that are "re-used" will often evolve over time as better wording is found. This process is to be encouraged. Principles are generally only relevant to the specific decision in which they are handed down (apart from a few that make their way

13296:

The original portal was a multi-subpage one, with 6 selected articles and 6 selected bios (no BLPs). The articles excerpted were all either FAs/FLs or B/C class tagged by the Wikiproject as of high or top importance. There were also 6 selected pictures & huge collection of On This Day items. All

13023:

displayed incredible cognitive dissonance stating that page views (or lack thereof), a core reason for deleting most of the 1000 abandoned pre-TTH spam portals over the last 7 months, were not a reason to consider deleting a portal. Portals do not have their own content and are useful only for their

12792:

I don't think that our portal structure is generally the product of consensus in the first place. My impression is that editors have more-or-less randomly and independently developed portals, although often by copying existing portals without giving much thought to whether the structure being copied

12120:

1) Limited discretionary sanctions are authorised for discussions of portals as follows: A: Any editor who disrupts a discussion about portals in general or about one or more specific portals may be banned from making any further contributions to that discussion. Where the discussion is about one or

10778:

There has been much discussion of portals, but no clear community consensus on what portals are for, how they should try to do it. (My own views is that WikiPortals have always been a solution in search of a problem; they are failed attempt to imitate the resource-intensive web portals which failed

10538:

DO NOT complement main topics, not in general. Maybe some good ones, but in general portals detract from main topics. They split content, split navigation roles, draw editing resources away from things that matter. They are detached from core policies WP:V and WP:NPOV. Many nation portals became

7255:

This principle seems to me to be a self-evident component of any goal of quality control. For example, we routinely delete articles on non-notable topics, categories with subjective or arbitrary inclusion criteria, redundant templates, undersized navboxes, misleading redirects. The portal namespace

5579:

I, a long-standing contributor and admin, was being treated like a paid editor or a vandal, just receiving repeated boilerplate material which in no way respected/considered my previous arguments, as if all 12 years of my contributions to portals were vandalism or spam or at best "vanity editing". I

5575:, but that +/– every single post contained +/– every conceivable rationale for deletion, including many that were strongly disputed by those wishing to retain some portals, forcing one to respond again and again and again with the same arguments, until everyone who was not 100% obsessed walked away. 4485:

One of the problems I recall was that it was not just one long detailed post, but post after post with +/– the same long rationale that one had already had to respond to repetitively before. This is to some extent a defect in MfDs. It did have a cumulative wearying effect on me, at least. To clarify

3432:

The sustained misrepresentation of policy, guidelines and previous discussions which Bagumba has indulged in both at MFD and here is timewasting, disruptive and highly uncollegial. I make no assumptions about the reasons for this msirepresetation, but IF it was done intentionally, it would be a form

3275:

2) Knowledge is a work in progress, and perfection is not required. Through collaborative work, a page that is incomplete, poorly organized, or not regularly updated can evolve into a high-quality page. If editing can improve a portal, that should be done instead of wholesale deletion of the portal.

2596:

Even though BHG commendably refrained from using her admin tools in portal space, she is still generally accountable for her behavior. The intensity with which she personalized disputes and unjustifiably impugned the character of other editors renders it necessary to remove her tools. However, it is

13380:

My summary would be that Northamerica1000's actions were entirely reasonable, and could easily have been improved upon further, although it would have been courteous to notify the Wikiproject. BrownHairedGirl's reversion appears suboptimal; the "sneaky" comment appears uncalled for and uncivil. The

13147:

and I are not engaged in some joint conspiracy against portals. We share many of the same views on portals and any review of the relevant MfD's shows we often cited one another in our own analysis. She also helped teach me how to evaluate portals for MfD and how to write a deletion nomination. Most

12689:

RfC ("Should the system of portals be ended?") and found !votes there by NorthAmerican1000 and BrownHairedGirl that were useful to me for perspective. I'm not sure about the timeline on when the conflict between the two started, but it's likely that April 2018 was before or early in the cycle, and

11964:

The second reason for the present situation is that on an organizational level, Knowledge lacks central planning, so something as failed and backward (yes, the purge-page function on nearly every portal is pure backwardness and absurdity) as portal space, which has always been so, was allowed to be

11355:

4) Excluding template-based (and similar) automated portals created after the RfC closure and deleted with community consensus, the number of portals has fallen from ~1500 to just under 500 since ~May 2018. The number of portals that had been reviewed as featured (before the featured process ceased

8881:

The Transhumanist was attempting to respond to critique in the original RfC by experimenting with new techniques to create/improve portals. I don't agree with their solutions, but I don't think there was an intention to make "thousands of low-quality portals". I see it as an experiment that got out

8249:

A content browsing system is not only an important part of an encyclopaedia superficially... it is considered traditionally to be an unfolding technology in encyclopaedia, ground to a halt by the inception of Knowledge and downgrading of Britannica, who had been refining their content tree for more

7759:

I'm not at all in favour of deprecating what I thought had been a guideline for around a decade. I assume this happened while I was having a cool-off wikibreak. As Lepricavark states below, the problem is everyone naturally believes their own opinion is common sense, and the other side's opinion is

7234:

In order to maintain the highest quality of content in the encyclopedia, it is necessary to have processes for the deletion of pages from the encyclopedia. Decisions about the deletion of pages must be made deliberately and with collaboration, and with mutual respect for other editors who may have

7074:

This behavioural standard is frequently breached. Often with apparent impunity. The standard is not enforced evenhandedly, and when a person in a position of trust breaks these rules it is a bad example for other members of the community. Some allowance should be made for circumstances. Reaction to

6777:

Demonising the opposition by bundling them under a disparaging category to which they do not subscribe is a personal attack and should be recognised as such. ("Portalistas", "Planet Portal", etc. come to mind immediately in this context, there are others.) Labeling someone as a liar, dishonest or a

4770:

Repeated large scale offensives against consensus, without genuine cooling off periods, i.e. wearing the community down into an action which cannot be reversed, is gaming against the system which prefers a cooling off period for such proposals. You asked if portals should be deleted altogether. You

4724:

7) Using the term "gaming the system" should be done judiciously, as it can be viewed negatively as an accusation of bad-faith editing. Even if bad intent by others seems subjectively clear, one should not cast aspersions about the mentalities or motivations of other editors. These alleged problems

2734:

Peter Southwood makes a good point. This could only work in combination with a word limit, but even that could prove problematic - say BHG makes a point that is misunderstood, that misunderstanding cannot be corrected for 5 days (at which point the discussion as likely moved on a long way) and even

522:

Arbitration case pages exist to assist the Arbitration Committee in arriving at fair, well-informed decisions. The case Workshop exists so that parties to the case, other interested members of the community, and members of the Arbitration Committee can post possible components of the final decision

13445:

in my section on the Evidence page. On those occasions, he was batch-nominating Portals, including Featured and/or well-maintained ones with the sole rationale: "we don't need them". It was pretty obvious what was going on there and in his other nominations. The goal was not to delete poor-quality

11984:

and I won't be the last editors to leave Knowledge, if we do over the present insanity. But by all means, focus on me, someone who as you say hasn't even made many edits to mainspace, since that's obviously what Knowledge is about. Not focusing on the bigger picture is portal space in a nut shell.

10402:

1) The purpose of Knowledge is to create a high-quality, free-content encyclopedia in an atmosphere of camaraderie and mutual respect among contributors. Contributors whose actions are detrimental to that goal may be asked to refrain from them, even when these actions are undertaken in good faith;

9729:

that the entire deletion discussion area requires the intervention of the Arbitration Committee. This case would not be sufficient as it is well beyond the scope and much greater input from the wider community would be needed in order for us to even remotely consider taking such a dramatic action.

9408:

I see where you are coming from, but I think it better to have separate findings about each of them (per Certes). There doesn't have to be an exact 1:1 relationship between findings of fact and remedies - one remedy can relate to multiple findings, so it isn't necessary to combine them to enable a

9177:

portal was created by TH or an other? Namecheck serves no purpose and I generally agree that namechecking of current editors who are not parties shouldn't be done. Not every deletion discussion has been contentious, so that should be clarified. Not every contentious discussion has resulted in both

8955:

consensus is open to debate. I guess The Transhumanist decided this was not the hill to die on, and after the lack of success in establishing a consensus purpose for portals, I also decided to apply my time to places where some lasting value could be achieved. Left in the hands of editors who find

8275:

It would diffuse much of the consternance for the importance of content browsing systems to be in the consciousness around here. All parties overlooked it. It's so important to the mission. Criticism in itself is constructive where valid, obviously. However, though this iteration has failed in the

7902:

Agree. Sometimes pointing out to user:Example that their conduct in a given content discussion is/was not helpful/not appropriate is necessary to keep a discussion on track (and often that stops the disruption without requiring further action), and linking to a directly relevant conduct discussion

7705:

which begins "Informative and instructional pages are not policies or guidelines themselves..." and continues "...like essay pages, have a limited status, as they have not been thoroughly vetted by the community.". Given that two, good faith, highly competent editors may have completely opposite

5932:" I make no assumptions about the reasons for this msirepresetation, but IF it was done intentionally, it would be a form of GAMEing the system, by forcing other editors to choose between lengthy exchanges (for which they can then be accused of bludgeoning), or leaving the falsehoods unchallenged." 5698:

had been listed as a guideline since 2008. In 2019, it was tagged for update requests and disputes before being marked as under discussion, which led to its current status as a failed proposal. Discussions have been difficult at MfDs with long discussions, incivility, and accusations of gaming the

5298:

Yes, and it quite clearly refers to editors who work on portals as children. It's written by Robert McClenon who has participated extensively in the case and in nominating numerous portals for deletion. BrownHairedGirl isn't the only one who denigrates editors in this way, simply the most frequent

5257:

with an admin not currently participating in this process, referring directly to a "parallel universe" where those who disagree with BrownHairedGirl are "sustained by faith, to the exclusion of reason and of evidence." This usage is clearly disparaging. Several comments later she refers to "Planet

4905:

Or one could be making a perfectly logical argument but based on a premise that is wrong, for example due to a good faith misreading or misunderstanding or even simply changed circumstances one was not aware of. Even if this means the conclusion of your argument is incorrect it does not make you a

4266:

This proposal as drafted would create a bias against analysis which is particularly inappropriate in this context, because portals are complex, multi-page structures: some of those I nominated at MFD contained hundreds of pages. Assessing that structure involves a lot of details, and a nomination

4039:

3) During content disputes, the focus should be on content and not editor conduct. Assume good faith. Bringing up conduct during content discussions can be antagonizing and unproductive. Seek appropriate dispute resolution on the content issue if the discussion becomes unavoidably uncivil. Conduct

3087:

1) Accusations about personal behavior that lack evidence are never acceptable. Serious accusations require serious evidence, usually in the form of diffs and links. Discussion of a user's conduct or history is not in itself a personal attack when done in the appropriate forum for such discussion

2787:

I completely disagree that this proposal is "mean-spirited". It is unworkable (because it goes too far) but I see no evidence that it was not proposed as a good-faith attempt to break the back of the dispute while still allowing BHG to participate to limited degree from someone who does not have a

913:

1) The purpose of Knowledge is to create a high-quality, free-content encyclopedia in an atmosphere of camaraderie and mutual respect among the contributors. Anyone may edit, use, modify and distribute the content for any purpose and the re-use of the information should be facilitated, where it is

13228:

about portals and page views. It's also been stated that these volunteers will work on areas more useful if portals are deleted. But these are not workers, where their supervisors reassign them to a new task. A lot of Knowledge editors only work in one specialized area. These portal editors are

13109:

Only 29% are in article space, with 52% to Knowledge: namespace. My figures are 87% article and 1.5% Knowledge:, which seems more typical for a constructive editor. 320 of Newshunter12's last 500 edits are to portal MfDs. My figures for that period (since August 2019) are 28 out of about 9000

11943:

Instead of wasting time complaining about me, and un-rightly at that in my opinion, perhaps you ought to reconsider donating your time to Knowledge, an organization unwilling or incapable of handling reality. 15 years of hard data shows portal space was and has always been a complete disaster and

10449:

complement main topics in Knowledge, and expound upon topics by introducing the reader to key articles, images, and categories that further describe the subject and its related topics. Portals also assist in helping editors to find related projects and things they can do to improve Knowledge, and

9843:

I disagree in the firmest possible terms to this - we don't implement DS because "a few editors have been disruptive". DS is implemented when normal steps aren't sufficient to retain general functionality - I'm not aware of this being an issue on either AfD or even general MfD. Most of the issues

8596:

To say no guidelines existed before is factually incorrect....yup it fell out of favor but it was there even if it was not followed as some would have liked. I agree that generally there is no need to have a guideline as "most" would agree all pages especially content pages for our readers fall

8185:

Can I draw your attention to the argument here, whether readers are going to be editors or not? Readership is an underspoken, main goal of the site. Being effective in that respect requires efforts toward the content browsing systems. I can evident at length here, the lack of interest in browsing

7856:

Knowledge has forums that focus on article content and forums that focus on editor conduct issues. The discussion of conduct is sometimes necessary and inevitable in content discussions, but should be kept to a minimum, because the purpose of content discussions is to improve the encyclopedia.

7450:

is true but irrelevant. Both statements are uncivil. The claim that an editor is stupid is, as SJ says, a simple ad hominem, and a breach of civility. The claim that an editor is lying should be avoided even if the editor is making untrue statements, because the allegation of lying involves an

6938:

Disagreements concerning article content are to be resolved by seeking to build consensus through the use of polite discussion – involving the wider community, if necessary. The dispute resolution process is designed to assist consensus-building when normal talk page communication has not worked.

6745:

An editor must not accuse another of inappropriate conduct without evidence, especially when the accusations are repeated or severe. Comments should not be personalized, but should instead be directed at content and specific actions. Disparaging an editor or casting aspersions can be considered a

5768:

Well, I for one was driven away from the process by regard for my mental health. I consider a reasonable proportion of decisions flat-out wrong, and not just the deletions. There really is limited point in having deletion discussions when there's no agreed policy applicable; the result appears to

4760:

negative. It is an accusation of something which cannot be tolerated. It is an accusation of cheating. Accusation is not wrong. It is accusation without foundation which is wrong. It does not require aspirations on the motivations, intent, or mentality of anybody, to point out they are gaming the

2674:

I don't believe I have ever seen a restriction that limits an editor to one edit every five days. I'm not going to ba an active arb on this case, but I have to wonder, if you believe a restriction of this magnitude is needed, why not just go for a full topic ban, as the effect would be nearly the

1351:

Bringing up the same proposal repeatedly at short intervals, or spread out with no attempt to centralise discussion, is gaming the system. In some collaborative situations, finished requests are not heard again unless there is a change in situation or unheard evidence, however, refusing to hear a

13208:

I think Newshunter12 has acted in good faith all over....the problem is they are simply emulating another editors pov and classifications (I. E. "playground) that is used by another in a derogatory way. I don't think Newshunter12 lack of experience should come into play as every editor can have

12073:

Newshunter12's comment above is all the evidence needed that this admonishment is needed. You can disagree with something without personal attacks. Denigrating other editors as "lack critical thinking skills" or describing good faith arguments in favour of keeping portals as "fanboys clinging to

11947:

The most pressing reason is that part of the editorship lack critical thinking skills to understand a). efficient time use at an organizational level (the Salvation Army doesn't send Santas to collect donations at vacant lots, they send them to busy stores and streets - on Knowledge, portals are

6913:

SmokeyJoe is correct. However arbitration committee decisions can sometimes have the effect of settling disputes if all that stands in the way of the community doing this is the behaviour of one or a small number of editors. For example if user:Example is removed from a topic area for disruptive

6790:

This is something that multiple parties to this dispute have been guilty of. What counts as "disparaging" towards an editor varies depending on context and the views they hold. For example, describing someone as a "fan of portals" in an otherwise neutrally worded comment is generally going to be

5819:

I agree with Espresso Addict and SmokeyJoe. I completely disagree with the conclusions reached in many of the portal MfDs because (in many, but not all, cases) only a subset of the arguments was being presented. I chose not to continue participating in most of them though because spending a very

5730:

It is not fair to say "Discussions have been difficult at MfDs". MfD has been working well despite the incivility and despite the large number of Portal MfD nominations last year. The damage of incivility and alleged gaming has been to the editors involved, and perhaps the driving away of some

5556:

I can't speak for others of course, but that's not the reason I had issue's with BHG's posts - it was because they were unnecessarily long, poorly formatted, contained lots of issues (that would be better dealt with separately for clarity), and frequently repeated arguments already made multiple

5541:

More generally, I take issue with the relevance of this as a finding, as in, "So what?" Posts should be long enough to provide the required information. Too often, supporters of portals in general would complain that posts containing detailed information by BrowhHairedGirl, or Newshunter12, or

2982:

We need effective, prompt remedies to restrain editors such as NA1K who systematically misrepresent policy and game the system, and editors such as Moxy who repeatedly disrupted discussion with angry off-topic falsehoods and repeatedly tried to game the system through tactics such as non-neutral

1372:

Consensus is also not the majority agreement of one minority group overwhelming the minority agreement of another minority group. Taking a disagreement that may affect persons outside of the original groups to a larger audience is a legitimate procedure where a local consensus is percieved to be

12260:

1) Should any editor breach a type A ban, they may be blocked for a period of up to one week for a first offence, up to 1 month for a second offence and up to 6 months for a third or subsequent offence. 2) Should any editor breach a type B ban, they may be blocked for up to 1 month for a first

12040:, part of the hard reality of Knowledge is that it is written by volunteers. Belittling the work of other volunteers (takling about "playgrounds" comes across as belittling) does not usually motivate them to volunteer more, nor does it create a more welcoming atmosphere to find new volunteers. — 11053:

I have indicated above that I do not personally consider BrownHairedGirl's conduct such as to merit removal of admin tools. I have not examined NorthAmerica1000's actions in detail, but no evidence has been presented that the editor has done anything that would merit the removal of admin tools.

9773:

I as well do not see the point of this for a deletion discussions in general. Notonly would it be a great change incurrent practice, but I think it would not be the least helpful, and would make disputes more complicate and moredifficult to resolve. . We may possibly need some rethinking of how

8499:

Re: BrownHairedGirl: Additional questions might be: should all portals have the same function?; is there a role for portals in motivating/providing a framework for existing editors? I'd also question the characterisation of the portals project as a unified voice; this is certainly not the case.

5632:

Endorse BusterD. Fwiw, typical day of a portal maintainer (eg me between late March and early May 2019): Get up. Anxiously check "my" portals & talk page for deletion notices over espresso & breakfast. After second espresso, look at my series of pings from BrownHairedGirl, write acerbic

5614:

It would appear BrownHairedGirl believes she is welcome to write an analysis so detailed as to discourage a normal editor from attempting refutation, forcing such an editor to "recuse themselves". By extension editors who DO attempt engagement can be (and have been) gradually eliminated through

4060:

Where a falsehood is asserted in the course of a discussion, the best place to challenge it is in that discussion. Where there is a pattern of the same falsehood being repeated by the same editor in multiple discussions, that pattern of disruption should be noted in the discussion to allow the

2505:

a tireless contributor. Any respects you've had for her in the past have been well founded. This series of events is confined to the portals. So it is fair to claim an appropriate response is to first try to focus on the portals and related parties. I do not even consider myself on BHGs side as

12708:

I say this with some sadness because I recently spent a day or two making Template talk:YearInCountryPortalBox to automatically add portal links to thousands of country-by-year cats; but as I built it and viewed more portals, I became more and more convinced that my concerns were well-founded.

11474:

If there's no policy, then there's no rational basis for weighing arguments on either side. I've not closed any portal MfDs because I would find it very difficult to put aside my biases. I would say some of the closes have been "bad", because they seem to weigh some arguments more heavily than

10700:

As with any contentious statement of fact, try putting it in the active tense. Who designed portals to complement main topics? I suggested that portals should be considered as a failed experiment. However, there was no experimental plan. There was no scoping statement. No record of initial

8160:

I have always found EA to be civil and honest, but I find it very depressing that almost a year after these dramas began, we still have this sort of highly implausible assertion being raised even at ArbCom. The numbers show that it clearly isn't happening, and if EA was noting it as a goal of

7018:

5) Knowledge editors are expected to behave reasonably, calmly, and courteously in their interactions with other editors; to approach even difficult situations in a dignified fashion and with a constructive and collaborative outlook; and to avoid acting in a manner that brings the project into

3285:

It would be more appropriate to flip this to make it more align with how it voliated existing policies - something like, "there was no consensus to delete portals wholesale, hence there was no place to delete them outside of the usual processes that decide deletion." or somesuch. It also needs

11414:

5) In the absence of a generally agreed guideline for portals, portal deletion discussions are not underpinned by any generally agreed portal-specific policy. Arguments based in general policies or in application of policies for other namespaces have been disputed. Discussions have often been

10263:

ARBCOM has rightly received extreme rebukes from sanctions of non-parties in the past. The case would have to be returned to an earlier stage and TH notified they were becoming a party if this was desired. Additionally, sanctions should be preventative, and that currently is not demonstrated.

7087:

That's a good point about baiting. I've long held that baiting someone to break a policy/breach a restriction/etc should result in the same outcome for the person baiting as would be applied to the baitee had they done that thing without being baited. (e.g. if User:Example is subject to a 1RR

5749:

I meant the difficulty from "long discussions, incivility, and accusations of gaming the system". I make no comment on the close of individual MfDs. From the big picture, however, I question continued serial deletion nominations while there are no guidelines for portals and in the face of the

3819:

This is inviting ArbCom to make are finding that portals are subject to the same deletion criteria as articles. That is a policy matter for the community to decide, and any analysis of existing policy should note that several non-article namespaces have their own deletion forums with varying

3519:

specifically refers to articles, not to other namepsaces. If Bagumba or anyone else wants to open a RFC to propose a similar policy for portals (or to amend BEFORE to include portals), then they are free to do so. However, Bagumba's proposal here amounts in effect to an attempt to bypass the

2500:

Seems inappropriate without a) the abuse of tools and b) an attempt at other Arb remedies. This issue is extensive and BHG has been insulting, however, originally these insults were founded and left underacknowledged, in this case, editors such as NorthAmerica1000, were taking on portals they

13425:

This is a good analysis, and I too cannot find anything wrong with NA1K's actions here. As I've been looking over this case, there have been a few instances of concerning edits from Robert McClenon so it is rather unfortunate that neither I nor anyone else brought his actions up in evidence.

13132:

The eight comprehensive portal nominations (so excluding the hundreds of other portals I examined at MfD) should suffice as evidence that I have a deep understanding of portals. I only first got involved with portal space in August 2018, when it was abundantly clear nearly every portal is an

6274:

Noted; I obviously haven't looked recently enough. Coming back after my wikibreak I've been trying to avoid non-constructive portal conversations, with some success apart from being sidetracked here. Unfiltered automated suggestions for virus & Cheshire are just laughable, unfortunately.

4092:

Where there is sustained mendacity, it is also important that the closer can see the evidence that the system is being gamed. Sadly, in the relevant portal MFDs, some editors seemed to be much more concerned about the mendacity being noted than about the substance of the attempt to game the

1991:

Unfortunately I can't find diffs. on this, since I think every portal where this happened was then deleted. But it definitely happened, and editors with access to deleted pages may wish to investigate this further during this case. We may also consider a change to the deletion policy that

11974:

To reiterate where your thoughts ought to be, just as America's financial problems will one day cause the USMC, all of whose funding passes through the US Navy, to be shoved under a bus in the fight for funding-scraps, if Knowledge can't get skill and honesty to be baseline requirements of

11960:

job). Just as the fanboys and special interests refuse to phase out the obsolete USMC despite it being a key factor in the slow bankrupting of America, portal fans are clinging to their playground despite all evidence demonstrating that the vast majority of portals add nothing positive to

3796:

It only mentions articles there, though. And if a portal indeed needs constant attention to function properly, but it didn`t get over a significant period of time then that`s a problem that cannot be fixed by simply fixing the portal once when it gets nominated - the attention needs to be

2899:

This might be best for all involved as others have been able to represent the same points as Brown in a more civil and constructive manner. Though I have only been involved in a few deletion talks I will be voluntarily withdrawing myself from these talks simply to avoid conflict as it may

9423:

There is value in both options, but I think separation may make it easier to manage. Possibly even to three points: The behaviour of each and the interaction between them. There may be significant differences or similarities between their behaviour with other people and each other. · · ·

2914:

This is the best case scenario if the behavior has been specific to the obvious frustration around Portals, and there is confidence that she can remain productive outside of that area. Perhaps my earliest recollection of BrownHairedGirl was her general composure almost 2 years ago while

7465:

The allegation "an editor is lying" should be called out, with evidence. If it continues, resolution is demanded. BHG accused NA1K of lying. If true, that is not incivil, but necessary. I think ArbCom should investigate the allegation for truth. Either the lying is unbecoming of an

7153:

This is part of what makes portal deletion discussions so contentious. In the absence of any guideline governing the use of portals, global consensus is difficult to gauge and everything is left to local consensus. This leads to the same arguments being repeated over and over again. –

3414:. Bagumba fails to note the distinction between a one-off correction and ongoing maintenance. which I set out clearly in the MFD. Bagumba's choice to omit my responses is highly selective an thoroughly misleading; it presents a skewed view of the discussion. Note for example my reply 1099:

3) Knowledge users are expected to behave reasonably and calmly in their interactions with other users, to keep their cool when editing, and to avoid acting in a manner that brings the project into disrepute. Administrators are expected to adhere to this at a higher standard. Unseemly

8759:

In the second half of 2018 and the first quarter of 2019, The Transhumanist and other editors created thousands of low-quality portals, in accordance with Knowledge policy because Knowledge policy was silent on the subject, but without discussion with the larger Knowledge community.

3602:

In perhaps a dozen MFD nominations, concerns were expressed that a renomination followed too soon after a previous discussion. In some cases, these were unbundlings of previous group nominations. These seemed to me to be no more controversial or frequent than I have seen at CFD and

8371:

I think the truth is more nuanced than what is stated here. First, I do not think guidelines need to be "enacted"; if so, how is that done exactly, and can we point to that process having occurred for every (or even most) guidelines on Knowledge? Second, we need to recognize that

10761:

I think this strays too close to trying to resolve a content dispute. There have been a number of discussions about the purpose of portals which have been contentious, and while well intentioned, this principle will likely be seen as trying to legislate from the bench by someone.

9629:

Agree with the above...would be different if it was just between the two admins,,,but Brown does not get along with anyone on the wrong side of the fence. Orly Brown has conflict with multiple editors as demonstrated by 100+ differences were noone else has this problem on either

13043:, a category picked at semi-random from an article I started.) I believe the notion was allowed to pass largely unchallenged in the well-attended MfDs of template-based automated portals because, frankly, almost everyone agreed with their deletion, and didn't want to derail it. 11086:

if not then exonerate the innocent and sanction the accuser. If that's an oversimplification and ArbCom takes a more nuanced view, sanctions against the two parties are still negatively correlated. I see no outcome where "hang and flog 'em both equally" is the best approach.

4284: 4331:; it is an invitation to ArbCom to make policy. Given the nature of Bagumba's other comments, it appears to be designed to facilitate the criticism of editors who have served the community by making detailed analysis of complex portals or detailed rebuttals of falsehoods. -- 2466:

The committee rarely sets a timeframe (and when it does it's almost always 6 or 12 months), simply saying they may regain adminship at any time at RFA. Very few people who are desysopped do apply sooner than a few months down the line, and almost none of them are successful.

7394:

Similarly, if an editor repeatedly demonstrates insufficient competence to do the task the attempt, and fails to recognise the limits of their competency, the quality of the project will be in big trouble unless there is some way in which this problem can be described and

4294:

ArbCom should commend editors for doing detailed analysis of complex multi-page deletion nominations, and not reproach them. Editors who do not wish to engage with the mass of detail of an MFD of a large multi-page portal are free to recuse themselves from the discussion.

6668:

Most of those venues which you are not reader-facing pages (WikiProjects, Arbcom, etc are internal). DYK & ITN are reader-facing, but have very specific and clearly-stated purposes, with high readership. I see no way in which the low-view portals encourage editing.

1352:

proposal ever again is also damaging because it prevents refinement, which is possibly the most important feature of the WikiMedia projects. Ideally, proposals toward significant effect should have a cooling off period of at least (I say at least a year and at most two).

11724:

I set about improving individual portals but scaled back my efforts after seeing pages I'd edited deleted or rolled back to ancient versions. I stopped after seeing NA1K's changes bulk reverted. I continue to maintain underlying software and to defend the most obvious

3648:, which mentions only articles. At no point does it say "pages" in general, and nor does identify any other namespace. If it was applied to all namespaces, then TFD, RFD and CFD would need to change their practices. ArbCom should not impose such a change of policy. -- 6625:. Categories, navboxes, exist are all defined on their functional merits rather than as some sort of boost to "positivity". That appears to be a personal view of yours, and it's pity that you present a personal view as some sort of undocumeted community consensus. -- 2242:

As written this wound mean that BHG (or whomever) would be punished (or not) as a result of other administrators actions. No one should be punished (or not) just because other members of a certain group they happen to belong to do something inappropriate (or good). -

13223:

I'm not going to get around to adding this as a proposed principle about volunteers, but I've seen the tone multiple times by multiple editors of volunteers making inefficient use of their time trying to improve portals. This relates to one of the disputed points at

9092:

In 2019, some editors have identified large numbers of portals that they have proposed for deletion. These portals included but were not limited to those created by The Transhumanist and others. These deletion discussions have been contentious and have resulted in

4418:

In many portal MFD discussions, critics of portals provided detailed analysis, and defenders of portals complained about too much information, but they also complained about not enough information when portals were nominated for deletion without supporting details.

13313:

add "some other select selections to provide a more comprehensive overview of the state" in a separate section. These are predominantly either B class (various importance levels) or C class & top/high importance, but there was one C/Start-class, High-importance

11517:

6) Deletion of portals based on the multi-subpage model is not like the deletion of articles. Hundreds of subpages need to be deleted, and not even those with permission to view deleted content can form any view of the nature of the original portal after deletion.

4593:

5) Disagreements can be the result of different perspectives, and are generally not because of ill intent or incompetency. People make mistakes. These can generally be corrected with a civil reminder. Seek dispute resolution when disagreements appear unmanageable.

2735:

then BHG would have to use some of her word limit correcting the misunderstanding rather than moving the discussion along. If it is necessary to restrict someone to that extent then there doesn't seem much (if any) benefit to the project over a simple topic ban.

2485:

As above the time limit is not required, but it is important that the desysopping of BHG be actively considered by arbitrators given the extensive battleground behaviour and personal attacks that have persisted despite numerous callings-out at ANI and elsewhere.

9192:

I think the intent is to distinguish new automated portals (using techniques developed by The Transhumanist & others) from long-standing hand-curated portals mainly using the multipage model. The degree of contentiousness between the two has been different.

2990:: on the contrary, I do understand very clearly why some editors consider that I have been uncivil. However, I strongly disagree with the apparent belief amongst some that calling someone a liar (with supporting evidence) is more problematic than telling lies. 5313:

Good find. If I'd been aware of that I'd certainly have brought that up in evidence. At the very least that needs to be in userspace not project space, and I'm tempted to MfD it to be honest as detrimental to the functioning of a collaborative encyclopaedia.

5181:

I don't recall BHG committing to not use the term "portal fans" so that is a separate issue to Wugapode's comment. (i.e. she agreed to refrain from using one specific term, not to refrain from doing the same labelling, belittling, etc using different terms.)

12977:. Nor am I aware of them discussing portals in any of the usual venues. This does not seem to me to be sufficient experience for them to criticise edits to portals from an expert point of view, nor to expound on what might or might not make a portal useful. 8383:

criteria specific to portals, was the basis of an extensive featured content process, unilateral changes to it were reverted as requiring consensus, etc., etc. Which means it looks to me an awful lot like it was a guideline during that time. That there is

5820:

significant proportion of my available time for Knowledge in a hostile environment getting accused of all sorts of things (many of them repeatedly, despite being fully refuted on multiple previous occasions) in massive walls of text was really not pleasant.

12973:

is listed as a party and has provided evidence. I have been associated with portals on & off since 2007 but have not encountered this editor prior to this case. Their only edits to portals that I can find are 9 edits to 8 deleted portals placing MfD

7561:

In cases where all reasonable attempts to control the spread of disruption arising from long-term disputes have failed, the Committee may be forced to adopt seemingly draconian measures as a last resort for preventing further damage to the encyclopedia.

3725:

Understood about good faith nominations. But I suspect there is a trend among the MfD nominations to find a few errors then justify the whole portal's deletion, while alluding to the risk of BLP violations lurking and lack of dedicated editors for said

2196:

deals with "actions involving administrator tools". Is there a policy or guideline about their behavior as editors? There probably should be, as I'd imagine an editor who was excessively combative would be pressed to pass a request for adminship, or a

5448:

BrownHairedGirl's posts are long when they contain a large amount of detailed factual information. Sometimes lengthy factual analysis is useful. Some editors post lengthy and tiresome posts that are difficult to read and are the subject of the essay

5212:

Indeed it is not a matter for "laudation" - my comment is simply a factual note in response to Wugapodes' observation. In this context agreeing to refrain from one specific term and doing so is neither good nor bad, but had she agreed to refrain and

7195:

Generally agree, but I'm not sure what relevance this has to this dispute, which is largely caused by there being a broad global consensus that portals should exist but no consensus (global or local) on pretty much anything more specific than that.

953:

I disagree with the second sentence above. I think the first part is better phrased "Anyone may edit, use, or modify the content, or distribute it for any purpose . . ." And I think "re-use of information" can be problematic, (which is why we have

6791:

uncontroversial (assuming the editor in question does generally like portals), however doing so in the context of discussing their !vote to keep a portal that has been nominated for deletion could be (and on occasion has been) seen as disparaging.

8956:

value in working on portals, they are mostly harmless. Their continued presence is irrelevant at worst. Disrupting the creation of the encyclopedia to prove a point is generally deprecated. Whichever point turns out to be the final outcome. · · ·

4570:

I did not expect this much debate on a proposed principle. Detailed posts are sometimes necessary, but it should be a flag to be extra discerning about how long really is necessary. This isn't a fact about a person, and certainly not a suggested

4222:

Where there is an alleged pattern of the same falsehood being repeated by an administrator in multiple discussions, it requires urgent resolution at WP:AN. It is not OK to repeatedly make conduct allegations at the content deletion forum, MfD.

8161:

portals, then it's a failed target. One of the most exasperating aspects of portals MFDs has been the repetition of notions such as this which need to be rebutted again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again. --

7398:

The proposal as worded would protect liars and empower editors who repeatedly fail to recognise the limits of their skills. This principle would be commendable for a social club, but it is utterly toxic to any attempt to build an encyclopedia.

6812:

A similar problem occurs when using limited evidence to generalise to an assumption about someone else's motives, then stating the conclusion as fact. Repetition of a claim does not make it any more true, regardless of the Bellman's claims in

8571:

if consistent practice can make a guideline, then I hope we can agree that the consistent practice developed in 2018 of deletion automated spam portals, narrow-topic portals, and abandoned or poor-quality portals is the basis of a guideline.

4551:

I do not agree that BHG's posts are excessively long and difficult to read. She presents thorough, logical, well-structured facts and argument. Excepting for comments on others, her contributions to MfD discussions have been high quality.

2201:

if they were already an admin. If we don't hold an admin accountable for their actions outside of the tools, it sets up a double standard if that admin in question themselves holds other admins to a higher editing standard, as I presented at

9001: 8918: 3612:

rejection of a proposal to delete all portals and misrepresented it as decision to never delete any portals. A variant of that was repeated ABF assertions that editors were using individual MFDs as a stealthy attempt to delete all portals.

6574:

that there are differences, but other than being virtually invisible, it is not clear what they are or should be. I think that assumptions about what is or should be permissible in portal space is at the root of some of the disputes. · · ·

8979:

TTH's portalspamming went way beyond an "experiment". The intial experimentation became a mass rollout which quadrupled the number of portals. Those who objected at portal project discussions were shouted down by TTH and his group of

7143:

Where there is a global consensus to edit in a certain way, it should be respected and cannot be overruled by a local consensus. However, on subjects where there is no global consensus, a local consensus should be taken into account.

8153:. Their editing rate has been lower since the edit you linked than it was before, so if the portal edit had any effect it was to discourage editing. (No, I don't think it had any effect, but since EA is positing a causal effect ...) 4270:

I made a lot of long posts at MFD, because I did a lot of prior research and posted a lot of evidence. I took great care to structure those by using bulleted and/or numbered points, separate paras for separate issues, etc. (see e.g.

3248:

BHG, please present and refer to the incompetence specifically, and rely on that presentation for the sake of this argument at any time in future. Arbs, if she does that, the content of this complaint will have begun to pass, right?

2072:

1) The purpose of editing restrictions - up to the site ban - is to protect Knowledge. Anyone applying or proposing them should verify that these measures are the best way to solve a problem. However, inaction can be a problem, too.

8848:

decision to not delete the whole portal namespace, a discussion on a project page let some editors to interpret this as a mandate to create ~4,200 automated portals. That discussion was neither formulated as an RFC nor notified at

1803:

I agree this or something like it should be included. The fact that the same people who were hammering away in contentious portal discussions in February were hammering away in contentious portal discussions in November says a lot.

9546:

Agree with User:UnitedStatesian still after all this time the evidence we have is of an admin doing their best and being hounded and insulted by another admin.....nothing like lying or deliberately making bad edits has been shown.

6084:

I agree that this is not something that ArbCom can impose. It has been suggested previously without consensus being reached. It might be worth seeking consensus anew after the case closes, depending on what the final remedies are.

4388:@BrownHairedGirl: regarding your reference to Hecato's evidence, this principle is unrelated. They took some snapshots showing multiple short posts in a single discussion. This principle deals with individual posts which are long.— 11103:, even if BHG were to be found to be absolutely right about the substance of the dispute, her conduct might still be a reason for sanctions. Fram, for example, was desysopped despite being usually right about the issues debated. — 10070:

Extremely unfair given the absence of any demonstration of actual misconduct on NA1K's part. I really hope ArbCom won't simply adopt the 'topic ban the both of them' approach. Arbs, please actually look at the so-called evidence.

9890:

Considering the evidence so far, I think it unlikely that BHG and NA1K will be able to work productively together on any topic, at least for the next six months, so such an IBAN could make sense even without restrictions. Regards

1293:

Again, I agree. I am not sure whether 'good intentions' is the best description for behaviour based on the certain conviction that one is right and the opposition is wrong, but I think this is what we have been seeing here. · · ·

6829:

Call out incorrect statements or illogical arguments in content discussion. Take the accusations of bad intent or incompetency to an appropriate venue. Discussion conduct in content discussions is a distraction and inflammatory

1319:

that follows Knowledge's policies. However, the idea that consensus can change does not allow for the same point being brought up repeatedly over a short period of time and/or in multiple venues in an attempt to shift consensus.

5731:

editors who don't like the unpleasantness, but there is no allegation of bad MfD decisions due to the unpleasantness. If there are concerns about bad decisions at MfD, they should not be raised first at ArbCom, but at DRV. eg

3844:

Yes, I encourage a statement to be made whether there is a spirit to be followed here or whether letter of the law says "perfection" only applies to articles. This is especially important given that there is no portal guideline

3748: 12986:"hostile takeovers", "playgrounds", "portal advocates", "spam portals", "playground behavior", " playground practice". It also makes generalisations unwarranted in the evidence presented and ascribes motivations to editors, eg 12823:

deletion. I would be surprised, and deeply saddened, if the community decided that competence was not a relevant attribute in building an encyclopedia, but maybe that's not just your view. But when CIR is deleted, let's talk

4725:

should be addressed at the proper noticeboards. Uninvolved parties there can detect bad behavior with consise evidence containing proper diffs. Repeatedly alleging bad faith motives could be construed as a personal attack.

2528:

I am not aware of any misuse by BrownHairedGirl of the admin tools, in the portal area or any other. Removal of admin tools for incivility alone has not, in my opinion, resulted in a positive long-term outcome in the past.

8700:

I think this pretty much common knowledge about deletion debates in general--or indeed about all debates in WP; about deletion debates in this area, abundant examples have been presented in the complaint and the evidence.

1314:

5) Consensus is not immutable. It is reasonable, and sometimes necessary, for both individual editors and particularly the community as a whole to change its mind. Long-held consensus cannot be used as an excuse against a

7331:

To give this context -- ignoring The Transhumanist-associated bump -- total portal numbers have declined from ~1500 to ~500 since May 2018. Around 32/172 portals (19%) that had been reviewed as featured have been deleted

2916: 11459:

I think you are probably saying they are not bad, per se, from an individial closer's perspective, but because the arguments are so subjective, another closer could determine that almost the same arguments point another

2277:" Administrators are expected to lead by example", as you quote above, would be a valid principle; but the proposed principle is " administrators are a bad example". "All" includes BHG, "Some" may or may not include. - 5600:, I said diffs from past posts—better yet, (organized) essays—would make posts more readable. This is also a byproduct of not having a portal guideline, causing the urge to debate everything including the kitchen sink.— 1199:

Agree something like this should be included, but I'm concerned it is weakened by being too broad, and implies every one of the listed behaviors was shown by at least one admin party to this case. Is there evidence of

2625:) and answers to questions about these edits that are directly addressed to her should not be counted. Attempts to game the restriction by answering or asking overly broad questions are not acceptable, from anyone. 8156:

As to WikiProjects, this again is just more unevidenced wishful thinking. The same low portal readership applies, and most WikiProjects are gathering tumbleweed. So the numbers aren't there at either end of the

4089:'s 10:26 question: I am referring to both sorts. Whether the falsehood is due to misunderstanding or mendacity, it should be noted in the discussion so that closer can assess the issue and impact of the falsehood. 13039:

The "low page views merits deletion" notion is not in accordance with any policy of which I'm aware. (I've never, for example, seen it used to delete a category, yet many categories receive low pageviews; eg see

4862:

An accusation of lying my be defensible by it being the truth. It should be considered: Who was accused. What was the accusation. Was the accusation correct. Also, was the tone of the accusations justifiable.

6539:

I support this. Knowledge's encyclopedic content is in articles; all other namepsaces are either internal (e.g. User, WP) or are tools to navigate and/or showcase articles (e.g. categories, navboxes, portals).

13209:

valid points even if they have never contributed to the portal space..... I don't agree with the point of view that portal editors are wasting their time as well as volunteers you can work on what we wish.--

12891: 7925:

Discussions of whether to delete material from Knowledge pages and spaces should focus on content. While sometimes discussion of conduct is necessary in deletion discussions, it should be kept to a minimum.

5467:

I've seen long Powerpoint presentations, good and bad. Useful information become useless if it's not consumable. It's dismissive to take a "too bad" attitude. I AGF that readers are sincere when they complain.—

2689:

It allows others to check their contributions if they choose to use that edit, making it easier to establish if the restrictions should be eased upon appeal. Or if they don't get another chance and fully topic

8997: 8914: 4040:

disputes should be dealt with directly with the other party on their talk page in a civil manner. If the conduct issue still cannot be resolved, seek an uninvolved administrator or an appropriate noticeboard.

10543:

inadvertently became an exposé of Wikipedian criticism of Donald Trump, due to the decoupling of portals content from content policy. ArbCom should not add the voice of ArbCom to backwater wishful thoughts.

9983:... It's mainly a dispute beween two well established editors (one of whom has over 1.5 mio edits) who should be experienced enough to attempt to put aside their mutual animosity and resolve it themselves ... 4450:

This seemsed to me to be a universal best practice. There is no ban on longs posts. If we all can forget about Portals and Knowledge for one moment, we all know that TLDR can be a real-life issue. Or look at

3438:

I suspect there is a trend among the MfD nominations to find a few errors then justify the whole portal's deletion, while alluding to the risk of BLP violations lurking and lack of dedicated editors for said

3351:

Tho nominating by itself is not out of process, nominating abusively, or in such a manner that proper consideration can not be given , or in such a way as to bypass discussion, is an improper use of process.

8219:

Though the category system was born of lengthy debate and heated opinions, all of the rest of the content browsing system is, frankly, neglected by the community in general. To complain about the portals is

6186:, I'd say it needs some updates, as the page currently seems to assume that most portals are fully automated and that this is the most desirable state. Many of our best portals do not follow this practice. — 3555:'s comment of 08:16, below: Bagumba's choice to repeat their misrepresentstion of my comment about ongoing maintenance was not forced by word count limits, and nor was Bagumba's choice to again misrepresent 1678:, and so should consider moving on, at least temporarily, to other areas of Knowledge if they find themselves in conflicts that risk escalation, such as to a level that necessitates arbitrator involvement. 7390:

This proposal appears to treat lying as civil behaviour, but noting that lying as an unacceptable breach of civility. Any such principle rigs the system massively in favour of liars, and imperils consensus

6234:

There's a confusion that, as I recall, "fully automated" used to mean, uses the subpage model to rotate the selection automatically, rather than manually replacing it monthly, which was the original model.

6213:

At least there is potentially a good portion that represents some common ground. I was fearing the worst by the fact that parties were unable to salvage even a stripped down version of the prior guideline.—

5415:

4) BrownHairedGirl makes a lot of long posts. "Editors who do not wish to engage with the mass of detail of an MFD of a large multi-page portal are free to recuse themselves from the discussion.", she says.

10583:

continues to nurture it. My view as stated, I think we can agree, is on the spectrum of opinions. The point is that consensus on portals is still in development, and the role of portals is in question.

2545:

It won't affect Portals. It would address cries that those higher up dont police their own, and the likely reality that an admin's civility as an editor impacts the community's trust in them as an admin.—

6254:, indeed, I mean the page has a bias towards a post-2018 single page model with News and DYK selected via text matches, although that needs to be done very carefully in order to avoid nonsense results. — 5024:

With regard to "portalistas" it's my understanding that she voluntarily stopped this after a related AN(I) thread. If this hasn't recurred, I think referring to it in the present tense is inappropriate.

3559:. I invite Bagumba to either name the editor who they believe was being subject to compulsion, or to withdraw that claim ... because unless there is an identifiable editor then there is no compulsion. -- 11652:

It would be nice to have a list of people who (partially) disengaged from portals and/or portal MFDs. I am aware of at least Moxy and Thryduulf in addition to myself, but I am sure there are many more.

11300:

is intended to form a balanced selection suitable for an introduction to the topic area. They are not the same as categories, navigation boxes or outlines, which do not filter content by quality level.

10282:

Absolutely not. It would be a dreadful precedent if prior but stale issues were to be used as a justification for sanctioning an editor during a separate case in which said editor is not a named party.

5838:

s, I also avoided many MfDs due to their tone and verbosity. The suspicion that almost every portal may soon have its turn at MfD is also a significant deterrent to actually improving the namespace.

6519:

for Knowledge, presenting human knowledge to readers in the form of the encyclopedia. All other namespaces in Knowledge are incidental to article space, which presents human knowledge to the readers.

3527:'s comments elsewhere on this page about consensus being established by practice, then there clearly is a consensus that severely neglected portals should be deleted, and that BEFORE does not apply. -- 2983:

notification, objecting to a call for notifications of interested editors, and launching a straw man RFC. The lack of effective restraint is what led me to use direct terms to describe these problems.

2821: 1870:

Most situations are not actually urgent; there are no deadlines on Knowledge, and perfection is not required. At all stages during discussion, consider whether you should take a break from the dispute.

1787:

3480:

Yes, this post is loooong. But the reason is simple: it's very easy to do what Bagumba did, and assert a sweeping suspicion ... but it takes a lot more words to demonstrate that it is a falsehood. --

11006:

3) As an alternative, ArbCom should decide on whether BHG and NA1K should be banned from the English Knowledge for at least six months or indefinitely, but I see evidence leaning towards the latter.

7432:

The allegations, "an editor is lying" and "an editor is stupid" are not on par with each other. The first is a serious allegation that demands investigation. The second is a simple ad hominem. --

12887:

process which focused almost entirely on presentation, and almost never even considered the selection of articles. I have found no FP review which examined the portal by a checklist of criteria."

11350: 9390:

is correct that the conduct issues on trial about the two editors are different. I intend to propose findings about both of them. On the other hand, the purpose of this finding is to propose an

4404:

Some posts are long because they contain detailed factual analysis. Such posts are often desirable. Some posts are long because they are tedious repetitive walls of text, and are undesirable.

2885: 5127: 5360: 5343: 4974: 4452: 10562:

is the best place to look for recent (but not finalised) balanced discussion of portals, where one can see that SmokeyJoe's view represents just one point near the end a spectrum of opinions.

3186:

I don't think this case is dealing with one-off PAs or an occasional heat-of-the-moment lapse. There has been a persistent battleground, despite pleas, warnings, and noticeboard discussions.—

2338: 12908:

Looking through the archives, there were some successful featured portal reviews that appear cursory, but others seem to have been more detailed; see eg two of the promotions from Sept 2010:

12765: 9978: 7903:

from a content discussion (especially the link is discussion conduct in that content discussion) is frequently going to be appropriate, but that is clearly within the "keep it to a minimum".

12894:

ended the abandoned playground practice of giving comprehensive endorsements to certain portals, overwhelmingly on aesthetic value only grounds as any reading of the analysis at a FP review

8951:

I took a look at some of the deletion discussions. Those which I inspected appeared to be frequented mostly by the same editors. Whether this constitutes a fair, reasonable and sufficiently

3895:

Knowledge has policies and guidelines, but they are not carved in stone; their content and interpretation can evolve over time. The principles and spirit matter more than literal wording ...

13041: 11371: 11576:

I'm intending to imply (1) deletion of multi-page portals is labour intensive; and (2) nearly impossible to check or contest after the fact, even by those with administrative permissions.

3508:'s comment of 07:57, below: the proposition above asserts as fact the point which Bagumba raised in evidence as a question. Bagumba is therefore asking ArbCom to formulate deletion policy. 9009: 7115:

Alleged intent is often not clearly explained or demonstrated to an outside administrator. The ideal case would be an uninvolved admin in that domain, who has insight to bridge the gap.—

6914:

behaviour, then it might be that everyone else quickly agrees that content X should (not) be in the article/the correct interpretation of policy Y is Z, and there is no longer a dispute.

7088:

restriction that would be enforced by a 24 hour block for violations, and user:BadUser baited them to revert multiple times then User:BadUser should be themselves blocked for 24 hours).

6693:

Ah, I missed "namespace" in the proposed principle. I still think this is overly simplistic and prefer the first sentence of Robert McClenon's earlier principle, "Purpose of Knowledge".

11242:

2) Portals are unusual in being designed to be reader facing, yet to display areas associated with editing, such as WikiProjects. They are not purely navigational aids like categories.

10745:

One of the problems is that there appears to be no definition of a portal's purpose that pleases everyone. It's not clear why all portals have to serve precisely the same goal, either.

5786: 3701: 3393: 2114: 980: 11188:

1) Portals are a long-standing part of Knowledge. Community consensus has been sought to delete the namespace, but the community has affirmed its support for the existence of portals.

2722:

Five days seems a bit over the top, possible even pointy. It may also have the counterproductive effect of eliciting massive walls of text instead of reasoned rational argument. · · ·

2274:, it says that some administrators (A, B, C, etc., which may or may not include BHG) are leading other users by bad example, as a principle used to eventually punish administrator BHG. 11619:

7) The climate at deletion discussions has led some editors to take a break from portal editing or the encyclopedia. Those editors who continue to edit portals have felt discouraged.

10195:

Also agree. Also, the community can always discuss sanctioning TTH if TTH is being disruptive but they are not a party to this case and there is no evidence that they should. Regards

9681: 2067: 103: 12255: 12233:

Yes. The lack of common ground proved to be too much for some editors to handle. More disagreements to manage mixed with escalating bad faith and a mix of incivility brings us here.—

8907: 13346:; B class, low importance) did not seem to be entirely suitable as the article is quite short, the topic peripheral and possibly promotional. The C/start class article noted above, 12810:

Revert undiscused change of format; unexplained, sneaky addition of dozens of articles which are neither listed anywhere visible nor disclosed in edit summaries, let alone discussed

11199: 11183: 10992:

2) The proposed sanctions with respect to BHG and NA1K will be any of the following choices, all of which come with making their bans from editing in portalspace and PfD permanent:

6044:

ArbCom would not write the guideline. I am looking to 1) remove the disruption 2) encourage a guideline, which could determing that an exception is needed for portals regarding the

5974:

1) The community shall not create portals nor nominate portals for deletion at MfD for one year. Moratorium can be appealed if a portal guideline becomes approved by the community.

11884: 8603:

Improve pages wherever you can, and do not worry about leaving them imperfect. Preserve the value that others add, even if they "did it wrong" (try to fix it rather than delete it)

2563:

Don't see a need for this as her admin tools were never involved. However I can see how other admins may think this is necessary to maintain the integrity of the admin community.--

7103:

is much simpler to disregard the intentions and act on the available evidence. When using this strategy it is advisable to keep in mind that one will occasionally be wrong. · · ·

6099:

Admittedly, this is the first case I've commented at. Hopefully it can spark something that can reasonably address the concern. People are being driven away based on feedback at

12301: 11816: 11759: 11693: 9055: 8940: 8893: 8553: 8511: 8180: 8129: 8103: 7774: 7350: 6746:

personal attack. If accusations are made, they should be raised, with evidence, on the user-talk page of the editor they concern or in the appropriate dispute resolution forums.

6704: 6688: 6660: 6644: 5591: 5551: 4350: 4151: 4112: 3667: 3632: 3578: 3546: 13502:) disagrees with. It is regrettable that they are not a party to this case as their incivility has been nearly equal in severity (if not quantity) to that from people who are. 13441: 12913: 4001: 3839: 13392: 13080: 11426: 11015:

6) Addendum, 11 January: All mentions of "BHG and NA1K" are switched to "BHG and/or NA1K, but especially BHG", and 4 is applicable only for a possible topic ban. Courtesy ping

10136: 9714: 8485:

It's fair to say consensus changed. We can analyze what happened too, but "happy for years" and "mess" sounds like an unnecessary tone of blame. We try, we learn, we improve.—

8403: 7075:

persistent baiting is not easily suppressed, and sometimes we snap, but there are limits. I see that baiting is not mentioned at gaming the system. Perhaps it should be. · · ·

4537:

Espesso Addict and Lepricavark accurately sums up the issues here: BHG's posts are excessively long and difficult to read. This has been one of the real problems in this area.

3433:

of GAMEing the system, by forcing other editors to choose between lengthy exchanges (for which they can then be accused of bludgeoning), or leaving the falsehoods unchallenged.

2203: 2152:

Not necessarily incorrect but unnecessary complicated. I would rather use the policy's language as pointed out by Bagumba below as has been done in previous ArbCom cases (e.g.

1226:

Decorum is a good word for this problem. Decorum involving conflicting administrators is quite serious. The display of poor decorum by administrators has been distressing. —

13165: 12909: 11994: 11719: 10902:

This is my first time participating in an ArbCom case, so I'll give it a go if it means helping the encyclopedia. I trust the Knowledge community will find this very fitting.

9035: 8963: 7548: 6612: 6581: 5191: 2128: 10251:

As far as I know The Transhumanist has not been active in Portal space or in the WikiProject for some time. I do not remember him indulging in incivility at any time. · · ·

8814:. A reasonable number of Wikipedians contributed to the discussion. The Transhumanist is not a party in this case and he should not be subjected to this disparagement. -- 8617:....that was redrafted and tagged as a supplement of our editing and deletion policies after a similar conflict not all that long ago. We have no guidelines for some of the 2649: 532: 98: 13435: 13268: 13202: 12083: 12032: 11772: 11080: 10798: 10756: 10710: 10695: 9838: 9418: 8876: 8839: 8480: 8435: 8397: 8075: 7754: 7731: 7499: 7475: 7460: 7441: 7221: 6445:

The purpose of Knowledge is to create a high-quality, free-content encyclopedia in an atmosphere of camaraderie and mutual respect among contributors. Use of the site for

6024: 5566: 5226: 5207: 5114: 5082: 4442: 4428: 3425: 2797: 2717: 2699: 1855: 1841: 1221: 13033: 13025: 11529: 11409: 10237:

An inappropriate suggestion. Although The Transhumanist is significant in the history of portals, I do not believe he was ever a party to the long running incivility. --

9541: 9532:

policy was that editor using in bad faith? I also don't see the edits meeting the definition of tendentious editing, or that quality was sacrificed to maintain quantity.

5969: 5094: 4963: 3499: 2864: 2782: 2612: 2033:, someone else nominated for deletion (and the discussions look like keeps). This is gaming only if it is deliberately organised, for which I have not seen any evidence. — 408: 11707: 11630: 11602: 11587: 11571: 11500: 11486: 11469: 10844: 10816: 10273: 9443: 9204: 8810:

That is an unfair statement. His creation of automated portals that transcluded article lede contents instead of content-forking content was discussed and encouraged at

8494: 7977: 7521: 7005: 5798: 5780: 5648: 5609: 5528: 5514: 5498: 5476: 5244: 4516: 4497: 4464: 4413: 4383: 4186: 3854: 3765:

There`s a difference between articles not needing perfection and keeping portals that are unlikely to have any value over navigation templates. Which small portals don`t.

3688: 3151: 2861: 2554: 2020: 1776: 13469: 13455: 13276: 13119: 12090:

Just a lack of experience is what I'm seeing. But the example set by Brown is being followed by new editors and this is a problem that needs to be nipped in the butt.--

11738: 11095: 10997: 10825:

should be qualified by the lack of evidence for a consensus that it reflects either current or practice or desirable practice. It's neither a policy nor a guideline. --

10723:

It's fair to say that is how it's billed to readers. The statement is directly accessible on the Main Page via the "All portals" link, and is available on any page via "

9403: 8041: 7992: 7317: 4920:

Or that a different interpretation than your own is not a "falsehood." Or failing to mention a detail one judged insignificant or wasn't aware is not being "deceitful" —

4814: 4503: 4026: 3953: 3932: 3906: 3806: 3791: 3774: 3735: 3713: 3523:

Note that about 1,000 non-automated portals were deleted in the course of 2019, mostly on grounds which included long-term neglect and lack of maintainers. If we apply

3209: 2729: 2540: 1010: 996: 13020: 13017: 13013: 11668: 10292: 10258: 10080: 10065: 9853: 9823: 9431: 7790: 7110: 7097: 6824: 6800: 6596: 6286: 6269: 6246: 3226:

says the analysis and commentary is done at that user's talk page or appropriate noticeboard. Never behind the user's back, and not to complicate content discussions (

3027: 2756: 2744: 2048: 1301: 1194: 12895: 12099: 10161:

Agreed. The way this is supposed to work is that the proposed remedies are justified by the evidence presented. Unless you can provide evidence that TT is part of the

9556: 9314: 9285: 6734: 5308: 5059: 4972: 2909: 2858: 1827: 1712: 445: 277: 13443: 10773: 10593: 10571: 9994: 9187: 9168: 8633:(not the former guideline page but the one page that has outline what portals are for a decade+) needs to be updated because unlike the help and project namespaces 8629:

of the other administration namespaces. But like the draft namespace after conflict like this there should be some sort of guideline or info level page to guide all.

8591: 8291: 8059: 7124: 6923: 6843: 6785: 5869: 5090: 5086: 4812: 4561: 4546: 4480: 3239: 3195: 3181: 3059: 2684: 1235: 967: 12055: 11840: 10779:

in the 1990s despite the huge resources allocated to them). Without a stable community consensus, this well-intended proposal looks like policy-making by Arbcom. --

10667: 10488: 9367: 6908: 5946: 5877: 1182: 92: 81: 52: 12965: 12498: