Knowledge:Arbitration/Requests/Clarification and Amendment

8482:

they feel a profound emotional attachment (again, understandably, but love of country is not coterminous with love of any one particular government and/or its worldviews). To respin the disputes that arise as an irremediable clash between nationalist POVs is nonsense, but that is the temptation here. And, if this goes to ARBPIA5, the outcome is predictable. There will be two parties identified (regulars and nationalists/socks), and a number from each will be sanctioned, for wikipedia must not give the impression, particularly under the pressures over the last year, of siding with one 'side' or t'other. And why have we got to this? Because an innonative reading, impeccably 'behaviouralist' now takes all reverts, regardless of the rationales, to be on the same footing, and any series of reverts by different editors, regardless of the talk page or the RS literature (the contexts), as evidence of mutual tag-teaming. of course, there will also be a further tightening of the screws on 'behaviour', since everything else is considered a 'content issue' where it is presumed there are a variety of POVs that are, in any case, not up to admins to read up on or make judgments about.

8771:@Arkon. Whatever the outcome, I think this lengthy exchange of views, explorations of so many standard terms used to (mis)characterize what goes on in the putatively 'toxic' IP area, has been very useful. Instead of the intrinsic litigiousness of standard AE/ANI reports, this has been a productive (?hmm many will think TLDR perhaps) exploration in civilised dialogue, yeah with the odd edge of irritation or annoyance showing through, but that's picayune compared to the overall tone, of issues that we've never had quite the time to look into. The emergence of toolkit algorithmically generated evidence also was refreshing, an attempt, even if in my view, not quite as successful as one would like, to get a minimal empirical handle on what often is read as mere opinionizing. The rules of etiquette and strict topic focus all too often hinder discussions of what is really on editors' mind, before a community and its arbiters, and it is all to the good that we have been afforded this opportunity. 8387:

bludgeoner, then recalling the earlier episode where they abused their admin tools and damaged my bona fides is more than fair. I was a newbie at that time (that shows in my remarks there), and was almost driven off by the arbitrary punitive measures made against me. I don't hold grudges because I made no formal complaint, which might have damaged you, and I have almost never had recourse, on principle, to making ANI/AE reports to settle disputes by getting someone who disagrees with me banned, a practice that is of chronic here, one used against me with unusual frequency. I exercise care in the words I use. 'atrocious' per Merriam-Webster means 'extremely wicked, brutal, or cruel: barbaric.' You're entitled to that view of me as someone displaying exceptional brutality and cruelty on wikipedia. But you should quietly ask yourself, because I don't report insults, how that squares with the content evidence of my creation of 1,000 plus articles as varied as

8834:. I had the distinct impression the line I quoted summed up (a) BM giving empirical evidence and (b) being attacked for doing so by several editors. My impression was that BM answered my solicitation for such evidence (on another page), came up with his charts and was immediately thanked by sean.hoyland and myself. Then Hoyland, Zero, with a professional competence in these things, questioned aspects of the chart, or the inferences BM drew from them as did SashiRolls. This was absolutely normal, consensual discussion. The only blip was Nableezy being upset at the way BM's chart distorted his comments. BM and Nableezy often collaborate and at times get annoyed at each other, but that is not 'multiple editors' getting at BM. What has been suggested is that his particular modelling of the data produces the kind of result he'd be comfortable with, and that is a point very frequently made of papers in population genetics and other fields. 5075:

events, then use mainstream media. Maybe "clarification" is a better word for that than "carve out"? In terms of defining "recent," I think one year minimum or two years maximum ... the purpose being that once scholarship exists, ditch the news media in favor of the scholarship. It's taken about 6 months, I'd say, for a decently-sized body of scholarship to develop about the 2023 war. A year later, we now have a good number of journal articles, and some books are starting to be published. By this time next year, there will be no need to use news media for events in 2023, as we'll have books and journal articles to draw from. This is my anecdotal and totally unscientific and unqualified opinion, of course :-) But bottom line: OK to use NYT for events in the past year or so; don't use NYT's "I-P conflict explainer," instead use scholarship for that; don't use 50- or 100-year old newspapers for anything.

8310:@User:BilledMammal. I'm sorry, but language and grammar are merciless in these things (and the fact that such niceties are missed so often is one reason reading ANI/AE discussions is, certainly for me, so painful -I was in part permabanned because one admin could not understand irony, though everyone else saw the amicable comedy of my, to him alone, 'aggressively' 'uncivil'/abusive remark). You are simply wrong. If you have played lawn bowls, then grasping whether the ball you are drawing has a wide or narrow bias is fundamental to mastering the art. The whole point of RSN deliberations, and you engage in them often, is to distinguish between narrow and wide bias in newspapers. A narrow bias doesn't imperil the general reliability of a source: a wide bias can lead to deprecation. I guess now, having told you you are flat-out wrong, I have now produced a diff that can be cited in just one more 4977:(calling them "fringe"). We call this adoption of the mainstream bias "neutral point of view." Everyone will always disagree with some parts of it, but it'll be different parts. Sure, I also think our ARBPIA articles are riddled with bias, but not the same parts that Hen Mazzig is talking about, and Arbcom isn't going to resolve that disagreement between us. We are not here because of bias in articles, and I don't think there is any chance that we are going to stick NPOV tags on thousands of articles, nor are we going to elect a body that can come up with a way to write a bias-free summary of the most complicated and controversial geopolitical dispute in history. Let's keep our expectations reasonable: we can kick people out who are causing a lot of trouble, and maybe find ways to reduce the amount of volunteer time wasted on unnecessary writing (cough), that's what we can try to do. 8790:

other. Sympathy when partisan is tribal, and modernity teaches us that, though Hillel the Elder put it superbly in his dictum:'What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow: this is the whole Torah; the rest is the explanation; go and learn,' which we have now in the form, 'Do not do unto others what you would not have them do to you.' To empathize along ethnic lines is to sap the very principle that underwrites this as a human virtue. So, what befell Jewish israelis in the kibbutzim, and the fate of the hostages elicits the same pain as one should feel at what befalls Palestinians. I admit that there are very strong drifts in representation which retribalize our principles, demanding that we showcase the tragedy of Israeli hostages, each with a photo and lifestory, while the parallel hostage-taking of Palestinians ( of the 9,170 arrested roughly 4000 are in

10718:

An editor wishing to avail themselves of the exception for returning it to the status quo while it is being discussed must clearly identify their edit as such using the edit summary, and must immediately support their view on the talk page by identifying the last time the status quo content had been significantly disputed or was added to the article originally if there was no dispute. Alternatively, if there was a prior consensus for the content, a link to this discussion will suffice. Any uninvolved administrator may evaluate the veracity of the claim of status quo, and if it is insufficient or in bad faith may recommend removing the disputed content altogether, changing it to a more-stable version, or a reasonable alternative. Editors abusing this exception may be sanctioned at AE from making any reverts under this exemption in the future.

6117:

pushing, it is editors who edit according to the best available sources and editors who edit on emotion and time-wasting tactics. And those things should not be treated as though they are opposing camps. Those editing according to our content policies against those editing contrary to them is not a POV-pushing battle. Number 57's complaints about this, as somebody who is informed on how editing goes here, have to my ears always rang hollow. Consensus was against their position on things like including language on the illegality of Israeli settlements in their articles, and so he has openly called those who supported including such a thing, including me, POV pushers. Im sorry he feels that way, Ive never really been aware of what I could do to ameliorate that impression of his, but Ill just state I disagree with the premise of his claim that

11707:

reasons I stood for ArbCom last year. It's likely we will end up holding it in some form but we need a clear scope and a clear question that ArbCom can answer. This is our most troublesome topic area and has already been through this process four times, so ArbCom may not have any tools left in its toolbox, having already created ARBECR out of whole new cloth. The Knowledge dispute is a microcosm of the real-world dispute and a baker's dozen Knowledge editors cannot resolve the entire Arab-Israeli conflict. On Knowledge, the topic heats and cools with the real-world conflict and we are currently in a very large flare up due to horrific real-world events. I am sympathetic to the view that we have reached the limits of what can be achieved with the open, collaborative model given the proliferation of sockpuppetry in the area.

5347:@Sean.hoyland thanks for the numbers, they are really informative! I will say, it is fairly obvious a giant influx of editors to the topic area happened recently as a result of the conflict (myself included), though obviously the analysis of such a large dataset to confirm or deny toxicity by a core group would go beyond just numbers. I think the pure mass of folks in the topic area is just a lot harder to govern around and regulate, especially with the contentiousness of the topic area. And as the conflict spreads beyond obviously ARBPIA pages to tangentially related pages, the regulations get murkier. I think if PIA5 does happen, a key issue is just how to govern and regulate en masse, as well as on the individual editor/cabal level, and how to handle PIA content on pages that aren't just pure PIA (see the 7628:

Arbitration Committee forum. Further, the sanctions being handed out are being done under Arbitration Committee authority, not community authority. As such under the Arbitration and Consensus policies, the Committee can do what it feels best including mandating that all appeals in this topic area are heard by it rather than AE. As to the substance of the SFR's suggestions, I'm not sure the committee wants to hear all appeals, but if it thinks SFR's idea is a good one I would suggest it limit itself to either or both of: appeals of recent sanctions (<3 or <6 months) and appeals stemming from an AE report (regardless of whether it is actioned by an inidivudal administrator or a rough consensus). I think giving uninvolved administrators the ability to use the tools available in

9272:

reflect serious real-world divides, new / inexperienced users and blatant new SPAs are going to constantly flow into the topic area and require experienced editors who are willing to take the time and effort to keep an eye on a vast number of pages in order to maintain some semblance of balance or even just basic compliance with policy. We aren't going to solve the underlying A/I conflict on Knowledge; the topic area is always going to be fraught. And the simple fact is that distinguishing between an experienced editor who eg. frequently reverts in a particular way because they're doing the necessary gruntwork of dealing with an endless tide of SPAs trying to blatantly add a particular bias an article, and an experienced editor who is performing

6035:

effect on the dynamics of the topic area, and most importantly they divide the community into sanctionable and unsanctionable classes. And remember, sockpuppets are not just accounts that makes hundreds edits from a single account and stick around, although there are plenty of those. The majority of sockpuppets make tens of edits in PIA and are gone. Most are probably not "discovered" or blocked at all. The vast majority of articles in the topic area are not EC protected so there is no barrier in place, just the vigilance of editors who spot and revert EC violations. Then, of course, that topic area monitoring and revert work will be counted as part of estimates of how much someone resembles an SPA, which is pretty funny.

13391:- merge discussions are processed in the same venue as deletion discussions. So there potentially is a chance that what is a merge discussion may soon turn out to have consensus in favour of deletion. You didn't intend to delete, but you did get involved in a deletion discussion after all because the final result was delete. And yes, the nom has no control over how the discussion goes. Blocking for violating TBan in this case would be unfair, but you will definitely find people who will assert he violated his TBan regardless. It doesn't matter if mergers/blanking-and-redirecting are not technically deletions. The matter is, that discussion may yield a delete result. 9385:

ones I received. I'm also not sure why it matters -- neither side should be receiving death threats, but nobody "wins" by being more oppressed. As to my lack of having been targeted for on-wiki vandalism by one side or the other, as Nishidani pointed out, my "presence is very rare in the IP area" so not only would I have less visibility over other people receiving threats, logically I'm not going to be the target of abuse from that area either. And, I was considerably less active in editing from 2012 until 2023, which certainly bears on why my User Talk was not subjected to those kinds of attacks. Thus I believe I'm just not a good fit for your metaphor.

10725:

significant concern over the changed/altered/added content remaining in the article while it is under discussion can request an evaluation of uninvolved administrators at Arbitration Enforcement as to whether the claim is valid enough to support removing it while it is under discussion. Only uninvolved administrators may reply to such a request, the request will be solely over whether the concern is significant enough to remove pending discussion (and not conduct issues), and if a decision to remove the content or return to a different prior status quo in the meantime is made, that decision will stand until a consensus emerges on the talk page

7819:

possibilities to me: the editor made up/manipulated evidence, the people accusing that editor of lying are casting personal attacks, or there is such bad faith among topic area editors that honest mistakes/normal editorial choices while summarizing information is seen as being done with malevolent intent. In theory ArbCom is best positioned to figure out which of these things is true in this and several other similar accusations. And if ArbCom decides they can't (or don't have capacity to stay on top of this kind of conduct during a case), I hope they consider an intermediary step until ArbCom would have the capacity to do this.

10666:

further words" on all three, but that would be unfair to A who, even if their comments were partially disruptive, at least kept them concise. They could impose a blanket 1000 word restriction on everyone, but then how are B and C to be punished for not following a restriction that wasn't in place when they made the comments? They also wouldn't likely be able to come into compliance since removing/editing comments that have been replied to would be unacceptable. So that leads to the first situation - A is being restricted and B and C would not be penalized for exceeding it.

10580:(outside obvious socks/SPAs/etc that AE can continue to handle), or resolve the issues in this topic area by some other means. As it stands, editors on the side with more experienced editors can continue to weaponize AE to remove editors they don't like from the topic area since AE admins feel obligated to continue reviewing reports with what ideally should be an impending case - and as they've said multiple times, AE isn't the right place nor equipped to handle reports regarding conduct that crosses over a plethora of editors. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez | 9222:(Perhaps I'm posting here too much, but ArbCom's near-silence creates a vacuum.) ArbCom, don't get distracted by outside publications claiming bias in our content. It's special pleading, and ArbCom shouldn't end up with another Polish Holocaust case. We've got a problem, apparently, with a bottomless well of newish accounts that make life difficult for good-faith editors, which is something that AE should be able to handle. And I believe strongly that we have a problem with experienced editors who make it too difficult for AE to do its job. -- 11654:

that we probably should given that AE has done exactly what we told them they could and should do: refer cases to us. As much as I'm remiss to hold PIA5, it seems increasingly unavoidable. The world's most intractable problem continues to be our most intractable problem. Should this AE become PIA5 though? That's where I'm undecided and would be interested in more feedback on whether we can resolve the narrow origins of this AE report without also having to make it PIA5. It may benefit us to consider PIA5 independent of this AE request.

8992:(Added after some other editors have kindly said that they agree with me; I don't know if they will agree with what follows.) ArbCom should know that the problems with "the usual suspects" that cannot be handled by AE generally do not fall along the expected POV fault-lines of Israeli versus Palestinian POVs, or antisemitism or Islamophobia. (I'm sure there are POV pushers like that, but they can be handled at AE.) If anything, there's a divide between different lines of Jewish thought, with the most problematic editors favoring 7336:, simple cases of misbehavior of newish accounts are fairly easily handled, as I think my ~80 AE sanctions this year show. The issue arises when we're asked to look into tag-team or long-term edit warring, as we were in this case, and even cursory investigation shows that a large number of editors are involved. You can't have edit warring or tag teaming with just one party or one side. AE is not equipped to handle, or at least they're is no appetite to handle, multiple long-term edit wars involving large numbers of editors. 10091:, or try to push a POV over what reliable sources support. And definitely some of that has been happening here, and I encourage ArbCom to look at the behavior of individual editors in this topic area. But I don't think this stuff coming from established editors is a systemic issue over and above the inherent fact that the Israel/Palestine conflict just is a contentious topic. It's fine to not want to edit in a contentious topic area but I don't think that a topic area being intimidating to edit in is by itself an issue. 11188: 2932:. The issue with the previous motion is that Remedy 6-8 rely on the "primary articles" and "related content" distinction, and establish some special rules that are not found in the rest of the CTOP/ARBECR world. This motion would retain some of the guidance on the templates but broadly eliminate the formal differences in enforcement rules. One other option is to bring some of the rules from ARBPIA into the broader arbitration enforcement procedures. I think there is some merit in that idea — currently, all 8641:(38,036 edits). Another successful sock tagteaming operation since they did manage to change the name before being caught out. I don't know if it is proper to call this misrepresentation 'lying'. It is nonetheless the kind of error which can easily insinuate itself when one is applying to a massive data field algorithms that have no feel for context. Note that Icewhiz/User:Seggallion is missing from BilledMammal's chart unaccountably., comfortably slipping through the tool net despite 38,036 edits. 10681:, would be able to strike through, hat, or remove off topic/useless comments, and as another alternative to impose reply-restrictions that amount to a discussion-specific interaction ban (i.e. if editor B and C are going back and forth, they are no longer permitted to reply to each other or to others questioning each other's comments, but they would still be able to reply to A on issues neither B nor C had raised/commented on). This would be difficult but not impossible to implement in my opinion. 6105:, there was a similar argument, where one "side" was claimed to be the pro-Palestinian side, and the other the pro-Israel side. But that, like most of these disputes, was not true. One side was indeed pushing an identifiably nationalistic narrative identified with one "side" in the geopolitical conflict, the other was not. The two "sides" here have never been symmetrical here. As far as BilledMammal's highly subjective understanding of bludgeoning, he lists me as having bludgeoned 4724:. The criteria used for the database search can be seen as a (flawed, but useful) proxy for the latter. The former requires contextual analysis as to whether or not someone is simply posting the same point a bazillion times in response to different people; showing diffs in the same discussion where someone is repeating the same point over and over (and over) again across a multitude of comments would provide better evidence towards that point than the analysis currently does. — 11130: 8753:, and sometimes it may be quite disconcerting for those whose general information on the conflict comes from TV and mainstream newspapers to find that there is another, equally valid, perspective on events, and we must balance them for NPOV. There is absolutely no problem in finding massive coverage of events from a pro-Israeli perspective, but you have to frequently go to the scholarship to see the other side. And much of that scholarship comes from places like 8422:

unblock a sanctioned Israeli user after he talked to you privately (invisibly, without even examining the relevant pages where he broke 3R to verify his narrative) and (b) denied my own unblock request when, given the circumstances, you should have stayed out of this and left the decision to any other admin who was uninvolved. I gave all the relevant links, to allow editors to draw their own conclusions. Archaeologists of wiki disputes can judge for themselves.

5384:* regarding the "secret majority" theory proposed by some, I argue that folks use the idea that CTOP contentiousness is driven by a small group of editors to pursue a "burn the house down" strategy of removing/wounding an editor population they perceive to be ideologically biased in one direction. Sean.Hoyland has already produced statistics indicating that editor counts are diverse and that the area is contentious primarily because the topic is contentious. 7497:

a way to "punt" that decision, instead focusing on whether or not it agrees with Levivich's interpetation of tag-teaming/edit warring. I say this based on comments members of the 2019 committee (a 13-member committee which is the only one to have a bigger activity problem than this committee) have made around their inability to give PIA4 and Antisemitism the full attention they deserved. In the latter case this then blew up into a much bigger case (

9485:

topic area is dominated by a relatively small number of long-term editors who rarely break rules such as 3RR etc, but (as said above) are purely here to push their POV and support other members of their group in doing so. They have been allowed to do this for years – the question is whether the community sees this as perfectly fine, or whether it wants to do something about it (which IO think can only be achieved by a mass handout of topic bans).

11216: 11160: 11102: 11074: 2434: 2406: 9034:

that being listed as a named party is not a predetermination of guilt, something that perhaps will be more important here than in many other cases. You have multiple AE admins telling you that a full case with multiple parties is needed, and they have given you a reasonable list of potential parties (including admins who are well-positioned to give useful evidence). This is not the time to get stuck on quasi-legalistic procedural details. --

5294:* There is benefits to having folks with bias on here, especially the most heaviest editors, doing major work. Bias is inherent to humanity and pretending otherwise is just an excuse to press the red ban button without considering consequences (or especially because they hate the current bias of Knowledge compared to their preferred bias). The way to deal with bias is using the principles we have, rules we can apply even handedly, 5089:@Eek: I think my concern about current events could be addressed with a sentence added to the RS restriction that said something along the lines of, "Reputable news media may be used as a source for current events that have not yet been significantly covered by scholarship." That's what I meant by "carve out." I think this sentence would apply to APL and ARBPIA and any other topic areas where the RS restriction was in effect. 7674:

singularly focused Wikipedian" divide (for instance SFR has pointed out that Levivich's definition of tag-teaming could apply to some of former group but is only being applied against the latter group). This complexity is why I repeat my concern about ArbCom accepting a case unless it feels it truly has the capacity/ability to do it just because a lot of people (me included) are saying the status quo isn't working.

9326:

discussions on any attempt to balance it. And because events are moving quickly in the real world, this is a serious concern; there's constant new events that justify new articles, which often require fixes but which can't necessarily be summarily deleted. Beyond that, it's, again, not really aimed at the real problems here - revert-wars aren't the main issue (they're one of the things admins

11297:

what ArbCom should enact to help admin find solutions to editor conduct issues. In response to how to refer a case to AE: instead of a magical incantation suggested by SFR, an admin can use a bolded vote at the beginning of a statement (something like "Refer to ArbCom", in bold) or as was done here, an uninvolved admin can determine that action as the consensus of the admin conversation.

7212:

court). Meanwhile, no case has been made for PIA5. We have seen wild assertions without evidence, that's all, and it would be a mistake to take them at face value. Considering that there is a shooting war going on right now, ARBPIA is actually in better shape than one would expect. I've been editing in ARBPIA for over 22 years and for most of that time it was in worse shape than now.

11669:

an effective stopgap measure. In a perfect world, I would have PIA5 be heard by next year's committee, as either its second or third case of the year. That way, the new members are seasoned enough to know the process and contribute, but we haven't yet lost participation to the mid-year slump. That also has the benefit of giving these motions a chance to work and see if that helps.

7319:, the tldr is the original complaint was more or less about tag team edit warring, looking into it I saw that it was, in my view, broadly similar to much of the behavior widespread in the topic area, and wasn't terribly interested in making one-off sanctions. It's incredibly widespread, as well as other disruptive behavior, and AE isn't the place to address topic-wide issues. 6652:. I've manually re-reviewed all of Iskandar323's other !votes, and they appear accurate, but if you have any issues with them please let me know - although preferably on the talk page, to avoid requiring the Arb's to wade through the collaborative process of improving that table. If I refuse to change the table I think that would be when it is appropriate to raise here. 11513:. A case with a set number of named parties that led to this arriving at ARCA would allow us to more thoroughly examine those issues and determine if this is something specific to those editors that might require sanctions, or if there may be more general actions that can be taken, in which case we can do so with a more thorough examination of the facts via a case. - 10382:. All of these edits should have been uncontroversial. But I know that when I do the former (ie.removing "in Israel" from places which have been occupied by Israel since 1967) I can expect a tsunami of insults and threats, while when I do the latter (ie: placing Arab cities in Israel), I have *never* recieved any such reaction. Why this difference, I wonder?cheers, 8502:

oddly - my list has over a score, since Oct.7. That issue was what Levivich tried to address, and his reports somehow got transformed into assertions that they weren't the problem, the 'regulars' were, all based on hearsay circulating for at least a decade, hearsay drummed up by new off-wiki attack sites with a clear nationalist brief to go for wiki's IP jugular.

8582:. As far as I can see, your statistics do not note a deterioration over time of editing in the IP area. They only indicate that roughly half of the cases brought there are IP related, and that AE has efficiently sanctioned a large number of the editors reported. I could make many other inferences but leave a proper analysis to those competent in these matters. 9962:) from appearing on BilledMammal's list. That said, and as others have already said on the talk page (or when it is was brought to ANI as an attack page), showing that people engaged in discussion, provided RS, debunked silly arguments, responded to sockpuppet provocation, etc. does not show that people "bludgeoned" anything. As the explanatory essay says: 10745:. Both of these would also avoid administrators having to fully protect an entire page - it amounts basically to a portion of the page being "protected" against further changes if a change is disputed, while giving uninvolved administrators the ability to enforce prior status quo and remove policy violating content as they would have if the page as a whole 8093:, I've seen editors brought before AE where part of the evidence involved reverts to other edits well over a 24 hours old. So from what I've seen the idea of recent is older than 24 hours. I don't have an answer on what I think should be a good threshold for what "recent" is, however I could foresee a lot of problems if it was defined as short as 24 hours. 6803:, I believe that 13, collectively making 75,383 edits to the topic area since 2022, generally align with a pro-Palestinian position. I believe two, collectively making 5,832 edits, generally align with a pro-Israeli position. The remaining five, collectively making 19,550 edits, are either neutral or have a position that I have been unable to determine: 5535:. In general i've seen a greater commitment to source quality in this topic area than elsewhere (tho might strongly object to some readings of the sources). Are you suggesting a rule that will only constrain the reasonable editors, but one which the unreasonable are incapable or unwilling to comply with? For instance i would not be surprised to see a 9420:

a Marine, as well as not realizing I'd been out of the military for over a year at that point) categorically disqualified from participating in the Israel topic area; made the same argument about a British military admin; and then proceeded to imply that we were tag-team coordinating while admitting that you had no evidence whatsoever to make that

13498:

intended to solve. If an editor edits unhelpfully about topic X but productively about adjacent topic Y, then in a doubtful case and all other things being equal, one might not want to construe a topic-ban on X to include Y. Of course, where the applicability of the topic ban is clear then it must be observed, unless and until it is modified.

339: 347: 5369:. All areas of Knowledge has "regulars" and regulars generally provide the most institutional wisdom to the project, rejection of "regulars" ability to vote would likely represent a repudiation of the current coverage of the conflict in favor of the implicit view by some that "secret majorities" have overrun the CTOP areas. For 2589:

conflict, broadly interpreted", and making conforming edits to the rest of the case. (We can keep the templates, but the definitions of primary articles and related content will no longer be necessary in defining the scope of the restrictions.) Doing so would resolve this request and simplify the language going forward. Best,

5066:, and arguably something like NYT, BBC, or AP would qualify. But I think some distinction needs to be made between using news media for current events (good), and using news media for history (bad, especially because ample scholarly sources are available for history). Even that breaks down into two further categories: using 9280:-ing innocent new editors, is often not obvious. Part of the reason an ArbCom case is needed is because the community and AE aren't equipped for that; but this also means it's important to approach the case with an eye towards the drive-by / SPA problem, at least as context for the behavior of parties to the case, and not 8708:'s political history of Tibet at 17; to specializing academically in the concepts of nationalist exceptionalism -all underdog stories and therefore a sense that any judgment must be grounded in universalist principles or logic. When I started reading wiki IP articles, Palestinian history was absent from most (so I rewrote 8296:, They are not valid evidence for what you claim for a very simple linguistic reason. 'Severe bias' and 'bias' are not interchangeable, the adjectival qualifier makes all the difference. All newspapers have bias, like humans. 'Severe bias' in a newspaper/organization is what makes it unacceptable, as distinct from others. 13371:

they believe is wrong with the article. But urging people to go towards a deletion discussion, or anything that would touch it, is something they should avoid as part of their sanctions. Again, they would be better off if instead of tagging, they actually found the sources, or told others they couldn't find any at all.

7234:

tables (example: only 17% of Selfstudier's edits this year were in mainspace, but who knows?). My greatest fear is that arbitrators will think that you are just a helpful provider of objective information when in fact you are one of the main area protagonists and your data must be critically examined with that in mind.

7959:(and anyone else watching) I think at this point there are no bad ideas. Part of my rationale for proposing the motions was to see if they sparked any better ideas. Separate cases might be worth thinking more about. How would we structure a general case about the topic area to avoid it becoming a mud-slinging contest? 9140:(Although, in my case, it might not show what you expect now.) I'd suggest other editors, with more experience in the content area than I have, consider doing that, too. Arbs might want to click on those source links to check them for yourselves, but that's as far into source material as I expect you will need to go. 2452: 9250:, while I don't particularly appreciate being snidely labelled a pro-Israel complainer, I do appreciate an immediate example of "experienced editors . . turning the entire topic into even more of a WP:BATTLEGROUND than it needs to be". So—on balance, notwithstanding its intention—I thank you for your statement! 8668:. My instincts told me immediately that there was some echo in that voice I recognized from the past, and a few moments of thought prompted me to associate it with a prior editor, highly intelligent and articulate, very pro-Israel, but utterly unfamiliar with any of the scholarship. The name that popped up was 10696:

it does not actually explain why the user is of the opinion that the PAG does not apply, that comment can be struck through. That way the closing administrator doesn't have to sort through potentially hundreds or thousands of lines of text of opinion back and forth that don't have any helpful discussion on the

8857:

Zionism. It would also help if commentators remembered that Zionism was proposed by someone unfamiliar with Judaism and Hebrew, and that the pronounced secular cast of the foundational movement horrified a large majority of orthodox Jews at that time. The bible arguably had a greater impact on the antisemitic

5213:. There are POV-fork type issues, but this is one of those topics where every time there is a question of how to categorize the conflict, it opens up the same exact battle lines of arguments in a million pages, even if they cover completely different aspects that may involve Israel/Palestine as one example. 10523:

furiously engages is necessarily disruptive. We should be careful not to draw a false equivalence between the two. Especially when one side focuses on policy based arguments, namely summarizing inclusively pro Israeli and Palestinian sources while other sides are pushing for singular/nationalist narratives.

8798:) is systematically ignored. To state that, given the disparity, is not to espouse a pro-Palestinian perspective. It is simply to insist that our civilization in its laws and ethical principles commends our sympathies to go out to whoever suffers, regardless of the mean divisions of politics and ethnicity. 3110:: I guess the question is whether it'd be worth codifying this distinction for the other CTOP areas as well. We can go in the other direction and borrow some of this language for use in the broader enforcement procedures — ARBPIA is not particularly unique in the sense of being a broad topic area. Best, 11253:

It would be quite helpful to have your perspective here. I would also appreciate hearing further from the uninvolved admins as to what you'd like ArbCom to do — I see two buckets of possibilities: (1) Hold a full case or case-like structure to resolve the complex multiparty questions here, and/or (2)

10695:

arguments that others make entirely, or by claiming, without any logic/evidence, that the PAG doesn't apply/is being used improperly. This would also be resolved by clerking during the discussion - if an administrator observes a !vote or comment that disagrees with a PAG based argument by another and

10555:

On one hand, if this becomes PIA5, more people would have given commented (if they wished) and existing editors might have presented evidence differently. On the other hand, a lot of time is wasted going in circular questions about the correct forum, when many of the issues raised are the same. If it

10331:

Not to mention that some cats are the subject of off-wiki harassment and outing-attempts, while others are not. I cannot recall in all my years here that there has been a single attack-page aimed at the pro-Israeli editors, while there have been at least half a dozen attacking those editor not deemed

10266:

As for Number 57 view: "is a core group of 10-15 editors in this topic area (many of whom have been with us for well over a decade) who are primarily on Knowledge to push their POV I could also easily name such a group – but it would prabably be a totally different group from the one (I guess) Number

9419:

thank you for bringing up an example that I did not remember from nearly two decades ago of your atrocious behavior within this topic area, in which you became so infuriated that I denied an unblock request from you, that you went on a rant about how my military service in Iraq (miscategorizing me as

9104:

nature of the problem, in ways that contradict one another, and that cannot possibly all be true. If that means that ArbCom is having difficulty envisioning what such a sprawling case would consist of, and lead to, that reflects what a mess this is. But not knowing ahead of time what the outcome will

8856:

Though the query was twice raised with Levivich, the suggestion of using the Bible re Zionism was not shouted down, as implied, with injury to the editor making that proposal. The technical point is that such primary resources should be, where necessary filtered through pertinent high quality RS on

8676:

alluding to the possibility the editor had a prior account. Whatever the truth, that editor desisted from further editing IP articles. Go figure. But only deep editing experience will give one the kind of informal knowledge (often subjective, but not infrequently spot on, though never mentioned) that

8655:

This isn't some pleas for myself, but a note to explain something about why the widespread enmity against 'longterm editors' who, several seem to believe, should be TNT'd so that the area can be rebuilt effectively, is a simpleton fantasy that can do enormous damage if taken seriously. Apart from the

8501:

hell for the first decade of my working here, and I don't think growing senility accounts for my impression that over the last several years much of that heat has been significantly lowered, thanks to ARBPIA3. The only change I have witnessed is the sharp rise in newly registered accounts that behave

8496:

And yes, seconding Zero, I really would like to see a minimum of evidence that the place has deteriorated to the point of requiring executive re-examination. What evidence we have is that there has been a massive investment of editors, a great many new, creating and working hundreds of articles since

7604:

Thanks Z1720. Sounds like your reading is the same as what I had previously thought. So then I'm still confused about what your initial comment was suggesting - there was never any confusion (that I could see) among the uninvolved admins about what the rough consensus was at a given moment (even if I

7496:

I guess I should add one thing. If this ArbCom can't do the review of editor conduct well, and given that this is the committee with the biggest issues with activity among arbs of any 15-member arbcom in at least a decade it may decide it doesn't have the capacity to do this well, I'd suggest it find

7150:

If any restrictions are imposed on the area, they should apply to everyone and not to some arbitrary list like this one. One of the notable things about the I/P area in the past several months is the remarkable number of new and revived accounts that have joined in, mostly on one side of the equation

6144:

about including that information in each article. And since then, you have repeatedly called myself and others POV-pushers for reasons I have not yet figured out. And you have, again, that entire time played up that a couple of pro-Israel users opposed your RFA. I dont know what is disingenuous about

5320:

I am not sure the same cabal of pro-Palestine/pro-Israeli editors is necessarily "crowding" out other editors? There are folks who loudly complain about exiting ARBPIA areas, especially on this section, but that isn't quite the same as actual stats to back that up. I'm actually fairly new-ish to this

5246:

A further issue is that for most of the last two decades the two sides have been seriously mismatched in terms of numbers and one side has been consistently able to push their POV through weight of numbers, either by long-term tag teaming or by swinging poorly-attended discussions (and in my view the

5117:

There seems to be constant RFCs and threads about the reliability of sourcing in this area. I know the current arbitration request is about long term edit warring, but there is also long-term campaigns in talk spaces to remove usage of certain sourcing. See the downgrading of the ADL, the current RFC

2248:

An exemption is added so that the requirements of "General sanctions upon related content" are not applied to editor restrictions imposed under CTOP. This would be the closest to the current intent where editors could be restricted from related content based on and applying to all of their editing in

13603:

initiating or participating in merge discussions: This rides the line, but I come out as a "yes this is in scope." A merge discussion has many of the same hallmarks that a deletion discussion does. A merge discussion may also result in the practical deletion of an article, because redirected content

12631:

I understand this will slow the topic area down and be a general barrier to editing. But given the alarm bells being rung above, and the threat of PIA5, I think we have to consider drastic measures. I'd also vote for a time limited version of this; i.e., with a sunset clause of a year, and we'd have

11668:

A good number of you continue to urge us to accept a case so as to hear PIA5. But I don't think we're in a great place to do that right now. With the loss of Barkeep, and generally low activity, I'm not sure we're cut out for the gargantuan task of PIA5. I think passing some motions at the moment is

11653:

I find SFR's proposals to be exciting ideas and suggest that at a minimum we propose them as structural reforms in the area, and pronto. I think there's an immediate problem that needs to be solved: this AE report. Resolving it is our necessary goal. I'm not opposed to holding a case here, and think

11508:

A more effective route in handling this may be to have a case that focuses specifically on resolving the complex editor interaction issues that caused this to become an ARCA referral rather than jumping to a broader case that goes beyond those issues, or motions that do not address all of the issues

11486:

I'm open to SFR's suggestion that ArbCom handle the appeals. As to the word limit suggestion, it would at minimum have to be reworded before I'd support something like that. Short of possible scripts or off-wiki websites (most of which give inconsistent word count results), there's no easy way for a

10885:

The sources I previously posted, and which have since been redacted, reported that a group of editors had been coordinating using third-party tools (e.g. Discord) to fight “on the Knowledge front the information battle for truth, peace and justice.” According to the articles, their activity included

10533:

The other thing that remains unacceptable is the presentation by some editors in this ArbCom request and general discussions as POV pushing by two sides, when the reality is it is POV pushing versus critically summarizing the state of different reliable sources. Having a much stricter enforcement of

9717:

That's not even to mention the specific reasons why this case was primarily brought here (in my understanding), that being AE is mainly intended to be an A reporting B case forum. When the issue at hand is tag-teaming, multi-party edit warring, multi-party incivility, etc, AE's not too well-equipped

9610:

Huldra, I don't think it's appropriate to get into an argument about who has suffered the most abuse, particularly using a single metric like talkpage redactions – the fact is that no-one should receive any level of abuse for editing Knowledge. And also worth noting that I have also been impacted as

9510:

Re my views on 30/500 – my concern is that it is a deterrent to new editors entering the topic sphere, which is one of the issues preventing an equalisation in the number of POV pushers on each side (as I've said above, I would rather they were all topic banned, but if Knowledge is going to tolerate

9453:

That said, Jeske+Barkeep's suggestion of splitting this into topic area and editor conduct halves I think merits further examination. Depending on how those two groupings relate to each other (e.g. if findings from the topic area can inform whether editor conduct issues exist), that could be a clean

9271:

I also want to second Loki's statement below that much of the problem is drive-by new editors or SPAs with few edits elsewhere - a lot of the other comments here have basically said "this is all about a few bad editors"; I don't think that's correct. In topic areas like this, where the disputes here

7754:

is true. If no one else other than Levivich had replied, some quorum of admin would have been able to reach consensus on האופה. The fact that the replies that actually happened split the focus in a way that AE is ill-equipped to handle is why I ultimately (if reluctantly) agreed we should refer the

7233:

Your response to my request is what I expected and thanks for confirming my suspicion. You are refusing to present information that might shed factual light on the subject when it disturbs the point you want to make. Another example is your refusal to separate main space from talk space in the other

7189:

It's great to see someone present actual evidence. The number of distinct editors in I/P has remained essentially the same for the past 8 years until it suddenly jumped up at the start of the present war. I wonder, is there a simple way to show the same data without the articles specifically related

7157:

Some types of discussion such as a negotiation between two editors should not have a limit at all. Also, in general there is no way to define "a discussion" except in the case of formal discussions like RfCs. The main points of dispute are brought up repeatedly and don't have clear boundaries. This

6895:

If you - or anyone - disagree with any of these, then I think it would be helpful to discuss so that we can create a consensus list, although I would ask that the discussion be opened somewhere other than here. For the avoidance of doubt, this doesn't mean these editors are POV pushing. For example,

6444:

The purpose of RSN is to determine the reliability of sources, not the level of bias. There is no basis in policy to consider biased sources unreliable, and that means that editors attempting to argue that "source they don’t like" is more biased and thus less reliable than "source they like" are POV

6422:

I don’t consider the distinction relevant, because there is no basis in policy to consider sources unreliable due to bias, regardless of the level of bias. Tolerating editors making the assessment that source A is more biased than source B, and thus A is unreliable while B is not, is to tolerate POV

5612:

This table lists the number of different editors and the number of revisions for talk pages in this 'topic area' for the last ten years or so. The number of revisions provides an upper limit on the number of editor interactions on talk pages. Obviously, the actual number of interactions will be much

4896:

in under 500 words per person. Limiting talk page discussions to 500 words would be very counterproductive to building an encyclopedia, in any topic area, because it would prevent people from discussing anything in any serious depth. Many of us can't even comment on this month-long ARCA in under 500

4633:

good faith editors from the topic area. In the event that a full case is opened, I agree that it is most appropriate to only have the individuals whose behavior is under examination to be considered as parties. But, before that list is finalized, we might want to have some space for the community to

11706:

I apologise for the tardiness of my comments; I've been reading and thinking all along but I've had limited time to type out my thoughts, which requires a proper keyboard. I am reluctant to hold a PIA5, at least at this time and via this vehicle. I thought it was likely to come up and is one of the

10717:

further change to return the disputed and surrounding content and context to a past version that is either supported by prior consensus or had not been in dispute for (time period) before the change was made, as well as for enforcing arbitration remedies such as ECR violations or editor topic bans.

10676:

2 (my proposal) - Rather than allowing word limitations or anything similar, administrators should be given increased "clerking" abilities for formal requests for comment in this area. As part of those abilities, they would be able to prevent future comments by an editor if that editor is no longer

10529:

On a practical note, reducing the ability of individual editors to dominate a conversation by instituting either a limit on word count or percentage, would allow more voices to sustainably opine with succint policy based arguments without having to compete for eyeball attention and save clerks more

10256:

of Israels' supporters. It was their incessant rape- and murder- threats which brought about this policy. AFAIK, Number 57 has never been threatened with murder for editing wiki, or seeing his loved ones being raped (And I am happy -and relieved- he hasn't!), but I wish he would try to imagine how

10030:

A response to Bluethricecreamman's comments: NOTAVOTE (an essay, not a rule) is not really relevant; closes against the majority of views expressed only tend to occur when there is a clear right/wrong (e.g. alignment with a certain policy or guideline). In this topic area, most things are arguable,

9703:

deal with that, in practice it's been reluctant to for one reason or another - many of the experienced editors in question often straddle a line of problematic behavior that AE has seemed unwilling to definitively bring down the hammer on (hence my WP:UNBLOCKABLE concerns mentioned above), and that

9532:

And re Nableezy's comment about me – disingenuous at best. For context, what I objected to was including the same paragraph of text about the legal status of Israeli settlements in the introduction of every single article on a settlement – my view was that everyone knows they are illegal and simply

9506:

9484:

Re LokiTheLiar's comment below that "a lot of the worst behavior is from new-ish users", I would say that is only partially correct. These users tend to be the worst in terms of edit warring and other more flagrant violations of Knowledge rules. However, IMO the real issue here is the fact that the

9018:

About what ToBeFree said, I suspect that the information that would be made available to ArbCom via the case request page would look incredibly similar to what you already have here, so it would just be a bureaucratic waste of time to start over from scratch. And as for any aspersions that everyone

8917:

If this weren't very clear from my statement above, I don't think this ought to be handled by motion. The issues here aren't simple; they need to be disentangled with care. If civility and edit-warring were the only problems, we wouldn't need ARBCOM. We need an evidence phase, and for ARBCOM to dig

8738:

Look at it from another set of angles. What is the proportion of Palestinian (zero) vs (pro-)Israeli/Jewish editors in the IP area, for example? Or what is the proportion of bias in the mainstream sources we almost invariable regard as core RS. E.g.'33,000 news articles from 1987-1993 and 2000-2005

8481:

A very large number of positions assumed to be contentious here are not so in that scholarly literature, where a large consensus on the historical realities exists. These however are relentlessly challenged by editors who don't care much for the ivory tower, but care deeply about a country to which

7833:

Trypto: I think determining who should be party to an ArbCom case based on who happened to show up to an AE thread isn't the right way to determine a party list. The party list I gave might be too small but equally discouraging participation at AE because you might become party to a case when there

7773:

I absolutely think you should be able to present evidence about admin conduct in this topic area. Knowing the concerns you and some others had is why I included SFR in my list of potential parties. And I think it's reasonable to say something like "after that initial post by SFR there was no choice

7627:

Regarding Levivich's statement: even beyond what SFR pointed out (BANPOL is quoting Arbitration Procedures), I think Levivich operates under a fundamental misconception about AE. Levivich seems to view AE as a community forum, where as I feel it is, as the name of Arbitration Enforcment suggests an

7571:

no further action would have been needed as ArbCom (arbs/clerks) would do the rest of the steps? If so that is definitely easier than the answer I gave (close with a rough consensus to refer by an uninvolved admin, uninvolved admin files a case request here, and notifies all interested editors) and

6903:

As a general note, I think one of the issues with the topic area is that it is common for editors to refuse to acknowledge their own POV, while frequently insisting that the editors they disagree with have a POV. It's possible to manage a POV and edit neutrally, but only if one is able to recognize

5227:

TLDR; battleground fractures into dozens of talk pages that aren't necessarily pov-forks, same arguments pushed everywhere in each RFC. Better guidelines on how to be more succinct with RFCs on this topic, and how to discuss WP:ARBPIA topics on pages that aren't necessarily centered on ARBPIA would

4971:

may be true, but there is not widespread agreement on which way that bias runs. This widespread belief is not a problem that can be fixed, or that we can even try to fix. There will always be widespread belief that Knowledge articles are biased, just like there is widespread belief that the rest of

4497:

select IBANs, TBANs, individual anti-bludgeoning restrictions, and topic-wide restrictions on the length of posts people make in discussions within this topic area. However, because the discussion broadly turned into a set of complex and multi-party complaints regarding behavior of multiple editors

3088:

I think there's merit to the primary article distinction. This is a sprawling topic area; not on the scale of some contentious topics, but still broad. And there's a difference between the core set of articles that document the conflict and other articles that are not necessarily about the conflict

2588:

points A, B, and C establish the proper enforcement actions to be taken, without need for any reference to "primary articles" and "related content" — a distinction that few if any other cases maintain. I would therefore support a motion defining the "area of conflict" to simply be "the Arab-Israeli

13370:

Not necessarily, as tagging by itself does not automatically lead to deletion discussions and in fact articles may sometimes stay with notability tags for years without getting deleted. Adding a problem tag is not in general participating in deletion discussions. They can tell on the talkpage what

11545:

The reason this was referred here was because the interaction between a specific group of editors and any issues caused by this was deemed too complex for AE to examine and address. A proper examination is needed to adequately address any issues, and if we're going to make a decision based on this

11471:

To your first question, while I have a good idea of what these issues are based on the statements and preliminary examinations of some of the articles/talk pages, evidence that certain issues are substantially more common and disruptive than others would be helpful in determining the scope. To the

11296:

After reading the AE thread and the above statements, I think ArbCom will need to take some sort of action. I agree with L235 that I would like admins, both those involved in the AE and those that were not, to comment on whether it should be a full case or, if we are to resolve by motion, describe

10361:

say they have received death treaths, and I have no reason to disbelieve them, and I am very sorry they have done so, BUT: Do you deny that the threats against "the-not-so-pro-Israli"-editors is far greater than against the "pro-israeli" editors? After all, your talk-pages are blissfully clean of

10270:

I agree fully with Zero0000's asseccment: "There is a reason why many editors who enter the I/P area quickly decide that it is toxic and controlled by a cabal. It's because they come along armed with nothing except strong political opinions and a few newspaper articles, and don't like it when they

10248:

As for Number 57 view: "the 30/500 restriction has actively worsened this situation by giving the long-term problematic editors an advantage" As an editor who has been "credited" by off-wiki web-sites and blogs with bringing about this rule, I can say: "credit where credit is due", namely with the

9558:

Nableezy, I had been calling people in the topic area POV pushers for years before the discussion you reference and my issues with you also started well before then as well. While I have been accused of bias, it has come from both sides, and that gives me reassurance that I must be doing something

9351:

While my user page has remained remarkably free of vandalism I have received death threats and threats to my family, specifically targeting me as a Jew, through Knowledge that were so bad that WMF Legal had to be involved at one point. I'm not the cat you're looking for; please keep me out of your

9319:

Motion 3, Involved participants: This would reward sockpuppetry and canvassing, and silence contributions from editors with the most knowledge of the topic and the underlying dispute. Beyond that it's just not practical - would every editor only get to weigh in on one RFC in the topic, ever, after

9193:

I really think that ArbCom has an obligation to deal with these problems via full cases, and not simply motions. But if the difficulties of creating a named parties list are getting in the way of a single, large case, then the idea posed by several other editors, of having one case about the topic

9048:

Responding now to Harry Mitchell's comment, I'm worried that ArbCom is starting to over-think this. Focus on conduct, not on which sources are definitive. Have an Evidence page. Editors will either provide evidence of misconduct, or they won't, and ArbCom can tell the difference. You've got enough

8955:

The motions being considered may provide useful administrative tools in some cases, but to my mind they do not touch the heart of the problem. We are at ARCA because the disputes are too involved for AE to separate good-faith content dispute from bad-faith editing. I don't see how we can reach any

8789:

Good grief. What on earth has sympathizing with a 'side', presumably either collectively 'Israelis' or 'Palestinians' got to do with it. It's not a football match where people look on, 'rooting for' (that is extremely vulgar in Australia, where we say 'barrack') our side, and, in doing so, boo the

8607:

the IP area. What it does show is that several editors you would include under that description devote more than half, or indeed in a few cases, most of their attention to the topic area. Greek studies are 'dominated' by people who've mastered the topic- That doesn't mean they are 'domineering' as

8421:

That incident occurred 17 years ago, when I was new to wikipedia, and, faced with an inexplicable administrative punishment (technically) I made the inferences one can see. I wouldn't do that now. What you don't deny is the gravamen of those two incidents (a) you used your administrative tools to

7934:

My thinking is that if ArbCom feels like they have enough information to make a clear statement other than "we don't see a problem" they should just take action themselves rather than telling AE admin how to do it. I think the potential tools is a far better alternative to any statement they might

5190:

Going off of the suggestion from ScottishFR, for the limit of 500-1000 words, some of these RFC discussions go long. Instead of absolute limits that could unfairly limit discussion among the most passionate editors of the topic, would it be possible to go with proportional limits (no more than 500

2513:

This should be changed in my opinion, and I am inclined to support the removal of the userspace exemption as edit requests should be sufficient to allow non-extended-confirmed editors to participate with minimal disruption in the area. The current state allows them to wait 30 days, make 500 purely

13616:

adding Notability tags to articles: I don't see this as an issue. While I have personal beliefs about tag bloat, and think they should be used more sparingly than we do, placing a tag is not a deletion or a discussion. While it might eventually prompt someone else to AfD the article, I see such a

12119:

Seems reasonable. There is many a discussion where an editor goes on to bludgeon a conversation by dint of replying endlessly and exhausting a books worth of words. Since bludgeoning can be quite hard to handle, I think a wordlimit is a useful tool that can be imposed on editors for whom that has

11626:

During their absence, the report became a discussion about general behavior of multiple users in the area, then expectably too much to handle at AE, and now we're here with multiple arbitrators indicating an interest in opening a case. What I personally don't entirely get is how all this happened

10083:

I would also like to say that my assessment of the behavior of established editors is notably less negative than many other people here. I basically agree with nableezy: it's inherently a contentious topic area and so disagreements are common and will always be common. It's also unsurprising that

9384:

I appreciate the words written in support. With regard to the question of whether I think the "not so Israeli" side receives more threats than the Israeli side -- I don't know. I'm not sure how I *could* know as I wouldn't be privy to threats received in private much like you weren't privy to the

9067:

This would be fine, but it doesn't do anything about the topic area in general, and I'm not convinced that AE can't handle that. Possibly not as drive-by allegations in a thread about another editor, but if a separate complaint is filed with clear evidence on each editor for admins to evaluate, I

9033:

Adding to that: Although numerous editors are asking where the evidence is, for starting a full case with multiple parties, the correct answer is that evidence will be presented, and critically evaluated for whether it is valid or not, on the Evidence page of the case. ArbCom should make it clear

8970:

Topic-wide enforced BRD is a bad idea. It is needed on some pages, and admins have the power to require it. Elsewhere, it just allows endless opportunities to stall constructive change. A hallmark of the ARBPIA disputes recently at AE is that editors were making reflexive reverts and not engaging

8262:

Everyone here knows which users I'm talking about and which sides they fall on . . This will always be a contentious topic, but it is possible to prioritize the sources over your own beliefs when editing in contentious topics. The current regulars have forced out anyone who might be willing to do

7980:

the case) would be my most serious suggestion. In more of a brainstorming mode, somehow structure evidence slightly differently (post themes - source manipulation, edit warrning, etc and allow submissions for that them), you could do summary style again (would not recommend given how much time it

7527:

of referring need work, but I don't think AE admins need to be told to bold vote something in order to find consensus to refer. All 4 uninvolved admins - with 4 uninvolved admins being a lot of admins these days - agreed to refer, and all 4 were (as best as I can tell) clear about what each other

7278:

Any appeals of sanctions by editors previously warned or sanctioned in ARBPIA should be handled by Arbcom to take pressure off individual administrators. Arbcom discussions have clerks to handle word limits, aspersions, and other disruptive editing. Arbcom can simply vote on if the sanction was a

6100:

It seems highly likely that this is going to be accepted as a full case, but I do want to push back on some of the claims being bandied about here. There is this misconception that there are "pro-Israel" editors vs "pro-Palestinian" editors, and that is both not true and has never been true. Once

6034:

And being reported is not the same as being blocked. There are many "discovered" sockpuppets operating in the topic area right now. Many people in the topic area can "see" the socks like bright objects. They are part of the community of editors, they are major contributors, they have an important

5885:

PIA topic area - project membership (3019 articles). Articles that are members of both Wikiproject Israel and Palestine. This is the approach BilledMammal uses, so thanks for that. Neither of these methods capture every article that a person would say is in the topic area, they are both different

11378:

Sorry that I did not answer your question sooner, as the ping was lost on my end. As the instructions are written, the admin that closes the AE discussion determines the consensus of admin who commented on the case. If the closing admin determines that the consensus is an ARCA referral or a case

9325:

Motion 4, Enforced BRD: This would make editing in the topic area a glacial slog; it would also add a massive first-mover advantage to anyone who creates an article. Because the R in BRD can't be used to "uncreate" an article, someone could create a highly-biased article and then force extensive

9093:

able to handle it, and you and maybe some other Arbs are saying the opposite. Handing the problem back to AE with an admonition to do it better is what will do nothing about the topic area. From my limited experience, bringing a case about one editor at a time to AE results in walls of text that

8716:

could morph into the nationalism of modern Israel, In that sense, Palestinians are incidental, to a much broader point-of-view. And lastly, there was this vast disparity between the cusp of scholarship and mainstream reportage, and editors were basically drawing on the latter, which is no way to

8353:

and 'the usual suspects' (people like myself) might give the impression of a detached view by an experienced admin. Not quite true. You admitted 17 years ago that you used your admin tools to unblock an Israeli editor for a 3R infraction because, offline he contacted you and convinced you he was

8020:

one of the reasons I requested CU back was to help in this topic area. But the CU policy has a globally established floor (one which is monitored by the Ombuds who report directly to the Board of the WMF which underscores how seriously its taken). Unlike most global policies where enwiki has far

4900:

Excluding "involved" participants - "Editors designated "involved" in the area of conflict" would be everyone who edits in ARBPIA. I'm not sure of the thinking behind putting restrictions on everybody who edits ARBPIA. There certainly isn't any evidence that everybody who edits ARBPIA is editing

13497:

I seem not to have been completely clear in my earlier comment. My point was not that editors should be free to ignore topic-bans if they are making (what they perceive as) beneficial edits. It is that the scope of a topic-ban in the first place should be keyed to the scope of the problem it is

13294:

deletion discussions; it's more nuanced than that (to be fair, is AE really set up for nuance?). Rather, that, in your metaphor, it's not whether content should be deleted, but whether it should live in the reader's eye or out of their sight. A merge is not a deletion, but that is not to say it

10665:

which causes a problem. If an uninvolved administrator notices disruption that is in part (but not wholly) due to three users (A B and C), and A has already written 1000 words, B has written 2500 words, and C has written 4000 words, what is the administrator going to do? They could impose a "no

9094:

include attempts to demonize the editor who first filed the AE report. After one such experience, I gave up on AE for this topic area, and I gave up on trying to edit in this topic area. (And I know better than to name names here on this request page, as opposed to on an eventual Evidence page.)

6116:

I dont want to get too caught up in what I think are opinions of people uninformed on both the actual editing in this topic area as well as being generally uninformed on what the sources actually support in this topic area. Ill just restate that this is not "pro-Israel" vs "pro-Palestinian" POV

4976:

has "neutral" in the title, but it redefines the word to mean something unique on Knowledge. NPOV doesn't mean free of bias, it means we adopt mainstream bias. We say in wikivoice what the mainstream says, we identify dissenting views that the mainstream deems significant, and ignore the others

4854:

If no one else other than Levivich had replied, some quorum of admin would have been able to reach consensus on האופה. The fact that the replies that actually happened split the focus in a way that AE is ill-equipped to handle is why I ultimately (if reluctantly) agreed we should refer the case

2550:

describes; the CT page describes what is and is not under the ECR restriction in a way that is entirely compatible with the wording of ECR. ECR covers the area of conflict, and userspace is not in area of conflict. However it can be as "technically correct" as possible, but if it's confusing or

8053:

i think it's pretty clear looking at the chart that the number of new editors spiked because of the war (given that it spiked last october). i don't think you can claim from that chart alone what the impact of the regulars has been; it'd be ludicrous to say that the temperature in this area is

7818:

I can appreciate and support Trypto's scope, though I'd suggest that a narrower party list is appropriate. I would also note that, today, we've had an editor present evidence right here about the topic area and multiple others accuse that editor of lying about the evidence. This suggests three

7211:

I don't think ArbCom has an obligation to resolve the AE case. The fact is that there is nothing about it which AE could not handle perfectly well by itself. What you should do is send it back to AE (taking the cue from the practice of appellant courts sending cases back to the referring lower

7167:

why many editors who enter the I/P area quickly decide that it is toxic and controlled by a cabal. It's because they come along armed with nothing except strong political opinions and a few newspaper articles, and don't like it when they meet experienced editors familiar with the vast academic

5074:

news media for history -- like citing to a 1948 New York Times article that says the Arabs "fled" instead of "were expelled", which is something I've seen a number of times in this topic area, and which should be totally avoided. I would phrase it like: stick to scholarship, except for current

4628:

Thank you for your comment. I think that a full case/case-like structure would be best, as that is the sort of thing that would allow for clear examination of the complex multi-party disputes that AE is not quite able to handle well. In my view, I don't think the topic-wide "please be brief in

2237:

A decision is added to the index explicitly allowing CTOP restrictions to apply to edits made in relation to related content anywhere on Knowledge to close the loophole currently exempting userspace completely. This would mean, however, that to be covered user talk pages would need to have the

12825:

I deliberately kept it vague because "recent" means different things in different contexts. In the context of the ongoing war where information changes rapidly and articles are edited to keep up, an edit from an hour ago might be outdated and buried in the history but some of the higher-level

10724:

If content is significantly changed, altered, or added to an article and that change/alteration/addition is contested, the change cannot be remade until a discussion takes place on the talk page. An exception will be made for reverts to enforce ECR or an AE remedy. Editors who feel there is a

10579:

Since this ARCA has been opened, there has been at least two more AE requests related to this topic area. ArbCom would do good to actually state their intentions on this issue - either open a case (or voice your intention to do so more clearly) so that AE admins can focus on other topic areas

10522:

Enforcement in this area has been largely ineffective. The net result is a hostile/toxic environment. Remaining editors face a dilemma to either disengage (probably the healthier option) or furiously engage (also bringing the worst side of all parties involved). This does not mean someone who

6942:

I also think, Levivich, that you're too focused on the sock issue. It exists, although perhaps it is not as impactful as we previously believed, but socks aren't the only issue in the topic area. POV-pushing among established editors is also rife, and is far more impactful than POV-pushing by

5979:

Note: this statement of mine "obviously limited to only talking about logged blocked socks" is not really true. There is also the network of sock related categories that might contain accounts assigned to sockmasters that do not have log entries that I would capture or log entries at all. The

10434:

say. And the scholars call it a genocide. I was once accused by a off-wiki website of "undermining the factual history of Israel on Knowledge by creating false documentation that shows nearly 400 Arab villages were allegedly depopulated by Jews and Israel." Well, guess what: even Israeli

8386:

re my putative 'atrocious behavior within this topic area'. You don't have to believe me when I say I don't hold grudges. But I have by all accounts a good memory. If someone out of the blue, whom I haven't seen around for 17 years, implies that I am one of the 'usual suspects', a sealioning

7673:

FWIW, I agree with the observations made by both Trypto and Nableezy that the "sides" here don't neatly align on pro-Israel/pro-Palestinian. Beyond the nuances they both have offered, I have seen a definite "established/multi-topic interested Wikipedian" vs "less-established more and/or more

7274:

As a sanction across the topic area, or added to the standard set of CTOP enforcement mechanisms available to administrators on a per editor or per discussion sanction, a 500 word limit in any discussion under 5000 words, and a 1000 word or 10% of the discussion limit, whichever is lower, on

8932:

I fully endorse what Zero has to say about academic sourcing, but I disagree with the conclusion. There are editors here who are engaging constructively, and editors who aren't: and to determine who is in which category ARBCOM really needs to examine the content and the sourcing editors are

8703:

on our emigration to Australia; to the unusual circumstances of having a father and mother each with a very odd, in a racist Australian world, tradition of sympathy for Zulus and aborigines; to having a Downie as our youngest sister, to an adolescent reading of Holocaust memoirs; to reading

5122:

about Al Jazeera, etc. The downgrading of the ADL, in particular, caused significant media coverage for barely much difference in the status quo of average Wikipedian (from my understanding, we already had significant warnings about using ADL with attribution only when speaking about Israel

12796:

SFR has raised a good point: "recent" is a vague definition. I'm thinking we could clarify it as either 1) reverting any edit made within the last 24 hours or 2) reverting the most recent edit to an article if it hasn't been edited in more than 24 hours. But that definitely adds a level of

10373:

To re-iterate: some of the worst abuse I have recieved is over removing "in Israel" from places which have been occupied by Israel since 1967. This should have been totally uncontroversial, but apparently isn't. Likewise, I sometimes have to undo edits which place Arab cities in Israel in

6341:

My aim was to review a representative sample of discussions in the topic space, rather than providing a sample biased towards discussions that I was aware of. To do this, I limited the discussions to two clearly defined areas; talk pages in both the Israel and Palestine Wikiprojects, and

11379:

request, it is the closing admin's responsibility to post the request at the appropriate venue. Bolded !votes sometimes help the closing admin determine the consensus. I would not rely on the clerks to open cases at ARCA because I am not sure how closely the clerk team is monitoring AE.

2207:' requires that before CTOP, ECR and 1RR are applied to any page other than an article the enforcement templates have been added to that page which is "only when disruption creates a need for additional administrative tools" and that this can never happen on userpages or user talk pages. 4909:). I don't know whether Enforced BRD or Consensus Required is better, or if either are improvements over neither, but we do not have enough data to know. Let admins apply them to pages first, and see how they work out, before we consider applying either of them to the entire topic area. 5290:

It sounds like a few of folks are leaning towards massive topic bans against all participants... Regardless of how unlikely such a proposal is, I hate the idea of "cleaning the slate" and such a broad strokes approach is likely to cause more problems than it would theoretically solve:

4652:

I believe that it might be useful for some anti-bludgeoning sanction to incorporated into the discretionary sanctions available for administrators to dole out, but if so, I think it should look like one that the community has previously endorsed in a DS area. One such sanction is that

2551:

seemingly incompatible to reasonable editors (which seems to be the case) then it's not doing it's purpose and needs to be rewritten or amended for clarity. If we're going to be imposing these atypical rules for this topic area then they need to be accessible and easily understood. -

10084:

many editors take editorial lines that lean towards one side or the other of the conflict: editors aren't required to have no POV, only articles are. None of this is that surprising to me for editing in a contentious topic area and I don't think that any of this per se is a problem.

7350:

Maybe this idea is wild, but how about anyone named in someone's evidence becomes a party? This isn't a court of law, and being a party doesn't mean there has to be findings or sanctions. Add that if you go over the standard word/diff limits you become a party and Bob's your uncle.

6141: 10602:. A full case, with evidence, should be opened. If after the full case, ArbCom still feels those motions are the best way to resolve this, well fine. But an ARCA is not the place to expect to be given all the evidence, so we will just end up with a case eventually. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez | 4901:

disruptively or that excluding their voices would somehow benefit the topic area. Also, experience editing a topic area is not a bad thing. I'm having a hard time seeing the logic in replacing experienced editors with inexperienced editors and expecting that to lead to improvement.

2658: 4887:

Word limits - Bludgeoning can't be determined by word count or comment count, those are indicators but not determinitive; any determination requires case-by-case analysis. Also, it's a fallacy to think that long discussions are always a problem. We can't decide whether to call it

9878:

be a problem in the area, nuke or not, but it's a problem that can be dealt with somewhat easily via SPI and sockpuppeteers having an almost comical tendency to accidentally out themselves. We shouldn't just put up with how much of a mess things currently are because there's the

6125:

say about this topic, thats their problem, not mine. Im aware of my reputation on certain websites, but in my entire time here my purpose has always been to bring the best sources I can find to an article and to base the content I write and the arguments I make on those sources.

10653:

is toothless. If a word limit is going to be imposed, sanctions need to be authorized for violating it - whether it's a universal word limit in the topic area, a discussion-specific word limit, or an editor-specific limit. Secondly, I don't think a flat word limit is going to

5590:

Why would a person on a righteous mission hand over control of which rules they have to follow to people hostile to their cause when they can simply use disposable accounts and pick and choose which rules to follow without having to concern themselves with the consequences of

2359: 7045:

For you second point, I want to say I am tired of the incivility in this topic area. It drove me from it before, with the only reason I returned to it being the current conflict, and it is sufficiently bad that I believe as soon as the current conflict ends I will withdraw

5267:

I will also say the 30/500 restriction as a "worsening" of situation seems silly. I am not quite sure about the logical reasoning behind that assertion, though some other biased publications have attempted to use that to suggest that wikipedia "censors" certain viewpoints?

7717:

in this topic area. 2) To the extent that Levivich's version of what happened at AE is true, I don't think that argues against a case; it supports the idea that thetopic area needs to be examined, not just having a single complaint against a now inactive editor resolved.

2818: 5851:

be dealt with somewhat easily via SPI" (my bolding) is just not true. That's what the data shows, and we have a lot of data, at least for people who advocate for Israel, less so for people who advocate for Palestine (although they are also present). If you ask questions

9588:

information, unfortunately I have had numerous people wishing me death and other unpleasant things both on and off-wiki – most recently in June an IP left numerous edit summaries on articles saying I should be tortured, stabbed, beheaded, raped or "bullied to suicide".

10190:

Those holding up progress by causing endless circular arguments on talk pages (I'm not going to say "bludgeoning" because people may look at BilledMammal's subpage which IMO has a wildly flawed methodology for assessing this). A lot of these people are, again, new-ish

6553:

I think it also addresses your concerns regarding the parties list; because it shows that the topic area is dominated by editors who generally align with a pro-Palestinian position, we would expect that such editors would make up the majority of a representative party

10732:

Both of these suggestions would work similar to how full protection of an entire page works now - but with the added protection that it wouldn't be a unilateral administrator replying to an edit request or making the determination of which version to protect - as per

6899:

As for the utility, I think it helps us determine whether concerns such as those raised by Nishidani that the party list is unrepresentative, as well as concerns such as those raised by Number 57 that the topic area is dominated by editors holding a specific POV, are

6618:

In general, that table is intended to provide on overview of the issue in the topic area, for the purpose of helping the arb's determine scope and parties. While it will be useful in any case that is opened, and I see it as evidence of POV pushing, I don't believe it

5837:

If every editor currently active in the topic area were topic banned today, the topic area would be rapidly recolonized, probably within a matter of days or weeks. The pioneers would be more likely to come from subpopulations that do not think the prohibition against

10405:: "Once discovered, a sockpuppet account is automatically blocked" No, they are not. I am 100% sure that a Tombah-sock is active at present, but he is still unblocked. And Nocal works in the tech/computer-industry and knows every trick in the book to avoid detection. 6946:

The "massacre" RM's demonstrate that well; we have editors consistently, based on their own POV, saying that massacre's are only perpetrated by one side - and when we review those discussions we find that those editors present contradictory arguments to support this

6998:

That’s a discussion about moving from a title using "massacre" (Re'im music festival massacre) to a title using "massacre" (Supernova music festival massacre) In other words, the "massacre" aspect isn’t being considered, which is why it isn’t included in the table:

9131:

I predict you'll end up finding that this has a lot less to do with POV than some editors are claiming. And you won't have to judge source material the way that it happened in the Polish Holocaust case. Personally, I expect to present some evidence in the form of:

8918:

into whether editors are editing within all the PAGs, not just the ones easy to assess. I also think it would be a mistake for ARBCOM to handle all the appeals. We shouldn't be spending the limited resource that is ARBCOM's time on appeals that aren't complicated.

5137:

In terms of reversion, the reversion limits are harder to understand in CTOP space, especially for more contentious arguments. A clarification of what the "base" article text is and what the contentious edit that is being reverted is would be useful. In my case on

2343: 10121:

Not only do I agree with The Kip and Zanahary that a significant number of topic bans should be on the table, but such bans are the bare minimum of what's necessary. At this point, topic bans aren't a drastic last resort. They're the first step of a slow, painful

13394:

Because if that interpretation is correct, then basically the editor can spam AfDs with "merge" or "redirect" instead of "delete" and get away scot free because "I cannot predict if the article is gonna be deleted, I just respect the boundaries not to argue for

13212:

my comments on that talk page, and annotated that they should be disregarded, because I had been "topic banned" from DELETION discussions So if there are those who need guidance, it's not me. They did not like my content, and are putting their 'thumbs on the

329:

Requests for amendment are used to ask for an amendment or extension of existing sanctions (for instance, because the sanctions are ineffective, contain a loophole, or no longer cover a sufficiently wide topic); or appeal for the removal of sanctions (including

11234: 6121:. Since I know he means me, Ill just state that I do not edit Knowledge to push a POV. I edit Knowledge to try to make it so that article in this topic area are based on the balance of the best sources available. And if somebody does not like what the sources 10690:

bring up a good point - contentious topics do somewhat frequently have to rely on !vote counting, because regardless of the strengths of the arguments, many users will be !voting based on their personal opinion. This can take the form of simply ignoring the

10751:

administrators have the discretion to temporarily fully protect an article to end an ongoing edit war. This approach may better suit multi-party disputes and contentious content, as it makes talk page consensus a requirement for implementation of requested

10615:

I'm going to presume the evidence posted by Amayorov was something that would be best suited as private evidence in an ArbCom case. This is even more reason that a case should be opened rather than trying to dispense with this by motion(s). -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez |

10556:

is possible to refactor/raise a prepared PIA5 instead of starting from scratch, I would support a separate venue. Everyone should have a fair chance to bring input, but for most editors (myself included) ARCA is incredibly confusing and bureaucratic. ~ 🦝

9313:

situation and just remove the people who are unable to stop themselves. Bludgeoning is a symptom of the real problem, not its cause. Also, it would make editing in the topic area even more stressful because you'd have to constantly keep track of your word

9785:

from both sides of the POV-war, there's a near-constant attitude of "my side is doing nothing wrong, if we just sanctioned the POV-pushers everything would be fine," rather than any introspection on the absolutely toxic environment created by nearly all

8556:. Just out of curiosity, if Arbcom opens a case, who are the editors whose behaviour is to be examined. The list given by Red-tailed hawk, or is it larger? I say that because there is a massive imbalance in the people singled out, according to the usual 13539: 9143:

But the community expects ArbCom to solve the intractable problems that the community has failed to solve. ArbCom knows that this is one of them. To drop the ball on the basis that the request process wasn't good enough would be failing the community.

6351:

Finally, as I said on the analysis page, I am willing to rerun it with different configurations, including an expanded list of discussions. I am also working to implement the recommendations on the talk page, to make the data more accurate and useful.

12296:

As I say below, given the alarm bells being rung above, and the threat of PIA5, I think we have to consider drastic measures. I have added a sunset clause because I really do think this is an extreme measure that shouldn't be in effect in perpetuity.

10966: 9750:- see how some of those named in this case pretty much receive only logged warnings and/or minor things such as revert restrictions for substantial incivility, abuse of AE process, edit-warring, etc that would've gotten a newer user swiftly blocked. 8368:). When I read your first post here I remembered that contretemps. I never reported it as a misuse of admin tools, and I never hold grudges. But I do remember things, and took your generalization as coming from someone 'involved' in the topic area. 10643:, and that sentiment is reflected by enough administrators who frequent AE in general (or in this topic area), then I have no problem with this being added to their toolkit. I am, however, skeptical that this will do much to improve the topic area. 8473:

intractable, but not descriptively so, taking in both an Israel (semi-)official POV and the scholarship, to the end of achieving NPOV. To the contrary. We can draw on one of the richest WP:RS highbar resource bases existing, for the simple reason

7546:

so you're saying the answer I gave is incorrect? If so mark me as surprised but glad for your clarification. I will eagerly await to see if a rough consensus of other arbitrators agree with you and presuming they do adjust my actions accordingly.

8712:) - there was a bias to just an israeli narrative of Jewish traditions there. So 'pro-Pal' is risible. Indeed, if I have an intellectual challenge reflected in my work here, it is to read to the end of trying to grasp how the universalism of the 4904:

Enforced BRD - This is already something that can be imposed on talk pages, yet in my experience it has almost never been imposed on any talk page in ARBPIA (I can't think of a single example). We have one page that is under Consensus Required

10712:

10271:

meet experienced editors familiar with the vast academic literature. The small fraction of new editors who arrive with genuine knowledge of the topic have a much better time of it", I have met people with PhDs in the I/P-area, who knows far,

2261: 9320:

which they're involved and can never contribute to another? How would this even work? We'd rapidly run out of people willing to respond to RFCs (non-sockpuppets, anyway. I guess it could serve as a honey-trap for them but it's not worth it.)

8247:

in my history of making active edits. . topic area where, as @ABHammad observes, Knowledge is out-of-step with a large number of the reliable sources that we rely on for other topics . . I find myself aligning with @The_Kip's suggestion of

5608:

I don't know what the 'topic area' is exactly, but thousands of article talk pages have one of the various topic area related templates informing people about the special rules. So, we can look at those and pretend it's the 'topic area' or

4555:

around that topic. For completeness's sake, I included everyone in this one. Going forward, there might be some norm/convention, but I figured that it was better to incorporate everyone rather than potentially leave someone relevant out. —

12926: 148: 10593:

I see all motions being proposed as merely kicking the can down the road. The problems in this topic area are those like Levivich who have taken to making threats (as Barkeep points out) to other editors because they seem to feel they're

9428:. Are you *really* sure this is the example you want to bring up? You're making my point about "It's you: you're the problem" quite well for me. But sure, you never hold grudges... except for the one you've apparently held for 17 years. 6605:, as while you can argue you didn't support "massacre", I don't think you're arguing you opposed it? I've also manually reviewed all the others of yours, and they appear correct; if you disagree with any of the others, please let me know. 11639:, with a list of desired parties, evidence of disruptive behavior of each, evidence of prior dispute resolution attempts about each, and without a general unenforceable aspersion-casting "we need to remove everyone from the topic area". 11527:

That sounds an awful lot like "let everyone throw mud at the wall and see what sticks". The combination of that approach and ArbCom feeling pressured to be seen to be doing something has historically led to poor or ineffectual outcomes.

10054:". This is a repeating problem and is only leading to parties that are able to mobilise more effectively getting changes made. I'm not saying policy is being purposefully gamed here, but if it was, this is one way it might look. Tagging 10442:

AFAIK: only pro-Israeli groups actively recruits wp-editors, they have done so for at least 15 years, they come to wp. with lots of opinions and zero knowledge of scholarly work. And are bitterly dissapointed when they cannot convince

6931:

The terms just means that the editor sympathizes with that side more than the other. Both positions are reasonable, and it doesn't mean they are anti-Palestinian/anti-Israeli, nor does it mean that there is a problem with those editors

2723:

While this would solve the confusion brought by the wording, it also further erodes the ways in which an editor can edit, despite there being no compelling evidence in this discussion of intractable disruption warranting this change. -

9966:. If there were any utility to a page which simply counts the number of times someone's signature appears on a page, I would ask him to rerun the data based on 18 comments in 4 discussions so that NoCal100 would appear in his list. -- 7475:, right now administrators cannot unilaterally place word limits on editors or discussions. Imposing such limits let's editors plan out what they'd like to say and what they choose to respond to, rather than be cut off mid-discussion. 6231:

Including both editors switching their stance to conform to their POV (for example, supporting using massacre as a descriptive term only when Israelis were targeted, or only when Palestinians were targeted) and editors misrepresenting

13636:

I think that merge discussions are outside of the bounds of the topic ban, I would like to register my profound disappointment that both 7&6 and TPH seem to be unable to stop touching the general area of the notability of topics.

11711: 11687:

I like your idea for applying the RS restriction. But why a recent events carve out? And how would you suggest defining recent? Such a simple word, and yet now twice in one discussion we find ourselves having definitional problems :/

9718:

to deal with a case where A and B want to report C, D, and E, except A and B have also been engaging in the reported behavior themselves, and F probably was too but wasn't brought to the case until later due to a variety of reasons.

9116:

to handle the topic area, and on ways to solve those impediments". Use Red-tailed Hawk's parties list, and make clear that, because it's a long list, being on the list is not a presumption of wrongdoing. Then do these three things:

7855:

I feel like you're saying we disagree (for the 2nd time here) but I don't think we do? If BilledMammal is presenting misleading evidence that is important to know and act on, especially if that evidence is intentionally misleading.

8211:

at each other in every discussion; there's a level of toxicity that just makes me want to ignore the area entirely. This BATTLEGROUND issue is only compounded by the fact that virtually all of the culprits are WP:UNBLOCKABLE . . -

5477:

Then the next two on the list are RM's that I proposed and the result accorded with what I proposed. I will waste no more time with this, if anyone would like to accuse me of POV pushing based on such evidence, feel free to do so.

7694:

the absence of האופה is exactly why the referral is here. There became so many other editors conduct to consider - not just in tag teaming but in the AE thread itself - that it became beyond what AE can handle well in its format.

12922: 144: 8861:'s enabling of Zionism that it did on the founding fathers. Part of the ongoing problems in this area is reading back into the past, which is another country, perceptions and notions that consolidated themselves only much later. 4883:

Appeals only to arbcom - I don't see any evidence that appeals are a significant source of disruption in this topic area. Where are the links to 5-10 recent disruptive appeals? So I don't see any reason to change anything about

7528:

thought as opinions evolved, so it's not like it was a puzzle what was happening to the uninvolved admins and since other commenters gave feedback on whether or not to refer I don't think it was a puzzle to anyone else either.

5332:

on large sections of the editor community who specialize on here... Unless it is certain that all of the project is absolutely unsalvageable or ARBIPA is somehow all a failure, I ask arbitrators to avoid granting such a power.

3020:. I think there's a strong interest in standardization, so I would rather have separate up-or-down votes on those two things, and then it would seem logical for you to support both of those motions. Curious for your thoughts. 13123: 9049:

people telling you here that there are conduct problems that have overwhelmed AE that you can be confident that it won't just be a fishing expedition, but it would just result in ongoing disruption if ArbCom punts for now. --

7041:

For your first point, I disagree that it sheds factual light. There is no useful information from someone supporting moving "massacre" to "massacre"; indeed, it is indistinguishable from someone opposing moving "massacre" to

5543:

discussed the other day. Of course the citations would be aids to the reader and not sources to build content from. The only time i've seen something along the lines of that "Reliable source consensus-required restriction"'s

6730:

My sympathies lie more with Israel than with Palestine, although I try to recognize and account for any bias that introduces in my thinking - while editors are allowed to have a POV, I think the first step in ensuring their

13099: 7127: 3185: 1919: 13581:@SN, that is fair, I suppose my thinking is that merges are far enough removed from deletion (even though some content may be left out of the final product) that they would not fall under the "broadly construed" umbrella. 12918: 12910: 9511:

POV pushers in contentious topic areas, at least allow them to contribute in roughly equal numbers). I've been here nearly 20 years and the dominant personalities in this topic sphere have barely changed in the last ten.

140: 132: 7252:

I calculated the 23% figure using the total of 431,132 that BM gave elsewhere. Using your total of 473,212 it would be 21% unless your way of counting also changes the top 20 counts. Also, the top contribution was 3.1%.

6113:, where BM has some 73 comments there. I dont think that subpage is accurate either in its definition or its counting, and Id caution that evidence by editors who are highly involved not simply be accepted as accurate. 2571: 12669:

Yes this will slow editing down (though I hope admins will exercise common sense when it comes to honest mistakes) but to a certain extent that's what we want. Reducing the urgency might help to lower the temperature.

2328: 11027: 9068:

have confidence that credible complaints will result in action and vexatious ones will be rejected. But if admins would prefer to refer a complaint against a specific editor to ArbCom, I'd be happy to hear that case.

2523: 11828:

I wouldn't support making all appeals to ArbCom by default, but if this takes some of the workload off of AE or gives admins cover to make unpopular but necessary decisions, I'm happy to take on some of that burden.

12490:

Ideally, the bold formatting has no effect anyway and it's all about the arguments. Restricting the use of formatting does not reduce (but perhaps increase) the amount of words people use to explain their position.

10332:

pro-Israeli enough. And outing: apparently you will "help the state of Israel" if you make public my RN. Gosh, this cat had no idea that she was that important! Oh well, on the internet nobody knows you're a ......

2537: 8193:(many of whom have been with us for well over a decade) who are primarily on Knowledge to push their POV . . for most of the last two decades the two sides have been seriously mismatched in terms of numbers and 5010:(created one week ago) has 250 editors and 171 watchers. Those hundreds of editors are part of the Knowledge community (as am I, as are the editors I work with every day). They have not avoided this subject area. 3181: 2615: 1915: 1878: 11438:

This isn't much of an update, but I don't want to give the impression that this matter isn't being considered. I've been following the statements here and I am convinced a case is needed. At the latest, once the

13405:

but only if it continues to be disruptive. If it is not disruptive but still a violation of TBan, then a warning should be enough, and a recommendation to do something else and just wait until the TBan expires.

12914: 12906: 9158:

I'm gratified that Barkeep49 agrees with my idea about the scope, but I want to caution against narrowing the parties list too much. Barkeep49's suggestion definitely leaves out editors who need to be examined.

6705:. As for the RM statistics, Seggallion only participated in one; if you like, I can try to group sockpuppets under their masters as I did at the activity statistics, but better to discuss that on the talk page. 136: 128: 10317:(and no: that isn't because our editing is that bad: some of the very worst abuse I have suffered was after I removed that the Western Wall was "In Israel" (It isn't, according to the International community.) 7804:, namely BilledMammal, Nableezy, and Selfstudier (and maybe also Levivich?). I think some of these allegations are stronger than others but those allegations are 100% part of why this case was referred to you. 6307:

Regarding ScottishFinnishRadish's word limit proposal, I don't think that will have the desired result. Editors are often required to review a wide array of sources, such as when attempting to determining if a

6384: 6000:

If you can't sanction or block a person, you can't solve problems. It's like sending the dishonest people to prisons without gates, then blaming the honest people who haven't been sent to prison for the crime

2961:). If it would be useful to import some language from Remedy 6-8, that could be on the table. But there may not be much appetite for doing so, in which case we can just adopt the motion as drafted here. Best, 8672:, with whom I engaged in at considerable length around 2016. But I had no, and do not have, and don't care to have, any proof that this intuition might be correct and indicate a dual account. What I did was 6348:

I am also aware, and prominently state in the analysis, that it is only an approximation - while most examples listed will be bludgeoning, exceptions will exist, including possibly the discussion you mention.

10673:

of the current arbitration committee, sure, but if this is added for the topic area it should not go away until there is a clear consensus (either among arbitrators or AE admins) that it is no longer needed.

7378:

I think there's already an enforced BRD sanction, but it only applies to the editor that first made the edit. This would be more effective in this topic, where the reverts are often between several editors.

7122:

I'm not sure why you think that I believe it is unrelated to disruption in the topic area. It is related, but it’s not in the scope of that table, which is focused on presenting information about individual

11244:

and other users whose behavior is under consideration here (perhaps the editors listed under "Other editors whose behavior was directly mentioned in the AE thread", though even that list may be too long).

7413:, we don't know what's going to pass yet, so we don't know that any tools are being added to our toolbox. I think a clear statement from Arbcom about the topic area would be handy if they're going to punt. 5961:

If we just look at 2022 to present, obviously limited to only talking about logged blocked socks that made edits in PIA (with the caveat that we can't know the sock discover rate), we can see the following

5271: 2141: 2068: 1933: 11011: 3177: 3169: 1911: 1903: 6319:

Instead, I think a comment limit - perhaps ten comments per discussion - will be more effective at preventing the back-and-forth and repetition of points that causes discussions to expand unproductively.

2954:

This procedure applies to edits and pages in all namespaces. When considering whether edits fall within the scope of a contentious topic, administrators should be guided by the principles outlined in the

12902: 12186:

While I don't think a broad word limit that is implemented by default is the most effective way to deal with issues, there is benefit in allowing uninvolved administrators to implement this as needed. -

7089: 5191:

words or 10% of comments, whichever is greater?), or limits per week (500 words per week?) In addition, I have questions if such a limit would apply to single RFC threads, or to the whole topic at once.

124: 10638:

1 - I haven't particularly seen evidence that there is an issue of AE time/capacity/capability being insufficient to handle the rare appeals made of AE actions in the area. However to quote HJ Mitchell

3089:

but the related disputes spill over. Ideally, editors should be able to work on articles about the culture and history of the region without big scary ArbCom notices, at least until there are problems.

11663: 11594: 6394: 5307:). Seeing a list of highly motivated folks in this topic area is not a sign necessarily they are always hogging the attention, so much as they provide much of the energy to keep Knowledge up to doate. 4520: 11648: 11585: 11440: 5842:" applies to them. We know this because we have lots of data about how new highly motivated biased editors cross (or tunnel through) the EC barrier and what they do when they get into the topic area. 5834:

and editors who do not and therefore cannot be sanctioned effectively. Maybe a currently topic banned user in this discussion could talk openly about this reality. Their input could be very valuable.

4210: 9667:

some months ago for a different arb case. Some of the more active users noted on that chart are now TBANned, but it still serves as a solid chunk of data for the mass-scale POV-warring in the area.

8633:

to push 'massacre' (which is a reasonable preference anyway), what was going on won't be evident to the birds-eye perspective. The name-change was pushed by an old throwaway account by a NoCal sock

2467: 13641: 13631: 13523: 8695:

As to the requested 'pro-Pal POV', that is inane language. I could give a long essay on the roots of my general outlook, from family tales of Irish dispossession (the genocidal consequences of (a)

11433: 11306: 10278:

As for Guerillero' wish for better cat-herding rules; I was thinking of something like: scratch another cat's face: 1 month's automatic topic-ban. Of course "scratch another cat's face" has to be

10158: 9194:

area and how it affects AE (but not getting ArbCom into reviewing source material!), followed by a second case focusing on editor conduct, might well be the most practical way to accomplish it. --

2754:'s idea; I'm open to them changing the motion text if I missed something. It's a simple and clear solution, and simplifying confusing conditions that have actually caused confusion is good to me. 13610:

proposing an article for deletion or contesting a proposed deletion: Clearly within scope for me. A ban from deletion wouldn't be very effective if someone could sidestep it by prodding articles.

13576: 11291: 8629:, of BilledMammal classifying you as a supporter of the term 'massacre' when you did no such thing, confirms my wariness about drawing any conclusions from broad statistical charts like that. In 3173: 3165: 1907: 1899: 10541:

These remedies would be easier to resolve than the (possible) allegations of tag-teaming and or gamification of Knowledge which will continue to be contested and or repeatedly brought here ~ 🦝

4514: 12894: 9798:, et al. This complete lack of introspection/acknowledgement that "hey, maybe I'm part of the problem too" is exactly why many in the area, if not all its experienced users, deserve sanctions. 5897:

The bottom plot shows the same results scaled by article count. This result might suggest that the topic area is more attractive to editors than Knowledge in general. Didn't really expect that.

293: 116: 5205:

I think categorizing and various ontologies is also problematic and hard to determine, as is expected. See the issue with whether Israel is just accused of being an apartheid state, or also a

2154: 9778:

After further reading of comments here from multiple users on either side of the POV-war they either deny exists or insist it's mainly/only the other side that's toxic, I'd like to reiterate:

2733: 1850: 1845: 1838: 1833: 1828: 1823: 1818: 1813: 1808: 1803: 1798: 1793: 1788: 1783: 1778: 1773: 1768: 1763: 1758: 1753: 1746: 1741: 1736: 1731: 1726: 1721: 1716: 1711: 1706: 1076: 1071: 1064: 1059: 1054: 1049: 1044: 1039: 1034: 1029: 1024: 1019: 1014: 1009: 1004: 999: 994: 989: 984: 979: 972: 967: 962: 957: 952: 947: 942: 937: 932: 11001: 8971:

substantively on talk pages. BRD cannot work when editors aren't discussing things in good faith. This is too much of a blunt instrument, and it does not get at the core issue brought here.

7065: 7369: 5549: 4318: 2886: 1701: 1696: 1691: 1686: 1681: 1676: 1671: 1666: 1661: 1654: 1649: 1644: 1639: 1634: 1629: 1624: 1619: 1614: 1609: 1604: 1599: 1594: 1589: 1584: 1579: 1574: 1569: 1562: 1557: 1552: 1547: 1542: 1537: 1532: 1527: 1522: 1517: 1512: 1507: 1502: 1497: 1492: 1487: 1482: 1477: 1470: 1465: 1460: 1455: 1450: 1445: 1440: 1435: 1430: 1425: 1420: 1415: 1410: 1405: 1400: 1395: 1390: 1385: 1378: 1373: 1368: 1363: 1358: 1353: 1348: 1343: 1338: 1333: 1328: 1323: 1318: 1313: 1308: 1303: 1298: 1293: 1286: 1281: 1276: 1271: 1266: 1261: 1256: 1251: 1246: 927: 922: 917: 912: 907: 902: 897: 892: 887: 880: 875: 870: 865: 860: 855: 850: 845: 840: 835: 830: 825: 820: 815: 810: 805: 800: 795: 788: 783: 778: 773: 768: 763: 758: 753: 748: 743: 738: 733: 728: 723: 718: 713: 708: 703: 696: 691: 686: 681: 676: 671: 666: 661: 656: 651: 646: 641: 636: 631: 626: 621: 616: 611: 604: 599: 594: 589: 584: 579: 574: 569: 564: 559: 554: 549: 544: 539: 534: 529: 524: 519: 512: 507: 502: 497: 492: 487: 482: 477: 472: 13398:

This is why in my playbook "broadly construed" means "imagine any possible scenario in which an admin may potentially block you, even if they are not totally right, and stay away from it".

11424:

I agree that action from ArbCom is necessary, and having reviewed everything over the past couple of days, looks like it may need to be a full case based on the complexity of the issue. -

8656:

accrued area familiarity with its vivacious theatre of new editors who sound like oldtimers, and the RS literature one acquires, there is a dimension of experience, of what Polanyi called

6448:

Alone, not enough to warrant action - but it is another piece of evidence that adds to evidence like only supporting the use of "massacre" when the victims are from the side they support.

9746:

the problem is those new-ish users are fairly easily dealt with via AE, if they haven't already violated ECR. On the contrary, AE has shown itself to be reluctant to heavily sanction any

4155: 3161: 2528:

I just wanted to note that I am aware of and am watching this discussion, but I would like to look more into the reasoning/history behind the current wording before commenting further. -

1895: 1241: 1236: 1231: 1226: 1221: 1216: 1211: 1206: 1201: 467: 462: 457: 452: 447: 442: 437: 432: 427: 8739:

the article shows that anti-Palestinian bias persisted disproportionately in the NYT during both periods and, in fact, worsened from the First Intifada to the Second.' (Holly M Jackson,

6345:

This does mean I missed at least one discussion that I am aware of where I was too enthusiastic, but it also means I missed discussions where you were too enthusiastic - it balances out.

2333: 2149: 2130:

The entire set of articles whose topic relates to the Arab-Israeli conflict, broadly interpreted; edits relating to the Arab-Israeli conflict, to pages and discussions in all namespaces

13247:

a DELETION discussion, and so far as I recall I had not even ventured into any other MERGER discussion in 2+ years. This was once; and only came up because I had edited this article.

5269: 5038:, but with a carve out for current events. In recent days at Talk:Zionism, we've had editors try to cite the Bible, Knowledge, and dictionaries, as RS. This is a too-common occurrence. 1176: 402: 13169: 10754:

However this is rarely used as it prevents edits to other parts of the page while the temporary full protection is in place, so perhaps this form of "partial full protection" may help.

10598:. By resolving this without any sanctions against the editors making this topic area contentious, that is only going to give those editors more reason to continue their disruption and 7268: 6109:, but a, that isnt a formal discussion, and b. that is a back and forth with a handful of users. That isnt bludgeoning by any reasonable definition. They also somehow neglected to add 2323: 2079: 7161:

Bludgeoning does not mean making a lot of edits. Replying to everyone who makes a contrary comment is bludgeoning, but repeatedly bringing new reliable sources is called good editing.

6624: 6380: 5253:

rule. There are RFCs where arguments on either side are heavily favored by numbers before an admin/uninvolved closer throws away votes that have reasoning that is logically rebutted.

1161: 387: 9334:

work, it only really functions when there's a solid status quo and no need to update it quickly, which isn't the case during an active fast-moving real-world conflict like this one.

6543:

I think it demonstrates that the issue of sockpuppets is less significant than we believe. In 2024, only one sockmaster is in the top 100 editors by edit count within the topic area.

5059: 11732: 7657:

the Arbitation Committee will decide who the parties are. So it might be RTH's list, it might be a smaller group of that, or it could be part of that and others not included there.

7299: 6504:

What sort of information would be helpful in determining a scope? In addition, will parties be decided at this stage, or will parties be able to be added during the evidence phase?

9958:

Just for the record... after further research I have been able to determine that it was the decision to set the cutoff at 20 comments rather than at 18 which kept Kentucky Rain24 (

7060:

However, you ignore all of this, to focus on one of two that I haven't yet been able to address - and you use that failure to accuse me of manipulating the data to prevent it from

4754: 2179: 2084: 12411: 10115:

I agree with Ravpapa's points about low article quality, but these issues plague most current events articles (another area that could use cleanup, but it's not analogous to PIA).

6102: 4766:; emphasis mine) is that I had to submit it here rather than as a case request. If this is to change going forward, the instructions should probably be tweaked to clarify this. — 13273: 9537:

was disrupted by canvassing by pro-Israel editors who considered me to be a problem because I was doing things like removing articles on settlements from "in Israel" categories.

9241: 8444:

data we desperately need to as a work basis to get out of the suggestive/insinuating/subjective gossip mode often prevailing on wiki when it deliberates on core issues like this.

5111: 2768:

I'm worried this motion fails to resolve what happens to Remedies 6-8, which rely on the distinction between primary articles and related content. See below for one alternative.

2164:

I think Remedy 9 repeal is possibly long overdue, it was written in 2015, and it only reminds the obvious that admins can use indefinite blocks, which is true even outside CTOP.

2089: 9112:

I'm going to propose the case scope right here: "Ongoing disruption in the Israel-Palestine topic area, with a particular emphasis on factors that interfere with the ability of

8183:

makes it exhausting and frustrating for non-battleground editors to participate. In any event, I see the "usual suspects" attempting to downplay or deny that there's any dispute

4672:

good-faith editors who are entering the topic more than already occurs. That being said, making it available as a discretionary sanction that could be applied by an admin would

3153: 1887: 269: 245: 7484: 7467: 7449: 7434:

We've got a problem, apparently, with a bottomless well of newish accounts that make life difficult for good-faith editors, which is something that AE should be able to handle.

7422: 7405: 7388: 7360: 7345: 7328: 7311: 7154:

Imposing a limit on contributions that consists of a word limit or edit limit will cause delight to the tag teams, who will take full advantage of their combined greater limit.

4759:

A consensus of administrators at the arbitration enforcement noticeboard may refer an arbitration enforcement request to the Arbitration Committee for final decision through a

13142:) is topic banned from deletion discussions, broadly construed. This ban may be appealed twelve months after the enactment of this remedy, and every twelve months thereafter." 13118:) is topic banned from deletion discussions, broadly construed. This ban may be appealed twelve months after the enactment of this remedy, and every twelve months thereafter." 10146:

Administrators don't give a second thought to blocking or tbanning newbies, while they often shrink away from sanctioning entrenched editors who do much worse much more often.

4751:

If the closing admin determines that the consensus is an ARCA referral or a case request, it is the closing admin's responsibility to post the request at the appropriate venue

4264: 2338: 2043: 13353: 12584: 12424: 12249: 12072: 11908: 11745: 9000:, and some other editors (sometimes more crudely) finding such source material to be contrary to popular political opinion. In my experience, getting caught in the middle of 8040: 8021:

stricter rules, for CU (and OS) I think we're already operating close to, if not at, the floor. So if there are articulable reasons that justify CU it can be done - as I did

2831: 2671: 12885: 9841:

problematic pro-Israeli experienced editors are any less of a contributor to the toxicity, policy violations, et al in this area, or that they deserve any lesser sanctions?

6110: 4654: 3144: 13358: 13347: 13308: 10106: 7710: 5373:, what would be defined as recent? editwars may take the form of months long warring, in which case which edit is a revert, and which is disputed becomes contested as well 11615: 7920:

is any comment needed? They're giving new tools in response to the problems brought forward. Presumably the idea is that AE and individual admins start using those tools?

13268: 10971: 10912: 10768: 10031:

and therefore the number of attendees do swing discussion outcomes – while this isn't an issue as a one-off, when it is many discussions over many years, it is a problem.

9507:

and therefore the number of attendees do swing discussion outcomes – while this isn't an issue as a one-off, when it is many discussions over many years, it is a problem.

9259: 7629: 5584: 5283: 5237: 5185: 2576:

I think one issue with this is that the "primary articles" and "related content" distinction has proven to be less useful with time. When the case was first decided, the

13622:

At any rate, I wouldn't punish 7&6 or TPH for having been in merge discussions up to this point, since I do think it was arguable as to whether merges are in scope.

8205:

absurd levels of incivility, condescension, POV-pushing, bludgeoning, edit-warring, hypocrisy, and virtually every other type of WP:BATTLEGROUND editing humanly possible

7079: 10763: 8078: 7782:. Selfstudier and I draw different conclusions about that statement we agree on and the Arbs can decide which conclusion they agree with as it's ultimately up to them. 5596:

It might be better to assign low credence, by default, to the accuracy of assessments of the state of the 'topic area', a complex system with thousands of moving parts.

5567: 5441: 5393: 5360: 5342: 5262: 5222: 5200: 5167: 5132: 2318: 10782: 10686:

3 - I agree with those commenting that this should have no effect, since consensus is not based on bold !votes anyway, but on the strength of arguments. However, this

13262: 13234: 13203: 10976: 10847: 10573: 10412:" Keeping entrenched editors to protect us from socks and newbies is like keeping cats to protect the mice from kittens" I have no idea what this is supposed to mean. 9826:

Are there more pro-Palestinian problematic experienced editors in the area than pro-Israeli ones? Yeah, I kinda feel like that's an objective fact at this point - as

8067: 6222: 4804:

across the whole area will exhaust editor time unnecessarily, and it would prove unworkable (particularly so for articles on rapidly developing current events where

13491: 13415: 10946: 10842: 10077: 9883:

that it could get worse, and anyways, I disagree that the hypothetical "it could get really bad" is worse than the current reality of "it's a toxic disaster zone."

9853:

whom I won't name. Hell, from the linked motion, part of the reasons one side is smaller in the first place is because many of the problematic users from that side

8877:

Don’t know what’s happening, but keep me out. If the argument is that I’m bias, true, but I try as hard as I can to be neutral, and I can provide examples of this.

7490: 7168:

literature. The small fraction of new editors who arrive with genuine knowledge of the topic have a much better time of it. All of this is exactly as it should be.

4821: 4779: 4737: 4689: 4647: 4614: 4587: 4569: 4546: 2173: 11510: 10781:

The Arab-Israeli conflict's Arbitration history well predates the first PIA case; PIA1 is simply the first time ArbCom turned its gaze on the situation as a whole

8677:

helps one to assess things, beyond the issue of RS etc. If my informal hunch had been true, what followed would never show up in a statistical analysis like BM's.

7068:

didn't clarify that - but not prioritizing your request is not the same as manipulating the data, and there is no justification for these assumptions of bad faith.

5971:

The average 'SPA-ness' is low (percentage of edits in PIA articles, talk, templates, categories, portal and draft namespaces). They do not generally resemble SPAs.

192: 13380: 10940: 10814: 10178: 10052:

from a rough count, I see around 22 !votes endorsing the closure and 15 saying to overturn. I also don't see any kind of slam-dunk argument in the overturn !votes

9952: 9338: 8986: 8673: 8245:

incredibly experienced, incredibly knowledgeable of processes, , , enable(s) Wikilawyering on a scale that I've frankly not encountered anywhere else on Knowledge

8083: 7158:

means that a limit on "discussions" will just produce a lot of arguments over whether something was part of the same discussion or part of a different discussion.

7144: 6119:

there is a core group of 10-15 editors in this topic area (many of whom have been with us for well over a decade) who are primarily on Knowledge to push their POV

6070: 363:

If your request will affect or involve other users (including any users you have named as parties), you must notify these editors of your submission; you can use

12571: 12236: 12059: 11895: 11801: 10743:

avoid protecting a version that contains policy-violating content, such as vandalism, copyright violations, defamation, or poor-quality coverage of living people

7590:

does what I wrote above accurately summarize your thinking? I want to make sure to know whether to adjust my actions for any future potential referrals. Thanks,

6484:

I've included all editors with more than 500 edits since 2022 who have made 50%+ of their edits in the ARBPIA topic area. Sub-5000-edit accounts are marked with

10986: 10516: 10016: 9478: 9265: 9089:

about fixing the topic area in general. Among the multiple impasses in the discussion here on this request page is that AE admins are telling ArbCom that AE is

8911: 8886: 8116: 8110: 13518: 13364:

Yes, because merging will lead to at least some deletion of content - the nominated article may get deleted, some content during merger may be lost, and so on.

11343:

Your answer was "correct" because it gave one path to refer an AE case to ArbCom/ARCA. My comment above was to highlight a second path to get the same result.

11006: 8750: 2165: 13567:

of a discussion); I am willing to be persuaded in either direction. PROD would definitely fall under the "broadly construed" of deletion discussions, though.

13421: 10991: 10907: 10879: 10873: 10624: 10610: 10195: 10153: 9942: 7565:

thanks for that clarification. I want to understand this second parth. Am I correct that you're saying that if the 4 uninvolved administrators had all bolded

7138: 7105: 7020: 6984: 6959: 6913: 6791: 6747: 6714: 6661: 6636: 6569: 6513: 6457: 6432: 6410: 6361: 6329: 6075: 6044: 5990: 5401: 4827: 2223:

which I suspect is intended to mean things defined above as 'related content' (not what is actually says which is pages not covered at all in the definition).

9980: 9830:

or the aforementioned Swatjester have stated, just look at the number of experienced editors showing up to insist they're not the problem, everyone else is/"

7652: 6800: 6527: 6373:

There is a lot of POVPUSHING at RSN, but from what I've seen the issue is more common - and more effective - in the opposite direction from what you've seen.

5539:

to the Hebrew Bible in the Zionism article, and i would expect (depending on how detailed the content) citations to contemporary reporting of "fled" in that

13507: 10758: 10588: 10526:

Cases are brought to ArbCom or ANI after obvious escalations, however what we need is stronger focus on preventive measures over enforcement after the fact.

10118:

BilledMammal's list does produce some of the most active editors, and while there's plausibly a strong correlation, it doesn't prove bludgeoning on its own.

10100: 9947: 9647: 8980: 8965: 8950: 8927: 6165:

that was a well advertised and well attended RFC a baker's dozen years ago. What level of consensus it was really has no bearing on anything at this point.

5938: 5487: 5470: 12760: 12682: 12485: 12230: 12168: 12040: 11889: 11841: 10797: 9153: 9080: 8349:. Surely you shouldn't take exception to a somewhat playful implication you were a 'cat'. Your presence is very rare in the IP area and your remarks about 8022: 7885: 5625:

How many are hostile, toxic, combative, tendentiousness, condescending, bludgeoning, hypocritical, bullying, glaringly dishonest etc. and how many are not?

5546:

article in a peer-reviewed scholarly journal, an academically focused book by a reputable publisher, and/or an article published by a reputable institution

5423:, just two days after blaming another editor for being a sock solely based on some shared topics of interest with a blocked editor who had 72,000(!) edits 4893: 4601:

Please see my comment above, and my exchange with Levivich for an explanation as to why you are listed under the category of "Involved AE participants". —

13513: 12879: 12865: 12806: 12650: 12403: 12389: 12315: 12138: 12049: 11810: 11697: 11678: 11607: 10996: 10200: 10071: 10008: 9970: 9472: 9446: 9403: 9370: 9231: 9217: 9203: 9188: 9168: 9105:

be is a feature, not a bug, because obviously you shouldn't prejudge the case. Let the community give you evidence. And this is one case where you should

9058: 9043: 9028: 9013: 8906: 8366: 7998: 7971: 7375:

Motion 3 is interesting, but it has to be clear if it is or is not a sanction, and if it should be applied to all regulars, or just over-engaged regulars.

6950:(Nishidani, I do have more to say in regards to your comments - I'm not ignoring the questions/statements you made - but I don't have time at the moment) 6401:

Considering that policy doesn't provide any support for considering a source unreliable on grounds of bias, I find this example particularly problematic.

5493: 13179: 12838: 12777: 11726: 11466: 9976: 8741:

New York Times distorts the Palestinian struggle: A case study of anti-Palestinian bias in US news coverage of the First and Second Palestinian Intifadas

8596: 7881: 7247: 7228: 7130: 7097: 7054: 7012: 6976: 6951: 6905: 6783: 6739: 6706: 6653: 6628: 6561: 6505: 6449: 6424: 6402: 6390: 6353: 6321: 4695: 3758: 3101: 12820: 12791: 12710: 12664: 12342: 12328: 12181: 12151: 11855: 11823: 10565: 10475: 9631: 9605: 9579: 9553: 9527: 9501: 9293: 8870: 8847: 8807: 8780: 8766: 8726: 8686: 8650: 8617: 8591: 8569: 8545: 8511: 8491: 8453: 8431: 8412: 8377: 8341: 8323: 8305: 8034: 7944: 7929: 7911: 7897: 7865: 7843: 7828: 7813: 7791: 7764: 7745: 7727: 7704: 7683: 7666: 7645: 7614: 7599: 7581: 7556: 7537: 7520: 7510: 7064:. I admit, I don't consider it a priority (although I have already spent some time on it), as I don't see what useful information it would provide, and 4552: 4445: 3205: 2310: 2283: 12641: 12306: 12129: 9309:, so this is the one suggestion here that is at least aimed at what I'd consider the real problem... but it would probably be better to treat it as a 8626: 8293: 7873: 4659:

no more than two comments per discussion per day, except replies (of reasonable length) to questions or very brief clarifications of their own comments

13590: 12565: 12026: 11555: 11540: 10981: 10901: 10837: 10646:

2 (generally) - I think limiting discussions from getting derailed is a good idea, but I don't think any of the current motions are the way to do it.

10550: 10184:

Sub-5000-edit accounts which are basically SPAs on the PIA area, some of which will inevitably be socks but even if they're not are equally disruptive

7257: 7238: 7216: 7194: 7172: 6475:

Sub-5000-edit accounts which are basically SPAs on the PIA area, some of which will inevitably be socks but even if they're not are equally disruptive

6212: 6188: 6174: 6154: 6135: 5514:

and do something about it then they are the last people who should feel qualified to perform some kind of grand "source analysis" for the topic area.

5435: 5098: 5084: 5047: 5019: 4986: 4959: 4870: 12731: 12523: 12509: 12363: 12196: 10785: 10469: 7437: 7050: 6065: 4666:

500 word limit in any discussion under 5000 words, and a 1000 word or 10% of the discussion limit, whichever is lower, on discussions over 5000 words

3136: 11472:

second question, I'd like to see parties decided on case creation, with parties added in the evidence phase only with compelling reason to do so. -

10703:

4 - I don't share the concerns about circumventing verifiability/onus/burden/etc, but I do have a potential solution to them - rather than it being

9936: 9902: 9817: 9769: 9737: 9686: 9560: 7989:

points out recently so there might be other ideas to glean from reading those (and reading what the arbcom at the time wrote about them privately).

6287: 5823:

policy in PIA. It's largely unenforceable for a variety of practical, wiki-cultural and technical reasons. We all know this. There have always been

5314:

The precedent of massive topic bans without careful assessment of the reasoning why leads to dangerous precedents for other future content disputes.

2120: 326:

Requests for clarification are used to ask for further guidance or clarification about an existing completed Arbitration Committee case or decision.

12536: 12500: 11997: 11983: 11573: 11322:(in a humourous context that I chuckled at), and referrals to ArbCom from AE have not been common, I wanted to make sure there was clarification. 11319: 9208:

In response to the question about how to avoid making the topic-area case into a mudslinging contest, limit the named parties only to AE admins. --

7151:

and many with scant knowledge of the subject. Quite a lot of the disputes arise because of them, not because of the people likely to comment at AE.

5619:

How many of these talk page interactions are consistent with the sweeping negative assessments of the state of the topic area and how many are not?

5424: 2911: 2763: 11969: 10391: 10345: 10326: 10301: 10295: 8329: 5561: 5523: 3046: 3001: 2987: 2808: 2794: 10829:

This figure does not count the (incomplete) Archive 339, nor does it count any unarchived threads at Enforcement, including the one referred here

10794: 10304: 8896: 8603:

Sean Hoyland’s remarks on your page. That is an excellent tabulation. I don't think it demonstrates anything of the sort, that 'pro-Pal' editors

8073: 7733: 3343: 11522: 11496: 11481: 11459: 11409: 11388: 11366: 11352: 11331: 10506: 10490: 10458: 10232: 9704:

Arbcom may be more open to conclusively dealing with. As a result of AE's apparent higher threshold needed for experienced editors, things like

6767: 5819:

It isn't possible to topic ban or block a person and prevent them from editing in the topic area. Why? Because it isn't possible to enforce the

3295: 2560: 13295:

doesn't appear that different to the WP:READER, who, whatever we dress the discussion up as, will not be able to see material they once could.

10310: 10112:

I like ScottishFinnishRaddish's suggestion that everyone who participated in an ARBPIA AE discussion since last October be considered involved.

8901: 6935:

All it does is help us understand the dynamics of the topic area, and is particularly helpful in understanding the background to comments like

6766:

There are some editors who do subscribe to that position - but there are also editors who subscribe to the position that the opposite is true,

6259: 5839: 3079: 57: 7778:

for a lot of other people to reply which is why that thread sprawled and PeleYoetz" didn't. But I stand by my agreeing with Selfstudier that

6896:

while I feel it's obvious where Vice regent's sympathies lie, I've been very impressed by their ability to put them aside to comply with NPOV.

4857:

I think the "first admin comment" link above disproves this. Look at who replied and who didn't before that first comment was made. It wasn't

4668:

topic-wide in a blanket fashion; I feel like this sort of thing would serve as a trap to good-faith newcomers who are verbose, and we needn't

2650: 13001: 12935: 8608:

the rumour-mill here is suggesting. Perhaps I'll have other observations later (here because I won't be participating in any Arbcome process)

5321:

topic area, and admins have been kind enough to help shepherd, provide useful guidance, and prevent my early exit (voluntary or involuntary).

4630: 4476:

The inability of the tools available at AE to adequately handle disruption that involves a large number of parties over long periods of time.

1183: 409: 13216: 9300:

Motion 1, Appeals only to ArbCom doesn't really address any of the core problems; it isn't like revolving-door appeals are the problem here.

6937:

I say that because there is a massive imbalance in the people singled out, according to the usual perceptions of the IP area's POV-stand-off

13093: 11240:

Thank you to the AE admins for submitting this referral. As a procedural note I would suggest that we limit the parties to this request to

8757:

and diaspora Jewish scholars (many also Zionist). 'Pro-Palestinian' implies 'anti-Israel' and that is why the term is totally unacceptable.

6478: 6262:

for an assessment of the extent of the problem. For technical reasons, it is currently limited to discussions on article talk pages and at

6106: 1140: 11635:. If we aren't able to evaluate a single party's conduct, we aren't able to hear a case either. And if we are, a case can be requested at 11487:

reasonable person to tell if an editor has contributed a given percentage of a discussion, especially if they're using a mobile device. -

10739:

exercising discretion on whether to apply protection to the current version of an article, or to an older, stable, or pre-edit-war version

13049: 10149:

Any administrator with the resolve to take action (or even mention the possibility) is hounded and abused by the user's tag-team buddies.

5106: 4174: 7190:

to the war? Removing articles created from Oct 7, 2023 onwards might be a good approximation. Don't spend time on it unless it is easy.

4629:

discussions" provision will be enough, as it isn't going to remedy the long-term edit warring/tag teaming, nor the civility issues that

2624:: I would assume the two terms should be viewed identically. Further thoughts forthcoming — currently discussing among ourselves. Best, 12354:

Even with a sunset provision, a word restriction across the entire area of conflict is not something that should be done by default. -

9534: 5934: 5855:"How many sock accounts are currently active in the topic area, or outside the area (to gain EC or access to wiki-mail for canvassing)" 5827:

in PIA and there is apparently very little that can be done about it. They are part of the community of editors in PIA, like it or not.

5421: 5415: 3926: 3535: 12811:

Tying it to the normal 3RR definition of 24 hours does seem like a good idea, but I also like the idea of "most recent edit" as well.

10922:

to more liberally employ CheckUser in this topic to deal with potential ban evasion. If so you can start by checking Sean and myself.

9712:

cross multiple lines to receive anything more than a logged warning that is almost always disregarded by the receiver in the long run.

13341: 13302: 10250: 5882:

PIA topic area - template presence (3734 articles). Articles with one of the ARBPIA/contentious topics templates on their talk pages.

5206: 4337: 4186: 3775: 3583: 62: 10127:

The opinions of less established accounts are taken less seriously in discussions relative to more experienced users (this probably

12701:

are important to me, and as "reverting" includes the restoration of content where verifiability is disputed, I can't support this.

11187: 10800: 9708:, bludgeoning, weaponization of process, less "blatant" incivility, and so on are difficult to definitively sanction - you have to 8534: 5540: 4204: 4192: 3631: 3439: 3337: 1964: 1144: 4498:

over long periods of time, a consensus was reached among administrators to refer the broader dispute to the arbitration committee.

3289: 2459: 2193: 2186: 12768:, I've added "within the area of conflict" above to avoid any possible impression of the motion applying to all edits wiki-wide. 10788: 4180: 3679: 2992:

I do like this motion as is already! Thanks for creating it; I hadn't noticed the need for adjusting the other remedies as well.

13463: 10951: 10707:

revert must be discussed before it can be redone, have a safety switch if need be. I'd like to recommend a couple alternatives:

10658:

disruption/work - all it will do is cause arguments over what counts for the word limit, and why certain things shouldn't count.

7902:

I think SFR's AA3 motion would be counter productive - a real "the beatings will continue until morale improves" type of thing.

6904:

and acknowledge that POV - the frequent failure, on both sides, to do so is why we have a POV pushing issue in this topic area.

2119:

The current topic areas under this restriction are listed as having the "extended confirmed restriction" in the table of active

13115: 13082: 12995: 10791: 8996:-compliant scholarly work by largely-Jewish academics, but doing so with a massive-scale disregard for the ArbCom principle of 7263: 6521: 5937:

makes a sequence of edits (that may or may not be noticed and result in people having to spend time creating and processing an

4282: 4198: 4022: 3974: 3878: 309: 10062:

here as it would be rude not to, given I've mentioned one of their closes. For full disclosure, I opposed the original close.

8354:

justified in breaking the rule. You didn't even check to see if his wild offline claims (presumably about me) were correct. (

5418: 3319: 13087: 10749:

fully protected.In fact, the protection policy already allows fully protecting an entire page as a response to an edit war -

6007: 5408: 5031:

Something to address the socking -- though I don't know what (ECR hasn't posed a problem for the topic area's dedicated LTAs)

4574:

I do acknowledge that I left out several individuals whose behavior was directly mentioned, and I will fix that issue now. —

4119: 4070: 3823: 3727: 3391: 3246: 9100:

I can appreciate that ArbCom must find it baffling that so many editors on this request page are asserting things about the

5407:

Much of what I was discussing is unfolding as we speak. Take a look at this discussion in an article recently created by an

4397: 3307: 13139: 13043: 11627:

without a single statement from the single reported editor, and why ArbCom's task in this situation isn't to evaluate only

10929: 10430:, I don't know what is." That is the problem; you think you know "the Truth", but you obviously haven't read what genocide 4470:

The widespread nature of edit warring, battleground mentality, and POV pushing within the Arab-Israeli conflict topic area.

4294: 351:

of an arbitration decision or procedure (including an arbitration enforcement action issued by an administrator, such as a

7458:. There's already no policy that defines a revert which makes 1rr a pain. Let's not have any more vague rules to enforce. 2204: 2197: 12952: 12578: