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:Legacypac's comment above [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case&diff=889228332&oldid=889225480] is a good example of the assumption of bad faith I mentioned. [[User:Thryduulf|Thryduulf]] ([[User talk:Thryduulf|talk]]) 11:37, 24 March 2019 (UTC) |
:Legacypac's comment above [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case&diff=889228332&oldid=889225480] is a good example of the assumption of bad faith I mentioned. [[User:Thryduulf|Thryduulf]] ([[User talk:Thryduulf|talk]]) 11:37, 24 March 2019 (UTC) |
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:If arbcom is not going to look into the behaviour issues identified (and I still think this would be beneficial), then there needs to be significantly more uninvolved administrative eyes on the ANI thread, the AN discussions and the MfD nominations. It's not just SMcCandlish and BHG (that is tangiential to a significant degree) - from my point of view it is principally Legacypac, but also Robert McClenon, Fram and BHG, but they'll no doubt point a finger at people like me, SMcCandlish, SmokeyJoe and NorthAmerica). [[User:Thryduulf|Thryduulf]] ([[User talk:Thryduulf|talk]]) 17:02, 25 March 2019 (UTC) |
:If arbcom is not going to look into the behaviour issues identified (and I still think this would be beneficial), then there needs to be significantly more uninvolved administrative eyes on the ANI thread, the AN discussions and the MfD nominations. It's not just SMcCandlish and BHG (that is tangiential to a significant degree) - from my point of view it is principally Legacypac, but also Robert McClenon, Fram and BHG, but they'll no doubt point a finger at people like me, SMcCandlish, SmokeyJoe and NorthAmerica). [[User:Thryduulf|Thryduulf]] ([[User talk:Thryduulf|talk]]) 17:02, 25 March 2019 (UTC) |
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A good example of the issues we're seeing in MfD noms is this deletion rationale from Legacypac at [[Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Tacitus]]: |
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:{{tq|but this is backward. The portal enthusiasts claim the guidelines are out of date and they can create any portal they like. 4500 automated portals later we are left to do the hard work of sorting these mass creations one by one. Significantly more effort is going into analysis and MFD by other users then when into topic selection. The burden of meeting the guidelines should fall on the page creator not on everyone else to apply and debate compliance with the guideline they dismiss as worthless. [[User:Legacypac|Legacypac]] ([[User talk:Legacypac|talk]]) 19:43, 24 March 2019 (UTC)}} |
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In sequence this is a meaningless statement (what is "backwards"? what does that even mean?), an ad hominem arguably casting aspersions against unnamed "portal enthusiasts", a general statement about the number of portals created (which is irrelevant to whether the portal under discussion is good or not), a statement about the amount of effort involved (which while possibly true is also offers no useful assessment of this portal), a general statement of opinion about where the burden should lie that is not supported by consensus (it's not even really been discussed specifically anywhere I know of), and then another aspersion against unnamed people. Together it is a general statement of dislike about a set of pages that the nominated portal is part of. This was justified by a collection of quotes (not all in context) from individual editors (mainly TTH) about portals in general. [[User:Thryduulf|Thryduulf]] ([[User talk:Thryduulf|talk]]) 18:56, 25 March 2019 (UTC) |
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=== Statement by SmokeyJoe === |
=== Statement by SmokeyJoe === |
Revision as of 18:56, 25 March 2019
Requests for arbitration
Portal Issues
Initiated by Robert McClenon (talk) at 22:42, 23 March 2019 (UTC)
Involved parties
- Robert McClenon (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log), filing party
- The Transhumanist (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
- SMcCandlish (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
- Legacypac (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
- BrownHairedGirl (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)
- Thryduulf (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)
- Confirmation that all parties are aware of the request
- Confirmation that other steps in dispute resolution have been tried
- Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#Thousands of Portals
- Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Legacypac and portals
- Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive1005#User:SMcCandlish disregarding ban from my talk
Statement by Robert McClenon
This is a request for arbitration of conduct issues involving portals, including the creation of portals, and debates over the deletion of portals. There have been several threads at WP:AN and WP:ANI on this topic, and some of the cases are still open, as listed above. Perhaps the most heated is also listed above, which resulted in no consensus with regard to the two parties, but a widely expressed view that the matter would need to go to ArbCom. Arbitration is a last resort and is needed when the community is unable to resolve a conflict, as is evident in this case. The primary focus is Miscellany for Deletion discussions for the requested deletion of portals, and Deletion discussions are often controversial. I am asking ArbCom to consider whether either ArbCom discretionary sanctions should be available in deletion discussions in general. I am of course also asking ArbCom to consider whether civility violations by the parties require sanctions. I am also asking ArbCom to consider whether the creation of thousands of portals, some of them defective, by User:The Transhumanist and others, was disruptive editing in itself.
The community is divided by at least three types of issues. The first is policy issues, of what the policy should be regarding the creation and maintenance of portals. The consensus in May 2018 not to abolish portals was not a consensus to create thousands of new portals. The second type of issues is questions of deletion or retention of portals, and deletion is a content issue. The third is conduct issues, which interfere with the orderly resolution of the policy and content issues. I am specifically asking ArbCom to resolve the conduct issues.
Follow-Up Comments
I have no objection to a mandated hiatus on requests for the deletion of portals. However, I find the statement of concern that the critics of portals are attempting a fait accompli by piecemeal deletion of portals after discussion in a public community forum to be ironic, after thousands of portals were created without discussion and then their existence has been cited as the status quo that should be left alone. Robert McClenon (talk) 02:50, 24 March 2019 (UTC)
Observations
I agree that this case has strong similarities to the Infobox cases. Infoboxes and Portals are both optional features of Wikipedia. Some editors love them; some editors hate them; some editors behave badly in pushing their viewpoint. ArbCom tried to let or tell or order the community to deal with infobox wars before finally imposing an effective draconian remedy. The issue of Portals or No Portals will continue to annoy and divide the community until the ArbCom concludes that a draconian remedy is in order.
Those of us who either dislike Portals or think that Portals are an overused capability also think that this case bears a strong resemblance to the Neelix redirects.
It will be overly optimistic for ArbCom to decline this case by thinking that the community is a few days or weeks away from solving it. Robert McClenon (talk) 14:25, 24 March 2019 (UTC)
- User:Voceditenore - The case in which a draconian remedy had to be imposed was not Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Infoboxes so much as Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Civility in infobox discussions and the draconian remedy is Infobox Probation. Perhaps some editors do not think of it as a draconian remedy. I do, but I think that sometimes draconian remedies are a good idea, and this was one of those times. Robert McClenon (talk) 04:38, 25 March 2019 (UTC)
Statement by The Transhumanist
Statement by SMcCandlish
This is long overdue. It's remarkably similar to WP:ARBDATE, WP:ARBATC, WP:ARBINFOBOX, WP:ARBINFOBOX2: repetitive debating over content-presentation matters that most editors don't care about, but which some are turning into an excuse for WP:POINTy antics and for uncivilly personalizing disputes against certain parties over and over and over again. It's turned into a full-on WP:BATTLEGROUND, though most of the parties named above are not engaged in battleground behavior. I'll get into the diffing later; this is a workday for me. Just to be clear: Unless forced to, I am not going to dwell on the recent misunderstanding between myself and BrownHairedGirl, which is only incidentally connected to this topic (it was more about user-talk namespace than any particular subject); both of us agreed at ANI not to make that an RfArb dramafest. The fact that the portals debate – despite an RfC last year, and a new RfC being drafted, and an huge AN discussion – has turned into a roiling brawl seems to indicate that it's ripe for ArbCom. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 17:20, 24 March 2019 (UTC)
- @Kusma: your "big difference" isn't a relevant one. All of these were editorial civility and disruption cases, over matters of guideline (not policy) compliance, about presentational matters most editors consider trivial, and involving a small number of entrenched "your side vs. my side" editors – just like this one. The "mainspacishness" of any of them was no component of any of these ArbCom cases. Also, your comment below "Consensus on the simplest possible cleanup solution (just nuke the lot) hasn't quite arrived yet" is highly misleading (presumably unintentionally so). In last year's RfC at WP:VPPOL there was a strong consensus against such a notion. We may yet arrive at a consensus to delete all automated portals, or all those per [insert some new criterion here], but it has not happened yet. And it clearly will not be a consensus to delete all portals, since we just went over that within the year at the community's broadest venue. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 18:17, 24 March 2019 (UTC)
- I thank Kusma for the clarification below. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 07:25, 25 March 2019 (UTC)
- Voceditenore provides mostly a good nutshell summary of the entire issue, other than I take exception to the declaration of The_Transhumanists's post-RfC activity as "clearly disruptive". WP:DE has a specific and constrained definition here, it's not just some hand-wavey "feeling" someone has. WP:EDITING is a central policy; that which is not expressly forbidden is permissible to be attempted, and to be refined and improved, unless and until the community actually does forbid it. And the AN result isn't a general topic ban, but an interim result pending further discussion. Aside from these quibbles, I agree with every word of Voceditenore's section so far. The POINTy behavior at MfD, and the incivility, strongly reminds me of the FAITACCOMPLI and BATTLEGROUND antics that led to ARBINFOBOX. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 07:25, 25 March 2019 (UTC)
Deletion rationales: This will addresses several parties' comments, at least in part: "The Transhumanist made it" isn't a deletion rationale. "It was created after some people expressed a concern but the community came to no consensus that agreed with those concerns, and instead closed with a strong consensus against deprecating portals, without addressing more specific criteria for them" isn't a deletion rationale. "Was created with a semi-automated tool" isn't a deletion rationale. "Nobody's manually working on it right now" isn't a deletion rationale. Arguably, "is a topic with fewer than 20 articles" is one, but even this has been disputed (another page says 3, I think; this was discussed at the AN thread). There's another one, for topics too narrow in scope, but it's subjective and people aren't sure what it's supposed to mean (see the ongoing spate of MfDs, which vary from near-unanimous delete to near-unanimous keep, and everything in between). It's not ArbCom's job to answer these questions (since they're about content), but the behavioral problems need to be restrained. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 07:38, 25 March 2019 (UTC)
Statement by Legacypac
- [1]
- At Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Alhambra, California User:Ɱ (who should be party if this proceeds) says "A guideline (WP:POG) that I don't have to follow" and "you even stated in one that you were spreading out the nominations (not several portals in one nom) in order to give the impression of more nominations against small city portals. That's essentially fraud." I believe this is a bad faith fabrication.
- In the same MFD TTH says [2] which is very problematic.
- If this is accepted I'm prepared to show User:Thryduulf behavior is suboptimal. By suggesting we stop MFDs now he is forumshopping arbcomm to get what he can't get at the AN WP:X3 discussion. Even if all Portal MfDs close delete, the deletion rate per day will be much slower than the creation rate per day as seen here [3]
Statement by BrownHairedGirl
I see no need for such a broad Arbcom case. Thee may be some individual conduct issues to examine, but that's all.
The broad facts are simple. A huge number of portals were created by a semi-automated process, and this has been highly controversial. Some of the more extreme creations have been taken to MFD (e.g. University of Fort Hare), and and RFC is considering whether to have a special speedy-deletion criteria for others.
Views vary widely, but are not intractably polarised. So what the community most needs now is broad RFC to settle which portals (if any) should exists. An Arbcom case would merely distract energy from that. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:17, 24 March 2019 (UTC)
Statement by Thryduulf
There are two types of conduct issue here - those around the mass creation of the portals and those related to the subsequent effort to delete them. The first has stopped completely, one of the principal proponents, The Transhumanist (TTH), has been recently topic banned (long after the fact) and ~5 days later this topic ban has not been breached.
Several users, most notably Legacypac, but BrownHairedGirl (BHG) and others also, have (in the words of Certes) declared a "war on portals" - with countless MfD nominations and numerous proposals to speedy delete them and/or restrict the - see WP:AN#Thousands of Portals (particularly the subsection WP:AN#Proposal 4: Provide for CSD criterion X3) and WT:CSD#Extend R2 to portals. Opinions that do not align with the view that all mass created portals should be deleted as quickly as possible (for whatever reason and to whatever degree) are frequently met with hostility, assumptions of bad faith, borderline incivility and misrepresentation (see WP:AN/I#Legacypac and portals for some examples.)
I would recommend that the committee look into the conduct of all parties (myself included) and pass a temporary injunction against new MfD nominations of portals (by everyone) until the case concludes or all RfCs relating to the deletion of portals are formally closed, whichever happens first. There have been 23 new nominations of portals (some covering tens of portals) in the last three days alone, causing the appearance of attempting WP:FAITACCOMPLI. Thryduulf (talk) 00:06, 24 March 2019 (UTC)
@SilkTork: and others. This is a mix of content and conduct disputes, the former are obviously outside arbcom's jurisdiction but the conduct issues which are hindering collegial resolution of those issues (see [4] for another report on Legacypac for example) is very much within arbcom's remit. Thryduulf (talk) 09:30, 24 March 2019 (UTC)
- Legacypac's comment above [5] is a good example of the assumption of bad faith I mentioned. Thryduulf (talk) 11:37, 24 March 2019 (UTC)
- If arbcom is not going to look into the behaviour issues identified (and I still think this would be beneficial), then there needs to be significantly more uninvolved administrative eyes on the ANI thread, the AN discussions and the MfD nominations. It's not just SMcCandlish and BHG (that is tangiential to a significant degree) - from my point of view it is principally Legacypac, but also Robert McClenon, Fram and BHG, but they'll no doubt point a finger at people like me, SMcCandlish, SmokeyJoe and NorthAmerica). Thryduulf (talk) 17:02, 25 March 2019 (UTC)
A good example of the issues we're seeing in MfD noms is this deletion rationale from Legacypac at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Tacitus:
but this is backward. The portal enthusiasts claim the guidelines are out of date and they can create any portal they like. 4500 automated portals later we are left to do the hard work of sorting these mass creations one by one. Significantly more effort is going into analysis and MFD by other users then when into topic selection. The burden of meeting the guidelines should fall on the page creator not on everyone else to apply and debate compliance with the guideline they dismiss as worthless. Legacypac (talk) 19:43, 24 March 2019 (UTC)
In sequence this is a meaningless statement (what is "backwards"? what does that even mean?), an ad hominem arguably casting aspersions against unnamed "portal enthusiasts", a general statement about the number of portals created (which is irrelevant to whether the portal under discussion is good or not), a statement about the amount of effort involved (which while possibly true is also offers no useful assessment of this portal), a general statement of opinion about where the burden should lie that is not supported by consensus (it's not even really been discussed specifically anywhere I know of), and then another aspersion against unnamed people. Together it is a general statement of dislike about a set of pages that the nominated portal is part of. This was justified by a collection of quotes (not all in context) from individual editors (mainly TTH) about portals in general. Thryduulf (talk) 18:56, 25 March 2019 (UTC)
Statement by SmokeyJoe
This is a years old Portals / Outlines issue, and I think it is frustrating generally due to the lack of agreed forum. For years, Portals have been discussed at MfD, but MfD processes just one at a time. Outlines have largely been pushed out in the direction of Portals. Portals have recently become a feature in multiple threads at AN, and WT:CSD. WT:Portals has hosted discussions, but few opposed to Portals bother going there. Now there are RfCs in the works, in userspace, where userspace-ownership has proven an issue. I think no editors are at fault, all act in good faith. I think what is needed is an agreement to a central discussion, not AN, not MfD, not WT:CSD. This is an unusual discussion because one option on the cards is the depreciation of an entire namespace. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:20, 24 March 2019 (UTC)
Statement by Alanscottwalker
The only issue of far-reaching importance I see, is the issue of 'mass creation', which is bound to lead to some segment to fret over 'mass deletion'. My own take of the portals created are that they are at worst harmless, at best, someone's idea of useful exploration of a topic, so the actions and reaction of some seem just too much.
On the other hand, I am not aware of whatever standards we have for mass creation or script assisted creation and I can see mass creation potentially causing multiplied problems (perhaps earlier Arbcom cases have dealt with this). Nonetheless, there is no doubt that these things are conduct. So, though, I don't actually see individual user focused remedies being useful, here, a thoughtful in depth review of the ground around mass creation and/or script assisted creation, would be good use of this committee's time - at least by pointing to where and what the issues/policies/guidelines (and lack there of) are. Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:06, 24 March 2019 (UTC)
Statement by Kusma
I do not think that the issue has reached ArbCom-level disruption. The Transhumanist mass-created portals (with very few clicks each). Many people think that wasn't a good idea (I am one of them, and have voted to delete many such portals, nominated others at MfD, and reverted some "upgraded" portals to their old semi-manual versions), and so cleanup is now on its way, along with discussions about what topic deserve portals. There is also (too little) discussion of what portals are currently good for, what they could potentially be good for, and what the community wants them to be. Consensus on the simplest possible cleanup solution (just nuke the lot) hasn't quite arrived yet, and so we have many individual MfDs where the same discussions are going on. In a way that just means we're hashing out the criteria for portals at MfD instead of at some centralised RfC, which is time-consuming and tedious, but should also produce some rough criteria after a while. The advantage of the current approach is that we learn more about special situations of certain portals, which might be overlooked in RfCs covering several thousands at once. The Committee should decline this as premature: either this is resolved quickly through CSD X3, or slowly through a couple of months of MfDs. —Kusma (t·c) 14:10, 24 March 2019 (UTC)
- There is a big difference between the portal questions and the ArbCom cases mentioned by SMcCandlish: the issues here are essentially not relevant for article space (other than the presence or absence of a tiny and usually ignored link somewhere near the bottom of the page) and most editors won't even notice the outcome of the discussion (number of views of portals is minuscule, even for ). I have not seen any recent edit wars in article space about portal links. There also seem to be no edit wars in portal space either (unless you want to count my reverts of portal "restarts" or "upgrades"). All we have are a couple of Wikipedia space discussions that most editors can safely disregard unless they have some personal involvement in portals. (Even popular portals like Portal:Sexuality or Portal:Pornography have just a few hundred views per day). —Kusma (t·c) 17:47, 24 March 2019 (UTC)
- When I say "nuke the lot", I am talking about all portals created by TTH since the end of the RfC, a discussion where I was strongly on the "keep all" side. —Kusma (t·c) 19:03, 24 March 2019 (UTC)
Statement by User:Pldx1
It seems difficult to pretend that mass-creating content-less portals, like the late Portal:E (mathematical constant), could be a content problem, instead of a behavior problem. It remains that a temptation is great for the ArbCom to pretend that the community should work harder, instead of pretending that said community cannot address such a simple disruptive behavior (and all of the minor side effects of this disruption). 14:37, 24 March 2019 (UTC)
Statement by RTG
The problem here is specifically a matter of guidelines.
- Transhumanist and co are saying they want to do as much as can be permitted.
- Objections are that lines have been specifically crossed.
- What much is permitted? What lines have been crossed? The details needed to cover this in the guidelines would be relatively minor. ~^\\\.rTG'{~ 15:44, 24 March 2019 (UTC)
I still can't find a centralised discussion where I could propose solutions like, birth each portal. Give each portal a week in a special incubator page of the project. Limit the number of concurrent pregnancies to 3 or 4, and give that page an overall feel of a content discussion for the Main page, (which is something the contributors seem to have as a goal, i.e. little main pages=portals).
- One-click creation is great. One-click create what is requiring more debate. ~^\\\.rTG'{~ 16:09, 24 March 2019 (UTC)
Statement by Voceditenore
I strongly disagree with Robert McClenon's contention that the "Infobox wars" were settled via Arbcom's "draconian measures" and that they are needed here. Though, I'm not sure what he means by "draconian measures". Please read Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Infoboxes. It focused purely on behaviour and resulted in a variety of admonishments and a complete topic ban on infoboxes for one editor and a partial one for another. Both were rescinded two years later. I hardly consider that "draconian". ArbCom also recommended that the community hold an RfC to settle the content/policy issues. It never happened, but the issue has settled down considerably. What did help were the restrictions on and admonishments of several of the most entrenched editors (on both sides). It provided a blessed breathing space for those people to reflect and get some perspective and for the rest of us who were caught in the crossfire to get on with editing articles without constant explosions. Both sides eventually realized that the world was not going to come to an end if an article had an infobox and vice versa. One might say the same thing about the existence of Portals. There are some behavioural issues here, for sure. And again, on both sides. But really, the entrenched positions developing in this melee are not helpful to anyone, including yourselves. Voceditenore (talk) 15:55, 24 March 2019 (UTC)
Just adding that The Transhumanist's bot-like creation creation of thousands of very sub-par portals was clearly disruptive, but he is effectively topic-banned from that now. Perhaps Arbcom needs to formalize that? I don't know. But I would say that coming in for second prize in the disruption stakes is the current rash of indiscriminately bundled MfDs for portals which are long-standing and predate the recent spate of bot-like automated ones—some of them Featured portals on important topics. Such MfDs are a pointless distraction. As I said in this MfD, in my view, they are an attempt to make an end run around the clear consensus to neither delete nor deprecate Portal space at the Village Pump RfC of less than a year ago. Both the first and second prize disruptions are the root of most of the unseemly sniping which may yet escalate to a level where ArbCom needs to get involved. Voceditenore (talk) 16:41, 24 March 2019 (UTC)
- Replying to Robert McClenon. The second case that you refer to, Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Civility in infobox discussions, only restricted one editor and that restriction (or "Probation" as they called it) was actually much milder than the complete topic ban placed on one of the editors in the first case. The only difference I can see is that the second case introduced discretionary sanctions with "probation" as a penalty. I suppose they might help in this case, at least to tamp down the civility issues. Depending how the probation is worded, it could also call a halt to portal creation by any sanctioned editor and possibly also to the indiscriminate attempts to delete portals which were not part of the spate of mass-created ones. Voceditenore (talk) 06:31, 25 March 2019 (UTC)
- Replying to SMcCandlish. Per MEATBOT, the mass creation of poor-quality portals which continued despite the early warnings/objections being raised can be considered disruptive. Ditto the conversion and consequent degradation of quite a few decently functioning portals, some of which had been Featured portals. Mass creation of extremely poor quality stubs (even without automated tools) and their subsequent abandonment by the creator has been considered sufficiently disruptive in the past to result in an indefinite block, e.g. [6]. So no, the perception of disruption in this case is not just some "hand-wavey 'feeling' someone has." Of course, there's always the notion that if editors are concerned about the mass-creation of poor content, they should just ignore it and turn their attentions elsewhere. That's easier to do with portals than articles. But is that an optimal solution? Voceditenore (talk) 11:32, 25 March 2019 (UTC)
Statement by Fram
A few things:
- MfDs bundling automated / recent portals with older ones are a bad idea
- People voting to "merge" such automated portals don't seem to have grapsed even the basics of these new portals, and should perhaps leave the debate as they are simply voting without doing the necessary background checks to have an informed opinion
- A moratorium on proposing new portals for MfD is a useless prolongation of this whole sorry mess. Many (not all, e.g. Certes is genuinely busy improving portals) of the people who have voted against speedy deleting these and against individually deleting these as well seem to do so on either purely ideological grounds, or (worse) because of personal animosity against some of the people supporting the deletion. Actual interest in portals seems to be mostly lacking from their ocntributions though. Then again, actual interest in portals seems to be lacking in general, as major errors get undetected and uncorrected for months. The official purpose of portals, to function as some specialized main pages, entry points for readers, is flawed in general, and completely baseless for the many, many small portals created last year.
- The downplaying of the SmCandlish/BrownHairedGirl dispute by SmMccandlish above (" Just to be clear: Unless forced to, I am not going to dwell on the recent misunderstanding between myself and BrownHairedGirl, which is only incidentally connected to this topic (it was more about user-talk namespace than any particular subject); both of us agreed at ANI not to make that an RfArb dramafest.") doesn't seem to match what really happened; it was hardly a "misunderstanding", there was near-general agreement that SmMccadlish had been harassing BHG and then lied about it at ANI to make BHG look bad, and the only reason it didn't end up at ArbCom was because BHG couldn't deal with the stress of an ArbCom case. It is not clear to me whether it belongs with this case, or whether a case about "SmMccandlish vs. others" may make more sense, but to downplay it as a "misunderstanding" where both agreed not to take it to ArbCom as if they didn't find it important enough is twisting reality too far. Fram (talk) 07:59, 25 March 2019 (UTC)
Statement by {Non-party}
Other editors are free to make relevant comments on this request as necessary. Comments here should address why or why not the Committee should accept the case request or provide additional information.
Portal Issues: Clerk notes
- This area is used for notes by the clerks (including clerk recusals).
Portal Issues: Arbitrators' opinion on hearing this matter <0/1/1>
Vote key: (Accept/decline/recuse)
- Recuse. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 22:45, 23 March 2019 (UTC)
- I would like to hear from the other named parties and wider community, but based upon the preliminary statements so far, I could see a case being useful here if only to examine the issue of conduct more closely. Mkdw talk 03:27, 24 March 2019 (UTC)
- I'm not seeing where ArbCom could be involved in the Portals discussion - that appears to me to be a community discussion, and one which the community are dealing with. However, there is some heat between SMcCandlish and BrownHairedGirl, which would be worth getting a wider view on to see if a case is needed. SilkTork (talk) 05:40, 24 March 2019 (UTC)
- Decline. The community are handling the Portals issue. Discussions are ongoing, The Transhumanist has been topic banned, and I'm not seeing where there's a place for ArbCom to get involved. Sometimes progress on issues like this is slow and fractious, with one step forward and one step back, but that's the nature of Wikipedia, and generally through such debate and discussions emerges a consensus that is not a compromise, but a working solution. We are actually, as a community, very good at solving these issues, while ArbCom is not. What ArbCom would do is sit and ponder for a month, and then issue restrictions - the community meanwhile can discuss quickly, openly, fluidly and imaginatively and reach creative and brilliant solutions that people agree on and buy into. It just takes time, and sometimes a bit of frustration and bad temper. As for the SMcCandlish and BrownHairedGirl issue, neither wish for an ArmCom case, so I don't see the point in forcing one on them. If people feel that SMcCandlish is being particularly problematic, they can start a discussion at WP:ANI to see if there is any consensus for that view. It is only if the community cannot resolve user behaviour that ArbCom should get involved. The community should at least make that attempt first, or provide evidence here that such attempts have been tried. SilkTork (talk) 09:39, 25 March 2019 (UTC)
- At its heart, this is a content dispute, and so we need to be careful not to step too far into that if we do review the conduct issues here. I do not think ArbCom has the jurisdiction to suspend MfDs of portals, as these are firmly within the realm of content. I also question whether a month-long arb case would just make the eventual discussions surrounding portals even more contentious, by placing these editors in direct conflict with each other for a prolonged period of time. Instead, my initial thoughts are that this case bears a stunning resemblance to the Crosswiki issues case request. We might consider resolving it the same way, by authorizing discretionary sanctions over all discussions related to portals for a finite period of time as this situation is resolved through normal community processes. ~ Rob13Talk 13:34, 24 March 2019 (UTC)
- Decline. I've gone to write a motion on this case several times now, and every time, I've come up with nothing I felt would help ease tensions in this area. My general idea was a motion providing temporary discretionary sanctions on discussions about portals, but after reviewing the underlying discussions several times, I actually don't see widespread conduct issues that would make such a sanction useful. There have been one or two scuffles (notably, the SMcCandlish and BrownHairedGirl business), but they were at best tangential to portals and don't seem like they would have benefited from discretionary sanctions. ArbCom could also encourage editors to avoid a fait accompli situation, but editors on each side disagree over what actions would be a fait accompli (see follow-up comments from Robert McClenon), so such a statement would accomplish little. The community is already holding an RfC to see whether a CSD criterion for The Transhumanist's mass creations should be temporarily added, and further RfCs will likely be needed to chart a future path for the Portal namespace. Given all of this, I see no role here for ArbCom at this time. ~ Rob13Talk 16:25, 25 March 2019 (UTC)
- Comment: The community has not definitively decided whether it wants these portals (as an editorial choice), and how to deal with them if it doesn't (as a procedural matter). In particular, a decision has not been reached as to whether these portals deserve a new CSD. By deciding on these issues, the community would unchoke many of the discussions/MFDs underway – thereby also resolving most of the situation-based conduct problems we are seeing. I would be inclined to deal with this matter by a motion (1) clarifying the committee's advice as to resolving, (2) passing any injunctions needed to assist implementation of our advice, and (3) reserving a fuller case, to be opened if needed. I am not opposed to opening an arbitration case, but I actually think that isn't how we can best assist in this particular matter. AGK ■ 14:04, 24 March 2019 (UTC)