The actual working title of the case is "Banning Policy."
This is a thread for Greg Kohs, who doesn't have a mechanism for giving testimony in a case ostensibly all about him — the series of posts which he or Joe Jobs pretending to be he have trickled across Jimbotalk, causing anti-paid editing crusader Smallbones to blow a brain gasket, with the assistance of dedicated provocateur "Tarc" — the guy who trolled simultaneously both this site and WP during the "Private Manning's Privates" dust up.
Initiator of the case is a guy in such danger of being whacked in a head by a boomerang that I'm starting to suspect he's a drunken Aussie at a family picnic, Mr. Hell In a Bucket... Yes, the same person who trolled Mr. New York Brad's talk page during the recently fizzled "Malleus Malevolence XLIII" non-case...
Away we go... Here's the opening statement by the case initiator.
Well, aside from the obvious fact that Mr. Bucket has a lot of trouble actually generating the URLs for Wikipedia diffs, one thing is perfectly clear about this statement. Oh wait, no, nothing is clear about this statement. That Mr. Bucket has embroiled himself at ArbCom over some petty low-level sniping that would have been laughed out of AN/I tells you something about him... Oh, BTW, he gave himself a two week ban immediately after dumping his chum bucket over the side for the sharks... Wacky.Hell in a Bucket wrote: "There is a lot of dispute if WP:EVADE ( linkhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia ... _of_blocks[/link] ) is covered under talkpage posting. It's my understanding that when banned that person is persona non grata and all edits are to be reverted. If in an article and it's not vandalism another editor may take responsibility for that edit but posting on their behalf or attempting to repost their concern is not appropriate.
Enter User:Tarc. Tarc (T-C-L) has been blasting insults, incivility and outright trolling on Jimbos page. Edits such as "someone has a hissy fit again, I'll just post your comment as my own, with attribution. Let em stew on that." ( linkhttps://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... 31731%7CIf[/link] ) or this edit summary "try ONE revert, and see if that's enough to get the serial harasser goes and finds another house to haunt. If not, either I or someone else can bring Smallbones to ANI again, then I'll just re-post this user's concerns to Jimbo's under my own name." ( no actual link provided )
Apparently the word cunt is not ok but telling a editor "you think you have the balls to remove something I post under my own name, then come at me bro" ( no actual link provided ) or telling me "can go the the first part of my username" ( no actual link provided ) or the attitude that this is a game "challenger appears" ( no actual link provided ). There are many more edits stating that Smallbones and myself are whiteknighting, overzealous and etc. Jimbo has not replied and there is an impasse as Smallbones and I are within policy to revert on sight edits on or on behalf of a banned user without regard to 3rr. Why will we ban people then let them post if it's good contributions, there are plenty other editors with lots of great contributions banned and there is no question about it. Hell in a Bucket (talk) 11:18 am, 15 August 2014, Friday (UTC−7)
That ArbCom has decided to accept the case tells you something about them. But what? That I'm not sure...
Fortunately, the other primary parties have been more coherent about what ails them...
Well, at least Smallbones is consistent in his being oblivious to the disruption he has been causing...as part of his tl;dr presentation, Smallbones wrote: "Jimbo has left a note...essentially saying he was on vacation and will start a discussion (AFAIK on this topic) in a few days (or more). I would guess that that discussion will take at least a few days, and then any questions at issue here will be moot. In line with that, I'll suggest that this case request be closed, and if anybody has anything leftover they want to pursue, they may open a new case request later.
I also want to remind folks that I did not propose this case. HIAB, the proposer has given himself a 2 week ban and essentially dropped out of the case. (what's that all about?) I would not have proposed the case, and I do not consider myself an ally of HIAB in any way. He did jump in and do a few things that I approved of, but he also confused the issues at times, and took the bait, at times, of folks who were clearly trying to disrupt Wikipedia. I don't think he has broken any Wikipedia rules however. I don't think he will want to reopen the case after the discussion at Jimbo's talk page, and doubt that there could be any sanctions against him if he did.
I'd also like to point out that nobody has made any credible accusation that I've broken any Wikipedia rules, so that if anybody decides to reopen this, I'll request that they specify exactly what rules they think I've broken.
Yes, there are some folks who say that I've edit warred, despite WP:NOT3RR andSome have accused me of some vague violation of our user talk guideline, despiteWikipedia:Edit warring#Other revert rules - "Reverting edits by banned or blocked users is not edit warring."Some seem to suggest that I have reverted Tarc for WP:PROXYING. Check the record - I have not.Wikipedia:User pages#Ownership and editing of user pages - "Other users and bots may edit pages in your user space .... Material that clearly does not somehow further the goals of the project may be removed (see below), as may edits from banned users."
Some have accused me of violating some special unstated rule of Jimbo's talk page, despite Jimbo clearly stating: "Over 3,000 Wikipedians monitor my user and user talk page via a watchlist, and I trust them to edit and remove errors or attacks. " (5th paragraph of User:Jimbo Wales)
And everybody should reread WP:REVERTBANSo if you'd like to accuse me of anything on this page, I think you have a long row to hoe.Edits by and on behalf of banned editors
"Anyone is free to revert any edits made in violation of a ban, without giving any further reason and without regard to the three-revert rule."
Smallbones(smalltalk) 10:39 am, 18 August 2014, Monday (8 days ago) (UTC−7)
Then we have Mr. Tarc, bless his tinder-sparking soul, who is at least lucid...
Well, thank god somebody at least knows what is going on...Tarc wrote: Hell in a Bucket (T-C-L) is mounting a rather superlative misdirection campaign by highlighting my use of silly internet memes ("a challenger appears", come at me bro", etc...) in edit summaries. For someone who casually throws around misogynist c-bombs into discussions in this project, and someone who acts as deplorably as he did at User talk:Newyorkbrad#Word usage ( linkhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk ... Word_usage[/link] ) in defending the c-word, I find it to be the height of hypocrisy to call anyone out for incivility.
This whole mess is about a few different things, but one in particular; a fundamental difference in opinion regarding what it means to edit a page in this project, be it a user talk page or an article-space page. One site has a strict interpretation of "banned means banned", and that all edits by socket (whether proven or unproven) can and will be reverted on sight. This means that any possibly banned user who posts a question to Jimbo's talk page is automatically reverted, as well as a possibly banned user who adds a freely-licensed image to an article is automatically reverted. The other side wishes to evaluate the merits of the post or the article addition and believes that either should remain in place unless there is something egregiously wrong, e.g. WP:NPA or a topic ban violation. This is a collision of a draconian interpretation of the ban policy vs. how things usually flow in this project, and have flowed for years. Users have traditionally been granted a bit latitude in allowing banned users to post to their talk pages; I do that myself with a few people on mine. Users have also been traditionally able to "take responsibility" for revert article content and have been able to re-add it as their own if deemed a "good edit". Both of these have been denied lately; here at Jimbo's page, and one here involving a suspected sock of Russavia. I asked Kww if he plans to call for a block of the user, as he threatened to do to me, who restored the image at Dassault Falcon 7X, but have yet to see a response. [...]
The other aspect of this is the situation of editors reverting suspected socks of banned/blocked users...and no, not that they are literally flagged as a suspected sock, but that the reverter him/herself is the one with the suspicion. That is how I got embroiled into this mess initially, when Hell and Smallbones were reverting an account with no block log and no SPI. The account is now blocked, but I and others are rather uncomfortable with regular users patrolling another user's talk page and removing content based on their own guesswork alone.
If this case is accepted, I would urge the committee to not focus on the who but more of the substance of what is at stake here. "Russavia" and "Mr. 2001" (alleged to be "thekohser") are being invoked here as boogeymen, people that quite frankly no one, even myself, particularly care for. We shouldn't craft policy or make decisions with the aim in mind of punishing specific editors.
So this is where we're at... "banned means banned" vs. "if a rule prevents you from improving the encyclopedia, ignore it". Tarc (talk) 11:51 am, 15 August 2014, Friday (UTC−7)
RfB