Revision as of 15:29, 15 January 2018

Initiated by Seraphim System at 20:22, 21 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Case or decision affected

Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Discretionary sanctions

List of any users involved or directly affected, and confirmation that all are aware of the request:

• Seraphim System (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) (initiator)
• EdJohnston (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)

Confirmation that all parties are aware of the request

• [1]

Statement by Seraphim System

Does the awareness requirement need to be fulfilled before discretionary sanctions are applied?

When

Here is the link to my discussion with the EdJohnston: User_talk:EdJohnston#Edit_Warring_block

I am requesting clarification of the DS procedure. I understand that there is no requirement to warn of individual editing restrictions, but I had not received any notice of discretionary sanctions in the topic area. I am requesting clarification of the following: No editor may be sanctioned unless they are aware that discretionary sanctions are in force for the area of conflict.

My understanding is that awareness under the formal criteria is required for the topic area before any discretionary sanctions are applied, but that notice of the individual restrictions on specific articles is not required by the decision. If

@Callanecc: Without going into too much detail, there was no long-term edit warring, I restored an NPOV template that was properly justified and needed to be in the article. I added a refimprove template after my citation needed tags were removed. This is what is being called "long term edit warring". If the block was for "long term edit warring" that would be extraordinary and even less justifiable, but this would not be the place to discuss it.

I understood this as a hasty and passing remark by an admin, who was sanctioning for a clear 1RR violation, but EdJohnston can say more about it. EdJohnston clearly stated that there was a 1RR violation, I understood it to be a 1RR violation and he continues to defend it as a 1RR violation. I thought what happened here was a good faith mistake that needed clarification, so admins and editors would know what was expected in the future.

Long story short, it is especially important in difficult topic areas that blocks are preventative and not punitive. Part of that is editor's awareness of the discretionary sanctions, because intentionally violating 1RR is fairly construed as an intent to continue editing disruptively. If I had been aware of the restrictions, I would have certainly respected them. Admins should not unilaterally modify what has been decided by an Arbitration decision, since most editors will not be aware of their unilateral standards, as I was not in this case. Certainly, the decision as stated should say what it means, and the admins trusted with enforcing it should respect that. But before proposing any modification, I would like to see if there is community consensus about its meaning.Seraphim System ^(talk) 01:33, 22 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@EdJohnston: My argument is exactly as you said - 1RR is part of discretionary sanctions. See this for example: Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement/Archive188#Wiking - formal notice is required for 1RR. Even in cases where there are informal warnings. It has been discussed by the community and amended to clarify that formal notice is required. Can you explain what kinds of cases you think the DS warning template is for? AFAIK, AE has declined to sanction in 1RR cases like this.

(Where is the 1RR restriction logged btw? I can't find it here: Wikipedia:Arbitration_enforcement_log#Armenia-Azerbaijan_2)

Seraphim System ^(talk) 02:48, 22 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Ed has said he sanctioned for 1RR and has refused to even explain what "long term edit warring" is when I asked him under ADMINACCT so let's focus on 1RR - an editor didn't have notice, it wasn't logged as AE, and admins/arbs can't even agree on whether it is AE or not. What a mess for an editor to get caught up in. Please get this sorted out. A few points:

• The practical distinction between general sanctions and discretionary sanctions is that the rules are different. You would not want to punish editors who generally follow the rules because they did not know different rules were in effect for a particular page, right? That is what the notice requirement protects editors from.

• I see a lot of comments assuming that I deliberately violated a DS that I knew about, I did not. If you review the complaint at
  WP:BRD
  is not sanctionable. I understand that I violated 1RR, but I did not know the restriction was in effect on this article. These notice rules are in place to prevent abuses.

• I have a different color scheme on my browser, and I think my font was mint green at the time. The box looks green, so probably I did not see the notice. There could be a million reasons why an editor would not see this. If you rely on the editing notices alone, experienced editors are the most likely to get caught up in it. (Bad for Wikipedia.) I already know the rules, so I don't read the fine print on every article and it is not reasonable to expect this. That is why the formal notice requirement is important. (Because in controversial areas like this where discussion sometimes breaks down, the community has put in place extra precautions and procedures in place to prevent abuses.)

I think it does create some unfairness in areas where an editor has previously been active, but the amendment is clear that currently informal notice is not sufficient. Judging from the comments, there may be some will for modification.Seraphim System ^(talk) 23:38, 22 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@KrakatoaKatie: I didn't see it. Please compare it to the notices at ARBPIA with all the important stuff emphasized - I think there should be a template at the top of the talk page and the article page, and they should be in a consistent style. It doesn't benefit editors for the look/color of the templates to change from one conflict area to the other. All the DS notices should look the same. It is unhelpful when the same notices have different appearances on different articles. Experienced editors should not have to slow down to read different versions of the same notice they have read 50 times already. Most likely these issues have all come up in the past and ARBCOM decided that a formal warning for the topic area at a minimum was fair.Seraphim System ^(talk) 12:38, 23 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I have to also add that it is frustrating to be accused of lying, for no reason. I have managed to go all this time without a single 1RR sanction in ARBPIA. Most of my edits are constructive, including maintenance, vandalism patrol, pending changes review, AFC backlog, GA reviews, as well as just regular content creation. A 48 hour block for these edits?: [2] [3] - even if I had known, I would not have thought it was a 1RR violation, because of the near unanimous consensus among admins at AE that editing long-standing content does not count as a revert.Seraphim System ^(talk) 13:27, 23 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@BU Rob13: I can comment that I think even the topic area would be enough, but that it should be given before any DS are applied, including 1RR. The formal templates serve the purpose of making these types of problems less likely and keeping editors cool when working on difficult articles. Editors understandably get upset, some have quit, etc. When I know an area is under discretionary sanctions, I am more careful - I look around to see if there are templates or special notices, I edit more slowly. Generally, we want editors to slow down and edit more carefully in these topic areas, and the formal warnings topic area warnings are usually enough to achieve this. There are a lot of DS topic areas, I don't know all of them, and I don't want to live in fear that I may accidentally edit an article on GMO for example, and get hit with a DS with no warning and no discussion. I do think the font being larger, and the article restrictions being clearly stated, and the individual pages being more consistently templated in some of the less active areas would also help. But the warning comes first, editors should know they are editing in a topic area where pages may have special restrictions.Seraphim System ^(talk) 15:04, 23 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• @Doug Weller: The block absolutely was not reasonable, and you almost lost an editor for it, but if I had been asking for you opinion on the block I would have filed a desysop request. There seems to be consensus that the current rules did require a formal warning for at least the topic area. It sounds like you support modifying the current warning system - I don't support it and that was not my intention filing this. I would only support making the protections for editors stronger, I do not support weakening them. I wanted clarification on the current system - it seems patently clear, as the discussion has turned to modifying the awareness requirement, instead of clarifying it, there was an awareness requirement and what Ed told me under ADMINACCT was incorrect.
• If you have not please read my comment to User:BU Rob13 above on why the awareness requirement is important. No editor has asked for it to be modified and I don't think the proposal will receive community support. If a modification is going to be proposed, this should be discussed with the community in a formal proposal, not as a side matter in a clarification request.Seraphim System ^(talk) 21:16, 23 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• To summarize my position, I think that the current awareness requirement would have been enough to avoid the issue that arose in this case. I have never missed an editing notice when I have been aware of DS in a topic area. I don't think increased page-level notification is necessary and I am not asking for it. A topic area warning would have been sufficient to avoid this block. I'm not persuaded of the wisdom of trying to fix something that isn't broken. That wasn't my intent asking for clarification, I only want to know that I can rely on receiving proper notification of DS when I am editing in a new topic area, so I am aware that I should edit more cautiously if I edit about "Ancient Egyptian race controversy" or the "Shakespeare authorship question" for example. Seraphim System ^(talk) 22:20, 23 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by EdJohnston

Most articles are under

In response to Seraphim System's question about logging, here is where Moreschi logged the 2008 1RR on

Armenian Genocide. EdJohnston (talk) 03:38, 22 December 2017 (UTC)[reply

]

I fully support the idea of a bot notifying editors after they've substantively edited a page covered by DS. This would solve a lot of problems. See

Wikipedia talk:Template messages/User talk namespace, for some consultation on this. It's not like this is the first time we've needed to get a message across without scaring or angering people.
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  02:26, 4 January 2018 (UTC)[reply

]

Redaction. I've struck an idea above after thinking on it longer, for reasons explained at the related AE thread in this post. (Also pinging

Ds/alert}} is nothing but an awareness notice. No harm can come from simply being made aware that a page one might edit again is covered by DS. If you edit the page, you get the notice, period. Simple, no room for doubt or error, and we'll become so used to them so quickly any perception of them as menacing will go away.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  11:08, 4 January 2018 (UTC)[reply

]

PS: This is the typical reaction to even going out of one's way to explain that one does not like the DS template one is leaving and doesn't like that ArbCom requires them. Twice I've had people attempt to

WP:RM/TR works. There is no harm – that's the central premise, anyway – in simply being made aware of something. If people freak out when regular editors make them aware of DS, then either an artificial or an administrative party needs to do it without any interest in the underlying dispute or who the parties are.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  10:36, 4 January 2018 (UTC)[reply

]

• Just a note to say that average inexperienced editor has no idea what is the difference between discretionary and general sanctions. I doubt most experienced editors do, either. If awareness of restrictions before sanctions are imposed is considered to be a "fairness" issue, I strongly suggest Arbcom/the community synchronize the requirements for both types of sanctions. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 22:03, 26 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Coffee

It is ArbCom policy that page restrictions do not require a talk-page warning, as the editnotice warning does the job. As these edits were not done on a mobile device, the user who opened this is fully aware of that. As can be verified by clicking edit on the article. I wouldn't think Arbitrators were unaware of this, considering they

Any uninvolved administrator may impose on any page or set of pages relating to the area of conflict semi-protection, full protection, move protection, revert restrictions, and prohibitions on the addition or removal of certain content (except when consensus for the edit exists). Editors ignoring page restrictions may be sanctioned by any uninvolved administrator. The enforcing administrator must log page restrictions they place.

Best practice is to add editnotices to restricted pages where appropriate, using the standard template ({{

ds/editnotice

}}).

If it has been found sufficient in all the previous ARCA's I can recall about this, I imagine Arbs wouldn't change this rule suddenly for administrators now. — Coffee // have a ☕️ // beans // 20:11, 22 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@DGG: @Callanecc: I'd be interested to hear your thoughts, since you've already commented below (seemingly without the realization that ArbCom wrote the policy to be used exactly as Ed used it here). — Coffee // have a ☕️ // beans // 20:14, 22 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Callanecc: Then why was this not stipulated at the last ARCA I'm clearly referring to? — Coffee // have a ☕️ // beans // 02:09, 23 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@

WP:AC/DS? — Coffee // have a ☕️ // beans // 03:28, 23 December 2017 (UTC)[reply

]

@Callanecc: I rather like that one too... would definitely clear this up finally. — Coffee // have a ☕️ // beans // 03:45, 23 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Callanecc: I refuse to sanction editors who are shown to be using the mobile or visual editors (this is always tagged in the history). Can we not make this an official policy until the devs fix that issue with warnings? Something to the order of: "if the offending edit is tagged as a mobile or Visual edit, administrators should not block for more than 24 hours unless the editor's knowledge of the page restrictions is clearly established"? Or would it be better to wait on the developers to have the notice more prominent in those two GUIs? — Coffee // have a ☕️ // beans // 18:18, 23 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

My biggest concern obviously is that putting it into written form makes it rather easier to game the DS system. — Coffee // have a ☕️ // beans // 18:19, 23 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I will note I disagree with the use of green for any ArbCom editnotice. I was under the impression we could only use {{

ds/editnotice}} anyways, is that not correct Doug Weller, Callanecc, Krakatoa Katie? — Coffee // have a ☕️ // beans // 22:30, 23 December 2017 (UTC)[reply

]

Regarding bot could place a notice on an editor's talk page after their first edit to a page under discretionary sanctions seems like a decent idea, if possible. My thinking is that the more alerts are placed, the more they become like they're supposed to be - neutral alerts, not alerts to be placed after a violation has occurred. This could be also manually done, using a script to see if someone has been alerted before and for what, so that people, when they notice someone doing a few edits in an area, can easily see if an alert is needed to be placed and do it. As an aside, definitely need to up the size of the "this does not mean anything bad" portion of the ds/alert template by like 5 times, otherwise there'll be loads of complaints if a bot is done. Galobtter (pingó mió) 15:31, 26 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Thryduulf: Makes sense. @Opabinia regalis: may just want to make it "semi-automated" - using script to make it a lot easier and a lot more common to put alerts. Galobtter (pingó mió) 12:16, 31 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Darkfrog24

While I don't know Seraphim specifically, it is absolutely possible to scroll right past a notice of discretionary sanctions on a project talk page and have no idea that it's there, especially if you were working on that talk page before it was placed and already in the habit of scrolling past the top to read new threads. This might be a separate problem, but even after reading the page on discretionary sanctions, it's still not clear what they are, how they work or what the editors are supposed to do about it. Darkfrog24 (talk) 17:35, 26 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by DHeyward

From a practical standpoint, AE actions are intended to stop longterm abuse. The project shouldn't collapse due to the time it takes for an AE warning. This isn't vandalism. Nor does it require immediate action. If it did, there are other rules in place to get immediate action. Secondly, if a warning achieves its goal of stopping long-term abuse, then it has done its job and is much preferred to arguing over a sanction and whether a notice was given. The rush to apply a sanction is misguided and a form of "gotcha" abuse when it's very clear that any AE sanction can afford to wait until individual notice is given. No admin should invoke an AE sanction without being able to provide a diff of the listed methods of notification listed in the standard AE/DS procedure (no, an article talk page banner is not one of the notifications allowed). There is much confusion about who can place talk page notices and what they mean. It is simply not sufficient or necessary to rely on them. Asking admins to provide the notification diff is part of the heavy lifting necessary to implement a virtually irreversible long-term sanction. If they can't or won't, then it's not worth invoking an AE sanction. --DHeyward (talk) 20:17, 26 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by isaacl

Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Procedures#aware.aware lists the precise number of ways an editor can be informed of discretionary sanctions. An edit page notice is not one of the listed methods. Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Procedures#aware.alert specifies the precise method to be used to alert an editor. isaacl (talk) 05:39, 27 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by slakr

I noticed some discussion below about wanting more input re: alerts and such (e.g., from @

• If a page already has an ACDS sanction attached to it (e.g., a standard 1RR), I look first to see if there's an edit notice to that effect. If it's only on the talk page or absent entirely, I assume (in absense of anything else) someone might not be aware of it, so if they breach it without any other form of notification or evidence of awareness of the sanction, I typically just add an edit notice myself, send any incidental {{Alert}}s, and wait to see what happens. If there already is an edit notice (and it's been there since whatever breach happened), I've assumed that's fair game for blocking anyone breaching it, regardless of whether they've ever received an Alert in the topic area—though I don't apply any additional editor-level sanctions. For example, if someone violates a 1RR page-level restriction and they clearly should have seen the edit notice but haven't otherwise gotten an ACDS alert, nothing other than a relatively short-term block might come of it, but they'll still get an {{Alert}} from me as part of the package in case they decide to continue the dispute on other subject-area articles.
• If a person doesn't have an ACDS {{Alert}} in the past year and they're involved in an edit war (for example) on an ACDS-able page, regardless of whether the page has active sanctions or not, I typically add an {{Alert}} to the user and wait to see what happens. Therefore, if they edit war on a page that doesn't have an explicit ACDS restriction, is within the topic area, and they HAVE been Alerted, they might get a topic-wide 1RR restriction (but might not even get blocked).
• Regardless of ACDS applicability, if someone's obviously edit warring despite usual, non-ACDS warnings, they get blocked regularly (as a non-AE action).

So the general idea is that edit notices and user-talk-page {{Alert}}s, if "not seen" by someone, are assume-bad-faith within their respective domains (i.e., edit notice for page-level sanctions and page-level enforcement of those sanctions; user Alert template for user-level sanctions/topic-wide sanctions applied to a user). Someone doesn't need both an edit notice on the page AND an alert; it's just too difficult, in my opinion, for people to "accidentally ignore" either the obvious "you have messages" or the "stop! there's an active sanction" edit notices, while it's entirely possible for someone who's even been Alerted to not see the talk-page notice of "hey, there are sanctions for the page attached to this talk page." Thus, a single-page-level sanction (and enforcement action taken in response) are presumed "notified," most reliably, through that page's edit notice, while broad, topic-wide, user-level sanctions (and actions taken in response) are presumed "notified," most reliably, through prior Alert templating and/or recent participation in AE-type discussions in the topic area.

Hopefully that helps? If I'm screwing it up, please let me know whatever you guys decide. :P

--slakr^\ talk / 23:16, 27 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@

WP:BRFA

):

• It can be a a little complicated to figure out when/if the person truly got alerted previously (or if they meet the "participated in an AE on the topic" portion). There's an edit filter to tag the alert, but if an alert already exists on the page (even if over a year old or in a different topic), the filter might not catch it, plus someone might later clear their talk page, etc.... That said, going forward, if everyone was okay with that minor dumbness in the bot to begin with (e.g., someone possibly getting 2 alerts within a year or something), it might not be as big of an issue in the long run. There's just the appearance of a bright-line with a lot of arb topics, and the Alert template's edit notice (sorry; confusing; "the edit notice alert that pops up when you try to use the Alert template to notify a user") has the perception that "you'll be doing a bad thing" if you over-alert, which is understandable, but also causes like me reviewing a bot to get much stricter with someone wanting to run one.
• Page-level restrictions might be complex and aren't necessarily reference-able by a bot in a unified manner, except perhaps in edit notices. {{
  Editnotice GMO 1RR}} and others that might be out in the wild (I believe Callanecc
  might have felt my pain with dealing with some of these a while back. :P) Case-by-case exceptions could be made for the broad topics, but it might get awkward on the non-standard/free-form sanctions (e.g., 1RR in the context of specific content). Plus, there have been cases where an admin adds a sanction just as a new section on the talk page(!) and you have to play hide-and-seek in the archives to find it (or not find it if one never existed and someone just slipped in the template in the talk header). Either way, in my opinion, an edit notice should be the standard go-to for where a sanction lives, even moreso if a bot's going to be parsing through them.
• Changes to the sanctions on the page might(?) need to prompt subsequent bot messages for the user. For example, say a page starts with a "1RR over content pertaining to his birthday" but then moves to "1RR across the page," would the broader one need implicit followup alerts? The bot would need to track or be aware of that.
• Bots aren't always reliable, and reliance on them for critical notifications may be problematic.
• Bot notification can sometimes be seen as bitey or annoying in general. Even with SineBot people have complained about {{
  tilde}} or {{unsigned
  }}, and thankfully I can just say sofixit or "discuss on the talk page," but arb templates are more locked down.

For active page-level sanctions it still makes sense to me to have and standardize around an obvious edit notice, and if someone disables their edit notices, it still seems the onus should still be on them (I mean, if you close your eyes, you still have to stop at the stop sign, even if you don't see it). That said, if edit notices aren't being shown in different UIs to begin with, I feel that's a major problem anyway that should be addressed as a loss of functionality (might need to open a ticket if it's not in our hands to modify it locally).

Apart from the bot thing, though, I've noticed that even people involved in disputes on a page that's clearly under an ACDS topic frequently don't, themselves, use the {{Alert}} (et al) templates, quite possibly because they're otherwise obscure and buried deep within policy pages, and the ACDS topics themselves require a level of conscious searching and discovery + familiarity. Plus, most disputes seem to erupt over simple text issues instead of technical features or templates (once more, the audience isn't necessarily template, policy, or community savvy; doubly so with the mass-popularity topics like American Politics and BLP). So it usually take someone with a lot of experience who's ALSO conscious of what all the active DS topics are AND how to act on them to actually break out the alerts equally and without inflaming the situation, by which point a lot of anger, frustration, and disruption may have already taken place. In that sense, the more automated (or more passive but still unmissable) the alerting process could be, likely the better.

So I dunno. I still think it's a relatively safe/sane balance to have two domains of alerts (e.g., page-level = passive edit notice before taking action, topic-wide = actively {{

would be able to make a bot

if that route wants to be tried, too.

--slakr^\ talk / 02:23, 4 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by John Carter

I know that there are talk page templates which add a form of warning box to the edit box. Someone doing a vandalism revert wouldn't see that of course, but might we rig up some template to add some form of 1RR warning to a contested article, and, maybe, also rig it to give a warning on a revert? John Carter (talk) 23:10, 28 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Sidecomment about bots for alerts by JJE

Seeing as Opabinia has wondered about using bots for sending out alerts, there is a mini-conversational thread on

@Opabinia regalis: The problem is that when delivered to people who aren't actually editing the content (fixing typos, rescuing dead links, template parameter errors, etc, etc) such alerts will either be seen as meaningless spam (and spamming people is never a good thing) or scare new editors away, and anyone who gets an alert while copyediting and later edits content in the area will be formally aware (they've received an alert) but not actually aware as they will likely have ignored the (then) irrelevant message. I encourage you to read and contribute to the linked discussion (and look at previous discussions too) as there are very good reasons why bot delivery to everybody has been rejected previously, and until we get AI-level bots that can accurately distinguish someone engaging with the content from someone copyediting from someone fixing templates from someone engaging in subject-irrelevant vandalism then we need humans to determine who alerts are relevant to and who they aren't. Thryduulf (talk) 12:07, 31 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by GoldenRing

I disagree with those who say editors should be notified of individual page restrictions before being sanctioned, because the result of such a rule is perverse. DS authorise admins to take any action they consider necessary for the smooth running of the project up to and including a 1 year block, so long as the editor is formally aware of the DS in place. So an editor who makes two disruptive reverts in a day can be sanctioned by an admin... unless there is a page-level 1RR restriction in place, in which case an extra notification is needed? As I say, that seems a perverse outcome. GoldenRing (talk) 22:00, 7 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Kingsindian

I do not have much comment on most aspects of this request, but I can give my own experience: I basically never notice edit notices. I have edited for a long time in ARBPIA and my mind just filters them out. I think EdJohnston's block was reasonable, but not blocking would also have been reasonable. In discretionary sanctions areas, unfortunately everyone (including admins) tend to become cynical. If Seraphim System says that they didn't see the notice, it would have been easy enough to warn them for their first offence.

My feeling is that the warning system doesn't really need to be changed (this case was a bit unusual). But I don't have any strong opinions either way. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 06:34, 9 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by TonyBallioni (DS)

Rob, just a brief statement on the motion regarding awareness. While you’re at it, it might make sense to remove the bit about not being aware of sanctions if you have successfully appealed a sanction: that’s pretty counterintuitive. Anyone who has gone through the dramah that is a DS appeal is more than aware that sanctions exist. If the last line contradicts it by saying they’re aware if they’ve appealed all there sanctions, it also seems like unnecessary extra verbiage. Not really related to the general part of this thread, but since your amending it, you might as well consider another simplification at the same time. TonyBallioni (talk) 19:49, 10 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Ca2james

Regarding point three of the proposed motion (In the last twelve months, the editor has given and/or received an alert for the area of conflict). Must an alert be the formal templated notice left on a editor Talk page, or can it also be a note on an editor's Talk page saying something like, "there are discretionary sanctions on HotButtonTopic page so be careful when editing there" enough? Thanks, Ca2james (talk) 05:05, 11 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the clarification Premeditated Chaos. It's good to know that "alert" is defined and not nebulous. Ca2james (talk) 13:20, 11 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by SPECIFICO

My experience with DS relates only to American Politics and BLP. The DS system is not working. Admins are not able/willing to enforce it either by exercising their delegated authority or through the AE process. Admins at AE are gun-shy and unable/unwilling to judge the facts of reported incidents. There's a structural dysfunction in that the editors who are reported at AE complaints are among the most energetic, motivated, and disruptive editors on WP. It's their only way of pursuing their POV's. They're at AE because they've failed to gain consensus through normal editing process and have resorted to various forms of disruption. There are objective reasons why Admins may feel unable to function within this environment.

If DS is intended to be discretionary, then reversals on appeal should be rare and uncontroversial. But what's happened instead is that most DS get appealed, either through jawboning and lobbying the sanctioning Admin or through extensive drama threads on at AN or AE. So AE has degenerated into ANI, but with more Admin time wasted than in the ordinary ANI.

So we have a sick elephant and this amendment request is like doing plastic surgery to straighten its tail. I suggest Arbcom start with a clear statement of the purpose of DS, what is needed beyond normal resolution processes, a clear definition of the DS process and how it is intended to function, and then a set of standards and procedures.

Instead what this request is addressing is a single one of those procedures, which can only be sensibly designed after all the other issues are considered and resolved. SPECIFICO talk 14:22, 11 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@BU Rob13: Thanks for the clarification. With respect to the question of notification: If the initial sanction against any editor is small, it serves as a warning and should not cause much concern. It's a mild rebuke. It doesn't matter much if some number of the editors who receive a first such sanction are surprised. In the majority of cases, another editor or Admin goes to the user's talk page to convey the concern prior to a block or an AE filing. In case there's good reason why that does not occur, an innocuous initial block -- which could routinely be 24 hours of contemplation, or similar -- has serves the purpose of preventing future lapses. If the problem continues, then the mandated "escalating blocks" are warranted and will not have come without warning/awareness. I don't think it's worth worrying about the small minority of editors who do something disruptive enough to be blocked without knowing their behavior was a problem and without another editor or an Admin warning them. They get a minimal first sanction and will be more aware in the future. It's just more efficient and the cost of the rare false positives is minimal. SPECIFICO talk 18:48, 11 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by {other-editor}

Other editors are free to make relevant comments on this request as necessary. Comments here should opine whether and how the Committee should clarify or amend the decision or provide additional information.

Discretionary Sanctions: Clerk notes

This area is used for notes by the clerks (including clerk recusals).

Discretionary Sanctions: Arbitrator views and discussion

• Looking at your block log and the
  WP:AELOG, Ed's block wasn't an arbitration enforcement action enforcing 1RR but a normal admin block for edit warring. In fact in his comment on AN3 he says that you had engaged in long-term edit warring.

  Having said that, it's probably worth having a discussion on whether editors need to/should be individually notified about page-level sanctions before being sanctioned. If memory serves, I think (and this is testing my memory) that the original intention was that editors would not be sanctioned without previous notice.^ However, in practice, this hasn't been the case with admins sanctioning editors who breach page-level sanctions without prior notice (this is particularly the case for 1RR). Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 00:57, 22 December 2017 (UTC)[reply

  ]

^ In the

this summary). Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 01:56, 23 December 2017 (UTC)[reply

]

• There are a lot of comments here about what decisions have been made in the past and contradictory decisions at that. I'd suggest to all those who are commenting that evidence of these past decisions (links) is needed, nor vague recollections. Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 20:53, 22 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• @
  WP:ARBPIA3 which specifically included language about 1RR applying and that, in that topic area, editors could be blocked for 1RR vios without prior notice. That is, in both circumstances, blocking without notice was specifically approved by the Committee or community. Another difference is that under the discretionary sanctions system an alert expires after a year, whereas with the SCW&ISIL general sanction the notification doesn't expire. Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 21:00, 22 December 2017 (UTC)[reply
  ]
• @Coffee: Nothing in the bit of WP:AC/DS you quoted says that the requirements of the Awareness and alerts section does not apply to the enforcement of page-level restrictions. In fact, neither the section on individual sanctions nor the section on page-level restrictions state that an editor is required to be "aware" because the Awareness section says No editor may be sanctioned unless they are aware that discretionary sanctions are in force for the area of conflict. Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 01:56, 23 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Only that I didn't think of it then, I was actually looking at the 2013 review page earlier this year for something else so the memories of a previous discussion about edit notices it was relatively fresh. Looking back at threads on arbcom-l from the the AP2 ARCA it looks like the committee was discussing amending AC/DS to make it clear that editors could be sanctioned without being "aware" if there was an edit notice, but that either there wasn't enough of a consensus to do it, or that something else happened and we got distracted. Given the time of year, this might be a motion which the new ArbCom will need to consider. Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 02:28, 23 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    • I don't think anything so specific is going to work. I'm not a big fan of giving editors a specific time limit to do something, as it can com across as an aggressive ultimatum, plus we're volunteers and there's no deadline. Consider a situation where a user makes an edit which they didn't know was violating, goes to sleep, wakes up and goes to work, then logs in to find themselves blocked). Plus any sort of time limit (IMHO) pushes it a little towards punitive rather than preventative. I'm thinking more along the lines the following as a new paragraph in either the awareness or page restrictions sections (not sure which would be best yet, though I'm leaning towards §awareness:

Uninvolved administrators may use their discretion to issue #sanctions (such as blocks or page/topic bans) of no more than one week in duration to editors who breach page restrictions but are not #aware of discretionary sanctions as prescribed above if the page in question includes an edit notice, using the standard template ({{

ds/editnotice

}}), which specifies the page-level restriction in force. This does not prevent administrators using the full range of #Sanctions against editors who do meet the #awareness criteria.

It needs a little wordsmithing. Note that # = link to the section on ACDS. This way, we're giving admins an ability to enforce page-level restrictions without an individual editor needing to be have been alerted (or otherwise aware) but not allowing them to impose any sanction without the editor being properly made aware. Otherwise, we're effectively creating a loop hole where any discretionary sanction can be imposed on an editor without them meeting the awareness criteria as soon as they breach a page-level restriction. Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 03:43, 23 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• @BU Rob13: There isn't really a problem with you commenting in this section. It's really only formal decisions (e.g. motions, declining request) where there's an issue.
  I'm a little conflicted on that, I think it's important for editors to be aware of restrictions before they are sanctioned. However, even if an editor recessive an alert it's still very likely that they won't be aware of specific page-level restrictions as the notice they receive on their talk page doesn't tell them that. So, given that, the only way to ensure that they are aware is to give them an alert and tell them about page-specific restrictions in place. That's not really a sustainable approach both in terms of logging and administrative hoops to jump through, but it is my preference from a editor point of view.
  From an administrator and as someone who was very active with AE my preference would be that if the article has an edit notice the editor can be sanctioned (regardless of whether they've received a notice). The problem with that approach is that it's easily missed using VisualEditor and edit notices don't appear at all in the mobile version.
  So, I'm still on the fence. Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 06:05, 23 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• To add (re BU Rob13), my preference is that an editor would both be aware of the discretionary sanction in the topic area (through an alert or otherwise) and that the page in question had an edit notice (plus, given the technical limitations, weren't using a mobile device). That, to me, seems to be best way to ensure that an editor is aware of the restrictions which are in place. Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 04:16, 24 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• I too cannot see how it is reasonable to apply page-level DS without individual warning. Our system for DS is sufficiently complicated that at the very least fairness require full notice. . DGG ( talk ) 05:35, 22 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

since I was asked for my general view. I personally consider the system of AE inherently unfair, unreasonable, and erratic. I have never participated in it as an admin, and I would advise other admins to use it only when there is no other solution. Unfortunately I cannot find an alternative, so all we can do at the moment is try to minimize harm. At least we can require explicit notice. DGG ( talk ) 04:18, 23 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I've modified my position based on the convoluted nature of discussions on this page in the last 2 weeks. I no longer support the use at AE at all. The system is too complicated, unclear, and inflexible. Though I still have no suggestion for a replacement, the first thing to try is to see if we can do without it entirely. DGG ( talk ) 18:40, 9 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• I agree with DGG that the entire discretionary sanctions and general sanctions systems is a mess. We should take a hard look at their wording and implementation, because I believe it is inherently unfair to sanction an editor if that editor is unaware of a possible penalty. The burden is on us as administrators to make sure an editor is aware, as unwieldy and burdensome as that is, and we need to make it as simple as possible in order for the system to work. I'm no coder, and I don't know if this is possible, but maybe a bot could place a notice on an editor's talk page after their first edit to a page under discretionary sanctions. Or perhaps an 'are you sure?' box like the one that comes up when we try to give the DS alert on a user talk page.

In terms of the specifics here, Seraphim System made fifteen edits to the page in question in just over 48 hours. It strains credulity that he didn't see the 1RR edit notice with that many edits. I could possibly believe it if this were three edits, but fifteen? It's even got a hidden comment that appears directly under the places where he added his maintenance tags. Does he need bright flashing lights and sirens? Katie^talk 11:37, 23 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• @Coffee: It is my understanding that the DS notice is required to be posted as it is in the template, and that color modification (or any modification other than the topic area) is not allowed. Katie^talk 03:42, 24 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• The block seems reasonable. I see the problem with VE and mobile devices, but I still think that an edit notice should be sufficient. I'm sure we can improve the system but my experience is that DS in general is avoiding a lot of problems we'd have without the system. Doug Weller talk 15:33, 23 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Given the comment by Seraphim System about the color scheme perhaps it could have been missed, so I’ll have to reconsider my comment. Doug Weller talk 22:15, 23 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    • I think we should consider Callanecc's suggested wording. Doug Weller talk 16:14, 26 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    • [[User:Darkfrog24}} makes a good point. I try to always start a new section with a clear heading stating that DS has been applied. Maybe this should be required. Doug Weller talk 17:47, 26 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• @DGG and Callanecc: Could you clarify whether you think just notification of discretionary sanctions in the topic area is necessary before sanction or notification of the specific page-level sanctions on each individual page? How does this opinion interact with the prominent edit notices typically used on articles under sanction? Would a notification of topic area sanctions in addition to an edit notice about the page-level sanctions be considered sufficient notification? Note I'm asking about what you think should be, not what you think is current practice/policy. Opinions from any other editors would also be appreciated. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 05:13, 23 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • As a procedural note, the Committee has no authority to modify general sanctions, which derive solely from the community. If we decide to alter the awareness requirements for discretionary sanctions, the most we can do is encourage the community to adopt the same changes. Having said that, I think we need to seriously think about what the right standard of awareness is. Should an editor have to be actually aware of a page-level restriction to be sanctioned, or should they only need to have been in a position such that a reasonable editor of limited experience would be aware? For instance, if a particularly oblivious editor misses a massive edit notice with giant font saying "This article is under 1RR" (with appropriate wikilinks to explain), should they be sanctioned if they violate that restriction? As for the technical issues (mobile browsers, mostly), that is something we can presumably refer to the WMF to develop a fix. It would be technically doable to display edit notices in mobile browsers on a page prior to the edit window. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 14:46, 23 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Here's my take on current policy and practice, for what it's worth.
    WP:AC/DS#Awareness and alerts makes clear that at least a topic area-level notice must be issued before sanctioning under discretionary sanctions. A page restriction derived from discretionary sanctions can only be enforced via discretionary sanctions, so this same awareness requirement exists before sanctioning someone for violating a page restriction. Currently, there is no requirement (in policy or in practice) requiring an additional notice of a page restriction before sanctioning an editor for violating it. There's no policy requirement for edit notices, etc., but in practice, we do expect administrators to place them. The conversation on changes to this policy should probably take place at a different venue with community feedback. As for this particular block, Seraphim System hadn't been notified of discretionary sanctions in this topic area, so he should not have been sanctioned. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 01:29, 24 December 2017 (UTC)[reply
    ]
• Since it should be possible technically to place individual notices, there is no reason not to do so. DGG ( talk ) 01:31, 24 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• If there's a legitimate doubt that an editor was aware that a restriction was in place, then better practice is to warn rather than block for a violation of that restriction—unless the edit was such as to be independently blockable in any case. We have had instances (I'm not opining on whether this is one) in which an editor was blocked and sincerely had no idea why; it is important that that should not happen. Newyorkbrad (talk) 15:14, 26 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Focusing for a second on the original question, are we all agreed that at a minimum an editor cannot be sanctioned under page restrictions deriving from discretionary sanctions unless they've met the awareness criteria for that DS topic area? ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 02:03, 27 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • I am, but I'd like to add (by motion) that there also needs to be an edit notice on the article (with a footnote that admins should consider that the footnote doesn't appear when using a mobile device). Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 06:42, 29 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    • I've started working on a draft at User:Callanecc/sandbox2. Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 05:06, 30 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• OK, I've caught up on all the other ARCAs except this one, so I guess I can't avoid it anymore. This is thinking-out-loud as I'm catching up on the background reading; read it if you like arbs showing their work and skip it if you don't like long-ass posts ;)
  • My first reaction to all of this follows DGG and Katie's reactions that AE/DS is kind of a mess, and not only because it's unpredictable from editors' perspective but also because it must be seriously tiresome to be an admin on the receiving end of all the wikilaywering. This is not the only recent issue that centers on someone objecting to a short block and one way to manage that problem is to just deescalate the perceived significance of blocks. I'm perfectly happy to get blocked some more if necessary ;)
  • Slakr is definitely on the right track in not expecting that talk-page banners are sufficient to alert editors of the actual article. But in terms of editnotices on the article itself... I hate editnotices. Hate. For a long time I used a userscript to automatically hide them because there are so many and they're so bloated and they take up so much space on my little 11" laptop screen. (Obviously, I did not obey the one on this page that says "be succinct" ;) While I'm sure every incremental addition to every editnotice on the project seemed important and useful at the time, cumulative banner blindness is a real problem. There's also the issue Callanecc points out - editnotices are formatted differently, and often hard to read, and sometimes may not appear at all for editors using the Visual Editor or the 2017 source editor, and they're unavailable on the mobile site (and the mobile app?). Also, the edit tags indicating which editor someone used aren't perfectly reliable either, so not really a good way to judge whether someone "should" have seen a notice. In general, editnotices are not reliable methods for communicating information to editors. I was under the impression we'd already decided this once, but when I went back to look at the incident I was thinking of, the conclusion was almost the opposite of what I thought I remembered. (And for my own part, I see I was more concerned with a different aspect of AE/DS enforcement I consider problematic. I was unaware at the time of the "consultation discussion" Callanecc linked above.)
  • That being said, it is also obviously impractical for some editors on an article to be under the impression that they are working in a 3RR environment, and others to be subject to 1RR (because they've received the appropriate individual DS alerts, rather than because they personally are under an editing restriction). The best solution I can think of is a bot sending out automated alerts to the talk pages of editors to an article subject to a 1RR restriction, but I had the impression that had been considered before and decided against (either because no one wants to write the bot, or because of practical limitations that aren't immediately coming to mind).
  • Overall I think Callanecc's sandbox version is better than what we have now, but more broadly, I think the current mechanisms aren't effective in communicating restrictions to editors and are asking admins to do a lot of manual checking before sanctioning someone under those restrictions. Unless I'm missing an obvious drawback, I think we should revisit the bot-notification method. Opabinia regalis (talk) 21:57, 30 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    • Jo-Jo Eumerus, thanks. I actually think that's a feature, not a bug :) When the existing alerts come from specific other editors, people tend to react to them as if they're aggressive acts or personal affronts. If everybody and their mother gets one, and they come from DSBot, they're less personal. (I assume the bot could deliver just one notice per topic.) Opabinia regalis (talk) 07:39, 31 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    • Thanks for the follow-ups - this is a bit of a side point, since a change of that scale would be better discussed somewhere other than the middle of an ARCA, but I'll go read the other discussion in the meantime. Opabinia regalis (talk) 02:36, 1 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• Wikipedia:Arbitration_Committee/Discretionary_sanctions#Alerts here and isn't being modified AFAIK. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 05:19, 11 January 2018 (UTC)[reply
  ]
  • Correct, we are not modifying that at all in this motion. I'm going to refactor the motion to underline the changes. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 14:10, 11 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• @SPECIFICO: I largely agree with your comments. I think there is appetite both within the Committee and among the broader editing community to overhaul how discretionary sanctions operate. This discussion is not about that, but separately, discussions about discretionary sanctions and arbitration enforcement in general are happening. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 18:30, 11 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Discretionary Sanctions: Motion

For this motion there are 12 active arbitrators. With 0 arbitrators abstaining, 7 support or oppose votes are a majority.

The

The

Enacted: Kevin (aka L235 · t · c) 15:29, 15 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Support

1. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 19:28, 10 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
2. Thanks for proposing this Rob. Obviously support since I wrote it and my comments above. Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 21:17, 10 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
3. Okay, because it makes it clearer, but we really need to look at the whole discretionary sanctions thing and make it work better. Katie^talk 23:59, 10 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
4. Support, but I agree with Katie that this system is Byzantine at best. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 04:34, 11 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
5. Agree with Katie. Thanks to Rob for proposing. Alex Shih (talk) 04:51, 11 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
6. This is a good start to hopefully clearing up DS once and for all. RickinBaltimore (talk) 16:03, 12 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
7. Been mulling over this, but it does seem a general good step. Worm^TT(talk) 08:27, 14 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
8. Agree with KrakatoaKatie. -- Euryalus (talk) 09:34, 14 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
9. As an improvement over current wording. -- with no implication it deals with all necessary improvements. DGG ( talk ) 11:08, 14 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
10. Ok, I'm not entirely sure but it's better than the old version, and maybe baby steps are the way to do this. Doug Weller talk 12:40, 14 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
11. Per most of the other supporters. Newyorkbrad (talk) 19:18, 14 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose

Abstain

Inactive

1. Opabinia regalis
2. DeltaQuad
3. Mkdw

Discussion by arbitrators

• Posting this with slight edits from User:Callanecc/sandbox2. This motion serves to add edit notices as a requirement before sanctioning for a page restriction. It also makes clearer that editors must be aware of discretionary sanctions in a topic area before being sanctioned under a page restriction. The last line in the proposed page restrictions section will probably be reformatted as a note if this passes, but it's easiest to display without a note here. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 19:28, 10 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • I don't understand why successfully appealing all their sanctions makes an editor unaware of the sanctions. I know that has to be over 12 months earlier, but as suggested above, isn't it pretty certain that an editor who has had to appeal a sanction would remember it? Doug Weller talk 12:25, 11 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • @Doug Weller: I think the logic behind having the 12 month timer at all is because editors with no sanctions/heavy involvement in the area are unlikely to follow whether discretionary sanctions have been rescinded or not. Having said that, I agree we should simplify the awareness requirements and plan to start a discussion about simplifying discretionary sanctions in general soon-ish. For now, this proposal doesn't change anything about the usual awareness requirements, and I think it's best to avoid trying to conflate this simple change with a broader overhaul of DS. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 12:32, 11 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• Changes are now underlined while removed text is struck. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 14:13, 11 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]