Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Conduct in deletion-related editing/Evidence

Wikipedia Arbitration
About arbitration Talk Arbitration policy (CU/OS) Guide to arbitration Noticeboard + Talk Search archived proceedings Ban appeals Report
Open proceedings All open requests Case requests Clarification and Amendment requests Arbitrator motion requests Enforcement requests
Active sanctions Contentious topics (Log) General sanctions Editor sanctions
Arbitration Committee Discuss + Contact Members Procedures Elections Talk History Clerks + Talk Clerk procedures
Audit Talk Statistics Talk Reports (pre-2016)
Track related changes
t e

The evidence phase has been extended one week to allow the submission of evidence (with diffs) about other editors who should be a party to this case. Otherwise-meritorious requests to add parties may be denied if submitted after the first week of the evidence phase. Please read this for more information on submitting evidence about a non-party editor.

Arbitration case pages exist to assist the Arbitration Committee in arriving at fair, well-informed decisions. This page is not designed for the submission of general reflections on the arbitration process, Wikipedia in general, or other irrelevant and broad issues; and if you submit such content to this page, please expect it to be ignored or removed. General discussion of the case may be opened on the talk page. You must focus on the issues that are important to the dispute and submit diffs which illustrate the nature of the dispute or will be useful to the committee in its deliberations.

Submitting evidence

• Any editor may add evidence to this page, irrespective of whether they are involved in the dispute.
• You must submit evidence in your own section, using the prescribed format.
• Editors who change other users' evidence may be sanctioned by arbitrators or clerks without warning; if you have a concern with or objection to another user's evidence, contact the arbitration clerks by e-mail or on the talk page.

Word and diff limits

• The standard limits for all evidence submissions are: 1000 words and 100
  diffs
  for users who are parties to this case; or about 500 words and 50 diffs for other users. Detailed but succinct submissions are more useful to the committee.
• If you wish to exceed the prescribed limits on evidence length, you must obtain the written consent of an arbitrator before doing so; you may ask for this on the Evidence talk page.
• Evidence that exceeds the prescribed limits without permission, or that contains inappropriate material or diffs, may be refactored, redacted or removed by a clerk or arbitrator without warning.

Supporting assertions with evidence

• Evidence must include links to the actual page diff in question, or to a short page section; links to the page itself are inadequate. Never link to a
  page history, an editor's contributions, or a log
  for all actions of an editor (as those change over time), although a link to a log for a specific article or a specific block log is acceptable.
• Please make sure any page section links are permanent, and read the simple diff and link guide if you are not sure how to create a page diff.

Rebuttals

• The Arbitration Committee expects you to make rebuttals of other evidence submissions in your own section, and for such rebuttals to explain how or why the evidence in question is incorrect; do not engage in tit-for-tat on this page.
• Analysis of evidence should occur on the /Workshop page, which is open for comment by parties, arbitrators, and others.

Expected standards of behavior

• You are required to act with appropriate decorum during this case. While grievances must often be aired during a case, you are expected to air them without being
  personal attacks
  , and to respond calmly to allegations against you.
• Accusations of misbehaviour posted in this case must be proven with clear evidence (and otherwise not made at all).

Consequences of inappropriate behavior

• Editors who conduct themselves inappropriately during a case may be sanctioned by an arbitrator or clerk, without warning.
• Sanctions issued by arbitrators or clerks may include being banned from particular case pages or from further participation in the case.
• Editors who ignore sanctions issued by arbitrators or clerks may be blocked from editing.
• Behavior during a case may also be considered by the committee in arriving at a final decision.

Deletionists are a thing

In this comment at the request stage, a normally excellent editor seemed to imply the word "deletionist" should only be used ironically. Deletionists are real. Using afdstats its easy to find editors who vote Delete over 90% of the time. Having different people embody contrary principles can be a helpful opposition like finger & thumb, Defence v Prosecutor , red team/blue team etc. But it does risk friction which can cause deletionists to see their opposites as problematic for no good reason.

Exoneration for 13

13 is unlike the other 3 parties, who are high volume editors. Whereas 13 only participates in about 5 or 6 AfDs per month. He's been mentioned in a few ANIs, but far less than the other 3 parties. The two most recent ANIs came closer to ending with a boomerang rather than a sanction for 13, especially the ANI earlier this month. The June ANI was focussed on conduct at this AdD where the filer made the ridiculous reply to 13 that "Article improvement is *not* a proper response in the middle of an AfD" The ANI filer drew heavy criticism for this position, and to his credit didn't double down, instead retracting the view. 13 is to be commended for taking the time to improve articles at AfD. 13 isnt always word perfect, and it would be easy to cherry pic diffs making a case that he could benefit from a reminder. But while I argued against a boomerang for the last two editors who raised ANIs against 13, it would be absurd if their needless litigation is rewarded by seeing it lead to even a minor sanction like a caution for 13. Hopefully an exoneration is was what editor Ritchie333 had in mind when he said making 13 a party may stop getting things worse. (PS - none of this is to imply I see major problems with the other 3 editors - I don't)

Inaccurate statements from the Delete side

Back in the portals case it seemed necessary to point out that assertions from the delete side collapse under scrutiny. This may be the case again here. At the request stage a ludicrous assertion was made that 13 & I are among those "especially" likely to be involved in ANI fights. ARS editors like 13 & me are good as gold. On average I post to ANI less than once a month. Im not perfect but no ones going to be able to pick out diffs proving I typically edit there with a battlefield mentality. Mostly I just plead for moderation & fairness, including quite often for deletion leaning editors if I see them at risk of a sanction that I feel would not be net +ve for the encyclopedia, e.g. as I did last year for Mr Lambert FeydHuxtable (talk) 14:20, 18 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Johnpacklambert has an extensive log of sanctions, including two indefinite blocks

Looking at the block log:

• On 29 October 2015, Johnpacklambert was blocked indefinitely for serious violations of the
  biography of living persons policy on Jeanne Shaheen. The block was appealed successfully
  that November.
• On 9 March 2017, Johnpacklambert was "indefinitely banned from nominating any articles at WP:AFD to a maximum of ONE article in any given calendar day, determined by UTC
• On 25 August 2021, Johnpacklambert was again blocked indefinitely, which included disabling of their talk page for a week in order to cool off. The talk page was re-enabled following a discussion - Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive1078#Johnpacklambert
• On 16 September 2021, Johnpacklambert was "indefinitely topic-banned from articles focused on, and edits related to, religion or religious figures, broadly construed." Note that I placed the topic ban, but as expected, did so by instruction of consensus of the community. On 7 December 2021, he was blocked for a week for violating this topic ban, which was reversed on appeal.

Johnpacklambert has regularly been complained about on noticeboards

• 15 June 2022 : Johnpacklambert's recent deletion discussions
• 28 December 2021 : Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive1087#Johnpacklambert violates his topic ban again - closed as "Block proposal is not supported at the time, so we let it go. I however would like to draw Johnpacklambert's attention to the fact that many users think this was a topic ban violation, and many users in good standing supported the block proposal. Next time, they might be in majority, and it is your direct interest to make sure that there is no next time."
• 14 April 2021 : Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive1065#Disruptive POINTy AfD !votes and racist comparisons by Johnpacklambert - closed as "Enough already. There is no consensus for sanctions, JPL has improved their voting and there is clearly going to be no tarring and feathering. In the meantime, this thread must be actively harmful to JPL and no longer serves a purpose. Some of the people contributing here should be taking a long hard look at themselves"
• 1 August 2020 : Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive1043#Johnpacklambert and Prods - closed as "Boldly closing this. I have commented, so anyone should feel free to undo the close if they feel it's out of process, but JPL has agreed to take the feedback on board and act differently, the OP has indicated they are satisfied, and there doesn't seem to be consensus for anything else to happen. Back to work folks..."
• 1 September 2016 : Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive932#User:Johnpacklambert - closed as "There is clearly no consensus for any action to be taken against JPL and now the topic is veering off into policy discussion about notability, which does not belong here, so please take that to the appropriate venue. It's WP:CLOSINGTIME, you don't have to go home, but you can't stay here"
• 13 May 2013 : Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive248#Ban requested for User:Johnpacklambert - closed as "Obviously no consensus for a ban"

A common theme of these threads is that there is no obvious agreement or consensus on how to handle Johnpacklambert's behaviour Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 14:48, 18 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks to the committee for granting me 1,500 words.

7&6=thirteen (S Marshall)

I'm surprised and delighted to see 7&6=thirteen added as a party. He's the party I'm most concerned about.

Evidence: 1, 2

Narrative: In link 1, from November 2021 I proposed 7&6 should be topic banned from AfD. When I proposed this, I believed 7&6 had fabricated page numbers and falsified a source to stop an article being deleted. I believed this because the AfD was about Reginald V. Smith, and the source 7&6 cited (a) didn't mention Smith on or near the pages he cited, and (b) didn't contain the search string "Reginald". 7&6 couldn't explain this becase he couldn't recall the AfD.

During the subsequent discussion, Suffusion of Yellow found the problem. 7&6 had cited the page numbers from the wrong book. 7&6 cited pages 41, 384, 512 and 514 of this book (which only has 223 pages), but in fact Mr Smith was mentioned on pages 41, 384, 512, and 514 of this book.

I still have concerns with this, for the reasons Deor gave in that AN/I. Yes, Mr Smith is mentioned on those pages, but no, the book doesn't support the claims that 7&6 attributed to it. 7&6 attached that citation to the sentence: His wife Rogers Mae and sister Annie Marietta Smith-Randolph attended his graduation, but the source does not verify any of that at all. I can't offer diffs because this is deleted content, so I ask the committee to use advanced permissions to check for themselves.

Wugapodes closed that AN/I with no consensus for a formal sanction but a final warning for 7&6.

In link 2, which opened 8 days after Wug's closure, the community couldn't agree a remedy.

Evidence: Canvassing: 1, 2.

Narrative: I believe that 7&6, an editor with 144,000 edits since 6th November 2007, has called these edits "a mistake".

Evidence: Behaviour at AfD after Wugapodes' final warning: 1 (links a fandom page in an AfD and says "We have an obvious problem with Spanish language sources"); 2, passim but especially comments by Vanamonde93 here and subsequently.

Ten Pound Hammer (S Marshall)

Evidence:

• 1, 28 January 2018 topic ban from AfD
• 2, 4 August 2018 partial repeal
• 3, 6 October 2019 full repeal, with closer's note that [T]he community seems unlikely to offer another chance after this.

Narrative: Note in that third link where TPH says: I understand why my topic-ban was imposed in the first place, and I will chalk it up to an overzealous attempt to clear out cleanup categories which led to a great deal of reckless nominations... I think that my above-mentioned method of watchlisting articles or other content that I find suitable for deletion, and watching them for a period of time before determining whether or not to nominate, will help me take a more measured, uncontroversial approach to the isuses that led to this ban in the first place.

Evidence: 1, start of discussion which is still open on AN/I right now.

Narrative: I fully endorse what Cunard says about TPH here, but please take particular note of the averages: 35 prods and 10 AfD nominations per day.

Evidence: Table of AfD nominations made by TPH starting 1 June 2022 (i.e. during that AN/I discussion).

Narrative: None of these AfD nominations is individually problematic. I present them here because, in the workshop phase, I will contend that TPH is overwhelming our deletion processes through sheer volume of nominations. Note the far lower nomination rate during that AN/I discussion and the far higher accuracy relative to the preceding period. I think this table shows TPH on his very best behaviour and it's the best we can expect from him without editing restrictions.

Evidence: 1, TPH says at AN/I I fully admit I act in haste way too much.... Instead of instantly nominating, my plan is to put questionable articles on the cleanup list. 2, time stamp one (1) minute later, he nominates an article for deletion. 3, time stamp two (2) minutes after that, he nominates another article for deletion. Further deletion nominations on the same day: 4, 5, 6, 7.

Narrative: TPH is well aware that his use of AfD is excessive. He pledges to restrain himself but can't actually do it unless there are community restrictions on him. He does comply with restrictions when they're made clear.

Evidence: Canvassing. 1, 2: "Obligatory ping of" to editors likely to !vote "delete", one of whom is of course another party to this case.

Evidence: Finally I present an absence of evidence: the committee won't see many diffs about TPH between 4 August 2018 and 6 October 2019.

Narrative: In the workshop phase, I will contend that TPH is a pro-social, rules-compliant editor who can follow editing restrictions. Others might say that TPH should be topic-banned from deletion-related venues, so the point of an "absence of evidence" section is to challenge this. A topic-ban worked; but another, lesser, but crystal-clear and rigorous restriction could well also work.

Lugnuts (S Marshall)

Evidence: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.

Narrative: Until 15th June Lugnuts' signature created linter errors. He was ignorant and obstreporous about changing it, and in that particular case, snide.

Evidence: 1, 2.

Narrative: Lugnuts has two community-imposed editing restrictions. In link 1 the community bans him from creating articles or converting redirects to articles, unless they have at least 500 words when created; in link 2 the community bans him from making changes that have no effect on the rendered page. (Lugnuts' reversion of attempts to fix linter errors in his signature breach this restriction). The community has tried and failed to agree what to do with the stubs Lugnuts created before this restriction came into force. See Cryptic's evidence below for a useful discussion of Johnpacklambert's attempts to deal with these stubs one by one at AfD.

Evidence: Canvassing. 1, 2.

Evidence: This tool.

Narrative: Lugnuts is the Wikipedian who has started the most articles: 94,367 of them. Lugnuts has 1.6m edits. The closest comparators are Dr Blofeld, who has started 93,898 articles and made 629k edits, and Carlossuarez46, who has started 73,255 articles and made 505k. There are no other Wikipedians who have started half as many articles as Lugnuts.

Lugnuts is remarkable not just as a prolific article starter, but also for making very high numbers of very small edits.

AfD stats (S Marshall)

I've selected April 2022 as a recent, relevant period to analyze. I used this tool to extract the raw data and I summarized the output manually. The results I got were:-

TenPoundHammer

• Edited 169 unique AfDs
• Was the nominator in 123 of them.

Lugnuts

• Edited 47 unique AfDs
• Wasn't the nominator in any of them.

Johnpacklambert

• Edited 182 unique AfDs
• Was the nominator in 19 of them.

7&6=thirteen

• Edited 1 AfD.

Poorly-sourced stubs (S Marshall)

Evidence: 1

Narrative: The community doesn't know what to do about the numbers of poorly-sourced stubs. Although there isn't a consensus, there is a widespread and growing sense that this is a substantial problem and something needs to be done, even if we don't know what. From that discussion, we see that many of them are BLPs that met

when created but no longer do so.

Johnpacklambert afds more of Lugnuts' articles than expected, but not by enough to constitute "harassment" as claimed

The collapsed table's only worth skimming; I talk about it in aggregate.

(As an aside, WP:Articles for deletion/George Lawton (canoeist) and WP:Articles for deletion/Hans Riedl are of particular interest: Johnpacklambert had redirected the article; Lugnuts undid the redirects, prompting the afds; during which Lugnuts voted at least in part to redirect.)

Total afds: 103

98 afd are of pages in the 1898-1914 births categories. (I deliberately omit W. E. Lawrence or Denia Nixon, not because their 1896 and 1986 birth years are outside of this arbitrary-looking range, but because they're the only ones where the birth year is not getting monotonically earlier.) Of those, 83 were tagged stubs; among the other 15, I'd call 8 of them stub-length at the time of nomination despite being untagged (example).

So some 95% of Johnpacklambert's afds since the start of the year have clearly been from working backwards through the year-of-birth categories. Further, either 81% or 88% of the total are stubs, depending on whether only tagged ones are counted.

38 of the afds are of pages where Lugnuts had the first edit. All 38 were tagged stubs, and all except W. E. Lawrence were in the 1898-1914 birth year categories.

37 out of 98 pages, ignoring the outliers on both sides, being Lugnuts' creations seems like a lot at 38%. Here's the data on who created the stubs currently in those categories:

Pages in both Category:1898-1914 births and Category:All stub articles

Birth year	Total pages	# created by Lugnuts	%	raw data
1898	2220	326	14.7%	here
1899	2169	353	16.3%	here
1900	2298	403	17.5%	here
1901	2271	390	17.2%	here
1902	2353	422	17.9%	here
1903	2392	413	17.3%	here
1904	2391	441	18.4%	here
1905	2421	395	16.3%	here
1906	2481	392	15.8%	here
1907	2497	409	16.4%	here
1908	2591	422	16.3%	here
1909	2563	433	16.9%	here
1910	2573	422	16.4%	here
1911	2613	397	15.2%	here
1912	2774	472	17.0%	here
1913	2734	452	16.5%	here
1914	2778	446	16.1%	here
Total	42119	6988	16.6%

So, while Lugnuts is by far the most prolific creator of stubs in these categories, and even though the numbers above won't include any pages that were deleted, redirected, or otherwise lost the stub tag by today, there's still significantly more afds of his articles than you'd expect.

Johnpacklambert's said repeatedly that he's been paying particular attention to Olympics-related stubs. That's less immediately obvious looking at the articles' categories than the birth year categories are; still, 55 out of these afds are pages in at least one category containing "Olympi". This includes all 37 of the pages Lugnuts created except W. E. Lawrence.

So about 67% of the Olympics-related stubs in yearly categories that Johnpacklambert nominated are Lugnuts creations. The data:

Pages in Category:1898-1914 births, Category:All stub articles, and a category containing "Olympi"

Birth year	Total pages	# created by Lugnuts	%	raw data
1898	418	212	50.7%	here
1899	433	214	49.4%	here
1900	503	278	55.3%	here
1901	510	262	51.4%	here
1902	530	296	55.8%	here
1903	487	283	58.1%	here
1904	540	307	56.9%	here
1905	518	263	50.8%	here
1906	548	267	48.7%	here
1907	524	265	50.6%	here
1908	568	286	50.4%	here
1909	555	279	50.3%	here
1910	542	289	53.3%	here
1911	546	262	48.0%	here
1912	621	316	50.9%	here
1913	591	314	53.1%	here
1914	576	304	52.8%	here
Total	9010	4697	52.1%

Numbers in that table are, again, going to skew slightly low since it's existing stubs as of today, but not enough to matter. —

]

Counting just non-medalist Olympian stubs in those yearly categories: 7108 total, 4578 by Lugnuts for 64.4% (

]

Lugnuts' signature

Lugnuts finally fixed his signature on June 15 [1]. That said, the consequences of using obsolete tags for so long aren't limited to the snippiness as he reverted people fixing it. The entirety of WP:Bots/Noticeboard ([2]) and 2⁄3 of its most recent archive ([3]) are currently devoted to complaining about the volume of editing from the bot that's eventually going to have to go around and fix every single one of those signatures. —

]

Current status of Lugnuts' mainspace creations

]

Evidence presented by Aquillion

7&6=thirteen (Aquillion)

• In discussions related to deletion, and especially anything related to ARS, 7&6=thirteen is constantly uncivil and engages in
  WP:BATTLEGROUND conduct: [4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26]
• I also want to point out this: [27] Saying that articles will be disappeared and the like, or grandiose statements like [28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37], are not as obvious as the above, but they contribute to a battlefield good-vs-evil mentality around AFD; and they show that 7&6=thirteen, in particular, approaches everything related to AFD from a battleground mentality.

The concept of the search requirement in

WP:BEFORE

is controversial

• Several editors have asked for sanctions based on
  WP:BURDEN, which places the burden for that search on the creator or on people who wish to retain it. See relevant discussions [38][39], as well as the community response in the ANIs linked above; these show that the interpretation that BEFORE is a hard requirement is clearly not uncontroversial. --Aquillion (talk) 07:41, 24 June 2022 (UTC)[reply
  ]

Evidence presented by Beccaynr

7&6=thirteen has regularly been complained about on noticeboards

• 21 June 2019: Canvassing and other disruptive behavior by 7&6=thirteen - closed as: "It's doubtful that anything good will result from leaving this thread open any longer."
• 2 August 2020: Aspersions at ARS - 7&6=thirteen listed as a party, archived without closure
• 23 February 2021: User:Mztourist and 153 articles redirect-merged without discussion - closed as: "There is consensus that the mergers and/or redirects by Mztourist at issue here, which concern articles about people after whom ships were named, were appropriate. 7&6=thirteen is warned to avoid personal attacks or other aggressive conduct towards fellow editors, or they may face sanctions. There is however no consensus to impose sanctions on 7&6=thirteen at this time."
• 31 October 2021: ARS Proposal #2: Topic ban for 7&6=thirteen - closed as: "No consensus for a formal sanction. The main proposal cites an alleged incident of 7&6=13 fabricating a source as its only justification, but subsequent discussion demonstrated that this was likely a good faith error where two sources got confused. Given that explanation and the lack of other evidence in the proposal editors were hesitant to implement a formal topic ban. However, editors raised concerns about the behavior of 7&6=13 unrelated to the alleged fabrication such as civility concerns and the quality of sourcing offered in general at AFD discussions. These were raised in individual comments and generally did not demonstrate sufficient consensus that a topic ban was an appropriate solution. While there is no consensus for a formal sanction, this discussion should serve as a sufficient, final warning. If problems continue, administrators responding to editor concerns should consider resolving the issue using existing tools."
• 11 November 2021: 7&6=thirteen's behavior hasn't improved - closed as: "This is all a horrible time sink and it's clear that the community can't determine an outcome. I suggest that the next time someone feels the urge to take an ARS-related matter here, they (a) hold their peace or (b) let their gaze fall upon Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests."
• 11 June 2022: 7&6=thirteen's behavior *still* hasn't improved closed as: "I think that's quite enough bickering. However, it is clear that ANI is not the location that this type of disagreement can be solved, that location would be ArbCom, if anyone is brave enough to start a case."

Note: I used the string u|1=7&6=thirteen to search Noticeboards.

7&6=thirteen and

WP:IDHT

Two warnings by ANI closers are noted above. In the most recent ANI, 7&6=thirteen states, I am acutely aware of the warnings, pained by them. Even though the prior warning was premised on a false assumption, since I never made up sources. [40], appears to refer to the prior warnings as mere allegations [41], and states, I am not disputing the prior warnings, even though they were wrong in my opinion. [42]. On the Talk page of this case, 7&6=thirteen states on 18 June, I have been repeatedly subjected to vexatious ANIs by an organized group. This becomes inevitably deletionists as the suspected protagonists. [43]

In the discussion below, the user TenPoundHammer (talk · contribs) will be abbreviated as "TPH".

TenPoundHammer nominates pages for deletion rapid-fire

• As counted by
  WP:BEFORE
  for every page.
• At
  talk · contribs) on April 30. (example: prod → deprod
  ) NemesisAT was concerned that TPH had nominated far too many pages in a single day to have done BEFORE on all of them.
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Playbook (TV series): TPH claimed in the nomination that sports shows are less likely to get media attention. The user Artw (talk · contribs) objected that this nomination is utterly baseless; and that it contains a false claim, possibly what was amended here.

TenPoundHammer sometimes

bludgeons

AfD discussions they have initiated

• WP:ITSNOTABLE
  , I hate the nominator."
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Taking On Tyson: Repeatedly dismissing Associated Press, which wasn't even one of the sources in the article, as a press release agency; and complaining that a participant did not add the sources they found to the article.
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Shep Unplugged: Repeatedly rebutting every comment because none of them provide a reliable source that verifies the title. They assert that this article, about a supposed talk show hosted by Shep Messing, is a hoax.
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/SuperCars Exposed: Argued back and forth with other users because a large number of PRODs by TPH, including this one, were contested with no comment.

Other misconduct at AfD by TenPoundHammer

• At some of the "
  Fram (talk · contribs) and Johnpacklambert (talk · contribs) (examples 1, 2, 3), possibly because those users have also participated in other AfD's in the same series; Johnpacklambert !voted delete on all 3 of the aforementioned AfDs, and example of an AfD initiated by Fram
  .
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Darkover (TV series): Inappropriate and involved non-admin closure by TPH, which was promptly overturned following this DRV, which deemed the closure inappropriate.
• Matt91486 (talk · contribs
  ) was in the process of merging to another article.

TenPoundHammer has been subject to ANI discussion on multiple occasions

• This ANI from 2010 is one of the earliest ANI threads about TPH. The initiator cited uncivil edit summaries such as calling a user a dumbass, as well as several questionable AfDs like Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mashable, which closed as snow keep.
• This ANI from July–August 2011 expressed concern about TPH repeatedly reinstanting a contested {{db-a7}} tag at an article, which was later deleted at AfD, because AFD will take too long and I feel so strongly that it's a slam-dunk A7.
• This RfC/U from March–May 2012 is one of the earlier threads specifically about their conduct at AfD. The closing admin noted: TenPoundHammer acknowledges that some of his nominations to AfD are problematic and will endeavor to make nominations more in line with current community consensus.
• The closing admin at this ANI from September 2012 cited misconduct by other users in ANI reports about TPH at AfD, but acknowledged that TPH was unpopular in the AfD community.
• TPH was topic banned from the deletion process at this ANI from January 2018, but the ban was modified in February 2018 and in September 2018, and was successfully appealed at this ANI from October 2019.
• TPH was blocked for one week at this March 2019 ANI due to uncivil comments. One of the examples cited by the initator was the edit summary then find sources, you fucking dipshit, directed at Jax 0677 (talk · contribs).

–LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 16:19, 19 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

TenPoundHammer untruths in edit summaries

• Redirected an article with the comment "unsourced", article contained a source. [44]
• Started an AfD with the statement "[45] - Prod was actually contested with the statement "decline prod. No evidence of WP:BEFORE being performed" [46].

TenPoundHammer recklessly deleting attempting deletion (by Prod or Redirect) or starting AfD discussions without performing proper

WP:BEFORE

• On an AfD based on a prior prod of theirs: Claimed a Emmy award was unsubstantiated, sources for the award were subsequently added after trivial searching. [47]
• Redirected an article with a simple "not notable". Article has the cited claim that its subject contains "the first lesbian sex scene ever on American network TV" [48], which seems like something that should probably get it an AfD at minimum.
• Blanked an article for an unaired Buffy the Vampire Slayer pilot with ""[49]. Article was restored with comment "AfD it", which TPM proceeded to do[50], though they state "Redirect contested without comment". They also state "The pilot has never been officially released, meaning that the plot synopsis fails WP:V.", which is makes no sense, and "I could find no better sources." - when asked about BEFORE he replied "I did, and all I found were clickbait listicles from unreliable sources, fandom wikis, Reddit, and bootlegs of the pilot. "[51] - upon searching thsi was found not be the case and additional sources were predictably added by other users with trivial effort.
• Nominated The Adventures of Superboy for deletion with the claim "Nothing on Newspapers.com, ProQuest, or Google Books". [52]. Sources were subsequently found and added via Google books, at which point he modified the AfD listing [53] and continued to comment as if it had been that way all along. [54].

Other sketchy statements by TenPoundHammer

• AfD claims "a brief burst of sourcing at the initial announcement, but literally nothing afterward" - looking at sources they spanned a period of multiple years. [55]. Article is a ridiculously obvious merge candidate but that is not a path they took for some reason.

Review of mass article creation has proven contentious

A great deal of contention has arisen over the need to clean up mass creations of stubby articles. I have personally experienced this in the effort to clean up the geostubs but it appears to be an pervasive issue:

• A year ago, the Carlossuarez46 case came to ARBCOM after many complaints about that user's response (or lack thereof) to the cleanup of hundreds of stub article on places in California as well as in other states.
• At around the same time, User:Lugnuts was taken to AN/I for a mass creation spate of Turkish place names (see [56]). He lost the autopatrolled right after a long discussion.
• There was also a massive AN/I case concerning the Article Rescue Squadron and its members (see [57]) which resulted in two editors being banned from AfD participation. A third has been made a party to this case.

Stub cleanup is a massive effort

I have been among those devoted to the cleanup effort for stub place articles, and I discover that since February 2018 I have nominated on the order of 1200 such articles for deletion, most of which were deleted. I suspect others have nominated substantially more. This does not count PRODs, nor the articles I reviewed and decided not to nominate. I would estimate we are at best 70% done looking at US locations; there are many other countries which are probably in much worse shape.

Comparison of AfD activity

Using the Afd Stat tool, I have compiled the following:

Participation and accuracy for last 500 AfDs as of 20 June

User	%Keep	%Delete	Accuracy	Nom Accuracy
Lugnuts	52%	18%	79%	82%
John Pack Lambert	0.2%	98%	88%	65%
Ten Pound Hammer	3%	97%	59%	50%
Andrew Davidson	90%	1%	54%	43%
Mangoe	2%	92%	80%	83%

I have included an example of someone banned from AfD per the ARS case, as well as myself. Note that AD's delete "votes" consist entirely of his eight nominations, so the nomination accuracy figure is imprecise.

Abuse by spammers

AFD has become the subject of systematic and pervasive abuse from undisclosed spam sockpuppets. Tactics, techniques, and procedures vary - some socks create poor quality nominations in order to burnish their credentials to get new page patrol permissions, some nominate articles created by competitors, some participate in "spam canvassing" to keep spam articles (e.g. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/TrendSpider, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Thinkmarkets) disguised with lots of low quality votes on other discussions, and some use AFD as a means of pressuring article subjects to pay for spamming services. See e.g. Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/SpareSeiko, Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/GermanKity, Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Sanketio31, and Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Expertwikiguy. Checkuser has not been an effective tool in stopping the abuse, which is too close to the threshold of detection via other means.

I don't think it is likely that ArbCom have any additional means they can reasonably bring forth to curb this abuse. However, I am providing this section for context and in the small chance that they do.

Johnpacklambert's drive-by !voting and disregard of

WP:NEXIST

At times, Johnpacklambert appears to base their !votes at AfD only upon the state of sourcing within articles, going entirely against the grain of

searches, as evidenced in discussions where others easily found sources. Also, the user has engaged in binges of rapid-fire, drive-by !voting, also an indicator of likelihood that WP:BEFORE searches are not performed.

The user sometimes bases deletion decisions upon their own personal subjective interpretations and opinions, rather than upon guidelines and policies. A direct example of Johnpacklambert ignoring

to synthesize their own subjective guideline, rather than basing arguments for deletion upon existing guidelines that were decided upon by consensus.

See below for examples of the binge drive-by !voting at AfD (note the times) and the basing of notability solely upon the state of sourcing in articles. All times are in UTC. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 06:41, 20 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

May 2022

• Bad Dog! – 13:30, 25 May 2022 (diff)
• Miami Animal Police – 13:31, 25 May 2022 (diff)
• Ready... Set... Cook! – 13:32, 25 May 2022 (diff)
• Second Honeymoon (TV series) – 13:33, 25 May 2022 (diff)
• Weekends with Maury and Connie – 13:34, 25 May 2022 (diff)
• Your Worst Animal Nightmares – 13:35, 25 May 2022 (diff)

April 2021

• Anal sphincterotomy – 19:36, 13 April 2021 (diff)
• Auxiliary field – 19:37, 13 April 2021 (diff)
• Compelled signalling – 19:38, 13 April 2021 (diff)
• C Sharp in Depth – 19:38, 13 April 2021 (diff)
• CSOBS – 19:39, 13 April 2021 (diff)
• NIA rhesus macaque calorie restriction study – 19:39, 13 April 2021 (diff)
• External flow – 19:40, 13 April 2021 (diff)
• Gan mao ling – 19:41, 13 April 2021 (diff)
• Intellectual synthesis – 19:41, 13 April 2021 (diff)

March 2021

• Imran Khan (cricketer, born September 1973) – 20:52, 2 March 2021 (diff)
• Imtiaz Ahmed (1990s Jammu and Kashmir cricketer) – 20:53, 2 March 2021 (diff)
• Iqbal Seth – 20:54, 2 March 2021 (diff)
• Irfan Ismail (cricketer, born 1992) – 20:55, 2 March 2021 (diff)
• Irfan Ismail (Quetta cricketer) – 20:56, 2 March 2021 (diff)

GiantSnowman's drive-by !voting

• 29 June 2022: 74 !votes and comments in 26 minutes, from 18:30 to 18:56: Wikipedia namespace contributions on 29 June 2022. This averages to one every 21.08 seconds.
• 27 June 2022: 17 copy/paste !votes in 4 minutes: diff, diff, diff, diff, diff, diff, diff, diff, diff, diff, diff, diff, diff, diff, diff, diff, diff.
• 26 June 2022: 7 copy/paste !votes in 2 minutes: diff, diff, diff, diff, diff, diff, diff.

Regarding GiantSnowman's relistings comment: the relistings occurred per the very concerns presented herein about the respondents in those discussions, GiantSnowman and Johnpacklambert. Per their trite and often rapid, copy-pasted nature, such !votes come across as a straw poll form of simple, elemental voting, but AfD discussions are not a vote. Such !votes typically carry very little to no weight. Furthermore, AfD discusion closures are not based upon straw poll forms of voting. See

]

Update: Per GiantSnowman's comment, I will AGF and I take them at their word. At this time, I will leave the content directly above in place, but solely as an example of potential indicators and patterns at AfD that users may see that may come across as suspicious, potentially existing as drive-by, straw poll !voting. I've struck some content above. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 21:55, 7 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

TenPoundHammer

At the ANI discussion, the user stated they're trying to slow down, but that they are apparently unable to actually do so (diff). User reply there: diff. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 18:56, 9 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Lugnuts’ OTHERSTUFF

I came across Lugnuts in a recent RfD,

]

Evidence presented by JoelleJay

It generally takes incivility to trigger sanctions on editors who have poor !voting behavior at AfD

See how long it took before we even got TBAN proposals against several ARS members: [58], [59], [60]. There was wide agreement in identifying specific behaviors as longterm problems, including misrepresenting source coverage, availability, number, relevance, and quality; accusing nominators/other !voters of incompetence; mischaracterizing P&Gs and others' arguments; and generally wasting editors' time with pointless and unsupported commentary: [61] [62], [63], [64], [65], [66], and basically every other support !vote in the last TBAN. So why didn't more admins step in much earlier with warnings after particular instances of misbehavior? I think the justifiable reluctance from admins at AfD to get involved in anything outside of closing, in case it compromises their apparent neutrality; and the lack of patrolling by non-closer admins; results in behavioral issues that aren't of the obvious incivility/socking/SPA/legal type being completely ignored outside of occasional closing statements.

Misleading assertions of source reliability, coverage, independence, and general compliance with guidelines

Example: Ortizesp has a long history of throwing in guideline-deficient !votes that do not advance consensus: [67], [68], [69], [70], [71], [72], and more recently of making baseless assertions that GNG is met. See here, where, after saying "Guys, please stop taking the lazy way out and do a proper BEFORE, AFD isn't supposed to be a removal tool", he insists a blog, single-sentence mentions, media releases from the subject's own team, and an article on a different person are valid and significant coverage after someone called him out about them. Here he states a blog interview is "independent and reliable". Same here. Ortizesp has been directly informed dozens of times by me, Ravenswing, BilledMammal, and many others that his understanding of guidelines is incorrect and that the types of sources he claims meet GNG emphatically do not. His <45% success rate for keeping should be another indicator he is not aligned with consensus, and yet he continues to make the same disruptive contributions without any consequences. He has also resorted to PAs and accusations of racism [73] on the rare occasions he responds substantively to another !voter. Please consider this a request to add him as a party. EDIT: more examples: Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Peter_Beniseau, Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Zabihollah_Kohkan, Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Teyah_Lindo

Here are some athlete AfDs where we see a number of keep !voters repeatedly making the same guideline-deficient or source-misrepresenting arguments even when consensus is regularly against them:

A sampling of some of the athlete AfDs in the last 2ish years where closers (comprising 15 different admins) explicitly criticize the weakness of the keep arguments, and/or emphasize that !votes without guideline backing are given very little weight, and/or affirm a consensus interpretation of a guideline specifically in rebuttal to keep arguments; just scanning the keep !votes you can see the same group of editors continuing to ignore such closer feedback:

Mass rapid-fire copy-paste !votes with little/no specificity to the subject or indication of source analysis

Example: GiantSnowman has made hundreds of !votes with identical rationales ([74], [75] en bloc, often within seconds of each other. He insults those whom he believes haven't done a search [76], [77], [78], but it's hard to believe he has done one himself or has even looked at sources he claims are sufficient [79]. Here he suggests he does not perform an initial source evaluation and commends Ortizesp for the (terrible) sources he produced (see above). Please consider this a request to add him as a party.

Edit: Another example of drive-by, poorly-considered !votes: Simione001: 9 !votes in 5 minutes(!), 11 !votes in 9 minutes

These are largely from my own experiences at AfD. I'm sure one can find examples of bad behavior by inclusionists, exclusionists, deletionists, or whatever other label you wish to use. I make no secret I'm exclusionist. But regardless, terrible, policy-ignorant behavior which wastes our time or is actively harmful, not to mention blatant personal attacks and incivility, goes completely unpunished in almost all cases. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 22:05, 20 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

AfD participants, especially inclusionists, often flagrantly ignore policies and guidelines

• "Keep because ILIKEIT" [80]
• "Documented, therefore notable" [81]
• "If something is verifiable and there's not a good merge target, it can't be deleted" [82]
• "It's interesting" [83]

AfD is routinely turned into a battlefield, and nobody is enforcing any sort of civility unless it's egregiously uncivil

• The entire AfD from the above bullet is worth reading as it became acrimonious: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Stations with no exit
• DRV is not exempt from acrimony either Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2022 March 25
• Another contentious AfD at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/New Chapter. 7&6=13 was consistently uncivil here. No consequences.

Extreme inclusionists and deletionists create a battleground

On average, if you look at a random sample of AfDs, they typically result in a "Keep" closure around 15-20% of the time. Therefore, one could reasonably assert that an editor that votes to keep significantly more than 15-20% of a random sample of AfDs is biased towards inclusionism, and one that votes to keep less than 15-20% of the time is biased towards deletionism. AfD voting stats (for the last 500 AfD pages edited) for some key editors:

• 7&6=thirteen - Votes keep 88.8% of the time, heavily inclusionist.
• Dream Focus - votes keep 86.2% of the time, heavily inclusionist.
• Lugnuts - Votes keep 53.6% of the time, moderately inclusionist.
• Johnpacklambert - Votes delete 99.5% of the time, heavily deletionist.
• TenPoundHammer - Votes delete 97.2% of the time, heavily deletionist.

Arguably, it's reasonable to conclude that anyone with extreme voting tendencies (on either side) is likely to be acting with a

at AfD.

The Article Rescue Squadron (ARS) has long been an inclusionist haven to canvass for AfD votes

The

is a WikiProject whose stated goal is to coordinate to improve articles that have been recently nominated for deletion, in the hopes that those improvements will "rescue" the article from deletion. Over the long period that ARS has been around, it has attracted a group of like-minded inclusionists that often use ARS as a communication hub for alerting members to the presence of borderline AfDs that might be swayed by a few extra keep votes. The ARS contributes heavily to the battleground mentality at AfD discussions:

• ARS used to use a {{Rescue}} template to tag articles for rescue. It was deleted twice (here and here) because it was being used for canvassing more than rescuing.
• Despite the template being deleted, ARS still manually maintains a
  list of articles that need rescuing
  . Of the AfDs listed there currently, the vast majority have received Keep votes from at least 1-2 members of the ARS.
• Two ARS members were recently topic banned from all deletion processes for canvassing and having a battleground mentality. Wugapodes' closing statement on the ANI thread also recommended, "Editors should consider a discussion on the Article Rescue Squadron and whether it should be deprecated similar to WP:Esperanza."

Additionally, I recently analyzed approximately 1 year's worth of AfDs that have been flagged for rescue by the ARS. The results of this survey can be found at User:Scottywong/ARS canvassing survey. It finds that adding an AfD to the ARS rescue list results in a 93% chance that it will get at least one vote from an ARS member, and a 64% chance that it will receive 2 or more votes from ARS members (which are almost always Keep votes). The top 2 most frequent voters in the rescue-tagged AfDs analyzed were Dream Focus and 7&6=thirteen. This demonstrates that the ARS rescue list is being used as a form of inappropriate canvassing, which contributes to the battleground mentality at AfD because it is viewed as an unfair inclusionist advantage for which deletionist editors often feel the need to counter in various ways.

Johnpacklambert has a pattern of drive-by contributions at AFD contrary to

WP:DISCUSSAFD

This is additional evidence of what Northamerica1000 referenced above: JPL has a track record of voting in AFDs in quick succession, often repeating the same or similar comments in support of his vote. Such rapid-fire voting is contrary to

. Here are some examples -- this is far from an exhaustive list:

April 26 -- 20 votes in 50 minutes

[84] [85] [86] [87] [88] [89] [90] [91] [92] [93] [94] [95] [96] [97] [98] [99] [100] [101] [102] [103]

February 8 -- 20 votes in 56 minutes

[104] [105] [106] [107] [108] [109] [110] [111] [112] [113] [114] [115] [116] [117] [118] [119] [120] [121] [122]

• It's important to note that all this happened while JPL was under a community-imposed editing restriction limiting the number of articles he could be nominate for deletion per day to one as a result of rapid-fire nominations (see Ritchie's evidence above).

The ANI discussion prior to this case happened because JPL doesn't understand when to redirect

The nearly three-week long discussion at ANI that preceded this case arose because of events related to Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Charles_Massonnat (a stub Lugnuts created). In that AFD, Lugnuts voted to redirect the page, with a rationale for doing so. JPL responded within minutes that such a redirect "is just not justified," despite the PAGs cited by Lugnuts. The page was ultimately redirected. And here we are weeks later.

Thank you

-- Vaulter 18:15, 21 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Additional noticeboard threads concerning JPL

In addition to the discussions cited by Ritchie above, JPL has been the subject of other noticeboard threads:

• July 2021 Johnpacklambert emptying categories prematurely; edit warring. No actions called for "though Johnpacklambert should note there are legitimate concerns with some of his actions regarding categorizations."
• February 2021 Johnpacklambert_AfD_nominations. Closed with no action taken.
• July 2014 Johnpacklambert continuing the Group of 88 thing. JPL was topic banned from certain BLPs (I'm uncertain whether or not this has been lifted) and admonished by the closing admin.
• May 2014 John Pack Lambert should probably resist talking about Amanda Filipacchi if he can't do it civilly. Closed with no consensus for a proposed topic ban.
• September 2013 Johnpacklambert. Archived with no action taken.

Thank you again

-- Vaulter 17:13, 28 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

And he's back there again. See here. -- Vaulter 15:17, 5 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Drive-by voting at AFD has continued during this case

The conduct I noted in the above section has continued during this case. For example, on June 30, he made seven votes at AFD within nine minutes. [123] [124] [125] [126] [127] [128] [129]

Thanks you once more.

-- Vaulter 21:08, 2 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

John Pack Lambert is well within acceptable norms at AfD

Let's just forget the politics and petty backstabbing and score-settling and look at Mr. Lambert's participation at Articles for Deletion objectively, shall we?

Making use of the AFDStats tool today (June 20, 2022), I took a look at his last 500 AfD votes.

John Pack Lambert voted Delete or Speedy Delete 401 times — 80% of the time. That's a lot, but that's his prerogative as a deletionist. The key question is: were those votes out of whack with the resulting consensus?

• Of these 401 Delete votes, 44 (11.0%) ended up in Keep or Speedy Keep — Mr. Lambert voted against consensus.

• Of these 401 Delete votes, 347 (86.5%) ended up in Delete, Speedy Delete, or the two de facto deletion results, Merge or Redirect.

• Of these 401 Delete votes, 10 ended as No Consensus.

In other words, Mr. Lambert voted with consensus essentially 86.5% of the time, and bucked consensus 11% of the time.

That's not bad.

Just to provide context, here is how I, a card-carrying inclusionist voted in my last 500 AFD votes.

I, Carrite, voted Delete or Speedy Delete 209 times — 42% of the time.

• Of these 209 Delete votes, 16 (7.7%) ended up in Keep or Speedy Keep — I voted against consensus.

• Of these 209 Delete votes, 176 (84.2%) ended up in the various forms of Deletion, Merger, or Redirection.

• Of these 209 Delete votes, 17 ended in No Consensus.

Not so very different in our participation, our conservative deletionist and our liberal inclusionist, are we?

Mr. Lambert is a committed, active, and productive Wikipedian serving the project as he best sees fit and should be treasured as a valuable participant rather than railroaded to the witch-burning pyre.

Ten Pound Hammer is a work in progress

Mr. Hammer and I go way back at AfD. We differ. He's a pretty hardcore deletionist and I'm an inclusionist and we differ. That's all.

He's good stuff for matters of his expertise (music topics in particular). He's a little bit........ sketchy with some of his votes at AfD.

Let's look at the stats in the same manner as above.

Mr. Hammer voted Delete or Speedy Delete 412 times out of his last 500 votes — 82% of the time.

• Of these 412 Delete Votes, 145 (35.2%) ended up with a result of Keep or Speedy Keep — Mr. Hammer voted against consensus.

• Of these 412 Delete Votes, 245 (59.5%) ended up Delete, Speedy Delete, Merge, or Redirect.

• Of these 412 Delete Votes, 22 ended No Consensus.

This is qualitatively dissimilar to the participation of Mr. Lambert at AFD. Whether it is problematic remains a matter of debate; I'd like to see him do a better job there. The question of flooding AFD with nominations is a separate matter for him as well, and some sort of hard limit of nominations per day — 3, 5, whatever — might be in order.

But let me say this in his defense: I do not have a single doubt that TPH is a committed Wikipedian acting as he sees best fit to improve the project. I do not doubt his honesty, his intelligence, or ultimately his willingness to accept whatever guidance he will receive from the community in this matter. Ahead of this proceeding he publicly, on-wiki, acknowledged that he had not handled things well and suggested a path for improvement. Alas, before we could see whether he would be good to his word — and I have no doubt that he would have been — this little spectacle was initiated. Pity.

Do not harm either of these solid Wikipedians! We do not all have to agree about everything. Thank you. Carrite (talk) 05:47, 21 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

TenPoundHammer has unreasonable sourcing standards and makes demands of other editors during deletion discussions

The close of the topic ban discussion from 2018 stated, There is a general view, even amongst those who opposed, that hectoring other editors with comments like "if there are sources about the article, put the ****ing things in and improve it!" does not give the desired result, and just leads to growing animosity. Comments of this kind recur in Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Twists_of_curves (April 2022), repeated enough that an editor warned about bludgeoning. Policy doesn't require these additions, editors can be understandably reluctant to work on a page that might vanish, and as noted, demands generate needless ill will. That discussion also showed a seeming willingness to judge highly technical topics by exact string-matching [130][131][132], even after it was explained why this doesn't work [133][134].

For a less overt example, see

.

TPH has been warned of blundgeon-y behavior

In addition to the case mentioned above, another recent example is

]

Evidence presented by GreenC

7&6=thirteen (GreenC)

This ArbCom began as an examination of three users whose actions might be harming Wikipedia at large scale. Good! It was later expanded to include 7&6. They are two separate issues.

The case against 7&6 is being evidenced by many of the same who tried to sanction him at ANI in October and November, but failed because 7&6 has the support of many members of the community, and the evidence was never strong, they closed without sanction. User:S Marshall earlier accused 7&6 for things he did not do (closed: "likely a good faith error"). User:S Marshall now says he takes "delight" in seeing 7&6 at ArbCom (Special:Diff/1093739354/1093743304).

Since 1 January 2022, 7&6 has been involved in only 29 AfDs or about 1 per week:

Source: wikiget -u "7&6=thirteen" -s 20220101 -e 20220625 -n 4 | grep 'for deletion'

User:EEng has been an inveterate cynical commentator about ARS for years. For example during this ArbCom evidence phase he called ARS a "religion" (Special:Diff/1093919940/1093931066), which implies blind faith and not objective decisions. Casting aspersions like this against ARS whole-cloth is common by a minority of editors. This thread at ARS says it all, where he jokingly says he remains "subtle" about long running personal feuds (Special:Diff/1093594879/1093594962), though he originally said "I hide it well" (Special:Diff/1093594285/1093594879).

There have been 10 attempts to close down ARS over the years and consistently the community has supported the project: listed at top Wikipedia_talk:Article_Rescue_Squadron.

There has long been direct evidence of dog whistling at Wikipediocracy, for example most recently related to this ongoing ArbCom case: [140] ("the old-school ARSehole Brigade still left") in which 7&6 is singled out. It is a constant thing at Wikipediocracy, ARS members such as 7&6 have been the target of some of the most vicious ex-users of our community.

I chose two users (Marshal & EEng), as examples, due to space constraint, though I make no accusations of off-site activity by users here in good standing. Look, this case is strongest against the original three users (TPH, Lugnutz, Johnpack): the question is if they are doing the right thing for Wikipedia at large scale. This is the evidence ArbCom should focus on. The case of 7&6 involves some trivial involved-editor personal grudges have spilled into ArbCom with little scale impact.

In response to misleading Scottywong bit

I have put things on the Rescue list and gotten zero people to vote Keep other than myself. The third and forth person you list as appearing most often in things tagged for Rescue, usually vote delete. Number 3 complains about the ARS constantly. You claim that "93% chance that it will get at least one vote from an ARS member". Well most people wouldn't post on the list if they didn't think the article was worth keeping, so they'd vote keep already, even if the ARS list didn't exist. You also don't show how many of these articles were significantly rewritten, a lot of work done on them, and how many reliable sources were found to prove them notable. I look at what's on the list now and see Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Flags_of_counties_of_the_United_States and notice I made a comment there about it should be at Wiki-commons, didn't vote at all. Days later 7&6=thirteen shows up and votes to keep it. He tags it for the Rescue list. MrsSnoozyTurtle shows up and says to delete it. No one showed up and said keep. No canvassing for keeps happened, he just brought an extra delete over. Your stats are misleading. You'd have to spend a few seconds looking over each AFD to get a proper perspective of what's really going on. Also when this was brought up previously, there was a time when most of the things put on the list got deleted, proving it isn't canvassing keeps. Dream Focus 19:23, 23 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Lugnuts has misled other editors about the notability guideline for Cricketers

The

now states "Sports biographies must include at least one reference to a source providing significant coverage of the subject, excluding database sources."

The following four AfDs were improperly closed as Keep or No Consensus despite failing the basic basic SIGCOV requirement after Lugnuts !voted Keep based only on NCRIC criteria and other editors as well as closing admins followed along:

• 22 June 2022 Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Sarah Forbes (cricketer) - Withdrawn by nom after being convinced by Lugnuts that meeting NCRIC is sufficient. No SIGCOV sources provided.
• 2 June 2022 Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Subroto Das - Lugnuts and others vote Keep based on number of matches played. Closed as Keep. No SIGCOV sources provided.
• 1 June 2022 Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mamata Kanojia - Closed as Keep, closing admin mistakenly cites "policy based arguments". No SIGCOV sources provided.
• 1 June 2022 Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Shabana Kausar - Closed as No Consensus after Lugnuts and others cite NSPORTS; closing admin seems to be under the false impression that notability standards for sportspeople are still under debate. No SIGCOV sources provided.

GiantSnowman cited the the deprecated WP:NFOOTBALL guideline at AfD

GiantSnowman continued to cite WP:NFOOTBALL and its participation-based criteria for more than a month after it was deprecated and also groundlessly accused AfD noms of failing to perform a

search. These articles were ultimately deleted or redirected due to lack of SIGCOV.

• 13:10 28 March 2022 - Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jake Burton (footballer)
• 03:45 14 April 2022 - Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Karl-Erik Nilsson (footballer)
• 15:14 15 April 2022 - Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mervat Rashwan
• 15:16 15 April 2022 - Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Pavol Piatka
• [141] - In response to a question left on their talk page, GS incorrectly advised an editor that there is "presumed notability for football teams if they play in the National Cup" and cited the
  WP:FOOTYN
  essay, instead of NSPORTS, as the "relevant guideline". GS doubled down and made excuses when I questioned this advice.

"There is no bright line between" policies and guidelines

1. WP:Policies and guidelines (policy, permalink) often refers to them collectively as "policies and guidelines" (Ctrl-F returns 33 matches) or "guidelines and policies" (3 matches).
2. WP:The difference between policies, guidelines and essays – {{supplement}}, permalink, linked prominently in WP:Policies and guidelines#Role – states: There is no bright line between what the community chooses to call a "policy" or a "guideline" or an "essay" or an "information page".

Alternatives to deletion are not preferred over deletion

ATD, policy

If editing can improve the page, this should be done rather than deleting the page.

) are preferred over deletion.

1. The sentence is under Editing and discussion (WP:ATD-E). There is no text between the ATD and ATD-E section headers that would apply to all of ATD.
2. ATD-E links {{
   WP:PRESERVE
   ), is concerned with removal, which extends beyond deletion. The Redirection (WP:ATD-R), Incubation (WP:ATD-I), and Other projects (WP:ATD-TRANS) subsections all involve removal from article space, so they do not overlap with ATD-E.
   1. Using Ctrl-F, EP contains 12 "remov" and 2 "delet", and PRESERVE contains 8 and 1.
3. Editing was originally the second subsection in the 2007 draft. It was moved to first per WT:Deletion policy/Draft#Alternatives to deletion. This increases the doubt that it was intended to cover ATD in general.

ATD, consensus

Preferring ATD, implemented by giving its recommendations significant extra weight or discarding others while closing, does not have consensus. This goes beyond closer discretion and infringes on the WP:Consensus (policy) of the AfD.

1. WT:Articles for deletion/Archive 61#RfC: Merge, redirect (2011) established consensus for equal weight. It was listed at WP:Requests for comment/Wikipedia policies and guidelines and WP:Centralized discussion and had many participants. WP:ATD and WP:PRESERVE were mentioned explicitly throughout the prompt. I have found no discussion that overturned it.
2. More recent discussions have included opposition to extra weight:
   1. WP:Deletion review/Log/2022 January 28#Paul Heitz – AfD originally closed by a non-admin as redirect; by my manual count: 11 overturn/delete (including nominator Ravenswing), 12 overturn/relist (including SmokeyJoe), 8 endorse (including S Marshall)
   2. WP:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive331#Review of DRV closures by King of Hearts (2021) – many participants supported overturning and/or mentioned "supervote"
   3. WT:Deletion policy/Archive 48#Does the community really agree with WP:ATD as policy? (2018) – around 14 participants, mixed opinions

Evidence presented by BilledMammal

Lugnuts has engaged in canvassing

This year, Lugnuts has issued 22 notifications of AfDs to individual editors. Of these notifications nine resulted in a keep vote, eight against consensus. 5 resulted in only a comment, and 8 had no response; this response demonstrates a partisan audience. Concerns about these were dismissed. (1, 2)

Notifications issued

Notification AfD Response Result Løken Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Silvia_Lesoil Comment Keep Yngvadottir Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Arnolds Krūkliņš Keep Keep The-Pope Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Gregory_McDermott No response Keep Rugbyfan22 Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/A._Lawrey Keep Delete Rugbyfan22 Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/E._J._Jones_(rugby_union) Keep Delete Canadian Paul Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Marcel_de_Kerviler No response No consensus Løken Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Rudolf_Andreassen Keep Delete Løken Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Lars_Nilsson_(volleyball) Keep Delete Deb Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Percy_Baker_(gymnast) Keep Redirect Ipigott Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Mathias_Logelin Keep Delete Deb Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Harry_Gill_(gymnast) No response No consensus NealeWellington Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Terry_Pearce Comment Delete Schwede66 Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Terry_Pearce Comment Delete Sammyrice Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Terry_Pearce Keep Delete BrownHairedGirl Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/John_Woodcock_(cyclist) No response Keep Mpk662 Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Shabana_Kausar Comment No consensus Tintin1107 Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Mamata_Kanojia No response Keep Tintin1107 Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Subroto_Das No response Keep Tintin1107 Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Barun_Das_(cricketer) No response Redirect Tintin1107 Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/T._K._Sukumaran_(2nd_nomination) No response Redirect A Simple Human Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Monaem_Khan_Raju Comment Delete Canadian Paul Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Frits_de_Voogt Keep Delete A 23rd notification was issued, but it was appropriate as no other editor could answer the questions raised. This does not consider pings issued, and only user talk page comments with an edit summary that suggested a relation to AfD were reviewed; some notifications may have been missed.

Lugnuts has disruptively disputed prods

Regularly disputing prods only to agree that the individual is not notable when the article is brought to AfD is disruptive; it requires the community to spend unnecessary time when the same result could have been achieved by either allowing the prod to stand or boldly redirecting the article. Lugnuts has regularly disputed prods, only to agree that the individual is not notable when the article is brought to AfD. (Recent examples: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7).

Disproportionality between creation and deletion

Creating twelve microstubs on cricketers using the same database took

WP:BEFORE

, considering AtD, writing the nomination, considering the nomination, assessing consensus) requires the community to spend a disproportionate amount of time.

Bot-like article creation

Lugnuts, BlackJack, and Sander.v.Ginkel have engaged in the mass creation of micro-stubs at a bot-like rate. This is true of all of them, but particularly of Lugnuts; in his most productive month he produced 2419 articles, and in his most productive day 133.

Such high rates are not possible to achieve by manual editing; instead, these three editors used templates populated with information scraped from a database. Population and scraping can be done manually or automatically, with the result being an automatic or semi-automatic process. In the case of Lugnuts and Sander.v.Ginkel, population was done automatically; in the case of BlackJack population may have been manual.

Historically mass creation of articles has been controversial and since 2009 there has been a requirement that mass automated or semi-automated article creation proposals need to go through BRFA; such proposals have typically been rejected, and reviewing BRFA it does not appear that either Lugnuts, BlackJack, or Sander.v.Ginkel made such a request. These articles place a significant burden on the community; they are rarely improved beyond micro-stub status and thus need to be reviewed individually.

Article creation rates

Editor Non-deleted main space article creations Micro-stub creations Current micro-stubs Redirected Monthly Average Monthly peak Peak month Lugnuts 93,986 92,380 77,571 2247 490 2419 March 2021 BlackJack 3936 3677 1444 1509 43 554 January 2007 Sander.v.Ginkel 6780 5895 3423 837 130 867 February 2016 This table assumes that articles under 2500b of text are micro-stubs. It omits articles that were created from redirects or were deleted.

Template examples

From BlackJack: NAME (DATE OF BIRTH – DATE OF DEATH) was an English first-class cricketer active YEARS ACTIVE who played for CLUB. He was born in BIRTH PLACE; died in DEATH PLACE. From Lugnuts: NAME (DATE OF BIRTH – DATE OF DEATH) was a Danish footballer. He played in NUMBER OF MATCHES match for the Denmark national football team in YEAR. - this use of templates was noted as early as 2008. From Sander.v.Ginkel: NAME (DATE OF BIRTH – DATE OF DEATH) was an COUNTRY male weightlifter, who competed in the WEIGHT CATEGORY category and represented COUNTRY at international competitions. He competed at the OLYMPICS YEAR.

Local consensuses

AfD's are frequently closed in a manner that overrides community consensus; from the past fortnight, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.

The first of these overrides

WP:SPORTCRIT

#5. The first is particularly notable because of the comments of the closing admin; There seems to be a disconnect between the guideline on whether this should exist and editors feelings on such - closers do not feel empowered to close against a local consensus even if that local consensus would override a broader community consensus.

Evidence presented by FOARP

Lugnuts has received multiple "final" warnings for uncivil or otherwise disruptive behaviour that admins have failed to act decisively on when the behaviour resumed

• 2016: Blocked for 24 hours for edit warring, warned "I must warn you that continuing this behavior could lead to further warnings and/or blocks".
• 2018: Blocked for one week for "Gross incivility and persistent abuse of a fellow editor" after this ANI report. Unblocked the next day with warning that: "any resumption of incivility, abuse, harassment etc. will result in a far lengthier block"
• 2020: Blocked for 24 hours for "edit warring and making essentially null edits". Unblocked after saying "I understand and promise that the cosmetic edits are pointless and will stop". Null edits were latter the subject of another ANI complaint where a community sanction was upheld against Lugnuts.
• March 2021: An ANI discussion was begun regarding Lugnut's mass-creation of articles. The 11 April 2021 close stated "As Lugnuts committed late in the discussion to consider the criticisms offered here in good faith, I decline to impose further sanctions at this time". Despite this warning, Lugnuts created numerous articles of exactly the kind complained of in only a 24-hour window after the decision was made.
  It should be noted that this discussion was hatted and archived for more than a week after Lugnuts posted concerning message(s) starting with their statement that "There's no point to this anymore" at 17:17, 31 March 2021 (UTC) that are no longer accessible to ordinary editors. These message(s) were posted exactly at the point when it became obvious what direction the consensus the discussion was going in. It was re-opened on 8 April 2021 only because of this ANI report that I posted about a resumption of uncivil behaviour and canvassing related to deletion.
• December 2021: Another ANI report about canvassing and uncivil behaviour. Community sanction (not admin act) imposed.
• March 2022: Blocked for 31 hours for uncivil behaviour with warning "if your next offence is aggravated then it will be straight to indef".
  

The impression given is of an editor who behaves uncivilly and disruptively on a regular basis on the (hitherto correct) assumption that they can do so as they are effectively unblockable and can simply talk their way out of sanctions, because repeated warnings have not been enforced when ignored. FOARP (talk) 10:30, 30 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Evidence presented by Liz

AFD observation

I'm a relative newcomer to AFD closures, just becoming active in January 2022 so this is a recent and general observation, not a statement full of diffs and directed at specific individuals named in this case. What suprised me the most when I started evaluating AFD discussions was the low level of participation at most AFDs. While a dozen editors might have worked to create and build an article, an article can easily get deleted based on one or two editor's opinions that it doesn't meet Wikipedia's standards for notability. And it doesn't take evidence to prove a lack of notability in AFD nominations, just the assertion that an article doesn't have it! If there is no editor who can take the time to argue against this assertion (and evidence is typically required for those wanting to keep an article), well, then articles get deleted. This happens pretty frequently every day.

To see if a low participation at AFDs was a recent phenomena, I compared an AFD log from June 20, 2022 to that of five years earlier, June 20, 2017. While there were around the same number of AFD discussions and the usual phenomena of a small number of discussions having a large number of participants (say, 5 or more) and the vast majority having a smaller number (3 or fewer), based on this one day's comparison, it seems like the total number of editors participating in AFD discussions has decreased to some degree. This decrease probably reflects some level of editor burnout working in the AFD area as well as a smaller number of editors working on the project in general.

The reason why I bring this up on an evidence page is just to point out that because fewer editors participate in AFD discussions, those who are very, very active, like most of those editors named in this ArbCom case, can have a disproporationately large influence on what articles are kept or deleted on the entire project. So while individual instances of editor conduct might not seem egregious and can be seen as business as usual, it's the volume and pace of the activity that can alarm and cause anxiety on the part of editors who want deletion discussions to be a considered and thoughtful process and not an assembly-line process to delete certain types of now unwanted articles. I really don't think this is really a dispute between inclusionists (keep everything) and deletionists (delete everything) but a conflict about the process of deletion discussions, between those who think that there is a mass amount of cleanup and deletion that needs to happen on the project and that deletion discussions should happen at a fast clip and those who believe that any discussion about deletion of content should be carefully done, on an individual article basis.

Is the main space cluttered with junk articles and those who are nominating them by the dozens are doing their best to help clear out the garbage? Or is the AFD deletion process as it is now being done occurring in a hurried and careless manner, without proper feedback from the editor community, with entire genres of articles being quickly trashed? I think regardless of what all of the hundreds of diffs presented on this page say, whether or not you find editors guilty of misconduct or not will rest on how you judge their intent, whether it is beneficial to the project or detrimental to building an encyclopedia of knowledge. Thank you. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 19:57, 1 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

By the way, if we could eliminate 3 or 4 word statements at AFDs like "Keep per Editor X" or "Delete per nom", we'd greatly enhance the quality of deletion discussions but I think that is beyond ArbCom's control. I think most closers, by and large, ignore these opinions. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 20:07, 1 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

After reading over the evidence page, I just wanted to make a further comment. I see complaints about "drive by" voting in AFDs. While these opinions (the drive-by votes, not the complaints) are less than useless, they are done by individuals on all sides of the Keep/Delete spectrum and this behavior is done by many editors who are not a party to this ArbCom case and who have not presented evidence here. As I said above, these "Delete per nom" comments are lazy "Me too"s and while I wish they were eliminated, they are not primarily a problem with the parties of this case but a general problem in AFD discussions. I think they are especially common when there is a barrage of nominations on the exact same type of subject and interested parties find themselves repeating themselves in a dozen or more cases.

I think fewer AFD discussions would raise the quality of participation but I don't see a feasible way of introducing limits to the number of AFD nominations that can happen in a day. One possible way to address this issue would be a general limit of the number of AFDs any editor can make in a day (limiting that number to 10, 12, 25?) to allow AFD participants the necessary time to track down sources and evaluate each case. This would be a major change in policy and is probably best brought up in the Workshop phase of this case. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 18:55, 8 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Evidence presented by Star Mississippi

before using the last evidence template, please make a copy for the next person

Poor quality !votes and personalization by Ortizesp

I've never done this before, so please let me know if anything needs changing We have a problem with lower-quality !votes at AfD. Many have been mentioned above and I'm not going to repeat comments from the ANIs that led to this, but among those I haven't seen mentioned are along the lines of the following from Ortizesp:

• Keep passes GNG as per above. by Ortizesp here when there is absolutely nothing above that indicates GNG was met.
• Keep passes GNG. here. Article was deleted

and unnecessary harassment and personalization:

• Keep another ridiculous deletion nom, amongst dozens of others here (Keep was the consensus, but there's no reason to snark at the nom)
• Strong keep another lazy nomination... here (article was deleted).

It's not that Ortizesp necessarily has a poor ratio of !votes to outcomes, but explaining why they think it meets GNG would go a lot further in making AfDs more collaborative and productive. And there's no need to attack the nominations. What makes them more lazy than a !vote with no backup? We need better AfD discussions and more participation, but this isn't it. Star Mississippi 23:26, 3 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Evidence presented by Robert McClenon

Deletion Disputes Are Divisive

Articles for Deletion

disputes are often divisive, which should not be surprising because editors care about the content of the encyclopedia. There are several factors that are involved in making some deletion discussions unpleasant. The community is divided not only by deletion debates, but sometimes by

WP:ANI

. Some of the disputes have been inconclusive or repetitive.

The listing of specific controversies involving deletion here is intended not to request sanctions against any specific editors, but to demonstrate that deletion discussions have long divided the community, and a more effective way of dealing with them is needed.

The most recent controversies about deletion that the community has been unable to resolve have been, of course, those that resulted in the current ArbCom case. At the same time, a less salient and so perhaps more typical case that also was not resolved was that of User:Alansohn in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/IncidentArchive1100#Additional_Sanctions_for_Alansohn

A previous controversy concerning the Article Rescue Squadron and some of its participants in October and November 2021 may have seemed to resolve the conflict: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/IncidentArchive1083#Wikipedia:Article_Rescue_Squadron_is_getting_problematic but obviously did not, because we are here again. As the closer,

civility. This resulted in User:Andrew Davidson being indefinitely banned from deletion discussions, User:Lightburst banned from deletion discussions for six months, no consensus on User:7&6=thirteen, and no action on User:Dream Focus

.

The Article Rescue Squadron has been controversial since at least 2007, as seen in:

• Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Article Rescue Squadron
• Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Article Rescue Squadron (3rd nomination)
• Wikipedia:Miscellany_for_deletion/Wikipedia:Article_Rescue_Squadron_(4th_nomination)
• Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Article Rescue Squadron/Rescue list (2nd nomination)
• Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Article Rescue Squadron – Rescue list

These are a subset of efforts to delete the ARS ( the others of which can be consulted by viewing the list of prior MFDs in the most recent efforts, and are presented to illustrate how the community has been divided by attitudes toward deletion for fifteen years.

This information is presented to illustrate that deletion discussions and controversies over deletion and over conduct in deletion debates are a continuing source of division and toxicity. Robert McClenon (talk) 02:12, 4 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Evidence presented by GiantSnowman

Northamerica1000's drive-by re-listing

4 July 2022: 8 identical re-listings in 3 minutes: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. GiantSnowman 21:12, 4 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Baseless allegations of 'drive-by !voting'

I wasn't going to justify my edits, but now feel the need to. The 'evidence' about me has been entirely misrepresented. I do NOT drive-by !vote. My editing technique to is open up all the AFDs listed at Wikipedia:WikiProject Football/Nominations for deletion and page moves, review them individually in detail, and then !vote all at once. Evidence - last edit before I started !voted rampage, first edit where I start commenting on AFDs - gap of 37 minutes. You will see that there is a substantial gap every time.

For example, I did not !vote here and then within one minute locate a number of sources about a different article here. Those diffs also show me listing the articles at FOOTYDEL several minutes earlier. An earlier example includes this and this followed by basically within 90 seconds this - again, obviously I am not locating several references in mere seconds, I am not that talented.

I am disappointed that several editors have ABF and assumed I do not review articles or put any thought into AFD. I will note the same editors have never raised their concerns with me previously.

Evidence presented by Cerebral726

TPH has refused to engage with community consensus on what constitutes a Reliable Source

In

WP:RSPYT and asked why the relevant video didn't qualify, TPH said "...because it's a YouTube video. Nuff said." diff.--Cerebral726 (talk) 15:36, 5 July 2022 (UTC)[reply

]

Evidence presented by Worldbruce

TenPoundHammer didn't tell the truth in deletion nominations

In PRODs and AfDs he started,[142],[Admins see PROD history of deleted List of people on the postage stamps of Bangladesh] TenPoundHammer described articles as "unsourced" that in fact cited at least one reliable source. Given multiple opportunities to walk back the falsehood, TenPoundHammer instead repeated it.[143][144]

TenPoundHammer votestacked

In AfDs he started, TenPoundHammer selectively pinged two editors,[145][146][147] who had sided with him to delete similar articles, without notifying other editors who had participated in such discussions, in particular those who had recommended keep.(Haiti, Oman, Vanuatu, Faroe Islands)

Evidence presented by Lugnuts

Billedmammal, AfDs and bludgeoning

BM bludgeons the deletion process, going out of their way to make a point. Example of this RfD was closed as disambiguate (IE keep). So they then went further to AfD it which ended in keep They feel the need to reply to most editors who also vote keep. Once that is closed, they then bludgeon the process with the closer. Prior form here, here, here, here. Another example of an AfD bludgeon by this user is here. My AfD stats show in the vast majority of cases that my conduct in an AfD is simply to add my comment and move on, regardless if it’s an article I’ve started or not. I’ll contest a Prod and/or redirect with a redirect !vote at AfD, but the AfD comment starts with If nothing can be found… IE someone might be able to find something that I can’t access.

Billedmammal, prods and harassment

If I remove a prod from an article that BM added, they go straight to AfD (

two, three, four). They are going out of their way to target articles I’ve created, as others have raised with them, with a "delete and no alternative" mindset. more

. They’ve also made spurious claims in this evidence section saying I have used automation to create articles. Again – I have NEVER used automation to create articles. I copy & paste a basic skeleton template, but everything is created manually.

Billedmammal, canvasing

BM does’nt understand

WP:APPNOTE

. They’ve listed examples where I have contacted others with regards to relevant AfDs. Every single one of those notifications has been in line with WP:APPNOTE – "Notifications must be polite, neutrally worded with a neutral title, clear in presentation…" AND sent to "Editors known for expertise in the field". In other words, editors who might have access to sources that I don’t. Those editors may find that the article is indeed non-notable, and comment to say so, or not comment. Notification to all those editors result in any replies being policy based (keep or delete).

Dlthewave, AfDs and WP:POINT

This user works with the same mindset as BM.

WP:ATD appears not to be an option, with a similar policy of delete everything. Their three most recent AfDs (one, two, three) were all started within a very short timeframe of each of them previously been closed (as keep). One of the original AfDs had the closer’s comment of "I have considered this very carefully and will not change my decision based on talk page messages" suggesting their exacerbation of closures being challenged. A fourth AfD (which was deleted) resulted them going straight to RfD

in an attempt to delete that too, with editors calling this nomination WP:POINTY. During the Workshop phase of this case, Dlthewave made three back-to-back incorrect statements about me and my editing. 1, 2, 3.

Spartaz, admin conduct and accountability

Spartaz made

WP:ADMINACCT

they have failed the "Administrators are expected to respond promptly and civilly to queries about their Wikipedia-related conduct and administrative actions, especially during community discussions on noticeboards" and "Administrators should justify their actions when requested" per the "Failure to communicate" point.

JPL, harassment, AfD, prod and indef blocks

As mentioned above, JPL has made a deliberate effort to target articles I have created. Before and during the duration of the

WP:CIR issue. This sub-section

that I started raised all the questions I had about JPL not understanding notability and prods.

JPL and drive-by noms

Despite being pointed out to him, JPL continues to do drive-by !delete vote comments at AfD, with multiple comments across AfDs in a short spell. On 5th July there was approx. 25 !delete votes, including two at 18:59 and two at 19:07. There can be no

WP:BEFORE work with most, if not all, of these comments. Similar recent similar pattens include 27th June, 22nd June, 15th June, 13th June, 6th June

, etc.

Evidence presented by Ingratis

Johnpacklambert bites other editors than Lugnuts at AfD

This shows JPL repeatedly bludgeoning a civil editor in an AfD discussion to the point that the other editor states that he will not participate in AfDs again because of the unpleasantness: throughout but cf esp here, here and here. (I don't believe this is the usual deliberate sort of viciousness that prevails at AfD, but is simply because JPL cannot see when he's overstepping the mark).

Johnpacklambert's BEFORE is defective

Here - JPL refuses to address the existence of additional sources in an equivalent article on de-Wiki.

Mangoe's evidence #9.1

NB that the arguments about the Turkish geostubs mentioned by Mangoe ended with the decision that Lugnuts' sources were of comparable standard to the equivalent sources accepted for Anglosphere places (here) and that the proposed mass deletion, or redirection of them using AWB, was abusive and should not proceed, which is what happened (here, although those involved never got round to undoing their redirections).

Evidence presented by Joe Roe

AfD is resilient to disruption

I don't have any diffs to offer here, just speaking from five years' experience of closing AfD discussions. I hope the committee will bear with me.

There are disruptive editors at AfD. There are discussions that are derailed because of them, and they can be really frustrating. But I think it's important to bear in mind that AfD handles something like 500 discussions a week and the vast majority of them result in a clear consensus without incident. That's quite remarkable, when you think about it: few of our processes handle that volume of discussions, and deletion is by nature a contentious and emotive topic. Our deletion policies, guidelines, and processes are amongst the oldest and most stable on the project. One thing they're especially good at is insulating the deletion system from disruption. Closers are given a lot of discretion—besides generic guidelines like

WP:DRV

, and having its own specific review venue (as opposed to the dog pit of ANI) is another way the deletion system is robust against potential disruption. That only a tiny fraction of AfDs end up there is again evidence that this system, on the whole, works well.

JPL is a good example of this resilience to disruption. I think at this point it's well-established that, for many years, his participation at hundreds of AfDs consisted of essentially automatic delete !votes with no explanation. But this just meant that most other AfD participants, and definitely all closers, learned to stop paying attention to them. His drive-by !votes, even if there were hundreds of them, had no effect on the outcome of discussions, and hence were not really all that disruptive – it wasn't until 2017, when he started nominating articles in large numbers, that the sanctions started. The only times JPL's voting became disruptive was when others rose to it and the back-and-forth became unproductive. That's a general pattern at AfDs. A lot of the behaviour called disruptive here and in the workshop is only really a problem when others react to it. Unfortunately many of us (me certainly included) struggle not to call out a bad faith argument, a misrepresented policy, a canvassed !vote, etc., when we see it, but it really is better to just ignore it and trust the closer to give it the weight it merits. It would be extremely unfair to sanction editors simply for making bad arguments or holding opinions that deviate from current policy, when those actions alone don't demonstrable disrupt the deletion process. – Joe (talk) 16:59, 9 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Evidence presented by 7&6=thirteen

Who am I. I have been editing Wikipedia for 14 ½ years. I have over 144,000 edits. I was recently Editor of the Week, and thank my fellow editors for the recognition. I am a member of

WP:ARS

. Have been for many years. And my guiding light in that regard is article improvement. Voting at AFDs has been secondary. I note that ARS has been constantly the I do not always vote. I always self censor. If I can vote Keep, I do. If I can’t I generally do not participate. In my business I am paid to be right 100% of the time. While I recognize that I am final in that job, and that the goal is at least aspirational since we are all subjcct to human fallability and making mistakes, it is my personal standard. I do not canvas. I do post at the ARS, and my goal is to get articles improved. If I vote, it is ordinarily in conjunction with article improvement. My improvements to articles that were part of the deletion process are monumental. I would also note that I frequently improve articles that are at AFD, and do not necessarily post them at WP:ARS. Part of the reason for doing that is that it will simply rile up those who want to delete articles. Inevitably, User:MrsSnoozyTurtle will turn up, usually vote DELETE, and make the obligatory “canvassing” slur.

WP:ARS has a number of loiterers whose often articulated positions indicate that they want ARS to cease to exist, and/or at least be decapitated.^[1]

The talk page at ARS and the listing of articles for improvement should be studied in its totality to understand the dynamic. It is not my purpose here to reopen these, but it is my purpose to fully inform the panel. It is also a fact that a posting at ARS list will beget attacks on that page and regularly produced accusations of canvassing. These are not helpful to the closers at the AFD pages, but simply turn them needlessly into an adversarial side show. If my comments at ARS are to be considered, there are lots of deletionists who have been

WP:Uncivil

and deserve their reward, too. I would also urge the arbitrators to consider context of the talk pages at ARS. If folks choose to make unjustified accusations (e.g., User:MrsSnoozyTurtle, who has been told by others to cool it and drop the stick) one should be able to respond. In fact, I don’t respond, and she repeatedly harasses me by name. She repeatedly makes accusations, and I just let them pass. I have always been insistent that editors who post an Article for Rescue at ARS put the *<small class="delsort-notice">Note: This discussion has been included in the Article Rescue Squadron's [[Wikipedia:Article Rescue Squadron/Rescue list|list of content for rescue consideration]]. <span style="text-shadow:#396 0.2em 0.2em 0.5em; class=texhtml">[[User:7&6=thirteen|<b style="color:#060">7&6=thirteen</b>]] ([[User talk:7&6=thirteen|<b style="color:#000">☎</b>]])</span> 02:42, 10 July 2022 (UTC)<!--Template:Rescue list--></small> on AFD pages. It is ethically required, and is good practice. Nevertheless, whatever I say on that subject has been criticized.[reply]

I deny being insulting at AFD pages. Saying that there has been poor or ineffective

WP:AGF

. If they At AFD discussions, I ordinarily try to say it succinctly, and avoid repeated entries and arguments.

WP:COAL

is a good practice, and I apply it the best I can.

Mass deletions (in one case 220 in one day by one editor) are problematical, and deserve to be called out. No one can cope with that. ARS cannot respond. Nor can it improve articles which can take many hours of time. This has got to stop, and it is rightly called out. Further, if you are easily persuaded that he really did a BEFORE check in a diligent way, I’ve got a bridge to sell you. The statistical arguments are deceptive and wrong. If you want to get a fair picture, take a count of the number of times I voted and the number of times I was in tune with the final result. It isn’t required that I do that. But if you are going to Monday-morning quarterback, you should be asking the right questions and collecting all the pertinent data I do not know how to get that statistic, and doing it manually is out of the question for me. I lack the technical skills. Merely posting at ARS is not proof of “canvassing.” It is what the project is supposed to do. I note that ARS has been the subject of 10 deletion attempts. And productive editors who were preserving articles are now told they cannot participate. If my numbers are high, it is not evidence of “canvassing.” It is evidence of article improvement. If the articles were kept, it shows either that (1) the AFD was wrong in the first instance; or (2) the article was improved so that it should be kept (and may be vastly different than it was when nominate for deleting). Keeping the article under those circumstances is a win for the encyclopedia and our readers. In passing, I note that User:Highking has boldly taken the position that article improvement is not a valid response to an AFD nomination. The panel ought to squarely straighten that out. The critics also note that if an article is posted at

WP:ARS

I don’t vote Delete. I think I have, but it is a rarity. That only proves that I am not being canvassed, and that I am selective. In my experience, AFDs are like litigation and horse races. In litigation, lawyers give themselves too much of the credit for their successes, and too much of the blame for their losses. In horse races, the outcome is 90% horse and 10% rider. If the article deserves to be kept, hopefully the closer will see it in the article and the result will follow. If it isn’t there, it isn’t there. I have no vested interest in the article’s fate; although I acknowledge that providing substantial edits to an article that gets deleted is frustrating, but comes with the territory. It is an occupational hazard. Reasonable minds may differ. I also respect closers and outcomes. Conversely, I get upset when serial deletions are brought on quickly after a keep. It happens. Or the KEEP outcome is cleverly circumvented by a fast Redirect. I do not keep a scoreboard of the articles I have saved (other than the partial listing of outcomes at ARS – I don’t always put AFD discussions in which I participate on those boards). I believe that the participants should be advised of the results. Feedback is important to moral.. I note that some of the deletionists participants here do keep and maintain lists of the articles they got deleted. A body count, so to speak. Oh well!

The purpose of posting at

WP:ARS

and my participation in editing articles, is exemplified by the following:

• My way or the highway ARS posting

• Fit in or Fuck Off ARS posting

• The Wants (band) ARS posting AFD

• Legal Advisor (Poland) ARS postingAFD

• Daniel Sillman AFD

• List of Settlements in Bedfordshire by population

ARS posting AFD

• Ian Marsh (writer) AFD

• Mike Tinney ARS posting AFD

• Clop (erotic fan art) ARS posting AFD

• ARS public school the retaliatory strike

ARS posting ARS posting posting Silly retaliation Maybe it means Article Rescue Squadron? [sarcasm] Dronebogus (talk) 04:05, 11 November 2021 (UTC) Why this article? Why NOW? And why again? This is a continuation of the just closed nomination And Dronebogus has now provided an explanation for his overwrought actions. Streisand effect. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 09:55, 11 November 2021 (UTC) Stop with your paranoid conspiracy theorist nonsense. Yes, I was making fun of your group for Molon labe-ing over this silly school article, but I also think there’s legitimate issues with notability and over-reliance on old AfD consensuses. Do you have nothing more productive to do than run the wiki around ranting about me? Even Andrew and Lightburst have cooled it a little after their tbans, and DF has participated in several AfDs (including this one) without stirring up drama. Why can’t you do the same? Not every AfD needs to be a battleground. Dronebogus (talk) 10:05, 11 November 2021 (UTC) If this closes as no consensus because of their obstructing nonsense again you should just renominate it. --Adamant1 (talk) 10:48, 11 November 2021 (UTC) I’ll be taking them to ANI again first so they don’t immediately do it again. Dronebogus (talk) 10:52, 11 November 2021 (UTC) nWho are you taking to ANI and for what reason? NemesisAT (talk) 16:32, 11 November 2021 (UTC) ARS posting

• Various demographic articles

ARS posting ARS posting ARS posting ARS posting

• Robert Spinosa ARS posting

• Daniel Sillman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Daniel_Sillman

• Uranian ARS posting AFD

• List of Conflict by duration Draft; Little Big Time ARS posting AFD

• Rob Roy McGregor Rob Roy McGregoir ARS posting

AFD 7 edits

• Vesey Alfred Davoren Vesey Alfred Davornen ARS posting AFD 99 edits

• Seed counting machine ARS posting AFD 57 edits

• Armament of the Iowa-class battleship ARS posting

AFD

• Big John (dinosaur)

ARS posting See the extended discussion which is buried. AFD 85 edits [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Article_Rescue_Squadron_%E2%80%93_Rescue_list&oldid=1051958333Bib John Dinosaur (See MZ Tourist comments – continuing and irrelevant atttack on ARS)Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Wikipedia:Article_Rescue_Squadron_is_getting_problematic Parallel discussion

• Cherman Shaik ARS posting

• Mac Ross (admiral) [148]

• List of living Medal of Honor Recipents AFD

• Lubi-lubi I had put in sources years before AFD

• John C. England AFD See the comment by MZTourist

I am frankly shocked, Mztourist, in another AFD on another genuinely notable namesake, didn't you claim that nomination was supported by precedent to delete all articles on namesakes? You failed to acknowledge there had been a procedural keep on a mass deletion. In the interests of civility and collegiality, I urge you to be open and transparent, in every discussion. Geo Swan (talk) 23:52, 29 January 2021 (UTC) Keep Nominators who do not make a genuinely meaningful effort to comply with BEFORE let down the entire project. Please, if you ever consider nominating another article, be more careful. Geo Swan (talk) 23:27, 29 January 2021 102 edits

• William W. Creamer [149]

• Shelby Gem Factory DYK

AFD Shelby Gem factor. Now a Good Article.

• Kristoffer Domeij AFD DYK 149 edits

• Edward Henry Allen AFD and mass deletion by User:Lettler and User;MZtourist

220 articles or thereabouts. I know about

WP:Before

in this process, I’ve got a bridge to sell you.

• Bolt (cloth) AFD 150 edits Note this discussion: “Which info about bolts (fabric) would you wish to see in an article about (fabric) rolls? off topic wallpaper stuff could go into its own article, if necessary. (Also, "perjorative"? Are you a member of Project ARSehole too. It would explain a lot.) -Roxy the inedible dog . wooF” 15:43, 29 December 2020 (UTC) This was discussed at length [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Bolt_(cloth)

at the article’s talk page.]

• Harold John Ellison Tom Rees (airman) ARS listing

AFD AFD “another User:Lettler special. Keep As a matter of housekeeping, I would note that this is there is a previous nomination for deletion that just went down the tubes. This is the second nomination. This fact is being knowingly suppressed – on this and many articles. See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Edward Henry Allen. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/John_C._England Keep per WP:POINT. This article has been worked on by numerous editors to the point that it has appeared on the main page. It is therefore generally acceptable as an adornment to the encyclopedia per our policy WP:IAR. The nomination is based on WP:SOLDIER but that is an essay and so has no official standing and the current RfC Template:Did you know nominations/Tom Rees (British soldier) Discussion at DYK

• Gun serial number Gun serial number ARS listingAFD 91 edits DYK

• List of tallest buildings in Augusta Georgia ARS listing AFD

• 86 (term) AFD

• Harry F. Bauer, George M. Campbell and Maurice D. Jester

DYK ARS listing See Mztourist’s comment here Harry F. Bauer, George M. Campbell, Maurice D. Jester Rescue listing

• Hamilton McWhorter III AFD DYK 117 edits

• Richard Haine AFD DYK28 edits

• Long face syndrome

AFD nDYK 59 edits

• Crooked BilletnAFD DYK 159 edits

• Derrick Morris AFD DYK 120 edits

• World record egg AFD DYK 103 edits

• Candida blankii AFD DYK 124 edits

• Daniella van Graas AFD DYK 121 edits

• A. D. Kenamond AFD

• Elizabeth L. Gardner AFD DYK 138 edits

• Bachelor Lake (Brown County, Minnesota) AFD

70 edits

• Maira Khan AFD

• John Tiedtke John Tiedtke (2nd nomination) AFD talk DYK 117 edits

• S.W. Randall Toyes and Giftes AFD DYK 113 edits

• Benno Bikes AFD DYK 75 edits

• Democracy Manifest video AFD DYK 93 edits

• Albanese Candy AFD AFD 2ND nomination See User:Higking’s remarks.DYK 38 edits

• Andy Auld (Royal Navy officer) Speedy deletion DYK for Andy Auld (Royal Navy officer)

Updated DYK query.svg On 17 July 2020, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Andy Auld (Royal Navy officer), which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that during the Falklands War, Royal Navy officer Andy Auld helped make operational the Sea Harrier, a short take-off and vertical landing jet fighter? You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while onC

• American athlete strikes talk DYK 21 edits

• Mercy dog Merger discussion DYK 72 edits

• Tom's Ice Cream Bowl AFD 111 edits

• Thomas J. Bray AFD DYK 96 edits

• Performance (textiles) AFD DYK 166 edits

• Arabeyes AFD

• Frank Masters AFD

• Nebraska v. One 1970 2-Door Sedan Rambler (Gremlin) Talk

DYK 110 edits at the article 73 edits at the DYK

• Church of All Saints, Houghton Regis proposed for deletIon. March 23, 2022 I ran across this on User:Dr. Blofelds page.

DYK 116 edits

As you will observe, my discourse at the AFDs is short. By no means is it disruptive. I refuse to be baited into jawing with those who have made up their already closed minds.. It is a vain act. I need tol persuade the closer, and I do that by improving the articles.

If one wants to talk about results, it is the horse that won the race, not me.

This whole exercise is about the inability of the deletionists to thwart a dedicated editor who goes the extra mile to research and document the article’s subject matter.

This is sour grapes.

Kicking me out of ARS and out of AFDs will not make Wikipedia a better place.

Speaking as one arbitrator (in real life) to other arbitrators, I am confident you will review the record and do the right thing

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED, 7&6=thirteen (☎) 02:42, 10 July 2022 (UTC) 7&6=thirteen (☎) 03:54, 10 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

1. ^ I am not asking for them to be added as parties. However, their conduct needs to be viewed, so that anything I said can be reviewed in context, not just a few words in isolation. Differential edit links don't provide that. And those pages have been repeatedly archived, or extraneous comments hidden.