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Wikinews:Requests for arbitration/Brian New Zealand vs. Amgine/Evidence

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Anyone, whether directly involved or not, may add evidence to this page. Please make a header for your evidence and sign your comments with your name.

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As such, it is extremely important that you use the prescribed format. Submitted evidence should include a link to the actual page diff; links to the page itself are not sufficient.

This page is not for general discussion - for that, see talk page.

Please make a section for your evidence and add evidence only in your own section. Please limit your evidence to a maximum 1000 words and 100 diffs, a much shorter, concise presentation is more likely to be effective. Please focus on the issues raised in the complaint and answer and on diffs which illustrate behavior which relates to the issues.

If you disagree with some evidence you see here, please cite the evidence in your own section and provide counter-evidence, or an explanation of why the evidence is misleading. Do not edit within the evidence section of any other user.

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The Arbitrators may analyze evidence and other assertions at /Workshop. /Workshop provides for comment by parties and others as well as arbitrators. After arriving at proposed principles, findings of fact or remedies voting by Arbitrators takes place at /Proposed decision. Only Arbitrators may edit /Proposed decision.

Evidence presented by Brian New Zealand

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Userboxes are part of Wikinews

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Userboxes first appeared on Wikinews on the June 6, 2005. Since then there has been no complaints on Wikinews about them until this message [1] appeared, after this, everything went downhill.

Amgine disrupted the site by deleting them

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  1. Amgine, repeatedly violated the WN:DG, and the WN:SD. Below, are examples of this behaviour have been gathered:
    1. Amgine's deletions
      Deletions of templates: [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] [22] [23] [24] [25] [26] [27] [28] [29] [30] [31] [32] [33] [34] [35] [36] [37] [38] [39] [40] [41] [42] [43] [44] [45] [46] [47] [48] [49] [50] [51] [52] [53]

Wikinews is not Wikipedia

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  • Amgine stated: “Wikinews is not Wikipedia. Our policies, and community needs, are different”[54]
  • But also said: “…watching the developments on WP, and measured the benefits versus the drawbacks of userboxes…. The user use of category and template namespaces… userboxes should not be on Wikinews” [55]

One this does not if in with the "Wikinews is not Wikipedia", and I agree Wikinews is not Wikipedia. Wikinews is a different community, different policy. Different needs, different proposes. How can what happens on wikipedia be what is necessarily the best for Wikinews?

Deletion was out of process

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The entire deletion of the Userboxes/babel templates should have gone through WN:DR. Amgine is an admin, and a respected editor, but in this case he used his privileges in a mass deletion campaign - breaking links on user's pages - and set a bad example for other users and administrators.

Userboxes are beneficial

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Babel templates are helpful. They can show a user's language skills and, if you need help on a Spanish article, you can track down who speaks it to ask for help. The same applies with Userboxes. If you were writing about US politics, you can get help from someone who knows about how the US system works, etc. Therefor how can userboxes make Userpages be offensive, if it's imforming you infomation.

Amgine was disruptive

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Amgine's actions violated the sense of community and collaboration that is Wikinews.

Re: "Wikinews is not a free wiki host or webspace provider" (WN:NOT), the policy also states "Wikinews is not a theater of war." Mass deletions don't reflect that Amgine was behaving civilly, calmly, and in a spirit of cooperation.

Evidence presented by Amgine

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Due to the nature of an Arbitration Committee, decisions are largely based on accepted practice, written policy, and previous decisions in similar cases. The Wikinews ArbCom has not had previous cases, so it is difficult to find evidence showing specific practice on Wikinews. This case is also about learning from the example, and mistakes, of our sister project en.Wikipedia. I plan to use some examples from Wikipedia where policy between the two projects are similar, and where there are particularly clear examples, as well as evidence from Wikinews.

Userboxes are disruptive

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Userboxes developed from the original Babel templates from en.Wikipedia. The experiences of en.Wikipedia are instructive due to their longer, and more severe, exposure to userboxes.

Current wheel wars

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Admins on en.Wikipedia are currently disputing enforcement of policy regarding userboxes originally proposed by sannse and made policy by Jimbo Wales[56].

5 users de-admined

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Disputes, polls, and proposals

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The extension to the Criteria for Speedy Deletion is only one of many incidents of instruction creep related to userboxes on en.Wikipedia.

Requests for comment, arbitration, current admin notification incidents

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Userboxes on Wikinews

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At the request of ArbCom Chiacomo, I checked the use of the templates I deleted, examining the date of initial creation and the userpages which connect to these templates.

The majority of user boxes were initiated, or rewritten, on 23 February 2006 (note: this was technically a violation of GFDL, copying from en.wikipedia or meta.) Likewise, a majority of user categories were created, all by User:ClaesWallin.

There are currently 82 user pages (including talk pages) linked to userboxes. This number is probably reduced from 4 days ago, when the userboxes were initially deleted. This does not reflect the actual number of user pages on which the templates appear as most of the pages which have any userboxes have more than one. One quarter of these are the native english speaker userbox.

Template initial userpages
Template:Babel-2 06/03/04
(recreation, original date lost)		 1
Template:Babel-3 06/02/23 5
Template:Babel-5 06/01/11 1
Template:Babel-8 06/02/04 1
Template:Babel-8 06/02/23 4
Template:Babel field 06/02/23 4
Template:Babel field 1 06/02/23 0
Template:Babel field 2 06/02/23 0
Template:Babel field 3 06/02/23 1
Template:Babel field 4 06/02/23 0
Template:Babel field N 06/02/23 2
Template:Babels 05/06/16 1
Template:User sv-3 06/02/23 0
Template:User sv-2 06/02/23 0
Template:User sv-1 06/02/23 1
Template:User sv 06/02/23 0
Template:User sr 05/08/12 0
Template:User sl-1 05/08/12 0
Template:User ru-2 05/08/12 0
Template:User pt-2 06/01/27 0
Template:User no 05/09/24 1
Template:User nl 05/06/16 2
Template:User la-2 05/06/21 1
Template:User it-2 05/11/27 1
Template:User it-1 05/07/08 1
Template:User it 05/12/05 1
Template:User fy 05/06/16 1
Template:User fr-3 05/08/04 0
Template:User fr-2 05/08/04 1
Template:User fr-1 05/08/04 6
Template:User fr 05/08/04 4
Template:User es-3 05/08/15 0
Template:User es-2 05/08/15 2
Template:User es-1 05/08/15 5
Template:User es 05/08/15 1
Template:User en-4 05/11/27 2
Template:User en-3 05/06/16 3
Template:User en- 2 05/06/16 3
Template:User en-1 05/06/16 1
Template:User en-0 06/01/11 0
Template:User en 05/06/16 20
Template:User de-3 05/06/16 1
Template:User de-2 05/06/16 0
Template:User de-1 05/06/16 2
Template:User de 05/06/16 1
Template:User als-3 05/06/18 0
Template:User als-2 05/06/17 0
Template:User als-1 05/06/17 0
Template:User als 05/06/18 0
Template:User af-3 05/06/16 0
Template:User af-2 05/06/16 1
Template:User af-1 05/06/16 0
Template:User af 05/06/16 0

Users may not use Wikinews as a webhost

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This element of Wikinews policy has been unchanged since its first draft:

Wikinews is not a free wiki host or webspace provider. You may not host your own website or blog at Wikinews. If you are interested in using the wiki technology for a collaborative effort on anything other than writing journalistic news articles, even if it is just a single page, there are many sites (such as SeedWiki or Riters.com) that provide wiki hosting (free or for money). You can even install wiki software on your server.

Use of categories and templates should be for the project

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From the first formulations of Wikipedia policy to the latest discussions it has been clear that all pages, including user pages, are intended to be relevant to the project.[57] The earliest mention of userpages in policy specifically state they are to be used for working on the encyclopedia.[58]

Use of template and category namespaces for personal use does not work toward the goals of Wikinews. Wikinews Mission statemen

The Catholic Alliance of Wikipedia used categories contained in userboxes to attempt to bias the content of Wikipedia through vote stacking. Likewise, StrangerInParadise engaged in the same behaviour[59], which also led to this memorable quote from David Gerard:

Grossly non-encyclopedic categories in userboxes have been considered a bad thing since they first showed up. (ibid)

User pages must not be offensive

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Wikinews does not have a written userpage policy. Practice has been to request a user remove offensive material, and in rare cases for an admin to remove the offensive material. (Looking for cases, I remember one late spring 2005 plus the discussion with User:Neutralizer by Eloquence, et al.)

Other policies are relevant:

Wikinews:Etiquette
  • Be polite.
  • Recognize your own biases and keep them in check.
  • Be civil.
  • Don't label or personally attack people or their edits.
  • to be open and warmly welcoming, not insular,
  • Make others feel welcome (even longtime participants; even those you dislike)
  • Create and continue a friendly environment
Wikinews:Username
  • Don't create user names that are offensive
  • Out of courtesy to other users, please do not create usernames that may be misleading or confusing.

Ignore all the rules

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WP:IAR is a concept, if not a policy. To state it simply for Wikinews:

If the rules prevent you from working on Wikinews, ignore them and go about your business. Remember the purpose of Wikinews is to report news; use common sense and don't be a dick.

This concept has a long tradition in the wiki communities, predating Wikipedia. It is closely related to the mantra "Be bold!". In both of these guidelines is the implicit instruction to improve the project no matter whether what you do is "outside of process". If it works toward the goals and missions of the project, it supercedes the policies and traditions of the site which have developed. Product is more valued than process.

Evidence presented by Neutralizer

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First assertion

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Amgine has a long established pattern of arrogant abuse of administrative privilege ,site disruption and rudeness as shown here;

Amgine abuses administrative authority consistently and has done so for at least 9 months. Here are a few examples of administrative abuse.
  1. Dan100's list of Amgine's "bullying and poor behaviour"

Second assertion

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He will not stop abusing administrative privilege; as this blatant out of process unilateral deletion of his yesterday shows; Amgine went "out of process" and unilaterally deleted an article[61] (which he had tagged days earlier) without submitting the article through our Deletion Request process. The article clearly is not elligible for speedy delete and had been in develpment for days before the unilateral out of process deletion. The fact Amgine placed the article in a user's space is particularly worrisome as other editors had been participating in editing and discussion.

  • 'Summary' of the 2 assertions; I think the evidence shows Amgine is a wiki-troll; just playing with the site to manufacture his own rules and hand out 6 month blocks etc. at his whim and when it comes to his own behavior, to ignore all rules equally at his whim. He relies upon the good nature and gentleness of most contributors (as well as turnover) to co-dependentize his behaviour. Few of the Arbcoms here ever knew DV or Simeon or the other great wikinewsies Amgine pushed out; Just read the DR histories concerning Amgine's behavior over the past year. Now that's in evidence too. I suggest that Arbcom read it before making a final decision. Neutralizer 22:36, 20 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
If I remember corectly, DV leaving had nothing to do with Amgine's behavoir, and more to do with the limits of NPOV. Simeon left before I came. Bawolff ☺☻  22:40, 20 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
If you go back through DV's history you'll see it all; he was just too much of a nice guy to leave a critical comment when he left. He'll tell you himself if you get in touch with him, I'm pretty sure. He could stand no more of Amgine's hypocrisy. Simeon was even a sadder example of pure harrassment, wikistalking and even 3RR trap setting (Dan100 referred to that). Its all in the histories of DV and Simeon.
Sorry; I left out Mateo"I can not contribute to a project where I am not allowed to edit in peace."; there's been so many border-line blocks and rule quoting by someone who enlists "ignore all rules" in his own defense. Mateo's final edit on wikinews is kindof ironic given this Arbcom; ""Email me when the vast majority of good administrators get a tighter hold on this place." User:Neutralizer|Neutralizer]] 23:03, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
An intreasting kinda unrelated comment I saw [62]. Bawolff ☺☻  23:06, 20 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
In answer to the notion that userboxes inform and are therefore not offensive, I would note that there are instances where information is offensive. For instance, on an advertising-free website such as this, I would be put off to click on a contributor's user page to find it full of advertising banners (where an "Advertising banner" is an evolved userbox). For example, "Edbrown05 speaks no Spanish, but will paint your Spanish-speaking home" in a flashing font on the banner trailing an airplane as it crosses your browser window.
It could be argued that since it is my user page, I can post what I want. But as Bawolff noted, where do you draw the line?
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