As part of our recent investigation into off-wiki misconduct, we had been made aware of Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations/Smallangryplanet/Archive#11_April_2025. Two of the alleged socks of Smallangryplanet have now been ArbCom blocked. However, our investigation did not reveal direct evidence of off-wiki misconduct by Smallangryplanet or Lf8u2. Given the public SPI, which constitutes the extent of the evidence we are currently aware of, the Committee has opted to hear these motions in public. CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 05:08, 26 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

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

Support:

1. If we expect single admins, or the three or four admins that work AE, to topic ban people for NPOV sticking to one side no matter what, we should be willing to do it ourselves. With the crossover with editors we know are coordinating I think a topic ban is reasonable. As well as the SPI, there's situations where one can't decide which of the responses is an editor banned for off-wiki coordination or an editor that consistently supports one side of a conflict, e.g.[1]
   Strongly support Tel al-Sultan massacre, Rafah massacre, or Tent Massacre, with a preference for Tent Massacre as that is what RS are calling it.
   Support massacre with no preference for the rest (I've seen the place being referred to as Rafah more often, but haven't done a proper analysis so maybe that's just my impression). Per nom and other comments, there's not a lack of RS using the term.
   Strong support for massacre in the title, with a preference for "Rafah Tent Massacre". I concur with @Makeandtoss, @Abo Yemen et al. that the term 'massacre' is employed by reputable sources
   We consistently say that editing in support of one side of a conflict is a violation of NPOV, and that When a group of editors consistently and repeatedly participate in the same discussions to support the same point of view — especially when many or most of the members of that group had little or no prior participation in the underlying dispute — it is reasonable to presume that they could be coordinating their actions. We know there is off-wiki coordination, we want the topic area to be better, and we say that CTOPs/AE allow admins to take these actions, so let's show them we mean it. We can't expect an admin or four to stick their necks out if we're not willing to. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 15:04, 26 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

   To clarify, per my response below, simply supporting one side of a conflict isn't nearly sufficient for a sanction, and absent other factors is generally fine. In this situation there is a lot more to look at. We have editors that have become active or resumed activity after the current escalation in the conflict, edit in support of one side of the conflict, take part in discussions that have been the target of off-wiki coordination, !vote in-line with and with similar verbiage to editors banned for off-wiki coordination, and since their return to editing have made a large portion of their edits about the conflict. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 10:40, 28 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

2. As per my comments internally last month, I agree with SFR's comments here as to how to weigh the collection of evidence as a whole against the relevant outcomes. My views around this were strengthened with the recent action we took against two other editors. The discussion below, while very extensive and worthy of careful consideration, has not dissuaded me from this position. Daniel (talk) 03:33, 4 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
3. I find myself answering Eek's question in the discussion below with "yes". Primefac (talk) 13:07, 4 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
4. While the private evidence we have received does not directly and unambiguously show that these two editors have engaged in off-wiki coordination, it does show a pattern and timing that, when combined with their activity on-wiki, shows that they highly likely to have engaged in off-wiki coordination. Enough is enough. - Aoidh (talk) 22:39, 4 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
5. Having strong views on the conflict is fine, of course, but editing in a consistently-slanted way is not. If you can guess with ~100% accuracy how someone will land in a discussion based solely on which "side" they are on, they are bringing little value to such discussions. Combining that with circumstantial evidence of coordination is enough to land here. Elli (talk | contribs) 01:16, 5 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose:

1. I guess I'll say at the outset that if these motions pass, I won't be losing any sleep over the fact that Smallangryplanet and Lf8u2 will be topic-banned from ARBPIA. Like Elli, I'm not exactly convinced that they're contributors devoted to constructing a neutral encyclopedia, and were I looking at their records as an individual admin, I could definitely see a battleground-based case for a balanced editing restriction or a topic ban. But that's not the case that was made here, and as a result, the hurdles that due process demands of a fair system haven't been cleared. In particular, I take strong issue with the case made by some in the support section above:

   ScottishFinnishRadish: If we expect single admins, or the three or four admins that work AE, to topic ban people for NPOV sticking to one side no matter what, we should be willing to do it ourselves. With the crossover with editors we know are coordinating I think a topic ban is reasonable.

   Elli: Having strong views on the conflict is fine, of course, but editing in a consistently-slanted way is not. If you can guess with ~100% accuracy how someone will land in a discussion based solely on which "side" they are on, they are bringing little value to such discussions. Combining that with circumstantial evidence of coordination is enough to land here.

   In other words, it doesn't really matter if the evidence on the off-wiki coordination charges aren't ironclad, because we know that there's off-wiki coordination out there somewhere, these people look suspicious, and it's probably for the best that they get topic-banned anyway, so let's skip the boring paperwork.
   That argument deprives Smallangryplanet and Lf8u2 of the chance to actually defend themselves against the charges they're up against a topic ban for. Two arbitrators have decided that the editing history of these two editors renders them partisans who are not in this topic area to edit constructively, an assertion that has been at all litigated here at ARM or in private. No concrete evidence is presented in support of it. It's somewhat based on the fact that the selected sample of votes shown here consistently align with a certain point of view, which is not the same thing as proving that those editors prioritize their ideology over policy and guideline. Also, as long as we're talking about partisanship, there's the other elephant in the room: the filer of that SPI happens to be on the opposite side of the aisle of the four people they're gunning for. I wish editors in this area were willing to police people they agree with ideologically, but it basically never happens, which contributes a lot to the feeling that there are two entrenched camps attempting to break each other by any means necessary.
   Aoidh and others do argue in the support section that the off-wiki coordination case is, in and of itself, compelling enough for a topic ban. I respect that argument, but looking at the facts of the case here, I don't agree with the conclusion. Yes, we know SAP, Lf8u2, GeoColdWater, and Isoceles-sai all started increasing their participation around the same time Tech4Palestine was born, but there's a pretty reasonable case that that's just a coincidence given that Smallangryplanet and Lf8u2 were not, to our knowledge, part of T4P. Yes, we know that Isoceles-sai, GeoColdWater, and Lf8u2 voted in a lot of the same discussions that Smallangryplanet (the most experienced of the four here) did, but some of the evidence doesn't hold up here – the most plausible coordination fact-pattern would be that the three less experienced editors were taking cues from SAP, but SAP cast a decent number of their votes after the less experienced editors. Also, there would have to be some unknown server that links all four of these editors that started around the same time as T4P, so while it's tough to dismiss this as a coincidence – the overlap does seem higher than what I'd expect, even for PIA – the fact pattern for it being not being a coincidence also feels bizarre. The wording of the votes in question don't at all look similar to me, aside from the fact that they're all supporting the same thing. I certainly wouldn't be surprised if they were all coordinating, but there's just not enough to go on.
   Partisanship is something ArbCom should be stamping out. If we had made this case about how these editors' (and others'!) activities put ideological interests above the integrity of the encyclopedia, we'd be setting a wonderful example for AE admins and the community on how to draw lines of clearly unacceptable conduct. Instead, frustratingly, the sloppiness of the argument not only prevents me from voting in favor of something that I think is probably net positive in and of itself, but that it hampers ArbCom in doing exactly what many supporting arbitrators would like it to do, which is to lay out a clear, consistent philosophy of partisan editing that AE admins can rely on in making controversial decisions. Circumstantial evidence about one charge plus unsubstantiated assertions about another does not equal a slam-dunk case, and I think that the precedents we're setting here about what constitutes improper editing and standards of evidence are out of step with what the community expects from us as a methodical, deliberative, and reasoned body. theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 05:31, 5 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
2. I've procrastinated here because I can't convince myself there's enough for these remedies, and if I haven't convinced myself by now, it's not going to happen. Katie^talk 23:18, 9 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
3. Rationale per leeky, tardiness per Katie. I can't see a strong enough case for action here but these editors would do well to consider themselves on thin ice. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 23:32, 9 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
4. I stand by the framing of my question, but I just don't find that the circumstancial evidence of collusion is strong enough. I think Chess identified some potentially dubious conduct, but it's hard to say that proves the missing link. That's especially true given that other folks picked through the private evidence with a fine toothed comb and strong motivation to try to find colluding individuals. If someone could have connected Lf8u2 or SAP's edits to off-wiki collusion, they would have. If what we really wanted here was just straight up topic bans for the regular "can't behave in the topic area" reason, then we need different motions and different arguments. CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 00:45, 10 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Abstain:

1. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 11:05, 26 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Support:

1. If we expect single admins, or the three or four admins that work AE, to topic ban people for NPOV sticking to one side no matter what, we should be willing to do it ourselves. With the crossover with editors we know are coordinating I think a topic ban is reasonable. As well as the SPI, there's situations where one can't decide which of the responses is an editor banned for off-wiki coordination or an editor that consistently supports one side of a conflict, e.g.[2]
   Strongly support Tel al-Sultan massacre, Rafah massacre, or Tent Massacre, with a preference for Tent Massacre as that is what RS are calling it.
   Support massacre with no preference for the rest (I've seen the place being referred to as Rafah more often, but haven't done a proper analysis so maybe that's just my impression). Per nom and other comments, there's not a lack of RS using the term.
   Strong support for massacre in the title, with a preference for "Rafah Tent Massacre". I concur with @Makeandtoss, @Abo Yemen et al. that the term 'massacre' is employed by reputable sources
   We consistently say that editing in support of one side of a conflict is a violation of NPOV, and that When a group of editors consistently and repeatedly participate in the same discussions to support the same point of view — especially when many or most of the members of that group had little or no prior participation in the underlying dispute — it is reasonable to presume that they could be coordinating their actions. We know there is off-wiki coordination, we want the topic area to be better, and we say that CTOPs/AE allow admins to take these actions, so let's show them we mean it. We can't expect an admin or four to stick their necks out if we're not willing to. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 15:04, 26 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

   To clarify, per my response below, simply supporting one side of a conflict isn't nearly sufficient for a sanction, and absent other factors is generally fine. In this situation there is a lot more to look at. We have editors that have become active or resumed activity after the current escalation in the conflict, edit in support of one side of the conflict, take part in discussions that have been the target of off-wiki coordination, !vote in-line with and with similar verbiage to editors banned for off-wiki coordination, and since their return to editing have made a large portion of their edits about the conflict. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 10:40, 28 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

2. Per commentary above. Daniel (talk) 03:34, 4 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
3. I find myself answering Eek's question in the discussion below with "yes". Primefac (talk) 13:07, 4 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
4. Per my comment above. - Aoidh (talk) 22:40, 4 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
5. Per above. Elli (talk | contribs) 01:17, 5 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose:

1. I ain't writing all of that a second time, see above :) theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 05:32, 5 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
2. Per my comment above. Katie^talk 23:18, 9 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
3. Per above. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 23:33, 9 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
4. See my comment on the other motion. CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 00:45, 10 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Abstain:

1. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 11:05, 26 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• I don't at all agree that consistently editing in support of one side is a violation of NPOV if the individual edits aren't NPOV violations. What if someone consistently focuses on articles that are skewed towards one POV when the consensus of reliable sources supports another? I think it would be inconsistent with NPOV and WP:VOLUNTEER to require that someone include false balance in their editing. Misinterpreting sources due to carelessness is an issue; misinterpreting sources in ways that emphasize or advance one POV is unacceptable. theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 02:59, 28 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  SFR does say elsewhere that Simply supporting one side of a conflict isn't nearly sufficient for a sanction, and absent other factors is generally fine. I do agree with that, and wish it was clearer in their vote above. theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 03:03, 28 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  @MarioGom: Picking the brain of an expert here :) you were the patrolling clerk at the original SPI thread, where you closed for lack of evidence: When evaluating sockpuppetry and meatpuppetry at SPI, we have to decide whether strength of evidence raises above the expected background noise of each signal in certain topics. That background noise here is very high. That's usually the case for overlaps in broad contentious topics.

  In light of the fact that two of the editors in the report have now been ArbCom banned for off-wiki coordination, would you say your analysis has changed significantly? On the one hand, it'd be odd for Isoceles-sai and Geocoldwater to be on two separate off-wiki coordination venues together, one of which we don't know about and has SAP and Lf8u2, the other of which we do know about and has Ivana. On the other hand, the high overlap with people who were weighing in mostly on discussions that were targets of off-wiki coordination is somewhat suspicious. Do you think the new evidence changes the calculations here? theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 16:48, 2 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• As I understand it, the question before us is: based on circumstantial evidence of collusion of Lf8u2 & Smallangryplanet with Isoceles-Sai & GeoColdwater, and concrete evidence of off-wiki misconduct by Isoceles-Sai and GeoColdwater, is that circumstantial connection enough for us to assume that Lf8u2 and Smallangryplanet were also involved in off-wiki misconduct, such that a topic ban is warranted? These motions were originally proposed in private, but given that we found no private evidence of misconduct, I suggested that it would be more transparent for us to handle the matter in public. CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 05:56, 29 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Like @Lf8u2 I am...confused as to why this motion was brought when it has already been stated that there is no evidence that we were part of any coordination, and this is why the SPI case was closed as well. If there was to be any follow up on that case I frankly would have expected a case to be brought against the user who falsely accused myself and Lf8u2 of rather extreme things without evidence...

I’m not sure how to give evidence proving something that doesn’t exist and I will again point to my reponse to @Chess, and add that any overlap between myself and the three other editors – who, if we're being honest, appeared to be randomly chosen since there is the same degree if not higher of overlap between myself, them and others as @VR pointed out – is entirely incidental.

Additionally on a more abstract policy point I continue to believe that it is not a violation of any rules to agree with people in a shared area of interest in a talk page discussion. I don’t know why other users were banned, and I think there is a distinction between inappropriate POV pushing and articulating well sourced information in pursuit of consensus, as I have consistently done. I also think it potentially creates a dangerous and easily-abused standard to suggest that finding consensus with other editors is somehow de-facto suspicious. On a purely personal note I should add that this case has been filed during a two week period in which I’m not able to edit Wikipedia very often, so responses may be sporadic until next week/early May and I ask for some patience. Thank you. Smallangryplanet (talk) 13:05, 28 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, hello. I've found some time to look at the discussion, and there's nothing but speculative and very weak misrepresentations of data points that, as @Zero0000 noted, appear significant only if one accepts the assumption of guilt for the initial – and crucially, disproven (as written by SPI admin) – charge. Then I read something @Theleekycauldron raised which I am not sure even they fully grasped the significance of, and realised the situation is even more egregious than I initially thought, namely: On the one hand, it'd be odd for Isoceles-sai and Geocoldwater to be on two separate off-wiki coordination venues together, one of which we don't know about and has SAP and Lf8u2, the other of which we do know about and has Ivana.

The motion and the entire case by @Chess is self-referentially incoherent, and the stronger he appears to make it based on arbitrarily assembled (and misrepresented) data points – the more it is proven to be so.

Let me explain: Two of the editors who were part of the original SPI case, @Isoceles-sai and @GeoColdWater, have now been banned based on evidence provided to Arbcom proving their membership of an off-site canvassing and coordination group. The same evidence was found not to exist for the editors this motion is about, yours truly and @Lf8u2, even though it was alleged that we are all part of the same coordination group.

Again and again and again and again, I have to point out that this is self-contradictory. If we are all part of the same coordination group, the same evidence would by necessity exist for all of us. That's the entire point of the accusation against us, that we are all part of the same coordination group. The same applies to our alleged membership of the "T4P" group, for which also no evidence has been presented, just more of the same idle speculation based on data points regarding overlap and timing that only have any significance if our guilt is assumed, and @Zero0000 has shown that those data points were misleadingly presented to create the appearance of significance while in fact they are entirely ordinary for any active editor editing in any CTOP where editors align with the same general perspective. Whew.

So. Every data point assembled as evidence of coordination on our part with the banned editors or one another is purely arbitrary speculation based on the presumption of membership of a group that was conclusively disproven when these coordination efforts were exposed as we were shown to not be part of the group in question!

This means that the overlaps and other data points assembled as proof of coordination in fact disprove Chess' allegations, since if there were such a thing it would have shown up in the same batch of incontrovertible evidence for the T4P bans and the recent bans of the two other editors. @Chess has masterfully made the case for why there isn't coordination by myself and Lf8u2 despite the non-significant overlaps and other data points, and in a frankly delightful and simultaneously very frustrating irony the more data points he assembles the more he proves our innocence of his own charge.

I want to again thank @Theleekycauldron for raising this crucially important point that definitively exonerates myself and @Lf8u2 from the frivolous charge against us: On the one hand, it'd be odd for Isoceles-sai and Geocoldwater to be on two separate off-wiki coordination venues together, one of which we don't know about and has SAP and Lf8u2, the other of which we do know about and has Ivana.

...to which I've gotta say: Yes, exactly! This point exonerates both myself and LF8u2. Both coordination groups were uncovered with actual direct evidence, the latest two just recently, so if we had been part of it all along as is alleged, the same would be true of us!

I suspect the folks at Arbcom are aware of the fundamentally contradictory nature of the allegation(s) against us, and so they are requesting a topic-ban instead of a site-wide ban, which as far as I can tell is the historically appropriate sanction for the allegation of off-site canvassing and coordination. It seems like the admins not only know there is no evidence for any misconduct as they have stated in the motion, but also that the evidence that was found conclusively disproves it (as I explained), so they downgraded the potential sanction to make it seem more palatable. I argue that the appropriate response when something is conclusively disproven is to not to bring motions against editors to have them sanctioned at all, rather than to try to appease the accuser by proposing a downgraded version of a sanction!

Turning back to Chess now, all this makes what happened with the original SPI case all the more outrageous. Based on the facts we can all verify, not idle speculation, we know or at least can assume that Chess had evidence of off-site coordination on the part of the two now banned editors, and instead of bringing it to Arbcom directly so they could take the appropriate action, he decided to cast aspersions with a guilt by association SPI case and extend it to myself and Lf8u2.

Also, after @Zero0000's probing of his ever-shifting allegations and exposure of the misrepresented data points to create the appearance of significance, Chess let the truth slip: I'm sorry that we don't have a detailed confession made in a publicly accessible Discord server that several newspaper articles spent months reporting on. Smallangryplanet and Lf8u2 have better opsec than that.

This only confirms the self-referentially incoherent and just plain contradictory nature of his own charge, and that he was aware of it yet still persisted in making what he must have known was a false charge against us, for if we were part of the same coordination group our op-sec would be identical. He had hoped no one would notice this, but thankfully Theleekycauldron did.

Why did Chess, who it seems had actual evidence of off-site coordination on the part of Isoceles-sai and GeoColdWater that was supplied to Arbcom and led to their ban, knowing full well that it excluded myself and Lf8u2, decide to ignore that fact and instead make a case that implicated us?

What appears to have happened is that Chess found the evidence of coordination on the part of the two now banned editors and opted to use them as a weapon to go after myself and Lf8u2 by using what he knew were misrepresented data points, and having implicated us, he could extend the net ever farther and wider. He pursued all this despite knowing full well that the evidence he had proving the two now banned editors were part of a coordination effort excluded us, thereby proving that we were in fact not part of the alleged collaboration group.

I noted in my reply to the SPI case, and others like @Parabolist have noted it here as well, that Chess has a history of making frivolous accusations against editors in this CTOP who are, as he says, Pro-Palestinian. The insistence on all of us being members of a group called T4P – which, conveniently, those of us who aren't cannot ever disprove to his liking as it is based entirely on speculative inference from misrepresented overlaps – is a useful tool for proposing and expanding an ever-larger and sinister network, where anyone who disagrees with Chess is defacto a malicious entity. This is certainly the attempt being made here, now.

This is again truly outrageous behaviour, and it's only getting worse the more @Chess assembles selective data points and draws inaccurate or spurious conclusions between them, using the ghosts of previously banned editors to imply that editors who find consensus in a particular CTOP must be coordinating because if they weren't...well, why would anyone have these opinions otherwise? NPOV dispute makes it clear that these kinds of accusations are a last resort, and I will once again say that it creates an extremely dangerous precedent to suggest that consistently disagreeing with someone, or several someones, should seemingly automatically trigger accusations of misbehaviour. I will be extremely vague to avoid OUTING myself here but in my off-wiki life I work in a sometimes contentious role where I am often having to work things through with my colleagues, and when some of us agree and some of us disagree, this is seen as normal and indeed beneficial to the task at hand, since it produces better results because, as on Wikipedia, we need to investigate our own preconceptions and other sources and come to a satisfactory consensus to move forward. Sometimes we emerge from these discussions believing more strongly in our original proposition, sometimes our notions change.

(Apologies for possibly overstepping various word count limits - I had a small period of time in which to respond to a sprawling conversation. I should be more normally around later this upcoming week, and once again ask for and appreciate your patience. Please let me know if you have any questions and if there is anything I can expand upon.) Smallangryplanet (talk) 13:39, 4 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'm mostly back online now and continually astonished by what is happening in this case. SFR's latest reply to VR sets up a new standard for why a topic-ban is justified in our case (but apparently not others): If you participate in Talk for a page but haven't edited the page itself, that warrants a t-ban. He provides the Nuseirat rescue and massacre page as a case study for this policy.

Well. Alright. Let's have a look. A quick check reveals at least the following editors who supported the current RM on that page's talk without making a single edit to the page itself:

- Chess

- WatkynBassett

- Reenem

- FortunateSons

- HeloPait

- Chicdat

- MaskedSinger

This list includes very active editors in the CTOP for whom you can easily, as Elli says, guess with ~100% accuracy how someone will land in a discussion based solely on which "side" they are on. We can ignore the existence of RfC lists, wikiprojects, and other aggregators that deliberately function to drive editors towards these processes, because of mysterious reasons. Should we place a warning on Wikiproject Palestine's page that if anyone wants to respond to requests in the topic area they had better make sure to edit the page beforehand, otherwise they'll be hauled up into AE or arbcom and summarily topic banned?

At this point I think it's incumbent on arbcom to just say that you're conducting a witch-hunt against specific editors because of how we align with a perspective in this subject area that you don't like, and that you're now facing extreme pressure over from external forces – including the Trump administration! – to clamp down on. Neither my nor Lf8u2's statements seem to be making a dent in the discussion, and we haven't been asked any questions by anyone involved, simply presumed to be guilty of meatpuppeting even though the evidence itself conclusively disproved the allegations. How could I not assume that external pressure is a factor here? I would appreciate it if the editors involved would just say so.

It would be better than having this farce where admins are not even bothering to engage with community input – that is entirely against a ban – based on this absurd "POV-pushing/advocacy" standard that's being selectively and arbitrarily applied, and which even Chess (who made the original SPI case) doesn't believe is legitimate. Smallangryplanet (talk) 13:11, 7 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@FortunateSons: to be clear these aren't my standards, they're the ones being used by certain administrators to justify a groundless t-ban, but I don't think your behaviour on that page comes off looking any better per those (admittedly absurd!) standards. In the post you cite, you expressed worry about inclusion of a "Pro-Palestinian" source, the Euro-Med Monitor, that accused Israeli forces of attacking a civilian family with no mention of the hostages being involved to justify it. Once that content was added justifying the attack on the basis, you raised no objections. That's perfectly fine of course and you likely had good policy-backed reasons for it, but we could have guessed it with ~100% accuracy. Your only other brief two-line edit was in the ongoing RM arguing for removal of massacre, using similar wording as the others backing the "pro-Israeli" position. Personally of course I do not think your edits mean you should be brought up on charges, so to speak, but I'm using it as an example of how absurd this supposed indicator of suspiciousness / meatpuppetry is, and how it is being selectively applied.

Again, most of the others backing the current RM only have one-liners with similarly written !vote supports – as SFR cited for the now-banned geo and isoceles as reasons for suspicion, extending same to the editors in this case, even though both Lf8u2 and myself have significantly contributed to multiple discussions, exactly how SFR said was a positive indicator for VR and cited as a reason for being "good faith" and having no need to worry about being brought up on charges – but for us that's not a relevant factor worth mentioning as long as SFR throws in a "healthy dollop" of the disproven case tied to the now-banned editors.

Also...the list of editors I posted above is incomplete. I didn't include all the editors who participated in the prior RMs/RfCs with zero edits on both the pro-Israel/pro-Pal sides where we can easily have a ~100% accurate guess-rate for where they end up in votes. We all know the names, and we all know what the results will be when the same standards are applied to other articles in the CTOP.

That's just how this and I suspect every other CTOP works, but not by SFR and Elli's standards, which are solely being used to target specific editors and justified by appealing to a "healthy dollop" of, again, an admittedly disproven coordination allegation.

VR's point about intentional framing of editors by misdirection is actually a very good one and it seems like SFR hasn't grasped that he's enabled malicious bad faith actors to take advantage of it by setting up these ludicrously arbitrary standards for a ban. We know the two now-banned editors were involved in a coordination effort and the evidence against them conclusively proved that Lf8u2 and myself are not, yet now SFR and the other admins backing this motion have established the following as a standard for banning an editor in this CTOP: Engage in off-site coordination, make sure to leave a paper-trail, edit in agreement with your targeted editor(s), get a high degree of overlap, use similar language, then have the coordination "leaked" to ArbCom and get someone to tie it to the targeted editor(s) in a frivolous (SPI) case.

Boom, voila, you have the exact same fact-pattern being used to justify the ban against us...and you don't even have to go that far, just keep up the "meatpuppeting" behaviour with your target per the SFR standard and they can be implicated as being part of a POV-pushing/advocacy "bloc" and subject to a ban.

...all of this is to say that this is why you don't make frivolous motions to ban editors when the evidence has exonerated them. The consequences of what is being done here will be far-reaching; more than any of the admins themselves seem to be able to grasp. Smallangryplanet (talk) 19:04, 7 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@FortunateSons, yes, let's let not re-litigate the Nuseirat case here, but I just want to make the point that very experienced editors have expressed support on both sides not just in this RM but also previous ones, and they're both legitimate positions. SFR or any other member of ArbCom wading into it with their own judgment as to which is the genuinely "neutral" and policy-compliant view – which of course happens to be the one aligned with the "pro-Israeli" position – and then using that as the standard to render anyone who disagrees with it suspicious and liable to be banned, is outrageous and oversteps the bounds of what we expect from an active admin in the CTOP they're supposed to be neutrally admin-ing. I repeat, this motion did not arise out of any concerns with our edits being POV-pushy/advocacy, that's an AE matter. It arose out of a coordination claim that was proven to be false by the presented evidence. So all of this is beside the point...

Also, entirely agree with the creation of clear universally applied standards, and of course will also happily abide by them, and yes, definitely will keep any follow-ups to just the essentials! I should also re-iterate that I'm not accusing you (or any of the other editors I mentioned) of anything at all – I'm trying to explain why this new standard for suspicion doesn't make sense. After all, I'm still unclear on what exactly these standards are. Is merely sharing the same position as someone else considered proof of canvassing? Or is it about participating in a certain number of discussions? If voting the same way as a now-banned editor is enough to justify topic bans, what about those who consistently vote in the same discussions and share the same views as previously banned sockpuppets? Will SFR consider topic bans for everyone who agrees with them?

My !votes have always been based on policy and supported by sources. You may disagree with how I interpret those policies, but I genuinely try to apply them in good faith. Reducing my participation to a simple "support/oppose" !vote, as if I'm blindly following a group, is both insulting and dismissive of the effort I put into volunteering here.

@Chess I asked this before, but can you provide a discussion in which you and Lf8u2 disagreed? I already answered this: Overlaps and agreements in this CTOP by active editors who align with a general perspective are not a legitimate basis to cast suspicion on editors, let along justifying a ban for them, as by that metric you and every other active editor in the field are equally "guilty". Can you provide a discussion in which you and Andrevan disagreed? Or BilledMamammal? Alaexis? Even if you can find one or two for yourself, it's going to be in the 95 to 100% range of agreement, and yes for many it is 100%. We all know the active editors on that side, we all know this to be true, and we all know they don't have motions against them to have them banned on that basis. Also, if you actually look at the content of our argumentation, as in the Nuseirat case, Lf8u2's is substantially different than mine, and as I noted other editors who backed the RM with just one-liners expressing support using the same language as others are on much weaker grounds per this (irrelevant) standard that you also agreed is not a legitimate basis for justifying a ban.

Also VR's point helpfully made me realise this, too; as with the "off-site coordination" case it is intrinsically incoherent and self-contradictory, for if anything it adds additional proof that we are not part of a POV-pushing/advocacy "bloc", whatever that means. If we were we would have contrived disagreements like the Icewich/Galamore sock/meatpuppets do and would, I assume, be standard practice for any experienced editors engaged in such activity while looking to avoid scrutiny. The very fact that we didn't by itself proves our agreements were genuine, and not contrived (the same goes for those on the other side!). Just as with the original case that was proven to be false by the presented evidence, here too my point applies: in a frankly delightful and simultaneously very frustrating irony the more data points he assembles the more he proves our innocence of his own charge.

These are all very important points clarified by community input, and being ignored by SFR and the other admins who opted to cite this incoherent and self-contradictory POV-pushing/advocacy "bloc" claim as the justification for our ban – with a "healthy dollop" of the admitted to be disproven SPI case that exonerates us.

If you want to make us the sacrificial lambs for an arbitrary set of loosely defined rules and brand us as dishonest editors canvassing for a secret group, then by all means, go ahead. I'm sure some media outlets and advocacy groups will have a field day. It feels pointless to even write this, since no one voting seems to be engaging with my comments. Maybe once we're topic banned and people start weaponising this new standard, it will finally become clear that this was a mistake. Smallangryplanet (talk) 12:09, 8 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I remain perplexed as to why this motion was brought against me, particularly given the confirmed finding that no evidence was discovered to support the accusation of coordination and sockpuppetry in my case. As no evidence exists, I do not know on what basis a case proceeds, nor exactly what I am expected to say concerning something that is patently false except to reiterate that it is.

At this juncture, there is one point I feel compelled to address. @ScottishFinnishRadish extended beyond the initial SPI case which found no evidence of misconduct on my part and introduced an additional justification for supporting a topic ban, namely: If we expect single admins, or the three or four admins that work AE, to topic ban people for NPOV sticking to one side no matter what, we should be willing to do it ourselves.

Simply supporting one side of a conflict isn't nearly sufficient for a sanction, and absent other factors is generally fine. In this situation there is a lot more to look at. We have editors that have become active or resumed activity after the current escalation in the conflict, edit in support of one side of the conflict, take part in discussions that have been the target of off-wiki coordination, !vote in-line with and with similar verbiage to editors banned for off-wiki coordination, and since their return to editing have made a large portion of their edits about the conflict. The evidence for these two editors is circumstantial and involves a judgement call. After considering the evidence and the factors I mentioned, as well as the Arbcom precedent noted in the motion, in my judgement there is enough likelihood that they were involved in the off-wiki coordination that I'm comfortable with a topic ban.

I must underscore that this POV-pushing in supposed violation of NPOV reasoning is unrelated to the initial now disproven accusation of coordination and sockpuppetry; thus, I am unclear as to why @ScottishFinnishRadish cited it as grounds for supporting a topic ban originating in that disproven claim. I am entirely in agreement with @Sp, I also have problems with the "our investigation did not reveal direct evidence of off-wiki misconduct" but still bringing these motions forth. If there were real problems, a case should have been brought forth and/or an WP:AE

Moreover, I do not know how one can determine whether a position "benefits the Palestinian point of view" and is therefore suspicious when the argumentation provided for it is based on RS and policy, as is the case with my edits and votes. As pointed out by @Zero0000, subjective characterization of positions benefitting a Palestinian or Israeli point of view or the Israeli can only be demonstrated via objective criteria, such as misrepresenting RS and making policy-violating edits to push a particular POV. Instead there is only an appeal to the disproven SPI coordination sockpuppetry case. In regards to the cited previous RfC regarding Nuseirat and the use of the term "massacre," it was noted that I supported the use of that term. However, I have presented extensive argumentation grounded in RS and NPOV principles, which was not referenced. Furthermore, my arguments were distinct from those of other editors active in the RfC, and I consistently strive to offer a unique perspective in discussions.

The standard @ScottishFinnishRadish is applying to me to justify a topic ban appears particularly curious to those familiar with the subject area, or any subject area as noted by @Sp. Numerous editors engage exclusively in edits and votes that could be characterized as "benefitting an Israeli point of view," many of whom became notably active after October 7, often cast brief, one- or two-line votes supporting the Israeli perspective, employ similar verbiage, while participating in discussions that have been the subject of documented off-site coordination and sockpuppetry (as @Smallangryplanet demonstrated regarding the Nuseirat RfC, and this also applies to others). Moreover, the degree of overlap among these editors is the same or greater than what has been demonstrated in my case. As @Sp observed, this is entirely to be expected given the nature of how subject areas work. Active editors in them tend to overlap and align when they share general perspectives.

Nevertheless, no editor has been banned, nor has any case been initiated against them for engaging in the behaviors @ScottishFinnishRadish now cites as justification for supporting a topic ban in my case.

I share @Sp's grave concerns with @ScottishFinnishRadish's behavior, and I shall extend that to @Chess, the editor who made the initial accusation against me that was found to be without evidence. I do not know why they have not been reprimanded or sanctioned for doing so, and instead a motion was made against me.

If it is to become standard practice to question or sanction editors based on such criteria, then it is essential to establish a clear, uniformly applicable policy outlining these expectations. Furthermore, precise definitions of what constitutes "benefitting a Palestinian or Israeli point of view" must be articulated, rather than relying on subjective assessments by individual administrators. Then apply it consistently to everyone who meets these criteria.

I must reiterate: none of these alleged POV-pushing arguments pertain to the initial, proven-to-be-unsubstantiated accusation of coordination brought against me in the SPI case. Consequently, I remain at a loss as to why a motion was initiated against me when it has been demonstrated that no evidence supports the initial charge.

Should the administrators require any further information or clarification from my side, I would be pleased to provide it. Thank you all for your attention to this matter. Lf8u2 (talk) 06:39, 28 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Chess states: I dug through most of Lf8u2's talk !votes before filing the SPI. The most obvious behavioural trait is !voting the same way in requested moves in Israel-Palestine.

The largest inconsistency with policy is when adding "massacre" to article titles. WP:NCENPOV says "massacre" is appropriate if it is part of the WP:COMMONNAME or a "generally accepted word used to identify the event". However, editors in this cluster will !vote to add "massacre" based on only a few reliable sources.

So, @Chess disagrees with my talk page contributions and !votes, which once more I must reiterate are always based in RS and policy and I always endeavor to make insighftul. Chess disagrees specifically with my support for the addition of "massacre" in the Nuseirat case, even though I presented detailed argumentation for it which are entirely in line with the RS standard and policy, as observed by @Thryduulf.

If it is considered sufficient to bring a case against me on such a basis, then it must logically follow that cases should also be brought against virtually every other active editor in this subject area since the alleged "behavioural traits" are neither unique nor policy-violating.

We must begin with bringing a case against all those who agree with my position in the Nuseirat case to include the use of "massacre": @M.Bitton, @Rainsage, @Skitash, @Cdjp1, @Genabab, @Raskolnikov.Rev. We must also look at the previous RfCs for anyone who supported the same position, and also support a ban on them.

And those who believe like me that supporting the use of "massacre" in other instances where @Chess believes it is a violation of WP:NCENPOV must also be banned per the same logic. This includes the editors in this ongoing RfC where Chess has proposed the removal of "massacre" citing the same rule: @Darouet, @The Great Mule of Eupatoria.

We must also find the percentages of overlap between editors in votes and ban them if they are at the same level if not higher than @Chess pointed out in my case.

I can keep going, but I hope the point is made. @Chess wants to apply a standard to me that will result in the banning of most if not all editors in this and other subject areas if it were to be applied equally to all.

If @Chess brought a case against me or anyone else in AE on these grounds, it would be dismissed out of hand for being a frivolous content dispute case, and I assume a sanction would also be imposed.

Instead, @Chess elected to link me to three other editors as part of an unfounded and evidence-free allegation of coordination and sockpuppetry, and it was found to be without evidence.

Thus, I must once again question why I am the subject of a motion, rather than the editor who made baseless accusations that were found to be unsupported by evidence, and who is now attempting to retroactively recast the matter as a content dispute — one that could equally be applied to many if not most other editors active in this and other subject areas. Lf8u2 (talk) 07:24, 28 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• There's one question I have about ScottishFinnishRadish's vote: We consistently say that editing in support of one side of a conflict is a violation of NPOV:
  • One of the things I should do as a good faith editor to show I am not violating WP:NPOV is to !vote in ways that don't help my particular side but is still consistent with my interpretation of the rules.
  • In this particular case, the fact that 100% of Lf8u2's 16 !votes (out of 17 !votes to all talk pages) relating to the Palestine-Israel conflict benefitted a Palestinian point of view indicated a violation of WP:NPOV.
  • This would be true even if every individual !vote had a consistent interpretation of our policies.
• If the pattern of Lf8u2 exclusively supporting Palestinian viewpoints didn't exist, would you have voted differently? Or were there other considerations? Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 21:35, 26 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  There are a number of things that informed my vote in this situation. Simply supporting one side of a conflict isn't nearly sufficient for a sanction, and absent other factors is generally fine. In this situation there is a lot more to look at. We have editors that have become active or resumed activity after the current escalation in the conflict, edit in support of one side of the conflict, take part in discussions that have been the target of off-wiki coordination, !vote in-line with and with similar verbiage to editors banned for off-wiki coordination, and since their return to editing have made a large portion of their edits about the conflict. The evidence for these two editors is circumstantial and involves a judgement call. After considering the evidence and the factors I mentioned, as well as the Arbcom precedent noted in the motion, in my judgement there is enough likelihood that they were involved in the off-wiki coordination that I'm comfortable with a topic ban. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 19:09, 27 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  @ScottishFinnishRadish: The difficulty here is that you're trying to set an example for WP:Arbitration Enforcement, but I don't think you're showing a generalizable example here for a topic ban because it's so fact-specific.

  I think Smallangryplanet is extremely suspicious (I reported them, after all) because there's 3 accounts found by ArbCom to engage in offwiki canvassing and also spent most of their time supporting Smallangryplanet (CoolAndUniqueUsername who I reported at AE, later EC-revoked, Isoceles-sai , and GeoColdWater). Lf8u2 has the same behavioural traits as well. But it's unclear what general lessons you want administrators at AE to take from this. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 03:47, 28 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I forgot to mention this at the SPI, but the the Tech 4 Palestine Discord introduced Ivana as the "resident Wikipedia expert" in April of 2024.[3] Smallangryplanet, Lf8u2, Isoceles-sai, and GeoColdWater all have activity changes in that month or the month immediately after.

  • Smallangryplanet went from 10 edits in April of 2024 to 117 in May of 2024.[4] May 2024 was also the month Smallangryplanet made their first talk page !vote.[5][6] This was to the same discussion as Ivana at Talk:Sexual and gender-based violence in the October 7 Hamas-led attack on Israel
  • Lf8u2 made their first contribution to a talk page in May of 2024 to Talk:Sexual and gender-based violence in the October 7 Hamas-led attack on Israel.[7][8] This was reverted, but they came back to !vote for real on the same article the next month.[9]
  • Isoceles-sai created their account in April of 2024.[10]
  • GeoColdWater went from 4 edits in March of 2024 to 24 edits in April of 2024.[11]

  In response to Lf8u2's point that my logic is applicable to other editors: I'm aware. Most of the editors Lf8u2 listed have long histories before the October 7 attacks. However, some of the editors mentioned do share behavioural characteristics with Lf8u2. I only picked the strongest for the initial SPI report, though. I'll pick the second editor Lf8u2 mentioned because I don't want to look through all of M.Bitton's talk page contributions. Rainsage began editing in April of 2024, then their first three !votes were to agree with Lf8u2, Ivana, and Smallangryplanet.

  • Rainsage began editing in April of 2024

• There's more but I got bored and they continue sinking Rainsage's overlap percentage. It's kind of suspicious that Rainsage started at the same time as the T4P Discord and !voted the same way, but they don't have the same 10-month long !voting pattern overlap Lf8u2/Smallangryplanet do in which they mostly support each other and do not generally !vote outside of helping each other out.

  If Rainsage at some point was in T4P, they probably left a while ago, and stopped performing tasks for the group before it was exposed. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 08:52, 28 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  @Smallangryplanet: we haven't been asked any questions by anyone involved I asked this before, but can you provide a discussion in which you and Lf8u2 disagreed? Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 22:35, 7 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• I have grave concerns with SFR's statement about banning someone for holding a specific POV and supporting it via !votes. I can name 20-30 editors in a number of areas that do just that, including in CTOPs. Yet these two are being singled out. I also have problems with the "our investigation did not reveal direct evidence of off-wiki misconduct" but still bringing these motions forth. If there were real problems, a case should have been brought forth and/or an WP:AE. spryde | talk 16:11, 27 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Aghast that this is apparently solely based on having a specific, consistent point of view. If no misconduct was discovered, what the fuck are we doing here? Human beings have consistent beliefs. Parabolist (talk) 19:13, 27 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

A lot of factors apparently affected SFR's vote, so much so that his second comment hardly even resembles his first. Is this a MEAT issue, or is this an NPOV issue? Going from If we expect single admins, or the three or four admins that work AE, to topic ban people for NPOV sticking to one side no matter what, to simply supporting one side of a conflict isn't nearly sufficient for a sanction, isn't a clarification, it's a pivot. No evidence of collusion or canvassing is presented, only evidence of the (now not an issue, apparently) "NPOV" issues. If this motion is purely vibes based, say it outright. Otherwise, present real evidence. Parabolist (talk) 05:36, 29 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Parabolist: It's always been a WP:MEAT issue (the discussion got sidetracked), as the person who originally started the SPI thread at WP:Sockpuppet investigations/Smallangryplanet. I've dug through all of Smallangryplanet, Lf8u2, and now Raskolnikov.Rev's !votes to talkspace. The important thing is all of these editors started spiking in their activity after April 2024 (when Tech 4 Palestine started) and 70%+ of all of their !votes anywhere in Talkspace agree with Smallangryplanet, who doesn't have that many !votes. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 04:36, 1 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Chess: I'm very aware of your obsession with the Tech4Palestine case, and the multiple times it has caused you to try to coyly OUT editors in public forums instead of submitting evidence to Arbcom. Your dogged pursuit of those editors is causing you to see patterns here that are simply explained by the fact that the situation in Gaza (and the associated media coverage) drew many people to (or back to) wiki articles. You need distance from this. Parabolist (talk) 07:23, 1 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

What was the point of making this public, if none of the arbs are going to bother engaging with any of the commentary? Oh great, your votes are based on private evidence. We found no miscounduct but the vibes are bad, and these posters were consistent with their views. NPOV is found by voting the opposite way you think is correct every now and then, just to seem impartial. Here's some incredibly reasonable RFC votes as evidence. Genuinely embarassing, and describing articles on an active genocide (and massacres!) as having teams is disgusting. For shame. Parabolist (talk) 03:21, 5 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Parabolist: I agree, honestly. It's unclear what the principles are that ArbCom wants the enforcing administrators to extract. Did any of the evidence I presented actually convince the arbs? What was or wasn't helpful? Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 06:53, 5 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

As a general comment, I think it's better to dispense with the 'have made a large portion of their edits about the conflict' way of thinking about editors. The portion of edits in the topic area doesn't seem to tell me anything useful because it has nothing to say about the edits themselves, which is supposed to be what matters. We already know that ban evading actors active in PIA only make, on average, about a fifth of their revisions in the topic area. Even the Wikipedia account possibly used by zei_squirrel didn't have a large portion of their edits in the topic area. The monthly max was around 10%, but it was normally much less. I should caveat this by saying that although I've been told an account name, and it's plausible-ish, I've not been able to validate it and I've not seen the evidentiary basis for the claim. I don't know if any of the media sources have published an account name with evidence to support the claim. Maybe Chess knows. If they have, don't link it here, but I would be interested the article. Sean.hoyland (talk) 12:55, 5 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Sean.hoyland: I would be surprised if Zei_Squirrel got to WP:500/30 because it appears to me she did little work, delegated to others, and took credit because she's a well-known influencer in the pro-Palestinian community. I'm unaware of any Wikipedia account linked to her.

You're right that "edits made in the conflict area" aren't a useful signal. The best signal is a lack of disagreement on anything, because of strong peer pressure from the outside group and consensus being made offwiki. This was present at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/WikiProject Tropical Cyclones, in which even minor disagreement over which photos to choose were not tolerated.

A Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 23:19, 5 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• I am intentionally not commenting on these two particular editors and I haven't looked at their contributions. I just want to address this: "We consistently say that editing in support of one side of a conflict is a violation of NPOV." NPOV is a requirement of the content of articles; WP:NPOV doesn't even mention talk pages in this context. In contentious topics, NPOV is achieved by means of negotiation between editors with different POVs. It is hardly ever achieved through editors sometimes supporting one side and sometimes supporting the other. To first approximation, the latter type of editor doesn't exist. Violations of editorial standards arise when an editor refuses to compromise, refuses to discuss, misrepresents sources, edits against consensus, etc. etc., not just by virtue of having a POV. Expressing an opinion and then accepting the consensus is not an NPOV violation even if this is repeated multiple times. Zero^talk 02:34, 28 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Editing consistently on one side of an issue could also be a way of ensuring articles meet NPOV. For example, K.e.coffman was noted for fixing a lot of existing bias in Wikipedia articles, but that was because she was consistently editing them to be neutral instead of pro-German. Seems too close to arbitrators interfering in content decisions, which they supposedly refuse to do. (t · c) buidhe 03:44, 30 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  @Buidhe: I would recommend looking at the SPI evidence and the diffs I've presented. The suspicious factor is they all started editing when Tech 4 Palestine started and most of their !votes on all of Wikipedia are in agreement with Smallangryplanet. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 04:28, 1 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  If so that's a problem unrelated to whether their edits could be construed as supporting one side of an issue. (t · c) buidhe 04:46, 1 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Question - Which of Smallangryplanet's and Lf8u2's !votes are true statements/consistent with policy, which statements are false statements/inconsistent with policy, and which are somewhere in between? Who "benefits" does not strike me as a valid metric because our decision procedures don't care who benefits. Timecards for accounts named in the SPI case are available here. Sean.hoyland (talk) 03:19, 28 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  @Sean.hoyland: I dug through most of Lf8u2's talk !votes before filing the SPI. The most obvious behavioural trait is !voting the same way in requested moves in Israel-Palestine.

  The largest inconsistency with policy is when adding "massacre" to article titles. WP:NCENPOV says "massacre" is appropriate if it is part of the WP:COMMONNAME or a "generally accepted word used to identify the event". However, editors in this cluster will !vote to add "massacre" based on only a few reliable sources. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 04:08, 28 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Without commenting on this specific case (because I haven't looked at the details), if multiple reliable sources independent of each other use the term "massacre" in relation to the event, is that not evidence of it being a "common name for the event" and/or "a generally accepted word used to identify the event"? Certainly it's almost always going to be good enough for there to be a redirect at that title. Thryduulf (talk) 04:43, 28 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I don't think !voting the same way in requested moves in Israel-Palestine is a useful signal. I'm lazy so I have only extracted strings for 3 of the discussions involving these 2 accounts cited in the SPI. There are many !votes and the choice is pretty much binary, so I have a hard time convincing myself that correlations between these 2 particular accounts' !votes are significant.

Talk:Sexual and gender-based violence in the October 7 Hamas-led attack on Israel/Archive 4 - Requested move 4 June 2024
:'''support''' - See [[WP:PRECISION]] for
:'''oppose''' -- both mean quite differen
:'''Support''' - even to the extent that
:'''Oppose'''. While I appreciate the mor
:<s>'''Support''' The page even documents
*'''Oppose''' for now, as this article is
*'''Support''' per nom. There's very litt
:*'''Oppose''' per the arguments regardin
*'''Support'''. The current title is pend
*'''Support''' to avoid [[WP:OVERPRECISIO
*'''Oppose''' for the same reasons as For
*'''Oppose''' - Sexual and Gender Based V
*'''Oppose''' per FortunateSons, Ïvana, L
:'''Oppose''' I agree with what Fortunate
:'''Initial support but''' with adding "a
:'''Support:''' per [[WP:CONCISE]] and pr
:'''Oppose'''. [[SGBV|Sexual and gender-b
:'''Oppose''' It's important to match the
'''Oppose'''. The title "Sexual and gende
'''Oppose'''. The term Sexual and Gender-

Talk:Nuseirat rescue and massacre/Archive 2 - Proposed merge of Nuseirat refugee camp massacre into 2024 Nuseirat rescue operation
 :'''Support''': UN sources which I need
 *'''Oppose''' – This article is re
 :'''Support:''' Merge the articles into
 :'''Oppose''' – Responding to orig
 :'''Support''' This is precisely what I
 :'''Support''' — Many sources note the e
 :'''Strong oppose''' I agree that there
 :'''Oppose'''. What was the purpose of t
 :'''Oppose''', The main topic here is, o
 :'''Strong support''' Clearly, the rescu
 :Support merging, but '''weak oppose'''
 *'''Oppose''' per [[WP:NCENPOV]], POV im
 *'''Weak support''', although a title li
 *'''Support''', although I agree with th
 *I '''agree''' because there was no mass
 *I '''agree''' for reasons I provided on
 *'''oppose'''. For the same reason i sta
 *<s>'''Wait'''</s> Until things are clea
 *'''Agree''' The articles should be merg
 * '''Oppose''', there is widespread refe
 ::I strongly '''agree''' that there shou
 *'''Support''' merging the articles and
 *'''Oppose''' and agree with Dylanvt. Th
 *'''Agree '''- most of the killings were
 * '''Support''': It is the same operatio
 *'''Agree '''- This article is an embarr
 *'''Support'''. This is an obvious [[WP:
 *'''Oppose''', or '''support''' merging
 *'''Support''' merger of the article on
 *'''Support''' merge. The latter is part
 *'''Support''' merger of two articles ''
 *'''Oppose''' merge. With over 274 death
 *'''Support''', in my opinion this is a
 * '''Oppose''' per Dylanvt, the massacre
 * '''Support''' per IOHANNVSVERVS and Ti
 *'''Oppose''' per Dylanvt an others. Whi
 *:::That's what I suggested... see my pr
 *'''Support''' merging. The events are i
 * '''Support''' The main event here is t
 *'''Support''', per [[WP:POVFORK]]. [[Us
 * '''Support'''. Both pages describe the
 :'''Support'''. [[User:KronosAlight|Kron
 * '''Oppose''' per Dylanvt. See {{Cite w
 * '''Wait''' until more information is r
 *'''Oppose/wait''': The information is s
 *'''Agree''' per [[WP:POVFORK]]. As of n
 *'''Support'''. [[User:MarshallBagramyan
 *'''Support''' We're talking events that
 *'''Strongly oppose''': the massacre tha
 *'''Strongly oppose.''' We have an artic
 *:'''Support'''. The massacre was an asp
 *'''Support:''' They both cover the same
 *:'''Support''' of a merger under a new
 *'''Strongly oppose''': The sheer number
 *'''Support merge into this article''':
 :'''Oppose''': The hostage rescue has go
 :'''Support''' per [[WP:POVFORK]] and [[
 *'''Support:''' one event happened becau
 *'''Support''': seems like a sort of acc
 *'''Support''' merging under a neutral t
 *'''Oppose''': I think both articles pas
 *'''Support to a neutral title''', such
 * '''Support''' since this is a clear ca
 * '''OPPOSE merge''' - keeping it as two
 * '''Support''' {{tq|since this is a cle
 *'''Strongly Oppose/ disagree''' I concu
 * '''Support''' – The idea that it
 :'''Weak support but keep the massacre w
 : '''Conditionally oppose'''. I'm not su
 :'''Support''' merge, also per {{ping|Dy
 :'''Support''' merge. These are POV fork
 :'''Strongly oppose''': As stated earlie
 :'''Support''' The two articles overlap
 *'''Support''' Per @[[User:KronosAlight|
 *'''Obvious support''' as there is absol
 *'''Strong oppose''', and I rarely use t
 *'''Agree''' - POV fork [[User:Bluethric

Talk:Al-Ahli Arab Hospital explosion/Archive 21 - RFC on inclusion of Forensic Architecture in lede
* '''Oppose'''. Reliable sources are in
* '''Support''' Forensic Architecture i
*'''Oppose'''. The bottom line on this
* '''Support'''. For the reasons @[[Use
*'''Support''' - I do not find this mat
*'''Oppose''' The problem is not just t
* '''Oppose'''. Forensic Architecture i
* '''Support''' - this has already been
*'''Support''' - and all the complaints
*{{s|'''Support''' - We have [[Talk:Al-
*'''Support''' - Agree with Nableezy's
*'''Oppose'''. Lacks weight and reputat
:'''Strong support''' The False Balance
::I'm also in '''support''' for this re
* '''Oppose'''. In their reports publis
*'''Oppose''' following the views of Bi
*'''Oppose BUT'''  The entire sentence
*'''Support''' I by in large agree with
*'''Oppose'''. The current wording impl
*'''Strong support.''' It's unhelpful t
*'''Support leaving in lede''' Having t

Sean.hoyland (talk) 11:04, 28 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Sean.hoyland: Any chance you can share the script you're using to calculate? I am getting tired of manually counting people. Also, this isn't "requested moves in Israel-Palestine", my percentages are based on all !votes. The big signal is that it's very suspicious a bunch of editors decide to start !voting or editing from April-May 2024 when the Tech 4 Palestine server was starting, then a bunch of them !vote to support Smallangryplanet, who also started editing in May 2024. Especially when Smallangryplanet has only !voted probably around 20 times ever. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 04:25, 1 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I haven't done any !vote calculations. I don't have anything that counts !votes or even reliably extracts the data. This is the first time I've actually looked at extracting data from discussions that involve !votes. Having looked at a few move discussions to see how feasible it is to pull the !vote, account and comment information from diffs or the wikitext, rather than the quick botch job I did the other day, their unstructured, non-standardized, free-wheeling nature makes it a bit tricky not to miss things e.g. like unsigned !votes. I assume someone has already written something to do this, but I don't know where it would be. Anyway, here's an only-superficially-tested, possibly-quite-brittle attempt at extracting data into a list of dictionaries. Not sure whether that will help at all. Sean.hoyland (talk) 18:03, 1 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

def get_votes(user_agent, host, page_title, section):

    site = mwclient.Site(host=host, clients_useragent=user_agent)
    page = site.pages[page_title]
    lines = page.text(section=section, cache=False).splitlines()

    # Requires '''bold !vote'''. Votes like Option '''3''' will not be matched.
    pattern_vote = re.compile(
        r"'''[^']*?\b(disagree\w*|agree\w*|support\w*|oppos\w*|wait\w*|renam\w*|option\w*)\b[^']*?'''",
        re.IGNORECASE,
    )

    # - Sometimes signatures only include link to user, sometime only to talk.
    # - Need to avoid false positives where 'per user X' lacks an @ prefix 
    #   e.g. :'''Option 1''' per [[User:something|something]].
    # - Will miss signatures that don't use UTC timestamp.
    pattern_user = re.compile(
        r"(?<!@)\[\[(?:User(?:[ _]talk)?):([^|]+)\|.*\(UTC\)\s*$",
        re.IGNORECASE | re.MULTILINE
    )

    results = []
    in_vote_section = False

    for line in lines:
        vote_match = pattern_vote.search(line)

        # Only extract votes near the beginning of a line to avoid cases
        # where an editor quotes another editor's vote in their comment.
        # Need to handle situations where vote and signature are on separate lines.
        if vote_match and vote_match.start() <= 20:
            vote = vote_match.group(0) # 0 to get entire bold string, 1 to get search term
            comment = []
            in_vote_section = True

        if in_vote_section:
            comment.append(line)
            actor_match = pattern_user.findall(line)
            if actor_match:
                actor = actor_match[-1]
                results.append({
                    'actor': actor,
                    'vote': vote,
                    'comment': '\n'.join(comment)
                })
                in_vote_section = False
            else: # not on a line with an !vote
                continue

    return results

# config = dict(
#     user_agent = 'Test (Sean.hoyland)',
#     host='en.wikipedia.org',
#     page_title = 'Talk:Nuseirat_rescue_and_massacre/Archive_2',
#     section = 11,
# )

# config = dict(
#     user_agent = 'Test (Sean.hoyland)',
#     host='en.wikipedia.org',
#     page_title = 'Talk:2023 Israeli–Palestinian prisoner exchange',
#     section = 8,
# )

config = dict(
    user_agent = 'Test (Sean.hoyland)',
    host='en.wikipedia.org',
    page_title = 'Talk:Israeli bombing of the Gaza Strip/Archive 1',
    section = 32,
)

results = get_votes(**config)

@Thryduulf: You can look at (but don't touch) Talk:Rafah paramedic massacre if you want an example of !voting rationales that ignore WP:NCENPOV. Two of the editors Lf8u2 cites as being bannable are present at that discussion. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 18:49, 28 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I wonder what is required to help this seed grow and whether ArbCom can help. Sean.hoyland (talk) 07:17, 29 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You can also look (but don't touch) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Kissufim_massacre#Requested_move_24_April_2025 if you want another example of !voting rationales that ignore WP:NCENPOV. But those editors are advocating a pro-Israeli POV, which seems to explain why Chess is not that bothered by them. Raskolnikov.Rev (talk) 07:22, 29 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Raskolnikov.Rev: But those editors are advocating a pro-Israeli POV, which seems to explain why Chess is not that bothered by them. You're aware that I started that requested move, right? I am the person that proposed removing "massacre" from the title of that article. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 21:32, 29 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I know you did. That's why I linked it. But your behavioral traits don't match with the claimed violation of WP:NCENPOV regarding Nuseirat. You haven't bothered to reply to any of the pro-Israeli voters and their one-liners, while you did do so in the other case, and you cited the Paramedic RM for examples of policy-violating voting rationales instead of that one. And as the vote is currently going it's set to have about the same result as the Nuseirat one, no consensus for removal. So if this is indeed a very serious violation of Wiki policy that warrants suspicion and action, it doesn't only apply to one side. Also I agree with @Sean.hoyland on working on that MOS. Raskolnikov.Rev (talk) 07:06, 30 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Are we discussing whether one editor, against whom no allegations of problemtic editing have been raised, is apparently "bothered" equally enough by NCENPOV-violating votes across two discussions? Who cares? ꧁Zanahary꧂ 22:11, 30 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Hold on let me get this straight. Chess made a case accusing Smallangryplanet of running three accounts as meat puppets while citing as evidence overlapping percentages, this was closed for lack of evidence as it obviously and clearly means nothing given the much higher level of overlap with other editors who are active in that topic. CaptainEek says Chess failed to provide any other evidence for this very serious allegation against smallangryplanet and lf8u2, instead only offering off-site evidence that led to two other editors being banned, and a case was remade against smallangryplanet and lf8u2 based on the originally dismissed claim of coordination even though CaptainEek confirms it was found to be without proof?

What exactly are we doing here?

Why is a case being brought against two editors who were falsely accused of running or coordinating with other accounts instead of against the editor who made the false accusation and apparently has a history of doing so based on what smallangry said in the original response?

And I want to join smallangry in asking: If Chess had added two, three, four, five, ten more editors in his original case to tie to the two now banned ones based on overlapping percentages that were as high if not higher, would they all be in the same motion now? He has already extended the insinuation of guilt to M. Bitton and Rainsage.

Chess, can you please provide a full list of all the editors you are convinced are part of this coordination ring so that we can all assess just exactly how far-reaching your desire to ban editors extends? It seems like you want to cast suspicion on most if not all active editors in the Israel-Palestine topic you consider to be "pro-Palestinian". Curiously not a single pro-Israeli editor is among them. That's very strange given your own editing history that's definitely not pushing a particular POV on this topic. Raskolnikov.Rev (talk) 07:32, 29 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Raskolnikov.Rev, could you clarify if the last sentence is ironic and means that Chess is pushing a particular point of view about the Arab-Israeli conflict? ~ ToBeFree (talk) 21:28, 29 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

No it is not ironic. I frankly have no idea if Chess is pushing a particular POV about the Arab-Israeli conflict except per the cited metrics in this motion because I don't believe that can be determined by them, like overlap in binary talk votes and generally agreeing with a particular POV. By those metrics I suspect Chess and most editors including myself are "pushing a particular point of view". As @Parabolist said "Human beings have consistent beliefs." But that's not relevant. Actually pushing a particular POV should be determined by the criteria of WP:NPOV, like stating opinions as facts, misrepresenting sources, asserting seriously contested assertions as facts, etc. And I have not seen that being shown for the editors in this motion, nor Chess. Raskolnikov.Rev (talk) 07:02, 30 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

To clarify, I didn't insinuate M.Bitton or Rainsage are guilty of anything. In fact, I've explicitly said they are not guilty, because if you look at the totality of all of Rainsage's !votes, most of them do not overlap with Smallangryplanet, Lf8u2, Ivana, GeoColdWater, etc, despite the majority of Rainsage's !votes being on Palestine-Israel topics. Likewise, M.Bitton has edited for years prior to Tech 4 Palestine, unlike Smallangryplanet and Lf8u2 who only began !voting in May 2024, the month after Ivana began running the T4P Discord.

There are 5 main traits I can see:

• Started !voting on talk pages after April 2024.
• Overlap in !voting with editors we know, based on direct evidence, to be involved in the Tech 4 Palestine Discord.
• A lack of !votes that don't overlap
  • 70% of all !votes by the affected editors overlap.
• Shared POV.
  • Pro-Palestinian.
• A focus on requested moves.

Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 22:14, 29 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Clerk note: @Chess and Zero0000: That's quite enough of this. While word limits and sectioned discussion haven't been imposed here, that doesn't make TL;DR-posting or extended back-and-forth helpful. – JensonSL (SilverLocust) 07:39, 2 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Thank you for this summary. If this is your case, I have to conclude that you have no case. You have to demonstrate this degree of similarity is not a common feature of PIA editors with similar POVs. Why is 70% large, for example; it doesn't look large to me. Zerotalk 14:06, 30 April 2025 (UTC)[reply] @Zero0000: The first thing that excludes most editors is the April 2024 start date. There wasn't much happening in the Israel-Palestine conflict except for it being the time Tech 4 Palestine kicked their operation into high gear. Editors with a history of !voting prior to April 2024 will have miniscule overlap with Smallangryplanet because Smallangryplanet did not !vote prior to May 2024. Out of the list Lf8u2 gives of possible socks, only Rainsage[25] and Raskolnikov.Rev[26] had a sudden change in activity in their XTools chart after April 2024. Smallangryplanet[27], Lf8u2[28], CoolAndUniqueUsername (EC-revoked) [29], Isoceles-sai (banned) [30], and GeoColdWater (banned) [31] all had activity spikes after that month. We've already seen Rainsage's contributions, which initially !voted to support Smallangryplanet but sharply diverged later on. Here's Raskolnikov.Rev's !voting pattern. I will also note which discussions you (Zero0000, using the third person since it's easier to CTRL+F) participated at, since you aren't a sock and were active enough to be named at WP:ARBPIA5. Analysis of Raskolnikov.Rev's !votes Raskolnikov.Rev's first !vote was on 2024-07-27 to Talk:Sexual and gender-based violence in the October 7 Hamas-led attack on Israel. This is in common with Lf8u2, Smallangryplanet, Ivana, and Rainsage. Zero0000 was not present at this discussion. Vice regent was present and agreed. Their second !vote was on 2024-08-20 to Talk:Gaza war, to support a move away from Israel-Hamas war. This was in-line with Ivana[32], Smallangryplanet.[33] and CoolAndUniqueUsername.[34] Zero0000 was not present at this discussion. Vice regent was present and agreed. Their third !vote was on 2024-09-10 to Talk:Gaza genocide. No commonality with others. Zero0000 was not present at that discussion. Vice regent was not present. Their fourth !vote was on 2024-10-09 to Talk:Human shields in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. This was to conditionally support a move request from Ivana, that Smallangryplanet and Tashmetu (EC-revoked for T4P) also supported. Zero0000 was not present at this discussion. Vice regent was present and agreed. Their fifth !vote was on 2024-10-18 to Talk:Nuseirat rescue and massacre, where Ivana[35], Isoceles-sai[36], Smallangryplanet[37], CoolAndUniqueUsername[38], and Lf8u2[39] commented on. Zero0000 was not present at this discussion. Vice regent was present, but did not support including the word "massacre". Their sixth !vote was on 2024-10-20 to Talk:Hezbollah. No commonality with others. Zero0000 was not present at this discussion. Vice regent was present and agreed. Their seventh !vote was on 2024-10-25 to Talk:2024 Lebanon electronic device attacks. No commonality with other T4P members. Zero0000 was not present at this discussion. Vice regent supported "2024 Lebanon electronic device attacks" instead of Raskolnikov.Rev's "2024 Israeli electronic devices attack in Lebanon" Their eighth !vote was on 2024-10-28 to Talk:Al-Ahli Arab Hospital explosion. This was agreed with by Ivana[40], Smallangryplanet[41], Lf8u2[42], and CoolAndUniqueUsername[43]. Zero0000 was not present at this discussion. Vice regent didn't !vote, but was present. Their ninth !vote was on 2024-10-28 to Talk:1948 Arab-Israeli War. Smallangryplanet !voted the same.[44] Zero0000 was present at this discussion. Vice regent was present, but didn't !vote. Their tenth !vote was on 2024-10-29 to Talk:14 October 2024 Al-Aqsa Hospital attack. Ivana !voted the same.[45] Zero0000 was not present at this discussion. Vice regent was present and agreed. Their eleventh !vote was on 2024-11-05 to Talk:Hamas. Smallangryplanet started the RfC. Zero0000 was not present at this discussion. Vice regent was present, and suggested rephrasing the RfC.[46] They only !voted on one of the subquestions. Their twelfth !vote was on 2024-12-23 to Talk:Zionism. Smallangryplanet !voted the same at that discussion.[47] Zero0000 was present at that discussion, but !voted "Meh" instead of "No" Vice regent was not present. Their thirteenth !vote was on 2025-02-04 to Talk:Zionism. Smallangryplanet !voted the same at that discussion.[48] Zero0000 was present at that discussion, but !voted for a six month instead of twelve month moratorium.[49] Vice regent didn't !vote. This isn't a !vote, but Raskolnikov.rev called something a bad RfC and it was immediately closed.[50] Nobody else was present at that discussion. Their fourteenth !vote was on 2025-02-25 to Talk:Israeli bombing of the Gaza Strip. Lf8u2[51], Smallangryplanet[52], GeoColdWater[53], and Isoceles-sai[54] agreed. Zero0000 was not present at that discussion. Vice regent was present and sort-of agreed (didn't !vote). Their fifteenth !vote was on 2025-03-06 to Talk:Shadia Abu Ghazala School massacre. Smallangryplanet[55] Lf8u2[56] agreed. Zero0000 was not present at this discussion. Vice regent was not present. Their sixteenth !vote was on 2025-03-17 to Talk:Nuseirat rescue and massacre. This was to agree with Smallangryplanet [57], Lf8u2,[58] and GeoColdWater[59] Zero0000 was not present at this discussion. Vice regent was present, and !voted "Nuseirat rescue and mass killings" instead of "Nuseirat rescue and massacre". 12/16=75% !votes in common with Smallangryplanet, 3/16=18.75% !votes in common with Zero0000. I've just been manually counting !votes, so let me know if you want me to redo this with someone else (e.g. Vice regent, who offered themselves up as an example at the SPI. I don't know if they'd be fine with me redoing this here). @Raskolnikov.Rev:, since you asked can you please provide a full list of all the editors you are convinced are part of this coordination ring? That list now includes you. How, exactly, did you find out about this motion? Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 04:18, 1 May 2025 (UTC)[reply] @Vice regent: I redid the above, comparing to you. You were present at 11/16 of the same discussions, similarly to Smallangryplanet's presence. However, despite generally leaning pro-Palestinian, you frequently disagreed in minor and major ways with Smallangryplanet/Raskolnikov.Rev, such as by opposing the use of the word "massacre" on certain titles or on stylistic choices. Smallangryplanet, Raskolnikov.Rev, Lf8u2, GeoColdWater, Isoceles-sai, Ivana, and CoolAndUniqueUsername have never disagreed with each other in a talk page !vote. Not even once. That's abnormal, despite being present at many of the same discussions. So, to ask Smallangryplanet, Raskolnikov.Rev, and Lf8u2 a question, can you provide some instances of talk page discussions where you actually disagreed on something? Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 05:10, 1 May 2025 (UTC)[reply] Comparing any of these editors to me is actively misleading since I consciously avoid editing on the Gaza war. In general comparing participating editors to non-participating editors proves exactly zero. Meanwhile, I don't know what "started in April 2024" means in the case of Lf8u2 and Smallangryplanet. Lf8u2 joined in 2008 and in April 2024 did no PIA edits except to add two innocuous cats [60] [61]. Smallangryplanet joined in 2021 and in April 2024 made only one edit [62] that is arguably PIA-related, and it wasn't their first PIA edit [63]. I repeat my assertion that you don't have a case. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Zero0000 (talk • contribs) 05:54, 1 May 2025 (UTC)[reply] @Zero0000: I added in a comparison to Vice regent, who did participate in those discussions, since they suggested comparing to themselves at WP:Sockpuppet investigations/Smallangryplanet. I should've taken their advice sooner, because it's made me realize that the bigger signal is the lack of disagreement. I would like your feedback on that comparison. Even though VR participated at 11/16 of those discussions, Raskolnikov.Rev disagreed with VR 3/16 in the above cases. The reason why "lack of disagreement" is an important signal is because normally, editors negotiate onwiki on talk pages about articles or have idiosyncrasies about policies. Vice regent supported "2024 Lebanon electronic device attacks" (per WP:NCWWW) while Raskolnikov.Rev supported "2024 Israeli electronic devices attack in Lebanon". You disagreed on the length of a moratorium on the Zionism article. It doesn't appear that Lf8u2, Raskolnikov.Rev, or Smallangryplanet have disagreed on even minor issues at RfCs or requested moves. If a group of editors never, ever disagrees onwiki, it a strong signal that they're communicating offwiki and achieving consensus there before implementing it on articles. It's similar to Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/WikiProject Tropical Cyclones in 2022. Even editors generally aligned with a certain POV will disagree on random stylistic choices, but editors coordinating offwiki do not bother with consensus making onwiki. The meaning of started in April 2024 is because Israel-Palestine requires WP:500/30. Lf8u2 went from 9 edits for a period of 10 years to 30 edits in April 2024, then 129 edits in May 2024, and finally hit 500 edits in June of 2024. [64] Something happened in April 2024 that prompted Lf8u2 to decide, after a period of 10 years of inactivity, to go for extended-confirmed. Then, immediately after hitting extended-confirmed, start !voting in discussions for the first time in their entire editing career. Likewise, Smallangryplanet edited in May/June 2022 for a bit, then went inactive, then made a bunch of edits in October of 2023, then went inactive again trailing to a low of 10 edits in April 2024.[65] Suddenly, Smallangryplanet goes from 10 to 117 edits in May of 2024, and decides to !vote in discussions for the first time ever. Despite sporadically being active for years and having well over a thousand edits before October of 2023, Smallangryplanet didn't think !voting in discussions was a good use of their time until after the creation of the Tech 4 Palestine Discord server in which Ivana canvassed people to !vote in discussions. Finally, Raskolnikov.Rev makes a little over 200 edits in 2015, quits Wikipedia for 9 years, comes back in May 2024, starts making a ton of edits to hit extended confirmed, and immediately starts !voting in Israel-Palestine related topics after getting WP:500/30.[66] Raskolnikov.Rev also had zero interest in !voting until after Ivana joined Tech 4 Palestine. The reason why these dates are so important is because that is when Tech 4 Palestine started kicking into high gear.[67] There's no dispute that Ivana operated an organized canvassing campaign to influence discussions from that Discord server. The question for the arbitrators is whether these three editors that: Had very little interest in our discussion processes before April 2024. Started grinding edits to participate in those discussion processes starting in April or May of 2024. Spend much of their time at the same talk page discussions after reaching WP:500/30. Somehow have never disagreed with each other during any of those processes. Are part of the same known group of editors that: Decided in April of 2024 to start influencing our discussion processes. Gave out training and other materials to help get editors to WP:500/30. Were banned or warned by the Arbitration Committee because they flooded discussions after deciding offwiki to !vote a certain way. Have never disagreed with these 3 editors, but !voted at many of the same discussions as a possible ringleader (Smallangryplanet). Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 06:59, 1 May 2025 (UTC)[reply] One of my professional specialties is critical analysis of statistical experiments. Perhaps that's why I am very far from convinced that you found smoke, let alone fire. It's all just insinuation based on selected weak coincidences. And they are weak, or even non-existent. Take "April 2024". There is nothing in your JJ source about T4P "kicking into high gear" in April other than mention of a Zei_Squirrel post on April 23. But Lf8u2 began the actions you claim prove their guilt before April 23. Smallangryplanet indeed went from 10 edits in April to 117 in May, but why didn't you mention that less than 20 of their 117 April edits (16 I think) were PIA edits, and almost all in one talk page discussion? Their monthly PIA count didn't exceed 30 until October. So Smallangryplanet's supposed massive sudden interest in PIA was barely a whimper. Zerotalk 12:56, 1 May 2025 (UTC)[reply] Can you explain why, in their lengthy Wikipedia editing histories, why they've never disagreed at a talk page !vote? Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 17:48, 1 May 2025 (UTC)[reply] I'm not a mind reader, but one possibility is that they didn't disagree because they agreed. Zerotalk 02:02, 2 May 2025 (UTC)[reply] @Zero0000: Thanks for flagging the Zei_Squirrel connection for me, I didn't realize the importance until now. Ivana was introduced to T4P on April 4, 2024, according to page 39 of the dossier in the JJ article. Her expertise on Wikipedia shifted the group towards high-impact/visibility WP:CANVASSING (for which she was banned). Zei_Squirrel had a parallel Wikipedia operation, and accepted Ivana's standing invitation to join T4P on May 20, 2024 according to page 59 of the dossier (possibly May 19th, because this was 1 AM and time zones). This appears to be the cross-pollination moment in which editors from Zei_squirrel's Discord and/or Telegram joined Ivana's WP:CANVASSING operation to learn methods. May 19th/20th is the date Lf8u2[68] and Smallangryplanet[69] first ever !voted in a discussion (Raskolnikov.Rev did not have WP:500/30 by that point). It seems likely that Smallangryplanet/Lf8u2 were part of the Zei_Squirrel operation. They were brought by Zei_Squirrel to the Tech 4 Palestine Discord on May 20. On that day, Ivana recruited them to the ongoing Talk:Sexual and gender-based violence in the October 7 Hamas-led attack on Israel discussion, and the WP:CANVASSING began. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 22:05, 1 May 2025 (UTC)[reply] You can endlessly modify your story each time the previous version is debunked, but that only goes to prove that multiple different stories can be constructed from the same complex data. Smallangryplanet averaged much less than one PIA edit per day for the 5 months after they were supposedly recruited and that's a fact you can't get past. Zerotalk 02:02, 2 May 2025 (UTC)[reply] Smallangryplanet averaged much less than one PIA edit per day for the 5 months after they were supposedly recruited and that's a fact you can't get past. I don't get the point you're making, because more PIA edits would be less suspicious. Per ArbCom precedent, groups of editors showing up to the same discussions is suspicious especially when many or most of the members of that group had little or no prior participation in the underlying dispute. I don't understand this "gotcha" that why didn't you mention that less than 20 of their 117 April (sic, you mean May) edits (16 I think) were PIA edits, and almost all in one talk page discussion? Wow, that's a talk page discussion Ivana participated in,[70] and all of those edits happened after the day Zei_Squirrel joined her Discord editing operation with Ivana's! Right after editing talkspace for the first time in 6 months,[71] Smallangryplanet proceeded to make 3/4 more !votes agreeing with Ivana, a user banned for canvassing other editors to discussions on the Tech 4 Palestine Discord server.[72][73][74][75] You offer no explanation as to how Smallangryplanet is finding out about these RfCs and requested moves if Smallangryplanet is uninterested in Palestine, RfCs, requested moves, and talkspace as a whole. But you're saying it's definitely unrelated to Ivana, the sitebanned editor Smallangryplanet is agreeing with and who canvassed people during that period of time. It's also unclear how Smallangryplanet's voting overlap can be normal for an active PIA editor since you are now asserting they are not an active PIA editor. I'm sorry that we don't have a detailed confession made in a publicly accessible Discord server that several newspaper articles spent months reporting on. Smallangryplanet and Lf8u2 have better opsec than that. But Icewhiz and NoCal100 socks (both pro-Israel) get blocked on behavioural evidence that's miniscule in comparison. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 07:01, 2 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The only reason I even know about this motion is because I was pinged into it by @Lf8u2, and just because I decided to point out that bringing a case while admins admit there is no evidence against the accused is astonishing to me, I'm now being roped into it too with blatant misrepresentations of my contribution history. You claim to have found a new golden nugget for your conspiracy and to involve me in it: "Somehow have never disagreed with each other during any of those processes". Your claim that I have never disagreed with these editors, "even on minor issues", is false. It also reduces all my talk contributions and arguments to a binary support/oppose to create the appearance of sameness. While for @Vice regent you pointed out variations like "You disagreed on the length of a moratorium on the Zionism article", for me you left out that I for example did not support the moratorium proposed by @Smallangryplanet in the Nuseirat case. And that's after insinuating that my mere presence here was evidence of malfeasance because you hadn't bothered to read the statement where I was pinged. As @Zero0000 has also shown, you are now just blatantly misrepresenting editing histories to cast aspersions against editors.

Even if I had never disagreed in a binary vote with these or any other editors, it would mean nothing. I am not going to artificially feign disagreement with a position or contributor when I don't have any basis to do so in Wiki policy and the sources. That by itself is against policy as @Theleekycauldron said, and the fact that you are trying to impose that as a standard everyone must uphold or they'd be looked upon with suspicion is troubling. Raskolnikov.Rev (talk) 20:39, 1 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Your claim that I have never disagreed with these editors, "even on minor issues", is false. You've linked an edit request in which you disagreed with Smallangryplanet, but the WP:CANVASSING only happened for structured discussions (RMs, RfCs, etc) because those are where !votes = wins.

The moratorium in the Nuseirat case was proposed after you !voted. You didn't take a position on the moratorium there. Vice regent actually proposed a different option at the requested move.

I'm also not asking you to feign disagreement. I'm pointing out, that in the structured discussions at which WP:CANVASSING is an issue, you didn't find any reasons to disagree with Smallangryplanet, Lf8u2, Ivana, GeoColdWater, or Isoceles-sai. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 21:32, 1 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

What are you talking about? An edit request that was refused by Smallangryplanet was accepted by me and I actually made the edit. That is a "win", as the content appeared on the page. It is a much more significant "win" than a mere binary vote agreement, and you are just pretending like it's totally meaningless even though it goes against the very argument you made for why it proves I am part of some coordinating ring: "If a group of editors never, ever disagrees onwiki, it a strong signal that they're communicating offwiki and achieving consensus there before implementing it on articles."

Your point regarding Nuseirat also makes no sense per your own baseless allegation of a conspiracy, as it wouldn't matter when the moratorium request was posted if it had been coordinated. I would have supported it regardless, and I explicitly didn't at any point. In fact, I didn't even endorse the claim that was raised about canvassing. Again, you said we never had any disagreements, not even minor ones in talks and votes, and that is just blatantly false.

You are shifting goal-posts now because you were caught misrepresenting my edit history. Raskolnikov.Rev (talk) 21:51, 1 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Raskolnikov.Rev: These are all fair points, actually. You can see above that in response to Zero0000 pointing out the possible Zei_Squirrel connection, I revised the start date to May 20th, the date Zei_Squirrel joined Tech 4 Palestine. That means you don't really fit the pattern anymore, especially since you've actually provided an example of disagreement. You've convinced me.

Still waiting on Smallangryplanet and Lf8u2, though. I will redo the !vote overlap analysis for them. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 23:02, 1 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure if there's a word limit here but please be mindful of bludgeoning in this discussion. IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 17:52, 1 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Chess, i'm counting at least 3000 words of the 6,200 words here from you, including at least 14 out of 44 replies. Gathering and presenting evidence is important, but this is already miles past the 1000 word limit [76]. Can you at least ask an arb for permission if you plan to post more?

@arbs, if we are dealing with a PIA5.5 type scenario, can we have a structured place to put evidence? if not a pia5.5, then can we enforce word limits? Bluethricecreamman (talk) 20:00, 1 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Bluethricecreamman: I'm going to hat the extended diffs. I don't believe there's a diff/word limit at community discussion on Arbitration motions, though perhaps there should be (WP:ARCA now has one). Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 20:28, 1 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

•  Clerk note: Originally replied inline to theleekycauldron's question. HouseBlaster (talk • he/they) 21:14, 2 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Maybe. I see a lot of details in this discussion that were unknown to me before, such as the Tech4Palestine creation date and any activity spike correlation, the list of users who were known to be coordinating off-wiki, etc.

  I still maintain what I said before: ratios for vote overlap or vote agreement are only relevant if they are significantly above the probability of 2 users who do not coordinate to have the same ratio. This is very hard to model, so we usually go with heuristics. When coordination happens in very niche topics with less than a dozen editors participating in 10 years, it stands out very quickly. When it happens in a highly polarized topic that is in the news, there are things that look like coordination when it is not.

  Israel-Palestine conflict is not even so special. It happens with Azerbaijan-Armenia conflict, various ethnic conflicts related to Kurds, American politics, etc. If you ask any SPI clerk why these cases often take more than 1 month to resolve at SPI, I'm sure anyone will provide a similar answer. It's just not so simple to tell what's the significant signal level for sockpuppetry or meatpuppetry.

  My assessment of this case is roughly as follows: it is plausible that Lf8u2 and GeoColdWater are the same person, it would be plausible but unlikely that Isoceles-sai and Smallangryplanet are the same person, it is implausible that Lf8u2/GeoColdWater and Isoceles-sai/Smallangryplanet are the same person, it is plausible that all of them are coordinating off-wiki.

  Now we know some of them were indeed coordinating off-wiki, does this mean that all of them were doing so? Maybe or maybe not. Chess has provided some new hints, such as a possible activity increase when T4P started. So my question to Arbs here would be: if you are considering taking further action here, what are the specific bits of evidence available now that are enough indicative of meatpuppetry? This should be a set of behavioral traits that, when applied, does not lead to a catch-all group. You may consider a sanity test: how does this evidence compare against some established users you strongly believe are not involved in this coordination? MarioGom (talk) 18:48, 2 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I'm sorry for the long non-answer, but I really have no conclusive assessment here. MarioGom (talk) 18:54, 2 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Some data. Page intersection data across all projects are available for...

• 'Lf8u2 (ref_actor) vs (other_actors) GeoColdWater' here at Test L
• 'Smallangryplanet (ref_actor) vs (other_actors) Isoceles-sai' here at Test M

For comparison, the other end of the cross-project page intersection spectrum, see the data at Test K, a non-disruptive unreported ban evasion candidate whose average monthly activity level within the PIA topic area is ~16 revisions - too low for me to care given the absence of disruption.

For convenience, I'll note again, timecards are available here Sean.hoyland (talk) 09:15, 3 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Can you explain what edit percentage and actor percentage mean? Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 06:58, 4 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

They're the ref_actor or other_actor(s) value for a page over the total value for the page, for revision counts and actor counts. Here are the calculations.

        # Add percentage columns.
        # Note no rounding used here. Rounding to 2 decimal places is done for wikitable.
        df["ref_actor page edit percentage"] = (
            100 * df["editcount ref_actor"] / df["page_rev_count"]
        )
        df["other_actors page edit percentage"] = (
            100 * df["editcount other_actors"] / df["page_rev_count"]
        )
        df["ref_actor page actor percentage"] = 100 * 1 / df["page_actor_count"]
        df["other_actors page actor percentage"] = (
            100 * df["actorcount other_actors"] / df["page_actor_count"]
        )

Sean.hoyland (talk) 08:23, 4 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe some background would help. The Editor Interaction Analyser output doesn't tell me anything about the improbability or significance of an intersection. Intersections are obviously more improbable/surprising and therefore probably more significant on pages with low edit counts, low actor counts, low page views, low watcher counts (blanks mean less than 30 watchers - they aren't logged for some mysterious reason). Sean.hoyland (talk) 08:38, 4 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

low watcher counts (blanks mean less than 30 watchers - they aren't logged for some mysterious reason) I believe this is so that bad actors cannot tell which pages are completely unwatched. Thryduulf (talk) 11:26, 4 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Ah thanks. That makes sense, although attracting bad actors to certain pages with fake zero watcher counts could be interesting, like green lights on squid boats. Sean.hoyland (talk) 13:11, 4 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Seeing some of the comments here, I'd like to express my support for broader measures against long-term POV pushing. If someone supports calling acts massacres if done by Nation A, but never if done by Nation B, then that person is here to push a point of view, not to build an encyclopedia. If someone continuously votes to keep any article that makes Nation A look bad but to delete any that makes Nation B look bad, then we have sufficient evidence that the person is not acting in good faith. If someone is gung-ho for tbanning these two but circles the wagons when it's their side, or vice versa, the best case scenario is seeing them here next. If other POV-pushing editors come to mind, then please, for the sake of the project, gather diffs and file a report at AE. This isn't just about PIA either; several CTOPs have this problem. Theleekycauldron's concern about procedure has merit and I'd prefer if the other arbs would respond to it more directly, but that doesn't change the fact that obvious, rampant WP:ADVOCACY editing is frequently dismissed as "editors are allowed to have opinions". This is going to get worse until we accept that editors who cannot separate their beliefs from their editing are disruptive to the project. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 05:46, 6 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I agree that double standards should be considered actionable indication of POV pushing. Excuse me if I missed it but do we have diffs showing double standards from these editors? IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 13:07, 6 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I used to be quite sympathetic to this view. Now I think it wouldn't work in practice or would have unintended consequences. It would certainly be weaponized, but that issue already exists, as you note. As long as there is a spectrum of reporting and people have source preferences, social media feeds etc. and can choose which part of the spectrum they sample for a particular event or a topic, there's going to be structure and coherence in voting patterns. People can choose to be a prosecutor or a defense attorney. We need both. I have more confidence in the individual undirected rules-based actions of countless individual editors over time, slowly nudging things in the right direction, than I have in heavy-handed top-down approaches that focus on individuals rather than tweaking the rules. I think the size and diversity of the editor population and the sourcing rules are much more important than the bias of individual editors. Sean.hoyland (talk) 13:50, 6 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  obviously, there is no way to measure the full impact of all socking operations, or off-wiki campaigns, but your research found the identified accounts only made up a minuscule number of the edits in the PIA conflict space, right? Bluethricecreamman (talk) 14:24, 6 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Yes, I tried to compare deception rates in PIA vs Wikipedia in general (1 million articles) here and found that identified liar-liar-pants-on-fire accounts only made up a minuscule number of between ~ 6 to 8% of all revisions in the topic area. So, no problem, just keep filtering out editors that aren't employing deception or disguising their bias and it should be fine. Sean.hoyland (talk) 14:42, 6 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  🤓 the nerd part of me has multiple questions now.🤓 is there anyway to see how effective a sock/extreme POV account is compared to the average editor? i.e. what is the rate that these bad accounts get their way on an RFC vs the average editor? if baddies are much less effective than good-faith, that paints a much different picture than if a baddie is much more effective than good-faith.

  obviously much harder to answer. Bluethricecreamman (talk) 14:50, 6 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  There are so many interesting unanswered questions about the topic area and not enough time to look at it. I would like to know how much of each article was written by ban evading actors using the WikiWho service without getting blocked for annoying the servers. I'm also interested in the impact of ban evading actors on things involving !votes and noticeboard discussions. But part of me thinks there should be an amnesty for ban evading actors or some easier way back because we can't stop them and when you can't prevent blocked editors from returning, everything else is theater. As for off-wiki campaigns, I don't understand why they are off-wiki when there is already an on-wiki solution, the wikiproject, where people are allowed to openly collaborate to improve the encyclopedia. Do these groups think they are improving the encyclopedia? Yes. So, they can do it out in the open like everyone else. Sean.hoyland (talk) 15:22, 6 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  @Sean.hoyland: I don't understand why they are off-wiki when there is already an on-wiki solution, the wikiproject, where people are allowed to openly collaborate to improve the encyclopedia. Do these groups think they are improving the encyclopedia?

  It may be helpful to look at real-life geopolitical conflict resolution scholarship about why various "spoilers" opt out of a peace consensus.[77] Foreign Affairs summarizes the three types nicely:[78]

  Civil wars can yield three types of disgruntled local parties, or "spoilers," who can derail peace processes. "Limited spoilers" are simply suspicious of promises made by the peace brokers and demand additional guarantees that they will be treated fairly; "greedy spoilers" seek to take all they can get from the postwar reconstruction, even beyond the point of diminishing returns; and "total spoilers," feeling they have no stake in the peace, will try to make it fail at all costs.

  The solutions differ for each group. Summarizing:

  • We need to push total spoilers off the encyclopedia with the help of ArbCom and Arbitration Enforcement. They view Wikipedia as a battle to the death and are incompatible with a consensus that doesn't result in their total control.
  • We need to constrain greedy spoilers with policy, since they will yield to consensus and they only try to "get more" for their side opportunistically.
  • We need to pull limited spoilers into making the topic area better, since they will be loyal towards the overall peace project if their goals are accommodated.

  WP:ARBPIA5 lumped greedy and total spoilers together, using an all-out coercive approach for both. This is a mistake, because our coercive capacity is limited as a volunteer editing project and bans impose an ongoing cost due to sockpuppetry/meatpuppetry.

  A better alternative for greedy spoilers is mild coercion and socialization to the rules of Wikipedia.[79] A widespread issue in the area is an editor arguing an event should be called a "massacre" because of their personal beliefs that the event was bad. This usually turns into a WP:NOTFORUM violation that inflates wordcount and prevents consensus. We need to empower editors to go to WP:AE for a quick informal warning/hatting remarks. This combines socialization to our community norms with mild coercion.

  The flipside of this is that we also need to focus on inducement (addressing concerns) for limited spoilers. Draft:Manual of Style/Israel- and Palestine-related articles is an attempt at that. There are very real concerns from pro-Palestinian editors that the term "massacre" is unfairly applied to the killings of Israelis but not Palestinians. This is a concern that is based on WP:NPOV. The inducement here is a talk page where systemic issues can be visibly discussed onwiki, and I believe it would be effective because shows that following WP:NPOV is beneficial.

  art+feminism sponsors the creation of articles about Palestinian culture to combat ongoing cultural erasure without violating WP:ECR or treating being "pro-Palestinian" as a zero-sum game.[80] Editors go off-wiki to socialize and receive recognition in an unstructured and informal environment. WikiProject Palestine needs a Discord server or channel where the WP:CANVASSING policy is enforced that new editors who are incentivized by the ongoing war can join. That diverts editors who would participate in offwiki canvassing operations. Many of the editors in Tech 4 Palestine (e.g. Samisawtak) indicated an interest in operating legitimately with an onwiki presence, so it may be flawed to treat them as total spoilers.

  I'm less familiar with pro-Israel editors and influence operations, except they are dominated by a few editors with organized sockpuppet campaigns that are long past the point of no return. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 02:30, 7 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Question for ScottishFinnishRadish. Someone going through my history could easily predict how I'll !vote on the next move discussion (same can be said for Chess etc). So could a bad actor not simply pretend to be my meat and get me tbanned by arbcom? In the WP:ARBIRP I do recall one sock/meat who, for some time, !voted in the opposing camp as their master.VR _{(Please ping on reply)} 03:12, 7 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I don't think they could, actually, other than to say you're really quite likely to push for more neutral article titles. For instance, at Talk:Nuseirat rescue and massacre#Requested move 6 March 2025 you didn't support the massacre language, or at Talk:Beit Rima raid#Requested move 6 January 2024, and many others. You're not voting as part of a bloc, generally not using very similar language, not only getting involved with pages specifically for RMs/RFCs, actually editing the articles. It looks, to me, like you're a good faith editor involved in the topic area that's trying to improve articles and follow NPOV.

  Using the Nuseirat rescue and massacre example we have you contributing to multiple discussions and actually editing the article. We have GeoColdWater with no edits to the article and a single edit to the talk page supporting per Lf8u2. Lf8u2 has no edits to the article and essentially single edits just to three merge and move discussions. Smallangryplanet also has no edits to the article and only took part in the same discussions as Lf8u2. Isoceles-sai also has no edits to the article and only took part in a move discussion. This is where When a group of editors consistently and repeatedly participate in the same discussions to support the same point of view — especially when many or most of the members of that group had little or no prior participation in the underlying dispute — it is reasonable to presume that they could be coordinating their actions comes in. Mix in a healthy dollop of knowing that some of those editors were engaging in off-wiki coordination, and that brings me to support topic bans.

  So no, I don't think you're at any particular risk of being topic banned, and hordes of meatpuppets seeking policy compliant, neutral article titles would be an interesting change of pace. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 11:26, 7 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I'm pro-Palestinian now at requested moves according to WikiBias.[81] Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 02:54, 8 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• @Smallangryplanet, I‘m probably not the best argument in this case, considering I contributed to a non-vote talk page discussion last year. Ironically, and that of course depends on who you ask, this contribution is closer to being pro-Palestinian than pro-Israeli, considering I’m arguing that the sourcing at the time was insufficient to include what now looks like this: The IDF stated that, at the time of the rescue, the three male hostages were being held in the family home of Ahmed Al-Jamal, a physician. His son Abdullah Al-Jamal, a freelance journalist, was also in the household. Ramy Abdu, chairman of the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor, reported that Ahmed Al-Jamal, Abdullah Al-Jamal, and the latter's wife were all killed after Israeli forces stormed the home by ladder. Al Jazeera disputed IDF allegations that Abdullah Al-Jamal had been one of its journalists, stating that he had contributed to an opinion piece published on its website but had no other involvement with the network. Abdullah Al-Jamal had contributed to the Palestine Chronicle, a nonprofit online publication based in the United States. The Palestine Chronicle claimed inconsistencies in the Israeli narrative,but a Wall Street Journal investigation found that the Al-Jamal family had been known for its close ties with and support of Hamas. Locals criticized Hamas for placing hostages in civilian areas. FortunateSons (talk) 14:20, 7 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  @Smallangryplanet, I’m honestly agnostic on the question of what a fair and reasonable standard would be, though I would genuinely appreciate it if ArbCom or the community came up with one of those, preferably in a manner that doesn’t decimate most of our CTs. And for the record, I would obviously comply with one of those, as I believe you would.

  For the engagement with my specific response, my reasons were rather simple: a statement about BLPs was made based on sources that I consider to be insufficient, and just because the issues I believe this source to have are bias towards instead of against the person doesn’t mean we should use bad sources for BLPs. From an ideological basis, which I believe was not part of the motivation for my argument, declaring a journalist to be engaged in hostilities, even if I personally (and retrospectively, likely correctly) believe that they are, should be based on better sources than were available at the time, particularly as there is WP:NORUSH.

  Concerning my vote, it’s a 3 sentence length policy based argument (with a little bit of WP:OTHERSTUFF sprinkled in for good measure) supporting what I believe to be a pretty neutral name (removing the factual, but contentious “rescue” and the subjective “massacre”), based on the title of a similar but less contentious article. One can find this style of argument to be convincing or not, particularly considering I currently believe that the best standard for massacre would be “can a reasonable person make an argument that a significant percentage of the killing wasn’t grossly illegal?”, which has absolutely no chance of gaining consensus here, despite probably justifying a rescue and massacre title for this article. Having said all of that, I do not believe that my vote is similar enough to anyone’s to garner genuine suspicion of coordination, and do not mind if someone wants to run an SPI to make sure. I’m likely to disengage with this not to clutter up the discussion further than it needs to be. On that note, while I understand that defending oneself in this situation requires lots of words, I do hope that I’m not overstepping by asking you for a little bit of brevity, considering you’re at almost 3k words based on my count. FortunateSons (talk) 20:06, 7 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Isn't the purpose of ArbCom to resolve "serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve"? Why are they intervening here unsolicited to pass their judgement on the conduct of these two users? And this in a complicated and contentious topic area, where no one in the community even objects to these users' conduct?

theleekycaukdron and CaptainEek are right that the only question ArbCom should be considering here is whether these users are co-ordinating off-wiki, per point 4 of their duties and responsibilities. theleekycauldron also expresses well a number of the other issues here.

A number of arbitrators seem to think it's simply obvious that these users are violating NPOV, as if this isn't a complex topic area, and as if they have some superior wisdom which allows them to know better than those who actually edit in the topic area and are familiar with the relevant RS and their nuances.

ScottishFinnishRadish has accused these editors of "sticking to one side no matter what", yet I've only seen evidence presented that they are "sticking to one side", and no evidence that they are doing so "no matter what". Nothing has been shown to suggest these users are applying double standards, and there is no reason to believe they wouldn't abide by any clearly laid out policies about battleground editing and POV pushing.

Would a user be banned from editing about the Holocaust for making too many "pro-Jewish" edits? Obviously not. Would a user be banned from editing about US politics for making too many "anti-Trump" edits? Not necessarily. Yet this user is essentially being accused of being too "pro-Palestinian", without regard to whether or not their edits comply with policy or RS.

Aoidh cites enough is enough, yet how does that even remotely apply here? As far as I can tell, these users have not caused an iota of "disruption to the editing environment and to the community" - there is a question as to whether they are co-ordinating off-wiki and that's all. Does enough is enough mean "in order to save time and effort, ArbCom reserves the right to just ban anyone deemed suspect without due process"? Quite a dismal standard if so. IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 13:53, 9 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'll add that these users may well be engaging in battleground editing, but that it hasn't been demonstrated and that there's no indication they wouldn't stop doing so if it was explained to them what exactly battleground editing is and is not.

Also I'm someone who frequently accuses editors of pro-Israel POV pushing. But when I make that accusation I mean that they are actually distorting the encyclopedia, and I would show examples of edits that are bad, and of talk page arguments that are unreasonable or contrary to the best available RS. Nothing like that has been shown here. IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 14:21, 9 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]