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Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Horn of Africa

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Case resolved by motion on 23:57, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

Case amended by motion on 16:20, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

Case amended by motion on 21:36, 14 December 2022 (UTC)

Watchlist all case (and talk) pages: Front, Ev., Wshp., PD.


Case information

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Involved parties

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Prior dispute resolution

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Preliminary statements

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Statement by TomStar81

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I come before this board at wit's end. Repeatedly we have sought community assistance (to include community authorized general sanctions) to deal with the ever increasing amount of disruption on and around the Horn of Africa region and have been left wanting. The region's instability has fueled massive sock farms, multiple ANI complaints, and for better or worse has resulted in many familiar with the region to take a hair trigger approach when dealing with contributors whose MO matches known disruptive editors - many of them already blocked - and this carpet bombing has taken many of us (myself include) to the brittle edge of ipso facto assuming bad faith. I am asking the committee to take up this issue to gain a community perspective of the problem and judge for themselves what actions should be taken to help the situation. TomStar81 (Talk) 23:18, 25 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

  • @Newyorkbrad: I've been thinking about that myself since its a large request likely to involve a number of people interested in or involved with the region and thus subject to the case. The most useful areas would be WP:AN and WP:AN/I, so as to draw attention to the matter with those who end up cleaning up messes made by those working in the region. There are a total of seven wikiprojects that lay claim in some way, shape, or form to the Horn of Africa region, and there are likely to be more when considering regional race and ethnic groups, sexually based wikiprojects (those that focus on LBGTQ editing and Women in general and so forth in that manner), religious groups (Islam and Christianity in particular), and those interested in historical time frames for both regions and nations in regions. Notifying each project would be difficult and likely counterproductive, so I would consider excluding notifications to these projects except in cases where a project has an active coordinator group, in which case I may make the coordinators aware of the case. Notifying the checkuser corps would be of use, since these editors can look "under the hood" as it were they may be able to offer insight into this matter and connect dots for the committee to gain a fuller understanding of the problem. A handful of editors ought to be contacted specifically, to include @TomStar81, Robert McClenon, Cordless Larry, Buckshot06, Drmies, Nick-D, Kzl55, and AcidSnow:, as these editors have dealt with the offending editors repeatedly, while @Ben MacDui, Wadaad, and EvergreenFir: have dealt with socks in this editing region in the past and may be able to offer supportive evidence in favor of a case. In addition to Drmies, @Sro23, Sir Sputnik, Oshwah, TheSandDoctor, JJMC89, Callanecc, GeneralNotability, and Zzuuzz: have rendered opinions in favor of or against blocking the two most prolific accounts that are often listed at SPI, and should be consulted here. Additionally, as much as this board doesn't want to hear it, all necessary and reasonable efforts must be made to get in touch with Bbb23 (talk · contribs), as the checkuser who was arguably the most familiar with both case pages his input here is priceless and precious beyond all measure. I understand if he doesn't want to log back in to participate, but if his email address is still enabled reaching out to him on this matter would be eye opening. TomStar81 (Talk) 11:48, 26 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Maxim: In regards to your bullet points, I provide the following answers
  • On both occasions when general sanctions were attempted, the community failed to respond in a positive way to the issues presented. Similarly, discussions on the possibility of an LTA page was deemed a bad idea and shot down. Given the numerous failures of the community to address the underlying issues, and the fact that the region could be argued to come under arbcom sanctions (broadly interpreted) from the existing cases Race and Intelligence (tribal-specific promotional edits and genetic based edits of who came from where) and Palestine-Israel articles (Arab league includes nations in the Horn of Africa region), I though it may be prudent to finally let ARBCOM weigh in on the matter and decide what should be done here.
  • This is largely sockpuppetry, a well coordinated offline effort to effect the articles we have online. A non-exhaustive list of people who could be said to be party to the dispute could be found at User:TomStar81/Horn_of_Africa_disruption#Questionable_editors, but most of these accounts are behaved enough or have been exposed and blocked that this is request would not directly undermine them. I note that the answer I give is shaped by the fact that I am usually requested to look at the two largest known sockpuppet farms, and that I do most of my contributing to on or related to articles that are related to the United States and Naval Warfare, so I am not the best person to speak for specific editors within the topic that should be reviewed. Others who have been pinged may be more active in this region and may be better equipped to answer this question, should they elect to leave a statement.
  • The scope here is difficult to determine, but is generally limited to articles on tribes, regions, nations, and genetic groups from the region. One of the reasons for the consistent failure of community requested general sanctions is over the term "broadly construed", as I have no idea what the accounts may do if abruptly restricted I include the phrase to allow enough leeway for us to pivot as needed to address what future issues we may have from the accounts, but the community appears to interpret this is blanket restrictions for everything instantly and eternally, and that in turn tends to dissuade them from supporting. As this is decentralized, I would be loath to place limits on this until we can see what happens next. As for long term semi-protection or extended confirmation protection, the accounts in question are patient and willing to wait to clear the thresholds for editing. Long term protection of this nature then would be of some use in forcing otherwise annonomous or ISP-based contributing accounts to register, which in turn would make it easier for the SPI people to block accounts instead of ISP ranges, however it would likely not be enough for us to settle the area down in any meaningful way. TomStar81 (Talk) 20:01, 26 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Preliminary decision

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Clerk notes

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Arbitrators' opinions on hearing this matter (4/0/0)

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Vote key: (Accept/decline/recuse)

  • The request for general sections at ANI is from 2018 and was sparsely attended. If the issues from 2018 still persist today, why has another proposal for general sanctions not been attempted again?
  • Usually cases like these, which involve disputes along ethnic or similar lines (which I'll call "advocacy" cases), tend to come with a reasonably exhaustive list of involved parties. TomStar81, you have pinged a plethora of editors, but these would seem only involved in cleaning up the mess. My question is as follows: are there any established editors who are disputants in this topic area whose conduct you consider worthy of review, or is poor conduct more exemplified by sockpuppetry?
  • How well defined is the scope of affected pages? Are we looking at a few key pages (e.g. Somali) or is the disruption more decentralized? If it's more centralized, has long-term to indefinite semi- or ec-protection been attempted? Maxim(talk) 19:15, 26 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Worth seeing what other statements we get here, but if the concern is lack of flexibility and the overall issue is off-wiki coordination of accounts, I think it makes more sense to just apply DS (perhaps time-limited to be reevaluated) rather than going through a full case. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs talk 15:36, 27 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • I am also leaning towards handling this by a motion rather than a full case. My impression is that a large part of the problem is users who would not participate in a case or respect any decision such a case would make so our primary responsibility is to shield good-faith editors from those people with whatever tools we have at our disposal. Beeblebrox (talk) 02:17, 28 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Like the others, I'm not seeing the benefit of a full case here when we could handle it by motion. The bad actors who are socking won't participate here, as Beeblebrox notes, leaving us with only the conduct of (probable) good-faith editors to review. Let's not put them through a full case if we don't have to. Katietalk 15:40, 28 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • I agree with my colleagues who think discretionary sanctions could go a long way here, and that it could be handled by motion. GorillaWarfare (talk) 21:48, 28 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • I also agree with the idea of resolving this by motion. I also like the idea of a time limit but I think the limit should be on when we have to re-evaluate it, not on the DS themselves, so they don't end prematurely while we are busy discussing whether to make them permanent. I have proposed a motion below. Regards SoWhy 09:52, 29 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm as by the book as the next editor (probably more so, as a number of people have pointed out in the past) but I still think a full case is not necessary at this point. I understand the reasons bradv provides but then again, we have already a lot of cases to draw experience from which can also serve as guidance to future editors. As ArbCom, we cannot fix the underlying problem of the area needing more NPOV editors. What we can do is provide tools to help those editors already working in this area. But that brings us back to DS. From everything I have read here, I cannot envision a scenario in which DS will not be a part of any remedy at the end of such a case. But if we can be practically certain of this already, then we can also skip the case and authorize them by motion.
    The proposed motion already includes a review obligation for this Committee to assess whether further action is necessary. Any editor is able to file a new request or an ARCA if they think DS is not sufficient before six months have passed. Nothing really is lost by resolving this by motion but in the best case scenario, there is a timely fix to help with the problems that clearly exist.
    That said, if the majority opposes a motion and the decision is solely between accept or decline, I would vote to accept. Because we do agree that something needs to happen. Regards SoWhy 16:34, 2 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • I have some reservations about this. The community has twice discussed imposing GS on this topic area, and decided not to. I'm uncomfortable overruling that decision without going through the exercise of a full case: taking statements, gathering evidence, and exploring different solutions together. The benefits of imposing DS by motion are unclear to me at the moment – if the main issue is sockpuppetry, how are regular administrative tools insufficient? If the point is to be able to quickly topic ban people without going to ANI, how big of a problem is this currently? How many people have been topic-banned by the community from this area? If we want to impose DS in order to allow for 1RR page restrictions, where is the evidence that this is necessary to end disruption? These are some of the questions I have, and I'm leaning toward accepting a full case to explore them. – bradv🍁 15:01, 1 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    • I believe the purpose of suggesting a review after six months is to allow us to evaluate then whether the discretionary sanctions have made a useful contribution to reducing the problems in the area, or whether something else is needed. There is enough evidence of problems that I think it is worth trying the experiment, despite the growing concerns that in general we may be becoming too dependent on DS as a panacea overall. Perhaps, though, it would make sense to calendar the review for three or four months from now instead of six? Newyorkbrad (talk) 23:35, 1 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
      • So let me turn this around for a moment then: of all the cases ArbCom has ever heard, what makes this one so special as to enact the remedy before considering the evidence? Is this not a classic horse–cart inversion?
        The first comment on this page suggests that new editors in this topic area are getting blocked or mistreated based solely on their point of view or modus operandi, without compelling evidence that they are actually abusing multiple accounts. GoldenDragonHorn confirms this has happened to them, and the relevant SPIs do kind of back this up: (1 2). If this is systematically happening it could be affecting the neutrality of our articles, and is worthy of a proper investigation.
        Secondly, Kzl55 has provided evidence of off-wiki coordination, which needs to be examined more closely as well. If we simply resolve this by motion we'll simply be disregarding this problem without providing any sort of solution (I can't think of how DS alone would be useful here).
        Finally, there's the scope of the actual sanctions. Does Horn of Africa cover the entire area of the disruption? Should this cover all aspects of the region, or just nationalism within it? There's more discussion about this below, but we may not have arrived at the right definition yet, and it's hard to know because we haven't yet looked at all the evidence.
        I know this may seem like a bit of a waste of time to some, but I would rather not defer or deny this request. We should perform a full investigation in the hopes that we can provide a lasting solution – and we should do it now rather than in three or six months given the evidence already before us. Yes, authorizing DS is the most likely outcome, and it is possible that it will be the only remedy, but that doesn't mean we should shortcut the process. Evidence-gathering, workshopping proposals, establishing principles and findings of fact that can serve as guidance for future editors — these are all worthwhile activities, and the only way to be sure we've done justice to this request. – bradv🍁 00:34, 2 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
        • @Bradv: You make a persuasive argument. Reconsidering this overnight. Newyorkbrad (talk) 03:03, 2 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
          • What I want to note in particular is that the motion imposes DS with a clause to review in 6 months whether it helps/ed—there would be a (clearer) path to have a full case if it's still necessary. My impression of both attempts to impose some sort of sanctions is that they sank in part because we don't have many users or administrators interested in the topic area. It's to do with a part of a world that I'll guess most of our editors are jut not familiar with and it doesn't involve vested contributors. The editors and administrators that are active in the topic area are asking again for something to help. I think that at least being able to impose 1RR and topic-bans may likely help.
            As SoWhy above, if the motions fail, then I would also accept a request. I also don't foresee a case being particularly productive. I'm not entirely sure what the scope of such a case would be either; is it to examine the conduct of all parties (and we don't have a good list there), is it to examine how to handle off-wiki coordination in advocacy disputes, is it to do more formal due diligence prior to imposing DS (which seems a very likely outcome whether by motion or case), a combination thereof, or something else? Maxim(talk) 18:28, 3 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    • Accept to hear as a full case. – bradv🍁 16:24, 2 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Accept - needs looking into in a systematised way. Concerned DS will miss some subtler ways to influence article content Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 12:12, 2 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Accept As with other nationalism disputes, the commmittee has historicallly done well with a full case. I furthermore think we should see if there is something other than DS that might be applicable. DGG ( talk ) 17:00, 2 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Accept. It does seem like DS is the only plausible outcome here, so I can see the logic in dealing with it by motion. But I would prefer a full case for two reasons. One, I think as a general rule, if the committee is going to impose something as sweeping as DS, we owe it to the editors in that subject area to examine the facts fully first. The trial idea does help with that, but ultimately it just shifts the responsibility to others, when we are the ones that have the community-mandated responsibility and processes for doing it. Two, I share DGG's scepticism about the entire DS system, and would prefer to find a less bureaucratic resolution if at all possible. – Joe (talk) 14:12, 8 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

New alternate motion (3-month DS trial)

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This case request is provisionally resolved by motion as follows:

Standard discretionary sanctions are authorized for all pages relating to the Horn of Africa (defined as including Ethiopia, Somalia, Eritrea, Djibouti, and adjoining areas if involved in related disputes) for a trial period of three months and until further decision of this Committee. After March 1, 2021 (or sooner if there is good reason), any editor may ask that this request be reopened for the purpose of evaluating whether the discretionary sanctions have been effective and should be made permanent or if a full case should be accepted to consider different or additional remedies.
Enacted - KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 23:47, 9 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support
  1. Proposing this for consideration. Bradv and others have made important points against our reflexively imposing discretionary sanctions and assuming we've addressed the issues. At the same time, the admins most active in this area seem to agree they are necessary, and I think it would be helpful to see from experience whether they prove useful in solving the problem. Given that this is an active topic-area, we can allow the option of reopening this after three months (or even sooner if there is good reason) rather than six. Note the compromise wording on whether to simply say "Horn of Africa" or list the involved countries. Newyorkbrad (talk) 19:02, 3 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  2. I think this is a good compromise. I'm willing to hear a full case if we have to, but if we can make a quick, targeted strike to fix the problem, let's do that and evaluate the results. Katietalk 01:29, 4 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Third Equal choice after with original proposal and alternative #1. I think less than three months is not sufficient time to really determine whether DS work but it's still a better solution than a full case at this point. Regards SoWhy 08:09, 4 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    Amend my vote in light of NYB's explanation below. Regards SoWhy 18:51, 4 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  4. First choice alongside accepting the case Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 08:16, 4 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  5. I'm also happy with this approach. I share SoWhy's concern that three months might not be enough but nevertheless I'm optimistic. Maxim(talk) 14:53, 4 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    Three months is the suggested minimum time for someone to request our review. We can always decide to wait longer if we think we need more data. Newyorkbrad (talk) 17:35, 4 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  6. Seems worth a try. first choice. Beeblebrox (talk) 22:16, 4 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  7. First choice. GorillaWarfare (talk) 21:25, 5 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  8. I'm still of the opinion that this should be handled by the community - under general sanctions - however, I can accept a 3 month trial of something the majority of arbs are thinking will work. WormTT(talk) 08:36, 7 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  9. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs talk 13:05, 8 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose
  1. I'm not going to vote for a remedy including DS, but I recognize there is some logic towards getting empirical data. DGG ( talk ) 00:08, 7 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Per my vote to accept the case. – Joe (talk) 14:12, 8 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Abstain
  1. Mkdw talk 06:25, 6 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Comments

Final decision

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Contentious topic designation

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All pages relating to the Horn of Africa (defined as including Ethiopia, Somalia, Eritrea, Djibouti, and adjoining areas if involved in related disputes), broadly construed, are designated as a contentious topic.

Amended by motion at 21:36, 14 December 2022 (UTC)

Amendments

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Amendment (November 2021)

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The already authorized standard discretionary sanctions for all pages relating to the Horn of Africa (defined as including Ethiopia, Somalia, Eritrea, Djibouti, and adjoining areas if involved in related disputes), broadly construed, are made permanent. The committee declines to open a full case. Any further amendments or requests for clarification should be made following the normal method.

Passed 11 to 0 by motion at 16:20, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
Superseded by motion at 21:36, 14 December 2022 (UTC)

Motion: contentious topic designation (December 2022)

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As part of the 2022 adoption of the contentious topics procedure, the Arbitration Committee adopted the following motion to re-designate existing discretionary sanctions remedies as contentious topic designations.

21) Each reference to the prior discretionary sanctions procedure shall be treated as a reference to the contentious topics procedure. The arbitration clerks are directed to amend all existing remedies authorizing discretionary sanctions to instead designate contentious topics.

Passed 10 to 0 with 1 abstention by motion at 21:36, 14 December 2022 (UTC)


Enforcement log

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Any block, restriction, ban, or sanction performed under the authorisation of a remedy for this case must be logged at Wikipedia:Arbitration enforcement log, not here.

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