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Misplaced Pages Arbitration
About arbitrationTalk Arbitration policy (CU/OS) Guide to arbitration Noticeboard + Talk Search archived proceedings Ban appealsReport
Open proceedings All open requests Case requests Clarification and Amendment requests Arbitrator motion requests Enforcement requests
Active sanctions Contentious topics (Log) General sanctions Editor sanctions
Arbitration Committee Discuss+ Contact Members Procedures ElectionsTalk History Clerks+ Talk Clerk procedures Conflict of interest reports
Audit Talk StatisticsTalk Reports (pre-2016)
Track related changes
v t e

Important — please note The Committee, in passing the motion to open this case, provided explicit direction to all editors participating in this case: "Editors are expected to observe appropriate decorum on the case pages and in any other discussion of this incident." "Editors are instructed to refrain from disclosing on-wiki the name or other identifying information concerning any editor who does not edit under or disclose on-wiki his or her real-world identity. Any evidence that would have the potential effect of making such a disclosure shall not be posted on-wiki, but shall be e-mailed to the Arbitration Committee. The committee will take appropriate steps to ensure that no editor is sanctioned based on private evidence without an appropriate opportunity to respond to such evidence, while also seeking to ensure that editors' identifying information is not unnecessarily disclosed." "All editors, whether or not they are potential parties to the case, are strongly urged to exercise consideration and discretion in dealing both on- and off-wiki with all aspects of this highly sensitive situation. Any behavior that would unnecessarily inflame or widen the dispute should be avoided." The Clerk for this case is KnightLago (talk · contribs) who will be assisted by non-recused members of the Clerk team in enforcing the above rules. The Clerks will, wherever it deems necessary, refactor and remove statements where they violate the above directions, or where they violate the general standards of decorum and Misplaced Pages policies. The Clerks will, where required for particular egregious or repetitive violations, ban participants from the case pages for an appropriate period of time. Both the refactoring of statements, and case page bans, that are implemented by the Clerks, can be appealed to the Committee. If any user requires assistance in submitting private evidence to the Arbitrators in the method requested by Committee (see the second bullet point, above), please contact a member of the Clerks or, alternatively, an Arbitrator directly. —User:KnightLago (talk) 02:17, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Anyone, whether directly involved or not, may add evidence to this page. Create your own section and do not edit in anybody else's section. Please limit your main evidence to a maximum 1000 words and 100 diffs and keep responses to other evidence as short as possible. A short, concise presentation will be more effective; posting evidence longer than 1000 words will not help you make your point. Over-long evidence that is not exceptionally easy to understand (like tables) will be trimmed to size or, in extreme cases, simply removed by the Clerks without warning - this could result in your important points being lost, so don't let it happen. Stay focused on the issues raised in the initial statements and on diffs which illustrate relevant behavior.

It is extremely important that you use the prescribed format. Submitted evidence should include a link to the actual page diff in question, or to a short page section; links to the page itself are insufficient. Never link to a page history, an editor's contributions, or a log for all actions of an editor (as those will have changed by the time people click on your links), although a link to a log for a specific article or a specific block log can be useful. Please make sure any page section links are permanent. See simple diff and link guide.

This page is not for general discussion - for that, see the talk page. If you think another editor's evidence is a misrepresentation of the facts, cite the evidence and explain how it is incorrect within your own section. Please do not try to re-factor the page or remove evidence presented by others. If something is put in the wrong place, leave it for the Arbitrators or Clerks to move.

Arbitrators may analyze evidence and other assertions at /Workshop. /Workshop provides for comment by parties and others as well as Arbitrators. After arriving at proposed principles, findings of fact or remedies, Arbitrators vote at /Proposed decision. Only Arbitrators (and clerks, when clarification on votes is needed) may edit the proposed decision page.

Attention: Due to the private nature of the contents of the alleged mailing list, the following rules are in order: No quoting of any email is to be done by persons other than the author or intended recipient(s) No reference to real life identities of editors is to be made No posting of the email archive, or of links to purported copies of the email archive, is permitted Clerks are instructed to enforce those measures with blocks as necessary. Submission of evidence that contains or may contain private information is to be done by email only to the Committee mailing list.

Evidence presented by Sandstein

Reposted here from the case talk page as suggested by Daniel.

I was first made aware of the (alleged) existence of this mailing list in the WP:ANI thread of 17 September 2009, and have not seen the supposedly leaked archives.

I have not participated in any off- or onwiki coordination related to Eastern Europe in general or administrative actions in this area in particular. I am not aware of any attempts, as has allegedly been the purpose of this mailing list, to exert any sort of influence upon me (except of course that I have received several onwiki and some e-mail reactions to administrative actions I took with respect to the topic area).

My administrator and arbitration enforcement actions in this area are all based solely on the requests made and evidence presented on the administrators' and arbitration enforcement noticeboards, and this will continue to be the case.  Sandstein  12:44, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

Evidence presented by Ellol

User Russavia was unfairly topic-banned

First of all, what are the facts. Russavia was topic-banned for 6 months by Sandstein for addressing a member of the Eastern European Mailing List (Marting) in a not generally appropriate manner.

Later, the topic ban was extended by Sandstein for infinity after this Russavia's comment at Russavia's talk page: .

Given the new evidence about the Mailing List, the situation looks so.

Russavia told to a member of the Mailing List a single sentence that was treated by the admin as WP:BATTLE (though it was marked with a smile, and could be normally treated a joke). As far as I know, it's a rather harsh decision even without the current evidence.

But given the evidence we have now, I assert that Russavia was not in the situation of the ordinary Misplaced Pages user-to-user discussion. Instead, he addressed the people acting as a single united team with certain ideological settings. Generally, we see the Wiki relationships as person-to-person ones and insist that people need to stay civil. But in this case, Russavia was confronted by a team.

I had to stand in some situations against edits by users from the Mailing List, and I can say it's a highly unpleasant feeling, when it looked that I don't talk to real alive people, but the wall that behaved regardless of what I do. It looked like the world around was against me. And it looked that I am wrong merely for having a different opinion than the other people -- who as I see now actually teamed against me. So I understand perfectly well what Russavia could feel.

What happened later is what I can't understand at all. Russavia's ban was extended merely because he posted a comment on his own talk page! What does it mean -- he could not even express his opinion about what's going on, at his own talk? How can this be possible?

I strongly propose the Arbitration Committee to review the situation with Russavia's ban, that looks for me very much unfair, especially given the new evidence.

Admin Sandstein shouldn't be let to keep sanctions on Russavia

I see that he made an unjustified decision to ban Russavia even without the evidence we have now. But what strikes me is that Sandstain continues to insist now that his decision was correct: .

I am afraid, that now he might be merely proving that he was right that time, as it may matter for his future and current Misplaced Pages career.

I believe that he is not an uninvolved person to this case. I strongly propose not to leave Russavia's case on behalf of admin Sandstain, who must be suffering from the conflict of interests.

Evidence presented by Durova

After taking a couple of days off it isn't very much of a surprise to see this dispute at arbitration, but it is startling to discover the way it arrived and shocking to see myself compared to a cockroach. If any good can arise from this unfortunate situation let's hope it will be to see WP:CIVIL resume its former significance at this website. For those who prefer name-calling, Usenet is thataway.

These unexpected developments make a statement necessary. As everyone knows, I have a history with regard to offsite correspondence which I am very sorry for. If there had been any reason to guess that this situation could take a similar direction then I would have avoided it completely. I was not aware that the mailing list existed. The ANI thread about Russavia's topic ban appeared to be at the wrong venue and it seemed like a reasonable thing to agree with the people who had already referred it elsewhere.

Shortly afterward, when a community sanction got proposed, I objected procedurally in order to prevent the kind of difficulties that arose after the Bluemarine case: for a quick refresher browse two noticeboard threads that bookend the problem. The main lesson to be learned from the Bluemarine example is that it's best to establish clear lines regarding arbitration sanctions and community sanctions. Months of trouble arose from the lack of clarity in that instance. The Eastern European disputes are bitter and longstanding; a similar problem there would likely be worse.

Both at ANI and here I have no opinion whether the sanctions on Russavia were appropriate or inappropriate; I simply hope to see ArbCom settle the matter and put it to rest.

Until today when this case opened my only offsite correspondence regarding this dispute was a brief gchat with John Vandenberg on 11 September, which I initiated. I mentioned the ANI thread and suggested the Committee might want to look into the problem before it worsened. My final words to him were "It's the type of situation where the cross-accusations tend to accumulate, and ArbCom eventually finds itself mopping a big spill instead of a small one."

Today I received two brief emails from Piotrus and a gchat from Giano, which brought me up to date in a basic way. As the nature of this matter becomes clear please conduct further communications onsite.

Regarding the list emails themselves (which I have not seen nor do I want to), it is currently my understanding that they were obtained via hacking. During the Bluemarine arbitration a computer hacking occurred and the Committee disregarded the information that emerged from it. There are two very good reasons for ignoring hacked information: (1) we don't wish to encourage hacking, and (2) anyone who sinks to hacking is probably not above altering material.

In the Bluemarine case the hacking victim's bank account was also emptied. Durova 19:40, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

Evidence presented by Skäpperöd

Statement by Deacon of Pndapetzim

Email archive

Let's get one thing clear: this list is real, and the amount of incriminating material is breathtakingly overwhelming and thickly spread, so much so that despite the huge size of the archive evidence of gross misconduct is obscenely easy to spot. For instance, in the threads entitled " Molobo ban" (early days of June), it is revealed that Piotrus, Radek, Biophys and others knew and encouraged Molobo's recent socking (for which he was banned for a year by User:Avraham), conspired more puppetry, pondered how to avoid detection in future, and advocated use of proxies. Other such activities are easy to spot. Conspiring to harass and edit-war is so rampant throughout the archive that ironing out the details is almost pointless, and using this User:Deacon of Pndapetzim/North-East Europe AE threads along with the archive saves very little time. I will not post many more comments on the archive until it is clear what ArbCom have and have not spotted, what they intend to do, and so on.

Some of these emails should be required reading for future AE admins. Particularly Biruitorul's post on " More cabal theory" June 6 2009 and Radek's long post at "Re: It isn't over" on June 21 2009, the former concerning the "political" set-up among nationalist users in eastern Europe and the latter on cabaling strategy in general. Read only though if you can take the smack on your faith in human nature, and can protect yourself from future over-reactive cynicism.

My "involvement" and how this was allowed to happen

Two of the users on this list I've been familiar with for years, namely Piotrus and Molobo. I only encountered them because I inadvertently stepped into a nationalist war on a medieval history article (Jogaila), and, after that dispute was settled everything was amicable, until the Lokyz unblock that is. The others I had never heard of until the period leading up to the Piotrus 2 ArbCom hearing, but know now from AE threads. What an experience it has been to have users like Martintg, Biophys, Vecrumba, Digwuren, and others, who I'd barely heard of and never had a dispute with, attacking me on wiki. Back when I encountered them in 2006 (Piotrus and Molobo are the only survivors from that period on this list), they were doing much of this on wiki, at

• Portal talk:Poland/Poland-related Misplaced Pages notice board (note the top, there is a list of nationalist POV disputes advertised to all members to edit war in "articles needing attention")

(and there after visibly went offline e.g.)

I sought intervention against that board and its activities then, (or see Talk:List_of_Polish_monarchs/Archive_01#Aftermath) and nothing would have happened (as I was an inexperienced newbie) were it not for the fact that my concerns were picked up, independently I think, by User:Elonka.

E.g. Portal_talk:Poland/Poland-related_Wikipedia_notice_board/Archive_6#Proposal_to_rename_this_notice_board

Elonka's good-faithed activity led to her recusing from involvement in the area once she became an admim, yet she was not "involved" beyond trying to ensure good behaviour, while her Polish ancestry made her no more involved than Kirill Lokshin, the Russian architect of most previous ArbCom decisions. Yet the users in question managed to hound her from the area, just as they later hounded me. And as a result, two admins with insight into this matter were made useless to the community, and instead it was left to more naive admins whom this cabal could and have eaten for breakfast. I've had to watch while good-faithed admins like AGK, Ryan Postelwaite, Sandstein, and others were played like pawns in a game they neither understood nor knew they were playing (Thatcher is an exception, and this should be stated). If these admins think I am being unfair, then they should check the emails and note how the cabalists glory and gloat at their expense.

Why have I been unable to do anything? When I brought Piotrus 2 forward, they depicted me as an involved eastern european editor:

Misplaced Pages:Requests_for_arbitration/Eastern_European_disputes/Evidence#Tag_team_1:_Russian], where Piotrus listed me as part of a Russian tag team.

• The account User:Koretek was set-up by User:Molobo (as User:Sciurinae has shown since) purely to leave messages on talk pages accusing me of being anti-Polish

I think some of the arbs bought this, sadly enough; certainly that's what the email cabal seem to think (e.g. "Friday, February 06, 2009 5:15 PM"). A frivolous admonition was passed against me as punishment for bringing the case, and since then this "remedy" has been used to undermine everything I've said about this case, whether this was on AE threads (e.g.) or elsewhere. I have also been accused of nursing a grudge against Piotrus (by Piotrus' list pals of course, but sadly also by User:Coren,here soon after a minor dispute I had with him as a clerk, comments which even these mail-listers thought were funny ). I was really frustrated at this, but being a little non-networking user/admin I had to accept that this is sometimes the result of trying to protect good wikipedians against abuse. As I said at the time to one of the arbs, ArbCom and the clique around them often inadvertently do more damage to good users than these bad users do.

But if I and Elonka, two admins with AE experience, had freedom in this area, this cabaling would not have had the same effect. I can't speak for Elonka, but I already knew this was happening and stated frequently. As a result I was frequently accused of bad faith and grudge-holding, but my integrity has never been seriously challenged and the plain fact is that I just had more experience and insight. Having no reason to doubt my integrity, there was no reason to ignore me and my experience, as ArbCom did. But if this weren't bad enough, ArbCom had the ability to know itself just by reading the evidence, but did nothing.

You can bring a horse to water, but can't make it drink

ArbCom already had the information to know this was happening, and to know about the character of these users. The Alden Jones incident in question was commented upon in the evidence section of Piotrus 2. Since mine is mostly deleted now, I'll repost the section:

Shortly afterwards a user came out of nowhere and reverted , User:Alden Jones, for which effort he was almost blocked for it. The user has only poor English, no interest in the topic and was only reverting to "support" Piotrus, and most of his edits in the past have consisted of little more than reverting to whatever version of an article Piotrus happens to prefer. Funnily enough, Alden had been inactive for more than three weeks prior to that revert, since his 2 day block for revert-warring (along with Piotrus) on Truce of Vilna. Alden Jones has since effectively revealed that he was sent there by another user; the only other reverter was, of course, Piotrus . Piotrus later left this message Long time after the single revert, but 2 hours after Lokyz' comment there. Use your own judgment here. He has since claimed this is a loving follower, and now I'm just waiting for him to claim that Alden's gaff was the result of his poor English.

The diff, presented above, is here.

Evidence showing beyond doubt that off-wiki collaboration was widespread was presented, here, here, and, among other places, here and here. But, despite this, we got:

25.3) There is no definitive evidence that Piotrus (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · edit filter log · block user · block log) is responsible for any off-wiki editing coordination that may have occurred in this case.

Passed by 6 arbs to 0.

You can only bring a horse to water, you can't make it drink. Not only was this FoF a bad summary of the evidence, it was also a misleading message (presumably prompted by Piotrus' disingenuous complaints that he was being misunderstood) that told the admin community that the accusations against him were a natural result of the inevitable enmity he encounters by writing lots of articles, and nothing more. I know some of the arbs actually believed this, from a second hand account of private arbitrator comments. That said, this finding was just one of many absurdities showing the arbs hadn't read the evidence and had little but haughty contempt for those who provided it, a haughty contempt that turned misguided opinion of the matter into damaging action.

It was continually shown that Piotrus and his followers were using offline techniques to co-ordinate edit-warring and harass other users; it was continually shown that Piotrus had a disreputable character unbecoming of an editor let alone an admin (evidence the TigerShark-Lokyz IRC incident, or the whose post_Piotrus 2 history can be seen in the emails), yet those punished were the victims, a list including but not confined to User:Irpen, User:Lokyz, and, in a previous case, User:Ghirlandajo. The last, before he left, was statistically Misplaced Pages's top content contributor! Irpen joined Ghirlandajo after the case in the long list of productive wikipedians who have been driven off the project. They are volunteers and don't need to put up with this kind of abuse if ArbCom, the only body who could have protected them, refused to and instead victimised them. Having a sense of injustice transforms a person remarkably.

What's to be done

Every single remedy and FoF in Piotrus 2 case is outdated and many of them now look not only ridiculous, but positively cruel. The entire case should be declared void. If not, then at the very least victims like Irpen, Lokyz, and perhaps Boodlesthecat, should have their punitive remedies lifted. Ghirlandajo should be praised for his former contributions, and a remedy should be passed urging him that his return to content-editing would be welcomed. And lastly, I, Thatcher, and the few others who now appear in all the ArbitrationEnforcement threads to have credibility should be praised for the effort we've put in and the stress we have endured. The Digwuren case, the plaything of this email list, should similarly be put to the sword and the bad book burned. An all-encompassing new case with a new set of remedies in light of ArbCom's lucky new wisdom should be enacted.

What's more, ArbCom needs to reform itself in certain regards. Beyond the miscarriages of justice, the biggest frustration was the reason these miscarriages happened: the arbs didn't read the evidence, or if they did there was no on-wiki evidence they did, and there was no opportunity to challenge the arbs before they acted. Besides the fact it was obvious to me they didn't from their remedies, there was no participation in any of the workshops, despite the fact the designers knew this was necessary and signaled their intention for this by having separate (in practice almost always empty) arbitrator sections. This is beijg changed anyway if I remember correctly, and if so this is good. That's not the only reason it went wrong though. Just like I said they would, the users in question filled the evidence section with slander and misleading diffs, increasing the workload to overwhelm the arbs ... forcing them to rely more on weak heuristic techniques, such as punishing both sides equally from a sense of "natural justice". At worst, two handfuls of active arbs merely read Kirill's remedies and voted with only cursory glances, trusting Kirill. At best, all of them read the evidence, and few of them understood it, most miraculously coming to the same conclusions as Kirill. All the arbs are intelligent hard working people, but they need to give themselves a chance to avoid normal human frailties which, although safe elsewhere, can be damaging with this kind of power.

Then there's the issue of off-wiki co-ordination. It's not likely that this is the only group, though it is probably the most disreputable and most skilled, and we are very lucky here to have uncovered it. I suggested a while ago on that Arbitration reform thread that admins be allowed to classify the edits of multiple users as one at their discretion (following ArbCom remedies of course, not generally). It wasn't much heeded at the time, being apparently over the top. But with this evidence now, is it really?

Evidence presented by Offliner

Here I present some evidence which I hope will be helpful to ArbCom when investigating the emails. ArbCom should compare the dates of these diffs with emails from the same time perioed, and see if there is something interesting going on in the email list. I will concentrate on editors who according to ArbCom are members of the list.

Members of the secret email list coordinate their edit warring

According to this investigation by Shell Kinney -- which contains further evidence of coordinated edit warring that ArbCom should read -- It is also clear that there are sides and from time to time, editors blindly support those on their "side".

Here are some example incidents about possible team actions which indicate off-wiki coordination:

Russian apartment bombings

After having made no edits on the article for a long time, Biophys arrived on 11 September to edit war:

Radeksz arrived on 13 September to edit war in support of Biophys: . Before this, Radeksz had showed no interest in the article's subject. He had only made 1 edit, which also was a revert in support of Biophys: (for this edit, Radeksz was briefly blocked: )

Biophys was blocked for edit warring on another article for 31h on 15 September (although he also made 3 reverts in 24h on Russian apartment bombings, and more later)

Radeksz continued to edit war in support of Biophys while Biophys was blocked:

Piotrus arrived on 16 September to edit war in support of Biophys (Piotrus never edited the article before):

Alexander Litvinenko

On 9 September, after having made no edits on the article for a long time, Biophys suddenly appeared to edit war: He performed a massive revert to an old version. To see why this is a massive revert, observe how Biophys blindly restores a typo ("persecuition"), that had been fixed many times by other editors (as noted on the talk page by Russavia.)

On 9 September, Offliner reverts Biophys: .

On 9 September, Biophys mentions Offliner's revert on the list and calls for help in the edit war. (20090909-2347- Russavia got Bannned !.eml)

On 15 September, while Biophys was blocked, Radeksz arrived to edit war on Biophys' behalf:

Early June edit warring

In early June, there was edit warring in several articles with several members of the list participating.

There were several calls to arms on the secret list.

• 2 June. Digwuren informs the team that "we have a situation." He says that he has used his 2 reverts already on several articles, and suggests that the teams needs a more systematic approach. (20090603-1647- Discrimination.eml)
• 5 June. Digwuren suggests the "classic tactic" which involves overwhelming the opponents revert count. (20090605-2009- tactics re Offliner and PasswordUsername.eml)
• 6 June. Piotrus suggests that the team should coordinate their reverts, so that none of the team members has 2 reverts, but Offliner has 3 reverts. This way the team should be able to report Offliner at ANI/3RR eventually without getting reported themselves. (20090606-0618- tactics re Offliner and PasswordUsername.eml)

Ethnocracy

• 3 June. PasswordUsername edits:
• 3 June. Digwuren reverts:
• 3 June. Shotlandiya reverts:
• 3 June. Radeksz arrives (he never edited this article before):
• 4 June. Edit war continues:
• 5 June. Martintg arrives:
• 9 June. Sander Säde arrives:
• 11 June. Radesz continues to edit war:

Discrimination against ethnic minorities in Estonia

• 1 June. Article created by me.
• 1 June. Martintg nominates for deletion: .
• 5 June. Article is merged to Human rights in Estonia.
• 6 June. Radeksz arrives to edit war:
• 6 June. Vecrumba arrives to edit war:

Kaitsepolitsei

• 5 June. Criticism by Amnesty International inserted.
• 5 June. Radeksz removes:
• 6 June. Sander Säde arrives to do the same:
• 6 June. Radeksz continues to edit war:
• 7 June. Martintg arrives:
• 7 June. Digwuren arrives:

Digwuren personal attack

Digwuren calls other editors Neo-Nazis (in violation of WP:DIGWUREN): As a result, Digwuren is blocked by Thatcher:

Team members use coordinated action to keep copyvio images

On 11 August, admin User:J Milburn (who is very experienced with image copyrights) nominates several copyvio images for deletion. Example:

At 01:01 on 12 August, Piotrus arrives to accuse J Milburn of disruption:

At 01:42 on 12 August, Jacurec arrives to protest against the nomination:

At 02:09 on 12 August, Poeticbent arrives to do the same:

J Milburn is convinced that the images are copyvio:

See J Milburn's replies here: . Sorry I didn't say this just now, just wanted to add that my head is reeling. I really, really, really can't see why you've turned a simple image cleanup into some kind of war between encyclopedists and deletionists. What are you doing?! Whatever, that image can be decided at FfD now. Seems like an awful waste of time, but it's what you wanted...

It seems very likely that on 11 August, there was a call to arms on the secret list to use team pressure to keep the copyvio images. Especially in light of the extremely fast response time of the team.

Team members are engaged in coordinated attempts to provoke their opponents

Coordinated provocations against Deacon of Dnapetzim

At 06:05 on 4 April, Piotrus initiates a move discussion at Talk:Battle of Vilnius (1655):

Piotrus asks members to comment on the discussion and try to provoke Deacon into losing his temper. If this happens Deacon can then be reported to AE/ANI according to Piotrus' plan. (20090404-0611- Deacon versus Piotrus.eml)

At 09:53, Radeksz arrives to support Piotrus:

At 09:56, Digwuren arrives to support Piotrus:

At 15:56, Deacon of Pndapetzim arrives to oppose:

Jacurec, Poeticbent and Loosmark also supported Piotrus.

Coordinated provocations against PasswordUsername

On 10 June. PasswordUsername edits Jewish Bolshevism.

On 11 June. Vecrumba makes a post at PU's talkpage:

On 11 June. Vecrumba discusses his post on the secret list. He predicts that either PasswordUsername will back of, or he will take the bait, lose his temper and make incivil remarks. If this happens, Vecrumba will try to get PasswordUsername banned. (20090611-0230- PasswordUsername_ opportunity.eml.)

Members of the secret email list protect each other at admin noticeboards

• 2009-03-20. Russavia reported to AE. Commenting against Russavia: Digwuren, Vecrumba, Martintg
• 2009-04-02. Martintg reported at AN3. Defending Marting: Colchicum, Piotrus, Biophys
• 2009-04-02. Colchicum reported to An3 . Defending Colchicum: Digwuren, Martintg
• 2009-05-21. Digwuren reported to AN/I. Defending Digwuren: Martintg, Colchicum, Radeksz, Vecrumba, Piotrus
• 2009-06-14. PasswordUsername reported at AN/I. Commenting against PasswordUsername: Radeksz, Piotrus, Vecrumba, Martintg
• 2009-06-18. Biophys reported to AE Defending Biophys: Digwuren, Martintg, Vecrumba, Piotrus
• 2009-06-18. Digwuren reported to AE Defending Digwuren: Martintg, Piotrus, Jacurek, Miacek, Tymek
• 2009-06-19. Rejected Eastern Europe Arbitration request
• 2009-09-15. Biophys reported to AN3 Defending Biophys: Martintg

On 2 April, 2009, Martintg was blocked for edit warring: . Piotrus arrived -- as usual -- to Martintg's defence: . Biruitorul also defended Martintg: . Dc76 also appeared defensive: . Both Piotrus and Biruitorul use the same argument (Martintg's previously clean block log) -- was this coordinated on the secret list?

On 15 September, Biophys was blocked by User:Rjanag: Martintg arrives to defend Biophys: Marting tries to defend Biophys on Rjanag's talk page as well -- Rjanag thinks Martintg's actions are inapproriate: . Rjanag responds to Martintg: "The only reason you think it's unjustified is because in the past I didn't block one of your "enemies" who, in your perception, edit warred just as much": . Piotrus arrives to defend Biophys, saying "I didn't see the unblock request, otherwise I'd have unblocked you": . Caspian blue says: "You'd better not because you're an involved person in regards to Biophys (not in the edit warring). Favoritism should be avoided". . Piotrus claims he is not involved:

Members of the secret email list appear to be involved in stealth canvassing of votes

Most of the members always vote the same way in AfDs. Often editors who never showed any interest in the article's subject will suddenly appear to vote in favour of other members of the group. Especially interesting is the behaviour of Radeksz and Piotrus in the following Russia-related subjects: normally they only edit Poland or WWII related articles, but often they appear out of nowhere to support their friends on Russian articles.

• 2008-12-28. Putinjugend. Keep: Biophys, Martintg, Digwuren, Biruitorul, Dc76, Hillock65
• 2009-04-19. Evidence of FSB involvement in the Russian apartment bombings. Keep: Keep: Biophys, Martintg, Vecrumba, Biruitorul
• 2009-05-02. Russian influence operations in Estonia. Keep: Vecrumba, Biophys, Martintg
• 2009-06-08. Discrimination of ethnic minorities in Estonia. Delete: Martintg, Digwuren, Sander Säde, Colchicum, Vecrumba, Biophys, Termer, Radeksz, Piotrus, Biruitorul
• 2009-08-02. Russian influence operations in Estonia 2 Keep: Martintg (probably through the ip), Radeksz, Piotrus, Vecrumba, Jacurek, Poeticbent, Biophys
• 2009-08-03. Communist genocide Keep: Piotrus, Martintg, Jacurek, Hillock65, Poeticbent, Vecrumba, Termer, Biophys
• 2009-08-26. Evidence of FSB involvement in the Russian apartment bombings 2. Keep: Biophys, Martintg

Piotrus has made unfounded personal attacks

When I filed a report about Digwuren, Piotrus responded by attacking me: I agree with Radek; and I am fed up with the continuing harassment of Digwuren by Offliner. He has started baseless threads here, at user talk pages, at other Misplaced Pages pages... and has been throwing mud on Digwuren by the bucket, hoping something will stick.

I asked Piotrus: Could please provide evidence that I have done such things? When have I harassed Digwuren or started baseless threads about him? I do not recall starting a single threat about him, except this one.

Piotrus refused to provide evidence for his claims, although I requested this repeatedly:

When I filed an AE report of Digwuren, Piotrus responded by attacking me:

He also said that my evidence was "extremely poor." However, based on this evidence, Digwuren was blocked and placed on 1RR.

When I filed an AE report of Biophys, Piotrus again responded by attacking me:

Piotrus has abused his admin status

Piotrus often uses his admin status to defend his team mates. For example, on 15 September, when Biophys was blocked, Piotrus said: "I didn't see the unblock request, otherwise I'd have unblocked you."

At WP:AE, Piotrus has repeatedly tried to present himself as an "uninvolved adminstrator" on EE threads concerning his team mates or his enemies. As a result, he has been warned by Jehochman, who threatened to ban him from WP:AE: .

Piotrus' actions are in direct violation of a previous ArbCom remedy, which cautions Piotrus "to avoid using his administrator powers or status in situations in which his involvement in an editing dispute is apparent."

Martintg has continued to be disruptive after his 1RR sanction was lifted

Based on this investigation, Martintg was placed on 1RR on 23 June, 2009.

Later, after intense protesting by several editors, the sanction was later lifted by Thatcher for bureaucratical reasons, because no prior warning was given. As a sidenote, it may interesting to ArbCom to investigate the emails of the secret list from this time period.

After his sanctions were lifted, Martintg has continued to be disruptive.

I edited Kuril Islands dispute for the first time on 9 July, 2009:

The next day, Martintg arrived (he never edited this article before):

Martintg started to edit war with me and to insert anti-Russian POV in the article.

Martintg unilaterally moved the article two times without discussing first. As a result, he was warned by an admin:

He then launched a personal attack against me, and attempted the reveal private information about my background:

He was then blocked for outing:

Piotrus -- as usual -- arrived to support Martintg's unblock:

I believe this episode was an attempt to provoke me into edit warring or to making incivil remarks. Like I said, Martintg never edited the article before this. The only reason he arrived was because he saw that I had just edited the article the day before.

Martintg has been disruptive in other articles as well. On 10-11 August he broke 3RR at Communist genocide:

Confirmation by William M. Connolley that Martintg broke 3RR: . See this discussion:

Martintg has edit warred at Soviet Story. As a result, he was warned by an admin: .

Statement by Lysy

I've been involved in Eastern European topics for years here, took part in many contentious disputes, edit wars etc. and never heard of any mailing list so far. My bias is Polish. --Lysy 02:40, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

Statement by Jmabel

I'm remarking here only because I notice User:Biruitorul, whom I've always considered a first-rate and evenhanded contributor, is on the list. Checking the evidence above, the only allegation against him is that he said a user ought not to be blocked for his earlier edits to an article from which he had withdrawn, which sounds reasonable to me in almost any circumstances. Surely it is not a reason for a ban from editing on Eastern European topics, the proposed "remedy".

In fact, I'm not sure what exactly is supposed to be the problem here. What is the basis for saying that this particular list of users are involved in a conspiracy? - Jmabel | Talk 06:35, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

Evidence presented by Badger Drink

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence

A certain meme has already started to spread with regards to this case, stating that the mailing list archive was hacked, then falsified, before being leaked. This meme is catching on through sheer force of repetition, and has already made a sucker out of at least one outside participant above.

At this point in time, the only supporting evidence for this claim is the following line of reasoning: "Certainly nobody from this list would leak its contents with an outsider! The list has been leaked to an outsider, therefore it was leaked by somebody who was not a member of the list! Therefore it was hacked!".

Unfortunately, the premise here (that nobody on the list would share its archive with a non-participant) is completely unverified. Whistle-blowing is hardly a new phenomenon - no matter how gung-ho all members of a group may feel on day one, there's always the chance that eventually, one member will feel disillusioned.

It is my sincere hope that ArbCom not be taken by this smokescreen until substantial, valid evidence is offered to back these claims of hacking. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, and up to this point there has been no proof of these extraordinary claims of hacking and forgery - no extraordinary proof, no proof at all.

Evidence presented by Atama

I just wanted to post a response to Ellol above. Per Russavia's block log, Sandstein had blocked Russavia for only 2 days. Russavia had violated a topic ban but later agreed to abide by the topic ban, which led to Sandstein removing the block. It was Good Ol'factory who later blocked Russavia for making legal threats, and that block has only been lifted procedurally to allow for comments regarding this mailing list incident. I don't see why Sandstein's block is being objected to, when the current indefinite block was Good Ol'factory's decision. Good Ol'factory made the declaration of the indefinite block on AN/I and approved the temporary unblock. I just wanted to clarify this as an outside observer.

Evidence presented by Biophys

Massive outing and email theft

We know that personal information about paricipants of the group has been posted off-wiki, and people are receiving emails with links to that side . So, the real purpose of the perpetrator was outing of every member of the list. This is probably the biggest outing in WP history.

Why did he send the original email from an wikipedia account? Because sending it from an external destination would make the Foundation completely uninvolved. Who cares about an email theft made off-wiki, even if the victims edited in wikipedia? But this is precisely the purpose of the pertpetrator to make the Foundation liable to potential litigation by victims of the outing (although I am not aware of any plans of litigation). We also know that the leak was accomplished quite professionally, through a proxy server in third country. The archive and the links were sent to "right people".

This all makes the present case very different from "CAMERA". The context of the case is also very different. This is a multi-year conflict between a small group of Russian users (some of them were blocked but immideately replaced by others) and users from many other countries (Baltic States, Ukraine, Poland and others) some of whom created this mailing list.

In email dated April 16, I translated from Russian to other members of email group a copyright authorization placed by Russavia in Commons. The authorization was signed by Natalya Timakova, a personal biographer of Putin. In a few days, this autorization was modified in a certain way (please see what Russavia tells about this below). In email dated April 27, I said to other members of the group based on this episode: "someone in Kremlin is reading our emails. Do you want our correspondence here mailed to ArbCom?" I also explained a standard method that would be used against such group as their. But others convinced me that I was paranoid. Am I?

Impact of email discussions

I completed a preliminary assessment of the impact made by our email discussions, looking at a set of selected threads kept since April 16 (when I joined the group). I came to the following conclusions

• Members of the group were not able to influence any decisions by WP administrators, except the appeal of discretionary sanctions by Thatcher, but the reversal of sanctions was done according to the policies, as was noted by several Arbcom members
• No any private information was disclosed in emails, except information about the participants themselves and information that was openly posted by others in wikimedia space
• No discussions and votes were influenced to produce a clearly incorrect outcome. This disussion is a typical example. The members of the group debated the issues and often disageed with each other.
• There was no damage of WP content, beyond creating several articles of doubtful quality
• Instances of edit warring coordinated over the email are not obvious. The members of the group simply followed edits made by others by looking at their edit histories.
• The content of the emails show battleground mentality of some participants, and many comments would be grossly inappropriate in the wikipedia space. However the comments were made privately and off-wiki.

There are no clear rules about off-wiki communications

I thought one can freely discuss anything by email with his friends, including his life, his political views, and his hobbies like WP editing. Now Thatcher tells that anything I said to another WP user can be viewed as an "off-wiki coordination" and forbidden. But how could I possibly knew? Yes, I was reading your instructions about the off-wiki communications with regard to voting fraud. But I never did canvassing. There was nothing else in instructions.

Saying that, I unsubscribed immediately after beginning of this ordeal and will never participate in such newsgroups again to avoid becoming a target of internet crime.

Campaign of threats and outing by pro-Putin users

I have reported to old ArbCom a coded death threat which was made to me by pro-Putin editor ellol. He did it using slang Udaff to make translation from Russian more ambiguous and almost impossible by a non-native speaker. He would be blocked right away because I also reported this incident to the ANI, but User:Alex_Bakharev declared that ellol did not mean it.

Being perfectly aware of this threat, another pro-Putin editor User:Vlad fedorov suddenly reappeared as a sock puppet, User:La poet to evade his one -year block by ArbCom and reported my real life identity to ellol. I send this information with diffs to Thatcher some time ago, but the diff is still sitting right there, and I would appreciate if Thatcher redirected my email to ArbCom if he still has it.

Next wave of outing was initiated by User:Miyokan and supported by User:DonaldDuck and User:Russavia (hence his two-week block by Moreshi), who all know my real life identity and made it clear to me that they know it, and who are strongly pro-Putin editors. I can support this by diffs over the email to ArbCom if needed. I am not sure why they are doing this because I almost never edited article Putin.

User:YMB29 is an SPA who does nothing but reverts

This user made so far only ~500 edits. It is enough to look at his edit history and block log. Just a few examples (note misleading edit summaries): . He was also incivil . The only user with whom he was able to positively collaborate was User:Kostan1, a sock of notorious User:M.V.E.i.

Response to evidence by Russavia

The only bad thing I ever said about Russavia in emails was this: I think he has a confict of interest.

Since no one challenged the first two-week block of Russavia for outing me (15 September 2008), I have to start later. When Russavia came back from the block, I suggested him to live in peace here and suggested an independent editor who was at the moment at the Russavia side to mediate any potential disagreements. But Russavia responded that "Anyone who thinks I would agree to such a thing would have to have rocks in their head" . and mobilized several users for a big "battle" , . He called these users "members of a web brigade" .

Although this all sounds bad, I only had a serious content disagreement with Russavia in one article (Litvinenko). Here he accused me of BLP violation (see his statement below). This is nothing new, because Russavia repeatedly accused me of this during an unrelated AfD discussion, at the talk page of Kirill, at the BLP noticeboard, and WP:RS noticeboard. After such campaign by Russavia, I decided that it would be safer to remove this information even though it was well sourced. I removed it and reported to BLP noticeboard that the problem has been resolved:. And what Russavia does? He re-inserts this claim back!. I am trying to remove it again because I do not want to be accused of BLP violations: . But he reinserts it back again . Why he is doing this? In order to accuse me again during this ArbCom case?

During all this time, I made an official question/request about Russaiva in only two cases, and Russavia received no sanctions due to any of these requests: (a) a thread about 22 hour non-stop editing started by Piotrus (no, I did not ask Piotrus to start this thread over the email), and (b) an AE request about uncivil comments with regard to Baltic users (no, no one asked me over the email to file this request). Anyone can check this ANI thread and AE request to decide if I acted in a good faith. I believe I provided enough evidence for the AE request, and the concern about his 22 hour non-stop editing, day after day after day, was grounded.

Wikistalking by Offliner

I filed this AE request about Offliner. Once again, no one asked me to do this by email. I believed the request was justified because Offliner continuously wikistalked my edits. All these articles were created or extensively edited by me. Offliner never edited them before. He suddenly visited a number of such articles (most of the diffs below are in the end of April), and removed a lot of sourced content, together with supporting sources:

• Article 1 and again, and again, and again, and again
• Article 2
• Article 3 and again
• article 4, and again, and again
• Article 5
• Article 6, and again, and again, with offensive edit summary
• Article 7, deletion of other sourced information in the same article
• Article 8
• Article 9
• Article 10

• And he refused to discuss his deletions:,,,,,.

Also note this offensive suggestion by Offliner at my talk page and his endless block shopping and personal attacks by Offliner , , ,but although he believes he never started baseless threads

Suggestion by Óðinn

I urge the ArbCom to check if the User:Petri Krohn has also been the victim of this alleged campaign of harassment, discrediting and provocation. He is currently blocked for a year over a conflict with one of the parties of this case. Óðinn (talk) 20:54, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

Evidence presented by User:Russavia

WP:OUTING and harrassment by list members on myself

I have good, and sound, reason to believe that I have been subjected to long-term systematic campaigns of harrassment which involved at first User:Biophys, User:Digwuren and User:Martintg, and later more actively joined by User:Piotrus, and other editors at times. I have no doubts that Piotrus and crew co-ordinated at least one campaign of harrassment on this email list. In November 2008, immediately after I received a block for 3RR (which entailed me removing and then rewording very poorly sourced information in the Litvinenko article surrounding claims of Putin being a paedophile - a WP:BLP violation) (might I add I am disgusted that nothing ever happened despite raising objections at numerous venues) Biophys asked Tiptoety about his belief that I was sharing my account. He was advised that there was not enough evidence to proceed with any checkuser. Due to other accusations levelled against me, which included accusations that I was employed by every Russian state organ from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the FSB/KGB, (instead of just being a conscientious contributor who is here to contribute and improve the project), I demanded a checkuser be run on myself in order to put the matter to rest. Even after the results were confirmed that I am but a single editor, it was continued at the checkuser's talk page. On 23 April (my local times I guess), Piotrus posted Misplaced Pages:Administrators'_noticeboard/Archive191#Ethics_of_sharing_an_account what I thought at the time was posted on behalf of Biophys, as a continuation of what myself and others deemed to be harrassment. Due to Piotrus claiming that he was asked about this subject, and after not being able to find any evidence of any onwiki discussion between Piotrus and any other editors, I assumed there was offwiki communication going on in this regard, and hence asked Piotrus for information, but no name or editor came forward. Logically, one can only assume that this was posted either on behalf of Biophys (and others), or was posted by Piotrus in order to give these editors yet another opportunity to harrass myself onwiki. I am certain that if Arbcom checks emails of dates around 23 April 2009, there would more than likely be discussion on this particular harrassment campaign on their email list, which would thereby prove this campaign of harrassment, and the legitimacy of the emails received.

At the same time, so concerned was I that there was serial harrassment and stalking going on, that on 26 April 2009, I contacted a crat on Commons, in order to have my name and other details removed from File:Kremlin authorisation-English.pdf and File:Kremlin authorisation-Russian.pdf. I operate a business in the real world, and am setting up another, and due to what was obvious to me at the time was stalking and harrassment, I did not want my name being linked to any accusations of my being connected to Russian FSB, etc, particularly as one of those businesses is connected to what is deemed to be a strategic industry; the nature of which I believe I have made known to Arbcom in emails in the past.

The outing and harrassment of myself was further enforced in my mind when Biophys posted this on Digwuren's talk page in March, with the comment, "Please read it. I am not going to comment anything further.". On 17 April Biophys included a link to the document on Commons in his userspace; ostensibly as proof of his unfounded accusations that I am employed by the FSB or some other organisation, and am a paid editor, as part of some web brigade. It was in searching for the discussion on Digwuren's talk page that I stumbled across the AN thread; a thread which was allowed to run for two days without my being aware of it. This was an obvious set up by these editors to continue with their campaign of outting and harrassment of myself.

For further information please look at Misplaced Pages:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Eastern_European_mailing_list/Evidence#Response_to_evidence_by_Piotrus below.

Treating WP as a battlefield

Web brigades

Back in January 2009, Digwuren added information to the web brigades article citing an a previous Arbcom decision. After it was removed by another editor, Digwuren re-inserted it. It was again removed by yet another editor, citing correctly that WP is not a reliable source. Piotrus has instantly reverted. This was again removed by yet another editor. Piotrus has again reverted. At that point, I have reverted, noting discussion on the talk page. Martintg has then reverted me. And I have removed again, after which the article was locked by] User:Vassyana. Discussion took place on the reliable source noticeboard, at which Martintg, Piotrus, Vecrumba, Digwuren and Biophys -- all list members -- argued for it's inclusion, whilst it was evident as per other editors who commented, that it should not be included.

I noted at the time, and with hindsight it was like reading from a crystal ball:

The inclusion of this information into the article, in my opinion, is well co-ordinated continued harrassment of editors by this clique; by linking to the Arbcom they have given readers of the article an opportunity to go and read all the paranoid accusations that User:Biophys has made against MANY editors."

To demonstrate my stance then with current events now; if it is found that these list members have acted in the same fashion as a web brigade allegedly does, i.e. teaming, harrassment, etc, would they object to its inclusion in the article based only on an Arbcom decision. Even under those circumstances I would be removing it for the same reasons as I removed such contentions back in January, i.e. Misplaced Pages is not a reliable source, nor is it a battleground, and I hope this would be the same of all Misplaced Pages editors.

Alexander Litvinenko

Immediately after I was banned under Sandstein's first ban, Biophys has done a massive revert to the Litvinenko article, re-including what I believe is 2 WP:LINKVIO, text which I had verified and changed accordingly, misrepresentation of photos, the same mispelled "Persecuition" and the removal of a huge amount of sourced, NPOV-worded text, to what is often described as a compromise version (code for his favoured version). I posted a long list of problems with the article on the talk page and this basically went unheeded. Offliner, an editor who has long been active on the article and talk pages, and also an editor who had been working with me on User:Russavia/Litvinenko, reverted this, due to the same type of problems. Biophs reverts this. After being unblocked by Sandstein, I have reverted this, pointing Biophys to the talk page discussion. (Note: This edit is one which contributed to me being topic banned from ALL Russian articles). Biophys reverts this. (Note: By this time I had received message from Sandstein on my talk page, and I didn't have a chance to incorporate several minor fixes to the article). Offliner reverts this, again pointing Biophys to the talk page, at which point Radeksz acts in a team like manner and reverts. At this point Alex Bakharev has locked the article, and started a discussion.

Evidence of stalking

• I added information to List of most common surnames after stumbling across an article on RIA Novosti. Several editors, none of whom had edited the article previously soon showed up. Miacek revert. I have re-worded and re-added. Martintg reverts (missing the fact that the referenced article quotes an Estonian media source), I revert, noting the stalking. Digwuren, then starts a talk page discussion at Talk:List_of_most_common_surnames#RIA_Novosti.27s_scope_of_reliability, which is joined by tag teamer Vecrumba in which both editors start attacking the use of Russian sources (a common tactic used by these editors to exclude information from articles). Both editors more interested in creating and fermenting yet another battleground, rather than recognising the source states: "One in every 200 Estonians has the Russian name Ivanov, making it the ex-Soviet Baltic country's most common surname, weekly newspaper Eesti Ekspress reported on Thursday.". Instead of helping to find the Eesti source (I don't speak Estonian), these editors instead stalked myself, obvious tag team, used the talk page as a soapbox and created yet another battle. --Russavia 08:36, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

Response to evidence by Piotrus

Piotrus asserts that the thread that he started was not harrassment. An uninvolved editor clearly thought it was, starting a subsection on this very assertion. In fact, throughout the entire overall thread there are numerous uninvolved editors and admins who saw it as continued harrassment. Now bringing this back to this case, between "20090422-1543- Important categories at CfD" and "20090427-2055- Attack on Russavia" there are numerous emails discussing this very subject. Some of the emails predate Piotrus' posting of the ANI thread, and the rest postdate it, and all are around the time of the actual thread. The emails see discussion and plotting by Piotrus, Biruitorul, Biophys, Digwuren and Martintg. All of whom appeared at the ANI thread. In "20090422-1935- Important categories at CfD" Piotrus notes "Here's something of potential use" with a link to the ANI thread started by himself. In "20090424-0205- Russavia", Piotrus advises list members "I am reposting this because I think you guys are missing a great opportunity to deal with one of your main problems (see last link):" In "20090424-1635- GFDL", a list member states "One more accusation against Russavia, even if false, can only help us". The rest of the emails involve discussions on meatpuppeting, sockpuppeting, discussion of my real life identity, and also discussions on how list members could mess with my real life identity and my real life business. This indicates that my gut feeling back in April on removing my name from files on commons was spot on, as even my paranoia which lead to me removing my name from two commons files was discussed in emails from those dates. Given the email posted by Biophys, with links to previous discussions on this subject, and the fact that it was noted in some of those links that the constant accusations of myself sharing my account with others could be deemed to be harrassment, Piotrus is not credible when he states that his posting of this thread on behalf of Biophys, and in order to "deal with one of your main problems" (his words), is not harrassment.

Response to evidence by Biophys

It is a well established fact that Biophys has accused many editors of being in the employ of Russian security services (KGB/FSB/etc) in the past, and the present. He refers to this edit as my calling an editor to arms - when clearly it is a notice to another editor who had long been involved on the article that they may want to join the discussion on the article talk page. Remember this is the same article and at the same time that I covered above.

List members are acting as sockpuppets and/or meatpuppets

There are many instances of email list members using the list as a call to arms in order for them to stack votes according to their own editorial POV. It is plainly obvious that apart from the harrassment of their so-called enemies, a major function of the group was to enable the group to force thru their POV by sheer numbers, thereby creating false consensus. Example of this include:

• 20090912-1939- Help needed on Anonimu-initiated move reques is a call to arms to list members by Biruitorul to Communist Romania. As has been noted at on the talk page, there was a rapid succession of votes by members of this list, inluding Biruitorul himself, Biophys, Radeksz, Dc76 and Tymek. Vecrumba, whilst not voting, did make comments on the talk page. Please note, that this is a current move request, and editors are aware of this arbcom now taking place. --Russavia 10:19, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
  • After posting this message and seeing votes come in, in 20090913-1833- Re Anonimu - thanks!, Biruitorul sends a congratulatory message to the list thanking them for their meatpuppeting. --Russavia 10:42, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Evidence presented by YMB29

Biophys' stubborn edit warring

From editing the Human rights in the Soviet Union article, I could tell that there was some kind of team work involved. User:Biophys would have some users show up to support him in edit warring and "creating a consensus". User:Bobanni especially would come and help Biophys avoid 3RR, keep his edits to 3 or 2 reverts.

Recent example:

10:36, 10 September 2009 Biophys (Unexplained revert)

10:12, 10 September 2009 YMB29 (Undid revision 312888591 by Biophys (talk) See edit on 15 June 2009 23:46)

20:49, 9 September 2009 Biophys (rv. Sorry, but that was you who started reverts here)

13:13, 9 September 2009 YMB29 (Undid revision 312804016 by Bobanni (talk) See talk. Don't start a revert war again.)

12:22, 9 September 2009 Bobanni (reverting to an old copy is not the Misplaced Pages way - see talk)

10:53, 9 September 2009 YMB29 (Reverted sneaky reverts by Biophys, made some statements more clear and neutral.)

And then an admin blocked me because I had 3 reverts, but Biophys only 2...

I can understand how the group could have gotten users blocked after purposely making them lose their cool. It was often very frustrating with Biophys. He would act like he was following the rules and knew what he was editing. However, discussing with him felt like talking to someone who pretends to be silly to make you lose your patience. Often he would ask me to list my problems with the article to discuss, but he was unable to follow on with the discussion, continue to revert, and then again ask to discuss the issues...

Some of his comments from discussion:

You act against consensus here.

I will need a couple of days to look into all the issues and find all additional sources.

I have no time right now.

We had a stable version. You came and started making large changes without discussion.

You are welcome to include citation tags if they were accidently deleted.

Please tell what specific problems do you have with this last specific version.

Please do not fight against consensus using blind reverts.

OK, let's start it all over again, one point at a time.

Comments like that were very annoying in the context of him refusing to fully discuss issues and him reverting everything, including tags and sourced info.

Based on Biophys' editing, it is no surprise that he might have been involved in planned actions that were against Misplaced Pages's rules. He has shown that he only cares about keeping the article how he wants it with his stubborn reverts, which were often sneaky. He would say one thing in the edit summary but would really just revert the article to his version. This was obviously done to mask his reverts. For example, after settling down for seven months, on 15 June 2009 he reverted to his version from 3 Nov. 2008.

19:46, 15 June 2009 Biophys (actually, this is referenced to book by Albats that someone deleted) diff

You can see here that the versions are exactly the same, while his edit summary is nothing about that.

Piotrus defending Biophys

On Sept. 10th, not wanting to get into another long edit war with Biophys and Bobanni, I reported Biophys, specifically his edit on June 15th. The first comment I see to the report was one by Piotrus defending Biophys. Before I could write a response that Piotrus is not impartial when it comes to Biophys (I knew it from here), I am blocked. Another admin blocked me without really looking into what I reported. I have a strong suspicion that Piotrus' comment may have influenced this hasty block.

Furthermore, when Biophys was last blocked Piotrus again defended him and said he would have unblocked him if he would have seen his unblock request (before it was withdrawn) . Also User:Martintg hounded the admin for blocking Biophys.

-YMB29 (talk) 20:49, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

Response to evidence by Biophys

I don't know what difference it makes how much edits I have. Maybe I would have more edits if Biophys was more cooperative in that article, since he wasted my time and discouraged me from getting into editing other articles. From the misleading edit summaries Biophys claims I made, only in one I did not mention or imply that I was going to revert (I reverted and added links as part of a compromise). I did reply and explain on the talk page , so I was not misleading anyone.

I was not uncivil to him; that was regarding a user citing hate websites in another article over three years ago.

As far as User:M.V.E.i., Biophys already accused me of being his sock and was proven wrong (even though there was not any real evidence to start a checkuser request).

-YMB29 (talk) 02:42, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Evidence presented by MBisanz

Authenticity of archives

In June/July I was contacted by two people now alleged to be on this mailing list, the discussions I have since forwarded to arbcom. I have now seen a copy of the mailing list archive on a public website and compared the emails around the dates of these two earlier conversations and do see references that lead me to believe that the archive in general is authentic, since it would require non-public knowledge known only to me and the two other parties to re-create these properly timed references in the archive.

Evidence presented by Good Olfactory

Responsibility for block currently in force against Russavia

I want to confirm what Atama has stated in evidence above. The editing restriction imposed by Sandstein is related to, but obviously not the same as, the block I imposed. I imposed the block for Russavia's extensive wikilawyering and for making an ambiguous legal threat while Russavia was challenging the restrictions imposed by Sandstein in a WP:ANI thread. The block currently imposed on Russavia is the block I imposed. This block has been temporarily lifted with my knowledge and acquiescence so that Russavia can participate in this case. Unless the decision in this case decides otherwise, I expect the block against Russavia to remain in force after the case is concluded.

Was not contacted by any of the parties in this case prior to imposing the block

I was not contacted by any of the parties in this case regarding Russavia's behaviour prior to my decision to impose an indefinite block on Russavia. I have had typical Misplaced Pages "passing interactions" with some of the parties in the case, but I have never experienced any contact with any of them in which a user has lobbied or otherwise requested that sanctions be imposed on other editors.

Evidence presented by HistoricWarrior007

On the Russavia Ban

I believe that the reason Russavia made the comments that enabled Ol'Factory to ban him, was because Russavia was constantly provoked by the e-mail team, and even banned by their resident administrator. Thus the issue here is not Russavia's final action, but the reason that Russavia committed his final action. We are all human. We all err. A single error should not be the reason that a person gets banned. Russavia made a bad post, after being provoked by the e-mail group, that Sandstein used to get him banned for 6 months. Here is the comment: "In his edit notice at , Russavia (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · edit filter log · block user · block log) wrote that the content at issue was "hardly undue and i willl fight you to the death on this :D." When a Russian user posts a smiley on the end, ahh heck, when any user posts a smiley on the end - that means they are kidding! A six month ban for such a comment, considering the previous provocations against Russavia, and considering that the article in question, is trying to promote a film that shows "how similar Soviet States was to Nazi State" (because we all know it was the USSR and SS going around and committing the Holocaust, or so the film's hypothesis alleges). Russavia wanted to include a Dyukhov, someone who wrote a critique of the film, while the e-mail group wanted to marginalize Duykhov, and anyone critiquing the film, because "if you cannot attack the argument, attack the person making the argument" is apparently a valid tactic to use on Misplaced Pages. For this, Russavia received a six month ban from Sandstein, which led Russavia to make the comment that was used by Ol'Factory to impose an infinite ban on Russavia. I don't see this as neither fair, nor just.

More to come

Evidence presented by Fut.Perf.

Tymek voluntarily disclosed his password

User:Tymek has publicly admitted he voluntarily disclosed his wikipedia password to his fellow list members . (Arbitrators can check this against the e-mail archive from July, thread titled "vacation".) This means we no longer need to assume any illegal act of "hacking", "security breaches", "information theft" etc either from inside or outside the group at all. It makes it quite likely that the whistleblower e-mails were exactly what they said they were: written by somebody from within the group who felt he could "no longer support this". The whistleblower used his own, legally acquired copy of the e-mails and was merely forwarding them non-publicly to selected individuals, which is entirely legal; by using Tymek's account he was probably just trying to create a false track to avoid detection by his fellow conspirators, but he wasn't even acting illegally in doing this because Tymek had explicitly invited list members to use his account for "whatever they felt necessary".

This also throws some doubt on the sincerity of the loudly professed security fears and concerns over illegal hacking attacks offered by the list members – after all, they all knew Tymek's account was open to this kind of exploitation by one of their own. Fut.Perf. ☼ 08:15, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

CAMERA precedent

Given the above evidence, it seems safe to assume at this point that the legal status of the Wikipediametrics e-mails is exactly the same as that of the CAMERA e-mails in 2008: leaked to Misplaced Pages administrators by somebody who, being a legitimate recipient of the original list, had every right to do so. In the CAMERA case, the following practice was found acceptable by both the community and Arbcom: a small group of administrators who had been given access to the material were free to study them, publicly summarise their contents, publish selected quotations from them, and disclose links between wikipedia accounts and list members, while making certain that personally identifying information in the e-mails was filtered out (see Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents/Statement re Wikilobby campaign). Sanctions imposed by us administrators on the basis of this report were explicitly validated by Arbcom (here, see also here). Fut.Perf. ☼ 08:50, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Evidence presented by PasswordUsername

Note: I will be posting evidence for the ArbCom case as User:Anti-Nationalist, as I don't have access to the password for my old login when my laptop hardware got fried on September 7th. Anti-Nationalist (talk) 16:27, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

The history reviewed

The situation that ArbCom is now looking at is nothing new, and was already apparent to all who bothered to look from the very get-go, such that when I arrived on Misplaced Pages, I was already besieged by accusations of bad faith, repeated -- seemingly endlessly iterated -- edit warring against the change that I sought to make, threats to expose me as somebody's sockpuppet, attacks on my motives when I sought to complain to an administrator, and denials of any out-and-out coordinated editing by the team members.

When it was continually shown that such users Biophys, Piotrus, and fellow members of the cohort were using what appeared as extremely well-coordinated edit-warring and harassment against other users to get their way, nothing was ever done, while good editors who pointed out the problems with members of this group were driven away by endless harrassment and confrontation from the team members. Both User:Deacon of Pndapetzim and myself pointed out the matter very succintly when we pointed out the politics of the game for ArbCom members in our opening statements for the (rejected) Easterm Europe case in June.

I pointed out the state of things very clearly on May 26 , on just one occasion when the whole team showed up en masse to swamp a request for comment section for Human rights in the United States full of their own POV. Rather than actually do something about users who disrupt the productive lives of other editors, both the administrators at large and ArbCom (when prodded to take a closely resembling case back in June) preferred to ignore such warnings. When 1RR restrictions for both list members and opponents were issued by User:Thatcher in June, these were soon rolled back after an intensive e-mail lobbying campaign; the pattern of things returned to status quo ante. Were it not for this sudden whistleblowing and leaking of the evidence to ArbCom, Misplaced Pages have simply let Russavia, one of the most productive Misplaced Pages editors and an outstanding contributor of Russia-related content, without bothering to check the long-time harassment that he has faced from content opponents such as the stubborn editors from the leaked archive of the clandestine mailing list.

Swamping of AFD discussions

• Biophys-created Internet operations by Russian secret police (nominated 27 March 2009). Voting keep: Digwuren, Vecrumba, Martintg.
• Digwuren-created Neo-Stalinism (nominated 9 April 2009). Voting keep: Digwuren, Dc76, Martintg, Biophys, Miacek. (No uninvolved users participated; the semi-involved Petri Krohn–a relatively pro-Russian editor–was subsequently chased off Misplaced Pages by the same crowd.)
• Miacek-created Derzhava (older version; nominated 28 May 2009). Voting keep: Digwuren, Miacek, Biophys, Radeksz, Martintg. (The few uninvolved users voted delete.)
• Digwuren-created Soviet-run peace movements in the West (nominated 11 July 2009). Voting keep: Piotrus, Biophys, Ostap R, Biruitorul, Jacurek. (Most uninvolved users favored deletion.)

Stalking by mailing list members

Various users, all part of the mailing list, appear to have stalked me at various points in the past six months, although the editing patterns of these users may also be attributable to something else. Worst of all was the following of my edits to different parts of the project by Digwuren, who suddenly took interest in all manner of things never related to his understandable niche of things Estonian:

• June 1 - Digwuren twice reverts my edits to Kim Jong-Il, an article he never edited before: ,
• June 1 - Digwuren twice reverts my edits to Ilya Ehrenburg, a page he never edited before: , .
• May 27 through June 3 - Digwuren and Biophys show up on the talk page for List of Eastern Bloc defectors to support User:Mosedschurte against myself and User:Yaan in a content dispute . On June 5, Biophys and Martintg help Mosedschurte revert. , . Neither of these edited List of Eastern Bloc defectors before.
• May 24 - Digwuren reverts me at Benjamin (Animal Farm) , Squealer (Animal Farm) (and 2nd revert - 27 May: ), and Old Major (and 2nd revert - 27 May: ), neither of which he edited before.

From the very beginning of my stumbling upon this team, I asked members (specifically Biophys and Digwuren) not to stalk me around: , . User:Vlad fedorov has also noted the stalking performed by Biophys on various occasions.

Members of the mailing list defend each other from sockpuppet investigations

• Comments at the Molobo sockpuppet investigation by Digwuren: , , . Comments at the Molobo sockpuppet investigation by Radeksz: , . Comments at the Molobo sockpuppet investigation by Martintg: , . Comments at the Molobo sockpuppet investigation by Jacurek: . Comments at the Molobo sockpuppet investigation by Piotrus: , . Comments at the Molobo sockpuppet investigation by Poeticbent: . Molobo's role as a sockpuppeteer was subsequently confirmed.

False accusations of sockpuppetry and persisting insinuations against myself by team members

Within a day of having discovered me after I submitted a Digwuren-made category for discussion in early May, Digwuren came to my talk page to inquire, in a very indirect way, whether I was a sockpuppet of User:Anonimu, who was notably targeted for elimination by team members in 2007: . Being a relative newbie to much of the editing trends and unfamiliar with the drama, I reverted this, and, seeing no basis for Digwuren's accusations after his incivil comments in my address at a CFD, wrote in my edit summary for the talk page rvt: "Deleting bad faith edit" . Digwuren instead came to the administrators' noticeboard, a very public place, with warnings of a "possible return of Anonimu" . As his main item of evidence, Digwuren wrote:

"When, after a little digging, I asked PasswordUsername if he might know Anonimu, he responded in a way rather uncharacteristic for a new user -- by deleting the question from his talkpage within about a minute, claiming it was "bad faith edit". When Anonimu was active, he was very aggressive in removing all criticism -- including warnings -- from his talkpage, going as far as to post a set of rules about how his talkpage should remain blank onto his talkpage."

Additionally, Digwuren misrepresented my editing pattern and contributions, simply trying to tie me to his own portrayal of Anonimu in any possible way, then proceeded to inform administrator (and ArbCom member) User:Newyorkbrad of his suspicions: . After being told that Anonimu came from Romania, Digwuren did not withdraw his complaints from the noticeboard, but hedged his bets and began referring to the case as a "possible return of Anonimu or Jacob Peters." Nobody, of course, took the episode of the ridiculous accusations thrown seriously: when I patiently explained to the admins reading the noticeboard what my reaction was and that Digwuren's reading of my edits was completely and blatantly distorted , admin User:Hans Adler responded that Digwuren was abusing ANI and should "stop crying wolf and start apologising" . Rather than having a well-deserved apology or even having the chapter close right there and then, the accusations continued when Biophys showed up to support Digwuren with questions about my editing as an IP (not something I ever denied); Biophys also posted at Moreschi's talk page, which prompted User:Unomi to ask Biophys to go to SPI if he thought the concerns were genuine and to stop with the admin blockshopping .

Despite having no case against me and in fact never bothering to go to the CheckUser, both Biophys and Digwuren continued their insinuations in messages to my talk page days after they were told that they had no evidence, both on talk , , , and in edit summaries: (here Digwuren also manages to cleverly accuse me of "diluting the gravity of anti-Semitism" because of my inclusion of material regarding an instance of Estonian anti-semitism). From on-wiki speculation that I was Jacob Peters or Anonimu the current moved toward speculation that I was M.V.e.I. or somebody else–team member Ostap R betting "100 euros" that I was a sock of M.V.e.I.: . Did mailing list members actually convince themselves that this was the case? While this is very representative of this cabal's campaign of Wiki-hounding, I am sure that off-Wiki evidence sheds light on even more material of this sort, and I have every reason there is to believe Alex Bakharev's summary of the nature of these editors' off-wiki conduct. Accusations like these are unreasonable, and there was no reason to be harassing me with them when there was a clear lack of evidence for doing so.

Some cases of coordinated warring by members of the mailing list

The following incidents and descriptions (which I picked so as not to overlap with the incidents described by others) is a partial representation of the problem, as my serious involvement with the project begins in May, whereas documenting and helpfully annotating every possibility of coordinated editing (I do not have access to the secret mailing list's archive) even from my period of involvement only would take up an extraordinarily Byzantine amount of time. (In any case, note also: .)

Anti-Russian sentiment: 8-16 May 2009

Following a chain of reverts of Offliner by Digwuren , fellow mailing list mates Martintg , Radeksz , and Vecrumba join in edit warring against Offliner, Beatle Fab Four, Kupredu, and myself.

Neo-Stalinism: May 10-18 2009, August-September 2009

May 10-18 - Digwuren and Biophys repeatedly edit war against me while discussion is ongoing, while the only uninvolved editor User:Magioladitis, takes my side at talk.

May 14 - After pointing out problems with the way Biophys edits to an admin, User:Hans Adler and Adler expressing his concern about Biophys' POV, Biophys (all the while telling Hans Adler that I am the one culpable of stalking him) writes that he does not care about neo-Stalinism , and actually leaves the page alone from then on. Subsequently, Biophys comes back in order to revert Russavia at August's end: , , . Vecrumba helps out .

August-September 2009 - Edit war as Radeksz reverts my changes. Jacurek and Biophys help edit war. I do one other revert. User:LokiiT attempts to edit the article, but encounters further members of the team–Radeksz , Jacurek , and Vecrumba (all perform almost identical reverts).

Timeline of antisemitism: 3-10 June 2009

3 June – I make an edit to Timeline of antisemitism . Secret cabal member Digwuren, never having touched the article before, arrives to engage against me in an episode edit warring, removing my addition of an episode of Estonian anti-semitism from the timeline: . Martintg, never having edited the article before, arrives in support of Digwuren: .

After edit warring between myself, Digwuren, Martintg, and Offliner, Biophys - never having edited the article before – joins in on 5 June to revert my edits to Digwuren’s version . Dozens of reverts by Martintg, Digwuren, and Biophys follow. (see history )

Mark Sirők: 3-17 June 2009

3 June – Shotlandiya creates an article stub for Mark Sirők. Digwuren arrives within a half-hour, demanding a removal of the article based on Shotlandiya’s having misspelled “Russophone”: .

4 June – after Digwuren fails in having article deletion proceed, Sander Säde joins Digwuren in their attempts to discredit Mark Sirők -- . Sander Säde and Digwuren begin combating Shotlandiya jointly. Finding the newly-created article, I only make one minor change: .

7 June – Radeksz arrives on the scene to make major changes, significantly altering content: . Digwuren continues battling against Shotlandiya.

8 June – Martintg arrives to revert Shotlandiya: . Digwuren’s further massive changes invite revert from Offliner: . Digwuren continues warring: . Offliner doesn’t revert further, but constant reverting by mailing list members against myself and Shotlandiya rages until the numerically weaker party leaves (allowing the last revert for Digwuren on June 17).

Moscow Victory Parade of 1945: 13-14 June 2009

In what seems like organized team-tagging, after my initial edit to this page on 13 June, Digwuren , Martintg , and Radeksz all arrive to combat me, all reinserting the same piece of text. Neither Martintg, Radeksz, or Digwuren had edited the article at all prior to June 13-14.

Collaboration with the Axis Powers during World War II: 15-17 August 2009

In spite of ongoing discussion at talk (quickly concluded in my favor), Jacurek , Vecrumba , Radeksz edit war against myself over my removal of out-of-scope text about the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact agreements from an article about pro-Nazi collaborationism, alongside an image inserted by Piotrus in July.

Dc76 arrived on Rjanag's talk page to make unfounded accusations

Please look at the section PasswordUsername - here we go again in Rjanag's admin talk archive to get the complete picture.

In what appears to be coordinated team battling, Radeksz and Martintg arrived almost simultaneously at an admin's talk page to complain regarding my "edit warring" to Monument of Lihula, where, in fact, I had accidentally passed the 3RR rule but almost instantaneously reverted myself, long prior to these administrator user page reports: , . (Apparently, they decided to lobby the administrator, User:Rjanag, in their favor, as a very similar "3RR report" where I had self-reverted was dismissed from the noticeboard a very sort time prior to that.) Rjanag, while noting that three reverts could be considered gaming the system, properly said that with regard to my reverts, no violation of 3RR had been committed and that my edits were compromise versions. )

At that point, Dc76 (also a member of the team) arrived to back up Radeksz and Martintg with very hostile comments, accusing me of doing battleground behavior, making "ad hominems" in edit summaries (that no reasonable person would read from of them, as well I never made and that my edit summaries were clear "challenge you"s. . (Quite disingenuously, in the very same comment, Dc76 gives it away that he'd stopped editing the article a long time prior to my changes.)

These very nasty attacks on my edits made no sense at all. Dc76 simply backed up his team's members by accusing me with extraordinary slander: what was written against me was pure provocation, and provocation that occured after Rjanag clearly let everyone know that he wasn't going to sanction me for this, although Martintg's particularly aggressive behavior didn't look at all good for him. At this point, I asked Dc76 to explain his unfounded attacks , but received no answer, leading me to think that in all likelihood his characterization of my editing was either deliberately belligerent and frivolous or he doesn't normally arrive to peek at Rjanag's talk. (Both may very well be true.)

I believe that this was an episode of gaming the system in order to make myself look bad in the eyes of an admin; since Dc76 had only very limited contacted with me and arrived to support Radeksz and Martintg with such outstandingly carless sophistry, I have no doubt that this was coordinated through the mailing list in e-mails that the members exchanged around September 4th. At least, if Dc76 cared about what I was reverting and did not simply want to be part of a team project, he would have made some actual arguments. And I have every reason to doubt that Dc76 would have arrived so quickly to make nonsense charges about me on Rjanag's talk page.

Evidence presented by Piotrus

I will just address the appearance of my name. I am not presenting evidence against anybody else; the only person against whom the evidence should be provided is the person who hacked our computer(s).

Re:Deacon

I want to be clearly state that I did not encourage Molobo's socking (and not having seen all the "sikret" evidence in that case I find the public evidence still unconvincing); I encouraged him to find ways to prove he is a constructive editor who should be unblocked.

Re:Offliner

re:my edit to Russian apartment bombings, and re:"Members of the secret email list appear to be involved in stealth canvassing of votes": I think the article was mentioned several times on our discussion list. At some point, despite my relative lack of interest in Russian politics, I decided to read the article. I read it, read the recent talk discussions, looked at the diffs in edit history and reverted to a version I considered better. I see nothing wrong with my action there. Similarly, sometimes deletion or other discussions are annouced; I always read the article in question and consider arguments of both sides before editing/voting, and I hope other members of our groups (and all other editors in all similar situations) do the same. Your argument would be more convincing if I my vote here was pure delete, instead of delete and merge (with rationale). Why don't you mention more examples where the members of our group disagree? Here, for example, Biophys votes keep, I lean towards deletion with my merge. Heck, here you can find an entire mediation with editors from our little group on both sides :) Oh, and here's another recent vote (on merger) I proposed recently and that I am pretty sure I mentioned on our discussion group, where I find myself agreeing with Offliner and disagreeing with Biophys: Talk:Web_brigades#Merge._again. We discuss, sometimes agree, but sometimes disagree (there are no "yes men" among us), and never tell others to do disruptive edits. What's the problem? That we dare to talk to each other off-wiki? That's not against the rules, what's against the rules, to cite our policies and arbcom, is aggressive propaganda campaigns, and that never took place on our group.

re:copyvio images

I recall I encouraged, on and off wiki, for editors to find sources for such images and to provide proper fair use rationales; I am currently involved in trying to obtain the permission for the entire archive to be made free (see Template_talk:PolandGov#Send_a_request_again). In the end, some images were deleted, some kept. See Misplaced Pages:Files_for_deletion/2009_August_12#File:1Comp_obwSambor_inspecDrohobycz_Burza3.jpg for example, or the new improved rationale at File:CaptMruk recce Soviet Aug1944 Rad-Kie.jpg. I see nothing wrong in discussing such issues.

re:Talk:Battle of Vilnius (1655)

Thanks for bringing this up. I do wonder why did Deacon arrive to vote there, on an article that is not part of his usual editing routine and interests? I am sure it was not because *I* initiated the move... I might have announced such a move on the discussion group (as well as on the various public wiki boards), and asked others to comment. I never ask people to "vote yes" or "vote no", and it is not uncommon for members of our group to disagree with one another (see above) or as happens in most cases, not to join the discussion/vote because they had no time to familiarize themselves with the topic, and our ethics discourage taking action otherwise (think for a moment while I, in the Top 50 active Wikipedians, often spending hours on this project, am so inactive on the Russian modern politics (a common subject in our discussion group)? The answer is simple: I don't consider myself to know enough about it to edit the subject, and even if I sympathize with certain side I won't edit the subjects they care about till I am sure I know what I am doing).

re:Members of the secret email list protect each other at admin noticeboards

Eh? We discuss wikipolitics, and are interested in one another wiki-wellbeing. What is that supposed to prove or disprove? Other editors, such as you (Offliner) and Russavia, for example, also agree with one another and support one another in such threads. Such discussions are not a vote, and admins making the decisions are not swayed by choruses (or at least, should not be), but by reasonable arguments.

re:Piotrus has made unfounded personal attacks

I don't see what this has to do with the email group, other than be a general jab at me; in either case neither comment I made and you cite is a personal attack. Saying that your evidence is "extremely poor" is not a PA (I will also say this again - your evidence here is "extremely poor" - and if any clerk thinks I am being uncivil, please let me know so I can moderate this comment...).

re:Piotrus has abused his admin status

After Jehochman's advice (not a warning), I no longer posted in the uninvolved admin section on AE but in the regular discussion section. At this time we also refined our definition of what an (un)involved admin is (this should be somewhere in the AE talk archives, I think), although I still think this merits more clarifications (my previous understanding of uninvolvement meant no involvement in a given article content dispute, now our practice seems to extend this to interactions with certain users, which makes sense, but needs more refining).

re:Piotrus -- as usual -- arrived to support Martintg's unblock

Well, yes, I disagreed with it and still do, per my comment and reasoning there. So?

re:Russavia

re:my posting the Misplaced Pages:Administrators'_noticeboard/Archive191#Ethics_of_sharing_an_account

If it was a harassment thread, don't you think somebody would have spotted it sooner? Investigating if somebody is sharing an account is not harassment, not unless unfounded accusations are repeated over and over. This was brought up once and once analyzed, dropped.

re:my edits to web brigades

See my reply to Offliner, first re. In addition: I am interested in this article due to the Tygodnik Powszechny Polish connection, so I have it on my watchlist, which is an exception as far as the area of "modern Russian politics" and my interest go. I see nothing problematic with me editing that article and discussing it with others.

re:Piotrus defending Biophys

I disagree with the rationale behind his block; but while my judgment wavered for a moment, I decided not to unblock him as. No admin power was abused, so what's the problem here?

re:Response to evidence by Piotrus

Yes, we talked about you a few times. So????

re:PU

image

I am not sure what kind of argument you can build on my single edit that replaced an unfree and now-deleted image (File:German Soviet.jpg) with a free one (File:Armia Czerwona,Wehrmacht 23.09.1939 wspólna parada.jpg). At least, I am not seeing any argument that the mention of "Piotrus did this, it has to be evil" :>

re:DonaldDuck

DonaldDuck (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) was and still is indef blocked for his disruption (edit warring, block evasion and sockpuppetry), unblocked only to participate in this discussion. His edits to tsarist autocracy where on the verge of vandalism (removal of referenced text in violation of WP:V, refusal to discuss issues on talk (particularly in December), edit warring - I don't recall the details but he was breaking 5/6RRs a day at some point, if not more (!)). He single-handedly went ballistic on the tsarist autocracy, caused a major disruption in that article and got himself banned due to his refusal to edit constructively. Yes, this article was discussed on our group, as it fits the interest of most members. We have discussed the issue extensively on Talk:Tsarist autocracy as well. Members of our group have helped to prevent disruption in the article, expanded it into a well-referenced DYK (to the obvious benefit of our encyclopedia-building project), and the vandal got blocked for his own actions, after multiple warnings from many editors. Nobody baited Donald, he was given plenty of opportunities to engage in discussion and work on a compromise version instead of reverting, he refused them and kept reverting and reverting to his own version (WP:OWN, anyone?). Vandal edits (removing refs), vandal gets reverted. Discussions on talk are held, vandal refuses to accept edits of others. Vandal edit wars, vandal gets blocked. I see nothing wrong with this picture. Donads' insistence on not seeing any errors in his behavior, even now, and on attacking those who disagree with him makes it quite obvious who is the dedicated edit warrior here. I am curious, however, who asked Donald to participate in this discussion?

PS. Found it. The final revert spree Donald went on that led to his indef had 17 reverts. SEVENTEEN REVERTS. Who are we going to see next, WheelyOnWheels? :) I rest my case.

Re:Donald: I expect every editor to read the article, read the discussion, and edit (revert, vote, whatever) only after they are familiar enough with the topic. I am assuming good faith and trusting now, just like I did in the past, that those few editors who joined in editing/discussing this article did so. You can ask them about that.

Concluding remarks

Regarding some emails quoted here, I have doubts about their authenticity. I'll discuss those doubts with the Committee.

Anyway, if this is all the nasty cabalist stuff that is being brought against me, I guess I don't have to worry much :) --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 01:48, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

Evidence presented by Shell Kinney

I was made aware of this mailing list via private email several days ago mainly because someone reviewing the "leak" noticed several of my emails had been forwarded to the mailing list. I can confirm that the emails forwarded to the list by Piotr were not forged or tampered with and I can provide the original mail to ArbCom if needed. This was done without my permission or knowledge and I am frankly outraged that Piotr not only broke trust in this manner, but has yet to offer any reason or apology for such behavior. This is not the sort of conduct I would expect from an administrator. Shell 17:30, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

Evidence presented by DonaldDuck

Edit war, wikistalking and block-shopping by the members of secret mailing list team

On 31 December 2008 User:Piotrus writes to the mailing list asking for help dealing with me in Tsarist autocracy article. Piotrus explicitly writes that this help is needed to circumvent Arbcom warning to him to stop edit warring. On 2 January 2009, when I make edits in this article, coordinated action from the team follows.

1. 03:54 IP user reverts my edits Contributions from this IP from Estonia. This IP was active only from 31 December 2008 to 15 January 2009.
2. 12:18 Second revert from different IP . This is the only edit from this IP from Estonia. No other edits.
3. 13:22 Mailing list member User:Digwuren joins the edit war.
4. 14:21 Mailing list member User:Hillock65, who never edited this article before, joins the edit war, makes 2 reverts 1 2 and places warning at my talk page
5. User:Piotrus reports me to the administrators noticeboard. I am blocked by User:Spartaz. Efforts to block me are discussed in the several emails in the mailing list. Spartaz fails to notice teamwork, although it is quite easy (appearance of 4 new editors in one day, 2 anonymous IP edits, editor who never edited this article suddenly coming to make reverts), blocks me for a week and warns me of further indefinite block.

On 6-12 May 2009.

1. Piotrus starts new edit war against me, making 2 reverts 02:20 06:00. He writes to the mailing list, asking for help in edit war. He writes that he would like to avoid more then 2 reverts a day.
2. Mailing list member User:Radeksz, who never edited this article before, joins the edit war
3. User:Digwuren joins the edit war
4. On 9 may 2009 Piotrus writes another letter to the list, reminding that I am still a problem.
5. I am avoiding 3RR violations, but at last after repeated provocations by members of the team I make 4 reverts in a 24 hours on 9-10 of May. User:Radeksz places a warning at my talk page . After this warning I self-revert my last edit. Technically, I did not even break a 3RR rule in this case
6. Piotrus reports me to the administrators noticeboard. Two members of the secret team: User:Biophys and User:Digwuren support this report by Piotrus. User:William M. Connolley ( recently desysopped for abuse of admin tools by ArbCom decision) blocks me for 2 weeks, but noticing previous warning of indefinite block by Spartaz, in 5 minutes changes his decision and indefinitely blocks me for edit war that did not even amount to 3RR. He fails to notice offwiki communication between the members of the team.

June 2009.

1. After some negotiation, William M. Connolley unblocks me. Mailing list member User:Biophys tries to intervene to keep me blocked. My unblock is discussed in the mailing list, there are calls to "look out" for me.
2. On 9 June I am included to the "fresh enemies list" by members of the mailing list.
3. User:Biophys runs a campaign to block me again. On June 23, Biophys wrote offwiki email to User:Thatcher. On this secret offwiki request I was again blocked indefinitely by User:Thatcher. Such offwiki block-shopping is strongly discouraged by Blocking policy

In this way, organized edit wars, stalking and block-shopping against me, started by Piotrus despite previous warning by ArbCom to him to stop edit wars, and carried out by Piotrus, Digwuren, Hillock65, Radeksz and Biophys, coordinated through this secret mailing list, resulted in my indefinite block.

Edit war in this aricle quite clearly illustrates methods, employed by this secret group. It was not group vs group, cabal vs cabal. Several commited and experienced edit-warriors attacked single editor, primarily because he did not fit their political agenda.DonaldDuck (talk) 02:22, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Re:Piotrus

Hillock65 and Radeksz did not make a single edit in Tsarist autocracy before you called them to join your edit war in your letter to the mailing list on 31 December 2008 (by the way this was already your third letter to the mailing list asking to deal with me). And after I was blocked on 12 May, Digwuren, Hillock65 and Radeksz also did not make a single edit in this article. This proves that they came to this article not to improve it, but with single purpose of taking part in edit war.

I can not believe your expectations of good faith from members of your team or your own good faith after my inclusion into the "enemies list" by member of this team. You did not report creation of this list to administrators. DonaldDuck (talk) 03:52, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Re:Biophys

I have no connection to User:Russavia beyond his 5 public messages at my talk page, and 2 my responses to this messages. And I have absolutely no connection to User:Miyokan, I have first known about this editor from Biophys posts.

IP editors

Can someone check IP editors 62.65.238.142 and 90.190.58.112 ? Was it Digwuren or some other member of the mailing list or not?

Evidence presented by Poeticbent

Attention:
Contributors are expressly prohibited from quoting private correspondence of involved parties. The emails you reveal (most often in minute detail) have been obtained through unethical means and are accessed by you illegally. This is a federal offence. Under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 (ECPA), Pub. L. No. 99-508, 100 Stat. 1848, third parties are forbidden to read private e-mail.

I have marked the passages in evidence provided by the above contributors, requiring immediate attention of the designated clerk Daniel who’s instructed to enforce those measures with blocks as necessary. No quoting of any off-wiki third party email is to be done by persons other than the author or intended recipient(s). --Poeticbent talk 15:04, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Evidence presented by {your user name}

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

{Write your assertion here}

Place argument and diffs which support your assertion; for example, your first assertion might be "So-and-so engages in edit warring", which should be the title of this section. Here you would show specific edits to specific articles which show So-and-so engaging in edit warring.

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Place argument and diffs which support the second assertion; for example, your second assertion might be "So-and-so makes personal attacks", which should be the title of this section. Here you would show specific edits where So-and-so made personal attacks.