Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Aitias/Evidence

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Evidence presented by Acalamari

Improper conduct

  1. In the RfC, there were concerns over Aitias' "ownership" of certain pages. Rjd0060 made an edit to Template:Unblock that was quickly reverted by Aitias with an explanation of "?".
  2. Rjd0060 tries to discuss the revert with Aitias, and Aitias responds with sarcasm and rudeness, and accused Rjd0060 of making personal attacks when he was backing away from the dispute.
  3. In the RfC, concerns had been raised about Aitias' "owning" of Wikipedia:Requests for permissions/Rollback, and incivility on that page. This discussion on requests for rollback shows Aitias being rude and sarcastic to Juliancolton, who had disagreed with him.
  4. When Juliancolton tried to discuss the issue on Aitias' talk page, Aitias was rude and sarcastic.
  5. This and this show another user trying to talk to Aitias about the conflict with Julian, and Aitias just reverts it.
  6. When Julian made an attempt to settle the dispute, Aitias responded with "If you don't want to reply, that's okay of course. I did not expect anything else anyway.

Dismissiveness

  1. In that same thread on Aitias' talk page with Rjd0060, MZMcBride tried to talk to Aitias about recent events, but Aitias appeared to dismiss his concerns on the basis of recent disputes surrounding MZMcBride.
  2. Dismissive and sarcastic response on a recent RfA.

Vanishing and unvanishing

  1. Aitias invoked his right to vanish on March 16, right after performing several admin actions on his userspace indicating this.
  2. Since the initial vanish, he left three opposes with vague rationale to the RfAs of people he has had recent disagreements with; Ironholds, Ottava Rima, and MZMcBride.
  3. The second and third were met with criticism: [1][2][3][4][5], and the first one, Ottava Rima noted that Aitias had just invoked his right to vanish just prior to making the oppose. In the latter two, Aitias made no edits just prior to his opposes.
  4. Aitias explains his reasons for unvanishing here and here, stating that he was on a Wikibreak and had not vanished.

Other

  1. Aitias has stated himself that "A polite and civil tone should be mandatory for everyone, but especially for admins of course."
  2. A rough list of the to the top contributors to Wikipedia:Requests for permissions/Rollback and to the related talk page.

Evidence presented by Ottava Rima

Use of tools

Much of my evidence has been put forward already, but, in looking at other evidence, I discovered items like this - protection of his own talk page and reverted as inappropriate by Swatjester. According to his logs, he decided to protect many of his pages along with deleting his own pages. A final note - his first archive dates to June 2008, and his original talk page edits before then were deleted on his talk page and never archived nor are they retrievable except to an admin.

Evidence presented by Juliancolton

Edit warring

Incivility

  • Aside from the evidence Acalamari presented, rude comments such as this and this demonstrate inappropriate conduct for an administrator.

Tendency to WP:OWN

Evidence presented by Majorly

Misuse of tools or position

  1. Aitias was one of the most active admins at requests for rollback. A user requested rollback, and Aitias responded with a patronising "Evidently, you have to be more careful", linking to a userpage revert that is now deleted. The revert itself was indeed questionable, but quite obviously accidental, in response to an unexplained page blanking. Two other admins, Acalamari and Juliancolton expressed the opinion that one accidental revert should not prevent the granting of a very no-big-deal tool. Aitias went on to show a diff from five months previously, that was clearly accidental again. Again, Acalamari and myself disagreed with this, and I personally found the "Um, sorry" and the vague link to a diff as rather unhelpful and patronising. Efe, another admin, made a comment along the lines of the past 50 edits not being a good basis to grant the tool, which Aitias mistook to be endorsing his denial. He refused to budge on this issue, suggesting it was brought up at WP:AN, here. When I notified I had done so, he responded with "Well done". Anyway, after a longish discussion on AN, Tiptoety granted rollback. Aitias then removed it, citing an unfounded "no consensus" (there was consensus, but consensus is not required to grant rollback). Aitias was clearly biased, involved and in effect was wheelwarring - Aitias denied granting, Tiptoety granted, Aitias removed.
  2. Opposes an RFA; it is closed at 0/6/1 by iMatthew. Aitias disagrees, and posts a note to him, justifying keeping it open because of the number of edits the user has, despite not having a chance. Neurolysis closes per NOTNOW; Aitias reverts, using his note to iMatthew as the justification (i.e. no discussion or consensus, just Aitias' say-so). He then posted a patronising note to Neurolysis, again using his own say-so as justification for leaving the RFA open to get more and more opposes. The RFA is closed 2 hours later by I'm Sparticus!. Aitias' edit warring over the closure was totally unnecessary, and brought a total of 23 opposes to the RFA. Hardly encouraging to any user.
  3. Hypocritically demands consensus, before other users can touch "his" rollback page ("never seen you here before"!) Despite the fact he has altered system messages without any consensus!
  4. Following his RFC where he promised to take a more loose attitude on RFR, less than a month later we have this. Aitias's issue was over a single revert that most people would consider as vandalism, although the IP's other edits were problematic. Juliancolton decided to grant the user rollback. Aitias responded with several sarcastic remarks: "Incredibly respectful that you ignored the concerns from another admin. Also, incredibly respectful that you did not give the user the time to reply to my question. Incredibly respectful and collegial behaviour." The discussion moved to his talk page. Juliancolton asked Aitias why he called him "incredibly disrespectful", which Aitias denies doing. Julian shows Aitias the diff clearly showing implying it, and Aitias responds with "What does it imply?" when it is obvious it is implying he said he was incredibly disrespectful.
  5. When I brought up my concerns with Aitias on the same page, he responds with "I have done nothing wrong here. Thus, take whatever action you feel like, nothing at all has been done wrong by me here". I then bring up an inappropriate use of rollback, to which Aitias responded "I think you are well aware that this revert was perfectly fine" and linking to the rollback feature page, which does not state at any point it is acceptable to use rollback on a talk page that isn't obviously unconstructive. When I tried to explain to him the difference between a talk page and userpage, he replies with "Read Wikipedia:Rollback_feature#When_to_use_rollback and Wikipedia:User space. The situation is blatantly clear, no need for further wiki-lawyering/discussion". I responded, explaining again, and how I would take the issue further since he didn't seem to be understand that what he was doing was inappropriate. Aitias responded, egging me on: "(edit conflict) Do it, Majorly, do it; again, this use of rollback was perfectly fine - the situation is clear as glass. You would also find out this fact if you asked at WP:AN or WP:HELP. Simply put, you are wrong, Majorly". I think the link to the help page was particularly patronising. Juliancolton and SWATJester also came to the talk page to try to explain to Aitias how the rollback was incorrect. Aitias responded saying "However, there was no need for removing it manually. This use of rollback is perfectly fine. :)" Manual reversion is always better than using rollback, especially when use of rollback was inappropriate in any case. SWATJester continued to try and explain to Aitias, who refused to believe it: "Even if you don't like the idea, it is permitted (there is no point in trying to doubt it, it is, simply, a matter of fact). It would be the best if everyone realised that." Things didn't help when Protonk made an incorrect statement (backed up by no evidence whatsoever) stating "You can roll back edits on your user or user talk page, FYI. No wikilawyering about it." This is clearly mistaken, since user talk pages are not part of userspace. Aitias, however, immediately used this to back his misuse of rollback up, saying "No, you're mistaken, just as Majorly. Also, please don't forget that User:Protonk tried to explain this above as well. Both you and Majorly are simply mistaken — this state of facts won't change even if you write in majuscules. :)" SWATJester responds again, and Aitias replies with this gem: "LOL. Again, read Wikipedia:Rollback_feature#When_to_use_rollback ("[...] to revert content in your own user space [...]") and Wikipedia:User_space. It's simple, you're wrong, nothing to admit on my part (but on yours), no need for further discussion." When SWATJester explains again that talk pages aren't part of userspace, Aitias simply replies "If you had simply read Wikipedia:User space you would have found out that user talk pages count as user space within the meaning of the policy". I have read the pages Aitias linked to from top to bottom and have still found no sign that it is ever acceptable to rollback good faith edits to a user talk page. This kind of attitude trying to weasel his way out of a single inappropriate revert is utterly inappropriate for an admin, especially one who hangs out at RFR denying rollback to people who make errors from months ago. It is a disgrace someone who cannot handle the tool himself is permitted to grant and deny to others.

Improper conduct

Aitias is routinely sarcastic, as are a lot of people, and I don't think a bit of sarcasm now and again is a bad thing, especially when I am quite sarcastic myself. However, there are some incidents of inappropriate use of sarcasm, and other problems I'll note below.

  1. Responds in a completely unnecessary way to a perfectly reasonable question on an AFD, inquiring where the rationale was. The rationale being on an edit summary is totally unhelpful for people, but Aitias responds in a way that suggests it is completely obvious to everyone.
  2. This entire thread is a disgrace.
  3. As is this.
  4. And this.
  5. And this - other editors explain they are also concerned with Aitias's behaviour.
  6. About half way down the thread, Aitias begins to post in Ancient Greek for some reason. When I explained I didn't understand the language and this was English Wikipedia, he responds sarcastically: O rly? Unbelievable!. I then asked him to keep his comments in English (a language that most people here understand). He responds claiming he was speaking in English which he clearly was not. He claimed several times he was unable to translate the comment, but did anyway; here he also claims it is "perfectly obvious" why he posted in a foreign language. He then lied about having translated immediately - see this. (If you are unwilling to translate a comment into English, don't post in another language, simple as that. Aitias was trying to get a point across, fairly badly, in a language he cannot expect people to understand. He should have either translated in English immediately, not posted any Ancient Greek at all, or simply pointed to the article on the subject. He did none of these things properly).
  7. Created a large thread about someone being granted rollback - Aitias didn't like the idea solely because the user didn't have very many edits. The user is a trusted editor from de.wiki who knows how to use a simple tool like rollback. Again, Aitias having issues with people getting rollback causing a big problem. He was the only person on the entire thread (out of seven people) who apparently had an issue with it. As Iridescent and Giggy noted, the attitude displayed was entirely inappropriate and elitist, somehow suggesting admins are better than other editors.
  8. Aitias's habit of posting excessive templated questions to RFAs was criticised - an issue here was a large note posted regarding the user's answers to questions. Aitias inappropriately made the note italicised and bold at the same time to draw attention to it. This thread also contains more sarcasm such as "Yeah, if you define yourself as "most people".
  9. Forum shopping regarding a single page protection. When the thread was closed as "resolved - no admin action needed" Aitias inappropriately reopened it. It was closed again soon after.
  10. Following removal of ABF's (a long-term commons admin) rollback right for "biting" (which was readded a few hours later), Aitias tries to policy wonk his way around the subject instead of accepting Frank's concerns.
  11. This thread contains comments from Aitias that appear to be unnecessarily goading, and begging some admin to block for longer, which was rather unnecessary considering several admins were dealing with it. He was asked on several occasions on the thread to disengage - he did not listen, instead creating a further (pointless) thread about off-wiki attacks [7]. He then proceeded to create an RFC, despite the user being blocked, and the issue long over - an example of adding further fuel to the fire (that had burned out pretty much by then in any case). The page was deleted, but Aitias simply did not get the hint [8] to stop it. His continued posts to the page caused MZMcBride to ask him to stop posting there. Aitias argued about it, and continued to post there anyway [9], fussing about an apparent COI - comments are further goading the editor whose talk it was.

Ownership issues

Some of these points have been mentioned above, but I'm summarising them so it's easier to see the pattern:

  1. Reverting on a fully protected template with the summary "?". Admittedly, Rjd0060's summary "fix" wasn't exactly helpful, but Aitias should not have reverted without asking Rjd0060 what he meant. Normally such an issue probably wouldn't be classed as "WP:OWN" but the discussion that followed shows to me at least that it probably is.
  2. This discussion, beginning with "Incredibly respectful that you ignored the concerns from another admin. Also, incredibly respectful that you did not give the user the time to reply to my question. Incredibly respectful and collegial behaviour" shows a very clear WP:OWN issue with the rollback request page.
  3. Edit warring on a protected page, again showing WP:OWN issues.
  4. Demands consensus on a rollback request template. "Never seen you there, btw" suggests to me an WP:OWN issue - it's suggesting only certain editors are allowed to edit the template.
  5. Starts a thread regarding a user getting rollback, despite having only a few edits. It's completely admin discretion who gets rollback so to me this suggests an WP:OWN issue with who and who doesn't have rollback - perhaps? Maybe I'm stretching things here.
  6. More issues at WP:RFR.
  7. After denying a request, I took the issue to AN/I where Tiptoety granted following a discussion. Aitias removed the right declaring "no consensus", despite consensus not being required to grant rollback.

Other editors feel free to add to this list. Majorly talk 15:31, 12 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Evidence presented by Mr.Z-man

Rollback granting/removing data

As requested by Carcharoth on the talk page, the following is a list of the most active users granting or removing rollback rights (including only users with more than 10 rollback changes) from the Toolserver as of Fri Apr 10 22:15:51 UTC 2009:

The full list of users and grant/remove numbers is at [10] Mr.Z-man 22:28, 10 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Aitias is often rude or hostile

Aitias is frequently rude, sarcastic, or otherwise hostile to others (often claiming "no offense intended" or similar, or using emoticons), while at the same time accusing others of being rude or unreasonable and repeatedly refuses to accept any responsibility for his actions or admit he was wrong. I tried to avoid repeating diffs already posted elsewhere, but there may be some overlap. Mr.Z-man 00:58, 11 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  • (all from [11])
    • "My comments do neither constitute sarcasm nor aggression, let alone “rudeness”."
    • "I think it's safe to say that I did at no time misuse, let alone abuse, my administrator tools; also, I never did violate WP:NPA or WP:CIVIL."
    • "you can be proved right, and they still will remain unreasonable"

The RFC was ineffectual

Between Feb 19 and Feb 24 2009, Aitias was the subject of a user conduct RFC. It closed as a result of a statement by Aitias on Feb 20:

As a result of the quick closure there was little agreed upon and few participants.

  • Within just a few days was the RMHED incident [12], explained in more detail in the 4th paragraph here
  • Just 3 weeks after the RFC we have more WP:OWN-ing and hostility at RFPERM, which carried over to Aitias's talk page.
  • As well as this discussion where Aitias again responds with sarcasm and refuses to accept that his behavior might possibly be wrong.

Evidence presented by PeterSymonds

Specifically Wikipedia:Requests for permissions/Rollback

  • Here he openly requests opinions of other admins, which is perfectly correct.
  • Unnecessary hostility shown in regard to a request marked as done. In response, the granting administrator removed rollback pending discussion, but the comments were rather unhelpful. It should be noted that, ultimately, Pedro and Aitias reconciled with mutual apologies.
  • My experience based on watching PERM/R has been generally mixed. Please bear in mind that every admin reviewing user rights requests have slightly different standards. It is my belief that Aitias is, for want of a better word, harsher in terms of requirements. That is not necessarily a bad thing; it is merely an observation.
  • Here, a user is denied rollback for an incident that occurred in June 2008 (the request was declined in January).
  • Much of the time, Aitias was courteous and polite to admins who responded to his decisions. Here Acalamari raises concerns about a user who had been granted rollback, and Aitias responded with grace, allowing the decision to be overturned if needs be.
  • Here Aitias removed a malformed request, which I probably would not do. It is much less bitey to simply fix it, and make a decision following that. There was nothing in the wording of the request to suggest any bad faith on the requester's part.
  • The declined request of Jpoelma13, which Majorly took to WP:ANI (direct link), was undoubtedly a catalyst to Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Aitias. I disagreed with Aitias on this issue, as did others, and Tiptoety granted rollback to Aitias per WP:AGF. This decision was almost immediately overturned by Aitias, claiming "no consensus at all" (the rollback tool is generally not given per consensus). This was over a revert in September and a blanking by Thehelpfulone (talk · contribs) (Thehelpfulone blanked a page–I have forgotten which, as the edit in question has been deleted–but it was generally seen at the time to be an understandable error. There certainly appeared to be no pattern to bad reverts, from my view, and I endorsed the decision to grant rollback.
  • This discussion between Aitias and Juliancolton (talk · contribs) was unnecessarily hostile, in my opinion, and probably fuelled the concerns about "ownership" of the page. While I suppose it would have done no harm to wait until the requester answered, the tone used by Aitias was not appropriate.

It should be totally made clear that I have gone through all edits and have tried to give my opinion based on the request above. I have tried to keep this balanced and neutral, and therefore have deliberately missed all declined requests that resulted in little-to-no further discussion, and deliberately missed out all approved requests that caused little-to-no further discussion. If you feel my understanding or interpretation of the evidence posted above was in error, please do tell me. Thank you. PeterSymonds (talk) 19:10, 10 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Evidence presented by Aitias

Preliminary remarks

As it’s difficult to respond to such a huge amount of accusations and to provide my own evidence —both in a proper, clear way—, I have decided to divide my statement in three main points: My own evidence, evidence responding to the evidence presented on this page and finally evidence responding to the points listed here.

Own evidence

The evidence presented here until now (with the exception of PeterSymonds (talk · contribs)’ evidence) does convey the impression that the vast majority of my work as an administrator and my replies on my talk page (or generally on talk pages, or —even more generally speaking— my comments) would always be abusive, impolite, rude, incivil and such like. However, I don’t think that’s approximately true: Since I have become an administrator, I have deleted more than 3,000 pages (cf. [13]), blocked more than 1,000 users, and, in total, taken more than 4,000 decisions as an administrator. I have always tried to give my best when taking a decision and, frequently, I have given huge efforts while doing this; just to provide one example: E.g. by writing long closing statements when closing AfD debates. So, altogether, I feel that the very utmost part of my admin work has been good; though, of course, nobody’s perfect and no one is free of mistakes. Regarding my communication, while I think it’s similar, it’s nevertheless not the same: I still think the the biggest part of it is good and, while I don’t agree with a lot of the evidence presented with regard to this (I tried to explain the reasons for this detailed below), I agree that I have sometimes been not as polite as I used to be and sometimes, admittedly, unnecessary impolite — while I again, believe, that this is limited on rare occasions, I anyhow agree that being one time impolite is one time too much and I agree that, especially in the last few months, it has been too much in my case. The correct thing to do would have been to heed this advice from Acalamari (talk · contribs). I agree that I have been kind of dismissive regarding this particular advice back then and that this was a considerable mistake. Howsoever, what I have really learned from the occurrences of the past few weeks/months is that I will take a wiki break way before I become that stressed.

Evidence responding to…

Acalamari’s evidence

  • [Responding to first section (“Improper conduct”), points 1. and 2.] The incident brought up here has nothing to do with “ownership issues”. To provide some background: Rjd0060 (talk · contribs) made this edit to {{Unblock}} with a misleading edit summary “fix”. However, this edit was reverting Sandstein (talk · contribs)’s edit (cf. [14]). Therefore, it was clearly not a “fix” of any kind. Thus, I have reverted it asking for the reason of this “fix”. I admit that using “?” as an edit summary was not the best way of doing this — though, an interrogation mark does clearly suggest that a change should be explained more thoroughly, not simply by the word “fix”. After I have been asked by Rjd0060 what the point of my revert was on my talk page, I have explained it: “Well, this was not added by me, but by User:Sandstein nearly two months ago. It is of help and there is no reason for removing it with the reason "fix" (clearly uncalled-for). [...]” On the other hand, Rjd0060's reply to my explanation was nothing but provoking par excellence: “Ooh, WP:ANI time?” [!] — it’s noteworthy strange that Acalamari (talk · contribs) calls this kind of reply a “backing away from the dispute”, while it’s fairly evidently exactly the opposite. Also, reading my replies I cannot see anything sarcastic or rude — I have to ask Acalamari to explain how this does apply.
  • [Responding to first section (“Improper conduct”), points 3. and 4.] The first and most important thing to put right here is that I did not disagree with Juliancolton (talk · contribs)’s decision — at no point of time. However, I have explained this entire issue already in my first statement and for the sake of not repeating everything, I may refer to it as a reply.
  • [Responding to first section (“Improper conduct”), point 5.] The reason for this revert was that this comment was utterly unhelpful and unnecessary, that the discussion did not benefit from it and, most important, that the content was simply besides the point of the discussion. As I have already pointed out, I should have better used WP:UNDO instead of rollback, just to emphasise this once again.
  • [Responding to first section (“Improper conduct”), point 6.] Well, to be honest, there was simply no reply regarding the main point of the discussion from Julian. Stating that this is okay and that nothing else was expected is probably unnecessary, however, on the other hand, there’s nothing wrong with that comment as well.
  • [Responding to second section (“Dismissiveness”), point 1.] Well, nothing “dismissive” here: MZMcBride (talk · contribs) did disagree with two perfectly justified and reasonable blocks — there was nothing “dismissive”; I simply did not agree with his disagreement. Nothing wrong with that.
  • [Responding to second section (“Dismissiveness”), point 2.] At this point I have, again, to ask Acalamari to explain how this comment was “dismissive and sarcastic”: There’s a general problem here: Acalamari simply claims that a comment would be sarcastic, however he does not provide any evidence how a particular comment was sarcastic. I have already explained to Acalamari that there is no shift in the burden of proof, i.e. that it is not my job to prove that a particular comment was not sarcastic, but his to prove that it was sarcastic. And, to come back to this particular comment: Actually, Acalamari is the one who is “dismissive” here, not me: Acalamari started complaining about every vote from me on RfAs claiming that I would just comment in the way I did because I would not like the candidate — I explained to Acalamari that this is not true, and the reason for me opposing (this particular RfA) was that I did not trust the candidate (just as 56 other users did not trust him) — nothing else — and that Acalamari should there consider stopping making this claim under every vote of mine on RfAs.
  • [Responding to third section (“Vanishing and unvanishing”), points 2. and 3.] The first thing to do here is to ask Acalamari to provide evidence on how I “had recent disagreements with” Ironholds (talk · contribs). As for the opposes, the same thing as I have just explained above ([Responding to second section (“Dismissiveness”), point 2.]) applies here: I did simply not trust those users to be an administrator (just as 107 [!] other users on Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Ottava Rima and 55 on Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Ironholds 3) — it should be made entirely clear that I was perfectly entitled to voice my opinion on those RfAs — even though Acalamari disagrees with them — but, of course, this is not a valid reason for me not voicing my opinion, just because Acalamari disagrees.
  • [Responding to third section (“Vanishing and unvanishing”), points 1. and 4.] Regarding the vanish issue there are several important points to make here: The first and most important thing is that a few people here should note that not everyone editing the English Wikipedia is a native speaker of English — I am not and Majorly and Acalamari are very, very well aware of this fact. Therefore I am, to be honest, not even a bit, but very much appalled by their comments. I simply thought that vanishing would more or less mean making a longer brake, with a possibility of coming back to editing. This was what I intended, and I have explained this more than once.

Ottava Rima’s evidence

  • The only thing that was inappropriate here is Swatjester (talk · contribs)’s unprotection — user talk page archives are regularly fully protected (cf. below, section: Evidence responding to Carcharoth’s request).
  • “[...] his first archive dates to June 2008, and his original talk page edits before then were deleted on his talk page and never archived nor are they retrievable except to an admin.” This claim is simply not true — my entire talk page is viewable by the talk page history.

Juliancolton’s evidence

  • [Responding to first section (“Edit warring”)] Two reverts do not constitute edit warring. The reason why I did not reply was because I did agree with Gonzo fan2007 (talk · contribs) and did no more revert anything after his message.

Majorly’s evidence

Firstly I have to note some general remarks regarding Majorly (talk · contribs)’s evidence: Majorly’s evidence is sometimes simply untrue — I will correct those statements which are untrue. Also, Majorly’s evidence is based on assuming bad faith to a great extent.
  • [Responding to first section (“Misuse of tools or position”), point 1.] I have replied to this accusation on Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Aitias already. In order to avoid repeating myself I refer to this section (re. 1.: a.) and b.)).
  • [Responding to first section (“Misuse of tools or position”), point 2.] Well, this is simply not a matter of “Aitias disagrees” and of “just Aitias' say-so”. We do have rules for some reason: Wikipedia:Bureaucrats#Promotions_and_RfX_closures: “Non-bureaucrats should be very careful in the latter case and only close RfAs when they are not in doubt. In such cases the requesting user should always be asked to consider withdrawal first.” Second thing: There was consensus for keeping the RfA open/for giving the candidate the chance to withdraw first [!]. “He then posted a patronising note [...]” How at all was this note “patronising”? I explained the situation in a nice and friendly way, nothing patronising about it. “Aitias' edit warring”: There was no edit warring.
  • [Responding to first section (“Misuse of tools or position”), point 3.] “Despite the fact he has altered system messages without any consensus!” Again, this is simply not true. Mr.Z-man (talk · contribs) was the one to alter “system messages” (we should note that this is technically not a “system message”) — I simply reverted to the long-standing version and asked Mr.Z-man to accomplish consensus for his changes first.
  • [Responding to first section (“Misuse of tools or position”), point 4.] I have replied to this above already, cf. #Acalamari.E2.80.99s_evidence: [Responding to first section (“Improper conduct”), points 3. and 4.]. Also: “when it is obvious it is implying he said he was incredibly disrespectful.” this is unbelievable. One is responsible for what he says/writes — not for what some people see “implied” in a comment or what they read into it.
  • [Responding to first section (“Misuse of tools or position”), point 5.] There’s not much to say here: I have already replied to this in my first statement, to which I may refer here; especially: “Howsoever, it was anyway the first time I did revert a good faith edit using rollback in my user space, and it will remain the last time.”
I will have to make some general notes here first: I have explained it to Acalamari (talk · contribs) above already: There is no shift in the burden of proof. Majorly cannot only say “this comment is sarcastic” — he has (1) to say how a particular comment is exactly sarcastic and he has (2) to prove that it is sarcastic. Also, we should distinguish between sarcasm and irony [!].
  • [Responding to second section (“Improper conduct”), point 1.] How is this reply in a “completely unnecessary way”? I used exactly the same wording as the user who asked the question.
  • [Responding to second section (“Improper conduct”), points 2., 3., 4. and 5.] I have already commented on each incident above.
  • [Responding to second section (“Improper conduct”), point 6.] I may refer to my reply here (re. 13.).
  • [Responding to second section (“Improper conduct”), point 7.] I can refer to my reply [[16]] (re. 17.). “[...] elitist, somehow suggesting admins are better than other editors.” Once again: I am not responsible for what Majorly reads into my comments.
  • [Responding to second section (“Improper conduct”), point 8.] “was criticised” — exactly, by Majorly [!]. Also, to understand what happened one has to read the entire discussion. Especially Oren0 (talk · contribs) explains it quite well: “Does anyone else find it odd that this user was able to completely rewrite answers to several questions. The user was effectively told that the answers were entirely wrong and what the answers were, and then was able to rewrite them entirely with no notification that they have been edited. [...]”.
  • [Responding to second section (“Improper conduct”), point 9.] I refer to my reply here (re. 23.).
  • [Responding to second section (“Improper conduct”), point 10.] I refer to my reply here (re. 24.) and to this comment.
  • [Responding to second section (“Improper conduct”), point 11.] Again, I refer to my first statement.

Mr.Z-man’s evidence

I have already commented on most of the points listed by Mr.Z-man (talk · contribs) above; regarding the little part I have not already commented on, they do not seem comment-worthy to a great extent, as they are not of concern (i.e. there’s nothing wrong with them). There’s just one I’d like to comment on:

  • [17] With this comment I was referring to this comment [18]: “Tripe? Perhaps, when you have as many FA and GA articles to your name as Malleus does, rather than the handful of DYK and two GA listed on your user page, I will consider your opinion worth listening to.” by Myosotis Scorpioides (talk · contribs) (please note that this comment was directed to Majorly (talk · contribs) [!], not to me.).

Evidence responding to Carcharoth’s request

  • “Could someone point to current policy or standards on self-deletion or protection by admins of their own user pages and talk pages when retiring or going on a long break? How common is it [...]?” It’s very common: Just a few examples:

Evidence presented by Rjd0060

Aitias continues to dismiss concerns raised

In addition to the information that I provided at the initial request for arbitration (see here), I would just like to note that Aitias continues to dismiss concerns presented on this page and others. This is evident from his statement above (see #Evidence presented by Aitias), where he has continued in an argumentative state. Although his statement appears incomplete, there is no reason to believe that the remainder of his statement will be any different. Given that the information may change after I save this, here is the revision that I am referring to and I note that future revisions may contain things contrary to what I've pointed out. - Rjd0060 (talk) 19:14, 13 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Evidence presented by Vassyana

Request for permissions header

Aitias was restoring the standing version with this revert. It arose in late August, as a bold change with an accompanying talk page note ([31][32]). Until the change and revert (in early December), it went completely undiscussed. Here is the discussion following the revert, which is relevant. The change was reinstituted ([33]) and again reverted ([34]). The change was restored by another user at the end of December ([35]) and reverted by Aitias at the beginning of February ([36]), followed immediately by one more go-round ([37][38]) and a change spurred by the objections ([39]). The accompanying discussion and the section that follows are relevant. The page currently reflects the version to which Aitias' edits ([40]).

Evidence presented by Risker

Aitias and RMHED

The interactions between Aitias and RMHED are alluded to briefly in Majorly's evidence above. This is a more detailed review.

December 2008

Aitias blocked RMHED on 29 December 2008 for 3RR violation on Manning Marable, and removed rollback permission for using rollback in edit war.[41] Review of the situation shows that IP editor 62.103.147.54 placed a prod tag on the article, RMHED removed it with a comment that importance was asserted. About 20 hours later, the IP returned and this time added a CSD-A7 (non-notable person) tag, insisting that removal be discussed on the talk page; again, RMHED removed the tag with an edit summary again noting that importance/significance was asserted. This was repeated three times, with the IP commenting in the edit summary of his last revert “Final undo before reporting user and article to an admin.Please discuss if you have objections”. RMHED again removed the tag with a comment “I have given my reasons for removing the CSD several times.” Concurrent to these alternate reversions, the IP editor and RMHED discussed on RMHED’s talk page.[42], with RMHED explaining the policy he was applying, and the IP editor ultimately responding with a 3RR warning, after submitting a report to the Edit Warring Noticeboard.

At this point, several other editors descended on the article to improve it, and three minutes after RMHED’s last reversion, he was blocked by Aitias. The IP was not blocked. The article was not semi- or fully protected. After extensive discussion, in which it becomes apparent that Aitias (and perhaps a few other admins) was not really familiar with the speedy deletion section of the deletion policy, RMHED was unblocked. Aitias continued to post on RMHED's talk page, starting another section under the title “Just a last comment by me”, in which he goes on to suggest that administrators who support his actions are impartial, implying that those who disagree are “partial”.(extensive discussion on talk page re block/unblock)

February 2009

On 26 February 2009, RMHED was blocked for 3RR, this time for edit warring on several templates, by User:Caknuck. A discussion was also started on ANI, in which Aitias participated almost immediately, and on several occasions he was asked to disengage.[43][44][45][46] Aitias not only continued to discuss on ANI, he posted repeatedly on RMHED’s talk page during and after a period when RMHED was blocked from editing it himself, including reversions of RMHED's derogatory comments about Aitias, and notifying RMHED that he had initiated a (quickly deleted) RFC/User on RMHED's editorial behaviour.[47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55][56][57][58][59][60]

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 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.


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