[WikiEN-l] Paul Vogel banned for a year

Fri May 7 10:40:43 UTC 2004

The proceedings are still technically open I believe, but there's 
majority votes on enough issues---particularly the issue of 
banning---for something to be implemented.  The findings of fact were a 
bit more controversial, so basically everyone agrees Paul Vogel needs to 
be banned, but we don't completely agree on why.  But given that we 
agree on the action part, sitting on our hands arguing about the 
legalistic justifications doesn't seem all that useful.

The gory details are all on [[Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Paul 
Vogel]] (where they've been for a while, actually), including links to 
examples and evidence and whatnot.  The summary version follows.

All votes reported as (Yes-No-Abstain).  There are 10 arbitrators, so 6 
'yes' votes are needed to pass any issue.

Findings of fact
---
Passed (7-0-0): Paul Vogel has engaged in a few instances of vandalism. 
Examples include: [...]. ... The arbitration committee notes that many 
accusations of "vandalism" levelled against Paul Vogel would more 
accurately be described as "NPOV violations".

Passed (6-0-0): [Read the page for the text... Summary is that the 
committee found Paul Vogel's counter-accusations to be unpersuasive, and 
generally found rather the opposite was true for most of them.]

Almost but not yet passed (5-0-1): Paul Vogel has engaged in a number of 
personal attacks in violation of the widely accepted no personal attacks 
policy. ... The arbitration committee notes a handful of personal 
attacks made against Paul Vogel. ... However, the committee was unable 
to uncover any evidence (and none was provided) supporting the 
accusations of slander or repeated attacks alleged by Paul. ...

Nothing decided (2-2-1): [Read the page for the text... Summary is that 
there's disagreement over whether he was blocked inappropriately by 
individual sysops and therefore whether he should be held liable for 
circumventing some of those bans.]

Remedies (both passed 7-0-0)
---
1. Paul Vogel's editing priviledges on Wikipedia are revoked for a 
period of one year.

2. Wikipedia contributors are encouraged to edit Wikipedia's talk pages 
to deal with personal attacks, excessive repetition, misleading 
indentation or signatures, unnecessarily offensive comments, etc, 
contributed by Paul Vogel. They should delete them, edit them, 
quarantine them on an appropriate user talk: page, or otherwise deal 
with them as they judge appropriate.

Comments by me (not the committee)
---
A year is a rather long time for a ban, but I don't think anybody really 
sees how Mr. Vogel can become a productive contributor in the forseeable 
future, so there was no need to waste everyone's time with a succession 
of shorter bans that would be the inevitable result.  If he surprises us 
and does indeed have an interest in working more amicably with us, he 
can request reinstatement, and either Jimbo or the committee can 
reconsider the matter in light of any new evidence.

As far as enforcement goes: In light of the decision, I've blocked 
24.45.99.191, his most common IP address.  Even though he's used it 
consistently for some weeks, it has 'dyn' in the hostname, so I only 
blocked it for a month, lest it turn out to be dynamic.  Reblocking it 
for an additional month after that expires is a trivial matter if he 
returns anyway.  He's used a number of other addresses, most of them 
dynamic IPs, and relatively infrequently (and not in the past few days), 
so I have not blocked those.  Since he is now officially banned, any 
sysop may feel free to ban any reincarnations that pop up, although I'd 
recommend 24-to-48-hour bans unless you're sure it's a static IP of his.

-Mark