Wikipedia talk:General sanctions/Obama article probation

For archived discussions, see Wikipedia talk:General sanctions/Obama article probation/Archive 1.

Sonia Sotomayor

With her supreme court nomination by President Obama, should we also include the Sonia Sotomayor article and sub articles under the probation too? Her articles are highly trafficked articles and also seem to be getting a wide variety of editors editing there with the usual edit warring and other such disruptions. Thoughts? Brothejr (talk) 23:57, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Good question. My inclination is to wait and see. We're expecting a 60-90 day confirmation process, right? Article probation is an extraordinary step for a particular problem. If the Sotomayor article faces the same issue, same group of editors, and same disruption, and if disruption to the other Obama articles spills over there and vice-versa, it makes sense. If it's just a random current event that gets the sort of trouble that random current events get, I wouldn't want to make article probation the exception that swallows the rule. What's likely to happen is that her article will quiet down once she's confirmed or rejected, and the trouble will move to the next nomination or issue in serial fashion. Adding new articles and current issues to the probation list would turn it into subject matter probation rather than article probation. Wikidemon (talk) 01:08, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Where should we report violations?

I'm wondering if we should move the incidents page or start a sister page... or something in the general sanctions page hierarchy... as an administrators' notice board to report simple probation violations and general issues / problems on the page. As an example, a bunch of new WP:SPA accounts that are all acting like socks of somebody keep reviving nonsense anti-Obama issues.[1][2][3][4] It's not worth the trouble of a sockpuppet report. An AN/I thread would be a big mess and involve people who don't want to hear from the Obama page... and it disrupts the article talk page to talk about it there. The incidents page seems like the place but it's moribund - is anyone following it? Any thoughts, suggestions, support or opposition to using a notice board? Wikidemon (talk) 18:33, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Reorganized article probation pages

I have just reorganized article probation pages by breaking the main article probation page (which had been on this page into four pages:

• Wikipedia:General sanctions/Obama article probation - the main probation page, for official announcements and statements.
• This page, for a general discussion of article probation
• Wikipedia:General sanctions/Obama article probation/Requests for enforcement - as the name implies, requests for administrative help in enforcing the terms of article probation
• Wikipedia:General sanctions/Obama article probation/Logs - a list of sanctions, notifications, and articles covered

- Wikidemon (talk) 06:15, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Note - following some discussion on my talk page and at WP:AN, I have relocated these pages to fall under WP:General sanctions. Their current location under Wikipedia:General sanctions/Obama article probation can be found in the "see also" section there. Wikidemon (talk) 19:37, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Findings for the committee to consider

I hereby notify the working group that the article probation is ineffective. I am so fed up with subtle POV pushing (and not so subtle POV pushing) that these warriors have chased me away from WP. I am now retired. These warriors should be blocked for destructing WP by chasing people away.

The most common POV pushing is using wikilawyering excuses to get their way. They say a point is not relevant or they use some other excuse. Basically, any right wing fanatic that only edits negative information on Obama and other liberals are one kind of POV pusher. Another is a left wing radical who insists on no negative information on Obama. You can see them insist the same thing for articles like Sotomayor and/or Hillary Clinton. Important information is taken out.

These people are not hard to find. Just look at 3 days of edits and see if they are removing negative or adding negative. Then look at their other edits and 99% of the time, there is a pattern.

Another problem is the article doesn't comprehensive cover Obama. For example, his Afghanistan policy is very relevant. However, late last year, someone put a neutral comment about Afghanistan and the left wing radicals thought any mention of Afghanistan conflicted with the anti-war Iraq message so they took that out. The right wing fanatics are guilty of similar actions such as the Teleprompter issue. All of the fair minded people are gone.

The article probation is ineffective because it allows the old timer radicals to continue to edit, collapse peoples' comments into boxes to cover-up discussion. They claim the "undue weight" argument but insert trivial things themselves.

PARTIAL SOLUTION

The partial solution is to organize a committee to decide what sections there will be. Then sub-committees will decide on the most important topics of each section. Only the POV warriors have the energy to insert a sentence then fight over it. Neutral people don't have the fanaticism to do so.

This way, we can overcome radicalism. The current presidency section could be open to anyone to add a sentence or two since it is current. However, the committee work could fix his senatorial career and Illinois stuff and early life. Anyone could join the committee. The committee can work on one section every month and it will be done before years end.

Another solution is for the current editors to take a leave of absence from the Obama article for 3 months. They could make comments in the talk page but would be barred from editing, except for removing obvious vandalism and "Obama is a Muslim" type edits.

WORSE THING FOR COMMITTEE TO DO

The worse thing for the committee to do would be to remove these comments and somehow take cheap shots at me. All the comments made are neutral and constructive. No names are mentioned to avoid the appearance of attacks on anyone.

- — Preceding unsigned comment added by Formerwiki (talk • contribs)

Are these sanctions still active?

Is this probation still considered active? I'm just checking because the sanctions log hasn't been updated since last October. — Richwales 03:38, 25 June 2012 (UTC)

How to avoid being subject to remedies[edit]

I would increase the grammatical parallelism by beginning the fifth and sixth injunctions with verbs, to match the others. For example: Instead of: <"Not much leeway in pages under probation, so basically be a model Wikipedian;"> perhaps change to: <"Remember that there is not much leeway in pages under probation, so try to be a model Wikipedian;">. And instead of: <"We actually know when we cross the line; we are all intelligent people;"> perhaps change to: <"Use your obviously considerable intelligence and judgment to recognize when you are about to cross the line;"> --Wikifan2744 (talk) 08:24, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

Probably better than what I recommended above as a replacement for: <"We actually know when we cross the line; we are all intelligent people;"> might be <"Use good judgment; be cautious: stay far enough away from the line so as not to remotely risk being sanctioned;"> And I think, also, that since the eighth bullet point concerns what to do if you actually do get sanctioned, it might better say something like: <"And, finally, if you do get sanctioned, don't take it personally; instead, graciously accept the judgment of your peers, learn from your mistakes, take a break, and come back refreshed and determined to be a better editor.">--Wikifan2744 (talk) 01:25, 30 November 2013 (UTC)