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Case Opened on 23:54, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Case Closed on 22:30, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Please do not edit this page directly unless you wish to become a participant in this case. Only add a statement here after the case has begun if you are named as a party; otherwise, your statement may be placed on the talk page, and will be read in full. Evidence, no matter who can provide it, is very welcome at /Evidence. Evidence is more useful than comments.

Arbitrators, the parties, and other editors may suggest proposed principles, findings, and remedies at /Workshop. That page may also be used for general comments on the evidence. Arbitrators will then vote on a final decision in the case at /Proposed decision.

Once the case is closed, editors may add to the #Log of blocks and bans as needed, but it should not be edited otherwise. Please raise any questions at Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration#Requests for clarification, and report violations of remedies at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Arbitration enforcement.

Involved parties

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Requests for comment

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Statement by SirFozzie

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R. fiend has been accused of using his administrator powers in numerous inappropriate ways. Among the incidents of questionable adminstrator rights brought up in the RfC:

A) Reverting to a preferred version in the Black Irish page, and then immediately semi-protecting the page to prevent the IP addresses that he was edit-warring against from editing the page. Then, having "won" the edit war, left the page semi-protected indefinitely for almost six months. Revert Protection, Protection Log

B) Continual insertion of questionably-sourced information about a person' (that would violate WP:BLP if the person in question was living). R. fiend again semi-protected the page (without any message as to reason) to "lock out" the anonymous IP editor from editing the page. Link to diff of protection. When the anonymous editor in question requested the page unprotection, two administrators asked R. fiend for the rationale for the protection. He stated that his edits were per the talk page's consensus On the administrator's talk page], but when asked for a link to show this consensus, he did not reply.

C) R. fiend blocked User:Ed Poor in an apparent error in October, leaving no block summary. User:Jeffrey O. Gustafson unblocked Ed nine hours later in the absence of any communication. When questioned on it on his talk page by a three other admins,[1], he replied, "Hmmm. Looks like a mistake. Oh well. No harm done.".[2] When it was suggested by User:WJBscribe that he apologize, R. fiend just walked away and never approached User:Ed Poor on the matter again. (Block log). When this matter was brought up as part of the RfC, he apologized stating that he must have been drunk or high while he edited, which he stated he did infrequently. Link to R. fiend statement about block of Ed Poor. Ed Poor has asked that the block be expunged from his record.

D)R. fiend has been involved in a content dispute with User:Domer48 over the Segi article.[3][4][5]. He then went on to block Domer48 for WP:3RR violation on the same article, even though he was in dispute and editing there. Nor had R. fiend approached Domer48 at any time before the block. While it is fairly well understood that Domer48 was at least at 3 Reverts (and may have broken 3RR), R. fiend, as a participant in the dispute should NOT have been the one to carry out the block. After Domer48 was blocked, uninvolved admins, User:Luna Santin and User:Metros and other editors voiced their concerns.[6][7] R. fiend replied that he didn't see any problem with being a participant in the dispute and blocking Domer, stating "If I didn't block him, someone else would have" [8] Luna Santin questioned that comment, saying that it could be considered an abuse of admin privileges, that besides the obvious conflict of interest in the block, it could have a chilling effect on future editors who found themselves in dispute with R. fiend.'[9]. R. fiend chose not to reply, instead refused to unblock and got more irate[10] when questioned by myself .[11]

In the interests of brevity, I will not list several other incidents that R. fiend was involved in, however, should ArbCom wish to review this additional information, I invite them to review the evidence posted at theRfC on R.fiend‎ Throughout, R. fiend has refused to acknowledge that he had done anything wrong in most of the incidents above, stating that he thought folks were whining, and that most of his actions were fundamentally correct. He also says that he is a self-admitted "Snide Bastard" and that folks knew what they were getting when they passed his RfA, therefore this allows his behavior. [12]

ArbCom should accept this case, review the incivility and use of his administrator rights and privileges, and determine if at least a temporary suspension of these rights, if not a permanent revocation of his administrator rights, is called for.

Statement by Alison

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I originally opened the recent RfC on User:R. fiend, having unsuccessfully tried to have the issues addressed at WP:ANI. The desired outcome was as follows:

  1. R. fiend needs to completely refrain from using his administrative tools on articles in which he is involved, even tangentially. This particularly applies to article protection. Instead, he should apply to Wikipedia:Requests for page protection as any other editor should so that a neutral administrator can review the situation and act accordingly. This is how other administrators operate. He needs to understand the protection policy and what it covers.
  2. R. fiend should also pay particularly close attention to the policy on civility, as administrators are obliged to follow this in the same way as any other editor. In ways, administrators should also be exemplars when it comes to civility, politeness and respect for their fellow-editors.
  3. If R. fiend performs an administrative action for whatever reason and is requested to comment on it, he should do so rather than simply ignoring it.

These are basic admin requirements yet, one RfC and much discussion later, R. fiend has still refused to sign up to these. An admin should never protect an article they are in dispute over and, as a rule, should not subsequently edit a protected article especially if there's a dispute involved. In his career as an admin, R. fiend has only done about 25 article protects, but a good 6 of these have been problematic. From the RfC:

  • R. fiend was in an edit-war over addition of "Popular culture references" to the Black Irish article,[13][14][15] and chose to lock out the anonymous editors by reverting to his own version[16] and immediately semi-protecting the article without specifying any protect rationale.[17]. This was in May; the article remained semi-protected and untagged until I discovered it today (Prot. log).
  • He was involved in a content dispute with an anonymous editor on the Patrick Pearse article, regarding additions relating to Ruth Dudley Edwards.[18][19] the anonymous editor had been removing largely unsourced commentary regarding the subject's sexuality and had been using good edit summaries to justify the changes, whereas R. fiend had been using none. R. fiend then indefinitely semi-protected the article without specifying any protect rationale.[20]. The anonymous editor made a request to unprotect on WP:RPP. I was on RPP patrol at the time and handled the request. Rather than simply undo the rather blatantly inappropriate protect, I left a polite message on his talk page[21] requesting clarification. Another regular RPP patrolling admin, User:Steel359 weighed in on his talk page to concur[22] R. fiend replied on my talk page here stating consensus was achieved on the talk page. When I checked, I could not find it and when I asked where, he never replied. Nor did he reply to my question, "This sounds from what you are saying that you semi-protected the page to block out an anon editor who is involved in a content dispute, and is in dialog. Is this the case here?". The article was subsequently unprotected by User:Steel359 with the comment, "Inappropriate use of semi-protection". A second unprotect request had been made on WP:RPP and Steel had gone to investigate. He also requested of R. fiend to point to talk page consensus, but he could/did not. (Prot. log). Today, R. fiend still remains active on this article.
  • R. fiend was involved in reverting the Shaun Glass by changing it to a redirect.[23] He changed the article to a redir, whereupon another editor reverted and began adding detail to the article.[24] A few days later he returned, reverted to his redirect[25] and straight away semi-protected it indefinitely[26] without commentary whatsoever; neither on his edits, on talk pages, nor in the protection summary, even though the article had been significantly updated in the interim. The protect is still in place today. (Prot. log)
  • Similarly, on the article As I Lay Dying, R fiend redirected this to As I Lay Dying (novel) without comment in what was a dispute between the significance of the redirect to the novel or to As I Lay Dying (band). Another editor reverted his changes[27] whereupon R. fiend reverted again[28] and immediately fully protected the article indefinitely[29] without any comments whatsoever, even though a number of editors had disagreed. The protect is still in place, almost two months later (Prot. log)
  • In November, he was revert-warring with User:Domer48 on Kevin Barry, yet another "Troubles"-related article.[30][31] He had been in a content dispute and was reverting without discussion using Admin Rollback. He then immediately fully protected the article without edit summaries.[32] This was subsequently unprotected an hour later by uninvolved admin User:Mercury with the comment, "note on administrators talk".[33] Mercury's comment was, "Whats going on at Kevin Barry. It appears that you were edit warring, and have protected your version, or have I mistaken?".[34] At that point, he had been repeatedly warned about edit-warring on that article by a number of people. R. fiend chose to blank most of the warning messages[35] and walk away without responding to anyone, including User:Mercury. Mercury was left with no option but to leave a warning, "Please note that edit warring is disruptive and can lead to preventative blocks. Additionally, please do not apply protection to articles you are currently in dispute.",[36] and unprotect (Prot. log)
  • This week, R. fiend was involved in revert-warring with User:Domer48 and User:BigDunc on the Easter Rising article, another "Troubles" article. The article was then protected by uninvolved admin, User:Luna Santin with the statement, "edit warring".[37] R. fiend then went on to make a revert to the article using his ability as an admin.[38] When called on this, he self-reverted two hours later[39] Later, the article was again fully protected due to the same edit-warriors. This time, R. fiend immediately made an (albeit trivial) edit to the article using his admin powers[40][41]. (Prot. log). This led to the matter of this admin being brought up at WP:ANI, which led to the RfC and then this RFAr case.

Additionally, As SirFozzie notes, R. fiend blocked User:Domer48 for an arguable 3RR offense, even though he was revert-warring with him at the time.

In October, R. fiend blocked User:Ed Poor indefinitely for no reason whatsoever. When questioned on it by a number of admins, he said, " Hmmm. Looks like a mistake. Oh well. No harm done.", and left it at that. He never again approached Ed Poor on the matter to explain what happened. Yesterday, I discovered an essay, written by R. fiend, about Conservapedia. Ed Poor happens to be an admin there[42] and R. fiend states the following there;

Ed Poor is quite upset about his block being on his record as he's currently on parole and now needs to explain why he was blocked and unblocked. When I questioned R. fiend directly on the matter yesterday, quoting the essay,[43] he replied that he was possibly "really really drunk when that happened (maybe even high) [...] there have been occasions where I have blacked out, and done things I really can't attest to."[44]

As an admin, he has been quite unresponsive and uncivil, and dismissive in his edit summaries and talk page comments. For example, when informed that he was being discussed on WP:ANI[45], he replied[46], "Thanks, but I'm less than inclined to care about such inanity", eventually only participating when he was informed again[47] that it could result in an RfC. Edit summaries such as "restoring FASCIST CENSORSHIP or REFERENCED MATERIAL. This has a FOOTNOTE. Therefore it CANNIT be removed or altered by ANYONE, ever. To do so would be ORIGINAL RESEARCH!!!!111!!11oneone1!!!",[48] humourous as it may be intended, are highly inappropriate. Comments like "Good. Glad this needless discussion is over. I accept your surrender"[49] are inappropriate and needlessly inflammatory, especially considering "surrender" carries certain well-known connotations on "Troubles"-related articles. User:Domer48 left a message stating that R. fiend was reported to WP:AN3 for revert-warring.[50] R. fiend then blanked it with the summary, "whoop-de-fucking-doo".[51]

In summary, I did not want this issue to reach the ArbCom stage. All I wanted was R. fiend to commit to the "desired outcome" of the RfC; that he refrain from using the tools in an abusive manner, especially on articles/editors with which he was involved. He refused to sign up to these , noting that it's more expedient that he do these things himself, rather than call in a neutral admin, or use {{editprotected}} or whatever. So long as (he feels) another admin would produce the same result, that made it okay. He sees little wrong in what he has been doing here.

Addendum

Can the Arbitration Committee make a clear statement regarding the block of User:Ed Poor, carried out by R. fiend? As Ed Poor is on parole, it would help him greatly if ArbCom could officially have the block struck from his record as it reflects badly upon his parole history. Thanks - Alison ❤ 20:15, 11 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by R. fiend

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First off, I want to say that the recent spate of free time I've recently had that has allowed to me spent large amounts of time to editing and discussions at Wikipedia is drawing to a close, so I won't be able to devote as much time to this as I have to other things recently, nor will I be editing as regularly in general, for reasons not associated with AN/I, RfC or Arbcom.

Basically, I just want to say this. At the RfC, I clearly stated that I would refrain from obnoxious comments, show more restraint in article protection, and be more careful when blocking people. Other editors seem to have decided ahead of time that I am not going to do theses things. I just think it would make sense to put off an Arbcom until we see if they are right.

Thank you. That is all. -R. fiend (talk) 00:18, 10 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

As I have a little more time now, I'll say a couple more things here, because, again, there are some misrepresentations. First of all, the information in the Patrick Pearse article was sourced (dispute B in SirFozzies's statement). Someone just didn't like the source, thinking it was biased, so removed all information directly attributed to that source (which, incidentally, is the only available biography of the subject) as well as the source itself from the bibliography. This sort of thing has happened a couple times in the past, and I have spent hours dealing with the matter on the talk page. Some people don't like seeing any criticism of their heroes. They need to read Wikipedia guidelines on NPOV. (The article would pass WP:BLP fine, by the way.)
About Segi (D): there was an edit war going on, but I was not part of it. In the course of constant reversions, essential information (the very defining facts about Segi) was being removed. I assume it was unintentional, and that Domer was not deliberately sabotaging the article to make a point. I put it back in, but as others edit warred it was again reverted to an earlier uncorrected version. Therefore I did not consider myself a party to the dispute, just the clean up as it progressed. In any case, as I said, I intend to be more careful about blocking people in th future.
Also this sentence by SirFozzie is also quite the misrepresentation: "Throughout, R. fiend has refused to acknowledge that he had done anything wrong in most of the incidents above, stating that he thought folks were whining, and that most of his actions were fundamentally correct. He also says that he is a self-admitted 'Snide Bastard' and that folks knew what they were getting when they passed his RfA, therefore this allows his behavior."
The only incident I referred to as "whining" was the minor one that brought the original AN/I (and which SirFozzie seems to have thought to minor to even mention here). I also didn't say I was a "snide bastard", merely that I could be one at times (which is different), nor did I say anything about it allowing my behavior. I only noted that others had made that observation, and that it in and of itself was apparently not seen by the community to be worth declining an RfA.
I also think SirFozzie should question his use of the term "irate."
Again, despite multiple assertions that nothing has been accomplished, and given the fact I've stated improvements that I will make, and the fact that I have made no objectionable actions (as far as I know) since the AN/I, I have to wonder if this is the best use of everyone's time. I'm sure if I am seen to be abusing admin powers in the future there will be no hesitation on the part of several people to bring it to Arbcom then. -R. fiend (talk) 18:07, 10 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Preliminary decisions

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Arbitrators' opinions on hearing this matter (6/0/0/0)

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Temporary injunction

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1) R. fiend, the subject of this case, has indicated that he will resign as an administrator, thereby resolving the main issue raised by this case, if the case will then be closed. Accordingly, this case is suspended for a period of 72 hours from the adoption of this motion. If R. fiend is voluntarily desysopped during that period, this case will be automatically closed without need for a further motion or proceedings and with the following determination:

Because R. fiend (talk · contribs), the subject of this case, has resigned his adminship, this case is closed. If R. fiend wishes to seek administrator status again in the future, he may do so only through a new request for adminship. The Arbitration Committee finds that R. fiend's unexplained block of Ed Poor on October 1, 2007 was unjustified. An arbitrator will make an appropriate notation in Ed Poor's block log reflecting this determination.

If R. fiend does not resign his adminship within 72 hours after this motion is adopted, the case will resume and this motion will have no further effect.

Passed 7 to 0 at 22:39, 13 January 2008 (UTC).

Final decision

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Because R. fiend (talk · contribs), the subject of this case, has resigned his adminship, this case is closed. If R. fiend wishes to seek administrator status again in the future, he may do so only through a new request for adminship. The Arbitration Committee finds that R. fiend's unexplained block of Ed Poor on October 1, 2007 was unjustified. An arbitrator will make an appropriate notation in Ed Poor's block log reflecting this determination.

Passed 8 to 0 at 22:30, 14 January 2008 (UTC).


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