This is a page for working on Arbitration decisions. It provides for suggestions by Arbitrators and other users and for comment by arbitrators, the parties and others. After the analysis of /Evidence here and development of proposed principles, findings of fact, and remedies. Anyone who edits should sign all suggestions and comments. Arbitrators will place proposed items they have confidence in on /Proposed decision.

Motions and requests by the parties

Request for investigation

1) At the bottom of the npov dispute dogpile at Biological psychiatry, at the time of intervention on behalf of Cesar Tort, two of the usual suspects can be found, JFW and Midgley. There has been an ongoing, broad based campaign to stifle non-mainstream content in medical articles through aggressive wikilawyering, cascades of accusations of personal attacks, numerous articles put up for AfD, and other procedural diversions. These actions have been chronicled (in lieu of pursuing onerous procedurual remedies that favor large, entrenched cabals) by several editors targeted by editors encumbered with their own conventional medicine conflict of interest issues. Among the editors who have had these chronicles attacked vociferously are Whaleto, Leifern, and 86.10.231.219. Other editors, feeling outnumbered, have simply left the Wiki out of frustration with the behavior, and that only compounds the problems associated with trying to keep a relatively flat playing field with a balanced complement of editors for the sake of creating and maintaining relatively npov articles. Given that several members of the medical lobby are named, a broader investigation into their numerous and concerted procedural maneuvers, numerous aggressive reverts and deletions, etc., is requested. Ombudsman 10:23, 1 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

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My involvement in this article has been small, and in the argument around it slight. I think Ombudsman would do better to consider the subject of the RFC than to use it as anotehr chance to attack me or any other doctors around, but I suppose that to be his privilege and choice. User:Whaleto and his polemical website whale.to and 86.10.231.219 (who insists on representing himself as if a logged in user "The Invisible Anon" in his signature) are the subjects of current RFCsWhaleto RFC,"The Invisible Anon" RFC. Whaleto has been blocked for incivility, 86.10.231.219 has, unusually, had the user page blanked and blocked for use of it as an attack page, and makes similar use of the talk page. Leifern has on several occasions been reminded that if he wishes to call an RFC he can do so, as has and could Ombudsman. Links to the whale.to website were the chief substance of an earlier RFC on Ombudsman. The description of activities and motives given above is incorrect, although typical of Ombudsman's postings. Midgley 12:30, 1 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ombudsman's assertion that having a medical education and Practice constitutes a conflict of interest is interesting. I do not think that a WP where the articles on Nuclear fusion may be written by anyone, provided they have no education in nuclear physics, where law is described by all but the lawyers would be as good as the present arrangement. My impression is that on the whole the articles which have been deleted after AfD needed to be, and those that have not I am persuaded had some promise of merit. Ombudsman, in common with the others he names, I do not believe have been persuaded by such community decisions, nor intend to be. An example of a user who I believe has left the Wiki out of frsutration is User:CDN99 who had produced a quantity of good edits. His given reason[1] related to the behaviour of, actually, Ombudsman et al in pushing POV through eg apparently biographical articles which consisted almost solely of a note that the person was against vaccination and the perceived ineffectiveness of the WP process in dealing with this. Midgley 12:30, 1 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ombudsman cannot resist the temptation to even in this comment make personal attacks. His reference to conflict of interest has been a recurring theme (especially in edit summaries), and has done nothing to improve cooperation between himself and the "medical cabal" at WP:CLINMED. Ombudsman's personal "conflict of interest", of course, is a long-held bias against mainstream medicine, as evidenced by articles he created (e.g. medical resident work hours, much of which was speculative and defamatory).

I take personal responsibility for involving fellow medical editors in scrutinising Ombudsman's many forked articles with respect to the vaccine controversy. In my mind, he has been using Wikipedia as a soapbox, insisting that individual researchers adhering to "alternative theories" deserve their own Wiki biographies (e.g. Mark Geier, Boyd Haley, Dan Olmsted etc).

I have cooperated with Leifern on various issues, and we have corresponded about the merits of autism treatments; I never edit warred with Leifern and do not plan doing so. I have indeed discussed with 86.10.231.219, usually in a civil tone whenever possible, and do not recognise myself in the characterisations made by Ombudsman. My disagreements with John Whaleto are well known, and this editor is presently the subject of an RFC.

I am outraged by Ombudsman's insinuation that I am paid by the drug industry to edit Wikipedia[2]. This is a complete violation of "assume good faith". Like Midgley I lament the departure of CDN99 specifically in reaction to the deafening crossfire. JFW | T@lk 23:07, 3 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by others:

I renamed this from the vague "Template" to "Request for investigation". Having said that, the arbcom doesn't investigate. It expects you to present evidence. If you don't, it won't bother examining your claims. Johnleemk | Talk 10:56, 1 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Some of the evidence available to you is laid out on user pages and subpages by three of the editors named above. In any case, much of the evidence has been deleted by way of page deletions, including pages chronicling bad behavior by majority groups. As a semi-formal but alternative dispute resolution body, and because of the flexibility inherently necessary for dealing with seasoned Wikilawyers is plainly codified (Wikipedia doesn't have firm rules), certainly the arbcom has the necessary latitude to apply common sense if it recognizes the systemic problems presented by the growing medical lobby. Such problems of scale are becoming more common, wherein groups gang up on new editors like Cesar, all the while speaking in Wikilawyerese to avoid sanctions themselves. In fact, Cesar's avoidance of engaging in the dispute is quite interesting, in that a lack of response to the threatening spectre of abitration was used as an excuse to go ahead with this process. Better still, take a look at the powerful trauma model article he wrote, it debunks much of the biological psychiatry article's current Pollyanna pov. It is powerful evidence in and of itself, as it presents knowledge that the arbcom should keep in mind when examining the behavior of rogue gangs, and for why the pov tag is still needed for the biological psychiatry article. Too, it speaks directly to how editors, especially new editors that are descended upon en mass, tend to view perceived threats, especially coming from the relatively articulate medical lobby, or when simply having to deal with the behavior chronicled by Whale.to, Leifern, and 86.10.231.219. Ombudsman 12:03, 1 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Cesar seems a decent chap, easy enough to work with, who found that there was a consensus, he was not part of it, and agreed to disagree rather than waste anyone's time. I have no recollection (and no desire to go looking for) any suggestion by him that he even thought that people who disagreed with him were therefore bad people, or that there was a conspiracy against him, or that the Real Trouble was other people ganging up on him. I'd suggest to the ArbCom that if there is any need for any comment on him at this point it is no more than noting that he should continue to accept the concensus view on that specific article, and I'm not convinced there is any need for that since he has accepted it. Ombudsman's comments above are a bit like his articles - no actual facts, lots of assertions, and when you dig at them mostly wrong and presenting his own POV. Whale.to's chronicles, when referred to on ANI earlier today, were regarded as something to call RFAR on. An example would be that if one types "Wikipedia Midgley" into Google, today we find on the first page below a few notes about the genuinely notable philosopher Mary Midgley, "Midgley has been on Wikipedia a short time, but has a consistent record of personal attacks, borderline vandalism, malicious sockpuppetry and impersonation. ... www.whale.to/vaccines/midgley_h.html - 20k" It isn't true, and it is a personal attack prosecuted by use of a personal website outside WP and a website moreover that Ombudsman has been active in trying to use as a WP source despite it being unqualified under every point of WP:RS and WP:EL. It belongs, obviously, to [User:Whaleto]] who presents himself as "John" and has a long history of abuse of doctors in Usenet medical and health lists. The comment reported was I think Leifern's, made as an irrelevant ad hominem in an AfD discussion. It is untrue, although Leifern like Ombudsman and 86.10.231.219 has the habit of describing edits with which he disagrees as vandalism. Leifern's also persistently describes the editing I did before registering a user name - IE with an IP address, as sock-puppetry, and in fact pretty much anything I do as bad, at boring length. Ombudsman and Leifern did make a treaty to act together, but it isn't obvious to me why Ombudsman has dragged him into what is on the face of it a dispute about Ombudsman's actions, berely involveing me, and not involving Leifern at all. It does tend to indicate some fixed purpose, and that purpose doesn't look like making an encyclopedia. Midgley 12:46, 1 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This is the workshop, not evidence page. Gripes about the dispute resolution process are not a matter for the arbcom to resolve. Add evidence to the evidence page, with specific links to diffs, etc. The Special:Log documents page deletions, etc., and as all the arbitrators are admins, they can view deleted pages. Just add links to the deleted pages on the evidence page. Don't use the workshop to make a vague request for investigation (the arbcom isn't a police force) and expect the arbcom to bother trawling though various pages, hunting down specifc instances of vague allegations. Johnleemk | Talk 14:06, 1 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

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1) The systemic flaws that have contributed to the problem at hand seem to stem primarily from a double standard in terms of application and enforcement of npov guidelines. Where a majority or conventional pov gang of editors descends upon an article in the role of gatekeepers, threats and intimidation often ensue. The very notion of npov depends upon covering noteworthy contrarian povs in good faith, but it is strikingly evident that gatekeepers have been ganging up to skew the eventual determination of what any given consensus might be, particularly with regard to deletionism involving medical articles. This same effect, largely attributable to a cultural conflict between the Wiki's relatively quite flat organizational structure and the growing influence of editors acculturated by rigid hierarchies in the medical community. That clash of cultures has been relatively mild thus far in comparison to the vast amount of undue influence that big pharma payola has had on the medical establishment's inherently rigid hiearchy, where systemic corruption has almost completely undermined the credibility of a number of scientific investigative bodies. This corruption, which has serious ramifications for the Wiki's npov guidelines, was reported upon last year in the April edition of Scientific American and numerous other publications, most recently in the New York Times, which reported on May 2 that "Recent disclosures of fraudulent or flawed studies in medical and scientific journals have called into question as never before the merits of their peer-review system."[3] To remedy the situation with gatekeeper gangs, perhaps a gang task force, headed up by mediators or similarly neutral parties, and/or an investigative body to look into reports of suspected or observed abuses referred by admins, who could and perhaps should be assigned mandated reporter responsibilities. Unsigned comment by Ombudsman, 04:22, 4 May 2006.

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Ombudsman clearly did not see Johnleemk's comments above. Further philosophying about other editors' motives and the delivery of further personal attacks should not be taking place on this page. JFW | T@lk 14:54, 4 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

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Note: All remedies that refer to a period of time, for example to a ban of X months or a revert parole of Y months, are to run concurrently unless otherwise stated.

Motions and requests by the parties

Request for investigation

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Proposed final decision

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Edit warring

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General discussion