WP:ARC

Requests for arbitration

Request name	Motions	Initiated	Votes
'Incel' Article Ownership and Neutrality Dispute		7 September 2018	0/9/0

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Open cases

Case name	Links	Evidence due	Prop. Dec. due
Indian military history	(t) (ev / t) (ws / t) (pd / t)	08 Jun 2025	22 Jun 2025

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Clarification and Amendment requests

Request name	Motions	Case	Posted
Amendment request: Arbitration motion regarding Ritchie333 and Praxidicae	Motion	none	20 May 2025
Amendment request: Venezuelan politics	none	(orig. case)	12 June 2025

Arbitrator motions

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'Incel' Article Ownership and Neutrality Dispute

Initiated by Willwill0415 (talk) at 17:18, 7 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Involved parties

Willwill0415 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log), filing party
GorillaWarfare (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)
Jorm (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Confirmation that all parties are aware of the request

Confirmation that other steps in dispute resolution have been tried

Statement by Willwill0415

GorillaWarfare, an admin, against wikipedia conduct policy [1] has assumed ownership of the controversial 'incel' article when no one is supposed to do so. Vigorously reverting my own edits, or thylacloop5, or Amin, and a bunch of other uncoordinated registered editors. She has written/tone-policed (ownership) most of the content after the Minassian attack and along with Jorm, another veteran, have been reverting along WP:Tendentious_editing#Righting_great_wrongs lines for months, holding people to standards not held to herself, monitoring every edit implicitly assuming responsibility for the current article, and not allowing most editors to edit beyond simple or small changes.

[2] GorillaWarfare doesn't allow 'sympathy for the incel' because it's based on a positive opinion of incels, but allows in the current article: "Incels Want Gender Terrorism, Not Sex", [3], "Self-hating 'incel' men are the new jihadists", "The internet is enabling a community of men who want to kill women. They need to be stopped", "Unfuckable' Women Don't Go on Killing Sprees" , "We must try to understand how unwanted virginity leads self-hating incels to murder", "Hating Women Was His Disease"", "A Toxic 'Brotherhood': Inside Incels' Dark Online World", etc etc which are equally opinion based in the title and contents

[4] doesn't want a sourced sentence about the incel murder rate being rare, taking the same WP:Tendentious_editing#Righting_great_wrongs, another agressive reverter Jorm does [5] "I don't think that anyone is "involuntarily celibate". It's a stupid term made up to allow dudes who have no interest in developing any game to foist the blame for their failures onto other people. I normally wouldn't give a shit, but it so happens that the echo chamber they created allows for the worst parts of our world to fester so what would normally be considered a bunch of whiny misogynists have become murderous misogynists. And I won't let them whitewash that away"

[6] Uses Georgia U study aka the "Donnnolly Study" the first academic study to use "involuntary celibacy" as a sociological term, but has [7] deleted it whenever I used it in the past citing it as a bad study [8]

[9] and https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Incel&type=revision&diff=850938983&oldid=850938431] Gorilla says people in the 'murder' subsection must self-identify as incel, Cruz and Harper-Mercer are currently listed but don't explicitly self-identify either

[10] Removes sourced sentence that says involuntarily celibates don't believe involuntary celibacy is an ideology, because of an ideology "blackpill" some incels have

[11] dating op-eds are not ok, but activist op-eds about incels from biased journalists after the Minassian attack are fine

[12] removes sentence because it references an opinion piece, but same opinion piece is now back in 3 times

I can't link all the diffs cuz of word limit Thanks!

Statement by GorillaWarfare

Well, this is unexpected. I warned Willwill0415 that I would request he be topic banned from the page and this is apparently how he decided to respond. As others have said, this is clearly premature. Take it to NPOV or ANI if you want, I'll happily participate in those discussions. If the arbitrators want me to actually refute the "evidence" Willwill0415 has provided, or provide my own, I'll do so, but I don't want to waste time on a case that's not going to be accepted. GorillaWarfare (talk) 20:21, 7 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Softlavender: Agreed. I already warned him I would start a discussion about a topic ban, which I think is what led him to requesting this case. It seems ill-timed to open a discussion about that while this case request is open, but once it's sorted I plan to discuss it somewhere more suitable—either as part of a discussion if he brings this to ANI next, or one of my own. GorillaWarfare (talk) 02:56, 8 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Thylacoop5: Thank you, that's very kind :) GorillaWarfare (talk) 07:46, 8 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Jorm

Willwill0415 is a single purpose account who is frustrated by Wikipedia's rules about sourcing, language, and general readability. They make few (if any) good edits. I do not believe they are here to improve the encyclopedia.

By opening this case, they've just ratcheted up their disruption. This case should be closed with no action.

Barring requests from the committee, I am not going to respond any further.--Jorm (talk) 17:27, 7 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Gamaliel

This is the stupidest waste of time imaginable, so I'm sure that ArbCom will immediately take this case and sanction everyone except the editor who wasted everyone's time by bringing it. Gamaliel (talk) 17:51, 7 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by GRuban

GW has been quite good about politely and thoroughly discussing issues on the article talk page, giving reasons, citing policy and guidelines, and at times agreeing when convinced. The linked diffs sections show disagreements, but the "dispute resolution" links are the most telling. Just look at them, they clearly show that her edits represent talk page consensus. I recommend against opening the case, as I'm pretty sure that's exactly what the conclusion will be. --GRuban (talk) 18:05, 7 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Beyond My Ken

Not ripe for arbitration. I urge the Committee to reject the case request. Beyond My Ken (talk)

Statement by power~enwiki

The filer Willwill0415 has less than 500 edits, and more than half of their edits are to Talk:Incel. This is clearly not the right forum for their concerns as stated; perhaps WP:NPOV/N would be relevant. power~enwiki (π, ν) 18:14, 7 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Beeblebrox

I don’t think you need to wait for GW to make a statement here, as a former arb she can see as well as you all can that this case request is grossly premature. Just reject it. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:30, 7 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by MjolnirPants

I've seen this dispute, and it seems very largely to be a WP:1AM situation. If other editors supported using the sources the OP provided (Yes, this is a content dispute), I haven't seen it. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 19:51, 7 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Thylacoop5

I should disclose that in late May I also argued that GW was assuming ownership of the page (diff). In part, what prompted that notice was a talk page comment wherein GW was ~~outed herself as an anti-incel activist by~~ describing being incel as an "extreme ideology" and seeks to delegitimize the term "incel". I can't remember the more immediate action that prompted that notice though. Thylacoop5 (talk) 21:54, 7 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

After GW pinged me I thought I should clarify my comment since it could be misconstrued; i meant to add "perceived" or something. I enjoy working with GW and she has taught me a lot about how to edit Wikipedia - sort of like a mentor. Thylacoop5 (talk) 07:39, 8 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Robert McClenon

I have, in general, thought that ArbCom should accept more cases than it does, because I may have a lower standard of when an issue has exhausted the ability of the community to deal with it than some editors. I tend to think that, after two or three trips to WP:ANI on a topic, the community should deal with the problem, whether by a site ban, a topic ban, general sanctions, or what. Failure to address the problem after the second or third trip indicates that the problem is divisive and calls for a quasi-judicial approach. That is my perspective. However, in this case, I don’t see any trips to WP:ANI at all. The filing party hasn’t gone to ANI, perhaps just as wisely because they might get a boomerang, but they haven’t tried to get the community to deal with the problem (regardless of whether the problem is Gorilla Warfare or Willwill0415.

I see that in the past Willwill0415 made some non-neutral edits to the article which were reverted. More recently Willwill0415 has mostly just been soapboxing on the article talk page, and Gorilla Warfare has been a voice of reason. I disagree with the statement that this is a content dispute, because it has become a conduct dispute due to the soapboxing, but it is a conduct dispute that hasn’t yet gone to ANI.

The filing party has not tried other methods of dispute resolution. The question for the ArbCom is whether simply to decline the case, possibly with warnings from individual arbitrators, or to decline the case with a formal warning. Robert McClenon (talk) 22:44, 7 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Softlavender

This issue is obviously not appropriate for an ArbCom case, but it does bring to light that the filer is an SPA focused solely on Incel. If he is being disruptive, then I agree he needs to be topic-banned. If the disruption continues, I suggest that someone take the issue to ANI. He does not seem to be here to build an encyclopedia. -- Softlavender (talk) 01:56, 8 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by {Non-party}

Other editors are free to make relevant comments on this request as necessary. Comments here should address why or why not the Committee should accept the case request or provide additional information.

'Incel' Article Ownership and Neutrality Dispute: Clerk notes

This area is used for notes by the clerks (including clerk recusals).

'Incel' Article Ownership and Neutrality Dispute: Arbitrators' opinion on hearing this matter <0/9/0>

Vote key: (Accept/decline/recuse)

I will wait to hear from GorillaWarfare and comments by the community, but by early assessment, none of the steps provided are particularly good examples indicated exhaustion of dispute resolution. Additionally, ArbCom does not decide on matters of content and I am seeing very little evidence that the filing party has pursued reporting the editor for any misconduct at the appropriate venue, nor any indication that the community has not been able to resolve the issue, thereby requiring ArbCom's involvement as a measure of last resort. Mkdw ^talk 17:34, 7 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- Decline for the reasons stated above. Mkdw ^talk 20:57, 7 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
If this is a conduct matter, it hasn't gone to the community yet at ANI or any other relevant noticeboard. If this is a content matter, then we don't have any jurisdiction. Either way, decline. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 17:39, 7 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Decline This is a clear content dispute, and it hasn't gone to the community yet, much less any other avenues of resolution. RickinBaltimore (talk) 17:58, 7 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Decline Dispute has not left the talkpage. If it's that bad, use a noticeboard next. -- Amanda (aka DQ) 20:48, 7 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Decline as premature. No attempts at resolution on a community level appear to have been attempted yet. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 22:10, 7 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Decline - Arbcom is usually for intractable or systemic issues, for regular content disputes try regular dispute resolution first, please. -- Euryalus (talk) 00:11, 8 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Decline as premature. Opabinia regalis (talk) 03:32, 8 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Decline per Rob - either it's a content issue and thus not ours, or it's premature. Doug Weller talk 07:26, 8 September 2018 (UTC) Adding that I just looked at Thylacoop5's diff and I don't see evidence that she's an activist. Disliking a subculture, even if strongly, doesn't make one an activist. Doug Weller talk 07:29, 8 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Decline per above. Newyorkbrad (talk) 12:28, 8 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]