User talk:Andrewjlockley: Difference between revisions

SmackBot suggestions

Hi Andrew, thanks for the note. SamckBot is run on a batch basis so most of this stuff would be difficult, however there is a COIbot that looks for autobiographical articles.

It would however be possible to tag for lack of inline citations, and maybe lack of references. Rich Farmbrough, 09:24 15 January 2009 (UTC).

Re: Editing talk comments

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January 2025

You have been blocked indefinitely from editing for contravening Wikipedia's policy against harassment.

If you believe that there are good reasons for being unblocked, please review Wikipedia's guide to appealing blocks, then add the following text to the bottom of your talk page: {{unblock|reason=Your reason here ~~~~}}.  CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 21:03, 18 January 2025 (UTC)

Unblock

This user's unblock request has been reviewed by an administrator, who declined the request. Other administrators may also review this block, but should not override the decision without good reason (see the blocking policy).

Andrewjlockley (block log • active blocks • global blocks • contribs • deleted contribs • filter log • creation log • change block settings • unblock • checkuser (log))

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Request reason:

I've already filed a manual block removal request. As has been pointed out by others (replying to @CaptainEek block announcement) this is an egregious misuse of the no-notice indeff sanction and a grossly inappropriate interpretation of WP:HARRASSMENT. The email I sent to the organisation funding @EMsmile's PR-style edits to Wikipedia didn't even mention her name or account name (Redacted). It simply asked them to stop paying to twist Wikipedia for their own PR efforts - which was unarguably the case, based on the declared association with @EMsmile and her history of inappropriate and promotional editing (discussed ad nauseum, in the same thread and on the article talk page). I simply asked an organisation - one within my field of deep, long-standing expertise - to behave itself wrt Wikipedia. To describe this as personal harassment, directed at an unknown, paid Wikipedia freelancer is a shocking misinterpretation of the truth. NB As I recall, I sent this letter before any direct dealings with @EMsmile, or even knowing her ID/association with her client. Applied generally, the implied principle would lead to a situation where nobody with a WP account can ever criticize an external organization for misusing Wikipedia. Advocating for such a situation is utterly absurd; criticizing an organisation is emphatically not harassing an (unknown) individual who is paid to do the bidding of that organization. It is simply incomprehensible that taking such an action would lead to a no-warning, permanent site ban. Andrewjlockley (talk) 12:54, 19 January 2025 (UTC)

Decline reason:

I called this out by means of letter to the employer [1]. We don't do that and it absolutely is harassment, If someone is editing in an unacceptable manner, we block them, we don't contact their employer.

You are under an indefinite block currently, not a "permanent site ban" but if you can't or won't acknowledge that what you did was out of line and utterly unacceptable, you might as well be banned because it is highly unlikely any admin will unblock you.

I think it's a real shame for an editor who has been around to go out like this, but if you did not know this wasn't acceptable, you should have. Beeblebrox ^Beebletalks 21:25, 19 January 2025 (UTC)

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If you want to make any further unblock requests, please read the guide to appealing blocks first, then use the {{unblock}} template again. If you make too many unconvincing or disruptive unblock requests, you may be prevented from editing this page until your block has expired. Do not remove this unblock review while you are blocked.

Andrewjlockley (talk) 12:54, 19 January 2025 (UTC)

I feel like I'm missing something here. Is there some kind of Wikipedia geoengineering mailing list? What group are you referring to in your email? CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 18:33, 19 January 2025 (UTC)

I put a link into this earlier but it's vanished for some reason (redacted, again)

If you can't see the text at the link, let me know and I will paste it in full

It's a research (solar geoengineering) mailing list. I think my post had 47 online views when I checked, but I can't see the people who read it in their inbox. Frank, the guy that it was addressed to, is the founder of the organisation in question. He is quite well known in our field for launching the non-use agreement - which is what the contested edits were all about

You can see I didn't mention anybody specifically and at that point I don't think I knew who the person I got blocked for harassing actually was. So, I'm seemingly being nuked for harassing someone I didn't even know existed. There could have been one person or 10 people doing this editing for Frank's org, I had no idea. I'd heard from a colleague that it was going on and that's why I wrote the letter. As far as I recall, all my dealings with the person I'm supposed to have been harassing came after the email was sent. So if that's harassment it's also time travelling harassment

To avoid any suggestion that I've subsequently been harassing this individual user, I have recused myself from voting on any possible sanction. I've only clarifying my concerns - to say that I don't care about any claims of outing me and I don't really care that she's a paid Wikipedia in residence (if that's what she is) as long as she's doing the job in a way that isn't obviously biased . So the idea that I've got some kind of beef with this person personally - or that I'm trying to hound her out of a job - is just absurd . She just needs to check her behavior and stop doing paid PR with a public resource that we all work on.

As a general point I think it's really chilling if we have a situation where we can't even discuss Wikipedia offline if we have a Wikipedia account. I don't work paid for the organisation and I don't see why I should be accountable externally for my speech- any more than I should be accountable for what I say about YouTube or Twitter. If an organisation was paying somebody to upload unacceptable content on Twitter or YouTube I would call that organization out too.

Another user put this far better than I ever could when he said in reply to your block "To be frank, this is the kind of convention that makes newcomers and outsiders think we are nuts." Andrewjlockley (talk) 21:18, 19 January 2025 (UTC)

@Beeblebrox Did you read the letter, linked below? I've got no intention of going against policy - but, as you can see from the discussion under my block notice on the ANI page, there was considerable disagreement among users about whether I had done anything wrong - so the idea that it is seen as "absolutely" being harassment is certainly not universally held - implying that harassment policy is either misapplied or vague at this point. In fact, I'm personally entirely unclear as to why specifically you think it's harassment - and that's not me being deliberately obtuse, I just don't understand what makes it harassment. As I've explained clearly below, I was not even aware of this specific person's involvement at the time I called out the organisation for its unacceptable paid-PR editing practices. Their freelancer's username or real name were not linked or mentioned in my letter. Your response implies that I grassed someone up to there to their employer because I didn't like them, or didn't like what they had done - but this is emphatically not the case. This freelancer has been hired by the org in question to mess up Wikipedia with PR spam - potentially as part of a portfolio of responsibilities. I went to speak to the organisation responsible for the decision, who are very much in my existing academic orbit. The idea that this constitutes harassing someone who has been hired to do that job is a bit of a stretch, to put in mildly. And, as I recall, I didn't actually know if it was was one person, 10 people, or nobody at all at that point (as I made clear in the letter). Please carefully read the letter below if you need more context, because I think this is all based on a massive misunderstanding of what actually happened. If your response to this is genuinely that no Wikipedia user can ever speak to any organization about the org's conduct on Wikipedia, without being nuked for harassing anybody who might be involved in that conduct, then that is tantamount to a gagging order that prevents anybody with a Wikipedia account ever discussing Wikipedia with any other organization or company. If you really genuinely believe that that isn't an egregious overreach then this policy needs to be agreed at very high level - because I'm sure that 99% of Wikipedia account holders have no idea that they are expected never to speak of the organization to any company/organisation that might be represented by any kind of freelancer or staff editor. I have certainly never signed up to any kind of gagging order, with that breath of scope. In fact, your position (if maintained) would seem to be that I am also potentially committing a civil or criminal offence if I ever discuss an organizations action on Wikipedia in this way - because such personal harassment of staff at work is likely to constitute a civil or criminal offence in many jurisdictions. That position, I can confidently say, I reject emphatically. I have never agreed that discussing Wikipedia outside the website constitutes criminal or civil personal harassment, and I absolutely would not sign any document or agree to any terms which meant that mentioning in the organisation in this way did constitute civil or criminal harassment. Andrewjlockley (talk) 23:11, 19 January 2025 (UTC)

I'm not super inclined to go through this wall of text and respond point-by-point, but I am not in any way making a legal argument. The community here has made it clear, repeatedly, that they consider contacting an editor's employer and similar acts to be harassment. This is not how Wikipedia handles these issues and never has been. Beeblebrox ^Beebletalks 23:17, 19 January 2025 (UTC)

I think there is a difference between contacting an editors employer as a method to intimidate them and contacting an organisation which is paying paying for edits to be made and asking that they try to follow the guidelines more closely. I agree that it was not a good idea and that it would have been better dealt with through the normal channels, but reading the harassment policy and the letter sent, I don't personally see how the letter linked to constitutes harassment. The letter is clearly focused on maintaining neutrality rather than attacking any particular editor. That said, I fully understand why contacting editors employers is seen as such a red line by the community and Andrew needs to understand the problem with taking disputes off-wiki. Hopefully all that is needed is for Andrew to realise that while they thought it was the right course of action, they now understand why some consider it harassment and promise not to do it again. SmartSE (talk) 00:17, 20 January 2025 (UTC)

• Yes, the link itself vanished because it got oversighted, and then oversighted again when you reposted it, because it contains the emails of private persons. At this point, I think I'm going to send this issue onto the Arbitration Committee, (and will recuse from the issue), as the Committee is best equipped to handle these kinds of issues. Regarding your comment to Beeblebrox, I'll also remind you that we have a strong no legal threats policy. CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 04:36, 20 January 2025 (UTC)

  The link I supplied is on the open web and nothing private has been posted. I don't see how anyone can appraise the situation without reading the email (in which I'm supposed to have harassed an unnamed person). For clarity, I didn't make any legal threats. It appears that an implied legal threat has been made against me, because I've been told that what I've done is harassment of a person (who was neither known nor named) - and this may constitute a criminal or civil offence in some jurisdictions. If I agree that writing to an employer who is funding non-neutral Wikipedia edits constitutes WP:HARASSMENT of the staff/freelancer making those edits, I may be admitting the commission of a criminal offence or leaving myself vulnerable to a claim for civil damages. While I now understand that Wikipedia's view of best practice is to deal with such matters internally to Wikipedia in future (although this view is plainly contested on the ANI), I do not accept that asking an external organization - one within my own academic field - to obey Wikipedia's rules constitutes harassment of any individual person on Wikipedia (particularly if that person is not named by their real name or their Wikipedia ID). As such, sanctions for WP:HARASSMENT should never have been applied or even implied. It is also unclear to me why asking an organisation to obey the rules is a breach of Wikipedia policies at all. It is no different from asking somebody not to drop litter or to turn down a noisy radio.

  Here's the body text. For brevity I didn't paste the policies summary.

  Wikipedia neutrality, NUA

  (addressed to founder)

  I'm writing in a private capacity (cc the group for transparency) regarding the SRM article on Wikipedia. This is, as you're likely aware, a globally prominent resource for informing the SRM debate.

  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_radiation_modification

  For background: I've been editor on Wikipedia for 15 to 20 years, and was highly active in setting up the original pages around geoengineering. Wikipedia is a valuable public resource, and maintaining its integrity is critical for fostering informed, unbiased discussions about contentious issues like SRM.

  I'm writing to you today because this article appears to have been heavily and inexpertly edited, raising the prominence of the SRM non-use agreement (NUA) in an inappropriate and unbalanced fashion. These edits - and the process leading to their insertion - may violate various Wikipedia policies, which I have summarised (bottom) for your convenience. I have not checked the origin of these problematic edits, but whoever made them may conceivably have had some association with the NUA.

  In response to this situation, I have today made the number of improvements to the SRM article. Among other changes, this includes removing inappropriate material from the lead, and more generally removing undue weight given to the NUA. I understand that others in our field have previously done this very same task - and yet the material has been reinserted into the article. This kind of edit war behavior - especially when in support of policy-violating edits - is a significant breach of editing protocols.

  Should you others wish to raise the profile of the organization and its campaign on Wikipedia, an appropriate way of doing this may be to create a new page describing the organisation and its campaign, in a neutral fashion. Whether you or your supporters make a new page, or edit an existing one, please ensure that both the edits and processes follow policy. Wikipedia is not the place for partisan or promotional editing.

  Thank you for your attention to this matter. Policy summaries continue below. Andrewjlockley (talk) 11:43, 20 January 2025 (UTC)

  If the editor in question was pseudonymous I wouldn't be commenting here because I wouldn't have anything new to add. However, since Andrew uses his real name and his real-world colleagues are aware of this situation, I think it is urgent that Andrew not have "sending harassing letter to another contributor's employer" attached to his name. This label has the potential to cause significant and lasting damage to a living person, and we can all see that he might actually be innocent (I for one think he is). I understand and appreciate @CaptainEek's haste, but now that you know a bit more about the situation, would you consider unblocking and/or adding a new entry to the block log with a more nuanced explanation? Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 02:46, 21 January 2025 (UTC)

  Having read the email, I agree that the underlying conduct was not quite as severe as I first imagined, and so have removed the word "harassing" from the block log. But Andrew's ANI message is exactly why he got blocked. Let's examine the issues.

  • I called this out by means of letter to the employer - not because I wanted to get EMS into trouble with the employer So he understood that this was EMsmile's employer, and that by contacting them, he could get her in trouble, and did it anyway. Boy, that sure seems like harassment (as defined by Wikipedia's internal policies) to me, even if he didn't put her name in the email, and merely alluded to a potential contributor. He wrote that email to have a chilling effect.
  • Let's stop getting bogged down in bureaucratic process and concentrate on the key point, which is whether we want Wikipedia to be edited by people who are trying to promote their employer's organization or point of view. All this talk of outing and "be kind" sea lion behaviour is a total distraction. An unrepentant admission that he didn't care about the rules or the process, and had sent the email as a wildcat action. Might I also point out that Andrew seems to have a strong point of view in this topic area, and seems to be pushing his POV, so he's not exactly going at this with clean hands.

  Saying those things at ANI was wrong, and several folks have agreed with me. If Andrew won't admit that he shouldn't have acted the way he did, then...he hasn't gotten the message. Now, I understand this is a complicated situation, so as I already said, I have sent this on to the Arbitration Committee, so that they can decide whether this is really a private evidence block or not. Insofar as Andrew has pasted a part of the email, he's left some off, and also the email addresses themselves (which may be relevant) can't be revealed. Let's give the Committee a chance to review this and see what they think. If they send it back, I'll send myself to WP:AARV and we can get some broader input. CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 03:55, 21 January 2025 (UTC)