Hi Ivanvector. Hope the bees are well? Or perhaps that the infestation of them has cleared up? Whichever one is the reason for your absense, in any case. :)
I hope you'll forgive the presumption, but I'm in need of some advice which, in light of this situation, you may be uniquely situated to provide (or your talk page stalkers, if they are so inclined). Please do, of course, feel free to ignore this request if you'd rather not get into it; and in any case, please do not let it disturb whatever hopefully pleasurable activities are currently keeping you away from Wikipedia. No hurry, and no crisis; just a request for advice for if you're inclined and when it suits.
In any case, this is about the situation referenced above: a couple of IPs, and two redlinked user page + low edit count editors, who removed the—long-stable and cited to high-quality sources—section on Feminist literary criticism from The Tempest. When I requested page protection (extended-confirmed) you, at least initially, read the situation as a run of the mill content dispute, rather than vandalism, which by implication would make my reverts of them edit warring.
Now, I realise that parachuting into a situation like that, and trying to deal with it as one of a giant backlog of issues requiring administrator assistance, it is very hard to absorb all aspects of an issue and its full context, and you must necessarily act as best you can under the circumstances. Normally I would have just chalked it up to that and forgot about it. However, I've recently, in a completely unrelated situation, been directly accused of edit warring. That situation was in that gray area between BRD and 3RR, so I initially dismissed the specific accusations (not the general disagreement) as heightened rhetoric in a somewhat contentious discussion.
But when three long time editors—including an administrator and a former arbitrator—either implicitly or directly, and in two different situations, accuse me of edit-warring… Well, lets just say I start to seriously question my judgement on the issue!
Meanwhile, I'm trying to keep my eye on the 1500-ish Shakespeare articles (more eyes always welcome there!), where I routinely observe edits like these: , , and . It never occurred to me to keep track of these (any more than any other vandalism on these articles), and I'm not sure how to search for them (can one search for the "Section removal" edit filter across a set of articles?), but there have been enough of these over at least the last two years that I've noted it as a specific trend to keep an eye out for. Previously I have routinely reverted these as clear and obvious vandalism, and though rarely relevant, have never considered WP:3RR (much less WP:EW) remotely relevant.
Now I hesitate and agonise over whether I should revert this.
The section has been stable since at least 2012. It's cited to journal articles in Shakespeare Quarterly, Women's Studies, and a monograph by Georg Brandes. Like everything on Wikipedia it can, of course, be improved; but this is still way above the average article section on Wikipedia. Let's say, by analogy, that it'd probably pass at WP:GAN just fine, but wouldn't quite meet the criteria at WP:FAC. And I'm only talking about WP:V and WP:RS here, not the actual content (on whose level of quality I have very little opinion just now, without studying up on it).
Surely, surely, there is no policy, or even guideline, that places the burden on me to gain consensus on the talk page to keep this section in the article? Surely section blanking can safely be presumed to be vandalism absent specific indications to the contrary? Surely even spurious rationales in the edit summary, as was the case on The Tempest, can be ignored in these cases if the editor in question has been asked to bring their concerns to the article's talk page?
For the life of me, I cannot reconcile these with constructive editing; and thus I cannot see what other way it would make sense for me to deal with them other than to revert them on sight, ignoring 3RR (under the vandalism exception), and requesting temporary semi- or extended confirmed protection when they persist. And yet, in view of the signals from trusted community members referenced above, I am forced to question my judgement on this. I am unable to square my own conclusion as to what policy and common sense suggests as the right way to handle these, with the censure from respected members of the community.
In any case… My philosophical crisis is certainly not your problem, and no manner or form of criticism of your handling of the RFPP is intended! Do, please, feel free to ignore this request entirely (I really won't be offended in any way!). It's just that since you read that situation so differently from me, and since, as an administrator, you have a lot of experience with such situations, and the application and applicability of the relevant policies, your advice on this issue would be very helpful.
PS. Oh, and I mean the general issue. The specific instances I've linked will sort themselves out one way or another eventually.
PPS. Sorry about the wall of text. I couldn't figure out any way to make it shorter. My bad!
Cheers, --Xover (talk) 09:18, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
- Hi Xover, thanks for your notes. I'm using an alt account because I'm on a computer I'm not sure is secure, but I wanted to address your comments. I'm not sure which other instance you're referring to, so these are mostly general comments.
- On The Tempest, I did look into the history of the dispute and the editor removing the section, and my read is that they are a single purpose editor bent on removing feminist critique sections from articles on Shakespearean literature in particular. But our policy narrowly defines vandalism as editing clearly intended to damage the encyclopedia, not just editing with a difference of opinion. My take on the situation was that an editor with an opinion that the feminist aspect is irrelevant to encyclopedic coverage of Shakespeare was asserting their opinion, and so I treated this as a content dispute. I am certainly not meaning to endorse that opinion.
- Admins are supposed to use tools like blocks and protection to stop or prevent disruption, and different situations call for different actions. I observed that the editor was repeatedly blanking a section and declining to discuss, but since it didn't seem like anyone else was inclined to discuss either, it seemed to me like protecting the page was the best way to get people to start talking and move towards a resolution. But nobody did, which I found unfortunate. When the editor reverted again as soon as protection expired, it was clear to me they were going to continue disruptively edit-warring to their preferred version, which is tendentious, so I blocked them. From the diffs you've provided I now suspect they evaded that block by logging out and editing on this IP range, which I especially dislike, and I'll be looking into that further when I'm back on my main account.
- As for discussing the removal of content that has been stable for years, our guideline is bold, revert, discuss; my supplemental opinion is that when you find yourself stuck on step 2 you're edit warring, no matter how stable your version of the content. Wikipedia is built on continuous change and revisiting of opinions, and although it can be frustrating we owe some consideration to new editors with different opinions to consider their good-faith points of view, as well as perhaps discuss why something is the way it is. There's a limit (see also WP:AGF is not a suicide pact) but the balance is more art than science.
- I've run short of time so I'll have to follow up on this later, but I hope this provides some insight at least. Thanks again for checking in.
- -- Ivanvector's squirrel (trees/nuts) 13:51, 31 March 2018 (UTC)
- Thanks for the explanations and advice. Much appreciated!A couple of general points first. In re
I am certainly not meaning to endorse that opinion.
I must stress that my query is not an expression that I am questioning your judgment, but rather that I am questioning mine. I'd also like to be clear that, in regards the Feminism section I didn't write that section; I have no particular attachment to that section; do not believe it is a particularly well constructed section; am not particularly interested in literary criticism in general, and struggle particularly with the feminist lens (in short, it bores me); and have as a long standing todo list item for the article to rewrite and expand that entire part of it (hopefully with assistance from someone who is interested in, or at least competent to write about, literary criticism). In short, I don't think I'm particularly prone to WP:OWN tendencies here.To the matter at hand… I see your point regarding the immediate situation. The editor in question has a registered account, with an edit history, and offered something purporting to be a rationale in their edit summaries. However, my reading of WP:VANDALISM is that it addresses the actions of this editor directly: Removing encyclopedic content without any reason [is vandalism]. Content removal is not considered to be vandalism when the reason for the removal of the content is readily apparent by examination of the content itself, or where a non-frivolous explanation for the removal of apparently legitimate content is provided, linked to, or referenced in an edit summary.
The relevant section's stability (which implies silent consensus), high-quality sourcing, and relative NPOV and prose quality exclude the clause about the content being a readily apparent reason for removal.Which leaves the judgement of the relative frivolity of the edit summaries. I had considered them obviously trolling, and an attempt to hide the vandalism, but I see that a case can be made that they are logically valid if one presumes that the editor in question actually holds those views. Removing section irrelevant to the main subject; fringe opinion (also possible OR)
; Removing content as per WP:FRINGE
; "Feminist Critique" being promulgated as valid. Zero justification given on why the feminist lens, as opposed to an equally arbitrary 'inanimate objects lens', should be given a platform.
I do, however, have trouble accepting that these reflect an honestly held opinion. And that, as best I can tell, is the crux of WP:VANDALISM: Assess whether the edit was made in good or bad faith. If in good faith, it is not vandalism […]. If it is in bad faith, then it is vandalism and you may take the appropriate steps to remove it.
No matter what opinions one may hold personally, nobody can be under the misapprehension that Wikipedia (or society in general) considers feminist literary criticism to not be a valid form of criticism, that it is a fringe theory, or that a comparison to a hypothetical "inanimate objects lens" is valid. To me this is a clear indication that the edits were made in bad faith, and thus that WP:VANDALISM applies.I will have to reflect more on this, and on your point about SPA vs. VANDAL.However, let me also provide a further bit of context (in slightly jumbled order; sorry): This is just from the four first articles I thought of that have a section that addresses feminst criticism, and only those edits which show in the edit history as "Section blanking" (you'll note that the edits by the editor discussed above do not show with that tag, despite removing an entire section). I see this kind of edit on my watchlist (about 1500 Shakespeare-related articles) often enough that I've noticed it as a pattern (but I wouldn't want to try to quantify whether the above set represents 99% or 1% of the total: I just haven't been watching that specifically until this latest incident). And it goes all the way back to at least 2009 (when, perhaps, auto summaries and tags were introduced?). This certainly colors my abiility to assume good faith in terms of assessing relevant edits against WP:VANDALISM.Finally, if you'll be looking into possible WP:EVADE issues, you may want to look at the various IPs involved on relevant edits to The Tempest since 20 February; and in particular the account Arnol Chuarseneger (is that against the username policy btw?). As I mentioned initially, I have an itch that these all reflect either socking or off-wiki coordination (or both, of course), but I don't have anything concrete enough that it would be actionable. If that's the case then there's a VPN or proxy or something involved.In any case, thank you so much for taking the time to respond! You've made some points I hadn't considered, or not considered in sufficient depth. I will have to reflect more on this. As you see from my reasoning above, I am not, yet, entirely convinced; but I do now, at least, see the reasoning behind what previously appeared somewhat illogical. So thanks again, and again apologies for, it appears, being utterly unable to be brief. :) --Xover (talk) 10:45, 1 April 2018 (UTC)