Talk:Universal Code of Conduct/Coordinating Committee/Cases/Arabic Wikipedia admins against the Levantine Arabic Incubator Wikipedia

Hi @Ajraddatz, I created the case. Just wondering if there is anything I need to do before it can be considered. Thank you for your guidance. TheJoyfulTentmaker (talk) 04:41, 6 November 2024 (UTC) Reply

Hi @TheJoyfulTentmaker: - can you please provide some diffs to back up assertions made in your statement where possible? Links to previous attempts at resolution for example would be useful. Once done, you can add it to the main cases page in a format similar to the other case, and send notifications to the other parties (we have a template that you can send linked on the main cases page). – Ajraddatz (talk) 02:22, 7 November 2024 (UTC) Reply

Dear U4C members,

I would like to thank you for considering my application. According to the subsection 4.2.4.2. titled "Appeal of decisions" of the U4C charter, I believe I have the right to appeal this decision. I would like to provide additional evidence and arguments demonstrating that my case was valid, that my actions did not violate any local guideline, and that there was no prior local community consensus justifying the admin actions I complained about. I would appreciate it if you could let me know the minimum time required before filing this appeal and the procedure for doing so.

Sincerely, TheJoyfulTentmaker (talk) 21:42, 15 November 2024 (UTC) Reply

We will discuss the answer to "I would appreciate it if you could let me know the minimum time required before filing this appeal and the procedure for doing so." and let you know. Barkeep49 (talk) 05:06, 16 November 2024 (UTC) Reply

Thank you, @Barkeep49. Please consider the following only if it helps to determine the time period needed.

• A mistake that I made in my original filing is that in the proposed solution I asked for acknowledgement of past UCoC violations. I take that back, since the interpretation of UCoC was not clear to anyone until recently. I believe it is sufficient if we could align on the fact that, at least some of the examples I shared would constitute violation in the future if repeated.
• Contrary to what was suggested, I never insisted on anyone to work on the Levantine Wikipedia after they said no, or after they did not respond to my collaboration invite.
• The composition of the Arabic Wikipedia community is much more diverse than some tend to believe, and the community is not uniformly against the Levantine Wikipedia. Here is one example where a user I initially tried to contact on ArWiki shows interest and their response implies that they did not appreciate the User Talk message intended for them being deleted by an admin against their will.
• Please understand that Levantine Arabic is an important part of my Wikimedia identity, even if I don't speak the language yet. It is my ancestral mother tongue and a language commonly spoken in the environment I grew up. So it makes me sad when people simply do not understand that or does not respect that and modify my user page in a way to suppress the expression of this identity, which unfortunately happened again after the U4C decision.

TheJoyfulTentmaker (talk) 06:37, 16 November 2024 (UTC) Reply

What new evidence do you have for your potential appeal? --Ghilt (talk) 11:03, 16 November 2024 (UTC) Reply

Before I start, I would like to state that Ibrahim's feedback is very well received and I acknowledge that my own conduct on the grant talk pages was not appropriate. While UCoC concerns are legitimate subjects for grant discussions, I should have been much more careful since those were one-sided allegations and it was a mistake to reference an ongoing open case filed by me. I will not repeat this in the future.

Now, I would like to add some new evidence that I did not present in the case in bullet points.

• Regarding Barkeep49's initial question "I think Arabic Wikipedia can form a consensus against "promoting" incubator projects in general or Arabic incubator projects specifically. Does this consensus exist? If not, I would like to understand the policy reasons for admin actions here." I believe no such consensus exists and a strong indicator for that is that incubator templates are on at least 50 main space articles on the Arabic Wikipedia. These are small invitation boxes to these incubator projects, including the Levantine Wikipedia, and none of these are placed by me. They are placed by other ArWiki community members, suggesting that the community had no such consensus against placing these kinds of invitations. This clearly shows that Wikimedia Incubator is a considered a legitimate sister platform of Wikipedia, and deserves the same treatment as WikiData, Commons, WikiSource, etc.
• Regarding the flexibility of what can be put on user pages: an admin shares external links to their accounts on multiple off-Wikimedia platforms, such as YouTube. On the other hand, a link to my own userpage that I created on Wikimedia Meta was removed and considered a violation, very recently, after the U4C ruling.
• The raw text on my user profile was recently modified by an admin from "... I started my journey in learning Arabic, focusing on both Classical Arabic and Levantine Arabic." to simply "..., I started my journey in learning Arabic." Please note that this has nothing to do with the Levantine Wikipedia, and this redaction was done without my consent. I believe this is as a result of the interpretation of the U4C ruling in a way that it was not intended. I also state that Levantine Arabic is an important component of my Wikimedia identity, so the modification is not well-received by me.
• Regarding local canvassing guideline: I believe there is a big misunderstanding. That guideline is about unfairly influencing decisions. I would like to re-emphasize that there is no pending decision about the Levantine Arabic Wikipedia. It is already determined to be eligible by the Language Committee, since it satisfies the Language Proposal Policy. So I believe there is nothing in my behavior that would violate that guideline. All I am trying to do is find more people who can collaborate on the test wiki, especially people with the language skills. After we believe the test wiki is close to be launched, it is going to be examined by the language experts with respect to the quality of the articles, and a decision will be made mostly in light of that expert opinion.
• User SarahFossil's response that I shared above is a good indicator that there is no consensus in the Arabic Wikipedia community about censoring all mentions of Levantine Wikipedia. I believe many community members are completely okay to talk about it (without being excessive, obviously, which is valid for any subject.) One other evidence in this direction is that a very experienced community member and admine Michel Bakni had started this page. They made it very clear that they are against the project, but I think it is also clear that they are not against talking about it.

I may add more items as I come across them. Thanks again for consideration. TheJoyfulTentmaker (talk) 13:47, 16 November 2024 (UTC) Reply

@TheJoyfulTentmaker: there is a local rule on canvassing and local admins decide on when something counts as canvassing.

• First of all, there is no equality in wrongdoing. This means, if other people did something wrong and nobody corrected it, you do not obtain a right to do that thing as well. Quite the contrary: You might obtain a right to get the wrongdoings corrected, but not a right to do similar wrongdoing yourself.
• The next point: have you appealed the admin decisions locally yet?
• The new evidence you presented is imo not relevant to your case. Especially, i do not see "their response implies that they did not appreciate the User Talk message intended for them being deleted by an admin against their will" in the link you provided from SarahFossil. --Ghilt (talk) 15:20, 16 November 2024 (UTC) Reply

Thanks, @Ghilt, this is very helpful feedback. Regarding equality of wrongdoings, I totally agree with you. However, I have to clarify that when I took those actions I personally was completely confident that there was a systemic violation and thought that it was the right thing to notify the grant evaluators. In retrospect, I clearly see that not waiting for the official outcome was not acceptable, and my action was definitely not compliant with any sensible code of conduct. I apologize.

My next steps will be to appeal the admin actions locally, and update the discussion here. Thank you so much for your continued help with this situation. TheJoyfulTentmaker (talk) 22:12, 16 November 2024 (UTC) Reply

Most members have gone along with "The rule on canvassing in the Arabic language Wikipedia applies" however I don't see that resolves the issue. There would need to be more, I think, since at least some of the actions against the Joyful Tentmaker seem on their face to be mobbing, bullying and hounding and not in pursuit of the rule on ar.wiki. Certainly I am very surprised at the use of version deletion, and removal of a link to his Meta user page. I get that there can be perfectly legitimately held beliefs that new wikis can be a net negative, but this type of censorship of their very existence is (again on its face) contrary to the very ethos of the Wikimedia movement - to quote the policy 'behaviour will be founded in respect, civility, collegiality, solidarity and good citizenship.'

I would have hoped that the least response would be to congratulate a colleague on getting a new wiki to incubator stage, though a deafening silence is, I suppose, acceptable. The evidence presented would seem to warrant further investigation, especially as there is no ArbCom like entity to deal with it locally.

Rich Farmbrough . 22:02 6 January 2025 (GMT). Rich Farmbrough . 22:02 6 January 2025 (GMT). 22:02, 6 January 2025 (UTC) Reply