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Comment by _louisr_ | Hacker News Reader

Everything looks good here. The biased Wikipedia editor can no longer edit pages on post-1978 British politics. The whistleblower can no longer speculate on any editor's off-wiki behaviour.

No more biased edits from the accused, and no more witch-hunting from the whistleblower.

Relevant quotes from article:

  Philip Cross is indefinitely topic banned from edits relating to post-1978
  British politics, broadly construed. This restriction may be first appealed
  after six months have elapsed, and every six months thereafter

  KalHolmann is indefinitely restricted from linking to or speculating about
  the off-wiki behavior or identity of other editors. This restriction may be
  first appealed after six months have elapsed, and every six months thereafter

Well done Wikipedia.

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> no more witch-hunting from the whistleblower.

I think the issue raised is the definition of Holmann's actions as whistleblowing or witchhunting.

If it's the latter, that would seem to imply he shouldn't have engaged in that witchhunt, in which case the ban on Philip Cross would definitely not have come to pass. Are you saying this should be the case?

If it's the former (whistleblowing), it can't be defined as witchhunting and you must agree Holmann should not be restricted.

You can only agree with one of the above and remain logically consistent.

Kalholmann didn't open the arbcom case, and they didn't provide the bulk of useful evidence. I'd say they were neither whistleblowing nor witchhunting; just producing more heat than light (sadly).

KalHolmann's post about Philip Cross' conflict of interest was posted on 18 May 2018 on the Wikipedia Administrators' noticeboard. It ended with the following proposal:

> I request that Philip Cross be topic banned from editing George Galloway and the other "goons" with whom he is at war—Matthew Gordon Banks, Craig Murray, Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed, Tim Hayward (academic), Piers Robinson, and Media Lens— all of whose Wikipedia pages Cross has frequently edited. KalHolmann (talk) 21:04, 18 May 2018 (UTC)

Five minutes after posting that, your acquintance Wikipedia admin Guy rejected it, as he'd done the previous attempt (also within minutes).

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Adminis...

As it turns out, two months later, the arbitration committee essentially ruled agreeing with his initial request (and in fact broadening the ban to all of post-1978 British politics).

So your claim that he was "producing more heat than light" is nonsensical.

Be that as it may initially; ultimately JzG relented, opened an Arbcom case, and explicitly invited KalHolmann to put forward their position.

One of KalHolmann's key actions in response was to seek to be removed from the case entirely! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests...

Do you deny that this happened? Would you put forward the position that KalHolmann changed his mind later? Or (checking the record) do you see that mostly other people took over and examined the case instead?

-- seeing your other comments, I do see some timeline issues in the above statement which I need to doublecheck.

(+edit): Ah, here's the first statement by KalHolmann on 26 may, which is a bit more ambiguous.

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Arbitra...

It could just be that KalHolmann isn't sure of their footing: It's still not the most brilliant of openings in building a case against Philip Cross of course. I was disappointed.

I can't speak for Kal, but if you examine his actions from the start (I quoted his 18 May 2018 post, which precedes the one you linked, here it is again https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Adminis...) it appears he simply wanted to notify the community of Philip Cross' conflict of interest and to suggest a topic ban to prevent Cross from editing pages of people he had a conflict of interest with. There is nothing to indicate he wanted to open an arbitration case, nor be party to one. So that all occurred because of Guy (JzG) who after blocking all of Kal's attempts to start a discussion about this, finally started one himself in which he misrepresented the issue (by making the whole dispute to be about Galloway) and falsely accused Kal of being a supporter of Galloway, among other baseless accusations.

In light of that, Kal Holmann's statement which you linked above makes perfect sense. He was dragged into an arbitration dispute by a Wikipedia admin (Guy/JzG) who you seem very keen to defend, and then posted a statement denying the accusations levelled against him. Wikipedia arbitrators end up punishing Kal but say not a word about Guy/JzG's actions.

Well, if Philip Cross's alleged conflict of interest were to be examined and dealt with, ultimately it would need to be looked at by the arbitration committee. Once you understand that, other things start falling into place.

JzG changed tack because I poked them and pointed them at your story.

JzG went back to admin's noticeboard to gather further input, and people confirmed that an Arbcom case would indeed have merit.

At that point, the Arbcom case became inevitable.

Now, as an honorable human being, you can't go and start something, and then when it happens turn around and get cold feet.

I'm a bit disappointed in KalHolmann because they ran away when things Got Interesting.

I'm also disappointed in you because your stories turned out to actually not be as well researched as they seemed at first blush.

I now regret my own part in this :-/

> Well, if Philip Cross's alleged conflict of interest were to be examined and dealt with, ultimately it would need to be looked at by the arbitration committee. Once you understand that, other things start falling into place.

Not true. The community is more than able to reach a decision without arbitrators. As was done when they voted to topic ban him from George Galloway.

> JzG changed tack because I poked them and pointed them at your story.

That doesn't excuse or explain his shutting down of Kal Holmann's initial report of conflict of interest - there was plenty in there deserving of discussion whether one looked at our story or not. And part of Guy/JzG's 'changing tack' was to misrepresent the issue by making it out to be a dispute mainly between Philip Cross and George Galloway, confusing other editors in the process. Something that the arbitrators also failed to comment on in their decision, but appeared to be aware of because they re-titled his arbitration case from "George Galloway" to "BLP issues on British politics articles" and later expanded the scope of the ban even more to "post-1978 British politics". Quite a jump from Guy's preferred focus of just Geroge Galloway.

> Now, as an honorable human being, you can't go and start something, and then when it happens turn around and get cold feet.

You're not making sense. Earlier you wrote "KalHolmann...was also not the person who brought the arbitration case." So why are you now saying he started it and then got cold feet?

The fact is he didn't start it. Guy/JzG requested it and dragged him into it with false accusations. I started to participate in the evidence phase of the arbitration case myself and was alarmed at the way the arbitrators were treating Kal so I withdrew too. The rest of the evidence we published on our own site. I won't rehash what I've already said in my other replies to you here regarding this, they're easy enought to find. You seem determined to misrepresent this story without providing any useful evidence. Bit rich to be accusing us of "cherry picking".

The wikipedia community disagreed with you there. The consensus was in favor of sending this to the arbitration committee, with the topic ban being a temporary first fix. And it did go to arbcom, and arbcom did take action.

On the one hand, JzG is obviously not your yes-man; this particular person has a mind of their own and presented the case from their own perspective. That said -on balance- their behavior came out in your favor. (as is abundantly clear now that we have 20/20 hindsight)

Kalholmann was given every opportunity to set/correct the record from their own perspective, but they just didn't take it. Hence my dissapointment.

You and I are working with the same set of evidence. I guess the main difference (if even that) is that I'm not just reading the partial account on your site, but I am also reading directly from the primary source including the bits that your team have left out.

Obviously our interpretation differs. ;-)

I guess only you yourself can know whether you are deliberately spinning things; or whether you are genuinely personally convinced by the narrative that you present.

> The wikipedia community disagreed with you there. The consensus was in favor of sending this to the arbitration committee, with the topic ban being a temporary first fix. And it did go to arbcom, and arbcom did take action.

You miss the point. You wrote "if Philip Cross's alleged conflict of interest were to be examined and dealt with, ultimately it would need to be looked at by the arbitration committee." I was pointing out that that is not in fact true. The Wikipedia community can make decisions without referring everything to the arbitration committee. I wasn't expressing an opinion about whether this case should or should not have gone to the committee.

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