Connolley may be out at Wikipedia

For those who don’t know, William Connolley, a Real Climate founding contributor, has been the most prolific climate information gatekeeper at Wikipedia, and was the subject of this Lawrence Solomon article:

Wikibullies at work. The National Post exposes broad trust issues over Wikipedia climate information

Given the volume of his volunteer Wiki output, one wonders how he supports himself with regular work.

Bishop hill reports today:

A correspondent writes to tell me that Wikipedia’s Arbitration Committee are currently examining the conduct of people involved in the ongoing saga of edit wars over climate change articles. 

The allegations and counter-allegations over who did what and when can be seen here.

There has now been a draft decision issued and it looks as though, hot on the heels of losing his SysOp privileges, Dr Connolley may be up for a ban. He will be accompanied by at least one sceptic.

(As always with Wiki, please don’t get involved if you are not already)

A look at the list of grievances  is interesting, note that Lawrence Solomon’s page is in an edit war.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Climate_change/Proposed_decision

Edit warring on Climate Change related articles

6) During the course of this arbitration case, the following articles required full page protection due to edit warring. [3]

• Lawrence Solomon (10 July 2010 for one week)
• Hockey stick controversy (10 July 2010 for one week)
• The Hockey Stick Illusion, (15 July 2010 for one week, 1 August 2010 for one month)
• Christopher Monckton, 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley (21 July 2010 for one week with protection lifted on 27 July 2010 and then Indefinite full protection 27 July 2010)
• Michael E. Mann (5 August 2010 for one week)
• Robert Watson (scientist) (23 July 2010 for one week)

Four of the six articles involved in the eight edit wars are biographies of living people. Almost 30 editors were involved in the eight edit wars that resulted in these page protections; two of these editors, William M. Connolley and Marknutley, were involved in seven of eight edit wars.

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William M. Connolley previously sanctioned and desysopped

7) In the Abd-William M. Connolley arbitration case (July-September 2009), William M. Connolley was found to have misused his admin tools while involved. As a result, he lost administrator permissions, and was admonished and prohibited from interacting with User:Abd. Prior to that, he was sanctioned in Requests for arbitration/Climate change dispute (2005, revert parole) and Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Geogre-William M. Connolley (2008, restricted from administrative actions relating to Giano II). He was also the subject of RFC’s regarding his conduct: RfC 1 (2005) and RfC 2 (2008).

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William M. Connolley has been uncivil and antagonistic

8) William M. Connolley has been uncivil and antagonistic to editors within the topic area, and toward administrators enforcing the community probation. (Selection of representative examples: [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17])

This uncivil and antagonistic behaviour has included refactoring of talk page comments by other users,(examples: [18],[[19]]) to the point that he was formally prohibited from doing so. In the notice advising him that a consensus of 7 administrators had prohibited his refactoring of talk page posts, he inserted commentary within the post of the administrator leaving the notice on his talk page. [20]] For this action, he was blocked for 48 hours; had the block extended to 4 days with talk page editing disabled due to continuing insertions into the posts of other users on his talk page; had his block reset to the original conditions; then was blocked indefinitely with talk page editing disabled when he again inserted comments into the posts of others on his talk page.[21] After extensive discussion at Administrator noticeboard/Incidents, the interpretation of consensus was that the Climate Change general sanctions did not extend to the actions of editors on their own talk pages, and the block was lifted.

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William M. Connolley has shown Ownership

9) William M. Connolley is acknowledged to have expertise on the topic of climate change significantly beyond that of most Wikipedians; however, this also holds true for several other editors who regularly edit in this topic area. In this setting, User:William M. Connolley has shown an unreasonable degree of Ownership over climate-related articles and unwillingness to work in a consensus environment. (Selection of representative examples: [22] [23] [24] [25] [26] [27] [28] [29] [30] [31])

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William M. Connolley BLP violations

10) William M. Connolley has repeatedly violated the biography of living persons policy. Violations have included inserting personal information irrelevant to the subject’s notability, use of blogs as sources, inserting original research and opinion into articles, and removing reliably sourced positive comments about subjects. He has edited biographical articles of persons with whom he has off-wiki professional or personal disagreements. (Selection of representative examples: [32] [33] [34] [35] [36] [37] [38] [39] [40])

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The list of solutions that Wiki members can vote on don’t bode well for Mr. Connolley

William M. Connolley banned

3.1) User:William M. Connolley is banned from the English Wikipedia for six months for long-term violations of WP:OWN, WP:CIVIL, and WP:BLP.

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Comment:

(Please note that some of the remedy proposals here are alternatives.) Newyorkbrad (talk) 05:57, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

William M. Connolley topic-banned (Climate Change)

3.2) User:William M. Connolley is banned from all Climate Change articles, broadly construed, for one year. He may edit their talk pages. This editing restriction specifically includes modification of talk page edits made by any other user, on any talk page; in the case of posts to William M. Connolley’s user talk page, he is free to remove posts without response.

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William M. Connolley topic-banned (BLP)

4) User:William M. Connolley is banned from editing any article that is substantially the biography of a living person, where the person’s notability or the subject of the edit relates to the topic area of global warming or climate change.

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William M. Connolley restricted

5) User:William M. Connolley is subject to an editing restriction for one year. Should he make any edits which are judged by an uninvolved administrator to be uncivil remarks, personal attacks, assumptions of bad faith, or violations of WP:BLP, he may be briefly blocked, up to a week in the event of repeated violations. After 3 blocks, the maximum block shall increase to one month. This editing restriction specifically includes modification of talk page edits made by any other user, on any talk page; in the case of posts to William M. Connolley’s user talk page, he is free to remove posts without response.

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