Case Opened on 23:47, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

Case Closed on 18:08, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

Case Amended by motion on 14:32, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

Case Renamed by motion on 05:44, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Case Amended by motion on 05:32, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

Case amended by motion on 00:50, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

Case amended by motion on 23:19, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

Case amended by motion on 22:19, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

Case amended by remedy on 16:30, 20 May 2023 (UTC)

Case amended by motion on 21:15, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

Please do not edit this page directly unless you wish to become a participant in this case. (All participants are subject to Arbitration Committee decisions, and the ArbCom will consider each participant's role in the dispute.) Comments are very welcome on the Talk page, and will be read, in full. Evidence, no matter who can provide it, is very welcome at /Evidence. Evidence is more useful than comments.

Arbitrators, the parties, and other editors may suggest proposed principles, findings, and remedies at /Workshop. That page may also be used for general comments on the evidence. Arbitrators will then vote on a final decision in the case at /Proposed decision.

Once the case is closed, editors may add to the #Log of blocks and bans as needed, but closed cases should not be edited otherwise. Please raise any questions at Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration#Requests for clarification.

• Irpen (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) (initiator)
• Digwuren (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• impossible to precisely know number of Tartu-based accounts. Wikipedia:Requests for checkuser/Case/DLX and Wikipedia:Requests for checkuser/Case/Digwuren must include the legitimate users too. Exhaustive list of accounts requires the ArbCom investigation.
  • DLX (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
  • Alexia Death (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
  • Erik Jesse (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
  • 3 Löwi (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
  • Klamber (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Clerk note: Above is a listing of all users mentioned in the CheckUser requests. (DLX and Digwuren)

Digwuren (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) is a notoriously abusive POV-pusher and a fierce revert warrior with the record of gross disruption.

The case here is crystal clear. Without spending time going over details of his past disruption and block log (his last one-week block being not even a month ago) it is enough to take a look at Digwuren edits within the last 12 hours. There are a total of 93 edits.

• Of his 58 article space edits, over one half of which are purely non-content formatting changes, I still counted 18 pure reverts, most of them using popups, undo or TW, thus implying opponents' vandalism (none are actually vandalism-related)
• His talk page edits made in the same time frame include:
  1. grossly offensive entry directed at one content opponent saying: "How come that a Great Russian Patriot like yourself does not live in Russian Federation but in Canada?"
  2. accusation of stalking
  3. non-repentant resentful response to a long overdue admin warning. In response to being cautioned for an offensive talk page entry and characterizing his opponent's edits as vandalism, Digwuren wrote: "I stand by all these characterisations, and resent the accusation of incivility. Digwuren"
  4. This was soon followed by offensive accusation towards the warning admin: "It would seem that you've taken up an anti-me crusade, likely triggered by the situation at Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya. Don't you consider such WP:POINT-making contrary to Wikipedia policy? Digwuren"

Looking at the edit summaries of his reverts, one sees that he routinely accuses his opponents in vandalism and not by merely using the undo button, but specifically using the vandalism undo option in twinkle:

• To his most frequent content opponent: reverted 1 edit by Petri Krohn identified as vandalism (make sure to look what he "identifies as vandalism")
• six more of the exact same vandalism accusations of his opponent

You are welcome to dig deeper to find more of the same. After the last debacle, he promised to solicit opinions from other editors to rectify the situation. The promise earned him an unblock but he failed to deliver on his promise. He was later reminded of it by an unblocking admin and promised again to rectify the situation with no result to this day.

A devoted revert warrior, he is as of the day of this submission, Aug. 14, 2007, one step under 3RR at Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, Occupation of Estonia by Nazi Germany, and Alyosha Mirny and this is just the tip of the iceberg.

The disruption would not have reached the current level if he was not receiving a consistent encouragement and support from a small but well coordinated group of editors that feel sympathetic to his fringe POV. Judging from the past record, I believe this encouragement and support is bound to continue. What prompted me to submit this case for arbitration without further wait is the extent of disruption, meatpuppeting in edit wars, discussions of deletion, renaming or ANI, thus effectively bombing those discussions. Just today I noticed a fresh single-purpose account Ptrt (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) whose entire short activity consists of the support of Digwuren in edit wars followed by the immediate joining of the 5-edit old account to the ANI discussion, once the appearance of a new SPA was mentioned there.

The fact of multiple users editing from the Tartu University from behind firewall makes even a checkuser less than conclusive to sort out this mess. Immediate appearance of the familiar faces at any discussion, board, talk page, edit war that involves Digwuren is mind-boggling. There is also an undeniable evidence of the permanent line of the off-wiki connection among the POV-pushing (even legitimate) accounts as the coordination in synchronous revert warring, talk and board page postings is impossible to explain otherwise. Sure enough, coordinated posting will follow below.

Finally, there is an unprecedented fact of the complaint by the blocking admin that his computer faced the intrusion from Estonia-based IPs during the block period.

This is all too messy and complex for ANI and warrants a more thorough look by the ArbCom members armed with the checkuser tool and experience in dealing with POV-pushers of the most disruptive pattern. I did not even go into Digwuren's edits themselves, which are notorious for extremely blatant pattern of POV-pushing on all fronts, to save space as the ArbCom intervention is clearly warranted by the facts outlined above in their own right. I don't believe there is even a need at this stage to analyze content-wise this tsunami of POV-pushing while Digwuren's friends are to attempt circumventing the discussion of his disruption by presenting it in terms of some global content conflict. This is nothing like the much more complex in assigning faults and finding remedies Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Piotrus. The Piotrus' case involves top-notch editors from all sides dangled into their content disagreements and largely revolves around the notion of ethical conduct, also very important but much more difficult to judge or remedy. However, this case is about a clearly disallowed pattern of behavior spelled out very well in our policies and guidelines.

The mess of the egregious POV-pushing and disruption by Tartu-based accounts has got to be sorted out at last with:

1. illegitimate accounts banned
2. valid disruptive accounts placed on various paroles
3. Digwuren receiving the punishment called for by the degree of the disruption caused by him.

If ArbCom has no way of determining the illegitimate accounts, still 2 and 3 above is within its purview if it agrees that the action is needed. --Irpen

Indeed, as Martintg points out, this is a snowjob, starting from absurd accusations and misrepresentations, and ending in Bishonen's hypocritical attempt to present an RFC that she failed (on absurd premises) as suddenly valid now that it suits her cabalistic purposes. However:

• I have never edited Wikipedia using computing resources restricted to University of Tartu, nor through any firewall operated by the University. If this arbitration case is about that university, I'm irrelevant to it.

• The confirmation is bogus. Last week, exploiting the short work-week caused by August 20 falling to Monday this year, I left for a brief vacation. The first real notification of this whole RFAR was sent to me through email two days ago, and I only read it yesterday night, in a relatively inconvenient position. (I will not divulge the mail's sender's identity at this point, due to concern of bogus puppeteering accusations raising out of it. I may do so if he or she should explicitly agree, or confirm it if he or she should publically claim to have sent it.)

• The "community" reference is bogus, as pointed out by others, and apparently a case of the false consensus effect on part of Irpen.

• The "last 12 hours" section is just as bogus. First, such a period of time is far too short for any thorough analysis. Second, as should be obvious, I was relatively busy with off-Wikipedia affairs during these hours, leading to many of my edits being spelling fixes and other minorities about Soviet Union's cosmonauts. Third, dismissing "purely non-content formatting changes" belies hypocrisy on part of Irpen, as evidenced by this suggestion to his pet troll RJ CG (who, should it be relevant in any way, is currently blocked by ProhibitOnions, a completely uninvolved — and thus, presumably neutral — administrator)

• Irpen's misrepresentation of [1] as "grossly offensive", [2] as "accusation of stalking" or [3] as "offensive accusation" are patently ridiculous.

• As for non-repentance — I do not customarily repent when I'm being right. I may repent and apologise when I make a mistake, as happened in [4]. However, Petri Krohn's attempts to push his grossly incorrect — and offensive — alternative history ideas about The Holocaust to Wikipedia are clearly a deliberate attempt to violate Wikipedia's integrity; that is to say, vandalism. It is not different from a bored teenager spray-painting swastikas to synagogues, and it serves no encyclopædic purpose whatsoever.

• As for Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Digwuren, I'm still preparing material for it. I have been rushed (as it turned out, on false pretenses and completely needlessly) into one RFC/U before; I certainly don't want to make the same mistake twice. There's a lot of material to work through, and it needs thorough analysis.

• As for "devoted revert warrior" — thanks for noticing my devotion.

• As for "fringe POV", this is yet another ridiculous claim. All content I have added to Wikipedia's mainspace comes from either WP:RS or is common knowledge. This has been elaborated by other users above, so I do not go into details here. If I would, I should refer to material gathered for the above-mentioned RFC, and as mentioned above, there's quite a lot of it.

• Ptrt appears to belong to an established personality in Estonian Usenet, whose first name is probably 'Peeter'. He has mostly been active in newsgroups I haven't been in, so I don't know anything further about him; this has been gleaned from two simple Google searches.

• FayssalF's story about cyber-attacks is revolting. It is not only a ridiculous accusation (first, the only thing I, as a non-administrator, can know about FayssalF's laptop — such knowledge being needed for such an attack — is that there's a good chance it's somewhere in or near Morocco, and that only because FayssalF declares on his userpage that he's in Morocco; second, there would be nothing to gain for me by such an attack, and third, I haven't been to Tallinn since May), but with me being a contributor to the article on Cyberattacks on Estonia 2007, this is an attack on my integrity; an accusation of my engaging in hypocrisy. I know for a fact that FayssalF can not back his accusation up with any evidence, thus, I expect him to either apologise, or the Arbitration Committee to strongly rebuke him. (There's another issue of FayssalF's weird ideas regarding me, but I expect to raise that in the upcoming RFC, so I won't detail it here.)

• As for off-wiki communication, I would point out Petri Krohn's hypocrisy. From the sudden style change in RJ CG's contributions, and especially, their extent, it's clear that from about August 13, Petri Krohn has been feeding content to RJ CG for inclusion in Wikipedia; possibly related to this call for off-wiki communication from 21 July. (I can't blame Irpen for not noticing this, though, as it can be reasonably assumed that he is not familiar with RJ CG's previous style, or, being non-native English speaker, does not notice most of the subtle linguistic clues.) This kind of meatpuppeting to try and leave his own — once burnt — hands "clean" from a user so vocal about bogus puppeteering changes before constitutes hypocrisy.

• As for JdeJ, I believe he's misunderstood the purpose of my comment, possibly through unfortunate word choice by me. I apologise for the misunderstanding, and point out that I have nothing against his person, or his good job in a host of other areas. His particular idea in question, though, is rather problematic. But this is not the place to work that out.

• As for "disruptive users", very few of the users traceable to Estonia can be classified under that, and almost all of those are one-shot trolls, such as Gerog112 (who appears to have left once the Rein Lang affair got cold). None are those listed under the abusive RFCU incidents. I agree with Irpen that disruption-reduction measures are needed — very frustratingly, this has not been done on Baltics States related articles for a long time —, but his fingers are pointing to a wrong direction.

• As per above and below, I strongly reject Irpen's peculiar notion that there's punishable disruption emanating from me. If he insist he's talking about a Digwuren, he does not know what he's talking about.

• The comparison with the Piotrus' (whom I deeply respect) arbitration case is relevant, but incomplete, for reasons that do not belong here.

• The RFC of Petri Krohn was improperly deleted by DrKiernan, whom Bishonen had led to believe that the RFC was not properly certified. Among her claims was that [5] does not constitute "attempt to try to resolve the dispute". It's illustrative to compare this very thorough explanation of the problem with, say, [6], which, to Abakharev was sufficient to "escalate the issue" to Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive286#Can somebody persuade User:Digwuren to follow WP:CIVIL and WP:NPA (without my knowledge or involvement, I should add), and this, in turn, appears to Irpen to be such an attempt.

• This RFC is important for another reason. Specifically, extra-political deletion of such a clear-case RFC, and accompanying comments made by Bishonen (to which I will not link, because I consider it too likely that she'll just delete the RFC again, leading to these links becoming red) sent the folks of WikiProject Estonia a strong message that there is no real way to deal with persistent and determined trolling on Estonia-related articles. For example, one of the currently most active trolls in these articles is RJ CG. Is it feasible to do an RFC on him? No, because no matter what people disagreeing with his continuous tedious editing do, it's not enough for Bishonen. Is it feasible to do other kind of WP:DR? No, because according to Wikipedia policy, the RFC step must first be done.

• Because of this, I welcome this arbitration. (So has been Alexia Death, who is apparently quite sick from Petri Krohn's repetition of the arbitration mantra.) As seen by actions of Bishonen, this snowjob by Irpen is the only real way of achieving an environment even remotely conducive to collecting an encyclopædia. It may not be according to the policy, but life has shown that on Wikipedia, policy is for excuses, not for rules, anyway.

• But the arbitration is thoroughly misrequested. As I have explained above, it is most certainly not about me. This arbitration is needed to sort out disruption in articles relating to Northeastern Europe, including the "Tartu University accounts" slur. If the Arbitration Committee fails to condemn that misrepresentation as a case of uncivil behaviour, I will consider it a personal WP:POINT of mine to refer to the cabal centered around Petri Krohn, Ghirlandajo, Mikkalai and RJ CG as "Cartel USSR Forever" in every relevant Wikipedia-related context. (Thanks for Erik Jesse for coining it.) I may consider such broad-brush labelling disdainful in my off-Wikipedia life, but Wikipedia will have shown that this is what it is about.

All that having been said, let's now go forward with arbitration. It would appear arbitrators have even been so forthcoming as to vote for accepting it even before I returned from my vacation. I guess it underlines my non-involvement. Digwuren 17:23, 25 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

There have been threats of Arbcom from almost the very beginning I and other Estonians now labeled "Tartu accounts" or "Korp!Estonia" became active and I personally am sick and tired of the constant attacks, the accusations and the mindless POV pushing based an national level animosity of certain editors. It needs higher level attention, and it needs it NOW. Lets air this matter for good.

Lets get the facts straight

• Editing from behind UT firewall allegation is false - I graduated from University of Tartu two years ago and have NEVER edited WP from its infrastructure or knowingly used its proxy. These claims are plain WRONG. I have never knowingly met any of the editors associated with me in his manner.

• Accusations of "hacking" are dubious - To attack someone, Digwurren would need to know that someones IP. He is not an admin so he has NO ACCESS to that information. FayssalF is mistaken and owes Digwurren an apology unless he shows some proof. Otherwise the whole claim is slander. The recent clam that an obscure guess about his locations based on his public info proves anything is rather odd. I'm starting to SERIOUSLY doubt his IT skills if he keeps it up. Knowing that someone is in or near Morocco is about as helpful in mounting a cyber attack on someone as knowing that a particular person likes to wear blue pants in finding that particular person in a city of a million people. If FayssalF maintains that Digwurren mounted a cyber attack on him then Wikipedia must have a major leak or flaw somewhere allowing Digwuren to obtain his IP. Is he prepared to claim that?

Comment on Digwuren and his woes

I became active on Wikipedia pretty much on the same time as he did. I've participated in the same "battles". The difference between him and me is that I refuse to follow the examples set by opposition. With the constant name calling("extreme nationalist Estonians", "Korp!Estonia", "socks on wheels" - this I actually found to be funny), constant accusations of vandalism ... no wonder it has rubbed of on someone fairly new to Wikipedia. We tried RFC/U with Petri Krohn, but in spite the overwhelming amount of evidence, the case was rejected because, apparently we had not tried hard enough to make up. I believe this was the turning point of Digwurren. We had tried to do this right, but it did not work. Why bother with being good all the time if the system favors being bad? May it be noted that this is not an excuse, its a reason and as long as the rules are not enforced fairly and equally on everybody, there will be others leaning from current "role models".

Comment on now undeleted RFC/Petri_Krohn

The "outside" views are actually views of two camps that voting clearly displays. One side acknowledges that these views are really not outside, the other not. And then there are just plain racist slanderous slurs like this.I worked hard in trying to put it together and I was seriously disappointed with he whole process when it failed.

What I seek from this case

• An end to the "Korp!Estonia" and "Tartu accounts" accusations.
• WP:CIVIL enforced equally regardless of your edit count or other merits.
• An end to ruthless Russian/Soviet POV pushing campaign in articles about Estonia. NPOV should be respected, views attributed and content reliably sourced. And all this needs to be enforced just like WP:CIVIL.

Extending Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Piotrus/Proposed decision to this case

If it is made clear that this case is also extended here then the two last wishes on my resolution list are handled. That would still leave the constant accusations of some form of "co-operation" between the "Tartu accounts" and the matter of unsubstantiated hacking accusation.

Last modified: --Alexia Death the Grey 09:26, 27 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I noticed this thread days ago, but thought it wasn't worth of a response. But now the “non-involved” Ghirlandajo has also started commenting and he'll certainly soon be followed by his admirers. As I won't have computer access for some days, I'll better say sth before taking a break. The so-called Korp! Estonia – existence of which no-one has proved, only assumed – is of course blamed here again. The meatpuppetry and Estonian conspiracy accusations have been quite ridiculous in Wikipedia context, for some time I thought they even didn't deserve an answer. The point is certainly not, whether some of Estonians co-ordinate their efforts by e-mail etc. The practice of co-operative editing, incl edit warring, however, is hardly founded by this alleged Korp!. One just look how certain Russia-related articles are 'edit-warred' - first you'll surely see Ghirlandajo there, he'll be joined by Irpen soon (how come that they find each other so easily?) When these two are there, A.Bakharev may join in with his admin tools. (Not to forget Grafikmfr, once a prolific author, who has sadly stopped contributing in fall 2006, but quickly finds, as if by magic, when his brothers-in-arms need his help at reverting or voting (this 'phenomenon' has of course been already noted [7]) I affirm once again, that to my knowledge, the Estonian users included in this arbcom request, are not personally acquainted and most probably keep track with others only by checking the contributions and the Estonia-related watchlist.
Now to Digwuren. I absolutely agree with Martintg and Sander Säde, who are much more experienced here. I'd add that I am not surprised at all that a competent user like Digwuren may sometimes over-react in case of provocations by his opponents. After all, if obvious vandals or trolls, proud blackhundredists (cf. this 'statement' !) or self-described National Bolsheviks are allowed to troll in Estonia-related articles, don't be surprised if one is sometimes uncivil when dealing with legitimate accounts or doesn't follow all the guidelines you have discarded long time ago. So that, first look into mirror, dear cartel USSR forever!, or how we're going to call you. Erik Jesse 06:02, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I've got quite a clear evidence, which i'd be presenting to The Committee to look at it, re attempts of intrusion of my laptop back on late July 2007 exactly when Digwuren (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) was blocked by me for a week. I'll not in any case post them at the evidence page as it contains personal data and i am not silly to divulge it in public. What strikes me more is the way Digwuren talks about my location. I quote from their statement above: ...is that there's a good chance it's somewhere in or near Morocco... which is technically very very accurate. I do mention that i am based in Morocco but that's all. I've never declared that i also edit sometimes from a neighboring country even if it is true. Evidence of the places from where i edit would be shown to The Committee as well. So what led Digwuren to guess about that very particular fact?

Background

Well, in brief. I was the admin who blocked Digwuren back on July 2007 as well as 2 other users which i'd identify as the "other side" in what follows.

Timeline

• I don't know about all past behaviors of User:Digwuren but i know since a couple of weeks now that Digwuren's first edit was at Talk:Bronze Soldier of Tallinn on May 1st, 2007. A good start for a first edit. Trying to discuss!

• The first time i heard about the conflict was on 11 July 2007 AN/I thread. The thread was started by User:Suva claiming that User:Ghirlandajo [is] pushing his political POV in inappropriate places. As you'd see from that thread, admin Bishonen and myself saw no admin intervention was needed.

• July 13, 2007: After a request by Digwuren to give my opinion about the RfC on User:Petri Krohn and spending around half an hour checking the conflict between both users i told them that both of them would have deserved to be blocked and that uncivilty and POV pushing from both sides was highly noted.

• July 16, 2007: The AN/I thread which lead to the following:

• Blocked Digwuren (talk · contribs) for 1 week.
• Blocked RJ CG (talk · contribs) for 48h (the other side)
• Blocked Petri Krohn (talk · contribs) for 72h (the other side)

• User:Dc76 wikilawyering accuses me of bias and posts a thread at the AN/I. According to reviewing admin Tom harrison → FayssalF rocks!.

• July 18: Admin Deskana convincing me of letting Digwuren edit conditionally. (to participate in an RfC regarding his own conduct). After a few hours, i accepted and Deskana posted it at the AN/I as per my request.

• On July 19, 2007, i received a kind of a "barnstar" from User:Petri Krohn. According to [User:Petri Krohn], i am an Administrator with balls.

• On July 20, 2007, i've experienced some online intrusion attempts made against my machine (for what i could record, the experience lasted no more than a couple of hours). I've already got a C# userbox posted at my userpage. I am saying this responding to User:Suva's request to know about the IP in question. The problem is that User:Suva insisted in knowing about the exact location of the IP in question. I totally refused such request and said that's IMPOSSIBLE as long as [He] is not an ADMIN. I've explained to everyone that any admin can contact me to know about this issue. I declared many times that only an admin can get that kind of information and asked them to stop insisting. I've already explained that it was not my intention to talk about that but since matters arrived to this point then i considered it is right to talk about it.

• August 14, 2007, #Can somebody persuade User:Digwuren to follow WP:CIVIL and WP:NPA A new AN/I thread started by User:Alex Bakharev.

Now i see that [User:Digwuren] is threating to file a RfC on me. No problem of course. What is odd is why Digwuren want us to wait until my potential RfC to talk about my alleged admin abuse. Isn't this the right place? -- FayssalF - ^{Wiki me up®} 07:14, 27 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with the objections against the behaviour of Digwuren. I personally experienced his agressive and uncivil behaviour. He reverts promptly edits he does not approve without reacting on a motivation on the talk page. If he reacts his statements are rhetorical and often sarcastic. Otto 18:57, 28 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• I'm not entirely sure if there is anything we can do about this. The checkuser results have been inconclusive when requested at WP:RFCU and I don't see how they would be any different for us running queries ourselves. Would Irpen or others who want us to take this case like to summarize the kind of relief they seek? The Uninvited Co., Inc. 17:23, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Accept. Comments and requests suggest that we can help sort this out better than the community can. FloNight 12:12, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Accept. Paul August ☎ 18:40, 22 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Accept. James F. (talk) 14:55, 23 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Accept. Kirill 13:10, 24 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

1) This matter concerns all disruptive editing related to Estonian-Russian ethnic conflict, particularly those who edited regarding the Bronze Soldier of Tallinn controversy. Any editor reasonably believed to have engaged in disruptive editing may be noticed in and evidence may be presented regarding them. If evidence is presented regarding an editor, they should be noticed in.

Passed 5 to 0, 17:15, 10 September 2007 (UTC)