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The following is an automatically-generated compilation of all talk pages for the Signpost issue dated 2013-08-07. For general Signpost discussion, see Wikipedia talk:Signpost.

Arbitration report: Fourteen editors proposed for ban in Tea Party movement case (21,573 bytes · 💬)

It might be noted that some of the fourteen were not named as a party to the case until immediately before the motion was proposed and some were added after the motion was proposed. None of the added editors were afforded any chance to provide evidence concerning any claims about them, as zero evidence against some of them was ever given, and no findings were even proposed about them at all. One Arbitrator had opined that Calls for sanctions should be based on evidence; the greater the sanction, the greater the need for appropriate evidence and then proceeded to support sanctions based on zero evidence whatsoever. As a result, at least one long-time editor has decided to go on a "wikistrike" to protest such an example of WP:Tiptibism (using presumed authority on the mere basis that since they have the authority to make an extreme decision, that therefore it is proper to do so).. Collect (talk) 00:47, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

  • Well...I was pretty sure this wasn't going to end well...I just didn't think it would end like this. Gosh...I don't really know how I feel about it.--Mark Just ask! WER TEA DR/N 01:39, 10 August 2013 (UTC)
I realize that topic bans and blocks aren't intended to be measures to "cool down" disputes but this could have a positive effect on the article. While I wouldn't like to face a block, I know if a certain article was off-limits to me, there are still millions of articles I could contribute to.
I don't agree with how the 14 people were chosen (it seems pretty random to me, whoever was named as an involved party) but I also can see that this disagreement was never going to be mediated away and consensus reached so better an article ban that a site ban (which I've seen being handed out too indiscriminately). Newjerseyliz (talk) 03:17, 10 August 2013 (UTC)
How we choose the editors to ban is important, and should be done with some objective standard such as "any editor who has made more that 20 edits to the article or 50 edits to the article talk page in the last six months". What we don't want is some administrator or arbitrator deciding that Fred and Ethel need to be banned but Ricky and Lucy can keep on editing the page. If we do that, we are sanctioning because of behavior rather than giving the article a reset, and to do that we need to show evidence of misbehavior and give the editor a chance to respond. --Guy Macon (talk) 18:27, 10 August 2013 (UTC)
  • This motion sets a very worrisome precedent, and I strongly agree with Roger Davies' opposing view: "While I understand the rationale behind this approach, and I do appreciate that the artcle is unlikely to make progress with the present personae dramatis, I cannot support sanctions (no matter how they are dressed up) without at least cursory individual findings of fact. " — Richwales (no relation to Jimbo) 05:40, 10 August 2013 (UTC)
    • I don't see this as setting a precedent, because we exclude groups of editors from articles all the time. We exclude non-autoconfirmed editors with semi-protection. We exclude non-administrators with full protection. Although not on a per-article basis, we exclude all TOR users from editing. I don't see excluding, as a group, the editors who have spectacularly failed at cooperatively editing an article as being all that different. We aren't implying that any one editor has done anything wrong, just as we aren't implying that any individual IP editors or TOR users have done something wrong in the other cases I listed. When I see a full-protected article, I am excluded from editing it. Where is the individual finding of fact that justifies me being "sanctioned" in that case? The answer is that, like this case, it isn't a sanction at all. --Guy Macon (talk) 18:16, 10 August 2013 (UTC)
  • This propsed motion seems wrong in two critical ways. It goes beyond the bounds of [authority].

Scope and responsibilities

The Arbitration Committee of the English Wikipedia has the following duties and responsibilities:
To act as a final binding decision-maker primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve;
They have intervened and imposed sanctions on editors who were not shown to have been involved in any bad conduct, were added after the motion was proposed, and who had no opportunity to defend themselves. The second key point is "collective punishment". It is an injustice to impose penalities on those who did no wrong, who were in fact essentially uninvolved. There is a reason such collective punishment is an anathema in civilized society. This is a bad proposal with real consequences. 18:22, 11 August 2013 (UTC) 17:55, 11 August 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Capitalismojo (talk • contribs)
Assuming, of course, that your claims about sanctions/penalties/punishment are true. I contend that they are not. See my comments above. --Guy Macon (talk) 19:26, 11 August 2013 (UTC)
ArbCom's jurisdiction over editing disputes has traditionally been limited by the Wikipedia community to conduct disputes. In the absence of specific factual findings of misconduct against specific individual editors, this really can't be said to be a "conduct dispute" as we normally understand that term. And if this is an intractible content dispute involving editors who are acting in good faith and following the rules but simply cannot reach a consensus, I honestly don't think ArbCom can take any action at all unless we were to first get a broad community consensus to expand the Committee's domain of responsibility. Even assuming that the best approach to the present problem is for the current good-faith, clean-nosed contributors to the article(s) to step aside so that a totally new batch of editors can try their hand at a solution, I do not believe ArbCom has been given the authority to mandate such a course of action or to authorize anyone to enforce same via blocks or bans. And even though the Wikipedia community has authority to topic-ban editors, this power is conventionally limited to cases where someone has been "repeatedly disruptive" and has "exhausted the community's patience" — again, referring to individual conduct issues. A finding that a group of editors have "spectacularly failed at cooperatively editing an article" is not a "conduct" issue, and if the community wants to start "sanctioning" such a situation (or to authorize ArbCom to do so), I believe that would first require a much wider and much more in-depth discussion by the community. Thus far, the community has chosen not to give ArbCom authority to impose binding solutions in content disputes, and this case may very possibly help us understand why. — Richwales (no relation to Jimbo) 21:45, 11 August 2013 (UTC)
Is it within ArbCom's jurisdiction to apply semi or full page protection to an article in the absence of specific factual findings of misconduct against specific individual editors? --Guy Macon (talk) 22:17, 11 August 2013 (UTC)
Are you saying that a topic ban on an arbitrary group of editors about whom, in some cases, there was zero evidence of any sort given, and who were added after the motion was made and who had zero opportunity to comment except on the decision talk page, is identical to "page protection" which applies to every single editor on Wikipedia? That would be an interesting, if clearly errant, claim. Collect (talk) 23:02, 11 August 2013 (UTC)
Please don't imagine where I am going with an argument and then stuff words in my mouth that you think I am about to say. It is unseemly, and you are unlikely to guess correctly. If, indeed, I am preparing to say that, you will find out soon enough. Speaking of being errant, page protection does not apply to every single editor on Wikipedia. As of 22 November 2024, there are 851 editors who it does not apply to. Please try to avoid making errors in the process of assuming without evidence that others are about to make errors. So again I ask, Is it within ArbCom's jurisdiction to apply page protection to an article? It's a simple question. Either it is or it isn't. --Guy Macon (talk) 01:31, 12 August 2013 (UTC)
Guy Macon, arbitration has not set any objective criteria. I made 2 edits in the 6 months before the arbitration was set up, in fact more than 3 months before, and had never had any contact on the article with the person who set up the requested arbitration. Yet after the evidence was heard, in which I am not mentioned, an arbitrator added me, and therefore I am included in the list of editors facing a page ban.
Incidentally, The Wikipedia "protection policy" allows only specified forms of protection, which does not include protection against an arbitrarily selected group of editors. Furthermore, there are obviously no penalties for editors who ignore page protection.
TFD (talk) 03:17, 12 August 2013 (UTC)
Responding to Guy Macon's question: AFAIK, Yes: ArbCom certainly does have the authority to apply page protection to an article. For example, the Tea Party movement article is currently under "full" protection, imposed by a sitting arb, with a protection summary saying "Edit warring/Content dispute: Fully protecting until ArbCom case reaches decision."
Having said the above, however, I will endorse what The Four Deuces just said — there are a specified set of standard protections allowed by our protection policy (and made technically available by our software), and protection against an arbitrarily named group of individuals is not one of these standard protections. The fact that certain protection types are technically doable and are within the accepted powers of the Arbitration Committee certainly (IMO) does not imply that ArbCom has carte blanche to impose any sort of page or topic ban it decides on, in the absence of a finding that specific individuals have engaged in misconduct. — Richwales (no relation to Jimbo) 05:05, 12 August 2013 (UTC)
OK, we have established that it within ArbCom's jurisdiction to take an action that prevents one class of editors from editing a page while allowing another class of editors to edit the page, and we have established that they can do so without any specific factual findings of misconduct against the specific individual editors who are being prevented from editing the page.
The reason that I wanted to establish this is because I see three separate arguments against the recent Arbcon decision, two that have merit and one that is bogus.
The bogus argument is the claim that that it is not within ArbCom's jurisdiction to take an action that prevents one class of editors from editing a page while allowing another class of editors to edit the page without any specific factual findings of misconduct against specific individual editors, and that any such action is "punishment" "sanctions" and "penalties". This is demonstrably untrue.
The two remaining arguments that have merit are the argument that there are no allowable classes other than those in the case of page protection and the argument that this is not a legitimate reason or this is not a legitimate class.
If you make the first argument, then it would appear to be equally non-allowable to limit, say, all paid editors from editing one page (Under the current rules they are discouraged but not forbidden in the general case of pages they are paid to edit, and no I do not want to us have that arguments again). It would also seem that they could not limit all editors who have made over 500 talk page comments on the same page per day for over 500 days.
If you make the second argument, which I believe to be the stronger of the two, I don't see a strong counterargument. You can't argue precedent, because nothing similar has ever been done (I proposed something similar once,[1] but it never made it past the "let's discuss the idea" stage). The best counterargument to this that I can think of -- and it isn't strong -- is the "don't handcuff Arbcom" argument (they need to be free to do extraordinary things when faces with extraordinary problems, etc.) Of course for most of the other people on this discussion, handcuffing Arbcom is exactly what they want to do, and their arguments for doing that are not all that unreasonable. --Guy Macon (talk) 09:24, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

FWIW, "full page protection" does, indeed, apply to all editors - an admin who seeks to simply edit such an article would be in violation of Wikipedia policy which states that Administrators can make changes to the protected article reflecting consensus and thus they are not free to simply make their own edits to a fully protected page. That argument is therefore exceedingly weak. "Semi-protection" requiring that only confirmed editors be able to edit also does not affect an "arbitrary group of named editors" either.

I leave with the words of Lord Denning:

Every unjust decision is a reproach to the law or to the judge who administers it. If the law should be in danger of doing injustice, then equity should be called in to remedy it. Equity was introduced to mitigate the rigour of the law. But in the present case it has been prayed in aid to do injustice on a large scale.

If this is not clearly an applicable case to his dictum, I know not what would be. Collect (talk) 12:22, 12 August 2013 (UTC) (continuing Wikistrike)

That would be a great quote, Collect, except Wikipedia is a website, so it doesn't really make sense to try to apply the legal concept of equity to its operation.
Perhaps there should be an RfC on the concept of "no fault" topic-bans. Formerip (talk) 13:40, 12 August 2013 (UTC)
I had rather thought the concept of "equity" was not inapplicable here. Heck, I had thought it was a universally accepted concept, but if you aver that "equity" is alien to Wikipedia, I would like to see a reliable source for that assertion <g>. Collect (talk) 16:13, 12 August 2013 (UTC)
Denning is talking about Equity (legal concept), which is something distinct from equality or fairness in its general sense. It is to do with tempering strict application of the law. One thing you can't accuse ArbCom of in this case is being overly strict in following the rules. Formerip (talk) 17:28, 12 August 2013 (UTC)
[2] Two major categories -- legal and financial. ArbCom has nothing to do with stock ownership. The other kind which you seem to think only has a sense in law is actually the earlier and broader sense, and is properly the issue at hand. Ask a law professor to explain the meaning. Cheers. Collect (talk) 17:44, 12 August 2013 (UTC)
IMO, the legal concept of equity — and I'm talking here about the specific legal concept — lies at the heart of Wikipedia conduct dispute handling. Sanctions here are, after all, explicitly supposed to be preventative (not punitive) and injunctive (requiring or forbidding specific actions). Our practice of banning/blocking disruptive users is supposed to be preventative in nature: we are repeatedly reminded that the goal is to prevent further damage to Wikipedia and (if possible) to convince recalcitrant editors that our principles and policies need to be taken seriously.
The reality, of course, is that bans/blocks are inevitably seen as punitive (in addition to, or sometimes instead of, the official goal of being preventative). And the main problem I see with the proposed motion is that a specific set of users are to be subjected to a de facto punitive sanction without any specific finding of misconduct on their part — something many people (myself included) object to on fundamental principle.
I should mention here, BTW, that I haven't participated in the Tea Party movement article or in this arbitration case, except to comment on the (im)propriety of the current proposed motion. I'm not proposing that no action at all should be taken — just that whatever action does get taken, it needs to be well grounded in our principles, or else we're asking for major trouble down the road, because not only do we need to follow our own rules, but we must also strive to be seen to be fair ("equitable" in the way this term is generally used by the common people) as we do so.
I do wonder whether this case has been sufficiently analysed through the lens of the essay on so-called "civil POV pushing". If it hasn't, I would think it really ought to be. — Richwales (no relation to Jimbo) 17:40, 12 August 2013 (UTC)
That essay could have specifically been written about Tea Party Movement, as well as other articles frequented by the same editors. — goethean 17:56, 12 August 2013 (UTC)
Agree with Collect on page protection. Full protection does not mean that administrators can continue to edit just as if protection had not been applied. Any editor who wishes to make an edit must make a request and obtain consensus, when an univolved editor make action the edit. While semi-protection stops IPs and unconfirmed editors from editing, they may request an edit on the talk page or set up an account and have it auto-confirmed. And note too that the restriction on editing is applied against accounts, not editors. An uninvolved administrator with a legitimate second account for example may not use that account to edit a protected article. And note too that only legitimate reason for semi-protection is suspected sock-puppetry where individual blocks are ineffective. Furthermore, a "class" is normally a group that has something in common. The only thing in common established in the case is that they are all listed. No evidence was even provided that all of them edited the page. Nor is any reason given why the other 1500+ editors who edited, including the editor who requested arbitration, are not included. TFD (talk) 19:17, 12 August 2013 (UTC)
While I do not agree with some of the arguments that have been made here, TFD makes a very good point. I do think that Arbcom should have the last-resort option of removing all the editors from a page for X months and letting a new set try (let's call it The Nuclear Option), but you can't just arbitrarily pick some names for no-fault topic bans without even explaining how they were picked. The only fair way to impose The Nuclear Option is to tell everybody who has been editing the page and/or discussing changes on the article talk page to give it a rest for X months and let someone else take a shot. Perhaps a well-defined exemption for vandalism reverting, spelling corrections, and perhaps only making one or two edits before giving up, but that's it. I think that even those here who disagree with me about TNO being allowed would agree that, if it is allowed, it needs to be done along the lines I just described. --Guy Macon (talk) 21:11, 12 August 2013 (UTC)
It's not just about whether it's a good or bad idea. I think the other question is about whether the community expects ArbCom to be developing Manhattan Projects without its consent. Formerip (talk) 21:20, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

Discussion report: Civility policy, geographic names, CheckUser and Oversighter candidates, and more (1,069 bytes · 💬)

  • Kudos to Pine (talk · contribs) for adding the wmfblog: posts to the discussion report. Far too many people miss the important announcements made there. Thanks for including them here. 64.40.54.169 (talk) 01:43, 10 August 2013 (UTC)
  • Thanks for the note! --Pine✉ 23:50, 11 August 2013 (UTC)
  • Thanks, I'll update that in next week's report. --Pine✉ 23:50, 11 August 2013 (UTC)

Featured content: The great Colorado River and the mysterious case of the grand duchess (641 bytes · 💬)

  • Can someone please proofread 72nd Academy Awards? I just took a look at it and corrected about a dozen egregious typos and usage errors. It certainly needs more attention. -- Ssilvers (talk) 15:35, 10 August 2013 (UTC)
  • Just on a quick scan, the last three FAs mentioned were also in last week's issue (may be others, I don't have time to check)... Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 14:03, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

News and notes: Chapters Association self-destructs (8,106 bytes · 💬)

  • Good riddance to the WCA. While there's a fair bit to be said for having a person/people to act as a point of coordination across the Wikimedia Chapters, the WCA made the rookie mistake of focusing on internal issues, including setting up grandiose structures and positions, which wasn't in line with how Wikimedia chapters or equivalent organisations actually operate. Nick-D (talk) 23:23, 9 August 2013 (UTC)
    • Agreed. There's enough chapter bureaucracy already. For all the good work chapters do, they do often seem to be a magnet for drama, bureaucracy and minor-league politics. Seeing some of the chapter bureaucracy disappear is actually quite refreshing. —Tom Morris (talk) 06:55, 10 August 2013 (UTC)
    • I tossed up whether I should reply to this or let it slide, but this WCA meeting was going to be about various programs (such as the Chapters Exchange, WCA Journal, Chapters Manual, and so on - all of which were started in the past twelve months and are at various levels of progress), until, ironically, the announcement by WMFR - with "too much bureaucracy" being the main issue - turned it into another meeting about bureaucracy. A self fulfilling prophecy.
In addition, perhaps the contributors to this piece should have listened to the stream/recording of Jimbo's keynote before writing that headline. -- Chuq (talk) 15:26, 10 August 2013 (UTC)
Jimmy's headlining keynote is going to be covered next week. We ran out of time to cover it in this edition, unfortunately. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 02:29, 11 August 2013 (UTC)
Just to clarify, I was referring to taking heed of what Jimmy said about over sensationalist journalism, not the reporting of the speech itself. -- Chuq (talk) 03:30, 13 August 2013 (UTC)
  • If the WCA is to unband then I wish that there could remain a central unfunded project or on-wiki space and communication channels to facilitate communications between chapters. Right now, the majority of chapters have no regular communication with other chapters and I feel that if this were easier to do and encouraged as expected behavior of chapters, then this would happen more often. I do not like the Wikimedia Foundation being the de facto hub for connecting community members who want to collaborate with other community members for projects which are unconnected to the Wikimedia Foundation. I have a proposal for this at meta:Peer review in which I simply say that chapters should review each other's work. This would be in contrast to the current practice of primarily depending on the WMF for reviews of their work. Blue Rasberry (talk) 21:57, 10 August 2013 (UTC)
  • Asaf Bartov's comparison to WLM is interesting and I would like to point out that the success of WLM has to do with the fact that without a heritage list, it is impossible to participate. For some countries, their heritage list is posted in more than one Wikipedia project because its member states have more than one primary language. That means that more than one chapter may be involved with parts of the WLM process of any particular WLM national project, such as listmaking, jury duty, organizing "Wiki Takes ..." meetups, or prize donation. What goes undisputed however, is the unique code given to a monument by a list holder. No matter what the politics of the photographer, if the photo looks good, both leftwing liberals and rightwing conservatives will vote for it. When you look at the Chapters association, the demarcation lines are nowhere near so clear. Jane (talk) 06:35, 10 August 2013 (UTC)
    • Italy doesn't have an official heritage list and thousands of entities have to be individually asked permission, FYI.[3] [4] --Nemo 08:18, 10 August 2013 (UTC)
  • hmmm, perhaps the inevitable consequence of the fact that the WCA never found favour with the WMF. I would be interested to read a more NPOV account of all this.Leutha (talk) 10:07, 10 August 2013 (UTC)
  • I find too much bureaucracy in Wikimedia and hoped for chapters to bring things closer to my needs. I have supported WCA but I disliked when they intended to form a bureaucracy of their own. I'm more interested in getting knowledge from other wikimedians than on getting a budget. For me, many of the documents supplied by the central structure in Wikimedia are a quite complex mixture of English, Legalese and Technoblablabla, three languages and don't master enough. I know the Poles have organized a tour of their railway system to take pictures: I wish I could talk to them so I could learn how to replicate that in my home town. What has it to do with chapters? Well, there's a Polish chapter, to begin with, and a Spanish chapter I'm a member of. They have the knowledge we could use. Some kind of common platform (WCA for instance) would help. Does it mean we need a budget and an administrative estructure? No. A complex procedure isn't needed. What we need is some easy connection that allows the average Pablo to ask the average Pawel. B25es (talk) 13:42, 11 August 2013 (UTC)

"...and possibly feature a hybrid community-paid journalist model" I'm not sure if I'm reading this correctly, but if Jimbo is doing an about face on paid editing, then that's a big deal. Many people—myself included—are opposed to paid editing on WMF projects. 64.40.54.169 (talk) 01:03, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

Who says this is going to be a WMF project? Powers T 01:17, 10 August 2013 (UTC)
Powers is correct. Also of note is that Wales requested that people email his Wikia account—i.e. not something affiliated with the Wikimedia projects. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 02:24, 10 August 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for clarifying this. I wasn't sure if I had it correct or not. Best. 64.40.54.169 (talk) 03:06, 10 August 2013 (UTC)
No worries. Also, I'm not trying to insinuate that it will be a Wikia project. My read of "from the ground up" is an entirely new site with a new domain name. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 07:29, 10 August 2013 (UTC)
I believe Jimbo uses the Wikia address for all communications; at least, it's the only email address he lists on his userpage. — PinkAmpers&(Je vous invite à me parler) 07:43, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

Journalism

  • I thought Wikinews already existed? Granted there are some internal politics on that site to overcome. Sfan00 IMG (talk) 17:12, 13 August 2013 (UTC)
I was wondering if Wales's suggestion was going to be a repurposing of Wikinews in order to resolve the problems it has been having. — SMUconlaw (talk) 10:10, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

Traffic report: Greetings from the graveyard (3,377 bytes · 💬)

  • Sorry. I'm not a regular reader of the Signpost so perhaps I'm missing context, but what are you saying? Are you saying fewer people are visiting en.Wikipedia? --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 11:31, 10 August 2013 (UTC)
    Yes. At least for the week being tracked. Serendipodous 11:44, 10 August 2013 (UTC)
    Thanks! Is there a graph somewhere?
    Couldn't it be the case where Google directs users to https pages in which visits don't count? I've read about this issue before, but I can't remember the details. Mohamed CJ (talk) 18:21, 10 August 2013 (UTC)
    That was a problem for a few months, but it's now been fixed. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 02:42, 11 August 2013 (UTC)
    I see. Then does anyone know why is this happening? Mohamed CJ (talk) 02:48, 11 August 2013 (UTC)
    It's probably because it's summer and people have better things to do than surf the web. Serendipodous 02:55, 11 August 2013 (UTC)
    Is there a graph somewhere? Meta? --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 05:23, 12 August 2013 (UTC)
    I don't know. Wikipedia's rule is not to care how many people are reading the information, only to ensure that the information is there to be read. Serendipodous 06:59, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/SummaryEN.htm has als always wealths of stats too. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 23:18, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

  • you have all misunderstood the stats. We probably, based on fairly average page views of the perennial top 10 article Facebook (most weeks between 500 & 700k views), have had very average total page views across the board. But we haven't all looked at the same page as much as other weeks. We do have the choice of 4 million to view, after all. The-Pope (talk) 00:32, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

WikiProject report: WikiProject Freedom of Speech (7,544 bytes · 💬)

Request for suggestions

  • Alright, this is my first report. If anyone wants to give me some tips, that would be perfectly fine with me. buffbills7701 00:21, 10 August 2013 (UTC)
    • The report is interesting. The only comment I can make is that information is repeated: when you ask a question about a wiki project to members of that wiki project, many of them may repeat the same information. Not much can be done about this other than asking them questions that will naturally get them to give different answers and summarizing their answers to the more general questions instead of listing them all. For example, when asking about the project's purpose (as in the first question in this case), you can summarize the answers, while you can list them all when asking about gaps of coverage in articles (as in the third question), since they're then more likely to be different. -- Rastus Vernon (talk) 03:26, 10 August 2013 (UTC)
      • My only tips: longer introduction to the topic and project (plus, as Rastus says, you can sometimes use the information interviewees give you to eliminate a question and beef up the introduction), and prune prune prune. You don't have to print every word you're given! Other than that, I think that this is an excellent first report. Thanks Buff! Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 07:20, 10 August 2013 (UTC)
        • The above feedback is good. Also, you may want to include a sidebar providing news about WikiProjects (if there's enough news to report) or offering similar interview subjects from our archive as a sort of "further reading". Other than that, you did well. I look forward to your next Report. –Mabeenot (talk) 14:59, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

Attacks on free speech by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Pictured above, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.. wrote the notorious decision upholding the federal government's criminalizing dissent during World War I (Schenk v. United States), and so he should be recognized as an enemy of free speech.

Holmes also supported forced sterilization. Kiefer.Wolfowitz 12:57, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

All most interesting points, but those are topics better discussed at the talk page for the individual, at Talk:Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.. Also, Newyorkbrad might have something to say about the history related to that individual, I think he's knowledgeable about the subject matter. — Cirt (talk) 16:40, 10 August 2013 (UTC)
In the development of constitutional law as in other aspects of society, progress toward more progressive or more modern (or as we might think more free or "better") ideas comes incrementally. Justice Holmes, like his colleague Justice Brandeis and his admirer Judge Learned Hand, certainly voted to uphold restrictions on speech that might not be acceptable to a single Justice today. But there's also no doubt that he helped to move the state of First Amendment law, particularly in the realm of "sedition" prosecutions, in the direction of greater openness and freedom. A point often overlooked is that the currently robust (though of course imperfect) state of freedom of speech in the United States was by no means a historical inevitability; one need only read the opinions in Near v. Minnesota (1931) or Fred Friendly's book about that case to see how things could readily have evolved in a very different direction. It later fell to moderately "liberal" but also flawed Justices ranging from Harlan Fiske Stone (the sole dissenter in Gobitas) to Hugo Black to William Brennan to consolidate modern First Amendment thinking, and of course there were disputes and backslidings along the way. So Holmes was by no means a perfect champion of pure speech, but it is impossible to tell the story of how the First Amendment traveled from a virtual dead letter a hundred years ago to the core of American freedom today without recognizing his role.
Buck v. Bell was of course an appalling piece of work (see Stephen Jay Gould's essay on the case for trenchant, non-lawyerly criticism), both for its substance and also for the flippancy with which Holmes dashed off the opinion without regard to the human beings whose rights the heart of what is now understood as a collusive case. (Of twentieth-century opinions, only McReynolds' dissent in Gaines and Burger's concurrence in Bowers stand out in my mind as equally nasty.) What is remarkable to the modern reader is how uncontroversial this opinion was at the time; Chief Justice Taft, no admirer of the "Bolshevik" Holmes, admired it greatly, and it spoke for eight members of the Court; there was no written dissent (Justice Butler dissented without opinion or explanation, a vote usually attributed to his religious beliefs). Buck v. Bell embodied bad social policy, bad science, and bad constitutional law: one can readily say that such a man as Oliver Wendell Holmes should have risen above all three of these things, but if so the fault must be ascribed as well to Brandeis and Stone and all the rest, not to Holmes alone, who despite his greatness was in this respect sadly an embodiment of the tenor of his times.
Holmes' Wikipedia article has occasionally been edited by one of his principal modern biographers, Sheldon Nowak; I'm sure he could address all of this far better than I have. Newyorkbrad (talk) 21:39, 10 August 2013 (UTC)
Certainly, Holmes was not hardly leading anyone, including the legislature and governor of Indiana where the first sterilization law was adopted (1907) or of Virginia, or 33 other states -- he went along, unfortunately. As for Free speech, he was a thoughtful and prescient advocate for free speech in Abrams v. United States. Alanscottwalker (talk) 22:34, 12 August 2013 (UTC)
Thank you both for the informative and interesting comments.
George Anastaplo's unconventional and Straussian book, The Constitutionalist, has appendices on Schenck v. United States, including pamphlets by the Socialist Party of America against the draft, which used the natural rights language of the Declaration of Independence.
In terms of leading public opinion, the libertarian journalist H. L. Mencken's criticisms of Holmes and of the jailing (and failure to pardon) Eugene V. Debs was popular and scandalous at the same time. It is easy to over-emphasize the reaction of the WWI-era (like the 1950s). Mencken was not banned for primatology metaphors.
Best wishes, Kiefer.Wolfowitz 15:51, 13 August 2013 (UTC)


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