Requests for comment/Site-wide administrator abuse and WP:PILLARS violations on the Croatian Wikipedia

This is a subpage; for more information, see the Requests for comments page.

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Statement of the issue

Approximately for the last ten years, Croatian Wikipedia (CW) has had a number of major problems:

• Far-right bias in a number of topics, most notably related to World War II, including outright historical revisionism and Holocaust denial.
• Proliferation of grossly unencyclopedic, poorly sourced, and unsourced biased content.
• Administrator abuse, manifested most importantly by blocking editors who try to fix the biased content or even express disagreement with it, while at the same time protecting and encouraging like-minded editors.
• Mass departure of editors, largely due to blocks and inability to change the above-described circumstances, and, at the same time, a significant influx of new editors with extreme views.

Over the years, these problems have persisted or even gotten worse, and have been widely covered by the media in Croatia and abroad, chiefly in 2013 and 2018, making the general public aware of the situation.

This RfC argues that:

1. The current state of CW grossly violates the five pillars of Wikipedia - namely, pillars #1 ("Wikipedia is an encyclopedia"), #2 ("Wikipedia is written from a neutral point of view"), #3 ("Wikipedia is free content that anyone can use, edit, and distribute") and #4 ("Wikipedia's editors should treat each other with respect and civility"). There is a persistent, major failure to adhere to the purpose of Wikipedia.
2. CW is a dysfunctional community, particularly when the general disposition of the majority of currently active admins and editors is taken into account.
3. CW is, without outside intervention, terminally dysfunctional, because years of abuse and suppression have made the dissenting editors a powerless minority, and change from within is impossible.

Therefore, an outside intervention is both justified and necessary.

Evidence

This RfC stems from "The Curious Case of Croatian Wikipedia", a 1350-word article I've written on the topic, published in the August 2019 issue of The Signpost. The article gives an overview of the negative media image of CW, and provides a number of concrete examples of extreme bias, unencyclopedic content, and administrator abuse. "The Curious Case of Croatian Wikipedia" is crucial to this RfC both in terms of background and evidence, and should be considered an integral part of it.

A shortened Croatian-language translation of the article has been posted here. That version omits the discussion of the media coverage, focusing exclusively on the on-wiki evidence, as it - unlike The Signpost version - provides both the examples and the supporting diffs.

All of the incriminating examples in The Signpost article are directly linked to three long-time CW administrators:

1. Kubura (named in the article as "K").
2. SpeedyGonsales (named in the article as "Q").
3. Zeljko (named in the article as "Z").

Of these, two have been desysopped before: Kubura was desysopped in 2010 through a Meta-Wiki RfC for misuse of admin tools, while SpeedyGonsales was desysopped and blocked for one year in 2009 for off-wiki harassment and abusive behavior towards other editors.

Reactions to The Signpost article

I announced The Signpost article and its Croatian translation in the CW's village pump. I was subsequently exposed to a number of rather crude personal attacks,[1] and, a while later, given an indefinite block, accompanied by more personal attacks.[2] A single editor expressed support for my views in the village pump; shortly after, he was given a three-month block under some pretense.

The three accused admins took part in the village pump discussion, but none them made any substantial attempts to deny or argue the accusations.

To my knowledge, none of the remaining admins (there are eight: Ex13, Fraxinus, Jure Grm, Lasta, Maestro Ivanković, Roberta F., Tulkas Astaldo, and Vodomar) have provided any kind of public or non-public comment or reaction on the issue, although it is not possible that they are all ignorant of it. This should be understood - in the absence of evidence to the contrary - as full support for the three accused admins. There is little reason to doubt such support generally exists, since there is no public record of substantial criticism of Kubura, SpeedyGonsales, and Zeljko from any of these admins. In particular, there is also reason to believe that, in this case, non-communication was chosen over open support in order to avoid self-incrimination.

In effect, the above-described aftermath merely provides additional evidence CW is severely dysfunctional.

Background

For context, here is a brief timeline of the CW:

• CW was established in 2003.
• In July 2009, local ArbCom was formed.
• A group of editors, headed by SpeedyGonsales, campaigned for the dissolution of the ArbCom, arguing that it is too powerful. In the process, he was desysopped and blocked for off-wiki harassment that targeted the ArbCom members.
• In January 2010, ArbCom was dissolved following a community vote. SpeedyGonsales was subsequently reinstated. Kubura and Zeljko, who both sided with SpeedyGonsales and helped him return, became administrators too. From that point on, a small group of admins assumed effective control over the project.
• In September 2013, a large controversy erupted over the far-right content on the CW. More than 50 articles were published on the topic by the Croatian media.
• In October 2013, a local vote to demote Kubura, SpeedyGonsales and Zeljko was narrowly defeated (40-46, 38-45, and 42-44, respectively). As a consequence, however, SpeedyGonsales was stripped of his checkuser status.
• In July 2014, Argo Navis, Dean72 and Conquistador, three prominent dissenting editors, entered the RfA, but were narrowly defeated (58-62, 55-61, and 59-61, respectively).
• In 2013 and 2014, many editors left the project in disappointment and frustration, among them some admins. Argo Navis, Conquistador and Dean72 left the CW in 2014, 2015, and 2016, respectively.
• In 2017, Kubura was elected bureaucrat with a vote of 21-0.
• In 2018, more than a dozen articles about the far-right bias and abuses on the CW were published by Croatian and foreign media.
• As of September 2019, of 46 editors who opposed Kubura's demotion in 2013, 20 have left the CW, and 26 are active. Of 40 editors who had voted in favor of demotion, however, 38 have left, and only 2 are still active.

The following CW-related RfCs have been submitted in the past:

• Requests for comment/Croatian Wikipedia - User Suradnik13 - blocking and deleting (2008)
• Requests for comment/Croatian Wikipedia - User:Dalibor Bosits case (2009)
• Requests for comment/Croatian Wikipedia-misuse of admin tools by User:Kubura (2010)
• Requests for comment/2013 issues on Croatian Wikipedia (2013)
• Requests for comment/Hard line nationalism on the Croatian Wikipedia (2015)
• Requests for comment/Consistency and bias across different language Wikipedias (Holocaust example) (2017)
• Requests for comment/Administrator abuse on the Croatian Wikipedia (2016-2019; partially overlaps this RfC and is superseded by it)

A pattern of issues consistent with the ones discussed by this RfC is readily apparent.

What this is not

For the sake of full clarity, here is what the CW issue at hand and this RfC is not:

• A complete list of incriminating examples. Here is just one more: in the "External links" section of the CW article on Homosexuality, Zeljko inserted a link to an article titled "Homosexual couple adopted a girl - two weeks later, one of them killed her".[3] The list of similar examples could go on - dozens upon dozens more could be presented - but this is unnecessary, since the evidence already provided is both damning and irrefutable.
• An exhaustive list of problems with CW. CW suffers from arbitrariness, cabalism, social engineering, sockpuppetry, lack of openness and transparency, poorly written and defective guidelines and procedures, lax attitude towards copyvios and plagiarism... but this RfC is not about all that: quite simply, there are even worse things more or less the same people are responsible for.
• A list of cherry-picked, isolated issues, honest mistakes, or mix-ups on the part of the admins. I believe no elaboration is necessary here.
• A reflection of the prevailing ideological positions and divisions among the general population in Croatia. It is rather a reflection of what happens when a large part of the population is systematically shut out from participating.
• A problem best left to the consensus of the local community. From the above, it should be clear that there is no meaningful community anymore; it should also be clear why.

Proposed actions

The following actions are proposed to address the above-described issues (big thanks to DraconicDark for his original draft proposal):

1. Remove the admin status from Kubura, SpeedyGonsales, and Zeljko, the three worst offenders.
2. ... and give them a lifetime ban from reapplying.
3. Dismiss all local admins.
4. Remove bureaucrat and checkuser status from all local bureaucrats and checkusers.
5. Set up a local ArbCom consisting of experienced Croatian or similar language-speaking editors from other wikis, to be appointed by the global community at Meta-Wiki.
6. Solicit extra participation from the members of similar-language projects.

From these, one or more actions may be chosen, and other actions are possible too.

When considering what sort of action is the most appropriate, it is important to recognize that simple and quick-to-implement solutions are the most likely to have an immediate effect. On the other hand, it is vital to choose the actions which, on the whole, cannot be subverted, worked around, or even rolled back through local consensus.

Your comments and questions are more than welcome. (Pinging the participants of the previous RfC, in no particular order: Notrium, George Ho, Srdjan m, DobarSkroz, Rschen7754, DraconicDark, Sj, Ajraddatz, Rosguill, SpinningSpark, Nosebagbear, Kaldari, Daß Wölf, Santasa99.) GregorB (talk) 21:48, 10 October 2019 (UTC)

Discussion

• First of all, thank you to GregorB for putting in the legwork of raising awareness of this issue and mobilizing a response to it. For the most part, the proposed actions seem reasonable to me. However, I'm wondering if the motion to dismiss all local admins might not be a bit too drastic––one motivation for not speaking out that doesn't appear to be addressed above is fear of retaliation from the troika of the most problematic admins. Moreover, if other actions are successfully implemented (removing the worst offenders, setting up a local ArbCom, and adding a significant number of good-faith editors who are aware of the situation from similar language projects), it's not clear to me that any remaining problem admins hidden amongst those who haven't spoken up would even have that much power to derail things more than any other user, as their use of admin tools would presumably be subject to significant scrutiny and any wheel-warring would be extremely visible. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 22:17, 10 October 2019 (UTC)
• A crystal clear summary, thanks for the insightufl and persistent attention to this. I second both of Rosguill's comments. I agree that something should be done that considers the depth and duration of the situation, but removing all admins does not seem necessary and may lead to avoidable confusion or backlash, including from the community that would otherwise provide extra participation. –SJ talk  02:52, 11 October 2019 (UTC)
• Support for the proposed action. The deselection of the 3 incriminated individuals has to be the cornerstone, and after that a moratorium. --Ivan VA (talk) 12:13, 11 October 2019 (UTC)
• Support for all that was written. The only thing I may waver on is dismissing the local admins--their inaction seems to be less of an issue than the rest of the points. --Jesuislafete (talk) 02:34, 12 October 2019 (UTC)
• I support all proposed actions. At the very least, the three most problematic admins must be removed and banned from reapplying, as well as removing all local bureaucrats and checkusers. If the problematic three are desysopped without doing anything else, they will simply regain their powers within a few months and then it's back to square one. The other thing that needs to be addressed is, if the Croatian Wikipedia ArbCom is reestablished, how will its members be decided? If the consensus of this discussion ends up being in favor of setting up a new ArbCom, a new Meta-Wiki RfC may be needed to decide who is on the ArbCom. It is then important to choose people who will be as impartial as possible, and set up measures to ensure the ArbCom can't be dismantled, in order to prevent the situation from deteriorating again. DraconicDark (talk) 16:11, 12 October 2019 (UTC)

Thanks. @Rosguill: When you say fear of retaliation is also a possible reason for silence, you are quite correct: for some of them at least, it is actually plausible. While merely clinging to admin tools in the face of such obvious, severe and persistent violations of Wikipedia principles may in itself be seen as a major failure to do one's duty as an administrator, it is quite possible that there are also real-life concerns here. Moreover, I fully agree with you, and I'd even say it is the essence of the matter: other, long-term actions, such as setting up a local ArbCom in particular, make the removal of all admins redundant at best, and detrimental at worst. GregorB (talk) 17:41, 11 October 2019 (UTC)

• Revisiting message that Kubura gave me, I am more inclined to take sides with the blocked user VS6507 (Alex). Here are interactions between the two. Furthermore, using some mere 2009 incident to indefinitely block the user in 2015 is too delayed and very harsh. Also, the incident itself is mere attack neither intended to be perceived as sexual harassment that "K" claimed to be. That was just expression of frustration. A mere admonishment would have suffice if the admonishment occurred in 2009, but admonishment in 2015 for the 2009 incident is pointless. Still, there's no need to take grudge over just one incident. Disturbingly, "K" gave the blocked user a message saying never to insult Croatians (or something). This makes Alex's rationale for the other RfC more valid and sound.

  Back to the main proposal, I now  Support proposals #1, #2, and #4. Since the hrwiki possibly contains biased, whitewashed content, those admins and editors with their similar (extremist?) views would be responsible for the state of the project. However, I agree with others that #3 is too excessive. Regarding #5, I don't know whether there will be enough active arbs@hrwiki in the future. Is the hrwiki community large or sufficient enough to have its own ArbCom? As you said, there is "no meaningful community" anymore. However, if ArbCom were to be reestablished, I fear that any admin or editor with extremist or extremely-biased views would become an arbitrator by majority vote. Furthermore, which part(s) of ArbCom voting process would be shared publicly? Would it be similar to enwiki's or what? About proposal #6, I can't decide whether inviting those members is necessary. If so, hopefully they can understand and communicate Croatian, right?

  BTW, Croatian version of five pillars still exists. George Ho (talk) 18:50, 12 October 2019 (UTC); edited, 02:31, 10 November 2019 (UTC)

George Ho, that sentence written by VS6507 to a femal colleague is explicit and rude sexual harassment (violence against women): "come and suck my ... ". [4][5] (European Commission - Statement: "...Around half of women in the European Union have experienced verbal, physical or online sexual harassment.") Kubura (talk) 17:17, 28 October 2019 (UTC)

Did VS do anything else to other females? Do you have proof that VS did such things to them? George Ho (talk) 19:48, 28 October 2019 (UTC)

"Did a bully punched other females?" That excuse does not work. He wrote it. Kubura (talk) 21:59, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

• Per Rschen7754's recent vote change and diff provided by the user, I now  Weak support #3, despite looking too harsh. George Ho (talk) 02:31, 10 November 2019 (UTC)

• • In the message you've mentioned, Kubura says in the end: "[Your comment about the Croatian coat of arms] is an impudent stigmatization of the Republic of Croatia and Croatian insignia, practiced in the Greater-Serbianist aggression against Croatia". As bizarre as it may seem, it's actually fairly tame compared to one highly ludicrous recent example (Google Translate).

To be fair, user VS6507 said a very stupid thing, so perhaps it warranted a stupid response. I question the impartiality of a user who calls the centuries old Croatian coat of arms, "a washed out fascist movement symbol, chosen by hard line nationalist Tudjman, who prosecuted more than 200,000 people from Croatia." --Jesuislafete (talk) 04:55, 13 October 2019 (UTC)

No contest there, even if the reaction looks more like ideologically motivated retaliation than upholding any Wikipedia policies. GregorB (talk) 11:43, 13 October 2019 (UTC)

An ultra-nationalist statement like that carries a long shadow indeed (not to mention the comment on Roberta F. talk page). Whatever may have prompted VS into writing these things, someone who wrote that to/about e.g. British or Americans on en.WP would be quickly indefbanned as en:WP:NOTHERE. But I also don't see the wisdom of blocking someone 3 years post factum. Such "punishments for past crimes" on the whole must do much to inhibit both constructive as well as unconstructive editing. Daß Wölf (talk) 19:36, 14 October 2019 (UTC)

• • Forming a strictly local ArbCom (members coming from CW only) would quickly run into several problems: 1) current admins (other than these three, of course) would normally be natural candidates, but given their conduct in the affair, they can't be trusted (whatever the reasons for that conduct are), 2) few qualified editors otherwise, 3) undue off-wiki influence, since it's a small community, where many editors socialize off-wiki, and know each other's real-life identities (cf. the 2009 ArbCom incident described in the CW timeline above). Editors from Bosnian, Serbian and Serbo-Croatian Wikipedias will have no problem at all understanding Croatian, won't generally be vulnerable to undue off-wiki influence, and will make a greater pool of qualified and experienced editors to choose from. This could make them the solution for the ArbCom problem. How exactly should this ArbCom operate is a very pertinent question, perhaps to be discussed once a high-level plan of action is agreed upon. GregorB (talk) 23:05, 12 October 2019 (UTC)
    • I would also support that this Arbcom have jurisdiction on any of the hr, sr, bs & sh Wikipedias. As these languages are mutually intelligible, there shouldn't be communication problems, and their editors are inextricably linked through recent political history. POV issues which are unlikely to go away are present to one degree or another on all of these wikis, and I feel we would kill two four birds with one stone this way, and also prevent such issues from escalating on other wikis in the future, and somewhat deflect the victim/siege mentality that will likely be exacerbated on hr.WP when actions are taken there and not on the other WPs. Daß Wölf (talk) 19:36, 14 October 2019 (UTC)
      • I volunteer to be candidate for a member of such Arbcom for sr wikipedia.--Antidiskriminator (talk) 20:55, 14 October 2019 (UTC)
        • @Daß Wölf:@Antidiskriminator: In principle, I support the idea of an ArbCom that has jurisdiction over all varieties of Serbo-Croatian. However, one concern I have about this idea is that there might be pushback from the communities of sh, sr, and bs if they feel it's being forced on them. Therefore, the next logical step would be to notify the communities of sh, sr, and bs that this discussion is taking place, so that they can both a.) provide input on what to do about hrwiki, since they understand the language, and b.) recommend candidates for the ArbCom. The discussion about who should be on the ArbCom should probably be a separate RfC, so that this discussion on a solution to the problems with hrwiki doesn't lose focus. DraconicDark (talk) 13:21, 15 October 2019 (UTC)
          • • [6] Calling someone "far-right" and calling the hr.wiki as "neofascist propaganda site" is the dirty lie. Low blow, just to get what You want. Do You know what those words mean? (BTW, e.g. Croatian President, Primer Minister, Min. of Foreign Affairs, President of Parliament are also being called as "fascists", "supporters, protectors of fascists", "they take the bow to fascists" etc.) What is Your next "argument"? The work of Blagoje Grahovac about Yugoslavia as "unicate jewel"? Hr.wiki is not on the line of the apologets of Yugoslavia and Yugoslav and Greaterserbianist crimes. Kubura (talk) 22:23, 5 November 2019 (UTC)
              • Kubura, you seem to conflate Croatian Wikipedia with the country Croatia, when they're two completely different things. I never said anything about the country Croatia or its government officials; I only spoke of Croatian Wikipedia. That page you link to is an old draft that hasn't been worked on in a while, so the wording is obviously not very refined. I didn't use those same words I used before in my comment that you replied to, so, at this current point, in this current discussion, I am not using "low blows" to get anything.
                You also miss the point of my comment: I was saying that if any proposed ArbCom is to have jurisdiction over bs, sr, and sh, that is something for a separate discussion, and would require the input of a lot more people. Calling all of those people "apologets of Yugoslavia and Yugoslav and Greaterserbianist crimes" is both poisoning the well and a false statement. DraconicDark (talk) 00:21, 6 November 2019 (UTC)
                • DraconicDark, the attacks/criticism are the same, same rhetorics, both toward hr.wiki, Croatia, Croatian officials. It is Your old draft, but You used those words. They are low blow. Second, I dislike those ArbCom over bs, sr, hr, sh. I more respect their untruths and (edit: not "and", but "than"; here is supposed to be the comparison. Kubura (talk) 21:49, 26 November 2019 (UTC)) than the imposed truth by some "outer body". Historical science uses the opposing sources and puts pieces together, so does hr.wiki, they use and hr and sr and bs and others. The sources are good because they are opposing (even if they say untruth, because that indicates the direction of bias, intention, agenda, methods, proofs that compromises them), because the authors had no commisar nor censor above them. Kubura (talk) 00:49, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

@Kubura - You the hr. Admins have set yourself up as Commissars on hr.wiki, massively reverting and blocking people you disagree with. I’ve had practically everything I edited, instantly mass-reverted – i.e. quotes of Nazi sources, widely quoted by many western historians, quotes of Zagreb University historians, quotes of concentration camp inmates, quotes from the US Holocaust Museum, etc, etc. You yourself mass-deleted my contributions, stating I can’t quote on hr.wp the same German sources western historians cite, since these multiple WWII German sources, per you, all “wrote against Croats”. You also deleted my quotes from the US Holocaust Museum, saying “they are not immune to fraud”. Thus it matters not what western historians or the US Holocaust Museum write, because Commissar Kubura has appointed himself judge of who is “anti-Croat”, or what info from the US Holocaust Museum can’t be quoted on hr.wikipedia. Yet holocaust-deniers and convicted forgers, like Roman Leljak, are freely quoted hr.wiki, with Commissar-Admin, Zeljko, declaring that Leljak’s Jasenovac victim numbers - which are 50 times smaller than those of US Holocaust Museum, the Croatian Jasenovac Memorial and nearly all western historians – are the “only true number”, and “everything else is propaganda”. I.e. Commissar Zeljko has declared that Holocaust-denial is the only truth, the complete opposite to the US Holocaust Museum, Croatian Jasenovac Memorial and the vast majority of western historians, who all say up to two-thirds of Croat Jews were exterminated at your euphemistically-named, "Jasenovac Collection Camp"Thhhommmasss (talk) 18:40, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

Thhhommmasss, don't put to people the words they have not said at all. Noone denies the Holocaust. Holocaust is a fact. The problem our colleague is talking about is the problem of the certain entries in the database [7]. All these institutions are not immune to misinformations. There's a case of Croats who died in exile in El Shatt, Sinai, but they ended on US Holocaust Museum's site.[8] (article from Slobodna Dalmacija).

Also, "sabirni" and "koncentracijski" are synonyms in Croatian language.[9] "Logori mogu biti po namjeni; zarobljenički, sabirni(koncentracijski) i radni, te privatni i logori za provođenje masovnih silovanja, koji se manje spominju, a izrazito su okrutni. http://hdlskl.hr/o-nama/povijest-logora/ " Kubura (talk) 00:25, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

First as I repeatedly noted, you quote convicted fraudsters and Holocaust-deniers, who deny 98% of the Jasenovac Holocaust victims, as per the US Holocaust Museum, and your Admins state this is the only “truth”, dismissing as “propaganda” the US Holocaust Museum, western and Croatian historians, etc (btw here's a Radio Free Europe article on the CW-cited, convicted-fraudster and Holocaust-denier Roman Leljak) The claim of Sinai victims on the Jasenovac victims list, also found on CW, is one more Holocaust-denier deception. The list they refer to is from Jasenovac.org, a private site in Brooklyn, unrelated to the US Holocaust Museum or the Croatian Jasenovac Memorial, which also clearly states that theirs is a named list of 640,000 WWII victims from across all Yugoslavia, so it is not just a Jasenovac list. Then on this list, clearly marked as not just from Jasenovac, these Holocaust-deniers make the "big discovery" that there are victims who are not just from Jasenovac, and go on to claim this “proves” Jasenovac was not a death camp.

I will not keep replying to this endless nonsense, since with committed ideologues, when someone disproves your arguments, you come up with 1,000 new, unrelated nonsensical arguments, and so on ad infinitum. In any case this isn’t the place to discuss the substance of these issues, this is the place to discuss the fact that you systematically violate core WP principles, when you cite convicted fraudsters and holocaust-deniers as “Reliable Sources”, while mass-reverting citations from truly Reliable Sources, then repeatedly block people when they complain, just because they dare cite sources you disagree with. Plus all the other violations of core WP principles, many perpetrated even here, like refusing to respond to questions you’ve been repeatedly asked, and instead ignoring them or claiming you don’t have to provide any proof, blocking people, name-calling and shouting “Serbo-Croatists” as the “answer” to everything, dismissing people’s views because of their nationality, changing the subject with yet new falsehoods, like this claim about the Jasenovac victims list, etc, etc Thhhommmasss (talk) 20:13, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

• • • • • • I'd support such a cross-wiki ArbCom too. However, this would be a matter for a separate discussion and a separate set of arguments, as the other wikis do not have an immediate problem to be solved (at least not nearly of this magnitude). GregorB (talk) 08:18, 15 October 2019 (UTC)
• I fully support the proposal, but feel additional moves may be necessary.

@Rosguill:, @Sj:, @Jesuislafete:, regarding the qualms about dismissing all admins, you should understand that since Speedy and co. got rid of their ARBCOM and all opposition around 2009-2010, they have kept tight control of all hr.wikipedia.org activity, among other ways by blocking contributors as soon as they see the contributors would cause them trouble by "being anti-Croat" or "aligned with Greater Serbian interests". Basically, there is a single fringe clique and nobody outside it is allowed to edit or become admin.

Regarding those additional moves that may be necessary: because the CW editor and admin groups are all part of the single clique or approved by it, I think greater integration with other Wikis may be necessary. Basically, I think any admins from en, de, and fr Wikipedias should be allowed to act as admins and/or ARBCOM members for CW. Notrium (talk) 20:41, 16 October 2019 (UTC)

• I also fully support this proposal. Given the serious, now decade-long repeat violations of the most basic Wikipedia principles, I believe CW admin removal is the only possible solution. Personally, I’ve cited sources which leading western historians repeatedly cite, even state they consider these among the “best informed and most objective sources”, and while these same sources are extensively quoted on en.WP, the CW admins repeatedly reverted my citations with claims that these sources are “anti-Croat”, and therefore can’t be quoted on CW. Then when I complained, they banned me. They also deleted my citations from the US Holocaust Museum, with the explanation "the Holocaust Museum in Washington is not immune to fraud", plus they reverted my quotes of history professors at the University of Zagreb, and many others. Simultaneously, they themselves will include outrageous, Holocaust-denial information from convicted fraudsters, and when you challenge them on this, or challenge them instead to provide reliable sources for their claims, i.e. the most basic of WP principles, they respond that such a requests represent “an attack” and threaten to ban me. All this has resulted in highly biased articles on CW, particularly on historical issues.

I also agree with the proposal for a cross-wiki ArbCom. I think that it would be even better if longer-term some general policies were developed to require ongoing cross-checking and attempts to achieve greater consistency across all different language versions, instead of allowing “alternative truths” to flourish (for example, I imagine Indian and Pakistani WPs present quite different takes on some subjects. etc) As a first step I support Notrium's proposal that admins on en, de or other more reliable WP versions be provided admin rights on CW Thhhommmasss (talk) 23:32, 16 October 2019 (UTC)

•  Support 1 and 4,  Oppose the rest. I don't think a special ArbCom is the way to go - I think it would result in those other groups pushing their POV on hrwiki. Two wrongs don't make a right. As far as the concerns about the three admins regaining their powers, because stewards would be granting the admin rights, they would have the ability to ensure that elections were done fairly. --Rschen7754 04:42, 17 October 2019 (UTC)
  • • Postscript: I now also support 3. Behavior like this from a hrwiki admin indicates to me that all the admins need to go. Still oppose 2, 5, and 6. --Rschen7754 00:05, 10 November 2019 (UTC)
  • @Rschen7754: When you say "those other groups pushing their POV", what do you mean specifically? I haven't a priori excluded anyone from ArbCom membership. I'd expect a public discussion with the ArbCom candidates, and I'd expect their history of adherence to WP:NPOV to be examined. POV-pushing is something that can and should be backed with evidence - it shouldn't be conjectured or presupposed. What will happen if 1 and 4 alone are implemented? Will other admins simply continue in the same vein? I see no evidence to the contrary. Will they be willing to revise blocks or restrain POV-pushers? I highly doubt it. Will those three get themselves reelected once more eventually? You bet. What will have been achieved by all that in the end? If nothing else, the lesson from both 2009-10 and 2013-14 (see CW timeline above) is that failed revolutions don't make things the same as before: they invariably make them worse. Therefore, the answer is not "nothing" - it's even less than nothing. I don't care one bit about the "fair" or "unfair" elections. Wikipedia is not a democracy, which means, specifically, that WP:5P beats "fair elections" and "consensus" any day of the week. Those three fellows very likely won't come here to defend themselves: they know that they can't, so they're hoping things will blow over, like many times before, and they're counting on us to play the democracy game. Let's not do that. This is no longer a matter of enough is enough, it's way past that. GregorB (talk) 20:27, 17 October 2019 (UTC)
    • As I stated in the other RFC - I'm aware that those nations don't always get along very well. And I'm not really sure what the purpose of such an ArbCom would be anyway. In terms of "Will those three get themselves reelected once more eventually? You bet." well, SpeedyGonsales had CU removed by a steward a few years back and still has not gotten reelected to that position. --Rschen7754 00:43, 18 October 2019 (UTC)
      • @Rschen7754: That's true, but Kubura was desysopped by a steward in 2010 for misusing admin powers, and that user ended up being voted back to admin. So, yes, "you bet" the problematic three will get reelected once more if too little is done. DraconicDark (talk) 20:42, 18 October 2019 (UTC)
        • • Wrong. Steward (that was on leaving from the steward position, so he had nothing to lose) did that by a wish of a single malcontent, despite the will of the community. The hr.wiki was furious because of that and reacted. Kubura (talk) 22:39, 5 November 2019 (UTC)
        • You miss the point: with no bureaucrats, stewards will be the ones determining whether or not an admin will regain their rights, and if there is tampering with admin elections, they will be able to take action. --Rschen7754 00:18, 19 October 2019 (UTC)
      • Would we want a WP where de.WP and fr.WP present vastly different views of WWII, because at the time they did not get along well? That's where I have a problem with separate language WPs having total independence, thus we get hr.WP, azeri WP, etc. There is the separate issue that most linguists say that hr, sr and bs are not different languages, but one language, now increasingly referred to as BCS. Thus the creation of these separate WPs has enabled the propagation of different ethnic "truths", where hr.WP Admins decide what is pro-Croat or anti-Croat, and act accordingly Thhhommmasss (talk) 20:18, 18 October 2019 (UTC)
        • Wrong. There's no "increasing referring as BCS", but the opposite. The only "increase" is by a group of persons (that do not understand Croatian at all + few cases that represent themselves) that by a brute force imposed their PPOV on en.wiki and pushed the agenda about so-called "Serbocroatian" That "BCS" has always been the political product by the serbocroatist remnants. Croatian is a separate and independent language, as such has been recognised in EU, and developing in its own way. Regarding "various ethnic truths", leave it. It is better that everyone has its own "truth" than to have an imposed "unified version", because the "unifiers" have always been heavily biased. Science is such - there is no unison saying, every scientist gives his thesis that is based on some fact. By nature of scientific works, all disagreeing scientists over the time "look over the fence at neighbours yard" and rethink and slightly and slowly change their attitudes. Kubura (talk) 22:08, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

Not to offtopic, but since a cross-wiki Arbcom is talked about, u first have to locate the problem considered on the other 3 wikis before u pursue such action. The problem on hr.wiki has been clearly identified. I'll just ping @Antidiskriminator: here, since i can detect from the comment below that he's got something in mind. --Ivan VA (talk) 09:56, 17 October 2019 (UTC)

No, I do not have anything in mind.--Antidiskriminator (talk) 17:24, 18 October 2019 (UTC)

Having in mind all circumstances, the future members of the cross-wiki Arbcom should be selected only among the editors who were indeff banned at some of sh.wikis.--Antidiskriminator (talk) 09:23, 20 October 2019 (UTC)

• I was blocked as a vandal for a simple change to a Trvtko II article. I have provided 3 sources, from real actual books from Croatian authors (they have a habit of referencing anonymous websites like hercegbosa.org as a source.) and they blocked me as a vandal. Unacceptable. --Mhare (talk) 11:41, 17 October 2019 (UTC)

I tried again (1) to do simple change with really good sourcing of that one claim, but they have reverted my changes, and refuse to even discuss the reason why they have reverted it. It's really anti-scientific and has nothing to do with an encyclopedia. It is just unacceptable. Mhare (talk) 11:47, 18 October 2019 (UTC)

• Well done to GregorB for pulling this together. I agree that the three problematic admins have to go, and I believe their desysopping should be permanent. I would be very wary of a new hr ArbCom without strong oversight (which is self-defeating really, as it should be the final arbiter of user conduct), as there are likely quite a few supporters of these three there, and they may just elect a like-minded ArbCom and we are back at square one. I am very sceptical about a cross-wiki ArbCom for sh language variants, as there will be POV-pushers on all sides who will want to influence hr WP to their way of thinking rather than taking a neutral approach. Any such ArbCom would need to be very carefully selected, and members should not have been sanctioned on en WP or another of the sh WPs. It is editors like GregorB that are sorely needed at hr WP, including as admins. Peacemaker67 (talk) 05:49, 18 October 2019 (UTC)
  • I second the suggestion for admins like GregorB at hr.WP. Perhaps some Admins from en or other more reliable WPs, who understand the language, could also pitch in Thhhommmasss (talk) 20:18, 18 October 2019 (UTC)
• Good job GregorB for all the effort you've put into this! Based on the above, I also want to give my support to at least remove the three mentioned admins. Although other administrators actively or passively gave their support for the status quo and by doing this failed in their adminship, I think we should avoid the risk of a potential break-up of the community in case of removal of all. -- Edinwiki (talk) 10:29, 20 October 2019 (UTC)

Just for the sake of having it on the record, my writing to the croatian wiki village pump to infrom the community that there is an ongoing discussion about the issues here and that they should participate, has been deleted. --Ivan VA (talk) 18:13, 20 October 2019 (UTC)

...coincidentally, by an editor who has gone on record saying that Ante Pavelić is "one of the greats of Croatian history". GregorB (talk) 18:48, 20 October 2019 (UTC)

Further proof that these guys are totally incapable of adhering to the most basic WP principles and need to be permanently removed as Admins. You may want to post the RfC notice on sh.WP village pump, since some hr editors may have migrated there, given the abuse Thhhommmasss (talk) 20:13, 20 October 2019 (UTC)

• Quite frankly, if the situation is as egregious as it's being made out to be, I don't think these remedies will be enough. Obviously the three problem admins should be banned, but then what? If the Croat nationalist clique has entirely taken over the website, then won't they just reelect more trouble admins and/or continue resisting attempts to correct the content? I doubt that NPOV good faith editors will just appear out of the woodwork to return to the Croat Wikipedia after being bullied out over the course of several years. English Wikipedia has an essay called TNT for a reason. Might as well blow up this website and start over when there's shown to be enough interest from good faith users. -Indy beetle (talk) 06:18, 21 October 2019 (UTC)
  • Here are my current expectations:
  1. The three above-mentioned admins will be demoted.
  2. The rest of the admins will either denounce the demotions or (more likely) have no comment.
  3. No substantial effort will be made to acknowledge errors, revise blocks, fix POV content, or subdue POV pushers. All attempts to do so will likely be quietly undermined. The takeaway from this RfC will be: don't produce on-wiki evidence which can later be used against you.
  4. There will soon be a RfA, where more admins vetted by the current clique will get "elected" (in the fairest of elections, no doubt - and I'm not being sarcastic here).
  5. At the earliest possible opportunity, the three will get elected back to their positions.
  6. Some time in 2020, I'll be writing yet another RfC on the same issue.

The only good thing about it is writing that RfC will be easy: everything is already documented and there will be nothing new to add. I'll just point to this RfC and the above 6 bullets - chances are I'll be batting a thousand with these predictions. GregorB (talk) 08:56, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

It's obvious that an (reasonably elected) ArbCom has to bee the next step. If you grasp the whole problem. Btw, just for the record, i'v got blocked on HW indefinitely for going into an argument with one of the admins proposed for deselection about the deletion of the village pump info to join the discussion. --Ivan VA (talk) 09:22, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

Or, hr.wikipedia will take it as a warning shot across the bow that if they don't step up and reform their wiki, a second RFC proposal will result in more drastic options. --Rschen7754 18:14, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

As per Gregor B's documentation, these guys have taken a whole series of warning shots over an entire decade, and persisted in the same old ways. They are total ideologues, totally incapable of reasoning or reasoned argument. The only solution is to remove them permanently since they are a disgrace to WP and everything it stands for. Would systematic deletion of sources quoted by recognized western historians, Holocaust denial, quoting of convicted forgers as "Reliable Sources", and then banning people who protest such practices be tolerated for 10 years on de or other Wikipedias? Thhhommmasss (talk) 18:54, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

But little was ever done about it those times - only 1 CU was removed. Escalating sanctions would send a stronger message (and is more consistent with the outcome of Requests for comment/Do something about azwiki, where stewards refused to remove all admins). --Rschen7754 00:15, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

You've seen their reaction to the Signpost article complaining of their behavior, where they immediately insulted and indefinitely blocked Gregor B, then blocked another user who spoke up in his defense, and later they also deleted the link to the RfC on hr.wikipedia. This is like a crook repeatedly accused of stealing, stealing multiple jurors' watches. Would you propose giving that guy another chance with a warning? The "best" that might be hoped for is that they will find less obvious ways to constantly harass and drive away everyone they disagree with Thhhommmasss (talk) 01:19, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

Yeah, I get that, but the problem is that this would be a hard sell for stewards who didn't act when the problem was more clear-cut and the wiki was smaller. And some might say that was justified, because stewards aren't a global ArbCom and it's difficult for them to take such an action. --Rschen7754 04:07, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

•  Support 1&4 per Rschen7754, and the strategy of escalating sanctions also per Rschen7754. —Ah3kal (talk) 03:04, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

Here is my vote on this request for comment, split into numbers for each of the proposed actions by GregorB.

1. I  Support removing the admin status from Kubura, SpeedyGonsales and Zeljko for their misuse in the RFC´s posted for the last 6 years. Issues prior to that where handled by the then-functional ArbCom.

2. I  Oppose the ban from re-applying, mainly because the beurocrats that re-sysoped them no longer have that right. Kauburin was re-elected after an discussion on the Village pump and SpeedyG was elected after an 32-2 election. Luka Krstulović re-added Kaubin as admin and MayaSimFan re-added SpeedyG as admin. They both lost their bureaucratic rights due to inactivity in 2017.

3. I  Oppose dismissing all admins. Their actions do not warrant that kind of response.

4.  Support removing both Checkusers and Beurocrats, all of them. Beurocrats: SpeedyGonsales and Kabura are also beurocrats. RobertoF blocked GregorB unnecessarily. Denny has not made any action since February 2018 and not edited since August 2018. That leaves just de-crating Fraxinus for good measure.

Checkusers: I support removing Ex13´s checkuser rights. This is because of Ex13´s involvement in the ArbCom case, and for removing the site notice for an admin removal vote, as mentioned in the 2013 issues meta RFC. As Croatian Wikipedia can not have an single CheckUser, Vodomar would also have his rights removed until another CU is elected. CU requests will be handled on meta meanwhile.

Comment Would you be so kind and sign your posts above. --Silverije (talk) 22:02, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

5-6.  Oppose With CheckUser requests on meta, I do not see the need for forcing an ArbCom upon the Croatian Wikipedia.

Additional: That the Croatian Wikipedia implements proper voting regulations on CheckUsers, and that they are stricter than the ones for admins. Explainations of what the CU is for, like is present on hr:Wikipedija:Provjeritelji is not enough.--Snaevar (talk) 17:59, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

I don't think it's meaningful to set up an ArbCom unless the community really have a consensus for do so. An ArbCom with only inactive or biased users does not make things better. Nor does someone be a arbitrator for life.--GZWDer (talk) 19:53, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

Given the long history of repeat abuse, and some of the points raised by others above, I'd like to propose consideration of the following additional steps, which would also be applicable to other problematic WPs:

1. Remove all blocks from everyone the 3 admins have blocked
2. Send notification to all who’ve posted to hr.wp, or even better, post banner on hr.wp, telling everyone of Admin removal and other changes, and to invite back people who've been driven away from participating, since otherwise they may not learn of changes. This can help rebuild the hr.wp community, compared to what is likely now a POV-selected community, which could perpetuate the same abuses, even if 3 admins are removed
3. Provide a very simple way to report any further abuse. E.g. in header of all hr.wp Talk pages add a “Report abuse” link which links to a Project page where everyone can report abusive behavior on any hr.wp article (on Project page hr.wp Admins can't block people who complain of their abuse, a major problem to date). This would provide a simple way to monitor and address issues across all hr.wp articles, instead of these issues being buried in many individual Talk page discussions
4. Just as POV and other tags can be added to individual articles, a tag/notice could be added to all hr.wp Talk or Article pages, to indicate hr.wp is under bias and other abuse monitoring, and this notice remains until issues are deemed to be fully resolved
5. Per suggestions by others, add an Admin to hr.wp from en, de or other reputable WP, who knows the language, and will be able to monitor behavior, and take immediate action Thhhommmasss (talk) 20:18, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

• Let me first thank User:GregorB for putting together this case, beginning with the excellent article at Signpost, and than compiling the following Rfc. I  Support 1 through 6 (all of the above enumerated actions) in strongest possible manner. (Only, I have some doubts that at the end of the day, even those will be sufficient to hold that language version of the project in check - this, of course, by no means suggests that we should continue to sit, arms crossed, doing nothing.) Also, the additional steps, such as those proposed by User:Thhhommmasss, should be taken most seriously into consideration.--^{s a n t a | t a l k | p i t} 22:00, 23 October 2019 (UTC)

 Support 1~6 + globally lock all of them. - PlavorSeol (T | C) 20:05, 24 October 2019 (UTC)
 Support for 1, 2 and 4 –Aνδρέας ^{talk | contributions} 01:55, 26 October 2019 (UTC)

• Support items 1-2, 4 & 6. Weak Support item 3. I do not believe point 5 is viable - if it's locals there's too high a chance of the same individuals getting in and making it even harder to solve the problem. If it's similar communities, those individuals might speak the language but don't know the community. Points 1, 2, 6 are obvious based on the evidence. Point 4 will mitigate some of the issues. Point 3 will cause some collateral damage, if I believed it more significant I'd oppose, but I'm not sure removing worst contributors alone from adminning is sufficient Nosebagbear (talk) 12:19, 27 October 2019 (UTC)

Also support 10 (external sysops) - we need reliable sysops. Any lingually capable global sysops should be authorised, and admins on similar language projects who want to apply should be encouraged, with them vetted through either meta or Stewards. I suggest 2 year terms. Nosebagbear (talk) 18:59, 27 October 2019 (UTC)

•  Support 1, 2, & 6, I think 3 & 4 should be not universally applied, assess it per need by I guess it would have to be the Stewards. I agree with others that 5 is likely not possible nor entirely desirable. While here I will just say that several of the additional actions below have merit too. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 17:00, 27 October 2019 (UTC)
• I had some interactions with members of the Croatian community, and the worst thing is that few want to speak up. It is crystal clear that the community is heavily divided in two factions fighting each other (one being indeed around 'Q'), but I don't think desysoping everybody will really solve the problem. We did reach the point where an external intervention is really needed, but we need to do something with the divide itself. I would suggest doing the following:
  • Set up a communication channel where Croatian Wikipedians can provide feedback to a neutral party. You will probably get no feedback in the village pump. You will probably not get it here either. Wikipedians who left the project will probably not answer themselves either. However, one can perfectly contact them personally, and community members can provide useful feedback privately.
  • Identify most active members of either group and desysop those who have admin rights and were involved in abusive actions (with specific actions identified for each desysopped).
  • Identify users trusted by both groups who can be administrators during the transition period.
  • On the other side, involvement of participants from similar languages is a road to nowhere. I am confident that there are Croatian Wikimedians who are neutral and can govern this wiki. The problem with similar languages is historical antagonism: Croatians had recent and bloody wars with Serbians and Bosnians, and the current generation still remembers them. I don't think that having users who identify themselves as Serbo-Croatian, Serbian or Bosnian govern Croatian Wikipedia will be accepted by the Croatian community, but this will likely make things worse.
  • Set the goal of making the content accepted by Croatian general public, not by neighbouring language communities. Domovinski rat in Croatian Wikipedia will not become War in Croatia, we should accept it. However, having Croatian history written in a way heavily critised by Croatian media is not acceptable at all and should be the problem to solve.

  NickK (talk) 23:06, 27 October 2019 (UTC)

• @NickK If most people are afraid or won’t speak up, this points to a very dysfunctional community. However, I wonder how many objective-minded contributors are left on hr.wp, particularly among those writing on historical subjects like WWII. Like Gregor and others, I believe the problem goes beyond the 3 Admins. In my own experience, Dvanajsti igrac instantly reverted multiple edits where I quoted Zagreb University historians, the US Holocaust Museum, etc. When I protested their reverts of the western historians I quoted, Mateo K stated that “the interpretation of sources in this area of history is in many cases highly questionable. Especially when they are from the former Yugoslavia or from the US”. Thus he’s questioning all US sources, and went on to state that the Nuremberg Tribunal “freed itself of all proof requirements”, implying they proved nothing regarding Nazi crimes. When I asked Mateo K to document some other claims he made - i.e. the most basic of WP principles - I was instantly threatened with a block, for “attacking” Mateo.

In all these cases, plus others, absolutely no one else ever spoke up to differ with that crowd. Since per Gregor, just the 3 Admins blocked 1.000 people, this likely means hundreds have been driven away, as most people will not put up with repeat abuse. I know of excellent editors who left hr.wp because of abuse, and I’m sure others know many more. If after driving many away, Dvanajsti igrac, Mateo and their ilk are all that’s left of historical contributors on hr.wp, and they’re set to replace the 3 Admins, I have zero confidence they can make appropriate decisions now, or in the future. It may be true that those who’ve left have been so thoroughly disgusted and discouraged that they will never return, but strong efforts should be made to bring them back and recruit new editors, as well as put in place ongoing monitoring, including right away having an outside Admin step in at least temporarily, as many have suggested, sort of like a bankruptcy judge when companies go bankrupt, as well as hopefully put in place other strong, ongoing monitoring systems so such things do not occur again. This will all help support the good editors who still remain, and perhaps with some returns and new recruits the community can be rebuilt Thhhommmasss (talk) 05:18, 30 October 2019 (UTC)

• @Thhhommmasss: I fully agree that just removing all admins and letting the currently active community re-elect admins will basically lead to the status quo. This is why I think we need to start with some way to contact those who left the project and those who are still there but do not speak up, and find people who can be trusted to govern the project. I don't know any cases where an outside adminship succeeded without trust of local community — NickK (talk) 17:56, 30 October 2019 (UTC)

So, if you desysop everyone who is going to do the daily job? Stewards? Nope, we are probably not interested in such stuff. I am not elected to take care of daily business of one wiki which language I do not speak. Crats and CU — that's not that of a burden but daily admin work for hands of non–language-speaker, hell no. — regards, Revi 02:32, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

• @NickK:A big hurdle in trying to lure people back who’ve been driven away by abuse, and bring in new ones (including those who’ve stayed away entirely because of hr.wp’s poor reputation – I know many such cases, I’m sure others do too), will be convincing them substantial changes have been made. In particular after multiple failures to address this problem, there’s a lot of cynicism, and I’ve heard people say that it’s not even worth trying, since nothing will change. Saying that a couple of the worst offenders have been removed (which of course is needed), so now those who left are invited back to work it out with the remaining admins and editors, most of whom are likely very similar, is a very tall challenge, given the dysfunction and distrust, even if some outside mediator is involved.

I believe a temporary, outside Admin can provide an additional assurance that things have changed, particularly if they’re from a reputable WP, like en, where some editors who abandoned hr.wp in disgust, still contribute. Thus if they hear an en Admin has stepped in, they may be more assured that things will be run along the lines of the known en.wp, which despite some similar issues, has nothing like the abuse of hr.wp. This might be much more reassuring than new, untested processes. It might also help to further define the outside admin’s role - e.g. require all blocks, a key source of abuse, to be first approved by the outside Admin. Combined with robust new systems for continuous reporting, monitoring and dealing with abuse, I believe such an approach may stand the best chance of rebuilding a healthy community, which later, after some balance is restored, and people are reassured, can run itself.

Having largely given up on hr.wp, the above would go a long way toward reassuring me that it might be worthwhile to reengage on hr.wp. It’d be great to hear from others who’ve given up on hr.wp, what would it take to personally bring them back. Btw, I agree with trying to reach out to those who left, but in order to first find out what it’d take to bring them back, since I believe it will be a more protracted process to regain trust and rebuild a normal communityThhhommmasss (talk) 03:30, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

It's worth considering that if we do opt for external admins they are going to have be even more resistant than normal admins, and be capable of dealing without that without losing control or mistaking unhappiness with abuse - otherwise the local community will never be able to rebuild Nosebagbear (talk) 13:54, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

@Nosebagbear: Yes, I agree. That’s why I believe the outside Admin should be vested with extra powers, in essence make them a SuperAdmin, to act as Custodian, until things are straightened out. That’s what is done with bankruptcy judges and many other custodianships when individuals or organizations fail to perform their duties. Thus, in addition to granting the outside Admin the power to approve in advance all blocks, a key source of abuse to date, I think it’d help to give them the right to suspend any other Admins who abuse their power, as well as appoint new interim Admins from among those behaving responsibly. On top of that, I believe it would greatly help to add easy-to-use, robust systems for reporting, monitoring and taking action on any new abuse (like the instant, wholesale reverts of people’s contributions, another main source of abuse to date). Such systems could both support the outside Admin, since it will be difficult for them to track everything, while establishing systems that will help prevent such abuse, once the outside Admin relinquishes their role. Personally, I think it may take about a year of such outside Adminship, to reestablish trust and rebuild the community, after which it can revert to more normal processes, especially if, as mentioned new systems are put in place, to prevent the return of such abuse Thhhommmasss (talk) 18:52, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

@Thhhommmasss:, for a start, the software won't support that, so there is the risk of basically a full out permissions war being wrought - I'd get very concerned by these users actually having more power (albeit locally) than our stewards do. They'd also be in a position to hold staggering influence even after their term and powers ended, depending on how they used them. The reasoning for them is obvious, but either we will have canned all the admins ourselves or we clearly can't even generate a meta consensus for removal, so we can't then hand power for unilateral de-sysoppings to individuals (or even a triumverate). I DO think it would make sense to let them unblock individuals, even if the other admins don't want them to be (i.e. their power can be grown to a "veto" but not unilateral authority).

Regarding timescale, 1 year is the logical amount. Certainly, even if it's not resolved by that point we should be stopping and thinking because clearly our actions have failed to help. Nosebagbear (talk) 19:42, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

@Nosebagbear: I mentioned that trusted, experienced outside Admins should be brought in. I do not think that such people will run a mock, instead they can help instill more normal processes. Regarding software issues, perhaps they can coordinate with stewards on needed measures Thhhommmasss (talk) 20:24, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

@Thhhommmasss: My major question is where such admins can be found. This requires a lot of daily routine (hrwiki currently has 6 very active and 3 moderately active admins) and a lot of work resolving really complex conflicts (otherwise we would not need a desysop). I would think that at least 3 very active people are needed, and all of them should speak the language and know local rules. I don't think we will have a lot of outsiders willing to do that.

Regarding users who left the project, I would rather be willing to have them suggest changes themselves rather than wait until they happen — NickK (talk) 19:31, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

@NickK: From personal experience, I’d say a lot of their activity now is instantly reverting all quotes of Reliable Sources I contributed, then threatening to block or blocking me, while extensively arguing holocaust-deniers and convicted fraudsters have the only true answer, plus tons of similar nonsense. In any case, I believe the outside Admin should act as a custodian/supervisor. In bankruptcy, just the senior management is typically kicked out, and supervision imposed over the rest. While companies are in bankruptcy, they often still function, and the bankruptcy judge does not make all day-to-day decisions, just important decisions are kicked up to them – I mentioned some of these which I believe the outside Admin should control. Also as mentioned, appropriate new systems for reporting, monitoring and dealing with abuse can both support the outside Admin, to ease their burden, while creating the infrastructure to help prevent such abuse in the longer-term. Finding such a person will indeed be a challenge. Let me suggest one person – Peacemaker67, who is familiar with the subject-matter, I believe understands the language (although may have some difficulty writing it, but could write in English, since practically everyone understands it) is level-headed and fair-minded, etc. Perhaps others can suggest additional candidates Thhhommmasss (talk) 20:14, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

@Thhhommmasss: That's not how adminship works. There should always be admins who block vandals, delete spam etc., no wiki can live without it. If existing admins are desysopped, someone should start doing this instead — NickK (talk) 20:43, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

@NickK: So I was going here with the case where only the 3 admins are removed, and others stay in place to do the regular work, but supervised by an interim outside Admin. The alternative is remove all current Admins, and find new ones Thhhommmasss (talk) 20:56, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

I  Support all actions, especially 5 and 3. Similar actions should be done for some admins or bs.wikipedia and sr.wikipedia too. --Obsuser (talk) 16:36, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

I would not comment on this request, because I'm not active on hrwiki. But I want to answer the charges of user Obsuser. Yes, I blocked the user Obsuser. Because I was the only one who had the courage to do it. He has for many years made a circus of the project, many things worked without consultation with the community, acted arbitrarily. Violated rules and many things. I have had problems with some administrators on srwiki in the past, but there is no need to even consider taking such measures on srwiki like for hrwiki what we are discussing here. Here are other users in the community to confirm my allegations: @Soundwaweserb, MareBG, and НиколаБ:. Zoranzoki21 (talk) 18:53, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

• Strongly support 1, 2, 4, 6. Oppose 3 because hrwiki is too large to function without admins and we would have little chance of electing enough new admins soon enough if all the existing admins were blocked. I would say, looking at block logs, there is however evidence of other admins supporting each other, and that a blocked user has no realistic recourse in an appeal. I would hope some new RfAs will fix this problem. Regarding 5, so far only tentative support because few people have come forward in its support and I think an ARBCOM msut be elected properly and in an NPOV way the first time around. I have in my mind some editors I could nominate for the ARBCOM but I have doubts if they'd be willing to take part in this affair, and I'm going to hold back for the moment to see if the mutual ex-yu ARBCOM gets support. I applaud GregorB for getting us to this point, he may not have much confidence in how this is going to pan out but I do. Daß Wölf (talk) 19:26, 3 November 2019 (UTC)

• I invite everyone to take a look at similar case on Turkish Wikipedia. There is a Site-wide authority abuse by admins and likes of tr.wiki to show the US as a culprit of the 1980 coup. Here is the page about Turkish wiki case: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Request_for_comment/Political_bias,_nespotism,_abuse_and_mob-rule_at_tr.wiki --Ruhubelent (talk) 14:17, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

• Interesting: the proposer refers to previous RfC, that was started in the eve of the biggest Croatian national holiday, when the victory in the war for defense, liberation and independence of Croatia is celebrated [10] (anniversary of Operation Oluja)! Usually these days the greaterserbianists, from the country that attacked Croatia, have escapades and denigrate Croatian major celebration and attack Croatia, with same "arguments" as GregorB, calling Croatia biased, nationalist, (neo)fascist etc.! Kubura (talk) 23:02, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

Strong oppose. Here's the breakdown. GregorB requires the coup d'etat, without any support from hr.wiki. Since he cannot takeover the project, because he and alikes do not have support (nor on hr.wiki nor in Croatia), he abuses the RfC procedure to hostilely takeover the project and impose neoyugoslavist agenda. Just like in real life, to keep the captured project in his hands, he must eliminate the top users ("top", because community gave them the support) and users (without tools) that have high reputation in community.

And who is supporting this attack? Non-Croatian speakers, few Croatian-speaking venomous users (but not sure that they are from Croatia or Croats at all, they could be e.g. Vučić, Dačić and Vulin), and from ex-Yu republic that was hard supporter of Yugoslavia and Serbocroatism (not the Croats from that republic). And users with nothing on their userpages, behaviour pattern of the expendable accounts for dirty tasks while the true owner plays the rosebud.

1. Remove the admin status from Kubura, SpeedyGonsales, and Zeljko, the three worst offenders. This looks like this [11] Nužno je zabraniti rad partija koje su najodgovornije za najveći zločin u Evropi poslije Drugog svjetskog rata, a to je razbijanje Jugoslavije (="It is necessary to ban the activity of the parties that are most responsible for the biggest crime in Europe after WWII, and that is the breaking down the Yugoslavia.")

2. ... and give them a lifetime ban from reapplying. Yugocommunist method, eliminating all other parties as "burgeoisie" and "nationalist", especially those with the major support, otherwise in normal democracy these "burgeoisie" restore the voters support.

3. Dismiss all local admins. Paranoia goes on. Everyone is suspicious! Communists find socialdemocrats as the traitors of the cause.

4. Remove bureaucrat and checkuser status from all local bureaucrats and checkusers. Paranoia goes further. Even the secretaries, drivers, cleaners, janitors are suspicious. What is next? Restoring the star to Croatian flag, coat-of-arms and changing of roof tile on the Church of St. Mark in Zagreb?

5. Set up a local ArbCom consisting of experienced Croatian or similar language-speaking editors from other wikis, to be appointed by the global community at Meta-Wiki. Solicit extra participation from the members of similar-language projects. Imposing the commisariat made of from "confidential peoples" (supporters of Yugoslavhood; interesting, three users from bs.wiki applied here for that) to inobedient "nationalist" "fascist" Croatia that busted "beloved jewel Yugoslavia", silence and dismiss "nationalist" Matica hrvatska (=major Croatian cultural organization).

One more important thing. When this process started (somewhat before this RfC, around major Croatian national holidays), simultaneously started strange persistent rude attacks and threats on our wiki pointed to several users, not on Kubura, Speedy and Zeljko, but to other very active admins, as some kind of auxiliary line of attack. Fresh example, repeated many times before, [12] "name1 name2 fa*s I'll slay You all". As an attempt to additionally disrupt the project, intimidate and chase away the maintainers. Kubura (talk) 00:24, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

By diverting from the topic and comments like this, it tries to divert attention from the proposal to politics, which is not acceptable. Nobody talks about Yugoslavia, Yugoslavhood, communism and the like. I beg that the real arguments be raised against the proposal. Greeting! --Acamicamacaraca (talk) 23:19, 18 November 2019 (UTC)

Strong oppose and  Strong support to attacked admins of hr.wiki --Mateo K 01 (talk) 00:27, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

It is an attack of a marginal, extreme political direction in Croatia that represents only themselves in a very public manner. --Mateo K 01 (talk) 00:40, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

@Mateo K 01: please correct me if I'm wrong - in the CW article on Ante Pavelić, you called him "one of the greats of Croatian history"? GregorB (talk) 13:25, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

I was on a shared computer, logged off and left the PC for a few minutes. The cookies remained and a work colleague took a look at the recently visited pages and he made fun of me by writing this in the article. I have been asked about it countless times, and at some point it will be enough. I won't react to anything like that anymore.

And please, don't "ping" me anymore. --Mateo K 01 (talk) 01:57, 9 November 2019 (UTC)

Simply placing symbol without arguments... I don't see anything concrete here. --Acamicamacaraca (talk) 23:19, 18 November 2019 (UTC)

Strong oppose IMHO each community should be able to decide whether they want to be left leaning or right leaning. Most language versions are probably left leaning (because people that tend to work voluntarily on an encyclopedia are likely left leaning). But if the Croatian Wikipedia is "right leaning" and the community has decided that that should be that way there should be no interference in that from outside...--Sparrow (麻雀) 🐧 17:11, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not supposed to be left- or right-leaning, nor Croat- or Serb-leaning, but take an NPOV, quote Reliable Source, and allow the editors to engage and discuss things. That is not what is happening on hr.wikipedia, where Admins systematically, massively revert edits and instantly block users they disagree with, while allowing quoting of convicted forgers and other dubious sources, declare that holocaust-deniers have the only true answer, etc - all so that their POV will prevail. Here is just one of many articles from Croatian media criticizing hr.wikipedia, describing how its Admins, led by Speedy Gonsales, have systematically abused the system to drive away many other editors. Individual wikis should not have the freedom to violate the most basic WP principles, and WP would be entirely remiss if it did not take action Thhhommmasss (talk) 19:04, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

I do unfortunately not speak Croatian thus I can't look through all sources and come up with a thorough conclusion. I do however doubt that a whole language community would for no reason at all (because all Wikimedians I've met are highly intelligent open minded people) turn into an authoritarian dictatorship that systematically blocks out opinions. I do however feel that this is an attempt to block out certain opinions. If this proposal goes through, then this will set a precedent to have this be done in other language versions. And it'll start with something big but slowly it will progress until there are more and more things that can't be said or written. I'm German. We've had this twice last century. I want neither a right wing nor left wing dictatorship. Both of those always started with a banning of free speech. And this is an attempt to ban free speech. People are agreeing here with the proposal because buzzwords are thrown around. Only few of those people actually speak Croatian and are thus able to understand the whole issue. I find this straight up horrifying. I thought we've been here already. But apparently people never learn. And people never understand what banning free speech leads to.--Sparrow (麻雀) 🐧 20:03, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

It is not free-speech when, as the above linked Croatian article notes, hr.wiki Admins systematically massively revert edits and block people they disagree with. Plus WP is not based on free speech, certainly not in the sense that everyone should be able to freely spout holocaust-denial, or flat-earth and conspiracy theories, etc. Instead it is based on NPOV, Reliable Sources, ability to discuss disagreements, etc – principles which these guys have systematically violatedThhhommmasss (talk) 20:17, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

On the contrary, @Thhhommmasss:. You are imposing Your point of view and You are systemacitally massively reverting edits. You got thorough explanation on Your talkpage about Your behaviour and the reason for (non)disputing the sources. You do not mention that here. You have not been permablocked nor banned. You're trolling. Misusing the RfC process (by disqualifying) to impose Your point-of-view and permaeliminate the opponent. You've been told that You can put the same text again, just do not use that heavily compromised biased source. Regarding the Holocaust, You've been explicitely told that that is very sensitive topic, that the victims of Holocaust must not be belittled by citing compromised sources, quack scientists/would-be-scientists. "Daklem, možeš unijeti isti tekst, ali pod uvjetom da se pozoveš na ozbiljni i nekompromitirani izvor! Ako ga nisi našao, onda ga ne unosi. Shvati da je holokaust ozbiljna tema koju ne smijemo omalovažiti pozivanjem na nadriznanstvene izvore. Zar bi želio pozvati se na izvor u kojem se za počinitelje krivi ljude-guštere? " Do not misuse buzzwords to get Your point. And others, who just to play along, supported this misuse of RfC process to impose a black myths, please do not interfere into something if You don't understand the language. You got selectively presented information. Kubura (talk) 22:20, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

Sure Kubura, I'm imposing my POV, by quoting German sources whom the Croatian-American historian Jozo Tomasevich, author of the most widely-quoted book on WWII Yugoslavia, published by Stanford University press, deems the "best informed and most objective of sources", same sources quoted by many other western historians, yet you instantly mass-reverted all these quotes, because per you, these sources are "unreliable" and "anti-Croat". You wrote for example that these sources are "compromised" because they write of "mass-terror against Orthodox Christians", i.e. the same Ustashe mass terror against Jews, Orthodox Christians and Roma that the US Holocaust Museum, Croatian Jasenovac Memorial, and practically all Western historians write. Thus it is obviously one big global conspiracy by all these source, which is why you mass-deleted such quotes. Of course per you, English WP is also part of this "anti-Croat" conspiracy, since here is what you left on my Talk page after you mass-deleted all this information: "I would only advise you not to follow the lead of English Wikipedia. They do not work in a quality manner, they often cite sources who are compromised, writing unnaturally about Croats" Thus it is obviously you who on hr.wiki gets to decide who writes "unnaturally about Croats", and therefore can't be quoted, western historians and Holocaust Museums notwithstanding Thhhommmasss (talk) 23:07, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

@Thhhommmasss:, do not misinform. The other author has been disputed. You have that explitictly written on Your talkpage. Kubura (talk) 23:11, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

@Kubura - the Croatian authors you quote to dispute von Horstenau and western historians, also clearly dispute the "mass-terror against Orthodox Christians" that the US Holocaust Museum, Croatian Jasenovac Memorial and nearly all western historians write about. Since I can similarly quote you many Serb authors who dispute all Serb crimes in Croatia and Bosnia, and just like you claim that all who say otherwise are "unreliable" and "anti-Serb" - there is all the proof needed that no such Serb crimes occurred, and Serb wiki should follow your lead and mass-revert claims to the contrary Thhhommmasss (talk) 23:24, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

@Thhhommmasss:, a correction: noone denies the "mass-terror" by Ustashi regime, You don't have to read Horstenau for that. But be precise: Serbs (they are mostly Orthodox Christians) were the target of the mass-terror and/or were mistrusted, but not the all Orthodox Christians; Bulgarians, Romanians, Ukrainians, Macedonians, Montenegrins (even they), even the Russians were considered as friends. Finally the Croatian Orthodox Church's priests from those ethnicities. Kubura (talk) 00:08, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

@Sparrow: But there is a precedent, see m:Requests for comment/Global ban for Til Eulenspiegel. What goes for one checkuser and admin goes for many checkusers and admins. Tgeorgescu (talk) 08:40, 9 November 2019 (UTC)

 Support 1 and 4 per Rschen7754. ~riley (talk) 19:41, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

Strong oppose The easiest thing in the world is to moan that everything is corrupt and disreputable. Should this RfC come to fruition as proposed above, CW itself will die, and users from similar-language projects, who have never lifted a finger to assist CW before, will be granted free reign on it, free to write whatever they see fit, with no regards for truth nor the credence and sentiments of Croatian people. In my honest opinion, this RfC is founded in malicious intent from members of similar-language projects, who wish to spread misinformation and sleaze for their own benefit. Everything listed here has been taken out of context and interpreted with malicious intent, in order to incriminate its authors. --Ivi104 (talk) 01:43, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

If this RfC succeeds, some of the many Croatian editors systematically driven away by the abuse on hr.wp, as described in multiple Croatian media articles, will have the opportunity to return, and create a more normal hr.wp. As someone of Croat ancestry, I truly resent a Wikipedia run by those who state convicted fraudsters and Holocaust-deniers have the only true answer, or proclaim "anti-Croat" those who dare criticize genocidal killers Thhhommmasss (talk) 04:45, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

@Ivi104: When you say that "the easiest thing in the world is to moan that everything is corrupt and disreputable", I cannot but agree. But what precisely are you saying: 1) that there is nothing wrong with CW, or 2) that there may be something wrong, but no evidence has been presented? Also, please provide some examples of things "taken out of context and interpreted with malicious intent, in order to incriminate its authors". GregorB (talk) 20:36, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

Personally, I'm not a member of any similar-language projects, my only editing of note has been on en.wiki. Since this (sadly) appears to be a matter of importance, let it be known that I'm a Croat by nationality, ethnicity and residence. I hung my flag on 8.10. like everybody else. What I don't stand for is not even promoting and characterizing new Holocaust theories as if they were already culturally accepted and taught in school, I became aware of that long after I left hr.wiki. My main gripe is e.g. taking 6-7 edits to write an entire article with sources, upon which I was harassed for "flooding recent changes", despite other editors having far more edits on the recent changes page than me, after which I naturally lost interest in hr.wiki. Why should I put up with that kind of behaviour? When some years later I'm offered a chance to help make hr.wiki a place where I wouldn't feel like a 2nd class citizen because I'm not on "singular you" with the key people, why should I not make my grievances heard? And trust me, I would've dropped this a long time ago if every word I got from the hr.wiki crowd wasn't a template notice or an outright insult. Daß Wölf (talk) 22:25, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

 Support all proposals. Banfield - Reclamos aquí 19:21, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

Comment Per w:WP:NONAZIS Holocaust denialists should get banned by WMF. This does not require a vote. Find the evidence, submit it to WMF, and they get a lifetime ban. Tgeorgescu (talk) 02:20, 8 November 2019 (UTC)

• @tgeorgescu – I’d certainly place proclaiming that notorious Holocaust-deniers, like Roman Leljak (who also happens to be a convicted fraudster), have the only "truth", represents Holocaust-denial, as Admin Zeljko did. Leljak wrote a book claiming - contrary to the US Holocaust Museum, the Croatian Jasenovac Memorial and great majority of western historians - that Jasenovac was not a death camp, and instead of the 80.000 to 100.000 estimated victims, just 1.654 people died there. Thus he is decreasing victim estimates 50 times, or by 98% compared to these other sources. Since all these other sources also state that up to two-thirds of all Croat Jews exterminated in the Holocaust were exterminated by the Ustashe at Jasenovac, he is also denying 98% of these Jewish Holocaust victims. Yet quoting this convicted fraudster, here is what the Admin, Zeljko wrote: “We have an accurate list of the number of people in the camp (18,600) and the death toll (1,654). All other so-called sources are fabrications and lies”. Thus he is relying on a Holocaust-denier and convicted fraudster, to deny 98% of the Jewish Holocaust victims at Jasenovac, while claiming that “all other so-called sources” (i.e. the US Holocaust Museum, the Croatian Jasenovac Memorial and the vast majority of western historians) “are fabrications and lies" Thhhommmasss (talk) 19:58, 8 November 2019 (UTC)

• Don't ask me to judge that. Tell WMF about it. I'm not in charge; I'm not boss over WMF servers. Tgeorgescu (talk) 08:52, 9 November 2019 (UTC)

 Support, although I worry that these prophylactic actions may not prove successful. After all, experience has shown that determined editors can evade bans. Secondly, even if the problematic editors are kept away, a new cabal may emerge that forces their own bias upon hr.wp. I can't believe I'm actually suggesting this, but we may want Trust & Safety to hire someone fluent in the language to serve as a disinterested observer while this project is assisted back into a healthy state. -- Llywrch (talk) 20:33, 8 November 2019 (UTC)

• Support all proposals, but I also think WMF should appoint a supervisory group, including hired outsiders, with Arbcom-like powers, but over the arbcom (and less involved with the detail). This has been a festering sore of the global movement for years and WMF needs to exert itself to sort it. Johnbod (talk) 17:40, 9 November 2019 (UTC)

Strong oppose. To all proposals. There shouldn't be interference from outside.--Rovoobob Talk 02:35, 10 November 2019 (UTC)

Why not? There shouldn't be outside interference because everything is fine, or because there should never be any interference, no matter what? GregorB (talk) 09:08, 10 November 2019 (UTC)

Meta is a project for coordination of Wikimedia Foundation's wikis. I do not see anything controversial in discussing the long-term issue about Croatian Wikipedia here. Best regards! --Acamicamacaraca (talk) 23:19, 18 November 2019 (UTC)

Comment It's undeniable that there are problems with bias on hr.wiki regarding certain topics/articles. I still have to read through the whole discussion, and decide which proposals I will support and/or oppose. --Hmxhmx 10:55, 10 November 2019 (UTC)

Strong oppose - Nonsense. The three targeted admins are one of the best admins on hr.wiki, hard-working and determined to their job. Targeted admins, stay strong! --Dvanaesti Igrač (talk) 20:04, 10 November 2019 (UTC)

On what bases do you call them the "best"? Violation of the administrator's rights and Wikipedia's basic rules is surely commendable. --Acamicamacaraca (talk) 23:19, 18 November 2019 (UTC)

 Strong support • Strong support to all proposals. Project “independence”, “sovereignty”, “autonomy”… could be valid up to some degree, and only if Foundation principles (chiefly those listed from 4 to 6) are observed and fully implemented. Since that is clearly not the case, the wikimedian community (and WMF) should and must react. When Founding principles are concerned, the hr.wiki acknowledge their superiority over local consensus: m:w:hr:Wikipedija:Konsenzus#Iznimke (it is one of 10 main rules of hr.wiki). Stewards can follow only valid consensus, but are not obliged to implement anything in defiance to the said principles. I support also the ArbCom, which should be defined in the next RfC. -- Несмир Кудилович (разговор) 20:53, 10 November 2019 (UTC)

Comment Regarding #3, I would recommend that Sokac121 remain admin, since he is one of the truly neutral ones. -- Несмир Кудилович (разговор) 13:01, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

I agree with Несмир Кудилович. --Acamicamacaraca (talk) 23:19, 18 November 2019 (UTC)

@Nesmir Kudilovic:, no good deed goes unpunished. Those hr.wiki administrators and hr.wiki at all, that are rudely denigrated here, showed You full understanding for You and several times gave You another chance. Not just second, but the third, fourth. We closed our eyes on Your previous behaviour when You reappeared under new accounts. On other project these Your accounts were blocked. Your previous incarnation was user:Bugoslav [13] [14], Imbris (Imbris~commonswiki) [15] [16] [17], [18] Rainman (renamed Rainman~commonswiki; from the time befor unified wikis, because there is also a Serbian user Rainman), [19] Reasons for blocking:Intimidating behaviour/harassment: general problem editor, causing disruption here, hr.wikipedia and other places. Kubura (talk) 21:46, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

Strong oppose - I don't think that this kind of discussion is for Meta. If some user disagrees with wiki politics than he can gives up from editing. Kubura, Zeljko and Speedy are notable admins and users on Croatian Wikipedia and they are trying to save impartiality and objectivity on Croatian Wikipedia. -Kraljnnm (talk) 08:55, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

"If some user disagrees with wiki politics than he can gives up from editing" — If wiki policy is such as to impose one point of view over another and to block opponents... "Kubura, Zeljko and Speedy... are trying to save impartiality and objectivity on Croatian Wikipedia" — wrong and unfounded. --Acamicamacaraca (talk) 23:19, 18 November 2019 (UTC)

 Strong support The last answer convinced me that CW will not change her violating issues against the five pillars. And CW will not change from inside too - especially if the problem stay since more than 5 years. Sammyday (talk) 19:37, 15 November 2019 (UTC)

 Strong support, that's systemic violations of our fundamental rules. --GrandCelinien (talk) 13:38, 16 November 2019 (UTC)

Strong oppose--Croq (talk) 08:46, 17 November 2019 (UTC)

Plain vote without arguments... --Acamicamacaraca (talk) 23:19, 18 November 2019 (UTC)

 Strong support I finally mustered the courage to take part in this discussion. Stewards should remove admin status to mentioned users, and of course ban them from reapplying. Removing bureaucrats and checkusers will be useful and effective. Violation of Wikipedia's basic rules, imposition of one point of view and blocking opponents must be stopped. I support the creation of ArbCom and want to volunteer in it (if there is room :)). Also, the user-victims of these administrators should be unblocked, and users who have left the project should be invited back to help restore a neutral point of view in the articles and help in further development of project. Allowing an easier method of reporting abuse will also be helpful. Best regards! --Acamicamacaraca (talk) 18:01, 17 November 2019 (UTC)

You are from Serbia, and You wrote this message in the eve of the anniversary of the occupation of Vukovar (Croatian city), that was occupied by Serb-led Yugoslav Army (and ideology of Serbocroatism is behind any Yugoslavism) and Serb paramilitars (after 3 months of shelling and bombing; the excuse was "liberating the city from "ustashas", "Croatian Neo-Fascists", "Croatian nazis"), as well as the anniversary as the slaughter on Ovčara (near Vukovar) and Škabrnja. You really chose the date. This shows who started this RfC, and what kind of people are supporting it. Kubura (talk) 01:42, 18 November 2019 (UTC)

My comment had nothing to do with politics. In general, I think everything could have been settled without war, in a peaceful way. We do not need to attack each other for the past, but we need to look to the future. I have no intention of disputing the territorial integrity of Croatia and I do not hate Croats and the state of Croatia (I've actually been to Croatia several times during the holidays :)). Although this is off-topic. Greetings! --Acamicamacaraca (talk) 07:57, 18 November 2019 (UTC)

I want to thank Kubura for making this comment because it precisely describes what the problem is with Croatian Wikipedia and how hopeless situation currently is there. So, we have this RFC for 37 days already and users are adding their comments on daily basis. And, after Acamicamacaraca added this comment on November 17, Kubura instantly make insane consipracy theory saying

You are from Serbia, and You wrote this message in the eve of the anniversary of the occupation of Vukovar (Croatian city) [...] You really chose the date. This shows who started this RfC, and what kind of people are supporting it.

— Kubura

Despite the fact that this discussion lasts practically without interruption for 37 days, he just can't help himself and when a user from Serbia makes a comment on a day before an anniversary of the Serbian occupation of Vukovar, he instantly *sees a pattern*. This is paranoia. There is no other word for that then paranoia. It's not just he personally believes this. He actually thinks it's good idea to share his paranoia with community on Meta, believing that he can actually convince other users that the things he sees are real. Think about that! Take all the time you need and think about that! Kubura made similar statements zillion of times, and GregorB well documented it in signpost article and here. *This* is what Croatian wikipedia under Kubura looks like for more then 10 years. Whenever someone makes a logical argument, he doesn't react to an argument. Instead, he just thinks of another crazy conspiracy theory *why* user made that comments, what are his motives and how the user is connected to Serbian Secret Service. To make things worse, he is not alone. Croatian wikipedia is full of admins who, I'm sure, recognize this as paranoia, but pretend it's not because Kubura makes a dirty work of cleansing Croatian wikipedia of all the users that doesn't fit their preferred ideological profile. I beg WMF to finally solves this problem because it's just sad to what a wikipedia project turned into.

P.S. If this Kubura's comment alone doesn't show the scale of abuse of 5 pillars, specifically "Assume good faith", I really don't know what more proof You need. --Hrwikiuser (talk) 11:14, 18 November 2019 (UTC)

@Hrwikiuser - excellent comment. Not only do we see paranoia, but obviously clear ethnic prejudice, since he attacked the commenter for his ethnicity, not the substance of his comments, and he has repeatedly made attacks on people’s presumed or real ethnicities, his main “argument”. Also, megalomania, since as is often the case with extreme nationalists, Kubura and the other CW Admins have designated themselves the only “true Croats”, systematically reverting and banning people they deem "anti-Croat". In the above comment, he even makes the ludicrous claim that people shouldn’t have the right to criticize CW Admins around certain national holidays and anniversaries. Thus they see every criticism of CW Admins as an “attack” on the entire Croat nation, and this despite the numerous criticisms of CW in the Croatian media, clearly indicating that they do not speak for all Croats. Yet further proof these guys violate every core WP principle, and thus should be removed forever Thhhommmasss (talk) 20:18, 18 November 2019 (UTC)

Another example of obvious croatian-national-holidays-related paranoia by Kubura here:

One more important thing. When this process started (somewhat before this RfC, around major Croatian national holidays), simultaneously started strange persistent rude attacks and threats on our wiki

— Kubura

It is impossible to reason with someone who is this paranoid. I don't think user:Kubura:Kubura should be just de-sysoped. I believe lifelong ban on editing any WMF project is more appropriate. --Hrwikiuser (talk) 07:46, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

I actually think similarly as Hrwikiuser, but de-sysoped, with some topic bans, and editors of such profile wouldn't pose to much of a threat anymore (?!). It is obvious that editors on these "small" wikipedias, at least in this case on Wikipedia in Croatian language, are really convinced that project somehow belong to people of that particular ethno-national group, then from there it gets narrower in ideological terms - they are convinced that they own it. One of these admins in question is on record stating that these activities surounding RfC is nothing less than "diplomatic incident", something like that. There is no arguing with that.--^{s a n t a | t a l k | p i t} 08:53, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

Specifically regarding Kubura’s attacks on the commenter’s ethnicity, I believe there is a need to further clarify, and more vigorously and consistently enforce WP:NPA which forbids attacks on the basis of race, sexual orientation and religion. First, this should be expanded to proscribe attacks on the basis of ethnicity, the type of attacks we most frequently see among Balkan nationalists, in an attempt to discredit people, without dealing with the substance of their comments. Given Kubura’s pattern of repeatedly alluding to, and attacking people’s ethnicities, real or imagined, he should have been permanently blocked from WP long ago for this alone Thhhommmasss (talk) 19:46, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

First, You lie. I do not attack anyone's ethnicity - that's what You said, Thhommmasss. Do not input me the things I have not said. Ethnicity is not the same as citizenship. So, You are on the line of the Serbian leadership (Vučić, Dačić, Vulin). Some of them have compromised themselves during Croatian War of Independence. They use exactly the similar words. I respect if anyone is loyal citizen of his country, but that does not allow him to attack the wikiproject whose main contributors are from other country, the country who was attacked from the same country which now uses other means instead of guns and tanks - now, they are persistently trying to brand Croatia as "neonazi, fascist" etc. Leaving politics aside, it is shame for the Meta to allow to expendable dirty-tasks sockpuppets to require to decapitate and disrupt whole project, project that the attacker has never been co-building at all. Hey, a user with a username that is not normal, it looks like a name created from fooling around (as if he has no ideas for names anymore, after dozens of sockpuppets), without any effort invested to create a decent userpage, requires the elimination of several users, that are major contributors/maintainers to a certain project and to Wikimedian projects at all? Kubura (talk) 21:20, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

@Kubura – you keep inventing your own WP “rules”. Where on WP does it say that a citizen of one country can’t participate or write on other language WPs? Given the Hague Court has determined that Croatia attacked Bosnia, and Croatian forces committed many crimes against humanity in Bosnia, then according to you, Croat citizens should be forbidden from participating on or criticizing Bosnian WP. And if by chance they still do, they should be instantly attacked as “apologists of Greater-Croatia crimes”, exact same as you’ve attacked others here as being “apologists of Greater-Serbia crimes”. Second, as a WP editor I've been contributing for years to enwiki and Slovenian WP, with hundreds of edits on each, and absolutely zero problems there. So obviously it is again a case were en, sl and other WPs, plus the whole rest of the world is always wrong, not you.

There are numerous articles in Croatian media that criticize CW for its extreme right-wing bias, obviously another mass “Serbo-Croatist” conspiracy. Not to mention all the “Serbo-Croatist” German officers, western and Croatian historians, whose citations you mass reverted, since they are also part of the entire “anti-Croat” conspiracy. Of course, online Croatian dictionaries and the entire .hr domain are in on this “conspiracy” too, since they define and use the Croatian language in a manner that is contrary to what you claim, etc, etc. Why don’t you put in your own RfC to remove the entire rest of the world, since they all dare contradict you Thhhommmasss (talk) 00:00, 27 November 2019 (UTC)

@Kubura, the idea of Serbo-Croatian language is linguistic subject, not political. Croats can be patriots and call their language Serbo-Croatian in the same time. Croatian nation does not depend on definition of separate Croatian language. Americans call their language English, yet noone doubts they are separate nation. Irish too. Only people who themselves are not sure of their national identity feel the need to prove the Croats and Serbs speak different languages. Unfortunately, You are one of those people. That's why You harass anyone who speaks of Serbo-Croatian language and automatically take that as proof he is "enemy of the state", and consequently, of Croatian wikipedia. I would advise you to cool down a bit, bit You are long beyond that phase. --Hrwikiuser (talk) 09:07, 27 November 2019 (UTC)

@Hrwikiuser, Croatian nation does depend on definition of separate Croatian language. That applies to all other national states. Remove them the language, and they lose their identity, then You can put there some other nation that speaks other language and expel the native nation or assimilate the native nation that got its language "removed" (by force or forgetting). When the native population loses the language, they lose the identity. Argument of "not sure of identity" is fallacy and switching of thesis: People who themselves are not sure of their national identity feel the need to suppress the difference of Croatian and Serbian and to use the "mixed" term (not to mention those that have agenda of forceful merging). You are the one from them. Maybe someone says that he or she speaks so-called "Serbo-Croatian", maybe they think that they are Croatian patriots, but they are on the wrong way. It will take them to patriotism to "Croatia", but what kind of Croatia? Non-Croat Croatia with the only thing that is Croatia is the sticker with the name "Croatia". Serbocroathood in its essence is against the Croathood, because it directly denies the separate Croat identity, it requires melting/assimilating the Croathood into something else. Kubura (talk) 06:13, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

 Support It is important that WMF finally starts to take responsibility and breaks down the idea of the immunity of individual wiki-projects to external interventions. Maria Sieglinda von Nudeldorf (talk) 08:06, 24 November 2019 (UTC)

Says the user from politically protected Serbocroatist project. Calling for external interventions (and that way limiting the sovereignty of wikiprojects) is terrible. Serbocroatism is in close ties with (Yugo)Communism, therefore it reminds on Soviet intervention in Hungary and Czechoslovakia. Kubura (talk) 22:06, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

I strongly, once more,  Support all of the propositions in this RfC, especially banning all of the responsible editors, since all of their actions can be interpreted as not being encyclopedic, right-wing biased and essentially malicious --Edgar Allan Poe (talk) 16:06, 24 November 2019 (UTC)

Says the user from politically protected serbocroatist project, a project that serves as playground/sanctuary for neoyugoslavist discontents and mostly built itself as botopedia. And the very idea of Serbocroatism is in opposition with the idea of Croatian language, and Croatia at all. Serbocroatism is incompatible with anything that has the attribute of Croatia(n).

Also, this user above that supports this RfC (Edgar Allan Poe) has a sockpuppeteering history (on hr.wiki) with five known sockpuppets on hr.wiki, and before he had a ban on uploading pictures (he oversaturated with uploading copyrighted images, deleted pictures from Commons he uploaded on hr.wiki [20]). In later stages of his work on hr.wiki, he was (short period) blocked because of mistranslating; his edit looked like the playing the game with poor software translations. Kubura (talk) 22:22, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

@Kubura: Aren't you now saying similar things about shwiki that you are blocking people for on hrwiki? --Rschen7754 02:29, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

@Rschen7754:, please, give me the diff. Generally, people are being on hr.wiki if they show destructive behaviour; depending on the level of destructiveness and previous activity on hr.wiki, they get blocked shorter or longer, sooner or later or simply they get a warning. Kubura (talk) 05:46, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

@Kubura: The reasons for block are the provocative disruptive edit on the national Independence Day, and calling hr.wiki as "neofascist propaganda site" (!!!) [21] --Rschen7754 06:51, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

@Rschen7754:, I have not in the very first edit massively removed the content on the highly sensitive topic on biggest national holiday that celebrates independence, and I do not call them "neofascist propaganda site". Kubura (talk) 07:36, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

 Support After long debating with myself to add my official stance to this, i've decided to support this. I feel bad for numerous editors who were expeled from community, and can't contribute to Wikipedia in their own language. I was not member of that community, and was blocked for referenced small changes to the article(s). That was just one small example, I can't imagine what they did to their regular users with whom they didn't share their POV. I encourage stronger scrutiny toward other wikipedias as well - bs, sr and sh. Time to rise above. --Mhare (talk) 18:14, 24 November 2019 (UTC)

 Support For all proposed actions except #3 They shouldn't be punished for their inaction, especially in a community where a part of it has a history of intimidate its detractors. ~ℳɑrio (talk) 14:09, 25 November 2019 (UTC)

I have spoken with many administrators and could not notice any "extreme nationalism", especially not with Kubura. He is an excellent personality, always friendly and helpful. --Mateo K 01 (talk) 23:06, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

Strong oppose - Nonsense. The three targeted admins are one of the best admins on hr.wiki, hard-working and determined to do their job. Keep on the good work guys! --Ceha (talk) 22:33, 1 December 2019 (UTC)

Strong oppose As far as I can see, the same story again. The same man, aided by more or less the same (little) group of supporters, for the n-th time attacks and obstructs the whole Croatian project because of his frustration and personal anger towards the administrators and lot of the other users he quarreled over because of his aggression. The actions he proposed prove what kind of person he is. Removing the admin status, dismissing admins and giving them a lifetime ban from reapplying? Really? Does somebody want to punish administrators harder than the worst vandals? Administrators, who enjoy the support of the majority of the community? It is worrying that someone wants to be a dictator in the 21st century, on Wikipedia, and silence the dissenters by totalitarian methods. Same thing with checkusers and bureaucrats. ArbCom consisting of similar language-speaking editors? Is this a joke? It is ridiculous to consider Croatian Wikipedia should be controlled by users who are incapable and unwilling to put their own projects in order, such as Serbian Wikipedia, which is full of nationalism, chauvinism and historical revisionism, complete with numerous forgeries. Or „Serbo-Croatian“ Wikipedia, mostly composed of articles directly copied and pasted from the Croatian Wikipedia. Please, get rid of the senseless stories and stop bullying the Croatian Wikipedia. IvanOS (talk) 23:15, 1 December 2019 (UTC)

You seem to have misconstrued some of the action points. It's "lifetime ban from reapplying for an admin position", not a block (I never asked for anyone to be blocked), so no, nobody wants to "punish administrators harder than the worst vandals" - even if the damage they have done far exceeds anything a vandal could have achieved. GregorB (talk) 23:58, 1 December 2019 (UTC)

Strong oppose Very good admins, Croatian Wikipedia with them is very high quality and accuracy. I want to give them full support and that they continue to do this quality work. Thanks. Mikola22 (talk) 14:18, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

 Strong support I was active contributor back on 2011.-2014. on Croatian Wikipedia, active translator on Meta etc. However many acts of Croatian admins (including comments on IRC after they found I was from "leftist" Rijeka) discouraged me from contributing to Wikipedia anymore. It is sad what happened to Croatian Wikipedia. Even biggest portal in Croatia is writing how awful Croatian wiki is now. --Anton 008 19:34, 8 December 2019 (UTC)

Strong oppose Allegedly „biggest portal in Croatia“ is a portal inclined to yellow press, sensationalism, exaggeration, communism nostalgia, Serbophilia, Yugoslavophilia and generally biased presentation of news. And just this portal is usually cited, when an attack on Croatian Wikipedia is in the timetable. Why not other portals? And who cites it? Mostly users without their own user page or those without any single new article created. Those users are often supported by sockpuppets or/and provocateurs, who only write/talk about removing, deleting, banning, blocking, dismissing etc. Some of them write, for instance, „remove both - Checkusers and Beurocrats, all of them“ or „lifelong ban on editing any WMF project is appropriate” or „there is terror of some paranoid right-wing admins“ or „hr.wiki is a neofascist propaganda site“ or „create a cross-jurisdictional ArbCom for the similar language projects” or „merge the bs-, hr-, and sr-wiki projects into the primary one: sh-wiki“ or „globally lock all of them“! and so on. It seems that their only mission is to destroy. --Silverije (talk) 23:59, 11 December 2019 (UTC)

Silverije, your entire comment questions the integrity and motives of the critics, without as much as a word about the issue at hand: the three above-mentioned administrators, did they do something problematic or not? Have you read the Signpost article or its Croatian version? It lists a number of examples. What am I getting wrong? Please provide concrete examples. GregorB (talk) 08:46, 12 December 2019 (UTC)

You might not be getting wrong, but rather one-sided. Admins on Croatian Wikipedia reacted on editing which they understood as arrogant, blatant, provocative or as vandalism. Their reactions were very similar to such reactions of admins on English Wikipedia (and other wikipedias as well). Users showing inappropriate behavior (like [22] or [23]) take the consequences for their behaviour. As for the Jasenovac concentration camp or similar issues, the number of victims is rather a question of sources than of editors or admins. And The Curious Case of Major Milan Tepić, whose desperate and disastrous terrorist act was awarded with the “Order of the National Hero” in Serbia, shows how things can be turned upside down. --Silverije (talk) 00:29, 14 December 2019 (UTC

Why don't CW Admins go on de.wiki and similarly cite as the "only truth" convicted fraudsters who deny 98% of Auschwitz victims, and then claim it's just a "question of sources", and see how far that will get them. Or go on enwiki and repeatedly rail, as they've done on CW and here, about how "unreliable" and part of a vast Serbo-Croatist/anti-Croat conspiracy are Encyclopedia Britannica, enwiki, western historians, Croatian historians, the sources these historians cite, the US Holocaust Museum, the official Croatian Jasenovac Memorial, Croatian and international linguists, mainstream Croatian media, the Austrian government, German public television channels, etc. And then instead of these "unreliable sources", claim that the only "reliable sources" are right-wing Croatian websites that promote Holocaust-denial, and celebrate as "heroes" convicted Croatian war criminals and mass murders of civilians, invent "language genocides" while denying real genocides, etc. See how far that will get you on enwiki, plus massive reverts and blocks of sources you disagree with, endless name-calling, repeat refusals to provide any proof for your claims, claims that all this abuse is just "a question of sources", etc, etc. Thhhommmasss (talk) 20:37, 14 December 2019 (UTC)

Strong oppose I strongly oppose these proposals, because they are backed with very hollow arguments.--Ejnal (talk) 00:34, 15 December 2019 (UTC)

Strong oppose all of the proposals because these may harm Croatian Wikipedia community by presenting the wiki to the public opinion as an extremist wiki. --Agusbou2015 (talk) 01:56, 16 December 2019 (UTC)

Answer to falsified allegations

Excuse my French, but this RFC is load of crap. First two points GregorB wrote above, namely "Far-right bias in a number of topics, most notably related to World War II, including outright historical revisionism and Holocaust denial." and "Proliferation of grossly unencyclopedic, poorly sourced, and unsourced biased content." are either straight lies, or falsification or misrepresenting the facts. In short:

• During and after WWII communist government in then Yugoslavia did number of crimes, which are today abundantly documented, by scientists and researchers, and no scholar, domestic - meaning speaking the language and living in the country this crimes were committed, or foreign scholar, disputed that. I don't write about en:The Black Book of Communism, which is targeting communism in whole East Europe, and maybe somewhere it misses its target a bit, I mean books like: "Partizanska i komunistička represija i zločini u Hrvatskoj 1944.-1946. - Documents", ISBN 953-6659-20-4 etc, which are solely based on documents, which make no summarized judgement, but just state the atrocities communist government made. Resolution of European Parliament named "Importance of European remembrance for the future of Europe" is by some criticised as unjust equalization of Nazism and Communism, but it could help in societies where WWII war criminals are still praised and laudated for their crimes, like mass killing is a good thing. Have in mind, this resolution restate that ALL crimes must be judged. That means, crimes of communist states are not smaller because countries opponents of Hitler did it. As US did their best to end WWII with as low bloodshed it can possibly be, Hiroshima & Nagasaki are still mass murders of civilians, but that happened before end of war, and had it's purpose. What to call murders of hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands which happened after end of war, and had no purpose except killing all possible opponents of new government?

• • No holocaust denial is happening on Croatian Wikipedia. In Croatian society is active process of estimation of number of victims of WWII, scholars are doing it. Communist regime not doubled or tripled, but multiplied some numbers by 10 or 100, to get more money in reparations from Germany, which is also well documented, by Serbian historic Zoran Janjetović in his book "Od Auschwitza do Brijuna, Pitanje odštete žrtvama nacizma u jugoslavensko-zapadnonjemačkim odnosima", ISBN 978-953-6979-41-7.

• Croatian Wikipedia is not perfect, I am not perfect, or users of our project are not perfect. But, we allow all valid sources. Some dispute books printed in Croatia after 1990, which is ridiculous, as scientists (historians) are doing their job same today as before 1990.

GregorB clearly lies (OK, misrepresents) about media coverage of our project, there was some media coverage of Wikipedia in Croatian language in 2013, but it was not taken by serious media, and in 2018 there was no criticism in Croatian media at all towards Wikipedia in Croatian language, except in Novosti, paper of Serbian minority in Croatia, which is well known as ridiculous, non-serious paper which exist purely as it is funded by state budget for minorities, and is allowed to publish rubbish as this is called freedom in democratic country.

In conclusion, number of users of Wikipedia in Croatian language is steady, and users would themselves raise an issue, if there would be an issue to be raised, but there is not. Sysops are often under pressure, I myself dislike that my volunteer work of 15 (going on 16) years is in this way denigrated, but, that is obviously the case, sysops are here to fight any ridiculous accusation anybody can issue, and GregorB is kind of serious; if you are not insider, you can easily trust this web of carefully crafted falsifications. But I ensure you, his statements are false.

We can discuss about anything, content of articles, sysop actions, no problem here, but to state that sysops are biased without any serious base for that except things that are in 2013 invalidated is sad or laughable, or both. If Wikipedia would take statuses of sysops because one or few disgruntled users state their falsifications on meta, Wikipedia as a project would be long gone. As I stated in previous sentence, I am open for discussion of everything, but to loose precious time with users who are clearly ready to falsify facts, I am somewhat reluctant, I hope you understand that. Best wishes to you all! SpeedyGonsales (talk) 16:46, 26 October 2019 (UTC)

Umm... you did edit the Croatian version of "Black Book of Communism", didn't you? Also, Croatian version of "holocaust denial" looks small-ish in contrast to English Wikipedia one, which is larger, more detailed, and GA-promoted. Also, English version says that those deniers would make "false statements", while the Croatian one (via Google Translate) didn't say much about the deniers. How do you explain the significant differences between the two versions? BTW, English article doesn't deem Novosti as unreliable as, say, en:Daily Mail and en:Breitbart News, both of which are forbidden to be used as source of facts due to mainly due to their content and accuracy issues. Moreover, I don't know why you accuse others of falsehood without substantial evidence. George Ho (talk) 17:43, 26 October 2019 (UTC)

The main issue with hr.wp is that it repeatedly deletes citations of sources deemed authoritative and widely quoted by western historians, and when people complain, they block them. For example, I quoted the German general von Horstenau, whom the widely respected historian Jozo Tomasevich deems “the most authoritative and most objective of sources”, and is further quoted by numerous other historians, yet all quotes from him were instantly deleted from hr.wp, with the explanation that he is “unreliable” and “anti-Croat”, presumably because he dared criticize Ustasha atrocities. I guess that means in Serbian Wikipedia, they can declare widely quoted critics of Milosevic as “anti-Serb”, and instantly delete them, then block everyone who protests. I’ve also had quotations deleted from the US Holocaust Museum (with the explanation “they are not immune to fraud”), University of Zagreb historians, etc. For quoting these sources I was repeatedly blocked or threatened with blocks

While deleting widely quoted Reliable Sources, hr.wp simultaneously allows the quoting of the convicted forger, fraudster and Holocaust denier, Roman Leljak. Contrary to the US Holocaust Museum and most western historians, who put the Jasenovac death toll at 80.000 to 100.000, Leljak claimed the toll was 1,654, based on some Yugoslav document from 1946 he dug up, which at the time, in the chaotic post-war conditions, was able to document only 1,654 individual names of Jasenovac victims (many names were added later by subsequent efforts). I responded that in the Belsen trial, the Allied authorities in 1946 could document only 12 named victims, compared to the 50.000 victims of that Nazi camp, that most now estimate. I wrote to admin zeljko, that claiming that an obviously incomplete Jasenovac named-victims-list from 1946, is the only correct count, is like someone insisting that the only correct estimate of Belsen victims are those 12 named victims in the first post-war documents, and that the 50.000 Belsen victims that most now estimate, are all lies. Or that the Auschwitz known named-victims list fromm 1946 (perhaps only in the hundreds, or a couple of thousand), is the only true count, and everything else is "a lie". Yet zeljko and other hr Admins deleted my edits with US Holocaust Museum and other estimates of victims, with the claim “We have official Yugoslav ...names of all who were in [Jasenovac – i.e. the document dug up by Leljak with 1.654 victim names], and among those who was killed.... So everything else remains...malicious propaganda and unfounded charges”. Thus per hr Admins, the only true number of Jasenovac victims are the claims by a convicted fraudster, forger and Holocaust denier. This, combined with repeated deletions, attacks and blocks of editors who protest, makes hr.wp totally unprofessional, contrary to the most basic WP principles Thhhommmasss (talk) 19:05, 26 October 2019 (UTC)

That is exactly what is happening. They delete citations that are referenced by multiple authors, and that just hurts. I can just see how one would just give up if they delete your contribution. I wanted to make a little change of obvious misinformation that Tvrtko II was Croatian noble. You can't find any resource or book that would support that claim. I found at least 3 citations (2 by Croatian authors) that speak of Tvrtko II as a Bosnian king - nothing more, nothing less. I was banned as a vandal. Simply unacceptable and unscientific! --Mhare (talk) 19:23, 26 October 2019 (UTC)

Here's the hrwiki version, just in case. George Ho (talk) 21:02, 26 October 2019 (UTC)

It is Your PPOV, @Mhare:. First, You have not been permablocked or even banned, but 1 day block; further explained on the talkpage. You are misusing this RfC for imposing Your point-of-view, instead of using corresponding talkpage. Kubura (talk) 21:26, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

First of all, it's not my POV. It is recognized literature, and I believe they were all Croatian authors. Well, you said it all. I was blocked for 1 day for entering referenced information. Even quoted Miroslav Krleža Institute of Lexicography. This is just sad. --Mhare (talk) 22:34, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

Poštovani Thhhommmasss nijedan izvor o pretpostavkama i nagađanjima o broju žrtava u Jasenovcu nije obrisan. Pogledajte sami povijest članka i uvjerite se. Ako je ijedan uklonjen, ja ću ga vratiti. U stvari neke suradnike smeta što sam JA u tekstu dodao i podatke koje je naveo Leljak. A ti podaci su fotokopirani spisi koje je nakon rata otkrila OZNA ili UDBA i koji su se krili u Beogradu. Pa kakva je to bila nepristranost na Wikipediji ako se nesmije staviti ono što jednoj strani ne paše. Lip pozdrav iz Hrvatske. --Zeljko (talk) 22:43, 26 October 2019 (UTC)

Like I said zeljko, there are Allied documents from 1946 showing only 12 named victims known at the Belsen camp at that point, hence per the convicted fraudster, Leljak, and you, "proof" that only 12 people were killed at Belsen, and the 50.000 claimed victims by most historians today, are just "propaganda". In the Jasenovac article, you quote these ridiculous claims by the convicted fraudster, Leljak, in the very first sentence of the very first paragraph on Victim Estimates, whereas a much briefer sentence fragment of victim estimates by the United States Holocaust Museum (which btw is also the consensus estimate by most Western historians), is buried some 20 or 30 estimates below that. Any objective approach would have reversed this, put the estimates by the consensus estimates by the US Holocaust Museum and other reliable sources at top, and most likely ignored ridiculous claims by fraudsters such as Leljak. And the problem is not only that, but the fact that you went and immediately deleted my quotes of University of Zagreb history professors, who dispute Holocaust deniers like Leljak, Igor Vukic and others whom you extensively quote. hr Admins also repeatedly deleted my quotes of many other sources quoted by western historians, then banned me, or threatened to ban me when I complained Thhhommmasss (talk) 23:49, 26 October 2019 (UTC)

Procjena nije činjenica, a te procjene su takve da već postaju besmislene. Bio Leljak lažljivac ili ne, on u svojoj knjizi Mit o Jasenovcu bez komentara iznosi samo dokumenta koje je pronašla politička milicija poznata kao OZNA i koji su se od 1946. donedavno skrivali od očiju javnoasti u Beogradu. Čemu ta skrivanja dokumenata, osim da bi se moglo manipulirat sa brojem žrtava. U dokumentima su poimence navedene sve žrtve sa njihovim imenima, odakle su, šta su bili po zanimanju, i kako su umrli.

@zeljko - Leljak does not just present the 1946 document as "a fact". Here's a video of him claiming that Jasenovac was not not a place of mass killing, and then goes on to claim that the true number of Jasenovac victims was in fact 1.654, and everything else is made up, thus claiming that the number of Jasenovac victims was 50 times less than the number of victims given by the United States Holocaust Museum, the Croatian Jasenovac Memorial and most western historians, who place the victim numbers at 80.000 to 100.000. This claim that you and Leljak made of 1.654 being the only true number of victims is also total Holocaust-denial, since the US Holocaust Museum and many other sources state that 13.000 to 20.000 Croatian Jews, i.e. up to two-thirds of all Croation Jews killed in the Holocaust, were exterminated at Jasenovac. Yet in the section on Victims Estimates you lead with this total misrepresentation and falsehood, and further you made claims that this totally false claim from a convicted fraudster is the only true number, and everything else - i.e. including the 50 times greater estimates by the US Holocaust Museum, the Croatian state Jasenovac Memorial Area and the vast majority of western historians - is "propaganda". Like I said, claiming that the document from 1946 is "a fact" is same as quoting the fact that that court documents from 1946 name only 12 known Belsen victims, and then using this to make the totally false claim that only 12 people were killed at Belsen, and not the 50.000 now thought by most historians. I.e. it is using facts to falsify, since there are many other facts which totally contradict Leljak's claims. The Srebrenica-denier Dobrica Cosic, similarly claimed there is a 1995 US document mentioning just 400 victims of Srebrenica, and thus claimed this is the true number. For all I know such a document may indeed exist (based on what someone may have thought at some point in 1995), since there are numerous documents that all holocaust-deniers - including Leljak, Igor Vukic and Cosic - continuously cherry-pick and selectively quote out of context to make their case. Yet if the Victims Estimates section of a WP Srebrenica article led with Cosic's claim of 400 victims, I'd say every last Srebrenica Admin should be kicked out. Particularly if, as in the case of hr.wp Admins, they repeatedly reverted and blocked people who quote the same sources as western historians, University of Zagreb historians, etc, in order to contradict the claims of the Holocaust-deniers quoted on hr.wp Thhhommmasss (talk) 22:58, 27 October 2019 (UTC)

• Ako postoji nešto bitno za članak sa potkrijepljenim izvorima vrati, budući da neznam o čemu se točno radi. To je bitno, jer kad istina izađe na sunce, onda će se vidjeti ko je muljao sa tzv podacima i tvrdnjama. Lip pozdrav --Zeljko (talk) 12:17, 28 October 2019 (UTC)

@SpeedyGonsales: First of all: you said "GregorB clearly lies (OK, misrepresents) about media coverage of our project", and you claim that "in 2018 there was no criticism in Croatian media at all towards Wikipedia in Croatian language, except in Novosti". Yet, the Signpost article quotes and references, apart from Novosti, two more such articles. You should really know better than to accuse others of lies, when you clearly didn't bother to read the article with any degree of understanding, and it is your claim that is demonstrably false. In fact, a one-minute Google search finds two more such articles: one is titled "Croatian Wikipedia in the hands of the extreme right" and the other "Croatian Wikipedia reaches new low with a new Jasenovac article".

In more than 1/3 of your reply, you're talking about the communists, something that has nothing to do with the topic we're discussing here. It turns out that, whenever Croatian Wikipedia and you personally get accused of right-wing bias, the "communist" card is played, like, for example in this edit you made in 2013 in the English entry on the Croatian Wikipedia. Your edit summary was, and I quote, "rephrased to remove POV", so this also serves as a good English-language example of your approach to NPOV.

It's utterly useless to argue that my claims of "Far-right bias in a number of topics, most notably related to World War II, including outright historical revisionism and Holocaust denial." and "Proliferation of grossly unencyclopedic, poorly sourced, and unsourced biased content." are false, when the Signpost article presents a number of supporting examples (limited, obviously, by available space). What is more, it presents a number of examples where you, Kubura and Zeljko are directly responsible, all easily proven by diffs. This is the crucial issue here, but about that you didn't say a word. I'm sure you know why.

Finally, I'm certain that in the future you'll keep complaining that the accusations were trumped-up, unjust, false, or whatnot, but the fact is you had the time, means, and opportunity to respond, and you managed to say absolutely nothing of substance. GregorB (talk) 09:52, 27 October 2019 (UTC)

As a general note to all, your arguments would be more convincing if you found the diffs to back up statements of alleged onwiki behavior. --Rschen7754 16:28, 27 October 2019 (UTC)

As stated in the "Evidence" section above, all diffs pertaining to on-wiki actions discussed by the Signpost article, and ascribed to Kubura, SpeedyGonsales, and Zeljko, can be found in the article's partial translation to Croatian here. None of it has been challenged thus far. GregorB (talk) 16:53, 27 October 2019 (UTC)

This is the diff that was used as reason to ban me. --Mhare (talk) 17:29, 27 October 2019 (UTC)

To clarify more - I just changed part of the sentence. "Croatian noble" was replaced with "Bosnian King". --Mhare (talk) 17:34, 27 October 2019 (UTC)

This all is trolling as a method of attack on hr.Wikipedia. All these allegations have already been explained on the talkpages of respective users who complained here. Read them first. Not just these complaints with skipped sensible parts that compromise the complainters.
The attack on hr.wikipedia is like the case of minor and loud group (with no support in country) that cannot takeover the reign in the country from inside, so they choose the means of foreign intervention.
Also, this is again the attempt of jamming, so hr.wiki cannot grow, but to live in endless circle of senseless, low blow accusations.
Whenever hr.wiki shows nice growth and excellent editing atmosphere, than the jealous, envious and badintentional users attack.
BTW, this RFC was started just around the en:Independence Day (Croatia). Always at the time of the anniversaries and holidays related to Homeland War and WW2, or when some monument is unveiled, these things start.
Those users here who never talked to the questioned admins here, talk to them first.
The accusing sentence Far-right bias in a number of topics, most notably related to World War II, including outright historical revisionism and Holocaust denial." and "Proliferation of grossly unencyclopedic, poorly sourced, and unsourced biased content." pointed towards the hr.wiki actually is a projection of criticizers' behaviour on the attacked hr.wiki. These allegations are actually Hardline neoyugoslavist, serbocroatist and anti-Croat bias in a number of topics, most notably related to World War II and the attempt of "Proliferation of grossly unencyclopedic, poorly sourced, and unsourced biased content." of neoyugoslavist and serbocroatist colors (e.g. GregorB cited himself as a source).
Science by itself is revisionistic, so is the historiography. No conclusion and no historical document claim is determined "once and for all". It is always the subject to permanent testing, challenging, reexamining, improving etc.
The only ones who violate the principles of Wikipedia are these activists who use street language and political accusations, the same (low blows) ones used in political fight against current Croatian government (President, Prime Minister, Government...). Because of the dirty methods used last time (2013), the attacked Croatian users had to take court action and things ended on the court of law. Kubura (talk) 17:47, 28 October 2019 (UTC)

Sure everyone should follow hr.wp's lead, where they prominently feature holocaust- and genocide-deniers like the convicted fraudster Leljak and Vukic - who completely opposite to the US Holocaust Museum, the Croatian Jasenovac Memorial and practically all western historians - claim that no mass killings of Jews, Serbs, Roma and others occurred at Jasenovac, that it was merely "a work camp", where people put on plays and played soccer. Following the lead of hr.wp, and your claim that "no conclusion and no historical document claim is determined "once and for all", then sr.wp should feel free to start off its Srebrenica Victim Estimates with Dobrica Cosic's claim of 400 victims, the US 9/11 article should give equal or even preferred billing to 9/11 conspiracy theorists, other articles on the Holocaust should prominently and equally feature Holocaust-deniers, while instantly reverting and banning people who seek to contradict these claims by quoting reliable sources. And btw all those Nazis who wrote with disgust of mass Ustashe killings of hundreds-of-thousands of civilians, women and children, wrote eyewitness accounts of the extermination of children in Ustashe camps, in 1943 from Zagreb reported the extermination of 100.000 people at Jasenovac, etc, etc - per your claims all these Nazis were also "hardline neoyugoslavist, serbocroatist and anti-Croat" - i.e. its all just one big global conspiracy against Ustashe innocents. That's why you instantly deleted my quotes of von Horstenau, since according to you he's "unreliable" and anti-Croat, no matter that Tomasevich and other historians extensively quote him, and consider him very well-informed and objective. I guess following your lead, sr.wp should put together a list of all those who dared criticize Milosevic and Serb crimes, claim they're unreliable and anti-Serb, and instantly revert all citations of such sources, and if people complain, block them Thhhommmasss (talk) 21:14, 28 October 2019 (UTC)

@GregorB, no other paper media in Croatia except Novosti published in 2018 any critic of Wikipedia in Croatian language. Index.hr is not newspaper, and although it is not as ridiculous as Novosti, it is kind of yellow news portal, carrying over lot of rubbish, clickbait and such.

@Thhhommmasss, your complaints, if I see right are focused on one article, Jasenovac, not place, but war camp. When I last checked that article (3 or 5 years ago), in that article were present all alleged numbers of victims, ranging from around thousand and half to over one million. It is obvious that all that numbers cannot be correct, some are bullshit, some are facts, but my apprehension of Wikipedia is that we, Wikipedians are not arbiters of truth, but we are here to make encyclopedic content, to clearly present what valid sources state, and maybe even some invalid, if they have some merit, if not validity, but they can be (and often are) presented as evidence of mistakes done by people, and later corrected. It is sad that more than 70 years later there is no clear picture of number of war victims in Croatia, but that is mostly result of dark communist regime, and in last 29 years historians are doing big strides in analysis of that period. When final results will be known, I don't know, but it is clear here that some users are having preference for some works and historians, and are harshly criticizing others, as they have preferred version of facts, or as they know the facts as they were there. That's not encyclopedic, that's not Wikipedia approach, IMNSHO. Lastly, you are accusing Vukić as fraudster, but his works are (to best of my knowledge) heavily referenced by documents from WWII archive in Zagreb, which are also mostly available in Belgrade. Does that mean that anybody proved that Vukić falsified one or more documents? Or are you just accusing him without any proof? This have nothing to do with me, but I am curious, as I have read some of his works, as he is kind of widely present in Croatian media recently.

In other words, as I stated before, this RFC is load of crap. We can talk about sysop actions, I already stated, nobody is perfect, there can be even some grave mistake I don't know of, but if there really is some dubious sysop act, no such was presented to me until now. I see just a one or two angry users which couldn't push their bias. If GregorB's words would be right, I would be first to ask that something need to be done, but his words have no validity at all. SpeedyGonsales (talk) 20:09, 29 October 2019 (UTC)

@SpeedyGonsales: Could you please comment on your on-wiki actions and comments as described in the Signpost article? If the RfC is indeed, and I quote, "load of crap", surely that's not going to be a problem for you, because you've done nothing wrong. Your actions and statements from the Signpost article, one by one, with your commentary. I insist. Since the accusations against Kubura and Zeljko are, presumably, also a "load of crap", please do refute these too, one by one, it should also be easy. GregorB (talk) 21:30, 29 October 2019 (UTC)

@SpeedyGonsales I said the quoted Roman Leljak is a convicted fraudster, who defrauded 448 private Slovene investors and an Austrian bank, for which he spent 3 years in prison, starting in 2008. He claims the true number of Jasenovac victims is 50 times less than then the US Holocaust Museum and practically all western historians. As far as I know, neither he, nor Vukic has published in any peer-reviewed journal, and certainly not in western peer-reviewed history journals, unlike Ivo Goldstein, Tvrtko Jakovina and many other legitimate Croat historians, who btw have a very different view of Jasenovac. Igor Vukic claims that Jasenovac was merely a “work camp” where no mass killing took place, people put on plays, and for this he also quotes an inmate’s book, while “forgetting” to quote the portions of the same book which describe the most brutal extermination of tens of thousands of men, women and children at “work camp”, or per the hr.wp euphemism, “collection camp” Jasenovac. This too is total fraud

Yet when I tried to cite a University of Zagreb professor who directly criticizes Vukic, this was instantly reverted by Dvanajsti igrac, as were my quotes of Jasenovac victim numbers by ethnicity from the US Holocaust Museum, etc. Contrary to your claims, that you’re not “arbiters of truth”, practically everything I wrote was instantly reverted, and I consistently quoted sources used by western historians, University of Zagreb historians, the US Holocaust Museum, etc. Yet Admin Kubura declared all these quoted sources, which are also widely quoted on en and other WPs, as “unreliable”, and instantly reverted all my contributions, then blocked me when I complained. Admin Zeljko wrote that the only true Jasenovac victim estimate, is the 1.654 claim by the convicted fraudster, Leljak, and that everything else is “propaganda”. So don’t try to sell the notion that you’ve not set yourself up as arbiters, because you definitely have, and with a very particular bias. And it is precisely because of such behavior, totally contrary to WP principles of requiring Reliable Sources, etc., that many good hr.wp editors have left in disgust. Incidentally per your notion that WP should not be an arbiter, sr.wp should also provide equal billing to deniers of Srebrenica and deniers of Serb crimes in Croatia, Holocaust-deniers in general are welcome, etc Thhhommmasss (talk) 22:05, 29 October 2019 (UTC)

GregorB, Thhhommmasss, George Ho you get caught up in a pointless debate over content with someone in position of power, overseeing project appropriate use, and who has obviously abused that power and privilege for years - it's like debating with a bank robber if (s)he has / had an account at a bank (s)he just robbed, killing a bunch of workers and account holders in the process.--^{s a n t a | t a l k | p i t} 00:27, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

Santasa99, on the contrary. Here You have the case of malcontents that are abusing the RfC for the elimination of the persons whome they disagree with, by the method of political disqualification. These malcontents are indefinitely accusing, over and over again, selectively presenting the informations, repeating the same lies, calumnies etc., repeating endless times until someone believes that that is the truth and when the number of those who agree with him get the critical value.

There's a better comparison, like in a proverb "ljudi drž'te lopova". That robber runs away from the bank, and when the robbed person runs after the thief, the thief turns and points the finger towards the robbed banker and yells "People, get the robber!". Gregor, Thhhommasss etc. are doing the same thing, pointing towards the others and You bought that. Kubura (talk) 21:55, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

@Kubura: Rather than call everyone a bunch of liars, could you provide any diffs to back up your statements? --Rschen7754 01:40, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

@Rschen7754:, every of those disputed contents, edits, reverts and blocks have been thoroughly explained and discussed (and permanently new material is being provided to prevent editwars) on the corresponding articletalkpages and usertalkpages. The malcontents have not transferred those explanations and discussion. Kubura (talk) 20:54, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

@Kubura: U're such a liar. U/u'r sockpuppet blocked me indefinitely just for disagreeing with u (2 weeks ago). U accused me of conspiring with the Serbian government against hr.wiki?!???? U literally violated the most basic wp.rules. I said it on the hr.wiki village pump then, and i'll say it again here, hr.wiki is basically a Kubura&sons enterprise, and it's been one for the last 6 years. --Ivan VA (talk) 11:58, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

@Ivan VA:, You are playing the game "I do not know what are You talking about (although everything has been explained to You), so explain me". That is trolling. This is insult on religious basis You wrote [24] and You got the other explanations on Your talkpage. Kubura (talk) 00:53, 18 November 2019 (UTC)

@Kubura: What has been explained to me? That i'm a SPY?!? for the Serbian government??? What an insult on a religious basis? I don't even know what religion u are. U made the point that u regard yourself as a shepherd of the hr.wiki community. I just made the obvious association where the metaphor comes from. U blocked me INDEFINITELY for exercising freedom of speech. --Ivan VA (talk) 03:02, 18 November 2019 (UTC)

It may be difficult to follow some of these arguments if people are unfamiliar with Balkan nationalisms and history, but here’s one easily-verifiable item – Question #1 raised here by others, including Croatian media, as to why the CW Jasenovac article is titled “Sabirni logor (Collection Camp)” instead of “Komncentracijski logor (Concentration Camp)” as on en, de and all other wikis. The hr Admins first answer that is what the Ustashe called the camp. But all mass murderers use euphemisms, yet I doubt we'd want a WP article titled “The work-sets-you-free Auschwitz camp”. But beyond this, all their other claims are false. For example, their claim that “the Croatian language for collecting people in one place uses the word "sabiranje" (collection), it does not use word "koncentracija" (concentration), except sometimes for German camps". But contrary to their claim, the Croatian state Jasenovac Memorial indeed calls it “Koncentracijski logor (Concentration Camp) Jasenovac”. Googling “Koncentracijski logor Jasenovac” on the .hr domain, we get nearly 2,400 articles, vs. only 600 articles for the CW term “Sabirni logor Jasenovac” (most of the latter in holocaust-denier articles). The Croatian Language Portal not only lists the adjective "koncentracijski", but they define "Koncentracijski logor" (Concentration Camp) as a “place of mass detention for forced residence, forced labor, and the killing of political opponents and/or racially, religiously and nationally discriminated groups in totalitarian states” - thus, contrary to CW, clearly indicating Croatian uses concentration in this very sense, and not just for Nazi camps

I guess per Kubura this proves the Croatian Language Portal and the entire .hr domain must've been taken over by "anti-Croats". Actually, the CW Admins are not only inventing their own facts (e.g. who is “anti-Croat” and can’t be cited on CW), but their own version of the Croatian language, different from the Croatian Language Portal, the Croatian internet domain, etc. Yet this might still be considered just a case of semantics, but for the fact that the Holocaust-deniers they cite on CW insist that Jasenovac was indeed just a “collection-” or “work-camp”, where inmates put on plays and played soccer, not the concentration/death camp described by the US Holocaust Museum, the Croatian Jasenovac Memorial, countless western historians, etc. And when people try to cite these other sources to disprove the Holocaust-denial lies, they mass-revert edits and block people Thhhommmasss (talk) 20:05, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

Thhhommmasss, You are playing the game of playing "I do not understand". [25] "Sabirni (koncentracijski) logori su ...". Your "argument" is from ex-Yugoslavia, where the form in Croatian language was treated as nacionalistic (with further extending the accusations to "ustahi, fascist, nazi", especially when talking about military terminology and WWII. Kubura (talk) 00:53, 18 November 2019 (UTC)

Kubura, you're quoting one right-wing portal, which same as other genocide- and Holocaust-deniers, calls Jasenovac a "work camp", versus the concentration/death camp that is called by the US Holocaust Museum, most Western and many Croatian historians. Instead of one right-wing portal, I quoted the official Croatian state Jasenovac Memorial which uses "Concentration Camp Jasenovac", the entire .hr domain which in 80% of the cases employs the same term, plus the Croatian Language Portal, a publisher of Croatian language dictionaries. And all this is present-day usage, not from ex-Yugoslavia, as you falsely claim Thhhommmasss (talk) 01:08, 25 November 2019 (UTC)

Additional Proposed Criteria

Various individuals are proposing other solutions, which is blurring the discussion section. Some have been discussed before, others have not. I thought I'd summarise the main ones and they could be added on or taken off as people think. I realise additional criteria discussion in a major RFC is somewhat disruptive; but since it's going to happen anyway.

I've manually made them number from 7 upwards so if people start wanting to !vote for them, they're easier to pick out. I've added any that at least a couple of individuals have mooted Nosebagbear (talk) 12:33, 27 October 2019 (UTC)

• 7) Commence a cross-wiki discussion to create a cross-jurisdictional ARBCOM for the similar language projects
• 8) Remove all blocks from everyone the 3 admins have blocked
• 9) Review all blocks implemented by the 3 admins
• 10) Enable the addition of croatian-speaking admins from other sources [global, en, de, similar language have all been proposed]
• 11) Create an off-wiki method (surveys, etc) for individuals to provide their feedback and concerns with regards to Croatian wiki
• 12) Create an on-wiki method to continuously report, monitor and address abuse, so that this does not reoccur

Discussion of additional proposals

• 8 seems foolish because this would mean everyone they blocked gets unblocked, including vandals. --Rschen7754 17:37, 27 October 2019 (UTC)
  • In that case I'd say at least review those blocks before unblocking Saederup92 (talk) 18:39, 27 October 2019 (UTC)
    • The three admins have more than 1000 blocks between them. Some of these falsely claim "vandalism". This is going to be very difficult to review. On the other hand, it is important to review the blocks and reinstate the editors who were unjustly blocked. Other than individual appeals, I currently see no other solution. I'd volunteer to analyze and appeal the blocks myself (provided I'm unblocked in the first place), but I believe currently one cannot appeal blocks other than one's own, and the procedure is rather complicated and restrictive. A simpler, quicker procedure would be of help. GregorB (talk) 11:45, 28 October 2019 (UTC)
      • The 1.000 blocks by the 3 Admins sound abusive in themselves. Is it possible to get Block metrics for all the Admins? It'd also be interesting to compare the number of blocks on hr.wp with other comparably sized sh wikipedias, as well as randomly select some 10 blocks on hr.wp and then see what these blocks were for, all of which could better indicate abuse. Given the large number of blocks we could consider a “reset”, i.e. unblock everyone, and then give everyone notice that behavior will be more systematically monitored. In particular, since some incivility, while inappropriate, may have been prompted in reaction to the systematic abuse by the Admins. I think one of the objectives of the hr.wp Admins is to swarm and systematically revert everyone they disagree with, then block them at the slightest inappropriate response (although they block people even without such responses, as we’ve seen with the blocks of people who merely posted links to the Signpost article and RfC)

I know of very valued contributors on en.wp, who’ve been so thoroughly disgusted by such hr.wp Admin behavior that they’ve left the project. It will be very difficult to get them back, unless thorough changes are made, and everyone is informed of the changes. I believe it’d help to build public, proactive, systematic processes for this, instead of relying on ad hoc, after-the-fact, behind-the-scenes ones. One example would be the mentioned Abuse Reporting link on all hr.wp Talk pages, where users could go to a Project page and report abuse across all hr.wp pages, and hr.WP admins could not block them there. This would surface problems earlier and more systematically, instead of being hidden in many Talk page discussions, across many articles. Thus appropriate action to deal with problems could also be taken earlier, instead of after a decade of abuse, 1,000 people blocked, and many valuable contributors having fled. This approach is also easier to scale and apply to other WPs, as opposed to later trying to dig out all diffs and abuses across many years and many articles. Other, more systematic and proactive approaches could be taken to deal with the problems, to rebuild and maintain a healthy community Thhhommmasss (talk) 19:38, 28 October 2019 (UTC)

In regards to 8 I agree with Rschen7754 that it would be unwise to just auto unblock all of them, but as others have pointed out maybe they could be reviewed. To me this is a complicated and difficult situation. Having traveled to Slovenia and Croatia I am aware of the political issues in their history. As such I think great care and empathy for their situation needs to be employed to oversee this wiki appropriately. I am guessing we may need to find willing people with the language skills that are currently on other wikis, but great care should be taken with this. 12 years ago I was effectively driven off a wiki and I went back once the abusive admin was dealt with. I was welcomed back and am now a Crat on that wiki. People will come back if they see the changes that need to happen. Most people realise its not going to be perfect overnight. So I would encourage any that left the Croatian Wikipedia to feel they are welcomed back. They have to start from somewhere. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 02:06, 1 November 2019 (UTC)

The current Admins do not speak for all Croats, in fact there are many other Croats who very much resent what they've done, and articles of outrage regarding hr.wp have appeared in the Croatian press – here is just one of many, where the author writes of the many editors who have abandoned hr.wp, because of Admin abuse, naming Speedy Gonsales among the chief perpetrators. The writer goes on to say that even when some changes were made, temporarily removing SpeedyGonsales and a couple of others, they managed to return and absolutely nothing changed, the abuse continued. So given this history, I truly doubt that removing Speedy and pals, Part 2, after a full decade of additional abuse, will convince anyone to return, unless other, much more extensive measures are taken. Nor will well-intentioned invites of "come on back" be enough. I know of excellent Croatian editors who've repeatedly said they want nothing to do with hr.wp, and while they remain engaged on en.wp, the fact that they have not even bothered to comment on this RfC to me indicates the total mistrust of hr.wp, as well as total mistrust that WP will ever adequately address this problemThhhommmasss (talk) 04:00, 1 November 2019 (UTC)

• I'm concerned about either de or en-wiki admins (language aside) being the chosen wikis. If there are any global sysops who speak croatian, then they'd be logical to allow (currently crwiki is opted out) and then some process of authorising similar language wikis, perhaps through either a meta process or some suggested set of names Nosebagbear (talk) 17:42, 27 October 2019 (UTC)

• This just appear to be tricky situation, but it shouldn't be too inconvenient to deal with - unblock them all, and then deal with any "vandal" that might come back to disrupt articles on a case-by-case basis. Most likely, the vast majority of those who are blocked due to genuine vandalism will not return and probably won't even notice (IP's and single-purpose acc.) they are being unblocked. But even if they do notice and return, so what - now you are going to (re)build proper environment where any real transgression is going to be properly (re)evaluated.--^{s a n t a | t a l k | p i t} 18:05, 30 October 2019 (UTC)

• Just note for the last proposal, there are ways to reflect this, but I think what here means is to provide additional ways of reflection.--1233 （T / C） 03:03, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

Nije nikoga problem odblokitrati ako želi doprinesti svojim radom.

• Suradnik GregorB je blokiran 10 puta od 5 administratora i zbog učestalih svađa sa mnogim suradnicima. Njegov doprinos su uglavnom napadi na druge suradnike. --Zeljko (talk) 14:27, 31 October 2019 (UTC)
• Zeljko: We are aware of that, and it does not change anything. That how low the bar is for bans on croatian wikipedia is part of the problem.--Snaevar (talk) 15:00, 2 November 2019 (UTC)
• Zeljko the fact you blocked people just for posting a link and expressing views on the Signpost article, confirms the abuse
• In therms of blocks, I think the most resonable thing would be to review blocks of users with decent number of edits, as it would cover established editors. There are over 3000 user blocks on the croatian wikipedia and over 200 ip blocks. When user blocks are limited to users that have more than 50 combined edits & actions, then the block list shrinks to less than 5%.--Snaevar (talk) 15:00, 2 November 2019 (UTC)
• Snaever, that may be a good start, but would not address people who could not become established editors, because they were immediately driven away by blocks and other abuse. Btw, is there blocks-per-Admin data, since that could further indicate the most abusive Admins? Thhhommmasss (talk) 00:41, 3 November 2019 (UTC)
  • @Snaevar:, You are editing small project with small traffic, so You and Your colleagues have plenty of time for maintaining the project. Hr.wiki is bigger and Croatian-language community is even more bigger than Icelandic. Therefore we have much more vandals. Vandals are persistent and stubborn. Once we recognize the pattern, we have to cut it at the start, otherwise You lose a lot of energy and time and still nothing. E.g., currently we have a psycho that threats that he will rape (with full details) and slay several users. He appears everyday twice since August this year, as IP and as registered. Kubura (talk) 23:09, 6 November 2019 (UTC)
• I've participated at WikiProject Croatia for around five years now, and during that time I've interacted plenty with GregorB. He has helped me write en:WP:GAs and en:WP:DYKs and I've read some of his own DYKs and other work and have found no anti-Croat or yugonostalgic bias that you write about. If it weren't for this whole controversy the thought would never enter my mind. I've also found him to be a reliable, level-headed editor who on enwiki always remains tactful and respectful. He's contributed to countless articles and has probably the highest edit count of all Croatian editors on enwiki. He's well versed in English spelling & grammar and wikitext editing. If he were to run for an enwiki admin, I'm sure he would pass without problems. Hence the question is, is GregorB some kind of a Jekyll & Hyde character, or is something else going on here?

If this was just about one person and one matter (political), I might falter in my judgment here, but I can think of plenty of people on Forum.hr (the largest online forum in all of Southeast Europe and the only one of any significant size in Croatia), from all walks of life, most of whom aren't interested in politics, who act respectably on the forum, yet have been indef blocked, mostly for repeated altercations with admins. I would say that is pretty strong evidence that the hrwiki admins are the ones who are pushing some POV and talking to other editors in a manner that causes said editors to lash out. Daß Wölf (talk) 19:42, 3 November 2019 (UTC)

You skipped those that are supporting hr.wiki. And those indef blocked have multiple accounts on that forum.Kubura (talk) 22:53, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

http://www.forum.hr/showthread.php?t=797091, especially the last few pages - it seems my "plenty" was actually an understatement. Daß Wölf (talk) 22:39, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

• The very fact GregorB has 10 hr.wiki blocks, but zero en blocks further proves what a renegade outlier hr.wiki is. That he persisted despite these blocks, and persisted with the RfC, despite a general sense nothing will change, just goes to his credit and I think he’d make a great Admin Thhhommmasss (talk) 00:47, 4 November 2019 (UTC)
  • Has it ever occured to You that these blocks were for a good reason? Kubura (talk) 22:53, 5 November 2019 (UTC)
• To bring up an example from my comment on Jimbo Wales' talk page: here an IP editor adds a lot of content to a list of episodes, including some malformed internal links. I could find no evidence you even tried to tell the editor what is he/she doing wrong and how to fix that, you simply protected the page, and wrote "had to protect because the editor doesn't know how to add links". Do you not see how a new editor can get insulted when they make a long, 60-80% useful edit and find that the the page protected without warning because of that bad 20-40%? Daß Wölf (talk) 19:54, 3 November 2019 (UTC)
• Daß Wölf, You want to impose major coup d'etat on hr.wiki, and You have nothing on Your userpage, but a redirect to the talkpage? That's not a behavioural pattern of the ordinary user. Such pattern is present at the accounts that are expendable and for the dirty tasks. Kubura (talk) 22:53, 5 November 2019 (UTC)
  • Unindenting this personal attack which has nothing to do with the issues I raised in the comment that preceded it. Let's get back to the major problem at hand for me which is biting newbies. Is there no policy against that on hr.wiki? I see for example, hr.wiki admins are still harassing and blocking people for the crime of making multiple smaller edits where one big edit will do. Daß Wölf (talk) 22:39, 7 November 2019 (UTC)
    • One thing is when a new user shows the pattern of clumsiness, misorientation, or elderpeople's behaviour (shaking hands, typos) and similar. The other thing is when the new user writes graffitti, attacks others, removes massive content or references. Therefore, I find Your stance here as disruptive. You took the side of the destructive users. Wikipedia is not a social institution for integrating persons with unacceptable behaviour, there're specialized professionals for that. If someone enters the bank, store, government office, police station, medical ordination etc. and starts yelling, writing graffitti on the wall of the waiting room or kicking papers, there's no "don't bite the newbies". That newbie is not clumsy, misorientated, or very old but destructive.
    • Further, when I said something about Your userpage, that was not the personal attack. I dislike that sockpuppet (=owner exists under other name) or expendable account (=user's only account, "constructive" part of the usage is solely a disguise, the true intention of the account is to use it solely for editwars, arguing, unpopular actions) pulls me by the nose. True constructive editor almost always puts some effort to arrange a decent userpage. The userpage reflects the user's intentions, behaviour on contentpages and discussions, and finally his/hers personality - that's my experience. There're exceptions, but basically that's it. Are You a sockpuppet, expendable account or an ordinary user - everybody can make conclusion for themselves. It is indicative when a usertype (described above) attacks whole project and most active, constructive and higly appreciated users on that project. Kubura (talk) 23:58, 10 November 2019 (UTC)
      • I see we agree that vandals and sockpuppets should not be welcomed with open arms. No argument there. I also think your admin corps has proven to be a bad judge of both, first for believing I'm a sockpuppet, second for templating, annoying and blocking users who are obviously not here to do damage to the project. To repeat my example: blocking contributors because they contribute in obvious good faith but in a way that annoys patrollers is biting newbies, creating an unwelcome atmosphere and driving away good contributors. Do you dispute that? I'll also add that I think the reason this goes on is because you're obviously all friends and it's easier to pretend that everyone who argues with you is a vandal and/or a Milošević troll than to disagree with a friend. That's why I give up hope of you listening to my reasons. Ending with a quote from Jimbo Wales about the project Nupedia:

The idea [behind Nupedia] was to have thousands of volunteers writing articles for an online encyclopedia in all languages. Initially we found ourselves organizing the work in a very top-down, structured, academic, old-fashioned way. It was no fun for the volunteer writers because we had a lot of academic peer review committees who would criticize articles and give feedback. It was like handing in an essay at grad school, and basically intimidating to participate in.

Daß Wölf (talk) 22:58, 17 November 2019 (UTC)

To !vote:

• Strong support for 7 since there are persistent POV pages on other wikis too. So long as we can all agree to staff the ARBCOM with sane editors who can make a bona fide attempt to be impartial, I don't see where the problem would be. I appreciate that there is a sentiment (and surely not just in Croatia or ex-yu) to make X language wiki comport with the views of X ethnicity, but I think this needs to be balanced with the driving away of many users who would be accepted but for one disagreement in POV. Also strongly support 9 instead of 8 for the same reason I opposed action 3 above. Re: 11, 12 support and recommend involving T&S, I think they could be a useful asset here in teaching. Re: 10, I support attracting the attention of Croatian speaking admins from large projects to this discussion. Hopefully we can interest some of them into taking up a permanent role on hrwiki. Daß Wölf (talk) 20:14, 3 November 2019 (UTC)
• #7-strong support. Ethnic-specific “truths” (e.g. deny/minimize crimes and genocides by one’s own side, and play up those perpetrated by the other) serve to inflame hatreds and wars in the region, so this is not just an academic debate. Support #9 if such a large review is practical, else #8 with #12. Strong support for #10, also support interim, extra powers for outside Admins (e.g. to approve blocks, remove additional misbehaving admins, add new interim admins), particularly if only 3 Admins are removed, and others can still cause trouble (extra powers need not be baked into software - e.g. if outside Admins must approve blocks, other Admins can ask them for approval, and if they violate new block process, outside Admins can work with stewards to de-Admin them, etc). #11 Support, and #12 Strong Support – believe latter will be essential, particularly if just 3 Admins are removed, while other like-minded Admins and editors remain. Systems to report, monitor and deal with abuse could’ve helped prevent problem, and can help address similar issues on other WPs Thhhommmasss (talk) 01:36, 4 November 2019 (UTC)
• Badava vi glasujete za njega. On kod nas jednostavno ne želi radit, i jedini mu je cilj isprovocirati blok. --Zeljko (talk) 15:26, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

I think, now that the meta community has seen the responses from Kubura, that u finally can see what we're dealing with here. For me, its perfectly obvious that he regards his work on hr.wiki as highly political . The more u dig in, the more u see that the stuff he talks about has nothing to do with writing an encyclopedia, but some political agenda he regards is the right one, everyone else being an intruder. The fact that this is a common, global project, where everyone is welcome to participate is completely lacking etc. This RfC was so much needed. --Ivan VA (talk) 12:34, 7 November 2019 (UTC)
Strong oppose Misrepresentation of events, innacuracies, faking of the truth, malevolent RfC and extreme disrupting of Wikipedia.Lordluka99 (talk) 06:42, 8 November 2019 (UTC)

@Lordluka99: Some concrete examples of "misrepresentations", "inaccuracies", and "faking of the truth", please. GregorB (talk) 09:08, 8 November 2019 (UTC)

It is unnecessary to give examples, because the title and the basic idea of this RFC are wrong and fictitious. Questions of content have already been thoroughly discussed, explained and elaborated on the talkpages.

To emphasize it clearly, on the Croatian Wikipedia there is neither a postulated abuse of administrative rights nor violations of the five pillars. --Mateo K 01 (talk) 02:39, 9 November 2019 (UTC)

GregorB showed us the opposite. Nor do I see any concrete argument here against the proposal. --Acamicamacaraca (talk) 23:19, 18 November 2019 (UTC)

Lasta's statement of facts

Dear GregorB, do not write assumptions and imaginations, especially about me. If you do not know the facts, please ask, do not spread lies around (at least, not about me). Your "quasi statement" is wrong and is based on your lack of knowledge of the situation. Namely, inserting my name together with other admins, you insinuated that nobody of us (me included) did nothing to change the situation and that all of us (again, me included) agree with the present mess. As you falsely accused me of lack of reaction (and you were able to recheck and find the right answer, either with me or with several admins on Meta) I am checking my options of giving you the chance to back up your accusations in front of the court of law. I am ready to accept that you were misinformed, therefore I am giving you the chance to remove my name from the list in next 48 hours, and inform me about that. Regards --Lasta (talk) 10:15, 9 November 2019 (UTC)

In that case, please provide:

1. A clear statement about the CW situation and the concrete responsibility of Kubura, SpeedyGonsales and Zeljko, as described in this RfC.
2. On-wiki evidence (i.e. diffs) that shows you substantially disagreeing, criticizing or attempting to remedy the said situation.
3. An explanation as to why you - being fully aware of this RfC - waited for one month before responding.

You don't need to give me any chances, I'm giving you a chance. GregorB (talk) 11:46, 9 November 2019 (UTC)

GregorB, it is too late for that kind of talk. That kind of talk was possible before the accusation, this is another game now. If you are sure of you accusations, you can send me your name, surname and data to my mail (or you can post it here), I will sue you for defamation and see you in court here in Croatia. If you are not sure, and you in fact was misinformed, you can withdraw your accusations against me, that will solve this situation. If you are not willing to do either, that will show me and all others that we are not dealing with honest person, having good intentions towards the community.

GregorB, kasno je za taj način razgovora. To je bilo moguće prije nego si me optužio, sada je ovo sasvim druga stvar. Ako si siguran u svoje optužbe, možeš mi poslati svoje podatke na mail (ili to isto možeš objaviti ovdje), ja ću te tužiti za objedu, pa ćemo se vidjeti na sudu u Hrvatskoj. Ukoliko nisi siguran, i zbilja si bio slabo informiran, možeš povući optužbe priotiv mene, to će riješiti ovuu situaciju. Ako ne želiš napraviti ni jedno, to će meni i svima ostalima značiti da ne komuniciramo s iskrenom osobom koja ima dobre namjere prema zajednici. --Lasta (talk) 13:48, 9 November 2019 (UTC)

Before I respond in full, let's just make one thing clear: are you making a legal threat against me? GregorB (talk) 23:34, 9 November 2019 (UTC)

I hope the above comment by Lasta, as well as all the other responses here by CW Admins, finally prove to everyone that extreme nationalist ideologues like them are incapable of rational thought or argument, since aside from railing against communist, neo-Yugoslavist, Serbo-Croatist, anti-Croat and who knows how many other conspiracies, they’ve been totally unable to offer any proof of their claims, or put together a single cogent argument. That is why on CW they systematically mass-revert edits, block and drive away numerous Croat editors they disagree with, even deleted and blocked people for posting links to the Signpost article and the RfC. Plus now instead of rationally discussing things, as is the WP-way, they threaten lawsuits. These guys are the total antithesis of everything WP, and should be forever banned from WP 06:30, 10 November 2019 (UTC)

Lasta, let's consider this case:

1. In 2019, a CW editor with a history of right-wing POV and blatantly unencyclopedic editing applied for patroller rights.
2. He received your support, as well as support of four other patrollers (who, according to the local procedure, support or oppose the candidate in a vote).
3. A single patroller voted "oppose", providing a number of diffs showcasing the candidate's unencyclopedic work.
4. In response, you spearheaded an initiative to strip the dissenting editor of his patroller rights, as a direct retaliation for his "oppose" vote.
5. The dissenting patroller in question was, in the end, demoted without a vote, which grossly violated CW's well-established rules.

This event is a typical example of the pattern of bias, abuse of powers, and dysfunction described in this RfC. It should be clear that, whoever supports, encourages or promotes editors with extreme views, and retaliates against dissenters, substantially fails to adhere to the purpose of Wikipedia. This is why - contrary to your request - I'm not changing or deleting any of my earlier statements about you. (Also, you have refused to provide any evidence these statements are incorrect.)

For the sake of brevity and focus, I left out the names, details and diffs from this story, but I will supply them if anyone is interested, or is disputing the above description of the event. GregorB (talk) 20:37, 12 November 2019 (UTC)

When starting the discussion on something that has been discussed and accusing someone for that, that is trolling and disrupting of Wikipedia to prove a point. In this case he defends one dissenting patroller that his patroller status to opstruct the maintaining process and almost paralyze the maintaing process. That patroller also misused the patience that community gave to him, the second chance(s) they gave him to work under the other name, since he earned reputation of fanatic hiper-hair-splitter and hiper-word-splitter. Community gave him more confidence, hoping that he has improved. Instead, he turned worse he was than before. His nano-hair-splitting always ended, like before, in something irrational. We checked what is he talking about, not just one time - and his remarks made no sense! Anyway, He has a block history on other project(s) under other name(s) because of his behaviour. Anyway, there was a voting on hr.wiki, since he p*ssed whole community off because of paralizing the procedures. BTW, there was a consensus on that voting. If You like him, no problem, I wish that he becomes the admin on meta, en., bs., sh. and commons. Kubura (talk) 01:15, 18 November 2019 (UTC)

So, he has been paralyzing the voting procedures by voting the wrong way? GregorB (talk) 08:34, 18 November 2019 (UTC)

@GregorB: Wrong thinking. E.g., if You appear on votings for adminship, bureaucratship on some wikis (maybe even on en.wiki), and vote on every candidate "no", and everytime when voting starts someone votes "no", that is considered as destructive behaviour.

Anyway, Nesmir's voting "no" is not a problem per se. He has a right to disagree, maybe he wants higher threshold for standards for getting the patrol statuses - he has a right to think like that. But if You want to set a high threshold, than show the others the example, be the example to others. Work, man. Maintain the project, don't leave the growing task to small community of others to clean it. It can be said: He was not patrolling at all! He was not helping! He was writing tens of hundreds of comment and critics on the discussion, but neglectively small number, very very few clickings on the "mark as patrolled" or reverts. Therefore the patrollers and admins had to mark as patrolled the diffs that had been already reverted by non-patrollers; or, on the other hand, they had to mark as patrolled the hundreds of edits of users that were correct and lose their scarce time and workenergy on that. Giving the status of autopatrolled to those users would solve that problem, but he was undermining these efforts with his hairsplitting. It was really annoying and uncooperative behaviour of Nesmir. It was a matter of time when some from users would lose his patience. Kubura (talk) 23:46, 4 December 2019 (UTC)

Actually, your thinking is wrong. People have the right to disagree - period, no buts. Also, Wikipedia is a volunteer project, nobody is on a payroll, so nobody should be punished or degraded for not "helping". That was not the real reason anyway: Nesmir provided some irrefutable arguments why an editor with a history of right-wing bias and unencyclopedic editing shouldn't be a patroller. You and your pals really wanted to promote him, because right-wing stuff and unencyclopedic editing is right up your alley, and you decided to punish Nesmir for merely disagreeing with you - it's that simple. GregorB (talk) 19:37, 8 December 2019 (UTC)

@GregorB: stay strong, but also vigilant and responsible regarding your personal safety - don't ignore or underestimate any eventual personal threats, while not allowing to get intimidated.--^{s a n t a | t a l k | p i t} 09:14, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

Neo-nazi whitewashing on croatian wikipedia?

Hi,

I'm user from croatian wikipedia, but I would prefer to remain anonymus (i.e. not linked to my primary account on hr wikipedia). I would like to ask for a comment on the case of, as I see it, white-washing of Croatian ex drug dealer/pimp/neo-nazi (source)/right-wing journalist Velimir Bujanec. His article (see history) used to have well-referenced section that included his drug abuse and drug-dealing past. In the next diff, that has comment "ispravak životopisa, wp:žžo, na zahtjev" (translation: bio correction, en:WP:LIVE, on request), done by Roberta F.. Here, admin Roberta F. beautifies his bio and completely deletes all controversial parts. Based on diff comment, I guess she did it on personal request of this neo-nazi. Later, user Bojovnik returns the part regarding drug abuse, but Roberta F. reverts it. Bojovnik then adds some {fact} templates, but SpeedyGonsales reverts it without explanation. hr:User:Carl Johnson again tries to add referenced claims of drug-related offences, but Speedygonsales reverts it. Carl Johnson is later blocked by SpeedyGonsales (for being rude). Carl johnson later opens a discussion on willage pump Velimir Bujanec vs Ante Tomić complaining about double standards claiming left-wing journalist Ante Tomić doesn't have the same WP:LIVE protection as Bujanec. The discussion leads nowhere. Admin user:MaGa focuses on Carl Johnson's rude comments, patronising him (calling him "my dear son"), not on aledged double standards, and discussion is derailed in that direction.

I would call upon croatian-speaking users to check this case and also Roberta F. and SpeedyGonsales to explain reverting referenced claims in the article. --Hrwikiuser (talk) 14:52, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

A modest proposal

A proposal to merge the bs-, hr-, and sr-wiki projects into sh-wiki has been rejected by the participants.
I strongly oppose GregorB's suggestion to intervene on hr-wiki in any way. Let me explain my stance. Do we need Australian and Brasilian Wikipedia and Wiktionary? The root of the problem with hr-wiki is the mistake of splitting one language into several separate wikipedias per national key. If this solution were good, then it would certainly be a division into British, American, Australian, etc. wikipedias and wiktionaries as well. Wiktionary has for some time accepted the division into Croatian, Serbian and Bosnian language variants, but several years ago it was reversed. Now there is only Serbo-Croatian language on Wiktionary. Kubura wins anyways If one accepts GregorB's proposals, a small percentage of hr-wiki articles might improve in next ten years, which means that even if Kubura disappears, he may be satisfied with what he did in the long run. In addition, Kubura and his associates built a wiki-community made up of nationalists, and they chased away anyone who is not a nationalist. Non-nationalists no longer contribute on hr-wiki. And they won't come back. This is permanent irreparable damage. Newspeak and linguistic purification Another problem not mentioned before is Kubura's massive linguistic purification of hr-wiki. In addition, he supports those who do it and punishes those who oppose it. The word sport /spôrt/ into šport /ʃpôrt/ is automatically changed everywhere, although 99% of people in Croatia and the Croatian media use the form /spôrt/. In this way he builds the illusion that the Serbo-croatian language in Croatia is even more different from the Serbo-Croatian language in Serbia. Kubura uses hr-wiki as a platform for the propaganda of Newspeak that is not universally accepted in Croatia. So, hr-wiki is stale even at the level of artificial purified language. This powerful propaganda is made possible and still enabled by Wikimedia. The only sensible solution is to fuse three national wiki-projects blooming with nationalism (bs, hr, sr) into old one: sh-wiki. Google search engine prefers hr-wiki The huge problem is that the Google search engine in Croatia always comes first with hr-wiki lemmas, bs-wiki or sr-wiki (or even en-wiki) in the second place, and almost never the non-ideologised Serbo-Croatian wiki. And most editors on sh-wiki are refugees expelled from hr-wiki. They diligently write articles and sh-wiki has 450,000 articles versus hr-wiki having 212,000 harticles. Unfortunately, sh-wiki is not visible because people go to what Google search engine offers them. This enabled the nationalist hr-wiki to be a successful platform for spreading of extreme nationalism in Croatian society. It is sad that young people during eduaction and reaching out for information are exposed to nationalist/profascist contents thus extreme nationalist political groups gain more new supporters and future voters. Thus, the Wikipedia project directly influences today's political picture of Croatia. Suggesting Google to put sh-wiki first in its search engine would achieve far more than can be the rosier result of this discussion. Hr-wiki enemizes En-wiki (as well as some living folks) Now, there are many more sub-topics that can be addressed. E.g. that there is not only a problem in historical subjects and historical figures, but as well with innocent living people. Their biographies are biased in way that expressive militant Croatian nationalists are presented in a beautiful light (eg Velimir Bujanec, Mario Grčević, Zlatko Hasanbegović etc.), and peace activists in the negative, for example Vesna Teršelič. Negative hr-wiki articles about living people certainly make it difficult for them to get a job or rent an apartment and many other everyday problems. We can only anticipate that there are public figures who hesitate to publicly criticize nationalism, fearing that their biographies on hr-wiki should become a place of blame. One example of tendently written articles is the article "Declaration of Common Language", which, in addition to rebuking of cartoonish proportions, is also an example of blocking an wikipedian who tried to make the article more objective. I suggest you to compare the English and Croatian versions of this article. By the way, Kubura on the hr-wiki Village Pump constantly depicts en-wiki as his biggest enemy. {comment}} Hr-wiki does not enemize En-wiki (as well as some living folks). Hr-wiki possibly enemizes ONLY pro-Greater-Serbian users on it, who systematically and continuously attack and provoke anything and anybody about Croatian Wikipedia. --Silverije (talk) 23:59, 11 December 2019 (UTC) Conclusion This is the only sensible long-term solution. So, I modestly propose to merge the bs-, hr-, and sr-wiki projects into the primary one: sh-wiki. — The preceding unsigned comment was added by Micika Bičaš (talk) 17:35, 20 November 2019 (UTC) Comments  Oppose And people didn't believe me when I raised concerns about this regional Arbitration Committee pushing their own POV on Croatian Wikipedia... --Rschen7754 19:30, 20 November 2019 (UTC) Is the reason why there is no overt bias in e.g. enwiki's ArbCom that enwiki's editors are all devoid of bias, or that biased editors by and large do not get elected to ArbCom? The solution for a non-biased Croatian Wikipedia ArbCom is therefore simple: do not put biased editors into it. GregorB (talk) 09:51, 21 November 2019 (UTC) @GregorB: If you're looking at nationalism-related biases, English Wikipedia consists of editors from many different countries - US, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Ireland, and many English speakers in other countries worldwide. There is also such a large base of editors to draw from, which also brings a lot of added scrutiny - not to mention accountability from WMF and from other CU/OS holders. --Rschen7754 01:59, 22 November 2019 (UTC) That’s why it'd help to involve in any ArbCom people with extensive experience on en, de or other more reputable WPs, plus knowledge of the language. Such ArbCom members could also serve as mentors, to help CW get back on track. A similar mentoring approach could help in addressing other problematic WPs Thhhommmasss (talk) 01:21, 25 November 2019 (UTC) Comment @Micika Bičaš: Shouldn't this proposal be a new RfC? Proposing it here only drives the focus of this discussion away from Croatian Wikipedia and needlessly enlarges the scope of the discussion to Bosnian and Serbian Wikipedia as well, which, as far as I know, haven't had similar issues (at least, none to such a massive degree). Diverting the focus of the discussion like this runs the risk of causing no action to be taken at Croatian Wikipedia in the end, which, given the stated issues, is not a good outcome. If you really wish to pursue your proposal further, I would recommend starting a new discussion elsewhere, as starting it on this page won't help matters. DraconicDark (talk) 03:02, 21 November 2019 (UTC)  Oppose - see DraconicDark's comments. This requires new RFC. Also, this proposal dilutes current discussion. It's also generally a very bad idea, but since it's off topic considering RFC's topic, I won't elaborate any further. Can I suggest to move this proposal somewhere else (at least to the talk page) since it really clutters this discussion. Just look at the TOC on the top! --Hrwikiuser (talk) 08:03, 21 November 2019 (UTC)  Oppose I want to be quite clear: if I had to choose between the current state of CW and your proposal, I'd choose the latter without a second thought. (Not because it is a good solution - it's not - but because it's still better than the alternative.) However, there is no reason to believe these are the only choices we have and, in particular, there is no reason to believe Kubura will "win". True, they chased away anyone who is not a nationalist and created a lot of bad content. In the future, editors who are habitually incapable of adhering to the purpose of Wikipedia will be "chased away", and the content will eventually be fixed. Whatever has been done, can be undone. GregorB (talk) 09:42, 21 November 2019 (UTC) I agree with GregorB. Despite the terror of some paranoid right-wing admins, there is a constant intake of new editors. And there are even some who just like wikipedia too much to be driven away ;). The number of editors will not be the problem, since many new one will come if they learn about the changes. If we solve the problem of admins who are actively driving people away, Croatian wikipedia will in time become much better. --Hrwikiuser (talk) 10:11, 21 November 2019 (UTC) That's still minuscule base, where diversity of attitudes and perspectives is/will be rarity, and I would bet that of all the currently active editors with significant contributions, 90% of them are in line with admin's worldview, meanwhile, I am 110% assured that rest of the admins there are, a.l.l. of them, mirror image of the fantastic-trio.--s a n t a | t a l k | p i t 04:07, 22 November 2019 (UTC) A lot of admins left because they couldn't stand current situation, and couldn't change it because they were outnumbered. Just look at the diagram at hr:Wikipedija:Administratori. A lot of de-sysoping is because of admins asking to be de-sysoped out of frustration or fantastic-trio waiting for them to be inactive for a few years and then asking community to de-sysop them because of inactivity. --Hrwikiuser (talk) 07:55, 22 November 2019 (UTC) That's right - and I don't believe that most of those who left the project in disillusionment and despair will ever want to return, no matter what is going to happen with all this here - we can only hope that the new wave of editors, the first-timers, will appear and find much friendlier and less anti-intellectual environment there.--s a n t a | t a l k | p i t 20:13, 22 November 2019 (UTC)  Oppose I would like to thank Micika Bičaš on here proposal, however, I find proposition arguments unconvincing in every regard.--s a n t a | t a l k | p i t 01:49, 22 November 2019 (UTC) - On aside - It's not part of this RfC, but I find a segment of editor's proposition where they discuss fusion of all three wikis into one Serbo-Croatian, to be true, and I also believe, in nominator wording, that fusion would be the "only sensible solution" if we want to diversify attitudes and reduce amount of propagandistic and ideological contamination. But this is still something else, and the admins' grip over that project still need to be dealt with.--s a n t a | t a l k | p i t 02:09, 22 November 2019 (UTC) Comment After the Language Committee decided there should be 4 wikipedias on 1 single language, the idea that u can close 3 projects (hr,bs and sr), which now have quite large communities themselves and an inner life, is pretty much gone. Gone doing it via an authoritarian decision of the Language Committee, made on a scientific basis (that there is, linguistically, 1 language = 1 Wikipedia). That bus is gone. The only way now is through a political campaign/democracy. Meaning u ask the 3 respected communities, via an vote/election, that they themselves close down their projects and merge into sh.wiki. That's the moment u leave science behind and get politics in. Because science is not democracy. And knowing the 'polls' and thinking about this topic on the 3 projects, i think the overwhelming majority is against the merger. As a sr.wiki editor i can tell u that this debate was going on 3 or 4 years ago, and most people don't want it. It doesn't say that they are nationalists or smth like that (most of them aren't), and they write perfectly non-pov articles, but they don't wan't to merge. As for the argument that hr.wiki is dead and done, i don't share that view. As long as there is a hr.wiki, it by definition has legitimacy for it's existence. And people read it's content. the Wikipedia brand. So if u don't wanna shut it down/close for good, people will read it. If u don't wanna do that, than -repair- is the only option. As for a regional ArbC @Rschen7754: is wrong here. There are plenty non-biased editors on sr, bs and sh.wiki who are eager to help and do things properly. Writing on bs. or sr.wiki doesn't by default make u biased as is implicated by this commentary. The fact is much more simple. The 1 policentric (serbo-croatian language) is, locally, by each nation -in every day life- called serbian/croatian/bosnian. And when that (everyday) guy comes online and sees that there are wikipedias (existent) that bear that name, he/she/+ just sticks to them (write/read there). If the LangC had 14 years ago decided that there should be 1 wikipedia (sh.wiki), then the people would go there and use that wiki. Plain simple. --Ivan VA (talk) 22:03, 23 November 2019 (UTC)  Oppose This proposal feeds conspiracy theories. (But I like its satyrical tone.) Maria Sieglinda von Nudeldorf (talk) 10:21, 24 November 2019 (UTC) Strong oppose--Serbocroatian language DOES NOT exist.Lordluka99 (talk) 20:53, 26 November 2019 (UTC) Strong oppose Guys, we live in the 21. century. Left those serbocroatist and "reunified Yugoslavia" daydreams behind. --Mateo K 01 (talk) 22:01, 26 November 2019 (UTC)  Oppose there is more to this than language alone and that needs to be respected. Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) talk 18:09, 27 November 2019 (UTC) Strong oppose A parachutist with a single day of activity wants to eliminate the 17-year work of a hr.wiki, community of over 228,000 editors. And in favor of a politically protected project of a city with no inhabitants - so called "sh.wiki", that is built by human and software copybots. Sh.wiki "has 450,000 articles" with the rhytm of 0 - 2 new articles daily, as it is now - the proof of dead political project, fake world. Neither worth for the Incubator. Micika Bičaš, You will not restore Yugoslavia, and so-called "Serbo-Croatian" never existed in real world. This RfC is just another Serbocroatist attack on Croatian cause. Kubura (talk) 20:38, 30 November 2019 (UTC)

Just some more questions (from definitely an outsider)

I am asking everyone who participated in this discussion these question and hope to seek an answer:

1. Given how political this is, how to obtain consensus here?
2. How to enact any consensus (if any) (of the majority) if local community (some say here in its terminal stage, no comment about such claim) tries circumventing it?
3. Given the completeness of arguments from one side, where are the arguments from the other side? I believe this whole thing already circulating within hr.wiki for quite some time (correct me if I'm wrong). What can be done to facilitate and resolve these arguments and bring the local community's voice out to meta. I am not stating which side is 100% right or wrong, but it seems problematic when only one side was heard (with the other side being not heard because solely due to language barriers).

I hope I won't receive any emails for me to be sued because I wrote these things above.--1233 （T / C） 11:52, 27 November 2019 (UTC)

All good questions, let me try to answer:

1. This RfC and the issues described in it do have a political background, but the RfC itself is not political, it is a matter of WP:PILLARS.
2. If the issues persist even after the actions agreed upon in this RfC will have been implemented, there will be another RfC.
3. The CW community has been informed about this RfC through the local Village pump, and full evidence with diffs has been presented in Croatian. Given that:

1. ...at least two of the incriminated admins are able to adequately communicate in English, as evidenced by the above discussion
2. ...no significant counter-arguments have been provided in the CW Village pump or here, despite explicit calls to do so
3. ...nobody has thus far complained about the language barrier (to my knowledge at least)
4. ...months have passed

...my conclusion is that the absence of arguments from the other side is because there aren't any. In fact, I found some of the comments delightful, because they attempted to argue some of my points, but ended up actually reinforcing them. GregorB (talk) 18:46, 27 November 2019 (UTC)

I fully agree. The “arguments” from the other side have been deletions of the Signpost article links on CW Village Pump, blocks of people mentioning the RfC, name-calling (neo-yugoslavists, serbo-croatists, anti-croats, etc), outright refusals to provide any proof for their “arguments”, threats to sue people in order to shut them up, attacks on people’s ethnicity/citizenship, attacks on people’s choice of usernames, etc, etc, with absolutely nothing that might be considered a reasoned, substantive argument. It is time to put an end to this nonsense and continuing abuse. Thhhommmasss (talk) 21:28, 27 November 2019 (UTC)

@GregorB: @1233: I see broad consensus on removing the 3 Admins, with others voting to remove them all. Appointing an ArbCom has been more controversial and more consensus is needed here. Some of the opposition stems from questions about including similar-language wiki Admins. While I believe this is an admirable goal, and could help with POV issues on all these wikis, I can also see where it might encounter resistance from other CW editors, even if they’re not very nationalistic, while more nationalistic ones could use this to whip up resentment (I believe same would happen on sr or bs wiki, if a cross-language ArbCom was appointed there). Thus one solution might be to focus first on CW participants, including those driven away, as possible ArbCom members (I see some good candidates in this RfC discussion), perhaps complemented by experienced admins/editors from en, de or other reputable wikis, who understand the language

I believe ongoing oversight via an ArbCom is much needed, since just removing the 3 or even all Admins will not solve the problem. I’ve had edits citing the US Holocaust Museum and Croatian historians mass-reverted by editor Dvanajsti igrac, and from comments here it’s clear there are editors, beyond the admins, who can be problematic. Given the vandalism and people trying to delete this page, it’s clear how problematic. Thus an ArbCom could help decide which Admins need to be removed immediately, maintain ongoing oversight and remove any further Admins, review and decide who else to unblock, etc. Since regular Admin work is also required, on top of the need to oversee further problematic editors, I believe it’d also help if the ArbCom were given the power to appoint new temporary Admins, e.g. for the period of one year, until the community can be rebuilt and new Admin elections can take place

So perhaps the next step is to find a way to build a consensus on the ArbCom, its composition and role, or alternatively decide how this will work in the absence of an ArbCom Thhhommmasss (talk) 21:37, 29 November 2019 (UTC)

I will soon (in a matter of days, hopefully), post some additional proposals (most notably a better alternative to removal of all admins), as well as a more fleshed-out ArbCom proposal. GregorB (talk) 22:01, 29 November 2019 (UTC)

@1233:, this is the political issue. Those who started this RfC have same rhetorics as neoyugoslavists and greaterserbianists (e.g. Serbian leader Vučić), denigration of everything Croatian with buzzwords like "(neo)fascists, (neo)nazis etc..." and to eliminate the most prolific admins from hr.wiki, that are also very versed on the topic of Croatian language and Croatian Homeland War. Whenever You confront the persons who started this RfC (and their alikes) and their "arguments" (that are their wishes and conclusions, not arguments) with the facts, they hide it and just proceed on the other RfC, neglect what You say or hide what's been elaborated to them. Note that they very rarely mention what's been said to them on the talkpages, or they blatantly misinterprete what's been written.

Regarding denigrating of Croatian cause with "fascism", here's an example: Croatian Ministry of Foreign Affairs had to give a press release (March this year) regarding such denigrating rhetorics in Austrian media when talking about the commemoration of a mass-murder of Croatian civilians and POWs at the end of WWII.

Now about the attacked admins of hr.wiki. They have full support of their community; recently Kubura (me) was elected for bureaucrat with 20:0.

These questions we are talking about here have been explained and are being explained on hr.wiki. Nothing new, these topics (WWII, attacks on Croatian language) are elaborated in Croatian society whole time. New facts have been revealed. Yugocommunist system resiliantly defends its myths, even in democratic Croatia there was an attempt to prevent the extradition of notorious Yugoslav security agency (UDBA) agents to Germany; these agents were later sentenced by a German court because of the assasination of Croatian emmigrant.[26][27].Kubura (talk) 00:55, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

Indefinite blocks of whistleblowers

• Ivan VA (talk · contribs) voted to support this RFC at 12:13, 11 October 2019. Why was he then indefinitely blocked on Croatian Wikipedia with no talk page access 01:19, 21 October 2019? @Zeljko:
• What about DraconicDark's block at 21:36, 9 October 2019 as this RFC was starting, with talk page access removed? He was heavily involved in the previous discussions about Croatian Wikipedia and has only made 1 edit there. @Kubura: Edit: the rationale for the block is posted here [28] and clarifies that this was explicitly about the RFC.
• The indefinite block of GregorB at 17:58, 18 September 2019 should be investigated as well. [29] --Rschen7754 22:01, 27 November 2019 (UTC) edits made Rschen7754 18:50, 29 November 2019 (UTC)

Thanks. DraconicDark's block, in particular, is the most extreme case of admin abuse I've ever seen. I'd be willing to translate the content DraconicDark removed with his single edit, as well as Kubura's block rationale, if anyone is interested. (I thought about adding these to the RfC, but in the end it merely confirms what should already be clear. Google Translate is probably sufficient. Note the block is explicitly a retaliation for this.) GregorB (talk) 23:09, 27 November 2019 (UTC)

A user, who had never edited hrwiki, made a single highly controversial edit to a highly controversial page and got blocked as a result. Did DraconicDark knew in advance that they were going to be blocked? Was this a deliberate provocation? Ruslik (talk) 17:17, 29 November 2019 (UTC)

@Ruslik0: Even under this theory, why the removal of talk page access, and why an indefinite block 1 day and 21 hours after said edit? That seems harsh, even for enwiki. --Rschen7754 18:38, 29 November 2019 (UTC) Striking as GregorB has pointed out that the explanation Kubura gave links to the draft DraconicDark wrote on Meta of this very RFC. --Rschen7754 18:49, 29 November 2019 (UTC)

1 day and 21 hours is a short time. I also do not understand why the draft on meta can not be linked in the block rational if this can help establish motivations of the user who made the edit? Ruslik (talk) 09:04, 30 November 2019 (UTC)

Ruslik0, I would suggest that you block someone indefinitely on enwiki (or really any medium or large-sized wiki) 45 hours after they make 1 edit and see if that goes down well. --Rschen7754 20:33, 30 November 2019 (UTC)

Here I blocked a user indefinitely over two edits four days after the edits were made. Ruslik (talk) 20:09, 1 December 2019 (UTC)

No warning and no talk page message? Yikes. --Rschen7754 21:51, 1 December 2019 (UTC)

That account replaced the article with some gibberish-like content. It would have been a complete waste of time even to try to reason with them. Ruslik (talk) 11:02, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

Ok, I've been keeping myself away from the saga (in general), but this is interesting. I'd be willing to perform emergency-desysop if the response is not satisfactory. It is clear abuse of the admin privileges to block someone for participating in a RFC. Especially the block of DraconicDark who had one edit and has a (google-translated) rationale of "Defending black myths. Calling on the Serbo-Croatian commissariat. See talk tage." (original text "Branjenje crnih mitova.Zazivanje serbokroatističkog komesarijata. V. SZR."). — regards, Revi 01:21, 29 November 2019 (UTC)

Noone has been blocked because of the participation in the RfC. That's a rude lie. I see one thing. As things are now, it seems that here is possible to spit on hr.wiki on with IP-accounts and expendable sockpuppets, and as spitters are also users that do not write articles but just attack and disrupt the wiki to prove their point. Kubura (talk) 20:49, 30 November 2019 (UTC)

@-revi:, that user has in his sandbox preparation called hr.wiki as "neo-fascist propaganda site". That's a rude attack on whole community. Saying "this is just a sandbox" is a lame excuse. It is written there for everybody to see. Such accusations are serious, with consequences in real life. Has that attacker any responsibility, or he can spit on everyone he wants whenever he wants? Kubura (talk) 20:59, 30 November 2019 (UTC)

@Kubura: Well, were I to declare on Meta that enwiki is an uncivil pile of trash, I wouldn't expect to get blocked on enwiki. And if the block was completely unrelated to the RFC (in which it is proposed that you would be desysopped), then why did you mention it in your explanation for your block? --Rschen7754 21:04, 30 November 2019 (UTC)

The reasons for block are the provocative disruptive edit on the national Independence Day, and calling hr.wiki as "neofascist propaganda site" (!!!). The last part was the elaborate explanation and analysis of user's proposals on RfC, to prove that user's true intentions, to avoid any misunderstanding "maybe he meant that". This is the key: "Svatko ima pravo misliti šta želi, ali prava i slobode imaju svoje granice. Nazivati druge "krajnjom desnicom" (far-right admin) i našu Wikipediju neonacističkim propagandnim stranicama (neofascist propaganda site) krajnje je bezobrazno, besramno i neprijateljski. Izvrdavaš pojam neutralnosti. Neutralnost nije nešto što je "na pola puta od stavova dviju strana", nego ono što je točno. " Kubura (talk) 21:34, 30 November 2019 (UTC)

Yes, this is concerning. GMG^talk 03:25, 29 November 2019 (UTC)

@-revi, @GreenMeansGo, what are the threasholds a user must pass to be banned forever for all wikimedia project? I mean, it's possible that this RFC will result in de-sysoping some admins, but they will still be pain-in-the-ass of the project, considering the fact that ruining Croatian Wikipedia seams to be the main joy in their lives for last 10+ years. --Hrwikiuser (talk) 07:17, 29 November 2019 (UTC)

Put it this way, "Hrwikiuser": aren't You the one that wants to ruin Croatian Wikipedia that has been the joy for whole Croatian community for 17 years, and the only ones that dislike it are the pain-in-.... You're now using the pejorative terms. You are running out of arguments, if You ever had any arguments. Kubura (talk) 21:11, 30 November 2019 (UTC)

The abuse of administrative privileges is pretty clear. Other abuses which may lead to block should be investigated at a different stage. --Vituzzu (talk) 11:26, 29 November 2019 (UTC)

True, the abuse of admin privileges is about as clear and severe as it gets. More than that: it shows a complete failure to understand even the basic principles. I don't know what is the threshold for emergency desysopping, though. GregorB (talk) 14:16, 29 November 2019 (UTC)

@-revi, @GreenMeansGo, @Vituzzu Can I suggest at least de-sysoping Kubura during this RFC, as a temporary measure. That later can be changed. In unlikely case that we found out that everything is cool and super nice on Croatian wikipedia, he can get his adminship back. RFCs takes time, let's not waste time, at least not on this part of measures. --Hrwikiuser (talk) 14:27, 29 November 2019 (UTC)

So a parachutist, expendable account require the elimination of the most active wikiveteran on the project. Can anyone undo the time stolen during the RfC? Noone. Kubura (talk) 21:11, 30 November 2019 (UTC)

Also, from the perspective of this RfC, blocking people specifically because they took part in it is unacceptable. As a minimum, editors should be able to comment and express their opinions here without fear of retaliation. GregorB (talk) 15:39, 29 November 2019 (UTC)

You have presented no evidence that editors were blocked specifically for participating in this RFC. These are just your insinuations. Ruslik (talk) 17:13, 29 November 2019 (UTC)

Ruslik, let me reiterate: 1) there is nothing "highly controversial" about DraconicDark's edit, and 2) yes, he was blocked for drafting a RfC proposal. Please read Kubura's Google-translated block rationale, it even contains a link to Draconic Dark's draft here on Meta. If you still disagree or are not convinced, I'll post a full translation of these two edits, as I've already offered. GregorB (talk) 18:45, 29 November 2019 (UTC)

GregorB, DraconicDark has been blocked for something else and that is explicitely explained [30]. Kubura (talk) 20:59, 30 November 2019 (UTC)

I am not sure while are lying about the circumstances of this block. Yes, the meta RFC was mentioned in the expanded rational. However only because the administrator was incensed that hrwiki was called a "neo-fascist propaganda site". The actual block reason was the edit made in hrwiki. In addition, the edit was highly controversial as far as I can judge. Ruslik (talk) 09:01, 30 November 2019 (UTC)

What about the fact that the RFC proposes to desysop Kubura specifically? Do you think that is a conflict of interest then that Kubura issued the block? --Rschen7754 18:06, 30 November 2019 (UTC)

So, if tomorrow a user created an RFC on meta proposing to desysop a number of enwiki admins then those admins would be unable to block this user? Ruslik (talk) 14:53, 1 December 2019 (UTC)

Under normal circumstances yes. We normally do not locally block users for things they did on other projects. And as a veteran en.wiki user, I am confused why it needs to be explained how this would immediately result in a crap-storm with regard to en:WP:INVOLVED. GMG^talk 14:57, 1 December 2019 (UTC)

@Ruslik0, the well-known Croat author, Jurica Pavicic, wrote in a leading Croat newspaper that “[Croatian-language] Wikipedia is an organ of the Neo-Nazis” Thhhommmasss (talk) 20:18, 30 November 2019 (UTC)

No link provided. Second, he is not any kind of authority to call anyone as "Neo-Nazis". Don't forget that last time our users had to ask protection via court of law, because of media lynch. Further, that Pavicic is heavily biased person. Among other stuff he did, he signed the "Declaration about Common language" [31] (a Serbocroatist wish), and that Declaration has been signed around the 50th anniversary of Declaration on the Name and Status of the Croatian Literary Language, whose signers were persecuted in Communist Yugoslavia as "contrarevolutionary, (neo)fascist, breakers of unity of "common sh.language" ". Political provocation. Kubura (talk) 21:22, 30 November 2019 (UTC)

The link to Pavicic’s article is the Signpost article, for which you permanently blocked GregorB on CW. And, obviously Encyclopedia Britannica is also biased since it has an article on the Serbo-Croatian language, while Harvard University offers the Bosnian-Croatian-Serb language, and many international linguists state this is one polycentric language, etc, etc. Thus obviously, all citations of Encyclopedia Britannica, Harvard University and many other international linguists must therefore be mass-reverted on CW, and people who dare post references to these, permanently blocked, since again all these other people in the world are wrong, and only Commissar Kubura is right Thhhommmasss (talk) 22:07, 30 November 2019 (UTC)

@Thhhommmasss:, please do not misinform. GregorB was blocked for something else. He has a history of mildly said, bad spirit editing. Obviously destructive, and the guidelines WP:POINT, WP:TROLL, WP:PESTERING just partially describe that. Maybe, WP:VITRIOLIC, WP:VENOM. Further, Encyclopedia Britannica pushes the Serbocroatist agenda; official policy of the UK has always been the support for Serbia, Yugoslavia, Serbocroatian and suppression of Croat (if You want to talk about that, than we can talk on some other talkpage); there're lot of sci-works on that topic. If Harvard University pushes the "BCS" agenda, than they have very poor linguist section (despite abundant data available and intelligent experts), that is guided by political and not scientific agenda (it'll be interesting to find out whose policy runs Harvard Univ.). "many international linguists state this is one polycentric language" - that's fallacy (Argumentum ad populum, Magister dixit). Many of them are still imprisoned in their or other's false beliefs or they are repackaging dismantled historical fallacies into something new. "Many" also think that the Earth is flat. Or in short: "the similar (language)" is not "the same (language)". Ferrari on benzine is a car, Audi on diesel is a car, but if I order a Ferrari that runs on benzine, then I ordered Ferrari on benzine, not Audi on diesel. Kubura (talk) 07:09, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

The logged actions of User:Kubura are puzzling. They protected hr:Sabirni logor Jasenovac for a year, when there hadn't been any edits at all in about a week, and it doesn't look like there had been any actual vandalism for something like ten months. They seem to, as a rule, block registered accounts with email and talk page access disabled. Then they blocked this user for two days after they made an admittedly inappropriate edit on their user page, and for some reason, randomly disabled email, but left talk page access.

If you wanted to make the argument that this was not targeted vengeance but general and capricious incompetence, I'd be hard pressed to put together a convincing counter argument. GMG^talk 19:13, 29 November 2019 (UTC)

You speak as an inexperienced user, GreenMeansGo. This was the preemptive action. This RfC was started, and as my experience tells me, the vandals and provocators (mostly uregistered and "newbie" accounts) in such situations have a golden time for spitting on sensitive topics, because these articles are highlighted and have large monitoring audience; and some of them barely wait for some "nazi escapade" to happen and to report it here "as regular pattern and the proof of nazism". Besides that, the risk of congestion of overediting on the unprotected article is significantly higher in such times, and sensitive topic requires prompt reaction and that makes maintaing the project very difficult. Therefore, to prevent that, the article was locked for unregistered users. Kubura (talk) 20:17, 30 November 2019 (UTC)

This was the preemptive action. Yes, this is exactly what I am saying, which seems to be against your own local policy. It's also very difficult not to interpret your responses here as evidence that you approach editing primarily from an ethno-nationalistic advocacy perspective. GMG^talk 22:10, 30 November 2019 (UTC)

First, You lie. That action is not from "ethno-nationalistic perspective", but to prevent vandalisms that are misrepresented. You have no experience. Once during last lynch there was a vandalism in 21:13, removed in 21:18, the vandal restored it late in the night ( Dec 13, 2013) in 01:19, removed again in 01:38, vandal restored it again in 01:43, removed in 01:52 and then the article was locked. it was presented in two media "as a proof on the chaos on hr.wiki" [32]. Therefore, to prevent any such fake news, and to demotivate vandals, the page was locked. No ethno-nationalistic motives nor any buzzwords You use to denigrate us. The experienced admin does not wait for the crap to happen, he prevents that. Kubura (talk) 22:33, 30 November 2019 (UTC)

Your block rationale is a naked and near paranoid ethno-nationalistic rant, that those with whom you disagree are secret agents of the "Greater Serbian aggressors" plotting to besmirch Croatian honor on a particular holiday. I realize this may be difficult for your to consider, but most of the world does not think about Croatia...at all. When I started looking into this discussion I had to pull out a map to remind myself where Croatia was.

Your block of VS6507 doesn't come off any better: blocking a user for a comment they made two months prior on a different project, and an unrelated comment they made ten years prior. Again, your primary rationale seems to be explicitly ethno-nationalistic and not directly related to any ongoing disruption to the project.

This comment is more of the same. Almost pitiful self-interested nationalism. (I guarantee if you hadn't provided a link to Operacija Oluja, few to none of us would have had any idea what you were referencing.) This comment seems to sum up the situation quite well: [you] conflate Croatian Wikipedia with the country Croatia, and your response is essentially yes, you do see these as the same.

Your behavior as an administrator and your comments throughout this discussion only reinforce the notion that you view Wikipedia as a nationalistic enterprise, you are using it as a means of advancing nationalistic goals, and you seem to view anyone who disagrees with you in nationalistic terms. That is not compatible with the goals of the movement. GMG^talk 14:37, 1 December 2019 (UTC)

I can confirm blocks with disabled email and talk page access are common. For non-vandalism-only accounts, this is highly irregular, because it virtually prevents any sort of appeal. Maybe that's the idea. Grego: rB (talk) 19:25, 29 November 2019 (UTC)

Kubura did not protect the page. Ruslik (talk) 10:24, 30 November 2019 (UTC)

Umm...@Ruslik0: Are you sure about that? GMG^talk 15:07, 30 November 2019 (UTC)

I see only semi-protection. Ruslik (talk) 16:03, 30 November 2019 (UTC)

Yes? GMG^talk 17:00, 30 November 2019 (UTC)

Yes, the mildest form. To prevent vandalisms from IP's and freshly registered accounts. [33] "Dopušteno samo autopotvrđenim suradnicima". Allowed only to autoconfirmed users. Kubura (talk) 22:14, 30 November 2019 (UTC)

The involved administrators are a complete disgrace to the Wikimedia movement, and should be immediately emergency desysopped for blatant abuse of their userrights. I recommend to these administrators that, if their intention is to have a place to exercise a draconian dictatorship over, they pick somewhere that isn't a Wikimedia project. It is impossible to make a neutral encyclopedia when dissenting, to any degree, results in arbitrary and unappealable punishments. Vermont (talk) 18:55, 29 November 2019 (UTC)

Put it this way, @Vermont:: if these neoyugoslavist attackers that started this RfC require a place to to exercise a draconian dictatorship over Croatian community and impose neoyugoslavist and serbocroatist agenda, let them pick somewhere else that isn't a Wikimedia project. The disgraces are persons who believe to parachutists and expendable sockpuppets (and not to veteran editors) that persistently avoid to say that every action has been thoroughly explainec on the talkpages. They never gave a link to the explanations on their talkpages! Kubura (talk) 21:04, 30 November 2019 (UTC)

That purposefully walks around the blocks you imposed and attempts to blame the issue on an ethnic group rival to that of yourself. Your actions are arbitrary, you leave no room for appealing or questioning your viewpoint, and refuse to recognize the possibility of you being anything but infallible and those who disagree with you being anything but inherently wrong. Vermont (talk) 22:38, 30 November 2019 (UTC)

I checked the diff linked above in this section, and as the issue evidently stems from a harsh culture/ethnic war, an inherent bias, I am surprised that involved parties do not try to hide it, and rather flaunt their nationality/ancestry and evidently use it as reasons for blocking other editors. Vermont (talk) 19:00, 29 November 2019 (UTC)

@Ruslik0 Thanks for your critical thinking. This is essential especially in time of fake news, this RFC is full of fake news. --Mateo K 01 (talk) 21:21, 30 November 2019 (UTC)

Draconic Dark's case

There have been some strange disagreements about how and why was DraconicDark blocked, so here is translation of all relevant content to set the record straight.

DraconicDark made a single edit that removed a paragraph from the intro of the article on Jasenovac concentration camp.[34]

Content removed by DraconicDark from the article on Jasenovac concentration camp
In the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, a country where the communist regime, in the clear absence of democratic legitimacy, continually sought to justify its existence by the role of the communists in the struggle against fascism in World War II and the need to protect the "brotherhood and unity of the peoples of Yugoslavia" from "hostile emigration", "foreign enemies", and "enemies from within who rear their heads" - the official propaganda intensively promoted a megalomaniacal, mythomaniacal portrayal of Jasenovac as a mass execution site where as many as 750 thousand victims where murdered in the most cruel ways. The purpose of sustaining this black legend was vilification, stigmatization and silencing of Croats, cultivating a permanent feeling of shame inextricably linked to Croatian national consciousness and making any kind of notion of Croatian independence a taboo and, on the other hand, perpetual elevation of Serbs as innocent victims of Croatian statehood and national ideas, to whom Croats and Croatia need to forever apologize and appease them to their own detriment with eternal concessions and gifts, to comfort the "endangered Serbs" as a "permanent victim" and redeem the "merits" of the "keepers of Yugoslavia" - Serbia and the Serbs.

The above content had no sources (unsurprisingly), so no sources were removed. Edit summary was: "the article might not be neutral".

Kubura's reaction?[35]

Kubura's block rationale on DraconicDark's talk page
[36] How can you dispute the content in a language you don't understand at all? Are you acting as a meatpuppet of someone who speaks Croatian, or you do speak Croatian but falsely impersonate someone who doesn't? You have deleted the content which is not controversial in any way, unless you are a nurturer of malicious black legends about the Croatian people and Croatian state. You have deleted the section that spoke about how Croatian people were abused. To you, it was not neutral that the aim of this legend was "vilification, stigmatization and silencing of Croats, cultivating a permanent feeling of shame inextricably linked to Croatian national consciousness and making any kind of notion of Croatian independence a taboo", an insidious cultivation of a permanent feeling of guilt and making the Croats self-supress their desire for freedom so that they always need to ingratiate to the foreign master in their own back yard and are forced to make permanent concessions to their own detriment. Who doesn't understand this, has no understanding of Croatian history or is extremely malicious, that is, he is taking the side of Croatian enemies, that is Greater-Serbianists aggressors against Croatia. You made this edit on the date of Croatian holiday - Day of Independence, when Croatia freed itself from the dungeon of Yugoslavia. A provocation. [37] Everybody has the right to think whatever they want, but rights and freedoms have their limits. To call somebody "far right" (far-right admin) and call our Wikipedia neo-Nazi propaganda pages (neofascist propaganda site) is extremely insolent, shameless and hostile. You're twisting the meaning of neutrality. Neutrality is not something that is "half-way from the positions of two sides", but what is correct. Otherwise we'd have these shameless propositions of peace mediators who proposed that Croatia should share Baranja with Serbia, avoiding the mention of who was the aggressor against Croatia and asking not to use the term "Greater-Serbianist agression" but say it was merely some "war" instead, as if Croatia and Serbia went to war on equal terms for no man's land, and not a rudimentary armed Croatia being forced to defend itself from fully armed Serbia, which also had the international support. Your proposals are a major diplomatic incident. You are meddling in things much bigger than your ego. You are asking for the removal of status of the most well-respected (Kubura, SpeedyGonsales, and Zeljko) and the most active editors (Kubura, Zeljko). You are spitting all over the Croatian community that elected them and gave them their trust for all these years. On top of that, you are calling them "offenders". You are an offender. You are asking for bureaucratic and checkuser status to be removed from all local bureaucrats and checkusers. Who are you and who do you think you are? A petty egotist with a colonialist approach who goes about imposing a commissariat on the small nations. Shame on you. You are asking the stewards (who can't understand our language and who didn't build the hr project) to review all long-term blocks. Well, look at him, you would strip tools from those who are well-respected, people whom the community gave their trust, and you'd let loose those who create disorder. Wikipedia is not an anarchy. That last bit is worse than the commissariat, it is calling for an enemy occupation under foreign sponsorship. "Set up a local Arbitration Committee consisting of a mixture of stewards and shwiki admins, to be appointed by the global community at Meta-Wiki". You are calling for a commissariat made up from foreigners and, which is an extremely hostile act, from "shwiki". The Serbo-Croatist idea is the idea of the annihilation of the Croatian people and Croatia itself. All such projects have started with an attack against the Croatian language, usually under the Serbo-Croatist banner. That's not going to fly here. I'm giving you a permanent block and a ban.

Two links in the above text are per the original.

The block log reads:

Defending the black legends. Calling for a Serbo-Croatist commissariat. See talk page.

Now, let me reiterate once more:

1. DraconicDark's edit to the Jasenovac concentration camp article was not in any meaningful way "highly controversial". It is barely debatable, and I'd even say it's commendable.
2. Since one half of Kubura's block rationale is dedicated to DraconicDark's Meta draft proposal, as well as one half of the block log entry, it is obvious and absolutely undeniable that DraconicDark was blocked for writing it.
3. Kubura's conduct in this particular case is completely incompatible with being an administrator.

I really dislike being forced to translate this garbage, it literally gave me a headache, but hopefully now everybody will understand what was clear right from the start.

Ruslik: am I mistaken in any of the above three conclusions? GregorB (talk) 12:27, 1 December 2019 (UTC)

But these is your own opinion only. It is obvious that you do not like hrwiki admins but what it all has to do with stewards, meta and global policies? Stewards are not global arbitrators (as I have said many times in the past) and random people, who have happened to participate in this RFC, does not magically constitute an ad hoc arbitration committee either. So, what do you want to achieve by pointing out an obvious fact that there is an editorial dispute in hrwiki? By the way any edit that encounters objections is by definition controversial. So, you claim that 'DraconicDark's edit to the Jasenovac concentration camp article was not in any meaningful way "highly controversial"' is patently false. Ruslik (talk) 14:33, 1 December 2019 (UTC)

Ruslik: Please state clearly are my conclusions #2 and #3 above mistaken or not? It is you who raised this issue and accused me of "insinuating", so please: yes or no, I insist. 14:39, 1 December 2019 (UTC)

Also: "By the way any edit that encounters objections is by definition controversial." - I'm sorry, but that's just nonsense. I can scarcely believe you are a steward. GregorB (talk) 14:42, 1 December 2019 (UTC)

What exactly can not you believe? That any edit that is opposed by somebody is controversial by definition? It is so obvious, in my opinion. For instance, merriam-webster thinks so: uncontroversial - "not likely to be disputed or to cause strife or quarrel : not relating to or arousing controversy". Ruslik (talk) 18:51, 1 December 2019 (UTC)

Edits that fix vandalism, copyright violations, WP:BLP violations, WP:NOT violations - to name just a few - are not controversial, even if vandals, copyright violators and POV pushers disagree. This is less important, however: please comment on my points #2 and #3 above. GregorB (talk) 18:57, 1 December 2019 (UTC)

Fixing copyright violations can be as controversial as resolving BLP issues. Ruslik (talk) 19:33, 1 December 2019 (UTC)

Ruslik0, can you really look at the content removed and say that a proper response to that is blocking the user indefinitely without talk page access? It's blatantly a non-neutral, biased, nationalist rant. We're here because the administrators on the Croatian Wikipedia enforce this nationalist view as fact and block anyone who dares question it. It may be controversial in the eyes of the administrators, but were such a paragraph to exist on the English Wikipedia or any other project with a decent level of quality it would be removed post haste, and rightly so. You should not be defending such blatant acts of administrator abuse, which can only be rectified by some action by the global community, as (with the evidence presented here) anyone who attempts to fix the issues locally ends up blocked without chance of appeal. Vermont (talk) 19:38, 1 December 2019 (UTC)

Please, do not put words into my mouth. I have never said that I agree with this block. I only said that this edit was a deliberate provocation, which I do not like. Ruslik (talk) 20:00, 1 December 2019 (UTC)

If I misinterpreted your position, I apologize. For clarification, do you believe this was an abuse of administrative userrights? Vermont (talk) 20:06, 1 December 2019 (UTC)

I think that Kubura should have showed a restraint in his actions. The block was not necessary and a warning (if the edit was really controversial) would have sufficed. I think if it would be better if the block were lifted. Ruslik (talk) 14:34, 4 December 2019 (UTC)

Can we say that Kubura's block was not because of the RFC? We can't. All we have to go off of is his own claims, and I do not believe that they are credible. As I see it, anything an administrator does that interferes with a desysop process, or is obvious retaliation for it (especially if they are the target for it) - this is grounds for an emergency desysop because otherwise that admin can stifle all dissent and local users are powerless to do anything. --Rschen7754 21:55, 1 December 2019 (UTC)

However we know that the block was primary because of that single edit in hwiki. In other words if DraconicDark had not made that edit he would have probably never been blocked. RFC was just one of the factors that influenced it. In addition I do not understand how this block of a user, who does not have any serious intention to contribute to hrwiki, can interfere with the desysop process that is taking place on a different wiki? Ruslik (talk) 10:55, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

Ruslik, You are right, blocking s user on hr-wiki can't interfere with RFC. But, Kubura's behavior can't be understood if You look for a rational explanation. When he feels frustrated, he just takes revenge on the person attacking him. He did the same thing in 2010, when he was temporarily de-sysoped by a steward. And Yes, he probably wouldn't have been blocked without that edit, which Kubura took as an excuse for a permanent block. --Hrwikiuser (talk) 11:38, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

Ruslik - it is undeniable that DraconicDark was blocked at least in part as a direct retaliation for his RfC draft. Even if there were legitimate reasons for the block - there were not, but let's assume there were, for the sake of the argument - you should know, particularly as a steward, that this would still be a severe violation of WP:INVOLVED (severe enough for desysopping, according to precedents). Also, the fact DraconicDark does not contribute to hr wiki is irrelevant, since his block also intimidates those who do. GregorB (talk) 12:09, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

Ruslik, another part of their M.O. is to instantly mass-revert everything they disagree with (citations of western and Croatian historians, straight quotations of Croatian Supreme Court verdicts, etc, etc), and then swarm the user on the Talk page, accuse them of being a Serb agent, anti-Croat, a Serbo-Croatists, etc, etc, i.e. all the same stuff they've done here, and then when the user complains, use anything they say as a pretext to block them. So then the block supposedly is not for the edit, but the fact that people showed “disrespect” after they mass-reverted legitimate edits and called them every name possible Thhhommmasss (talk) 20:06, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

Violation WP:INVOLVED? I do not think that an English Wikipedia policy applies to hrwiki admins. Ruslik (talk) 14:18, 4 December 2019 (UTC)

The way I see it, nemo iudex in causa sua is a basic principle of justice. If an admin is using blocks against his own critics, specifically because they are critical of him, that's major abuse regardless of whether hr wiki does or does not have an equivalent of enwiki's WP:INVOLVED (it doesn't, ain't that a coincidence). GregorB (talk) 18:58, 4 December 2019 (UTC)

This too should be looked into - wikis not including certain WP rules. One result of such independence is that we get Bizarro World WPs, like CW, where they violate practically all core WP principles, and on top invent their own “rules”, with clearly retaliatory blocks for merely posting links to Signpost and RfCs, claims that they do not have to provide any proof for their claims, hit-lists of reliable sources they disagree with and thus can’t be cited, notions of nationalities and “anti-Croat” Croats who supposedly have no right to participate, etc. And all this is not just some game, but its ultimate goal is to promote the same nationalistic divisions and hatreds that drove previous wars, using WP as a tool Thhhommmasss (talk) 20:44, 4 December 2019 (UTC)

Rschen7754, your statement ("...that admin can stifle all dissent and local users are powerless to do anything") is factually wrong. a) Nobody has been blocked due to their participation in the RFC. This is an outrageous lie. The deletion of article contents under insufficient justification is by definition vandalism. b) It creates in others a completely wrong image of our Wikipedia. --Mateo K 01 (talk) 00:03, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

Okay, then prove it. And I will note that my concerns about this block [38] have not been addressed at all. --Rschen7754 00:11, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

-revi, could you please review the DraconicDark-Kubura incident as described and discussed in this subsection, particularly Kubura's block rationale in the collapsed box, and make a determination whether emergency desysopping would be justified here or not. GregorB (talk) 20:47, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

Emergency desysopping over a two months old block? Where is an emergency? Ruslik (talk) 14:20, 4 December 2019 (UTC)

I'm not saying that it is an emergency or that it isn't, but: 1) Kubura was desysopped after a 2010 RfC for a comparably mild infraction (all infractions seem mild compared to this one, I'd say), and 2) an impact on the free discussion in this RfC should be considered. That's all I'm saying, the rest is a matter for the stewards. GregorB (talk) 19:06, 4 December 2019 (UTC)

The emergency is that the block continues today, and cannot even be appealed. --Rschen7754 20:46, 4 December 2019 (UTC)

Copy from another page [39]. @Rschen7754: please have a look. First, look how DraconicDark misinterpretes the words. "Saveznici fašista, dosta slično, ali ne i isto." means: "Allies of fascists, similar a lot, but not the same". What was wrong here? No whitewashing ("similar a lot" can mean "similar, but worse"), no "not answering" - beginning of the sentence is the answer. DraconicDark is lying.

Futher, in March this year Croatian Ministry of Foreign Affairs reacted with press release for Austrian media [40] "Bleiburško polje za Hrvate predstavlja simbol masakra i mučenja i simbol povrede ljudskih prava. Stoga smo zgranuti prigovorom da se na Bleiburgu slavi fašizam, što stvara krivu predodžbu o Hrvatskoj i Hrvatima. MVEP je tako izrazio duboko žaljenje zbog percepcije događaja u austrijskoj javnosti koja u okupljanju na Bleiburškom polju vidi 'fašističku zabavu', 'najveće okupljanje neonacista u EU', 'skup ekstremne desnice' ili 'skup ustaša'. U priopćenju je naglašeno kako grubo poopćavanje u izvješćima medija, kojim se današnja Hrvatska i njezino stanovništvo povezuju s oživljavanjem fašističkih misli, u MVEP-u doživljavaju kao bolnu uvredu. Istaknuto je i kako je pogrešno na temelju pojedinačnih slučajeva, koje svakako treba najoštrije osuditi, brojne pripadnike obitelji žrtava kao i predstavnike Vlade i crkvenih vlasti okupljene na Loibaškom polju nazivati fašistima. Ukazali smo kako se upravo to radilo desetljećima pod komunističkom vlašću: prešućivalo se i ublažavalo ubojstvo desetina tisuća vojnika i civila koji su bili izručeni Titovoj armiji bez prava na sudski proces, kao što su utišavani i svi oni glasovi koji su oživljavali sjećanje na taj događaj', ... Mogućnost odvijanja ovakvog skupa u Austriji smatrali su pomakom u smislu demokratskog razvoja i kao takvog ga poštivali. I can translate You this from Croatian. Kubura (talk) 23:08, 4 December 2019 (UTC)

[41] DraconicDark said " saying that the Serbo-Croatian language is some sort of "language genocide" (that's not even a legitimate term, and Croatian Wikipedia has a red link there!) and that there were some sort of attempts to suppress the Croatian language by instead teaching children in Serbian,". "Language genocide" is a legitimate term. Here [42] in the magazine of major Croatian cultural institution is the line "Glasovi oporbe kulturnomu i jezičnomu genocidu bili su u Hrvatskoj nejasno artikulirani dijelom i stoga što onodobna jezikoslovna znanost nije pružala alate za bolji opis jezičnih pojavnosti i razina te odnosa među njima" The article is written by Croatian linguist Nataša Bašić. Articlename: Jezični identiteti nesrpskih naroda u velikosrpskom programu državnoga sjedinjenja - "The language identities of non-Serb peoples in the greaterserbianist program of the state unification"; deals with the serbocroatist and greaterserbianist topics. In the text "Preradović posebno napominje da ne prihvaća naziv srpsko-hrvatski ili hrvatsko-srpski jer je surogat i jer su ga izmislili ljudi kojima je stalo da hrvatstvo oslabi i da se njegov ponos ponizi. " Preradović (grandfather of Paula Preradović) especially notes that he does not accept name Serbo-Croatian or Croato-Serbian because it is the surogate and it was invented py persons who care that Croathood weakens and its (of Croathood) pride gets humiliated." Kubura (talk) 23:08, 4 December 2019 (UTC)

@Kubura - you again miss the whole point of WP, which is to present a NPOV, based on Reliable Sources, and not to promote your notion of “Croathood”, and attack and block all those you disagree with. People on CW should be able to freely quote western and Croatian historians who describe the Ustashe as fascist, genocidal killers, freely cite the same sources quoted on enwiki and in western history books, fully and freely quote the 50 linguists, both Croat and international, who signed the Declaration on the Common Language, freely cite Austrian EU parliamentarians who stated that the Bleiburg commemorations represent the “biggest fascist gathering in Europe”, etc. You can in turn, cite the Croatian Foreign Ministry or Croat nationalists' responses, but these should in no way be the only permitted views in CW, just as claims by the Serbian Foreign Ministry and Serb nationalists should not be the only permitted views in rs.wiki, to promote “Serbdom”

Yet instead of allowing such differing views, based on reliable sources, you repeatedly revert and block people, to enforce your nationalistic POV, totally against WP principles. That’s what this RfC is about, but even here you repeat the same things you’re accused of – you insist on the ability to use WP to present your nationalistic POV, attack other nationalities, “Serbo-Croatists” and others who you claim shouldn’t have the right to comment, block people because they dared criticize you, etc. So my question is how long are we going to keep going round-and-round on this, with more of the exact same, since I hope by now it's clear to everyone that one cannot reason with committed ideologues Thhhommmasss (talk) 01:41, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

"...fully and freely quote the 50 linguists, both Croat and international, who signed the Declaration on the Common Language..." - This is the exact proof that you and the initiators of this RFC want to propagate the Serbo-Croatian agenda. --Mateo K 01 (talk) 02:16, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

@mateo Your implied claim that on CW editors shouldn’t be able to cite these 50 respected linguists from Croatia and internationally, proves yet again that at CW you’ve set yourself up as not only the language police (even contradicting Croatian dictionaries), but also as the thought police, seeking to eliminate citations of Reliable Sources with whom you disagree, and then block editors who dare cite these sources. Again proof that whatever you’re running at CW, it bears absolutely no resemblance to Wikipedia and what it stands for Thhhommmasss (talk) 03:55, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

Mateo K 01, Did you notices that all of those people who, according to you and Kubura, are part of some secret plan to destroy "Croathood", all argued against merger of south-Slavic wikipedias in sh wikipedia (see below). When you are paranoid, no argument helps. Also, it would be nice if You and Kubura finally understood that the role of hr wikipedia is not to be the guardian of "Croathood" but to present facts in neutral way. --Hrwikiuser (talk)

Kubura, the fact that someone somewhere in Croatian media once used the word "language genocide", just to appear more dramatic, does not mean that it's a legitimate term. You could search up practically any combination of 2 words and google will give you some results. It's en:WP:PEACOCK words and it's clear violation of NPOV. --Hrwikiuser (talk) 07:26, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

@Hrwikiuser: WP:PEACOCK is whole this RfC, full of buzzwords and peacock terms. Kubura (talk) 05:36, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

@Hrwikiuser: Not "in some media", but by prominent Croatian author Joža Skok [43]. Further, [44]"U pristupu se odveć ne razlikuje ni današnja slavistika, osobito ona s tzv. demokratskoga Zapada, iz SAD-a i Velike Britanije, dapače, ona simpatizira s višedesetljetnim pokušajima ubijanja jezika nekoliko milijuna živućih hrvatskih govornika, a njihov otpor kulturocidu i jezičnomu nasilju drži hrvatskim nacionalizmom" (culturecide and language violence together). "Glasovi oporbe kulturnomu i jezičnomu genocidu " [45] These are not "some media", but words of prominent Croatian linguist Nataša Bašić in major Croatian linguist and cultural magazines. Kubura (talk) 06:33, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

Defense of terrorist attack as an "argument" to start this RfC

GregorB started this RfC [46]. He wrote this in his subpage (the translation of his article he wrote in The Signpost?) [47] Suradnik:GregorB/The Signpost. First, he gave wrong diff for the following. Anyway he mentioned this section as problematic, as "extreme example of the right bias", in the article about Milan Tepić: "Nisu uzeli u činjenicu da je odnio u smrt i ročnike JNA, koje nije pitao za žele li u smrt, niti je pogledao u lica roditelja, prijatelja i drugih bližnjih tih ročnika koje je terorističkim luđačkim činom odnio u smrt. " He finds it OK to remove that (Svi pokušaji da se ovaj tekst ukloni su poništeni ). Here is some of the explanations on the talkpage. "Glede udarnog vala koji je došao eksplozijom koju je onaj lik napravio, možete zamisliti koliko je ugrozio zdravlje civila. Udarni val ne pita tko si i što si po nacionalnosti. Koliko je žena pobacilo ili rodilo djece s defektom? Dobilo srčane i moždane? Skratilo vijek unutarnjih organa? Ovo je teroristički čin. Da je uspio u naumu, bjelovarska Hirošima obuhvaćala bi i grad Bjelovar i sve njegove stanovnike. Nikakva ratna akcija ne opravdava ubojstvo tolikog broja civila - 30.000 (trideset tisuća) ubijenih osoba. Nerazumna uporaba sile. Ratni zločin."
That terrorist lunatic act endangered the life of the whole city of Bjelovar, and the starter of this RfC finds that fact in the article as "right bias". Kubura (talk) 22:01, 30 November 2019 (UTC)

[48] "The Serbian government decided last week that a monument to Tepić would be erected in Belgrade on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of his death. ...The tragedy would be even worse if Tepić was not prevented in blowing up several other nearby warehouses.... Serbian Ambassador to Croatia Mira Nikolić has been recently invited to the Croatia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where she received “a sharp verbal protest” over the decision of the Serbian government to erect a monument to Serbia’s national hero Milan Tepić. Dačić said that Croatia stated that it was unacceptable and harmful for bilateral relations “to erect a monument to a man whose suicidal actions caused the death of 11 Croatian soldiers and an unknown number of recruits of the Yugoslav National Army”. The tragedy would be even worse if Tepić was not prevented in blowing up several other nearby warehouses.. See also the reaction of Serbian leadership. GregorB is on their wave. See the explosion's mushroom over Bjelovar. And such person starts this RfC and some people here even dare to defend GregorB's positions. Kubura (talk) 22:05, 30 November 2019 (UTC)

[49] Video of the explosion. Kubura (talk) 22:08, 30 November 2019 (UTC)

Kubura, I'm not sure what's your point so let's make it simple. There is a sentence in the Milan Tepić article that says:

[The Presidency of SFRY] did not consider the fact that he caused the deaths of Yugoslav People's Army conscripts, whom he did not ask if they wanted to die, nor did he look into the eyes of parents, friends and family of these conscripts, whose deaths were caused by his terrorist, lunatic act.

Do you find anything problematic with something like this in a Wikipedia article? Please: "yes" or "no". GregorB (talk) 22:20, 30 November 2019 (UTC)

What is Your point, man? That is the terrorist lunatic act that brought the lives of whole Bjelovar in danger. Known victims are 11 Croatian soldiers and an unknown number of recruits of the Yugoslav National Army”[50]; Serbs know the name of one soldier of JNA [51]. What is "right bias" in this? Say it. You said that this is the right bias so say it. Enlighten us. Kubura (talk) 22:38, 30 November 2019 (UTC)

Is it a "yes" or "no" then? GregorB (talk) 22:46, 30 November 2019 (UTC)

I can only thank user:Kubura once again to explaining what is actualy wrong with him. I, personaly, agree that Milan Tepić was nationaliatic lunatic who endangered entire city of Bjelovar and that it's insane to raise a momument to such a person. But that doesn't mean that You can insert a patetic ranting essay in the article. And this is exactly what Kubura (together with Zeljko and SpeedyGonsales) has been doing for years - ruining articles with patetic rants and POV writing. His writing style is the same in articles as is here in this RFC. He is totaly unable to understand what neutral wikipedia article should look like. And he pesistently harras and blocks anyone who complaints calling them neoyugoslav, serbian propagandist or some other BS.

P.S. In this very section, when asked if he understands what is wrong with his writing style, he replies with explanation of what was wrong with Milan Tepić. This pretty much sums up the problem. --Hrwikiuser (talk) 05:45, 1 December 2019 (UTC)

Interesting how selective is the outrage of Balkan nationalists. I looked at the CW article on Mirko Norac, convicted of war crimes, in which his subordinates said he commanded the killing of some 200 Serb civilians, including personally firing a bullet into the brain of a kneeling old woman, to instigate the slaughter of 50 civilians. Yet in CW there is no description of these despicable crimes, much less any editorializing on their evil, or the fact that the war criminal Norac later gained major functions in Croatia, was greeted by the Minister of Defense, etc. Same with Ustashe genocides in which they exterminated 80% or close to 100% of entire ethnic groups, down to the newborn – no editorialized outrage on CW, instead we get citations from genocide-deniers, plus massive-reverts and blocks of people who quote Holocaust Museums, western and Croatian historians, etc. Such propagandized outrage and focus on the crimes of the other side, while negating or minimizing the crimes of one’s own side, is what fueled the wars of the 90s, and Balkan nationalists on all sides are still at it, in this case using WP as their tool Thhhommmasss (talk) 20:07, 1 December 2019 (UTC)

Hello, sock. May I ask you to reveal the name of your master account? Ruslik (talk) 14:11, 1 December 2019 (UTC)

The user in question has clearly indicated that he is not using his primary account here because he wishes to remain anonymous.[52] Please pay closer attention to what people are writing and tone down your approach accordingly. GregorB (talk) 14:20, 1 December 2019 (UTC)

I think we have had enough socks in Wikimedia projects recently. So, this sock can not be allowed to participate in this RFC. Ruslik (talk) 14:38, 1 December 2019 (UTC)

Ruslik, I'm not using my ooriginal account here because simply because I don't wwant to be blocked on croatian wikipedia. In case You missed some parts of this RFC, this is exactly what happened to Draconic Dark. Also, this happened bbefore, in 2010, and Kubura was de-sysoped for this, ssee Requests for comment/Croatian Wikipedia-misuse of admin tools by User:Kubura. Also, I'm not using my hr wiki acount in this RFC. --Hrwikiuser (talk) 15:29, 1 December 2019 (UTC)

@Hrwikiuser, DraconicDark in his very first edit deleted whole section on a highly sensitive topic (that draw the attention and ran the blockdecision). You are defending the vandal. That denigrated whole project by calling it as "neofascist propaganda site". Deleting of content + attacking behaviour. What have You expected? Kubura (talk) 07:25, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

Probably I should also create a sock. It would be funny if all these comments were posted by a newly created account instead of my well known steward account. Ruslik (talk) 18:38, 1 December 2019 (UTC)

No, You shouldn't. Because You are not active on Croatian Wikipedia and You are in no danger of being blocked for expressing Your opinion here. If You or some other stewart already de-sysoped Kubura for the same type of "crime" he was already de-sysoped by a stewart in 2010, I'm sure I would feel much safer to use my primary account here. --Hrwikiuser (talk) 18:50, 1 December 2019 (UTC)

It would be even more funny if every user participated in this RFC through their undeclared socks. It would be then such a puppet theater. :):) Ruslik (talk) 19:20, 1 December 2019 (UTC)

Although I seem to disagree with you, Ruslik, I'm happy you make your views known, and publicly. If we're to come to some form of resolution with this issue we need to consider all viewpoints. Hrwikiuser, if you used your main account here and ended up blocked, then I would think an emergency desysop of the administrator who made such an action would be in order. One should never feel afraid to express their opinion, especially not on Wikimedia projects. Vermont (talk) 19:45, 1 December 2019 (UTC)

Technically if you use one account on one wiki and another on a different wiki it has not been considered a violation of policy on most wikis. It may not be forthright/transparent and I don't like it, but not against policy. --Rschen7754 21:35, 1 December 2019 (UTC)

GB, you must understand that not everyone uncritically believes your lies, falsehoods and perfidious interpretations and those of your like-minded people. You did not give us any explanation what is biased in that sentence about the terrorist that almost destroyed the city Bjelovar of 30.000 inhabitants in the single explosion. --Mateo K 01 (talk) 22:49, 1 December 2019 (UTC)

Please choose your words more carefully. The same question for you (and for Ceha and IvanOS, while we're at it):

[The Presidency of SFRY] did not consider the fact that he caused the deaths of Yugoslav People's Army conscripts, whom he did not ask if they wanted to die, nor did he look into the eyes of parents, friends and family of these conscripts, whose deaths were caused by his terrorist, lunatic act.

Do you find anything problematic with a sentence like this in a Wikipedia article: yes or no? GregorB (talk) 23:10, 1 December 2019 (UTC)

The world cannot be viewed in a black-and-white (yes or no) way of thinking. --Mateo K 01 (talk) 00:03, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

The question was: is there anything problematic. That sort of question can only be answered with either "yes" (something is problematic) or "no" (nothing is problematic). Other answers make no sense, there is nothing in between. Your talk about "black-and-white thinking" is just an excuse for not answering. (Speedy and Kubura are avoiding straight answers like the plague, and I suppose Ceha and IvanOS will follow suit.) You'd all like to argue, you use some big words, but you know very well you can't cut it in an open discussion, so it's hit and run. GregorB (talk) 00:21, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

You have no reason to feel superior in any way. No matter how we answered, you'd use it to discredit us. Complex facts cannot be reduced to a few words in a populist way. --Mateo K 01 (talk) 01:23, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

Mateo K 01, answer me plainly, is there anything problematic with the statement? If you say no, I agree with you. If you say yes, you're blatantly ignoring clear evidence an inch in front of your eyes. If your reasoning for your nonsensical retorts is nationalistic bias, as I believe it is, say that it is so. When someone tries to engage you in intelligent discussion, asking for you to respond clearly to a question that can only be answered with yes or no, and you tell them that you cannot respond to yes or no questions and that it's a "complex fact", you discredit yourself. Attempting to walk around basic questions by insulting the questioner just makes you look asinine. Vermont (talk) 03:12, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

I personally do not consider the Tepic article among the worst cases of CW bias, since there are many, much more egregious bias instances - like CW Admins quoting holocaust-deniers, and claiming that such people have the only “truth”, while dismissing as “propaganda” and mass-reverting/blocking people who dare cite contrary facts from the Holocaust Museums, western and Croatian historians, etc. Also as I noted above, in contrast to the CW Tepic article, there’s no such editorialized outrage in the CW article on Mirko Norac, not even one mention of specifics regarding the vicious killings of some 200 Serb civilians that his subordinates accused him of, i.e. much larger crimes than Tepic’s, including Norac's firing a bullet into the head of an old woman, to instigate the slaughter of 50 civilians. In fact, as can be seen in this diff, Admin Speedy Gonzalez reverted the edit by a user who dared quote some specifics of Norac’s crimes, directly from the judgement by the Supreme Court of Croatia. Thus per CW, obviously the Croatian Supreme Court is also “anti-Croat”, run by “Serbo-Croatists”, and therefor can’t be cited on CW Thhhommmasss (talk) 00:11, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

Thhhommmasss, it is frightening and incomprehensible that you can place at least one disinformation in each of your statements.

1. Roman Leljak and Igor Vukić, to whom you most likely refer, are not Holocaust deniers. Evil, inaccurate defamations of persons in public life should be better avoided in one's own interest.
2. No one has claimed that someone has leased "the truth" to himself only. Rarely read such nonsense.
3. There's no mass-reverting/blocking people. No one was blocked for citing Western sources. This is one of countless lies propagated by you here. --Mateo K 01 (talk) 01:23, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

Downsizing the number of murders in the Holocaust is a prevalent form of Holocaust denial. Even if you support them, which you evidently do, you cannot dispute the claim that they deny the otherwise widely-accepted numerical figures of the deaths at those camps. Therefore, they are holocaust deniers, or if you prefer, holocaust revisionists. Further, please try to engage in discussion rationally. An acceptable argument is not to simply refuse to address the evidence presented to you and call the petitioners liars and defamers. It's highly immature, and I'll request that if you want to participate here you do so intelligently. Vermont (talk) 14:12, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

@Mateo - I'm really getting tired of repeating this, but I will do it one more time, so you can't pretend again you haven't seen it:

• Igor Vukic, quoted in CW, is a genocide/holocaust-denier, who claims Jasenovac was a mere “work camp”, where no mass exterminations of Jews, Serbs and others took place, contrary to the US Holocaust Museum, Nazi sources, western and Croatian historians, etc. When I cited an article by Zagreb University historian, Goran Hutinec, to counteract these falsehoods, Dvanajsti igrac mass-reverted my citations, along with citations of the US Holocaust Museum and German sources, cited by many western historians. Then you claimed, without proof, that these German sources must’ve been tortured by communists, although all of them wrote and published their books in the West. When I asked you for proof of your claims, Admin Zeljko claimed I am “attacking Mateo” – i.e. on CW, asking someone to prove their claims, the most basic WP principle, is considered “an attack”. In addition, you wrote that if I'm referring to documents from the Nuremberg Trials, “then I'd like to mention that the tribunal freed itself from any evidentiary rules” - which I take as your claim that the Nuremberg Trials proved nothing about Nazi crimes
• Also after reverting my citations of Croatian historians and the US Holocaust Museum, Admin Zeljko wrote: “We have official records from Yugoslavia and the names of everyone in the camp are known, and who was killed and who died. So everything else remains at the level of malicious propaganda and unfounded accusation”. This is a reference to Zeljko’s citations in the CW Jasenovac article of a book by the convicted fraudster and Holocaust-denier, Roman Leljak, who claims Jasenovac was not a death camp, that a mere 1,600 people died in Jasenovac, thus negating 98% of the 80.000 to 100.000 victims estimated by the US Holocaust Museum, western and Croatian historians. Thus, Leljak and Admin Zeljko are also denying 98% of up to 20,000 Jewish victims estimated by the US Holocaust Museum to have been exterminated at Jasenovac, i.e. two-thirds of all Croatian Holocaust victims
• I was initially blocked from CW by Kubura, for citing Hitler’s Plenipotentiary in the Independent State of Croatia, General von Horstenau, whom many western historian cite, and whom the well-known Croatian-American historian Jozo Tomasevich considers “the best-informed and unbiased” of sources. After that Kubura posted tons of nationalistic clap-trap on my Talk page, as to why von Horstenau is “ureliable” and “anti-Croat”, and therefore can’t be cited on CW, even though he's widely cited in western history books and on enwiki (of course, according to Kubura, enwiki "does not work in a quality manner, they often cite sources who are compromised, writing unnaturally about Croats" - thus again claiming that the problem lies with enwiki and the entire rest of the world)

If need be I can dig up all the diffs on all the above nonsense, reverts and blocks, and provide tons of links to articles from Croatian historians, who thoroughly criticize the Holocaust-denial lies sold by Igor Vukic, Roman Leljak and other sources quoted on CW Thhhommmasss (talk) 02:50, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

This sections speaks about defending the terrorist act done by Milan Tepić that endangered whole city and 30,000 civilians, and the malcontents say that calling that as terrorist and lunatic is "right bias".

Short digression: You cite Hitler's plenipotentiary and You find that OK, please do not accuse any user if someone on hr.wiki cites certain Croatian Axis functionary. Regarding von Horstenau, here You have this [53] "Von Horstenau vrlo često govori o 'ustaškome teroru protiv pravoslavaca' i da daje sarkastičnu i kritičnu sliku ne samo o Paveliću već i o Hitleru, Ribbentropu i o svojim kolegama. No upada u uči da Horstenau nigdje ne spominje četničke zločine nad Hrvatima u NDH. ".... [54] "Knjiga Horstenauovih memoara ...dosta govori o svojim hrvatskim kolegama i prijateljima iz još davnih bečkih dana, kada je s njima, kao budući austrougarski časnik studirao na vojnoj akademiji u Beču, a kasnije, za vrijeme Prvog svjetskog rata, bio na terenu u Bosni. Von Horstenau je Austrijanac, stare austro-ugarske bečke škole. Tradicionalno, a i dandanas, Bečlije sebe smatraju mnogo većom gospodom od sjevernih Nijemaca, koje von Horstenau često zove 'Prusima', a samog Austrijanca, Hitlera, optužuje za pangermanski centralizam. Slične paralele on povlači među ustaškim emigrantima povratnicima, ustaškim čelnicima iz Bosne i Hercegovine i ustašama iz Zagreba. Ti kulturno-psihološki detalji među Nijemcima i Hrvatima, iz različitih krajeva Europe i Hrvatske i Bosne, veoma su bitni u shvaćanju ne samo von Horstenauove proze već i cjelokupne politike Trećeg Reicha prema Balkanu, a u konačnici i u njihovim ogromnim svjetonazorskim razlikama." Kubura (talk) 23:25, 4 December 2019 (UTC)

Kubura, You are either avoiding the answer or unable to comprehend the principles of Wikipedia. So, I will clarify to you. 1) Yes, AFAIK, what Milan Tepić did was terrorist act. 2) You need to describe what he did in encyclopedic words, not write pathetic texts like ...whom he did not ask if they wanted to die, nor did he look into the eyes of parents, friends and family.... Now, will you finally stop changing subject (nobody is defending Tepić here!) and answer the question (similar to what GregorB asked You above, in this section): do You understand that this pathetic writing style does not belong to a wikipedia article and removing such sentences is actually improving the article, not act of vandalism? Yes or no? --Hrwikiuser (talk) 07:36, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

@Hrwikiuser:, why do You repeat GregorB's question, do I talk to the same person? Further: what You said under 2) is something else. I agree with You, it is publicistic/belletristic/journalist style, not the exact style for encyclopedian entry - but that was not the question regarding that sentence/section. We were accused for the "right bias" for that section directly and violation of 5 pillars (or "unable to comprehend the principles of Wikipedia") as a part of whole this RfC. That's the problem. When someone disagrees with the style (belletristic, publicistic, journalist or encyclopedic) in a particular sentence/section/chapter/article/work-at-all, but the content is correct, than that is not the reason to start the RfC with the requirement to decapitate whole very functional community (incorrectly calling it "disfunctional", despite being the opposite) and to strip the community of the major, very prolific and very popular contributors (whose works very copied on other projects) and maintainers and even permanently ban them the access (+denigrating them as "extremists, neonazi whitewashers etc". Instead, when having such situations, that matter that can be pleasantly discussed on the talkpage without any fuss: "Hey, fellow, everything You wrote is correct, but I'd write that this way, let's make it less belletristic and more encyclopedic." Kubura (talk) 06:32, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

The reaction of Croatian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and ZDF

There's an interesting recent case that touches this topic. [55] (in Croatian) and [56] (in German). Reaction of Croatian Ministry of Foreign Affairs regarding the expressed points in the documentary aired on ZDF. Explained many of the "right bias", "western viewpoints", "fascism", Croatian Homeland War... Here is also interesting text connected to that one. [57] "d 3. siječnja 2000. na političkome planu u Hrvatskoj više ništa nije prepušteno slučaju. Nadzire se i kontrolira svaki politički proces, vodstva stranaka i mediji. Riječ je o iscrpljujućoj politici neoproštene pobjede kojom se iznutra iz dana u dan guši slobodarstvo, demokracija, težnje hrvatskoga naroda i budućnosna perspektiva uz istodobnu obnovu i promoviranje jugoslavenskih, velikosrpskih i komunističkih mitova i krivotvorina. ... a interpretacija raspada Titove Jugoslavije pripala je kreatorima prve i druge Jugoslavije i njihovim domaćim slugama.... jugoslavenska totalitarna baština prepuštena tihom zaboravu. Tako i Titovo lovište Macelj s procijenjenih 13.000 ubijenih bez suda i evidencije. Tako i Titova Huda jama. Daksa, Široki, Jazovka… Tihom zaboravu prepuštene su kosti nevinih žrtava Titova režima i njegove osobne zapovjedne odgovornosti u prekomjernom „granatiranju“ hrvatskoga naroda i ostalih „narodnih neprijatelja“....Nije dopušteno potpuno osvjetljavanje ni najnovijih zločina počinjenih u velikosrbijanskoj agresiji. And [58] "Vučić poručuje: Hrvati trebaju prestati govoriti da smo agresori". Kubura (talk) 07:15, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

There is nothing "interesting" about it - Kubura, please don't post off-topic political rants here, I'll delete such posts in the future. GregorB (talk) 11:03, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

Kubura, why the hell do you think that croatian ministry's opinion is relevant here? Because it's "croatian" wikipedia and we should all accept "official croatian" line of thinking? Your posts here are as much nonsensical as they are useful in understanding Your screwed way of thinking about what wikipedia principles. --Hrwikiuser (talk) 11:54, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

Index.hr article about this Meta RFC : a new low

Congratulations folks! The most read croatian web portal has published an(other) article about the croatian wikipedia, it's right-wing admins and this process here. Named Hrvatska Wikipedia je takvo smeće da su i vlasnici digli ruke od nje [translation: The croatian wikipedia is such garbage that even it's owners have given up on it]. For the non-native speakers, google translate works just fine. Among the highlights of the article: the Jasenovac NPOV, the denunciation of hr.wiki by a history university professor, and, surprisingly, a more in-depth analysis of the inner workings of WP and Meta as such, as well as a mention of this process here. At the end there is a call to save hr.wiki from the hands of @Kubura: and people alike. The article has been commented 108 times, and was conveyed by some of the well read serbian news portals like Politika, and Večernje Novosti. How many times this has to happen before stewards here decide to act?!

A message just for for @Kubura:: I would like to assure u, before u denounce this news article, that, YES, you are absolutely right! The most read news portal in Croatia (Index.hr), is on the payroll of the serbian government. All of this is a giant conspiracy against the croatian cause, and a part of an ongoing secret war. U are on the verge of discovering who killed Kennedy, that the earth is actually flat coz u don't see no curve form your living room etc. Keep it up! --Ivan VA (talk) 10:27, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

You forgot write that Index.hr made it clear that decision about arbitration between Slovenia and Croatia must be respected even Slovenians for some part of decision influenced in a criminal way(confirmed this month by themselves). Therefore Index.hr is highly anti-Croatian portal. Otherwise on Serbian wikipedia Ivan Gundulić and Ruđer Bošković are presented as Serbs, where Index.hr wrote about that, not to mention articles about war in Croatia? Reason for attack on Croatian wikipedia is because there is no more Yugoslavia and some would like to return Yugoslavia, and probably an Yugoslavian communist history, they miss it on wikipedia. Sugar on the end by Serbian wikipedia, I quote: "Srebrenica.. According to Bosniaks and much of the Western press, as well as the International Court of Justice in The Hague, this crime qualifies as genocide" Thank you God for such wikipedia. Mikola22 (talk) 11:03, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

Mikola22, to sum it up, index.hr is anti-Croatian because his editors differ from You in thinking what's best for Croatia. Just like all those anti-hr-wikipedia users who differ from you in thinking what's best for hr wikipedia. This is precisely the mindset among Croatian wikipedia admins. Thank you very much for this illuminating comment! --Hrwikiuser (talk) 11:50, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

Croatian Parliament rejected arbitration process with 100% of votes, if some portal and editors know that fact and fact that crime was committed in arbitration process why they were against Croatian decision. How would you qualify this portal? Why other portals did not follow Index.hr? Therefore anti-Croatian portal cannot evaluated Croatian wikipedia because this portal has a different view of Croatia probably from Yugoslavian perspective. I respect that and that is their right but it must be known here because some might think that this portal loves Croatia. Mikola22 (talk) 12:31, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

No it means that that is just the view of the croatian parliament (if it's right what u are saying), nothing else. No one here is obliged to take that decisions as something absolute. We, hare, are not some state officials. The croatian parliament also has voted for legislation which permitted a criminal privatisation in the 90's and 00's. When Index.hr, or any other citizen of Croatia is debating that, is that also anti-croat? --Ivan VA (talk) 12:46, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

@Mikola22: U didn't go into the merits and allegations of the article itself, but discredited the MOST READ portal in Croatia, just because it, on some topic, supposedly didn't share a political view like you. It's very interesting to observe through this whole discussion how some people put themselves into a position from which they can label who is anti-croatian/pro-croatian. And some well minded, fellow users here accepted that. I don't. Who gives u the right to throw ad-hominems around here? That that portal is somehow anticroatian is JUST YOUR OWN opinion.

Secondly, u are misleading by pointing out at NPOV content from sr.wiki here. On sr.wiki there is NPOV content. U pointed out some of it. But NO ONE will block u if u try to edit it, with serous references (which is the most basic WP rule). That's the difference. If u do it on hr.wiki, u will INSTANTLY GET BLOCKED. Like me. There is no such thing on sr.wiki. That's why the analogy/symmetry is completely false. And that's the whole point of this RfC. It wasn't started coz hr.wiki has some NPOV content (like any other wikipedia branch), but because there is admin abuse towards people who try to edit those articles in a serous manner. --Ivan VA (talk) 12:40, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

Then go to sr.wiki and change fact that Ruđer Bošković and Ivan Gundulić are Serbs, write and that is a "crime" in Sreberenica genocide without further explanation. I'm waiting for you. Mikola22 (talk) 16:27, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

I don't want do engage in those articles because i didn't study them/the academic works behind them in depth. And that is how i operate as an editor. But i have experience in editing „controversial” articles, like the most important bosniak medal from the war in BiH, i'm currently working on the Ferhadija mosque article which has been destroyed during the war etc. More recently an article about the arrest of Draža Mihailović has got featured status (not my work). Just to give u a few examples. So, if u got the literature and the credible sources on the topics u're mentioning, u're good to go. I don't, so i won't. --Ivan VA (talk) 17:01, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

Even if you are correct, your point amounts to little more than whataboutism, as it doesn't refute any of the points in this RfC, nor it is in any way an actual argument in favor of the current state of CW. GregorB (talk) 17:22, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

I suggest that controversial articles from hr.wiki be presented somewhere so that we all can say something about these article. I follow history of the Balkan peoples and I can present my own example. I quote hr.wiki "Serbs in Croatia..Most of today's Serbs in Croatia are descendants of Balkan Vlachs who immigrated to Croatia in the early new century during the Ottoman conquests". eng.wiki I quote "In some regions of modern-day Croatia, mainly in southern Dalmatia, ethnic Serbs have been present from the Early Middle Ages., Emperor Ferdinand I granted them the right to settle on the territory of the Military Frontier. In exchange for land and exemption from taxation, they had to conduct military service and participate in the protection of the Habsburg Monarchy's border against the Ottoman Empire. They populated the Dalmatian hinterland, Lika, Kordun, Banovina, Slavonia, and Western Syrmia". Which wikipedia is correct? We could vote before I answer to be more interesting and ultimately to test accuracy of hr.wiki. Mikola22 (talk) 18:03, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

I just want to point out that i find this analogy between hr.wiki and sr.wiki quite useful and worth exploring, since i'v seen that it's been heavily used by the incriminated individuals/admins and their supporters and that it has found some ground and justification among the well minded individuals who participate in the discussion.

The argument, as we all have read, goes like this: yes there is nationalist NPOV content on hr.wiki (the Jasenovac article as the main talking point), but there is also nationalist NPOV content on sr.wiki. So, why only intervene in hr.wiki? This also is used to, by default, discredit the contributions to the debate by sr.wiki authors...If there should be an intervention, then also for sr.wiki as well, or don't intervene in either project = leave hr.wiki alone etc. — goes the argument.

For once and for all i want to make this point and put this argument to the dustbin: the main difference is that the nationalist NPOV content on sr.wiki is a product of a lack of serious editing/individuals who want to take that NPOV article and edit it with serious references, while on hr.wiki a big chunk of the nationalist NPOV content is the product of admin abuse/people getting blocked for trying to edit those articles.

Most of the NPOV articles on sr.wiki are 7—10 years old (most of that kind of content is not being tolerated in recent years, since the community got bigger and the review process more vetting. Most of that kind of edits now days get reverted instantly). They haven't had serious edits for years, and all of them got that NPOV sticker on. Just to be clear for the reader. In comparison, the current policy on hr.wiki is a whole different ball game. No stickers, admin abuse/blocking and deliberate privileging of marginal/right-wing/discredited sources.

Having said all that, in conclusion, the analogy doesn't hold water. There is very much need for this RfC. --Ivan VA (talk) 18:06, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

If it were interpreted in that way(hr.wiki-sr.wiki) then we must also change the leadership of Bosnian, Albanian, Montenegrian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Russian, Ukrainian, Georgian, Greek, Turkish, Armenian etc wiki. Let's change the leadership of all wikipedia in the world that would be most fair. Mikola22 (talk) 18:28, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

No it doesn't. It's all about SYSTEMATIC admin abuse. --Ivan VA (talk) 18:32, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

Everything you're saying here is just an attempt to muddy the waters and derail the discussion. Like some other participants, you are probably aware that you stand very little chance of actually refuting anything, so you'd rather talk about something else. That, however, won't help. GregorB (talk) 18:43, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

I started with an example that all see which wikipedia is correct, if no one wants to answer hr.wiki is correct. Therefore I present concrete evidence. Mikola22 (talk) 19:55, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

A few days ago was the 20th. Death anniversary of the first Croatian President Dr. Franjo Tuđman. The ideological heirs of those who sentenced him to 2 years in prison for "nationalism" today attack us for the same reasons. Index.hr (or better Index.yu) is not a trustworty source as a yellow press with tendentious, sensationalistic content, let alone for politically relevant topics. The contents are often characterised by unprofessional behaviour and gross disregard for journalistic etiquette. --Mateo K 01 (talk) 22:14, 15 December 2019 (UTC)

If Index.hr is correct about CW, then it doesn't matter whether it is trustworthy or not, and, if it's not correct, then its trustworthiness also doesn't matter. Therefore, your remark is irrelevant, except perhaps in one aspect: you say Index.hr is not trustworthy, rather than not correct - sure you know why. Also, none of the evidence presented here has anything to do with Index.hr, so doubly irrelevant, I'd say. GregorB (talk) 01:24, 16 December 2019 (UTC)

@Mateo - Index.hr is the most popular Croatian portal, which doesn't make it authoritative, but the article quotes Zagreb University history professor, Hrvoje Klasic, who strongly criticizes CW, and who is a much more reliable source then the convicted fraudsters and Holocaust-deniers quoted on CW, with CW Admins further claiming these fraudulent sources are the only ones with "the truth". Other mainstream Croatian media, like Jutarnji list (one of 2 largest-circulation dailies), have published multiple articles heavily critical of extreme bias on CW, including an article by a Wikipedian who described the extensive abuse on CW, and how many have editors have left CW as a result. Again, Jutarnji list is a much more reliable source, with journalistic standards, unlike the 2 websites (Kamenjar and Braniteljski portal) cited here by Kubura as "authorities", both of which engage in Holocaust-denial, and celebrate as "heroes" convicted Croatian war criminals Thhhommmasss (talk) 02:02, 16 December 2019 (UTC)

The CW "Rule Book"

Thank you, Kubura, for enlightening us above that Encyclopedia Britannica is also part of the whole Serbo-Croatist, Neoyugoslavist, anti-Croat conspiracy thing. Since I’m having trouble keeping track of all this, I thought I’d summarize, what given CW practice and what you’ve said here, you obviously think are the CW rules, so everyone knows, and won't get into trouble, in case they’ve been inspired to edit CW:

1. “Unreliable Sources” per CW Admins, the citing of which will likely result in rants, name-calling, mass-reverts, threats of blocks, and actual blocks (as happened to me):

• Encyclopedia Britannica
• Enwiki ("I would only advise you not to follow the lead of English Wikipedia. They do not work in a quality manner, they often cite sources who are compromised, writing unnaturally about Croats" - Kubura)
• The United States Holocaust Museum (“not immune to fraud” - Kubura)
• German generals extensively cited by western Historians as being very knowledgeable and unbiased (“unreliable” and “anti-Croat”, per Kubura, thus instantly reverted on CW, and editor blocked)
• Western historians who define the Ustashe as both genocidal and fascist
• Numerous Croatian historians who define the Ustashe as both genocidal and fascist
• Austrian EU parliamentarians who dared describe Bleiburg commemorations as a fascist gathering
• The official Croatian Jasenovac Memorial, which despite your claims that the Croatian language only uses the term Concentration Camp for Nazi camps, insists on calling Jasenovac a Concentration Camp, not a "Collection Camp" as on CW
• The entire .hr domain which also disagrees with your claims of Croatian language usage and instead calls Jasenovac a Concentration Camp 80% of the time
• The Croatian Language Portal which further disagrees with your notion of language usages (must be part of the Serbo-Croatist conspiracy as well)
• Harvard and numerous other Slavic departments around the world which offer BCS or Serbo-Croatian as a language
• 50 respected linguists from Croatia and around the world who signed the Declaration for the Common Language, plus of course all Croat writers and others who dared sign the same declarations, and against which you've repeatedly railed here
• The Croatian Supreme Court, whose brief description of the crimes committed by the convicted war criminal, Mirko Norac, was instantly reverted by Speedy Gonzales, since obviously no mention can be made of any specifics of these horrible crimes
• Etc, etc, etc

2. On the other hand we have “Reliable Sources”, per CW Admins, since they repeatedly cite these and insist only they have “the truth”

• Convicted fraudsters, like Roman Leljak (the lead “authority” on Jasenovac victim numbers)
• Holocaust-deniers like Leljak and Vukic, who deny 98% of Jasenovac Holocaust victims, as per the “unreliable” US Holocaust Museum
• Holocaust-deniers and celebrators of convicted Croatian war criminals, like the right-wing tabloid Kamenjar, which you cited above
• Croatian right-wing veterans’ organizations, who are obviously the only “true authorities” as to whether Jasenovac was a concentration camp or a “work camp” (which of course means that right-wing Serb veterans organizations should be the ultimate arbiters as to whether Srebrenica was genocide or not, and also the ultimate arbiters of Serb crimes in Croatia, if any)
• The Croatian Foreign Ministry which per you should be the only authority when other countries dare criticize Croatia (same as obviously the Serbian Foreign Ministry should be the only authority when others dare criticize Serbia)
• Assorted other Croatian right-wingers you cited, who engage in Holocaust-denial, while ranting about invented “language genocides” (i.e. the same “language genocide” committed daily by linguists who dare say Spaniards, Mexicans, Colombians and Argentinians all speak Spanish, even though the local variants of Spanish differ much more than Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian variants)
• Etc, etc, etc.

3. More Rules. Yet merely avoiding above “Unreliable Sources”, while sticking to the “Reliable Sources”, will not keep you out of trouble, since there are yet more CW “Rules”, e.g.:

• “Members of undesirable groups rule”. Clearly from what's been said here all these are unwelcome on CW (you don’t even know what some of these terms mean? Don’t’ worry, if the CW Admins disagree with you, they will instantly tell you which undesirable group you precisely belong to):
  • People from Serbia
  • "Serbo-Croatists"
  • "Neoyugoslavists"
  • "Anti-Croats"
  • Etc, etc, etc
• “Forbidden dates to criticize CW Admins rule”. Both here and on CW the Admins repeatedly mentioned holidays and anniversaries, before, during and after which people can’t criticize CW, since that is a compounding violation for blocks. I suggest to help everyone, that the CW Admins put together a calendar of all Holidays, anniversaries and other observations, before, during and after which it is forbidden to criticize CW Admins, since obviously daring to criticize a CW Admin is the same as insulting the entire Croatian nation
• “Don’t ask for proof rule”. As people have experienced here, asking CW Admins for proof of their claims is a big no-no, resulting in responses that they owe no proofs, or merely ignoring people’s statements to provide proof, threatening to sue people, etc. I experienced that on CW too, when asking Mateo to provide proof for his unsubstantiated, totally false claims, I was told by the Admins that asking Mateo for proof is an “attack” on Mateo for which I received threats of a block and a yellow card
• "Deny, attack, name-call and play everyone for a fool rule”. When confronted with accusations of wrongdoing, just simply deny you did anything wrong, and instead respond with name-calling (“Serbo-Croatists”, “Serb agent”), change the subject to unrelated attacks (e.g. unprompted, extended rants against German and Austrian criticism of Croatian extreme right-wingers, again betraying your POV-agenda). Simultaneously, you play everyone for a fool, by for example claiming you did not block people for participating in this RfC or posting links to Signpost article, when clearly you did Thhhommmasss (talk) 20:22, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

Additional proposal

Since, as already pointed out earlier:

• departure of dissenting administrators in recent years has contributed to the deterioration of the state of CW, and
• the role of administrators is vitally important in addressing the current issues

...I'd like to propose:

• 13) All former admins who either lost their adminship due to inactivity or voluntarily stepped down can regain adminship by contacting a bureaucrat.

I feel this is a more positive version of #3 ("Dismiss all local admins"). In particular, participants who supported #3 might consider supporting #13 either as an alternative to #3, or as an additional measure.

A more detailed ArbCom proposal

While, in my opinion, the actual details of the original proposal #5 ("Set up a local ArbCom consisting of experienced Croatian or similar language-speaking editors from other wikis, to be appointed by the global community at Meta-Wiki.") are less important, since they could be discussed later, this has perhaps made the idea and its execution rather unclear to some participants. Therefore, here are some additional details.

CW ArbCom members will be chosen by (any combination of):

• WMF staff
• Stewards
• Experienced Wikipedia editors (Croatian or similar language-speaking editors from other wikis)

ArbCom member candidates should have a history of adhering to WP:NPOV and, if possible, admin experience or experience in editing major Wikipedias (en, de, fr...).

ArbCom members:

• ...work like regular admins
• ...oversee the work of local admins and resolve conflicts that can't be solved by other admins or community discussion
• ...are allowed to block or (ask bureaucrat to) de-sysop an admin if they break 5 pillars
• ...have the final word in all future RFAs and RFDAs, taking into account will of the community and arguments given in discussion

Because of previous cases of off-wiki harrassment of ArbCom members, starting from 2009, if an ArbCom member already has a Wikipedia account and feels that his identity might be easily revealed (for example due to info on his user page or his previous edits), he/she will be allowed to open a new account (e.g. "Croatian Wikipedia ArbCom member #1") just for ArbCom activity on Croatian Wikipedia.

Note that general support for proposal #5 (setting up a local Arbcom) does not necessarily imply support for any of the implementation details above.

The way forward

Whatever measures may be chosen, they should result in:

• Removal of unencyclopedic, poorly sourced and unsourced biased content
• Unblocking of wrongly blocked users (on their request or on request of other editors)
• Removal of patroller and autopatrolled rights from editors with a history of blatantly POV or unencyclopedic editing
• Ending the practice of using blocks and page locks under various pretenses, aimed at preventing the editors from fixing POV and unencyclopedic content
• A higher degree of inclusivity towards editors who are trying to improve the encyclopedia in good faith
• Open and public discussion about the issues, the RfC and its consequences

As already noted, the role of administrators is vital, and they are expected to actively work towards Wikipedia values as described by WP:PILLARS.

The progress - or lack thereof - along these lines should be assessed within 3 to 6 months and, if necessary, discussed further in a separate Meta RfC. Absence of significant progress will entail additional, more comprehensive actions. GregorB (talk) 00:55, 16 December 2019 (UTC)

Close Request

Could we find a couple of stewards willing to look at a close for this? I imagine it will take a while, since there's a bunch of suggestions mixed in with the formal proposals, and a number of non policy supported votes (mostly, but not entirely, on one side) Nosebagbear (talk) 16:30, 12 December 2019 (UTC)

It's not going to be the easiest RfC to close, and I would appreciate help from the stewards willing to do it. May I, however, ask for two to three more weeks before closure? I'm about to add a couple of additional proposals (by Sunday, hopefully) and I'd like to see the feedback, plus I'd say there is no hurry. GregorB (talk) 20:00, 12 December 2019 (UTC)

What sort of additional proposals? I worry that any more proposals will get diminishing returns and be further confusing and distract from any potential positive outcome. --Rschen7754 02:03, 13 December 2019 (UTC)

Rschen7754, I think we don't have consensus on the part of current proposal where we should remove all admins. Personally, I think it's bad idea, since even some of current admins voted to de-sysop the trio in 2014. Removing *all* admins in current situation, without defined ArbCom, will mean helping the far-right admins to get rid of last few admins that don't follow their agenda. You will create hazy situation where only the older crocodiles in the pond will know how to swim and it will not be the change for the better. I hope GregorB will address that issue. Let's see what he has to say. --Hrwikiuser (talk) 10:45, 13 December 2019 (UTC)

Comment There is no need to hurry. There are enough suggestions and proposals as well. The decision must not be one-sided, but rational and reasonable, neither far-right nor far-left. Stewards surely do know what to do and, unlike some one-sided users, they think about consequences. --Silverije (talk) 00:29, 14 December 2019 (UTC)