Yes - as I feel it is my role to be an advocate for someone who is on probation, in my opinion is trying to make some good faith edits in compliance with his probation (note on his Talk page my discussion with him) and is simply being endlessly reverted by two people who appear to disagree with his views. If a person who is on ArbCom probation does the right thing (again, IMO) and is not supported for doing the right thing, then there is absolutely no incentive for that person to cooperate or continue editing the encyclopedia - and the point of ArbCom probation, if I do not miss my guess, is to correct someone who has made mistakes but could otherwise be a valuable editor. -Travis FCYTravis @ en.wikipedia On Nov 14, 2005, at 12:06 PM, Fred Bauder wrote:

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Travis Mason-Bushman wrote: You know, this only works in the probationed editor actually wants to cooperate and improve. Many of them don't. When a person messes up the first time, we try to explain to them what they did wrong so they can behave better in the future. If that doesn't work, we try again. And again. Eventually, it goes up to RFAr. To my mind, most people who made it all the way to RFAr and got a decision against them (a months-long, difficult and painful process) already had more than enough opportunities to reform. If being on probation still isn't enough, and they continue the bad behavior, they shouldn't be met with even more patience and understanding. I am happy that Wikipedia is so open, but I think this would be going too far. Probation, then, serves as a blanket license to treat transgressions more harshly because of past history. It doesn't mean that the probationed editor is being granted a mentor to "teach" them the ways of the Wiki. It means "shape up or ship out" -- and as ugly as it is, there are some people who have to be dealt with this way, or we will never get anything done. Ryan

It may be useful in future if arbitration committee makes use of those involved on the newly formed mentorship group and nominates those who perform well as informal mentors along the lines in the Cool Cat mentorship, which effectively amounts to a controlled probation. In the Cool Cat case, disruptive editing by Cool Cat on articles related to Turkey and Kurds (for instance, persistent pushing of a point of view) may be dealt with by blocking. He has three mentors who can ban him from editing any article if necessary, but they also act as a court of appeal against blocks, with the power to alter or clear a block made by other administrators. In my opinion as a mentor the effects have been helpful, enabling this editor to perform useful work for Wikipedia while checking potential problems--some of them unforeseen at the time the mentorship was set up--as soon as they arise.