Based on the editors involved and the subject matter, this is a re-run of one of Wikipedia's most famous scandals: the Eastern European Mailing List (EEML).[0]<p>The EEML was a group of Eastern European editors who set up a secret mailing list to coordinate their activities in their never-ending nationalist edit wars, primarily (but not only) against Russian editors.<p>Secretly coordinating over a back channel is a real no-no in Wikipedia culture, because it allows a group of editors to completely subvert the rules. For example, one of Wikipedia's bright red lines is that no editor may revert the same page more than three times in 24 hours.[1] If you have a secret mailing list with all your like-minded editors, you can always just send out a request for someone else to revert on your behalf. That's exactly what the EEML did.<p>Two things made the EEML special. First, they had an admin in their ranks (Piotrus, who is also a party to this latest Arbcom case about Polish-Jewish history), who was actively scheming with them to sideline and ban their enemies. That gave them significantly more power than a random group of editors would have had.<p>Second, their entire mailing list was published by Wikileaks. Yes, Wikileaks, not Wikipedia. The speculation is that there was a mole in the EEML, who eventually passed their correspondence to Wikileaks. You can read a sample of the messages from the EEML here: [2].<p>There was a big argument over whether Arbcom should even consider the evidence from Wikileaks, or whether that would violate the privacy of the EEML editors. But Arbcom did end up taking the emails into account, because how could it not? The emails were pretty spectacular, showing all sorts of underhanded scheming: things like, "You, you and you will push editor X's buttons, and when he responds, I'll report him for incivility."<p>The EEML editors mostly got off the hook with a slap on the wrist. You would think they would have gotten permanently banned, but somehow, they weren't. Several of them have remained extremely active in Eastern European nationalist edit wars, and are in fact now parties to this new case.<p>This latest case centers around the history of antisemitism in Poland, and particularly around the involvement of Polish collaborators in the Holocaust. One of the biggest flashpoints was an article about a supposed concentration camp for non-Jewish Poles.[3] The camp never existed. It's an urban legend, invented in order to claim that non-Jewish Poles were equal victims as Polish Jews. But there was a big fight between Polish nationalist and Israeli editors over the article. Ah, Wikipedia, what a miserable place.<p>0. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Eastern_European_mailing_list" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests...</a><p>1. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:3RR" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:3RR</a><p>2. <a href="https://wikileaks.org/wiki/Wikipediametric_mailinglist/Piotrus" rel="nofollow">https://wikileaks.org/wiki/Wikipediametric_mailinglist/Piotr...</a><p>3. <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2019-10-04/ty-article-magazine/.premium/the-fake-nazi-death-camp-wikipedias-longest-hoax-exposed/0000017f-e367-d568-ad7f-f36f77000000" rel="nofollow">https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2019-10-04/ty-article-ma...</a>