From
this post by One:
QUOTE
Viridae blocked a user (1) based on a joke, (2) indefinitely, (3) without question or warning, (4) without talkepage explaination, and (5) as a "tax evasion" pretext for a suspicion that was manifestly false, if the admin had ever bothered to actually check. An admonishment is well-deserved. Don't do this.
That said, I thought unblocking yourself was one of our few bright-line rules. If you were hit with a bad block (which Herostratus was), you should remove it through request like everyone else. If Herostratus is so uninformed on our current practices, desysop is prudent.
Let's take a look at this, shall we?
(1) Based on a joke made by whom? It's been firmly established that, at best, the joke wasn't fully understood to everyone. And it was the person being blocked who was making the joke (in rather poor form).
(2) Indefinitely. This is where you can be
sure there's a red herring. "Oh my God, he blocked him
indefinitely!" That shit's, like,
permanent, dude. Or something. It's not like we do in nearly every case of emergency blocking.
(3) If you believe an account is compromised (which was the suspicion here), you don't warn or question, you simply block. Still not seeing anything out of the ordinary here.
(4) Without talk page explanation. And this is where we hit another sure-fire red herring. Viridae
posted to Herostratus' talk page, informing him that Viridae had
started a thread on a noticeboard. In that noticeboard post, he explains his reasoning for the block. So much for it being unexplained.
(5) This is the only valid part of your post.
Regarding self-unblocks, no, they're not actually a bright line rule. If you'd like, I can look up every case where a user has unblocked themselves. Herostratus saw an obviously bad block and overturned it. It's the same thing that many others have done. Off the top of my head, here's
Misza13 doing it after an obviously bad block. So much for that argument as well.
Without trying to intentionally cast aspersions on your motives (though I do take note that you've
finally stopped beating your wife), it seems you have a penchant for recusing in name only. The other Arbitrators are more than capable of making any relevant arguments or responding to criticism on the
Motions page. If you choose to not involve yourself, I think there's an expectation of some level of self-restraint.
All of that said, as I noted somewhere on this site, I don't think a caution for Viridae is out-of-line, but there's no compelling case (at least in this incident) for an admonishment. Though, as you noted
here, this admonishment is largely a pretext. Same shit, different day.
Just my two cents!