QUOTE(Guido den Broeder @ Sun 9th May 2010, 8:03am)
Blocked again, now for a week, and the vandalizing user threatening me with an indef block.
Still nobody else around.
Also note that Mr. Abigor
personally removed Ottava's request to desysop him on Commons.
Brilliant. But, at Commons, I don't have the contribution history to be anything other than an outsider. Or I'd dive in and point that out. I can act on meta, I have some history there, and it's meta, after all, where activity on "lower level" wikis is quite relevant. I'm waiting, both for reasons of lack of time, personally, and to let the smoke clear.
Guido, if you had not attempted to push your point, you'd be in a better situation. By edit warring on your talk page on meta, to remove the block notice, you set yourself up to look senselessly contentious. If you hadn't done that, the issue would be much clearer.
You must understand the politics of the wikis. People will look at a conflict between two editors and more or less wish for a "pox on both your houses." They won't get involved. But if they see an admin, for example, clearly abusing an editor who doesn't "fight back" except to calmly address the situation, they are far more likely to intervene themselves, or, later, to !vote in a discussion, in some sensible manner.
There is an effect I've seen for well over twenty years, on-line, with flame wars. It would happen that editor A abused editor B, grossly. Editor B complains loudly that he was abused. Other editors would jump in, taking sides, based on prior affiliation. Very few would look back at the history, and if someone did, pointing out how A had actually abused B, even giving evidence, this new writer would readily be identified as a partisan of B. It's how people tend to look at disputes. You could say they are lazy, but, in fact, people only have so much time.
So to address abuse is tricky. One of the best approaches is to give the abuser plenty of rope, let him or her build up the evidence. True abusers will take this freedom as a sign that the community approves what they are doing, and their behavior will often become even more abusive. And *then*, it can be confronted, and the house of cards they have built collapses on them.
In the meantime, privately console the abused person. Let them know that you see what happened, that it was wrong, but that it will take time to address it. Offer to help that person in whatever they were trying to do that was legitimate. I find they generally appreciate it. Indeed, Ottava, if you are reading this, do you remember?
On meta, Guido, you very correctly stood up for apparent consensus at the Speaker page. But that consensus is weak, distributed, many people aren't watching. To maintain that kind of consensus takes patience, and you were too quick to assert your position and to insist upon it. Being right is truly irritating to some. Abigor was out of line, for sure, but to do something about it, you'd need support. By being so assertive without that support, you exposed yourself as someone not patient enough to seek true consensus, or that's how it would look at first.
The wikis have not been set up to allow rapid and efficient dispute resolution, especially when an administrator becomes abusive. In the absence of that, to work for overall neutrality and fairness takes great patience. Probably too much patience, lots of people who are, indeed, fair-minded, are simply bailing, a long-term loss.