QUOTE(Guido den Broeder @ Fri 8th July 2011, 7:08pm)
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Especially since the same courtesy is never given to users with far lesser offenses, and Abigor himself even frequently removed a blocked user's access to their own talk page.
I originally had some sympathy for Guido, because of his advocacy for Greg, but I came to see that he was someone pursuing vendettas, and he was that way with Abigor, kicking him when he was down. Sure, Abigor was getting a kind of payback, I'd seen him as an administrative bully. He'd certainly abused his tools with Guido!
However, Abigor is now caught in a Catch-22, a true Kafkaesque moment.
On the one hand, it's claimed that checkuser identification of him as a the vandal, who created an account with a highly offensive username, attacking someone considered adverse to Abigor, was definitive, unmistakable, certain, with evidence in unusual detail being asserted (and which does, if true, represent the strongest level of identification), but, on the other, when Abigor requested the IP information, he was told that privacy policy prohibited that.
Which it doesn't. Permission of the user is a condition allowing release of the information, privacy and checkuser policy is explicit on that.
When I pointed this out, it was then claimed, by Ajraddatz, who had stated that the chance of false identification was "astronomically small" -- I refrained from pointing out the weird language -- that if he wasn't the vandal, revealing the vandal's IP and username to him would be violating the privacy of the vandal.
Catch-22. The user is not allowed to see the evidence against him, because he might not be guilty.
If it weren't for the seriously weird shit coming down about Poetlister, where it's clear that Wikiversity is under attack, distracting me, I think I'd have checked myself into a hospital. This stuff drives me crazy.
Abigor is probably the vandal, but ... even if he is, that he is treated with fairness and respect by *somebody* may help him get through this. And, of course, if he was framed, as he is effectively claiming, the only one who could uncover this crime would be him, if given the evidence, then investigating. Nobody else is going to do it!
It's not likely to help him, directly, but it might help someone, someday. The next victim, perhaps. "Ah! This also happened with Abigor two years ago, after conflict with the same user!"