The "Balloonman argument". This seems to be winning the day. The argument is precisely this: Fae was perfectly open in his replies to the questions asked at the RfA, he conceded that there had been a 'clean start', that there had been problems, that there would have been opposes if his identity were known etc etc. But the community took it on trust, in particular, from John Vandenberg. The RfA community utterly failed in this case by giving him a free pass, but by that token has relinquished the moral right to question the results today.
Any comments? My thoughts are
(1) Even if the system failed, does that prevent a re-run of the RfA? My example would be a doctor who obtained his qualification because a lazy examiner failed to mark his examinations or tests properly. I.e. he would have failed the exams if not for the slack marking. Would we be comfortable in his remaining qualified? Or would we have a moral right to demand a re-examination?
(2) Was Fae in fact being completely open? For example, he did not say anything about BLP problems. My examination of his edits suggest he did not actually accept the results of the RfC, and never believed he had been guilty of BLP violations (such as 'outing' members of a gay bathhouse).
This post has been edited by Peter Damian:
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