QUOTE(mbz1 @ Fri 10th February 2012, 11:16am)
And now, I'd still would like to ask everybody to look at this section
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_fo...s_when_involvedand tell, what from the documented cases I got wrong. If I am proven wrong on some of them, I will fix them, and/or remove these.
I'd also like to ask you to look
http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?t...1#Zhand38_on_en here, and honestly tell me, what admin who did something like this during RFC about her misusing the tools will be allowed to keep the tools? There is much more to this story, but I will not post it here. I am posting this link only because it is on Commons anyway, and Gwen posted it there herself. Thanks.
Do you realize that "asking everybody" to look at something is often seen as abusive? That's a fact, I'm not justifying it or claiming it's right. In any case, I'll look.
The first link is a link to the RfC on meta. The basic thing you got wrong, Mila, is that you filed this on meta. That's the first thing that occurs, and it will then affect how I and others read what you've written. Basically, it's all moot process, and we don't want to waste time reading evidence filed in moot process.
The second thing is a non-neutral presentation of evidence, that is woven through the RfC, instead of making an evidence section that is rigorously neutral, and a claims section that makes claims about the significance of the evidence. You incorporate in your arguments your own assumptions, such as "Using tools when involved is unethical, and it is a violation of the policy that clearly states:
In general, editors should not act as administrators in cases in which they have been involved.....
Using tools while involved is not necessarily unethical. It might be and it might not be. Further, your quotation of policy includes a caveat: "In general...." I.e, there are exceptions. By tossing in the "unethical" right at the beginning, you telegraph your conclusions and position. Absent clear standards of ethics, and I don't think they exist on Wikipedia, you are merely making a personal attack. That doesn't mean that she didn't do unethical things, but you aren't showing up with clean hands. On Wikipedia, when you file an RfC, you must show several things, and among them is certification by another editor who, with you, affirms that efforts have been made to resolve the dispute and failed. You are, yourself, involved, Mila, and your RfC will be seen in that light. I filed an RfC on JzG, over a dispute that had developed (This was RfC/JzG 3.) This was certified by Durova, and I'd never have filed it if I hadn't been assured of this. I was warned that I'd get banned anyway, and I took the risk.
On Wikipedia, your RfC, unless you found co-certification, would be promptly deleted. Meta doesn't have that rule, but the same principles will apply. You will be seen as pursuing a vendetta, whether you are or are not.
Before you have presented any evidence, you ask, "So why Gwen Gale has been allowed to misuse the tools over, and over and over again?" You are assuming the conclusion you have made before you have established it, and using it in a loaded question. It's polemic, it's not sober presentation of evidence, it's an attack.
Even if the user has done lots of Bad Stuff.
When you get down to presenting evidence, you include lots of stuff where the administrator's action was ultimately correct, but the administrator should have recused as involved. "Should have" is your position, this has never become clear on Wikipedia, and making it clear has been resisted. I'd agree that recusal would be better, but it's also considered efficient for a somewhat-involved admin to simply act without raising a big ruckus. Rules for this have never been developed, but you are expecting the admin to follow your concepts of ethics. You are making it personal, when, in fact, the behavior you are describing is quite common. So administrators aren't going to support your position because it is not being proposed as a general problem with policy -- there is a general problem -- it is being proposed as a reason why the particular administrator should be reprimanded, or, what do you want? Desysop? Not going to happen, not from these kinds of things, unless and until recusal requirements are clear policy and they are *then* violated.
As to your second question, I looked at the diff you gave in your comment on Commons. I see no impropriety there. The IP was blocked by Courcelles, an admin, and then by JamesBWatson. Now, perhaps Gwen Gale previously blocked this user. If so, you didn't show that, it would be an essential element to even begin to establish recusal failure. However, again, in this case what Gwen Gale actually wrote is what about any administrator would write. Yes, it would be better to allow an independent unblock (assuming Gwen Gale was involved before), but that something else is better doesn't establish that an action is abusive. Bottom line, no admin, under the conditions existing there, would respond to that unblock request with an unblock.
If you want to criticize Wikipedia, you are first going to need to understand how it works, basically, what's right about it. There is lots that is wrong, abusive even, but you won't be able to tell the difference.
Does that answer your questions?
(Now, I notice that there are revision deletions on the IP talk page. The log for these has been suppressed. Many Wikipedians feared, when RevDel became available to ordinary administrators, that it would be abused. Certainly it reduces transparency. I helped to develop RevDel standards, by presenting certain administrators -- self-selected -- with the opportunity to use RevDel outside of its intended use. When they did, it then became a matter for discussion, and the outcome was an improvement. However, there is no easy way to know if RevDel is being abused, it can only be reviewed by administrators. What I'd set up was a situation where I was making sure that the edit contents were published (elsewhere), so it could be seen that RevDel was being used outside of intent, as a kind of punishment, and certainly without necessity. That's rare, that an IP sock will both self-identify, and document what resulted. Socks mostly try to escape detection, and it's assumed that a sock that self-identifies is, then, "doing it for the attention." Maybe.... maybe the motive is to improve the wiki by drawing attention to violations of consensus or policy. (These were self-reverted edits, so there was actually no need for administrative response at all; none of the edits were uncivil or disruptive in themselves, in any way, except as "block evasion.")
(A certain administrator then set up an edit filter to detect "Abd" in edits, automatically blocking them, and thus interdicting my self-identification of the edits in the edit summary. This, then, caused collateral damage, as it turns out that the string Abd is pretty common, many Muslim names contain it, but there are other examples as well. It also loaded down the server. Indeed, the collateral damage was asserted in my ban as something that I gloated over. Nope. I pointed it out and did what I could to prevent or repair damage, spending valuable IP on it. It was administrative over-reaction through the edit filter that caused the damage, and I'd never dreamed that admins would go to those lengths to attempt to stop all editing. And, of course, it was ineffective, I merely stopped self-reverting.)
(You know, I think some of these administrators really are idiots. As the IP range blocks got more extensive, I finally created a real sock. How many I created is information that I won't reveal. But only one "secret" sock came to the attention of the "authorities," because, deliberately, I hadn't taken precautions. The sock only made collaborative edits -- though most of them were ban violations. When it was detected, JzG, predictably, reverted an edit I'd made to a BLP, and an administrator with whom I'd had prior conflict reverted my edit back in as proper. Now, if I want to edit, does anyone seriously think that Wikipedia has a means to stop me? I'm not editing now because it's not worth the effort, not because it's impossible. I demonstrated, in that short period last year, how it would be possible for a banned editor to make contributions in a *non-disruptive* way, self-reverted and self-identified as being reverted "per ban," with little or no complication of enforcement, how enforcement effort aimed at stopping this wasn't preventing harm but might actually be causing it, and I'd previously seen the concept accepted by respected Wikipedians, when suggested for ScienceApologist, but the "ban is a ban" trope took over.)
Just what is Meta for, anyways?
Tarc Just what is Meta for, anyways? 
