Global ban for Abd?, Gotta stop that POV-pushing Options

[Abd]

JzG at AN, the usual

Some of the usual usual, but I'd noticed before that T. Canens knew the difference between a block and a ban, and he points it out. JzG will try to get a ban declared, that's his history. Not that it matters.

JzG, however, has been the long-term POV-pusher here, that's clear. EnergyNeutral was, indeed, my sock. Demonstrating how I'd edit if not for the ban. Middle-of-the-road, actually. JzG archived and collapsed a discussion that was started by others, in which I'd merely commented, as if it were mine. EnergyNeutral was cooperating with Brian Josephson, a Nobel laureate in physics. By comparison, JzG has a friend who is a scientist. And he's 100% convinced that he's right. (I.e., that what his friend told him years ago is The Truth, which it might even have been, but you have to have some background to understand the issues.) He thinks he's talking about me.

(EnergyNeutral was created for just what I wrote on the EN user page, because of what I saw happening at EnergyCatalyzer, which is either the biggest fraud ever to hit the field of cold fusion, or it's the real thing, and .... the real experts are saying, "Damn! We can't tell, this is either a huge fraud, or Rossi Has Done It." Lying was not involved.) EN "pushed" for reporting what is in reliable sources, only, and added highly skeptical material. Brian Josephson had been active there, that's how he became involved. Off-wiki, he's known as a supporter of cold fusion research, and so have at least two other Nobel laureates in physics....

Hut 8.5 points to the Wikiversity documentation. Why, thanks, Hut! I tried to point to that on-wiki and it was Revision Deleted. Leading to some, ah, consideration of the boundaries of revision deletion.... The last edit documented there was May 13, and very little has anything to do with ban evasion, but it's all block evasion. EnergyNeutral was ban evasion, almost totally editing in cold fusion.

How was EnergyNeutral identified? Topic interest. Any new editor who isn't pseudoskeptical in the cold fusion area arouses claims of ban evasion, since the road is littered with knowledgeable banned editors. Has Wikipedia ever considered that it's banning scientists and experts? (Most experts simply stay away, to be sure.)

If Wikipedia were sane, the "ban evasion" and "block evasion" would be considered as to the effect. But WP isn't sane. The early block evasion consisted entirely of self-reverted edits, so there was no necessity for further enforcement. But we all know that they don't think that way. It was when they turned to revision deletion and larger range blocks, making it less convenient to IP sock, that I turned to socking. I wonder. With some socks, I've not been so careful, with some, I very much doubt they could find them. EnergyNeutral was very obvious as a suspect, and I didn't take any care about OS and browser details, so Coren did not have to work hard.

Rdfox 76 suggests a global ban, based on alleged "POV-pushing." That's interesting. WTF is Rdfox 76 (T-C-L-K-R-D) ? From the user page, I get the distinct feeling that this guy isn't, er, collaborative. Guns.

Not only can someone be banned on Wikipedia for coming to positive conclusions about cold fusion (which is now a substantial minority position among scientists, possibly a majority opinion among subject matter experts, like the peer reviewers in journals), but we will attempt to make sure that it isn't even studied, as at Wikiversity.

My, my. JzG edits BLP on Brian Josephson. That had been discussed on Talk, and the removal had been suggested by Stanistani, I decided that it was poorly sourced, took it out, and 2over0, normally an editor who'd as soon see me vanished, agreed and praised the removal.

From my supposed POV-pushing, I'd have wanted it mentioned that Brian Josephson is friendly with cold fusion researchers, and, of course, I know it to be a fact, because I know the field and am in close contact with the scientists, including face-to-face contact with some, and, I expect, more coming. I'm having fun, except when I get tempted to look back at Wikipedia.... Someone may notice JzG's restoration of improperly sourced BLP material....

This post has been edited by Abd:

[Abd]

AN discussion closed with community ban of Abd. No surprise here. I have no complaint about the close, as such, the closer, Courcelles, appears neutral to me, the close is correct, given the structure and normal process and core process-active community.

It's those givens, of course, that are taking Wikipedia down a rat-hole.

Detailed discussion of the close:

In balancing any discussion, the closers job is to assess consensus.

Well, that's part of the Wikipedia confusion. Courcelles is at least partially aware of the problem. Since Wikipedia allegedly does not vote, the job of a closer is to neutrally assess the arguments and decide on the weight of argument, not based on the numbers of editors arranged on sides. One might resolve this by assessing "consensus of arguments," but that is a consensus which exists in the mind of the closer. It's always been a knotty problem on occasion.

What we have here is strong support for a community ban of Abd, with opposition that varies from informative commentary, to some actual opposition to the ban, to opposition of the time this ban discussion consumed, to a desire for ArbCom to handle this user. Opposing a discussion's burden of time is not taken as opposition to the action proposed.

He's correct in that. The opposition to the discussion was a red herring, as far as making any decision is concerned. However, there is a long-term problem that Wikipedia hasn't addressed, whereas legal systems have. When a discussion is out-of-process, going ahead and deciding, based on it, rewards the initiation of out-of-process discussions. This is related to the trope that it's the encyclopedic result that matters, not the manner of getting there. The project, as long as it is a live project, depends on continual maintenance process that also governs improvement (or degradation). If that process is defective, the product will be defective. By focusing only on each individual result, process defects are allowed to grow and ultimately damage the project deeply.

We, as a community, hold the power to ban users, and I place little weight, correspondingly, in a desire to have the Arbitration Committee handle this, a course of action that will, without doubt, consume even more time of users and Arbitrators.

Only if ArbComm process is initiated. Courcelles seems to be assuming that, if not for the community ban, there would be such process. In fact, this ban has no effect either way. The impediment to ArbComm process at this point is the utter disinterest on the part of ArbComm of anything to do with Abd. Since Courcelles mentions ArbComm process as being "without doubt," he apparently is laboring under four misunderstandings:

1. That the community has any power to act at all. The appearance of community action takes place through the sum of individual editor actions. And individuals have no power to ban, some of them have the power to block, but not a user, rather, an account, IP address,or IP range. The community "power" is an illusion, an appearance, that does not become a reality merely because many believe it.

2. That some users wanted "ArbComm" to handle this. No, they wanted the community to leave it to ArbComm, should ArbComm wish to act. There were no users claiming that ArbComm should act. Why should ArbComm act when there is no action to be taken with any practical effect?

3. That ArbComm process would be avoided by a ban close. Grounds do exist for appeal to ArbComm, and what is stopping that is not this ban; rather, what's stopping that is the obvious position of ArbComm, writing an ArbComm appeal with any hope of success is a time-consuming task, and the political environment is unfavorable.

4. A closer, however, may declare a ban. This is not a ban based on "the community" which is not a coherent entity, but an interpretive fantasy. If we pick different samples from the community, presented with the same evidence, they would decide differently. Rather, the discussion represents those who show up to comment, excluding those who have been prevented from such, plus only a certain subclass of editors take any interest in AN discussions at all. AN, is, after all, a noticeboard intended to be read by administrators, so the "community" commenting on proposed decisions at AN is heavily biased toward administrators, who are not representative of the general editorial community, and my sense is that people who would better represent the full community would not generally, if they become experienced (and thus visible), be elected as administrators, since administrators themselves vote heavily in RfAs.

Procedurally, though, Courcelles is correct. The close should be based on the arguments presented, in theory, and, in practice, closes are really much more based on numbers, with possible closers who have distaste for what the numbers expressed generally abstaining, and closers who are sympathetic to the result desired by the greatest number being more likely to decide to close.

Even if I wasn't willing to partially discount some comments here, we remain with a strong consensus that Abd should be banned from the English Wikipedia indefinitely, that only becomes stronger when the strength of arguments is considered.

Now, "strength of arguments." What arguments? There are arguments, but as a number pointed out, they are evidence-free. That is, they assume that Abd is a disruptive editor, the cause of the obvious disruption and long-term upset, but they do so without any examination of the actions.

This is the fact: Abd took two administrators to ArbComm, which decided, in the end, to reprimand the first and to remove the privileges of the second. Any non-administrator who does this is not going to be popular with administrators! In the first case, ArbComm admonished Abd, but the nature of the admonishment seems to have been forgotten. He was admonished for taking so long to bring the case!

In the second case, the constellation of users and administrators that he called the "cabal" piled in (and he wouldn't have named them if not for this pile-in). This was roughly the same faction later called a "clique" by Lar, in the RfAr on climate change, and it had been predicted by William M. Connolley that Abd would end up banned. Why? Because Abd had pointed out WMC's use of tools while involved.

The administrator reprimanded in the first Abd RfAr was JzG. Who started the ban discussion? JzG. Who started the previous ban discussion that reinstated the cold fusion topic ban? JzG. And JzG has continued to act, using tools in an attempt to blacklist, and requesting bans of users, ArbComm's reprimand had no effect at all. And all of this is blatantly clear to anyone who examines the evidence. Hence the reliance of the administrative cabal on process that is evidence-free. If evidentiary process were initiated, they'd lose.

Therefore, Abd is banned from the English Wikipedia by a consensus of the editing community. Courcelles 06:32, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

Abd is banned, the account. The user is quite free. The ban was declared by Courcelles, based on a process before a subset of the community, a biased sample. That such discussions represent "consensus of the editing community," which is enormous by comparison with participation in even truly high-participation RfCs, is part of the Wikipedia myth.

The vast bulk of the community is not even aware of the ban, much less in support of it, or responsible for it.

It's possible to imagine process which would, in fact, represent that extended community, and my proposals for exactly that can be seen to underlie the long-term suspicion and rejection, it came up in the ban discussion (re delegable proxy, WP:PRX). Those proposals, if implemented, would lessen the relative power of the core administrative cabal, and, in the view of this cabal, they would damage the project, as power passes more evenly to those whom they would consider less-informed. While that is their imagination, not a reality, it's a powerful one, and this kind of imagination is what most deeply fuels what's been called, elsewhere, the "Lomax effect," the persistence of inequitable power in organizations.


This post has been edited by Abd: