Iridescent voted off the island Options

[carbuncle]

ArbCom made this announcement a few days ago:

Iridescent
Iridescent (talk · contribs) has been a member of the Arbitration Committee since January 2011. During this time, their contributions to the Committee have been thoughtful and valued when they have been able to participate but they have had long periods of inactivity both as an arbitrator and editor because of unavoidable off-wiki commitments. They have had only minimal activity as an arbitrator since June 2011 and have not edited Wikipedia for more than one month.

The Arbitration Policy provides that the Arbitration Committee may remove one of its members who is unable to "participate conscientiously in the Committee's activities and deliberations." However, the Committee would prefer to implement this provision only as a last resort. Recent attempts have been made to contact Iridescent and inquire as to whether they expect soon to be able to return to regular participation as an arbitrator, or alternatively, if they would tender their resignation from the Committee on account of their present unavailability to serve (thereby creating a vacancy that can be filled by the community at the upcoming Arbitration Committee elections).

Having not had success in contacting Iridescent, the Arbitration Committee has resolved to remove Iridescent from the Committee pursuant to Section 1.3 of the Arbitration Policy, based solely on their apparent unavailability to serve and not for any other cause.

The Committee thanks Iridescent for their past service on the committee and their extensive contributions elsewhere on the project.

Supporting resolution: Casliber; Chase me ladies, I'm the Cavalry; Coren; David Fuchs; Elen of the Roads; Jclemens; John Vandenberg; Kirill Lokshin; Newyorkbrad; PhilKnight; Risker; Roger Davies; SirFozzie; Xeno.
Opposing resolution: Mailer diablo.
Not voting/inactive: Cool Hand Luke.

For the Arbitration Committee, –xenotalk 22:30, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Comments left on the talk page calling Iridescent both "he" and "she" make me wonder if perhaps Iridescent might be interested in this WR thread about men who pretend to be women on WP...

[powercorrupts]

"The Committee thanks Iridescent for their past service on the committee and their extensive contributions elsewhere on the project."

(IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/laugh.gif) That's one way 'round it.

[A Horse With No Name]

"The Committee thanks Iridescent for their past service on the committee and their extensive contributions elsewhere on the project."

(IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/laugh.gif) That's one way 'round it.

Did Arbcom finally uncover evidence of Iridescent's sockpuppetry? If so, "their" would be the best fit.

And, yes, Iridescent is a guy.

[powercorrupts]

"The Committee thanks Iridescent for their past service on the committee and their extensive contributions elsewhere on the project."

(IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/laugh.gif) That's one way 'round it.

Did Arbcom finally uncover evidence of Iridescent's sockpuppetry? If so, "their" would be the best fit.

And, yes, Iridescent is a guy.

I must say he always seemed female to me. Perhaps he's a homosexual gentleman, a little on the pink side. Any accounts you suspect him of having? (don't say Malleus Fatuorum).

[A Horse With No Name]

Any accounts you suspect him of having?

Well, at this point I can't see what harm is done in letting the proverbial cat out of the bag.

Back in March 2010, Iridescent and I were in a PM conversation about a sockpuppeteer who recently failed at RfA. This is a verbatim quote I received from Iri on the subject of socking:

"You really ought to come back; with the new crop there's a lot of entertainment to be had, particularly in poking Coldplay Expert. I've developed a new ritual of creating a couple of throwaway accounts each day and adding his talkpage to their watchlists; you can see him getting more and more puzzled as to why so many people are watching him."

Iri had separately bragged to me about editing via proxies, which may explain why he was never caught socking.

My challenges to Iri and Arbcom are simple:

To Iri: please identify all of your Wikipedia accounts.

To Arbcom: is it acceptable for someone who reached the arbitrator level to maintain multiple accounts on WP that serve no purpose except to harass an individual editor?

[Peter Damian]

Any accounts you suspect him of having?

Well, at this point I can't see what harm is done in letting the proverbial cat out of the bag.

Back in March 2010, Iridescent and I were in a PM conversation about a sockpuppeteer who recently failed at RfA. This is a verbatim quote I received from Iri on the subject of socking:

"You really ought to come back; with the new crop there's a lot of entertainment to be had, particularly in poking Coldplay Expert. I've developed a new ritual of creating a couple of throwaway accounts each day and adding his talkpage to their watchlists; you can see him getting more and more puzzled as to why so many people are watching him."

Iri had separately bragged to me about editing via proxies, which may explain why he was never caught socking.

My challenges to Iri and Arbcom are simple:

To Iri: please identify all of your Wikipedia accounts.

To Arbcom: is it acceptable for someone who reached the arbitrator level to maintain multiple accounts on WP that serve no purpose except to harass an individual editor?

Sort of explains why Arbcom were never sympathetic to my complaints about Arbcom socking. Did he/she tell anyone about why they stood for election in the first place. Told to me 'in the strictest confidence' but I imagine 20 other people were told as well.

[A Horse With No Name]

Sort of explains why Arbcom were never sympathetic to my complaints about Arbcom socking.

Arbcom is sympathetic to socking when their friends are the ones doing it - most notably with the Law/Undertow affair, when it was shown that at least two arbitrators were aware that a sockpuppeteer was elevated to adminship and half of Arbcom blatantly refused to answer a simple yes-or-no question regarding their awareness of the charade.

Did he/she tell anyone about why they stood for election in the first place. Told to me 'in the strictest confidence' but I imagine 20 other people were told as well.

You might as well spill the beans, Petey - I suspect it had nothing to do with the pursuit of academic excellence.

This post has been edited by A Horse With No Name:

[radek]

CODE

Arbcom is sympathetic to socking when their friends are the ones doing it - most notably with the Law/Undertow affair, when it was shown that at least two arbitrators were aware that a sockpuppeteer was elevated to adminship and half of Arbcom blatantly refused to answer a simple yes-or-no question regarding their awareness of the charad

e.



Hmm. Ok. I dunno if this is "material for the book" but as someone who was not involved in the whole thing, I do get lost sometimes in exactly what happened.

And it seems like a pretty major fuck up.

So.

Can we have a write up of the basic timeline of what exactly happened. I understand that some of the arbs knew about this, which is sort of bad. I understand that this Law guy was some kind of White Supremacist who promised not to be all-white-supremacist-in his admin actions. But honestly - and this is a bit of a recurring problem - the details of where who and when someone fucked up get lost in the big swamp of Wikipedia.

Can someone write this story up? In time for the upcoming election?

[Peter Damian]

Can someone write this story up? In time for the upcoming election?

Try here http://wikipediareview.com/Directory:The_Wikiped...int_of_View/Law

[A Horse With No Name]

Can someone write this story up? In time for the upcoming election?

Try here http://wikipediareview.com/Directory:The_Wikiped...int_of_View/Law

A couple of things were missing from that account:

1. Ironholds was the one who outed Law via an IRC chat.

2. Six weeks prior to this mess blowing up, Keegan had emailed arbitrator John Vandenberg stating that Law was a sockpuppet. JVB claimed that he didn't read the email, though almost nobody believes that statement.

3. Arbcom was specifically asked by the "community" whether they could answer a simple yes-or-no question on whether they were aware that Law was a sockpuppet. Half of Arbcom refused to answer a simple yes-or-no question and Risker even tried to censor that aspect of the discussion.

Arbcom has no problems with sockpuppets, as long as the puppeteers are friends or members of the committee.

[Peter Damian]

Try here http://wikipediareview.com/Directory:The_Wikiped...int_of_View/Law

A couple of things were missing from that account:

1. Ironholds was the one who outed Law via an IRC chat.

2. Six weeks prior to this mess blowing up, Keegan had emailed arbitrator John Vandenberg stating that Law was a sockpuppet. JVB claimed that he didn't read the email, though almost nobody believes that statement.

3. Arbcom was specifically asked by the "community" whether they could answer a simple yes-or-no question on whether they were aware that Law was a sockpuppet. Half of Arbcom refused to answer a simple yes-or-no question and Risker even tried to censor that aspect of the discussion.

Arbcom has no problems with sockpuppets, as long as the puppeteers are friends or members of the committee.

Thanks. Do you have any dates for the off-wiki bits. When was the IRC chat?

[edit] Just found this http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=317444073 09:37, 2 October 2009 John Vandenberg.

It was brought to my attention this morning, about 9 hours ago, that a functionary had privately informed me on August 21 about the connection between Law and The undertow. The email that I received, which was sent to the audit subcommittee this morning and will be send to arbcom-l shortly, did not spell out the connection explicitly, and I can't be certain that I had even read the email until this morning. The day the original email arrived was the due date for the ERA submission for which I was responsible. My apologies for adding to the recent confusion, especially to the functionary who believed that they had elevated the matter to the committee appropriately. I dropped the ball, and didn't go back to pick it up once I had more time on my hands. However I never "knew" of the connection, nor have I ever been on friendly terms with either of these accounts. My interaction is limited to actioning an unrelated oversight request from Law, and possibly communications with The undertow on IRC prior to the desysop (I don't have logs). As a result of my position in this matter being complicated by this, I will recuse from any further involvement. If this, or any other error on my part, has resulted in a loss of confidence, I will be happy to submit to a re-election. (see also my recall pledge) John Vandenberg (chat) 09:36, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

And here is the poll of Arbitrators http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...n_4_days_ago.3F

Corrrect, half of them refused to answer.

Note the comment here

The work that the Committee does in private is done so because it is not appropriate for public viewing. Simple. AGK 20:24, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...John_Vandenberg

AGK is currently a candidate for this years elections. Obviously he has been in training for this.


This post has been edited by Peter Damian:

[A Horse With No Name]

Thanks. Do you have any dates for the off-wiki bits. When was the IRC chat?

Wasn't the text of the Ironholds/Law-Undertown IRC chat reprinted on WR?

title=Wikipedia:Arbitration_Committee/Noticeboard&diff=prev&oldid=317444073]http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=317444073[/url] 09:37, 2 October 2009 John Vandenberg.

It was brought to my attention this morning, about 9 hours ago, that a functionary had privately informed me on August 21 about the connection between Law and The undertow. The email that I received, which was sent to the audit subcommittee this morning and will be send to arbcom-l shortly, did not spell out the connection explicitly, and I can't be certain that I had even read the email until this morning.

It was Keegan who contacted JVB - and I seem to remember Keegan specifically stating that the connection was explicitly spelled out. However, I don't know why Keegan only contacted JVB and not the full committee.

This post has been edited by A Horse With No Name:

[jayvdb]

Thanks. Do you have any dates for the off-wiki bits. When was the IRC chat?

Wasn't the text of the Ironholds/Law-Undertown IRC chat reprinted on WR?

title=Wikipedia:Arbitration_Committee/Noticeboard&diff=prev&oldid=317444073]http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=317444073[/url] 09:37, 2 October 2009 John Vandenberg.

It was brought to my attention this morning, about 9 hours ago, that a functionary had privately informed me on August 21 about the connection between Law and The undertow. The email that I received, which was sent to the audit subcommittee this morning and will be send to arbcom-l shortly, did not spell out the connection explicitly, and I can't be certain that I had even read the email until this morning.

It was Keegan who contacted JVB - and I seem to remember Keegan specifically stating that the connection was explicitly spelled out. However, I don't know why Keegan only contacted JVB and not the full committee.

Keegan's email was clear enough, but it did not spell it out. It contained a link to "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Undelete/User:Law" and a small amount of commentary. It didnt indicate what the problem was, but it did indicate that the unspecified problem was a significant one. Had I looked at the link, and tried to see what he was seeing, it would have been obvious what he was referring to. I didnt look at the email at the time. Keegan's email was sent to me on 21 August, which was a hard deadline imposed by the government (You can see it on page 18 of 80). We had a meltdown on the final day and the ARC granted us an extension until Monday, and our team worked most of the weekend. Fun times. I didn't go back to read this email (and thousands of other emails) after my work pressure had subsided.

Keegan explained why he emailed me at the time. Directly emailing arbs can increase efficiency, as it avoids multiple email threads about the same thing, and it ensures that at least one arbitrator feels personally responsible for actioning the email. Giano's advice is pretty good:

My advice is, if you want all the Arbs to know something send it to several of your favourites individualy, asking them each to send it to the mailing list. Don't trust emailing it the mailing list yourself, and I have reasons for saying that, trust me on that one. Human error occur, errors of judgement occur and so does downright deceit. Just cut out the middle-man and hedge your bets. Giano (talk) 21:46, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

more info in the signpost.

[Peter Damian]

Directly emailing arbs can increase efficiency

Hang on. You've just made a long post about how a direct email to an arb (yourself) got lost in your personal backlog. And then you say "Directly emailing arbs can increase efficiency". Am I missing something?

This post has been edited by Peter Damian:

[jayvdb]

Directly emailing arbs can increase efficiency

Hang on. You've just made a long post about how a direct email to an arb (yourself) got lost in your personal backlog. And then you say "Directly emailing arbs can increase efficiency". Am I missing something?

Emailing a single arbitrator and emailing arbcom-l start different processes; there are benefits and failure rates of each, and the 'best' approach will depend on the situation. IMO Keegan chose the best process for that situation, esp. as he is functionary and arbs are not likely to casually ignore or discard an email from a functionary. A personal response is usually quicker and more informative than a collective response.

Giano's advice is to email several arbs, which does help reduce the chance of the arbs neglecting to address an issue.

[Peter Damian]

IMO Keegan chose the best process for that situation, esp. as he is functionary and arbs are not likely to casually ignore or discard an email from a functionary.

Sadly, not best enough.