Herostratus LIVES!, (you won't believe this) Options

[EricBarbour]

Despite being banned from Wikipedia (and computers generally) by court order, notorious pedophilia editor Herostratus (T-C-L-K-R-D) is still able to edit WP.

How? By getting his court-appointed minder to edit for him, apparently.

Check his edit log for proof. He's doing it, even while being banned from watching TV or listening to the radio. Mentioned here.

Why is his account still active?

[MZMcBride]

From this post by One:

Viridae blocked a user (1) based on a joke, (2) indefinitely, (3) without question or warning, (4) without talkepage explaination, and (5) as a "tax evasion" pretext for a suspicion that was manifestly false, if the admin had ever bothered to actually check. An admonishment is well-deserved. Don't do this.

That said, I thought unblocking yourself was one of our few bright-line rules. If you were hit with a bad block (which Herostratus was), you should remove it through request like everyone else. If Herostratus is so uninformed on our current practices, desysop is prudent.

Let's take a look at this, shall we?

(1) Based on a joke made by whom? It's been firmly established that, at best, the joke wasn't fully understood to everyone. And it was the person being blocked who was making the joke (in rather poor form).

(2) Indefinitely. This is where you can be sure there's a red herring. "Oh my God, he blocked him indefinitely!" That shit's, like, permanent, dude. Or something. It's not like we do in nearly every case of emergency blocking.

(3) If you believe an account is compromised (which was the suspicion here), you don't warn or question, you simply block. Still not seeing anything out of the ordinary here.

(4) Without talk page explanation. And this is where we hit another sure-fire red herring. Viridae posted to Herostratus' talk page, informing him that Viridae had started a thread on a noticeboard. In that noticeboard post, he explains his reasoning for the block. So much for it being unexplained.

(5) This is the only valid part of your post.

Regarding self-unblocks, no, they're not actually a bright line rule. If you'd like, I can look up every case where a user has unblocked themselves. Herostratus saw an obviously bad block and overturned it. It's the same thing that many others have done. Off the top of my head, here's Misza13 doing it after an obviously bad block. So much for that argument as well.

Without trying to intentionally cast aspersions on your motives (though I do take note that you've finally stopped beating your wife), it seems you have a penchant for recusing in name only. The other Arbitrators are more than capable of making any relevant arguments or responding to criticism on the Motions page. If you choose to not involve yourself, I think there's an expectation of some level of self-restraint.

All of that said, as I noted somewhere on this site, I don't think a caution for Viridae is out-of-line, but there's no compelling case (at least in this incident) for an admonishment. Though, as you noted here, this admonishment is largely a pretext. Same shit, different day.

Just my two cents!

[One]

(4) Without talk page explanation. And this is where we hit another sure-fire red herring. Viridae posted to Herostratus' talk page, informing him that Viridae had started a thread on a noticeboard. In that noticeboard post, he explains his reasoning for the block. So much for it being unexplained.

Look at the times. This was just short of three hours after the block. He only made the post because Herostratus had the idiocy to unblock himself. Herostratus then asked Viridae on his talkpage for an explaination. Rather than reply with an explaination, Viridae then (only then) started the thread was to get support to have him blocked again, not to discuss and review his block, which had already been overturned.

All of that said, as I noted somewhere on this site, I don't think a caution for Viridae is out-of-line, but there's no compelling case (at least in this incident) for an admonishment. Though, as you noted here, this admonishment is largely a pretext. Same shit, different day.

Just my two cents!

Not true. Giano and others are claiming that this admonition is because the blocked user was an admin. Many of the comments make clear that this interpretation is wrong. They are concerned mostly that the block was done without independent analysis and without care.

Without trying to intentionally cast aspersions on your motives (though I do take note that you've finally stopped beating your wife), it seems you have a penchant for recusing in name only. The other Arbitrators are more than capable of making any relevant arguments or responding to criticism on the Motions page. If you choose to not involve yourself, I think there's an expectation of some level of self-restraint.

No problem. I recuse when I'm acting as an advocate. I believe that any advocacy should be on-wiki so that it can be publicly examined. Some arbitrators in the past did not think this necessary, and freely advocated from the list.

As someone in favor of transparency (for ArbCom, anyway), I hope that you can appreciate this.

This post has been edited by One:

[MZMcBride]

All of that said, as I noted somewhere on this site, I don't think a caution for Viridae is out-of-line, but there's no compelling case (at least in this incident) for an admonishment. Though, as you noted here, this admonishment is largely a pretext. Same shit, different day.

Just my two cents!

Not true. Giano and others are claiming that this admonition is because the blocked user was an admin. Many of the comments make clear that this interpretation is wrong. They are concerned mostly that the block was done without independent analysis and without care.

I'm with Risker that it doesn't make much difference at all who the blocked party is or what user rights they have. Where we diverge is why this particular bad block rises to the level of an admonishment. It was a bad block, it was overturned, and, at least from my perspective, everyone had moved on... until ArbCom came in with motions.

There's a very real risk of pissing off dedicated contributors without any benefit in cases like this.

Without trying to intentionally cast aspersions on your motives (though I do take note that you've finally stopped beating your wife), it seems you have a penchant for recusing in name only. The other Arbitrators are more than capable of making any relevant arguments or responding to criticism on the Motions page. If you choose to not involve yourself, I think there's an expectation of some level of self-restraint.

No problem. I recuse when I'm acting as an advocate. I believe that any advocacy should be on-wiki so that it can be publicly examined. Some arbitrators in the past did not think this necessary, and freely advocated from the list.

As someone in favor of transparency (for ArbCom, anyway), I hope that you can appreciate this.

I think that's very fair. I might go further to say that due to the inherent extra access by Arbitrators, no advocacy would be preferred. However, if there is going to be advocacy, on-wiki is assuredly better than off-wiki in cases like this.

[One]

I'm with Risker that it doesn't make much difference at all who the blocked party is or what user rights they have. Where we diverge is why this particular bad block rises to the level of an admonishment. It was a bad block, it was overturned, and, at least from my perspective, everyone had moved on... until ArbCom came in with motions.

There's a very real risk of pissing off dedicated contributors without any benefit in cases like this.

This is a very fair point. Such admonishments are capricious. Quite often, arbitrators don't think that a situation even deserves comment. You can see this view clearly in NYB's comments.

The problem is that ArbCom is often concerned about the appearance of cover-up. When users are demanding judgment, we are in no position to say "move along now." Maybe we should say "no action necessary" more often, but in this case it was decided they should weigh in. When they weigh in, they're committed to examining all parties involved in the exchange, and fault was found here on all parties.

I agree with you that this could have been treated as a no harm no foul kind of thing, but it was apparently thought that findings would reduce drama. If there were going to be findings, I thought these were reasonable.

[Malleus]

I agree with you that this could have been treated as a no harm no foul kind of thing, but it was apparently thought that findings would reduce drama. If there were going to be findings, I thought these were reasonable.

The findings were predictable, but what really stirred up the dust was Coren's foot-in-mouth comment about how administrators ought to be treated differently from regular editors: "blocking another administrator without full knowledge of the situation at hand, and without attempting to contact the administrator to obtain such knowledge". Sad really.

How many administrators ever fully investigate the situation before issuing a block? None? Why is it more important to investigate fully if the blockee is an administrator?

This post has been edited by Malleus: