Abd, blah, blah, blan. How long before indef? A day. A year? A lifetime? Options Rating

[Abd]

Abd has abandoned his fantasy that due process might work. Too hard, too many idiots per square arbitrator.

No more explanations. Just edits, with edit summary. Ah, yes, he's blocked. So? Ah, yes, he's banned from cold fusion. So?

Respecting blocks and bans was part of due process. I tried that for two years. If there isn't any due process, there isn't any obligation. So now I'm trying something else. It's more fun, I'm sure of that already.

I know exactly what responses are likely, been there, seen that, many times, even from the administrative side. I've watched experts at work, experts like ScienceApologist and William M. Connolley, and anyone remember Fredrick day? He taught me that truly blocking and banning a knowledgeable editor was impossible. All you can do is block them, block IP, and range block, and even then, the damn edits keep coming through, unless you block huge swaths of the internet, which gets the Office irritated and makes the troll happy. Really got you there!

I worked out how to deal with this years ago, but never got to test it myself.

See User talk:Abd#Edits under ban. The first five edits there merely evade a block, plus the sixth. The sixth is the first substantial edit, fixing a broken archive, MiszaBot II failed to save discussions because of a spam blacklisting added because of the discussion, during it! Brilliant, eh? Incompetent blacklist administrator, is the real story. He knew there were usages, and there still are. But this broke the 'bot, causing four discussions to vanish. Took me a while to figure it out.

What had happened? Had someone censored it? In fact, someone did censor *part* of it! The link that was being discussed. That was a use of the blacklist for content control, on the argument of "biased web site." Which it obviously is, not RS at all, idiotic question, really. But RS is not the only legitimate usage of links. This was one. And there is an article on the web site, which is notable. So a link to the site is proper there. Etc. Can be whitelisted, sure. But the blacklisting admin perhaps expected the complaining IP editor to do the work.... Right.

The blacklist is supposed to be for *spamming.* Massive addition of links that can't be handled by ordinary editorial process, or, say, COIBot. Not content control. That's what ArbComm decided, but... who cares? If I complained about this, I'd have been whacked even without the recent block. They'd think I was pushing Islamic Extremism, a terrorist web site. Some of the people behind that site might kill me first, they *hate* Muslims who will cooperate with non-Muslims. I used to get death threats for writing about Islam.

The seventh is a ban violation, the original reason self-reversion was invented, to allow harmless fixes by banned editors. It should not complicate ban enforcement, since, being self-reverted, nobody is obligated to pay attention to it at all. But, watch. What do people think will happen?

How long will I be allowed to edit my Talk page? Any guesses? And do I care? That one I can answer.

Here are the two substantial edits: RSN and Cold fusion.

Really, Fredrick day taught me this trick: make good edits by IP, as a honey pot for your opponents, and when they revert them as block/ban violations, they look like idiots. He sucked me into reverting an apparent BLP violation. (it wasn't, but it looked like it was, porn star articles, well, they do it upside down.) Except, since I'm not actually trying to make anyone look like an idiot, I revert myself. Nobody has to do anything.

Which then discriminates between those who actually care about content from those who use bans as punishment. Hey, I think it's brilliant, but even my friends shake their heads about self-reversion.

So it's time to stop talking and act. Talk will never get this across.

What about here? Well, this is the local bar and gorilla. It's for talk, right?

The most likely response, right now, is nothing. That's Wikipedia. Nothing. But ... long term, I don't know.

Thekohser might have a word about how self-reversion worked. It staved off his admin enemies for long enough that a record of good edits was built up, and it was then possible to find a 3/4 majority for unblock. Without that, maybe. Maybe not. It's a wiki, which is Hawaiian for "unpredictable Sisyphean waste of time." Right?

This post has been edited by Abd: Sun 1st May 2011, 9:19pm

[Text]

You have been banned?

And if you weren't banned, would something change about your ability to criticize, make people angry, and disrupt things over there?

Can you make a short account about why they don't want you?

[Abd]

A more complete answer now.

You have been banned?

Indef blocked. Some whisper of "ban" arose in the RfAr/Amendment. But that was closed as moot because editor indef'd.

I'm indef'd and I'm ignoring it except as I actually experience. Like a lot of people before me, I've discovered this fact: if I reboot my modem, and don't log in, I'm perfectly able to edit. Of course, I already knew this. But I saw a 7-year-old discover this really nifty trick, he was clearly thrilled. Life is new.

Since my appeal was rejected without consideration, I've exhausted due process so I've revoked my implicit agreement to respect community process. I'm now playing Whack-a-Mole from the fun side. Because of my passive-aggressive stance of "Go ahead, try to whack the mole, you'll make yourself visible and your position clear," I can't lose.

I'm getting more good content work done this way, with my COI, banned topic, than I did when I wasn't blocked.

So far, the only block that was truly for a specific supposedly evading edit, wasn't. It was an edit by IP to my own talk page before access was cut off, acknowledged as mine. The actual block-evading edits were ignored by the admins, so far, as to blocks of IP. Yes, they blocked my account, that, of course, wasn't being used for evasion. All very predictable. But Kafka-esque, nevertheless.

This, by the way, is common: once they have decided to block an editor, they frequently do it improperly. Most of the truly competent administrators that I knew have retired, leaving behind ....

The errors they make are not my point. The point will be, in the end, that the ban and block accomplish nothing but a waste of time, compared to sensible due process. I've been blocked for "block evasion" consisting of only good edits, or edits that were completely harmless at worst. Like reverting my own comments that were considered, by the same people, as ban evasion. So, if it's ban evasion, why not allow me to revert them?

And if you weren't banned, would something change about your ability to criticize, make people angry, and disrupt things over there?

I can't imagine why a ban or not-ban would affect my ability to do a thing. What the events have demonstrated, to me, as similar events have demonstrated to many others in the past, is that Wikipedia policies and guidelines are ideals, with the reality of the community falling far, far short of realizing them, and criticism continues to be punished, with the structure institutionalizing past abuse, so that it is continued, including by those who naively imagine that they are serving consensus.

Can you make a short account about why they don't want you?

I questioned their competence, some of them, and challenged obvious abuses. I typically prevailed in those challenges, at first, until the obvious consequence followed: I was attacked, being now considered a high-value target by a certain clique, I'd seriously damaged their control of the project through prevailing at ArbComm. So they massed, and ArbComm remains really helpless in the face of that, they are ... incompetent.

The arbitrators who weren't incompetent have retired, or recused, or, at least, remain silent.

And the system selects arbitrators for devotion to the project combined with lack of offensiveness, leading to a systemic and heavy bias toward group-think. It's an error that many volunteer organizations fall into, because the end of it is continued division and weakening of the organization. True consensus process is far more effective and powerful, but it takes work, and competent facilitation, which is a skill completely missing.

That is, ArbComm's lack of ability to actually resolve disputes (it "decides" them) is a product of the election method, which is "plurality at-large," a method which, in a 2-party system, completely eliminates all representation for minority views, and when it is single-district, results in complete 1-party domination.

(Suppose there were two "parties" on Wikipedia, call them Inclusionists and Deletionists. Election of, say, ten arbitrators. Suppose that every voter may vote Yes/No on each arbitrator. For single-winner elections, that's actually an advanced method, winner would be -- this is approval voting -- the candidate with the most votes. But it's a lousy multiwinner method, because, if voters do vote according to the factional affiliation, the faction in the majority gets all of the seats. In a volunteer organization, this often means that the supporters of those not elected are discouraged and stop volunteering. Far better to use a method that results in proportional representation, and there are ways to do that without "party-list," which would be a Bad Idea on Wikipedia. There is a method called Proportional Approval Voting which could do it, Asset Voting, a tweak on Single Transferable Vote, would do it spectacularly, creating many side-benefits. And elements of this were proposed over three years ago, and the proponent promptly banned.)

Supposedly I don't understand why they topic-banned me, but I understand very well, I could write a book on it. But suppose they are right, that I don't understand. Where did any one try to explain this to me, on-wiki or off? AbrComm certainly did not, in their decisions. The fact is that at least one other who attempted to carefully explain my views and actions to them was banned first. By the same people.

Short answer: It's a long-term war.