And now we have an RFC, and what's more, an ArbCom case Options

[HRIP7]

It seems the committee have decided to introduce a special evidence length restriction for the Cirt case.

I've just been advised that my evidence is too long, at "894 words and 26 diffs". The bot notification links to the arbitration guide, which states that evidence should be "kept under 1000 words and 100 diffs, although some flexibility is tolerated".

To be fair, I see they've used the 500-word limit in a number of recent cases.

[Herschelkrustofsky]

Do people on Wikipedia just have their heads up their arses at all times or what?

The Arbs have demonstrated a propensity for deeper and grander head-thrusting than the average Wikipediot. By setting this case up as a Cirt-vs.-Jayen "conduct" case, they are implicitly exonerating Cirt for his persistent violations of core policies such as BLP, which is the only topic worth discussing.

[Jagärdu]

On July 5th Chris asks ResidentAnthropologist to remove him from the Arb request list (which RA did).

Please take my name off your list of "involved parties". I'm not a party to any of your disputes involving cults, Larouche, transcendental meditation or anything else. Commenting on the evidence presented in the RfC/U does not make me a party to your own disputes - I don't think it's fair or reasonable to rope everyone who participated in the RfC into an arbitration case that I want no part of. Prioryman (talk) 09:13, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

What a slimey arseface. He shows up to protect an old POV pushing friend by well poisoning his RfC and then he manages to get removed from the Arbitration Request because of all people he is "not a party to any of your disputes involving cults ..." Do people on Wikipedia just have their heads up their arses at all times or what?

Here are the emails related to this. What's suprising is that Rlevse appears to be the only arb outraged by the inconsistent and unfair treatment afforded ChrisO and how insulting this is to the WP community, who, at least in my case, expect the standards to sometime, someday be applied consistently to every editor. The mush-mouthing around about it by some of the arbitrators is embarrassing to read.

I don't see any attempt by the arbitrators in any of the emails to set a baseline standard so that newbie and vested contributors might be treated equally and consistently. All I see is a chaotic group of email acquaintances making decisions off the cuff on every single issue brought before them. There's no attempt at organizing, standardizing, or structuring their deliberative communication and decision-making. What a mess. Good grief, Jimbo, no wonder the administration of your website is such a debacle.

The climate connection is actually really intriguing as it suggests an answer to something that really puzzled me when I started reading the RfC. The participation of most of the pro-Cirt people involved can be explained fairly easily (supporters/friends of Cirt, people on his side of the Santorum issue, inclusionists who support his content creation etc.) But I couldn't for the life of me understand why people like William Connolley and Stephan Schulz were taking part in the discussion and why their participation was mostly of mudslinging, aspersion casting or well-poisoning sort. Now that we know who Prioryman is it seems more than likely that ChrisO asked for some assistance from his climate science buddies. Here's an overview, but as I am not all that caught up on the whole climate science Wikiwar perhaps I'm missing some people here.

William M. Connolley

You have gone to great lengths to prove my point - if you believed that, you wouldn't need to keep saying it. What you're actually doing is repeating an untruth in the hope that people might eventually believe it William M. Connolley (talk) 10:15, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

Stephan Schulz

Please see confirmation bias and cherry-picking. If you trawl through any large set of edits with a particular preconception, you can find "evidence" of some kind of POV pushing. It will just lack any significance. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 15:19, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

Raul654

I agree that we should not delete views/claims from an RFC, even when they are clearly fictitious. However, by the same token, I think there should be consequences for filing an RFC full of provably false statements and invalid charges, and this RFC would clearly qualify. Raul654 (talk) 13:43, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

Count Iblis

And why is WP:McCarthyism still a redlink? Count Iblis (talk) 03:04, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

Others like User:Piotrus and User:OhanaUnited might fall into this category as well if I'm not mistaken, though they did not muckrake they only voted for pro-Cirt/anti-critic statements on the main page. Is there a better explanation for the involvement of these individuals in the RfC? If you ask me ChrisO's deceptive sabotage of criticism of Cirt goes much further than his own actual, epic muckracking on the RfC talk page.

Addendum: I just noticed that at the case page Count Iblis is arguing for dropping discussion about ChrisO/Prioryman in connection with the case. I wonder why that is? Could it be because his own involvement in the RfC is a product of collusion and votestacking by Prioryman?

This post has been edited by Jagärdu: Sun 24th July 2011, 4:10pm

[Jagärdu]

The lengths that Arbcom is going to in order not to answer some of the most basic questions about Prioryman, their involvement with his return and his editing of the RFC is quite astonishing. Risker makes a strange case for Prioryman not being party to The one case I doubt anyone was suggesting he be a party to.

Prioryman did not comment at the request for arbitration in any way, so it is inappropriate to say that he participated in an Arbcom case. He participated (perhaps inappropriately) in an RFC/U, which is a dispute resolution process the Committee does not monitor and over which it has no jurisdiction. I would object to Prioryman being named a party in the Cirt/Jayen case ... Risker (talk) 22:41, 24 July 2011 (UTC)

Cool Hand Luke apparently doesn't know that Motion 1 divided the case into two separate cases - (a) and (b).

It was suggested elsewhere. What do you mean by "motion (b)" anyway? Cool Hand Luke 00:08, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

When Jayen very astutely points out that obscuring Chris' Wikipedia identity couldn't possibly help him with off-wiki harassment Roger Davies gives what appears to be a truly bizarre answer.

Don't you think it's unwise to be so emphatic about the origin or nature of threats you know nothing about? And, no, this isn't an invitation for a speculation-fest, it's a general observation Roger Davies talk 07:07, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

The only possible scenario I can think of here is that someone has threatened Chris not to participate in Wikipedia at all, either directly or that such a threat exists indirectly. If that is the case, then I feel the same way about this as I felt about what the Arbcom did for Cirt. If Chris' editing of Wikipedia, as with Cirt's, was putting him in so much danger off-wiki that the committee feels that it is appropriate to betray the trust of the community by obscuring his identity then it is surely completely irresponsible to enable Chris to continue editing Wikipedia in the first place. This is particularly the case since, as many editors including Will Beback (surprisingly) have pointed out, it is nearly impossible for editors to return in this manner and not have their former identity discovered at some point or another. If such editors are in such grave danger off-wiki this would mean the committee is allowing them to get into even greater danger by sneaking around until such time they are caught.

Of course, I highly doubt that this is what is actually going on. I do not think the danger is so grave. It is more likely that there was some minimal harassment, and they they worried that Chris would get harassed again, after his return for doing the same things he did back then. So they they tried to disconnect him from his former identity to protect him from future harassers. That scenario, becomes particularly troubling since Chris also received a get out of jail free card for his past transgressions by vanishing during an Arbitration case he was part of. In the end, whether the Arbs are conscious of this or not, they are basically protecting a user with a particular POV, from the type of anger and resentment that his style of POV pushing inevitably causes. They are also saying to the entire community that it is OK to disrupt the project and not suffer consequences if you are ChrisO or Cirt, who's POV pushing is apparently of the right kind.

I also think this situation brings up the very detrimental effects that having no humility whatsoever causes to community processes on Wikipedia. There is rarely any humility on Wikipedia when someone has been exposed for doing something wrong or stupid, and this is particularly true of people in positions of power. That fact, as opposed to calculated manipulation, probably sits at the heart of the reaction we're seeing from the Arbs. It is clear that they have done something wrong here, but they will never admit it out of a sheer lack of humility. Instead they'll wikilawyer and make nonsensical arguments to diffuse the situation. I think this feature of Wiki culture is probably also ubiquitous other internet social venues, and I think an Achilles heal to them all as well.



Moderator's note: Several off-topic posts were moved to this thread, which requires you to be a registered member before you can viciously assault yourself by reading it.

[Herschelkrustofsky]

What do you think is Cirt's basic strategy in these proceedings? Does he think he can ignore it and it will go away? Or is he confident that he enjoys high-level protection, and therefore has no need to defend himself?

[Jagärdu]

What do you think is Cirt's basic strategy in these proceedings? Does he think he can ignore it and it will go away? Or is he confident that he enjoys high-level protection, and therefore has no need to defend himself?

He will show up and do the bare minimum. He'll throw in all kinds of concessions and apologies that are meaningless to people with half a brain but that the arbs will point to as his good faith. Then they will make all of this go away for him. After reading through the ARBSCI emails Malice posted I believe this more than ever. The only current arb who even remotely questioned the kangaroo proceedings of ARBSCI appears to have been Cool Hand Luke. How many other arbs are there? How many of them share the sentiments that most of us have and think that Scientology is a parasitic enterprise that mostly harms people? Probably the lot of them, which means they'll defend the featured article writing anti-Scientology robot to the end of the world. Good luck fellas, because this one was rigged from day one.

This post has been edited by Jagärdu: Tue 2nd August 2011, 2:15am

[-DS-]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arb...t_is_desysopped

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arb...s_not_Desysoped

Blargh.

[Herschelkrustofsky]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arb...t_is_desysopped

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arb...s_not_Desysoped

Blargh.

This got the attention of Will Beback, who fears the sort of precedent that would be set:

The purported policy violations are fairly minor. Who else has been de-sysopped for regular editing that didn't involve admin tools and didn't result in a block? This seems so disproportionate as to call into question Off2riorob's judgment and perspective. Will Beback talk 02:07, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

Who indeed?

[Jagärdu]

move to its own thread

This post has been edited by Jagärdu: Tue 2nd August 2011, 3:56pm

[-DS-]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arb...t_is_desysopped

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arb...s_not_Desysoped

Blargh.

This got the attention of Will Beback, who fears the sort of precedent that would be set:

The purported policy violations are fairly minor. Who else has been de-sysopped for regular editing that didn't involve admin tools and didn't result in a block? This seems so disproportionate as to call into question Off2riorob's judgment and perspective. Will Beback talk 02:07, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

Who indeed?

Of course. God forbid that admins be desysopped for anything short of deleting the main page. How dare these trolls suggest that admins incapable of following basic policies should be desysopped? Why, these vile stalkers must be banned at once!!

[Jagärdu]

What do you think is Cirt's basic strategy in these proceedings? Does he think he can ignore it and it will go away? Or is he confident that he enjoys high-level protection, and therefore has no need to defend himself?

He will show up and do the bare minimum. He'll throw in all kinds of concessions and apologies that are meaningless to people with half a brain but that the arbs will point to as his good faith. Then they will make all of this go away for him. After reading through the ARBSCI emails Malice posted I believe this more than ever. The only current arb who even remotely questioned the kangaroo proceedings of ARBSCI appears to have been Cool Hand Luke. How many other arbs are there? How many of them share the sentiments that most of us have and think that Scientology is a parasitic enterprise that mostly harms people? Probably the lot of them, which means they'll defend the featured article writing anti-Scientology robot to the end of the world. Good luck fellas, because this one was rigged from day one.

And the guest finally shows up to the party thrown in his honor. What has he done so far? He has shown up and done the bare minimum and he's thrown in all kinds of concessions and apologies .... Now let's see if the rest of my prediction bares out. Arbs, ball is in your court.

[It's the blimp, Frank]

A voluntary topic ban -- well, that's better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. I would be surprised if Will Beback is so willing to compromise.

[-DS-]

The proposed decision is now being voted on.

There is a conspicuous lack of a "Cirt desysopped" remedy, but what I really want to talk about is this gem.

Wikipedia is a serious educational and scholarly project

[The Joy]

The proposed decision is now being voted on.

There is a conspicuous lack of a "Cirt desysopped" remedy, but what I really want to talk about is this gem.

Wikipedia is a serious educational and scholarly project

The "Manipulation of BLPs" arbcase isn't great either.

For both cases (in fact most cases), it should read:

Principles:
The Wikipedia Community (i.e. the dozen or so editors that care about the meta side of things) does not like people yelling about things and it do not care about the reasons for the yelling nor solutions for solving the problem(s).

The Arbitration Committee does not like people yelling about things and it does not care about the reasons for the yelling nor solutions for solving the problem(s).

The Arbitration Committee wishes that people would leave the Committee alone and quit coming to it whining about things because it not going to do anything about it anyway.

Finding of Facts:
People have been yelling about things for a good while which has caused many headaches and cries of "Make it stop! For the love of Jimbo, make it stop!"

The people in this case that are yelling and screaming have been around a long time and sanctioning any of them (rightly or wrongly) will make everyone angry. Those that are unpopular or becoming unpopular can, of course, be blocked or banned with no drama or fair appeal.

Remedies:
Everyone is to stop yelling and whining (even if it is understandable and rational) and mind your own damn business. Leave each other alone. Never you mind about the problem(s) that caused this whole ruckus and do not even bother asking the Committee to help you find a practical solution. The Arbitration Committee never wants to see any of you people in its presence ever again. If you come back, you will regret it and your asses will be banned. Any administrator that sees the yelling and screaming again or gets a headache from any of these troublemakers that started this case can block their asses.

[Apathetic]

Principles:
The Wikipedia Community (i.e. the dozen or so editors that care about the meta side of things) does not like people yelling about things and it do not care about the reasons for the yelling nor solutions for solving the problem(s).

The Arbitration Committee does not like people yelling about things and it does not care about the reasons for the yelling nor solutions for solving the problem(s).

The Arbitration Committee wishes that people would leave the Committee alone and quit coming to it whining about things because it not going to do anything about it anyway.

Finding of Facts:
People have been yelling about things for a good while which has caused many headaches and cries of "Make it stop! For the love of Jimbo, make it stop!"

The people in this case that are yelling and screaming have been around a long time and sanctioning any of them (rightly or wrongly) will make everyone angry. Those that are unpopular or becoming unpopular can, of course, be blocked or banned with no drama or fair appeal.

Remedies:
Everyone is to stop yelling and whining (even if it is understandable and rational) and mind your own damn business. Leave each other alone. Never you mind about the problem(s) that caused this whole ruckus and do not even bother asking the Committee to help you find a practical solution. The Arbitration Committee never wants to see any of you people in its presence ever again. If you come back, you will regret it and your asses will be banned. Any administrator that sees the yelling and screaming again or gets a headache from any of these troublemakers that started this case can block their asses.

I do say, sir, this gave me a hearty chuckle.

May I have your permission to republish it under a cc-by-sa license?

[The Joy]

Principles:
The Wikipedia Community (i.e. the dozen or so editors that care about the meta side of things) does not like people yelling about things and it do not care about the reasons for the yelling nor solutions for solving the problem(s).

The Arbitration Committee does not like people yelling about things and it does not care about the reasons for the yelling nor solutions for solving the problem(s).

The Arbitration Committee wishes that people would leave the Committee alone and quit coming to it whining about things because it not going to do anything about it anyway.

Finding of Facts:
People have been yelling about things for a good while which has caused many headaches and cries of "Make it stop! For the love of Jimbo, make it stop!"

The people in this case that are yelling and screaming have been around a long time and sanctioning any of them (rightly or wrongly) will make everyone angry. Those that are unpopular or becoming unpopular can, of course, be blocked or banned with no drama or fair appeal.

Remedies:
Everyone is to stop yelling and whining (even if it is understandable and rational) and mind your own damn business. Leave each other alone. Never you mind about the problem(s) that caused this whole ruckus and do not even bother asking the Committee to help you find a practical solution. The Arbitration Committee never wants to see any of you people in its presence ever again. If you come back, you will regret it and your asses will be banned. Any administrator that sees the yelling and screaming again or gets a headache from any of these troublemakers that started this case can block their asses.

I do say, sir, this gave me a hearty chuckle.

May I have your permission to republish it under a cc-by-sa license?

You may.

[EricBarbour]

Wikipedia is a serious educational and scholarly project

Yes, and List of My Little Pony characters is now 148k bytes long.
It being one of the most hotly debated "scholarly subjects" on the project-thing.

This post has been edited by EricBarbour: Wed 31st August 2011, 8:16pm

[Zoloft]

Wikipedia is a serious educational and scholarly project

Yes, and List of My Little Pony characters is now 148k bytes long.
It being one of the most hotly debated "scholarly subjects" on the project-thing.

Bronies.

This post has been edited by Zoloft: Thu 1st September 2011, 4:41am

[Herschelkrustofsky]

The proposed decision is now being voted on.

There is a conspicuous lack of a "Cirt desysopped" remedy, but what I really want to talk about is this gem.

It looks like a "Cirt desysopped" remedy is not out of the question. In fact, although I am surprised to see myself write this, the decision looks fairly reasonable and productive as ArbCom decisions go. What do you think, Jayen (don't comment if you feel it will jinx or otherwise negatively affect the ongoing process)?

[-DS-]

It looks like a "Cirt desysopped" remedy is not out of the question.

At the moment, it's five for and five against, so it still has a fighting chance.