FACE-OFF: Gerard vs AC, with a Godwin thrown in for flavor Options

[Kelly Martin]

What is amusing is the quasi legal tosh they resort to, and the attempts to be mega sleuths. It all reminds me of school in the late 1960s where they ran a prefects court. Kids would be dragged off to their common room once a week and reported for being out-of-bound, or overhead swearing, or smoking, or just generally being a cheeky bastard. They had a prosecutor, defence, and judge (head prefect), and a book of rules on procedure. Totally surreal, and hysterically funny.

Well, of course. A big part of the appeal of the ArbCom is that you get to play at being a judge. For at least some of the Arbs, that's the main reason they do it. Children always like to play at doing grown-up things, and this is no exception.

[thekohser]

I find it amusing that the lead counsel for the Wikimedia Foundation was so worked up over me personally, that he felt moved to mention me multiple times as a far more distasteful option than this guy.

I wonder how Mike's doing on the job hunt?

[lilburne]

What is amusing is the quasi legal tosh they resort to, and the attempts to be mega sleuths. It all reminds me of school in the late 1960s where they ran a prefects court. Kids would be dragged off to their common room once a week and reported for being out-of-bound, or overhead swearing, or smoking, or just generally being a cheeky bastard. They had a prosecutor, defence, and judge (head prefect), and a book of rules on procedure. Totally surreal, and hysterically funny.

Well, of course. A big part of the appeal of the ArbCom is that you get to play at being a judge. For at least some of the Arbs, that's the main reason they do it. Children always like to play at doing grown-up things, and this is no exception.

I left that school part way through a term (family moving from London to the West Midlands), on the last day we made a load of flour and water bombs kicked open the common room door plastered them with the mixture and then legged it. Mates came around that evening to tell me that those play-actors came out of the common room looking like they were wearing powdered wigs.

[Jack Merridew]

It doesn't matter who he is, or what's in the posts.
It's crap--an intentional attempt to distract people.

If these were real dumps, there would absolutely be more damaging items
than any I've seen so far. He's being "selective". Meaning we are being bullshitted.

Bugger off. I don't see you making any requests for whatever damaging shite you've been wanting.

There may be more, even lots more, but I'm seeing stuff that's fur-sur accurate. Over in the threads about me, too. Thanks for those. user:il Fugitivo -- it's a Tennessee Williams reference...

[Kelly Martin]

- Several of the arbs, Risker especially, did a good job calling out Mike Godwin on the crap he was trying to sell ArbCom
- The WMF staff don't appear to understand that they should be a little more careful about when they step into the en.WP ArbCom's business. The decision to do so on behalf of David Gerard, of all reasons, I think may haunt them in the future.

That's entirely the wrong takeaway. The real issue is that Mike caught them being phenomenally stupid in a manner that could easily have gotten the lot of them sued. They didn't like that because it interfered with their imaginary prerogative to be utter dicks, and took exception to Mike "interfering". Of course, Mike's real reason for this was to protect Jimmy's ass, since his role as "ArbCom GodKing" makes him liable for the ArbCom's actions (he supervises them, thus if they screw up it's legally his fault). Gerard was fairly unlikely to sue, of course, but someone else might not be so kind. Godwin's advice was sound, even if his motivations were suspect. Risker is just an idiot; you'd think someone in risk management would know better.

Of course, I'd prefer that more ArbCommies take your take on it; it would be in my interest for them to learn nothing, or even better learn the wrong thing, from that episode, so that they will eventually repeat the error with someone who is far more litigious than Gerard. Then we can see the ArbCom (and Jimmy, as their supervisor) sued, jointly and severally, for defamation. I would imagine that this would put quite the crimp on Jimmy's ability to recruit further jackasses for his Council of High Dickery.

[Milton Roe]

--
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The sender has not been given the recipient's email address, or any information about his/her e-mail account; and the recipient has no obligation to reply to this e-mail or take any other action that might disclose his/her identity. For further information on privacy, security, and replying, as well as abuse and removal from emailing, see <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Email>.

A request for MalleusOfSomeThought: could you do something about the line-wrap failures when you post a list-dump? Most of them are due to Coren's footer, which has no hard carriage returns. Just run it through your wordprocessor so that hard <CR>s are put in. Otherwise it goes to the max of the BBS line length, which is pretty long, and that sets the right margin for the entire rest of the thread, which makes reading it painful.

[Piperdown]

Would it be appropriate for me to claim that "Gary Weiss is currently
editing Wikipedia (and I ran the checkusers proving it)"?? Consider that,
unlike with Mr. Landeryou, we do know this on the basis of reliable if
illegally-obtained information that Gary Weiss is actually editing
Wikipedia.? Would that justify me publicly singling him out?

I think not.? We have actually discussed the matter, and that seemed to be
the consensus.

Suppose I go even farther and call Gary Weiss a waste of skin??

Go all the way, Wikidickensian! Pretty sure wordbomb did it "legally". And Gary did have a lot of excess skin that time he showed up on NYC public access cable. Funny, he was still in denial last time the Cade Metzes of the 2.0 world were asking him about his mastery of WP.

Also wondering if Utah has forgiven Gerard yet.

[Cla68]

- Several of the arbs, Risker especially, did a good job calling out Mike Godwin on the crap he was trying to sell ArbCom
- The WMF staff don't appear to understand that they should be a little more careful about when they step into the en.WP ArbCom's business. The decision to do so on behalf of David Gerard, of all reasons, I think may haunt them in the future.

That's entirely the wrong takeaway. The real issue is that Mike caught them being phenomenally stupid in a manner that could easily have gotten the lot of them sued. They didn't like that because it interfered with their imaginary prerogative to be utter dicks, and took exception to Mike "interfering". Of course, Mike's real reason for this was to protect Jimmy's ass, since his role as "ArbCom GodKing" makes him liable for the ArbCom's actions (he supervises them, thus if they screw up it's legally his fault). Gerard was fairly unlikely to sue, of course, but someone else might not be so kind. Godwin's advice was sound, even if his motivations were suspect. Risker is just an idiot; you'd think someone in risk management would know better.

Of course, I'd prefer that more ArbCommies take your take on it; it would be in my interest for them to learn nothing, or even better learn the wrong thing, from that episode, so that they will eventually repeat the error with someone who is far more litigious than Gerard. Then we can see the ArbCom (and Jimmy, as their supervisor) sued, jointly and severally, for defamation. I would imagine that this would put quite the crimp on Jimmy's ability to recruit further jackasses for his Council of High Dickery.

I guess my assessment of that was kind of confused. What I primarily meant was ArbCom members calling out Godwin for trying to put pressure on them as the WMF general counsel while feigning not to be acting in that capacity. I agree with you that the ArbCom made a mistake in the way they handled it publicly. I think someone with professional management experience would have told them not to publicly give their reasons why they were removing the admin privileges form Gerard, just announce they were removing them.

[Kelly Martin]

I guess my assessment of that was kind of confused. What I primarily meant was ArbCom members calling out Godwin for trying to put pressure on them as the WMF general counsel while feigning not to be acting in that capacity. I agree with you that the ArbCom made a mistake in the way they handled it publicly. I think someone with professional management experience would have told them not to publicly give their reasons why they were removing the admin privileges form Gerard, just announce they were removing them.

Well, yes. That twofacedness of Godwin's (a habit he shares with Jimbo, and many many others in the Wikisphere) is fairly stupid; the only reason he shouldn't have been held quite so much to task for it is that most of them do the exact same thing (which he snarkily noted later on).

The thing that really gets me about that episode is that Ira, as I understand it, is not merely a lawyer but also a parliamentarian. I don't know if he tries but fails, has given up trying, or just doesn't care, but there's no way he can claim that he didn't know that the committee's practices are legally stupid, or that they put not only his peers but also himself at risk. Perhaps he's just willfully blind. Common enough problem with cult victims.

[pietkuip]

Godwin's behaviour surprised me. He was acting as if he was Gerard's lawyer. Removing someone's check-user access should not be a big deal. It just shows how insanely important such badges are for the inner circle.

[Guido den Broeder]

Bonus points if you spotted Carcharoth jumping ship when he saw it sinking

That is what he usually does. With the stick still in his hand that he could have used to push the ship away from the cliff, but didn't

[spp]

So, Mike believed there was supposed to be due process...

[trenton]

So, Mike believed there was supposed to be due process...

only for his buddies...

[Kelly Martin]

So, Mike believed there was supposed to be due process...

No, Mike used "due process" as an excuse to justify beating up on the ArbCom for mistreating his friend. Like everyone in Wikipedia, for Mike rules (including ethics) are just weapons to use against your opponent of the day. If you break a rule, it's for a good cause. If someone else breaks a rule, they're evil and must be stopped. Of course, this sort of thinking is not limited to Wikipedia, but Wikipedia glorifies it instead of recognizing it as hypocritical and problematic.