Ashley Van Haeften, Commons admin? Options

[carbuncle]

I guess Ashley wants to delete the rest of his embarrassing uploads without the fuss of having to ask an admin...

I would like to put myself forward for admin tools. Over the last year I have committed to Commons projects, mostly in my role as a volunteer leading the GLAM UK programme, my work as an OTRS volunteer (for which having tools would mean a wider scope of the types of ticket I would pick up) and also my work as a trusted user (using my own scraping tool to help check and empty the Flickr backlog queue of dubious uploads every now and then). I run Faebot, though I recently paused in using my iMacro scripts as I would like to move to more standard batch upload tools for larger upload projects. In 2012 I will be part of a number of Commons projects and partnerships, including my continuing involvement in the future batch upload tool and some very high quality uploads with our UK GLAM partners; though it would always be useful to have a GLAM-knowledgeable admin available to help out, more important will be my experience of helping with all types of admin tasks on Commons to inform these projects as well as continuing the support I already give to the institutions on how to encourage Wikimedians to join in with making these projects a success, as well as promoting the use of simple policies for copyright and attribution. Fæ (talk) 18:45, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

[carbuncle]

Some material that isn't available on Fæ's talk page on WP (except to those with oversighter bits):

As I mentioned earlier I’m planning on doing a piece on Wikimedia governance and admin practices, probably using your rise to the positions of administrator on the English language Wikipedia and Board Member of Wikimedia UK as a case study. My name is Dan Murphy. Though I’m a reporter/editor at the Christian Science Monitor, I won’t be doing this story for them (for 3 reasons: I’ll be writing this from a first person perspective, something the CSM rarely does; it’s outside my remit; and some of the material I’ll need to cover will be too explicit for us).

I’ve also emailed this note to you with my personal email and phone number included. I append it here in the interest of full transparency, which I hope you’ll appreciate. Here are my questions:
1. Some of your statements on Wikimedia projects have confused me. You sometimes imply that there’s doubt that User:Teahot and User:Ash were not in fact, you. Could you address this directly? Did you or did you not control those two accounts? From my perspective and investigation it sure seems that you did.
2. The pictures of a half-naked man in bondage positions that were uploaded to commons by the User:Teahot account look a lot like you. Were you the model? If not, how did you come to own that photograph? (I suppose if you insist that you didn’t control the Ash/Teahot accounts, you wouldn’t be in a position to know).
3. Did you privately request the deletion of those pictures? If so, why? If you didn’t, what do you know about the decision to delete the images– at who’s request, and so on?
4. You’ve stated on multiple occasions that either “stalking” and/or “harassment” led to your “vanishing” (in the Wikipedia sense) as User:Ash. As someone involved in examining your editing at the RFC/U at the time you disappeared, I found this to be an implied attack on me and others and I found it offensive. In my mind, I was simply pulling on threads that indicated you had fabricated sourcing and stood in the way of article improvement. Why did you go? If you really feared for your safety (and that of your family if memory serves) why did you return under a new identity so quickly, that you then went on to publicly and clearly connect to your real name?
5. Do you think uploaders of pictures to commons should retain the right to withdraw the permissions they’ve given if they have second thoughts? This seems to have been done as a favor to you, (the bondage pictures) but commons practice (and some deletion discussions you’ve been involved in there recently) indicates this is generally frowned upon. This certainly looks like the case of a double standard, of different rules for the inner circle. Do I have this wrong? If so, can you explain how?
6. I have no particular concern or interest in your sexual habits. But examination of your editing requires that sexual content be dealt with – since that was a big portion of your work on Wikipedia as Ash and continues to be a major interest at commons as Fae. The biggest concern at the RFC/U for “Ash” was the misuse of sources, including claims they contained information they did not, in fact, contain. Do you dispute this was accurate? If not, did you disclose to Wikimedia UK your past account and the concerns of others before you were voted in?
7. I fully intend (after reviewing the old RFC/U and the links from that time) to write about the concerns about your editing then. In addition to what looked like deliberate misuse of sources, you also insisted on using industry PR (the “grabby” awards and so on) as reliable sources. The problem with those sources was not that they’re porn connected, but that they were marketing tools in which “facts” (physical measurements, personal preferences, real names, real ages etc…) are typically fabricated. Do you still think those are good sources for writing accurate and neutral encyclopedia articles about living people?
8. What was the process to become a Wikimedia UK board member? I.e. who voted, how were you nominated, stuff like that.
9. As Ash you created (and strenuously argued for the retention of an article called) “List of Gay Bathhouse Regulars.” Articles like this alarm me not just as a BLP issue (though false inclusion of a person in this article by a malicious IP was a near certainty at some point and that's alarming enough). They are at best a trivial cross categorization (the mundane example would be “People who like to go to the pub”) and at worst something that could cause real world harm and distress to someone who may have indeed frequented gay bathhouses, but would prefer some privacy in this manner (I have similar concerns about the marginal porn bios you spent so much time editing – many people who move on from porn don’t want to be remembered that way. Unless they’re folks of great fame, with extent sources to write serious biographies on, they don't need to be so immortalized). Why did you think this was an “encyclopedic” topic? Have your views changed on this? If so, how and why?
10. I’m still investigating this, but it appears that you’ve been involved in reaching out as a Wikimedia UK board member to MPs and other folks in the UK about Wikipedia’s safeguards against defamation, against inappropriate pornography (i.e. of kids), against general error. If I’m correct in this assumption, can you either explain to me what you’ve been telling them about editorial controls or direct me to presentation materials you’ve used?

Whew! That’s a lot for a start. It will probably be some weeks before I’m ready to publish anything and will certainly ping you when it’s getting close. Feel free to call or email at any time.

Regards
Dan Murphy

[SB_Johnny]

Some material that isn't available on Fæ's talk page on WP (except to those with oversighter bits):

Not oversighted, actually, but revision-deleted by AGK.