block review request on AN

So TP (that's a common Americanism for "toilet paper") becomes involved in a dispute with Cla68, and then blocks him. To his credit, it's only a 24 hour block, and he does ask for review. However, given that the discussion was taking place with wide attention, and that it wasn't an emergency, he'd have done far better to merely bring the matter up as a request for neutral review and action.

Too many admins simply don't get recusal policy, and one reason is that the "community" has heavily resisted clarifying it. It could be made quite clear, while still allowing emergency action in spite of a recusal obligation. I tried to establish this at Wikiversity, and it was resisted there, even though the Wikiversity environment is usually less toxic.

Recusal should be required whenever an appearance of involvement will exist for a reasonable observer, and I've claimed that a user claiming bias would be adequate, normally. Exceptions would exist and could be documented. Being involved in a content dispute is obviously involvement, though, with blocking being a means of "winning" the content dispute.

And then any admin could still act in the presence of a recusal requirement, by declaring an emergency, i.e., that harm would ensue if no action is taken. This would then require that the admin recuse from further action in the matter, establish the block reason by evidence, and turn the matter over to the administrative community. Claiming an emergency when there is no emergency, per later judgment, would be an error, and if this became common, there would be grounds for desysopping. But ordinary error, following proper procedure, wouldn't be such grounds.

Cla68 does seem to have been a tad insistent. I never resisted collapsing discussions of mine, provided that the summary was fair. I haven't looked at the situation, it does seem that Cla68 attempted to place a summary, and TP revert warred on that. It would have been far better to negotiate a fair summary. Instead TP insisted on My Way or the Highway.

Incompetent administrator. So new? Next case....