I Kevin.

I've always though that the intersection of unsourced and unwatched was worthy of summary deletion. Once MZ mentioned the infamous list and CHL suggested that it would have been good if they were deleted I couldn't resist. In that sense this thread was the catalyst.

I was surprised that others joined in, less so about being blocked. I only wish I'd been cleverer and prepared the list ahead of time and batch deleted the lot.

This inspired me to look at Kevin's talk and at the sequence. Kevin's action was rogue. The initial action was legitimate, within his rights under WP:BOLD and WP:IAR. The applicability of WP:BLP was, of course, debatable. However, when he ignored warnings and pleas to stop and continued, he was then subject to block, and when he continued after being short-blocked and then blocked for a longer time, he was, in effect, wheel-warring, failing to submit a dispute to the community.

There was no emergency that could justify this. Further, blanking the pages (and perhaps semiprotecting them, that's a further step, but it would then create more work for administrators) could have been done just as quickly with less damage. I've suggested elsewhere how this could actually improve the situation, it's a variation on WP:PWD. It would immediately address the libel and copyvio issues, while leaving text accessible in history to anyone, with any editor being able to reverse the change, creating a responsible editor and probably a watch.

In any case, the mass-deletion caused a great deal of disruption, actual disruption, requiring administrative actions to be taken. The breaching experiment only affected a list of twenty articles, easily checked and problems fixed once the list was revealed, which was certainly the plan. The provision of that limited unwatched list was something done and finished, not to be repeated, essentially moot once the list had been revealed, and the only remaining issue being whether or not this action was so egregious as to be worthy of desysopping or at least formal ArbComm reprimand. Given the crap from admins that I routinely see, even on RfAr pages, it's bizarre that MzMcBride's action is at RfAr and yet that of Rdm2376 (T-C-L-K-R-D) , which involved open defiance and continued use of tools in the presence of many objections, is not.

When I compare the two situations, I see that if either of these would justify an RfAr with questions about sysop bit, it would be the mass-deletion, because of the controversial use of tools. Whether or not Kevin was right to delete is an entirely separate issue, he was not right to continue when it was challenged and the challenge not resolved.

Actually, however, unless Kevin has done this repeatedly, neither of these belongs at RfAr, there has been completely inadequate prior examination. Prior examination through RfC prepares case evidence and vets it, making cases more thoroughly evidenced and examined, than what happens if there is no RfC. And before RfC, there must be attempts to define an ongoing, unresolved dispute, and then to resolve it. Much damage is done on Wikipedia through bypass of standard WP:DR process, and ArbComm should not tolerate it, period.

If I'm told by an admin, any admin, to stop a specific behavior, I stop first and ask questions later. That's what process requires, actually. If I'm going to go ahead and defy the warning, I notify the administrator first, and give some time for response, I don't just do it. In theory, the same would be true for a warning from any editor, but I get warnings so often from highly involved editors that I won't necessarily stop, but I'll certainly answer all formal warnings before going ahead.

However, having said all this, the mass deletion attempt, in itself, was of use, just as was the breaching experiment, and any possible sanctions should consider that, it's a mitigating factor. There is a dangerous trend toward what becomes quite equivalent to punishment, whereas policy clearly requires looking only to protection of the project, not punishment. I have never asked for a desysopping, per se, but only that ArbComm recognize abusive admin behavior and not only enjoin it, but require that the admin show reason to believe it will not recur, and, with AGF, at least the first time!, a simple statement showing that the admin understands the proscribed behavior and accepts the restriction and will not repeat it. If an admin cannot show understanding and acceptance, then the continued possession of admin rights is a hazard to the project, and those rights should be suspended pending the satisfaction of the committee that there is no more significant hazard.

Yes, yes. And if the Gestapo tells you to pick up the pace, that these cattle cars to the relocation camp cannot wait forever for your lolly-gaggin', then you'd best hustle up that gangplank, and ask questions later, when you're nice and comfy, settled in at your new home to the east.

What's that hissing sound?

Quick somebody tell the "admins" there's a gas leak!!!

It was my continuation after being blocked, and my willingness to continue after being challenged, that has forced further action on the BLP issue. No less controversial action would have sufficed, IMO.

I agree entirely. If you had stop after being challenged, then the whole matter would have died right there. It take an act of civil disobedience (if you could call it that) to get the ball moving. Wikipedia is fantastically inertial, and it takes a large force to cause any change in its direction.

But it was not the Gestapo telling Keven to stop, and it was not a gangplank that he was being told to hasten up. Civil disobedience is rarely punished on Wikipedia (and the exceptions are errors.) Civil disobedience, I'm defining as not doing what one is told to do. "Stop!" is a request -- or demand -- to stop acting, not a command to act.

Greg has a huge bias here, he believes that those unsourced BLPs should be unceremoniously deleted, and treats it as an emergency. But that's not the general community opinion, nor is it required by established BLP policy. Sure, one can argue that it should be.

Deletions cause more work to become necessary later, and, in particular, for more administrative action to be taken later. Conserving administrator time is an essential for Wikipedia.

The real point I'd make is that blanking would serve the basic purpose far better than deletion, and discussion could have, and might still, bring this out. It would remove any possible emergency from the situation (thus addressing, presumably, Greg's concerns, with these unsourced and unwatched articles effectively being treated the same as present watched articles are treated: unsourced material is deleted, regularly). It would allow deeper solutions requiring more attention to proceed at a pace that can be managed, with the work being distributed to the whole community, not merely administrators.

But, here, the point being made by me is that MzMcBride took an action that was very limited in possible damage, providing 20 names to Greg. Had he done this privately and without disclosing it, we would have never known how Greg got the names. The hoaxes could have been quietly fixed, the work of that could have been spread out a bit, and disclosure delayed until checkuser data was no longer available. However, because MzMcBride and Greg were very open about what they were doing, the attempt is being made to punish MzM, and Greg has already suffered losses from actually improving the project (the result of his edits was improvement, definitely).

On the other hand, Kevin's action, while also arguably improving the project, also crossed some fundamental lines that are essential to Wikipedia policy, that, if left unaddressed, risk far more serious damage, particularly if the actions are imitated. That's why I'm pointing out the great difference in how the two cases are being handled. And I hope that the sensible arbitrators who read WR will notice this.

They may not be able to overcome a head-in-the-sand majority, but they should at least draw the lines and argue for sustainable positions.

That's true, sometimes, but this is an argument for POINT violation. It's tricky. I'm not claiming that Kevin should have his bit yanked, but I'm quite concerned that there was active disruption aimed at forcing an immediate decision. I know full well what would happen if I did that.

Indeed, in a way, I did it. but not by taking an action that would be viewed by more than a tiny segment of the community as disruptive. WMC had banned me from cold fusion, and was claiming that he had to right to do so indefinitely, without discretionary sanctions or a community decision. In order to avoid disruption, I did not violate that ban, until, during the RfAr when I questioned it, WMC again threatened to block me to prove he could do it. I decided that it was less harmful to test this than to voluntarily comply, so I announced, on the same RfAr page, my withdrawal from voluntary compliance.

And a day later, I made a helpful comment on Talk:Cold fusion, not one that any reasonable editor would consider disruptive. A question had been asked about sources, and I pointed to a prior discussion in the Talk archive. My comment was not long and not contentious, nor was it uncivil in any way.

And then I went to sleep. The next morning, I checked. WMC had blocked me and had reverted the comment as a ban violation. But then I was unblocked and ArbComm began addressing the problem! WMC was almost desysopped on the spot, but he still had enough support that the question was postponed. As WMC never admitted that he'd done anything wrong at all, it was more or less inevitable that he'd lose his bit. It was entirely too blatant a violation of recusal policy. But, in fact, he'd done plenty of stuff just as outrageous before, but the cabal was always able to defuse it by disrupting the discussions with irrelevancies. This was so outrageous, though, that even the cabal was stunned for a moment. There started to be, even, some weak criticism of WMC from the cabal editors.

I'd say that defying WMC was the most efficient edit I ever made, in terms of effect. So I understand disobedience as an approach. However, I'd never do that unless I believed it would actually be efficient, and I doubt that I'd use admin tools if I had them, in this way.

Nevertheless, ArbComm utterly failed to address many other examples of egregious behavior that took place in that arbitration. I've seen, again and again, admins openly defy recusal policy, before ArbComm, arguing that it's ridiculous. These admins will violate it, it can be predicted. So why does ArbComm not address this?

My theory: the problem is too big. ArbComm is not prepared to take on issues that would possibly involve sanctions against many administrators, or even just reprimands. It will avoid them, hoping that if it can just get rid of the editors who irritate the cabal admins, the cabal will start to behave. And so, too often, it ends up serving the cabal by removing the opposition from the playing field, even if an editor who confronts the cabal manages to get a case to ArbComm.

It's a false hope, for the "irritating" editors aren't the problem, the abusive admins and tag-team cabal that owns sets of articles is. Carcharoth did see part of the problem, but was likewise unwilling to take it on. And it seems Carcharoth is retiring. Cool Hand Luke, who I know did see it, recused in my RfAr, and hardly participated. Bainer saw part of it, and proposed remedies that would have been roughly adequate, and was roundly ignored by the ArbComm majority, who did not investigate nearly as deeply.

(Fringe editors and minority POV-pushers are problems, to be sure, but problems that can fairly easily be addressed. Abusive admins and editorial cabals that can avoid 3RR violation without breaking a sweat, even without any off-wiki coordination, cannot nearly so easily be fixed, but actually cause much more damage, long-term.)

The best I can figure at present, ABD is some kind of Fred Bauder + FT2 + George William Herbert recombinant DNA experiment gone horribly wrong.

We're going to have to open up a new wing of the Annex just for him.

Jon

WELL WELL, I will reveal my "tuneup" of a Wiki article. I laid my BANNED HANDS upon the sacred article "Second Life" as a demo to a teacher, as poof that any syncopate and rummy could change wikipedia at will. I also show her the nastiness and the lack of humanity on Wikipedia. One more enemy for Wikipedia made

Bwt, Gamaliel (T-C-L-K-R-D) have access to wiki day or night. Your bans are useless, other then disrupting the 100s of thousands in Dupage and other places to access to the dirty glory hole of wiki. The more you try to stop me, Gamaliel the more you hurt the thing you love.


PS...BUMP.

This just shows how your overthinking this is damaging your ability to reason.

I really don't give a shit what happens to unsourced BLPs on Wikipedia.

You probably shouldn't confuse speaking in tongues from the Gospel of Jimbo with any kind of actual thinking process.

Otherwise, you run the risk that ABD's auto-hypnotic induction mantra might hypnotize you.

So watch out for that …

I should say that Thatcher suggested it several posts before I did. It seemed like a plausible plan.

Thanks for taking it the the end zone. It was unclear how it would turn out; Kirill and ArbCom deserve some credit for recognizing the goal. I hope there will be enduring progress.


Shocker.

The only thing that would be disobedient, according to the Wikimedia Foundation's terms of use that is linked to on every page, is if you don't agree to license your edits under both the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License 3.0 (Unported) and the GNU Free Documentation License (unversioned, with no invariant sections, front-cover texts, or back-cover texts).. So feel free to add or delete whatever text or other media you want to Wikipedia that isn't illegal in your jurisdiction.

Indeed. Since most of the people who are supposed to, don't, why in the world would you expect otherwise of Kohs? Given that he's under an ex-post-facto ban from WP for proposing to do what Jimbo and Angela Beesley Starling have basically been doing for years and years, which is make money by manipulating the content of Wikipedia.

Memory Alpha is hosted on Wikia, you will notice. And you will also notice that there is a strange force in the universe which keeps Star Trek related Wikis on WP from becoming too detailed. This is watched with far greater accumen than BLPs. Apparently the over-detailed Star Trek trivia "problem" never lacks eyes.

Do you believe in coincidences? Now, explain to me about the immorality of Greg Kohs. A self-serving person, is he? Goodness.

And once again: who stole the Klingon wiki?

That isn't disobedience at all, it is simple denial and of no effect. By "disobedience" I meant acting outside the expectations of "the community," i.e., those who imagine themselves to be the representatives of community consensus, by which they mean, in reality, with some exceptions, "my opinions and those of my friends." If I do this being aware of the likely opposition, it is "disobedient."

ArbComm can declare a topic ban for me, and it has declared two, one of which is unfortunately vague in meaning, but if I deliberately disregard this, in spite of understanding it, I'd be "disobedient." However, it's little noticed that IAR does not merely suggest, it requires ignoring rules when such would improve the project. This is not a license for stupidity, however, for disruption harms the project, sometimes. I.e., good action that causes a huge uproar may not be so good. On the other hand....

I have not so far been disobedient with respect to the bans, alleged violations were either found to be not violations, or were ambiguous. I can say that I did not repeat a behavior, even when its characteristic as a violation was ambiguous or I believed the objection was just plain wrong.

However, I have never promised to continue to respect the bans, as far as I recall. Disobedience remains an option. I prefer, however, to work off-wiki, where I may be, now, more effective. We'll see.

I have also not edited as IP unless accidentally as happens through autologout. Nor have I registered any undeclared socks. But I reserve the right to do this if I decide it would benefit the project. My work in general, though, does not depend on my personal presence on Wikipedia and, indeed, that presence is often distracting.

In my comments here in this topic, I've simply pointed out the vast difference between how the alleged offense of MzMcBride and the defiance of Kevin were treated. As far as I'm concerned, both of them were being bold in improving the project, but MzMcBride's offense was in appearance, because there was no major danger to the project created by providing Kohs with the name of those articles, but the alleged "poor judgment" was only in how the community would see it, not in actual harm.

A huge flap over an handful of BLPs having some irrelevant and harmless "facts" in them for a few days, of the kind that I've seen in many BLPs, creating no legal hazard: it's like arresting someone for spitting on the sidewalk during a blizzard.

On the other hand, Kevin forced consideration of an issue by defying not only objections on his Talk page, but formal warnings and blocks. He was creating work for others, demanding that work or he would go ahead. While the goal was reasonable, the method of getting there involved use of tools without consensus, and this is highly discouraged for very good reasons. Yet, with such a crucial issue, not even a peep about an RfAr.

Sometimes defiance is necessary, and the result worth the uproar. MzMcBride paid for his helpfulness with his admin privileges; ArbComm, however, isn't grateful. Kevin? Well, he did get some barnstars, but, tell me, is mass deletion based on one's own opinion acceptable? These articles were not BLP violations, in themselves, they were merely unchecked.

The goal of Kevin's action, as Abd said, was indeed reasonable, but I disagree with Abd in that such an action was not an honorable or positive thing. In my opinion, it was indeed the right thing to do, but it was done as an act of defiance to bring much needed attention to an issue that is ignored much of the time. The fact that many Wikipedians did not comprehend the motive behind the mass deletions, and instead produced much fervor and ultimately useless discussion about the action, rather than the issue at hand, proves that:

1. Wikipedia's power structure, and the majority of the people of which it is comprised, is inept, and have no sense of responsibility.
2. The ratio of responsible Wikipedia administrators to the majority of inept sysops who have little knowledge of appropriate practices regarding accountability, is too low.
3. A complete transformation of the entire systemic structure of Wikipedia is necessary, with more consideration for BLP victims, administrative accountability, and efficiency. Additionally, no editor should be seen as being more "valuable", having more clout, or having more exemption from the rule of law than another. Wikipedia should focus more on a system suited to equal treatment and real-world standards than the current standard in Wikiland, which is based entirely on the supposition that they can do what they want because this is the Internet.

Dealing with the problems that encircle biographies requires a willingness on the part of the Wikipedia "community" to see past punishing those who want the problem to be addressed, and focus on addressing the greater issue. If this issue is addressed, then maybe people wouldn't have to be banned for voicing their opinions about it, and criticizing Wikipedia's policy of doing absolutely nothing to address the issues surrounding BLP. This is all useless talk; what is needed is immediate action.

You aren't disagreeing with me, because I did not claim that.
Of course. However, another act, much less defiant, but no less intended to call attention to the very same problem, but not requiring admin tools and the use of them without consensus, has been considered a dishonorable thing and sanctioned.

I'm not seeking to have Kevin sanctioned, but I'm pointing out the drastic inconsistency. Was Kevin right to do what he did? It's debatable, and I'm not prepared to give a single answer. But what he did was not legitimate, it was practically the very essence of a WP:POINT violation. WP:POINT doesn't have an exception for good points!

The very same arguments are made by quite abusive administrators, they are violating recusal policy because they believe it's in the best interests of the project.

I think what I'm really saying is that whenever something like this happens, the admin abuse aspect should not be swept under the carpet. Wikipedia can make IAR exceptions, but it's hypocritical to drop barnstars on Kevin and cheer the sysop resignation of MzMcBride, when both of them acted to benefit the project, and in both cases there was actual benefit.

QUOTE

While the conclusion may be true, the case doesn't prove it, because some of the people who objected did, in fact, understand the motive. I believe I understand the motive, and consider that it was improperly done, i.e., the same goals could have been accomplished better and without the disruption. And, I suspect, far more people would have been cheering right from the start at the bold move.
Again, the conclusion is largely correct, but the evidence not.
Well, again, some truth, and noble ideals, but shallow. What's missing? How the hell to get from here to there!

Rule of law? What law? You don't think that the policies and guidelines are law, do you? If so, for each one, what's the implementation date, by what authority were they passed, by what majority or by whom? Try to change a policy based on a better idea, the way you think it should be. It doesn't matter how good the idea is, you will be met with: "Policies and guidelines document practice, they do not prescribe it."

There are some ways to change the situation, for sure, but they could come up and bang you in the nose, and you'd be unlikely to recognize them. Or maybe you would. Sometimes people do.

You have, Wikicrusher, just argued for the rule of law and nobody being exempt from it, when, by precedent and policy, Kevin would have been before ArbComm in a flash, and MzMcBride might have been completely untouched. MzM did nothing within the jurisdiction of ArbComm and the Wikipedia community, Kevin did. Kevin was blocked, what, twice? The blocks were fully within policy and proper.
The deletions were not.

But, remember, there is not the rule of law on Wikipedia. There is mob rule, with a few sane voices occasionally appearing to save the day, often none. Most Wikipedia crap passes unnoticed.

Quoting him a bit out of context, are we?

He doesn't give a shit, because he realizes that in reality, nothing will happen to them.
Even if deleted, they will be restored, and Wiki will crawl on. So why bother giving a shit?

The context being Abd asserting that Thekohser wants BLPs deleted. Thekohser clarifies that he doesn't care. From what I can tell, he primarily cares about using the issue to score points.

Then again, maybe you're right. Conversations with Abd get murky quickly.

I missed this Balloonman edit to one of "my" BLPs that I used to score points against One. Funny stuff.

It is a rare woman who can rescue gangrenous babies in the 1930's and also win Miss Germany titles in 2008. I'm surprised that her bio is so short.

Well, Balloonman is just the sort of editor who can sleuth out these rare women. I mean, he's authored Wikipedia articles about:

• Association of Certified Fraud Examiners
• List of World Series of Poker Ladies Champions
• Married Priests Now, and
• List of guest stars with The Wiggles

He's like the perfect Wikipedian!

Aw, c'mon, One. That was just an off-hand comment, not intended to nail Greg to anything. Conversations with me only get murky for people who insist on understanding everything at once. People who WP:DGAF do much better. After about a year or so.

Scoff.

But suppose Balloonman had made the same edit, but used a different summary, something like:

Then you'd be patting him on the back, right?

Frankly, I'm not even sure any more.

He also nominated "Pastor Theo" for adminship.

Yes, and supported "Ecoleetage" previously. He considered you a friend.
What a chump, eh?

This is the very first time I ever heard that Balloonman considered "Eco" or "Pastor Theo" to be a friend. But, then again, I wasn't aware that he considered anyone to be a friend -- the only thing he seemed to enjoy doing on WP was turning RfA into the Wiki equivalent of "The Gong Show."

I am glad that he backed away from RfA and is writing articles, even if they are about poker tournaments. There is still hope for him.