[WikiEN-l] Breaking this up for size: 2

[Durova]

>  you're failing to recognize the
> possibility of alternative explanations that place the whole thing in a
much
> different light.  That was a key mistake I made.  You're making it too.
Well, that's a very valid possibilty.  I would like to point out two
critical differences though:
1.  I'm not accusing you or anyone else of bad faith-- merely poor
judgement.  !! was suspected of actually trying to subvert it.  The
wpinvestigations-l sleuths are merely suspected of exhibiting poor
judgment.   Nobody is suspecting you of subversion, we're just
suspecting you guys of inadvertantly causing more harm than good.
******
Remember, that list didn't exist yet.  See above.

2.  I'm not trying to ban anybody.  I'm just saying-- administrators
of this project obviously rendered judgments on your evidence--  we
should be able to see those judgments, so we can better assess how to
help those individuals better contribute to the project.  Worst case
scenario, they have to return to the community and ask if they are
still trusted.
******
Point well taken about you not trying to ban anybody.  As for the rest, as
I've said before, these were individuals who were missing the same piece of
evidence I was missing.  I'm sure any of them would have discarded the
hypothesis immediately if any of them had it.  Also bear in mind that I was
the investigator, and that I was attempting to build upon a part of some
work that had been very successful in the Burntsauce and Dannycali
investigations.  The Burntsauce investigation was far more extensive than
this one and had numerous smoking guns.  Dannycali was also a much clearer
instance, although someone else acted while my evidence was at earlier
stages.  And no, that person isn't someone who saw the bad report I later
wrote.  There could very well have been a general respect for my successful
report on Alkivar (which had many smoking guns) and Eyrian's own reaction
when I blocked his sock spoke more than any evidence I could have mustered.
And I want to emphasize, this really was a much weaker report than the kind
of thing I usually do.

The onsite discussion got too heated to hold any real discussion of "Durova,
what were you thinking?"  Well I'd been pretty successful at what I had been
doing and wanted to systematize it.  The long term sockpuppets I'd
successfully found had been working in concert with other editors who were
either banned or gaming the system very seriously.  And remember I had tried
to ban Burntsauce half a year before, and I had been absolutely right, and
he had done a lot of damage since then.  When I returned in the fall and
really looked into it closely, I regretted having waited so long because so
much damage had occurred.  In fact, I'll give a barnstar to anyone who
restores the damage to ten articles he harmed.

I really wanted to find a way that would address the problem more
proactively.  And remember, JB196 has driven people to frustration until
they quit the project.  Curse of Fenric was a good editor, and others had
come to me for advice when they were on the fence about leaving too.
SirFozzie knew the JB196 case even better than I, but he had distanced
himself from it.  It was just too cumbersome.  So I was the person who had
by far the most experience in this particular area.  So I tried to distill
the common points between Burntsauce and Dannycali and some other accounts
I'd been watching quite closely but not acted upon, and I selected a test
case that raised my antenna a little and I hadn't examined before.  I
thought I was being impartial and objective, and I was surprised to see that
the correlations lined up.  Eureka!  The moment of hubris.

So yeah, the people who read that report all knew I had been on a roll and
had some background on why I thought this kind of thing was worth
attempting.  Don't lay it on their shoulders.  It was a bad report, not up
to the level of my usual work, and it was attempting a new kind of approach
I hadn't tried before.  With no disrespect for the real human being who
didn't deserve the hassle my mistake caused, I'm like the pitcher who threw
a wild curveball and got a drubbing in the sports pages.  You don't fire the
catcher and the first baseman for that.