On Tue, Nov 25, 2014 at 9:52 PM, Risker <risker.wp@gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm not going to opine on the decision that's being voted upon by Arbcom;
> I've been there, and ultimately the decision is based on the quality and nature
> of the evidence that people bother to present

Risker, I think your remarks are overall spot-on. I take your point
about any decision only being as good as the evidence which informs
it, but what I'm seeing happening in this case specifically goes
beyond that, IMO.

Just reading through the diffs and links in this case, it's hard for
me to see the proposed decisions as being based solely or ultimately
on the evidence presented. From my reading, there's a pretty visible
undercurrent here of babying an editor with a clear and unambiguous
history of toxic behavior. The best outcome ArbCom was able to muster
is apparently to give air cover to admins who enforce basic site
policy, as opposed to the ludicrous state of affairs where admins who
enforce civility policy are reverted by other admins and the
individual is openly declared to be "untouchable".

That this same individual is also on record ranting about a "feminist
agenda" and "alienation of male editors" while a topic-ban isn't being
seriously considered speaks volumes about the impact of the gender gap
on the set of shared beliefs and consciousness in our community. If
our community was majority-female, would such remarks be regarded as
conducive to neutral participation in a topic? If it was
gender-balanced, would they be?

I think inclusion is often about treating the same behaviors the same
way. If you imagined people switching roles in the case, would the
sanctions remain the same? From my understanding of some of the
history here, it seems more likely that one particular contributor who
is anti-social to the point of toxicity is being protected by an old
boys club in the community, and ArbCom's weak enforcement approach is
simply an institutional reflection of that bias.

As with any institution implicitly acting in accordance with biases
that exist in the larger community it serves and from which it
constitutes itself, these biases are expressed more explicitly and
openly in informal venues, such as user talk pages. But I see in this
case the trappings of an evidence-based approach, not the reality.

Erik