As I have read the responses on this mail list, several people have made some very good points, but others not so much. Some focus specifically on Eric and others are more broad commenting on cultural issues within the project itself. Eric said some bad words, most of us are adults here, so deal with it. Its really not that big of a deal nor is it worth all the effort being put into it. There are far worse problems in the project doing far more to bring it down than Eric and a few cusswords.
One point point for example by a couple folks indicated that Eric is responsible for running a lot of people off the project. Eric can be a jerk sometimes and use fowl language but I am not familiar with one editor who has stated they stopped editing because of him. I have met quite a lot that have stopped editing because of abuse by some admin. People are leaving, but Eric is not the biggest culprit, its the us and them mentality of some of the admins and their being exempt from the rules. So if folks are concerned about people leaving the project, I would suggest they start there.
Some have also suggested some issues with the Arbcom. Sarah Stierch questions its legality (as do I and others) and some have indicated they intend to go around the Arbcom and appeal its verdicts. To this I say good luck. I really wish they would, and its high time they do get more involved with the Arbitration sanctions and verdicts, but its not likely that the WMF has any interest in doing so and its even less likely they will overturn one of their decisions.
On the topic of sanctions against Eric at AE, he is as good as gone. The folks at AE have a long history of hounding and harassing editors to give them a reason to block. They do not care about admins baiting them or provoking a response and they do not care how far off topic the edit is, if they want to block someone, the "broadly construed" language gives them that ability. It also removes the Arbcom from the need to make a controversial decision by passing the buck to AE.
This Arbcom decision is going to have one definite result. People are going to avoid gender related topics and Wikipedia is going to have even more trouble getting more women involved in the project.
So I would encourage the WMF to get more involved with Arbcom and its decisions, because many of their decisions are directly responsible for the death spiral the project is in. The WMF needs to seriously start reviewing the conduct of admins if it wants to deal with editors leaving the site and they need to start addressing those abusive admin tactics like personal attacks, baiting, turning peoples talk pages into battle grounds and other tactics used to justify blocking them. Civility on Wikipedia goes far beyond Eric and a few swear words and if you want editors to follow the rules then you need to enforce them on admins as well as editors. Otherwise the editors see what the admins get away with and it makes the think they should be able to do it as well.
Reguyla
On Wed, Nov 26, 2014 at 1:37 PM, Kevin Gorman kgorman@gmail.com wrote:
It's noteworthy that they are not non-appealable blocks. I honestly don't think this is beyond the scope of the list, although it's certainly a depressing topic. Allowing severe gendered slurs to be bandied about with essentially no penalty is likely something that is going to decrease the participation of women on ENWP - which is not a good thing. I know there's been some debate in the past about whether or not ENWP specific issues are appropriate for this list, but I believe this is a large enough one to be.
Best, Kevin Gorman
On Wed, Nov 26, 2014 at 10:26 AM, Daniel and Elizabeth Case < dancase@frontiernet.net> wrote:
Eric Corbett is going to be under a new regimen of non-appealable
civility blocks under the aegis of Arbitration Enforcement.
One wonders if it’s really time for someone to just initiate a discussion on AN as to whether the community’s patience with him is exhausted enough to community-ban him indefinitely, regardless of the outcome of any ArbCom case. We have done things like this before—after one such editor prompted multiple suggestions that he be banned among the many opposes he received when he ran for ArbCom with the premise of effectively abolishing it by voting against hearing any new cases, I initiated that discussion, which led to the editor in question pretty much jumping before he was pushed.
And I say this as someone who has never interacted with him in any meaningful way, at least not for years, but sees and hears him increasingly discussed as the *one* user who represents all the shortcomings of our disciplinary processes. Whether he is a genuinely toxic person or not seems to be a matter of some debate, but I think there is no doubt that the perception that he is has increasingly mooted that question.
Of course we could also consider the suggestion Jimmy had in his closing speech at Wikimania this year that we deal with toxic people on the site who also happen to be good content creators by giving them their own wikis where they, and anyone who wanted to work with them, could develop and improve whatever content they wanted to.for reimportation. Maybe part of the problem is that we offer too limited a choice of
(And per other emails, this is really beyond the scope of this list, so any followups should probably directed to me personally or taken on-wiki. Besides I don’t want to ruin anyone’s Thanksgiving, regardless of whether you celebrate it or not—we all deserve a break).
Daniel Case
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