Slim Virgin wrote:
On 6/17/07, Fred Bauder fredbaud@waterwiki.info wrote:
The problem is that Wikipedia, for better or worse, has an inquisitorial system, with all the dangers such a system presents. We need to limit our investigations to harmful activities. Harmful activities cause harm, observable trouble. An administrator who uses open proxies but does not engage in vandalism or sockpuppetry is not producing observable trouble.
Fred
Fred, a banned user could cause a lot of trouble if he got elected to ArbCom using open proxies and a concocted admin account, built up easily by doing lots of vandalism reverting. There has to be some minimal accountability with admins, in part because they can be elected to these positions, and in part because they can cause big problems even without these extra powers.
"Could" is what paranoia is built on. How many such banned users have ever been elected to Arbcom? How many have even come close? Since you say that such a person would build up his account with lots of vandalism reverting, maybe the rule should be that a person with too much (whatever too much is) vandalism reverting should not be eligible for Arbcom because they would have a clear prosecutorial bias. At least such activity would be more revealing than simply using an open proxy for ordinary edits.
The concern with CW was in part the use of proxies, in part the low level of content contribution, and in part his/her unwillingness to explain, even by e-mail, why s/he was using open proxies. It's this last point that has attracted a lot of the opposition on the RfA. All in all, it added up to a worrying picture.
Sometimes when you begin by accusing someone of wrongdoing, and everybody starts shouting "WHY?" in her ear, clamming up is the preferred strategy. One possible parallel in US law is Miranda rights.
Ec