On Nov 27, 2007 11:26 AM, Alec Conroy <alecmconroy(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On 11/27/07, jayjg <jayjg99(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On Nov 27, 2007 11:12 AM, Bryan Derksen
<bryan.derksen(a)shaw.ca> wrote:
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
On Tue, 27 Nov 2007 05:04:44 -0700, Bryan
Derksen
<bryan.derksen(a)shaw.ca> wrote:
> A major line is crossed when that "private letting-off of steam" results
> in administrators blocking users and then refusing to reveal why they
> did it, though. This wasn't just some private venting session that leaked.
> If an administrator were to block someone with the explanation "I ran
> this by some people on an IRC channel and they okayed it, but I can't
> tell you who or where or why", that would quite rightly result in a
> furore. "Some people on an IRC channel" don't have any authority to
okay
> anything.
I completely agree. I think I've even said as much. The point here
is that this would not mean it was IRC that was to blame for the
cock-up, it would be the admin's fault.
I would also want to know who "some people" were, and whether they
really thought they had the authority to okay this or if the admin was
just blowing smoke about having their support.
If Durova "simply screwed up", fine, her bad. But if there's a group of
like-minded editors who were colluding on this and she just happens to
have had the bad luck to take the fall, I don't want the rest to meekly
and secretively creep back to whatever they were doing behind closed
doors that resulted in this happening. I want to make sure this attitude
and this bad process is rooted out.
Bryan, I've read through this e-mail thread, and in it I see both
Matthew and Guy saying clearly and unequivocally that Durova did not
even *propose* blocking !! on the private lists, much less get
approval for it. Do you think they are both lying?
One of the things that isn't included in this thread is hte email
Durova sent to the list. If you haven't seen it, go read it, and
you'll see why we're all so stressed out by this. There isn't a
person on the encyclopedia who couldn't be banned by this sort of
kangaroo court, if someone had an ax to grind. And if the discussions
are secret, they'll never even know they were being suspected--
they'll just wake up banned one day, just like !!.
Wait a minute; what "kangaroo court"? Durova is an individual admin,
and Matthew and Guy have both said clearly and unequivocally that she
didn't ask *any* list for permission to block, or, I believe, even
mention that she was planning to do so.
Durova DID post the "evidence" to the list, and members of that list
DID reply back to her "enthusiastically endorsing" the block. (or so
she says, and I believe her).
Are you saying that Matthew and Guy are lying? I think you'll have to
take a stand here, because Matthew and Guy both said that she didn't
even propose a block, so how could someone "endorse" something that
wasn't proposed?
Just because she didn't say the magic word
"I'm gonna ban them", it was obvious where it was going.
Was it? How could you possibly know? It seems that you have made a bad
faith assumption the purpose of the list is to ban WR editors, and are
viewing the e-mail through that lens. However, if the purpose of the
list is for Wikipedia's victims of cyberstalking to discuss their
issues, then I suspect that if people read it at all, most would look
at the e-mail and say "huh, well, not particularly relevant to the
list, but ok."
Anyone who
read hte email and responded with anything other than "Are you crazy,
this is NOT sufficient evidence to prove he's a sockpuppet" needs
looking at, because I think the community wouldn't trust their
judgment anymore than it trusts Durova's.
Regarding a reasonable reaction to the sockpuppeting claim, as Matthew
points out "She was completely right, as far as I know, that !! was a
returned user grooming an account for adminship. She was wrong in
making the unsupported leap beyond that - that this meant it was a
banned user
grooming an account for adminship - and discounting all other possibilities."