I've resisted taking this to the arbcom because
he
will turn it into a circus, and also because I
couldn't face going through all
the diffs
and having the whole thing repeated yet again.
The Arbcom - "a circus?" You must be joking. Maybe if
they... well... who listens to Me anymore? (Me Me Me).
I've been on the verge a couple of times of
writing
to Jimbo for help, but didn't because that puts him on
the spot. I've
also been on the verge of leaving, but
I don't want to let someone like that drive me away.
Yes, the great founder can't go around making
everybody feel better. "It hurts right here..."
Now, because Ed Poor recently blocked FuelWagon for
three hours over a personal attack on me, FuelWagon
has seized his chance and has
taken Ed to the arbcom,
where he will hold >court for several weeks, perhaps
several months, and all the >allegations will have to
be responded to.
Its funny how, in contrast with my Arbcom ("you broke
the rules!") Ed's violations require "defending" and
so forth. Ed's famous ((soothing vibe)) is indeed
something to behold, but wouldn't things work out
better if the Arbcom could be trusted to actually
review its cases and debate each point openly? Theres
a little AGF missing I suppose...
There has to be a better way to deal with users like
this. For example, we could set up a small committee
of
experienced editors, a
subcommittee of the arbcom and subject to the
arbcom's jurisdiction, whose job it is to identify
when a user >is trolling,
stalking, or harassing, and
we give that committee >the power to deal with it
there and then, using blocks of >increasing length for
each instance of it. I
know this has drawbacks (accusations of cabalism),
but I feel the benefits would greatly outweigh them.
No, this is wrong. Sorry you feel stressed out SV, but
thats the way it goes. Take it with a grain of salt,
as they say. Go on a wikibreak -- take a wikicruise.
WPh will still be here when we're all dead and gone.
Etc.
With the mandatory consoling out of the way, I have to
say its funny how the real "drawback" of cabalism
(according cabalists presumably) is the "accusations
of cabalism," and not the cabalism itself... and the
distance such represents from the Open Model (i.e. the
"lets see if this works" philosophy which built
wikipedia up to begin with. Sure, theres the GFDL and
a strongly egalitarian ethos too...).
But I liked Fred's idea of having official prosecutors
and defenders represent each case in some clear terms.
Prosecutors will take complaints and sort evidence,
etc. And defenders will challenge the Arbcom to hold
some perspective in the application of 'da rulz.' Of
course, those positions would not be paid positions
either... ("but Ive spellchecked every article for the
correct use of 'i before e'..." ). In anycase, Slim,
you seem to be another one on the boat for
[[WP:DRR|overhauling the dispute resolution process in
some general way shape or form]].
True, Wikipedia 'is a project to create a free
encyclopedia and not a free internet democracy,' but
IMHO authoritarian measures have usually proven
themselves to be mistakes. Of course, theres some
tinkering going on as we speak (you can hear it if you
listen closely). Question as always is: will the
tinkering break the machine?
Stevertigo
:''The user name above is incorrect for [[who
cares?|technical reasons]]. The correct title is
stevertigo.''
--- slimvirgin(a)gmail.com wrote:
On 12/2/05, Carbonite <carbonite.wp(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
On 12/2/05, Poor, Edmund W
<Edmund.W.Poor(a)abc.com>
wrote:
> By defending SlimVirgin against what
FuelWagon
HIMSELF conceded
> was an "accusation" (his words), I
find myself
hauled before the
arbitration committee.
For what its worth, FuelWagon has now turned
Jayjg's ArbCom candidate
question page into his own personal battleground.
FuelWagon's
"questions" span five sub-sections,
have dozens of
diffs and are filled with
endless rhetorical statements. However, this
doesn't even begin to compare
with the 16 section response to his RfC a while
back: (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/FuelWagon_2).
Ed's right, the system's not working here.
I want to describe some of what FuelWagon has been
doing so that
people can see how hard it is to deal with this
within the existing
dispute-resolution structure.
FuelWagon has been harassing Ed and myself, and a
couple of others to
a lesser extent, since July. It started because I
blocked him for 3RR
and then because I made a copy edit he didn't like
of an article he
had edited a lot. He responded with a stream of
invective and
talk-page disruptive, which Ed blocked him for, and
that made Ed his
victim too.
I hate to think how many personal comments he has
posted about Ed and
me since then, but it amounts to thousands of words.
He filed an RfC
against me, which was deleted because he failed to
show prior efforts
at dispute resolution. He promptly copied and pasted
it into his user
subspace, so that he can still link to his various
claims. He also
created an "attack page" on me, where he makes a
note of anything I do
that he feels he can use against me. Carbonite
opened an RfC against
him, but he hijacked it and turned it into another
attack page. He
tried to intervene in the arbcom case against Ed,
writing to Jimbo to
have it re-opened when it had closed, then tried to
have some kind of
black mark put on Ed's mediation record.
It has been very upsetting to be on the receiving
end of it. I tried
ignoring him, responding with reason, responding
firmly. I stayed away
from pages he edits, but he stalked me to pages I
edit and began to
revert me, so that I had to either let him have his
own way, or get
into a revert war with him and look as bad as he is.
It changed the whole way I interact with people on
Wikipedia. I found
myself becoming sharper with people than I had
previously been,
because I was on edge all the time. I felt
embarassed at having
someone pursue me with accusations, because most
people looking at it
will think there's no smoke without fire. And yet
when I tried to
correct some of what he was saying, I ended up
looking as silly as
him, so mostly I had to let him get away with it.
Several editors and admins have intervened and tried
to persuade him
to stop, including Ed Poor, Ann Heneghan, El C,
Carbonite, Jayjg,
Bishonen, Willmcw, Marskell, Aaron Brenneman, Mel
Etitis, and
Viriditas.
FuelWagon's response was that he would leave me
alone if I did 12
things that he listed on his talk page
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:FuelWagon&oldid=252…
including that I make, in the "first-person
narative
[sic] form" an
unqualified and unconditional apology in relation to
the copy edit he
didn't like, and he listed the various talk pages
that the apology had
to be posted on. He had a similar list of apologies
that Ed had to
make before he'd be satisfied.
He also teamed up with other known trolls like
Zephram Stark, Marsden,
and Vizcarra, so that a gang of people began to
pursue his various
victims.
I've resisted taking this to the arbcom because he
will turn it into a
circus, and also because I couldn't face going
through all the diffs
and having the whole thing repeated yet again. I've
been on the verge
a couple of times of writing to Jimbo for help, but
didn't because
that puts him on the spot. I've also been on the
verge of leaving, but
I don't want to let someone like that drive me away.
Now, because Ed Poor recently blocked FuelWagon for
three hours over a
personal attack on me, FuelWagon has seized his
chance and has taken
Ed to the arbcom, where he will hold court for
several weeks, perhaps
several months, and all the allegations will have to
be responded to.
The only way I can defend Ed now is to present the
case that I've not
been able to face putting together. It's probably
going to take me a
week or more to put all the diffs together in a way
that gets the full
force of his behavior across without being
unreadable for the
arbitrators.
There has to be a better way to deal with users like
this. For
example, we could set up a small committee of
experienced editors, a
subcommittee of the arbcom and subject to the
arbcom's jurisdiction,
whose job it is to identify when a user is trolling,
stalking, or
harassing, and we give that committee the power to
deal with it there
and then, using blocks of increasing length for each
instance of it. I
know this has drawbacks (accusations of cabalism),
but I feel the
benefits would greatly outweigh them.
Sarah
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