jayjg wrote:
So now, in addition to the two aforementioned lists, there's some other set of people "colluding" privately off-wiki to take action based on e-mails to the lists?
I don't know whether "collusion" was a bad word choice or not, but I was only referring to the private mailing lists that Durova mentioned sending her evidence regarding !! and the supportive response she said she got.
Personally, if it had only reached this point and gone no farther, I don't see a big problem. Private communication among Wikipedia users is allowed, supported by functions built right into MediaWiki, and couldn't be controlled in any event. Nobody would have known or cared. The problem came when the private discussion was used to support direct public actions while still being kept strictly private. If someone says "I have evidence this is a sock puppet of a disruptive user," I want to know what that evidence is before anything remotely like a ban is considered. If they say "a bunch of other editors support me on this," I want to know who they are or it's just meaningless noise.
As far as I'm aware Durova's email containing the evidence that was used as the basis for blocking !! is still thoroughly oversighted and expunged from Wikipedia. It's silly that I actually had to go to Wikitruth to find a copy of it.