On Nov 27, 2007 11:23 AM, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman(a)spamcop.net> wrote:
On Tue, 27 Nov 2007 10:56:25 -0500,
joshua.zelinsky(a)yale.edu wrote:
Now as I see it. A bad block was made. Admins make
bad blocks all the time.
There was a private list involved but that was incidental. The block was
overturned and then there was way too much drama over the matter.
A masterfully succinct and wholly accurate synopsis.
It was more than just a bad block, in the "admins make bad blocks all
the time" sense. It was block based on a methodology that was, to
quote a proposed arb com finding, "both unsophisticated and
fundamentally flawed. The techniques used are unremarkable, well known
and widely publicly discussed." The formerly secret (*) mailing list
was apparently not directly involved, but it seems to have led in part
to the paranoid thinking which spawned the bad block.
And I'd say the mailing list also is worthy of discussion on its own,
regardless of the block. The participation of people with access to
sensitive information, in a mailing list not controlled by the
Wikimedia Foundation and with an apparent topic of investigating
people who use the Wikipedia website, seems extremely problematic.
(*) The fact that the person running the list refused to even give out
it's name, and that the membership of the list still has not been
revealed, leads me to believe calling it "formerly secret" is
accurate. The name of the third list doesn't even appear to have yet
been made public, at least not in this thread.