Slim Virgin wrote: "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. 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

On 6/17/07, Slim Virgin <slimvirgin(a)gmail.com> wrote: And so could an UN-banned user. The current program doesn't strike me as being accountability per se. Everybody being accountable to one group of admins is inadequate. The other thing about the harping on banning and identification is that it's rather too obvously about preventing particular people from editing, and not about the editing per se.

On 6/18/07, jayjg <jayjg99(a)gmail.com> wrote: Actually, I believe the phrase you were looking for is "The Cabal (tm)". But I think Dan Tobias is right, and that it functions more like a clique. And as for its membership: please. Anyone who has followed this and its related crises over the past months can provide a quite precise set of names.

On 18/06/07, jayjg <jayjg99(a)gmail.com> wrote: The impression apparently comes from the timing of your revelation. - d.

On 6/18/07, jayjg <jayjg99(a)gmail.com> wrote: Personally, I still AGF regarding your actions here. The key problem is that what you did gives a very strong appearance of having been an intentional attack to torpedo the RFA. In many positions of responsibility, half of the job is not just avoiding actual impropriety, it's avoiding any appearance of it. People put power into positions and trust that it's being used in ways that everyone agrees are helpful to the community and not abusive of it. Whether people think that actions are abusive largely depends in real life on perceptions and the public PR face of things rather than actual factual malfeasance. It's unfortunately possible to be a perfectly honorable person and put your foot in it so badly that nobody will ever trust you with a position of responsibility again. It's also unfortunately possible to have a squeaky clean public face and be corrupt in fact. What you did put the critics in a position where they could, in their view of Wikipedia, conclude that you torpedoed a RFA with information widely considered to be confidential and private, and conclude that you did so on purpose as part of the great abusive admin cabal. Your reactions since then have been defensible from the "I didn't really do anything wrong" factual point of view. They're disasterous from the "appearance of wrong" point of view. You're arguing with the critics in a manner that both engages and enrages them. This is, from a PR perspective, close to the absolute worst thing you could be doing. Bald silence would be better. I AGF on the factual questions of an intentional hostile act to torpedo an RFA, and a privacy violation of CU data. I can't AGF on the PR aspects of this. You can fix it, but you have a hole to dig out of. I think it's reasonable to ask that CUs, Arbcom members, foundation board members, and the like act in a more PR-aware manner than you have to date regarding this incident. I would greatly regret coming to a conclusion that we can't trust you, in the wider community sense, with the Cu power merely because you turned a goof into a PR disaster. But that issue is now legitimately on the table. This RFA has become a double-edged microscope, as it were. Please stop blowing off the gadfly critics; either don't talk to them or answer their questions calmly and without firing back. Please also engage the reasonable critics here and on-wiki and address the criticisms. -- -george william herbert george.herbert(a)gmail.com

On 18/06/07, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86(a)comcast.net> wrote: Amen to that.

On 6/18/07, K P <kpbotany(a)gmail.com> wrote: Well, at least that's a reason, but huh? Why would I expect this any more from CW than from any other of the 10 new admins created each week? In fact, I would expect it less from CW than from most of the others, since CW appears to do little other than vandal reverting, and avoids almost all controversy, or even stating any opinions. I appreciate your at least attempting to provide a rationale, but seriously, can't you see how farfetched this whole thing is? Peter Singer, the philosopher and founder of the Great Ape Project? Isaac Bashevis Singer, Nobel-prize winning author?

On 6/18/07, jayjg <jayjg99(a)gmail.com> wrote: Impressive number of mailing list posts from someone who does that. -- geni

Slim Virgin wrote: Maybe if that concern had been voiced at an earlier stage, before CW arrived at RFA, the appearance of "putting the boot in" could have been avoided. I note that I still have no answer as to why, if so many CheckUser people were already aware that CW was appearing on the list of people using Open Proxies, nobody had seen fit to quietly inquire as to what was going on. True enough, CW had still not answered when I last checked, but maybe this is natural given the tone and venue of the question... -- Phil -- View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/the-elephant-in-the-room-tf3936475.html#a11170905 Sent from the English Wikipedia mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

On 6/18/07, David Goodman <dgoodmanny(a)gmail.com> wrote: David, as a matter of interest, how do you know this? That is, how do you know there has only been one example of true harm done to WP by false credentials?

J. Bryant Evans wrote: There remains the drive-by damage that was caused on one person's RfA, where a number of votes were cast on the basis that she had violated policy. Ec

Quite right. I should have said, the only public example where I think real harm was done. And the harm that was done was the loss of confidence in Jimbo. But maybe that is nort really harm, bbut a good development at this stage. On 6/18/07, Slim Virgin <slimvirgin(a)gmail.com> wrote: -- David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.