-----Original Message-----
From: Daniel R. Tobias [mailto:dan@tobias.name]
Sent: Sunday, September 30, 2007 02:55 PM
To: wikien-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] [Wikipedia-l] Indefinite ban problem
On 30 Sep 2007 at 19:59:00 +0100, "Thomas Dalton"
<thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com> wrote:
I'm not claiming there is no cabal, that would be
nonsense. Of course
there is a cabal. The key thing that people miss is that there is more
than one. The other common name is "groups of friends". There are lots
That's why I generally prefer the term "clique" over "cabal".
of groups of friends on Wikipedia. Some of them
contain quite powerful
Wikipedians, and work to help their members. However, and most
importantly, they do not all work together, and no one of them is all
powerful. If one group of friends crosses the line, other groups and
individuals will step in to stop them. A good example of this is MONGO
- he had a strong group of friends that defended him at every turn,
but once it got too bad, other people stepped in and stopped it. MONGO
was eventually desysopped.
...but he still has his large group (clique) of friends, who still to
this day sometimes air sour grapes about his desysopping, and act to
help him suppress any and all further criticism.
--
== Dan ==
You don't have it straight. From the beginning it was obvious MONGO was getting too
excited (rather like you). We warned him, and he kept on (As we can expect you to do), and
had to be desyopped. He remains an editor in good standing though and, for example, in the
SevenOfDiamonds matter, his input is respected, at least by me. There is nothing automatic
about springing to his defense. However, he has resisted some serious nonsense. His
biggest problem is thinking he's the little Dutch boy and has to play hero. The
community as a whole can generally be depended on to resist inclusion of unverifiable
information.
Fred