David Boothroyd wrote
In February, blocked wrongly for a
non-existent 3RR, at 1 AM in the middle of an edit that had taken
an hour, I self unblocked. I was a very naughty boy and I was
punished by being blocked again, but everyone seemed to think that
was closed.
Then, months later a completely unrelated issue in which I was
tangentially involved goes to ArbCom and results in this issue being
dragged up again.
Yes, you can have forgiving, and you can have transparent, but you may not be able to have
both at once.
<snip>
2) If ArbCom is the only body that can remove admin
status, excluding
self-administered recalls, then how does it cope with low-level but
persistent admin misbehaviour? ArbCom is much better at dealing with
egregious single incidents.
But that comment is in tension with the previous point.
If there is persistent incivility by someone, and there is a case brought, then everything
from the year dot can in principle be brought up. Everyone should bear in mind that the
site has an elephant's memory.
I think the Arbs don't like such cases, where some snarkishness from early 2005 can
get tagged onto recent misbehaviour. Makes some of us feel uncomfortable, if it can't
be more clear cut than that. For myself, I'm all for dealing with the persistent
problem users, but a smoking gun is very, very useful if you want to throw the book at
people. It makes the defence that things change and people learn from mistakes irrelevant.
We do want people to change behaviour, so 'give a dog a bad name' has to be borne
in mind, just as much as the leopard and spots.
Charles
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