On Wed, January 5, 2011 10:02 pm, George Herbert wrote:
On Wed, Jan 5, 2011 at 1:51 PM, Virgilio A. P. Machado vam@fct.unl.pt
wrote:
Is this supposed to be funny?
Time to address this matter to the list moderators.
Sincerely,
Virgilio A. P. Machado
Neither of these was funny; both were backhanded insults to you.
That said - I am not sure what role you think foundation-l should be
playing in your being banned from meta.wikimedia.org. You're claiming the snide responses are off topic and inappropriate. The original request was off topic and inappropriate as well, though not snide.
I am completely not up on the politics on Meta, or the other Wikis
you've been banned or long term blocked on, but as a general rule people who are being blocked or banned across multiple wikis are behaving in a way that causes the blocks, even if there are aspects of some of the blocks which are imperfect admin response. There seem to be a number of people on Meta who thought you were behaving
inappropriately.
Even if the blocks were abusive and inappropriate, foundation-l isn't a
block appeal channel.
-- -george william herbert george.herbert@gmail.com
A sensible answer and commentary is deeply appreciated. Please accept this user's apologies for not answering in the proper order, something quite out of character. Notifications are received by mail in almost a random order, and comments were being answered through that channel.
It is not up to a mere user to decide if some list members are being uncivil. That's the responsibility of the moderators. It has been said several times, and it may be necessary to repeat it many more times until others eventually get it. The person that can offend or intimidate another has not been born yet. Nobody can offend or intimidate another, for the same reason that that person will not be happy or do as it pleases for the rest of his/her life, just because someone tells him/her so. Nobody has that much power.
The only role that the Foundation-l was expected to play in the unfortunate events unfolding on Meta was, exactly as stated, to be a communication venue with "women and men of good faith who are members of this mailing list" so that they could provide whatever assistance they deemed appropriate and were capable of providing, mainly helping with answers to the six items listed a) through f). So far, nobody as provided that kind of assistance.
A request for assistance is never off topic, anywhere, under any circumstances. If that concept is difficult to grasp, there's no difficulty whatsoever in expanding and explaining it, in as much detail as required.
There was no clue that the events of Foundation wikis could be a matter of politics. They were always seen as matters of policies and procedures, not quite the same thing.
Lets put some of the bans that were mentioned in the proper perspective. brwikimedia and ptwikimedia are the wikis of the Brazilian and Portuguese chapters, that, like the Portuguese Wikipedia are run by the same usual suspects. Please note that according to a recent news item there's about 30 Portuguese active editors (Population: about 10 million).
The work on Meta was being done in an orderly manner until the disruption provoked and caused by the same usual suspects mentioned above. That's the only reason for "being blocked or banned across multiple wikis."
The user is the same. Trouble only started after the interference of the usual suspects of the Portuguese Wikipedia on Meta. Their votes can be seen popping up on the RfA. There has never been a single block on any other Wikimedia project where these editors do not have any influence. The obvious conclusion is that the hostile behavior stays with the usual suspects, not this user.
The unintended consequence is that the usual suspects have granted a single user a disproportionate power and influence: the power of one.
There is no block appeal made on this list. If there is, please quote the sentences where it is made. What was made was a request for assistance "to all women and men of good faith who are members of this mailing list," because of a strong, unshakable and unflinching belief that such persons exist. There is only some doubt if they have been reached yet.
Sincerely,
Virgilio A. P. Machado