The behaviour of three people in driving me out of adminship at en:wikisource has left me bitterly disappointed with and deeply offended by the length to which some will go to rid themselves of someone whom they personally dislike. I cannot but view their efforts as anything but a series of concerted personal attacks. The details can be found at http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Wikisource:Administrators/Archives/Eclecticolo...
The process began in the context of an annual confirmation at Wikisource. John Vandenberg began stirring the pot with a series of five claims which were all easily refuted. He later commented:"there is no expectation that evidence is provided here, nor is there a requirement to have attempted to "fix" the admin conduct prior to the vote of confidence." This is clear hostility to any peaceful resolution.
Pathoschild did not hesitate to distort and exaggerate individual incidents to suit his purposes. If I call a certain type of edit "useless", it can hardly be construed as a comment about the person. When he went so far as to say that I was belittling others, that was a bald-faced lie. His comment, "Of course he can reapply at any time, but I'll likely object then for the same reasons," tells me that he is willing to hold on to his grudges indefinitely.
Although, to his credit, Thomas V did not cast a vote because his en:wikisource activities have recently been sparse, that did not prevent him from dragging in old settled issues pre-dating the division of Wikisource into separate domains. He did not hesitate to attack two individuals who supported my continued adminship. For one he complained that his support was based entirely on the way I looked in a picture of me taken at a Portland meetup. There was no doubt more to the IRC conversation than that, but I am not privy to how those behind-the-scenes conversations may have influenced opinions.
The grudges with the latter two individuals have been ongoing for a long time, and in the past year I have been more than happy to keep my contact with them to a minimum. I certainly have not had the energy to wantonly dig up dirt on them when their confirmations came up.
The underlying issues for the complaints against me would be laughable in certain other projects. NPOV issues are fairly uncommon in Wikisource; persistent copyvios are not an issue; no questions of edit-warring are involved. Much of the problems had to do with cleaning up backlog, or differing views about how articles should be named, or banners on an author page to say that we had no works by that author even though that fact was already obvious because all the links were red. I have also had strong differences with the more technically minded people (including all three named above) over technical solutions and how we use templates. I happen to believe that an overuse of such techniques will drive away desperately needed help from non-technical people, and that some of the more rigid structures actually hinder our ability to become a value-added project. I have no compunctions about expressing my visions forcefully, or allowing for multiple solutions to a problem without feeling obliged to choose one as superior. If one is indeed superior it will eventually prevail without being forced. Being an admin should not prevent anyone from strongly arguing views that are different from those that currently prevail, and the fear that those tools may be taken away should not serve to intimidate admins away from taking unpopular actions. Proceeding with fairness and integrity is more important than popularity, and if it means that my actions will occasionally be reversed I'm not too worried about that
I have participated in these communities for seven years already, and my loyalty to their success is beyond question. I was active on the original Wikisource from the day that it opened, and have always maintained a vision for that project that goes far beyond the current trends.
In the course of the confirmations I did express my willingness to consider mediation, but that received no response at all. The Wikisource community is too small to have a regular arbitration or appeal process, and seeking a review from the same people who drove the tyranny of the majority is not likely to be successful. They are not in a position to take a fresh unbiased approach to the matter. I would appreciate it if someone could give a fresh look at this, and perhaps provide a degree of mediation.
Ec
Hello,
I think this is a communety thing. Its to bad that you lost your adminship but why should people from other projects step in? I mean this is something on the en.source not a global thing. huib
2009/3/10, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net:
The behaviour of three people in driving me out of adminship at en:wikisource has left me bitterly disappointed with and deeply offended by the length to which some will go to rid themselves of someone whom they personally dislike. I cannot but view their efforts as anything but a series of concerted personal attacks. The details can be found at http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Wikisource:Administrators/Archives/Eclecticolo...
The process began in the context of an annual confirmation at Wikisource. John Vandenberg began stirring the pot with a series of five claims which were all easily refuted. He later commented:"there is no expectation that evidence is provided here, nor is there a requirement to have attempted to "fix" the admin conduct prior to the vote of confidence." This is clear hostility to any peaceful resolution.
Pathoschild did not hesitate to distort and exaggerate individual incidents to suit his purposes. If I call a certain type of edit "useless", it can hardly be construed as a comment about the person. When he went so far as to say that I was belittling others, that was a bald-faced lie. His comment, "Of course he can reapply at any time, but I'll likely object then for the same reasons," tells me that he is willing to hold on to his grudges indefinitely.
Although, to his credit, Thomas V did not cast a vote because his en:wikisource activities have recently been sparse, that did not prevent him from dragging in old settled issues pre-dating the division of Wikisource into separate domains. He did not hesitate to attack two individuals who supported my continued adminship. For one he complained that his support was based entirely on the way I looked in a picture of me taken at a Portland meetup. There was no doubt more to the IRC conversation than that, but I am not privy to how those behind-the-scenes conversations may have influenced opinions.
The grudges with the latter two individuals have been ongoing for a long time, and in the past year I have been more than happy to keep my contact with them to a minimum. I certainly have not had the energy to wantonly dig up dirt on them when their confirmations came up.
The underlying issues for the complaints against me would be laughable in certain other projects. NPOV issues are fairly uncommon in Wikisource; persistent copyvios are not an issue; no questions of edit-warring are involved. Much of the problems had to do with cleaning up backlog, or differing views about how articles should be named, or banners on an author page to say that we had no works by that author even though that fact was already obvious because all the links were red. I have also had strong differences with the more technically minded people (including all three named above) over technical solutions and how we use templates. I happen to believe that an overuse of such techniques will drive away desperately needed help from non-technical people, and that some of the more rigid structures actually hinder our ability to become a value-added project. I have no compunctions about expressing my visions forcefully, or allowing for multiple solutions to a problem without feeling obliged to choose one as superior. If one is indeed superior it will eventually prevail without being forced. Being an admin should not prevent anyone from strongly arguing views that are different from those that currently prevail, and the fear that those tools may be taken away should not serve to intimidate admins away from taking unpopular actions. Proceeding with fairness and integrity is more important than popularity, and if it means that my actions will occasionally be reversed I'm not too worried about that
I have participated in these communities for seven years already, and my loyalty to their success is beyond question. I was active on the original Wikisource from the day that it opened, and have always maintained a vision for that project that goes far beyond the current trends.
In the course of the confirmations I did express my willingness to consider mediation, but that received no response at all. The Wikisource community is too small to have a regular arbitration or appeal process, and seeking a review from the same people who drove the tyranny of the majority is not likely to be successful. They are not in a position to take a fresh unbiased approach to the matter. I would appreciate it if someone could give a fresh look at this, and perhaps provide a degree of mediation.
Ec
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Hello,
I think this is a communety thing. Its to bad that you lost your adminship but why should people from other projects step in? I mean this is something on the en.source not a global thing. huib
I concur. On-wiki discussion is the appropriate method of resolution.
- Chris
On Tue, Mar 10, 2009 at 1:00 PM, Huib Laurens sterkebak@gmail.com wrote:
Hello,
I think this is a communety thing. Its to bad that you lost your adminship but why should people from other projects step in? I mean this is something on the en.source not a global thing. huib
-- Leave nothing but footprints, take nothing but pictures
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:SterkeBak
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Hello,
I think this is a communety thing. Its to bad that you lost your adminship but why should people from other projects step in? I mean this is something on the en.source not a global thing. huib
--
I have no idea of the en.ws situation, nor do I want to have any idea, but I would like to remark that leaving such things to the community decision is a good idea only if the community itself is big enough. Otherwise, it is easy for a group of individuals, or even for an individual to introduce their own rules which may be incompatible with the general purposes of the project. In this case, an external help may be needed. For instance, this is what happened a year ago on ru.wb when the only admin has been desysopped after it has been discovered and reported on this very list that he arbitrarily abused and blocked other users and removed edits.
Again, I am not really aware of the situation on en.ws, I have no idea whether this project is big enough to solve their own problems within the project, and I do not want to make any statements about any users over there. (As a matter of fact, I never logged in to en.ws). I just wanted to say that not every project is capable with solving its own problems.
Cheers Yaroslav
On Wed, Mar 11, 2009 at 7:05 PM, Yaroslav M. Blanter putevod@mccme.ru wrote:
Hello,
I think this is a communety thing. Its to bad that you lost your adminship but why should people from other projects step in? I mean this is something on the en.source not a global thing. huib
--
I have no idea of the en.ws situation, nor do I want to have any idea, but I would like to remark that leaving such things to the community decision is a good idea only if the community itself is big enough. Otherwise, it is easy for a group of individuals, or even for an individual to introduce their own rules which may be incompatible with the general purposes of the project. In this case, an external help may be needed. For instance, this is what happened a year ago on ru.wb when the only admin has been desysopped after it has been discovered and reported on this very list that he arbitrarily abused and blocked other users and removed edits.
Again, I am not really aware of the situation on en.ws, I have no idea whether this project is big enough to solve their own problems within the project, and I do not want to make any statements about any users over there. (As a matter of fact, I never logged in to en.ws). I just wanted to say that not every project is capable with solving its own problems.
I agree with this. English Wikisource does not have a mediation framework, and I didnt participate in that desysop discussion as much as I should have, due to time constraints. The next step would be a meta RFC, or something like an offwiki discussion. I am happy to participate in something like that if it would help.
What I will say now is that Eclecticology is a great contributor to the English Wikisource project, and I hope he continues to be. The main project that he has been working on, [[s:Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900]], has been exempt from the structure imposed on the rest of the project, as a way of reducing the tensions.
-- John Vandenberg
John Vandenberg wrote:
On Wed, Mar 11, 2009 at 7:05 PM, Yaroslav M. Blanter putevod@mccme.ru wrote:
I have no idea of the en.ws situation, nor do I want to have any idea, but I would like to remark that leaving such things to the community decision is a good idea only if the community itself is big enough. Otherwise, it is easy for a group of individuals, or even for an individual to introduce their own rules which may be incompatible with the general purposes of the project. In this case, an external help may be needed. For instance, this is what happened a year ago on ru.wb when the only admin has been desysopped after it has been discovered and reported on this very list that he arbitrarily abused and blocked other users and removed edits.
Again, I am not really aware of the situation on en.ws, I have no idea whether this project is big enough to solve their own problems within the project, and I do not want to make any statements about any users over there. (As a matter of fact, I never logged in to en.ws). I just wanted to say that not every project is capable with solving its own problems.
I agree with this. English Wikisource does not have a mediation framework, and I didnt participate in that desysop discussion as much as I should have, due to time constraints. The next step would be a meta RFC, or something like an offwiki discussion. I am happy to participate in something like that if it would help.
I am amenable to a solution of this sort.
What I will say now is that Eclecticology is a great contributor to the English Wikisource project, and I hope he continues to be. The main project that he has been working on, [[s:Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900]], has been exempt from the structure imposed on the rest of the project, as a way of reducing the tensions.
Fair enough, and while continuing work on that project, I have seen fit to limit my insistence on broadly applying my viewof the disputed structure. I still believe that my approach is a better one, but have for some time already taken the approach that that can best be exhibited by essentially limiting my approach to one encyclopedic work and one periodical [[s:McClure's Magazine]]. In part, it was to reduce tensions, but there was a recognition that I had a limited amount of time for working at it.
Ec
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