Ray Saintonge wrote: Odd that you sent this message three minutes after admitting that you were wrong. Would you mind retracting that statement and apologizing to Ronny, to Jerome, and to this list? -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

On Aug 1, 2004, at 12:46 AM, Ray Saintonge wrote: Perhaps this wouldn't have happened if you'd bothered to assume good faith, or at least contacted Fire privately to find out what was going on instead of tearing over to the list to complain publicly? I mean, what happened from the perspective of the uninvolved is that your first reaction to a sysop action you didn't understand was to come over to the mailing list and decry the "loose canon sysop" who tried to "sneakily acquire some kind of superior access" to your Wiki so he could "block a user that he does not like." I mean, clearly he was sysopped by a steward. That is the only way to, as you put it, sneakily acquire access. There are only eight of those, and they're all very sane and respectable people. Alternatively, the other sane assumption would be that he was a developer or some other person who was supposed to have access wherever he needed it. I mean, sysops do not simply materialize from nowhere. In general, if someone has the power to block a user, there's probably a very good reason. It seems like the default assumption would not be "Loose cannon trying to meddle with my Wiki" but "Oh. There must be some reason for this." Especially since there was a link, albeit a bad one, to the name change policy. This might have been a clue that the block had something to do with the name change policy. You could have, perhaps, gone to Wikipedia and found where the name change policy was supposed to be. Then, perhaps, if you were still concerned about what the reason was you could have, say, asked someone. Like Fire, for instance. I think he would have been a good person to ask. Or maybe I'm just crazy. Never can tell. -Snowspinner

Jerome Jamnicky wrote: [cut] It would be usefull if a wikilink of the format [[projectname:language:namespace:page]] whould work on all Wikimedia project wikis in all languages. This [[wikipedia:nl:gebruiker:walter]] does not work in a wikipedia but it does in a Wikiquote. -- [[wikipedia:nl:gebruiker:walter]]

Timwi wrote: I just tried that on a few links at [[wikisource:Author:John Adams]] and it didn't work. Ec

I think all this misunderstanding would not have happened if you had explained what you were doing Fire. Most of the disputes seem to come from action from person A, misunderstood by person B. As mediators often say, most disputes have two sides. So, while it is good that person B try to take more time to understand what occured and perhaps ask privately at first, it is also good that person A avoid this to happen in taking care of explaining what is going on. A link to the request on meta pasted in the user page. Or a short explanation left in the banning comment would be likely to do the trick. Ronny Raschkowan wrote:

I see you're up to your old grudges again. ;-) Give it up, and you'll feel better. Angela_ wrote: I thought of going to his talk page, but since this was the first time he showed up it was likely that he wouldn't look at it. The mailing list was appropriate since the block was also a public act. He did "fire" out of nowhere There was no emergency or immediate necessity. superior access = access to do things that those who do not have such access cannot, access to a broader range of functions He blocked him indefinitely. He could easily have explained himself. Under the circumstances where this was a technical rather than a disciplinary block, any active sysop on Wikisource would have been happy to accomodate him. You certainly should have known better than to perform a temporary sysopping in preference to seeking co-operation.. If your written recommendations included getting the co-operation from those in the project in question (especially the smaller ones), then maybe someone like User:Fire would not leave us with the impression that they are a bull in a china shop. Ec