Abe-
*I had never edited the page prior to this edit war and I have never
added
content to the page. The article's history demonstrates that I only
restored
versions, which were to be protected, that did not contain the content responsible for the edit wars. Personally, I was the ideal person to stabilize the page, being of no faith and never having participated in topics pertaining to the sex-abuse scandal.
Erik replied
The problem is that you expressed a very strong POV before your actions. You called the page contents gibberish, garbage, grotesque, rubbish, trash. That may all be true, but it places you in a position where you can no longer be an independent arbitrator. And that's what sysops who protect pages in edit wars should be. I have not asked you for an apology -- I have just asked you to accept and follow these rules: to only protect pages in matters where you have not taken sides. Instead you ignored my request and re-protected the page after I unprotected it. This, again, goes against a spirit of mutual cooperation among sysops and against the spirit of our policies as well.
I think you know that you overstepped the limits a little. I am willing to do my part and say that the protected page guidelines could be clearer on the point of when it is OK to protect and when it isn't. Can we then both agree to follow the guidelines in the spirit outlined above?
Erik, /you/ way overstepped the mark. 172 acted to stop an edit war through protecting a page, a page he had not contributed one word to but which one user was attempting to put an incoherent POV anti-catholic ramble. It may well have been inadvisable to for /him/ to do that, but he was dealing with an impossible situation, where there were calls for someone /urgently/ to act and where the user reponsible for the POV stuff had declared that he would continue to reinsert the nonsense with the warning not to cross him. He understood that he had Mav's support (something which Mav wrote appeared to give the OK but it turns out that Mav's words gave a wrong impression and that he was agreeing with something else, not Abe's offer to protect the page). He then protected it, believing he was doing what was agreed to.
When are /you/ going to apologise for 1. treating a user who acted in good faith in an emergency circumstances as if he was the guilty one when he believed he had the support of people like Mav in his actions?
2. For continually ignoring his attempts to clarify the matter?
3. For /you/ then leaving a sensitive page on which there was an edit war, wide open to more heavy POVing for someone who openly admits his anti-catholic agenda, including making comments that maybe catholics want their children abused?
If 172 deserves censure for in good faith for mishandling a crisis, so do you. If he deserves to lose his sysop powers, for your mislandling of the affair /you/ should lose your power to suspend sysops unilaterally. If apologies are required they are required from you too. Your handling was anything but adequate.
JT
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