Brian Haws wrote:
I don't think he's lost broad community support at all, if you look at his talk page and the talk pages on the ArbCom case, I think you'll see just the opposite.
And why, pray tell, would anyone who supports the decision dare go to his userpage and tell him, especially given his record of threatening blocks? Furthermore, why would any otherwise sane individual go and rub salt in the wound if he's that disturbed by the result of the RfAr by gloating about it? I'd like to think that most of the people who feel this is the proper outcome aren't interested in dancing around about it.
Any time someone leaves the project who's built a relationship with other editors, there's many pleas for them to reconsider. I don't necessarily take that as evidence of anything.
And when re-applying for RFA, you don't need to have lost broad support, just a small group (15% or so) of committed opposers will be enough to block it. Other high profile admins have gotten much longer leashes than this...
I think the evidence of lost support may, in fact, come from the results of the aborted arbcom election vote. Whether he acted correctly or ended up with the correct result (both of those are separate things) 99%, 75%, whatever of the time, I'm not sure that the trust of the general community exists anymore because of that percentage of being wrong.
Hell, I'm villified by a large portion of the community simply because I had an association with the group that's been trolling him. I've written an FA, created over 250 articles, and I have 10k edits to my name, but that doesn't change anything in a number of people's minds. As a whole, we're not defined by the 999 things we do right, but the 1 thing that people think we did wrong, and it doesn't matter who you are.
-Jeff