[WikiEN-l] The admin problem

Thu Mar 2 18:47:33 UTC 2006

The point of this is not to enshrine process. I merely said that he
acted completely contrary to policy, relied upon backchannel authority
for it (which turned out to be false), and said that the reprobation
of users who inquired about such authority was ill-founded.

And in response I have gotten nothing but abuse -- and not just
disagreement, which I always welcome, but name calling and crude
attacks on my intelligence -- from people who should know better. In
my opinion, if our processes or policies are wrong, we should try to
fix them first before deciding to dump it. It is a better long term
solution.

And I was, and remain, correct, so far as anything presented here as
shown. I will continue not to suspend my natural skepticism in the
absence of compelling reason.

And just as a parting shot or two: I didn't bring this issue up here
first. I'll admit, after the RFC provoked so many ridiculous defenses
of TBSDY's actions, I was tempted to post to the list. But I decided
not to. Why get involved in a big argument about it here? It's a
violation of policy, but it was not the end of the world, and I'm
happy to leave it at that.

But after it was lauded by Tony Sidaway as an example about the merits
of backchannel dealings and "suspicions" such as mine were declared to
be meritless and counter-productive, I thought some clarification was
needed, for those who had not followed the goings-on at WP. This, to
my surprise, provoked nothing but ire, demands that I stop,
accusations about accusations (I never accused TBSDY, Tony Sidaway, or
anyone else of "lying" in the slightest, and attempted at many points
to clarify exactly what I was alleging), name-calling, and, in the
end, absolutely not one shred of reasonable argumentation against my
assessment.

Now you can say that you happen to agree with the outcome, that ends
justify the means, what have you. To me, that is beside the point of
the whole dialogue. I have no love for fair use images. I have no love
for stifling processes.

But I do think that this sort of activity is more counter-productive
than it is productive. Some images were deleted, but at what cost? In
terms of time, resources, trust, morale, feelings, and future progress
-- I think much more than was necessary for the job at hand. It would
have been easier to change the policy, and in the end it would have
taken up less time than these discussions have. The deletion was
expedited, but the overall case was not expedient.

It is this sort of thing which provokes a good, reliable editor -- of
which I count myself, generally speaking, if it is not too vain to do
so -- to want to throw a fit of self-pity, say "I'll never edit here
again," or "I'll never work on policy again," or "I'll never
participate in this list again," or "I've got better thing to do than
hang out with these unappreciative louts, who are unable to take
responsibility errors of others or themselves." (OK -- the last one
might be a bit specific to this instance.)

I'm not going to do or say any of those things -- I only once
succumbed to the urge, saying I might not work on fair use again, and
afterwards I regretted being so melodramatic -- but it's the sort of
urge one feels. One gets the feeling, that one is trying to be
reasonable with a hoard of barbarians, one gets the feeling that one
is alone in one's reason in a sea of irrationality. It's not an
entirely justified feeling, I recognize -- a few people have written
to the list in agreement with me, one even wrote a much-appreciated
note of thanks -- but it is an unpleasant and very real feeling
nonetheless.

I say all this not to be melodramatic (but maybe I am, anyway), and
not to drag this on more than it needs to be (but perhaps I have
already done so), but only to hopefully derive some positive use from
the whole exchange: it illustrates perfectly the problems of relying
on backchannel discussions for justifying policy decisions, and if
anything positive were to come out of it, perhaps admins in the
future, if they felt that Jimbo had given them personal authority to
violate policy, would secure an open statement of such beforehand.
Just a suggestion.

Feel free to misinterpret this message however you please.

FF

On 3/2/06, Jon <thagudearbh at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> Stop wikilawyering.
>
>   It was clear that these images were going to go. That's the important thing.
>
>   Ok, TBSDY cut to the chase - but he got the job done. "Process" is not some god to be bowed down to. Now, ok, if TBSDY deleted images wholesale where there was a realistic possibility that after going through a fuller process they would have stayed, then there would be some point in asking him not to do the same thing in the future  - and even then you shouldn't rake him over the coals for actions clearly conducted in good faith. However, in this case, noting this email, there is no doubt - the images were doomed and the only action worth doing in response is thanking TBSDY for carry out the administrative chore.
>
>   Jon
>
>
>
>
> Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
>   The TBSDY e-mail has been posted at the RFC with Jimbo's permission,
> so I don't think it's wrong to repost it here.
>
> From: Jimmy Wales Mailed-By: wikia.com
> To: Arbitration Committee mailing list
> Cc: ta.bu.shi.da.yu at gmail.com, Tony Sidaway
> Date: Feb 19, 2006 7:42 AM
> Subject: Re: [Arbcom-l] ta_bu_shi_da_yu believes over 200 Time
> magazine covers pose a serious liability and bad PR
> threat
>
> I'd like to see a bulk AfD on these things. And if the answer is wrong,
> then I'll personally delete them anyway and use this as a good example
> of what's broken about AfD.
>
>
> --
> #######################################################################
> # Office: 1-727-231-0101 | Free Culture and Free Knowledge #
> # http://www.wikipedia.org | Building a free world #
> #######################################################################
>
>
> I think my interpretation is correct that this did not give TBSDY
> authority to speedy the images. As we know, AFD is about the polar
> opposite of speedying, for better or worse.
>
> FF
>
>
> On 3/2/06, Justin Cormack wrote:
> > On Thu, 2006-03-02 at 11:58 -0500, Fastfission wrote:
> > > Here are my claims simplified:
> > > 1. TBSDY was speedying large amounts of images labeled as "fair use"
> > > as being copyvios.
> > > 2. There are no CSD provisions for speedying images as copyvios (or at
> > > least, were not any at the time he was doing this; I haven't checked
> > > them since then).
> > > 3. TBSDY claimed that Jimbo gave him the right to speedy images as
> > > copyvios in a private e-mail.
> > > 4. TBSDY produced the e-mail, and it said that TBSDY could nominate
> > > the images for deletion (the proper policy), and if that failed, Jimbo
> > > might decide to speedy them. It did not say TBSDY could speedy images,
> > > or any other admin, as copyvios.
> > >
> > > My conclusions: TBSDY did not, in fact, have the authority to speedy
> > > images as copyvios, and was acting against policy. I'm perfectly happy
> > > to assume good faith on this and assume he misunderstood Jimbo's
> > > e-mail or something like that -- nothing dishonest is posited.
> >
> > Seems like an amount of misunderstanding.
> >
> > Can we see the email?
> >
> > Justinc
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
>
> ---------------------------------
> To help you stay safe and secure online, we've developed the all new Yahoo! Security Centre.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>