[WikiEN-l] Quitting Wikipedia and wanted you to know why.

[charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com]

David Boothroyd wrote

> In February, blocked wrongly for a
> non-existent 3RR, at 1 AM in the middle of an edit that had taken
> an hour, I self unblocked. I was a very naughty boy and I was
> punished by being blocked again, but everyone seemed to think that
> was closed.
> 
> Then, months later a completely unrelated issue in which I was
> tangentially involved goes to ArbCom and results in this issue being
> dragged up again. 

Yes, you can have forgiving, and you can have transparent, but you may not be able to have both at once.

<snip>

> 2) If ArbCom is the only body that can remove admin status, excluding
> self-administered recalls, then how does it cope with low-level but
> persistent admin misbehaviour? ArbCom is much better at dealing with
> egregious single incidents.

But that comment is in tension with the previous point. 

If there is persistent incivility by someone, and there is a case brought, then everything from the year dot can in principle be brought up. Everyone should bear in mind that the site has an elephant's memory. 

I think the Arbs don't like such cases, where some snarkishness from early 2005 can get tagged onto recent misbehaviour. Makes some of us feel uncomfortable, if it can't be more clear cut than that. For myself, I'm all for dealing with the persistent problem users, but a smoking gun is very, very useful if you want to throw the book at people. It makes the defence that things change and people learn from mistakes irrelevant. We do want people to change behaviour, so 'give a dog a bad name' has to be borne in mind, just as much as the leopard and spots.

Charles

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