On 4/10/07, Parker Peters parkerpeters1002@gmail.com wrote:
On 4/10/07, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
On 4/10/07, Parker Peters parkerpeters1002@gmail.com wrote:
George, you're a regular laugh a minute.
Always nice to keep things properly in perspective.
Indeed.
Why would I believe unblock-en-l is any different? Why should anyone?
The
statistics show that three users answer more than 90% of the unblock requests on-wiki. THREE users, and they uniformly deny them all. Why
would I
believe that a secretive email list where nobody can see in, is any different? I don't see a reason why.
"The statistics" is an interesting claim - no statistics are in evidence, nor am I aware of anyone having generated any.
I was speaking of the statistics of the {{unblock}} template, though there's a fair amount of abuse of that too - especially abusive administrators who block someone and then lock their talk page or revert their attempt to place the {{unblock}} template before another user sees it.
There's no connection between {{unblock}} and unblock-en-L. They're parallel mechanisms which can do the same thing.
In some cases we find admins have made mistakes, or done something abusive, in which case we go talk to the admin. On rare occation an unblock-en-L member has just unblocked, without talking to the blocking admin first, but we operate under the principle that it's better to talk first and avoid wheel warring over blocks.
Funny, that - that's precisely the policy that's made appealing to "another administrator" a complete joke. You continually state that users have the "right" to appeal to any other administrator, but the policies as put in place say otherwise: an administrator is required to "talk" with the abusing administrator, who merely has to keep their mouth shut in order to stonewall action.
No, if we believe there's been a major error made, and the blocking admin isn't reasonably responsive, people will unblock and notify the blocking admin. It doesn't happen often, but it doesn't have to happen often. Admins usually respond. One of the advantages of unblock-en-L is that we have a bunch of admins there who are willing to push the issue politely; if I find something I ask the blocking admin to reconsider, and they don't, Luna or Yamla or Clowns can often show up and chime in on the blocking admin's talk page (or any of many others, just a few off the top of my head).
Deferring to the blocking admin doesn't mean ignoring the situation if they don't respond or are unreasonable.
"anyone who thinks we need more oversight is welcome to propose
more oversight."
Bullshit. I'd have been happy to do so, but your corrupt freaks decided
that
anyone who dissents, anyone who gets too close to the truth about their
corruption,
has to be banned before those with power get exposed.
Unblock-en-L has very little power to be corrupt with. If we stood in the way, blocking other mechanisms of block appeal, it might be possible for us to cause problems. But we don't. Any blocked user has 1300-odd admins they can appeal to directly via email; unblock-en-l; posting the templates on their talk page; Arbcom; and the Foundation in extremis.
All of which are rubber stamps, more or less. And your claim that they can appeal to 1300-odd admins "directly via email" is doubly duplicitous, since the rules on "wheel warring" basically prohibit any administrator following up.
The rules on wheel warring most certainly don't prohibit any admin from following up. That's a ridiculous view of the situation. Wheel warring just means don't *keep* doing something which gets undone; go talk about it. We take situations to AN/I all the time, asking for independent review and comment. The unblock-en-l admins and other volunteers are really good at doing per-policy notification, advocacy, and escalation. We don't have to do it very often, but we do it.
Unblock-en-L has not been granted any special power by the Foundation, Arbcom, or community. We're just there to help clear things up for people, and if they need help, we can provide it. There's no special power in the list, or list members. The Foundation or Arbcom could come stomp on us tomorrow if they felt we were abusive, or the wrong mechanism or any such.
And why would they stomp on a rubber stamp?
I don't like being rude, but really. Put up or shut up.
I don't like being rude, but really, you're just being a prick now. You've seen the behavior that leads me to distrust the claims you're making, and you're just going on like this now?
I believe a lot of people have grounds for complaints about the process. But that's not the same as being paranoid about the whole of WP infrastructure being out to get you.
We're open to oversight and review.
I'll believe it when I see it. The behavior I've seen, not just in relation to unblock-en-l but in relation to wikien-l and wikipedia in general, shows that administrators think "oversight" is another tool for abusing people and maintaining POV-clique control of the article space.
It's possible that there's no overlap between the set of people you'd trust to propose to review
Unblock-en-L and the set of people who we'd trust with people's privacy enough to do the oversight role.
It's possible. I don't know yet. See below.
If that turns out to be true then we have a mutual problem.
There are plenty of problems with Wikipedia, generally. If this was a mutual problem, at least you'd be admitting it was a problem, which would likely be a first.
But you haven't made the effort to attempt to nominate someone for a review or oversight role.
Because any nomination, as long as the abuse by David Gerard hangs over all this, is rather futile now isn't it? I mean, seriously. I propose one. Someone else - likely David or one of his cronies - says absolutely not, because the person I nominate now has a connection to me. The abuse and flaming by David and his corrupt cronies will go on, and before you know it, the whole thing's torpedoed.
I don't think David's on unblock-en-L and I don't think anyone but Jimbo or the Board would get veto power over people joining it.
Ah, what the hell. The worst you can do is make more enemies for your corrupt selves.
You mentioned Marc. I don't know him that well. I don't know if he's suitable or not. I'd prefer to see Saintonge, because he at least APPEARS to be one of the few trustworthy wikipedians who's had any connection to this list - but I note even he went silent, probably again at the hands of Gerard and his minions. So I really can't say for certain.
That's not the right spelling for his account name, and I'm not recalling the correct one... I just went wandering through a bunch of stuff and couldn't get it, either.
From what I recall, he was fine. Have you asked him?