[WikiEN-l] Arbiter involvement on the Durova affair

[Alec Conroy]

On 11/30/07, SlimVirgin <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:

> Alec, you're mixing up so many issues, it's hard to know where to
> begin. Some points:
>
> 1. There is no suggestion that Durova, or anyone else, mentioned !! on
> the Investigations list.

That's fine-- to those of us who weren't invited in, the distinctions
between the two lists have been very vague and murky.  At the least,
the "investigations" list, by its very name and description, seems to
involve "sleuthing"-- but it's totally conceivable that !! was not a
target discussed.

> There is therefore no evidence that ArbCom members even saw it.

Well, part of the issue is that, and part of the outrage, is that as
of a  few weeks ago, I thought even creating a secret list, inviting
all your wikipolitical-like-minded friends to join it, and
participating in such a list was prohibited.   I, for one, thought
just doing so was wrong, for all the reasons expressed at CANVASS and
star chamber.

So, for example, to take my own pet wikipolitical issue-- certainly it
had occured to me that I could set up a list of the people who had
registered their opposition to BADSITES. Then, whenever a
BADSITES-like deletions occurred, I could just post to the list, and
the consensus could descend upon the page and restore the deletion.
But I never made such a list, never even sent emails, because I
thought that some sort of off-wiki coordination would basically be
subverting the wiki-process-- stacking the deck.

When it came out that lists made up of people on the other side of the
debate existed-- Cyberstalking and Investigations are the ones we know
about so far--  it was immediately clear either people hadn't been
playing by the rules or else my earlier understanding of hte rules was
in error.

In considering the basic question of "Is a list like this
Investigations appropriate?", clearly Arbcom members who were ON the
list shouldn't be deciding the question.   They should have recused
themselves, and It would have been very bad for the community if any
split-decisions came down where the deciding votes were cast by arbcom
member who maybe should have been recused.   Since that didn't happen,
we lucked out.



> 3. I'm again confirming that Durova didn't propose to block !! on the
> cyberstalking list.

See, without the evidence, you could confirm that and I'd just have to
believe you.  But the evidence is out, and "No one could ever have
known !! might be blocked" just doesn't hold water.    Anybody
familiar with wikipedia who read Durova's "evidence" and didn't "get"
that !! was in danger of a block is either incompetent or insincere.


> 4. Fact: there are no secret lists. There are  public ones and private ones.

That just doesn't stand up in the light of day.  Arbcom-l is private--
there are criteria for who can join, its existence is public, its
membership is public.

Cyberstalkings and Investigations were secret.  Durova repeatedly
asserted this in her "evidence" that the mere EXISTENCE of the list
was not known.   It took days and days of asking before even the NAME
of the investigations list was revealed, as the members of the list
stonewalled, before finally the name came out through leaks from
non-members.   The membership lists of both lists have been leaked,
but I still don't think they've been mentioned on-wiki.

I can assure you-- these were secret lists.
---

In the end, it doesn't matter.  Obviously, at this point, the answer
to "Is it appropriate to set up a secret list where you and your
like-minded buddies discuss on-wiki happening" is  "Yes, that is
appropriate. "

Admittedly, I think if that  if the question had come up in a
different context-- if the anti-BADSITES people had made such a list
and it came to light, we might have reached a different answer, but
things are as they are, and lots of big names have vouched for the
idea that these lists are appropriate, so..  barring some policy
change, I guess that's that..

The end result is-- the next time I see six admins all agree on
something, I have to stop for just a second and check in my head-- are
they a random sample, or are they a biased sample-- rather than just
assuming that of course they wouldn't be colluding in a secret/private
forum.  Maybe I should have been performing that sort of mental
double-check all along, maybe everyone else already was.

Alec