[WikiEN-l] WR's secret forum and list

[Matthew Brown]

On Dec 10, 2007 6:01 PM, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
> Indeed. My main concern at this point is that there seems to be a
> philosophy prevailing that 'the general public just misunderstood what
> happened, therefore we don't need to actually change anything and it's
> the public's responsibility to get it straight.'

It's easy on Wikipedia for a small number of vocal individuals to
create the impression of widespread support - especially if, as
commonly occurs, enough fuss being caused about something creates the
impression that something must be behind it.

That said, there clearly were some gross mistakes made.

One lesson is that the practise of abandoning an old account and
starting afresh under a new identity has become widespread.  Thus,
behavior that indicates this is not necessarily all that significant
or suspicious.  If the former identity was an admin, behavior designed
to pass RFA is to be expected.  Note that the arbcom has previously
held that an individual may not hold two admin accounts; thus, asking
for desysopping of the old account is necessary at some point before
RFA.  It would generally be a good idea to inform the arbcom if you
are an admin who wants to abandon one account and gain adminship on
another.

Secondly, blocking while being unwilling to explain why is not
acceptable.  In rare cases this explanation should not be made public;
in those cases, the blocking admin should be sure to find other admins
who will support the decision on-Wiki, and preferably should be
willing to explain in private to uninvolved, trusted parties.  It
would be preferable to obtain the active agreement of the arbcom
before doing such a block.  In this case, Durova claimed that she had
support but nobody came forward to state that they supported her
decision.

Thirdly, getting too involved in hunting down suspicious users can
lead to unintended confirmation bias; things that support the
hypothesis get noticed, things that suggest against it get ignored
unless they are really damn obvious.  This is why it's good to run
things past someone not as close to the problem.  That's what one's
fellow admins are for, and it should never be possible that there are
no uninvolved admins one trusts.

(there are probably many more lessons, but that's a few)

-Matt