[WikiEN-l] Moderation on this mailing list

[Parker Peters]

On 2/20/07, William Pietri <william at scissor.com> wrote:
>
> Mark Ryan wrote:
> > For transparency, the moderated user "countpointercount" has the
> > following message for subscribers to the mailing list:
> >
> > 'Your "moderators" are now claiming that any reporting of abusive
> > administrators is a "personal attack." This is obvious coverup
> > behavior.'
> >
> >
> > This is in response to my rejection of two emails, both of which I
> > considered to contain personal attacks because they called various
> > administrators 'abusive' etc. What are the thoughts of subscribers to
> > the list on this? What would the appropriate course of action have
> > been?
> >
>
> Having  been cc'd on one of those rejected messages, I think you made
> the right decision.


I've now seen one of them, and I'm convinced the decision was completely
wrong: the diffs were both valid and exposed serious abusive behavior going
on.

I looked into the user in question, and he was being contentious and
> difficult on AIV within 30 minutes of creating his account.


{{fact}}

[[Diff Needed]]

I didn't see anything of the sort: what I did see is a user making a very
legitimate question, and being attacked and railroaded through an abusive
and quite possibly false CheckUser for his troubles.

I'd give
> 10:1 odds that he's a sockpuppet doing the standard
> I'm-really-not-a-sockpuppet dance. His refusal to calm down and the
> stridency of his accusations aren't helping, either.


The abject refusal of anyone to make any serious enquiry into his complaint,
the ongoing abuse of his talk page when he tried to file for unblock, and
the continual abusive tactics displayed by many administrators in trying to
shut off further enquiry on the WP:ANI board aren't helping him to calm
down, either. They're more proving his accusations had some truth behind
them.

On the off chance that his he's really a well-meaning user, it seems to
> me that he doesn't have a lot invested in that account, and he's already
> gotten himself a bad reputation.


You mean, he's already been attacked and his "reputation" meaninglessly
blackened by people who will defend administrator behavior no matter how
wrong they are.

If he's still following this list, I'd
> suggest that he just let this incident go and take a month's break from
> Wikipedia. Then when he has cooled down, he can start fresh with a new
> account. As long as he becomes a good contributor and  behaves
>
appropriately, nobody will know or care that he once got off on the
> wrong foot.


Which means that he is blocked from participating in anything on WP:ANI or
reporting bad behavior by administrators: a clever ruse to stop anyone from
reporting administrators, given that administrators are given free reign of
terror whilst anyone reporting them has to get past the wringer of
accusations to even file a report.

I know some people are concerned that this is censorship, and is
> blocking an avenue of appeal.


Yes, it is. There's no real controversy there: the behavior I'm seeing, from
start to finish, has been administrators consistently doing their best to
shut off legitimate complaints about the behavior of an administrator.

Why? Because if one administrator's actions can be questioned, they all can,
and we have too many administrators here who are way too attached to their
own power.


If people are really worried about that,
> we could create another list where we try to sort the wheat from the
> chaff and talk down from the ledge people who are upset, legitimately or
> not. Something between an ombudsman, a help desk, and a therapist. I'd
> rather not see that traffic on this list, but I'm glad to serve on that
> other list.
>
> William


The "other list" is called unblock-en-l, but it's a joke and serves not as a
legitimate place of complaint, but a mere rubber stamp to certify the
"godliness" of admins, no matter how abusive an action they take.

Parker

-- 
====
Parker Peters
http://parkerpeters.livejournal.com