[WikiEN-l] Moderation on this mailing list

[Parker Peters]

On 2/21/07, William Pietri <william at scissor.com> wrote:
>
>
> Parker Peters wrote:
> > 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.
> >
>
> I think a point where we can agree is that I think many administrative
> and cleanup actions (not just blocks, but speedy deletions, regular
> deletions, and reverts) would go better if editors and admins were more
> patient with strong emotions, troublemaking, and the confusion of
> novices.


The problem is, administrators are not so. The current crop of
administrators are a bunch of hotheads, a provocative group who see any
chance to do something to try to provoke a reaction as justified because
they are the ones in power.


> In many cases, that could help people like "Samuel" to calm
> down, and it can keep people from turning into enemies.


Instead, admins on wikipedia and on this list consistently have done nothing
but the opposite. You've been doing your level best to turn every new editor
that comes in, any editor that comes to try to say "this isn't right", into
an enemy of wikipedia. And you're doing a very good job of it, because we
have more and more enemies every day thanks to your efforts.


That's part of
> why I'd like to see more admins, so that each one has more time and more
> patience.


Provided they actually showed patience, this would be a good thing, yes.
However, every system option that's been proposed so far has looked more
like a way for a group of admins to get more of their cronies made into
admins, than an honest way to get an honest group of administrators who can
enforce the rules fairly, neutrally, and remain calm and remember to treat
people with respect.

On the rest of it, I think we'll have to agree to disagree. I'm open to
> being persuaded that the current admin system is prone to the sort of
> collusion and systemic bias that crops up regularly in police
> departments. But this isn't the case that will do it for me.


This is precisely the case that shows it for me. Look at the sheer number of
problem admins:

- The_Epopt abuses a user once.

- Steel359 follows up The_Epopt's action and makes a nasty, incivil comment,
continues to try to provoke the user, blocks them, then locks the user page
and talk page and personally removes an unblock request.

- Sir Nicholas de Mimsy Porpington blocks a user, removes unblock request,
locks the talk page, AND redirects the talk page elsewhere to make it that
much harder to do a proper check.

- A completely innocent user, Miss Mondegreen, posts questions in regard to
this abuse and the deliberate provocation by Steel359, and is accused of
"trolling" and we see people calling for giving her a 6-month ban just for
speaking up.

- Trebor Rowntree (now curiously an admin candidate despite plenty of poor
behavior) abuses a user's talk page, removing unblock requests even though
he's not an admin.

- Yamla/Ryulong connection: I've been doing some studying, and two admins,
Yamla and Ryulong, are  answering probably far more unblock requests than
they should be, but since unblock declines aren't logged in an easy to check
way, it's hard to get real statistics. Regardless, this probably doesn't
help the situation, since their attitudes are rude at best.

- Regarding Jpgordon and the Checkuser, one of the few nice things about
being an old admin is that I still have a few contacts (who will remain
nameless for reasons you know well), and I've got the checkuser data myself.

Basis for a "probable" or "likely" check on CountPointercount and
RunedChozo? Zero edit collision (never a revert to each other or anything).
Possible IP address collision, but CountPointercount says he travels and the
IP is at a large university which likely has an open wireless network, so
that's no real proof either way. It would be easy enough to have
CountPointercount just go somewhere else and log in to prove he travels, but
that still has to get past people who are willing to falsify the results of
a CheckUser.

Basis for a "probable" or "likely" check on PSPMario and RunedChozo: editing
on two of the same articles (PlayStation Portable, PlayStation 3). PSPMario
reverts to RunedChozo's work on one occasion that I can find. Zero IP
address connection. The edit in question is related to a popular
webcomic/website (you may have heard of Penny Arcade?) and in regard to a
debatably popular, or at least widely noted in the newsmedia, game console.
We draw editors to these quite often, and claiming that PSPMario is a
"sockpuppet" based on this revert is a real stretch, especially since
Wikipedia's tools are specifically designed for things like reverts and
copying back of older versions/sections of a page.

Basis for a "probable" or "likely" check on PSPMario and CountPointercount:
the only possible confluence is that they both spoke up against the abusive
treatment RunedChozo received at the hands of Steel359. No edit collision,
no IP collision.

It's more likely that CountPointercount is a sockpuppet than PSPMario, and
even that is unlikely, definitely not the basis for a "likely" finding in
CheckUser.

JPGordon either misread the results or else deliberately wrote up his
"likely" summary to get rid of users who were question the behavior of
administrators, which is not a good thing. He likely didn't bother to run
the question on PSPMario at all, which doesn't say much for competence. I'm
willing to assume it was incompetence rather than malice for now, on his
part.

JKelly's indefinite block of CountPointercount can be excused on the basis
of "following orders" since JPGordon's bad checkuser was listed and Trebor
and "Ex-Nintendo Employee" were agitating to try to get everyone they
possibly can banned.

So yes, I'd say this has all the hallmarks of police dept-style corruption,
based on everything - all truthful - that I've just listed.

The_Epopt's involvement may explain why the arbitration committee members
are so curiously unwilling to respond to emails requesting that this be
written up as a case, and why administrators were so quickly trying to
"archive" it and otherwise quash investigation: they were probably easily
afraid that any action to the contrary would mean Epopt, or one of his
cronies, starting up an arbcom case to try to remove their own admin status.

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