[WikiEN-l] Jayjg: Abusing CheckUser for political ends?

[Gracenotes]

On 6/15/07, jayjg <jayjg99 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 6/15/07, Gracenotes <wikigracenotes at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On 6/15/07, jayjg <jayjg99 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > On 6/15/07, Steve Summit <scs at eskimo.com> wrote:
> > > > If I'm a system administrator who has access to everyone's
> > > > mailbox, for example, and while investigating some mailbox
> > > > corruption I happen to notice a confidential email indicating
> > > > that an acquaintance of mine is screwing his sister-in-law,
> > > > I'm really supposed to keep that to myself.
> > >
> > >
> > > And what if you happen to notice that someone is using the e-mail
> system
> > > to
> > > send the blueprints of your latest product to your competitor? Are you
> > > supposed to keep that to yourself as well?
> > >
> >
> > Hopefully anyone's ethics-meter would go off there. Not to say anything
> > about the ethics involved in stopping an otherwise adept and dedicated
> > contributor from gaining the adminship, starting a moral panic by
> > baselessly
> > associating the contributor with malicious sockpuppets, and another item
> > that I won't mention because it would mean assuming bad faith and
> possibly
> > poisoning the well.
>
>
> If there's any "moral panic" here, it's in your post. I simply asked why
> the
> editor was using TOR proxies, which, as we all know, is a *violation of
> policy*. That's it. When he/she insisted on knowing why I "invaded her
> privacy", I explained how I had initially come across the information. I
> didn't stop him/her from gaining adminship, nor did I associate him/her
> with
> malicious sockpuppets, nor any other such nonsense. From what I can tell,
> many of the "oppose" votes were in reaction to over-the-top statements
> like
> yours. And if there's an "ethics-meter" issue, it is about how people like
> Joe and you are now framing this.


No, I did not say that you associated her with malicious sockpuppets;
others did the courtesy of that. You have to be relatively unaware of
current events to wade into an RfA and say, "Oh hello there, I noticed
you were editing from an open proxy, mind explaining?" and expect it
to pass. Yes, maybe you were assuming the benefit of the doubt.
But, as was brought up in my RfA, these kind of sensitive interactions
that can ruin someone's reputation on Wikipedia are better brought
up in an email. Some cited a failure to do so as indicative of lack of
empathy and judgment. (Before someone starts drafting a
thesis explaining why the RfAs are different, making special
reference to the fact that NOP is policy, please note that
the purpose of analogies is to illustrate, not prove.)

There is the possibility that I am framing it reasonably. There is the
possibility that I'm not, and you are. I think that it is an issue of
ethics; no one is claiming that you were not in violation of policy.
In fact, policy is a cushion for your actions. Not to say that it's
making a couple of people nervous and depressed.

Once again, no violation of policy. You did nothing wrong. I
am just saddened by the course of events here, since in RfA,
it is trite to be *disturbed* by a course of events.