On 6/18/07, jayjg jayjg99@gmail.com wrote:
On 6/18/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 18/06/07, jayjg jayjg99@gmail.com wrote:
So, again, why would "The Cabal (tm)" specifically want to stop CW from becoming an admin? What nefarious purpose is served by this?
The impression apparently comes from the timing of your revelation.
Yes, I've gathered that, but what has still not yet been forthcoming is the alleged purpose or benefit The Cabal (tm) would gain from this. The only rationale I've heard so far is that I was somehow trying to stop new admins from being created, but my actual "voting" record on RFAs shows that to be specious, and in any event, it would hardly slow down their 1.5 new admin/day creation rate, unless you assume a huge number of admin candidates are using proxies (which I think is highly unlikely).
Again, what nefarious purpose is served by this?
Personally, I still AGF regarding your actions here.
The key problem is that what you did gives a very strong appearance of having been an intentional attack to torpedo the RFA.
In many positions of responsibility, half of the job is not just avoiding actual impropriety, it's avoiding any appearance of it. People put power into positions and trust that it's being used in ways that everyone agrees are helpful to the community and not abusive of it.
Whether people think that actions are abusive largely depends in real life on perceptions and the public PR face of things rather than actual factual malfeasance. It's unfortunately possible to be a perfectly honorable person and put your foot in it so badly that nobody will ever trust you with a position of responsibility again. It's also unfortunately possible to have a squeaky clean public face and be corrupt in fact.
What you did put the critics in a position where they could, in their view of Wikipedia, conclude that you torpedoed a RFA with information widely considered to be confidential and private, and conclude that you did so on purpose as part of the great abusive admin cabal.
Your reactions since then have been defensible from the "I didn't really do anything wrong" factual point of view. They're disasterous from the "appearance of wrong" point of view. You're arguing with the critics in a manner that both engages and enrages them. This is, from a PR perspective, close to the absolute worst thing you could be doing. Bald silence would be better.
I AGF on the factual questions of an intentional hostile act to torpedo an RFA, and a privacy violation of CU data.
I can't AGF on the PR aspects of this. You can fix it, but you have a hole to dig out of. I think it's reasonable to ask that CUs, Arbcom members, foundation board members, and the like act in a more PR-aware manner than you have to date regarding this incident.
I would greatly regret coming to a conclusion that we can't trust you, in the wider community sense, with the Cu power merely because you turned a goof into a PR disaster. But that issue is now legitimately on the table. This RFA has become a double-edged microscope, as it were.
Please stop blowing off the gadfly critics; either don't talk to them or answer their questions calmly and without firing back. Please also engage the reasonable critics here and on-wiki and address the criticisms.