[WikiEN-l] Blocking badlydrawnjeff (was Re: Thoughts on#wikipedia - threat or menace?)

[John Lee]

On 5/23/07, Philippe Beaudette <philippebeaudette at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> My thoughts (as a regular user - I'm not an admin) -
>
> I'm gravely disturbed by this whole process (or lack thereof).  Through my
> eyes, I see a political vendetta that was pursued within the ranks of the
> admins, who I would wish that I could trust implicitly, and my confidence in
> that is shaken.  There's nothing scary than a mob of villagers pursuing
> someone with torches.  My natural instinct is to jump into the fray on the
> side of the "wronged" party, but obviously, that's not appropriate here.


A vendetta? I see nothing personal in how the admins have been acting, with
the exception of Zsinj who *possibly* could have done it out of some
personal opinion about Jeff.

I have no opinion about Jeff - I think he probably serves a good purpose, as
> the agitator, and agitators often have detractors, but I hurt for him in
> this.  Further, I hurt for the people who made this decision; it's so
> difficult to be put in a position where you feel like you're driven to
> drastic action.  I wonder what it was that made them decide that our
> ordinary dispute resolution steps wouldn't work here?  Where is the
> consensus model in this?  Where did we, as a community fail?  DID we, as a
> community fail?  And, more importantly, how do we fix it to prevent it from
> happening again?
>
> Jeff was wronged, there's no question in my mind.  I won't cry out for
> blood, but I'll ask for accountability, and I'll ask for the decision tree,
> so that we can figure out where our systems broke down, if they did.
>
> I wonder about how we repair the damage that was done here - obviously,
> Jeff's unblocked, and that's A Good Thing.  But, what about the users like
> myself who see this action and worry about the unity and spirit of our admin
> corps?  How do we repair the shaken trust? I know these are people - flawed,
> like myself, but I expect a higher standard from admins.  Obviously,
> ArbComm's involved, and I think that's good.  I'd like to see users (not
> just the one who made the block, but including him/her) come forward and say
> "I was wrong, and I apologize".


The first thing to do is to rid yourself of the notion of a united admin
corps, because there isn't such a thing. Admins are basically ordinary
editors with some extra tools; it shouldn't surprise us that they fuck up
anymore than it should surprise us that a few idiots can get into edit wars
listed on [[WP:LAME]]. The only issue is sanctioning those responsible for
such fuck-ups.

Placing admins on such a pedestal is a bad idea - and even if you want to do
it, please don't refer to admins as a united collective, because we hardly
ever agree on anything (except possibly a few core ideas like [[WP:NPOV]]).
Treating us as a collective is like worrying about the unity and spirit of
our editing corps - it's pointless, because there's no such thing.

The Arbcom isn't literally involved just yet, per se. A new case has been
filed, but only one arbitrator has agreed to accept it, with two others
rejecting - but that was prior to the blocking incident. Let's see how this
goes.

More than anything, this makes me sad.
>
> Philippe
> [[User:Philippe]]


Johnleemk