On Fri, 23 Nov 2007 12:53:37 -0500, "The Mangoe" the.mangoe@gmail.com wrote:
One of the things you seem to miss, Guy, is that I (and I'm pretty sure that Dan holds the same opinion) don't really care about the running vendetta between Wikipedia Review and and The Cabal. At least, not as to the issues behind it. The thing that's annoying us is that The Vendetta keeps causing collateral damage in other parts of Wikipedia that don't have anything to do with the topics that started the whole rucus.
I have to correct a fundamental misconception here. The cabal (TINC) has no vendetta. The admin community has a job to do, and that job includes protecting editors from being harassed and threatened, protecting Wikipedia form being vandalised and protecting the content from being biased by people aggressively pushing an agenda.
The "vendetta" you describe is nothing more than a small group of individuals frustrated in their attempts to do one of those things that admins must stop them from doing.
Nobody held a gun to JB196's head and forced him to create over 500 sockpuppets, vandalise hundreds of articles, subvert an admin and pursue a vendetta against Wikipedia in general. That was his choice. Our choice was that we were not interested in being the venue for his self-promotion. It wasn't a very difficult choice to make, this was not a controversial ban. Neither was the ban of Judd Bagley. Bagley threatened to harass the admin who stopped him pushing his employer's agenda, and made good on that threat. If you look at ASM you'll see that he has threatened and harassed many people. This is not specific to Wikipedia, it is simply a function of how important it is to the abusers to get their agenda published on Wikipedia.
You've also missed another crucial point, which is that having taken opposite positions for most of the debate, David Gerard and I are actively collaborating on writing a Clue-based guideline to avoid the trivial mistakes which triggered the acute over-reaction which triggered the massive festivals of Stupid in which we all (and here I am certainly not excluding myself) took part. Hopefully we can also write it to avoid the hysterical over-reactions as well.
And I know full well that some participants in that debate will ascribe the hysteria only to their opponents. They are the ones who are *most* wrong and probably most to blame.
Guy (JzG)