Kiefer ban proposal
Just a quick comment - the proposal to ban Kiefer is troubling and quite badly wrong. The suggest of banning a user who was badly treated at the hands of a Wikimedia Foundation staff member is catastrophically wrong. It has all the hallmarks of criminalising the victim and apart from the questionable morality of such an option, the damage it could do to the project is enormous. The actions of the Arbitration Committee are closely scrutinised by members of our community and by people from much further afield, press and academics, and the negative reactions such a decision will create could do untold damage.
There's already a feeling of the community spreading out and clustering, of a caste system developing, with WMF staff at the top, functionaries and arbitrators also at the top, administrators some what further down, and regular editors without advanced permissions feeling really far adrift at the bottom, a decision to penalise such an editor when they were the victim of unsavoury and unacceptable comments by a WMF staffer is only going to reinforce that feeling amongst much of the community and polarise opinion unfavourably against the Arbitration Committee and the project itself.
I don't think Kiefer causes so much disruption that a permanent, indefinite block is the correct course of action anyway, the community is capable of dealing with any issues he raises, some of which are very important, such as the child protection issues.
The most recent blocks have all been overturned, either at the behest or with the support of the community and some shouldn't really be on there - I blocked him
for what turned out to be a spurious, bad faith outing complaint,
for example. The use of his block log as a stick to beat him with is wrong and shouldn't be taking place.
I'm not suggesting no action should be taken against Kiefer, but it needs to be proportionate to the complaint, the comments made by Oliver, the overall level of action taken by the committee in the case and the risk of disruption Kiefer could conceivably cause
for the project in future. I'd suggest some sort of admonishment and reminder about civility. The suggestion of a ban is a good example of what is wrong with the project - yes, Kiefer can be unpleasant, overly insistent and ultimately a little disruptive, but it's frequently because he feels he's being ignored and being unduly penalised. The current Arbitration case shows this to be largely correct, the Arbitration committee want to take no responsibility
for IRC and personal attacks made via that medium, instead choosing to focus on the results and responses to those personal attacks, but only when they take place on Wikipedia.
I trust you'll take onboard the comments I've made and make a more appropriate series of proposals at the RFAR,
for the future of the project,
for the benefit Kiefer and
for the integrity of the committee itself.
Nick (T-C-L) 4:21 pm, Yesterday (UTC+2)