SashiRolls requests a hearing

The Garbage Scow · Unread post by **The Garbage Scow** » Mon Oct 29, 2018 8:53 pm

They seem to really want you to promise not to hunt for more Admin sockpuppets. You must be good at it!

Unread post by **Midsize Jake** » Mon Oct 29, 2018 8:59 pm

Bezdomni wrote:It was blocked shortly after I clued Arbcom into that account's existence by linking to a page showing how annoyed the Green Party was with the Wikipedians for smearing their candidates. Bbb23 got that message from the MobCar CB.

Okay, I understand that "MobCar" is a humorous rearrangement of "ArbCom," but what does the "CB" refer to? Does that refer to a communications backchannel, or "committee board," or what? Or are you saying they all have actual CB radios that are used to notify other members of when "high-value target" sock-puppet accounts are discovered?

Poetlister · Unread post by **Poetlister** » Mon Oct 29, 2018 9:22 pm

Lankai wrote:Given you are going to get unblocked, I would advise that you should not edit controversial or anything related to the subjects you edited before. At least not for few months. Those who have opposed your unblock are going to check your edits every day to invent a new reason to get you site banned.

Excellent advice. And remember that on Wikipedia, almost anything can become controversial unexpectedly, so be prepared to make a quick exit from that article as soon as it starts.

Bezdomni · Unread post by **Bezdomni** » Tue Oct 30, 2018 12:24 am

While this has been going on KalHolmann has been indeffed after discussion brought by jytdog to AN for off-wiki matters.

O3000 has linked to this thread again, leading to a bunch of contributions being marked out on my watchlist, but not actually hidden from AN. Tryptofish has likewise complained of grudgey off-wiki posts, though doesn't go so far as to suggest that anything inaccurate has been said. Googling Tryptofish, I do find some threads about him with a lot of sourced quotations in them. Maybe he just doesn't like them and doesn't actually dispute what is said.

CB: communications backchannel, that's good, Jake. Ever since one particular discussion, I can't help but imagine Arbcom as a finely-tuned low rider.

And yes Lankai, that is clear. The admin who placed the no-defending-anonymous-strangers-on-the-drama-boards sanction on me was (perhaps unintentionally) very clever, because it is completely sure never to be successfully appealed (what?! you want to get involved in other people's drama?! ha, what kind of twisted masochist are you?), which means that a fresh start is impossible (so I can't just fade into the background legitimately because of that unappealable sanction). It was suggested to them by someone-who-has-since-changed-their-pseudonym, but still couldn't resist commenting in the AN thread. I believe my appeal has now been left open longer than both the AE cases Cirt brought added together. Don't know if leaving those earlier cases open a bit longer would've allowed the sockpuppeting admin to have been found out more quickly, and I suppose we never will...

Jim · Unread post by **Jim** » Tue Oct 30, 2018 1:05 am

Mason wrote:
Boing! said Zebedee wrote:As an aside, I'm singularly unimpressed by the oppose that's partly based on your use of Wikipediocracy. The opinion it expresses is very much wide of the mark, and what you do on other sites should have no bearing on Wikipedia unless you were pursuing nefarious ends (which you clearly were not). I might add a brief comment about that.
I was surprised to see the link to this thread suppressed on AN. But the "no badsites" enforcement has always been wildly inconsistent, I suppose.

I'm struggling to see the logic there too. Mr Ballioni (new oversighter) appears to have removed the link to this thread which Mr. Objective3000 posted in response to Mr. Tryptofish, looking purely at content size added/removed, but obviously mere mortals cannot see who oversighted what.

iii · Unread post by **iii** » Tue Oct 30, 2018 1:14 am

Bezdomni wrote:While this has been going on KalHolmann has been indeffed after discussion brought by jytdog to AN for off-wiki matters.

O3000 has linked to this thread again, leading to a bunch of contributions being marked out on my watchlist, but not actually hidden from AN. Tryptofish has likewise complained of grudgey off-wiki posts, though doesn't go so far as to suggest that anything inaccurate has been said. Googling Tryptofish, I do find some threads about him with a lot of sourced quotations in them. Maybe he just doesn't like them and doesn't actually dispute what is said.

CB: communications backchannel, that's good, Jake. Ever since one particular discussion, I can't help but imagine Arbcom as a finely-tuned low rider.

And yes Lankai, that is clear. The admin who placed the no-defending-anonymous-strangers-on-the-drama-boards sanction on me was (perhaps unintentionally) very clever, because it is completely sure never to be successfully appealed (what?! you want to get involved in other people's drama?! ha, what kind of twisted masochist are you?), which means that a fresh start is impossible (so I can't just fade into the background legitimately because of that unappealable sanction). It was suggested to them by someone-who-has-since-changed-their-pseudonym, but still couldn't resist commenting in the AN thread. I believe my appeal has now been left open longer than both the AE cases Cirt brought added together. Don't know if leaving those earlier cases open a bit longer would've allowed the sockpuppeting admin to have been found out more quickly, and I suppose we never will...

I hope none of this surprises you at this point.

You are right on the border of being a real PITA for the powers that be over there, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. They need people to hold their feet to the fire, but be aware that by doing so you run the risk of getting burned. If you can maintain control over your understandable impulse to start prodding and make sure you only do your "investigations" in the context of private channels that won't bother people, you've got a shot at redemption. Still, right now the strongest thing you have going for yourself is that your initial defense turned out to be correct.

Unfortunately, I think there are a lot of people over there (many of whom I, unlike a certain segment of the population here, think are net positives) that think this whole thing is possibly a case of a stopped clock being right twice a day. I don't know for sure whether that's actually not the case. Your Green Party championing is, at the very least, a borderline concern in my book, but I also recently witnessed someone needing to be committed to a mental hospital over falling down such a rabbit hole -- no lie -- so I'm not inclined to trust my judgment on that front. In other areas, you seem to be right as rain (as some others I know who have historically supported the Green Party).

The party line on this site tends to be that the people over there should follow their own rules, and while I sympathize with that position, I no longer think it's worth fighting that battle, per se. Rather, I think what would be best for Wikipedia is if there are people working on it who can fix problems that my students may encounter. It seems to me that you may have some of those skills, so I hope my investment of time here was not for naught. But even if it was, well, I've been guilty of wasting more time on less productive things.

Unread post by **Midsize Jake** » Tue Oct 30, 2018 1:26 am

Jim wrote:I'm struggling to see the logic there too. Mr Ballioni (new oversighter) appears to have removed the link to this thread which Mr. Objective3000 posted in response to Mr. Tryptofish, looking purely at content size added/removed, but obviously mere mortals cannot see who oversighted what.

I fear that most Wikipedia admins these days don't really understand subtlety or even the Streisand Effect. When they do things like that it just makes people more curious about what they're trying to suppress or hide.

TBH, I hadn't really looked into this case of Mr. Bezdomni's much before today, since I assumed nothing would come of it, but now that I have... the material they're calling "evidence" against him is almost comically trussed-up. There's practically nothing offensive there by any reasonable standard, or even by the standards that were in place at that time on Wikipedia. And now, at a time when they're seriously discussing whether or not the term "fuck off" should even be considered a civility violation, it's just laughable.

This was just a straight-ahead "get this guy out of the way, he vaguely irritates me" situation - it would have been an overreach even if the admin in question wasn't a sock-puppet account. Obviously I'm not unbiased, nor am I French, but nearly all of what they're calling "harassment" here can be just as easily - and much more realistically - be interpreted as wry (if somewhat stilted) French humor. It's like these people have never even seen The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (T-H-L), ferchrissakes.

If we're being charitable, maybe we could assume that the amount of unwelcome interaction was the problem... but that just seems too subjective to me.

Jim · Unread post by **Jim** » Tue Oct 30, 2018 1:34 am

What I missed was that Mr. Ballioni left Mr. Objective3000 a note:

Hi, I've unfortunately had to remove one of your comments at AN and suppress some revisions. Linking to other accounts off-site and providing a direct link to it falls under disclosure of non-public personal information, even if we try to talk around it. TonyBallioni (talk) 23:35, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

@TonyBallioni: Understood. I took a chance because, in my mind, it is public, not a real identity, and I think pertinent. The appeal will succeed and I hope for the best. Unlikely given the history. Rgds, O3000 (talk) 00:03, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, I get the thought process, but unless someone has linked an account on another website to their account on-wiki, a good rule of thumb is not to link. Not mad or anything, just wanted to let you know what I did. TonyBallioni (talk) 00:10, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

Thanks. Que será, será. O3000 (talk) 00:21, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

I'm not really convinced that this was a necessary or sensible use of his shiny, new oversight tool, but, as Mason pointed out, they pretty much make up the (wildly inconsistent) 'rules' for this as they go along, with, as you say, little thought for the 'Babs effect'...

iii · Unread post by **iii** » Tue Oct 30, 2018 1:48 am

Midsize Jake wrote:This was just a straight-ahead "get this guy out of the way, he vaguely irritates me" situation - it would have been an overreach even if the admin in question wasn't a sock-puppet account.

Yeah, this is American politics playing out, of course. The whole right wing-left wing shit show of the last election leaves lots of people, including the ones who got irritated with SashiRolls, so tired of being irritated that they're willing to be super mean about it. We now not only have the traditional paranoid style of American politics, but there is also the confusion that some who promote conspiracies might also be witting or unwitting co-conspirators.

Unread post by **Midsize Jake** » Tue Oct 30, 2018 1:59 am

Jim wrote:I'm not really convinced that this was a necessary or sensible use of his shiny, new oversight tool, but, as Mason pointed out, they pretty much make up the (wildly inconsistent) 'rules' for this as they go along...

I understand the policy, such as it is, but he did include a link to the blog post he wrote for us a month or so ago, and while the byline is "Sashi" and not "Bezdomni," you'd have to be almost deliberately obtuse to think it's a different person than the one on the forum whose profile (visible on all posts) says his Wikipedia user name is "SashiRolls."

I guess he might not have noticed it, or maybe just didn't want to click on the link, because of our reputation for trying to place hidden webcams in Wikipedians' bathrooms or whatever. Hopefully that's all it is.

Unread post by **Midsize Jake** » Tue Oct 30, 2018 2:22 am

iii wrote:Yeah, this is American politics playing out, of course. The whole right wing-left wing shit show of the last election leaves lots of people, including the ones who got irritated with SashiRolls, so tired of being irritated that they're willing to be super mean about it. We now not only have the traditional paranoid style of American politics, but there is also the confusion that some who promote conspiracies might also be witting or unwitting co-conspirators.

He's certainly irritated me on numerous occasions, with his apparent belief that the Democrats are somehow just as bad as (if not worse than) the Republicans, apparently for no better reason than they kept more people from voting for Jill Stein and the Green Party than the Republicans did. I suppose that as a French person, he might not fully appreciate the inherent dangers of the USA's two-party system, "Electoral College" proxy-voting, and so on... not to mention that he doesn't now have to live under the Trump regime/OGC himself. But somehow, all that hasn't quite been enough to get us to ban him from the site.

Obviously they'll never admit that this was the real (or at least underlying) rationale, but it does make the most sense, at least.

Bezdomni · Unread post by **Bezdomni** » Tue Oct 30, 2018 3:55 am

Brick Red Jake wrote:...his apparent belief that the Democrats are somehow just as bad as (if not worse than) the Republicans, apparently for no better reason than they kept more people from voting for Jill Stein and the Green Party than the Republicans did. I suppose that as a French person, he might not fully appreciate...

Thanks Jake, I think the ink is dry on my target now, could you check before I move and smear it up? I'll just remind you again that I'm not French despite liking both the Bunuel movie and the description of it that you linked to. Now, as for the intrinsic bestiness of all the members of the Pink Party as opposed to the Teal Party, I'm not so sure why you're saying stuff I certainly never have.

iii: thanks for the time you've put in, and the food for thought. Inicidentally, JS talks about that dinner party at one point on Democracy Now! She felt she ought to be there, paid to go, and spent the night chatting with a former German diplomat. As long as no other media entity in the US will broadcast 3rd party candidates, I don't see it as an an illegitimate move to spend money to travel there to show appreciation and to point that fact out, with pictures such as the one you posted. She says she was surprised Wired-in Flynn was there and says that the Russians wooshed in at the last moment, as it happens just in time for the photo that Willy Wimmer (the missing person between her and the Kusturicas) managed to artfully dodge. Shortly after the photo, Putin got up, and wandered off to give a speech. ^^

DR. JILL STEIN: I've explained a thousand times why I was at that table. [...§ ...]
------
The New Yorker actually reported that Putin and Flynn exchanged one sentence, which went something to the effect, “How’s it going?” “OK.” And that was reported by the Czech diplomat, who was the one person at the table who spoke both English and Russian, that was sitting next to Flynn, as well. Flynn actually introduced himself to me just before we sat down at the dinner. I thought it was curious that there was a military person at this conference that largely seemed to be peace advocates. And I should mention, by the way, that Ray McGovern was there, Rocky Anderson, Jesse Ventura, Thom Hartmann, Max Blumenthal. It was really a who’s who of the peace community, that, regrettably, has to resort to a foreign TV network in order to be heard in this country, because—

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, Jill—Jill, I wanted to ask you—

DR. JILL STEIN: —the issues of war and peace are not accepted by corporate media...

ed. trying to punctuate

Jim · Unread post by **Jim** » Tue Oct 30, 2018 3:57 am

Midsize Jake wrote:you'd have to be almost deliberately obtuse to think it's a different person than the one on the forum whose profile (visible on all posts) says his Wikipedia user name is "SashiRolls."

You'd think so. On the other hand, we've mentioned before the kind of blind panic/headless chicken mode they seem to tumble into with anything that even vaguely touches on the ever so sacred yet situationally variable OMGITSOUTING 'policy', so there's that too...

GorillaWarfare · Unread post by **GorillaWarfare** » Tue Oct 30, 2018 4:01 am

Midsize Jake wrote:
Bezdomni wrote:It was blocked shortly after I clued Arbcom into that account's existence by linking to a page showing how annoyed the Green Party was with the Wikipedians for smearing their candidates. Bbb23 got that message from the MobCar CB.
Okay, I understand that "MobCar" is a humorous rearrangement of "ArbCom," but what does the "CB" refer to? Does that refer to a communications backchannel, or "committee board," or what? Or are you saying they all have actual CB radios that are used to notify other members of when "high-value target" sock-puppet accounts are discovered?

How did you find out about the radios??

Unread post by **Midsize Jake** » Tue Oct 30, 2018 5:15 am

GorillaWarfare wrote:How did you find out about the radios??

We hadn't.

Until just now....

Bezdomni · Unread post by **Bezdomni** » Tue Oct 30, 2018 5:23 am

I sent you my mail at 2:13 PM on Sept 24, 2016 (my local time)
I was blocked at 6:10 PM on Sept 24, 2016 (wikipedia time)

At the time I thought it might be just telepathy, of course.

Oh, I'd forgotten. I made my pond frog a Basho page. I appear to have made (3) three (!) times as many edits as I'd remembered with B'rer Frog, though in fairness one was just a copyedit: §

Unread post by **Midsize Jake** » Tue Oct 30, 2018 5:23 am

Bezdomni wrote:I'll just remind you again that I'm not French...

You never actually told me that before, it just seemed like the only legitimate explanation for everything I was seeing.

So what's your excuse, then, if you're not French? Did a bunch of people wearing "Hillary 2016" t-shirts push you down into the mud (presumably somewhere other than France) and kick you in the head with an iron boot?
Help us understand.

Bezdomni · Unread post by **Bezdomni** » Tue Oct 30, 2018 6:01 am

I grew up in a small Midwestern town that anyone inadvertently mentioned on the Jill Stein talk page just after Cirt I. That Midwestern background was the reason for my skepticism about the Democratic progiciel of running Clinton and pushing Trump during the early primaries as the easiest-to-beat candidate in 2016. Many of my FB contacts from that period were enthusiastic about Bernie, who won the primary handily, but who, at least according to fivethirtyeight, had little chance of winning the general in the state.

iii · Unread post by **iii** » Tue Oct 30, 2018 9:38 am

Bezdomni wrote:[nicidentally, JS talks about that dinner party at one point on Democracy Now!...

Yeah, I actually reread that whole interview when I was looking for the picture. I normally like Democracy Now!, and while I appreciated that they had asked the question at all, man did they handle Stein with kid gloves for that interview! Her excuse that there was no time and no interpreter so she couldn't tell Putin off is left to drop like a lead balloon. Are you kidding me? This is supposed to be the leader of the party of radical leftist action!

Just off the top of my head, she could have told off Flynn, she could have stormed off, she could have gone CodePink. There were so many things she could have done and didn't upon realizing that she was being played. It is a reminder of the host of other "coulda, woulda, shoulda" things a huge segment of the American political left has been angry at the Green Party for.

But I'm resigned to the fact that we never will get the interview of Jill Stein I want, so I'll settle for explaining to you why I posted that photograph in the first place. There are contingents of people both here and at that other site that are pissed at the (witting or unwitting) operatives in the 2016 electoral disaster. The resistance you ran into is left over fury regarding this wound, and the disgust with you is collateral damage and a proxy attack. I agree with Jake that it would be better if the people who were involved in this could be honest and actually state this outright, but hey, I'm free to be honest about it here.

However, this is

so we may want to start a new thread or resurrect an old one.

Alex Shih · Unread post by **Alex Shih** » Tue Oct 30, 2018 9:47 am

Jim wrote:What I missed was that Mr. Ballioni left Mr. Objective3000 a note:
Hi, I've unfortunately had to remove one of your comments at AN and suppress some revisions. Linking to other accounts off-site and providing a direct link to it falls under disclosure of non-public personal information, even if we try to talk around it. TonyBallioni (talk) 23:35, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

@TonyBallioni: Understood. I took a chance because, in my mind, it is public, not a real identity, and I think pertinent. The appeal will succeed and I hope for the best. Unlikely given the history. Rgds, O3000 (talk) 00:03, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, I get the thought process, but unless someone has linked an account on another website to their account on-wiki, a good rule of thumb is not to link. Not mad or anything, just wanted to let you know what I did. TonyBallioni (talk) 00:10, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

Thanks. Que será, será. O3000 (talk) 00:21, 30 October 2018 (UTC)
I'm not really convinced that this was a necessary or sensible use of his shiny, new oversight tool, but, as Mason pointed out, they pretty much make up the (wildly inconsistent) 'rules' for this as they go along, with, as you say, little thought for the 'Babs effect'...

Yeah that was bullshit and utter pointless use of oversight inconsistent with common practice. You won't be hearing any complaints about it though.

spp · Unread post by **spp** » Tue Oct 30, 2018 12:53 pm

I'm just wondering at this point why they gave Cirt so much rope. How many names and blocks did that person have?

Off the top of my head...

Curt Wilhelm Von Savage
Smee
Smeeglova
Cirt
Sagecandor

iii · Unread post by **iii** » Tue Oct 30, 2018 12:56 pm

spp wrote:I'm just wondering at this point why they gave Cirt so much rope.

Because he's pretty good at content creation both from the standpoint of aesthetics and from the standpoint of achieving some of the (unspoken) political aims of the powers that be.

Anroth · Unread post by **Anroth** » Tue Oct 30, 2018 2:08 pm

Alex Shih wrote: Yeah that was bullshit and utter pointless use of oversight inconsistent with common practice. You won't be hearing any complaints about it though.

You should perhaps have a talk with who has the oversight tool. I have on separate occasions when requesting oversight of off-wiki accounts had conflicting answers depending on who responded.

Kumioko · Unread post by **Kumioko** » Tue Oct 30, 2018 2:59 pm

Anroth wrote:
Alex Shih wrote: Yeah that was bullshit and utter pointless use of oversight inconsistent with common practice. You won't be hearing any complaints about it though.
You should perhaps have a talk with who has the oversight tool. I have on separate occasions when requesting oversight of off-wiki accounts had conflicting answers depending on who responded.

That's because there are largely no rules. It's the wild west with OS and CU because there is absolutely no oversight of either toolset. There are so few people that have it that can even see the changes that no one bothers to review them and secondly, even if they did, they are one of them and won't be squeeling on one of their own.

Besides all that, the mentality is to identify a problem with those tools would bring to light how truly problematic they are and how often they are abused. That in turn would throw shade on the entire process and cause people to question it and lose faith in the tools and the users and they would rather hide and bury 1000 problems than to bring one to light.

Poetlister · Unread post by **Poetlister** » Tue Oct 30, 2018 3:53 pm

Jim wrote:obviously mere mortals cannot see who oversighted what.

What is the logic behind that? If an admin does anything, his/her username appears in the logs for anyone to see, and that is right given that Wikipedia is supposed to be transparent. Why should Oversighters be allowed anonymity?

Bezdomni · Unread post by **Bezdomni** » Tue Oct 30, 2018 8:26 pm

Alex Shih wrote:
Jim wrote:What I missed was that Mr. Ballioni left Mr. Objective3000 a note:
Hi, I've unfortunately had to remove one of your comments at AN and suppress some revisions. Linking to other accounts off-site and providing a direct link to it falls under disclosure of non-public personal information, even if we try to talk around it. TonyBallioni (talk) 23:35, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

@TonyBallioni: Understood. I took a chance because, in my mind, it is public, not a real identity, and I think pertinent. The appeal will succeed and I hope for the best. Unlikely given the history. Rgds, O3000 (talk) 00:03, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, I get the thought process, but unless someone has linked an account on another website to their account on-wiki, a good rule of thumb is not to link. Not mad or anything, just wanted to let you know what I did. TonyBallioni (talk) 00:10, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

Thanks. Que será, será. O3000 (talk) 00:21, 30 October 2018 (UTC)
I'm not really convinced that this was a necessary or sensible use of his shiny, new oversight tool, but, as Mason pointed out, they pretty much make up the (wildly inconsistent) 'rules' for this as they go along, with, as you say, little thought for the 'Babs effect'...
Yeah that was bullshit and utter pointless use of oversight inconsistent with common practice. You won't be hearing any complaints about it though.

I don't disagree, especially since it killed two birds with one stone: it kept KalHolmann from linking to the justification given for his indef. On the other hand, while we're focusing on squishy stinky cow patties, I thought I'd mention that I sent you a PM to inquire about a few matters that took place before you left ArbCom. For example, could you tell us something about ArbCom discussions of the evidence of the Cirt/Sagecandor connection at least two sources sent them during the period July 2017-October 2018? (Most of our webcams in the MobCar run through the same cable, which needs some twiddling. We get pretty good video, which is very intriguing and all, but without audio it's not very informative.) Maybe you'll say "what happens at ArbCom stays at ArbCom", but I thought I'd ask since elbows seem to be flying...

Jake, as a Smith's fan, and speaking of dinner parties, I'll bet you might have appreciated the less naive Continental humor of The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover (T-H-L). (Cf. §).

Unread post by **Midsize Jake** » Tue Oct 30, 2018 9:29 pm

Bezdomni wrote:Jake, as a Smith's fan, and speaking of dinner parties, I'll bet you might have appreciated the less naive Continental humor of The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover (T-H-L). (Cf. §).

Ehh, I don't really like revenge stories.

Bezdomni · Unread post by **Bezdomni** » Tue Oct 30, 2018 9:48 pm

I have a hard time sitting through Greenaway to be frank, but *should* really watch Prospero's Books again one of these days. (similar theme)

The last sentence of this summary of a summary (Rot's Progress) is more susceptible to satire than it should be: Greenaway often feels as pretentious as Godard, but at least he managed to avoid getting written into history by Charlie Hebdo.

ETA:

iii wrote: There were so many things she [Stein] could have done and didn't upon realizing that she was being played.

I searched the Queen's war manual and found this advice:

HR war manual wrote:Eat. Have a drink. Talk/Sulk/Text Obama

iii · Unread post by **iii** » Wed Oct 31, 2018 1:31 am

Bezdomni wrote:ETA:
iii wrote: There were so many things she [Stein] could have done and didn't upon realizing that she was being played.
I searched the Queen's war manual and found this advice:

HR war manual wrote:Eat. Have a drink. Talk/Sulk/Text Obama

That's essentially what Stein did, deary. And yet she's supposed to be the better candidate?

Great, let's just get a fascist elected. I'll smile in Flynn's direction.

Come on!

Unread post by **Midsize Jake** » Wed Oct 31, 2018 1:58 am

Bezdomni wrote:I grew up in a small Midwestern town that anyone inadvertently mentioned on the Jill Stein talk page just after Cirt I. That Midwestern background was the reason for my skepticism about the Democratic progiciel of running Clinton and pushing Trump during the early primaries as the easiest-to-beat candidate in 2016.

See, that sounds exactly like something a French guy would say.

FWIW, I've lived in a small Midwestern town for 25 years, and I can assure you and everyone else that there's nothing about the regional environment in itself that would make a person fail to accept or acknowledge the realities and limitations of the two-party system. I can accept that your parents might have beaten into you the notion that "no one should ever have to accept being compelled to vote for the lesser of two evils," but that's not the same thing, and it's not a "Midwestern" trait either.

Mind you, this doesn't change my opinion of how you were treated on Wikipedia, I still think it was almost comically wrong - but if what you're saying is true, then as an pro-democracy anti-fascist person I do think you should be at least a wee bit remorseful about how things went down in 2016.

Bezdomni · Unread post by **Bezdomni** » Wed Oct 31, 2018 2:47 am

Just coming back to the point at issue... where exactly did I ever say Stein was the best candidate? She is a politician. I think instead of texting Obama, she probably has "tweet" in her peace manual.

Ranked choice voting, on the other hand, might be kind of interesting to think about...

But, yes, of course, we should all blame ourselves, always. Concerning the oceans, I use way more packaging than I should. As far as global warming goes, I limit myself to public transport, though I do eat beans. US citizens chose the candidate they wanted in 2016 and then the electoral college proclaimed the other one the winner. I don't live there or vote in your elections, though I have the right to as a US citizen. But yes, my zipcode is several time zones closer to Libya than yours, which does change my perspective a bit. We have sackcloth here in bulk, if you need any.

Dysklyver · Unread post by **Dysklyver** » Wed Oct 31, 2018 4:58 pm

Poetlister wrote:
Jim wrote:obviously mere mortals cannot see who oversighted what.
What is the logic behind that? If an admin does anything, his/her username appears in the logs for anyone to see, and that is right given that Wikipedia is supposed to be transparent. Why should Oversighters be allowed anonymity?

Dunnio, odd that.

iii · Unread post by **iii** » Wed Oct 31, 2018 5:55 pm

Bezdomni wrote:Just coming back to the point at issue... where exactly did I ever say Stein was the best candidate? She is a politician. I think instead of texting Obama, she probably has "tweet" in her peace manual.

Ranked choice voting, on the other hand, might be kind of interesting to think about...

Well, I'm glad you don't think that Stein is the better candidate. Anyhoo...

My point is that people are going to be feisty when you carry water for these clowns as they are doing Russia's dirty work whether they want to admit it or not. In any case, I also recognize that you aren't the worst of those who have championed (however haphazardly) this political cause. I don't think you need to be committed, for example.

We are running dangerously off topic here, though kinda not because this was ACTUALLY why you were kicked out.

My advice is for you to steer clear of politics entirely if you want to stay on that website over there, but others have already made that point earlier on.

Beeblebrox · Unread post by **Beeblebrox** » Wed Oct 31, 2018 6:17 pm

Dysklyver wrote:
Poetlister wrote:
Jim wrote:obviously mere mortals cannot see who oversighted what.
What is the logic behind that? If an admin does anything, his/her username appears in the logs for anyone to see, and that is right given that Wikipedia is supposed to be transparent. Why should Oversighters be allowed anonymity?
Dunnio, odd that.

Because what we do is secret by definition and we aren’t allowed to discuss it publicly anyway.

Jim · Unread post by **Jim** » Wed Oct 31, 2018 10:50 pm

Beeblebrox wrote:Because what we do is secret by definition and we aren’t allowed to discuss it publicly anyway.

I quoted an entire talk page exchange upthread, where Mr. Ballioni discusses the use of his shiny, new oversight tool on a comment at AN in which Mr. Objective3000 had included a link to this thread (we know what it was because we saw it before it vanished.) So, aside from (imo) the removal itself being of questionable merit, was Mr. Ballioni not 'allowed' to have that discussion in that place?

...or are you not allowed to discuss that publicly?

Unread post by **Midsize Jake** » Wed Oct 31, 2018 11:32 pm

Jim wrote:So, aside from (imo) the removal itself being of questionable merit, was Mr. Ballioni not 'allowed' to have that discussion in that place?

FWIW, I'm willing to take him at his word that he believed he was following some sort of policy that disallows linking (implicitly or explicitly) an account on Wikipedia to a differently-named account on another site that claims to be the Wikipedia account only on the other site, i.e., not on Wikipedia itself, and that he either didn't notice the blog link Mr. Bezdomni/SashiRolls posted or didn't think it was sufficient (because the byline says "Sashi"). You'd think that once corrected he would restore the link, but maybe that correction has to be posted on Wikipedia itself too, and it wasn't.

Also, I should take this opportunity to thank Mr. Bezdomni for clearing up my own (and possibly others') confusion about his personal/political background - admittedly I hadn't thought of the "American ex-pat" explanation, but IMO it does make just as much sense as the "French national who spends too much time thinking about what the Americans are doing" explanation. Maybe more sense, in fact - TBH, if anything it makes his stance and affiliations seem much less onerous in light of the 2016 election results, to me at least. If he hadn't been dealing with Wikipedians (like Mr. Cirt), I might have said that he'd have been better off being up-front about it in the first place, but since he was dealing with Wikipedians, it probably wouldn't have made much difference either way.

Jim · Unread post by **Jim** » Wed Oct 31, 2018 11:45 pm

Midsize Jake wrote:You'd think that once corrected he would restore the link, but maybe that correction has to be posted on Wikipedia itself too, and it wasn't.

It wasn't, but it kind of is, now

SashiRolls on wikipedia wrote:O3000's oversighted comment was not a big deal, my wmf-project handle has always been on my Wikipediocracy posts, so there's no special need to link accounts, but doing so is certainly not a scandal. I did not ask anyone to revdel/oversight anything.

but restoring the link isn't really something I'd expect Mr. Ballioni to do retrospectively and automatically - especially if he wasn't specifically asked to. I agree with you that there was never really a privacy issue with it, but what's done is done, in many ways. I'm obviously of the opinion that it didn't need to be removed at all - but other opinions are available.

Anyway,

Beeblebrox wrote:Because what we do is secret by definition and we aren’t allowed to discuss it publicly anyway.

Midsize Jake wrote:
Jim wrote:So, aside from (imo) the removal itself being of questionable merit, was Mr. Ballioni not 'allowed' to have that discussion in that place?
FWIW, I'm willing to take him at his word that he believed he was following some sort of policy that disallows linking (implicitly or explicitly) an account on Wikipedia to a differently-named account on another site that claims to be the Wikipedia account only on the other site, i.e., not on Wikipedia itself, and that he either didn't notice the blog link Mr. Bezdomni/SashiRolls posted or didn't think it was sufficient (because the byline says "Sashi").

That's why I said 'questionable' in that aside. As we've noted, the 'policy' application/interpretation when it comes to these 'badsite' removals (and maybe even 'goodsite' removals) seems 'wildly inconsistent'.

I guess I was more interested, in this question at least, in the 'aren’t allowed to discuss it publicly anyway' part of Mr. Beeblebrox's comment and how that might be seen to apply, or not apply, to a discussion on the talk page of a user whose comment one had suppressed. I mean, I know these sort of discussions are usually a lot like trying to nail custard to a wall, but I still thought it might just be worth asking...

Alex Shih · Unread post by **Alex Shih** » Thu Nov 01, 2018 7:02 am

I think Jim makes a excellent point. Suppressing a link/information while discussing it/them openly is a pointless exercise; I can find many other examples of this. Everyone will still be able to know and access that information. The only result from such action is a false sense of self worth in the belief that you have followed the letters of a "policy" to "protect" without using any resemblance of common sense as there was never the need for the action to begin with. And if there was ever a need, discussing them openly only inspires speculations and interest, and would be far more damaging.

Alex Shih · Unread post by **Alex Shih** » Thu Nov 01, 2018 7:17 am

Anroth wrote:
Alex Shih wrote: Yeah that was bullshit and utter pointless use of oversight inconsistent with common practice. You won't be hearing any complaints about it though.
You should perhaps have a talk with who has the oversight tool. I have on separate occasions when requesting oversight of off-wiki accounts had conflicting answers depending on who responded.

Having been on OS before, I am not surprised. The idea is to protect sensible information and protect people from potential harm, but there are never "correct" answers, perhaps just "better" answers, which can only come with discussion. Some people have more pragmatic approach with a sense of real world, and some folks are just trying to be needlessly bureaucratic and forces their interpretation as the "only" correct interpretation with condescension. Therefore conflicting answers are to be expected.

Kumioko · Unread post by **Kumioko** » Thu Nov 01, 2018 10:37 am

Alex Shih wrote:
Anroth wrote:
Alex Shih wrote: Yeah that was bullshit and utter pointless use of oversight inconsistent with common practice. You won't be hearing any complaints about it though.
You should perhaps have a talk with who has the oversight tool. I have on separate occasions when requesting oversight of off-wiki accounts had conflicting answers depending on who responded.
Having been on OS before, I am not surprised. The idea is to protect sensible information and protect people from potential harm, but there are never "correct" answers, perhaps just "better" answers, which can only come with discussion. Some people have more pragmatic approach with a sense of real world, and some folks are just trying to be needlessly bureaucratic and forces their interpretation as the "only" correct interpretation with condescension. Therefore conflicting answers are to be expected.

This is the sort of thing that happens when there is no oversight of the OS or CU tools and the people who use them can do so whenever the mood strikes them regardless of policy. Bbb23 for example knows he can justify almost anything so he CU's new users en masse to "find socks". Of course he is going to find a ton of them, the CU tools are so generic he links random users with sockmasters from their areas. No one cares of course because he is a "trusted" user and they would never, ever, ever do anything wrong right?

WhoReallyCares · Unread post by **WhoReallyCares** » Thu Nov 01, 2018 1:00 pm

"Strongest possible opposition"

Sweet little Tryptofish seems a tad agitated. And his loony friend Mahogany Pants offers a supporting hand. They're like little insects. Watching these turds makes me realize how Gulliver must have felt when looking down on those tiny Lilliputians.

But at least the mighty Bishonen is now on your side.

Go Sashi, go!!

Poetlister · Unread post by **Poetlister** » Thu Nov 01, 2018 1:35 pm

Kumioko wrote:This is the sort of thing that happens when there is no oversight of the OS or CU tools and the people who use them can do so whenever the mood strikes them regardless of policy. Bbb23 for example knows he can justify almost anything so he CU's new users en masse to "find socks". Of course he is going to find a ton of them, the CU tools are so generic he links random users with sockmasters from their areas. No one cares of course because he is a "trusted" user and they would never, ever, ever do anything wrong right?

Is there a way to stop Bbb23 being brought into loads of threads where he is irrelevant?

Pudeo · Unread post by **Pudeo** » Thu Nov 01, 2018 6:12 pm

WhoReallyCares wrote: But at least the mighty Bishonen is now on your side.

And Drmies. I'm beginning to think Sashi is a WMF deepstate mole!

(This post was intended as humorous.)

Kumioko · Unread post by **Kumioko** » Thu Nov 01, 2018 8:42 pm

Poetlister wrote:
Kumioko wrote:This is the sort of thing that happens when there is no oversight of the OS or CU tools and the people who use them can do so whenever the mood strikes them regardless of policy. Bbb23 for example knows he can justify almost anything so he CU's new users en masse to "find socks". Of course he is going to find a ton of them, the CU tools are so generic he links random users with sockmasters from their areas. No one cares of course because he is a "trusted" user and they would never, ever, ever do anything wrong right?
Is there a way to stop Bbb23 being brought into loads of threads where he is irrelevant?

Well it would have been better if you had included the entire thread I had replied to rather than cherry pick and isolate my comment out of that. This was in reference to Alex's comment about OSers.

Beeblebrox · Unread post by **Beeblebrox** » Thu Nov 01, 2018 8:50 pm

Pudeo wrote:
WhoReallyCares wrote: But at least the mighty Bishonen is now on your side.
And Drmies. I'm beginning to think Sashi is a WMF deepstate mole!

(This post was intended as humorous.)

Clearly a Soros-funded false flag operation. .

Poetlister · Unread post by **Poetlister** » Thu Nov 01, 2018 9:35 pm

Kumioko wrote:
Poetlister wrote:
Kumioko wrote:This is the sort of thing that happens when there is no oversight of the OS or CU tools and the people who use them can do so whenever the mood strikes them regardless of policy. Bbb23 for example knows he can justify almost anything so he CU's new users en masse to "find socks". Of course he is going to find a ton of them, the CU tools are so generic he links random users with sockmasters from their areas. No one cares of course because he is a "trusted" user and they would never, ever, ever do anything wrong right?
Is there a way to stop Bbb23 being brought into loads of threads where he is irrelevant?
Well it would have been better if you had included the entire thread I had replied to rather than cherry pick and isolate my comment out of that. This was in reference to Alex's comment about OSers.

My point exactly. Bbb23 is not an oversighter, so it's irrelevant to bring him into a discussion about oversighters.

WhoReallyCares · Unread post by **WhoReallyCares** » Thu Nov 01, 2018 10:49 pm

Pudeo wrote:
WhoReallyCares wrote: But at least the mighty Bishonen is now on your side.
I'm beginning to think Sashi is a WMF deepstate mole!

..... and doubtless having a clandestine affair with Katherine Maher.

Kumioko · Unread post by **Kumioko** » Thu Nov 01, 2018 11:31 pm

WhoReallyCares wrote:
Pudeo wrote:
WhoReallyCares wrote: But at least the mighty Bishonen is now on your side.
I'm beginning to think Sashi is a WMF deepstate mole!
..... and doubtless having a clandestine affair with Katherine Maher.

Unread post by **Midsize Jake** » Thu Nov 01, 2018 11:58 pm

Jeez Louise, it's like everyone is daring me to delete bunches of posts today for some reason. Is it my hair? It must be my hair...

Anyway, I did notice that we're the #2 Google result on the word "Tryptofish" with three threads directly linked, but if you look at those threads, two of them don't include any posts by Mr. Bezdomni at all, and the other one (which Mr. B started) is mostly about User:GreenMeansGo and his RfA, not Mr. Tryptofish (though he does mention him in a negative way). And while it does appear that Mr. B was considerably more snarky on WikipediaSucks.co, at least the title of the thread looks positive to a casual reader ("The Tryptofish was a friend o mine"), and of course anyone who actually clicks the link and reads the initial post in the thread would immediately just assume that "Sashi" (aka Mr. B) was falling-down drunk at the time, given the wording. (Later in the thread he admits to being "lazy," which I guess is close enough...?)

Long story short, I'm not sure I agree with Mr. Tryptofish's point there. Personally, I might argue that most of what he does on WP is actually good, but given the amount of time he spends on the drama-boards and generally criticizing other users' behavior in general, he should hardly be surprised (or even offended) if and when a little push-back comes his way.

Bezdomni · Unread post by **Bezdomni** » Fri Nov 02, 2018 3:13 pm

Thanks for checking into this question Jake, at least people will know what it's all about. (tldr... Why can't we be friends? §)

In other news, I think it must be ratings sweep week at AN. Views had been down since August, so if there had a been a Deep State Memo I would imagine it would have suggested moar visibility for the happy resolution of the CIRTian drama. At the beginning of the week, there was discussion of Helen of DesTroy; and another, started by someone named "reader of the pack": "Journalist wants to see article history" (apparently about something called "the Warren Chaney case"). Unsurprisingly, something (was) verbed up to keep the ratings rolling, apparently something to do with pop culture...

I haven't gone digging into Winkelvi's perfidies/angelicisms and only know of them from reading their interactions with the Sage and the Snoog, but I do know they're usually a good draw when billed in events at center Court.

Oct 28: 1920
Oct 29: 3019
Oct 30: 2098
Oct 31: 2067
Nov 1: 3149

Xtools was a bit flaky earlier today, so I thought I'd just post the Nielsons in-text, but here is the link for the Halloween period: §. One does wonder what might have happened back at the end of May 2017 to bring 26,772 viewers to the channel. (§)

Meanwhile, many of the pumpkins I've been seeing lately have been either breath-taking or snarky. I watched still others get ninja-sliced & melted into improvised pies here, then eaten while checking out, in particular, the breath-taking pumpkins on genderdesk's porch.