Roger Davies: Wikipedia’s Imperial Arbitrator

evouga · Unread post by **evouga** » Fri Sep 11, 2015 10:53 pm

Yes, his favoritism regarding Mathsci is a legitimate concern. I assume he has come to change his mind about off-wiki harassment, and now believes that it should not excuse on-wiki misbehavior (a stance I agree with). It would be interesting to know if Roger now agrees his handling of Mathsci was improper.

Hex · Unread post by **Hex** » Fri Sep 11, 2015 11:58 pm

turnedworm wrote: That said, I can't speak for his motives, I'm not Roger. I'm surprised at the people who are trying to though, given they weren't there.

I was there. Seeing Katy Love's face as she had to walk past us was utterly mortifying. I felt disgusted by the prospect of being associated with him as a result.

Vigilant · Unread post by **Vigilant** » Sat Sep 12, 2015 1:51 am

:cringe:

Cla68 · Unread post by **Cla68** » Sat Sep 12, 2015 2:34 am

The Devil's Advocate wrote:Something that I noticed a little after this post was published is an interesting detail from the ArbCom mailing list leaks:

Don't let me stop you Just keep disruptive or battleground in the headings (for the benefit of hard of thinking onlookers).

I'll recuse on Cla68 anyway (including FoF drafting) as he and I go back a long way on Milhist.

Roger
Davies had recused from voting on any sanctions for Cla68 or being involved in any drafting that involved him during the Climate Change ArbCom case. He cited his time on the Military History WikiProject as the reason for the recusal. Davies consistently did not recuse when the one-way interaction bans with Mathsci imposed on me and Cla68 kept coming before ArbCom, but voted and strongly argued against doing anything about them at all. Kirill, from the same WikiProject, did recuse in those cases and in past cases involving Cla68.

After the flurry of ArbCom cases involving the one-way interaction bans, two other times matters concerning Cla68 were brought before the Committee. The first was when Kevin unblocked Cla68 after he promised not to repost the oversighted blog post here that gave out Russavia's real name. ArbCom voted to temporarily desysop Kevin with Kirill recusing and Davies not voting. Since Davies was one of four arbitrators to not vote it was not particularly notable, but later when Cla68's appeal was approved Davies again did not vote and, this time, he was the sole arbitrator to not vote on the matter.

It would seem that Davies either knew at the time he first got involved or realized at some later point that he should have recused regarding the one-way interaction bans with Mathsci given his past recusal regarding Cla68, but recusing in those later instances would have revealed that he should not have been involved in the discussion about the one-way interaction bans at all. As such he simply didn't vote when Cla68 came up again on other matters. That looks like an attempt to sweep a very serious mistake or abuse under the rug.

Although he "recused" in the global warming case, the leaked emails revealed that he had continued to participate in the case discussions and had made some indirectly disparaging comments about me in those discussions. I had forgotten about that.

Roger Davies · Unread post by **Roger Davies** » Sat Sep 12, 2015 5:36 am

turnedworm wrote: So, moving on to the "co-ordinating arbitrator" role and "mailing list administrator".
We had a few "mailing list administrators", who would add new arbs, remove olds ones and do the moderation. That moderation was a big job when I started, hundreds of spam messages to clear down each day. Roger was one of a few of us who spent their time wading through. Eventually, I got annoyed and implemented some regex to reduce the spam and the role became easier. So, I'd certainly say his role there is overstated.

The current lists typically have nine or ten moderators. For some of them (for example AUSC) all the participants are moderators. It really is no big deal at all.

Roger

Unread post by **Zoloft** » Sat Sep 12, 2015 5:41 am

Roger Davies wrote:
turnedworm wrote: So, moving on to the "co-ordinating arbitrator" role and "mailing list administrator".
We had a few "mailing list administrators", who would add new arbs, remove olds ones and do the moderation. That moderation was a big job when I started, hundreds of spam messages to clear down each day. Roger was one of a few of us who spent their time wading through. Eventually, I got annoyed and implemented some regex to reduce the spam and the role became easier. So, I'd certainly say his role there is overstated.
The current lists typically have nine or ten moderators. For some of them (for example AUSC) all the participants are moderators. It really is no big deal at all.

Roger

We welcome your membership and your perspective.

Roger Davies · Unread post by **Roger Davies** » Sat Sep 12, 2015 5:49 am

Captain Occam wrote:I'd say the central point of the post is contrasting the lengths that he went to in his efforts to defend Mathsci from harassment, at a lot of other people's expense, against the lack of sympathy he's shown about harassment when it's happened to people like Lightbreather. The significance of his comments at Wikimania isn't just to point out a pair of ill-judged things Davies said. It's that in the context of his arbitration decisions about gender politics, they suggest a possible reason for his lack of sympathy towards female editors, the same way that Mathsci's comment about Davies being "almost a neighbor" explains why Davies would have had the opposite bias in that case.

I don't have a lack of sympathy for Lightbreather. I spent a great deal of time trying to identify her harassers and I blocked one of them. But on the subject of double standards, the editor I blocked has bragged about their anti-Lightbreather activities here and, as far as I know, appears free to continue participating here.

Roger

Roger Davies · Unread post by **Roger Davies** » Sat Sep 12, 2015 5:58 am

Triptych wrote:"Civility case? (Har har) no fucking way you cunts!" speaks for itself pretty loudly as well.

As I mentioned at the time, this was a direct quote from an ping I'd received a short while earlier commenting on my decline comment. The actual words the OP suggested were "Fuck off, you cunts. Decline." It never occurred to me that anyone would take it literally.

Roger

Roger Davies · Unread post by **Roger Davies** » Sat Sep 12, 2015 6:03 am

evouga wrote:Yes, his favoritism regarding Mathsci is a legitimate concern. I assume he has come to change his mind about off-wiki harassment, and now believes that it should not excuse on-wiki misbehavior (a stance I agree with). It would be interesting to know if Roger now agrees his handling of Mathsci was improper.

It has been ignored here but I proposed a site-ban for Mathsci in the Race and Intelligence Review case. No-one else supported.

Roger

Roger Davies · Unread post by **Roger Davies** » Sat Sep 12, 2015 6:10 am

Hex wrote:
turnedworm wrote: That said, I can't speak for his motives, I'm not Roger. I'm surprised at the people who are trying to though, given they weren't there.
I was there. Seeing Katy Love's face as she had to walk past us was utterly mortifying. I felt disgusted by the prospect of being associated with him as a result.

Katy heard the remark out of context. In her position, I'd have been mortified too. I deeply regret not choosing my words more carefully but I thought it was clear enough from the schoolyard register I used that it was directed at heterocentric presumptions and not at women.

Roger

Captain Occam · Unread post by **Captain Occam** » Sat Sep 12, 2015 6:24 am

I don't have time to reply to all of your posts right now, but there is one thing I'd like to comment on:

Roger Davies wrote:The current lists typically have nine or ten moderators. For some of them (for example AUSC) all the participants are moderators. It really is no big deal at all.

Roger

The lists have two levels of permission, administrator and moderator. That's very nearly a direct quote from Risker, with whom I've discussed this. According to Risker, when she was on ArbCom the mailing list typically had around three admins, one of whom was you. How many admins does it currently have? The number of moderators is not relevant here, because you're a list admin, not a moderator.

Roger Davies · Unread post by **Roger Davies** » Sat Sep 12, 2015 6:57 am

Captain Occam wrote:I don't have time to reply to all of your posts right now, but there is one thing I'd like to comment on:

Roger Davies wrote:The current lists typically have nine or ten moderators. For some of them (for example AUSC) all the participants are moderators. It really is no big deal at all.

Roger
The lists have two levels of permission, administrator and moderator. That's very nearly a direct quote from Risker, with whom I've discussed this. According to Risker, when she was on ArbCom the mailing list typically had around three admins, one of whom was you. How many admins does it currently have? The number of moderators is not relevant here, because you're a list admin, not a moderator.

Actually, it's "list owners" (all permissions) and "list moderators" (subset). Everyone has had the "list owner" flag set for as long as I can remember, so there's no hierarchy. There are currently ten list owners for arbcom-l (I don't think it's ever been as low as three but it was around five for years). List owners are shown in the "run by" section on the list's public page; I don't think list moderators get a public credit but I may be wrong. For more info, see the MailMan manual.

Roger

turnedworm · Unread post by **turnedworm** » Sat Sep 12, 2015 7:43 am

Roger Davies wrote:
Captain Occam wrote:I don't have time to reply to all of your posts right now, but there is one thing I'd like to comment on:

Roger Davies wrote:The current lists typically have nine or ten moderators. For some of them (for example AUSC) all the participants are moderators. It really is no big deal at all.

Roger
The lists have two levels of permission, administrator and moderator. That's very nearly a direct quote from Risker, with whom I've discussed this. According to Risker, when she was on ArbCom the mailing list typically had around three admins, one of whom was you. How many admins does it currently have? The number of moderators is not relevant here, because you're a list admin, not a moderator.
Actually, it's "list owners" (all permissions) and "list moderators" (subset). Everyone has had the "list owner" flag set for as long as I can remember, so there's no hierarchy. There are currently ten list owners for arbcom-l (I don't think it's ever been as low as three but it was around five for years). List owners are shown in the "run by" section on the list's public page; I don't think list moderators get a public credit but I may be wrong. For more info, see the MailMan manual.

Roger

Nine or ten is up from the 4 or 5 when I was on the committee, but that's a good thing. I can confirm that everyone had list owner status at the time, and if I recall correctly, I was the one making most use of that permission, editting regex, spam blacklist, adding and removing other arbs etc.

Vigilant · Unread post by **Vigilant** » Sat Sep 12, 2015 1:52 pm

Roger Davies wrote:
Captain Occam wrote:I'd say the central point of the post is contrasting the lengths that he went to in his efforts to defend Mathsci from harassment, at a lot of other people's expense, against the lack of sympathy he's shown about harassment when it's happened to people like Lightbreather. The significance of his comments at Wikimania isn't just to point out a pair of ill-judged things Davies said. It's that in the context of his arbitration decisions about gender politics, they suggest a possible reason for his lack of sympathy towards female editors, the same way that Mathsci's comment about Davies being "almost a neighbor" explains why Davies would have had the opposite bias in that case.
I don't have a lack of sympathy for Lightbreather. I spent a great deal of time trying to identify her harassers and I blocked one of them. But on the subject of double standards, the editor I blocked has bragged about their anti-Lightbreather activities here and, as far as I know, appears free to continue participating here.

Roger

Do you want his name, address, phone numbers, social security number, work information, resume, linkedin, facebook, twitter, band name, shooting club, parents', siblings' and spouse's names, addresses, phone numbers?

If knowing that information is what's standing in your way, please allow me to help.

MMAR · Unread post by **MMAR** » Sat Sep 12, 2015 1:54 pm

Roger Davies wrote:
Captain Occam wrote:I'd say the central point of the post is contrasting the lengths that he went to in his efforts to defend Mathsci from harassment, at a lot of other people's expense, against the lack of sympathy he's shown about harassment when it's happened to people like Lightbreather. The significance of his comments at Wikimania isn't just to point out a pair of ill-judged things Davies said. It's that in the context of his arbitration decisions about gender politics, they suggest a possible reason for his lack of sympathy towards female editors, the same way that Mathsci's comment about Davies being "almost a neighbor" explains why Davies would have had the opposite bias in that case.
I don't have a lack of sympathy for Lightbreather. I spent a great deal of time trying to identify her harassers and I blocked one of them. But on the subject of double standards, the editor I blocked has bragged about their anti-Lightbreather activities here and, as far as I know, appears free to continue participating here.

Roger

Just to be clear, you do realise that there were two types of harassment of Lightbreather in play here - on and off wiki. The abject failures in the off-wiki aspect have been done to death; but I'm far more interested in those failures for which you as arbitrators are solely responsible for identifying and rectifying - the on wiki stuff. Accordingly, do you still stand by the claim "I spent a great deal of time trying to identify her harassers" in that context?

Further background here:

viewtopic.php?p=146060#p146060

It's a shame Sitush slunk back to where he came from recently, it would have been interesting to see what you would have said about some of his various comments on the subject of harassment. Assuming you're prepared to stick around long enough for a full and thorough examination of your role in this case, and indeed any others people might want clarification on.

Also, on a more general point re. the themes of that case - Vigilant recently unearthed some findings from the Pew Research Centre re. internet harassment (defined as anything from simply being 'mean on the internet' right up to threats of harm). They found that women in general are affected more by this behaviour than men - the obvious implication being that ignoring/downplaying it has greater implications for the retention of female rather than male editors.

In the context of what some of the more ignorant members of your so called community (including women) have said about the issue of harassment of women on Wikipedia, and in the general context that you still only have one person who openly admits to having been born a female on your 15 person committee, would you care to comment on that, either as an individual, or on behalf of the committee?

Further background on that here:
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=6698
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=6729

Captain Occam · Unread post by **Captain Occam** » Sat Sep 12, 2015 7:58 pm

Roger Davies wrote:Actually, it's "list owners" (all permissions) and "list moderators" (subset). Everyone has had the "list owner" flag set for as long as I can remember, so there's no hierarchy. There are currently ten list owners for arbcom-l (I don't think it's ever been as low as three but it was around five for years). List owners are shown in the "run by" section on the list's public page; I don't think list moderators get a public credit but I may be wrong. For more info, see the MailMan manual.

Roger

Thanks for clarifying that. This seems to support what other people have said earlier in the thread: that of the various positions you hold, the only one that really gives you a unique amount of influence is that you've been on ArbCom more than twice as long as every other current arbitrator except AGK.

It's useful for you to fill in more details about what's happened in these various arbitration cases, but you don't seem to be addressing the main issue. You can emphasize the sympathy you felt for Lightbreather, and remind us about the three-month ban you proposed as an alternative remedy for Mathsci during the 2012 review, but even your alternative remedy was a hell of a lot more lenient than what you proposed for Lightbreather, even though Lightbreather had far more extenuating circumstances than Mathsci did. And that doesn't account for the lengths you went to in your efforts to punish those whom you suspected had harassed Mathsci, even though I don't think you had any evidence that SightWatcher or TrevelyanL85A2 were responsible for the off-wiki parody account or for the sockpuppets that checkusers identified as Mikemikev and Echigo mole. (If you don't remember your argument that they were responsible for some of these socks, I can quote it.) It also doesn't account for your attempts to stop ArbCom from modifying the one-way interaction bans you gave these editors, when Mathsci's gaming of the bans kept coming before ArbCom later in the year.

Evouga said above that he'd like to know whether at this stage you think you made a mistake in your handling of Mathsci. I'd also like to know the answer to that, specifically with respect to all of your decisions related to the one-way interaction you gave SightWatcher and TrevelyanL85A2. If you hadn't changed your mind about the review's procedure in order to add them as parties, or if you'd given them standard topic bans, or if you'd allowed the other arbitrators to turn the one-way interaction bans into mutual bans any of the times they considered doing that before September 2013, everyone else would have been spared around a year's worth of drama. They say hindsight is 20/20, but it doesn't take a genius to figure out that it would cause problems when you were doing things like modifying the procedure for a case a case midway through it, and giving out one-way interaction bans that apply to every person who's ever edited a topic.

SightWatcher made a similar point in this comment, in what I think was 2012's seventh arbitration request about problems arising from your remedies in the review. I would've liked to see what you had to say in response to that, and I'd still like to.

I'm also curious what your explanation is for your inconsistency with respect to recusing from decisions about Cla68, but I think it's better for Cla68 or TDA to ask about that, since they know more about the issue than I do.

The Devil's Advocate · Unread post by **The Devil's Advocate** » Sat Sep 12, 2015 8:29 pm

Roger Davies wrote:It has been ignored here but I proposed a site-ban for Mathsci in the Race and Intelligence Review case. No-one else supported.

Roger

You suggested a three-month ArbCom block for him and indefinite site bans for everyone else. Even there is a sign of favoritism. Not even a topic ban was suggested for Mathsci.

Roger Davies wrote:As I mentioned at the time, this was a direct quote from an ping I'd received a short while earlier commenting on my decline comment. The actual words the OP suggested were "Fuck off, you cunts. Decline." It never occurred to me that anyone would take it literally.

Roger

No suggestion is made that this was a completely serious comment. I firmly believe it was a joke, but the issue is how it reflects on your later actions as an arbitrator.

Triptych · Unread post by **Triptych** » Sat Sep 12, 2015 9:39 pm

The Devil's Advocate wrote:
Roger Davies wrote:As I mentioned at the time, this was a direct quote from an ping I'd received a short while earlier commenting on my decline comment. The actual words the OP suggested were "Fuck off, you cunts. Decline." It never occurred to me that anyone would take it literally.
No suggestion is made that this was a completely serious comment. I firmly believe it was a joke, but the issue is how it reflects on your later actions as an arbitrator.

Are we to understand, as it surely looks, that another arbitrator sent Roger Davies this "Fuck off, you cunts. Decline." text? I'd be interested to know which one, and how often similarly toned communications are exchanged by the arbs, behind the facade.

turnedworm · Unread post by **turnedworm** » Mon Sep 14, 2015 7:18 am

Triptych wrote:
The Devil's Advocate wrote:
Roger Davies wrote:As I mentioned at the time, this was a direct quote from an ping I'd received a short while earlier commenting on my decline comment. The actual words the OP suggested were "Fuck off, you cunts. Decline." It never occurred to me that anyone would take it literally.
No suggestion is made that this was a completely serious comment. I firmly believe it was a joke, but the issue is how it reflects on your later actions as an arbitrator.
Are we to understand, as it surely looks, that another arbitrator sent Roger Davies this "Fuck off, you cunts. Decline." text? I'd be interested to know which one, and how often similarly toned communications are exchanged by the arbs, behind the facade.

Could I ask why you think it's another arbitrator who sent the comment?

Hex · Unread post by **Hex** » Mon Sep 14, 2015 7:57 am

Roger Davies wrote:
Hex wrote:
turnedworm wrote: That said, I can't speak for his motives, I'm not Roger. I'm surprised at the people who are trying to though, given they weren't there.
I was there. Seeing Katy Love's face as she had to walk past us was utterly mortifying. I felt disgusted by the prospect of being associated with him as a result.
Katy heard the remark out of context. In her position, I'd have been mortified too. I deeply regret not choosing my words more carefully but I thought it was clear enough from the schoolyard register I used that it was directed at heterocentric presumptions and not at women.

Thank you, Roger, I appreciate this.

Cla68 · Unread post by **Cla68** » Mon Sep 14, 2015 8:08 am

Welcome to WPO, Mr. Davies. Do you understand how frustrating it was for us dealing with the Mathsci situation? I don't know about the others here, but I was completely bewildered by it because, as far as I know, I had never made a single edit to any of the "Race and Intelligence"-related articles, nor the talk pages. I had never even given the topic more than a passing thought. Suddenly, I was blocked for trying to defend myself after Mathsci dragged me to AE, then I was handed a one-way interaction ban when I was blocked and couldn't speak in my defence. It wasn't until the guy finally proved to you how obsessive he really was that you finally (more-or-less) helped straighten things out.

What was up with all of that nonsense? Why did you allow me and other editors to get treated that way when it was so obvious how unfair it all was and that the dude at the center of it all had serious issues? Was it because Mathsci is from the UK and the rest of us are Americans (just an assumption on my part)? Was it because you two knew each other in real life or were neighbors? What was it?

Triptych · Unread post by **Triptych** » Mon Sep 14, 2015 2:19 pm

turnedworm wrote:
Triptych wrote:
The Devil's Advocate wrote:
Roger Davies wrote:As I mentioned at the time, this was a direct quote from an ping I'd received a short while earlier commenting on my decline comment. The actual words the OP suggested were "Fuck off, you cunts. Decline." It never occurred to me that anyone would take it literally.
No suggestion is made that this was a completely serious comment. I firmly believe it was a joke, but the issue is how it reflects on your later actions as an arbitrator.
Are we to understand, as it surely looks, that another arbitrator sent Roger Davies this "Fuck off, you cunts. Decline." text? I'd be interested to know which one, and how often similarly toned communications are exchanged by the arbs, behind the facade.
Could I ask why you think it's another arbitrator who sent the comment?

By this thread, the text Davies dutifully and loudly verbalized was "Civility case? Fuck off you cunts. Decline." Arbitrators accept or decline cases. Therefore it looks to me like another arbitrator chatting with him on whether to accept a case candidate.

Don't tell me "but that's not a sure thing." I never said it was.

PS: what case was it is the next question. Perhaps the submitters would like to know how vulgarly and cavalierly their efforts are dismissed.

Randy from Boise · Unread post by **Randy from Boise** » Mon Sep 14, 2015 4:45 pm

Triptych wrote: By this thread, the text Davies dutifully and loudly verbalized was "Civility case? Fuck off you cunts. Decline." Arbitrators accept or decline cases. Therefore it looks to me like another arbitrator chatting with him on whether to accept a case candidate.

And, surely it was. It's actually a pretty funny line, assuming an audience of 15 or so people who know each other well.

RfB

Vigilant · Unread post by **Vigilant** » Mon Sep 14, 2015 4:47 pm

Randy from Boise wrote:
Triptych wrote: By this thread, the text Davies dutifully and loudly verbalized was "Civility case? Fuck off you cunts. Decline." Arbitrators accept or decline cases. Therefore it looks to me like another arbitrator chatting with him on whether to accept a case candidate.
And, surely it was. It's actually a pretty funny line, assuming an audience of 15 or so people who know each other well.

RfB

From someone on the most powerful deliberative body on a nominal collaborative encyclopedia project, not so much.

Randy from Boise · Unread post by **Randy from Boise** » Mon Sep 14, 2015 4:51 pm

Vigilant wrote:
Randy from Boise wrote:
Triptych wrote: By this thread, the text Davies dutifully and loudly verbalized was "Civility case? Fuck off you cunts. Decline." Arbitrators accept or decline cases. Therefore it looks to me like another arbitrator chatting with him on whether to accept a case candidate.
And, surely it was. It's actually a pretty funny line, assuming an audience of 15 or so people who know each other well.

RfB
From someone on the most powerful deliberative body on a nominal collaborative encyclopedia project, not so much.

Backchannel email? I'm fine with it. I don't need to explain irony to you, I'm sure you "get it"...

ArbCom is not a court with berobed jurists in powdered white whigs. It's a volunteer discipline committee that weeds through reams of bullshit in their excruciatingly slow process of doing very little about not much at all. If they want to get a little silly from time to time on their email list, there is no harm in that.

Obviously, a formal, public declination using that precise rationale would be out of bounds...

RfB

Jim · Unread post by **Jim** » Mon Sep 14, 2015 5:05 pm

Randy from Boise wrote: Obviously, a formal, public declination using that precise rationale would be out of bounds...
RfB

Aren't we talking about a loud, public statement at an international conference?

Possibly not, and I mixed 2 things up, in which case, "Hey, t1t5...Arf, arf"

Vigilant · Unread post by **Vigilant** » Mon Sep 14, 2015 10:32 pm

Randy from Boise wrote:
Vigilant wrote:
Randy from Boise wrote:
Triptych wrote: By this thread, the text Davies dutifully and loudly verbalized was "Civility case? Fuck off you cunts. Decline." Arbitrators accept or decline cases. Therefore it looks to me like another arbitrator chatting with him on whether to accept a case candidate.
And, surely it was. It's actually a pretty funny line, assuming an audience of 15 or so people who know each other well.

RfB
From someone on the most powerful deliberative body on a nominal collaborative encyclopedia project, not so much.
Backchannel email? I'm fine with it. I don't need to explain irony to you, I'm sure you "get it"...

ArbCom is not a court with berobed jurists in powdered white whigs. It's a volunteer discipline committee that weeds through reams of bullshit in their excruciatingly slow process of doing very little about not much at all. If they want to get a little silly from time to time on their email list, there is no harm in that.

Obviously, a formal, public declination using that precise rationale would be out of bounds...

RfB

So, "he was acting in his role as a private contributor"?

Captain Occam · Unread post by **Captain Occam** » Mon Sep 14, 2015 10:43 pm

Triptych wrote:PS: what case was it is the next question. Perhaps the submitters would like to know how vulgarly and cavalierly their efforts are dismissed.

That's mentioned in the blog post. It was the "Civility" arbitration case requested by LT910001 (T-C-L). What makes Davies' comment particularly ill-chosen is that this case request grew out of a discussion started by Lightbreather, over another editor's use of the word "cunt" in a civility discussion... and then a year later, Lightbreather was site-banned by an ArbCom decision drafted by Davies.

By the way, were Davies' actual words at the conference "Fuck off you cunts", instead of "No fucking way you cunts"? It sounds like that might be what he's saying here, in which case I think it would be best to update the blog post in order to get the quote from him exactly right.

SB_Johnny · Unread post by **SB_Johnny** » Mon Sep 14, 2015 11:00 pm

Cla68 wrote:Welcome to WPO, Mr. Davies. Do you understand how frustrating it was for us dealing with the Mathsci situation? I don't know about the others here, but I was completely bewildered by it because, as far as I know, I had never made a single edit to any of the "Race and Intelligence"-related articles, nor the talk pages. I had never even given the topic more than a passing thought. Suddenly, I was blocked for trying to defend myself after Mathsci dragged me to AE, then I was handed a one-way interaction ban when I was blocked and couldn't speak in my defence. It wasn't until the guy finally proved to you how obsessive he really was that you finally (more-or-less) helped straighten things out.

What was up with all of that nonsense? Why did you allow me and other editors to get treated that way when it was so obvious how unfair it all was and that the dude at the center of it all had serious issues? Was it because Mathsci is from the UK and the rest of us are Americans (just an assumption on my part)? Was it because you two knew each other in real life or were neighbors? What was it?

Bump.

The Devil's Advocate · Unread post by **The Devil's Advocate** » Mon Sep 14, 2015 11:46 pm

Captain Occam wrote:By the way, were Davies' actual words at the conference "Fuck off you cunts", instead of "No fucking way you cunts"? It sounds like that might be what he's saying here, in which case I think it would be best to update the blog post in order to get the quote from him exactly right.

No, he is apparently saying someone suggested online that he say that, but what he said was essentially a rough quote of that statement. He does appear to be acknowledging that he said this at Wikimania exactly as it is quoted.

Captain Occam · Unread post by **Captain Occam** » Thu Sep 17, 2015 5:28 pm

Roger, are you going to answer any of the more detailed questions that I, MMAR, and Cla68 have asked you in this thread?

Vigilant · Unread post by **Vigilant** » Thu Sep 17, 2015 5:45 pm

Captain Occam wrote:Roger, are you going to answer any of the more detailed questions that I, MMAR, and Cla68 have asked you in this thread?

As much as the Republican candidates answer their debate questions, I imagine.

Roger Davies · Unread post by **Roger Davies** » Fri Sep 18, 2015 6:57 am

Vigilant wrote:Do you want his name, address, phone numbers, social security number, work information, resume, linkedin, facebook, twitter, band name, shooting club, parents', siblings' and spouse's names, addresses, phone numbers?

If knowing that information is what's standing in your way, please allow me to help.

I cannot discuss the specifics of this but the more degrees of separation between the Wikipedia account and the alleged perpetrator the more difficult a solid speculation-free identification becomes. Perhaps more to the point, handling anything other than the most clear-cut off-wiki harassment is way way beyond ArbCom's pay grade. And serious cases should be automatically referred to lawyers and to law enforcement. In many instances, a ban from the en-wiki (when there are 800+ other wikis to continue editing on) is at best purely symbolic.

Roger

Roger Davies · Unread post by **Roger Davies** » Fri Sep 18, 2015 7:34 am

MMAR wrote:Just to be clear, you do realise that there were two types of harassment of Lightbreather in play here - on and off wiki. The abject failures in the off-wiki aspect have been done to death; but I'm far more interested in those failures for which you as arbitrators are solely responsible for identifying and rectifying - the on wiki stuff. Accordingly, do you still stand by the claim "I spent a great deal of time trying to identify her harassers" in that context?

As has been discussed (to death) elsewhere on this forum, having been harassed does not vaccinate someone against the consequences of their own misconduct. (What policy says is "Suffering real or perceived harassment does not justify an editor's misconduct, but a more cautious approach to sanctions in such situations is preferred". Which is what happened.) It's worth mentioning that unambiguous harassment is dealt with swiftly and robustly by administrators: that happened in this case. However, the suggestion was that over many months LB was treated badly by various editors simply because she is a woman. While there is some truth in that (and it is reflected in the case's PD), it is by no means the whole truth. I did make a last ditch attempt to keep her editing but LB dismissed the proposal. For what it's worth, the case against LB was brought by a woman.

MMAR wrote:Also, on a more general point re. the themes of that case - Vigilant recently unearthed some findings from the Pew Research Centre re. internet harassment (defined as anything from simply being 'mean on the internet' right up to threats of harm). They found that women in general are affected more by this behaviour than men - the obvious implication being that ignoring/downplaying it has greater implications for the retention of female rather than male editors. In the context of what some of the more ignorant members of your so called community (including women) have said about the issue of harassment of women on Wikipedia, and in the general context that you still only have one person who openly admits to having been born a female on your 15 person committee, would you care to comment on that, either as an individual, or on behalf of the committee?

I was familiar with Pew but thanks for the heads up. A major area of harassment it identifies is unwanted sexual advances. Such advances are relatively rare on the English Wikipedia. The WMF has been investing heavily in initiatives to deal with harassment and they are much better equipped to tackle systemic internet issues than ArbCom. However, as a consequence of the case, the policy now prohibits the harassment "of an editor on the basis of race, sex, gender, sexual orientation, religion, age or disability" which is a step in the right direction. There is also a new page advising people how to deal with harassment.

Roger

Roger Davies · Unread post by **Roger Davies** » Fri Sep 18, 2015 8:05 am

Captain Occam wrote:You can emphasize the sympathy you felt for Lightbreather, and remind us about the three-month ban you proposed as an alternative remedy for Mathsci during the 2012 review, but even your alternative remedy was a hell of a lot more lenient than what you proposed for Lightbreather, even though Lightbreather had far more extenuating circumstances than Mathsci did. And that doesn't account for the lengths you went to in your efforts to punish those whom you suspected had harassed Mathsci, even though I don't think you had any evidence that SightWatcher or TrevelyanL85A2 were responsible for the off-wiki parody account or for the sockpuppets that checkusers identified as Mikemikev and Echigo mole. (If you don't remember your argument that they were responsible for some of these socks, I can quote it.) It also doesn't account for your attempts to stop ArbCom from modifying the one-way interaction bans you gave these editors, when Mathsci's gaming of the bans kept coming before ArbCom later in the year.

Evouga said above that he'd like to know whether at this stage you think you made a mistake in your handling of Mathsci. I'd also like to know the answer to that, specifically with respect to all of your decisions related to the one-way interaction you gave SightWatcher and TrevelyanL85A2. If you hadn't changed your mind about the review's procedure in order to add them as parties, or if you'd given them standard topic bans, or if you'd allowed the other arbitrators to turn the one-way interaction bans into mutual bans any of the times they considered doing that before September 2013, everyone else would have been spared around a year's worth of drama. They say hindsight is 20/20, but it doesn't take a genius to figure out that it would cause problems when you were doing things like modifying the procedure for a case a case midway through it, and giving out one-way interaction bans that apply to every person who's ever edited a topic.

SightWatcher made a similar point in this comment, in what I think was 2012's seventh arbitration request about problems arising from your remedies in the review. I would've liked to see what you had to say in response to that, and I'd still like to.

First, I had no special sympathy for Mathsci and am neither a friend of his nor a near neighbour. But he was bullied and harassed on- and off-wiki by a number of people over a long period and I view that with distaste. The harassment included numerous outings (oversighted) as well as a considerable amount of anti-semitic bile. However, the widely-held perception at the time (and there are plenty of public comments to this effect) was that Mathsci was preventing a series of sensitive articles from becoming platforms for either, depending on your POV, "white people are smarter" or "black people are more stupid". The impetus for this was coming from sockpuppets and meatpuppets as well as some particularly charmless trolls and bigots.

Second, your entire thrust is that this is all my fault. You suggest that I led the committee by the hand to make a decision it would never have made had someone else drafted. This is nonsense. I was but one voice of many. The PD I posted by and large reflected developing consensus from the arbitrators. The stuff that passed did so by a wide margin and the main measures would have been proposed by someone else if I had not done so. This is very clear indeed from the Proposed decision page

Roger

Roger Davies · Unread post by **Roger Davies** » Fri Sep 18, 2015 8:13 am

Triptych wrote:Are we to understand, as it surely looks, that another arbitrator sent Roger Davies this "Fuck off, you cunts. Decline." text? I'd be interested to know which one, and how often similarly toned communications are exchanged by the arbs, behind the facade.

No, it wasn't an arbitrator. It was from someone who posts here sometimes.

Roger

Roger Davies · Unread post by **Roger Davies** » Fri Sep 18, 2015 8:55 am

Cla68 wrote:What was up with all of that nonsense? Why did you allow me and other editors to get treated that way when it was so obvious how unfair it all was and that the dude at the center of it all had serious issues? Was it because Mathsci is from the UK and the rest of us are Americans (just an assumption on my part)? Was it because you two knew each other in real life or were neighbors? What was it?

This'll probably generate howls of "I told you so" but ArbCom's primary objective is to try to restore a topic to normal editing, using limited and crude tools. The underlying issue in the topic was waves of sockpuppets, recruited editors and out-and-out bigots trying to strong-arm change. The longer a dispute goes on and the more widespread it becomes, the higher the likelihood of robust measures. Your assumption that I'm anti-American is ridiculous (I have American relatives). I don't know him in real life and we are not neighbours.

Roger

Roger Davies · Unread post by **Roger Davies** » Fri Sep 18, 2015 8:59 am

Jim wrote:Aren't we talking about a loud, public statement at an international conference?

Nope.

Roger

Roger Davies · Unread post by **Roger Davies** » Fri Sep 18, 2015 9:01 am

Vigilant wrote:
Captain Occam wrote:Roger, are you going to answer any of the more detailed questions that I, MMAR, and Cla68 have asked you in this thread?
As much as the Republican candidates answer their debate questions, I imagine.

Sorry, it's taken a bit of time to get round to replying. I've been up to my ears in real life stuff.

Roger

Vigilant · Unread post by **Vigilant** » Fri Sep 18, 2015 4:20 pm

Roger Davies wrote:
Vigilant wrote:Do you want his name, address, phone numbers, social security number, work information, resume, linkedin, facebook, twitter, band name, shooting club, parents', siblings' and spouse's names, addresses, phone numbers?

If knowing that information is what's standing in your way, please allow me to help.
I cannot discuss the specifics of this but the more degrees of separation between the Wikipedia account and the alleged perpetrator the more difficult a solid speculation-free identification becomes. Perhaps more to the point, handling anything other than the most clear-cut off-wiki harassment is way way beyond ArbCom's pay grade. And serious cases should be automatically referred to lawyers and to law enforcement. In many instances, a ban from the en-wiki (when there are 800+ other wikis to continue editing on) is at best purely symbolic.

Roger

Then why ban anyone at all, ever?

This is a poor answer.

Vigilant · Unread post by **Vigilant** » Fri Sep 18, 2015 4:23 pm

Roger Davies wrote:
Triptych wrote:Are we to understand, as it surely looks, that another arbitrator sent Roger Davies this "Fuck off, you cunts. Decline." text? I'd be interested to know which one, and how often similarly toned communications are exchanged by the arbs, behind the facade.
No, it wasn't an arbitrator. It was from someone who posts here sometimes.

Roger

Does he have ferret hair on his drinking elbow?

Vigilant · Unread post by **Vigilant** » Fri Sep 18, 2015 4:25 pm

Roger Davies wrote:
Vigilant wrote:
Captain Occam wrote:Roger, are you going to answer any of the more detailed questions that I, MMAR, and Cla68 have asked you in this thread?
As much as the Republican candidates answer their debate questions, I imagine.
Sorry, it's taken a bit of time to get round to replying. I've been up to my ears in real life stuff.

Roger

I'd like to thank you for your answers, even though I disagree with many of them.

Captain Occam · Unread post by **Captain Occam** » Fri Sep 18, 2015 4:54 pm

Roger Davies wrote:The harassment included numerous outings (oversighted) as well as a considerable amount of anti-semitic bile. However, the widely-held perception at the time (and there are plenty of public comments to this effect) was that Mathsci was preventing a series of sensitive articles from becoming platforms for either, depending on your POV, "white people are smarter" or "black people are more stupid". The impetus for this was coming from sockpuppets and meatpuppets as well as some particularly charmless trolls and bigots.

I'm aware of all this, but it has very little relation to the decisions I'm criticizing. At the time when you had Ferahgo site-banned in May 2012, she had been avoiding the race and intelligence topic for the past year and a half. (In the SightWatcher's case, he had been avoiding both the topic and Mathsci for the past year.) Ferahgo had been topic banned from those articles since October 2010, and the only time she ever was blocked for violating the topic ban was in November 2010. One sign of this is that in the findings of fact for Ferahgo's site-ban, the only diffs that were less than a year old were those related to the arbitration case itself.

Your response sounds as though you think I'm criticizing the topics bans you drafted in the original 2010 R&I arbitration case, or checkusers' blocking sockpuppets of Mikemikev and Echigo mole whenever they were identified, but I'm not criticizing either of those things. What I'm criticizing is your decision in 2012 to sanction editors who had quit the R&I topic upwards of a year earlier, and your subsequent unwillingness to turn any of the one-way interaction bans into mutual bans when Mathsci gamed them for a year. If your goal was to prevent Mathsci from being harassed and to keep POV-pushers away from the race and intelligence topic, that doesn't explain the reason for these decisions.

Roger Davies wrote:Second, your entire thrust is that this is all my fault. You suggest that I led the committee by the hand to make a decision it would never have made had someone else drafted. This is nonsense. I was but one voice of many. The PD I posted by and large reflected developing consensus from the arbitrators. The stuff that passed did so by a wide margin and the main measures would have been proposed by someone else if I had not done so. This is very clear indeed from the Proposed decision page

At the time when you first proposed your decision, a developing consensus for it isn't what the case pages showed. What we see in this discussion is four different people arguing that a site-ban for Ferahgo was excessive, including the only other arbitrator commenting there (Casliber), as well as two editors who had generally disagreed with her when she was editing the topic (Hipocrite and Aprock). If there was a consensus, it was (at least initially) in the opposite direction. I find it especially ironic that your eventual argument there was that getting rid of me and Ferahgo was necessary because of the amount of time that had been taken up by all the AE and AN/I reports about us. As you know, most of those reports had been initiated by Mathsci. Did you think of the possibility that after we were gone, Mathsci would simply find a new batch of editors to focus on, the way ended up actually happening?

Obviously the rest of ArbCom came around to your perspective eventually, but there are some additional signs that it was more the result of them deferring to your judgement than anything else. As I mentioned in my post here, by the time SilkTork got you to correct the findings of fact that were supported by bogus diffs and dead links (in some cases as the only support), multiple arbitrators had already voted in favor of them. The obvious implication is that when the other arbitrators were willing to support what you proposed, most of them weren't really paying attention to whether it was accurate or not.

When you devote as much time and energy to getting your way as you did with this issue in 2012, a lot of the time you'll succeed not because other people necessarily have the same perspective that you do, but just because the issue isn't important enough to them for it to be worth the effort required to argue with you about it. Another likely example of this principle was when TDA made an amendment request in July 2012 about Mathsci's gaming of TrevelyanL85A2's interaction ban. The first several arbitrators to comment on the request felt that it was worth doing something about Mathsci's gaming of the ban, and then in the section for discussion among arbitrators, you subsequently left as many comments as all the other arbitrators put together. Your hijacking of the request and changing its subject was the entire reason his gaming of the ban wasn't addressed there. You are really stretching credulity by suggesting any other arbitrator would have handled this situation the same way--perhaps most other arbitrators would have done something about Echigo mole's harassment of Mathsci, but they would not have done it at the exclusion of dealing with the request's original topic.

Roger Davies wrote:This'll probably generate howls of "I told you so" but ArbCom's primary objective is to try to restore a topic to normal editing, using limited and crude tools. The underlying issue in the topic was waves of sockpuppets, recruited editors and out-and-out bigots trying to strong-arm change. The longer a dispute goes on and the more widespread it becomes, the higher the likelihood of robust measures.

If your reason for doing all this really is what you've been saying in this thread, I'm not sure whether that's better or worse than my working theory that it's been a case of standard cronyism. This basically amounts to saying that you were so fixated on eliminating all racists from the "race and intelligence" topic that this extended to people who had quit the topic years ago, including people who were were already under topic bans, and eventually also to people who'd never edited the topic at all. I doubt it's escaped your notice that in the two years since you stopped defending Mathsci (and finally banned him), the "race and intelligence" topic has become a lot calmer. Did you ever consider the possibility that part of why the dispute spread so far, and lasted so long, was because of your and Mathsci's tilting at windmills?

Cla68 · Unread post by **Cla68** » Sat Sep 19, 2015 4:40 am

Captain Occam wrote:
Roger Davies wrote:This'll probably generate howls of "I told you so" but ArbCom's primary objective is to try to restore a topic to normal editing, using limited and crude tools. The underlying issue in the topic was waves of sockpuppets, recruited editors and out-and-out bigots trying to strong-arm change. The longer a dispute goes on and the more widespread it becomes, the higher the likelihood of robust measures.
If your reason for doing all this really is what you've been saying in this thread, I'm not sure whether that's better or worse than my working theory that it's been a case of standard cronyism. This basically amounts to saying that you were so fixated on eliminating all racists from the "race and intelligence" topic that this extended to people who had quit the topic years ago, including people who were were already under topic bans, and eventually also to people who'd never edited the topic at all. I doubt it's escaped your notice that in the two years since you stopped defending Mathsci (and finally banned him), the "race and intelligence" topic has become a lot calmer. Did you ever consider the possibility that part of why the dispute spread so far, and lasted so long, was because of your and Mathsci's tilting at windmills?

This is it exactly, Roger. One of the reasons there was so much trouble in the Race & Intelligence area was because Mathsci, besides witch-hunting, was baiting, taunting, and harassing the boogeymen editors. He outed his "enemies" on, if I remember right, four separate occasions and you all did absolutely nothing about it except take his side. You didn't think anything about the fact that I, who had never made a single edit inside the topic area, was suddenly being blocked and banned? It didn't bother you that MastCell blocked one of Mathsci's other targets before the hapless dude even had a chance to defend himself at AE?

To avoid sounding like I'm just repeating, "I told you so," instead I'll invite you to answer this question: What should you and the ArbCom have done differently in handling that situation and how can you prevent it from happening again?

Triptych · Unread post by **Triptych** » Sun Sep 20, 2015 1:42 am

Vigilant wrote:
Roger Davies wrote:
Triptych wrote:Are we to understand, as it surely looks, that another arbitrator sent Roger Davies this "Fuck off, you cunts. Decline." text? I'd be interested to know which one, and how often similarly toned communications are exchanged by the arbs, behind the facade.
No, it wasn't an arbitrator. It was from someone who posts here sometimes.

Roger
Does he have ferret hair on his drinking elbow?

A guessing game then. Roger is obliged to tell if someone guesses correctly, until three guesses are expended.

...Spartaz?

Roger Davies · Unread post by **Roger Davies** » Sun Sep 20, 2015 6:14 am

Vigilant wrote:
Roger Davies wrote:
Triptych wrote:Are we to understand, as it surely looks, that another arbitrator sent Roger Davies this "Fuck off, you cunts. Decline." text? I'd be interested to know which one, and how often similarly toned communications are exchanged by the arbs, behind the facade.
No, it wasn't an arbitrator. It was from someone who posts here sometimes.

Roger
Does he have ferret hair on his drinking elbow?

Nope.

Roger

Roger Davies · Unread post by **Roger Davies** » Sun Sep 20, 2015 6:14 am

Vigilant wrote:
Roger Davies wrote:
Vigilant wrote:
Captain Occam wrote:Roger, are you going to answer any of the more detailed questions that I, MMAR, and Cla68 have asked you in this thread?
As much as the Republican candidates answer their debate questions, I imagine.
Sorry, it's taken a bit of time to get round to replying. I've been up to my ears in real life stuff.

Roger
I'd like to thank you for your answers, even though I disagree with many of them.

Thank you!

Roger

Roger Davies · Unread post by **Roger Davies** » Sun Sep 20, 2015 6:57 am

Captain Occam wrote: What I'm criticizing is your decision in 2012 to sanction editors who had quit the R&I topic upwards of a year earlier, and your subsequent unwillingness to turn any of the one-way interaction bans into mutual bans when Mathsci gamed them for a year. If your goal was to prevent Mathsci from being harassed and to keep POV-pushers away from the race and intelligence topic, that doesn't explain the reason for these decisions.

The error I think was probably in 2010 for not banning you and Feragho outright. This would have prevented much of the subsequent on-wiki escalation and resolved the absurd situation of two people using the same IP address and often the same keyboard, and all the while insisting their on-wiki activities were wholly unconnected. The fact of the matter is that you enjoy arguing/debating the same stuff, at length and seemingly for years and years, and this is disruptive.

Captain Occam wrote:
Roger Davies wrote:This'll probably generate howls of "I told you so" but ArbCom's primary objective is to try to restore a topic to normal editing, using limited and crude tools. The underlying issue in the topic was waves of sockpuppets, recruited editors and out-and-out bigots trying to strong-arm change. The longer a dispute goes on and the more widespread it becomes, the higher the likelihood of robust measures.
If your reason for doing all this really is what you've been saying in this thread, I'm not sure whether that's better or worse than my working theory that it's been a case of standard cronyism. This basically amounts to saying that you were so fixated on eliminating all racists from the "race and intelligence" topic that this extended to people who had quit the topic years ago, including people who were were already under topic bans, and eventually also to people who'd never edited the topic at all.

Nope, that's not what I said at all. What I set out is the standard Wikipedia approach to dispute resolution, which applies equally to ArbCom.

Roger
Edit: to fix formatting

Roger Davies · Unread post by **Roger Davies** » Sun Sep 20, 2015 7:03 am

Cla68 wrote:
Captain Occam wrote:
Roger Davies wrote:This'll probably generate howls of "I told you so" but ArbCom's primary objective is to try to restore a topic to normal editing, using limited and crude tools. The underlying issue in the topic was waves of sockpuppets, recruited editors and out-and-out bigots trying to strong-arm change. The longer a dispute goes on and the more widespread it becomes, the higher the likelihood of robust measures.
If your reason for doing all this really is what you've been saying in this thread, I'm not sure whether that's better or worse than my working theory that it's been a case of standard cronyism. This basically amounts to saying that you were so fixated on eliminating all racists from the "race and intelligence" topic that this extended to people who had quit the topic years ago, including people who were were already under topic bans, and eventually also to people who'd never edited the topic at all. I doubt it's escaped your notice that in the two years since you stopped defending Mathsci (and finally banned him), the "race and intelligence" topic has become a lot calmer. Did you ever consider the possibility that part of why the dispute spread so far, and lasted so long, was because of your and Mathsci's tilting at windmills?
This is it exactly, Roger. One of the reasons there was so much trouble in the Race & Intelligence area was because Mathsci, besides witch-hunting, was baiting, taunting, and harassing the boogeymen editors. He outed his "enemies" on, if I remember right, four separate occasions and you all did absolutely nothing about it except take his side. You didn't think anything about the fact that I, who had never made a single edit inside the topic area, was suddenly being blocked and banned? It didn't bother you that MastCell blocked one of Mathsci's other targets before the hapless dude even had a chance to defend himself at AE?

To avoid sounding like I'm just repeating, "I told you so," instead I'll invite you to answer this question: What should you and the ArbCom have done differently in handling that situation and how can you prevent it from happening again?

I saw a couple of outing allegations (but don't remember four). One wasn't outing at all as the real life names had been freely disclosed on wiki and the other wasn't outing because it didn't contain any personally identifiable information. If the situation was as bad and as blatant as you suggest, why didn't you report it?

Roger

Roger Davies · Unread post by **Roger Davies** » Sun Sep 20, 2015 7:04 am

Triptych wrote:
Vigilant wrote:
Roger Davies wrote:
Triptych wrote:Are we to understand, as it surely looks, that another arbitrator sent Roger Davies this "Fuck off, you cunts. Decline." text? I'd be interested to know which one, and how often similarly toned communications are exchanged by the arbs, behind the facade.
No, it wasn't an arbitrator. It was from someone who posts here sometimes.

Roger
Does he have ferret hair on his drinking elbow?
A guessing game then. Roger is obliged to tell if someone guesses correctly, until three guesses are expended.

...Spartaz?

Nope.

Roger