Arbcom blames editor for their failure.

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Arbcom blames editor for their failure.

Unread post by Kumioko » Sat Apr 12, 2014 8:26 pm

I know that Rich Farmbrough isn't popular with some folks here but I saw that he has again been brought to Arbitration enforcement and then to Arbcom for his "Failure" to follow his sanction. The problem is, for those that may not have read it, the Arbcom did such a lousy job of writing it, that no one would be able to meet it because anyone who reads it could interpret the thing a different way. Now they are actually blaming the editor for not meeting the sanction. This leads me to 2 (and possibly a bit of both) conclusions. Either they wrote it specifically so he wouldn't (nor would anyone else) be able to meet it so they could then justify banning him (which they couldn't muster the support for previously) or they are truly are so inept that they wrote it thinking they were giving him another chance and really don't recognize the poorly written sanction for the editorial piece of shit it really is.

I have been a critic of the failures of Arbcom for a while, pretty much as soon as I did research and learned about it and started following the cases in fact. But looking at their comments in Rich's case review here: Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Clarification and Amendment#Clarification request: Rich Farmbrough (T-H-L) and the petty arbitration enhancement post by Fram (T-C-L), I am now more convinced than ever that this Arbcom is not only the worst, but I am hoping this Arbcom has the same effect to Wikipedia as the Assassination of Julius Caesar (T-H-L) and the institution of the Second Triumvirate (T-H-L) contributed to the fall of the Roman Republic (T-H-L). They are just a couple of bad decisions away from unleashing totally anarchy on Wikipedia.

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Re: Arbcom blames editor for their failure.

Unread post by EricBarbour » Sat Apr 12, 2014 10:23 pm

Kumioko wrote:They are just a couple of bad decisions away from unleashing totally anarchy on Wikipedia.
Oh, you don't have to worry about that -- they unleashed total anarchy back in 2005. The primary purpose of Arbcom since then has apparently been the exact opposite of their "official remit". Instead of actually "governing", they generate the false pretense of "governance".

There is no controlling Farmbrough, there never will be. He is OCD and has fixated on Wikipedia as his "life's work". Since editing and formatting bots are now "more important" than actual content writers, Farmbrough is a sort of folk hero on Wikipedia.

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Re: Arbcom blames editor for their failure.

Unread post by Kumioko » Sat Apr 12, 2014 11:01 pm

EricBarbour wrote:
Kumioko wrote:They are just a couple of bad decisions away from unleashing totally anarchy on Wikipedia.
Oh, you don't have to worry about that -- they unleashed total anarchy back in 2005. The primary purpose of Arbcom since then has apparently been the exact opposite of their "official remit". Instead of actually "governing", they generate the false pretense of "governance".

There is no controlling Farmbrough, there never will be. He is OCD and has fixated on Wikipedia as his "life's work". Since editing and formatting bots are now "more important" than actual content writers, Farmbrough is a sort of folk hero on Wikipedia.
Yeah I pretty much agree with all of that actually. I think recently though, more and more people are seeing the Arbcom for the abomination it is. Most of the members of the Arbcom are just kids with no life experience, no qualification to be an Arbitrator and no common sense. With the exception of a couple, its mostly just a bunch of self important bullish and abusive admins like AGK (T-C-L) that are just hat collectors and more interested in patting themselves on the back and being in charge than to actually be an Arb. With regard to Rich, the arguements that got him sanctioned are mostly just BS. It really just boiled down to a couple of editors who got tired of seeing "minor edits" or seeing their watchlist fillup. Two of the worst possible arguments ever for having someone banned from automation. More harm was done to the project by sanctioning him and his bots than any vandal in the history of Wikipedia.

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Re: Arbcom blames editor for their failure.

Unread post by Triptych » Sat Apr 12, 2014 11:18 pm

EricBarbour wrote:
Kumioko wrote:They are just a couple of bad decisions away from unleashing totally anarchy on Wikipedia.
Oh, you don't have to worry about that -- they unleashed total anarchy back in 2005. The primary purpose of Arbcom since then has apparently been the exact opposite of their "official remit". Instead of actually "governing", they generate the false pretense of "governance".

There is no controlling Farmbrough, there never will be. He is OCD and has fixated on Wikipedia as his "life's work". Since editing and formatting bots are now "more important" than actual content writers, Farmbrough is a sort of folk hero on Wikipedia.
It is good every moment the arbs spend on minutae self-absorbed stuff like this, because it prevents them from spending time elsewhere doing more damage. However it has not tied them up enough so far because only Worm, AGK, Newyorkbrad, Salvio, and Beeblebrox are commenting. It is preferable that *all* the arbs should be typing mass portions of text for hours on end about how their arbitration enforcement bellybuttons should be brushed.

I'm semi-familiar with Mr. Farmbrough. He once did mass amounts of "automated editing" which means I gathered that he doesn't type stuff like you or I are here for example but rather with computerized tools to affect great numbers of articles in particular or personalized way (i.e.) punctuation and spelling that have little to do with the meaning of the content. He did it a lot. But some didn't like the results so yada-yada-yada Arbcom gave him orders not to do it anymore. It said "no more automated editing for Farmbrough." But then you have the little administrative participants running around suspecting he is using a spreadsheet off-line to do this or that before typing it, so they howl at him and Arbcom "that is automated editing!"

An example by complaining Fram is Fram's statement: "It seems unlikely that Rich Farmbroug made the same typo four times, matching exactly these four "starred" companies, the only ones to have that extra bit." What garbage. Show me some damage that has been done. Show me a diff that is obviously a messed-up edit. Fram tattles and seeks to harm Farmbrough on ambiguous technicalities, which include profuse use of the word "seems." Am I wrong? Show me a damaging Farmbrough diff. In closing, stupid stuff overall, inconsequential to anything except personal grievances, animosities, and henpecking. Chew it up for hours on end, Arbcom, chew it up to stop you from doing further damage elsewhere.
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Re: Arbcom blames editor for their failure.

Unread post by Notvelty » Sun Apr 13, 2014 12:42 am

Any half-way reasonable group in the real world would have told Farmborough to take his blatant efforts at pushing the line and gaming the system and piss off long ago.

Then they would have shown the door to the twits who encouraged him.
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Re: Arbcom blames editor for their failure.

Unread post by Vigilant » Sun Apr 13, 2014 3:07 am

In what sane world is there an "Arbitration Committee", comprised of people who won a popularity contest but possess zero training or experience in arbitration, to make political decisions for the fifth busiest website on the planet?

What insanity is this?
How utterly stupid would you have to be to think this might work?

WMF...step in and provide actual paid management structure for these squabbling children that pervade your website.
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Re: Arbcom blames editor for their failure.

Unread post by Bottled_Spider » Sun Apr 13, 2014 7:40 am

Kumioko wrote:...... They are just a couple of bad decisions away from unleashing totally anarchy on Wikipedia.
I think that situation was reached, and breached some time ago. It's really just inertia that's keeping it all going.

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Re: Arbcom blames editor for their failure.

Unread post by Midsize Jake » Sun Apr 13, 2014 8:01 am

Kumioko wrote:....I am hoping this Arbcom has the same effect to Wikipedia as the Assassination of Julius Caesar (T-H-L) and the institution of the Second Triumvirate (T-H-L) contributed to the fall of the Roman Republic (T-H-L).
One can always hope, but that sounds a little optimistic to me - I'd say we're closer to the Marius and Sulla stage of the process. Most historians will probably tell you that by the time of the Second Triumvirate, the situation had already deteriorated past the point of saving the Republic.

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Re: Arbcom blames editor for their failure.

Unread post by eagle » Sun Apr 13, 2014 9:29 am

I never bothered to learn about or monitor the actions of the Arbitration Committee for years after I started editing. I vaguely knew that some group of people had to be in charge. Krill and NewYorkBrad showed up at a Washington DC meetup and explained that they were on that particular committee. My first impression of the two of them was that it seemed to fit.

Most content editors don't know or care about the operation of the Arbitration Committee just as most college faculty do not care about the various faculty and administrative committees of their college. If they are doing their job properly, they should be almost invisible.

However, the fundamental structure of Wikipedia (and its theoretical justification) is being constantly reconstructed on the fly. So, it is impossible to explain what Wikipedia is or will become without answering the question "Who is in charge?" Because far more editors are banned by "the community" than the Arbitration Committee and because the Arbitration Committee does a very bad job of selecting its cases, the answer is that "nobody is in charge of Wikipedia - it is mob rule."

The WMF says that Wikipedia works in practice although it could not possibly work in theory. The difference between the WMF and the people on this forum is that the WMF is asking the public to donate millions of dollars to an uncontrolled environment in the hopes that it will continue to work, while the people here contend that the whole project has really stopped producing that magnitude of value.

Is the Arbitration Committee really improving the behavior of admins or content creators? Is the Arbitration Committee really addressing the protection of children or paid editing? Rather than focus of management issues or challenges, they are the most visible forum for the people playing wikipolitics.

In the real world, management controls an organization both through the power to hire and fire and also through the allocation of budget and resources. The ArbCom has the power to fire. (They also can do limited hiring to a few committees.) However, they have no financial control over English Wikipedia. If fund-seeking folks like PeterForsyth want to organize yet another conference, they go to the WMF not ArbCom. Suppose English Wikipedia had a governing board with a $20 million/year editorial budget as well as the banhammer. If they wanted to fix a protracted edit war, they would send a paid supervisory editor to bring adult supervision to a troubled area. If they wanted to increase the number of female editors, they could create six-month paid Wikipedia Fellowships for qualified women. If they wanted to improve math articles, they could hire mathematicians to edit.

The current Arbitration Committee is not in a position to provide leadership to English Wikipedia. It is just wedged in between Jimmy Wales, the WMF staff, and the WMF Board to free those three groups of the burden of dealing with day-to-day craziness.

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Re: Arbcom blames editor for their failure.

Unread post by Jim » Sun Apr 13, 2014 10:49 am

eagle wrote:... If they wanted to improve math articles, they could hire mathematicians to edit. ...
And that's fine, up to a point, but then what?
Do they lock the articles after the experts have finished, or do the experts then have to spend their paid time protecting their improvements from Randys, schoolkids and vandals, and arguing the toss on talkpages?
Can't see many expert mathematicians lining up for that gig...

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Re: Arbcom blames editor for their failure.

Unread post by Poetlister » Sun Apr 13, 2014 8:00 pm

Jim wrote:
eagle wrote:... If they wanted to improve math articles, they could hire mathematicians to edit. ...
And that's fine, up to a point, but then what?
Do they lock the articles after the experts have finished, or do the experts then have to spend their paid time protecting their improvements from Randys, schoolkids and vandals, and arguing the toss on talkpages?
Can't see many expert mathematicians lining up for that gig...
That's what talk pages are for. The articles are locked and people can then suggest improvements, which the experts then consider.
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Re: Arbcom blames editor for their failure.

Unread post by EricBarbour » Sun Apr 13, 2014 9:13 pm

eagle wrote:The WMF says that Wikipedia works in practice although it could not possibly work in theory. The difference between the WMF and the people on this forum is that the WMF is asking the public to donate millions of dollars to an uncontrolled environment in the hopes that it will continue to work, while the people here contend that the whole project has really stopped producing that magnitude of value.
Correct. It's one of the greatest snow-jobs in Internet history.
Is the Arbitration Committee really improving the behavior of admins or content creators? Is the Arbitration Committee really addressing the protection of children or paid editing?
Absolutely not, in fact I suspect they are making things worse.

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Re: Arbcom blames editor for their failure.

Unread post by Kumioko » Sun Apr 13, 2014 10:15 pm

I agree, in fact I confronted them multiple times on the issue because they are the only ones that can take the tools away from an abusive admin. Yet, it takes more than a month for them to even respond and even then that's only after incalculable amounts of damage. When they do accept a case they almost always let the admin go with Admonishment (whatever the hell that is) and then they also generally punish a couple of the non adminsn in the case just to make sure that no one submits a case in the future.

So not only do they not care or do anything about abusive admins, they are contributing to the culture of admins are royalty, are exempt from policy and the rules and cannot be questioned.

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Re: Arbcom blames editor for their failure.

Unread post by Kumioko » Mon Apr 14, 2014 4:43 pm

I don't know, it seems like the WMF is so set on making it work they are ignoring the obvious signs that VE and Flow neither work, nor are they particularly wanted.

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Re: Arbcom blames editor for their failure.

Unread post by Triptych » Mon Apr 14, 2014 4:51 pm

Kumioko wrote:I agree, in fact I confronted them multiple times on the issue because they are the only ones that can take the tools away from an abusive admin.
I've often mused that WP:AN/ANI could potentially desysop an administrator. (I group both of those discussion boards together because I think it's basically the same people doing the same stuff, although yes I think ANI might get a few other visitors to make it even the more rabid and chaotic and wilding.) Say someone opens up a thread on the question of the latest administrator to commit an heinous act: "Desysop X for outrageous conduct and tool abuse?" Assuming it then proceeds to one of their atrocious and lawless and vote-him-off-the-island votes, and somehow is not deleted, closed, or kidnapped, and the vote proceeds to say a 90% count in favor of desysoping, doesn't it then go to the bureaucrats who are capable of desysoping? And then it depends whether they are going to honor the vote or if they are more of the authority-minded "all hail Arbcom" variety.

Maybe there is policy that says only Arbcom can desysop, but I am not familiar with that. I'm happy to be corrected if I'm wrong.
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Re: Arbcom blames editor for their failure.

Unread post by Kumioko » Tue Apr 15, 2014 11:29 am

Wikipedia:Arbitration/Policy (T-H-L) Option 3 under Scope and responsibilities states it with the exception of those who go inactive for a year. There have been a few exceptions in the case of obviously compromised accounts, requests or the like, but they are fairly rare and the exception only.

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Re: Arbcom blames editor for their failure.

Unread post by Triptych » Tue Apr 15, 2014 1:45 pm

Kumioko wrote:Wikipedia:Arbitration/Policy (T-H-L) Option 3 under Scope and responsibilities states it with the exception of those who go inactive for a year. There have been a few exceptions in the case of obviously compromised accounts, requests or the like, but they are fairly rare and the exception only.
Well, that says Arbcom can desysop, not that is the *only* entity that can.
Arbcom policy, ratified 13 June 2011 wrote: Scope and responsibilities

The Arbitration Committee of the English Wikipedia has the following duties and responsibilities:

To act as a final binding decision-maker primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve;
To hear appeals from blocked, banned, or otherwise restricted users;
To handle requests (other than self-requests) for removal of administrative tools;[1]
To resolve matters unsuitable for public discussion for privacy, legal, or similar reasons;
To approve and remove access to (i) CheckUser and Oversight tools and (ii) mailing lists maintained by the Arbitration Committee.
You could argue that by designating desysops an Arbcom responsibility, it impliedly prohibits others from doing same, but that viewpoint I think is defeated by the other line items there, such as 1) block appeals, which individual administrators, WP:AN/ANI also hear, and 2) discussion of non-public matters which oversighters and I think OTRS/UTRS do. As well I clearly recall his majestic kingly founder Jimmy Wales reserving the power to do pretty much anything including kicking Arbcom to the curb if in his judgment it's necessary.
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Re: Arbcom blames editor for their failure.

Unread post by Kelly Martin » Tue Apr 15, 2014 2:16 pm

Triptych wrote:Maybe there is policy that says only Arbcom can desysop, but I am not familiar with that. I'm happy to be corrected if I'm wrong.
There's history here. Way back when, bureaucrats had the ability to desysop as well as sysop, and they would do so when community consensus existed. This was quite rare, and very few people were desysoped except by voluntary request. However, in some situation, the specifics of which escape me, Ed Poor (T-C-L) desysoped someone "out of process". A firestorm erupted, and the end result of that firestorm was to retract from the bureaucrats the capability to desysop anyone at all. Desysoping became a manual process that could only be performed by a developer, with Jimmy Wales as the sole gateway Decider Guy. This was around the same time that Jimmy decided to partially delegate his Decider Guy authority to the ArbCom, and so the ArbCom ended up with the sole authority to order a desysoping (aside from Jimbo's "royal prerogative" to do anything at all).

Not long after this, the "steward" role was invented, and many of the roles held by developers were offloaded onto stewards, but this had no immediate impact on the English Wikipedia policy of leaving the ArbCom with sole authority.

I don't know if the authority to desysop has been restored to bureaucrats. I imagine by now that most everyone in Wikipedia has forgotten about Ed Poor's "night of rampage" by now; that was far too many "generations" ago for the facts to be remembered. Even the echoes of that incident have probably decayed into insubstantiability by now. Wikipedians have very short memories for things they don't actively want to remember. On most other Wikimedia projects, bureaucrats have always had inherent desysop authority.

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Re: Arbcom blames editor for their failure.

Unread post by Triptych » Tue Apr 15, 2014 2:32 pm

Kelly Martin wrote:I don't know if the authority to desysop has been restored to bureaucrats. I imagine by now that most everyone in Wikipedia has forgotten about Ed Poor's "night of rampage" by now; that was far too many "generations" ago for the facts to be remembered. Even the echoes of that incident have probably decayed into insubstantiability by now. Wikipedians have very short memories for things they don't actively want to remember. On most other Wikimedia projects, bureaucrats have always had inherent desysop authority.
When Kafziel was desysoped in January, Pakaran implemented according to the log: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?tit ... tagfilter=. Pakaran is a bureaucrat according to his userpage though I couldn't tell you if he is also developer or anything like that.
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Re: Arbcom blames editor for their failure.

Unread post by Kelly Martin » Tue Apr 15, 2014 2:39 pm

Triptych wrote:When Kafziel was desysoped in January, Pakaran implemented according to the log: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?tit ... tagfilter=. Pakaran is a bureaucrat according to his userpage though I couldn't tell you if he is also developer or anything like that.
I admit that I've not followed this aspect of Wikipolicy closely since I left the site in 2007. It seems evident that the capability to desysop has been restored to bureaucrats, although when this happened and by what process I cannot say. Perhaps one of our other wikihistorians recalls.

My point is that while most Wikipedians likely do not remember the Ed Poor incident, at least some of the bureaucrats likely do, and certainly there are still longtimers who can recall a time when bureaucrats did not have that right, even if they do not know why. The office of bureaucrat, on the English Wikipedia, has long been imbued with an obligation for restraint, much of which likely stems from the Ed Poor incident.

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Re: Arbcom blames editor for their failure.

Unread post by Kumioko » Tue Apr 15, 2014 5:25 pm

Thanks Kelly I forgot some of that. Anyway, there is policy somewhere either written or implied that Arbcom shall be the sole decider on whether someone is to e desysopped or not. Generally even if they receive a request, they just admonish the admin regardless of how heiness the act. In most cases, the only time an admin is desysopped for cause, is in conjunction with a case not directly relating to them, but for which they were a factor. There is a feeling in the community by some that the general userbase cannot be trusted with the ability to desysop an admin because that might make the admin not act in cases where they should because they were afraid of reprisal. Personally I think that argument is pretty much invalidated by the ability of the community to ban someone from teh site. If the community has the ability to grant someone the tools or to completely ban a member, using myself as an example, they should also be trusted to remove the tools. Otherwise the community should not be trusted to grant the tools or to ban someone from the community. If 8 editors can get together one night and ban someone from the project, then they should be able to remove the tools from an abusive admin.

Aside from that, I personally think the notion that admins are the gods of the site is absurd. They were never meant to be the Wikipedia government and it was "just a few more tools" and "no big deal". Now its a huge deal for less tools.

While Bureaucrats still do desysop on behalf of Arbcom (or the admin is inactive for a year or voluntarily requests desysop) the Arbcom is the only one that can order an Admin desysopped.

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Re: Arbcom blames editor for their failure.

Unread post by Triptych » Tue Apr 15, 2014 6:20 pm

Kumioko wrote:Anyway, there is policy somewhere either written or implied that Arbcom shall be the sole decider on whether someone is to e desysopped or not.
If such policy exists, where would it be? I quoted the part of what is essentially Arbcom's charter (which you graciously pointed to) and it doesn't actually say that.

The fact is that we will know whether WP:AN/ANI (which is a crowd-sourced chat forum entity) can do a desysop when it tries to do so.

EDIT: Just notice your "sole decider" assertion, Kumioko, heh heh!
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Re: Arbcom blames editor for their failure.

Unread post by Kumioko » Tue Apr 15, 2014 7:11 pm

Lol, yeah, I have a lot going on so I am trying to type too fast.

I just looked around a bit more and I can't find anything more specific detailing how or why Arbcom has the sole responsibility of dealing with admins. My opinion of Arbcom is low, so it won't surprise anyone if I say that IMO they gave themselves the ability because they are admins and it will help them to protect their own power. As Kelly pointed out above Jimbo had a hand in it too and in many respects the community did as well with their knee jerk reaction to the Ed Poor incident. They are also the only ones that can decide if a banned editor can come back. What? Why the F should they do that? IF someone is banned for a year and comes back, great. If not then fine. Why does the Arbcom need to even be involved in that? They don't, but they have this idea that they have to interfer in everything to protect the Wiki (actually their own interests more than anything else).

The Arbcom was a reasonable idea when it first started to deal with some specific issues. Over time however they have become more and more of a burden to the project and have made worse and worse decisions. Even then, the decisions they do generate look like they are written by 1st graders. They are poorly worded, poorly thought out, poorly executed and are just plain garbage. If I was an Arb write now, I would be ashamed of the committee and myself for being a part of it. No wonder they are all going on Wiki break and adding themselves the inactive list.

Just a suggestion Tryptich but maybe you could drop a question on the Arbcom asking where the authority lies? I would but it would be quickly reverted because now they have the excuse to do so they have wanted for a long, long time.

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