Black Kite throws down: latest Eric Corbett block at RFAR

[Randy from Boise]

3b.

Anthony is hard at work chronicling the Guest of Honor's each and every use of the most offensive insult in the American feminist lexicon.

Since AHC is necessarily truncating quotations, I'll expand them just a touch here to provide context and indicate who EC is using the word against.

First we have an instance from Dec. 2013 — a mere 22 months ago — in which AutomaticStrikeout (T-C-L) gets the verbal:

Since you asked, bullying is the attitude that made you feel comfortable saying to Khazar2 above, "What's wrong with you Khazar2, that makes you feel emboldened to talk to me like this? You simply haven't got a clue." You're basically asking him what right he has to criticize you, which implies that you are superior to him. Well, guess what: we don't like your acting like you are better than anyone who disagrees with you. AutomaticStrikeout (₵) 7:44 pm, 4 December 2013, Wednesday (1 year, 10 months, 24 days ago) (UTC−8)

How interesting and very revealing that you (We? How many of you stupid cunts are there?) choose to ignore the comment from Kzahar that I was responding to, which to remind you was "you're someone who can only feel big when belittling others through the comfortable distance of the Internet." Still, whatever makes you feel justified in your own stupidity justifies your stupidity I suppose, at least in your own mind. Eric Corbett 7:50 pm, 4 December 2013, Wednesday (1 year, 10 months, 24 days ago) (UTC−8)

Next we have an instance 17 months ago in which EC went to the talk page of Administrator Dank (T-C-L) to burn bridges:

Don't you think it's a little bit naughty to alter your posting after someone has responded to it? Eric Corbett 3:06 pm, 27 May 2014, Tuesday (1 year, 5 months, 3 days ago) (UTC−7)

I didn't arrive at Wikipedia yesterday, Eric, and I've seen this before. You goad an admin until people think "Wow, there must be some kind of bad blood between them". Well, I've never treated you with anything but respect, and whatever conflict is going on at WT:FAC and here is in your head, not mine. If you want to try to make a federal case out of it that I changed "the" to "the or a" and then explained the change immediately, feel free. - Dank (push to talk) 6:28 pm, 27 May 2014, Tuesday (1 year, 5 months, 3 days ago) (UTC−7)

I see, you're the cunt I always thought you were. Eric Corbett 6:46 pm, 27 May 2014, Tuesday (1 year, 5 months, 2 days ago) (UTC−7)

And another, rather more famous, instance involving the Sole Flounder and others baiting EC at Jimbotalk in the aftermath of his Wikimania 2014 keynote attack... (linkhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Carr ... Speech2014[/link])

Surely, Mr Wales, you must realise the irony of using the WMF in this way to further a (as yet unsubstantiated) personal vendetta against an individual whose work (and resulting click-through, views and donations) pays the salaries of those very same WMF staff? WMF isn't simply gifted funds because of the excellent governance arrangements it has in place (which you admit have failed anyway) - content drives donations. I have no problem with your having personal disagreements with others but the petulant manner in which you have gone about fighting this particular battle is unbecoming. Respect for you and this project is diminished by your conduct, in this instance, not that of Mr Corbett. You dislike Mr Corbett and his style (which is perfectly fine) but you clearly haven't yet gathered enough evidence to come even close to substantiating your claim that he is a misogynist or that he is driving editors from this project. I wonder if the WMF would assist me in making a case against those editors far worse, far more divisive and far more toxic than Mr Corbett could ever be? I think not. St★lwart111 3:16 pm, 14 October 2014, Tuesday (1 year, 15 days ago) (UTC−7)

There is no irony. There is no vendetta. The facts are very well substantiated - I have given exact quotes which no one denies. And my clear and obviously correct point is that his behavior is destructive to Wikipedia because it costs us good contributors who are not willing to put up with his abuse. Content absolutely does drive donations, which is why it is critical for us to get rid of editors who drive way good content contributors through abusive behavior. The case for his behavior being destructive is absolutely clear, unless you really do think it is ok to call people 'cunt' and to attack the intelligence of other contributors in the course of what should be routine editing. What more evidence do you need?--Jimbo Wales (talk) 4:09 pm, 14 October 2014, Tuesday (1 year, 15 days ago) (UTC−7)

Jimbo, you're talking a big game here. Gather up your evidence--your actual evidence, not just assertions--and walk the talk. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 4:23 pm, 14 October 2014, Tuesday (1 year, 15 days ago) (UTC−7)

I have given exact quotes which no one denies. Wrong. (See above.) Ihardlythinkso (talk) 4:30 pm, 14 October 2014, Tuesday (1 year, 15 days ago) (UTC−7)

I've really had quite enough of this. Jimbo Wales is a dishonest cunt of the highest order. Now block me. Eric Corbett

linkhttps://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... =629642631[/link]

I count zero women being targeted in these three diffs...

linkhttps://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... =688065094[/link]

RfB

[Jim]

I count zero women being targeted in these three diffs...

Precisely. And Anthony is at pains to include "Corbett responded on a new, unindented line" in the heading for the (in)famous Lightbreather comment. ie: "Eric is an equal opportunities insulter..."

[ats]

This case is going to be about one thing, the Arbcom banning Eric or not. Up till now they haven't had the balls, but this time they might just go through with it. On the other hand, as I have said before plenty of other folks have also done wrong, but Arbcom doesn't care about any of that, because many of them were admins and if Arbcom did anything to any of them for baiting, harassment and hounding Eric, then it would ruin the Arbcom's reputation of being completely incompetent and one sided towards admins.

I guess we shall see what the future holds, but one thing is for certain, there is no Eric in the Arbcom's vision of the Wikipedia of the future.

IMO Jbhunley makes a rather valid observation;

Every single volunteer organization I have ever worked with had a very simple policy about volunteers - If you can not get along with the other people, no matter what your contribution, your services are no longer welcome. If you cause disruption ongoing controversy, whether it is your fault or not and no matter your contribution, your services are no longer welcome. This is basic to the continued well being of any volunteer organization and it is essential to the long term continued viability of Wikipedia. Wikipedia is not a 'special snowflake', people have been managing volunteer organizations for a very long time use the knowledge that has been accumulated. Hell read a book or three on volunteer management. It will help you.
I have no opinion on Eric as an editor and the misogyny claim looks to be BS but it really does not matter. If you want to maintain a viable organization in the long term you need to choose whether you are going to manage the chaos or allow Wikipedia to choke on its own anarchy.

You have established rules for AE and you need to stand by them to do otherwise is to trash whatever moral authority you have with both sides. You already have none with one side.

The other options are a) revolution or b) kick the can down the road for another group to face the same choice after unknown further damage is done to the community and the project. Some group must manage the intractable issues here. Managers are seldom liked by those they manage - at least not when they are trying to manage a bunch of anarchist wanna-be's - but they are necessary otherwise the wanna-be anarchists will find they have no place to indulge in their anarchy and no one wants to play in their sandbox. I hope none of this is new to any of you but based on many of the comments I have read here I fear it might be to some.

If they remove people who can not get along with everyone else, I'm afraid there would be almost no one left either editors or admins. And if causing disruption or ongoing controversy was grounds for bans/blocks then things like GGTF would be blocked on day one (cause obviously its going to cause disruption and ongoing controversy). The problem is that the advice of Jbhunley works great if you are applying it to your main mission (which for wikipedia is to create an online encyclopedia, and by all accounts Eric does seem to get along with a great number of people who do content) but wikipedia has sprawled into many other topic areas which by definition will cause disruption and ongoing controversy. And hell, lets not pretend that wikipedia is like any other volunteer organization, real volunteer organizations have charters, bylaws, hierarchy, etc. Wikipedia has explicitly decided not to go down that path.

[slacker]

If they remove people who can not get along with everyone else, I'm afraid there would be almost no one left either editors or admins.

Are you sure? This is a claim Eric's supporters like to roll out as one of their greatest hits, but it's really not true. Wikipedia is filled with people who both write good content and get along with people - both in terms of genuinely nice people, as well as those who are mature enough not to let their passion for content turn disagreements over it into highly personalised slanging matches. Crotchety assholes like Eric are in the minority, by a long way. This can be proven quite easily, whatever metric you use - blocks, warnings, (genuine) barnstars, popular votes, etc, etc.

[Oblia]

How interesting and very revealing that you (We? How many of you stupid cunts are there?) choose to ignore the comment from Kzahar that I was responding to, which to remind you was "you're someone who can only feel big when belittling others through the comfortable distance of the Internet." Still, whatever makes you feel justified in your own stupidity justifies your stupidity I suppose, at least in your own mind. Eric Corbett 7:50 pm, 4 December 2013, Wednesday (1 year, 10 months, 24 days ago) (UTC−8)

I see, you're the cunt I always thought you were. Eric Corbett 6:46 pm, 27 May 2014, Tuesday (1 year, 5 months, 2 days ago) (UTC−7)

I've really had quite enough of this. Jimbo Wales is a dishonest cunt of the highest order. Now block me. Eric Corbett

I count zero women being targeted in these three diffs...
RfB

Wake up, Randy!

In a collaborative environment it's sexist to call anyone a cunt. It's a word that says female genitalia are contemptible,

(my bolding).

Spot on, Oblia. It really is as simple as this.

[slacker]

I count zero women being targeted in these three diffs...

Carrite, if you want to be seen as a fair witness to these somber proceedings of the court, it would be in your interest to faithfully report that the issue with the use of the c-word is not simply the gender of who it's directed at, it's the fact that most women perceive it as having sexist connotations, and will certainly feel targetted in the misogyny sense when they see its use not being met with the strongest possible reaction that would be seen if it was some other extremely offensive identity based insult (the n-word, the 3 letter f-word, etc). i.e., telling someone to stop being such a f-g is still homophobic, whether or not your target is gay, and its use on Wikipedia would (you would hope) be reacted to in the strongest possible terms. It's clear Eric doesn't agree with this perception, but it's out there in the real word, and it's acceptance as the cultural norm in a respectful environment is only gaining ground, hence why most people expect it to form part of the respect culture on Wikipedia. He has plenty of other places he can use the word if he feels that strongly about it.

[Kumioko]

This case is going to be about one thing, the Arbcom banning Eric or not. Up till now they haven't had the balls, but this time they might just go through with it. On the other hand, as I have said before plenty of other folks have also done wrong, but Arbcom doesn't care about any of that, because many of them were admins and if Arbcom did anything to any of them for baiting, harassment and hounding Eric, then it would ruin the Arbcom's reputation of being completely incompetent and one sided towards admins.

I guess we shall see what the future holds, but one thing is for certain, there is no Eric in the Arbcom's vision of the Wikipedia of the future.

IMO Jbhunley makes a rather valid observation;

Every single volunteer organization I have ever worked with had a very simple policy about volunteers - If you can not get along with the other people, no matter what your contribution, your services are no longer welcome. If you cause disruption ongoing controversy, whether it is your fault or not and no matter your contribution, your services are no longer welcome. This is basic to the continued well being of any volunteer organization and it is essential to the long term continued viability of Wikipedia. Wikipedia is not a 'special snowflake', people have been managing volunteer organizations for a very long time use the knowledge that has been accumulated. Hell read a book or three on volunteer management. It will help you.
I have no opinion on Eric as an editor and the misogyny claim looks to be BS but it really does not matter. If you want to maintain a viable organization in the long term you need to choose whether you are going to manage the chaos or allow Wikipedia to choke on its own anarchy.

You have established rules for AE and you need to stand by them to do otherwise is to trash whatever moral authority you have with both sides. You already have none with one side.

The other options are a) revolution or b) kick the can down the road for another group to face the same choice after unknown further damage is done to the community and the project. Some group must manage the intractable issues here. Managers are seldom liked by those they manage - at least not when they are trying to manage a bunch of anarchist wanna-be's - but they are necessary otherwise the wanna-be anarchists will find they have no place to indulge in their anarchy and no one wants to play in their sandbox. I hope none of this is new to any of you but based on many of the comments I have read here I fear it might be to some.

I would generally agree with what he says too, unfortunately that's not how it works. The admins do not enforce violations consistently and nether does AE or the Arbcom. AE is essentially a hanging jury where anyone who is accused is guilty and no one monitors or oversees it so it ends up being a free for all to any admins who want to block people, no or few questions asked.

Wikipedia as a site can surely survive without Eric and anyone else for that matter, that's not the issue. What is the issue here, is whether the admins and arbs are going to allow their peers to continue to harass and hound people they do not like out of the project by goading them into a conflict to justify blocking them. As I have said before, Eric can be an ass, but when you have the same 3 or 4 people hounding you over and over and over and none of the admins have enough respect for the sites policies to do anything about it, anyone is going to get tired of it. So yes although Eric is very much to blame for his own demise, he is not the only one who's conduct needs to be addressed here.

I would also add that no "damage" is being done to the project even if the whole affair is something of a time sync.

[slacker]

Every single volunteer organization I have ever worked with had a very simple policy about volunteers - If you can not get along with the other people, no matter what your contribution, your services are no longer welcome. If you cause disruption ongoing controversy, whether it is your fault or not and no matter your contribution, your services are no longer welcome.

The problem here is that while all sides of this battleground will most likely agree with Jbhunley's statement here. The actual core of this conflict is not about if disruptive people should be kicked out but rather which people are actually being disruptive.

Team Colbert argue that all they want to do is edit their articles in peace while Team Gender Gap keeps attacking them out of a misguided desire to make Wikipedia a better place.

Team Gender Gap argue that Team Colbert make Wikipedia a hostile place and must be forced to comply or be ejected.

Ultimately this battleground will never end until at least one of these groups are kicked to the curb. Just banning Eric will do nothing, we're going to be back here again with some other editor taking his place. My preferred solution is to block all partisans on both sides from the project for atleast a year.

Well, for one, "Team Gender Gap" (until proven otherwise, let's call them the normal people shall we?) have policy on their side - nobody will find any support for "Team Colbert" (I hope that mistake is intentional btw, as it's hilarious) in WP:CIV, unless you take the view that 'rise above it' is all that policy actually says.

And for two, well, let's put it this way - no articles are being written about how Wikipedia made a huge mistake by making WP:CIV a pillar of their project, and they'd be a lot better off if it was just scrapped (stripped right back, this is essentially the mission of the Colbertistas) since a little bit of hostile now and then actually helps the project.

It was always pretty obvious there were only ever going to be two outcomes of this battle - either it continues indefinitely and Wikipedia maybe suffers because of it (let's not dismiss the idea that perpetual conflict over WP:CIV isn't actually an existential threat to Wikipedia, and history suggests it might not be), or the normal people win the day. The people who thought that somehow Team Hostile would eventually win the day, well, they need to really ask themselves, how was that ever going to happen? Seriously, how? ARBCOM simply cannot ban every editor like Lightbreather they encounter.

[Oblia]

I count zero women being targeted in these three diffs...

Precisely. And Anthony is at pains to include "Corbett responded on a new, unindented line" in the heading for the (in)famous Lightbreather comment. ie: "Eric is an equal opportunities insulter..."

Lightbreather, who didn't know Eric from Adam, started a thread by using the "C" word that makes Eric see red: CIVILITY. Eric's reply was to Lightbreather and the group of people who complain about incivility on Wikipedia.

[Randy from Boise]

Male genitalia has been used as an insult for generations — prick, dick, wiener, putz.

Female genitalia also: pussy, cunt

And universal naughtybits: asshole, butthole

It's part of the language and part of human nature to contrive insults relating to body parts. Not to say it's good, not to say it's not rude, not to say abuse should not be punishable — only that it is part of the language and that this is natural. True fact.

Now, here's the thing. Different words have different meanings to different people. In the US, "cunt" is the most offensive insult that can be hurled at a woman. As I said once, it's the word that a wifebeater screams before he hits his spouse in the face. It has thick connotations of violence. In the UK, Oz, and Kiwi, it is a word usually used by males of other males, with the closest American synonyms being "asshole" or "jerk" (the later of which also has a sexual origin, if I am not mistaken).

Corbett, who uses the word inappropriately on -Wiki in any case, made the grave mistake of using the dreaded C-word in the course of an interaction of Lightbreather — who is an inveterate POV warrior, who makes political hay about everything, who never lets anything drop, who never accepts no for an answer, who never stops for one moment or one molecule fighting, fighting, fighting. It does not play in Peoria or anywhere else in the continental USA to use that word in conjunction with an American woman, period, ever, and least of all with respect to this particular woman.

This is how we're still seeing magazine articles about Evil Eric's transgression on the websites of glossy magazines a year and a half later...

Ultimately, it's not a matter of sexism, it's a matter of incivility. Such things should be discouraged or even punished, but this particular Corbett incident is being politicized by the Kevin Gormans and Carol Moores and Lightbreathers as somehow causal of the disparity of numbers between female and male editors at WP. It is no such thing. It is an idiot being idiotic, not a misogynist being intentionally abusive. There is a big difference.

Awww, shit, too many words, I'm mmarring the page...

tim

[ats]

If they remove people who can not get along with everyone else, I'm afraid there would be almost no one left either editors or admins.

Are you sure? This is a claim Eric's supporters like to roll out as one of their greatest hits, but it's really not true. Wikipedia is filled with people who both write good content and get along with people - both in terms of genuinely nice people, as well as those who are mature enough not to let their passion for content turn disagreements over it into highly personalised slanging matches. Crotchety assholes like Eric are in the minority, by a long way. This can be proven quite easily, whatever metric you use - blocks, warnings, (genuine) barnstars, popular votes, etc, etc.

Have you been to wikipedia? They would have to remove so many people to get to kumbaya land that its not funny. Christ, just getting admins to actually follow "don't bite the new people" is a failure. Lots of people on wikipedia get along great with lots of people on wikipedia(yes even Eric as evidenced by all the supporters), but just about nobody on wikipedia gets along with everyone on wikipedia with the mere existence of this forum being proof. Wikipedia by its nature deals in lots are very contentious issues and by its actions deals in even more. You aren't going to have an active user base, large enough, to do the task at hand and have them all on the same side of ideological issues. You are naturally going to have sides develop in many articles, you are going to have rampant ownership in many articles, etc.

I made a joke about the resolution of the current ARBCOM case where I said wikipedia should institute a 3 strikes policy, ban everyone involved in anyway and shutdown ARBCOM for good. It was a joke because if they did that, and actually actually strictly enforced policy, there would be no one left. Hell there are active admins to regularly violate the 5Ps. Not a thing is done about it. You have admins and editors blatantly protecting other admins and editors. Almost no one actually edits in a NPOV. T-Bans should be used so liberally it makes heads spin, but doesn't happen. People sit on articles for months to make sure that their POV is maintained. Instead we get stupid crap like "broadly construed" which is basically just encouraging lawyering and witch hunts by people on all sides. AE which is just an idiotic dramafest. etc.

If you don't think wikipedia has cliques among pretty much all the established editors and admins... I present Wikiproject.

[Vigilant]

Replace cunt with faggot or nigger and see how far it flies.

[Oblia]

Male genitalia has been used as an insult for generations — prick, dick, wiener, putz.

Female genitalia also: pussy, cunt

And universal naughtybits: asshole, butthole...

Blah, blah, blah, blah. We had this talk 3 days ago...

I'm trying to figure out the line of reasoning that ends with 'Dick' being appropriate while 'Cunt' is not. If you have a problem with sex-based pejoratives then the most consistent position to take is to oppose all of them. There's absolutely no lack of pejoratives which don't refer to anyones gender or ethnicity you may use.

Who said it is? I think "dick" is a sexist comment, too, but this forum seems to tolerate "dick," "douche," "cunt," etc. (Much like Wikipedia.) They're probably OK among a group of friends. But whatever the group, friends or co-workers, if someone does say, "Hey now! That's offensive," the person who used the word should just say, "Sorry," and move along instead of taking a stand. ...

... and 30 before that, and 300 before that.

[slacker]

3.

Friend of the 'Pediocracy Anthony Cole files an amicus brief with ArbCom helping them to understand the deep, unstudied background of the soon-to-be-banned Eric Corbett's infamous July 24, 2014 "Besides, the easiest way to avoid being called a cunt is not to act like one" remark to L———.

linkhttps://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... =688017900[/link]

I'm sure this revelation will come as news to ArbCom — well worth having a case. This incident has never once been mentioned during the past 15 months in the 750,000 words of impassioned on-wiki hysterics, you know... But, ya gotta enter it into evidence to exact The Ultimate Punishment...

The Atlantic article also had inaccuracies, Anthony sagely notes — for instance, you may not realize this, but Eric Corbett is not an administrator. True fact!!!

Anthony is a pretty good dude. We don't agree about much of anything, but he is an honest person with deeply held beliefs.

RfB

P.S. I think Kevin Gorman might be mad at me... I'm sorry he took offense!

I am constantly amazed by some of the things arbitrators simply didn't know, but which is common knowledge to most highly active Wikipedians. A lot of them simply don't spend any time just keeping across the day to day politics, and quite obviously, the nature of the software means a lot of the dramas are simply too difficult to piece together after the event, so mistakes in perceptions of what happened, even in arbitrators, are quite frequent. There is only one rule at arbcom - if you want them to know something, you have to file it as evidence. It's still not a given it will be taken into account, or even read, but if you don't file, you lose all right to whine about their decision on the grounds that they didn't consider some fact you assumed was common knowledge.

[Randy from Boise]

Male genitalia has been used as an insult for generations — prick, dick, wiener, putz.

Female genitalia also: pussy, cunt

And universal naughtybits: asshole, butthole...

Blah, blah, blah, blah. We had this talk 3 days ago...

You're the one telling me to "wake up."

Clearly you didn't grasp my position... There's another chance.

RfB

[ats]

I count zero women being targeted in these three diffs...

Carrite, if you want to be seen as a fair witness to these somber proceedings of the court, it would be in your interest to faithfully report that the issue with the use of the c-word is not simply the gender of who it's directed at, it's the fact that most women perceive it as having sexist connotations, and will certainly feel targetted in the misogyny sense when they see its use not being met with the strongest possible reaction that would be seen if it was some other extremely offensive identity based insult (the n-word, the 3 letter f-word, etc). i.e., telling someone to stop being such a f-g is still homophobic, whether or not your target is gay, and its use on Wikipedia would (you would hope) be reacted to in the strongest possible terms. It's clear Eric doesn't agree with this perception, but it's out there in the real word, and it's acceptance as the cultural norm in a respectful environment is only gaining ground, hence why most people expect it to form part of the respect culture on Wikipedia. He has plenty of other places he can use the word if he feels that strongly about it.

I'm having trouble understanding why a cigarette or cigarette butt is homophobic. I mean, that's been the historical common accepted use for the term. Unless you are talking about the 6 letter American term which was introduced much later(basically a century latter) and is sometime abbreviated. And in fact the 3 letter f word is used many times on wikipedia because it has many different meanings and actually happens to be a brand name and an abbreviation used for many things.

[Oblia]

Male genitalia has been used as an insult for generations — prick, dick, wiener, putz.

Female genitalia also: pussy, cunt

And universal naughtybits: asshole, butthole...

Blah, blah, blah, blah. We had this talk 3 days ago...

You're the one telling me to "wake up."

Clearly you didn't grasp my position... There's another chance.

RfB

"Cunt" doesn't mean "here" what it means "there." People like Carol Moore, Kevin Gorman, and Lightbreather are way worse than idiotic Eric Corbett. Grasped.

What changes to the civility problem on Wikipedia would ever happen if people didn't fight for them?

[ats]

Well, for one, "Team Gender Gap" (until proven otherwise, let's call them the normal people shall we?) have policy on their side - nobody will find any support for "Team Colbert" (I hope that mistake is intentional btw, as it's hilarious) in WP:CIV, unless you take the view that 'rise above it' is all that policy actually says.

And for two, well, let's put it this way - no articles are being written about how Wikipedia made a huge mistake by making WP:CIV a pillar of their project, and they'd be a lot better off if it was just scrapped (stripped right back, this is essentially the mission of the Colbertistas) since a little bit of hostile now and then actually helps the project.

It was always pretty obvious there were only ever going to be two outcomes of this battle - either it continues indefinitely and Wikipedia maybe suffers because of it (let's not dismiss the idea that perpetual conflict over WP:CIV isn't actually an existential threat to Wikipedia, and history suggests it might not be), or the normal people win the day. The people who thought that somehow Team Hostile would eventually win the day, well, they need to really ask themselves, how was that ever going to happen? Seriously, how? ARBCOM simply cannot ban every editor like Lightbreather they encounter.

WP:CIV like most other pillars are generally violated by everyone on every side of every issue. If we lived in a world where wikipedia actually enforced the pillars, you might have a point, but instead we live in a world where the pillars are only as good as their worth in the next conflict.

[Randy from Boise]

"Cunt" doesn't mean "here" what it means "there." People like Carol Moore, Kevin Gorman, and Lightbreather are way worse than idiotic Eric Corbett. Grasped.

You honestly don't read very well if that's your takeaway.

On the one side: an idiot. On the other side: political activists making hay.

I'm a Wikipedian.

Side one: barely a Net Positive, if that. Side two: drone bees looking for WMF honey.

Fuck 'em all.

RfB

[slacker]

Next we have an instance 17 months ago in which EC went to the talk page of Administrator Dank (T-C-L) to burn bridges:

Don't you think it's a little bit naughty to alter your posting after someone has responded to it? Eric Corbett 3:06 pm, 27 May 2014, Tuesday (1 year, 5 months, 3 days ago) (UTC−7)

I didn't arrive at Wikipedia yesterday, Eric, and I've seen this before. You goad an admin until people think "Wow, there must be some kind of bad blood between them". Well, I've never treated you with anything but respect, and whatever conflict is going on at WT:FAC and here is in your head, not mine. If you want to try to make a federal case out of it that I changed "the" to "the or a" and then explained the change immediately, feel free. - Dank (push to talk) 6:28 pm, 27 May 2014, Tuesday (1 year, 5 months, 3 days ago) (UTC−7)

I see, you're the cunt I always thought you were. Eric Corbett 6:46 pm, 27 May 2014, Tuesday (1 year, 5 months, 2 days ago) (UTC−7)

RfB

If there was ever an incident that encapsulated what Eric's real problem is, it was this one. A lot of the supposed harassment he receives is all in his head, and simply stems from this ridiculous persecution complex he suffers from. It's inconceivable to him, and his supporters, that an admin who is entirely in their right mind can come fresh to a situation involving him and conclude that, yes, it was Eric who was in the wrong, it was Eric who then escalated the conflict, and therefore, even though he makes good edits at other times, his behaviour, and crucially the fact that it is persistent and unchanging even after warnings, warrants a block, just like it does when any other user behaves this way. The wheels came off and he became a perpetual drama magnet when those admins who are among his supporters kept nullifying those well deserved blocks, and so unsurprisingly, it hasn't been until now, with the more concrete system of AE blocks, that Eric's behaviour did start to show at least some improvement. And fast forward to now, when two admins have contrived to ensure even that system can be nullified in the most duplicitous of ways, meaning that in a delicious irony, it's looking likely that Eric will either be banned or even more severely restricted because of his admin supporters. With friends like that....

[Randy from Boise]

I'm having trouble understanding why a cigarette or cigarette butt is homophobic. I mean, that's been the historical common accepted use for the term. Unless you are talking about the 6 letter American term which was introduced much later(basically a century latter) and is sometime abbreviated. And in fact the 3 letter f word is used many times on wikipedia because it has many different meanings and actually happens to be a brand name and an abbreviation used for many things.

So I've often wondered, what is it that trolls eat?

RfB

[ats]

I'm having trouble understanding why a cigarette or cigarette butt is homophobic. I mean, that's been the historical common accepted use for the term. Unless you are talking about the 6 letter American term which was introduced much later(basically a century latter) and is sometime abbreviated. And in fact the 3 letter f word is used many times on wikipedia because it has many different meanings and actually happens to be a brand name and an abbreviation used for many things.

So I've often wondered, what is it that trolls eat?

RfB

Not really trolling, just pointing out that words have different meanings. While cunt can be uncivil there are numerous ways to be uncivil without using a potential pejorative. And I've always found the british and american use of fag somewhat interesting esp with regard to the common and casual use in the british influenced lands vs the pejorative use in the US.

[slacker]

If they remove people who can not get along with everyone else, I'm afraid there would be almost no one left either editors or admins.

Are you sure? This is a claim Eric's supporters like to roll out as one of their greatest hits, but it's really not true. Wikipedia is filled with people who both write good content and get along with people - both in terms of genuinely nice people, as well as those who are mature enough not to let their passion for content turn disagreements over it into highly personalised slanging matches. Crotchety assholes like Eric are in the minority, by a long way. This can be proven quite easily, whatever metric you use - blocks, warnings, (genuine) barnstars, popular votes, etc, etc.

Have you been to wikipedia? They would have to remove so many people to get to kumbaya land that its not funny. Christ, just getting admins to actually follow "don't bite the new people" is a failure. Lots of people on wikipedia get along great with lots of people on wikipedia(yes even Eric as evidenced by all the supporters), but just about nobody on wikipedia gets along with everyone on wikipedia with the mere existence of this forum being proof. Wikipedia by its nature deals in lots are very contentious issues and by its actions deals in even more. You aren't going to have an active user base, large enough, to do the task at hand and have them all on the same side of ideological issues. You are naturally going to have sides develop in many articles, you are going to have rampant ownership in many articles, etc.

I made a joke about the resolution of the current ARBCOM case where I said wikipedia should institute a 3 strikes policy, ban everyone involved in anyway and shutdown ARBCOM for good. It was a joke because if they did that, and actually actually strictly enforced policy, there would be no one left. Hell there are active admins to regularly violate the 5Ps. Not a thing is done about it. You have admins and editors blatantly protecting other admins and editors. Almost no one actually edits in a NPOV. T-Bans should be used so liberally it makes heads spin, but doesn't happen. People sit on articles for months to make sure that their POV is maintained. Instead we get stupid crap like "broadly construed" which is basically just encouraging lawyering and witch hunts by people on all sides. AE which is just an idiotic dramafest. etc.

If you don't think wikipedia has cliques among pretty much all the established editors and admins... I present Wikiproject.

I've been to Wikipedia. Crucially, I've been in all areas, not just the drama boards. I'm talking about the highly active user base as a whole, many of whom go completely unnoticed by the folks here, since they don't do anything wrong. These are the very people being disenfranchised by those who are trying to paint people like Eric as the norm, whose behaviour has to somehow be normalised. In my experience, it is quite clear that the vast majority of users are people who can either get along with anyone, or who are quite capable of not letting the fact that they don't like or don't agree with others manifest in disruption or tendentious editting. In other words, people capable of following the rules, and heeding warnings if they don't.

[ats]

I've been to Wikipedia. Crucially, I've been in all areas, not just the drama boards. I'm talking about the highly active user base as a whole, many of whom go completely unnoticed by the folks here, since they don't do anything wrong. These are the very people being disenfranchised by those who are trying to paint people like Eric as the norm, whose behaviour has to somehow be normalised. In my experience, it is quite clear that the vast majority of users are people who can either get along with anyone, or who are quite capable of not letting the fact that they don't like or don't agree with others manifest in disruption or tendentious editting. In other words, people capable of following the rules, and heeding warnings if they don't.

Or contrary, most editors on wikipedia are in areas that no one else really cares about so they never actually come into conflict with others.

[Jimbo Jambo]

if someone does say, "Hey now! That's offensive," the person who used the word should just say, "Sorry," and move along instead of taking a stand. ...

You might want to talk to the GGTF about that... diff
Unless offensiveness = power + profanity?

[Parabola]

I'm pretty certain Viriditas probably finds the GGTF to be too sane for their tastes.

[Kumioko]

I've been to Wikipedia. Crucially, I've been in all areas, not just the drama boards. I'm talking about the highly active user base as a whole, many of whom go completely unnoticed by the folks here, since they don't do anything wrong. These are the very people being disenfranchised by those who are trying to paint people like Eric as the norm, whose behaviour has to somehow be normalised. In my experience, it is quite clear that the vast majority of users are people who can either get along with anyone, or who are quite capable of not letting the fact that they don't like or don't agree with others manifest in disruption or tendentious editting. In other words, people capable of following the rules, and heeding warnings if they don't.

Or contrary, most editors on wikipedia are in areas that no one else really cares about so they never actually come into conflict with others.

Your precisely right, which also means that they probably aren't doing FA's, GA's, FL's, DYK's, working on WikiProjects or other controversial stuff. They are gnoming in corners of the project where no one notices them.

[Moral Hazard]

if someone does say, "Hey now! That's offensive," the person who used the word should just say, "Sorry," and move along instead of taking a stand. ...

You might want to talk to the GGTF about that... diff
Unless offensiveness = power + insult?

No, it's better that they say, "Thank you for checking my privilege! I'm sure that my behavior was sexist and misogynist. Please continue to empower women by calling out sexist behavior in the future."

That will make Wikipedia even more appealing for sadomasochists.

C.f., Barbara Ehrenreich's comments on how boring and oppressive she found leftist undergraduates at a politically correct college (Oberlin).
linkhttps://books.google.se/books?id=6XflI- ... ch&f=false[/link]
One of the criticisms she had was that they were obsessed with micro-politics on campus and so afraid of trying to organize for change. Perhaps Wikipedia appeals to the kids who wish to prolong their undergraduate experience?

The Gender-Gappers remind me of the damaged people in the Fred Newman/Fulani cult, that would have group psychotherapy with each other, while living in the same housing.

[slacker]

I've been to Wikipedia. Crucially, I've been in all areas, not just the drama boards. I'm talking about the highly active user base as a whole, many of whom go completely unnoticed by the folks here, since they don't do anything wrong. These are the very people being disenfranchised by those who are trying to paint people like Eric as the norm, whose behaviour has to somehow be normalised. In my experience, it is quite clear that the vast majority of users are people who can either get along with anyone, or who are quite capable of not letting the fact that they don't like or don't agree with others manifest in disruption or tendentious editting. In other words, people capable of following the rules, and heeding warnings if they don't.

Or contrary, most editors on wikipedia are in areas that no one else really cares about so they never actually come into conflict with others.

Your precisely right, which also means that they probably aren't doing FA's, GA's, FL's, DYK's, working on WikiProjects or other controversial stuff. They are gnoming in corners of the project where no one notices them.

Or maybe not. Maybe it will help people understand my point if I re-iterate that I am talking about the entire "highly active" user base, which of course includes the sub-sets of those who are heavy lifting writers, not gnomes. And I would also add that you would be surprised by what sort of unimportant topics people on Wikipedia will care about enough to generate a statistically significant number of users.

[Jimbo Jambo]

The Gender-Gappers remind me of the damaged people in the Fred Newman/Fulani cult, that would have group psychotherapy with each other, while living in the same housing.

Auditing? They are reasonably cult-like. At least Hubbard gets points for originality.

[slacker]

Not a surprise to see Dennis arguing that if only everyone left Eric alone and he was treated like any other editor, things would return to normality. WTF? It is the very fact Eric is not normal and doesn't react in the normal way to attempts to modify his behavior which has led him on this path to his station as the most divisive editor in Wikipedia history. With the help of the community of course, but it wouldn't have happened if Eric wasn't Eric. While there's not many factual errors here, just a hell of a lot of massively biased interpretations of history in Eric's favour, the bit in bold is indisputably a big fat lie, again, one of the greatest hits trotted out by his supporters. Still, admin lying to help out a friend, that's not a surprise. It's telling from this statement what Dennis doesn't talk about, namely the actions of all those who support Eric who have ensured that the system has not worked. It's quite poor for him to be using phrases like accepting responsibility, taking blame, passive-aggressive, [not] following the law, but only in terms of how badly Eric has been treated - ignoring all the times Eric has been guilty of the very same, which inevitably leads to permanent drama since his behaviour cannot be changed due to his supporters. Also, he filed this as "Evidence", which makes me wonder if he's really qualified to be criticising a process (arbitration) that he apparently doesn't even have a basic understand of.

Arbs, individuals, admins and the community have failed
Arbcom and the community as a whole has failed when it comes to enforcing civility. Eric is merely the poster child, if not for him, it would be someone else. The more restrictions you put on him, the worse the situation gets as clearly, he has equal numbers of supporters and detractors. This escalating blocks scenario has failed worse of all, as has the "first block advantage" of AE when dealing with controversial people. I will be the first to say that Eric has clearly earned some of his blocks, but not all of them. Arb has given those that oppose him an advantage and powerful tools to de facto ban him for the most minor of infractions. While this wasn't intentional, if you unwilling to accept personal responsibility and your share of the blame, you have failed the community yet again.
Too many people intentionally misread his words, using the cultural differences in US and UK English as a weapon (and no, I'm not talking about the word "cunt" here, I'm speaking in broader terms). We've made it a blockable offense to be disliked. Some say that admin are afraid to block him, as if the admin corp is a bunch of cowards. That comes across as a passive-aggressive way to avoid the real fact, that admin don't fear Eric, but they do fear the long, sometimes overreaching arms of Arb. Admin are afraid of getting dragged into Arb and bit stripped for the crime of agreeing with him. Eric doesn't have the power to force an admin into 6 weeks of debate into their fitness and suitability, with the potential to be desysopped without good reason, and with only a majority vote; a popularity vote. Only Arb has this power, not Eric, so let us be realistic when we talk about fear and risk. Avoiding Eric's opinion of you is pretty easy: stay off his talk page, as that is generally the only place he voices those opinions.
We've created this monster with unworkable Arb restrictions, perhaps forged with the best of intentions but executed in a way that turns Eric into a pinata. Anyone can take a swipe, but he can't swipe back. If you really care about keeping Eric, and keeping disruption to a minimum, lift all restrictions and treat him like any other editor. If he needs a 72 hour block, give it. The short blocks have been effective and there is no time for drama to build up, no perception of an overreaction by giving a month block for the crime of politely and calmly replying where you were first addressed. I've been the first to support these short blocks when they were reasonable and proportional to the problem. I'm not blind to the fact that we have an ongoing problem, nor am I blind to the fact that Arbitration has made it worse, not better. Arb might be the final step, but it hasn't been the best solution.
Kirill followed the letter of the law, but in an overly strict way. We've desysopped someone recently for habitually doing this very thing, while edit warring. That would be overkill here, no one deserves to lose their bits (and one person should get theirs back without asking, simply because it is the right thing to do). What we need is LESS Arbitration when it comes to Eric, not more. Otherwise, just ban him so everyone who supports him can just retire and you can be done with this. That would be the easy thing, but it would be the most expensive and foolish. Surely you see that the more you do, the worse the problem becomes. I'm not asking for Eric to be above others, simply have restrictions removed so we can treat him like everyone else, so you don't have the impression (or reality) that others are waiting by the sidelines hoping he says "gender" and gets banned. Take away the fuel from both sizes, and admit that we (as a community) tried using restrictions in this one case and we failed. There is no justice and Arb is not a court. What this requires is being brave enough to try something that might actually work, instead of this futile attempt to continually spank and shame him. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 14:54, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

[slacker]

Someone should tell Montanabw that her Evidence doesn't exactly help Eric either, it just reminds people of what he does do (poke, insult), and that his supporters have no problem in mis-remembering events or simply lying to the court, if it helps their friend:
-he did harass LB, he just didn't face any consequences for it
-it is not "rare" for Eric to target innocent bystanders
-he does not take his lumps even when guilty, he either stays silent, sulks or flounces
-other than calling him an admin, the Atlantic piece accurately portrayed what Eric did
-Kirill did not block Eric for attempting to clear his name

Two issues were conflated in the Atlantic article: incivility and harassment. Corbett is uncivil at times, frequently to those who take an arrogant tone toward him, but rarely to innocent bystanders. He has taken his lumps when he's overstepped. However, he did not harass Lightbreather, and his editing and content work clearly shows that he is not a misogynist. He was prone to stick his nose into the hornets' nest of the Gender Gap Task Force and poke the hive with a stick. That said, he insults everyone, and the four-letter insult that LB claimed was directed at LB is a term Corbett has also used to describe Jimbo. Montanabw(talk) 01:38, 29 October 2015 (UTC)
In short, Corbett was not portrayed accurately in the Atlantic article, and had every right to make efforts to clear his name. Montanabw(talk) 01:38, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

No diffs were provided for any of her claims of course, so the rules governing the case are working well.....

[Randy from Boise]

And back for another visit to the Circus... While our friend Anthony painstakingly continues to compile instances of Little Piggy using the C— word so that he can justify putting a sentient being on a spit, let's see who else is involved...

4.

Why, it's our friend Dave "Worm That Turned," today's hero of the Bannery... Dave's a really good spud, one of the best. He points out that The Pottymouthed Prince has already been blocked 6 or so times for violation of his December 2014 sanctions in the L—— case. Is it 6 or is it 7? Even an Admin wise in the ways of Wiki like WTT is having a hard time counting that high. A whole bunch, that's for sure. Somebody is not learning...

All the blocks are documented with diffs. I don't think anybody, friend or foe or bemused observer, doubts that violations were made. Nor should they doubt that foes of the Manchester Disuniter have clutched at each and every misstep in an attempt to have their Demon Figure cast asunder, having the green light to do so given them by ArbCom itself.

Dave thinks the civility and commentary missteps made by Eric are not as severe as they were in previous years and Dave wants EC's punishment to fit the crime for a change:

Eric Corbett is still regularly being blocked. Arbcom, and the wider community, knows that each of these blocks is associated with grumbling at noticeboards, which is a significant timesink. That said, the diffs for which Eric Corbett has been blocked are significantly less problematic than those associated with his past behaviour, making the longer blocks look extraordinarily draconian. Proportional blocks are the right way to go with Arbcom enforcement of this case, however we have seen that proportional blocks are not being handed out.

linkhttps://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... =688079072[/link]

This, of course, begs the question of why blocks are being accumulated at all. Either Eric lacks impulse control or Eric is being harassed, or both. Let's just agree that it's both and sing a verse of "Kumbaya," shall we?

RfB

[Kumioko]

Not a surprise to see Dennis arguing that if only everyone left Eric alone and he was treated like any other editor, things would return to normality. WTF? It is the very fact Eric is not normal and doesn't react in the normal way to attempts to modify his behavior which has led him on this path to his station as the most divisive editor in Wikipedia history. With the help of the community of course, but it wouldn't have happened if Eric wasn't Eric. While there's not many factual errors here, just a hell of a lot of massively biased interpretations of history in Eric's favour, the bit in bold is indisputably a big fat lie, again, one of the greatest hits trotted out by his supporters. Still, admin lying to help out a friend, that's not a surprise. It's telling from this statement what Dennis doesn't talk about, namely the actions of all those who support Eric who have ensured that the system has not worked. It's quite poor for him to be using phrases like accepting responsibility, taking blame, passive-aggressive, [not] following the law, but only in terms of how badly Eric has been treated - ignoring all the times Eric has been guilty of the very same, which inevitably leads to permanent drama since his behaviour cannot be changed due to his supporters. Also, he filed this as "Evidence", which makes me wonder if he's really qualified to be criticising a process (arbitration) that he apparently doesn't even have a basic understand of.

Arbs, individuals, admins and the community have failed
Arbcom and the community as a whole has failed when it comes to enforcing civility. Eric is merely the poster child, if not for him, it would be someone else. The more restrictions you put on him, the worse the situation gets as clearly, he has equal numbers of supporters and detractors. This escalating blocks scenario has failed worse of all, as has the "first block advantage" of AE when dealing with controversial people. I will be the first to say that Eric has clearly earned some of his blocks, but not all of them. Arb has given those that oppose him an advantage and powerful tools to de facto ban him for the most minor of infractions. While this wasn't intentional, if you unwilling to accept personal responsibility and your share of the blame, you have failed the community yet again.
Too many people intentionally misread his words, using the cultural differences in US and UK English as a weapon (and no, I'm not talking about the word "cunt" here, I'm speaking in broader terms). We've made it a blockable offense to be disliked. Some say that admin are afraid to block him, as if the admin corp is a bunch of cowards. That comes across as a passive-aggressive way to avoid the real fact, that admin don't fear Eric, but they do fear the long, sometimes overreaching arms of Arb. Admin are afraid of getting dragged into Arb and bit stripped for the crime of agreeing with him. Eric doesn't have the power to force an admin into 6 weeks of debate into their fitness and suitability, with the potential to be desysopped without good reason, and with only a majority vote; a popularity vote. Only Arb has this power, not Eric, so let us be realistic when we talk about fear and risk. Avoiding Eric's opinion of you is pretty easy: stay off his talk page, as that is generally the only place he voices those opinions.
We've created this monster with unworkable Arb restrictions, perhaps forged with the best of intentions but executed in a way that turns Eric into a pinata. Anyone can take a swipe, but he can't swipe back. If you really care about keeping Eric, and keeping disruption to a minimum, lift all restrictions and treat him like any other editor. If he needs a 72 hour block, give it. The short blocks have been effective and there is no time for drama to build up, no perception of an overreaction by giving a month block for the crime of politely and calmly replying where you were first addressed. I've been the first to support these short blocks when they were reasonable and proportional to the problem. I'm not blind to the fact that we have an ongoing problem, nor am I blind to the fact that Arbitration has made it worse, not better. Arb might be the final step, but it hasn't been the best solution.
Kirill followed the letter of the law, but in an overly strict way. We've desysopped someone recently for habitually doing this very thing, while edit warring. That would be overkill here, no one deserves to lose their bits (and one person should get theirs back without asking, simply because it is the right thing to do). What we need is LESS Arbitration when it comes to Eric, not more. Otherwise, just ban him so everyone who supports him can just retire and you can be done with this. That would be the easy thing, but it would be the most expensive and foolish. Surely you see that the more you do, the worse the problem becomes. I'm not asking for Eric to be above others, simply have restrictions removed so we can treat him like everyone else, so you don't have the impression (or reality) that others are waiting by the sidelines hoping he says "gender" and gets banned. Take away the fuel from both sizes, and admit that we (as a community) tried using restrictions in this one case and we failed. There is no justice and Arb is not a court. What this requires is being brave enough to try something that might actually work, instead of this futile attempt to continually spank and shame him. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 14:54, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

I honestly completely agree with Dennis here. Eric is not a normal editor because certain people won't leave him alone and hound his every edit. No matter how good you are, if someone looks hard enough, long enough, they are going to find something. No one was calling for Nyttend to be desysopped when he accidentally blocked everyone at the Wikiconference USA from editing, no one said anything to HJ Mitchell for calling the community F'ing morons, no one does anything about Binksternet, Floquenbeam, Beyond My Ken or dozens of others for generally be A-holes to every editor they meet, yet, if Eric makes a typo or a comment everyone is picking it apart and accusing him of being discriminatory to women or whatever. Jimbo himself has made statements worse than much of what Eric has done and so have the Arbcom. So before we all start climbing on our soapboxes about how Wikipedia policy and rules need to be enforced for Eric, we need to enforce them evenly and fairly for everyone, regardless of status, not just use that as an excuse to get Eric out of the project.

[Randy from Boise]

5.

Next up to the plate is Rich Farmbrough (T-C-L), a guy that I've tangled with in the past, briefly. Rich got banned off for a year for using automation or semi-automation in his editing when he wasn't supposed to. Shake your head sadly at the gravity of this situation... Anyway, he has come back wiser and more bitter. He's mad as hell and not gonna take this any more...

linkhttps://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... =688079646[/link]

It's Arbcom's fault, Rich insists... Here's his way of thinking: First they dropped trou and pooped out the Gender Gap Task Force case. Then they doubled down by doing the same thing during the L—— case. And they did it again and again after that until there was nothing but a huge pile of stinky poop in the middle of the room. No wonder nobody thinks much of the Committee's housekeeping skills — ewwww!

The way to clean up the mess, he thinks, is to admit that it was a bad idea to poop in the middle of the floor in the first place, to stop micromanaging blocks on the Guest of Honor, to give the well-meaning dissident Yngvadottir her damned tools back, and to shut down the show by motion.

Awwww, but that wouldn't be any fun, would it? Everybody loves a festive public witchburning...

RfB

[HRIP7]

Now, here's the thing. Different words have different meanings to different people. In the US, "cunt" is the most offensive insult that can be hurled at a woman. As I said once, it's the word that a wifebeater screams before he hits his spouse in the face. It has thick connotations of violence. In the UK, Oz, and Kiwi, it is a word usually used by males of other males, with the closest American synonyms being "asshole" or "jerk" (the later of which also has a sexual origin, if I am not mistaken).

Corbett, who uses the word inappropriately on -Wiki in any case, made the grave mistake of using the dreaded C-word in the course of an interaction of Lightbreather — who is an inveterate POV warrior, who makes political hay about everything, who never lets anything drop, who never accepts no for an answer, who never stops for one moment or one molecule fighting, fighting, fighting. It does not play in Peoria or anywhere else in the continental USA to use that word in conjunction with an American woman, period, ever, and least of all with respect to this particular woman.

Thanks. That hit the nail on the head.

I have posted a proposal at the Village Pump. What do you think?

Proposed: Tag / edit filter for talk page abuse

Proposal:
Create a special tag / edit filter designed to catch talk page abuse. (Example: linkhttps://archive.is/fr42Q#selection-1409.0-1413.0[/link])
Envisaged benefits:
1. An edit filter could warn users before posting that their comment may need to be refactored to be considered appropriate.
2. Editors could check recent changes for tagged edits, bringing much-needed third eyes to talk pages where an editor may be facing sexual harassment and other types of abuse.
3. Prevention of talk page escalation.
4. Improvement of talk page culture.
5. Enhanced editor retention.

This would actually be a "civility police" worth its name.

[slacker]

John Carter is a member here, is he not? If so, I have two questions about his evidence....

I was going to add to the PD page rather than here, but, that not being an option, I will say this here.
Eric's conduct can be bad. In many of the cases where it has been recently, including I think the circumstances leading to this case, that is at least in part due to his regularly being goaded by others and pointed out, I believe erroneously, as somehow the "poster boy" for harassment of women here by others. It is hard not seeing that conduct of others as a form of HARASSment against Eric, but there seems to be little if any interest in calling anyone on it.
In this particular case, the issue, as Anthonyhcole has pointed out above, much to my thanks, is a particularly trashy article in the Atlantic where, once again, he has been made the scapegoat for the "wikipedia harasses women" people. The article in its earlier versions, and possibly/probably still in the print version, contained at least some statements which were flat-out wrong and, considering Eric edits under his real life name here, almost certainly violations of one of our core policies, WP:BLP. However, there seemed to be no interest in anyone else in removing the comments. That being the case, and Eric probably knowing he would himself be blocked if he removed them himself, and also probably knowing that complaining to the noticeboards might get no results, considering the comments were on Jimbo's talk page, he took what might have seemed to be the only option available to him at the time and tried to deal with the errors in the only way he could. For this he was blocked. I consider that, frankly, under the circumstances, objectionable, but I suppose understandable. We do not have, so far as I can see, any clearly defined mechanisms for dealing with problems of this particular type yet, probably because it hasn't happened much if at all yet, and on that basis I would think WP:IAR should apply here.
To date, I do not know that we have ever really acknowledged that BLP applies to editors whose public identities are known, but I don't see anything in the text of the policy itself to say otherwise. I would think that the provisions most likely to qualify for editors other than the obvious are WP:NPF, and it is very arguable that the Atlantic article is not a "high quality secondary source" as indicated there, and, maybe, for accusations of the sort that we are most likely to see directed at editors here, WP:BLPCRIME, although I am sure that particular section will have to be adjusted if it is found, as I believe it must be, that BLP applies to comments about editors here where the real-life identities of those editors have been eplicitly or implicitly acknowledged by those individuals themselves. John Carter (talk) 17:08, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

1. Other than calling him an admin, which particular statements in the Atlantic piece were "flat out wrong" with regard to Eric to the point they would violate WP:BLP [if repeated or linked to on Wikipedia]?
1b. And indeed, do you really consider it a grave breach of BLP to link to that story on Wikipedia even though in doing so the poster highlighted that particular error? ("Aside from a relatively minor error about user rights near the top").
2. Regarding your claim that "he took what might have seemed to be the only option available to him at the time and tried to deal with the errors in the only way he could. For this he was blocked.", then:
-do you agree or disagree that Eric was not blocked for his first comment (which, while snarky, could be construed a complaint about him being erroneously called an admin)
-do you agree or disagree that Eric was not blocked for his second comment (which can be construed as a rebuttal of the supposed error that "Eric....told her [LB]")
-do you agree or disagree that Eric was blocked for subsequent comments, which violated his topic ban on mentioning gender disparity on Wikipedia?
-do you have any evidence at all that supports the idea that the block prevented Eric from correcting any errors in the article, real or perceived, other than those two detailed above?

In addition, regarding the overall thrust of your evidence submission (which contains no diffs, contrary to the instructions), do you think it is right for you to be making uncited claims on Wikipedia which appear to harm the reputation of named individuals, i.e. the Atlantic writer and Wikipedians who edit under their real names?

[Randy from Boise]

6.

Next up to the plate is my friend Dennis Brown (T-C-L), bane of a couple WPO posters who have left the building. I really don't get the hatred for him. Then again, some people don't like shrimp or guacamole, so go figure... Definitely the model of what a WP Administrator should be: hard working and willing to take on tough tasks even if he causes wailing in the process...

linkhttps://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... =688080933[/link]

Dennis is on point with his remarks. Dennis thinks Mr. Nasty has actually been getting taken to the woodshed for being Mr. Impolite, and he believes that ArbCom's effort to micromanage blocks upon him has backfired.

Eric is merely the poster child, if not for him, it would be someone else. The more restrictions you put on him, the worse the situation gets as clearly, he has equal numbers of supporters and detractors. This escalating blocks scenario has failed worse of all, as has the "first block advantage" of AE when dealing with controversial people. I will be the first to say that Eric has clearly earned some of his blocks, but not all of them. Arb has given those that oppose him an advantage and powerful tools to ''de facto'' ban him for the most minor of infractions.

Moreover, Dennis opines, it isn't Eric that has paralyzed the dwindling Administrative Corps, it is ArbCom itself with their escalation of an ongoing situation by putting everything the erratic EC does under the umbrella of Arbitration Enforcement.

Some say that admin are afraid to block him, as if the admin corp is a bunch of cowards. That comes across as a passive-aggressive way to avoid the real fact, that admin don't fear Eric, but they do fear the long, sometimes overreaching arms of Arb. Admin are afraid of getting dragged into Arb and bit stripped for the crime of agreeing with him. Eric doesn't have the power to force an admin into 6 weeks of debate into their fitness and suitability, with the potential to be desysopped without good reason, and with only a majority vote; a popularity vote. Only Arb has this power, not Eric, so let us be realistic when we talk about fear and risk.

Short blocks have been effective keeping EC more or less on the track instead of driving on the sidewalks mowing down passersby, Dennis argues. He wants ArbCom to back off with the micromanagement of blocks as a failed effort and to thereby end the ongoing game of "Get Satan Banned" ...

I'm not asking for Eric to be ''above'' others, simply have restrictions removed so we can treat him like everyone else, so you don't have the impression (or reality) that others are waiting by the sidelines hoping he says "gender" and gets banned. Take away the fuel from both sizes, and admit that we (as a community) tried using restrictions in this one case and we failed.

Yep.

RfB

[ats]

Now, here's the thing. Different words have different meanings to different people. In the US, "cunt" is the most offensive insult that can be hurled at a woman. As I said once, it's the word that a wifebeater screams before he hits his spouse in the face. It has thick connotations of violence. In the UK, Oz, and Kiwi, it is a word usually used by males of other males, with the closest American synonyms being "asshole" or "jerk" (the later of which also has a sexual origin, if I am not mistaken).

Corbett, who uses the word inappropriately on -Wiki in any case, made the grave mistake of using the dreaded C-word in the course of an interaction of Lightbreather — who is an inveterate POV warrior, who makes political hay about everything, who never lets anything drop, who never accepts no for an answer, who never stops for one moment or one molecule fighting, fighting, fighting. It does not play in Peoria or anywhere else in the continental USA to use that word in conjunction with an American woman, period, ever, and least of all with respect to this particular woman.

Thanks. That hit the nail on the head.

I have posted a proposal at the Village Pump. What do you think?

Proposed: Tag / edit filter for talk page abuse

Proposal:
Create a special tag / edit filter designed to catch talk page abuse. (Example: linkhttps://archive.is/fr42Q#selection-1409.0-1413.0[/link])
Envisaged benefits:
1. An edit filter could warn users before posting that their comment may need to be refactored to be considered appropriate.
2. Editors could check recent changes for tagged edits, bringing much-needed third eyes to talk pages where an editor may be facing sexual harassment and other types of abuse.
3. Prevention of talk page escalation.
4. Improvement of talk page culture.
5. Enhanced editor retention.

This would actually be a "civility police" worth its name.

So I guess the question is what you filter try to detect the example given?
I guess one filter would just be the '7 dirty words'. But I'm kinda shocked that filter doesn't already exist. Seems it would have been done ages ago as part of WP:CIV.

[Kumioko]

Now, here's the thing. Different words have different meanings to different people. In the US, "cunt" is the most offensive insult that can be hurled at a woman. As I said once, it's the word that a wifebeater screams before he hits his spouse in the face. It has thick connotations of violence. In the UK, Oz, and Kiwi, it is a word usually used by males of other males, with the closest American synonyms being "asshole" or "jerk" (the later of which also has a sexual origin, if I am not mistaken).

Corbett, who uses the word inappropriately on -Wiki in any case, made the grave mistake of using the dreaded C-word in the course of an interaction of Lightbreather — who is an inveterate POV warrior, who makes political hay about everything, who never lets anything drop, who never accepts no for an answer, who never stops for one moment or one molecule fighting, fighting, fighting. It does not play in Peoria or anywhere else in the continental USA to use that word in conjunction with an American woman, period, ever, and least of all with respect to this particular woman.

Thanks. That hit the nail on the head.

I have posted a proposal at the Village Pump. What do you think?

Proposed: Tag / edit filter for talk page abuse

Proposal:
Create a special tag / edit filter designed to catch talk page abuse. (Example: linkhttps://archive.is/fr42Q#selection-1409.0-1413.0[/link])
Envisaged benefits:
1. An edit filter could warn users before posting that their comment may need to be refactored to be considered appropriate.
2. Editors could check recent changes for tagged edits, bringing much-needed third eyes to talk pages where an editor may be facing sexual harassment and other types of abuse.
3. Prevention of talk page escalation.
4. Improvement of talk page culture.
5. Enhanced editor retention.

This would actually be a "civility police" worth its name.

So I guess the question is what you the filter try to detect in the example given?
I guess one filter would just be the '7 dirty words'. But I'm kinda shocked that filter doesn't already exist. Seems it would have been done ages ago as part of WP:CIV.

The thing about filters is that every edit has to go through them. So, the more you have and the more invasive they are, the more taxing to the hardware and the more lag you may see in the site. Also, most of the filters have limits based on status (admin or not, number of edit threshold, are they a confirmed user, etc.). Since Eric has been around for so long, the edit filter would need to be set so that anyone hits it. Since most people don't need it, that's a lot of wasted resources.

If they are going to create an edit filter like this, then they should restrict it to Eric. That way if he tries to make an edit with the C word in it, the filter would say "Hey Eric, your about to get blocked!" or something and stop him.

[slacker]

Now, here's the thing. Different words have different meanings to different people. In the US, "cunt" is the most offensive insult that can be hurled at a woman. As I said once, it's the word that a wifebeater screams before he hits his spouse in the face. It has thick connotations of violence. In the UK, Oz, and Kiwi, it is a word usually used by males of other males, with the closest American synonyms being "asshole" or "jerk" (the later of which also has a sexual origin, if I am not mistaken).

Corbett, who uses the word inappropriately on -Wiki in any case, made the grave mistake of using the dreaded C-word in the course of an interaction of Lightbreather — who is an inveterate POV warrior, who makes political hay about everything, who never lets anything drop, who never accepts no for an answer, who never stops for one moment or one molecule fighting, fighting, fighting. It does not play in Peoria or anywhere else in the continental USA to use that word in conjunction with an American woman, period, ever, and least of all with respect to this particular woman.

Thanks. That hit the nail on the head.

I have posted a proposal at the Village Pump. What do you think?

Proposed: Tag / edit filter for talk page abuse

Proposal:
Create a special tag / edit filter designed to catch talk page abuse. (Example: linkhttps://archive.is/fr42Q#selection-1409.0-1413.0[/link])
Envisaged benefits:
1. An edit filter could warn users before posting that their comment may need to be refactored to be considered appropriate.
2. Editors could check recent changes for tagged edits, bringing much-needed third eyes to talk pages where an editor may be facing sexual harassment and other types of abuse.
3. Prevention of talk page escalation.
4. Improvement of talk page culture.
5. Enhanced editor retention.

This would actually be a "civility police" worth its name.

This merely feeds into the myth Eric's supporters like to propagate that his critics are using him as a proxy to introduce a 'naughty words list'. They are not, as anyone who has watched this drama unfolding over the years would know. This is all part of the 'game' Carrite frequently refers to, but from the other side - attempting to make your opponents look silly or even hysterical in order to discredit them, rather than address the real substance of their complaints - that Eric is being deliberately personally insulting and demeaning.

The use of highly offensive words like the c-word is merely a by-product of that desire - but as his supporters bizarrely often like to tell people as if it somehow helps his case, Eric is clever enough to achieve the same aim without using any naughty words. He's quite capable of insulting another editors intelligence, upbringing, education, writing ability, nationality, morals and common sense, without using a single swear word. Hence why after the GGTF case he not banned from saying the c-word, he was banned from demeaning, belittling or insulting people. It addresses the intent, not the manifestation. That's why he and his supporters didn't like it, because it got to the heart of the matter.

Similarly, the topic ban on gender also got to the heart of that matter too - as his efforts on the GGTF and elsewhere showed, Eric is incapable of even mentioning the gender issue without causing disruption, no matter how politely he conducts himself while doing so (although the snarky/sarcy way he does it also didn't help). As this last year showed, to some extent, sanctions that get to the root cause of disruption do work, assuming admins like Yngvadottir don't take it upon themselves to supplant their own judgement on their validity over those who handed them down to be enforced. She did, and so Eric is now screwed, assuming ARBCOM can't figure out how to stop another kamikaze admin undermining their authoritah.

[Randy from Boise]

7.

And here comes John Carter (T-C-L) with a further defense of Mr. Main Course.

Eric has been made into a scapegoat of the internet meme "wikipedia harasses women," John declares. While his "conduct can be bad," nevertheless most of the ongoing hysterics result from his demonization, he believes.

linkhttps://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... =688100042[/link]

Carter thinks the Atlantic piece was "trashy," that Eric was a forlorn BLP victim merely engaging in self-defense in the face of provocation, and that Yngvadottir should get her tools back under IAR.

It's hard to show diffs of Eric being productive and nobody has done that so far.

Meanwhile, Anthony Cole piles up the instances of EC calling this person or that a "cunt." One would think that the minimum sanction coming out of this case will be a strict prohibition that those four letters ever be typed by the Ferret Friend on Wikipedia ever again...

RfB

[slacker]

Not a surprise to see Dennis arguing that if only everyone left Eric alone and he was treated like any other editor, things would return to normality. WTF? It is the very fact Eric is not normal and doesn't react in the normal way to attempts to modify his behavior which has led him on this path to his station as the most divisive editor in Wikipedia history. With the help of the community of course, but it wouldn't have happened if Eric wasn't Eric. While there's not many factual errors here, just a hell of a lot of massively biased interpretations of history in Eric's favour, the bit in bold is indisputably a big fat lie, again, one of the greatest hits trotted out by his supporters. Still, admin lying to help out a friend, that's not a surprise. It's telling from this statement what Dennis doesn't talk about, namely the actions of all those who support Eric who have ensured that the system has not worked. It's quite poor for him to be using phrases like accepting responsibility, taking blame, passive-aggressive, [not] following the law, but only in terms of how badly Eric has been treated - ignoring all the times Eric has been guilty of the very same, which inevitably leads to permanent drama since his behaviour cannot be changed due to his supporters. Also, he filed this as "Evidence", which makes me wonder if he's really qualified to be criticising a process (arbitration) that he apparently doesn't even have a basic understand of.

Arbs, individuals, admins and the community have failed
Arbcom and the community as a whole has failed when it comes to enforcing civility. Eric is merely the poster child, if not for him, it would be someone else. The more restrictions you put on him, the worse the situation gets as clearly, he has equal numbers of supporters and detractors. This escalating blocks scenario has failed worse of all, as has the "first block advantage" of AE when dealing with controversial people. I will be the first to say that Eric has clearly earned some of his blocks, but not all of them. Arb has given those that oppose him an advantage and powerful tools to de facto ban him for the most minor of infractions. While this wasn't intentional, if you unwilling to accept personal responsibility and your share of the blame, you have failed the community yet again.
Too many people intentionally misread his words, using the cultural differences in US and UK English as a weapon (and no, I'm not talking about the word "cunt" here, I'm speaking in broader terms). We've made it a blockable offense to be disliked. Some say that admin are afraid to block him, as if the admin corp is a bunch of cowards. That comes across as a passive-aggressive way to avoid the real fact, that admin don't fear Eric, but they do fear the long, sometimes overreaching arms of Arb. Admin are afraid of getting dragged into Arb and bit stripped for the crime of agreeing with him. Eric doesn't have the power to force an admin into 6 weeks of debate into their fitness and suitability, with the potential to be desysopped without good reason, and with only a majority vote; a popularity vote. Only Arb has this power, not Eric, so let us be realistic when we talk about fear and risk. Avoiding Eric's opinion of you is pretty easy: stay off his talk page, as that is generally the only place he voices those opinions.
We've created this monster with unworkable Arb restrictions, perhaps forged with the best of intentions but executed in a way that turns Eric into a pinata. Anyone can take a swipe, but he can't swipe back. If you really care about keeping Eric, and keeping disruption to a minimum, lift all restrictions and treat him like any other editor. If he needs a 72 hour block, give it. The short blocks have been effective and there is no time for drama to build up, no perception of an overreaction by giving a month block for the crime of politely and calmly replying where you were first addressed. I've been the first to support these short blocks when they were reasonable and proportional to the problem. I'm not blind to the fact that we have an ongoing problem, nor am I blind to the fact that Arbitration has made it worse, not better. Arb might be the final step, but it hasn't been the best solution.
Kirill followed the letter of the law, but in an overly strict way. We've desysopped someone recently for habitually doing this very thing, while edit warring. That would be overkill here, no one deserves to lose their bits (and one person should get theirs back without asking, simply because it is the right thing to do). What we need is LESS Arbitration when it comes to Eric, not more. Otherwise, just ban him so everyone who supports him can just retire and you can be done with this. That would be the easy thing, but it would be the most expensive and foolish. Surely you see that the more you do, the worse the problem becomes. I'm not asking for Eric to be above others, simply have restrictions removed so we can treat him like everyone else, so you don't have the impression (or reality) that others are waiting by the sidelines hoping he says "gender" and gets banned. Take away the fuel from both sizes, and admit that we (as a community) tried using restrictions in this one case and we failed. There is no justice and Arb is not a court. What this requires is being brave enough to try something that might actually work, instead of this futile attempt to continually spank and shame him. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 14:54, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

I honestly completely agree with Dennis here. Eric is not a normal editor because certain people won't leave him alone and hound his every edit. No matter how good you are, if someone looks hard enough, long enough, they are going to find something. No one was calling for Nyttend to be desysopped when he accidentally blocked everyone at the Wikiconference USA from editing, no one said anything to HJ Mitchell for calling the community F'ing morons, no one does anything about Binksternet, Floquenbeam, Beyond My Ken or dozens of others for generally be A-holes to every editor they meet, yet, if Eric makes a typo or a comment everyone is picking it apart and accusing him of being discriminatory to women or whatever. Jimbo himself has made statements worse than much of what Eric has done and so have the Arbcom. So before we all start climbing on our soapboxes about how Wikipedia policy and rules need to be enforced for Eric, we need to enforce them evenly and fairly for everyone, regardless of status, not just use that as an excuse to get Eric out of the project.

You do realise that Eric didn't simply become the most divisive editor on Wikipedia overnight? If you go far enough back, I'm quite sure you'll find that whenever it was that Eric first insulted someone he received the same treatment as anyone else, and indeed for the next few times after that. It all went to shit and he became a 'face' when the pretty unique way Eric reacts to attempts to modify his behaviour started to get noticed by those who don't like the fact they also have to be nice to people they disagree with. He became their figurehead in the 'insurrection', and so became a target of those trying to fight the rebels. He is a proxy for all those other editors and admins who don't have the guts to do what he does, but otherwise share his views about WP:CIV.

This is why Jimbo named him as one of the tiny few people who need to be removed post-haste to stop the rot and ensure Wikipedia becomes a place where everyone is entitled to respect, regardless of their contributions, even if they'e a vandal or a troll. It's akin to chopping the head off a snake. Dennis doesn't understand the full history of the Eric phenomena all that well, and is also generally clueless about the Wikipedia dynamic in general (he'd be fine with treating vandals and socks like shit, since he has no real understanding of how counter-productive that is in the long run), hence his analysis is always poor, even after accounting for the fact a lot of it is compromised by his obvious admiration for the guy's writing ability.

[ats]

-do you agree or disagree that Eric was blocked for subsequent comments, which violated his topic ban on mentioning gender disparity on Wikipedia?

There were two comments that were used as justification for the block:
A) "In fact, if I were to go just by the editors I've worked with, particularly on FA/GAs I'd be inclined to think that it was about 50/50 between males and females. "

B) "That's my experience as well. I'm just not seeing this alleged misogyny."

Neither of these mention gender disparity. In fact the only reason they were bannable is because of the boneheaded "broadly construed" BS that ARBCOM is fond of. The first referenced the gender breakdown of who *Eric* has worked with on FA/GAs and the second has nothing to do with gender disparity. He was blockable because the thread that this was mentioned in was about an off wiki article that mentioned gender disparity even though the thread itself was about harassment and hostility to women.

[Moral Hazard]

This is why Jimbo named him as one of the tiny few people who need to be removed post-haste to ... ensure Wikipedia becomes a place where everyone is entitled to respect, regardless of their contributions, even if they'e a vandal or a troll. It's akin to chopping the head off a snake. Dennis [Brown]... [would] be fine with treating vandals and socks like shit.

We are so lucky to have you here.


Nice to see that Risker has an icon

[Kumioko]

Not a surprise to see Dennis arguing that if only everyone left Eric alone and he was treated like any other editor, things would return to normality. WTF? It is the very fact Eric is not normal and doesn't react in the normal way to attempts to modify his behavior which has led him on this path to his station as the most divisive editor in Wikipedia history. With the help of the community of course, but it wouldn't have happened if Eric wasn't Eric. While there's not many factual errors here, just a hell of a lot of massively biased interpretations of history in Eric's favour, the bit in bold is indisputably a big fat lie, again, one of the greatest hits trotted out by his supporters. Still, admin lying to help out a friend, that's not a surprise. It's telling from this statement what Dennis doesn't talk about, namely the actions of all those who support Eric who have ensured that the system has not worked. It's quite poor for him to be using phrases like accepting responsibility, taking blame, passive-aggressive, [not] following the law, but only in terms of how badly Eric has been treated - ignoring all the times Eric has been guilty of the very same, which inevitably leads to permanent drama since his behaviour cannot be changed due to his supporters. Also, he filed this as "Evidence", which makes me wonder if he's really qualified to be criticising a process (arbitration) that he apparently doesn't even have a basic understand of.

Arbs, individuals, admins and the community have failed
Arbcom and the community as a whole has failed when it comes to enforcing civility. Eric is merely the poster child, if not for him, it would be someone else. The more restrictions you put on him, the worse the situation gets as clearly, he has equal numbers of supporters and detractors. This escalating blocks scenario has failed worse of all, as has the "first block advantage" of AE when dealing with controversial people. I will be the first to say that Eric has clearly earned some of his blocks, but not all of them. Arb has given those that oppose him an advantage and powerful tools to de facto ban him for the most minor of infractions. While this wasn't intentional, if you unwilling to accept personal responsibility and your share of the blame, you have failed the community yet again.
Too many people intentionally misread his words, using the cultural differences in US and UK English as a weapon (and no, I'm not talking about the word "cunt" here, I'm speaking in broader terms). We've made it a blockable offense to be disliked. Some say that admin are afraid to block him, as if the admin corp is a bunch of cowards. That comes across as a passive-aggressive way to avoid the real fact, that admin don't fear Eric, but they do fear the long, sometimes overreaching arms of Arb. Admin are afraid of getting dragged into Arb and bit stripped for the crime of agreeing with him. Eric doesn't have the power to force an admin into 6 weeks of debate into their fitness and suitability, with the potential to be desysopped without good reason, and with only a majority vote; a popularity vote. Only Arb has this power, not Eric, so let us be realistic when we talk about fear and risk. Avoiding Eric's opinion of you is pretty easy: stay off his talk page, as that is generally the only place he voices those opinions.
We've created this monster with unworkable Arb restrictions, perhaps forged with the best of intentions but executed in a way that turns Eric into a pinata. Anyone can take a swipe, but he can't swipe back. If you really care about keeping Eric, and keeping disruption to a minimum, lift all restrictions and treat him like any other editor. If he needs a 72 hour block, give it. The short blocks have been effective and there is no time for drama to build up, no perception of an overreaction by giving a month block for the crime of politely and calmly replying where you were first addressed. I've been the first to support these short blocks when they were reasonable and proportional to the problem. I'm not blind to the fact that we have an ongoing problem, nor am I blind to the fact that Arbitration has made it worse, not better. Arb might be the final step, but it hasn't been the best solution.
Kirill followed the letter of the law, but in an overly strict way. We've desysopped someone recently for habitually doing this very thing, while edit warring. That would be overkill here, no one deserves to lose their bits (and one person should get theirs back without asking, simply because it is the right thing to do). What we need is LESS Arbitration when it comes to Eric, not more. Otherwise, just ban him so everyone who supports him can just retire and you can be done with this. That would be the easy thing, but it would be the most expensive and foolish. Surely you see that the more you do, the worse the problem becomes. I'm not asking for Eric to be above others, simply have restrictions removed so we can treat him like everyone else, so you don't have the impression (or reality) that others are waiting by the sidelines hoping he says "gender" and gets banned. Take away the fuel from both sizes, and admit that we (as a community) tried using restrictions in this one case and we failed. There is no justice and Arb is not a court. What this requires is being brave enough to try something that might actually work, instead of this futile attempt to continually spank and shame him. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 14:54, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

I honestly completely agree with Dennis here. Eric is not a normal editor because certain people won't leave him alone and hound his every edit. No matter how good you are, if someone looks hard enough, long enough, they are going to find something. No one was calling for Nyttend to be desysopped when he accidentally blocked everyone at the Wikiconference USA from editing, no one said anything to HJ Mitchell for calling the community F'ing morons, no one does anything about Binksternet, Floquenbeam, Beyond My Ken or dozens of others for generally be A-holes to every editor they meet, yet, if Eric makes a typo or a comment everyone is picking it apart and accusing him of being discriminatory to women or whatever. Jimbo himself has made statements worse than much of what Eric has done and so have the Arbcom. So before we all start climbing on our soapboxes about how Wikipedia policy and rules need to be enforced for Eric, we need to enforce them evenly and fairly for everyone, regardless of status, not just use that as an excuse to get Eric out of the project.

You do realise that Eric didn't simply become the most divisive editor on Wikipedia overnight? If you go far enough back, I'm quite sure you'll find that whenever it was that Eric first insulted someone he received the same treatment as anyone else, and indeed for the next few times after that. It all went to shit and he became a 'face' when the pretty unique way Eric reacts to attempts to modify his behaviour started to get noticed by those who don't like the fact they also have to be nice to people they disagree with. He became their figurehead in the 'insurrection', and so became a target of those trying to fight the rebels. He is a proxy for all those other editors and admins who don't have the guts to do what he does, but otherwise share his views about WP:CIV.

This is why Jimbo named him as one of the tiny few people who need to be removed post-haste to stop the rot and ensure Wikipedia becomes a place where everyone is entitled to respect, regardless of their contributions, even if they'e a vandal or a troll. It's akin to chopping the head off a snake. Dennis doesn't understand the full history of the Eric phenomena all that well, and is also generally clueless about the Wikipedia dynamic in general (he'd be fine with treating vandals and socks like shit, since he has no real understanding of how counter-productive that is in the long run), hence his analysis is always poor, even after accounting for the fact a lot of it is compromised by his obvious admiration for the guy's writing ability.

I absolutely do not think Eric is innocent anymore than I was innocent. I also do not believe Eric is the only one and IMO there are several folks, Kww included, that seem to have made it their personal mission to make as big of a deal out of any infraction Eric does as possible. Wikipedia has dozens to hundreds of policies, guidelines and essays without adding in Topic bans and Arb sanctions into the mix. Then when you include the admins having broad and unlimited discretion to arbitrarily construe minor infractions into Wikiwar, you end up with the current situation where anything eric does is subject to scrutiny. Eric isn't perfect nor are any of us but unless the Arbcom is going to deal with the problem of people harassing him into situations they can use to block him, then they are missing an opportunity to end drama. Because once Eric is out of the way those same folks are simply going to turn their attention on some other editor and erode their patience. There are IMO far bigger problems to deal with in the project than Eric Corbett.

I would also pretty much disregard anything Jimbo says as a complete waste of breath. I have no respect for Jimmy of Wales anymore than he has respect for me or editors of Wikipedia. he would sell every one of us to make a buck or to make himself look good. Jimbo should have been told to go away a long time and quite shining the community on. If Jimbo says to do something we should all seriously consider doing the exact opposite.

I also do not find Eric's block log convincing. I see several folks I respect like WTT but I also see several names that represent the absolute worst of the Admins and the community like Fram, HighinBC (formerly Chillum) and Sandstein.

[Tarc]

This case is going to be about one thing, the Arbcom banning Eric or not. Up till now they haven't had the balls, but this time they might just go through with it. On the other hand, as I have said before plenty of other folks have also done wrong, but Arbcom doesn't care about any of that, because many of them were admins and if Arbcom did anything to any of them for baiting, harassment and hounding Eric, then it would ruin the Arbcom's reputation of being completely incompetent and one sided towards admins.

I guess we shall see what the future holds, but one thing is for certain, there is no Eric in the Arbcom's vision of the Wikipedia of the future.

IMO Jbhunley makes a rather valid observation;

Every single volunteer organization I have ever worked with had a very simple policy about volunteers - If you can not get along with the other people, no matter what your contribution, your services are no longer welcome. If you cause disruption ongoing controversy, whether it is your fault or not and no matter your contribution, your services are no longer welcome. This is basic to the continued well being of any volunteer organization and it is essential to the long term continued viability of Wikipedia. Wikipedia is not a 'special snowflake', people have been managing volunteer organizations for a very long time use the knowledge that has been accumulated. Hell read a book or three on volunteer management. It will help you.
I have no opinion on Eric as an editor and the misogyny claim looks to be BS but it really does not matter. If you want to maintain a viable organization in the long term you need to choose whether you are going to manage the chaos or allow Wikipedia to choke on its own anarchy.

You have established rules for AE and you need to stand by them to do otherwise is to trash whatever moral authority you have with both sides. You already have none with one side.

The other options are a) revolution or b) kick the can down the road for another group to face the same choice after unknown further damage is done to the community and the project. Some group must manage the intractable issues here. Managers are seldom liked by those they manage - at least not when they are trying to manage a bunch of anarchist wanna-be's - but they are necessary otherwise the wanna-be anarchists will find they have no place to indulge in their anarchy and no one wants to play in their sandbox. I hope none of this is new to any of you but based on many of the comments I have read here I fear it might be to some.

I would generally agree with what he says too, unfortunately that's not how it works. The admins do not enforce violations consistently and nether does AE or the Arbcom. AE is essentially a hanging jury where anyone who is accused is guilty and no one monitors or oversees it so it ends up being a free for all to any admins who want to block people, no or few questions asked.

Wikipedia as a site can surely survive without Eric and anyone else for that matter, that's not the issue. What is the issue here, is whether the admins and arbs are going to allow their peers to continue to harass and hound people they do not like out of the project by goading them into a conflict to justify blocking them. As I have said before, Eric can be an ass, but when you have the same 3 or 4 people hounding you over and over and over and none of the admins have enough respect for the sites policies to do anything about it, anyone is going to get tired of it. So yes although Eric is very much to blame for his own demise, he is not the only one who's conduct needs to be addressed here.

I would also add that no "damage" is being done to the project even if the whole affair is something of a time sync.

There is a storm of chaos and contentiousness that revolves around Corbett; whether it originates in him or is stirred up by others (IMO it is ~60%-40% on EC's shoulders) is not important. This is like a basketball game that is getting to chippy and out of control, where sometimes the refs have to T up both sides...and maybe even eject one...in order to bring the whole game back under control. It may not be fair, but not everything is.

Getting rid of Corbett will not make everyone else sprout daisies out of their backsides and shoot rainbows from their fingertips, but longest journey and first steps and all that.

[slacker]

Not a surprise to see Dennis arguing that if only everyone left Eric alone and he was treated like any other editor, things would return to normality. WTF? It is the very fact Eric is not normal and doesn't react in the normal way to attempts to modify his behavior which has led him on this path to his station as the most divisive editor in Wikipedia history. With the help of the community of course, but it wouldn't have happened if Eric wasn't Eric. While there's not many factual errors here, just a hell of a lot of massively biased interpretations of history in Eric's favour, the bit in bold is indisputably a big fat lie, again, one of the greatest hits trotted out by his supporters. Still, admin lying to help out a friend, that's not a surprise. It's telling from this statement what Dennis doesn't talk about, namely the actions of all those who support Eric who have ensured that the system has not worked. It's quite poor for him to be using phrases like accepting responsibility, taking blame, passive-aggressive, [not] following the law, but only in terms of how badly Eric has been treated - ignoring all the times Eric has been guilty of the very same, which inevitably leads to permanent drama since his behaviour cannot be changed due to his supporters. Also, he filed this as "Evidence", which makes me wonder if he's really qualified to be criticising a process (arbitration) that he apparently doesn't even have a basic understand of.

Arbs, individuals, admins and the community have failed
Arbcom and the community as a whole has failed when it comes to enforcing civility. Eric is merely the poster child, if not for him, it would be someone else. The more restrictions you put on him, the worse the situation gets as clearly, he has equal numbers of supporters and detractors. This escalating blocks scenario has failed worse of all, as has the "first block advantage" of AE when dealing with controversial people. I will be the first to say that Eric has clearly earned some of his blocks, but not all of them. Arb has given those that oppose him an advantage and powerful tools to de facto ban him for the most minor of infractions. While this wasn't intentional, if you unwilling to accept personal responsibility and your share of the blame, you have failed the community yet again.
Too many people intentionally misread his words, using the cultural differences in US and UK English as a weapon (and no, I'm not talking about the word "cunt" here, I'm speaking in broader terms). We've made it a blockable offense to be disliked. Some say that admin are afraid to block him, as if the admin corp is a bunch of cowards. That comes across as a passive-aggressive way to avoid the real fact, that admin don't fear Eric, but they do fear the long, sometimes overreaching arms of Arb. Admin are afraid of getting dragged into Arb and bit stripped for the crime of agreeing with him. Eric doesn't have the power to force an admin into 6 weeks of debate into their fitness and suitability, with the potential to be desysopped without good reason, and with only a majority vote; a popularity vote. Only Arb has this power, not Eric, so let us be realistic when we talk about fear and risk. Avoiding Eric's opinion of you is pretty easy: stay off his talk page, as that is generally the only place he voices those opinions.
We've created this monster with unworkable Arb restrictions, perhaps forged with the best of intentions but executed in a way that turns Eric into a pinata. Anyone can take a swipe, but he can't swipe back. If you really care about keeping Eric, and keeping disruption to a minimum, lift all restrictions and treat him like any other editor. If he needs a 72 hour block, give it. The short blocks have been effective and there is no time for drama to build up, no perception of an overreaction by giving a month block for the crime of politely and calmly replying where you were first addressed. I've been the first to support these short blocks when they were reasonable and proportional to the problem. I'm not blind to the fact that we have an ongoing problem, nor am I blind to the fact that Arbitration has made it worse, not better. Arb might be the final step, but it hasn't been the best solution.
Kirill followed the letter of the law, but in an overly strict way. We've desysopped someone recently for habitually doing this very thing, while edit warring. That would be overkill here, no one deserves to lose their bits (and one person should get theirs back without asking, simply because it is the right thing to do). What we need is LESS Arbitration when it comes to Eric, not more. Otherwise, just ban him so everyone who supports him can just retire and you can be done with this. That would be the easy thing, but it would be the most expensive and foolish. Surely you see that the more you do, the worse the problem becomes. I'm not asking for Eric to be above others, simply have restrictions removed so we can treat him like everyone else, so you don't have the impression (or reality) that others are waiting by the sidelines hoping he says "gender" and gets banned. Take away the fuel from both sizes, and admit that we (as a community) tried using restrictions in this one case and we failed. There is no justice and Arb is not a court. What this requires is being brave enough to try something that might actually work, instead of this futile attempt to continually spank and shame him. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 14:54, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

I honestly completely agree with Dennis here. Eric is not a normal editor because certain people won't leave him alone and hound his every edit. No matter how good you are, if someone looks hard enough, long enough, they are going to find something. No one was calling for Nyttend to be desysopped when he accidentally blocked everyone at the Wikiconference USA from editing, no one said anything to HJ Mitchell for calling the community F'ing morons, no one does anything about Binksternet, Floquenbeam, Beyond My Ken or dozens of others for generally be A-holes to every editor they meet, yet, if Eric makes a typo or a comment everyone is picking it apart and accusing him of being discriminatory to women or whatever. Jimbo himself has made statements worse than much of what Eric has done and so have the Arbcom. So before we all start climbing on our soapboxes about how Wikipedia policy and rules need to be enforced for Eric, we need to enforce them evenly and fairly for everyone, regardless of status, not just use that as an excuse to get Eric out of the project.

You do realise that Eric didn't simply become the most divisive editor on Wikipedia overnight? If you go far enough back, I'm quite sure you'll find that whenever it was that Eric first insulted someone he received the same treatment as anyone else, and indeed for the next few times after that. It all went to shit and he became a 'face' when the pretty unique way Eric reacts to attempts to modify his behaviour started to get noticed by those who don't like the fact they also have to be nice to people they disagree with. He became their figurehead in the 'insurrection', and so became a target of those trying to fight the rebels. He is a proxy for all those other editors and admins who don't have the guts to do what he does, but otherwise share his views about WP:CIV.

This is why Jimbo named him as one of the tiny few people who need to be removed post-haste to stop the rot and ensure Wikipedia becomes a place where everyone is entitled to respect, regardless of their contributions, even if they'e a vandal or a troll. It's akin to chopping the head off a snake. Dennis doesn't understand the full history of the Eric phenomena all that well, and is also generally clueless about the Wikipedia dynamic in general (he'd be fine with treating vandals and socks like shit, since he has no real understanding of how counter-productive that is in the long run), hence his analysis is always poor, even after accounting for the fact a lot of it is compromised by his obvious admiration for the guy's writing ability.

I absolutely do not think Eric is innocent anymore than I was innocent. I also do not believe Eric is the only one and IMO there are several folks, Kww included, that seem to have made it their personal mission to make as big of a deal out of any infraction Eric does as possible. Wikipedia has dozens to hundreds of policies, guidelines and essays without adding in Topic bans and Arb sanctions into the mix. Then when you include the admins having broad and unlimited discretion to arbitrarily construe minor infractions into Wikiwar, you end up with the current situation where anything eric does is subject to scrutiny. Eric isn't perfect nor are any of us but unless the Arbcom is going to deal with the problem of people harassing him into situations they can use to block him, then they are missing an opportunity to end drama. Because once Eric is out of the way those same folks are simply going to turn their attention on some other editor and erode their patience. There are IMO far bigger problems to deal with in the project than Eric Corbett.

I would also pretty much disregard anything Jimbo says as a complete waste of breath. I have no respect for Jimmy of Wales anymore than he has respect for me or editors of Wikipedia. he would sell every one of us to make a buck or to make himself look good. Jimbo should have been told to go away a long time and quite shining the community on. If Jimbo says to do something we should all seriously consider doing the exact opposite.

I also do not find Eric's block log convincing. I see several folks I respect like WTT but I also see several names that represent the absolute worst of the Admins and the community like Fram, HighinBC (formerly Chillum) and Sandstein.

There's one common link that connects everyone who claims Eric is a victim of harassment. They never have any proof. It always amounts to blind assertions. Try it - pick any of the current group of people making this claim (I nominate DDStretch), and simply ask them for evidence in the form of a convincing timeline of diffs with some analysis as to how the various actions aren't simply a case of various people trying, and failing, to get Eric to comply with policy, and doing so in ways and means that are also tried with other difficult editors. They won't furnish it, they'll claim they have better things to do with their time, or give you some other excuse. I have a small amount of sympathy for Eric because he's been the focus of these attempts far longer than other difficult editors (like yourself), so that must be stressful. Other editor's experience in this process is usually shorter, because they either eventually change, or they're banned. Eric's continuing stress derives from the fact he has been able to continue editting Wikipedia without ever changing or being banned - and the people to blame for that miserable experience are his supporters. With friends like that....

[slacker]

-do you agree or disagree that Eric was blocked for subsequent comments, which violated his topic ban on mentioning gender disparity on Wikipedia?

There were two comments that were used as justification for the block:
A) "In fact, if I were to go just by the editors I've worked with, particularly on FA/GAs I'd be inclined to think that it was about 50/50 between males and females. "

B) "That's my experience as well. I'm just not seeing this alleged misogyny."

Neither of these mention gender disparity. In fact the only reason they were bannable is because of the boneheaded "broadly construed" BS that ARBCOM is fond of. The first referenced the gender breakdown of who *Eric* has worked with on FA/GAs and the second has nothing to do with gender disparity. He was blockable because the thread that this was mentioned in was about an off wiki article that mentioned gender disparity even though the thread itself was about harassment and hostility to women.

What's boneheaded about it? The topic ban was placed because it became clear that every time Eric put his toe into the subject of gender disparity on Wikipedia, no matter how he did it, then disruption ensued. People act like they don't know how these conversations went before at the GGTF and elsewhere. Sure, it starts out with an innocuous claim like the 50/50 personal experience one, but we all know what comes after that. Soon he'd be questioning the very existence of the gap, or whether it has any effect, or whether it's caused by hostility, someone else shows him some evidence, he argues it's false/wrong, they point out the errors in his arguments, he calls them thick or a puritan or alleges they're part of a feminist conspiracy, they report him to ANI, the bloods and the crips turn out in force, etc, etc. All of this was repeated ad nauseum before, and was laughingly claimed to be just 'robust disagreement' by his advocates in the GGTF case, but on that score at least, the arbitrators weren't falling for it. There are ways to disagree without being an asshole, but Eric doesn't even really try, and why should he? It's something he'd got away with for years until the GGTF case.

The topic ban was necessary, and the comments above were violations of it, since what was being discussed falls squarely within what the arbitrators clearly, obviously, intended to mean by topics related to gender disparity (the hostile environment would be number 1 on the list). The only people claiming it wasn't a breach are the wikilawyers. Indeed, most of Eric's supporters are admitting it's a breach, they're simply arguing the month long duration of the block was excessive, or are otherwise making this absurd point that there is some way to not violate a topic ban if you're polite, or there is a way to 'technically' violate a topic ban (which I guarantee nobody can codify into a sanction wording, but they contend it exists as a thing nonetheless), or indeed you can violate it as long as you have 'just cause' (see previous).

[Kumioko]

There is a storm of chaos and contentiousness that revolves around Corbett; whether it originates in him or is stirred up by others (IMO it is ~60%-40% on EC's shoulders) is not important. This is like a basketball game that is getting to chippy and out of control, where sometimes the refs have to T up both sides...and maybe even eject one...in order to bring the whole game back under control. It may not be fair, but not everything is.

Getting rid of Corbett will not make everyone else sprout daisies out of their backsides and shoot rainbows from their fingertips, but longest journey and first steps and all that.

I agree with much of that and in fact I relate to the statement of "whether it originates in him or is stirred up by others " since the same happened to me in many ways. I also agree that regardless of what the effects of it are on the community, the Arbcom is going to ban Eric. That is a finality that isn't going to change and the fact that they just changed the title of his case to Arbitration enforcement 2 from Vested contributors makes the outcome all the more clear that the Arbcom has already decided on the outcome.

What I am curious to see is who will get burned next. Because there is always going to be someone in the project that some contend they have to get rid of for the sake of the project.

There's one common link that connects everyone who claims Eric is a victim of harassment. They never have any proof. It always amounts to blind assertions. Try it - pick any of the current group of people making this claim (I nominate DDStretch), and simply ask them for evidence in the form of a convincing timeline of diffs with some analysis as to how the various actions aren't simply a case of various people trying, and failing, to get Eric to comply with policy, and doing so in ways and means that are also tried with other difficult editors. They won't furnish it, they'll claim they have better things to do with their time, or give you some other excuse. I have a small amount of sympathy for Eric because he's been the focus of these attempts far longer than other difficult editors (like yourself), so that must be stressful. Other editor's experience in this process is usually shorter, because they either eventually change, or they're banned. Eric's continuing stress derives from the fact he has been able to continue editting Wikipedia without ever changing or being banned - and the people to blame for that miserable experience are his supporters. With friends like that....

Actually the proof of harassment is very easy to see if you bother to look for it. Its the same small group of people that have been hounding him for years commenting on his talk page, dragging him to AN and ANI, talking about him on their own talk pages, etc. I should clarify BTW that me and Eric aren't friends. We didn't really get along that well and I tended to stay away from him. But the way he is being treated is wrong and it bothers me that the admins are unwilling to do anything about the constant harassment and hounding that is so obvious.

The mere fact that people created a disruption when Eric made even civil comments about a subject shows that its not Eric that's the problem. That very statement illustrates that the people who are creating the disruption are the problem and its not always Eric.

Your also right that I can be difficult I agree, but that's because I expect the admins on the site to do their job and enforce policy fairly and consistently and time and time again I am shown that they not only don't want to do that, they are incapable of it and no one is willing to do anything about it. The admins want to enforce their definition of policy on editors like me and Eric they don't like that are contributing content that they don't have time for, but enforce it on their fellow admins? Never. When the admins start holding their peers to task and not just chasing after editors then I would be far less of a critic.

As long as admins with no regard for policy continue to enforce a lessor version of policy on themselves and the other admins let them do it. Some examples include:
*Banning people for minor comments on their talk pages (rather than following a 3 strikes agreement)
* submitting ban requests over and over until they get the result they want
* changing the outcome of discussions to what they want
* Hounding and harassing people in those discussions who don't share their views
* hounding and harassing editors into a situations to justify blocking them
* canvassing their peers on the admin IRC boards or other tactics like
* blocking them and then starting discussions to ban or block them and not allowing them to even participate

As long as admins don't have the morale courage to deal with their own, then I will continue to criticize them. If the admins want me to stop criticizing them, then they need to do what they volunteered to do or quit!

Now I cannot speak for Eric but regardless of the outcome of my ban, its not going to stop me from improving the project and contributing even if Eric decides to leave. I couldn't care less about what the Arbcom children think or say and I am not going to give up on the project even if a few people in it, most of which aren't there to build an encyclopedia anyway, want to claim a consensus to keep me out. In fact I have done edits every day this week and you know what, no drama at all. In fact I had several thanks for some.

I hope Eric comes back as well. Maybe using a different username after a short break will eliminate some of the drama.