Meta madness

[Abd]

So why do I show up on Wikpediocracy today? Well, I am periodically tempted to look at meta, and I See Stuff. In particular, when I see a user being abused, my long-standing habit is to protest. I saw the global lock request for Diegusjaimes, and noticed how this was, at least on the face of it, not following global lock policy.

Diegusjaimes has over 300,000 live edits on eswiki, this is not some random vandal. He was blocked there, and he has a bot, DiegusjaimesBOT, with many more edits, also recently blocked only because the master account was blocked.

Those two accounts had apparently not edited for over six months. So why was Diegusjaimes being locked now[i/]? Well, there were some abusive user accounts created on meta, the other day. These were blamed on him. The evidence was unclear and incoherent. No checkuser, apparently, but that's also unclear. There was no extensive pattern of cross-wiki abuse alleged, much less shown with evidence.

Without wasting a great deal of time investigating eswiki events, it looks like Diegusjaimes lost a political battle on eswiki. Maybe he'd become abusive, I certainly can't tell. But the most horrible behavior on a single wiki isn't grounds for a global lock, and the report almost entirely focuses on eswiki behavior or results. Plus five-year old claims about Wikia, totally irrelevant.

The complaint, action, and discussion, permanent link: https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php? ... egusjaimes

So a user commented: https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php? ... quote]What gave you the idea that stewards follow policy?[/quote]Because this was on a request page, where comments should remain on topic, and stewards following policy or not wasn't the topic, the topic was the lock of the user, I didn't respond there, but on his talk page.

And then I was witness to a nasty piece of business, that is leaving me convinced that, indeed, the community is lost, rapidly going downhill.

That is, https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_ta ... om#Nothing and what ensued. Permanent link to today's version, the juiciest bit: https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php? ... 85#Blocked

All this has taken place where there are several stewards active. Once upon a time, my intervention would have been treated routinely. A request would have been granted or denied with a few words. This time, I have a substantial level of expectation that the next thing I'll see on meta is an infinite block for Abd.

In investigating DanielTom's history, I came across a block where I know the blocking admin fairly well. A very decent sort. And face-palm obtuse in this case. Something about having block tools, in a context where the community has become entirely distracted and pays no deep attention, corrupts. It seems to corrupt even the best. I think I know what it is.

It's coming out of a sense of overwhelm, that handling matters with the necessary caution and depth simply takes too much time. So administrators are trained, in effect, to act quickly. After all, it's a wiki, and supposedly everything can be fixed.

That would be true except for one serious problem. The community generally assumes that whatever it did in the past was right. It highly dislikes review of old events, ancient history. It will think that if a user was blocked or banned, the user must be the problem, since this wonderful community of ours, which is so tolerant that it gives blatant vandals three warnings before blocking them, would never block or ban a user without good cause.

And so when it is shown that, indeed, someone has been blocked without warning, for something between a minor offense or no offense at all, but merely the existence of an offended administrator, why, the one showing this must be disruptive, nitpicking, and failing to assume good faith, even if no claim of bad faith was made.

It's obvious in the steward responses to what I wrote. They assume I'm personally criticizing them. It's clear that they don''t understand what I wrote, because they radically misinterpret it. Vituzzu thinks I'm claiming that the revision deletion was improper. Billinghurst thinks that I want him to unlock a proven, established cross-wiki vandal, setting him free to wreak havoc.

Yet the lock would not prevent what Diegusjaimes allegedly did: create some abusive user names. It would have no effect on that. What it would do is only to prevent the user from accessing his watchlists, and his email, where it might be important. Diegusjaimes is also not blocked on meta (that's routine, and the lock tool apparently does not prevent meta access, which makes sense). He's only blocked on eswiki. Being locked does not prevent account creation, at all. Indeed, the argument was made that the user can, and should, create a new account. (Because he's "not banned.")

Face-palm.

I'm done explaining this to people who can't read a simple account of fact without assuming motives and disliked emotional states. Once upon a time, there were enough stewards who could do that, so that it was fairly safe to discuss actions. No more. Because I might need access to meta, for Wikiversity purposes, I'd prefer not to be blocked there, therefore I'm shutting down all review of meta actions. Wikiversity has been quiet and safe lately. And that's the place where I have personal work, of substantial value, to do.

I used to go to meta to report cross-wiki spam and vandalism, I've requested plenty of locks, as I recall. No more.

One more comment: The user, Goldenburg111, who shows up on the meta DanielTom talk page, was protected by me from being globally locked three years ago, based an improper report (i.e, no actual cross-wiki abuse, and the only seriously active account wasn't blocked). At that point, he was, my estimate, about seven years old. I was protecting him, not so that he could vandalize other projects -- the normal behavior of a smart seven-year-old could look like vandalism -- but so that he could learn wikitext and to work cooperatively, on Wikiversity, being welcomed and supported there. Education, including learning-by-doing, is the Wikiversity mission, not just the "materials."

And he did learn, and while I was there on Wikiversity, he was fine. He'd make mistakes, sure. But he was mostly cooperative. When I was blocked for almost two years, unable to guide him, things did go south, but, now that I'm back, he's learning rapidly. Sweet kid, really.

He still makes mistakes, and he can lose his temper, but is responsive to guidance.

NOT THERAPY is one of the worst possible policies on Wikipedia. It destroys communities, by disallowing mutual support. Meatball:DefendEachOther becomes a dead letter, when defense is attacked. Nitpicking? No, the core of community.

We have an entire new generation of stewards who are fundamentally clueless. I've seen a few who remain otherwise. For how long will they continue?

Not my problem any more.

[Abd]

Great! Goldenburg111 was able to assist DanielTom. Goldenburg is about ten years old, and filed a vandalism report on Wikiquote. https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php? ... id=7044610

Meanwhile, TeleComNasSprVen tossed more irrelevancy into the Steward requests/Global meta page, with
https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php? ... id=7045278

TCNSV is the one who tried to get Goldenburg111 globally locked, when his user name was Draubb.

TCNSV had just filed a Global lock request that was properly rejected (as the one for Diegusjaimes should have been rejected, for similar and stronger reasons).
https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php? ... zhar_sabri

I saw that and said nothing on that page, it is not a place to allege bad user behavior, but TCNSV does that routinely. On Commons, he has an open request for deletion for that same user he was trying to have locked.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Comm ... tribs.29_4


The basic story: new user created user pages with a photo of himself and a very brief resume. It's common. Some wikis don't allow it until you are established as a regular user, but most tolerate it. The user is unskillful and clueless about Commons process. He is blocked on one wiki only for what is tolerated elsewhere. No other blocks. By global locking policy, not at all a candidate for global locking. That doesn't stop TCNSV.

This is the issue I was confronting, the *terrible welcome* that is slapped in the face of some new users. The user did learn to properly provide license information. Whatever files were actually in use have been kept, apparently.

It's very simple, TCNSV is a vicious wikignome, looking to exercise power over others.

His accusations against Azhar sabri were outrageous. Two of the user's first edits, apparently accidental edits to main pages (clearly in error and treated as such by wiki response) becomes "vandalism on multiple main pages." Photos of the user and a very small amount of biographical information, on a few user pages, becomes "cross-wiki spamming/advertising," though he is not blocked anywhere for that (except one wiki where his user page was deleted, I don't recall the history, he may have tried to recreate it). The photos and text on those pages is far from advertising, there is no solicitation at all, and they are harmless.

Hardly anyone is watching for behavior like that of TCNSV, behavior that is part of what can make the WMF wikis, for many users, a hostile and unfriendly place. Azhar sabri has not gone on, so far, to edit general pages, and I don't wonder why not. He was, very much, not made to feel welcome. Now, TCNSV did not create that, this was really something missing from the community. Nobody noticed his Commons talk page filling up with deletion notices, nobody tried to help him understand what was going on. And then TCNSV tries to globally lock his account, adding insult to injury. As usual (and as before), there is no notice to the user, no notice on the local wikis where supposedly there are problems.

TCNSV has used global lock requests to do what he couldn't get away with on the local wikis. It worked, once. It stopped working, partly because I intervened. I documented the history on his meta talk page.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php? ... id=6905306

A steward commented, briefly, neutrally.

As TCNSV speedy-archived his page, and left most of what I'd written out of the archive, and because he'd claimed evidence that Azhar sabri was abusive, I asked more.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php? ... id=6913798

The same steward commented again, confirming my suspicion that the evidence didn't show what TCNSV claimed. TCNSV simply deleted all that discussion, including the steward response, with no pretense at archiving this time.

Anyone who has been around the wikis for a long time has seen users like this. They will readily ask for others to be blocked, their work to be deleted, and for locks and bans, and they will be so careless about what they allege that they will effectively lie, but criticize what they do, civilly and straightly, you are uncivil and harassing them, and they don't have time for it.

And they will try to cover their tracks. Straight documentation of what they have done is "harassment." Where they can, they will try to get it deleted.

*Of course* he wants to point out how arrogant I am. He sees an opportunity, and that this is a corruption of the purpose of the stewards request page is irrelevant to him. He's running PayBack Time, thinking that surely they will block me.

Maybe. It's not impossible. It's not the stewards I'm most concerned about, it would be a meta sysop eager to curry favor with stewards by blocking someone who has made them uncomfortable. I don't think I've crossed the boundaries, but ... sometimes the boundaries are moved.

I'm writing here to reduce temptation to respond there....

[EricBarbour]

Boil this down to three paragraphs, with suitable links, and I'll use it.

[Zoloft]

For the first post (DanielTom), salient links:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php? ... 46985#Help
https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php? ... discussion
https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php? ... 85#Nothing
https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php? ... o_Philippe
https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php? ... 85#Blocked

[Michaeldsuarez]

There's now a proposal to have DanielTom globally banned.

[Abd]

There's now a proposal to have DanielTom globally banned.

Indeed there is. Utterly mad. Not much terribly surprising there, except for one user. The filer is clueless, didn't follow global ban policy, doesn't seem to understand it, and neither do many users commenting, they get it directly wrong.

It's a classic phenomenon. People see what they want and expect to see. So they see "permanently blocked or banned" and they read that as "indef blocked." But the policy goes on to specify that there must be discussion with widespread support, not merely some admin who decides to push the block button with indef. I.e., it must be a ban. There isn't even one commnity that has banned this user. There are, now, only two blocks, one is on en.wikipedia, which does explicitly distinguish between bans and blocks. All the blocks were ad hoc administrator decisions.

What was surprising to me was Laura Hale. I really wasn't expecting her to be so obtuse. She doesn't seem to get that accusing someone of theft, without evidence that property was taken without permission, is uncivil. It could actually be a tort.

If there was any violation of privacy policy here, it would be Laura, for revealing that the passport information was sent to her. That's a stretch, to be sure, but less of a stretch than claiming the user violated privacy policy. I poured over the policy, the user did not violate it. If so, nobody has pointed to the specific clause violated, plus the specific action. The privacy policy does not prohibit users from disclosing their own private information. The issue here is whether or not DanielTom sending a copy of his brother's passport to Laura Hale and another administrator was some horrible offense.

Suppose I said that I was So-and-So's brother, giving his name. That, by the interpretation given, would be violating policy.

Laura is demanding that I point to permission from the brother somewhere.How would we know that the permission actually came from the brother? After all, the passport was being shown to establish that they were different people. But the same person can have two different email accounts, it's trivial. In this case, they apparently have two different wiki accounts.... that were checkusered and found to be connected.

So ... the upshot of this was that real identity was matched to accounts, one of which had a real name in history -- which has been bandied about --, and that's a violation of privacy policy unless it was necessary. Was it? I haven't checked.

Apparently, if there is no proof that this was not "theft," it's fine to claim that it is theft and to act on that assumption. Guilty until proven innocent. Really. And Laura asserts analogies, attempting to convince me that, surely, *I* would be horrified if someone in my family showed a copy of my passport to random strangers.

However, even leaving aside that I would care at all, what exactly is the problem, my daughter wants to show my passport to whoever, maybe she likes the photo, what? or the passport stamp for my picking her up in China, or something, there is the fact that this was *not* some random stranger, it was a WMF administrator. Yes, not authorized to see sensitive private information and not authorized to demand it, but ... what was the horrible crime involved in him sending her a scan of that passport, what, was he naked or something? I don't think so, on a passport.

That is "personally identifiable information," but there is no policy against one user sending another "personally identifiable information" about another person, if there is no harm being attempted. What was the harm?

Laura went ballistic over something that was, at most, somewhere between clueless and useless, to mildly annoying. But a blockable offense? What is this world coming to?

I couldn't believe it, I really thought she was smarter than that. Maybe being an administrator does something to the brain.

Come to think of it, I did get pretty crazy when I had the buttons....

So what happens in this RfC is that every user that DanielTom ever tangled with shows up and attempts to pop him off. Really, not every one. Billinghurst might possibly have had a complaint about DanielTom but opposed the ban. And unblocked DanielTom, making a point to suggest taking that block out of the list (which is what left two)

The funny one is Cirt. In an attempt to come up with "bans" to assert, the filer points to an interaction ban with Cirt. And Cirt, of course, shows up to support a global ban. Cirt is not some clueless noob. I've collaborated with him on Wikiversity, I think he was pleasantly surprised. Wikiversity structure and policies made that possible. Elsewhere, he's a tendentious POV-pusher, and with buttons.

DanielTom is a hothead, and readily criticizes administrators he sees as abusive. And we are now getting to see who is utterly intolerant of the criticism of administrators. I'm taking notes for future reference. And, on the other side, it was nice to see what Billinghurst did, it was decent and sane. He wrote that if there is a problem, he can always reblock, which is true.

(My expressed opinion is that an administrator can always reverse his own actions, it is never improper, in itself. It simply returns the situation to status quo ante, which cannot be an offense. So if an administrator has blocked, he or she can unblock, and need not supply any reason. If they have unblocked, they may block at will, and walk away with no further responsibility.)

But I haven't researched the history of Cirt v DanielTom.

[Poetlister]

But I haven't researched the history of Cirt v DanielTom.

I think it's a fairly safe bet that if Cirt doesn't like DanielTom, that's a point in DanielTom's favour.

[Hex]

Meatball:DefendEachOther becomes a dead letter, when defense is attacked. Nitpicking? No, the core of community.

Buddy, the values we took so long to work out in the Meatball era are long, long gone.

[Poetlister]

Update: The proposal was clearly going to be rejected so the proposer, John F. Lewis (T-C-L), threw a tantrum. "Since it seems I am wasting the communities time, I am self closing this and will take the matter up with Wikimedia Foundation's Legal team in more depth surround what the community is calling 'false harassment charges', 'not fraud' and not 'forcing legal responsibilities onto other users'. John F. Lewis (talk) 14:34, 2 February 2014 (UTC)" I'll leave Greg to point out the grammatical errors.

The best quote was from BD2412, who is often an island of sanity in a sea of Wikipediots: "As for the various accusations of sockpuppetry and privacy violations, it seems odd to me that an editor would be accused of violating one policy, and then prevented from presenting evidence in his favor on the grounds that such evidence violates another policy."

[EricBarbour]

The best quote was from BD2412, who is often an island of sanity in a sea of Wikipediots

Perhaps, but I would not call him the best admin, not by a long shot. He's done his share of stupid and corrupt things.

[Michaeldsuarez]

Update: The proposal was clearly going to be rejected so the proposer, John F. Lewis (T-C-L), threw a tantrum. "Since it seems I am wasting the communities time, I am self closing this and will take the matter up with Wikimedia Foundation's Legal team in more depth surround what the community is calling 'false harassment charges', 'not fraud' and not 'forcing legal responsibilities onto other users'. John F. Lewis (talk) 14:34, 2 February 2014 (UTC)" I'll leave Greg to point out the grammatical errors.

Translation: "Democracy is broken. The public, bottom-up approach didn't end in my favor, so I'm going to use a private, top-down approach instead."

[Poetlister]

The best quote was from BD2412, who is often an island of sanity in a sea of Wikipediots

Perhaps, but I would not call him the best admin, not by a long shot. He's done his share of stupid and corrupt things.

I won't deny that, but "in the land of the WP Admins, the semi-good one is king".

[enwikibadscience]

There's now a proposal to have DanielTom globally banned.

Heavy support from should-be-globally-banned plant editor Brya.

[Poetlister]

There's now a proposal to have DanielTom globally banned.

Heavy support from should-be-globally-banned plant editor Brya.

Yes, you get that sort of thing a lot in this type of discussion.

[Kiefer.Wolfowitz]

DanielThom is a very smart young man, who is an internationally ranked Go player.

I have never understood why administrators have over-reacted to him, when they should have been showing him kindness and trying to demonstrate fairness.

He would do well to forget Wikipedia, which is really a waste of his time.

[Poetlister]

DanielThom is a very smart young man, who is an internationally ranked Go player.

I have never understood why administrators have over-reacted to him, when they should have been showing him kindness and trying to demonstrate fairness.

He would do well to forget Wikipedia, which is really a waste of his time.

You are a rational being, so of course you have difficulty in understanding the average administrator and even more difficulty in understanding say Cirt.

[eagle]

Laura is demanding that I point to permission from the brother somewhere. How would we know that the permission actually came from the brother? After all, the passport was being shown to establish that they were different people. But the same person can have two different email accounts, it's trivial. In this case, they apparently have two different wiki accounts.... that were checkusered and found to be connected.

So ... the upshot of this was that real identity was matched to accounts, one of which had a real name in history -- which has been bandied about --, and that's a violation of privacy policy unless it was necessary. Was it? I haven't checked.

Apparently, if there is no proof that this was not "theft," it's fine to claim that it is theft and to act on that assumption. Guilty until proven innocent. Really. And Laura asserts analogies, attempting to convince me that, surely, *I* would be horrified if someone in my family showed a copy of my passport to random strangers.

LauraHale does not have much of a reputation for honesty or logic.

[Lukeno94]

Having dealt with Laura on various naming disputes, where it was requested that she try and get all of the articles moved in-line with her gender-specific request (which would not have been a bad idea), rather than trying every trick in the book to move her pet article to the gender-specific title (which would've been a bad idea, on its own), I agree with eagle entirely there.

[Moral Hazard]

Laura is demanding that I point to permission from the brother somewhere. How would we know that the permission actually came from the brother? After all, the passport was being shown to establish that they were different people. But the same person can have two different email accounts, it's trivial. In this case, they apparently have two different wiki accounts.... that were checkusered and found to be connected.

So ... the upshot of this was that real identity was matched to accounts, one of which had a real name in history -- which has been bandied about --, and that's a violation of privacy policy unless it was necessary. Was it? I haven't checked.

Apparently, if there is no proof that this was not "theft," it's fine to claim that it is theft and to act on that assumption. Guilty until proven innocent. Really. And Laura asserts analogies, attempting to convince me that, surely, *I* would be horrified if someone in my family showed a copy of my passport to random strangers.

LauraHale does not have much of a reputation for honesty or logic.

[Moral Hazard]

Having dealt with Laura on various naming disputes, where it was requested that she try and get all of the articles moved in-line with her gender-specific request (which would not have been a bad idea), rather than trying every trick in the book to move her pet article to the gender-specific title (which would've been a bad idea, on its own), I agree with eagle entirely there.

[Moral Hazard]

DanielThom is a very smart young man, who is an internationally ranked Go player.

I have never understood why administrators have over-reacted to him, when they should have been showing him kindness and trying to demonstrate fairness.

He would do well to forget Wikipedia, which is really a waste of his time.

[Poetlister]

This thread is over five years old (and was started by Abd with two long posts). Is this a record for necrothread revival?

[Midsize Jake]

This thread is over five years old (and was started by Abd with two long posts). Is this a record for necrothread revival?

Mr. Hazard is basically bumping up threads to demonstrate that Laura Hale's more problematic activity on Wikinews "back in the day" did not go unnoticed by our members at the time. To some, this may seem a bit unseemly, so if there's nothing substantive to add, maybe we should... you know, bump them back down.

[rhindle]

This thread is over five years old (and was started by Abd with two long posts). Is this a record for necrothread revival?

Mr. Hazard is basically bumping up threads to demonstrate that Laura Hale's more problematic activity on Wikinews "back in the day" did not go unnoticed by our members at the time. To some, this may seem a bit unseemly, so if there's nothing substantive to add, maybe we should... you know, bump them back down.

At the time though she seemed like another typical corrupt and incompetent wikipediot gaming the system. Who at the time knew she had cover from very high up?