On 11/27/07, Sam Blacketer <sam.blacketer(a)googlemail.com> wrote: of be the It was her responsibility-- but it was their responsibility too. She drew upon the authority of others several times in justifying her block. The fact that arbiters had endorsed the block was implied if not outright stated. If an arbiter advises an admin to take an erroneous action, who made the error? Well, everybody involved. But, we're not saying anybody should be burned at the stake over this-- but we have some refs who made completely unreasonable calls, and we need to know who, so that we can help them and us learn how to prevent this sort of thing from happening again. THe people who were involved should be WELCOMING this process, not trying to hide in the shadows lest people know how badly the blew the call. Durova here was a great example. She stood up, she admitted she had made the call, admitted some of her her error, and decided she needed to ask the community for their trust again. Her actions in how she handled the error have been 100% exemplary. Unfortunately, her associates haven't yet worked up the courage to follow her example. They ought to stand up, say "Yep, I saw the evidence, and here's what I said about it. I told her !! deserved blocking, I was wrong, and I apologize, and I will try to do better in the future". To the people who saw the evidence and endorsed the block, I would say this. I know it's never easy to come clean when you made a mistake. It's embarassing, it's frustrating. I know being honest with the community will mean taking a reputation hit in the short term-- but it's the right thing to do for the project. Ya made a mistake. Doesn't make you an evil person, doesn't make you a bad person-- ya just need to own up to it. Alec ****** Alec, I appreciate that you're giving me some credit for stepping forward to take the heat for my own mistake. Nobody else needs to. The mistake was mine. There are several fundamental logical errors happening on the part of the people who are promoting this argument: you're failing to recognize the possibility of alternative explanations that place the whole thing in a much different light. That was a key mistake I made. You're making it too. I said in my evidence statement that the list isn't pertinent. I have also said repeatedly that the mistakes I made belong to me. It's obvious from my perspective how loudly and fiercely a pack of hounds are barking up the wrong tree. The irony here is too complete to ignore. When I got the !! block wrong I didn't dig in my heels and demand the full details of why and how the editor had changed accounts. It was enough for me to get one confirmable piece of evidence that contradicted my previous conclusion. As soon as I had that I did a complete turnaround, with apologies and my best efforts at atonement, and that's not an easy step to take. There's a very human impulse to reach for excuses. I'm not going to point out exactly where your logical errors are because, no doubt, that would only lead to further loose cannon speculation. At least I had enough rigor in my research to collect more than two dozen diffs and compare them to an existing hypothesis. The hypothesis itself was unsound, but the evidence available to me at the time did match it. The evidence already available to you does not match your hypothesis. All you need to do is go over existing statements in the site history files and you'll see several ways that it doesn't match. Now if you want to know why I'm on that cyberstalking list, there are several reasons. Have the decency to suppose that it is what it is, and leave the good people alone. I'd be very impressed if people who've pursued that line of reasoning took the same steps I did: open mouth, remove foot, stand up, apologize. -Durova