On 26 July 2012 20:01, WereSpielChequers
<werespielchequers(a)gmail.com>wrote;wrote:
It is a deeply unfortunate situation. A few
months ago if anyone had
said to me that Arbcom were capable of some of their recent behaviour then
I would have been inclined to defend Arbcom. But I now find myself almost
agreeing with David Gerard's assessment of them.
To my mind the worst thing about
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/F%C3%A6/P…
that Arbcom agreed that Fae had been harassed, but they banned him
anyway. In my view Arbcom has made the wrong decision, and they have
exposed the community to headlines along the lines of "Wikipedia responds
to cyber-bullying by identifying and banning the victim."
Nice headline. I think the premise of many Wikipedia behaviour policies
is to keep order. Therefore, oftentimes in such inflamed situation the only
correct thing to do is to ban *both* sides of the harassment, both the
harasser and the harassed. Yes Fæ is the victim, but I believe arbcom made
their ruling on the grounds that if Fæ sticks around too many people will
continue to gang up on him and distract everyone else from the project.
That sort of rough justice might work in a pub, and you could be right in
your explanation of Arbcom's motives. But if so it is a crass way to run an
intellectual endeavour. It is also far more toxic to the project to block
the victim and thereby encourage the harassers than it would be to block
or Iban those who subsequently gang up on them.
WSC
It should be noted that Michaeldsuarez was also indef-banned by the same