On 26 July 2012 23:00, Deryck Chan <deryckchan@gmail.com> wrote:
On 26 July 2012 20:01, WereSpielChequers <werespielchequers@gmail.com> 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/Proposed_decision was 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