[WikiEN-l] Zoe's Abuse of Power as a Sysop

Wed Sep 7 12:29:11 UTC 2005

> Message: 4
> Date: Tue, 6 Sep 2005 07:42:52 EDT
> From: Bruynsf at cs.com
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Zoe's Abuse of Power as a Sysop
> To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Message-ID: <216.871626d.304edabc at cs.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"
> 
> Zoe, a Sysop on Wikipedia, has seriously abused her
> position of 
> authority and 
> responsibility at my expense. ...
> In clear 
> violation of 
> the "assume good faith" Wikipedia policy, however,

That's right. There are a long trail of contributors
who have found that autocratic admins never assume
good faith, they assume the axiomatic bad of whatever
you are doing in an article and axiomatic good of
their view against it. Even when they punish only one
side of a 2-sided fight over links, for "link spam",
when both sides have behaved identically. It's only
their own good faith that they demand to have assumed.

> Zoe
> sent me an 
> official 
> warning accusing me of deliberate vandalism. I
> responded by telling her 
> that I 
> would seek arbitration if she continued to lodge
> such
> accusations 
> against me. 
> She, in turn, blocked me from Wikipedia and claimed
> that my editing 
> problems 
> could not possibly have been accidental (Again, See:
> User Talk: 
> Moriori). Her 
> official reasons for blocking me were the vandalism
> that I never 
> committed and my 
> warnings that I would seek arbitration, which she
> termed "threats". 
> Furthermore, finding that I could not reach the
> administrative 
> noticeboard to plead my 
> case and not having an individual e-mail address, I
> resorted to 
> attempting to 
> start new accounts,

That's right, you weren't spamming or trying to break
rules, you were trying to get around an unfairness to
access a page that in name you are entitled to use!!
You are frustrated by the extreme corruption that a
block imposed arbitrarily by 1 person blocks your
access to the community issues pages where you could
contest it and whatever issue caused it.

> "I  have a 
> very low opinion of spammers. Besides, I'm in the
> middle of several 
> brush fires 
> and am quite irritable right now." (User talk:
> Dragons
> flight). This 
> clearly 
> indicates that her abusive behavior towards me is
> unprofessional and 
> irresponsible and that she allows her moods to
> determine her decisions 
> in her very 
> important role as a sysop, which I assert to be
> unacceptable.

Yes, it does.

> Message: 8
> Date: Tue, 6 Sep 2005 12:51:31 -0500
> From: Guettarda <guettarda at gmail.com>
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Zoe's Abuse of Power as a Sysop
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
> Message-ID:
> <47683e9605090610511e5acbf5 at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
> 
> Felix
> 
> You really need to look at how you address people
> and
> address conflict. 
> Your 
> complaint about Moriori was posted, verbatim, in
> dozens of separate 
> places. 
> Posting the same message in a 
> whole lot of places is considered spamming.

Isn't it also considered doing his best to resolve his
issue by maximising its reach in the community and the
feedback it can get?

> Other users do not constitute "official channels",

That proves it unfair that blocks block use of the
various types of dispute-res page. 

> This is a
> community, not a 
> structured bureacracy. Yelling at people never
> helps.
> You say that when 
> you 
> told Zoe that you would "seek arbitration" she
> called
> it a "threat". It 
> is a 
> threat.

Now, this is key. If you announce you are going to try
to stand up for yourself, in terms of the rules
indeed, in any way at all,  - that counts as a threat.
But when an admin threatens you with ban unless you
kowtow to his POV over an article, that doesn't count
as a threat. That is this project exploded, once and
for all.

> Creating new accounts to bypass a block is strictly
> forbidden. What's 
> the 
> point of blocking someone for misconduct if they can
> just come back 
> under a 
> new name? You have asked that "punitive action" be
> taken against Zoe, 
> but 
>  Inserting hard
> returns into people's 
> comments is considered vandalism.

What are "hard returns"?

> If you had come here and pleaded your
> case, 

PLEADED!! PLEADED!!!! Listen to this.

>accepted 
> responsibility for what you had done wrong,

He didn't think he had done anything wrong. In the
real world you don't confess unproved guilt as the
first round of "pleading" to make anything happen at
all.

> Your 
> actions met the definitions of "vandalism" and
> "spamming", even if you 
> did 
> not intend them to.

So did he know they did? The definitions aren't made
obvious on a level plane to everyone, as per the open
policy that all rules are warpable in the project's
interests. 

> And a word to the wise - people
> who
> want to get into 
> vendettas should really start with an easier target
> than Raul/Mark. 
> Other 
> than Jimbo and the Stewards, I dount there is anyone
> more 
> powerful/influential in En.

This is a clear statement that differences of personal
influence affect the outcomes of cases. Is that any
basis for presenting the public with written information?

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