User talk:Abd/Archive 6/Blocked

User talk:Abd/Archive 6/Before flap
User talk:Abd/Archive 6/Warnings before block
User talk:Abd/Archive 6/Blocked

Enough is enough

You have been blocked indefinitely from editing in accordance with Wikipedia's blocking policy for repeatedly posting false accusations of sockpuppetry against another editor despite having it explained to you at least seven separate times why your "reasoning" had no basis in reality and that you were misreading your "evidence". This is "indefinite" in the sense of "unspecified", not "forever"; if someone sees good reason to unblock or you post a good unblock reason, I won't contest it. If you believe this block is unjustified you may contest this block by adding the text {{unblock|your reason here}} below.  – iridescent 22:12, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Abd, this whole affair (at least, the final straw of the F-day accusations) was a misunderstanding. You misinterpretted the IP's post as being a "quote" from your page, when in fact, it was a "direct quote" from Fritzpoll's page. All you had to do was say "oops, I screwed that up, I retract sockpuppetry accusations". You fell into F-day's trap. He was obviously reading ani, probably following your contribs, saw that part(s) of the community were having a "beef" with your contribs, and threw his 2 cents in. You took the bait, and refust to back off of it. The quote from the IP (the one that had you responde, at first with "Holy Shit!"), was a direct copy/paste from Fritzpoll's talkpage. It was not Fritzpoll. I endorse, based on your reply and continued, baseless defense of your suspicions, the indef block. Keeper ǀ 76 22:18, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Actually, Keeper76, I responded, above, with an acknowledgment of the error, immediately upon Barneca's much clearer explanation of it, and then promptly went to Fritzpolls' Talk page to make a brief apology when I saw that I was blocked. I saw the block when I opened the edit window. I was worrying over whether I should even post there, however, it was now moot. I came back, and saw that there was no block notice yet, so it all happened pretty quickly. What, exactly, was the emergency? Sort it out, guys, I'll be watching. Someone else's turn to defend me. If anyone is up to it. I'm going to do what I said I'd do, look around, and since I'd stated I wasn't going to edit outside of Talk, with anything related to this, the only thing the block does, in the near future, is to prevent me from helping User:Wilhelmina Will with possible DYK nominations, and I think someone else is likely to do that, at least I hope so. I agree, it was likely an Fd trap, he's known for this, but I wasn't the only one caught by it. Rather, it ensnared a hair-trigger administrator, who, if inclined to make this mistake now made with me, probably makes it with others, thus some benefit may come out of this. I had already agreed to stop posting outside of my Talk with anything related to this, when I was blocked. So, obviously, I was blocked for what I was writing on my Talk page, partly in response to Iridescent, the blocking admin. No, no, no, Iridescent, I wrote in a block summary that you'd made me happy, I'll explain that later, but it would not make me happy to see you hauled before ArbComm for this, so consider carefully if and when you are asked to permit my unblock. I'm not asking yet, though someone else possibly will. Relax. Make the right decision. Take the time to get it right. No rush. --Abd (talk) 22:41, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

(ec)Yes, you were on your talk page, but you continued to make overt accusations of sockpuppetry against Friztpoll. And even as you've yet to retract and apologize for your false statements about Fritzpoll, you're onto making idle threats at iridescent. –xeno (talk) 22:47, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

I've asked for clarification. What false statements? I never wrote that Fritzpoll was Fredrick day, if I did, it was an error, but I don't think I did that, and I asked previously for clarification on this, precisely so that I could fix it if I made a mistake. It was not provided. I made no accusation of sock puppetry against Fritzpoll. I noted that reasonable suspicion was raised, and I think that this will withstand review by ArbComm, should it come to that, which I doubt. Reasonable suspicion was raised, and, indeed, has not been totally dispelled, unfortunately, but, rather obviously, I'm not the one to currently be concerned about it. I'm simply continuing to explain my actions, what I know and what I've seen, here on my Talk page. As to "idle threats" at iridescent, I warn, I don't threaten, because I'm not trying to coerce. How could I make "threats"? If I tried to harm him, I'd be slapped down. However, I warn about what I see as possible as a community response, when the community is sufficiently aroused. A bad block can sometimes lead to desysopping, so I urged him to be careful, as I continue to do. Again, if there is something wrong with this, it will probably need explanation. I'm not sure why I'm even writing this, here. Sometimes I incorrectly believe, perhaps, that every error requires an answer. Still, it's my Talk, until and unless I'm blocked from editing it. I haven't "attacked" anyone here, within the meaning of WP:NPA. There are plenty of administrators I trust who will, I'm sure, explain it to me, here or in email, if I'm wrong. So, I get to find out how Wikipedia works when I'm not part of the debate. It's an opportunity. --Abd (talk) 23:13, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Are you honestly calling an admin, Iridescent, someone with 70,000 plus edits, years of experience, and a solid reputation, a "hair trigger administrator"??? How deep are you going to dig with your baseless accusations, subtle but obvious threats of pending doom (arbcomm)? You need to go away for a while, come back. Revisit your posts. You have no base here. You took on too many causes, with too many posts, and with too many inaccuracies. Your admitted adversary, this mysterious Fredrick day, pounced at the exact (wrong or right, depending on who's looking) time and led to your block. I'm exasperated by you, Abd. You are clouded by your own sense of superiority and "I know what's best for Wikipedia". Says who? You? Your threats against Iridescent hold absolutely zero merit. I'm done feeling sorry for you. Keeper ǀ 76 22:49, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

I am prepared to reduce to time served, unless there is consensus at AN/I otherwise. I do not think there was any bad faith editing involved though there may have been mistakes of judgment. How do you want to handle this , Iridescent, take it back to AN/I? I think you've over-reacted DGG (talk) 23:06, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Iridescent did not overreact, and explicitly stated that "indef" does not mean "forever", but merely "the time is unknown". I don't see how that is an overreaction. Bringing it to ANI (which to me, is bringing a match over to a pile of gas-laced kindling) seems unnecessary at this point, especially because Abd cannot present a case there. Pleae leave it here, DGG. Abd is able to edit here, I've personally said I will unblock if necessary or warranted. Please see both sides of this, and not merely the side that you by precedence agree with. Thanks, Keeper ǀ 76 23:09, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Let me also add, of course there aren't any "bad faith editing" issues involved. Abd doesn't edit the encyclopedia, but seems overly focused on the meta-side of things. Blocks do not only arise out of adding xxxx is teh gay, lol to articles, but can also arise out of over-posting to talk:/wiki:/wikitalk/ pages. I'm not the best, personally, at focusing on the encyclopedia, a fact I readily admit, which makes, hopefully, my charge even more effective in its truth. There are links that show very explicitly exactly what Abd is here for, and what he is not. Keeper ǀ 76 23:13, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

(ec) Dear Abd, I'm dismayed to see that you've been blocked. I've found some of your posts very apt and just recently posted a quote by you close to the top of my userpage. Abd and everyone else, please have a cup of tea and take some time to relax. Abd, you might just possibly find something helpful in my essays Advice for people making unblock requests (first paragraph) or Techniques for handling emotions when editing, or the how-to guide Guide to appealing blocks. I don't know the details of the above situation but it sounds to me as if really it's all pretty much already resolved and everybody just needs to stay calm, act slowly and deliberately and avoid making things worse.
Keeper, re "You are clouded by your own sense of superiority": Let's be gentle now: / Comment on the editor / Only when it's nice. ☺ Coppertwig (talk) 23:17, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

The only assumption you've made (perhaps caused by what you call not "knowing the details of the above situation"}, is just how completely and exactly callm I personally am. I actually believe that Abd is also calm at the moment, and Iridescent as well. I've personally done nothing but "slowly and deliberately" posted here, or anywhere, regarding this issue. If only Abd would see the issue, and not merely try to deflect or wikilawyer his way away from it. Sigh. Even within the last month, I've posted to Abd myself, letting him know that I understand him and find him useful. He seems to have gone "off his rocker" this time though. I'm at a loss as to how to continue at this point. I endorse the block, if only to simply confine Abd to this page so everything can be sorted out, everyone can shake hands, and everyone can sing Kumbaya around a campfire. I'm exasperated, but not defeated or defeatist regarding this issue, and this editor. Keeper ǀ 76 23:24, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Implication seen:
You assumed I had assumed.
No assumptions made.

☺ Coppertwig (talk) 01:57, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

WW and copyvios

Getting back to the matter at hand. I've been looking at this. I trust Blechnic that those are copyvios. Do you agree with that or not? I *think* your beef is that a better approach could be taken in handling this. The topic ban seemed OK to me. What exactly was your problem with the ban? Carcharoth (talk) 17:56, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

I'm also prepared to act as a buffer between you and Fritzpoll. I'm going to post to his talk page now. Carcharoth (talk) 17:59, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

(sigh of relief) I haven't been attacking Fritzpoll, though he seems to have taken it that way, and I was done with anything I'd be doing with his talk, he'd made his position clear enough that he wasn't going to budge. But see below.

(edit conflict) Thank you very much for looking at this. I'll review what you pointed to. I'm aware directly of one copyvio, from seven months ago. There is another allegation that I recall seeing reference to somewhere, I don't think it was mentioned in the AN/I report. In any case, this is what should have been happening from the beginning, an investigation and confirmation of the evidence, and I'm totally confident that we will quickly find agreement; if not, I'm also sure that we'll find a way to resolve the issue.

The whole thing just may have become moot. On the face of it, there was a post to AN referring to "my talk page" and the current events, written by 87.114, which is IP for the banned User:Fredrick day, who long ago claimed to have other accounts he did not risk. Fredrick day would bail if he thought he was being closely watched, he did it several times. I'm not ready to jump, but if this stands up, it would invalidate the close of the AN/I report resulting in the ban of Wilhelmina Will, and the ban would be invalid, unless someone else decides to take responsibility for it. If you believe the evidence warrants a topic ban, i.e., that this is an appropriate remedy, then you could do this. But after review of the situation, a topic ban is exactly the wrong remedy, and nobody intending to continue copyvio would nominate the articles for DYK, it would, given her history, just about guarantee discovery, and the proper result for continued violation wouldn't be a topic ban, it would be warnings and blocks. "Topic ban" was striking at the heart of this 16-year-old girls's (we're told) joy in participating here, her gaining of DYK awards, and she had 28 before the ban, and another after it, due to my nomination (which has also been asserted to be some kind of offense). As far as I can see, she responded to warnings by not repeating the behavior. So, please consider if the welfare of the project warrants a continue ban. Under the circumstances, that is, an closing administrator who withdraws, even aside from the Fd issue, the status of the ban, and any other administrator, particularly if neutral -- which I assume for you -- could review the original AN/I report and either close it as inconclusive -- perhaps based on lack of evidence -- or to confirm or overturn it. My argument here, that has gotten a lot of editors upset, has been that a closing administrator is responsible for determining, not only the "level of consensus," but the cogency and accuracy of the arguments, and that it is never true that "the community has spoken, I'm just noting that by closing and acting." (Though, maybe, one could assert this if there were a higher level of consensus than was actually shown in the topic ban AN/I report, where some serious doubts were raised, but ignored.) Thanks for taking the time to look at this. --Abd (talk) 18:13, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

I agree that the items in Carcharoth's post are copyvios. My problem with this situation is that these are the only copyvios that have turned up in this whole situation. And this copvio is 7 months old, apparently has not been repeated, and even with this there were apparently some unsuual circumstances. Since the most serious complaint that led to the concensus to topic ban WW, I am concerned that this 7 month old item is the only copyvio that has shown up. Admittedly there were other issues that led to the topic ban - that in rephrasing items to avoid copyvios WW sometimes compromised accuracy, that she reverted (but not to the extent of violating 3RR) an edit solely to keep the article above the DYK minimum of 1500 characters, and one rather uncivil comment in the edit summary of one of the reversions. But these items without the prevalent copyvios would have been unlikely to generate an indefinite topic ban. And the single incident above is not consistent with prevalent copyvios. So, although I originally supported the topic ban I now support Abd's attempts to get it overturned. But this may really be moot. All WW has had to do to satisfy many who supported the topic ban, and to satisfy Fritzpoll enough to reopen the case, is to state that she will do her best to avoid these problems in the future. And to date, WW has chosen not to, apparently content to live with the ban for now and just create articles without worrying about DYK. So this seems to be largely much ado about nothing at this point. Rlendog (talk) 19:55, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Responses to Fritzpoll

The main problem here is that Abd, whilst claiming to have tried to follow WP:DR, seemed to lose that in a quest to be "right". As I felt was appropriate, I offered, as one means of resolving the dispute, having another administrator review the close (since I can't unilaterally overturn what I perceived as a community ban). Following Abd's block last night, I asked Carcharoth to perform this task, which will hopefully be to the satisfaction of all concerned. Fritzpoll (talk) 08:52, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Fritzpoll, this is long. You have no obligation to read it, none, at least not from my side. The most important things here are that Carcharoth was an excellent choice for looking into any of this, that I never intended to attack you (think I didn't, either, but obviously some disagreed), that I never perceived you as an enemy, that I continued to assume good faith regarding you (even when I suspected you were Fredrick day), and that my concern about your competence was transient and has been lifted, it was never based on more than a single incident. Which, as we all know, can be pretty misleading.

Whether or not your analysis above is a fair analysis may take some time. I'm very, very familiar with the "quest to be right" problem, it's indeed a serious hazard. However, I believed, and continue to believe, that there were some very important issues here, and I'm gratified to see that, for example, Carcharoth has correctly identified at least one of them, the issue of administrator responsibility for decisions. It's my opinion that you repeat the error above. Now, when I write something like that, from my experience yesterday, I'm nearly certain to be attacked as "attacking Fritzpoll" or "not admitting mistakes." No, I think you hold and express opinion which is apparently held by what is to me a surprising number of administrators, and not by others. Because this is about the fundamental way that Wikipedia process works, and is also related to the ways in which the process breaks down and sometimes makes poor decisions, I considered it important to discuss and examine. Never did I impugn your good faith, even in my own mind, not even when I suspected you were Fredrick day, for it's my opinion that Fredrick day intends the welfare of the project, it is merely the way that he goes about it that is a problem. I repeatedly stated that you were acting within your authority as an administrator, I did not claim any abuse of tools or threat of such abuse, but I simply, first, attempted to discuss it with you. Because the discussion did not lead to a result fully satisfactory to me -- though it resulted in progress, i.e., you did clearly step into the role of closing administrator -- I would have proceeded to the next step, and I'm very pleased to see that you have, yourself arranged the next step, and it was your doing this that was the reason I also apologized for any implications I'd made regarding your competence. This was exactly what I would have done if events had not interceded. It was the next step in WP:DR. Usually, in fact, I've found that, unless a situation has already exploded, with fragments scattered all over the noticeboards, this simple approach resolves issues quickly.

What interceded was, again, in my opinion, an error on your part, but, again, one made in good faith. You took the matter to AN to get confirmation of what was already obvious. There had been an apparent consensus at AN/I, and that was never in contention. The one to take the matter to AN or AN/I would, properly, have been me, since I was the one who was seeking a change in the status quo. Let me make this clear: were I an administrator, I would not have used the tools in any way in this affair. I'd have gone to AN or AN/I. When the time was right, i.e., lesser measures had not resolved the issue. If I did not consider the continuation of the topic ban on Wilhelmina Will to be ongoing damage, I'd not have gone to AN at all, I'd have used WP:DR entirely. AN and AN/I are not part of WP:DR, they are for (1) discussion of administrative issues, largely for non-emergency assistance (AN) or (2) requests for administrative assistance, generally of an emergency nature, immediate threat of damage or ongoing damage that requires use of the tools (AN/I). It appears, however, that you felt that you needed confirmation. But you asked the wrong question, and, not surprisingly, the answer you got, before I intervened, was the answer to the question you asked. It was never in dispute, the question you asked, and that you thought this was my objection showed that you had not understood my objection (You were clearly trying to be fair. But such an intention does not always succeed.) To determine whether that was my fault or your fault or whatever would require examination, taking more time than it's probably worth, but if there is a user conduct RfC coming out of this, over my behavior -- which is where matters such as indef block should be handled, absent emergencies -- I or others would then devote the time. I have no reason to believe that I would file an RfC over your behavior. Quite simply, I have not complained about your behavior to that level. I simply claimed that (1) your close failed to consider the evidence -- and that has become quite plain, confirmed by quite a few other users, and (2) you took this matter to AN prematurely. You have now done what would have been a great idea in the first place, and what would have been my next step if the AN report had simply died, which I thought was going to happen at one point. I wasn't stirring it up, as I recall, after that point, I'd concluded, as I recall, that enough had been said.

But then, more or less, all hell broke loose. So much happened so quickly that I have trouble remembering the sequence, so, before I say much more about this, I'll need to review it and probably document it. I don't find what happened on Wikipedia to be clear, often, until I've put in quite a bit of work documenting it, and my snap judgments are often wrong, and, from what I see, I'm not different than many others in this respect. Intuition is one thing, and, in fact, an admin can and probably should act on intuition, shoot first and ask questions later, so to speak, but sober analysis and understanding are something different. It's not the block, it's what happens immediately after, as matters become clear. A bad block? All it takes to fix it is an unblock and an apology, either by the blocking admin (best) or by another on behalf of the community (almost as good). That is, if this happens quickly. When it happens slowly, it can do irreparable damage. And I'll write more about this at some time.

(We were atrociously hard on Durova for her single block error, for she, as soon as she realized her error, which was quickly, unblocked the user with an apology, yet she was pilloried for it. Bad, bad idea, one more example of how Wikipedia process can be murder. She would not have been desysopped, I'd have predicted.)

In any case, the sincerity of my apologies to you has been called into question by some. I made the apologies, such as they are, without consideration of my blocked condition, which controlled only the place where I made them. They were due regardless of such circumstances. I have not apologised for thinking that you made errors. You made errors, in my opinion. But if you never make mistakes, you aren't trying hard enough. People who work hard for the project will make mistakes.

We do not punish mistakes, at least we are not supposed to. Rather, we protect. One of the errors made by Iridescent in blocking me, possibly the principal one, was that he blocked me when there was no reasonable risk of ongoing damage. I'll be looking at his specific evidence to see if that's not correct, but I had announced that I was going to confine myself to comments in Talk and noncontroversial article work. And I had stated that this was in response to numerous administrators who had piled onto my Talk page to warn me, and that, while I did not think the warnings properly based in blockable offenses, my respect for community consensus required that I abstain from what they were warning me against, given the multiple warnings. However, censorship of me on my Talk page was another matter. I must remain free to discuss the issues, and especially the issues that resulted in my block. If this isn't acknowledged by the community, that degree of freedom (which is not license to violate WP:NPA, but I don't yet believe I did this outside my Talk page or on it), well, two possible outcomes. (1) Further formal process, perhaps up to ArbComm, or (2) I'm out of here, I would have proven to myself that the community is too far gone to fix. The world is vast, and, believe me, I've got plenty else to do, and only limited time in which to do it. The project has lost far too many valuable contributors, and I'd have no shame in being one of them.

Anyway, it totally mystified me why you "retired." I wasn't pressuring you, I merely presented the arguments for an unban, and for your right to unban, clearly. I simply wanted you to make your decision clear, and then I could move on to the next step. Because it had become apparent that you were not going to reverse the decision as you considered it a community decision, not yours -- and this is the issue I'll be pursuing later, not with you, that's just an incident, unless you care to involve yourself in it -- the time was ripe for the next step, and I was preparing for it. Carcharoth would have been an excellent choice for a mediator, and it seems that once there was a big fuss, he noticed it and stepped in. I might have asked him, anyway, but probably I'd have asked you to identify an admin or experienced user that you trusted, who might be willing to consider what I was claiming and review it. No harassment, no demand that you put more time into it, nothing but your voluntary participation, simply by listening, later, to someone you trust. The AN report trumped that, which is why I was saying that it was a mistake, it would be nice if you could acknowledge that, but ... I certainly can't force you and nothing will happen if you don't. It was a minor mistake (and you had, I think, some good reasons for it as well, it just turned out badly). I certainly could not have predicted the appearance of Fredrick day, he was far, far from my mind, hadn't thought about him for quite a while, possibly weeks, though I'm not sure. The disruption that caused was par for the course for him, he'd done it many times, he'd succeeded in getting productive editors banned, he knew exactly what buttons to push. If you look back at my Talk history, you could see that the only time I was seriously warned before was as a result of BLP traps that he had set. Long story. I was probably correct in what I was doing, but it looked bad enough, on the face, that I got a pile of warnings from administrators who were either neutral, plus Newyorkbrad, whom I greatly respected, so, brakes on immediately. Being "right" is not enough. It is a community project. I stop and look and think from one warning, no matter who it is from, and I did that yesterday. Whether I then continue or not depends on how I perceive the welfare of the project. More will come out when I review this.

It was your abrupt retirement, combined with the IP edit using "my," which looked like a kind of mistake Fd had made in the past, forgetting whether he was logged in or not and saving a page with a signature that revealed a connection, that made me strongly suspect you. (Fd had several times abruptly retired when he saw the writing on the wall, and it might have looked to him like that, because he thinks I'm obsessed with him, and that, if you and I were opposed, or looked that way, he might expect me to think you were him. Not. I made one SSP report for a user as possibly being Fd, and checkuser came back inconclusive. I.e., possible, but not proven, and I dropped it (and have no desire to reopen it. The editor, quite simply, was not disruptive, and even if he was Fredrick day, rather than the unfortunate victim of borrowing a friend's cell phone that picked up a known Fd IP, there was no disruption, hence no ongoing damage. Fd simply appearing and making his nasty comments would not have had that effect, wihtout the obvious implication that he was you. I wouldn't even thought of the sock puppet possibility. But there it was, staring me in the face. And I was aware of the risk, immediately, and that is why I remained very careful in what I wrote about it, why I was so careful to note that you were not disruptive, that checkuser might be needed to clear you (which would have remained true, which is why I could not totally apologize until Thatcher kindly looked, and had to confine myself to a conditional apology about the quotation thing, since that kind of evidence was needed to rule out sock puppetry. Much of the community obviously did not understand the Fredrick day thing. It didn't take me one second to see that edit as a Fredrick day edit and the implications, all of them, I only missed that the text was indeed an exact quote. (It was hard to find, actually, I only saw it, in spite of looking, when an editor kindly told me exactly what paragraph to look at.) Being an exact quote did not prove that you were not Fredrick day, it merely weakened the evidence on which suspicion might reasonably be based a little. It took a checkuser to truly demolish the suspicion. Fredrick day, of course, wanted to trumpet irrelevancies, that all kinds of users could be him, and that I could suspect anyone, blah, blan, that I was trying to demolish you are tarnish your reputation, all the typical Fd stuff, quite familiar. He put up a post that, right on the face, as it read, looked as if he had forgotten that he wasn't logged in, yet wrote as if he were you. Direct quote or not, the suspicion would have remained. I was thinking, actually, of going to Thatcher or Lar directly, through email. I do not use SSP reports to attack users. I file SSP when I suspect a banned sock puppet who has damaged the project and might be likely to continue that. Once I filed a report that was for a "nice" user. It was a mistake, even though it came out as a possible. Fredrick day has stated he has accounts that never cause disruption. That's great! It's the disruption that is the problem, not Fredrick day himself using an account non-disruptively.

Anyway, that's all moot now. Fd simply did more Fd stuff, you've been cleared, totally. I'm still blocked, but that certainly isn't your fault, you didn't ask for it. And I hope that any further contact between us is productive and pleasant. I have no reason to expect anything else. Good luck. --Abd (talk) 16:00, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

I have read the above (occasionally pausing for food and drink to sustain myself :) ) and fear there were some early misunderstandings. The first is that you seem to believe that I didn't consider the evidence when closing: it was a source of great frustration to me that you persisted in this, and it probably arose because I wasn't explicit about it when I first responded to you on my talkpage. I was subsequently, but this message was lost on you. That said, I fully accepted (and still accept) that my review of the evidence may have been mistaken or flawed - this is as distinct from never having considered it at all, which often appears (probably unintentionally) to be what you are saying.

You also quote WP:DR in the above, and I feel this deserves a comment. In my first reply to you (still at the top of my talkpage) I suggested that you could discuss this elsewhere, since you had commented in your opening query that you might want to seek out an administrator to come to me to challenge the topic ban. In my opinion, this was a solution, indeed a resolution, to the dispute; namely, seek out an admin and get my decision checked given that you disagreed. My increasing levels of frustration came about because you never took this step - instead, you continued to barrage my talkpage with commentary on why you felt the ban was wrong. I could only respond to questions, but none of that seemed satisfactory, and another lengthy description of my faults followed. Given that you didn't follow my suggested solutions (I offered further ones later in the discussion), I took the matter to WP:AN, a pretty low-octane page (certainly not like dragging it to AN/I would be, which would only generate heat and no light) so that the matter could be discussed. Although in my first post, as you point out, I neglected to mention your argument that the evidence was non-existent, if you read my second post to that thread, you'll see that I did point this out. Your latter responses to that thread seem to indicate that you missed this post and so felt I was making a pointless request for tallying consensus in a single discussion.

Finally, from my perspective: I offered means to resolve the dispute from the off, which appeared to be ignored. I sought a review of the actions, which you condemned as unnecessary. I am, like everyone here, just an editor. I have real-life problems that I don't have to bother you with, and this is just a little hobby. Suddenly, with having to deal with all these apparently unrelenting messages from you, when nothing I said seemed to placate you, this place became needlessly stressful. So I opted for a break - then you posted what was a very threatening message on this page. Perhaps you don't see it that way, but threatening arbcomm's, RfCs and the like is not productive - it increases the stress of those the threats are directed at, and you know what? I really don't need that kind of stress. So I decided to make my leave "indefinite"; not permanent, just indefinite.

Hopefully that clears things up a bit - my advice to you for the future is to treat Wikipedia less procedurally, and remember that a community of volunteers will always have a greater sense of casualness than a hierarchical organisation: I know that seems chaotic to you, but just by doing what I have now done and requesting another admin look at it, we could have avoided all of this, and it would have been over in a few exchanges. Instead you insisted on bypassing my suggestions and trying to force me to change my mind, which is not always going to be a productive use of your time.

I make no opinion on your block, as it isn't my place, and none of what I've said affects it, from what I can see in the rationale. I daresay you won't agree with some if not all of the above, but this is essentially my position on this matter, and it is unlikely to change. Thank you for your note, and thank you for your apology. Best wishes, Fritzpoll (talk) 17:14, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

I hope you don't mind that I continue to respond, Fritzpoll. You are not obligated to read this, read it, at your leisure, if you think it serves you and the community. My goal is to find increased agreement, not to fight over out different opinions, which would be useless at this point. If you don't respond, I won't continue to write on it, unless it becomes relevant somewhere else.

Food or drink are allowed, if they do not require distraction from reading and writing. Bathroom breaks, however, are only allowed once every three or four hours unless you have a note from your doctor. This is, after all, Wikipedia, and we do have standards.

Yes, I'm certain that there were early misunderstandings. In the first place, when I realized that the AN/I report that was the basis for the WW topic ban wasn't closed by an admin taking responsibility for the decision, I approached you, as it seemed you had concluded that it was in effect. I suggested that you had three options:

1. do nothing, in which case the topic ban didn't exist unless someone else closed -- which might have been the least disruptive response, if you were not taking personal responsibility for a ban closure,
2. close as no ban because, perhaps, of lack of sufficient evidence for a pattern of abused or adequate consideration of a topic ban on DYK as the appropriate remedy,
3. or close, confirming the ban, presumably based on a proper examination of the evidence. You chose this last course, which was certainly your right.

However, then, as the closing person, you became the go-to person with whom to discuss the matter, the person who is normally able to modify or reverse a decision without further ado. You seem to consider that if a decision is made at AN/I, the closing admin must go back to AN/I to reverse it. We don't do that anywhere else that I'm aware of, but perhaps there is some special procedure or precedent that applies there. With an AfD, if an admin reverses a prior decision, it is the same as if the admin had made the new decision earlier, the discussion stops in either case, and the recourse is the same, and I'd assume the same for AN/I. In other words, had the original closure been a ban, the admin making that decision could, on review of the evidence and additional considerations, reverse the decision. Happens all the time with AfD and other process. (But usually there is a bias toward one kind of decision, and changing away from that bias is more difficult than toward it. I.e., changing a delete to a keep or no consensus is fairly easy. Changing from keep to delete could certainly be done, but I don't think I've ever seen it.) It is a minimum-fuss procedure, reversible, generally harmless. And anyone who thinks AN/I should be consulted could take it there again.

Anyway, the first step was for me to understand your close. So I asked you for the evidence. Really. This was not a challenge, it was an attempt at understanding, since it certainly was not obvious from the AN/I discussion. Most of the charges in the AN/I report were not actually controversial, WW had done the things involved, but the problem was concluding from those things that a ban was appropriate was far less than obvious. It's pretty clear, while some editors supported a ban based on, say, WW lying about her leetspeak, in no way would that have been a proper basis for a ban. It was quite enough consequence for her to be totally embarrassed by it, and I doubt she would repeat it! Such lying is almost expected, at first, when a naive editor is caught doing something, I've never seen consequences from it in itself. There was also the edit reverting condensation of text by Blechnic, a totally blatant error that she admitted immediately (i.e., admitted her motive while doing it.). And the incivility that she lied about, which was mild. All of this together would, in my opinion, have merited nothing more than a warning, it would have taken repetition after warning for a ban or block to be considered, and, in fact, the remedy would be block, not ban. DYK was actually irrelevant, her motive for edit warring (i.e., 2RR) was irrelevant. We don't care about motive!

But then there was copyvio. I know you are saying that you examined the evidence, and I believe you, but what evidence did you examine? I've seen two examples mentioned, with diffs for only one, the old edit that Blechnic found. Very old. I don't think you had seen this, it came up later. And it had extenuating circumstances. And then another that I think you mentioned but, as far as I was able to find, was not mentioned on the page you pointed me to, and I still have not seen a pointer to it. So, I'd have to conclude, that examined evidence other than that which was presented at AN/I. That happens, and that is proper, perhaps, but it's normal to (1) provide that evidence in the close, or (2) provide it when asked. You did neither (in fact, the AN/I report itself was never closed, but I've considered that a mere technical detail). At some point, here, you also could have said, "That's all there is," and I'd then, have stopped bugging you about it. (Though I'd hope that two posts to your Talk page wouldn't be considered "bugging," is that what I did?)

I was still asking for the evidence in the AN report, eventually. No copyvio evidence, if I'm correct, has been provided there that would have been available to those discussing the ban at AN/I. I'm not saying there wasn't any, some participants may have seen evidence that nobody has pointed to, yet. But, at this point, I'd have to conclude that, if it exists, it was not blatant and not easy to find, and not repeated after warning. Since the evidence question was still open though -- you never told me, "There is no more evidence," or, "This is all I saw," you simply pointed me to the AN/I page for a previous report -- that didn't contain such evidence as far as I could see.

I'm saying that if you had simply taken my requests straight, instead of, perhaps, thinking I was after you or already arguing for WW's unban in spite of evidence, etc. much later fuss could have been avoided. It could have happened very easily. Again, as I've said before, the blame for this, if there is any, could be mine or it could be yours, or it could be both. It was a communication failure, which often takes two. Yes, I was starting to argue for WW's unban, because it had become clear that the matter had not been properly considered at AN/I, something was missing. And damage was being done. But I continued to assume that there might be some evidence that, for whatever reason, you just hadn't provided, or I'd overlooked in what you did provide.

I know you thought, apparently, that I was tendentiously arguing with you, but you could have put a stop to it at any time. Just "That's enough, I've got other things to do, you know what to do next. If you don't know, ask and I'll tell you" would have been more than adequate, it would have been thoroughly civil -- and, yes, you remained civil, anyway, through the whole affair, as far as anything I've noticed, one more set of points you get, so to speak -- yet would have protected your time. I advised you to read my discussion of the implications on my Talk page, I did not drop a note on your Talk notifying you of it, reading it remained totally optional. However, I regret the implication, made by you and some others,

I also know that you offered to settle the dispute, though the details of that were fuzzy. But, from my point of view, the very terms of the dispute weren't clear yet. Before I even know if we need further DR, it is highly useful if the parties can define what it is they disagree about. Since I didn't know what your evidence was, I couldn't decide that you had improperly considered it. So the "dispute," as it was, was rather fuzzy. I was preparing to go to the next step, the involvement of a neutral administrator -- pretty much exactly what you say you were suggesting, and I think you did, when you made the AN report, which trumped it.

When you explained the basis for your ban decision, you restricted it to two items, as I recall, and the most significant of these was copyvio. Yet we block people for copyvio, we don't ordinarily topic ban them. In any case, it was clear -- and this has been confirmed at AN -- that copyvio was the real issue, the thing that WW had allegedly done that could be worthy of some strong action.

I don't know that there is a whole lot that we disagree on here. However, I will outline the prime points of disagreement, please correct me if I'm wrong.

(1) An administrator may change an AN/I close that the admin made without going back to AN/I. For another admin to reverse this without consultation or further proper process would be wheel-warring. It seems you disagree with this.

(2)It seems that you continue to believe that there was sufficient evidence to show copyvio for WW, with risk of repetition at a rate worthy of a ban.

(3) (This hasn't been much discussed.) It seems you believe that a topic ban would be a better response than warning about copyvio, with block if violation repeated.

(Note that items 2 and 3 could be subsumed under item one. I.e., perhaps you don't believe 2 or 3, but believe that the community made its decision and you are only enforcing it, you have not made the same conclusion yourself. That's still not completely clear to me.)

Is that it? Is there anything else? This may be moot, unless you were to reconsider and say something like, "actually, now that it has been pointed out, there really wasn't enough evidence of copyvio to be worthy of a ban." Simple. Could save Carcharoth some work. But if you continue to believe those things, or some of them, you should stick with it. I would never want you to do something because you think I'm threatening you. From my perspective, I never threatened you, and the risk that I referred to in my warning -- on my Talk page, by the way, where it has little effect on later process, I do that deliberately, so that editors can see that it isn't a threat, it's a friendly warning, it would not come up in a review of your contribs, for example, only in a review of mine, unless you respond to it -- was a risk that under later review it could seem that you acted improperly. How serious that would be would depend on lots of factors. Bottom line, you'd have to be extraordinarily stubborn for it to actually hurt you, and I only mention it because I've seen several admins be exactly that stubborn, and lose their bits. This incident was mild and highly unlikely to result in such a risk. Yet what I was warning about, if repeated in a different situation with different players, could indeed result in disruption and risk. That's what I was talking about. Truly, a friendly warning, not a threat, no big stick being waved. Remember, the next step in my intended process would have been very simple, requiring little attention on your part, and, most likely, none of the ensuing process would have required your participation. You would not have been the object of my complaint. The ban would have been. You are not the ban, it is merely a decision you made. You made it properly, in good faith. Not a risk, in itself. There could be some issues about the evidence, but ... that would fall under normal error, unless somehow you tendentiously clung to some kind of error. This is what causes hazard.

Last night, I was blocked because I allegedly continued to "attack" you in spite of warning. I asked for examples of the attack, but the only example that was provided was a single diff where, as far as I could see, I hadn't crossed WP:NPA. It would be of great interest to me if, after review, you consider that I was attacking you. It could shape my response, because if someone perceives that they are being attacked, in some ways, that trumps intention. I.e., the action creating that perception should be stopped unless it is crucial and urgent. I stopped posting to AN because of the warnings, but, apparently, Iridescent considered my continued discussion on my Talk page to be a continuation of attack. I'll be dealing with that later, when I can get to it. I've got children to care for, the rest of the day. Thanks, if you read this, reading response remains completely optional from my point of view, since the substance of the important ongoing issue is in Carcharoth's hands.

By the way, I hope your real-life situations are working out for you. At no point in this, now or before, was your immediate response required, nor, for that matter, any response at all, as far as I was concerned. --Abd (talk) 18:50, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Might I suggest another olive branch?

There still seems to be some offense over this: sub-WR level conspiracy theory on the part of iridescent and probably justifiably so. If you truly have some reason to believe that he was out to block you and just looking for a reason to do it perhaps you can substantiate that in the form of diffs, but if not at this point I would suggest a short and succinct olive branch might not only be in order but might also help to clear the way to getting you unblocked (not that you should offer any such branch disingenuously). It is your decision on how to proceed. --GoRight (talk) 21:30, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Abd is welcome to if he wants, but please feel no compulsion. As I've said on the AN thread, I am explicitly not going to take any decision regarding blocking/unblocking or try to sway anyone else one way or the other. As per my original block of you, I won't contest anyone unblocking you. – iridescent 21:32, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

This is understood. I am assuming that others may be more willing to take the next step if such a branch were offered. As I said, the decision is his. --GoRight (talk) 22:16, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

I will unblock, without AN/ANI over-dramafication. Yesterday's events came fast and furious, with more heat than light in some instances. Abd/Fritzpoll seem to be coming to terms (either of you can correct me if I'm wrong there). A statement by Abd, more or less a sincere olive branch, or at least an addressing or explanation of the above links in regards to the "motives" of the blocking admin would certainly not be out of order here. Keeper ǀ 76 22:31, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

(edit conflict)... What is below was written prior to seeing Keeper76's post. It does clearly state that I was not referring to Iridescent's motives in that comment, I was referring to some, possibly, among other participants in this affair. Fritzpoll, by the way, was totally innocent, the only really weird thing he did was to bail at a crucial point, thus imitating a Fredrick day behavior, quite inadvertently, I'm sure, thus raising my level of suspicion. He's totally clear on that. I still disagree with his actions, but my focus after block, as before it, if I continue to be involved, would not be with him, but with the underlying situation, in which he was a very minor player, one not at risk, not having done anything but -- at the worst -- made a poor decision. Happens all the time. When an admin closes an AfD with a decision we think incorrect, we don't go after the admin -- at least usually we don't! -- we go to DRV. But, of course, first, we try to work it out with the admin. That went rather badly awry here, and I'm not entirely sure why, I've been fairly successful with such interventions before. --Abd (talk) 01:12, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

The post diff'd above did not assert that Iridescent was "out to block me and just looking for a reason to do it." Rather, what I asserted was that it was fairly obvious to me, for quite some time, that there were certain administrators who were looking for an opportunity to block. This happens to others, it's not just me. It happened to you, I think, GoRight. Iridescent just happened along, and responded according to the situation as he saw it. As he's noted, we had no contact before. It would be preposterous for me to think he was "looking to block." I think he made the decision quickly, too quickly, there was no emergency, but that is quite a different matter. I assume good faith, and, I assume it even with respect to the others, the ones who might have been "itching to block," whom I do not care to single out unless I were prepared to prove it, which I'm not, it would be a colossal hassle for little good. I do not think that the problems of the community are caused by bad administrators and bad editors. They are caused by defective or absent structure.

This would seem to be the core of the objection:

Might be worth looking at User:Abd/Rule 0 again. I've seen these kind of arguments before, Keeper76. They come up when admins want to block someone, but need to figure out a reason. This affair has, so far, to me, all the signs of that. It's fine with me. I don't need to be able to edit Wikipedia to prepare an ArbComm case, if that's what it comes to. Obviously, that's not the first step, far from it. But I am always considering that ArbComm is looking over my shoulder, because they might be, later. I am really, really interested to see what happens now.

This was referring to a general phenomenon, we see it when some occasion that might justify a sanction, in an administrator's mind, arises. If the reason is a little short, but, perhaps, there is some negative impression from the past, the editor's behavior is then scrutinized very closely, and behavior that would not cause a block, normally, becomes a reason, or additional reason, for it. The reference was not to Iridescent, it was to arguments that I have seen in the past, I was talking about arguments. Then, I connected it with the present, i.e., "this affair has ... all the signs of that," which isn't about a conspiracy, it's about a social phenomenon. Conspiracy was Iridescent's translation of it, a contemptuous one, I'd say. I was referring to what happens, for example, when a mob takes over at AN/I. Behavior is described with WP:ABF, and various editors, and too many administrators, join right in. I find it ironic that I'm blocked for supposed personal attacks, but what I wrote was civil compared to what has been written about me by some .... and nothing is done. I've seen it again and again. It's as if there is some kind of strange immunity that arises at AN/I, that protects some and not others. My impression is that the one who blocked me was more uncivil than I. (Again, I'm simply reporting my impression at this point.) And, again, this is fairly common. It's not enough to block someone, it seems that it is sometimes necessary to insult them to boot. I don't think that this present situation, mine, here, is the worst I've seen.

Olive branch? What, specifically, would that mean? I didn't attack Iridescent, though I've criticized his action here. I want to review it, so much happened so quickly that I'm not really clear what happened and when, but I do know that his arrival here was sensed by me as representing someone who was quickly taking charge, angry, hostile, and ready to block. He was menacing, would be a brief way of describing it. On the other hand, he also very quickly established that he wouldn't object to an unblock, and this, then, takes me to the core of this.

He is not keeping me blocked, the community is. If he did anything wrong, it was transient, the damage reversible, almost totally. The community is responsible for this having lasted. (I am, as well, of course, but I mean in terms of who holds the power and is exercising it as far as Wikipedia rights are concerned.) Is the community aware of what it is doing? I don't know, I suspect not. However, it is nevertheless responsible. This is how the Wikipedia treats people. How does it feel, Abd ul-Rahman?

"Shitty. What would you think?"

Of course, I already knew this. That, indeed, is why I've done much of what I've done. I want it to stop. I really don't think it would be that difficult, if even a relatively small number of us woke up and connected with each other. ("Us" means those who see the problem and might care to do something about it.)

And, so far, I have no idea if I can be of more service blocked, or unblocked. So, Wikipedia, your move. At your service. I said I'd prepare an unblock request, so I will. Probably tonight. --Abd (talk) 01:12, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Well, this isn't exactly what I had hoped for but it is your way of discussing things. I think there was a bit of an olive branch there at the top but the rest seems to leave it a bit tarnished. Let me quote for you some advice that you have given to others:

I think your contributions to Wikipedia have been valuable, and can be even more valuable in the future. However, there is risk involved. Choose your struggles. Get help. Avoid anything that appears uncivil, even if you could justify it, unless you are sure that it's not merely allowed, but necessary. Seek consensus, and that includes consensus with editors who have seriously opposed you. ... Let editors be wrong, focus on results, not on their opinions and actions.

— --Abd (talk) 01:48, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

and

Meanwhile, be careful, don't write anything that could be construed as a personal attack, that's my advice. Kindergarten rules: if you can't say anything good, don't say anything at all.

— --Abd (talk) 20:44, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

While I realize it is not your intention to do so, some of the things you have written are clearly being interpreted as attacks whether you have intended them as such, or not. In this instance I think a little reflection on what you have written and how it might be interpreted by others might be beneficial. Whether or not your technical points are precise or correct, sometimes it is best to just shake hands and part on good terms.

In this case, I might suggest that something more along the lines of:

"I can see how my earlier statement could be interpreted as implying that Iridescent was somehow in a plot against me, but that was never my intended meaning. Rather than Iridescent I was referring to other editors with whom I have had encounters previously. While I continue to disagree with the need for my block in this instance, I accept that Iridescent was acting in good faith and we can simply agree to disagree on this point, without prejudice. I apologize for any misunderstanding this might have caused."

would have been sufficient here, but of course this is only my opinion and I do not want to put words into your mouth (since you seem to have enough in there already).  :)

Just consider this some food for thought on how to help things move more smoothly going forward, which is one of your goals I think, especially since this is all a distraction from the more pertinent task at hand which is to craft a solution to WW's current situation, right? --GoRight (talk) 03:07, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

"Do as I say, not as I do." First of all, my advice was intended to help you stay out of trouble. You came in, parachuting into the middle of an effective edit cabal, and they were out to get you, right from the start, and it was a group that included a number of administrators. Your interest has been a narrow range of articles, you are basically an SPA. I think SPAs are fine, but.... there are some special rules. It will be assumed that you are biased, that you are pushing a POV, etc. So your situation is particularly precarious, they already blocked you once. Look at my block log. I've been in the middle of some serious disputes. I was first blocked right after I became seriously active; I likewise parachuted into hostile territory, so to speak, and article occupied and controlled by a collection of sock puppets and an IP editor who, I found, was the Executive Director of a political advocacy organization on the topic, the man has an article of his own here. The sock puppets and the IP editor were systematically taking out anything critical and making sure that the propaganda they had written was maintained in the article. When I challenged this, they tried to take me out with a 3RR report. It was rather stupid. Sure, I was blocked, but I also made sure that -- succinctly, I know how to do it -- what the admin needed to see was there in front of his nose, it was right under the 3RR warning. He promptly unblocked me and then blocked about everyone else in sight, including two SPAs, one on one side and one on the other. I intervened to help get both the latter unblocked.... that article is now pretty peaceful, and, contrary to their fears, it did not become a hit piece on them. Now, if there had been an admin or two maintaining that article, well, it would probably have been very, very difficult to fix. You took on a very difficult task, hence my advice.

My situation is very different. My primary interest is Wikipedia process, not content. In other words, instead of working on creating articles, I consider it my task to make the process by which articles are created more efficient, more effective, more reliable, and far less taxing on editors. I'm working on what creates articles and maintains them, and I'm really in an exploratory phase. Wikipedia wastes huge amounts of editor time, and only the fact that the reservoirs of volunteers has seemed inexhaustible has allowed this project to continue. Theory would predict, though, that a collapse could come fairly quickly. What would happen is that as the scale continues to grow, and demands on the administrators increase, but the number of active administrators doesn't keep pace, the burden on those still active becomes greater and they begin to burn out more quickly, thus increasing the burden, etc. It's been happening for some time, I think, though I don't have statistics. Administrators, and those on vandalism patrol, see a lot of real junk, and it's known for burning them out, some of them start to see vandalism under every edit. Uncivil conflict is far, far too common here. Admins are volunteers, and some of them come to see criticism as ingratitude for the tremendous task that they do, and therefore as intrinsically uncivil.

But, yes, I do need to take more care to avoid the appearance of incivility. However, this is where ADHD comes in. This avoidance is very, very difficult for me, I don't anticipate it, because when I'm writing, I'm thinking what I'm thinking, and what I'm thinking isn't uncivil, generally. I won't necessarily see an appearance of incivility -- i.e., a misinterpretation -- even if I carefully reread it. What I'd need to see would be how others would see it, which requires precisely what's difficult for ADHD people, sometimes. (Paradoxically, I can be hypersensitive, but that comes from the hyperfocus capacity, i.e., if I turn my entire consciousness to someone personally present, I can approach mind-reading, because of the high bandwidth possible. That does not happen on-line. Much of what was considered "attack" here was, for me, accompanied with no rancor at all, no desire to harm or bully. When I made a strong statement to Fritzpoll about his admin future, I was giving a sincere warning, being someone with no power at all to make anything happen to him, I was warning him about possible risks not from me. But that, of course, wasn't how it was taken. Sure, in hindsight, I can see the possible response. In some of what I write, I anticipate the response and incorporate text to head it off -- but this, then, makes the piece longer, and sometimes all the reader sees is the negative part anyway. I'm preparing an evidence page, here in my Talk, and I'm really struck how a piece where I affirmed that Fritzpoll was an excellent editor and, as far as I could tell, could be an excellent administrator, and I was merely disagreeing with one action, was called an "attack." That, I admit, continues to boggle my mind. (I've seen a good admin, generally, get desysopped because of one action, when the admin doesn't get it, can't acknowledge the problem. It's not the action, it's the response later, and this is exactly what I was trying to warn Fritzpoll about. He thought, apparently, that I was trying to bully him, but I was actually happy with his decision, I was just trying to make sure that it was clear, that he really had investigated the evidence and was confident about it, and, frankly, I'm still puzzled. But certainly I've said more than enough to him, it was time to move on to the next step.... and then came Fredrick day.... there, I see, reviewing the edits, that I was extremely careful to distinguish between reasonable suspicion and accusation. And I'll describe that more, later. First step is simply to put the evidence together, so that I can see what happened. Analyzing it comes later.

Sticky Parkin's comment

Abd, your comments can sometimes be interpreted as patronizing. Saying others need to 'be careful' 'take your time, sort it out' 'lots of errors' and 'With patience and time and wider understanding of basic policies (IAR, NPOV, AGF, etc.), and some work on structure to make it work better, we can make this a much better place.' I say this while agreeing that the second half of the first paragraph, about WW, might well be true. I just think you could avoid appearing supercilious to other editors, then you'd rub along with them far better, if you see what I mean, and probably be more likely to achieve what you consider to be the best outcome in each situation. Sticky Parkin 04:09, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Sure, Sticky, they could be "interpreted" that way. However, "take your time, be careful," etc. was written to my friends as well as others. I write what I think, straight out, avoiding only what should properly be censored. The comment about wider understanding was a very general one, and I'll stand with this: understanding of these policies is often shallow, and it's important that it be deepened. We need better structure, AN/I has become seriously flawed.

It should be understood that I'm far from the first person with reform ideas to be blocked. (As I write this, I have no idea if the block has been lifted or not. In an email to a friend, an administrator, I wrote that I did not want "any special favors," because one way to gain some utility out of this is to explore what happens when one does not have administrative friends. While it's a bit frustrating that I saw plenty of uninformed comment in AN last night, and more than a little viciousness around this affair (and I also saw the community beginning to sort it out, as others picked up on threads of thought that I'd put up), I trust that the issue put in front of me is the one I should focus on. I'm pretty much helpless about that, by the way, it's extraordinarily difficult for me to do anything else, I have ADHD. It's a blessing and a curse, all wrapped up in one. Wouldn't trade it for anything, but... it does make it hard to get things done, because the new distraction comes along. It's been Wikipedia for the last year, at pretty high personal cost. I've done it, though, allowed myself to put in the thousands of hours involved (2000 or more) because I do support, strongly, the foundation concepts of Wikipedia. When I seriously began to read policies and guidelines a year ago -- before then, I was pretty clueless, took me quite a while to figure out how to sign Talk page edits -- I was struck by the often deep wisdom involved. And my specialty had become how large organizations can take advantage of small group dynamics, but maintain the facility of them when they become large. What I saw was (1) how Wikipedia worked, but, at the same time, (2) how it was breaking down, running, as it were, a pyramid scheme where it still attracted more new editors than it lost; the losses were accumulating, mostly invisibly, from the accumulation of small incidents. You should know the drill: person discovers that they can edit Wikipedia, they read and believe our slogans: Wikipedia, the sum of all human knowledge. Wikipedia, the encyclopedia that anyone can edit. That is way cool, they think. So they write an article about something that they know about, and they do their best. Not being familiar with the guidelines, they make mistakes. And what happens? That depends on who comes across the article. Very, very often, a speedy tag is dropped on the article and it is gone, quickly, before the editor who created it has any awareness and, in fact, if the editor did not register an account, they have no notice, no warning -- or, easily, they might not log in during the period involved. Whatever, eventually, they look for their article. It's gone, and very often they have no idea what happened, except for one thing, they know somebody deleted it. Now, this happens to experts, not just random people who don't know what they were writing about. I've talked to quite a few of them, encountered here and there, Wikipedia has a terrible reputation among experts, who, even when they become more sophisticated in Wikipedia procedure, may find it a brutal place.

Solutions have been proposed, many, in fact. But one of the problems is that our deliberative process, whereby we might be able to collectively examine what is going on, create and examine possible solutions, and choose between them, experimenting on this and that, has become almost paralyzed. It's difficult or impossible to describe Wikipedia with a single word, but the organizational technique here is probably most quickly summarized as anarchist. It deviates from that (and necessarily so) in two ways: we have stratified user privileges, so it is really only anarchist among the administrator community, to some extent ... but that's actually a detail, in theory any editor has the same privileges as an administrator, but not the buttons, but practice is sometimes different. We also have Foundation oversight (which includes the "God-King" who has little effect on day-to-day operation) and ArbComm, an appointed body, after election advice from the community, which functions more traditionally -- and usually much better, in terms of deliberative process). But it can be extraordinarily inefficient, sometimes combining the worst of both worlds: direct democracy/anarchy, small scale with heavy participation bias, and large-scale, with a great deal of noise.

There are traditional solutions, some of them known for hundreds of years and in common use, and modern ones such as Delegable proxy, see also Wikipedia:Delegable proxy. The proposal of DP here is actually an example of how it breaks down.

I write about what I see, what I understand, and sometimes what I propose. It gets some people seriously upset, it always has, I've been doing this for more than forty years (i.e., since I became an adult). In hindsight, looking back, I was not always right, but I was right more often than not, and I've been fortunate enough to have people come to me years later and say, "You know, we couldn't see it, but you were right." It's part of the mixed blessing of ADHD. It allows me to see things that others can't see, at least not yet, but at the same time, classically, it can cripple communication and has certain other negative effects. It's a bit like being an idiot savant. Because so much central processing power has been dedicated to a narrow area, other areas of activity suffer. Most people can understand me, when it's face, I think, because there is high-bandwidth stuff that happens nonverbally. It's more difficult in writing. Only a few really understand what I'm writing, much of the time. But those are the people I'm writing for. As to what's really important, only a handful have seen it, most of them only partially. But enough to know that what I see, and what I'm working for, will survive me. It really wasn't mine in the first place, aspects of what I've seen are popping up all over, independently invented, sometimes in substantial detail. There is a political party in Sweden that implemented one of the ideas, and it worked. Most of the concepts aren't actually new, they are merely put together in a different way than before. And that new way challenges our conceptions of how organizations work, and don't work.

And, it was predictable, I wrote about this extensively before I started to edit here, and it came to be known as the "Lomax effect." When there is an inequitable power structure, and a proposal is made to make it more equitable, those who have "excess power" will resist it, because they will correctly see it as threatening their own excess power, and, usually, they believe that goodness and justice require that they have this excess power, because they are the ones who deserve it, for many reasons. They might even be right, that doesn't matter. I.e., today, very common the reason for the excess power is that they were the ones who have built the organization, they know the most about it and how it currently works, and so forth. They will easily think that if the great unwashed masses come to have some control, they will wreck the place. And, again, they might be right, and it would all depend on how power was distributed and exercised.

And I've gotta go, kids need to get to camp, life happens. --Abd (talk) 12:20, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Were you diagnosed with ADHD by a specialist? A person with ADHD wouldn't tend to write like this I don't think, your condition must be very well controlled. This is another user who says he has ADHD, this is a long post for him [1]. It's all more-or-less sorted now anyway as far as WW is concerned.:) I think you're critique of the governance of wiki won't get all that far, "they" have enough people off-site saying they're doing things wrong. However, I think you made some people reassess the WW situation, and maybe think more about what their approach should be like in future with checking what they're told etc.Sticky Parkin 13:50, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

About my writing. With my writing, you are often getting a glimpse, if you know how to see it, into how my mind works. It's not uncommon with ADHD, there may be many things brought up that will seem, at first, to be unrelated. It can be very disconcerting to some people. But the things are related, it simply may not be obvious. Put two of us together, under the right conditions, and it can happen that we communicate whole books worth of memes in a single glance. It is like two people thinking together, exactly on track. Very difficult through writing. Now, I have a friend, one of the smartest guys I know. For starters, he understands my FA/DP proposals well enough to explain them perfectly. It took me about two years of intense writing, on the internet, to find him; actually, he found me. He noticed the writing and eventually asked, "What about this? What about that?" because there are a host of obvious objections to the ideas. If I explain in advance, it's too long. If I don't explain it, people read it and say to themselves, "That would never work," and they reject it -- but don't say anything. Since he asked, I explained. He then took the explanations and made them into a FAQ, which stands as probably the best explanation available. And still most people don't get it at first. However, a year later, I've found, it gets easier. Something about the idea having lasted a year seems to help penetrate the meme-attack filters that we all have. Anyway, he writes much better than I, routinely. But, he says, it takes him three times as long, and, in fact, he doesn't write much, it is entirely too much work for him. He is embarrassed to write with the degree of openness and, indeed, vulnerability, which is routine for me. Many of us were punished or shunned as children for speaking our minds. Read, User:Abd/Rule 0. It's been considered a good essay on the subject. I managed to escape that -- but there were other terrible situations in my childhood, I used to tell my story at meetings and I'd look around the room and people would be crying and I'd be thinking, "What's the big deal, this was just my life, I'm okay." Well, I wasn't "okay," but merely high-functioning. There are certain things that I can to really well, probably better than one in a thousand -- that's about what the intelligence tests have shown, but I'm really off-scale, the tests are quite unreliable. And there are other things that are absolutely easy for a "normal" person, that are very difficult for me, if not impossible. So ... I'm putting energy into what I'm good at, and a few have found that useful. I'm trying to move the planet, so to speak. I've found the fulcrum and I've found the lever and I'm pushing. The world is big. It took a few years, not surprising, before I saw any movement. But I've now seen enough to think that the momentum built is irreversible, it's not just me now, there are others pushing as well, together, in the same direction. This is not a push in opposition to other pushes, there really isn't any opposition, just ignorance, apathy, cynicism, and despair. Ancient enemies, if we personify them, but they really don't exist, they are illusions, an absence rather than a presence. So am I a "POV-pusher"? No. A very important part of the concept is developing mechanisms for finding consensus, efficiently, on a large scale. Real consensus, not a fake consensus from many people believing that it is useless to speak up. NPOV is a kind of consensus "position." It neither opposes nor endorses any POV.

A few more comments about the "tomes" I write. They are, of course, not tomes, they are merely longer than usual, and one of the problems is that Wikipedia standard formatting is single-column with relatively small print. I was, among other things, an editor, typesetter, printer, and publisher. Bad design for this kind of writing. Columns, so that the width is shorter, are much, much easier to read, that's why newspapers used them. So that makes a long piece seem forbidding, this huge mass of text. Secondly, when I've made a conclusion and thus have a POV and something I want the community to do, I write very differently. It's still, sometimes, a bit long, but I put that triple effort into boiling it down and crafting it so that it is easily recognized. It is a lot of effort, so, unless I'm pushing something, I usually don't do it. I don't really care if any particular individual reads it, I'm just expressing what I see and think about the subject at hand. I'd say, if it's not for you, don't read it! If I want to warn you on your Talk page -- something I very rarely do, by the way -- I will almost certainly be quite succinct, because you are expected to read it. If I want to make a report to AN/I, I will so craft it. And I've generally been successful with such. However, when I am merely responding to a situation and trying to work something out, I don't have a fixed conclusion, and I never know, actually, what part of what I'm saying will turn out to be important. I don't have an organizing goal in mind. And this, again, drives some readers crazy. My suggestion to them has been, many times, don't read it, if it doesn't work for you. I try to organize my posts such that it is very easy to see what is mine and what is response, etc. It should be easy to skip what I've written. If what I've written is actually important, someone else will pick up on it and express the gist of it, probably more succinctly, because that follow-up process is much easier than the initial writing. This is part of the old writer/editor wars here, with editors complaining that the output of writers isn't properly edited. And the writers usually won't say it, but they may think that the result of the editing is boring, dull, and misses the point. Good publication requires both writers and editors, so, really, we should find some way to declare a truce over this, and truly learn to work together. It isn't, and will not be, easy. --Abd (talk) 17:12, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

I think he means something other than ADHD, especially considering his description. Tombomp (talk/contribs) 13:57, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

No, ADHD. Diagnosed, first, almost 10 years ago. However, I didn't realize the implications until a little less than two years ago. Diagnosis confirmed, clearly, by multiple experts in the field. I take medication, specifically Concerta, which is time-release methylphenidate, i.e, Ritalin, 18 mg/day, plus I chip a little plain methylphenidate, about 5 mg a day. When I stop I feel lousy, but that might be to some degree a rebound effect. However, when I started taking it, it was like the sun rose, it had multiple and surprising effects. My therapist at the time said, "We don't like to diagnose through response to medication, but ...." She was an expert in the field. I've seen three psychiatrist over the years, and the first two confirmed the diagnosis but didn't get the medication right, they gave me bupropion, which, while it helped in some ways, my wife said it made my demeanor denicer, was not nearly as visible to me, as the minimum dose of Concerta. I tried taking more, it gives me reflux. No complications at 18 mg/day plus a little chipping. I still take bupropion, and having gone off a few times, I can now recognize the effect, it's a good one. And then, after starting medication and realizing the huge impact ADHD had on my life (for starters, I think I'd be rich. Remember the old saw? If you're so smart, why aren't you rich? There is an answer: ADHD. Many of the smartest people in the world have ADHD. Some of them are very rich. What's the difference? Support. They don't do it alone. But that's another story. --Abd (talk) 16:16, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

quite a number of good contributors here say they have ADHD, and the wiki method apparent is in fact often one that suits their style of working. I am sure that Abd can explain much better than I, but some of it should be fairly obvious. It also seems suitable to people with many other intellectual or personality styles who may have some degree of difficulty with conventional media. I think our general openness here is something to celebrate, and a large part of our success. The only personality that really does not work well is those who cannot control hostility when challenged--though even here, some work very successfully on topics where they are unlikely to be challenged. As Abd says, people have a wide opportunity here to find their most satisfactory roles. DGG (talk) 18:26, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Yes that other user I mentioned his posts are pithy, catchy and brief. However I expect this'll all get sorted out.:) Sticky Parkin 21:17, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Google making us dumber?

Completely off-topic, but inspired by the bits of your writings above that I managed to get through... :-) I recently read something about how the internet and being able to Google everything makes people dumber and develop shorter attention spans. I know that I have more recently (last few years) found it much easier to flit around on the surface of things instead of getting deeply involved in writing an article or carefully and slowly resolving a crisis or engaging in long-term planning. It not that I no longer do the latter, but I seem to do less of it, possibly because all these other distractions are there. Someone might say that mental discipline (willpower, self-discipline - Britannica has an article on mental discipine theory, but we don't) is what I (and others) need to develop, but I've also noticed that I find it harder to finish a book than I did before. Possibly that is because non-fiction books are inherently harder to finish than a fiction book one is enjoying, or maybe I'm just reading the wrong books! But I digress. The point made was that those growing up in the internet age (and I came to the internet at university age, so I had mostly grown up by then) learn and read in a different way. Let's see if I can't Google(!) the article I am thinking of. Ah, here we go: Is Google Making Us Stupid?. Carcharoth (talk) 23:39, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

No, I don't think Google is making us dumber. But we are making ourselves dumber, some of us, in some way. It takes time to understand the world, others, and ourselves, and far too many of us want it presented to us in a hundred words or less, the carefully framed picture, the sound bite. Perhaps they do not realize that when someone puts that kind of effort into a communication, they usually have some purpose, something they want to convince people of, they are not merely sharing knowledge or exploring a topic.

With relation to the current flap, the little detail of my being blocked, I think that some people assume I'm trying to make some point when I write, and then the length really irritates them because, they think, it is preventing them from seeing the point. Rather, I come across points as I write, points can be derived from what I write, and, if I were to decide to push something, I'd take what I write and seriously boil it down, which I do know how to do, I've been a professional editor. I.e., I was paid to do it. I don't do much writing like that here. In article space, the "agenda" part would be inappropriate, though my style there is concise. On the rare occasions where I knew exactly what I wanted others to do, I was reasonably concise, my SSP and checkuser report for Allemandtando weren't tomes, as I recall. I've also been starting to write extended comments on something, where I've done a lot of research, and then write brief summaries pointing to a page with the full skinny. Seems to have been effective. I should really expand on this, writing in hypertext mode. But it is still much more work than simply writing. --Abd (talk) 01:40, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Abd, what in the hell happened?

I jet out of town for a romantic weekend (first time I've had two consecutive days off since before Christmas), and when I come back, you're indefinitely blocked? What can I do to help? Curious bystander (talk) 00:03, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Well, watching my Talk page is very helpful. Thanks. Looks like it is sorting itself out, though, I suppose I won't know until I'm actually unblocked. Since I haven't censored myself to "be nice," it's always possible some new offense will be discovered. The block was explained as "indef" until undone, not "indef" forever. Essentially, it looks like Iridescent really didn't know quite what to do, something seemed really wrong to him, and he was utterly unfamiliar with my work. I've written many times that admins should, in fact, block quickly when they believe ongoing damage is happening, especially with experienced users, because, for such, it's easily undone. He thought I was attacking User:Fritzpoll, and apparently also thought I was ignoring warnings. Neither of these was true, but there are also details that involve differences of interpretation of guidelines and block policy, etc. My true "complaints," generally, are about our lack of good process, we have an ad-hoc process that worked very well on a small scale, though never truly efficiently -- but much more efficiently than one might think. I've been amused to see that one of the "bad things" I did, allegedly, was to "attack" AN/I, i.e., to note that it is dysfunctional. One editor remarked that if this were a blockable offense, half the people "present" would be blocked.

The person who invented AN/I later left Wikipedia, remarking that he'd created a bit of a monster, though I don't remember the exact language.

Thanks for your support, thanks for visiting me in my "cell." Helps me to know who my true friends are, though silence here means nothing. --Abd (talk) 01:25, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

draft of unblock request evidence section

Please leave this section without response until I finish it and remove this notice, etc.

Block log: 22:07, 11 August 2008 Iridescent (Talk | contribs) blocked "Abd (Talk | contribs)" (account creation blocked) with an expiry time of indefinite ‎ ("Indefinite" as in "Unspecified", not "Forever". Repeated posting of untrue attacks on another editor after multiple warnings)[2]

Block notice explanation: You have been blocked indefinitely from editing in accordance with Wikipedia's blocking policy for repeatedly posting false accusations of sockpuppetry against another editor despite having it explained to you at least seven separate times why your "reasoning" had no basis in reality and that you were misreading your "evidence". This is "indefinite" in the sense of "unspecified", not "forever"; if someone sees good reason to unblock or you post a good unblock reason, I won't contest it.

Iridescent's list of diffs showing the actions for which I was blocked.

• Final warning to quit the personal attacks or be blocked 14:45, 11 August 2008 Jehochman(Section title:Warning before block)
  • I have asked another administrator to review your editing. The above screed [3] is a personal attack on User:Fritzpoll and includes major assumptions of bad faith. Such things are not allowed on Wikipedia, and I strongly suggest you remove them. If you continue your campaign to drive off User:Fritzpoll I will support an indefinite block on your account by a suitably uninvolved administrator. Due to past interactions with you, I will not place such a block myself. Your past editing history shows that your account is mainly used for disruption and drama mongering. As such, your account could be blocked indefinitely, per policy. Jehochman ^Talk 14:45, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

• Personal attacks and evidence-free accusations of sockpuppetry by yourself against Fritzpoll following that warning and prior to your block:
• 15:56, 11 August 2008 [4]
  • User:Talk:Fritzpoll#Something I don't understand: your withdrawal

Fritzpoll, I criticized your administrative action. Then, when you did not respond adequately, in my view, to your action, and filed an unnecessary AN/I report that showed, to me, that you did not understand the issue, you seem to have taken this as seriously disturbing. I'd hope that you can realize that it is an essential part of Wikipedia process that administrative actions -- and, sometimes, administrative competence -- be open to question, but I have never considered or suspected anything other than good faith from you, nor have I called into question your editorial competence, and my judgment of your administrative competence is around a single, possibly subtle, issue that may require ArbComm resolution, ultimately. I would not be my intention to make you the center of that. You really had nothing you needed to do, unless you wanted to continue argument, which you had no obligation to do, the ban stands until reversed, and argument doesn't reverse it. Most administrators, when a close action is questioned, simply respond, either accepting the criticism and modifying their action accordingly, or rejecting it, and then move on. They do not involve themselves in further process except where their testimony is necessary. So I hope that there is something you can learn from this, and that you can return and continue to function as an excellent editor and, quite possibly, an excellent administrator. Everyone makes mistakes, so, even if I'm totally right, this would not indict your general behavior. I have seen no other action from you that I have had occasion to question, and I was surprised, in fact, that you acted as you did in this case. From the support shown for you, so far, I'd have to consider your action within the normal range, even though I consider it seriously in error; in a situation like this, ArbComm would never de-sysop unless you continued to defend what was later found to be an error, see the ArbComm proceedings for User:Physchim62, desysopped, not for his error, but for continuing to defend it even after it became clear that the community and ArbComm were ultimately rejecting the action for very good cause -- later confirmed in other cases --, the community was practically begging him to apologize. Why? So that it could be confident that he'd not repeat the error. We do not punish, we only protect.

[5], [6], [7], [8], [9], [10]

• 21:59, 11 August 2008 [11] User talk:Abd (I'm about to block: Thanks, Keeper76, it will take me some time to figure out what's going on. Meanwhile, there shouldn't be any further problem, at least not today.)

Thanks, Keeper76, a whiff of fresh air. Yes, I didn't see Gwen Gales' comment here before posting. I now see a number of administrators requesting that I refrain from further action. Since I see no urgency today, I suspect that Wilhelmina Will will be able to survive another day -- and indeed, since she has been gone for a week and may now be creating articles, they will be fresh and ready for DYK nomination, should that be appropriate, she may need some help with that, so I conclude that it's fine for me to take a little break. However, I do notice stuff, and I understand far more about Fredrick day and who might be him and not -- I identified User:Allemantando as Fredrick day, confirmed by checkuser, when people were screaming that my SSP report was just more tendentious bullshit -- but, let me tell you all, that when an edit appeared from known Fd IP referring to "my" administrative position (i.e, Fritzpoll's), it bowled me over. I not only never suspected it, but didn't see an Fd pattern. Until one more thing happened. If Fd thinks I'm on to him, if he's made an error that will expose him, or thinks he has, he has a tendency to bail. He doesn't fight to the end, once the writing on the wall is clear. Now, there was no writing on the wall, here. But Fredrick day isn't rational, necessarily. He thinks I'm obsessed with him, plotting how to figure out who he is. And so, when I began to negotiate with Fritzpoll -- and that's all I did, really, except some isolated mentions elsewhere, where I thought it might do some good -- Fd may have thought that I was onto him.

But, please note: this is merely a theory. There is an alternate theory: Fredrick day pretended to be Fritzpoll (or, more remotely, the edit was some weird slip, but Fritzpoll still isn't Fd), just to stir the pot. So it's not proven without checkuser or other evidence. The only evidence I have is the IP edit saying "my" referring to Fritzpoll, which is enough for checkuser, should anyone want to go there, and the sudden, unexpected bailout, which is also Fd habit. The latter is merely a small additional ground for suspicion, it would mean nothing by itself. Others bail out as well.

I may continue to discuss this on my Talk page, where I think appropriate, but have no intention of bringing it up elsewhere, and I've probably said enough at the current AN report. I might make a brief comment that if anyone has questions about what I've written, to come to my Talk page. I'll respond directly to Gwen Gale in a later edit, I intend. I need to look around a little. --Abd (talk) 21:59, 11 August 2008 (UTC) Emphasis added Abd (talk) 15:36, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

• 22:09, 11 August 2008 [12] User talk:Abd ("Final final warning": very good advice, Barneca.)

Yes, very good advice. Thanks. However, that's not the end of it. Sometimes a lone voice, crying in the wilderness, is the only one who sees what is going on. I do not assume that I'm right. Rather, I assume that if I see something, and I describe what I see, my friends will correct my errors. So, friends, thanks for being alert! I assure you all that I am reviewing everything said here, and carefully. Barneca, above, may have identified an error, though it may still be merely an alternate interpretation, and, so far, I'll stick with the interpretation that the edit raises sufficient suspicion for checkuser, and I have been very, very clear that Fritzpoll may not be Fredrick day, I have never made an unconditional "accusation." I do theorize, there at AN, that if Fritzpoll is Fredrick day, then it explains certain things. If I overlooked specifying the circumstances, or, indeed, if I'm requested to strike something there, and I agree that it's marginal, or just plain wrong, I'll fix it or strike it, upon request here. Otherwise, couldn't I be accused of stirring up more shit? I've got, how many administrators, yelling at me here? On the other hand, look at Elonka.... Perhaps we should start the Tar baby club. It will all come out in the end, I'm sure. It doesn't even depend on me, it only depends on time.--Abd (talk) 22:09, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Iridescent's comment after providing diffs above: Seriously, we gave you way more leniency than we'd give someone without your history of potentially valid contributions. If you really think it's "abusive" to block you after that many attacks – not to mention seven warnings after your "final" warning (they're on your talk page – count 'em), than a site that runs on consensus and not who can complain the loudest is probably not the place for you. – iridescent 23:22, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Note that the above is simply a list of diffs, with text taken from the edits, so that it is easier for me to see, quickly, what happened and when and where. I need this to prepare my unblock request. I want to make it very simple and easy for the reviewing admin to make his or her decision. This was explicitly a draft, and I'd have prepared it elsewhere if I could edit user subpages, but I can't. There is no analysis in the above, except for whatever was in the edits for which I was blocked, and no "attitude" expressed, beyond an attitude of being careful and compiling evidence. I want to see what I did! Please do not comment on this evidence, in this section.

This user account is a huge time sink, for virtually no benefit to the encyclopedia. I recommend that the account remain blocked until there is a change of attitude. The above legalistic analysis is exactly what we do not need here. Jehochman ^Talk 02:28, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Uh, Jehochman, what you responded to was a draft of an evidence page where I lay out what was asserted as the reason for my block. I requested that the section be left alone while I worked on it, because I can't create user subpages. I'm trying to understand what happened. Now, there was no new legalistic analysis above, I've simply copied the text in the diffs. You could call the old text, the text taken from the evidence diffs, "legalistic analysis," or you might simply say that I was describing what happened and policy implications, it's a actually a major issue here, and, as far as I know, it's allowed. You've made decisions based on the attitude you express here before. I've advised others to be careful, but you, with your longer experience than I, I ask, do exactly what you please. Feel free. Except, please, don't edit in that evidence section unless I invite comment there. I'm preparing an unblock request and I'd prefer to be left unmolested, okay? Thanks. --Abd (talk) 02:47, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

• Seconded, with no further comment. ^S._D.Jameson 02:38, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Actually, Dean, didn't you promise that you'd stay away from my Talk page? Be careful of WP:HARASS, it could bite.

Abd, you are in no position to make spurious threats against other editors. Jehochman ^Talk 03:04, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

I am being harassed by Jehochman, I'm asking for administrative intervention.

I opened a section here to start putting together evidence for my unblock request -- it's really preliminary, I haven't at all added any argument, it is pure report of the diffs provided by Iridescent and the content of them -- and I requested that others not edit in that section. Jehochman promptly edited in that section, to make a gratuitous personal attack.[13]. I added a section header before his edit, to keep the evidence section separate, it's a working document and, in particular, I had open copies and wanted that section clear so I wouldn't run into edit conflicts. I did not change his edit except, later, in an edit to the new section, I reduced the indents as no longer necessary. But I ran into edit conflict anyway. Puzzled, I found that Jehochman had reverted my insertion of the new section header, with [14]. This has become more than incivility, it is pure harassment, and I ask for administrative intervention. I cannot prepare my unblock request in this environment, hence I'm shutting down for the night, and I'm going to be pretty busy for several days. --Abd (talk) 04:10, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Please remove this section and my section below and email me. Please? I would like to talk. Ottava Rima (talk) 04:35, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

I did email OR, but now reread this and see that his meaning was clearer than I thought at first. OR, you may remove the section below if you wish, including my comments in it, and your request here and my response, if you like. I'm not removing this section. And I'm already up way too late. --Abd (talk) 05:12, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Oh Abd, why can't you just say to the admins etc, "I'm sorry and it won't happen again?" Sorry for accusing someone mistakenly of being a sock, and sorry for repeated groundless telling people they may end up at arbcom etc. Sticky Parkin 18:01, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Because it will happen again, and it will then be even more difficult to deal with. Elsewhere, for example, it is suggested that I once again intervene on behalf of Wilhelmina Wilhelm, and that I should do whatever I can to satisfy those who are demanding additional conditions, so that I can intervene. Yet this whole thing happened because I intervened on behalf of WW, and one of the demanded conditions is that I confine myself to article space. And if I have promised "it won't happen again," and I believe that what are not personal attacks can be interpreted as such -- and I meant that broad community review of them in a deliberative environment such as ArbComm would agree that they were not PA -- I cannot effectively intervene even if I were allowed to edit WP space. No, resolving this issue comes first. Without clear guidance from the community on what constitutes personal attack, I cannot proceed. None of the discussions of this, so far, have pointed to the exact nature of the attack, and from my reading of WP:NPA and its obvious purpose my edits were not personal attack, or, alternatively, many many editors and administrators have personally attacked me. The latter might still be true, actually, but the former is easier. I.e., if the much stronger and unnecessary comments made about me are not personal attack, then my edits clearly were not. --Abd (talk) 19:08, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Jehochman continued harassment today

I was intending to follow advice to stay away from Jehochman, i.e., from debate with him or deliberate interaction with him, but he's intruding here, and has asserted his right to continue.

I've asked Jehochman not to post to this Talk page (absent necessity, of course, though I can't imagine, really, a necessity where he'd be the appropriate one to post here). He has ignored that and posted, attempting, it would appear, to interfere with my right to communicate with another editor. While he has similarly posted at AN, attempting to interfere with my right to comment on matters where I am knowledgable, that is not the basis of this request for assistance. Rather, it is his insistence on posting here after request to cease, and his repeated edit warring with me as to removing posts here, or formatting my Talk page for efficient access, that is the problem. If I'm correct, I should normally be able to remove most edits and warnings from my Talk without restriction, except perhaps for an active incident (i.e., block/unblock), a pre-block warning as an uninvolved administrator -- and normally I should be able to remove even that, since removal would be evidence that the warning was seen, better, even, than it simply sitting there with no response.

Following is the central edit history showing the harassment and interference with my Talk page and my right to communicate with another editor -- not about Jehochman! -- and comment in a noticeboard discussion where I've been recognized as knowledgeable on the topic. Edit warring with me on my own Talk page shown in bold:

• 02:35, 13 August 2008 Abd (move Jehochman's comment to its own section.)[15]
  • This edit simply inserted a section header: ==Jehochman's response to the evidence section, above.== This was done so that continued comments would not conflict with my edits to the evidence section above. Edit conflicts in this period were routine.

*03:04, 13 August 2008 Jehochman (Do not edit my comments. Do not refactor, reposition or reframe them.)[16]

• • Reverted my change to remove section header.
• 04:10, 13 August 2008 Abd (I am being harassed by Jehochman, I'm asking for administrative intervention. new section)[17]
  • This opened this section on my Talk. There was no response to this. However, harassment did not continue. It had been mentioned on Jehochman's Talk.[18]
  • There was no continued harassment for days, though there was no occasion, I didn't have reason to touch his single post in this period, which was not harassment and could easily be taken as good faith advice. As to my effort to separate out that section, I let it go, because my position was, after all, rather precarious.[19]
• 14:36, 15 August Jehochman (Stop your disruptive editing) http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3AAbd&diff=232112874&oldid=232088113]
• 14:53, 15 August 2008 Friday (Stop your disruptive editing i don't agree)[20]
• 15:00, 15 August 2008 Abd (→Stop your disruptive editing Stay off my Talk, Jehochman. Further edits from you may be deleted.) [21]
  • I suggest that if has a dispute with me or wishes to warn me that he involve a neutral editor per WP:DR.
• 16:45, 15 August 2008 Jehochman (Stop your disruptive editing reply to Friday)[22]
  • Jehochman asserts to Friday that I'm a disruptive editor. Even though Friday just disagreed with the example before us.
• 16:49, 15 August 2008 Abd (Stop your disruptive editing want to discuss with Friday, Jehochman, do it on his Talk page. Not here. Want this thread deleted? I'd consent, if Friday would.)[23]
  • I delete Jehochman's comment. It was the last comment in the thread, and there had been no response to it. It's as if he were "blocked: from editing my Talk page before making that comment, which, effectively, he was, a "block" he evaded. It resulted in no comments being "out of context."
• 17:35, 15 August 2008 Jehochman (Please do not selectively remove my good faith comments. Either delete the whole thread or refactor in a way that does not put things out of context. Thanks.)
  • Jehochman reverts me.
• 17:36, 15 August 2008 Jehochman (Stop your disruptive editing refactor my own comment to address the user to whom this talk page belongs) [24]
  • Apparently wants to make it appear that a comment written to Friday was written to me.
• 18:39, 15 August 2008 Abd (Stop your disruptive editing Okay, Friday, if you want this to come back, I'll undo it or you may, since you commented.)[25]
  • removed entire section.

Elsewhere: User talk:Jehochman
17:38, 15 August 2008 User talk:Jehochman DuncanHill (Abd talk page new section)[26]

• • DuncanHill notes I've requested Jehochman not to post, notes that users may remove comments from their own Talk, and asks "Why not just stop baiting?"

18:44, 15 August 2008 Jehochman (Abd talk page reply to DuncanHill)+ (Abd talk page expand)[27] Jehochman defends his action. Says, "I'm going to back off."

Related: Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard

• 14:43, 15 August 2008 Jehochman (Review of User:Wilhelmina Will's articles Both GoRight and Abd are not helpful in this thread.)[28]
  • Jehochman suggests that GoRight and myself "let other editors handle this."

Requested action (None at this time)

No action is requested at this time. This is a record of the harassment as it impacted me, for use if necessary in a future attempt to negotiate resolution of any related issues.

I was going to request that Jehochman be warned or cautioned by a neutral editor or administrator. However, because of his comment that he is going to back off, and because of his comments about the issues, and as an experienced administrator, I consider that he's been adequately warned and that if he repeats the behavior, he could be blocked without further warning. "The behavior" is, specifically, posting to my Talk page, very specific. He is free, subject only to guidelines and policy as they apply elsewhere, to continue to argue that I'm worthless to the project, that I should be indef blocked or forced to work in the salt mines, sent to article space for rehabilitation for our Great Leap Forward, or whatever. But not here.

Comment

While the last comment ("I'm going to back off") may indicate that there will be no more harassment, I'm concerned that he asserts his unconditional right to "respond to any criticism" in place, i.e., on a user's Talk page, whenever he chooses. I'd agree that he has a right to respond, but where he responds is not unrestricted, and his right of response does not interfere or conflict with my right to control my own Talk page. His revert of my removal of his last comment on my Talk page was utterly improper. I can say this: If this had been reversed, I'd be blocked, very quickly. I have no right to post to his Talk page if he has asked me not to. No matter what he says there. If it is offensive, I have other recourse. There may be an exception, if I believe I need to deliver a formal pre-block warning. For example, if I intended to try to seek a block of Jehochman for edit warring on my Talk, for efficiency I might put the warning on his Talk page. But it would be much better if I could find a neutral editor to do it. And that's the answer to his question, in general: when direct discussion has become impossible or imprudent, involve a neutral editor -- or a friend of the editor you need to communicate with -- or, if that's been exhausted, further DR process or a noticeboard. It is important to respect a user's right to freedom from harassment, and one of the core definitions of harassment is unnecessary contact maintained after a request that it cease. Further, if such a warning is delivered, it's well-established that the user may remove it, because this shows receipt of the warning. It would never be proper to edit war to restore it.

Ironically, there is a discussion where Jehochman notes that it should be a neutral editor who warns, not an involved one, see permanent version GoRight had warned S. Dean Jameson about posting to my Talk page after being asked not to do so.

Jehochman wrote: There are such things as warnings, but they are best delivered by uninvolved editors. Abd, or you acting as his agent, to "warn" me is not effective at all, and could be viewed as disruptive. My block was based on his warning as the primary one, but in that warning, he noted that he is an involved editor. Yet, here, he would say that if I warn him, because I'm involved, it is of no effect at all.[29] (GoRight was not my agent, I did not even know that he had given this notice.) It would appear that Jehochman has an asymmetric view of editor rights.--Abd (talk) 21:11, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Jehochman may post in this subsection

Solely for the purpose of addressing issues in this section, and not for any personal attack regarding me, Jehochman may post in this subsection, in spite of my general ban of him from my Talk page. I may close this section at any time. Comment here is not invited, but is allowed. --Abd (talk) 21:11, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Read WP:WOLF. I wish you would go edit some articles instead of brewing dramas. You seem to greatly overestimate how much time and attention you deserve from the community. Please stop demanding more than your fair share. Jehochman ^Talk 21:14, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Well, I could interpret "brewing dramas" as a personal attack, but harassment, it isn't, because the edit is here by my sufferance. I'll let it go. I know you wish that I'd stay out of your way, out of Wikipedia space, so you and the "good guys" can run the place without criticism. This is as minimal drama as I could manage without handling the whole thing by email. Nobody sees this except someone who watches my Talk, or who stalks you or me. As to the essay, sure. It's true. On the other hand, that refers to crying "Wolf!" when there is no wolf. Does that apply here? Are you aware that you have gone a bit far? You may respond here, if you think it prudent, I'm not sure that it would be, but feel free. --Abd (talk) 21:31, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

I didn't demand, in fact, any attention, through this whole process. I asked an admin to clarify a decision. He could have ignored the request. I responded to an AN section that I didn't create. Creating an AN or AN/I report does effectively demand some attention, but commenting in one generally does not. Further commenting in my own Talk is almost completely free of any demand for attention, except for an unblock template, and I only created one of those. It was proper, and concise. I believe I have now taken voluntary action that should resolve Jehochman's concerns about "brewing dramas." Or, more precisely, if I'm brewing a drama, it will take place solely in my user space, almost as if I had remained blocked, and I'd advise anyone offended by this "drama" to minimize their participation. Jehochman will be welcome to participate or to name a proxy whose opinion he'd think would be most likely to represent his, should he take this page or the involved pages off his watchlist and not care to waste more of his own valuable time. He can name this proxy at any time, and he'll be able to change the assignment at any time, and he won't be bound by any actions of this proxy, and, should he participate himself in some involved process, such as by voting in a poll, the proxy is without any effect at all, I'd disregard it and consider his own !vote. The proxy table will be solely for the purpose of advising me regarding how representative any conclusion here is likely to represent what the community would decide in a cautious and wide process. That's all. But ... wouldn't it be interesting if this works? This is the primary problem that the Wikipedia community faces, in its process, because we depend on local consensus that, sometimes, deviates widely from what a broader consensus, with better process, will conclude. (Actually, we don't depend on that, really, for our process uses what might be called "random judge with review." But we do make individual conclusions about consensus; for example, many admins think that there was a consensus that I harassed Fritzpoll. But when you look closer, there is disagreement on this, and it is far from clear that those concluding this actually examined the evidence, but came to their conclusion in some other way, which could include prior bias, trusting the report of another wihtout confirming it, failure to consider contrary analysis, etc., etc. This is why some ArbComm members want to create a Wikipedia council of some kind. It might not be necessary to create such a council, or, if it is necessary, proxy assignments could be used to create a dynamically representative council, I won't describe how, but it's not rocket science. No elections. No bureaucracy necessary. Fully representative, and continuously so, no dependence on what the opinion was about a candidate in an election last year as distinct from now. Geez, you'd think people would be climbing all over themselves to understand this. But, in fact, most editors don't even understand what the problem is, much less what could possibly solve it, and that is perfectly normal if they have not seen an example. Hence, this, here, now. It was partly an intuition of this that led me to comment, when I was blocked, "You don't know how happy you have made me, Iridescent," or something like that. By the way, it was also very, very painful to be blocked, it aroused old obsessions, it was psychologically very difficult. Shortly before the unblock, I was having very dark thoughts, thoughts of wikisuicide on the one hand, or of vandalism and revenge, on the other, stuff that is, actually, very typical when a user is blocked and does not find himself or herself capable of understanding that it was just. The last night before the unblock was the worst, I couldn't sleep, and that has a major impact on my family. Hence the wikisuicide idea: to stop myself from obsessing about this. Except that I don't think it would have worked. If seriously blocked, my concepts would still apply, and I'd still consider this experiment important. I'd still have set up this process, but because of technical restraints, I'd have set it up on another MediaWiki installation. I have one, you know. It's better if it's here, for Wikipedia.--Abd (talk) 18:43, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

A favor

Abd, I want to start off by thanking you for your dedication to mine and other's causes. However, I want you to understand that Fritzpoll is a good person and contributes a lot. I feel that you misplaced some of your criticism against him, and it spiraled out of hand. You may feel otherwise. However, this is just how I feel. Yes, I tend to get emotional and depressed about stuff like this. Yes, I am better in books and situations removed from conflict. However, I want you to understand that I have worked with Fritzpoll in other areas, and I have seen his contributions.

I am a little saddened by what happened, and I don't think anyone wanted this all to spiral out of control. I don't know what to say, or how to help. All I know is that I want you to recognize that Fritzpoll is a decent individual and means no harm. Some of your actions, in this light, have been a little unfair, and a lot of people out there are willing to defend Fritzpoll at all costs. As you stated before, he is not your enemy. However, you pursued him enough that it seemed to blur the boundaries. I don't feel comfortable when people pursue a topic in that way against me, and I am sure that others feel the same way. Its not so much your style, and its not so much your dedication. It was just that you focused on someone who wasn't really that involved and didn't really deserve that much attention.

I hope you understand how I feel, and I hope you understand why I want you to recognize Fritzpoll as a hard working member of this community. I don't want you indefinitely banned, but some people feel as if they had no other choice. Please, I need you to respect Fritzpoll and move on. Don't put together more evidence, or at least keep it off Wikipedia for your records. Don't harp on it. Try to move beyond it because it is honestly best for the community. Please. You are welcome to my email as always. Ottava Rima (talk) 04:27, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, Ottava. I think you may not understand what has been happening. Fritzpoll and I have no current dispute except possibly some minor details, which really aren't important. I did not pursue him. At all. It's complicated, and I don't have time at this point to explain what did happen, but the harassment charge, that I was attacking or harassing him, was repeated over and over; the sum of it, though, was that I communicated with him for a limited period of time, discussing the WW topic ban, and it seemed we were done there. I wrote something on my Talk page in response to a comment from him, where I gave him some strong advice, not taken well, but it certainly was not an attack, and I responded with edits to an AN report that he filed, based on my questions about his close of the topic ban discussion. That's it. That is far short of harassment. I'm engaged in reviewing the evidence about my actions not about Fritzpoll. That's what's in the section above, the evidence being compiled here. It's currently the evidence against me and, yes, Fritzpoll is mentioned, simply because the posts I made that were allegedly attacking him mention him. He is not the subject, I am. He is not the target, and, if you look around my exploding Talk page, you'll find that I've explicitly stated that he was not in any way to blame for my block, he's not my enemy, I never had any intention of going after him, I simply intended to challenge the WW topic ban, which is not about him, it's about WW -- and possibly Blechnic, her accuser/harasser. The next actions I would have taken would have hardly mentioned Fritzpoll. Yes, I think he made some errors, but that is, and would have been, water under the bridge, moot.

I have not reviewed Fritzpoll's contributions, but most administrators are hard-working, infinitely underpaid. I have no reason to doubt, not only his good faith -- which I never questioned, at any point -- but also his general work as an editor or administrator. I simply thought he didn't understand an important thing and tried to explain it to him. And I think he made an error regarding the evidence against WW. I make errors. Admins make errors. Everybody makes mistakes. As I've said, if you don't make any mistakes, you aren't trying hard enough. So that I think -- and continue to think -- that he made some mistake, is far, far short of a personal attack or a general smear. It's a tiny thing, one or two decisions. Out of thousands.

Of course, we could say the same about Wilhelmina Will, couldn't we?

Anyway, thanks for your support, it's appreciated. --Abd (talk) 04:48, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

One more comment. What happened yesterday was not about Fritzpoll. To quote Bob Dylan, "only a pawn in their game." I suspect that Fredrick day knew exactly what he was doing when he made it look like he was Fritzpoll. He knew that I'd recognize his IP immediately. He knew what the edit would look like. Now, I wasn't exactly fooled. I knew it was quite possible that the whole thing had been created by Fredrick day, that it really had nothing to do with Fritzpoll. I think Fredrick day, also, may have taken advantage of Fritzpoll's transient "retirement" notice. Fd had done that several times when the jig was up. So he may also have thought that this would increase my suspicion.

But, in fact, I never "accused" Fritzpoll of being Fredrick day. I have not reviewed all the evidence against me, yet, but the block summary features "false accusations of sock puppetry, without providing evidence" something I never did. It is not an accusation of sock puppetry to point to a cause of suspicion, to note or even claim that suspicion is reasonable, if there is evidence, and the evidence reasonably leading to suspicion was right there, immediately preceding my comments supposedly accusing Fp of sock puppetry, and I explicitly stated that this could be Fredrick day and not Fritzpoll. The sock suspicion was merely a possibility, a totally unexpected one, vastly complicating things, that dropped into the middle of a discussion that I thought was winding down.

But where I was blindsided was in two ways: I did not factor for how carelessly some read what I and other write. Even though I kept a careful distinction between suspicion and accusation, and never strayed into the latter, some here are very ready to impute motive. If I mention a suspicion, why would I be doing this? Obviously, to accuse, right? Not right.

And I did not think that continuing to discuss the matter on my Talk page would be considered blockworthy. It wasn't actually, there is a quite a bit of ArbComm precedent on this. But we'll get to that later. --Abd (talk) 04:59, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Lots of people are temporarily blocked due to stuff they've said on their talk page. That's all that's happened. Sticky Parkin 18:06, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Sure. But I'm not "lots of people." And I've seen many such blocks. Many of them have been, arguably, appropriate. It's very simple, if I was properly blocked, here, then the block should stand. If not, not. How do we determine if I was properly blocked? There is process. I'm following it. Admitting to what I did not do isn't part of that process. Promising not to repeat something might be. Depends, very much depends on details. Let's see what happens. There are now grounds for any admin to unblock me, quite simple and clear grounds. Whether or not it happens depends, to a degree, on the luck of the draw, whatever admin is the first to attend to the unblock template. It's pretty risky process, because I already know that perhaps one-third of admins, or more, will look at the history and say, "the block was proper." Unless they really take the time to examine the evidence and arguments in detail, which most of them won't do. Gotta go. --Abd (talk) 19:13, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Archiving assistance

Abd, your talkpage is currently very long, over 400K, and some people's browsers start having trouble with anything over 32K. Is it alright if I setup an archivebot for the page? --Elonka 06:18, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, yes, though I wouldn't want to archive anything newer than two weeks at this point. It's a bit of a nuisance, I don't think I can create or edit user space files, being blocked.... --Abd (talk) 07:36, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Looks like Xenocidic added the bot already, and did a first archiving pass, thanks.  :) I tweaked it a bit and added an auto archivebox. Even at a 14-day cutoff though, the page is still at 300K, so I'd recommend a faster archive cycle for now, such as 7 days. It can always be tweaked slower later, and any threads that have been inactive for a week and get archived, you can just put a pointer to the archive and continue the discussions here on the live page. To be honest, when a page is at 300K, if a thread goes inactive, it's probably going to stay inactive, since there's so much else going on.  :) If you really want to "keep" the thread though, just add a datestamped comment to it, and that'll "weight it down" so the bot doesn't grab it. The bot is smart enough to only harvest threads that have had no new posts in awhile. --Elonka 16:05, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your assistance on this, Elonka, it's appreciated. I suppose that if I think something needs to come back, I could bring it back. (Might be duplicate for a while (since I can't edit the archives), but that's easy to fix, so go ahead.) It's also kinda nice to know that you might be watching this page. I feel just a tad safer. I'm not worried about being blocked, or the further step of my Talk access being blocked, which I see as a real risk at this point, because what I want to do right now is simply analyze what happened, before reacting to it beyond discussion here. Maybe they are right, I had some kind of fugue, and I viciously attacked Fritzpoll. I want to know! What a mess! Anyway, whatever happens, it's better if it is seen. --Abd (talk) 16:48, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

The page was back up to 300K, so I did some more manual archiving to get it back into the 150K range. This does involve archiving threads which are only 48 hours old, but I tried to do my best to only archive the threads that had "gone cold". If you'd like anything restored back to the live page, let me know. --Elonka 15:13, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Tell you what, Elonka. I have a suggestion for you or any other admin who reads this. Pending some statement by an admin that he or she would unblock me without the condition, were the block still in place, I would agree to confine myself to my user space and not edit outside that if I were unblocked now, before the issues are resolved. I actually agreed to this before I was blocked, and it seems the blocking admin may not have noticed it, plus the blocking admin seems to have considered my continued discussion here to be a reason for block, which is a tad strange. Prevent me from editing my Talk page to make alleged "personal attacks," by requiring that I edit only my Talk page? I did continue discussion here, just as I would have if not blocked, except that the block itself became a subject of discussion, and nobody has threatened me or warned me other than to warn me that this is not the way to get unblocked, which is certainly true. If I were actually attacking someone, I'd think that I'd be warned that I would be prevented from editing this page if it continued. In any case, unblocking me now would allow me to handle the archiving and to, as well, shove some discussions into a subpage. And thanks for your assistance regardless. --Abd (talk) 15:28, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

I have a parallel unblock request using the formal unblock template. If I'm unblocked through that, terms of an unblock, if any, would be set by the unblocking admin. If I'm unblocked pending further resolution, so that I can attend to work here in my user space, then that restriction (to my user space) would stand. Just to make it clear. An admin unblocking for this local purpose would presumably make it clear in the unblock notice, or can, of course, set other restrictions. Thanks. --Abd (talk) 18:53, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Rehashing some old advice

Abd, I posted this and this on your talk page last month. I was concerned about your bold approach at challenging the Wikipedia powers, and now I'm more concerned. You have a lot to offer here, and I happen to think your analysis of Wikipedia is dead on, but the way your dealing with it is Wiki-suicide.

Wikipedia is an oligarchy, and the last thing you want to do with that kind of power structure is stand in the town square shouting out wordy accusations. Even if they're not accustions per se, anything which challenges the authority of a power user is bound to draw attention. You can't do that if you hope to survive here.

Now you have a block on your record, and you still don't seem to get it. You are still trying to mount a defense as if there is a fair and impartial judicial system that will hear it - there is nothing of the sort. Even arbcom seems reluctant to take even the smallest of steps in challenging the elite. The best you can hope for is to continue editing, make your opinions known non-aggressively and without direct criticism of the elite, and join the growing list of editors who are trying to address these problems passively.

As for this particular block, at this point anything you say will be used against you, so it's best to say nothing, offer a concise apology, and back off from the conflict. You will not be exonerated even if you're right, so might as well cop a plea and live to edit another day. ATren (talk) 13:39, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

I am afraid that I must whole heartedly agree with this advice from ATren. Your best course of action at this time is to simply replace everything in the section for your unblock request with just the unblock template and a single sentence unconditionally expressing good faith towards both Fritzpoll and Iridescent, a sincere apology for any misunderstandings and wikifuss, and a commitment to put this matter behind you without any further action towards either. This is my advice to you as the most sensible way way for your to continue to be an advocate and an adviser for WW. Helping her is more important in the big picture than making some point over this block, is it not? --GoRight (talk) 15:06, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Concur with both, hence my offer to unblock with a succinct (I understand that "succinct" means different things to different people) unblock request. I was also very much turned off by the "formulating unblock, please don't edit here" thread, and completely understand why Jehochman replied the way he did. He is not harassing you Abd, he is following up with you to continue to air his grievance. The thread titled "Jehochman is harassing me" should also be removed, it will not give you any leverage towards an unblock with whomever comes along. I ask again, and implore you to follow the sage advice by ATren and seconded by GoRight. I will unblock, but I need to see contrition. Lots of things went way off track here Abd, many through no fault of your own. The threads you are filling your talkpage with right now do not alleviate anything. If you absolutely, positively, and strongly feel that the best course of action for you, and for Wikipedia, and for your Cause of helping others (WW, others) is to continue to post 10,000+kb messages, keep going. I've read them all at this point, really I have. I will not read or respond to anymore. The only post I'll respond to at this point, if you want my help, is what has been requested of you here. Keeper ǀ 76 15:13, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

(edit conflict):::Thanks, Keeper76, I consider your edit here to be purely intended to be helpful. However, as to the "formulating unblock" section -- not a thread -- it's the equivalent of a draft page. It wasn't even intended to be read, it is for my use. So if it offended you, I'd ask why. I do understand that it's unusual. I could do it offline, and will probably do so. So what's the problem with doing it here? It wasn't argumentative, it was pure evidence. Evidence of what? Well, that's what I'm trying to find out. It's the evidence given by Iridescent for blocking me, nothing else, simply expanded and put together with context and dates. I don't know about you, but I can't look at a series of diffs and see what they are all about. I need to know what that evidence means before I respond to it, my response will depend on it. I'm quite aware that if I simply put up an unblock request template, perhaps with a few harmless apologies, there are some administrators waiting to do it. You said you would, and I fulfilled the conditions, I believe. I do wonder why you haven't done it, by the way. You don't have to wait for a request, and the blocking admin clearly said he'd not impose an unblock. Change your mind? I won't hold you to your promise (just as I wouldn't hold Elonka to hers about admin recall, we must ignore foolish promises. Well, not ignore, respect, but not necessarily follow.) Tell you what: if you withdraw the promise, I'll consider you not bound by it. Just be explicit, please.

Your reading shows good intentions, Keeper76, and I fully recognize what a burden that is, but doesn't necessarily guarantee understanding. I'll say this: if you put as much time into reading what I write, as I put into writing it, and researching it before, you'd be more likely to understand it. Much of what I write won't be understood by some readers for years. If I wanted to control people, I definitely wouldn't write this way! But I'm simply sharing what I have, and I have only a little time before it will be impossible. And that has nothing to do with whatever happens here. There are others who understand my agenda, my plans, and they'll do it when the time is right. It does not depend on me, and those who think that blocking me would hinder it are mistaken. As was discussed with Sarsaparilla long ago -- here on my Talk page, I think -- attempts to stop what I see coming will hasten it. Rather, the sane response would be to join it, to make sure the process does not go awry, for it will make whoever participates far more effective, and if only disruptive people participate, well, we would see very effective, practically unstoppable disruption. I certainly don't predict that, in fact, I predict the opposite. Most of those who now may think of themselves as very much opposed to me and the way I think and what I'd propose will end up joining it. By its very nature, it is not against them, even if they were to try to destroy it. But such efforts, if continued too long, will destroy those who attempt it.

It might be time to test some basic principles here. We need to learn if they are true or not. Do I have the right to remove posts from my Talk page that aren't needed for warning or block process? Can I request that a section be allowed for my exclusive use? Can I move posts put in that section out of the section, without changing meaning or losing their context? What rights does a blocked user maintain on their Talk page? (I'd suggest that no rights are lost, with the possible evidence being edits relevant to a block request. Still, I've seen users delete a block warning, and the guidelines I've read on that is that it was moot and the user had the right to do it.) If I'm defiant on my Talk page only, is this "disruption"? May administrators and others attack me on my Talk page, gratuitiously, not in a way needed for process? In blocking me, a very tight standard was used for NPA, which considered even civil criticism of a ban decision to be "personal attack," suspicion of sock puppetry based on present and obvious evidence (even though that evidence was ultimately misleading) to be personal attack (wouldn't every SSP report that turns out to be improper in some way, then be "personal attack," even if civil?) and "harassment."

And much more. Are administrators personally responsible for close decisions, or can they claim that "I didn't decide this, the community decided it," even if the community !voting was divided and evidence was missing? This, by the way, is something that was asserted by Fritzpoll, and I mention it now because it's an unresolved issue that the community should decide at some point, not to attack him. He's done, and he has a right to his opinion, and he clearly has some support in it, so it's beyond any kind of reproach for it.

I don't ask or demand that anyone read the relatively long edits I make. This is my Talk page, it's not in anyone's face who doesn't choose to read it. When I want or expect someone to read something, I edit it tightly, boil it down, and present all needed evidence as conveniently as possible. That's why I started with collecting the evidence against me. The next step would be to analyze it. If I found that I'd acted improperly, I'd then apologize for that, including apologizing to the blocking admin for any errors of mine that affected him (and simply being an occasion for block is a degree of inconvenience, i.e., if I did something wrong, I owe the blocking admin, as well as the community, an apology.) I requested help from the community as to harassment here by Jehochman. It was clearly harassment, it's not marginal. If that harassment is permitted by the community, which will be judged by its actual response, not by its guidelines and policies or some kind of vague good will, I don't want to be editing here. (I judge only with respect to where I put my time, the ultimate judgment is the judgment of history.) I still have plans, Wikipedia is far too important to drop, but I'd use other means. Don't worry. Not disruptive. The opposite. It's simple. If I should be blocked, if you are an admin and you think that the block is better for the community, leave it alone, it's indef. If you think it would be better for the community, unblock me. I'm not placing a template partly because I only get one chance, and I want to do it right, totally right. Yes, that takes much more work than just making a minimal request with some possibly phony apology, -- it has to be phony if I don't understand what I did wrong -- but that's my choice. The only time I'm wasting would be my own, and the time to read whatever I ultimately come up with, if it's not effective.--Abd (talk) 16:24, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

I received a friendly email from an uninvolved editor with concerns about this situation. In response, I explained how Abd could probably get unblocked. I'll repeat my advice here. 1/ Archive most of the content on this page. That shows that you do not wish to carry forward any grudges. 2/ Make a clear, concise statement of what you plan to do at Wikipedia, with a focus on article improvement. 3/ Promise not to stir up drama for the sake of drama. We are here to engage in a collaborative project. Engaging other users in disputes over process and policy is not what Wikipedia is for. Pick a few articles and get them certified as featured or good . The more writing you do, the more patience people will have for entertaining your proposals. Wikipedia is a meritocracy and an oligocracy, not a bureaucracy. Jehochman ^Talk 15:49, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Sure. I've read that advice, sincerely transmitted to me by another editor. I'll note that the conditions for my unblock have started to expand. Originally, it was simply, apologize to Fritzpoll -- which I think had already been done by then, I'm not sure -- and clarify what I meant by a certain post, with regard to Iridescent, and I clarified what it was about and specifically excluded Iridescent from that, it wasn't intended to apply to him when written. But now, there is a far more difficult set of requirements being suggested by Jehochman, who is, in my opinion, a major part of the problem here. So I'm requesting this:

Jehochman, there may be some good advice in what you wrote above. If my personal editing status were my goal, indeed, I'd have followed earlier advice, indeed, I wouldn't have been blocked. But my goal is the overall welfare of the project, and that requires a different approach, for me, regarding my special skills and vision. I've not been disruptive, the claims of harassment against Fritzpoll were totally false, there was not one "harassing" edit, nothing that required response from him, no filing of AN/I reports, RfCs, or any of that. So, Jehochman, unless it is necessary, i.e., your clear duty to edit here, don't. Stay away from my Talk, your participation here is literally disruptive, preventing me from doing necessary work here on my unblock request, and it's contrary to guidelines in other ways as well. I may revert any disruptive edits you make here. I don't see any necessity for any of what you've done here lately. (This is after my block.) You have personally attacked me, claimed that I'm useless to the project, should remain indef blocked because of that, and so forth (these aren't specific claims, now, just my general impression in my memory.) If I'm to be advised, here, it's not by you. Plenty of admins and others are doing a better job, anyway. If you continue to harass me here (as well as to encourage harassment, which you also did), I'm not warning you that I'll pursue recourse, I'm promising it; if necessary, through email to ArbComm. I know the procedure. I've never tried it. Maybe it's time. I'll be asking for plenty of advice, don't worry about that! But not so much advice on how to get unblocked, I already know how to do that, at least the easy way, but what I'm planning is not disruptive and is more likely to come up with a definitive decision with no fuss. In the Fritzpoll affair, I was rigorously following WP:DR, by the book, and that was considered harassment. That should not be allowed to stand, not just for me, but for the project. Emailing ArbComm, of course, is not the first step!--Abd (talk) 16:40, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

You have misunderstood or misrepresented me. I've never "promised" to do anything, let alone unblock you, I offered, with conditions. You've failed to meet them yet. I never said make a "phony apology", I said, to the best of your ability for the benefit of the situation, be succinct. You also have a misinterpretation of the "block template". There is no rule, written or understood, that you only get "one chance" if you use the block template. Yes, historically, a usertalk page will get protected if the block template is abused, but not if it is used, appropriately, multiple times. All that to say, I have made no promise of an unblock, only advice as to how to arrive at one most efficiently, and my willingness to be the unblocker. Jehochman is not harassing you and I'm sorry you feel that he is. Adding (subtlely, yes) that I don't "understand" you because I don't agree with you is not helpful either. I understand completely why you are blocked. I am witnessing, as others may or may not agree, one of the most astounding cases of "wikilawyering" that I've ever seen. Tearing apart "iridescent's block rationale", saying I was "suspicious, but I didn't accuse" Fritzpoll of being F-day, etc etc. It's a semantics game here, Abd. You are clouded by your own philosophy, you do not have a firm grasp on what Wikipedia is really all about. If you did, you'd realize that the most important aspect here is not the editors, but the editing. Editors that aren't working towards the editing are blocked for disruption. You've made no assertions here, or anywhere, that you have any intention of improving the encyclopedic quality of Wikipedia, you've only made assertions that "you know how Wikipedia works, and how to fix it." It strikes me, and I'm sure others, as being incredibly presumptious, haughty even. You do have a decent grasp on human psychology/motivations/social structures. You have Wikipedia all wrong though. You really do. Keeper ǀ 76 16:48, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for clarifying. An administrator had written to me by email saying that he was going to leave it to you to unblock, so apparently he read it the same way as me, but it's now moot. That's all I was asking for, clarity, and you provided that. Yes, much of what you write is accurate, but only as far as it goes. If I see Wikipedia differently from you, and our POVs can be integrated, we get depth perception. If POVs other than the one are excluded, we get something far less rich, even if the single POV is "neutral." No point arguing about it here. I have philosophical differences with what you've written here, and, yes, if I note that your argument seems one-sided and shallow, for that reason, I fully understand that it could seem "presumptious, haughty even." It might even seem presumptuous. Understand that I've been faced with this for many decades. I'm wrong sometimes, for sure, but I've turned out to be right more often than not. I'll say this much: I do not presume I'm right. That is a terrible error to make, paralyzing judgment. But I simply express the way things look to me, which includes analysis as well as report. The report, if done correctly, is never wrong, it's just a literal POV. The analysis is where I can more easily fail. Anyway, you are relieved of any responsibility whatever from the original comment, it appears that I misunderstood it. You certainly have no further responsibility to read what I write, here or almost anywhere else. --Abd (talk) 17:05, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

I've never once felt that I had a "responsibility" to respond, I do so because I choose to do so. If you are uninviting my company, sobeit, this will be my last post if you tell me not to post here. It is my estimation that you've overestimated your cognizance of this siutation and, in rather belittling fashion, underestimated mine. My intentions have been, and continue to be, pure (although apparently, my spelling bad). If we lived anywhere near each other (and egads, I just realized I have no idea where you are in the real world, nor is it my business, but I'm in Minnesota), I would buy you a beer, or a beverage of your choice while I drank a beer, and we'd hash this out in the communication medium that would be most effective - verbal. Written words are written words. My inner voice reads tone and inflection differently from yours. Jehochman types something, I read it one way (advice and warnings), you read it another (harassment). I could go right back up to the top of this page, reread it all the way down to the bottom, and come out the other side with a completely different interpretation. As could you. Right now, my interpretation of this is that you are more interested in grandstanding your opinions and conjectures than in collobarating in an online encyclopedia. Sobeit. For now, you are "restricted" to your talkpage. I don't believe you will remain "indefinitely blocked", nor do I think you will (or should) be banned from wikipedia. However, the edits that you've chosen to make, as to the betterment of the site's content, revolve almost exclusively around your single purpose and real life work. [Your Talk:] and [User talk:] and [Wikipedia:] all carry the same overall tone and flavor, in my interpretation, some overwhelming desire on your part to "save Wikipedia from itself", or some "perceived threat". And that manifests itself, again all in my interpretation, as "represent the unrepresented". You tend to talk right over people, Abd, with preconceived notions of righting the wronged. All noble, I suppose, and respectable work. But honestly? It is completely exasperating when spread too thin or pushed too hard. If you could humor me with a favor. Go back and read my first post in regards to this mess (I believe Jehochman started the thread as "warning before block", and my post is the third in that section, the one that starts with "huh." Keeper ǀ 76 17:19, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, Keeper. No, I was not uninviting you, at all. You have made useful contributions here. The harassment of Jehochman came when he undid a formatting change I made so that I could edit the evidence page without running into edit conflicts, made with a severe warning about touching his edits in any way. That was out of bounds. I didn't change his actual edit, as to content, nor the framing of it. Instead, I placed a descriptive section header, description not controversial, that connected what followed with what was before. Jehochman then made a post that was pure attack. It wasn't warning, it wasn't advice, it was on the lines of "this is a disruptive, wikilawyering, useless editor, he should be banned." (not exact words.) Then, S. Dean Jacobsen, the person who actually suggested that I investigate the Ottava Rima block issue -- I had posted a consoling note on the OR Talk page that didn't make any assumptions about "guilt or innocence" -- as part of an attack on OR, posted without necessity on my Talk, "seconding" the attack from Jehochman; S. Dean Jacobsen had promised, quite a few times, not to post further to my Talk, thus making unnecessary my asking him not to. Anyway, Jehochman essentially ratified that post by noting that I wasn't in any position to "threaten," i.e., do something about it. None of this was helpful, and Jehochman, in spite of some suggestions that might look helpful on the surface, is actually striking at the heart of my purpose on Wikipedia. Which isn't, by the way, to implement my supposed COI ideas, but to help bring the community to the point where it could even consider such a thing. It would only happen by consensus, except for one thing. The ideas can be implemented, at any time, by any group of editors who realizes the value. But I dropped promoting those ideas, in any steady way, maybe six months ago, making only occasional comments as it seemed appropriate. No, it's not my "Real life work." I.e., I don't have any position or income the like. And it's irrelevant to the vast proportion of what I've done, which has mostly been to learn how Wikipedia "really" works by doing as well as by reading guidelines and policies. And, by the way, by editing a few articles as well. Mostly, though, to resolve disputes. You might take a look at Routemaster as an example. So far, so good, at least up until a few days ago.

You are, I'll repeat, very right about a lot of things. But I'm not necessarily how I appear. If we met face-to-face, we'd probably cut through the bullshit very, very quickly, I suspect from what you've written above. I'm in Western Massachusetts. Don't drink beer, of course, but the thought is appreciated. Coffee, with heavy cream, please. --Abd (talk) 17:50, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

I'll take a coffee as well, black, and skip the beer this time. No cream though, lactose is one of my very few intolerances.  :-) Seeing as I would have a very difficult time explaining to my significant other, I won't be planning a trip to Western Mass anytime soon (although I've been there before, nice little slice of the country, but too crowded (in my biased Midwestern senses) for my tastes. How would you like to proceed? I recommend the same that I recommended above. Make a valiant effort at conciseness, to your best ability. I would recommend at this point, using offwiki avenues for "compiling the evidence" instead of your talkpage. If for know other reason, it has apparently created yet another distraction with unwanted responses, which garner responses, which get responded to. You can paddle upriver all day instead, and then portage your canoe down the shoreline to the conclusion of the river, as you have been doing. A lot of wasted energies, from a perception point, but you may find it to be useful for your own doings. I, of course, recommend just paddling downriver towards the same eventual delta. Keeper ǀ 76 18:01, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Heh, that is an excellent analogy. Sometimes that feels exactly like what Adb has a tendency to do.  :) --GoRight (talk) 20:12, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Sure, as to compiling off-wiki, I came to the same conclusion myself. Slight additional hassle, but less fuss. As to upriver, downriver, I'm just trying to cross it, going for what is right in front of me. It can seem like more work in the short run, but the long run is a different matter. As I've written before, when I understand the situation and know what I want, I've very concise. I'm just trying to get there first. I don't know what I want, don't know if I want to be blocked or unblocked. I have a fairly strong opinion that the block was improper, but, until I review the evidence, I could easily be biased about that. When I review the evidence, and am myself convinced one way or the other by it, then I'll not whether to respond with "Sorry. Won't do that again." or "Here's the evidence and my analysis. Unblock me, please." And, I think it's clear, if it is the second option, and I'm not unblocked, I go to the next step, probably wouldn't waste time with a second unblock request. But those are both speculation. I need to review that evidence, and it takes time.

(edit conflict) In the meantime, there are editors arguing that I should be unblocked immediately, at least one. That there is no benefit to the project from my being blocked. That's not my decision to make. It could be made by any admin, at this point, at least to unblock. The longer it goes without such reversal, the longer it appears to me that the claims of those that my actions are useless are true, that there is no hope of challenging the oligarchy, which will serve itself first, then the project (though it conflates those two goals, i.e., it protects itself because it believes that it must do so for the welfare of the project, and it might even be right), are correct in which case I conclude that Wikipedia has gone past the point of no return, even if there are plenty of excellent editors left, and I put my energy elsewhere. Believe it or not, I don't like tilting at windmills. --18:19, 13 August 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Abd (talk • contribs)

Lol I've not read the other's comments yet, but ATren completely hit the nail on the head.:) As to compiling stuff, you can do it in a word processor, or my quick and easy version is to write it in an email and send it to myself. Sticky Parkin 18:12, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

I also think ATren summarized the situation well, especially the last sentence: As for this particular block, at this point anything you say will be used against you, so it's best to say nothing, offer a concise apology, and back off from the conflict. You will not be exonerated even if you're right, so might as well cop a plea and live to edit another day. I'm of the opinion, though, that Abd (and of course I'm been presumtious here :-) may not actually be capable of "backing off from the conflict" and offering an apology, without first knowing what he is apologizing for. I've given him some ideas as to what needs to be apologized for, but they are only ideas. As Abd has stated many times, this really doesn't have anything to do with Fritzpoll, except tangentially, a tipping point of sorts. I don't think "exhoneration" is the same thing to Abd as it would be to one of our younger, less sophisticated editors either(namely, an unblock). To abuse the analogy above, everyone else sees a goal "downriver," and Abd going "upriver" instead. Abd sees himself trying or attempting neither route, but crossing instead. This is all quite fascinating (and a bit tiring). Keeper ǀ 76 18:29, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Lots of excellent advice and analogies here. I particularly like the "upstream, downstream, delta, crossing the river" analogy. Jehochman's advice at 15:49, 13 August 2008 (in an earlier thread - the three points and suggestion about people having more patience with those who have contributed content) was excellent. Abd's comment at 18:19, 13 August 2008 (about oligarchal self-preservation and not wanting to tilt at windmills) also seems very perceptive. I wouldn't go quite so far as to say that Abd should generalise from his situation to that of Wikipedia in general (I interpret what he says as being that the response, or lack of response, to his block can be used in some way to assess the "health" of Wikipedia's administrative systems). I don't think Wikipedia is quite homogenous enough for that (and is too large for a single data point to mean much anyway). Injustices do occur every day all over Wikipedia, and you do sometimes have to take an eventualist attitude. Sometimes things go wrong, but eventually things should turn out OK if the overarching principles are broadly maintained. Oh, and the only reason I haven't unblocked is because I consider myself too closely involved now, which ironically is the reason Iridescent gave somewhere (I think) for not unblocking. I suppose an equivalent to a "block where the blocking admin has said they won't oppose an unblock", would be an "unblock where the unblocking admin won't stand in the way of a re-block". But that feels silly and kind of like passing the buck around. Better for someone to take responsibility, to make an end to the matter here, and then have everyone move on. That, and the focus is again being dragged away from the WW topic ban that started this off. Carcharoth (talk) 22:00, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

(edit conflict):Yes, Carcharoth, you could be considered to be involved -- though not any more involved than many blocking/unblocking admins I've seen, and quite possibly no more involved than Iridescent was when he blocked. Seemed he was irritated by my writing. He'd warned me and, I think, he considered me uncivil in response, so he blocked. That's actually blatant COI. This very point has come up, and yes, there are some knotty problems involved. I'd argue that, given the circumstances, given that it's not contentious, being permitted by the blocking admin, you could unblock if you think that best. COI editors are allowed to make uncontentious edits. It's true that another admin could decide to reblock, but that would be a new decision and any fuss raised by that would be the responsibility of the new blocking admin, not you, nor Iridescent, who is done here.

I don't have any question about Iridescent's good faith in blocking me. I really can't predict what I'll think about whether or not his block was proper or not until I review the evidence in detail, which I certainly intend to do, particularly if I'm not unblocked. My impression from what I've seen so far is that, indeed, the block was improper, but what if that last diff I go over turns out to be a Holy Shit! moment for me? It's not done till it's done. From what I know so far, though, and given the assumption of good faith that is not at all difficult for me with Iridescent, the most I'd come to was a conclusion that it was improper, a good faith error, and, as we all know, we don't sanction those, we let them go unless there is serious concern they will be repeated. Both Psychim62 and Tango made good faith blocks -- in my opinion -- but were desysopped, but not really because of the blocks themselves, it was because, when the community later determined that COI rules had been violated, they refused to acknowledge it, and continued to assert they had acted correctly, thus creating reasonable fear that they didn't understand those rules. By the way, one of the areas of "conflict" that I participated in was the Physchim62 arbitration, where I think I helped formulate the community's view. I know I got some compliments on what I wrote there.

Thanks for your notice of my writing, Carcharoth. You raise, of course, a very valid point. What happens to me is just another data point. You referred to eventualism, and that's my point. The longer an improper block, if that is what it is, stands, when there are opportunities for the community to review it, the more it means. It could be said that every hour that passes without some review, given how visible this was, and apparently still is, is another data point. But, sure, Wikipedia justice is quite erratic.

Now, what about this block? Was it proper? If Iridescent had exercised due diligence and caution, would he have blocked? My impression of his edits leading up to the blocks was of impatience, and the block notice had a section header of something like "Enough is enough." That's a comment indicating frustration. At this point, I have apologized to Fritzpoll, but without acknowledging any wrongdoing. In other words, I don't believe that I personally attacked him, nor that I accused him of being a sock puppet, I kept my remarks with the allowed bounds of reasonable suspicion. And I can establish this with evidence. Later evidence came to my attention that removed all suspicion, and since being suspected of sock puppetry can be stressful -- though I've been suspected and I guarantee you, situations arise for me every day where I'm much more uncomfortable! -- I apologized to him. I'll note, as well, that I did not create the suspicion, Fredrick day did, with a typical Fredrick day intervention. That some admins didn't recognize it and thought I was overreacting added to the impression that Iridescent would have had.

Iridescent has claimed that I've attacked him afterwards, but that's not relevant to the question of whether or not the block was proper. A review of the block should be based on the evidence available at the time. That block record doesn't go away. So, what I'm looking for is a block that clears me of the charges made in the block. I'm not just looking for unblock. If I erred so badly that I personally attacked an editor (not just once but seven times) and made "sock puppet accusations with no evidence," then I really shouldn't be editing here, or certainly not in the areas I've worked in. But if I didn't, then what I want is an unblock that concludes that the block was improper. Otherwise, if I still think it was improper, I'd be motivated to go for review. I.e., more fuss. Better to leave me blocked, I'd say.

I'm not planning disruption, I'll emphasize that. But I do have the right to challenge what amounts to personal attacks. Improperly accusing someone of personal attacks is a personal attack. Stating an appearance is one thing, warning over the appearance another, but actually blocking represents a conclusion about personal behavior, and it impugns the reputation of the blocked editor, which is improper if it isn't necessary, it meets the definition of NPA. It's very simple to correct errors, but Iridescent didn't correct his error, if it was his error. He abstracted himself, instead. It's a legitimate option, but it also means that he did not avail himself of a remedy, should he have made a mistake. Nevertheless, because he clearly stated he would not oppose an unblock, he made it possible for any other administrator to remedy the error, it's an interesting response, my respect for him went up a notch over that. He recognized that he didn't want to read what I write about the issue, so he couldn't legitimately oppose unblock, but he also remained convinced that, for whatever reason, I should remain blocked. I still don't know the full implications of this.

Gotta put the kids to bed, I still want to read and document those damn diffs! I lost about half of what I'd done with complicated edit conflicts produced by Jehochman's disregard of my request and reversion of my fix. It's tempting, I'll admit, to edit war with him here, to call his bluff on that. I certainly should be allowed to remove personal attacks from my Talk page. But it will be simpler to deal with that later. Ah, yes, in case someone wants to suspect that I might take some action with regard to Jehochman, like an RfC. Yes, if standard preceding measures don't suffice. If he's acted properly, he should have nothing to fear. I trust consensus, when it has an opportunity to actually appear. --Abd (talk) 23:32, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

arbitrary subsection

And, in retrospect, I would say that procedurally the use of an indefinite block was a mistake. It has resulted in a situation where the user is blocked and no one will take responsibility for lifting it. Let me ask this, in the case of a first time offender accused of WP:NPA violations what would be the usual time limit? --GoRight (talk) 22:46, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

No, actually, that might have been right. She had evidence, she thought, of an ongoing pattern that wasn't stopping, and, I'll assume for the moment, wasn't likely to stop. She didn't know how long it would take. Apparently, she wanted to see some evidence of change; for example, if I'd immediately said I'd made a mistake, sorry, won't do that again, I think she'd have immediately unblocked. I couldn't say that, for reasons I've explained above, but she didn't know that. (I've been saying "he," sorry Iridescent. Habit. I did notice yesterday that you are a woman.) The biggest error was in blocking me after I'd already agreed to not edit outside my Talk until the smoke cleared. In other words, the behavior that the block would have been designed to prevent had already stopped, voluntarily. I think she may have missed that. If someone confirms that, they might ask her! I don't think she's reading here.

That's not the point. He's not being unblocked not because no-one will take responsibility for it, but because he isn't fulfilling the conditions required i.e. apologising, saying he will change to get along with people and the goals of wikipedia as an encyclopedia. That's standard for an indef block, that someone's usually blocked until they agree to change whatever the problem was. And what the time limit would be would depend on the rest of the user's contribs a lot of the time. However you do have a point. I suppose it's just a matter of having rubbed people up the wrong way, but there's no sign of Abd trying to smooth most people's fur back into place. Sticky Parkin 23:13, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

I fulfilled the original conditions, but new ones have been added. Who was offended? The block was for alleged attacks on Fritzpoll. He's accepted my apology. Iridescent seems irritated by my response, but, really, that's not relevant. Whatever damage was being done by my alleged personal attacks was remedied, I think, two days ago. No, Sticky, you need to understand what's going on. I actually asked my friends to be very restrained in this. I really want to explore the edges of this, and not simply use my "interesting writer" pass. So, while I'm not naive and defenseless, I'm placing myself in somewhat the same situation. I don't think what I'm doing here could be considered disruptive. It's my Talk page. Just about everything I'm writing is exploring Wikipedia policy and practice. Drives some people batty, but this is actually how I learn. It's quite efficient, for me, and it leads me to learn and understand things that sometimes escape even much more experienced editors. I've come to a whole new understanding, over the past week, of how Wikipedia works, and it is very clear and simple, but I don't know that I've seen it expressed anywhere. Carcharoth got it, in fact, but quite a few admins involved missed it and denied it. So, there's a task for me, write about it on the policy pages. Which is, of course, exactly what some admins, explicitly, are trying to prevent. They want me to work on articles. (Could be, by the way, that it's written up somewhere, this is a very big place.) It's like Sarsaparilla. He was blocked for creating a hoax article, apparently to blow off steam. Speedied. Had no prior offenses of any similar nature. Indef, by the way. He was blocked three times, all indef, for actions that would normally result in a 24-hour block, if that. Okay, the offense was in article space. So the remedy proposed? Topic ban, only allowing him to edit article space. Why is that?

Well, it shows the real purpose behind the block. He was interfering in policy, making proposals like WP:PWD. Etc. While I'm at it, third block reason: he created an article on a non-notable subject. Not a hoax. Verifiable. Probably not notable. If I'm unblocked, I think I'll recreate, not that article, but the proper one, on the parent company. The article was Easter Bunny Hotline. And Fredrick day, as an IP editor, screamed for his ban on AN/I, and the community bought it. Part of it was based on a lie, that the hotline was obscene. Perhaps it was, at the level that I hear every day on Air America Radio.... It's incidents like this that are behind User:Abd/Rule 0.

Ah, yes, what would an ordinary block be for personal attack. Normally, 24 hours. At this point, it would be pretty common that some admin would pop in and say, this was too long, and unblock for that reason. However, there is this issue of not having complied with conditions. But were the conditions related to the block reason, and have they not been satisfied? The original conditions, I mean. To my knowledge they have fully been complied with. --Abd (talk) 00:08, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Abd, may I suggest you take to heart the advice in the edit summary and first paragraph of this edit: [30]. I'm not convinced that your block was a result of making policy proposals, and I'm not convinced that extra conditions were added, but if they were, so what? I see nothing wrong with asking a blocked user things like "and you agree to follow all Wikipedia policies, right?" and similar questions before unblocking them, even if those specific questions weren't raised before or at the moment of the block. I suspect that the reason Iridescent used an indef block was that Gwen Gale had said, in the section "I'm about to block", that she was going to indef-block you and mentioned your lack of article-space contributions and the length of your posts. So if those factors are mentioned now, they aren't being added as new conditions but were part of the warnings before your block. I also disagree that posts to your talk page can't be disruptive. A number of people may feel some degree of obligation to read posts on your talk page, for example in order to help decide whether to unblock you. Very long posts can take up peoples' time, even on your talk page, especially when you're blocked. Posts on your own talk page could conceivably cause disruption in other ways, too. Try not to make a mountain out of a molehill: things aren't black-and-white. ☺ Coppertwig (talk) 01:16, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Yes, you are not convinced. You are right, that's not the only reason. There are others, including the reasons given in the block. That is, there was an appearance, to an administrator, that I was personally attacking Fritzpoll. And that I didn't stop after warning. That was sufficient justification for a block, indeed, a block was obligatory at that point. It was, however, an obligation upon one who wasn't seeing clearly. Because of the length of my posts, and the complexity of the issues, I can easily understand how Iridescent, acting in good faith, could block me. The fact of the block isn't the problem. The problem is what happened later. And, my conclusion at this point is, by acting later to make it clear that she did not object to unblock, she acted sufficiently. She isn't to blame. No individual administrator is obligated to investigate any situation. Really, the more I look at it, the more impressed I am. She saw substantial objection, from multiple administrators, to my actions. She saw that I didn't stop doing what they were telling me to stop. She actually didn't need to investigate. (And she didn't, it seems, or she might have reversed her impression, but that is moot.) There is the question of "attacks" on a user's own Talk page. There is the question of selective enforcement (I've been roundly attacked, have requested protection, no admin response), there remain questions. I did stop all controversial activity outside of my Talk page, or I think I did, I haven't checked the diffs yet, I keep being distracted by RL and posts here, but it's argued that my continuing to discuss the matter on my Talk page was sufficient justification for the block. So, on the theory that an administrator is not obligated to determine the truth of claims -- it's the same issue as the flap over Elonka, actually, which makes this whole thing quite ironic -- Iridescent's block was proper, and she properly terminated her involvement in the way she did. Good police work, Iridescent, I'll say, since you might see this at some point. Any process resulting from this, as some dispute that still needs resolution, isn't going to name you as involved, unless you re-involve yourself.

However, this doesn't apply to what ensued. The police officer saw a flap, said "Stop!", and, seeing one participant who didn't entirely stop, arrested that participant and tossed him in Talk page slammer. A real police officer in a real life, at that point, is done. Normally, the officer doesn't have any further responsibility at all. Here, though, we make an "arresting officer" a custodian, but, as this shows, the custodian can resign, saying to the admin community -- as she did on AN -- the door is unlocked from the outside, any of you can unlock it, if you are willing to take responsibility for inflicting this editor on the community, I've got other stuff to do. So, now, we are looking at the community. Because I'm interested in this as a non-disruptive test or probe, because I have the right to do that, the only damage is the continuation of my block, I haven't taken obvious steps to resolve it quickly. I'm taking it one very small step at a time. This isn't WP:POINT, because, rather obviously, if for me to continue to be blocked is disruptive -- and I don't think it is -- I wouldn't be the cause of the disruption. If there are supporters of mine being disruptive, which I haven't seen, but I also am mostly only seeing what is going on here in my Talk -- please be careful. I did see that the issue was raised on AN, as a continuation of the report involved in my block, but that didn't look disruptive to me, it looked normal. Some will allege that any challenge to injustice here, when they don't think it is injustice, is disruptive, we must stand firm against that. But incivility, for example, over this, would be disruptive. Be careful. I'll respond in more detail later to the specific suggestions made.--Abd (talk) 12:12, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Thank you very much, Abd, for taking my above post in a positive spirit. I came back here to apologize for it, because I was tired when I wrote it and thought I might have been too frank. I appreciate the degree to which you've shown yourself to be open to criticism in this response to my post. ☺ Coppertwig (talk) 12:39, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

It would be pretty silly of me to complain about someone being frank, when what's happened to me is a result of my being frank. Criticism of my actions, aimed at facilitating my proper participation in the community goals and process, has always been welcome here. We need more of this, not less. Civility is the issue. You have been civil, and more than that, you have been, I think, supportive. Criticism is best when it comes from someone who is supportive. It is far more likely to be heard. This is one reason why I don't ordinarily warn editors directly, on their Talk, of block-worthy behavior. If I was out to get them blocked, I'd do it. If I warn them on my Talk or in article Talk instead, it isn't prima facie evidence of proper warning. It's advice, even though, in this sequence, I've been described as "threatening." No, I was the only one threatened here. Fritzpoll was warned, here on my Talk. Not threatened. If the warning was improper, fine. Atren, above, warns me about continuing certain actions. That's not a threat. He's not going to take me to court, so to speak, if I continue those actions. That my actions were taken as threats is one more example of how easily confused this community can get, through various bad habits. If we were actually following policies, there would have been many warnings issued and quite possibly many blocks. That, in fact, is one of the reasons we don't enforce NPA policy, incivility including personal attack is far too widespread, and especially among administrators. When there is uneven enforcement, enforcement easily becomes a tool of bias, this is a general rule, not simply about Wikipedia. The cop in the small town stops speeders in a speed trap, defined as a place where the speed limit is low enough that the majority of drivers are speeding. (Legally, 80% of drivers should *not* be speeding, but many speed limits are set out-of-process. But nobody does anything about it.) The cop doesn't stop people whom he or she recognizes as locals, unless the officer has some agenda with that person, or the speeding is truly dangerous. And if someone he or she does not recognize turns out to be local or connected to a local, sometimes, or otherwise someone the cop feels connected with, they simply let them go. "Discretion," it's called. Legal. So only outsiders end up with tickets. And most don't realize how easy it is to challenge such a ticket and how much it can cost in insurance costs (it's often much more than the traffic fine itself, if they don't, or they think they are guilty -- they were driving above the speed limit, right? -- so the system rolls on as a tax on outsiders. Illegal speed limits, contrary to public policy and regulations, but continued because nobody challenges it.

Well, I'm challenging it. Simply by following process. Instead of "paying the ticket," I'm simply following procedure, step by step, not knowing what the outcome will be. But I'm not waiving rights, and that is, more or less, what I've been advised to do, so that I can be quickly unblocked. If the block continues indefinitely, and should it come to pass that my unblock requests are denied, and I have not myself concluded that I should stay blocked, I'll go to ArbComm directly, I have the right to do that. If I'm unblocked, any ArbComm action would be way down the line, after possible, less fuss involved, process before that fails, which I certainly hope would not happen.

To continue, ATren noted that I now have a block on my record. Above, I indicate that the block was "proper" which doesn't mean the same thing as "correct." A proper but incorrect block can be negated, in terms of future effect, by unblock with comment that leaves no stain. You will see in my block record that I was previously blocked for 3RR violation, but that the blocking admin reversed it when he realized that I had cause, reversing the edits of sock puppets and a COI editor. (And, I think, I had actually not crossed 3RR, another story). The block was proper, though, in fact, it involved error -- the blocking admin took the word of a blatant sock, created specifically to warn me and make the 3RR report, and the master knew how common errors like that would be, he's a long-time banned editor with a long list of socks.) Even if an unblock does not show negation, but only an opinion that the block should not be continued, the negative effect can later be removed by annotation, as was done with Blechnic. Quite a case, by the way, I've discussed it elsewhere. The effect, in theory, was not removed, but Blechnic knew, I think, that what he got would serve as if it were a "removal of the stain," when, in fact, if you look at the discussion that preceded it -- he argued tendentiously at AN/I for that annotation -- the only criticism of the block was that it wsa for too long for such a new user, the charge of harassment was never negated. Yet, more recently, when Blechic's prior block record was brought up, it's happened more than once, editors pop in with "but that was later found to be incorrect." Sure. Incorrect length. Not incorrect judgment of harassment.

In any case, I have elsewhere argued that admins should, in fact, block fairly quickly and easily, to stop disruption, and where a single editor appears to be the locus of disruption, blocking that editor is an obvious move. However, this is quite different from a judgment that the editor is responsible. That judgment can be made by an admin, as an agent for the community, but, if so, this is the same as an adminstrative close, and the admin is then responsible for administering it. By withdrawing, Iridescent denied that role, and I'd argue, then, no such judgment has been made. Another admin can step in, if they wish, by unblock and reblock. If so, reverting it would be wheel-warring. Further process would be needed. I don't think any admin would, at this point, be so foolish, I'm merely noting this as general process possibility.

See, Coppertwig, I'm using this as an opportunity to explore and learn about block process and policy. Consider this a seminar on block policy and related issues. (There is no professor, there are merely students here, plus, perhaps, a few who think they know what they do not know, and maybe a few who do know. The difference, I hope, will become apparent eventually.) Now, to more specific points:

I see nothing wrong with asking a blocked user things like "and you agree to follow all Wikipedia policies, right?" and similar questions before unblocking them, even if those specific questions weren't raised before or at the moment of the block.

I see plenty wrong with it, but it depends. If some new issue comes up during a block, that would be blockworthy on its own, there should be assurances that it would not stand as a new reason for the block. Some of what I've asserted here would imply that if an administrator concludes this is the situation, the admin should unblock and reblock for the new reason, thus making the issue clear, and who is responsible for it clear. I'm not arguing for a legalist interpretation. Legal analysis, which I certainly do, is aimed at understanding overall policy, and I fully understand that WP:IAR governs here, something which, in my opinion, deserves to be more widely understood, not less. Wikilawyering properly refers to insisting upon rules, when following the rule would harm the project or prevent benefit. I've never done that. It seems that some, in fact, have made "no wikilawyering" a rule, and they define wikilawyering to include reference to guidelines and policies as a defense, misunderstanding the whole concept and using it as ... a subtle form of wikilawyering, a new form of attack that they can employ. It should never be reprehensible to refer to a guideline or policy, in itself. But also it should never decide a case, on its own.

It's entirely possible that an admin could block for a reason, discover that this reason was not valid after further investigation, unblock and then immediately reblock for a new reason. It's quick, it's easy, and it would keep process clear and simple.

I suspect that the reason Iridescent used an indef block was that Gwen Gale had said, in the section "I'm about to block", that she was going to indef-block you and mentioned your lack of article-space contributions and the length of your posts. So if those factors are mentioned now, they aren't being added as new conditions but were part of the warnings before your block.

Yes. That's quite a good argument for an indef block, by the way, as the initial response. Iridescent was aware that there were more reasons being asserted. She did not make a determination on those, however. Now, lots of reasons were asserted as part of the warnings, I got so many warnings, saying so much, raising so many issues ... well, wonder why my Talk page exploded? I respond to issues placed in front of me, I don't go searching for trouble. I don't read the vast majority of what comes up at AN/I, I usually drop it from my watchlist when there isn't something current I've become involved in or interested in. This situation, now, is an example. I was invited, by a contending party, to research the issue. This party, by the way, is one now arguing that I should continue to be blocked, if I've got it right. Realize the implications? I don't think this person was literally trolling, I think that he simply assumed that he was so right that I'd immediately conclude that I'd been duped into making a supportive comment, on the blocked user's talk, without making any determination on the propriety of the block, and that I'd ignore the fact that he made a personal attack on another editor (without any necessity to do so) on my Talk page. When I investigated, and told him, again on my Talk, the result of what I'd found, he went to tl;dr and refused to examine what I'd written, "warned" me that if I pursued this, I'd "wouldn't like the results," and then said he wasn't going to read my Talk page any more. He violated that promise and popped in here with occasional attacks. Interesting. I suppose he was right, though I'm not sure, there is, for example, an active investigation of the WW topic ban going on, by a neutral admin. I like that. Many important policy issues have been raised, and the examination of them may lead to better description of how Wikipedia works in the policy and guideline pages. But what worries me is other implications, including an editor who thinks that he can bully, and that the community will support it. Short-term, yes, it can happen. Long-term, well, the jury is out on that, this is what the "eventualism" referred to above, by Carcharoth, I think, is about. "The wheels of justice grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly fine." Eventualism is correct, in a way, but does not relieve us of our responsibility to address present injustice, when we become aware of it.

I also disagree that posts to your talk page can't be disruptive. A number of people may feel some degree of obligation to read posts on your talk page, for example in order to help decide whether to unblock you. Very long posts can take up peoples' time, even on your talk page, especially when you're blocked. Posts on your own talk page could conceivably cause disruption in other ways, too.

Of course Talk page posts can be disruptive. But we allow much more freedom for a user on their own Talk page than we do elsewhere, and this is essential. If Talk page discussion -- no matter how "wrong" -- is prohibited, it won't stop discussion, it will merely shift it off-wiki, and there are various reasons to prefer that it be here. I could, for example, take issues to the main Wikipedia discussion list. But as long as my Talk page remains open, I won't. Now, consider this: if a person is being disruptive on their Talk page, is the remedy to confine them to their Talk page? Isn't this a strange response? No, if they are being disruptive on their Talk page, the remedy would be to block them, semiprotect the page, and specifically prevent them from editing it. It's a drastic remedy. Better be a good reason. The editor would then have no recourse but direct email to administrators or ArbComm or the Foundation. More fuss, not less.

Nobody has any obligation to read anything on my Talk page unless they take it on. Not even a blocking admin has that obligation. Not even ArbComm has that obligation. My Talk page is discussion, it isn't binding on anyone. Someone who asserts that it is relevant, say in an RfC or ArbComm case, is obliged to provide diffs, and if the diff is to a long edit, I'd say, to quote what is relevant in addition to giving the full diff. If I claim that it is relevant, I'd have the same obligation. I'd be obligation to digest it. That obligation isn't binding, I shouldn't be sanctioned if I fail to observe it, the "sanction" is a virtual one: I might not get the result I want if I present too much. What many have missed in complaining about my long posts is that I'm not aiming at a result. I'm exploring, learning, sharing, and only write for those who are interested. Many aren't.

It is, again, part of what Wikipedia is about and how it works. Nobody is obligated, at this point, to read AN/I. If I were to make a long complaint there, seeking action, and it were ignored, it could be my own fault. By the way, part of how AN/I breaks down is that, for example, I saw an admin make a brief and cogent complaint there, about a blatant violation, but the admin couldn't directly act because of COI rules. A very experienced and respected admin. And then there ensued many comments by many users, argumentative, about irrelevancies. Someone coming upon it would immediately be presented with a wall of comment, distracting from the original complaint. See User:Abd/MKR incident. Too much noise. Sure, much of what I write on AN/I may be too long. But is it possible that the cogency density is higher for what I write than for the remainder of what is posted there? That I've researched the situation and am bringing what we need brought to the discussion, so that we can make better decisions? I write a lot, because I research a lot, think a lot, and understand, I suggest, a lot. I make mistakes, for sure. But not most of the time.

I would argue that Talk page posts should only be censored or sanctioned if they are illegal, if it would be supporting libel for Wikipedia to host them. If they are disruptive, it is only because someone else takes them elsewhere. We can afford the disk space. But that is not a firm conclusion on my part, and I've referred only to what ArbComm has made clear: posts which would be sanctioned elsewhere are not sanctioned if they are in the user's own Talk. Thus a much higher standard for "personal attack" would be required here in my Talk than outside it. I did not personally attack Fritzpoll anywhere, but it was being claimed that I did, so I retreated to my Talk and announced that. Iridescent may easily have missed that. If she noticed it, then I'd return to a position that her block was improper, and she should apologize. But I'm not demanding it, and my present position that she's not involved any more will stand unless she volunteers the information -- or it comes to light that she saw it and deliberately disregarded it.

Try not to make a mountain out of a molehill: things aren't black-and-white.

Of course they aren't. However, this response is odd. Some have said, "Black." I've said "White exists as well." And then it's said to me, as if it contradicts my comment, "things aren't black-and-white." I'm a dialectical thinker, understanding (synthesis) comes from the integration of thesis and antithesis. As to mountains and molehills, Wikipedia may be a mountain, but the whole administrative and very-active-editor community is a molehill, thinking it's the mountain. There are, what, 2 million registered editors? Or is it six? I get the number of editors and the number of articles confused. There are only 1600 administrators, with most of them being inactive, I think. The only reason that the active-editor community has such influence is that it has apparent control. But that's only true because the mountain-community isn't organized. I know how to organize that community, not for my personal benefit -- that's impossible, or at least that isn't what I'd want and probably could not pull off -- and that, not surprisingly, is threatening to some moles. Because I'm not disruptively pushing my ideas on that, they can't block me for it. But some want to, that's become fairly clear, it comes out in some of the comments in this affair. It came out in the community reaction to WP:Delegable proxy. Not in the Rejection, that was obvious and expected by me, at this stage. It was in the attempt to actually delete the proposal, erase it, make it hard to find. There was enough life left in this place to stop that effort. But those editors are fading in power and influence, I'd say, are often attacked when they intervene as if they were interlopers, even though some of them are actually very long-term participants in the project. We've got a problem folks, and if we don't address it, this place will fall, I understand the mechanisms and have seen analogous history in the past, up close. Wikipedia looks invulnerable now. It isn't, there are processes taking place that are like the lily-pond effect. If a lily pond will be choked with by the growth of the lilies in thirty days, which double in space covered each day, a day before the pond is completely covered, it will be half-free with the fish saying, "no problem, still plenty of open water." We are fouling our nest, burning out editors, needlessly alienating great swaths of the public, but it doesn't look like a problem because there seem to be endless reserves to replace them. There are not endless reserves, and at a certain point the only editors who will continue are the abusive ones, who value being in control. And they will then find control impossible. What will happen at that point is that other structural models, implemented elsewhere, will out-compete Wikipedia. We still have plenty of open water, but it could vanish far more quickly than most of us realize. --Abd (talk) 14:31, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

I personally wouldn't have voted to delete WP:Delegable proxy in the MfD if you had shown any interest in respecting the massive consensus against you and Absidy. I thought deletion was in order because it seemed impossible to get you to take that simple fact on board.

Here, there's a strong consensus that you accused Fritzpoll of sockpuppetry, repeatedly, a number of times after being asked to stop. Iridescent blocked you, saying enough is enough. Now it seems that you've decided the block was totally and blatantly improper. Again, you seem to be ignoring consensus. But consensus is how decisions get made around here. On some level, I think, if you want to be part of the project, you have to respect the core values. Darkspots (talk) 17:12, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Well, as I look at the evidence, the picture has changed. The block was totally and blatantly improper.

I now see, once again, why a careful review of evidence is necessary, why it was so important to me that I review in detail the diffs provided by Iridescent as the reason for block. I must now assume, absent other evidence or claim, that Iridescent did read the edits involved prior to blocking. And in them, I explicitly noted that I was stopping all edits outside Talk, and the edit in which I did this, and the next, the last before block, there was no personal attack even if there had been before. So ... I'm not happy about this, but I must now claim that the block was totally and blatantly improper and that it should be reversed on sight. Look at the evidence section here, [31], I have bolded the most relevant diff text. --Abd (talk) 15:46, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Note, please, admins, that Iridescent specifically stated, here and on AN, that she would not object to unblock for whatever reason. I'd provide the diff, someone else can, please, because I have urgent RL matters do deal with. --Abd (talk) 15:50, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

• when I began to negotiate with Fritzpoll -- and that's all I did, really, except some isolated mentions elsewhere, where I thought it might do some good -- Fd may have thought that I was onto him. <-- This is the "final diff before blocking" and to me it still seems like a pretty clear repetition of the baseless sockpuppetry accusation. Couching your words in "may" and saying they are just "theories" and the fact that it was done on your talk page (in this writer's humble and honest opinion) does nothing to mitigate the fact that you were still engaging in blatant and obvious attacks on Fritzpoll's character by continuing to insinuate that he was Frederick day. That being said, if you want to be unblocked, there's a template that you can use for this purpose. –xeno (talk) 16:05, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

• • Thanks. Xenocidic. (1) Suspicion (not accusation, and there is a difference, a very important one) was not baseless, there was a prima facie reason for it, look at the original "Holy Shit!" edit. Yes, reasons later appeared to weaken this, but it takes time to research and digest, and the real proof, very easily obtained, and what I would have asked for, was quick in coming. Thatcher's comment. (2) I have had other things to do and had an edit window open for maybe two hours before I could get back to it to put up an unblock request, because the grounds for unblock had become very clear to me. --Abd (talk) 18:25, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

The two relevant issues seem to be your suggestions that Fritzpoll may be F.D. and that Irrdescent (or some other admin) was trying to trick you into doing something they could block you for. I don't believe you intended either of those interpretations. But by repeating the suggestion that Fritzpoll may be F.D. so often, it created a situation where a reader could fairly infer that you were suggesting he is F.D. And the comment about admins tricking you could also be fairly read to imply the interpretation irridescent took. So there was a misunderstanding, and it doesn't matter whether you meant that or not. Since you didn't mean those things, just apologize for giving the impression that meant those things, and agree to be more careful in the future about such suggestions. That would probably get you unlocked quicker and with less pain than having debates over what you really meant versus what others understood. Because at this point, debating what you meant and what others understood is no longer relevant.

In the meantime, while you are blocked, there is more drama going on at AN about WW now. Some people are now suggesting actually tightening WW's topic ban by topic banning any editor who nominates a WW article for DYK. Since you are the only person who seems to be able to effectively communicate effectively with WW at this point, since she (with good reason) doesn't seem to trust those who participated in her ban, it would be most helpful to her if you resolved your block quickly (without worrying about vindicating yourslef, because that really doesn't matter) so you can participate in this issue if it blows up further. Rlendog (talk) 16:59, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, Rlendog. If there were any aspersions cast by the sock puppetry stuff, it would have been about Fredrick day. I was careful to state that Fritzpoll was not an abusive editor, and that there was nothing about his behavior that was cause for suspicion. Quite simply, the matter appeared to be that Fredrick day showed that he was Fritzpoll. Suppose he had done it more blatantly, i.e., suppose that quotation had not existed, the edit was exactly the same. I have seen evidence like this used, many times, in an SSP case, combined with behavioral evidence, it can even be conclusive. But I also was clear that this was not conclusive, that the evidence visible wasn't enough to prove sock puppetry, and stated that checkuser would be necessary to dispel suspicion. Thatcher apparently agreed, and provided the evidence, possibly without being asked, I haven't checked.

It's unfortunate about WW. However, if the community doesn't care about keeping the very useful and competent editor, there is a bigger hole in the dike than I can plug. I've already done, really, whatever I could do to satisfy suggestions for unblock, Fritzpoll accepted my apology, and Iridescent essentially doesn't seem to be involved any more, and I clarified the meaning of the after-block edit that was a concern for some. (It wasn't about Iridescent, in the part that people objected to.) In any case, I've filed a much simpler unblock request than I originally planned, so I didn't need to complete examining the evidence. If anyone wants me to help defend WW, they can point me to the discussion and I can comment here or by email. But I'm really busy for the next few hours, probably about four hours. The issue about making nominations for a banned editor, taking responsibility for them, is clear from guidelines, this was raised before in an AN/I report by Blechnic and found no support. Wouldn't be surprising if the gang got together, though, to push it again. I haven't looked. --Abd (talk) 18:41, 14 August 2008 (UTC)