Enigmaman's RFA

The latest drama to hit enwiki RFA is Enigmaman's RFA. It's his second RFA, that was apparently going well. Very well actually, at 46/0/1 when it was put "on hold". Last month, a record 12 admins resigned, as well as two bots, so I'm not exactly sure if we do have enough admins at the moment. Anyway, Deskana put the RFA on hold, and posted the following message to the talk page:

I have placed this RFA on hold.

During the course of a checkuser investigation into an IP that would be editing in violation of Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Privatemusings#Sockpuppetry if it belonged to a user that was editing while logged out, it became apparent that this IP was infact owned by Enigmaman.

I strongly suspected that many of the supports in this RFA would be retracted if they could see the edits in question, but the privacy policy prevents me from disclosing the IP without the permission of Enigmaman. It does not seem appropriate for me, as a bureaucrat, to allow this RFA to continue when many of the supporters were unaware of the entire situation regarding Enigmaman. Therefore, I see two options.

1. Enigmaman refuses to allow me to disclose his IP. This means that I restart the RFA with a note that the user has been making inappropriate edits while logged out, but am unable to provide diffs due to the privacy policy.
2. Enigmaman allows me to disclose his IP, meaning the RFA can be restarted with the diffs in question in plain view for people to review.

The edits themselves aren't actually that bad, but I know the RFA crowd can be quite scrutinous when it comes to incivility. I actually think option 2 would work out better for Enigmaman, but that's just my opinion. The edits themselves were probably not blockable, but I imagine people would oppose his RFA for the edits. I probably would.

I hope people understand my actions here. They're not normal bureaucrat actions, but desperate times...

--Deskana (talk) 21:54, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

He actually took a while to post this, so people were fairly curious at to what the issue was. On IRC I asked Deskana jokingly if this was going to cause drama, he said "maybe". I think that was an understatement.

I was fairly surprised when I saw what was written. It was then revealed that Deskana had not contacted Enigmaman in private first, before posting this statement. This is similar to an incident I was involved with in 2007, when Deskana publicly pointed someone out as a sockpuppeteer, without discussing with them in private. While Deskana has not revealed any private information himself, this whole fiasco has indirectly lead the IPs to be revealed by others, through pressure, something which is explicitly forbidden in the checkuser policy. It is my firm belief that checkuser is most certainly a big deal, unlike adminship, and even oversight. Oversight is mostly random phone numbers, addresses, and libellous information about people. Nothing about the actual editors, for the most part, and when it is there is trouble (think Zoophilia). Checkuser is for making catching sockpuppets easier, not publicly humiliating good editors. Deskana's post suggests that many people would switch to oppose if they could see the edits made. This is not the case, at least so far. Several have stated they will be switching from support to strong support (as I shall be). I had a look at the edits, of course. I certainly do not see them as problematic in a way to make me oppose. They aren't Enigmaman's greatest moment, but then who am I to say anything? :-)

The whole thing was handled extremely poorly. It is obvious to all that Deskana should have contacted Enigmaman in private before publicly humiliating him on the RFA. I do not believe Deskana has the integrity skills required for the checkuser role. Tiptoety comments, asking "You feel he should resign because of this single incident? I see no pattern of mistakes or breaches of policy by Deskana, let's not get ahead of ourselves". Yes, I do. Checkuser is not like adminship or bureaucratship, where a few mistakes may be tolerated. I'm afraid this one mistake could have cost EM adminship, which he was easily on the way to getting at the time the RFA was paused. He was put under a lot of pressure, basically forced to reveal his IP, and has been unnecessarily embarrassed and humiliated on-wiki, in a situation that could have been solved without the general wiki population knowing about it. Surprising as it may seem, I agree with Jennavecia's post. The whole thing was a lot of shit-stirring for very little benefit indeed - and it looks like it'll have the opposite affect of what Deskana intended, because people will support because of how poorly Deskana handled this, and how well EM handled it. The whole thing was biased, as Deskana holds both checkuser and bureaucrat right, and apparently used both to unilaterally put a stop to EM's RFA, merely because he "suspected" a lot of people would switch if they saw the edits. I've seen the edits. My opinion has not changed at all. Well, it has - of Enigmaman, my opinion of him is higher. Of Deskana, he's a nice person with good intentions, but I feel he is not suited to continue with Checkuser.

Majorly RfC

So I created an RfC on myself. Following a rather disasterous RfA that I nominated, it was felt by some people that my actions on, and surrounding that RfA were inappropriate, or in some people's word's "despicable". Now, I offered to nominate Jamie months ago, after noticing her good work on articles on Christian Music. I started to talk to her on IRC, and after much persuasion she accepted a nomination. I regret very much that I did this. If I'd known how vicious the RfA crowd were this week, I'd have kept well away. As it happens, I didn't. Jamie unfortunately had the kind of username that gives away age. It seems the age crowd only like coming out at certain times: just a couple of months ago, another editor passed his third RfA without a big problem. And of course, we all know of Anonymous Dissident, who passed with 165 supports and a single oppose, in 2007. The age crowd must have been on vacation that week. I wonder if they'd have opposed if they had seen it, or knew his real age? I can only guess yes. Looking at some of the age opposes, some of them are well-reasoned, but others are just really awful. Consider oppose #1: "Kid admins have generally poor judgement". This shows that this particular opposer is already biased before they voted. OK, we all have our standards. This editor has made it clear they never support teenagers. But my issue here is not the fact they have their standards, or their opinion. It's the blatant abuse of the process. When voting, you are supposed to review the candidate yourself for a good idea of what they're like. It's rather clear that this editor, and others neglected this important part of the process. It's all very well them saying they did afterwards, but the fact is, they have generalised, and stereotyped this editor without giving them a fair analysis.

So, since my candidate is getting this rather poor treatment, I am naturally angry. I make a few comments, to the point of proposing that people don't actually have to look at contributions anymore, but can oppose for whatever reason they like (it's a vote after all). I start "badgering" a few people. Such people would not need badgering if they gave the candidate a fair review. You don't see me questioning the user who had issues with Jamie's AfD votes do you? That's because it's a completely fair oppose, and shows the user took the time to review her fairly. I'll "badger" votes that do not do this. It's incredibly easy to vote on an RfA. You can vote with "per above", "Not enough experience", "needs more time" etc - all are more acceptable that someone stating "Kid admins generally are immature". The funny thing is, I've not seen one smidgen of evidence proving that statement is true. Judging by some of the voters on the RfA, and the behaviour I've seen of some adult admins, I'd say the opposite is true. Jamie's conduct through the RfA was pretty exceptional. Obviously, hardly anyone noticed this under the dust cloud.

What is now really irritating me, is that some of the opposers are using me as the scapegoat for causing her RfA to go downhill! The only people causing her RfA to go anywhere are the opposers. If they want to make frankly ridiculous votes saying "The nominator's behaviour is less than satisfactory", that's their lookout. I would hope such votes are discounted in the end - even the age ones are better than that. Really, these people are that desperate to oppose someone, that when they find nothing wrong with the candidate, they move to the nominator! Actually I've seen similar - where people oppose per whoever is supporting, and their contributions. It's so unbelievably negative. And to think that if she had simply left the fact she's in school of her userpage, she'd probably be doing so much better now! It really sucks.

And now on to me. An admin by the name of Jennavecia, probably better known as LaraLove has decided I should be desysopped. This is following from nearly 9 months of particularly unpleasant encounters with this woman - I had, for a while been considering to create a requests for comments page on myself - I know I'm controversial, and have done some stupid things. She told me that an RfC was in the works. However I have grown impatient, and wish to get this thing out in the open, so I created it myself. Soon after its creation, Giggy whom I nominated for bureaucrat on Commons, spewed out a load of diffs, dating back to late 2007. There were so many! I went through each and every one. There was, perhaps, fewer than 5 really serious incidents. Each I admitted to and apologised for as necessary. There were a great many where he presented the evidence in a skewed manner, apparently deliberately linking to logs in such a way to make me look worse than I was. There were cases where I did minor things like endorse the block of someone, expressed my feelings about the BAG process and protected a page, which I began discussion on a mere 19 days later. Others were more major, but I don't need to discuss those here. I admitted I was wrong there and then, and no more needs to be said there.

Anyway, a bunch of people have turned up, and if I wasn't all too awake this morning, I could have sworn I most of those people somewhere else - wait, I remember - RfA! Yes, it's every chronic opposer on the block, from Iridescent to Kojidude, to Malleus Fatuorum to Friday! They're all there, and they're all agreeing. I don't know what to think of this. I really don't.

Then Jenna, aka Lara showed up, and proposed I be desysopped. Unlike the other people who made statements or proposals, Lara had nothing pleasant to say about me. This doesn't surprise me. She has told me before that she doesn't like me, and the feeling is mutual. What I don't understand, is why does she dislike me so much? I mean, I don't think Friday and I will ever agree on anything, but at least he had something positive to say, along with a lot of negative. Her description of me sounds like that of a vandal, or banned user. Now, as someone who has been on this site for over 2 years, and dedicated a hell of a lot of time to various aspects of the site, I am pretty offended to be described so harshly. Perhaps it's all true, but still, it's not nice to read. Then again, with my experience of Lara, she does say exactly what she thinks, though on-wiki she's mild compared to off (and where she thinks I can't see).

Anyway, I was given the choice - RfA or ArbCom? It was an easy choice. Just looking at the shithole I threw poor Jamie into, I'd go for ArbCom any day. If they desysop me, so be it. If not, I'll take the points from the RfC into account, and step back from RfA for a while. I actually want to do something else for a bit anyway, so it works out well either way for me.

RfA ideology

One of the many, many reasons RfA sucks is the ideology many people have. These are editors who, instead of coming to the request to look for reasons to support, will look for reasons to oppose. This is the complete wrong way to go about things. When RfA was created, it was not so much as a poll, more of an "OK then", perhaps like rollback. If people had an objection, it was done in reluctance, and normally with a good reason (not "he forgot to sign his self nomination acceptance" or "doesn't have enough edits to WP:AIV", but more like "he's only been here a week, maybe after a month's experience"). Some people actually set out to find a reason to oppose. I find this crazy. Why the negativity? Is it some sort of power thing, where it makes people feel better by opposing someone? I can't think why people seem to feel it necessary to look for reasons to oppose someone, instead of support. This is why supports tend to be more "votey" than opposes. Supports should be automatic, and the editor should be promoted bar any significant objection. Those who mass oppose who complain when someone questions their oppose, will sometimes say "Why don't you question the supports without a rationale?" The answer is, it should be up to the opposers to show a proper argument, and not the supporters. Adminship should be given unless there's a significant opposition, and it should be up to the opposers to prove that the user is unsuitable.

NotTheWikipediaWeekly MFD

This MFD is one of the most ridiculous I've seen in recent times. It's of the latest NTWW episode, which contains conversations with Somey (Wikipedia review admin), Moulton, and Greg Kohs. Apparently, the episodes are allowing banned users to contribute to Wikipedia via ogg... the banning policy does not state that users cannot speak on to Wikipedia, and if this is a convenient loophole then so be it. As most people know, I disagree with the part of the banning policy, where banned users edits are reverted on sight. If a user comes back and edits productively, they should just be left to get on with it. If they are discovered, then block them fine, but leave the edits. Anyway, NonvocalScream, an editor (at least under this name) here since January nominated the page for deletion. Luckily, most people are seeing sense and voting to keep, but there are some (who I expected) who are voting to delete. Which doesn't make much sense - they are voting to delete something that no banned editors have touched, or even spoken on! As I stated on the page, the ogg files are going to stay regardless of what happens to the page, as they are hosted on Commons, a separate site to Wikipedia. This nomination is completely pointless, won't achieve anything apart from drama, drama and more drama, and all it's done is given more publicity to NTWW - which is good.