User:Geogre/IRC rfar

What happened at RfAr IRC

What happened? Let's get history, issues, and "resolutions."

History

1. The admins.irc channel was floated as an idea, and it was defeated. It was not an overwhelming defeat, but it was a defeat, which is quite some distance from "consensus." The idea of BLP did not exist then (this was well before the Siegenthaller mess), and the OFFICE did not exist, and there was no such thing as OTRS. Nevertheless, the channel was created for admins only.
2. Many, many, many bad decisions came out of "discussion on IRC." Specifically, discussion on that one channel.
3. Several instances of talk that would in no way be tolerated at Wikipedia were documented at that IRC channel.
   1. This was not penis talk. Penis talk is common on the main IRC channel, and it's annoying, but it's not particularly important.
   2. These cases included users plotting to organize a ban of a user in good standing and encouragement to "look for" reasons to do it.
   3. They included also users agreeing to block users on suspicion of being bad people, despite the fact that they had not violated any Wikipedia policies (this was over their being suspected secret agents for users of Wikipedia Review and others).
   4. They included people telling users in good standing that they had no right to speak there.
4. The channel was populated by many administrators, but also by several non-administrators. Some of the abusive speech and action, above, was done by people not actually administrators at en.wikipedia, or any Wikimedia project. This including calling users "arsehole," but this was hardly an issue (the dirty word). The issue was that non-administrators were bullying administrators.
5. Jimbo Wales would go to the admins.irc channel, but rarely to the general channel. This meant that people who spent a great deal of time there could claim fiat, or at least get the chance to be the ones framing issues. This resulted in the illusion or presence of power, and this meant that users had an incentive to spend as much time as possible on admins.irc, rather than, say, Wikipedia.
6. A number of on- and offwiki dramas have resulted from misuse of admins.irc; complaints and blowups have continued after the closing of RFAR/IRC.

Issues

David Gerard had written a page, directly in name space, "describing" the admins.irc page. It encouraged administrators to use the channel for conducting business. The tone of the page was self-congratulatory, but the words were also lies. I use that term carefully: the page said that the channel had been created by user:Danny out of WP:OFFICE to deal with BLP concerns. This was both misleading (the idea that the channel "was created" by any official of WikiMedia) and a flat out lie. The page was also written almost exclusively in passive voice. Over the Summer of 2007, user:Giano II, user:Bishonen, and I had edited the page to satirize its fulsomeness and to test David Gerard's convictions. A person who believes in Wikipedia's policies knows that no page is sacred. This editing was playful and an expression of exasperation with what seemed to me, at least, to be fatuous self-love. This period of editing lasted about a week and then ceased.

At Christmas, 2007, user:Tony Sidaway (who has changed his account now), who is not and was not then an administrator at Wikipedia or any Wikipedia project was on the admins.irc channel. Arbitrator User:FT2 was critically discussing an absent user he had been in conflict with, and Bishonen suggested this was inappropriate ("do you really think it's right to spread yourself about his bad character here, where he can't reply?"). FT2 immediately and politely agreed to desist ("I'm content to accept bish's correction"), but Tony, who had not been part of the conversation, broke in to speak for FT2 at that point ("bishonen, yes, of course he does"), told Bishonen (an administrator) that "this is the admins channel" and not the "problem user channel" and that she should go be an "arsehole" somewhere else. So, a non-admin (who had lost his administrative status due to insulting behavior and conspiring with Kelly Martin to block users) was hectoring an administrator that she should not bother important people like himself and informing her of what the arbitrator she was discussing with ought to have told her (FT2, astonishingly, completely failed to pull Tony up short, here or at any other point). Bishonen was outraged. When I heard about it, I was, too. Giano was outraged as well.

I, and by report Giano, felt that, if anything had put the lie to David Gerard's loving description of the Eden of the channel, that did, and so we began to edit that page again. David Gerard issued page protection and threatened to take the page to Meta, where he could control it. That, to me, was as horrendous an illustration of his attitudes toward Wikipedia as possible. Giano II took logs of the insulting exchange and e-mailed them to users who said that the admins.irc channel had no bad behavior. N.b. he did not post them. He did not convey their contents by paraphrase. He used private e-mail.

The irrational lodging of a complaint

Oddly, a user who had never been involved with any of these users or that page lodged an RFAR that Giano was not using proper dispute resolution for IRC matters. Given the fact that there were no dispute resolution mechanisms for IRC and given the fact that ArbCom had ruled that IRC is not Wikipedia, then it seemed simply obvious to me that the case would be rejected. After all, a sin against IRC cannot be prosecuted on Wikipedia, if a sin on IRC cannot be redressed on Wikipedia.

In addition to the fact that we have never before been able to use ArbCom to redress such problems and that there are no dispute resolution mechanisms for misuse of IRC, it occurred to me that the case could not be accepted because cases require, first and foremost, previous attempts at resolution. This previously unheard of user had never spoken to any of the parties in the edit war, that I know of, nor parties to the IRC dispute, unless he had been recruited from IRC to lodge the case at some convenient time.

How could ArbCom accept a case without a complaint? What was it that Giano or I was supposed to have done? In the edit war, David Gerard had violated policy after policy. Beyond that, what, on Wikipedia, was there to speak of?

Well, wonder of wonders, the new ArbCom accepted, although they never specified what they had accepted.

Issues (the real ones)

The real issues are, of course, not reflected in anything ArbCom said or "John1234," or whoever he was, said.

The issue is that the admins.irc channel not only has non-administrators on it, but it has always had non-administrators on it. However, it purports itself (in the voice of the users) as official. For it to be official, it would need to have some regulations of its uses and misuses, and yet none exist, and none can exist if, as David Gerard said, it's James Forester's channel, and he doesn't need to listen to anything ArbCom says about it. The non-administrators on the channel are "trusted users," but no one knows who is doing the trusting. RFA is an assessment of trust, or is supposed to be, and when a person loses that status, one would have a hard time asserting that the person "is trusted." However, the semi-direct rule of Jimbo, where what Jimbo says either is law or gets treated as if it were, has meant that people have gained power by being on admins.irc. They may not be conscious of it, and it may be simply a side effect: be where Jimbo is, and rise. Once risen, you are one of the people devoted to this pastime.

Ever since the channel was created, it has had some critics. I am assumed to "hate IRC," when I have used it quite a bit and do not hate IRC, as few can understand that a person can have no problem with IRC but think that the admins channel is a disaster. I do not support oligarchies at Wikipedia. I do not support self-selected ones, most of all. Many users think that the admins channel is a bad idea (as I said, it failed when it was proposed), many more simply don't use IRC out of indifference. This one toy, this geek gadget, has moved steadily up in importance, and it is now such a case that those who keep pointing out the bad behavior of the "trusted others" or the fact that this pastime has flaws, or people who want to make it uncomfortable by asking for fairness (like Bishonen did when she asked that Tony not malign people who weren't there to defend themselves) are considered painful.

I was named as a party. Giano was named. Bishonen was named. Other than all of us thinking that people need to behave properly on that channel, we have nothing in common. However, it was "time" to "deal with" Giano (who embarrasses users of the channel by documenting their disgrace).

The prosecution and "what he'll do next"

I made a statement at the RfAr, and so did Bishonen, and so did Giano II. That was it, as far as I was concerned. I mean, since there had been no attempts at mediation prior, had been no violation of any Wikipedia policy in privately e-mailing logs to people who denied that abuse took place at the admins.irc channel, there was nothing else to do. Phil Sandifer, who used to be Snowspinner (just as Tony Sidaway has changed his account name), had blocked Giano for an extraordinary amount of time for changing David Gerard's page, and I had undone the block and warned him that blocking out of personal animus is not allowed. For my pains, or for previous pains, one, Phil became extremely active on the workshop and evidence page. This was a matter in which he seemed uninvolved, but he was opining on how a year long block and the like would be reasonable for the people concerned, how I should be demoted, etc. It was highly emotional it seemed to me.

The arbitration sat, largely idle, for about ten days. None of those accused were responding to new heapings of opprobrium. I expressed the opinion, privately, that I had been entirely in the right, and so anything that the arbitrators did say could not be applicable. There wasn't any crossing the line that had gone on, except by Tony, a non-administrator in the admins channel, who had been incredibly rude, by the people who saw that attack and did nothing, by David Gerard who had lied in his description of the channel and plastered it directly into name space and used illicit administrator's tools to protect his version of the wording (a terribly written as well as deceptive and erroneous form), so what was there to say? If the arbs acting on Phil Sandifer's accusations that I had been "incivil" hundreds of times in the past, that Giano had been "incivil" in the past and therefore must be banned for nothing he had done in this case, that Bishonen should bear some ill fame for having being insulted, then it showed that they were concerned with something other than Wikipedia, and I simply wouldn't care what they said.

So, without progress of any sort, things just lay dormant.

Eventually, a proposed remedy was so pointedly personal, and the comments so explicitly malign, toward Giano that he replied sarcastically. That, it seems, had been important. One of the arbitrators, and then another, said that they had been "waiting to see what he would do next." In other words, they were going to see how Giano reacted to the arbitration. He didn't react. So they waited some more. He didn't react. So they waited some more. Someone finally managed to propose a ban and lay all sorts of emotionally laden charges at him, and he responded angrily. Well, that was it.

I popped in periodically, when I saw the stoning in progress.

Results

1. Personalities and emotions

The results had to do with Giano. Now, Giano had not written David Gerard's page. He had not used IRC. He had not insulted anyone on IRC. He had not posted logs. No. None of that was part of the decision. The decision was based on a "history of incivility." It was based on having, over time, irritated people. That translates as, "I don't like you."

Parse it for a moment, please.

It means, "Giano has not done anything this time except be angry," so there's that. It means, "In the past, you made us angry." Well, there's nothing quantifiable there. Who can tell whether he is guilty of it now? How do you know that you are not establishing a "history of incivility?"

I ask because, although I was exonerated, as it were, my charge, too, was a "history" of "incivility." An array of diffs, which actually showed next to nothing, was offered where I had been "offensive" at some time in the last four years. It occurred to me to wonder how I had been offensive, when no one seemed to be offended. It occurred to me that, if no one complains to me or anyone else that can be documented that I have hurt their feelings, it's very strange for some third party to determine that my correspondents should have been offended, that the remarks contained some essential harmfulness without any evidence of causing disruption or harm. It just seemed very curious to me that Snowspinner would say that I had been offensive to him, when he had not spoken to me of it, had not asked for either clarification nor apology, had not seemed to diminish his copious editing in any way because of it.

You see, you may right now be "incivil." You may be bannable, blockable, or something else, but post facto.

It seems to me that this was the crux of the arbitration: personal feelings. Not actions. The actions in question were either annoyances of David Gerard's vanity or reminders that the admins.irc channel has tacitly approved non-administrators being evil, and only one of those was addressed (see #2). Instead, it had been about Giano all along, about "waiting to see what he does next" only in the sense of "waiting for a chance to do something we are inclined to do." That thing is "punish dissent." One can say that it's the way he does it all day long, but look at the most recent block of Giano. It was not for the way he said things. It was because he would not stop asking a question that no one would answer, a question that made the heaviest IRC users look bad.

The actual "results" were that Giano was put on a "civility parole." Since no one can define "civility," and no one attempts to be precise about what and how something fails it, this amounts to "any administrator may block Giano at any time at personal whim." FT2's block was on the verge of whim. He certainly would not answer what exactly it was that was "incivil." (Mind you, one can define "civility" in such a way that it has use, but no one is interested in that, because it restricts the freedom to block.) Nothing was done about Tony Sidaway per the arbitration, although something occurred later. Nothing was done about Bishonen, except that she remained "troublesome" for being offended by Tony (while all are free now to be offended by Giano for any word and block). If there was "a great deal of discussion on the mailing list" that contains some other conclusions, I can only plead ignorance: this is what the arbitration actually said.

1. Issues

The misuse of admins.irc, the fact that it has non-administrators on it, the fact that people use it as a rationale for on-wiki actions, was not addressed by the ruling, except that the arbitrators promised, in light of Jimbo's statement that IRC is answerable to them, to offer a reform of the channel. This has not happened. It was questioning FloNight, who most said that it would happen, that lead to Giano's most recent block. She said that it would occur and that she had ideas about it, and then she said that "there has been" opposition to reforming the channel. She would not answer about who opposed, where the opposition occurred, why the opposition came, or why ArbCom should make itself a liar over this opposition. There was no agreement to let the community (on Wikipedia) decide, no explanation of why the opposition could overwhelm and silence arbitrators and users, and why that opposition was powerful enough to allow for a repetition (again) of this case at a later date.

David Gerard's page was deleted, and a Meta page with a brief description of the channel exists now. That was the answer to one issue alone.

Losses

Bishonen doesn't edit Wikipedia much anymore. I look at my watchlist only. I had written over 250 articles from start to finish, but I do not intend to work for anyone here. I am not an employee.

FT2 went to the admins irc channel and asked the twelve or so people there at the time if they wanted reform. They said they didn't much think so. That's it.

Personal reflection

Personally, I think Wikipedia was born when masses of people began plonking away, making articles. I think it died when a choke point of power occurred. As soon as self-selected individuals could spend most of their time off the project talking to each other about how they will run the project, Wikipedia died. It was dying when the veneration of Jimbo started to develop into a cult. CEO's are an American mythological hero type, and they're not salubrious, unless you're a stock trader. However, I see that veneration as a way of establishing hierarchy. I long ago concluded that the person who mentions how much a friend of his Jimbo is is a person who has no arguments, but when Jimbo can only be reached by admins.irc, and when he is the only voice of power (and increasing power, I might add), then, consciously or unconsciously, users will develop a chat node that can make itself Star Chamber.

I will not exchange my labor for government by dysfunctional chat circles. Others are free to choose otherwise.

Why dead? You probably think I'm exaggerating. After all, I have a highly figurative prose style. I'm not exaggerating this time, though. Studies have shown what any long-time editor at Wikipedia knows: most articles have a single author. They have multiple editors -- multiple redactors -- but most have a single voice building from scratch. It takes only a moderate commitment to edit, but it takes a serious commitment to write. Writers tend to get passionate about what they're doing, for good or bad. When it's bad, we get the ethnic/political/religious wars. When it's good, we get people who go from articles to AfD to AN to RFA to AN/I, etc. The more people write, the better they get at it. If, though, there is a choke point, if there is an hierarchy, if there is an overuser, then writers will flee. In the loss of original old timers and the passionate authors, you are seeing a new paradigm. Existing articles won't vanish (unless some citation freak or fair use monster gets at them, or some drive-by assessment drive ends up labeling all our FA's "start class"), but you will move from the set up where someone like me is possible, here -- where someone can come at first to fill a gap and then begin joyfully adding all sorts of things -- to one where you get a revolving door of people who get in, do a little, and then go. It will be robbing the project of expertise and there ever being content expertise again. They'll stick around long enough to do a little, to realize who their masters are, and then they'll bail out. It's a zombie like population of mediocrity that's in the future. That's the death of Wikipedia and the co-opting of it by another 4chan, another Slashdot.