User talk:Kudpung/Archive Oct 2020

Summer greetings

July

pale globe-thistle above the Rhine

Just enjoy whatever you do! Miss you. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 17:21, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

Today's Wikipedian 10 years ago

Awesome

Ten years!

... and today if you want. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 06:40, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

Juliette Gréco

Juliette Gréco passed away this week at the grand age of 93. A true icon of French chanson, her miserable en.Wiki article is one I should have written. I saw her in concert in Bobino , Paris, in 1966. I was absolutely spellbound. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 15:15, 26 September 2020 (UTC)

That’s Ridiculous

I re-read the entire episode from when the incident originally happened & it’s just sad that you were punished for a righteous course. It’s very much annoying & saddening. Celestina007 (talk) 15:12, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

Thank you so much, Celestina007. I'm getting used to no longer devoting 30 hours a week or more to this circus. As judge, jury, and hangman, Arbcom is not a neutral and reliable body and examination of other cases will reveal that it it often takes distortion of facts, lies, and gaslighting as prima facie evidence. The punishments are always most severe when an admin is involved. A desysoped admin is also allowed no appeal. Because they are relatively rare, The Committee actually enjoys every opportunity to demostrate its power in such cases. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 20:19, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

Fourteenth Anniversary on Wikipedia!

Hey, Kudpung. I'd like to wish you a wonderful First Edit Day on behalf of the Wikipedia Birthday Committee! Have a great day! Chris Troutman (talk) 23:07, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

Thanks Chris, but after one or more arbitrators together with a handful of more users with extremely dubious histories succeeded with a vengeance in destroying everything I held dear to Wikipedia, the ca. 20,000+ hours I spent on it, the several thousand $ I spent on it, the participation in Wikimania on several continents, the important policies I got changed for it, and the many talks I gave in schools and colleges, now at well over 70 I'm not particularly overawed at being reminded.

Now that I am finally out of hospital with a chance of making it for a few more years, Wikipedia's loss is my gain in time to take more care of my health, the company I run, compose more music, taste some exclusive first-class wines before my taste buds give up for ever, making the occasional snarky but safe and truthful comment on these pages, and above all, continuing to write a book about the lies and corruption by some of Wikipedia's holders of advanced rights, FA fanatics, paid editors, and other greasy-pole climbing creeps. Those are the 'contributors' to the stinking morass of what the average reader believes to be the product of a happy bunch of crowd-sourcing individuals and its bloated, overpaid WMF.

It was nice (most of the time) when it lasted, until it degenerated into the circus it has become where some ill-spirited individuals are determined to throw their weight around while barely staying under the radar, and where its judge, jury, and hangman has turned it into a police state. I suppose one could say that I sound somewhat jaded, and perhaps even BrownHairedGirl shares at least some of my sentiment although she has chosen to soldier on while recently taking even more harassment and gaslighting than ever from some of them.

What I think of it all and what I'm prepared to say on-Wiki is of necessity guarded comment, but it would interesting also to know what Iridescent (especially), WSC, WTT, DGG, Boing, Blade, Bri, Ballioni, and Mr Brown, whose opinions I value more than most, really make of it all, but perhaps these Wikipedia talk pages are not the best place to discuss it. However, I haven't scrambled my PW (yet), my mail is always open, and most of you have my private mail anyway (only two people are decidedly unwelcome there unless they are coming with some genuine apologies rather than excuses for their health or genders, and if they are not completely stupid, they know who they are).

Maybe one of the days I'll even change sides completely, join the detractors of Wikipedia and and expose one or two home truths on Wikipediocracy, though the thought of rubbing shoulders with some of those cretins makes me shudder. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 04:56, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

From my perspective, I'd say Wikipedia is actually quite a bit less of an Arbcom-run police state than it was in the supposed Golden Age in the 2000s. Back then the committee genuinely did act as a governing council; now, they're much more of a supreme court. They may be just as inclined to come up with bizarre interpretions of policy as ever, but there's a lot less of them actually making up policy out of whole cloth. They're also far less inclined to interfere than the committee of the old days; they tend now only to deal with one or two cases per month, rather than being ever-present in everyone's life as they were in the old days. (You had the misfortune to be one of the few cases this year they did accept, but most editors nowadays are barely aware of their existence, which certainly wasn't the case circa 2007 when they were constantly interfering in everything.)

The quality of the individuals on the committee may have declined between then and now. (Whatever one may think of Fred Bauder, FT2, Kelly Martin and all the other controversial arbitrators from the old days, it's hard to imagine them being caught fabricating checkuser evidence to try to frame editors they consider non-persons—anyone with any experience of the CU interface will know that this isn't something that can happen accidentally since either two editors share an IP and useragent or they don't.) However, we have only ourselves to blame for that, The Community are not only the ones who elect them, but are the ones who submit every Arbcom member to a bombardment of on- and off-wiki abuse and make it such an unpleasant experience that no sensible person would volunteer for it, which largely restricts its membership to the careerists and obsessives. ‑ Iridescent 05:29, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

Your work is not lost. Not the excellent writing and rewriting you did. Not the very accurate and helpful review. Not the very sensible work at AfD and Deletion Review. Not the magnificent effort in rescuing Wikipedia from the flood of spam by helping conceive AfC, and being mainly responsible for keeping it running. Not the start & assistance you gave to our attempts at repressing paid editors. Not the encouragement you gave so many of us during the years. None of this was admin work particularly, and all of it could still continue. We're about the same age, and have worked together (most of the time, at any rate) for the last 10 or 11 years. We both are facing the inevitable limitation and finally end of our activities, and need to decide what to do with it. Continuing at Wikipedia is only one option. For the time being I'm staying with it, despite the frustration of telling endless streams of unprepared or even bad-faith contributors the same things over and over, and the greater frustration of trying over and over to keep our colleagues here from the same errors.

As you know, I've spent some years at arb com. (I of course did not participate in your case, but nothing I could have done would have stopped it.) Most of the arbs are there with good intent to attempt to do justice (though a few in the past have indeed been downright nasty overly punitive about it) ; I have tried to find the solutions that would help the basic values of the encyclopedia, which is not quite the same thing, though there have been occasional overlaps. I would not judge the others too harshly, by and large the recent work has dealt with insoluble dilemmas. In general the work I've done there that I consider important has not been public cases. I've stayed on while I could in order to show that the general committee approach of trying tp judge degree of guilt is not the only one, even though on most issues it's been a minority of one. Still, I have gotten the committee to recognize at. least a theoretical responsibility for dealign with paid editing, and am perhaps beginning to have some effect on their views of Discretionary sanctions. There have been a few others from time to time who have agreed somewhat with me: they've generally converted to the law and order ethos or resigned in despair. DGG ( talk ) 06:42, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

The more I think about ArbCom, the less I think it is suited to what we need. There are some excellent people on ArbCom, I have to say that. And the current ArbCom has done some good things - the open letter to the board in response to the Fram affair was probably what kept me from walking away altogether (well, and that I'm hopelessly weak when it comes to resolving to leave). But, in this session, ArbCom cases have produced some seriously wrong results. I've seen suggestions, and it's my opinion too, that some current members of the committee have been driven by a desire to flex their muscles and prove they're not inffective in cases against admins - and there are a lot of folk who do regularly accuse them of protecting others in power. I'm also disturbed by ArbCom judging cases where one of the protagonists is one of their own members. So I could put it down to the individuals who voted for harsh remedies, and just suggest voting them out. But I think the problem is deeper than that. Somehow, ArbCom as an institution does not work well, in my view. I've been through quite a few ArbCom elections now, and no matter who we vote for, we end up with the same fundamental problems. But what frustrates me most of all is that I have no idea what the solution might be. All I can think to do myself is to vote against the existence of ArbCom as whole by opposing all candidates who stand in ArbCom elections, and that is what I intend to do this time. And I'll just hope that at least some of the efforts of our best contributors (who are increasingly becoming ex-contributors) survive the inevitable descent into mediocrity from the ever decreasing academic ability of the average newcomer taking their place. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 07:37, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

One of the things about spending way too much time on Quora, is that it does give me an appreciation that there are worse ways of doing things than Wikipedia. But I'm also conscious that there have been times when the WMF has shown more than a whiff of contempt towards the volunteers of this community. I haven't followed arbcom for a while, but there did seem to be a pattern a few months back in their losing us admins who weren't US males. My early years on Wikipedia overlapped with the eight years I spent as a trustee of a Housing Association, and I remember the consternation among certain staffers there when I sat on a third stage complaint, ruled in favour of the tenant, but required her to let us install a sound absorbing rubber mat under her washing machine. Many at the WMF, some of our fellow editors and I suspect some Arbs are still young enough to think of the world in black and white rather than shades of grey. I suspect there is a link to the Foundation and its T&S team with their idea of a cross cultural code of conduct that seeks to impose a certain subset of US values on the world, and probably won't consider it as harassment to criticise an admin for enforcing a policy that you disagree with but can't be bothered to try and change. It just so happens that I share more of those values than the vast majority of people do, so I could just lay in some popcorn or alternatively play Cassandra. That said I'd rather have the current situation where the WMF wants to raise standards of behaviour without always being open as to what they want to raise, than the situation of about a decade ago when the WMF had much lower standards of behaviour than the community, and we had a CEO who stood by a staffer who had "joked" about murdering or raping community members. You will remember the months that it took us and ScottyWong to convince the WMF that their figure of 30% of longterm community members were former vandals was incorrect (30% of all accounts and 30% of the editors who then had the highest edit counts had at some point been blocked, but the true lesson from that is that if you stay here long enough the possibility that you will accidentally block someone, probably yourself, passes 25% - we also found some edit warrers and copyright violation blocks, but none of those thousand had been vandals). If we had gone straight to Wikipediocracy or similar it would have saved months in getting the WMF to drop that stat, but the true lesson was that stat evidenced the attitude that many in the WMF had to the community, and organisations don't respond well when you show evidence that contradicts their core beliefs. Kudpung, you are at your best when you choose your battles wisely and your allies from among the least obvious. I'm delighted to hear that you are out of hospital, I hope in time you can return to considering this project from a glass half full perspective rather than a glass half empty one. ϢereSpielChequers 10:07, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

I don't think I have much to add to the voices above - I've read through their comments with interest and largely found myself agreeing with them. Like DGG, I kept out of your case, but I have seen the committee from the other side and I don't see it as a terrible thing. The members are trying to do their best under the circumstances, they take their time and deliberate on their decisions, based upon the information they have. There certainly are worse ways of doing things than the way Wikipedia does, even if there are better ones - and given the volunteer style system and the vast size of the project, I personally cannot envisage a better system than the one we have. That said, I am a bear of very little brain, and am certainly willing to be proven wrong on that. In the mean time though, we have a system where the community largely polices itself and the Arbcom acts as a buffer between those issues that the community cannot handle and the external forces. I know the longer I remain on the committee, the more toll it takes on me personally, from the mud slung to the difficult decisions made - one day I'll walk away, and I've got to say, I do think my last day will come before yours, Kudpung. Worm^TT(talk) 12:24, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

• On average, the committee is not worse than it was 15 years ago, and maybe better. On average. That doesn't mean they always get it right. To be honest, my concern is with the Foundation, not Arb. We can at least vote Arb out if we don't like the members, but the recent power grab by the Foundation, and the weak follow up, demonstrate there are political elements at play at Wikipedia. I still hold my nose when I log in, and only do so because I believe in the mission, but not the "rulers" of the place. By decades end, I would expect Arb to be gone and those functions being taken over by the paid employees, who have no accountability to the greater community. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 13:56, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

Thank you so much, those of you, who have commented here. In all honesty I didn't really expect anyone to bother responding to the pings and I'm overwhelmed by so many kind words and suggestions. We have all had our moments as admins and when baited relentlessly for years by the same people, can occasionally fall slightly short of the mock politeness and pseudo tolerance that is expected around here. Some relatively new users are indeed totally disruptive and deliberately try our patience and fake their indignation all the way to ANI. Many regular users, however, sadly including even admins, Arbcom members, and (former) stewards truly contribute to the disharmony of Wikipedia's back office with their personal attacks, and gaslighting, and overly severe use of the blocking tool, and are quite ostensibly allowed to get away with it. Unfortunately, when push comes to shove, the ensuing loss of truly knowledgeable and industrious volunteers due to the peanut gallery at ANI or the reluctance of Arbcom to fully examine the claims before declaring them as facts, sometimes leaves a gap that is hard to fill. I'm not thinking so much about myself, but about other leaders of some essential Wikiprojects, pioneers of some processes, CUs, admins and other functionaries or people with invaluable institutional memories, who have either been forced out by process, or retired or handed in their tools in disgust.

@DGG: (actually the nicest, kindest, wisest, and most hospitable Wikipedian it's been a privilege and great honour to work with); Iridescent, who maintains Wikipedia's best blog, (and who like me, doesn't beat round the the bush), and whose writings incidentally also provide some seriously and badly needed comic relief; WSC, a personal friend and mentor from my very earliest days; WTT whose sagacity is often unparalleled; Boing, another great personal friend who always hits every nail squarely on the head; Blade whose determination and encouragement greatly contributed to the introduction of ACTRIAL and reforms of AfC and NPP; Bri whose indefatigable efforts avoid The Signpost from going completely out of print; Tony, who while Arbcom still exists should be on it but I would respect his desire for not wanting to have anything to do with it; Dennis who created WER but ironically ended up taking Wikbreaks himself out of disgust; and let's not forget Scottywong's immaculate data mining either, nor Bluerasberry, envoy extraordinaire, whose regular contributions to The Signpost, outreach, heath projects, and support of minority groups are far more important than even he realises himself (from me he gets a big hug every time we meet). And finally a word for dear Atsme whom I hadn't pinged (my apologies): Keep making trouble - of the right kind - but for heaven's sake, watch your back.

If I were privileged and important enough to create a team to lead Wikpedia into a better place, you would all be be on it, and if you were once a friend or someone I successfully nominated for Admin and I haven't mentioned you, don't take offence. The work of the WMF would be reduced to collecting the donations our work generates, and maintaining the servers. There would be no need for junkets on a trip that would fill an A320 or need for a mobile office at 36,000ft, there would be no WMF employees allowed anywhere near a Board of Trustees, there would be compensation for the volunteers who write most of the scripts and routines that make our policing of the project somewhat easier; and there would be food and drink enough to go round at Wikimania beyond the privileged celebrity guests and WMF employees, and attendees would be able to sleep in proper beds rather than bunks in a ten-man/woman backpackers' dorm, and the event would be run and managed by properly experienced event organisation graduates rather than every year by an ad hoc group of friends who have voted each other into a conference 'committee'. Wikipedia would get a new, modern page design, and Mr Wales would abdicate or be retired and can take a walk in the Internet Hall of Fame and his talk page archived and FP'd.

I still remain adamant therefore that Arbcom and its ridiculous layers of bureaucracy that would even baffle a British barrister needs totally rethinking from the ground up, 'We take ourselves too seriously, We're just an encyclopedia.'–DGG, and that the Community should keep ideas like BARC coming even if they don't immediately bear fruit. There are indeed a few good people in Arbcom, some of whom do in fact have the RL experience and maturity to fit the role and are, or have been, stalwarts of the process such as Risker and NYB. Arbitration Committee Elections however, are nowadays a total farce as some of us would be forced to admit. An election where tens of thousands of disinterested content editors and not-yet-blocked miscreants are expressly invited to vote anonymously at the click of a mouse after reading (or even writing) 'Candidate Guides' that are often vicious vindictive lies and blockable PA anywhere else. The blatant gaslighting, provocation, and PA in the so-called questions sections (also often by sitting Arbitrators), is less serious than some of the games played at a 7-year-old's birthday party in someone's living room. The whole thing is about as honest, reflected, and reliable as a British BREXIT referendum - or nowadays a US presidential election.

The fact that there are often barely enough candidates to fill the vacant seats means that some of them (possibly the 'careerists and obsessives') will be elected however unsuited they may be for such a task. The high rate of absence and/or drop out (or even kick-out) must surely be indicative that something is rotten in the state of Arbcom, and it's not possible to simply just vote them out of their one or two year terms.

Among the 620 other users who watch my talk page, to those who skulk around whether with advanced privileges or not, making other dedicated volunteers feel miserable and inadequate, and among the 2,743 users who have edited this page, the six or seven (that's all it was) sly trolls and/or high-privilege abusers (including even a former steward) whom I respectfully asked to piss off and not come back (though some of them didn't even have the decency to respect that request), and which the 'wise' Arbcom used as a FoF for my desysoping, the sooner the community exposes you for what you are and gets rid of you, so much the bloody better, including those who have joined Wikipedia with the sole purpose of climbing up its greasy pole and sport that silly 'I wanna be an admin' userbox on their page. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 07:27, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

October

harvest

Kudpung, you didn't ping me, but you gave me a nice kitten, and I just came to give you some apples in return. I believe that the importance of arbcom is overestimated, and I hope you'll be given seven more years to see that what seemed a problem may simply disappear. Enjoy life, and do on Wikipedia only what helps you doing so. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:52, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

• Kudz...I have always appreciated your brilliance, the outstanding contributions you've made to WP, and the opportunity I was afforded to work with you at NPP. If ever I find myself in your part of the world - at WikiMania, perhaps - it would be an honor to finally meet you in person. You are forever in my thoughts. Atsme 💬 📧 11:26, 20 October 2020 (UTC)
• I hope we see you editing merrily on the 15th anniversary I hope you stick around, and that your edits here are increased. —usernamekiran (talk) 11:36, 20 October 2020 (UTC)
• Thanks for mentioning me, Kudpung. I took quite a long break from WP (several years) and have started to slowly come back to doing some tasks here and there. I was at least fastidious enough to make enough edits to not lose my admin status during my long break. The things that pushed me away from WP were numerous: the disappointing failure of ACTRIAL thanks to the WMF, being outed and threatened by trolls on Wikipediocracy, and just generally having less free time due to a growing career and other real-life events. But I still look back fondly on the times when I spent a lot of time here. There was a large phase of my time here when I was learning a lot about coding. I was coding tools in Python on Toolserver, learning the basics of HTML/Javascript/CSS, and fumbling around with SQL to explore data mining of the WP databases. I did these things mostly because I found them interesting and fun, but you played a large part in harnessing my newfound skills and turning them into something useful, in the form of asking me to find various stats and proposing new tools to be created. So, thanks for that. If you ever find a way to return to WP in a way that is enjoyable rather than stressful, I'm sure you'll be welcomed back by everyone. If WP remains a sore spot that you don't like to touch, then take my advice: don't come back. Life is short, and you should spend your time on the things that make you happiest. Hope you're well, take care. ‑Scottywong| [speak] || 16:58, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

This user ...

... has thoughts that make him a force to be reckoned with!

• K thanks for the ping. You have enough barnstars already but do you have your own Vulcan? Well, here's one of those for you. Use it wisely. Bri.public (talk) 17:15, 20 October 2020 (UTC)
• Count me among those who hope you feel more inspired at some point. At least I'll keep on trying to make it the best place it can be, sometimes I like to step back and just do the simple things; keeping out of the center of the latest hubbub helps a lot, since said theatrics rarely intersect with what I'm working on here. The WMF I'm sure still has no great love for me either, but then that's not very different from my rather solitary existence in real life. But for a good fight that does matter, I'd want to be on your side of things. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 17:48, 20 October 2020 (UTC)
• I found out about this from something I saw on someone else's talk page, and I want to stop by to offer my best wishes as well. As you know, I too am in a... well, somewhat alienated state. And I clearly remember you taking notice of it in a very kind comment that did not go unnoticed. I could go on and on about this, but I won't. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:51, 20 October 2020 (UTC)
• I don't really have much to add to what's already been said here. In my case, there have been changes in my life and I've had to re-evaluate a few things. I know there are a lot of alienated people who I don't think will ever be on Wikipedia again much, in some cases if at all, and that's a shame. There's a lot less "meta" discussion on my talk page these days, I don't tend to get involved in major RfCs anymore, and to be honest I'm content now to just sit at the back and write a bit of content most of the time. I think we've made some significant improvements with WP:ACPERM which has helped things a bit, to the state where certain CSD criteria just don't seem to be as important as they once were. I think the team that you mention upthread would be good, I haven't got any solutions to Arbcom other than I wouldn't want to be anywhere near it. I still think we need to do something about the user interface, tools like Reply-Link help, but to be honest I've got no confidence the WMF will deliver what the community actually need, and it'll be left to enterprising (pun intended) third-party developers to plug the gap. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 21:05, 20 October 2020 (UTC)
• Apologies for the late reply crazy busy in real life currently. Of late I’ve come to think more like Boing! said Zebedee’s response here. I was discussing with Risker a few nights ago that I think the community/committee learned the wrong lesson from the Fram drama: namely that the people who work difficult areas and get burnt out doing good work are held to a significantly higher standard than those who are the cause of the burnout. The whole situation isn’t good, and you can make an argument that pre-Fram the community didn’t hold those who did the grunt work needed to make the place run accountable, but I feel that we’ve over corrected after and have to an extent the opposite problem now. At some point I might write an essay about it, but my thoughts aren’t that refined right now. I’ll say this, though, the solution to people being grumpy because they’ve put up with years of crazy people on the internet is not to side with the nice crazy people and tell the grumpy ones not to let the door hit them on the way out. TonyBallioni (talk) 04:29, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

  Well said, please ping me if you ever write that essay. ϢereSpielChequers 10:09, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

I had hoped this thread would peter out, but since it hasn't, I'm going to take a second bite at the cherry, and be a little more clear about my thoughts. Kudpung, Wikipedia is not a police state. Arbcom is not judge, jury and executioner. Honestly, Arbcom does very little on-wiki these days, but instead acts as a breakwater, holding back the cruel ocean, the harassment, the stupidity, the worst of the worst. I have done my damnedest to not read the case regarding you, because I consider you a friend and I really don't want to taint that. There are few I consider friends on Wikipedia, because I was burned so badly by trusting another early in my wiki-career. So understand that it pains me to say this - having now looked at the case, I think the decision to desysop you was the correct one. Some of the actions you have taken over the past few years, and the manner in which you have expressed them shown that you have become jaded, and acting as an admin in that manner does more harm to the project than good. That does not diminish the hard work that you have put in over the years, the importance of the systems you've put in at NPP, the research and shepherding at RfA, the articles you've written or the many other contributions to the project.
What needs to stop, though, is sowing the seeds of discontent. Increasing the us vs them mentality. The arbitrators I am working with on the 2020 committee are amongst the best I've worked with, each clearly has the project at their heart. I believe this is the first year where I can honestly say I would vote every single one back in. Sure, I disagree with some outcomes - it would be madness if I didn't. I'm sure I've pissed off a majority of them with my BHG RfA nomination, but none have treated me any worse for doing so. So when I see people in this section criticising the people who I'm working with, day in, day out - who are giving their all to help wikipedia, who are consistently berated for doing so, it saddens me greatly.
Some specifics. Iridescent, Bradv did not fabricate CU data, nor do I believe he would. I have worked with Brad as a clerk and an arbitrator, he is keen, forthright in his views and appears to be fundamentally honest. He has my respect, and my trust. I find it stunning that you would talk about the "bombardment of abuse" Arbcom members take while throwing shade in the same paragraph. DGG That "downright nasty" comment was out of line. If you believe someone is being downright nasty on the committee, you are in a relatively unique position to be able do something about it. Throwing it around on a users talk page just increases the us and them attitude and does nothing for project cohesion. I've read through the case, and while I have no doubt it was a horrible experience for Kudpung, I see nothing that was downright nasty. TonyBallioni if a person is no longer fulfilling a role due to putting up with crazy people of years, then they need to stop sitting in that role. It's the reason I left Arbcom in 2014, and I look back at my comments during the year afterwards and see how jaded I had become. Call it grumpy if you like but the fact stays the same, the grumpiness causes more discontent around the project.
What this all comes down to is remembering that every person here and on Arbcom, is a person. A person who had dedicated years of their life to making this encyclopedia what it is today. You may disagree with decisions made, but that doesn't mean the person isn't acting in what they believe is the best interests of the encyclopedia. Right now, I have a lot going on off-wiki (all good) - and I am distinctly upset by a decision made by WMF - and have been for a good many months. So I don't have a lot of inclination to remain as a member of this encyclopedia and were there a hill for me to die on, I expect I'd be making a last stand. Instead, I'm sitting on a fence that shouldn't exist - with excellent people on both sides. Worm^TT(talk) 10:18, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

that comment, as I should have made clear, refers to someone in particular who has not been on the committee for some time, but I strongly remember. I will reword it. DGG ( talk ) 11:06, 21 October 2020 (UTC).

I've gone into more depth on "fabricated" in the thread on my talk, so to avoid repetition I'd direct you there. Since two arbs independently made a demonstrably false statement, "fabrication" may be somewhet harsh as it implies intent but at minimum there's a serious competence issue there, of a level that in a non-arb would probably have got them both desysopped or at minimum given final warnings. Yes, arbs face a thoroughly unpleasant torrent of abuse and people should be nicer, but that shouldn't grant them immunity from criticism either.

Indeed, every person on Arbcom is a person. Every person not on Arbcom is also a person, a fact of which the committees of the past couple of years seem to have lost track. Every time you ban, block, or desysop someone—and conversely, every time you turn a blind eye to someone being obviously abusive or disruptive because they "do good work elsewhere" or just have friends in the right places—you're not just performing technical actions against a random username, you're actively insulting and disrupting the life of the real person behind that username, who in their own eyes is just as important as you (plural) are in yours. If the current Arbcom genuinely sees itself as "a breakwater, holding back the cruel ocean, the harassment, the stupidity, the worst of the worst", that's to me a sign of a complete collective breakdown of empathy on the part of the committee, and I'm increasingly starting to think that Boing! said Zebedee has a point. ‑ Iridescent 10:45, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

"What needs to stop, though, is sowing the seeds of discontent. Increasing the us vs them mentality." But this applies to everybody. Depending on who you speak to, "us" and "them" can mean different things. For example, I can think of a few people who believe "us" are the "content creators" while "them" are the admins, others who think "us" are the community while "them" is the WMF, or "us" are the admins and "them" are the unwashed POV pushers ready to pounce on political or medicine articles. We need a bit of mutual respect all round, but it can't be dictated by executive fiat, it has to be earned. I agree with Iridescent's view that everyone editing Wikipedia is a real person and sometimes it's easy to lose sight of that behind a computer terminal. One of the most difficult things I've ever had to do in the context of Wikipedia is explain to RHaworth in person to his face why I supported a desysop, where you can't simply walk away from argument and pretend the other party's concerns and feelings don't exist, and where it's very obvious that such a view greatly upset him and made him disillusioned.

Earlier this year, I went back onto another project for a few months while I had a bit of spare time, and was rather taken back to discover in my absence that something approximating Arbcom had taken shape. What I discovered is that when a group of people with the right authority get together and agree on stuff, and lots of people from outside that group disagree and starting voicing objections, the group with the authority start to close rank and believe they're under siege. I don't think you can do anything about it - it's human nature. This is probably why despite different people getting to elected Arbcom, the overall feel and impact of the group is broadly the same, even when at the same time I can happily to talk off-wiki to Worm and Joe in particular about various issues without any fuss. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 11:17, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

Ritchie333, If only we could dictate respect by executive fiat. What we can do, though is start with ourselves. Worm^TT(talk) 11:58, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

Iridescent, Absoultely every person not on Arbcom is a person - I tried to make exactly that point when I said "here and on Arbcom". All the committee can offer is consistency, not turning a blind eye. Absolutely I agree that every action the committee takes or doesn't take harms others. It's not a fun job. The breakwater analogy I have never discussed with other arbitrators, it's my opinion, and mine alone. But if you see the emails we receive, the information we make decision on, you'd see what I mean. I know you've been on the committee, the amount of emails may not have been as drastic as your infamous screenshot, but the type is still there. We're still dealing with the off-wiki harassment, the outing, the defamation, the cruel sea - so the community can sail pleasantly behind that breakwater. Worm^TT(talk) 11:56, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

Worm That Turned, I think Iridescent’s point, and one that I was actually going to make independently before I read him say it, is that this iteration of the committee seems to have lost sight of the fact that people who work in difficult areas, both admin and non-admin, and who are not on ArbCom are people too. I actually 100% agree with your response to me above. Burnout is a problem and one that should be addressed. My criticism of both the community and the committee (and this is not just an anti-ArbCom point) post-Fram is that we’ve begun to see the burnout of dealing with the disruption as more of an issue than the disruption itself. This isn’t specifically aimed at the committee, it happens at noticeboards as well, but there’s been a marked shift away from dealing with the underlying problems because the person who was dealing with it got frustrated. We’ve started to focus on the frustration rather than the cause of the frustration, which I don’t see as a good thing, and to Iri’s point, it’s not a very people-focused approach. TonyBallioni (talk) 13:29, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

This discussion has morphed into an extremely important and necessary examination of some of the things that I have come to regard as the most critical facing the Wikimedia movement today – and that are at the center of my own unhappiness with the state of affairs. I'll start by saying that I agree with WTT that the present-day membership of ArbCom are far better than many past iterations. That said, I can find serious fault with some recent decisions (Medicine), while not finding fault with other recent decisions (BHG) where Tony for example and others here would disagree with me a lot. I'm not an admin, certainly not an Arb, and yet I feel exactly like I have become burnt out dealing with difficult people in difficult areas. (The events leading into the Medicine case were the last straw for me.) In my opinion, we get sidelined when we try to argue over which "group" of people are right and which are wrong about this. Much of that is in the eye of the beholder. It isn't about things that would get better with a different set of characters on ArbCom, or with a structure completely different than ArbCom. Down those paths are just endless circles going nowhere. But the real issue here is that one of burnout, useful members of the community (among whom I would count everyone here including myself) reaching the end of our ropes dealing with members who are... not so useful. I've been seeing it over and over again: just get an experienced and constructive user to make one mistake, cross one line, and that's who will get kicked – while others have perfected the techniques of being civil POV pushers. It stands to reason: WP has now been around long enough that the smartest of troublemakers have figured out how to play the system. We need to get away from thinking of dispute resolution as always being about who crossed a line. Just because a good editor let loose with a string of cuss words or made an unexplained revert doesn't mean that they are at fault, whereas the other editor who carefully and systematically frustrated them is in the right. Context, increasingly, is more important than the one diff that contains the supposed smoking gun. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:29, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

I think you make some key observations there, Tryptofish, and you're helping clarify my thinking. The very nature of Wikipedia surely makes it inevitable that, as individuals, we will repeatedly have to encounter difficult people in difficult areas - unless we stick to mind-numbingly uncontroversial areas. And that will lead to inevitable burnout for everyone who does not possess saintly patience and infinite goodwill. Maybe it's not ArbCom that can't provide what Wikipedia needs, maybe it's Wikipedia that can't provide what Wikipedia needs. Perhaps it's inevitable that each of us will reach our limit, and perhaps we need to accept that instead of impotently trying to change the unchangeable. In the words of the song, the secret of a long life is knowing when it's time to go. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 19:20, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) Yes, this ^, this exactly. maybe it's Wikipedia that can't provide what Wikipedia needs – and the rest. How many people are still doing the same online activity as they were 20 years ago? There is maybe a time when it's just not the right thing any more. I'm shutting up again now. Best to all DBaK (talk) 21:20, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

@Tryptofish: In my opinion, this is an inevitable consequence of any large group of humans trying to work together in a common system, and it gets worse as that system grows larger and more valuable (either in terms of monetary value, or just its value to humanity in general). I don't know what country everyone is in, but look at the state of US politics nowadays. "Gaming the system" is an understatement. Gerrymandering in the US is a perfect example. When one person creates a rule, another will find a way around that rule, or systematically probe the rule to figure out exactly how far they can go towards sidestepping the rule without technically breaking the rule. This is simply human nature, and this will happen in any sufficiently large group of humans that are organized under a common set of rules. The only things we can do to combat this natural tendency are to ensure that our "laws" (i.e. WP policies/guidelines/essays) remain adaptable to changing circumstances and increasingly imaginative sidestepping attempts, and that our "government" (i.e. Arbcom, admins, crats, etc.) retains its integrity, remaining uninfected by the sidesteppers and able to spot them and deal with them effectively. It's not as easy as it sounds, but I like to think that the majority of policies and guidelines that have been adopted here actually strike a very good balance between clear and strict, while also being loose enough to retain the ability to be interpreted differently depending on the context of the situation. So, while the situation might seem dire and might cause burnout if you think about it too hard (or try too hard to control it), I think WP is still quite functional. The one thing that governments don't have that WP does is WP:IAR. ‑Scottywong| [converse] || 21:44, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

Thank you both for the kind words. Let me add this: it's potentially a mistake to assume that it's just time to move on after being here a long time, and WP will continue to go on and on. There's no reason to assume the latter part of that. It's entirely possible that WP will slowly, gradually, go the way of so many other human efforts that we now remember only as part of history. (I say more about this on my user page.) One way to look at that is, of course, that I'm going to get on with my life and I'll be fine, and whatever happens to WP happens. And that's a perfectly reasonable choice. But an alternative is to become interested in fixing what can be fixed. And an institution where the trolls have learned how to play the system is not something that inevitably has to be accepted. (By interesting coincidence, speaking of governments and the wider world, I just got back from voting early in-person in the US election. And I voted a straight Democratic ticket, in hopes that the trolls who have learned to take over the system will, maybe, be gotten rid of. And at the same time, I have it in the back of my mind that I might end up giving up and moving to New Zealand. Go figure.) But the reason that I'm still posting in discussions like this one is that I am seriously offended by the thought of the troublemakers winning. It just doesn't sit right with me. Maybe I'll resume content editing, and maybe not, but I'll be damned if I can't, frankly, stick it to those who I regard as assholes here. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:04, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

I don't agree that emotional motives like revenge are a great place from which to base your decisions. And while I'm also a Democrat voter, it's only because they're the (slightly) lesser of two evils, but they are also trolls that game the system (although they're not as good at it). The US seems to be almost a hopeless case at this point, and places like New Zealand do look like an attractive alternative on the surface (until you learn about the giant spiders). In the end, your relationship with WP is like your relationship with any person in your life: there will be a natural ebb and flow; times when you're getting along, times when you grow apart, times when you rediscover why you were initially drawn to it which inspire you to rekindle your relationship. There may also be a time when you permanently end your relationship with WP. All of these are ok. When you're getting along, have fun. When you're growing apart, take a break, or try to understand what's pushing you apart and work on it. When you're ready to come back, come back. When it's time to end things permanently, you'll know it. No need to force any of this; you'll know when it's time to change phases in your relationship with WP. My recommendation would be to try as much as possible to base your decisions on reason and logic, and avoid making decisions based on emotions like revenge and spite, as tempting as it might be. Try not to let people get under your skin; essentially, WP:DFTT. ‑Scottywong| [express] || 22:53, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

You are, of course, right about revenge being a self-defeating motivation. I said that last part in a bit of venting, and it would be best not to take it too literally. I guess that if I were to attempt to revise it in a more thoughtful manner, I would say something like I remain determined to try to fix the specific failures that have affected me personally, and it just doesn't sit right with me to simply let that go. But let's look at what I just (inadvertently) provided an example of. We all know that if, in the future, someone wants to take a cheap shot at me, they will cite the diff of my comment above while ignoring this one, and ignoring the context in which I said all of this. "Tryptofish is just here to settle old scores, not to improve the encyclopedia, whereas I (the troublemaker) am just trying to be a good editor." In fact, that's barely a paraphrase of something said about me during the ArbCom Medicine case! It's so easy, isn't it? --Tryptofish (talk) 18:22, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

PS: I do not share what I would view as a false equivalence between the two US political parties, just as I would not advocate for false equivalences between parties, say, in an ArbCom case. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:06, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

The inability to deal with the root causes of frustration, though, is a failing of the community who creates the procedures and policies to be followed. And it can't change them or ensure effective enforcement because consensus doesn't work as a decision-making method in even a moderately-sized group, never mind the dozens that weigh in on English Wikipedia. There are, of course, disadvantages to adopting a different decision-making system for creating and enforcing policies, and it would mean editors relinquishing their current leverage to stop proposals in their tracks through loud dissent. Whether the community ever decides that it's a price it's willing to accept in order for decisions to be made more efficiently remains to be seen. (Efficiency doesn't necessarily mean fairly, as cliques will always be an issue in any group, but it does mean the group can set a direction and move on, rather than staying stuck in the same patterns.) isaacl (talk) 00:17, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

I'll add that I've tried to get people to discuss root causes, during last year's imbroglio and on my own brainstorming page. The community mostly seems stuck on trying to sanction poor behaviour, rather than eliminate the incentive for it in the first place. isaacl (talk) 00:30, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

Making group decisions by consensus is literally the way every non-dictatorship government in the world works, and how most large businesses (i.e. with a board of directors, executive team, etc.) work. It's true that WP is somewhat different in that there are no official "representatives" who make decisions (by consensus with other representatives) on behalf of the entire population of users; here, anyone is welcome to join in the discussions to update policies and evolve guidelines. But that doesn't change the fact that large groups of humans have been making decisions by consensus since the dawn of civilization. If they can do it, surely we can figure it out. After all, what's the alternative? Having Jimbo make the rules for everyone to live by? Or have a small group of elected officials make the rules? I don't think that would be better. ‑Scottywong| [confess] || 00:32, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

Board of directors are small groups. Government work is done by small committees. Consensus can work in a small group with strong alignment in goals, but as that group grows, it's impossible to get true consensus. If those small groups can't agree, they'll vote. No government polls their entire populace for every procedural decision. Businesses and even volunteer organizations have decision makers, who are empowered to make a final decision. This helps manage interpersonal issues, because behaving poorly reduces your chances that the decision maker will agree with your preferred option. The English Wikipedia community tries to work differently to address flaws in that mode of operation, but the cost is that it's extremely difficult to make significant changes, and decisions are never final. isaacl (talk) 00:44, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

"decision makers who are empowered to make a final decision" ... kinda sounds like "admin who closes consensus discussion". ‑Scottywong| [speak] || 04:49, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

There is a key difference: closers on Wikipedia are expected to evaluate the consensus view and not evaluate the pros and cons of the choice based on their own judgment. Decision makers in the real world are not trying to determine a consensus view, but what option has the greatest net benefit from their point of view. They are the ones who take responsibility for the decision and its success or failure, and to the degree that they have support from the hierarchy above them, the decision is final. On English Wikipedia, decisions will get revisted constantly by the entire community, which provides a disincentive for editors to seek out a long-lasting compromise. isaacl (talk) 15:41, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

• This discussion has indeed become extremely important, Tryptofish, and has been a long time in coming but I didn't expect it to happen here or even spill over to Iridescent's page where their bashing by Arbitrators continues. As Boing said, I think you make some key observations, and unsurprisingly, some of the people on this page who have done great things for the project, are ones who have been shat on hardest. One of the problems however, is that many readers don't don't read the entire conversation, and just go straight to the section where they were pinged. Also, few readers of threads on Wikipedia actually take the trouble to click on the links the participants have provided. No, Dave, it hasn't petered out and I don't think it should - there are things that now need to be said, IMO, this current Arbcom is the least equitable I have ever known and and it looks as if this place (or perhaps this one) is as good a venue as any to discuss it informally, and in its time this page has been the schmelztiegel of many an idea that we can be grateful for today.

Wikipedia has millions of registered users, tens of thousands of regular editors who just get on with their work quietly when they can, and maintain the more serious and traditional aspects of an encyclopdia. Their topic areas are not generally contentious, controversial, or targets for disruption (although medicine for several reasons is an exception and frequently causes a lot of hoo-ha, as Doc James and a few others here can confirm). There are less than one thousand users who care about what's going on in the back office that the average reader doesn't get a whiff of, and only about 50 of the hundreds of admins are really active in any way. Of that 1,000, some are self-appointed police who spend more of their edits looking for people to castigate and flexing their juvenile muscles at ANI than I have made to AfD. When you've created and/or managed as many phpBB fora as I do on my server, it becomes so evident that under the guise of the anonymity the Internet affords, so many people and social misfits who haven't got a life are determined to become a moderator, admin, or arb. The irony is that at Wikipedia all confirmed users and even IPs already have far more power than the the average member of a typical forum despite phpBB's highly granular permission system and are only too ready to get themselves noticed by assassinating someone's character - and they do so with impunity and the overt support of the Arbitration Committee (diffs definitely available). The truly sad thing about Wikipedia however, is that a not an insignificant number of the wannabe Wiki-secret police are actually mature people with some form of established academic background; fortunately, whatever their aspirations, of those who start their Wiki-careers by bossing others around, very few of them will make it to adminship.

Users who do gain advanced rights fall into basically three categories: those, like many of us here who just fell into the role naturally without particularly wanting to exercise any authority or even asked out loud to run the 7-day gauntet. A few got there because they really did like the idea of being able to strut around like a parade ground sergeant major at boot camp - but few of them, like those who sport the "I wanna be an admin someday' box actually make it to officer grade. A handful of others hoodwinked us into giving them tools because their agenda was the more sinister activity of making money out of our volunteer efforts or doctoring the bios of presidents and electoral candidates or promoting their companies and organizations. This last group is the worst because some of them even wangled their way into a paid positions at the WMF and/or are still allowed to be admins.

I'm not one of the editors ho hides behind anonymity, and unlike some, I do have a user page that tells why I do and say the things I do on Wikipedia and why I'm qualified or not for editing it - hundreds of Wikipedians have met me, but sad to say, among them is a handful ofv some of the very worst kind I'm describing here and are the sad blocked and banned creeps who terrorised or disrupted Wikipedia for years now to populate the Wikipedia detractor forums. Others became close friends and contributed greatly to some of the moving and shaking that has significantly advanced the project despite resistance from the WMF who thinks they own us and expects us to clear up their expensive errors for free. But neither was I an admin, or whatever, who maintains blogs and social media pages to claim how important they are on Wikipedia in the hope of a mention in the NYT or The Guardian (links definitely available - and some of it would make you cringe).

I fully support DGG's comment about nastiness - he of all people is one user who should command the greatest of our respect and I strongly recommend anyone to go to Brooklyn and have dinner with him before throwing around with criticisms. Fortunately for me, who joined Wikipedia as a sprightly fifty-something, I am old now, been disrobed, had the respect for my work torn to shreds by a Committee that was dished up with the agendas of some of the worst trolls and vindictive individuals the project has never known, without according the slightest courtesy of examining what was behind it all just like they did here on another case - and some of it down to one of their own number - so while I still have a will to live, I fully understand not only the statement on your user page, Trypto, but I have no desire to be active again on content or new changes - regard me as a bystander but one who is not afraid to voice his opinion on the the events that unfold. I also totally empathise - again - withBGH who has very recently become the latest victim of the troll who started the proceedings that got me desysoped, and more systemic attempts at the destruction of her enthusiasm and spirit by yet another train wreck of one of Arbcom's warped processes - and if she does get her bits back, her Sword of Damocles won't go away and there will be miscreants enough who will continue to hound her, and as per this statement, it's high time some users with advanced rights or elected positions thought about falling on their swords.

Just a few of the tiny number of remaining users who are truly concerned for the quality of Wikipedia and the welfare of its editors are the ones who have posted on this page and whether we agree with them all or not, we've probably lucky to have assembled the best of the bunch. And we should be grateful for that. I sadly can't agree any more with my old friend WTT on some things but I'm sure that if ever I find my way back to Europe (unlikely now that my last living close relative there passed away last week), we'll be able to iron those difference out over a nice cup of tea. On Arbcom, there are some people whom I am fond of, WTT included, but as a body Arbcom is a well of totally poisoned water. They keep talking about the mountains of email they have to sift through, and it's probably time consuming and very necessary, but what interests most of us is the face we see of that Committee, and that face is not very pretty.

Two years ago I wrote a tryptich in The Signpost that I thought would be a seminal work on adminship. One day in the future, when Arbcom has gotten rid of all the admins (except themselves), the ensuing chaos will be the final bugle call in the noise and confusion of a battlefield that calls itself Wikipedia. Like many a police state with its spies and agents provocateurs (don't forget I lived within one metre of the wall of one of Europe's worst police states for nine years), Wikipedia will one day be a bunch of uncontrollable trolls with Arbcom in charge. The Committee will exist only for its own ends and rule the minions with an iron fist, and there will be a revolution: someone somewhere with a big server will copy the whole content, allow some paid editing and adverts, and that will be the end of donations for the WMF to squander on their junkets, their version of Airforce One at 36,000ft, and fancy employment perks, and the volunteer time and good faith we invested in the project will have made us the gullible laughing stock of the new mega-rich stock holders, but by then I'll probably be pushing up daisies and won't give a hoot.

And if Iridescent were a lesser mortal, right now they would probably be Arbcom's next admin target [1] and it remains to be seen what Arbitrator Bradv is going to do about it. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 09:25, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

Arbitrary break

@Tryptofish, Scottywong, Ritchie333, and Atsme: Revenge is sweet - especially when it is truly justified, and sometimes it is, and that's why, for example, people deserve closure when they've been the victims of crime. But here on Wikipedia once Arbcom has had its say, those who gaslighted and lied through their back teeth to get get you sanctioned become the Committee's pets and protégés and are permitted to perpetuate their disgusting behaviour with impunity - as we have seen yet again very recently. If you keep your trap shut and believe the Committee will investigate the case thoroughly and make truly judicious use of their privilege, you may as well step off a cliff right now, and especially once the Committee members themselves are implicated, if you dare to say anything in your defence it's labelled as 'doubling down' - and how I hate that expression that seems to have taken over the Wikipedia lexis lately - and if you're an admin, if you do as much as dare to squeak you'll be served with the severest punishment in the catalogue without the right of appeal. There are some privileged people within the Wikipedia-Wikimedia colossus whose reputations I'm sure some of us would gladly see torn to shreds, but like in RL, we generally just have to shut up and put up, and simply let that go - even some of those you thought were your friends will leave you hung out to dry, even if they don't actually help others to throw you under the bus. As WereSpielChequers says: ...organisations don't respond well when you show evidence that contradicts their core beliefs, and what Boing, who has an aptitude for annoying people by hitting nails squarely on the head - and even tells me to my face if I am wrong - has exposed in only a few words what too many don't really want to admit. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:23, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

I've been thinking about the systemic problems with the culture of Wikipedia, and I've thought of two more things that I consider worthy of discussion.

Tyrant human bots. A lot of tasks that need to get done on en-wiki are repetitive and, frankly, boring. Some get done by bots, which is good. But Wikipedia is also a magnet for editors who enjoy doing those tasks. And that's fine as well: better them than me. I'm not talking here about editors who do gnomish edits that entail actually reading what the page says, as those are very helpful and I have no issue with them. Rather, I'm talking about editors who make edits that actually could have been done by bots, if the needed bots existed, and do those in huge quantities day after day, and do little else. Some of these users may be on the spectrum, but I don't want to paint with too broad a brush. I can think of multiple editors who self-identify that way whose work I admire and am glad for. There's some overlap here with those who have the I-want-to-be-an-admin-someday userbox. The problem arises when these editors start to get involved with policies and guidelines. They can be obstacles to policy corrections, crying WP:CREEP if someone wants to change anything in their worlds. And they often revise style guidelines to reflect their personal, rigid, preferences, especially in areas where very few other editors are paying any attention, because it's not very interesting. And then they show up at articles that are not improved by their changes, as well as at userpages and user talkpages, to clean up stuff that doesn't look messy to anyone else. And then, of course, they point to the guideline that they changed, as justification. This happens very frequently with templates and categories. Uniformity must be enforced, and WP:IAR be damned! They end up creating time sinks for editors who actually write content. And they definitely add to burnout. It's been getting out of balance.

Misunderstanding what diffs are for. The talk just above, about how troublemakers can take a diff out of context and use it to wikilawyer, got me thinking about this. The idea that dispute resolution means "show diffs of what you allege" comes from a good place. If you are going to accuse someone of something, you need to back it up with evidence rather than just throwing accusations around. Based on that, the community has gotten used to regarding diffs as a sort of gold standard for dispute resolution, and gradually over time this has led to some misconceptions that are uncritically taken for granted. If you have a diff that looks like the smoking gun, then that's that. And if your diffs, taken individually, don't seem all that bad, then you have failed to make your case. And there are three problems that we collectively need to recognize there:

1. Context is lost. Was there something that came before, that would put the diff in a different light?
2. Patterns are overlooked. Maybe there's no single diff that, by itself, stands out as a personal attack, for example, but there are dozens of diffs over time, that if taken together would show a pattern of incivility.
3. The only patterns that emerge are patterns in which every individual diff is, by itself, the same policy violation.

And these problems play a significant role in burnout. Show me an ArbCom case where, arguably, someone was unfairly sanctioned (and someone else got off scot-free), and I bet I can find diffs misinterpreted in these three ways. ArbCom is actually rather bad at this, but it reflects a cognitive failure across the community. For example, in the recent Medicine case, I put a lot of effort into the evidence that I provided, and much of it dealt with patterns rather than a smoking gun. And in the Proposed Decision, I watched some of the Arbs twist themselves into pretzels trying to write a Finding of Fact, because they wanted to list a few diffs, and had trouble settling on just a few that would, each, stand by themselves.

These things, along with others identified above, are fundamental problems with the culture at en-wiki. And unless the community as a whole takes a hard look at them and actually does something about it, there will continue to be burnout, and there is no reason to assume that turnover with new editors arriving will compensate for it. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:51, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

Thank you so much for that, Tryptofish. It's 05:18AM here and you've spelled out exactly what I've been trying to say in my roundabout way, and just like Boing, you hit every nail bang on the head and so much more eloquently than I would nowadays be disposed to - at least they can only rip my well-worn admin T-shirt off my back once. And after being monumentally harassed by LTA for just doing my job (and among them, power people you just don't want to cross swords with, - but I'm the one with the clean block log...) yeah, I burned out and trod on a few fat, nasty toes. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 22:21, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

Thank you so very much for saying that – it's the occasional message like that, that is almost the only thing that has kept me from leaving here entirely. I hope that what I've observed here gets taken up by others and does not just pass with transient notice here. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:29, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

Tryptofish, I’ve previously said that the biggest problem on Wikipedia is that we insist as a community in giving those who are not compatible with a collaborative project every chance to prove it. I stand by that claim, but I’ll expand a bit more here on a related problem that has some overlap: we are completely incapable of dealing with editors who have an agenda and smile. That agenda doesn’t have to be political or ideological: it could be to change the styles of every article on bus stops (we’ve seen stranger things...) If you don’t lose your cool, and you know where the lines are, you’re untouchable even if you are basically a nazi apologist and everyone knows it, or if you’re a anti-vaxx conspiracy theorist arguing for false neutrality, or you focus on more meta things and insist on your pet behavioural norm becoming policy. All you have to do is be committed and smile for years, even if everyone disagrees with you. Eventually they’ll give up or be sanctioned for lashing out at you. Either way you get what you want.

This goes to your diff point: what I’ve described can’t be diff’d. Something can be blindingly obvious to everyone, but can’t be stopped because of a lack of line crossing diffs. This of course leads to frustration and burnout because if you actually try to stop the problems you can be accused of personal attacks. I’m all for our rule against casting aspersions, but it’s been wikilawyered to mean that commenting on trends puts you at risk for sanctions.

None of this is ArbCom’s fault, and as I made clear above, I think the community as a whole has overcorrected and now is holding the people who deal with this type of disruption to higher standards than those causing it. I’ve been critical of this committee on several occasions this year, and I personally wish they’d act as a calming influence against this trend, but I understand it’s a problem with our collective culture that’s changed over time. TonyBallioni (talk) 01:50, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

Agreed, and I loved your edit summary. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:31, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

I do understand where you're coming from Tony, but as long as I ever edit anything on en.Wikipedia again whether it be mainspace or talk (and I'm most definitely not going to do the same free, time consuming work fostering reforms or looking for COI/UPE/SPI etc that I did for years, or cleaning up the paid WMF's catastrophic errors and wastes of funds), I will always maintain that when it comes to sanctioning - or not sanctioning - it's Arbcom's fault. The rest as you say, is the Community's failure to be able to find a way of catching the people you describe without yourself becoming Arbcom's Aunt Sally and Scapegoat. Over the last 72 hours some people have been sending me some clues, among which there are some I cannot break confidence and reveal, and I've been looking at some major Arbcom cases where either serious sanctions or just a slap on the wrist were the result. There has often been corruption on the Committee, but to AGF, they often just cannot see the wood for the trees and they won't spend 'their' time looking for a clearing in the jungle of the case and coming up with an honest judgement. If the case is too complex for them, or if they just can't be bothered to give it their best, they either declare themselves on Wikileave, or go with the peanut gallery's flow of circumstantial evidence, faked facts, and its disingenuous distortions of context; I won't belabour those points now but I could indeed come up with a hundred diffs to prove it. The blindingly obvious from all this is that there is no consistency - whatever the current constitution of the Committee. Sure, it occasionally gets some things right - when they are easy, or represent a really huge community consensus (and even then not always), but otherwise It's all down to who your pals are among the advanced rights holders or on the committees, who has the most FA or DYK, or whose toes you trod on, and woe betide you if by doing you job you expose someone with a big bag of tools and a big ego - or get them perfectly proceduraly blocked. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:53, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

Yes, I’ve certainly been critical of this committee and like Boing! I think this one has gotten many cases. I’m willing to point out that these problems haven’t been limited to them though. I don’t think we’ll ever fix the current mens that I see as problematic by only criticizing the committee. Fixing it at the community level will hopefully make a shift on the committee. TonyBallioni (talk) 03:18, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

As an aside to one specific point, don't assume that someone making a long series of bot-like edits is necessarily on the spectrum, or incapable of other things. To take an obvious example, when you see me making a long series of script-assisted spelling corrections it generally doesn't mean I'm some kind of human-bot hybrid, but that I'm watching a sporting event of some kind in which I'm interest enough to keep watching but not so interested that I'm glued to the screen, and consequently am flicking my attention between the TV and "is that an error or correct in context? accept/reject". To take the example you're probably thinking of, BHG may well make long strings of minor edits, but she's also the author of something like 2⁄3 of Wikipedia's biographies of Irish politicians. (Plus, quite often when you see someone making a shitload of minor edits, it's actually an artefact of how MediaWiki handles scripts rather than some kind of obsession on their part. If we decided to rename Category:20th-century American politicians to Category:20th-century US politicians (which we arguably should) and I ran a script to replace the category on the member articles, it would show me as having made 10,760 edits even though all I'd have done is enter the search-and-replace terms and pressed "go".) ‑ Iridescent 05:30, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

Maybe I didn't make it clear enough, but I do understand that, about people on the spectrum. Indeed, you need look no farther than my defense of MPants on that. Although I do have issues with BHG (indeed, in part re MPants), that's not who I was thinking of. I've seen you at EEng's talk page from time to time, and I'm sure you've seen examples of what I am talking about, directed against EEng, there. Here's a link to another example: [2]. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:45, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

What's wrong with the Committee, for starters, is the way it's elected. There are rarely really enough candidates of the right calibre to fill all the vacant seats, so whoever they are, some who are not qualified will pass. Secondly, the ballot is all wrong. In fact for a process that is supposed to be for electing a body of the most reliable, experienced, fair and impartial users, the system is actually far less reliable than that other corrupt and contentious system: RfA. To be fair, despite the nastiness and plain sillyness that still pervades the RfA process, nowadays those who are brave enough to put up with it almost always pass; back in the day, pretty much any candidate only had a 50/50 chance of getting the bit, but today we've been able to find ways of nipping the nonsense transclusions in the bud and providing genuine admin wannabes with some sound advice.

Thirdly, our system of universal Wiki-suffrage is all wrong, but like everything else here, it was invented and installed by consensus of the community. A lot of people who edit mainspace, from kids in primary school to professors with multiple PhDs are not interested in voting on the ACE, but we ram it down their throats that they have to be, so of course, they do. It's not as strict as the Australian compulsory vote however cluefull or disinterested you are, but on bigger scale the Brits learned their lesson with their 2016 BREXIT referendum which was so close run it should have been rerun after the populace had been properly informed what an exit or a stay would or would not create, and the USA got a knee jerk the same year with their POTUS poll which disenfranchised the popular vote. I would therefore be pretty sure that a lot of people basically click away at random on the ACE form because they don't even know what Arbcom is or what it does. At least there is less advertising for RfA for Admins which most users are at least somewhat aware of and believe them to be some kind of forum moderators. I don't believe however that the new watchlist exposure and RFC Cent entries helped the situation - those weren't the real issues, and neither did reducing the pass mark improve the climate nor encourage more candidates to come forward and be counted. The RfC to get those new measures rolled out (which incidentally I supported) was really just a solution looking for the wrong problem but one which showed the community that at least changes can be made even if they are basically useless, and that's basically what's wrong with much of our consensus building system.

The final disastrous feature of the ACE voting, is therefore that everyone with a month's tenure and 150 edits is supposed to have enough clue to have their say, while an analysis of every RfA will come up with at least: 1 troll, 1 sock, and 1 idiot. Ironically, RfA with all its imperfections, is still the safer system - I recently made a nomination that I thought would be an easy pass, but someone came along with something I could not have known about and opposed it. The vote tanked the RfA, maybe rightly so at the time - the oppose vote was genuine and neither vindictive nor vengeful. OTOH, you take an RfA like mine and those who lost an argument over linguistics with you will round up their friends and try to convince the community you are a monster and a bully - and nine years later it will be used again by social losers to strip your admin T-shirt off your back and the Arbs who don't know you will believe them, and those Arbs who do know you will relish at the opportunity to get rid of another admin who has done more for the movement than most of the Committee together or bring their own revenge for an argument they lost with you a couple of years previously; the rest of the Committee will simply remain convinced that your mission in life is to bite every newbie despite having helped and been thanked by thousands.

One might like to know in advance which gender groups a successful teenage admin will later identify with, bearing in mind that as they grow older, bolder, and more powerful there might be a risk they will become a PoV pushing misandrist or misogynist, or simply - and wisely as an admin (or Arb if they get that far) - leave gender comments for others to make. Respect and cultural awareness prevents us for asking these questions however, and most of us in the free world grew up with these values - or is it acceptable for someone in the bus queue to tap you on the shoulder and ask "Hey, you, are you straight or LGBTQRXZ or belong to some other alphabet soup?" or "Are you Republican or Democrat?" or "Are you Protestant or Catholic?" or "Are you Jew or Muslim?" well, not from where I come from it ain't (and the wrong answer even in the large 'stable' Western European democracies can get you shot or even beheaded on the spot). The latest discussion on one corner of the Wiki last week is whether we should now even be asking admin candidates if they are NAZIS ! OMG, would you credit it? Where I was growing up, food was still rationed, we played on Birmingham bomb sites, and in the 60s you could share the same compartment with the same people on a commuter train for ten years, but if you were to greet one of them with as as much as a "Good morning, how are you today?" they would think you were after something - and in those days being gay meant 12 months in the nick or three months of enforced 'voluntary' ECT in Powick.

Some questions at RFA and ACE are therefore totally inadmissible - every editor should be aware of minimum etiquette, being a newbie is not an excuse for overstepping social norms and it's not our job to be society's educators (I know WTT will disagree with me, because it's something he's particularly gentle and good at, but not everyone joined WP to be a child minder), and experienced users should have the decency to refrain from taunting, baiting, and gaslighting with their questions. We're here to compile an encyclopedia, keep its content relevant and accurate, and get rid of those who can't or won't abide by those simple rules, but some arbitrators may have been around so long, Trypto, that they themselves have lost sight of what it means to be compatible with a collaborative project (and I don't mean those whom I actively encouraged and convinced to stand for last year's ACE, passed, and I hope that if we have to have an Arbitration Committee, will stay on it for a while).

With a couple of genuine jurists - they tend to be more pragmatic and not vote from the hip or the handbag , and a genuine highly experienced and qualified academic, I think Wikipedia is fairly safe with those Arbitrators who still have a year to go, but I fear for the project if some run again and get reelected, and no one knows yet who the candidates will actually be for those 7 seats. So fixing it at the community level to make a shift on the committee, Tony, will not be easy - at least not this time round unless of course someone can be bold enough to come up with a 'really good idea' and get it through Wikipedia's antiquated system of building consensus.

@Iridescent: I appreciate your series of observations on your talk page as a follow on, and as always, they are spot on. However, although it may look as if our opinions are closing their gap, we do remain quite distinctly apart on the reasons, cause, and effect of my own desysoping and why I'll never contribute to the actual running and building of this encyclopedia again or making suggestions for its improvement, and why the gap is widening between me and my old friend WTT. I'm quite happy to stimulate opinion however, and vote on some discussions and elections if I think they are worth my time, and if they will improve the lot of some of the other jaded industrious users and admins. Dennis, BHG, and Ritchie will know what I mean, and why I reacted the way I did to the attacks on you by that team-tagging pair of Arbs - and I'll refuse to accord an additional layer of respect to arbs and (former)stewards, or even 'Crats for that matter, than to any other users, just because of the Christmas cracker hats they wear. This isn't the military, and I've been there too. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 10:54, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

• ...would have appreciated more support for you from these editors during your Arbcom case. Lourdes 14:01, 24 October 2020 (UTC)
  • If this is some kind of insinuation that we all stood by and let it happen without comment, specify exactly what you're insinuating and who you're insinuating it against. My exact wording at the time (still preserved on the main Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Kudpung page, not buried in an obscure archive somewhere) was 'this complaint is way overblown and all it needs is a "both of you calm down, you're supposed to be on the same side"'. DGG and WTT were on the committee and for obvious (and correct) reasons not allowed to express personal opinions at the time; Boing! advised (again on the main case page) against taking any action against Kudpung; TonyBallioni complained that the case was inappropriately framed and degenerating into a general list of grievances rather than genuine arbitration; Atsme complained that the case was becoming a railroad of personal grudges; The Blade of the Northern Lights advised that the case was an inapprpriate piece of score-settling. (All these comments were made on a page on which you subsequently commented, so you presumably saw them at the time.) The only people I can see here who weren't putting our necks on the line for Kudpung at the time were Ritchie333 (who had a legitimate view that Kudpung should have been admonished for the tone of his comments), plus Dennis Brown and Tryptofish both of whom were largely inactive at the time and probably not even aware the case was happening. ‑ Iridescent 15:02, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

Just about me, I selectively made a few exceptions to my inactivity (and I'm still largely inactive), and those were in the Jytdog and Medicine cases. The former just left me sad, and the latter was a horrible experience (and actually was that for people on both "sides"). If ever we get to where things hinge on just a few editors being active or not active, the project will be dead. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:45, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

Tabish Gauhar

Make a page of Tabish Gauhar.

I wanted to add the following update.

https://profit.pakistantoday.com.pk/2020/10/02/former-k-electric-chairman-tabish-gauhar-appointed-as-sapm-on-power/

https://www.ke.com.pk/chairman-k-electric-tabish-gauhar-completes-tenure/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by Karachi Kings Dr (talk • contribs) 14:58, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

@Karachi Kings Dr: Judging by the many comments on your talk page which you have blanked, especially those by Girth Summit, you do not appear to be having much success at creating articles. I have placed a 'welcome' message on your talk page, please check out the links before you make any more edits. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 00:01, 28 October 2020 (UTC)