FRAMBAN, the revolution that fell apart

[CrowsNest]

Well, it didn't take long, but it has now become abundantly clear that the sound and fury that characterized the FRAMBAN controversy, was fake news.

The Wikipedia community's insistence that they are mature and responsible enough to police themselves in all matters except the most serious (as if that caveat in of itself didn't convey a lack of responsibility), has spectacularly fallen apart in the wake of the very first example of their elected government trying, and apparently failing, to resolve a serious harassment case.

It was a simple affair between two parties, the Administrator Ritchie, and the editor Praxidicae. After a private hearing, the ArbCom resolved that both parties shall be banned from interacting with each other, while making it clear Ritchie had been the problem user. The actual result, of course, is that Ritchie has retired.

So, what have we learned?

Ineffective community processes

Yet again, this was an incident that looks like it only got to the stage of secret trials, because the community itself had manifestly failed to deal with it through the normal channels. A concerned third party had asked the community to make sure Ritchie left Praxidicae alone back in November 2018, and despite the fact Ritchie had committed serious breaches of the higher standard expected of the Administrators, nothing was done, the prospect of an interaction ban being explicitly rejected. It is highly relevant the closer was an Administrator who seems to be getting a reputation for shutting down these community investigations early, in a manner that benefits sub-par Administrators. Still nothing was done as they tangled again, the community all looking on as if what they were doing to each other was fine and dandy. It was anything but.

It seems clear that private contact with Arbcom happened around the time of the third party request, if not before, a direct result of victim's dissatisfaction with the level of protection from harassment offered by the community. The same happened with Fram. It is clear ArbCom chose to act in this case precisely because, whether before but certainly after Fram, they now accept their role is to act decisively when it becomes clear the community has failed to do so.

Low standards is the reality

As regular readers will know, Ritchie is on my radar because he's an incredibly good example of how bad you can be, and still not be considered unfit to be an Administrator by the Wikipedia community. It is incredible, the breadth and scale of his failures - from copyright to personal conduct to dispute resolution.

What's incredible is how Ritchie seems to think he's good at this stuff. He's forever blowing his own trumpet, convinced he's right, and impervious to the fact that on several occasions, the community is universal in their belief he is not, either through their silence or explicit feedback. As was the case in the underlying philosophical dispute that led to the enmity with Praxidicae.

He tried to start a revolution against the Wikipedia sister site Commons over his manifest cluelessness over basic copyright issues, and nobody on Wikipedia said a word, except to support the know nothing dufus. It's ironic that Ritchie was one of the chief critics of Fram, he just never did what the rules expect of him and actually instigated proper proceedings. He just kept sniping from the sidelines, making snide comments and veiled threats. Harassment, in other words.

Loudmouths dominating as ever

As with Fram, the public inquest into the supposed faults in how ArbCom have handled this case are being dominated by a tiny minority of loud and aggressive and mostly male editors, motivated not by any serious ethical or procedural concerns, rather by their personal friendships or their wider sociopolitical aims to actually change the procedures.

As is tediously familiar, the toxic environment of Wikipedia sees no problem with these people just endlessly regurgitating their views in this entirely unproductive fashion. Wikipedia has established processes and procedures for people who think something has gone wrong, to state their case and gauge just how much support their is for it in the community, and act accordingly. These are set aside as irrelevant. Administrators aren't stepping in to moderate or refocus, indeed many of the mob are Administrators, that being precisely the social capital required to be a loudmouth pain in the ass. As with Fram, the clear aim of the vocal minority is to just express their rage and break stuff.

Nosey parkers everywhere

Yet again, there was an insatiable thirst among the community to know every sordid detail of this dispute. As with Fram, they simply cannot accept not being told information they want to use to judge for themselves who was in the right and who was in the wrong.

The mob is adamant that this should have been handled publicly, they're saying that even though they don't even know if the parties involved wanted it to he handled privately. There can be no privacy from the mob. The own you. ArbCom has total authority to decide what is and is not handled privately, this is long standing Wikipedia policy, but the mob is no longer happy with that arrangement.

The message is clear - participating in Wikipedia comes with a price. Whatever the dispute, but especially if you end up in a dispute with a popular Administrator, everything you do and have ever done, is up for public debate. What you said, what you were wearing, whether you deserved it, etc, etc. Victims are not victims until the community has revictimised them to the point they are satisfied they were the wronged party. Which is unlikely to be the outcome anyway, since there seems to be no real acceptance that their internal governance is so poor that yes, it is actually quite common for their Administrators to be guilty of misconduct, and occasionally one is going to be sanctioned for it.

It seems increasingly pointless even assuming there is ever a time when the community will accept being told something had to be handled privately. This has become a byword for mistrust of any and all findings and outcomes that result.

Vengeance said the Lord

After initially showing some restraint, it of course didn't take long before the inquest into the secret trial turned to the matter of finding some way of punishing Praxidicae. This mirrors what happened in the Fram case, and nobody shut it down with anything except mild condemnation. The editor doing it was defiant, but despite the clear threat that they will carry on doing this sort of thing in future, they are not blocked.

Not therapy

Truth be told, Ritchie is a mental case. A proper Section 8. As he ironically saw fit to reveal in his public protestations at his perceived mistreatment by ArbCom. Like the similarly oddly feted but clearly unfit to serve, Dennis Brown, he is a middle aged white man, who seems to be using his status a Wikipedia Administrator as a crutch to compensate for a failed career and a train wreck of a personal life.

Despite both being quite open about their personal circumstances, specifically their suicidal tendencies, there seems to be no desire among anyone in the Wikipedia community to state the obvious - maybe it isn't a good idea to put vulnerable people in roles of high stress and great responsibility, relatively speaking.

No good deed

As is normal for the toxic Wikipedia community, and despite it being a total violation of their fundamental principle of Assume Good Faith, the reaction to the announcement of the interaction ban has been riven with had faith, the barbed commentary going way beyond legitimate criticism. As always, no blocks are issued, this bile is just allowed to continue for as long as the aggressors want, even when it results in conduct violations far worse than those the announcement was meant to remedy. The parallels with the Fram revolt are obvious.

As they never tire of telling people, apparently it is significant to their sense of justice that their ArbCom is made up of volunteers, i.e. they are not evil paid staff, with their secret agendas. Remarkable then, that there seems no individual or collective sense that it might be best for everyone to not make this role appear like a thankless task, where every single mistake is viewed with the maximal bad faith. Back in 2018, there were only eight viable candidates for eight seats. Quite where the optimism that there is an entire new Committee waiting in the wings to replace this supposedly failed body, is a mystery. They get the leaders they deserve.

The strains are starting to show. This Committee is already much reduced through resignations, sackings and absences, and the aftermath of this Ritchie case has seen one more say they are taking a break due to the stress, and another two openly expressing their unhappiness at being the community's punching bags.

Of course, this is just a reset to the toxic working conditions, pre-Fram. The community has always treated ArbCom this way, and as a result they have always struggled to stay motivated and feel valued, their decisions always controversial when they affect popular users.

Their own worst enemy

As with the Fram debacle, much of the ensuing controversy is down to ArbCom's own mishandling of the case, their woeful communication and their inability to predict the reactions of the horrible community they serve. The community were happy to ignore that aspect of the Fram debacle, because it didn't fit the desired narrative of the Foundation being the enemy. With no Foundation to blame this time (although it course some are still trying to claim they are the ultimate villains), they're happy to blame ArbCom for their fuckups. They didn't word the announcement properly. They were wrong to hold it as a private hearing. Blah blah blah. As one person has observed, as if these armchair quarterbacks could do any better. One of the loudest critics is of of course someone who stood for election to ArbCom as the Trumpian drain the swamp candidate, and finished well outside the running.

Fake critics

As happened in the Fram case, the supposed preeminent critic forum, Wikipediocracy, isn't highighting any of the real issues. Their forum is just awash with the same loudmouth Wikipedians, the same tendency to blame the victims, and the same instinct to protect establishment volunteers against the hated Foundation. Wikipediocracy didn't even have a thread on Ritchie until this controversy, which was not surprising, since they don't really concern themselves with exposing the misbehaving volunteers who are the bedrock of the broken Wikipedia community - many like Black Kite are actually valued members of that forum. Their only concern is the evil Foundation, because of course they're the ones really to blame for Ritchie being such a foul mouthed emotionally unstable and generally clueless figure of authority, somehow. They're not sure how, but they'll find a way to blame the blameless and shield their friends from scrutiny, it's what they do.

Abandon all hope

As a couple of the Arbitrators have observed, the atrocious reaction to this trivial matter really does hand all the momentum to those who have been arguing all along that the community is dysfunctional, their Administrators useless if not actively a roadblock to progress, and they have absolutely no legitimacy when it comes to serious matters like harassment. They call for change. Spoiler alert - there will be no change, not without further major shocks like FRAMBAN. This is their culture.

The results are in, the Wikipedia experiment is a failure. The people prepared to volunteer their time and do what is necessary to climb their social ladder to achieve the crucial positions of trust, are not the people with the necessary skills to discharge that trust effectively. They lack the judgement, temperament and attitude required. They are seriously damaged people, looking for something from Wikipedia beyond the meagre satisfaction they can offer.

And the whole consensus model where everybody is in charge just does not work. It's clear that even if they see a problem, which his debatable, individuals are scared to act, our of fear of the mob. Ritchie lasted for as long as he did because it was the done thing among the community to pretend he wasn't a problem, indeed to praise him as one of their best Administrators. They're doing it even now, as if someone could possibly serve as an Administrator after what he has done.

[CrowsNest]

This post from a former Wikipedia Administrator neatly encapsulates what I wrote above.

As I said, I want us to maintain our autonomy by having matters dealt with by our own elected Arbitration Committee. But I have lost all trust in this lot. This was not just a mistake, or even a series of mistakes. It was and remains a travesty that has apparently done a deep injustice to a valued admin—one of the admins who endeavored to find a way forward from the WP:FRAM disaster, and not incidentally, an admin who continued to write and improve content. While harassment is a serious issue, and so is the aggressive environment on the project, I know my list of off-puttingly aggressive editors is different from others'; I suspect there are many, many different responses to different ways of interacting. And this is not social media; we are working together to produce an encyclopedia, and it is to protect that encyclopedia and the joint endeavor of writing it and keeping it up that we select admins. This Committee is guilty of driving away a good editor and a good admin, and whatever the intentions may have been, that is more than an oopsie or even a series of oopsies. It's a betrayal of the trust placed in them, particularly since they bypassed normal methods of community dispute resolution that had not been exhausted, thereby exceeding what they were elected to do. I don't trust these people as committee members any more, and part of our self-governance has to be that we get to withdraw our recognition and replace them. In fact it's in the Arbcom rules. As a beginning, we are owed not just contrition about the not just conflicting but less than fully truthful statements above concerning "discussion" with R and P, but a straight answer to the question above concerning whether Ritchie333 was fully informed that that would be his only opportunity to explain his perceptions of the situation and the basis for his actions. I will also add this question: Was the decision to carry out this investigation entirely in secret taken because of instructions or guidelines from WMF Trust & Safety? If so, that would be a small mitigating factor; but the community deserves to know, and I believe absolutely that it deserves an Arbcom that will stand up to the WMF, not one that will act as its tool. For one thing, if the invocation of the word "harassment" automatically leads to punishment of the editor accused of it, there will be irreparable damage to the project. It would place at risk not only all active admins but all experienced and active editors (vandal fighters, those active in contentious political and BLP areas, those who often debate "fringe" issues, those who watch for copyvio, and yes, those active at AfD and in anti-COI/spam efforts). We've been told "We kept the situation private to protect the privacy of both parties, both of whom were more candid in their discussions with us than I believe they would have been comfortable with in public" (Premeditated Chaos) and "this was determined to be a private matter unsuitable for public discussion" (SilkTork, endorsing PMC's statement). Yet as others have noted, the Committee has in the past dealt with disputes with some private evidence. Was it entirely the Committee's decision to do this in total secrecy, or was there arm-twisting from the WMF? We deserve to know before we lose any more editors, whatever the personal opinions of individual committee memb
ers may be about what P and R may have thought. Yngvadottir (talk) 20:33, 8 August 2019 (UTC)

Yngvadottir of course is the Administrator who sacrificed her own Admin rights in defence of the highly toxic editor Eric Corbett, who continues to be a vile person to other users, be they random innocents or Administrator enemies, to this very day. If this remotely bothers her, this culpability for enabling a toxic environment, she doesn't let it show.

This is Wikipedia's problem right here - with few exceptions, for the most part the only women who become established on the projects are those like this, who consider it more important that an Administrator creates content than whether or not he has harassed someone. It isn't in their capacity to assume good faith that 93 emails between a Committee of nine community elected Arbitrators, unanimous in their findings, is going to reflect the truth of the matter.

No, Ritchie needs to be given even more opportunities to publicly denigrate his target and spill his guts in a bid for sympathy, because of course it is perfectly normal to assume that because you can't see the contents of those 93 emails, then obviously what must have happened is Praxidicae falsely claimed harassment, and the Committe just believed the lying bitch, and now Wikipedia has lost a fine Administrator, because of course by being lenient and giving him a slap on the wrist means he had to retire. Obviously.

Never in my life have I seen this person ever admit she could be wrong, that she might be mistaken, that she might be letting her personal feelings cloud her judgement. Never. Not once. Whenever she opens her mouth, it is universally for the purpose of being strident in expressing her unhappiness. If Wikipedia gives her any joy at all, she keeps it very well hidden, because all she brings to community discourse is misery and back-biting. As for proposing reforms to bring about the changes she wants, no, that's other people's job. She's too busy building the encyclopedia, of course.

How did they even become an Administrator in the first place, given the evident lack of the more basic components of a well rounded human being? The things that would be essential features for someone tasked with dispute resolution and general mediation? Wikipedia is no better at selecting its Administrators now as it was when she was promoted, and it never will get any better. The experiment is a failure.

Not for nothing did Larry Sanger say the lunatics had taken over the asylum, over a decade ago now. Here's one of them.

[Graaf Statler]

Not for nothing did Larry Sanger say the lunatics had taken over the asylum, over a decade ago now. Here's one of them.

Larry in general say sensible things, although I myself doubt if blockchain is the panacee for all this problems with perverse money streams and the attraction of it on lunatics and profiteers. But, I admit i am sceptical agains every swam intelligence projects because they simple end up with a system Hitler should make jealous. Including digital concentration camps and executions and Star Chamber trails.

But who of us has seen Schindler's List will never forget the scene of a high n*azi who arrive in one of the dead camps and sinks with his feeds in the gold and treasures. There where only a few drunk Ukrainian guards and a few hookers left, the money and all that wealth had lost its value. It had changed in bullshit. In bullshit money nobody even took the trouble to collect.
And the same has happend here, money has lost it's value. It is changed in bullshit money where nobody cares about.
What WMF needs is not gender idiots or psychoanalysts, no, they need good bookkeepers and guys with guts with the T&S tools in there hands who know what they are doing. Yes, that would be a great improvement! A Crow drone at the buttons, what a clean up should that give! Are you a jerk or a freak or a troll? Or just a lunatic? Here you are, a WMF drone shit bomb on your head! BAM. And believe me, the place should be clean up in no time!

[JuiceBeetle]

The revolution is back!
Will need more popcorn.

[Graaf Statler]

Mail conversation:

Hi, how are you?

SLW80: Fine. That's a long time ago.

Do you remember Hale?

SLW80: OOwwwww, what hated I that woman.

If I send you a link, will you post your negative experiences on WO? (long story about the failed Fram revolution from Eurocrap S.A.) And you are a lefty, female, gay, married, a feminist, wasn't it? Great!

SLW80: OF course I will!! I will get that bitch. Give me that link to that WO and I will post my side of the story! I will write a piece of text as negative as I can.

https://wikipediocracy.com/forum/viewto ... 50#p246917

Thanks you!

End

In general I am not enthusiast about that wiki gender thing, that seems me clear. And also not about all that failing GLAM projects and WIR's.
But, without any link, proof or evidence is this of course again a schoolvoorbeeld, a example of framing, gentleman. And no, I don't declare madam Hale holy and I don't say she or her partner has nothing to do with that Framban, but please play the game in a fair way and not in this creepy slumforum style what you guys are doing now for mounts.

Good luck, guys. Sounds like she's got herself a comfortable spot right now, and she'll cling to it as long as she can.

Mhhh, doesn't seems me a stayer on WO.

[JuiceBeetle]

Mhhh, doesn't seems me a stayer on WO.

Sock on WO? What a surprise.

[Graaf Statler]

So Any admin can unblock, any 'crat can restore the bit, and any steward could undo a global lock. What we could see is a showdown where the Community basically has the chance to call the WMF's bluff, and in all liklihood would. Your move, WMF.

What's the WMF going to do if Arb rules to unban Fram and restore the bit? Is the WMF going to punish everyone who honors the Arb decision?

Properly, MrErnie.

[JuiceBeetle]

Properly, MrErnie.

Similar to his inspiration, Jehochman, he also changed his mind, revoking his statement. Just venting, not here to make an encyclopedia.

[Graaf Statler]

Similar to his inspiration, Jehochman, he also changed his mind, revoking his statement. Just venting, not here to make an encyclopedia.

The worst of all that crap is, they also keep you from your work. They jump like the same stoned monkeys also around on the wiki products, shouting gender, gender, chapter, chapter, goals WMF.
Once I wrote even Ik ben op het punt aangekomen dat ik fysiek misselijk wordt als ik het woord Wikimedia hoor en dat heeft zo zijn reden because of the around hopping stoned Chapter monkeys.

Whally wrote this:

Dit duurt nu al 4 jaar en het moet nu maar eens afgelopen zijn. Wij verdoen met z'n allen hier te veel waardevolle tijd met deze discussies.

Four years, four years was Romaine=>Wikimedia&Socks and Vigtroll, the for ever Arb wasting our time. But it is not only the time and energy, ze wonen je uit. They exhaust you, it is one piece of negative energie, ja tegen nee zeggen, saying yes to no, they destroy you!

They are insatiable, they never get tired, they are coming back kids, corks who always come up again, they always return in a other form, sock, for them every day is a new one.
Sometimes you think now he got it! Yes. Forget it, the next day they are back waving with there pirate flag and doing themself really nothing, just like instance Vigtroll. Yes, partying in the chapters and drinking the free beer there. I can't say in all those years I have seen one single useful project.
You have to change your complete mind setting to there total craziness to survive, that is the only option. Otherwise you wii be destruction, that SanFanBan was a relieve and blessing, really. I needed several years to recover.

The only, and really only succes I have ever seen of this Trolling&Sucking system is that a French gender lady what has beaten Romaine with the flag pool of his pirate flag down. And with the knowledge of this solution it was extreem stupide of me not to accept such a pirate flag in the beginning we started to clean up wikiquote, just to beat all that chapter freeloaders out of the by me designed Wikiquote ll. Met een pisboog!

[CrowsNest]

There is no scenario where the community wins, the WMF has shown in other incidents that it would be perfectly willing to remove all Stewards and lock down the site if faced with open rebellion.

Indeed, they have a legal and moral duty to do so, since if they cannot trust volunteers to enforce policy, they cannot trust them to protect living people from harm, respect copyrights, or keep oversighted material hidden from public view. Their critical infrastructure would also be left vulnerable to mass attack.

If the rebels are hoping to prove Wikipedia can, or cannot, survive without unpaid volunteers in advanced permission roles, this would be a good way to find out.

They should have settled on the extraordinary show of generosity the resolution to Framban really was.

You can't call someone's bluff when they literally all the cards. Well, you can, but you lose.