Infoboxes

[CrowsNest]

Here's a real insight into the problem, following on from the incident noted above.

The Arb case exposed at length the toxic nature of the dispute and the disruptive acts that have defined it, such as edit warring. The major participants were identified in the case, if not sanctioned, save Cassianto. Both Discretionary Sanctions were adopted and editors have been suitably notified, as well as a special Infobox Probation being made available as a pre-packed DS.

And yet even after all that, when SchroCat used an insulting term designed solely to inflame and goad while edit warring during one of the tedious disputes, he received nothing more than a slap on the wrist don't do it again or else style warning for the incivility, the same ineffectual response he would get anywhere for a mere first offence.

"Idiotbox"
Please do not use this term. It's needlessly divisive and leads to conflict, which is something the discretionary sanctions are intended to avoid. It does nothing to resolve or de-escalate disputes. ~ Rob13Talk 16:04, 7 April 2018 (UTC)

Nonsense. See For Dummies and get a sense of perspective (and leaving pointy messages like yours is even more needlessly divisive and leads to conflict). – SchroCat (talk) 16:28, 7 April 2018 (UTC)

And even after he made it obvious he didn't give a shit with that response, nothing was done.

And then nothing was done even after he demonstrated at length on the ARBITRATORS OWN NOTICEBOARD (where the original remark has been reported) what his views on the use of such incivility as part of the battles actually is.......signing off with this brilliant act of trollery......

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... =835545672

.....still no block. Not even a sterner follow up warning. And there is no sign of anyone reacting to the edit warring or incivility by placing him (and the people he was edit warring with, for balance) on Infobox Probation.

In truth, the Arbitrators are just weak. Or incompetent. Or biased. Or all three. In light of this weak and ineffectual response even from the Arbs themselves to an issue brought directly to them, which was no different to the sort of issues the case was meant to stop, then frankly, expecting better and more collegiate behaviour out in the sticks, and expecting ordinary neutral Admins to give a shit and stick their hands in the meatgrinder on their behalf, is ridiculous.

This is a hallmark of Wikipedia, specifically it's weak and ineffectual system of governance and dispute resolution. That perennial asshole SchroCat has already in this one incident done more than the minimum required to earn both a block until he promises to never be uncivil again, and be placed on Infobox Probation. Neither happened. The entire case was a complete and total waste of time, they aren't even interested in acting on its own findings, not even the people who 'found' them (literally none of their findings were actually unknown to the community).

Wikipedia is fundamentally and irretrievably broken, because you can't even vote these weak and ineffectual people out of office when the time comes. When you only have eight viable candidates for eight seats as in the last election, this is exactly the sort of thing that happens. This is what institutional paralysis/decay looks like. HTD.

[CrowsNest]

Unsurprisingly, Cassianto's return from his self-imposed exile immediately caused drama in this arena. He jumped straight into infobox disputes on articles he WP:OWNS, triggering an enforcement request due to his probation restriction, triggering a clarification request due to the unclear wording of the restriction. All because they didn't simply ban him, which is what his behaviour over the years easily merits.

If you can believe it, this idiot is one of the Arbitration Committee....

I imagine the simplest remedy for infobox warfare would be: a) a rigid civility standard in infobox discussions, enforced by blocks, and b) a ban on relitigating consensus for or against any article's infobox for a period of (say) twelve months after the previous discussion closed. That'd bring the current nonsense to an end, but the first would also cost Wikipedia some excellent content contributors and the second is outside Arbcom's authority. So we're left with this current somewhat tortured outcome. As always, alternative proposals welcome, and if they're any good let's put them in place of what we have. -- Euryalus (talk) 06:44, 3 May 2018 (UTC)

It's amazing the hell these weaklings who are supposedly the Guardians of Wikipedia put themselves and their charges through, rather than front up to bullies like Cassianto. He exploits their fear and indecision to the max, to terrorise the powerless, like all bullies do.

[CrowsNest]

As has been suggested on my talkpage, the solution to this infobox stupidity is very simple: mandate them for certain categories of article where they work well, and deprecate them for those categories where they don't. Problem solved. Eric Corbett 06:46, 3 May 2018 (UTC)

Oh really? It has already been proposed, probably more than once, and shot down in flames, you pompous idiot. Why? Because on Wikipedia, the power users hate hard and fast rules, they always prefer things that are left purposefully vague so they can be left to the magic sauce of consensus, which is easily manipulated by power users to achieve whatever outcome they prefer in any given situation. How does an asshole like Eric not appreciate that? He is and always have been the chief beneficiary of that fucked up truth of Wikipedia, after all.

[CrowsNest]

Just noting here that Cassianto claims Arbitrator Alex Shih is prepared to "do his best" to act on the content of emails sent to him regarding infoboxes, and Queen Bitch Bishonen has stated she is prepared to warn or sanction anyone Cassianto reports to her for causing him distress over infoboxes.

Bishonen would probably proudly announce she was acting for and on behalf of a scumbag like Cass, but I don't recall Alex ever publicly admitting he was saying or doing anything at the behest of that shitlord. Evidently Cass and Alex share the same view of the infobox problem ( "editorial judgement of major contributors to the specific article should be respected" ), but his venturing into acting on it with his admin hat, especially if it's been at Cassianto's unseen direction, doesn't seem to have moved Alex to recuse from being an Arb in his disciplinary case.

[ericbarbour]

Jesus, is this still going on? Arbcom are idiots, but eventually someone will just say "fuck this noise" and block Cassianto. Deals will be made on IRC to keep him blocked, most likely, and no one will discuss it openly. Pathetic excuse for a mafia, eh?

[CrowsNest]

No, that's what would have happened on the Wikipedia of yesteryear. The ground has subtly shifted, as seen by the evolving makeup of ArbCom, who now care less about noise per se, and more about how to transparently manage their more rabid pack members. Cassianto will be handled the way Eric Corbett has been - Abrcom will gradually restrict him with lesser measures, and merely look the other way when even those weak measures are overlooked or even frustrated by their Admin delegates, to the point of being de facto unenforceable. Eric has three restrictions on him, yet effectively his only restriction is the one comment at RfA rule. And if he tested it, even that might prove to be unenforceable.

Much like Eric, Cassianto will continue to grumble, will even spend long periods pretending like he is on strike and leading some kind of counter-revolt against those terrible autocrats and their Admin slaves (who he never seems to appreciate, are the ones who are ultimately ensuring they are never indefinitely blocked). He may even go away for long periods, appearing retired, but he won't be. Because ultimately, under this new order, he will still be relatively free to do what he wants, hence he will still be an addict, still be unhappy, but still be productive enough that even the most hardline of Admins will never get a unilateral infefinite block to stick. Anyone daft enough to use IRC against these people, will more than likely be the only people who come off worse.

As such, the damage he causes, the people he hurts, will have got no satisfaction from ArbCom or their Admin delegates, even though policy demands it. And their pain will be compounded by the fact many of those Admins will openly flaunt that fact, as if somehow they are untouchable. And Cassianto will continue to pretend like he is the real victim.

This level of rank hypocrisy and unfairness will eventually destroy Wikipedia - Jimmy chose his words well when he called such people "toxic". Essentially that is ArbCom and the Admin's role these days - to enable poisonous people in the name of productivity, while pretending the rot and decay that surrounds them in the form of collapsing structures and diminished populations, has some other cause. Like software. Yes, software. That will surely be the reason......even though they had the same software in the boom years, which saw all those people recruited and all those structures built.

HTD.

[CrowsNest]

The community has now, after ArbCom's second plea for them to have a high level discussion to resolve it, officially told ArbCom to go fuck themselves if they think that there is going to be any resolution of the underlying policy issue which causes all these infobox disputes (the absence of any sensible guideline which recognises they are a feature of standardisation, so their usage should be standardised, predictable, uncontroversial).

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... mp_(policy)&diff=prev&oldid=840386861

That debate merely ratifies the status quo - neither expected or required on any article, so let's all fight about it on each individual page (and pretend like you are only having a debate relevant to that particular article, even though you are clearly not), and be content with the idea that nobody wins. Just endless warfare, a complete and total waste of community time. That readers and new editors will remains totally baffled at their seemingly random usage, seems the least of their concerns.

[CrowsNest]

Queen Bishonen has of course finally figured out what the ArbCom case means for her ambitions to create a gang of loyal soldiers who will rally under her banner in the future overthrow of anyone who poses a threat to her authority. Starting with ArbCom, while is ironic in this instance.

Despite admitting Cassianto is harassing people (a mere aspect of him having been a disgusting shit simply to achieve precisely this goal), and despite admitting the last decisaivee decision on the matter was way back in 2005, she has used her Discretionary Sanction powers to declare the following on one of Cassianto's favourite articles (Stanley Kubrick).....

You must not start an infobox discussion here, nor add an infobox to the article, before 10 September 2018, and are subject to discretionary sanctions while editing this page.

That restriction will of course be made permanent the second it expires and someone tries to settle the issue again.

She of course payed no attention at all to any of the intervening discussions, to see if any of the disruption identified in the Arb case in the field of infoboxes had plagued them in this article, ensuring they all ended in no consensus, or just fizzled out. She didn't do that, because it would mean identifying Cassianto as a root cause of the disruption and dysfunction, and not, as he claims, an innocent victim.

[CrowsNest]

On look what I just realised.

Cassianto is topic-banned from infoboxes for three months. Sandstein 21:33, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Topic bans

The purpose of a topic ban is to forbid editors from making edits related to a certain topic area where their contributions have been disruptive, but to allow them to edit the rest of Wikipedia.....Unless clearly and unambiguously specified otherwise, a topic ban covers all pages (not only articles) broadly related to the topic...... For example, if an editor is banned from the topic "weather", this editor is not only forbidden from editing the article Weather, but also everything else that has to do with weather, such as:
.......
* discussions or suggestions about weather-related topics anywhere on Wikipedia, for instance a deletion discussion concerning an article about a meteorologist, but also including edit summaries and the user's own user and talk pages (including sandboxes).

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... =841330015

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... =841276156

The above diffs seem to be unambiguous violations of this topic ban. More importantly, they illustrate Cassianto has no desire to stop obsessing about infoboxes, finding different ways to start fights over them (and paint an even bigger target on his back for those who want to make a sport of fucking with him, even though it is inarguably just cruel because he is so easily baited).

Being generous, he probably completely forgot about his topic ban, and is still working on the assumption that the name of the game is finding things he can do which don't violate the letter of the infobox probation it was meant to temporarily replace, precisely because he showed no real sign of wanting to adhere to it.

Nothing will be done to make sure a simple thing like a topic ban is enforced, not even to simply remind him it exists and he has hopefully just mistakenly breached it. People are simply too afraid of Queen Bishonen and the gang of bullies and wikilawyering shitlords who turned up the last time, to spit venom at those who wanted to merely point out that no, he can't really claim he both never read the probation, and was consciously believing he was not violating it.

[CrowsNest]

17:15, 15 May 2018 Sandstein (talk | contribs) blocked Cassianto (talk | contribs) with an expiration time of 1 week (account creation blocked) (Arbitration enforcement: Infobox topic ban violation at https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... =841276156)

Like I told Volunteer Marek, there is still at least one Wikipedia Administrator who can be counted on to ensure there is some level of respect for the law, and you ignore him at your peril.

You certainly don't do this....

17:53, 15 May 2018 (diff | hist) . . (-337)‎ . . User talk:Cassianto ‎ (Undid revision 841407041 by Sandstein (talk) fuck off) (Tag: Undo)

All that remains is to see if Bishonen views this as an affront to her authority, although as a perfectly valid AE block pursuant to enforcing a topic ban whose placement was resoundingly confirmed on appeal to AN only 10 days ago, it is hard to see what options she has. She is powerful, but not God.

As ever, the only option available seems to be to harass Sandstein in the hope he once again decides AE edit work isn't worth the grief. This has always seemed to me to be a losing strategy, one which requires the creation of a wedge much bigger than seems possible here.

Sandstein is covering his tracks, denying he is a secret lurker of our intelligence cell slash mayhem factory, and dropping SchroCat in the shit in the process...nice...

Should you wonder, I noticed this violation after looking at your edits after being notified of the clarification request above. Sandstein 17:15, 15 May 2018 (UTC)

Ironically, SchroCat was filing that on Cassianto's behalf to clear up whether or not the specific wording of Sandstein's topic ban somehow overreaches the authority of Discretionary Sanctions the case authorised in this area. Which seems ridiculous, as they were specifically "authorized for all discussions about infoboxes". Seems like another epic attempt to wikilawyer after the last farce, and he had perhaps recently spotted what I had above and was trying to get ahead of it, as they say. It's being rejected anyway, on the grounds his clarification is an appeal in all but name, and only the victims can appeal. Pretty sure that issue has come up before at some point.....

I hope everyone at home is following all this. It's all perfectly simple. Exactly what you would expect to see in a website which is specifically not a bureacracy.