Sandstein

[CrowsNest]

I grow tired of waiting for the long promised show-down, where the great and the good of Wikipedia openly claim to be planning to take Sandstein down. He is biased, vindictive, and operating wholly outside the norms of Wikipedia, or so they claim.

Outsiders will struggle to see any flaws in what he does, since all he does is apply policy, without fear of favour. That last part is what likely irks the great and the good, challenging as it does a core aspect of what makes the Wikipedia community tick - patronage, vested contributions and intimidation.

Sandstein exposes the basic flaw of Wikipedia governance - if none of the policies really matter, if what happens to violators is entirely context dependent, and heavily weighted in favour of the establishment and the House POV, then the whole edifice of policy is a sham, and not in an IAR compatible sense, since IAR only applies if it is obvious you have common sense on your side.

All the ingredients for a showdown are there. For years now, Sandstein has not changed his approach in spite of their threats, he has just kept on doing what he does, laying down the law, putting his foot on the neck of the wretch Volunteer Marek being the latest example, not remotely caring about the impressive heavyweight line-up trying to thwart him, forcing a guy not known for his humility, into a humiliating climbdown.

https://www.wikipediasucks.co/forum/vie ... 8487#p8487

The only time Sandstein seems to fail to live up to what we have come to expect from him, is when his own interpretations of a situation fall down. The idea that The Rambling Man can violate his ArbCom sanctions as long as his violations are directed at ArbCom, being a bizarre recent example, where I am quite sure the fact others tried to float this as a half-hearted Wikilawyer's excuse, was neither here nor there.

I think they're just afraid. I think they're scared to take Sandstein on, because they know that because he cannot be intimidated in the usual ways, either they will need to force him out but at the cost of being seen to have really seriously bullied him out of the project, such as through a classic AN/I show trial, or they will have to take their chances that ArbCom sees him the same way they do. If a single one of them had the balls to go it alone and unilaterally block him, or convince some idiot to do it on their behalf, it would have happened by now.

It was entertaining for a while, watching the dance, seeing just how low some people were prepared to go, seeing how stoic Sandstein is in the face of such clear and obvious harassment and general lack of respect from his supposed colleagues, seeing two faced scum like Drmies doing what they do, like nobody else can see them.

But now I need closure.

Someone toss a Molotov cocktail in that mother fucker already.

[CrowsNest]

Sandstein showing absolutely no fear in the face of his detractors.

https://www.wikipediasucks.co/forum/vie ... 8660#p8660

Indeed, he seems to be showing he is learning, very smartly not announcing at AE that he had locked up one of their junkyard dogs and erased his droppings from that arena, his domain, and then given it an electric shock when it tried to continue to misbehave. That means the only people who really know what he has done, are those who have made lots of noise about how they're going to do something about it if he ever does it again. Which he did.

The limited duration block applied here, short, but annoyingly long enough to properly get the attention of the junkyard dog, may also be an example of Sandstein learning. Why waste time trying to put down the dog after he bites just two or three people, like the already rather pathetically weak Local Regulations demand? Wait until he has bitten ten, and Warden Sandstein has therefore collected evidence that the beast definitely does not respond to short, time limited blocks. And so, alas, it must be put down, and anyone who disagrees with Sandstein's ensuing lethal injection, stepping in to swipe the needle from him, shall likely find themselves having to explain their reasoning before ArbCom. The body whose ability to interpret the Regulations in favour of junkyard dogs, while an ongoing problem for Wikipedia, is still pretty limited.

Good for him. The only way to react to bullies, is to park your tank on their lawn and dare them to move it. Tank beats dog, every time.

Turns out the big beasts of Wikipedia don't want any part of stopping Sandstein doing anything, anywhere, at least not by acting on their own, and not in any way that seems to restrict what he can do in future, and crucially, to who.

So it seems there sadly shall be no epic battle. I can settle for the alternative, namely that we can expect plenty of dogs to be put down in the coming years. The smell of rotting dog carcases won't make the Wikipedia Park any more inviting for visitors than it already is. And dog owners who have to watch their favourite dogs get put down, well, they never make good public resource users, they always want to take it out on some innocent jogger daring to use their Park.

HTD

[CrowsNest]

I endorse everything Swarm wrote in this thread. As an admin working at AE, I've had a lot of grief when trying to enforce community norms, particularly regarding civility, against the so-called "unblockables". We are now finally, I think, realizing that the attitude of some veteran contributors and admin that anybody who does good work has the right to be a jerk is a big part of the problem. There is no justification, ever, for not being polite, professional and courteous to our fellow encyclopedists. I support all efforts to help improving our culture in this regard. Sandstein 07:27, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

You can tell it's true, because the coward Boing! immediately insulted him on Wikipediocracy, home of the frightened little wiki-boys. Hasn't had the guts to respond on wiki.

[CrowsNest]

This is about the right temperature for a Sandstein Arb case. Nobody at AE seems to agree he should be doing anything wrt Corbett (and also TRM but that’s a different story). It would just need to be framed the right way with the proper buzzwords like harassment and unsafe.

More delusional crap from Planet Moron, aka Wikipediocracy.

Sandstein can bring fifty diffs to any such case, showing he is the one who has been harassed. Some of it most definitely rising to the level of wondering if these freaks would take their campaign against him into the real world. And post-Framban, the identified perpetrators are getting fucked in any such Case. Proper fucked. Or Wikipedia magically loses its ability to govern itself.

The 'prior dispute resolution ' section would make interesting reading.

[CrowsNest]

Anyone who filed an Arbitration Case against this guy.....

For the moment, I'll take into consideration the views of other admins above, and wait to see what others propose to do. But I believe that not to take action here, in the face of flagrant, severe and repeated incivility, and a clear ArbCom mandate for action, would be to signal to the community and to the WMF that, even after the WP:FRAM debacle, that the community cannot effectively address endemic harassment and incivility by established editors. I strongly criticized the WMF for bypassing community dispute resolution mechanisms in the Fram case, but I'm not sure I could criticize them again if we do nothing here. Sandstein 19:17, 11 August 2019 (UTC)

......would be sealing their own doom.

Sandstein doesn't play. You can't threaten him, you can't persuade him a group of people talking utter shit should override his usually cast-iron reading of policy and indeed basic fucking principles of Wikipedia.

He would prevail. Or ArbCom would be sealing their own doom, or fatally damaging Wikipedia with the precedent such a result would represent, the signals it would send, both to the mob and the Foundation.

Whatever doubts and frustrations that have caused Sandstein to withdraw from the AE business in the past, seem to have dissappeared. He seems to be stoic in his view now, he's going to do this work, and anyone who wants to stop him, need something more than pathetic threats and a big gang.

[CrowsNest]

Sandstein I join others here in at least questioning whether you are able to act neutrally in regard to Eric Corbett. Jumping in with what you thought was the mandated sanction when actually you hadn't respected the minimum waiting time, which had been pointed out, and you got the mandated sanction wrong by an order of magnitude, is a sign that you are not. You might well stand on the letter of INVOLVED; we still expect administrators to have enough self-awareness to recognise when they are not able to act impartially and you certainly give the impression here of having reached that point. GoldenRing (talk) 09:55, 12 August 2019 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but someone who prefers to assume malice when a simple oversight is a more convincing explanation, is extremely lacking in self-awareness.

Think about it. What this supposedly neutral Administrator has just openly questioned, is whether or nor Eric Corbett and his friend's rants against the "good German" have an actual basis in fact. If they are right now, then they must have been right the fifty other times, and Sandstein has just been getting away with it all this time. And the fact that by this measure he must have similar blood feuds going with a bunch of other users that are frequent fliers at AE, is apparently immaterial. That too has been overlooked all this time. The guy is a criminal mastermind.

Other than a desire to believe the themes of an obvious hate campaign, given it comes from an Administrator with a spotless record, what reason would there be to blatantly assume bad faith about his explanation?

I was in fact unaware of this 24-hour discussion requirement, having not been involved (to my recollection) in previous ArbCom cases about Eric Corbett. I also overlooked the brief mention of it by the AE filer. I apologize for this oversight.

Indeed, are they seriously suggesting Sandstein is so incompetent he ignored these things deliberately, and believed he would get away with it? Utterly absurd. Not even remotely plausible As an alternative explanation. As absurd as the arguments offered that Eric is not doing these things deliberately, he is just a slave to his base human instincts, and for this one special flower, the entire theory of Wikipedia behavioural modification needs to be set aside.

Serious accusations require serious evidence. Supposition is not that. The actual evidence available, some going back years now, actually all points in the other direction - an orchestrated hate campaign to remove the threat Sandstein's uncompromising approach to policy enforcement poses to an unmitigated asshole like Eric Corbett, who of course isn't going to be in the least bit bothered by a 72 hour block.