THE FIX IS IN
Promoted, with 63.6% support of Bureaucrats (7 for, 4 against), supposedly seeing a consensus in a 63.9% RfA (the oft-quoted 64.1% ignoring the fact the final support came seconds before it was protected in preparation for closure).
Civility has been depreciated at the highest levels of Wikipedia governance, as per the clearly stated wishes of the Bureaucrat who decided to open the 'crat chat, despite it falling pretty far outside their discretionary zone of 65%-75% (he needed 168 supports just to finish on 64.6% and so get in on rounding).
We still don't even really know what the valid reason was for ignoring the range. There were not enough obviously invalid oppose votes that could be ignored to reach 64.5%. The Bureaucrat who made the decision, tried to argue it was because RexxS is merely a long serving editor. But if he stands by that, he is basically admitting he was just looking for any excuse. It definitely wouldn't stand if proposed as a policy change, codifying as it does, Vested Contributions. Was it IAR? Clearly not, as it wasn't even remotely an uncontroversial benefit to Wikipedia.
The desperation was clear when other Bureaucrats, the ones who believed they saw consensus, argued that somehow this half-dead dog had in fact numerically reached the range, thereby avoiding the issue of their land grab. How? By ignoring the obviously invalid votes,
and the voters who only cited the manner in which RexxS stood. That was a joke in of itself, even more so when RexxS had said quite rightly, if they think that is sufficient reason to opppse, they have the "right" to have their reasons counted as much as anyone else's. Clearly they have no such right. When Bureaucrats are in town.
We certainly know why they closed it so fast, even though the seven day time period is not a hard limit, Bureacrats being allowed to "extend RfAs beyond seven days or restart the nomination to make consensus clearer", in "exceptional circumstances". Curiously, the reason it was closed and called in for a discussion between Bureaucrats, was supposedly the existence of exceptional circumstances. Logically, for an RfA complicated by a messy start and with only one real point of contention, you would think extension or restart would be the way to go.
But no. The trend was clear. Maxim needed to act if he was going to pull this off at all. He could see the writing on the wall. Having been dumped down to ~60% after a day or so, RexxS had long passed the peak support he was ever seemingly going to attain, reaching the sunny uplands of precisely two thirds support (66.6% recurring) for all of 22 minutes, and it was only ever going downhill after that, certainly after the roller coaster ride of people fighting over whether he was even really good enough to finish above 65%.
A pretty miserable endorsement for one so highly thought of by such bastions of integrity, like Kudpung, Drmies, Ritchie, or Iridescent, all promoted to Administrator in a different time, when the true nature of the Wikipedia community had yet to be fully understood. The demographic angle was not lost in the minorities of Wikipedia, these old white assholes rooting for an old white asshole on the basis he's not as much of an asshole as they are, so give him what he is entitled to. But they are minorities for a reason.
You simply don't keep an old white dude who doesn't suffer fools gladly out of favour on Wikipedia. The best you can hope for, as someone who values a different kind of collaborative environment and discourse, an inclusive and respectful community, can merely hope, with enough allies and people who read the news, you can, or so it was thought, keep them out of the rarified air of being considered of a higher standard of Wikipedian. One of just 100 or so with real power. There was a clear means of doing that, or so it was thought.
That battle of wills between New and Old Testament was seemingly won, with just over a day left to run, the looming prospect of him finishing outside the range did not even trigger a late swing of support. Admittedly there can't have been anyone who was likely to support who hadn't already been canvassed. Late deciders, and the few who changed their minds, reflected what the community as a whole apparently wanted - that RexxS not finish inside the discretionary zone. They clearly wanted him to fail automatically, having never seen anyone finish below the range and still get called in.
If any Bureaucrat had made it clear their interpretation of the range was that he could still be called in even if he finished on 64 or even 63, it is clear the community would have pushed him further down, to avoid it. They didn't want to keep humiliating him, it clearly pained many to be forced to have to oppose, he was already at record levels of opposition, but unfortunately that is what the process requires, and in no small part, was the result of RexxS' astonishing arrogance to try and stare them down.
Much has been made of how traumatic this all was for poor RexxS. Little has been made of how easy it would have been for him to avoid it all. Step 1, don't even risk being thought of as showing contempt for the process. Step 2, don't run at all when you knew fine well the premise on which you did so, that Adminship is still No Big Deal, is itself an open sore of community division. Step 3, have the good grace to withdraw when it was clear to do otherwise was going to ensure this RfA would be historically divisive. Step 4, don't be the sort of dick whom casts himself as reasonable and diplomatic, then use the emotional blackmail of this apparently being a one time offer to achieve 63.9%.
Maxim clearly saw that this dog wasn't going to hunt no matter how long you ran it, or even if you restarted it. So he did the only thing that was possible to make it appear like their services were needed, to rule on whether RexxS' services were needed. This dog needed a mercy killing, Maxim instead decided to administer mouth to mouth.
The tone set, the Bureaucrats desperate to nail this fix then merely proceeded to agree to such absurdist positions as, when a historically large and uniform body of opposition coalescing around a single issue, civility, borne out of policy and historically seen as eminently strong reasoning in prior Bureaucrat chats, was in fact weak when pitted against an admittedly larger support, but one which on that very same issue was fractured, between total denialism, depreciation of what is policy, and support with reservations and a hope the candidate will be better.
They collectively looked at that, and laughingly told us the support had the stronger argument. The rookie Primefac even insulted people's intelligence by suggesting no consensus on that issue defaults to promotion, the exact opposite of what long standing practice is, namely to maintain the status quo. You can see why he needed to go there, RexxS having unwisely rejected the premise that in these times of division and fool me twice over civility, it was for him to prove to doubters that their fears were unfounded. We were even treated to the sight of the Bureaucrats even deciding to put themselves above the community in deciding how much evidence is enough, or arguing that the way you judge if an Administrator is uncivil, is if he has been blocked for civility. Ab-surd.
It is clear the smallest cohort of support was the one that said the opposers were not saying anything worth listening to at all, they were either not getting the nuance/context, not giving RexxS his due credit for long service, or just being plain wrong, and yet Maxim has rewarded them with the title of winningest argument. It is total coincidence I guess that it seems to match his personal view. It is no comfort that this is going to lead to plenty of highly experienced and respected Wikipedians thoroughly questioning the value of the bronze, silver and even gold sashes of office awarded to them by this very same community, on the basis that they really aren't that fucking stupid. ReadS was opposed, by an
actual Bureaucrat, ferchrissakes.
It is remarkable to think that when you take out all the support which was predicated on him sticking to his promise to be a better person with the badge, he would have finished so low not even Maxim could have called it in. Their ultimate finding that concerns over his civility were insufficient to oppose, in part because many claimed they are meritless and others relatively unimportant, has ironically mean the extra votes secured from supporters who had serious reservations over his civility, is what helped him achieve what he otherwise would not have if he had refused to acknowledge concerns over his civility.
To put that more simply,
he succeeded because he promised something the Bureaucrats have ruled he did not need to promise. Civility depreciation in action.
The Bureaucrats ignored it of course, because it illustrates very well the con-trick they just pulled. Much like their trickery over the discretionary range, if they had announced before their discussion that one possible route to promotion, the only viable one really, was to declare the matter of 'Is RexxS too much of a dick to be an Administrator?', on the community's current view of civility enforcement, to be narrowly settled in his favour, it is likely those who supported based on promises given to be less of a dick, would have been reconsidered, and likely moved to neutral if not oppose.
We can't know for sure, but a sure-fire route to test this theory would have been for the Bureaucrats to pass the decision back to the community, extend the RfA for a couple more days and direct them that in their opinion the numbers no longer matter, he is presumed to have passed pending further discussion on the one critical issue identified. As such, they are to now concentrate their minds on coalescing around a view as to whether or not RexxS as he stands before you today with his eleven years of service is civil enough to be an Administrator.
The lack of consensus evident from that exercise in generously throwing RexxS a lifeline on the basis he has said he will not run again, a perfect example of the sort of thing Bureaucrats are empowered to do for the good of Wikipedia, would be so obvious as to be inescapable.
The situation as it stands now is clear. RexxS is an Administrator, and all expectations, statements and promises made to the effect of him having better conduct than he did before achieving that status, is null and void. No complaints or concerns about his civility can legitimately be heard, not by other Administrators or even the Arbitration Committee, unless it is agreed by the majority that the incidents are worse than those seen in this RfA, or are more frequent. Because the bar of what the community has said is acceptable, has been set by this decision.
To put that into context, to put this decision into stark refief, it was shown in this RfA that in the space of a year, the most recent year before this RfA, RexxS has called two editors prats.
In the one case it was for violating a self-defined idea of what is best practice in the coding of Lua modules, a content dispute he had yet to test against consensus, and a conduct dispute he had let fester for eighteen months, in a topic area where he specifically intends to act as an Administrator.
In the other, it was edit warring in violation of WikiProject editor's (entirely mythical and anti-wiki) supposed sovereign rights to dictate what notices they could be given, a content dispute of mind-numbing triviality that at that point had only been tested against the views of those project members, of which RexxS was one, and which, while it did not result in sanctions when it finally did reach AN/I, did see several editors apportion blame on both sides for having caused drama and disruption.
Did the Bureaucrats ever get to the stage where they
discussed the discussion of RexxS' civility to the point they were aware of and had dismissed the potential for further drama and disruption around the critical area of civility, if they promoted RexxS? Unless their secret agenda is to hasten the destruction of Wikipedia, and hey, who doesn't want that
, they clearly did not. Rather troublingly, especially after they pressured him to withdraw his withdrawal, the intent seems to have been to hammer home a point to the effect the disagreement is just noise, and their clear vision has cut through it to reveal what truly benefits Wikipedia. Ignoring it. Sorry, discounting it.
The RexxS that stood by his principles, that all reasonable opposers were created equal and he did not want to be the latest example of how divided the community is, because after all it's no big deal and he didn't really have any need or particular desire for the extra buttons and was not seeking or seeing it as a matter of prestige, is the same RexxS that when he withdrew on principle, had apparently betrayed his supporters, who supported him because he had principles, and had not just a need but a right to the tools, as befits a man of his prestige in their eyes. If there as no fix, no brown envelopes, no government within a government working to its own agenda, then this is....illogical.
The RexxS that asked you to do nothing but trust his record of eleven years and his promises that his twelth year would see a marked improvement, now that during this process he had had his eyes opened to how poorly he is seen by many in the community, is the RexxS that is now an Administrator on the basis those promises need not be kept and he himself is wrong, because there is consensus the community that in practice, he is already meeting the high standards of Wikipedia Administrator.
On that score, I think everyone can agree. RexxS has the confidence of 63.9% of the Wikipedia community that he will be no worse that what is unfortunately the current standard of Wikipedia Administration, assuming he keeps promises that 63.6% of the Elders of Wikipedia have agreed he need not keep, in recognition of the perversity of holding him to a higher standard than is already de facto good enough.
It remains a fact that 90+ Wikipedia editors, a clear and obvious outlier of a shellacking in what is for all intents and purposes, a vote, were explicit in their belief he was not good enough according to the standard that already exists, unmoved by any arguments that their concerns were unimportant or misguided or just plain erroneous, unmoved by any promises the candidate made to do better, unmoved by the prospect that he would not be asking for their trust again.
That is a heavy cross to bear. It is perhaps a mark of Wikipedia's tendency to self-destruction, that it may yet break the spirit and confidence of an editor who, when he was just an ordinary if long serving volunteer, was undoubtedly not the worst performing editor they have on their books. If you perhaps pretend for example that even the policy of 'don't call people prats' is merely an aspirational goal for the rank and file, not the already firmly established minimum acceptable standard of basic editors, with any and all violations deemed unacceptable.
A standard that is theoretically never excused only mitigated, with even the newest of editors theoretically having to work quite hard to avoid a permanent exclusion if a pattern emerges and there is reason to believe they really should know better but can't or won't, perhaps on some level because they think or have been given reason to believe that sometimes there is some situation where there is not just mitigation, but a valid excuse.
It begs the question, does that not make him wonder, in his real world outreach efforts, when he stands before people asking them to commit themselves to Wikipedia the way he has done and was used to laud him for this role, if he has not rather undermined his credibility somewhat. Fatally so perhaps, if the sharp new recruits look up the credentials and performance reviews of their teacher and mentor. It is never wise to teach from a position of ignorance of one's own standing or your subject matter, much less with hypocrisy.
Of course, in that crucial respect, research has already shown that it always was a myth that there is a general trend in Wikipedia editors to be blunt, grumpy, rude or even abusive, as if it were somehow an unavoidable or excusable component of their work, and that while pervasive, the worst offenders were just the newbies and the anonymous cowards. The facts turned those assumptions right in their head, debunking any idea that experience or real life skin in the game has any effect, reinforcing the idea it is just a handful of highly toxic repeat offenders who do the worst damage. RexxS is as experienced and attached to a real persona as any editor could be. He is also now charged with being the very thing that researchers identified was a barrier to the theory becoming the reality......
Depressingly, the study also found that very few personal attacks are moderated. Only 17.9% of personal attacks lead to a warning or ban. Attackers are more likely to be moderated if they have launched a number of attacks or have been moderated before. But still, this is an abysmal rate of moderation for the most obvious and blatant form of abuse that can happen in a community.
Even if RexxS appreciated just how galling it would be to be an editor warned by him for incivility, and so never dares to go near that side of Wikipedia moderation, which seems unlikely in of itself both as a general reality of the role and specifically because he said one of the places he intends to serve is the Pentagon of that side of things, it is inevitable that his presence in that group, just as Kudpung et al before him, has thoroughly undermined the authority of those who do.
In conclusion, to quote one very prescient opposer.....
Oppose per above. Nobody in this community takes WP:Civility seriously. At this point, it's more of a joke than a pillar or rule. I don't think this would be a step in the right direction with respect to that problem. Ikjbagl (talk) 18:15, 4 April 2019 (UTC)
One wonders if that vote was one of the ones either given little weight, or no weight at all. It almost has to be, for their decision to make any sense at all.