We are now only four days after EEng's 72 hour block for a "pattern of incivility", and he has resumed that same pattern.
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... block_logs
If EEng had truly learned lessons from that incident and the many before it, he would by now be trying extremely hard to avoid giving anyone any opportunity to seize upon one of his naff jokes as if it were a serious attack. But no. Here he is calling SMarshall a "bitter enemy"......I am not strictly opposed generally to removing actions from user logs (i.e. the log/s of actions on the user), but this isn't the time to have this discussion, framed as it is not around what's good for the community but around something that EEng's circle of friends doesn't like. Bad cases make bad policy, and all that. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 19:13, 14 January 2024 (UTC)
I am not now, nor have I ever been, a member of EEng's circle of friends.—S Marshall T/C 21:14, 14 January 2024 (UTC)
I can confirm that -- we're bitter enemies. While Ivanvector licks his wounds, let's continue the useful discussion. I .....EEng 00:07, 15 January 2024 (UTC)
It is quite clear he does this precisely as part of his aforementioned "job", trying to expose bad Administrators who might not see the joke, or even block for it. This of course is just a mask to hide the reality - EEng either couldn't or wouldn't be able to participate in Wikipedia if he couldn't play the role of the jester cunt. The man who starts fires with misplaced humor, then sits back and enjoys watching the world burn. An attention seeking arsonist.
But of course, that isn't even the main incivility. That's just the appetiser. Like any good performer, he knows how to draw an audience in.
The use of language to suggest that SMarshall's riposte to Ivan was an attack that wounded him, is incivility. It is quite offensive for EEng to suggest a Wikipedia Administrator makes any comment with a view to wounding the target. It says a lot about Wikipedia that the inherent incivility in such a thing would barely even register to them.
Needles to say, such language dissaudes women from wanting to be anywhere near these sort of casually aggressive posturing little boys. And so Wikipedia's famous gender gap and indeed their general inability to be a truly mass movement, persists. Fine with EEng, one suspects. Less people to mess with his articles.
The real issue here, the thing the block clearly did not correct, was that EEng has no cause to even make that comment, so he should not have made it. He could and should have ignored the dispute between SMarshall and Ivan. The comment by Ivan is clearly inappropriate, but that is a matter for Ivan, Marshall, or someone with a better record of doing the right thing than EEng, to deal with. The right way.
That pathetic reference to Ivan licking his wounds wasn't remotely relevant or indeed necessary to his main point, and it certainly isn't a legitimate act of dispute resolution. But there it is. It is so astonishingly predictable that if you asked ChatGPT to reply to a comment in the style of EEng, it would always include some little piece of cuntery like this.
But this is what happens when you enable assholes, in this case by ensuring there are no lasting consequences for their proven patterns of incivility. Mere wrist slaps, easily ignored.
Without proper corrective action, which existing policy allows for and was fully appropriate in that case, assholes never even get to a point where they engage their brain and preview their comments, identifying which parts are needless incivility that add nothing. And indeed which only add to the body of evidence that the user is more interested in conflict and disrespecting perceived enemies than he is in being a model Wikipedian.
Which handily brings us to the suggestion of whether SMarshall is a friend of EEng's or not.
Clearly he is.
This is what SMarshal said of that 72 hour block.....
A sense of proportion eh?EEng often annoys me with his flippancy and arrogance, but to say this warrants more than a 72 hour block is bizarre. Sense of proportion, please, everyone.—S Marshall T/C 09:55, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
An indefinite block would have meant that either EEng was still blocked at this time, meaning he is prevented from even having the opportunity to pollute this debate with his patented sense of humour and desperate need to feud with his perceived enemies with barbed asides, or something else will have occurred to mean they stop while still allowing him to edit.
But thanks to people like SMarshall, such things never happen.
I don't even think the 72 hour block even tempered his incivility. The flippancy/arrogance Marshall refers to, is surely exactly this kind of low level but ever present malevolence of tone and intent.
Indefinite blocks are the only answer to long term problem users like this. They work. Either by reforming a user capable of reforming, or banning a user who is not.
This is why EEng's friends are TERRIFIED of EEng being indeffed, and will do anything to prevent it.
If by some miracle EEng had been able to appeal the indefinite block, it would only have been possible if he had given clear and convincing assurances that he understands why so many people think he is a complete and utter wanker. Why that is even the view of many of his friends, who see it, but take the view his good contributions somehow offset it. To be unblocked, he would have to have said something that convinces most people (not just his friends) that he gets it and has strategies in place to prevent it going forward.
There is a fair chance he wouldn't have been unblocked without a civility restriction similar to the one proposed. That would make sure that if he kept making snide little asides like this, he would very quickly be back to being indefinitely blocked. With that block only appealed to the community. And if they let him off again, well, they fucking deserve every single instance of drama, hurt and retirements that results.
Some think civility restrictions don't work because they are easily gamed. They really aren't. A meticulously polite user can never be harmed by such a thing. The cases where they don't work are when a user either genuinely doesn't understand what is and is not an uncivil comment, or is trying to exploit the fact such things do carry an element of subjectivity to push boundaries and keep their need for drama and attention satisfied.
Those people really don't belong on Wikipedia, so if their inability to deal with a civility restriction sees them ultimately ejected, well, job done. And if they then come back as snarling revenge fuelled socks intent on long term disruption, well, maybe that is the time people like SMarshall to look inward and reconsider whether they really should have done a better job of enforcing policy much sooner.
A Marshall is a friend of EEng. That he doesn't see it, despite having been deemed intelligent enough to be trusted to enforce Wikipedia policy (which very uncontroversially says a user with EEng's record has to be indeffed), is the problem here.
This is ripe for the Lourdes test. If I created a sock today, passed Admin in eighteen months, and then blocked Eng indefinitely the next time he made a comment as mildly incivil as that, what are they going to do about it?
Desysyop me? File an Arbitration Case? Go ahead. I have policy on my side.
Undo my block against my wishes? Go ahead. I'll file my own Arbitration Case. I have grounds.
I am enforcing policy. I have that power. I am trusted.
I mean, sure, I did join Wikipedia and make thousands of edits solely as part of a long game whose sole objective was to to harm EEng by getting him kicked out of Wikipedia. But unless I confess, you will never know my true motive. And my conscience is clear. Sometimes you need to do evil things, to fight a greater evil.
Why should anyone trust SMarshall? He said anything more than a 72 hour block was disproportionate. Not a view supported by any policy. Not a view that comes with any common sense reading of the facts, unless of course, you don't actually give civility the importance it has in policy.
With one single Admin sock, I can use EEng to create a drama on Wikipedia so big, you could see it from space.
All because they REFUSE to enforce CIVIL in certain cases. But they also refuse to amend or even retract it in favour of what actually happens in practice - as long as you are a productive editor most of the time, being a low level cancerous toad who occasionally crosses the line into outright abuse, is ignorable.
No.
I have already registered my future Admin sock.
HTD.