If Wikipedia wouldn't ban Salvidrim, who would they ban?

[CrowsNest]

I previously wrote this thread at Wikipediocracy, highlighting the bizarre development that even though they had caught an Administrator trying to leverage his trusted status as an Administrator to financially enrich himself, the Wikipedians, to a man, refused to consider the ultimate punishment, a community ban.

http://wikipediocracy.com/forum/viewtop ... =14&t=8877

Not even the mighty ArbCom considered it, refusing to even put it on the table for a vote.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia ... d_decision

The is a clear and obvious example of the Super Mario Problem. Being a Wikipedia Administrator doesn't bring with it an expectation that you will be sanctioned worse than a normal editor would for the same offence, it is in fact a safety net, a free hit. You can violate the community's trust in the very worst ways, and the worst that happens is you will lose your key to the executive washroom.

For an ordinary editor, there is no safety net, even though it is implied in their lack of Admin status that there is no real reason to trust them, so flagrant breaches of the rules and norms should not be unexpected, even by those with long service/experience or even other lesser forms of wiki-
resonsibility, if the incentive is great enough (we are told paid editing is becoming a highly lucrative business for experienced editors).

This sick state of affairs is now being flaunted in regular users faces, as if it is somehow not grossly unfair....

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... =857020140

Here, Jytdog bizarrely uses Salvidrim as a parable to warn an experienced non-Administrator of the dangers of thinking you can get away with it. It seems to me, if the recipient of this warning figures out that it effectively means Jytdog is perfectly fine with this two tier system of justice, then their best options are to either try to become an Administrator, or to take their paid editing completely underground.

This editor was in fact being more open and less underhand than Salvidrim, and he certainly didn't have the trusted user rights to be able to even do what he did. Yet it is implied they face a community ban, where Salvidrim did not. What they are facing, and what will likely happen, is a topic ban from paid editing, in whole or in part. Which is a good point to note that for what he did, Salvidrim didn't even get topic banned from paid editing.

As we saw recently, this remarkably lenient approach to Salvidrim contrasts quite markedly with the sort of thing many Administrators will get their poe-faces very red over and demand community bans for their Admin colleagues. Fred Bauder was harangued and harassed on his ArbCom questions page, was compelled to violate confidentiality agreements and subjected to opposition research of the worst kind, most of this being done by Administrators, who have not and will not face any consequences for it.

When he reacted by edit warring and unblocking himself, that was considered enough to go straight for a community ban. Even though these are things which, while violations of a bright line rule and serious enough to merit desysopping, were not an example of the sort of under the counter attempt to deceive that Salvidrim was guilty of. Granted, this was all most likely a transparent act of wikipolitics surrounding the march to weaken civility, but regular users don't know that. And Wikipedia precedent never takes into account such things.

The next time an Administrator does this, it will be said by the mall cops, without qualification or context, that the last Admin who did it narrowly avoided a community ban (and I think someone even crunched the numbers and it showed there was numerical support for it), so maybe now it is time to send that message, using the next guilty party. By contrast, there is now solid precedent from Salvidrim's case that Administrators who betray the community's trust in a far more serious way, do not even need to face the prospect of the ultimate sanction.

Why would all of Wikipedia's entire cadre of Administrators be seemingly OK with underhand deception performed by their own colleagues? To the point some of them view it as less serious as immediate and obvious violations that have no material effect on anything? And to the point they would all happily see ordinary users actually face worse sanctions for the same or even lesser breaches of trust?

Is the answer that underhand deceit has been practiced by all of them at one point of another, too simplistic? Deceit that usually starts with how they are coached to give politically expedient non-answers at their RfA. A lot of what these people do isn't even very deceitful, it is in your face obvious corruption. What assists then in getting away with it? This magical shield of Adminship.

I've seen complaints of corruption against Admins dismissed out of hand, the respondents admitting to not even bothering to look at the evidence, they simply happily assume their trust in their colleague means the complaint must be without merit. Sometimes these respondents are just being corrupt themselves, all part of the sick Wikipedia culture of patronage. But scarily, sometimes they are not, they genuinely think these things.

The lesson here for all you Wikipedia editors out there, is clear. 1. Leave now. 2. If 1. is not an option, due to your addiction or your desire to abuse Wikipedia for your own purposes, then do whatever it takes to obtain that Golden Ticket - Adminship.

The good folks of Wikpediocracy of course didn't understand the point I was trying to make in creating the original thread, indeed many actively fought the premise. Understandable, such a thing is inevitable when your board is infested by Wikipedians, including many of these very same deceitful Administrators. Salvidrim was there to, and he chose not to say anything, with Wikipediocracy's blessing.

Maybe, now the dust has settled, he might come here and admit he absolutely got away with it, and any shame or embarrassment he feels at being caught and busted down to the ranks of an ordinary editor, pales into insignificance compared to being ousted from the mothership, the inevitable fate of an ordinary editor who did what he did (or as close as they could get, since they could not do what he did without his advanced permissions).

Then again, maybe monkeys will fly out of my butt.

[Salvidrim]

Salvidrim didn't even get topic banned from paid editing

Yeah, I don't understand that one either. It's the de facto situation anyways of course

[CrowsNest]

Salvidrim didn't even get topic banned from paid editing

Yeah, I don't understand that one either. It's the de facto situation anyways of course

Well, if that is the case, be a good citizen and ask for it to be formalized. We would not want people to be in any doubt, would we?

[Salvidrim]

I did ask. I added it to the PD myself. ArbCom refused for some reason.

[Dysklyver]

I did ask. I added it to the PD myself. ArbCom refused for some reason.

They don't want to codify the idea that paid editing is completely disallowed I suppose.

[CrowsNest]

I did ask. I added it to the PD myself. ArbCom refused for some reason.

But you know it isn't only in their purview......