Fram

[CrowsNest]

While the Wikipediocrats are still busy with their investigations (funny how they keep finding women to target...... ), it is probably time for the serious critics to start diagnosing the reasons the revolution failed....

Unsympathetic victim

I'd say much of the community outrage about Fram's unjust treatment, is simply fake. I think even his supporters know he's an asshole, and they know he was heading for a ban. And obviously the Wikipedians are the very last people to be making the case that process is more important than outcome.

Unclear demands / objectives

While it is clear the mob is angry, it is genuinely hard to divine what they actually want as restitution. It took him a while to speak, but the one among them they consider a sort of Elder, has made an awful job of drawing up a set of demands, ranging as they do from the unrealistic to the downright ridiculous. Definitely needs replacing in that unofficial role, but sadly for the Wikipedians, there appears to be no obvious successor. The indecision has also afflicted the highest level of possible opposition, ArbCom being clearly unable to decide what they are supposed to do, seeking happy to default to doing nothing, chiefly because of the conflicting instructions of those they supposedly exists to serve.

Hypocrisy

It cannot have gone unnoticed by the WMF that much of the objections of the mob, specifically those making the process not outcome argument, were examples of complete and utter hypocrisy, making it obvious this was not about what the WMF had done or why, but who they had done it to. Complaining about powers the WMF already had, and used plenty. Invoking rights the community have never had, and talking about principles they have never held very dear in their own local governance.

Conspiracy theories

For a community that supposedly prides itself on its good sense, it's been hilarious to see how quickly they embraced a number of conspiracy theories. As ever, the simplest explanation has always been the best fit - the WMF wanted to remind the local English Wikipedia community that they are not in charge, and they have failed to effectively govern themselves, and so when Fram presented himself as a perfect opportunity to reimpose their authority and send a message, they happily did so. The idea he should not have been chosen because he was a vocal critic of the WMF only showed their utter naivety in understanding basic power politics, not their skill in locating smoking guns.

Hyper-localism

It also cannot have escaped the attention of the WMF that most of the mob seem absolutely clueless about what happens in the Wikimedia ecosystem, beyond their parochial little parish. As such, their demands to be better consulted or even be kept in the decision making loop on matters that concern them, much less that the WMF stay away and deal with only the pedophiles, will have come across as ridiculous. Negotiating with clueless idiots, much less treating them as equals, would be truly pointless.

Powerlessness

Sure, the mob were angry, but the WMF correctly diagnosed that anger without power can be safely ignored. The Wikipedians are so addicted these days, they can't seemingly even exercise the one true right they have (absent their legal rights as individuals, none of which were relevant here), namely to leave, in any significant way. It is ironic that the volunteers have been so productive as captured slaves, that they also seem to accept that Wikipedia has grown too big and powerful for the strategy of leaving an masse and taking a copy of the encyclopedia with them (as they are entitled to do), to set up their own Rebel Wikipedia, is simply a non-starter.

As they cycled through all their other options, all they seemed to have was to harm the very thing they claim to love. It carries all the threat of a teenager threatening to smash up their own room. Sure, we can surmise that for a minute there, the WMF were worried they might take a PR hit, but it soon became obvious that the media didn't have a clue what was going on, and anything they might write once they did, probably wouldn't paint the rebels in a good light, especially not given the likely press release from the WMF itself.

Lack of genuine popular support

It was slow in coming, but in hindsight it now seems obvious to anyone, that those in the mob who claimed to be speaking for the community as they issued their threats and made their proclamations, were horribly mistaken as to their true level of popular support. A genuine show of force is getting 300 Wikipedians to agree on something. They aren't even close. There are plenty Wikipedians out there who don't agree with pretty much anything substantive that the mob has to say for itself. The lack of a unified front was made obvious when, as some soldiers made a suicidal dash for the enemy HQ, others headed the opposite way, intent on destroying their own HQ. The characterisation of the revolution as just a group of the loudest most objectionable people the community has to offer, was compelling. They did not send their best people, not by a long chalk.

A stubborn opponent

Whether a deliberate strategy or just a product of what they are, the fact the WMF didn't panic in the face of the mob, didn't deviate from their initial response, and ultimately while appearing to listen and engage, haven't conceded anything that wasn't obvious (that their action caused drama) or entirely reasonable (to better communicate their intentions).

Fear

As much as they're trying to claim this is about the principles or whatever, given who is saying it and what they are saying, it seems quite obvious that much of the mob's anger is simply born out of the individual's instincts for self-preservation. While there were not many worse than Fram when considering scale as well as type of infraction, there are plenty that come close to banworthy on one or the other measure if this is to be a new era of what the community consider to be hardline enforcement of then terms of use. So it is really easy to see them complaining simply because they fear they will be next. And it is precisely that fear which has made them stop short of doing what it probably would have taken to mount an effective revolution.

The Wikipedians would be loathe to admit it, but if it was a deliberate strategy, it was a masterstroke by the WMF to represent this as them also sending a message. By putting the community on notice that this ban didn't just happen because of the specifics of the case, but because English Wikipedia as a collective had failed in their obligations to uphold what the WMF consider to be the global minimum standards that should apply across all their projects, it has caused real hesitation in just how to react, without confirming that charge.

It completely undermined the ArbCom's ability to act as a rallying point for resistance, because they were immediately racked with guilt at the realization they probably caused this cataclysm, both by dropping the ball when it came to dealing with Fram, and letting the WMF be seen as protecting ArbCom from accusations of conflict of interest, since Fram's last crime was a tirade against ArbCom. Having let him skate several times in the past, if someone had filed a Case citing that was the last straw, they definitely would have declined for fear of being seen to squash a critic.

Despicable methods and allies

I bet if they could do it all over again, I'm thinking the community would have absolutely refused the help of the scum at Wikipediocracy in their revolutionary endeavours. It must have made quite a number of them feel quite queasy that they were being seen as being in common cause with such disreputable people, and indeed that some of their own Administrators were playing an active role. The WMF cannot have failed to notice the disquiet, since many aired it openly. The counter-strike, calling it what it was, a GamerGate style attack, was a stroke of genuius, since rather predictably, in their indignant rage the mob proceeded to live right down to this characterisation.

Cowardice

It has probably been forgotten by the mob already, but the two Administrators who purportedly "fell on their swords" in furtherance of this revolutionary cause and who were the ones who arguably turned it from a drama into a constitutional crisis, soon showed their true colours. Neither has actually lost anything they valued, nor looks likely to. And both have since admitted they knew their actions were merely going to be empty gestures of civil disobedience, not materially affecting the facts on the ground at all.

Neither of them has stepped up and fulfilled the role of a leader of this revolution, indeed both have simply crawled back under the rocks from which they came, seemingly not wanting to participate in what they formented at all. Presumably because they do not and never did want to sacrifice anything, they only wanted to do what they did for their own benefit, the Wikipedia community being very prone to worshipping false idols.

Their long history of hatred toward the WMF and belief in the sovereignty of the community is not in doubt, so neither can be the nakedly opportunistic and ultimately cowardly nature of their acts. You don't give in to cowards, but you gain enormously by being seen to give them clemency, handing them back to the mob to be judged for their obviously treasonous acts. When they are formally cleared, the true nature of the community and its local leadership, will be revealed to all.

Immaturity

If we believe Jimmy Wales, if he were made to choose between the WMF and the community, he would choose the community every time. Well, the fact they responded to his calls for calmness and deescalation while he stepped in to use his direct line to the WMF's pay masters to get some answers and possibly even some concessions, the mob happily spat in his face and proceeded to smash the place up anyway. We critics know it is just the latest in a long string of examples showing Jimmy lost all control of the community a long time ago, and not in terms of direct control, but moral leadership. They made their choice, and in battle after battle, the community happily considered him the enemy, even the moderates. So in all honesty, they have to also live with the consequences of what it really looked like when, in this time of great crisis, the moderates suddenly wanted him to be their Champion.

[Abd]

While the Wikipediocrats are still busy with their investigations (funny how they keep finding women to target...... ), it is probably time for the serious critics to start diagnosing the reasons the revolution failed....

Everything boils down to lack of coherent organization of the "community," which has the collective intellegence of a slime mold, except for unreliable moments. Thousands of years of experience with human organizations was neglected and actually rejected by a community enamored with technology and the idea that reliability would just naturally form. Sure. It will. And it may take thousands of years. "Wiki" was quick, and the community always went for "quick." Functional human organizations do the opposite (when functional, that is!).

Unsympathetic victim ...

If you are going to base a revolution, moving the mob through an example, you need a sympathetic victim, even if on principle, any injustice would do, if the community cares about justice. But mobs don't care about justice, they care about whatever popular meme incites them. That rape victim? She's a slut, she asked for it. Fram deserved it because he was an asshole. But exactly what kind of asshole was he? He was following what he saw as what the policies and guidelines require. The community included and empowered assholes from the beginning, and they drove away what might have done better. And those who were not assholes, themselves, enabled the assholes by tolerating it. All for good purpose, of course. Fascism always has good purpose, from the point of view of the fascists (which is often quite popular).

Unclear demands / objectives

To develop clear demands and objectives would require deliberative process. In theory, ArbCom is the place for it, but ArbCom is (1) astonishingly inefficient as to open process, and (2) not actually representative of the community, a product of an election method known to generate warped representation, that would sound good to the naive, but that is well known to fail. Even a hint of an alternative was crushed quickly. Those who have excess power due to structural defects can be predicted to oppose change, and by the conditions of the problem, may have enough power to prevent it, if the forces that create the Iron Law of Oligarchy are operating and have not been structurally addressed from the beginning.
Hypocrisy

This is ancient. We only care about injustice or star chamber process when it is our ox that is gored. ArbCom runs a Star Chamber, has for years. If ArbCom were truly representative, if we could be confident that secrecy was only where necessary, yes, secrecy can be necessary. But who watches the watchers? This is, again, an ancient problem, but it has solutions, if the community wakes up. Usually it doesn't. It takes leadership, and the mob kills leaders ASAP.

Conspiracy theories

Just because you are paranoid does not mean they are out to get you. Conspiracies should not be alleged without evidence, or the theory backfires and discredits the theorist. To consider evidence requires deliberative process, and the community never really established it . . . again, except in a incredibly inefficient form through ArbCom. And that was corrupted, readily, by the mob. ArbCom actually attempted to create a committee to reform process, and the mob shouted them down, and they back down. They had no understanding of their proper role, but only considered themselves, too often, a rubber stamp for the screams of the mob.

Hyper-localism

The independence of the local wikis was a major protective feature. Crushed by Single Unified Log-in, and by the concept that a poorly-organized community ban discussion on meta could overrule the consensus of an individual wiki. I pointed out the problem at the time. It was ignored. And then the technique that was used for a local community to bypass a global lock was removed from the hands of the communities, by removing the rename tool from local bureaucrats. Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom. The community has very little institutional memory and no coherent communication process that would allow collective intelligence to function well.

Powerlessness

The community has power, but only if organized; further, how it is organized is crucial. Structural defects in organization will lead to the Iron Law operating to create a gap between the central structures and the full community, weakening it, but the Iron Law creates fascist organizations which are stronger in the sense that they can make decisions quickly and act coherently. Long-term, they are weaker, and for this reason the world has been moving toward structures that create deliberated consensus. These are always and probably must be representatively democratic, not direct. And that is "bureaucracy," rejected. "Elitist," rejected. (Notice the similarity to the claims of populist politicians.)

A stubborn opponent

Literally, their survival depends on asserting their own power. And they have learned to have some collective discipline, they learned to STFU.

Fear

Fram was very active doing what many have done without any consequences. WikiProject Spam had as its featured image a battleship firing its big guns off the coast of Wikilandia. Who cared about collateral damage? I documented cases where obsessive antispammers had crushed the work of a very sincere volunteer at Lyrikline based on alleged COI, without warning and with mass vandalism of content, all actually legitimate. Lyrikline was globally blacklisted, even though it was an academic project with governmental support, actually strong source, and definitely appropriate as an external link for every poet covered. I got Lyrikline removed from the global blacklist, but that made enemies of the anti-spam warriors. I did start to place those links and had a page to document the progress, anyone could have worked on this. Nobody did, and that page was deleted at the request of . . . JzG, who never declared his conflict of interest. Talk about assholes!

So if Fram was banned for doing what had long been approved or at least tolerated by the community, who is next?

Despicable methods and allies

Wikipedia runs by mob rule, and mobs have no ethics.

Cowardice

Only within the warped world-view of the Wikipedia Kool-Aid does simply doing what you believe is right take true courage. Losing admin tools or even the right to edit Wikipedia is actually being liberated, and only to an addict will it seem painful. However, individual actions would not actually show the power of the community. It would only demonstrate individual power, which is limited. The community has power because the members have power, but it cannot use that power when it has no mechanisms to create active, collective intelligence. When those mechanisms are created, we can literally travel to the moon and beyond. But mobs only scapegoat and blame, rarely do they do anything else, and when they do act, with collective power, the results are often worse than what they started with. I've been writing this for years: creating consensus-finding structures that allow efficient deliberation that will bring out the best in participants, rather than the worst, must be created first. If created ad-hoc when there is a Big Problem, it will be too late.

Immaturity

Jimbo blocked Bishonen for three hours for gross incivility. The community screamed. Three fucking hours! Bishonen had an opportunity there. If she had said, "Thanks for standing for civility, I will be more careful in the future," she might have transformed the whole project. Instead, she allowed the community to intimidate Jimbo. Her talk page discussion of the block. After than point, Jimbo had very little power. The discussion is intensely diagnostic of the problem.

Rather, "productive editors" were excused for incivility. But a three hour block was a token. Jimbo failed to warn, was one problem. In fact, a one minute block might have been better, putting a record in the block log. Bishonen had earlier asked to be blocked "experience it." A one-hour voluntary block is not "experiencing a block." Actually, what would have been better would have been a one-day block, explained on her talk page. It is as if Jimbo never learned how to actually function as an administrator. Blocking Bishonen without a violated warning would have been out-of process. He could have argued, though, that Bishonen should surely have known better.

This is the logic, and I find it inexorable: the only genuine standard for neutrality is a deliberated consensus that text is neutral. That is, neutrality can be measured by the degree of consensus enjoyed. The goal is 100%, not "rough consensus." Decisions short of the goal would properly be provisional, pending better decisions with a higher level of consensus. To find genuine consensus requires unwarped participation. Incivility will warp participation and distract process from the goal. Therefore incivility must be prohibited. How? By banning uncivil editors?

No, this problem was addressed long ago by the rules of parliamentary procedure. The chair will ask an uncivil member to sit down and stop talking. If the member refuses, the member will be conducted from the room. That is, blocked! However, this is never a "ban." The chair has no power to ban. Generally, the member will be allowed to re-enter, immediately if they commit to civility. Exclusion is not a punishment. It takes a supermajority of members to ban, after a deliberative process, with notice and opportunity to defend, etc.

As with any decision of a chair, that decision may be immediately appealed to the assembly. If seconded, as I recall the procedure, it is immediately put to vote without debate. A simple majority may overrule the chair. The chair does not govern except as an immediately responsible agent for the community.

Ah, but this couldn't work with Wikipedia! They will say. But it could. Wikipedia suffers from 'The problem of scale in democracy." It has solutions. Wikipedia totally ruled all of them out, a priori, not allowing even experiments, and why?

The Iron Law.

It has long been obvious that an off-wiki organization of users could dominate. It is arguable that such already exists, but every attempt by users not allied with dominant factions has been crushed when discovered. Let me put it this way: the community is fascist, and until and unless it realizes this, nothing will change. The Fram Flap is a power struggle between two fascist organizations.

[Abd]

While the Wikipediocrats are still busy with their investigations (funny how they keep finding women to target...... ), it is probably time for the serious critics to start diagnosing the reasons the revolution failed....

Everything boils down to lack of coherent organization of the "community," which has the collective intellegence of a slime mold, except for unreliable moments. Thousands of years of experience with human organizations was neglected and actually rejected by a community enamored with technology and the idea that reliability would just naturally form. Sure. It will. And it may take thousands of years. "Wiki" was quick, and the community always went for "quick." Functional human organizations do the opposite (when functional, that is!).

Unsympathetic victim ...

If you are going to base a revolution, moving the mob through an example, you need a sympathetic victim, even if, on principle, any injustice would do, if the community cares about justice. But mobs don't care about justice, they care about whatever popular meme incites them. That rape victim? She's a slut, she asked for it. Fram deserved it because he was an asshole. But exactly what kind of asshole was he? He was following what he saw as what the policies and guidelines require. The community included and empowered assholes from the beginning, and they drove away what might have done better. And those who were not assholes, themselves, enabled the assholes by tolerating it. All for good purpose, of course. Fascism always has good purpose, from the point of view of the fascists (which is often quite popular).

Unclear demands / objectives

To develop clear demands and objectives would require deliberative process. In theory, ArbCom is the place for it, but ArbCom is (1) astonishingly inefficient as to open process, and (2) not actually representative of the community, a product of an election method known to generate warped representation, that would sound good to the naive, but that is well known to fail. Even a hint of an alternative was crushed quickly. Those who have excess power due to structural defects can be predicted to oppose change, and by the conditions of the problem, may have enough power to prevent it, if the forces that create the Iron Law of Oligarchy are operating and have not been structurally addressed from the beginning.

Hypocrisy

This is ancient. We only care about injustice or star chamber process when it is our ox that is gored. ArbCom runs a Star Chamber, has for years. If ArbCom were truly representative, if we could be confident that secrecy was only where necessary, yes, secrecy can be necessary. But who watches the watchers? This is, again, an ancient problem, but it has solutions, if the community wakes up. Usually it doesn't. It takes leadership, and the mob kills leaders ASAP.

Conspiracy theories

Just because you are paranoid does not mean they are out to get you. Conspiracies should not be alleged without evidence, or the theory backfires and discredits the theorist. To consider evidence requires deliberative process, and the community never really established it . . . again, except in a incredibly inefficient form through ArbCom. And that was corrupted, readily, by the mob. ArbCom actually attempted to create a committee to reform process, and the mob shouted them down, and they backed down. They had no understanding of their proper role, but only considered themselves, too often, a rubber stamp for the screams of the mob.

Hyper-localism

The independence of the local wikis was a major protective feature. Crushed by Single Unified Log-in, and by the concept that a poorly-organized community ban discussion on meta could overrule the consensus of an individual wiki. I pointed out the problem at the time. It was ignored. And then the technique that was used for a local community to bypass a global lock was removed from the hands of the communities, by removing the rename tool from local bureaucrats. Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom. The community has very little institutional memory and no coherent communication process that would allow collective intelligence to function well.

Powerlessness

The community has power, but only if organized; further, how it is organized is crucial. Structural defects in organization will lead to the Iron Law operating to create a gap between the central structures and the full community, weakening it, but the Iron Law creates fascist organizations which are stronger in the sense that they can make decisions quickly and act coherently. Long-term, they are weaker, and for this reason the world has been moving toward structures that create deliberated consensus. These are always and probably must be representatively democratic, not direct. And that is "bureaucracy," rejected. "Elitist," rejected. (Notice the similarity to the claims of populist politicians.)

A stubborn opponent

Literally, their survival depends on asserting their own power. And they have learned to have some collective discipline, they learned to STFU.

Fear

Fram was very active doing what many have done without any consequences. WikiProject Spam had as its featured image a battleship firing its big guns off the coast of Wikilandia. Who cared about collateral damage? I documented cases where obsessive antispammers had crushed the work of a very sincere volunteer at [urlhttps://www.lyrikline.org/en/home/]Lyrikline[/url] based on alleged COI, without warning and with mass vandalism of content, all actually legitimate. Lyrikline was globally blacklisted, even though it was an academic project with governmental support, actually strong source, and definitely appropriate as an external link for every poet covered. I got Lyrikline removed from the global blacklist, but that made enemies of the anti-spam warriors. I did start to place those links and had a page to document the progress, anyone could have worked on this. Nobody did, and that page was deleted at the request of . . . JzG, who never declared his conflict of interest. Talk about assholes!

So if Fram was banned for doing what had long been approved or at least tolerated by the community, who is next?

Despicable methods and allies

Wikipedia runs by mob rule, and mobs have no ethics.

Cowardice

Only within the warped world-view of the Wikipedia Kool-Aid does simply doing what you believe is right take true courage. Losing admin tools or even the right to edit Wikipedia is actually being liberated, and only to an addict will it seem painful. However, individual actions would not actually show the power of the community. It would only demonstrate individual power, which is limited. The community has power because the members have power, but it cannot use that power when it has no mechanisms to create active, collective intelligence. When those mechanisms are created, we can literally travel to the moon and beyond. But mobs only scapegoat and blame, rarely do they do anything else, and when they do act, with collective power, the results are often worse than what they started with. I've been writing this for years: creating consensus-finding structures that allow efficient deliberation that will bring out the best in participants, rather than the worst, must be created first. If created ad-hoc when there is a Big Problem, it will be too late.

Immaturity

Jimbo blocked Bishonen for three hours for gross incivility. The community screamed. Three fucking hours! Bishonen had an opportunity there. If she had said, "Thanks for standing for civility, I will be more careful in the future," she might have transformed the whole project. Instead, she allowed the community to intimidate Jimbo. Her talk page discussion of the block. After that point, Jimbo had very little power. The discussion is intensely diagnostic of the problem.

Rather, "productive editors" were excused for incivility. But a three hour block was a token. Jimbo failed to warn, was one problem. In fact, a one minute block might have been better, putting a record in the block log. Bishonen had earlier asked to be blocked "experience it." A one-hour voluntary block is not "experiencing a block." Actually, what might have been better would have been a one-day block, explained on her talk page. (But no wheel-warring.) It is as if Jimbo never learned how to actually function as an administrator. Blocking Bishonen without a violated warning would have been out-of process. He could have argued, though, that Bishonen should surely have known better.

This is the logic, and I find it inexorable: the only genuine standard for neutrality is a deliberated consensus that text is neutral. That is, neutrality can be measured by the degree of consensus enjoyed. The goal would 100%, not "rough consensus." Decisions short of the goal would properly be provisional, pending better decisions with a higher level of consensus. To find genuine consensus requires unwarped participation. Incivility will warp participation and distract process from the goal. Therefore incivility must be prohibited. How? By banning uncivil editors?

No, this problem was addressed long ago by the rules of parliamentary procedure. The chair will ask an uncivil member to sit down and stop talking. If the member refuses, the member will be conducted from the room. That is, blocked! However, this is never a "ban." The chair has no power to ban. Generally, the member will be allowed to re-enter, immediately if they commit to civility. Next session, nothing happens unless the member is uncivil again. Exclusion is not a punishment. It takes a supermajority of members to ban, after a deliberative process, with notice and opportunity to defend, etc.

As with any decision of a chair, that decision may be immediately appealed to the assembly. If seconded, as I recall the procedure, it is immediately put to vote without debate. A simple majority may overrule the chair. The chair does not govern except as an immediately responsible agent for the assembly.

Ah, but this couldn't work with Wikipedia! They will say. But it could. Wikipedia suffers from 'The problem of scale in democracy." It has solutions. Wikipedia totally ruled all of them out, a priori, not allowing even experiments, and why?

The Iron Law.

It has long been obvious that an off-wiki organization of users could dominate. It is arguable that such already exists, for various interests, but every attempt by users not allied with dominant factions has been crushed when discovered. Let me put it this way: the community is fascist, and until and unless it realizes this, nothing will change. The Fram Flap is a power struggle between two fascist organizations.

[Abd]

A little horn-tooting. Notice who rescued the Lyrikline.org article and how I did it. My God, the cabal hated me! I knew how to use process to improve the project, even when they had done their best to demolish it.
history logs.
Hu12 was the fanatic antispammer, who totally whacked Lyriker. When I saw what had happened globally, I actually cried.

This was the wiki equivalent of Jackboot fascism, and . . . tolerated and encouraged.

By 2009 I knew what I was up against, I knew that my every move was being watched, ready to pounce on any arguable error.

In 2011, it had become intolerable, so I abandoned Wikipedia and used the opportunity to test "self reversion under ban," a way that a banned user and the community could cooperate without disruption. Prior examples had worked, and the test also showed how it could work. It also showed that WP:IAR was completely dead, except as an excuse for admins, not for anyone else. It showed that admins would violate policies and guidelines to maintain their own authority, without incurring any consequences, until and unless they blocked someone very popular.

And then I created one sockpuppet, who violated no policies other than block evasion. And that demonstrated that ArbCom had taken to itself private executive power, without necessity. (I had taken no evasive action to prevent checkuser identification, and I knew very well how to do that by that time. But the old rules did not allow checkuser without a claim of disruption. There was no ArbCom ban being violated, there was a community ban on cold fusion.)

And that is how I came to be 'community banned,' which also demonstrated how the "community" cheerfully ignored ban policy. Ah, don't get me started!
I never attempted to edit Wikipedia agai, my last edits were before that ban. I do trust and accept the right of a community to ban participation. Right or wrong, fascist or not. Socrates did the same.

That self-reversion test was documented on Wikiversity. There was an attempt to delete it which failed. But Michael Umbricht (Mu301) deleted it in 2017 as part of the conspiracy to 'delete all your work." Thus the link on Wikipedia became a dead link. But I was able to rescue those pages from dumps. This is not easy, I had to write a utility to sort through the gigabytes of data.

List_of_self-reverted_edits

And yes, a conspiracy, with named conspirators and evidence, see the Amended Complaint in Lomax v. WMF.

[CrowsNest]

The WMF is due enormous credit for engaging with the whiners this much. Another reply today has been greeted with the exact same responses as last time. At a certain point, the WMF has to cut its losses and accept that these people are going to think what they think, believe what they believe, and will just keep interpreting every response to that end.

My favourite comment.....

either you're lying or Fram is lying, and I know who I believe. .... ‑ Iridescent 15:13, 21 June 2019 (UTC)

You simply can't have a conversation with an asshole like this. I hope this bumps him up the list of future targets, because he at least is never leaving voluntarily. The original toxic.

[CrowsNest]

On dear. Looks like someone didn't much appreciate being called a coward who delivers empty gestures for personal gain....

I don't believe that my unblock of Fram was within local policy, as some are trying to frame it. If there is some loophole I could wiggle through if you parse the words one way or another, I'm not interested in wiggling through it. I thought at the time that it was clearly a violation of local policy, and I knowingly did that per IAR; in extremis, I knowingly broke a rule to improve the encyclopedia. Reversing the WMF's block Fram - with overwhelming consensus to do so - was clearly in the best interests of the English Wikipedia. The contempt WMF is showing our local processes and "self rule" needed to be addressed somehow, and I firmly believed - and still believe - that they would have replied with 1/4th the current (insufficient) effort if all I'd done is join the long, long, long list of people objecting on WP:FRAM. They can break local policy and ignore overwhelming local consensus with impunity; I felt that breaking local policy with ... punity? ... was my only recourse. It was not a result of my "confusion", as Jan implied in one of his posts, even if it might be easier to make it all go away if we pretended it was. So if things are leaning towards "don't desysop Floq, but issue a clarifying motion that such action in the future will result in a desysop", then please don't. That's a cop-out. Either support the unblock (which would make me proud), or say you disapprove of the unblock (which I would completely understand) and chose from the spectrum of possible responses (no action, reprimand, temp desysop, permanent desysop, block, 1 year ban with no appeal). But let's not pretend I didn't know what I was doing in order to make the decision easier for you, or the consequences easier on me. --Floquenbeam (talk) 15:36, 21 June 2019 (UTC)

What load of buuuull crap.

There's are no less than three completely contradictory reasons given for this unblock in this one post.

IAR
Any Administrator who doesn't understand that IAR cannot be invoked if you knew in advance your action was going to be highly controversial. If he is going with that, then just desysop on basic principle - Adminship isn't for morons.

"overwhelming" consensus
Any Administrator who doesn't understand that the validity of OFFICE actions are not subject to consensus, also needs to be desysopped. Simple as that. Unless you are invoking IAR, which we have already covered for this case, an Administrator seeking to undo an office action has but one permitted route - contact the office first. He did not do so, and trying to argue he had consensus for this gross breach of protocol makes as much sense as if he had said he had the Cheese Board of Kentucky's approval for it. You need to desysop any Administrator guilty of such an error, again, on basic fucking principle.

wikipolitics
Use of the unblock tool to force communication from the WMF for the purposes of gaining their respect and of advancing some idiotic campaign for self rule, probably doesn't explicitly break any existing Wikipedia policy, because it falls squarely under that large classification of 'supremely dumb shit you never even think you would need to tell an Administrator not to do". If he stands by that as his reasoning, you've got no choice but to desysop, since there can be no worse way to exercise your community granted privelage of being assumed to have good judgement, than doing dumb shit like that.

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It is still pretty obvious Floquenbeam is a coward. If he wants to be seen as taking ownership of his actions, then he should delete all reference to having supposedly acted on a consensus, and while he's there, delete all references to IAR too, since that implies consensus support after the fact. In both cases, if he wants these to be his reasons, he would be hiding behind the community.

The only truth to this statement, is that he wanted to force the WMF's hand for political ends. That is an action a brave person can stand behind, alone, ready to face the consequences. And yet even there, he exhibited a flavour of cowardice. He could have, for example, done as policy demands and asked the WMF to reconsider this office action, and only then when they refused, gone into Commando Elite Mode. It all comes back to the fact there was clearly no emergency. He had time to weigh his options.

At the end of the day, you can and probably should desysop him simply for making such a pig's ear of explaining his actions in a timely fashion. A basic skill required of any Administrator, at least ones who would like to be afforded the benefit of being assumed have had good motives, even if their acts are decidedly bad in policy.

[CrowsNest]

Ok, story time: In one of my first work situations (back when I was in my 20s) I was in an all male group of some 20 to 30 men. I was the first and only women to work there.
From day one, one of the guys greeted me with "Hi, sexy!" each time he saw me. It made me absolutely boil with rage inside. (It was a techie job, I got it because of my science background at Uni.) If I had the choice, I would stand up, "visibly distressed" I'm sure, and walk out of the room, slamming the door behind me each time he did that.
He didn't take the "hint".
After a week of this I, eh, "manned myself up" and told him in very clear language to stop.
I will never forget his face, or stunned reply:
"You don't like it?????"
Me: NO!!!!!!

But to be absolutely clear though, you would rather the Wikipedia community govern itself? Because the external consensus seems to be, they are not much interested in examining their techbro culture.

Worse, they have begun to merely virtue signal, to make it appear they care. It made me laugh my ass off to see Drmies indef block a seriously alpha user, for calling a women Admin a bitch. Drmies openly admitted he didn't know and wasn't remotely bothered about examining the rest of their history, so the user was free to do what usually happens, and get unblocked after an apology and promise not to do that specific thing again.

In truth, had the Wikipedians even slightly gave a shit about moderating such obviously Alpha Male "established editors", that insult would never have been made, because he'd have already been banned long before it (and the fact he eventually has been, shows how bad he was).

Oh, and Drmies' credentials as an ally to women can be realized in the fact that until that point, his only interaction with that women Administrator, was to put her down. Why? For spoiling his fun with her silly (tech based) objections to him creating joke categories. What was the notable first of these joke categories? To defend the disgusting Eric Corbett and his belief his liberal use of the c-word in Wikipedia discourse didn't have implications for how safe women editors felt.

The institutional acceptance of Fram's sort of aggressive and domineering approach to Adminship, qualities that are absolutely not required for any Administrator to adequately perform their "quality control" duties, but which has a disproportionate effect on women, is what T&S is clearly trying to correct with their message sending ban of Fram.

I have had to deal with my share of people who ignore what you tell them ("Oh no, you don't mean that!"), but if you haven't told people straight, not even once, then you don't have much to complain about, IMO.

Especially as a female: you have to set your borders.
Nobody else can set them for you.

And yet you keep pretending Fram wasn't told multiple times by users who were less powerful and less insulated than he is, precisely what he was doing that was wrong, and to cut it out. The intended message of the response of the community, specifically the Administration, to those users escalating those concerns, was received loud and clear. Go. The Fuck. Away.

If you genuinely cared about how women are treated in the tech environment, you'd stop pretending that it is the complainants or the WMF who did the wrong thing here.

[Graaf Statler]

Yes, but a few thinks about this. I am a sub constructor in decorate. This means I have often to deal with a team with builders, "real man" and woman and often gay people who decorate and I have never heard such a crazy things like I read here. Never is my whole long carrier.
If the women suggest me a inflatable doll would be a great therapy for me what must I say? I am sexual harassed? Because of a innocent joke? What plannet are these guys living?
To be honest if I look to me most wiki woman there biggest wish is someone should sexual harass them, because how for the hell would something with surge a what we call dragoon?

Romaine was right, social touching is complete accepted in Europe and the man- woman relation is complete different in Europe. We kiss, we tell bleu jokes, we challenge and we flirt. In the street we greet any stranger and smile. What the European wiki "lady's" try to promote is not representative for the European mentality and moral.
This French lady has to immigrate because her life in France must be a hell! Because, the more to the south the more free are the men - woman relations.

If you come in Greece man kiss both man and woman, I have heard a female police offices shouting to a man mastrubate yourself (Mallakas), woman are dressed up that you think they are sitting behind a window to sell themself (What is absolute not true), woman talk open about there sex live with strange man, it is extreem free. In Europe is rough sexual language complete normal. Kut, crunt is complete accepted Dutch by both man and woman. Het was weer kut, I didn't had my day.

Europe is NOT Amerika and I can't see or understand what Romaine according to European standards did wrong.
The French lady seems to me one of the many, many well payed professional victims in the chapters who is misusing the cultural difference between Europe and America.

[CrowsNest]

We on the board are in active conversations. I think you will receive a comprehensive, cogent reply, but we are looking to be thoughtful, reflective, to examine every aspect of this, and neither allow invalid precedent to be set, nor to set invalid precedent. The best way to avoid a bad outcome is to look to first principles, look at what has gone wrong, and to propose a process for healing but also for building a process that works better in the future.

In those board discussions, I am stating my own views directly and clearly, but it would be inappropriate to share them here and now, because as we all know, there are those who like to engage in "Jimbo said" argumentation, which doesn't clear the air but instead often only creates more heat.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 10:58, 21 June 2019 (UTC)

Hmmmm.

Every precedent I can think of, supports the WMF's position, and denies the rebel's claims.

This is ultimately about legal status, and the amorphous blob known as the community, does not have one. Never has, and likely never will.

Their powers as individuals to do anything that remotely looks like operational management, even as individuals purporting to be acting for the amorphous blob, does not derive from any legal status of the blob.

These powers derive ultimately from grants of authority by the WMF, both formal and informal, and that is clearly a form of management that only works if the WMF has the power to unilaterally revoke and and all such privelages at any time for any reason, regardless of how mad it makes the blob.

Even the times when the community thinks it has scored a notable victory over their Masters, if they actually bothered to look, this has only ever been a case of the WMF deciding it wasn't worth the drama of exercising their ultimate authority to its logical conclusion.

The awesome power that is SuperProtect was removed only for "symbolic" reasons to soothe community relations, on the assumption the community would be reasonable partners working with the Foundation in their software development goals. It is quite obvious that at the first sign the community has become unreasonable, such as for example declaring their autonomous status and God-given right to switch stuff on and off as they please, it still exists as a nuclear option.

It took the WMF over a year to be convinced it did not need this nuclear option to be available instantly, downgrading it to something that can only be used once they reinstall it. That is just how difficult it proves to be, in practice, to treat an amorphous blob as equal partners.

The future of Wikipedia, certainly if they want to get shit done on a reasonable timeframe, is clearly not in giving more powers to the blob. It is in putting them back in their box. Work with those who genuinely want to be partners, but stomp hard on delusional separatists and the Pure Breeds.

I mean, come on. It could be twenty fucking years before the blob and the WMF agree on a mutually acceptable protocol for effectively dealing with an Administrator like Fram, that is how far apart the division has been allowed to grow with the community looking after its own business. If your livelihood depended on sorting that problem out, as is the case for many WMF staff, you're not going to wait, and you're certainly not going to give any concessions regarding the powers to effect change that you already have.

The community have been obsessed with how this affects volunteer's motivations. They should probably start considering how likely it is anyone wants to actually work in such an environment. If the community wants to find out whether or not the WMF actually does anything to help Wikipedia survive and indeed grow (other than keeping the lights on), revolutionary action like this seems to be a great way to find out.

Plenty of Trust and Safety type jobs out there in Silicon Valley, all better paid. Sure, Facebook might give you PTSD, but working for Wikipedia surely just makes you want to cut yourself, and indeed, torture those who are causing you pain.

It's alright for Jimmy, he does fuck all actual work for Wikipedia. And he knows it.

[Graaf Statler]

The best way to avoid a bad outcome is to look to first principles, look at what has gone wrong, and to propose a process for healing but also for building a process that works better in the future.

The best outcome for me and Lomax is to sue this bunch of idiots and let them punish by independent judges with bone crunching lawyers, they have asked for it.
Both of us have so often offered let's talk about it, I with there is something terrible wrong in WPNL an WMNL-BE, and for me are at the moment (can change) all the bridges we could pass burned. And For Abd Lomax too because he has sued them.