I guess I shouldn't be surprised, but it seems like the Wikipediocracy folks needs shit explained to them again. These fucking people. And they claim to be lawyers and super villains and shit.
Before I get started, yes Vigilant, the WMF are indeed now focusing on environmental issues and editor retention, or more accurately, replacement. Have been for a while now. See what you miss when you succumb to Puff the Magic Dragon? You just step aside now. Stop scaring chicks. We got this. Yours, the cleverer and far more respectable side of the family.
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What's happened? T&S has sent a dossier to ArbCom detailing their investigation, with identifying information redacted.
Why? To get the whiny little bitches of the community to stop yelling at them and start yelling at who was really to blame - ArbCom - because surprise surprise, now they've seen it, the dossier is compelling to anyone with knowledge of policy and doesn't have cheese for brains (i.e., the minority of Arbitrators looking to open a case on Fram before it became moot)
What was the plan? Publicly announce ArbCom can review the ban based on the information provided, and wait a day while they realize any mere review exercise would be pointless because even with the redactions, they still can't tell anyone shit, least of all Fram.
Why? Precisely because all of the evidence against Fram is public, just confidentially reported. Ergo, you tell the pirrhanas anything remotely specific, maybe not even that, about the Foundation's case, and they will immediately know or be able to find out pretty quickly what the incidents were, and will automatically assume the people Fram was beating on, were the complainants. Bad on so many levels, but particularly because one of more complaints obviously came from third parties.
So what now? ArbCom are now going to do what I said they should have done a week ago - conduct an Arb Case against Fram, as if none of this shit had ever happened. Forget the dossier, forget the RATs, just declare it is open season on Fram, and let anyone who wants to register their disapproval to do so, in a full and public trial. Y'know, like a good old fashioned en.wiki Arb Case.
Why? Are they stoopid? Well, ArbCom know who pays the bills, and they know they need to be seen to be capable, otherwise they will have to accept further incursions from the professionals. They sure as shit know they lose their new found rebel credentials if they simply rubber stamp the dossier without giving the hounds anything chew on. They were dragging their feet claiming they didn't have all the information to do this, but that was just a lie. The dossier revealed it as such, containing no smoking guns, just regular old fashioned police work, and so left them nowhere to go.
Will it work? Probably. Given the blood lust, the community might be reluctant to present evidence against Fram, and most are too stupid to even know how to present a case. After all, if they could spot WP:HARASS violations and write them up in such a way Arbitrators couldn't ignore them, none of this shit would have ever happened. But I think enough of his victims will say fuck it, if this is my only chance, the mother fucker is going down. A few other good Samaritnas will want to be seen to do the right thing too, so as to keep those black helicopters grounded.
But just how badly is Fram going to get reamed by those he thought would be his saviours? Real bad. See, this is what I've been trying to tell you simple folk. ArbCom fucked up badly, and they know it. So in being gifted the chance to control the narrative, their best play here is to make this Case all about how it was the toxic community's fault, how Fram was doing this shit for years before ArbCom started getting their bells rung, and that only happened, not because the community finally realized ignoring him was a potential problem, but because Fram was starting to really annoy some of the Vested Administrators, who were having to field complaints from their corner boys about this un-allied Fram dude coming around fucking up their shit, saying dumb shit like he
protected by policy. Fool. We may even get the Holy Grail, an admission that their inaction was because the hollowed out authority vaccuum that is en.wiki ArbCom of recent years, was afraid the community just wouldn't stand for it. The part left out being how certain Members put that case to the quorum a little too hard. Keep that shit on the down-lo,
Committee Business, with scores to be settled much later, when nobody's looking.
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I think what people need to understand, as the Arbitrators are now doing, is the WMF have never been even half as stupid as their critic have often claimed. Fram was specifically chosen as a target. Not for any bullshit conspiracy/corruption reasons, but because his case exposed the fatal flaws of en.wiki's self-governance methodology up to now.
Take a look at this piece of shit, a very representative example of the old school toxic culture that is being squarely aimed at. A beloved member of Wikipediocracy too, but you wouldn't expect anything less of that scum.
I didn't follow many of the encounters Fram had with others too closely, but my impression was he was correct much more often than not. Hence with maybe some of the more involved interactions, the antecedents have to be examined (i.e. other editors' behaviour) Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 19:41, 5 July 2019 (UTC)
The time for even daring to suggest that victims of harassment somehow brought it upon themselves, or otherwise deserved it, is over. Harassment is not policy enforcement. If you have WP:HARASSed, and done so after warnings, then by definition you forfeited any right to claim you had a good faith belief what you were doing was for the good of Wikipedia.
This is where that whole 'yeah, we know WP:CIV is still a policy, we just ignore it' attitude, comes back to bite you sorry sacks of shit right in the ass. I means fuuuuck, how many times have I got to spell it out? WP:HARASS is defined with reference to WP:CIV. So you dumb fucks have essentially been admitting you don't take harassment seriously for years to anyone paying attention to your warped internal debates (as opposed to just the observable effects), you were just too stupid to realize it (or in rare cases, undermining CIV exactly for those reasons).
This was never really about Fram, this was about sending a message, clearing out the dead wood. And it is working.......
I trust ArbCom enough to support their judgment in the Fram case whichever way they decide, I will not be asking for my admin bit back - and that will not be a reflection on the Fram result, or on ArbCom in any way. It's because we are going through a change in the way the various bodies work and communicate, there are going to be changes made in the way we handle aggressive behaviour, there's a new "Universal code of conduct" in the pipeline, and the old regime under which I ran for admin is being replaced/upgraded/whatever. So I'm going to sit back and see how it pans out before I can decide whether I want to be an admin under the evolving new regime, and if I decide I want to, I'll need to ask the community if they want me to do so too. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 11:06, 6 July 2019 (UTC)
With these assholes out the way, the Committee can move on to ironing out all the other wrinkles, such as their alarming policy which infers the accused gets to know the case against them even in private proceedings. This will be incompatible with will those whining about natural justice, but they will be looking elsewhere by then, and it will pass because to not correct it will mean it is incompatible with the very obvious fact Wikipedia doesn't do and never has done anything remotely like natural justice.
So yes, this is to be a show trial. The community asked for a show, so they will get a very public beheading. It is to echo through the realm, it's effects felt far and wide. Whether that implies the conviction will be unsafe, seems to depend on whether you already think Fram is innocent or guilty, and whether you ever really believed the community was sovereign.
Pro-tip: he guilty as hell. Always was. And no, no sovereignty. Never was any. The fact Fram is still banned By Order of the Foundation, even after all the sweet words and the apparent passing of his wretched bones into the custody of some dude named Randy, should really have clued people in on that score.