Floquenbeam

[CrowsNest]

The desire to have his ego stoked was simply too much I guess.....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia ... quenbeam_2

Take a look Trust & Safety, look at how many editors of the English Wikipedia community don't give a damn about you, think you're worse than shit on your shoe.

This guy is hailed as a hero, despite knowingly reversing an action designed to keep people safe when he did not have and knew he never would have all the required information to make that decision. He's directly violated what was previously understood to be a bright line rule of the en.wiki community, office actions shall not be undone without consulting the office, and he has faced no consequences. The local ArbCom, inexplicably handed the task of ruling on this obvious misconduct by your employers, officially lodged a no decision. Unofficially, they too hail him as a hero. So you know where their loyalties lie.

Why would you work for these people? Why work for a Board and an Executive Director who would have people like this installed as your partners and colleagues? They don't have anything to lose. Do you know who is behind the Floquenbeam account? A real name and address, where lawyer's papers can be sent? No? Well, how come this guy apparently now more power to make critical, potentially life altering decisions, than you?

If you have any sense, you would now go find better jobs. Why would you accept a job where you're just the people who have to deal with the pedophiles and the people issuing threats of violence, because it's just too much for these cowards, but you're not allowed to protect victims of harassment if these people decide you must be doing something crazy or corrupt to have banned Fram?

What they charge you with, ironically, would get you fired, or worse, if it was true. They clearly know nothing of the legal obligations and exposure you have as employees of a non-profit. It's not Federal grant money you administer, but it's the next worst thing when it comes to the sort of corruption and corporate malfeasance they have happily accused you of, such is their utter disbelief Fram could be remotely guilty.

Do they care about the consequences on your careers of these slurs? Of course they don't. As you will have seen if you read this forum, evidently according to the en.wiki community, BLP doesn't apply to identifiable Foundation emoloyees. It does, oddly enough, apply to Fram, an unidentified pseudonym. Their allegations and smears are all easily discoverable, easily linked to your real names, your LinkedIn profiles, etc. Is that what you signed up for? Is that how you thought this whole movement thing worked? I doubt it.

This guy wanted to be a hero to the community, not the movement, without any consequences to himself from the movement. It was about his ego, his status, his power. He has his victory.

I knew the reversal of an office action (in spite of having consensus behind me) would cause further disruption, and I did it anyway.

Pay attention, all Foundation staff. It has never been local en.wiki policy that office actions are subject to consensus. When (not if) this RfA ends in a cake-walk, the point will be proven that not a single en.wiki policy can be trusted by anyone, least of all by those not deemed to be part of the community (that's you lot on the salaries, in case you haven't noticed), they can all be ignored if the volunteer mob wishes it, and their local ArbCom will stand aside and do nothing.

And not ignored in a perfectly valid WP:IAR way - the people who justified this as an application of IAR were only showing their own total ignorance (basically, if you knowingly cause World War III, you lose your right to invoke IAR as your defence). It is not a get out of jail free card, nor a permit to shout fire in a crowded theatre, it is something whose invocation should be so uncontroversial, it should be barely noticeable.

It should be noted that at no point did Floquenbeam say he was invoking IAR, since he at least knew fine well what he was doing was not covered by it. It was as they described it, civil disobedience, a defiant gesture, a poke in the eye for the Foundation. A naked act of abusing Foundation granted tools for political ends.

Everyone in the Foundation who doesn't have a massive travel budget and mates they can bunk with at Davos, it's time for you to seriously consider where you fit in the movement. Because I don't see how any of this shit is worth it, the utter degradation of it all. You couldn't pay me a million dollars to consider people like Floquenbeam as my colleagues, partners, customers, or whatever bullshit they're going to try and serve you up to justify this utterly absurd situation you now find yourselves in.

I'll leave you with this.......

Also, if it helps those on the fence: I've reached my lifetime quota for reversing office actions, so if/when another completely unacceptable office action ever gets made, I'll leave it to others to reverse it (or not).

.....proof, if it were needed, that he has royally screwed you all over, and it wasn't even on a point of principle (because where I come from, if it is a point of principle, you say "and I would do the same again").

[CrowsNest]

Unsurprisingly, the harassment site Wikipediocracy is all in too.....

I suspect the T&S folks will also not be happy about the timing of the New Yorker's new article on The Case of Al Franken. Very different situation, obviously, but the message that it's not good to accept harassment allegations without even cursory fact-checking, much less a proper investigation, is pretty much the same.

On what planet does anyone remotely believe Trust & Safety didn't properly investigate, much less do more than a cursory fact check?

As anyone with a brain and no ulterior agenda can see, the only explanation for why the Foundation banned and the community revolted, are their MASSIVELY different perceptions of what harassment actually is. And as anyone can also see, a four week deep dive investigation of Fram's public edits will have concluded quite easily, that Fram was guilty of WP:HARASSment, that the multiple complainants were right about him and right about the ineffectiveness of the local authorities, who have clearly dropped any pretence that the local idea of minimal behavioral standards (and thus higher standards also) is meant to align with that of the Foundation.

I mean, for crying out loud. Fram got banned in the same quarter the community showed that it didn't even believe that repeatedly telling other users to fuck off should be deserving of sanction. Why are people still pretending there has to be a Grand Conspiracy or a case of complete and utter incompetence? Only Wikipedians themselves could possibly be that deluded, and if you look closely, it's not that they are deluding themselves, they know exactly how disgusting and shameless they really are, it's that they genuinely thought they could get away with it forever.

They are welcoming back Floquenbeam with open arms, because he is a reminder of a local regime for local people that has and still does let them get away with it. He embodies the spirit that it's fine to tell people to fuck off if you can justify it to yourself using your own warped moral compass, and fuck what anyone else thinks. And you can indeed call that the "higher standard", meaning ordinary editors have to feel entitled to behave even worse, lest they feel cheated. As Eric Son of Cunt Corbett proved.

There can be no negotated settlement. People like Floquenbeam, and all those who think the Sun lives in his rectum, they're going to have to be forcibly removed from Wikipedia, if the goal of a safe and respectful environment is ever to be reached.

Stock up on your napalm, in other words. They won't go quietly or easily. Vermin never do.

[CrowsNest]

Of course, to annoint a God, you have to have the appropriate mythology.......

No, the concern at FRAM was that a seemingly unaccountable body bypassed our normal procedures without any warning and took an opaque action that nobody was able to review. .... --RexxS (talk) 22:52, 22 July 2019 (UTC)

Virtually every word of this narrative can be disputed in one way or another, but crucially all are ways that demonstrate Floquenbeam was off-reservation (how, for example, was he any more accountable than a paid employee following a clear process chart with identifiable chains of command), but why bother? This RfA isn't about facts at all.

[CrowsNest]

It was always obvious this was going to be a cake-walk, but that said, it is still pretty astounding how blase these unaccountable volunteer pricks are all being about how supposedly not-very serious it is to be unilaterally undoing office actions, and how Floquenbeam is still trying to pretend it is something that can ever be justified as having the backing of consensus. That itself is a gross deception of the largely retarded community, on the very page where he is supposed to be asking for their trust based on his honesty and competence.

Floquenbeam has tasted the blood of his master. The only trust the community can have in him now, if they had any sense, is that his promise not to bite again is probably also a lie, as big a lie as his original oath to follow the policies of Wikipedia. Especially the ones clearly marked as having legal considerations.

If they are going to resist the Foundation's efforts to tame them, then they will need dogs that bite their masters, because they know just how few of them are prepared to do such a thing in the same situation. Most of them only ever bark, or piss on the furniture.

There's only one thing to be done to a dog that has bitten its master even once. Shoot it.

[CrowsNest]

It might persuade the Foundation to stop this crazy strategy of thinking they can negotiate with these people, if they understood all the things that had to happen for Floquenbeam to think this was a good idea, and therefore what the community are now lining up to endorse as exactly the sort of thing they like to see in their self-government.

* He had to somehow persuade himself that office actions are subject to local consensus. Either because he is just that stupid he doesn't realize how crazy that is as a basic concept, or he is just that willing to justify himself using any absolute garbage he can think of and just hoping people are so stupid or desperate they will accept it.

* He has to arrogantly believe that Foundation staff are worthy of less courtesy than his fellow volunteer Administrators - even in this RfA he admits it is the done thing not to reverse a colleague without first having the courtesy to consult them, and if you don't you're basically saying they made a clear and obvious error and/or an emergency situation existed.

* He had to simply not give a tiny rat's ass about the very real prospect he did not and probably still doesn't have all the information with which to make an informed decision about the merits of this ban.

* He had to both be uncertain about the chaos he was about to unleash, but also have only done what he did out of some belief that some kind of chaos would be the result, because that was what he needed to achieve his secondary objective

* He had to have no qualms, none at all, about abusing his community granted tools for political purposes, in particular in a way that was designed to publicly embarrass the Foundation

* He had to not care in the slightest what message this sent to the people who had reported Fram, or people who might be having the same issues with different problem users.

* He had to be absolutely sure (which he is) that his real identity isn't known, thereby leaving the Foundation with almost total liability (since in their wisdom they chose not to follow the procedures that exist precisely to place all that liability back onto the broad shoulders of Section 230)

* He had to be sure others would follow him in his act of civil disobedience, otherwise it would have remained a pointless gesture.

[CrowsNest]

......opposes based on the belief that it was unacceptable for me to undo an office action are completely legitimate......so if/when another completely unacceptable office action ever gets made, I'll leave it to others to reverse it

Square that circle if you can. Someone has to be wrong, either the people who oppose, or Floquenbeam's belief it was completely unacceptable.

Of course, there is no mystery really, he is just playing politics. His genuine belief is that the office action was completely unacceptable and everyone who disagrees is an idiot/traitor. But he can't hardly admit that in an RfA, given it is basically an exercise in making people think you're reasonable and level headed.

[CrowsNest]

I was confident, and am still confident, that no real harm could occur by allowing Fram to edit en.wiki (while being watched by 1,536 hawks) while ArbCom decided what to do. --Floquenbeam (talk) 15:20, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

So why isn't he editing then?

If no harm can come from him editing, and the whole thing has been passed to ArbCom, why is he not editing? I know he's on holiday, but he's back at the end of the month, and you unblocked him before he left.

All your supposed deep thought about the things you thought you knew, and yet you didn't forsee that, did you?

We'll never know for sure, but I'd say it's fair bet this pointless unblock caused at least two editors exercise their right to vanish. Tip of the iceberg no doubt. Harm? Or you could give a shit?

It's insane how proud this asshole is of having supposedly analyzed all the factors in play, and decided entirely for himself, that the Foundation had made a mistake, and he had the right to correct it all by himself, by starting a fire.

One of the factors he heavily rests upon of course, is that Fram was only blocked locally. There appears to be no awareness that this was a new feature created for the benefit of people who didn't need to be blocked globally, for stated reasons that make perfect sense, whatever this asshole says. There is no awareness that if this hadn't been available to T&S, then Fram wasn't walking away with a warning, he was going to be globally banned.

So there you go Foundation. Next time, make sure the block is global. Make them think Fram was blocked for touching kids, and they won't dare cause trouble. They only take serious harm seriously. Harassment, not so much.

You tried to accommodate the needs of people who haven't touched kids but had done serious harm to a single project, and look where it got you.

[CrowsNest]

I'm reminded of all those Administrators who say, well, if just two of my peers who I trust say I am no longer fit to serve, I will step down.

How many would have to say it for Floquenbeam to step down?

Is this why he is using RfA? So that it wouldn't matter even if 50 Administrators said he was an untrustworthy and unfit to serve?

He's going to pass, but it has hasn't gone unnoticed that it this weren't simply a referendum on Fram, or this was a new candidate, he wouldn't have passed.

It is certainly fitting that Floquenbeam is reminding everyone with this farcical show, that there is one rule for ordinary editors and new Administrators, another for the old guard.

This is a brilliant comment.....

Oppose. Much of what was going on at WP:FRAM was vicious, angry, violent, mob rule. Whatever you may think of T&S's actions, pouring gasoline on the flames with dramatic actions is not the behavior I want to see in the leaders of the community. Speak your mind, sure. But, don't abuse the tools trusted to you to help build your soapbox. An important part of being an admin is the ability to divorce your personal feelings from your job responsibilities, and Floq demonstrated an inability to do so with their actions here. -- RoySmith (talk) 16:02, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

Floquenbeam claims he was being rational, emotion had nothing to do with it. He's lying. In his very first comment, he referred to the ban as bullshit. Soon after he declared there was only one person in the Foundation he trusts implicitly, and they weren't involved. Only after he was informed several people he does actually trust work in the Trust and Safety department, did he switch horses to claim they do good work, vital work, he just wanted this one mistake reversed. His big reason? The mob were angry.

[CrowsNest]

Down to 84% now. Not looking good for the guy who claimed 95% of the community were behind him. I mean, they still are, but we're well past the point he can realistically say the only people who think he is untrustworthy, are know nothing idiots.

Perversely, it has even been suggested that their lack of content edits makes their opinion as Administrators worthless. A common view, one that might succeed in any RfA except this one, because Floquenbeam admits he doesn't do shit to actually create content. He stands by his record as an Administrator, and other Administrators are telling it now it is. The minority, sadly, but Wikipedia wouldn't be the toxic shithole that it is if it wasn't the case that the Admin corps use measures other than judgement, temperament and trustworthiness, to assess the merits of their peers.

Floqunbeam is Old School, he stands for Traditional Wikipedia, in the same way Drmies and Bishonen and all the other Administrators who lack even a basic claim to be operating to the theoretical higher standard, do. The Wikipedia where pure self-interest means nobody dares point out the Emperor has no clothes, not if they want their daily feudal ration of mouldy bread and maggoty cheese. Governance, Middle Ages style.

This is certainly becoming less of a cake walk though, as seen by the desire of some of those offering vacuous reasons why they think Floquenbeam is fit to serve, to now actually use their words. They will need better words if the dissents in this RfA aren't going to hang around Floquenbeam like a turd necklace. He may yet even beat RexxS for the title of most illegitimate Administrator. Hilarious to think Bishonen is a deep friend of both. She's just drawn to mothering and protecting fellow scum, like a toxic witch. Queen of the shit pit.

Can someone explain to me where people think what he did was a courageous stand? That implies he was taking a risk, that he was going to lose something he valued, for the greater good. Well, Fram is still blocked, the existence of a greater good as a result is debatable - a couple of years down the line when the community and ArbCom has done what they seem intent on doing, carrying on Floquenbeam's FUCK YOU WE WON'T DO WHAT YOU TELL US attitude, I can see the Foundation simply globally banning future Frams, something Floquenbeam could do nothing about.

Only a mass walkout stops that future governance model, and that is a pipe dream, as this rather pathetic revolution has shown. And he's getting his Admin rights back, even though he requested them in such a way that many are levelling as having an arrogant disregard for their value. It has not gone unnoticed that Floquenbeam has a habit of resigning, almost as if he doesn't want to be an Administrator at all, but is hamstrung by the fact that without his tools, it doesn't seem like he has anything else to offer the community. Speaks well to the character of the man, an arrogant bully to his core, like Drmies, like Bishonen, lost without their ability to control others. And this defiant act was the ultimate act of asserting control, right?

This RfA was a dumb move.

Support for standing up and taking action against the @WMF's idiocy and total incompetence. You've earned my respect, that's for sure. -FASTILY 22:22, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

Earning the respect of Fastily in how you wield the tools, practically marks you out as a problem child.

Can we just take a moment to wonder also, at certain Wikipedian's total inability to appreciate the value of being seen to be neutral in affairs directly related to people you are personally tasked with adjudicating....

Support Of course Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 21:07, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

Support, obviously. Thank you for doing this again. Opabinia regalis (talk) 06:09, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

And on the issue of general stupidity, we have supporters as dumb as this retard, himself a well respected aparachtick......

those who oppose this afd are in effect supporting a process that prevents those accused from defending themselves and prevents appeals. ) DGG ( talk ) 18:15, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

Brushing over the hilarious mistake of calling an RfA an AfD, the reality is every single Wikipediot supports this approach to justice for certain individuals, because they are not protesting the very real fact Global Bans are a thing. And Floquenbeam specifically says he would have done nothing had the WMF applied one to Fram, ironically because apparently if they did that, he would be able to trust they had found he had done something really bad.

This well known corrupt Administrator sums up the general idiocy on display....

In the light of some of the opposes, I'll expand a little. Some are saying it is simply and unconditionally wrong to act against WMF office actions. But if we accept that, we accept that those in authority are always right and can never be acted against - and that's wrong. Sometimes we just have to do what's right regardless of who's in authority and what they say, and just see how it plays out. The way it's played out in this case is that there's a consensus that those in authority (the WMF T&S team) were wrong, and we are now in a process of rectifying their error. But we wouldn't have made that progress had we not been prepared to stand up when we saw something that was fundamentally wrong - and Floquenbeam and Bishonen played key roles in the process of disobedience. I said over at Bish's talk page that "The actions of Bish, Floq and others were instrumental in forcing a crisis and bringing WMF to the table. In this case, escalation was exactly the right thing to do." It's echoed by Floq's answer to Q8, and and I stand by it. Admins who are prepared to stand up for what is morally right are many times more valuable than simple rule followers. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 17:10, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

It's astonishing how far they're willing to go, to justify the unjustifiable.

Let's be clear, there are countless legitimate ways to "act against" an WMF action you think is wrong. The community has Board seats, for crying out load, one of whom is showing their absolute disregard for their position by participating in this farce. The precedent being set here, is that consensus can undo anything. ANYTHING. To accept that as remotely a good thing, you would have to believe the community is capable of not doing things that could result in serious harm to individuals, result in serious legal exposure for the Foundation, or seriously damage the reputation of their encyclopedia project, reducing good will and donations.

All three have resulted from this one incident, and we can name countless times when they have done similar things. The community are not rational, responsible, or mature. They act how you would think a bunch of entitled pricks, who may not even be over-18, would react in any situation that might threaten their freedom to be addicted to Wikipedia in the way that makes them feel most happy. Being made to consider serious things like how Fram affected others, or rather now they systematically failed to do so despite numerous repeated incidents and complaints, is a far too mature and adult responsibility for them to handle. So they acted out.

Of, and OF COURSE the Wikipedian-loving harassment site Wikipediocracy are all in, now at the even highest level now......witness a rare on wiki comment by Zoloft......

Support - Sic semper tyrannis. →StaniStani 17:28, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

[CrowsNest]

Thank you for answering my earlier question and the other ones above. Were you surprised by comments at WT:ACN that there were a significant number of reports to T&S, far more ... than I would have expected? What if anything do you have to say to the editors who filed those reports (and who might be reading this)? – Levivich 05:24, 24 July 2019 (UTC)
A:

Um, if he says anything other than "fuck you", he's lying.

He was either operating under the assumption there had been only one complaint, or he had already decided it didn't matter if there were a hundred, they had committed the ultimate sin by going over the head of the community.

This is where he loses the ability to say he thought long and hard about the merits of the block and the logic behind his protest action, because it is pretty damn obvious that most if not all complainants went that route because they had not been impressed by the way the community handled their or other people's complaints, and indeed one or more of the DIRTY RATS might actually be frustrated ArbCom Committee members, sick of being outvoted.

I am amazed nobody has asked each of the twelve Arbitrators for a categorical statement - did they or did they not file a complaint with T&S? Recusal would not be required in this new review, since they obviously didn't have a conflict of interest, only a conflict of interpretation with their colleagues. The community has already accepted the idea the Committee is free to examine Fram even if they have pre-existing feelings on him or the community's past efforts to control him. Their weird ideas of jurisdiction in action.

It doesn't help Floquenbeam of course that some, but crucially not all, of this vital context, had not emerged by the time he had already made the decision to start overturning tables and mooning the Executive. It leaked out slowly, distributed far and wide among the vitriol and rabble rousing, ashamed or afraid as these people were of telling the actual truth, and it required a person with the discipline and the non-emotional involvement of an analyst, to have seen it.

Floquenbeam was not that person. He waited only for the evidence that confirmed his pre-set conclusions, that the Foundation were being idiots and were set upon covering up their incompetence unless people started breaking shit. So he broke shit.