Ordinarily, this would be in Wikipedia Review Review, but given the public attention that this has gained, I think that it is best in a public forum, so that it can be quoted on Wikipedia and elsewhere, and demonstrate clearly what we are doing here.

The argument to ban Amorrow from Wikipedia Review:

Amorrow was commenting in ways that could be considered to be cyber stalking. Since Wikipedia Review is a law-abiding entity, it is risky for us to be associated with someone who may be engaging in illegal activity. Whilst he is free to do this on his own personal site, and we will not ban him for doing this, we do not want to in any way be seen to be encouraging what may be illegal activity. As such, he was given several warnings to try to stop these kinds of posts, and to alter his behaviour. He did appear to try to stop, but then diverted to talking about female editors, which was an example of discrimination, which also may potentially be illegal. As such, keeping Amorrow as a Wikipedia Review poster is something which we felt may be legally worrying. Whilst of course Amorrow never attacked Wikipedia Review, people do not generally get banned from this forum because we don't like them (only in exceptional cases such as Malber and Grace Note who went on elongated efforts to destroy every aspect of this forum). There has been talk to ban Amorrow for over a week, and whilst I was protesting the ban as I felt that he could merely be encouraged not to put us in to legal jeapordy, the other issue is that most people here didn't like him either. The ban was likely to come about this time anyway, and I do not personally protest the ban. I think it was fair to ban him from this forum.

The argument to remove the ban from Amorrow from Wikipedia Review:

As Everyking pointed out, Amorrow's ban from Wikipedia Review coincided with Linuxbeak, a Wikipedia administrator, removing the ban on Wikipedia of two of Wikipedia Review's administrators, Mistress Selina Kyle and Blu Aardvark. Whilst the bans on MSK and Blu Aardvark were both due to their posting on WR, and hence were examples of censorship of this forum, and most people agree that their bans should be lifted immediately, the issue is whether they were unbanned in return for Amorrow being banned here. MSK also resigned as a Wikipedia Review administrator, which may or may not have anything to do with this (she is still the site administrator, and for a long time I have suggested to her just to be site admin and not be moderator).

In these circumstances, I believe that we should have a poll, open to all users, including WR haters, including people who do not yet have accounts, to see if they think that Amorrow's ban was fair, and if the ban should be lifted. I think that it is important to do this so that people can see that we are not going to concede to Wikipedia's demands and we remain an independent body and a legitimate source of criticism.

Voted to unban immediately for the first question--already stated my views on this; I value the principle of maximum openness for discussion here, even by the most unpopular individuals.

Actually think all the things listed must have been factors in the banning, so I voted "some other reason".

Yes, I think he should have been banned from WP, but not indefinitely--no one should be banned indefinitely; there should always be some limit. People change and circumstances change.

I voted "not sure" for both the top two questions. I know it's wishy-washy, but I don't want to have to decide. I don't remember him saying anything useful, and a lot of the posts he made were pretty sick and revolting. I can't see any way for Amorrow to thrive in any kind of online editing community, so I voted indefinitely banned for the Wikipedia option. I haven't seriously considered banning policies on Wikipedia, though. If Wikipedia had some kind of per-edit monitoring or approval system it would be perfectly possible for Amorrow to contribute there. I would suggest that as a compromise, although it is not supported by the current software.

Whilst I know that on Wikipedia they aim for "consensus" and hence have a lot of associated bullying, I would urge people not to try to push other people who vote here one way or the other. I think that it is important for us to be as open as possible about this issue, and it should be a pure vote. If it is clear that the majority want the ban lifted, I think we should lift it.

The guy is creepy, but I don't really mind any of the misogynistic or whatever group he is going after de jure. It is funny when people make ad homs against the forum based on him--it shows that they have no cogent argument.

I'd like to defer to the judgement of others on this matter. But can you imagine what Wikipedia would be like, if banning a user were treated with this sort of gravity and considerate attitude?

You mean a REAL poll? pfft that wouldn't be the concensus of the community -- the cabal community that is.

Herschel didn't say "have a poll on banning", he said treat it with gravity and a considerate attitude.

Work's in either case.....

Please don't misunderstand things. Bans are not always voted on. Only when we have had controversial bans, basically.

Grace Note (twice)
Malber (3 times)
Ta Bu Shi Da Yu

And this one

That's it, as far as I can remember. There have been other bans that didn't go to a wide vote, or else went to a vote amongst admins only.

I think we want to make sure that there are no unfair bans.

I am not sure if Wikipedia ever allows bans to be voted on like that. It'd be good if they did, I think.

Anyway the vote is currently 3-3 and we will probably wait until votes have stopped coming in or until there is a clear margin before closing it.

He should be unbanned, because his behaviour was not grossly offensive, and he was not issued a formal warning before the ban -- he should be given a second chance.

I should perhaps link to all of the warnings that he got. Bear with me for a bit.

This post: http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=1205

When he was making anti-semitic comments about Freakofnurture.

This warning by Selina: http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?s=&sh...findpost&p=7257

noting that he was making stalker-like comments

This post: http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=1404

Fairly obvious warnings in there

This post: http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=1102

And of course his e-mail comments to Katefan0 I at least found quite shocking.

I would suggest that he has been warned, as much as can reasonably be expected.

Vote is currently 4-7 against him being unbanned (with 3 unsure), by the way. Just combining the 2 versions of "yes" vs the 2 versions of "no" in the first poll question.

my votes:
4
2
1

As I thought, we are 9-1 with people thinking he deserved to be banned from Wikipedia. So much for Wikipedia thinking we automatically think all bans are unfair.

Currently we are at 4-9 with people thinking the ban should be reversed. So I don't think it is going to happen. But we'll keep this open for as long as people want to vote and/or comment.

I'm not entirely familiar with the situation, but perhaps he/she could just post in the tar pit forum - or whatever people think .

Let's just moderate the posts. We shouldn't have /any/ literal bans here.

I agree, there is no reason amorrow can't at least post on a moderated basis. That's fine and all that he offended some of you, but you should have given him an official warning, and then given him a chance to modify his behavior.

mm, I suppose i was heavy handed. Yeah I agree, permanant moderation (on the offchance he actually changes his ways, which I doubt, he can be taken off, but if he goes back again he'll be straight on again) would be better

So, he can't post any more of the usual sexist/stalkery type stuff, but legitimate discussion will still get through

Right?

I voted for permanant ban before but I don't think there's any need, since unlike Wikipedia we can simply check the content before it arrives into public view

I don't believe he should have been banned from Wikipedia Review, at least, not yet. I had recently sent him a stern warning regarding his behaviour, but he never had the chance to shape up, as he was banned first.

Why was he banned from here? I believe it was a mix of things. Partially because he had repeatedly offended Selina, but partially because the hint of a compromise with Wikipedia had been made. Please note, I had nothing to do with his ban.

As for his ban from Wikipedia, well, a review of the evidence makes it clear, at least to me, that he should have been banned from there.

Maybe there was a hint but no compromise was offered, it wasn't a ban in exchange for anything or whatever - The main thing was I agreed with Linuxbeak: When Amorrow's scary rantings appears are all over the place it makes the place look bad - I believe very much in free speech, but I'd rather not have Wikipedia Review in the news with the headline "Stalker rapes internet victim, advertised intent to stalk victim on internet forum" or something

WP and WR have two different purposes; I think it was quite correct to ban Amorrow from WP. I cannot see him contributing anything pos. there. But I think he should be readmitted on WR. I detest his anti-"girlie" ravings ...and what he has written about some of the females on WP is ...extremely creeeeeeepy and nasty, but I still prefer to have him here where I can hit him with my (virtual) bat. I promise to be more active with my bat if he is readmitted

Hmm. He seems to be using sock puppets to evade the block, since Scatman is obviously amorrow.

If this was Wikipedia, he'd get more blocks or something now.

Amorrow's last email to me also states "He used this forum for his purposes" and also shows sign's of stalking 2 females on WP. The whole email has been read by staff and mod's here.

He is a threat to this forum and himself.

I don't think any regular member or contributor of Wikipedia Review should be banned because if we start doing that we will become just like Wikipedia. This site will be a censorship or popularity site. If a user truly acts like an ass, people will make dissaproving comments, thereby showing how he or she hasn't gained approval.

On the other hand, it seems like a real good idea to be careful who moderates this site. A moderator has power to remove posts and maybe even to stop mail and pms. I'm not sure about stopping mail or pms. A good idea might be to have votes on the moderators periodically. Maggie

vote on mod/staff ? pfft must be affriad of me to say such a thing.

amorrow's ban was warranted.

This is a private website, I'm not sure who pays for the hosting but as far as I know the domain belongs to Blissyu2, and Selina seems to do a lot of the admin work. Blu Aardvark and Lir are also responsible for that. It's possible for anyone with the requisite skills to set up a website like this and call it "The Wikipedia Critique" or something. Just coming here and contributing to this website means you have a certain amount of confidence in the people behind the website and some trust in their good intentions. Actually I have very much more trust in the people behind this website than I do in the people administering Wikipedia, otherwise I wouldn't be here. If you want to vote, why not vote with your chequebook and set up your own anti-Wikipedia site?

With recent events in mind, and the probable sockpuppet (gawd, I hate that word) account scatman, I'm beginning to lean more towards, "don't let him back", although, when he isn't ranting about female admins, he is usually making quite intelligent posts.

I would not be loathe to allowing him back if his account was restricted to "moderator preview". (What this means is that anything that he posts would have to be read by an admin or moderator before being made visible to the board.)

sockpuppet = clone

I prefer clone instead. Which is just a accurate.

I think that we should go by what the poll says.

Big majority (2:1 or greater) means keep him banned and don't even think about lifting it unless things change, and if they do, have a similar discussion.

Close in favour of banning means keep him banned for now, but probably lift the ban after a while, with some restrictions on his editing.

Close in favour of unbanning means unban him but with restrictions.

Huge in favour of unbanning means unban him immediately without restrictions.

I think that there are a lot of arguments for all sides here, and it is impossible to come up with a best answer. There is no neutral point of view over controversial issues, and this is a controversial issue. So we should vote, and go by what the vote says. That's what I think.

Note that it is currently 10-6 in favour of keeping the ban.

I initially voted to allow him back, but amorrow's continued actions, including calling the workplace of a Wikipedia adminstrator, have forced me to change my mind.

I do not want amorrow, or any of his clones, back on this board, with or without restrictions.

I'm getting copied on emails he's sending to Jimmy. About half a dozen since he's been banned. They are strange -- all about certain female editors or administrators, and nothing about male editors or administrators.

One even mentioned Jimmy's daughter. Brad Patrick and Fred Bauder got copies of that one.

I'm about ready to put a spam filter on him.

He even contacted a female work place on WP that is a cop IRL and tried to get info on her.... That info is in the moderators forum. The stupid fuck actually called a cops job!!! Just how insane is that?

That dude scares the fuck outa me, I am glad we shitlisted that fruitloop.

The fact that he used one, whatever it may be called, on this board, and in a manner that was somewhat transparently obvious, suggests that he is a few sausages short of a barby.

Indeed

I think that police should be called on him. I would encourage Katefan0 to do it, or at least to forward the e-mail he sent her on to his ISP.

Consider that without knowing anything else about Snowspinner, there's probably a 0.5% chance that he is guilty of a crime. And knowing how he behaves on Wikipedia, plus his refusing to give DNA, fingerprints or say his motivation, and his willingness to use it as a front to attack WR, including getting Cory Doctorow to lie for him, it goes up to about 5%.

Now consider that Amorrow wrote much the same kind of thing, but did not mark it as "fiction", and continued to write it 10s or maybe even 100s of times.

Amorrow is probably about 20% likely to have done a crime similar to what Snowspinner was thought to have done. So if anyone feels that there was a hint of validation for cops to be called on Snowspinner, multiply that by 10 (or maybe more) for Amorrow.

I'm only a poor little statistician - I can't make head or tail of this arithmetic.

73.8% of statistics are made up on the spot

Seriously though, disregarding the (flawed, IMO) arithmetic equation, I think it highly likely that amorrow has been engaging in some activities that could possibly be considered illegal. Several members of this forum has recieved some rather questionable correspondence from him, and it seems likely that he has recently been involved in calling the workplace of a particular Wikipedia adminstrator.

Plus, he's just damned freaky. I wouldn't want to let him into my house, that's for sure.

Maybe. Fortunately, as long as he can't find your address, he won't come knocking. Banning someone from an Internet site is way different from banning him from a physical location.

I'm a public figure in the linux world...... It would be hard for me to hide.

So what difference would it make to you to ban him from here?

At this point in time I really could careless anymore if he is unbanned. I have run out of common reasoning here and pointing out the issues about this.

Amorrow should be unbanned so that he can continue to demonstrate how pathetic he is. I must say, he is rather funny, although not when he tries. Unban him for the humour value alone. Besides, I think he belongs quite well in this forum.

Yeah, but now you've decided to join us, flame boy, so we've got all the humour value we need. But since you like him so much, maybe you and amorrow can go and form your own forum. Something like that Star Trek episode where the man and the anti-matter man were condemned to fight each other in limbo for eternity.

Look, this issue is a legal issue more than anything. And some choices we cannot consider for legal reasons. If Wikipedia Review is breaking the law, and is prosecuted, then it will cease to exist. End of story.

So these are our options:

1) For Wikipedia Review to become an entity that allows editors here to break the law, and won't ban them or censor them in any way, and just washes its hands of them.
- We can do that, but it'd become like anarchy. One in, all in. That option could very easily destroy Wikipedia Review. Right now, one thing that Wikipedia Review has over Wikipedia is that it does not break the law, and does not use loopholes. If that changed, then we'd lose a lot of weight in our criticisms.

2) Wikipedia Review could allow people who engage in illegal activity to post, just to continually delete or edit posts where they conduct illegal activity, either with discriminatory posts (sexist, anti-semitic etc) or cyber stalking related.
- In other words, we could only allow Amorrow back if we were prepared to delete his offensive posts and/or censor them. This is tiring work, and we missed a lot before. So unless he makes some kind of promise not to engage in that kind of activity, then we really have no choice.

3) Wikipedia Review could keep him banned. That's the easy option.

Now look, I don't mind him staying or not. But if he stays, we need to make sure that he isn't using this forum to conduct illegal activity. If he stalks people on his own free time, then that has nothing to do with us. For all I know, half of the people who post here have secret lives of doing something illegal. I don't care! It makes no difference to me, because we aren't here to pass judgement about the legitimacy of critics. But we can't become criminals.

Its not a matter of "Oh Wikipedia wants us to" or anything like that. Even if Wikipedia was sitting there being decent, not harassing us, not slandering us, not trying to destroy us, and we were working together, we still couldn't allow this kind of activity. Its got nothing to do with whether or not Wikipedia hates him.

Look, Wikipedia hated Grace Note and Malber, but we still banned them. Of course, Wikipedia decided to love them because we banned them, which is amusing in a lot of ways.

And I am sure that everyone here remembers Malber's hate speech. Wikipedia *IS* legally liable for what Malber wrote, because there's no way that they could have avoided it. His insistence that people with Asperger's Syndrome were faking it, were just abusive people, and that anyone with that diagnosis should be banned from Wikipedia is discrimination. Its illegal. Wikipedia cannot allow it. But they do. Wikipedia won't ban Malber for such an attitude, and indeed they encourage it.

I vote leave him banned. WR is often accused of being stalkers. These lies are not true, but they will be if we let Amorrow in again. There really was something mentally wrong with him. If I heard correctly, he compiled a list of female admins and tried to stalk them. We don't want stalkers here, because he might get a list of WR users and stalk them. Leave him banned.

My thoughts exactly.

Its only based on memory that we can recollect what he did. Whilst it might be in archive.org (his web site), its probably best not to look.

I am not 100% sure what he did.

Minimum:
He compiled a list of female editors (including administrators, but not all were admins), and had their web page addresses, photos, real life addresses, work places, editing habits, and as much info as possible. Like Daniel Brandt's Hive Mind but far more information, and limited to female editors. He also regularly made anti-semitic jokes.

Maximum:
He stalked females in real life, some of whom he found information about through Wikipedia, and had maximum amount of personal information about them, and was radically anti-semitic.

I am not completely sure of how far it got or how serious it was, but that is the range.