SlimVirgin, NewYorkBrad, FT2.

What do these WP personnel have in common, I may hear you ask? Why, the answer is plainly obvious: they've all been doing positive stuff recently. SlimVirgin, amongst few other notable cabalites, have helped to ensure that Daniel Brandt doesn't get any more coverage on Wikipedia than is absolutely necessary, as well as being instrumental in the building of the BLP Policy. FT2, as well, has come into praise for the way he has helped Poetlister to be unblocked from Wikipedia. And NYB? Well, he's a nice guy, and Brandt got quite a bit of criticism for the way he handled it all and for someone leaving who could have potentially helped the WP Project.

But on the flip side of the coin, these three, as well as many others who have recently been praised, share something else in common, something which is beginning to taint the atmosphere of Wikipedia Review.

The thing is, people here have been so quick to be impressed by these guys' seemingly "positive" actions for Wikipedia that it's almost as if it has been forgotten what has happened before. It's like we forget the way FT2 has been with regards to his being the most excessive of all the negative actions directed towards Giano and the condescending bullshit FT2 says to justify it all; it's like we forget Slimmy's long history of abusive tag teaming articles and acting horribly to tons of editors, and let's not forget the Linda Mack/Sarah McEwan stuff; and as for NYB, well he's responsible for the most catastrophic failure in Wikipedia history, with the failure to impose a just punishment to Mantanmoreland (aka Gary Weiss and SamiHarris) for his excessive sockpuppeting that would have seen any other user tarred and feathered out of Wikipedia.

So I guess what I'm saying here is, put things into perspective okay? It's like Wikipedia smacking the Review over the head with a cane and throwing it down the stairs and then the next day handing the Review a lollipop, while saying "you know I only do this because I care right?"

Why do you hold NYB in particular responsible for that decision?

I don't think WR have been lavish with excessive praise of these Wikipedians recently. In particular there's been a whole thread going about FT2's exploits on wiki over the years. And not many people think the Poetlister solution was a perfect outcome, with Taxie and Rachel Brown still blocked.

I'm sorry are we living on the same planet Wiki here? Is this post some kind of strange joke?

{{citation needed}}

Agreed. If FT2 helped PL get unblocked that is news to me.

Actually, it's {{fact}}, but a bot will deal with this soon enough.

Alternatively; discussing the post as a whole...{{unreferenced}}, especially FT2 apparantly being praised.

It's hard for me to praise FT2 for unblocking Poetlister. I expected the Committee to unblock Poetlister. Should I praise people for paying their taxes? It reached the point where, as I wrote in correspondence to the Committee, they had a "strong moral imperative" to let her return. They accepted this argument.

I do strongly praise FT2's forthrightness in explaining his rationale for not exonerating Poetlister. I make no secret of the fact that I believe Poetlister's side of the story, and I've said so both to Poetlister and to FT2. Still, I was very satisfied that FT2 respected my questions enough to draft a full response. That level of transparency will improve the dispute resolution process.

On the larger issue, it may be hard for you to grasp the obvious, but...we're all human beings. Regardless of SlimVirgin's other issues, she has authored five featured articles. Nobody can take that away from her. Newyorkbrad is widely acknowledged as one of the fairest arbitrators Wikipedia has ever had; it's unfortunate that someone wishes to judge him as ineffective because he wouldn't pull the trigger on banning Mantanmoreland. I'm not nearly as public a figure on Wikipedia as FT2, SV or NYB, but if I were, there is no way I could stand up to the scrutiny of every one of my actions, which now number more than 20,000. Accept the fact that the leaders of the Wikipedia community became leaders for good reasons. Criticize their actions if you will, but do not pretend that all their thoughts and actions are "only bad all day" (Genesis 6:7).

And for wanting to turn a blind eye to the antics of Sockin' Josh. Don't forget that bit.

[citation needed]

Honestly from what I got from Brad - he was just taking th middle ground when he drafted those remedies - there wqere certain arbs that were never going to agree that there was sockpuppeting so Brad (I think) gave it up as a lost cause and took the middle ground between the warring factions.

This is a bit much for me. It may be a good antidote for constitutional oppositionalists who assume leadership of any kind to invariably be incompetent and/or corrupt, but isn't it dogmatic, really, to assume the equally invariable opposite?

Why was FT2 elected to the Arbitration Committee? If the reason was so good, why did an oversighter have to brush inconvenient facts from FT2's edit history, and why was the whistleblower blocked

And what did Morven do to earn the position of leadership? I don't recall ever seeing his username except in his capacity as a cyberbullying arbitrator. Why was he elected? That's not a rhetorical question; I honestly don't know.

I'd agree with you that there were good reasons to elect Newyorkbrad, or FaysallF, for example. However, I can't see the justification for proposing this as a general rule. Sometimes the crowd is wise. Sometimes the crowd is foolish. Sometimes the crowd is manipulated through blocks of dissidents and oversights of incriminating diffs.

Well, I can see the concern. Basically, whitewash is a universal response to criticism, POV pushing, and any dodgy behaviour.

But the whitewash tends to highlight more bad stuff, and makes us dig deeper. For example, since more exposure here, its very clear that the likes of FT2 are just working through backchannels to push their hobbies. Action Potential has always been FT2's best mate, and with a ridiculously obvious COI and POV pushing background has been defended by FT2 every time, as you would expect from two NLP practitioners.


This sort of activity, for example:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=210900734

shows the sort of criticism removal/suppression that both FT2 and Action Potential generally work together on.

Its probably also worth reading between the lines in the various zoo articles. I don't know the sort of POV that SV pushes, but again, its worth checking out the activities of any "friends"there.


So, I believe its not a problem when the cranks and pushers try to act squeeky clean. Just go a bit deeper into the behavior and pick up more bad stuff. And if you don't mind the slight possibility of getting banned or blocked (for responding to WR criticism), just go in and correct the bad stuff to punish the whitewasher.

That's my impression as well. His political mistake was earnest one: he spoke when Mantanmoreland's partisans remained silent, fighting even a show of hands which would have shown their hands to have been compromised. NYB's mistake was taking this fall for them.

NYB was a good man. But he was not up to playing the role of Beckett.