On January 1, brimming with hopes for the new ArbCom, I filed an appeal at RfAr requesting an end to the sanctions I've been under since 2005. Those sanctions include a "restraining order" barring me from interacting with Phil Sandifer, because I had the nerve to criticize some of his admin actions back in mid-2005. This restraining order was imposed after a previous, voluntary agreement earlier in 2005 was torpedoed by Phil's insistence on continuing to comment about me even after I had agreed to stop commenting about him.

Phil replied to the appeal by attempting to associate me with his police incident, based on my WR participation (lest anyone forget, he is banned from WR for trolling); he also claimed that, through my participation in the relevant WR thread, I had some relationship to the ED article created about him--and therefore I am somehow responsible in some indirect way for harming his job prospects and his reputation with his students.



Apparently the ArbCom was moved by those accusations, because it decided, by a vote of 9-0, to keep the restraining order in place indefinitely. The ArbCom was apparently not moved by my repeated requests to be allowed some dignity and restored to the status of an ordinary editor in good standing. I presented three alternative ideas for resolution which were completely ignored by the ArbCom: "1) a mutual restriction on both Phil and myself; 2) the removal of the restriction on myself; 3) a private arrangement under which both of us would avoid interaction except with the prior agreement of the arbitrators." Nor was the ArbCom moved by the arguments of several other editors in favor of lifting the restriction, although perhaps it found merit it the argument offered by Tony Sidaway:



So the lesson here, I suppose, is that if you had the misfortune to think it was all right to criticize certain admin actions in 2005, you will keep paying for it for years, perhaps for the rest of your life, and you will always be treated as a fifth-class editor, somewhere below anon IPs and above banned trolls and vandals. What's most incredible is that there is no chance the original case against me would ever even be accepted by the current ArbCom--no one would be subjected to arbitration over such a preposterous "offense" today--yet the sanctions associated with that case are upheld here in 2009.

*sigh* EK, when will ever you ever learn? "Winning" on Wikipedia has nothing whatever to do with good encyclopedia writing or loyalty to "the project". IT'S ALL ABOUT HOW YOU PLAY THE GAME. Phil is better at playing at martyrs than you are, which is why his "win" continues to be protected.

As for the infusion of new arbs, that was just so much rearranging of the decks chairs on the Titanic, as it was in all years past and will be in all years hence until WP finally implodes.

It's not that I haven't "learned"; I've been complaining about that for years. But knowing it to be true doesn't mean I'm not going to argue against it and try to change it.

It's a Carrollian Chess Game. You can't change it. Like Jumanji, you have to play the game to the end.

In this case, the script is well known. It's a Classical Dostoevskian Drama.

I stand corrected. It would appear then that the subject of your unfounded optimism is not the way Wikipedia actually works, but rather its capacity for reform. While I would agree that WP is not inherently beyond reform, I am quite convinced (as you know) that WP shall never experience any effective reform for the reasons I stated here.

I said it there, I'll say it here. EK. Let it go. Stop beating your head against the wall. The fact you're so strenuously fighting for the right (apparently) to resume a three+ year grudge against someone else doesn't fill me with confidence. You're in good standing. The only remedy is for something you JUST CANNOT LET GO. Deal with the 99.99% of Wikipedia that ISN'T your past grudge.

Sheesh.

SirFozzie is making insinuations about EK's motives in response to me bringing this up.

Oh, wait, I see you're doing it here too. whatever.

Random: I just think it needs to be let go. EK (and now you) is taking this personally, and it's nothing like that.

Did you read my appeal? I don't want to pursue a grudge with Phil; I don't want anything to do with the guy. I argued in favor of a mutual restriction, which would have had the same practical effect, but would have treated the matter in a fair and neutral way without endorsing Phil's claims of "wikistalking". A one-sided restriction is a scarlet letter that condemns one side and acquits the other. Is it so remarkable that I "just can't let go" of something like that?

You're not being condemmed (as much as you'd like to use colorful language to describe the issue, it's just not fitting) you're just being told to let things go, and deal with the 99.99% of Wikipedia that isn't your past grudge.

I'd rather rearrange deck chairs on the Poseidon, so I get to see them flipped upside down.

On the face of it, these accusations look terrible and if correct, or if unmitigated, would justify the '9-0'. Presumably there are mitigating circumstances or corrections that need to be made to the unvarnished account? And if there, was there evidence that Arbcom looked at these?

My impression of my recent RFAR was that, while it was successful for me, did not involve looking at any of the evidence I had carefully prepared, and and was purely a matter of politics.

I'm afraid I haven't looked at the details of your case.

Unfortunately, the restraining order has real effects on my Wikipedia activities which you don't seem to appreciate. When I run for RfA, people will say "he needs to get his ArbCom sanctions lifted first, then come back". In the past, when I wanted to review deleted articles after AfDs, I was told that I could not be trusted with the text because I was "not a user in good standing". On another occasion, Phil nominated a bunch of 2004 election controversy articles for deletion, and I wanted to vote, but because the ruling did not specify whether that was allowed, I could not do it--even though my only purpose was to discuss the articles, not the nominator. Does this apply to all processes and discussions initiated by Phil? I have to assume so, because if I make the wrong interpretation I can be blocked at any time, without any warning or consideration--that's the kind of treatment you get as a fifth-class, ArbCom sanctioned editor. Who knows when you'll slip and do something that contravenes someone's interpretation of the restriction, and then they bring the hammer down on you?



I replied to him as part of the appeal, but I'll run through it a bit anyway. Phil used to have a blog in which he wrote short stories. One of the stories, narrated from a first-person perspective, was about murdering homeless people. This aroused some concern (it was not necessarily obvious that the blog story was fiction), and someone called the police (not me). The police visited Phil as a result, although nothing else came of it. (Phil tried to set himself up as a martyr for free speech on the Internet after that.)

I commented, along with a bunch of other people, in the WR thread about that incident. In Phil's mind, this somehow makes me complicit in "police harassment", as well as somehow indirectly responsible for the ED article about him. It's completely absurd.

And if he actually dared to ask for permission to do any of these things, that'd go in the evidence file as "constantly attempted to ... have it weakened."

The world is not a Just Place. It's just a place.

Wikipedia mirrors the world.

This is an outrageous substitution of innuendo for evidence. Any competent forum would specifically reject this "offering" and indicate that it is an unacceptable salad of guilt by association and rumor. "More prejudicial than probative" is the usual way of summing up this type of thing. The sanction itself, self-styled as "a restraining order," places an undeserved stigma on Everyking's head.

If I recall correctly "Phil" was some kind of graduate student with teaching responsibilities who wrote unsettling fiction about snuffing out people. Certainly not a crime, except perhaps against literature. AFAIK no one used any misdirection or even exaggeration in relating this to authorities. The police just thought it might be prudent, even on a pre-UV campus, to look into the matter. If he had a problem with this he should get counsel and go after the law enforcement officers he asserts "violated his privacy." None of this has anything what-so-ever to do with Everyking.

You know, what did happen to that topic? I can't seem to find it in search...just the reaction topics.

Now we are getting closer to what really happened back in 2006. The real reason that EK got pilloried (other than the fact that he sucks at playing at martyrs) was that he was "ZOMG! A WR MEMBER/NEO-NAZI OUT TO DESTROY THE WIKI! AAAAAAAUUUUUUUGGGGGHHHHHH!" Because, as everyone knows, we are all a bunch of trolls, harassers, outers, spammers, stalkers and torturers of helpless kittens.

Somey and HK close in on their latest victim

Ah yes! There is nothing like the smell of fresh roasted wiki-martyr in the morning! Why, I myself am responsible for the persecution of at least 150 wiki-martyrs.

"Did I say '150'? What I really meant was . . . 15,000

Yeah! 15,000! That's the ticket!"

Here

OK what you say in the snipped bit sounds very plausible, but what about



Also, did you feel that the arbcom read carefully your reply to these allegations?

[edit] I just found this.



But that seems pretty mild, particularly when you consider some of the threads I started here.

[edit] I've been through the whole thread linked above, and the quote here is the only one I could find. Mind you, there were some very harsh things said by other people in that thread.

[edit] And it certainly wouldn't count as 'regaling the thread with speculation'. EK only contributed three posts that I could find, and none were remotely obnoxious. Two of them accused Sandifer of being a 'cyberbully', much quoted by others.

Everyking, you really do need to forget about this. Yes, it isn't fair, but there isn't anything you can do about it except pretend that it doesn't exist. Snowspinner/Phil Sandifer isn't worth an extra second of your time. You're much more valuable to Wikipedia than he is, because you actually improve articles while about all he does is leave what he probably hopes are sage comments in the administrator forums.

Would you pay any attention to a person like him in real life? If not, why do so when engaging in one of your hobbies, editing Wikipedia? You don't have much, if any, control over whether ArbCom ever sees the unfairness in the situation, so you'll just have to let it go and move on. Accept the things that you cannot change and things will work out in the end.

If Phil doesn't leave you alone, you can handle it the way Rootology did with MONGO a few months ago. MONGO wouldn't stop harassing him so Rootology publicly requested the ArbCom to do something about it. So, FT2 politely and publicly told MONGO to knock it off and he did.

Some sort of assurance that this is not going to get in his way in places where he'd have a legitimate reason to comment but Phil happened to get there first (like AFDs he mentioned) should be made.

As I see it, this is not the issue. EK seems to have been lumbered with a very unfair judgment. The present Arbcom has lumbered him with the same judgment again.

And the particular issue that concerns me, which I have seen in a number of other cases, is that the committee members do not seem to have read or deliberated upon the evidence. The whole process seems to consist of comments in arbitrary order by an indisciplined rabble, then a vote by the committee members. Surely there are better ways to dispense justice.

Well, there are several arbitrators here at WR... maybe they could comment.

[Cool Hand Luke is recused.]

Newyorkbrad, was it your intent in voting on the motion on lifting the other sanctions, that the request would be archived with no consideration on whether to lift the remaining sanction?

FT2, how do you feel about not having had time to vote or comment on this at all?

Anyone else is of course welcome to chime in.

James, time is on your side, hang in there.

I feel for you EK; I know what it's like to be branded and know your a man (to quote an old theme song). The thing is, even if everything was removed you'd still be branded, as you don't have the right friends. I'd vote for you in a RfA, but you are on of those users that could come back under another name and easily pass RfA, but with your current name you never could.

I question the completeness of that thread, and I suspect that a number of posts were removed at some point. Maybe what you now see is a combination of two or more threads, at which point some stuff was removed that seemed insubstantial.

I recall making a post back then in that precise context that went something like this: "If I know anything about grad school, it seems to me that a complaint to the University about Sandifer might make it difficult for him to finish his PhD program."

I made that post or something very close to it, but I did not make the complaint. Shortly thereafter someone else did, and I have no idea who it was. That's when the University president asked the campus police to check it out.

I'm not ashamed of that post I made back in 2006 — I'd do it again.

I am ashamed that the ArbCom is unable to see this in the context of the Real World instead of in the narrow context of Wikipedia's perverted pool of wacky admins. If the ArbCom was Real-World oriented, they would have dismissed any and all complaints from Sandifer about what happened on WR. That's because what happened to Sandifer as a result of any and all WR posts about him was perfectly reasonable and responsible, and whoever complained was in all probability sincerely concerned about Sanidfer's potential for anti-social behavior in the Real World.

After all, isn't that what the University president concluded just before he asked the campus cops to check it out?

At this point I suspect that Sandifer is not dangerous, but I still think he's irresponsible and lacks sufficient judgment to be a Real-World role model for impressionable undergrads. Part of the evidence for this is that he keeps beating this specific long-dead WR horse, and has yet to admit that he should not be free to use the Internet the way he did with his little blog, without a huge disclaimer attached.

Of course, he does just fine as a role model on Wikipedia. That's par for the course.

As Lar has reminded us, Due Process is beyond the scope of the project.

And as Jimbo has declared, Ethics is also beyond the scope of the project.

Without Due Process and without Ethics, we can infer that Justice is also way beyond the scope of the project.

It's important to understand that the scope of the project is limited so as to to ensure that 21st Century youth do not learn anything so radical as Ethics, Due Process, or Justice on Jimbo's dime.

That just wouldn't fit in with the Dramaturgy that we all know to be the Central Liturgy of WMF-sponsored projects.

Just so everyone is on the same page, this is alleged to have been the original contents of one of EK's posts to the original thread.

You know, I was wondering what had happened to that topic. It has been tampered with quite a bit.

I remember Brandt making a PhD knock, but that's my memory.

Still...there's at least one independent source quoting Brandt's post in that picture.

And just to complete the record, the comic-book fanboy who saved the screenshot on his elsewhere.org blog is one Joshua Larios, aka RJL20, hades, Empath, etc. Here he is on LinkedIn. Judging from his Amazon wishlist, Josh enjoys an active fantasy life, and I wouldn't expect him to be sympathetic to real-world concerns. Consider his overall opinions to be disqualified.

At least my comment on his screenshot appears to be accurate, which means he gets one point for not Photoshopping it.

You're revealing more about yourself than him, by showing prejudice against somebody based on their preferences in entertainment.

Not that it's not something that's been made abundantly clear about DB before, mind you.

Problem is, I can't move on, because the restriction always finds a way to bite me. As much as I'd like to forget about it all, it comes back to haunt me in various situations, often in unexpected ways. It's not about Phil per se; it's about how being an ArbCom sanctioned editor affects my Wikipedia participation in general.




I would also love to see some arbitrators discuss the situation here. I'd especially like to know why my three alternative solutions weren't even discussed, let alone presented for voting.

Raul654, never one to shy away from an opportunity to attack and smear me, is now openly suggesting on the RfAr talk page that the police tipoff was "possibly EK's actual doing" and that, even if it wasn't, the person who did was surely acting at my instigation. It makes you wonder what they're saying on the ArbCom mailing list--maybe they're treating it as a proven fact that I was responsible. For the record, let me repeat that I did not contact the campus police, the university administration, or anyone else about Phil's blog or anything else pertaining to him. Furthermore, while Raul insists that the whole thing was really my idea, in fact I never suggested contacting the police or connecting Phil with anything illegal. The reality is that I was just one person out of many commenting on the thread and I said nothing all that special, but falsely associating me with the incident was an effective way of ensuring that the restriction would remain in place indefinitely. If this smear ceases to work at some time in the future, maybe Phil will say I dressed up as an officer and harassed him in person.

I think it's obvious that Phil Sandifer, Tony Sideaway, and, perhaps, Raul are trying to hold this thing over your head forever, but what can you do about it? Nothing that I can see right now except to continue on actually writing articles, which Phil and Tony don't do much of, and see how things turn out. I believe everyone who reads WR and the ArbCom pages is now aware of the situation.

Ridiculous.

Here's the diff, by the way:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=262195485

Phil Sandifer wrote a creepy, wacked out, poorly-written.... thing that was specifically formatted to look like a real, legitimate appeal to a government agency for him to be hired as an assassin of some sort, complete with gory details about how he supposedly went out and murdered some homeless guy just for "practice." The original version contained no disclaimer at all about it being "fiction." Even if it had, it was at best shockingly insensitive for someone working as a graduate assistant at a University that had seen five co-eds murdered by a serial killer just 12 years earlier.

The idea that Wikipedia would have someone like that for an administrator is shameful and and absolute disgrace, not that anyone here should be surprised by it. Nor should we be surprised by their lying and their pathetic attempts at spin control, either. All of these people - Sandifer, Raul654, and anyone else who has defended their actions in this matter - should have been desysopped and banned from WP years ago.

And now they accuse us of covering it up? US???? When we did it mainly to protect Sandifer himself from further "harassment"? Yeah, right!

These people are such assholes... Narcissistic bastards. It just boggles the mind.


No need - I'll restore it. If they can't keep it in their pants, why should we?

At least they dropped the other so-called "sanctions"... That's something, at least.

well there's a couple of bullshit snark chime-ins if i ever read one on the W-R.

One's choices in entertainment can be very revealing. Being entertained by reading and posting to W-R is certainly revealing about myself, and I don't think it's a good revelation, lol.

Being entertained by Huge Juggs on WP is something that JzG certainly wasn't happy to have revealed, lol. And that unhappiness was more revealing about the revealed than the revealer. How's that for a turn-around.

snarky turn-around arguments like "people who complain about gays are usually closeted gays themselves" come to mind. No, some folks are just mean, undereducated, or religiously inflexible. None of which describes Brandt. Could he be called the grumpy old man down the block who kept your footballs that you and your friends kept breaking his windows with, and wouldn't give them back until your parents grounded/punished you for it? Sure. I think that's a pretty accurate comparison for what's gone on with Brandt and the "Our Gang" kids...

I kind of wonder what happened here

Hushthis apparently requested all references to him, and his posts, be deleted, and the reference to Hushthis was removed. I have no idea as far as the "cyber-bullying antics" quote goes, though.

Sandifer himself probably requested the deletion(s) - he certainly complained loudly enough...!

Bear in mind that after this incident, Sandifer registered an account here and attempted to have what can only be described as a narcissistic bit of fun (note: requires registration to view) with the members who were here at the time, in particular one of our former admins who went by the name "Hushthis."

That thread got to be so excruciating, Sandifer had to be placed in a special group called "Sophists," and restricted to a particular forum reserved for excessive sophistry. That's when he started this topic (also requires registration). Unfortunately, when Hushthis erased all of his own posts in a fit of pique one day, he rendered those threads almost unreadable - though ironically, Sandifer's own posts quote him extensively enough that you can get the gist of what it was like.

I think that this so very illustrative of ArbCom's inability to distinguish between evidence and the kind of non-sense that the slapped together nature of ArbCom "processes" allow to contaminate decision making. Perhaps New York Brad or someone else who is privy to this sausage making could comment on the use of this innuendo by ArbCom.

Lar and GRBerry are both on record as noting that Wikipedia does not embrace or employ Due Process. Jimbo is on record as declaring that academic material on the subject of Applied Ethics is beyond the scope of the project. The casualty, of course, is that Justice thus falls by the wayside.

One of the leading lights in 20th Century education is Seymour Papert, who developed Lego/Logo Mindstorms. The name of his group at the MIT Media Lab was Epistemology and Learning.

For those who are unfamiliar with the term, Epistemology is the branch of Philosophy that addresses the question, "How do we know that our "knowledge" is correct?" Tools such as those employed in the Scientific Method help scholars ensure that the Edifice of Knowledge is accurate and comprehensive, and not riddled with misconceptions, delusional beliefs, erroneous analyses, and dysfunctional ideas.

To the extent that Wikipedia proposes to compile the Sum of All Knowledge, it's important to pay attention to the Epistemology of the Process. How can Wikipedians ensure their compilations are as correct and complete as possible?

The lack of epistemological discipline in the Wikisphere is nothing short of scandalous. It's not that Wikipedians make the occasional academic error. Scholars make inadvertent errors all the time. The scandal is that Wikipedia lacks the fundamental processes painstakingly developed over thousands of years to ensure that the Edifice of Knowledge is built on a sound foundation, with the best possible tools for thought, to ensure that it doesn't collapse like an ill-assembled house of cards.

Not only does Wikipedia lack Judicial Due Process when it comes to forming judgments about its own participants, it also lacks Epistemological Due Process when it comes to reviewing all manner of content published on the site.

Wikipedia should be teaching its participants to adhere to the highest standards of academic scholarship. But instead the pseudonymous administrators of the site routinely blacklist the contributions of credentialed academics and dismiss the scholarship of the world's foremost academic communities. The result is that Wikipedia has turned away from the academic culture to morph itself into a post-modern cyberspace theater of the absurd.

...or the Scooby-Doo villain who "would have gotten away with it if it wasn't for those pesky kids."

The next time you run for an elected office in Wikipedia, whether for administrator or any other elected position, and Raul, Tony Sideaway, or Phil opposes you, someone should quickly point out that there appears to be personal reasons behind their objections, with a link to Phil's statement in your request for clarification and to the subsequent discussion on the talk page.

One facet of participation in Wikipedia is that there is often an implied or unspoken threat from other editors that they'll try to torpedo you if cross them and then later attempt to gain an elected office. Yes, this is used by some as an attempt at intimidation and control. I'm not necessarily saying that Phil, Tony Sideaway, or Raul are implying this right now, but we'll see what takes place the next time you run for an elected office, if you choose to do so.

Right now, it appears that Phil is involved in some dispute on Talk:Threshold (online game). I've never heard of this game and I don't have the patience to try to figure out what they're talking about, but let's say, hypothetically, that I was to read everything piled up on that talk page, form an opinion, and register it there as part of the discussion. What would happen to me? Nobody has said I'm not allowed to edit the Threshold article or participate in relevant discussion, but am I effectively banned from it now just because Phil has taken an interest in it?

One

One is the squirreliest member that we ever knew
Cool can be as bad as One
He’s the squirrelist arb’er since the member One
Ohhhhh.

Oppose is the saddest opinion that you'll ever know
Yes, it’s the baddest opinion that you'll ever know
'Cause One is the loneliest member that we ever knew
One is the loneliest member, even worse than you

chorus

It's just no good anymore since he went astray
Now we search in vain for critic strains of yes-ter-day...
(Member) One is the loneliest
(Member) One is the loneliest
(Member) One is the loneliest member that we ever knew
(Member) One is the loneliest
(Member) One is the loneliest
(Member) One is the loneliest member that we ever knew

© Three Dog Night and BarRoom Dork Associates

Heh. Every time I see a post on WR from "One",
I think of that song....

Sandifer? He's still doing dirty? If WP was a "real" "encyclopedia", they would
have shown him the door 2 years ago.

Actually, the idea of having a special "Sophists and Pedants" forum
that crass types like Sandifer are exiled to, this is not such a bad idea....
Yep.

Didn't he say at one point or other (prior to the ArbCom vote) that he'd tend to recuse himself from decisions involving WR regulars?

Don't make me look it up...

Yes, and I will usually hold to that in cases involving regular regulars (i.e., anyone with several hundred posts who has been active since I've been here). Would like to avoid any accusations of bias.

That said, I noticed that no one requested the same thing of, say, IRC #-admins regulars. Oh well.


Good song, nice in-joke.