Further plea and misplaced clarification by Bishonen (but if not here, then where?)
I'm replying here to FT2's response to Carcharoth's basic question why the final principle "The Arbitration Committee has recently been asked by Jimbo Wales to take an expanded role in the governance of IRC. The Committee is formulating policy and procedure changes based on this new role independently from this case" (passed 7-1) and its associated remedy "Policy and procedure changes regarding Wikipedia IRC channels will be addressed separately by this committee" (passed 9-0), have both come to naught. My post goes to clarifying the committee's final principles and remedies as they relate to en-admins IRC case—it's not about FT2's block of Giano—therefore I post it here, in preference to drowning it at the now extremely copious discussion of that block on WP:AE (most of it posted by FT2). Yes, I know I'm not supposed to post in this section, which is for arbs, but it seems my only chance of being heard. (I won't post again, whether or not you remove me from this spot, Thatcher. This has taken me much too much time as it is.)
Like probably most people, I feel at an awful disadvantage when attempting to discuss or debate with FT2, since he seems impressively able to write about 100 lines in the space of time that it takes your average wikipedian to write 20, and me to write 5. (And NYBrad to write 70 or so.) My efforts in the direction of debate with FT2 have always literally drowned. But I will try just once to do my own clarification. I made an effort to come to grips with the background to FT2's new guidelines for IRC (at this moment not available in CBrown's space, but mirrored at [23])—these guidelines being the only mouse that has so far been born from the laboring mountains of the IRC case, and it's final principles and remedies. The background to the guidelines, as offered by FT2 in channel to anybody interested, turned out to be an edited log of a discussion between FT2 and some 6 or 10 channel users (by FT2's own estimate) from February 25-26. I have it here. It's been edited by FT2 to remove irrelevancies, and consists–well, I don't have any counting tool that will work for this— but at my rough estimate, the discussion consists to at least 80% of FT2 himself talking, mainly describing how well the channel works now:
(Exact quote of log)
* <FT2> irc runs well now (here)
* <FT2> but the outside world doesnt know it
* <FT2> we're like in wikipedia in the old days, "dont be a dick" and "no real rules otherwise"
* <FT2> we have our sort of "unspoken code"
* <FT2> a user who harasses here will (or probably should be) talked to or sorted out/calmed down...
* <FT2> a user who canvasses persistently likewise
* <FT2> these things dont much happen, we have a sort of unspoken code here
* <FT2> its nice
* <FT2> but the outside world doesnt know it
* <FT2> also channel ops dont know what's okay to do, so if a dispute breaks out, like the bishonen/tony one a while back... should they act? or not.
I discussed these matters with FT2 in PM on IRC several times, before he actually sent me the above log to look at, and I was rather shocked by his descriptions of that log. Here's a snippet of our discussion from March 5, posted with permission.
(Exact quote except that an e-mail address and a couple of typos have been removed.)
* <bishonen> may I have a copy of the full discussion of the channel? there was something about that in the header before.
* <FT2-away> sure
* its enacted now but there wasnt any controversy on it -- most folks reaction was "yeah, commonsense"
* <bishonen> thanks
* <FT2-away> I was just very careful to consult hugely to be sure that nobody could accidentally feel unasked or whatever. You know how it can go.
* <bishonen> i thought there was going to be a workgroup, or the arbcom would be involved.
* <FT2-away> I was thinking of the dispute over roillback.
* nah
* <bishonen> hugely?....
* <FT2-away> the channel basically sorted it out, about 6 or 10 people, everyone was pretty much "yeah, commonsense" by the time it was done
* <bishonen> so more people than the users of this channel were invoived?
* <FT2-away> no...
* <bishonen> i see
* <FT2-away> but there are a lot of users here... and of course those include a load of people who arent often here
* <bishonen> that's not hugely in my book, i'm afraid. but whatever.
* <FT2-away> the concern was to clean up and ensure that issues of the past were not going to be perrennial
* <bishonen> let me get this straight. only admins have been consulted? and only the minority of admins that use the admin channel?
* <FT2-away> and that's much more about people here accepting norms and considering what norms they feel apply, than about asking others... most people here or elsewhere who care about irc stuff, know what the issues are or were anyway
* <bishonen> do they?