RK/notes 2

from Talk:Community case:RK

This file is not representative as it deletes RK's various edit log comments, some of which cntain outright libel. The specific ones that gave rise to my observations are not important - I've made my position clear. Here are some he has written about others: http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-August/005700.html

There is also discussion on User_talk:Ed_Poor and User_talk:Stevertigo and User_talk:EntmootsOfTrolls and User_talk:EntmootsOfTrolls/RKism. I do not welcome any further discussion of this case in my own user_talk space except at User_talk:EntmootsOfTrolls/on_applying_Sharia_to_RK. Whoever protected User_talk:EntmootsOfTrolls/Ban_RK is abusing his sysop powers and sould lose them. Giving in to RK is a sure way to encourage his abuses. EofT

Im the one who protected it (briefly) because you and RK were in a "stupid and silly" edit war over a nonsense ban page that ninetyfour percent of voters voted against anyway.-戴&#30505sv 22:59, Aug 22, 2003 (UTC)

The point of these pages was not to have a vote, but to prevent discussion of one user's consistent behaviour from spreading into literally every talk page of Wikipedia.EofT

I have suggested, at Wikipedia_talk:bans and blocks, that we replace the "/ban page" convention, which User:Jimbo_Wales has rendered inoperable with his failure to support it, with a Shun: space. That is more to he issue than Community case: whatever that means. EofT

Very fancy, smart guy, but what good would that do? The interest of Wikipedia are balanced -- weighing the cost/benefit of both banning and tolerating-- the final sum of which may not quite be agreeable with you at this time. Live with it. How would you like it if we banned you? That wouldnt be nice, now would it? Especially if people didnt seem to take the whole matter seriously--either too flippant (like you on this RK deal), or too indifferent(in spite of a "strong vote") to actually file a serious report, like (MB re 172)--戴&#30505sv 22:59, Aug 22, 2003 (UTC)

You may block an IP number, delete an account, or shun liars but you may not, under my present understanding of the technology, successfully "Ban" any "person" - you can't see who's behind the addresses. Didn't the Michael/Lir business teach you that? I never stood for a ban until it became obvious the sysops are incompetent at simply dealing with liars. As for more taking RK flippantly, what do you expect? I am to take seriously a whiner and liar who posts provable falsehoods to a mailing list, or calls to exclude me for political reasons the very same week we encounter each other? If I took him "seriously", there'd be serious consequences for him. Libel is actionable. I feel sorry for those who stupidly reveal their full names here, but the day RK goes after one of them, he'll likely find charges filed against him. EofT

On the Shun: space issue, what is Talk:Community case: other than a badly-named Shun: space? You seem to back the convention of total control over the [[User_talk:]] space by the [[User:]], which is fine, but then to "protect" an unwanted page is a total breach of this.. Your exact words:

I protected this user page because of a silly and stupid edit war. I would encourage EofT to be rid of it, and RK to simply leave it alone, as it is in EofT's namespace -- and simply cannot be "vandalized" by EofT himself.

And my response:

I don't want it here. This is an abuse of sysop powers, and an acceptance of some kind of moral equivalence between the abuser (User:RK) and myself, who has done little but catalogue his abuses and put them in the right place. First you advocate *giving* him these powers, now you abuse them on his behalf. What is your motive? Apparently you support an end to "/ban" pages, but rather than debate that, you simply support the convention that a user owns all files in his user_talk namespace (rendering the /ban page impossible to maintain) and do not support alternatives (like my Wikipedia_talk:bans and blocks) "Shun:" space suggestion. EofT

This is leaving the community's crap on my doorstep, as opposed for finding a proper place to flush it/him. Given that many people wrote things in this file, and given that it's a wider Wikipedia:troll war that has spread to a lot of space anyway, I'll give this 24 hours to find a proper home, where we can concentrate all discussion of User:RK's various abuses of process and and libellous statements, before listing it on VfD. OK? EofT

Since I can't delete it, it's a redirect to my actual standing comment. If you find it "flippant", tough, the alternative is probably a libel suit that would likely involve Wikipedia. Surely you must recognize, you cannot simply allow RK to make false statements that stand on the record forever, with Wikimedia or whatever entity as the publisher? There is a genuine legal reason to exclude him. This is not about a "community", it's as serious an issue as "copyvio". User:LMS said as much some time ago. EofT

(cur) (last) . . 00:23, 24 Aug 2003 . . MyRedDice (#REDIRECT Wikipedia talk:Community case RK (merge))
(cur) (last) . . M 16:34, 23 Aug 2003 . . EntmootsOfTrolls (missing word)
(cur) (last) . . 16:31, 23 Aug 2003 . . EntmootsOfTrolls (libel is serious, Shun: is better than Talk:Community_case:)
(cur) (last) . . 22:59, 22 Aug 2003 . . Stevertigo
(cur) (last) . . 21:25, 22 Aug 2003 . . EntmootsOfTrolls (other places where talk of this exists)

location, location, location

Is there a reason why this is in the article space? It has quite a Page History so I didn't want to just move it. Suggestions anyone? -- Ams80 17:05, 22 Aug 2003 (UTC)

editors note - the page was at Wikipedia Case User:RK when this question was asked

Of all places, it should definitely not go there .. I moved it on. IMhO redirects like WP: from the article namespace to Wikipedia namespace should also be avoided. -- User:Docu

Why? I love those WP redirect things. Angela

Its there to be rid of /ban pages altogether- see recent wikien-l discussion. Since RK is still here its rather rude to be discussing his ban on his user pages -- since its a community "case" - it deserves community attn. Though I think it might be better on meta, let us see what people think. It has substantial linkages already, and I (as uninvolved in any of the voting, etc) took it upon myself to clean up the mess, to be fair to RK, and to get this stuff aired as openly as possible. -戴&#30505sv 17:22, Aug 22, 2003 (UTC)

(In the meantime, Stevertigo moved it back). It's just that Wikipedia:Article about is in the Wikipedia namespace, and Wikipedia Article:about in article namespace. I'm not sure where it belongs, but it's definitely not for the article namespace. -- User:Docu

Thats all Fine and dandy. But I dont care about style conventions at this point -- Im just trying to clean up a big frickin mess, involving the possible banning of a user. I think the import of the latter takes precedence over the former, and since there is a huge revision history here, and its a community issue, -- how about Community case user:RK?? Would that suit the fancy -- I will move the page if you take care of all the redirects. -戴&#30505sv 17:37, Aug 22, 2003 (UTC)

It is a mess... :-( Martin

I think you missed the point of the "no ban pages" discussion -- the objection was to having these pages at all, not to naming them /ban. I.e. discussing the possibility of banning an active contributor on the Wikipedia is needlessly inflammatory, and should be avoided unless there is absolutely no other option but to ban them. --Delirium 20:28, Aug 23, 2003 (UTC)

Why is this at Wikipedia: Community case rather than EofT's userspace? --Delirium 17:16, Aug 23, 2003 (UTC)

Some think it should be a user talk:RK/ban. Some think it should be in EofT's namespace. Some think it should be somewhere else entirely.

I think people should stop moving it around. Martin 20:06, 23 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Me too. Where it is, is satisfactory. Delirium, you appear not to have noticed that there are many users' comments here, and that Martin and myself had a quite similar experience with RK deliberately constructing false copies of the dialogue, and that he like me is labelled as "sick" or writing "hatespeech" for simply implementing policy and keeping this material visible at User_talk:RK/ban. If you think this is some kind personal issue between RK and me, you re wrong. I have baited him here and there as a tit for tat strategy, which he appeared to learn nothing from. I am now adopting a different strategy, which is to accept his definitions of hatespeech and harassment and sickness, and to refer to anything I see which offends me on his part that way. If this is unacceptable, it's news to me: RK is still accepted and has been doing it daily. And why in the world would RK lying on a mailing list be discussed in *my* user space? It's hardly relevant that the lies were about me, he tells similar lies daily about others. EofT

What is this page for? I can see it collects a lot of complaints about RK together, but to what end? --Camembert

What is RK's accusation that I'm "obsessed with Jews" for? I can see that it's part of a general attempt to smear me as anti-Semitic, but to what end?

This page is a useful place to dump this kind of shit, and so clear up pages like talk:Zionism and racism and talk:anti-Semitism. It also serves as educational material for new folks unfortunate enough to get into an argument with RK. By placing RK's insults into perspective, it removes much of their sting. By providing context to RK's frequent calls that user X be banned, and edit Y be deemed vandalism, it reduces the likelihood of people taking such calls seriously.

An alternate solution would be for RK to stop insulting people, and take back his insults against me and other bona fide contributors. Martin 12:51, 24 Aug 2003 (UTC)

seconded :-) Anthère

Well, I know RK isn't exactly the most popular user in the world, and I've had my--well, let's call them disagreements--with him in the past, but this page just depresses me. There's got to be a better way of doing things than this. If the idea is to make new users aware of RK's tendency to jump to accusations of anti-Semitism (or whatever) rather quickly, why not just have a word with a user so-insulted and let them know about this tendency (to be honest, I would think it's pretty obvious to users new or otherwise when RK is going over the top). If the idea is to move inappropriate comments from talk pages, why not just delete them outright from the talk pages (if the stuff doesn't belong on talk pages, it doesn't belong anywhere - moving personal attacks here doesn't make them OK)? Of course, I agree the best solution is for RK to stop the insults, but I don't think this page is going to encourage him to do that. --Camembert

One of the biggest problems with RK's behavior is that he pretends to speak with an authority that he clearly does not have. Newbie Wikipedians may not realize this, and they may assume that RK's frequent "sysop alerts" have some sort of legitimacy, and that people who challenge RK really are "risking a ban." The mere existence of a page wherein various Wikipedians who are victims of RK's tactics have put RK's overbearing behavior into perspective therefore -- with many of them being sysops themselves -- serves a legitimate community policing function; it also helps put the role of Wikipedia's sysops -- a purely administrative function -- into perspective. -- NetEsq 14:38, 24 Aug 2003 (UTC)

If the concern is that RK gives the impression he and other sysops have more authority than they do, then again, why not just tell a user who may be labouring under this misapprehension that it isn't the case? Or else direct them to Wikipedia:Administrators (where it says "Sysops are not imbued with any special authority"). One of my concerns is that if new users see this page and take it seriously (and it's in the Wikipedia: namespace, so they probably would), they're going to think that disputes like this are more common than they really are, that communications between users on the Wikipedia are more strained than they really are, and that there's a great deal more ill-feeling on the Wikipedia than there really is. That might put them off contributing more than the actions of any single user. --Camembert

"why not just delete them outright" - I tried to do that in the past, and RK reverted me, in his own inimitable style:

(cur) (last) . . 14:38, 3 Jul 2003 . . RK (Sysops, please awar [sic]: MArtin [sic] (MyRedDice) is censoring and deleting other user's Talk discussion. I am concerned about his attempt to hide his repeated acts of Jew-baiting.)
(cur) (last) . . 23:20, 2 Jul 2003 . . RK (Martin, please do not remove other people's contents [sic]. These were not ad homenim attacks. They were detailed explanations of what [sic] certain actions are widely viewed as anti-Semitic. )

Plan B then. Martin 14:55, 24 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I don't really see the difference between personal attacks living on talk pages and personal attacks living on this page. But, OK, I can appreciate that it's a bit different to deal with these issues first-hand (like you are) than it is to snipe from the sidelines (like I am), so I'll shut up about it. --Camembert

Votes for deletion

Talk:Community case:RK - yet another page on the topic created in the article namespace by User:EntmootsOfTrolls. --Delirium 01:15, Aug 24, 2003 (UTC)
- It's a relic of the move war over the page currently located at Wikipedia:Community case RK. Probably unfair to blame EofT - I think it was Stevertigo who moved the mess to Community case:RK, and Docu who suffered from the bug that leaves talk pages behind on a move. I've merged the content into Wikipedia talk:Community case RK. Keep it for now - delete it when the issue has been resolved to everyone's satisfaction. Martin 01:24, 24 Aug 2003 (UTC)
  - I understand removing the word "Ban" from this sort of page, but "Community Case" instead of "Case"? Sounds a bit "social-worker-ish" to me. I much prefer the suggestion that the compiling of "dossiers" in support of disfellowshipping be kept privately, and offline. -- Someone else 01:41, 24 Aug 2003 (UTC)
    - If Wikipedians are to be shunned, it is much better to do so through a transparent public process than through a star chamber proceeding. -- NetEsq 02:07, 24 Aug 2003 (UTC)
      - I didn't suggest a star chamber proceeding. I suggested that personal grievances be kept personal before any "proceeding", rather than steadily accumulated, published on the Internet and retained forever. If, in your view, these pages are in fact "trials", let them be named accordingly. -- Someone else 02:17, 24 Aug 2003 (UTC)
    - This is no different from a /ban page. If we can't have them, we can't have this either. I say delete them all and the numerous redirects to them. Angela
    - I agree. If you disagree with Jimbo's request to not have ban pages on the Wikipedia, say so and keep it at the normal /ban location. Euphemistically renaming it does not solve the original objection, which was against ban pages existing at all (unless I'm misunderstanding Jimbo's comment), not against their names or locations. I personally vote to delete the whole lot of them.--Delirium 02:15, Aug 24, 2003 (UTC)
      - I am just curious, if there are no ban pages or such, how will bans be handled since users will not be able to communicate with one another (or with those who do the banning) about harassing or unencyclopedic posters. Thanks.Ark30inf 02:28, 24 Aug 2003 (UTC)
        Well, the only person with the authority to ban signed in users (except in cases of obvious and egregious vandalism) is User:Jimbo Wales, so if anybody wants somebody banned, they should write to him. He's quite capable of assessing any evidence put before him, I think. I don't see how this stops users communicated with each other about bad users. --Camembert 14:21, 24 Aug 2003 (UTC)
        
        I don't think bans should be discussed, because they're nearly always uncalled for. If you think "hmm, so and so should be banned," in my view you should calm down a bit, take a break, and go back to doing something productive. The only users who should be banned are outright vandals. --Delirium 23:20, Aug 24, 2003 (UTC)
- I, in common with almost all who've commented, don't want RK banned. The page is unpleasant, but no worse than wikipedia:problem users. Martin 18:20, 24 Aug 2003 (UTC)