Geo Swan

Archived, old material to User talk:Geo Swan/archive 2022-03-19

Questions for en.wiki administrator Moneytrees...

En.wiki administrator Moneytrees closed a discussion on en:WP:ANI today, ruling I was banned from en.wiki. contributions

Moneytrees wrote:

Closing this, this has been here for close to a month and responses have petered out- no need to drag it out any longer. Commenters are pretty unified: {{Ivanvector}}'s actions are endorsed, and there is consensus for Geo Swan to be community banned.

1. Should it matter whether the record shows I actually did not do what my accusers claim I did?
2. The main accusation I faced was that en:Dan Trotta was an en:WP:ATTACK page. Did you, User:Moneytrees, consider taking thirty seconds to look at en:Dan Trotta yourself, to confirm, for yourself, it was an en:WP:ATTACK page?
3. Would you still have ruled I merited a site ban if you found en:Dan Trotta was NOT an en:WP:ATTACK page?
4. Aren't community bans, theoretically, appealable? In theory, isn't an individual who has been community banned, entitled to request re-instatement, stating they are contrite, understand what they did wrong, and offering a promise not to do that again?
5. So, as the person who made the ruling, do you think it was your responsibility to indicate what I should promise not to do again, if I were to appeal this ban? If that wasn't your responsibility, whose responsibility do you think it was?

Inquiring minds want to know. Geo Swan (talk) 02:03, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

I sense that this will go nowhere, but oh well. I'm willing to elaborate:

My ban was based on the consensus in that thread, not on who was right and who was wrong. It doesn't matter if you think you were in the right and did nothing wrong. Essentially everyone commenting in that thread believed you had done wrong, and no one explicitly opposed the ban. Even the comments in support of your past contributions believed you had done wrong in this instance. I can't close it like, "Well, even though there is clear support for a ban, you're all wrong, and he's right, so no ban." That's not how these discussions work. Of course, I don't want a ban I do to be unreasonable or unjust in some way, I looked into the background. I had already seen the deleted page and the resulting discussion at the time in 2021. I revisited the deleted page while looking at this discussion.

The content on the page is mostly OK, but the context in which it was created makes it a different story. You created a headshot of the subject by cropping a larger picture. Someone claiming to be the subject wanted the photo deleted. You get into an argument with them, and say, "If this image was in use, say in a brand new wikipedia article on Dan Trotta, we would almost certainly decline your request for a courtesy deletion, because it was in use. For about 30 seconds I considered starting a nice fair article on Dan Trotta, but I didn't do so because it might seem like a dickish move on my part. [...] 19:12, 28 February 2021" Then, at 20:09, 28 February 2021, an hour later, you created the article and included the image. This makes it reasonable to think that you created the page to disparage or spite the subject, making it an attack page. It doesn't matter that the article was neutral, it doesn't matter if it wasn't your intent to mock the subject, and it doesn't matter if the user you were arguing with wasn't actually the subject. It doesn't matter.

When I block someone for copyright violations as an independent admin action, I always provide a rationale and advise them on what to do. This is different from my job here as the closing admin, which is to assess consensus in the thread and carry out the result. I have no responsibility to give you recommendations for a future appeal. You will have to rely on yourself to come up with an appeal. Maybe there are some friends who could help you. But it is not my responsibility in anyway. You currently don't have access to your email or talk, so options are the en:Wikipedia:Unblock Ticket Request System where volunteer admins can copy an appeal to a noticeboard, or an email to Arbcom, who can restore your talk page access for an appeal to the community.

You may think I answered none of your questions, but if you read carefully, you will realize I answered all of them.

I will give you some parting advice though. Stop. There were serious suggestions in the thread that you be reported to Terms and Service. They can give you a conduct warning or globally ban you. Those two things are even more serious than a community ban and are even harder to appeal. Further lawyering around this issue will not help your cause and will push you closer to a global ban. Take a break, and maybe come back in a few years when there is personal change. Moneytrees (talk) 03:21, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

User:Moneytrees, I can't tell you how disturbing being blocked has been.

You offered me several pieces of advice. You say you made an attempt to be fair to me. But I think there are some very strong factors you overlooked or misinterpreted. So, frankly, I remain concerned about fairness.

I wrote a completely different note to you, earlier today. I shelved it. Instead I am going to start with the last part of your comment, the warning I could be reported to Terms of Service.

I checked the WPANI thread. No one mentioned Terms of Service there. I looked. I found no en:WP:Terms of Service, or Meta:Terms of Service. But one person did mention Trust and Safety. Should I assume this is what you meant?

I wrote to the Trust and Safety committee, asking their advice. I did that after Ivanvector blocked me from accessing my talk page, but before you ruled I should be banned.

I'll be frank, I didn't see anything in the replies I got from them suggesting the Trust and Safety committee had any concern about my conduct.

So, before I seek clarification for the earlier parts of your reply, I am going to ask you to clarify this last part. Do you, Moneytrees, see any aspect of my conduct or comments that merits the attention of the Trust and Safety committee, or the Terms of Service committee, whatever that is? If you do, could you be specific? Geo Swan (talk) 01:15, 13 August 2022 (UTC)

Oops. There is no Meta:Terms of Service, but there is a plain old Terms of Service. I don't know why my search didn't find it.

It's long, very long. Are there specific sections you think I need to read? Geo Swan (talk) 01:19, 13 August 2022 (UTC)

I meant Trust and Safety. I got the terms mixed up since T&S is a commonly used abbreviation for both; but in a Wikipedia context whenever someone says T&S they are almost certainly referring to Trust and Safety... but the Terms of use (TOU) do inform what actions T&S take, though. Also note that the abbreviation "T&S" is used by more than one user in the banning discussion. I do not believe it is my place to tell you which sections of the TOU I think you may have violated (the section you would be interested in is the fourth one). If it makes things clearer, I filed a T&S report against an editor one time, and I did not cite any parts of the TOU when I did so, even though the behaviors I described clearly violated several parts of it; the commentators at AN may very well not had a specific part of the TOU in mind when referencing T&S. Moneytrees (talk) 03:50, 17 August 2022 (UTC)