Re: Wikibook User Arbitration

I prefer not to do this, but for clarity I will discuss some points 
individually.

>While
>I may agree that this edit war is getting out of hand, the justification
>for performing a user block is definitely one of a grey area rather than
>something as clear cut as Johnny seems to be implying here.

It may be difficult to see it in hindsight, but as these things were 
happening, there was certainly plenty of rationale to go around. People had 
looked to me originally to perform the block myself (I was deemed neutral to 
the issue), and I refused initially because there was no precedence nor 
policy on this matter

>The more I started to dig into reviewing Johnny's actions, and to see
>explicitly what exactly Panic did, the more confusing to me that it
>became.  In addition, apparently some very heated exchanged happened on
>IRC that have tainted this whole process and precipitated some of this
>action, independent of what was actually done on Wikibooks.  While I can
>appreciate some individuals being offended by a particular user due to
>some very crass and pointed remarks on IRC, that by itself doesn't
>justify a user block on the Wiki as a result of those heated exchanges.

As a matter of clarification, Panic never came onto IRC (as far as I know), 
and all the discussion in the chat room was between SBJohnny, Darklama, and 
myself. There were no logs on these discussions, but I can attest that they 
centered around us discussing panic, and determining whether a block was 
warranted. We discussed the matter at length, and it was a collective 
decision to block him. I mention these IRC chats only to show that proper 
forethought and discussion went into the matter before the blocks occured, 
and that it wasnt a rash decision by SBJohnny.

>I know Wikibooks is not Wikipedia, but the policies simply
>havn't been established at all for Wikibooks on this topic.

If this case wasn't happening, what do you think are the odds that the 
wikibooks community would accept an Arbcom, or create a policy on the 
matter? If you look through the list of rejected policies (you can find them 
on [[WB:PAG]]) you will see that the community has already rejected a 
proposed creation of a mediation committee (which is far less imposing then 
an arbitration committee). Using arbitration in this case is essentially an 
attempt to shotgun the creation of such a mechanism into practice, when the 
community at large generally doesnt need or want it.

>More to the point, I just want to know what is going on.  Simply logs
>like the block log and page move log (apparently one justification for a
>user block) doesn't seem to from my viewpoint provide justification or a
>clear explaination for what has happened.  It is for this reason and
>others that I simply requested some additional information.  Based on
>IRC chats I've had with Johnny, there did seem to be a strong motive for
>the block, but it wasn't apparent right away.

I can understand this, even with all the history pages and archives and 
whatever, it can still be very difficult to follow a wiki-discussion from 
beginning to end. Unfortunately, the problem with Panic is very old, and 
extends very far back into the history trail. It was only brought to light 
with Darklama's problems, and those alone almost dont warrant a block. 
However, given his history and his actions with Darklama and James Bennett 
(being the two most recent), a block seemed warranted. Darklama probably 
knows most about this.

>BTW, some comments here seem to imply that we should (seemingly) always
>accept what the other admins are doing.  It is one of the key
>responsibilities of administrators to police each other, and make sure
>we aren't stepping over the line.  I have been critical in the past of
>the actions of some administrators, although in the case of Johnny I've
>never had any real cause to have concern in the past.  Certainly in this
>situation it needed to be reviewed.

I'm sure you're referring to my comments, so let me elaborate. En.wikibooks 
is one of the most strict projects in terms of the creation and maintenance 
of admins. I know we've received lots of criticism from people because of 
our policies. to become an admin on our project recently, candidates must be 
nothing less then vandal-fighting, content-contributing supermen. These are 
people who are, i think, worthy of some trust.

Beyond that, the current admin staff forms a pretty tight-knit group, and we 
do tend to discuss actions among one another in advance. A little planning 
in this manner reduces our need to police actions, because we have already 
agreed on most actions that occur. To reiterate, several of us discussed the 
Panic block before it happened, and we all tended to agree on the matter.

Sorry for the long email.

--Andrew Whitworth (Whiteknight)

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