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Following up

Re a comment you made about a possible article chairpersonship at the Barack Obama article: I've made a proposal that it -- maybe -- be considered. Is there anywhere you know of where I could read about such a thing/observe it in practice? Thx.  ${\displaystyle \sim }$ Justmeherenow (  ) 21:29, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Hasn't been done on Misplaced Pages as far as I know. It's a classic solution though. I'd consider having more than one "chair." The need arises if the article is protected, as seems likely. If it is protected, how do changes get made. In order to judge whether there is consensus for a change, an administrator needs to review the discussion, and, if there isn't unanimity, it can become quite a chore, and administrators make mistakes in such judgments if they are unfamiliar, and they make a different kind of mistake when they are familiar, which often means that they have become involved.

Having a single administrator supervise the article, which is how it's done sometimes, causes that admin to become familiar with the issues and quite frequently results in some kind of bias.

So this would use classical organizational techniques to create a means whereby the editors working on the article would go through an intermediary -- or intermediaries -- in requesting changes. The attempt would be made to identify and recognize editors who are trusted by involved editors as being likely to be fair. These would be involved editors, they wouldn't be "neutral", necessarily. What they would do is to judge when sufficient consensus has been attained that a change to the article should be requested. A relationship would be developed between this chair or these chairs and administrators, such that, while the administrator would review the proposed change before making it, it needn't be such a deep review, and it is less likely to err in judging consensus.

This wouldn't take away any existing rights, though it might divert some channels a little. Basically, a requested change from an editor where there has been some formal expression of general trust might be able to be implemented more efficiently.

Existing consensus process on Misplaced Pages can be murderously inefficient, it's a problem which was solved hundreds of years ago with the development of parliamentary procedure, which is often mistaken for "majority rule." --Abd (talk) 21:59, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Maybe we'll be breaking new ground! :^) Thanks, Abd.  ${\displaystyle \sim }$ Justmeherenow (  ) 22:20, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Here is a rule from parli pro that Misplaced Pages could use. No motion is debated in formal session (i.e., where decisions can actually be made) if it has not been seconded. No debate. Period. How many times are countless hours wasted debating something that has no support? Somebody proposes something, and that's it. It lies there. If you don't support it, you don't debate it until someone *else* has said, "Yes, I think we should do this." I.e., seconds it. This is the one rule that I see most often missing, to great loss, in non-formal process. A chair would, after a decent time, say that the motion fails for lack of a second. One way that I've thought of doing it on Misplaced Pages would be that, if someone is chosen as a chair, they create a formal deliberation page in their user space, where they ask people to only edit within rules, which they set. In user space, they have what I've called quasi-administrative authority. You can ask someone to stay away from your user space, and you can generally revert without limit there. Again, this is why I suggest that there might be more than one chair, each one is a kind of caucus. There is a lot more thinking behind this than I can express in a few words. I made a comment on the page you mentioned, so it's on my Watchlist. While I certainly have political opinions, I really don't want to get involved in political issues on Misplaced Pages, preferring -- greatly -- to stay with pure process, with very few exceptions. That's why I've intervened on behalf of users I thought were being treated unfairly, even where I probably disagree with their POVs very much. NPOV, to me, means that all POVs are given due respect, and the only difference from due respect and full respect is that fringe POVs cannot dominate, but that is practically automatic in some areas because of the scarcity of sources for true fringe POV. What I'm trying to do is to ensure that the field is level, and that fringe POV, as it might be seen by the majority, nevertheless is given full opportunity to participate in finding consensus, and that the goal would be for articles that all sides, including fringes, will say, "Yes, this is fair, given the reality in the world." I.e., usually, fringe thinkers want to be treated fairly, but most of them will agree, yes, our POV is rejected by most in the field. They think this is wrong, of course, but that's a POV and, again, most of them can recognize this, when the context is right and they aren't being attacked and shoved out..... ahem.... I can go on. I'll try to restrain myself in your corner. --Abd (talk) 00:25, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

I'm not optimistic about this. But I'll attempt to make it work. Are you going to be the moderator? Curious bystander (talk) 23:25, 7 August 2008 (UTC):I'm not optimistic, either. That is, while I'm pretty confident that it would help if tried, that is, produce more benefit than the effort involved in setting it up and maintaining it, I'm not so optimistic that any editors will try it, and no benefit accrues until at least two participate. Significant benefit accrues with a significant percentage of users give it a chance. if it works, then there is more benefit than from simply the one article, because a technique would have been demonstrated. Given all the factors, it's very important that whatever is set up be extremely simple and easy.

As to moderator, there is a role for someone who simply manages (through suggestion) the overall process, and who stays rigorously out of content issues. Because I do have experience in that role (in real life), I am willing to serve in that way if asked. It may even be a good thing, for this, that I'm not an administrator. I have no big stick, only the power of persuasion, which I lose if I act in a partisan way. We need adminstrative intervention, we -- any one of us -- can ask for it. --Abd (talk) 15:48, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

I'm not in the habit of watching pages, so I missed your above comments until now. Wow! Anyway, I've just invited User:Nutiketaiel to join in this discussion as well (which perhaps s/he might). Thanks. (This is what I just wrote hi/r):

No, please do!
Abd expressed an interest in lending assistance if asked, which is encouraging. Although what it is we'd be needing from folks, if anything, still seems pretty nebulous.
If you feel your comment in the Talkpage section needs an introduction maybe just mention I'd canvassed for input from your expertise.
One thing off the top of my head (which you don't gotta respond to, but's something I've thought about) is the rationale behind general populations' using a secret ballot to select representatives: 'Cause of the social awkwardness that results from not choosing somebody certain people think you should. For example, if you're nominally a part of some faction but independently support another. (Even choosing somebody can seem awkward, if they haven't put themselves up as a candidate, for example, as it put on that person a subtle imperative to represent your interests, in a a way or else implies that you're in awe of them or beholden to whatever their philosophy blah blah blah.).......
Thx.
In fact let's move our discussion to User:Abd's page.

 ${\displaystyle \sim }$ Justmeherenow (  ) 18:03, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for all your hard work and refreshing objectivity

I owe you a significant debt of gratitude for your taking the time to really look into the details behind my RfC. I know that this must have taken a significant amount of time to compile and the results were very well presented. If there is ever anything I can do for you please let me know and I will be more than happy to be at your service. --GoRight (talk) 04:00, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Ready to Mainstream the Page

The page under creation as an American author or a biography isn't perfect or finished, but it's as good as many similar pages already at Wiki. Can we move the page in creation now and make it a mainstream Wiki contribution? I don't have a copy of the original article in the Greater Kashmir Times. I have contacted the editor several times asking for a copy but no response...Perhaps you can ask him for it? SuzanneOlsson (talk) 06:27, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Two questions. Last first. No, there is no reason why I'd be more effective in asking than you. Are there any friends there who could go to a library or place where the Greater Kashmir Times is archived and make a copy and get it to you? Any decent digital camera could do it, it just has to be readable, and it can be a series of images that, together, allow reading the whole article. And the whole page should be shown, for the first page, if there is more than one, plus a closeup of page information which would ordinarily show date, etc. That way, anyone looking at the set of images can verify that the article existed. If we cannot find the article, then we are depending only on your report of it, which isn't enough.

Then, as to the article as it is now, remember the plan? The plan was for you to write a decent article, without depending on whether or not sources were available, but then to, probably, stub it down to what can be solidly established by reliable, independent source. That's what would go into mainspace. In order to establish that the article isn't going to get deleted at any time, we'd probably go to Deletion Review to get the deletion overturned with the new article, which really should be impeccable, or as close as we can make it.

You should understand that the quality of "similar pages" isn't relevant. There is a massive cleanup under way at Misplaced Pages, and, necessarily, it hits some articles before others. There are "similar pages" that are terrible. See WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS, your idea here is a common one, and has been rejected. Now, if we could show that other, similar articles, with the same problems, are passing Articles for Deletion, and your article was improperly rejected, then we'd have some kind of basis. But simply that you can find them in the encyclopedia, no, that merely means that there is other stuff that should be deleted.

So, anyway, I will look at the article and work on the sourcing. You haven't used standard in-line sourcing, I'll fix that, and you should then be able to see how it is done for the future.

I apologize, by the way, for taking so long to get to this. I've been fighting fires, so to speak, plus I traveled for a few days. Am I correct that you live in New York state? Where? (tell me by email if you don't want to state it publicly, and no obligation to tell me, either). --Abd (talk) 22:49, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Mentorship

You have been very helpful and insightful during the fluster about Ottava. I would appreciate if you could help drafting the terms we are putting together on his talk. None of us have much expeirence in this area, so are touting for openions;). Thanks. Ceoil 09:07, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

I have no experience with mentorship, either, at least not formal, recognized mentorship. However, I do have some ideas about it and I'll participate if both of you accept that. Having a mentor could be a huge help in any area where the mentor has experience, and even without experience, two heads are better than one, and three are even better. This works with even greater numbers, if all share sufficient common goals.... --Abd (talk) 22:35, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

My flippant reply on Ottava's talk was only an attempt to keep things light. You have shown a lot of integrity through out this, and thb I cant see this working without your input. None of us know what we are doing re mentorship, but we all want the same thing, which is a good start. Ceoil 00:02, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Recall: "do something truly courageous, this would be automatic desysop"

Do you realise that you've just painted me (and every single other administrator who is in the recall category) as cowardly? Are you realistically suggesting that (for example) Lar, long-time contributor to Misplaced Pages Review and semi-constant gadfly, has never done anything courageous?

brenneman 00:02, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Easy answer: No, I don't realise that. And certainly that is not what is implied, how would you derive that from it? There was nothing in my comment that stated that admins were refraining from doing courageous things in order to avoid the recall request. The statement doesn't say anything about these admins, except that, if they were to do something truly courageous, something that challenged the behavior or opinion of a major segment of the Misplaced Pages community, and that might bring on other supporters who, say, don't understand the issues sufficiently, they could be almost automatically desysopped as a result. Rather obviously, those conditions don't arise very often. Or do they? How would we know? Only a certain percentage of administrators have accepted voluntary recall.

The goal of voluntary recall was to avoid the fuss of RfC and RfAr. However, it's not at all clear that it is working that way. We already have the RfC on Elonka's behavior. I'd say the whole concept needs review. When the idea of "six editors in good standing" was proposed, the intention was that it would be unlikely that six editors would improperly conspire to remove her unless there was good cause. But a number of situations on Misplaced Pages have now come to my attention where there is substantial tag-teaming in reversions, and the ability of some contentious articles to attract large numbers of participants is creating a situation where an admin who is acting neutrally could easily offend a large number of editors. Problems of scale are causing Misplaced Pages process to break down in numerous ways, and I'd predict this will continue until it is recognized that procedures that worked with a much smaller community don't necessarily continue to work on a larger scale. AN/I has become a disaster, erratic at best. If AN/I were more reliable, if it were performing its role properly, we wouldn't need Elonka to deal with the articles, a group of experienced editors, including involved editors, could do it. We really need to become more efficient. And that includes the question of who should continue to hold admin bits. I've seen serious abuse result in ... nothing, and minor abuse, if it was abuse at all, result in a huge fuss. It all depends on who notices, whether they have time to do anything about it, etc. There is no regular monitoring going on, no regular review process, no structure for making decisions other than the very simple individualist admin process. ArbComm members, among others, have proposed structural solutions, and generally these have been ignored. Why? Well we don't have the deliberative process that would be possible to make decisions about deliberative process. There are classic solutions to this problem, not tried here by anyone with experience with them, which are rejected immediately because "thats' not the way we do things."

If three experienced editors were to decide to reform the system, so that it could respond to the challenges of scale, and continue to do well what Misplaced Pages does well, and if they were to work together, coherently, toward that, it would be reformed. Try to find three! it's not easy for something new. With three, it would take time, perhaps years. With thirty, it would be over quickly. --Abd (talk) 02:36, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

I thought this had gone away, but...

I've responded to your comments at WP:AN, which is the right forum for scrutinising administrator actions that do not require immediate administrative response. Fritzpoll (talk) 09:12, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Sure. However, it's a waste of time for an admin whose actions might be scrutinized to go in advance of the one scrutinizing. Every administrator's actions might be scrutinized. I could go to AN, but the better place to go would be AN/I, because there is immediate and ongoing harm. I need to do it, but it takes time to prepare a report that will cut through the noise at AN/I. Now, it is true, if you are in doubt about your own closure, AN could be a place to go for advice. However, you did not go, raising the important question, which was not whether or not there was consensus at AN/I for the block, but whether or not the closing admin -- you stepped into that role without actually undertaking the duty involved -- had properly considered the evidence, which is an obligation independent from determining a consensus, because a consensus in any process can be warped by participation bias. A closing admin will look at the !votes and determine if the !voters were properly informed, and that would entail looking at the evidence presented; if a closing admin finds that evidence was not properly considered, it's a duty to close contrary to apparent consensus. That's a crucial part of the system, without this, it breaks down, as it has in this case. It's very simple, Fritzpoll. If you have seen evidence that Wilhelmina Will was engaged in any pattern of copyright violation, point to it. A single incident won't suffice, for everyone can make mistakes, and we don't block for mistakes, we block for intentional disregard of warnings, or, sometimes, for incompetent disregard, usually limited to very active editors unable to understand the guidelines.

This comment is long, Fritzpoll, but I assure you, you can read it, even carefully, in less time than it took me to write it. It's important. Your administrative future may depend on it.

It's not necessarily relevant, Fritzpoll, but have you considered the fact that the community was presented a very distorted picture of Wilhelmina's activties, by an editor with a history of being blocked for harassment? That this editor continued to harass Wilhelmina Will? I don't write empty words, so if you need diffs, they can be provided. I was hoping, initially, that a word to the wise would be sufficient, but apparently that didn't work for some reason. This whole affair, essentially created by Blechnic, has resulted in two instances of serious damage: WW may have been driven away from Misplaced Pages, and Ottava Rima was blocked for what may have been tendentious efforts to protect her. There are disturbing aspects both to the ban you confirmed and to the block of OR. Both WW and OR made mistakes. However, those mistakes were less serious than actions of other editors which haven't been sanctioned, nobody with admin tools has apparently looked at the overall situation, each one focusing on the narrow spotlight cast on Wilhelmina Will -- and OR -- by Blechnic and a supporter of his. I've seen this happen far too many times: abusive user is uncivil to an editor, enough that the editor responds with incivility or complaint. Attention is then focused on the originally abused editor, who is warned or blocked. Misplaced Pages has lost more than a few very productive editors as a result. AN/I is broken.

I don't blame you -- or even Blechnic -- for this. It's a systemic deficiency, and Blechnic has simply discovered how to take advantage of it. He hasn't been properly warned by a neutral editor. I'm not neutral with respect to him, because he originally revealed to me just how serious the problem was by his attacks on my Talk page, against my advice to Wilhelmina Will, so I'm involved; were I an administrator, I'd be unable to use my tools, I'd be in exactly my present situation, dependent on AN/I -- or I could call on administrative friends, there are many, but my truly fundamental concern is Misplaced Pages process, and thus I'd rather try to fix AN/I. Otherwise I'm fighting fires, continually. I could still have warned Blechnic, so that he'd be blocked if he repeated the activity, but I've argued, elsewhere, against such warnings, because they are often disregarded because they are considered hostile.

The advice to WW, by the way, later turned out to be correct, and she got another DYK as proof. Your apparent inability to understand what was going on, and your willingness to act to close the AN/I report with a ban without making the evidence clear, call into question, in my opinion, your competence as an administrator. It would not be that you made a mistake, or even that you made several, it would be that you didn't respect and attend carefully to criticism of your actions, and continued to defend them. When you went to AN, you essentially asked a question: "Was there a consensus to ban at AN/I?" And you got an answer to that question: "Yes." But if you'd been following what was going on with WW, and paying attention to what I'd written on your Talk page, you'd have known that this was not the issue. There was a rough consensus. Not a complete one, there was some clear opposition voiced. It is the duty of a closing administrator to examine the evidence, not the numbers. Numbers are merely a support.

And this will come out if there is a review, an RfC on your actions, or ArbComm proceeding. Understand that there are very important principles involved here, you have inadvertently touched a live wire. I seriously urge you to consider carefully the topic ban. You have the power to withdraw your close (you don't have to actually reverse it). This is Misplaced Pages process, the first step in WP:DR, discussion between involved parties in a dispute. We do not go first to AN or AN/I, normally. You stated clearly the reasons for the block, but you didn't show, at all, that there was actual evidence for the problems. I've reviewed this for you more than once. You gave two reasons:

1. Copyright violations.
2. Padding an article ("reverting an improvement," was the way you put it, as I recall.)

Given that there was only one incident of the latter, barely worthy of a warning, much less a ban, I've focused on copyvio. And when I asked you for evidence of copyvio, you pointed to a prior AN/I report. Which contained no evidence of copyvio except for Blechnic's allegations and his rather paranoid speculations about some plot to vandalize Misplaced Pages. (Notice that later, Blechnic started calling the contributions of WW "crap," then amended to "vandalism," as if that were better -- and nobody warned him. Do you wonder that Wilhelmina then referred to him, in her naivety and in leetspeak, as "revolting." I'm sure he was, to her.)

I have now seen reference to two possible copyvio problems. One was uncovered by Blechnic when he set out to prove that she was massively vandalizing the project. It was seven months ago, and there were extenuating circumstances, she'd actually asked an admin before putting that article up. The other was mentioned by someone, perhaps you, that a copyvio had been pointed out to her and she had responded weakly. I did not see reference to this in either AN/I report, maybe I missed it. The first problem would be totally irrelevant to a present ban, even if it had been an egregious violation, which it was not. The second would be a minor concern, worthy of some kind of warning, perhaps, perhaps not. Not a ban. We don't ban except when we have reason to believe that warnings will be ignored and ongoing damage will occur.

And there is no reason to believe that. She responded to warnings, apparently. You (and others) have confused a lack of participation at AN/I or specific, explicit, response to warnings, with defiance of them. It is not, and it is a serious error to interpret lack of response as defiant response. There are many reasons why an editor would not respond. Literal absence, embarrassment or other emotional distress, fear of conflict, etc. No, we don't even, properly, care much if an editor responds with "Fuck you!" to a warning. (Plenty of ArbComm cases consider an angry response to a warning, on the user's talk page in particular, to be uncivil but normal and not blockworthy.) We don't even conclude "defiance," but simply block if the warning is ignored by repeating the problem behavior.

Fritzpoll, this is an opportunity for you to learn this, quickly. Other administrators have failed to get this and have been desysopped. Whether or not that will actually happen depends on many factors very difficult to predict. But it's a real possibility. It is not the mistake itself that causes the loss of the admin bit. It is an inability to recognize the problem, and thus continued insistence that a use of tools was correct. (In a current RfC and a "voluntary recall" flap over admin Elonka, a topic ban, even though admin tools were not actually used, seems to be considered as such a use: it is an implied threat of use.)

Please remember something as you consider all this. I was neutral. I'd had no contact with you, with Wilhelmina Will, with Blechnic, with Ottava Rima, until I noticed the block of OR and another editor -- without any need to do so -- attacked OR on my Talk page. Since it was OR who had been blocked, and not this other editor, I saw "vendetta" spelled out before me, and when I investigated, and confirmed that in the original triggering incident, OR had been correct, the plot thickened. And then I saw the topic ban of WW to be an immediate problem. OR, it seemed, could handle the block and even benefit from it. WW was in danger of dropping out. So I wrote some consoling words to WW, and simply noted that it was still possible for her to get DYK nominations even though topic banned. And Blechnic, again, then attacked WW for what I had done, and when I did not surrender to his warnings, and I checked out a WW article eligible for DYK and nominated it, he went to AN/I again. This guy was going to AN/I without following WP:DR and without any emergency, and attacking WW when she had done nothing but ask about what I'd suggested.

And so a new editor (if he's not a sock), previously blocked for harassment -- and given a newbie pass, which assumes that he wouldn't repeat the behavior -- did repeat it and nobody was watching and few, if any, cared, instead focusing on a few errors of this very young and apparently vulnerable editor, with many articles created, with all that I have seen being better than the average new article, -- actually much better -- and 29 successful DYK nominations, is now gone. I hope not for good, I hope that the damage can be undone, and it's a shame that you did not pay attention to this sooner. I will, later today, go to AN/I with a request for a withdrawal of the ban. And if that is not successful -- and unless someone does come up with evidence of massive damage from WW, sufficient to be ban-worthy or warnable/block-worthy -- I'll take it beyond that. This will cause my behavior -- and your behavior -- to come under close scrutiny. So, again, I urge you to carefully consider. As long as you stand as the administrator who personally confirmed that the topic ban was appropriate -- not merely passively "passing on the news," you will be considered responsible for it. If it's right, by all means, stand firm, don't be bullied. But if you are not sure that you got it right, you could and probably should withdraw your support for the ban, which would effectively end it. An editor should not be banned unless an administrator is confident that the ban was proper, based on personal investigation of the evidence, preferably shared with the community. As an administrator, you are trusted by the community to make such a decision with due caution and due diligence, otherwise to abstain from decision, and failure to do this is grounds for a loss of confidence in you.--Abd (talk) 14:23, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Warning before block

I have asked another administrator to review your editing. The above screed is a personal attack on User:Fritzpoll and includes major assumptions of bad faith. Such things are not allowed on Misplaced Pages, and I strongly suggest you remove them. If you continue your campaign to drive off User:Fritzpoll I will support an indefinite block on your account by a suitably uninvolved administrator. Due to past interactions with you, I will not place such a block myself. Your past editing history shows that your account is mainly used for disruption and drama mongering. As such, your account could be blocked indefinitely, per policy. Jehochman 14:45, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

• Despite the olive branch I extended to Abd after he treated me similarly, I support this. Fritzpoll's an outstanding editor and a good administrator. This kind of treatment is completely unacceptable. _D.Jameson 14:49, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

(edit conflict, no response to Keeper76) I will review your objections and respond. I have a pending edit at AN which I will review to be sure that it does not contain personal attacks. However, before reviewing what you have posted, I would note that questioning Fritzpoll's competence as an administrator is not a personal attack, and at no point, insofar as I recall, have I questioned his good faith. It is essential to Misplaced Pages process that examination and criticism of admin behavior be allowed, unless it rises to the level of harassment, which, in this case, would be preposterous. If you believe that my actions are improper, you are welcome to question them, and the fact is that I act as if I've already been warned and therefore could, possibly, be immediately blocked. I write what I write, imagining that ArbComm is looking over my shoulder, and, while I make mistakes, I try not to repeat them. I'll come back here after review. As to S. Dean Jameson's remarks, try to find some effort on my part to support a pre-block warning for him. I have not only not attacked him, I have avoided mentioning his name. He has, however, I have concluded, been part of the problem in the Ottava Rima and Wilhelmina Will, so I suppose it will, indeed, be necessary to include him in an RfC coming out of that. His confirmation of your warning here was gratuitous, it added nothing to it, he is known to be hostile to my intervention in the affair, even though it was he, above, who suggested that I investigate. He simply did not like the results of that. Thanks. --Abd (talk) 15:21, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Huh, I was just coming here to say something very similar to Jehochman, but without the block warning, though I see it as an appropriate warning. In the last week, you have made extended comments, well within your "rights" in an open environment, in several highly contentious discussions. I make no comment at all about your accuracy or inaccuracy in your posts. You have made extended comments regarding your perception of "bad blocks/bad bans" involving several good editors, POV editors, and "charged" topics, purposefully scrambled here: MGodwin, Global Warming, Wilhemina Will, Ottava Rima, Child Sexual abuse/advocacy, GoRight, S. Dean Jameson, Barack Obama, Elonka, Toddst1, Fritzpoll, IP 209-86-226-18, and most visibly, AN and ANI. (Am I missing any?) Lately, it seems that where there is perceived controversy, a lecture of sorts of Abd's is soon to follow. It has become predictable both in your pending appearance at the venue, and which "side" you're going to take. You have not done any main space editing (outside of one or two Instant Runoff Polling edits, an article you presumably watchlist) and one group of edits to an actor's page that you "worked on" for another editor that is topic banned to get around the ban on that editor's behalf. Please consider the effects your editing is having both on the community and on you as an editor and consider restraining your editing in highly charged areas. To agree with Jehochman here, it is beginning to look much more like a "crusade on behalf of the unrepresented" (at least, what you would call the "unrepresented") and its looking less like collaborative editing and good faith opining and more like drama-mongering. Diffs on request, starting with this one. Keeper ǀ 76 15:02, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

(edit conflict again) Interesting. Yes, I've been involved in conflict, and I'd be happy to defend that, if necessary. I am unfortunate enough to understand what makes Misplaced Pages work and what is, as well, destroying the community, causing many long-time editors to leave in disgust, and I consider that when I understand a situation and I have time, it's my duty to comment. As a result, I've been getting comments and emails of support from not just a few administrators, so .... there are divisions in the community, and it is my goal to bridge them and find true consensus on quite a number of issues which have been plaguing Misplaced Pages. It is expected that, as part of this process, some editors will attempt to interdict my efforts. That's unfortunate, and I will not hold it against them, but the community might. I understand Misplaced Pages process and how WP:DR works, and exploring this has been part of my training after my last RfA. And that, indeed, involves entering conflict zones. I am short on mainspace edits, indeed, that's not what I'm good at. I'll warn, however, that blocking me because of a paucity of mainspace edits would be disruptive. And I'm not as short as Keeper76 claims, he should be more careful. Generally, the community has supported the interventions and edits named above; for example, the DYK article was approved and used, and, in spite of efforts to complain about it at AN/I, consensus was that there was nothing wrong with it, so what I can see here is that Keeper76 is trying to dredge up reasons for complaint, hence he has pulled in a host of irrelevancies. Jehochman's claim is more specific and will require investigation to be certain that I didn't make a mistake. --Abd (talk) 15:21, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

I wasn't dredging anything, Abd, and I was being careful. I merely looked at one week's posts, going back to August 6th. Not dredging. Dredging would be going back thru your edits past this last week. The edit counter doesn't lie, as Iridescent linked above (or is it below?), and your Special:Contributions includes, this week, several posts involving each issue that I posted above. I specifically said I don't necessarily "dispute your accuracy" in any one particular debate you've thrown your energies into, I asked (not demanded) that you show restraint. It is not "your duty to comment" on anything here, let alone a proliferation of different contentious issues. I am glad you feel that you "understand what makes Misplaced Pages work". How nice of you to so willingly share your wisdoms. Surely you'd agree that spreading your week's edits over so mainly varied areas with strong opinions and accusations would draw attention to you and your editing? Of course you're getting "emails and comments" of support, that's what happens when you choose a side on something. A "bridge", as I'm sure you understand with your expertise in DR, doesn't necessarily take a side, merely connects the two. I made no threat of block based on "short on mainspace edits". I stated clearly that I feel you should back away, perhaps refocus is a better word, from over-involving yourself in so many "bridge construction projects" at one time. Keeper ǀ 76 15:46, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

The reason I escalated to a warning is because of the highly damaging effect on User:Fritzpoll, and thus Misplaced Pages. Fritzpoll has taken a wikibreak to get away from the stress inflicted by User:Abd. Jehochman 15:06, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Without referring to any specific examples, I have definitely seen this pattern from Abd. Abd, I would suggest you consider taking a step back and looking objectively at your participation in these areas. –xeno (talk) 15:12, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

I came here to disagree with Keeper et al – as you're presumably aware from the extended conversations, I support WW on this one – but after doing some digging, I second (third?) the warning. In your time here, less than 18% of your contributions are to the mainspace (and I suspect that, by size, it's closer to 5%). You don't seem to understand what this project is about – the talkpage discussions which comprise 50% of your entire history here should only be to discuss improvements to the encyclopedia, whilst you seem to treat this site as some kind of glorified chatroom. My AGF when it comes to you has gone totally out the window after watching your obvious attempts at unproductive shit-stirring on Elonka's RFC, and if you continue on your apparent quest to inject yourself into every discussion whether or not you have anything to say, I won't hesitate to indefblock you for disruption. – iridescent 15:14, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

"Indefinite" in the sense of "undefined" (eg, until you agree to stop trolling), not in the sense of "forever".

Still at it. _D.Jameson 15:39, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Given the length of that post, there's a reasonable chance it was written before he read this thread, so give him the benefit of the doubt. – iridescent 15:40, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

• Negative. He posted on this thread at 15:21 , prior to the latest screed. Will somebody press the block button please. This disruption needs to be stopped. Jehochman 15:46, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

• And now threatening me with an RFC for supporting J's warning. I've no response to this absurdity. One example of his low light to heat ratio (though not the worst by far) is his contributions to this now-archived thread. Threats of an RfC on me no longer worry me, as I've done nothing to merit accusations of bad faith that have been leveled at me. This mess will result not in sanctions against me, Fritzpoll, or any of the other editors Abd harrasses, I'm quite certain. _D.Jameson 15:30, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

"I am unfortunate enough to understand what makes Misplaced Pages work and what is, as well, destroying the community, causing many long-time editors to leave in disgust..." As it turns out, you have no understanding of this at all. You are part of the problem. Tan ǀ 39 15:42, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

If this is true, then you are obligated to block or seek my blocking, and Misplaced Pages will be fixed, saved from at least part of the problem. However, in fact, this idea that we can fix Misplaced Pages by blocking and banning editors, and particularly editors who simply speak up, is part of the problem. It doesn't work with seriously disruptive editors, who just come back again, and only the clumsy ones are quickly spotted, leaving stupid vandals, plus, unfortunately, those who may have been improperly blocked or blocked excessively based on marginal evidence. I'm not challenging the block policy, it's actually pretty good. But it often isn't followed. I find it rather odd that my edits to the RfC for Elonka, and my edits to the discussion of her admin recall on her Talk page, are considered some kind of offense. My position, though entirely independent, is supported by about 2/3 of the community commenting at last glance; but that leaves 1/3 who have, apparently, a very different view of Misplaced Pages and administrative responsibilities, including quite a number of administrators, so.... it would not be surprising if I were blocked, and, indeed, it might cause some good. Among other things, it identifies a lightning rod, I hope the rod is prepared or it might burn out. Of late, I've been advising that editors involved in conflict read WP:DGAF. The legitimate message there is to do what you believe is right and not be attached to the outcome, it's actually an ancient message, worth taking in. What I'd advise any admin considering blocking me is to carefully weigh the evidence, document it, and be clear about the reason for blocking. Beware of "trolling" as a reason, it involves mindreading and AGF failure. Besides the fact that I'm not trolling, not seeking outraged response or disruption. If I were seeking disruption, I'd be the one going to administrative noticeboards with complaints. Today's actions, the cause of this, were discussions on my own Talk page, not started by me, plus, now, posts to AN, in a section not started by me but being somewhat of a complaint about my behavior. And if I respond, civilly, to that, I'm supposedly "trolling"? Beware. Live wire. Touch with proper caution and protective measures. --Abd (talk) 16:19, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

I don't think these were caused by today's actions alone, but by a culmination of your actions over the past little while. –xeno (talk) 16:22, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

(ec)Abd, the intentions of my post here were to explicitly tell you that you were wearing yourself thin, by over-opining on too many issues at once. With really really long posts, that don't fit the (online) audience well. I cast no judgments as to the accuracy, I've not participated in anything Global warming related, or Elonka related, only tangentially w/ regards to SDJ and Fritzpoll. It's the proliferation of the posts that is disruptive and brings out the term "trolling". It isn't starting ANI posts that is "trolling", it is commenting on all of them at once with diatribes. In fishing (do you fish? It's great fun, very relaxing), "trolling" means to move around the lake in the boat, not staying in one place for too long. Advantages of trolling in fishing: You get to have your hook and minnow in several areas, perhaps increasing your chances of catching a fish. Less likely to get bored because the scenery changes. Disadvantages of trolling in fishing: You are in too many places, never long enough in one place to be effective, and too spread out, making the chances of catching a fish more "random" in some senses, and less "planned and objective-based", perhaps decreasing your chances of catching a fish. And perhaps, more boring. Again, show restraint. You have no duty to respond to every contentious area of meta-wikipedia and every "publicized conflict". Keeper ǀ 76 16:39, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Sadly, I tend to agree - even though I often agree with your comments, their length and wordiness tends to preclude a favourable reception in many areas. However, on the separate issue addressed here, the sort of behaviour you have exhibited towards Fritzpoll is exactly the sort of conduct which does *not* lead to a productive editing environment. In the particular post in question you have mischaracterised several past ArbCom cases and then made some kind of threat, and are now going around asserting he is a banned user. I think if you want to stick around here, you're going to need to avoid that kind of behaviour - we have a shortage of good users/editors as it is and Fritzpoll is most definitely one of them. Retracting the threats and moving on would be a good start. Orderinchaos 18:51, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Received an email from Fritzpoll: rm section as unnec per discussion

S. Dean Jameson's posts here.

S. Dean Jameson has previously promised (three times, actually, as I recall) not to post to this page. I came to consider his posts here nothing but disruptive, but I did take his "olive branch" seriously, and to my knowledge, did not gratuitously refer to him anywhere after that. Up until his comments here today, I don't think I mentioned him at all, in fact, but I may have made some indirect reference somewhere, so ... why did he intervene here? Certainly not to confirm the "olive branch" offer! I'm now asking him to refrain from posting to this Talk page, unless there is a necessity. In no way have I been harassing him, nor did I harass Fritzpoll, rather, I asked him to decide if he was or was not closing the AN/I discussion on the WW topic ban, I criticized the decision he then made, and requested he reconsider. I also responded to -- did not originate -- AN and AN/I reports where either I was mentioned or the issue I was researching was brought up. None of this required his response, it cannot reasonably be considered harassment. He wasn't pursued. While I can see no reason for the Fritzpoll "resignation" mail to be posted here, other than in an attempt to stir up sentiment for my blocking, that's minor, I can easily let it go unless necessity appears later. SDJ, if you were serious about the olive branch, and I assumed you were, stick with it and you'll stay out of trouble. This is as much warning as you'll get from me. Warning is a preface to blocking, and I'm not seeking to have you blocked.--Abd (talk) 17:15, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Abd, I also asked SDJ (on his talkpage) not to post here, (I also included my talk, Frtzpoll's talk), for similar reasons as you state above, and in regards to the olive branch that was offered after my intervening on both your and his talkpages to the prior issue between you two. He agreed in sentiment to the issue of perception that I brought up with him, and offered apologies on my talkpage (diffs on request if you haven't read any of those posts, they were all today and dated after Jehochman's post here and SDJ's subsequent post(s). I would hope that you would consider the tangential issue of SDJ's opinions here exactly as that, tangential, and would not continue, beyond this well worded post, to post again about it. I would interpret any further posts about it as deflection from the core issue at hand. Keeper ǀ 76 17:36, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

WW and copyvios

Getting back to the matter at hand. I've been looking at this. I trust Blechnic that those are copyvios. Do you agree with that or not? I *think* your beef is that a better approach could be taken in handling this. The topic ban seemed OK to me. What exactly was your problem with the ban? Carcharoth (talk) 17:56, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

I'm also prepared to act as a buffer between you and Fritzpoll. I'm going to post to his talk page now. Carcharoth (talk) 17:59, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

(sigh of relief) I haven't been attacking Fritzpoll, though he seems to have taken it that way, and I was done with anything I'd be doing with his talk, he'd made his position clear enough that he wasn't going to budge. But see below.

(edit conflict) Thank you very much for looking at this. I'll review what you pointed to. I'm aware directly of one copyvio, from seven months ago. There is another allegation that I recall seeing reference to somewhere, I don't think it was mentioned in the AN/I report. In any case, this is what should have been happening from the beginning, an investigation and confirmation of the evidence, and I'm totally confident that we will quickly find agreement; if not, I'm also sure that we'll find a way to resolve the issue.

The whole thing just may have become moot. On the face of it, there was a post to AN referring to "my talk page" and the current events, written by 87.114, which is IP for the banned User:Fredrick day, who long ago claimed to have other accounts he did not risk. Fredrick day would bail if he thought he was being closely watched, he did it several times. I'm not ready to jump, but if this stands up, it would invalidate the close of the AN/I report resulting in the ban of Wilhelmina Will, and the ban would be invalid, unless someone else decides to take responsibility for it. If you believe the evidence warrants a topic ban, i.e., that this is an appropriate remedy, then you could do this. But after review of the situation, a topic ban is exactly the wrong remedy, and nobody intending to continue copyvio would nominate the articles for DYK, it would, given her history, just about guarantee discovery, and the proper result for continued violation wouldn't be a topic ban, it would be warnings and blocks. "Topic ban" was striking at the heart of this 16-year-old girls's (we're told) joy in participating here, her gaining of DYK awards, and she had 28 before the ban, and another after it, due to my nomination (which has also been asserted to be some kind of offense). As far as I can see, she responded to warnings by not repeating the behavior. So, please consider if the welfare of the project warrants a continue ban. Under the circumstances, that is, an closing administrator who withdraws, even aside from the Fd issue, the status of the ban, and any other administrator, particularly if neutral -- which I assume for you -- could review the original AN/I report and either close it as inconclusive -- perhaps based on lack of evidence -- or to confirm or overturn it. My argument here, that has gotten a lot of editors upset, has been that a closing administrator is responsible for determining, not only the "level of consensus," but the cogency and accuracy of the arguments, and that it is never true that "the community has spoken, I'm just noting that by closing and acting." (Though, maybe, one could assert this if there were a higher level of consensus than was actually shown in the topic ban AN/I report, where some serious doubts were raised, but ignored.) Thanks for taking the time to look at this. --Abd (talk) 18:13, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

I agree that the items in Carcharoth's post are copyvios. My problem with this situation is that these are the only copyvios that have turned up in this whole situation. And this copvio is 7 months old, apparently has not been repeated, and even with this there were apparently some unsuual circumstances. Since the most serious complaint that led to the concensus to topic ban WW, I am concerned that this 7 month old item is the only copyvio that has shown up. Admittedly there were other issues that led to the topic ban - that in rephrasing items to avoid copyvios WW sometimes compromised accuracy, that she reverted (but not to the extent of violating 3RR) an edit solely to keep the article above the DYK minimum of 1500 characters, and one rather uncivil comment in the edit summary of one of the reversions. But these items without the prevalent copyvios would have been unlikely to generate an indefinite topic ban. And the single incident above is not consistent with prevalent copyvios. So, although I originally supported the topic ban I now support Abd's attempts to get it overturned. But this may really be moot. All WW has had to do to satisfy many who supported the topic ban, and to satisfy Fritzpoll enough to reopen the case, is to state that she will do her best to avoid these problems in the future. And to date, WW has chosen not to, apparently content to live with the ban for now and just create articles without worrying about DYK. So this seems to be largely much ado about nothing at this point. Rlendog (talk) 19:55, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

"Final final warning"

Any more crap like this and I'm blocking you and letting you argue your case from an unblock template. "Two people posted in the same thread" does not give you the right to assume they're the same person, let alone to start playing supersleuth and demanding checkusers. – iridescent 18:15, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

I've been quite careful about this, Iridescent. I didn't do what you just described, so if you do block me, you are going to look like an idiot. However, I'll check the diff, after writing this, and if I'm wrong, I'll strike it. Okay? --Abd (talk) 18:22, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Here is the text from the diff'd edit:

Holy Shit! 87.114 is a User:Fredrick day IP. Two possibilities: Fritzpoll is Fredrick day, a banned editor, which I absolutely did not suspect, though it now does make some kind of sense, or this is Fredrick day is trying to stir up shit by pretending to be User:Fritzpoll. It's checkuser time, to clear Fritzpoll, if nothing else. (I would not argue that Fritzpoll should automatically be blocked if checkuser confirms that he is Fredrick day, but I think it is essential that we know, given what has come down here. (FYI, folks, Fredrick day was himself exposed most clearly because he apparently forgot he was logged in and edited signing his post with the sig of an identified vandal; if Fp is Fd, this, then, could be him forgetting that he was not logged in, thus revealing his IP. But it would take checkuser of Fp to verify this.--Abd (talk) 17:51, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

I made no conclusion from the two editors posting in the same thread and, in fact, I'd expect Fd to pop in if he thought he could make some trouble for me, he's done it many times. This would mean nothing about Fritzpoll. I can see that you are going to need to see, as well, the text of the subject edit:

goes beyond that doesn't it? ] more firmly implied by your dire threat on your talkpage that my "administrative future" might depend on reading your 11KB post]. --87.114.149.224 (talk) 17:14, 11 August 2008 (UTC)]

87.114 here uses my administrative future to refer to this matter. This is the kind of evidence which is a strong justification for checkuser, it is practically routine for an edit like this to result in checkuser if requested. But I have not requested it, nor do I necessarily plan to. It's possibly moot. If Fritzpoll was Fredrick day, he'd consider the whole cover ruined by the possible attention this would focus on him. Fredrick day has been community banned, he had to really try to gain that status. I really did not suspect this until he slipped with the above, if it was a slip. "Supersleuth"? The only special thing I did here was to pay attention and know and notice the Fd favorite IP range. He practically bonked me in the nose with it.

In retrospect, it makes some sense, but this could also be Fd making a point that he's made before. "I only reveal what I choose to reveal." He would be showing here that he can run an account and gain admin status for it, even though he's a banned editor. On the other hand, it must be considered as a possibility that this is a ruse by Fd, who is pretending to be Fritzpoll. Fritzpoll was not a disruptive editor, and if he returns and claims to not be Fredrick day, then the community would probably want to know, hence my checkuser suggestion. And, in fact, if he returns and say, "Yes, I was Fredrick day, but please unban me and allow me to continue my helpful, nondisruptive work," continued adminship would be out of the question, but unbanning would be a possibility. He can do little harm if we know who he is. I do not believe in punishment, only in protection of the project and the community. --Abd (talk) 18:41, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Now, having reviewed the diff you provided, Iridescent, I don't see what I should strike, if anything. Could you be more specific? Or perhaps did you misjudge what was going on? --Abd (talk) 18:44, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

I don't think you've been careful at all Abd. The part that was saying "my administrative future" was in a direct quote, bluelinked that the IP likely copy/pasted from a discussion. You have developed a strong aversion to anything related to F-day (likely rightfully), to such a degree that other things start looking like F-day in your mind when they are so obviously not F-day related. Fritzpoll posted a wikibreak template out of exasperation in regards to your incessant, long posts, and therefore, he's F-day? I feel for you, buddy. F-day has seriously affected your ability to reason, and that is completely unfair to you. Go back and reread your posts on AN and honestly state that your attempts to defame an administrator are not just another case of deflection (see above regarding SDJ). I'm courting the idea of a block simply to get you to stop posting anywhere outside of your talkpage to curb the disruption and help you get the story right, on your talkpage. Keeper ǀ 76 18:47, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Agreed, this is a spectacular demonstration of bad faith, and given my generally high opinion of your "clue" factor, a chronic lapse of judgement on your part. Orderinchaos 18:56, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

What they said. It looks to me like the only one who's "misjudged what was going on" here is you. – iridescent 19:27, 11 August 2008 (UTC

Ah, they rush in to grab the Tar baby. I wrote this before I was interrupted by RL, so all what is below came down in the interim. I'm going to look around and see what's been happening, but ... I'll summarize this: so far, there is sufficient evidence to file a checkuser request for Fritzpoll as a sock of Fredrick day. Would you folks prefer that I do this privately, or with a formal, public request? If you think otherwise, that there is no basis, I'd say that you don't understand the situation, which might be remedied if you read what I wrote:

(unindented)(edit conflict) Good point, Keeper76. From the beginning of this latest twist, from the IP edit, I've claimed that this could be Fredrick day (not necessarily Fritzpoll) attempting to make trouble for me. "Obsessed with Fredrick day"? Come on! I wasn't thinking about Fredrick day and I wasn't pursuing Fredrick day and I had no suspicion that Fd was involved here. Until he posted. A million to one, the 87.114 IP is Fredrick day, from the convergence of IP and topic. However, let's look at this. It's not quite what Keeper76 thinks, though the error is understandable, I made some kind of mistake in copying the diff. Here is the wikitext, 87.114 wrote:

::goes beyond that doesn't it? . --] (]) 17:14, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

The "my 'administrative future'" comment was manually supplied by 87.114. The original text, which is on my Talk page, not on the page blued -- i.e, I wasn't harassing Fritzpoll with this, he had no obligation to read it, unless he thought it might be cogent -- was this: This comment is long, Fritzpoll, but I assure you, you can read it, even carefully, in less time than it took me to write it. It's important. Your administrative future may depend on it.

No, 87.114 was not quoting "my." He was quoting, as is plain from his correct use of quotation marks, "adminstrative future." He supplied the "my." We still have no proof that Fritzpoll is Fredrick day, merely enough suspicion for an SSP report and checkuser. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it. I have seen no evidence or credible charges -- no charges at all, in fact, -- that Fritzpoll is a disruptive editor, so there is no emergency. Let's let this unravel a bit, everybody calm down, please, okay?

Darn it! I thought I might get a break! I'm utterly unafraid of being blocked, and always assume that what happens to me is for the best. I respond to warnings -- carefully! -- because that's the right thing to do, not out of fear. Sure, I've been warned plenty of times. Look at the outcomes. There is one warning that, had I continued the behavior, I'd have been blocked. I still would argue that what I was doing was correct, but clearly, also, the community did not accept that argument, and I was warned by an administrator -- ArbComm member, actually -- whom I respected greatly, one of the dear departed, Newyorkbrad. In any case, I stopped. Immediately, while I sorted it out. WP:IAR requires that I follow my own lights, moving beyond warnings by editors who may be biased. I follow guidelines, generally, unless I see the spirit or intention of the community beyond the guidelines as requiring something else, that's the meaning of WP:IAR, which also requires, by the way, an administrator who thinks I've erred in a damaging way, and that am likely to continue to err, to block me, which is a reversible action, it's not the end of the world, and all I've been saying is: "Be careful!" Not only with me, but with everyone. I don't mind it, but some editors are driven away by a single block, and, in fact, a long-time administrator bailed from a single improper block. See User:Ta bu shi da yu. I've done my homework, folks. When I write a long post, I'm not just writing for the hell of it, I have something to say. Read it or don't, it's up to you, usually. I'm not an administrator. I can't block you even if I wanted to, which I don't. (As an administrator, I'd have different duties, I might be obligated to block, sometimes, though I doubt I'd be looking to find those situations, and I'd like to help make AN/I more functional, in which case we might even need fewer administrators, though continued growth could erase that benefit fairly quickly.) And now, back to this wikidrama brought here by our eager beavers:--Abd (talk) 20:18, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure how to respond to this. First, what was my "good point"? The last thing I said was I should block you, but I made several points. You are still clearly not understanding your misunderstanding. The IP did a copy paste from Fritzpoll's page, not from your page. Sorry if I wasn't clear. On Fritzpoll's page, he wrote .....my 'administrative privileges'. In fact he wrote the entire sentence that the IP bluelinked and copied at ANI. Here's the diff. You are completely out of bounds Abd. You also, above put "obsessed with Fredrickday" in quotation marks above. I never said that. In fact, I said I felt bad for you, both here, and on other pages. F-day has appeared on my talk page twice today, both times blocked for block evasion (by someone else). You are completely being misled by your own past experiences. You have this one wrong, and you should apologize to Fritzpoll, and retract your comments and unfounded suspicions. Completely. Keeper ǀ 76 20:59, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Abd, I have already asked advice regarding a checkuser, but been advised that insufficient evidence exists for one to be undertaken to prove to you that I am not this other user. Incidentally, the quote where you're picking over the pronoun usage is taken fro my talkpage where I respond to your confusion over my break. If you are to make an accusation, please make one, else retract the implicit accusation you make by insinuation - is that unreasonable? Fritzpoll (talk) 20:27, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Agreed. The accusations of sock puppetry are serious and should not be brought up lightly without solid evidence to affirm them. Without such corrobarating evidence, they should be withdrawn. In addition, these accusations do little to progress any of the core issues to a resolution. Gazimoff 19:34, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Note. The IP, above and at ANI, has admitted both on Fritzpoll's talkpage, and on my talkpage, to being Fredrick Day, and has agreed not to interfere with this going forward, an assertion I choose to believe to be true. Moving along, Abd - it is strongly advised that you make some sort of atonement on ANI for acting/reacting too quickly to an obvious attempt to bait you by a former (and apparently current) adversary. Keeper ǀ 76 19:49, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Fritzpoll and I appear to have received the same information. Checkuser will decline to act if evidence does not exist to link the two, which is the case in this instance. It's not a tool to "answer community questions", and your suggestion above that it should be used that way is quite bizarre considering it is basically a sanctioned invasion of privacy and should not be used frivolously - hence why there are so many limits on checkusers, and a checkuser ombudsman to examine use of the tool, and so on. I tend to work by the "strong allegations require strong evidence" approach, and allegations of this nature are poisonous to the editing environment. Orderinchaos 20:33, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

One precious half hour to devote to Misplaced Pages today, and for some stupid bizarre reason, I chose to look into this kerfluffle on WP:AN. Abd, you're confused in your post above. Frederick Day is exactly quoting Fritzpoll; he did not add the "my". Follow Day's blue link to Fritzpoll's post on his own talk page, and look at the 6th paragraph. It says exactly, to the letter, what Fritzpoll said. Day did not add the quotation marks, he did not add the "my". Of course, Fritzpoll could be Frederick Day. So could I. So could Keeper. So could you. All four possibilities have roughly the same likelihood. The only difference is, you've publicly accused Fritzpoll (in particular, look again at your edit summary of your last post at WP:AN, where you start theorizing on how Frederick Day got caught). I think an apology is in order. --barneca (talk) 20:42, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Also, Since CBW was kind enough to create this for me a little while ago, I'll direct your attention to the following blue link: Misplaced Pages:When multiple people are saying you did something wrong and nobody is agreeing with you there is a very good chance that you are wrong. --barneca (talk) 20:51, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Yes, very good advice. Thanks. However, that's not the end of it. Sometimes a lone voice, crying in the wilderness, is the only one who sees what is going on. I do not assume that I'm right. Rather, I assume that if I see something, and I describe what I see, my friends will correct my errors. So, friends, thanks for being alert! I assure you all that I am reviewing everything said here, and carefully. Barneca, above, may have identified an error, though it may still be merely an alternate interpretation, and, so far, I'll stick with the interpretation that the edit raises sufficient suspicion for checkuser, and I have been very, very clear that Fritzpoll may not be Fredrick day, I have never made an unconditional "accusation." I do theorize, there at AN, that if Fritzpoll is Fredrick day, then it explains certain things. If I overlooked specifying the circumstances, or, indeed, if I'm requested to strike something there, and I agree that it's marginal, or just plain wrong, I'll fix it or strike it, upon request here. Otherwise, couldn't I be accused of stirring up more shit? I've got, how many administrators, yelling at me here? On the other hand, look at Elonka.... Perhaps we should start the Tar baby club. It will all come out in the end, I'm sure. It doesn't even depend on me, it only depends on time.--Abd (talk) 22:09, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

I'm about to block

Having been asked to look at this, owing to a gaping lack of contributions in the article space along with these unbelievably long and time wasting posts which have nothing meaningful to do with writing articles (but do make groundless claims of sockpuppetry), unless I hear otherwise, in a few hours hours I will block this user for disruption indefinitely, mostly to keep him away from user and project spaces other than this page. Please everyone, do let me have your thoughts. Gwen Gale (talk) 21:04, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

I've been having several conversations with and in regard to Abd and the surrounding issues, and right now, I would not support a block. Abd does need to promptly (and if I dare ask, succinctly and without caveats or reservations) offer an apology to Fritzpoll. Keeper ǀ 76 21:08, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

:(e/c with the everpresent Keeper) The "please do let me have your thoughts" above was probably directed at Abd, but since I'm here, snooping: I would be inclined, instead, to see how he reacts to the torrent of advice he's received from multiple people today. As far as I know, he's only been made aware in a serious way that he's flirting with disruption starting today (although if I missed something previous, please correct me).--barneca (talk) 21:10, 11 August 2008 (UTC) See below --barneca (talk) 22:16, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

I meant "everyone" and have fixed the text to make that clear. Gwen Gale (talk) 21:12, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

I'd probably agree with Keeper here. I'd like to see what the response is before making any further decision.Gazimoff 21:21, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Let's wait then. Thanks for commenting so quickly. Gwen Gale (talk) 21:20, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Is this the response? Gwen Gale (talk) 21:24, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

(posted before xeno, below, and indenting)No, that's not the response. Abd is very good at responding where most appropriate. He probably started typing that long before you posted here, and is just now getting your (and the subsequent) messages. At least, that's what my AGF-ing tells me. He'll respond here, if precedences is anything. Keeper ǀ 76 21:31, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, Keeper76, a whiff of fresh air. Yes, I didn't see Gwen Gales' comment here before posting. I now see a number of administrators requesting that I refrain from further action. Since I see no urgency today, I suspect that Wilhelmina Will will be able to survive another day -- and indeed, since she has been gone for a week and may now be creating articles, they will be fresh and ready for DYK nomination, should that be appropriate, she may need some help with that, so I conclude that it's fine for me to take a little break. However, I do notice stuff, and I understand far more about Fredrick day and who might be him and not -- I identified User:Allemandtando as Fredrick day, confirmed by checkuser, when people were screaming that my SSP report was just more tendentious bullshit -- but, let me tell you all, that when an edit appeared from known Fd IP referring to "my" administrative position (i.e, Fritzpoll's), it bowled me over. I not only never suspected it, but didn't see an Fd pattern. Until one more thing happened. If Fd thinks I'm on to him, if he's made an error that will expose him, or thinks he has, he has a tendency to bail. He doesn't fight to the end, once the writing on the wall is clear. Now, there was no writing on the wall, here. But Fredrick day isn't rational, necessarily. He thinks I'm obsessed with him, plotting how to figure out who he is. And so, when I began to negotiate with Fritzpoll -- and that's all I did, really, except some isolated mentions elsewhere, where I thought it might do some good -- Fd may have thought that I was onto him.

But, please note: this is merely a theory. There is an alternate theory: Fredrick day pretended to be Fritzpoll (or, more remotely, the edit was some weird slip, but Fritzpoll still isn't Fd), just to stir the pot. So it's not proven without checkuser or other evidence. The only evidence I have is the IP edit saying "my" referring to Fritzpoll, which is enough for checkuser, should anyone want to go there, and the sudden, unexpected bailout, which is also Fd habit. The latter is merely a small additional ground for suspicion, it would mean nothing by itself. Others bail out as well.

I may continue to discuss this on my Talk page, where I think appropriate, but have no intention of bringing it up elsewhere, and I've probably said enough at the current AN report. I might make a brief comment that if anyone has questions about what I've written, to come to my Talk page. I'll respond directly to Gwen Gale in a later edit, I intend. I need to look around a little. --Abd (talk) 21:59, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

You still don't get it, do you? Fritzpoll is not Frederick day, F.d. is not pretending to be Fritzpoll; you have made the whole thing up and are still – after at least five warnings – throwing your fabricated accusation about. – iridescent 22:04, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

I don't understand this comment. The IP pretty much admitted on Fritzpoll's talk page to being Frederick Day. And the IP's ANI comment certainly appeared to be impersonating Fritzpoll.] Abd was obviously incorrect about Fritzpoll being Frederick Day, but he certainly had reason for suspicion, as the F.D. did make a post that (intentionally or not) was made to seem to be coming from Fritzpoll. Rlendog (talk) 00:30, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Should anyone really be expected to read nearly 11,000 characters? The meaning of TL;DR is clearly lost on this user and he's STILL making fairly overt accusations of sockpuppetry. I'll admit my mainspace contributions are fairly thin myself, but for goodness sakes, expend some of this energy building the mainspace. We've got far more effective "champions of the underdog", heck, Gwen, you are one of them from time to time. As far as I'm concerned, Abd is hurting, not helping the people whose causes he takes up. –xeno (talk) 21:27, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

I consider that not only does this prove Abd hasn't taken any of the criticism on board (a post longer than the average policy page, which reads like a particularly dull Misplaced Pages Review thread and at no point says "I was wrong"), but that this a clear personal attack on Fritzpoll. Since as far as I can tell this editor has virtually no non-COI mainspace edits, can anyone stalking this page give any good reason not to indefblock? – iridescent 21:34, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

On general principle, blocking because of too much meta-discussion is not something I like. Feedback about Misplaced Pages should be welcome (in appropriate namespaces, of course.) So, if a block is to be made, be sure to carefully explain the justification for it. Hopefully, "too much metadiscussion" won't be part of that justification. That said, I've previously found Abd's posts to be longwinded and unhelpful, sometimes even bizarre. But, my solution to this is for me to not pay attention to them, rather than to block. Your mileage may vary. Friday (talk) 21:37, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

I do agree with Friday about not paying attention (if one can). Took me a minute to read. Seemed like forever because instead of using diffs to rehash, he paraphrases, which makes it almost useless, then he makes the sockpuppet claim again, after he'd been asked to take it back. I'd like input again please, because I'm ready to block again. Gwen Gale (talk) 21:38, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

I've responded at ANI to the latest long post. Still waitinig for Abd to formulate a reply here (hopefully a cogent, succinct, and readable reply - consider that a challenge of sorts, abd?) before I decide to follow Gwen's or Friday's advice. Keeper ǀ 76 21:41, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Abd, you say above "there is no urgency today". Yes, there is; you've accused an editor of being a banned user based on... well... if you'd bother to read what people are telling you, nothing. You can't just leave that hanging for a couple of days while you look into it. Looking into it is what you do first. Putting myself in Fritzpoll's shoes, if someone accused me of being a banned user, and never retracted it, and there were no consequences for the unsubstantiated accusation, I'd probably leave for a while, too. I'm no longer opposed to a block. --barneca (talk) 22:16, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Well, it's moot now. I went to Fritzpoll's Talk page to apologize -- for what I can apologize for, I clearly made an error in analyzing the Fd IP edit, but saw that I was blocked. However, something puzzles me, still. Fd has been known to set traps, and that certainly looks like one in retrospect. I actually looked at the original Fritzpoll diff three times before I saw the coincident text, and the way the post was put up did make it look like the "my" had been inserted by Fd. (But as I stated from the beginning, the whole appearance in AN of Fd could be a disruption, with Fritzpoll being totally innocent of connection.) And then there is now something else. I won't go there yet, but ... checkuser will probably be the best way to clear it up. I'll deal with the block separately. I would rather, though, watch for comment from others before I request unblock. I will request it, because that's proper procedure, but not yet. I had already stated that I was going to post only here for a while, so ... the block was improper, because it prevented nothing. So let's see where this goes. --Abd (talk) 22:27, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

The block is very proper, before you start conjuring up your rebuttal. It was set to prevent you from continuing to debase a fine editor (I'm purposefully not saying admin, because that is what is a moot point). Even here, where you say "I was about to go apologize to Fritzpoll", you still find a way to continue to back up your baseless accusation and irrational thought process. Again, I feel bad for you, Abd, I really do. That IP showed up at exactly the worst time possible, and completely derailed an otherwise solvable dispute. It does seem, if I were to assume bad faith, to be rather "convenient" of you to say in so many words, 'well, if I weren't blocked, I was gonna apologize'. You had ample opportunity to apologize, but instead, left diatribes both at ANi and here, continuing the same insinuations. Again, unfortunate, as I know how F-day knows how to find your buttons and push them with a jackhammer. I endorse the block, and endorse the wording of it as well. It is indefinite in the sense that things need to be resolved before you are unblocked. That is not an improbable conclusion by the way. I will unblock you myself if I feel that you will be productive to the community. Say what you want, and here. If anything, I'm glad I only have to look here for the next few days. Keeper ǀ 76 22:33, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

But, of course, you wouldn't say such a thing about what I said about what I was doing. I'd testify to it in a court of law, actually, but that doesn't matter, I can't prove it, except that the timing works. I made a partial retraction here, acknowledging the error about what was quoted and what was inserted, and I'm still a bit confused about what actually happened there, but I assume it will get sorted out, and then I realized that the most urgent thing was to apologize to Fritzpoll, because of the error I had indeed made, but I couldn't do that. Let me repeat this: what I saw was an edit made by Fredrick day. There was no error about this. That edit referred to "my 'administrative....'" That is, the word "administrative" was in quotes and my preceded it. Fd did not state that he was quoting the whole thing, and when I looked at it -- it was a relatively long response by Fritzpoll -- I missed the exact quotation. So, on its face, it looked like Fredrick day had perhaps slipped and said "my" and forgot he wasn't logged in. In hindsight that interpretation is weak, but I did see it as a possibility. I also saw other possibilities, and was explicit that this could just be Fd stirring up shit. (Which is, in fact, how Keeper76 has interpreted the affair.) Because of that appearance, the suspicion that Fritzpoll was Fredrick day was stronger than it might otherwise be, much stronger. I have said that I'm not yet satisfied that all such suspicion should be dismissed, and that's a simple truth. But certainly I should have apologized to Fritzpoll and explained that I wasn't accusing him of being a sock of Fredrick day. Rather, the situation was that Fredrick day had -- in my possibly incorrect interpretation -- claimed to be him. And what do we do when that happens?

But, take away my error. The post is as we now know it to be, an exact quote. So? Fd posted a post that appears to be a claim that he is Fritzpoll. The situation really hasn't changed. Fd plays games like this. Allemandtando was blocked because Fd insisted that I essentially "put up or shut up." He didn't care. He will toss an account, he loses nothing; but, in favor of an interpretation that it was pure disruption, and that Fritzpoll is totally innocent, I don't think that Fd would deliberately risk an asset like Fritzpoll, though there are other considerations I can't disclose at this time. It's possible. Just seems pretty unlikely.

None of this would be a threat to Fritzpoll unless he's Fredrick day. The chances that he's editing from Fd IP is extraordinarily low. (He has written something like "what if it's my IP?" That comment, in fact, is one reason why still have some worry about this. That is exactly what Fd might say.) Is he in London? If so, the risk gets higher. However, nothing would be automatic if it turned out that his IP were the same as Fd. As I mentioned again and again, Fritzpoll was not a disruptive editor, I simply disagreed with one action he took and was pursuing WP:DR with him (I did not take this matter to AN), and he could have stopped that at any point and, if I didn't agree with him by then, it would have been on me to take DR to the next stage. So the idea that I was harassing Fritzpoll, which got tossed into the mix here, is preposterous. Fritzpoll is an administrator, his skin became astonishingly thin over this. I never attacked him, but his responses did call into question, for me, his administrative competence, for reasons which will come out if it is made necessary, but process resulting from that would be way down the line, if ever, and he'd have plenty of time to amend any problems or find confirmation from the community. I simply wrote about it, civilly, on my Talk page. --Abd (talk) 00:42, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Not sure what your other considerations are that make you think that I'm a sock still, but if you let us know, we'll tell Thatcher, who's been pretty emphatic on this point Fritzpoll (talk) 00:50, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

(e/c response to Abd). Your latest rant (and yes, at this point, it appears to be nothing short of a rant) does nothing to assuage the concerns about you, and about your use of your "anyone can edit" account. I realize you have "fans", and I fully expect them to contribute here. But for you to continue to malign an admin, and a quality editor, such as Fritzpoll, with your "continued doubts", is beyond the pale. I'm at a loss, frankly. This has absolutely nothing to do with Wilhemina Will. You've never called Fritz a "disruptive editor", I agree. You've also never claimed him to be a sock of your long time adversary, F-day. Until it became convenient to do so. I'm beyond good faith at this point. You are clearly flailing at this point, in my eyes, to restore some semblance of respectability on-wiki. I'm very glad for Iridesecent's block, I'll reiterate once again, if only to confine you to this particular talkpage with your ramblings. You just don't seem to get it. You continually cite your extensive DR experience, your off-wiki experience, and yet here we are. You are the common denominator, Abd. You have added your "2 cents" in too many places, and instead of affecting chage, you have done nonthing other than "show your hand". Again, I'll state, life is too short for your ramblings, you've completely mischaracterized and misjudged this community of NPOV article builders. At the moment, I personally don't feel that your presence is welcome here. Keeper ǀ 76 00:59, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Enough is enough

Abd, this whole affair (at least, the final straw of the F-day accusations) was a misunderstanding. You misinterpretted the IP's post as being a "quote" from your page, when in fact, it was a "direct quote" from Fritzpoll's page. All you had to do was say "oops, I screwed that up, I retract sockpuppetry accusations". You fell into F-day's trap. He was obviously reading ani, probably following your contribs, saw that part(s) of the community were having a "beef" with your contribs, and threw his 2 cents in. You took the bait, and refust to back off of it. The quote from the IP (the one that had you responde, at first with "Holy Shit!"), was a direct copy/paste from Fritzpoll's talkpage. It was not Fritzpoll. I endorse, based on your reply and continued, baseless defense of your suspicions, the indef block. Keeper ǀ 76 22:18, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Actually, Keeper76, I responded, above, with an acknowledgment of the error, immediately upon Barneca's much clearer explanation of it, and then promptly went to Fritzpolls' Talk page to make a brief apology when I saw that I was blocked. I saw the block when I opened the edit window. I was worrying over whether I should even post there, however, it was now moot. I came back, and saw that there was no block notice yet, so it all happened pretty quickly. What, exactly, was the emergency? Sort it out, guys, I'll be watching. Someone else's turn to defend me. If anyone is up to it. I'm going to do what I said I'd do, look around, and since I'd stated I wasn't going to edit outside of Talk, with anything related to this, the only thing the block does, in the near future, is to prevent me from helping User:Wilhelmina Will with possible DYK nominations, and I think someone else is likely to do that, at least I hope so. I agree, it was likely an Fd trap, he's known for this, but I wasn't the only one caught by it. Rather, it ensnared a hair-trigger administrator, who, if inclined to make this mistake now made with me, probably makes it with others, thus some benefit may come out of this. I had already agreed to stop posting outside of my Talk with anything related to this, when I was blocked. So, obviously, I was blocked for what I was writing on my Talk page, partly in response to Iridescent, the blocking admin. No, no, no, Iridescent, I wrote in a block summary that you'd made me happy, I'll explain that later, but it would not make me happy to see you hauled before ArbComm for this, so consider carefully if and when you are asked to permit my unblock. I'm not asking yet, though someone else possibly will. Relax. Make the right decision. Take the time to get it right. No rush. --Abd (talk) 22:41, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

(ec)Yes, you were on your talk page, but you continued to make overt accusations of sockpuppetry against Friztpoll. And even as you've yet to retract and apologize for your false statements about Fritzpoll, you're onto making idle threats at iridescent. –xeno (talk) 22:47, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

I've asked for clarification. What false statements? I never wrote that Fritzpoll was Fredrick day, if I did, it was an error, but I don't think I did that, and I asked previously for clarification on this, precisely so that I could fix it if I made a mistake. It was not provided. I made no accusation of sock puppetry against Fritzpoll. I noted that reasonable suspicion was raised, and I think that this will withstand review by ArbComm, should it come to that, which I doubt. Reasonable suspicion was raised, and, indeed, has not been totally dispelled, unfortunately, but, rather obviously, I'm not the one to currently be concerned about it. I'm simply continuing to explain my actions, what I know and what I've seen, here on my Talk page. As to "idle threats" at iridescent, I warn, I don't threaten, because I'm not trying to coerce. How could I make "threats"? If I tried to harm him, I'd be slapped down. However, I warn about what I see as possible as a community response, when the community is sufficiently aroused. A bad block can sometimes lead to desysopping, so I urged him to be careful, as I continue to do. Again, if there is something wrong with this, it will probably need explanation. I'm not sure why I'm even writing this, here. Sometimes I incorrectly believe, perhaps, that every error requires an answer. Still, it's my Talk, until and unless I'm blocked from editing it. I haven't "attacked" anyone here, within the meaning of WP:NPA. There are plenty of administrators I trust who will, I'm sure, explain it to me, here or in email, if I'm wrong. So, I get to find out how Misplaced Pages works when I'm not part of the debate. It's an opportunity. --Abd (talk) 23:13, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Are you honestly calling an admin, Iridescent, someone with 70,000 plus edits, years of experience, and a solid reputation, a "hair trigger administrator"??? How deep are you going to dig with your baseless accusations, subtle but obvious threats of pending doom (arbcomm)? You need to go away for a while, come back. Revisit your posts. You have no base here. You took on too many causes, with too many posts, and with too many inaccuracies. Your admitted adversary, this mysterious Fredrick day, pounced at the exact (wrong or right, depending on who's looking) time and led to your block. I'm exasperated by you, Abd. You are clouded by your own sense of superiority and "I know what's best for Misplaced Pages". Says who? You? Your threats against Iridescent hold absolutely zero merit. I'm done feeling sorry for you. Keeper ǀ 76 22:49, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

I am prepared to reduce to time served, unless there is consensus at AN/I otherwise. I do not think there was any bad faith editing involved though there may have been mistakes of judgment. How do you want to handle this , Iridescent, take it back to AN/I? I think you've over-reacted DGG (talk) 23:06, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Iridescent did not overreact, and explicitly stated that "indef" does not mean "forever", but merely "the time is unknown". I don't see how that is an overreaction. Bringing it to ANI (which to me, is bringing a match over to a pile of gas-laced kindling) seems unnecessary at this point, especially because Abd cannot present a case there. Pleae leave it here, DGG. Abd is able to edit here, I've personally said I will unblock if necessary or warranted. Please see both sides of this, and not merely the side that you by precedence agree with. Thanks, Keeper ǀ 76 23:09, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Let me also add, of course there aren't any "bad faith editing" issues involved. Abd doesn't edit the encyclopedia, but seems overly focused on the meta-side of things. Blocks do not only arise out of adding xxxx is teh gay, lol to articles, but can also arise out of over-posting to talk:/wiki:/wikitalk/ pages. I'm not the best, personally, at focusing on the encyclopedia, a fact I readily admit, which makes, hopefully, my charge even more effective in its truth. There are links that show very explicitly exactly what Abd is here for, and what he is not. Keeper ǀ 76 23:13, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

(ec) Dear Abd, I'm dismayed to see that you've been blocked. I've found some of your posts very apt and just recently posted a quote by you close to the top of my userpage. Abd and everyone else, please have a cup of tea and take some time to relax. Abd, you might just possibly find something helpful in my essays Advice for people making unblock requests (first paragraph) or Techniques for handling emotions when editing, or the how-to guide Guide to appealing blocks. I don't know the details of the above situation but it sounds to me as if really it's all pretty much already resolved and everybody just needs to stay calm, act slowly and deliberately and avoid making things worse.
Keeper, re "You are clouded by your own sense of superiority": Let's be gentle now: / Comment on the editor / Only when it's nice. ☺ Coppertwig (talk) 23:17, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

The only assumption you've made (perhaps caused by what you call not "knowing the details of the above situation"}, is just how completely and exactly callm I personally am. I actually believe that Abd is also calm at the moment, and Iridescent as well. I've personally done nothing but "slowly and deliberately" posted here, or anywhere, regarding this issue. If only Abd would see the issue, and not merely try to deflect or wikilawyer his way away from it. Sigh. Even within the last month, I've posted to Abd myself, letting him know that I understand him and find him useful. He seems to have gone "off his rocker" this time though. I'm at a loss as to how to continue at this point. I endorse the block, if only to simply confine Abd to this page so everything can be sorted out, everyone can shake hands, and everyone can sing Kumbaya around a campfire. I'm exasperated, but not defeated or defeatist regarding this issue, and this editor. Keeper ǀ 76 23:24, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Implication seen:
You assumed I had assumed.
No assumptions made.

☺ Coppertwig (talk) 01:57, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Iridescent, please provide diffs for the "repeated posting of untrue attacks on another editor," after warnings, on which you apparently based your block. Thanks.

The block reason that appears when I try to edit shows ""Indefinite" as in "Unspecified", not "Forever". Repeated posting of untrue attacks on another editor after multiple warnings."

Please, would the blocking admin show diffs for a repeated posting of an "untrue attack," that is, presumably, multiple posts that are both attack and untrue. I made an error based on the plain appearance of an edit, on its face, and until it was better explained by Barneca, didn't understand the basis for an objection that had been raised, but since I believe I always made it clear that Fritzpoll could easily not be Fredrick day, the only "error" was a misinterpretation of a post by Fredrick day that would not, by itself, prove that Fritzpoll was Fredrick day, the most it could do was raise some suspicion, quite the same as if Fredrick day had said, "I'm Fritzpoll." It would raise suspicion, but certainly not be proof. So: could Iridescent provide diffs of "repeated posting of untrue attacks after multiple warnings."? Yes, I was warned, I waive consideration of that, though I think I did ask for specifics and don't recall them being provided. But sometimes I'm a bit dotty. I'm asking for specifics now. That's the first tangled thread to be unraveled: what did I actually do? When I know what I did, I can then determine if I should apologize, request unblock, email other admins, write ArbComm, or what. It will also simplify further process, since there will be something specific to review. Thanks.

Note:I'm specifically asking Iridescent for this. Procedurally, that's important.--Abd (talk) 23:01, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Iridescent will reply, I'm confident, but first, I must ask, do you honestly feel that your block has only to do with a "misinterpretation" of an IP post? Really? This whole thread started with a "warning" about a block, only later did the IP, and the repeated assertions towards your better senses, come into play. If you seriously think that anyway will take this one infraction, as a stand alone, as the reason for your block, then you are the ultimate in the field of wikilawyering. Keeper ǀ 76 23:04, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Abd, if you're this uncertain about things you yourself have said, maybe you should slow down and think more before writing. Friday (talk) 23:07, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

I've seen a lot of bad blocks, intervened with a few, and watched quite a bit of ArbComm review of same. Blocks are preventative, never punitive, and I had stated I wasn't going to continue with posts outside my Talk. Yes, it's true, there are a series of "infractions," and they go back for many months, and they include, for example, my challenge of a block made by Jehochman, which we were able to resolve in a friendly manner. They include other issues between me and adminstrators who have become involved here. Iridescent's behavior did not, shall we say, impress me as worthy of an administrator, a good administrator knows how to defuse problems, not to inflame them. Want to see what a good administrator would do? Look at Carcharoth's actions today. I finally saw what he had written on Fritzpoll's Talk when I went there to apologize for my error, and it was excellent.

Yes, I'm sometimes unsure about what I've done or said. You get to do that when you are 64. Unfortunately, I already put way too much time into writing. When I see the actual wrong things I supposedly said, I'll know better. Are you claiming that it doesn't make any difference? Yes, there was a misinterpretation of an IP post, and it looks to me like the post was a setup for exactly that misinterpretation. However, I didn't actually "fall for it," except in a minor way. I refused to actually accuse Fritzpoll of being Fredrick day, I repeatedly stated that Fritzpoll was not a disruptive editor and I only had a problem with one action of his, that the idea he might be Fredrick day was astonishing to me, and I was very, very careful to repeat, numerous times, that the whole thing could be an Fd trick. So? What did I do?

Might be worth looking at User:Abd/Rule 0 again. I've seen these kind of arguments before, Keeper76. They come up when admins want to block someone, but need to figure out a reason. This affair has, so far, to me, all the signs of that. It's fine with me. I don't need to be able to edit Misplaced Pages to prepare an ArbComm case, if that's what it comes to. Obviously, that's not the first step, far from it. But I am always considering that ArbComm is looking over my shoulder, because they might be, later. I am really, really interested to see what happens now.

My daughter is possibly named after Birtukan Mideksa, who, when we adopted our daughter, was in prison in Ethiopia. My kids wanted to know if Birtukan had done anything wrong. "No, I explained, sometimes good people are in prison because they stand up for what is right." Well, I'm under Talk page arrest at this point, so to speak. I'll take good advantage of the opportunity, as did Birtukan. --Abd (talk) 23:41, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

How on earth was harassing an editor off the encyclopaedia "standing up for what is right"? Orderinchaos 00:32, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

It wouldn't be. But I did not do that. I did not harass Fritzpoll, I asked him about an AN/I poll and his actions with respect to it, he never asked me to stop. I responded to him on my Talk page, and also to an AN report that he filed which mentioned me. This is far, far from harassment. He never claimed harassment, to my knowledge, until abruptly, at the end. His "leaving" -- which was astonishing to me and totally unexpected and unexplained (except through the Fd hypothesis, which does explain it, but that's another story, it proves nothing) -- may not be final, and I see no reason why it should be. However, it might point out this justice in this: I was not harassing him, but he may have felt harassed. Now, what about Wilhelmina Will? How did she feel? She was harassed, that became obvious, dragged before AN/I over matters that would ordinarily be resolved quite short of that. And Fritzpoll wasn't a help with this, and may have been part of the problem. Nevertheless, it was not my intention to cause him grief, and my next step, since it seemed that the AN report was winding down, would probably have been to go to AN/I with an unban request on WW, succinctly written -- please remember, I didn't start the process at AN, and I was in explanatory, discursive mode -- because this (AN/I) would be simpler than other possible actions.--Abd (talk) 01:14, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Even this post contains subtle attacks on both Fritzpoll (in the parenthetical) and the ANI system. Keeper ǀ 76 01:10, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Mind you, one would have to block everybody if attacks on the AN/I system were a criteria :) Orderinchaos 17:45, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

OK, if you really insist:

Final warning to quit the personal attacks or be blocked

Personal attacks and evidence-free accusations of sockpuppetry by yourself against Fritzpoll following that warning and prior to your block: , , , , , , , ,

Seriously, we gave you way more leniency than we'd give someone without your history of potentially valid contributions. If you really think it's "abusive" to block you after that many attacks – not to mention seven warnings after your "final" warning (they're on your talk page – count 'em), than a site that runs on consensus and not who can complain the loudest is probably not the place for you. – iridescent 23:22, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, Iridescent. I will review that. Do you think I should attempt to discuss these with you, here, if I think your judgement incorrect as to what is an "attack" and "untrue"? Or should I reserve that for an unblock request? I'd rather resolve this with you before involving another admin. What do you think? Oh, by the way. I have about forty years of experience with true consensus organizations, and I always seek consensus. It's a process, though, not a fixed thing, and part of it is that participants are open about what they think and see and feel. But that's beside the point, here. I will simply note that I did respond to the warnings and stated that, essentially until the smoke cleared, I wasn't going to be editing in any controversial way outside my Talk, and I had no understanding, or warning, that my Talk page edits would be considered improper, and I believe I was careful even here in Talk. So in that sense I wasn't adequately warned, possibly. But I won't stand on that. I obviously knew that a block was imminent, I referred to it numerous times.--Abd (talk) 00:45, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Abd there are bounds beyond which trust begins to flake away. Gwen Gale (talk) 00:55, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

While the general meaning of this is simple, the specific meaning of it here may be one of those enduring mysteries to me. Or not. Why did Gwen Gale post this here? Does it refer to something I wrote immediately above? What is this supposed to accomplish? Mystery upon mystery. --Abd (talk) 01:09, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

I'm just guessing and I could be wrong, in which case I apologize to Gwen, but I think Gwen might possibly mean that she doesn't believe you when you say that you didn't know that posts to this talk page would be considered improper. ☺ Coppertwig (talk) 01:54, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Re your original question, I'm neither going to unblock you nor endorse any decision to leave you blocked. I am getting extremely irritated at being the subject of your sub-WR level conspiracy theory that, despite my never having heard of you before today, I somehow engineered this situation to give myself a pretext to block you; any decision I make regarding you, you'll no doubt either take as proof of my "bias" or as my "defeat", depending on how it suits your warped view of how this site operates. – iridescent 02:09, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Can someone please post a summary of what happened here?

I am not asking for much, just a paragraph or so, to give an overview of the main facts and, if possible, some pointers to the key places to review in order to familiarize one's self with the details of what lead up to the block here? I gather that it has something to do with accusations of sock puppetry and tricky IP addresses and whatever else, and that there may have been some sort of a trap involved? --GoRight (talk) 01:14, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

I'm afraid you'll have to look yourself, plenty of diffs are offered above. If I post here, or Iridescent, the accusation of bias is soon to follow. The same for if Abd posts. Do your own research, GoRight. Keeper ǀ 76 01:17, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

(edit conflict)

It's complicated, GoRight. To detail it, with diffs, would take quite a bit of time, and when I took shortcuts in some comments, and stated things that I could reasonably show evidence for, but without diffs, that was used against me, as if it were an offense. I wouldn't worry about it. Watch my Talk page, it helps to know that people are watching and care. However, if you are really interested, you would look here in my Talk (start with a post above from User:S. Dean Jameson), then review what happened with User:Blechnic above, then you could look at my edits to User talk:Fritzpoll, various pages referenced here in Talk, and then, an AN thread titled "Wilhelmina Will's DYK topic ban," filed by Fritzpoll, and you might need to look at various pages referenced in what I've described. Thanks. --Abd (talk) 01:26, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

(ec)I was not asking for diffs, I can find those myself, I was just asking for some meaningful place to begin. What you have provided is sufficient for now. Thanks. --GoRight (talk) 01:31, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

You really do feel that you are above reproach, don't you, Abd? Astounding. Upon looking back on my original post regarding this matter (not my original post to your talkpage, but my original post regarding this particular issue, the one where I list the several contentious issues that you've "involved" yourself in), I can't help but to feel sorry for you. You think that you have this community and its contributors right. You don't. You are so very far off, that it is actually comical. You need to understand, that I approached you, and the latest situation regarding another editor (Fritzpoll) with an open mind, and with complete respect towards you and your meta-logic. I even posted as much on your talkpage. You really have fallen off the deep end here though, Abd,. Keeper ǀ 76 01:36, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Some of Abd's attitude reminds me of User:Moulton. Not saying Abd is Moulton -at all-, just saying that he's slightly similar in his outlook on other editors/wiki. I can easily see why he interpreted the IP's edit the way he did, though. When I first looked at Abd's recent contribs a week or so ago I was amazed and reassured to see less mainspace contributions than me.:) Abd- if you still can't see whats wrong it's the constantly saying others, and individuals, admins are wrong, even to the extent of saying their actions might end up at arbcom. I can assure you IMHO a thing with an admin or any case at arbcom really is not that common. It certainly wouldn't happen because you personally and mostly you alone think they're wrong. I think you underestimate the extent to which others have a consensus in each situation. And you claim you know how to make a consensus, but 'threatening'- for want of a better word, that people's actions might lead to arbcom is not the way to go, when it wouldn't be interpreted that way by anyone else. And I'm a fine one to talk with this long post lol but concision is a virtue too. I say this to you as someone who considers you a wikifriend and can empathise somewhat with some of your perspectives, such as towards younger editors. Sticky Parkin 03:54, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Interesting comment from Fredrick day

Fredrick day wrote:

Actually that's not true (about me harassing him for months) - there was a gap of three months between fredrick day and my last account (Allemandtando) who pretty much just got on with editing - but since he looks for me everywhere, he got the account CU'd and that was that. I tried to run a good bluff on it but it failed. Since I've used pretty much every major ISP in the UK - he can point to literally any IP he encounters and keep me blocked forever - that's how it went down last time I went for an unblock - he just pointed to some vague IP edits that he could claim were me. I posted to AN because I'm familiar with his methods of dealing with people - the vague threats, the attempts to get over people to give warnings to people he is in dispute with etc. Sorry I forget the quote marks and dropped a bucket of additional shit on Fitzpoll's head. --87.114.149.224 (talk) 19:27, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Here, Fredrick day acknowledges that he "forget the quote marks," and thus takes responsibility for having "dropped a bucket of additional shit on "Fitzpoll's" head." In other words, he understood why I'd interpret it as I did. Fd does a better job than those who are supposed to be assuming good faith, here. Fd, if you read this, thanks. But no bucket of shit was dropped on Fritzpoll's head. Nothing happened to him. He could have remained entirely silent about the whole Fredrick day aspect of this, with no harm. H ecould have simply told me to bug off, I've made my decision, I'm done with this.

As Fd knows, it is impossible to fully disprove sock puppet allegations. Yet we must be free to report "suspected sock puppets," that's why we have WP:SSP. Making sock puppet allegations or raising suspicion without evidence is considered uncivil, but, in this case, the evidence was right there in front of us, immediately before my Holy Shit remark, on AN. I stated repeatedly that it wasn't proof, by any means, and never said "Fritzpoll is Fredrick day." Or anything equivalent to that, and I stated this before, here, and asked that if I'd erred and had, indeed, said that, would someone please point me to it so I could fix it. Nobody responded to that. Instead attention was focused on details of how I'd interpreted the message, whether it had been quoted or not, etc. The fact is that the message on its face appeared to be Fredrick day writing as if he thought he were logged in as Fritzpoll.

By the way, Fredrick day seems to have forgotten that he, as Allemandtando, demanded that I file an SSP report and checkuser on him. I wasn't harassing him, though he took a few minor actions of mine, certainly nothing continuous or rising to harassment, that way. I simply let him know, when AN/I was discussing blocking him -- I didn't start that -- and was wondering who the puppet master might be, that I suspected he could be Fd, but I also stated that there was not sufficient evidence to pursue it, and this comment seems to have contributed to the close of that AN/I report. Possibly, if I'd been aggressive, a lot of later grief could have been avoided. But that's a long story, for another time, another place. If ever. --Abd (talk) 01:46, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

I finally got around to reviewing what Fd had done today. Interesting. As part of that, I read what may have been one of the last comments I made at AN/I, and Fd's reply:. That comment certainly can be interpreted as a sock puppet allegation. If I had had time to review these edits, I'd probably have struck it or much of it, and I certainly apologize for the impression this may have created of a sock puppetry allegation. I did maintain the distinction between suspicion and allegation, and definitely avoided certainty, but it was stronger than I'm comfortable with, particularly after the problem with interpretation of the Fredrick day comment was pointed out. At the time that was written, I hadn't seen that the text was totally quoted, which weakens the interpretation I was placing on it. It doesn't destroy it, by the way, "weakens" was a word that was carefully chosen. And again and again, I've repeated, Fritzpoll wasn't under any hazard unless he happened to be Fredrick day, and even if, terrible luck, his IP was identical, nothing automatic would have happened, and it wouldn't be me that was "prosecuting." (Fritzpoll wasn't my interest, how Wilhelmina day was treated was. I'm now the second editor to be blocked over what happened to her, perhaps, eventually, someone else will look at this.) I've been actually accused of sock puppetry (and not just by Fredrick day!): standard advice re what to do about it: nothing. It is a charge that requires no action on the part of the suspected editor, nothing will happen, almost always, if there is no good proof. And fastest way to look guilty: vigorously defend yourself. Attack the one who mentions the suspicion. That's what real sock puppets do! Again, Fritzpoll was not some naive newbie, he's an administrator. I'd think he realize all this. So the whole affair leaves me with unresolved questions. (Fritzpoll did not attack me, by the way, I say this lest someone misinterpret this comment, it would be rude to interpret his "resignation" as some kind of passive-aggressive attack, I take it more simply, though it was certainly used as ammunition by others, including the posting of his "I won't be coming back" email here.) --Abd (talk) 02:10, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

To save you some time, did you check out the diff I cited above where Thatcher said there was no technical evidence that I am Fredrick Day, and circumstantial evidence that strongly indicates the contrary? Fritzpoll (talk) 02:16, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Jaw drops, eyes glaze. Gwen Gale (talk) 02:19, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks! Fritzpoll. Indeed that could save me a lot of time, and, no, I didn't see that edit. A lot of edits came fast and furious here, and apparently I missed a lot, I've been going back over what happened. I'll look and come back quickly. --Abd (talk) 02:28, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

You're welcome. I've also arranged to have a neutral administrator review the close of the WW case in full, as I suggested you try. With luck, the WW matter will be sorted by tomorrow, and hopefully without so much as a whimper at AN/I Fritzpoll (talk) 02:33, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Okay, here's the diff. Yes, I totally missed it. Having looked at Thatcher's edit, I now can resolve the remaining suspicions, there is no reason to continue to suspect Fritzpoll of being Fredrick day, and I apologize for any distress that the suspicion, raised by Fredrick day's "forget the quote marks" (see the beginning of this section), may have caused him. This has nothing to do with any unblock request that may be forthcoming, in my opinion, because, given what I'd seen, as has been confirmed by at least one other editor here, the suspicion was reasonable, and the most that I wanted was for checkuser to confirm or refute it, and apparently that was arranged by someone else. (I also missed other posts which were contiguous with this comment of Fritzpoll's, and I'd already been blocked by the time Fritzpoll commented here with what sealed the matter.) Fritzpoll is not Fredrick day, there is no reason to suspect it, there is plenty of room to consider that Fredrick day's clumsy intervention was simply that, as he acknowledges and apologizes for. Fritzpoll bears no responsibility for my block, here, I don't think he asked for it to happen, but I thank him for troubling to clue me in. I'd have eventually noticed it, but, as he suspected, he did indeed save me quite a bit of time, there is now one whole aspect of this that I can simply drop. --Abd (talk) 02:49, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

And from other aspects here, I can also, now, apologize for my thoughts, expressed above, calling into question Fritzpolls' competence as an administrator. I still think he made some mistakes, but.... what matters is what happens next, and it looks like he's properly handling it now. Now, we turn our attention to some other matters.... I see there is discussion of my block at AN, because that's where the Thatcher diff came from, and I can hope I'm still blocked so I'm not tempted to comment, it's getting late. Somebody let me know if I should make some noises. --Abd (talk) 02:57, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Discussion of my block at AN

I did look at the thing. My, what a tangled web! Lots of errors there, but.... I'm still blocked! Which means I won't waste more time tonight, I can turn of this computer and go to bed. No rush, folks, but ... be careful. The problems I've pointed to at AN/I have to do with people making snap judgments when there is no emergency, assuming good faith without verification when there is a conflict of testimony or a right to a presumption of innocence, that kind of stuff. (i.e., someone makes charges that an editor was engaged in massive copyvio, but does not provide one single diff, and then editors write, "assuming that the charges are true, and I see no reason to assume otherwise, ... sure, topic ban.")

There is no emergency that I'm aware of, here. So take your time, sort it out. And thanks to those who have been helpful here, starting with Fritzpoll, actually, last but not least, and many others who have expressed their support or who have helped me to recognize mistakes. With patience and time and wider understanding of basic policies (IAR, NPOV, AGF, etc.), and some work on structure to make it work better, we can make this a much better place. Good night. --Abd (talk) 03:09, 12 August 2008

There was quite a bit of discussion of what I'd done at AN last night, and, since I wasn't invited to the party, I'll make some comments here, under specific section headers. If anyone thinks that what I write here is worth taking there, they can do it, either by stating the relevant facts or ideas, or by transclusion. I actually prefer this kind of indirect communication, where what someone proposes is reviewed by others before going before a larger group. It is, in fact, the direction that Misplaced Pages would need to go to survive the challenges of scale. Motion and second, before debate is allowed, standard stuff. Later today or tonight, if I haven't been unblocked anyway, I plan to put together an unblock request. Before that template is completed, I may draft it here, and comment would be welcome before it is actually submitted. Thanks. --Abd (talk) 13:54, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Sticky Parkin's comment

Abd, your comments can sometimes be interpreted as patronizing. Saying others need to 'be careful' 'take your time, sort it out' 'lots of errors' and 'With patience and time and wider understanding of basic policies (IAR, NPOV, AGF, etc.), and some work on structure to make it work better, we can make this a much better place.' I say this while agreeing that the second half of the first paragraph, about WW, might well be true. I just think you could avoid appearing supercilious to other editors, then you'd rub along with them far better, if you see what I mean, and probably be more likely to achieve what you consider to be the best outcome in each situation. Sticky Parkin 04:09, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Sure, Sticky, they could be "interpreted" that way. However, "take your time, be careful," etc. was written to my friends as well as others. I write what I think, straight out, avoiding only what should properly be censored. The comment about wider understanding was a very general one, and I'll stand with this: understanding of these policies is often shallow, and it's important that it be deepened. We need better structure, AN/I has become seriously flawed.

It should be understood that I'm far from the first person with reform ideas to be blocked. (As I write this, I have no idea if the block has been lifted or not. In an email to a friend, an administrator, I wrote that I did not want "any special favors," because one way to gain some utility out of this is to explore what happens when one does not have administrative friends. While it's a bit frustrating that I saw plenty of uninformed comment in AN last night, and more than a little viciousness around this affair (and I also saw the community beginning to sort it out, as others picked up on threads of thought that I'd put up), I trust that the issue put in front of me is the one I should focus on. I'm pretty much helpless about that, by the way, it's extraordinarily difficult for me to do anything else, I have ADHD. It's a blessing and a curse, all wrapped up in one. Wouldn't trade it for anything, but... it does make it hard to get things done, because the new distraction comes along. It's been Misplaced Pages for the last year, at pretty high personal cost. I've done it, though, allowed myself to put in the thousands of hours involved (2000 or more) because I do support, strongly, the foundation concepts of Misplaced Pages. When I seriously began to read policies and guidelines a year ago -- before then, I was pretty clueless, took me quite a while to figure out how to sign Talk page edits -- I was struck by the often deep wisdom involved. And my specialty had become how large organizations can take advantage of small group dynamics, but maintain the facility of them when they become large. What I saw was (1) how Misplaced Pages worked, but, at the same time, (2) how it was breaking down, running, as it were, a pyramid scheme where it still attracted more new editors than it lost; the losses were accumulating, mostly invisibly, from the accumulation of small incidents. You should know the drill: person discovers that they can edit Misplaced Pages, they read and believe our slogans: Misplaced Pages, the sum of all human knowledge. Misplaced Pages, the encyclopedia that anyone can edit. That is way cool, they think. So they write an article about something that they know about, and they do their best. Not being familiar with the guidelines, they make mistakes. And what happens? That depends on who comes across the article. Very, very often, a speedy tag is dropped on the article and it is gone, quickly, before the editor who created it has any awareness and, in fact, if the editor did not register an account, they have no notice, no warning -- or, easily, they might not log in during the period involved. Whatever, eventually, they look for their article. It's gone, and very often they have no idea what happened, except for one thing, they know somebody deleted it. Now, this happens to experts, not just random people who don't know what they were writing about. I've talked to quite a few of them, encountered here and there, Misplaced Pages has a terrible reputation among experts, who, even when they become more sophisticated in Misplaced Pages procedure, may find it a brutal place.

Solutions have been proposed, many, in fact. But one of the problems is that our deliberative process, whereby we might be able to collectively examine what is going on, create and examine possible solutions, and choose between them, experimenting on this and that, has become almost paralyzed. It's difficult or impossible to describe Misplaced Pages with a single word, but the organizational technique here is probably most quickly summarized as anarchist. It deviates from that (and necessarily so) in two ways: we have stratified user privileges, so it is really only anarchist among the administrator community, to some extent ... but that's actually a detail, in theory any editor has the same privileges as an administrator, but not the buttons, but practice is sometimes different. We also have Foundation oversight (which includes the "God-King" who has little effect on day-to-day operation) and ArbComm, an appointed body, after election advice from the community, which functions more traditionally -- and usually much better, in terms of deliberative process). But it can be extraordinarily inefficient, sometimes combining the worst of both worlds: direct democracy/anarchy, small scale with heavy participation bias, and large-scale, with a great deal of noise.

There are traditional solutions, some of them known for hundreds of years and in common use, and modern ones such as Delegable proxy, see also Misplaced Pages:Delegable proxy. The proposal of DP here is actually an example of how it breaks down.

I write about what I see, what I understand, and sometimes what I propose. It gets some people seriously upset, it always has, I've been doing this for more than forty years (i.e., since I became an adult). In hindsight, looking back, I was not always right, but I was right more often than not, and I've been fortunate enough to have people come to me years later and say, "You know, we couldn't see it, but you were right." It's part of the mixed blessing of ADHD. It allows me to see things that others can't see, at least not yet, but at the same time, classically, it can cripple communication and has certain other negative effects. It's a bit like being an idiot savant. Because so much central processing power has been dedicated to a narrow area, other areas of activity suffer. Most people can understand me, when it's face, I think, because there is high-bandwidth stuff that happens nonverbally. It's more difficult in writing. Only a few really understand what I'm writing, much of the time. But those are the people I'm writing for. As to what's really important, only a handful have seen it, most of them only partially. But enough to know that what I see, and what I'm working for, will survive me. It really wasn't mine in the first place, aspects of what I've seen are popping up all over, independently invented, sometimes in substantial detail. There is a political party in Sweden that implemented one of the ideas, and it worked. Most of the concepts aren't actually new, they are merely put together in a different way than before. And that new way challenges our conceptions of how organizations work, and don't work.

And, it was predictable, I wrote about this extensively before I started to edit here, and it came to be known as the "Lomax effect." When there is an inequitable power structure, and a proposal is made to make it more equitable, those who have "excess power" will resist it, because they will correctly see it as threatening their own excess power, and, usually, they believe that goodness and justice require that they have this excess power, because they are the ones who deserve it, for many reasons. They might even be right, that doesn't matter. I.e., today, very common the reason for the excess power is that they were the ones who have built the organization, they know the most about it and how it currently works, and so forth. They will easily think that if the great unwashed masses come to have some control, they will wreck the place. And, again, they might be right, and it would all depend on how power was distributed and exercised.

And I've gotta go, kids need to get to camp, life happens. --Abd (talk) 12:20, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Were you diagnosed with ADHD by a specialist? A person with ADHD wouldn't tend to write like this I don't think, your condition must be very well controlled. This is another user who says he has ADHD, this is a long post for him . It's all more-or-less sorted now anyway as far as WW is concerned.:) I think you're critique of the governance of wiki won't get all that far, "they" have enough people off-site saying they're doing things wrong. However, I think you made some people reassess the WW situation, and maybe think more about what their approach should be like in future with checking what they're told etc.Sticky Parkin 13:50, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

About my writing. With my writing, you are often getting a glimpse, if you know how to see it, into how my mind works. It's not uncommon with ADHD, there may be many things brought up that will seem, at first, to be unrelated. It can be very disconcerting to some people. But the things are related, it simply may not be obvious. Put two of us together, under the right conditions, and it can happen that we communicate whole books worth of memes in a single glance. It is like two people thinking together, exactly on track. Very difficult through writing. Now, I have a friend, one of the smartest guys I know. For starters, he understands my FA/DP proposals well enough to explain them perfectly. It took me about two years of intense writing, on the internet, to find him; actually, he found me. He noticed the writing and eventually asked, "What about this? What about that?" because there are a host of obvious objections to the ideas. If I explain in advance, it's too long. If I don't explain it, people read it and say to themselves, "That would never work," and they reject it -- but don't say anything. Since he asked, I explained. He then took the explanations and made them into a FAQ, which stands as probably the best explanation available. And still most people don't get it at first. However, a year later, I've found, it gets easier. Something about the idea having lasted a year seems to help penetrate the meme-attack filters that we all have. Anyway, he writes much better than I, routinely. But, he says, it takes him three times as long, and, in fact, he doesn't write much, it is entirely too much work for him. He is embarrassed to write with the degree of openness and, indeed, vulnerability, which is routine for me. Many of us were punished or shunned as children for speaking our minds. Read, User:Abd/Rule 0. It's been considered a good essay on the subject. I managed to escape that -- but there were other terrible situations in my childhood, I used to tell my story at meetings and I'd look around the room and people would be crying and I'd be thinking, "What's the big deal, this was just my life, I'm okay." Well, I wasn't "okay," but merely high-functioning. There are certain things that I can to really well, probably better than one in a thousand -- that's about what the intelligence tests have shown, but I'm really off-scale, the tests are quite unreliable. And there are other things that are absolutely easy for a "normal" person, that are very difficult for me, if not impossible. So ... I'm putting energy into what I'm good at, and a few have found that useful. I'm trying to move the planet, so to speak. I've found the fulcrum and I've found the lever and I'm pushing. The world is big. It took a few years, not surprising, before I saw any movement. But I've now seen enough to think that the momentum built is irreversible, it's not just me now, there are others pushing as well, together, in the same direction. This is not a push in opposition to other pushes, there really isn't any opposition, just ignorance, apathy, cynicism, and despair. Ancient enemies, if we personify them, but they really don't exist, they are illusions, an absence rather than a presence. So am I a "POV-pusher"? No. A very important part of the concept is developing mechanisms for finding consensus, efficiently, on a large scale. Real consensus, not a fake consensus from many people believing that it is useless to speak up. NPOV is a kind of consensus "position." It neither opposes nor endorses any POV.

A few more comments about the "tomes" I write. They are, of course, not tomes, they are merely longer than usual, and one of the problems is that Misplaced Pages standard formatting is single-column with relatively small print. I was, among other things, an editor, typesetter, printer, and publisher. Bad design for this kind of writing. Columns, so that the width is shorter, are much, much easier to read, that's why newspapers used them. So that makes a long piece seem forbidding, this huge mass of text. Secondly, when I've made a conclusion and thus have a POV and something I want the community to do, I write very differently. It's still, sometimes, a bit long, but I put that triple effort into boiling it down and crafting it so that it is easily recognized. It is a lot of effort, so, unless I'm pushing something, I usually don't do it. I don't really care if any particular individual reads it, I'm just expressing what I see and think about the subject at hand. I'd say, if it's not for you, don't read it! If I want to warn you on your Talk page -- something I very rarely do, by the way -- I will almost certainly be quite succinct, because you are expected to read it. If I want to make a report to AN/I, I will so craft it. And I've generally been successful with such. However, when I am merely responding to a situation and trying to work something out, I don't have a fixed conclusion, and I never know, actually, what part of what I'm saying will turn out to be important. I don't have an organizing goal in mind. And this, again, drives some readers crazy. My suggestion to them has been, many times, don't read it, if it doesn't work for you. I try to organize my posts such that it is very easy to see what is mine and what is response, etc. It should be easy to skip what I've written. If what I've written is actually important, someone else will pick up on it and express the gist of it, probably more succinctly, because that follow-up process is much easier than the initial writing. This is part of the old writer/editor wars here, with editors complaining that the output of writers isn't properly edited. And the writers usually won't say it, but they may think that the result of the editing is boring, dull, and misses the point. Good publication requires both writers and editors, so, really, we should find some way to declare a truce over this, and truly learn to work together. It isn't, and will not be, easy. --Abd (talk) 17:12, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

I think he means something other than ADHD, especially considering his description. Tombomp (talk/contribs) 13:57, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

No, ADHD. Diagnosed, first, almost 10 years ago. However, I didn't realize the implications until a little less than two years ago. Diagnosis confirmed, clearly, by multiple experts in the field. I take medication, specifically Concerta, which is time-release methylphenidate, i.e, Ritalin, 18 mg/day, plus I chip a little plain methylphenidate, about 5 mg a day. When I stop I feel lousy, but that might be to some degree a rebound effect. However, when I started taking it, it was like the sun rose, it had multiple and surprising effects. My therapist at the time said, "We don't like to diagnose through response to medication, but ...." She was an expert in the field. I've seen three psychiatrist over the years, and the first two confirmed the diagnosis but didn't get the medication right, they gave me bupropion, which, while it helped in some ways, my wife said it made my demeanor denicer, was not nearly as visible to me, as the minimum dose of Concerta. I tried taking more, it gives me reflux. No complications at 18 mg/day plus a little chipping. I still take bupropion, and having gone off a few times, I can now recognize the effect, it's a good one. And then, after starting medication and realizing the huge impact ADHD had on my life (for starters, I think I'd be rich. Remember the old saw? If you're so smart, why aren't you rich? There is an answer: ADHD. Many of the smartest people in the world have ADHD. Some of them are very rich. What's the difference? Support. They don't do it alone. But that's another story. --Abd (talk) 16:16, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

quite a number of good contributors here say they have ADHD, and the wiki method apparent is in fact often one that suits their style of working. I am sure that Abd can explain much better than I, but some of it should be fairly obvious. It also seems suitable to people with many other intellectual or personality styles who may have some degree of difficulty with conventional media. I think our general openness here is something to celebrate, and a large part of our success. The only personality that really does not work well is those who cannot control hostility when challenged--though even here, some work very successfully on topics where they are unlikely to be challenged. As Abd says, people have a wide opportunity here to find their most satisfactory roles. DGG (talk) 18:26, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Yes that other user I mentioned his posts are pithy, catchy and brief. However I expect this'll all get sorted out.:) Sticky Parkin 21:17, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Responses to Fritzpoll

The main problem here is that Abd, whilst claiming to have tried to follow WP:DR, seemed to lose that in a quest to be "right". As I felt was appropriate, I offered, as one means of resolving the dispute, having another administrator review the close (since I can't unilaterally overturn what I perceived as a community ban). Following Abd's block last night, I asked Carcharoth to perform this task, which will hopefully be to the satisfaction of all concerned. Fritzpoll (talk) 08:52, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Fritzpoll, this is long. You have no obligation to read it, none, at least not from my side. The most important things here are that Carcharoth was an excellent choice for looking into any of this, that I never intended to attack you (think I didn't, either, but obviously some disagreed), that I never perceived you as an enemy, that I continued to assume good faith regarding you (even when I suspected you were Fredrick day), and that my concern about your competence was transient and has been lifted, it was never based on more than a single incident. Which, as we all know, can be pretty misleading.

Whether or not your analysis above is a fair analysis may take some time. I'm very, very familiar with the "quest to be right" problem, it's indeed a serious hazard. However, I believed, and continue to believe, that there were some very important issues here, and I'm gratified to see that, for example, Carcharoth has correctly identified at least one of them, the issue of administrator responsibility for decisions. It's my opinion that you repeat the error above. Now, when I write something like that, from my experience yesterday, I'm nearly certain to be attacked as "attacking Fritzpoll" or "not admitting mistakes." No, I think you hold and express opinion which is apparently held by what is to me a surprising number of administrators, and not by others. Because this is about the fundamental way that Misplaced Pages process works, and is also related to the ways in which the process breaks down and sometimes makes poor decisions, I considered it important to discuss and examine. Never did I impugn your good faith, even in my own mind, not even when I suspected you were Fredrick day, for it's my opinion that Fredrick day intends the welfare of the project, it is merely the way that he goes about it that is a problem. I repeatedly stated that you were acting within your authority as an administrator, I did not claim any abuse of tools or threat of such abuse, but I simply, first, attempted to discuss it with you. Because the discussion did not lead to a result fully satisfactory to me -- though it resulted in progress, i.e., you did clearly step into the role of closing administrator -- I would have proceeded to the next step, and I'm very pleased to see that you have, yourself arranged the next step, and it was your doing this that was the reason I also apologized for any implications I'd made regarding your competence. This was exactly what I would have done if events had not interceded. It was the next step in WP:DR. Usually, in fact, I've found that, unless a situation has already exploded, with fragments scattered all over the noticeboards, this simple approach resolves issues quickly.

What interceded was, again, in my opinion, an error on your part, but, again, one made in good faith. You took the matter to AN to get confirmation of what was already obvious. There had been an apparent consensus at AN/I, and that was never in contention. The one to take the matter to AN or AN/I would, properly, have been me, since I was the one who was seeking a change in the status quo. Let me make this clear: were I an administrator, I would not have used the tools in any way in this affair. I'd have gone to AN or AN/I. When the time was right, i.e., lesser measures had not resolved the issue. If I did not consider the continuation of the topic ban on Wilhelmina Will to be ongoing damage, I'd not have gone to AN at all, I'd have used WP:DR entirely. AN and AN/I are not part of WP:DR, they are for (1) discussion of administrative issues, largely for non-emergency assistance (AN) or (2) requests for administrative assistance, generally of an emergency nature, immediate threat of damage or ongoing damage that requires use of the tools (AN/I). It appears, however, that you felt that you needed confirmation. But you asked the wrong question, and, not surprisingly, the answer you got, before I intervened, was the answer to the question you asked. It was never in dispute, the question you asked, and that you thought this was my objection showed that you had not understood my objection (You were clearly trying to be fair. But such an intention does not always succeed.) To determine whether that was my fault or your fault or whatever would require examination, taking more time than it's probably worth, but if there is a user conduct RfC coming out of this, over my behavior -- which is where matters such as indef block should be handled, absent emergencies -- I or others would then devote the time. I have no reason to believe that I would file an RfC over your behavior. Quite simply, I have not complained about your behavior to that level. I simply claimed that (1) your close failed to consider the evidence -- and that has become quite plain, confirmed by quite a few other users, and (2) you took this matter to AN prematurely. You have now done what would have been a great idea in the first place, and what would have been my next step if the AN report had simply died, which I thought was going to happen at one point. I wasn't stirring it up, as I recall, after that point, I'd concluded, as I recall, that enough had been said.

But then, more or less, all hell broke loose. So much happened so quickly that I have trouble remembering the sequence, so, before I say much more about this, I'll need to review it and probably document it. I don't find what happened on Misplaced Pages to be clear, often, until I've put in quite a bit of work documenting it, and my snap judgments are often wrong, and, from what I see, I'm not different than many others in this respect. Intuition is one thing, and, in fact, an admin can and probably should act on intuition, shoot first and ask questions later, so to speak, but sober analysis and understanding are something different. It's not the block, it's what happens immediately after, as matters become clear. A bad block? All it takes to fix it is an unblock and an apology, either by the blocking admin (best) or by another on behalf of the community (almost as good). That is, if this happens quickly. When it happens slowly, it can do irreparable damage. And I'll write more about this at some time.

(We were atrociously hard on Durova for her single block error, for she, as soon as she realized her error, which was quickly, unblocked the user with an apology, yet she was pilloried for it. Bad, bad idea, one more example of how Misplaced Pages process can be murder. She would not have been desysopped, I'd have predicted.)

In any case, the sincerity of my apologies to you has been called into question by some. I made the apologies, such as they are, without consideration of my blocked condition, which controlled only the place where I made them. They were due regardless of such circumstances. I have not apologised for thinking that you made errors. You made errors, in my opinion. But if you never make mistakes, you aren't trying hard enough. People who work hard for the project will make mistakes.

We do not punish mistakes, at least we are not supposed to. Rather, we protect. One of the errors made by Iridescent in blocking me, possibly the principal one, was that he blocked me when there was no reasonable risk of ongoing damage. I'll be looking at his specific evidence to see if that's not correct, but I had announced that I was going to confine myself to comments in Talk and noncontroversial article work. And I had stated that this was in response to numerous administrators who had piled onto my Talk page to warn me, and that, while I did not think the warnings properly based in blockable offenses, my respect for community consensus required that I abstain from what they were warning me against, given the multiple warnings. However, censorship of me on my Talk page was another matter. I must remain free to discuss the issues, and especially the issues that resulted in my block. If this isn't acknowledged by the community, that degree of freedom (which is not license to violate WP:NPA, but I don't yet believe I did this outside my Talk page or on it), well, two possible outcomes. (1) Further formal process, perhaps up to ArbComm, or (2) I'm out of here, I would have proven to myself that the community is too far gone to fix. The world is vast, and, believe me, I've got plenty else to do, and only limited time in which to do it. The project has lost far too many valuable contributors, and I'd have no shame in being one of them.

Anyway, it totally mystified me why you "retired." I wasn't pressuring you, I merely presented the arguments for an unban, and for your right to unban, clearly. I simply wanted you to make your decision clear, and then I could move on to the next step. Because it had become apparent that you were not going to reverse the decision as you considered it a community decision, not yours -- and this is the issue I'll be pursuing later, not with you, that's just an incident, unless you care to involve yourself in it -- the time was ripe for the next step, and I was preparing for it. Carcharoth would have been an excellent choice for a mediator, and it seems that once there was a big fuss, he noticed it and stepped in. I might have asked him, anyway, but probably I'd have asked you to identify an admin or experienced user that you trusted, who might be willing to consider what I was claiming and review it. No harassment, no demand that you put more time into it, nothing but your voluntary participation, simply by listening, later, to someone you trust. The AN report trumped that, which is why I was saying that it was a mistake, it would be nice if you could acknowledge that, but ... I certainly can't force you and nothing will happen if you don't. It was a minor mistake (and you had, I think, some good reasons for it as well, it just turned out badly). I certainly could not have predicted the appearance of Fredrick day, he was far, far from my mind, hadn't thought about him for quite a while, possibly weeks, though I'm not sure. The disruption that caused was par for the course for him, he'd done it many times, he'd succeeded in getting productive editors banned, he knew exactly what buttons to push. If you look back at my Talk history, you could see that the only time I was seriously warned before was as a result of BLP traps that he had set. Long story. I was probably correct in what I was doing, but it looked bad enough, on the face, that I got a pile of warnings from administrators who were either neutral, plus Newyorkbrad, whom I greatly respected, so, brakes on immediately. Being "right" is not enough. It is a community project. I stop and look and think from one warning, no matter who it is from, and I did that yesterday. Whether I then continue or not depends on how I perceive the welfare of the project. More will come out when I review this.

It was your abrupt retirement, combined with the IP edit using "my," which looked like a kind of mistake Fd had made in the past, forgetting whether he was logged in or not and saving a page with a signature that revealed a connection, that made me strongly suspect you. (Fd had several times abruptly retired when he saw the writing on the wall, and it might have looked to him like that, because he thinks I'm obsessed with him, and that, if you and I were opposed, or looked that way, he might expect me to think you were him. Not. I made one SSP report for a user as possibly being Fd, and checkuser came back inconclusive. I.e., possible, but not proven, and I dropped it (and have no desire to reopen it. The editor, quite simply, was not disruptive, and even if he was Fredrick day, rather than the unfortunate victim of borrowing a friend's cell phone that picked up a known Fd IP, there was no disruption, hence no ongoing damage. Fd simply appearing and making his nasty comments would not have had that effect, wihtout the obvious implication that he was you. I wouldn't even thought of the sock puppet possibility. But there it was, staring me in the face. And I was aware of the risk, immediately, and that is why I remained very careful in what I wrote about it, why I was so careful to note that you were not disruptive, that checkuser might be needed to clear you (which would have remained true, which is why I could not totally apologize until Thatcher kindly looked, and had to confine myself to a conditional apology about the quotation thing, since that kind of evidence was needed to rule out sock puppetry. Much of the community obviously did not understand the Fredrick day thing. It didn't take me one second to see that edit as a Fredrick day edit and the implications, all of them, I only missed that the text was indeed an exact quote. (It was hard to find, actually, I only saw it, in spite of looking, when an editor kindly told me exactly what paragraph to look at.) Being an exact quote did not prove that you were not Fredrick day, it merely weakened the evidence on which suspicion might reasonably be based a little. It took a checkuser to truly demolish the suspicion. Fredrick day, of course, wanted to trumpet irrelevancies, that all kinds of users could be him, and that I could suspect anyone, blah, blan, that I was trying to demolish you are tarnish your reputation, all the typical Fd stuff, quite familiar. He put up a post that, right on the face, as it read, looked as if he had forgotten that he wasn't logged in, yet wrote as if he were you. Direct quote or not, the suspicion would have remained. I was thinking, actually, of going to Thatcher or Lar directly, through email. I do not use SSP reports to attack users. I file SSP when I suspect a banned sock puppet who has damaged the project and might be likely to continue that. Once I filed a report that was for a "nice" user. It was a mistake, even though it came out as a possible. Fredrick day has stated he has accounts that never cause disruption. That's great! It's the disruption that is the problem, not Fredrick day himself using an account non-disruptively.

Anyway, that's all moot now. Fd simply did more Fd stuff, you've been cleared, totally. I'm still blocked, but that certainly isn't your fault, you didn't ask for it. And I hope that any further contact between us is productive and pleasant. I have no reason to expect anything else. Good luck. --Abd (talk) 16:00, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

I have read the above (occasionally pausing for food and drink to sustain myself :) ) and fear there were some early misunderstandings. The first is that you seem to believe that I didn't consider the evidence when closing: it was a source of great frustration to me that you persisted in this, and it probably arose because I wasn't explicit about it when I first responded to you on my talkpage. I was subsequently, but this message was lost on you. That said, I fully accepted (and still accept) that my review of the evidence may have been mistaken or flawed - this is as distinct from never having considered it at all, which often appears (probably unintentionally) to be what you are saying.

You also quote WP:DR in the above, and I feel this deserves a comment. In my first reply to you (still at the top of my talkpage) I suggested that you could discuss this elsewhere, since you had commented in your opening query that you might want to seek out an administrator to come to me to challenge the topic ban. In my opinion, this was a solution, indeed a resolution, to the dispute; namely, seek out an admin and get my decision checked given that you disagreed. My increasing levels of frustration came about because you never took this step - instead, you continued to barrage my talkpage with commentary on why you felt the ban was wrong. I could only respond to questions, but none of that seemed satisfactory, and another lengthy description of my faults followed. Given that you didn't follow my suggested solutions (I offered further ones later in the discussion), I took the matter to WP:AN, a pretty low-octane page (certainly not like dragging it to AN/I would be, which would only generate heat and no light) so that the matter could be discussed. Although in my first post, as you point out, I neglected to mention your argument that the evidence was non-existent, if you read my second post to that thread, you'll see that I did point this out. Your latter responses to that thread seem to indicate that you missed this post and so felt I was making a pointless request for tallying consensus in a single discussion.

Finally, from my perspective: I offered means to resolve the dispute from the off, which appeared to be ignored. I sought a review of the actions, which you condemned as unnecessary. I am, like everyone here, just an editor. I have real-life problems that I don't have to bother you with, and this is just a little hobby. Suddenly, with having to deal with all these apparently unrelenting messages from you, when nothing I said seemed to placate you, this place became needlessly stressful. So I opted for a break - then you posted what was a very threatening message on this page. Perhaps you don't see it that way, but threatening arbcomm's, RfCs and the like is not productive - it increases the stress of those the threats are directed at, and you know what? I really don't need that kind of stress. So I decided to make my leave "indefinite"; not permanent, just indefinite.

Hopefully that clears things up a bit - my advice to you for the future is to treat Misplaced Pages less procedurally, and remember that a community of volunteers will always have a greater sense of casualness than a hierarchical organisation: I know that seems chaotic to you, but just by doing what I have now done and requesting another admin look at it, we could have avoided all of this, and it would have been over in a few exchanges. Instead you insisted on bypassing my suggestions and trying to force me to change my mind, which is not always going to be a productive use of your time.

I make no opinion on your block, as it isn't my place, and none of what I've said affects it, from what I can see in the rationale. I daresay you won't agree with some if not all of the above, but this is essentially my position on this matter, and it is unlikely to change. Thank you for your note, and thank you for your apology. Best wishes, Fritzpoll (talk) 17:14, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

I hope you don't mind that I continue to respond, Fritzpoll. You are not obligated to read this, read it, at your leisure, if you think it serves you and the community. My goal is to find increased agreement, not to fight over out different opinions, which would be useless at this point. If you don't respond, I won't continue to write on it, unless it becomes relevant somewhere else.

Food or drink are allowed, if they do not require distraction from reading and writing. Bathroom breaks, however, are only allowed once every three or four hours unless you have a note from your doctor. This is, after all, Misplaced Pages, and we do have standards.

Yes, I'm certain that there were early misunderstandings. In the first place, when I realized that the AN/I report that was the basis for the WW topic ban wasn't closed by an admin taking responsibility for the decision, I approached you, as it seemed you had concluded that it was in effect. I suggested that you had three options:

1. do nothing, in which case the topic ban didn't exist unless someone else closed -- which might have been the least disruptive response, if you were not taking personal responsibility for a ban closure,
2. close as no ban because, perhaps, of lack of sufficient evidence for a pattern of abused or adequate consideration of a topic ban on DYK as the appropriate remedy,
3. or close, confirming the ban, presumably based on a proper examination of the evidence. You chose this last course, which was certainly your right.

However, then, as the closing person, you became the go-to person with whom to discuss the matter, the person who is normally able to modify or reverse a decision without further ado. You seem to consider that if a decision is made at AN/I, the closing admin must go back to AN/I to reverse it. We don't do that anywhere else that I'm aware of, but perhaps there is some special procedure or precedent that applies there. With an AfD, if an admin reverses a prior decision, it is the same as if the admin had made the new decision earlier, the discussion stops in either case, and the recourse is the same, and I'd assume the same for AN/I. In other words, had the original closure been a ban, the admin making that decision could, on review of the evidence and additional considerations, reverse the decision. Happens all the time with AfD and other process. (But usually there is a bias toward one kind of decision, and changing away from that bias is more difficult than toward it. I.e., changing a delete to a keep or no consensus is fairly easy. Changing from keep to delete could certainly be done, but I don't think I've ever seen it.) It is a minimum-fuss procedure, reversible, generally harmless. And anyone who thinks AN/I should be consulted could take it there again.

Anyway, the first step was for me to understand your close. So I asked you for the evidence. Really. This was not a challenge, it was an attempt at understanding, since it certainly was not obvious from the AN/I discussion. Most of the charges in the AN/I report were not actually controversial, WW had done the things involved, but the problem was concluding from those things that a ban was appropriate was far less than obvious. It's pretty clear, while some editors supported a ban based on, say, WW lying about her leetspeak, in no way would that have been a proper basis for a ban. It was quite enough consequence for her to be totally embarrassed by it, and I doubt she would repeat it! Such lying is almost expected, at first, when a naive editor is caught doing something, I've never seen consequences from it in itself. There was also the edit reverting condensation of text by Blechnic, a totally blatant error that she admitted immediately (i.e., admitted her motive while doing it.). And the incivility that she lied about, which was mild. All of this together would, in my opinion, have merited nothing more than a warning, it would have taken repetition after warning for a ban or block to be considered, and, in fact, the remedy would be block, not ban. DYK was actually irrelevant, her motive for edit warring (i.e., 2RR) was irrelevant. We don't care about motive!

But then there was copyvio. I know you are saying that you examined the evidence, and I believe you, but what evidence did you examine? I've seen two examples mentioned, with diffs for only one, the old edit that Blechnic found. Very old. I don't think you had seen this, it came up later. And it had extenuating circumstances. And then another that I think you mentioned but, as far as I was able to find, was not mentioned on the page you pointed me to, and I still have not seen a pointer to it. So, I'd have to conclude, that examined evidence other than that which was presented at AN/I. That happens, and that is proper, perhaps, but it's normal to (1) provide that evidence in the close, or (2) provide it when asked. You did neither (in fact, the AN/I report itself was never closed, but I've considered that a mere technical detail). At some point, here, you also could have said, "That's all there is," and I'd then, have stopped bugging you about it. (Though I'd hope that two posts to your Talk page wouldn't be considered "bugging," is that what I did?)

I was still asking for the evidence in the AN report, eventually. No copyvio evidence, if I'm correct, has been provided there that would have been available to those discussing the ban at AN/I. I'm not saying there wasn't any, some participants may have seen evidence that nobody has pointed to, yet. But, at this point, I'd have to conclude that, if it exists, it was not blatant and not easy to find, and not repeated after warning. Since the evidence question was still open though -- you never told me, "There is no more evidence," or, "This is all I saw," you simply pointed me to the AN/I page for a previous report -- that didn't contain such evidence as far as I could see.

I'm saying that if you had simply taken my requests straight, instead of, perhaps, thinking I was after you or already arguing for WW's unban in spite of evidence, etc. much later fuss could have been avoided. It could have happened very easily. Again, as I've said before, the blame for this, if there is any, could be mine or it could be yours, or it could be both. It was a communication failure, which often takes two. Yes, I was starting to argue for WW's unban, because it had become clear that the matter had not been properly considered at AN/I, something was missing. And damage was being done. But I continued to assume that there might be some evidence that, for whatever reason, you just hadn't provided, or I'd overlooked in what you did provide.

I know you thought, apparently, that I was tendentiously arguing with you, but you could have put a stop to it at any time. Just "That's enough, I've got other things to do, you know what to do next. If you don't know, ask and I'll tell you" would have been more than adequate, it would have been thoroughly civil -- and, yes, you remained civil, anyway, through the whole affair, as far as anything I've noticed, one more set of points you get, so to speak -- yet would have protected your time. I advised you to read my discussion of the implications on my Talk page, I did not drop a note on your Talk notifying you of it, reading it remained totally optional. However, I regret the implication, made by you and some others,

I also know that you offered to settle the dispute, though the details of that were fuzzy. But, from my point of view, the very terms of the dispute weren't clear yet. Before I even know if we need further DR, it is highly useful if the parties can define what it is they disagree about. Since I didn't know what your evidence was, I couldn't decide that you had improperly considered it. So the "dispute," as it was, was rather fuzzy. I was preparing to go to the next step, the involvement of a neutral administrator -- pretty much exactly what you say you were suggesting, and I think you did, when you made the AN report, which trumped it.

When you explained the basis for your ban decision, you restricted it to two items, as I recall, and the most significant of these was copyvio. Yet we block people for copyvio, we don't ordinarily topic ban them. In any case, it was clear -- and this has been confirmed at AN -- that copyvio was the real issue, the thing that WW had allegedly done that could be worthy of some strong action.

I don't know that there is a whole lot that we disagree on here. However, I will outline the prime points of disagreement, please correct me if I'm wrong.

(1) An administrator may change an AN/I close that the admin made without going back to AN/I. For another admin to reverse this without consultation or further proper process would be wheel-warring. It seems you disagree with this.

(2)It seems that you continue to believe that there was sufficient evidence to show copyvio for WW, with risk of repetition at a rate worthy of a ban.

(3) (This hasn't been much discussed.) It seems you believe that a topic ban would be a better response than warning about copyvio, with block if violation repeated.

(Note that items 2 and 3 could be subsumed under item one. I.e., perhaps you don't believe 2 or 3, but believe that the community made its decision and you are only enforcing it, you have not made the same conclusion yourself. That's still not completely clear to me.)

Is that it? Is there anything else? This may be moot, unless you were to reconsider and say something like, "actually, now that it has been pointed out, there really wasn't enough evidence of copyvio to be worthy of a ban." Simple. Could save Carcharoth some work. But if you continue to believe those things, or some of them, you should stick with it. I would never want you to do something because you think I'm threatening you. From my perspective, I never threatened you, and the risk that I referred to in my warning -- on my Talk page, by the way, where it has little effect on later process, I do that deliberately, so that editors can see that it isn't a threat, it's a friendly warning, it would not come up in a review of your contribs, for example, only in a review of mine, unless you respond to it -- was a risk that under later review it could seem that you acted improperly. How serious that would be would depend on lots of factors. Bottom line, you'd have to be extraordinarily stubborn for it to actually hurt you, and I only mention it because I've seen several admins be exactly that stubborn, and lose their bits. This incident was mild and highly unlikely to result in such a risk. Yet what I was warning about, if repeated in a different situation with different players, could indeed result in disruption and risk. That's what I was talking about. Truly, a friendly warning, not a threat, no big stick being waved. Remember, the next step in my intended process would have been very simple, requiring little attention on your part, and, most likely, none of the ensuing process would have required your participation. You would not have been the object of my complaint. The ban would have been. You are not the ban, it is merely a decision you made. You made it properly, in good faith. Not a risk, in itself. There could be some issues about the evidence, but ... that would fall under normal error, unless somehow you tendentiously clung to some kind of error. This is what causes hazard.

Last night, I was blocked because I allegedly continued to "attack" you in spite of warning. I asked for examples of the attack, but the only example that was provided was a single diff where, as far as I could see, I hadn't crossed WP:NPA. It would be of great interest to me if, after review, you consider that I was attacking you. It could shape my response, because if someone perceives that they are being attacked, in some ways, that trumps intention. I.e., the action creating that perception should be stopped unless it is crucial and urgent. I stopped posting to AN because of the warnings, but, apparently, Iridescent considered my continued discussion on my Talk page to be a continuation of attack. I'll be dealing with that later, when I can get to it. I've got children to care for, the rest of the day. Thanks, if you read this, reading response remains completely optional from my point of view, since the substance of the important ongoing issue is in Carcharoth's hands.

By the way, I hope your real-life situations are working out for you. At no point in this, now or before, was your immediate response required, nor, for that matter, any response at all, as far as I was concerned. --Abd (talk) 18:50, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Might I suggest another olive branch?

There still seems to be some offense over this: sub-WR level conspiracy theory on the part of iridescent and probably justifiably so. If you truly have some reason to believe that he was out to block you and just looking for a reason to do it perhaps you can substantiate that in the form of diffs, but if not at this point I would suggest a short and succinct olive branch might not only be in order but might also help to clear the way to getting you unblocked (not that you should offer any such branch disingenuously). It is your decision on how to proceed. --GoRight (talk) 21:30, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Abd is welcome to if he wants, but please feel no compulsion. As I've said on the AN thread, I am explicitly not going to take any decision regarding blocking/unblocking or try to sway anyone else one way or the other. As per my original block of you, I won't contest anyone unblocking you. – iridescent 21:32, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

This is understood. I am assuming that others may be more willing to take the next step if such a branch were offered. As I said, the decision is his. --GoRight (talk) 22:16, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

I will unblock, without AN/ANI over-dramafication. Yesterday's events came fast and furious, with more heat than light in some instances. Abd/Fritzpoll seem to be coming to terms (either of you can correct me if I'm wrong there). A statement by Abd, more or less a sincere olive branch, or at least an addressing or explanation of the above links in regards to the "motives" of the blocking admin would certainly not be out of order here. Keeper ǀ 76 22:31, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

(edit conflict)... What is below was written prior to seeing Keeper76's post. It does clearly state that I was not referring to Iridescent's motives in that comment, I was referring to some, possibly, among other participants in this affair. Fritzpoll, by the way, was totally innocent, the only really weird thing he did was to bail at a crucial point, thus imitating a Fredrick day behavior, quite inadvertently, I'm sure, thus raising my level of suspicion. He's totally clear on that. I still disagree with his actions, but my focus after block, as before it, if I continue to be involved, would not be with him, but with the underlying situation, in which he was a very minor player, one not at risk, not having done anything but -- at the worst -- made a poor decision. Happens all the time. When an admin closes an AfD with a decision we think incorrect, we don't go after the admin -- at least usually we don't! -- we go to DRV. But, of course, first, we try to work it out with the admin. That went rather badly awry here, and I'm not entirely sure why, I've been fairly successful with such interventions before. --Abd (talk) 01:12, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

The post diff'd above did not assert that Iridescent was "out to block me and just looking for a reason to do it." Rather, what I asserted was that it was fairly obvious to me, for quite some time, that there were certain administrators who were looking for an opportunity to block. This happens to others, it's not just me. It happened to you, I think, GoRight. Iridescent just happened along, and responded according to the situation as he saw it. As he's noted, we had no contact before. It would be preposterous for me to think he was "looking to block." I think he made the decision quickly, too quickly, there was no emergency, but that is quite a different matter. I assume good faith, and, I assume it even with respect to the others, the ones who might have been "itching to block," whom I do not care to single out unless I were prepared to prove it, which I'm not, it would be a colossal hassle for little good. I do not think that the problems of the community are caused by bad administrators and bad editors. They are caused by defective or absent structure.

This would seem to be the core of the objection:

Might be worth looking at User:Abd/Rule 0 again. I've seen these kind of arguments before, Keeper76. They come up when admins want to block someone, but need to figure out a reason. This affair has, so far, to me, all the signs of that. It's fine with me. I don't need to be able to edit Misplaced Pages to prepare an ArbComm case, if that's what it comes to. Obviously, that's not the first step, far from it. But I am always considering that ArbComm is looking over my shoulder, because they might be, later. I am really, really interested to see what happens now.

This was referring to a general phenomenon, we see it when some occasion that might justify a sanction, in an administrator's mind, arises. If the reason is a little short, but, perhaps, there is some negative impression from the past, the editor's behavior is then scrutinized very closely, and behavior that would not cause a block, normally, becomes a reason, or additional reason, for it. The reference was not to Iridescent, it was to arguments that I have seen in the past, I was talking about arguments. Then, I connected it with the present, i.e., "this affair has ... all the signs of that," which isn't about a conspiracy, it's about a social phenomenon. Conspiracy was Iridescent's translation of it, a contemptuous one, I'd say. I was referring to what happens, for example, when a mob takes over at AN/I. Behavior is described with WP:ABF, and various editors, and too many administrators, join right in. I find it ironic that I'm blocked for supposed personal attacks, but what I wrote was civil compared to what has been written about me by some .... and nothing is done. I've seen it again and again. It's as if there is some kind of strange immunity that arises at AN/I, that protects some and not others. My impression is that the one who blocked me was more uncivil than I. (Again, I'm simply reporting my impression at this point.) And, again, this is fairly common. It's not enough to block someone, it seems that it is sometimes necessary to insult them to boot. I don't think that this present situation, mine, here, is the worst I've seen.

Olive branch? What, specifically, would that mean? I didn't attack Iridescent, though I've criticized his action here. I want to review it, so much happened so quickly that I'm not really clear what happened and when, but I do know that his arrival here was sensed by me as representing someone who was quickly taking charge, angry, hostile, and ready to block. He was menacing, would be a brief way of describing it. On the other hand, he also very quickly established that he wouldn't object to an unblock, and this, then, takes me to the core of this.

He is not keeping me blocked, the community is. If he did anything wrong, it was transient, the damage reversible, almost totally. The community is responsible for this having lasted. (I am, as well, of course, but I mean in terms of who holds the power and is exercising it as far as Misplaced Pages rights are concerned.) Is the community aware of what it is doing? I don't know, I suspect not. However, it is nevertheless responsible. This is how the Misplaced Pages treats people. How does it feel, Abd ul-Rahman?

"Shitty. What would you think?"

Of course, I already knew this. That, indeed, is why I've done much of what I've done. I want it to stop. I really don't think it would be that difficult, if even a relatively small number of us woke up and connected with each other. ("Us" means those who see the problem and might care to do something about it.)

And, so far, I have no idea if I can be of more service blocked, or unblocked. So, Misplaced Pages, your move. At your service. I said I'd prepare an unblock request, so I will. Probably tonight. --Abd (talk) 01:12, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Well, this isn't exactly what I had hoped for but it is your way of discussing things. I think there was a bit of an olive branch there at the top but the rest seems to leave it a bit tarnished. Let me quote for you some advice that you have given to others:

I think your contributions to Misplaced Pages have been valuable, and can be even more valuable in the future. However, there is risk involved. Choose your struggles. Get help. Avoid anything that appears uncivil, even if you could justify it, unless you are sure that it's not merely allowed, but necessary. Seek consensus, and that includes consensus with editors who have seriously opposed you. ... Let editors be wrong, focus on results, not on their opinions and actions.

— --Abd (talk) 01:48, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

and

Meanwhile, be careful, don't write anything that could be construed as a personal attack, that's my advice. Kindergarten rules: if you can't say anything good, don't say anything at all.

— --Abd (talk) 20:44, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

While I realize it is not your intention to do so, some of the things you have written are clearly being interpreted as attacks whether you have intended them as such, or not. In this instance I think a little reflection on what you have written and how it might be interpreted by others might be beneficial. Whether or not your technical points are precise or correct, sometimes it is best to just shake hands and part on good terms.

In this case, I might suggest that something more along the lines of:

"I can see how my earlier statement could be interpreted as implying that Iridescent was somehow in a plot against me, but that was never my intended meaning. Rather than Iridescent I was referring to other editors with whom I have had encounters previously. While I continue to disagree with the need for my block in this instance, I accept that Iridescent was acting in good faith and we can simply agree to disagree on this point, without prejudice. I apologize for any misunderstanding this might have caused."

would have been sufficient here, but of course this is only my opinion and I do not want to put words into your mouth (since you seem to have enough in there already).  :)

Just consider this some food for thought on how to help things move more smoothly going forward, which is one of your goals I think, especially since this is all a distraction from the more pertinent task at hand which is to craft a solution to WW's current situation, right? --GoRight (talk) 03:07, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

"Do as I say, not as I do." First of all, my advice was intended to help you stay out of trouble. You came in, parachuting into the middle of an effective edit cabal, and they were out to get you, right from the start, and it was a group that included a number of administrators. Your interest has been a narrow range of articles, you are basically an SPA. I think SPAs are fine, but.... there are some special rules. It will be assumed that you are biased, that you are pushing a POV, etc. So your situation is particularly precarious, they already blocked you once. Look at my block log. I've been in the middle of some serious disputes. I was first blocked right after I became seriously active; I likewise parachuted into hostile territory, so to speak, and article occupied and controlled by a collection of sock puppets and an IP editor who, I found, was the Executive Director of a political advocacy organization on the topic, the man has an article of his own here. The sock puppets and the IP editor were systematically taking out anything critical and making sure that the propaganda they had written was maintained in the article. When I challenged this, they tried to take me out with a 3RR report. It was rather stupid. Sure, I was blocked, but I also made sure that -- succinctly, I know how to do it -- what the admin needed to see was there in front of his nose, it was right under the 3RR warning. He promptly unblocked me and then blocked about everyone else in sight, including two SPAs, one on one side and one on the other. I intervened to help get both the latter unblocked.... that article is now pretty peaceful, and, contrary to their fears, it did not become a hit piece on them. Now, if there had been an admin or two maintaining that article, well, it would probably have been very, very difficult to fix. You took on a very difficult task, hence my advice.

My situation is very different. My primary interest is Misplaced Pages process, not content. In other words, instead of working on creating articles, I consider it my task to make the process by which articles are created more efficient, more effective, more reliable, and far less taxing on editors. I'm working on what creates articles and maintains them, and I'm really in an exploratory phase. Misplaced Pages wastes huge amounts of editor time, and only the fact that the reservoirs of volunteers has seemed inexhaustible has allowed this project to continue. Theory would predict, though, that a collapse could come fairly quickly. What would happen is that as the scale continues to grow, and demands on the administrators increase, but the number of active administrators doesn't keep pace, the burden on those still active becomes greater and they begin to burn out more quickly, thus increasing the burden, etc. It's been happening for some time, I think, though I don't have statistics. Administrators, and those on vandalism patrol, see a lot of real junk, and it's known for burning them out, some of them start to see vandalism under every edit. Uncivil conflict is far, far too common here. Admins are volunteers, and some of them come to see criticism as ingratitude for the tremendous task that they do, and therefore as intrinsically uncivil.

But, yes, I do need to take more care to avoid the appearance of incivility. However, this is where ADHD comes in. This avoidance is very, very difficult for me, I don't anticipate it, because when I'm writing, I'm thinking what I'm thinking, and what I'm thinking isn't uncivil, generally. I won't necessarily see an appearance of incivility -- i.e., a misinterpretation -- even if I carefully reread it. What I'd need to see would be how others would see it, which requires precisely what's difficult for ADHD people, sometimes. (Paradoxically, I can be hypersensitive, but that comes from the hyperfocus capacity, i.e., if I turn my entire consciousness to someone personally present, I can approach mind-reading, because of the high bandwidth possible. That does not happen on-line. Much of what was considered "attack" here was, for me, accompanied with no rancor at all, no desire to harm or bully. When I made a strong statement to Fritzpoll about his admin future, I was giving a sincere warning, being someone with no power at all to make anything happen to him, I was warning him about possible risks not from me. But that, of course, wasn't how it was taken. Sure, in hindsight, I can see the possible response. In some of what I write, I anticipate the response and incorporate text to head it off -- but this, then, makes the piece longer, and sometimes all the reader sees is the negative part anyway. I'm preparing an evidence page, here in my Talk, and I'm really struck how a piece where I affirmed that Fritzpoll was an excellent editor and, as far as I could tell, could be an excellent administrator, and I was merely disagreeing with one action, was called an "attack." That, I admit, continues to boggle my mind. (I've seen a good admin, generally, get desysopped because of one action, when the admin doesn't get it, can't acknowledge the problem. It's not the action, it's the response later, and this is exactly what I was trying to warn Fritzpoll about. He thought, apparently, that I was trying to bully him, but I was actually happy with his decision, I was just trying to make sure that it was clear, that he really had investigated the evidence and was confident about it, and, frankly, I'm still puzzled. But certainly I've said more than enough to him, it was time to move on to the next step.... and then came Fredrick day.... there, I see, reviewing the edits, that I was extremely careful to distinguish between reasonable suspicion and accusation. And I'll describe that more, later. First step is simply to put the evidence together, so that I can see what happened. Analyzing it comes later.

Google making us dumber?

Completely off-topic, but inspired by the bits of your writings above that I managed to get through... :-) I recently read something about how the internet and being able to Google everything makes people dumber and develop shorter attention spans. I know that I have more recently (last few years) found it much easier to flit around on the surface of things instead of getting deeply involved in writing an article or carefully and slowly resolving a crisis or engaging in long-term planning. It not that I no longer do the latter, but I seem to do less of it, possibly because all these other distractions are there. Someone might say that mental discipline (willpower, self-discipline - Britannica has an article on mental discipine theory, but we don't) is what I (and others) need to develop, but I've also noticed that I find it harder to finish a book than I did before. Possibly that is because non-fiction books are inherently harder to finish than a fiction book one is enjoying, or maybe I'm just reading the wrong books! But I digress. The point made was that those growing up in the internet age (and I came to the internet at university age, so I had mostly grown up by then) learn and read in a different way. Let's see if I can't Google(!) the article I am thinking of. Ah, here we go: Is Google Making Us Stupid?. Carcharoth (talk) 23:39, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

No, I don't think Google is making us dumber. But we are making ourselves dumber, some of us, in some way. It takes time to understand the world, others, and ourselves, and far too many of us want it presented to us in a hundred words or less, the carefully framed picture, the sound bite. Perhaps they do not realize that when someone puts that kind of effort into a communication, they usually have some purpose, something they want to convince people of, they are not merely sharing knowledge or exploring a topic.

With relation to the current flap, the little detail of my being blocked, I think that some people assume I'm trying to make some point when I write, and then the length really irritates them because, they think, it is preventing them from seeing the point. Rather, I come across points as I write, points can be derived from what I write, and, if I were to decide to push something, I'd take what I write and seriously boil it down, which I do know how to do, I've been a professional editor. I.e., I was paid to do it. I don't do much writing like that here. In article space, the "agenda" part would be inappropriate, though my style there is concise. On the rare occasions where I knew exactly what I wanted others to do, I was reasonably concise, my SSP and checkuser report for Allemandtando weren't tomes, as I recall. I've also been starting to write extended comments on something, where I've done a lot of research, and then write brief summaries pointing to a page with the full skinny. Seems to have been effective. I should really expand on this, writing in hypertext mode. But it is still much more work than simply writing. --Abd (talk) 01:40, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Abd, what in the hell happened?

I jet out of town for a romantic weekend (first time I've had two consecutive days off since before Christmas), and when I come back, you're indefinitely blocked? What can I do to help? Curious bystander (talk) 00:03, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Well, watching my Talk page is very helpful. Thanks. Looks like it is sorting itself out, though, I suppose I won't know until I'm actually unblocked. Since I haven't censored myself to "be nice," it's always possible some new offense will be discovered. The block was explained as "indef" until undone, not "indef" forever. Essentially, it looks like Iridescent really didn't know quite what to do, something seemed really wrong to him, and he was utterly unfamiliar with my work. I've written many times that admins should, in fact, block quickly when they believe ongoing damage is happening, especially with experienced users, because, for such, it's easily undone. He thought I was attacking User:Fritzpoll, and apparently also thought I was ignoring warnings. Neither of these was true, but there are also details that involve differences of interpretation of guidelines and block policy, etc. My true "complaints," generally, are about our lack of good process, we have an ad-hoc process that worked very well on a small scale, though never truly efficiently -- but much more efficiently than one might think. I've been amused to see that one of the "bad things" I did, allegedly, was to "attack" AN/I, i.e., to note that it is dysfunctional. One editor remarked that if this were a blockable offense, half the people "present" would be blocked.

The person who invented AN/I later left Misplaced Pages, remarking that he'd created a bit of a monster, though I don't remember the exact language.

Thanks for your support, thanks for visiting me in my "cell." Helps me to know who my true friends are, though silence here means nothing. --Abd (talk) 01:25, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

draft of unblock request evidence section

Please leave this section without response until I finish it and remove this notice, etc.

Block log: 22:07, 11 August 2008 Iridescent (Talk | contribs) blocked "Abd (Talk | contribs)" (account creation blocked) with an expiry time of indefinite ‎ ("Indefinite" as in "Unspecified", not "Forever". Repeated posting of untrue attacks on another editor after multiple warnings)

Block notice explanation: You have been blocked indefinitely from editing in accordance with Misplaced Pages's blocking policy for repeatedly posting false accusations of sockpuppetry against another editor despite having it explained to you at least seven separate times why your "reasoning" had no basis in reality and that you were misreading your "evidence". This is "indefinite" in the sense of "unspecified", not "forever"; if someone sees good reason to unblock or you post a good unblock reason, I won't contest it.

Iridescent's list of diffs showing the actions for which I was blocked.

• Final warning to quit the personal attacks or be blocked 14:45, 11 August 2008 Jehochman(Section title:Warning before block)
  • I have asked another administrator to review your editing. The above screed is a personal attack on User:Fritzpoll and includes major assumptions of bad faith. Such things are not allowed on Misplaced Pages, and I strongly suggest you remove them. If you continue your campaign to drive off User:Fritzpoll I will support an indefinite block on your account by a suitably uninvolved administrator. Due to past interactions with you, I will not place such a block myself. Your past editing history shows that your account is mainly used for disruption and drama mongering. As such, your account could be blocked indefinitely, per policy. Jehochman 14:45, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

• Personal attacks and evidence-free accusations of sockpuppetry by yourself against Fritzpoll following that warning and prior to your block:
• • User:Talk:Fritzpoll#Something I don't understand: your withdrawal

Fritzpoll, I criticized your administrative action. Then, when you did not respond adequately, in my view, to your action, and filed an unnecessary AN/I report that showed, to me, that you did not understand the issue, you seem to have taken this as seriously disturbing. I'd hope that you can realize that it is an essential part of Misplaced Pages process that administrative actions -- and, sometimes, administrative competence -- be open to question, but I have never considered or suspected anything other than good faith from you, nor have I called into question your editorial competence, and my judgment of your administrative competence is around a single, possibly subtle, issue that may require ArbComm resolution, ultimately. I would not be my intention to make you the center of that. You really had nothing you needed to do, unless you wanted to continue argument, which you had no obligation to do, the ban stands until reversed, and argument doesn't reverse it. Most administrators, when a close action is questioned, simply respond, either accepting the criticism and modifying their action accordingly, or rejecting it, and then move on. They do not involve themselves in further process except where their testimony is necessary. So I hope that there is something you can learn from this, and that you can return and continue to function as an excellent editor and, quite possibly, an excellent administrator. Everyone makes mistakes, so, even if I'm totally right, this would not indict your general behavior. I have seen no other action from you that I have had occasion to question, and I was surprised, in fact, that you acted as you did in this case. From the support shown for you, so far, I'd have to consider your action within the normal range, even though I consider it seriously in error; in a situation like this, ArbComm would never de-sysop unless you continued to defend what was later found to be an error, see the ArbComm proceedings for User:Physchim62, desysopped, not for his error, but for continuing to defend it even after it became clear that the community and ArbComm were ultimately rejecting the action for very good cause -- later confirmed in other cases --, the community was practically begging him to apologize. Why? So that it could be confident that he'd not repeat the error. We do not punish, we only protect.

, , , , , , ,

Seriously, we gave you way more leniency than we'd give someone without your history of potentially valid contributions. If you really think it's "abusive" to block you after that many attacks – not to mention seven warnings after your "final" warning (they're on your talk page – count 'em), than a site that runs on consensus and not who can complain the loudest is probably not the place for you. – iridescent 23:22, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Note that the above is simply a list of diffs, with text taken from the edits, so that it is easier for me to see, quickly, what happened and when and where. I need this to prepare my unblock request. I want to make it very simple and easy for the reviewing admin to make his or her decision. This was explicitly a draft, and I'd have prepared it elsewhere if I could edit user subpages, but I can't. There is no analysis in the above, except for whatever was in the edits for which I was blocked, and no "attitude" expressed, beyond an attitude of being careful and compiling evidence. I want to see what I did!

This user account is a huge time sink, for virtually no benefit to the encyclopedia. I recommend that the account remain blocked until there is a change of attitude. The above legalistic analysis is exactly what we do not need here. Jehochman 02:28, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Uh, Jehochman, what you responded to was a draft of an evidence page where I lay out what was asserted as the reason for my block. I requested that the section be left alone while I worked on it, because I can't create user subpages. I'm trying to understand what happened. Now, there was no new legalistic analysis above, I've simply copied the text in the diffs. You could call the old text, the text taken from the evidence diffs, "legalistic analysis," or you might simply say that I was describing what happened and policy implications, it's a actually a major issue here, and, as far as I know, it's allowed. You've made decisions based on the attitude you express here before. I've advised others to be careful, but you, with your longer experience than I, I ask, do exactly what you please. Feel free. Except, please, don't edit in that evidence section unless I invite comment there. I'm preparing an unblock request and I'd prefer to be left unmolested, okay? Thanks. --Abd (talk) 02:47, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

• Seconded, with no further comment. _D.Jameson 02:38, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Actually, Dean, didn't you promise that you'd stay away from my Talk page? Be careful of WP:HARASS, it could bite.

Abd, you are in no position to make spurious threats against other editors. Jehochman 03:04, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

I am being harassed by Jehochman, I'm asking for administrative intervention.

I opened a section here to start putting together evidence for my unblock request -- it's really preliminary, I haven't at all added any argument, it is pure report of the diffs provided by Iridescent and the content of them -- and I requested that others not edit in that section. Jehochman promptly edited in that section, to make a gratuitous personal attack.. I added a section header before his edit, to keep the evidence section separate, it's a working document and, in particular, I had open copies and wanted that section clear so I wouldn't run into edit conflicts. I did not change his edit except, later, in an edit to the new section, I reduced the indents as no longer necessary. But I ran into edit conflict anyway. Puzzled, I found that Jehochman had reverted my insertion of the new section header, with . This has become more than incivility, it is pure harassment, and I ask for administrative intervention. I cannot prepare my unblock request in this environment, hence I'm shutting down for the night, and I'm going to be pretty busy for several days. --Abd (talk) 04:10, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Please remove this section and my section below and email me. Please? I would like to talk. Ottava Rima (talk) 04:35, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

I did email OR, but now reread this and see that his meaning was clearer than I thought at first. OR, you may remove the section below if you wish, including my comments in it, and your request here and my response, if you like. I'm not removing this section. And I'm already up way too late. --Abd (talk) 05:12, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Oh Abd, why can't you just say to the admins etc, "I'm sorry and it won't happen again?" Sorry for accusing someone mistakenly of being a sock, and sorry for repeated groundless telling people they may end up at arbcom etc. Sticky Parkin 18:01, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

A favor

Abd, I want to start off by thanking you for your dedication to mine and other's causes. However, I want you to understand that Fritzpoll is a good person and contributes a lot. I feel that you misplaced some of your criticism against him, and it spiraled out of hand. You may feel otherwise. However, this is just how I feel. Yes, I tend to get emotional and depressed about stuff like this. Yes, I am better in books and situations removed from conflict. However, I want you to understand that I have worked with Fritzpoll in other areas, and I have seen his contributions.

I am a little saddened by what happened, and I don't think anyone wanted this all to spiral out of control. I don't know what to say, or how to help. All I know is that I want you to recognize that Fritzpoll is a decent individual and means no harm. Some of your actions, in this light, have been a little unfair, and a lot of people out there are willing to defend Fritzpoll at all costs. As you stated before, he is not your enemy. However, you pursued him enough that it seemed to blur the boundaries. I don't feel comfortable when people pursue a topic in that way against me, and I am sure that others feel the same way. Its not so much your style, and its not so much your dedication. It was just that you focused on someone who wasn't really that involved and didn't really deserve that much attention.

I hope you understand how I feel, and I hope you understand why I want you to recognize Fritzpoll as a hard working member of this community. I don't want you indefinitely banned, but some people feel as if they had no other choice. Please, I need you to respect Fritzpoll and move on. Don't put together more evidence, or at least keep it off Misplaced Pages for your records. Don't harp on it. Try to move beyond it because it is honestly best for the community. Please. You are welcome to my email as always. Ottava Rima (talk) 04:27, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, Ottava. I think you may not understand what has been happening. Fritzpoll and I have no current dispute except possibly some minor details, which really aren't important. I did not pursue him. At all. It's complicated, and I don't have time at this point to explain what did happen, but the harassment charge, that I was attacking or harassing him, was repeated over and over; the sum of it, though, was that I communicated with him for a limited period of time, discussing the WW topic ban, and it seemed we were done there. I wrote something on my Talk page in response to a comment from him, where I gave him some strong advice, not taken well, but it certainly was not an attack, and I responded with edits to an AN report that he filed, based on my questions about his close of the topic ban discussion. That's it. That is far short of harassment. I'm engaged in reviewing the evidence about my actions not about Fritzpoll. That's what's in the section above, the evidence being compiled here. It's currently the evidence against me and, yes, Fritzpoll is mentioned, simply because the posts I made that were allegedly attacking him mention him. He is not the subject, I am. He is not the target, and, if you look around my exploding Talk page, you'll find that I've explicitly stated that he was not in any way to blame for my block, he's not my enemy, I never had any intention of going after him, I simply intended to challenge the WW topic ban, which is not about him, it's about WW -- and possibly Blechnic, her accuser/harasser. The next actions I would have taken would have hardly mentioned Fritzpoll. Yes, I think he made some errors, but that is, and would have been, water under the bridge, moot.

I have not reviewed Fritzpoll's contributions, but most administrators are hard-working, infinitely underpaid. I have no reason to doubt, not only his good faith -- which I never questioned, at any point -- but also his general work as an editor or administrator. I simply thought he didn't understand an important thing and tried to explain it to him. And I think he made an error regarding the evidence against WW. I make errors. Admins make errors. Everybody makes mistakes. As I've said, if you don't make any mistakes, you aren't trying hard enough. So that I think -- and continue to think -- that he made some mistake, is far, far short of a personal attack or a general smear. It's a tiny thing, one or two decisions. Out of thousands.

Of course, we could say the same about Wilhelmina Will, couldn't we?

Anyway, thanks for your support, it's appreciated. --Abd (talk) 04:48, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

One more comment. What happened yesterday was not about Fritzpoll. To quote Bob Dylan, "only a pawn in their game." I suspect that Fredrick day knew exactly what he was doing when he made it look like he was Fritzpoll. He knew that I'd recognize his IP immediately. He knew what the edit would look like. Now, I wasn't exactly fooled. I knew it was quite possible that the whole thing had been created by Fredrick day, that it really had nothing to do with Fritzpoll. I think Fredrick day, also, may have taken advantage of Fritzpoll's transient "retirement" notice. Fd had done that several times when the jig was up. So he may also have thought that this would increase my suspicion.

But, in fact, I never "accused" Fritzpoll of being Fredrick day. I have not reviewed all the evidence against me, yet, but the block summary features "false accusations of sock puppetry, without providing evidence" something I never did. It is not an accusation of sock puppetry to point to a cause of suspicion, to note or even claim that suspicion is reasonable, if there is evidence, and the evidence reasonably leading to suspicion was right there, immediately preceding my comments supposedly accusing Fp of sock puppetry, and I explicitly stated that this could be Fredrick day and not Fritzpoll. The sock suspicion was merely a possibility, a totally unexpected one, vastly complicating things, that dropped into the middle of a discussion that I thought was winding down.

But where I was blindsided was in two ways: I did not factor for how carelessly some read what I and other write. Even though I kept a careful distinction between suspicion and accusation, and never strayed into the latter, some here are very ready to impute motive. If I mention a suspicion, why would I be doing this? Obviously, to accuse, right? Not right.

And I did not think that continuing to discuss the matter on my Talk page would be considered blockworthy. It wasn't actually, there is a quite a bit of ArbComm precedent on this. But we'll get to that later. --Abd (talk) 04:59, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Lots of people are temporarily blocked due to stuff they've said on their talk page. That's all that's happened. Sticky Parkin 18:06, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Archiving assistance

Abd, your talkpage is currently very long, over 400K, and some people's browsers start having trouble with anything over 32K. Is it alright if I setup an archivebot for the page? --Elonka 06:18, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, yes, though I wouldn't want to archive anything newer than two weeks at this point. It's a bit of a nuisance, I don't think I can create or edit user space files, being blocked.... --Abd (talk) 07:36, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Looks like Xenocidic added the bot already, and did a first archiving pass, thanks.  :) I tweaked it a bit and added an auto archivebox. Even at a 14-day cutoff though, the page is still at 300K, so I'd recommend a faster archive cycle for now, such as 7 days. It can always be tweaked slower later, and any threads that have been inactive for a week and get archived, you can just put a pointer to the archive and continue the discussions here on the live page. To be honest, when a page is at 300K, if a thread goes inactive, it's probably going to stay inactive, since there's so much else going on.  :) If you really want to "keep" the thread though, just add a datestamped comment to it, and that'll "weight it down" so the bot doesn't grab it. The bot is smart enough to only harvest threads that have had no new posts in awhile. --Elonka 16:05, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your assistance on this, Elonka, it's appreciated. I suppose that if I think something needs to come back, I could bring it back. (Might be duplicate for a while (since I can't edit the archives), but that's easy to fix, so go ahead.) It's also kinda nice to know that you might be watching this page. I feel just a tad safer. I'm not worried about being blocked, or the further step of my Talk access being blocked, which I see as a real risk at this point, because what I want to do right now is simply analyze what happened, before reacting to it beyond discussion here. Maybe they are right, I had some kind of fugue, and I viciously attacked Fritzpoll. I want to know! What a mess! Anyway, whatever happens, it's better if it is seen. --Abd (talk) 16:48, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Rehashing some old advice

Abd, I posted this and this on your talk page last month. I was concerned about your bold approach at challenging the Misplaced Pages powers, and now I'm more concerned. You have a lot to offer here, and I happen to think your analysis of Misplaced Pages is dead on, but the way your dealing with it is Wiki-suicide.

Misplaced Pages is an oligarchy, and the last thing you want to do with that kind of power structure is stand in the town square shouting out wordy accusations. Even if they're not accustions per se, anything which challenges the authority of a power user is bound to draw attention. You can't do that if you hope to survive here.

Now you have a block on your record, and you still don't seem to get it. You are still trying to mount a defense as if there is a fair and impartial judicial system that will hear it - there is nothing of the sort. Even arbcom seems reluctant to take even the smallest of steps in challenging the elite. The best you can hope for is to continue editing, make your opinions known non-aggressively and without direct criticism of the elite, and join the growing list of editors who are trying to address these problems passively.

As for this particular block, at this point anything you say will be used against you, so it's best to say nothing, offer a concise apology, and back off from the conflict. You will not be exonerated even if you're right, so might as well cop a plea and live to edit another day. ATren (talk) 13:39, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

I am afraid that I must whole heartedly agree with this advice from ATren. Your best course of action at this time is to simply replace everything in the section for your unblock request with just the unblock template and a single sentence unconditionally expressing good faith towards both Fritzpoll and Iridescent, a sincere apology for any misunderstandings and wikifuss, and a commitment to put this matter behind you without any further action towards either. This is my advice to you as the most sensible way way for your to continue to be an advocate and an adviser for WW. Helping her is more important in the big picture than making some point over this block, is it not? --GoRight (talk) 15:06, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Concur with both, hence my offer to unblock with a succinct (I understand that "succinct" means different things to different people) unblock request. I was also very much turned off by the "formulating unblock, please don't edit here" thread, and completely understand why Jehochman replied the way he did. He is not harassing you Abd, he is following up with you to continue to air his grievance. The thread titled "Jehochman is harassing me" should also be removed, it will not give you any leverage towards an unblock with whomever comes along. I ask again, and implore you to follow the sage advice by ATren and seconded by GoRight. I will unblock, but I need to see contrition. Lots of things went way off track here Abd, many through no fault of your own. The threads you are filling your talkpage with right now do not alleviate anything. If you absolutely, positively, and strongly feel that the best course of action for you, and for Misplaced Pages, and for your Cause of helping others (WW, others) is to continue to post 10,000+kb messages, keep going. I've read them all at this point, really I have. I will not read or respond to anymore. The only post I'll respond to at this point, if you want my help, is what has been requested of you here. Keeper ǀ 76 15:13, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

(edit conflict):::Thanks, Keeper76, I consider your edit here to be purely intended to be helpful. However, as to the "formulating unblock" section -- not a thread -- it's the equivalent of a draft page. It wasn't even intended to be read, it is for my use. So if it offended you, I'd ask why. I do understand that it's unusual. I could do it offline, and will probably do so. So what's the problem with doing it here? It wasn't argumentative, it was pure evidence. Evidence of what? Well, that's what I'm trying to find out. It's the evidence given by Iridescent for blocking me, nothing else, simply expanded and put together with context and dates. I don't know about you, but I can't look at a series of diffs and see what they are all about. I need to know what that evidence means before I respond to it, my response will depend on it. I'm quite aware that if I simply put up an unblock request template, perhaps with a few harmless apologies, there are some administrators waiting to do it. You said you would, and I fulfilled the conditions, I believe. I do wonder why you haven't done it, by the way. You don't have to wait for a request, and the blocking admin clearly said he'd not impose an unblock. Change your mind? I won't hold you to your promise (just as I wouldn't hold Elonka to hers about admin recall, we must ignore foolish promises. Well, not ignore, respect, but not necessarily follow.) Tell you what: if you withdraw the promise, I'll consider you not bound by it. Just be explicit, please.

Your reading shows good intentions, Keeper76, and I fully recognize what a burden that is, but doesn't necessarily guarantee understanding. I'll say this: if you put as much time into reading what I write, as I put into writing it, and researching it before, you'd be more likely to understand it. Much of what I write won't be understood by some readers for years. If I wanted to control people, I definitely wouldn't write this way! But I'm simply sharing what I have, and I have only a little time before it will be impossible. And that has nothing to do with whatever happens here. There are others who understand my agenda, my plans, and they'll do it when the time is right. It does not depend on me, and those who think that blocking me would hinder it are mistaken. As was discussed with Sarsaparilla long ago -- here on my Talk page, I think -- attempts to stop what I see coming will hasten it. Rather, the sane response would be to join it, to make sure the process does not go awry, for it will make whoever participates far more effective, and if only disruptive people participate, well, we would see very effective, practically unstoppable disruption. I certainly don't predict that, in fact, I predict the opposite. Most of those who now may think of themselves as very much opposed to me and the way I think and what I'd propose will end up joining it. By its very nature, it is not against them, even if they were to try to destroy it. But such efforts, if continued too long, will destroy those who attempt it.

It might be time to test some basic principles here. We need to learn if they are true or not. Do I have the right to remove posts from my Talk page that aren't needed for warning or block process? Can I request that a section be allowed for my exclusive use? Can I move posts put in that section out of the section, without changing meaning or losing their context? What rights does a blocked user maintain on their Talk page? (I'd suggest that no rights are lost, with the possible evidence being edits relevant to a block request. Still, I've seen users delete a block warning, and the guidelines I've read on that is that it was moot and the user had the right to do it.) If I'm defiant on my Talk page only, is this "disruption"? May administrators and others attack me on my Talk page, gratuitiously, not in a way needed for process? In blocking me, a very tight standard was used for NPA, which considered even civil criticism of a ban decision to be "personal attack," suspicion of sock puppetry based on present and obvious evidence (even though that evidence was ultimately misleading) to be personal attack (wouldn't every SSP report that turns out to be improper in some way, then be "personal attack," even if civil?) and "harassment."

And much more. Are administrators personally responsible for close decisions, or can they claim that "I didn't decide this, the community decided it," even if the community !voting was divided and evidence was missing? This, by the way, is something that was asserted by Fritzpoll, and I mention it now because it's an unresolved issue that the community should decide at some point, not to attack him. He's done, and he has a right to his opinion, and he clearly has some support in it, so it's beyond any kind of reproach for it.

I don't ask or demand that anyone read the relatively long edits I make. This is my Talk page, it's not in anyone's face who doesn't choose to read it. When I want or expect someone to read something, I edit it tightly, boil it down, and present all needed evidence as conveniently as possible. That's why I started with collecting the evidence against me. The next step would be to analyze it. If I found that I'd acted improperly, I'd then apologize for that, including apologizing to the blocking admin for any errors of mine that affected him (and simply being an occasion for block is a degree of inconvenience, i.e., if I did something wrong, I owe the blocking admin, as well as the community, an apology.) I requested help from the community as to harassment here by Jehochman. It was clearly harassment, it's not marginal. If that harassment is permitted by the community, which will be judged by its actual response, not by its guidelines and policies or some kind of vague good will, I don't want to be editing here. (I judge only with respect to where I put my time, the ultimate judgment is the judgment of history.) I still have plans, Misplaced Pages is far too important to drop, but I'd use other means. Don't worry. Not disruptive. The opposite. It's simple. If I should be blocked, if you are an admin and you think that the block is better for the community, leave it alone, it's indef. If you think it would be better for the community, unblock me. I'm not placing a template partly because I only get one chance, and I want to do it right, totally right. Yes, that takes much more work than just making a minimal request with some possibly phony apology, -- it has to be phony if I don't understand what I did wrong -- but that's my choice. The only time I'm wasting would be my own, and the time to read whatever I ultimately come up with, if it's not effective.--Abd (talk) 16:24, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

I received a friendly email from an uninvolved editor with concerns about this situation. In response, I explained how Abd could probably get unblocked. I'll repeat my advice here. 1/ Archive most of the content on this page. That shows that you do not wish to carry forward any grudges. 2/ Make a clear, concise statement of what you plan to do at Misplaced Pages, with a focus on article improvement. 3/ Promise not to stir up drama for the sake of drama. We are here to engage in a collaborative project. Engaging other users in disputes over process and policy is not what Misplaced Pages is for. Pick a few articles and get them certified as featured or good . The more writing you do, the more patience people will have for entertaining your proposals. Misplaced Pages is a meritocracy and an oligocracy, not a bureaucracy. Jehochman 15:49, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Sure. I've read that advice, sincerely transmitted to me by another editor. I'll note that the conditions for my unblock have started to expand. Originally, it was simply, apologize to Fritzpoll -- which I think had already been done by then, I'm not sure -- and clarify what I meant by a certain post, with regard to Iridescent, and I clarified what it was about and specifically excluded Iridescent from that, it wasn't intended to apply to him when written. But now, there is a far more difficult set of requirements being suggested by Jehochman, who is, in my opinion, a major part of the problem here. So I'm requesting this:

Jehochman, there may be some good advice in what you wrote above. If my personal editing status were my goal, indeed, I'd have followed earlier advice, indeed, I wouldn't have been blocked. But my goal is the overall welfare of the project, and that requires a different approach, for me, regarding my special skills and vision. I've not been disruptive, the claims of harassment against Fritzpoll were totally false, there was not one "harassing" edit, nothing that required response from him, no filing of AN/I reports, RfCs, or any of that. So, Jehochman, unless it is necessary, i.e., your clear duty to edit here, don't. Stay away from my Talk, your participation here is literally disruptive, preventing me from doing necessary work here on my unblock request, and it's contrary to guidelines in other ways as well. I may revert any disruptive edits you make here. I don't see any necessity for any of what you've done here lately. (This is after my block.) You have personally attacked me, claimed that I'm useless to the project, should remain indef blocked because of that, and so forth (these aren't specific claims, now, just my general impression in my memory.) If I'm to be advised, here, it's not by you. Plenty of admins and others are doing a better job, anyway. If you continue to harass me here (as well as to encourage harassment, which you also did), I'm not warning you that I'll pursue recourse, I'm promising it; if necessary, through email to ArbComm. I know the procedure. I've never tried it. Maybe it's time. I'll be asking for plenty of advice, don't worry about that! But not so much advice on how to get unblocked, I already know how to do that, at least the easy way, but what I'm planning is not disruptive and is more likely to come up with a definitive decision with no fuss. In the Fritzpoll affair, I was rigorously following WP:DR, by the book, and that was considered harassment. That should not be allowed to stand, not just for me, but for the project. Emailing ArbComm, of course, is not the first step!--Abd (talk) 16:40, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

You have misunderstood or misrepresented me. I've never "promised" to do anything, let alone unblock you, I offered, with conditions. You've failed to meet them yet. I never said make a "phony apology", I said, to the best of your ability for the benefit of the situation, be succinct. You also have a misinterpretation of the "block template". There is no rule, written or understood, that you only get "one chance" if you use the block template. Yes, historically, a usertalk page will get protected if the block template is abused, but not if it is used, appropriately, multiple times. All that to say, I have made no promise of an unblock, only advice as to how to arrive at one most efficiently, and my willingness to be the unblocker. Jehochman is not harassing you and I'm sorry you feel that he is. Adding (subtlely, yes) that I don't "understand" you because I don't agree with you is not helpful either. I understand completely why you are blocked. I am witnessing, as others may or may not agree, one of the most astounding cases of "wikilawyering" that I've ever seen. Tearing apart "iridescent's block rationale", saying I was "suspicious, but I didn't accuse" Fritzpoll of being F-day, etc etc. It's a semantics game here, Abd. You are clouded by your own philosophy, you do not have a firm grasp on what Misplaced Pages is really all about. If you did, you'd realize that the most important aspect here is not the editors, but the editing. Editors that aren't working towards the editing are blocked for disruption. You've made no assertions here, or anywhere, that you have any intention of improving the encyclopedic quality of Misplaced Pages, you've only made assertions that "you know how Misplaced Pages works, and how to fix it." It strikes me, and I'm sure others, as being incredibly presumptious, haughty even. You do have a decent grasp on human psychology/motivations/social structures. You have Misplaced Pages all wrong though. You really do. Keeper ǀ 76 16:48, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for clarifying. An administrator had written to me by email saying that he was going to leave it to you to unblock, so apparently he read it the same way as me, but it's now moot. That's all I was asking for, clarity, and you provided that. Yes, much of what you write is accurate, but only as far as it goes. If I see Misplaced Pages differently from you, and our POVs can be integrated, we get depth perception. If POVs other than the one are excluded, we get something far less rich, even if the single POV is "neutral." No point arguing about it here. I have philosophical differences with what you've written here, and, yes, if I note that your argument seems one-sided and shallow, for that reason, I fully understand that it could seem "presumptious, haughty even." It might even seem presumptuous. Understand that I've been faced with this for many decades. I'm wrong sometimes, for sure, but I've turned out to be right more often than not. I'll say this much: I do not presume I'm right. That is a terrible error to make, paralyzing judgment. But I simply express the way things look to me, which includes analysis as well as report. The report, if done correctly, is never wrong, it's just a literal POV. The analysis is where I can more easily fail. Anyway, you are relieved of any responsibility whatever from the original comment, it appears that I misunderstood it. You certainly have no further responsibility to read what I write, here or almost anywhere else. --Abd (talk) 17:05, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

I've never once felt that I had a "responsibility" to respond, I do so because I choose to do so. If you are uninviting my company, sobeit, this will be my last post if you tell me not to post here. It is my estimation that you've overestimated your cognizance of this siutation and, in rather belittling fashion, underestimated mine. My intentions have been, and continue to be, pure (although apparently, my spelling bad). If we lived anywhere near each other (and egads, I just realized I have no idea where you are in the real world, nor is it my business, but I'm in Minnesota), I would buy you a beer, or a beverage of your choice while I drank a beer, and we'd hash this out in the communication medium that would be most effective - verbal. Written words are written words. My inner voice reads tone and inflection differently from yours. Jehochman types something, I read it one way (advice and warnings), you read it another (harassment). I could go right back up to the top of this page, reread it all the way down to the bottom, and come out the other side with a completely different interpretation. As could you. Right now, my interpretation of this is that you are more interested in grandstanding your opinions and conjectures than in collobarating in an online encyclopedia. Sobeit. For now, you are "restricted" to your talkpage. I don't believe you will remain "indefinitely blocked", nor do I think you will (or should) be banned from wikipedia. However, the edits that you've chosen to make, as to the betterment of the site's content, revolve almost exclusively around your single purpose and real life work. and and all carry the same overall tone and flavor, in my interpretation, some overwhelming desire on your part to "save Misplaced Pages from itself", or some "perceived threat". And that manifests itself, again all in my interpretation, as "represent the unrepresented". You tend to talk right over people, Abd, with preconceived notions of righting the wronged. All noble, I suppose, and respectable work. But honestly? It is completely exasperating when spread too thin or pushed too hard. If you could humor me with a favor. Go back and read my first post in regards to this mess (I believe Jehochman started the thread as "warning before block", and my post is the third in that section, the one that starts with "huh." Keeper ǀ 76 17:19, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, Keeper. No, I was not uninviting you, at all. You have made useful contributions here. The harassment of Jehochman came when he undid a formatting change I made so that I could edit the evidence page without running into edit conflicts, made with a severe warning about touching his edits in any way. That was out of bounds. I didn't change his actual edit, as to content, nor the framing of it. Instead, I placed a descriptive section header, description not controversial, that connected what followed with what was before. Jehochman then made a post that was pure attack. It wasn't warning, it wasn't advice, it was on the lines of "this is a disruptive, wikilawyering, useless editor, he should be banned." (not exact words.) Then, S. Dean Jacobsen, the person who actually suggested that I investigate the Ottava Rima block issue -- I had posted a consoling note on the OR Talk page that didn't make any assumptions about "guilt or innocence" -- as part of an attack on OR, posted without necessity on my Talk, "seconding" the attack from Jehochman; S. Dean Jacobsen had promised, quite a few times, not to post further to my Talk, thus making unnecessary my asking him not to. Anyway, Jehochman essentially ratified that post by noting that I wasn't in any position to "threaten," i.e., do something about it. None of this was helpful, and Jehochman, in spite of some suggestions that might look helpful on the surface, is actually striking at the heart of my purpose on Misplaced Pages. Which isn't, by the way, to implement my supposed COI ideas, but to help bring the community to the point where it could even consider such a thing. It would only happen by consensus, except for one thing. The ideas can be implemented, at any time, by any group of editors who realizes the value. But I dropped promoting those ideas, in any steady way, maybe six months ago, making only occasional comments as it seemed appropriate. No, it's not my "Real life work." I.e., I don't have any position or income the like. And it's irrelevant to the vast proportion of what I've done, which has mostly been to learn how Misplaced Pages "really" works by doing as well as by reading guidelines and policies. And, by the way, by editing a few articles as well. Mostly, though, to resolve disputes. You might take a look at Routemaster as an example. So far, so good, at least up until a few days ago.

You are, I'll repeat, very right about a lot of things. But I'm not necessarily how I appear. If we met face-to-face, we'd probably cut through the bullshit very, very quickly, I suspect from what you've written above. I'm in Western Massachusetts. Don't drink beer, of course, but the thought is appreciated. Coffee, with heavy cream, please. --Abd (talk) 17:50, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

I'll take a coffee as well, black, and skip the beer this time. No cream though, lactose is one of my very few intolerances.  :-) Seeing as I would have a very difficult time explaining to my significant other, I won't be planning a trip to Western Mass anytime soon (although I've been there before, nice little slice of the country, but too crowded (in my biased Midwestern senses) for my tastes. How would you like to proceed? I recommend the same that I recommended above. Make a valiant effort at conciseness, to your best ability. I would recommend at this point, using offwiki avenues for "compiling the evidence" instead of your talkpage. If for know other reason, it has apparently created yet another distraction with unwanted responses, which garner responses, which get responded to. You can paddle upriver all day instead, and then portage your canoe down the shoreline to the conclusion of the river, as you have been doing. A lot of wasted energies, from a perception point, but you may find it to be useful for your own doings. I, of course, recommend just paddling downriver towards the same eventual delta. Keeper ǀ 76 18:01, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Heh, that is an excellent analogy. Sometimes that feels exactly like what Adb has a tendency to do.  :) --GoRight (talk) 20:12, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Sure, as to compiling off-wiki, I came to the same conclusion myself. Slight additional hassle, but less fuss. As to upriver, downriver, I'm just trying to cross it, going for what is right in front of me. It can seem like more work in the short run, but the long run is a different matter. As I've written before, when I understand the situation and know what I want, I've very concise. I'm just trying to get there first. I don't know what I want, don't know if I want to be blocked or unblocked. I have a fairly strong opinion that the block was improper, but, until I review the evidence, I could easily be biased about that. When I review the evidence, and am myself convinced one way or the other by it, then I'll not whether to respond with "Sorry. Won't do that again." or "Here's the evidence and my analysis. Unblock me, please." And, I think it's clear, if it is the second option, and I'm not unblocked, I go to the next step, probably wouldn't waste time with a second unblock request. But those are both speculation. I need to review that evidence, and it takes time.

(edit conflict) In the meantime, there are editors arguing that I should be unblocked immediately, at least one. That there is no benefit to the project from my being blocked. That's not my decision to make. It could be made by any admin, at this point, at least to unblock. The longer it goes without such reversal, the longer it appears to me that the claims of those that my actions are useless are true, that there is no hope of challenging the oligarchy, which will serve itself first, then the project (though it conflates those two goals, i.e., it protects itself because it believes that it must do so for the welfare of the project, and it might even be right), are correct in which case I conclude that Misplaced Pages has gone past the point of no return, even if there are plenty of excellent editors left, and I put my energy elsewhere. Believe it or not, I don't like tilting at windmills. --18:19, 13 August 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Abd (talk • contribs)

Lol I've not read the other's comments yet, but ATren completely hit the nail on the head.:) As to compiling stuff, you can do it in a word processor, or my quick and easy version is to write it in an email and send it to myself. Sticky Parkin 18:12, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

I also think ATren summarized the situation well, especially the last sentence: As for this particular block, at this point anything you say will be used against you, so it's best to say nothing, offer a concise apology, and back off from the conflict. You will not be exonerated even if you're right, so might as well cop a plea and live to edit another day. I'm of the opinion, though, that Abd (and of course I'm been presumtious here :-) may not actually be capable of "backing off from the conflict" and offering an apology, without first knowing what he is apologizing for. I've given him some ideas as to what needs to be apologized for, but they are only ideas. As Abd has stated many times, this really doesn't have anything to do with Fritzpoll, except tangentially, a tipping point of sorts. I don't think "exhoneration" is the same thing to Abd as it would be to one of our younger, less sophisticated editors either(namely, an unblock). To abuse the analogy above, everyone else sees a goal "downriver," and Abd going "upriver" instead. Abd sees himself trying or attempting neither route, but crossing instead. This is all quite fascinating (and a bit tiring). Keeper ǀ 76 18:29, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Lots of excellent advice and analogies here. I particularly like the "upstream, downstream, delta, crossing the river" analogy. Jehochman's advice at 15:49, 13 August 2008 (in an earlier thread - the three points and suggestion about people having more patience with those who have contributed content) was excellent. Abd's comment at 18:19, 13 August 2008 (about oligarchal self-preservation and not wanting to tilt at windmills) also seems very perceptive. I wouldn't go quite so far as to say that Abd should generalise from his situation to that of Misplaced Pages in general (I interpret what he says as being that the response, or lack of response, to his block can be used in some way to assess the "health" of Misplaced Pages's administrative systems). I don't think Misplaced Pages is quite homogenous enough for that (and is too large for a single data point to mean much anyway). Injustices do occur every day all over Misplaced Pages, and you do sometimes have to take an eventualist attitude. Sometimes things go wrong, but eventually things should turn out OK if the overarching principles are broadly maintained. Oh, and the only reason I haven't unblocked is because I consider myself too closely involved now, which ironically is the reason Iridescent gave somewhere (I think) for not unblocking. I suppose an equivalent to a "block where the blocking admin has said they won't oppose an unblock", would be an "unblock where the unblocking admin won't stand in the way of a re-block". But that feels silly and kind of like passing the buck around. Better for someone to take responsibility, to make an end to the matter here, and then have everyone move on. That, and the focus is again being dragged away from the WW topic ban that started this off. Carcharoth (talk) 22:00, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

(edit conflict):Yes, Carcharoth, you could be considered to be involved -- though not any more involved than many blocking/unblocking admins I've seen, and quite possibly no more involved than Iridescent was when he blocked. Seemed he was irritated by my writing. He'd warned me and, I think, he considered me uncivil in response, so he blocked. That's actually blatant COI. This very point has come up, and yes, there are some knotty problems involved. I'd argue that, given the circumstances, given that it's not contentious, being permitted by the blocking admin, you could unblock if you think that best. COI editors are allowed to make uncontentious edits. It's true that another admin could decide to reblock, but that would be a new decision and any fuss raised by that would be the responsibility of the new blocking admin, not you, nor Iridescent, who is done here.

I don't have any question about Iridescent's good faith in blocking me. I really can't predict what I'll think about whether or not his block was proper or not until I review the evidence in detail, which I certainly intend to do, particularly if I'm not unblocked. My impression from what I've seen so far is that, indeed, the block was improper, but what if that last diff I go over turns out to be a Holy Shit! moment for me? It's not done till it's done. From what I know so far, though, and given the assumption of good faith that is not at all difficult for me with Iridescent, the most I'd come to was a conclusion that it was improper, a good faith error, and, as we all know, we don't sanction those, we let them go unless there is serious concern they will be repeated. Both Psychim62 and Tango made good faith blocks -- in my opinion -- but were desysopped, but not really because of the blocks themselves, it was because, when the community later determined that COI rules had been violated, they refused to acknowledge it, and continued to assert they had acted correctly, thus creating reasonable fear that they didn't understand those rules. By the way, one of the areas of "conflict" that I participated in was the Physchim62 arbitration, where I think I helped formulate the community's view. I know I got some compliments on what I wrote there.

Thanks for your notice of my writing, Carcharoth. You raise, of course, a very valid point. What happens to me is just another data point. You referred to eventualism, and that's my point. The longer an improper block, if that is what it is, stands, when there are opportunities for the community to review it, the more it means. It could be said that every hour that passes without some review, given how visible this was, and apparently still is, is another data point. But, sure, Misplaced Pages justice is quite erratic.

Now, what about this block? Was it proper? If Iridescent had exercised due diligence and caution, would he have blocked? My impression of his edits leading up to the blocks was of impatience, and the block notice had a section header of something like "Enough is enough." That's a comment indicating frustration. At this point, I have apologized to Fritzpoll, but without acknowledging any wrongdoing. In other words, I don't believe that I personally attacked him, nor that I accused him of being a sock puppet, I kept my remarks with the allowed bounds of reasonable suspicion. And I can establish this with evidence. Later evidence came to my attention that removed all suspicion, and since being suspected of sock puppetry can be stressful -- though I've been suspected and I guarantee you, situations arise for me every day where I'm much more uncomfortable! -- I apologized to him. I'll note, as well, that I did not create the suspicion, Fredrick day did, with a typical Fredrick day intervention. That some admins didn't recognize it and thought I was overreacting added to the impression that Iridescent would have had.

Iridescent has claimed that I've attacked him afterwards, but that's not relevant to the question of whether or not the block was proper. A review of the block should be based on the evidence available at the time. That block record doesn't go away. So, what I'm looking for is a block that clears me of the charges made in the block. I'm not just looking for unblock. If I erred so badly that I personally attacked an editor (not just once but seven times) and made "sock puppet accusations with no evidence," then I really shouldn't be editing here, or certainly not in the areas I've worked in. But if I didn't, then what I want is an unblock that concludes that the block was improper. Otherwise, if I still think it was improper, I'd be motivated to go for review. I.e., more fuss. Better to leave me blocked, I'd say.

I'm not planning disruption, I'll emphasize that. But I do have the right to challenge what amounts to personal attacks. Improperly accusing someone of personal attacks is a personal attack. Stating an appearance is one thing, warning over the appearance another, but actually blocking represents a conclusion about personal behavior, and it impugns the reputation of the blocked editor, which is improper if it isn't necessary, it meets the definition of NPA. It's very simple to correct errors, but Iridescent didn't correct his error, if it was his error. He abstracted himself, instead. It's a legitimate option, but it also means that he did not avail himself of a remedy, should he have made a mistake. Nevertheless, because he clearly stated he would not oppose an unblock, he made it possible for any other administrator to remedy the error, it's an interesting response, my respect for him went up a notch over that. He recognized that he didn't want to read what I write about the issue, so he couldn't legitimately oppose unblock, but he also remained convinced that, for whatever reason, I should remain blocked. I still don't know the full implications of this.

Gotta put the kids to bed, I still want to read and document those damn diffs! I lost about half of what I'd done with complicated edit conflicts produced by Jehochman's disregard of my request and reversion of my fix. It's tempting, I'll admit, to edit war with him here, to call his bluff on that. I certainly should be allowed to remove personal attacks from my Talk page. But it will be simpler to deal with that later. Ah, yes, in case someone wants to suspect that I might take some action with regard to Jehochman, like an RfC. Yes, if standard preceding measures don't suffice. If he's acted properly, he should have nothing to fear. I trust consensus, when it has an opportunity to actually appear. --Abd (talk) 23:32, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

arbitrary subsection

And, in retrospect, I would say that procedurally the use of an indefinite block was a mistake. It has resulted in a situation where the user is blocked and no one will take responsibility for lifting it. Let me ask this, in the case of a first time offender accused of WP:NPA violations what would be the usual time limit? --GoRight (talk) 22:46, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

No, actually, that might have been right. She had evidence, she thought, of an ongoing pattern that wasn't stopping, and, I'll assume for the moment, wasn't likely to stop. She didn't know how long it would take. Apparently, she wanted to see some evidence of change; for example, if I'd immediately said I'd made a mistake, sorry, won't do that again, I think she'd have immediately unblocked. I couldn't say that, for reasons I've explained above, but she didn't know that. (I've been saying "he," sorry Iridescent. Habit. I did notice yesterday that you are a woman.) The biggest error was in blocking me after I'd already agreed to not edit outside my Talk until the smoke cleared. In other words, the behavior that the block would have been designed to prevent had already stopped, voluntarily. I think she may have missed that. If someone confirms that, they might ask her! I don't think she's reading here.

That's not the point. He's not being unblocked not because no-one will take responsibility for it, but because he isn't fulfilling the conditions required i.e. apologising, saying he will change to get along with people and the goals of wikipedia as an encyclopedia. That's standard for an indef block, that someone's usually blocked until they agree to change whatever the problem was. And what the time limit would be would depend on the rest of the user's contribs a lot of the time. However you do have a point. I suppose it's just a matter of having rubbed people up the wrong way, but there's no sign of Abd trying to smooth most people's fur back into place. Sticky Parkin 23:13, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

I fulfilled the original conditions, but new ones have been added. Who was offended? The block was for alleged attacks on Fritzpoll. He's accepted my apology. Iridescent seems irritated by my response, but, really, that's not relevant. Whatever damage was being done by my alleged personal attacks was remedied, I think, two days ago. No, Sticky, you need to understand what's going on. I actually asked my friends to be very restrained in this. I really want to explore the edges of this, and not simply use my "interesting writer" pass. So, while I'm not naive and defenseless, I'm placing myself in somewhat the same situation. I don't think what I'm doing here could be considered disruptive. It's my Talk page. Just about everything I'm writing is exploring Misplaced Pages policy and practice. Drives some people batty, but this is actually how I learn. It's quite efficient, for me, and it leads me to learn and understand things that sometimes escape even much more experienced editors. I've come to a whole new understanding, over the past week, of how Misplaced Pages works, and it is very clear and simple, but I don't know that I've seen it expressed anywhere. Carcharoth got it, in fact, but quite a few admins involved missed it and denied it. So, there's a task for me, write about it on the policy pages. Which is, of course, exactly what some admins, explicitly, are trying to prevent. They want me to work on articles. (Could be, by the way, that it's written up somewhere, this is a very big place.) It's like Sarsaparilla. He was blocked for creating a hoax article, apparently to blow off steam. Speedied. Had no prior offenses of any similar nature. Indef, by the way. He was blocked three times, all indef, for actions that would normally result in a 24-hour block, if that. Okay, the offense was in article space. So the remedy proposed? Topic ban, only allowing him to edit article space. Why is that?

Well, it shows the real purpose behind the block. He was interfering in policy, making proposals like WP:PWD. Etc. While I'm at it, third block reason: he created an article on a non-notable subject. Not a hoax. Verifiable. Probably not notable. If I'm unblocked, I think I'll recreate, not that article, but the proper one, on the parent company. The article was Easter Bunny Hotline. And Fredrick day, as an IP editor, screamed for his ban on AN/I, and the community bought it. Part of it was based on a lie, that the hotline was obscene. Perhaps it was, at the level that I hear every day on Air America Radio.... It's incidents like this that are behind User:Abd/Rule 0.

Ah, yes, what would an ordinary block be for personal attack. Normally, 24 hours. At this point, it would be pretty common that some admin would pop in and say, this was too long, and unblock for that reason. However, there is this issue of not having complied with conditions. But were the conditions related to the block reason, and have they not been satisfied? The original conditions, I mean. To my knowledge they have fully been complied with. --Abd (talk) 00:08, 14 August 2008 (UTC)