Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Mav

Wikipedia:Requests for comment/168 and Mav

Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/168 | User:Lir

Initial statement

168..., an admin, feels that mav, another admin, has attempted to intimidate him by citing what are regarded by many others as rules of thumb as if they are absolute rules that demand de-adminship when breached ([example below]). 168... feels that the manner of mav's continuing inquiry into 168...'s actions shows a prejudice, which continued to characterize Mav's conduct, despite evidence of more tolerant views among other admins around him. Even before Mav made his first public calls for scrutiny of 168...'s conduct, 168... feels mav should have consulted with Cyan, an admin that mediated the disputed page and who is much more familiar with the context of the objected-to behavior than himself. 168... sees this failure to consult Cyan a failure of due dilligence and evidence of a disregard for principles of fairness and neutrality. 168... also sees this as an exploitation by Mav of Mav's notoriety and 168...'s lack of notoriety as a do-gooder. Other accusers could not have rallied so much support so quickly, 168... contends, and the presence of any bias or unjustified zeal in Mav's accusation can be expected to have had a very large impact on the public perception of 168..., which 168... could not effectly balance through self-advocacy. 168... would like to note that this whole conflict, involving many admins and many pages and many kilobytes of text, has only occurred because of the failure, despite the calls of many, to permanently ban User:Lir. 168... would also like to point to a bias or discrimination implied by Mav's having discouraged others from participating in a poll of opinion that 168... attempted to conduct about Lir [1] and Mav's failure to speak against a poll that others conducted about 168... here, and which resulted in 168...'s public condemnation and stripping of sysop powers. Mav claims to have brought accusations against 168... justly and without prejudice.

On top of many other accusations (see Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/168) Mav accuses 168... of raising accusations against Mav only in order to distract from the accusations against 168.... 168... says this is untrue and typical of how Mav has been prosecuting his case against 168, which 168... sees as involving at every turn either an assumption of bad faith and/or an action tending to bias public opinion against 168... and favor a resolution that Mav prefers: That the current version of community rules and guidelines should be obeyed "to the letter" and that 168... be harshly reprimanded for having interpreted them liberally.

An example of Mav's use of what 168... calls "guideline exaggeration" is this:

(cur) (last) . . 00:42, 3 Feb 2004 . . Maveric149 (putting Ed's note back again; Note that 168 used the auto revert feature to erase it last time; another abuse of sysop user rights)[2]

Explaination from 168

> Here's my take on things, as far as who did right
> and
> who did wrong and who owes what to whom.
> 
> I think there are a lot of similarities or parallels
> between what I did and what Mav did. I think Mav
> wrote
> at one point that he wanted to make an example of
> me.
> So that suggests to me that, like myself, and
> whether
> consciously or not, Mav was acting politically. As I
> wrote on Requests for comment/Mav, Mav's political
> goal I think is to encourage people to see the
> current
> version of community rules and guidelines as needing
> to be obeyed "to the letter." My goal (to quote a
> recent comment I made to Kingturtle) is to soften
> the
> conservativism here, to get people to see the rules
> as
> evolving guidelines instead of the articles of a
> constitution, to get people to notice the
> inconsistencies between our values and the
> particular
> articulation of certain rules that we have now and,
> in
> particular, to move the organization in a direction
> that enables it to either get rid of or reform
> people
> like Lir, who waste enormous amounts of person
> hours,
> cause enormous amounts of aggravation, scare
> enormously valuable people away, enormously diminish
> the quality of articles and enormously slow the pace
> of the production of a high quality encyclopedia.
> Both
> Mav and I share a more fundamental goal of making
> Wikipedia a better place by reducing the feeling of
> anarchy created by a subset of users. But for me,
> the
> ideology of extreme all-inclusiveness is not
> essential
> to Wikipedia, and so I am willing to use banning and
> protection more liberally than Mav. So in order to
> achieve our shared fundamental goal, Mav and I have
> chosen different immediate goals, which have brought
> us into conflict with one another. In particular,
> for
> Mav to achieve his immediate goal, I must be harshly
> reprimanded for having interpreted the Wikipedia
> rules
> liberally.  
> 
> So Mav acted politically and I acted politically.
> Besides that similarity, we also both may be said to
> have set bad examples for others in the pursuit of
> our
> goals. In order to perceive and portray what I
> initially did as a simple crime and in order to
> portray everything I did in response to being
> prosecuted by Mav and others into additional simples
> crime, Mav had to assume bad faith of me at every
> turn
> and he had to oversimplify the facts and work to
> bias
> people's opinions against me.  To the extent this
> was
> a game of politics, I am a little inclined to say it
> doesn't matter whether Mav sincerely believed me to
> be
> as evil as he made it seem or believe me to have
> acted
> as wrongly as he made it seem to everybody else.  
> 
> The bad example I may be said to have set for others
> is more or less what Mav has said. I am a sysop.
> (According to a strict interpretation) I broke some
> very important rules, and I broke them over and over
> as other administrators told me to stop.
> 
> Yet another similarity between Mav and me is that
> the
> bad examples that we both set were set partly by our
> own free choice. I did not HAVE to stretch the rules
> and ignore calls to stop. Mav did not HAVE to take
> such an interest in my supposed crime and in all my
> subsequent behavior, and he did not HAVE to campaign
> against me in the slanted way he did.
> 
  

So why do I see what Mav did as more deserving of
scrutiny than what I did? Well, I think there are some
important differences that make what Mav did a lot
worse.

 
> Essentially, I think I didn't hurt or commit an
> injustice against anyone, but Mav hurt me a lot and
> committed a lot of injustice against me. We both bad
> examples for others and hindered each other's
> political goals, but only Mav caused hurt by
> (whether
> consciously or not) distorting the truth. Mav and
> other reactionaries like to point out that I
> protected
> a page and protection prevents others from editing,
> but I protected a page that several other admins
> were
> on the verge of protecting anyway. So I was the one
> to
> do it, but it would have been protected without me.
> All my protection did was to attract attention,
> which
> is what I wanted.   
> 
> I think that if I had done what I did initially, and
> if Mav had not not done what he did initially and
> continued to do forever afterwards, then I think my
> reputation would not have been so damaged and I
> think
> I would not have had to take so many actions that
> damaged my reputation. Without Mav's strong voice
> and
> Mav's good reputation presenting an oversimplified
> and
> condemnatory portrayal of what I did, I think that
> perception would not have taken hold in the general
> population of Wikipedians. I think a debate would
> have
> emerged and what I did would be recognized as having
> exposed a conflict between certain community values
> and the rules we have as they are currently
> expressed.
> I think my actions against Lir might have come to be
> seen as not so controversial. I think I might not
> have
> had an army of admins undoing without discussion
> every
> action I performed, so that I would not have been
> involved in revert wars against admins. I think I
> might not have had so many people so willing to post
> oversimplified portrayals of my crimes on a
> Requests-for-comment page prior to any discussion
> with
> me, contrary to the rules. I think I would not have
> so
> many people assuming bad faith of me.
> 
> What I want is this: I want Mav to acknowledge that
> what he did was political and to acknowledge that
> his
> ideology does not represent the only one that a
> reasonable, democratic and good-hearted Wikipedian
> can
> hold. Up to know he has been acting like God's
> emmisary. Also, to the extent that Mav actually
> believed that I was acting in bad faith and was a
> bad
> individual, I want him to admit that he was wrong
> and
> to publicly apologize to me for not having taken the
> simple steps he could have taken to achieve a more
> accurate appraisal of my character and intentions.
> To
> the extent he actually believed he was leading a
> non-biased campaign, I want him to realize how
> easily
> this text-based, anonymous world allows bias and how
> vulnerable he has been to this bias, especially
> given
> that he is serving as an arbitrator. Then I would
> like
> him to ask others whether they think he should
> resign.
> If it turns out that he slanted his representations
> of
> me intentionally, I want him to admit publicly what
> his missteps were and how he thinks he made them, so
> that his behavior will provide a lesson to others
> who
> might try to steer the majority into thinking badly
> about an individual, and once again stifle the
> freedom
> of expression and democratic evolution of Wikipedia
> guidelines and custom.  


> 168...