Board Thread:Community Voting/@comment-10112739-20160102070335/@comment-5052737-20160102155120

Madkatmaximus wrote:

Alemas2005 wrote: I'll probably have to close this anyway since votes on unblocking users aren't allowed (you can't vote to block users, so why would you be able to unblock them...?), but for now, I'll just proceed to explain our actions... I must point out, however, that due to data loss on the admin site, the thread discussing Fort's block got wiped, so I'm having to work from memory. I cannot find anywhere in the policy where it states that votes on unblocking users are not allowed. Given how much Fort was on chat, I'd definitely say that this is a community issue, therefore warranting a public vote. So please tell me why we voted to permablock Dama/Nightfall, who was just as much a community member as Fort, and then after that we even re-voted on it at the behest of the community. We have voted on several users, no-one complained. If we were to allow the community to vote on unblocking users, then what's the point of having the admins block them in the first place? Shouldn't the admins have the responsibility of protecting the Wiki? Something has to give here.

First, Mad, no, this wasn't "incredibly shady". The discussion was held on admin chat, to which you had access. For you, it couldn't have been "shady" at all. If you were referring to how quickly we dealt with the matter, I suggest you try to remember just the overwhelming amount of evidence collected against him. To any neutral observer, on the basis of that evidence, they probably would have quickly decided for a block as well. And it wasn't "consistent" due to the history of the user in question. Yes, Alemas, it was shady. As Slice said, there was no prior indication or warning of any sort that he would be permablocked for any bad behaviour. Just because it was held on admin chat with a vote doesn't make it any less suspicious. As for consistency, you recently voted to unblock a user that was permablocked for trolling chat, making several dupes, and cursing on chat, and have as of yet done nothing about another formerly permablocked user being here. And yet you vote to block a well established member of the community with absolutely no warning who is well liked by a number of people. He might not have been warned on his Wall, but he could have been warned in PM. You can't exclude that possibility. And what you say about "voting to unblock a user" is incorrect: I haven't unblocked anyone (as you can see here), and I haven't "voted" on unblocking the user in question. Furthermore, there's currently an admin thread on that subject, in which I pose the question on whether or not we should take action, and in said thread I haven't yet posted my vote. I do not currently understand to whom you are referring with the second user. We can't know whether he received "absolutely no warning", as it could have been given in PM. And the fact that he's "well-liked" is, unfortunately, irrelevant. If a user repeatedly breaks policy, we can't allow them on the Wiki. If I were to break policy, for example, I'd expect action to be taken, otherwise it would be a case of blatant personal bias.

Now, to Rus's statements...

"the administrators decided amongst themselves to block Fort from the wiki for /Eternity/ for nothing major in particular": It wasn't one big policy-breaking action which led to him being blocked, it was the accumulation of several hostile, unnecessary, and offensive comments which the Wiki could well have done without. For example, there was one exchange in this blog between him and Kira in which they exchanged hostilities. Slicer tried to stop it, which only led to Fort reacting negatively towards him and continue the comment chain. The whole farce was stopped when the whole 60+-comment chain got deleted. The whole thing is referred to here. More examples of his rude behaviour can be seen here, here, and here. There were several more pieces of evidence of Fort's obnoxious comments which got lost in the data loss. And again, he was given no sort of official warning for that. At all. And again, he could have been given a warning in PM. Warnings in PMs are perfect if you don't want to create too much drama.

"only on the basis that he had been warned in the past to improve his behaviour, however Fort apparently did not commit any new offence for which to be blocked": Allow me to rectify that; he did. Offensive comments towards admins spring to mind (just see his comments towards Jude above), as well as this edit to his "retirement" blog, which was a blatant personal attack. No comment for several reasons. Very well then, no comment from me as well.

"he has not heard from any administrator about the reason for the block at all": Perhaps not from the admins, but there's a block reason under his Evie Dark account. That's incredibly vague, and he still never received any official word on this. Still not looking any better for you. I don't find it as "incredibly vague", it describes what he did wrong. There's even a "specifically" in it. Not looking any better for me? FYI, that warning was written by someone else, not me. If I remember correctly, I added the "Was repeatedly warned before this block" part. I'm not quite sure what you're on about.

"so I see no reason as to why he should be /permanently blocked/ for seemingly nothing other than being warned before on certain things": The permablock has a reason. The accumulation of obnoxious and offensive comments would have led to a block, you can't dispute that. However, we blocked him permanently because on the basis of his past behaviour, he just wouldn't have improved (allow me to point out the block logs of his Brickmaster and TwistedAlpha accounts). A temporary block would have simply delayed an inevitable permablock, so we decided to cut things short and block him for eternity already. And may I point out that he did get repeatedly warned? If you continuously ignore warnings and continue doing exactly the same things for which you got warned, some form of action is inevitable.

It goes without saying, I vote B).

JSYK, if the admin who posted the thread in admin chat shows up, he may provide yet more evidence for Fort's permablock. I don't have much more to add that I haven't already said, but you're still grasping at straws here. No matter the context, it was still handled poorly, unfairly, and very unprofessionally, and something needs to be done about it.

Well, you were around when this happened, so why didn't you bother mentioning all these concerns back when we were actually talking about it? Wouldn't have hurt at all. Something could have been done back then. Indeed, I didn't get any feeling that we were doing things wrong when we were deciding things.