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WP:INVOLVED

Sandstein, it occurs to me that you should not be reviewing the appeal of Brandmeister's sanction as an uninvolved editor. As you were one of the admins who supported the sanction in the initial AE case you would be involved with regards to an appeal of said sanction.--The Devil's Advocate _{tlk. cntrb.} 21:53, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

That's a valid argument, but I'm not sure whether you're right. I understand how one might think so. But technically? WP:INVOLVED describes the concept of involvement as "current or past conflicts ... and disputes on topics", which does not apply to me in relation to Brandmeister. Additionally, I reviewed the original request against Brandmeister in my administrative capacity. Per WP:INVOLVED, "ne important caveat is that an administrator who has interacted with an editor or topic area purely in an administrative role, or whose prior involvements are minor or obvious edits which do not speak to bias, is not involved and is not prevented from acting in an administrative capacity in relation to that editor or topic area. This is because one of the roles of administrators is precisely to deal with such matters, at length if necessary." So according to the wording of the policy I'm uninvolved in the sense of that policy.

Now, as a practical matter, should administrators who have expressed a view on a sanction (rather than imposed it themselves) recuse themselves from later discussion about that sanction? In theory, to prevent the appearance of bias, the answer should probably be yes. But the number of admins participating at AE is normally so low that, if they all recused themselves from commenting on appeals where they previously expressed an opinion about the sanction, the result may well be that there will not be enough uninvolved contributors in order for the qualified consensus needed to overturn a sanction to emerge from the discussion, and as a result most appeals to AE will be doomed to failure. If they don't recuse, they may well form a new opinion about the original sanction, as I did in the case you refer to, or they may conclude that the reason for the original sanction no longer applies, e.g. because the appellant has credibly promised not to repeat whatever misconduct he was sanctioned for. In addition, it is probably preferable for sanctions to be supported by a rough agreement of admins active at AE, because this will make it more likely that the sanction is not completely out of bounds. We should therefore not encourage admins not to comment on sanctions proposed by their colleagues just in case they may need to review an appeal later.

For these reasons, on balance, I consider that it's probably preferable for me to comment on appeals of sanctions I've previously commented about as an administrator, while however making it clear that I did so, so that whoever closes the appeal thread may still take this into consideration and, if they consider it appropriate, not take my view into account when assessing consensus. However, the question remains a valid one. I'm asking AGK (talk · contribs), the arbitrator who I understand is working on proposals to clarify AE appeals procedure, to take the question into consideration and perhaps offer a solution in his proposals.  Sandstein  22:26, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

You are involved with regards to questions about your administrative actions, period. It is why unblock requests have to be reviewed by a new admin. Lord Roem understands this as he commented as an involved party. The idea is for people who weren't involved in the initial sanction to review the action. Obviously, someone who imposed the sanction is more likely to try and preserve it.--The Devil's Advocate _{tlk. cntrb.} 22:48, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

I agree that whoever imposes a sanction is involved in any appeal. But in this case I did not impose the sanction that is now being appealed. I merely commented on whether I thought it was appropriate - which is not a use of administrative powers. Following your argument, I would have had to recuse no matter whether I commented positively or negatively.  Sandstein  22:57, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

Well, yes, because that would be a good idea either way. One suggests that you might be biased in favor of an appeal, the other suggests you might be biased in opposition of an appeal.--The Devil's Advocate _{tlk. cntrb.} 23:05, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

Indeed, and an argument can be made for that position, but for the abovementioned reasons I am not entirely convinced by it.  Sandstein  23:09, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

Why is it you cannot see when you are involved here, either? How are you blind to this pattern? Commenting as an "uninvolved admin", not as a regular user in a "Statement by" section, is in fact "a use of administrative powers", and one that you actually show a clear pattern of engaging in when it's inappropriate. You're behaving like a cop who wears his uniform to a party; you don't seem able to tell when your "duty" role is and is not appropriate, and quite a a bit of difficulty in putting it down when it seriously isn't in the context. I know how much you like to see patterns; try applying such analysis to your own actions for a change. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖכþ Contrib. 00:06, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

SMcCandlish, you have announced on your talk page that you intend to appeal the topic ban I imposed on you. So as not to have to repeat myself, I would like to respond to your concerns about that ban in one place, that is, in response to your appeal if and when you submit it. Thanks,  Sandstein  05:46, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Different topics, albeit connected. My concerns about your involvement in Brandmeister's appeal and the pattern it's forming are related to but not identical to those relating to your ban against me, which are more personal. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖכþ Contrib. 13:33, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Seriously?

Did you actually just topic ban an editor for filing an AE request after he had withdrawn it and apologised? Black Kite (talk) 19:12, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

I banned SMcCandlish at for, as explained there, making a frivolous arbitration enforcement request – but not for that alone, but rather as the last point in a pattern of battleground conduct. The withdrawal did not contain an apology, but a very much qualified possibility of one, predicated on the future conduct of his opponent ("Maybe I even really am flat-out wrong about your posts, too, as you say; if time shows this to be the case, I will owe you an apology"). That is entirely unconvincing. More importantly, it did not reflect an understanding by SMcCandlish that (and why) his conduct was problematic. Also, the request was only withdrawn after several administrators agreed that the request was sanctionable. In view of that, the withdrawal would need to have been accompanied by a much less ambiguous statement to convince me that it reflected not merely a tactical maneuver to avoid being sanctioned, but rather a genuine understanding by SMcCandlish that the request (as well as his prior battleground conduct) was disruptive, and that such conduct would not reoccur.  Sandstein  19:43, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

Hmm. I'm no defender of SMcCandlish - indeed I think his antics regarding WP:BIRDS were completely disruptive - but that topic ban does really strike me as a bit punitive. Black Kite (talk) 07:19, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

That was not my aim; my aim was to prevent reocurrences of battleground behavior in this topic area. A topic ban is better suited to this than the block proposed by another administrator would have been.  Sandstein  11:54, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

How can you say that with a straight face? You proposed topic-banning me for an entire year (after previously, in the AE request brought by someone else, proposing to block not topic ban me for a year), when Mr. Stradivarius proposed a one-week block (which I would also appeal as punitive nonsense, but that's not the point). I filed an AE request that quickly failed because the evidence was decided by you and some other admins to be too old to be relevant; the merits of that evidence were never discussed, and so there is no case to be made that it was poor, thus no case to be made this was part of some disruptive "pattern" with regard to MOS/AT. That request should have been closed immediately with no sanctions for anyone, on that technicality, but you decided to turn into in a very lengthy SMcCandlish witchhunt. The fact that MOS/AT even had anything to do with it at all was incidental and inevitable – ARBATC only applies to MOS/AT discussions, so I could not have brought any other sort of request to AE for enforcement under ARBATC in the first place. Your implacable zeal to see my virtual mouth taped shut and to be the one to do the taping has blinded you to basic logic in more than one way when it comes to any dispute involving me.

The fact that my evidence was thrown out on a technicality and not shown to be faulty on the merits is why I did not issue Fyunck(click) an apology; the evidence is actually quite damning, and the user has a long history of serious disruption with numerous blocks. I rescinded the AE request because it was clearly being rejected by multiple admins on the evidence-age technicality, and thus was a waste of time for everyone involved. Your theory that I did it to cover my own butt is yet another blatant assumption of bad faith on your part toward me, one of several. Besides, there is no principle at AE that apology leads to no sanctions, so I would have had no basis to assume making one would have any effect on what happened with regard to me, which I am near-certain would have been a warning until you just couldn't resist unrecusing yourself to dump an excessive, WP:POINTy punishment on me. Has any admin ever unrecused themself before? That's so weird and unwise, it might be a unique occurrence. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖכþ Contrib. 23:58, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

SMcCandlish, you have announced on your talk page that you intend to appeal the topic ban I imposed on you. So as not to have to repeat myself, I would like to respond to your concerns about that ban in one place, that is, in response to your appeal if and when you submit it. Thanks,  Sandstein  05:47, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Just giving you an opportunity to resolve this yourself, as plenty of others have suggested you do, instead of involving yet more process. I'll take this as you declining. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖכþ Contrib. 13:36, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

User:SMcCandlish and a topic ban

Your topic ban of SMcCandlish states that in you have instated the topic ban in your capacity as an uninvolved admin. I am here to inform you that you are, in absolutely no way, uninvolved. Your ongoing conflict with this editor and in this topic area is the very essence of involved, and your conflict of interest is palpable to outside editors, like me. You are doing a disservice to yourself and to the entire admin community by imposing sanctions that would be far more appropriate from literally any other administrator. VanIsaac_{WS Vex} 22:13, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, that "conflict" consists of SMcCandlish disagreeing very intensively with my assessment of his conduct which I have made in my capacity as an administrator enforcing an Arbitration Committee decision. Such disagreements are to be expected in the course of administrative action, which is why WP:INVOLVED provides that interactions in an administrative role, at length if necessary, do not constitute involvement.  Sandstein  22:29, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

And that's the problem. Your entire involvement in this area has been marked by a persistent unwillingness to reexamine your own perceptions and actions. You see your actions as simply carrying out normal functions, but from the outside, your threats and punitive sanctions against this, and other editors, has the marked appearance of hopeless conflict of interest, and your continued refusal to examine the history of these issues and instead relying on your initial perceptions and the reaction thereto, has made you hopelessly WP:Involved when it comes to many of the editors involved in this dispute. Your initial questionable judgement has been combined with an unfortunate intransigence which has made your involvement incredibly unseemly, and your continued persistence in meting out punitive sanctions undermines your moral authority to exercise sysop tools. Please; leave this conflict area immediately. Your continued presence harms both yourself and the project. VanIsaac_{WS Vex} 04:30, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

You and the user on whose behalf you write are certainly at liberty to disagree with my administrative actions at AE, but the proper way to contest them would be filing an appeal against those actions, rather than demanding my recusal.  Sandstein  06:13, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

I am not writing on anyone's behalf, least of all SMcCandlish, whom I originally watchlisted to keep an eye on. I am not contesting anything, as I am not a party to any conflict. I am not demanding anything, as I do not actually care whether a particular editor is topic banned or not. I am telling you that your actions are harmful to this project. You can act with an introspection that you have not shown before, but make no mistake, I am talking for myself and only for myself: your actions and attitude are destroying your credibility as an admin, and your continued insistence that you are acting without bias is self-delusional. VanIsaac_{WS Vex} 07:28, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

• The hull has suffered irreparable damage, and the ship is sinking fast. The greatest irony, I think, is that the torpedo was self-launched. -- Ohconfucius  08:30, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

User:Kumioko's block log

I can't figure out the deal with this -- the user's block log shows only two blocks, both this year, but its clear from looking over some old talk pages that he was blocked before that. Am I doing doing something wrong in the query, or what? Herostratus (talk) 04:03, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

I don't know. Maybe they were blocked as a previous user account?  Sandstein  06:14, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

I don't think so, but it's not important, although I hope the block logs generally are showing correctly. I took a quick look because I was surprised to see such an accomplished editor being shown the door. But I don't know if anything else could have been done. Interesting and sad case of a good career going off the rails, I guess. Herostratus (talk) 06:24, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

It's kind of a sad story. The original account was Kumioko (renamed) (talk · contribs). About a year ago, he got into a dispute with Markvs88 (talk · contribs) when Kumioko added WikiProject US tags to the talk page of a few Connecticut articles and Mark removed them. That led to further controversy over his rather broad notions of the WikiProject US scope (many articles with "American" in the name seemed to be getting tagged on that basis alone), Kumioko didn't get the support he'd hoped for on the Village Pump, and ultimately got blocked for edit-warring. That set off a full-scale "Dramageddon" (as he later put it), including POINTy opposes at RfA, an attempt to MfD WP:DIVA after someone applied it to him, and a prolonged quitting process which ended with him scrambling the password to that account. About two days later, he reappeared as ShmuckatellieJoe (talk · contribs), pretending to be a new user and trolling Markvs88. He ultimately got caught because he was editing with both that account and an IP address and signed a ShmuckatellieJoe post as "formerly Kumioko" (plus the obvious stylistic similarities), although he insisted on denying it to the end. About a month later, he got tired of editing by IP, and got a new account and retook the Kumioko name; see here.

He continued doing some useful tagging work for a while, but then he decided he really, really needed admin rights to do some of the template work he wanted to do, with predictably disastrous results. Since then, he's been oscillated between announcements that he's disillusioned, quitting, etc., and emotional outpourings about the unfairness of RfA, ArbCom, admins, how certain editors are bullies, etc. After an embarrassing attempt to score a point on Fram (talk · contribs), a perennial nemesis (attempted to have some of Fram's articles with attributed PD text deleted as copyvio, refused to listen to people telling him he didn't understand what he was doing), he tried using the Wikibreak Enforcer to quit, but then came back as IPs and then with a new account to keep venting about ArbCom and so on. That led to the current block on the main account.

This long tale of DRAMAZ notwithstanding, I have to say, I have a soft spot for him—he's a good-hearted guy who just can't seem to keep his cool and think through his decisions when he gets worked up. If he'd commit to use one account (no alternates, no IPs) and a topic ban from RfA/ArbCom, where his editing has probably convinced no one and done him a great deal of harm, I'd be inclined to unblock. I think either six months of complete absence from Misplaced Pages or six months of just tagging and article editing would do a great deal to make him feel better about the place, but he doesn't seem to be able to stick with either. Sad, but what can you do? Choess (talk) 04:19, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

archives

Hi, just a friendly reminder here that you might want to update your archives list for 2013. I found the March one by using common sense to change the url, but others may not be so lucky. El duderino 06:30, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

Done, thanks for the notice.  Sandstein  11:56, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

Request at ARE

Hi, I've made a request at Misplaced Pages:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement#Statement_by_IRWolfie- as an interested party, to prevent any bureaucratic hurdles to a future enforcement request. I'd assumed Hgilbert would have been already been warned about pseudoscience/fringe science discretionary sanctions sometime in his past 10 years of editing the topic, but it appears not to be the case. Perhaps, as an aside to whatever is decided (I haven't been involved specifics of the case since I have been on a wiki break, but I have been around for some of the long term behaviour which seems to be out of scope for ARE) an official discretionary sanctions warning can be given? IRWolfie- (talk) 15:33, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

Agreed - I've now issued warnings that meet the requirements of the discretionary sanctions procedures.  Sandstein  18:57, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

Article Feedback deployment

Hey Sandstein; I'm dropping you this note because you've used the article feedback tool in the last month or so. On Thursday and Friday the tool will be down for a major deployment; it should be up by Saturday, failing anything going wrong, and by Monday if something does :). Thanks, Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 23:30, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Barnstar of Good Humor
	Your closing at this AfD was quite droll. Bearian (talk) 18:35, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Heh, thanks.  Sandstein  18:37, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Article notability notification

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Request for clarification

Hi Sandstein, given that a few procedural issues have recently arisen at AE, I thought I would start a clarification request in order to (hopefully) resolve them all quickly and with a minimum of fuss. Since you are involved, you may want to comment. Regards, Gatoclass (talk) 04:04, 15 March 2013 (UTC)