User:Richardb/explanation-12-Jun-2007

Explanation of circumstances around dispute with Connel MacKenzie and dmcdevit.

This explanation is 24 hours late as I was blocked for 24 hours by dmcdevit. It was mostly written shortly after the blocking--Richardb 12:20, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

Richardb explanation

I cannot believe just how much bad faith there is with some Wiktionary administrators.

I’ve been making positive contributions to Wiktionary for several years now. Whilst I have had many fierce arguments with Connel McKenzie, I have never vandalised his work in any way. But tonight, as I settled down to do a little bit of work on Wikisaurus, I was subject to an unwarranted attack by Connel, including RFD’s etc,.

Check Beer Parlour around 07:40 Jun 11th.

Connel made several mistakes of reading and asserting policies exist which don’t. He marked an entry of mine for RFD within seconds of me writing it. No debate, no assumption of good faith. (I'll answer those points in WT:BP). Outraged, I went to delete his RFD entry, and, I’ll have to admit, accidentally deleted the whole RFD page (I was only viewing the one RFD entry, and unfortunately was unaware/forgot that using the delete tab would delete the whole of RFD, not just that one entry. (I rarely use "delete", excpet to delete my own mistakes, and to do my own cleanups. I am not a deletionist. But deleteing a totally unwarranted attack was I felt necessary.

I was then replying to some of Connel’s points, when dmcdevit blocked me for 24 hours. Complete assumption by him of bad faith on my part; that I had deliberately deleted the whole RFD page.

• And now I can see Connel’s even immediately called for de-sysoping me ! (Wouldn’t be surprised if he’s already done it, without waiting for a vote !) • He’s RFD’d a valid policy page – Wiktionary:Wikisaurus/criteria. This has been a policy page since 11-May-2006. This page is also referenced in WT:CFI. That reference has been there since 29-May-2006. He hasn’t bothered with the formality of a vote at all. He just asserts it never was policy, despite all the evidence to the contrary. As usual, if Connel doesn’t agree with a policy, he just jumps in and deletes it. One way to win an argument about what is policy or not I suppose.

He also slammed me for not using the citations namespace. There is no such namespace, the vote to have has not been decided. I cannot even find any evidence of any use of a pseudo namespace, Wiktionary:citations.

Now I am being attacked by this pair in WT:BP, without any ability to reply. Connel is also going around marking my pages, and policies, for deletion while I am off the air!

I made an honest mistake, and get immediately blocked for 24 hours and listed for de-sysop.

So, what should be done to Connel, who • always attacks anything I try to do with building up Wikisaurus. • Who has mis-interpreted my actions and totally assumed bad faith by me. As he constantly does. • Often changes policy without a vote, but always insists other people must vote. • And does this kind of thing to many, many people, constantly.

Acts on policies that do not exist, are just in his head.

My view is that Connel does do a lot of good work. And he should continue to that good work. But he should be • Asked to refrain from doing anything with Wikisaurus – he is just totally opposed to allowing “dirty” words into it. • Asked to refrain from doing anything with policy cleanups – he has shown himself incapable of even notionally adhering to the policies, and willing to just delete policies he does not agree with. • Counselled about his totally inappropriate way of working, constantly RFDing stuff from other regular users, constant acting against people unilaterally, autocratically.

My view is we need to monitor Connel’s bowdlerisation, which seems to be a burning passion with him. He constantly attacks anything that doesn’t meet his personal taste. Of course, he always quotes CFI. But he doesn't do that for rare words, or foreign langauage words etc, which might well fail CFI. HE always does it for any words which are vulgar, obscene. I suggest we log CM's bowdlerisations at Wiktionary:Monitoring CM

I’m also mightily offended by the action of dmcdevit. I could not contact him via Email, as for some reason that function was not working, despite me being logged on and having a valid email address. (Though possibly not a validated email address, since I changed it fairly recently.)

But, I haven’t had problems with him before, and I guess he might have thought I was about to attack the whole system. So, I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt.

But, my view is Connel’s repeated outrageous behaviour to other users really drives contributors away. He has to be reined in somehow.

It is worth remembering, also, that • I kick started Wikisaurus, and having been doing my bit to try and build it up. Connel has been the most vigorous opponent of the way Wikisaurus has developed, because it has so many words which offend him personally, being crude and rude. He has “bowdlerised” it many times. • I kicked started developing policies in Wiktionary. Partially because so much was subject to the whim of Connel McKenzie. Connel was always asserting things were common practice, discussed ages ago, without any written policy, any reference to where this common practice was agreed to. I decided to try and pull some of the common practice into policy pages, allowing for further debate and improvement. This seems to be particularly hated by Connel, who still is constantly asserting something is common practice, or policy, either with no supporting evidence (except possibly in some ancient archive). Or even, as in this case, when he finds there is a policy page which positively supports an opposing point of view, he just unilaterally marks it for deletion. No vote or anything.

Please, does anyone know how to let me keep making my contributions, whilst keeping Connel from attacking me all the time. The old saying of “Be Bold” is not enough in this project. You have to be prepared to suffer constant attack by Connel too. I want to keep contributing, but I cannot tolerate Connel’s constant attacks anymore.

Richardb

Point by point...

This insulting rant is completely misdirected.

Your 24 hour block was because of the belligerent deletion of WT:RFDO, with an edit summary that made it very clear the action was deliberate.
I have made it clear several times that my intention was to delete the single RFDO entry which you had made, against policy. I had no intention of deleting the whole RFDO page.
No. You have not recognized that deleting the single RFDO discussion is unacceptable. Furthermore, not in a fit. Furthermore, not copiously laced with personal attacks.
No one (especially not Dmcdevit) was stepping up in my defense, as you assert.
Nowhere did I assert that. What I said was I was then replying to some of Connel’s points, when dmcdevit blocked me for 24 hours. Complete assumption by him of bad faith on my part; that I had deliberately deleted the whole RFD page.. Then I even went so far as to say But, I haven’t had problems with him before, and I guess he might have thought I was about to attack the whole system. So, I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt.
If you can't read why you yourself wrote above, I guess there isn't much to say, other than, "you are wrong, Richard."
Your ironic accusations of "assuming bad faith" are exaggerated by your deliberate assumption of bad faith on my part. I was simply tagging your beloved entry for routine cleanup (deletion) as OBE.
Remarkable that you did it so quickly, and with a choice phrase of - I can't believe this nonsense exists. And that as justification you asserted a policy which just does not exist.
Listen closely. That page is not indicated on the banner because it was not part of the revised policy structure - you snuck it in sometime with the "Policy-TT" and it had been overlooked. However, even assuming that is somehow wasn't a mistake then, it MOST CERTAINLY WAS ERRONEOUS AFTER THE VOTE!
Wiktionary:Votes/2006-09/Wikisaurus semi-protection isn't policy? It isn't universally implemented for all WS entries out of some respect that I had, for you personally.
Check that policy. That policy has nothing to do with the change I made, which was simply to ask people to put /citation pages for Wikisaurus entries.
The policy you are pointing to is Making Wikisaurus pages less embarassing to have, by semi-protecting and moving undesirable material to "/more" subpages. , which is a policy I support..
Read the nonsense you have on that page. You (you and no one else) explicitly say that WS entries don't have to follow CFI - which is completely untrue.
"Within seconds" is quite misleading. We put a man on the moon "within seconds." It would be more honest and accurate to say "a few minutes later" and perhaps "while Connel was on routine Special:Recentchanges patrol, he noticed an obsolete item left over from an ancient, obsolete policy scheme.
I put the changed page up at 18:12, calling for discussion with (Added an improvement. Discussion will be on the Discussion page and Beer Parlour asap.) . OK, it wasn't seconds, but it was while I was still working on the thing. And without reference to that discussion at all.

You "thought"you found some obsolete item. It was, and still is, valid policy. On what basis did you think it should be deleted, beyond this "thought". Did you check anything. Becuase I checked, and found the clear evidence it still is policy.
Again, it never was policy - the best that could ever be said about it, was that it may have been overlooked earlier.
"Deleting an unwarranted attack"...well, the numerous assumptions of bad faith that implies, ignored, you still could never reasonably do any such thing. But even that aside, even if somehow, it could be understood that you were so outraged by a trivial opening of a discussion, even if that were so, the technical aspects of deleting a high-volume page is unforgivable. You could easily have cause actual database corruption, if the bug from three days ago had not yet been fixed. A temper tantrum destroying en.wiktionary?
Well, if that isn't bad faith I don't know what is. Assuming, and continuing to assert, that I intended to delete the whole RFDO, despite my repeated explanations, and my wording at the time Connel's RFDO entry immiediately deleted.

The reason I deleted your RFDO entry, before any discussion there, was a)becuase I had already invoted dicusssion at the BP b) becuase you were deleting a current policy page, which is not on.
For the millionth time: OPENING A DISCUSSION is not the same thing as DELETING.
I can't de-sysop you. I wouldn't, even if I could. But I opened a VOTE page on the topic; the tepid response there, has been to assume I was then as upset as you. I expect the community will ask me to retract that VOTE, when it is clear it will go nowhere.
Your assertion that non-policy is policy is baffling. You incorrectly (recently) added a policy tag to a page that is in direct conflict with all discussion the community has had on the topic, in particular, the resulting vote!
You are again calling me a liar in direct denial of the evidence. The page history cleary shows the {{Policy-TT}} tag was put there at 12:25, 11 May 2006. The banner results from that.
And when did that template move? And how drastically did it change? And didn't all (except this one error) get explicitly listed atop that banner? No Richard, this was never official policy, even though it seems to be marked as such, now.
The fact that it had escaped notice immediately is no big surprise, but your violent reaction to it being cleaned up, is.
By what right, apart from omipotence, do you claim that it was not noticed. The reference to it in WT:CFI was there at the time the votes on WT:CFI were taken. You cannot just personally decide later that "oh that was overlooked, I'll just clean it up now.
Why else would one call it clean up? The evidence indicates that that page was either slipped into place surreptitiously, or overlooked. It clearly is at DIRECT odds with ALL discussions and votes on the topic!
"Ignorance of the law is no excuse" I believe is the relevant adage. Your personal refusal to have anything to do with WT:VOTE is beyond inexplicable.
What makes you say I'm refusing to have anything to do with VOTE. You'll find I have voted on a few things. As I'm not on here that often (partly because of you, but also other commitments), I have not necessarily had time to vote on everything before the vote closes.
Why are you trying to blame me for your lack of commitment? You never followed up on your original disastrous policy scheme, even when it boiled over after confusing and misdirecting innumerable Wikipedians and Wikimedians. I see you NOW have voted on some things. Well, good for you. Day late, dollar short.
Having had numerous individual votes brought to your personal attention, one can only assume that you have seen and understand the vote currently in progress. (You even suggest that you are aware of the vote in your comment!)
, as above, you point out irrelevant policy, or more often, you simply assert policy without checking facts first.
It doesn't matter how many times you repeat your lie - it is still a lie.
You aren't being attacked; your actions are. Dmcdevit in no way conferred with me before taking the actions that he did, nor I with him. Your actions have been outrageous. It should be obvious that the immediate, uncoordinated opposition to them is simply a universal response.
Already responded to above. I accepted dmcdevit's action as taking precautions to protect against possible vandalism. On the other hand, you should know me well enough that I rarely, rarely delete anything, only my own mistakes
With an edit summary like that? How can ANYONE possibly assume you deleted in good faith? Again, even if you succeeded in deleting only the section you intended, that still would have been completely unacceptable.
A 24 hour block (for which I was offline, again, out of some former respect for you) is hardly "without any ability to reply." The community expected you to cool off, and return with coherent discussion, not a long screed of misplaced minor complaints.
There were several comments made about me that I was not able to reply to. You put up a vote aginst me whilst I could not put my side of the argument.

They are not "minor complaints". Your behaviour is constantly complained out by many, mnay users. Your careles asserting and misquoting of imagined policies and common practices as justifications for harsh treament of users , is all too common. ÝOU'are a major problem, or rather your overzealous and ill-informed policing, of Wikisaurus and Policies in particular for me, but in many aspects for many other users.
I am a frequent target, because I clean shit up. People don't like it when they shit all over Wiktionary, then have their shit quickly removed, as it if never existed. Of course I get a constant stream of flack. You would too, if you weren't so lazy. I suppose it is easier for you to justify your attacks by using logical fallacies.
- The particularly salient point is that all sysops can easily unblock themselves. It was very polite of you, to not unblock youself...thank you for that.
  I wasn't aware of that, as I tend to try to stay out of the technicalities of sysop work. Thank you for also taking yourself off-air for the argument for 24 hours.
Your personal attacks on my are:
1. invalid (no assumption of bad faith, no made-up policies, no hallucinations, etc.)
2. untrue (I most certainly do not attack anything to do with WS, nor with anything you do to WS.)
  I beg to differ
  Precisely why? Are you lying to yourself, playing the victim? Come on!
3. bullshit (How on Earth can you suggest that crap? There is an ENORMOUS difference between how I speak in a nightclub, on the street or in other colloquial contexts, and what I [and everyone else] expect in a dictionary or thesaurus.)
  Policy is "all words in all languages". So why do you censor words ?
  A little thing called WT:CFI. AND STOP FUCKING CALLING ME A CENSOR, YOU FILTHY LITTLE PIG FUCKER.
Richardb, you make an excellent suggestion (albeit with the wrong target), regarding specific prohibitions: since you refuse to go with the community decision on the topic, you yourself should be prohibited from ever touching anything related to Wikisaurus. I have only acted in direct compliance with the vote on the topic!
If only you would actually read policy, and not delete those inconveneient bits of current policy you don't agree with, you would find the complete opposite is the truth.
Dream on.
Your assumption of bad faith of Dmcdevit is perplexing. Are you really that brazen, to not admit your guilt?
???? What are you on about ????
Read your rant above - each of these comments (in sequence) correspond to SOMETHING you said above. I'm sure you can figure it out.
I'm sorry to hear that you are having problems with your e-mail. Check your Special:Preferences and re-enable your e-mail there if it does not work.
If it actually were true that I would or could drive away certain people, that would be quite a feat. It is quite an overstatement of my abilities (I am no demi-god) and a wild misrepresentation of my intents. I do think you need to be reined in somehow, though.
I have never actively opposed the concept of a thesaurus. I have contributed to its development. While I did suggest restarting the project, I listened to the feedback I got. The same cannot be said for you.
We have a different view about the "crude" words. But other than that you'll find I have contributed quite a few decent entries too. And, with the crude words, I'm mostly just trying to find a way to tidy them up. I don't put the words there, other people do. I just want the words retained if they have any value, no matter that they are crude. Why don't you try to swamp the crude entries with far more decent entries. The problem is, you will never get past the fact that this is a public wiki dictionary, and people will want to look for crude words, and add crude words. You are just trying to be King Canute in trying to stop that. Better to manage it. And, I keep asking other people to try to contribute with better ways to manage it. Not to just keep deleting, and deleting, and deleting.
Methods always change, but your blatant disregard for WT:CFI is appalling. If you say you do real entries, then do so. But don't expect leniency for garbage. While I do much of the cleanup, even that is gradually being overtaken by the numerous new sysops. Your notion of "an entry for every possible typo" found on usenet is untenable, and has been rejected over and over again. Yes, the deletion log comments appear now, when visiting a deleted page. Yes, that feature has already eliminated a noticeable amount of "re-entering." Yes, we now have the ability even to prevent page re-creation. Your bizarre obsession with lowering the bar has been refuted at every turn - remember? By me? No, usually I've been in support of that too...remember? I wonder, DO YOU? The hole for WS was closed by a VOTE. Trying to pretend the vote didn't happen, and CFI doesn't apply to WS is just pure bullshit - you know it is. You also know it is directly in conflict with the overwhelming majority of people here.
Your blatant lie regarding policies is enormously baffling. Eclecticology was (in his words) the "dictator" of Wiktionary. Yes, that is why we have policies, and yes, that is exactly why I created WT:VOTE - so that no one person's whims (not Ec's, not yours, not mine) can be allowed to drift too far away from what everyone else knows is needed. The policies and policy structure you "kick-started" was never tenable, nor followed up upon. The reworking of policies that I did was requested, reasonable and workable and met no complaints; in fact, as worked rather well so far, in proving that it can be modified to suit the Wiktionary community.
I disagree with your changes, and I think the system is less useful now. I don't think you followed any valid procedure in changing the policies, but ... I didn't have the time at the time to put an opposing view, so I am trying to work with your new policy structure. I have to admit it is working better. But not becuase it is better, but becuase you, as a very active administror, support it. I think mine would have worked better if you had supported it. C'est la vie.
Oh come on! "Less useful"? Are you saying you actually don't understand it? And anyway, how have I "supported" the new structure, (after the one evening of set-up)? To date, it has amounted to two "Richardb flare ups" that I've taken the time to respond to. With your old system, there were weekly questions on WT:ID, WT:BP, WT:BR, WT:TR, Talk:Main_Page and any place else people could dream up, to ask, with unanswerable questions at every turn. Also, if you recall, I TRIED TO SUPPORT YOUR POLICY SCHEME during the Ec regime. It would have required five to ten dedicated policy wonks to maintain that structure, especially as it grew.
"Marking for deletion" is a cleanup activity that indicates the start of discussion. If I had been one tenth as abusive as you suggest, I would simply have deleted it quietly in the midst of normal Recentchanges patrolling deletions. Instead, (again, as a display of respect to you personally) I took the longer approach of nominating the page in question for discussion and deletion.
But all after you had made the wrong call, marking a Policy page for deletion. I was rectifying that call. And I had already called for discussion on BP.
No, it is tagged because it was either snuck in via template, or an error from the start. BUT, even if I was completely wrong in my opinion that it should be deleted (obviously not) how on Earth does OPENING A DISCUSSION about it actually delete something?
You can "be bold" only when it is not in direct conflict with what the community has voted on. Being bold does not mean you can do whatever the fuck you want.
Wrong assertion again.
Well, I've fucking had it with you saying my sole intent is to bowdlerize Wiktionary. Cut that crap right the fuck out.

--Connel MacKenzie 16:56, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

Connel, is Wikisaurus clean-up something you are so passionate about that you will spend many hours arguing over. Or have you got better ways to contribute.

If you want to go through the process, then propose a change to CFI removing the exception for Wikisaurus that is currently there in the CFI policy, or by modifying the Wiktionary:Wikisaurus/criteria page.(It isn't very good, I'll admit, but better than nothing). Put the propsoed change to a vote. But I can see it being a long, hard fought battle, as I am so opposed to your deletionist/bowdlerisation approach extending to Wikisaurus.

But the first step would be to actually read the current policies. At the moment you keep quoting policies that aren't as you think they are. Please.... Read them as they are, not as you think they are or should be! --Richardb 02:26, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

You don't suppose this is distressing, in any way, do you? I suppose, with so little of your time invested in Wiktionary, that perhaps you really could care less.

Please stop pretending the vote that took place, isn't against your notion of WS.

Please stop pretending that everything on your cites page isn't in direct conflict with it.

Please take a moment to actually read them.

Please stop insinuating falsehoods. I have read our real policy pages; some portions I still don't agree with, but abide by. If you could learn to do that, Wiktionary would be a better place.

--Connel MacKenzie 08:43, 13 June 2007 (UTC)