User:Kevin Gorman/sandboxahaifh

WTT's evidence absolutely fails to build a reasonable case that I should be desyopped or placed under any set of restrictions. The fact that WTT doesn't like my judgement (frankly, I don't like his) is not a reason to desysop me, not is any of the evidence that he cites. WTT is wrong in stating that I am not open to recall; although I've never posted a recall policy, I am open to recall (as I mentioned on my ACE questions page, which I guess he didn't read. Any admin who is doing their job properly is going to occasionally have people calling for their head (as is for that matter any arbitrator,) so I've chosen not to leave my recall up to a mass vote, but to the judgement of individuals that I trust.  500 new users could post on my talk page asking me to give up my toolset and I'd probably gnore them, if Keilana had a conversation with me and she came to the sincere belief that I shouldn't be an admin, I'd probably have a post at WP:BN asking to be desysopped within ten minute.  Other parties that would have significant influence on my choice to resign the tools include Gamaliel, NativeForeigner, GorillaWarfare, Sasata, NYB, Drmies, Slakr, Tryptofish, Jimmy, Sue, Steven Walling, and Doc James. I could probably name dozens of other people as well. I don't mean that I'd necessarily resign on the advice of any particular one of them (although with Keilana, I probably would,) but if multiple people in that category expressed concern with my continued adminship, I'd at least temporarily resign the tools in most circumstances, and work with them to address their concerns. Obviously, that process gets adjusted during an arbcom case, because resigning during an arbcom case would be resigning under a cloud.

WTT accused me of abusing revdel. WTT resurrected an unpleasant conversation on my talk page that Jehochman had already killed once under a creative exercise of WP:DENY. The conversation didn't reflect well on any of the participants - including both me and WTT - and SB_Johnny stopped by my talk page offering to RevDel the conversation. He ended up just deleting it. I was about to go out of town, so I RD'ed it because I had no desire to have it resurrected while I was in LA for a few days. WTT emailed me pointing out that RD5 didn't apply to usertalk, and I restored the conversation as soon as I could reach a computer. Pretty much all my previous revdels have either been RD1 or RD4, so I didn't bother to check if RD5 could be legitimately applied to usertalk, and just assumed SB_Johnny was correct that it was RDable. I should've checked the RD criteria before conducting the RD, but I don't think anyone missed anything because they couldn't read a snippy conversation on my talkpage for a brief period of time.

WTT's perfectly correct that I conducted an inappropriate unblock of CU-blocked accounts. The accounts belonged to a class that is currently ongoing and advertising the fact that they'll be editing ENWP at LIUC, a university near Milan. I left comments overnight at the SPI and on the instructor's user talk page. I failed to ping Mike V, which I should've - not only because he's a CU, but because I consider it inappropriate to unblock without consulting the blocking admin. Vanjagenie, the SPI clerk responsible for the case (including tagging the 40 or so accounts involved) stated that this was not a CU block and that I should feel absolutely free to undo it. Vanja is both relatively new to being an admin and an SPI clerk, and should be commended for volunteering in an area of the encyclopedia, and not sanctioned in any way for this error. Mike V, the blocking checkuser, accepted that the unblocks were made in good faith and that the accounts most likely were part of a class (the findings he publicly described are exactly what he would've found in one of my classes. He warned me to be careful about CU blocks, and gave Vanja a couple sentences of guidance - he didn't feel the need to file an arbcom case and seemed to view it as a  "no harm, no foul" situation. The CU unblocks should be considered a much more relevant violation if the CU had a serious problem with them, but he didn't - instead WTT jumped on it as a reason to file a case.

WTT refers to my "historical outing" of Wiki-PR. I readily admit to, in the distant past, being involved in helping bring the Wiki-PR issue public. I believe such action was necessary to preserve the integrity of the encyclopedia, and the cban I wrote is preserved intact in a number of places across the encyclopedia and beyond, including a C&D WMF had Cooley send Wiki-PR. My role in bringing the issue public also had the support of the community, as demonstrated by the strength of consensus in favor of the community ban I suggested which unanimously passed and I believe is still the broadest community ban ENWP as ever passed. This also led to a major changes in the term of the use and had broad general support. I believe that undisclosed paid editing poses a major threat to the encyclopedia. Since the founders of Wiki-PR had given media interiews to outlets as large as the WSJ and had been broadly reported on by the time I ever mentioned their names on-wiki, on further thought, I actually have a hard time thinking I outed them. When you give an interview to mainstream media outets about your unethical pinata-store destroying joke of a PR firm, you become at a bare minimum a public figure at least in the context of Wikipedia and PR - so naming them is not outing them. I've worked with several investigative journalists regarding Wiki-PR, but I never had to out people to them - they're investigative journalists. Martin Robbins of The New Statesman and Vice had a more complete list of Wiki-PR employees and firms connected to Wiki-PR (and we've never dsclosed most of these names, btw) within hours of starting to investigate the issue than I did, even though I'd been involved in the case for quite some time, working closely with multiple admins and CUs. More recently, after the founders of Wiki-PR (now operating under the name Status Labs) demolished a pinata store owned by legal immigrants with its full inventory (and safe) still inside despite the fact that the owners' were up-to-date on their rent just because the founders wanted to host a SXSW party, a journalist at the Austin-American Statesman has handed me more than Wiki-PR article to G5, complete with solid evidence that it was their work. If another case like Wiki-PR came up today, I'd again try to solve the problem internally - which would be more likely to be successful now that we have a functional CA department - but if I failed, I'd have abolutely no problem going public with the issue. Besides the damage Wiki-PR did to the encyclopedia, it also caused WilliamH, an excellent bureaucrat, to quit in disgust at the functionaries' unwilingness to take stronger action on the issue, and caused Dennnis - who was one of our best SPI clerks - to pretty much stay away from SPI altogether. If another Wiki-PR happened today I'd consider going public about their actions even if it did involve violating policy- I consider the integrity of the encyclopedia and the retention of excelent users like WilliamH more important than potentally violating policy - but if skmehow the only way I could find to bring it public involved violating WP:OUTING, I'd do so, and I'd be ready for whatever judgement arbcom deemed necessary. However, I didn't violate WP:OUTING here, and it's two fucking years old anyway - this committee has no business trying to bring up and punish actions that were widely supported then.

WTT accuses me of conducting inappropriate "opposition research" in suport of a two week block and topic ban I made under the GG sanctions. The "opposition research" consisted of looking at old, unredacted versions of a user's talkpage, and realizing that he had linked to vicious screeds targeted at many of the women targeted by GamerGate. I'm deeply disappointed that a former arbitrator both doesn't realize that using unredacted information posted by a user in this fashion is an explcit exception written in to WP:OUTING, and that WTT apparently values the privacy of an editor who publicly disclosed their pseudonym and viciously attacked the targets of GamerGate both on and off-wiki. We have BLP policies for a reason; our artcle subjects are real people with real feelings and real reputations.

I've addressed most of WTT's other points on the workshop page. I made a couple of small mistake that were quickly addressed. I made one larger mistake that Mike V, the blocking CU, took as a good faith mistake and didn't try to initiate any further action on