User talk:BarryBoggside

Reminder: I'm not the blocking administrator, I simply reviewed your unblock request above. (1) You say this block is clearly marked as a CheckUser block. You might be correct, but I don't see this. Your blog log indicates this is a block for block evasion. I see no indication this is a checkuser block. Note that the blocking administrator,, does indeed have checkuser rights. Your user page (User:BarryBoggside), indicates the block is determined based on your contributions. Again, and I want to be clear, you might be correct that the block is based on checkuser evidence, I might just be missing where you see this. Or alternatively, it might not be documented as a checkuser block, but might indeed have been the result of checkuser evidence. (2) I'm not granting that a checkuser was run, or run illegitimately, on your account. Based on your contributions, I would strongly suspect you weren't a new user. However, I see nothing to connect you to other than what I believe to be your admission in your unblock request (again, though, you might actually not be admitting this). (3) I'll refrain from commenting here, as I don't have checkuser access myself. (4) Given my comments on 2 and 3, it would be inappropriate for me to comment on 4. (5) I very, very strongly believe it would be inappropriate for me to take action here. I could have my admin rights stripped if I lift a checkuser block; we've been explicitly warned about this, though I don't have the citation handy. While it is unclear if this is a checkuser block (you say it is, you may be correct but I don't see this declared), there's still the problem of what I understand to be your admission of block evasion, in your unblock request. On that basis, I should also not lift your block. Now, you have raised a very serious concern. That concern should be addressed. However, it shouldn't be addressed by me, via the unblock template. Plausibly, it could be addressed in WP:ANI by the community, but frankly, I don't think that's a suitable venue. I think the only suitable venue is ARBCOM. That's my opinion, that ARBCOM is the way forward. It's my very, very firm belief that this cannot be addressed via the unblock process, as frustrating and annoying as that may (legitimately) be for you. I firmly believe I am prohibited from taking action here, given your claims of checkuser abuse and given your admission of block evasion (at least, I believe you've conceded that point), and that prohibition would apply to all other admins reviewing your unblock request. You may see other paths forward that don't involve ARBCOM, paths that I haven't considered; I just don't believe the unblock template is a path to address your concerns. --Yamla (talk) 19:59, 13 May 2020 (UTC)


 * TL,DR: It is clearly not officially a CheckUser block (per tag and log), but probably meant to look like one, to deter you. Ask for confirmation, and report them if you're not convinced. I'm not going to confirm or deny the accusation of block evasion (because doing so would be a further invasion of my privacy, rewarding Materialscientist's original privacy invasion) unless you clarify you're OK with that, and specify why. Doing the right thing here (simply undoing the effect of a privacy invasion) serves you and Wikipedia far more than upholding the frankly non-existent grounds for believing harm would arise from unblocking (indeed, what harm is alleged has or will occur if you cannot even reassure yourself I am who Materialscientist says I am?). ArbCom are not there to review every obviously bad block, but when they issue updated advice, they expect everyone on Wikipedia to ensure it is being followed, because not doing so affects everyone, not just the immediate victims like me. BarryBoggside (talk) 21:21, 13 May 2020 (UTC)


 * You're almost getting it. I call this a checkuser block because to my mind it can only have been the result of an illegitimate check. As you have perhaps now realised, Materialscientist has been very careful not to officially call it a CheckUser block, and you'll note the tag he placed on my user page directly contradicts the idea it is, implying as it does that you should be able to find evidence of my alleged block evading sock-puppetry in public contributions alone. I suspect he is just hoping you would see a CheckUser making a block, and assume it was a CheckUser block, as a means to make you feel like you're not empowered to even question it, much less lift it. I'm neither confirming or denying I am guilty of block evasion, I am merely pointing out that if you want me to answer that as a condition of unblocking, you would effectively be asking me to reveal private details I would not have been asked to reveal, if Materialscientist had not performed an illegitimate check, because then I wouldn't have been blocked in the first place. I will happily answer the question, if you explicitly acknowledge that is the situation you're agreeing to be a party to, as an Administrator, appreciating as you would then that it transforms the problem from a potentially singular failure to uphold the privacy policy, reversible by the system, to an institutional failure, embedded in the system. If you don't believe Materialscientist has any grounds for this block, namely if you can't see any evidence I am Crash Dennis from the public record, or am acting on his behalf, and if you don't see anything else in my contributions that marks me out as a block worthy user (assuming you accept that merely not looking like a new user is not grounds for blocking), then yes, you are empowered to reverse the block. I see no reason why you should be afraid of anybody in doing so, and I doubt you really believe you'd get the right answer from the community, given it seems obvious the majority strenuously rejected the idea that individual privacy trumps their desire to invade it, as seems obvious from reading the controversy surrounding the reasons for why the anti-fishing rule needed to be clarified recently in the first place. I suppose I could take this to ArbCom if you still feel powerless, but I feel like Wikipedia should be grown up enough not to have to do that for every single clearly abusive block, it being the equivalent of asking the Supreme Court to adjudicate on every single case of potential abuse of power. They exist merely to set and indeed clarify the law. They clarified it. Fishing is prohibited, and what I was doing is not grounds for a check. No private information is required for you to do the right thing here. I'm asking you merely to recognize that the only reason for this block is because the updated advice was ignored and an improper check was run, and therefore, the right thing to do, is return my account to the status quo ante - a user in good standing. Bearing in mind that upholding this block does actually mean the only way I could even bring this invasion of my privacy to the attention of ArbCom, would be by potentially revealing personal information, in the form of an email address. Easier for you to simply unblock me, surely, and you certainly then couldn't be blamed for making a bad situation worse, potentially transforming a singular instance of abuse by one Administrator, into an institutional failure to properly value my privacy over other far less important concerns. As policy dictates, before doing the right thing, your first port of call should be to ask Materialscientist what he thinks he's playing at, whether he is actually trying to deceive you or whether this really is an official CheckUser block. If he says it is, ask him what his grounds were, and if you don't like what you hear given the updated advice, then regardless of what happens to me, it is your duty as an Administrator to be the one to report it to ArbCom, who will then hopefully start doing more than just warn those CheckUsers who apparently think user's privacy is a secondary concern. BarryBoggside (talk) 21:05, 13 May 2020 (UTC)