Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship/SarekOfVulcan 3

Username:	                       SarekOfVulcan User groups:	                       autoreviewer, filemover, reviewer, rollbacker First edit:	                       Mar 30, 2004 06:40:28 Unique pages edited:	               13,545 Average edits per page:	               3.16 Live edits:	                       40,480 Deleted edits:	                       2,282 Total edits (including deleted):	42,762 As of 08:02, 19 January 2014 (UTC). -- Ankit Maity «T § C» «Review Me»   08:02, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

Email to Arbcom
On 19/01/2014 01:21, Garrett Fitzgerald wrote:

> I just filed

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship/SarekOfVulcan_3,

> and am getting seriously dinged for not addressing in depth what I

> learned from my conflict with Doncram. However, while there's an

> interaction ban in place, I feel that it's impossible to discuss it in

> any detail. Could I get a statement on the RFA that I'm right not to

> discuss it, or a note on my talkpage that it's possible to go into more

> detail as long as I'm very, very careful what I say? Thanks.

Opining as an individual, and most emphatically not on behalf of ArbCom, the main issue seems to be your terse responses to Q3. This question is not about Doncram but about dispute resolution generally.

While the IBan prevents you from discussing the specific dispute with Doncram, nothing in my view prevents you from responding to the much broader issues raised about dispute resolution by the question and from outlining in general terms what, if anything, you've learned from past disputes and what, if anything, you'd avoid in future.

Feel free to publish this response on wiki though if you do so it must be in its entirety.

Roger Davies

Threaded discussion of BrownHairedGirl's support vote moved here

 * I've included the support vote itself, for context. Bishonen &#124; talk 16:22, 24 January 2014 (UTC).

Support. Switching from oppose. Sarek's revised response to Q3 resolves my main concern, and my other concerns are offset by the Sarek's demonstrated commitment to hand in the mop if their adminship becomes too controversial. I urge other opposers to look again the significance of Sarek's demonstrable openness to recall, and to reconsider their opposition. (I think that the vote tallies would have looked very different if Sarek had gotten clearance to discuss the Doncram episode before this RFA started, because it would have avoided the appearance of nonchalance and reticence about this significant point in his previous adminship. But hindsight is a great luxury ...) -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 01:04, 24 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Interesting. And I, maintaining a consistent opposition to indulging such sustained disregard for process, fairness, and ordinary hard-working Wikipedians, urge opposers to keep opposing. And I urge supporters to switch to oppose (accepting the need for a principled stand, not swelling Sarek's fan-base); and I urge neutrals to switch, for the same principled reason. ☺ Noetica (talk) 02:16, 24 January 2014 (UTC)
 * I am sorry you had a bad experience with Sarek, but according to your RFA opposition, primarily others were involved in the incident regarding a controversial topic and Sarek was a bystander. I agree it should have never happened and I wish you can comeback to the project and give it a second chance. But the opposition and the comment above seems to be more of a grudge against Sarek instead of actual evidence of tool abuse/process wonkery. Secret account 02:39, 24 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Thank you for sharing your impressions, Secret. To move beyond impressions and guesswork, look at the whole history in WP:AE archives, and much more that preceded that. No grudge here; I'm just one who moves on, when confronted by personalities who make impossible the sorts of contribution at which I excel. Many of us are "rugged and beautiful" as Bishonen has it, but we don't all hog the limelight to prove it. Loving my retirement, I can assure you! Noetica (talk) 02:52, 24 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Are you indeed rugged and beautiful, though out of the limelight, User:Noetica..? Are you saying Noetica is another wild national park like arctic Sarek, that I frivolously associated the candidate's name with? (I've hiked in Sarek National Park.) I admit it didn't occur to me that anybody would zoom in on that lighthearted parenthesis, to the exclusion of the rest of my support, and compare it with a support consisting of the single word "Stud". If you're going to keep attacking the candidate, and for some reason me (have we met?) in further 'brief appearances of a retired editor', then could you please take it to the talkpage? Or perhaps re-write your own oppose to be juicier, rather than add further waspish comments to support votes. The support section is not your soapbox. (P. S. I'm not aware of belonging to Sarek's "fan-base"; if I've ever interacted with him it's been slight.) Bishonen &#124; talk 15:22, 24 January 2014 (UTC).
 * If you don't want commentary, don't post in a way that invites it. I would answer all your questions if you answered all of mine, somewhere else. Our real business here is serious, not an opportunity for display of tail-feathers and twee anecdote. If you don't know Sarek's handiwork, study the opinions of those who know it all too well. Otherwise, better and more honest to vote with a monosyllable. I've said all I need to. The rest is silence. Noetica (talk) 15:54, 24 January 2014 (UTC)
 * ... I suppose we must have met. Bishonen &#124; talk 16:30, 24 January 2014 (UTC).

Voting patterns are highly suspicious
I can't imagine why the supports started to climb dramatically just as the opposes juddered to a halt. This has been going on for days.

Is something afoot that we should know about, like extensive discourse on an IRC channel, or a backchannelling email campaign?

Tony  (talk)  03:35, 25 January 2014 (UTC)


 * I don't know what we need to be told of, but apparently you need to be told of Assume good faith.  Konveyor   Belt  03:56, 25 January 2014 (UTC)
 * The hyperbolic end-point of AGF is the invalidation of all policies on WP. Tony   (talk)  05:57, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

What a pile of crap this insinuation is. You think there's malfeasance going on with this RfA? Provide your evidence or shaddup. AGF. Doc  talk  06:46, 25 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Also strange to see so many people voting to give Sarek a second chance, when many of these same people recently said no to giving Cindamuse a second chance regarding old issues.   INeverCry   06:13, 25 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Yeah that happens a lot, one minute they say no and the next they say yes with no consistency. I also agree that the voting is suspicious but I'm sure the bureaus will pass him through. He is the sort that usually wins. Kumioko (talk) 13:51, 25 January 2014 (UTC)
 * It's not all that easy to uncover stuff from behind the scenes, if indeed it exists. All I can say is that the patterns look odd to me. And I note breaches of WP:CIVIL in this thread. Tony   (talk)  08:13, 25 January 2014 (UTC)
 * No breach of CIVIL from me, Mister. Serious accusations require serious evidence. Which editors do you feel may have theoretically been influenced by some "backchannel" process? Is this seriously to be entertained any further? A to the GF. Doc   talk  08:30, 25 January 2014 (UTC)
 * "Mister" itself is a breach of the civility policy. I find it offensive. Tony   (talk)  08:32, 25 January 2014 (UTC)
 * You can't be serious. You are accusing good-faith editors of violating multiple policies with no evidence, and you consider that term a personal attack. Frightening. Are you open to recall? ;P Doc   talk  08:37, 25 January 2014 (UTC)
 * The suspicious vote pattern is evidence that speaks for itself. That the bureaucrat put this on hold at 66% is simply absurd excessively cautious. Has anybody ever in Wiki history been promoted at 66% (or less) before? Kraxler (talk) 17:45, 25 January 2014 (UTC) {Redacted after taking notice of the Carnildo case] Kraxler (talk) 14:51, 27 January 2014 (UTC)


 * Come on people, lighten up, this discussion is just paranoid. There were also several late oppose !votes, you think that's suspicious, too? One of them from someone coming out of retirement for it. Please AGF, unless there's real evidence. And the 'crats aren't little kids, they can see all the arguments, every pattern, and will certainly be able to come to a good decision (even though, whichever way it goes, a bunch of people are going to be unhappy with it). --Randykitty (talk) 18:02, 25 January 2014 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure that the reasons for the Crat Chat stand up to close scrutiny. The opening statement is simply wrong and the conjecture about certain classes of !vote rationale is precisely that, conjecture. No single view can be taken on !votes that were given at the time in good faith based on evidence and which the editor concerned might now regard in at least 4 different ways.  Leaky  Caldron  18:12, 25 January 2014 (UTC)


 * @Kraxler: Yes, Carnildo was promoted at 61% in 2006, also per crat chat. It caused justified outrage at the time. The situation was very different, I won't go into it. I would be troubled to see somebody promoted at 66%, I hope it doesn't happen. But I dislike these hints, and outright accusations, of offsite collusion and canvassing among supporters of Sarek. Who exactly do you think has been suborned or poked into supporting? The ten last supports? The twenty last supports? Please list the people you suspect and start an RFC or file an arbitration request on them or something. No? Why not? Those who air those suspicions must surely realize that the accused, whose names are all there on the page, have no way of disproving the accusations. Think empirical science: if a theory isn't falsifiable, it's useless. In my opinion, such useless theories shouldn't be aired in public, because the people who are implicitly pilloried have no recourse; they can't prove a negative. I'm surprised at you, Kraxler. I voted for you for ArbCom in December, because I thought and still think that a good non-admin content contributor would add a valuable perspective in ArbCom. Now I'm rather glad you didn't get in. Bishonen &#124; talk 18:26, 25 January 2014 (UTC).
 * I came upon this RFA while reviewing the contributions of other editors with whom I was interacting. I can't speak for anyone else, but it looks like I came in near the beginning of the upswing - it looked like this was going to fail at the time, which is why I offered "moral support", but when I came back later I saw that while the oppose votes had barely increased, the support votes had increased substantially. BOZ (talk) 19:02, 25 January 2014 (UTC)
 * I can honestly say that for the first couple years Sarek was a pretty good admin and did a lot of good. But as with many the longer he was an admin the more arrogant he got which led to his Arbcom situation. With that said he showed extremely bad judgement and a complete disregard for Wikipedia policy, yet he made it through Arbcom (not surprising to me) and then resigned. I don't have sympathy for a lack of good faith here. He did that to himself when he desecrated Wikipedia policy. He got a 66%. I don't think this warrants a Bureau discussion its a fail plain and simple. He can try back again in a year and maybe he'll have better luck. The argument at the bureau discussion that reconfirmation RFA's be easier is both stupid and insulting and the bureau's should know better than to make such a dumb statement. The editor who wrote the crat chat writeup really doesn't understand what they are doing or what they are saying IMO. Kumioko (talk) 19:08, 25 January 2014 (UTC)
 * @Bishonen: I don't accuse anybody of anything. I just wanted to say that I also noticed the strange voting pattern, something that didn't happen in any RfA for ages. The only occurrence of similarity I can think of during the last year was Dirtlawyer1 who got a late avalanche of opposes after well founded concerns were voiced. That 4 days into an RfA, at under 40% support, suddenly, without apparent cause, the opposes dry out, and a lot of supporters appear who haven't voted at RfA for a long time, or came out of retirement or semi-retirement to vote here, just looks strange. That's all. Certainly all this could have happened by chance. That's why I can't and won't accuse anybody of anything, and I don't think that the pattern warrants any further investigation. By the way, I'm not worried about my election to ArbCom, if there are better candidates, they may take the seats. Kraxler (talk) 19:17, 25 January 2014 (UTC)
 * I'm glad you elect to choose your words better when you're challenged, Kraxler. Originally you called the voting pattern "suspicious" and "evidence". Bishonen &#124; talk 21:10, 25 January 2014 (UTC).
 * Well, actually it was Tony who used originally the word "suspicious" and it sort of slipped into my answer, I hope you can forgive me for this slip-up. The "evidence" bit meant that the voting pattern is data that can be read, like an edit count for example. Obviously there are different possible interpretations, and some are highly speculative. I reiterate that I did not mean to accuse anybody of anything. Kraxler (talk) 13:47, 26 January 2014 (UTC)
 * I may have overreacted in using the word "suspicious". Tony   (talk)  14:11, 26 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Kraxler, I understand that you spoke in haste when you said "evidence that speaks for itself", which sounded rather different. Thank you for clarifying, and you too, Tony. I'll zip up now. Bishonen &#124; talk 15:27, 26 January 2014 (UTC).
 * One thing I would say is that while a large upswing in support votes could be explained by off-wiki canvassing, how would you explain oppose votes slowing down? BOZ (talk) 19:24, 25 January 2014 (UTC)
 * That's a good question. However, after the abovementioned mutual invocations of AGF, I doubt that anybody would come up with an answer now. I'm afraid we'll have to drop the subject. Cheers. Kraxler (talk) 19:38, 25 January 2014 (UTC)
 * I looked at the timing of the support votes and oppose votes and I don't think there is any cause for concern regarding that point. This was more a matter of opposes trailing off than supports increasing. What we see is a steady stalemate until about halfway through when opposes started declining.-- The Devil's Advocate tlk.  cntrb. 21:02, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

Possible good-faith explanation for late supports
Many editors keep an "RFA leader-board" template on their user talk pages. This includes some users who I watchlist.

I saw SarekOfVulcan 3 running at close to 70% with less than 12 hours to go, so I rushed over fully intending to support because my interactions with him in the past have earned my respect.

Before !voting, I read the entire RFA. Enough of the issues in the Opposes were strong enough that I wound up !voting neutral. Had I come in a bit earlier or had I not read the whole RFA, I would've supported. No off-wiki canvassing or other shady activities brought me here.

Perhaps the same things that brought me here late in the week brought others as well. davidwr/ (talk)/(contribs)  02:01, 26 January 2014 (UTC)