Wikipedia talk:Requests for comment/SchuminWeb

Good lord
Whoever closes this RfC should note it has Dream Focus, DGG and me agreeing on something to do with deletion. That should be evidence in and of itself ;p. Ironholds (talk) 15:21, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

ArbCom
I'm torn on the suggestion by S Marshall that this case be referred to ArbCom. If SchuminWeb was continuing to edit whilst ignoring this RfC, such an action would have have my full support. As of now, he hasn't made an edit since the 28th of November, and hasn't used his tools since the 26th. Personally, I'm inclined to give SW the benefit of the doubt, and only take action when or if he returns without addressing these concerns. Hopefully his wikibreak has allowed him to rethink his actions, and he returns with a better attitude. A commitment from him to abide by ADMINACCT in the future, and to avoid the kind of IAR actions that brought him here in the first place, is all that is required for him to have my confidence to remain as an admin. Quasihuman (talk • contribs) 08:54, 11 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Do we know whether or not he's even aware of the RFCU? He's not edited since 28 November; we don't know whether he's even logged on. Perhaps somebody should e-mail him? GiantSnowman 09:17, 11 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Quasihuman, there are two possible evils here. One is the potential evil done to SchuminWeb by desysopping him before he has stated his case. The other is the potential evil done to the community by allowing sysops to avoid processes by refusing to state a case.  How do we balance those evils? In my view, either SchuminWeb has stopped contributing to Wikipedia or he hasn't.  If he has stopped, then desysopping him does him no harm.  If he hasn't, then in the circumstances, desysopping him is a service to the community.— S Marshall  T/C 21:08, 11 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Looking at the progress of this, I don't see a lot of support for allowing him to let this blow over and then go back to the same old behavior. Indeed, a lot of this from what I can see is that his behavior has been enabled by the fact that WP:FfD, for whatever reason, has not historically seen the level of participation that the other deletion processes have "enjoyed" (or often enough suffered). Therefore it took a step outside the usual course of these deletions to bring out that there are a lot of people who have had an issue with his behavior, and likewise, it's going to be easy for him to started editing again and resume the same behavior that brought this on. Besides, the unresponsiveness itself is a major component of the problem. I have to agree with S Marshall that he shouldn't be allowed to blow this off. Mangoe (talk) 21:40, 11 December 2012 (UTC)
 * This admin has done this in the past -- disappear in the weeds for a period of time when things got hot to await till the kerfuffle blew over claiming either "burnout" or that he was being attacked by editors who disagree with his administrative actions -- and then returned to engage in the same disruptive "my way or the highway" behavior and misuse of admin tools as before. Centpacrr (talk) 22:00, 11 December 2012 (UTC)
 * As not responding to ArbCom is grounds for desysop, I don't see why not responding to concerns during RfC/U shouldn't lead to an ArbCom case request if the concerns are serious enough. Having said that, fair chance to respond should be given as there can be legitimate reason why SW haven't edited for a couple of weeks. If email is enabled, of course attempt at contact should be made first. -- KTC (talk) 01:26, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

Schumin's own twitter feedshows he has accessed Wikipedia in the middle of the RFC, seems highly unreasonable that he is not aware of it.50.64.36.111 (talk) 02:47, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

Case submitted
I've started an Arbcom request at Arbitration/Requests/Case. I've included a limited set of participants which I suppose could be expanded to include most everyone responding here. I would ask that you not list yourself as outside the case if you have supported the suggestion that this be taken to Arbcom. Mangoe (talk) 17:46, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

RfA
I was looking for the RfA and a slight change in the username caused me a little confusion. To save others similar trouble, here's what I found. Warden (talk) 10:18, 11 December 2012 (UTC)


 * 1) Requests for adminship/Schuminweb
 * 2) Requests for adminship/Schuminweb 2
 * 3) Requests for adminship/SchuminWeb


 * Someone pointed out that his username violates policy because its the name of a website he is connected to, http://www.schuminweb.com/  D r e a m Focus  13:06, 11 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Capitalisation does not affect that. GiantSnowman 13:22, 11 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Huh? Yeah, not suggesting that's why he changed his name.  Just pointing out something interesting I saw.  That is a clear violation of the name rule.  Not sure if anyone ever brought it up at wherever such things are mentioned.   D r e a m Focus  13:33, 11 December 2012 (UTC)
 * What I meant was that it doesn't matter whether it's Schuminweb' or 'SchuminWeb' or 'SCHUMIN.WEB' or any variance of that, you can still tell there's a link. I agree it appears to violate WP:ORGNAME as it's promoting his website. GiantSnowman 13:37, 11 December 2012 (UTC)
 * As this was known during his successful RFA, can't really complain about it now. -- KTC (talk) 01:18, 12 December 2012 (UTC)
 * I would agree that it's water way under the dam by now, besides which I don't see any sign that he engaged in self-promotion. Making an issue out of it now would, I think, just confuse the issue. Mangoe (talk) 20:00, 12 December 2012 (UTC)
 * The RfAs make interesting reading. I particularly found AKAF's "I'd be worried that his actions as an admin would be more about him than the encyclopaedia" prescient. Phil Bridger (talk) 22:09, 11 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Can we please move on? This is about his actions now. Username policy violations already accepted by the community or comments from 2007 have no real relevance, and I don't want anyone to be able to write this RfC off as "everyone jumping up and down on him when he's out for the count", which it could well be interpreted as if it's used as an opportunity to fling in every non-crossed T and non-dotted i. Ironholds (talk) 21:58, 14 December 2012 (UTC)
 * I think this RFC is over, and has reached a clear conclusion. The fact that it hasn't been closed yet is leading to accusations based on ancient history; the reason for these accusations is probably no more than fear that the RFC will be closed without result owing to inactivity.  That's actually a legitimate concern.  I move that we request the assistance of an uninvolved closer without further delay.— S Marshall  T/C 11:06, 15 December 2012 (UTC)
 * I concur. Mangoe (talk) 13:35, 15 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Agree as well. As a large number of issues of misuse of sysop tools have now been raised regarding the subject Admin and he has declined to participate in this process, it appears that it is time to move this on to the next level for resolution of the desysop issue. Centpacrr (talk) 18:15, 15 December 2012 (UTC)
 * And I make four. CtP  (t • c) 21:27, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

The Wikibreak in December 2011 and what preceded it
To save everyone the trouble of repeating the review of what happened at the end of 2011, I'm posting this summary. The short form is that from October through November SchuminWeb was involved in a series of contentious deletion discussions which culminated in a pile-on DRV concerning a user picture of Centpacrr which pretty much in my opinion encapsulated virtually all the problems being discussed here. SchuminWeb put up a wikibreak notice, ostensibly to work on his website, and then virtually disappeared for the rest of the month, gradually returning to editing in January and months following. The events were as follows:


 * The warmup for this happened back in September in Files for deletion/2010 September 1. ShuminWeb's closure of this as a deletion was overturned.


 * Somewhere around the beginning of October the campaign against the DPL/Otto Perry images began. I get the impression that this was part of a larger review of images uploaded by User:Lordkinbote, who joined the project very early and who left at the end of 2006. The survivors of the affected images were uploaded in 2005. A lot of these images were deleted silently by ShuminWeb through the expedient of orphaning them and then tagging them as such. This tactic was used against a set of railroad drumhead logos which appeared in various articles on name trains. For example, he deleted the drumhead for the Broadway Limited and a photo of the consist in this pair of edits and presumably tagged the images, allowing someone else to do the actual deletions later in the month. Another example was the deletion of a historic picture of V&T #18 with a dismissive edit remark here ; interestingly, he failed to delete the railroad's logo, presumably because someone was actually watching the page and caught him in the act, and therefore was able to put the rationale in. Of course, you can see from the edit in which he attempted the deletion  that he had everything he needed to do this himself right at hand; for whatever reason, he couldn't be bothered. He started calling all such image uses "decorative" when it became clear that he was going to have to put them through FfD (e.g. Files for deletion/2011 October_9).


 * In the midst of this, File:Pioneer Zephyr Dawn to Dusk Club.jpg came up again. SchuminWeb first tried to delete it for lack of rationales, for which he got a rebuke for not just putting the rationale in himself. Five days later, he nominated it again, which resulted in a another keep result when everyone else rejected his theory about how the image was not essential.
 * From here on, things went downhill. Eventually he put up a group nomination of DPL images rather than picking them off one at a time. Here again his copyright theory was rejected, and the images were forced to be submitted individually. In fact none of them were resubmitted; instead they were removed from articles to delete them through orphaning.


 * Throughout this there was developing a continuing conflict between ShuminWeb and Centpacrr. This culminated in an attempt by the former to delete File:Centpacrr.jpg on November 10 on the extremely flimsy pretext that Centpacrr wasn't holding the camera when the picture was taken. The an undeletion request was denied on 29 November by Fastily, and then dumped into DRV on 3 December after two rounds of contentious discussion on Fastily's talk page (see first and third entries here; Fastily's talk page archive got badly scrambled at some point). Deletion was reversed after a knock-down drag-out non-argument about how preposterous the standard was that ShuminWeb and Fastily were defending, particularly since SchuminWeb had lots of images lying around which failed the same standard.


 * At the same time all this was going down, there was a parallel battle over File:JesseDirkhising.jpg, which was first deleted back in July at SchuminWeb's behest by Fastily as a reaction the deletion of another image in similar circumstances. This went to DRV on November 7, where there was a strong consensus for a relisting. The relisting on November 21 was closed by SchuminWeb as "delete" even though all votes where to keep the image. This went to DRV on December 5 where there was overwhelming consensus to overturn based on SchuminWeb's involvement in the original deletion; there was also an RFC at the time about specifically excluding the rationale used for the deletion. By this time he had made his disappearance from the scene.

A lot more went on besides this, including attempts on a couple of templates and a truly gratuitous attack on another picture taken by Centpacrr. Mangoe (talk) 17:59, 14 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Endorse: I agree completely with the quite complete and accurate summary of just some of the improper misuse of the administrative tools and powers which have been entrusted by the community to this Admin with regard particularly to the fair use of non-free images as well as on several images for which I clearly owned the copyright, routinely ignoring community consensus, and disrespectful attitude toward "ordinary" editors with whom he disagreed. Centpacrr (talk) 19:25, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

Template usage question
I'm not sure how important this is but has anyone else noticed that the top of the page says: "Please note: This template is for listing disputes about actions that are limited to administrators only, specifically these actions:

protecting and unprotecting pages

deleting and undeleting pages

blocking and unblocking users

For all other matters (such as edit wars and page moves), please use the template at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Example user."

I believe that all administrators should be accountable for their actions and the fact that some might remove themselves from the project temporarily to avoid scrutiny frustrates me but was this the best choice of template for this RFC? - UnbelievableError (talk) 05:38, 15 December 2012 (UTC)
 * I have no idea, but I removed that text, as it was suppoed to be removed when the page is transcluded. — ΛΧΣ  21  05:45, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

Proposed Closure
Since SW has gone on an unannounced wikiBreak, and hasn't had an opportunity to respond to this, I propose the following closure

''SchuminWeb has ceaced editing prior to the instigation of this RfC/U regarding Administrative actions. Multiple highly endorsed viewpoints call specific attention to the manner in which questions of administrative action are responded to. A Request for Arbitration has commenced regarding these responses.'''

Certifiers, is this acceptable to you? Hasteur (talk) 18:31, 17 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Certainly - I've literally just given my statement at the RfArb and was actually just about to return here to propose a close. GiantSnowman 18:40, 17 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Yes, I think that's an appropriate conclusion. Mangoe (talk) 18:46, 17 December 2012 (UTC)


 * I agree too. I have left my statement there and I think that leaving this opened will only fractionate discussion. — ΛΧΣ  21  19:05, 17 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Agree. I will post any further statements on this issue at Arbitration/Requests. I note that the subject Adim has also acknowledged that he is aware of both this process and the Arb Request here. Centpacrr (talk) 20:09, 17 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Sure. Ironholds (talk) 02:01, 18 December 2012 (UTC)