It can be quite difficult to follow the esoteric details of some drama. I clicked a few links, spent an hour reading related stuff, and I am still not sure wtf happened.
I mean that part about Andrew Landeryou and how David lost his “checkuser” privilege...
First, David tweeted: “mr landeryou has some history on wikipedia. (i did the sockpuppet investigation.)”
Then, Mr. Landeryou sent him some polite threats by e-mail: “Your entitled to your opinion of me but I think it might be best for you to discuss claims you make about me with me first. If you don’t, I’ll promise to return the favour after an investigation into exactly what ails you. And that really would be a waste of time for me and a very unpleasant outcome for you, so I urge you to Twit more carefully in future.”
Then, David published his e-mail, along with a long list of SMTP headers.
Okay, so my first question is, was there something sensitive or interesting in those SMTP headers?
Some people might consider it rude to expose someone’s e-mail address. When a similar situation happened to me in the past—someone sent me an e-mail with polite threats, -- I also responded by publishing the full text including the sender’s name, but I didn’t include the e-mail address, because… what’s the point? And including the SMTP headers feels like a 13 years old kid’s idea to say “I am a leet hacker”. Unless those SMTP headers expose something relevant to the story. As a hypothetical example, if someone who denies being connected to some organization would send a message from the organization’s servers, that would expose the lie. But all I see in the headers is that Mr. Landeryou uses GMail. Is that somehow controversial or did I miss something else?
The leaked e-mails from arbcom-l start with a complaint about the tweet and about publishing the e-mail. The person considers this “troubling enough itself; it’s unseemly for a current checkuser to brag about catching somebody on Wikipedia, presumably engaged in self-promotion”, “embarrassing to Wikipedia and perhaps even chilling” and suggests to “remove his CU bit immediately”, mostly because David is barely using it anyway.
My second question: do I read this correctly that the complaint is essentially about the immature behavior of someone publicly connected to Wikipedia, rather than about something actually serious?
Following e-mails: “Again?! We need to show him the door. I’m sorry, but he’s a liability for the project(s)”, “we are consistently ashamed of his behavior. He’s had numerous chances before; we all tried several time to ask him to tone his rhetoric down and he is unwilling or unable to. We need to make it very clear that his behavior is unwelcome and unbecoming, and that any pretension of speaking for the project is entirely illusory. That he discusses his checkuser work is just the proverbial straw.”, “we’ve been spending the year telling him that he needs to tone it down several notches”.
The message for David: (not sure whether it was actually sent, or was just a discussed draft)
Hello David,
You recent blog post (see link at the end) has come to the attention of the Committee, and we are disappointed that you were unable or unwilling to heed the concerns expressed by the arbitrators and other functionaries over the past year. Such outbursts are completely unacceptable as they reflect poorly on the project and, given your status as a functionary, particularly damaging. In particular, disclosing past checkuser results (especially with a bragging tone) and publishing email including private information are not compatible with the trust and decorum expected of holders of advanced rights.
Given the warnings you have already received on that subject, the Committee is voting to suspend both checkuser and oversight permissions, and to remove you from the func-l mailing list. It appears at this time that the motion will carry, but we wanted to extend the opportunity of stepping down willingly of your own volition beforehand to reduce the likelihood of drama and the possible embarrassment.
If you have comments to offer, please respond to this email before 2009-12-01; at which point we will otherwise close the pending motion.
People on the list worry about the possiblity of drama. They speculate that if they merely announce that David has lost the checkuser privilege, there will be less drama than if they start discussing the details and allow him to frame the story in his favor. But the least dramatic way would be to tell him how they feel about his behavior, and hopefully he is mature enough to resign.
In hindsight, if someone is so immature in his role that he needs to be removed from it, expecting him to be mature enough to accept this decision calmly might be… a bit too naive?
Then… I am sorry, I am still in the middle of the leaked e-mails, but my day is already over… it seems like David decides to go nuclear instead, and threatens to sue the ArbCom for defamation?
And the conclusion is that, on one hand, David loses the checkuser privilege, but on the other hand, any cricitism of him is purged from the Wikipedia records. The fellow Wikipedia admins keep asking, but get no response.
UPDATE: Originally I wrote “this seems to me like a huge victory for David”, but on the second thought it feels completely pointless. He successfully strongarmed the ArbCom into… doing what ArbCom has proposed in the first place (removing the privilege without explaining why). The only difference perhaps that now as a part of the private settlement the members of ArbCom are not allowed to talk about it later? Which means that the next time he does something immature but kinda plausibly defensible, the frustrated people who asked “again?” will have nothing to point at.
...ok, so I did actually figure it out while writing this, I think.
It can be quite difficult to follow the esoteric details of some drama. I clicked a few links, spent an hour reading related stuff, and I am still not sure wtf happened.
I mean that part about Andrew Landeryou and how David lost his “checkuser” privilege...
First, David tweeted: “mr landeryou has some history on wikipedia. (i did the sockpuppet investigation.)”
Then, Mr. Landeryou sent him some polite threats by e-mail: “Your entitled to your opinion of me but I think it might be best for you to discuss claims you make about me with me first. If you don’t, I’ll promise to return the favour after an investigation into exactly what ails you. And that really would be a waste of time for me and a very unpleasant outcome for you, so I urge you to Twit more carefully in future.”
Then, David published his e-mail, along with a long list of SMTP headers.
Okay, so my first question is, was there something sensitive or interesting in those SMTP headers?
Some people might consider it rude to expose someone’s e-mail address. When a similar situation happened to me in the past—someone sent me an e-mail with polite threats, -- I also responded by publishing the full text including the sender’s name, but I didn’t include the e-mail address, because… what’s the point? And including the SMTP headers feels like a 13 years old kid’s idea to say “I am a leet hacker”. Unless those SMTP headers expose something relevant to the story. As a hypothetical example, if someone who denies being connected to some organization would send a message from the organization’s servers, that would expose the lie. But all I see in the headers is that Mr. Landeryou uses GMail. Is that somehow controversial or did I miss something else?
The leaked e-mails from arbcom-l start with a complaint about the tweet and about publishing the e-mail. The person considers this “troubling enough itself; it’s unseemly for a current checkuser to brag about catching somebody on Wikipedia, presumably engaged in self-promotion”, “embarrassing to Wikipedia and perhaps even chilling” and suggests to “remove his CU bit immediately”, mostly because David is barely using it anyway.
My second question: do I read this correctly that the complaint is essentially about the immature behavior of someone publicly connected to Wikipedia, rather than about something actually serious?
Following e-mails: “Again?! We need to show him the door. I’m sorry, but he’s a liability for the project(s)”, “we are consistently ashamed of his behavior. He’s had numerous chances before; we all tried several time to ask him to tone his rhetoric down and he is unwilling or unable to. We need to make it very clear that his behavior is unwelcome and unbecoming, and that any pretension of speaking for the project is entirely illusory. That he discusses his checkuser work is just the proverbial straw.”, “we’ve been spending the year telling him that he needs to tone it down several notches”.
The message for David: (not sure whether it was actually sent, or was just a discussed draft)
People on the list worry about the possiblity of drama. They speculate that if they merely announce that David has lost the checkuser privilege, there will be less drama than if they start discussing the details and allow him to frame the story in his favor. But the least dramatic way would be to tell him how they feel about his behavior, and hopefully he is mature enough to resign.
In hindsight, if someone is so immature in his role that he needs to be removed from it, expecting him to be mature enough to accept this decision calmly might be… a bit too naive?
Then… I am sorry, I am still in the middle of the leaked e-mails, but my day is already over… it seems like David decides to go nuclear instead, and threatens to sue the ArbCom for defamation?
And the conclusion is that, on one hand, David loses the checkuser privilege, but on the other hand, any cricitism of him is purged from the Wikipedia records. The fellow Wikipedia admins keep asking, but get no response.
UPDATE: Originally I wrote “this seems to me like a huge victory for David”, but on the second thought it feels completely pointless. He successfully strongarmed the ArbCom into… doing what ArbCom has proposed in the first place (removing the privilege without explaining why). The only difference perhaps that now as a part of the private settlement the members of ArbCom are not allowed to talk about it later? Which means that the next time he does something immature but kinda plausibly defensible, the frustrated people who asked “again?” will have nothing to point at.
...ok, so I did actually figure it out while writing this, I think.