User talk:Arcticocean

"I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people." Where this user currently is, the time is 22:49, Monday 24 June 2024. This is the user talk page for AGK. You can also send this user an internal email. I have taken 68,260 actions on Wikipedia: 54,362 edits, 3,301 deletions, 2,661 blocks, and 7,936 protections. You are welcome to reverse any of them, except if my reason mentioned "checkuser", "arbitration", or "oversight".

User talk:Sandstein#Mild warnings of discretionary sanctions

Hi, in the above-linked thread, EdJohnston proposed creating a new "mild" discretionary sanctions notification template. Do you have an opinion about that?  Sandstein  09:28, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

On the face of it, the proposal is a good one. However, I would suggest that we postpone its implementation until I have the opportunity to publish my motions concerning discretionary sanctions—simply because a new template may "muddy the waters" by causing there to be too much change at once. Also, it is likely I will have something to say, within the forthcoming motions, about the wording and purpose of warnings and notices of discretionary sanctions, which may have to be considered when creating this new template.

As an aside, my most urgent present wiki-task is the publication of the proposed decision in Doncram. By arrangement with my co-drafter, that decision will be published tomorrow evening or on Saturday morning. However, after that my first priority will be the discretionary sanctions renovation. If you feel as though there has been a delay in dealing with your clarification request, it is only because proposed decisions are the committee's highest priority—and you had the ill-luck to make your clarification request just before we took on a case-load that is higher than it has been for many months. Regards, AGK [•] 22:43, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for replying and for taking the time to work on the clarification request and the attendant changes in procedure. I agree that it's best to wait until that has been resolved. It's not a very urgent matter, so I completely understand that your priority is resolving the ongoing cases.  Sandstein  07:26, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

I retain a strong interest in the outcome, since I received the "strong" notification template from Sandstein that included the stigmatizing "if you continue..." wording that indicates a accusation of wrong-doing – one that I've already proven to be false. Since that time, Sandstein's accusation has been twice misused for vexatious WP:GAMING against me at WP:AE. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 23:20, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

I cannot predict how my colleagues will vote (nor am I even sure into which camp I fall), but at this point I think I intend to propose a new system whereby the "warnings" become "notices" that require little or no presumption of guilt. The present template is very severe, but it was never designed to be worded in such a way, and the earliest templates were merely reminders that discretionary sanctions are in effect for a given artilcle or topic; although the template now in use gives a very different impression, I think it was only used on your talk page because it is, really, the only standardised way of satisfying the requirements of our discretionary sanctions system. AGK [•] 20:27, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

Oversight request

I would kindly request to oversight and suppress the hatred speech and threats made by User:LAX111 on my talk page as I find them to be personally defamatory and libelous [1]. Amartyabag ^TALK2ME 13:53, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

(talk page stalker)Doesn't seem necessary to oversight. Simple revision delete should be just fine.—cyberpower ^Chat_{Limited Access} 14:18, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

 Done: Revision deleted (with the decision to not suppress being for the same reason as Cyberpower suggests). In future, please do not make suppression requests on-wiki; it's very important that you always use WP:RFO and e-mail to request oversight (suppression). Thanks, AGK [•] 22:10, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

Request from User:Whitetararaj

Please write all my articles in Wikipedia. When you deleted some of my contents, you also deleted the names of articles which I have created. You should do it or else I will give a complaint about you or an administrator for Vandalizing Wikipedia. Thanks! Whitetararaj 12:07, 23 February, 2013 (UTC)

Now that the lines of communication are open....

Hello, Arcticocean. You have new messages at Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard#Was_there_a_change_in_our_child_protection_policy.3F.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Delicious carbuncle (talk) 16:39, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

DS Draft

Not sure where you / the Committee are going with this, but ya'll should choose one of two paths. Either

• Warnings
  • Linked to specific editor behavior contrary to wikipolicy
  • Must be placed on editor's talk page
  • May only be placed by uninvolved admin
  • Appealable somewhere, most likely AE

or

• Notifications
  • Linked only to editor contributing in affected area
  • Must be placed on editor's talk page
  • May be placed by anyone
  • Not appealable

The sort of just a courtesy notice, sort of a specific accusation, ambiguous nature of the wording of the current draft is just going to cause problems. NE Ent 14:45, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments, but my draft is in a very early stage and what I have now is very far from what I intend to propose. I disagree that notices given by administrators must be appealed; I think I will actually propose a system that falls somewhere between the two "paths" you suggest (for a number of very good reasons). I'll publicise a link to the draft once I've finished it. Regards, AGK [•] 22:53, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

You realize the top of it has the invitation "You are welcome to assist in its construction by editing it as well...", right? I wouldn't have commented now otherwise. NE Ent 23:54, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

I meant to suggest that any comments are likely to be made obsolete by the edits I'll have to make in order to bring the draft up to publication standard, not that your comments were not welcome. AGK [•] 15:16, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

Understood. NE Ent 12:51, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

Doncram case

You double-voted there bud. :) --The Devil's Advocate _{tlk. cntrb.} 22:27, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

Argh, I did indeed. Thanks for letting me know. AGK [•] 22:51, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

Email

I haven't received it yet. Daniel Case (talk) 15:13, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

It's on Oversight-l, sent on 2 March 2013 14:21 by Snowolf. Are you subscribed to that mailing list? AGK [•] 15:15, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

I am but from a different email address than the one I usually use, and I'm not sure I remember the login. Perhaps the relevant email could be forwarded via the email link on my user page? Daniel Case (talk) 15:28, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

I've sent a hard copy of the e-mail to you by EmailUser, but it's quite problematic that you aren't properly subscribed to Oversight-l so you might like to ask a listadmin to update your e-mail address. My e-mail address is wikiagkgmail.com, if you want me to proxy any information. AGK [•] 15:34, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

Got it. Sure. I thought we were phasing out the mailing list in favor of OTRS? But whatever ... Who would be the listadmin to ask? Daniel Case (talk) 15:44, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

The mailing list is used quite regularly, for discussion of complicated tickets and more general co-ordination. You would ask anybody whose e-mail address is listed beside "Oversight-l list run by" at the bottom of mail:Oversight-l. Thanks, AGK [•] 15:53, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

Hmm an email on the topic was also sent yesterday by Risker to functionaries-en, did you at least receive that one? Snowolf ^{How can I help?} 16:07, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

The best contact for OS listadmins would be Risker or myself. Daniel, if you need your registered email for OTRS updated, I can handle that as well. Keegan (talk) 19:52, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

Please "courtesy vanish" my account

Cancel all redirects to my user page, please. Rename my account. Thank you. Humanpublic (talk) 15:58, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

I am unable to vanish your account. You need to read Wikipedia:RTV#How to request a courtesy vanishing. Regards, AGK [•] 15:59, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

That says I have to use email. If I don't want to give Wikipedia my email, I contact a "functionary." You are first on the list of functionaries. Humanpublic (talk) 19:21, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

I've emailed the bureaucrats a diff of Humanpublic's request here. NE Ent 19:47, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

NE Ent, thanks very much. Humanpublic, the page instructs you to contact a Functionary "for advice". You are asking for your account to be vanished, not asking for advice on the process of vanishing. Only a bureaucrat could vanish your account. AGK [•] 20:06, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

A thought

Hi Anthony, I thought I'd bring this here rather than bog down the discussion of the motion over a tangential issue but I wanted to respond to your point about admin actions made on the basis of OTRS tickets and other private information. Since discretion and privacy are the raison d'être of processes like oversight and OTRS, doesn't drawing attention to the existence of the private information by decreeing that the action cannot be reversed by a non-oversighter/non-OTRS agent/etc sort of defeat the point of the secrecy? For example, I don't wish to criticise Beeblebrox too harshly, but his mentioning of oversight in the block log entry only advertised that there was oversightable information somewhere. For those reasons, I tend to think that the logic behind the motion is flawed (though I also believe the motion is procedurally flawed and starts us down a slippery slope of ArbCom amending policy at will to retrospectively justify its actions). Best, HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 18:04, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

In my opinion there wouldn't be as much furor over an OTRS-related block as there's a lot of OTRS agents who also are enwiki admins. OTRS actions are also bound by enwiki policy as well, and those should be even more rare than CU/OS blocks. The only time that I've mentioned OTRS in blocking is when a ticket made it clear an account was here solely for promotion and it wasn't obvious from the onwiki evidence alone, and I would gladly explain that to anyone who questioned it. --Rschen7754 18:13, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

• HJ: It is a very important concern that "oversighter blocks" are a self-contradictory notion. However, the controversy over the Cla68–Kevin incident came about because Kevin reversed a block which is not afforded special protection by any Wikipedia policy (or committee ruling); the absence of such protection made the status of the block open to debate where it would (if policy or committee procedure had already set down rules for reversing the block) otherwise have been an open-and-shut case. Today, {{unblock}} requests made in relation to a checkuser block are almost automatically closed by non-checkuser members of the community with a comment like "Checkuser block – please use UTRS or contact a functionary". Oversighter blocks are very rarely made (I think I personally have only ever made one, and I've blocked a lot of accounts), so the cultural transition in this case may be slower. However, by affording blocks based on suppressed edits the same special protection as 'checkuser blocks' have, the committee is—in my mind—ensuring that, in future, these types of incidents are both handled by a person in possession of all the facts and handled with minimal drama and attention. The alternative to causing this cultural change would be a community where oversighters could never block a user based on edits that have to be suppressed (lest their blocks be reversed at the whim of any of our ~1,400 administrators), or where any oversighter who was forced to make such a block could not prevent its reversal without a similar amount of drama as we have in the present situation. Regards, AGK [•] 20:23, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

• Isn't reversal distinct from granting unblock request following user commitment not to repeat action? I don't think anyone is arguing Cla68 didn't dox. NE Ent 20:41, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

• Undoubtedly so, but in my mind that's not really the point. An action either has special status or does not. If it does, those without the right to do so should not be commuting or overturning the block—because, not having access to all of the suppressed edits, how could they know the blocked user was genuine when he or she promised not to engage in the same misconduct once unblocked? If they can't read the offending edits, they are flying blind.

  On another (less theoretical) point, I don't think we need to make much fuss out of restricting these blocks only to oversighters. I can count the number of oversighter blocks I know of on one hand, so the motion the committee is presently considering would affect a minute proportion of the number of blocks we make on Wikipedia. AGK [•] 20:50, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

• They don't know whether the blocked user's intent is genuine -- but that's a tautology, no unblocking admin ever does. It's a matter of judgement, which is why we run editors through that dreadful Rfa process before giving them the bit. NE Ent 20:57, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

• Rschen, there probably would be less of a furore over an OTRS action; but if you imagine a case where you blocked a user based on an OTRS ticket that contained information that simply could not be revealed (even in a summarised form), then you would have a better idea of the pickle our oversighters are placed in when they have to make these types of block. Although I cited it as an example, OTRS poorly illustrates my argument, because most OTRS tickets are simply behind an interface that not everybody can log into; conversely, oversighted edits contain information that is both restricted and highly sensitive, rather than merely restricted. AGK [•] 20:23, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

• Well, at least we have an ArbCom here; I also hold sysop on two other WMF wikis and have faced situations where we may have to block users based on sensitive information, but the only way to indefinitely block users would be to have a community discussion... awkward. --Rschen7754 20:33, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, Arcticocean. You have new messages at Elen of the Roads's talk page.
Message added 01:36, 6 March 2013 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Elen of the Roads (talk) 01:36, 6 March 2013 (UTC)