User talk:Kevin Gorman

re

There are various revdel posts, and off-wiki items which you may not be aware of. Even without those, there are plenty of on-wiki items with multiple editors which show disruptive editing. The fact that I have warned RO in the past is not a valid "involved" argument. I stand by my block. — Ched :  ?  18:54, 15 November 2015 (UTC)

• @Ched: - it's generally bad form to block an editor during the course of an ongoing discussion when they are not causing active problems unless consensus has developed to do so, since it prevents them from defending themselves. That holds doubly truly when we didn't block a male admin who created a much bigger clusterfuck than this could possibly be literally like three days ago under the mantra 'preventatitive, not punitive.' Is there an ongoing situation where blocking RO rather than letting her participate in the ANI thread causes damage? If not, your block is just making those who rightly or wrongly paint our administrative processes as biased look more legitimate. Kevin Gorman (talk) 20:08, 15 November 2015 (UTC)

Kevin, I have no idea how "gender" comes into play here. I blocked for habitual disruptive editing. There are multiple threads showing disruption with editors who have declared both male and female genders. I blocked to PREVENT further disruption to this project. My understanding when I came to this project was that it was about providing knowledge, not a platform for some sort of agenda for race, creed, gender, or anything else. I have no idea if RO is male or female, and frankly, I. DON'T. CARE. I blocked because there is a constant disruption to the project. — Ched :  ?  20:29, 15 November 2015 (UTC)

It comes in to play because the last few weeks have seen multiple male editors not blocked (and certainly not blocked until consensus was established at ANI) for far more disruptive behavior than any diff I've seen from RO. I can see revdeled posts btw, and unless they've already hit oversight I see nothing in your history or RO's in the recent past, let alone that would justify an indef in the middle of an ANI thread depriving the user the right to defend their own actions and shortcircuiting consensus. As a general rule it's never a good idea to indefinitely block a user with an active ANI thread about their behavior unless it's necessary to protect the current integrity of the project - not for some future possible disruption. Kevin Gorman (talk) 20:35, 15 November 2015 (UTC)

I'm still waiting for an answer: Why are you bringing gender into this? Cassianto^Talk 21:36, 15 November 2015 (UTC)

Because we're regularly getting public flak for treating users who aren't men differently than users who are men, and unilaterally indeffing someone in the middle of an ANI thread about their behavior where the norm is to wait for consensus to develop before taking such drastic action is the norm? Someone dropped me an email shifting my opinion of indeffing the user in general, but I think the fashion it was carried out in still warrants a mid-sized trout. Kevin Gorman (talk) 01:17, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

So because a few people claim that sexism goes on around here, and because RO is female, that automatically means that Ched has a sexist motive? That, is complete bullshit. Maybe then you can further explain why Lynn felt in necessary to bring up Eric seeing as the discussion had shifted to gender? Cassianto^Talk 08:21, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

I'll paypal you $20 if you can point to a single diff where I accused Ched of having a sexist motive. I would've objected to indef blocking someone in the middle of ANI thread about their behavior unless there was a compelling, preventative reason why such a block was necessary regardless of the presented gender of the editor in question. It's not good administrative practice to indef someone in the middle of an ANI thread about their behavior in any situation unless ongoing disruption is going on, a practice that has been established for good reason (barring circumstances where consensus has formed or it's an obvious sock, etc.) This is true regardless of the presented gender of the editor in question. The flak that Wikimedia is getting flak in the media for enforcing a dual standard depending on what gender an editor presents as is just another reason why Ched's block was bad. I was damn near indeffing Neelix in the middle of the thread about his ridiculous situation last week, but as @Drmies: and others pointed out, indeffing him in the middle of an ongoing discussion about his behavior was a bad idea, and thus I didn't. I'm not Lynn, and as much as I try - maybe you should go ask her? Although since your question serves very little productive purpose, I'd encourage her to ignore it and rollback your edit in the same way I just did Giano's.

I do find it quite curious that you and another editor are persisting in derailing the thread with discussion about gender to the point that it's literally quite impossible for other editors to have a reasonable discussion about RationalObserver's behavior - which, once the bad block was dealt with should have been the purpose of the thread. Kevin Gorman (talk) 10:40, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

It wasn't me who brought up gender, it was you and your pal Lynn. I was trying to keep the thread on subject; hence why I asked you what gender had to do with it. Cassianto^Talk 12:08, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

• Kevin, it is true that I didn't want Neelix indef-blocked while we were dealing with the situation. I guess that was in part because we were dealing with the situation and I wasn't fully aware of the full scope; even after I was, I wouldn't support an indefinite block because I figured that, since they had stopped, and since they were going to be scrutinized like few others (haha, including me and Eric!), there wasn't any risk of much further disruption. I don't like punitive blocks though I am sure they feel really good. This case, though, is different, but I don't really want to elaborate on that much more right now. I haven't even had a second cup of coffee. BTW, Cassianto and others were getting a bit excited and I must admit I didn't read the entire thread very carefully, but I did note that "the gender card" was being played, though I'm not going to point fingers. I really think we could do with less essentializing. Oh, I am glad to see you are doing better, and I wish you the best of health. Take care, and good luck with your ArbCom run! Drmies (talk) 16:03, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

• Oh, I'll lose, but losing to a good slate of candidates is no shame. I agree with you that this case is different, although I still view an unexplained block in the middle of the ANI thread as inappropriate, but, unfortunately, the continued hijacking of the thread by Cassianto&co prevented discussion about the actual issues (and I suspect we're talking about the same issues.) As I've said elsewhere I was giving more than brief consideration to dropping a block on the basis of evidence received through private emails or having someone do an OS block, etc. Kevin Gorman (talk) 19:58, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

Howdy Kevin. If I may clarify things. Cassianto & co, did not insert gender in the ANI discussion about RO's behaviour/conduct. More importantly, the gender issue should be avoided at that discussion, IMHO :) GoodDay (talk) 20:38, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

• I realize they didn't - I was talking more about their continued behavior (as under the arbitration subheading, etc.) And from some of the emails I've received, I agree with you on the latter point as well. I still disagree with a mid-ANI thread block when there's not ongoing disruption, but as I've stated in a couple other forums I'm considering taking action myself on the basis of information I can't divulge on-wiki but would forward to AC if the discussion on-wiki results in no substantive action. Kevin Gorman (talk) 21:11, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

I believe mentorship for RO, would be best at this time, if the indef block isn't restored. GoodDay (talk) 21:17, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

WP:RFPP

Please clear the list. Some reports are still there. I filed few pages yesterday which were being vandalized. --Galaxy Kid (talk) 01:52, 17 November 2015 (UTC)

• I knocked a few out of the way - though I declined a number of them for insufficient levels of activity - one of the accounts you mentioned being an issue at Prom is one edit away from being autoconfirmed, so a semi there wouldn't have done anything anyway. Just AIV him if he keeps being an issue and it'll get taken care of, and the level of general disruptive editing there was honestly lower than I expected :p Kevin Gorman (talk) 02:23, 17 November 2015 (UTC)

Email

I've sent you a inquiry for the Signpost's coverage of the election, via Meta. Tony (talk) 04:41, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

There's a new cool pageview API

Just pointing this out to any TPS who aren't on wiki-research - there's a new, quite cool pageview API out now supported by WMF - you can find it here, along with a demo of one of the kinds of things that can be done with it here. Kevin Gorman (talk) 18:23, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

STOPzilla

Think I put on the protection you intended to. [1] --NeilN ^{talk to me} 19:00, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

Though it's technically out of scope for a TE to uncreate protect a page, I look at it as the same kind of de minimis out of scope involved in someone with +acc using it to create an editnotice. That said, I don't mind your change, since it's not like it's very likely to be unsalted for a bloody long time. Best, Kevin Gorman (talk) 19:04, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

Hasn't been repeatedly recreated for seven years, other than a one-off housekeeping action in 2010. -- Euryalus (talk) 02:52, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

Heh, you're right - I hadn't noticed the dates, just the length of the log. That said, given that it just got killed at AFD again, my inclination is to leave the salt on - someone interested in creating an article about it can always request the salt be lifted. Kevin Gorman (talk) 02:55, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

Fine by me. Some apparent admin-shopping going on here - I was asked to salt this too but declined due to age of earlier deletes. But in the list of things to worry about, this ranks fairly low. -- Euryalus (talk) 03:48, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

I picked it up off RFPP rather than a direct request, though I'm damned if I can remember the name of the user. Either way, even on the list of things for us to worry about just this week, this probably ranks pretty low, heh. Kevin Gorman (talk) 04:30, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

Allie X

You full-protected this page without an AFD notice, and there is an AFD currently running at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Allie X (2nd nomination). (There was also a duplicate 3rd nom, but I closed that one.) Could an AFD notice be re-added to the page? Thanks, shoy (reactions) 18:39, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

• Yeah, thanks for the heads up, I had missed that there was another AfD currently running. I'll fix it promptly. Kevin Gorman (talk) 22:15, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

• @Kevin Gorman: It looks like the AFD for Allie X has been resolved, but the template is still on the page -- I'm not sure of the protocol, but presumably it can be removed now? Does an Admin have to do that? Thanks, Mary Mark Ockerbloom (talk) 02:07, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

• If it's still fully protected yeah. I'll go ahead and strip it. Kevin Gorman (talk) 02:11, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

Totally not my place

[2] Best, Drmies (talk) 18:50, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

• Totally your place, and I thank you for the comment. Kevin Gorman (talk) 20:10, 20 November 2015 (UTC)
  • I had an even harder time explaining those redirects to my daughters. Ritchie333, sorry--you know I rarely disagree with you. The point in general about Arbs and decent language is valid, I think (you know I'm raked over the coals for it, and that probably got me slammed as a misogynist by the GGTF voter guide writers), but the Neelix case is just so overwhelmingly WHAT THE FUCK WAS HE THINKING? that I cannot find fault with someone over a couple of f-bombs. Drmies (talk) 23:34, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

Totally your place, making a comment is fine. I cleaned up some redirects myself and some of the ones Drmies deleted were awful. However, I just think Kevin went a bit too far and took it personally - at least that's how I interpreted "I'm emailing Arbcom, Jimbo, all admins, Obama, your mother etc etc" and it seemed like over-harsh bullying. Sorry. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 14:22, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

Keep in mind, I also am the person who got him to step down voluntarily under a cloud, and close the existing arbcom case. My private emails also started the arbcom motion, which also would've involved significantly less drama than an ANI fest or a full arbcom case. I may have cursed a few times in the process, but my actions overall minimized the drama of the situation. Kevin Gorman (talk) 20:44, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

signpost survey on approval voting

Hello again, I'm reading over the signpost, and am finding that some of the questions I thought were obvious agree-answers sometimes result in disagree-answers. Of course, the numeric answer just leads to more questions, about the reason behind the numeral. So here I am. Can you fill me in on why you are "[un]satisfied with the ternary [oppose–neutral–support] voting system for [the annual] ArbCom elections" which was question#T. Or if you have you posted something about it elsewhere, feel free to direct me thither. I always thought the approval-voting scheme used by arbcom was pretty decent, better than instant run-off voting (used e.g. in Oakland and SFO elections), and better than first past the post (used in USA federal elections) by far. SecurePoll bangvoting is one of the few places where wikipedia is permitted to act as a leading indicator following best practices, rather than a trailing indicator which reflects the nominally reliable sources, as we do in mainspace. This is not a high-priority question, clearly, since probably I'm the only wikipedian curious enough to ask about the underlying rationale here, but when you have a spare moment, I'm definitely curious. Thanks, 75.108.94.227 (talk) 00:29, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

• I definitely don't support FPTP or instant run-off, I just dislike the fact that with our normal relatively low turnouts and with opposes counting so much more significantly than neutrals, it's relatively easy in theory for a pretty small bloc to mass-oppose candidates that they disliked in a way that would shift the balance of the election in a way that I don't think accurately represents the wishes of the electorate. These are using way bigger turnouts than we actually have, but, for instance, a candidate with 150,000 support votes and 150,001 negative votes would not be elected, whereas a candidate with 2 support votes and 0 negative votes would be elected. I think there are situations where a candidate, though falling short of the 50% minimum, certainly is supported by enough of the electorate that they should reasonably win a seat over a candidate with far less support but also far less opposition. Kevin Gorman (talk) 00:35, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

• (edit conflict) I'm not Kevin, but I can answer for why I certainly don't consider the existing setup best practice; it institutionalises a tyranny-of-the-majority setup on what should be an inclusive project. As a hypothetical, assume that kittens are the current burning issue on Wikipedia; further, assume that 55% of voters are strongly in favor of more coverage of kittens, while 25% of voters hate kittens and the remaining 20% don't care. Since that 55% is dominant, it means that pro-kitten candidates will sweep the board and take every seat, rather than a more equitable distribution of eight pro-kitten, four anti-kitten and three kitten-neutral candidates. Since it's well, well documented that voters in any kind of election have a subconscious tendency to support candidates they perceive as similar to themselves, this has serious implications in a project with well-documented race, age and gender gaps and where the US is so disproportionately represented among the editor base. (Black arbs: 0; female arbs: 2; arbs outside the North America/UK wiki-heartland: 0.) A few years ago I proposed having 'constituencies' for arbcom slots, based on geographic location and/or particular fields on Wikipedia (roughly the same setup trade union councils use, with delegates from both geographical areas and specific areas of work), but nobody seemed very interested in the proposal and it would probably have been unworkably complicated on a project with such a cult of anonymity. ‑ iridescent 00:49, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

• Thank you @Iridescent: for your much more detailed explanation that I agree with 100%. I had ongoing conversations in half a dozen windows up at once, so my answer here wa subpar, but you pretty much nailed it. Kevin Gorman (talk) 01:36, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

• Heh heh! Am delighted to find other people who take voting systems seriously. There is definitely a problem with the threshold being unspecified; if this were scaled up to handle municipal elections, for instance, it would be important for the sanity of the outcome to have a system where, for an example mechanism, there was a minimum number of support-votes needed to qualify as a candidate, say 10% of the legit voters who actually voted in the election in question... but alternatively or additionally, I think that "neutral" should count slightly negative aka instead of plusOne minusZero minusOne for the support/neutral/oppose bangvotes, it makes sense to have pluOne minusOneTenth minusOne ... thataway, relatively unknown candidates like the hypothetical 2-support-1-oppose-999-neutral person, would not get elected. Of course, it would be harder than ever to achieve the 50% approval cutoff, were 'neutral' to be redefined as 'leaning one-tenth towards negative', so it might be necessary to adjust the cutoff-threshold downward to 40%.

  As for the tyranny of the majority, all systems which are fundamentally democratic have that risk, as Aristotle first noticed if memory serves... though of course, since arbcom does not actually write the wiki-laws, but is merely supposed to interpret them like SCOTUS, kinda sorta anyways, there is somewhat less of a worry. There most definitely is a worry about tyranny of the factional majority in terms of *writing* the PAG themselves... one need not be elected to arbcom, in order to rewrite WP:N for instance!  :-)     I will have to think more deeply on the question of whether the 50% cutoff leads to systemic bias, however. I'm generally against proportional systems in all their stripes, because they strongly encourage both divisiveness and simultaneously factional loyalties, almost as much as FPTP does. However, the main proportional-system disadvantage, however you set the proportions (geographical is typical in the off-wiki world as opposed to demographical or "wikiproject-membership-o-graphical"), is that with FPTP there are mathematically only going to ever be two major parties (with rare exceptions at the saddle points), who both compete to satisfy intra-party coalitions large enough to win out against the other major party... and thus have some advantages versus proportional, in avoiding the tyranny of the majority problem. I have never heard of approval voting having the tyranny of the majority problem (my admiration of it is because it solves the independence of clones issue with maximum simplicity), but will look into it more, thanks much for the elbow-joggle, to make me think harder.

  p.s. One parting food-for-thought, which might satisfy both the problem of 1000 yea + 1001 nay bangvotes mentioned by Kevin, and the problem of systematic bias mentioned by Iridescent, would be some sort of scheme where instead of electing 9 equally-weighted-members out of 21 actively-standing-candidates, we instead gave ALL of the 21 candidates a percentage of the 9-equally-weighted-votes on the arbcom. If candidate X were to receive 1000 supports in the election, and all the other candidates received 100 supports each, then the distribution could be something like 9*1000/3000 == three arbcom bangvotes for candidate X, and 9*100/3000 == three-tenths-of-a-bangvote for each of the other twenty candidates. Guaranteed election to serve, in other words, but variable amount of power. Using or ignoring the oppose bangvotes durin the arb-election, left as an exercise for the reader.  ;-)     75.108.94.227 (talk) 02:10, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

So my idea picking 3 individuals one loves, 3 individuals one doesn't love, and 3 individuals in the middle to vote for ain't so bad! (Hope ya don't mind a bit of drive-by talking!) --MurderByDeadcopy^"bang!" 04:55, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

(snorts derisively at with FPTP there are mathematically only going to ever be two major parties, from the perspective of a country whose FPTP electoral map looks like this.) ‑ iridescent 10:41, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

(spit take) Ha! I never said it would actually work!!! --MurderByDeadcopy^"bang!" 19:45, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

@75.108, a simple solution which preserves the positives of the existing system would be to keep the setup exactly as is, but only allow three "support" and three "oppose" votes per voter. That way, the obvious bozos would still have no chance of slipping through, but it would prevent the scenario of fifteen people who appear to a particular group of 51% of voters but are despised by the remaining 49% from making a clean sweep of every election. ‑ iridescent 00:21, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

• 75 - arbcom cases involve too much private evidence to want to expand the committee that significantly, especially since with two tranches we'd likely end up with like 42 freakin' arbs. I actually kind of like what Iridescent just suggested, or at least something going off of it... Kevin Gorman (talk) 00:26, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

ARBCOM question

Just an FYI but this Q & A was removed. I haven't even read it but there may be some drama with that so either way you feel like handling it. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 00:05, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Ok, I see from the talk page there that you don't need anything more about this. Either way, good luck with your candidacy. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 04:53, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

• Thank you for the heads up about it, I hadn't noticed myself initially. It's pretty much just Giano being Giano, and will settle down. Kevin Gorman (talk) 04:55, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

Turnout

Wow, voter turnout is amazing this year. Great idea about the talk page notifications. I'm really curious to see how this will affect the outcome. Mark Arsten (talk) 00:08, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

I really am pleased with how it is looking so far. Who knows how it will effect the elections - one thing a lot of people missed is that I didn't want more votes because I thought they'd support candidates I liked, I wanted more votes because 600-something people choosing a body as significant as arbcom when the declared electorate is so much bigger is kind of disturbing (as far as I can tell, at least half of the world is technically under active arbcom sanctions.) We have another two weeks of voting, and we've already just about hit last year's total turnout already! Kevin Gorman (talk) 00:13, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

Yeah, it's amazing to me how few people bother to vote (on Wikipedia but in real life too). I hope we'll be able to get a better idea of where most of the community stands on the issues, since the loudest voices aren't always the majority. Mark Arsten (talk) 00:42, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

Excuse the interruption, but where can I find voter turnout? --Kansas Bear (talk) 00:48, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

You can see a list here. In comparison, last year we had 593 votes total... which is about what we have right now already. I'm really curious to see how this ends up effecting the composition of arbcom. Kevin Gorman (talk) 01:08, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

• Whether it has anything to do with the talk page notifications or not, we've exceeded 600 votes in less than a day - more than the total participation in the election last year. Kevin Gorman (talk) 02:51, 24 November 2015 (UTC)
  • 571 (including dups) at 0:00 UTC, but close enough ;-). --SB_Johnny | ^talk✌ 03:22, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

• @SB Johnny: is there a really good way to get exact counts including dups at particular times in the election? I've mostly been just setting to view 100 and eyeballing it, but such a tool would be potentially useful to see what effect the massmessaging is having on voterturnout, since it's being batched and we could look at the hours immediately following a batch vs the hours immediately preceding one. Between the general quality of the candidate pool and the greatly increased voter turnout... to be honest I'd have trouble not being happy with the results of this election, regardless of if I am elected, since a lot of editors I quite respect are almost certain to be + well, the whole voter turnout thing. Kevin Gorman (talk) 16:11, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

• That's pretty much what I do. You can change the url where it says "100" to, say, "760" if you suspect it's not much more than that and then just count as a shortcut. --SB_Johnny | ^talk✌ 01:21, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

I'm bad at remembering server time is in UTC :) we have actually surpassed total participation last year at this point though, which is still pretty bloody impressive. I'm quite curious what high turnout does to the elections. Kevin Gorman (talk) 04:53, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

Is this a stupid question: Is this election a good way to fish for socks? I mean, if somehow there were a bot that could go through the list of voters, perhaps look for consecutive ips or whatever is that is done to find socks and flag suspicious votes? For example, you might expect socks to have an identical voting algorithm. Isn't one of the reasons editors are so tempted to become socks is that they want to influence 'voting'? Best Regards,

  Bfpage |leave a message  15:23, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

If people wanted to sock previous arbcom elections, they've been frankly terribly about it - socking is more often than not to create a false impression of consensus on individual talk pages, rather than bigger elections like these. Without getting too WP:BEANSy, there's both quite a lot done to eliminate duplicate votes from arbcom elections, and probably plenty of countermeasures people could take to try to escalate a socking war in an arbcom election - but as far as I know, most arbcom election socking has been trivial. Recently, few people have just cared enough to vote at all. Despite being quite a powerful body, people have been elected arbitrators who would not have been made administrator with the same vote tallies. We're trying some broader outreach strategies (like massmessaging every eligible voter this time) try to decrease turnout from the dismal 593 voters the last election saw - we already have a higher number, and voting has hardly started. I would encourage you to take a look at the candidates and their statements and guides, and take some time to cast votes as you think best (note that oppose hurts a lot more than a neutral does, and that no one from ENWP, myself included, will be able to see how you voted - so you could oppose me and I'd have no idea.)Part of the reason that I mention that I'll have NO idea how you vote is I'm intending to finish up commenting on your page later today. Jytdog is banned for now, which will simplify some things, and I think Flyer would mostly prefer to defer to my judgement rather than directly interact. Hopefully we can get a much shorter set of guidelines you can easily work within finalized within the next few sets of days. I can't come close to making you follow any set of guidelines at this point, but think most of the problems with your editing disappeeared while you were following them, and think that it's pretty awesome as a measure of good faith (we can probably even explicitly frame it as that, rather than anything remotely puunitive) that you're intending to follow a continue, far cut down, set of guidelines. You were legitimately close to a long block ahead of time, and I'm glad this turned out this way. Would you like me to annotate your block log to reflect thaat you did not at all serve a six month block but served far lesser, and behaved exemplarily?Kevin Gorman (talk) 16:11, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

ArbCom elections are now open!

Hi,
You appear to be eligible to vote in the current Arbitration Committee election. The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to enact binding solutions for disputes between editors, primarily related to serious behavioural issues that the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the ability to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail. If you wish to participate, you are welcome to review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page. For the Election committee, MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 14:30, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

Discussions over Voter guide

SlimVirgin closed the original thread - there's no need revisit anything in it. I've restored our subsequent conversation, with Jehochman's agreement [3] and added a comment on the end. Kevin, I do appreciate you taking the time to engage, the last thing I want is bad blood from this situation. Worm^TT(talk) 15:59, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

• Though not bothering to unclose it, I'd add that I have in fact been doing quite a bit of editing about a rather important missing medical topic - I just haven't had a solid full day with sources to make it live yet, but expect to within the next several days since IVIG as it stands is pretty sad. I'm aware the above thread is unlikely to gain me many support votes (and was equally aware that pointing out to Doug that breaking outing on Arb pages isn't an instant automatic block, in defense of Tryptofish, even though I knew that bringing that situation up, which was ironically nearly universally supported at the time - would hurt my odds just because people already opposing my candidacy would be looking for additional points to glom on to - but did so anyway, because I believe it was the correct thing to do.) I'm afraid I'm a little bit like Bernie, especially this election; I'm unwilling to change my basic viewpoints about what is fundamentally inappropriate behavior just because calling out a vested contributor will hurt my voting data. I might alter my tactic were there a distinct lack of qualified candidates to serve, but luckily I'm fairly certain the new arbcom tranche will be competent with or without me (though I am touched by User:Salvidrim!'s explicit endorsement of me when he decided to withdraw from the race,) that I cannot see a pragmatic reason sufficient to avoid publicly calling out behavior this absurd by an ex-arb and respected admin.)

I think the situation above really sums up a lot of Wikipedia's problems in a nutshell. A generally respected ex-arbitrator and admin who had no involvement in the case in question made a broad statement that I had used my - non-public and unknown to WTT at the time- health and disability issues to somehow magically avoid being banned. If an editor who was not a vested contributor had made such offensively inccorrect claims, let alone in sequence, they would've been pretty uncontroversially handed a long block. Yet since this is silly season if I even took WTT to ANI for violating the board-approved WP:Non-discrimination policy, I'd be accused of backdoor campaigning if I did so right now, if I had taken similar edits to ANI before silly-season, I would've been told to grow a thicker skin, and if I took them to ANI after silly season, I would've been both accused of having a thin skin and holding stale grudges. I do have health problems which are luckily once again well controlled, as they were during the case that WTT (while recusing as an arb and thus not having access to private arbcom discussions,) accused me of taking advantage of my disabilities to manipulate a case. When I went in to sepsis in January, I got told I had about a 30% chance of leaving the Cedars-Sinai ICU alive - luckily, the history of my case proved their initial predictions wrong, but that's no laughing matter. I would easily brush off such trolling were it coming from a newbie, rather than an experienced and respected former arbitrator making a faux-pretense at trying to put together a reasonable voter's guide. Having it suggested that I used health issues I did not disclose on Wikipedia at any time of the arbcom case WTT was recused from to somehow excuse myself from apparent wrong-doing to such a degree that a ban would've been enacted had I not done so is a really offensive comment when coming from a senior community member and not a ten year old that Cluebot is blindly reverting. For an ex-arb to suggest that an early 2014 case's decision was secretly based on the fact that in very early 2015 I had a less than one in three chance of surviving a then-unpredictable medical emergency is disgraceful. Kevin Gorman (talk) 10:00, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

Kevin, I'm concerned for you. You'll note I've blanked everything to do with me and you, voter guide, conversation on talk page (where I'd left you a note) and questions on your question page. I don't want to antagonise you further by responding to these comments. Worm^TT(talk) 10:05, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

I'm going to be extremely blunt - you need to stop this pot-stirring right now, as you're losing friends and I could probably talk myself into believing a block would serve its legitimate purpose of reducing damage and disruption to the encyclopaedia. Obviously, I'm not going to block you myself as I could easily be considered WP:INVOLVED, but please drop all of this right now and get back to writing Hyaluronidase (assuming that's what it was). I want to see your next five edits in article space. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 10:32, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

I directly linked the article I am in the middle of working on - and my next five edits are not going to be in article space (though you may wish to see them wherever you want I suppose,) given that I'm currentlyworking on a userspace draft (which I linked above.) Although I agree that WTT's decision to blank involved interactions is likely to minimize the amount of stirring the pot and do find that an admirable goal in general, I still it flabbergasting that you decided to cast aspersions, completely lacking in evidence, that I had used claims of ill-health to avoid a ban in a case before I had even significantly discussed any issue of health on Wikipedia. And Ritchie - I can't stop you from believing a block would serve to stop disruption of Wikipedia, but can you think of a similar incident where an ex-arb and senior community member made a number of unfounded aspersions against a current ACE candidate that included among other things that they had previously used a claim of ill-health to avoid a ban, and tried to use a statement that they had cooperated with a journalist as a demonstration that they took a lackadaisical approach to WP:OUTING? Although a desire to minimize drama is a good idea, I don't agree with the notion that the person objecting to offensive and baseless claims is the person creating the drama, rather than the person asking "Why do you still beat your wife?" (And WTT: you don't need to worry about me, I'm quite fine, and shall continue to be and shall continue to contribute to Wikipedia win-or-lose. Questioning your judgement doesn't equate to some sort of mental health crisis.) Kevin Gorman (talk) 11:00, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

I'm glad to hear you're fine, sincerely. I don't want to continue arguing, it's something that I hate doing on Wikipedia or off. I tend to de-escalations, rather than drama. I wrote up my answers to your statements last night - as I feel you've made a number of inaccurate statements yourself, but am currently refraining from posting them. I'd be happy to share them with you. Do you still have access to emails sent around February 2014? Have you checked to make sure your statements are right? With respect to avoiding a ban through claiming ill-health - no, you never did that. My statement was incorrect - I was thinking of a different user, a completely different situation. I struck my statement the moment that you pointed this out to me,[4], confirmed you were right then apologised.[5] I was wrong there and I'm not afraid to say so.
As for outing - you appear to have missed the entire point of this thread. You outed an individual on your question page by linking an account to photographs of another individual. I highlighted the issue to you, you removed it. I oversighted the edits in question. Had you behaved differently when the issue was highlighted, you would currently be blocked. As it was, I thought a message would be sufficient, but got myself tangled up in raising another issue (incorrectly). The OUTING issue remains, and I would appreciate you acknowledging that it was outing, it was unintentional and you will be more careful in future. If you'd like to chat further on this issue, please do let me know and either I can email you or vice versa, but I believe I've revealed enough that you can understand the issue. Worm^TT(talk) 12:40, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

I was under the impression that my removal of the link as my next edit coupled with our reciprocal editsums made it obvious that I agreed it was unintentional outing - if it wasn't obvious to you, I certainly agree that it was. Generally by convention (I wish I could point to a policy, but can't,) most situations involving rapidly corrected unintentional outing that I've seen (and there are quite a few) end up with one person pointing it out to the offender, and the offender quickly remove the offending content.

As outing itself acknowledges, it's undesirable to acknowledge the truth or falsity of the information involved, and me commenting it on it much more significantly than I did by rapid removal of the content and my editsum coupled with the nature of the information removed would've acknowledged the nature of the information posted, which is an undesirable outcome - and could've easily been another violation of WP:OUTING. Many cases of unintentional outings of the real names of pseudonymous editors and the like end up just involving the pseudonymous editor changing the post that contains the editor's real name, the person who made the post realizing what they did, it headed off to revdel or oversight, and not much more happening. The reason I made the particular error I did in this situation has to do with a significant number of events at Wikiconf USA 2014/2015 - you can find more detail posted offsite, but because of an absence of an obvious green/yellow/red dot system for photos as the Ada Initiative adopted, a good number of Wikimedians found their pictures posted along with their real names on Commons, and found their real names undesirably posted alongside their real photos. Additionally, many Wikimedians who have ever attended any wiki-related event wind up with galleries of their photos on Commons, whether they realize it or not (and the user in question has attended multiple Wikimanias as well as other wiki-related events, so it's a bit remarkable Commons doesn't appear to have an image of him.) The events I've attended have had few members in attendance, yet several dozen photos of myself have ended up on commons (although ironically mostly bad ones, given the multi-day and low-sleep nature of the events, since many of the better photographs that came out of me were not posted by the choice of the photogs who were worried that they would be used in MRM style harrassment.) Since Wikiconf USA 2015 just recently happened, I've been dealing with a large number of issues related to galleries posted on Commons by people who would've preferred for their anonymity to be preserved, and when faced with what seemed like a fairly improbable claim (that a very prolific editor and attendee of many wiki-related events did not have a single confirmation of their gender or a photo of them up anywhere on Wiki,) did a pretty logical seeming thing to do, and looked for a gallery on commons to confirm or deny the claim. I made a rather silly mistake by not confirming the two were one and the same, particularly since I actually recognize the person whose gallery I did post from my past work in his field. If the person I had incidentally violated the letter of outing against had posted asking about it, I would've answered him in far more detail - short of that WP:OUTING discourages discussion of incidental transgressions unless they are initiated by the person who was transgressed against.

Reciprocally: would you mind acknowledging that stating that I cooperated with a journalist is not the same as saying I out people to the newsmedia? Although I did collaborate with the journalist in question, his investigation built up a staff chart of the organization in question far faster than I would've been able to myself, even if I had tried quite hard to do so - he's simply better at his job than I am. And even though you struck it, the mistake you made in claiming that I would've been banned if I had not hidden behind my health was caused by much the same thing as my error - the difference being that mine involved photographical confusion involving two people with the same name (a situation also explicitly acknowledged in WP:OUTING, though the filenames and my previous familiarity meant I should have instantly caught it myself,) and was removed within minutes of being posted with an editsum that it was a rather silly mistake for me to have made and then oversighted, while you simply noted "I have stuck this specific comment," which without further comment doesn't say much (and is in fact easily confused between "I'm correcting a mistake I made by conflating two users'" and "I'm simply striking a comment in the hopes it doesn't generate that much additional drama." I'd suggest that accusing an ACE candidate who has had significant health issues of hiding behind their health issues to avoid a ban because you conflated them with another user and letting the original accusation stand in place (around voting, no less) for 24 hours before finally striking it without further comment for another two hours beyond that is quite a bit more harrassy, then a minutes long photographical error, that minimally victimized either subject. (Finally striking it out that is, before replacing it with a sorry-not-sorry accusing me of further wrong doing that apparently also drew from arbcom-private emails, since neither the first nor second motion (which was opened rather out of process) about the situation involve any significant discussion of desysopping me other than people (including people not very fond of me) saying it wasn't justified, and me personally saying that if I did it again, I'd request my own desysop.) So, short of inappropriately drawing it out from nearly four year old emails between arbs, I'm not sure why your apology for your first mistake was coupled with the statement "That said, there was consideration of a desysop (not a ban) in February 2014, wilful misapplication of Arbcom remedies is something that the committee gets very upset about and if you'd doubled down I have no doubt it would have been proposed. " Kevin Gorman (talk) 13:47, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for that acknowledgement Kevin, I'll not be pursuing yesterday's outing further. Also if you are indeed working on unwanted photo galleries of Wikipedians on Commons, I can do nothing but thank you for that - it's something I feel strongly about and I really appreciate anyone who's willing to put that effort in. I do, further, appreciate the tone you're taking. I will, of course, acknowledge that I don't know the extent you co-operated with the journalist, nor do I know where he got his information from - but that information was on Wikipedia at the point that the article was written, and it was put there by you. My thought process went "Kevin posted this personal information on Wikipedia. Kevin co-operation with a journalist. The journalist posted personal information in the press. Kevin brings up the co-operation in a conversation about OUTING" - the implication that you passed the information to the journalist was not a big leap. My mind also drew parallels to another recent case where a wikipedian had collaborated with journalists with significant repercussions. That said, it was an additional step - and I thank you for clarifying that you did not do so.
Now, if you'll indulge me - you've tried to discredit my opinion twice on the events of February 2014. The first time you stated "Moreover, you weren't even an arbitrator when I was before arbcom (I just doublechecked,)"[6] - despite the fact that I was on the committee. The second time, you've stated that additional information was sent to the -b list. During my entire period on Arbcom, I was unsubscribed from the -b list on two occassions. Firstly, during the Kiefer.Wolfowitz / Ironholds case - I specifically requested that the discussions were held elsewhere, as did another involved arbitrator. I was reinstated at the end of that case. (The total dates were 14 July 2013 - 15 August 2013) The second time was when I left the committee (on 7 January 2015). I retain both "you have been unsubscribed" emails. As such, I refuse to believe there was a "full explanation" sent to the -b list, which I somehow missed.
You made a brief statement to the committee on 10 February. It was lost in moderation, but as a list moderator, I found it and forwarded to the committee on 12 February. That email was effectively a 500 word "holding message" that a full statement would be forthcoming, but stating your actions were made in good faith, but that 2 arbitrators knew more. I was fully aware of this case, but did not get involved on the Arbcom list. I sent a total of three emails in the thread, the contents of which I'm happy to disclose privately to anyone interested. None were commenting on your behaviour.
You also sent me a direct email explaining the situation in more detail on 12 February. I responded on 14 February, explaining that I felt your actions were inappropriate and echoing another arbitrator who had criticised your behaviour on that main list. When faced with a high stress situation (legitimate concern for another individual), you seemingly escalated a grudge on Wikipedia, singling out a different individual who you believed would cause more harm and ignoring the possibility that he could be hurt. You then incorrectly used an Arbcom remedy to enforce your point of view, all within 1 month of gaining adminship. Re-iterating, I was aware of the case, I followed the case, I did not comment on the case. A desysop was considered, but the decision was to strongly admonish.
I'd really appreciate it if you could tell me where I've got the wrong end of the stick on this one, as it's that incident that left me with the impression that you will leap to action based on personal disagreements, rather than looking at the facts presented. Worm^TT(talk) 15:59, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

Zpeopleheart

Hey, I'm not really sure what to do, and I waa hoping you could advise me. It's not fun for anyone to have to deal with this, but it's getting old. And I know you don't support the topic ban for WordSeventeen since you can just block him, etc. But Zpeopleheart is still being rather disruptive and uncivil, still missciting WP:UNDUE and calling edits improper, and refusing to discuss a ything I know the undue is wrong, and I see respective music video links on single pages, but I've never checked the properness of that. You can see his uncivil dif comments here: [7] Thanks — Preceding unsigned comment added by SanctuaryX (talk • contribs) 15:40, 25 November 2015 (UTC)