User talk:SlimVirgin

File:SV age 3.jpg

Like Wikitumnus [1] and Crum375, [2] I confirm that I waive my right to privacy regarding the March 2008 checkuser of our accounts, in order that the ArbCom can get to the bottom of the complaints against User:Lar, who performed the check — either in public or by circulating evidence among the parties. None of the evidence has been seen by the parties to the case, despite numerous requests from Wikitumnus and me going back weeks, and it has meant we've been unable to address it. The result is that the evidence remains unexamined by the only people in a position to rebut it.

By waiving our right to privacy — in the interests of which the ArbCom claims the evidence may not be circulated among the parties — we hope to offer rebuttal as appropriate. The dispute-resolution process must be seen to be fair or there's no point in having one.

A secret tribunal where evidence is viewed exclusively by a self-selected handful of people on the ArbCom mailing list — many or all of them friends of User:Lar — where the evidence may not be seen by the parties, and where the parties may be accused in public but may not defend themselves in public, flies in the face of the most basic principles of procedural fairness. It is unacceptable that the English Wikipedia has an arbitration committee that doesn't understand, or is willing to ignore, the fundamental building blocks of all English-speaking and European legal systems.

Audi alteram partem! SlimVirgin ^talk|edits 02:39, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

Poetlister

I've posted an account of the effect this person — now at last confirmed to be one older man rather than a dozen young women — has had on my life, and how and why he started the "SlimVirgin is evil" meme on Wikipedia Review. Please see User:SlimVirgin/Poetgate; I wrote it in response to e-mails from people wanting to know the background. Posted with sincere thanks to the people who managed to track him down. SlimVirgin ^talk|edits 18:40, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

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Your post

Regarding your recent post on your user page:

I don't have a chosen side in this matter because someone will be hurt no matter what decision is reached. However, in view of some very serious allegations now being rumoured amongst certain editors it is imperative that this case does not close until all aspects have been addressed, no matter how reluctant the Arbs are to confront what is placed in front of them, for their own reasons. While it would be painful to some some for such matters to be in in the pubic domain - the project cannot command, deserve and expect respect and trust if these matters are not addressed. At present I have seen no evidence of these matters being addressed, privately or publicly - I expect to see it. The problem needs to be solved with the swatting of a couple of troublesome hornets, before the whole nest erupts. Some people, they know who they are, need to resign their positions and go quietly on the premise of least said soonest mended. The Arbs should be encouraging them in this action. There has been no honour in this case, the community now needs to see some. Giano (talk) 12:10, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

Express Support

Just read your epistle on the Poetlister scandal. Truly shocking and almost unbelievable. I am so delighted that you have managed to keep it together through all the horrors, and hope that the Wiki admin quickly deals with any issues that are residual. It is an amazing story. Please know that you are supported by me and others here who have worked with you and know you to be a highly intelligent and fair admin. Thanks for being you. Tundrabuggy (talk) 19:57, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

Why this should matter to everyone

I read the Poetlister essay as well as the material posted by ArbCom and have to say, I find it pretty ironic that in ArbCom and the checkuser's so-called campaign against harassment, they hold a person, such as yourself, who has clearly been the victim of harassment, to a higher standard than those accused of harassment (then again, I think it is ironic that they seem to hold editors to a higher standard of behavior than they do members of ArbCom and people with checkuser privileges ... that increasing power should b accompanied by a corresponding increase in accountability seems like a pretty obvious principle to me). I have known you to be devoted to our core content policies, and a careful editor. I think you are also now setting a standard for honesty and transparency that humbles most, and shames some, members of ArbCom.

I think your case - meaning your double-victimization - raises two crucial issues. The first is, do we consider valued editors replaceable? yes, Wikipedia is the encyclopedia that anyone can edit. But does "anyone" mean that we shouldn't care if you were to leave or be forced out of the project? I don't think so. I do not think we have yet to find someone to replace JHK, for example. Our best editors, the ones who understand the relationship between policy and quality encyclopedia articles, the ones who regardless of their credentials or profession can recognize and value real research by others and are willing to put the time into doing some real research of their own, are too often treated as replaceable. I am not devaluing the important work done by thousands of editors who fix links and revert vandalism; I admire what they do and generally do not consider them replaceable either. But there are other editors who are disruptive, bullies, or trolls, who come here to push a narrow point of view ... there was a time when the Wikicommunity generally did a good job of telling the difference between trolls and serious encyclopedia-researchers. Over the past few years though I have seen too many people who, I am sure with good intent, defend bullies and trolls while really good editors, especially ones who bring to Wikipedia bodies of knowledge and experience that are underrepresented in the community, are either wikilawyered or bullied into leaving or just worn out and left to evanesce away. I suspect that this is because our numbers are growing so fast that too many new, earnest, and well-intentioned editors just lack the experience; lacking experience they turn to policy and very narrow readings of policy. It is easy to recognize a vandal, or behavior that violates WP:CIV. It takes a lot of experience to be able to tell the difference between a valuable contributor and a troll, between a JHK and an HJ, for example, and as our community grows at a faster and faster rate, so grow the numbers of people who really want to help but just don't have enough experience. It doesn't help when some people promote edit counts as a mark of experience. Yes, edit counts are easy to tabulate and make for easy comparisons; I am talking about differences that are harder to recognize, that are not quantifiable, that require the kind of judgment that comes with experience. If we cannot tell the difference between an editor worth fighting to keep versus those who, despite an impressive edit count and the fact that they have never succumbed to the temptation to blank a page and write "EVAN ROCKS" or some other juvenilia, Wikipedia will stagnate at the level of quality achieved by so many other American enterprises: so damn big that of course there is a lot to admire and appreciate, yet, as it gets bigger and bigger, nevertheless still always somehow less than the sum of its parts. Yes, anyone can edit. But some people are not replaceable. You are not.

I think your issue also raises the case of how we police ourselves. A long time ago wikipedia had sysops with powers required for regular and necessary maintenance. Obviously we want someone fairly reliable to be given these powers, but being a sysop was no prize, it did not mean that you were a better editor than others. Sysops were servants of the community. As far as i am concerned they still are. Frankly, I think we may be better off with a system where any active editor who has been around a couple of years has to be an admin for a fixed period of time, and just make it rotate, like the community service it ought to be. Anyway, then we had to create ArbCom, and my recollection is that we did it with much hesitation because we did not want to create a hierarchy at Wikipedia. But it was obvious that we needed a committee that, as its own page suggests, can be the last resort for mediating disputes. That is a relatively narrow mission and while it requires a lot of work - more work than I think most people appreciate, more work than we could ever make a form of rotating community service, and work I am profoundly grateful they do - it is still a narrow enough mission that the committee can operate with transparency and little fear of abuse. But now that Wikipedia has become internationally prominent, we face another problem beside disputes among users. We face problems that could end up involving the legal system. I mean the real powers, institutions that can put a person in jail or impose a fine or financial settlement. To protect ourselves from people who might abuse Wikipedia in a way that makes one or more editors, or the project, vulnerable to legal action requires giving more powers to someone, powers that cannot be used with the same kind of transparency. I can handle that. I don't think we have a choice. But I do not think we have handled these growing needs well. I am concerned about mission-creep - about a committee meant to be the mediator of conflicts concerning the editing of articles of last resort being given more and more obligations and powers when it may be better to have a much stricter and clearer separation of powers. The mission of any such committee has to be very clearly spelled out, including the limits of its jurisdiction or concern. And we need a bigger and ongoing conversation about transparency and accountability. Given the freedom of anyone to make any edit at any time, and the fact that we actually encourage conflicts among editors acting in good faith, because the clash of different views is supposed to lead not to a lowest common denominator but to something greater, the only real guarantee of Wikipedia's integrity is its almost absolute transparency. The only limits to Wikipedia's transparency are (1) the anonymity of editors and (2) those that are forced on us by governments, in most cases probably for the better, although in some cases perhaps for the worse, but there is nothing to do about that. But it seems to be that transparency itself is a core value here. I am not denying that there are cases where transparency may have to be restricted, only that we should only do this when we have exhausted all other possible actions, and do so with heavy hearts. But it seems to me that there are some people at Wikipedia - people who may not have violated any policy (or may have trampled on many) who do not appreciate transparency, who do not like it, who hide behind anything excuse to avoid or deny transparency. One way to recognize such people is they will act as if transparency is an all-or-nothing deal, that some things can be handled in the full view of the public and anything else must be done in the strictest confidence, as if we could have public trials and the Star Chamber, with nothing in between - a position I consider false on its face. Another way to recognize such people is that they will suggest to anyone who questions them that the needs for privacy are too complicated to explain. That is a massive act of bad faith, and dangerous because it combines a lack of transparency with a lack of accountability, when if anything the rule should be, the more of one, the less of the other. Slim Virgin, Wikipedia did little to help you when you were outed and harassed and since then has held you to a higher level of accountability than checkusers, or so it seems. This is really messed up. I know many people are shocked by some of your accusations and cannot believe them; many people want to extend the good faith and trust you have in the past been denied, to those whom you accuse. I've already made it plain that all things being equal I assume anything you say is true, but let's for a moment give the benefit of the doubt to those who, unlike me, do not know who to trust, what to think. What is clear to me is that the less transparency with which ArbCom acts, the larger and more toxic a cloud of suspicion will hand over this community. What you have done is to take the brave step of being as transparent as you can and inviting transparency. I assume you do this because you believe in transparency as a principle, that it works so often at Wikipedia that we should trust it, that the more transparency, the greater a chance of a true resolution of this conflict. I consider this a test, a challenge to others. Who else has this faith in transparency? Slrubenstein | Talk 21:44, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

RFAr Further Sanctions

Regrettably, I've asked arbcom to consider adding sanctions to the C68-FM-SV case. On a personal note, you have done wonderful, wonderful things for wikipedia, and I truly, sincerely wish you well. --Alecmconroy (talk) 22:27, 27 October 2008 (UTC)