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I see this from a high-level. There's a power-struggle going on where one body is taking an action another body feels they should have control or at least inpu
by jmull 7y ago
I see this from a high-level.
There's a power-struggle going on where one body is taking an action another body feels they should have control or at least input into.
That this power-struggle occurs and especially that it happens in public is healthy, IMO.
But ArbCom should really be looking itself in the mirror right now. The fact is, under their watch Fram was free to be a huge asshole to contributors for some 15 years. ArbCom suggests that someone should have told them they needed to do something. But that seems like a very weak excuse for the senior conduct body. You are the ones who need to be setting and enforcing the rules that allow for contributions!
IMO no organization should tolerate assholes, so they got the result right but clearly did not do it the right way. I think ArbCom needs to handle these cases, at least a decade quicker than in this case.
- nsajko 7y agoBut there are indications of corruption within WMF, capriciousness of the T&S team, and no evidence against Fram was given.
- jmull 7y agoI agree T&S did not handle this the right way. My main point is ArbCom should have already handled this, perhaps a decade ago. So they are broken. If they want a healthy Wikipedia their first priority should be fixing themselves. They should understand why a toxic asshole was running free for many years under their watch and how they can prevent it from happening again. Maybe they are doing this behind the scenes, but it's not clear to me they even understand they have a problem. (BTW, no one seems to be disputing that Fram is an asshole. Maybe I missed it, but if true, then there's no question that in a community-driven site, something needs to be done about it. Some people seem to want to believe that it could be simultaneously true that Fram could be a big asshole AND be a good editor. In the context of a community-driven site, those people are wrong. Driving off potentially valuable contributors is cardinal sin.)
- nsajko 7y agoI am not that well acquainted with Fram, and the term asshole is not precise enough; but you really do need some well intentioned assholes if you want to run wiki-style projects. The problem is that wikis are free to participate to, but not everybody is well intentioned or capable of constructive and positive participation. Those people are more harmful than "assholes", and Fram used to take care of such people from what I gather. Edit: I did not down-vote you, nor would I do it if I could.
- DanBC 7y agoNo. That attitude is incompatible with Wikipedia. It's also wrong to suggest that fram was only abusive to people who shouldn't have been on wikipedia. Read the thread and buzzfeed articles linked here: even people on his side describe him as toxic.
- nsajko 7y ago> It's also wrong to suggest that fram was only abusive to people who shouldn't have been on wikipedia. Quite a claim, maybe give some evidence for that? I saw no example of such behavior. > even people on his side describe him as toxic. I am tempted to call you "toxic". Terms like "brusque", "rude", "asshole", "harasser", "toxic" are not equivalent, but you repeatedly try to assign some of those labels to Fram based on others. "Brusque, bordering on rude sometimes" is not even a bad thing for a Wikipedia user. And "like Inspector Javert at times" is not really as strong as "toxic".