User:ThatPeskyCommoner/Case History

The reason this case upset me so badly was that it violated some fundamental principles, and the community (or, to be more accurate, many of those who commented) apparently condoned the gross violation of those principles.

The fundamental principle

Justice

The subsidiary principles

Thou shalt not bear false witness
Thou shalt not take false witness at face value and pass judgment

For anyone to presume to pass judgment, either aloud, or in a position of authority, or even within their own heads, they have an inescapable, fundamental, and moral duty to familiarise themselves with every scrap of evidence, and not pass judgment based on edited highlights cherry-picked to give apparent support to the "prosecution's version of events".

To do any less is a gross violation of the fundamental principle of justice. It illustrates a (possibly transient) lack of honour, integrity, and attention to important details.

The Wikipedia Principles

Assume good faith.

I am the only person who can know my own motivation and intent.
Ascribing bad motives and ill-intent to another person violates WP:AGF

WP:CIVIL

To make bad-faith and false accusations regarding an editor's motives and intents at AN/I is uncivil in the extreme.
To accuse another editor of incivility as a result of ascribing evil motives to them is also uncivil in the extreme.

WP:CIR. Really. WP:DGAF just isn't good enough.
Don't be either of the words describing genitalia!

Nuff said.

I leave it entirely up to the reader to decide, after reading every scrap of evidence including reviewing all the diffs, to decide which of the various people involved were in violation of which of all these principles (and yes, you can, at your discretion, include the C-word one. Just don't make your views public!).

Background

The "Pesky is a problem" accusation started with RfA. No, not "Steven Zhang's RfA" - with RfA itself. ("RfA is a horrible and broken process." Jimbo.)

The RfAReform 2011 Task Force started in late March 2011. I was there, right from the beginning, when the idea of the task force was first mooted, and when a few people decided that RfA Talk was an impossible place to have a sensible discussion among people who were solution-focussed and could work collegiately. (29 March 2011) "Definitely no incivility or PA: yippee!! (And how about an immediate indef block for incivility for anyone violating the rule …… not that I'm over-reactive, or anything …..) Seriously, how about a one-month loss of voter's rights for first offence, two months for second offence, four months for third offence, eight for fourth, and so on?"

Note: as at this date Steven Zhang hadn't "come back" to WP after (effectively) quite a long break; and I had only recently re-started after an even longer break. There had been no overlap in our editing, and neither of us was aware of the other one's existence. See: (Note: SZ had 6 edits in January 2011, none in Feb, none in March). See the same chart for me: - I, too, had 6 edits in January. On 31st January, to be accurate. And the first few were instantly deleted - I'd never heard (obviously) of the "Verifiability, not truth" thing. diff.

What I care about is RfA. Not Steven Zhang. diff

Look at what actually happened there. diff

This was consistently misrepresented. And even in that RfA there were bad-faith suggestions of IRC-Cabalism.

Cardamon in BD's RfC/U on 12th November here brought up the strawman-argument-"proposal" of: "Some people should accept that Badger Drink did indeed have the right to cast this oppose !vote at the Steve Zhang rfa, and move on." The RfC/U was not about an RfA, or even about comments at that RfA. It was about years of breaches of something which was actually made quite clear in the civility policy. (Direct rudeness: belittling a fellow editor, including the use of judgmental edit summaries.)

Yes, Cardamon made some good points - very good points - but it was a strawman argument, he didn't come up with any solutions, either for BD, or for dealing with any other editor who has trouble controlling their anger and frustration, at least to the extent of not putting it into words preserved for immortality in edit summaries.

See the list of supporters of that argument, and compare with the list of people antagonistic to me at AN/I when BD made his complaint. Note undermining comments like "this and the un-actioned ANI report that followed it was imo the reason for the RFC user being created" by Off2riorob. Misleading people - all over this "proposal" - was done in many ways. For example, the reason the initial AN/I was "unactioned" is that it was MOVED to the RfC. The initial AN/I actually had a fair amount of support.

Case

Allegation

BD started his AN/I complaint about me with: "After my opposition to the RfA a friend of his, Pesky has been increasingly living up to his name - calling for a civility block for statements he earlier "appreciated". When AN/I rightfully told him what to do with his concerns, he filed an RfC - the fact that it quickly attracted a bunch of "support" from a lot of participants in the aforementioned RfA, despite the opening statement being woefully malformed, certainly not reeking of off-wiki canvassing. Evidently unsatisfied with my sole contribution to that particular circus, he has taken up the habit of leaving pesky (or should I say "badgering"?) constant "friendly reminders" on my talk page, despite being told in no uncertain terms that his input was not welcome. Considering his seeming inability to get the hint, I was unfortunately backed into a corner, and felt the need to make my uncertain terms even less uncertain (trigger warning: Cussword). Pesky parrots the language of civility, but his actions are transparently baiting, and while "don't take the bait" may sound like sound advice, the unfortunate fact of the matter is that some of us are not in this for smug self-satisfaction at "being the better person", and would rather not feel demeaned by "playing along" with the game. I would appreciate it if a third party could step in and let Pesky know that he's certainly living up to his name. Surely he has better things to do than obsessively check my contribution history for terrible, inexcusable edits like this" (diff given for "told in no uncertain terms")

Note the Off-Wiki(IRC)-Cabalism accusation again. I would think that the simple explanation of a large number of people having seen the original AN/I thread, and that RfC's are clearly advertised, would adequately explain the turnout at the RfC/U. And if anyone (ArbCom?) wanted to check IRC logs for the period, they would with a 99.9% certainty refute the allegation of off-wiki canvassing. (I'm leaving the 0.1% of uncertainty to cover the possibility that someone else discussed it, without my having seen that.)

This false history, of "supporting a friend at RfA" allegedly providing a hidden-agenda motive for attack and hounding (as opposed to simply wanting to address a civility problem), and further gross misrepresentations of fact, were what skewed the entire AN/I thread and created such an outburst of ill-feeling against me.

Timeline truths, with diffs.

7th November Mandatory notification of AN/I on BD's talk

The original AN/I, closed as no consensus as the problem was being moved to RfC/U (made clear in Fluffernutter's closing)

Important note: that AN/I thread was not even about BD's vote, or his wording of his vote, at the RfA, and it's quite clear that even in mentioning the parts which I was unhappy with at AN/I, it wasn't the vote, it was the subsequent incivility of describing of other people's input as "a stream of histrionic bullshit" and other remarks made after the original vote. If people had actually been bothered to read properly, or had understood what they read instead of making wrong assumptions about it based on their wholly incorrect assumptions as to my motives, they would have quite clearly seen that this was the case.

"and a "studied pattern" belongs at WP:RFC/U :-) (talk→ BWilkins ←track) 12:12, 8 November 2011 (UTC) " - that's where I was TOLD to move it to RfC/U

cf. the allegation version: When AN/I rightfully told him what to do with his concerns, he filed an RfC

8th November 2nd Mandatory notification; about the move to RfC/U

BD's response to the RfC/U : "I have many more fascinating activities to pursue than further legitimizing the vapid, frivolous, and/or completely bogus concerns of two-faced individuals who are just upset that I didn't support their pet RfA candidate and are seeking petty retribution."

Note: concerns about violations of the civility policy categorised as being "vapid, frivolous, and/or completely bogus", and completely wrong assumption of motives based on a wholly imaginary paradigm.

16th November (over a week later) WTT posts to BD's talk about the RfC/U

THEN (and only then) does BD remove WTT's post with es of "remove sanctimonious needling", at the same time removing the mandatory notifications, which he had acted on and which were past their sell-by date. It should be clear to anyone with a reasonable degree of intelligence that mandatory notifications are unlikely to be labelled "sanctimonious needling", and at that point those were the only things I had ever posted.

cf. the allegation version: he has taken up the habit of leaving pesky (or should I say "badgering"?) constant "friendly reminders" on my talk page.

Note: I strongly suspect that BD was relying on editor-apathy for people not actually to look at the diffs provided, just noticing that words had been "linked" to something. Anything. Mandatory notifications are not "friendly reminders", and apathy-reliant diffs should not have been used to suggest that those were anything other than mandatory notifications. One post to BD, after that, is not a habit, nor is it pesky, nor badgering, nor constant. Judging by the pre-Defence-opening-speech pile-on, that tactic seemed to have worked. Nobody noticed – or, at the very worst, those who noticed deliberately failed to point out – the fact that the diffs didn't support the allegation.

Also cf. despite being told in no uncertain terms that his input was not welcome - He had never told me anything of the kind, either on his own talk page, or on mine, and the edit summary to which he linked was in response to WTT's post, and quite clearly didn't refer to the mandatory notifications. (Comment: any editor who actually viewed mandatory notifications as "sanctimonious needling" would clearly have a severe attitude problem.)

28th November, Kudpung on the RfC/U on BD: "A careful watch over his future ES and comments won't do any harm, and if he steps out of line again he shouldn't be surprised if an admin blocks him immediately with the rationale that this RfC and its preceding AN/I have been sufficient warning."

4th December having done as suggested at the RfC/U and checked on BD's recent edit summaries (no, I wasn't watching constantly, just checked 6 days later) Instead of warning and escalation, I did the low-key thing and dropped a note, with the intention of helping him not to drop himself in it, bearing in mind that on the RfC/U the next step people proposed was escalation of sanctions. Note: this is *exactly* the approach recommended by Jehochman on my talk page, and recommended by WP:CIVIL.

Note: my approach was in the exact format recommended to me both as a teacher and as a teacher-of-teachers:

You deal with the person where they're at.
You praise what was done well, particularly if it's a marked improvement on the initial problem.
You pick up where the problem recurred; explain why it was a problem, and suggest a better approach.
You return to what had been done well, praise it again, and encourage continued improvement.

12 hours later BD does this: "fuck the hell off, you horrifyingly creepy obsessed individual" and just under an hour and a half later posts his gross misrepresentation of the facts and false accusation at AN/I : "Borderline-obsessive hounding; continued baiting" This was clearly a combination of vindictive retaliation and pre-emptive strike for anyone else following the actual recommendations of his RfC/U (escalating blocks, bans, ArbCom).

Parallel: "this is the bitch who grassed me up for throwing rocks through windows, and I hate her snobby accent, so I'm afraid I had no option but to throw a brick through her window. She drove me to it; I did it in self-defence. Make her go away."

Pile on

The pile-on began before any "evidence from the Defendant" had even appeared, with comments like these:

It actually perfectly demonstrates the difference between "surface civility" and "actual civility", Badger having none of the former and Pesky having none of the latter. I agree with Badger Drink that a two-way interaction ban is the best way of solving the problem. (Mkativerata).
Pesky's incivility is obvious. She doesn't use cuss-words. But this kind of condescension, having run Badger through the wringer at ANI and an RfC, is rank incivility. It is actually creepy.. (Mkativerata) (note: attempting to deal with long-term incivility is now classified as "running someone through the wringer"),
Agreed William M. Connolley (with an edit summary of "well said")
If anybody deserved a block in this affair, it was Pesky. Talkpage badgering is blockable, and despite the sugery language (or rather because of it), ~~his~~her behaviour was in fact a good deal more "incivil"[sic] than Badger's response. Plus, Badger had done the reasonable thing in bringing the matter here. (Fut.Perf. ☼)

... and after I had just pointed out the gross misrepresentation of one post being called "Borderline-obsessive hounding; continued baiting"

Wgfinley says: "Pesky needs a dose of WP:STICK here".

Note: No attempt whatsoever to verify whose version, BD's or mine, was the true one. Accusation equals guilt approach, unworthy of an admin.

So, according to these people, following the (almost) correct route of attempting to deal with incivility, and having left one FemaleSpeak politely-worded and gentle suggestion that BD should avoid backsliding, now apparently amounted to incivility deserving of a block. If Fut.Perf. had actually taken just one look at BD's talk page history, they would have seen no "talk page badgering", but two mandatory notifications and one further post. Accusation equals guilt approach, unworthy again.

Clearly, none of these people had actually checked the accuracy of the initial allegation against the readily-available history.

Very little WP:AGF going on in that lot. And aren't those all those comments significantly more uncivil than my one non-notification post which started this off?

Note: describing my post on BD's talk page as "patronising and condescending" and/ or uncivil is particularly crass when it's compared to BD's "Response" at RfC/U:

If this was Kindergarten, I'd feel there might be a small chance of the above concerns being valid. Unfortunately, this is an encyclopedia. The fact that this ridiculous RfC stems from one RfA and cherrypicking four years of User Talk doesn't exactly lend any validity to the process. Dressing one's expression up in a mixture of pompous legalese and painfully condescending schoolteacher-speak does not automatically make one "civil", any more so than putting a monkey in a suit and giving him a pipe makes him human. Likewise, just because I used the phrase "rat's shit" (trigger warning: cussword) as opposed to "rat's doo-doo", does not make the statement (which seems to have so wracked Pesky that in the span of one hour he went from "appreciating my concerns" to calling for a civility block over the exact same concerns) automatically uncivil. In fact, the extra emphasis seems to have been needed, as expressing the same point in my own attempt at pompous legalese seems to have resulted in Pesky's original confusion over just why I was opposing, whereas after the dreaded "shit-bomb", everybody seemed to be on the same page. Some people don't like cusswords or seeing people not kowtow to their boring, tedious missives. That's cool. I personally don't like patronizing Leave It To Beaver speak or seeing greengrocers' apostrophes in articlespace. There's a Rolling Stones song that comes to mind here. This is my final word on the subject, as I have many more fascinating activities to pursue than further legitimizing the vapid, frivolous, and/or completely bogus concerns of two-faced individuals who are just upset that I didn't support their pet RfA candidate and are seeking petty retribution.

Really, is that not significantly more patronising, condescending and offensive?

In the AN/I thread against me, at 00:45, 5 December 2011 Cardamon asks: "@Pesky. I notice you have a four year and 9 month gap in your early edit history, from April 20 2006 to January 31, 2011. Have you edited Wikipedia under any other account names?"

Note: I had had no encounters with Cardamon other than his involvement in the RfC/U (see above); I am still at a loss to understand the reason why Cardamon would seek to undermine / discredit me or arouse unwarranted suspicions like this.

I explained the perfectly valid reason for the editing gap as soon as I saw the question, and Ironholds (admin and staffer) publicly vouched for my identity: "There seem to be questions of socking or multiple account use here. Just to verify; I've met Pesky, and she's precisely who she said she is. I can verify the real life issues, I can verify her identity, and I can verify that she is one of the most conscientious and well-intentioned people I know, offline or online. If she says that no hounding was intended, you can take her at her word."

... After which Jehochman called for a CU on the AN/I page, and then on Sven's talk page says "What evidence do you have that Pesky isn't a sleeper troll account? I have seen what appears to be baiting behavior".

Note: An attempt to get something done about long-term incivility; two mandatory notifications and one further politely-worded request "appears to be baiting". No attempt whatsoever to verify whose version, BD's or mine, was the true one. Accusation equals guilt approach, unworthy of an admin. How on earth can anything ever be done about incivility if any attempt to address the issue is regarded as "baiting"?

And, on Jehochman's page, again after I had been publicly vouched for, Hipocrite says "I am seriously concerned that Sven Manguard is archiving sections prematurely, and massively overstepping his authority. He had earlier determined that your request for a checkuser was unfounded (I diasgree)(sic)". Note also the bad-faith accusation against Sven in Hipocrite's post: "I further note that he is obviously a returned user of some sort (cf. first edit, then immediately to the automated template adding)."

… and if anybody had really thought that any CU's were in order in this case, it should have been this one: Note: IP's first edit (71.220.199.247) so almost certainly someone socking for disruption purposes on 30th November on BD's RfC/U, which is interesting, bearing in mind that people were suggesting that I was a "sleeper troll account" and calling for a CU on ME at AN/I

And then, Jehochman posts on my talk page: " I do not like it when vulnerable individuals are picked on by a gang." I'm not sure whether he was referring to the perfectly legitimate RfC/U as an example of a vulnerable individual being picked on by a gang, or what, but it was pretty ironic for him to say that, under a new section header of "Baiting", when he had just joined in with the gang picking on (baiting?) me. Despite the circumstances, I almost smiled at the aptness of the heading; I do appreciate that it wasn't intentional.

Sven posted "Oh how fun. Jehochman, I came here to tell you to leave Pesky alone. You just accused her of harassment and then went and posted on her page right after a nasty AN/I thread. To me that's more harassment than anything Pesky did. Unless you want to wind up the subject of an AN/I thread for harassment yourself, I advise you leave all of the parties that disagreed with you alone for a while." … which Jehochman deleted with an edit summary of "bye -- we are done talking" about half an hour later.

On 5th December, the editor (Wgfinley) who had decided on the previous day that "Pesky needs a dose of WP:STICK here" closes the thread admonishing me for "incivility that could be construed as hounding", based on the initial allegation rather than a thorough investigation into all the evidence, with no consensus for admonishment, and an edit summary of "+archive, request has been resolved".

... and, after I had just been comprehensively attacked, and then publicly admonished, for identifying instances of incivility and politely asking a user to refactor their remarks in future edit summaries, Jehochman posts on my talk page: "The best way to enforce civility is to identify instances of incivility and politely ask the user to refactor their remarks".

None of the people joining in with the pile-on apparently saw anything wrong in their own behaviour, despite having been so judgmental about mine. My talk page archive illustrates.

A public and humiliating "admonishment" for attempting to deal with long-term incivility as per policy and guidelines, and leaving one good-faith, perfectly polite message on a user talk page, following two mandatory notifications, and define it as "incivility bordering on hounding"? In the face of the far more gross incivility and hounding directed at me? Come off it. Really, come off it.

Aftermath

Several people who actually had their wits about them then attempted to take this matter up with Wgfinley. (suggestion: read entire thread here.)

Note: Hipocrite, who had "disagreed" that a CU was unwarranted, and who had left repeated haranguing messages on my own talk page, accuses me of incompetence, and includes other associated snark. I did end up asking Hipocrite, quite politely, to leave my talk page, and refrained from directly quoting the phrase about grandmothers and eggs, and to stay away unless he/she was prepared to explain, and ideally apologise for, what he/she had done so far.
Note 2: prior to this event, I had had no interaction with Hipocrite other than answering his / her support of the strawman argument left on the RfC/U, so I have trouble understanding exactly what his / her beef was with me.

Wgfinley, on his talk says: "@Worm If you file an RFC and you choose to "investigate" further instead of listening to what others have to say are you really looking to remediate (sic) that user's behavior or are you looking for a public flogging to prove you're right?"

It appeared that he probably hadn't even looked at the RfC, where Kudpung had said ""A careful watch over his future ES and comments won't do any harm, and if he steps out of line again he shouldn't be surprised if an admin blocks him immediately with the rationale that this RfC and its preceding AN/I have been sufficient warning," and that was pretty much agreed by all who commented on it. The "instead of listening to what others had to say" can't be logically, rationally explained in any other way. He didn't apparently know what other people had said.

OohBunnies pointed out several times to Wgfinley that mistakes had been made, and got an WP:IDHT response. In fact, everyone who attempted to persuade Wgfinley to look at evidence, as opposed to accepting accusation as equal to guilt, got the same IDHT response.

It was not until Chzz effectively forced Wgfinley to sit up and take notice that the IDHT problem was overcome, as a result of which the unjustified admonishment was struck from the record on 11th December.

Six days after it had been handed out, during which time I very seriously considered quitting Wikipedia altogether.

I still lack the motivation which I had before this event. And I certainly lack faith.

The edit summary for striking the admonishment was " after further discussion at my talk page I have agreed this warning was too strong and am removing it."

I would have been happier – significantly happier – if it had read "unwarranted" or "an error of judgment" rather than "too strong". No admonishment was warranted - I did nothing deserving of an admonishment. If some people "feel" that a civil note left on someone's talk page is "too polite", "too gentle", or whatever, and thus say it "could be seen as patronising or condescending", that does not deserve any reprimand of any kind. To have any kind of reprimand being described as "too strong" is similar to saying that being fined for "almost speeding" was "too strong".

Many people who were aware of this case brought against me - and there were indeed many - still have absolutely no idea of what the truth was, and no idea that the admonishment was struck from the record. My record, in those people's eyes, is permanently tarnished. There is apparently no way to have one's name publicly cleared in Wikipedia.

And here are the important points:

No proper definition of civility
Attempting to address an incivility issue is defined as being incivility deserving of a block
The very people who piled-on in the attack were, in point of fact, far more uncivil than my one non-mandatory post to BD's talk page could possibly have been seen as being, but could see nothing wrong with their own behaviour
Shoddy, slapdash lack of even basic investigation, following a bad-faith false allegation of "Borderline-obsessive hounding; continued baiting" led to an "accusation equals guilt" mentality and a public and humiliating admonishment
WP:IDHT directed at several people lasted for almost a week before the admonishment was struck
Massive violations of WP:AGF from far too many people.

Final comment

In the interests of "closure", anybody who feels, reading this, that their own apology to me might be in order, my talk page would be the place to leave it :o) Sincere apologies are met with forgiveness.

Notes

At ArbCom (Civility enforcement) NYB says: "On the other hand, if the discussion were split 50:50 and someone who'd taken sides took it upon himself or herself to close the discussion and divine the result, that would be problematic (similar to the rule that one doesn't close an XfD or an RfA one has voted in)." (18:58, 14 February 2012 (UTC))