Wikipedia talk:Requests for arbitration

Formatting

Resolved. Renegade comments removed. AGK 22:01, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

This section of Requests for arbitration page should probably be split and placed to sections made by individual users? Thank you.Biophys (talk) 19:21, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

I've removed the comments. If Kuban wishes to re-comment, he is welcome to do so in his own section. Thanks for drawing attention to this. AGK 22:01, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

Statement from ScienceApologist ?

The cold fusion case has been accepted without a statement from ScienceApologist. I'm not familiar with ArbComm procedures. I would welcome any comment on the possible impact of ScienceApologist's silence on this case. Pcarbonn (talk) 21:26, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

He's notified, and he's a named party. Therefore, he will be bound by the results. In fact, ArbCom is capable of issuing decrees that bind uninvolve parties, though these parties traditionally must be notified before any sanctions are applied to them. A clerk should confirm this, but I think my answer is correct. Jehochman ^Talk 21:32, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

The standard line the Committee takes on party non-attendance at Arbitration proceedings is that they are only doing themselves a disservice; the case will proceed as normal, regardless of whether S.A. contributes at any juncture or not. The Arbitrators have shown themselves to be unsympathetic towards an editor who refuses to explain his or her actions in full. I therefore suggest, Pcarbonn, that the impact of ScienceApologist's silence on this case on a procedural level is zero—the case will proceed as normal, regardless of whether a party chooses to become involved in the adjudication—but on a decision-making (and largely unofficial) level, the only result I envisage is a decision that is unsympathetic to himself alone. Only through co-operation with the Committee can Arbitration proceedings entail as little stress as possible (and, curiously enough, the same logic applies to editing Wikipedia in general). AGK 22:08, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Matthew Hoffman case

I'm adding further discussion here instead, where it's easier.

The request is to vacate the case in toto (ie, completely). That is a lot more than just "one or two findings could be improved" -- in fact cases are always intended to be pragmatic to an extent and given additional time could always be refined or improved. A request to vacate a case suggests that the case was fundamentally at heart, so wrong as to not stand up. For reasons I've given, I don't feel the Matthew Hoffman case comes anywhere close to that. The acceptance, the main findings, and the final decision, were all procedurally appropriate.

Opening and basis of the case

The opening statement says clearly that the concern leading to the case was:

"A review of admin actions in the matter of the indefinite blocking of User:MatthewHoffman; the indef block has been lifted, but the matter is still contested after serious discussion, and there are wider issues, such as the biting of newcomers of unpopular views..."

"I believe it is important to know to what extent such decisions have become endemic, as a workaround of the gathering of hard evidence confirming sockpuppetry..."

"In particular I'm calling for Vanished user to lose his sysop powers. He admits no fault here..."

"It seems plain to me that his actions were in fact affected by the opinions being expressed by User:MatthewHoffman; his comments placed on User talk:MatthewHoffman are contested for accuracy by other admins."

This is a reasonable basis to open a case, and was properly accepted under usual procedures which operated without hitch. A request to open a case should include an indication of the matter, and enough grounds to see why it may need RFAR, and cases may be more readily accepted when they appear to relate to a division between administrators, apparently credible concerns over admin access misuse, or other serious matters that need that kind of review.

I cannot easily accept a view that somehow the acceptance was flawed, mainly because there's actually no evidence that acceptance was procedurally incorrect. If the above concern was posted on a different case today, and accepted the same way, I would not express a concern my colleagues had acted badly wrong in accepting it (such that their decision to do so should be demolished and the case abandoned for wrong acceptance).

Administrative actions that were considered in the case

When a case opens, it is often opened (with or without saying so) to look at the conduct of all involved, any evidence of their behaviors, and so on. The admin conduct of Vanished user was one of those, and that admin conduct was very seriously a problem.

As a new Arbitrator I noted that Vanished user wanted the Committee to reshape a draft decision (#9) that he had complaints about. I reviewed his admin actions carefully, as someone with absolutely zero prior involvement, discarded one cited issue as "too uncertain and too old" (April 2008), and gave fully details on the others. Redrafted finding #9.1 was the result, which was far more specific.

Vanished user's administrative actions

Example selected by Shoemaker's holiday - review

To take the very block he picks out himself, that of Nov 30 2008, the finding of fact #9.1 states (as he rightly quotes) "semi-protected Homeopathy a second time, citing IP "vandalism". A review of IP activity from Nov 27 - 30 2007 shows the edits related to POV differences and minor edits, not vandalism (WP:VAND refers)". To disprove this, though, diffs are cited from Nov 25, close to a week (5 days) before the protection was applied, to show that edits then were vandalism. The finding #9.1 is then also (wrongly) quoted later as saying there was "no vandalism" (in fact it says there was no IP vandalism in the period Nov 27-30 prior to protection on Nov 30 which justified that protection per WP:VAND). The admin action was very much in breach of WP:PROTECT#Semi-protection, which anticipates semi-protection for current and reasonably heavy IP vandalism, not for IP vandalism almost a week prior when the only current IP activity is copyediting and opposing editors' views. A request for semi-protection at WP:RFPP would have almost overwhelmingly been declined on Nov 30, for that reason. (See eg [1][2][3][4] and note "{{RFPP|nea}}" == "not enough recent activity"). Vanished user had been a heavy editor on that article at the time he used admin tools to apply protection himself. The effect of that protection which 1/ was said to deal with vandalism though none was present and 2/ was applied to an article he was a highly active editor on himself, was 3/ it removed opposing and copyediting voices. That was one incident alone. Other actions which took place included direct blocking of editors with whom he had been in a revert war or other content dispute, reverting to a preferred version then protecting against opposing user edits, and protecting an article he himself was editing, to exclude opposing editors described as "POV pushers".

(cont.) These other examples, all in the same period of October - November 2007, are then ignored with the note that "We could review the others". They were indeed reviewed -- and the view was they all were improper, or had the actual effect of wrongly excluding users, often those in a content dispute. There was easily enough evidence to conclude admin access was heavily misused by Vanished user, and easily enough to justify a case.

That some of those matters were known before the case opened but not cited in the case request, or others arose after the case opened or in response to Vanished user's contentions (which led to a review of his admin actions to check if the objection was valid) is just not relevant. Many RFAR cases open to examine wide ranging behavior, of which some is raised at the time of opening, and other is raised at ANI beforehand, or raised at RFAR after. Arbitration considers all evidence, we aren't going to ignore highly relevant evidence just because they weren't named in the opening statement.

Even if both findings about the Matthew Hoffman block (#3 and #4) were completely in error, then at most those two points would be affected. The opening of the case, the seriousness of misuse of admin access, and the final decision would frankly be almost identical, and the case would still very easily stand.

Summary

For this reason, the view that the entire case should be vacated doesn't work for me. There was clear evidence of serious repeated and major misuse of administrator access. Users in a content dispute were either targeted, or bore the brunt of this by being blocked or prevented from editing. I've just now re-reviewed the evidence and it still says the same conclusion on Vanished user's use of admin access. So I do not consider that a finding that the case was so fundamentally flawed as to need vacating is anywhere like "proven". It may be that some individual findings could be revisited, but that's true of many decisions, and we aren't a court or legal-wonk forum, I've yet to see a single piece of evidence to suggest that the case itself needs vacating.

As I have posted at RFAR:

"It is obvious and clear that the case process, handling, and so on, was extremely upsetting to Shoemaker's Holiday, some of which I agree with him on, some of which I think he's leaning on too much and isn't merited. Most of the case is history, and that's good. Shoemaker's Holiday has gotten past the issues mostly and that's good. But vacating the case would be asking for agreement the case was not valid, and should never have been heard, and I can't agree on that. I can only agree it should have been heard better in terms of handling than it was - a state of affairs for which numerous statements of apology have been sought and given and I'm at a loss to see what yet another can do. The case (and its final decision) were viable; the "how it got there" which is the issue, is secondary and has been discussed at length. The notion of "I need this case vacated for my own personal peace of mind" doesn't work for me since arbitration cases exist to serve the project, and there was a clearly reasonable and well evidenced project need for it (since bad adminship is a serious concern), even if this could have been processed, documented and followed up a lot better than it was." - RFAR

FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 12:51, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

FT2, first off, you ignore the unambiguously incorrect Finding of Fact #4, which claims I was in a content dispute with Hoffman, citing that I edited the page 7 months previously, showing I had views on the subject. WP:BLOCK makes a firm distinction between blocking because of content disputes (forbidden) and being aware of potential conflicts of interest (which are left to the administrator's judgement).

Secondly, Finding of fact #4 sasys cool down blocks are against policy. This is untrue, per WP:BLOCK (emphasis original)

Blocks intended solely to "cool down" an angry user should not be used, as they often have the opposite effect. However, an angry user who is also being disruptive can be blocked to prevent further disruption.

Hence Finding of Fact #4 - a key finding in the case - is completely and totally wrong. It was, of course, an error of judgement to block Matthew Hoffman, but the Arbcom's attempts to make it a policy violation are an error and a misapplication of policy.

Secondly, Wikipedia:Protection_policy does not anywhere give a three-day timescale, and, in a case where the Arbcom misread a seven-m,onth-gap as a content dispute, I hardly think that misjudging the likelihood of further IP vandalism after 5 days is particularly relevant, or a moral failing. Also, every single thing cited in the case was at least two months old at the time it was cited, and many were older. There was no pressing need for immediate consideration of my actions by the arbcom, and had it not been initiated by an arbitrator, a two-month-old bad block, which had been fully lifted by the administrator after a somewhat heated discussion, would presumably never have been accepted as grounds for a case.

I have, of course, admitted I was wrong in the cases cited repeatedly. However, the arbcom's claims as tho the extend of the wrongs include severe misapplications of policy in Finding of Fact #4, and, in the end, four or five errors of judgement, all at least two months old, were used to harass a productive editor until he had to drop out of University, and very nearly off Wikipedia, all while talking about how important newbies were, at the same time as harassing and driving off driving off a proven creator of multiple FAs and researcher of historic FPs. I still do not do half as much work on Wikipedia as I used to.

Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 13:08, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

I think this somewhat misses the point. We are needlessly arguing over legal minutae here; the real question is not whether the procedural errors that took place during the case are sufficient to require that it be vacated, but rather whether vacating the case is or is not the most beneficial course for the project as a whole, at this point.

Regardless of whether each individual finding is correct—indeed, regardless of whether any of the findings is correct—the decision has already been put into full effect. SH is no longer an admin, and is not suddenly going to become one merely because we put a different note on the blanked pages. The case itself has no value as precedent—since we don't actually consider cases to be such—and is not needed for future enforcement. We have a choice, therefore, between obstinately (though perhaps justifiably) insisting that the case is not so irreparably flawed as to need vacating, but at the cost of allowing this conflict to continue; or vacating a case that may not require it, but thus ending the conflict at no practical cost to the project. I really don't see why the first option is to be preferred. Kirill ^(prof) 13:21, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Whether that was or wasn't so, the request we have isn't to review one finding (FoF #4) in one case. It's to vacate the entire case. The key issue was "use of admin access" - and that's a lot more than just one block. So I've reviewed the entire case rather fully, and explained why I feel the case is valid:

"Even if both findings about the Matthew Hoffman block (#3 and #4) were completely in error, then at most those two points would be affected. The opening of the case, the seriousness of misuse of admin access, and the final decision would frankly be almost identical, and the case would still very easily stand".

I've also reviewed the blocks and pointed out exactly why the one selected as "obviously poorly reviewed" was in fact completely correctly assessed by communal norms.

The aim of a case is to get an appropriate decision, that is right for the project. Whether FOF#4 is 100% right, or 100% wrong, or anywhere in between, not one other part of the case acceptance or final decision (remedies etc) would be affected. I'm sorry if you don't agree. I've looked hard at the case, and yet I don't see even slightly close grounds for this. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 13:36, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Unfortunately, vacating a case has a lot more impact than you're suggesting. A vacated case declares the entire case never happened. It reverses all findings, reverses all decisions and remedies. That is what "vacating" an entire case would mean. There were multiple users who were blocked improperly from editing by an administrator who used admin powers in a content dispute, or on articles the then-admin was heavily editing, at the time. Whether or not the then-admin user concerned is upset or unhappy at one finding, those admin accesses were misused -- grossly. Vacating declares that this probably didn't happen, wasn't serious, or shouldn't have been reviewed by the committee. "I'm upset" is not sufficient grounds for this, and shouldn't become so. I would be fine vacating specific findings on the grounds of "unreasonable to uphold". That would be fair, if true. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 13:45, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

You claim that four or five page protections or short-term blocks, all of which were at least two months old, were grounds for a finding of severe abuse of admin tools, in a case where there was no previous dispute resolution, in order to give the admin any sign that he was acting incorrectly? Show me a single other comparable case. You say that this is standard arbcom practice. Demonstrate it. In fact, how about I ask you a personal question, since you think that accidental or mistaken abuses of power or violations of standard processes should be judged so harshly: Does this mean that YOU should be thrown out of the arbcom because of your actions in the Orangemarlin case? Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 13:49, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

(edit conflict) The only actionable part of the case is the desysopping, and we've already established that it's not being "reversed" (in the sense of SH's adminship being restored); the findings are of no lasting interest or value beyond their role in justifying said desysopping. I don't see any practical difference at all between having the case case moldering in the archives in its current state, and having it do so with a "vacated" tag; either way, nobody is ever going to read the thing again unless they're compiling a history of ArbCom—and if they are, they're perfectly capable of looking at the history of the page. We could "vacate" half the cases we've ever written, and I very much doubt anyone would even notice.

This seems, to me, to be more a stand on abstract principle than one with any practical impact. Kirill ^(prof) 13:54, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

It may have no impact from the perspective of an arbitrator, but I think that this process you are experiencing right now (in addition to many others you've experienced as an arbitrator in the past) demonstrates that the status and wording of past cases does impact those who were involved. Vacating a case is not without impact - it does send a message about the case, about the committee, and about Vanished user. Why would it not make more sense to specifically identify what about the case was wrong, and rescind only those findings/remedies found to be in error? Avruch ^T 15:43, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

I think the thing a lot of people are missing is that "vacating" a case was just a word thought up to explain our resolution of a unique circumstance this summer. It really has no relevance or meaning outside that circumstance. Sam Blacketer (talk) 15:49, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Then applying a different word that isn't borrowed from legal traditions may be a good idea.--Tznkai (talk) 15:56, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Tznkai is right - the word wasn't thought up by the committee this summer, it has a common meaning and was used with that meaning in mind. Readers will understand it using the common meaning, not necessarily as a "one time only" meaning created for Wikipedia arbitration. If "vacating" the case isn't what you want to do, then call it something else. It would still make more sense to my mind to simply rescind findings in error, if action is needed. Kirill above seems to be making both arguments - that doing something will have no practical effect, but that something should nonetheless be done. Avruch ^T 16:32, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Have a full readthrough of the case. Can anyone point to any aspect of this cas ethat was handled in a fully neutral, fair manner, as concerns me? Voting to condemn me began before I even set up a statement, and then, after everything I said was seemingly ignored, even a simple request that we pause for exams (they were in December, not the end of January) and I gave up, the arbcom began attacking me for not continuing a futile attempt to defend myself that they seemed to have no interest in reading. If the issues about Finding of Fact #4 - that there was no ongoing content dispute, and the merest check of page history would confirm that - could not be dealt with, what hope did I have that anything I said would be listened to?

The handling of this case were such that even an offer to give up my adminship, because of severe health problems being aggravated by the case was rejected in favour of prolonging the agony for two more months, where, after lecturing me on how I should use admin tools, the Arbcom promptly removed them, making the previous two months of lectures nothing but pointless tormenting of the severely ill. The arbcom need to accept that their handling of cases can affect real people's lives, and vacating this case would sereve as a promise to the community that they would not behae in such a manner again. THAT is the issue I want sorted. I don'ðt know how many people were chosen for Arbcom test casews,a nd were driven off the site, unable to ever speak up on how they were treated by the arbcom. But I actually came back, and I will speak up for all the people who no longer can.

The arbcom needs to reaffirm their commitment to proper treatment of the people before them. If the Arbcom wants to say, for instance, that "This case is vacated on procedural grounds, due to the Arbcom's handling of this case making it impossible for the accused to have gotten a fair trial. All findings are vacated. As it has been a year, a new trial to find out which, if any, of the findings were justified, but problems have been pointed out with several." that would be perfectly acceptable. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 16:18, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

(e/c)Just as a note, "vacating" a case declares the original judgment invalid, but not incorrect. It is a negative finding: the case was not, on balance or by a certain threshold proper. In the U.S legal system at least, and I believe most legal systems, vacating a case makes no positive claims on the various merits of the case itself (only the grounds on which it is vacated), it does not declare proper or improper behavior. Often it simply leads to a retrial, a case can be vacated, retried, and achieve essentially the same result.

Although ArbCom is not a court, and Wikipedia is not a government or a bureaucracy, we do borrow a lot of terms, procedures and other artifacts from legal tradition. Its not exactly clear what vacating would do, but my opinion is that the impact on the system would be negligible: it would declare the previous findings not made, and invite the parties and the committee, if they are willing, to arbitrate the dispute again, which I don't think is going to happen. The message it would send is "errors were made."--Tznkai (talk) 13:57, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Why not just strike out or annotate the bits that were false, or don't most of the arbcom want to admit they did anything wrong which is sufficiently offensive to the person concerned, and to the community, that it should be amended? Patronising statements about someone's emotional response such as the comments by FT2 on the RFAR page seem to me are no help. Anyone would be upset if incorrect things were said about them in a venue which seems to give the ultimate judgement about someone on wikipedia and not amended when seen to be false. As to it not being a legal thing, a remedy of some kind in cases such as this would simply be common decency. 19:43, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Jehochman belabors the point

I think a better resolution of the original controversy would have been for somebody friendly (non-adversarial) with Vanished user to have contacted them and said, "You seem to be having difficulties with use of tools. What are the circumstances?" To that, Vanished user could have said that they were having personal difficulties. A friendly observation could then have been made that such difficulties could lead to erroneous use of tools and failure to respond adequately to concerns. The natural result would have been for Vanished user to resign the tools (under a cloud) with the opportunity to get them back, once personal difficulties were resolved, via an appeal to the Committee.

There was no purpose in creating a public case, except perhaps that Vanished user was a convenient example to discourage others from improper use of tools. Under the circumstances, which probably were not know to the person bringing the case, Vanished user was exactly the wrong person to make an example of. This is the problem that we now seek to correct. The case should be vacated. In lieu of the case, a statement can be posted that Vanished user has resigned under a cloud and can get the tools back by appeal to the committee. Whether the path back includes RFA or not is a red herring, in my humble opinion, because the chance of a successful RFA at this point is vanishingly small. Should Vanished user wish to become an admin, they need to show the Committee that they understand the nature of past mistakes and provide reasonable assurances that such mistakes will not be repeated.

On the whole, vacating the case and replacing it with such a statement would be a net gain for Wikipedia. Therefore, we should do it. If the original evidence (not argumentation) of tool misuse might be needed for future reviews, it can be saved. Jehochman ^Talk 16:04, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

In the interests of expedience, I am willing to enter into a gentlemen's agreement with the committee, but due to the problems discussed with the committee's handling of the case,I would prefer something that is only unofficially binding. Which the committee would have every right to object if I violated (which would sink any RfA anyway), but which would have no official weight, and appear nowhere public.

Should this be a real issue, I could agree to official agreements, but can we at least keep them semi-private? Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 16:15, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Possible compromise?

I simply ask the arbcom to accept that mistakes were made in this case, many of them severe, and promise to make every attempt not to do them again. That's all I really ask. If we could have done this in private, that would have been fine. The Arbcom did not respond to my requests to communicate in private. As it has had to be done in public, the statements need to be public. If the Arbcom wanted, we could review all the findings of fact for accuracy and the like, but is there really any point a year later? I do thonk the arbcom should accept that they made a severe error in Finding of Fact #4, as that comes very near to the heart of the poor care that the arbcom used in their handling of this case. However, I'm not after blood here. I just want the Arbcom to, finally, admit that errors were made and promise not to do them again. That having been done, everyone involved can move on with their lives. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 16:58, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Forced apologies are not valuable. It will be better if they just erase the case, and you make a binding agreement to contact them if you wish to be an administrator again. There is no reason to discuss private matters in a public forum. I do not think RFA is likely to succeed. Reinstatement via the Committee is your best chance if that's what you eventually want. Jehochman ^Talk 17:39, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Well, fine, cut the apologies, but keep the promises not to make the same mistakes again. Because, seriously, if you go to voting before the party provides evidence, you've just removed any feeling on that party's part that you care what they have to say. This case illustrates another problem with that - the Arbcom, having begun to vote on the decisions, refused to remove provable falsehoods from FoF #4, which shows a lack of due care and actual failure to read the commentary on the case. This case was highly controversial, and caused a lot of discussion, but as far as I can tell, the arbcom ignored all of this. Both these behaviours must change. Furthermore, someone, possibly the Arbcom, has already refused to include the points of action suggested by the RfC as referendums in the elections, thus rejecting accountability to the community (see the 2tTo do" list at the top of the talk page for the elections - if a hugely-participated RfC is not a sign that the community wants change for the arbcom, then what will be accepted as consensus. If community oversight is not going to be allowed, then they MUST show themselves capable of monitoring themselves. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 17:59, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

• Comment - I have no knowledge or opinion of this case. However, it seems to me that the problem here is with an objection to what some see as an "unfair trial" - and a discussion over whether it was, or was not. Arbcom should not be in the business of "trials", nor, and this will be contentious, of obsessing with being "fair". They are not a court of law, and are NOT here to make sure that the "rights" of parties are upheld, fairly or otherwise. This is a project to build and encyclopedia. No one has "rights" here. If a user editing or having sysop power is judged to help the project then fine, if that user editing or having sysop power is judged not to be helping, then they ought to be removed. The judgement ought to be "the project's interest" and NOT some notion of justice, due process, natural law, or even the subjective disposition, motivation, or circumstances of the user concerned - except in so far as such factors might affect future benefit or harm to the project. Arbcom ought to be the ultimate in devoted pragmatism. Arbcom's job is to step in when the project is malfunctioning, and the normal process are failing to fix that malfunction. Arbcom's goal should be to remedy the malfunction, and (where necessary) to tweek the system to minimise future malfunctioning - nothing more. Arbs are essentially mechanics, not judges, social workers, or human rights defenders. So, the only question here ought to be: in light of whatever new information we have, or now the dust has settled, are the remedies given by arbcom in this case, still viewed as useful to the project? If they are not, then reverse them. If they are, then don't. Whether the case was "fair" at the time, or whether due process was followed, is beside the point. The case may have been "fair" but the remedy no longer helpful - in which case repeal it. The case may be atrocious - but the remedy (even on other ground) pragmatically useful - in which case stand by it. If arbcom want to make a statement saying that in future they believe that it would be more useful to handle cases like this in a different manner - let them do that. But terms like "vacating" and "miscarriage of justice" have no place here.--Scott MacDonald (talk) 19:55, 17 November 2008 (UTC)
  • It is very much in the interest of the project not to treat volunteers as disposable fodder. This poorly handled case has had a negative impact on morale, and has damaged the committee's reputation. It should be stricken as a mistake in toto and a suitable replacement statement posted, as FloNight has suggested. Jehochman ^Talk 20:01, 17 November 2008 (UTC)
    • If the remedies are harmful, then I agree.--Scott MacDonald (talk) 20:04, 17 November 2008 (UTC)
  • Scott above says exactly what I would have said a year ago, and I'd have been wrong. The arbcom's devotion to utility over justice is short-sighted. It has not given the community or the parties either fair treatment or the appearance of it, and has contributed to, rather than remedied, the malfunctions. Jehochman says it right - to keep (or rebuild) the community we need to write the encyclopedia, we need to not treat each other like disposable production units. Tom Harrison ^Talk 21:16, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

I agree with the general sentiment that the committee is not a court of law, and that its ultimate responsibility is not the maintenance of society or preservation of government or any other aims of a court system. On the other hand, fair and just administration of the project is essential to the maintenance of a vibrant and peaceful community, which itself is essential to the future of the project. Avruch ^T 20:06, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Just because it's not a court of law, doesn't mean people shouldn't behave as decent human beings and avoid excessive obnoxiousness and not make erroneous statements about other people, and if made, correct them, as most of us are meant to in life- but due to the authority of arbcom, they sometimes behave as if they can talk about people who are already facing the stress of an arbcom case, in any manner they like. 17:41, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

After talking to Shoemaker's Holiday and getting a feel for some wording that would work for him as a statement, I'm offering an alternative motion that I hope will satisfy all concerns. Additionally, I want to make the point that Charles Matthews was doing the work of the Arbitration Committee when he approached Shoemaker's Holiday to discuss the block. I firmly believe that he waded into the situation with the best intentions. I imagine that no one wishes that it turned out differently more than him. It has been almost a year. Let's try out best to work out a solution and put this issue to rest. FloNight♥♥♥ 20:50, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Charles Matthews has asked my forgiveness, and I forgive him. I don't think anything more needs said about him. I apologise if I got too heated before we made up. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 20:56, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

More needs to be said about CM due to his RfC towards Slrubenstein which seems a similar case- attempts at having a go at another user a month or so after the event etc, but this time round they're being met with the reaction they deserve. The place to discuss that is probably not here due to the reaction it will face, but no doubt plenty will be said about both these cases and probably more, in the forthcoming arbcom elections. 17:41, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Well, head over to my Candidate questions, if you have a question. It will be in good company. Charles Matthews (talk) 17:55, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Note regarding pending motions

I had set aside some time tonight to vote on the various pending items on WP:RfAr, but Wikipedia is running slowly for me tonight so I may have to wait until later or tomorrow. If so, my apologies to those who have been patiently waiting for my input. Newyorkbrad (talk) 01:57, 18 November 2008 (UTC)