User talk:Proof: Difference between revisions

Bottom line first: Since your complaint concerns only off-wiki conduct, evidence should be analyzed and assessed off-wiki via e-mail or other appropriate channel and not on this page.<div style="margin-top:.5em"></div>The general [[:meatball:WikiPatternLanguage|WikiPattern]] when user conduct needs to be scrutinized is that evidence involving on-wiki actions should be presented on-wiki, and evidence involving off-wiki conduct should be presented off-wiki. There may be occasional exceptions to this pattern (e.g. when [[Test Wiki:Suppress|suppression]] is involved) but I see no reason for one in this specific case.<div style="margin-top:.5em"></div>I don't know all the details, nor should I know them as I am not a local functionary. The decision made by the stewards will take into account the quality of the evidence as well as the totality of the circumstances including duration, recency, severity, and the conduct of other parties. What I can tell you is that a one-off comment made two years ago that some people took the wrong way will be treated differently than an ongoing pattern of harassment that hounded a contributor away from the community last week. And yes there is a lot of ground between those two positions, and no you should not try to explain where on that continuum exactly the current situation falls on this page. Until a decision has been made any editors whose edits here have not been disruptive will be treated as would any other editor in good-standing. Once the decision is made, accept the outcome whatever that may be, and move on.<div style="margin-top:.5em"></div>On a semi-related tangent, creating a bunch of sockpuppets to disrupt a wiki however much you dislike it or its members is a waste of everyone's time, and more your time than theirs. You can read more at [[:wiki:WhyWikiWorks|WhyWikiWorks]] but it's been pretty conclusively proven at this point that if there is one thing all active wikis have in spades it is people who will hunt down all (perceived) sources of disruption be it spammers, flamers, vandals, trolls, or just editors who they feel don't belong; undo their work, and either block them or find someone else who will. You could argue that people who are willing to do that all day, every day are just as weird and/or crazy as the people doing the disruption in the first place, but that doesn't change the fact that they exist. The way to actually handle a wiki that is hosting copyright infringing, illegal, or other grossly inappropriate content is to either contact the ISP's through their e-mail for handling abuse or in the case of a respectable wikifarm, to just contact the central authority responsible for managing all wikis. This may not be a permanent solution when employed against a particularly determined community (the many lives and deaths of ED come immediately to mind), but it will at least make life considerably more difficult for them and shift the time wasting dynamic to one that is in your favor.<div style="margin-top:.5em"></div>On another note, (and without knowing all the details which I should not know), wikimedia has it's own well developed systems for handling abuse that occurs off-wiki on IRC or elsewhere, and they have far greater resources to analyze, verify, and authenticate off-wiki evidence than we do.