UDWiki:Administration/Misconduct

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This page is for the reporting of administrator (sysop) misconduct within the Urban Dead wiki. Sysops are trusted with a considerable number of powers, many of which have the capacity to be abused. In many circumstances, it is possible for a sysop to cause considerable havoc. As such, users are provided this page to report misconduct from the System Operators. For consistency and accountability, sysops also adhere to the guidelines listed here.

Guidelines for System Operator Misconduct Reporting

The charge of Administrative Misconduct is a grave charge indeed. If misconduct occurs, it is important that the rest of the sysop team be able to review the charges as necessary. Any charge of administrative misconduct must be backed up with evidence. The clearest evidence that can be provided for administrative misconduct is a clear discrepancy between the relevant action log (deletion, block, or protection log) and the archives of the relevant administration service page, and this is a minimum standard of evidence admitted in such a tribunal.

Misconduct is primarily related to specific Administrator Services, not standards of behavior. As such, situations including verbal attacks by sysops, while frowned upon, do not constitute misconduct. Sysops on a wiki are in theory supposed to have no more authority than a regular user - they merely have a greater scope of power. Personality conflicts between sysops and regular users should be treated just as a personality conflict between two regular users. If, in the course of such a conflict, a sysop abuses their administrative powers by banning a user, blocking or deleting a page without due process, that is misconduct, and should be reported to this page.

There is, however, an exception to this rule - excessive bullying, or attempts to treat the status of sysop as a badge of authority to force a sysop's wishes on the wiki may also come under misconduct. Any accusations of this should come with just as clear evidence, and for such an action to be declared misconduct, there should be a clear pattern of behavior across a considerable period of time.

All discussion of misconduct should occur on this page, not the talk page - any discussion on the talk page will be merged into this page once discovered. Once a misconduct case has been declared closed, a member of the sysop team other than the sysop named in the case will mete out the punishment (if deemed necessary), and then move the case to the Archive.

Administrative Abilities

For future reference, the following are sysop specific abilities (ie things that sysops can do that regular users cannot):

• Deletion (ie complete removal, as opposed to blanking) of pages (including Images and any other page-like construct on this wiki), through the delete tab on the top of any deletable construct.
• Undeletion (ie returning a page, complete with page history) of pages (including any other page-like construct on this wiki (Images are not included as deletion of an image is not undoable), through the undelete tab on the top of any undeletable construct
• Protection of pages (ie removing the ability of regular users to edit or move a particular page), through the protect tab on the top of any protectable construct.
• Moving of pages (ie changing a page complete with the page's history to a different namespace).
• Warning users reported in Vandal Banning.
• Banning of Users (ie removing the ability of a specific user to edit the wiki), through the Block User page.
• Editing of Protected pages by any means.
• Research IP activity using the CheckUser extension.
• (Bureaucrats Only) Promotion (providing the above abilities) of User to Sysop/Bureaucrat status.

If none of the above abilities were abused and the case doesn't apply for the exception mentioned above, then this is a case for UDWiki:Administration/Arbitration or UDWiki:Administration/Vandal Banning.

Example of Misconduct Proceedings

Sysop seems to have deleted Bad Page, but I can't find it in the Archives of either the Deletion or Speedy Deletion pages. The Logs show a deletion at 18:06, October 24th 2005 by a System Operator, but this does not seem to be backed up by a request for that deletion. I would like to know why this is the case -- Reporter 13:42, 28 Oct 2005 (BST)

The deletion was asked through my talk page. I give my Talk page as proof of this. -- Sysop 13:42, 28 Oct 2005 (BST)

It looks like the page that was deleted did not belong to the requesting user, so you were in no position to delete it on sight. -- Reporter 13:42, 28 Oct 2005 (BST)

You know the rules, Sysop. All deletion requests have to go through the Speedy Delete page. Next time, please inform the user where they should lodge the request. This is a clear violation, will you accept a one-day ban as punishment? -- Sysop2 13:42, 28 Oct 2005 (BST)

I'm not liking it, but I clearly broke the rules, I'll accept the ban. I'll certainly remember due process next time... Sysop 13:42, 28 Oct 2005 (BST)

As punishment for failing to follow due process, Sysop has been banned for a period of 24 hours. This will be moved to the Archive shortly. -- Sysop2 13:42, 28 Oct 2005 (BST)

Before Reporting Misconduct

Due to a the growing number of Non-Misconduct cases popping up on this page the Administration Staff has decided to compile a basic summary of what has been viewed as Not Misconduct in the past. Please read over UDWiki:Misconduct and make sure that what you are reporting is in fact misconduct before filing a report here.

Cases made to further personal disputes should never be made here, harassment of any user through administration pages may result in vandal escalations. Despite their unique status this basic protection does still apply to Sysops.

Misconduct Cases Currently Under Consideration

Iscariot's Vandal Data "Situation"

As most of you know, I made an attempt a few months back at determining the correct state of Iscariot's vandal data, and I realized today that I had forgotten to follow up on it. Read through that link since it provides the details I'll be working from, then come back here. My intention here is that we can clear up all outstanding issues as a result of this case, so I'll be highlighting a lot of potential cases of Misconduct for us to rule on, even if I might not personally think they are Misconduct, just so that there is no reason for us to ever think about this stuff again. It'll be a mess, since this whole ordeal is anything but simple, but I'll try to keep it organized, at least.

Now, assuming you have read it, it should be obvious that misconduct took place, some more egregious than others, and some which has already been dealt with. I'm not pushing for everyone involved to be brought up on Misconduct, since sysops should reasonably be able to trust existing vandal data, meaning that any sysops that unknowingly acted on faulty data should not be held responsible for their actions.

The most obvious example of Misconduct, and where this whole circus began, is Nubis' banning of Iscariot for a week, since at the time, Iscariot was due a de-escalation (i.e. he should've had just a warning instead), and even if he wasn't due one, it should have been a 48 Hour Ban, not a 1 Week Ban. However, Nubis has already been brought up for Misconduct on that, so it's basically a closed case. Of note, however, was the strange ending to the case. From what I can tell, no formal ruling was ever decided regarding Iscariot, so they left him on record with having served a 24 Hour Ban, since he had served about ~29.5 hours before they unbanned him. It wasn't until months later that boxy made an attempt to fix his vandal data to accurately reflect that he should have received a warning.

Potential Misconduct 1: Linkthewindow was the one that "corrected" Iscariot's data to say 24 Hour Ban (instead of the 1 Week Ban it previous said), when it should have actually been a warning Iscariot received, so he's the likely one to hold accountable for not properly fixing the vandal data at the time.

A few months later, Nubis "corrects" the data and applies a new 1 Week Ban at the same time. Iscariot was once again due a de-escalation at the time, so he should have merely received a warning. Additionally, since Iscariot had never received a 48 Hour Ban, Nubis should have supplied a good reason to change the 24 Hour Ban to a 48 Hour Ban, but instead merely cites a lack of de-escalation on file. Nubis was never brought up for Misconduct from what I can tell for this case.

Potential Misconduct 2: Nubis alters Iscariot's VD without good cause.

In September of 2009, boxy went back and corrected the vandal data so that it fell in line with what Iscariot should have received following the earlier Misconduct case. That is, he correctly applied a de-escalation of an earlier warning, struck the erroneous 24 Hour Ban that had been changed to a 48 Hour Ban by Nubis, and then applied a warning in place of the ban.

Potential Misconduct 3: boxy did not do anything about the 1 Week Ban that Nubis had incorrectly applied, despite the fact that it should have been clear a 1 Week Ban was impossible without having first received a 48 Hour Ban. He also de-escalated the incorrect warning.

The next month, boxy applied a de-escalation to Iscariot's vandal data, seemingly without a reason.

Potential Misconduct 4: boxy de-escalated the incorrect warning again, since de-escalations are supposed to start with the last warning, not the first. There's also a question of whether sysops have the right to de-escalate at any time, as opposed to having to wait for either a request or a new escalation.

After that, not much else occurred, aside from DDR bungling one ruling, but that's already been brought up for Misconduct, so the case is closed with him, and I didn't see anything else unusual at the time.

Anyway, I've placed headers below where we can discuss the individual actions separately. Feel free to add more if you think I missed part of this ordeal or that someone else should be brought up. —Aichon— 05:11, 28 July 2010 (BST)

Potential Misconduct Discussions/Rulings

Linkthewindow "corrects" Nubis' ban

In the case where he "corrected" Nubis' wrongful 1 week ban to a 24 hour ban, I would say Not Misconduct. There was an open question remaining in Nubis' Misconduct case of whether or not unrequested de-escalations for Iscariot were valid, so he may have been working under the assumption that they were not, which, given the context of the case, seems perfectly reasonable. Had that question not been left open, however, I'd think very differently on the matter. —Aichon— 05:11, 28 July 2010 (BST)

Nubis alters the VD

In the case where Nubis altered the former 24 Hour Ban to read as a 48 Hour Ban and then applied a 1 Week Ban, I'm leaning towards calling it Misconduct, but would like to see if anyone else can provide additional context. Nubis should not be held responsible for failing to apply a de-escalation at the time of a new escalation, since precedent and common sense says that that'd be foolish, but the previous 24 Hour Ban on record should not have been altered without excellent justification, and merely saying that a de-escalation is not on file is not sufficient. —Aichon— 05:11, 28 July 2010 (BST)

boxy fails to fix the data

In the case where boxy did not address obvious errors in the data while fixing other ones, I'm going to have to go with Not Misconduct. It's pretty clear that he was merely trying to fix the mistakes that were left over from the Misconduct case, since he provided a link in his edit comments to the point in the case where he (correctly) explained what should have happened at that time. I am not of the opinion that we should punish sysops for making improvements, even if they knowingly do not fix every problem they are aware of. That said, I do think it was irresponsible, since the problem should have been easy to fix at the time. As for his de-escalating the incorrect warning, it made no material difference, since both of them were older than a month at that point, and I don't think it's worthy of a Misconduct vote. —Aichon— 05:11, 28 July 2010 (BST)

boxy de-escalates incorrectly

In the case where boxy de-escalated the incorrect warning and did it seemingly of his own volition, I'd like to hear his reason for doing it, if he can recall what it was, but I'd still say Not Misconduct, since there were no rules saying he couldn't de-escalate if he wanted to, and it had been more than a month since either of the warnings, so it made no material difference which was de-escalated first. —Aichon— 05:11, 28 July 2010 (BST)

Fixing the data

In addition to addressing who is responsible for these mistakes, I would like for us to make the effort to undo the mistakes as part of our rulings here (which was something that should have been done in the original Nubis Misconduct case and would've helped us avoid all of this). I believe that we should retroactively give Iscariot all of the applicable de-escalations he was due but never received. If you check my write up of the ordeal in my user space, I catalog what his vandal data should look like based on those assumptions. I've reproduced it below for your convenience:

• Warned - 22:40, 28 October 2008 (GMT)
• Warned - 14:44, 11 January 2009 (GMT) de-escalated 03:16, 11 March 2009 (UTC)
• 24hr Ban - 13:44, 30 January 2009 (UTC) de-escalated 01:09, 29 November 2009 (UTC)
• 48hr Ban - 13:16, 11 March 2009 (UTC) Improperly applied, changed to a warning.
• Warned - 03:16, 11 March 2009 (UTC) de-escalated 03:43, 3 June 2009 (BST)
• 1 Week Ban - 13:43, 3 June 2009 (BST) Improperly applied, changed to a warning.
• Warned - 03:43, 3 June 2009 (BST) de-escalated 06:50, 28 October 2009 (UTC)
• 1 Week Ban - 01:09, 29 November 2009 (UTC) Improperly applied, changed to a warning.

• Warned - 22:55, 9 January 2009 (UTC)
• Warned - 01:09, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

As an aside, I know there have been questions raised, even recently, of whether or not we can de-escalate Iscariot without his permission. I think that whole argument is nonsense. He has no more right to say that you can't de-escalate him than he does to say that you can't escalate him since the vandal data doesn't belong to him. If he doesn't want to remind us to de-escalate him when his time comes, that's his business, but saying that we can't do our job without his permission is utter stupidity. Also, I only ever found evidence of him taking issue with being de-escalated improperly, not with being de-escalated at all, so I think it's a non-issue either way. —Aichon— 05:11, 28 July 2010 (BST)

jesus christ i thought we already established that nobody gives a fuck about this dumb shitty "issue" Cyberbob  Talk  05:54, 28 July 2010 (BST)