UDWiki:Administration/Sysop Archives/Karek/2012-09-18 Re-Evaluation

Administration » Sysop Archives » Karek » 2012-09-18 Re-Evaluation

Karek

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Since it is already late in the British day, I'm opening Karek's RE, which is due today. -- Spiderzed█ 18:17, 18 September 2012 (BST)

• Abstain - He's technically capable, but not mentally.

  I apprieciate that he's (very) active, does the grunt work consistently, while displaying a certain knowledge and expertise of both coding as well as wikilaw. On the other hand, he often can't handle being disagreed with, loves to throw accussations of bias/vendattas and doesn't know when to stop arguing when it accomplishes nothing more then inane walls of text. Although he's been behaving nicely lately, I'm hesistant whether this is an actual change in behaviour or more the result of lack of feasible drama.

  I would be willing to vouch like I did last time, because in the end, I find him capable enough and he brings something different to the table than other ops. However, I can't help but notice that I'm on some sort of shit list of his, and that he prefers to ignore me as much as possible and, in all honesty, I cannot fully support a sysops when said sysops does not support me as a member of this community. Therefore I abstain -- Thadeous Oakley Talk 19:23, 18 September 2012 (BST)

  No more so than J3D, I like J3D he's just a good example to be bandied about. --Karek^{maps 2.0?!} 00:18, 19 September 2012 (BST)

  I'm not J3D, and my point remains. You have accused me of incompetence, bias and encouraged others to ignore me. Clearly there is a personal issue at hand. Look, I'm not asking you to be loveable cuddly teddybear, but I would highly recommend taking DDR's and Aichon points into consideration. Otherwise you may one day find yourself the unwanted heir of Grim's legacy. -- Thadeous Oakley Talk 11:51, 19 September 2012 (BST)

  Really? Comparing him to Grim? --I'm not the Ross UDWiki needs, I'm the Ross it deserves. 11:58, 19 September 2012 (BST)

  Clearly I am the heir to Grim's (unwanted?) legacy. ᚱᛁᚹᛖᚾᚨᚾᛏ 04:14, 1 October 2012 (BST)

  I endorse this message and/or product The Grimch 04:31, 1 October 2012 (BST)

  See? --I'm not the Ross UDWiki needs, I'm the Ross it deserves. 17:13, 1 October 2012 (BST)

• Vouch. Same reasons as last time. Personality clashes aside, he's a good op. ~ _{19:38, 18 September 2012 (UTC)}
• Question - Is Thad's abstain the result of "bias/vendettas"? --Shortround }.{ My Contributions 20:02, 18 September 2012 (BST)

  Hold on there, I never accussed him of being biased against me. I trust him to be impartial, even against me, it just seems to me that he would prefer to see me leave the wiki rather sooner than later. -- Thadeous Oakley Talk 20:18, 18 September 2012 (BST)

  Question - Karek, did you get that my first question was a joke?--Shortround }.{ My Contributions 00:01, 19 September 2012 (BST)

• Question. Why is it important to retain dinosaurs on the sysop team? --I'm not the Ross UDWiki needs, I'm the Ross it deserves. 20:12, 18 September 2012 (BST)

  I am a dinosaur (actually, a wiki dragon) and i take offense in that question --hagnat 20:16, 18 September 2012 (BST)

  Shut it haggy. Before I get mainly Cretaceous on your ass. --I'm not the Ross UDWiki needs, I'm the Ross it deserves. 20:23, 18 September 2012 (BST)

  Probably something to do with being willing to argue wiki untouchables because I, or they, were there when those touchables were gently caressed out of a pile of rage and bile. As were most things in the olden days of yore. --Karek^{maps 2.0?!} 00:20, 19 September 2012 (BST)

• Vouch good sysop, will trade with him again. A+++++++ --hagnat 20:15, 18 September 2012 (BST)

  thing is, the wiki NEEDS people with different opinion on stuff that matter for it to work. --hagnat 17:20, 23 September 2012 (BST)

• Question - What has been your single biggest contribution to the wiki in the past eight months since your last evaluation? Bob Moncrief ^EBD•W! 20:16, 18 September 2012 (BST)

  Since my question has gone unanswered while Karek has responded to several other comments, clearly my opinion is not valued. Therefore, Against. Bob Moncrief ^EBD•W! 01:48, 23 September 2012 (BST)

  I actually forgot about this in the responding to DDR stuff. I don't honestly consider contributions in the light of importance but the really important stuff, in my opinion, doesn't involve Sysop privileges and are more along the lines of this. Mostly these days I cycle anything in queues when I'm on and process bot bans. That's been the bulk of my contributions with the occasional comment on VB or Misconduct, I still haven't had time to go through the A/VD archives but it is on my list for when I have a couple of hours and no work in any of my other adminery roles off site. --Karek^{maps 2.0?!} 04:27, 23 September 2012 (BST)

  Thanks! I'm satisfied, but given how many others have expressed concern above and below, and that I haven't interacted with you personally very much, I'm going to abstain. Bob Moncrief ^EBD•W! 06:44, 23 September 2012 (BST)

• Vouch - He knows what he's doing. I trust he'll be able to keep doing what he's doing. --•▬ ▬••▬ • •••• •▬ ▬•▬• ▬•▬ ^{#nerftemplatedsigs} 20:50, 18 September 2012 (BST)
• Vouch Against abstain major asshole. changed my mind again. does good work but is a jerk about it most of the time. --User:Sexualharrison23:07, 18 September 2012
• Against - Personal issues aside, I find his way of dealing with issues on this wiki deplorable, and often seems more interested than arguing a point than actually getting the right thing done, often lying about past events and precedents to convince others that he's right, actions that he's readily condemned in the past when used by other people in the community. This includes threatening users with A/VB cases he never intends on creating, claiming he has a mountain of evidence he just "can't get it", and preposterous denial of three years worth of precedent because he was AWOL for that precedent and "didn't like it". In the latter link he also threatens me with an A/M case with an edit summary but prematurely concludes that it would "fail because Yon would back him up", when there were around 10 other sysops at the time, right. Similar thing happened here, where Karek again complains that spelling Humour the british way on a british based site is wrong, claiming that it's been decided "like five times already" that he's right, even though looking back it seems that most evidence actually proves it's been the exact opposite the whole time. Without doubt Karek has been getting better of late and doesn't pull this shit as often, and I treat him like shit over all of these personality traits and he takes it pretty well. He also has little problem admitting when he's been called out, but people shouldn't have to call a bluff for him to admit he was bullshitting in an argument that has administrative consequences and when things get more intense I wouldn't hold my breath that he'll begin approaching it in an impersonal fashion.
  These are situational links but they really exemplify Karek's attitude towards issues on this wiki and I think the desire to lie to peers to strengthen one's argument is one of the least desirable traits a member of staff should have. A ZOMBIE ANT 01:58, 19 September 2012 (BST)

  Sure, I'll bite the bait.
  
  This is referring to his behavior against other users driving them to bring him there as a form of harassment in response to his behavior, not as a threat, apparently I wasn't clear enough about that, I could care less about A/VBing him and I actively avoid using that page if I can. There is only one page I report people to and that's A/M in actual abuse cases.
  
  I sometimes play the devils advocate. Your bid link is an example of that. Would you expect a user to fail a bid on the last day with only a single serious contentful against? Neither would I. However this review bids are a method to also bring up issues that need addressing. I don't take against comments personally, I don't expect another historically abrasive sysop should either. I also tend to type in the tone of the subject, abrasive users occasionally get abrasive responses. The relevance of your bid to my bid here, to me, makes no sense. Especially since that was a case of both couldn't easily access and didn't care enough because it was targeted as feedback for you and people who were aware of what I was referring to.
  
  The same applies to this. Yes, I was a douche, in response to your overreaction and yes, it was the case of another edit summary being misinterpreted. Which is actually funny because you can see the reasonable response you edited over with vitriol from a gut reaction to an edit summary about a good misconduct case. A good case about any rule or set of rules actually develops the limits and understanding of a that particular rules usage, it does not consist of people defending a person on principal and the people actually deserving of being offended at that comment were Yonnua and Thad, not you. On top of that, the three year old precedent you're siting was created by me so that raises the question of why I in particular wouldn't have mentioned the case at the core of the rule? I've never once lied about precedent and in cases where I'm indefinite or running off memory and not physical source articles I'm staring at when making the statement(believe it or not I actually research these things in contentious cases of actual issue) I generally mention as much.
  
  And finally Humour, is this seriously still an issue? I made one god damn passing comment in reference to an issue that was settled before it was resettled after I left(your 2009 and 2010 links in that link), it wasn't vehement it was a short little note on the history of the debate over the article while I was passing through. Let. It. Go. --Karek^{maps 2.0?!} 04:45, 19 September 2012 (BST)

  It's not about the actual topic of humour vs humor, it's not about whether your one against could fell an A/RE bid or whether you take things personally or not. It's simply evidence that I could find from the top of my memory where you'd blatantly misrepresented history, precedent and rules of the wiki to benefit your argument on the subject, presumably hoping no one had the veracity to argue against it or make note of it. Of course, the reason I take such issue to it isn't because of these examples at hand. These links are simply quick examples of an overarching issue where at some points in your history as sysop, you did this on an almost daily basis, but of course I can't remember when and hence haven't looked for proof of it, so these links are the best I have to prove my issue I've had with you for a while now. Nonetheless, doing things like this regularly (let alone at all) is something I'm vehemently against seeing in a sysop. A ZOMBIE ANT 05:02, 19 September 2012 (BST)

  For most of those I wasn't a sysop DDR. That was after I came back before I got pushed into a renomination and most of the incidents you linked are missing information that changes context. Things like the DDR page deletion incident which shows I set the precedent I'm accused of misinterperting. The fact that I actually was the one who emptied the Humour page in the incident that led to it being a redirect and left that way for years and the fact that I actually apologized and rescinded the matthewfarentheit comment in response to your correctly calling me out on mis-remembering part of that 3 year old, at the time, case. --Karek^{maps 2.0?!} 05:13, 19 September 2012 (BST)

  Alright. For the record as I thought was clear I wasn't calling you out for the Matthewfarreinheit thing, I used it as an example that when wrong you are fine at admitting it. It also accurately sums up my criticism: Whether you realise it or not, whether there's malice behind it or you're just misremembering stuff, using "wrong" information as fact, especially for someone who attempts persuasion as strongly as you, has consequences for people who rely on us to do the right decision by them. A ZOMBIE ANT 05:31, 19 September 2012 (BST)

• Against. Seconding DDR's points for the most part; but I also have to admit I find Karek's punitive attitude to be something I'm uncomfortable with. Obviously I'm not for outright anarchy (well...) but a fan outlet for a browser game is something that should encourage an attitude of fun, competition and jest, and Karek's draconian approach to punishment is something which, while perfectly healthy as advice from the sidelines, is not something I enjoy seeing in a sysop. 02:09, 19 September 2012 (BST)
• Against As DDR & Mis.--Alice Gravesend 03:10, 19 September 2012 (BST)
• Vouch - I actually wasn't going to say anything, but honestly even though he's a prick and a liar, as long as he doesn't actively commit misconduct and does throw in maintaining things, I can't really say he doesn't deserve the abilities of a wiki janitor. -- ™ & © Amazing, INC. All rights reserved. Replying constitutes acceptance of our Terms of Service. 05:12, 19 September 2012 (BST)
• Kinda pulling an AHLG - I've been giving this some thought for awhile now, since I have a few serious objections with the way Karek operates. Quite obviously he's an ass (it's hard to overstate how much of an ass he can be), but that's true for many here. More than that though, he's uncompassionate and far too legalistic. It's taken me quite awhile to peg it down, but those are my two biggest issues with him, and I do consider them to be major ones, since I feel that our job as sysops is not merely to wrangle every letter of the law, but also to try and establish the spirit in which the wiki should be operating. Taking such a legalistic and uncompassionate stance so often serves to poison the way the wiki operates by removing humanity from the equation. Additionally, while I don't feel any animosity towards him, nor has he given me reason to believe he feels any towards me, I regularly find working with him to be unpleasant, primarily due to the abrasive and vehement manner in which he chooses to disagree with others, even over inconsequential matters.
  
  But despite all of that, I have plenty of good things to say about him as well. I still believe Karek to be one of the most competent sysops we've had. I also trust him more than any other current sysop to stand up for what he believes to be right, and I trust him to be right a good chunk of the time as well. When it comes to technical matters on the wiki, his knowledge surpasses mine, which is exactly the sort of thing that I really like to keep around. His wealth of experience on the wiki is also invaluable, as is the fact that he plays no favorites (his ire is bountiful and he shares it freely with all :P). If I need someone to act as the compass in a difficult situation, Karek is that person more often than not. He's rock steady, even if he's in a different place than I think he should be, though that stubbornness can also be problematic at times.
  
  Long story short, I have a lot of high praise for him, but it comes with several serious and ongoing concerns. All-in-all, however, I still come down in favor of his A/RE, though it's somewhat tentatively done. —Aichon— 05:29, 19 September 2012 (BST)
• Vouch - 7 misconduct allegations in favor of the defendant, (although this one was misconduct but was Viper's fault). that's good enough. plus i think Karek is a woman...the Hillary Clinton type...we need female SysOps. -- →Son of Sin← 10:23, 19 September 2012 (BST)
• I had to think about this for a bit, and to weigh the pros and cons.
  There is no doubt that Karek is savvy with the technical side of things, and has been around a lot in the old days. He's also a person of strong convictions who doesn't falter fast from popular pressure, which is to me a very important trait to a sys-op.
  That being said, in the last few months my concerns about his general conduct have considerably grown. In that time, he has been quick to assume bad faith and to invoke non-existant precedent to back up his position.
  In the end, the decisive factor has been Karek's conduct in the recent A/MR request. It is one thing to take up an unpopular stance and to keep it up against all opposition. It is an entirely different thing to start the argument by basing the request on the assumption of bad faith and to make unshakeable claims that the administrative action is inevitable and merely put through the regularly channels by courtesy. That did nothing to solve the issue, but did a lot to fuel drama. In the meantime, out of all users Karloth Vois did the right thing by going to the talk page, adressing Amazing's concerns and providing constructive criticism on how to save the page - which turned out to be as simple as to restart from scratch.
  So, tl;dr: Against for very similar reasons as DDR and surprisingly Thad. -- Spiderzed█ 19:10, 19 September 2012 (BST)

  That was me noting that I was attempting to provoke actual discussion on the issue, not that it was an inevitability. Move actions are currently something that sysops are allowed to do on a whim, I assumed lack of awareness of this was what lead to incorrect assumptions of my intentions. It resulted in the current discussion on the page now about how to make the page's policies better and it got users who were previously arguing to actually stop and positively participate in the page's development. Which was the idea. --Karek^{maps 2.0?!} 19:27, 19 September 2012 (BST)

• Against I don't really follow Karek's work. However, since nearly every criticism of Karek's past actions in this Re is met with an explanation of how they are actually wrong or why the actions were justified, it just seems there is more concern on winning than being right. -- _{Org XIII} ^Alts 23:21, 19 September 2012 (BST)
• I dunno with Karek. He knows his stuff with the wiki and does the work fantastically. But at the same time he's really argumentative and creates a lot of unnecessary fights, something I'm not a fan of. Personally I think sysops should try to mitigate drama and step back if it's getting out of hand, but the question really has to be if the good he does outweighs the harm he can do by being argumentative. Imo, that's a judgement call for the crats to make.--Shortround }.{ My Contributions 14:54, 20 September 2012 (BST)
• So, basically, everybody's saying that Karek should be less of an ass. I agree with them (although he hasn't been an ass against me yet), but his general competence as a sysop balances out quite a bit of it for me. -- †  talk ? f.u. 17:30, 20 September 2012 (BST)
• Vouch- Karek does his job and knows the wiki better than most. Yeah, he's argumentative. Yeah, he's Judge Dredd every now and then. But I don't really see that as impacting his ability to carry out his sysop duties. At the of the day, I'd rather have someone competent who knows exactly what he is doing with regard to wiki maintenance and admin tasks, than some model citizen who is never around or not pulling their share.-MHSstaff 21:49, 23 September 2012 (BST)
• Judge karke has always argued to the best of his knowledge and he knows what he's doing. He's a dick sometimes, yes. But honestly? I'd still rather have an active sysop who's a bit of a dick than some of these inactive fucks. And by that, I suppose I just mean the General. Anyway, w/e. I'm kind of seeing Karke and DDR as what used to go down between ME and DDR, so yeah. PRobably just a phase for everyone.--SA 23:24, 20 September 2012 (BST)
• Vouch - fuck sailor moon--THE Godfather of Яesensitized, Anime Sucks ^{Yalk | W! U! WMM| CC CPFOAS LOE ZHU | Яezzens} 05:18, 21 September 2012 (BST)
• Vouch - Karek takes a lot of flak for making hard decisions and sticking to them, but that's precisely what a sysop should be doing! --Karloth Vois ^¯\(°_o)/¯ 11:35, 23 September 2012 (BST)
• Vouch What can I say? I like the guy :) PB&J 18:16, 26 September 2012 (BST)
• Eouch – While Karek is somewhat (harh!) abrasive, he does good work – and fact is, you need someone to wear away the crud that builds up otherwise. I witnessed his first reluctant run for sysop, and I still think we're all the better off for having his talents on our side. A vouch for Karek is a vouch for a better UDWiki! I hope that was worth ten bucks! ᚱᛁᚹᛖᚾᚨᚾᛏ 02:29, 1 October 2012 (BST)

You know what? Being a crat should be the easiest thing in the world. You promote, you demote. Every once in a while you mount a coup. Should be easy. But then you get something like this. There's no boxy around, I've given him enough time, and plenty of reminders. So here comes my ruling. Karek's evaluation is cycled as successful.

Now. Here's my reasoning. As I'm the only one making the decision, and as you people always love it when I talk, here's the in depth ruling. First of all there's my own position. My own opinion is Vouch, and here's why. Firstly Karek gets the job done, has superior technical knowledge to many of the team (including myself) and is a good source of knowledge on aspects of the game I have only read about.

But, that's like, my personal opinion man, and frankly the last thing I should consider. So looking at the feedback and comments, I note several things. 1) On a basic numerical level he has twice as many Vouches as Againsts. 2) Where the hell were all these comments Last time around? It was an absolute cakewalk! Re-evaluations are for exactly this kind of thing. 3) The common theme between all votes, whether for, against or abstain is that Karek is technically able to do the job, indeed does it very well, the issue is with style & personality. Karek is thermonuclear, he is Judge Dredd. So I look at his misuses of power. There's not a lot to go on there. So I return to the bid. In random Order.

"He's the next Grim!" - He isn't. He's certainly mentally capable of performing the role. He doesn't say "Fuck you!" on admin pages, and he's barely a flicker in crat elections. A grand total of two votes in his favour this year. Why? For exactly the reasons stated above. He's never going to run the place. He's found his natural level of responsibility.

"Uses wrong information as fact". Yeah. I think we've got enough example of that kind of thing. That's something we should stop doing. This is Karek's Achilles heel, and if I was a betting man, is exactly the kind of thing that will eventually get him kicked off this train.

"Always responds/doesn't know when to stop..." this is true. It's tough to walk away, especially when your a combative person. But in this case, it's not a flaw in my opinion. The more he speaks, the more we learn about him. DDR has thrown up a lot of past examples to back up his POV, because he got into long running discussions, arguments, etc with karek. Karek justifies his arguments. The issue is sometimes these justifications are wrong.

Now. (Deep Breath). There are some members of the sysop team who have thrown the decision solely at the crats. On a personal level I hate you. On a decision making level, it reinforces my final point. The sysop team should reflect differing opinions, varied points of view, strong feelings and pointless drama. It's a reflection of the wiki as a whole. Karek is one part of a whole, scrutinized more than any other by a thankless band of long term veterans and former sysops. When he kicks up a fuss, people will always question him, object to him and vote against him. That's what a wiki is for. I want strong opinions on the sysop team. Frankly, I want more of you on the sysop team. Go, apply now. I'd let practically anyone in.

Karek. Read this. Some of the criticsm hers is valid. Be less of an ass, know when it's time to walk away from stuff and carry on being good at sysop-things

Everyone else. Disagree with me? Fine. Run me up for misconduct, find someone else to make these decisions.

I tolerate you all. --I'm not the Ross UDWiki needs, I'm the Ross it deserves. 20:10, 1 October 2012 (BST)

*Showers Ross in mojitos and beach chairs* I suspect adulation and praise might be in short supply, but I'll offer my, "You made the right decision, given how this went", to start things off. —Aichon— 20:29, 1 October 2012 (BST)

Technically I do not believe promotions/demotions are Misconductable since they do not make use of sysop functions, but yeah, no disagreements here. Good jorb. ᚱᛁᚹᛖᚾᚨᚾᛏ 01:21, 2 October 2012 (BST)

I came close to testing that once with the J3D promotion wherein neither crat wanted him but both were under the impression they had to accept him. It was one of the more ridiculous bids on the wiki. --Karek^{maps 2.0?!} 03:36, 2 October 2012 (BST)

I see little issue with making solo calls, and if it is, it only reflects on Boxy and his occasional dense inactivity more than anything else. And it doesn't take a rocket scientist to deduce that you made the right decision and with some good points. So I'd prepare my facepalm laughing cap for anyone who approaches A/M A ZOMBIE ANT 10:03, 2 October 2012 (BST)

For the record, I agree with pretty much everything Ross said about the issue. Karek is too useful to lose as a sysop whilstever he's willing to put in :p -- boxy 09:43, 5 October 2012 (BST)