UDWiki talk:Misconduct

Not sure I like these changes

Please don't make me side with Iscariot here because i know what you are aiming for and think its a good idea but...

• "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."

This could leave it a bit to open for a sysop to claim "harassment" on a user and punish them with A/VB escalations. As long as I can remember it has been a firm principle of the misconduct procedure that punishment (even for bringing frivilous cases) was never to be given to the accuser as it may discourage folk from bringing real cases. Yes there are many examples of recen cases that go beyond frivilous and should be regarded as vandalism/trolling but Misconduct is the only real way the community at large has to call out the sysops and anything that alters the balance deserves more consideration and community input than what we have here. As for the actual list of "not misconducts", I really do not think it is particularly useful.--Honestmistake 09:44, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Do you honestly think that the sysops can not tell the difference between a user thinking they have a legitimate concern and someone that is grasping at straws? Have you ever noticed on the A/VB page when a "new" user posts a case that isn't vandalism the attending sysops explain why it isn't yet when some long time user does we say "you should have taken this to their talk page first"? Have you never ever ever seen that? Have you ever noticed that a majority of the Misconduct cases are filed by the same people? Do you really think that sysops shouldn't be given the same protections as regular users? --– Nubis ^NWO 14:15, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

In 99.9% of cases you are completely right about sysops judgment on such things, however the wording of this just suggests that it could be used as another way of drumming users that a sysop doesn't like off the wiki. You point out below that Grim had filed 6 cases but how many did he have filed against him by regular users who felt he was abusing his authority that he managed to have disproved because he hadn't technically broken rules? Thing is I can remember Grim driving a few users off and trying to do the same to a few others with the A/VB system, Nalikil springs to mind. If he had been able to utilize misconduct to further such campaigns he might have been even more "successful" and yet he wasn't found guilty of abusing the trust that the community had supposedly put in him and he was clever enough to not use his sysop powers in a clear cut misconductable way? I do think that Sysops deserve the rights to prevent harassment, but i don't think threatening sanctions against those who use misconduct in a way that the sysops find inappropriate is the right way to go about it. I am not saying that you, or indeed anyone else on the current team would try such asshattery nor am I saying that Iscariot should not be facing Vandalism charges for some of his recent cases, I am merely stating that i think this notice/explanation leaves a lot to be desired and sends out the wrong message--Honestmistake 17:09, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Or to put it simply... Vandalism charges have always been a possibility for extreme cases and we have never felt the need to put up an explicit threat/reminder before. Putting this here now may serve to deter the current common offenders or more likely serve as evidence in their A/VB trials but the notification will still be there and its reason for appearing will blur, and the tolerance level will drop until we get a borderline "grasping at straws" case which pisses someone off and results in a vandal escalation. Misconduct exists so that sysops can be held to some sort of accountability and something that reduces the willingness for a regular user to call them on actions they feel are unjust is not a step in the right direction. --Honestmistake 17:21, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Ok, stop and think for a minute. I don't even know where to start with you.

Grim had 6 misconduct cases - 2 were about bullying, 1 was for the coup, 1 was a DHPD/Dead thing, 2 were non-sysop stuff. Only 2 were voted Misconduct. Grim was a bully because he constantly "narced" on people for the slightest thing that was a technical violation. Any user can make A/VB cases and many do make annoyance cases. That isn't a sysop only function that needed to be handled in Misconduct.

He hid behind POLICY POLICY and fought every civility policy that came along. His targets were normal users and his weapon of choice was A/VB. Does that sound familiar? Just change the target and weapon slightly...

It almost took an act of god to get rid of him when it should have been a no brainer when he started abusing the system. He was adding nothing to the wiki and we couldn't protect the normal users from him because even though we knew it was harassment technically it was right (but for the wrong reasons). Since everything every sysop ever says is quoted by someone at some point as "precedent" you had to watch how you voted on his cases. You didn't want habitual troll user B using the case against user A (that made a mistake and was persecuted by Grim) as precedent to get away with wiki murder.

If vandalism charges have always been a possibility for "extreme" cases and there isn't a notice that says they are isn't that very unfair ? If someone gets a VB case against them for extreme abuse of A/VB or A/M and we can't point to a warning on a page how is that fair at all? It's a good thing that the current sysops actually believe in the intent of a rule or policy and not the wording. --– Nubis ^NWO 19:59, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

First let me reiterate that I do not disagree with you in regards to there being a problem, I don't even think the issuing of warnings in extreme cases is wrong. However there is a fundamental difference between technicalities of guilt on A/VB and A/M. In vandalism cases unless its a newbie mistake its still vandalism and there have been many cases where that was the verdict regardless of how serious the act and the consequence (admitedly those were again most often involving Grim) On A/M though we frequently see real misconduct treated as inconsequential because of the reporter or because it was in good faith or because it did no harm or the rule broken was in the wrong etc... Someone throwing such nonesense technicality cases IS still throwing genuine cases and its very shaky grounds to try punishing them for it even if it is annoying. Likewise the poor bugger who feels he is being picked on (right or wrong) who throws a wobbler and trawls history to put together a few misconduct cases to get his own back and ends up in A/VB for his troubles. Just because Grim is gone doesn't help if we give extra weapons to the next sysop to go GaGa and thats what i feel this (in its current form) could lead to.--Honestmistake 14:13, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Some stats to ponder. In 2008 there were 39 Misconduct cases filed.

• 1 Case was clearly not a sysop power, but it still counts (Grim vs Lost Causeman).
• 3 cases were related to The Dead/Vote Striking/DHPD issues.
• All the sysops combined (excluding Grim) filed a total of 4 cases against other sysops.
• J3D filed 4 cases.
• Grim filed 6 cases.
• Iscariot filed 9.

(I know that doesn't add up to 39 but the other cases are filed by other users. There are a few users that have 2 cases, but not many.)--– Nubis ^NWO 14:55, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Comments From the Wizard Who Did It

You are correct Honestmistake charges have always been possible. However I do feel that certain users don't realize that and have tried to use the absence of a notice to that effect as an excuse to abuse our lenience when it comes to this type of thing. That's why I put that in there, as you say it's simple restating the current status quo. That fact that we're having this discussion here should make it clear as to why it's there for future cases. :)

And fortunately I have a decent history of being against escalations for Misconduct cases, and on that note any input on making the purpose of that notice more clear would be much appreciated. However I do believe it is needed in the light of the growing number of obviously harassment oriented cases. --Judge Karke, self-proclaimed Decider of Everything and Ruler of All 23:23, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

I agree that it is unlikely to be abused in the way i suggest it might by the current sysops but there really is something that makes me uneasy about the whole thing. I will take you up on the input being welcome when I get a chance but believe it or not I am on the sysops side here, the recent spate is an example of how misconduct gets abused and its happened before in one form or another (GRIM) I just don't like this answer, its not Draconian and its not even mildly unfair, it just seems like a step towards something that is and much as I hate to say it Iscariot does make valid points occasionaly :( --Honestmistake 14:00, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Out of the 9 cases Iscariot filed only one was voted Misconduct. That one case was the one where his warning was struck 7 edits early. What point exactly is he making? --– Nubis ^NWO 17:21, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Archive

Can we get someone with the ability to edit the page to add a prominent link to the archives here. Something that notes that there's a place to look up other examples of what is and isn't generally taken as Misconduct, big M, on the wiki? It always frustrates me when I come here and there isn't a prominent archive link before. Hopefully it'll clear up some of the misconceptions about precedent. --Karek^{maps 2.0?!} 22:33, 4 May 2011 (BST)

Good?--Yonnua Koponen ^{T G P} ^^^ 23:37, 4 May 2011 (BST)