UDWiki:Administration/Misconduct/Archive/Cyberbob240/2007

02:43, 26 March 2007 (BST)

Here Cyberbob240 bans some dirty zerger's wiki user even though there were no vandalism edits and then warns them against making additional accounts. Their contributions while not astounding appear a pretty common sort of meta-gaming chit-chat and banter. I hope most would not agree with this persons style of game play. None of their actions caused harm to the wiki itself, violate policy or even seem more troublesome than trite.

Making the use of alternate accounts vandalism through policy has been rejected by the community and further discussion seems met with apathy. The use of multiple accounts has not been shown to be outside what a person might do in a meta-gaming construct and has been shown to be nobody's business but their own unless they are created to circumvent a ban or to vandalize directly. --Max Grivas ^{JG / M.F.T.} 02:43, 26 March 2007 (BST)

Not misconduct. He acted accondingly to this policy.--Thari ^{TжFedCom is BFI!} 05:12, 26 March 2007 (BST)

As I already said on A/VB, Max. Thanks for actually taking the time to read my comments. --Hubrid Nox ^{Sys WTF U! B!} 05:46, 26 March 2007 (BST)

Guys, that part of the policy seems like a "valid for everything argument" that I'm not happy to accept, as the spirit of that part of the guidelines is misinterpreted like that. I'm not complaining here, as I believe that Cyberbob240's actions were done in good faith, but I do prefer some other kind of justification than pointing to a part of the policy that ultimately could justify everything. I do interact with Gasbandit from time to time, mostly in-game, and the practice of using two seperate wiki accounts to back up his arguments in a discussion is unexcusable. It should be noted that Gas didn't provide any explanation on why he did that. --Matthew Fahrenheit ^YRC☺T☺+1 06:10, 26 March 2007 (BST)

I was taken to misconduct for unveiling a sockpuppet. I don't see why Cyberbob should be treated differently. Precedent is a bitch.--Gage 05:48, 26 March 2007 (BST)

Would you like some cheese with your incorrect whine? Look at the policy. --Hubrid Nox ^{Sys WTF U! B!} 05:54, 26 March 2007 (BST)

I am looking at the policy. It says:

• Moderators are also given the authority to make decisions regarding actions for which there is no governing policy in place. For example, should a particular action for which there is no policy be disputed, moderators may exercise their best judgment to allow or deny it.
• Past moderator actions that are not explicitly governed by a policy may be used as precedent, but if a moderator believes that the precedent should be ignored for some significant reason, he or she may do so.

First, I tried to reign in this issue via a policy. That means that there was a policy that governed this behavior and it was rejected. That is as good as the community saying "this issue should be allowed". The second part says you may subvert precedent for a significant reason. As Max had stated before, there has been no vandalism or anything of the sort from this user. As such, this is misconduct.

You can't use the clause in A/G as carte-blanche permission to do whatever the fuck you want to.--Gage 06:05, 26 March 2007 (BST)

Gage, Gasbandit was using his alternate account as a back up on the discussions he engaged on. That seems bad faith to me... --Matthew Fahrenheit ^YRC☺T☺+1 06:12, 26 March 2007 (BST)

Yeah, and Kevan was using his as a sockpuppet on A/VB, there was Faerie Queen, and of course, Grundo. All of which were sock puppets. All of them. None of which we revealed, except for Kevan's which is the one I got in trouble for. Maybe it was bad faith, but the precedent with bad faith sockpuppets is that as long as they haven't caused actual vandalism they are okay. Again, this is misconduct. I am unbanning the account in question.--Gage 06:52, 26 March 2007 (BST)

Rash as always. Another Sysop already ruled on this you know? you should at least wait until have a consensus or at least a majority before taking action. And for your arguments: yet again you prove how much you ignore even the basic rules.

Gage said:

Maybe it was bad faith, but the precedent with bad faith sockpuppets is that as long as they haven't caused actual vandalism they are okay.

Bad faith IS vandalism. --Matthew Fahrenheit ^YRC☺T☺+1 07:05, 26 March 2007 (BST)

I do have a majority. Count again. Cyberbob does not count. I want boxy's opinion on this, but everyone here knows my opinion already. This user caused much less trouble than User:Faerie Queen and Cyberbob resolutely refused to reveal the account's owner in that case. I value consistency, and if we allow the revealing of this account while keeping in mind that we didn't reveal the identity of User:Faerie Queen, this smacks of bias. Surely User X would not get preferential treatment because the mod staff happens to like them, would they?--Gage 07:30, 26 March 2007 (BST)

Newsflash Gage: Faerie Queen was Saromu. The General revealed that on my talk page after Cyberbob ruled his actions as vandalism, go look if you want. What were you saying about consistency? It was obvious that Saromu was getting preferential treatment that another user wouldn't have gotten in other circumstances, so the precedent would be different, but I do not want to go back to that issue: Saromu and me apologized to each other for our faults and I think it's over. Also, I didn't see Max ruling... --Matthew Fahrenheit ^YRC☺T☺+1 07:55, 26 March 2007 (BST)

Off-topic for a sec - I just wanted to apologise for that whole episode. 'Twas a Bad Thing to Do...

And back on-topic - There is a huge precedent for banning alts which haven't committed vandalism. Look at Jedaz's alt, Jeda. People wishing to change their account names must currently (as we don't have the required plugin) make a new account with their desired name, and have the old account banned. We don't have to go by precedent, but in this case there's plenty of it anyway. --Hubrid Nox ^{Sys WTF U! B!} 08:35, 26 March 2007 (BST)

Oh, for clarification - Jeda wasn't Jedaz's original account or anything - just an example of an alt who was banned without having committed "vandalism". Interestingly, he appears to have been performing a similar function to Captain Jack Testes'. --Hubrid Nox ^{Sys WTF U! B!} 08:45, 26 March 2007 (BST)

Thats an invalid point Cyberbob, during that time that account was banned because it was counted as going around a ban. - Jedaz^{ΣT MC ΞD GIS S!} 10:01, 26 March 2007 (BST)

Good point. Lemme dig through the logs for another example. --Hubrid Nox ^{Sys WTF U! B!} 10:28, 26 March 2007 (BST)

Dang. Can't find a single one. The ban was still justified, though, as the alt was arguably used in bad faith to "zerg" conversations the main was involved in. --Hubrid Nox ^{Sys WTF U! B!} 10:45, 26 March 2007 (BST)

My opinion Gage? Not misconduct. The guy was using a second account to back his main account. There is no need for that. I disagreed with C'bob's original stance on Faerie Queen, but he was convinced to change his mind, so no real inconsistency there. It sort of set the precedence for this in bob's mind I'd guess. However, it is a messy area, and I understand your (and Max's) disagreement with it. It needs to be spelled out. Anyway, gotta run for a bit -- boxy ^{T L ZS Nuts2U DA} 08:55, 26 March 2007 (BST)

I second boxy--Vista 10:35, 26 March 2007 (BST)

I disagree. As long as none of the accounts were involved in actions of bad faith cyberbob had no reason to point out the alt account, not even to ban it from the community. If alt accounts were all to be treated as vandalism, we should warn Kevan for using an alt in the Vandal Banning page during the fall of caigar, and me for having created the DangerReport user. --People's Commissar Hagnat ^{[cloned] [mod]} 12:43, 26 March 2007 (BST)

You don't count zerging conversations with other people as being bad faith? --Hubrid Nox ^{Sys WTF U! B!} 12:47, 26 March 2007 (BST)

Kevan is exempt from any rules we may make, or try to enforce -- boxy ^{T L ZS Nuts2U DA} 13:01, 26 March 2007 (BST)

Actually seeing how Kevan behaves on this wiki, I'd think he'd be insulted if we didn't haul him to A/VB if he committed vandalism. He's as a model wiki-user as they come. I think we can count the times he invoked executive privilege on one hand. He goes out of his way to avoid using it., He even creates new accounts to avoid giving us “orders from above”--Vista 13:47, 26 March 2007 (BST)

Newsflash Gage: Faerie Queen was Saromu. The General revealed that on my talk page after Cyberbob ruled his actions as vandalism.... thx Matthew for pointing General's Misconduct. --People's Commissar Hagnat ^{[cloned] [mod]} 12:43, 26 March 2007 (BST)

As far as I'm concerned, it's not misconduct to reveal the alternate login name of people with sock puppets used for bad faith edits (such as was the case with Faerie Queen). The privacy policy states that data from IP checks can be revealed where it is reasonably necessary to protect the rights... of the Urban Dead wiki, its users or the public. UD wiki users have a right to know when they are being "zerged", IMO -- boxy ^{T L ZS Nuts2U DA} 12:57, 26 March 2007 (BST)

I think we should make clear in the ruling here that this alt was banned for what we consider a bad faith edit, not for being an alt part. Also, I think it can’t hurt to point out that editing under an alt is allowed but extra prudence while editing under an alt is necessary because the possible anonymity makes that you meet the standard of bad faith quicker. --Vista 13:36, 26 March 2007 (BST)

Sorry for this side note, but since it's been revealed that Faerie Queen was Saromu, and Faerie Queen was warned, shouldn't Saromu have his vandal data updated and the corresponding warning/ban be enforced? - Jedaz^{ΣT MC ΞD GIS S!} 14:21, 26 March 2007 (BST)

Looks like that, yes. It would be more of a bookkeeping act than anything else though. It seems he's gone permanently inactive.--Vista 14:28, 26 March 2007 (BST)

Yeah, if we go by the rules then Saromu should be warned and the alt account banned indefinitely, but... let's say that when that drama fest was over I didn't want to have more to do with it anymore, and as Saromu apologized (and not used the account again ever since), there wasn't any reason for me to have Saromu warned (and doing so would probably have resulted in the hostilities resumed). Call it "solomonic justice". --Matthew Fahrenheit ^YRC☺T☺+1 18:23, 26 March 2007 (BST)

Well, the decision appears to be deadlocked with Max, Gage, & Hagnat saying "yes it is misconduct" and Thari, boxy, and Vista saying "no it isn't misconduct." The conflict really seems to be between the rejection of this policy and the precedence of banning alts indicative of this policy. On the one hand, it states "no you can't ban alts", but according to the other policy, through precedence, it dictates "yes you can ban alts". Assuming each holds equal importance, we're kind of stuck. --^T 17:29, 26 March 2007 (BST)

Well actually I think it’s even worse. I think we’re not even at the misconduct stage. We’re divided about if there even was a mistake. Making a mistake is allowed and not automatically misconduct. The fact that there are about two equal camps shows that the rules are somewhat less then clear in this matter. Now I believe that if we can’t agree if a mistake is made then misconduct is highly unlikely.

I propose a vote to see if Cyberbob, either made a honest mistake/simply had it right, or that he behaved in a way that constituted misconduct. And that this case has no status as precedent. So that we either introduce a new alt policy through the normal channels and/or judge the next case on its own merits.

All in Favor? --Vista 18:34, 26 March 2007 (BST)

How about we just close this then.?--Vista 09:04, 28 March 2007 (BST)

Agreed.--Thari ^{TжFedCom is BFI!} 09:34, 28 March 2007 (BST)

done, it's gone on long enough.--Vista 09:37, 28 March 2007 (BST)