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→re: panel
I saw some of your recent remarks about CP blocking in relation to yourself. I also saw you have created a significant amount of content at CP. Could you explain your non-TK blocks in the past or all of your blocks if you feel so inclined (I was never a TK fan)? At best, I could lobby for you to be on the panel if you wish to be. No promises though as I don't want to cause needless controversy concerning the panel. Worst case scenario, the panel may look at your previous blocks as possible useful input. [[User:Conservative|Conservative]] 17:47, 15 August 2011 (EDT)
I saw some of your recent remarks about CP blocking in relation to yourself. I also saw you have created a significant amount of content at CP. Could you explain your non-TK blocks in the past or all of your blocks if you feel so inclined (I was never a TK fan)? At best, I could lobby for you to be on the panel if you wish to be. No promises though as I don't want to cause needless controversy concerning the panel. Worst case scenario, the panel may look at your previous blocks as possible useful input. [[User:Conservative|Conservative]] 17:47, 15 August 2011 (EDT)
:Thanks for the reply. I appreciate being invited, but you don't need to create controversy on my account. That a few of the panel members read my comments is all I request. At any rate, I'm headed out of the country to visit in-laws later today, and will not likely be online while your panel is underway.
:To answer your question about blocks, the most recent one was by a parodist (JacobB). Whatever prompted it has disappeared from my logs, but the "personal remarks" JacobB referenced probably had something to do with me ribbing his buddy TK about the "socialist sport" comments he had made during the World Cup. Nothing earth-shattering.
:As for the other blocks, I'll briefly describe them here. One I'll admit to being deserved, both are very instructive as to what's keeping good-faith editors away from here:
:''14:58, 17 April 2009 DeanS (Talk | contribs) blocked JDWpianist (Talk | contribs) with an expiry time of 3 days (account creation disabled) (Negative personal comments: Andy's talk page)''
:*When a very good user (over 1000 useful edits and many pages created) and friend of mine, AlanE, was insulted by Andy for having made "no significant contribution" to the site, he understandably got angry and wrote a stinging Parthian on the way out. I got angry too, and mouthed off at Andy myself, saying (with some measure of incivility) that if one can't keep a good user like AlanE on the site, then there's no hope -- funny how the same theme keeps recurring...
:''18:09, 16 March 2009 Karajou (Talk | contribs) unblocked JDWpianist (Talk | contribs) (user request, as per email)''
:''17:22, 16 March 2009 Karajou (Talk | contribs) blocked JDWpianist (Talk | contribs) with an expiry time of infinite (account creation disabled) (Same IP(s) as previously blocked user(s): Use of foreign ISP as proxy mask: Chello Broadband GmbH, Vienna, Austria (chello062178038065.13.11.vie.surfer.at); sock of Wilsher)''
:*This block happened the day I showed up, before making any single edit. Karajou apparently assumed that there were no valid users wanting to edit from Vienna, and so I clearly must have been a sock of the last guy who tried to edit from Vienna. Had I been the easily-dissuaded type, I would have just given up. But I sent an e-mail to Karajou saying, "I don't know who this guy Wilsher is, but I'd like to edit the site." After a suspicious reply, something to the effect "Well, okay, but I'm going to be watching you like a hawk!", Karajou was kind enough to "allow" me to edit the site. This is the kind of treatment that I think is counter-productive to having good editors here. I think that for most good faith users, being blocked right away, no questions asked, and then having your e-mail replied to grudgingly, sends the clear message "we don't want you here." You are all so focused on eliminating the threat of bad-faith users and vandals, but you don't realize that it's your draconian policies which are encouraging them.
:A further word or two about TK: now that he's dead, the CP sysops are happy to disown him and everything he did, but don't forget that when he was still active, your honor code ("never question another sysop's block") made sure that he was able to do whatever he wanted unchecked. If he didn't like someone, he had a habit of sending abusive e-mails; any appeal I made to other sysops was met with silence and inaction. Like it or not, CP's policies, which are designed with the sole purpose of giving sysops free reign to fight vandalism as they please and contain no recourse or review for unfairly-blocked users other than begging and grovelling to the one who blocked them, make it easy for the TK's of the world to set up their own fiefdoms here and get their jollies through harassing and bullying others. There have been by my count at least two other "mini-TK's" since, and is probably one more right now.
:The bottom line is, there needs to be a sea change in how sysops view their role. I don't deny that you have a problem with vandalism, but sysops shouldn't forget that the first goal should be to keep good faith editors here and happy. If the policies are only engineered to make it easy for sysops to counteract vandals and alleged "parodists," then you're creating obstacles for the good-faith users which will usually cause them to give up and contribute elsewhere, and by extension making sure that the only users wishing to jump those hurdles are people who secretly hate the site and wish it harm. Clear rules are needed, which the sysops must follow as well as the regular users. Transparency and fairness are a must. Wikipedia's "assume good faith" and "don't bite the newbie" policies are a fantastic guide for working with new users.
:Cheers, [[User:JDWpianist|JDWpianist]] 03:09, 16 August 2011 (EDT)