It was always going to end this way. The community, or at least those who loudly profess to be it, complained for years that ArbCom were incompetent idiots by not doing what they wanted. The cause of their frustration was of course that ArbCom did what they were elected to do, stand up for policy against the mob, who would rather ArbCom ignore policy to protect established users seen as doing good work (even "irreplaceable" in extreme cases), or on the flip side ignore policy and not protect those who were so effective at using policy (and stubbornness) to fend off the baying mob.
And so, almost unnoticed, instead of carrying on complaining, they decided to exploit the weakness that ArbCom is the only place on Wikipedia where voting is power. It started slowly at first, just a couple of official mob candidates. They got elected easily, despite being horrendously unqualified and unsuited. Having quickly devalued the quality of the Committee, decisions started to get weaker and weaker, the very idea these people existed to show leadership evaporated. Before too long, the insurgency became the orthodoxy.
In 2017 there were only eight viable candidates for eight seats. Five years ago this would have had the 'community' screaming that the whole thing was a sham, an establishment stitch up, an affront to true democratic choice. They sat on their hands. Why? Not apathy. They could see that with absolute lying scum like Opabina Regalis now firmly entrenched as the ranking Members, they no longer needed to worry that ArbCom would be out of step with their wishes. The measure of Opabina's character, indeed her basic inability to do anything complex like assess evidence, is indistinguishable from the sort of half-witted disingenuous game playing lying scum that had been railing against the Committee for getting it wrong for a decade.
There are still good people on the Committee, real leaders capable of defending policy, but not enough to even ensure a valid case gets accepted half the time, much less is properly progressed if by some miracle one is. We have seen what happens even when the qualified and sensible candidates are given the relative power of drafting a case decision. If it contradicts the mob orthodoxy, it is voted down by the rest of the Members, or subjected to Death By Committee. The result are utter abortions like Giant Snowman.
This is the environment that explains why absolute scum like The Rambling Man can routinely break the sanctions previous Committtee's have applied to him, and nobody says a damn word, least of all the current Committee.
This recent request decline is a classic example of how a Big Beast of Wikipedia blatantly ignoring policy to act unilaterally for her own ideas of what Doing The Right Thing looks like, has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to fear from the Committee anymore.....
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... =878467205In previous years, the fact that clear and obvious breaches of policy had been identified, regardless of the specifics of whether or that particular incident was still causing controversy, would have led to a case being opened, to examine if playing fast and loose with the tools and the rules with no clear and obvious benefit to the community (as defined by the absence of any legitimate complaints), was a pattern for this specific Administrator.
As anyone who follows Bishonen knows, it is totally her pattern. She is a complete and total cowboy, she uses her powers in this fashion all the time, arrogantly daring people to do something about it if they disagree. If you're lucky you might get an explanation, but it is more typical that, as happened here, she will choose to hear what she wants to hear and double down, and if you don't like it basically you can GO FUCK YOURSELF. She's too smart to say it, but as any idiot can see, that is the effect of her actions and words, or lack thereof. She got away with not even giving a proper statement FFS.
It used to be the case that investigating the actions of Administrators who had a genuine belief their actions were right and proper and done for the best of Wikipedia, but due to their own actions they were either still completely idiotic, speaking therefore entirely to either their utter incompetence or worse, their desire to game the system. Now bizarrely, this is somehow used as a reason not to accept a case.
It would be funny if it were not so serious, how often Opabina does what she did here. First, she comes up with a fanciful version of events that is basically fraudulent, and she then places on top of that interpretations of policy that are absolutely WARPED. I mean, on what fucking planet was this a valid application of IAR? The first clue it was not, was that BISHONEN DID NOT SAY SHE WAS APPLYING IAR.
In that environment, where somehow the likes of Opabina have become the ranking members and absolute nonsense like that is ignored even by her peers, and is celebrated by the rank and file as TRUTH, then you understand why the few Committee Members still capable of actually taking sense, such as Mkdw in this scenario, still feel pressured not to rock the boat and accept the case.
Bishonen walked off into the sunset, not even remotely caring that four out of seven Arbitrators who commented said she had failed to meet what is a minimum standard for an Administrator. If the Committee had not been completely hollowed out and made to resemble the community itself, where such things don't matter because for Big Beasts the rules don't mean shit, you just need to have the balls to ignore them and stare everyone down, then a damn sight more than four would have been saying it, and they probably would have realized that this is not the first time she has received such criticism, and cares as little about that now as she ever did, and accepted a case to collect the evidence of this pattern (easily found), and then set her straight, or kick her out.
This is why the Committee does hardly anything anymore, except to accept and prosecute clear and obvious cases, shooting people in broad daylight in the middle of Fifth Avenue type cases.
The current Committee wants absolutely no part of investigating anyone, be they Administrator or Editor, who has a clear and persistent pattern of ignoring the rules for no other reason then they are inconvenient to them and conflict with their personal view of what is best for Wikipedia. Unless of course, the person is pursing an agenda that is deemed unacceptable to the cult, like genuine NPOV in areas like politics, then the rules will be used as a tool to achieve the desired outcome. In this respect, the Committee is now totally aligned with the core bunch of game playing bastards that likes to call itself the community.
See, Democracy works! The one obstacle to the mob, was eventually removed by the mob exercising their power at the ballot box.
If anyone wants to see the effect of democracy on Wikipedia, consider this......Bishonen justified her action as follows.....
None of the usual reasons for keeping a talkpage unprotected applies.
.....but as the Committee should certainly appreciate, this is an absurd case of turning the entire body of Wikipedia protection policy on its head. That a page is unprotected is the DEFAULT, it is for those arguing it should not be unprotected to give clear reasons why protection has to be applied. As had already been pointed out to her by a colleague, 'user request' is not one of them.
I mean, FUCK, there is
no such thing as a list of reasons why a page should be unprotected, only a requirement that the valid reasons for protection no longer apply. If Bishonen genuinely believe this is the protection policy, she is incompetent. She doesn't believe it, she knows it's garbage, but she is merely following the established pattern that the community and virtually all the current Administrators less powerful than her are more than happy to accept whatever garbage she says, largely because they don't want to be wiki-beaten up for disagreeing with the almighty Bishonen.
The Arbitration Committee had an opportunity here to investigate the root causes as to why Bishonen, an Administrator, seems so comfortable talking utter shit to justify an obvious abuse of policy. They declined the opportunity. Literally declined it. It should be absolutely no surprise then, that now it has become the norm for the sort of utter scum ordinary editor that Bishonen has previously protected with her abusive ways, have now begun to parrot her bullshit.....
Tony knows only too well how many times my talk page has been vandalised, including filthy comments about my wife. There's no reason to unprotected it, unless of course The Duke of Nonsense wishes to create a sock to carry out such bile, undetected. CassiantoTalk 17:02, 20 May 2019 (UTC)
....and it was no surprise then to see one of the Committee members who don't know or don't care that it is wrong and gave Bishonen free reign to continue her cowboy ways, turning up to endorse it......
Cassianto has expressed a desire for the semi protection to remain and for you to leave him alone. Please respect that and drop the matter. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 17:52, 20 May 2019 (UTC)
Is it a coincidence that Bishonen, Opabina and PMC are all women? Probably not. The theory that the women who rise to the top of Wikipedia typically only get there by being even more corrupt than then men they need to displace, holds. Arrogance is what it is, having the sheer balls to say something absurd and simply expect others to accept it, or resort to pitched battle to prove you wrong. Not a common female trait, but quite clearly being selected for by the evolutionary forces of what works for the Wikipedia community.
Cassianto (editor)==Bishonen (Administrator)==PMC (Arbitrator). All as corrupt as each other, telling people black is white and to move on, nothing to see here, if they think differently. The theoretical difference in their level of trust and implied clue arising from the differing statuses, now only a theoretical.
This same patterns of the Committee simply aping the worst elements of the so called community in how and why they decline Cases, can be seen time and again....
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia ... d_requestsIt took a long time, but it is clear, this fish didn't rot from the head, it began with the tail, and now the rot has progressed right to the head.
These days, anyone who submits an ArbCom case that is not a clear cut case of "tool abuse", really is an idiot on a fool's errand. The message that it is a complete waste of time has been received by most of the community, for whom submitting a Case was never an appealing prospect anyway. Now it is only those too naive (newbies and Robert McLennons alike), or entrenched combatants, who even try. Not a great look for a project that purports to be self-governing.