His intent appeared to be to help the Commons community come to the realisation that Beeblebrox had infact been guilty of harassment of Fae, and this really was a serious matter.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.p ... Beeblebrox
Which it is. People have been Globally Banned for it before, specifically for this specific type of quite evil harassment, a mix of on and off wiki posts which the harasser knew would be seen by their victim, and took a sort of perverse and gleefull enjoyment in realising that they had had the intended effect.
Celtic Minded was soon wrongfully blocked by Ymblanter, but because that block was so obviously a bad block, whose only real purpose seemed to be to protect Beeblebrox, it was swiftly undone.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User ... tic_Minded
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.p ... _contribs)
And then, bang, out of the blue, something very weird happened.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special ... tic_Minded01:11, 30 August 2021 Martin Urbanec talk contribs changed status for global account "User:Celtic Minded@global": set locked; unset (none) (Globally banned user)
Someone has obviously gone right over the heads of the local Commons community, to achieve what Ymblanter had failed to do. Showing all the intelligence of a crap admin, Ymblanter claimed this was not a surprise, because he knew he was right. Bollocks. A bad faith out of policy guess is still a bad faith out of policy guess, even if it was proven right.
But hang on. Was he even right? Strangely, the above log entry is the only information that has been released. Which is more than a bit suspicious. I am not aware of a single reason why confidentiality would be necessary here.
Normally there's a paper trail.
According to who Beeblebrox apparently thinks this "globally banned" user is....
.....it is me. Or Eric Barbour.Yeah, a sock of a user who runs a much nastier off-wiki forum that I've just been informed has an entire subforum dedicated to talking shit about me in particular. Thanks to the local admins and the steward who had the good sense to see that they were an obvious block-evading troll. Are we done here? I think we're done here. Beeblebrox (talk) 04:32, 30 August 2021 (UTC)
But as far as I know, I'm not globally banned, and neither is Eric.
So who is it?
It could just be a mistake. As unlikely as it sounds, this Steward could have simply written Globally Banned when he meant Globally Locked. And he could have just had a brain fart and not done what is usually done, and identified a sock master. Also seems unlikely.
But Wikimedia Stewards aren't known for their professionalism, for sure. This guy in particular, this foreign fuckwit, regularly shows that the role is quite often just mindless mashing of buttons, and they're usually no more than useful idiots easily manipulated by smarter corrupt actors who exploit the fact they're not native speakers who have little to no time to check even basic details, like whether a sock accusation is merely suspected or confirmed, before applying a global lock on that basis. By now the people who manipulated him in one certain case, are probably sweating down their ass cracks, thinking maybe I had forgotten all about it. As if.
For if only for the outside possibility that all these mistakes perhaps hint at something more serious than genuine mistakes, I feel the need to ask the question. Who is it?
Beeblebrox clearly got his duff information through private channels, which is again, pretty fucking suspicious.
And note how Beeblebrox hasn't properly read the script he was given, assuming his source of information isn't just himself reading Wikipediocracy. Celtic Minded wasn't blocked by local Admins for being "an obvious block evading troll", at least not successfully, and he wasn't blocked by a Steward for that reason either.
The reason is right there. Celtic Minded is allegedly a "Globally banned user", and that is the sole and solitary reason why Beeblebrox has been spared further humiliation at their hands.
Nobody ever wants to believe their heros are corrupt or their chosen hobby is a sham. Lots of people voted in good faith for Beeblebrox to represent them as their moral touchstone. So it might crush them to learn that he or his friends perhaps saw such a big threat looming here, they did something very silly. Coloured well outside the lines.
I can sympathise, sure. Beeblebrox's misconduct, both the original crime and the way he tried to be cute about it after the event, had exposed the WMF and the volunteers to a massive risk. For absolutely no gain either.
An English Wikipedia Arbitration Committee Member getting blocked for harassing a Commons editor, would be a huge scandal. Even before Framgate, but certainly after, with the world and their dog having been told that there is no need for Foundation oversight, that the democratically elected ArbCom is all that is needed to ensure a minimal standard of behaviour is assured.
It needed to be prevented. Perhaps it needed to be prevented so badly, they happily decided to take the risk and do something that has probably exposed someone to legal risk. Would they have taken that chance? Gambled that nobody is going to do what the law can force them to do, for an incident like this.
I hope they have.
Because I think, if you presented this the right way, the legal fighting fund would build itself. The chance to expose a Wikipedia CheckUser perhaps doing illegal shit to protect the very person who sits on the Committee tasked with making sure CheckUsers aren't doing illegal shit? Awesome.
Maybe it was just a mistake. I'm sure it was.
So, who is this mystery Globally Banned user?
If they can't or won't tell, well......
I do so love the cases where the Wikishits saying nothing just makes them look even more guilty.
I fucking LOVE my job. Sorry, hobby.
