Arbcom 2017: How Worthless and Horrible it Was

[Mutineer]

THE GOOD (there isn't that much of it)

*Desysoped Arthur Rubin. Rubin apparently was a jerk to The Rambling Man, was forbidden by the WP:AN/ANI mob from editing pages other than his own talkpage (gee, how's that work, is it an honor system block)? But his chief offense to Arbcom was removing the New Pages Patroller rights of "Legacypac" without consulting "Swarm" who had granted them. It's good any time an administrator is desysoped.

*Desysoped "Magioladitis," whose bot was doing some weird hyper-technical yet meaningless stuff that the other bot people didn't like.

THE BAD (there isn't that much of it)

*Forbid the quarreling military history bugs Keysanger and MarshallN20 from talking to each other. Let them fight, I say! Schedule a duel!

OH WAIT IS THAT IT? REALLY?

Yes, according to this page (http://archive.is/Wdgtw) archived a few moments ago, Arbcom handled exactly 4 cases (the fourth was a prequel to the Magioladitis desysop) in 2017. "Thank you for your service" as that buffoon New York Brad often tells his fellow administrators, as if they were war heros coming back from Afghanistan.

CONCLUSION

What the heck else does Arbcom do? I think now it just automatically throws the child-protection stuff over to the WMF (as it should). Ban appeals? I don't immediately see a record of any Arbcom did. My sense is that it's gradually taken itself out of that business, in violation of The Arbcom Charter which says it is supposed to handle otherwise intractable ban disputes.

Oh yes indeed, Doug Weller, DGG, Mkdw, DeltaQuad, Euryalus, Ks0stm, Newyorkbrad, GorillaWarfare, Casliber, Opabinia regalis, Keilana, Drmies, Callanecc, Kelapstick, and Kirill Lokshin. "Thank you for your service." A Wiki-nation honors you, the best of its breed.

EDIT: Fixed parentheses only.

[zordrac]

Arbcom seems to be a way for administrators to pat each other on the back while justifying the unjustifiable.

[badmachine]

My sense is that it's gradually taken itself out of that business, in violation of The Arbcom Charter which says it is supposed to handle otherwise intractable ban disputes.

My ban came in 2012. i waited 8 months before writing back after they failed to reply to my messages. I think it was SilkTork who replied (after 8 months) 'oh we thought you would have given up by now'. To me that looked like a 'you're perpetually banned, don't bother us' message. After that, i logged on to #wikipedia-en and caused a little trouble and actually was log dumping for a short while at wikipedialogs.com. Right around that time, people began moving to Slack and Discord, plus the IRC channels knew they were being logged. So that project was a dud because of timing, but i have learned a lot about template redirect vandalism.

[Mutineer]

My ban came in 2012. i waited 8 months before writing back after they failed to reply to my messages. I think it was SilkTork who replied (after 8 months) 'oh we thought you would have given up by now'. To me that looked like a 'you're perpetually banned, don't bother us' message.

I don't blanket indict every arb that ever lived, but generally speaking they're complete, callous jerks. Silktork is a complete asshat. For example, and I like the British as much as anybody, but he's this Briton who chooses to wade into and solve the American "Tea Party Movement" article squabbles, and he ends up recommending X and Y and Z be voluntarily topic-banned, and throws himself in for good measure, yes he says he, Silktork, shall also be topic-banned. Maroon or moron, you decide.

The skeevy, dicey behavior towards on the mailing list, essentially, "let them hear only silence" is completely bad faith and at odds with the Arbcom Charter. A lot of the arbs engage in that. If you're not going to respond to a guy, then at least give him the decency of saying "I'm not going to respond to you." Instead they indulge in this sadistic thing where they leave people hanging.

[Kumioko]

Each successive Arbcom seems to exceed the previous one in uselessness. Eventually they will just collapse of their own weight like so many of the WikiProjects have. I really think the time is coming fairly soon. The WMF is having to spend more and more money just to maintain the status quo and eventually they will reach a tipping point.