- Sucks is a forum for genuine criticism of Wikipedia and the critical communiy, the Treehouse is a Discord server, much more efficient for chat than phpBB fora, and, as well, there is wikitop.cc. Eric, with high experience and skill as a writer, is welcome in all three places, where real people may communicate, with some facilitation to avoid civility-destroying flame wars, without censorship. Yes, that is possible. The Discord server is not managed by me, though I have staff status. Invitation.
- The former excessive tolerance on Sucks is no more. Because of this, with no examples -- quite the same as the old Offwiki claims -- I've been called a "dictator," but, in fact, I merely stood for basic civility, not as a baseball bat to squash enemies with, but for the promotion of communication. Vigilant hates this with a passion. It has become easy and quite satisfying to handle this troll.
- Arguing with trolls is useless, I suggest Corbett needs to learn this. There are far more effective ways of handling trolling.
- Trolls, having become skilled at manipulating ordinary humans, will demand that you do what would actually be best for you, knowing that the natural "avoiding domination" survival response will kick in. I've been demonstrating alternatives, and it's obvious that Vigilant considers this a threat, he is on WPO with links within minutes of a post here.
- Back to what was here when Vigilant linked:
So an open letter to Corbett:I do share one thought expressed on Sucks, which is that Vigilant is "a troll, pure and simple, and he's tolerated on Wikipediocracy for the entertainment value".
But my lasting aversion to Sucks stems from the rants against me made by Crowsnest that were allowed to stand. And to be perfectly honest I feel much the same way about the rants against me here on Wikipediocracy made by Vigilant that are allowed to stand.
I see similarities between you and Kumioko.
Crowsnest was not allowed to continue, but there had been a strong reluctance to block a content creator, who sometimes wrote well. The irony here is manifest.
Sucks had suffered from lack of active moderation. JuiceBeetle pointed to some problems, so Barbour invited him to mod, to vast derision from Vigilant and others on WPO, plus, of course, contempt from CrowsNest and Graaf Statler.
He's not a sock'em block'em kind of mod, and he displayed what I saw as excessive patience. I don't mind that if it can be balanced by others. In the end, there was a genuine consensus on Sucks, among the admins and mods: CrowsNest could not be allowed to continue his rants. He was defiant. Like you, Eric, on Wikipedia. The result was in both cases predictable. And the same with Graaf.
(And I'm not making you wrong for defying them, only pointing to the obvious.)
It seems clear at this point, WPO is not about to give up their favorite attack tyranno-skunk, though I suspect it's coming in the future.
Yet you somehow are not so averse to WPO, you are there commenting and have been for a long time. You don't have to give up WPO to comment here.
It's actually work to document what Vigilant does. From doing it, Vigilant's character has become crystal clear to me, including his vulnerabilities and obsessions. Well-presented, this could make it clear to others, and it could start to impact WPO's reputation. I don't have a crystal ball, but there are possibilities, and I can tell you that documenting what Vig does is vastly more satisfying than complaining about it, whining, and the rest. It is empowering to see him helplessly whining -- or snarling but nobody cares.
You could help. It is very rare, unfortunately, for collaboration and cooperation to actually take place. There have been some examples. The book wiki on the Logic Museum, but that has suffered from overcontrol and I don't know what else. Still, there is a lot of content that we will be releasing. You could help, as a writer.
What's stopping you?
I was banned from WPO in 2014 for almost exactly what you are doing now. I considered it a liberation.