Meanwhile, the Spectator piece has already been mentioned on Wikipedia's Admin Noticeboard as a heads up......
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... a_heads_upHere are the selected highlights so far......
Administrator Ian Thompson insults all Daily Mail readers as likely too thick to do anything about it, and concludes "Five years from now, the site regulars are probably not even going to remember this". I love how he's not even embarrassed to say this.
Administrator Beeblebrox claims Hitchins received "due process". That he doesn't even clarify he means with respect to what that looks like on Wikipedia, makes this a hugely ironic comment. I wonder, do these people even realise there is a world outside of Wikipedia, where "due process" has a specific meaning to most normal people. i.e., it doesn't mean a group of fuckwads turn up to declare you an unperson, and all other considerations, namely fairness, impartiality, truth, mitigation and proportionality, don't even come into it.
Administrator Swarm claims he tried to do Hitchins a favour by attempting to forestall a community ban. He claims Hitchins is leaving out this crucial detail. I charge Swarm with leaving out a few crucial details of his own - merely telling someone like Hitchins to read and follow GAB was utterly pointless given at that stage, it was clear (as in really fucking obvious) he was clearly not going to get it, or didn't agree with it. So your offer of help was fucking moronic. And now it appears only to have been done to make yourself look good, rather than actually help Hitchins. And how exactly is there a fault with Hitchins wanting this to go for a full community review, come what may? Your argument essentially boils down to you knowing how fucked up Wikipedia can be, and you were simply trying to prevent him finding that out for himself, then writing about it.
Resident moron Beyond My Ken claims Hitchins was treated well due to having not been blocked before then (how the fuck is that down to him, and since when is an indefinite block as a first recourse remotely due process?), and then spins a lie about how Hitchins simply refused to understand what was being asked of him. The copious amount of words expended by Hitchins, and the relative lack of them coming the other way, show there was plenty of confusion, and nobody on Wikipedia's side was really all that bothered about telling Hitchins what was what (see earlier posts about the role of 331dot for example).
Overall, no surprises here. The Wikipedians are nothing if not consistent, and their reaction to anything like this is always to claim they did nothing wrong and the complainant is just stupid or angry or didn't try hard enough or just plain lying.
Never their fault. Not even partly.
For their sheer arrogance alone, they deserve everything they get as a result of bans like this. Ian and assholes like him might well be the only Wikipedians left in five years.