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Eclecticology

2007-10 admin (failed)

The following discussion is closed:

Not appointed


I was the original bureaucrat on the old Wikisource; I technically still am, but just haven't been using it lately. I had a lot of history there that goes back to arguing for Project Sourceberg should not be a part of Wikibooks. I drifted away over the splitting up of WS, but recognize after an extended wiki-break that it would be next to impossible to glue together the old crockery. I suppose that I would get back to doing a lot of the work that I used to. Eclecticology 20:00, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

For the sake of clarification this is NOT a request to be a bureaucrat. Eclecticology 07:42, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
  • en.wikisource has one bureaucrat currently. It would be good to have more, not that Zhaladshar ‎is in any way not doing everything needed, but it's alway good to have more than one just in case. I'm not sure if you are suggesting you eventually would like to become a bureaucrat here or not, but asking the community to approve of you as an admin rather than standing on what bits you had before the split shows a desire for consensus, and is a good start in any event. Your recent contribs certainly show a lot of hard work. Support ++Lar: t/c 20:12, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Oppose, Zhaladshar is currently more than capable of dealing with the rare bureaucrat tasks. When we do decide on a second bureaucrat, I'd be more comfortable with someone who is more established as an editor and community member of the current English Wikisource. As you've noted, your experience is largely with a project that has changed dramatically since you were active. I'd be more comfortable if you edited and participated in community discussions regularly for at least a few months. I've only known you in so far as you routinely debate current practice, and you tend to be uncivil in doing so; for example, in a single discussion you accused me of paranoia and empty altruism, deliberately misleading others ('red herrings'), inventing rules, and proposing bullshit. That does not suggest you'll be an administrator or bureaucrat that will encourage polite collaboration. —{admin} Pathoschild 22:02:39, 07 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Support adminship. We need more admins here. There are a lot of unchecked vandalism. Eclecticology is known user who can help. But I am not sure if we need a bureaucrat. Yann 22:12, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Oppose (per Pathoschild, mostly). I think you should become much more familiar with the workings here first. —Benn Newman (AMDG) 01:06, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Oppose Eclecticology has been doing a terrible job when he was in charge of wikisource.org. He kept opposing to the creation of language subdomains, and his motivation to do so seems to have been mostly power-hungriness (Ec, correct me if I'm wrong), and the desire to control everything. Once subdomains were created, he ended his participation in the project, which suggests that his own bureaucrat status was more important to him than the project itself. In addition, he combines unpoliteness, uneasy behavior and a strong ignorance of technical aspects. It is true that one of his favourite scaring tactic consists in inventing rules and proposing bullshit to newcomers. ThomasV 12:29, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
    It's difficult to respond to comments that are nothing but bad-faith lies and criminal libel. Yes, I opposed the creation of language sub-domains, and I did drift away when they were set up, and I am not a supporter of technical solutions. That does not warrant the vicious personal attack that Thomas has launched. Eclecticology 22:23, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
    Eclecticology, your response strengthens my concerns. Rather than calmly refuting ThomasV's accusations (however uncivil or misguided you think them), you resort to bad faith and uncivility of your own. His words strike true with my own experiences with you; I've seen you routinely attack others (myself before and ThomasV above). You have expressed disdain for much-developed plans to implement metadata (which you admittedly found "geekish" and did not understand), not to mention proposing that we deliberately disrupt them and thus waste the efforts of a number of established editors. You've shown no hesitation to edit templates so they no longer comply with established style guidelines, and I wonder if you would bother discussing major changes to other standard templates if you could edit them. —{admin} Pathoschild 01:35:13, 09 October 2007 (UTC)
    You will note that I did not respond to your earlier comments, even though I had an opportunity to do so before Thomas added his comments. I still strongly disagree with much in your comments, but they are at least contemporary and relevant to current issues. Thomas' comments merely dredge up old issues to arrive at wholly fictitious conclusions; that's well over the line.
    If you want to discuss the style guide please note that it says, "While the style guide presents widely-supported standards, it is not a set of rigid rules." I realize that you have invested considerable personal ownership in your metadata proposals, but that does not make them inviolate, or closed to further changes, nor should it deny anyone the right to develop alternative visions. Restoring the old disambig template was not much of an edit; the only effect of that would be to give people the option to use that or your more recent version. You refer to "discussing major changes" but fail to add importance to the fact that the header syntax discussion has been in Scriptorium. We clearly have different visions and philosophies about Wikisource, and I am sure that my "disdain" for technical solutions will go a long way to satisfy a constituency that would like things to be simpler. I fully intend to continue giving a vigorous voice to these views. Eclecticology 09:46, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
    I don't feel like digging too much into the archives, but this should illustrate my point about uneasy behaviour and unpoliteness. And oh, the "vicious attack" was not launched by me, I was only confirming what Pathoschild said a few lines above. He made his opinion on you by himself, without me influencing him. ThomasV 09:28, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Support, more admins are needed and Eclecticology knows the ropes. The admin bit is about handling backlogs such as CAT:CSD and vandalism. I've looked through the contribs here on en.wikisource.org and see a lot of hard work on content over the last few months, and reasonable level of input into discussions here. The discussions that Eclecticology has been involved in lately relate to difficult problems and so have been heated; in this, strong opinions are better than none if we are to move forward. Should any admin start using their admin bit to push their own opinions without concensus, we have the "Votes of confidence" to remove the bit. Given the opposes above, any inproper use by Eclecticology would be fatal. John Vandenberg 00:19, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
It is true that in theory, adminship is about handling these things, and nothing more. But in practice, my experience shows that opinions expressed by admins, or remarks made by them to other users, have a high intimidating power, especially on newbies. Misusing this power is not an acceptable behaviour. ThomasV 09:18, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
I am yet to see evidence that justifies being concerned that Eclecticology will step out of line here.
With regard to Eclecticology's remarks in the diff you point to above, it is unfair to judge general behaviour based on how Eclecticology dealt with the split. I only know wikisource after the split, and from a structural perspective it makes sense to split the languages in order to allow the project to scale up. However, I can also immediately see strong arguments for keeping all of the languages together in the same way as is done on commons. Articles like Balade to Rosemounde are an issue; it's not really English as we know it, so why is it here? : Because "English" covers more than one language family, and here is the most sane place to put it (there is no enm sub domain). Just this week I have been faced with what seems to be an intractable problem caused by the split: putting the journal articles of w:Astronomische Nachrichten on wikisource is going to be a mess as they are all different languages (predominately English and German). Personally, I dont see this as a problem worth fussing about, but I can understand why a crat managing wikisource.org before the split would be tearing out hair at the idea.
Regarding the diff again, Eclecticology probably could have chosen words more carefully, but obviously was a bit annoyed. The reasons for that are best known by those of you who were involved in this at the time, but I am pretty sure it is more complex that simply abuse/misuse of power. Eclecticology has been dedicated to the wikimedia projects for a long time and I am sure the motivations at the time were for the benefit of the project, however misguided they were. Ultimately, Eclecticology is back here (with more contribs on this subdomain than the main site) and is willing and able to help, in spite of having been "proven wrong", and is no doubt wiser for it. John Vandenberg 14:32, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
At the risk of adding a lot of excess verbiage, I should give a little background to Thomas' cited diff and my outburst. A Hungarian editor (the newbie?) had started an author page without an author prefix at all, and I suggested possibilities about how this might be handled for Hungarian pages. (I do not understand Hungarian at all.) The Hungarian editor was thankful for my response, but Thomas used the incident as an opportunity to push his view for split domains, and that was the source of my annoyance.
I still believe that the split was wrong, but it is a fait accompli. Is Thomas so afraid that I would sabotage his accomplishments? Your reference to Astronomische Nachrichten raises an important issue, as has a recent mention in Scriptorium about what to do with those of T. S. Eliot's poems which were originally in French. Those situations need to be considered, but it would not be appropriate for me to go further into those discussions on this page. Eclecticology 17:41, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
Please do not misunderstand me : I used this diff only to illustrate how impulsive, uneasy and impolite you can be, and not to question what happened at that time. But since you have decided to move the discussion to a different ground, namely that of facts, let me correct a few facts. You forgot to mention that the thing about author page prefixes was of secondary importance. Here is my first message to you, that triggered your irate answer. The first part of my message ("the mistake you just made") refers to the fact that you requested deletion of a hungarian author page because its content was a link to "Ha..." (hungarian for "If..."). Only the second part of my message refers to author pages prefixes. I was suggesting that in order to tell apart hungarian and vandalism, it would probably be easier to be a hungarian speaker on a hungarian wikisource, rather than a canadian speaker on a multilingual site. I don't think it is interesting to discuss this further here, but telling only half of the truth is not telling the truth. ThomasV 20:50, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
Please stop distorting the facts. Look at this, and it will be clear that the author prefix was the primary reason for that entry. If "Ha..." had been real vandalism I would have deleted the article immediately without the nomination process. (I was the one to point out that it was a translation of "If...") If I had known what the Hungarians wanted to use as an author prefix, I would simply have moved the page. There was no mistake, so your reason for making that accusation remains a mystery. The request for deletion was not a mistake; it opened the subject for discussion. While it's clear that this might be a non-problem on a purely Hungarian site, it was a problem to be solved on a multilingual site. If you are going to start opening up old debates, I agree that "telling only half of the truth is not telling the truth"; that's why I needed to act these additional facts. Eclecticology 08:39, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
I think that we both can agree that you almost deleted a page because of a language issue (this is what you wrote in the last diff). This mistake was the primary reason for my message to you (I never said that it was the primary reason for your entry in the deletion list, I do not claim to be able to guess your reasons). Your current behaviour only illustrates my point, namely that you are impolite, uneasy, and unable to recognize your own mistakes. In addition, as everyone can see, you keep trying to change the topic of the discussion, instead of answering my primary remark. This is why I do not think that it is appropriate to grant you adminship. Besides that, I have nothing against you being here, and I even left a greeting message on your talk page when you arrived a few weeks ago. (ok, I must admit that I had forgotten many things about your behaviour when I did that, but now you have completely refreshed my memories). ThomasV 09:26, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
Could you please elaborate on this? what do you mean by "take that into account"? Is adminship about distributing rewards to those who supported you ? You certainly did not mean that, but this is what your message suggests... please clarify. ThomasV 09:33, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
I suspect he means he'll try to use edit summaries more often. —{admin} Pathoschild 10:23:00, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
hmm, I guess you're right. sorry if I got it wrong :-) ThomasV 10:38, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
I have made this comment as I have seen a very famous Chinese Wiki site admin frequently deleting pages without clear reasons. Therefore, I consider using edit summaries very important for adminship candidates.--Jusjih 02:20, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Recent contributions show no knowledge of current standard practices for contributing works. As I believe all admins should conform even to guidelines, conforming to the Style Guide--especially in regards to {{header}}--is a must. Also, I'm a little concerned about giving sysop rights to someone whose comments at time seem to be personal attacks. Whether they are or not, that was the way I read them (and the way a few others have, as well) and admins should try to be as respectful as possible. Maybe after more time of contributing and after familiarity with the current practices of en:ws, I'll support, but not at this time.—Zhaladshar (Talk) 20:53, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
    In my defence let's begin with Pathoschild's comments:
    1. The reference to paranoia was "The paranoia about abuse has no basis in reality." This applies to a specific view, not a person.
    2. The mention of "empty altruism" was puzzling. It turns out that I used the term "empty truism" in regards to a very general expression in support of quality. Of course we all want to improve quality, but that is a vague generality with no direction for action; that's what makes it an empty truism. This has nothing to do with altruism.
    3. I cannot find where I said that he was "deliberately misleading others"; I don't believe that I said that.
    4. The "red herring" arose because he opposed my view that we should include all works published before 1923. He claimed that we would not include "old paintings and audio recordings". That's true enough, but it's a red herring when we are essentially discussing textual material.
    5. I did say that he was inventing rules. He used the Hirtle reference to justify his position about a point in copyright law, but what he stated to be the law was not consistent with his own reference. But again that's a comment about a particular act, and not a personal attack.
    6. The proposal that I called bullshit was the one to limit sources to ones that are found on-line. That's what it was. It appears to have been based on a fear of forgeries being added. I would prefer to Assume Good Faith on the part of editors who add material. We would seriously distort our purposes if we limited ourselves to online sources.
    None of this can be construed as a personal attack; they all relate to specific points, not to persons.. If he wants to characterize them as personal attacks, that that's his problem. If I see something as wrong I fully intend to say so in clear and unambiguous terms, both now and in the future. I have a long history of being collaborative, but being collaborative does not require sitting in the corner fearful that I will say the wrong things on the off chance that my adversary will be offended.

    ThomasV's claims have already gotten a big hearing above. His comments started as a straightforward personal attack without any justification in fact whatsoever. He uses the terms "terrible job", "power-hungriness", "desire to control everything", "his own bureaucrat status was more important to him than the project", and "favourite scaring tactic". These would necessarily relate to events from more than 2 1/2 years ago, if there were any truth to them at all. I dare him to substantiate any of this garbage, or admit that he has engaged in a totally unwarrented personal attack.

    One of the key features of the style guide is the flexibility of its application. It is not without reason that it is the very first sentence in the style guide. Apart from the question of headers, there have been no complaints about what I have added, and its conformity to style anyways. If someone were to complain I'm sure that accommodations would be available; guidelines are always open to discussion. I'm glad that your reference was to headers template and not the headers2 template. I have not opposed the headers template though it certainly has room for improvement; my complaint has been about headers2 and the permanent link tag that it puts immediately above the header box. That is certainly something that is open to discussion.
    It is true that I base my judgment on what you did to this project 2.5 years ago, which is a long time. Maybe it would make more sense to look at your recent contributions, and to forget about the past. But apparently you have chosen to take the full credit of your past contributions (see your short introduction above). Therefore I do not see what is wrong with telling others what you did at that time. So the question is, shall we take into account your past behaviour or not? ThomasV 09:35, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
    Your statements were still personal attacks, however they were motivated. Your statements are routinely provocative and assume bad faith, in that phrases like "paranoia about abuse", "not based on reality", "bullshit", et cetera imply that I am myself paranoid, delusional, and that my proposals were inherently stupid (not simply misguided or in opposition to your own opinions). Note the wording: "The "red herring" arose because he opposed my view..." If you cannot state or refute an argument without attacking the editor, I do not think you are well suited to adminship.
    You've said that you fully intend to say so clearly if you see something wrong; I certainly agree with that statement, as this discussion shows, but I won't attack you unnecessarily in doing so. I'm sure your contributions are valuable and you act in good faith to improve Wikisource, but that makes you a good editor rather than admin.
    (I'll be away over the weekend, so won't comment further until Monday.) —{admin} Pathoschild 12:28:56, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Oppose without prejudice Spend more time taking part in local discussions and integrating into this community. I think it is a bad idea for a controversial candidate to become an admin without being fully integrated in the community. Which in my mind means the rest of the community has enough experience with them to be confident in their expectations of how the candidate will act in disputes and a month after the dispute is settled. Reliable expectations are extremely important to things running smoothly.--BirgitteSB 13:26, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment I endorse Birgitte's remarks above. I hope that you will take them to heart and become an active participant here so the community will become re-acquainted with you. FloNight 00:38, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

2008-01 admin

Eclecticology (talk • contribs)

Trying again, having established that I'm a full participant in community activities. Eclecticology 02:33, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Appointed--BirgitteSB 14:35, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

2009-02 confirmation (failed)

The following discussion is closed:

Not confirmed


status administrator since January 2008
activity active (contributions, logs)
discussions
  • Desysop. Eclecticology is a great contributor, and has many ideas (both good and bad, but always worth considering), however I dont think he should retain adminship on this project. The following are just a few of the many problems we have had in the last year:
    1. "Involved" deletions such as Wikisource:Proposed_deletions/Archives/2008-11#Benjamin Bowen Day
    2. nominating a leading featured text candidates for deletion *, not notifying the contributor, and without realising that many other sets of capable eyes had endorsed this already.
    3. despite being advised that a firm proposal be made for replacing {{USC}}, he has gone ahead and done it anyway * (is it backwards compatible?)
    4. Deleting {{Category redirect}} and all instances where it was used, without discussion and essentially overturning an old proposed deletion outcome.*
    5. Not using {{dated soft redirect}} for pages which have long histories here, such as Pro Caelio/Section 77.
    John Vandenberg (chat) 15:08, 5 February 2009 (UTC)
    1. The Benjamin Bowen Day article was properly nominated, and was supported by two others in the full week that followed, in accordance with Wikisource:Deletion policy. You said nothing until it was deleted. It's notable that there have been no attempts to undelete it since then.
    2. The Coker articles were "kept" in a manner consistent with the responses. So what's the complaint? Is it now such a sin to be merely nominating articles? Any article may be nominated, even good ones. There's a big difference between nominations and actual deletions.
    3. The USC template was originally set up to link to pages that were originally "Wikiproject" pages. Three months later these were all moved to proper United States Code pages, effectively creating over 400 redirects. These, many of which were not used at all, were all carefully replaced by {{USCX}}. What I was doing was mentioned on the project page, but no-one has objected there. You commented yourself in the deletion discussion, "or be bold and brace yourself", and that's exactly what I did. Did anyone but you object?
    4. Unneeded redirects are a speedy deletion criterion. This merely finished cleaning up a point that was made on the page itself when it was last edited.
    5. Where is there anything saying that using this template is mandatory? It seems strange that a person who feels so strongly about this would not have raised this point before. In any event the "Pro Caelio" page was in Latin, and we do not use redirects to other language projects.
    Eclecticology (talk) 19:11, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

  • Desysop, per the behaviour cited by John and other such cases. A prime example I recall is his unilateral removal of the {{populate}} template added by various editors (used to track author pages with no works on Wikisource, or categories with no pages), because he personally felt it was "utterly useless". In this and various other situations, he made no effort whatsoever to consider the efforts of other contributors or consult them on whether it really was useless. When several editors protested the removals, he belittled their protests as rhetoric and "a matter of pet projects".

    Mass-removal of other contributors' work with zero consultation, belittling other contributors, and generally making far-reaching changes with no effort to consult the community (such as the two-letter author initials, which was never completed) are not examples of role model behaviour I expect from administrators. —Pathoschild 10:35:24, 06 February 2009 (UTC)

    1. To say that I have belittled any contributor is a blatant lie.
    2. Neither of the two examples that you give require admin tools to perform.
    3. The "Populate" template does two things: It puts the page in a category (which I don't mind), and it puts an ugly banner on the author page (which I do mind). Take away the banner aspect, since it's quite obvious from looking at the page that we have nothing by that author, and we would have nothing to argue about; perhaps I should be replacing the template with a category. The question of "pet projects" came up in an exchange with one other contributor who can be just as outspoken as I. He and I often clash very forcefully, but I would never seek to use that as an excuse for taking away his tools.
    4. There was a problem with the two-letter codes at the beginning because the author template uses them in two different ways. John found a simple solution for fixing that problem. I did agree at that point to limit my activities to the four letters with the greatest number of authors, at which point it could be reviewed. I accept responsibility for the lack of completion, and will work to get that finished within the stated parameters very soon.
    5. There never was any mass deletion of pages without consultation. The 438 (more or less) pages deleted in connection with the USC redirects were roughly 2/3 of all my deletions, and that was put up for discussion on both RfD and the USC project page. My other deletions were too much of a scattered assortment to be considered "mass". Eclecticology (talk) 10:39, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
    Eclecticology (talk) 01:55, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
    You did indeed belittle them; you accused them of "indiscriminately hanging[ing] wallpaper", adding "clutter", using a "rhetorical trick", their additions being "utterly useless", and one editor's objections being "about [their] pet project" (and of course your above statement that I'm an outright liar). I fail to see how this is model behaviour in any discussion. Whether particular examples of bad behaviour require administrator access is not relevant.
    Personal dislike for a particular template is no excuse to unilaterally remove it, and if you had proposed the author template change first you would not have discovered problems after you started. Sitewide changes or mass removal of other contributors' edits should certainly be discussed first.
    I think administrators should be held to a reasonable standard of behaviour, which I've often seen lacking in your edits; as such I do not support your continued administrator access. —Pathoschild 17:15:46, 12 February 2009 (UTC)
    I did not call any person an outright liar; I said that one particular statement was a blatant lie. The words you cite were all criticisms of particular actions, but it seems to serve your purposes to distort them into being belittlements of a person. Someone who goes around making false and distorted personal allegations is not exactly qualified to be talking about reasonable standards of behaviour. Eclecticology (talk) 10:39, 13 February 2009 (UTC)
    "Blatant lie" and "false and distorted personal allegations" serving "[my] purposes" means deliberate deceit, as opposed to simple misunderstanding or misinterpretation. Saying you didn't call me a blatant liar, just a person who blatantly lies, is semantic nonsense. Unfortunately such assumptions of bad faith, insults or belittlement, and dismissal of others' concerns seem to be par for the course with you, thus my oppose. Retorting that I'm a blatant liar does not really help your case. I'm sorry you disagree, but I'm quite firmly on the desysop side now. —Pathoschild 21:52:08, 13 February 2009 (UTC)
  • Desysop - Per John and Pathoschild. Such behavior should not be exhibited by administrators. The additional tools carry with them an obligation to act in an exemplary manner, and as the above examples show, Eclecticology has not always fulfilled this obligation. Psychless 15:50, 7 February 2009 (UTC)
  • Troubled I am troubled by this Vote of confidence, according to policy Any user may propose a vote of confidence, but at least three established users must support the need for one before it can be called.. In this case it appears that there was no call for a vote, nor was there 3 established users supporting the need for one. The vote was called by a single user as if it was a regular annual vote [1]. The approach to this has been questioned with no response at Wikisource:Scriptorium#Vote_of_confidence_for_Eclecticology [2] [3]. Also counter to Johns normal habit of including multiple references and links [4] to validate actions for admin consideration, I am not seeing anything showing evidence of an attempt to address the questioned behavior prior to this "Vote of confidence". If we are going to question the actions of a duly promoted admin should we not at the very least follow the established policy and preferable attempt to address and correct the questioned behavior prior to submitting a vote? Jeepday (talk) 00:21, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
    REgarding your first concern: Ec is due for his annual confirmation, so a regular vote was started in the regular way. There is only the need for three users etc. when calling for a vote out of turn from the annual votes.--BirgitteSB 00:31, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
    Thank you, I stand corrected Jeepday (talk) 00:48, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
    Regarding your other concern, there is no expectation that evidence is provided here, nor is there a requirement to have attempted to "fix" the admin conduct prior to the vote of confidence. This is a vote; discussion is supplemental. However Pathoschild and I have listed complaints with evidence to ensure that there is room for discussion. Pathoschild has pointed to User_talk:Eclecticology#Pop where there was an attempt to correct the problem; note that this was followed by Eclecticology repeating the original problem, which was discussed at User_talk:Eclecticology#pointless_tag. I have also provided links to the relevant forum discussions (look for the "*"s); I could provide more but my intention was to demonstrate the problem as I see it using recent examples. John Vandenberg (chat) 01:11, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
    Of course, you forget that the "populate" issue was mostly in September, and there has been little done about them since. The five points that you raised in your initial comments were completely refuted. Your comments about "no expectations of evidence" and not needing to attempt a "fix" say more about your attitude than about any adopted rules. The weight that you attach to a template that only puts a glaring box on a page is completely out of proportion to what is important in this project. Eclecticology (talk) 10:39, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
    Thank you John, As I am researching I also find this recent edit where he changed the content inside of an editors comment. I will be posting my vote soon. Jeepday (talk) 11:03, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
    That change was perfectly justifiable. The link offensively installed something on a person's watchlist without any warning that that was being done. My change effectively kept the link to the page, and offered an opportunity to those who wanted the link on their watchlist. What should be so wrong about this response to sneaky behaviour? Eclecticology (talk) 02:02, 12 February 2009 (UTC)
    I'll back Eclecticology up on this one—there were two such "add to watchlist" links in that section, and I changed one of them to link directly to the page in question. Modifying links for accessibility and ease of use for the reader is a far cry from modifying the words of someone else's comment. --Spangineerwp (háblame) 16:00, 12 February 2009 (UTC)
    Non-confirm, Everything I am seeing is echoed in Hesperian's comment below, and other non-support votes through out. Jeepday (talk) 23:22, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
  • Desysop, while Eclect is a great contributor to the project, I think we may have been too hasty in assigning Administrator privileges when he was not yet "developed" enough to use them properly. Mea Culpa, I still remember my embarrassingly newbish mistakes on WP when I first joined it -- had I been given administrator privileges so soon it's likely I would have created similar disasters. He may reapply in the future; but this past year has been too filled with rash, unilateral and combative decisions that have cost other administrators hours of work undoing his changes. Sherurcij Collaboration of the Week: Author:Charles Sheldon. 00:34, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
    I have no sympathy for the stalker who chose to spend hours undoing my changes. By not going back and restoring my edits I was the one that prevented the edit war that he was provoking. As to what might have been rash and unilateral, the word "filled" is a gross exaqgeration. Eclecticology (talk) 10:39, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
  • I don't know if anything like this has been articulated at Wikisource, but at Wikipedia, administrators are required to use their tools only to enact the will of the community, rather their own will. I suspect that Eclecticology will readily agree that his personality is the very opposite of that: he routinely takes actions according to what he thinks is right, and who cares if it is unpopular with the rest of us?! I confess I cannot help but admire his intellectual honesty and independence. Yet these traits remain irreconcileable with my understanding of the admin role. I think non-confirm. Hesperian 12:02, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
    And where is that so-called will of the community articulated? Often, the only support these elements of community will have is inertia. It's a sad day when intellectual honesty and independance is irreconcilable with an admin's role. Sure my personality is not that of an ass-kissing yes man. Situations are rarely a black and white dichotomy between what the community wants and what an individual wants; blind popularity alone is seldom a reliable criterion for achieving a superior product. In most instances I am willing to seek a middle ground, a practice which should be of the first order in a co-operative project. Eclecticology (talk) 10:39, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

  • Neutral I did not express myself until now, because I have not been very active on en.ws during the last year, so I cannot judge of whether Eclecticology's behaviour actually improved. However, since his confirmation vote has become so controversial, I think that a few things should be known:

    • Ec was a bureaucrat on ws.org before subdomains were created. He (with the support of yann) did everything in his power to prevent the creation of subdomains. At that time, the power (adminship, decision making) was concentrated in the hands of those who could understand English and another language. Those who did not understand English were de facto excluded from the decision making process. Once subdomains were created, he left Wikisource for a few years, which suggests that his own bureaucrat status was more important to him than Wikisource itself.
    • Later, when he first applied for adminship on en.ws, I voted against his nomination; his application was rejected.
    • I was neutral when he applied for the second time, even though I was shocked that he waited only a few weeks between both applications. I stayed neutral because was sensitive to the argument that we should forget about pas behaviour. He was appointed.
    • Currently only two users are supporting him : Yann and Zyephyrus.
      • Yann helped Ec in his fight against wikisource subdomain creation. Therefore we can reasonably suppose that Yann's current support is more the result of an old friendship than anything else. It should also be known that Yann has been desysoped on fr.wikipedia for repeated abuse of his administrator's priviledges. (arbcom)
      • I asked Zyephyrus on IRC what are the reasons why he supports Ec. Believe it or not, Zyephyrus told me that that there is a picture of Ec that he likes (it is a nov. 2006 picture taken at a wikipedia meetup). Zyephyrus told me that on this picture, Ec has a listening attitude and he inspires confidence to the people around him. I then asked Zyephyrus if he ever had the occasion to interact with Ec on the wiki, and what was the most direct interaction he ever had with him. Apparently he never had a single discussion with Ec. He told me that the most direct interaction he ever had with him was: this thread. My point is that the support by Zyephyrus is not based on any knowledge of Ec's actual behaviour. I think Zyephyrus should have been neutral.

    ThomasV (talk) 18:14, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

    ThomasV, you seem to have forgotten that I am not so illiterate that I must judge only images without texts :) I like this image but I have supported Ec because he answered real questions on en.ws scriptorium, not because he seemed to listen on the image. I think that we need a variety of profiles, not only one kind of profiles, and I think that our strength is to be together, not apart. ---Zyephyrus (talk) 20:40, 14 February 2009 (UTC)
    Thomas, your description is a complete distortion of the reality. You have been opposing Ec for a long time and you look for every bad reason to dismiss him, even when there is no connection between the current disapproval and what you mention. This is absolutely not acceptable, especially for an administrator.
    I support Ec as an admin because his opinions, especially on copyright issues when the status of admin matters, are most of the time useful and balanced between the extreme, i.e. keep even when the argument doesn't hold or copyright paranoia (I hope you see what I mean... ;o) ). We could wish that he would be less controversial on some issues, but I am not sure that this is related to his admin status. Yann (talk) 20:47, 14 February 2009 (UTC)
    Thank you Yann. I admit that I don't shy away from controversy, but I also know to back away before things go too far. My detractors would be hard pressed to find instances of persistent abuse of admin tools. Most of my loudest comments have been directed towards one person, whose reputation is far from impeccable when it comes to making questionable comments. Eclecticology (talk) 01:44, 15 February 2009 (UTC)
    I find some things in Thomas V's comments to be highly unethical.
    1. What has the subdomain issue to do with what is going on now? Yes, I opposed the breakdown to subdomains, and I still think it was wrong. That said, a blind man could see that it is now a fait accompli, and putting Humpty-Dumpty back together again is no longer a realistic pursuit.
    2. After landing on the short side the subdomain debate I did go away for a while, and stayed away until I had calmed down over this deeply philosophical issue. It's a non-sequitur to impute motives about protecting a bureaucratship out of these actions. Surely, going away doesn't do much to protect one's status; communal memories here can fade very fast. If I remember correctly, Yann and Zhaladshar are the only two from those days who continue to be active. Also, having been a bureaucrat, I also know how little the job entails.
    3. The most serious breach of ethics on Thomas V's part is his using this discussion as an opportunity to belittle other users for no other reason than that they supported me, suggesting that because of that support all of their activity must be viewed with suspicion. I don't participate in IRC, so I don't know what kind of campaign he is promoting there. Using the quick answers that are necessarily a part of that forum to characterize someone as a less-than-stable supporter of physiognomy does not bode well for the ethics of the one doing so. I know nothing of Yann's difficulties with fr.wikipedia, so how is that relevant to what is happening here? Free speech is sorely endangered when honest support of a person or idea puts one's own status in danger.
    Eclecticology (talk) 01:44, 15 February 2009 (UTC)
    I gotta say I can't see anything wrong with Eclecticology opposing a popular proposal; nor with him reconsidering his commitment to the project in the wake of such a fundamental decision not going his way. Hesperian 03:26, 15 February 2009 (UTC)
    Agreed. There is absolutely nothing wrong with taking the opposing position for a crucial decision, nor is there any problem whatsoever with choosing to stay away for a while afterward to let things cool down. It is wrong and unfortunate that people are discussing any of this in the current context. The right thing to do is drop the matter entirely. Dovi (talk) 10:29, 15 February 2009 (UTC)
    Still Pass. I am concerned with people analysing and attributing why someone voted as they did, that seems a little unseemly and approaching belittling. Their vote is their judgment, leave it at that. I thought that the vote was about use of admin tools, not character assassination. -- billinghurst (talk) 04:06, 15 February 2009 (UTC)
    @Ec: I am absolutely confident that your goal is not to put 'humpty dumpty' back together. I did not want to suggest that. My concerns are not about your past and present opinions, which I respect. However I am concerned by the methods you used to enforce them at that time. As you write above, you opposed the breakdown into subdomains. But you forgot to tell us how you opposed it. At that time, you made all sorts of authoritative statements on the wiki, about you not letting "this" happen. However, when it came to voting for/against the creation of subdomains, you did not take part in the vote! could you tell me why you did not vote ? Without your opposition, it is probable that this vote would not have been needed at all; and when the time to vote came, you were a complete no-show. If a majority of contributors had decided not to vote, then the vote itself could have been considered as invalid. This is why I see your refusal to vote as a denial of democracy. My experience is that you are harmful as an admin, and I use my freedom of speech to say it. ThomasV (talk) 13:27, 15 February 2009 (UTC)
    @Billinghurst, Hesperian, Dovi: you are right, I should not have interpreted the reasons behind Yann's vote. I present my apologies to yann for that. The fact that he recently attacked me has probably to do with it, but this thread was not the right place to answer. Concerning Zyephyrus, however, I did not do any interpretation. I faithfully reported what he told me. I must say that I was a bit irritated by his answer; I took the time to listen to him, and all I got was a brain-dead answer about Ec's physical appearance. Of course, I suspected the reason he gave to me was not the real one. However, I decided to keep for myself what I think about his actual motivations, and to stick to what he said. ThomasV (talk) 13:27, 15 February 2009 (UTC)
    ThomasV, have I given a "brain-dead answer"? I am not sure that you have understood anything of my answer, nor am I sure that you transmit it correctly.. I said nothing about Ec physical appearance, you invent that because I showed you a picture. I have said exactly this: "Si tu ne distingues pas une image d'une autre, tes explications ne vaudront pas grand chose." (If you don't distinguish one picture from another picture, your explanations won't be good.) You illustrate exactly that I was right. Of course I haven't voted for a picture, and I don't find any sense about what you have said, that I ought to have discussed something "directly" with Ec to know if I agree or not with what he says. I don't understand this "directly": when I read authors, I don't discuss anything "directly" with them and you don't either, you can agree or not with what they say. So it would be better that you don't explain my words but would you be kind enough to explain your words? Thank you if you do: obviously I have not understood them. ---Zyephyrus (talk) 18:30, 15 February 2009 (UTC)
    I did ask you a serious question, and I estimate that I had the right to receive a serious answer. Instead of that, the answer that I received was that there is a picture you like, where Ec "has a listening attitude and seems to be inspiring confidence to the people around him". I had the feeling that you were just making fun of me, and I felt pissed off by such an answer. If your answer was serious, please explain to me why Ec's look on a picture is a serious argument for voting for him. ThomasV (talk) 19:31, 15 February 2009 (UTC)
    @ThomasV: You asked why I have supported Ec and you said that you think that showing a picture like the one I showed isn't a serious reason to vote for somebody. I have supported Ec not for one reason only but for a variety of reasons, the picture is one of them, his answers to questions on the scriptorium another (and more serious) one. But I'd like one thing to be clear:The reason why I supported you AND Ec is the same reason for both: in my opinion none of us knows everything, each of us is strong in other things, we are very strong when we are together so I do what I can in order to keep us (the wikisourcians) together. ---Zyephyrus (talk) 23:08, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
    This could easily be cleared up by posting a transcriot of the relevant IRC discussion. Eclecticology (talk) 10:39, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
    While Ec's actions regarding subdomains may not be considered "admirable", as he says himself, the issue is dead and there's no way his adminship can really affect the question of sub-domains at this point, so to me the issue is moot. I also agree it's poor practise to try and surmise the "reasons" why people vote as they do, other than their stated reasons. It will just lead to backbiting and hard feelings all around -- and I'd rather not see grudges come out of this. I doubt Yann is voting "out of friendship" any more than you're voting out of "being an enemy" -- to simply things to such a level is just a disservice to the project. Sherurcij Collaboration of the Week: Author:Joseph McCabe. 06:35, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
    And where did I characterize my actions as either "admirable" or not? It seems as though you are just making that up. If you don't want grudges then don't encourage them. This entire debate started with old grudges, which I have been careful to ignore over the last year; it's hard to avoid grudges when one has been victimized by the present bullying process. Eclecticology (talk) 10:39, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
    I'm a bit concerned by your combative tone by what I think was very clearly a "being nice to Eclect" post; I chastised the user who tried to say that votes in your favour were cast for spurious reasons, and I said you yourself do not claim to be "admirable", notice the all-important comma which seems to have slipped your attention. I have no idea why you think my post was encouraging grudges, when I was criticising ThomasV for his "character assassination" and urging him not to let Admin Affirmation become a petty grudgematch. To be honest, I'm more than a little taken aback that you'd attack me when I think I was very clearly trying to defend you and the legitimacy of the process. Sherurcij Collaboration of the Week: Author:Joseph McCabe. 11:01, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
    If I misunderstood your post, I certainly apologize for that. Though you introduced the word "grudge", it was not your old grudge. My interactions with you have often been lively from both sides, but once specific discussions have exhausted themselves, I have been just as quick to agree with you on other matters, and have not used those lively interactions as a basis for grudges. Since you have now raised the question of a comma, we are now dealing with a kind of problem which is far too common on-line, especially in heated circumstances. The readings in your intent and my interpretation are both possible. Your clause, "as he says himself," has commas at both ends; which one do you mean? As things stand that clause can apply to either what comes before or after it. Starting a whole new sentence with "As" might have better served your purposes. Eclecticology (talk) 18:45, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
  • I've observed this case for several days, and have decided to hold my reserve thus far. However, I think I'll make a remark now, and my conjecture is that the combativeness Eclecticology has displayed in responding to people here is directly indicative of the behaviour he is being arraigned for; see the altercation with Pathoschild. Therefore, I think the rights should probably be removed. I'm sorry that the situation has come to this. —Anonymous DissidentTalk 02:07, 15 February 2009 (UTC)
    So you don't think one should defend oneself against false accusations? Eclecticology (talk) 10:39, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
    I think there are appropriate and proper avenues towards such a defence, and I also think that in your quarrelling, which has been seen to border on antagonistic, you have eschewed these avenues in your defence here. It seems what we have seen here is microcosmic of the situation as it is alleged and I think this fact justifies my remark. —Anonymous DissidentTalk 14:05, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
    The appropriate avenue is the place where the false accusation were made. Eclecticology (talk) 05:02, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
  • Desysop. Please, folks, everybody go spend 20p and then we'll all be friends again, OK? This dispute appears to have roots farther back in time than anticipated. That it must pop up here seems somewhat ridiculous, at least to me. If a removal of admin access is a means to restore the peace, so be it. But I doubt that all of this is 100% Eclecticology's fault and suggest he'll be allowed to reapply not too far in the future. Surely, with some goodwill, Wikisource will once be large enough for the two factions to avoid each other.--GrafZahl (talk) 17:32, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
    That may be true of ThomasV's objections, but mine are based on his behaviour as an administrator now. Of course he can reapply at any time, but I'll likely object then for the same reasons. —Pathoschild 21:45:05, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
    Most of the time I have avoided Pathoschild over the past year. My conflict with him and with Thomas V was severe when I first sought to regain adminship, as it is now. But we had very little interaction in the middle. Removal of adminship will not restore peace, it only exacerbates the problems. My differences with Thomas V are already five years old, so I don't see his intervention as constructive. What the situation really needs is someone who is a little more skilled in mediation. Eclecticology (talk) 10:39, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
    My objections have nothing to do with any conflict we've had. I've had far more conflict with Sherurcij, and I supported his confirmation. Have you considered, even once throughout this discussion, looking at any of the concerns I've raised as simply that, rather than a facade for malicious ulterior motives? —Pathoschild 00:26:01, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
    The persistance of your attacks, and your complete failure to seek alternate solutions to these fairly minor issues tells me that there is more to your campaign than just those issues. Eclecticology (talk) 05:02, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
  • Desysop per my observations of him over the past year. His comments in this discussion reinforce my concern. FloNight (talk) 15:32, 18 February 2009 (UTC)
  • Closed: Not confirmed.—Zhaladshar (Talk) 17:36, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
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