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Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2015/Candidates/Gamaliel

Direct experience has shown Gamaliel doesn't have the temperament, discipline, competence, or fair mindedness for such an important post, and it's alarming that he's this close to getting it. It's bad enough that he allows his strong political opinions to color his editing in inappropriate ways, but more importantly he's abused his admin status, he's cited dubious policy rationales that at best betray a misunderstanding, and at times his behavior has been downright trollish. Just last year he was involved in an extended content/edit war on the America: Imagine the World Without Her movie board.

Edit warring: [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9], [10], [11], [12], [13],

The community ultimately rejected his argument in this dispute in multiple RFCs. During this dispute, in which he was undeniably heavily involved, he at least once used his admin powers to erase an opposing editor's edit summary (August 19, 2014 17:11 [14]; not discovered until weeks later, when he admitted it under questioning by another editor in the discussion linked below). He also sometimes replied to serious, on topic posts with large, sophomoric pictures (e.g. scroll to bottom - [15], [16], [17]) or linked to a youtube video as his edit summary ([18]), which did nothing but enhance disruption in an already contentious dispute. Here's a sample of the personal invective he spewed on the talk page in this discussion:

[19]

"You people are ridiculous."

"It has an odious reputation amongst everyone not in the wingnut bubble"

"You have consistently and perhaps purposefully missed the point."

"For added hilarity and accuracy, I imagined you saying this stamping your feet."

"I'm going to start calling you Scarecrow because you love the straw man so much. My primary argument is "unconvincing" because you have no idea what it is. I have to keep repeating it for you so much I should just create a template for it."

"This shit is exactly why dealing with you is so unpleasant, because any attempt to collaborate or engage with you is met with a punch in the dick….. Instead I'm on the receiving end of months-long harangues about someone's low traffic blog and a partisan shit sewer. Fuck this noise, go argue with your mirror."

"I'm beginning to think you are some sort of performance art project."

"Why are you acting like a jackass?"

"It's been a very long edit conflict here, and we all have had moments where we've been less than perfect, but you are the only one standing in a pile of your own bullshit and insisting that you smell absolutely delicious."

"The SPA who is the chief proponent of including Brietbart"

"This SPA should have been topic banned months ago. It's long past time to bring this to ANI."

[20]

"And despite your repeated farcical lie that I haven't identified what is in dispute,"

"It's clear this temper tantrum is a deliberate strategy of yours to obfuscate that issue."

"Is something wrong with your brain?"

(sic)

Despite our personal, extended, adversarial involvement just months earlier, this past September Gamaliel was the first admin to reply to a malformed, tit for tat DS report against me by an editor I had just reported to the edit warring board, one that contained not a single evidence diff of any of my posts or edits or even a coherent accusation against me. It was a report that should have been immediately deleted, but instead he kept it alive, prodded the accuser to provide evidence (she never did), and in subsequent comments proceeded to both ignore evidence I posted against her (for which multiple posters corrected him, not that he acknowledged it) and even hinted that some action against me might be warranted for alleged POV editing, despite not a single diff of my editing having been presented. At that point I was forced to ask him to recuse himself, generously only providing some broad outlines of our past interaction (and a later offer to delete it all if he would delete his comments about me). He did recuse himself, claiming he hadn't previously recognized my screenname, but did so with a lengthy, snarky, and venomous paragraph full of personal attacks like I "should not be editing any Wikipedia article at all, much less one of our most important ones, nor should he be allowed to use a computer without adult supervision", "belligerent SPA", and accused me of "deceptiveness", among other things. [21] Another editor called his recusal "one of the pettiest actions I have seen by an "un-involved" admin", but he never deleted or even struck through it. Despite that poisoned well, after he recused himself ultimately no action was taken against me in the DS case.

The attacks by Gamaliel against me and other editors through all this were invariably false (the easily debunkable "SPA" charge was especially egregious, as that tag basically exists to imply that someone is a paid or COI editor on a particular topic, and the "Who not to tag (SPA tagging guidelines)" make it clear I'm not even close to an SPA, so he was apparently just bitter and trolling in a failed to attempt to marginalize and discredit an editor with whom he disagreed), but since none of us are running for office it's not worth getting into those details.

Gamaliel's behavior has been reprehensible and isn't that of someone who is fit to be entrusted with Arbcom power. Everyone makes mistakes, and Gamaliel vaguely alluded to past blemishes on his own record in his statement, but I've seen no evidence that he sees anything wrong with his specific actions laid out here, nor that they wouldn't continue. I've seen long time admins/Arbcom members who are unfailingly polite, reasonable, and generally avoid controversies, especially political ones. Gamaliel is the opposite of that. I'll be happy to engage in a civil conversation with him about this if he wants, but right now I see no reason why I or anyone else should have confidence that he would be a fair judge of other editors. VictorD7 (talk) 01:33, 25 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I cannot imagine the patience and restraint Gamaliel has shown with you in the past. Your post here is a better campaign poster than any other I can imagine. You are not unique, and I think a lot of us can relate. We know what it is to be ground down by someone who is persistent and absolutely convinced they are right, who argues with the straw man, who describes in extreme terms the moderate actions and opinions of others who disagree, who writes a wall of words and will likely never understand why those words (and dozens of diffs) were not enough to persuade others. This will only backfire, and you will probably never understand why. Dcs002 (talk) 09:58, 25 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Personally attacking me is no defense of the comments and actions documented above, and blind ideological/personal solidarity isn't as mysterious a motive as you apparently feel it is. Honest, open minded people won't see edit warring, POV pushing, abuse of admin power, trolling, or endless streams of personal attacks as points in an Arbcom candidate's favor. VictorD7 (talk)

Gotta admit I'm really enjoying this dramafest. I've seen the archives, the difs, and within a span of a single half-hour I've come to the conclusion that "whoa Gam really doesn't want to be wrong here." Nobody has talked about the argument Vic is bringing up, waving it away with "strawman" but never explain how it's a strawman. What is the argument that Vic made up as a strawman compared with what the actual argument Gam is trying to make, then? Why is there so much hand-waving and insult throwing coming from both sides? Yea, Vic, you're kinda heated in some parts as well, but I've seen far more evidence that you give to support why you make this argument and virtually nothing from Gam's side but "nuh uh, you're wrong." He made blatant contradictions right there in the freakin' evidence, FFS. Anyways, everyone calm down and talk about evidence and not the people behind them. Sethyre (talk) 19:31, 27 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I have spent a few hours with these claims, and my previous comment stands. I would not have had the patience. Dcs002 (talk) 05:07, 30 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for actually taking the time to read and understand something of the dispute's substance, Sethyre. Though, even substance aside, the edit warring diffs and disruptive quotes I bolded and spaced out for the convenience of those with an aversion to reading should be enough to give serious pause to anyone considering putting that person on Arbcom. Surely there are many better candidates. The hope is that most voters don't see edit warring, POV pushing, abusing admin power, trollish attacks, and the general pettiness displayed as behavior they want in an Arbcom member. Otherwise, it doesn't really matter who sits on Arbcom. It would just be a kabuki dance around a cesspool. VictorD7 (talk) 21:30, 30 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

This candidate is radical and unfit for duty.200.48.32.157 (talk) 11:00, 2 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

linus torvalds created a community of programmers working on the linux kernel 1991. the community grew since then to nowadays 5'000 commits a month, 5 times more than 10 years ago. alone the linux kernel mailing list receives more than 20'000 messages a month, 3 times more than 10 years ago. innovative technologies are added to the kernel first from universities, individuals, companies, bearing the GPL. what do you see as the key success factors of that development, and what can you take off that into your work at wikipedia? --ThurnerRupert (talk) 15:25, 29 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]